Authors: Michelle Woodward
ROMANCE: CLEAN ROMANCE: Summer Splash! (Sweet Inspirational Contemporary Romance) (New Adult Clean Fantasy Short Stories) (33 page)
So they waited a few days and bought a test from the store. It was positive. After that things changed between them, but not drastically at first. It wasn't until the talk they had a few days after the test came back positive.
“Jen, there are a few things I've kept from you,” Rick said as he sat on her couch with her, holding her hand. “First of all, I don't know how else to say this so I'm just going to go for it. I'm in the mafia. That means the whole waste management thing is more or less a cover for all of the other stuff that I have to do for the mob. It's a pretty good paying gig, but there is a bunch of unsavory practices that I didn't mind so much when I was younger, but as time goes on I hate it more and more.”
Jen wanted to recoil but didn't. She didn't want to offend Rick. It was shitty that he'd lied to her, and it sucked that he was in the mob, but maybe they could get over it. Maybe there was a way for them to reconcile what was going on between them with what the world wanted them to do.
“There is something else,” Rick said. “Besides that, I'm married.”
Jen recoiled this time, and the wail of a banshee left her lips before she could even think of suppressing it. She got up and ran out the front door of the apartment, then down the hall, then down the steps, then out the door. She just kept running and running. She figured she'd know when she was supposed to stop, but she couldn't. Something about moving away from the entire situation made her feel like she was getting some kind of resolution to what was happening. Like if she put enough distance between her and Rick maybe she wouldn't have to face it. Maybe, just maybe, if she ran forever everything would go back to normal for a change instead of being so shitty. So she ran, without looking back. All the way to the end of town. Then she collapsed.
Luckily Rick was just behind Jen when she went down, and he scooped her up and carried her back to her place. After that their relationship changed, but it didn't cool off. They were still hot for each other, but now they had to be careful, almost as if playing some kind of game. They couldn't go out in public together, and Rick couldn't get caught coming over to her place. This wasn't just because Rick was married, but because if the mob found out that she was pregnant something would have to happen. Either she would be drawn into the mob herself as an axillary person, or she would be killed. Of course neither of them wanted the former, but even the latter seemed to be a bad option in Rick's mind. He told her that even though it could appear to be glamorous at times it really wasn't. In the movies they never showed the hours of boredom, waiting for someone to show up at a money drop, or all the paranoia that eventually tore people apart.
The more Jen listened the more she realized that being in the mob was nothing like the movies depicted. There was just so much more going on under the surface that she hadn't known about. People killed each other all the time with little or no reprisal. The only people that a mobster would get into trouble for touching was someone who was “made.” Rick was a made guy, like the rest of the made guys he hung out with. But some of the others were starting to bring around hanger-ons, as they were called. People that didn't really have any skin in the game but wanted badly to be a part of it. The way they did this was by doing things for made men in the hopes that at some point they would be rewarded by being vouched for when they were made themselves. It was all a pretty shadowy underworld of rules and regulations that were only adhered to when it was convenient, and completely disregarded at a moments notice.
Jen thought long and hard about leaving Rick for awhile but it always seemed like the coward's way out. Not that Jen didn't realize that it was an actual, viable option. It was just that she was actually in love with Rick and didn't want to leave him. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. Jen didn't think about what was going to happen with his wife and kids, or what was going to happen if, or when, people found out. And when it dawned on her she had retreated into her own head a good deal, in order to justify staying with Rick and to minimize the very real danger to her and her unborn child, she knew that was why so many of the people that Rick hung out with had that weird, detached look on their faces. The kind that soldiers get after being deployed to long. The look that man adopts when the pressure is just too great and they have to be absent in order to be present.
Jen thought about calling her mother and fleeing the state but that seemed like a terrible idea to her the more she considered it. She even thought about contacting the police and offering up her cooperation in exchange for some kind of protection, but then she heard Rick talking about how a made man had rolled on the mob years ago. The mob had been patient, dropping the entire matter for about a decade. Then they had carefully started to seek the person out. First it was just the internet and searches. Then it was weird phone calls in the middle of the night to people they thought might be the guy. Eventually they tracked him to a small town in the middle of nowhere. It didn't take long for the guy to disappear. The real kicker, Rick had told her, is that since the former made man had been in the witness protection program no one noticed when he wasn't around anymore. As far as anyone knew he'd died shortly after rolling over on the mob. So his family didn't raise a stink that would have forced people to do their jobs and track down the killers, or at least try. Instead the whole thing was swept under the rug, so to speak, because the witness protection program wasn't about to air their dirty laundry to their own bosses and tell them how badly they'd fucked everything up.
So Jen felt trapped, but at the same time it was the kind of trapped that a dog feels while it wears an electric collar and stares longingly across the property line at the street. Jen knew that it was all on her, that her destiny was in her hands. Sure the mob would try to flex and make people think that they ran everything, but really, from the little she'd been able to see of Rick's friends—which wasn't very much since they couldn't know they were together as a couple—it had seemed that most of them were literally playing some kind of weird game where organized crime was the focal point. Sure they were dangerous, but mostly to each other. The mob even had loosely followed rules about only killing people that were soldiers in the mob as to avoid civilian death. Jen also noticed that when they did kill someone out side of the mob syndicate it was usually someone weak and alone, someone that wouldn't lose their minds and kill everyone in sight. The mob didn't pick on retired cops or soldiers, they didn't fuck with people they knew would go from zero to shooting up their houses at night in less time then it took to pee their pants. The mob always had an eye out for an easy mark, and sometimes they didn't want anything from a mark but their life.
Things went on this way for some time. Then Jen really started to show and both of their attitudes changed. Rick started talking about how it might be possible to buy his way out of the mob. He could leave his wife in good financial standing so that she'd never have to work and he didn't even think she'd really mind anyway, if that were the case. Jen asked how much money he was talking about having to spend to buy his way out, but Rick wouldn't say. He just kept talking about how it was worth it, how he had to live a normal life at some point and all of the mob stuff was going to get him killed eventually anyway. It just wasn't enough that they were in love. The way things were at that time pretty much insured that Jen would end up raising the kids alone, and neither of them wanted that.
When Jen first started considering taking off with Rick she knew that it would have to be quick, and that she wouldn't have time to commiserate with any of her friends about what was going on. She knew that Rick was giving up a lot for her, but at the same time she didn't feel at all badly about it because she knew as well as he did that what he was doing wasn't something that could be done forever. People got out of the mob for reasons that were usually pretty good. Rick's reasoning was sound, as far as Jen was concerned, but she also wondered if he was being completely honest with her. What if there was no way for him to buy out and he was just saying that so that she didn't worry all the time. She knew that she wasn't cut out for constantly looking over her shoulder.
“Listen,” Rick said one day as they walked in the park. “I'm going to buy my way out and we're going to head west, all the way out to Colorado. The west side of the Rockies out there is sparsely populated. There are towns where people go to disappear. One place I've read about on the internet even has a sign up at the post office telling people that if they take pictures of the residents that they will be arrested and the film scrapped.”
Jen's eyes grew wide.
“What do you think is going on out there?” she asked.
“I'm not sure, really. It could be that witness protection just loves the place. Or it could be the rich eccentric people move out there to be left alone. You'd be surprised how hard it is to be left alone in this country. But Colorado's Front Range does a good job of providing that place. You can go there and get lost in the mountains. And weed is legal. I've never smoked the stuff because the mob looks down on that sort of thing, and drugs in general. But maybe we could move out there and live like a couple of New Age hippies in the mountains. Of course we'd have running water and all of that jazz. You know what I mean. I'm not talking about living under a bridge or anything.”
Jen had agreed and they'd set a date. As the date approached Jen wondered more and more whether or not she'd made the right decision. It was easy to just tell herself yes, but she knew that deep down there were other ways she could go about raising the child. She knew that she could pull off being a single mother, and that it didn't have to turn into something out of a thriller movie where she moved far away from her life in order to stay alive. The closer the day got the more antsy she felt about the entire thing. But she couldn't let Rick know. He wasn't joking around about buying out, and the amount of cash that he'd stored at her house for the drop off was huge. She'd never seen so much money in one place in her life. She wondered what it must feel like to be able to produce that amount of money on demand. Or maybe the feeling was more like the trapped feeling she'd had clinging to her for the past few months. Maybe Rick felt like his whole life had been kind of a waste since he'd only ended up making enough money to buy his was out of the mob.
The day they left the sky was sunny and clear. They got on a train westward bound and settled in. Rick told her about all of the places they'd go and things they'd see once they made it out there. It was pretty great to listen to him talk, to know that he loved her so much that he was willing to do all of this. Because love was a word they hadn't thrown around yet, or even said once. But as the train chugged away from the station Jen realized that this was love, the amount of sacrifice for each other. This was the thing that so many people went their entire life without finding. And like with so many other people, love was the thing that might end up tearing them apart. Because who knew how each of them would adjust. Who knew what would happen. They could move out there and end up hating it, end up resenting each other and everything about the mountains and the hippies and the pot and the tourists. They might end up worse off.
Jen rested her head against Rick's arm as the train slowly picked up speed. The rhythm of the engine was something she felt in her soul. She smiled as she thought about how their baby would enter the world in one of its most beautiful places. She just hoped that Rick and herself could do right by the child and each other. She hoped that end the end it would all be worth it, and neither of them would have any regrets. Jen fell asleep and didn't wake again until their next stop. It was dark out, but for the first time since they met they were alone together, without anything darkening the sky above them. Jen felt at peace for the first time. She felt homeward bound.
THE END
When I walk into the club, I stride, great big swallowing steps that eat up the floor in front of me like it’s made up of nothing but candy. Except that I’m not sweet. I can feel the eyes on me, the sway of my slender hips cutting the air around me, the black leather skirt I’ve got on swishing from side to side.
The men flock to me like flies to honey. I know what they see. They see the dark slash of my hair, falling all the way down to my butt. They see my eyes and they know; they can feel the dark energy rising up in me. It’s been a month since I’ve doffed the collar of Master Slick, and it’s been a very lonely night indeed. There are still nights when I pick up the phone and for the few moments that he picks up the phone and I can hear his voice and breathing, I find myself aching in all the familiar old ways. We broke up and I haven’t been able to bring myself to find a new Dom, but I think that tonight is my night.
I see my mark, a man relatively well-known around here. The things I’ve heard about him make me think that he’s exactly what I need; so much of what I enjoy about this particular lifestyle is purely psychological. Some subs require the whips, the contraptions, the strappings, but for me, the best part is mental. The idea of surrender, the vulnerability that comes with placing your soul and body into the hands of another—I feel charged just thinking of it.
My moniker is Little Iliana.
The man and I lock eyes, but I look demurely away, sending the signal that I would like him to display his alpha male prowess. There is a communication in this world that goes beyond actual words, and this man understands my meaning. He crosses the room with two Grey Gooses in his hands, sits down next to me and we sip our drinks silently for a while. The only thing touching is our eyes. His are a steely gray, and we take stock of each other. He is powerfully built, a stocky man who has that broody quality about him that reminds me of Master Slick. I sip my drink while he watches, and then pause. He tells me to finish the rest of it. I comply. He tells me to eat the olives off the toothpick. I chew. Then he tells me to dance, and when I get up, his eyes skim my body up and down. I am not sure I like the way he is issuing orders without really getting to know me, but maybe that’s just his personality. In either case, I feel like dancing.
I am swaying, I am rocking, I am totally in my body. I love it when I’m being watched by just one person; it makes me feel special, like I’m the only woman in the world. I am rotating my hips in the infinity signs to the heavy music that is pouring out of the speakers, crossing my midline with my arms, allowing the black bangles to slip all the way down my forearms. I am shaking my long hair from side to side when I spot Hank.
My heart begins to pound so hard that I am sure the Dom can see it pounding against the sharp bite of my ribcage. I quickly look away; Hank appears to be uncommonly uncomfortable and I know that it is very difficult to make a man that disciplined feel out of place. He has weaved in and out of the crowd and is now standing on the fringes, watching me; I can see his reflection in the mirror I am dancing in front of, although I don’t think he knows it. There is something like shock in his eyes, and I know that I’ve just changed his perception of me entirely. God’s blood, what’s a man like that, a decorated Navy SEAL, doing in this club?
Maybe I misjudged Hank all these years.
Maybe he’s even more interesting than I first imagined.
Maybe we’re more alike than I first thought.
I dance and watch his amazement grow. He cannot unlock his eyes from the curve of my waist as I roll my hips forward and back, and then again, as I shimmy my shoulders, the soft swell of my breasts lush against the silk fabric of my top. I am an enchantress in that moment; I can feel it just as surely as a dog feels its owner’s energy through a leash. In our case, the leash is invisible.
Given our history, I find it incredibly amusing that right now, I am the alpha. I was always the alpha. It just had to be in the right situation. I met a man who was a dog handler once; he introduced me to this soft, fluffy little Maltese and told me that when he first had the dog, it displayed dominance and aggression over him and all the other dogs in the house. Then he demonstrated the alpha roll and told me that no other Maltese he had ever met would allow a human being to do that to it.
Watching him alpha roll that dog was a huge turn on. I had him eat me out by sitting on his face in one of my special chairs, the kind that’s like a throne with a hole in it. By the time I was done, he was short of breath and his quads were aching, but he knew who was boss. And he liked it.
Side to side and back and forth. I slide my hands down my thighs and use the flats of my hands to slide my skirt up, revealing my ankles and allowing the long slits of it to give flashes of my creamy skin underneath. A highway to heaven that is off-limits to anyone who I do not invite there first. A quick glance up reveals that Hank has turned a peculiar color and is unable to stare at me directly anymore; he’s got his eyes down and his shoulders are turning in a little. I recognize that pose. We’re back to the dogs again—when a dog is submissive, it stops puffing its shoulders out and acting important. Hank can feel who is in charge here, and it is certainly not him. What an interesting change that must be for someone who is a Navy SEAL, someone who is used to being the pack leader and directing others.
He forgets that we are two of a kind. And he has always, but always, underestimated me. And if you know who I really am, you realize how dangerous that is.
* * *
What you want and what you end up getting are often two entirely different things.
For example, when he came home on leave, the last thing Hank Leigh wanted to do was to go to some seedy little club in the middle of nowhere. However, when he learned that Iliana Reed was in town, his natural sense of curiosity got the best of him. After Iliana had dropped out of Stage 3 of their training, neither he nor George had heard from her again, and it had been a good four years since he had seen her last. He was given leave for two weeks and had rushed back to his childhood home, only to find that while everything looked exactly the same, everything was exactly different at the same time.
It was his mother who mentioned that Iliana was back. Nobody knew exactly where she had been over the past few years, but she had returned right after her mother had died and taken back over the house. During the day, she worked in the pet shop over on Main Street, and as soon as she would close the store down for the night, she could be seen hopping into her car, a sleek black beauty, and driving in the direction of the town fifteen miles east, the one that was hopping with nightlife fit for a major urbanized center. She was young and entitled to a life, particularly after such a harsh tragedy, his mother reasoned aloud to him, but for God’s sake, nobody knew where the girl was going and where she was coming from. It was a small town and people talked; Iliana sure was a strange one was how Hank’s mother put it, probably thinking she was diplomatic as all hell.
Hank couldn’t deny that last one, though. Iliana had always struck him as just a little bit left of center in the least political meaning of that particular phrase. She was a loner even during their SEAL days, which was strange because their training focused on creating a unit, people who would support each other and work together to complete their missions. But there was always that thing about Iliana, the way she would look at their training officers that made it perfectly clear she would never display that humility that is considered the proper character for SEALS.
George, one of the other recruits and also hailing from their home town, had seen it a little bit differently. “She’s a girl, man,” he would whine to Hank every time Hank would try to bring up Iliana after she left. “It’s rough on us, but imagine what it’s like for the women, with their delicate lady parts and whatnot. A SEAL has a passion for excellence; maybe she just had a passion for cookies.” Hank would grind his teeth and try to focus, instead, on how good the other man was during their missions; his nervous energy would slough off and he would be alert, focused, and hypersensitive to the positions of his team.
Hank didn’t pause to think much on why he wanted to see what Iliana did with her nights. He spotted her at the pet store one day, looking as shockingly young as she did during her SEAL days, but he couldn’t come up to her and greet her. He was not a man who liked to stand much for unnecessary awkwardness, and that was all he could picture happening if he went up to Iliana and talked to her. Because the truth of the matter was was that all the questions he had for her would not be ones that were appropriate. Where had she gone after the SEALS? If she hadn’t wanted to be there, why did she join them in the first place? Was it weakness that caused her to leave, as George had always theorized, or was it something else? Back when he knew her there, she had always had this look about her like she was waiting for the next hit, the next dangerous training session because she didn’t care if she lost the skin off her teeth as long as she could prove something.
What are you running from? Hank wondered as he drove behind Iliana, making sure to stay three cars behind her on the highway to avoid being spotted, although he knew it was a stretch to imagine that she had been alerted to his presence in town as he had been to hers.
His mind had been a pleasant blank before he had pulled into the shady little darkened parking lot outside the club. Iliana had pulled in and dimmed all her lights; it was already dark out, so he couldn’t see into the car, but she stayed in there for ten, maybe fifteen minutes. When she emerged, his heart almost stopped. Gone was the uniform of chinos and a T-shirt she wore at the store. The woman who stepped from the shiny black car was an ethereal creature if he had ever seen one. With her bird-like slim build and loose flowing hair, encased in silk, leather, and velvet, all black against the pale ivory of her skin, she looked like a dark fairy setting out for a night of frolicking amongst demons.
It never even occurred to him that she might be one of the demons herself.
It is only when he comes across the list of rules that Hank gets his first inkling of what type of club he has wandered into.
1. No booze and no penetration.
2. Everything must be consensual. If you see someone who intrigues you, by all means, ask, but wait until they are finished first.
3. Leave your street clothes at the door ($2). Paddles, cat-o’-nines, and other items available for purchase at the rear end room under the EXIT sign.
What is inside almost offends his sensibilities, but then he pulls himself up short. There are men in skintight latex suits being led on leashes held by women whose dark makeup gives them a slightly vampiric edge. Gorgeous women of all shapes and sizes, wearing collars or not, are being attended to by men. There are indeed paddles up for sale near the back exit of the club, and the line to obtain these toys moves fast, although it is easily ten-deep. The whole place reminds Hank heavily of a dungeon, the kind where he and George ended up on one of their missions; they ended up having to extricate the women there and lead them to shaking, relieved safety. Unlike that mission, however, the women here look as if they feel completely at ease. There is no familiar bar-buzz, seeing as the place sells non-alcoholic drinks, only, and there is a surreal feel to the space; this is where fantasy goes to live, and there is a group of people on a centralized platform suspending what looks like a bed onto a complicated pulley system. A closer look reveals that what he thought to be the bed is actually a very large box filled with straw; in the center of it lays a nubile young woman, her ankles and wrists bound together, a black satin gag tied around her mouth.
His first instinct is to run to her, untie her, and punch everyone around her, but he notices that her eyes are burning with excitement and not fear; he would know fear anywhere, and this most certainly is not that. As men’s hands reach out and stroke her, she arches her back and leans into the caresses; Hank sees one of the men draw out a riding crop and slide it gently over the rounded expanse of her bottom. He lifts his arm, but before he can bring it down, Hank turns away. He is the interloper here; he has seen many things over the course of his lifetime, and he knows better than to interfere, especially when the rules of the club are so blatantly clear. There must be over a hundred people in this club; if none of them are running away screaming, then why should he panic over some sexual deviance? As it is, he avoids making eye contact as he uses his peripheral vision to scan for Iliana.
He stops stock-still.
There, on the dance floor that consists of a reflective surface and many blinking lights, a slim-hipped young woman sways.
He is riveted to her, the fall and rise of the top of her skirt riding low, the way the natural grace of her arms waves in time to the music. It is as if he has been transported back in time, when kings and noteworthy men would call upon the beautiful women in their royal households to dance for them, to serve them. She cannot see him, her eyes are downcast, but he watches her, trying his best to ignore the feeling of dirty rising up within him. He survived Hell Week, for Pete’s sake, that fourth week of SEAL training where candidates sleep for about four hours a night and run more than two hundred miles the next day. He should be able to stop from staring at a woman.
The dance is over much too fast for his taste, as loathe as he is to admit it. Hank watches with regret as Iliana goes back to her seat, next to a man who looks as brutish as any I have ever seen. Is this actually her type? He looks as though he can choke a horse, and the idea of the man doing anything to her wiry little frame puts Hank ill at ease. He does not notice as he begins to gradually draw closer and closer to the couple. The man leans over and whispers something in Iliana’s ear, to which she laughs, the liquid in her martini glass swishing softly. Hank draws closer and closer, not thinking of what he is going to say and do—how will he even justify being here?—and then he sees the man put his hand on Iliana’s thigh.
