HUNTER (The Corbin Brothers Book 1) (60 page)

With that, I exchanged Sandra for Blue, the freedom of New York City for the security of a place to live and work. We threw back the shots to celebrate, the burn of whiskey signing the contract.

What really sealed the deal for me was that I could live on premises in Mama’s boarding house. She explained to me how the work I did paid for my room and board while the tips I made were mine. I also liked the idea of having friends right on hand for me to meet and hang out with in the form of the rest of Mama’s girls.

I roomed with Cocoa first, as did every girl who just started working there. I loved her from the start—her quiet confidence and the way she seemed to know what to do in every single situation. She was clearly Mama’s second in command as well as a leader for the rest of us. Besides my art teacher, Cocoa was one of the strongest mother figures I’d ever had.

I guess I was surprised on my first night of work, mixing drinks like crazy, to find out what the nightclub really was. Surprised, but not affronted. One of my fellow bartenders told me when I asked why girls kept leading customers up a stairwell on the opposite side of the nightclub as the stairwell that led up to the boarding house.

“What’s up there, anyways?” I asked, tossing two handfuls of empty beer bottles into the trash bin with a crash that couldn’t be heard over the loud dance music blaring over the sound system.

“That’s where the real money’s made,” she said, winking. “The bedroom money.”

It didn’t take me ten seconds to piece together what that meant. Girls were up there selling their bodies to men who’d pay to be with them. I was politely interested and asked Cocoa about it that night, after we’d closed up the nightclub.

“I sell myself,” she said, nodding, her beautiful face placid at the admission. “We all do. We get good tips waiting tables. Don’t get me wrong. But the money we make upstairs is the real money.”

For the first time, I felt almost jealous of this “real money” the girls kept talking about. I was behind the bar and rarely had any contact with customers.

But then, about after three weeks of living and working at Mama’s nightclub, Mama herself approached me.

“Some man’s taken a shine to you, Blue,” she said, winking at me. “You know what’s what around her, don’t you, sweet girl?”

“I got it, Mama,” I said, nodding confidently.

“Well, honey, he wants you to take him upstairs, if you get my drift,” Mama said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder. “I’m sending Cocoa over here to help you out with what you need to know.”

Cocoa was laughing and chatting vivaciously, hanging onto a man’s arm. Was this him? Was this who was going to pop my prostitution cherry, so to speak? He wasn’t bad looking. He was fit and had his long, blond hair pulled neatly back into a bun at the nape of his neck. He seemed cheerful, if a little drunk, and as beautiful as Cocoa was, only had eyes for me. I blushed, feeling secretly pleased to be singled out by him, even if it was for a paid sex act.

“You all have fun, now,” Mama said, waving us away. My fellow bartenders immediately began working faster to pick up my slack.

As soon as I came out from behind the bar, Cocoa gave the man a tiny push toward me.

“You’re the most beautiful creature in this entire room,” the man said, grinning. “I’m Emil.”

“Blue,” I said, holding my hand out. When he seized it, he brought it to his lips, kissing my knuckles delicately.

“What a gentleman,” Cocoa said, gaping. “Blue, you lucky thing. They don’t make them like this anymore.”

“I’m pretty old-fashioned,” Emil said. “But I have to have something as beautiful as you the moment I see it.”

My heart pounded harder and harder with every step we climbed, Cocoa chatting about this and that as we went upstairs. The place I’d only imagined before was very real in front of me as we all walked down the hallway together. It was a mirror image of the boarding house, just without all of the pretty decorations and names of the girls on the doors. Behind some of the closed doors in this hallway, I could hear moans and cries. I wondered who’d be hearing my moans and cries.

“Right in here, you lovers,” Cocoa said, flinging a door open. The room was decorated in deep gold and mustard yellow, exuding a sort of luxury that I’d never witnessed before. There were tassels on the heavy velvet curtains covering the window, and the lights were on such a setting as to make everything look like it was gilded.

“Emil, why don’t you make yourself comfortable while Blue and I step inside the bathroom for a moment,” Cocoa said, blowing the man a kiss before pulling me inside of the bathroom.

Once the door was closed, Cocoa dropped her nightclub personality. Some of the girls we lived with were genuinely flirtatious, liking to lavish attention on any remotely attractive member of the male gender. Cocoa was different. She more or less put on an act when she was working. When the nightclub wasn’t open, she was serious and compassionate. It was that Cocoa who was looking at me now.

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” she asked, unbuttoning my work blouse swiftly.

“Of course I am,” I said, indignant. “All of the rest of you are always talking about the real money. Now I’m going to get some, too.”

“All right,” she said with a sigh, brushing my hair back, out of my face. “Keep in mind that I’ll be right outside the door in case you need anything.”

“Like what, a tag team?” I asked, laughing and picking a stray eyelash off of my cheekbone as I checked my appearance in the mirror. “You think this guy is a weirdo, or what?”

Cocoa didn’t give a sign that she noticed my inward wince. I couldn’t believe I was being so quick to judge. When I was still flitting from couch to couch, before I’d come to the nightclub, I was open to each and every person. Why was I discounting Emil as a weirdo before I even spent time with him?

“Every guy’s different,” Cocoa was saying. “The drunker they get, the more wary I am. Usually, drunk guys just mean whiskey dick. More often than not, they’ll get off sooner than they want to—unless they’re regulars. This guy isn’t. He’s new. We try to vet them as best as we can, but the occasional weirdo does slip in. Just call for me.”

“I’m sure I can handle it,” I said, adjusting my bra so that even more of my cleavage spilled out. I had to appreciate my mother for this one detail. I had a pretty great rack.

“Blue …”

I looked up as Cocoa’s voice trailed off. She looked pensive—almost sad.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” she said, laying her hand on my bare shoulder. “I can cover for you with Emil—with Mama, too. You can walk away from this.”

I laughed her off. “You’re acting like this is the worst thing in the world,” I said. “I’ve been giving it away for free since I got to New York City. It’s about time I started making people pay up.”

That made Cocoa smile, but it was a ghost of a thing. I found myself wondering how many men she had been with during her tenure at Mama’s nightclub. I wondered if each of them had taken a piece of her, and the Cocoa standing in front of me was just being held together with stubbornness and desperation.

“Are you on birth control?” she asked.

I nodded. “I had terrible periods,” I explained. “Got them for free from the local health department in Tennessee. The nurse praised me for being responsible, but I hadn’t had sex at the point. Just wanted more manageable cramps.”

Cocoa smiled. She opened a drawer and handed me a bottle of lube.

“Put this on,” she said. “You’ll thank me later.”

“I can get the juices flowing, don’t you worry,” I said, trying to give her back the bottle, but she shook her head.

“It’ll make it better for both you and him,” she said. “He doesn’t have to do foreplay or anything. There are no rules. You might get a considerate lover, or you might get someone who thinks you’re disposable. You never know, and you always want to be prepared.”

“Fine, fine,” I grumbled, squeezing the cold stuff onto my fingers and stuffing my hand beneath my panties. The lingerie set was new, something that Mama had bought for me right when I started working. She’d said that the clothes I’d brought from Tennessee were too raggedy for the caliber of business she was running, and I was more than willing to go on a shopping spree with her.

I had seven sets of lingerie—one for every day of the week. It was Thursday, so I was wearing my blue set, which matched my eyes perfectly.

I capped the bottle of lube and tried to give it back to Cocoa only to have her shake her head again.

“Behind, too,” she said. “You never know what they’re going to want.”

I could understand the wisdom of being prepared, but this seemed a little much.

“He said he was old fashioned,” I protested.

“People have been having anal sex since the beginning of time,” Cocoa said wryly. “You never know what you’re going to get.”

Cringing, I squeezed more lube out onto my fingers and worked it between my cheeks. I’d had anal during my foray into New York City, and didn’t mind it terribly. Vaginal sex, however, was my cup of tea. Mutual pleasure was so much better than one-sided pleasure.

“Any other pearls of wisdom to impart, baby?” I asked, sticking my hip out and putting my hand on it. I hoped I looked as confident as I felt.

Cocoa simply laughed at me. “Try to have a good time,” she said. “Get off, if you can. And if you can’t, pretend you did, anyway. He’s already paid for the pleasure of being with you, but he could always tip a little extra if you make it worth it.”

“Let the games begin,” I said, throwing open the bathroom door. Emil was sitting on the raised bed, smiling.

“You look even more beautiful than before, if that’s possible,” he said. “Your eyes are so blue.”

“That’s why they call me Blue,” I said, winking.

“You all are too cute,” Cocoa said, blowing us a kiss from the door, her nightclub personality firmly in place. It stunned me how easily she could switch it on or off. Always pretending to be something I wasn’t would exhaust me.

“You gonna stay and watch, Cocoa?” Emil asked. “I wouldn’t mind one bit.”

Cocoa laughed coquettishly, her eyes flickering. “Maybe next time, sweetheart,” she said. “I’ll be close by, though.”

The threat was implicit, but I heard it for what it was. I wasn’t sure that Emil did, though. Cocoa left the room, pulling the door closed, and I was alone with the man. For the first time, my confidence faltered a bit. When I’d first come to New York, I felt like the city was my oyster and I was finding one pearl after another. I was open to each experience and made an adventure out of everything.

This adventure was very real and grittier than anything else I’d done. This was illegal, I knew. And yet here I was, breaking the law in Mama’s name, selling my body to Emil.

I had to admit to myselfit was kind of exciting. This was just going to be my next adventure. If that was how I had to view it in order to be comfortable with it, then that was what I was going to do.

I smiled and cocked my head in what I hoped was a sexy pose before slowly stalking over to the bed.

“Emil,” I said, letting his name roll off my tongue. “I want you to tell me exactly what your expectations are.”

“I never have expectations,” he said. “I go into every situation open to anything.”

I was a little taken aback, but continued my slow walk to the bed. His philosophy sounded a little like someone I knew—mine.

“Well, I’m gonna tell you what I expect to happen,” I said, biting my finger before trailing it down my torso, over my breasts, and then down to the top of my panties, running it just inside the flimsy material before stopping just short of the bed and putting my hands on my hips.

With some satisfaction, I noted that Emil had followed my finger’s path very, very intently. I was happy that I’d painted my fingernails blue to match everything else. Putting on this new persona was exciting. Sandra felt more and more like someone I left in Tennessee, and Blue could be whomever she wanted.

“I desperately want to hear what you expect,” Emil said, focusing on me and nothing else. The bulge in his pants told me he was just as interested as he said he was.

“I expect us to have a beautiful night together,” I said. “That’s all that has to happen.”

“I think I can manage that,” he said, opening his arms to me. “Now, come here.”

I jumped lightly up and onto the bed, giggling as it squeaked mightily.

“I’m going to have to tell maintenance or someone to oil the springs,” I laughed. “Good lord.”

Emil laughed, too, and held me to him, me nearly naked against him, fully clothed. His silk shirt felt good against my bare skin. I put my nose against his neck and inhaled deeply. I could tell just from the smell of it that his cologne was expensive—probably more expensive than his shirt, even. I knew that Mama’s nightclub catered to those who could afford it. The drinks weren’t cheap, and neither were the girls. But it was still a shock to me that I was about to sleep with a very wealthy man. My previous New York trysts had all been successful in their own bohemian ways, but none of them were financially secure.

He exuded money, from the rings on his fingers as he caressed my milky skin, to the cut and color of his hair.