HUNTER (The Corbin Brothers Book 1) (72 page)

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Cream chanted, over and over again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

I grabbed her hand and squeezed it, trying to hush her. “It’s okay,” I said under my breath, chancing a glance at her.

Cream looked beautiful. Both of us did. That’s what Jason had said. Dress beautiful. Look beautiful. And we’ll figure out something for you.

We’d spent two whole hours in his bathroom doing just that—Cream straightening her long, ash brown hair, dusting powder on her marble skin even though she didn’t need it, sweeping on the perfect eye shadow to emphasize her dark blue, almost purple eyes.

I’d curled my dark bob into a mess of gorgeous curls, added just a touch of bronzer to my olive skin, and smudged liner around my brown eyes to give them a smoky effect.

Both of us were wearing new clothes, purchased by Jason. Cream had on a sparkly green off-the-shoulder dress. I had a bedazzled camisole tucked into a micro miniskirt that emphasized my rear.

We’d painted our nails earlier. Our mile-high stilettos waited for our feet. Jason had bought everything. Everything.

“What is this for?”
we should’ve screamed.
“Where are you taking us?”

But we didn’t. We didn’t because we had no way of knowing what would happen. Neither of us had stopped to ask what the “something” might be that Jason promised to figure out for us.

We’d taken a cab to a part of the city I’d never been before. Gorgeous buildings glittered on every side of us. This was a finer area than either of us had ever dreamed of venturing into, given our humble backgrounds.

And the life we’d just come from.

“Jason, you’re a lifesaver,” Cream gushed, her face pressed up against one of the cab’s windows. Mine was pressed up against the other, while Jason sat up front with the driver.

“Anything for you,” he said, grinning. “And for Pumpkin, of course.”

“Thank you, Jason,” I said shyly. He had been Cream’s customer, not mine, and I felt lucky just to be in the car, wearing nice clothes and looking good, too.

“Can you imagine living in one of those big buildings?” Cream asked. “Can you just imagine it?”

I was, just as she was saying it. I’d live on the top floor. I’d no less than three maids to wait on me—clean up after me, do my laundry, give me backrubs, cook for me, whatever I desired. I’d have a gorgeous view of Central Park just off my balcony, and I’d sit up there and drink cocktails no matter what time of the day it was.

“Here we are,” Jason said, as the cab pulled up to one of the very buildings we’d been ogling. He got out first and helped us out of the back of the cab as if we were coming out of a limo. There might have been a red carpet for how gallant it all was. I could imagine all the flashing cameras on either side of me, capturing my image as I strutted toward this event, that world premiere.

I was so lucky to be with Cream, so lucky that she was able to get in touch with Jason after everything.

Maybe I should’ve started asking questions, then, as Jason walked us into the building, me on his left arm, Cream on his right. We were dressed for a club, not a fine dinner. Our five-inch pumps clicked across a marble floor. No one gave us more than a second glance, even though there were women there wearing pearls that probably cost more money than I’d ever seen.

For the first time, I didn’t feel quite as beautiful as I thought I looked. Men were in tuxedoes and the women on their arms wore little black dresses that hit them just at the knee. Their asses were in no danger of tumbling out from beneath the hem, as mine was.

A single pair of their shoes alone—demure, black, but with racy red paint on the underside—probably cost more than mine and Cream’s outfits combined.

I was shy by nature, only bold and sexy in my own imagination. I got the acute feeling that people were staring at us, but being blasé about it in that famed, nonchalant way that New York City had. Biting my lip, I looked over at Cream, but she was busy fawning over Jason.

Jason was making it happen for us—whatever “it” may have been.

When we got into the elevator, the doors sliding shut behind us, I should’ve asked when Jason asked the attendant to press the basement level button, slipping the uniformed man a strange-looking card with a twenty dollar bill wrapped around it. “Why tip a man twenty bucks to push a button to the basement?” I should’ve demanded. “Where are you taking us?”

But I never did. My brain kept making up explanations for everything. Maybe it was New York’s newest, most exclusive nightclub. They’d call it Basement, or Subterranean, or the New York Underground. That’s where Jason was taking us—to get us jobs taking care of the city’s elite.

Maybe, just maybe, when the elevator doors rolled open to show not a nightclub but a meat market—a raised platform running down the middle of the room, bare fluorescent bulbs hanging low over it, bathing the women standing on it in harsh, unforgiving light but keeping the men sitting around the stage in anonymous darkness—maybe I should’ve asked then.

“What is this place?” I should’ve said, wrenching my arm from Jason’s and dragging Cream to me. “Who the hell are you?”

But I just kept walking. Kept my eyes at my shoes when we approached a man at a table. Barely looking up when Jason said he had two more girls “for sale.” Didn’t even hesitate when Jason led us to the edge of the platform, which had a couple of stairs to help us get up into the light.

“This is how this works,” Jason said, withdrawing his arms from us and stepping back. Cream’s lips were pursed into a question, her brow furrowed. She should’ve been asking, too, this whole time, but Jason was her client. He’d take care of us, she said. He had been our last hope when our lives had been upended.

“This is a market,” he said, “and you are for sale. When you are purchased by the highest bidder, you will belong to him. You will belong to him, and you will do whatever he wishes.”

Jason smiled, his white teeth very bright in the dimness outside those damning bulbs. “I told you that you’d be taken care of, didn’t I?” he asked. “There’s a room full of men who want to take care of you. You just have to be good girls, both of you, and get the highest bids possible. You look beautiful. Now then, Cream, you first.”

I found my voice immediately, the one I should’ve been using from the beginning.

“No,” I said. “We go together, wherever we go.”

Jason stared at me, surprised. “There’ll be higher bids if you’re separate,” he said. “Maybe a man doesn’t want two girls. Maybe a man likes her better than you, or vice versa.”

“Maybe I don’t care about how high the bids are,” I shot back. “We’ll go together or not at all.”

“You don’t have a choice, now,” Jason said. “Once you’re down here, you’re down here. There’s no getting out.”

His words gave me a chill, but I stood firm. Cream laid her arm on her former customer’s arm.

“We’re going together, Jason,” she said, her eyes wide and frightened, her voice shaking, her face as pale as the grave. “We’re all we have left.”

Jason had been Cream’s former customer. I hadn’t known him. From what I knew now, I realized he wasn’t a good person. I needed to learn how to sniff out the bad ones, I realized. I needed to figure out who they were from the start. Jason had been so nice, so accommodating, letting us lay low in his beautiful condo until the heat died down.

He’d let us eat his food, bought us the basic necessities that we were lacking, and asked us what our plans were.

“Stay here as long as you’d like, don’t get the wrong idea,” he said, his smile so bright. “But I want to help you get your lives back.”

“I don’t even know where to start,” Cream said. “We had so much, and now we had nothing.”

“I think I can help,” he said. “I know of something. We’ll have to go shopping, though, to get you two some new clothes. You’ll have to dress beautiful. Look beautiful. And we’ll figure something out for you.”

I’d listened to the sounds of Cream and Jason having sex that night, the night after he bought us our gorgeous clothes. I didn’t know if Cream had genuinely liked the man or if she was just trying to express our gratitude. I wondered if it’d be my turn to “say thanks” next. I was just as good at it as Cream was, but I never gave it up for free. My body had been my business, though Cream had often thrown herself at guys she’d liked for no cost but their hearts.

She’d broken many a heart in her tenure—most often her own.

Jason hadn’t had to take us in. In fact, he’d put himself at risk by doing so. He was good-looking, I supposed, but not necessarily my tastes. Jason was always wearing designer clothes, a thick gold chain around his neck, his head shaved and oiled to a burnished gleam. He looked like a rapper or something, and had the digs to support the lifestyle. His condo was in a nice part of town, and he had a projection television that turned an entire wall into a screen.

I should’ve asked how he got his money. What he did for a living. What he had in mind for us.

“Fine,” Jason said quickly, pushing us up the stairs to the platform. With our tall shoes, I could hear the buzz of the fluorescent bulbs most of all. They sounded like angry insects, drowning out the chatter of the men sitting around the platform.

Cream and I huddled together up there, staring down at Jason uncertainly.

“Walk around,” he hissed, flicking his hand forward. “Sell it!”

I didn’t know what we were supposed to be selling. Our bodies? Our souls? Cream and I walked to the middle of the platform. The eyes on us made my skin crawl.

“Next up, a package deal,” Jason said, projecting his voice around the room. The men sitting around the platform quieted to hear what was being offered.

“Two former sex workers from one of our favorite places around town,” Jason continued. I flinched. Saying it like that was so raw. Truthful, but raw. Sex workers. I guessed that was what we had been before everything had gone down.

“Mama’s nightclub may be closed, but these girls are still open for business,” Jason said, drawing a couple of sarcastic laughs from the crowd.

My eyes flickered down to the men below us. The fluorescent lights were so bright. I wanted to shield my eyes to stare at the people who might try to own us, but I didn’t want to see their faces. I didn’t want to see any monsters down there. I didn’t want to be bought by a monster.

“What you see is what you get,” Jason said. “Two girls. A package deal. A light girl when your moods are light. A dark girl when you want to walk on the dark side.”

Cream was the light one. I was the dark one. I wondered how many other pitches like this one Jason had made down here in this basement. Probably enough to buy his pretty little condo. The projector television. Designer clothes.

“These girls know what to do between the sheets,” Jason added, “or in the shower, or on the rug, or against the wall, or in your car …”

He trailed off and paused, waiting for the wolf whistles and catcalls to die down. It was then that Cream started to apologize.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said, grinding the words out from between her gritted teeth.

She couldn’t come apart now, no more than I could. Not in front of all these people. What would happen if no one bought us? Jason had said that once we’re down here, we’re down here. There was no going back.

No escape.

“Let the bidding begin,” Jason said, backing off into the dimness of the room.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Cream chanted.

I threaded my olive fingers through her marble ones and squeezed.

“It’s okay,” I said. Her eyes were wide—probably as wide as my own. Neither of us could’ve foreseen this. Neither of us. How could we?

An auctioneer started up his chant, thankfully drowning out Cream’s apologies. I could barely make out the fact that the men in the crowd were lifting paddles with numbers on them. The auctioneer pointed each one out, his voice getting louder, his words flowing quicker, the price spiraling higher and higher.

The man’s slurring, the excited murmuring of the crowd of men, Cream’s chanting, the buzz of the fluorescent lights all merged together in one horrifying sound.

It was the sound of the end. I knew it. This was it. We were survivors, all of us. At least we had been.

But there were some things that couldn’t be survived. This was one of them.

We were being sold to the highest bidder.

We were nothing more than property.

The only thing to keep me from screaming was the fact that I was too shy to make a scene.

Too shy to scream for them to let us go.

Being shy definitely hadn’t come naturally to me. In fact, I was the black sheep in the family because of it.

I’d grown up in East Harlem, one of three sisters and two female cousins who crammed their lives together in a public housing apartment. We were all Puerto Rican, but the cousins were fresh from the island. My sisters knew Spanish well enough, peppering their quickly fired statements with island slang. The cousins knew English well enough, cursing fluently, adding creative and blush-inducing adjectives to their Spanish stories.

I was lucky to be able to speak at all.

Our parents had gone back down to the island as soon as my sisters had grown, leaving me in their care. I was the youngest by far, “
Mami y Papi’s sorpresita
,” they called me—Mom and Dad’s little surprise. I barely remembered my parents: big, red, wet kisses at a crowded airport, lipstick prints I had to wipe off with tissues on the train ride home.

My sisters barely talked about Mom and Dad—they were nineteen and twenty years old, and had more important things on their minds. I was just eight years old and too shy to ask them to tell me about Mami and Papi. Their volume was impossible to compete with, anyways, so I kept quiet as a general rule. I kept quiet, and kept my eyes open, trying to learn as much as possible through observation.

In some arenas, it worked.

I learned all about flirting and courting and kissing and sex. My sisters were unabashedly sexual, giving it up for any and all men who struck their fancy. In our claustrophobic two-bedroom apartment, I’d often be stuck on the couch, listening to the sounds coming from one bedroom, then relaxing when it finished, and tensing up again at the sounds coming from the other bedroom.

I didn’t know I was lucky to have the couch on those nights until the cousins arrived—
las primas
, my sisters kept going on and on about.
Las primas
this,
las primas
that.

When we met them at the same airport we’d sent my parents off from, all four of them of similar age and squealing, jumping up and down in the middle of the crowd, I felt more alone than ever. More alone, and more observant, watching everything.
Las primas
looked like my sisters—big hoop earrings, red lipstick, dark eyebrows, perms curling their hair into ringlets—and my sisters acted like
las primas—
giggling, talking faster than seemed humanly possible, switching back and forth between English and Spanish so easily that it made my head spin.

I understood everything and nothing at the same time, knowing the words but not their meanings, puzzled by cultural differences and curious about what seemed to be universal currency as far as their stories went—boys.

The cousins rattled Spanish at me on the train ride home, pinching my cheeks, but I couldn’t respond. I could understand the language, but I didn’t know how to speak it.

“Is she dumb, or what?” one of
las primas
asked my sister.

My sister looked down at me and shrugged. “I dunno,” she said. “She just don’t talk much, is all. Teacher never says anything.”

The teacher never said much of anything, to be honest. The rest of the kids in my class were unmanageable, wild little animals. The teacher probably didn’t even realize I was in her class. She was working hard to simply wrangle the rest of the students that she rarely had time to teach. I was sent home with worksheets that I puzzled over, sounding out the words carefully in my quiet voice, trying to shut out the screams of laughter that often punctuated the apartment.

It was so hard for me to focus on my schoolwork when more than two of the sisters or
las primas
were in the apartment, drinking beer from the bottle, gossiping about their latest conquests of the boys in the neighborhood, or plotting their next one. I knew that my sisters received some sort of public assistance for raising me, but it seemed like they never worked. Looking back, I knew they had to have had jobs to afford the tight jeans in all their different washes, the makeup, the rings that glittered on every finger. I always had clean clothes, my hair slicked back into braids every morning for school.

I was taken care of, but I wasn’t. My basic needs were looked after—food, bath, clothes—but nothing else. I did my worksheets at the kitchen table as the sisters and
las primas
revolved around me, ignoring me and going about their own pursuits.

Then, when I was fifteen, I blossomed suddenly and devastatingly. I shot up like a weed overnight, my hair was shiny and luscious, falling to my fuller breasts, and my ass was bigger and rounder than any of my family members’. The classmates who had always overlooked me at school started to pay closer attention. So did the female contingency at home.

“Where did these
nalgonas
come from?” a sister asked, slapping me on the very thing she’d just named. “What, did some ass fairy visit you last night? Mari! Look at
sorpresita
’s
nalgonas
!”

I blushed, hot and heavy under my olive skin as the other sister and
las primas
all crowded into the bathroom.

“Fuck,
sorpresita
,” my other sister said. “That’s a better ass than any of us.”

“
No es verdad, cabrona
,” one of
las primas
insisted. “That’s not true, bitch. Look at these
nalgonas
right here!”

She slipped down her boxer shorts and mooned us right then and there, slapping her own brown cheek.

The girls’ shrieks were deafening in the tiny bathroom, and I just wanted to curl up and die of embarrassment right on the spot. One of my sisters reached forward and spanked
la prima
’s bare ass as many times as she could until
la prima
pulled her shorts back up. I was sure they were taken from one of her many conquests.

“C’mon,
sorpresita,
” the other
prima
cajoled. “Tell
tu prima
how you got such a pretty ass all of a sudden. You been doing exercises? What?”

Death was being stubborn, so I was forced to shake my head slowly.

“She’s always here,
cabrona
,” my sister said. “You see her doing squats in the corner? Lunges around the kitchen?”

“
Sopresita
’s always doing her homework,” the other sister said. “Is that where you store all of that knowledge, baby?
En las nalgonas
?”

I shook my head again, resigning myself to my fate. Death wasn’t merciful enough to take me now and the female contingency had me cornered in the bathroom.

“I know, I know,” the other
prima
said. “
Sorpresita
never talks. All those unsaid words go straight to her ass!”

“Maybe you could shut up and try it,
cabrona
!” her sister screamed, and all of the girls screamed with her, laughing their heads off.

“You gotta come to the club with us,” my sister said. “Oh my God, they would die. You would fucking slay them with that ass,
sorpresita.”

“I can’t go to the club,” I said as the female contingency congratulated one another for this terrible idea.

“What’d you say,
sorpresita
?” my other sister asked.

“No!”
la prima
shouted. “Don’t speak! We don’t want those
nalgonas
deflating!”

I swore that I was going to have hearing loss from all the laughter in that tight little bathroom.

“I can’t go to the club,” I said. “I’m only fifteen.”

“You’ll be sixteen next month,” my sister said dismissively, as if that made all the difference in the world.

“You’ll be fine,
sorpresita,
” the other sister said. “You stick with us girls. We know people. We can get you in.”

Getting in wasn’t what I was worried about. I didn’t want to be paraded around all of the guys my sisters and cousins targeted. I didn’t want to go to the club at all.

“When we gonna do this, then,
cabronas
?”
la prima
asked. “This Friday?”

“Fuck it, let’s go tonight,” the other
prima
said.

“It’s a school night,” I protested.

“
Ay!”
my sister cried, swatting me on my ass. “What a little scholar! No, we’ll wait for Friday, then.
Sorpresita
’s gotta get her education. Mami and Papi wanted that most of all.”

I perked up, wanting to hear more about Mami and Papi. They were shadows to me—red kisses in a crowded airport. But the female contingency cackled on, planning what I was going to be wearing and what they were going to be wearing and who’d be most interested in whom.

“
Cabronas
, we’re forgetting the most important thing!” my other sister exclaimed.

“
Sorpresita
doesn’t know what’s up! We gotta give her the talk.”

“
Sí, sí, sí,
”
la prima
said quickly. “She can’t go to the club without the talk. Not with that ass.”

My sister pushed me down on the toilet as she and
la prima
perched on the edge of the tub. My other sister hopped up to sit on the sink, and the other
prima
leaned against the towel rack. My heart sank. They had me in their claws now. I was going to get a real education, now—even though I’d been learning about them ever since I’d learned to observe.

“There ain’t nothing wrong with sex,
hermana
,” my sister said. “Sister, we’re all products of it.”

The rest of the girls made noises of assent. I pressed my lips together, trying to just get through this. There was no escape for me.

“It’s a beautiful thing, really,”
la prima
said dreamily. “If it’s with the right guy.”

“Or the wrong guy with the right dick,” the other
prima
put in. They all cackled.

“The most important thing is that you protect yourself,” my sister said. “Protect yourself in all senses.”

“Don’t let anyone into your
chocha
unless they’re wearing a condom,” my other sister said, drawing a giant “X” over her own crotch with her finger. “Too many things can happen.”

“You don’t want a little baby in
tu panza
, do you?”
la prima
asked, patting my flat belly.

“And you don’t want a disease,” my sister said. “Always use a condom. That’s rule number one. Protection number one.”

“Even if you’re taking it in that ass of yours,” the other
prima
said.

“Don’t give that ass away,” my other sister protested. “Only to the man you love.”

“All of them are gonna tell her they love her, trying to get in that ass,”
la prima
said. “
Sorpresita
, don’t let them in. That’s a one-way street, your ass.”

“I dunno,” my sister said. “I kinda like it.”

I had to cover my ears at the resulting screams, dodging as the other sister hopped down from the sink to slap at our sister.

“
Sinvergüenza
!” the other sister hollered, laughing so hard that tears were rolling down her cheeks, blackened from her heavy mascara. “You shameless thing! What are you thinking, telling
sorpresita
that?”

“What?” my sister said, fending off the slaps with blows of her own. “She’s gonna make her own decisions about things. At least she can’t get knocked up if she takes it in the ass.”

“
Es verdad, cabrona,”la prima
said solemnly. “She can’t get a baby through her ass.”

I couldn’t do this anymore
, I decided, standing up abruptly.

“Thanks for the advice,” I said, making a move for the door.

“Sit your ass down,” my other sister said. “We’re not done here. Condoms. They gotta be used no matter what hole you prefer. Diseases can still happen in the ass,
sorpresita
, and that is not a pretty thing.”

“Condoms, protection number one,”
la prima
said, pushing me back onto the toilet.

“Protection number two,” the other
prima
said, “is your choice. Pepper spray. Mace. A knife. Whatever fits in your purse,
sorpresita
, or between those titties.”

“I gotta pair of brass knuckles,” my sister said proudly. “Slip those on,
hermana
, and it’s lights out. It don’t matter how big that guy is.”