Make Me Sin (24 page)

I
follow him. Slowly, because I’m still weak, I make my way from
room number twenty-seven down the long corridor, Bella trotting by my side. I take the stairs to the main floor. A.J. is nowhere to be seen.

At my feet, Bella huffs. I look down at her, and she’s staring in the direction of the corridor that leads to the rear of the hotel. “Show me, Bella. Where’s Daddy?”

She yips and trots away. I follow behind, my heart pounding, my knees like Jell-O.

The light is murky today; there’s a storm coming soon. In A.J.’s room I saw the sky through the windows, slate gray, threatening rain, and downstairs there’s little illumination as I walk barefoot through the silent halls. When Bella reaches the door that leads to the pool patio, she looks back at me, waiting. We go outside.

I see him right away, standing at the edge of the empty pool. He’s motionless, looking down at the piles of dead leaves. Even from where I’m standing I can see how his hands shake. The clouds overhead cast everything in a shadowed half light, so though it’s morning, it seems like we’re headed toward night. When A.J. raises his head and looks at me, the first of the rain begins to fall.

His face is already wet.

The pull between us is so strong, I feel as if an invisible hand has reached into my chest and grabbed my heart. I don’t even try to resist it. My feet move before I can stop them, and then I’m running.

When I’m a few feet away, he opens his arms. I slam into his chest at full speed, but it doesn’t knock him off-balance. He wraps his arms around me and buries his face in my neck.

“You’re still here.”

His voice is hoarse. The fist around my heart tightens. “I still have one more day.”

We’re getting wet. The drizzle is turning into a downpour, which we both ignore. Under the patio awning, Bella barks, wanting us to come in.

“You don’t hate me for lying?” he whispers, trembling.

And my heart, dear God my poor battered heart, just cracks wide open. I start to cry. “No, I don’t hate you, A.J. I love you! I love you no matter who you are! I can’t
not
love you, no matter what name you call yourself or what you’ve done! I don’t care about any of that!”

My words make him groan. He takes my face in his hands. He kisses me deeply, passionately, his heart thumping hard against my chest. Rain catches in my lashes and slides down my cheeks, mingling with my tears.

He lifts me into his arms. I rest my face against his neck and close my eyes, shivering, my arms wrapped around his strong shoulders. He walks us out of the rain, into the hotel, and up the stairs. My heart beats like a hummingbird’s the entire time. I can’t stop shaking, or catch my breath.

He kicks open the door to his room. He strides over to the mattress,
kneels on it, and lies down with me in his arms. He kisses me again, desperately, his body wet and hard against mine. When I respond with equal desperation, he rips off my wet T-shirt, sweats, and panties, throwing it all aside so he can stare down at my naked body.

His gaze is adoring. He kneels between my legs, running his hands down my thighs, over my hips and belly, and up across my breasts, slowly, as if he’s memorizing every inch of my flesh. Everywhere he touches I arch into his hands, feeling like I’m ablaze.

“So beautiful,” he murmurs, caressing my breasts. “You’re so goddamn beautiful, angel.”

I hold out my arms. He lowers himself atop me. I love his weight, the feel of his wet chest against mine, the smell of his skin, his hair. I want to drown in him.

His cock is hard against my thigh. The thin nylon shorts are no match for it; he might as well be naked.

When he kisses me, I rock my pelvis against his. He moans into my mouth. I slide my hands down his back and under the elastic of the shorts and grab his ass, sinking my nails into his skin. He hisses and draws back, looking like he’s in pain, but I know it’s not from my fingernails.

It’s because he’s still holding back.

I stare into his eyes. “I know you said you’d never fuck me. But you never said you wouldn’t make love to me.”

His cock twitches against my leg. Agonized, fighting himself, he stares down at my face.

Remembering what he told me before, that the reason he’d never sleep with me was because then I’d belong to him forever, I whisper, “I’m already yours, A.J. It’s too late. All of me already belongs to you.”

I see the exact moment it happens, the instant he decides. He teeters for one final breath, then, with a flutter of his lashes and a soft exhalation, he gives in.

He digs his fingers deep into my hair, fits his mouth against mine, and kisses me like I’ve never been kissed in my entire life. He puts his all into it, his body and his heart and even his soul, so that I feel like we’re not even two people anymore; we’re fused. It’s incredible.

It’s a claim.

By the end of the kiss I’m writhing against him, delirious with want. I jerk the thin nylon shorts down his hips, tearing at the fabric. He lifts his hips, allowing his cock to spring free between us, then lowers himself again so it’s pressed, hot and throbbing, against my core.

He reaches his hand between our bodies and takes his erection in his fist. He slides the tip of his cock back and forth over my entrance, watching my face, listening to my whimpers and low moans. He whispers, “You on the pill, baby?”

I shake my head.

Without a word, he shifts his weight, reaches over to the side of the mattress and retrieves a little foil packet from beneath. He tears it open with his teeth, ripping the gold lettering “Magnum XL” in two. I watch in breathless anticipation as he quickly rolls the condom down the length of his stiff cock, then positions it again between my thighs.

When he eases it inside me, I gasp at the feeling of fullness. He’s big, but I’m so wet and ready he doesn’t have to go as slow as he’s going.

A low rumble of thunder rattles the windows. Rain drums hard against the roof.

“More,” I plead, rocking my hips, trying to get him deeper, but he’s in control. He won’t let me set the pace. He kisses me, then lowers his head and sucks my nipple into his mouth, hard, using his teeth. I arch, crying out in both pleasure and pain. Instantly he gentles, lapping my nipple with his tongue, suckling lightly, moving to the other nipple to lavish it with the same attention.

I squirm beneath him. It will only be seconds before I start to beg incoherently. He’s still got only the tip inside me, and I need every beautiful inch of it.
Now
.

“Chloe. Keep still.” His voice is firm, just this side of hard.

“I can’t.” It’s true; my thighs tremble as I say the words. My fingers squeeze his ass.

“Do I need to tie you up?”

Now I freeze. My body falls completely still. Only my chest moves, rapidly rising and falling with my breath.

He lifts his head and breathes something in Russian into my ear. The tone is soft but the language is guttural, harsh, and incredibly sexual. I have no idea what he’s just said to me, but I’m
on fire
.

He moves his hand and presses his thumb against my swollen, aching clit. Stiffening, I suck in a breath, trying not to move. I’m rewarded with low, satisfied praise.

“Good girl.”

Still not sinking deeper inside me, A.J. lowers his mouth to my nipple again. He begins to suck it at the same time he rubs slow, gentle circles around my clit with his thumb.

My moan of pleasure is broken. My eyes slide shut. It takes every ounce of my concentration not to move, to resist the incredibly strong urge to flex my hips and arch my back, to buck against his hand.

“Perfect,” he whispers, and slides farther inside me.

I feel myself stretch around him. I feel the heat of him, the hardness, the pulsing vein that runs the length of the crown to the base. I’m so close to orgasm I have to bite the inside of my mouth to keep myself still.

“Open your eyes baby.”

I do. His nose is inches from mine. His face is strained, and his eyes are both soft and thrillingly hard. It’s obvious that going this slow is as difficult for him as it is for me. I wonder why he’s doing it.

“Tell me again.”

“What?”

“You know what.”

It can only be one of a few things. I moisten my lips. “I’m yours.”

He slides in another inch.

I gasp, struggling to remain still. My fingers dig into the muscles of his ass.

“What else?”

“All of me belongs to you.”

He presses in farther, another few inches, huge and hot, and I can’t stop the groan that slips from my lips. My thighs shake with the effort not to wrap around his waist.

“And what else?”

“And . . . and . . .”

He waits, breathing shallowly, watching me with hooded eyes. He’s balanced on one elbow, still massaging the bundle of nerves between my legs. I can tell he can’t last much longer, either. I know now what he wants me to say, and what he’ll do when I say it.

A sliver of lightning briefly illuminates the room in a jagged pulse of white. It’s raining so hard it sounds like gunfire.

On an exhalation, looking into his eyes, I whisper, “I love you.”

With a growl like an animal’s, he shoves all the way inside me.

I cry out. My body bows against his. My eyes fall shut. My head tips back against the pillow. A.J. starts to thrust into me, deep and hard, over and over, one big hand beneath my head, pulling my hair, the other gripping my thigh, holding me open as he plunges inside.

So this is what I’ve been missing.

That’s the last coherent thought I have before I come, screaming his name.

T
here are moments that brand you.

There are moments that alter you, that you recognize, even as they’re happening, will leave you different afterward than you were before. It’s these life-changing moments that make you who you are, more so than the family you were born into or all the experiences you had leading up to them.

For better or for worse, once you’ve lived through such a moment, you can never go back.

As I lie sweaty and sated in A.J.’s arms, my head resting on his chest, our legs entangled and our frantic heartbeats finally beginning to slow, I know that this is one of those moments. I’m different from the girl I was just this morning. I’m darker. More dangerous. In fact, I’m capable of anything.

Because now there’s something I’m willing to lie, cheat, steal, or die for to protect. Something I don’t want to live without.

Or some
one
.

And it’s time for him to share. There can be no more walls between us, not after this.

“Tell me everything, A.J. Start from the beginning. Don’t leave anything out.”

His chest slowly rises with his deep inhalation, lifting my head. His right hand is on my scalp, fingers entwined in my hair, the left trails slowly up and down the arm I have flung across his chest.

“I was always bigger than the other boys. Even when I was little, I was always the giant of the bunch.” His voice is slow, almost sleepy, neither sad nor happy, just matter-of-fact. “My earliest memory is of fighting. I don’t know what it was about, but I was fighting a boy a few years older than me, and winning.” He pauses. “Mostly I remember the screaming.”

“The other boy’s?”

“The crowd. People were standing around us, watching. Cheering me on.”

“How old were you?”

He thinks silently for a moment. “Maybe four or five.”

I picture a child, barely more than a toddler, fighting bare-knuckled in the street, surrounded by a rabid crowd of onlookers. It doesn’t seem possible.

“Where was your mother?”

There’s a shrug in his voice. “Fucking some john.”

We’re quiet for a moment, listening to the rain. Bella is nestled at our feet, dreaming. Her paws twitch in a dream run.

“I never knew my father. Don’t even know his name. I doubt my mother knew who he was, either. It was common for the prostitutes to get pregnant in the slums; johns paid more when the girls didn’t insist on protection. There was the threat of HIV and everything else, of course, but they always paid more if they didn’t have to wear a rubber. I don’t know why.” He pauses again, and his voice turns dark. “Some of them paid more for a pregnant whore, too.”

Pressing a kiss to his chest, I close my eyes.

“The brothel I grew up in was run by a woman named Darya, but everyone called her
Matushka
. Mother.” His snort is derisive. “A wolf had more maternal instinct than that old bitch. Her girls had to work when they were sick, pregnant, on the rag, beaten up, starving, everything. There were even girls who were dying of AIDS who were still turning tricks. As long as you were breathing and could spread your legs, you were worth something to
Matushka
.”

There’s a longer, darker pause. “And if you weren’t breathing, there were certain men who would pay special for that, too.”

I lie perfectly still. I want to hear this—I need to—but I know it will gut me. I know it will be the worst thing I’ve ever heard.

A.J. exhales through his nose, a hard burst that stirs my hair. “
Matushka
’s girls were allowed to keep their bastards on two conditions. One: they kept earning during their pregnancy. And two: as soon as they could, the children would go to work. Not like that,” he adds when he sees my horrified look. “At least, not until they were older. Girls had to be ten before they could start turning tricks.
Matushka
said it ruined their insides to start earlier.”

I swallow. “And boys?”

“Six.”

He says it without a trace of regret or sadness. It’s just a fact of life. I think of my brother at six years old. I can only remember from pictures; I wasn’t even born then.

“And so . . . you had to . . .”

A.J. produces a low, chilling laugh. “No. Not me. I was worth much more than what the chicken hawks would pay. I wasn’t just a fresh little hole to fuck. I could
fight
. And for the house, taking hundreds of bets on a single fight is much more lucrative than a four-trick-a-day whore, no matter how many of them you have in your stable.”

The bitterness in his voice breaks my heart. I’m suddenly ashamed by my privileged, first-world upbringing, of all the times I complained about clothes or cars or boys. Until now, real life was as real to me as Santa Claus or the tooth fairy. Real life was somewhere
out there
, beyond the safe confines of my pretty little bubble in Beverly Hills.

“So you started fighting for your keep.”

He nods. “Earlier than most, because I was big, and always angry anyway. I didn’t understand why I was so different, why I saw colors in sounds and no one else did. I felt like a freak. And because the more often I won, the easier
Matushka
was on my mother.”

Bella growls in her sleep, and turns over. She settles again, burrowing into the covers, still making a warning grumble deep in her throat.

“My mother was an addict. Heroin, crack, booze, whatever she could get her hands on. When I was ten, she overdosed. On Christmas morning. I didn’t tell
Matushka
for three days, until after my mother’s body had already begun to decompose.” He adds thoughtfully, “Only fresh corpses were commodities.”

I whisper, “Oh my God.”

“So I told everyone she was so sick she couldn’t get out of bed. Luckily that week,
Matushka
had brought in a pair of fourteen-year-old twins from the country. Farm girls. Their father couldn’t afford to feed them anymore, and
Matushka
paid well for rarities like twins. She could charge three times as much for twins as she could for a single whore. And all my mother’s regulars wanted a turn with the twins, as did everyone else; word had spread. Most of the other whores idled for the first few weeks after the twins arrived. So by the time my lie was discovered, it was too late.
Matushka
couldn’t make any money on my mother’s remains.”

He turns his face to my hair. His heart beats beneath my palm, banging against his breastbone like it’s trying to break free.

“I paid for that lie with a beating so severe I couldn’t get out of bed for ten days. But I had nowhere to go, so I took it without complaint. The other whores looked after me, nursed me, brought me food and water. Though I don’t think
Matushka
expected it, I survived. And when I was able to fight again,
Matushka
put me up against a boy three years older than me. His name was Pavel.”

A.J.’s voice cracks when he says the other boy’s name. I glance up at his face, and his eyes are closed. His brows are pulled together. He seems in terrible pain.

Haltingly, he whispers, “He was the first . . . the first one . . . I killed.”

My heart stops. I rear up on my elbow and stare down at him. When he opens his eyes, they glitter like he has a fever.

“I was so angry. About my mother, about my life. I just went wild on him. I was like an animal. And the sound of the crowd, urging me on, screaming louder and louder the bloodier it became, the colors of their voices, everything so black . . .”

He closes his eyes again, as if he can’t bear to look at me. “When he fell on the ground I stomped on his throat and broke his neck.”

He touches one of the crosses tattooed on his throat, a small one, the closest to his ear. Though he can’t see it, his fingers trace the outline perfectly, as if they’ve done it a thousand times before.

My horror is so crushing I can only breathe in shallow, panted breaths.

There are three crosses on his neck.

“
Matushka
took better care of me after that. She made a lot of money from that fight. So she moved me into a nicer room and gave me better food, and told me I had a purpose in life. I had value. I could fight, and win, and so I had value. It didn’t matter that I didn’t want to. Survival was the only thing that mattered. By the time I was thirteen I was six feet tall, and famous in certain circles.
Medved
, they called me. The bear.”

I think of Trina calling him a big ol’ huggy bear, and I feel sick.

“I fought almost every week. I rarely lost. When I was fourteen I was matched with a boy my own age. He was too small. I don’t know why they gave him to me, but I knew from the moment I saw him that he’d be number two. He’d be the next Pavel. By then I didn’t care about hurting the boys I fought. I only cared about hearing the crowd scream and getting my money.

“His name was Maksim. He had a face like a doll’s. Before the fight, I mean.”

A.J. traces the other small cross on his neck, the one closest to his Adam’s apple.

I’m shaking. Outwardly A.J. is calm, telling me this horror story in a tranquil, almost detached voice, but his eyes are filled with self-hatred and revulsion, and his face is very pale.

“After that fight, I was notorious.
Matushka
couldn’t find a local fighter to go up against me, so they started coming in from the city. I just kept growing and gaining weight, getting harder with every fight, and it was easy for me. I was good at it. I was a fourteen-year-old, six-foot-three, two-hundred-and-ten-pound soulless motherfucker who stole and fought and lived with whores, and I thought that would be my life.”

The rain is relentless, drumming against the roof, sliding down the windowpanes like silvery tears. Bella twitches in her sleep. I can’t get warm, even though I’m pressed against the hot bulk of A.J.’s body.

“And then came Sayori.”

He pauses for a long time, struggling, it seems, for words. Or maybe he’s trying not to cry. I can’t tell; his throat works like he’s holding back great, unspoken emotion, but his eyes have gone blank, staring at the ceiling. I think he’s lost inside himself, inside whatever terrible memory he’s about to reveal.

“She was old for a whore. Usually the girls would overdose, die of disease or botched abortions, or be killed by a john by the time they got to be her age, but there were a few who survived into middle age. She was originally from Tokyo, the daughter of a rich businessman and a former geisha, raised to be a dancer. She was spoiled. Stubborn.” His voice falls. “And beautiful. Right up until she took her last breath, she was beautiful.”

Thunder booms in the sky. Startled, I jump. I realize I’m holding my breath.

“She came to Russia when she was still young, followed a man she’d fallen in love with. Turned out he was married. Turned out he didn’t want anything to do with her when he found out she was pregnant. Her father cut her off when she left Japan to find her lover, so she had no one to turn to. And desperation makes whores of us all, one way or another. She took up with some lowlife who eventually convinced her to have an abortion and start selling herself to support them both. That was the beginning of the end. The lowlife abandoned her to another, worse piece of scum, who sold her to a collector who had a fetish for Asian girls. When she got too old for his taste—she was thirty by then—he sold her to someone else, who eventually sold her to someone else, until she wound up on
Matushka
’s doorstep. When we met, she was forty-four.”

When he stays silent too long, I prompt, “And you were fifteen.”

“She was kind,” he whispers. “After my mother died, I didn’t know any kindness. Sayori was the one who taught me how to read, how to appreciate music, how to make origami.” His voice turns reverent. “Like you, she had the voice of an angel.”

Ghosts
, he’d said.
When I look at you all I see are ghosts
. I try to gather my courage, because I already know how this story will end.

“Why did she take such a special interest in you, do you think?”

“I was the only man she ever knew who never fucked her or fucked her over. That’s what she said. She was like a second mother to me, for a while.” His voice quivers. “So when she got sick . . . I couldn’t say no . . .”

My body breaks out in gooseflesh. My heart pounding, I stare at his face.

Abruptly he rolls onto his side, turning me so I roll with him. He winds his arms around me, pulls his knees up behind mine, and bows his head, so his forehead rests on the back of my neck. His body trembles. His breathing is shallow and erratic.

“When the time was near, she was too weak to help herself. She was wasted away. I think it was cancer, though she never told me. She knew what happened to whores who died in
Matushka
’s house, and she didn’t want that to happen to her. I told her I’d take care of her, that I’d get her out of there or make it so
Matushka
didn’t find out until it was too late, but she said no. She said she’d only stayed so long because of me, and she didn’t want me to get into trouble. So the problem, as she saw it, wasn’t so much how to die, but how to leave a corpse too damaged for even the twisted tastes of one of
Matushka
’s special clients.”