As soon as I let go of her chin, her head fell forwards, pressing against me. I paid the man behind the counter, ignoring his leer as he did his best to look down her top.
“Room seventeen,” he said. “Same age as her,” he added with a wink.
“I’m nineteen actually,” she mumbled before falling silent again.
I turned away from him, lifting Isabel by the waist and half carrying, half dragging her up the stairs. I got her into the room a minute later, pushing the door open whilst holding her tightly, doing my best to keep her upright. Once inside, I picked her up, ignoring her snoring as I laid her down on the bed.
I thought about undressing her but then thought better of it. If she woke up with me stripping her clothes off, she’d probably scream the place down. Not only that but if I got her naked, I doubted I’d be able to control the urges that were building up inside me. The sight of her in the bar had been enough to spark my lust. She looked so innocent, so perfectly timid. She’d do exactly what I told her in bed. Just how I liked them.
I settled for removing her shoes, easier said than done as her knotting skills were a nightmare to untangle. When I finally got them off, her snoring had settled into a rhythm, an ear splitting rhythm.
I tucked the blankets around her, leaving her to sleep it off for a while. By the time she woke up, the street should be empty and I could take her home, get this job over with and get back to what I was good at. It had been no fun wandering the town looking for her. In my line of work, I was usually given an address and knew exactly where I was going. I’d been in half the bars and restaurants in the place before finding her in the middle of a bottle of wine. She’d had the look of someone who had every intention of getting as pissed as possible.
The vultures watching her could see her vulnerability as well as I could. It had radiated off her and I couldn’t believe she was so naive as to let them ply her with more drink. I hadn’t planned to be so visible, I’d planned to grab her when she left the bar but when they’d gone for her, something snapped in me and I felt, well, almost protective of her. I looked at her snoring form and wondered why. Seeing her there, I didn’t feel protective anymore, I felt like I might grab and her and fuck her before she even knew what was happening.
I dragged the only chair in the room over to the corner. From there I could see the door, the window and the bed. No one would get in or out without me knowing about it. I sat there, the lights low, looking at her as she slept. I hope you’re worth all this trouble, I thought to myself, resisting the lust filled thoughts in my head.
I only planned to sit. I must have been more tired than I realised. Either that or the stifling heat of the room had snuck up on me. Or those dirtbags had put something in her wine. Whatever it was, I fell asleep without realising it was happening and I didn’t wake up until the next morning.
To find her gone was a shock. I was a light sleeper, I’d needed to be for a long time. The slightest sound was usually enough to wake me. If she’d climbed out of bed, I should have heard it. But I hadn’t. I hadn’t heard her go but gone she had. I was alone in there. I got to my feet and took a step forwards, falling to the floor with a heavy thud. What the hell?
I looked down at my feet and couldn’t help but laugh. Not only had she been so quiet that she’d slipped from the room without me noticing, she’d had time to stop and tie my shoelaces together. They were knotted in the same way her boots had been and it took far too long to get them undone. She was better at planning than I thought.
Once I’d sorted my shoes out, I headed downstairs. “Did you see a woman go past?” I asked the man behind the counter. He didn’t look as if he’d moved from last night. Maybe he never did.
“Lost your ‘daughter’ have you?” he asked with a sneer, his hands marking the punctuation around the word ‘daughter’ in the air.
I leant across the counter and grabbed his shirt. “Have you seen her?”
His face lost its colour as he nodded. “She just left, not five minutes ago.”
“Thanks,” I said, letting him go and turning for the door. “We were never here.”
I ran outside and looked up and down the street. There she was, climbing onto a double decker bus. I thought about getting my car but the bus might be gone by then. I ran after it just as its engine turned over. I joined the back of the queue. There were two people in front of me and glancing past them, I saw her head up the stairs to the top deck.
“A single,” I said to the driver when I reached him.
“Where to?” he asked.