Shattered Glass(14)

“Fucking liar.” He cupped my crotch—my very strained, very hard, very responsive crotch.

“Okay, I’ll rephrase. I don’t want to have sex with you right now.” Maybe never. And not for money, I added silently. There was only so much hostility I could take. But there were those small flashes of…something. Every once in a while, they showed through his sharp comments, and I was hooked. “Two hundred to touch you for an hour. Three hundred more for you to stay and…talk with me for the night.” I nearly asked how much to keep the bunny slippers on. This conversation was ridiculous. I so failed with whores.

“Something seriously wrong with you,” he whispered as my fingers slid from his chin to the dip in his throat.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m coming to that conclusion, too.” As much as he pretended to feel nothing, when my hand pressed against his smooth chest, his heart hammered against it. I was absolutely enraptured by the way he trembled, the goose bumps popping up beneath my delicate exploration of his stomach.

His skin was warm, and softer than I’d imagined, though the muscles were tight just beneath the surface. Each place my fingers trailed a muscle twitched. I licked my lips and brushed them against his shoulder. He tasted of sweat, and a grain of sugar caught on my tongue. “Beautiful.”

His body tensed, only to tremble again like a plucked bow string. When I pulled my head back, his eyes were focused on my hand grazing his hip; his lips parted, his skin flushed, and his breath grew sharper with each tiny exhale.

This was too intimate. Maybe more intimate than sex. I drew my hand back and pushed it through my hair.

What are you doing? This is insane. Truly insane.

I had no idea who he was. I wasn’t even sure if he had been lying about his age or name. My job, my life, my everything could be torn away thanks to this one little indiscretion. The whole situation just seemed more and more fucked up

Yet, I couldn't help being a little satisfied. I had at least part of my answer. I liked touching him. Still, this was too fucked up to continue.

“You want me to take you home or to the diner?”

His head whipped up. “I’m not giving the money back,” he said.

For some reason, that made me laugh. “Keep it.” Grabbing my keys off the dresser, I slipped into sandals and threw a shirt over my head. Peter still hadn’t moved by the time I was dressed.

He eyed the floor, hands tucked into his pockets. I was astonished to see him smiling. Not a sweet, or even humorous smile; it was just a sad little curl of his lips, and it made him appear so vulnerable. And, like every other emotion I’d seen—besides hostility, which wasn't even really an emotion so much as it was a state of being—this one disappeared quickly. “Whatever.” He pushed past me, and I heard his soft footsteps down the stairs.

I followed him with the intent to drive him back. Halfway down the stairs, the front door slammed.

I checked to see if he was waiting by the car, but the area was empty, so I went back inside. Once undressed, I climbed into bed. Exhausted, frustrated and anxious, sleep took hours to find me. I didn’t even spare a passing thought about Angelica.





Chapter Three





Theme Of The Day: Prostitutes

Tuesday I was so tired that I confused my orange juice with milk and used the OJ to make scrambled eggs. I didn’t even notice until I was chewing. Too groggy to care, I ate it all anyway. It tasted like sweaty feet. Three cups of coffee later, the taste was finally out of my mouth, and the caffeine woke me up enough that I could get dressed and drive to work without nodding off.

I arrived at work thirty minutes late and in an expensive, but rumpled, brown suit. The only positive about working while being this tired was that I couldn’t dwell on last night and my epic failure at paying for, but not screwing, a prostitute.

“You look like shit,” Luis noted as I took my seat at the desk across from him. His suit wasn’t much better than mine in the wrinkled department, and the whole thing probably cost him less than my tie. I had a feeling he'd bought his blue blazer sometime in the 80's, and the trousers a decade before that—back when maroon polyester had actually been in style.

“And you look like the love child of Barney Miller and Archie Bunker.” It was as much wit as I could summon in my state. “What’s on for today?”

“Gaines has poofed.” Great. Our new informant was now our new problem.

I groaned and sized up the inviting surface of my desk. I wanted to lay my cheek against the wood and sleep until everything requiring a functioning brain went away. I didn’t have patience for an idiot like Gaines.

Him ‘poofing’ meant he was going underground, probably because he was vying to take over Alvarado’s operations—a common reason why snitches snitched on their business partners. The only other reason why he might disappear was that he had been outed as a snitch. Either way, Luis and I would be spending the day questioning whores and pimps and the rest of society's dregs in order to find him before Alvarado made bail.