Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 109286 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 546(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109286 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 546(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
Paying customers don’t want to touch a dirty whore. Everyone uses condoms, not just because Freeze says so, but because they don’t want to catch anything I might have. Fuckers.
Once my awful shower is done, I towel off, trying to ignore the fact that the towel smells like someone else’s perfume. I don’t want to think about how many other whores have used it before me. I let down my hair, and she hands me my American flag bikini again. It’s faded and grimy, but I never get to wear it for long.
Then, I’m given a travel toothbrush and toothpaste, and I brush my teeth obligingly, then spit into the grate. Ironic that now I get to spit instead of swallow.
Alma gives me an apologetic smile and grabs the towel, refolds it, and leaves the room quietly.
I curl up on the mattress, hugging my legs to my chest, and wait. There will be another man soon enough, and then Freeze, so I enjoy the moment of silence while I can. My lip hurts, a bit puffy from where the last man hit me, and I touch it with my fingertips, wincing.
Then, I lay my head back against the wall, thinking. My mind is filled with the gun and the man I was forced to service, and my stomach roils uncomfortably again. I swallow hard and force myself to think of zombie movies, instead. E. I don’t know what movies begin with E. This one will require some thought. Maybe something with Enemy in the title.
I ponder this for minutes, staring at nothing, when there is a knock at the door again. I get to my feet automatically. God, I hope it’s not the man with the gun again. I don’t think I could stomach seeing him twice in one night.
But when the door opens, it’s not Freeze.
The man that steps in is unexpected. He’s accompanied by Senhor Gomes, the master, a man I have only seen once but hear about all the time. Gomes looked me over when I arrived, and then left, as if I were an uninteresting piece of property.
The man with him is tall, good-looking, and wears a casual suit. He’s got nice brown hair, sharp eyes, and I can tell immediately from the cast of his features that he’s American.
What the fuck. Not again. Not another American jackass. It doesn’t matter if he’s American—he’s here to rape me like all the others before him. Except this time? I’ll know all the nasty, shitty words he yells into my ear.
And later, when he’s done with me and leaves, I’ll feel even dirtier because he’s only made things worse.
He looks me over, his gaze sliding to my star-spangled bikini, and I can’t help myself. “What’s the matter,” I ask, “international pussy not good enough for you?”
CHAPTER TWO
DANIEL
She’s a biter. That the warning given when I point to the blonde with the glazed green eyes in Senhor Gomes’s book of whores. He shakes his head and says that he has access to dozens of others that are better and all willing to engage in whatever perverse activity I want. He brags that there isn’t a sick sex act I can think of that Gomes can’t fulfill. I like home cooking, I tell him. A Texan in Rio sees a lot of beautiful Brazilian women, but sometimes you want a little star-spangled banner in the rotation.
He nods as if this makes sense to him, but I think it’s the money that I’m flashing that he understands. We walk up to the second floor and down a narrow hall toward the back, a windowless part of this brick-and-metal building. I can’t call it a home or even a brothel. It’s a dingy place where men with deep perversions but shallow wallets can get their rocks off.
I don’t want to have sex here, I’ve explained to Gomes. I have a thing against hellholes and having sex in them. I wave around a lot of cash, and Gomes nods and asks no more questions.
We’re a strange parade—Gomes, me, and some house mom trailing behind. He stops at the second-to-last door and removes a key.
I’ve seen pictures of Regan Porter before, and not in Gomes’s look book, but nothing prepares me for her full-fledged, magazine-quality beauty. She hasn’t been eating well; her delicate bones are beginning to look sharp in places—at her shoulders, ribs, and hips. But there’s no denying her breathtaking looks. Her blond hair is damp, and small strands stick to her perfect skull. Her oval face, with its pink cheekbones and lush lips, and eyebrows that look like wings, stands out like a piece of fine china at a flea market. Though she’s thin, there’s a delicious curviness in the slope of her side as it dips into the waist and flares back out to form a cuppable roundness at the hip. And those endlessly long legs.