She creeps back toward me like a skittish kitten, takes the gauze squares from me and gingerly places them on one of the wounds. There's an aged bottle of peroxide on the counter and I point at it. The wounds need to stay clean. She frowns at me, but gets the bottle and hands it to me. I dump a small amount on my wound, and my teeth almost crack from the strain of containing my scream of pain.

Fuck, it hurts.

She takes it from me and does the same to the rest of my wounds, and by the end I pass out from the pain. I come to, and she's clumsily taping the gauze on, loose and off-center.

"No, no. Not like that," I say.

She starts and drops the tape. I rip off the bandage she did and re-tape it, centered and tight. She watches carefully, and then does the same. Her fingers on my skin are gentle, careful, feather brushes. She looks to me and I nod.

"Good job. Much better. Thanks. Chokran."

She responds, and I shrug. She points at me, says “Chokran,” and then points at herself and repeats what she'd said, which I understand to mean "You're welcome." I repeat it, and she corrects my pronunciation.

She touches my chest, and this time I lay back down, slowly moving to the floor, each inch agony. I lay panting, eyes squeezed shut against the pain. I open my eyes to see her watching me, her expression inscrutable.

I examine her in the light of day. She's the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. About my age, twenty-three or twenty-four, a narrow face with high cheekbones, small, delicate ears, full red lips framing a wide mouth. Her eyes are like chocolate, dark and liquid, watching me watch her. Her body is svelte. I remember that word from high school English class. Her waist is narrow, turning her slim hips into tantalizing curves, making her full br**sts even more pronounced. I remember her mimed comment about hunger being the impetus for becoming a prostitute, and realize her thin figure is the result of true hunger rather than any desire to be thin for the sake of appearance.

She shrinks back under my gaze, realizing I'm looking at her appreciatively, like a man looks at a woman. Her eyes harden and her lip curls. Her fists clench.

I drop my gaze, but I feel her eyes on me a moment longer. She goes to the doorway, peers out, and ducks back in. Her face is shuttered closed, hard, ice-cold. She reapplies lipstick, retouches her blush, too much.

She has a trick, I realize. She's totally different, now. Her body is loose, her hips swaying as she moves to the door; before, each motion was tightly controlled, precise. Now, she's like liquid, exuding sultry confidence that I realize is totally faked. She glances at me once as she moves out of sight, and I see a flash of some inscrutable emotion, there and gone.

I hear a man's voice, hers answering, low and sweet. Fake. The air is still today, and I can hear everything. A jingle of a belt, faintly. Her voice, moaning, fake, too loud. His voice, grunting, porcine.

Vomit roils in my belly, anger pulses in my chest. Hate. Jealousy. Disgust.

Where is this coming from?

I don't know her. Don't even know her name. So why am I reacting this strongly? There's no answer, but each moment increases the tempo of my rage, beating with my frantic heartbeat. Each sound makes my gut clench. Her voice, so falsely enthusiastic, shreds my nerves.

I recognize the emotions now. All together, they form a single feeling: helplessness. I want to stop this, but I can't. Physically, I can't even move. It's her choice, her life, not mine. And I'm completely dependent on her.

Fuck.

After far too long, a span of maybe ten minutes, she reappears, repeating the process of cleaning herself in the tiny doorless bathroom. She fixes her hair and lipstick and blush and clothes. I don't watch this time.

She glances at me once she's done fixing herself. I try valiantly to keep my face neutral. I don't know what she sees, but she turns away from me and goes outside, leaning against the outside of her house near the window, just within view. I can see her back, a strip of skin visible between skirt and shirt.

I shouldn't want to touch that stripe of skin, but I do.

The desire is overwhelming.

I lever myself up off the ground, holding my breath against the pain, and then let myself fall back down. Lightning bolts of excruciating pain shoot through me, blinding white, subsuming me until I pass out.

Darkness floats over me, welcome relief from desires I shouldn't have and don't understand.

FIVE

RANIA

He is asleep. So handsome. I do not understand what is happening to me. From the first moment I saw him, something in him called to my blood and made it sing. Even now, my last client of the day gone as the sun sets, my body thrums merely looking at him.

His jaw is square and strong, his hair as black as the darkest hour of the night, making his shockingly blue eyes even more vivid. Of course, he is sleeping right now, so I cannot see his eyes, but they sear into me nonetheless, whether I am awake or asleep, working or at rest. His eyes seem to see me, the real me.

His body...pale skin, smooth and hairless except for a thin trail of hair from his navel down beneath the band of his underwear. He is hugely muscled, each limb sleek and thick and powerful. His chest is broad and hard, bulging with muscle even slack in sleep. His belly is like a plowed field, squares of muscle delineated by deep grooves. His arms are like cords of braided rope, each bicep wider than my thigh, his hands large and rough and powerful. His legs are like the twisted trunks of old trees, nearly as wide as my waist

No man I have ever seen looks like him. Of course, the men I know, they merely jingle their belts and pull out their manhood and do their quick and dirty business on me. They never disrobe entirely. They are never naked. To do so would be allowing themselves to be vulnerable. To stay clothed demonstrates their power over me. I must be naked while they remain clothed and pay me money so they may violate me.

This man, this American. He is not naked. He has his underwear on, and I have not moved them, so I have not seen him naked. But, even so he seems more fully nude than any man I have ever seen. I want to look away from him, but I cannot, and when I look at him, strange things flutter through me, pulse in the secret places of my heart and soul and body. It is like hunger, but not.

I remember Malik, my first client. I remember all too well the way he looked at me, and I remember thinking he looked hungry then. Is that what this is? The thought douses me with coldness and disgust. Is this feeling in my belly and between my thighs the hunger for sex?

No. That is not meant for anything but work. Money. Men are pigs. I am not a woman, I am a thing. An object, a servant for their needs. Sex is a tool.

But...nonetheless, I cannot stop looking at him.

He must be in pain. He moans even as he sleeps, trying to roll over in his sleep, but the pain stops him. I remember his hand touching mine as he showed me how to rip the bandage off. My hand burned as if shocked by lightning, a single, innocent touch that set my entire being on fire. I could not help my angry response.




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