Her Perfect Gift (13 page)

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know how you feel about working for one client, but it ain’t all that bad, man. I mean our company is paying me a helluva lot better, but sometimes I miss my days of working security for Roxxy. The single-client haul can be lucrative, too, especially since Rustanov’s got offices in three locations. And get this, when I told him you were in Chicago taking care of business until further notice, he told me he’s been thinking about opening up a Chicago branch of Rustanov Enterprises.”

“Right now I can work from anywhere I choose. I don’t take that freedom lightly.”

“Yeah, I like the flexibility, too. But these D.C. trips—listen, I grew up in the Bronx. We don’t trust the cops down the street, much less the government. These G-men like us now, but what happens if a mission goes bad? Or if we accidentally cross them? At least we know we can trust Rustanov, and the money he’s offering ain’t bad at all.”

Suro, who’d actually been the one carrying out the hits, had had similar thoughts himself. As much money as their Washington contacts paid them, the clandestine nature of their relationship didn’t give them job or, more importantly, life security. And if Rustanov was serious about opening a Chicago branch…

“I’ll think about,” Suro told his partner.

“You do that. And I’ll let you know if I can turn anything up in Philadelphia.”

After he hung up with Dexter, Suro glanced at the clock on his computer. It was half past six, which meant Lacey would already be back at their apartment, making something good to eat.

And indeed, as he entered the apartment a few minutes later, he found a crock pot full of gumbo simmering on the stove, but Lacey herself was nowhere to be seen in the kitchen or front room. He went into the bedroom and found her rummaging through her nightstand drawer, looking increasingly confused as she shifted its contents around.

“Looking for something?” he asked from the doorway.

She jumped. Then said, “I need to put a bell around your neck or something. You move way too quietly.”

“You were looking for something.”

Lacey slammed the nightstand drawer shut. “No, no. Um, I thought I left something in there, but I guess not.”

“Something like what?” he asked.

“Nothing important,” she answered. “Really, I opened the drawer to get a notepad to write something down, but then I was surprised because this other thing wasn’t in there. But it doesn’t really matter, because I wasn’t planning to use it or anything.”

“Maybe I could help you look for it.”

“Suro,” she said. “Let’s just drop it, okay? Like I said, I don’t really need it.”

“But I think you do.” He walked over to the part of the closet he had claimed as his own and pulled her small vibrator out the coat pocket he had stowed it in the day he searched the apartment. “Is this what you were looking for?” He waved it slowly like a small, pink flag.

She covered her eyes with one hand and peeked out at him. “I can’t believe you stole that.”

“I’m very pleased it took you this long to realize it was missing,” he said, coming to stand closer to her.

“Like I said, I didn’t need it. I was looking for something else when I noticed it was missing.” She held out her hand. “Can I have it back now so we can end this awful, embarrassing conversation and eat dinner?”

“Will the gumbo burn if you don’t get to it right away?”

“No, gumbo’s kind of made to simmer as long as you want it to. And it’s in a crockpot, so it’ll be all right. But you’ve got to be hungry.”

“I am hungry,” he assured her. “Just not for dinner.”

Then he turned on the pocket vibrator, and its small electric whirring sound filled the space between them.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Lacey,” he answered. “Trust me.”

BEFORE LACEY COULD ASK ANY MORE QUESTIONS, he had her pants unbuttoned and slipped the pocket rocket inside her panties.

“Suro,” she whispered. The vibrations immediately started working their magic. In fact, they seemed even stronger with Suro using his entire hand to press the small machine into her dewy folds.

“Shhh,” he said.

He rubbed the vibrator up and down her slit, causing her to gasp. It had been one thing to do this to herself while thinking about Suro, it was another to have her fantasy working the instrument into her pussy.

It felt so wrong, but oh so erotic.

He shifted the vibrator, so the head buzzed against her sensitive clit, and the only thing that kept her upright after that was his strong arm around her waist.

“Don’t stop now,” he said. “You’re almost there.”

She
was
almost there. It embarrassed her to come this quickly with less than five minutes of rubbing on his part, but his hand in her panties, working the hard plastic vibrator against her pussy—it was too much.

“I’m… I’m…”

Before she could finish the sentence, he shoved the vibrator into her quivering tunnel and then swallowed her cries with a hungry kiss as she came harder than she ever had using her pocket rocket alone. She could feel rivulets of her own cum, running down her thigh.

“I can’t believe you did that,” she breathlessly told Suro.

But he wasn’t done with her yet.

The next thing she knew, she was on her back, her legs spread open, with the vibrator still lodged in her convulsing womanhood.

Suro made quick work of unbuttoning her blouse and removing her work pants. Soon she was completely naked, save for her panties and the vibrator housed within.

“So much cum,” he observed, as he got out of his clothes and put a condom on before climbing onto the bed between her legs. “I like looking at your breasts when the nipples are hard and wet because I’ve been sucking on them, but now I’m wondering what they look like with your own cum on them.”

He took the vibrator out of her now sopping wet pussy and rubbed it over her nipples, spreading her sticky essence onto each breast. She could feel her nipples standing up and arched her chest into the vibrator loving how good this nasty act felt. “Oh…”

Suro must have liked what he was seeing, because she could feel his dick growing even harder against her leg.

He let out a low appreciative rumble. “Yes, just like that.”

Despite having just climaxed a few minutes ago, she could feel more sticky wetness streaming out of her pussy then. And apparently, so could Suro.

He brought the vibrator back down to her slick folds and rolled it in her creaming pussy. He then shifted her body, so she was lying on her side with the vibrator still between her legs.

“Oh, it feels so good,” she moaned, no longer able to control her body.

She rubbed against the vibrator, trying to get him to put it all the way inside of her again.

But Suro had different ideas. He removed the vibrator and replaced it with his own long dick. She gasped out as he worked his way into her tight, wet tunnel until he was all the way in to the hilt.

“Even better,” she said, moving her hips against his.

He then turned them both over so she was now on top, straddling him on both sides. She thought he wanted her to ride him. Suro liked watching her come in that position while she palmed her own breasts. But when she tried to rise up, he brought her back down, pinning her cum-covered breasts to his chest.

She could still hear the vibrator buzzing in the background. “You don’t want me to—?”

“Trust me,” he said.

She let out a surprised cry when she felt the hard plastic vibrator circling the rosette between her butt cheeks.

“Relax,” he said in her ear, still working his cock up and down in her hot cunt. “Trust me.”

Though her heart was beating like a rabbit’s, she did as he said, biting her lip when the vibrator coated with her own juices started working its way into her bottom. It was a tight fit, almost too tight, verging on pain, but then it was all the way in and Suro’s dick was working her pussy and it was like nothing she’d ever experienced before, being filled up from both sides like this.

She moaned and her pussy clenched around Suro’s cock in a vice grip that sent both of them into a wild frenzy. Soon he was spewing Japanese as he continued to slam into her and work the vibrator in her ass.

“Suro! Suro! Suro!” She could do nothing but say his name over and over again.

And then she was clawing at his chest as the orgasm burst through her entire body. Suro came soon after, his teeth clenched together as he arched into her throbbing pussy.

He let go of the vibrator and wrapped his arms around her, holding her close, his face pressed into her shoulder as he emptied himself into the condom.

It took what felt like eons for her orgasm to subside. When it finally did, she collapsed against his chest with a breathless sigh, her hair fully in her face.

He brought a hand up and once again smoothed her locks behind her ear. “See how good it can be when you trust me?”

CHAPTER 15

EVERY
time Lacey took her office trash can to the dumpster, she thought about her father and the fateful night he had died. They had a cleaning service for the club, but because of the money she used to launder for Tony, Lacey had made her office off-limits and gotten into the habit of cleaning it up herself, including making visits to the dumpster that sat behind the club whenever her office trashcan got full.

And as usual, while dumping her small metal trashcan the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, she got hit with a memory, this time of showing up bloodied and bruised at the apartment she used to share with her father after she shot Hector Jr. She’d had to knock on the door because it had taken all the strength she had just to get to West Trenton on the train and then make the two mile walk to his restaurant.

“Tasha? What happened to you?” he asked, coming out from behind the counter after she came staggering into his shop.

“Daddy, Daddy, I’m sorry,” she sobbed quietly.

Upstairs in their apartment above Cofi’s, she told him everything: about the baby, about shooting Hector Jr., all of it.

And to her surprise, her father hadn’t condemned her or said, “I told you so.”

No, proving himself to be a much better person than the daughter he’d raised, he’d cleaned her up and wrapped her ribs in bandages. “That will have to do you until we can get you to one dem free clinics.”

Then he’d started packing suitcases for them both. “I’m going to go to the bank and close out my account tomorrow, then we’ll be on our way. Think you can make it to Philadelphia? I got a contact there who might be able to get us into a place, no questions asked.”

She shook her head, the pain from her ribs still peaking through, even though he’d given her some old oxycontin from his hip surgery a few years ago.

“No, Daddy! This is my fault. I should go alone.”

“I ain’t sending you out there alone. Not with Mendez on your trail.”

“But Daddy, your shop…”

“I can cook anywhere. Just give me a gumbo pot. And you think Mendez just gonna let me go’on ‘bout my business anyway? Naw, men like him, I den met them before. You take they son, they take your whole family and burn down everything you love right in front of you.”

“But, Daddy—”

He cut her off with a fierce look. “Don’t ‘but daddy’ me! I lost your mama to cancer and I’d like to die if I lose you too,
cher
.” He grabbed her hand, his eyes burning with fierce love. “You my blood part of me. And I am never gonna leave you. You and me stick together
no matter what
.”

“No matter what,” she whispered to herself now. And despite the biting cold of a Chicago winter, hot tears stung her eyes.

“I need to talk to you,” a voice said behind her.

She hastily wiped her eyes and turned around to see Candy, more gaunt than she should have been, with a wild look about her. Her heart sank. Candy’s habit had not only gotten worse since Lacey had issued her ultimatum, but also, if Lacey was reading the signs right, it looked like she had switched to the much cheaper crack to keep her habit going. That would explain why the dancer had been late again with the rent this month, and why she had begun bringing Spidey down to the daycare, even when she wasn’t on stage.

Lacey had let it slide for the child’s sake. It wasn’t his fault his mama was an addict, but she didn’t know how much longer she could let the situation go on without intervening.

“I quit!” Candy said.

Lacey blinked. “What?”

“You heard me. I’m sick of working for your uppity ass. So I quit. And I’m moving out at the end of the month.”

Part of Lacey wanted to say good riddance, but the other part of her was truly alarmed. The weeks leading up to Christmas were one of the most lucrative times of the year for dancers. She’d never had even the most disgruntled worker quit right before the holidays. “But how will you survive? And what about Spidey?”

“Spidey ain’t none of your business, so stop acting like you some kind of social worker or something, because you not. You a uptight fucking bitch, and you deserve everything you going to get!”

Lacey shook her head, trying to keep her own Jersey accent at bay. If she were still Tasha from West Trenton, she would have given Lacey back as good as she got. But instead she had to settle for a tepid, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Candy grinned, putting Lacey in mind of a skeleton, she was so thin now. “You about to find out. Watch.”

Then she walked away, leaving Lacey very confused, not to mention worried about Spidey.

“Something’s bothering you,” Suro said that night at dinner.

“It’s work stuff,” she answered. “One of the dancer’s put in her notice today, but she’s got this kid I’m really worried about.”

“Spidey?”

“How did you know?”

“I see you with him often in nursery.” The look in his eyes let her know that he was aware of how much she liked the innocent little boy and not entirely unsympathetic.

She put her fork down, suddenly no longer hungry. “Yeah, I try to visit every day to check in on him because his mom has a drug problem. But now that she’s leaving, I’m not sure what to do. If I report her to child services, then Spidey gets put in the foster system, but if I don’t, she leaves here with him, and I don’t think the next club she works at is going to have a babysitting co-op. Who knows what could happen to him?”