I can’t bring myself to ruin Ari’s life by arresting her. I’ve written it off at work, passing the assignment off to someone else, and hoping they go in another direction, to any other hooker in the entire city besides Ari. I have reserved myself to the fact that I’m going to continue ‘paying’ Ari for sex with meals and spending time with her. I hope to fucking hell that no one in the department ever finds out about us. That will be the end of my career as a police officer, and as of right now at thirty-six years old I have thirty years left before retirement. I laugh at that thought.
Except, the thing is, I’m not sure I’ve actually paid Ari for sex; not in a way that counts. We’ve fallen into this weird bartering pattern, just shy of illegal. I’ve made passionate love to her in every way imaginable—oral sex, sex in the car, sex in public, sex hard and fast, sex slow and sensually. But the barter is always, “Order some Thai,” or “…grab me a bottle of wine before I get there.”
The first time Ari slept over the entire night, accidentally falling asleep after I pounded her until tears were leaking out of the corners of her eyes. I had been nervous that was going to be the straw that broke the camel’s back—that for some reason Ari was going to turn around and demand compensation for all the other meetings she’d missed that night. Instead, she only smiled at me across the pillows, half of her face illuminated by a beam of sun coming in through a window.
“Do you have pancake mix?” she’d asked me the next morning and even helped me flip them.
It’s risky and unexplainable what Ari and I share. Something in my gut tells me she’s not who I think she is. She’s too good to be out in the streets working. But, she continues to slip away from me whenever I’m sleeping. I wake up to an empty bed, ready to chase after her…to pursue the next feeling of passion we will undoubtedly share. Whatever this is between us, I don’t want it to end.
Chapter Eight
Ari
“Are you okay, Ari? You haven’t been working all week. Our arrests have gone down the tank. We’ve only arrested ten men this month, and we only have a few days left. That’s a long way from the thirty-six men we took down last month. We were averaging at least one perp a day then. How are we going to explain this slump to our boss? It’s not like the men aren’t out here picking up women,” my partner, Sloane, stands in front of me at the park trying to figure out where my head is.
“I know, it’s just been a slow month for me,” I say dismissively.
I haven’t had the desire to pretend to want to take men home since I met Blaze. Doing that means I have to transfer sexual energy to them, allow them to talk to me any kind of way, allow them to touch me, and I don’t want that anymore.
“Slow month, eh?”
“That’s what I said. Slow, Sloane. Now, get off my back!” Sloane is the type of person I have to ward off before he gets started. If I don’t get sassy with him at the start of our conversation, I’ll be listening to him talk smack for hours.
“Well, it’s going to be slow if we’re not working, and by we, I mean you because I can’t go in the room with these men.”
“Well, technically, you could,” I remind him. “Some of them are looking for that kind of action.”
“You’re getting off the point, Yan. There’s no way you’re going to convince me that no one’s tricking just because it’s December. I see transactions that appear to be happening with the other girls out here, but I have no insight on what’s going on because my partner is out of commission,” he argues.
Sloane knows as well as I do these men will come out here and trick if it’s the last thing they do. Even if there is a fifty-fifty chance the gates of hell will open up and suck them in on the spot, they’ll take that chance. Hell, some of them might even think it’s kinky.
“I’m here now, okay,” I say, not caring enough to offer an excuse for not working. My time with Blaze is off limits for this discussion.
“Well, I went by your house, and you weren’t there. You weren’t at any of your usual spots. What’s going on with you lately? You’ve never slacked on the job, so it has to be something.”
“Stop being so pushy and nosey, Sloane. I just needed some time for myself. Am I allowed that?” I ask.
One of the guys I suspect of beating up a prostitute last week walks in front of us. He’s headed over to where there is a group of girls, so I think quick.
“Go on about your business if you don’t want to pay the forty dollars!” I yell at Sloane, giving him the nod, so he’ll know I’m going back undercover. “I’m not fucking with you for free!” I tell Sloane.
“That’s right. You heard the lady,” the man turns on his heels to say. He’s a big, husky man, and his skin is blistering red from the cold air. He should be at home somewhere trying to stay warm, but he’s always out here soliciting women so he can brutalize them in a nearby motel.
Sloane slinks away. “My bad, big guy. You can take this one because I’m just not paying that much. It’s out of my price range,” he says before disappearing.
“So, what are you looking for tonight, big money?” I ask the man.
He coughs, and it sounds horrible. “A good time is what I want,” he begins. “Can you give it to me without any attitude? These other girls don’t know how to treat a man, but they want to take a man’s money,” he says, his voice coming out raspy and weak sounding.
I itch to reach inside my bag and pull out my gun. Any wrong move and I’m shooting him where he stands.
“No attitude here. Just all performance. I can do whatever you want,” I say to the man who’s about to hack up a lung. My stomach cringes at the thought of going anywhere alone with him.
“That’s what I like to hear. See, you sound professional. What are you asking for?”
“Forty for blow jobs and a hundred for everything, head, and penetration,” I say, my stomach curling more.
“Shit, as fine as you are baby, I want everything. How much for me to get in that pretty, round ass of yours? Ooouu, I bet it’s tight too.” His fat tongue slides out of his mouth, and he licks his lips.