“You shouldn’t be here,” she says.
One of the undercover guys, loading his gun, comes over and ruffles your hair, then turns to her, and his smile vanishes.
“Neither should you, Pinky. And if we don’t capture thatchao pho, you are as good as dead.”
Chao phois a big crime boss, and the girls work for him, you learn.
There are four more girls next to you, barely wearing any clothes, men’s suit jackets draped over their shoulders.
The undercover men with guns and your dad discuss the capture.
You hear the wordraid. It sounds exotic.
You eat your green tea ice cream and study them all curiously. You don’t want to be one of those pretty girls with bright makeup and funky shoes. You want to be one of the men who wear vests and baseball hats and look like bad-ass guys from movies.
That’s the night you learn another word.
Sex trafficking.
It sounds dangerous.
A week later, you ask your father about the raid and the girl you made friends with and find out that she is dead.
Your father doesn’t hide the brutal facts of life from you. He knows that the more realistic you are about life, the better the chances of your survival.
Two years later, you move back to the US, to a small town in the mountains of Pennsylvania, boring as hell and too quiet. You do everything your father teaches you. You play games in a shelter built underground. You follow him into the Appalachians with only the clothes on your back and learn how to make a fire, a shelter, and survive for weeks. You learn the skills that seem only useful in movies.
Because you want to be Wonder Woman.
Most importantly, because your father says that one day, they mightsave your ass.
And one day, they do.
22
KAI
In the daysfollowing the episode in the cave, everything changes so rapidly that it feels like Christmas in May.
Callie and I talk again the next evening. We sit on the beach and watch the sunset. Everything is quiet and resting after a hot day. Nature starts getting ready for sleep. But my body is on full alert next to hers.
It kills me.
I try to stay away.
Day after day.
It only gets harder.
I go fishing, surf with the boys, and stay busy in the workshop. But since the cave, we don’t have to pretend we hate each other. And we don’t. Callie pulls me in like a fucking magnet. She is constantly around. Her slender body is everywhere, no matter where I look.
Soon, she becomes the one thing I think about when I wake up and when I go to bed.
Right after I jerk off thinking about her.
Fuck. Me.
The first time it happens is on the day of the cave incident. I am in bed, hot and naked and wide awake. I think it’s stress relief. And because my fucking stress has blond hair and blue eyes, naturally, it is Callie who opens her legs for me, her pussy taking my cock as I pound and pound into her.