Chasing Taboo

WARNING: This chapter includes content of a sexually explicit nature, so it may be inappropriate for readers under the age of 18 (or readers who are in my immediate family *blush*). You have been warned. Journey onward at your own risk. With a change of undies.

Olivia pushed her spaghetti around her plate feeling a little uneasy. After the other night, she wished her mother had prepared a meal that didn’t involve any red sauces. Luckily, she managed to wipe the disgust off her face before anyone had a chance to catch notice of it. The mood at the table had been quiet and strange all week, but something was different this time. Brighter. Sharper.

“We want to meet this boy,” said Dan. “Your grandparents are coming Friday. Tell him to come by at seven.”

A spike of adrenaline harpooned Olivia from backside to cranium. “Um, what?”

“Grandparents. Friday. Your boyfriend. Invite him. Please.”

Olivia voice was lost in a maze of panic, like blood trapped in clogged arteries, giving her an emotional stroke. “But I don’t have a boyfriend, it’s not—”

“Then you have thirty days to pack your stuff and move out of this house,” said Dan.

Olivia shook, quite literally and physically, trying to center herself in this sudden reality. “But I thought we had an understanding about my privacy.”

“We do. And you’ll have all the privacy you want in your own apartment. You can come home at any hour you want with as many bandages on your face as you please, and no one will be worried about you. If that’s what you want.”

Something about that statement, the cold, brutal honesty of it, struck a chord in Olivia. In fact, she had never had more respect for her father in her life. That said, her hands were tied.

“What if I’m telling the truth? What if I really have no boyfriend?”

“Then start packing.”

Somehow, Margaret must have talked Dan into this. It was a bold, vicious move—not Dan’s style. It had Mommy written all over it. Margaret was trying to hide the smirk on her face, but she was failing miserably.

Olivia looked at the red sauce smeared on the edge of her plate. A clump of parmesan reminded her of a broken tooth, and with a queasy stomach, she had no idea what to do.

As Olivia made her journey down 2nd street, she tried to think of how in the world she was going to ask Hero to do this. Not only was he going to suffer through a police interrogation from each of her parents, but with her mother’s parents there as well? The initial scrutiny would be enough to make Hero head for the hills, but asking him to chase that down with the aftershock of Grannie and Pap-pap’s follow-up questioning would be a downright fruitless effort.

Olivia cut through her familiar alley on the way to Club Lanka, once again taking a moment to admire the assorted graffiti. She ran her fingers across the faded word, Dragons, and warmly reflected on the naiveté she harbored the first time she saw it. Maybe she was better off before she knew the truth.

The sound of a high heel slamming against a window tugged at Olivia’s perception, forcing her head toward the souped-up Caddy a few yards away. The girl inside kicked again, hard and desperate, and shrieked with weak, feminine defiance. Olivia could see two ruby red heels fighting and fidgeting in the low lighting. There was another figure in the car, thick and male, obscuring most of the scene with his gray-shirted mass.

Olivia, without fear or thought, Olivia went for the car and jerked the door open, pulling the heavy man away from his captive. The girl’s panties were torn after having been ripped from her hips, and her red lipstick had been smeared from when the man had been gripping her mouth.

“What are you doing?” cried the girl. As soon as she spoke, Olivia recognized her. Orchid.

The man, a bit nervous and flustered, went for the front seat.

“Wait!” Orchid jumped out and went for the door. “Don’t worry about her, she don’t know what she doing. Come on back, baby, please. We do it just like you like it.”

He threw some cash out the window and drove away, leaving Orchid to fall to her knees, picking up the scattered cash and cursing.

“Sorry,” said Olivia. “It looked like he was raping you.”

“He was raping me,” said Orchid. “It’s his thing, it’s what he like. He slaps me around a little and fucks me.”

“Does Hero know that?”

“No.” She put tucked her money into her tiny handbag. “Fuck… fuck, now what am I gonna do? Fuck…”

“Did you have a quota you were supposed to meet or something?”

“Yeah.” She started to turn away. “Don’t help me no more.”

“Wait!” Olivia followed her. “Just tell Hero it was my fault, he’ll understand.”

“It don’t matter if it was my fault, his fault, your fault. I still don’t have enough money.”

“Doesn’t Hero take all your money? If he isn’t gonna hit you or anything, why does it matter?”

Orchid looked at Olivia with grave seriousness and unmitigated sincerity. “Because it’s my life.”

Olivia wasn’t bashful about the fact that she didn’t understand. “Will Hero hurt you if you don’t pay up?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Then I don’t get it.”

“I have my life because of Hero,” she said. “Hero gave me my life.” She started to make her way through the alley, back to the front of Second Circle. “Don’t follow me. I’m fine.”

She disappeared as thunder started to roll through the sky, leaving Olivia to continue her journey under a series of black, ominous clouds. She knocked on the backdoor of Club Lanka just as a few rain drops were beginning to fall.

Hero was on the phone when she got to his office, and he nodded at her politely as he was wrapping up his conversation.

He hung up. “Hey, chag’ya.”

This was an awkward moment for Olivia. She wasn’t his employee, so she couldn’t ask about her responsibilities, but she was in no position to run up and kiss him either.

“Look. I need your help.”

“What do you need?”

She released a short, sharp sigh. “I feel really awkward asking you this, but…” She supposed she needed to establish first things first. “I mean, about you and me… what… are we? Exactly?”

Hero frowned and raised an eyebrow. “Homo sapiens? Dark-haired? Carbon-based? There are a fuckton of ways to answer that question, chag’ya.”

“I know, but I mean—”

“I know what you mean.” He looked at the monitors, quickly losing interest.

“But I really do need your help.”

“Then be clear.”

“Fine. My parents are a little less than thrilled with my constant nightly escapades, especially since I keep showing up damaged.”

“Understandable.”

“So they’re pretty much convinced that I have a secret life and, naturally, a secret boyfriend that I’m going off to see, and they won’t let it go, so…”

Hero nodded.

“…so, my grandparents are coming for dinner on Friday, and they’re sort of insisting that I invite my secret boyfriend over, and if I don’t, they’re forcing me to move out in thirty days, so…”

Hero nodded.

“…so…”

Hero leaned in a bit.

“…so do you think that Ace would be willing to pretend to be my boyfriend? Just for one night? So I don’t get kicked out of my house?”

Every muscle in Hero’s neck seemed to tense, pushing his face ever so slightly forward. His mouth melted into a baffled O shape, and his right eye twitched a little, twisting him from a passive arrogance to a creepy, seething, angry version of confusion.

“I don’t give a fuck. Go ask him.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s at the bar across the street. The Corner Bar.”

“Okay. Thanks.” She started to turn around.

“Hold on, I’m going with you.” He hit his intercom and ordered Stone to man the control center.

“Why?”

“I’m just going with you.”

“Yeah, but w—”

“Ace is playing pool with some guys I used to know and I want to—why are you all up in my business? Stop being a damn nag, then maybe you’ll get a real boyfriend someday.”

“Oh my God. You’re jealous.”

“Jealous!? What the fuck would I be jealous for?”

“Hero…” Olivia smirked, locking her hands behind her back and twisting her foot playfully into the floor. “You want to come over for dinner, don’t you?” She bit her lip.

“Fuck no. I can’t imagine more of a twisted carnival nightmare than meeting your blue-blooded parents at your million dollar Westcliff estate. Count me out.”

She laughed, because all she heard was, ‘no, why would I want to go to stupid Westcliff and eat stupid dinner with your stupid family, they’re probably all stupid anyway.’

“Don’t be an asshole,” said Olivia, half irritated and half amused. “If you ever came down from your tower and stopped sending me mixed signals all the time then maybe I would have thought I could ask you, but—”

“I ain’t the one sending mixed signals. You fucked my brother, you fucked Dub C—”

“—hey, almost fucked Dub C—”

“—and now you want to take my brother to meet your family—I don’t understand what the fuck you want from me.”

Once Stone got to the room, Hero and Olivia bickered down the hallway. Once the hallway had been properly bickered through, they bickered down the stairs, they bickered out the door, and they bickered right into a rainstorm.

“Oh yeah?” Olivia snapped. “Well maybe if you—”

“Fuck. It’s raining.”

“Holy shit, no way.”

He smirked. “Last one to the Corner Bar is a spoiled trust-fund brat.”

Before another word was spoken, he was already pounding gravel, crossing with a series of splashes to the other side of the street. Olivia just stood there, watching a wall of water form between them as the rain spilled from the roof of Club Lanka.

Hero jerked around with confusion as soon as he realized Olivia wasn’t by his side, but when he looked back and saw her standing there, awkward and timid under Club Lanka’s dripping awning, he relaxed into cynicism. “Olivia, get the fuck over here.”

The steady noise of the rain slapping against the street was rolling into a deafening hum.

Olivia shouted, “What!?”

“I said get the fuck over here!”

She stammered, wringing her hands, looking down at her Michael Kors dress. “But it’s raining!”

He looked around with baffled glare. “I’m aware of that, chag’ya!”

Her hands tightened into the impatient fists of a toddler. “Do you have any idea how much this dress costs!?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Well, you should,” said Olivia, “because you paid for it!”

“I’ll buy you another one!”

“Well that’s not going to help me right now, is it?”

“Christ, will you just cross the damn street?”

She just stood there, whining to herself, stepping in place. “Hero, I don’t want to.”

“Would you stop bitching? Just run, you’ll be fine.”

“But my shoes will get—”

“Dammit, woman, get your ass over here right now!”

Olivia shuffled her feet in a mad dash across the slick asphalt, her heels dropping a beat to the melody of raindrops. She made it to Hero, gasping for breath, water trailing down her collarbone and gluing the fabric of her dress to her skin. A drop trailed her nose and dripped to her bottom lip.

She shoved Hero in the chest. “You don’t know jack shit about chivalry, do y—”

He put his hands on her waist, pulled her tightly to his body, and kissed her mouth, tasting the rain on her lips. He fingered her wet hair, gripping the matted clumps as he pressed her face deeper into his, tasting her fevered, hungry tongue. He kissed her from sharp, rigid anger to euphoric dizziness.

He parted from her, leaving her bottom lip burning for more. “I wanted you to get all wet for me.”

The disorienting warmth she was feeling left her breathless. “Um, what?”

He kept his hands on her hips, and looked into her face. He glanced over each of her shoulders to make sure no one was around before he spoke.

“Olivia, please don’t ask Ace to do this,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m asking you not to.”

“Asking me? Or commanding me?”

He leaned in to kiss her, but she turned away from him, toward the bar to push the door open. Hero pulled her back by the stomach, took her hand, pulled her deeply down the side of the building near obscuring shadow, and pressed her against the wet brick wall. She could feel the fabric of her dress getting annihilated against the rough surface, scratching and scraping.

He pressed his mouth to hers, letting her feel his breath on her top lip, tickling her. He kissed her deep, washing over her more and more, pushing his desire onto her, entangling his fingers into hers, not taking no for an answer, but naturally, that’s the only answer Olivia was going to give. As his hand began to move up her thigh, Olivia swatted it away.

“Come on, chag’ya.” He took her hand and gently placed it under his shirt, letting her fingers trace the contours of his abs. “Don’t you think about my body when I’m not with you?”

Her face went beet red. “No. Well, maybe, but—”

“What do you think of it?”

“I’m not buying this,” said Olivia, jerking her hand back. “You’re not doing this because you want me, you’re doing this because you want me to want you, and I’m not falling for it.”

“You don’t want me?” he asked, trailing his finger down the side of her body with a pathetic pout.

Her heart was enslaved by the conflicting heats of rage and arousal.  “At least Ace puts out. You’re a tease.” She put cupped her hand over his groin, massaging the growing bulge. “If you’re going to fuck me, do it. Now.”

He laughed. “Sure, right now, against this wall.”

“You think I’m joking. I’m not. I’m horny, and I want it right now.”

He looked at her with condescending amusement. “I’ll take care of you tonight, after the club closes, okay? If you don’t ask Ace. Deal?”

“No. No deal. You fuck me right now, or I’m going into that bar. Ace has fucked me, you haven’t, that makes him the closest thing I’ve got to a boyfriend in Sequoia Grove.”

He grabbed her active hand and pushed it against the wall. “Hey. You told me you loved me.”

“You never told me you loved me back.”

“Why the fuck would I tell you that when you treat me like this?”

“Treat you like what? A carbon-based brunette homo sapien who won’t fuck me?”

He shut her up with a furious kiss, slamming her head against the wall as he pushed his hand under her soaking dress. His fingers wrapped around the crotch of her thong and pulled it aside so he could get to her center. His fingers went to work, gently probing her opening, but just barely. Just enough for her to get the point.

“Tell me you love me,” he said, the rain sparkling through his hair like diamonds. “And I’ll fuck you.”

“Fuck me and I’ll tell you anything you want.”

He grabbed her drenched hair and pushed furious breaths through his teeth. “Westcliff brat gotta have her way, huh?”

She rolled her eyes. “Why are you stalling? Because you’re Asian? Don’t worry, sweetie, I’m a huge believer in the motion of the ocean.”

He grasped her cheeks with his left hand, hard and vicious, while his right hand continued sliding between her thighs. “Do I have to shove my dick in your mouth to shut you up?”

The aggression in his fingertips was making her lightheaded, and the relentless rain pelting her skin only made her feel weaker. She spoke confidently despite the obstacles. “Sure. I’m sure all three inches of it will fit nicely.”

He took her hand, and rested her fingers on the rim of his pants. His eyes locked into hers, challenging her. “If you want it,” he smirked, raising an eyebrow, “come and get it.”

“Maybe I will.”

He held her as she affixed her mouth to his, unbuttoned him, unzipped him, and freed him, forcing his exposed hips against hers and hoisting her legs up and around him.  Hero’s arm worked on her dress and battled the barrier of her bra until he could open her body to his greedy hands and the ruthless rain, turning her Michael Kors dress into nothing more than a useless wrinkled tube of wet fabric hanging around her hips. The flurry of action, saturated with precipitation, lust, and anger, calmed down once their bare skin was joined, and the satin rush of soothing calm stunned them both to silence.

Olivia’s face was over Hero’s shoulder, so he repositioned himself so his forehead leaned gently against hers, their faces now directly across from each other. He followed a raindrop with his finger down the side of her cheek, and then tilted her chin toward his. “Look at me.” She did, and he looked into her eyes as he slid inside.

As he moved her and the rain trailed tingling stripes of sensation down her bared torso, electric aftershocks of candy pleasure followed close behind. She felt enslaved by the power of the phenomenon, her skin saturated by rain and reverie, enclosing her body and completely redefining her perception of touch. She couldn’t stop moaning, she couldn’t stop shaking, she couldn’t hold Hero’s body tight enough, and she couldn’t look away from his almond-shaped eyes. She was starving for him, and swallowing him whole.

“I love you,” he whispered, eyes courageous and hips hard at work.

“I love you, too.”

She clung to him like a child, kissing him desperately, clumping his shirt into her grasping hands. Her tongue explored his mouth in a feverish, sloppy kiss, tasting lust and rain. The drops on her cheeks felt like tears.

“Come for me, chag’ya.”

With his fingers entangled in her head, she leaned her head back, eyes closed, mouth opened. Every time she exhaled, she let out a wild, animal sound, declaring her orgasmic delight. Her thighs went tight as a vice around him, engulfing him, begging him with her body.

“Come for me,” he repeated, kissing the rain sparkling down her neck. “I love you, chag’ya. Come for me.”

She tightened and tightened until she broke her passionate fever and fell over the edge, an avalanche of ecstasy spreading to every corner of her body, making her scream in rapturous agony. She pumped her hips harder into him, stealing every possible morsel of orgasm she could.

“I’m coming,” she moaned.

He kissed her, joined her in euphoric explosion, and guided her through her descent from earth. They didn’t stop kissing until they landed.

Beep.

As Olivia sat at Hero’s windowsill and watched the rain fall, she was beginning to wish each beep were closer together, forming some semblance of a rhythm. Instead, they arrived sporadically, so distant from one another she had nearly forgotten about them by the time they came around again. Once she drifted onto the shore of sleep, the tide of the beep pushed her deeper into the waves of panic.

Hero stirred, groaning with disappointment when he realized half his bed was empty. He got up and glided across the moonlit haze to sit opposite Olivia, tilting his head in concerned observation.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked.

“Of course not. Your house still beeps.”

“I’m sorry. I forgot that bothers you. You alright? You look real pale.”

Her eyes were dreamy and distant. “Where are you from?”

“8th Block. You know that.”

“No I mean, where are you from? Like, what country?”

He frowned. “America.”

She scoffed. “I mean—”

“I know what you mean. And you know better than to ask me that by now. If you’ve still got questions about me, don’t fill in the blanks with my ethnicity. Just ask.”

Her jaw jerked to the side, as if she were trying to bite off his snarky tone. “I saw Orchid getting raped in the back of a car tonight.”

His face tightened. “You saw what?”

“She had a client with a rape fantasy,” Olivia explained. “I tried to help her because I didn’t understand, so he just threw some cash at her and drove away.”

Hero leaned back. “She ain’t supposed to service guys like that. She knows better.”

Olivia’s train of thought had already passed his station. “How can you take all their money? How can you let those girls do that every night? Who are you?”

Beep.

“You know who I am.”

“No, I don’t. I don’t even know your real name.”

He smiled. “Hero. Nice to meet you.”

“Your real name is not Hero.”

“Is too.”

She sighed, now even less inspired to join him in the bed. “Try to level with me for once, please, okay? I’m having a lot of trouble with this.” She gulped and tightened her toes. “I feel really drawn to you. To the Blades, Club Lanka, this place. It’s like I feel compelled to be here, like I can’t help but come back, but I know what you are. You’re a criminal, and I know that I should stay away from you.” She tugged at her own hair and scratched a non-existent itch on the back of her neck. “Sometimes I hear it when I’m not even here, and the fact that you can’t hear it at all makes it worse.”

Hero leaned his head against the glass and released a slow, careful breath through pressed lips.

“I need to make a choice,” said Olivia. “I’m either a soulless aristocratic harpy from Westcliff or a mob boss’s arm candy. I can’t be both. And I need your help to decide.”

He closed his eyes, tightened them for a second, and released them to gaze into Olivia’s distraught face. “You wanna know why I like flowers so much? Why I name my girls after flowers?”

She waited for him to answer himself.

“Because I like the idea of something beautiful growing out of nothing,” he said. “That’s what we were in 8th Block, we were less than nothing. My father had a degree, but it didn’t carry to the States, so we had to start from scratch in the projects. My parents were so busy trying to stack their paper and get out of that place that me and Ace and Seneka had to make our own way. Eventually, I started noticing the tenant leaders were negotiating with gangs, not the social workers or the five-oh, so if I wanted to get anything done down there, I knew who I needed to get involved with.

“Orchid, Rose, and Pansy didn’t come to this country the way I did. They were put up in nice hotels and shit, their traffickers had decent investors. It’s a big business—the recruiters told them they were going to get married when they got here and become legitimate US citizens. Didn’t happen that way. The second they got here, they were cycled through the Grove—brothels, massage parlors, that kind of thing. Mostly seedy shit hiding behind legit businesses. A couple pimps ran their business out of 8th Block, and when the girls came through, that’s how I met them.

“Pansy’s pimp didn’t have cash to buy drugs, so he tried to pay with Pansy’s pussy. I remember, I was scared shitless. I had product I needed to deliver, and if I didn’t come back paid, I was gonna get my ass beat, and there was this girl with her face between my legs. If I didn’t take the blow job for the drugs, she was the one who was gonna get beat down, so I lied to her pimp for her and paid for the crack out of pocket.”

Hero shook his head at the memory. “A few years later, the Dragon Blades were taking off, and I bought this house. I never forgot about those girls, and I saw them from time to time.” He smiled to himself. “Stone always says you can’t take Hero to the pound, or you’ll end up with a house full of mangy dogs.” He looked at Olivia. “So I borrowed against this house and took the girls home.

“It was real hard, trying to figure out what to do at first. I mean, what was I gonna do? They couldn’t speak English, they couldn’t do shit but dance and suck dick. I looked into getting them in school, but they weren’t legit and I didn’t have the protectors or the informers that the traffickers did to forge them paperwork. It was a fucking mess, and if I didn’t figure out a way to get that money back, we were all going back to Thomas Chaucer.” He sighed. “So I started pimping them.”

Olivia nodded slowly, but still held a frown. “But it’s been so many years now. They still haven’t paid their debt?”

Hero shook his head. “It hasn’t been a smooth ride. Money goes here, money goes there,  Kang’ju was born, a lot of shit goes down south of the Interstate. And they like working for me. All their needs get taken care of and they don’t have to be responsible for their own lives. The allegory of the cave, I guess.” He shrugged. “This is what they know.” He relaxed. “My real name is Hi’luh. Seneka started to spell it H-E-R-O after I brought the flowers home.”

He stood up, walked over to Olivia, brushed her bangs out of the way, and kissed her forehead. He ran his fingers through her hair, put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her, holding her against his belly. He kissed her head again.

“I can’t tell you who you are, that’s up to you,” he said. “But I can tell you that I love you, and that I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”

Beep.

Tags: Dan, Hero, Margaret, Olivia, Olivia's Point of View, Orchid

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 19th, 2009 at 6:46 pm and is filed under The Story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.