with my guilt, it still didn’t stop them from invading my dreams at night.
“What, you’re not going to talk to me now?” Calisto asked.
She got that right. There was no point wasting my breath on a jezebel whore like her.
I walked over to the desk in the corner of the hotel room and searched inside the drawers, hoping to find something useful. A sharp letter opener would have been fantastic.
No such luck.
I did find a single copper penny though which might be good enough.
Years of living on the streets had taught me the true value of a penny—it was a great substitute for a flathead screwdriver when one wasn’t readily available.
I began my search for the two-way speaker system, starting with the vents.
I positioned the edge of the penny into the crevice of one of the screws and began turning it.
Meanwhile, Calisto continued ranting in the background with random gibberish. I blocked it all out.
“I bet you Aria’s fucking Shadow right now. You know, they’re both better off without having you in their lives. You’re a parasite, leeching off the happiness of others,” Calisto said. “Tell me, Lincoln, was she better than me? Did you love her more than you ever loved me? Was her pussy as sweet as mine?”
Keep talking bitch, I thought to myself. Because when I see you next, I’m going to shut you up permanently with my bare hands.
I envisioned my fingers, wrapped around her neck and how good it felt to have her trachea cave in under the weight of my hands.
And for the first time since I was taken captive, I smiled.
#
Chapter Six
Aria
The house was eerily quiet this morning, I thought to myself as I stood alone in the kitchen. Shadow had woken up at the crack of dawn to prepare for his trip with Beau.
I had insisted on going along with them, knowing full well they didn’t exactly have complimentary personalities. Shadow was a brooding, no-nonsense, let’s-get-shit-done type of guy while Beau was…well Beau.
I figured at some point, the latter would say something stupid, like he always did, tempting Shadow to shut him up with a tire iron.
“I’d be an asset in this meeting,” I had told Shadow. “After all, I was the last one to see Lincoln, just before he was kidnapped.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Shadow had said. There was something cold about the way he spoke to me. Oh God, had Shadow possibly figured out what transpired between Lincoln and I?
“I love you,” I said.
He looked at me and nodded. “I love you too Aria, more than you can ever know.” He kissed me on the forehead, just before leaving me alone in the bed. The kiss, however, wasn’t one filled with passion reserved for people as madly in love as we claimed to be. It felt like a simple ‘I’ll call you when I’m free…maybe,’ type of kiss which I had experienced once in high school. That bastard never did call.
Shadow was doing it again, giving me the cold shoulder. Granted, he wasn’t as bad as before. At least last night he slept in the same bed as I did.
But he didn’t hold me or make love to me despite all my efforts to arouse him.
It tore a bit out of me when I had his cock fully in my mouth and he gently pushed me off saying, “I have a long day tomorrow. It’s best we both get some sleep.”
What man didn’t like having his dick sucked spontaneously by his woman?
One who was angry at his girl, that’s who.
Or worse yet, there was another woman.
It had all begun after Shadow received a text message on his cell.
What did it say? More importantly, who was it from?
Was it indeed from another woman? Maybe he was growing bored of me and had moved on to someone else?
“Men are nothing but a giant sack of perpetual disappointment.”
I turned around and saw Reiko standing by the kitchen bar, grabbing a frosted bottle of grey goose from out of the freezer.
“You want a drink?” she asked as she grabbed two highball glasses and set them on the table.
I nodded.