“What sort of dream?”
“It’s stupid, really.” She choked out a laugh for my benefit. “I’m walking down the aisle as if I’m about to get married, and I’m really happy.”
“What’s stupid about that?”
“It’s not in the cards for me,” she said. “The whole idea is ridiculous. I don’t want to get married. But in the dream, I think I do, and I’m really happy until I get to the end of the aisle.”
“What happens?”
“I see his face, and it’s always different, but the same. One of the Johns. And I don’t know their names, but I remember exactly what they did to me.”
Bitterness coated my tongue, and I wanted to tell her to stop. I didn’t need to hear anymore. That would be the selfish thing to do, but she didn’t stop. Once she opened up, the words flowed freely.
“I remember the way they fucked me. A girl who had barely sprouted boobs. They never questioned it. They just told me what they wanted. What they needed. But you know what? They never asked me what I wanted. What I needed.”
Her voice was shaded with quiet rage, and I wanted more than anything to take away her pain. I didn’t know why. I didn’t know how I’d become so hung up on this damaged girl and the intimate secrets of her life. But I collected them, and I kept them stored away in my memory, waiting for a day when the inevitable would happen. She would lure me from the path of righteousness. She would tempt my demons out to play.
“Does this make you uncomfortable?” she asked. “You probably don’t like to hear me say fuck, huh? You probably don’t know what to say when I tell you that I learned how to please a man long before I ever learned how to do basic math.”
“It’s your truth,” I choked out. “It’s not for me to silence.”
“It makes me wonder,” she said. “If there is a God, where was he then? Does your God want me to be powerless? Is that it?”
“No,” I answered. “You have more power than you could ever imagine.”
“Sure, I do.” She scoffed. “Because I took that power, and I made it mine.”
“You’ll never let a man hurt you again,” I supplied for her.
There was a quiver in her voice when she answered. “That’s right.”
“There’s just one problem with that,” I told her.
“What?” she asked.
“It means you’ll never let one love you, either.”
“WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?” Gypsy looked around the same room that I’d first taken her in this club.
“Get undressed,” I commanded.
She hesitated, her eyes drifting to the door I’d locked behind us. Tonight was not for show. It was intimate. Something for her and me and nobody else.
“Why did you bring me here?” she repeated.
I moved into her space, my fingers ghosting over the fading redness on her neck. “Do you trust me yet?”
I was desperate to drink the words from her lips, and I hoped she’d say yes, but Gypsy would never admit her vulnerabilities so freely. She didn’t know there was beauty in surrender.
I inched the hem of her tee shirt up over her head and tossed it aside. “I’m a man of my word. I’ve told you many times that I won’t hurt you.”
Her hands curled into my shirt, clinging to me with a weariness I wanted to extinguish for her. “Don’t you think I’ve heard that one before?”
I unbuttoned her shorts and removed those too. Standing in front of me, in the form of a beautiful woman, was a girl who never got to be. Frozen in her past, I needed a chisel to get inside her. It required delicate work. Layers upon layers of extrication. My skills were that of demolishment, but right now, I needed to be an artist.
I coaxed a kiss from her mouth and led her to the table in the center of the room. “You are safe in my care,” I assured her.
She bit her lip. “Is this what you need from me?”