Floored Read Free

the only way.
    He gave her shoulder a prod. “Nikki, wake up.”
    She came awake slowly. She’d been drinking heavily last night. She’d have a sore head and a sick stomach. Under the circumstances that was helpful. He could get away with saying she was too drunk and he didn’t fuck comatose chicks. That would win him another day and the usual round of ridicule over his being soft in the head, over his ‘sensitivity’.
    She blinked up at him, eyes unfocused and bleary.
    “How do you feel?”
    “Um.”
    “That good.” He hunkered down so he could look in her red-rimmed eyes. “Listen Nik, the party’s over. It’s time for you to go home. You’ve had your walk on the wild side and before it all goes too far, you need to go.”
    She was all sleepy kitten. “No. Fetch, I want to be with you.”
    “No you don’t. I’m too old and cranky. Anyway, I don’t do sixteen year old schoolgirls. So you don’t have an option.”
    “Wacker said I was yours.”
    “Wacker doesn’t own you. He can’t give you away. You own you. You have to start acting like it.”
    “But I want to be with you.”
    “No. You don’t. I’m not very nice.”
    She showed her pretty teeth. She really was a cutie. And frigging young. “Yeah you are. You’re the nicest of everyone.”
    He pushed hair out of his eyes. “Why did you come here anyway?”
    “My parents don’t understand.”
    She thought she was being winsome and damsel in distress. She thought that would work on him. “What, that you have ambitions to be a crack whore?”
    She struggled to a sitting position, but her face paled from the effort to stop feeling motion sick. “My father pushes me around.”
    Fetch sat straighter too. He kept his eyes resolutely on her face. “Your dad hits you?”
    Her forehead crinkled, but her eyes widened. She’d been shocked by the suggestion. Her dad probably didn’t want her dressed like jail bait either. Fetch would bet he wasn’t hitting her, or doing anything worse. Nikki sniffed as if she was about to cry. It wasn’t good acting. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
    He moved so quickly she gave a little gasp of shock. He grabbed both her arms and pulled her close. He breathed nasty morning breath on her. “So you’re used to being roughed up then. That’s good. You know your place. Crack whore on P plates.”
    “No, I…” She tried to pull away. She had no chance. He moved a hand to the back of her neck and anchored her. She wasn’t going anywhere except home.
    “No, you what?” he mocked.
    “I—”
    “You listen to me, Nikki. I’m going to work now. I’ll be gone all day. This is what you’re going to do. You’re going to get dressed, wash that black crap off your face. Tell Maise you’re going to run an errand for me.”
    She nodded. Bambi caught in the crosshairs. Except she thought she was frolicking in the freaking meadow.
    “You’re going to take the five hundred bucks I give you.”
    She nodded again. She didn’t know where this was going.
    “You’re going to walk to the station and stand at the taxi rank. When a driver pulls up, you’re going to get in and give him your home address.”
    Now she got it. “No… I—”
    He squeezed the back of her neck. Enough so she’d know he wasn’t mucking around.
    “You’ll do it, Nikki. And you won’t ever come back here.”
    He held her neck, he held her eyes. He was going to be late with the first drop. He’d be running behind all day. When he got back, Wacker would want to know why he was so incompetent he couldn’t manage to make a few deliveries on time. But he’d have given the poor kid her life back and sent her home, where bad things were less likely to happen to her.
    It’d be easy to explain, once a runaway, always a runaway. He could let Wacker think he’d gone hard on her and frightened her off, or better, that he’d been a stupid enough fuck to be nice to her, and she’d run out and stolen his money. Yeah—that worked much