Chapter Text
It’s the damn dress that does it.
Miles has no idea how long something like that can last, but the minute he puts his hand on Charlie’s shoulder, the texture of it brings the memory rushing back. He’d been high, of course, every crevice of his body singing with the smoke, but he remembers the surprise of expecting lace and finding only nylon, a cheap, ugly surprise.
He had expected more, at Drexel’s. They put up with the man for exactly two reasons: opium and orgies. And neither came cheap.
The girl wearing the dress had been exquisite, lean and muscled but with breasts so high and round that even Bass had stopped to ask just how old she was. Nineteen, she’d said, and they’d looked at each other, knowing it for a lie, but stripped the dress off her anyway.
He’d like to say it was the opium, the way they’d fucked that girl half the night. He’d been raw in his skin, sure enough, and reality was a distant, mocking light, but he’d known she was too young. Known the stubborn set of her mouth spoke of a girl refusing to be victim, an uncommon type for a whore.
They’d gone out of their way to make it good for her, but he’s still surprised when she’s snuggled between them come morning. But if she was still between them … who was sitting on top of him? He’d squinted up through the opium fog to take in long, moonlight-coloured curls, milk-pale skin, and huge green eyes glaring out of a picture-portrait face, so fierce his cock had throbbed its approval. Shame about the knife.
“What sort of leaders like to fuck children?” Mama Bear had growled, and there’s no comeback for that, no possible defense, so told her to take the girl and go. But then Bass made a sleepy noise of protest beside him, even as he struck like a viper to grab the knife.
“Why shouldn’t I kill you both?” he’d asked, and Miles is listing the reasons to himself, trying not to boil them down to ‘because she’s right’ when the young girl, still naked between them, had kneeled up in panic.
“Because I’ll do anything. We’ll do anything,” she promised, and this time, he can’t even blame the drugs, or Bass, because he’s the one who makes the demand out of pure, unrestrained spite.
“Children, huh? Truth this time, kid. How old are you?”
“Sixteen. Sir.”
“And how old is blondie here?”
“Maggie? I don’t know, sir. Twenty-five maybe?”
The blonde objects, her cut glass accent tight with strain. “Thirty-one, actually.”
“Hmm. Guess you are a mama bear. Protector of lost children? That deserves a reward,” he grins, but whoever Maggie is, she’s not fooled, staring at him with dread.
Miles lets his gaze shift to the girl, forcing himself to notice the slight roundness of her face, and the bloom of childhood still on her skin. Sixteen. He’s shot men for less. But every day he lives this life, he searches for a boundary he’s not willing to cross. This horse had bolted even before he’d the chance to discover whether he’d found one yet.
Blondie really shouldn’t have put a knife to his throat.
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Paige. Paige Duncan.”
“Well, Paige Duncan, you’re going to give Maggie here her reward. You’re gonna eat her out, and make sure she screams your name when she comes. Then she’s gonna open you up so we can fuck you, and when we’re done showing her just how much of a woman you are, she’s going to lick our cum out of your pussy and your ass, and beg our fucking forgiveness. Because that’s just the kind of leaders we are,” he says, voice heavy with mockery.
Maggie sobs through her humiliation, but young Paige surprises them both, shuddering through a wave of orgasms that crashes down the minute they start to rock her between them.
“Why? Why is it so good?” she had asked, green eyes full of confusion, and of all the things he has to hate himself for, how weird that this one stings the most. He’d pulled out of her, unable to answer, and it had been up to Bass to cuddle her close and explain.
“Different people like different things,” he’d soothed her, and “never let anyone make you ashamed for feeling good.”
Maybe Bass’ altruism is catching, or perhaps it’s some fancy conceived in the smoke that made them take the girl with them when they left. Maggie Foster, too, stony faced bitch that she was, but they’re in no position to turn down a doctor, especially one who is willing to trade right of passage for her services as a spy.
He should have joined the dots, he knows, when she walked into his bar and pretended not to know him. It had been him who sent her to Ben in the first place. But Charlie’s fierce golden beauty had knocked out his ability to think, and in that moment all he could think was that his every last sin had flown home to roost.
Except he’d been wrong. He’d forgotten about Nora. The woman who loved him, who always put him first, and suffered for it.
The irony isn’t lost on him, he wants to tell her. Everything that went wrong in their lives had started here. The drugs. The orgies. Their dazzling parade of addictions.
And now, she is lying close to death in the basement, her life hanging on a tenuous thread of goodwill, back in this place. They’d dug their own graves, he accepts.
But he’ll be fucked if he’s ready to surrender Nora to hers just yet.