Bane

“Is this a brothel?” Elena asks once I’ve closed the door behind us. I look at her face to get a read on how she’s feeling about it. Instead of appearing mad, she looks excited, almost intrigued.

“Yes,” I say. “Brothels are very secretive about their guests. If anyone were to come looking for us, we don’t need to worry that we’ll be found.”

“That’s good thinking,” she says while looking around the room. “I’ve never been to a brothel before.”

Now she’s full on smiling.

“This is exciting to you?” I ask.

“Yeah, I guess it is. It feels kind of naughty.” She laughs and then continues. “For me, being a woman. For a guy it’s probably more normal. But I’ve never even been to a strip club before.”

“A strip club?”

“Yeah, it’s where women dance and take their clothes off and men give them money for it. I mean, they can make good money.”

She sits down on the edge of the bed, caught up in her thoughts.

“Downstairs, one of those girls let a guy play with her gazungas for a bit and then he gave her a handful of coins. I mean, I could do that.”

“No, absolutely not,” I say before I can stop myself. “I already told you, if you need anything I will get it for you.”

“I know,” she says. “I didn’t really mean that I was going to do it, it’s just something you say sometimes.”

I sit down on the bed next to her. Because it is a brothel, there is a large bed in the room and not much else. She doesn’t look at me and I worry that I was too forceful with my words. But the thought of another man putting his hands on her makes me see red. Maybe it’s because I feel as though she is my responsibility now and naturally I want to protect her and keep her safe. That includes not letting someone else put his hands on her for money.

“Oh, a bath!” She gets off of the bed walking toward the corner of the room. There’s another small room with a tub sitting in the middle of the tile floor. A tall faucet sits at one end. Without hesitating, Elena turns the nobs and water comes pouring out into the tub. “It works!” she says excitedly, turning around to show me. “Do you mind if I take a bath?”

“Of course not,” I say.

She walks back toward the doorway and stops. “I don’t think there’s a door or anything.” She examines the entrance and then continues, “But we are in a brothel, so I guess their main concern isn’t privacy.”

Once again she smiles at me and I like the way it lights me up inside.

“I’ll go downstairs and get us something to eat. That way you’ll have privacy.” I stand up without waiting for her to answer and walk out of the door into the hallway. Seeing her naked and wet would require too much self-control on my part anyway. I don’t have it in me to keep my hands to myself if I were to get a look at her curvy, voluptuous body.

So I quickly close the door behind me but that doesn’t stop the images from assaulting me anyway. I walk down the hallway in the direction of the bar, all the while trying to remind myself of the predicament that I’m in. I need to hand her over to Phantom or I get tossed back in prison. Either way ends with us not being together. It doesn’t matter what she makes me feel, we were doomed before we started this journey.

I sit at the bar and order two plates of food along with a cold mug of mead. After a long day of walking in the brutal rays of the sun, the frothy liquid makes my mouth water. It is well into the evening at this point and the crowd is loud and rowdy. I think about what Elena told me she saw and I can’t help but glance around the room. In the corner a woman straddles a man’s lap while they kiss. Her hand is down the front of his pants, clearly working his cock.

I look away and take a drink of the mead. Staying here was a mistake. It is already hard enough to behave myself with Elena. Now I have these images in my head, making my cock ache. Before I can stop myself, I imagine what it would feel like to have Elena straddle me like that with her hand in my pants, pumping my cock. I moan into my mug and shake my head, trying to get rid of these thoughts.

“It can never work,” I whisper to myself, as if somehow saying it out loud will make the thoughts go away.

The bartender brings over two plates of food and I’m glad for the interruption. Once I finish eating, Elena should be finished with her bath and I can bring her the other plate of food. Then we’ll go to bed so we can get up early tomorrow and get the hell out of here. I lean over my plate of food and dig in.

I try to be a gentleman when I open the door and make enough noise so she knows I’m back in the room. She must still be in the bath, though, because the bedroom is empty.

“I’m back,” I say. “And I brought food.”

“Okay,” she says and I can hear the water splash. “I’ll just dry off and be out in a minute.”

I step into the room and walk toward the bed, the only place I can set the food besides the floor. From the bed, though, I can see her clearly. Her back is to me and she has a towel wrapped around herself. I know I should look away, but there’s nothing indecent about this. I mean, she does have a towel around herself.

I’m about to make myself walk back toward the door when she lets her towel drop down to her feet. Before I can tear my eyes away, she bends over and begins to dry her legs. I have a perfect view of her round, voluptuous ass, all the way down to her legs. When she stands back up her ass fills out even more. She has a few small dimples in her cheeks and they bounce just a little as she dries her hair. Before she can turn around and see me staring, I force myself to look away and stand over by the door.

My cock is hard in my pants as I imagine what it would feel like to grab onto her ass and push my cock inside of her. After all of this time, it would be the best feeling in the world. Before my mind can get too carried away, she comes out of the room fully clothed again. She spots the food on the bed and walks right over to it.

“Thanks for the food,” she says, picking it up and taking a bite right away. “I’m famished.” She has a mouthful of food, chewing away when she looks over at me. “Did you have some?” She holds up the plate.

“Yes, I ate downstairs at the bar so you could have some privacy.”

“Thank you,” she says, taking another bite. “It felt so good to soak in the tub after so much walking today. You should take a bath too.”

“I might do that.” She’s right, it would feel good to get clean and wash away all of the dirt and grime from our crazy day. But on the other hand, I might have a hard time getting her out of my head if I’m naked in the tub.

“Go ahead, I won’t peek,” she says, smiling. At first I wonder if she knows that I was watching her. But it’s clear she’s just teasing again when she takes another bite and continues eating her food.

“I think I will. And then we should go to sleep. We need to get back on the road as early as possible. Go ahead and take the bed,” I tell her. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” she says, waving her hand to dismiss my last comment. “This bed is plenty big for the both of us.”

I’m at a loss for words. Quietly, I stand up and walk into the next room and turn on the water. I make it cold so I can try to extinguish all of the ways my body is betraying me right now. The thought crosses my mind that maybe if I just took matters literally into my own hands, it might help me get through the night while lying next to her.

When I’m finished a few minutes later, the light is still on in the room but Elena is lying under the covers and she appears to be asleep. I breathe a little easier when I walk over to the bed. I turn off the light before laying down on top of the covers and closing my eyes.

“You can sleep under the covers, you know,” she says.

“I thought you were asleep.” I stretch out and tuck my hands behind my head. It does feel good to finally lay down. Slowly my body relaxes into the mattress beneath me.

“Almost,” she says quietly. A few minutes later, when I’ve just closed my eyes, she says, “That man on the street just outside of town.”

“Yes?”

“Was he homeless?”

“Yes, he was,” I say, simply.

“And he told you where we could stay?”

“Yes.” I turn to look at her now, unsure of where she’s going with this or what has piqued her curiosity.

“For money?”

“He would have told me without money but I wanted to help him out, even if it was only a little.”

“That was nice of you. When you told me about your past, I didn’t expect to see you giving money to a homeless man.”

“Well, I told you, that was a long time ago. And I’ve been where he has been.”

“You mean, without anywhere to stay?”

“Yes.” I hesitate to tell her more but I like talking to her and I want her to trust me. It’s important to me that she knows I wasn’t always a bounty hunter. “Before my father died, it was just the two of us and we lived day to day with whatever he could do to earn money. When he died, I struggled to make money. I should have starved on the streets.”

“But you didn’t,” she says. “What happened?”

“I was recruited by a man who wanted me to do a job for him. He told me I would be well compensated. Never have to worry about where I was going to sleep or what I was going to eat. All of those important things, you know?”

“Yeah. All the things you need in life.”

“Well he was right. He paid me well, better than I could have imagined. And somehow I was able to ignore what I had to do in order to get that money.”

“He saved you but you lost your true self in the process.” She reaches over and touches my arm. I’m surprised by the intimacy of the gesture. I’m always waiting for her to decide that I really am a monster and that I don’t deserve forgiveness or happiness. Not just because of my sketchy past but because of how I was hired to get rid of her.

I reach over and rest my hand on top of hers. When our eyes meet I nod. She moves her hand so she’s holding mine and then she smiles at me before she closes her eyes.