June 28, 2014

You gotta throw me a bone here, Elliot. It's been months and the chief is asking for results. I just got my ass handed to me at COMPSTAT. I mean, be honest with me. What are we really doing here? You haven't brought me anything solid on Kosta in days. So, he's running protection. So, maybe he's running girls, but you keep tying that back to Albi and not the big boss. Nothing you've given me is solid, and you don't have any members of his crew willing to turn on him. You gotta bring me something, Elliot. You gotta bring me something real.

If it had been Ayanna's intention to light a fire under his ass she had succeeded admirably, though perhaps not for the reasons she'd thought. She'd tried to apply pressure from the bureau chief, from the brass, but Elliot didn't give a single solitary shit about any of them. What are we really doing here, that was the question that troubled him, that pressed him. What the fuck was he doing here? Going drinking with Reggie, teasing the girls at the cafe, doing favors for Kosta, it was starting to feel - had always felt, really - less like he was investigating them and more like he was one of them. Like this was his life, now, running through the streets with the worst of the worst, mayhem in his wake. The highlight of any week, the thing he looked forward to most, was maybe getting the chance to go see a madam across town, the relationship he was forging with her - and with Reggie - feeling less like a necessity for the job and more like something he was doing for himself. Everything had gotten all twisted up inside him and he couldn't remember, sometimes, what it was all for.

But Ayanna had passed down an ultimatum, and he meant to do what he could to make her happy. Bell was a good boss, a good woman, she didn't deserve to get chewed out for his fuck ups. For her sake, he'd do better. Try harder. Think clearer.

To that end, then, when he made his way back to Oak House with Kosta on a Saturday evening he did not venture out to the terrace in search of Olivia, no matter how much he wanted to. Maybe it was Eddie who wanted that, the part of his heart that had become Ashes longing for something that belonged only to him, but he could not feed that beast. Instead he waited for a moment when no one was watching him, when no one would notice, and slipped up the stairs on silent feet.

Every wall in this place must have been soundproofed, but maybe the doors weren't. If he could figure out which room the redhead had taken Kosta to, maybe he could talk to Olivia and her bodyguard about planting a bug in there. Kosta did favor the one girl, and that made him curious; was Kosta really infatuated with one girl in particular, or did the girl serve some other purpose? It was Sinatra who'd pointed her out in the first place; what if they were brokering more deals in secret, deep in the soundproofed rooms of Olivia's house? What if it was a sham; would the girl have told her boss that she wasn't fucking Kosta, that she was just giving him a convenient excuse to meet with Sinatra away from prying eyes, or would she just take the pay she'd earned, and rest, and not draw attention to it?

All that was pure speculation, of course. Kosta could just be comfortable with the girl. Could just be she did something he liked. Elliot didn't know, but the first step to finding out would be finding out where the girl took her customers.

The upper floors were a warren of rooms, though. There were four floors in total, the first given over to entertaining space, the next three home to the girls, and Olivia, and Noah, whoever the fuck he was. Not her dog, whatever she might say on the subject, not her man, because she'd told Elliot she wasn't fucking anybody, didn't have a boyfriend. Noah was just another secret he wasn't privy to yet, another question that nagged away at him.

The corridors were deserted; there had been a party tonight, and every room was surely full at present, every girl occupied. Each door had a gold-plated number screwed into its face, but the numbers told Elliot little. Maybe he should have gone outside, and talked to Olivia. Maybe he should have just asked her, but he was hesitant, for some reason. Sister Peg had told him not to trust her, that she was only looking out for herself; would Olivia help him at all, or just give him enough rope to hang himself? Everything in this house was for sale; how much would her assistance cost him? How much would it cost her, if anyone ever found out?

As if thoughts of her had conjured her on the spot she appeared around a bend in the hallway. She was a vision tonight; well, she always was, but tonight was something else. Her dress was satin, a deep, rich purple, something vaguely Grecian in the way it wrapped around her body, wound around her breasts and showed the shape of them off so enticingly, though the neckline rose all the way to her collarbone. For a madam and a former working girl, she seemed to have an aversion to showing off her cleavage - and her back, and the tattoo hidden there. There were secrets lurking beneath her clothes, he thought, but he could not for a moment fathom what they might be.

"You lost, Mr. Wagner?" she called softly when she saw him, giving a haughty toss of her head, her thick, dark hair tumbling back from her shoulders in a shimmering wave. Those teardrop shaped earrings were diamonds, he thought.

"Just looking," he answered with a quick grin.

Olivia was good, he'd give her that. She only called him Elliot on the terrace, when they were utterly alone and unobserved, and everywhere else in the house he was Mr. Wagner, her careful pronunciation of the name an offer of protection beneath her roof.

"You shouldn't be wandering around up here."

"If I ask you which room the redhead is in, will you tell me?"

She frowned as she drew closer, swaying to a stop perhaps a foot away from him.

"The redhead has a name."

"I'm sure she does, but I don't know it."

"Sienna."

"Ok, Sienna. Which one's she?"

"Number four," Olivia said, and then she began to move, gliding down the hallway in the direction Elliot had come, leading him back towards the stairs, and him with no choice but to fall into step beside her.

"Does Sinatra have a favorite?" he asked her quietly, keeping his eyes straight ahead, and not on the proud line of her jaw.

"Ruby. She's number five."

That was interesting.

"Any chance four and five are next door to each other?"

Instead of answering Olivia just pointed; she'd lead him straight to the two rooms, and he could see the numbers on the doors, side-by-side, 4 and 5. Just ahead the corridor turned to the left, led to rooms 1 through 3, and the stairway.

"Come away from the door," she said, her hand brushing against his arm for a moment, and he followed her, spellbound, to the corner on the left, mirrored her posture when she leaned back against the wall, the pair of them standing so close their shoulders were almost touching.

"You think something's happening in those rooms," she observed, almost accusing.

"Something besides sex? Yeah, maybe. What do you think?"

"It's hard to say. I can ask, though."

He had his mouth open to reply, perhaps to tease her about whether her asking would lead to him getting an answer, but just down the corridor the door to number 5 opened. Someone was coming out.

There was no time; he could turn and race for the stairs, but what if someone saw him running, or out of breath, what if Sinatra noticed him entering the parlor just ahead of him, and wondered where he'd been? Sinatra's man usually waited outside the door while the boss was busy, Elliot remembered, but there was no trace of the fellow now; what if he was lurking at the foot of the stairs? But there was nowhere else for Elliot to go. He could only move in two directions, and one would send him running smack into Sinatra, and the other would send him into uncertainty.

While his mind was racing Olivia's must have been, too, and she found the answer before he did.

"Come here," she hissed in a low voice, and then her hands were on him, and he was powerless to resist her.

With one hand on the back of his head, her fingers pressing gently against his scalp, she encouraged him to turn towards her, and with the other she fisted the back of his jacket, tugged him so hard and caught him so off guard that his body all but slammed into hers as she pulled him deeper into the corner, flung herself back against the wall. His own hands moved on reflex, one of them landing palm first against the wall to hold himself steady while the other fell to her hip, anchoring her to him. She wriggled, just a little, and at first he had no idea what she was thinking but then the slit in her dress fell away from her thigh, and she was angling her hips towards him, and a strangled groan left his mouth as he realized she was raising her leg, entreating him to grab hold of it. He did so without second thought, the hand on her hip moving at once to the soft flesh of her bare thigh, helping her to hook her leg around his waist, holding on to him tight. The hand at the back of his head pulled him in, and in, and down, until his nose was pressed hard to the silken skin of her neck.

Jesus Christ.

There would be no doubt in the minds of anyone who happened to pass them by what the couple in the corner were doing. Elliot's back was to the corridor, his face buried in Olivia's neck, her stiletto digging into his ass, her hand cradling his head against her. Such a clinch was not an uncommon sight in a brothel, even one as classy as this one; likely Sinatra wouldn't even give them a second look.

But Elliot wasn't thinking about Sinatra, in that moment. He wasn't thinking about much of anything, couldn't hear his own thoughts above the rushing of blood in his veins, the pounding of his heart.

Olivia smelled like oranges. Light and citrusy, like something he wanted to drink, and her skin was smooth against his cheek. While he struggled to control his own breathing his mouth opened, and he felt his lips brush that soft skin, and arousal shot through him like lightning. Holding her like this, being held like this, tangled up in her arms and her hands and her fucking perfect legs, the bulge of his cock had settled firmly against her center, and with her dress cascading back from her hip there was nothing between them but his worn black trousers and whatever lacy thing she had on underneath that dress, hardly anything at all, certainly not enough to disguise the sheer damning heat radiating out from between her legs. Every fiber of his being longed to rut into that heat, suddenly, wanted to bury himself inside it, wanted to be held by her truly, honestly.

There was nothing honest about this pose, though. She might have been pressing his head against her skin, but it was only to hide his face. She might have canted her hips towards him invitingly, but it was only to give him shelter from his enemies. The soft swells of her breasts might have been pressed hard to the plane of his chest, but he would not be permitted to touch them, to kiss them, to see them, even. Her embrace was a lie, but a tantalizing one, one that was testing his restraint to its very limits.

It had been months since he'd last been to bed with a woman, but he'd found no joy in the act since Kathy died. It had been a lonesome sort of thing, the scratching of an itch, hardly dignified, rarely repeated. Dating didn't suit him; he hardly knew what to say to a woman, when asked about himself, when there was so little about himself worth the telling, and so much about himself that would send a sane woman running for the hills. He abhorred the getting-to-know-you dance, trading pieces of himself away over and over again in the hopes that this time something might stick, feeling foolish, feeling like a fraud. But one-night-stands didn't suit him much either, always left him feeling hollow, somehow.

But Olivia, Olivia lived sex. Olivia knew just what to do, had made the business of sex her life's work. Was comfortable with it, knew how to navigate it with ease. She didn't worry about logistics and pleasantries and commitments; she'd know, he thought. She'd know how to fuck, and every piece of her seemed made to do it, and Jesus if he didn't get ahold of himself all the blood currently rushing to his dick was gonna make itself known, and he didn't want that. Olivia had traded sex for money all her life, had since she was a teenager been used for sex, and the last thing Elliot wanted was for her to think that he was just a man who looked at her and saw only a means to an end. She was so much more than that, and she meant so much more than that to him.

"I'm sorry," he breathed as quietly as he could manage, his lips catching against her neck.

In response the pressure of her fingertips at the back of his head increased, ever so lightly, an acknowledgement that she'd heard him.

They'd been standing that way for what felt like an eternity, the scent of her, the softness of her, dragging him under like a drug, making his thoughts foggy and hard to contemplate. Surely it was enough time for Sinatra to have passed them, but Olivia did not release him. She just held him, tight, until at last she seemed satisfied. Her hips pressed up towards him once, perhaps meaning to urge him to step back but instead drawing a strangled sound from the back of his throat as his half-hard cock settled more firmly against her. His brain caught up quickly, though, and he eased her leg down off his hip, his palm trailing against her bare skin as she slipped away from him.

The hand on his head lingered, for just a moment, and then she turned her face against his, and pressed a kiss to his temple before pushing at his shoulders, pushing him away.

He stumbled back, unbalanced in more ways than one. He'd never felt anything in his life as electric as the warmth of Olivia, and he'd never seen anything as beautiful as her in that purple dress, her eyes wide and dark and sad in the golden glow of the lamps overhead.

"Coast is clear," she said in an unsteady voice. "You'd better go back downstairs, Mr. Wagner."

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

He didn't move though, not right away. For a second he just stood there, looking at her, fixing the vision of her in his mind, the ghostly touch of her leg still heavy at his hip, his heart full of questions. Had she felt it, too, he wondered; while they stood there, holding on to one another, when she'd kissed his temple; had she felt want? Was she even capable of wanting anyone at all, after the life she'd lived, the way the act of sex had been perverted into a business transaction? And even if she was, would she ever, could she ever, want him?

"Good night, Elliot," she whispered, and then she turned away, disappeared back the way she'd come, silent as a ghost.