9. Zoe
9
ZOE
I fly out of the doors and debate which way to run. Left is a swarm of people that already recognize my face, and right are more paparazzi. It’s always the same. They appear like an army fleet the second somebody reports my appearance.
I take a good photo, apparently, and I should see it as a compliment. That’s what Felix always says every time he notices me looking distressed.
Good thing he’s at home now. He’d probably be forcing me to pose and draw in even more attention—that’s more money for him.
But when does it ever go into my pocket?
I don’t need to see money, apparently. Just the result of it. One time, I asked Felix to set up a bank account for me, but he simply furrowed his brow and said, “You don’t need one. Just use mine.”
He does that so he can track my payments. Question anything suspicious. I rode the bus one time with Sammy after ditching the Ubers—the drivers used to report back to him—and he saw the bank transaction and slapped me across the face for “putting Sammy in danger.” He doesn’t care about Sammy, but it’s his go-to line because he knows the guilt will eat me alive for days.
Felix’s voice cuts like ice. Anything he says, you believe. My expertise is in travel and tourism, not psychology, so I don’t know logistically how it all works. All I know is that he has a talent for using weakness against you.
Mine being Sammy and Fiona, my darling younger sister who still lives with Father.
He banned me from seeing her after the bus incident.
With nowhere to go, I slip back into the casino and dip my head. The bikers are nowhere to be seen. I should be pissed at them for breaking into Felix’s property, but I’m honestly kinda glad. Were they actually concerned for my safety?
I don’t know why. They’ve only known me for a day.
I smooth back fallen pieces of hair and return them to the claw clip. People turn from their games to look at me. My appearance prompts chatter that I can’t hear. Probably for the best—the public love a conspiracy.
But this is different.
These three bikers are the only shot I have at freedom. As soon as the media plaster their faces all over the web and caption the image with something untrue, it’s game over. Back to square one.
“Mr. Reeves!” I flag him over before I realize what I’m doing.
Reality catching up with me, I freeze. Force my brain to think fast before he gets too close. Paparazzi will take another photo, and this one will be worse. Somebody will recognize him as an ex-teacher from Top Hill High School. That will trigger rumors, and then Felix will see that he spends the rest of his life behind bars.
“In here.”
We scurry into a high-limit room and draw the blinds.
“This looks even more suspicious,” Mr. Reeves turns to me and says.
In walk the other two from God knows where.
Why is it that they come as a package deal? Is that a biker thing? They must hunt in packs of three at all times? I wonder if they’re from the same club as the ones from the masquerade. Damn, if only they had told me their names.
My temperature rises, and the intense internal body heat sticks in my throat. I can’t breathe. Fuck, I could look at them forever. It’s Teagan’s fault for hosting a birthday masquerade and allowing in three silver foxes. That’s when my obsession for mature guys began.
Felix is mature, sure, but he’s nothing to look at.
Nothing compared to these three.
Remind me why I’m with the freak again?
Ah, yeah. To appease somebody else.
I think the masquerade remains a core memory because it was my last taste of freedom. It was the last time I acted selfishly to fulfill my own desires.
I wish Father had warned me about the marriage. Given me more than a week’s notice so I could’ve begged the motorcyclists to steal me away on their bike or something. At Lucky Boy Casino, Father asks his employees to deliver resignations four weeks before the end of employment.
Before the end of my life , I got nothing. No notice. Not even an apology on the day.
I slump in a leather chair and observe all three of them. Instinct tells me to straighten my posture, but there’s no need. These guys live in the middle of the desert, for God’s sake. They don’t understand social cues.
Speeding and crime-committing is more their forte.
And here I am again, alone in a room keeping three silver fox bikers company.
Oh, the world works in weird, wonderful ways.
“What are we in here for, then?” Bullwhip hardens his brow.
“I’m…” I search the ceiling. “Not sure.”
Bullwhip continues, “Now we’re alone, I want to know something.”
How good my back arch is?
If I can take it deep?
God, it’s been too long since I had cock inside of me.
I hate that Felix’s was the last one.
“What is your father doing in Paul’s casino? Doesn’t he have his own to run?”
Such a boring question. But one I’ve also asked myself these past few days.
“I dunno.” I creep forward in the chair to bring my face closer to the bikers. They all sit opposite me, black uniforms making it feel like an interrogation. “I think Felix is up to something.”
“Isn’t he always up to something?” sniggers Wrangler.
“Hm.” I recline back in the chair. “This feels different.”
“Does he have any dirt on Paul?”
“Like I said before, Felix never discusses work with me.”
He just instructs me to stand up straight and smile.
Mr. Reeves removes leather gloves and nets his hands together on his lap. “What feels different with him?”
“I don’t know. He’s on the phone a lot more. I see him even less.” Not like I’m complaining about the latter. “He seems busier than he was before. Always out of the house.”
“Hmm.” Mr. Reeves strokes a finger over his chin.
He looks awfully attractive like this.
My hormones need to pack the fuck in.
“What could a billionaire man that has everything be up to?” He wipes a hand across the back of his neck. A bead of sweat forms on his brow. It drops several seconds later, and I almost hear the plop sound it makes as it lands. Main room music recedes, the incoherent chatter too. Suddenly, and without warning, the world shrinks. Nothing outside of this room exists.
I survey each of them. They’re all hot, and I’m not surprised in all that leather. Wrangler’s panting breath grows in volume. He licks his lips, and the wet smack of them grows hunger between my legs. I imagine him between them, saliva juicing the apex of my thighs.
Then there’s Bullwhip. He’s the most intimidating one in the group, and my entire body falls to shade when he gets too close. I like it when we’re inches apart, though. Like now. Even seated, he casts an elongated shadow over me. The darkness wraps around me, and it’s like I’m in a bubble, floating away from reality. Gravity weakens.
They sit opposite me looking like models, soft saxophone melodies from the jazz mix playing out their seductive theme tune.
It’s kinda like the beginning of a porno.
I used to visit porn websites late at night. Using my imagination every night gets exhausting, so sometimes it’s a treat to use visual aid. At first, it was your stereotypical step-brother shit, but then my fingers started inputting letters into the search bar, and before I knew it, I was scrolling through search results for “ one girl with three men .”
Inserting the vibrator, I used to imagine that it was me. That I was the lucky girl on the table receiving penetration…multiple ways. It was bad and I knew I shouldn’t have been watching it, but sexual desire always got the best of me—and besides, it helped me sleep.
The search results started becoming more specific.
“One girl with three middle-aged men.”
“One girl with three middle-aged biker men.”
“Three hot, middle-aged bikers wearing leather show a girl the time of her life.”
The next morning, I entered the kitchen and saw Felix on the bar stool displaying the Pornhub search results. An angry finger pointed to the screen, and he demanded to know why I was cheating on him.
It’s not like there was ever love or respect between us or anything, anyway.
He smacked me on the cheek and told me there would be trouble if he caught me on pornography sites again.
Now, I stare at Mr. Reeves—Poet—and the other two. I never found out what Felix meant by “trouble”—I abandoned the pornography sites after that, but I imagine it to be mild in comparison to the trouble he’ll inflict if he ever finds out that I’ve engaged in sexual activity for real.
My pussy tells me one thing.
My mind another.
“Zoe?” Poet reaches out to grab me. “You look flustered. Are you OK?”
I swat him away, shoot to my feet and choke out a “sorry.”
“What for, sweetheart?”
“Touching you…inappropriately yesterday.”
“Sweetheart, it wasn’t inap?—”
I exit the room before my ears hear the end of that sentence.
Great. Now what?
I locate the women’s restroom and cross the casino, head down because I can’t look anyone in the eye right now. Anger fizzles through my veins, the kind I need to release somehow. Punching something sounds tempting. A face. Patrick—was that his name? The paparazzi guy who’s about to make a fortune from my misery?
If Felix remembers the niched-down search results on Pornhub, he’ll see the image of me and the bikers huddled up around a corner and explode.
He knows my sexual fantasies better than he knows his own.
Probably because he doesn’t have any.
If he discovers I’ve been disloyal, it won’t be me he hurts—he needs me alive and red-carpet ready.
It won’t be Sammy, either—that’s his daughter.
It’ll be Fiona he touches.
And it’ll be all my fault.
I make it to the restroom—the one furthest away, and corner myself into a cubicle, sliding the lock. Pressing my back into the wall, I release the biggest sigh, but only a fraction of the frustration bubbling inside of my body exits.
Only three things will restore me to a neutral, pH-seven balance.
One of them looks like he could break every bone in my body.
One has bone structure like a god.
The other is my old literature teacher.
I slip out my phone and search the web. Press releases act quickly. There’s a chance the image is already…
It’s not even been an hour and they’ve uploaded it already?
I close a hand over my mouth, vision blurring, then unroll a thick layer of toilet tissue and pat dry my eyes. Sliding back the latch, I kick open the door and carefully mop up any dark splotches of makeup in the mirror before they leak down my face and erase my foundation.
Paul definitely hired quite the interior designer for this bathroom. One long rectangular mirror stretches across the four marble basins, the gold framing giving it a renaissance-painting kind of look—fitting, given women in that time period experienced little to no freedom either.
Diamond-tile flooring stretches across the bathroom floor, and the shapes start to morph the more I look at them.
I stick my nose into the air, sniffle, and blow out a steady breath.
Get it together, Zoe.
I reach for my phone again.
Headlining on the first page of some online article titled “Juiciest Celeb Conspiracies,” is a photograph of me and the bikers being caught “red-handed.”
“Captured above, we see Zoe getting her rocks off with three biker-cosplaying showmen. Do successful billionaires with enlarged bellies not do it for her?! Felix? Are you a bore in the bedroom? Time to swap out the suits for leather!!”
I scroll through some of the comments:
“He probably lets her see other people, TBH” —Gregory, Nevada
“Gross! How disrespectful can you get? Felix gives Zoe everything and this is how she repays him?” —Mary-Rose Jane, New York
“More like boar in the bedroom. Is my guy bulking or binge eating?” —anonymous
I snort at the last one, the noise echoing through the bathroom. Stress eating, probably, but stressed over what? Money’s supposed to erase all of your worries, not compile more.
I put down my phone and examine my reflection in the mirror again. It’s not so bad. Clearly, paparazzi were so eager to capture the perfect shot that they missed the truth. Biker-cosplaying showmen? Gosh, what a mouthful.
But the photo still remains a risk.
A very high one.
I corner one final clump of mascara out of my eye, and then turn away from the mirror, clutch wedged under my arm as I make for the door.
My days of fun, masquerades, and orgasms are over. This is real life, and in the real world, people get hurt. Continuing to interact with the bikers doesn’t just risk my sister’s life, but the bikers.
Felix founded his real estate business at just eighteen years old. Now, at forty, I’ve yet to see him lose. If someone sketched out his success onto a graph, they’d be drawing one positive, diagonal line until they’re off the paper.
Some people just do not fail.
Why is it always the psychos?
Straightening my posture, I go to push the door open. I need to find the bikers and tell them to get the fuck away before they get caught in one of Felix’s many webs.
But it’s wedged.
Either I’m weaker than I thought, or I’ve been locked in.
One more failed attempt closes up my throat. Is this my punishment? Felix has seen the photo already?
Grimacing, I try again, but this time the door flies open to reveal three bodies.
Them.
I suck in a breath. How is it possible for three people to look even more blindingly handsome every time I lay my eyes on them?
Six eyes stare at me.
I stare back.
And then a force makes me lunge forward, and my lips collide in a heated mess with Mr. Reeves’.