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Facing West (Forever Wilde 1)

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“So it wasn’t that bad really. I was mostly freaked about getting some nasty disease, so I was very careful with condoms and stuff. I refused anything more than oral for as long as I could, but then… well, shit happened.”

I felt his body stiffen behind mine and knew he wouldn’t want to hear any more details of my time on the streets. Hell, even I didn’t want to hear them.

“Anyway, I met Griff and busted my ass to keep him from falling into the same line of work. There was a nice cop named Brady who was sweet on him and eventually got him into this great program at a youth shelter that was different from some of the others. That’s where he met the Marians, who ended up taking him in and adopting him.”

“What about you? You didn’t want that too?” West asked.

“No, hell no. The idea of another set of parents or stepparents or adoptive parents having any say over my life made me crazy. No way. So I kind of fell into this limbo of having one foot in the shelter and one foot on the streets. And that’s how I met this guy named Donny Jessup.”

I thought back on the man and felt some of the old familiar tendrils of insecurity sneak in around the edges of my consciousness.

“Who was Donny?” West asked.

“He was this rich, older guy Griff used to call Richard Gere. Not that he was as beautiful as the actor, mind you, but he pulled the whole ‘wanting to save the prostitute routine’ with me. Only it didn’t start off nearly as romantically as the one from the movie.”

“What happened?”

“It started off with him spotting me outside a club one night with a client. The guy I was with pulled me into an alley, but before anything happened, Donny came up and told the guy to get lost. I was too overwhelmed by his audacity to react at first, and somehow he got the guy to leave. Eventually I came to my senses and barked at him about losing me money. Then I’ll never forget him reaching into his wallet and pulling out a crisp hundred-dollar bill.”

West made a grunt of disapproval, and I felt his arms tighten around me more.

“He started off so different from anyone I’d ever known. He told me he didn’t want any sexual services from me, he just wanted me to sit with him while he had dinner at a nearby diner. I was starving—honestly, it felt like I was always starving as a teen—so I agreed easily. We sat and talked for hours. He did most of the talking, really. When he’d first approached me in the alley, he’d been wearing a fancy business suit. But once we were in the lights of the diner, I could see he was covered in ink. It peeked out from his collars and cuffs and intrigued me. It turned out, he owned a tattoo shop nearby—one I’d seen plenty of times and knew from its reputation it was successful.”

I threaded my fingers through West’s and brought his hand up to my mouth for a kiss. He didn’t resist.

“He ended up making me an offer. If I let him use me for tattoo practice, he’d let me stay in the back storage room of the shop for a few nights and buy me some clothes and shit. I was floored. No fucking way could I be so lucky. The guy even told me I could choose where on my body the tattoo would go, even though I couldn’t choose the design. Well, what the hell did I care? I’d pick a spot on my back and never see the damned thing.”

I blew out a breath and tried to stay calm. Just remembering Donny made me angry.

“Little did I know it was a gang symbol. He’d been hired to ink it onto new members and was terrified of screwing it up, hence the need for a human practice session. Once I learned what it was, I demanded he cover it up with something else. He agreed. As long as I’d let him practice a few more designs on me as well.

“I went along with it. He kept offering me more and more in exchange for letting him practice on me, and once I got a certain amount of ink, I just didn’t give a fuck anymore. I was fascinated with the process and wanted to learn how to do it myself. By then, we were sleeping together and he was letting me live in the back room of the shop indefinitely.”

I laughed, remembering the shit hole. “I fucking loved it. My very own room all to myself. Except when he was in there, of course. Which was pretty much whenever the fuck he wanted to be. But at that point, I’d started to fall for him. He was everything I wasn’t—strong, handsome, successful, rich, poised. And the fact he wanted to be with me, to take care of me, was like the greatest feeling ever even if he didn’t return my feelings or want something real and committed. As humiliating as it is to admit now, I was happy with whatever bits he gave me. I felt pretty sure that was all I deserved.”


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