Beauty and the Dark

Deliberately I pick up my coffee and drink it, trash the cup, and go back to Sofia’s room.

I open the door and find her awake.

“I thought you’d gone home,” she says.

“Not without you, Princess. I ain’t going nowhere without you.”

Thirty-one

Sofia

The technique Jack used is called a scar revision with geometric line closure. I have been prescribed painkillers, but I think I am too happy to feel any real pain so I don’t take them.

Forty-eight hours after my operation Jack takes the bandages off in his bathroom.

“Hmmm …” he says.

“What does it look like?” I ask anxiously.

Jack positions me in front of the bathroom mirror. “Close your eyes.”

With bated breath I follow his instruction.

“Go on and open your eyes now.”

I obey, and Jack is holding another mirror behind me. I look into it and inhale sharply. Even though my wounds are still very swollen and raw the ugliness is gone! All the thickened and tethered scars, the snarled skin, and the angry red and brown valleys have been taken away. All that is left is the unharmed skin. I cover my mouth with my hands and meet his gaze in the mirror.

“Like it?” he asks.

I spin around, and cupping his face between my palms, kiss him. For a long time I simply lose myself in our kiss, the evergreen sensation of his lips, the taste of him, the smell of him, the feel of my man. Then I pull my face away.

“It looks … amazing,” I whisper into his mouth.

He holds me a few inches away from him. “It’s not finished yet. This is only the beginning. In two weeks you will start wearing silicone sheets. Then, when all your incisions are well healed in about four weeks, I will increase the volume of whatever few depressions are left with fat transfers under the tissue. After that I’ll resurface the remaining scars with a series of Fraxel laser restructuring.”

I smile at him.

“Just when you don’t think it can’t get any better you will have microdermabrasion treatment. After that the scars will be so fine you’ll have to look really hard to see them.”

I look up at him in awe. He is my savior, my protector, my all.

He shakes his head. “How can you look so sweet after everything you have been through? It’s simply incredible that you are so untouched by the evil and cruelty you have been forced to live with,” he marvels.

I look deep into his beautiful eyes. “Thank you.”

“Thank me properly,” he whispers back.

My breathing catches. “How?”

He hooks his fingers into my panties and pulls them down my thighs. They pool around my feet. He grabs my ass and lifts me up. I curl my legs around his waist, pressing my wet heat into his abdomen. There is nothing separating us except his thin shirt. I lift it up. Now there is just my open naked sex rubbing slowly and deliberately on his skin. It’s like I’m leaving my scent on him. Marking him as mine.

His eyes darken with crazy need as he carries me to the countertop next to the sink and sets me down.

“Open up, my beauty,” he orders, his voice husky.

I open my legs wide. Gazing into my eyes he slips two fingers into me and curling them expertly stokes my inner walls. I whimper as he kneels between my thighs. I feel his hot breath on my open pussy before his mouth clamps down on my clit and he starts sucking greedily. Always as if he is starving. As if he can never get enough.

I look down and his other hand is working between his own legs, his movements rough and frenzied. One of his favorite things is tasting me as he jerks off. I’ve never had a man who loved my taste so much. I open my legs even wider to give him more access, and he immediately growls with lust and satisfaction.

Our eyes lock.

The orgasm hits me hard and fast.

One moment I’m nearly there and waiting to ride the wave, and the next, my eyes are rolling to the back of my head. I’m screaming like a banshee and gushing all over his hand, his mouth, and his chin. I still find it embarrassing and dirty that he drinks my juices, but it is also indescribably sexy.

With his fingers still buried inside me he stands. Pulling his fingers out he feeds all eight inches of his big, hot, girth into me, filling me to the brim. My head drops back and I moan with pleasure.

“This. Is. How. You. Thank. Me,” he grunts as he thrusts in and out of my clenched muscles.

“Harder,” I pant with every hard slam.

He shuts me up by crashing his mouth against mine, pushing his tongue into it and making me suck it. The gesture is at once aggressive, dominating and completely possessive. As he picks up speed his mouth separates from mine.

“Tell me you’re mine,” he says.

“I’m yours,” I reply.

With a hoarse sound, he spills his hot seed inside me.

“Sometimes I can’t believe you’re real,” I tell him.

“I have the same damn problem,” he mutters.

Smiling, I lean forward and lie on his chest. His big arms come around my waist and his cock twitches deliciously inside me.

Thirty-two

Sofia

That Thursday Lena takes my class for me. When I ask her how it went she says that Lori came, but when she saw her, she immediately turned around and ran out of the room. Lena also says that she looked frightened and pale.

I wonder what is wrong, but there is absolutely nothing I can do except wait for my next class and hope she will attend. In the meantime, my life is a big bowl of the reddest, ripest, sweetest cherries. It is food, laughter, fun, and sex. Oh, my God, the sex.

Even though I am still lightly bandaged it never stops Jack. The only position we don’t attempt is with me on my back, otherwise, there is no limit to his creativity. I find myself sitting up with my legs open very often. On beds, tables, chairs, at the end of the bath. Oh, and sometimes he’ll make me stand and hook a leg over his shoulder while he helps himself. Like I said, we are limited only by his creativity.

Usually, Lena will arrive by ten and stay until he comes back home. We talk, we read, we play with Irina, we go for short walks. The time passes quickly and Thursday comes around. I persuade Jack and Lena that I feel well enough to take my music class, but it’s not the class I care about. Its Lori.

I feel as if I must see her. After all the years I spent living off my wits, my instinct has been honed and is very strong. I know that something is wrong. I feel it in my bones. We go to the center and I wait for her in my classroom. The other girls arrive on time, but Lori does not. Disappointed, I start the class without her. We are almost finished when she bursts though the door. She is brea

thing hard and her eyes are wild with terror.

“What is it?” I ask standing up from the piano stool.

She rushes up to me and says urgently, “Please help me, Sofia. My mother is very ill. I’m afraid she might be dying.”

I take her hand. “Take me to her.” She starts pulling me to the door. I know I am not supposed to run and I can feel the strain on my wounds, but it can’t be helped. I know this is an emergency. We run down the corridor and open the door that leads to the reception. Jack and Lena are waiting for me there.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Jack cautions. He opens his hands in a gesture that is meant to convey what the fuck are you doing.

“Lori’s mother is very ill. We have to help her,” I tell them.

He holds his hands up. “Just calm down everybody.” He looks at Lori. “What’s going on?”

“Mama has been ill for two weeks, but now she’s really bad.”

“Don’t worry, Lori. We’ll help your mother.” He looks up at me. “I’ll go. You stay here with your sister.”

Immediately I feel Lori squeeze my hand. I look down at her and she is begging me with her eyes to go with her.

I look at Jack. “I want to come.”

“You don’t need to.”

“Please,” I beg.

“All right,” he says. “But no running.”

“Let Robert drive you. This way if you need to take her mother to hospital, Robert can help move her, and he can just drop you off at the entrance of A&E. You don’t have to park.”

“Good thinking, Lena. Thanks,” Jack says.

We walk quickly to the car and drive to her house. She lives in one of the four high rise apartments behind Kids Rule. As we walk towards the graffiti sprayed entrance, we see Andrew, one of the boys who comes to the center, standing by the heavy door. He smiles at us, but looks embarrassed.

I wonder why until I notice the older boys standing beside him. I can tell straight away they are small time drug dealers. I’d know those shifty eyes and stance from a mile away. For years I saw them hanging around the brothels.