Daddy In Charge Read online

  “Underground?” the driver stumbled over the word with a frown. He looked at me, uncertain, and began to shake his head.

  “Please take me there,” I said. The driver shrugged in resignation and I climbed into the back of a small sedan with a cold vinyl bench seat that had stains and tears in the fabric. The windows were grimy with sludge and the car creaked and rattled at every turn. The driver was an older man with a stubble of unshaven growth on his cheeks and chin, and his eyes hidden behind the peak of a soft cloth cap. He drove with the reckless abandon of a madman, gesticulating angrily at the surrounding traffic and slamming on the brakes at traffic lights.

  When he finally slowed to a halt, I recognized the restaurant where Mitch and I had met for dinner with the Russian politician.

  I paid the driver with a handful of crumpled notes. I had no understanding of the currency. The old man smiled, and I saw his teeth were tainted yellow and sparkled with stainless steel fillings.

  I got out of the car and the taxi wheezed away into the night. I felt a last pang of forlorn despair.

  I was alone.

  The red neon light of the nightclub sign glowed dully through the misting night air.

  When I turned the corner and started down the alleyway, I saw the young Russian thug standing outside the front door of the nightclub, talking quietly with a group of other young men. He noticed me, and his face registered recognition, but he seemed subdued. His reaction took me off guard; I had expected his features to coarsen with gloating lust. I saw his interest flash in his eyes, but it was held under tight restraint.

  I followed him in through the front doors. The nightclub was already full; the press of bodies in the tight stifling space made me feel claustrophobic. The air reeked with the smells of tobacco smoke and a pungent odor like boiled cabbage. We passed down the same corridor I had seen Mitch disappear through. Partway along the passage the thug stopped before a door and pushed it open.

  I stepped inside and he followed.

  It was a small cubicle about the size of a prison cell. The gray walls were water-stained with brown patches and there was an opening in the far wall covered by a curtain. I realized it was the curtain that opened onto the small stage.

  This was the holding room where the girls dressed and prepared to be sold.

  There was a single lightbulb suspended from the ceiling by a length of black flex cord. On one wall hung a full-length mirror that was smudged and fly-spotted. The carpet felt damp under the soles of my shoes.

  The Russian pushed the door closed behind him.

  We were alone, and suddenly he let his lust off its leash.

  “You are very fucking sexy,” he growled. His eyes crawled intimately across my body. He ran the pointed tip of his tongue along the inside of his mouth and the gesture gave me a chill of apprehension. He saw the bags I was clutching.

  “Clothes?”

  “Yes.”

  “For you to wear on the stage?”

  “Yes,” I said again.

  He curled his top lip into a loathsome arrogant smile. “Then change.”

  “Where?”

  “Right here, of course.”

  “When?”

  “Now,” his voice thickened.

  I shook my head and feigned an assured laugh. “Not with you in the room.”

  The thug’s face darkened. I saw the flash of hot anger, but in an instant it had been extinguished. He glanced down at the expensive gold watch on his wrist.

  “You have four minutes. I will be waiting on the other side of the door.”

  It took me ten frantic minutes to change clothes. I teased out my hair and let it fall loose and tangled down my shoulders, and I went deliberately heavy with the makeup and glossy red lipstick. Before I pulled on the white blouse I had purchased, I discarded my bra. The heels and thigh-length white stockings were the last things I put on.

  I looked at my reflection in the smudged mirror, appalled and shocked at the transformation.

  I looked like a young slut.

  The noise of the crowd through the curtain reached riotous peaks and crescendos as the patrons filled themselves with cheap vodka. I stole a nervous glimpse through a chink in the fabric and saw a dark swarm of faces.

  When I turned away, I realized the young thug had come silently back into the room. He was lolling with his back against the door, ankles crossed and one hand thrust deep into the pocket of his jeans. He was leering at me.

  “Very sexy,” his eyes were slitted and cunning. “Turn for me.” He made a circling motion with is hand. I felt a flush of hot indignation, and then I took up the challenge with all the cock-teasing vengeance and defiance I could muster.

  I paraded and postured in the small space, folding myself forward at the waist with my legs wide apart, flaring the hem of my short skirt to expose the full length of my thighs. I ran my hands in lingering caresses across my breasts until the nipples hardened of their own volition. I could feel my own blood pounding in my ears and see the way I stirred the thug’s desire. His gaze became misted and I saw his hand moving within the pocket of his pants. He was touching himself.

  “Enough?” I arched an eyebrow insolently. I was breathing deeply, and I could feel a flush of something warm spreading across my chest. The heady mix of adrenalin and nerves was slowly dissolving into something intoxicating I didn’t recognize.

  “Not quite,” the thug said. He pushed himself away from the door and his hands went for the buckle of his belt. “You will not be allowed on stage until you have paid the required admission.” He spoke slowly and deliberately, giving weight and emphasis to every word. He began tugging at the zip of his jeans.

  I watched the movement of his hands with a mixture of revulsion and mesmerized fascination.

  “Come here,” he said.

  I didn’t move.

  “Come here.” His voice firmed and became an edged warning.

  I obeyed. I felt like helpless prey snared in a trap.

  “Now, get on your knees,” the thug commanded. I flinched and his voice cracked like a cruel whip. “Kneel down!”

  I sank slowly to the damp carpet, kneeling in a pose of submission. I hung my head so that the hair about my face fell forward like a curtain. Behind the fringe, I felt the prickling sting of degraded tears.

  The thug reached into his pants and pulled out his cock. It was pale and flaccid. “Suck me,” he said. “It’s the only way you will get to earn any money.”

  I pressed my lips together and slowly shook my head. The thug growled. He was stroking himself slowly. His cock swelled and hardened in his hand like a dead thing given life. “Suck me!” He clawed a fistful of my hair and pulled my face towards his cock.

  I tightened the muscles in my neck, resisting against the insistent pressure of him. Then the door to the room was suddenly flung back against its hinges and a middle-aged man with a stained grubby shirt sauntered into the room. He saw me on my knees and he lashed out at the thug, cuffing him across the ear so violently that the youth skittered off balance. The man roared at the thug, bellowing a string of violent threats, bunching his fist and waving it.

  The man helped me to my feet.

  I glared savagely at the thug. He was rubbing the side of his head where he had been hit.

  In the background I heard the sound of sudden thumping music and I spun round towards the curtain in a fluster of wild panic…

  Chapter 12

  Connie

  I could hear the loud voice of the oriental woman through the curtain. She was on the stage, whipping the crowd of bidders into an excited frenzy like a skilled ringmaster. Her voice was sharp and piping as she set the scene for what was about to unfold. Then her head appeared through the joins of fabric and she stared at me with bright little eyes of surprise.

  “Wow,” she said in a thick accent. “You a pretty piece of ass.”

  I blinked.

  “You from Poland?” she asked, each word clipped.

  I shook my hea
d. From over my shoulder I heard the young thug spit a torrent of Russian, and the woman’s face transformed into an expression of surprise and delight.

  “I’m American,” I said.

  The oriental woman’s eyes became cunning. “You do exactly what I tell you,” she waggled a finger at me in warning. “And we make big, big money. Okay?”

  I jerked my head in a nod of understanding. A sickening rush of nerves crashed over me. I was shaking so badly that my legs felt fixed to the floor. I shuffled through the curtain and onto the stage, cringing with all the mortal fear and panic of someone walking to the gallows.

  The crowd roared in wild enthusiasm.

  I was wearing a white blouse with the tails of the shirt tied in a knot to expose the flat toned flesh of my midriff, and a short blue pleated skirt. Around my neck hung a loosely knotted leather tie, dangling between the cleft of my breasts like a leash and collar. I stood in my high heels, taller than the oriental woman, and ran my trembling hands slowly up the mesh of my stockings until my fingers were at the tops of my thighs, tantalizing the faces in the crowd that gaped with lustful fascination.

  The oriental woman put her arm around my waist, drawing me forward to the edge of the stage.

  “How you like our beautiful schoolgirl?” the oriental woman shouted into the noise of the audience. “She is American. She look just like Britney Spears, yes?”

  The crowd roared and clapped. The music was swamped by the lust and adulation in their voices. The force of the noise struck me like a wave and I swayed.

  “Show us her breasts, Ming?” a cry went up. There was a wedge of middle-aged businessmen standing closest to the stage, packed tightly together by the pressure of the crowds of people further back in the darkness. The businessmen were short and fat with thinning hair and round sweaty features. Their suits were ill-fitting, their mouths slack. They had pale sickly complexions, fleshy from overindulgence.

  And they were looking up at me with the fervent adoration of worshippers.

  “You want to see her titties?” Ming’s voice cajoled the crowd.

  “Yes!” came the cry. “Yes! Yes!”

  Ming cupped a hand to her ear and leaned forward. Her eyes were alive and sparkling as she manipulated the crowd with the same skills she’d used to orchestrate the auction of the two women the night before. The audience seemed entranced; they moved and swayed and chanted as if they had become a single massive organism.

  “I cannot hear you,” Ming insisted.

  The crowd became deafening, whistling and baying like hungry dogs. At last Ming relented. She turned to me and ran her hands across the mounds of my breasts. The touch of her fingers made my skin crawl. The rising terror that had overwhelmed me now turned into loathing. I held my breath and tried to fix my gaze on a point high on the far wall of the nightclub where a row of wine bottles was displayed behind the bar counter.

  My only hope to endure the humiliation was to detach myself; to safeguard my mind as I surrendered my body. I felt my fingernails cut into the palms of my hands while I trembled with revulsion.

  Ming was busy with the knot of my blouse. She tugged at the fabric until it unraveled, then peeled the shirt off my shoulders. It fell to the floor and I stood with my back straight, exposed and displayed like cheap goods on a store shelf.

  The sound from the crowd was a moan of appreciation that was thick with simmering lust. They ogled every inch of my nakedness while I choked back humiliated tears that were fueled by pangs of remorse and self-pity.

  I thought that would be all – I made the mistake of believing the worst of the auction was over.

  I was wrong.

  Ming pushed my legs apart and then circled around behind me. She put her palm in the middle of my back so that I was compelled to fold forward at the waist to keep my balance. The crowd went berserk. Someone in the audience peeled off their shirt and hurled it onto the stage. It landed at my feet like a crumpled white flag of surrender.

  Then Ming put her hands on my hips and began to grind her pelvis against me in a parody of a sex act. As she thrust against me, my body rocked in response and forced the gentle sway of my breasts. The men standing just a few feet away from me reached up and I felt the touch of a sweaty pale palm as it brushed against my nipple. I shuddered, and had to bite down hard on a scream of disgust.

  “Oooh!” Ming’s repugnant voice cooed with scandalized pleasure. “She so good to fuck. Her pussy so tight!”

  “Eighty thousand!” someone out of sight cried out.

  In an instant the crowd felt silent. It was as if the celebration had been cut short by the impulsive bid for my body. I felt Ming’s hands slide from my waist.

  She came to the edge of the stage and lifted her eyes with dramatic slowness to stare out into the audience. “Eighty thousand?” she broke off and shook her head with disappointment. “No!” Ming waved off the bid, and made a petulant face of sorrow. “I not sell this bitch for less than one-twenty-five!” She folded her arms and stood as though she was daring any of the men in the audience to defy her.

  I straightened, but my legs were still parted. Ming came across to me and thrust her hand arrogantly between my legs. She lifted the hem of my short skirt so that every man could see the sheer lace of the panties I was wearing.

  “This American pussy is so smooooth,” she drew out the word. “It worth much, much more!”

  For an incredulous moment there was a kind of shamed hush, as if the frail little Asian woman had humbled the audience. They shuffled their feet and looked chastened. The predatory lustful mood in the nightclub turned serious.

  “One-hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars!”

  I didn’t see the man who bid for me. All I saw was a hand shoot up in the air from amidst the pressing bodies. It was a dark figure standing away from the bright lights. The voice was thickly accented, husky.

  Ming looked suitably placated. She nodded her head with a sly grin.

  “Yes. Good,” she said, then looked around into the sea of pale sweating faces. “Any other bids?”

  “One hundred and thirty!”

  It was a counter-offer that came from the other side of the room. The crowd turned and parted, and I saw the young Russian thug, standing nonchalantly by the rail where I had been introduced to him the previous night.

  A gentle sigh went up from the crowd as they sensed the thrill of a fierce bidding war. Ming’s smile was secret and gloating.

  “Good,” she clapped her hands.

  “One hundred and fifty thousand!” the mystery bidder barked a new bid.

  “One sixty,” the thug challenged and then he leered at me. I felt a hot rush of nausea churn in the pit of my stomach.

  The crowd began to stir with growing fascination. A hush had fallen across the room.

  “One seventy.”

  Every head in the nightclub seemed to turn towards the young thug and I heard the voices in my head secretly and fervently praying that he would not bid; that he would concede.

  “Two hundred thousand dollars,” the thug snarled. He thrust two fingers into the air, his voice gravely and strained. There was tension in his expression.

  For a long moment the room was eerily silent. My heart was hammering.

  Don’t let him win! Anyone but him!

  The thug looked pointedly at Ming, compelling her to declare the auction closed and announce his winning bid. Even in the darkened gloom where he stood, I could see the simmering fury in the way the thug held his body, the clench of his jaw.

  Ming searched the faces in the crowd one last time and then opened her mouth. I felt my heart stop beating entirely; I knew a night in the cruel depraved hands of the young thug would be terrifying… and brutal.

  “Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars!” the first mystery bidder shot back at the last possible instant.

  The crowd gasped in shock at the bid. The amount was astronomical.

  A quarter of a million!

  They turned about the
mselves, wide-eyed, searching to see the face of the man who would offer such a price.

  “Sold!” Ming roared and clapped her hands loudly together. The crowd milled in stunned silent disbelief for a split-second more, and then the cheering and baying calls erupted into an excited crescendo. Ming draped an arm around my shoulder. She was smiling with triumph. She led me back through the curtain and into the tiny room.

  It was done.

  I had sold my virginity… and I didn’t even see the face of the man who had just paid to fuck me.

  Chapter 13

  Connie

  I was shaking uncontrollably, my whole body gripped by spasms that made my teeth chatter. I had changed back into my street clothes and then been escorted to a grimy office in front of a desk that was littered with crumpled greasy bank notes. I stood alone, hunched and shivering like I had been rescued from a freezing ocean.

  I had known this feeling once before – this uncontrollable wash of adrenaline and fear. Two years ago I had been driving my car when another vehicle came through an intersection without slowing. Fortunately neither I, nor the driver of the other vehicle, had been injured. We inspected the damage to our cars, exchanged license and insurance details, and then sat under the shade of a sidewalk tree to await a tow-truck.

  That was when the aftershock had hit me; the sudden release of pent-up emotion and fear. This moment was like that… except this moment was much more intense – and about to get worse.

  The grubby middle-aged Russian man came into the room and dropped down into a chair behind the desk. He looked at me dispassionately from under the thick bush of his eyebrows.

  “Account?” he asked in a gravelly voice.

  “What?” his English was thickly accented.

  “Account numbers?” he made a fluttering gesture with his hands and I finally understood. I snatched my phone from my purse and logged into my bank’s website. It took me three attempts. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely hold the phone.