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“Look, we all have a past,” she said, her eyes fixed on the passing structures.
A mix of suburban homes, strip malls, and the occasional church in the city of sin. Not the ones on the Strip for quickie marriages, or even the ones on the edges that get a better count when it came to theAmeetings—Alcoholic, Narcotics, or Gamblers Anonymous—than at any Sunday mass. No, these were the proper ones with baptisms and communion, where you plan out your wedding over months instead of flipping through a binder of laminated options.
“Do tell,” he prodded. “I’m all for a good daddy-issue-garnering story.”
“I’m sure you are,” she replied. “Isn’t that how you make your money? Faux talk about missed love and acceptance and offers to provide that with a spin of a pole?”
“Men are simple, dumb creatures, Zookeeper. Women need money to survive,” he said. “I provide a service and opportunity for the women of the community. Girls don’t run to Vegas to work a pole. They land here, in one way or another. We aren’t LA, where they have a dream. Las Vegas is where you go to be lost in the crowd. It’s for survivors, the sinners of the world, and you call it home.”
“For now,” she said. “I work out at Turnbelt-Coffly.”
“The government war machine place?”
“We have civilian contracts too.”
“Militias maybe,” he said with a smirk. “Can’t see a function beyond blowing shit up for them. How do the men in charge like their coffee?”
Her head snapped toward him so fast he worried she’d have paralysis. “I wouldn’t know. I’m an engineer, working on solar sustainability projects.”
“They afraid to let you touch the big guns?” he questioned.
“What can I say? They tend to go off with the slightest stroke of my finger,” she challenged, and he shifted in his seat to reposition the prominence in his lap. “Was it something I said?”
He glared over at her, and the two of them locked into a stare off, doing his best to catch most of what was in front of him as they drove, more than likely blowing through stop signs, until the invisible rosary returned and she broke from the deadlock.
“You’re infuriating,” he growled. “I don’t know whether to fuck you or dump you on the side of the road.”
“Neither are options for you,” she stated as if she actually had a say in his life.
“Oh, I’m pretty sure I could do one right after the other if I wanted to,” he said. “You wouldn’t be the first.”
“Try the first option, and I will be the last.”
Her face hardened, and need bubbled up inside him, the need to break her, claim her body and, for some fucked-up reason, soul. Could he? Was it the challenge or the woman he craved? Then he rethought her words, rolled them over with those of a plethora of women who’d come before with some belief they could capture him with a magical pussy sent down from the gods, as if the way they moved their hips was in some way superior or groundbreaking. He’d probably done everything known to man under the sun, stars, and moon with a woman. Branched out a bit with a man for tag team play with a bitch even. For him, what was between their thighs could be found on every street corner, bar, and grocery store, ripe, willing, and ready to be plundered.
He'd heard the claims a thousand times before—Fuck me and you’ll never want another—in the same singsong, whiny voice as the stripper ready to blow him while he did shots at the bar. The words were hollow at this point.
“I swear, they say men think their dick is magic,” he said, shaking his head.
“Bold of you to believe I’d even let you try,” she replied absently. “I just meant if you try, you’ll be carrying an ice bucket to the surgeon, asking if your dick can be reattached.”
* * *
Bree had no idea if the kids were exhausted from the trauma or normally heavy sleepers. Ice took one in each arm as if they didn’t weigh a ton and made his way into the Airstream as their unconscious heads rested on his shoulders. It wasn’t as if the man wasn’t taking care with the children. There was an obvious bond and care, even with the limited contact. The way Misty told it, when Ice claimed or took on care for a person, it was deeper than basic family.
Loyalty was treasured by him. He gave it rarely, but when he did, you were blanketed in a way you feared nothing. It lasted as long as he allowed, though. In the case of Misty, she spoke of walking through casinos and people parting like the Red Sea. Maybe it was just Ice and who he was, the glare he could give that chilled you to the bones or the way the leather coat hung on his back like a uniform of the Fuck Around and Find Out Crew. And then there was the way he smoothed his daughter’s hair to the side as he laid her in his bed next to her brother, the fact the man opened each of the kids' backpacks knowing a stuffy would be there and needed to be next to them when they woke in a strange place.
Had the kids even been here before? Misty said they mostly hung out in North Vegas when he took them because he didn’t want to spend over an hour going down the Strip and back. She stood in the confined space that was clean, but very much a bachelor’s pad. Plates, bowls, silverware were all in pairs as if he’d got a quick pack at the Dollar Tree. None of them matched. Since they were in the dish rack, she took it upon herself to put them away in the small cupboards. Was it a lack of space, or was the man a minimalist?
“Sorry, the maid doesn’t come until morning,” he joked, but she had a feeling he might have been telling the truth. Even if the maid was one of the burly men who’d brought the truck. “Now what?”
“Now?” she questioned.
“You jumped in my truck to make sure I got my kids home safe. They are,” he challenged, “unless you have some other issue.”
“The fact motorcycles are revving up outside, the music is blaring from a strip club not fifty feet away, and you have no bed to speak of.”
“Those babies were probably conceived with the song of my people revving,” he said with his arms stretched wide to the point they touched both sides of the trailer at once. “Trust me when I say their mama spun to those songs until they got too big for the pole. Contrary to popular belief, Misty wasn’t the paragon of virtue she likes to pretend to be.”
