The Blue Room Vol. 6 Read online

“No,” Terrence groans. I can tell from the huskiness in his voice that he’s close too. “We worked together, she and I. That was all. We were professional. She was professional. That’s how it was. But then some patron beat her to a pulp – I don’t know who it was – and I was in shock. I couldn’t believe it. We’d never had anything like that before.”

  “Is that what happened?” I can’t believe it. I am finally getting closer and closer to the truth – and closer and closer to orgasm. “Her patron beat her up? But who was it?”

  The adrenaline is coursing through both of us: the adrenaline of truth along with the adrenaline of desire. I can’t breathe. The shock and the mind-blowing sex together is too much for my body to withstand. I feel like I’m about to explode.

  “I. Don’t. Know!” Terrence pumps into me so hard that we both come together, screaming one another’s name. “I don’t know anything, Staci. I’m just like you. I’m in the dark.”

  We fall against one another: exhausted. Spent. I cling to Terrence’ magnificent body as he carries me to the bed, lays me down gently.

  “Poor Rita…” I whisper. “Poor, poor Rita.”

  Terrence lies down beside me, holding me tight. I can feel him shudder against me. His beautiful long dark lashes, framing his blue eyes, are wet with tears.

  “You really did care about her, then?” I ask him.

  “I cared about what happened to her. What that bastard did: nobody should ever do to a person. Especially not in a place I’m responsible for. I may not like being a Blue at times, but I value what we put our name on. Danny, Xander, we all care about the Blue name. And we aren’t going to be known for getting girls beaten up.”

  “But the world of the Blue Room,” I say. “It chews people up and spits them out. Girls are forced to have sex…”

  “Never forced,” Terrence says. “We’re clear about that. We don’t force anyone to work here. We never force them to take patrons they don’t like. And technically we’re an escort service: no sex provided. None of our contracts, dealings, or training mention the word sex. The girls decide what is acceptable to them. We never force the girls to say yes when they want to say no. Never. We provide the atmosphere, the screening. But we’re the middle-men. The choice to fuck or not is yours.”

  “We’re prostitutes, Terrence. Virginia was…”

  “You’re not a prostitute, Staci,” Terrence murmurs. “You had the choice to go as far as you wanted with Mr. X. And with me, Mr. O. As far as I know you haven’t had anyone else. And even if you had: you’d have the choice whether to sleep with them or not. We never force anyone to go all the way unless they want to: which you did. Didn’t you?”

  I don’t understand what I’m hearing. Does Terrence really believe this place isn’t a brothel? Is he really so naïve?

  “Read your contract, Staci. It says companionship, nothing more. Whatever else you do is your choice.”

  I feel my face heat up. It’s true. The Blue Room has technically kept its hands clean. I’m never contractually obliged to have sex with anyone I don’t want to have sex with. Technically – technically – that was my choice. And I had wanted it, hadn’t I? With Xander, with Terrence. I’d have slept with them even if it weren’t for the Blue Room putting us together. All my notions and self-flagellation about the Blue Room was just a result of my preconceived prudish prejudices. Was judging the Blue Girls – judging myself. But the truth was, I was having the sex I wanted. Nothing more, nothing less. I craved having sex with Xander, and can’t get enough of Terrence’s touch. If anything, if I was truly honest with myself…I wanted to stay at the Blue Room for Xander and Terrence.

  “Anyway, Virginia never had sex with any of the patrons. She was an escort-only, as far as I know. She knew what her boundaries were. She was an escort, a companion, but she was always very specific about not having sex, at least penetrative sex, with her clients. That’s why we were so surprised that she was beaten. As far as we knew, she wasn’t sleeping with any of her clients.”

  “So you don’t think the patron who beat her – this Mr. X. – was a spurned lover?”

  “I don’t know where you got the idea that this was a Mr. X., Staci,” says Terrence. “Virginia was never paired up with a Mr. X.”

  Chapter 2

  After we’re finished fucking, Terrence leaves. I lie there, on the bed, spent. I’m overwhelmed by what has happened. I’ve never seen Terrence like this before. So filled with anger, with rage, with sadness that has turned him harsh like a beast. I’ve never seen anyone so angry before. And I’ve never seen someone turn his anger to such powerful passion. Being fucked by Terrence was a way to sublimate all my pain, my hurt, my rage. My longing for Rita was sublimated into a new kind of longing: frenetic, all-consuming desire. My body is racked with pleasure. My skin tingles. My nerves are still on fire. I look up at the ceiling, counting the cracks, wondering at all that has happened. I’ve never experienced anything like this before.

  Terrence has made me feel a way nobody else has ever made me feel. And the sensation is so new, so strange. I don’t even know what to think. I don’t even know how to feel. All I know is that Terrence Blue is a man of hidden depths: the deepest parts of which I may never truly know or understand. I’m still not sure I can trust him, but at least I know that he did love Rita – or Virginia – or whatever her name really was. He loved her in his own way. Maybe that would have to be enough. Yes, I think, that has to be enough.

  I think back on all that I’ve learned from my “interrogation” with Terrence as I try to put together whatever clues I can. I wonder: where did I first hear about Rita, about Mr. X., about the Blue Room? Back when Rita and I were such close friends, back when we were sisters, she’d mentioned a Mr. X. But maybe she wasn’t referring to a specific “Mr. X.,” or to the alphabet of the Blue Room. Maybe she was just using it to mean a “mystery man,” an anonymous man. X. marks the spot , after all. Maybe X was just a placeholder term: obscuring who she really meant.

  But now I know Rita never slept with any of her patrons. She was a Blues Girl in name only. So the whole spiel about her falling for a patron – maybe that was a lie, too. Maybe that was her way of saying goodbye to me: pretending she was falling in love with somebody else to mask the fact that she was away for longer and longer periods of time, that she didn’t come home some nights. Many of the things she said about Mr. X. could have been a cover for her real work as a PI. What better way to explain mysterious absences than an equally mysterious boyfriend to sweep you off your feet?

  But that was not the only curiosity, I think, as I remember more about Rita’s past, as the pieces of the puzzle start to fit together. Rita went by Virginia here at the Blue Room: that much is clear to me But Roz recognized the name “Rita”, not “Virginia.” Back before she was murdered, right before she was murdered, Roz had hinted that she knew who Rita was. The very mention of Rita had seemed to set her on edge. She’d had something to tell me about “Rita.” But if she’d only known a “Virginia”, why summon me to her room at all the day she was killed? Unless….I think….Roz was part of some wider plan? Unless Roz knew Rita’s real identity – or something?

  There is only one way to find out, I begin to realize. I have to figure out what connection Rita and Roz had to one another. Were they friends? Enemies? Working together or working to destroy one another?

  Who do I know in the Blue Room who would know the history of the girls, I wonder? Who in the Blue Room can I trust? Who in the Blue Room isn’t a Blue? As I get into the shower, eager to scrub Terrence’s sweat off me, eager to scrub myself clean of the sex that’s fried my brain, I rack my brains, even as I try to wipe the familiar Blue scent off my golden skin.

  My mind falls on one person: the only person I can trust.

  I change into casual clothes – jeans, heels, and a silken floral print T-shirt – and braid my hair before coming down to see Ben, who is working at the bar. I smile when I see him. Good old Ben, I think. The only person in this whole
mess who will give me a straight answer.

  “Hey, Ben,” I say.

  “What’s up?” He mixes me up a Sazerac. “Just the way you like it,” he winks.

  “I want to thank you for convincing me to go to that Never Knights concert,” I say. “I had a great time. I really enjoyed it – playing like that…it was so much fun.

  “You were great up there,” Ben smiles. “I was really proud of you.”

  “They invited me to make a demo with them,” I tell him. “I just wish I could.”

  “You’ve had so much on your mind lately,” Ben says. “I mean, the stuff with your mother….”

  I look up at him in surprise. “How do you know about that?” I ask.

  “Mrs. Walters was looking for you. A Mr. S. booked you. But when we couldn’t find you we had to find someone else. We saw that you’d used the company card to get tickets to Vegas. So we figured it was family stuff. Mrs. Walters wasn’t as angry as you’d expect. She’s a tough old bird, but I guess she has a heart for family. Not that I know if she has any of her own. I’ve never seen a Mr. Walters…”

  So, a Mr. S. booked me. Someone who keeps requesting me but hasn’t had the opportunity to see me yet. Could he be Rita and Roz’s killer?

  “Hey, Ben?” I ask. “Can we hang out after your shift? I’ve got some stuff I want to talk to you about.”

  He looks surprised. “Sure,” he says. “I get off work at one.”

  So I wait for one and then we head to a late-night bar about a ten-minute drive away – Ben takes me in his car.

  “So,” Ben says. “What do you want to talk to me about?”

  “I wanted to ask you,” I say. “About Roz.”

  “What about her?” He looks pained at her memory.

  “What was she like? Did you know her well?”

  He looks down. I can tell how the question hurts him and I almost feel bad for asking. “She was a friend,” he says. “A rare thing, you know. It seems like the nice ones always get hurt the most. Especially in the Blue Room. It’s the bitches who run the place. The bitches coast. You remember the ones you met. They love this place.”

  “How could anyone love this place?” I ask.

  Ben nods. “They’re making out like bandits. One girl has one patron paying her brother’s college tuition and another paying off the mortgage on this cute new little place of hers in Aspen. Another one of the girls got her patron to guarantee her lease for a lingerie store she wanted to kick off over in Vegas. But Roz – she just wanted enough to pay off her student loans and get out. Dangerous. If you can’t play the game to win, you shouldn’t bother playing at all.

  “Did she have other friends, here?” I ask. I’m starting to get a hunch.

  “Friends, not exactly. But she had a mentor. An older girl who showed her the ropes.”

  “What was her name?” I already feel like I know the answer.

  “Virginia,” says Blue. “One of the older Blues girls. An escort. A real pro.”

  My heart quickens. Virginia and Roz were close enough to be mentor mentee? My first real lead…

  “How long were they mentor mentee?”

  “I don’t know,” Ben shrugs. “A couple of months, I guess. Roz started a few months before Virginia…uh…left.”

  “Left?” I ask him. My heart is beating so fast I’m afraid he’ll hear it.

  “Nobody knows what happened,” Ben says. “One day she was a Blues Girl, raking in the dough. And the next day she just packed up her things and left. Nobody knows anything except that one second she was here, the next she was gone.”

  So, other than Terrence, the staff here all think Virginia quit. But Virginia was apparently beaten to a pulp. It seems she was able to hide her injuries well, then. Or at least, someone was able to hide them.

  “Roz must have been devastated,” I say, trying to lead him into saying more. “Losing your only friend in a place like this must have been hard, with no warning…”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Ben says absent-mindedly. I’m surprised by his casual tone. I didn’t expect Ben to be so nonchalant.

  “You guess?” I ask him. “You mean you’re not sure?”

  “Uh, I don’t know,” Ben says. “She didn’t seem too shaken up, to be honest. And it was good for her in the end. She started getting Virginia’s old patrons. Her income doubled after Virginia left. I guess she kind of stepped into Virginia’s place.”

  I’m shocked to hear this. A rival? Did Roz see Rita as a rival? Does that mean that Roz was the one who arranged for Rita to be beaten? And is that why Roz was killed – by somebody seeking revenge?

  “Was Virginia really popular, then?” I ask. “She must have been, to have so many patrons. How did they see her?”

  “She was pretty popular,” Ben shrugs. “She definitely knew how to handle her men. They all adored her. To be honest, when she left, I figured she’d run off with one of them. Gotten sick of the Blues life and wanted to go on the straight and narrow with one of her admirers. At least, that’s what I thought.”

  “Thanks, Ben” I say.

  Then, “Oh, I forgot. I need to call my mom.” I hate lying to Ben but sometimes a girls gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. “Do you mind driving me back to the Blue Room?”

  “Actually…” Ben’s stare has turned to a handsome young man winking at him in the corner. “I might wanna stay. Do you mind?” He hands me some cash. “For the cab back,” he says. After all, I’ve been drinking.

  I hail a cab and get in the back. I take out my phone and dial a number; a number I’ve never needed to use before. But this time it was an emergency.

  The phone rings and rings until at last I hear his voice. So familiar, but it still sends chills through me every time. I feel myself melting at the sound of his velvety, sensual voice.

  “Hi Xander,” I say, shaking.

  “Staci?” Xander sounds far away, vague. “What’s wrong? Are you okay? What’s going on?”

  “I need to see you,” I say. “I’m near the Blue Room. Please – we have to talk.”

  Xander chuckles. “Thank goodness you’re safe,” he says. “You called me sounding like a bat out of hell, I was worried about you. I was actually about to call you myself. I just got in from out of state and was thinking about swinging by the hotel anyway.”

  “I don’t want to meet at the hotel,” I say. “I’m in a cab heading back – let me meet you where you are.” I don’t trust the Blue Room right now.

  “Then come to me,” says Xander. “At my Malibu place. I’ll text you the address. I can’t wait to see you.”

  Chapter 3

  My heart is beating so quickly. As I sit in the back of the cab heading to Xander’s Malibu beach house, fingering my phone, turning the little black machine over and over in my sweaty palms, I try to calm myself down. But the thought of seeing Xander again makes me melt. I miss him, I realize. Now, more than ever. And my missing him is affording me physical pain. I had forgotten how much I needed him. I had forgotten the way he made me feel. When I am with Terrence, all chaos and raw sex, all desire and need and fear and adrenaline, I forget the warmth of Mr. X: the way he wraps me in his arms and makes me feel so safe, the way he makes me forget all the stress of the Blue Room, all the terror I feel, all my wondering at death and beating and secrets it sometimes feels I will never know the answer to.

  Right now, I don’t need answers. Right now, I don’t need to know what happened to Rita or to Roz. All I need is Mr. X’s arms around me. All I need is Xander Blue: in the flesh, telling me how much he misses me, how much he cares about me, about how much he wants me near. Even if it’s a lie. I just want to pretend: just for a little while. I just want to get lost in the fantasy. I just want to be the one not doing the losing for a change.

  The cab drops me off at Xander’s place. I marvel once more at how beautiful it is: the glass walls, the minimalist design, the way it looks down over the crashing waves and the shore, the cliffs and the seafoam that even from this dista
nce makes me taste salt on my lips.

  As I stand there, deciding whether or not to knock, Xander pulls up in a shiny red Audi: a painfully elegant car that makes me swoon. He always looks so put together, I think, so in charge. I can forget, for a moment, that he’s an internationally-renowned billionaire; I can pretend he’s just a boy like me. Then one look at this car, this house, and I remember the game. I remember what a lie this is.

  But when he pulls me close to him and kisses me tight, crushing me against his warm, cinnamon-hot lips, it doesn’t feel like a lie at all. It feels like we’re lovers: real lovers. Like the two of us could conceivably become one. It’s a glorious feeling.

  “Staci,” he murmurs into my neck. I love the feeling of his warm breath on my skin. “I missed you so much when I was away. I missed you so much I thought I would burst, missing you.”

  I try to crack a smile, but it’s weak. “None of the other Blues Girls could satisfy you like I can?” I know it’s a joke but my eyes betray real pain, real jealousy.

  “Don’t be silly, Staci,” Xander says, caressing my bared shoulders. “I want nobody else in the world. You are my one and only, Staci. You know that.” He kisses me on the forehead. “You know I’m not a real patron, anyway. I told you that. I’m just undercover, same as you. I’m only there to investigate the truth: what really happened to Roz. You are just an added perk of my job.”

  “I have to ask you something,” I say.

  “Anything, darling,” he smells so good, leaning into me like this. I almost can’t think.

  “Terrence – is he trustworthy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean – why did you kick him out of the Blue Room? Was it because you thought he was a danger?”

  “What?” Xander furrows his brows, looking confused. “Listen, let’s get you inside first.” He opens the door to his house, pulling me in. The house is cold and dark, as though nobody’s been in for a while. He presses various buttons, flicks various switches. “There we go,” he says. “That’s better. Let me warm this place up. Then we can get something to eat. Although in all honesty, Staci, all I think about is the great pleasure it would give me to eat you out until you ‘re screaming for mercy and begging for release, until you can’t take it anymore. But oysters will have to suffice until we get this place to a manageable temperature.” He starts up the fireplace.