Free Gathering Storm by Victoria Danann Page A

strips and filets, when you’re in the mood for fish and not
meat.
    He decided to hit the
men’s room before he left. As he came back out into the dim hallway
a girl stepped in front of him. She pressed the front of her body
up against him and purred his name. Between the pale blond hair and
the white dress, she was glowing like radiation in the semi-black
lighting. He’d been with her last week, in a stall on the other
side of the men’s room door. Maybe she’d given her name and maybe
she hadn’t. It was irrelevant because he couldn’t remember either
way.
    “Okay look, doll, it’s not
happening, right?”
    He tried to ease her away, but she pressed
closer, thinking she was being seductive.
    “What’s the hurry? Stick
around. See what I’ve got for you.”
    He grabbed her biceps, his
big hands completely circling her arms, and swung her around so
that her back was against the wall. When he shoved three fingers
inside her, none too gently, she went bug-eyed and gasped. The
skirt was so short and the thong so tiny that he didn’t even have
to work for it.
    “Oh, yeah, been there.”
The words were vicious, but his actions were even more brutal. He
wiggled his fingers around while her mouth hung wide open in shock.
“And once was enough. See ya.”
    When he withdrew his fingers, she gasped all
over again, maybe even louder. “You dick!”
    He laughed right in her face. She jerked and
squeezed her eyes shut when she felt spittle.
    “That’s right, no name.
You loiter outside the men’s room and make your twat that
accessible, somebody’s gonna take advantage.”
    He wiped his hand on the
leg of his jeans and walked off thinking that he’d done the piece a
service. He hadn't left anything open for misunderstanding. Even
though he didn’t remember the details of that particular encounter,
he was confident that he’d been honest about his part of the
bargain. He never led women on. Never said, “Sure. I’ll call,” or
any such shit. It was what you might call a policy of
his.
    Actually, thinking more
about it, he realized he’d just schooled her up on one of the
downsides to indiscriminate fucking. Yeah. He chuckled to himself.
He should actually be recognized for philanthropy in the area of
saving women from guys like him. Like the song says, sometimes you
have to be cruel to be kind.
    Angel had never had to
work for pussy. Even when his features were completely at rest, his
natural intensity mimicked the look of sexually fueled passion. The
promise of something forbidden radiating from those black eyes drew
women like a Nordstrom going-out-of-business sale. Of course his
perfectly proportioned anatomy didn't hurt either.
    When he landed himself on
the streets as a young teen, he’d survived at first by stealing. It
didn’t take long before other kids on the street gravitated to him.
They seemed to congregate around him and then stand nearby looking
at him like he was supposed to know what to do next. So he put them
to work stealing for him. He liked to think of himself as a
community organizer. Angel loved tongue-in-cheek.
    It wasn’t a bad gig. He
found places where they could be safe to crash, some even had
working plumbing. He spent enough of the proceeds on clothes and
grooming so that none of the kids would ever be taken for homeless.
He taught them how to look and act like suburban kids in the city
for a shopping trip, thereby appearing completely non-threatening
so that no mark would ever be on their guard.
    The big moneymaker was
lunchtime in the shopping districts. Nicer restaurants. Women hung
their purses off the backs of chairs and then got busy talking to
their friends. Lots of people coming and going past tables. If
somebody walked by, smoothly eased a bag off a chair back, and kept
walking, no one would be the wiser until it was time to pay the
check. Then the budding criminal would meet friends around the
corner and pass out the plastic. By the time the credit card
companies were