Free Complementary Colors by Adrienne Wilder

neck.
    “Why?”
    “I want to feel you next to me. I want to know your body.”
    “You already know the important parts.” I hated that my voice cracked.
    “No, I don’t.” He put his hand on my left pectoral.
    “Julia will have a fit if I don’t come home.” And that wasn’t a lie.
    He made some space between us, and I was able to regain my composure. “Why do you do what she wants?”
    “It’s difficult to explain.” How did you tell someone you had no rights? You’d been made into property? You’d long ago had the fight stripped from your core?
    And there was no such thing as parole from Julia’s prison.
    “Try.” Close again, his exhale warmed the shell of my ear.
    I found myself leaning into him, searching for the warmth of his body, inhaling the scent of sweat and sex from his skin. What would it be like to be held as I fell asleep and to wake up in those same arms? I wanted to know. I needed to know.
    No matter the price.
    “I’ll stay, but under one condition.”
    “What?”
    I scraped my teeth down his neck to his shoulder. “You make sure to fuck me hard enough there’s no way I could even think of walking out.”
    ********
    “Where have you been?” Julia cut me off at the bottom of the steps.
    “Can you yell at me later? I’m tired.” Tired, sore, completely melted. I was going to have to sit on a pillow for a week. God, I hoped she hadn’t promised me to anyone.
    “Not until you tell me where you were.”
    “Out. With a friend.”
    “Please tell me you used a condom.”
    “I didn’t know you cared.”
    She slapped me. “I work too fucking hard to have you destroy it all just because you can’t keep it in your pants.”
    “Then I would suggest you cancel any further dates you have scheduled me for.”
    “The clients who have earned your company have to prove they are clean. And they know the rules.”
    Condoms.
    She gripped my chin and turned my head to the side. “Do you have any idea how hard those are going to be to cover up?”
    And no visible marks. Especially no hickies.
    “Now I’ll have to take you to get tested.” She pulled out her cell phone. “Have you showered yet?”
    “Take a sniff. What do you think?”
    “I do not need this, Paris. Not now. You have the biggest interview of your life in three days. I cannot believe you would risk everything for…” Her face reddened.
    “Sex?”
    She slapped me again.
    “Well, what else did you want me to call it?”
    She quick-keyed the number. “How dare you do this to me?”
    “You can calm down. He’s clean.”
    “Really? He tell you, or did he show you his paperwork? I’m sure he just conveniently had it lying around.”
    “No, he’s never had sex with any other man.”
    “There are more than a few ways to catch something.”
    “You’re right, there are. And those ways won’t be stopped by a condom.”
    “I mean, drugs. Specifically needles.”
    “He doesn’t even smoke cigarettes, let alone shoot up.”
    “Drug users lie.”
    “I had my tongue in every crack and crevice of his body. If he had track marks, I would have found them.”
    She curled her hand into a fist. I braced myself, but the strike never came.
    “Look, sex helps me paint. That’s what you want me to do, isn’t it?”
    “Then maybe I should take more applicants?”
    “Sex with people I want to have sex with.”
    “And obviously, that’s not a choice you can be trusted with.”
    “He’s the only one I’ve slacked on in years.”
    “It only takes one.”
    “Even without tests, there’s less of a chance with him than the people you hook me up with who wear condoms. Now, can I go get a shower?”
    A child laughed.
    I turned. “Who did you bring in here?”
    “What are you talking about?”
    With only a dividing wall between the kitchen and open floor plan, there was nowhere for anyone to hide. “Nothing.” The beginning of a headache throbbed behind my eyes.
    “Here, I have some pills in my purse.” She walked over