Free Rogue (In the life of the Rogue Book 1) by KaNeshia Michelle Page B

hand slipped from her shoulder, slid between her arm and waist and found its home on her hip. She nuzzled closer, her head resting on my chest, her mouth just inches from my nipple.
    But, yet, our movements weren’t sexually stimulated.
    My fingertips played at the skin. It was a wonder to me how a woman, no matter how hard life had been or was, could still have skin that was smooth and velvetly to the touch. I felt her heartbeat against my side and breathed slowly, my chest collapsing as the exhale escaped. And as I exhaled, she wiped at her eyes as if the closeness, or lack of, had touched a very deep place and it didn’t sit well. I refused to look down to confirm if she was crying or not. It was fear that if I saw those tears it would bring my own. I looked up to the cheap, crumpling ceiling, my cigarette clenched between my teeth. I hissed as I inhaled a lung full of smoke and blew it out.
    We were in repose from our adventure on the floor and we had found a common ground that was rare and neither one of us was ready to allow the moment to slip by talking over it and mucking it up. We were both in deep thought. We were skin to skin but worlds away at the same time. Maybe she was thinking of her life that ended with her needing to sell her body. My mind glided to the woman I had met on the balcony with a dead man leaking in the tub not to far away. Seeing Dominique’s face, seeing those gray orbit pools that made up her eyes, was like a lighting bolt and I jumped slightly. I couldn’t help but remember the way her skin creased slightly as a smile was about to erupt and burn anything in its path. Her face sliced brutally at my mind and my heart burned in response.
    The hooker’s hand drummed against my chest. Then her fingers stopped drumming and the index pointed to the cigarette burning softly in my hand. I stubbed out the dwindling cigarette, placed another in my mouth and lit it, intending it to be for her.
    And that’s when the screaming began from the bathroom.
    Zander was nude, hunched over on the toilet, with his eyes halfway up in his head. His face had gone to an ashy white. His hooker, her face contorted in just plain ole’ disgust, mingled with rage with a dash of hate, reared her hand back and slapped him.
    “You son of a bitch!” Her accent too had changed. “You took all of it!” She was screaming at him.
    It was then that I saw the needle poking out of his forearm and the blood cascading down, making a pool in his upraised palm.
    She cocked her arm again like a thumb would cock back a hammer on a glock. “You fucking bastard!”
    The slap against his cheek was so loud it sounded like a shot and I jumped, pulled out of my stupor. She reared again for another shot and I was on her, pulling her arm and pushing her away.
    My hand hovered over the needle in Zander’s arm. Not a drug addict, unsure of just what to do. I had the puerile thought if I withdrew the syringe then he would inflat like a balloon that lost its air.
    I turned to look at the hooker. “What did you give him?”
    Her head jutted up in defiance.
    I bared my teeth and my body coiled like a snake all too happy that she had given me her neck for easy ripping. She caught the look, the dangerousness in my face and wilted – she was ready to flee in terror and reached for her purse but I was quicker. I snatched it off the counter, overturned it and dumped the contents out on the floor. Make up, rolls of condoms – the cheap kind - and crumple up dirty bills fell out, followed by syringes and a little baggie with white residue inside it.
    “What is this?” I demanded.
    My whore was standing in the doorway watching the events. She shook her head disapprovingly at her friend. “That was for us. What were you thinking?”
    “He said he pay me double for it,” her friend whined back.
    I huffed and tossed the baggie down on top of her trash from her purse. “With what money? We gave you what all we had.”
    My words settled into a