“We’ve gotta go…” She said it softly, as if she didn’t believe it, or didn’t want to. “Um, I mean—yeah. We need to go before he calls the cops on us.” She climbed off him and dusted off her clothes. Shani looked well and truly flustered, dots of burgundy high on her cheeks.
Royce hid his grin, beginning to seriously wish he could get it up. “Yeah. And I’ll be hurting pretty soon. You don’t need to help me out again…” He tried to laugh it off, but he couldn’t help the twinge of embarrassment.
“I know, baby.” Shani didn’t seem to notice the term of endearment she used, wrapped up as she was in organizing the clothes and other items in the back of the van. “We’ll stop at a motel.” She spun around, slamming the back doors as she went. Their eyes met and heat flared between them. “It’s not like we got anything better to do—waiting for Frank to get back…” Her words trailed off as she blinked up into his gaze.
He broke eye contact first, shrugging up his sweatshirt a couple times to release the heat and sweat climbing up his neck. The sun was starting to filter through the trees, so Royce pulled off the sweatshirt to go only in short sleeves.
Shani’s gaze scoured him, lingering on his biceps and chest, his neck, and finally his lips. Royce knew they had to either get out of there or fall on the ground making out again.
“Let’s go.” She strode past him toward the front seat. “Shouldn’t be too far.”
He swung open the passenger side door and climbed in. As Shani pulled out of the campground and started again down the gray country road, Royce recounted the scuffle. He hadn’t meant to hurt her, that much he knew. But the way he’d pushed her had been aggressive—there was no doubt about it. And his programming normally wouldn’t allow him to use force of any kind unless the client asked for it, especially with a female client.
Royce flicked a glance Shani’s way, watching her maneuver the van and curse the GPS under her breath. With her, he’d pushed, shoved. He felt sure that if he’d wanted to smack her, he could have.
“You okay?”
“Yeah… I’m good.” Royce flexed his arms under his shirt, trying not to be too obvious. Then he stretched his arms over his head, feeling the strength in his back. He knew it looked like an innocent movement. But hell, he felt strong. Hard. Toned. For the first time in his undead life, he realized those muscles packed on his body were more than pretty. If he wanted to, he could overpower her. He could probably overpower lots of people.
“What’s so funny?”
Royce didn’t realize he’d been chuckling until she said it, but that made it all the funnier. He lifted a hand in front of his mouth to hide his laughter, but then even that seemed ridiculous. Loud guffaws left his lips, shaking his body. “Nothing.” He reached over and took her hand. Shani didn’t try to pull away, not that he would have let her.
“You are one weird slave-boy, you know that?”
That only made him laugh more.
Chapter Six
Shani drove the Pacific Coast Highway past wine country and through northernmost California. Small towns dotted the roadside, one more eccentric than the next. When they stopped for gas, Shani went into the attached convenience store to pay cash. The white girl with dreadlocks who took Shani’s money didn’t seem to mind or notice that every other person in line had the hooded gaze and secretive air of a marijuana grower.
“Is there a motel around here?” Shani hoped the girl didn’t think she was a love-bot, though it was the only logical assumption. “I drove through the night.” She wished desperately that she had some dark glasses and a hunter hat like the two guys stepping up to the counter behind her.
The cashier pulled out a stained and folded map from the register and traced directions with a colored pencil. “There’s one right there. Don’t let Jake give you a hard time or charge you extra.” She looked Shani up and down.
Closer to civilization, the lifers had wanted to believe Shani’s story about a couple of steins traveling alone. But no one in these lawless parts would buy it. The heavyset guy behind her leaned closer. Shani felt to her marrow that he was getting ready to proposition her. “Thanks.” She nodded at the girl and mentally repeated the directions in her head.
Ignoring the whistles of the guys in the parking lot, Shani returned to the van and climbed into the cab next to Royce. He leaned back in his seat, his body relaxed and a hand draped along the open window. But his eyes kept darting around. Lines tensed between his eyebrows.
“You holding up?” She started the van and pulled onto the street.
“Yeah…” He shifted in his seat. A rueful grimace tilted his lips. Royce adjusted his cock, through maybe he was just trying to rub the ache. “It’s not so bad.”
“There’s a place up the road. They have a two-hour rate.” The price didn’t matter, but she felt the need to warn him about what type of place they were going to. When his clients took him to a hotel, it was probably four-star, not a roadside shithole.
“Doesn’t matter to me, baby.”
She was positive he was doing that on purpose, making his words drip like syrup. Rolling his neck, and his muscles, and his long limbs so he looked like a wet dream.
“It should be right up there.” Shani turned onto the side street the girl had described. The motel was worse than she thought—a rusted monstrosity of lined-up doublewides. A broken sign flashed tiredly, only three letters still working. It read
Wankin’ Steins
. Shani realized why the place looked so familiar. Royce may never have worked in a dive like this, but Shani had a million times.
“Funny name.” Royce reached for the door handle before she stopped the car. “And kinda fitting, huh?”
Shani’s breath rushed out, her heart beating as if it would burst right out of her chest. It was all she could do to hit the brakes before dots of light and darkness filled her vision.
“What the hell, Shan?”
She held up a hand to stop him before he said anything to make it worse. “Don’t make light of this shit. You know what this place was?”
He peered up at the sign and then around the parking lot to the various corners of the hotel. “Oh!” He cleared his throat, deepened his voice. “You think this was a brothel?” He backpedaled, hands up in surrender. “The type of place they had before… I mean—things were worse when you…” He shook his head. “You know what I mean, right?”
“Don’t kid yourself,” she spat. “The new guidelines have improved things for love-bots, but there are plenty of places like this still in operation.” Panic fluttered in her chest and she made a harsh connection. “Oh, if they’re still working slaves in this place…” Her hands fisted, furious tears springing to her eyes. Her mind spun, thinking about how they might find a horde of girls, or boys, stashed in some dirty back room…
“Hey!” Royce snatched up her hand and squeezed it. “Shani, you okay?” He rubbed her arm, but Shani had a hard time focusing. In her head, Shani scrolled through all the places like this she and Frank had busted. All the empty-eyed, half-dead steins they’d found.
The place Frank had found her flashed in her memory—clear as a horror film. She’d been locked in that motel room for months, covered in her own blood and other peoples’. The dirty handprints on her skin—she hadn’t known which were from the people she’d eaten and which were from the men who fucked her.
“Shaniqua!” Royce’s firm voice cut through the haze of her panic. “You have no reason to think they’re still housing slaves here.” He spoke slow, clear, every word a hammer through her armor. He stroked her arm, pushing up her sleeve to find bare skin. His touch was firm and cool.
“But I know some of the people around here are doing illegal stuff. Maybe Frank didn’t hear about this one. My God, the girls could have been here for ages. It’s been ten years since we uncovered the last one.”
He grabbed her face between his hands, forced her to look him in the eyes. “Look at me!”
She pressed her eyes closed, her breaths rushing in and out so fast she thought she might faint. But Shani forced her gaze to his. “I…” Her voice shook when she tried to talk, so Shani swallowed and forced a slower breath through her nose.
Royce stroked a thumb across her cheekbone, and then her jaw. “You’re okay.” When she shook her head, he brushed a thumb across her lips. “You’re fine. And you’re with me,” he breathed right before slanting his lips across hers. She would have thought it would make her frightened, being held and kissed. But instead, the taste of him grounded her.
Royce wasn’t hard or rough, he neither struggled nor pushed. Instead, he brushed his lips across hers. His mouth felt soft, and moved slow and sweet as molasses on her lips.
“I’m okay.” She pulled back a fraction, trying to catch her breath.
Royce wove his fingers with hers. “Yeah…” Shani could have sworn he was blushing. “This area’s infamous for drugs, and I wouldn’t put it past anyone around here to turn a blind eye on certain things. But the Department of Heath scared the bejeezus out of those lifers—telling them unregistered steins carried syphilis.” His lip twitched. “And corpse-herpes.”
She snorted, a damp laugh she couldn’t control shooting out her nose. The syphilis part was true. The 2042 outbreak alone had been enough to scare most people off having sex with illegal love-bots. “Yeah, I know I wouldn’t want to catch corpse-herpes.” Not that steins could catch herpes, or anything else. The problem wasn’t the steins, it was the lifers. Steins didn’t get sick unless they were programmed to, but they could pass diseases between humans.
“Corpse-herpes is almost as bad as corpse-cooties.” Royce was grinning now, though she saw the lines of tension around his mouth.
She did her best to smile back. “Well, as long as you don’t give me your corpse-cooties…” Shani unlocked her door. “Let’s get you taken care of.”
He hopped out his side of the van. Shani reached for her door, but found him opening it, a pale hand lifted to catch her dark one. She felt like a princess descending her throne. A zombie princess, getting ready to fuck a guy in the ass in the kingdom of a crappy motel room. Oh well, Shani thought, she’d take what she could get.
“Check-in’s over there.” Royce led the way across the cracked and weed-infested parking lot until they reached the office. Wood panel lined the room. Behind the plywood counter, a man with thin blond hair typed on an outdated keyboard. A threadbare orange curtain hung behind him, obscuring the view to a darker space beyond.
Royce entered ahead of Shani, carefully blocking her from view.
“Can I help—” The motel owner lifted his head and did a double take. “I’m sorry. We don’t…” He shuffled some papers nervously, determined not to really see them. “We don’t do that kind of thing anymore.”
Royce approached the desk with a calm smile on his face. Shani knew she’d never be able to copy that easy manner no matter how many times she practiced.
“It’s not like that. We’re not working for anyone.” Royce pressed his hands into his sweatpants pockets and rocked backward on his heels like your typical zombie-next-door.
The hotel guy took a step back and grabbed for the phone.
“I mean…” Royce spoke again, this time a little more desperate. “We work for someone, but we’re between jobs and they said we could have a day off.”
Shani closed her eyes in frustration. How could Royce not realize how stupid that sounded?
“So, folks like you get days off?” The guy sounded more amused than suspicious. He knew perfectly well Royce was lying, but the way his lips twitched up in the corners said he was connecting the dots in a way that worked out more comfortably for his personal set of concerns.
Royce, on the other hand, folded his arms. He tucked his chin into his chest in a defensive posture. “Yeah, we get days off all the time. Just like…” He waved his hand around in the air, giving the guy space to fill in the blanks.
“Well, you two can have a room. But if anyone asks, you didn’t stay here. And you can only stay two hours. I can’t risk an overnighter.”
When Royce stuttered and seemed like he’d argue, Shani stepped around him. “That’s real nice of you. We won’t be any trouble.”
The guy nodded once. Truthfully, he didn’t seem like a bad guy.
“Jake?” A woman’s voice called from somewhere behind the curtain. The guy hurried to grab Shani’s credit card. “I’ll hold this ’til you two are done. Come sign when you get back.” He shooed them away with a few waves of his hand.
A woman, or more specifically a stein, stepped around the fabric doorway. An old and jagged scar crossed her face, covering a missing eye. It was obvious she was blind in the other as well, because she fumbled along the counters to the guy behind the desk.
Shani’s nerves strung tight as she watched the woman hobble. The scars on her face were healed and old, but there was no telling what this hotel guy was doing with her.
Jake shot her and Royce a warning glance and then went to the stein. He cradled her in his arms as if the broken woman was made of glass. “You okay, sweetheart? Another bad dream?”
The stein pressed into Jake’s side, but suddenly became aware that there was someone else in the room. Her face, mangled though it was, contorted in horror. “No,” she said so low and ominous she might have seen the devil incarnate. “No, please…”
“Shhhhh.” Jake pulled her into his side and patted her dull-blonde hair. “It’s okay. They’re just staying a couple hours and leaving. That’s all.”
Shani wanted to speak up, to reassure the woman that she and Royce were no threat. Hell, Frank at the underground might be able to help her—fix the vision in her one good eye. But somehow Shani knew talking would only frighten the battered woman more.
“We keep each other’s secrets in this town.” Jake breathed into the woman’s hair and patted her back. From what Shani could tell, she was little more than skin and bones. Shani didn’t know if it was because Jake didn’t know what to feed her, or she’d been programmed with a sped-up metabolism. Much as she wanted to ask, she held her tongue.
“Y’all go to your room now.” The clerk shooed them again and this time Royce grabbed Shani’s hand and tugged her toward the door. “And remember what I said. You got two hours, then I need you to hit the road.”
* * * * *
“Was it that bad for you?” Royce shut the door behind him, blocking out the mid-day sun from the dingy room. The discomfort he’d been feeling dissolved in a wash of self-loathing. Because it was only discomfort—he knew that now. Whatever that stein in the office had been through eclipsed any pain he’d ever felt. Even the weird buzzing that had started in his mind—like radio static—seemed inconsequential.
Shani lowered herself to sit on the bed. It had a green-and-brown nylon comforter with scattered stains. Across from it, a dented mirror hung on the wall. “I dunno.” She lifted her shoulders only to drop them again. “I dunno her situation exactly.” Shani blinked and stared around the room, looking utterly lost.
He paced a few steps in one direction, then swiveled and marched the other way. His body coiled tight as a knot, ready to rip to shreds the people who’d done these things. Unfortunately, they were probably all in jail before he was brought to life.
“Hey.” A hand grasped his, cool and soft. Shani peered up at him with dark liquid eyes. She was so strong, stronger than he’d ever had to be. “It’s okay. It’s the past.”
Royce didn’t realize he was shaking his head and muttering until Shani pressed a palm to his face. “It was a long time ago. Probably for her too.”
“You’re really fine?” He realized how stupid that sounded and struggled to find a new way to phrase it. “I mean… Hell, I don’t even know what I mean.” His makers had built him to be eloquent, to talk about feelings as easily as the weather. But he’d never faced this…this anger before, it was like acid in his veins.
“I’m fine.” Shani stepped away from him, patting his shoulder as if they were nothing more than friends. “Really. Let’s just do this.” Then she bent to pick up the toy bag and lifted it onto the bed. “I’m not gonna lie and say I like being in a place like this, but we might as well make do and get moving again.”
The way she shoved her hands into the satchel chilled him. As if he were a job, a trick. As if he was making her relive all the crap she’d ever been through.