Jessica Clare - Last Breath

I soon learned that no one approached Mr. Freeze. Everyone was terrified of him.

He dragged on plastic surgical gloves and then proceeded to examine me like a racehorse. As his bodyguard held me upright, his hand moved down my legs, checked my thighs, my pussy, my ribs, and my breasts. And then he made me open my mouth. To my surprise, he pulled out a flashlight and examined my teeth.

“Are these your real teeth?” he asked me. “Do you brush twice a day? And shower?”

“Fuck off.”

He slapped my face and grabbed my chin, careless of the blood dribbling from my split lip. “Answer me.”

I didn’t answer. I tried to bite him instead.

He slapped me again, and this time it left me reeling. “Answer me. Do they shave you or have you had laser treatments?” He lifted my arm and examined my armpit, then bent to study my pubic hair again. “Natural blonde. That’s good.”

It was like I wasn’t a real person to him. I was a doll he was checking out to purchase. Or a car. “You want to kick my tires before you take my ass around the block?”

He pulled back and gave me a look so cold that I knew immediately that I’d made a mistake. Now I was dead.

It had been a good run…for a while, anyhow.

But Freeze only looked at his bodyguard and nodded, and the man released me. I sank to the floor and wrapped my arms around my body, waiting for the inevitable rape.

It didn’t come. Freeze and his guard talked for a long minute in Russian, the words sounding strange in his mouth, though I noticed that no one dared to correct his pronunciation. Then the bodyguard left, and Mr. Freeze stared at me with those cold eyes, watching me.

The Russian housemother came into the room a few minutes later with the bodyguard, and she was clearly nervous.

“This one,” Mr. Freeze said in English. “I like her. I will take her.”

“Fuck you,” I spat from my corner of the room. He wasn’t here to save me at all. He was here to fucking groom me. What an asshole.

“Very well,” the housemother said. “You know her price.”

“It is a rather high price for one that bites,” he said in a chilling voice. “She nearly took off my finger.”

The housemother stopped in place, and then she shot me a killing look. I was going to be punished, I knew it.

"You know how I like my girls,” he told her. They’re still speaking in English, which means he wants me to hear this. “Clean and broken. This one is not clean, nor is she broken.”

“We will keep her clean.”

“And?” He waited.

“I know where we can send her,” the housemother said quickly. “Give Senhor Gomes a month and he will have her gentle as a kitten.”

“A month,” he agreed. “Until then, I want you to have her brush her teeth three times a day. Vitamin supplements with her food. Bathe her daily and make sure someone shaves her twice a week. No hitting her in the face. Condoms for every client. And no drugs. Not even if she asks for them.”

The housemother nodded.

Mr. Freeze got back to his feet and left the room. “I will return to check on her.”

I figured out after that night that Freeze had a blonde fetish of some kind and he liked me. Lucky, lucky me.

He returned once more while I was in Russia, checking my teeth and body and tsking when I tried to bite the fingers he put in my mouth.

The next week, though, everything changed. After three weeks in the brothel in Russia, men came after me with needles full of drugs and a sack they shoved over my face. I’d been terrified, thinking that I’d outlived my usefulness as everyone’s favorite captive American pussy, and now they were going to kill me.

I’d fought, but they’d drugged me before I knew what was happening.

When I woke up, I was in my current room, my ankle chain locked to a new wall, and a dirty mattress in the corner for me. The room was no bigger than a walk-in closet, with a cracked tile floor that slanted toward a drain at the far end of the room and a nice corner bucket for me to shit and piss in. An industrial size box of condoms was set at the foot of the bed. There were cracks in the ceiling and no windows. I hadn’t seen the sun in weeks. I wondered if I’d ever see it again.

My new owners had given me clothing, though—an American flag string bikini covered in beads and itchy sequins. And they talked loudly in a different language. By listening at my door, I figured out that I was now in Rio de Janeiro.

And the Rio brothel was run by Senhor Gomes. I remembered that name—Freeze had mentioned it.

Being Freeze’s new little plaything had apparently gotten me sent here to Rio. But captive blonde American pussy was as hot in Rio, and neither Gomes nor Freeze cared who fucked me as long as they didn’t mess me up.

Freeze has visited me once while I’ve been in Rio. I bit and fought and spit in his face. It was like he didn’t notice, though. He simply watched me with those cold eyes, checked my teeth, insisted that they wax my eyebrows into shape, and left.

He’d wait for me to be broken.

The customers in Rio are no different than the Russian customers. They like to rough a fighter up. They like to hit and smack around a girl before they fuck her. I’m sure there are nice men out in the world that just want to screw and cuddle, but that’s not who come to the whorehouse of Senhor Gomes. They’re here because they like to be rough with girls, and I’m here because Freeze wants to break me. But I’m not broken yet.

I sit upright, and Alma comes to me with a towel and a shower cap. We’ve fallen into habit already, and I move to the corner of the room, above the drain and as far as the chain will let me go. Today isn’t shaving day, so I pull my hair into the shower cap and she turns on a water-hose that is connected to the sink in the room. Like an animal, she hoses me down, and I feel a little more of my humanity die with this ritual.

Paying customers don’t want to touch a dirty whore. Everyone uses condoms, not just because Freeze says so, but because they don’t want to catch anything I might have. Fuckers.

Once my awful shower is done, I towel off, trying to ignore the fact that the towel smells like someone else’s perfume. I don’t want to think about how many other whores have used it before me. I let down my hair, and she hands me my American flag bikini again. It’s faded and grimy, but I never get to wear it for long.

Then, I’m given a travel toothbrush and toothpaste, and I brush my teeth obligingly, then spit into the grate. Ironic that now I get to spit instead of swallow.

Alma gives me an apologetic smile and grabs the towel, refolds it, and leaves the room quietly.

I curl up on the mattress, hugging my legs to my chest and waiting. There will be another man soon enough, and then Freeze, so I enjoy the moment of silence while I can. My lip hurts, a bit puffy from where the last man hit me, and I touch it with my fingertips, wincing.

Then, I lay my head back against the wall, thinking. My mind is filled with the gun and the man I was forced to service, and my stomach roils uncomfortably again. I swallow hard and force myself to think of zombie movies, instead. E. I don’t know what movies begin with E. This one will require some thought. Maybe something with “Enemy” in the title.

I ponder this for minutes, staring at nothing, when there is a knock at the door again. I get to my feet automatically. God, I hope it’s not the man with the gun again. I don’t think I could stomach seeing him twice in one night.

But when the door opens, it’s not Freeze.

The man that steps in is unexpected. He’s accompanied by Senhor Gomes, the master, a man I have only seen once but hear about all the time. Gomes looked me over when I arrived and then left, as if I were an uninteresting piece of property.

The man with him is tall, good-looking, and wears a casual suit. He’s got nice brown hair, sharp eyes, and I can tell immediately from the cast of his features that he’s American.

What the fuck. Not again. Not another American jackass. It doesn’t matter if he’s American—he’s here to rape me like all the others before him. Except this time? I’ll know all the nasty, shitty words he yells into my ear.

And later, when he’s done with me and leaves, I’ll feel even dirtier because he’s only made things worse.

He looks me over, his gaze sliding to my star-spangled bikini, and I can’t help myself. “What’s the matter,” I ask, “international pussy not good enough for you?”

Daniel

SHE’S A BITER. THAT’S THE warning given when I point to the blonde with the glazed green eyes in Senhor Gomes’ book of whores. He shakes his head and says that he has access to dozens of others that are better and all willing to engage in whatever perverse activity I want. He brags that there isn’t a sick sex act I can think of that Gomes can’t fulfill. I like home cooking, I tell him. A Texan in Rio sees a lot of beautiful Brazilian women, but sometimes you want a little star-spangled banner in the rotation.

He nods as if this makes sense to him, but I think it’s the money that I’m flashing that he understands. We walk up to the second floor and down a narrow hall toward the back, a windowless part of this brick and metal building. I can’t call it a home or even a brothel. It’s a dingy place where men with deep perversions but shallow wallets can get their rocks off.

I don’t want to have sex here, I’ve explained to Gomes. I have a thing against hellholes and having sex in them. I wave around a lot of cash, and Gomes nodded and asks no more questions.

We’re a strange parade—Gomes, me, and some house mom trailing behind. He stops at the second to last door and removes a key.

I’ve seen pictures of Regan Porter before, and not in Gomes’ look book, but nothing prepares me for her full-fledged, magazine-quality beauty. She hasn’t been eating well; her delicate bones are beginning to look sharp in places—at her shoulders, ribs, and hips. But there’s no denying her breathtaking looks. Her blonde hair is damp and small strands stick to her perfect skull. Her oval face, with its pink cheekbones and lush lips and eyebrows that look like wings, stands out like a piece of fine china at a flea market. Though she’s thin, there’s a delicious curviness in the slope of her side as it dips into the waist and flares back out to form a cuppable roundness at the hip. And those endlessly long legs.

Shit. I close my eyes and swallow. No decent man would be standing here thinking about those legs wrapped around his waist. But then again, I’m not decent. I’m no longer army sniper, Special Forces Daniel Hays who may have once been lauded as a hero for killing insurgents in Afghanistan. Now I’m Daniel Hays, mercenary who kills people for money and spends all his spare time in brothels and flesh dens like this one. Decency is a word I don’t even know the meaning to anymore.

It’s been too long since I’ve had a woman. That’s my only excuse. That and I’m becoming the monster that I’m hunting. I focus on the bruises on her knees that are scraped red and raw from time on the floor and the manacle around her ankle. Any feelings of arousal are jettisoned by the obvious signs of abuse.

Glancing sharply at Gomes, I wonder how he’s come to possess a beauty like Regan Porter. Gomes is a small-time flesh peddler, stuck up here in the slums, with a house full of females—half of which are missing their teeth or are too old or too broken.

He usually gets what the market calls second-hand goods, the girls that no other house wants. But Regan Porter is gorgeous, and while she looks a little rundown, she’s still model beautiful with big pink lips and wide green eyes.

“Nice tits,” I smirk for Gomes’ sake and her shudder of disgust only feeds into my growing belief that I’m as dirty as the flesh trader beside me. The dark edges of the world that I now inhabit are seeping into my skin like an oil slick covering an ocean. I shouldn’t want to touch her. And if I have to fuck her in front of Gomes to get her out of here—I don’t even let myself finish that thought.

There’s still life in her eyes. If she’s biting and spitting out acerbic insults, there’s spirit left in her, and I don’t want to be the one to snuff out that last flame. Her eyes convey her hate, and if she had a knife, I’d be sliced from my throat to my belly. I stare back, not because she’s fucking beautiful, but because she’s still standing. I’m not sure I would’ve been as strong. I don’t know if she sees my admiration or whether she can only interpret varying degrees of lust and degradation, but she sees something. An invisible string spools out between us and her eyes widen when it hits her like an electrical shock.