“Oh,” Mike said, turning around, “right.”
Anisa looked at Katya, who was standing with her arms folded, watching, and then shrugged. She took the small rectangle and, spreading her legs slightly, stuck it to the inside of her thigh.
“You can still see it,” Anisa said triumphantly.
“Higher,” Katya said, sighing angrily.
“If I put it any higher it will be inside of me!” Anisa protested.
“And the problem with that is…?” Katya asked. “Besides, it won’t. Just put it higher. There is plenty of room. You just have to actually touch yourself. Don’t tell me you’ve never touched that part before.”
“Cottontail…” Mike warned.
“Ow! Ow!” Anisa exclaimed as she peeled it back off. “That hurts!”
“It’s… pretty strong adhesive,” Vanner replied, his back still turned.
“Oh, no,” Anisa said as she fumbled under the dress.
“What now?” Mike asked in exasperation.
“It’s… caught,” Anisa said, blushing. “On… hair. Down there.”
“You should have waxed,” Cottontail replied, her arms still crossed. “This is silly. Let me carry it.”
“I don’t think Anisa is up to chatting up a guard,” Mike pointed out. “Do you have it in place?”
“Yes,” Anisa said, adjusting her dress. “You can look again.”
“Now, try walking in the heels,” Mike said.
Anisa carefully tottered across the room, stopped at the far side and turned without actually falling down.
“This is insane,” Katya said, angrily. “Just let me do it! I can chat up the guard and plant it!”
“She needs to learn,” Mike said. “We can’t be depending on you to do all the outside work. Anisa, one foot in front of the other, like you’re walking on a narrow beam. Move your hips with the motion and your shoulders against it. Undulate. Try it.”
Anisa sighed and started back. She did pretty well until she got her hips and shoulders out of sync and Adams had to catch her before she fell.
“Nobody had better ever find out about this,” she hissed, pushing herself back up. The chief had been exceedingly careful with his hands, but there wasn’t much he could catch that wasn’t off-limits. He’d managed by wrapping both hands around her waist. This caused her dress to head north and south, respectively, which very nearly left her unclothed. At least in important areas.
“Try it again,” Mike said sternly. “This is training. You are going to be doing a mission every bit as important as the door-kickers. They had to train; you have to train. If I’d thought ahead, I would have brought one of the harem. I didn’t. This is my fault. Drop it on me. But we’re going to need you to be able to do this. And maybe more than just you. You’ll be training at least one other girl in the same things. Get used to it. And everyone is going to know about it. You’re going to have a security team watching you.”
“Okay, okay,” Anisa said, readjusting her dress. “Here goes.”
By the end of thirty minutes with Mike coaching her and Katya inserting snarky, but pertinent, remarks, she could walk in the heels and even undulate. A bit. Enough to look like a new hooker on the street.
As the two left, Adams let out a long sigh.
“I’m going to have to either go down on the street and hire a girl or go take a long cold shower,” the chief said. “That was just…”
“Erotic as hell,” Mike replied. “You can understand why these pimps do what they do. Besides the money, which in this society is nothing to sneeze at.”
“It almost makes me rethink my choice of career,” Adams admitted. “And they get to do this all the time.”
“And beat the girls around when they screw up,” Mike added.
“I’m not particularly into beating on women,” Adams said, shrugging.
“Well, most of the girls they get don’t exactly want to be hookers,” Mike pointed out. “And even the ones that do, don’t want to give up most of their hard-earned money to the pimps. So they beat on them until they learn better. It’s a sucky situation. And you know the fun part?”
“What?” Adams asked, frowning curiously.
“How many whores have you fucked in some third world shit-hole?” Mike asked, turning to look at him. “We’re the reason this goes on. You can’t just say ‘it’s males’ when you’re one of the males that benefited by it.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” Adams shrugged. “I don’t notice you losing sleep over it.”
“I do, sometimes,” Mike admitted. “And I’m the one that enjoys beating on women. I wish I had the money to buy up every whore and potential whore on the planet and put them somewhere safe.”
“But if you did, you’d just have more kidnappings.”
“There’s that,” Mike admitted, sighing.
“You ever think about this whole system as a good thing?” Adams asked.
“What in the hell do you mean by that?” Mike snarled.
“Think about it,” Adams replied calmly. “In the states, the predators snatch some girl off the street, rape her and kill her. Here they snatch them off the street, rape them and then sell them. Alive.”
“Now there’s a hell of a thought and no lie,” Mike said quietly. “But you think that some of them don’t die in the process?”
“No, a bunch of them do,” Adams admitted. “But a bunch of them live, too. For a given value of life. Which means still breathing. Concentrate on bringing home a live one and leave the fucking existentialism for after the mission, SEAL.”
“Will do, Chief,” Mike said, grinning.
“Now I’m gonna go find some abused, raped, forced-to-be-a-whore whore and fuck her silly ass off. For cash. Without beating on her. End of angst.”
Chapter Eleven
“I don’t know where to look,” Anisa said, nervously trying to adjust her dress so she wasn’t showing so much skin.
“Anywhere but at the cars,” Cottontail said easily. She clearly didn’t care if her dress was riding up. Or down. She looked as if she was terribly bored and more than willing to just have the damned thing fall off. “If you look at the drivers they might stop. That would be good on one level; we’d look like we were actual working girls. But we’d have to turn down the offer. Unless you’re planning on doing a trick while you’re doing this and I don’t suggest it.”
“I’m not,” Anisa snapped.
“Well, that’s one problem off my mind,” Cottontail said, smirking. “You might want to try it, though. You don’t have a pimp to take all the money and cash is cash. Well, the Kildar might want a cut.”
“I’m not going to… do that with a man other than my husband,” Anisa said.
“And probably the Kildar, right?” Cottontail said, snidely. “For your ‘bride price,’ right? What do you think that is but turning a trick? Maybe you could work up the bride price while you’re here…”
“Stop it,” Anisa said angrily. “Just… stop, okay? We’re here to work.”
“Well, it’s work…” Cottontail said, trailing off. “There’s the car.”
“I see it,” Anisa said, nodding.
“Don’t look directly at it.” Cottontail looked around. “Look at the other girls, instead.”
Anisa looked around and sighed.
“They are all dressed so…”
“Sluttily,” Cottontail said, laughing nastily. “Men like that. They like to have women that are fast, cheap and easy. They don’t have to worry about whether we like it or not. Most of them like that we don’t. They like to hurt us, to use us, to make us feel less than they are.”
“Not the Kildar,” Anisa pointed out.
“Even the Kildar,” Katya replied sharply. “He likes that he owns us, that he can use us.”