Chapter 4: Anal Initiation
The warehouse address was a dead-end street crumbling into the river. Raj’s taxi sped away, its taillights dissolving into the fog, leaving him alone with the hulking silhouette of a brick building. A single sodium vapor light buzzed overhead, casting a jaundiced glow on puddles of oily water. The air smelled of wet concrete, diesel, and the distant, muddy stink of the river. The text had said the door would be open. He walked toward a smaller personnel entrance, a steel door set into the vast brick face. It was, indeed, slightly ajar.
He pushed it open, the hinges groaning. Inside, the darkness was profound, broken only by thin blades of streetlight slicing through high, grime-caked windows. The space was cavernous, empty save for a few forgotten pallets and piles of sawdust. The silence was a physical presence, thick and expectant.
“Back here.”
Candy’s voice echoed, coming from a partitioned office at the far end. A faint, flickering light, like from a candle or a phone, spilled from its glass window.
Raj walked toward it, his footsteps echoing. Each step felt like a point of no return. He reached the office door, which was also open.
She stood inside, leaning against a metal desk. The room was devoid of anything personal. No wig. Her real hair, a darker blonde, was tied back in a messy knot. She wore simple jeans and a worn leather jacket over a tank top. The club persona was gone. This was the woman from the apartment, but stripped even further, down to a raw and brittle core.
A single LED camping lantern sat on the desk, casting sharp shadows on her face. On the floor beside her was a small duffel bag, unzipped. Raj could see clothes, a few toiletries, a passport.
“You’re leaving,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
She nodded, her arms crossed. “The guy in the suit. At the club. His name’s Viktor. He’s not a fan. He’s my… was my management. A different kind of manager.”
Raj leaned against the doorframe, the cold steel seeping through his shirt. “The texts. The van.”
“A warning. A final one.” She gestured to the bag. “I’m done. The dressing room… that was my last set. Ever. I needed…” She trailed off, her eyes searching his face. “I needed to feel something real before I vanished. Something dirty and honest th
that wasn’t a performance.” Her voice was low, stripped of all pretense. “You were real. Clumsy and gentle and… real. The dressing room was a fuck-you to him. To everything. And to myself.”
She uncrossed her arms and took a step toward him. The leather jacket creaked. Up close, he could see the faint tremor in her hands, the dark smudges of exhaustion under her eyes. “I have maybe two hours before he knows I’m gone. Before this city eats me.”
“So why text me?” Raj asked, his own voice hollow. “Why bring me here? To say goodbye?”
Candy’s eyes, a stormy grey in the bleak light, held his. “No.” She reached out and took his hand, placing it on the cold zipper of her jacket. “I brought you here for one more taste of real. One for the road.” She guided his hand down, slowly pulling the zipper lower. The sound was loud in the empty room. “I don’t want his sweat on me. I want yours. I want the taste of a man who doesn’t own me.”
She shrugged the jacket off, letting it drop to the dusty concrete floor. The tank top followed, peeled over her head. She stood before him, pale and shivering slightly in the damp warehouse air. Her breasts were heavy, the nipples tight from the chill. She pushed her jeans and panties down her hips in one rough motion, kicking them aside.
“You know what to do,” she said, her voice a husky command. She walked backward until her bare ass met the cold edge of the metal desk. She hoisted herself up onto it, the metal groaning under her weight. Then she spread her legs wide, planting her feet on the floor, and leaned back on her elbows. “Don’t be gentle now. Be hungry.”
Raj was on his knees before the thought fully formed. The concrete was hard and unforgiving. He moved into the space she had opened for him, his hands gripping the smooth skin of her inner thighs. Her scent, musky and deep, cut through the warehouse smells. This was nothing like the perfumed club. This was raw, unadorned woman.
He didn’t kiss or tease. He buried his face in her. He lapped at her with a broad, desperate stroke of his tongue, tasting her clean sweat and her essential salt. She gasped, her hips jerking forward, seeking more pressure. He circled her clit, then sucked the stiff little bud into his mouth, grazing it with his teeth.
“Fuck yes,” she hissed, her head falling back. “Just like that. Eat me. Clean me out of this fucking life.”
He drove his tongue inside her, fucking her with it. She was already wet, hot and yielding. He could feel her muscles clenching around nothing, seeking to be filled. He worked her with a frantic, dedicated rhythm, his glasses digging into his nose, his own arousal a painful throb in his trousers. He was consuming her, trying to memorize this taste, this feel, before she vanished.
“Use your fingers,” she demanded, panting. “Finger-fuck me while you suck. I want to come so hard I forget my own name.”
He obeyed, sliding two fingers deep into her slick channel, curling them upwards. His mouth never left her clit, sucking and flicking. The sounds were obscenely loud—wet, slapping, sucking noises, her ragged breathing, the creak of the desk. Her thighs tightened around his head, trembling.
“Oh god, right there, don’t stop, I’m gonna—"
Her orgasm hit her like a seizure. Her back arched violently off the cold metal, a raw, guttural cry tearing from her throat that echoed in the vast, empty space. Her juice flooded his mouth, bitter and sweet, and he drank it all, his fingers pumping through her convulsions until she collapsed back onto the desk, spent and shaking.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their heavy breathing. Raj rested his forehead against her damp thigh, the reality of the situation crashing back. She was leaving. Someone named Viktor was coming.
Candy slowly pushed herself up. She looked down at him, his face wet with her, and her expression was unreadable. Then she slid off the desk, her legs wobbly, and began to gather her clothes from the floor.
“You should go,” she said, not looking at him as she pulled her jeans on. “It’s not safe for you here now, either.”
Raj stood, his knees protesting. “Where will you go?”
“Somewhere a plane ticket can take me.” She pulled her tank top over her head. “Forget this, Raj. Forget me. Go back to your code and your quiet life. It’s cleaner.”
She turned to pick up her jacket. As she bent over, the small bird tattoo on her hip seemed to shimmer in the lantern light. A symbol of freedom she was desperately chasing.
He moved without thinking. He grabbed her arm, pulling her around to face him. “It’s not cleaner. It’s empty.” His voice was rough, surprising him. “That quiet life almost killed me. You showed me it could.”
She searched his face, her defiance fading into a deep, weary sadness. “I’m a liability wrapped in trouble. You don’t want my kind of excitement.”
“What if I do?” The words hung in the cold air. He didn’t know where they came from, only that he meant them.
A door, somewhere deep in the warehouse, slammed shut.
The sound was like a gunshot. Candy’s eyes widened with pure, undiluted fear. “Shit. He’s early.” She shoved the rest of her things into the duffel bag. “You need to leave. Now. The way you came.”
Heavy, deliberate footsteps echoed in the cavernous space, growing closer. A man’s voice, thick with a Slavic accent, called out. “Candy! Little bird! You think you can fly?”
Raj stood frozen, caught between instinct and a new, terrifying impulse. Candy looked at him, at the open door behind him, and then at the lantern. In a swift move, she kicked the duffel bag into the shadows under the desk.
Then she did the last thing he expected. She grabbed the front of his shirt, pulled him close, and kissed him hard. It was a kiss of salt, fear, and farewell. “The window,” she whispered against his lips, her breath hot. “In the back. It’s loose. Go.”
She pushed him toward the rear of the office just as a large shadow filled the doorway.
The shadow in the doorway resolved into a man. He was broad, thick-necked, with a shaved head that gleamed under the buzzing fluorescents he’d flicked on outside. Viktor. His eyes, pale and cold as river stone, slid past Candy’s defensive posture and locked onto Raj. A slow, unpleasant smile spread across his face.
“You brought a friend,” Viktor said, his accent carving the words into blunt shapes. “A customer. Still working the farewell tour, zaichik?” He took a step into the office, his presence making the room shrink. Raj smelled old tobacco and expensive cologne masking something sour beneath.
Candy moved, placing herself slightly between Viktor and Raj. “He’s nobody. Just a trick who followed me. He’s leaving.” Her voice was steel, but Raj heard the fine tremor beneath.
“Leaving?” Viktor chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. He picked up the camping lantern from the desk, swinging it slowly. The light swayed, throwing monstrous, moving shadows. “No one is leaving. We have a conversation first, you and I. About respect. About debt.” His gaze swung back to Raj. “Your friend can watch. He paid for a show, yes? He gets a finale.”
Raj’s heart was a trapped bird slamming against his ribs. His feet felt rooted to the concrete. Every instinct screamed to run, to bolt for the window she’d mentioned. But his eyes were fixed on Candy’s back, the tense line of her shoulders under the thin tank top. Running meant leaving her here with him.
“The debt is cleared,” Candy stated, her chin lifting. “I paid. Every dollar.”
“The money, yes.” Viktor set the lantern down, its beam now pointing at the wall, casting the room into grim relief. “But the disrespect? The stealing of my property to your little… apartment?” He said the word like it was something filthy. “That carries interest.” He finally looked fully at Raj. “You. Did you fuck her in her bed? Did you think it was special?”
Raj said nothing. His mouth was dust.
Viktor nodded, interpreting the silence. “She is very good. Makes you feel like a king.” He took another step, now only a few feet from Candy. He reached out, not to strike her, but to touch a strand of her hair that had escaped her knot. She flinched, a full-body recoil she couldn’t suppress. “You see?” Viktor said to Raj, his smile widening. “She is a creature of habit. She needs a firm hand. You would not understand.”
Something inside Raj fractured. It wasn’t courage, but a volcanic surge of all the swallowed humiliations, the years of silence, the searing memory of her whisper in the dressing room—You were real. He stepped forward, placing himself beside Candy, not behind her. “She’s not your property.”
Viktor’s smile vanished. The affable mask melted into pure, chilling calculation. “Ah. So it is like that.” His hand, still outstretched from touching her hair, moved with shocking speed. It wasn’t a fist. It was an open-handed slap that cracked against the side of Candy’s head with a sound like a branch snapping.
She cried out, stumbling sideways into the desk. Raj moved without thought. He threw himself at Viktor, a clumsy, weighty charge fueled by rage. He connected, wrapping his arms around the man’s thick torso, driving him back a step. It was like hitting a tree trunk.
Viktor grunted, more in annoyance than pain. He brought a fist down hard on the centre of Raj’s back. The air exploded from Raj’s lungs in a pained whoosh. A second blow landed on his kidney, a white-hot spike of agony. Raj’s grip loosened.
Viktor shoved him off easily. Raj fell to his knees, gasping, the world tilting. He looked up, blinking through the pain. Candy was up. She held the metal lantern, now swinging it in a fierce, whistling arc. It connected with the side of Viktor’s knee.
He roared, more in fury than real injury, and backhanded her. She spun and fell, crashing into a stack of empty cardboard boxes. The lantern clattered across the floor, its light spinning wildly, strobing the nightmare scene.
Viktor turned his attention back to Raj, who was trying and failing to rise. The man’s face was a slab of cold anger. He drew back a foot, aiming for Raj’s ribs.
A piercing electronic siren ripped through the warehouse, deafening and immediate. A flashing blue light erupted from the doorway—a compact, personal alarm Candy must have triggered when she fell. Viktor froze, his hands flying to his ears, his face contorted in surprise and pain from the sheer, skull-splitting noise.
Candy scrambled to her feet, blood trickling from her split lip. “Window! Now!” she screamed over the din.
Raj lurched up, his body screaming in protest. He stumbled toward the rear of the office where a grimy, rectangular window was set high in the wall. Candy was already there, shoving a filing cabinet beneath it with desperate strength. “Up! Go!”
Raj climbed onto the wobbling cabinet. The window was old, painted shut in places. He threw his shoulder against the rusted frame. It budged with a scream of metal, letting in a gust of damp, free air. He turned, reaching down for her.
Viktor was recovering, batting at the air as if he could swat the sound away. He took a lurching step toward them.
Candy slapped her hand into Raj’s. He hauled, pulling with every ounce of his strength. She scrambled up, leveraging her feet against the cabinet. Behind her, Viktor lunged, his fingers brushing her ankle. She kicked back viciously, her heel connecting with his jaw with a sickening crack.
Then she was through, tumbling out into the night. Raj followed immediately, launching himself headfirst into the darkness. He fell, landing hard on wet asphalt in a narrow alley, the wind knocked from him again.
Candy was already up, grabbing his arm, pulling him to his feet. “Run. Don’t think. Just run.”
They ran. The blaring alarm faded behind them, replaced by the frantic percussion of their own footsteps and ragged breathing. They turned corners blindly, leaving the warehouse district, fleeing into a maze of quieter residential streets. They ran until Raj’s lungs were fire and his legs were lead. Finally, in the doorway of a closed bakery, they collapsed, sliding down the brick wall to the cold pavement.
For minutes, the only sounds were their gasps for air. Raj tasted copper. His back and kidney throbbed with a deep, sickening pain. Candy pressed a hand to her bleeding lip, her whole body trembling violently from adrenaline and fear. The silence around them felt fragile, temporary.
She looked at him, her eyes wide in the dim glow of a streetlight. “You’re a fucking idiot,” she breathed, but there was no anger in it. It sounded like awe.
Raj coughed, spitting onto the pavement. “He hit you.”
“Yeah. He does that.” She leaned her head back against the brick, staring up at the smudged night sky. “He’s going to be really pissed now. About the knee. And the jaw.” A shaky, almost hysterical laugh escaped her. “No more quiet escape.”
Raj finally asked the question burning in his chest. “What now?”
Candy was silent for a long time. She looked at her duffel bag, still back in the warehouse with her passport, her money, her entire life. Then she looked at him—rumpled, bleeding, terrified, and sitting beside her in the gutter.
“Now,” she said softly, her voice raw, “you’re in it.” She reached over, her fingers finding his in the dark. They were cold, but her grip was fierce. “You’re really in it, Raj.”