Sugar

"Sugar?" He asked. "As in S.U.G.A.R. Sugar?" He spoke each word slowly.
When I nodded his jaw strained tight, his lips curled back from his teeth. "That is so..." he frowned again. That edge of dissatisfaction back to mess with his features.
"Cliche?" I offered.
"Fake," he growled. "If you'd gone for Salt maybe I might have believed you."
His eyes were hard and cold.
I was annoyed. "Can you read minds or something?"
"No." He frowned and chewed a spoonful of grilled baby carrots. "And if I could, I wouldn't read yours, hell, with your kind of work, only the good Lord knows how far your thoughts shy away from holiness."
We lapsed back into silence as we finished eating. I was fuming. He was such a jerk. After dinner, he offered to do the dishes. When he walked back into the room I cleared my throat.
"Let's toast." I said quickly, giving him the spiked glass of juice.
His fingers wrapped around the glass hesitantly and he eyed me cautiously. "To what?"
I thought for a second. "New..." I wanted to say friends, but realized that I didn't even know him well enough to consider him anything more than a stranger, regardless I didn't peg him as the friendly type. "Encounters."
He clicked his glass to mine and I watched him empty his glass. Within a few minutes, he was asleep.
After a nice hot shower, I skipped back to the bedroom where Roman was still very much asleep. Even in his sleep, he wore a frown, I sighed and helped him out of his boots and laid a blanket on top of him.
The smell of pancakes and green tea was the first thing I became aware of in the morning, followed by the sound of profanities — Roman's voice seemed to fuel my anxiety.
I refused his offer of breakfast and hopped in the shower instead. I meant to hurry, to be done before he was finished with breakfast.
When I walked back into his bedroom with a towel wrapped around me, I froze. Roman was already sitting in a chair, facing the window, his eyes distant.
"Good morning." I kept my voice even, though the unrecognizable emotion on his face unnerved me.
He took a deep breath. "Yes, it must be."
"I need to get going. I was hoping we could discuss the payment."
"We should." He took a deep breath and stared coldly at my face as he stalked towards me.
I gulped. "So, um... as you know, it's two hundred for an hour."
"Ah, yes," he replied slowly, pulling his wallet from the drawer. "How long were you here for, again?"
"Thirty-six hours."
"Yes," he quickly agreed. "Except, I didn't see you jiggle your tits — I mean that is... what you were here for, right?"
"Well, yes, but you fell asleep." I stared, uncomprehending, into his eyes. "It's not my fault you didn't have fun."
He smiled, a sick, twisted smile and I gulped, suddenly more worried than before. "Maybe I'll pay you if you answer a few of my questions?" He offered.
"No" — He just stared at me with a look of disapproval as I continued — "Bill will kill you if you try to bunk payment."
"Maybe he'll kill you when he finds out that instead of sharing your cookie, you give clients sleeping pills," he informed me, and watched awareness seep through me.
"What? Wait, how?" my hands were in front of me waving frantically.
"How will he kill you?" he asked and dug through a precariously stacked pile of hundred bills in his wallet till he pulled out a stash that I assumed to be eight thousand. "Oh. I don't know. Gruesome murders, those, are not what I fill my head with." He brought several bills to my line of sight to show me. "This could all be yours. Just give me what I want. And you won't have to deal with what's-his-face."
"Bill," I corrected him.
"Yeah, that's what I said, Bull."
I opened my mouth to say something, and then closed it again. He watched me carefully, his face wiped clean of all emotion. I tried again.
"How did you know, that's what I'm asking."
He sighed impatiently. "Oh, you thought a man like me would sleep over at a house that was unprotected? That didn't have surveillance?"
My whole body went numb. Bill would kill me. "You have me on tape?"
He just stared at me, and I could see from his eyes that he was done pretending to be calm.
I could hear the blood pounding faster than normal behind my ears. I took a nervous breath. "Okay, what do you want?"
"I told you. Answers."
"That's all?" I asked with a hint of skepticism. "You better not be looking to score with me or —"
"Okay, let me stop you right there." He had that frustrated look again. "I am not sexually attracted to you be any means, okay?" He shook his head slowly, always watching my face. "And, I don't sleep with strippers. And I just think women are just disgusting."
"You said women are disgusting, are you gay?" I was sad. The disappointment was clear in my voice. It would be such a waste. Such perfection.
He choked and rocked back on his heels, shock rearranging his features to an adorable grimace. "Do I look gay to you?"
"Well..." I craned my neck to the side and studied him. He didn't look gay at all but I shrugged, not answering.
He made a whizzing sound, his eyes large with horror. "I don't mean that sort of disgusting. I mean your sort of disgusting."
"My sort?" I asked, surprised at how hoarse my voice sounded. "You mean strippers?"
"No," he said curtly, and his tone was livid. His booming voice shattered the quiet house and made me jump. "I mean you trying to drug me and then trying to extort money from me, that's the typical woman's behaviour: manipulation and it's disgusting."
"Oh... you mean you have women issues." My voice was still sad. I tried to clear my throat quietly. "One woman hurts you and you view all of us the same?"
He snorted.
"Why did you hire me then?" I tried to sound indifferent. "Don't try to sell me the values crap."
"Values, let's talk about values, shall we?" he asked and sat on the bed. "Nah, maybe not. The point is... I didn't hire you, Anton did, and even if you hadn't tried to drug me, I wouldn't have required your services."
"Okay, I'll bite." I gulped. "Now ask away." My voice sounded strange.
"What's your name?"
"I told you, Rose."
"And I told you you don't look like a Rose." Roman grind his jaw and managed to hiss, "... Your real name."
I shivered, though I wasn't cold. "I'm Nuru."
"You have a last name, Nuru?"
"I'm Nuru Lynn."
"Take off that wig, Nuru." He suddenly looked up at me. "I'm being unintentionally rude today. Can I call you Nuru?"
I nodded helplessly.
"We don't have all day." He gestured with his hand for me to hurry.
I didn't even bother to question how he knew I was trying to hide my identity with fake hair and eye contacts. I pulled the black hair off and my red waves hung loosely to below my shoulders.
He looked at me oddly. "Fuck!"
"What?"
"Now it would have made sense if" — he gestured to my hair — "you'd put that on show and then tell me you're a Rose." He craned his neck to the side to study it further. "That's an unusual shade you've got Nuru. Very bright, more like a strong orange, or maybe a brownish orange? It's like fire. Wild. Alive."
I glared at the Marble black floor in surprise. "Oh." Was as complex a reply as I felt I could muster at the moment, though I felt sure another, pithy reply was just within minds thought if only I could focus on it for a second or so.
I was watching Roman study my face and then suddenly he went rigid, his face was ashen, his eyes round with horror. He was suddenly furious, the rage shinning in his eyes, making them deep blue. How anyone could be that terrifying I had no idea.
I wondered why he suddenly looked like he wanted to murder me. I looked away quickly and hid behind my hair, color drained from my face.
He stared back coldly. "How old are you, kid?"
I knew that with black hair I passed off as the twenty something year old I presented myself to be but with my real hair and no makeup, I mostly got away with eighteen and those were the select few times I was having extreme luck.
With a roll of uncertainty, I gulped. "The last year before I finish the calendar."
"Okay, allow me to rephrase that." He swept a hand through his hair messing it up further, his tone had an angry edge to it. "Rose aside. How old is Nuru?"
I sighed and glared at my hands. "I'm seventeen."
"Jesus Christ!" His pale eyes flickered to mine for just a fraction of a second, and he looked away quickly — but not quickly enough, I saw all the things he thought about me in that quick look— the hostility behind it made me lower my eyes nervously.
"Shit, what the hell are you doing here? You want to get me arrested?" His eyes were cold and he made little effort to hide his annoyance. "You know what you being here might do to my career? Why would you do something so stupid. There's an age acceptable to whore yourself around. You're just a kid. Fuck! You're lucky I'm choosing not to be upset today. Fuck. Fuck!" His fists came down on the bed repeatedly. I was suddenly scared he might choose to land them on my jaw instead.
I chanced a quick glance at his hate filled eyes and looked away quickly. "I had no choice."
"You're a kid, you should be at a sleep over at some friends house, and talking about celebrity crushes or how bad your hair is, not drugging older men, and giving yourself away like this." His tone was cutting.
I flickered a glare his way and said, "Stop judging me, you don't know jerk about me."
He closed his eyes and let out a shaky breath. "Okay, what do you want from me then, kid?"
"I want you to stop calling me kid for starters," I said. "...in case you didn't hear, I'm Nuru."
"Shouldn't you be at school or something?" He snapped. He used a tone I hated, one I was familiar with — the same tone my mother used when I'd done something wrong.