Love or Money
Authors: Elizabeth Roderick
Love or Money
By Elizabeth Roderick
Love or Money
Copyright © 2015 by Elizabeth Roderick.
All rights reserved.
First Print Edition: January 2016
Limitless Publishing, LLC
Kailua, HI 96734
Formatting: Limitless Publishing
ISBN-13: 978-1-68058-360-1
ISBN-10: 1-68058-360-3
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
For Tanna, Whisper, and all the other tough women out there making their way in this world. Our paths and stories may be different, but there can always be a happily ever after.
Table of Contents
Marissa glanced over her shoulder to make sure the guards weren’t looking, then pulled Riel into the bathroom.
They were alone. The only sounds were those of the sink dripping water into its stainless steel basin, and the faraway buzz of an automatic door. Riel’s heart pounded as Marissa backed her up against the wall. Their hips pressed together, and their fingers intertwined.
“I wanted to give you a goodbye kiss,” Marissa said softly, pressing her soft lips to Riel’s.
Riel broke away and grinned mischievously. “I’d like more than just a kiss.” She giggled.
Riel caught Marissa’s round ass, pulling the other woman tight against her. She could feel the heat of her pussy through the thin cotton of their uniforms, and she pressed harder. A shiver ran through Riel as she felt herself get wet.
“You want something to remember me by?” Marissa asked, her brown eyes sparkling.
“Oh, yeah.” Riel kissed Marissa, running her hand down the other woman’s taut, brown belly and under her waistband, finding her hard, hot clit and rubbing it slowly. “We have to be quick,” she whispered. “They’ll be coming back from the rec yard soon.”
“Aaah,” Marissa moaned, closing her eyes. “You almost got me there already, baby.”
Riel rubbed harder, and Marissa’s hips moved against her fingers. She slipped her other hand into Marissa’s panties, making her moan again as she pushed two fingers deep inside her wet pussy.
“Riel, baby,” Marissa breathed, her body moving, her fingers twining in Riel’s cascade of wavy, black hair. “I’m gonna miss you.”
Riel brought her lips to Marissa’s, trying not to think that it might be the last time they were together like this.
Her girlfriend’s soft lips parted in a gasp as Riel fucked her faster with her fingers. Marissa’s eyes lit up and burned, and her pussy got hot and even wetter, her hips shuddering as she thrust hard against Riel’s fingers. A small noise escaped her lips that made Riel’s own clit throb.
Marissa let out a sigh and smiled, sweat dampening her smooth brow. “You want it now?” she murmured.
“Yes, Rissa. Fuck me.”
Marissa kissed her slowly, dragging her fingers along Riel’s thighs and sliding two of them into her wet pussy. Riel’s breath caught as she felt them press deep, gently stroking her inside. “Fuck me hard, Rissa.”
“You like that?” Marissa moved her fingers faster, deeper, finding just the right spot inside her. In the year and a half they’d been together, Marissa had learned all the ways to make Riel come hard.
Riel moaned. “I love it. I need it. Oh, I need it so bad.”
“Good, baby, ‘cause I love to fuck you.” Marissa pulled Riel’s shirt up and ran her firm tongue around her nipples, pounding hard with her fingers. Riel gasped and moved her hips, getting close.
She felt Marissa tense up. There were footsteps approaching. Marissa’s eyes darted to the door, and she pulled her fingers halfway out.
“Don’t stop, Rissa, please,” Riel whispered. “Oh, God, please. Make me come.”
The footsteps came closer, but Marissa took one look at Riel’s face and thrust her fingers in deep again. Deeper, again and again, until Riel moaned Marissa’s name, trembling in ecstasy.
Marissa quickly whipped her hand out of Riel’s pants just as the bathroom door opened.
Officer Cheney came in. The guard’s hard gaze flicked back and forth between Marissa and Riel as they stood frozen, watching her. A drop of sweat ran down the back of Riel’s neck.
Cheney raised her thin-plucked eyebrows. The radio on her belt beeped and hissed out a message garbled by static. Riel’s heart pounded in her throat.
“What are you two doing in here?” Cheney asked.
“Going to the bathroom, ma’am,” Marissa said, her face blank.
The guard’s eyebrows crept higher, her gaze falling on Riel. “How much longer you got, Hernandez?”
Riel’s hand darted up to wipe the sweat from her nose, but she managed to hold Cheney’s grey-green eyes evenly. “Just a wakeup. I get out tomorrow.”
Cheney tapped her stubby fingers against her belt. “I’d be careful, if I were you. Wouldn’t want to delay your release by getting in trouble.”
Riel swallowed. “No, ma’am, I wouldn’t want to do that.”
Riel thought she saw the ghost of a smile rise to the guard’s pale lips. “Get out of here, you two, if you’re done
going to the bathroom.
” She wrinkled her nose.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Marissa and Riel let out simultaneous breaths and exchanged a relieved look as they scooted out the door.
“Good thing it wasn’t Carter,” Riel murmured as they power-walked down the hall to the TV room. “We’d be in the hole for sure.”
“Psh,” Marissa said. “Cheney would have put us there too if you weren’t getting out tomorrow. Too much paperwork for no reason.” Her eyes lingered on Riel’s for a moment, and Riel’s heart twisted at the sadness in them. “I’m gonna miss you,” Marissa said.
Riel blinked back tears. “I’ll miss you too.” She tried to smile. “But you’ve only got another thirty-two months, and I’ll be waiting for you.”
Marissa’s lips twitched into a grim smirk. She looked away at the grey-green walls. “I know you will, baby.”
***
Riel had a hard time sleeping that night. She lay on her top bunk, listening to her roomie’s familiar snore. She’d been in this place fourteen months, which seemed like a lifetime. She was lucky she hadn’t gotten a longer sentence, considering the amount Isaias had her carrying when she was busted, but he’d gotten her a good lawyer.
It was hard to believe that this time tomorrow she’d be out in the wide world, able to eat and sleep whenever she wanted, go where she wanted. She thought of all the things she wanted to do on the outside—play her guitar, eat a huge plate of
carnitas
, get a pedicure, sit in the park. But when she thought of Marissa, her racing heart stumbled. And when she thought of what else was waiting for her out in the bricks, she realized that, other than the food and the pedicure, she didn’t really have much to look forward to. At least in prison she’d found someone to love, and someone to love her. Outside, there was only Isaias and friends who hadn’t even written to her.
Riel forced the pain from her mind. She had her sister, and she’d make new friends. Plus, she only had about two and a half years to wait for Marissa, and that wasn’t long, really.
She thought of the way Marissa looked when she was fucking her. The way her body moved. She thought about her tight, wet pussy, and how she would moan when Riel found her clit with her tongue. Riel’s fingers crept down inside her own panties, finding her clit and stroking it lightly. Her eyes closed, and she saw Marissa’s firm, round tits. She rubbed harder, arching her back, then slid the fingers of her other hand inside herself, thrusting them deep and hard until she came with a gasp.
The fantasy drained from her mind, leaving her to stare at the light from the hall, which splashed across the concrete ceiling. She felt empty and alone. Riel curled around her pillow and eventually drifted off to sleep.
She had a horrible dream in which they’d decided to not set her free. Instead, Isaias came to live with her in her cell. He insisted on having the top bunk, and covered the walls with posters of bald eagles, muscle cars, and vapid, naked women. When Riel tried to take them down, he caught her by the wrist and slammed her into the lockers.
Riel woke with a start as the overhead lights clicked on, the glare burning through her eyelids. Her thin mattress squeaked as she flopped over and pulled her pillow over her head, craving a few more minutes’ sleep before they called breakfast.
A jolt flew down her spine. This was the last time she’d be awoken by the dismal glare of fluorescent lights.
“It’s Riel’s last wakeup,” Nora sang gruffly from the bunk below. She pounded the bottom of Riel’s bunk with her heels, making the steel frame vibrate.
“Stop it, Nora!” Riel groaned.
Nora laughed. “Wake up, cutie pie, you’re going home!” She stopped kicking and lumbered out of her bunk with a groan. “Goddamn, I hope they don’t give me some stinky bitch for my next roomie. You’ve been real good to live with, and I’m going to miss you.”
Riel smiled, sitting up and stretching. “I’ll miss you too, Nora.”
Nora blew a raspberry as she went over to her locker. “Don’t waste time missing anything here. Go out and make yourself a new life. Be a good girl so you don’t have to come back to this shithole.”
Nora started singing “Ring of Fire” as she stripped down and put on fresh clothes. Riel couldn’t keep from glancing at the other woman’s tired rolls of dimpled flesh, her jiggling underarms and spider veins. Nora had been in this place for over twenty-seven years, serving a thirty-year sentence for armed robbery. In her early twenties, after her husband had died in a drunken car accident and left her with two babies, she’d fallen in with a petty crime ring just trying to make ends meet. She’d probably been beautiful when she’d first gotten to prison, but now her beauty was long gone. She’d be released a used-up old woman, long forgotten by those she’d left behind.
Riel sighed, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes.
Make yourself a new life.
She had to try, or she’d end up like Nora, or worse.
She swung her legs over the edge of the mattress, clambered down the steel ladder, and got dressed for the last time in her prison blues.
She met Marissa in the lineup, waiting to be taken to the dining hall. Marissa had worn her hair the way Riel liked it, not straightened and tamed with clips and ponytails, but allowed to be itself, standing out big and black and frizzy in a soft halo around her head. She gave Riel a sad smile as she walked up, and they clasped hands briefly when the guards weren’t looking.
“Hey, baby,” Marissa murmured with a slight smile. Her gaze moved away from Riel’s and wandered unseeingly over the heads of the other women in line. She looked like she’d been crying.
“You okay, Rissa?”
“I’m fine.”
Riel’s heart clenched.
The guards took them out across the yard to the dining hall. It had been raining for weeks, but the clouds had cleared away in the night, and it looked like it would be a sunny day. The sky was pink and orange, and the early spring air was crisp and dewy. Sheets of mist swirled around the tall pines, which rose up beyond the dully gleaming loops of razor wire. Pretty soon Riel would be on the other side of that fence with those trees, and the realization sent a searing wave of adrenaline from her scalp to her toes.
Riel and Marissa got their breakfasts and sat together at one of the cafeteria tables, where some of their friends sat with them. Marissa stirred her spoon round and round in her Cream of Wheat, her eyes dull and distant. Neither she nor Riel spoke. The other women at the table chattered, filling their silence.
“I wish I was getting out today,” a woman named Orla said with a wry grin at Riel. “I’d head straight to my favorite restaurant, get myself a huge plate of fried chicken and okra.”
“Shit, but they ain’t never gonna let you out, Orla, and it’s probably a good thing.”
They all laughed, except for Riel and Marissa.
After breakfast they headed back to their unit, Marissa still slump-shouldered and silent. Riel chewed on the inside of her cheek, trying to think of something to say—the magic words that would make her girlfriend feel better, that would fix everything.
But she still hadn’t thought of anything when a guard approached the group, looking at his clipboard. “Gabriella Hernandez?”
Riel looked up, startled. “Yeah?”
“Come with me. Time to process your release.”
Riel stood, gaping. “What, already?”
The other women looked over at her.
“Bye-bye, Riel,” a girl named Lora said, rolling her eyes.
“They letting Riel out,” a woman named Beatrice said with a smile. “Watch out, world.”
Nora laughed and patted Riel on the back. “Good luck, honey. You be good out there.”
Marissa stood frozen and wide-eyed. Riel stepped toward her, tears springing to her eyes. Marissa took her hand and quickly squeezed it once, smiling stiffly. “Go on, baby,” she said. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” Riel said, tears spilling over.
She turned and followed the guard, looking back once as they headed toward administration. Her last glimpse of Marissa was of her girlfriend hiding her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking.