Killer Nights

Jiang Zhengkai held onto A-Jiao"s arm, and together they slowly walked out of the hospital room.  This was the first time the two of them had had any sort of actual physical contact.  Even though Jiang Zhengkai had seen A-Jiao"s naked body before, the two had never actually touched.  A-Jiao"s skin was very soft to the touch, a kind of softness that was both helpless and tender.

"Can you walk on your own?" Jiang Zhengkai asked with concern. "Should I rent a wheelchair?"

"Wheelchair?  Will the sub-bureau reimburse you for it?" A-Jiao jokingly asked Jiang Zhengkai with a wink in her eye.

"This has nothing to do with reimburs.e.m.e.nt." Jiang Zhengkai didn"t know how to answer A-Jiao.  He used his free left hand to press his hair in frustration.  She really is a strange woman.

"Then I"ll just walk," A-Jiao quietly replied. "I could use the exercise."

Her response made Jiang Zhengkai smile.  He switched the positioning of his arms to ensure better support for A-Jiao as she walked.  He moved his right hand from holding her arm to holding her right shoulder, and used his left hand to support her left shoulder.  From afar, it looked as if A-Jiao were being carried in Jiang Zhengkai"s arms, but that was not in fact the case.  To be honest, A-Jiao longed to be in Jiang Zhengkai"s arms right now, but she quickly banished the thought from her mind.  After all, she was painfully aware of the fact that she sold her body for a living.

So with the one supporting the other, the two of them slowly made their way to the hospital entrance.  "You stay right here!  I"ll go get the car," Jiang Zhengkai anxiously said to A-Jiao as he dropped her off by the main door of the inpatient wing.  He even made sure she was able to prop herself up by the doorframe before leaving.

"Go on!  I"m not going anywhere," A-Jiao said with a smile.  What a silly man, she thought sweetly to herself.  Making sure I held on to the doorframe before he left.  It"s not like I can"t stand on my own.

Jiang Zhengkai quickly pulled around to the doorway in his police cruiser.  He got out and held onto A-Jiao as they walked towards the pa.s.senger side.  "Here, get in!"

"Okay."  A-Jiao looked at the police cruiser and playfully tilted her head while asking Jiang Zhengkai, "So… do I sit in the back then?"

"Haha!" Jiang Zhengkai laughed, tickled by her response. "No, the front this time!"  he said as he pointed to the front pa.s.senger seat.

"Well, I"ve only been in the back of a police car before." A-Jiao deliberately held back her smile as she asked Jiang Zhengkai with pouted lips, "Is the front seat more comfortable than the back seat?"

Jiang Zhengkai smiled in response but otherwise said nothing.  When the two of them neared the car door, Jiang Zhengkai swiftly picked up A-Jiao with his arms, causing her to yelp in surprise.  At that moment, her face was mere inches away from his, and what she saw was the mature, rugged face of a man.  Having his face so close to hers made her cheeks unconsciously blush bright red.

"Alright, here you go!"  Jiang Zhengkai placed A-Jiao squarely into the front pa.s.senger seat.  He knew that it would have been very difficult with her injuries to squat down and get into the car by herself, so he took it upon himself to place her in the car.

"What"s your home address?" Jiang Zhengkai asked A-Jiao as he climbed into the driver’s seat of the police cruiser.

"Ju"an Estates.  It"s the housing development right across from the police station."  A-Jiao wasn"t sure if Jiang Zhengkai knew where it was, so she decided to elaborate a little further.

"Oh, that place," Jiang Zhengkai said as he turned on the car engine.  This woman has pretty good taste, living in such a high-end community like that, he thought to himself.

Jiang Zhengkai"s police cruiser very quickly arrived at their destination.  Following A-Jiao"s directions, he parked his car in a nearby parking lot.  "Okay, I live in the building"s penthouse," said A-Jiao.  Her body trembled a little, as it was obvious the ride there had tossed her around a bit inside the car.  After all, a cop car wasn"t quite the same as a luxury sedan, and it certainly wasn"t built for comfort.  Add to that the fact that Jiang Zhengkai wasn"t a professional chauffeur, or even a regular driver for that matter.  All those years of hot pursuit behind the wheel of a police cruiser meant that driving like a maniac had become second nature to him.

"Really?  Your condo looks quite nice," Jiang Zhengkai complimented A-Jiao as he saw the three-story low-rise condominium building.

"Umm… yeah," A-Jiao replied with a smile. "Oh, I also double as a housekeeper for the owner of this condo, okay?"  She originally planned to say that she and a couple of her sisters jointly leased the condo, but her quick thinking made her change her story to one that was more believable.  "The condo"s owner lives abroad now.  He used to be one of my clients," A-Jiao added.  After all, she was a prost.i.tute, so the explanation she gave was a perfectly logical one.

"Oh, I see," Jiang Zhengkai replied brusquely.  It seemed as if there was a slight trace of displeasure on his face, but that was exactly what A-Jiao was aiming for.  So you do care about me a little, don"t you?  A-Jiao secretly thought to herself.  "Well, time to get out!"  Jiang Zhengkai then grabbed A-Jiao"s arm and gently lifted her out of the car.  "Right, let"s go!" he said as he started walking up the stairs with A-Jiao in his arms.

"What are you doing?!" exclaimed A-Jiao. "Put me down right this instant!"  But despite having said that, her arms were still tightly hooked around Jiang Zhengkai"s neck, and there was no indication that she wished to loosen them anytime soon.

"Don"t worry, I can carry you all the way up," Jiang Zhengkai said to A-Jiao as he carried her to the building"s front door.

"Let me punch in the security code."  A-Jiao took one of her hands off of Jiang Zhengkai"s neck and slowly typed in the code, all the while stating what she was doing. "First I press 3-0-2.  Then I press 5-2-1-1-3-1-4.  Finally, I place my index finger on the touch screen.  Okay, the door"s open!"  It was quite obvious that she deliberately told Jiang Zhengkai how to gain access to her condo building.  As for the final step of verifying her fingerprint, she was pretty sure that as a police officer, he had access to her fingerprints.  After all, her line of work ensured that she often had brushes with the law, which meant that she had been fingerprinted multiple times by the police.

Jiang Zhengkai was just about to head for the staircase.  "No, you idiot!" A-Jiao shouted at Jiang Zhengkai while pinching his nose.  Was this the most intimate act the two of them had experienced up until this point?  She then pointed at a corner behind the staircase and said, "There"s an elevator over there."

"Oh, ok," Jiang Zhengkai replied, carrying A-Jiao over in the direction of the elevator.  This really is a cla.s.sy place, yet somehow they let a prost.i.tute live here, Jiang Zhengkai secretly thought to himself.

"Alright, that"s my home right there!"  A-Jiao pointed at the door in front of them as she and Jiang Zhengkai got off the elevator.  "Why don"t you punch in the security code for me?  It"s a bit hard to reach from where I am right now."  Obviously, she didn"t want to leave Jiang Zhengkai"s embrace.

"Haha, you don"t expect me to carry you for the rest of your life, do you?"  Jiang Zhengkai chuckled as he looked at the woman in his arms.

"Fine!" A-Jiao replied as her face turned red once again. "I"ll do it myself!"  She slipped out of Jiang Zhengkai"s embrace as her feet touched the ground once more.  Although the distance between Jiang Zhengkai"s arms and the ground was only a few feet, A-Jiao felt like she had fallen off of cloud nine.  Don"t you know who you are?  You"re just a wh.o.r.e who sells her body on the street.  He"s a cop, how could he possibly fall in love with a wh.o.r.e like you?  Wait… when did I start thinking of myself as a wh.o.r.e?  Whatever, just open the door first.

A-Jiao"s home was rather s.p.a.cious, and the interior decoration was quite elegant.  If one didn"t know that this place belonged to a prost.i.tute, it would be easy to think that a very artistically-talented family lived here.  Jiang Zhengkai just stood in the foyer and didn"t go any further.

"Come on in!  It"s been a while since I"ve been here, so it"s bit of a mess right now," A-Jiao called after Jiang Zhengkai as she slowly walked into her home.  But to Jiang Zhengkai, it seemed like this place was very well-kept.  Although A-Jiao engaged in a lowly profession, she was definitely not a lazy woman.

"Alright, I got what I came for," A-Jiao said as she came out of her bedroom. "Can you take me to the post office?"

"Okay," Jiang Zhengkai nodded.  

He didn"t ask her what she planned to do there, but A-Jiao told him anyway. "I"m going to wire my parents some money.  They"re waiting to use it."  A bright smile spread across her face.

"Alright, let"s go then!" said Jiang Zhengkai, as he walked out of the condo and waited for A-Jiao to catch up to him.

"What?  You only provide half service?" A-Jiao tilted her head and asked Jiang Zhengkai in a mischievously sarcastic tone.  She then spread out her arms and looked at him with blinking, longing eyes.

"Very well, full service it is then!"  Jiang Zhengkai nonchalantly shrugged his shoulders.  He knew what A-Jiao wanted, so he picked her up, closed the door, and proceeded downstairs.