Rosy Ridge was a war zone. It was Baghdad, it was Bosnia, it was Dresden after the firebombing. Or at least that’s how it looked to Madison Adams.
As she walked the dirty streets of the town she had technically called home for the last 7 months, the freshman got her first real look at urban poverty. She saw the broken windows and the abandoned cars. And above all, she saw the people. Black people.
These black people--almost all of them men--sat on the street or on stoops the way she and her friends sat on the grass of the quad. It seemed that every block had its group of young black men doing nothing but talking and drinking and staring at her.
She got a lot of stares, and Madison wished she had worn something different. Her tight navy skirt revealed far too much of her thighs, and while she was typically proud to show off her generous cleavage, today she wished she hadn’t worn a low-cut tank top. The occasional catcall didn’t bother her, but those stares…Madison shivered in fear despite the warmth of the day.
But at the same time, Madison also felt something else. After spending the day imagining wild sex with a strong black man, the naked hunger in the way these men looked at her body was making her hot even as it terrified her. Some secret voice inside her whispered that maybe these feelings were really the same thing, but Madison refused to think about that right now.
So it was with a feeling of mingled relief and disappointment that Madison finally spotted the liquor store just ahead of her, her temporary shelter from the staring eyes on the street.
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