by Tessa Vidal
As I found out almost the same week. There were no words for describing what it's like to find out your mom has a terminal illness from a detective hammering questions at you because he's investigating your brother for a robbery. The detective wasn't gentle. He was coming from a place where he assumed anybody or everybody knew something about what my brother was up to.
What did I know about my mother's illness, about the costs of her treatment? What did my brother know? How did we know about it? Who talked to us about a way to solve all our money problems? Was it my mom, was she in on it? How about Caroline and Ms. Bullard? And that old lady next door who was in and out of the Taylor trailer all day. Wasn't she in on it, wasn't it her idea? Did I know her son had once been involved in an armed robbery in West Memphis? And that lady at the post office, the one who held the things that wouldn't fit in Caroline's tiny box. Where did she fit in? On and on it went, tearing into our little lives as if they were made out of wet cardboard.
“The sooner you tell me the truth, the better it will be for everybody in your family,” the detective kept saying.
As if I knew any truth I could tell anybody. The whole town was built on secrets.
Caroline's secret, buying and selling clothes, seemed so innocent now. In my mind's eye, I could see her spotting a scrap of vintage fabric down a long table during the Canton flea market. I could see her scurry over to snatch up her prize before any of the other treasure hunters took notice. She wanted to be special. She didn't know she already was.
“Every time I think I understand how awful it must have been for you, I find out something else,” she said. “I'm really so, so sorry, Rayna. It must have been endless.”
“It wasn't your fault.” We were still rocking together, which made it easier to sound reasonable without trying to meet her eyes. “It wasn't anybody's fault. If somebody robs a casino and takes the haul over state lines, the FBI gets involved. It isn't even their fault. It's a job. Somebody's got to do it. And the casinos pay a lot of taxes. Millions every month.”
After a time, we calmed enough where I could flick off the lamp and guide her down spoon-fashion to the mattress. She was the little spoon. She needed to be. This stuff was old news to me, I'd been living with it a long time. If there was anything I blamed Caroline for, it wasn't the FBI. That was all on Ryder, and I couldn't even blame him. He had no other way to get the money needed. Nobody should say sorry for anything. Or, if anybody should be sorry, it should be me, for being so clueless.
I knew we were poor, but poor wasn't rare in Tunica County. It wasn't something you dwelled on. We never had any money, so I didn't really notice when we had even less. But Ryder knew about our mother's illness and what it would cost for treatment― hundreds of thousands of dollars. More money than my mom earned in her entire life. How could it be legal to charge such prices? To say, in effect, that somebody's mother wasn't worth saving?
Caro felt good in my arms. She needed to sleep. We both did. If only my mind would stop picking over the same stale questions.
If I'd known what Ryder knew, if I had the chance Ryder did, wouldn't I have done the same thing? Or would I have found another way?
What other way?
Win Megabucks? They wouldn't even pay the prize to an eighteen-year-old playing on a fake ID. Get a summer job under the table cutting lawns, walking dogs, watching babies? Such jobs paid below minimum wage in Tunica County.
Caro's tense shoulders wobbled. She was crying without crying, all of the sound and almost all of the motion locked inside her.
She couldn't sleep any more than I could.
“Shhh, then. Shhhh.” I began to knead those tense muscles. Not too hard at first. Her skin was silk, but the muscle underneath was stone. I slowly increased the pressure, a question in my touch. She rolled onto her belly. An answer.
We moved slowly into position― not for the pleasure of the delayed tease but because it takes time to shift away from dark thoughts of a lost past. We had more to give each other than memories of loss and darkness.
After a time, I straddled her, a knee sinking into the mattress on either side of her long thighs. All my weight went into working the hard knots out of those shoulders.
She whimpered softly. “That feels so good. Better than I deserve. I should have been there. I should have never let her send me away. I should have never stayed away.”
“You deserve every good thing, Caro. You'll believe that one day.”
After I worked my hands down her spine, I planted a series of wet, tongue-heavy kisses to make a soft snail's track of damp all the way to the dimples in the small of her back. We were focused on bodies again, on the building tension and the approaching release. Her slim hips began to rock beneath me, and I knew she was bucking her soft, damp delta into the mattress.
Good. That was what I wanted. What she needed.
Distraction.
Delight.
She twitched suddenly, pushed with both hands to sit up beneath me. There was a playfulness to the way she knocked me off, and I laughed in spite of myself.
“Oh, no, you don't, Shell Tate. Oh, no, you fucking don't. You don't take control, you don't make me lose control, we're in this thing together.”
“Mmm,” I said. “Is that a challenge?” I folded my arms over my chest and tried to look stern. Although I doubted she could see much of my expression in that luscious darkness.
“You had your turn, and you wasted it on a back rub. Now I'll show you how it's done.”
“Oh, you will, will you? Show me, then. You've got my curiosity up. How's it done, Caro? You're the expert, you show me how it's done.”
She pushed me up and over, and I let her. It was a thrill, being a living doll for Caro Ballad to play with. People saw me as a useful person. Practical. A dog walker, a dog trainer, a woman who was no-nonsense about teaching you to be your own alpha. Caro saw me another way. I wasn't merely useful or practical. I was fun. A toy.
It felt delicious to be fun.
“Legs apart.” She used her own sleek knee to enforce her decree, jabbing it flirtatiously between my thighs.
As I sprawled on my back, my arms and legs pointed to the four distant posts of the too-big bed. A hint of dawn peeped through the curtains, so I was beginning to be able to see better. Caro's pink body was still white in the dim light, but you could see a certain shine on her skin― the slick gloss of sexual sweat.
“You're going to stay where I put you for a while,” she said.
“Mmmm. I think I can do that.”
“You say that now. But I've noticed something about you, Shell. You wiggle.”
“I do not wiggle.”
“You do. You wiggle.”
Her pert bottom bounced as she hopped off the mattress to throw open the door to the largest closet I'd ever seen. Admittedly, a dog walker doesn't see much of her client's closets, so maybe all celebrities are outfitted that well. Either way, I didn't have a brain cell to spend on thinking about anything except the dimples in the small of Caro's back. She twitched her bottom from side to side, a hypnotic technique for capturing my gaze as she poked around.
What are you looking for, Caro? Dare I hope?
She twirled on her toes with a ballerina's grace to flourish the scarves she'd snatched off their padded hangers. After that, things moved faster. Caro Ballad climbed on top of me, her busy hands knotting and looping thousand-dollar scrips and scraps of designer silk. I held myself open, passive and accepting, as she devoted herself to the purpose of securing me, wrist and ankle, to the four posts of the big bed. The spread-eagle left my pussy wide open, leaving the slick of my desire exposed to her entirely.
It was a vulnerable position. A boldly sexual one.
“You like that.” Squatting on top of me, she looked directly into my eyes. “You like being open. You like being mine. I can do anything. Tease or lick. Finger or tongue.”
The sun must be up by now. I could see the green and amber flecks in those hazel eyes. My sp
read body trembled all the way down. “I do like that,” I said. “I like it very much. Take me. Any way you want me. Finger or tongue or tease or anything or nothing or everything. Just take me. Take me now.”
Chapter Eleven
Caro
This morning shouldn't be about saying sorry. It shouldn't be about sad memories of a past we couldn't change. This morning should be about pleasure too long denied. About four long scarves in four different prints bought on a whim. White cranes for luck. Pink flamingos for whimsy. Green parrots for a pirate's spirit. Butterflies in all the rainbow colors of the world.
When you buy certain designers, you don't buy a scrap of fabric. You buy a story. As I snatched up the butterfly scarf to bind sexy Shell Tate to my bed, I flashed back to its story, a whimsical one indeed. “The butterfly is the soul,” my personal shopper assured me. “Did you know that? After this life is over, our souls live on as butterflies. The Mayans believed that. The Greeks believed it too. No one stays in the underworld forever. They emerge, and they fly.”
We would emerge, and we would fly.
I promise you that, Shell. We will fly.
I'd never worn these scarves. They were too extravagant to wear, and sometimes I wondered why I bought them in the first place, although I felt a secret thrill to see them hanging on their padded hangers. They ranged from five hundred dollars for the green parrots all the way up to twelve hundred dollars for the butterflies. Outrageous if not out-and-out obscene prices, a promise that I'd finally arrived.
Imagine that. A girl from Robinsonville with money enough to buy a twelve-hundred-dollar scrap of fabric she never wore.
We will fly. We already know how.
Bondage isn't just to tease the one you bind. It's a tease for both of you. My blood burned hotter with every knot I tied. In a flash, Shell was wearing the costly scarves I'd never worn myself, a silk streamer from each limb stretching her in a sprawling X across my rumpled bed. I suspected she could flex a few strategic muscles and be out of my inexpert knots in moments, but she had no wish to escape. The pupils of her steel-blue eyes were black with lust.
My own eyes must be black with an answering lust. The insides of my thighs felt slick and shivery.
Smiling, I dragged a finger from the sweet hollow of her collarbone down to her belly button and then down below that. Her delta was trimmed into a neat triangle, the soft curls of hair conditioned with a product that smelled faintly of coconut and sea. Something healthy, I thought, something good for the environment. I tested her sensitivity by flipping my blonde hair over my face to tickle the ends against the sensitive flesh of the inner hollows of her long thighs. She twitched and kicked, or tried to kick, although the silken bonds around her ankles restricted her range of motion.
“Don't, don't, the tickles make me crazy.” She rotated her leg, trying to adjust the angle of her thighs so I couldn't tease the tender flesh inside.
Impossible, of course, when she was bound in a spread eagle.
“Be careful what you ask for.” I rubbed my hand on the knot securing her right ankle. “I could set you free with a single pull.”
She groaned.
“Say it. Tell me.”
“I can't say it. You have to make me.”
I rubbed nose, then forehead against her open thighs, coincidentally or not-so-coincidentally bobbing my chin in a strategic area of her delta. Her clit was small but hard, a clenched button already desperate for release. If I wanted to tease, I had to do it strategically. Otherwise, she'd burst and be done before I wanted it to be over. So easy, though, so tempting to grind the round of my chin into that button. So easy to trigger her and watch all those lovely ripples in her open thighs.
Not yet, not so soon.
I needed to see her hunger. The arch of her back, the way she yanked arms and legs against the bedpost. The way she flexed the muscles of her ass to lift herself higher, ever higher. There's something about reined-in hunger that awakens my hunger, and so I sat back on my haunches between her open knees, the better to watch her writhe.
I can make you beg with a look.
I can make you want it so bad.
Her hips lifted, her back arched. “Please. You can see how much I need it. I want to feel your tongue again. I love the way the walls of my pussy grab it hard to pull it deeper.”
Imagine how much I love it.
But I couldn't speak. Couldn't reply. I was already kissing and licking all over her open nudity again. This was mine, all mine. How was it possible that I'd lived without this for all these lonely years? There were other women, of course there were, I had no reason to believe Rayna would ever speak to me again, but they left me cold, and they called me aloof. Arrogant. Or worse.
“You're so beautiful like this,” she said. “Naked. Graceful. Your mouth everywhere.”
I climbed on top of her, twisting my agile body so I could ride her right thigh like a saddle at the same time I licked and massaged her sensitive boobs. Small, firm, all-natural, she was responsive in a way a lot of women in Hollywood weren't. As I rocked my waxed delta into her thigh, I positioned my clit to give myself a jolt of pressure every time I bounced forward. We could both feel the cream seeping from my depths. The speed was mine to set. I could bounce faster and more violently, and bring myself off in an instant, using Shell as my living sex doll. I did that for a minute or two, then pulled myself back from the brink.
“You fucking tease.” But she sounded happy about it.
Time passed, but how much time I never knew. Time didn't matter. What did matter was the easy way I shifted position, scrambling over her captive form so I could bend a probing knee against her wide-open pussy. She was dripping wet by this point, and soon my knee was too. I had a special trick for using it to rub all around a woman's mound, sometimes putting the pressure just above or below the clitty, but often teasing the entire area. It was a form of massage that left her desperate for completion.
“I'm begging you. You tease. I'm begging. You hear me begging.”
Still on my knees, I scooted back again. The sudden rush of nothing between her legs was a torture to Shell.
“Please! Please!”
“You're saying please more often. I like that. I like it a lot.”
“Oh, fuck, just please.”
At last, I curled two fingers into her folds and began to glide as slowly as humanly possible into her quivery hole. She was slick with the need I'd created, and my fingers went deeper faster than I'd planned, almost like they were barreling down a slide. I added a third finger, and her greedy, grasping flesh finally began to offer some resistance. Small semi-convulsive shudders caused her inner walls to clutch eagerly at my digits.
“Oooh. Is that a hot spot? Mmmm.” The pads of my fingers rotated. “Oh, yes, I do believe it is.”
“You're evil. Devious. Heartless!”
“I'm going to make you come. On my schedule, not yours.”
“Now. Please. Now.”
We were both wet and sweaty. My nose tickled with some woodsy pheromone I knew came from deep inside of Shell. My wet fingers moved faster, and her inner walls clenched harder. I pressed my other hand against her clitoris, which was pulsing faster and faster. Talk about an elevated heart rate. I removed my hand and flipped the ends of my hair over again to tickle that spot with another waterfall of blonde. Her pelvis was punching up and down, her bones working visibly in the flesh. Could she come like that, or would she hover forever on the verge?
My fingers worked faster to counterbalance the teasing tickle of my hair. A certain spot inside of her felt... different. I'm not sure how. More swollen, more sensitive? If I pressed too hard, she twitched with near-panic. If I gave her no more than a tickle, her panic was even worse.
“I can't, I can't, I can't hold back anymore...” Were those real tears streaming from her eyes?
As if you're the one who's holding back.
No, my sweetness, that's all my doing. After all this time, I need to see you need. I ne
ed to know you feel the things I've always felt...
Or did you think I really was a princess? No feeling for anything except luxury and the moment? An instant gratification girl?
I'll show you instant gratification...
My own juices were running down my thighs. A ticklish feeling at first, no more than a feather. Then an insistence. Soon, I would be as insane with desire as she was. It was my last moment to savor being in control.
“Please...” Her head rolled back, her eyes stared blindly at the ceiling. I doubt she saw anything anymore other than a blur. All she knew was pure sensation. “Fuck, please.”
Time to bring my tongue into play again. My fingers kept stroking in and almost out, in and almost out. My mouth lowered itself to the sweet spot immediately above her clit. I remembered that about Rayna, that her trigger was easier if you came at her indirectly. Too much pressure on the critical spot might actually slow her down. But this― the fingers stroking fast and furiously on the inside― and this― my lips sucking hungrily at a tiny but mission-critical point just above her swollen nubbin...
She went stiff all over, jerking within the scarves as if struck by lightning. Her entire body was a single bunched-up knot of tension ready for the convulsive pounce.
And then she was coming recklessly hard, her clitty fluttering violently against my mouth, her pussy sucking urgently around and around my fingers. It was an eternal tsunami of climax that went on so long I realized she'd tripped some trigger and continued into the second wave. She was experiencing a true multiple at my hands and tongue. I felt a rush of unreasonable power. Me, I did this, I had the power to make a woman like this clench, tense, and then implode.
“Please.” It was the same word, and yet we both knew her ragged voice begged for something else now. Not her own release, but for mine.
“I wonder if you can bring me off without your hands,” I said. A challenge. Or was it? I was already shaking so much with desire she probably could have brought me off by breathing heavily on my clitty.
