by Poppet
I hold his face like he held mine, it's so angular compared to my own, his body heat is almost too much, it scalds into my arm where I press against his chest, forced to lean in because he relaxes a bit and makes me rest on him to reach his mouth with mine, and I sob, just once, sucking in my anguish, tears gushing from my eyes, but I plow on, pressing my lips to his, sucking in his bottom one, running my tongue over it, finding it slippery and smooth. He holds my head and opens his mouth, delving his tongue over mine, stroking it, and I try do it in return.
He rolls me, his body locking mine to the bed, and this time he applies pressure, sucking and kissing and tongue caressing over and over until I'm breathless and my head spins. When he pulls away I feel weak, like I have no energy to sit up, my lips tingling, tasting his coffee, his clean shave smell clinging to my nose. It's all I can smell. I pant for air, still feeling the imprint of his nose next to mine, his chin pressing into mine.
“That's what it's supposed to be like, Polina. What do you think?” His hand trembles slightly when he scrubs his scalp with fingers, sitting up and swallowing, looking away from me and out the window at the trees and greenery of the park.
“It makes me breathless,” I whisper, touching my lips, wondering why they feel prickly like a bee stung them.
“It also made your nipples hard,” he states, glancing at me. “It means you liked it. You didn't vomit, but you did cry.”
“I was afraid, Mikah. This is scary for me. It takes so much bravery.”
Laughing, he shakes his head, “Wrong, what it took was trust. Giving trust is the part you find challenging.”
“What does put it to bed mean?” I ask, sitting up, holding my head because the world spins like a dancer it is so silly with that kiss.
“It means once we discuss it, then it is done, we don't bring up that issue again.”
“So we don't talk about my switchblade no more?”
He shakes his head, “Never again.”
I reach my hand into his, leaning against him because my head still tilts the room. “Did I do good?”
“Da.” Mikah exhales long and heavy, then leans forward, resting his chin in his hand, elbow on knee, looking back at me. “We need to teach you pleasure, Polina. We have to get you over these irrational fears you have.”
“Pleasure?” I frown. “The kiss was nice. Papa put his tongue so far in I gagged, maybe because I was too little?”
“Do you only know the word, nice?” he says, arching an eyebrow.
“What must I say instead of nice? It made my lips tingle, my head get drunk. It wasn't awful, but it was strange. I'm breathless. Like your kiss stole my air.”
He bursts out laughing, shaking his head, his mouth stuck in an amused smile. “Oh baby girl, you are clueless. That is lust, it's called desire. That's why people do it, because it feels good, it makes the body react, like your nipples did. It makes your skin more sensitive and makes you wet between the legs. It's natural, kisa. It's normal and sexy and right.”
Shocked and embarrassed, I look down, “Oh.”
He stands, dusting his hands on his jeans, then offers me a hand to help me up. “Tonight I'll teach you pleasure, I'll pick up supplies on my rounds. But now we must go, it's time to return you to natural. Thank you for the breakfast, you take good care of me.”
I let him help me up, appreciating the arm around my shoulders when we walk to the lounge, him giving me support while I feel so weird and weak. When he pockets his smokes, wallet, gun, and phone, I ask, “Am I always supposed to kiss you like that? When I kiss you better after I hurt your feelings?”
He clears his throat so hard it sounds like he's choking, not looking at me when he picks up his keys and moves to open the front door. “After you learn pleasure, otherwise I'm afraid I'll need you to go further than a kiss.”
“Sex?” I gasp, appalled.
He stops with his hand on the door handle, twisting to face me. Reaching some kind of decision he drops his hand from the door and strides back to me, grabbing my hand and pressing it to his zipper. “This is normal. It's not sick or fucked up. You're a woman, not a little girl. My reaction is healthy and normal, just like your nipples getting hard and you getting hot and breathless is normal. There are many ways to pleasure each other without me penetrating you inside where Oleg hurt you. I'm trying to be patient, Polina, I want to teach you. Just … don't always assume I'm a sadist needing to hurt you. If I was that kind of man I'd just rape you, but I didn't. I told you we are friends, we are building trust. You are mine now, you will always be mine. You will see me in every way and I will see you in every way, and like the kiss, it won't hurt you. I swear to my father it won't hurt you. If I want to hurt you I'll strap you down and whip you, I won't use my dick to do it.”
“Will you whip me?” I gasp, eyes wide, blood gonging in my head.
“Only if you disobey me. When we left your place yesterday I asked you not to give me a reason to hurt you, because I don't want to punish you Polina. Now let's go. Someone will hurt today, he will meet his judgment.”
“Who?” I ask, pulled out the door with him and marched to the car.
“Foma.”
“Why?” I cry, struggling when he wants me to get in the car.
“Because he bought you, that's why! When he found you he already had a photo to identify you by! He's not who you think he is, he was Oleg's client in America, the container at the docks was his, and he didn't have to go far to find you. Today that fucker is going to bleed all the tears you cried.”
“Oh my god, Mikah!”
He uses my shock against me, getting me in the car and slamming the door, striding around to his side, getting in and starting the car with such anger the engine screams.
At the stop sign he pauses, reaching out to hold the ends of my long hair, his tone deadly and flat. “He made you dye your hair, parade your tits, and put on whore makeup. He had you dancing and stripping at his father's club. He was training you, Polina. He was gonna be your pimp, you were never free.”
“God told you this?” I whisper.
“He did. Now let's go unwhore you and make you look the way your maker intended. I told you I don't want a whore. You know you can trust me, you even know you like it a little. Trust me to take care of Foma too. After today he won't be bothering you anymore.”
“Where will I be?” I ask, watching him drive us past the Cheesecake Factory.
“At home. I'll get you DVD's too. Just stay locked inside until I get home. Alright, angel? Trust me, learn to do it as default. I treat you like a queen, better than any of the bratva would treat you. I buy you nice things, put a little faith in me. I fucking earned it.”
“I'm sorry.” I know his feelings are hurt again, I can tell. So I lift his hand from the gear lever and kiss it, changing the subject. “What must I say, if I don't say nice?”
“Wonderful, delightful, fantastic, amazing …” he says, concentrating on the road.
“Your kiss is amazing,” I say softly, watching his face, at the hard jaw clenched in anger.
His lips deepen on the edges and he glances at me, a smile in his dead eyes. “Yes?”
Nodding, feeling shy, I look out the window. “I think I like lust.”
“Only if it's for me. If it's for anyone else it is a sin. You understand that, right?”
“There's no one else, Mikah. I don't trust no one else.”
Reaching over he holds my hand, pulling it to his leg, resting them together on his thigh. “Good. It pleases me to hear you say you trust me.”
“It was always just me, but now - like you say - I can hide behind you. It's nice. It's … um … wonderful.”
Laughing he nods, turning on the radio, humming while he drives us to a hairdresser. I've never been to one of those either. It's for rich women.
I wonder if now I'm also a rich woman?
~ Chapter 7 ~
Total paranoia
is just total awareness.
~ Charles Manson
I don't know if Mikah is my boyfriend or an instant husband, but it's still alien for me to have a man paying, making me beautiful and buying me pretty things. I have a smile because in Russian the word for boyfriend is drug, but in English that same word implies an addiction to a substance, a reality altering formula you put on your tongue or in your body to feel different, to detach from reality, and Mikah is that too. He is like a drug. It's easy to like him, a little too easy. What if I become an addict?
Is my drug my drug? Now I sound crazy. Sometimes I think I am. He is so many things, and nothing at all. My mind can't put everything in place, and I wonder again if all the trauma made me stupid, or maybe there's no excuse for it and I am just stupid.
That's what I am, a sheep. Useless without a shepherd to lead me around, to show me what to do, and without him I'd fall and break my leg and die alone because I'm just a sheep and can't make sense of my hurt, or why it cripples me and makes me see death.
After cleaning the house, using a new vacuum cleaner, a new iron, hanging all his clothes up with mine, finding a lot of my old things missing now that I have new things, I am at a loose end until he returns to tell his sheep what to do.
With him the world feels new, there is so much I don't know, even the products he uses. There are things in cupboards that are bizarre to me and I don't know what to do with them. Even the mop he bought isn't made of strings, it's flat with a microfiber cloth, like that's supposed to mean something. I am lost and afraid now.
I knew my place, I knew how to stay out of trouble, now even my home seems set up to make me fall from grace. Conflicted (I like this word), I get on my knees at the couch, folding my hands together, asking God again to keep me from trouble, to keep me safe, to forgive me of my sins so I never have to repeat them.
“And God, I'd also like to phone you. Please? I'm a good girl, I'll do what you say, but I have questions.” I cross myself and open my eyes, to see the man with winter sleet eyes watching me from the doorway.
He was so quiet I didn't hear him come back, not even his car. “Mikah,” I gasp, suddenly feeling naked and vulnerable, my stomach watery and shaky with the tectonic plates of my soul shifting with fear.
“Kisa,” he says, standing out of his slouch against the front door, his face blank again.
He makes me blind, I couldn't even read him if I ran my hands over his face, there's nothing there to feel for clues. There is no brail written with frowns, no Morse code to read with a tense tic of his jaw, just me in the dark even though it is light.
My skin screams warning at me, it squeezes my body as if shrink-wrapped tighter, clinging onto my muscles as if to warn me I should be tense. My legs are shivering when I stand too fast, waiting for him to break this fear with a smile.
“God won't hear you,” he says, as if I should know this.
“Why not?” I stammer, automatically taking a step back, my calves connecting with the coffee table.
“Women were never allowed in the temple, if they had something to tell God they had to ask their husbands to talk to God for them.”
His voice is so mellow and rich, like warm wood stained with love, polished so it catches the heart, redolent with the scent of comfort. It's at odds to the danger I sense in him. Outwardly he seems calmer than a midnight lake, his tone is smooth like the last ice setting on it at the end of winter, after the thaw which makes it mirror smooth and glossy. I remember those lakes, I remember how pretty they are, how they make you want to run and slide, but they're treacherous, they hide a cold so sharp it can kill you in minutes.
Mikah is my winter when I crave summer. Looking down at the cool sheen of the gray tile under my feet, I dare to ask, “What if a woman doesn't have a husband? Does God still ignore her? Then why do they let us in church?”
He stalks stealthily closer, his shoes making no sound, his movement unable to shift the air, like a ghost he walks through the room, just the deep pull of his aura keeps me locked to the spot as if there is a black hole right under my feet. “Polina, church is a new idea introduced by Paul. And even he said women must cover their heads in shame and hold their tongues when they are in God's house. Don't let me catch you talking to him again, or you bring shame on us both.”
“But I ask him to keep me safe so I don't repeat my sins. Are you saying I must ask you to be my priest?”
He drops a bag on the table now that he's reached me, his heat touching my skin, his breath fondling my nerves. “It's not your fault, you didn't know because the world is full of lies. Now you know. Ask me to ask Him, and if you want to confess go ahead, but keeping you safe so you don't repeat your sins, that is my calling. Don't challenge my authority on this, it won't end well.”
“I don't understand,” I whisper, cowed and unable to look up and meet the cold frost of his cloudy eyes. If you ever wake really early and look outside, you will find clouds so high up painted across the sky, they fade the blue of the sky, they hide its beauty, and his eyes are like that. Distant, cold, blue but cloudy, faded because he's so far away even though he's right next to me.
“God is busy, if I have answers he'll be angry you asked him and not me. I have a duty to keep you pure and good in his eyes, to follow his laws as he gave them long ago before there ever was a temple, long before Solomon gave him a building, instead it was something he shared in a hot desert from the shade of a tent. Understand?”
“But we're not married. I don't know why I'm here and must ask you to be my priest,” I say softly, still looking at my feet. A fool would look up now, a fool would tempt fate and die at the tearful end of a whip.
“Did Adam marry Eve?” he says, emotionless, like a robot telling me to put my pin code into the machine.
“No,” I frown. I'd never thought about that.
“Exactly. God gave Eve to Adam, and then she was his. God gave you to me, now you are mine. That's how it works, kisa.”
“Even now?” I mumble, my throat closing with a gut terror I cannot explain or fathom.
“I speak directly to him, nothing has changed. No one ever married when God put them together, they were paired like the animals. It is man who sins, who makes these bastard rules that offend God. He is angry, kisa. Very very angry. He is at war with the world because it is so full of sinners.”
“Why am I here?” I stammer, my heart thrashing the drum of my soul so hard my ears pound.
“Because I am saving you from him. I have rescued you.”
“Why?”
“You ask too many questions, kisa.” He points to the packet. “Your DVDs. Let me show you how to work the machine so you can watch them.”
Our discussion is over and my instincts bellow for me to obey, to let my questions go, to trust him or he'll get angry. I don't know much about Mikah, but I do know it would be a grave error to see him angry.
He puts the first one in, showing me how the remote works, how to do it, then showing me how to switch the big TV screen on, and where the volume is. I'm familiar with TV from Foma's office, so nod, confident I can manage this.
The screen comes to life and I turn to him, remembering my place. “Beer? Lunch? What can I get you?”
“I'm fine, I ate with the bratva. Sit and watch, practice, pay attention and copy everything the woman on this video does.”
Still on edge I sit, facing the screen with the seriousness of me taking writing lessons, only to react when I realize what it is I'm looking at. Jumping away I turn my back on it. “Mikah! No! I can't do that. It's dirty!”
He walks behind the couch to face me, leaning his arms on the back of it and bracing himself, the veins in his arms threading a network of power across his forearms when he leans in. “Listen to me, Polina. Open your ears and really listen to me. Did God give Adam a little girl to raise? Did he have to wait for Eve to grow up and become a woman? No, he didn't. He gave Adam a fully formed adult woman, who he cursed with lust so she would always crave and desire her man. He gave Adam a woman because a man doesn't want a child, he has need
s, but a woman doesn't understand those needs until she craves him with her pussy.” He points at the screen behind me, his chenille voice deep enough to rattle my heart. “Pleasure is your default setting. You need to leave the child behind now, Polina. Learn to be a woman, because I have no use for you if you choose to stay a child.”
I swallow hard, frozen with stiff muscles and cold blood.
Mikah stands straight, losing the mask when it slips, the noises from the TV embarrassing me. Slowly he unbuttons his jeans, unzips, and pulls out his divinity. Because of that God says he goes to heaven, because only men go to heaven. I know that much from Padre Antonio.
“Kisa, this is normal, this is desire, this is what it looks like. It doesn't hurt when done right. It's natural, I have needs. Now become a woman, do every single thing that DVD tells you to do. Then we shall discuss and answer questions.” Pointing to the parcel, tucking himself away, he says, “Everything you need is in that packet. I'm going out now to give you privacy, to experiment and find out how it feels to be a woman instead of a little girl. When I get back I expect to smell your lust when I walk in.”
I nod, too paralyzed to do anything else. My mind is blank with panic. He comes closer, around the couch to me, lifting my hand and placing a cell phone in it. “If I call, answer it.”
Mikah breathes closer, kissing my forehead with a spider silk softness. “A flower only smells good when it's open, kisa. I don't want the bud, I don't want the wilted petals, I want you open and filling this house with your beauty and fragrance. Understand?”
“I hope so,” I whimper, my insides so knotted and jumbled up that my heart is getting confused when it beats. It rushes and skips and it muddles my breath.
“Start dinner in two hours. When I get back at six I'd like to find beef stroganoff waiting for me on the table. Look after me, kisa. Look after me always and I will shield you from the damage of the world, and from God's very bad temper.”
It gives me bravery and I look up, into the misting eyes of blue iced over with cold. “Tell me about God. Where is he? Is he close?”
