Bleeding Heart

by AM Hartnett

  Sorry. Say you’re sorry. Say it now.

  Her panic in her head shrieked, but she didn’t listen to it. This was bad. Really bad. And if the annoyed look on his face was any indication, a simple ‘sorry’ wasn’t going to cut it when she’d just invaded his home and been caught sifting through his personal belongings.

  Stepping away from the table, she lowered her gaze and tried to think of something to say. The only thing she could come up with was ‘I’m sorry. I’ll go out the way I came in.’

  ‘Hang on a second,’ he said as she turned, and she sighed as she stared at his feet approaching her. He grabbed her hand and held her in place, not forcefully but gently. ‘You know, I suppose I should be more upset about this than I am, but right now I’m just curious about how you got in here to begin with.’

  Her shame revealed itself in fat tears. ‘I came through the window to give you a blowjob.’

  ‘Wait, what?’ he asked, and then he cracked up.

  It wasn’t funny. She hadn’t meant to be funny, and now that he was laughing and pulling her into a hug, she was actually mad at him for laughing at her.

  She tried to wriggle away and failed. He wasn’t letting go and he hadn’t stopped laughing. Only when he started to cough did he loosen his embrace a little.

  ‘All right, so you came down here to suck my dick, and you decided to have a look around?’

  April told him she was sitting in the chair, omitting the part about masturbating, and the stacks caught her eye. ‘I couldn’t help it. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to hide,’ he said gently, ‘and the part of your plan that involved getting me worked up was fucking spectacular.’

  ‘But this is so private.’

  ‘Yeah, in a way.’ He stepped away and turned to his piles. ‘I wouldn’t have shown it to you on my own. I hid everything back in the closet when I thought I might have you down here the other night, so it wouldn’t be in your face.’

  He reached into the plastic bin and picked up one of the photos between two fingers. She couldn’t read his face as he looked at the younger version of himself, but he smiled as he held the picture up. It was the one by the flower bed.

  ‘That’s my wife, but I guess you figured that out.’

  April wiped her tears away and returned his smile. ‘Yeah. I did. She’s got a nice smile.’

  ‘Yeah, she does. Bossy as hell, too. I’m pretty sure she was ordering me down to the garden centre to get her more dirt. I don’t let many people push me around, but with Rita it’s just easier to let her have her way.’ He sucked in a quick breath as he looked back down at the picture, then gave her a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. ‘Was easier. I’ve got to work on that.’

  He slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer as he dropped the photo back into the bin.

  ‘What are you doing with all these?’ she asked quietly, though unsure if she should.

  ‘Sorting, to start. Then I’m putting them all on the computer like she wanted to do, though if I’d known how much goddamn time it would take and how many pictures there were, I would have just left them in the closet.’

  April sniffed. ‘It’s a big job.’

  ‘Bigger than I thought. Hey, stop with the crying. I don’t do well with crying women.’

  He hugged her closer, and April welled up again. ‘I’m really sorry. I had no right to be in here snooping around.’

  ‘Tell you what: why don’t you leave your window open the next time you go out and I’ll go snooping around your drawers.’

  ‘You’ve already seen what’s in my drawers.’

  ‘I feel like I need a second look. You know, to even the score.’

  His tone was naughty, but his embrace offered a gentle comfort. It was ludicrous: she was in the wrong, and he was comforting her over something so deeply personal to him.

  ‘You know how to work one of those?’ he asked, and gestured towards the desk in the living room where a large printer was unboxed but obviously not hooked up to anything.

  ‘I should.’

  ‘Good, because I haven’t got a fucking clue.’ He let her loose, save for her hand, and pulled her to the desk. ‘Says it’s wireless, but when I look at the instructions all I see is some kind of exorcism ritual.’

  April had the impression that, in his quiet way, he was letting her make up to him by helping with the printer, or maybe distracting her from the sad purpose of those piles.

  He found the printer handbook and then ordered a pizza while she read through it. In an hour’s time, they had both eaten their fill and she had gotten the printer talking to his computer, and then they went onto the fire escape with two old throw pillows and a six-pack.

  ‘Feel better?’ he asked, pulling her closer.

  ‘I wish you’d stop acting like I didn’t do anything wrong,’ she mumbled. She took a slurp, then rested her cheek against his shoulder.

  ‘Too bad, because that’s what I’m going to do.’ His laugh rumbled right through her. ‘How many did you look at?’

  ‘Only a few. The ones in the bin, and another one from your wedding day.’

  ‘What did you think when you got a look at me when I was your age?’

  ‘You were younger than I am, weren’t you?’

  ‘About the same as you.’

  ‘You were pretty hot, and I’m guessing a little wild. What happened to your eye? She find out you got a little too crazy at your bachelor party?’

  ‘It would have made her really happy that this was the conclusion you came to. No, actually, I got that from her old boyfriend. Neither of us did the big last hurrah before we got married, we just went to the bar for drinks with friends. Next thing I know, I’ve been flattened and she’s beating the piss out of him with her purse. We got married the next day. Christ, did Dad ever think that was funny.’

  April glanced up. ‘You never mentioned your folks before.’

  ‘They’re both gone. My mom went when I was fourteen, and Dad went about five years ago. Let me tell you, with the hell I put him through, he was the happiest man alive when I got married and became someone else’s problem.’

  ‘Were you that bad?’

  ‘Christ, yes.’ He paused to take a drink, but laughed before he could do so. ‘When I was fifteen, I had this huge party. Every one of my friends who came by must have brought five others, and then those five brought five of their own. Cops were called. Shit was broken. We even made the news.’

  ‘For a party?’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t my house I had the party in. A kid in my class was talking about how his family was going to Florida for two weeks, so…’

  April snorted. ‘Did you get arrested?’

  ‘No, the cops couldn’t figure out who the ringleader was, so we all got a warning. My Dad knew, though, and he grounded my ass for two months. Told me I was lucky I hadn’t been born twenty years earlier because he would have beaten me black and blue. Then there was the time I took his snow-plough out for a ride. Rode right past a cop car and waved, and they waved back.’

  ‘How did you not end up in prison?’

  ‘I met Rita. She told me if I ended up in prison on her, she’d poke a hole in the rubber one night and that would fix me for eighteen years. I wouldn’t be able to afford to have any fun.’

  Sucking on the edge of her can, April debated whether she should ask what was on her mind before speaking. ‘How come you never had kids?’

  ‘It never happened and we never tried. We were happy to go from one day to the next with just the two of us.’ He gave her a nudge. ‘Your turn again. Tell me something about you.’

  ‘Like what?’ she asked, and hoped he didn’t ask her if she wanted kids.

  ‘What about your folks? You seem like you came from a two-point-five-kids kind of family.’

  She groaned. ‘God, I wish. My parents divorced when I was ten, so it was just me and my mom.’

  ‘What happened to your dad?’

  �
��He’s still around. He’s the principal of a school in some fly-in community up north, so I only see him every few months when he comes down to visit.’ She set her drink aside, then with a sigh settled into his warm arms. ‘It’s better that he’s away. Back when he was living here, it was always so much drama when he’d come and pick me up for visits. Not him, my mother. She’s bitter, to say the least.’

  ‘Did he meet someone else?’

  ‘No, and it didn’t make any difference. He left her, and that was enough. First came the depression, then came the anger, and then came the constant bitchiness. Towards him, that is. She just smothered the hell out of me.’

  ‘How did you manage to escape?’ he asked, hot breath tickling her temple.

  ‘Barely. When I told her I was moving, she didn’t speak to me for three days. Then she comes along with her chequebook, hands me a blank one and tells me to buy out my lease.’

  ‘Jesus, she really didn’t want you to go. I would have had to charge you almost three grand.’

  ‘She would have paid for the full year if it meant keeping me home.’

  April closed her eyes. It was embarrassing to talk about how much her mother had tried to baby her, but she felt comfortable with him. Besides, he had opened up to her.

  ‘I feel bad for her,’ she went on quietly, ‘but whether I went now or when I was forty, she’d still be the same. She’d still expect someone to be there to take care of her. I go and visit her on my way home from work, but I can’t bring myself to stay more than fifteen minutes. She’s really good at laying on the guilt. She says to me, “Thanks for stopping by,” like I hadn’t lived there for twenty years. God, I must sound like such a whiner.’

  ‘No, it’s good. It explains why you’re so fierce.’

  She tittered. ‘Fierce. That is the last thing I’d call myself, especially on a day when you saw me crying.’

  He vibrated against her back as he laughed. ‘You had me by the balls the first time we met, didn’t you? If I was some kind of slum lord, I’d be worried you were going to report me. And the way you chased that asshole on the fire escape. That guy ran.’

  ‘I think that guy ran because you came out. You’re pretty intimidating when you’re not being a complete teddy bear.’

  ‘Is that what I am?’ Seth put his beer alongside hers, then tugged the straps at her shoulders. ‘Was I a teddy bear when I had you bent over my knee?’

  ‘Hmmm, not so much.’ She shrugged, then giggled as he began undressing her. ‘It’s still light out. Someone’s going to come down that alley and see.’

  ‘Care to revisit the cage?’

  Tempting, but she didn’t want anything too adventurous that night. She just wanted him in her bed, pressing down on her and whispering dirty things as he filled her again and again until she couldn’t breathe.

  ‘Let’s go to my place.’

  ‘I like that better,’ he said.

  ‘Do you really?’

  ‘Oh, hell, yeah. You make different sounds when you’re in your bed.’

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘Yes, you do, and you move differently – like for a minute you think about putting up a bit of a tussle because it’s your bed, but you’re having too much fun to really want me to do you any differently.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s true.’

  Seth groaned as they scrambled to get up from the hard metal stairs. ‘Believe it or not, it’s true. In my bed, you like it a little rougher. My hand in your hair, giving you a slap on the ass to make sure you’re keeping up.’

  ‘That’s because you’re so bossy.’

  ‘Nah, that’s not it.’

  April stood chest to chest with him, but there was no way she was going to bully Seth when there was so much of him and so little of her. Still, she stood on her toes and planted her hands on her hips.

  ‘Then what?’

  He pushed forward a little, his mouth twitching into a smile as he played her game.

  ‘You’re out of your comfort level when you first get in there. You’re just a little off balance surrounded by my clutter and disorder. You think about your pretty little bedroom with the throw pillows and the baskets all over the place and you go right off your axis.’

  ‘You make me sound like some sort of mental patient.’

  ‘And then,’ he went on, bowing down as he lowered his voice, ‘it hits you how sordid it is to fuck someone like me in my unmade bed and with clothes hanging off the footboard, like it’s some quickie you’ve just got to have. That hits you and you get this hungry look, and by the time I’ve got you stripped down and on the bed, and you’re moaning while I’m teasing you, you’re not even you any more. You’re just some woman who wants a fuck so hard you won’t even be able to see straight after you come.’

  April’s heart beat so fast it took her breath. God, she loved the way he talked, not just the words but the rumble of his voice when he said it. She pressed her thighs together and it was no surprise to find that she had become slippery while he spoke.

  ‘Why don’t we save my place for later?’ she whispered, keenly aware of the excited shake to her voice. ‘I believe I’m going to need to think a little bit about that last part.’

  ‘You’re not going to be thinking for very long once we’re in there.’

  He took the hand she offered and, for now, let her lead him back into his apartment, past the empty pizza boxes and Coke cans, past the discarded packaging from the printer and those neat stacks on the dining-room table.

  He was right. Once they were inside and her dress fell, she didn’t think about any of that, not with him pushing her down onto her hands and knees the way he wanted her.

  ‘As much as I applaud your scheme to tempt me to do wicked, wicked things to you, I’m feeling a little robbed,’ he said.

  April arched her back as he shoved her skirt up to her waist. ‘I don’t see how.’

  ‘This part, when I get to pull down your panties nice and slow and just leave you waiting.’

  April puckered her lips and kept in the oooh that tickled her tongue. She had to admit it, she loved this part too, showing him her wet pussy while he undressed. She bowed down and thrust her ass up, and the clink of his belt coming undone sent a sinful thrill through her.

  She endured the whisper of his clothes sliding off his body, but couldn’t keep it in when he rubbed his fingers along her crack. She moaned and pressed her face into his sheet.

  He was right. The unmade bed, the chaos and the comfort of his most private space did things to her. She was ready for a fuck. He knelt on the bed and the mattress sagged. She thrust her ass up.

  His cock replaced his fingers, the thick head moving through the lips. She closed her fingers around the bedding and waited to be opened up, but Seth had his ways and he intended to have them now. He teased her, pushing just enough to cork her, but gave her no more.

  ‘More,’ she murmured, thinking he wanted her to beg, but he just went on as though he hadn’t heard her.

  One hand on her ass, he smeared her juices from the bottom of her hot cunt to where her clit had fattened out of its sheath, then back up to penetrate her once more.

  His silence smothered her. She tried to take deep breaths but each stopped quickly at the back of her throat. Her thighs started to tremble, but she wouldn’t waste what little air she could get on asking for more when she knew he wouldn’t give in. The moment was meant to torment her, and as he pushed in a little deeper she whimpered into his bedding.

  On and on it went, until at last he gripped her hips. He went deep, every inch, and held her in place as his cock throbbed inside. Her body immediately hungry and ready, she pushed up into her hands.

  It was a hard fuck. He pushed and pulled, slamming against her with such force she felt the sting of his belly against her ass as keenly as she had felt his palm earlier that week. Though she tried to keep in place, each thrust propelled her forward. Each time he dragged her back and took her harder.

  ‘Co
me ’ere, sweetheart.’ He pushed forward, bullying her around the bed until she faced the headboard, then dragged her up onto his lap so she sheathed around him. He planted one hand on her shoulder and growled, ‘Grab on.’

  April gripped the top of the headboard and gasped as he took a handful of hair. The action loosened her tongue, and as he resumed his savage possession she cried out.

  Given the freedom to move with him, she matched his rhythm. The bed creaked and groaned along with her. She held as tight to the headboard as he did to her hair, the sting in her scalp turning her feral.

  She seemed to swell inside as her climax raged forward, and as it burst she found herself wriggling to escape it. Seth held tight, cinching his arm around her waist.

  ‘Don’t let go yet,’ he hissed into her hair as he slowed. ‘I’m not done with you yet, baby. I’m not even close.’

  And so it began again, slow but firm strokes that kept those glorious aftershocks coming. She couldn’t stop shaking now as she rested her head against the headboard, and Seth’s fingers softened and splayed in her hair.

  He cooed to her as he once again built his momentum, but she didn’t hear a word. The deep timbre of his voice skipped up and down her spine, as powerful as the jut of his hips.

  April held on and whimpered. In moments he was handling her as roughly as before, and her body responded with the same ravenous heat. This time, when she quaked through her orgasm, Seth didn’t stop. He fucked her as hard as ever as she trembled in his clutches, until he went balls deep and held her tight against him as she milked one hot spurt after another from him.

  ‘You’re right, I do like fucking in your bed,’ she conceded breathlessly as he rested heavy against her.

  Seth chuckled from between her shoulder blades. ‘Are we still here? I thought the earth had opened up and swallowed us about halfway through.’

  Another moment of catching their breath and they separated to flop across his mattress.

  ‘It’s official. I’m becoming that neighbour. One of these nights I’m going to get a noise complaint on myself.’