Salt

by Mara White

  Chapter 15

  Tiago

  Tiago wasn’t sure he could tear her clothes off fast enough. Although he remembered her body from the first time, now he wanted to possess it. He wanted to insert himself into her life, fuck away Eric, the snotty parents, the money and privilege, make nothing matter besides himself. He threw her onto the bed in her bra and jeans as he undid his belt; she sat up, eyes at half-mast, and helped him out of his pants. He reached around behind her and undid her bra. She laid back on the bed and unbuttoned her pants. Tiago tore them down, taking her panties along for the ride. Salana was naked, hair spread out on the comforter. He took in her beauty; it devastated him and he began to stroke himself. Just staring at her was like taking an ax to the chest. Cleaving it open and gutting him. Salt was better than a centerfold.

  It wouldn’t take much to bring him to orgasm. Tiago knocked her legs apart with his own and lowered himself onto the expanse of her soft body. He felt dark and hard and masculine in contrast to her softness. Salana was strong, smart and independent, with runner’s legs and persistence to match. But Tiago perceived something else in her that she kept hidden and which likely went unnoticed to others. Salana liked to be babied and she liked to give up the control she’d wielded tightly her whole life.

  He slapped her hip hard, leaned down and sucked her pink nipple into his mouth. Her head fell back, and Tiago yanked her hair into his fist.

  “Turn the fuck over, Salt.” She flipped and rotated her hips into the mattress. Tiago pressed his erection into the cleft of her ass. He lowered himself, biceps bulging along the expanse of her body. Pushed her knees apart again and covered her sex with his hand. With his other hand, Tiago pushed her hair to one side and gently bit the back of her neck. She was wet and still rotating her hips, rubbing up against his fingertips and down into the bed. He sucked the soft skin on her neck to mark her. Her scent was light, like talc and fresh flowers; he wanted her to smell like sex.

  “I’m off my birth control,” she said, muffled into the pillow. A purple hickey stained her pale skin and Tiago bit and sucked her again.

  “I’ll pull out,” he said gruffly, his cock already leaking pre-cum at the tip that dripped onto her ass. He gripped his shaft and dragged the head through her folds making her hips rise involuntarily. He shoved her back down and playfully smacked her ass hard enough to make her flinch. “I’ll come on your body, Salt. You tell me where. You can lick it off if you want.”

  She groaned and rotated her hips again. Tiago pushed her down, pinned her still and slid his thick cock into her pulsating flesh. “Be a good girl, Salt. I’ll tell you when you’re ready to come.”

  SALANA

  Desire was a blanket of want and uncertainty that wrapped around her heart. Santiago felt like the missing ingredient, the chemical change she’d been waiting for. His penis was thick and engorged with lust. Salana had to breathe deeply to allow her muscles to open and accommodate his size. The longing was so deep in her she felt it all the way from her cervix to the base of her skull. Afraid she’d scream at the intensity of the urge, she clenched her jaw tightly to compensate.

  The confidence he had in his body brought her confidence in her own. Sex with him, just like she remembered that one night in his apartment, forced her to be present and mindful. Santiago didn’t allow space for awkwardness or being detached. She accepted his touch the moment it happened and he wouldn’t let her hold back. Other lovers had been boring or void of emotion; she’d had to fantasize about being elsewhere or imagine being with someone else. With Santiago, Salana felt fully grounded in her body. With him, she wasn’t allowed to go anywhere.

  TIAGO

  He slid his palm in between the mattress and her pussy, applied gentle pressure on her clit with his palm, without even moving it. It was Salana who rubbed into it and used his hand to come. He crashed his hips into hers, staring down the expanse of her back, watching the flesh on her ass bounce with the contact. He leaned down and gripped the back of her neck as hard as he could. When Salana came she released a wave of emotion that crashed over Tiago. It was as if he were feeling both the darkest and lightest parts of her. The attraction between the two of them was a haywire compass. He didn’t know which way was up or down, but the madness of it drove him insane and one way to exorcise it was to fuck it out of both of them.

  He wondered what would happen with so much energy between the two. Would they fight like they fucked? Tiago wanted both to hurt her and to love her. Destroy her and then put her back together again with great affection. He wanted to never let anyone else look at her. Or exploit her and watch while someone else fucked her, then kill that person in front of her.

  His thoughts were so fucked up and overwhelming, he’d be terrified to share them. But he couldn’t stop the flow of feeling and ideas that seemed to flood his brain along with the physical sensation of finally being with her.

  “I want to come in your mouth, Salt,” was all he could manage.

  She rolled away from him obediently and sat up on her knees. He stood and jerked off while she tipped her head back and opened her mouth. When he came on her tongue, the release was so intense that his stomach muscles clenched involuntarily until they hurt. He spilled his seed into her mouth and she swallowed and sucked, massaged him with her tongue until he shivered.

  “I can die now,” he said to the ceiling.

  “Please don’t.”

  They made love again, this time with Salana on top.

  Their fingers were interwoven and when she moved them up the bed, she didn’t let go of him so that his arms followed hers like a post-coital swim in the ocean. He distinctly remembered this feeling from before, not wanting to pull out and let go, refusing to separate his body from hers. A dichotomy in Salana was ever-present and scared him. She was both good and evil, whore and virgin, absolutely wrong, but very right for him. He bit her neck again when she shifted so as to roll him off. He was the big cat and she the frozen rabbit.

  “I can’t let you go yet,” he said into the tangled mess of her hair. She nodded like she understood and released the tension in her butt muscles, the tightness in her hands.

  “I’ll never be good enough. Smart enough. Have enough money. Your parents would hate me and it’d make them hate you too. I’d ruin your fucking life, Salt. Whatever picture you always had, it’d be fucking different with me, and probably not in a good way,” he confessed into her neck, her sweaty hairline, but not to her face.

  She choked out a sob and the emotion rolled off of her in tidal waves.

  He sucked on her warm neck again, pulling the blood to the surface. She trembled like it hurt, but didn’t flinch; she said nothing. His grip on her fingers tightened to aggression, but it was heated passion, not violence, because love didn’t hold any brutality inside him. The bruises he gave were small acts of mercy compared to what he wanted to do to her.

  “I don’t even know what I’m asking, but I want you to say yes. ‘Cause I can’t stand the idea of you giving this to anyone else. I swear to fucking God you’re the only person who can make me feel like this. And I don’t want to lose it even though we’re so different.” He still spoke into a secret spot where she couldn’t see him, but she could feel him all over every inch of her body.

  SALANA

  Salana was crying again. Of course love was blind, but its judgment was also way off. The obstacles they’d have to overcome if there were to be commitment between them were too exhausting to think about. She would be embarrassed to be seen with him in front of her peers. But right now she questioned whether she even liked or cared about her friends. Were they really her friends if they judged the person she loved? Nothing, in fact, seemed more important than their union.

  “You can’t be a drug dealer,” she blurted out, her censorship turned off after sex.

  “You can’t be a doctor,” he clapped back. Tiago released one hand and moved her hair, stuck his tongue in her ear. His dick was getting hard again nestled between her butt
cheeks. He wouldn’t let her go until she agreed to fall all the way in love with him. He wanted it all, even the parts that hurt his feelings.

  “I broke up with Eric because I wanted to go away. Join Doctors Without Borders. Make a difference. Help people. He thought it was stupid. A waste of time and money.”

  He pressed his erection into her backside and Salana struggled to flip over, to be able to look at him.

  “I thought to myself, what kind of partner can he be if he shoots down my dreams and dismisses things that are so important to me?” Salana was doing it again, like she had with the teenage pregnancy. Unloading on Tiago because he felt safe, he was an anomaly. Santiago would appear dangerous to anyone else, but to Salana he was an oasis, the one star that could shine through the layers of darkness. But put him in a line-up next to Eric or Julian and Tiago would take the fall, the quintessential bad guy. And from what she knew, he could really be such. This wasn’t the first time he’d blanketed her with his body and absolutely demanded her trust.

  “So I want to go, when I finish with my residency. For a few years maybe, whatever feels right in the situation. I know it’s down the road and so much could happen between now and then, but…”

  TIAGO

  She was still wet so he slid easily into her, and his cock was thick and hard, demanding her body in a way that was nearly foreign to him. His penetration was deep and aimed right for her G-spot. Santiago almost came just a few strokes into it. This was Salana saying yes, her accepting his ill-defined proposal. His skin felt too small, his muscles inadequate to handle the full flush of emotion. Then Salana was grinding, the noises she made agitating his heart. She moaned loud enough to wake the dead.

  “Don’t fucking lie to me, Salt.” The thickness of his cock matched the heaviness in his throat. “Don’t say shit you can’t do. I want fucking all of it.” He slid his hand under the front of her neck and lifted her body up into an arch. She used her hands to support her weight and Tiago pinched her nipples ruthlessly.

  Salana called out as the orgasm pulsated through her, body on high alert, mind tamed into oblivion, focusing only on relief. Her whimpering made him come and he pulled out just in time to bathe her ass in his orgasm. Semen spilled into her crack and over the round curve of her butt cheek.

  SALANA

  She stealthily turned under his body, now lubricated from them both.

  “I want to be with you more than anything else.” The declaration made her color all over her pale body, deep red blotches on her chest and her cheeks blooming even more rosy. He kissed her hard and fast, tongue deep, erection still holding against her belly. It might have been the most reckless thing she’d ever done. Fallen in love and said an unconditional yes, to a thug.

  Chapter 16

  Salana

  They were sailing South down ninety-five and Salana decided to put the top up as the wind rushed in her ears. She’d picked him up on a whim from the corner and taken him hostage without telling Tiago what their final destination would be.

  “How old were you, Doc, when you first sucked a dick?” Twenty-seven? A joke, but a guy could dream if he wanted to.

  “Seventeen. On the golf course at my parents’ country club. Not to one of my dad’s friends—thank God—but his friend’s son, a gentleman for the most part. I was ready to get it over with. Then Julian took my virginity soon after.”

  “What? In the broad daylight?”

  “At night. We snuck out.”

  “The guy in Switzerland, did you ever love him?” He wanted to hear her say no—as petty as it was he felt jealousy when he thought of him.

  “No, not at all.”

  “So you threw it away—with somebody you didn’t care about?”

  “I cared about it afterwards. Even the blow job guy. I obsessed about him not calling me. I looked for him every time we went to the country club. He had a girlfriend. I used to compare myself to her, scrutinize my body in the mirror and hate it for not looking like hers. But that was a summer thing and my real life was back in Switzerland.”

  They’d resumed their mode of conversation, learning about one another’s lives by asking and listening. Their experiences were so different, marked by culture, race and class. But their humanity was always more than enough to bridge the gap.

  “That one time on the golf course, then Julian, you and Eric. And you again. That’s my whole history. Please don’t tell me yours.”

  “Who was the best?”

  She punched him in the arm.

  “Why do you have your street number tattooed on your hand? Is it a gang?”

  Tiago looked down at his hand and made a fist. His forearm was nearly covered in ink, some of it so old and poorly done that it looked like layers of graffiti in a New York City public bathroom stall. Indecipherable ticks and scratches, drawings and words that captured a fleeting Zeitgeist or moment from his childhood.

  “’Cause nobody else would claim me besides my street. I don’t got no school sweater, Salt. No fancy degree or membership to any secret society. I’m only half Puerto Rican, and half Dominican. I ain’t enough of any one thing, so my street in the Heights is what always best described me.”

  Salana nodded because she understood what he meant. There was a lot Salana could claim and she had the privilege to be welcome and to fit in almost anywhere. Her mind then skipped ahead to subject matter that was premature and explosively controversial, or would be to her family and friends. Like the fact that she could marry Tiago and take his name, making his claim on her official. She could have his children and they’d bear his name. They could buy a house together, start a business under both of their names. She was getting ahead of herself—even Tiago would probably think her ridiculous. He wasn’t the type of man who would ever settle down and she’d be inviting heartache and unrest into her life in this picture she was painting of their future. Her parents would question her sanity. Not just her parents—everyone would.

  “Where you taking me?”

  God, maybe he’d never been out of New York, except for those short trips to Connecticut, she thought. What to her was a quick, casual jaunt to their summer house might be a mammoth excursion for him. She needed to stop assuming things and slow down.

  “My parents have a house on the ocean in Avalon.”

  “Of course they do,” Santiago said with a hesitant and lopsided grin on his face. “Of course they fucking do.”

  Less than two hours later they pulled into the secluded beach cove that bore a sign warning “No Trespassing. Private Access Only.”

  “Salt’s parents bought her the ocean,” Tiago murmured. He rolled down the window and lit up a cigarette. Salana drove the two blocks to the beach, passing houses which now seemed incredibly ostentatious when viewing them through Tiago’s eyes. Architecture that belonged in magazines and was the stuff of the rich and elite. Houses used only a few weeks out of the year and left empty the rest of the summer, while thousands of city kids only dreamed of ever going to the ocean.

  Tiago did his low whistle as they pulled up in front of her family summer home, a modern take on the Nantucket beach house design, with a lower wrap-around porch and upper decks that looked out over the ocean. They had five bedrooms, two fireplaces and an elegant grand foyer. Salana had been spending summers there since she was nine years old and had never once thought of it as a luxury reserved for only the ultra-wealthy. But when she parked the car in the driveway and they two of them sat there in an uncomfortable silence. The engine whirred and clicked as it settled down from the long drive. Salana lowered the window so that they could hear the waves crashing on the beach. She realized the house was probably larger than any he’d ever been in, and when she thought of the tiny Section 8 apartment he shared with his grandmother, this house was perverse and obscene. Her happy and peaceful place suddenly seemed offensive and grotesque. She thought about how Santiago told her that his grandmother didn’t like to leave the public housing building except for church on Sundays. It wasn�
�t only because the neighborhood was rough, but the NYCHA elevators were notorious for breaking and she feared getting stuck.

  “Oh my God, I shouldn’t have brought you here,” Salana said and lowered her face onto the steering wheel.

  “I can deal, Salt. I’m from New York. I’ve seen rap videos. I even went to a party in the Hamptons once.” He smiled at her; his generosity was abundant. He was trying to make her feel better for being embarrassed of her wealth when really it should have been her who was accommodating.

  The wind whipped around them as they stepped out of the car, the drizzle mixing with sea spray, the day grey-blue and overcast. Tiago came up behind her as she looked up the stairs to the house. He wrapped his body around hers from behind and the tense grip of her muscles gave way under his reassurance. She unlocked the heavy front door and quickly reset the alarm. The house looked pristine because her mother still hired someone to come in and clean during the off season. The entire space was in the color palette of the day’s sky, dark and light greys, dark blues, creams and off-whites, beige, and a few accents in an almost lavender hue. Her mother was quite the amateur decorator. She also had the time and money to do so.

  “Anyone live here?’ Tiago asked. His voice sounded baritone and filled up the profound emptiness of what appeared to be a wasted home. A giant space to thrive in when Tiago had never been given any space other than his street or a shitty city playground to run free in.

  “Not until summer time. It’s chilly, let me go start a fire.” She left the warmth of his embrace and immediately regretted not having him close to her.

  They walked on the beach barefoot in the wet sand at the edge of the water’s reach. The frigid water bit their toes and they rolled their jeans up their calves. The cold air made her skin prickle. She wanted to ask him if he’d ever been to the ocean before, but it seemed insensitive. She’d grown up diving under the waves, eating seafood with her parents, surfing with her uncle, fishing and crabbing with her dad. Salana treasured her days at the seashore but until now, hadn’t really thought about how lucky she was to have them.