Pierce Her Stepbrother

by Saffron Daughter

  Penelope grins, and peers at me. “What is this? Are you trying to not be a dick?”

  “Ouch,” I say. “Penny’s got a bite.”

  “Seriously, Pierce. Why are we here?”

  “Why do you need a reason for everything? It’s like you’re always suspicious, always need to know every detail. Don’t be so insecure.”

  “I’m not being insecure,” she says. “I just don’t believe this whole act you’re putting on.”

  “What act is that?”

  “The whole dinner date thing.”

  “We’re on a date?” I ask. “Told you that you wanted me.”

  “I’m going to leave,” she tells me. “Really. I only agreed to come because I was curious as to what you might want.”

  “You’re so prickly all the time,” I say. “It’s like defusing a bomb trying to get to know you.”

  “Well, get used to it, because I’m not letting my guard down.”

  I lean back, smirk at her. “You going to tell me?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “What made you want to become a tattoo artist.”

  “You tell me what made you want to become a fighter first.”

  I shrug. “Fair enough. My dad’s brother, Uncle James, was a boxer when he was young. He was pro, but not very well ranked. Before my dad died, he showed me an old black and white recording of Uncle James boxing. He wasn’t a hard hitter, and he had a bit of a glass jaw, but God he could dance in the ring. He was so springy, always moving, like a rabbit on amphetamines. Half the time he wore his opponents out, and when their guard was down, that’s how he scored his points.”

  She frowns. “There are points in boxing?”

  “Oh, yeah, for sure. It’s a technical sport. You get rewarded for good hits, and you can win off points, even if you’re outclassed physically.”

  “But in your illegal cage fighting, no points?”

  “That’s right,” I say.

  “Why didn’t you go into boxing?”

  “Uncle James trained me, starting from when I was ten. He helped my mom out a lot after my dad died. Anyway, I was good at boxing, but I wanted to try more styles. He was a traditionalist, didn’t believe in all the new fighting approaches, especially with the emergence of MMA. We had a bit of a falling out. He died when we weren’t talking.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “Nah,” I tell her. “It was my own damn fault, anyway. I pushed him away.”

  “Gee, I wonder how you did that?”

  “So I stopped boxing.”

  “But you could have gone pro?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. I’m not as good at boxing as I am in the cage. There are a lot of rules, a lot of technicalities. It feels stiff to me. But I mean, it’s not stiff at all. Watch Ali, and there you see a fluidity that’s just amazing. Even Tyson was a really fluid athlete.”

  “You like fighting,” she says, thanking the waitress as she sets down our drinks.

  “Mm,” I say. “Gin and tonic does kind of hit the spot, doesn’t it?”

  “Only one for you tonight. You’re driving me back home.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “You worry too much. Your turn.”

  “My turn?”

  “Hey, I answered your question. Now, it’s your turn. Hey, you were the one who started this, treating conversation like it was a negotiation.”

  She relents. “Fine. My story is nothing so dramatic. I just saw a tattoo one day – one of my high school classmates got one – and I started researching it. I was always good at drawing, but I liked the idea of drawing on skin. It all just sort of continued to grow out of there. Before I realized it, I was obsessed, reading magazines, talking to owners of tattoo shops around the city, making new friends in the industry. I found Tina’s work online, and loved her style. She makes such great use out of curved lines, and I’ve never seen someone draw so well on skin before. I mean, her proportions are just perfect. I followed everything about her, started planning how to meet her.”

  “And it all just fell into place?”

  “Yeah,” she says, and she laughs softly. “I’m a little amazed, to be honest.”

  “Your dad just let you go?”

  “No, I had to push him a bit, but eventually he did.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “We’ve been like a team, you know? After mom left, it was just me and him. I looked after him.”

  I bunch my brows. “What do you mean?”

  “He never cooks well on his own. He eats unhealthily.”

  “You’d think a fifty year-old man would know how to eat a salad.”

  “He’s busy,” she says. “He works really hard.”

  “So does everybody,” I say. “Not eating well is a conscious choice.”

  “Not everybody lives in the gym like I assume you do. Not everybody wants to be an athlete.”

  “I’m not talking about being physically fit. I’m talking about eating right. With all the information out there about healthy eating, anybody who doesn’t is just fucking stupid, or fucking lazy.”

  “Hey!” she says. “Don’t talk about my dad like that.”

  “I’m just calling it like it is.”

  “You don’t know his situation. He works thirteen-hour days sometimes. He worked hard for me.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He’s an architect.”

  “Please,” I say. “That’s a job for people with passion. He does it for himself, too. How can you be so smart, but so naïve at the same time?”

  “You know, Pierce, you have this talent for pissing people off.”

  “What, you think I’m wrong?”

  “I think you don’t know half as much as you think you do about my dad’s and my life.”

  “People are the same. Seems to me like you’re just being sensitive.”

  “I’m not being sensitive. You’re being a jerk.”

  “Well, trust me, he doesn’t need you looking after him. He’ll have to change his diet on his own, especially when he starts feeling it. At his age? That’ll catch up to you fast.”

  “He does need me,” she says. “You don’t understand.”

  “Why are you guilting yourself for coming out here?” I ask. “Why are you under the delusion that you somehow left him worse-off for going after your own career? You’d think a parent would be proud.”

  “Is your mother proud of you?”

  I pause. That was a good counter. “I wouldn’t know,” I say. “We don’t talk much.”

  “Well isn’t that the surprise of the century. For someone with so much life wisdom to dole out, you sure set a poor example, don’t you?”

  “Ooh, you’re getting upset, aren’t you?”

  “You have a talent for reading people,” she says, eyes narrowing. “You should become a therapist, put those amazing skills to good use.”

  “Admit it,” I say. “You enjoy being miserable. You like to guilt yourself.”

  “You know what, Pierce? I’m done. You want to know why I think that about Dad? Because I have to make sure me coming out here was worth it. I have to hold my feet to the flame.”

  “You use it for motivation?” I ask, impressed. It’s something athletes do all the time. Find something – guilt, an imaginary slight, an imaginary debt – and use it to motivate.

  “I don’t use it for myself,” she says. “I’m done. I don’t know why I agreed to come here in the first place.”

  She gets up, and I watch her as she leaves.

  I don’t know why, but I don’t try and stop her. I don’t even know why I kept pushing. I sigh, and rub my forehead, looking out at her through the window.

  She goes to the tram stop and waits, wrapping her arms around herself in the cold winter wind.

  *

  “Hey, little girl.”

  I look up, and right in front of me are two guys, maybe in their thirties. They look drunk.

  “What is it?” I ask, slowly slipp
ing my hand into my bag and folding my fingers around my phone.

  “You looking for some company? You look sad,” the one on the left says. He’s wearing a red baseball cap on backwards, and he’s grinning, bearing yellowed teeth at me.

  “I’m just waiting for the tram,” I say.

  I don’t want to tell them to leave me alone or to go away, because I suspect they’d react badly to that.

  “It’s been a really long day,” I continue. “I work with old people, and one of them threw up all over me today.”

  They just look at each other. Damn it, I think. They’re not taking the bait.

  “There’s no nursing homes around here. You lost, honey?”

  “No. I came here to grab a bite to eat.”

  “You mean, while in your clothes that someone hurled on?”

  “No,” I say, my voice dropping. “I mean, I changed.”

  “Well since you’ve had such a bad day,” the man with the baseball cap says, “Why don’t you let me and my friend here buy you a drink. You know, take the edge off.”

  “No thank you,” I say, taking a step back. I can feel adrenaline pumping through my body, and I’ve got to admit to myself that I’m scared. I flash a look quickly back at the restaurant, but it’s too dark and I can’t see if anybody is coming my way or not.

  “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go ’ave a drink, shall we?” the second man says.

  “I said no,” I say. “No means no.”

  “Well, unless no means yes. And you know how it is with women,” he says, sneering at his friend.

  I’m holding my breath. I don’t know what to do. I think about running back to the restaurant, back to… back to him.

  And I really don’t want to do that!

  “No means fucking no, you dickhead!”

  I turn around to see Pierce walking up to us. He’s got anger in his strides, and his fists are balled.

  “No, wait,” I say, trying to grab him, but he just walks past me. “Wait, Pierce. They’re drunk!”

  “I don’t fucking care,” I hear him grow.

  The two drunk men stand stupidly, stare at the behemoth of a man charging at them. He grabs the man with the baseball cap and throws him down on the tram stop benches, and when his friend turns to start and run, Pierce grabs him by the collar and yanks him down, kicking out his feet at the same time. I hear him slam against the ground.

  It’s really loud. I’m scared he’s broken something.

  Pierce kneels down, points the guy’s face at him, and then punches him. His body goes limp.

  “Oi, you,” he says, standing up and going to the man with the red hat. “Do you know who the fuck I am?”

  “Yeah,” the man gasps. “Yeah. You’re Pierce Fletcher.”

  Pierce hauls him up to his feet, and pins him against the back of the tram stop shelter.

  “What are you?” Pierce asks.

  The man just shakes his head.

  “What are you?” Pierce bellows. When the man doesn’t answer, he sighs. “Repeat after me. I am a lowlife, shit stain with a small cock.”

  The man just shakes his head.

  “Repeat it you fucker, or God help me I will bash your fucking head in.”

  “Okay, okay!” the man says. “I’m… uh… a lowlife, shitstain… with a small cock.” He says the last words quietly.

  Pierce pushes down on his shoulders and the man falls into a squat. “Stay,” he growls. “Until morning.”

  “Pierce,” I say, exhaling. “Come on. You’re being a dick.”

  “Say it again!” Pierce says, slapping the man on the top of the head.

  He repeats it, this time quieter. He’s speaking at the floor, head buried between his knees.

  I just shake my head. “You don’t have to stay here until morning, just wait until we’re gone.”

  Pierce shoots me an angry glare, and then he walks over to me and grips my arm.

  “Hey!” I shout, shaking free. “Don’t fucking touch me!”

  He just looks at me, bores holes into me. He’s panting, but I slowly see his body relax. Then his hand comes up slowly, and he touches my face.

  “Would you have come back to the restaurant? If these two assholes were chasing you?”

  “You shouldn’t have let me go!” I shout.

  I hear the man with the red baseball cap get up, and start running. Pierce’s eyes don’t even go to him.

  “You shouldn’t be so sensitive,” he says.

  “I’m not being sensitive. You shouldn’t be so insensitive.”

  He takes my hand, and he presses it to his mouth, and he kisses it. I can feel his hot breath against my palm, feel how quick it is.

  That’s when I notice something. His eye shave gone shiny, and the expression on his face isn’t the anger I thought it was.

  It’s fear.

  “I would have been fine,” I say. “They were just a couple of drunk creeps.”

  “Would you,” he says through gritted teeth. “Have come back to the restaurant.”

  “Of course I would!” I say. “I’m not stupid.”

  His mouth flickers into a smile ever so briefly.

  “There are people in the restaurant. They wouldn’t do anything in public.”

  We look at each other for a moment, and I know he hasn’t bought my lie. I would have run straight back to him, because I knew that he, more than anyone else, could and would protect me.

  He smiles, and when he starts to let go of my hand, I hold onto it.

  I don’t want him to let go.

  “I’m… I’m sorry,” he says, interlocking his fingers with mine. “Come back inside. Let’s finish dinner.”

  “I don’t want to,” I tell him. “I stormed out, we made a scene. I don’t want to go back in there.”

  “Fine, I’ll settle-up, get the pizza take away. We can eat it at my apartment. What do you think?”

  “Your apartment?” I echo. “What was that, some kind of move?”

  “No, but it’s warm, overlooks the city.”

  “What if I just want to go home?”

  “Do you?”

  I look into his hard, grey eyes.

  *

  chapter ten

  It’s tense as we walk through the lobby of his apartment building. The twenty-four hour guard is sleeping in his chair, and we walk past silently.

  In my mind, there’s just this single thought repeating over and over again

  What is about to happen?

  I can’t deny to myself that I’m nervous, even a little afraid. For some reason, I feel like I’m walking down a path of no return. There is trepidation.

  But, as I walk with my hand clasped in Pierce’s, I realize I want this. I want to go to his apartment with him. I want him to do to me whatever he wants.

  I want to give in to him.

  We wait for the elevator, and the tension is as thick as butter. I steal a sidelong glance at him, look at the lines of his sharp, handsome side profile. My eyes travel down his arm, to where his sleeve is folded at the elbow, to the muscular forearm, the wriggling veins, and then down to his enormous hand as it completely swallows mine up.

  The elevator dings, and the doors slide open.

  I gulp as we step in.

  The doors shut, and he turns to me. I don’t know what I expect to happen – I don’t even know what is going to happen – but I feel like I’m waiting for something.

  I don’t want to be the one to make the first move.

  His hand leaves mine, and begins to sidle up the inside of my arm. The touch is slightly ticklish, but it leaves a fiery trail of buzzing nerves. Goose bumps erupt all over me, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I’m breathing quickly, lips open, looking into his eyes. I feel like I can’t look away.

  I’m waiting for him to kiss me.

  It’s like he reads my mind. He pulls in close to me, fast and hard, but then gently takes my lips in his. It’s as if, all of a sudden, the dam of inhibition within me h
as cracked and burst open, and all my desires are spilling out uncontrollably like so much reservoir water.

  I press my body into his, he corrals me tight in his arms, and I suck on his lip, kiss it sloppily. It’s my first kiss, but I don’t care. Somehow I’ve become immune to modesty, to shyness.

  His mouth moves, I feel it move into a grin, and he pushes me up against the inside of the elevator, clamps my hands above my head, and he breaks the kiss. I try to move forward, but he pins me there, and just watches me for a moment.

  I’m panting, nervous, excited, scared, sweating, flushed, hot and yearning. I’m everything I can feel all at once.

  “Kiss me,” I beg.

  He presses his body against mine, and I can feel his hardness pressing through his slacks right at my belly. I have this uncontrollable urge to reach down and cup his crotch, to feel his excitement, his desire for me.

  But he doesn’t let my hands down. Instead, he takes my lower lip and bites it, before kissing across the side of my face toward my ear, then down my neck. I’m shivering at the delicate sensations, his soft and deft lips teasing my skin, encouraging my growing lust.

  His hands run down my arms, down my sides, setting my hands free. I wrap them around his wide back, pull him tighter on to me, love that I can smell him, that I can feel his heat radiating into my body.

  A loud ding sounds, and the doors slide open, and I make to pretend we weren’t doing anything in case someone is on the other side, but he doesn’t care. He just keeps kissing me.

  And then he’s got my hand in his, and he’s pulling me down the corridor to his apartment. It feels like forever as we walk, and then he’s unlocking the door, yanks me inside, shuts the door hard, drops the pizza box, and then pushes me up against the wall, claiming my lips in his again.

  I’m whimpering, moaning, sighing, panting. I feel like an animal. I feel out of control.

  And… and I like it.

  “Come on,” he says, his voice deep and gravelly. He pulls me through his apartment in the dark, kicking off his shoes as he does so. I do the same.

  He takes me to the bathroom, and there blasts the shower, filling it with steam. Then he’s on me again, taking off my clothes, pulling up my top. He throws it outside onto the floor, and his hot hands are roaming up and down my body, devouring every inch of my skin.