Unless…
Unless it makes more sense to them that I’d be joking, pulling one over, rather than actually telling them not to insult the girl holding my hand. A girl who happens to be black.
And that—well, that makes me want to breathe fucking fire.
The hell of it is that if you’d asked me just this morning what racism was, I’d have given you an answer that involved slurs and bus seats and throwing rocks, I would have said that I’d never personally seen racism, I might have even said something about how we live in a post-racial world and racism is over.
And the extra hell of it is that, based on words alone, you could almost make a case that everything was fine, that this was just an awkward misunderstanding. But it wasn’t. Because I was here, and I heard the subtle condescension in that woman’s tone, I heard the layers and layers of assumptions she was making about Zenny in just a handful of careless words. It’s dangerous because of how subtle it was, how insinuating. Almost hard to pin down, and then once you have it stabbed wriggling and wormy to a board to examine, it tries to morph, it tries to shapeshift, it tries to hide in plain sight.
And the extra, extra hell of it? There’s this gross, almost instinctive part of me that wants to make some kind of excuse for Sophia/Hayley, that wants to justify or defend her, and as soon as I recognize that impulse for what it is, self-loathing roils violently in my gut.
I open my mouth to say more, to set these people the fuck straight, but before I can get a word out, Zenny is flashing a smile at everyone and tugging me away. “So sorry, I need to have a word with Sean, one second.”
And before I know it, I’m in some strange giant hallway outside the ballroom, tucked behind a plant where I can’t smite anyone. Before Zenny even says anything, my eyes are on the ballroom doors, because I’ll be patient and let her tell me whatever it is that’s so urgent, but then I’m going back in there and I’m killing everyone, killing them and then stomping their corpses into the parquet floor until they’re flat enough for Zenny and me to dance on.
Then I’ll calm down, I decide. Once I’m waltzing on their corpses.
“Stop being an asshole,” Zenny says, and it’s not at all what I expected her to say, and also over the past week I’ve become painfully attuned to that word—asshole—latching onto it as our safe word of sorts and marking it in my mind as a signal to back off.
And so I tear my eyes away from the ballroom and focus on her—on my Zenny-bug, who is beautiful and who also looks like she’s a combination of angry and amused and annoyed and…pitying, maybe?
I take a deep breath, trying to harness my fury, because it’s not directed at her and I don’t want her to think for a second that it is. “Zenny, they were saying—”
“I know.”
“They were acting like you—”
“I know, Sean. I know.”
But how can she tell me that she knows and still act like she doesn’t want to pour boiling oil over everyone in that cursed ballroom? “Zenny, they were acting like that because you’re—” and here I falter, because I’m still so angry, and saying the bald truth out loud feels like having a nest of hornets in my mouth. “Because—”
“Because I’m black,” she says. “They assumed I was working the event because I’m black. They saw me, a black woman, in what they think of as ‘their’ space, and to them it was a logical assumption that I was the help.”
“But…that’s shitty,” I protest.
“I know.”
“Because why wouldn’t a black woman belong in there? Why is it more likely that you were a server than that you legitimately belonged there?”
“I know, Sean. You don’t have to tell me.”
“And that part about you belonging only after they realized who your dad was!” I fume, barely even listening to her now, so lost in my own anger. “That almost makes it worse, like, oh, now it’s okay because we’ve vetted your parents?”
“Sean,” Zenny says, holding up a hand. The first edge of bitter impatience lines her voice. “Please. I know all of this.”
“But,” I splutter, “then why are you so calm right now? How can you live with it?”
This strikes a nerve; I see it in the copper flash of her eyes. “This is my life, Sean. I deal with this every fucking day. What am I supposed to do? Not live? Not go anywhere ever? Not talk to anyone ever?”
“But then why aren’t you angry?” I demand.
“Because I can’t get angry!” Zenny bursts out, her words loud and shaking with frustration. And then, clearing her throat and glancing around the empty hallway, she says again, “I can’t get angry. If I get angry, then I’m the Angry Black Woman. If I admit to having my feelings hurt, then I’m being too sensitive. If I ask for people to treat me thoughtfully, then I’m being aggressive. If I joke back, then I’m being impertinent or sassy. If I cry, then I’m hyperemotional. If I don’t react at all, I’m intimidating or cold. Do you see? There’s not a way I can react where I win. I can’t win.”
Her words gouge at me, at the space in my heart that’s cracked open just for her in the last week and they also gouge at my mind, where my admittedly flawed concepts of fairness live. I hurt for her, I want to bleed for her, I want to fix it—
I want to fix it
I want to fix it
I want to fix it
“Okay,” I say. “But I can get angry—let me go back in there and—”
“Sean,” she says sharply. “Stop. If you go back in there and do anything else, the headline is not going to be ‘Noble Sean Bell Heroically Defends Young Woman.’ It’s still going to be ‘Black Girl Causes Scene.’”
“But—”
“It will reflect back on me. And,” she adds in a defeated tone, “it will reflect back onto my parents. I can’t risk that. I can’t risk their standing and their livelihoods just so that you feel better. Please tell me you understand this.”
And all at once, I feel like seventeen emotions are collapsing in on me. Rage and righteousness and concern for her and the need to protect her and—ugh, defensiveness. Shame. I don’t like admitting them to myself; they’re such gross feelings to have right now, when all of me should be focused on Zenny, but they’re there.
And I realize those flashes of shame and defensiveness are there because I’m just as guilty as Sophia or Hayley. Maybe not tonight, maybe not in the exact same ways, but I’m still guilty. Of assumptions and careless words. Of unkindness and disrespect. Not once ever in my entire life have I been put in a position like Zenny was tonight—a position that she’s put in every day—and with deep, ugly regret, I recognize times that I’ve been on the other side of it. The times when I’ve been the garbage goose person, the one casually spraying a room with my entitlement.
I’m not innocent of harm and the thought is painful.
“Zenny, I’ve—I think I’ve done shitty stuff like this too.” I want to reach for her but I don’t let myself. I don’t deserve it. “I mean, I know I have.”
“I’d be surprised if you hadn’t,” Zenny says. “You’re a straight, cisgendered white man from the Midwest.”
“I—” I stop, because I still feel a swell of defensiveness, because I can’t help those things, I can’t change them—but in light of what just happened in the ballroom, I can’t deny that they’ve given me blinders, that they’ve shaped how I see the world, and probably not for the better.
“Even good people can do or say racist things. Even white boys with an actual, literal, black best friend.” She cracks a small smile as she says the last part, and I huff out a self-deprecating breath.
“It’s stupid of me. I always knew Elijah was black, that you were black. It’s not like I didn’t know, but it never seemed like something different, not when we had so much in common. I just never thought outside myself enough to consider what it might mean for you…”
“It’s okay,” she says, and she takes my hand. “I mean, not okay like I’m absolving anything, but okay like…you’
re learning. And learning is good.”
I search her lovely face, which looks sad and tired and still all the lovelier for those things. “How can you want to hold my hand after all this? How can you want to touch me?”
She puts her hands on my chest, and then slides her arms around my waist in a full hug. I can’t stop myself; I crush her tight against me, bury my face in the crown of her hair. “I’m sure there’s something smart and insightful I could say about human interactions within the locus of marginalizing social constructs, but I can’t think of it right now,” she says into my chest. She tightens her slender arms around me. “All I can think of is that I still trust you. I still like you. I still want you.”
That doesn’t change reality, but I’m willing to navigate it with you.
That’s what she said the night we discussed us and what an us would look like, and here we are. Navigating. I thought it would be only about our age, about our shared connection with Elijah, but here it is about something else entirely.
I remind her of what she said, and I can feel her smile into my chest.
“You’ve missed your calling as a prophet,” I say, and she sighs against me. Not a sad sigh or a happy sigh. Just a sigh.
“It doesn’t take being a prophet to know these things will happen,” she says.
Which stirs me up all over again. “I want to build a tower around you, and then build a castle around that tower, and then dig a moat around that castle, and then I want to guard you like a dragon. Burn anyone who tries to hurt you into ash and then scorch those ashes a second time.”
She doesn’t answer in words, and simply burrows her face in my chest. And together we stand, arms tight, breathing in harmony, her cheek to my heart and my lips pressed to the top of her head.
“I’m getting makeup on your tuxedo,” she mumbles, but I don’t let her move.
“Fuck the tuxedo.”
Finally, she tilts her head to look up at me with liquid eyes. “Take me home,” she says.
And I take her home.
Chapter Twenty-One
My apartment is nothing but moonlight.
I open the door for Zenny, and after I lock back up, I don’t bother with the lights. I don’t bother with anything, actually, except coming up behind where she stands at the window and kissing along her neck. She smells, as always, faintly of roses, and her skin is so soft and delicious. I can’t stop kissing her neck, her shoulder, the secret hollow behind her ear. She sighs back into me, a sigh of contented desire this time, her hands reaching up and back to lace in my hair and keep my mouth against her neck. That small act alone has me hard beyond belief, throbbing with the need to fuck.
“Tonight?” she asks.
“Tonight,” I confirm, and scoop her easily into my arms, carrying her like a bride to my bedroom. She moves her arms around my neck, and it’s so good, so very good. She’s all I want, all I’ll ever want, and I almost don’t want to put her down when we reach my bed.
“Is this still what you want to do?” I ask her instead, still holding her tight. “Am I still the one you want to do it with?”
“Yes,” she says simply. “And yes.”
“Are you sure? I know you’ve said one part of sex doesn’t matter any more than the next part, and I know that’s technically true, but it just feels like this is different—”
“Sean,” she calmly interrupts. “If you don’t shut up and start taking my clothes off, I’m going to scream.”
And I pause, because even as she says it all bold and daring, I feel her shiver of nervous excitement, I see the shyness hiding in her eyes.
“Honest girl thing?” I check one last time. “Fun-nervous?”
“Honest girl thing,” she says clearly. “Fun-nervous. Please, for the actual, literal love of God, make love to me.”
I don’t bother to correct her adorable sex phrasing—I didn’t know people actually still said the words make love—and she’ll see soon enough that I’m not the kind of man to whom words like that apply. Instead I set her gently on the bed and crawl over her, moving in a slouching, slow prowl so that I can absorb every single detail, memorize every single part of this beautiful, trembling girl laid out in front of me.
Her parted lips and her hooded eyes. Her nose ring glinting in the dark and the shadows swirling like fog in the hollows of her collarbone and between her breasts. The gleaming skin of her legs and arms and the tempting swells of sweet, innocent curves underneath the flirtatious chiffon. And her high-heeled feet moving nervously against the bed and her hands twisting fretfully at the fabric of her skirt—both things at odds with the expression on her face, which is one of pure, aroused fascination.
Nervous and bravely wanting—even now, Zenny is a puzzle of feelings, quivering like a virgin sacrifice but looking at me like I’m her next meal. It’s endlessly enthralling, and I drink down every part of it. I’ve fucked an untold number of women, but this is something different, something much different, and it’s all to do with her. All to do with this strange cavity she’s carved out of my chest and left empty and keening.
I’d dreamt of this night since the gala—exactly how I would unwrap her body, in what gradual stages I’d uncover her nakedness and kiss and lick at her skin. Exactly how I would seduce her already willing body and introduce her to my own body and its needs. But before I can execute any of my careful plan, Zenny reaches up for my face and pulls me down for a long, lingering kiss, a deep one of shared breath and parted lips and silky tongues. Between us, my cock pulses like a living iron bar. I try to hold it up from her, which she notices.
“Be yourself. Don’t baby me,” she says against my mouth, and I remember all the times Elijah and I were trailed by a pigtailed Zenny, demanding the same thing. Don’t baby me. I’m the boy who once tied her shoelaces and helped her find her missing Barbies, and is it reprehensible or some kind of fucked-up destiny that I’m the one to initiate her into these things now that she’s grown?
“I’ve never fucked a virgin before,” I admit. I’m over her, braced up on my arms, and still tuxedoed, and the flowing skirt of her dress is everywhere, tangled around my dress shoes and half-rucked up around one of her thighs and spilling around our knees like a sea of tears.
“Really?” she asks. “Never?”
“Never,” I say, ducking my head to nip at her breasts through her dress. “You’re my first.”
“What would you do if I weren’t a virgin?” she asks curiously, her words studded with gasps as I bite teasingly at her. “Would you do anything different?”
“Some things.”
“Like what?”
I shift my weight to my knees and elbows so that I can find her hands with my own. “Well, first,” I say, leaving her breasts to kiss at her neck and jaw, “I’d pin your hands over your head, like this.” And I do as I’m narrating, stretching her arms over her head and keeping them locked there with one of my hands around her wrists.
“Oh,” she says underneath me, and she gives a shivery kind of wriggle. A happy wriggle.
“And then I’d reach under your dress and check your pussy, to see if you were wet for me.” And I do that too, finding the weightless hem of her dress and sliding my hand up her warm thigh, my thumb brushing across the bare, slick skin of her snatch. She lets out a low whimper, her legs falling completely open and her back arching the tiniest bit underneath me.
“No panties?” I ask in a growl, rising up to my knees and yanking her dress up to her waist to see for myself.
“No panties,” she agrees. And sure enough, that cunt I’m so obsessed with is naked and exposed, a velvet split between her legs. The revelation that she was bare all night like this, that I could have pulled up her skirt and tasted her whenever I wanted…
I groan at the very thought, leaning down to smell her.
“Sean!” she says, her voice embarrassed as I press my nose and lips to her cunt and breathe her in deep. Why she hasn’t accepted the terminal thing I have for her pussy yet,
I don’t understand. I love everything about her cunt; I love to smell her and to taste her and even just to look at her, which is what I do now. I spread her legs, and in the moonlight, I stare at the welcoming, wet seam; I use my thumbs to part her folds and see the tight, pink place I’m about to fuck. And very suddenly, it’s not enough to be only looking at her, I need more, more, more, and I settle between her thighs for a long kiss on her pussy, and I stay there for several more kisses, enjoying the delicate scrape of her high heels along my back, the tangle of her skirt around my head, and her taste. Fuck, do I enjoy her taste. Sweet and intimate and all her.
“Sean,” she says again, but her tone has changed, and now she sounds like she’s been running, like she can’t quite remember how to breathe. “Sean, oh, oh God—”
I’ve added a finger now, and then another, and she’s unraveling into a sheer sensation, all twisting limbs and panting breaths and that delicious dress tangling everywhere around us, and then her first climax rolls through her like a storm, sending her tightening around my fingers and grinding against my face.
I love it.
I’m ready to do it again.
But then Zenny comes down from her peak and reaches for me, and I reluctantly come up from between her legs, torn between kissing her cunt to another climax or crawling into her arms. But it’s worth sacrificing the chance to give her another orgasm to have her hold me, to hold her again, to kiss her and let her lick her own taste off my mouth like some kind of curious kitten.
It also makes me nearly wild with need, and enduring her kissing me like this is something close to madness.
“You’re shaking,” she whispers, pulling away from our kiss to search my face. Her eyes are metallic, her mouth is wet. Jesus Christ.
And I am shaking. I’m shaking because I need to fuck, I’m shaking because the woman I need to fuck is a woman I’m feeling insane things for, I’m shaking because I’m going to fuck a woman I’m in love with for the first time in my life.
Sinner (Priest Book 3) Page 22
