SICK HEART

by Huss, JA

  And so many things go through my mind in that breath. I want to resist her offer. Push her down, roll over, and forget where I’m at and who I’m with.

  But that’s just fucking stupid. I like this girl. A lot.

  I want to kiss her.

  And all those other thoughts earlier about not wanting sex… well. This seems like more than sex. So that’s something I am interested in.

  When our lips touch everything that happens next—whether it’s today, tomorrow, or next year—everything that happens next is preordained. And there’s no way to stop it.

  I cup my hands around her face, my thumbs caressing small circles on her cheeks as her mouth opens and her tongue touches mine.

  There is maybe one more moment. One more chance to stop the car crash that’s coming, but it’s such a small moment, so short and tiny, it barely exists.

  And what comes next is pure lust.

  I open my mouth, kiss her hard. Bite her lip, grab her breasts as I drop my full weight over her.

  She kisses me back. But her kiss isn’t urgent, like mine. It’s soft. And even though we’re stained with salt water, and sweat, and the wind, she tastes so sweet, I want this kiss to last forever.

  Her fingernails dig into the muscles of my back and I hiss a little. Because she’s not being gentle. The time for gentleness is over now and all that’s left is sex.

  She knows it as well as I do. Because she helps me get her shorts off. She’s the one who takes off her shirt as I watch, my eyes drawn to her tight nipples and perfectly shaped breasts. The fading bruises on her skin left over from the fight just add to my desire.

  This girl saved my life. And that’s so fucking hot, I flip her over so she’s on top of me, ready to show her how grateful I am.

  She smiles and her eyes dance with mischief, or playfulness, or maybe just power. Her wild, tangled hair falls forward to brush against my chest as I pull her face down to mine and claim her mouth.

  She’s naked, but I’m not. Her fingertips are tugging on my shorts as we kiss, our tongues dancing as they twist together as she pulls my shorts over my hips. Her hand is between my legs, grabbing for my cock. It’s hard and thick. And when she squeezes me and begins slowly pumping her hand up and down my shaft, I have to hit pause on this moment and close my eyes so it can’t slip by without me noticing.

  Anya’s lips on my cheek make me open them again. She’s leaning over me, her full, round breasts pressing against my chest. Her ass is up in the air a little, and I smack it, and grab it, and smack it again. Hard. I want to leave marks on this girl.

  I want to leave my mark on this girl.

  She must be a mind reader. Because her mouth dips down to my neck and she bites me. She doesn’t nip me. No, she fucking bites me. Hard enough to make me hiss. Then she is kissing her way down my chest, her hand still on my cock, still working it, her thumb caressing small circles over the tip on the upstroke.

  I sigh a little, so fucking grateful I brought her here. She was worth the fight. Worth the price, too.

  Because I don’t just like her, I want her.

  Her lips reach my stomach and she licks my abs, dragging her tongue across the taut muscles. I put my hands on her head, ready to push her face down to my dick and put it in her mouth, but she pulls back a little, just enough to look up at me, and says, “Shhhhhhhhh,” with that pouty fucking mouth of hers.

  This is enough to calm me down. At least for a moment. Because shushing me is sound. And I want to hear all the sounds from this girl right now.

  She scoots down a little more and I know it’s coming, so I twist her hair around my fingers and promise to let her take her time.

  It pays off. Because she knows exactly what to do with my fat cock.

  She doesn’t put it inside her mouth. Not at first. She teases the fuck out of me. Her tongue dances around the tip of my dick, her hand still squeezing, her thumb still massaging the head. And I give in.

  Fuck it. I give in.

  I just close my eyes and picture it all in my head as she licks me. Up and down my shaft. Over the tip, then down again. Her hand slips down to grab my hard, tight balls, squeezing them just a little as her other hand sends her fingertips exploring the sensitive skin just underneath. She places her mouth low on my shaft, then lets it slowly dip down until she’s wrapping her lips around my balls.

  I twist her hair a little tighter in my fingers, pulling on her scalp. But if she objects, or even notices, she doesn’t say anything.

  Then her mouth is moving back up, her hand once again squeezing my shaft, and then there it is. Her hot breath caressing the tip of my cock. Her tongue flicking over it. Her mouth open and ready.

  I groan with anticipation, unable to stop my primal reaction to her seduction, and then I push her face down, forcing my dick inside her. She accepts my command and opens wider, letting it slip to the back of her throat, and I swear to God, I’ve had plenty of blow jobs in my lifetime, but this isn’t a fucking blow job. She is making love to my dick.

  I rock my hips forward, fucking her face a little. She responds by getting up on all fours, balancing on hands and knees as she devours my cock.

  I slap her ass again. This feels good—very fucking good—but I want to push this girl down on the ground face first and take her from behind.

  I breathe out, getting control of myself.

  No. I’m not going to do that here. Not on the fucking concrete. That’s how you fuck a whore and Anya Bokori is a lot of things, but whore is not on that list.

  She pulls back, probably sensing my thoughts, and then straddles me, her hips slightly elevated, her hand on my cock, aiming it right between her legs. She is so wet, she drips down the side of my dick before I even get inside her. And then she leans forward, both hands smacking my chest with a hard slap, just to make sure I’m awake for what’s coming—trust me, Anya, I am—and then sinks down. Forcing my cock inside her.

  We both close our eyes and moan. And in this moment, I want to make all the promises to Anya Bokori.

  I want to hold her.

  I want to love her.

  I want to keep her.

  I want to save her.

  She comes. Her head back, mouth open and moaning. Her fingernails digging into my chest. Her pussy clamping down on my dick. Her hips still moving. Her wind-tangled hair blowing out behind her.

  And then I come too.

  And I make all those promises with my fingers.

  Knowing full well I will never keep them.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - ANYA

  Things change between Cort and I after we have sex on the roof. I wasn’t planning on fucking him ever again. I don’t equate sex with intimacy. In fact, it’s the opposite. Sex, to me, is transactional.

  But lots of things have changed in my life since the fight and that trip down to the lower platform was some kind of… I don’t know. The word that comes to mind is ‘catharsis,’ but that feels like a very strong word filled with drama and endings, so it doesn’t quite fit. Because there’s no drama here. It’s actually the most peaceful place I’ve ever been. And this is definitely not an ending. Not even close. I feel like I was dropped into a brand-new life and all the things I relied on to survive no longer matter.

  So it’s really not a catharsis. Maybe more of a cleansing. Some kind of break. A pause between the old and the new.

  I feel fresh again. Clean. Even though I’m literally covered in sweat and grime nearly all the time. But when Cort van Breda held me in his arms and jumped into the ocean and I saw that reef, something switched inside me. This whole new reality suddenly became real.

  Some of that was probably fear, and the adrenaline from the jump, and the shock of the water. But most of it was the realization that I was somewhere… else.

  Somewhere far, far away from Lazar. And even though I understand that it’s not really that far away because we’re stranded here like prisoners and he is just a helicopter ride away, the odds of seeing him again have suddenly dwindl
ed down to near zero.

  I don’t belong to Lazar anymore. This is what hit me under the water that day. I might not be free, but I don’t belong to Lazar.

  It’s not enough. I get that. I don’t have any real power in this world and I don’t control much. But I control myself. At all times. I can make certain decisions, I can avoid certain outcomes, and I can keep my mouth shut.

  This won’t last. I have no idea how long we’ll be here, I just know it won’t be forever.

  One day Udulf will come and pick me up. He will take me home, or whatever. Sell me, maybe. I don’t know what he’ll do with me.

  Cort and I will not be together. I understand this. He will go his way, and I’ll go my way, and this pause in my life will just become another fairy tale story in my head. Something that never really happened.

  But each morning when I wake up, I put the nightmare that is my life aside and only think about the reality of my new day. Which is training.

  I jump rope for about thirty minutes. I do the drills I know, then learn a new one and practice that until I’m exhausted. And then Cort and I spar, or wrestle, or box. He has taught me how to kick, how to punch, how to use my elbows and knees, and how to block.

  He still slaps my face every day. Well, he tries. The day after the roof sex he showed me four ways to block that slap. He made me practice relentlessly that first day and it’s still something I practice as one of my drills. So now, on day thirty, I don’t get slapped anymore. I have bruises all up and down my forearms from blocking, but it has been eight days since his fingertips even got close to my cheek.

  Every afternoon we look at that tank on the roof and he decides if we can afford the water for a hosedown or a shower. And every few days, he decides we can. But on the other days we just jump into the ocean and swim around the reef, washing off the sweat but picking up salt from the sea.

  We eat dinner with our bowls propped up on the beam and watch the birds, and the waves, and when it’s dark, the lights far, far off in the distance. I think it’s land. Like, real land. A coastline. And there’s a shipping lane too. We’re too far away to really make out the ships, but at night we track the running lights across the dark-blue horizon.

  My skin burns, but then darkens to a golden brown as my hair becomes wild and tangled from the salty air and streaked nearly white from the sun.

  Then, when the day is finally over and we’re lying on our mats, Cort will point to the moon and flash his fingers. We are counting up, not down. And who knows where that count ends. Could be tomorrow, could be next year.

  And when I think about this, I find that I don’t care if we stay here forever. I know that’s not possible. We don’t have enough water to last much longer. But if we could stay, I would stay.

  I like this pause.

  We haven’t had sex again. We haven’t kissed, or held hands, or even sent each other longing, meaningful looks. When Cort looks at me, his look is hard and filled with expectations. He’s training me. I am a student to him right now. And at first, I felt a little hurt and maybe even a little used, but now I see that I am earning his respect. When he smiles at me now, it’s because I blocked a punch or a kick. It’s because he didn’t get the best of me.

  And that’s new. Every man I’ve ever known has wanted the best of me. They want to take things from me. They want me to give myself to them.

  But not Cort. He wants me to stop him. Everything we do is about me stopping him.

  Sometimes, in the afternoon when it’s raining hard enough for the water to blow in onto the training mats, we’ll go inside and play a game. Or sometimes I will read a book and he’ll just lie on the couch and stare at the ceiling. He never naps or even closes his eyes. He just stares up at that ceiling.

  It rains a lot, at least once every day. In the mornings and then again later in the afternoon. Most of the nights are clear and we can see the stars as well as the moon. But there have been a few rainy nights and we’ve had to sleep on the mats on the training floor.

  He doesn’t like sleeping down there and I’m starting to get the feeling that Cort prefers to be out in the open as much as possible because when I tried to sleep in the game room, he just shook his head and pointed to the roof.

  I don’t know what that’s about because we don’t talk. We don’t even sign anymore. He hasn’t taught me any new ones since that moment he realized I was picking them up on my own.

  I don’t think he likes that I understand his language. And not because he’s got some ego about the signs, either. I think it just took him by surprise, and I get the feeling that Cort van Breda hates surprises.

  I didn’t have to show him the signs. I could’ve kept that secret. But I wanted him to know. It felt like something he should know.

  We ran out of food seven days ago. Unsurprisingly, no one came to pick us up or restock our pathetic pantry. But that morning Cort got up before I did and when I went down to the training level, he was messing around with a giant net. It was pretty obvious that if we wanted to eat, we’d have to get that food ourselves. We had nothing left. Not even a cup of rice. It was all gone.

  We spent the entire day fishing with that heavy net, casting it out and pulling it in over, and over, and over again, hoping for fish.

  We caught lots of tiny ones. And we didn’t throw them away. But tiny fishes aren’t enough and it doesn’t take a genius to realize that there is no way to fillet a two-inch fish. You just have to eat it whole.

  I want to hurl just thinking about it now. But that’s exactly what we did that night. Cort ate like thirty of them. He was so full that night, he sighed and patted his belly in satisfaction. I only managed one and it was so disgusting I puked it back up.

  The next day, we did it all again. It was easier that time because I settled into Cort’s rhythm with the net-pulling. But my body was still sore from the day before. And that night, even though once again we only caught the tiny fishes, I forced myself to swallow five of them.

  I clutched my belly that night, just like Cort. Only I was sick, not content and full.

  It took two more days to finally net three large fish that could be filleted. And by that time, I was swallowing those little fish like a champ. I even ate a tiny fish that one of the birds dropped at my feet.

  This made Cort smile like a boy. They do that a lot. And he eats them too. Every single time. I get the feeling this is something he’s done for years. And I want that story. I want to know what’s up with these fucking birds and how Cort van Breda—the Sick Heart himself—managed to tame them like he’s Tarzan.

  But of course, I didn’t get that story. I will probably never get that story.

  And tame isn’t even the right word. Those stupid birds love him. Even the gulls. They don’t feed him the way some of the albatrosses do, but they don’t move when he gets near. They aren’t afraid of him the way they are me.

  We cut the meat of those three fish into strips and dried them in the sun. And that’s what we’ve been chewing on for the past two days.

  Today we are foodless again. And I’m not looking forward to more fishing.

  But when I come out of the bathroom and go looking for my jump rope, ready to pretend fishing isn’t happening, Cort isn’t holding the net. He’s just standing on the edge of the training platform, looking out to sea.

  I walk over, wondering what’s attracted his attention, and that’s when I see the ship coming right towards our platform.

  I gasp, and Cort turns to me, shaking his head. I’m not sure what that means. No, he will not let Udulf take me? Or no, there’s nothing he can do?

  But then I look back at the ship and realize it’s neither of those. Because as the ship gets closer and angles the side of the hull up to the rig, I count twenty kids on deck wearing orange life jackets.

  And then I see Maart. He waves to us.

  No. Come on, Anya. Maart is waving to Cort. Not me. I saw those two together on the Bull of Light. There is something between them. Something more
than just trainer and doctor, if that’s what Maart is. And it’s more likely that Maart’s skills were built out of necessity and involved a lot of on-the-job training. He is probably half the reason Cort is still alive right now. Maart gives no fucks about me at all.

  I saw the way he looked at Cort in that clinic back on the Bull. He was very worried about the blood loss and maybe he’s just not used to having strangers in the clinic with him after a fight when he’s putting Cort back together, but it might just be that he didn’t care if I knew.

  Maybe he wanted me to know that they are something more.

  That bottle of Lectra was always going to be consumed, so they were always going to fuck me that night. But I get the feeling that Maart was sending subtle signals to me too. Making sure I understood that that’s all it was.

  Just fucking.

  You’re here today, gone tomorrow, girl.

  But I didn’t go. I wasn’t sent away. Cort brought me out here to the rig with him. And now it’s all starting to make sense. This is all a fantasy. Just a dream world. A temporary reprieve. And this place that has started to feel like home suddenly doesn’t feel like anything anymore.

  Because this is his training camp. And I don’t know why we just spent thirty days out here alone, but I get the feeling it’s all just… work.

  I am just work.

  Cort absently props an arm on my shoulder as he watches the kids jump from the ship. One by one, they jump, splashing into the sea below. Most of them have life jackets, but a few don’t. The older ones, I realize. And by older, I mean like… twelve. Maybe. There are a lot of little ones, though. One very small girl is screaming her head off in Rainer’s arms as he positions her over the side of the ship, ready to let her fall.

  The ship is a platform supply vessel. Lazar was obsessed with ships and he owns several just like this one, so I recognize the class. This one looks like it’s been around for a couple of decades and isn’t freshly painted the way Lazar’s ships are. But I don’t care how rundown the ship looks. This means we’re getting food and water today.