by M. O'Keefe
“What happened?” she asked.
“Baby, you don’t want to hear this.”
“I do.” She wanted to hear everything. All of his stories.
“They came at me in the shower—they’d bribed some guard to look the other way. But I had this fucking screwdriver I paid a guy to get for me and I’d been sweating over it for weeks. I had it sharp as a razor and I…I killed him.”
“How?”
“I stabbed him, what do you think?”
“But where? How? Was it fast? Slow?”
He took a deep breath. “I’m worried about you,” he finally said, his low voice cracked and dry with concern.
Stop doing this to him, she told herself. But she wasn’t going to. No. She was in now and she was going to hear all his dark secrets. Burrow through all his dark places. She was greedy for it. Hungry for it.
“I’m worried that you want to hear this.”
“Me, too,” she said with a laugh. “But I’d be more worried if I didn’t. We can’t pretend these things didn’t happen to us.”
He was silent for a long time and she had no idea what he was thinking.
“It was fast,” he finally whispered. “But it felt like a thousand years. I stabbed him in the neck. His boys scattered. The guard who had been paid to look the other way so I could be beaten or raped or killed, he charged in and put me back in chains.”
A low moan of distress came out of her throat.
“Don’t, baby,” he murmured. “It was years ago; don’t take that pain on, too. It’s been a long time since I thought about him.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “For asking.”
“No, you’re right. I can’t pretend like it didn’t happen. Like it’s not this huge tear in my life. Everything after that was totally different. I was totally different.”
“I feel completely changed,” she said. “And I’m not sure if it’s good or bad. It’s just…change.”
“You’re scared.”
She closed her eyes and pressed her face against the pillow. It wasn’t a question. He just knew that truth about her.
“When we first started talking,” he said, “you were this…I don’t know, this, like, bright light. So fucking pure—”
“That’s not true—”
“Hey, this is my side of the story. You don’t get to tell me what I think is true.” She smiled at his fond, rusty chastisement. “And everything I asked you to do, even as shit got a little darker, you stayed so bright. Even up at my place, even when you were telling me you were married and I could tell how awful you felt about making me a part of adultery, you were still bright and pure. You still are now. This shit with Hoyt, it didn’t change you. Not where it counts. Not the way I see you.”
It was so nice talking to him again. The tiny bridge between who she was now and who she’d been just a few days ago. He was the link. The line connecting the wildly scattered dots.
“You should talk to someone,” he said.
“I’m talking to you.”
“No, like a real someone. After I killed that kid, I got moved to Union to finish my sentence—”
“But it was self-defense, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. I mean that was the ruling, but when I was in juvie I got added time for fighting. So the two years I originally got for stealing cars and illegal street racing quickly turned into four, so I had to finish my sentence in Union.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, well, I survived,” Dylan said, downplaying it. “But in Union, this priest used to come in—”
“You’re religious?”
“Fuck no. I just…I don’t know…this priest kept coming in. And he seemed cool, like, badass. He had a pretty shitty history that was not unlike my shitty history, so I talked to him. And it helped. It helped a lot. I mean, I was surprised.”
“I loved church,” she said. She closed her eyes and remembered the feeling she’d had in those pews. The sunlight in the stained glass bathing the entire congregation—their praying hands, their upturned faces—in brilliant colors.
The sunlight at church seemed warmer than anywhere else.
Or maybe it was just the power of being surrounded by people when she was usually so alone.
“You should go back,” he said. “Find yourself someone to talk to.”
“I don’t even know what day it is, isn’t that funny?”
He chuckled. “It’s very early Monday morning.”
She’d just missed it. Next week, she thought.
How incredible it would feel to get back that part of herself. A piece Hoyt had taken away. Quite suddenly, there were a lot of pieces of herself she wanted back.
And maybe it was because of his voice in her ear, but she wanted her body back. She wanted those moments of pleasure. The long, rolling orgasms she’d given herself. The exploration and the thrill.
But more—she wanted the ones he gave her. And she wanted to give someone else pleasure. Oh God, not someone else, what a stupid lie. Him. She wanted to give Dylan pleasure, with hands that had just been learning how.
But her body felt dead. Heavy.
“Annie?” he asked. “You still there?”
“Yeah. Do you think…” She didn’t know how to put it into words.
“What?”
“I just…I wish you were here.”
“Why?”
“I want to feel my body again. The way you made it feel.”
A week ago he would have groaned at her words, that dark, excited growl of his that traveled from satellite to satellite to settle in her belly, where the sound would reverberate through her whole body. And then he would have asked her to do something to herself. Squeeze her nipple. Her clit. He’d tell her to roll over onto her stomach and put all of her fingers as far inside herself as she could.
And she would have done it. Sobbing and wet and on fire with her own pleasure, her own ecstatic enjoyment—she would have done everything he asked.
There was a pulse, weak, but there between her legs. A brief ache, but then it was gone. The clouds back over the moon.
“You can do it yourself,” he said, his voice cold and distant.
“It’s not the same.”
“You just need some time—”
“Stop,” she cried, suddenly angry. “Stop telling me what I need. I know what I need and it’s to feel something again. To feel good. To feel wanted and cherished and desirable.”
“You are, baby. You are.”
“Then where are you?” she demanded. “I need you, Dylan.”
He blew out a long breath and then he said, “I’m in the trailer next to yours.”
DYLAN
Months ago, when Annie and I first started this thing between us, when it was just phone calls and we were pretending to be other people, I told her that I would never lie to her. I wouldn’t always tell her everything, but what I did tell her would be the truth.
Tonight she asked me what I’d been doing and I said nothing.
Because I couldn’t tell her that I’d spent three hours in the parking lot of a strip club looking for my brother.
And when I got home from The Velvet Touch, I told myself when I collapsed face-first into this bed, in this crappy trailer, that just because I was staying here didn’t mean we would rush into things. We would go slow, because she deserved that.
Because she’d experienced some fucking trauma.
Because my past had moved in with me and things weren’t so simple anymore.
You need to keep her away from you and your shit.
Oh, that fucking voice. That angry, bitter voice that only served to keep me feeling small—I’d gotten rid of it after jail. I’d worked hard at silencing it and losing the dark doubts that came from how I grew up.
Of course it would be back now. Living next to Pops. Looking for Max.
I am not my family, I told myself. Except I was. Right now, I was rolled up and packed in tight with my family. I was shoulder to shoulder
with their poison.
One fucking phone call from Annie and my plan was demolished. So much for keeping my distance. I could hear the fear and desperation in her voice and I would do anything to make it stop. Anything to make her feel better.
Ah, listen to you, you piece of shit, telling yourself you’re going to fuck her for her own good. You are a regular saint.
I wasn’t going to fuck her. I wasn’t.
There was a knock at the door to my new home and I got out of bed to answer it. I could not deny my pleasure. My excitement. And if I were a better man I’d tell her to go back to her trailer.
Because she deserved better than me lying to her. She deserved better than the bullshit I had attached to my back right now.
I opened the door and she stood there, barefoot and bathed in bright white moonlight. She wore a tank top and shorts, all that alabaster skin so perfect.
Her intentions were obvious and my blood started to pound. My dick agreed with her intentions. The base part of me that just wanted to feel good, to make her feel good, got excited.
But the bruises on her face, her swollen lip—fuck, I couldn’t do this.
“Annie,” I breathed. “This is a bad—”
As she walked up the steps and into the trailer, I could feel her vibrating with tension. Her hands were fists. Her eyes bright and wide.
“I don’t care what you think,” she said, all upthrust chin and attitude.
Oh God, I tried not to smile. But I loved her like this. Unchained and furious. It was pure. A mess, but it was a pure mess.
“I’m not going to have sex with you,” I told her, but her expression called bullshit. “I’m serious, Annie. It’s a bad idea, and you’d see that if you weren’t so charged up right now. You want to feel something good because there’s been a whole lot of shit. I totally get it. I want it, too.”
“Then why not?”
Because I’m lying to you.
“Because we’re not in any shape for it, honey. Because you’ve been through something awful and sex isn’t going to make that go away. Because there’s a good chance neither one of us will like ourselves in the morning!”
She looked deflated, unbearably sad and still somehow pissed off, and before I could stop myself I crossed the small trailer and pulled her into my arms.
“I don’t want to be alone,” she breathed against my chest. Her hands, cool and shaking, slipped around my waist.
I didn’t want to be alone, either. For the first time in longer than I could remember, my solitude chafed.
She stared back at me with haunted eyes. “Don’t make me be alone,” she whispered.
Oh. Jesus. I could not refuse.
“Come on.” I led her into the bedroom. Which was so damn tiny. There was the double bed in faded and worn flowery sheets and there was us. She took a deep breath and her chest nearly touched mine. “Let’s…let’s try to get some sleep.”
She crawled up onto my bed, and I looked out the window instead of at her ass in those little shorts. Her petite body curled up into almost nothing on one side of the bed.
“You cold?” I asked, and she shook her head. Her blue eyes piercing in the darkness.
Did I really tell her those things? About prison and the priest? Looking in her eyes, I couldn’t see her knowledge of them. Or if not knowledge, her…reaction to them.
“Those things I told you, about the guy in jail…?”
“Yeah?”
“Other than the priest I’ve only told one other person. A woman. The night I got out.”
Annie blinked up at me.
“There was this guy who I used to race with, an older guy named Miguel. He was kind of a local legend when I was growing up. He’d done some low-level NASCAR stuff when he was younger. Margaret was his wife, Blake was his oldest son—that’s how I met them. When I got out of jail they threw me a party. Max took me and I think he hired this girl.”
“Like…a prostitute?”
This is you, asshole. Pretend all you want, but this is you. And she should know who you really are.
“Yeah. Like a prostitute. She was real sweet. Real kind, you know. And I was high from a blow job and weed and freedom and I told her.”
“What happened?”
“She threw on some of her clothes, enough that she was decent. Grabbed the rest of it and got gone.”
“I’m sorry she did that,” Annie said.
“Yeah, well, Max probably didn’t pay her enough to listen to my confession.”
Tell her about the other whores, the voice said. The ones after the fire. The women you paid to touch your skin and suck your dick, so you could try to feel like a man again.
“Do…” Annie sat up, her eyes on her hands. “Do you want me to leave?”
“No.” Fuck me, but that was the truth. I didn’t want her to leave.
I crawled into bed beside her, making sure we weren’t touching. Half my leg was hanging off the bed and my arms were behind my head. The bed was barely big enough for me and while she might be tiny, this thing between us was huge.
Tell her, I thought. Tell her why you’re here. Tell her what being here might cost her.
But I couldn’t. I didn’t want to scare her. I didn’t want to add to her worry; she had enough.
Bullshit, that voice said. You don’t want her to leave. You don’t want her to leave you alone in this fucking trailer park with Pops and your brother and your past. Be man enough to admit that.
Suddenly, she crawled toward the end of the bed.
“What are you doing?”
“This is worse than being alone,” she said. “I’m lying here thinking about everything you asked me to do, everything we did together, and you’re right here and I’m right here and we might as well be miles apart. It hurts, Dylan.” Her eyes, her beautiful eyes, revealed it all, the width and breadth of her agony. “It hurts to be near you like this.”
Hurting her was the last thing I wanted.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “Come on, come back to bed.”
She eyed me warily but I put my arms around her, pulling her back into me. I shifted, rolling us to our sides, and pulled up my knees until they were right behind hers. Her back against my bare chest, her ass pressed into my groin.
Her head was right under my chin, my arms tucked around her, and I could feel every breath she took. After a few seconds, my breath started to match hers. Our chests lifting and falling at the same time. Our heartbeats, pounding against each other, started to beat in time.
I wasn’t going to tell her about Rabbit, or my brother. She had enough bad shit spinning through her thoughts. I would handle my past. She would get better. Maybe in a few days it wouldn’t matter. Max would come back, the deal would be done, and the threat would be gone.
The deep breath she took shuddered at the top and I squeezed her a little tighter.
“These beds are nice, aren’t they?” she asked.
I laughed, and she was so flush against me it made her shake. “They really are.”
The night was thick and lush around us. And I was trying hard not to feel everything, her skin and her weight and the air. But I was failing. Blood was beginning to pound in my dick. I knew she could feel it and I felt obscene.
Carefully I shifted away from her. “No,” she breathed, her hand reaching back and curling over my hip. Her fingertips biting into the muscle of my ass. “Stay.”
“Baby, this doesn’t feel right.”
“But it feels like something, doesn’t it?” she asked.
I had to concede. And like an idiot I stayed there. My dick against her ass, getting harder with every breath.
My belief that this could stay innocent was going up in flames. It was a stupid belief anyway.
Her hand, surprisingly strong, clutched mine against her stomach.
“I hurt,” she said.
“Where?” I sat up, thinking of her concussion. “That Joan woman left a ton of shit—I can see if she’s got aspirin or som
ething.”
“No.” She shook her head. Slowly she pushed my hand down her body and I buried my face in my pillow. Powerless to stop her.
She had our hands between her legs.
“I hurt here,” she whispered, and moved our fingers until I was cupping her. “Make it better. Please.”
DYLAN
Who was I saving by being noble? She didn’t want nobility. She didn’t want reason.
She wanted some basic animal connection.
Fuck it. I did, too.
I pushed my fingers against her, feeling the thick folds of her pussy through the cotton. I found the seam between them and ran my finger along it.
“Like this?” I asked. She nodded, pushing back against my cock. Her breath came in harder. “Or like this?” I lifted my fingers so I could slip them down over her tummy, between her shorts and her skin. She wore no underwear, and so my fingers slipped right over her bare pussy.
I made a sound low in my throat. “I’d forgotten you’d shaved,” I whispered into her hair.
“You like it?”
I kissed her head, closed my eyes, and slipped one finger between her folds. She parted her legs a little to give me access.
I’d never touched a woman so tenderly. I’d never been so careful.
I found her wet, but I wanted more. I wanted to be sure. So I rubbed the callused edge of my finger over the sensitive skin of her clit until it was hard as a bead at my touch.
“Dylan…” she whispered, her voice breaking.
“What?” I stopped touching her, pulled my finger away, but she pushed forward into my hand.
“It feels so good,” she sobbed. “Thank you for bringing this back.”
It felt good to make her feel this way. Healing, somehow.
I pushed one finger inside of her and found her drenched. I brushed my thumb against her clit over and over again, harder each time.
“More,” she breathed, and I gave her another finger, burying my face into her neck. Inhaling the scent of her sweat and her skin and her arousal.
“There. Oh…God. Dylan. Right there.” She clutched at my hand and jerked her hips against it and I let her do it. I let her use me. She rolled onto her back and threw her leg over mine, until we were a tangle on top of the bed. The sight of my hand buried between her legs, her own hands grabbing onto my wrist like she had to keep me there, like it was possible I could leave, was powerful.
