by A. R. Hadley
"You are not a commodity."
"Are you real?" I turned and faced the crazy-talented jerk, shaking my head. "Do you understand how things work? No wonder this place ate you up and spat you out."
"Have you ever painted?" he asked.
I huffed, tightened the fold of my arms against my chest, and gnawed at my lip. "I'm not painting."
"Come here." He did that adorable thing with his head — ticking it to the side, coupling it with a twinkle in his eyes — they were fucking gems. He wasn't from here or anywhere. Maybe he flew in on a spaceship from planet Zen.
"I'm not, Jeremiah."
"Come here, you stubborn woman."
We stayed like that for a moment, staring at each other, waiting to draw fire. But he got the better of me. Always did. He would whittle me down and worm his way into whatever soft place may still exist in my heart.
I gave up, or maybe I was trying to be what he needed, what he thought he saw reflected in my eyes.
Dragging my boots across the floor, I sighed.
He yanked on my hand until I was in the position he wanted, in between him and the blank canvas, and then he put those damn beautifully worn hands back on my hips.
Nuzzling his face into my hair, he positioned his lips at my ear, tickling me. How did he expect me to paint with endorphins beginning to pump through my vagina? The crazy-happy-Zen fool.
"Put your hands in the paint," he whispered, as he unbuttoned my jeans, hands grazing my stomach.
His touch felt like fingers dancing across a wheat field.
I stared at the tiny dipping dots of color speckled on his skin as he slid my jeans to my ankles along with my underwear. "Get a condom," I said. "Please."
He did, and he was wrapped and at my entrance before I could change my mind, before I could peel my eyes away from my painted eyes on the canvas that leaned against the wall near my feet. The emeralds were huge, misshapen, and full of a hope I had forgotten.
"Go on, Dee." He ran his cock along my seam. "Get your fingers dirty." Nipping at my ear, he pressed the front of his body deeper into my rear. "More," he hissed, coaxing me into position. He entered me, unexpectedly.
I eased forward, and I may have grunted.
"Paint our fuck." He thrust each word into my body, made noises. The sounds told me I was exactly what he wanted; my pussy was where his cock needed to be. His noises, and the circling of his hips, told me I was necessary.
I slapped my hand onto the canvas and began to ruin the blank space. Destroying it while he drove into me recklessly. Keeping my hand on the table and another on the board, he rammed his dick into me over and over, causing my fingers to slide and shake without warning, resulting in wild streaks of paint across the square.
"More," he grated through his teeth as he slapped my ass and squeezed my cheeks.
I thought his grip and his nails would rip me in two. Dropping my head, I sucked in a breath, dipped my fingers into the paint, turned my head to the side, and touched his cheek. I drew a vertical line from just underneath his eye to the corner of his lips.
"Yes, baby." His voice was hard and tormented, and his mouth was screwed up with lust and an I-don't-know-what because I denied it.
I drew another line across his opposite cheek then gripped the edge of the board, one of my hands blue, green, black, red, yellow, and purple; the other bland and plain, only the color of me.
"God, babe," he panted. "Do you feel how well we fit together?"
"Just fuck me." I started to cry, eyes on the streaks and blobs I had made, eyes on my painted eyes on his canvas on the floor. I wept and shook. "Please."
He tilted my body toward the wall, and I placed my palms on it. My prints would leave marks there too.
"Steady yourself. I'm going to—"
"Fuck me!" I interrupted.
I didn't care if the neighbors could hear me. If I yelled, the tears would stop. If I yelled, I wouldn't need a drink. If I yelled, I could ignore my eyes, his smell, and the way we did fit together. Perfectly.
Oh, God. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
He rocked me with the same precision he had used with the paintbrush. He knew exactly how to move his instruments, when to be harsh and when to be still, how to get the desired finish. Ramming into me fast and swift, he stayed inside, grinding his tip all the way to my womb as he worked his hand along different parts of my body — my clit, my breasts, my stomach, my neck.
Finally, he put his hand over my sternum, his thumb under my chin. "What did you see in your eyes?"
Bastard. Just when I had the crying under control, he wanted more of me. Did he want to fuck me or be my therapist?
"Nothing," I said.
He pulled out, and by out I meant … All. The. Fucking. Way.
"Nothing?" he growled low in my ear, making circles over my clit, his other hand resting on my hip.
"Nothing," I whispered, weak and uncertain. Except I had never been more certain of my fears.
He teased my entrance, went in a little, then left me again. Cold and empty. Without a piece of him.
"You are a woman who wants a hard fuck but who is afraid of her own eyes." He flipped me around. In an instant, we were face-to-face. Eye-to-eye.
I was drenched in charcoal and rainwater and sex.
"You are beautiful, Deirdre." As he lifted me up, I wrapped my legs around him. He sank back into me, pressed his face to my neck, resting it there for comfort, like he needed to stay in that spot for eternity. "This will be slow now. Come with me.” Pumping me slower, more kindly, his eyes held an emotion I didn't want to believe or see. “We will come at the same time. Watch us. Look at how we fit. Watch our fuck."
He wasn't real. He was an apparition. Make-believe.
Something had to give with him. Maybe the only drawback was his lack of a bed? But I had one. I flicked my eyes to it. He noticed. Swallowing my nerves and my self-righteous decree of earlier, I embraced the novelty.
"Take me." I nodded toward the unmade bed. It was only a double, but it would do. The mattress was the only thing in my matchbox that wasn't used.
He laid me down, climbed over me, and for the longest time just looked at me, smiling and interpreting each line and freckle on my face.
"I'll do a better job next time," he said as he finally pushed inside of me. "I'll paint every feature. I won't miss a thing on your beautiful, perfect face."
"I think you need glasses."
"No," he breathed. "I need you."
I could handle hard, but tenderness — needs, ache, fitting, perfection — would destroy me.
It already had.
He slipped under my shell, cracked me open, made love to me in my bed, and I came with him just as he had wanted.
Afterward, we collapsed together, and he held me, draping himself over my body, smothering me, planting his fucking face back against my neck, and stayed there. He wouldn't leave.
I don't think I wanted him to go either.
Ever.
We fell asleep tangled and sweating.
I woke up in the night to pee, and on my way back to the snuggle shop, I couldn't help but stare at that stupid canvas again. I shined my phone onto the emerald eyes, and then I found the nearest one of my notebooks, sat on the floor, and leaned against the wall with my favorite charcoal pencil and wrote.
Liquid man
Colors like sand
Passing through webbed fingers
Inside
Out of my hourglass figure
Turning me on myself
Where I'm in prison
For eternity
Behind the rosy colored glasses
That were invented by a man
Who sits atop
Los Angeles
and laughs
At the spectators
In a ring
A court
For your pleasure
To be ripped
apart
By lions
and Elizabeth Taylor wielding chariots
/> Size 4
Size 2
Size 0
I don't fit
My key is deformed
Will I be enough for what you shaped out of colors you mixed
Can I live up to your unrealistic expectations
Can I call you my own
Live in my neck
Claw a hole in my sternum
Forever
THREE
Two days off from the shelter. Two, and the furniture in my office had been rearranged. Things out of place. Pencils sharpened. Papers stacked. I could see the stain and the grain of the wood on my desk for the first time in weeks.
It shined, now centered, facing the door. And the scent…
Everywhere and unfamiliar. Leather, old money, and mints. Peppermints. The kind of candy wrapped in tight, crunchy plastic with the twisty bows at the ends. Red-and-white-striped ovals that made a God-awful noise when I’d try to open them quietly in the pew at church.
Mass…
I had missed Sunday, was behind on Hail Marys, and confession had become a dream I perspired over in the early morning and forgot by mid-day.
Moving on, I leaned over my desk and started to open drawers, my drawers, examining the foreign contents then slamming them shut. As the final drawer hit, a man I’d never seen walked into my office. Or what used to be my office — the one I’d earned after months, no, years of dedication and hard work.
He entered, looked me up and down, then tossed a file onto the desk, all while wrestling with the knot of his silver tie, the threads bringing out the molten of his eyes.
He didn’t belong in this room.
My room.
Or the motherfucking building.
He belonged in a tower where men discussed and made money.
Snorted coke with it.
A high-rise where they probably lined the wastebasket with hundred-dollar bills.
For fun.
He was the source of the smell too.
Money suit.
Money shoes.
Money haircut.
Nothing about those things he shouldered impressed me, but his eyes did — looking sorrowful, pensive, and defiant — asking me questions I couldn’t deny.
Why are you afraid of power, Deirdre?
Why do you deny yourself the enjoyment of things?
Why are you weak?
Because money changed people.
It was the root of all evil.
My family epitomized money. I did the opposite of my family. This man, the stranger in my office, embodied it too. Entitlement. Wealth. Seduction. He already scared me. Intrigued me. Without saying a word. He wore my silent judgment in his expensive suit. Threw danger around with the million-dollar smirk advertised in his fucking lips.
I wanted to know if they tasted rich…
Shit. I needed to take my eyes off sin. Off him.
And wait… That wasn’t correct.
Money was not the root of all evil.
“For the love of money is the root of all evils.”
The love.
And behind money there was usually a stack of lies and a parade of deceit. I didn’t want any part of it. I wanted money-suit man out. I didn’t give a fuck about the taste of his lips or why he was here, in my office, standing in front of my now-clean desk, fingering his tie as though he was trying to show me that using his fingers was something he was an expert at.
“Name?” he asked, barely giving me a sideways glance, his smirk still in place.
The damn tie seemed to be his enemy or the noose he desperately wanted to release. I eyeballed the knot, envying it, wishing those fucking fingers struggled with me, but he stopped toying with it and instead slowly slid his palm down the silk, studying my confounded reaction as he did.
I swallowed, ripping my eyes from the fingers, the tie, and the knot.
“Deirdre,” I managed to reply.
He maintained the smirk. “O’Drassen, right?”
I used my family’s old Irish name rather than Drazen. Always had. I didn’t need anybody to know I came from money or why I hated it.
“I’ve read your file.”
“Oh,” Donna said, entering the room, her voice up an octave from normal. She played with the collar of her frilly shirt. “I see you’ve met Pierce.” She must’ve had something in her eye because she kept fluttering her lashes.
Pierce didn’t change or move. He kept his gaze on me, his salt-and-pepper hair not an inch out of place, his molten eyes burning through my fair skin like flares from the sun.
No one asked why the sun set in the evening or why it rose again in the morning. Apparently, no one asked about Pierce’s autonomy either.
He just appeared.
Rise. Set. Fucking blinding sun.
Ignoring his stare and yanking Donna by the wrist, I pulled her into the hall. “What the fuck?” I whispered through gritted teeth.
“Davis is out, honey. It’s all very hush-hush. Keep your nose out of the politics and just admire the view.”
“The view has my desk.”
“And a fine ass. He could push me up against it—”
“Jesus Christ.” I ruffed my fingers through my hair and scoffed.
She bumped my elbow. “Did you see the man’s arms, Dee?” Donna fanned herself while making those ridiculous eyes women make over men they think will help them forget the mundane and give them the orgasm to end all orgasms.
I screwed up my face, pretending I hadn’t noticed his arms or his ass or his anything. But I had noticed — his cuffs rolled up to elbows, causing his biceps to strain against the white of his dress shirt.
Everything about him appeared strained.
He needed release.
I couldn’t involve myself with the sun; I would get burned. I didn’t do personal. I didn’t care where he came from or why he was here. I had a job to do.
As Donna took off down the hall, still flapping a palm near her face, I casually peered into the room. Still behind the desk, gaze on the contents of the file, his body exuded something fierce I couldn’t tear my eyes from.
“Come in, Deirdre.” He stepped around the desk, rested his fine ass against it, crossed his ankles, and folded his damn arms across his chest.
“Why the fancy shoes, the suit? You do realize this is a homeless shelter?”
His lips curved into a delicious smile I wanted to lick off his face. “No harm letting them see what they can aspire to.”
Them. Great.
“Everybody wants to be Cary Grant,” he said, not a hint of humiliation, but I strangely liked it. What the fuck was happening to me? Sleeping with a homeless man then lusting after his polar opposite. Maybe this was my mid-life crisis. Or my fucked-up version of a bucket list.
“You are no Cary Grant.”
“Even Cary Grant said he wanted to be Cary Grant. People need idols, Deirdre. These people need—”
“These people? You’re unbelievable. Waltzing in here, taking over my office.”
“This is my office, sweetheart.”
“What did you just call me?” I narrowed my eyes.
“Dee, Sam is waiting for your signature,” Jeremiah said, standing under the doorframe. He tipped his head. “Hey, man. I’m Jeremiah.”
“I know.” Pierce filled in the blanks. “Occasional volunteer. Former resident.”
“This is,” I said, my tongue full of sarcasm, gesturing between the two men, “I-Don’t-Know-His-Last-Name Pierce.”
“You’ll be sharing an office?” Jeremiah asked, not giving away a thing.
“Unfortunately,” I replied.
“No,” Pierce said at the same time.
“Tell Sam I’ll be there in a minute.”
Jeremiah left.
“I worked my way through the world too, Deirdre,” he said, fingertips pressed into the desk, knuckles white. “The hard way. No hand up.”
“I’ll work my way back into this office. I’m not giving it up for you.”
God
, I meant that in any and every way he would take it too. I wasn’t giving anything up for him. Not my heart, my sex, my sobriety, my comfortable rationalizations, or my fear of carousels.
FOUR
His desk, my desk, had two big baskets on it. They hadn’t been there earlier, and they were huge, wrapped in cellophane, and tied with frilly ribbons. Cracker boxes and sausage logs and tons of fruit practically spilled out of them.
People would be lining up soon.
“Are you hungry, Deirdre?” Pierce set a bottle of champagne on the desk, fidgeted with the knot of his tie, and looked at me the way he always did — like I was the contents of the baskets and had a pretty ribbon across my breasts that he couldn’t wait to untie.
I couldn’t possibly be his type. My jacket alone screamed, Get the fuck away from me. But maybe that was how he liked it. The chase. The rebel. The girl with the grease under her fingernails.
He had an angle though. I still didn’t know what it was or why he was working here or where he had come from, nor did I ask.
I needed time to figure him out. But I didn’t care to.
Men acted complicated, but they were really very simple.
He had asked if I was hungry, but his eyes implied I was hungry for him. I scoffed as I began to pick at the ribbon, blew hair away from my forehead and cheeks. The damn knot was too tight.
Smiling condescendingly, he put his hands on the ribbon and tried to take over. I wouldn’t let him. So, we both kept working on it, pulling on the shiny black decoration.
Together.
His knuckles brushed mine.
I inhaled, ignoring the prickles on my skin and the flush I could feel flooding my cheeks.
“I can do it,” I said, jerking my palm away. Hands were hands. But his were exquisite and probably made of rolled-up one hundred dollar bills — except they weren’t. Maybe he had made his way through the world the hard way. His cuffs and fancy watchband couldn’t hide the wear and age I saw on his skin.
He caught me looking and thinking, and he dismissed the curiosity he saw in my eyes with his next question.
“You do everything around here. Are you a feminist?”
“Every woman is a feminist,” I huffed, starting to work on basket number two. I didn’t need a man to untie ribbons or change a tire. I could install light bulbs, kill bugs, and fix toilets.
