by A. R. Hadley
I had given him the key.
There wasn’t any part of me that man could not open. He didn’t need a jagged-edged piece of metal to enter, possess me, or turn the starter.
EIGHT
The two of us had been in the office together many times since he’d touched me when he should not have dared, when I had whispered my intention, and when he had described what he wanted to do to my body in great detail. Or was it grave?
Today wasn’t any different. I stood at the filing cabinet, a stack of papers in my hand, trying to find the appropriate folder for each page.
I could stay busy, ignore him and the scent of bills and the red-and-white-striped candy, the kind that used to sit in a glass dish in a bowl at my grandmother’s. My sister Sheila put the same mints out now.
He passed by the door. He may have locked it.
I was the candy.
Today was different.
Holding a red flag, air escaped his nostrils, visibly. He touched my upper arm.
I didn’t stop. Sort. Sort. File.
He put his nose into my curls and went over them slowly and surely, breathing against my scalp. My stomach lurched, but my pussy swelled.
I released the papers.
Nothing in the office had consequence. Everything had free will.
Jeremiah wasn’t volunteering here today. He was at home or in Venice selling hard work. I couldn’t think his name so long as the pulse between my legs increased. Jeremiah and I had never said what we were. We had no definition. Temporary lovers? Make-believe dreamers?
Pierce wrapped his other arm around my neck and slid his hand toward my breasts. It happened in slow motion. His fingers treaded water until they slipped inside my shirt, past my bra, and found what he wanted, or needed, and knew how to tend to.
He pinched my nipple. It puckered immediately. A hiss escaped my lungs.
"Fuck... your skin," he breathed against my ear.
He thumbed my nipple with a harsh but sweet stroke until the ache in my groin was so strong I thought I might burst. The pain and satisfaction erased any remaining common decency or sense.
"I want to see what you look like, Deirdre. I've thought about your body for weeks."
I could feel his length against my backside, and I didn't need to see his face to know his eyes would be dilated and full of masterful strength.
"Turn around."
I didn't follow his command. Didn't move. Ironically, he stopped too. The loss of his warm hand on my breast and his whispers in my ear almost made me change my mind.
Had I made a decision?
"I can't," I said without looking at his reaction.
He made the decision for me. He spun me around, pushed his thigh between my legs, lifted my shirt and pushed away the cups of my bra, holding what he desperately wanted to see and had already expertly touched.
"Jesus, your nipples match your hair." He grabbed my curls, held me in place, leaned his head closer to my breasts, then took one in his mouth. My head fell back. I could see the patterns on the ceiling. The shapes. I even found a thin crack.
I wanted him to mend the places I was broken with his hands, craft a new woman, someone without shame who had vision and purpose, a woman who could rule the world no matter who she fucked. Except I wasn't her, and I wanted someone else. I wanted Jeremiah, maybe even needed him. Maybe… I loved him.
Fuck.
I pushed against Pierce's chest and lifted my head. "Stop," I said not too convincingly because after all he was pleasuring the hell out of me, and his hands hadn't even found my ache or my flesh or my denial.
I needed contact. Now. His fingers inside of me.
God. Who had I become? My heathen-of-a-sister Fiona? I wanted to trade real and good and trust for an orgasm.
"No, please. Stop," I panted, pushing him away again.
He peeked at me through his lashes, his blue eyes dark and determined. "Do you mean yes, Deirdre? Is this another game? I've watched your reaction to me for weeks."
He nuzzled my breasts and licked my nipples as if they were an exquisite delicacy.
"I can't." I yanked my bra over my breasts, slid my shirt back down hastily, and moved away from the man in the suit with a dick that was hard and ready to fuck. He probably had a slew of condoms in his pocket or wallet or maybe even in the desk. God, would he have fucked me on the desk?
I would burn in hell for this. Fuck me and my desires.
I shook my head, stacked the papers against the filing cabinet, and went about my business as if he wasn't standing there — six feet two, salt-and-pepper hair, blue eyes, and an erection threatening to puncture a hole through his four-thousand-dollar suit.
"I didn't take you for a prick tease."
I straightened my wrinkled shirt. "This is harassment." I couldn't look at him when I spouted out that piece of bullshit. I wanted him to harass me, but couldn’t lose what I had worked hard to attain at the shelter.
"File a paper with HR, then. Isn't that what you're good at?"
Tears stung the corners of my eyes. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. Apparently, I wouldn't give him any satisfaction. Maybe I was a prick tease.
"Fuck you." The stupid tears coated my voice.
I needed to escape.
Grabbing my bag, I dropped the papers and fled, leaving no time to write down my animalistic feelings in a notebook.
I had to leave.
Shoving open the back door, I ran outside, toward the street.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Jeremiah had my bike.
Rain started to fall. The mascara already felt goopy around my eyes. My tear ducts betrayed me. I kept running alongside the building, then the next, and before I realized it, the Buell came to a skidding halt only feet from me.
Jeremiah hopped off, dropped the kickstand, removed his helmet, and rested it on the handlebars.
I was crying. Stupid crying. Crying I promised no one would ever see, tears reserved only for my pillowcase and my bathroom mirror. Not my family. No one. Only children could cry. The hungry children I helped feed. The ones on the streets. The kids without enough food or a parent or a bed. Who the fuck was I to cry? I had no reasonable reason. I had this life. One life. God’s hell-bent will and my determination. Two men who wanted to show me I mattered for a fucking blip of a second on this planet.
I. Mattered.
Jeremiah pushed me against the brick wall and cupped my cheeks. I must've looked like a drowning tabby cat. I could taste the mascara. I could taste my sweat and my arousal.
I wasted no time, shoving my tongue into his mouth before he could start asking me questions.
He devoured me for a few minutes. Our lips were swollen. We were soaked.
Inching his face away from mine, he said, "Your hair stays put when it's wet.” He tugged at the matted strands.
"Bite me. My lips. My neck. Hard, Jeremiah. Please."
"God, why don't you ever wear skirts? I want inside of you — now."
He undid the button. I unzipped. His hand slipped into my panties. It happened so fast I couldn't breathe. The contact I had subconsciously begged for in the office was being relieved. I didn't care anymore who had the fingers, and two were already inside of me, tapping out the disgusting indiscretion of my mind.
"Do you want this?"
"Yes!"
"Are you thinking of him?"
Jeremiah didn't miss a beat. Finger fucking me in the rain and wishing to own every piece of me. This was why I didn't fall in love or do relationships. How did he know? Because he had watched the two of us swap eyeballs at each other for weeks. He saw everything I had seen. The stolen glances. The tension.
I slipped my hand to Jeremiah's nape and pulled on his dripping strands. "You can't have my thoughts."
He showed me he owned my body and my thoughts, devouring my unreasonableness with another smothering kiss. My chest heaved. The rainwater dripped between our lips, mixed with our sweat and intention. He increased the pressure inside me and added a
thumb, using it to circle my clit better than he ever had before.
He tortured me.
Soft enough to keep me on the edge but not hard enough to allow my orgasm.
"Why do you want him?" he asked.
I shifted my head to the side, tried to crawl up the wall.
"Do you want to fuck money?" He thrust a third finger inside of me.
"No."
"Power?"
"No."
Despite the decibel my no had reached, my answer was weak. I despised power. I fought against it daily. Nothing about it appealed to me. Pierce appealed to me, but it wasn't the power he had or the world he needed to control. It was that I wanted him to control me. Push my buttons, release me, wind me up, and tell me how far I could go.
"Come for me." Jeremiah gave me the pressure I needed. I arched my hips into his palm. "You don't have to feel guilty, baby. Just come. Only for me."
He lowered his head to my shirt and bit my nipple through the material. I screamed as I grabbed onto his hair. Clung to him. He bit and caressed my nipples — repeatedly. The pain went straight to my center, and just when I thought my throat was dry and I couldn't speak, his name left my lips in broken syllables as my pussy swallowed up his fingers.
The rain had slowed. The sky was dark.
He slid his fingers out of me and smeared my moisture along my jaw line, mixing it with rainwater.
"I'm one of the good ones, Dee."
He watched my expression. It probably looked like the clouds — misty, grey, and hovering over the city of L.A.
"I don't have clout or credentials, baby. I don't even have a roof. But I'm not a prick or a liar or a cheat."
"You don't know—"
"You ran from corruption your whole life, and now you want to defend him to me and bury yourself neck-deep in what?" He yanked on my hair and bit my lower lip. "Fancy cock?" He sucked on my lip until it stretched out before him. "Money?"
He paused, and when he flicked his gaze to me I became frightened. Not because of him. Because of me. I saw my life in his reflection. I started to choke on my spit.
"Did you fuck him, Dee?"
"Let me go." I began to cry. Stomach in my knees, I attempted to slide down the wall, but he kept a strong hold of me by my hair, pulling me upright with it, forcing me to see my reflection in his irises.
"Dee. Dee. Dee." He pleaded with me. My name sounded like sorrowful notes on a scorned lover’s scale.
"No," I shrieked. "I didn't fuck him. Let me go. Give me my key!"
"Come home with me."
"What home? Your home?" I spit venom before sense returned to my brain.
He looked me over, took the key from his pocket, opened my palm, placed it inside, and folded my fingers over the cold metal. He kissed my cheek. I could've sworn his lips left an imprint. A tattoo. A mark on my skin where he would always remain. I did love him, and if he walked away now, I might never see him again. He might lose himself in addiction or pain or the streets.
Fuck. Shit. Fuck.
Those words... loss, addiction, and pain — they were for me. Not him.
I was the lost one.
The addict.
I was in pain.
I didn't deserve to be with either man.
There couldn't be a right one for me. I was diseased and full of sinful shades of wrong.
I had my work, the poor, the children. It was what God needed me to do. I had to keep seeking retribution while dragging my cross behind me in the sand.
NINE
I picked at the dirt under my fingernails. It may have been there for days. Or was it paint? He had left me, but I could still smell him, taste him.
I needed a drink.
I was on the couch, and the drink was on the floor — in the form of a 1.5-liter bottle of vodka.
I hadn't really started drinking as much as I had given in.
The reasons I kept opening another bottle didn't wash with me anymore. But it had become habit even if it was an undesirable one. Like meeting up with an enemy after years of not speaking as though a day had not passed, and the bottle and I could continue exactly where we had left off … in misery and in pain.
I looked for an answer at the bottom of my frenemy and felt pleased I could be myself without regard or worry for others. I refused to be a quitter even when what I did meant my destruction. Even if my soul would burn in hell.
I drank to stop the sacrifice, or maybe I drank to continue with the retribution.
I had been five or six or maybe seven days not sober since Jeremiah had left. And, in addition to being in a constant state of landing myself in an alcohol-induced coma, otherwise known as bliss, I also suffered — if I’d had the unfortunate horror of being born with a dick — from the worst case of blue balls known to man. With a glorious hard-on to match.
I had turned into Fiona. Pre-Elliot Fiona. I masturbated perpetually and drank straight from the bottle. Didn't need to hide it from myself or shield it from the fucking canvases leaning against my walls — the ones he had left behind. The colorful squares were everywhere, staring at me, making fun of me. The eyeballs on some of them, mine, could go fuck the hell off.
Work had phoned and phoned and phoned — in the beginning. They could all fuck the hell off too. Pierce hadn't called. It was Jimmy or Donna or Zax. Maybe the asshole had taken my advice. Maybe Pierce was gone, on an express train back to Prickville.
I raised the neck to my lips and tipped salvation into my mouth. It didn't burn anymore. It tasted like each year of my life I had spent before they’d all ganged up on me and begged me to turn over a new leaf.
The intervention, the retreats, had all been a waste of Daddy's precious money. A waste of existing in this town. They would all be calling me soon. My eldest sister, Margie, would be first. Then Sheila. Jonathan would call just to see why I wasn't running the bike shop he had invested in last June. Fuck him and his beautiful, one-life-number-two wife. I wore the cross. I dragged it along.
Me. Not him.
I had stood by my brother’s ex-wife, Jessica, and by Daddy, too.
Me. Not him.
Where had my painter gone? Where was he staying?
“Jeremiah,” I mumbled, thinking I heard a key in the lock. Maybe it was just the alcohol making me fuzzy, or maybe I was going schizoid.
I should go to church.
Scratching at the knotted curls piled on top of my head, I tossed the blanket aside and stood but then collapsed into a heap on the floor. "Shit. Fuck."
I held my palm up and wiggled my fingers in front of my eyes the way Marty McFly did when he was being erased from existence. My fingers felt strange because they felt like nothing. Which meant they felt just the way they should have.
"Numb..." I said the word out loud as I made a humming sound then stuck out my tongue. It felt odd, too. Actually, it felt familiar. Sandpaper was the comfort my family had forced me to give up when they’d intervened on me, not long after Jon had recovered from his heart thing. The nine of them were there, stampeding me. Even Carrie — all in the same room with Daddy, and she hadn't even flown home to see Jonathan. Everyone had suddenly found the religion I’d never left or some stupid shit.
Church… fuck.
I needed to stand.
Lifting my armpit, I put it near my nose and smelled myself. Jesus Christ. I stank. But if I went to Mass now, I could reward myself with a drink after. I could buy another bottle on the way home.
I smiled, licked my palms, and matted my hair down. I could stuff my flask inside my combat boot and steal sips the moment I was away from the pew. I just needed to hit Mass, dissolve the Body of Christ on my tongue, and pray. God, when had I last eaten? Fuck. Where was my phone? Margie would take me to church. She could pick me up.
“Dee!” Pound. Pound. Pound.
Fuck... Was that the door or my head?
“Dee!”
“What?” I screeched.
“Open up, or I'll kick it down.”
“Wa
it...”
“Dee...” Pound. Pound.
I grumbled and mumbled and tried to scoot myself along the floor, dragging my upper body as if my legs weren't working. They weren't. I was useless.
I needed another drink.
“Dee!” The pounding started up again. It was harder, louder. He would kick it down. He wasn't kidding.
My fleece bunny blanket had been following behind me, stuck to my pants. I was moving my leg profusely, trying to shake the damn thing off, when I felt his hands under my armpits. Funny, I hadn't noticed that he also must have flattened my door.
He lifted me. It hurt.
Looking into his eyes hurt. They were like mine, and he knew how I felt.
“Jesus, Dee.” Jonathan lifted me until I stood.
I only remained upright because he held onto me. I was Woody from Toy Story. All bendy legs and arms.
I needed a drink.
“Pledge,” I mumbled.
“You lost pledge when you stopped texting Margie.”
“What?” I asked, but I sounded garbled. My throat must have had mothballs in it.
He sat me on the couch, yanked the blanket from the hem of my pants, and draped it across my lap. He began to survey the room.
I kept my mouth shut and my lips squeezed together tightly. My brother was a fool if he thought he was getting anything out of me today — and without pledge. I didn't care if the room looked like hell: bottles on the floor, dishes in the sink, take-out containers with the contents half-eaten on the countertop, plastic forks sticking out, clothes strewn about, and then there were the canvases. Jon's eyes scanned the walls, taking in the dozens of paintings, and then he stopped on the one with my big, hypnotic, misshapen eyes.
He knelt in front of me, supporting himself on the weight of his heels. “Why did you let it get this bad?”
I blinked. "You know how it is." I shrugged. Couldn't feel a buzz anymore. I needed a swallow to numb the gigantic lump that had formed in my throat. "Sometimes it's bad before you begin."
His eyes went wide, and they glossed over. Not a sight I was accustomed to seeing.
"Gabrielle..." He choked on his daughter’s name. The horror he must've been imagining flashed across the tourmaline screen of his eyes.
