project

by Torrance, Asa

  I don’t know what he’s done, what hell he’s about to rain down upon us, or the Snake Eyes, or himself. But in this moment, I don’t care anymore. I just know he’s here with me, right now, on a sunlit morning by the beach when we’re both missing from our normal lives and wherever it is we’re supposed to be. In class, pretending like things are simple for us when they’re anything but.

  Things have always been complicated, especially between me and Damien, but right now they feel simple.

  I want him, and he wants me. There’s nothing else to know, and nothing else matters but that single fact.

  I squeeze my thighs against his hips, wanting him in ways he won’t let me have, not yet, but I can feel him getting hard. I feel a grin creep onto my lips even as I kiss him, and I wonder if he can tell.

  He leans forward, leaning me back until he’s able to shift us over entirely. Our lips part and I land squarely on my back against the backseat, my breath rushing from my chest in a single panting, anxious breath.

  His hands pass over the tops of my thighs before finding the sides of my underwear and pulling. I shift my hips up, making his job easier, and relishing the delicious bareness I feel once he pulls them all the way off in a flash of light pink that disappears almost as soon as they come into view. Outside, the beach stirs and undulates crashing crescendos of waves, and the highway just out of sight from the turnout whooshes with the periodic sound of cars traveling down the road.

  I couldn’t care less, especially when he spreads my legs and dips his head between my thighs. I cry out as his tongue slides through my slit, raising up towards my clit but stopping just short. He moves down again, delving into my slickening entrance before lapping me up from my center to my clit.

  I make a conscious decision to not move my tattooed arm, but my other arm is fair game, slicing through the air to palm the back of his head and press myself against him harder. I remember the way he slid his cock into my mouth back at my house, the way it hit the back of my throat with an uncompromising thrust, and pushing my clit greedily against the onslaught he’s brought forth is the least I can do to repay him.

  His hand slides against the top of one of my knees, pinning me against the seat below me and leaving me no recourse but to wait for him to come to me. He eases up the pressure of his tongue against my pussy, a move that simultaneously drives me crazy and makes me love him even more.

  Another moan escapes my lips. “How the fuck are you so good at this?” I ask in a gasping breath. I lean my head up and watch him, taking in the way his face looks between my legs, the way he lavishes my pussy with attention that makes me twist and squirm. “Don’t answer that,” I decide, because I don’t want to think about him with anyone else.

  He leans up and looks at me, hazel-colored eyes like candied apple orbs gazing up at me from just past the rolled up hem of my skirt.

  “Should I stop talking?” I ask, my voice getting high as he returns his tongue to my slit, finding a spot that makes my inner thighs tremble in response. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  But I’m liable to come soon, and while I feel like telling him, I have a feeling he knows.

  “No,” I utter anyways, a pleading whine, because I don’t want this to stop.

  “Just relax,” I hear him say, and I tilt my head back, staring up at the blue sky visible just past the frame of the window. My body seems to melt at his command, transcending time and space until the only thing I can feel is pleasure. My insecurities, my anxieties, my curiosities, my need for control, it all slips from my fingertips, easily, like trying to clutch a passing breeze.

  A winding tension creeps into my body, tightening itself around my every nerve. I suck a deep breath into my chest, knowing the key to more lies with me unwinding that tension, but I can’t get it to stop. Besides, it feels so good that part of me wants to give in entirely.

  I begin to quiver, my hips arching up towards the feeling of his mouth. He nips and sucks at my clit with teasing strokes, lighting my nerves on fire before purposefully extinguishing the flames by moving back. He brings me to the edge before shifting away to ignore my clit entirely, fucking me with his tongue until it starts to feel like I’m going to come that way. I feel myself beginning to gush, a slick wetness that rolls down the curve of my ass.

  “Fuck, Wind,” I hear him say. “You’re so wet.”

  He leans up slightly, shoulders shifting between my legs to move a hand between my legs. He probes at me with a curious fingertip before sliding it into me entirely, and I whimper in response. His tongue finds my clit again as he moves his finger, replacing it with another before beginning to pump them in and out. The simultaneous feeling of being entered at my center and having my clit lavished with attention sends me over the edge, and I begin to come, a shaky breath leaving my chest a second before a final pleading moan.

  He groans back at me, a slightly sympathetic sound that does it for me, and I brace myself as wave after wave of pleasure crests over me in response to the pulsing of his fingers, and the movement of his tongue.

  I cry out again, my nipples hardening under my shirt as goosebumps sprout all over me. Everything feels so real right now, and so good, that I nearly feel like crying again.

  Damien slows his movements, easing me down from my orgasm with a sort of care akin to a parachute, ensuring I don’t crash down to the ground, but that I float.

  It feels like floating, my body electrified with pleasure, my brain swimming in endorphins, my mind filled with thoughts about love and long-held grudges finally put to bed. I may not have the answer to everything, but I’m at least a little closer than I was before.

  When it’s over, I don’t move, my still slightly twitching body lying open and exposed in the backseat of the Falcon. I’m in no rush, because what would be the point?

  Finally, I lean up, only to find him still staring down at my spent pussy with a concentrated gaze. “Find something interesting?” I ask as a smirk curls my lips.

  “Very,” he replies, wisping his thumb over my swollen clit in a way that makes me gasp. Satisfied, he pulls me upright, and I let myself lean against him, into him, smelling the fresh scent of him, like citrus over cedar, against the saltwater scent that ebbs through the open windows.

  Post-O has to be the best feeling on the planet.

  Or maybe I’m just partial to the person who gave it to me.

  “We should get you bandaged up,” he reminds me. “But there’s one last thing we should do before we go.”

  I lean up, finding his eyes with mine. He’s giving me a serious look, one that sparks my curiosity. “What’s that?” I ask.

  He moves slightly, reaching for the bag at our feet and delving his hand inside. A second later, he emerges with Jessa’s journal held firmly in his hand.

  I gaze down at it with trepidation. For a moment, everything in the past had felt far away, but now it feels like it’s back to being front and center. But I know just because it’s out of sight, that doesn’t mean it’s over. Things may have changed, but I also know they’ll never be the same.

  I don’t say anything, watching as he lifts the cover and parts the pages. Jessa’s swirling writing, always in her favorite color of purple, swirls along the pages. Sometimes she would write me letters during class, things she could have said over text but chose not to for novelty’s sake. A text wasn’t something I could save in a drawer, folding and unfolding the intricate shapes she would make to pass to me the way I still do to this day when I want to feel close to her again.

  He skips ahead to the last entry she ever made, the pact, the one with my signature scrawled at the bottom. I would do anything to unwind that careful handwriting of mine, the mark I had made that said I accepted the terms of the conditions we had just created. In reality, I had been signing my permission to let her go.

  The page tears from the journal before I realize that Damien has done it, and I jump, shifting my body away from him. “What are you doing?�
�� I ask.

  “Come on,” he tells me, and I shift my skirt back down over my legs as he throws open the door and begins to climb out of the car. I follow suit, watching the cursed sheet of paper clutched in his hand. Sand dunes are only a few yards away, and I watch as he walks ahead of me to find a section of flat rocks. The telltale signs of previous beach fires long since extinguished, black soot making lines across the sand, are apparent everywhere. He stoops down, arranging a few flat rocks before taking a lighter out of his pocket.

  There’s a pause in his movements as he glances over at me, seemingly asking for my permission.

  I give a nod. “Burn it.”

  29

  There’s something that feels transcendent about burning the pact written out by Windy and my sister. I know I’ve never had the power to free either one of them. The choice was always theirs, and I just needed to live with the aftermath.

  In Jessa’s case, it meant living without her.

  In Windy’s case, it means I couldn’t live without her, and so I’ve had to do everything in my power to put aside the things I used to think would divide us forever.

  The paper burns with a swift curling of flames and smoke, like it’s been dipped in gasoline. I’ve never felt better about watching something destroyed, and even if it doesn’t have the power to reverse what’s happened, I know reversal isn’t needed.

  Going forward is what’s important now. I’ve been doing it in one way or another, sometimes dragging my feet, fighting against the changing tides, sometimes marching, biding my time until I was free again.

  I raise up from my haunches where I’ve squatted to watch the paper burn, winding my arm around Windy’s waist. Together, we step forward, the soles of our shoes pairing to stamp out the last of the kindling and turn the ashes to dust.

  Right now, I feel pretty damn free.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket, rocketing me back down to a reality that’s different than this one. I reach for it, reading the text that comes up on the screen.

  ACE: The Daggers are ready to talk

  I let out a silent curse, one I think I’m able to stifle well enough until I feel Windy shift to look at me. She can probably feel the turn in my mood because it feels fucking palpable. When I woke up this morning, I was on the top of the world. Now, it feels like I’ve been kicked down from the North Pole, and gravity wants nothing more than to drag me down to hell.

  I shouldn’t have stolen away with a girl who means as much to me as Windy does, stowing her away in this idyllic setting, this paradise on earth if you didn’t know where the hell we were. But Diablo Beach is never going to be anything but the place it is, a harborer of dark secrets, bad people, and dirty deeds.

  All qualities that have applied to me, in one way or another.

  “We should get out of here,” I tell Windy, meaning I should take her home before shit really hits the fan, but as soon as I say it I realize there’s a bigger context I can envelope it in.

  A part of me feels like this city makes me bad. But by now I’m so entangled with everything, by fucking birthright even, that leaving it behind seems all but impossible.

  “We’ve gotta get you bandaged up,” I add, taking her hand and turning her arm over for my inspection. The skin where she’s been tattooed is a little puffy and red, but other than that, the ink doesn’t look bad.

  I’m still shocked she even wanted to get it, but I know something in the process was cathartic for her, because I felt it, too.

  Still, I know she senses something bigger than what I’m willing to say, because she turns towards me and looks at me until I look at her. I stare into her eyes, wanting her to understand, but she stares back at me stubbornly. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “It’s better if you don’t know,” I say, reaching up and skimming my thumb over her cheek. I know I have the upper hand right now, but on the off chance I never get to see her again, I want to take my time with this moment.

  “That’s bullshit,” she murmurs, but I know she understands. That doesn’t mean she has to be happy about it.

  But I also know if I can manage to pull this off, I stand a better chance at being able to make her happy for the rest of her life. I know I want her as a permanent fixture in my life, but I also can’t turn away from the Snake Eyes, not right now. Eliminating my rivals in whatever way I have to ensures I can keep her protected.

  “It’s not anything bad,” I say, doing my best to try and reassure her. “It’s almost like a call for peace.”

  Windy raises an eyebrow, obviously not buying it, and without any of the details, I don’t exactly blame her. What she doesn’t know is that brokering the release of Benita Andreas is the ultimate olive branch, even if I’m calling for the elimination of the Daggers to do it.

  It’s either this way, or the other way, where any one of us winds up dead at the hands of the other.

  Once the Daggers are gone, Sloan is too power hungry to not let the Roses fall in step. We’ll soak up the majority of the leftover territories, and the business that runs through them. By then, recognizances from the Valentinos will help the Snake Eyes remain at the top of the food chain.

  And the rest will be history.

  I take Windy’s hand and start heading back towards the car. I should feel better than I do right now. Getting the upper hand is supposed to feel good.

  It’s just nerves, I tell myself, something I’m susceptible to like any other human being on earth. Being with Windy has managed to dull some of my edge, the good in her rubbing off on me, infecting what used to be soul that felt entirely black.

  Now it feels like a lighter shade of charcoal gray.

  I open the passenger’s side door for her, half out of chivalry, half out of not wanting to give her the chance to say no, to delay me any longer from what I know I have to do.

  And that’s getting her home, back to where she’s safe.

  But she starts in on me almost as soon as I turn the key in the ignition of the Falcon. “Are you going to tell me where you’ve been staying?”

  “Why would I do that?” I murmur, trying not to act like I care about her questions. I flip the turn signal on my car automatically as I merge into an empty lane of traffic. I can tell she takes my overcaution as a signal of my distraction, and the realization washes over me that she knows me pretty damn well.

  “Just come home,” she says softly, but there’s an unmistakable urge in her voice, one I know I’m not imagining.

  That doesn’t mean it doesn’t prickle my nerves all the same, like the smallest thorn in the surface of my skin.

  “What is home, Wind?” I mutter. “You don’t seem to understand I don’t have one of those.”

  “Everyone has a home,” Windy responds. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be a physical place.”

  “What does that even mean?” I counter. The ingrained habit of mine to be as stubborn as possible rears its head.

  “It can be a person, too,”

  “And you think you’re my person?” I sneer.

  She doesn’t respond right away, and in that single second I have time to comprehend that what I said was fucked up, while the realization that it’s entirely too late to take it back comes barreling after it a second later.

  Of course she’s that person. In so many ways, Windy is one of the only people I have in this life. But she’s different in the way that she accepts me, for better or worse. I’ve been fucking worse for so long now that it feels weird to finally be going in reverse. Maybe that’s why a subconscious part of me is fighting it, and making me say shit I know I shouldn’t say.

  “Are you still wasting energy on trying to push me away?” she finally says quietly, crossing her arms across her chest. “Or have you finally realized that’s not working?”

  For longer now than I want to admit, so I don’t.

  I drive us back towards the fold of the city, the buildings downtown brunting up against the rim of the oc
ean juxtaposed against the endless green trees of the Diablo Hills. Between these two things, lies heaven and hell.

  After a quick stop at the drugstore just past the swirling suburban streets of her neighborhood, I dress Windy’s fresh tattoo while my car idles in the parking lot.

  “You’re in a rush now,” she notes softly, still attempting to make me answer to her.

  I look up from where my eyes have been focused, her arm held in my grasp as I swirl a cotton pad over her skin, and hold her gaze long enough for her to know I’m paying attention. “Not when I do this,” I tell her. “But afterwards, maybe.”

  I don’t have to look at her to know she’s pouting, but I ignore it, throwing my care into bandaging her arm when words fail me. Lately, they usually do.

  “Trust someone else besides yourself for once,” I say, tearing off the end of the bandage wrapped around her arm. “I promise I’m not trying to let you down.”

  She doesn’t say anything, but she pulls her freshly dressed arm back in towards her body. I shift into reverse and drive again, heading towards her house. By now, the streets have become familiar, but everything turns into a landmark of how close I’m getting until I have to let her out of my sight.

  But it’s no use. Duty fucking calls, and I roll into her driveway, the Falcon bouncing up and down on its shocks as I come to an abrupt stop.

  “Everything is going to be fine,” I say, but the way I growl it out makes that claim sound far from believable. I can’t help it if I’ve already been mentally preparing for battle this entire time, probably since I left the Lobo Loco, maybe even before.

  “Why don’t I believe you?” she murmurs sarcastically, her hand perched on the passenger’s side door.

  “Because I’ve been a dick to you,” I reply. “Because I haven’t given you any reason to.”

  “Besides keeping your promise to eat me out,” she reminds me. Her face stays serious and it’s somehow even cuter. I have no choice but to survive today if I want the chance to ever bury my face between her thighs again. Feeling her squirm until she came is the ultimate fond memory to take with me into battle.