by Helena Maeve
“Out of battery.”
For a moment we stood on opposite sides of the sidewalk, bathed in the crisp, forgiving light of morning. It was Ashley who bridged the gap between us.
“I was coming to bail you out,” he murmured into my hair as he pulled me tight to him. “I stopped to get cash—”
“They didn’t charge me with anything.” They had the right to hold me for twenty-four hours until I ‘cooled down’, so they had. I’d been offered a phone call—which I’d used to call Ashley before he boarded his flight to New York—as well as food and water. I’m sure if I’d asked, they could’ve contacted my embassy, too, but the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. I felt stupid.
I couldn’t look Ashley in the eye when he pulled away.
“You okay?” he asked, cupping my cheeks with both hands. “You look exhausted.”
He didn’t ask what I was doing in Topeka and I didn’t volunteer the information. There would be plenty of time to come clean later, once we’d put this place behind us.
“Take me home?” I pleaded, and Ashley got the message at once. He bundled me into the car and gave the address of my hotel to the driver.
I didn’t think of the rental Toyota until we were on the interstate.
“Do you remember where you left it?” Ashley asked when I told him.
I nodded.
“Okay, I’ll call them when we get to the hotel. I’m sure it’ll be fine.” His optimism bolstered my confidence, but nothing changed the fact that I’d just spent twenty-four hours in a jail cell. I felt it in my bones—the discomfort of being thrust into a small, cold room, the click of the latch as the door had locked behind me.
My thoughts had circled back to my father so often that I’d almost empathized with the guy by the time they’d let me out. Then I remembered why I’d driven down to Topeka in the first place.
I laid my head on Ashley’s shoulder for the rest of the drive and listened to his breaths. He stroked my knee absentmindedly for a while, before the barren scenery stole his attention. I was grateful to him for coming all the way to Kansas, but I wasn’t so full of myself as to think that there would be no consequences.
He was too much of a gentleman to drop me before we reached Paris. And I was too much of a leach to be the bigger person and tell him that I understood why we couldn’t be together—namely, that I was a walking disaster.
As soon as we made it to the hotel, I disappeared into the bathroom, where I stripped off all my clothes and set the shower onto its hottest setting. Steam clung to the tiles and hung around me like fog. I wiped off what was left of my makeup and the blood dried on my knees, then slipped beneath the spray. Water stung my eyelids and pelted my skin with scorching droplets.
I wondered vaguely at the risks of developing third degree burns from a shower—something to ask the Internet about later—and startled when I heard a knock on the door.
“Laure? Can I come in?” The wood and the pitter-patter of the shower muffled Ashley’s voice, but I heard him all the same.
“Sure.” Why not? He’d seen me look worse.
Our eyes met through the folding shower screen.
“I called about the car. It’s all good. They’re going to take a penalty off your card, but—”
“I don’t care,” I said, and meant it.
Ashley nodded. “I booked us a flight at nine tonight. I hope that’s okay.”
Perhaps I should have minded that he didn’t check with me before making arrangements that concerned us both. I didn’t. We stood separated by the shower screen for a long moment, neither of us saying anything while water streamed down my back in steaming rivulets. Then Ashley nodded, flashed me a rueful smile and left, closing the door behind me.
I probably wouldn’t have joined me in the shower, either.
I waited until the water began to run cold before I made my way out and scrubbed the crimson blotches on my skin with a towel. I didn’t bother with the blow dryer. My hair was already curling from the sticky humidity. I left condensation on the mirror above the sink and my clothes in a heap on the closed toilet lid.
I would change into something more me eventually. For now, though, the terrycloth bathrobe would do.
Ashley looked up from his smartphone when I emerged. “I ordered room service.”
“Great.” The bed was within reach. I collapsed upon it like an invertebrate. One of the ones nominally capable of surviving asteroids. I felt more grateful to Ashley than I could say, but I had a hard time showing it. Normally I’d trust that all my other quirks would make up the difference.
Not today.
Today I was weak-willed and exhausted. I’d been laid low by my own self-importance.
“Do you want to talk?” Ashley asked after a beat, combing his fingers through my hair.
I shrugged against the mattress. “You do.” And he had every right to ask questions. After all, I’d frozen him out of my thought process since before I’d left Paris. “Go on,” I prodded. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”
Ashley stood, the mattress creaking as he kicked off his shoes. I didn’t need to open my eyes to sense him squirming closer. “I’m guessing you going all the way to Topeka has something to do with your father and Barnes… I’m also guessing you didn’t go over there because you wanted to harass the locals.”
“I get enough of that in Paris.”
The gentle touch of a hand on my calf stopped the wisecracks in my throat. I waited for Ashley to prod the bruises on my knees, but he didn’t. His tender caresses still surprised me, even though I’d been to bed with him enough to know he was no brute.
I supposed that reconciling the two halves—care and torment—wasn’t quite as easy as I pretended. Back home I’d had the luxury of not feeling surprised.
That was before I needed Ashley. I owed him now.
The mattress dipped when he stretched beside me on the bed. The spicy cedar and bergamot scent of his cologne wrapped around me like an eiderdown. I wanted to wallow in the embrace, I wanted to let myself be coddled and comforted in a way I knew I didn’t deserve.
“I think Donna Barnes is buried in the Macintoshes’ yard,” I said instead, doing away with silence.
“And you went over there to dig her up?” Ashley asked.
“Yes. No… I don’t know.” I rolled over onto my back and foisted my gaze on the ceiling. “I wanted to be sure before I cried wolf.” I hadn’t been put on the witness stand as a nine year old, but the judge and prosecutor had sat down with me to tease out my testimony. I had few memories more vivid about the trial. I knew what it was like to have authority figures ask five, six times if I was absolutely sure I saw Daddy throw Mom into the Kaw.
Ashley propped himself up on his elbows. “Tell me about it.”
So I did. I went back to the Laura Nyro album, Wedding Bell Blues, on the turntable, the room spinning around me as Mom twirled us around. Her black curls brushing my cheeks, the back yard flashing by once—a glimpse of Kane with the shovel raised—twice—a black garbage bag beside a hole in the dirt—then a third time. “I saw her hand,” I told Ashley. “I’m pretty sure, anyway. I know I sound crazy.”
“You don’t.”
I tilted my head against the mattress and cocked an eyebrow. “Really.” It wasn’t a question. I might have been tired, but I wasn’t deaf. I could hear myself—twenty years after the fact, bringing up evidence no one had been able to dredge up.
“Your house wasn’t searched when your father was arrested?” Ashley asked.
“Wrong house. We moved right before Mom left.”
The fights are getting worse. They go round after round when I’m supposed to be sleeping, my wailing only adding to the pitch of their verbal volleys.
One night, the sound of shattering glass rings in my ears. Mom’s screaming. I hear muffled voices and creaking bedsprings.
I rolled my shoulders against the bed. “Shit, maybe I’m making it up.”
Ashley opened his mouth to sp
eak, but a knock on the door cut him short. “That must be our lunch. Hold that thought.” He bounded from the bed, grabbing his wallet on the way to the door.
My only contribution was sitting up and making sure that the bathrobe covered my thighs. Modesty fell by the wayside as soon as I smelled the food. I didn’t realize how famished I was until the waiter rolled in two steaks, fries and two salad bowls.
I padded closer on bare feet. “Can we eat first?” I asked, hating myself for looking to Ashley for permission. What would I do if he said no? Ignore my hunger until he was satisfied that I’d told him everything there was to tell?
To my relief, Ashley didn’t even hesitate. “Of course. You sit, I’ll bring everything over.”
We had lunch in bed, with the TV humming softly with some afternoon talk show. I became quite engrossed in the family melodrama that played out in front of a live studio audience, although I couldn’t tell if the participants were actors or average people with no concept of what privacy was worth.
I wondered what my family would look like, put on display like that. Grandmother would have a heart attack.
“We should’ve checked out,” I mused as I set my empty plate on the bedside table and lowered myself onto the pillows. “It’s noon.”
“So?” Ashley tucked the comforter around my bare feet.
“I’m going to have to pay an extra day.”
“Small price for being comfortable, don’t you think?” He leaned in slowly, giving me more than enough time to stop him. As if I would.
I loved kissing Ashley. I’d loved it from the first time our lips met and I loved it now, as he cupped my cheek with a gentle hand and licked around my teeth and the roof of my mouth. “You taste like strawberries,” he murmured when he pulled away for breath.
“Thanks for ordering dessert,” I replied, tipping forward before he could retreat all the way. I didn’t care that this was probably a show of pity, our last rodeo before we parted ways. I pulled Ashley on top of me, my legs on either side of his waist, and arched my hips. I captured his groan with my mouth. Tired as I was, I still found the strength to rock upward and brush my mound against the seam of his jeans.
“Fuck,” Ashley gasped. I felt him thrust down, his denim-covered dick a heavy weight against my belly. His kisses grew aggressive as he nipped at my bottom lip with sharp teeth and ran warm palms under the folds of the bathrobe. I wanted him to pry it open all the way, but the belt tangled between us and I lacked the hand–eye coordination to do anything about it.
Ashley kissed his way down my neck, dipping his tongue into the hollow of my collarbones as if he knew that would make my breath short out. I didn’t go for his hair, no matter how much I wanted to twist and pull, my knuckles white with effort. Let him tease. I wanted something to remember him by—and the pressure of teeth around my nipple could well be it.
I groaned, raking my fingernails down the back of his shirt until I had it rucked up so high under his arms that it took only a little effort to tug it the rest of the way free. Ashley stood propped above me for an instant, eyes dark with desire. Then he reached for his button fly.
“Condom?” I panted, heat coiling at my core like a lit furnace.
“My wallet.”
I extricated myself from the bed and tore off my bathrobe in the process. Ashley’s wallet was conveniently on the room service table. I got a thrill out of tearing the condom from its shiny wrapper, careful not to damage the latex circle, but nowhere near as strong as the one I felt when I saw Ashley sit back against the pillows, one hand loosely wrapped around his cock.
Breath fled my lungs in a rush. I staggered where I stood, my mouth gone dry.
“Come here,” Ashley said, no trace of question in his voice.
I was powerless against the hypnotic pull of his command. Blood rushed to my extremities, filling me with an almost electric buzz as I crossed the room on weak knees. I crawled onto the bed and slowly straddled his hips. I wasn’t sure if this was what he wanted and suddenly it mattered very, very much that I do precisely as he pleased.
Ashley combed his fingers through my hair. “Put it on.” He meant the condom. It was obvious, logical, and yet my thoughts sizzled like sparklers. I had trouble concentrating as I rolled the gauzy latex down Ashley’s stiff cock. I wanted to do it with my mouth instead of my hands, but I didn’t dare offer for fear of making a hash of the attempt.
I felt weirdly gratified when Ashley sank fingers into my hair and guided me down, onto hands and knees, my mouth level with his erection. Pleasure thrummed like a plucked cord somewhere deep within. Yes, give it to me… I parted my lips and let him thrust inside, rolling my tongue all along the ridges on the underside of his dick.
We’d only done this once, sans condom, and the latex tasted bitter and chemical on my tongue. I grimaced as I went down his shaft. I wanted to taste him, not some filmy intermediary. I nearly suggested that we do away with the condom when he pulled me off almost brutally and slammed our mouths together. My pussy clenched as he fucked my mouth with his tongue and I promptly stopped caring about what I wanted—Ashley took care of that. He’d done it since the beginning and I saw no reason to mess with a working model.
He handled me like a rag doll—not cruelly, he was never spiteful, but certainly without sparing punches. I found myself being pressed into the mattress on my belly, my hands folded into a firm grip at the small of my back. I should’ve worried about giving up control. The last time someone had pulled my hands behind me, I’d been cuffed and nudged into the back of a police cruiser. The irony wasn’t lost on me as Ashley sucked a bite into my shoulder blade, robbing me of thought.
I cried out, wrecked with pain and pleasure when he sank teeth into my flesh, and bucked against the stiff weight of his cock between my buttocks.
“Please,” I choked out. “Please, fuck me.”
Ashley’s rules were in constant flux. I couldn’t remember if I was allowed to beg or if that, too, was prohibited.
He gave me a light, stinging swat on the hip, the echo of skin striking skin ringing out loud in the silent room. Yet when he spoke, his voice was honey and roses, the sweet, wholesome end to a PG-rated movie. “How do you want it?” he crooned, tracing my spine with a fingertip.
I wriggled helplessly in his grasp, but with him astride my legs and my hands in clasped in his strong fist, I couldn’t get away. I didn’t really want to.
“I don’t—I don’t know. I don’t care.” I swallowed with a dry throat, my cheeks burning. “Whatever you want.”
“Oh, really?” The cadences of Ashley’s voice reached inside me and ramped up my arousal by another few notches. I squirmed against the sheets as he walked his fingertips down my back, over my tail bone, and gently pressed his dick into the cleft of my ass. “Even here?”
My breath caught. It was as if my whole body had become one giant erogenous zone. Wherever he touched me, tendrils of pleasure unfurled along every nerve only to coalesce in the pit of my stomach. I gave up struggling and fell back into the sheets. My lungs were burning, though I doubted I could breathe any quicker.
Ashley clucked his tongue, my dithering clearly running counter to his unwritten guidelines, and delivered another swat. I jerked with the sound of the impact more than the sting. “I asked you a question, Laure. Which is it? Yes or no?”
“Yes,” I breathed. “Yes, even there.” When was the last time I’d tried anal? I couldn’t remember when I’d last kissed a man who wasn’t Ashley, never mind that.
I spared a moment’s worry for the absence of lubricant before the thought evaporated. It was so easy to give up control and let Ashley take over. Probably poor form, though. What did he get out of this? No sooner had the query flashed behind my eyes that Ashley shifted off of me and released my hands.
My heart sank. “What—”
He cut me off by tugging me onto my knees and working his cock into my pussy in a single, hard thrust. I was dripping wet, so there was no unpleasant burn, but
the sudden stretch as my body struggled to accommodate his girth was enough to steal my breath.
I thought he’d be content with me on hands and knees, but he pulled me up all the way, seating me back into his lap and clutching me fast. I had to spread my legs wide to straddle his thighs, a position that left me feeling even more vulnerable than I was used to.
Ashley bit my shoulder—lightly this time, merely raking his teeth along my sweat-damp nape. “Move when you’re ready. Take your time…”
It took me a moment to get the hang of what he was saying. By the time I grasped his meaning, my hips were already rotating of their own accord, the flames burning at my core too much for my poor, addled mind to contain. I needed friction. I needed to feel him plowing in and out as he traced runes into my skin with his tongue. I shivered with delicious pleasure as he flicked my clit with a fingertip, both of us moaning as I clenched around him in anticipation.
“Again,” I pleaded, rocking my hips to take him deeper. “Fuck, again, please…”
Ashley didn’t rebuke me for the greedy demands. He worked me over with quick strokes, expertly rolling his index finger over my pebbled nub as I hurtled closer and closer to the edge.
The last time I’d had his hands on me seemed like an eternity ago, but the fear I felt when I thought that he might desist was very real. I grasped hold of his wrist—to hell with the rules—and begged him not to stop.
He didn’t.
I ignited around him, wave after wave of pleasure crashing into me as I panted his name. Through the roar of blood in my ears, I heard him urge me along, his voice cracking when he found his peak. His cock twitched inside me as he came, every jolt against my G-spot triggering another violent aftershock.
We stayed like that for a good minute, until, exhausted, we broke apart and fell to the bed in a loose-limbed heap.
Ashley wrapped an arm around my waist and curled in close, his breath warm against my neck. “I was worried, you know.”
“Really? Weird… You’ve never had trouble getting me off before,” I heaved, playing dumb.
He scoffed against my cheek. “You know what I mean.”
