Unlovable

by Cynthia St. Aubin

  I weighed the merits of sharing my food against the karmic consequences of keeping a god captive. “Okay,” I whispered. “But he can’t see you when he gets out of the shower.”

  “Yes, anything, just let me out!”

  I leaned across the thin floral print bedspread and unzipped the bag.

  The head of damp blonde curls emerged followed by the beautifully boyish face—dimples and all. His wings were more ivory than white when soaked by sweat, the feathers stuck together in clumps against the pore-less skin of his back. He tumbled onto the comforter and drew in a few deep breaths before a chubby hand grabbed the nearest paper bag and sniffed it. “Meh,” Cupid sighed. “He’s got to have something better.”

  “What’s better than this?” I used a few fries to scrape up cheese stuck to the waxy yellow wrapper. Feeling an unnatural calm settle over me as the salty, melty bite slid down my throat, I was forced to admit that I might have unfairly overlooked the therapeutic qualities of this particular dairy product.

  Cupid crawled across the bed to the black duffle bag and unzipped the front most pocket. “Bingo,” he said triumphantly.

  I looked at the thick brown twig grasped in his chubby fingers. “Is that a cigar?”

  “Not just any cigar,” Cupid whispered. “A Cuban cigar.” He pulled out the drawer on the nightstand and withdrew a book of matches. “This is going to—”

  The bathroom door opened, and a towel-hipped Liam sauntered into the room on a cloud of steam. “Forgot my—”

  They froze.

  Cupid, smoke puffing from the cigar, embers burning down the cardboard match to his hand.

  Liam, hand halfway to the duffle bag, in search of a razor or shaving cream.

  Then, they screamed.

  Cupid first.

  Then Liam.

  Then Cupid.

  Then Liam.

  “So, this is awkward,” I said around a mouthful of burger. “Liam Whatshisface,” I pointed from the half naked man to the creepy winged kid, “Cupid the love god. Cupid the love god, Liam Whatshisface. You’re both ruining my life, by the way, so you have plenty in common.”

  “You can see him too?” Liam whispered.

  “See him, hear him. Smell him at the moment.” I waved smoke out of my face and fought the sorrow sinking in my chest. Any hopes I had about Cupid springing me free evaporated along with the bathroom’s steam.

  Liam followed the tendrils of smoke back to their source and glared at Cupid. “Where did you get that?”

  “Found it,” Cupid said, tapping ashes over my discarded fry carton.

  “Where did you find it?” Liam’s hands found his hips, and my gaze followed, tracing the shadows his v-shaped ligaments cut until they disappeared into his towel.

  I sat and chewed like the dumb animal I had become, incapable of dragging my unabashed gaze from Liam’s sculpted torso. If a human male could look like this, what might Crixus be hiding beneath his T-shirt? The word objectifying floated through my subconscious, so I took another bite of burger to distract myself.

  “In your dufflemrrrg,” Cupid mumbled.

  “In my duffel bag?”

  “If you ask me,” Cupid said, shifting the wet brown stump to the corner of his mouth near a killer cheek dimple, “any man who keeps a Cuban in the pocket of his duffel bag doesn’t deserve to smoke it.”

  “That’s because I wasn’t going to smoke it. That was my grandfather’s cigar.”

  Cupid took a deep drag and blew it toward Liam. “I don’t see dear old grandpappy anywhere around here.”

  A vein rose and began to pulse in Liam’s forehead. “He’s dead. That cigar was the only thing he left me.”

  “Well,” Cupid shrugged, “at least the old man had good taste.”

  If the winged, immortal love god reclining against the headboard could actually be murdered, the muscular, nearly nude hit man seemed just the guy to do it. Luckily, there was only room to hide one weapon in Liam’s towel, and it sure as hell wasn’t a gun.

  As I found myself handcuffed to the headboard between them, it felt prudent to diffuse the situation as best I could. “See,” I said, setting my half-eaten burger down on the wrapper, “what we have here is an opportunity to discuss boundaries.”

  Liam’s hands clenched into fists at his sides. “And I would like to take this opportunity to tell Cupid to put down the cigar before I shove my foot so far up his ass he’ll be coughing up diaper fluff.”

  Ice crystalized in Cupid’s blue eyes. “It’s a loincloth.”

  “Now, Cupid,” I interrupted, “what Liam means is he would appreciate it if—”

  “Last time I checked,” Liam said, casting a meaningful glance down at his towel, and affording me the opportunity to do the same, “loin cloths were for covering dicks. Not wee-wees.”

  “Liam, perhaps if you spoke to Cupid using non-judgmental statements beginning with ‘I feel—’” I suggested, still staring at the outline of his not wee wee behind the towel.

  The smile spreading across Cupid’s face brought to mind movie marathons with my mother, whose particular affection for dolls and children possessed of the devil had made for many sleepless nights in childhood.

  “I feel,” Cupid said, stubbing out the cigar in the remains of my burger, “like doing this.” He lifted the no longer smoldering stump and shoved it down the front of his dia—loincloth.

  Liam leapt, crushing me beneath him as we fell onto the bed. Cupid ducked, using my body as a shield.

  “Hey,” I shouted. “I’m not part of this.”

  “Come here, you mouthy little shit,” Liam growled next to my ear, grabbing for Cupid’s wings.

  “Fuck you!” a voice squeaked behind my back.

  “Boys! Stop this!” I was a battlefield of sensations—Liam writhing on top of me to get at the creature digging his bony knees into my spine. Unable to decide if arousal was an acceptable response to the situation, my mind yielded control to my body, hungry for the information traveling up my nerve endings in electric pulses.

  “I’m…not…a boy,” Cupid said, his breath compressed by the weight of two bodies.

  “You sure as hell are not a man. A man would come out and fight me.” Liam shoved a hand beneath me, searching for anything he could wound. And at last, he found it.

  Cupid’s scream rattled through my rib cage as Liam came up with a fistful of feathers. “Uh-oh,” the hit man teased. “Looks like someone’s molting.” White tufts drifted to the bed like fat snowflakes.

  “You ignorant mortal meat sack! Do you have any idea how long those take to grow back?” Cupid was moving beneath me, shifting to get at something.

  A something that left a comet of gold in my peripheral vision as it arched toward Liam’s neck.

  “No!” I screamed, catching Cupid’s chubby fist in mine, arresting the weapon’s progress. Liam seized my wrist, and we all wrestled for control.

  Cupid, trying to stab Liam. Liam, trying to spear Cupid. And me, trying not to get poked by the arrow (or anything else for that matter) in the operation of options one and two.

  “Shanking…Liam…isn’t going to…solve…anything,” I said, exertion breaking my sentence into staccato bursts.

  “I don’t care,” Cupid huffed. “He owes me blood for feathers!”

  “He’s already bleeding,” I pointed out, seeing the thin red line rise on the tanned skin of Liam’s neck. “You…scratched him.”

  Liam let go of the arrow and brought his hand to his throat. When it came away smeared with blood, he shoved himself off the bed.

  “Here,” I said, grabbing the towel on my lap. “Use this.”

  The towel. Liam’s towel. On my lap.

  And then I looked up. “Holy shit,” I marveled, squinting through my grease-smudged glasses. “Is it supposed to be that big?”

  Liam’s expression changed from rage to amusement as he examined what must be goggled-eyed wonder on my face.

  Blood heated my cheeks under his scrutiny. �
��I said that out loud, didn’t I? God damn it! This is why I don’t eat meat. You see what happens when you let the animal passions take control? It starts with a hamburger, then it’s the heroin, and before you know it, you’re under a bridge with a needle in your arm giving blow jobs to a one-legged vagrant named Smoochy to score your next fix!”

  “I believe they call that a false belief system,” Liam said.

  “Not to mention overgeneralization,” Cupid added, holding a red-stained napkin to his injured wing.

  “I appreciate what—for the love of God can you put that thing away?” I had made the mistake of looking right at Liam’s stiff how-do-you-do.

  “Happens when my blood is up,” he said, bringing the towel back to his waist. “It will pass in a minute.”

  “No, it won’t.” Satisfaction would be too strong a word to describe Cupid’s tone, but only just.

  Liam folded his arms across his chest. “What do you mean, no it won’t?”

  The arrow’s golden feathers sighed as they slid through Cupid’s fingers. “It was only a scratch,” he said, glancing at Liam’s neck. “So the effects aren’t permanent.”

  “Effects?” Liam demanded, looking at the bulge in his towel.

  “Yeah, well. It’s a love arrow. You got just enough to affect your…lower biological instincts.”

  “So how long will this last?” Liam asked.

  “Probably only a couple of weeks,” Cupid shrugged.

  As I couldn’t see my own face, it was difficult to tell whose eyes were wider: mine, or Liam’s.

  “A couple of weeks? A couple of weeks! You had better be fucking kidding me!”

  “I never kid about fucking,” Cupid answered.

  Liam had begun to pace the worn industrial carpet. “How in the hell am I supposed to function for a couple weeks with a hard-on?”

  “Wear baggy pants?” Cupid suggested.

  A smile flashed across Liam’s mouth and disappeared just as quickly before he leapt at Cupid for the second time.

  I ducked and rolled as far as my handcuffed arm would let me, my passage marked by the rustling of fast food wrappers.

  “There’s a cure,” Cupid yelped, seconds before Liam’s hand closed over his throat.

  The muscles in Liam’s back flexed as he leaned into his straining arms, pinning Cupid to the headboard. “Start talking.”

  “Sex.”

  Cupid’s voice broke, and he tried to swallow, but was prevented by the hand crushing his neck.

  Liam relaxed his grip. “Sex?”

  “Sex. The arrow is designed to activate instincts that encourage the proliferation of the human race. Once the…urges…are acted upon, the effects dissipate.”

  Relief softened the panic hardened features of Liam’s face. “So I just have to fuck someone?”

  This word, “someone,” agitated my mind like a pebble in my shoe. Was it that easy, then? All these years alone, and I could have been fucking someone. Some nameless, faceless specter who yielded a willing body to my need without stealing the floorboards upon his departure. A ghost. A cipher who could float through my life without consequences, giving all and taking nothing.

  Being my mother’s daughter had taught me there was no such thing as casual sex. Every man who walked through our door took much more than his clothes when he left.

  “Not someone,” Cupid answered at last. “Her.”

  *****

  “Me?” A nanosecond elapsed between the time Cupid had spoken the word and the moment I realized his eyes were fixed on my face.

  “Her?” Liam asked, his voice piqued with what I hoped was wonder and not disgust.

  “Her,” Cupid said. “You’re in love with her.”

  “He most certainly is not!” I protested on both our behalves.

  “Trust me, he is.” A knowing smile dug dimples into Cupid’s cheeks. “At least part of him is. The arrow’s catalyst operates by occupying the bloodstream. It concentrates where blood is available in its richest supply. Which is why I usually shoot it into the heart.”

  My head jerked toward Liam, looking at the place between and below his pectoral muscles. A natural path suggested itself, an infinitesimal divide between his abdominals as they disappeared and reappeared beneath his crossed arms.

  In a life full of epiphanies, this one came as a surprise. “His penis is in love with me?”

  “Could we not use that word?” Liam asked, adjusting his towel.

  “Medical terms bother you?” I focused on his dark eyes to assure myself I was looking at his face, and not his crotch.

  “As much as non-medical terms bother you,” he replied.

  “Non-medical terms don’t bother me in the least.”

  Liam sat down on the bed. “Say cock.”

  My skin tried to rearrange itself over my bones. “I don’t see any reason why I should—”

  “Come on, Doctor. Repeat after me: his cock is in love with me.”

  “That’s an ill-advised misappropriation for a word intended to describe a male chicken,” I argued. “And I find such irresponsible misapplications of linguistic specificity reprehensible. Particularly when slang is the selected medium.”

  A lascivious grin split Liam’s chin. He reached over to the nightstand, picked up his wallet, and pulled out a few twenties. “I’m sorry about your wing,” he said, handing them over to Cupid. “Why don’t you go pick up something to take your mind off it?”

  “Thanks, man,” Cupid said, tucking the wad of cash into his loincloth. “That’s real decent of you.”

  “Speaking of decent,” Liam added. “Go three doors down, knock twice, and ask for Fast Eddie. Best weed this side of the Mississippi.”

  “You’re shitting me!” Cupid’s eyes grew glassy with desire.

  “Straight up,” Liam replied.

  “Dude, you’re all right with me.” The love god and the hit man bumped knuckles.

  A ripple of anticipation shivered down my spine when Liam closed and locked the door behind him.

  “You’re really going to forgive him just like that?” I said, hoping to rekindle his rage. “I mean, smoking your grandfather’s cigar is really big deal.”

  “Oh, he’ll still pay, believe me. But it can wait.” Liam turned, pulled the towel from his hips, and sauntered, yes, sauntered, toward the bed.

  I pried my gaze from his erection and attempted to look uninterested. “I am not going to have sex with you.”

  His hungry smile stripped my artifice bare. “Lady, you need an orgasm like the night needs stars.”

  “What I need is not to be handcuffed to the bed in some cheap motel room.” What was this heaviness in my stomach? Was it the burgers?

  “Oh, I beg to differ. I think you need to be handcuffed to a bed more often. Frequently, even.”

  “Last time I checked, only one of us was getting paid to tell people what they think.”

  “If I had an hour alone with you and a couch, you wouldn’t be telling me what you think. You’d be screaming it.”

  “I don’t scream,” I said. Somewhere in the stale air of this isolated motel room, my argument had turned into an admission. “Ever.”

  “It’s time we fixed that. Give me your hand.” The desire in his dark eyes spoke to a part of me that had no words.

  My un-cuffed hand rose off the bedspread, hovering for an uncertain instant before Liam caught it, bringing it to his lips, planting a kiss on each fingertip.

  When he reached my pinky, he paused to make sure I was watching. Slowly, he traced up one side and down the other with the tip of his tongue.

  “Oh, wow.” The words rose like a prayer from my lips as fire roused long-dormant nerve endings from their slumber.

  His ministrations ceased for the space of a heartbeat. “You said that out loud,” he informed me, taking my naked ring finger into his mouth.

  “I still…won’t…have sex…with you.” Each word had to fight for the air I held in my lungs.

  “Why not?�
� My middle finger disappeared between his lips. His teeth scraped the indentation at my knuckle and he began to suck. Sympathetic aches radiated down my thighs.

  “You really want me to enumerate the reasons?” I asked.

  He pulled both middle and index fingers into his mouth, and split them with his tongue. “Yes,” he whispered. “I do.”

  “You barged into my office, shot my fish…”

  Finished with my hand, he reached under my skirt, finding the waistband of my pantyhose.

  He was close now.

  I could have raked his face with my nails had I been fast enough. Could have scratched out the glittering jewels of his eyes. Instead, I watched them darken as my legs surrendered their second skin.

  “You abducted me at gunpoint,” I continued. “Handcuffed me, drugged me with animal tranquilizer, dragged me to a Godforsaken motel, and all because you plan to trade me to a Las Vegas mobster named Stefano the Fathead for a fat paycheck.”

  I was gathering momentum now, and a good thing too, considering his teeth were nipping at my inner thigh.

  “But I bought you fries,” he said, his hot, velvety lips sliding toward my panties. “That should count for something.”

  “Do you honestly think that balances that equation?”

  “Math was never my thing.” His fingers hooked the silk panties riding my hips. The fabric traveled down my legs with a pilgrim’s worshipful progress, kissing my ankles before evaporating entirely.

  “And what is your thing?” I asked, bolstered by the lack of skin-to-skin contact.

  His eyes found mine over the edge of my skirt. “Open your legs, and I’ll show you.”

  *****

  His words leveled the terrain of my mind like an atomic bomb, leaving naught but ash in their wake. “I—we can’t—this is totally irresponsible!”

  “How about I take responsibility for making you come?” My thighs fell apart under the weight of his hands. “Would that help?”

  “Noooh—my God!”

  Wet heat found me. Liam’s tongue tracing lines no man had ever touched, coaxing sounds from me like a master musician. The slightest shift in pressure, direction, and speed could alter my breathing, my blood, the very beating of my heart.

  He pressed my knees wider, pushed my skirt up around my waist so I could see his face in the frame of my thighs. Some wicked thought tugged the corner of his mouth as he caught my gaze and held it.