Unlovable

by Cynthia St. Aubin

  The strokes of his tongue grew more deliberate. He wanted to see what he was doing to me. Wanted to watch my face and know he controlled its expressions.

  My breath scissored in and out of my body in short, desperate gasps. Every cell seemed to surrender its normal function to follow some primordial migration toward the pulsing energy beneath Liam’s relentless tongue. All of me, every whit wanting to pull the sensations outward, to spread them through my entire body.

  Hurtling through timeless space, I felt a cliff approaching at breakneck speed. Thoughts flew out like grappling hooks. Stop him. Stop this. Before you go over. But all my anchors had gone, and there was nothing binding me to a life I recognized. I didn’t have to let go. There was nothing left to hold.

  I knew what was happening. Knew all the clinical terms tasked with translating this ecstatic impulse to mere ink and paper, or words on a screen.

  Impossible.

  Impossible to contain this much sensation in one human body.

  Impossible to pull back the tide beginning to ripple outward through my quaking limbs.

  Impossible to keep from crying out in a moment of pure, animal pleasure.

  An answering growl rose up from Liam’s throat, and he was grabbing for the duffel bag, tearing open a foil packet.

  He paused between my knees, his hands digging into my naked hips. “Yes or no?”

  “No,” I whispered. The desperation and disappointment on his face turned to something like awe as I surged upward, wrapping my legs around his waist, and rolled him beneath me. “Like this.”

  With one wrist still cuffed to the bedpost, I had to readjust my arm to get leverage against the headboard. “Now,” I said, reaching behind me, “I need you to hold still.”

  “But wh—” He gasped as I tightened my hand around him.

  “Very still.” I inched backward until I could feel him where I wanted him. Where I needed him.

  Liam’s voice was tight when he spoke, colored by the same dangerous desire he’d awoken inside me. “What—what are you doing?”

  “Research.” I sank down upon him, taking him in increments too small to measure by any other means than feeling, and time.

  Sweat bloomed on Liam’s brow, his eyes squeezed closed, jaw clenched, his face a mask of concentration. “Jesus,” he groaned.

  When I felt the first stab of pain, I paused to take a breath.

  His heavy eyelids lifted a fraction. “Don’t stop.”

  “I might need your help,” I admitted. “I’ve never actually…done this before.”

  “What?” he laughed. “Ride on top?”

  When I was silent for a couple of beats, his eyes opened wide. “You’re not—a virgin.”

  Again, I said nothing.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded.

  “Should I have done that before you abducted me at gunpoint or after you handcuffed me to the bed?” I said, jiggling my wrist in its metal bracelet for emphasis.

  “Before! After! Shit! We can’t do this! There are plenty of women in Vegas. I’ll just—”

  “You’ll just shut the fuck up is what you’ll do,” I said, grabbing his chin with my free hand. “You dragged me here. You handcuffed me to this bed. You made me want you, and now, you’re going to finish what you started.”

  The look on Liam’s face mirrored the wonder and surprise I felt. Where had that come from?

  Before the question could be further explored, a violent impact on the other side of the hotel room door had me scrambling off Liam and yanking my skirt into place.

  Nimble as any animal that is either predator or prey, he rolled from the bed, grabbed his gun from his coat, and trained it on the door.

  “Let me in,” came Cupid’s panicked voice. “Hurry!”

  Liam kept the gun, but slid away the security chain and opened the door.

  Cupid shot through the gap in a blur of feathers and collapsed on the bed next to me, panting much as I had only moments earlier.

  “What the hell happened?” Liam asked, setting the gun on the nightstand and retrieving his towel.

  Cupid’s small chest rose and fell for a few more rapid breaths before he found words. “They figured since they were big, and I was small, they didn’t have to give me what I paid for.” He turned a pink-cheeked impish grin to me. “But they were wrong.”

  “What did you do?” Liam asked.

  “Let’s just say Fast Eddie won’t be walking right for a while. At least, not if his friend Moose has anything to say about it.”

  “You didn’t,” I said.

  “Hey, I helped two lonely men find love. What’s wrong with that?”

  “You can’t go shooting love arrows into people just to score weed!”

  “I didn’t do it to score weed. I did it for revenge. Those fuckers were going to rob me. Speaking of…” He sat up, reached into his diaper and withdrew a plastic baggie. “You guys gotta try this shit.”

  “I’ll pass,” I said, holding up a hand.

  Curiosity softened Liam’s expression. “What you got?”

  “Oracle.” Cupid tossed the bag at Liam who held it in the piss-yellow glow of the lamp on the nightstand.

  “This is some of the most expensive weed in the world. No wonder they were going to dick you out of it.” Liam tossed the bag back to Cupid.

  “Yeah, well now they can spend the night dicking—”

  “That’s enough,” I interrupted, shooting Liam a disbelieving look. “You are not seriously considering putting something that came out of his di…er loincloth, in your mouth?”

  “Of course not,” Liam said. “I’m going to put it in my pipe.”

  He and Cupid shared an uproarious laugh over this.

  My exasperation quickly became exhaustion. “Are there any windows in the bathroom?”

  “No,” Liam answered. “Why?”

  “Can you please un-cuff me so I can go take a shower? It’s not as if I can escape.”

  “I suppose that could be arranged.”

  I looked up at his torso, beautiful even in such ugly light. His smile was somewhere between affection and irritation as he unlocked the cuffs and set my wrist gently on the bed. I wobbled toward the bathroom on unsteady feet, still not entirely trusting the power of my free will to carry me.

  “Hey lady,” Liam said. “Catch.”

  The bundle of clothes hit me square in the chest, the familiar scent of fabric softener whispering into my senses like a lullaby. “Hey,” I said, recognizing the T-shirt, and a pair of well-worn yoga pants. “These are my clothes.”

  “Stopped by your apartment before I stopped by your office. I figured you might need a few things for the trip.”

  “Thanks.” Only when I closed the bathroom door behind me and saw the gallon-sized plastic bag containing my shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, and lotion on the sink did it occur to me exactly what I was thanking him for.

  Breaking into my apartment. Before kidnapping me.

  Still, I thought, withdrawing the smaller bag containing my toothbrush and toothpaste, it was kind of thoughtful.

  He’d even labeled it with my name and the date in black magic marker.

  So it stays separate from the others.

  The others.

  And of course, there had been, and would be, many more. I was just a job like any other.

  Liam’s and Cupid’s laughter began to drift beneath the door along with the scent of skunky smoke I’d come to associate with one of the unscrupulous babysitters of my youth. There had been a few of those too, before at the age of twelve I became a ward of one state institution, and my mother, another.

  And there, in the mirror, I saw her.

  Saw her in the black mascara smudged rings around my eyes. In the pale skin of my cheeks. In the lipstick smeared across my mouth. In the dark hair tangled about my head like an outward manifestation of an inner madness.

  Where had I gone?

  Was a life so carefully built so easily deconstructe
d? All those years, everything I had worked for, everything I had learned, and it could all be undone in a day.

  I removed my glasses and set them on the counter, grateful to have the world go fuzzy. I peeled my clothes away from my body, just another vestige of my former life to be discarded.

  The showerhead spat more than it sprayed, but the steaming water was a welcome baptism after this day. My chafed wrists stung as the shampoo bubbles slithered from my hair down my arms to wind their way to the drain, pulling the last of my energy with them toward the center of the earth.

  I sat down in the tub, the porcelain warm from my scalding shower, and pulled the rough, wet washcloth over my face. It came away smeared with black, beige, and red. Such an artless rendering of a contrived image. A laugh shook my shoulders, dragging up a sob up with it.

  Hugging my knees, rocking like the mad woman I always feared I might be, letting the hot water beat down on my back, I came to know irony.

  I chose a profession that would keep love from doing to me what it did to my mother.

  In the end, my profession caused a love god to be dragged kicking and screaming into my life, towing madness in his wake.

  *****

  “Do you believe in miracles?”

  In my wallowing, I hadn’t heard the bathroom door open, or Liam—still clad in a towel—ease the shower curtain aside and seat himself on the edge of the tub.

  So much for the flimsy lock.

  I dropped my forehead back to my knees and spoke to him through my legs. “I believe human beings assign divine providence to fortunate circumstances because it makes them feel cared for by a higher power.”

  “Then how would you explain a shitty motel having this much hot water? Because that’s a miracle in my book.” The shower’s inconsistent sputtering became more so as Liam passed a hand through the spray.

  “Done getting baked?”

  A handful of warm water sluiced down my spine, followed by gentle fingers. “Alas, I lost my taste for grass a long time ago. But I thought our little friend was more likely to get stoned off his tits if he thought someone was doing it with him. And I was right.”

  I peeked over my folded arms. His eyes were clear and focused. True, he didn’t look high. “You still smell like weed.”

  He leaned down and sniffed the towel. “Here’s our culprit.” Once again, the towel hit the floor.

  The condom and its wearer maintained all of their former stature, apparently unmoved by my earlier efforts.

  “If that’s why you’ve come, you might as well turn around and walk your naked ass back out the door.”

  “So the moment has passed, I take it?” The disappointment in his voice almost sounded genuine.

  “The moment has driven a dump truck through a nitroglycerine plant.”

  “Well then, I can at least shower off the smoke.” He stepped into the tub, towering over my seated form, robbing me of the warm water. He reached for my shampoo.

  I slapped his hand out of the way. “Get out,” I ordered.

  “No,” he said, grabbing for the bottle a second time.

  I grasped his wrist and held it. “You’ve taken my freedom, my sanity, my apartment, and my office. But you will not take my shampoo.” With this I released him, grabbed the shampoo and conditioner, and stood.

  The realization that I was naked came as an afterthought, so vulnerable I already felt. Only when his eyes fixed on my nipples, hard and tight beneath the hot water’s spray did I realize my predicament.

  My attempt to cover my naked breasts was met with his hands seizing my arms, shoving me backward into the shower wall. The bottles fell from my hands.

  “Let me go!” I tried to pry his fingers away, digging my nails into his skin.

  “Stop!” He gritted his teeth against the pain.

  Rivulets ran down his face from the dark hair plastered to his forehead. I looked into his eyes through the curtain of water. “You’re a coward. A delivery boy for the big boss man because it makes you feel important.”

  His hands tightened on my arms. “Shut your mouth.”

  “Selling a service that destroys lives because it makes you feel powerful, just like one of your Las Vegas hookers.” A realization slid through my mind, and I knew how wrong it was by the savage pleasure it brought me. “Is that what your mother was? A whore?”

  His kiss bruised my mouth with the force of a blow. I felt the impression of his teeth against my lips as he crushed my body against the tiles with his own.

  The same tongue that had nearly stopped my heart earlier now stopped my words, sliding into my mouth, silencing me with sensation. His naked thigh shoved between mine, the second line in the same battle, demanding surrender.

  My moan into his mouth was met with a revelation.

  He released my lips to whisper hot, wet words into my ear. “I know. I know you’re not her. I know you’ve never been to Las Vegas. You’re not the woman who did those things. But I was going to sell you to him anyway. Because I need the money.”

  This cold knowledge sank into my heart, warring with the fire in my belly.

  “But I can’t,” he continued. His lips had found my throat, brushing kisses down the column of my neck, stopping only to nip at the tender flesh. “You’re not like any woman I’ve ever met. You’re brilliant. Kind. Gentle. Beautiful.”

  “I’m not,” I insisted, my resolve evaporating with every flick of his clever tongue. “After what I just said—”

  “What you said was the truth,” he admitted. “Do you know how rare that is in my world?” I melted by fractions as he scraped my skin with his teeth. “How does a woman like you go her whole life untouched?”

  “Intimacy issues,” I breathed into his ear. “My mother used to have sex…while I was there. She had—” I gasped as his finger slid inside me “—undiagnosed schizophreniaaah.”

  He allowed me a moment to adjust before he pushed against a place that stole the bones from my legs.

  I ceased to be inert, remembering I had hands and fingers both, and a mouth besides. Leaning forward, I tasted the smooth skin of his neck, savoring the spot where it connected with the sloping muscle disappearing into his shoulder.

  My fingertips explored at their leisure, mapping the valleys cut by every muscle. Each in their own time, they wrapped around the part of him that remained hot and hard.

  “She was a…crack whore,” he gasped. “My mother.”

  Some instinct drove my hand downward, then upward, knowing this would coax words from him better than any questions I could devise.

  “She used to disappear for days at a time. Leave me with babysitters,” he added.

  This word rattled through my body only inches from where his fingers worked a pattern of pleasure.

  “Mine too,” I said into his ear, following the admission with my tongue.

  His eyes met mine through the scrim of steam. Electricity crackled on the air, exchanging any information yet unspoken between us.

  Strong hands cupped my buttocks, lifting me off my feet.

  “Please,” I said, wrapping my arms around his neck, my legs around his waist.

  His eyes never left mine as he moved my hips, preparing me. One quick, fierce thrust, and we were joined.

  Pain and pleasure twined together like vines, and my cry climbed them both.

  His chest heaved with the effort of holding his body still. “Okay?”

  “More,” I breathed against his neck.

  He planted hands on my hips and began a slow, fluid undulation. Each surge brought him deeper, a wave reaching further upon the shore.

  And I was an island, waiting my whole long life to be discovered this way. The curving dunes of my body rolling with ecstasy, sliding like sun-warmed sand through capable fingers.

  An enlightened conquest ceased to be enough.

  “I have my whole life for making love,” I breathed. “Fuck me.”

  My back was reintroduced to the tile as he sought better leverage. I too
k a moment to savor the animal cruelty in his face before I fastened my mouth to his ear and poured in the filthiest (non-medical) demands I could devise.

  As the shockwaves crashed through me, each more brutal than the one before, my mind strung erotic words together like beads on a string.

  “Out loud,” he commanded, his words as ragged as his breath. “Say it.”

  I closed my eyes, and let him evict each word with a thrust. “Fuck. Me. Harder.”

  And he complied, driving me up the shower wall.

  “I. Love. Your. Cock.”

  “Then take it.”

  I contracted around him, eliciting a deep, predatory growl from his chest that sent a ripple of pleasure through my belly.

  “Make. Me. Come.”

  He continued his assault, catching my nipple between his teeth and tugging.

  The arc of pleasure burned through me, and I was lost. Coming apart around him, against him. I folded forward, convulsed in pleasure, unable to stop the screams tearing from my throat.

  “You’re so tight,” Liam groaned.

  And then I was not alone. His own cries matched mine for elation, desperation, and abandon.

  Only as our breathing began to slow did I register the cold water falling on my skin like rain.

  “See?” I said. “Even miracles have their limits.”

  He was on the point of arguing, when the bathroom door swung open, and a swollen-eyed Cupid stumbled to the toilet, pulled down his loincloth, and started peeing.

  Liam clapped a hand over my mouth to stop the giggle trying to erupt upon my realization that with his chubby ass, golden curls, and round belly, Cupid looked exactly like a fountain.

  Finished, Cupid turned toward the shower, smiled, winked, and mumbled, “I still got it,” before staggering out.

  *****

  “I don’t see why we still have to go to Vegas,” I said.

  We were back in Liam’s car, watching the desert slide by our windows under the cover of darkness.

  Post-shower, Liam and I had passed out on the bed with Cupid curled up at our feet like a strange, winged pet. We’d slept the day through and woken at dusk, driving all the night and into the following day, stopping only for road food and restroom breaks. Nebraska cornfields slid into Colorado mountains as part of one never-ending tapestry. Now, only miles outside of Vegas, the city’s glow bled into the night sky like a radioactive strip across the horizon.