Confessed

by Nicola Rendell

  “You called me your hunk,” he says.

  And I nod back up at him because I most certainly did. “Hope you don’t mind…”

  “Fuck no I don’t,” he says with a pump. “Because you’re all mine.”

  He goes slow. I feel everything, from the pressure of his tip on my cervix to his balls brushing against my inner thighs. He drives into me with this maddening patient aggression. Having sex with him, it’s a totally out-of-body experience. I think to myself, there, so small and overcome under him, that this is how sex is supposed to be. Carnal. Primal. Loving. Ruthless.

  “I saw your sketchbook,” I say softly as he pulls out.

  He freezes. He looks like the vulnerable one now. For one instant, I can see exactly the wide-eyed innocence he must have had as a little boy. It’s adorable. It’s heartbreaking.

  “You’re so talented.”

  He grips my shoulders from behind to pull down on my body as he drives in from below. “Don’t you tease me, not about that.”

  I take his face in my hands. “I’ll never tease you about what matters.”

  His forehead comes to my shoulder. This big beast of a man, embarrassed, because of me. He places a kiss on my breastbone. “You get me where it hurts, Lucy. I don’t know how you do it.”

  I wrap my arms around him as best I can. I feel the healing gunshot scar pass under my hand. I look at the deep bruises turning green on the edge of his nose. “You’re not all sinner,” I whisper.

  He shakes his head. “Not with you.”

  He pumps into me. I draw his finger into my mouth and suck hard.

  His eyes go to my lips. I run my tongue around his fingertip. He says, “Fuck.”

  I raise my eyebrows. You like that, don’t you? I slide my tongue up his finger, same as I would if it were his cock.

  Even inside me, I feel his cock give a pulse, saying what he already said out loud. Fuck.

  His drives get more urgent, more passionate. He puts a second finger into my mouth, and I suck on them both. With his thumb, he keeps my jaw steady. Our eyes don’t part until his grunts get darker, more pointed, and his blinks slower and slower. That’s how I know he’s getting close. But so am I. My sucking slows, and I find myself opening my mouth, whispering his name over and over again. “Vince. Vince, oh my God. Vince.”

  “I love the way you say that motherfucking word.”

  I arch my back, and when I bring it back down, his hand is there waiting, spanning the width of my waist from behind.

  “I want to know your dreams too, beautiful,” he says, all coarse and gravelly into my ear. “I want to know what you need, what you want. What you’ve never told anybody.”

  “Keep talking like that…” I pant through a merciless drive. “You’re going to make me come.”

  “Already, huh?”

  I clench my teeth. My clit flickers, I’m tensing around him. I lose the sound of the forest in his grunts. My nod is almost backward, head pressed into the ground, neck taut and rigid.

  He growls, “Because I’ll tell you another dream,” he drives in again. “Knocking you the fuck up.”

  Oh my God.

  “My baby inside you. All of it. All of you.”

  I’m holding on to him so tight I can’t even breathe. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

  “For fucking ever.”

  “That’s what I want,” I gasp. “That’s it.”

  His fingers find my clit and start working it in a gentle circle clockwise. “So goddamned hot, right?”

  “It’s the thing I shouldn’t want,” I tell him.

  “Fuck that. You can have everything. Starting right now,” he says, with a long press into my cervix.

  Then he moves his fingers down towards my lips, stretching them from the opening as he fucks me. Harder. More. Wilder. He cups his palm against my clit, flattening it out against his hand. I grind against it instinctively, working my body against his skin. “Just say the fucking word, gorgeous,” he says, driving all the way into me and holding himself there while I fuck his hand, “and that’s what you’ll fucking get. You’ll get my seed inside you. For good.”

  I’m coming. I’m going. I’m here. I’m there. I’m telling him yes and no. I get lost. I know I’m talking, I know I’m groaning out a long stream of things at him, but it’s like some other version of me is saying them. That’s where he puts me. So far inside him, I lose myself completely.

  I’m in another world where everything is sugar and gold. I’m hovering between awake and asleep.

  “Whose are you?” he says into my ear.

  “Yours,” I say into his

  “What are you?” “Whatever you want me to be.”

  “That’s right,” he says, and keeps on driving into me all through my orgasm. His balls slap against my body, and the Y of his thumb and forefinger pin my neck to the blanket.

  I hold my hand over his, telling him I want more, I need more. Because right now, I’d do anything for him. Anything to get him there. “All my air is yours,” I whisper. “Everything is yours.”

  His sounds are more animal than human. A long “fuuuuuuuuuck” echoes through the forest as he comes. I can’t take my eyes off of him. There is nothing but him. There is nothing but us.

  Nothing but this.

  19

  I watch her fall asleep in my arms. I don’t know how long we stay there, but I don’t move. Not once.

  The two of us together, it’s fucking intense. I didn’t know I’d ever find a woman who could get under my skin like she does. And I never—ever—thought she’d look like this. I move her hair away from her cheek. She’s so soft and delicate. I’d kill to have my sketchbook right now, but I don’t want to wake her up. I wrap her in the blanket a little tighter and pull a leaf from her hair.

  I memorize everything. The bend of her elbow, the lines at her wrist. The way her veins are just barely blue under her pale white skin. A shadow falls onto her from above, making oak leaves on her stomach. I see she has a birthmark, just a tiny black freckle, on the edge of her belly button. Two piercings in each ear, and a cartilage piercing on the right. I’ll bet her parents went nuts over that. Whole nights at dinner spent brooding. I let my mind wander to where she must have come from, what that place must be like. Her whole story. She’s not wearing an earring there anymore, but I’ll bet she’d look just awesome if she did. I imagine a barbell or a hoop. I’d like to darken her up. I need to darken her up.

  Because disappearing, it’s in the big things and the details too.

  This little pistol, though, she really is something else. Paying off my debt? I still can’t believe it. What possessed her to do it, I have no idea, but I’m fucking thankful. I turn her head a little in my arms. She’s dreaming, I can tell by the movement of her eyes under her closed lids. She does make me want to look after her. She makes me want to get a little possessive, never let her leave the house without her gloves in winter. Make sure she always locks the door when I’m not there. She makes me feel guilty for shit I never felt guilty for before.

  Her breathing gets slower and steadier, and her lips part a little. Her eyebrows come together like there’s something upsetting her. Deep in my chest I feel this rush, this need, this fucking burning desire to protect her. Even from herself, even from her bad dreams. This is more than just screwing around. A lot more. It’s more than just being stuck together. It’s that white-hot heat, once in a lifetime. The thing that was never going to happen to me.

  But it has.

  And it makes me want to stay right here, with her in my arms, for the long haul.

  Except there’s shit to do before we can even think about anything but today.

  “Lucy,” I whisper. I touch her cheek with the pad of my thumb.

  She presses her face into my chest, making noises like she just wants to sleep.

  “Wake up, Peaches.”

  She yawns and stretches, feline and so fucking sexy.

  “Wake up, gorgeous,” I tell her, kissing her fore
head. “We’ve got work to do.”

  I pull off I-40 outside Tuscaloosa, and park behind a Baymont Inn. Middle America standard-issue, across from a Denny’s that clearly used to be a Pizza Hut. Though I’m scanning the mirrors like a hawk, I stay relaxed on the outside. No need to freak her out, and I’m not that worried yet. Just like the assorted cops who’d like to see me in the slammer, it’s a hell of a project to find one person out of 300 million. Manhunts don’t come cheap. Problem is that she’s high profile. Pretty enough to be hated, cute enough to be recognized, and right in the middle of the kind of a case some jackass young prosecutor would like to get his teeth into to “teach the upper class a lesson.” Everybody loves a fall from the top. Everybody.

  There’s no way I’m letting her fall anywhere.

  I park by a median with a dead tree planted in the middle, surrounded by mulch and black plastic. What I’d like to do right now, what I should do right now, is drive out into the plains and set fire to this fucking Beemer. But that would involve stealing another car, and I don’t think she’s ready for that. I mean, look at her. She’s putting on lip gloss and checking her teeth for specks of food. She’s not first-degree felony material, not yet. For now, the swapped plates will have to be good enough. After all, there are a lot of white BMW X5s in the world. I should know.

  “We’re stopping already?” she asks.

  I get what she’s saying. It’s still light. Not even time for dinner. So I turn to her and with one finger slide her sunglasses up onto her head. Her hair gets a little tangled, but she doesn’t fuss with them. “Yeah, we’ve got shit to do. Like I said.”

  “We do?”

  “And I want you.”

  She gives me some quick blinks. From the light of the sunset, I see her pupils dilate, and a blush comes up high into her cheeks. “Yes, please.”

  I lean over her. She’s so tiny in that seat. I take her face in my hands. “You’re gonna have to trust me.”

  The noise she makes is like pure fucking lust. This rumble in her chest.

  “Do you trust me?”

  I feel her nod more than see it, her throat shifting against my palm.

  “Say it.”

  Now I feel her smile as she tips her chin down. “I mean…I shouldn’t.”

  God, still so sassy. “Right. You definitely shouldn’t.”

  She loops one thumb around my belt, and I feel her tiny fingers press into my abdomen, under my boxers. She smiles. “But I do.”

  “Good,” I say. I plant a kiss on her lips, open-mouthed and greedy, and then I manage to drag myself away from her body and open my door. I get out and come around to her side. She’s just swinging those pretty calves out of her seat when I get there. I’m a little annoyed she didn’t let me open the door for her. That’s alright, though. Getting used to me looking after everything for her, it’ll take time.

  She puts her purse on her shoulder and smiles up at me. Which is when I take her sunglasses off of her face, drop them on the ground, and crush them with my boot.

  “What the hell was that for!” she says. “Those were Gucci!”

  I gather up the pieces and toss them in the dumpster, and then I slam her door and start walking through the parking lot.

  “What are we doing?” she asks in a huff. She’s trotting to catch up. Her little footsteps patter on the asphalt; they just kill me. She snatches my hand. “Vince! Tell me. What are we doing?” She yanks me backward, but I keep going.

  I can just hear the only child oozing out of her. She’s used to getting her way and knowing everything. But not this time. So I say, “Just a little errand.”

  The CVS is just like every CVS. Smells the same, looks the same, has the same stains on the carpets. I take a pair of women’s aviators off the sunglasses rack. $7.99. I hold them up in front of her face. She gives me this irritated pout. An employee lady walks by with a cart full of shampoo. She’s not paying attention, though. I can hear Adele playing at full volume in her ears. “Hello. It’s me.” I might be a fan.

  “Are we doing this or what?” I say under my breath.

  Then she shuts her eyes so I can put them on. I place them on her ears and push them up her pretty little nose.

  She adjusts them and moves the tag, which is poking her square in the forehead. I see myself reflected in the lenses. They look sexy on her. Gold rims and the right size for her face.

  Lucy says, “I feel like the Unabomber.” She moves them back and forth on her ears, so they go a little cockeyed each way.

  “He never looked so good.” I take charge of the straightening. She lets her hands fall, trailing her fingers down my chest. I glance at the mirror. “Take a look.”

  She turns and looks at herself in the weird little tilted display mirror. “These aren’t me.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  Then I take her by the hand and lead her down the makeup aisle. She folds up the glasses and puts them in a hand basket. I keep her close—I’m finding I like to keep her close, preferably with as much of my body touching as much of hers as is physically possible, and a hand on her ass if I can—and say, “The thing is, you’re noticeable. Memorable even.”

  She presses my hand down and squeezes around it. “You might be biased.”

  “Possibly. What’s your usual? This?” I take her fingers in mine. They’re painted with something light pink. Her fingers are just tiny. Her fingernails are neat, cute ovals cut short, but not so short that they didn’t leave marks on my back last night.

  “This or bright pink, mostly.” She stretches her hand away from her and fans out her fingers.

  So I grab a bottle of black polish, put it in the basket and keep on moving.

  “I’m not cut out for Goth!” she whispers. She scurries in front of me like she’s trying to block my way.

  I take her shoulders in my hands and then brush her hair back from her face. Her eyes flutter closed, and it reminds me so much of when she comes, I can feel myself getting a little bit hard. I groan right out there next to the seasonal camping gear, and I have a vision of bending her over a nearby box of Igloo coolers and fucking her right here and now. Clean-up on motherfucking aisle 4. Shit yes.

  Pull it together, Vince. You’ve got a fugitive to aid and abet. “You’re going to look like a fucking bombshell.”

  Eyes still closed, but there’s that little smile. “You know just what to say.”

  I nudge her chin with my thumb. “Maybe.”

  So now it’s back to business.

  “What about makeup? Usually like you are now?” She’s wearing sort of a pretty, brownish-gray eyeshadow, but not too much. Her long lashes are coated with just the right amount of mascara. I was once in the joint with a drag queen named Queen Bea who taught me all this shit.

  “This is the usual.” She puckers her lips and looks off to one side, flirty and sassy.

  I scan the racks of eyeshadow. It’s insane. I once heard that women know something like the names of thirty times more color names than men, and no fucking wonder. In the middle, below some fake eyelashes, I spot a rectangular box with deep dark browns and blacks and a deep purple, labeled ROCKSTAR. I hold it next to her face. Yeah. Purple against those eyes? Perfect. I put it in the cart. She throws in a little box of fake lashes and eyelash glue. She wiggles her shoulders and grins like I might not mind this so much.

  As for lipsticks, I don’t even know. I can’t even process what I’m seeing. It’s a pink tide. “You pick.”

  She grabs a light pink lip gloss and holds it up, between thumb and forefinger. Girl’s gonna hang on to the way she was until the end. I take it out of her hands. “Darker.”

  She goes one half of one tiny percent of a shade darker. “There.”

  I edge her up against the rack. “Helen. I’m serious.”

  Her weight shifts from one knee to the other. “But I don’t wear lipstick lipstick.”

  I don’t even know what that means. I put a hand to her waist. “You do now.”

&nb
sp; I watch her clench her hand. Annoyed. Spoiled. Sexy.

  Battling with her, I could do it all day. But finally, she picks a dark pink. “How about this?” She opens it up and swipes the back of her hand. “Not quite classy. Not quite trashy.”

  “Now we’re fucking talking,” I say.

  But now, she’s going to get serious. I stroll past the body washes—she grabs one on the fly—and lead her to the next aisle.

  Her knees lock. She’s spotted the plan: It’s the hair dye aisle. It’s the big plunge.

  “No way,” she says. She runs her palm over her braid. I have to admit, her hair is fucking sexy. I’ll miss it. The way the ends just brush her nipples. Jesus.

  I take her by the hand and try to drag her, but she’s not budging. I wrap an arm around her, and pull. Her flip-flops skid along the carpet. She grips onto an end cap full of lotion or some shit. Two bottles clatter to the ground with plasticky thumps, but she still hangs on.

  I pull harder. “Come on, Peaches. What’s the first thing that people will notice about you?” I wait. I rub the edge of my nose, which doesn’t hurt quite so bad now.

  “My winning personality?”

  “Right. Same thing they say about me.”

  “My driving skills.”

  “Christ.”

  There is actual anguish on her face as she looks at the color choices. It’s hitting her, I can see it’s hitting her, the reality of this whole fucking crazy idea that we’re diving into together. I touch her braid, cool and smooth under my fingers, “That’s what they call a ‘distinguishing characteristic’ in the business.”