Confessed

by Nicola Rendell

  There is silence. There is stillness.

  My arms begin quivering harder. I brace myself and clench my eyes shut.

  But he doesn’t whip me. Instead, he whispers, “Turn your little whore face to Daddy and tell me why you like pain so much.”

  Holy shit. I recoil inside. That was too much. Turn your little whore face to Daddy… He hooks one finger around my jaw. “Tell me.”

  “Because… it…” I stutter.

  “Answer the fucking question.” He grips my jawbone hard in his fingers, compressing my cheeks. This is the face of a man who’s done very, very bad things. There is no light in his eyes. There’s no game, there’s no fun. It’s dark and serious. This is natural to him. To me. To us both together.

  “Have you done this before?” I whisper. I feel like I have to whisper. Like I’m not supposed to be talking. Like I’m breaking some rule.

  The leather moves along my rib cage. “Once.”

  “Who was she?” Perverse again is the idea of him fucking another woman. I can stand it because I’ve got him. If I didn’t, I realize, it would make me insane.

  “She…” he says, “…was a horse.”

  Snap it goes again, and my knees buckle under me. I groan out.

  “She was the only horse I ever broke.”

  I gasp for air. “You never told me you had horses.”

  “There’s a lot about me you don’t know.” His hand comes to my throat, grazing my windpipe.

  My toes curl. “I know.” I whimper out a gasp and lower my head. I reach out for his hand. He squeezes it, just for a fleeting, reassuring second, before letting it go again.

  “No, you don’t.” He brings my head back around to face him. At first, there is no mercy in that face. But then there is, just a little. When I need it most. “Where is your head, Lucy Burchett? Answer me.”

  My back is pulsing. I am my skin. I am the lines of pain on my back. He brings his lips to mine and kisses me. A steadying kiss, and then pulls away. “Okay?” he asks.

  “Yeah. More than okay.”

  Again he hits me. This time it’s harder, meaner, and the meat of the belt lands squarely on my shoulder blades. A little shriek comes out of my mouth on impact, and I cry out, “Holy fuck.”

  He doesn’t rub in the pain now. This time, he just lets me suffer and circles again. Then I feel his cock between my legs. I glance down and see the tip between my lips. I feel him slippery with my wetness. He doesn’t say anything. My back stings, it burns, but it’s also cold. “Did that leave a mark?” I whisper.

  “No,” he says, and then whips me yet again.

  And this time, I don’t wish it was harder. I sob out his name.

  He traces the edge of the sting with his fingers. I can feel the heat running all the way through my body.

  Next to my ear, he whispers, “Tell me you’re good.”

  I nod. I sniffle.

  “Good girl.” His hands grip my hips.

  I arch my back and suck in a deep breath of air. “I want you inside me. I need you inside me.”

  He drags the tip of his cock between my ass cheeks.

  “Give it to me, please, Vince, please.”

  The cramp in my calves tells me my toes have been curled up this whole time. I try to unflex them, but the anticipation, the desire, I can’t.

  “How do you know what to do to me…?”

  He laughs. It’s this hollow, mean laugh. “You don’t know another man like me. This isn’t naughty Lucy time. This is you and me getting down and dirty, exactly like we fucking are.”

  I nod.

  “Say it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fucking say it, Lucy.”

  “Yeah, Daddy.”

  He breathes out slow and calm. He twists my nipple in his fingers. “I know what you want because I’m teaching you what to like.”

  Whack.

  I fall to my elbows and groan. Big, roaring scream with my cheek in the sheets.

  Everything is quiet for a moment. I can’t even hear him breathing. I begin to come up on my elbows again, but that is when he gives me another, the other way, making a flaming X on my back. I sob into the pillows. I curl into a ball.

  And I hear the belt clatter to the ground.

  He climbs onto me, mounting me. One finger slides into my mouth, and I draw it in with my tongue. His thumb, I think, presses slightly into my ass. He’s got all my openings covered, controlled. He begins fucking me. Then, faster and harder than I’ve ever been fucked in my life. Faster and harder than I ever thought possible. The room becomes blurry. I make a long groaning moaning hum as he jolts me with pump after pump.

  He compresses my throat a little with his hand and says, “Make yourself come. Right fucking now.”

  I slide my hand between my legs, my palm to my stomach.

  “I can’t. Not on my knees,” I say around his fingers.

  He yanks my head back against his cheek. “We belong together. And you’re gonna do exactly…” Thrust.

  “…As…” Thrust.

  “…I say.”

  Furiously, in the blur of his body slamming into mine, I work my clit. I force myself to let go to him. To trust him entirely. To be completely his.

  “Whatever you knew before,” he tells me, “you don’t know anymore.”

  “Whatever I was,” I moan, “I’m not now.”

  Pump, thrust, drive. “That’s right. Now it’s just you and me, whatever the fuck we want. So do it. Come, right now. For me. On me.”

  I’m coming. I’m coming so hard that I’m sobbing. As I come, he bears down harder on my throat and things shiver from color to black and white. I feel my heart pounding in my throat, and the orgasm is a like a chemical explosion. Like a detonation. I scream out, barely sounding and feeling like I’m me at all.

  As I come, he comes again, digging his huge hands into my hips and pulling me into him as he drives deeper, telling me I’m a good little bitch, a good little whore. A beautiful girl. The most beautiful woman in the world. His woman. His beautiful thing. Tangling me up only to let me fall further and further.

  His orgasm is furious. Rude. Aggressive. For the first time, I feel the moment when the cum enters my body. The pump and quiver as he lets himself go into me. “There it is,” he says, sliding his hand up my stomach. “There it fucking is. God damn you, Lucy. God damn you.”

  He slows and gets softer. His lips run down my shoulder blade. As he takes his cock from my body, I fall to the side in a heap. He scoops me up into his arms. A wave of emotion shakes deep inside me. It feels like some vast well of untapped… I don’t even know. Relief. Shame.

  “Was that fucked up?” I whisper.

  “No way. That’s ours. We decide what’s fucked up. And that,” he kisses my neck, “was fucking fantastic. Nobody else in the world gets a say in us.”

  He takes me in his arms so tight that it prevents my lungs from expanding all the way. With one thumb to my cheek, he looks me straight in the eye. “Lucy,” he says. He sounds a thousand miles from me. “Lucy, I’m right here.”

  I press my forehead to his chest. I wrap my arms around him. Tears, a flood of them, in gasps and chokes, spill out of me. They won’t stop. It’s like a broken dam. He lets me cry and cry and cry. I find myself laughing through the tears as he smooths my hair over and over. He tells me it’s perfect. I’m perfect. He’ll give me everything I’ve ever needed. Never known I needed.

  I don’t know how long later, but a knock at the door startles me. He gets up slowly and puts on his boxers. He pads to the door, and I hear nothing for a while. I know he must be looking out the peephole. I pull the sheets up around me and hope like hell we’re not about to get ripped apart. I couldn’t take it. I can’t let go now.

  But then I smell pizza. And sit up.

  Vince grabs his wallet from the floor and pays. I hear the chain lock slide shut, and then the deadbolt. He comes back to bed and puts the box between us on the sheets. He leans in, kisses me sweetly
on the mouth. Then he opens the box, takes out a slice of Veggie Lover’s Original, and holds it out for me to take a bite.

  23

  She’s lying naked in bed with the empty pizza box open beside her. On TV, The Shining is playing on mute. Her choice. Mine too. I’m sitting backward on the desk chair, drawing her. There’s a new shine in her eyes now, all dark haired and confident. She was too beautiful not to draw.

  “You’re sexy when you’re working,” she says. The light from the television switches from blue to red, then white. Her eyes move away from me and widen. I catch a glimpse of Jack Nicholson at his typewriter. All work and no play.

  “You’re sexy all the time.”

  I work on the soft angle of her forearm. I notice I’m working fast like she’s going to disappear. I try to make myself slow down, but I just can’t. I’m fucking frantic to save her like this forever.

  That Daddy shit, the whipping, that was brand fucking new to me. I've never cared enough about anybody to want them like that, to want to hear shit like that. I've never known a woman strong enough to really take it. But she is, and strong enough to take me down right alongside her. She’s the fucking fantasy, in the flesh.

  Now to her nose, to her cheeks. To that perfect symmetry of her eyes, so totally rare. I work on her lips. I love those lips.

  Her face, the way her toes curl, the way she hooks her ankles together and lets her legs tip off to one side. That smile.

  “Vince,” she asks, and I know that when she says my name like that, she’s getting serious.

  “Lucy.”

  She gives me those pursed lips. “What’s the plan? Where are we going?” I erase a line from her cheek and blow some dust from the page. “I’ve got a place we can lie low a while.”

  Her face lights up. She sways her legs back and forth. “Yeah?”

  I nod at her. I don’t exactly know how to tell her because I don’t know what to expect myself. “It’s in New Mexico. Middle of nowhere. What do you say?”

  She sighs, deep and contented. But she takes a second to think it over. The screen goes dark, and her eyes get a little pensive. “Is it safe?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’ll keep you safe. You’ll love it.”

  She presses her hand into her cheek a little, tipping her head down and raising those eyes. When she looks at me, I feel it all the way through my body. Then she says, “Well if it sounds good to you, then I’m game.”

  Good girl? Shit. The best in the world. And all fucking mine.

  I get back to sketching. No point in worrying about New Mexico now. Now, it’s just her and me and those eyes. Her eyes are hardest. Her eyes have everything. I rough them out, trying to get their angle just right, but just as I start getting the shape and feel of them, her eyelids start to slip closed. I watch her. I stop drawing, pencil just above the page. Suddenly, she opens them, looking startled. Her eyes drift to the TV, and they slide closed again, staying closed longer. Her head starts to tip forward, and her palm slides up her cheek, making her lips into a cockeyed, droopy, adorable line. She becomes incredibly awkward as sleep overtakes her. Her legs fall to one side, and her breathing gets deeper and deeper. A little tiny snore fills the room.

  I’m smiling so hard it hurts.

  Inch by inch, her hand slides up her forehead, until finally, it gets to her hair. Then the domino reaction is set in motion: Her head tumbles down to her forearm with a light smack, just missing the pizza box. Her face gets mashed up against her elbow. But she doesn’t wake up. The snoring gets slightly louder, amplified by the fact that her nostril is wedged against her arm. I want to grab a photo of this, but she’d kill me. So I put my sketchbook down and go to her. I move the pizza box to the dresser and then take her in my arms. She makes a startled snort, mutters something I can’t understand and tucks her head against my chest. I stand there for a little while, wondering if I can stay like this forever with her in my arms. She’s limp and dead weight, but even like this, she’s a bundle of feathers. She’s sound asleep, like a toddler. Her head lolls back against my forearm, and her mouth drops open a little. I lay her down in bed, head on the pillows, and tuck her in. I fold the blanket down and smooth her hair. I lean down and kiss her on the cheek and inhale deep and long.

  Then she snuggles her face against the pillow and curls up on her side.

  I switch off the TV and look out the window. In the dark, I watch the lights of semi-trucks streak past on the highway. I watch a cop’s lights come on, and he pulls someone over on the shoulder. It’s a brutal reminder that somewhere out there, cops are looking for both of us. Hers are white collar. Mine is a detective in a cheap suit. When it comes right down to it, though, they’re part of the same squad: They want to keep us from being free. From being like we are. From being together.

  I turn and look at her sleeping, so peacefully. The little snore starts again. As sweet as a sleeping puppy.

  This woman, she makes me want to stop running. She makes me want to settle down.

  For the very first time in my life.

  24

  We head west on I-40. We don’t hurry. We take turns driving and checking in to an assortment of peculiarly quaint hotels using names of semi-famous artists. At night, we get pizza delivered or run out for Chinese and beers. We check into motel rooms that are neat and wreck them like rock stars. Our sex is like that. In Knoxville, we knock over lamps. In Little Rock, we damage a headboard. In the Panhandle, we pull down a shower curtain. He calls me beautiful things and nasty ones. I get him on his knees. He gets me up against walls. I seethe at him as I come, and tell him things I’ll never remember saying. There’s that phrase, an awakening. I never understood that until now, but that’s what’s happening to me. I know it. I love it. I need it. Pure trust, no inhibitions. No shame. That’s the thing that brings tears to my eyes. In front of him, I have no shame. I can be whatever I want. Whatever I am. It’s all okay. I can scream his name as loud as I want, and it’ll always be okay. I’m not a slut for wanting it, or for needing it either. There is no should anymore. Not for us.

  Every mile that passes, we get to know each other better. The pressure of the world falls away from me, and I slowly peel away those onion layers of myself and him too. I find him smarter, sharper, and funnier than I could have possibly imagined he would be. Good in bed is one thing. But good company, that’s the stuff of love.

  “I just thought you’d be…”

  “What…a badass?” He eases down into the driver’s seat and holds the wheel with one hand, like a gangster. Then he raises his chin at me. Total gangster right now. I love it.

  “I don’t know. Kind of a brute.”

  “What? Is that Connecticut for asshole?”

  I’m matter-of-fact about it. He loves when I’m deadpan. “Yep. That’s the translation.”

  He shrugs. “Maybe I’m an asshole out there,” he points at the world, “but not with you.”

  “That’ll suit me just fine,” I say, and give him a peck on the cheek. “Brute.”

  He talks to me about learning to draw, about prison, about bad choices and dropping out of school. “It’s not like I could’ve ever gone to, you know, Yale,” he says.

  “Pffft! I barely went to Yale,” I say.

  “But you know what I mean.”

  I do. I think about luck and circumstance and how lives are shaped by forces way, way beyond our control. “You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

  He takes a deep breath. He doesn’t turn to face me, but he does lean over to hold my hand.

  The West opens up in front of us, and we talk. I can talk to him like I’ve never talked to anybody. Not nervously, not uncomfortably, just plainly.

  He tells me about growing up poor and asks me about growing up rich. We’re both embarrassed about it. Me more than him. I mess with the radio, and he says, “Peaches, we don’t choose where we come from. We only choose where we go.”

  Each day, we go to breakfast at a Denny’s or a diner or a drive-throu
gh. I take pictures with the Instax, sometimes with us together but mostly just of him. I learn he has a thing for oatmeal, which I find adorable. He learns I have a thing for cinnamon rolls, and says he isn’t surprised. “Gotta feed the sweetness somehow,” he says. “Gotta keep the octane up.”

  We ration our cash. Rooms are cheap; food is cheaper. Gas is down to $2 a gallon. For the first time, my life is surprisingly, effortlessly simple. There’s the road. There’s Vince. And there’s the great big unknown.

  I avoid newspapers as much as I can. But one day at a Walmart outside the rather magnificently named Mustang, Oklahoma, I see a photograph of my dad on the cover of USA Today. He’s holding his hand out to block the camera, and the headline says, simply: “GRILLED.”

  I clutch my Granny Smith apples and turn away.

  Only to find myself looking at a Forbes magazine, with the similarly brutally punny headline: “SKEWERED.”

  So that’s how things are going at home. I think of calling my mom, but I don’t know what I’d say. I think of calling Naomi, but as I look at Vince, as I ease back into myself, I realize, for now, I don’t need to. That I’m okay. That everything out here, in this world apart, is okay. So I pay for my apples, and I see a glimpse of myself on the cover of the Times. But it’s the old me. I’ve let go of her already.

  On we go. Spotify is out of the question, and we amass a small but respectable collection of used CDs from tiny closing-down record stores that litter the breadbasket. Johnny Cash, singing about how God’s gonna cut you down. Live, singing about selling the drama. Tom Petty, singing about the sky being the limit.

  Outside Pampas, Texas, I find a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas at a used book and record shop. I ask him if he’s ever read it, and he says, “Yeah. I have.”