by Karina Halle
I try not to think about it, about the other women he might have been with.
He walks to the other post, tugging on my leg slightly so I’m more spread eagle on the bed, and starts tying up that ankle as well.
Any thoughts about other women are totally obliterated because now all I can think about is how fucking crazy this is.
Don’t think, I remind myself. Just be.
I take in a deep breath and watch as Vicente slides his hand up the length of my leg and then crawls onto the bed between my thighs.
The most devious expression lies on his lips, like he’s not sure what to do first.
“I thought it would be rude if I didn’t finish what I started,” he says, bracing his elbows on either side of my shoulders. He smiles down at me, and once again I’m unnerved at how gentle it is. It softens every rugged thing about him, making him look, just for this moment, like he might not be any older than I am.
He runs his fingers over my nose, down the hills of my lips, looking at me like he’s seeing me, just as he did earlier, only there’s no camera lens to capture it. It’s his eyes that take the photos, and he’s taking in evidence.
“I want to suck on every inch of your body,” he murmurs. “Is that all right?” He licks along the rim of my ear, the sensation causing my skin to tingle.
I make a sound that’s half yes, half begging.
He continues to move his lips and tongue down the length of my body, caressing my collarbone, my breasts, sucking hard at my nipples until I’m dizzy and nearly mad with sensation. The fact that my legs are tied and spread, my hands above my head, just adds to it, like pouring gasoline on a fire.
And I have no choice but to succumb to the flames.
My stomach shivers under his tongue, and my hips jerk under the tickle of his stubble, the sweep of his soft lips.
Finally his head settles between my legs, already parted wide for him, thirsty with anticipation. Naturally, he takes his time. He parts me open, slowly letting the rough pad of his fingertip brush over my sensitive flesh.
I’m already gasping, unable to keep quiet, to contain myself.
Then his tongue snakes out, sliding along my clit and setting off more fireworks that flame the fire inside me. My breath shakes, unstable, my fingers clawing at each other, trying to grasp the sheets. My hips lift up, wanting more of him.
He obliges, putting his mouth and lips into it. He’s watching me. Those tiger eyes are watching my every movement as he gives me more and more pleasure, his teeth grazing over my clit, his tongue plunging deep inside. His head between my legs is the world’s most beautiful sight, and I know I’m looking dumbfounded and crazed as I stare back at him.
The air between us crackles, lightning in a summer storm.
This is dangerous.
The thought sweeps through my head before I can hang on to it.
Maybe I need dangerous.
I can’t hold his gaze any longer. I throw my head back and the world becomes hotter, tighter, as if my universe were built of a million burning stars. It grows and grows and grows, this impossible force inside me that gathers every single nerve and piece of my body until it’s wound over and over again.
The slide of his tongue pulls the trigger.
“Fuck,” I cry out, and he murmurs into me, his groans vibrating deep inside and kicking me over the edge. I’m going over, falling from the bridge, whistling through the wind, and my body quakes endlessly, until I’m quivering, boneless, and lost to him.
I can barely catch my breath, my chest heaving and covered in sweat. He gets off the bed, grabbing a condom from the drawer beside us.
Then he’s back on the bed and he’s grabbing my thighs, positioning himself. He pushes inside, still hard through all of that. I’m so wet and spent that he slides in easily, though still as huge and thick as he was earlier.
He shoves himself into me with pressing urgency that borders on profane.
I’m one hundred percent in his hands. I have no control.
I’m at his mercy.
Vicente grinds into me, his hips circling as he pistons himself in and out. He is merciless, grunting hard with each thrust, this rough, animalistic noise that gets louder and louder the closer he gets to coming. It’s such a gorgeous, raw noise that causes the heat to build in my core, coaxing the last bit of flames I have left.
Faster, harder, deeper. His pace is relentless. It slams me hard into the bed, the rope around my ankles digging sharply into my skin with each thrust.
Pain never felt so good.
So, so good.
And obviously good for him too. I can see him starting to lose control, dipping over the edge. His eyes burn into mine, and then he’s in deep, so deep that he’s shaking and muttering my name in low, guttural tones.
Before he totally loses it, he sticks his fingers in his mouth and then places them at my clit, rubbing, swirling, faster, faster.
It sets me off in a hot second, and once again I’m floating, flying, but this time I’m with him, and we’re riding it together, our bodies joined inside and out. For this moment, we are one, falling together.
Vicente collapses against me, his hard body sweaty and sliding against mine. His breath is rough and steady in my ear, and his lips brush my neck briefly. I want to hold on to him, to feel his skin as it calms, but I can’t move. I think my arms are asleep.
Once he catches his breath, he places a soft kiss on my forehead, then pulls out. He takes the condom off, disposing of it in the trash before he comes back and starts to undo the tie around my wrists.
He moves to my ankles, slowly unwrapping them.
He makes a tsk sound and I look up, shaking out my arms and trying to get the feeling back into them.
He gently runs his fingers over the welts the ropes made on my ankles, then kisses the red marks. It only stings a bit.
“Sorry,” he says softly, placing my feet back down.
“Worth it,” I tell him. And I mean it.
He smiles at me and holds out his hands to pull me up.
“Now, how about we get some fucking food?”
I laugh, letting him pull me to my feet. Holy shit. My entire body feels brand new.
“I have to admit, I’m not sure I feel like going to a restaurant after all this,” I tell him.
“Room service?”
“Yes, please.”
“Only if we can eat naked though. And maybe if I can eat dessert right off of you.”
My god. This man doesn’t stop.
I don’t think I’d want it any other way.
I watch as Vicente drives off, the lights of the Mustang disappearing into the fog. The chilled air rushes against me as it passes, but my shivers aren’t from the cold. They’re from the impossibility of everything that just happened.
I look up at the house and see the light on in the living room but no shadows, no movement. I immediately start walking down the street, smiling into the night. I need time to process everything that happened. I can’t be alone in my room, trying to contain myself. I can’t talk to Mom and Dad. I just need to be free.
I head down to Haight, the only place that feels remotely safe at eleven at night. A lot of the bars are still open and tourists still walk the streets. I move anonymously among them with no direction in mind.
My body is humming with electricity. I feel his lips between my thighs, his teeth at my nipples, his hard length inside me. I can see his eyes, relive what it was like to lose all sense of self. It was like the opposite of time travel. No past, no future—there was nothing in those moments with him except for what was happening, sweaty second by sweaty second.
God. We were fucking animals.
I’m still in shock. There’s only the new camera at my side and the sweet stiffness between my legs to tell me that what happened was real.
I was thoroughly fucked by Vicente.
Over and over and over again.
In a way I never imagined.
He made me step
away from myself. He pulled me out of that prison. He opened my eyes to a reality I didn’t think I could be a part of.
He made my weaknesses my strengths.
He made them raw and beautiful.
I don’t see how my life can possibly go back to normal after this.
I must have walked up and down the main five blocks of this street a few times before my phone buzzes.
In a stupor I pull it out, half-expecting it to be Ginny following up on her earlier threat (my god was that only today?) but instead it’s Ben. Not exactly who I want to talk to when I’m still recovering from post-coital bliss, but he rarely calls.
I pick it up. “Hey.”
Even though I sound pretty fucking cheerful, he answers with a stiff, “Hey.”
I decide to cross the street at Masonic and head back up the hill. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. I…um,” he clears his throat, “was doing some research on Dad.”
I can feel my orgasmic glow drain out of me and I suddenly stop in my tracks. A man in a dark blue coat who must have been walking closely behind me, bumps into my shoulder, spinning me around.
I grumble at the man who turns to the right and keeps walking down the hill. “Sorry,” I say to Ben. “What did you find?”
Silence fills the line but then I hear him breathing. “Ben?” I prompt. I stand at the corner, wondering if I should head down the street or up. It’s then that I notice the man that bumped into me. He’s stopped, waiting a few stores down, collar up and hat down, partially obscuring a very pale face.
The hairs at the back of my neck rise.
Something’s not right.
“Yeah,” he says. “Sorry. It’s…I found another clip online. Just something short. From 2014. It wasn’t about Dad so much as about something else. He was mentioned at the end as being falsely blamed for the kidnapping of a…of a woman and her three-year-old son. But it wasn’t him, it was these two brothers with ties to the mafia.”
“Mafia?” First Mexican gangs, now Italian ones.
I’m aware that people are starting to crowd around me waiting for the lights, so I decide to cross with them and back across the street again, remembering to lower my voice.
“Yeah. The woman he kidnapped, I mean, who he was blamed for kidnapping. Her name was Sophia.”
“Sophia?” I repeat, walking back up Haight.
I make the mistake of looking over my shoulder and see the pale man in the blue coat running across the street as the traffic starts up, a cab honking for him to get out of the way.
“Does it ring a bell?” Ben asks, but I barely hear him.
The man starts walking a few yards behind me.
My mouth goes dry.
Am I being followed?
“Are you there, Vi?” Ben asks.
“Yeah,” I whisper into the phone, turning back around and quickening my pace. “I think someone might be after me.”
“After you?”
“Following me.”
“Where are you?”
“On Haight. Just about to cross to Club Deluxe.”
“Who’s following you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t recognize him.”
“Cross the street again. Just make sure before you get all paranoid.”
I grumble under my breath and quickly dart across while there’s a gap in the traffic, ignoring the lights. Cars are honking at me now but I don’t care. “Okay.”
“Is he following you still?” he asks.
I look across the street and our eyes meet. His are dark, shadowed, hidden beneath a fedora. It makes his bone-white face look like a skeleton from the Day of the Dead.
I watch as he walks up to the lights at Clayton and waits, wanting to come over to my side. His dark gaze never drops from mine.
The walk signal lights up. He begins to cross.
“Shit,” I swear. “He’s coming across.”
“Go inside somewhere busy,” Ben says.
I start jogging up the street, but it’s late and so many shops are closed. I glance back to see him right behind me, coming up fast.
I could run across the road. I could make a run for it all the way home. But the streets around my house are dark. I’d be safer in public. The man can do nothing to me here, right?
Or can he?
“Vi?” Ben sounds panicked.
“Yeah, going into the Rock Shop,” I tell him, ducking into the massive tourist shop that sells anything to do with San Francisco, drugs, and psychedelic rock. The lights inside are bright fluorescent, the kind that normally hurt my eyes and make me feel sick, but now I welcome them.
It’s not empty either, which is a relief. People are scattered among the racks of t-shirts and posters and glass cases full of patches and bongs.
“What are you doing?” Ben asks.
“Hiding. To see if he’s coming in here,” I whisper.
I head toward the back of the store where the rows of posters are and hide behind them, watching the front door through the cracks.
It opens.
The man in the dark blue wool coat walks in.
I suck in my breath.
In the garish lights I can see him more clearly. The brim of the fedora still casts long shadows over his face, but it’s a face I can’t forget. Pale, like milk, with no eyebrows. He must be albino or wearing white stage makeup. Large swaths of raised scar tissue cover his cheeks and lips.
Even the clerk behind the counter notices him, and that clerk is always stoned out of his mind. His glazed eyes follow the white man as he slowly walks inside, scanning the store.
Looking for me.
“Ben,” I say in a hush. “He’s in here. He’s looking for me.”
“Can he see you?”
“No. I’m behind the posters. I can see him through a crack.”
And the minute I say that, he moves out of my sight.
Fuck.
Part of me realizes how ridiculous this is. There are at least five other people in the store, people who would help me if I needed it.
But would they?
Too many times I’ve heard stories of people being attacked in front of others, people who yell for help, and no one comes to their aid. People these days are too afraid to stick their neck out and help each other. There are too many guns, too many crazies, too many criminals. Even in the most liberal city in America, I wonder how many San Franciscans would take the chance.
But I can’t think like that. I have to believe in the good in people, even as the world spins to an even worse future.
Run for the door, I tell myself. The people in here will protect you. The scrawny clerk probably has a gun beneath the counter.
Do it.
“I can’t see him anymore,” I tell Ben. “I’m going to run.”
“Violet,” Ben warns.
“Hold on.” I move the phone away from my ear, clutching it in my hand like a weapon. I can hear his muffled voice telling me not to do it.
I don’t care.
I need to know.
And I need to go home.
I take in a deep breath and jump out from behind the posters.
The man is ten feet away, his back to me.
He’ll see me run out, but I don’t care.
I start running down the aisle, bumping into t-shirts that swing on their hangers, until I’m almost out the door. I give the clerk a look, one that I hope says “stop that man if he comes after me” and not “I just stole a bunch of your merchandise.”
Then I’m outside on the street and running across traffic again, almost getting nailed by an SUV, before I round the corner about to head home.
But I have to know. I pause, turn back, and go to the corner of the building, half-hidden, watching the door to the shop, watching for the man to come after me.
I raise the phone to my ear. “Ben,” I tell him. “I made it outside. He hasn’t followed me yet.”
“Fucking just go home now. Or I’ll
call Dad to make you.”
“I’m going, I’m going, I just have to see.”
And I stand there and watch for at least another minute as my heart rate returns to normal.
Finally the door opens and the man steps out.
“There he is.” I shrink back against the wall and peer out.
The man looks up and down the street then slowly starts walking up Haight toward the park.
“What’s he doing?” Ben asks.
“He’s walking up to Golden Gate Park. It took him forever to leave the store. He doesn’t seem to be looking for me anymore.”
“So maybe the whole fucking thing was in your head again?”
“Maybe,” I admit.
But thinking that doesn’t make me feel any better.
“I’m going home now.”
“Good,” he says. “I’ll see you this weekend. And I need to talk to you some more…in person.”
“Okay,” I tell him. “See you Friday.”
I hang up and take in one long inhale as the fog starts up again, sliding past me down the street like a ghost.
I’m in no mood for this film noir atmosphere.
I go straight home and try to push the last fifteen minutes out of my head.
I think of Vicente instead.
And smile.
Chapter Ten
Vicente
I’m dreaming.
I can’t remember the last time I dreamed.
It feels so long ago.
Maybe I was a child.
Twelve years old, tossing in my bed, welcoming dreams to take me away from the days where I yearned to hold on to my childhood while learning how to shoot a gun.
But like in those dreams, I’m fully aware. Not in control, just an observer who quietly watches the world crash and burn.
In this dream I am in a safe house, one of the many I was shuttled into growing up. For a while there, things got pretty bad. My father didn’t know who he could trust around his family.
So Marisol, my mother, and I were under watch of a family friend, Diego. Diego was the closest thing I ever had to a father. He was always old, always had a swoop of thick grey hair and a mustache I used to liken to a caterpillar. He’s dead now, passed away from cancer, which in a way seems like a rarity when so many die at the hands of another. Sometimes I wonder if it was better to go like Diego did, old and in pain, having lived a long life, or to die younger with a bullet to the head.