by Tiffany Sala
“You’re cute,” said Devin. “You actually think that went well.”
“She agreed to support the whole wedding scheme, didn’t she? Gave me a place to stay? Was there something else we were trying to achieve back there you didn’t bother to let me in on?”
“There are short-term goals here and longer-term goals, Julia. So she decided to give us everything we wanted today, but… in the grander scale of things, she’s going to have her own ideas of what she wants.”
“I think you’re just trying to be all dramatic and make out like your mother is so bad when she’s pretty cool,” I told him. “I could never imagine my parents being that generous, especially if I came to them with a new son-in-law all of a sudden.”
“Yes, I noticed your parents are not fans of your new life direction,” Devin said. “But I suggest you should assume in future that the people you meet have very little in common with your parents and the way they choose to conduct their affairs.”
He stopped the car outside another set of apartment buildings that had the same vibe of hotel luxury as the one his mother lived in. I felt much less nervous walking in knowing there was nobody new to confront at the other end of this journey.
The place the key unlocked was smaller than Angel’s place, but that just made the luxury jump out all the more. The colour scheme was gleaming black and white: sleek, expensive. White couches, black kitchen countertop, black appliances. The single splash of colour came from a painting on one of the white walls, an abstract rainbow splashed onto the unframed canvas. It made a powerful statement.
Devin brought in my little bag of things and a bag of basic groceries he’d stopped to pick up from a cornerstore, shut the door behind him, and moved further into the main room, perfectly matching this world in his suit. As did I, I supposed, dressed for my own funeral.
I realised something then that I hadn’t anticipated: Devin wasn’t planning to just bid me good day and head off into the sunset. He was going to stay here just as he’d stayed with me at my parents’ house… and I had the option of not getting myself drunk tonight.
I was probably in a lot of trouble.
Chapter Eleven
“Am I supposed to believe you are shy?”
I was so startled by Devin’s voice out of nowhere I dropped the capsicum I’d been fidgeting with. It rolled across the bench, and Devin caught it with one hand while he continued dicing its unlucky sibling with the other.
“I guess you wouldn’t,” I admitted, “but if any situation was going to make me feel that way… I mean, we’ve gone from you having me dragged out of bed to trying to cook with me?”
“You’ve got to roll with the challenges life presents you sometimes, Julia,” said Devin, rolling the second capsicum into the path of his knife.
“Are you talking about me here or you?”
“Both of us, for once.” His expression visibly dulled. It struck me then just how much more animated he had become since we had first met. It was just a handful of hours but there was someone behind the mafia man front he was slowly letting me see, whether by choice or unconsciously I did not know.
It actually bothered me to see that man disappearing again. It was messing with my head. Now, my primary thought when I looked at Devin was how smooth he was with that knife, how much damage he could probably do to another human with that thing.
“Can I help?” I asked.
Devin pointed me to a cupboard. “Electric frying pan in there somewhere, oil it up and start piling food in.”
I was a pro at preparing breakfast for myself, but this level of cooking, with cutting things up and heating them and mixing them with oil, was beyond me. How was it that someone whose family had residences just lying around fully-furnished waiting for someone to step in could cook?
I scrambled for something to say to keep him from noticing my fumbling with the cap of the oil bottle. “I… Did your mother teach you to cook?”
So much for a diversion from the situation at hand.
Devin frowned at me as he turned his attention to the chicken he’d purchased earlier. “This isn’t really cooking, Julia. I know it fits the definition for the average individual—or the above-average individual around here—but that is a misconception. This is no more than you could learn to do by reading the instructions off the back of a packet: true culinary art demands time and attention.”
I couldn’t decide if I was more or less afraid that he would be judging me for my inability to pour oil without spilling it on myself. “Whatever you say.”
Devin sighed. “I take it everything you experienced during our restaurant meal last night was completely lost on you.” He stepped over to the frying pan I had prepared with his cutting board of chicken, and put it down fast. “Julia, are you hoping to deep-fry something?”
“Too much oil?” I muttered.
“Yes, I would say half the bottle is too much…”
I slid the bottle out of sight on a shelf while Devin’s back was turned decanting oil out of the frying pan. It left a big smear on the shelf as it went along… but so long as Devin didn’t have a go at me, I would take care of that later. “Well, I don’t think I can be expected to know about cooking.”
“You should know the difference between real cooking and bullshit. You’ve been born into a family with means, there’s no excuse. It’s the sort of thing that sets heathens with money apart from people of culture, Julia.”
He moved the frying pan back to the bench, plugged it in, and started pushing around the pieces of chicken and capsicum in the pan with a metal kitchen implement, his back tranquil in posture and not a single splash of anything unclean on his black jacket.
“I suppose that’s why you won’t touch me unless you want to scare me into thinking my parents might see or punish me for throwing footwear at you. I’m too much of a heathen for you.”
“I already told you that kind of intimacy was not what I was looking for in this arrangement.” Devin turned to me, his face an obnoxious model of tranquillity too. “Some small portions of rice?”
I located the shopping bag with the package of rice and took a hesitant step towards the microwave.
“No.” At least that managed to cause a flash of pain on his face. “Have you never prepared rice before?”
“It usually comes in microwave packets…”
Devin was shaking his head while still stirring his chicken. I started walking for my phone in my bag. There had to be a cooking app or something I could track down.
“Two parts of water to one part rice, boil.” I turned around. “And not in the microwave!”
“You’d be more attracted to me if I didn’t need to have cooking rice explained to me, right?”
At least with my head buried in a cupboard on the hunt for a pot I could pretend he wasn’t still making disapproving faces at me. “You are fixated on the physical aspect of any relationship between a man and a woman. I thought it was supposed to be a man’s prerogative to be overly focused on sex as a goal?”
I got up so fast with my pot I banged my head on the inside of the cupboard on the way out, but in the state of mind I was in I couldn’t bring myself to be bothered about that. “It’s just bizarre to me, to be agreeing to marry someone and having things just be awkward sexually.”
I thought there was something stiff about his posture as he turned to me, but if I’d managed to make him uncomfortable he was able to recover faster than he was able to with his mother. “That’s quite normal in some circles.”
I would have deliberately laughed in his face at that, but it was pushed out of me beyond my control. “I hope you’re not trying to convince me that we’re going to have a traditional marriage.”
Devin took a step towards me that had me shrinking against the far side of the kitchen. Perhaps I had set him off talking about traditional marriage.
I flinched at his hand on my shoulder, but he was just moving me aside so he could open a cupboard. He pulled a glass lid off a
shelf and fitted it over the frying pan, fidgeted with the controls, and then returned his attention to me. I tried not to look like his scrutiny was making me too nervous to get the pot of rice going, then I reflected that nerves might be a better explanation than incompetence.
“Of course nothing about the partnership we will form is going to be traditional. If we were going to have a traditional marriage, I wouldn’t care about anything in the intimacy sense except whether you did as you were told and were able to become pregnant in a reasonable amount of time with healthy offspring.” Something about the way he moved his head before he continued speaking said he was dragging that line out because of my reaction. “And then to return to your original state of receptiveness quickly after completing the pregnancy.”
“I am not receptive to pregnancy at all,” I snapped. “Just in case there was any uncertainty.”
He had returned to my side. Thank goodness I seemed to have the rice in the prescribed quantity of water and cooking. “Good. You’re not in a stage of life where having a baby would be appropriate.”
I glared up at him, but when he was that close he was able to reflect it back on me, and it really felt like he was heating me up. It pissed me off, when it was just his lack of involvement causing it.
“Why do you have to be like this?” I demanded.
“Do you mean, agreeing with you?”
“You can play it like that if you want, but I mean standing there with that Madonna-and-child energy like you know a secret I don’t, cutting me down with every second word.”
“Madonna and child.” Devin folded his arms and leaned back; it felt like an acknowledgement that I’d landed a hit, but I didn’t have any idea how. I’d just been trying to give a voice to my frustrations. “So you know a little bit about art, then.”
“I think that’s kind of something I picked up through pop culture actually,” I said. I was hoping to screw with him while I seemed to have an advantage, and he did appear to deflate a little in response. “You’d be more eager to get a leg over if I was the kind of girl who actually knew about art and how to recognise real cooking, right?”
“We’ve already discussed this. I am not engaging with you because I have any desire to ‘get a leg over’. And I have no intention of scorning you because you lack cultural polish. I assure you that I will be able to provide for you sexually in every way you might require.”
“What kind of statement is that? Trust me, I’m a sexy beast, even though from the way I behave you would expect pretty much any Arctic land to be less frigid than I am?”
“Do you want me to provide references?”
“I’m just saying the way you’re acting towards me when it comes to this topic is making me feel incredibly uncomfortable, and suggestions like that are not helping at all.”
Devin took another step forward. I retreated a little out of some growing habit, but he’d never acted against me with more force than was necessary, so my fear receded quickly. Then as my back pressed against the vertical line of a shelf behind me, the adrenaline spike and my elevated heartbeat mingled to create something else.
The bastard, he gave me absolutely nothing, but I was responding to him all the same.
And then—a flicker. I didn’t know what it meant, but he seemed to be experiencing some response when he looked down on me. His expression twisted like he was rebooting for a moment there.
“It’s fucked-up that you’re even pushing for this,” he told me. “I decided to snatch you from your bed a few days ago. Anything could have happened to you.”
Of course he had to hit me right where I was most uncertain about how I was proceeding myself. “But you already know I’m fucked-up, a bit twisted, not like other girls.”
“Not like other girls.” Devin tipped his forehead forward, gently contacting mine. “I’ve heard that line before too, you know.”
“I know, and I’m sure you’ll agree it was pretty rude of them to go taking my—”
He put his mouth gently over the rest of my bluster. My knees failed to lock and I probably would have lost contact with him and fallen in a heap on the floor, but the shelves behind me gave me something to lean on, plus he was so close I took it as invitation to grab onto him, using his strength to keep me balanced.
I didn’t get a chance to work out how I felt about the kiss. It was over in a flash, leaving me clinging to firm fabric over firm arms with my heart racing.
Devin’s eyes moved over my face the way I’d seen the really invested kids at school study their textbooks. There weren’t a whole lot of words to be found in my head though.
“I can give you what you want,” he said. “But it’s not going to matter. It’s just a service to me, is that the sort of experience you really want?”
A service? It felt like a pretty powerful service to me, but I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t want him to change his mind.
Devin seemed to be able to reach right into the back of my mind and dig out things about me I didn’t want him to have, but I was starting to think maybe I could be able to do the same for him too. Maybe the reason I was so drawn to him against all logic was that we were so similar I couldn’t really find it in me to fear him.
Well, Devin could say all he liked about it not meaning anything, but I was certain all of that would come to bullshit in the end. So I fluttered my cute little eyelashes and murmured, “If that’s all you’re willing to give me, that’s what I want.”
“You are a truly troubling young woman,” said Devin, and kissed me again.
That time it lasted long enough to make its way to the thinking part of my brain: yes, there was nothing about this that felt like just a service.
Then my thoughts turned themselves off again, aside from inane blips the likes of yes, you very bad mafia man. Devin’s hands were wandering all over the place, down my back and my backside and then my skirt was creeping up through some mechanism I didn’t understand…
And then he’d pushed me back again so my head bumped against the shelves, although I only felt it as a vague discomfort in the background.
“What?”
“Your rice is burning,” Devin told me, “and we need to eat dinner.”
And all of those seemed like things that he would have known before he charged in on me like that, but there was no way Devin was going to admit he’d been hoping to get in and out in seconds, put me in my place and then move on with dinner… until he found himself liking the buildup too much.
Maybe if I was completely clueless about men, I wouldn’t have understood it. As it was, I thought I was starting to understand more than I ever had before. I would have called Devin out on it once, worked on him until he cracked, but I kept my mouth shut this time. I was confident I was going to win anyway, and this was the best way to do it.
I winced a little as I wondered if Devin and his mother were so doubtful of my ability to make even a good fake partner for him because there were so many ways in which I wasn’t being sensible in my dealings with them. Tells I hadn’t even learned to see yet. It was probably why my parents weren’t willing to let me in on the extent of their crazy world. That was kind of depressing though, because my parents were hardly in a position of tremendous competence. They seemed to be mostly existing by deluding themselves into utter overconfidence.
Devin had already moved away to set the table. And there I still was, my lips burning from the way his mouth had tasted, certainly not hungry for food. But Devin gestured me towards the table with a stare that said I was going to have to eat that slightly compromised stir-fry, or nothing.
The food was terrible, even for me with my disgusting lack of taste. I hardly noticed it. I kept staring at Devin, eating with roughly the same attitude he’d brought into that expensive restaurant, not even spilling the sauce on the black parts of his suit where it wouldn’t show. I kept trying to convince myself that what I was craving was the worst craving anyone had ever had, including anything that had been thought up by
a brain on pregnancy. But it was ridiculous to be so worried about whether I did or didn’t sleep with him when I was already making myself vulnerable to him, right? Or was this just how I was convincing myself to go along with wherever my lust took me?
I don’t think I ate much. I wasn’t really looking at my plate. Then when Devin abruptly slid his chair backwards and stood, I startled like a tiny animal that could run away if provoked further. I knew damn well I couldn’t run.
Devin came to my side and put his hand out for mine, drew me to my feet when I complied.
“You have sauce on you,” he said, and pointed it out on my shirt—his fingertip pressing slightly into my breast in a way that was, I’m sure, entirely necessary.
I looked down at his hand there. Well, apparently I’d managed to at least try to eat something.
I thrust my chest forward in his face, but even though he’d served me nothing stronger than water to drink and I was completely sober, I couldn’t help taking this in a ridiculous direction. “It’d be an awful shame if some of that ended up on that perfect ensemble of yours, now wouldn’t—”
Devin took a firm hold of my shoulders and pushed me back… then his fingers trailed down between my breasts, and he dug them into the fabric of my shirt and yanked. A few buttons scattered, and he pulled the shirt back down my arms but not completely off, so my wrists remained tangled up in it.
“You are far too smart for your own good.” He had me reeling back with a push. “You need to have your head taken off and screwed back on straight, so to speak.”
“And what’s that going to involve?” A couple pushes later, I could see he was herding me towards one of the couches. A stronger shove sent me sprawling back along it, and Devin stared down at me silently for a few seconds without saying anything. From that angle, I was starting to get the idea that he was going to have me blow him… and I was pretty sure I wanted that.