by Alice Archer
Penelope’s large family foisted on her the unwelcome expectation that, as the oldest girl, she would care for her three younger siblings. She pushed against that expectation when she ran away to Oliver’s for drawing lessons and to play with us.
Jill had her brother’s friends and their inappropriate comments to deal with. I made a mental note to ask her if she’d brought up the issue with her parents yet.
I didn’t know much about Abelino—only that he’d been born in Mexico, where he’d lived until he was seven, and he and his mom didn’t have much money, due to her illness. In the courtyard, when I’d inspected the kids, I’d glimpsed Abelino’s lunch in a battered plastic baggie—a banana way past its expiration date, one white bread sandwich with a thin slice of baloney, and a bag of airplane peanuts worn enough to have been foraged for in an infrequently used suitcase. I’d brought plenty of food to share for lunch. I’d make sure Abelino knew he could have as much as he wanted.
And then there was Kai.
I made a few desultory snips at ground-level vines as I waited for Clover to scoot forward. Kai spoke and smiled more each week, but he hadn’t given me any clues about what worried him. I was back to waffling on my decision to push, not wanting to make him retreat again.
“Brutus, you about done?” I asked Clover. “I’m pooped.” I wasn’t, but I sensed Clover was on a mission to prove something and might need help realizing she already had. “Feels to me like you’ve led us into the heart of the beast.”
“Here?”
“Here looks great to me.”
Clover dropped her shears, declared us home, and pointed out where we could widen the tunnel to make a cavern.
Kai and Abelino worked as a team with the loppers to sever stalks at ground level. The rest of us clipped away at the edges, pushed the cut stems into the curved walls with our gloved hands until we’d claimed enough space for all of us to sit. The top of Clover’s head brushed the ceiling when she stood.
Abelino put a gentle hand on Clover’s shoulder to get her to move aside, then held the loppers over his head to clip a circular hole as wide as his shoulders into the ceiling. When he’d clipped as high as he could, he ducked down to hand the loppers to me to finish our skylight.
I stood on my tiptoes, shored up by the kids leaning against my legs to steady me, and cut through to bright blue sky crisscrossed by the few branches beyond my reach.
The resulting patch of sunlight lit the floor of the cave like a spotlight.
I assumed the kids would horse around, take turns posing in the spotlight, gorge on all the ripe blackberries within reach, or rip into their packed lunches, but they stayed quiet.
We sat in a scatter on bare ground decorated with sun confetti, amid a refined aroma of dust, smashed blackberries, and sweaty kids.
Wonder filled their faces as they looked around.
Our labor had come to an end in reverence, as if we’d created a church. I almost asked the kids what they were thinking about, but stopped myself. The unusual space, the timeless moment, the rough circle of stark brightness in our midst, the birds, the rustle of leaves, the heat, the dirt, and our breaths became my favorite prayer, my best moment. I closed my eyes against an intensity of gratitude.
“I think…” When Kai began to speak, the other kids looked away from him, gave him a respite from observation. Their consideration made my heart contract with joy. His soft voice merged with the dappled, contented silence. “I think I’m gay.” Kai kept his eyes locked on mine as his face turned red, and he started to tremble.
I smiled and waited, but he held his breath and didn’t seem inclined to say more.
“You’re perfect,” I said.
His face squinched up and he nodded. The tears that fell from his eyes rinsed layers of dust from his cheeks.
“And you look like a warrior,” I told him with a gesture at my own cheeks.
The other kids looked at Kai then.
“Oh.” Penelope’s eyes widened. “You really do.”
I dug into my pack to find the stainless steel camping plate I’d brought to serve the snacks on, gave it a polish with a handful dirt and the elbow of my shirt, then passed it to Kai.
That grin. Lord, I’d missed it.
Kai handed Abelino the plate and crawled through the spotlight to me. I wrapped as much of him as I could into a hug. “My brave warrior nephew,” I whispered in his ear, “holding such a big secret inside until you felt safe enough to let it out. I am so proud of you.”
Kai sniffled and snuggled against me for a while. When he pulled back to look at me, his face looked truly relaxed.
Lunch, after Kai’s declaration, became a raucous affair after all, involving extensive food trades, surprise treats from my pack, and fingers dipped in smashed berries to draw purple warrior marks on dusty faces.
Penelope and Jill asked Clover, whose face was the dirtiest, if they could design her marks. What they did with blackberry juice and judicious fingerdots of water made Clover look fierce. I managed a couple of good photos before Clover saw her reflection in the plate and transformed their careful work by crying all over it.
Through it all, I took photographs to sustain me when I got back to Seattle and missed the sappy, wholesome camaraderie. I laughed and teased, and felt enough to burst.
When we’d eaten all the food, Kai suggested Clover take the lead on the way out. I emerged last from the tunnel into full light, birthed anew with my brothers and sisters.
I hugged the kids goodbye at the brambles and set out to find Oliver. I wanted to ask him why he hadn’t joined us, and tell him about the adventure while it remained fresh.
He wasn’t at the stump chair, where he seemed to gravitate to in times of stress. His car and bike were parked under the carport. He didn’t answer the door at the house.
I cleaned and put away the cutting tools in the workshop, dumped my daypack on the picnic table in the courtyard, and considered Oliver’s options. He might have gone for a walk, in which case I was unlikely to find him.
One final possibility, before I gave up, was the small building I’d noticed out beyond the hedges the day I’d trimmed them. I approached from the driveway, walked around to the back, and cupped my hands at a window. It was an empty garage. Empty as in sterile. Bare concrete floor, bare workbench along one wall, shelves bare except for a few old gas cans.
At the front of the garage, I convinced myself the grass between the ruts of the drive looked freshly trampled and followed it on down the hill, away from the house. A few minutes later, the drive ended in brush, but a footpath veered off to the right, toward a blot of dense green, which turned out to be an immense stand of holly trees. To get a sense of its size, I began to walk around it.
The gate came as a surprise. I tried the latch. It was locked, or maybe stuck. The solid construction of the gate seemed excessive. It was too tall to see over, even when I curled my hands over the top—which I could barely reach—and jumped to try to get a view of what lay beyond.
Too curious to give up, I held tight and threw a foot up next to my hands, managed to haul myself all the way up and over. I landed on the ground on the other side in a crouch, hands in the grass for balance.
Why in the everloving hell did Oliver stash a Cadillac behind a wall of holly?
I lifted my eyes. Holy panorama, Batman. Sky, distant sea, the southern Kitsap Peninsula —all right there.
Subtle movement in the car caught my eye. A bare foot propped against a side window.
Oliver.
I smiled and walked toward the car.
Chapter 48
Oliver
When I heard the footsteps, I took my hand out of my pants. A shadow darkened the divan where I sprawled, lost in the fantasy I’d spun.
A door opened. A hand caught my propped feet. A man smelling of sweat and sun-heated earth slid onto t
he divan under my legs. The door closed.
I opened my eyes and saw my old enemy, the emperor’s son.
“Did I give you that dueling scar?” I asked. I shook my head. That couldn’t be right. I lifted my hand toward his neck. “But… it’s new. We haven’t seen each other in…” It felt like forever since I’d last seen him.
“Since you walked away?” The voice of the emperor’s son, low and familiar, made me blink. The emperor’s son who’d become the emperor.
He shook my leg. “Hey, you look like you’ve been napping. Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, because I didn’t. I felt unfinished and wanting.
“You would have loved it, Oliver. The kids were incredible. And Kai finally opened up.”
The stone fortress began to fade.
When I didn’t answer, lost in the in-between, he went on. “I was worried about you.” He brushed the backs of his fingers across my forehead and cheek. “You’re flushed.”
A slight turn of my head into his cool hand took me closer to his scent. I licked his palm to taste, saw the scrapes and grime on his fingers. “You rescued those kids too, didn’t you? Wrecked your hands on the stone.”
“What?” His full palm covered my forehead. “I think you’re delirious. Let’s get you to the house and find a thermometer.”
“I don’t want to leave.”
“The car?”
No, the fortress, I almost said aloud. But why wouldn’t I want to leave my prison?
It’s not a prison if he’s here with me.
He set his heavy arm across my thighs. No, I really don’t want to leave.
“You’re out of it, man,” he said. “Take a moment to get a grip and then we’ll go.”
I nodded, but the nod was a lie.
“This is a stunning car,” he said. “I want to hear all about it, but later. You need to be home and in bed.”
“Three hours won’t be enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“For all I want you to do to me before they come for us.” I put every moment of my long years of imprisonment into my gaze. I wanted the emperor to feel how much I’d ached for him, and for how long. My hand twitched toward him.
It worked.
The concern in his dark eyes flashed into heat. He stared, then rushed me, shoved my legs apart to lunge between them, to reach my mouth. The thumb of his hand on my face entered my open mouth as his tongue filled me. I scrambled to swallow him, to pull all of him into me, tasting earth and need.
His big hands pinned my head to the wall behind me.
From my neck down, my body twisted and squirmed. It was beautiful. A flawless pause in the endless stream of time. If the price of that kiss had been an eon of imprisonment, it was worth every…
I fell off the seat.
“Oh crap,” he said. “Damn it. Oliver, I’m sorry.”
I looked up. Not the emperor.
Only Grant, a jobless, aimless squatter. Intruder. Threat to my secrets.
I wished he were Freddie. That would have been simple. But Freddie thought I’d sold the DeVille. Even if he knew I still had it, he’d never breach the gate. Freddie would respect the obvious.
I rubbed at my head to clear it, pushed away the hand Grant offered to pull me off the floor, and pointed at the door. “Out. Get out.”
The shock and hurt on Grant’s face didn’t matter. It was his own doing, his own fault.
“I can’t believe you did this,” I said.
“But… you kissed me. You—”
“It is inexcusable of you to invade this space, my private space.”
Lips pressed tight, Grant studied me for a long moment then untangled his hands from my legs, slid off the seat and out the door. I didn’t hear him walk away, because my ears weren’t working right, but I heard the locked gate rattle as he went over.
I stayed on the floor. The deeper shadows suited my state of ruin.
I’d thought I was alone and private and safe.
As I fumed, summer’s long spin toward evening placed a careful hand on the dimmer switch. In spite of my cramped discomfort on the floor, I dozed through the shifting light into a dream more disturbing than my fantasy.
We drive at night. The vibration of tires on narrow roads jars my skull against the door. He drives while I hide under a blanket on the floor in the back. The hard work of hiding requires my full attention.
His official mission is to deliver me to safety, but we’ve been on the road for as long as I can remember. I suspect his personal mission is to keep me captive.
I wake to the hush of early daylight, to his steady breath as he sleeps in the front seat.
I watch his face and wait.
I’m not restrained. Long ago I had the idea to surge up and overpower him as he slept. Climb into the front, open the driver’s door, push him out, drive away without him.
I didn’t move a muscle to do anything. I swear. I only had the thought, a flash of inspiration, and opened my eyes. He was awake, watching me, running hands through his dark hair. He always knows what I’m thinking.
Every day, after he sleeps, he takes his payment for keeping me lost.
When he awakens, I begin to shake. Don’t want it. Want it. Hurry. Wait.
We rarely speak. He reaches back with his long arm to find my face with his hand, maybe to reassure himself I’m still breathing. Fingers slide into my hair. I sigh before I catch myself and tense. My body wants. I only want out.
He tells me he does what I want him to do. He says he’s my servant and I’m his sovereign, but how can I believe him? Why would I choose a life on the run, a kingdom as small as the back floor of a car?
I ask him what I’m hiding from.
“You’re the only one who knows,” he says.
I ask him where we go every day in the car.
“Only where you need to go,” he says.
I ask him when we’ll get there.
“As soon as you’re ready,” he says.
I accidently stretch up into his touch.
He climbs over the seat and pulls me off the floor, his first kiss a confident crush. The thumb of his hand on my face enters my open mouth as his tongue fills me and I scramble to swallow him, to pull all of him into me, to taste his certainty. He drives me as capably as he drives the car.
My ears fill with the hiss of the clock’s lit fuse. All the other hours of the day are novocaine, timed to wear off when he touches me, when I remember to feel.
I half-stand to shove off my pants, but he pulls me onto his lap before I’m done, arranges his hand beneath me, fingers closed in a fist for me to sit on and rub. Big knuckles against the skin between my balls and hole. He presses up hard enough to turn the motion of my rubs into the engine that rocks the car.
I beg him to hurry.
He never hurries.
I hurry enough for us both, lift off his lap, struggle out of my clothes, kick away the tangle, peel off his shirt, press the side of my face to his warm chest as I unfasten his pants and pull them down. All the while, he runs his slow hands down my back and lower, down and between. His fingers set me on fire, tickle or push, slide into me, wrap my cock, until I look up at him and he smiles.
None of his weapons slay me like his smile. With his fingers in my ass and his smile an inch from mine, I’m lost to his movements and the gentle regard in his dark eyes.
With a sideways shift, he engineers the scene to lay me out beneath him. I watch him slick himself to get ready, can’t look away as he prepares to invades me. His sure hands hold me in place until I remember to open, to let him in. I yield.
I always yield. “Don’t wait,” I beg. “Please don’t make me wait.”
He stops mid-thrust to smile-kiss-swallow my mouth, teases the top of my cock and waits for me to mo
an. Not until I freeze does he give me his cock again, in one controlled pump that restarts me with a gasp.
I’m his ruler.
He only does what I ask.
I can’t figure out how to breathe for myself, so he breathes for me, day after day.
All I want is the detonation at the end, shooting me into black space. I squirm and twist when he slides his cock out, hold still when he pushes in, flush hot under his steady gaze. He watches my face, stops when I get close to coming. I can’t hide it when I get close. I never can. Only when I give up and sag does he start again. A slow push of his cock all the way into me, a slower pull out.
“I hate you.” I try to fold my arms over my chest to put distance between us. It’s awkward.
“I know,” he says with another smile.
“I command you to give me what I want.”
“I am.” He smiles. “Your highness.”
“Fuck. You.”
“Mmm.”
When frustration threatens to make me kick him off, I remember I know his body too. I hold the side of his head against my mouth, thrust my tongue into his ear, scrape my teeth along the furled curve. With my other hand, I jerk myself fast.
“Guh,” he says, and lifts his body to quicken his thrusts, to finally give me room to hump up against him and pull harder on my cock. When I get the angle just right for him, he starts to sweat. I pull myself closer to whisper into his wet ear, “I’ll never let you go.”
He comes first. I feel the hot rush deep inside me.
With both hands down my open pants, I floundered on the floor of the DeVille, locked behind a tall gate in a barbed wall in a car aimed over a cliff. My climax crushed my lungs, until I remembered I knew how to breathe on my own.
Chapter 49
Oliver
I’d never come in the DeVille. The risk of jizz on the leather seats was too high.
Except that time I did.
I unfolded myself from the floor, cleaned up, locked up, and jogged to the house. En route, I called Freddie to tell him I needed him.