Seven Sins

by Piper Lennox

  “God, especially you. I can’t say one thing without you throwing rays of sunshine on it.”

  With another small smile, she scoots closer.

  “The way you see the world isn’t completely wrong, Van, and the way I see it isn’t automatically right. You can think I’m too positive, I can think you’re too negative, and both things are just as false as they are true. But so what?”

  Slowly, she looks out the window again. “Your mom didn’t see the color you saw. But she still saw the sky. That’s what she was sharing with you.”

  I try to make my eyes follow hers, but can’t. Forget the sky. I’d rather look at her.

  “Maybe that’s what you’re missing,” she says. “When someone tries to talk you down from being angry, or to convince you to look at the world their way...they’re not telling you a green sky is blue. They’re just pointing out how clear it is. In the end, it’s still beautiful.”

  I consider this, then shake my head. That might be true of her, but I know exactly how the rest of this world thinks. They won’t be happy until I give up and tell them, Sure, green is blue. Shit is fine. No, I’m not angry or bitter.

  And I definitely don’t default to those because I’m scared shitless of going numb again.

  “But,” she goes on suddenly, “I get what you’re saying. You stopped believing in the things people told you, because there’s no way to know if they’re true. Even if they believe what they’re telling you with all their heart.”

  “Exactly. Can’t calibrate human perception.”

  “So I’m guessing that’s why you don’t trust promises, anymore, and why you don’t make them yourself?”

  “How can I? We promise stuff based on what we see and feel, but we don’t know if it’s accurate. And we can’t predict the future.”

  “True…but promises are about intentions.”

  “Intentions don’t mean anything. Actions do.” I inhale and stretch out my legs on either side of her. “Anyway, do you know why I told you all that?”

  “I think I can guess.” She turns her earring back and forth. “Eye for an eye, right?”

  “Yep. But I don’t want just any confession from you. I’ve got a question you need to answer.”

  The color drains from her face, and I know exactly what she’s thinking—that the question will be about what the hell happened with my father. She says nothing did; he’s never mentioned it.

  And, lucky for her, I’m not enough of a masochist to ask.

  “Do you really not know your own birthday?”

  Gradually, she relaxes. It’s still not a question she wants to answer, but she’ll take it. Give a shark your limb, and you can escape.

  “I really don’t. Just the year.”

  “How the fuck did that happen?”

  “Growing up, I was told it didn’t matter. Actually, caring about it was considered a sin.”

  “Pride,” I whisper, and she twists her mouth up and nods.

  “So when do you celebrate it?”

  Her fingers brush back and forth on my leg hair. “The day I came to the ranch. When you found me.”

  Something in me aches. I don’t like it. “Why?”

  “I figured it made sense to pick the day my life felt like it really started.” She picks at her lip, then bites it again. “And that was when I met you.”

  “Not when you left me?”

  “No, Van.” She shifts, getting to her knees and leaning close, arms snaking around my shoulders. “Leaving you felt like....”

  “Dying?”

  “That is the word that came to mind,” she admits, pressing her smile to my ear while my hands find her waist, “but I didn’t want to be dramatic.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  The second her mouth is near mine, I join them. She slides her way onto my lap and moans when I get my erection pressed between her legs.

  Her answers give me about a thousand more questions to ask, but I bite my tongue. I only gave her one thing, so I know that’s all she’s going to give me for now.

  Trouble is, I’ve got a lot less than she does. My story is simple: the cumulative letdowns of life produced the mess she sees before her. And I’m going to run out of things to tell her long before she finishes telling me hers.

  But I’m really talented at pretending bridges don’t exist until I get to them. That day isn’t this one, so I refuse to think about it.

  “Van,” she sighs, tipping her head back as I lick my way from her mouth to her cleavage, “maybe we should move to the bed before you...before....”

  The record skips, courtesy of my hand between her thighs.

  “Moving to the bed wastes precious time,” I tell her, shoving her tank top straps off her shoulders. “I’m not waiting one more second.”

  I grab her shirt right between her breasts, ball the fabric up in my fist, and shove it down to her stomach.

  “Besides...the floor has no memory foam or springs. Nothing to absorb the motions.” I brace my hand on her back and turn us, laying her down while I flick open her bra. “Which means this car will move, more and more, the harder I fuck you.”

  I paint my way down her chest and pull her nipple into my mouth, sucking hard until her back arches from the floor.

  “Which means every last person who walks by...will know exactly what I’m doing to you.”

  Twenty-Two

  Van yanks my clothes down the length of my body. My shirt tangles up with my shorts and damp underwear, one big ring of fabric he’s clearly thrilled to toss aside.

  He lets me peel his shirt off, but stops me when I reach for his zipper.

  “Not yet. I want to taste you before I ruin how sweet you are.”

  “Is that your way of warning me you taste bad?” I laugh, but it’s choked around the vagueness of his sentence. Ruin.

  Van’s breath is the hottest, wettest thing I’ve ever felt between my legs. My hips jerk towards his face from the thrill of it alone, before he’s even made contact.

  He laughs and lays his arm across my lower abdomen like a safety bar, pinning me.

  “Slow down. I’m admiring. Haven’t you ever heard that the eyes taste the meal first?”

  “Van,” I plead, and have to cover my face with my hands, I’m so ashamed of my begging.

  His need reveals itself in heavy breaths and the bulge in his shorts, but mine radiates across my entire body like a fever. It rattles my voice.

  It makes my sex drip so much, I can feel it all over my butt and thighs, and I know that’s what he’s “admiring.” Reveling in what he’s done to me, when he’s barely done a thing.

  “You’re already soaked.” His fingertips run up and down my opening. “I could make you come in two seconds, if I wanted.”

  Please, please, say you want to.

  I know better, though. Van never ends his moments near the sun a second sooner than he has to.

  He pushes his tongue inside me, humming another laugh when I writhe underneath the weight of his arm. I’m already close, but he manages to keep my orgasm just beyond reach as he licks up and down, in and out, drinking up every drop of my body’s anticipation.

  “Sweet. Just like I thought.” His face appears above mine. Instead of his arm across my stomach, I now have his entire body to pin me down.

  His breath paints the scent of my own desire across my face. When he kisses me, his tongue fills my mouth with the same confident force it filled my sex.

  I whimper; he smiles.

  “Care to try me?”

  I can’t nod fast enough.

  Van gets up and leans against the bed on his elbows, nodding down at the floor in front of him. I crawl closer.

  “Fuck, I could watch you do that a thousand times.” He undoes his pants, but waits for me to pull them off.

  My nerves catch up to me, seeing his full length right in front of my face and knowing there’s only so long I can “taste with my eyes.” Sure, Van is absolutely loving that I look mildly terrified righ
t now, but he thinks it’s solely because of his size.

  Mostly, it’s because I’ve got no idea what I’m doing.

  I’ve seen enough porn since leaving the ranch to know the basics, I think. No teeth, save for a light graze from time to time. Bob your head. Use your hand around the base, if you need to—and I will definitely need to.

  Strangely, though, for all the fear knotting up my stomach...I’ve never wanted to do anything more in my life.

  “Shit, Juni,” Van sighs to the ceiling, as soon as I take his erection into my mouth. I slide it into my throat carefully, afraid I’ll gag.

  I do. Twice.

  “Admire the enthusiasm,” he laughs, breathless, “but you don’t have to take it that deep. It’s fine.”

  The problem is...I want to.

  It’s an issue I’ve faced as long as I’ve known him. I want all of Van Durham-Andresco. Every last inch. Every fractured bone, and every cynical breath.

  I just don’t know if I can handle all of him.

  I don’t even know if I can handle most.

  When I try again, relaxing my throat as his length slides deeper, his nails dig into the edge of the mattress. I watch his abdominal muscles clench and his chest heave.

  “Okay,” he pants, smoothing my hair. He gathers it at my nape to gently pull me away. “I need to fuck you.”

  Need. It makes me inexplicably happy that he chose this word.

  We reposition ourselves on the floor. He kisses me, blending our tastes until we’re both groaning and pressing ourselves to the other’s thigh.

  “Please tell me you’re on the Pill. The shot. A fucking diaphragm, even. Anything that will let me come inside you.” His teeth sink into my lip and draw back. It buzzes, swollen and stinging with pleasure, when he lets it go. “I want to fuck you without a single thing between us.”

  My pulse fills my ears when I shake my head. “I don’t have anything.”

  “Fuck,” he groans, stretching the word out all the way to his duffel bag.

  He returns with a handful of condoms, scattering them nearby like rose petals.

  “Took these from Theo’s,” he says, nodding at them. “Ladies’ choice.”

  I paw through them. Ribbed, ultra-thin...tingling?

  “Um...this one, I guess.” My stomach twists as I pass him one. It feels like I’m waiting on the grade to a test as he tears it open.

  “Here.” Suddenly, he’s nudging me onto my stomach and wedging a pillow under my hips. “Grind on that while I fuck you from behind.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, one: this is my favorite position.” His chuckle forces one from me, but my lungs cramp at the realization that I’m nowhere near Van’s first. These condoms probably weren’t even pilfered with me in mind.

  “Two,” he says, spreading my legs roughly and pressing his tip to my opening, “I actually do like the idea of getting the Transit rocking like an earthquake, and this is the best way to do it.” His kiss on my back, directly on my spine, makes me relax. “Don’t worry, we can switch to your favorite next.”

  My favorite. I try to think of one. Absolutely anything.

  But the time to think is over, because Van has pushed into me. One long, fast stroke, all the way inside.

  I’m grateful for his position choice; he can’t see me wince. I push up on my elbows so I can press my face to the carpet.

  Through the pain, there is pleasure. Gallons of it. I’ve never felt anything like this—an aching, bone-deep thrill that doesn’t just mask the sting, but seems to feed off it.

  “God, you feel so good.” His hips rock into me. I feel my butt and thighs shake with his movements, but being self-conscious over it never crosses my mind. I like it.

  I like the friction of the carpet on my nipples, while my breasts swing back and forth in time to his thrusts. I like the staccato nature of my cries when the rolling pleasure spikes, my voice at the mercy of Van’s hips.

  I like that my body is swept up in the earthquake he’s creating, all around us.

  “Everyone out there knows you’re getting fucked. And when the car stops moving, they’ll all know you and I just came.” His fingertips brush the hair away from my ear; his teeth drag across every inch he uncovers. “You like that? Thinking about everyone out there knowing?”

  “No,” I blurt, meeting his thrusts, “I just like that I’m with you.”

  Van’s hips slow, then stop. The laugh he gives is almost confused.

  “For real?”

  I lay my head on the carpet and glance at him. “For real.”

  His eyes cloud for a moment. I’ve given him information his brain doesn’t know how to process.

  To him, cohabiting with other humans might be impossible. But this human can’t get enough of him.

  “All right, then,” he says, after a beat, “let’s switch to your favorite for the second half.”

  When he withdraws, the sting catches up to me. I flinch.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  I shut my eyes.

  Tell him.

  “It just stings a little.” I swallow the dryness in my throat and press my face to the carpet again. “And…I don’t have a favorite position. I’ve never tried any.”

  For a long time, we’re silent. Five seconds stretch into ten, then thirty, and I hear his breathing slow.

  “Get in the bed, Juni.”

  Steel coats his voice. But when I push back up and look at him, his whole expression has changed. The confidence is gone.

  In its place is something like shame.

  My limbs shake. Van rises and draws me up with him, body pressed to mine as he kisses me like he did outside.

  “Why didn’t you tell me I was your first?” he asks, looking so furious with himself it’s amazing how gently he places me onto the bed.

  As he climbs in beside me, I brush the warm sweat from his forehead. “Would you have believed me?”

  “Yes,” he says fiercely.

  “Why?” My heart thunders. “Why that, when you’ve believed so little else I’ve told you? What changed?”

  Really, I’m asking myself that question.

  Van glides his hand through my hair and down to my chin. “I don’t know. Time together? All our eye-for-an-eye talks? Maybe it’s being out here in nature.” He smirks. “You did say nature can heal just about anything. Why not this?”

  I smile. This.

  “We don’t have to know all the answers right now,” he says.

  My eyes close again. I try to commit this to memory, until I feel it in every cell. Does it matter why or when things change, as long as they do?

  Blue, green…it’s still a beautiful sky.

  “Now,” he breathes, trailing his tongue along my jaw, “let’s get rid of your virginity the right way.”

  He flicks his tongue over my nipples while his hand rubs back and forth between my legs. His thumb draws hard, fast circles against my clitoris when he brings his head back up to kiss me.

  “Van, I...I’m....”

  “Good,” he says against my mouth. “Let it happen. I want to make you come so many times you’re addicted to me.”

  Impossible. I already am.

  My tongue tangles with his again. Blinding colors wash my brain to nothing, and I stiffen in his arms when the orgasm burns through me.

  “Your first time should be one big blur of this,” he whispers. “Not what I just did to you on the floor. I mean, that’s fun as hell—and make no mistake, I will fuck you senseless on every last square inch of this car, very soon.”

  His smile stamps itself into my forehead when I curl up against him, shivering in the afterglow. “But not today.”

  I’ve never been a girl’s first.

  You’d think there wouldn’t be any pressure, right? I could be fucking awful at it (that’s a laugh), and she’d have no way to know. But the second I found out I was hers…I had to get us off that floor.

  I’m going to do this right.

  �
��Van,” she stammers, as I sink inside her and reach between us to flick her clit with my thumb again, “I think....”

  “Say it, baby.” I lick the skin behind her ear. “Tell me you’re close again.”

  “I’m c-close again,” she manages, before her pussy spasms through another orgasm, even longer than the first.

  I give her a few gentle thrusts until she recovers, then start the process over.

  “Oh, God,” she cries, winding one hand into her hair and the other into mine, when I finally let my hips do what they want. Holding back any longer just isn’t possible. “Oh, God, Van, fuck.”

  Another first: hearing her take the Lord’s name in vain. She’s told me she’s not sure if she still believes in a god or not, but that—coupled with no cursing—made me wonder.

  They say there are no atheists in foxholes. I say there are no clean mouths in bedrooms.

  “I’m coming.” Tears roll from her tightly shut eyes and down her temples.

  “Me, too.” I kiss her and groan, finally letting myself careen over that edge as I drive all the way inside her.

  Both our bodies twitch and shiver, sweat-slick skin sliding at every point of contact.

  My brain shuts down, so damn happy to finally get its rush of chemicals it forgets I’ve got at least sixty pounds more weight than she does. I collapse on top of her.

  “Off,” she coughs, giggling while I flop to the side.

  I stretch out next to her in the hazy light through the windows. “Was I a good first?”

  Her eyes flicker up and down my body. I watch her trace my paper airplane tattoo with one nail, like a razorblade scoring cardboard.

  If I could, I’d punch the plane out like a paper doll and give it to her to keep. Anything to even the score for what she just gave me.

  “The best,” she whispers.

  Twenty-Three

  “It’s not about being perfect. It’s about doing what feels perfect for you.” My hand presses into Van’s back again, straightening his spine while he grumbles another curse. “You’re overthinking these poses. Isn’t that what you tell me not to do on the skateboard?”

  “Yoga is nothing like skating.” He watches me go back to my mat. “Let’s do downward dog again. I liked that one.”