by Mara White
He also wanted her to feel the same way about him. It was frightening to admit that he desperately wanted her approval, needed her. He’d never not had the upper hand and the vulnerability terrified him. He couldn’t support her—fuck, he certainly couldn’t support their children or even pay Salana’s rent if he wanted to. He couldn’t seem to bring himself to tell her how he felt, so instead he concentrated on making her laugh, trying to turn her on and impress her in any way he could.
“Eric ever eat your pussy?”
She was out of couch pillows. She picked up a magazine and chucked it at him, but he caught it midair. He laughed.
“Oh my God, that piece of shit didn’t go down on you, did he?” Tiago was grinning, enjoying her torment. Salana was blushing, ashamed to admit what a poor lover she’d settled for. And all because of her parents’ expectations, a doctor, Ivy League education, upstanding family with a good zip code and all of the stupid crap that mattered so much to them.
“You were going to marry that guy? Salt, I’ll eat your pussy until you can’t take it no more. I’ll lick you until you beg me to stop.” His dick was getting hard and Salana’s blush had spread to her neck and chest.
“I wasn’t really going to marry him.”
“Well shit, he gave you the ring and then took it away again?”
“He showed it to me, but he wanted to propose on Thanksgiving in front of my parents.”
“That’s the fucking lamest shit I ever heard, no lie. Here’s your ring, but I’m gonna whip it out again in front of everybody and you pretend to act surprised. When I propose to you, girl, it will be between you and me.”
SALANA
Salana stood up from the jolt of electricity that crashed down her spine when he said crazy shit like that.
“I still have the ring, it’s in my top drawer. Want to see it?” It was unfair to Eric, but she was feeling vindictive; maybe if he hadn’t been such a jerk she wouldn’t have ended up shot in the arm.
Santiago whistled low when she pulled out the three-carat diamond set in platinum.
“Big money—the pussy phobe,” Tiago said as he turned it in his fingers. “What you gonna do with this shit?”
“I’m not giving it back, that’s for sure.”
“So cold, Salt. Want to pawn it? I know a place,” Santiago said, sizing her up.
“I don’t really need the money,” she told him, her brow slightly wrinkled.
“Not to fucking make money, to get back at him and his fake-ass Thanksgiving proposal, where he’d stuff his face with turkey and pie but not your beautiful cunt.”
“No C-word!” Salana shouted, covering her ears. Tiago was crazy, so irresponsible and immature, so contrary to expected behavior, that she found herself getting high off of it. “Okay, let’s pawn the ring. Then I won’t have to look at it anymore.”
Tiago smiled devilishly at her and she grinned back. It felt like the two of them were always up to mischief whenever they were together.
“Get ready to hustle,” he said. “Put on your game face. Look hard, no smiling! Pull the hood of your sweatshirt up so you stop looking like such an innocent baby.” Salana punched him in the arm, pulled up her hood, and did her best mean mug.
She locked the door behind them and they bounded down the steps toward the train. She was getting used to taking the subway with Tiago by her side, although she was still wary about running into coworkers. With his chains, tattoos, braids and sagging pants, Tiago would probably look to them like he’d just gotten out of prison—which wasn’t too far from the truth.
It seemed like Tiago got shit from his friends too for hanging out with her. But it was different, more sexual in nature. His friends jeered and made suggestive jokes, whereas her coworkers would probably think they needed to call 911. The thought made her curl instinctively into his shoulder; she wrapped her arms around his neck and placed her lips right over the tattooed gun on his neck, kissed him softly there. He slid his hand down her thigh and rested it there possessively, the tips of his fingers gripping onto her flesh.
“Let ‘em look till their eyes hurt,” he whispered. Then Tiago took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and kissed her on the train. People averted their eyes.
The pawn shop was hopping. Fancy cars lined the street, and people were standing outside drinking in circles, some of them singing along to the music that blasted out of the car stereos. The bass was so loud that it made Salana’s lungs vibrate. She held Tiago’s hand tightly and felt like she was walking into a lion’s den. There were no other white people and certainly no other women. The display medallions and watches were the most ostentatious pieces she’d ever seen. From diamond-encrusted golden machine guns on one thickly-roped chain to a watch that looked like it weighed ten pounds from the embellishment. Who would wear a diamond-laden belt buckle that said “Baby girl” on it? A far cry from the ubiquitous Cartier bracelet or Tiffany’s charm her parents gifted her with on special occasions over the years. The music was deafening, the air clouded with cigar and hookah smoke.
“I thought indoor smoking was illegal in New York?”
Tiago just looked at her and gave a subtle eye roll.
“Everybody’s got a price, Salt. What’s yours? Remember, look hard. Can you act hood? Nope. Nevermind.”
“I’m guessing he paid around two hundred grand for the thing, or three hundred, maybe more?”
Tiago’s arm slid around her waist and she pressed herself closer to his hard-muscled body.
“So how much do you want to ask for?”
God, people were swearing and shouting, it sounded like a fight was about to break out, but Tiago assured her that they were just bartering.
“Aren’t you the one who knows how to do this? I don’t care what we get for it, let’s not hang out in here.” Salana didn’t like how the men were looking at her. It was obviously a man-cave and not a welcoming spot for women or outsiders. The pawnshop workers were all behind Plexiglas. Knowing their luck, the place would get held up and they’d make the newspapers again. From deli freezer to pawn shop. Tiago shook hands elaborately with some of the patrons. Salana knew enough Spanish to understand what “mi mujer” meant. She was extremely conscious of how his fingers drifted from the upper curve in her waist downward just below the waistband of her pants.
The place was lit up brightly to make the platinum and gold shine and the facets on the diamonds sparkle like water in sunlight. Tiago gave her signals and she swallowed them up like a dependent baby bird. The unknown thrilled her; they were completely mismatched and it felt better than perfect, like a problem she had to solve, a barrier she had to break. She turned into his body, allowing his arms to come around her. She sought his mouth to reassure her that everything was okay.
When Salana kissed Santiago it was different from kissing Eric or any of her exes. Their kiss was an experiment, a test in the limits of acceptable behavior. Tiago tongued her deeply and his hand squeezed her ass casually; he wasn’t used to having to work for women. His confidence charged the air around him, and his lazy swagger made her wet and desperate. She thrust her tongue into his mouth in return and could feel him harden against her. Just being in the pawn shop was an act of defiance; ditching the ring, a symbolic rejection of everything she’d been brought up to be. When people stared hard, Tiago kissed her harder.
From the way his hands roved over her body, Salana thought that Santiago would take her in public if she let him. The idea made her crazy in a way she’d never felt before. Desire was frenetic, like her body had been shaken up too hard. Pop the top and she’d explode, effervescence exploding everywhere. Maybe it was happiness? Or maybe hormones flooding her brain and impairing her judgment.
“You want to ditch the diamond or you want to go home and fuck?” He whispered it, nipped at her ear, and Salana thought she’d come in that garish and crowded, tacky and seizure-inducing sparkling room. She couldn’t even see straight—desire held her captive. She had to pull a deep sobering br
eath into her body to function. Tiago was enchanting her to the point where she’d lose herself completely if she didn’t focus and concentrate.
“¿Dime aver?” the man behind the glass counter said as they approached hand in hand.
“¿Qué lo que, manin?”
“Dímelo tigre.”
To Salana, the men were talking in circles. Tiago took out the ring and tipped it back and forth, pinched between his pointer finger and thumb. It picked up the bright light in the room and looked even larger than it was. Salana blushed as the man raised his brows looking from Tiago to Salana, then back to Tiago again, trying to figure them out. Salana felt too blonde, too conservative, maybe too skinny and square. Her life of refined behavior seemed like a social hindrance in company like this. She frowned to look serious, having no idea how she should act.
“What, like three carats?” the man asked her, lifting his chin. He took in her blue eyes, her breasts, while Salana focused on the gold chains around his neck, the diamond studs in his ears.
“I think so,” she whispered, feeling like she’d choke on her own voice. Somehow getting rid of Eric’s ring felt like a commitment to Santiago—the reversal of her engagement was in his hands.
“We’re not trying to make money. Just play us straight and we’ll bounce.”
“Twenty-five thousand cash is the best I can do,” the man said, revealing two gold-rimmed front teeth. He eyed them shrewdly, chewing on his bottom lip, making the soul patch there move up and down. Salana wondered if he were Middle Eastern or Hispanic; it seemed impossible to tell. Culture just became New York regardless of where your parents were from or what language they spoke.
“Thirty.” Tiago lit a cigarette, cupped his hands around the flame from his lighter. Salana felt tense, a clear sexual current still zig-zagging through her body. Smoking indoors was illegal in New York, but this apparently wasn’t a place where people cared.
When Tiago looked at her, Salana said, “Okay?” Her mouth fell open, she wasn’t sure how to play this game.
“We’ll take it,” Tiago said. He exhaled smoke up to the ceiling and tossed the ring into the indentation, where money could be passed under the Plexiglas. He pulled Salana to his side and her hip bones bumped into his. She could still feel his semi-hard erection and he bit her bottom lip, growled into her ear, his stubble scratching her face. He ground his chin into the top of her head, pulled her toward him so that her belly was in line with his pelvis. Everyone was watching them, but Tiago was oblivious to everything but Salana, her body, and the force that kept pulling them together. He slid his palm over her ass and squeezed for everyone to see. He knew they were watching and Salana could see the flash of deviousness cross his rugged face.
Behind the counter they used a machine to count the cash. The bills flew by in a blur of green and grey. The pawn shop employee turned the machine to show Tiago and Salana the red digital readout of four zeros after the three. He shuffled the bills into a brown paper bag, which Tiago took quickly and shoved down the front of his pants as if he did this kind of shit every day.
“Come on,” he said, guiding her by the hip. Salana was hyper-aroused, both sexually and with an uncomfortable amount of vigilance. Weren’t they asking to get robbed, carrying this much cash?
“Are we taking the train?” she questioned, eyeing the bulge in his pants. He strode with so much determination and confidence that Salana had to practically run to keep up with him. He flew down the steps at the entrance to the one train, as if traveling with thousands of dollars in his pants up against his dick were the norm. Salana was jittery, sweaty and turned on. She clung onto Santiago and she didn’t care who saw her. It was the same train her coworkers took on their way to the hospital. They made out on the crowded number one train like teenagers unleashed. He licked up and down the cords in her neck while she giggled, one hand gripping the cold pole, the other his hard bicep. Her nipples were erect, her mouth swollen, her panties soaked with arousal.
“I want you,” she whispered into his neck. He pressed his pelvis back into hers, pinning her against the train car door. He was fully hard and she remembered with clarity the way he could move his hips, move himself inside her like nothing she’d ever felt before. It was hard to breathe, hard to swallow, hard to do anything other than cling to Santiago.
He took her back up to her apartment as if he were its rightful owner. Threw open the door, tossed the bag of cash on the couch and pulled his shirt off over his head with one swift grab back between his shoulders. Salana screeched in surprise when he lifted her up and set her down on the island in the kitchen. Latin trap music blasted from the apartment next door and both windows were open so anyone could see inside. He kissed her mouth like he could consume her, absorb all of her pain and turn it into pleasure. She lifted her hips to meet his, crossed her arms and pulled off her shirt. He bit the swell of her breast that escaped from her bra, then attacked her neck with love bites, swipes of his tongue, and open-mouthed kisses until she nearly couldn’t take the height of arousal anymore.
She didn’t know why it came up like it did; maybe it was his incredible calm that allowed her to be vulnerable, to surrender in his embrace. But Salana began to weep as she kissed him. The sadness appeared out of nowhere, or maybe it was just being close to Santiago that made her feel safe. She cried for how he’d made love to her so beautifully when she had nowhere else to turn. How he’d carried her through loss only barely knowing her.
“I hope you’re not crying ‘cause you’re sad,” he said. Salana shook her head and wiped under her eyes. Tiago pulled her legs around his waist and settled himself in between her legs.
“Whatever this is—it is strong. I’ll say that,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but I never felt like this before either, in case you were wondering.”
She nodded and wiped under her nose with the back of her hand. She laid her forehead on his chest and refused to make eye contact.
“I’m scared to have sex with you,” she said bluntly.
“Won’t be the first time,” Tiago said. He pulled her hair over to one side, exposing the back of her neck, then ran a single fingertip up and down her cervical spine. Salana didn’t know if he meant it wouldn’t be the first time for the two of them or if it wouldn’t be the first time a girl would be afraid to have sex with him. She laughed and it broke the tension.
“My family would die, so would Eric, if they knew we got a brown paper bag full of thirty grand for that diamond. Oh my god! What did we do?”
“Got that piece of shit out of your life.” She looked up at him and he kissed her hairline.
“What are we gonna do with the money?”
“Drink champagne and eat caviar? Stay in bed all day? Fuck if I know. We can burn it or throw it out the window. I don’t give a fuck. But I do want to fuck you.”
Convulsions of emotion flooded down her spine with his words, his husky voice, the scent of his musk enveloping the air around them.
Salana reached up to Tiago’s earlobe and gently took his earring out. It wasn’t real silver, she could tell because of the green tarnish on the metal, and of course the diamonds were fake—that was pretty much a given. She knew that if Tiago came into money like that, he’d likely buy something for his grandmother to alleviate her stress rather than decorate his body. Although he did have a lot of tattoos and those didn’t come cheap. Salana had noticed his grandmother did the laundry by hand and hung it to dry on a jerry-rigged clothesline in the bathroom. She wanted her to have a washer and dryer in the home. Life hadn’t been easy for that woman, and in turn, for her grandson either.
She reached up to her own earlobe and pulled the backing off of her earring. The studs she wore were each a one-carat diamond her father had bought as a gift for her after graduation from medical school. She slipped it into his piercing and reached up to pinch the other one free. They looked better on him anyway. Salana couldn’t find the words to let him know how being with him was the most adve
nturous thing she’d ever done and the faith she had to summon in herself and her own judgment felt immense. It was a rebirth and she was grateful for every moment. She had to hand over her trust to Tiago in a way that she’d never done. She knew she probably couldn’t trust him to be faithful and maybe not to obey the law, to act conventionally or settle down or find a real job. But the trust she could feel and the commitment she knew to be true, was that Santiago was honest in how he felt about her and he didn’t want her to be anything other than who she was. That in itself was the most powerful freedom she’d ever known.
“I think I’m in love with you,” she said to him. Her arms were linked behind his neck. She looked deeply into his smoky dark eyes as the warm words buzzed past her lips. He raised an eyebrow in response and looked absolutely devious. Like he would do anything she asked of him. He would jump out of a plane with her or marry her in Vegas that night to spite the hell out of her parents and the rest of the world. He looked so pleased, so self-satisfied that it made her laugh. Tiago wasn’t surprised that she’d fallen in love with him.
But all of this was new to her. She’d never felt adequate, not in relationships or in her family. Salana, exactly as she was, was good enough for him. She swore to herself in that moment, while looking into his eyes, that truth and acceptance mattered more than convention. She promised to never be ashamed of or try to hide who he was. Santiago was good enough too. He was worthy. Despite the great division in class and education, the difference in experience and culture. Tiago had proven himself to be unwavering and to save her every time she fell.
“Salt, you gonna make love to me or you gonna keep distracting yourself?”