by Hurt
in symmetrical chaos. No sound, no sign of movement. He was getting drenched. He pulled on the door handle.
She was hunched against her steering wheel. His core turned to ice with a sudden dropping feeling, like being in a plane that suddenly loses a few thousand feet.
But then her still, silent body moved. Straightened.
Some evil wizard had stolen her life and turned her into a crash test dummy.
Smooth face void of expression. Blank eyes. He couldn't even tell if she'd noticed him.
He touched her shoulder, softly as he could, then bent down close.
"Vanka. Come back in with me."
Had she heard him? Did she even know he was there? He touched again, stroking her damp hair, tried her name again. She just went on gazing vacantly at his garage door.
"I'm going to bring you inside, all right?"
Nothing changed. He leaned in, killed the ignition, grabbed the keys, got a forearm under her knees, his other arm curved around her back, under her arm, pulled her against his chest, and lifted her out of the car.
"It's OK. I'm bringing you inside, Vanka," he assured her in his gentlest voice, kicking her car door closed.
"Put me down," she said before he'd reached the front door. "I'm not a fucking baby. I'm not an invalid. Put me down."
He put her down. She didn't charge back to her car.
"Come on." He tentatively touched her back, hoping to get her inside before she was as wet as he, a little surprised when she moved toward the house.
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"My purse."
"I'll get it."
He trotted back to the car, reached across the driver's side and snatched her purse up from the passenger seat. Back in the house, he wrapped a blanket around her, pulled her to him, held her, rubbing her back through the blanket, while something he'd glimpsed a moment earlier began worrying the back of his mind. She was quiet and still in his arms, He settled her on the couch. She'd slipped back into catatonia, but every now and then she drew in a sudden, deep, shuddering breath. Her eyes seemed not to see. He lit the fire, went back to his room, and hurriedly changed into dry clothes. When he came back she was still sitting, just as he'd left her, her unseeing eyes staring straight ahead.
It startled him when, a moment later, she spoke.
"This is so ridiculous. I'm sorry."
She was looking at him. Seeing him. He smiled.
"There's nothing to apologize for."
She turned her shell-shocked aspect toward him.
"Do you think I could have another drink?"
"Sure."
He couldn't remember where she'd left her glass, so he got a clean one from the cupboard and threw a drink together for her, shorting her a bit on the vodka. In the morning, she'd be glad. She smiled at him, sad and grateful as he handed her the drink, then took a shaky but dainty little sip. She seemed to want it in her hand, more than anything. A little piece of security.
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"God, you poor thing," she laughed sadly. "You invite a girl in for a quick fuck, and look what you get."
"I didn't invite you in for a fuck."
She gave him a bemused smile.
"No?"
"No. Believe it or not, I'm not in the habit of fucking people I've just met.
Anymore."
He wouldn't have told her, before.
"I invited you in because the accident freaked me out. I was scared. I didn't want to be alone." He couldn't resist smiling and adding, "It was later I decided I wanted to fuck you."
"It was my gauze work, wasn't it? No man can resist a woman with a roll of gauze."
There was something sweet in her attempt at humor when she was so obviously sad. Hurt.
"Actually, it was the way you relentlessly wield a pair of tweezers."
She smiled. He was only half kidding. He perched on the coffee table in front of her.
"Vanka. Should I call your doctor?"
She looked shocked. Then scared. Then amused.
"What? I have one little nervous breakdown in a stranger's house, and you think it's time to call the men in white coats?"
Defensive. He smiled, hoping to calm her.
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"I think someone should take a look at your stitches."
He waited. Watched a little look of surprise pass like a tiny shockwave over her features. Watched her think. Maybe she'd deny it. Or maybe he was wrong. Then she softened and shrank slightly as her defenses came down.
"How'd you know?"
"The blood. I would have seen it sooner. The way you reacted. Got scared. I thought I'd scared you, but it didn't quite make sense. And just now, after I brought you back in. I saw your bra in your purse."
She just nodded.
"So, should I call your doctor for you?"
"I don't want to go back there. Not tonight."
"You may have pulled your stitches. You should at least go and check. Use the bathroom mirror. If it's bad, I'll take you in."
She just sat there, staring into the distance somewhere to the left of him.
"Vanka?"
"I can't."
He took her drink, took her hand, and led her over to the kitchen, settling her on the stool he'd sat on earlier while she dressed his wounds. The first aid kit was still there, still open, spilling over with gauze and medical tape. It was a regular clinic now.
"All right?" he asked.
"Yeah."
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Button by button he undid her blouse, then pulled the left side—the side with the now-darkened blood stain—open, baring her breast and the square of blood-stained gauze that partially covered her nipple.
"I'm going to take the gauze off, okay?"
She nodded.
Carefully he peeled up an edge of tape.
"That hurt?"
"No."
Pinching the corner of her bandage between his fingers, he slowly pulled, lifting the bandage, the white tape clinging, pulling at the delicate, smooth, pale skin of her breast. The incision, dark and thick with dried blood, came into view, a diagonal ridge just below the areola, just before the last of the tape tugged and released her nipple.
Her eyes evaded the sight of the blood-stained gauze as he set it on the counter.
"All right?"
She nodded.
"I'm going to clean it up a little, so I can see better. Okay?"
Another nod.
He doused a wad of fresh gauze in peroxide and gently pressed it to the wound, held it there, lifted, pressed again. She was silent, but when he looked to her face, tears were rolling down her cheeks.
"I'm sorry. I'm trying to be gentle."
"I'm going to die," she whispered.
Her words hurt him.
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"They told you that?"
"They don't know yet. But I do."
"This . . . they operated?"
"Today was just a biopsy."
He went on, pressing and lifting, staining the peroxide-soaked gauze darker and darker, slowly revealing the neat incision beneath the dried blood.
"So you're waiting. For the results."
"I know what it is. And I know I'm going to die."
"Vanka. Even if it's cancer . . ."
"My mom died of breast cancer when I was six. She was twenty-nine. Her sister was thirty-one when she died."
The stitches were intact. He started fashioning a fresh bandage. Gauze.
Neosporin. Tape.
"I think I've always known I wouldn't get away with it."
"What?"
"Staying whole. Dying old. Of something else."
He resisted his impulse to reassure, to promise that medicine could do more now than twenty years before, when her mom had died. As gently as he could, he covered her wound with the fresh bandage, carefully pressing the tape against her delicate skin, and pulled her blouse closed, covering her breast.
He understood now. Why she'd come in with him after the accident. He touched her cheek. Gave her a tender s
mile.
"I'll be right back."
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When he returned a moment later, she was standing in front of the slider, gazing out at the wet L.A. night.
"Let me wash your blouse. Here's something warm for you to wear."
When she didn't move or speak, he tentatively touched her shoulders, then slid her blouse down her arms, realizing as he did so that she hadn't buttoned up. She had a very pretty back, smooth, muscular, defined. He slid his flannel pajama top up her arms, onto her shoulders.
"I should go."
"Stay. I want you to."
"I've put you through enough."
"You haven't put me through anything. I didn't want to be alone tonight, either.
Stay."
Halfheartedly nodding her assent, she began buttoning up the flannel top.
"You tired? Ready for bed?" he asked when he'd put her blouse in the wash.
She looked sort of scared, but nodded her head.
"Come on."
He led her back, to his bedroom, let her pee and use his toothbrush, then did the same. When he came out of the bathroom, he found her standing hesitantly at the side of his bed.
"Do you want to be alone?"
She shook her head “no,” then stripped off her pants.
"Which side is yours?"
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"They're both mine," he answered mirthfully, having gotten a good bit of teasing over the years for his indiscriminate sprawling. "Take whichever side you like, and be prepared to defend it."
She climbed in and he stripped down to his boxer briefs and slid in beside her.
Met her in the middle. He coaxed her onto her side and curved his body into hers, spoon style, curving one arm over her, pulling her close against him.
They laid together like that for a long while. For three or more reasons he was wound far too tight to sleep. From the pattern and quality of her breathing, he knew she was awake, too. Thinking to soothe, to comfort her, he stroked her arm, just lightly with his fingertips over the soft rough flannel pajama top. He sensed her tense a little.
He whispered, "Should I stop?"
"No. It feels nice."
His fingers drifted up, into her hair, incredibly soft but a bit tangled, still, from the wind. She sighed quietly as he combed and petted, giving her the sorts of touches she liked best, that always seemed to soothe, to bring on drowsiness almost like a drug. Her hair was slightly damp from the rain, and it smelled just faintly of almond. She shifted and her ass flexed and rubbed against his cock. He couldn't help smiling, almost laughing at himself for having the guile to blush at being found out, that a woman in his bed would feel the evidence that he was aroused.
"You're hard."
He went on massaging her hot scalp.
"Don't worry. I can restrain myself."
"You have impressive recuperative powers, Mr. Ross."
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"That's actually true, but lying in bed with you doesn't exactly constitute proof of that."
"Blood and sickness and morbid talk of disease and imminent death do it for you, do they?" Her voice had a defeated note to it.
"Tangentially, maybe you could say that."
"You don't have a scalpel fetish I ought to be aware of, do you?"
"My real thing is bone saws. Vzzzt, vzzzzzt," he buzzed in her ear, running his finger along her scalp, then her neck, relieved when she squirmed and giggled, anxious after it was already too late that his teasing might have triggered another bout of anxiety, terror, or shock. When she settled down, he realized her thrashing and giggling had him even harder.
"I'm not a fetishist, really. Scalpels or otherwise. But I'm attracted to real things.
Sometimes fear and pain feel more real than whatever erotic games people generally like to play."
It wasn't coming out right. He just wanted her to know she wasn't . . . broken to him.
"So," she said in a voice so quiet he could hardly hear, "you still . . . you'd still fuck me?"
A little charge zapped through his body, indifferent to his brain's certainty that she was just looking for validation. Reassurance that having cancer—breast cancer—didn't cancel her out as a sexual being.
"Like I said. I can restrain myself. Restraint implies desire."
"Because I want you to."
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He carefully crafted his reply.
"You want me to fuck you?"
It was her word.
"Yes."
"Yes."
She was still lying on her side, facing away from him. He slid back a bit, drew her shoulder back, toward him, until she turned onto her back, and after a moment of waiting, turned to face him in the dim moonlight seeping hazily between the dispersing rain clouds. Tracing the outline of her face with the tips of two fingers until all stray strands of hair were off her forehead and cheeks, he pressed his lips to her temple. He was thinking about it.
"You're not a child, Vanka. I won't question what you need tonight. I'll trust you to say something if you change your mind."
"I won't. It's what I've wanted all night."
He could do this. Play the masochist. Begin to make love to a woman he was sure would tell him to stop just as his arousal hit its limit. Again.
It was kindness that overcame his cynical reasoning. But nothing had to overcome his body. He wanted her. Everything about her—everything—had been pulling him to her, all night. The way her bottom lip, like a plump, ripe cherry even without lipstick, begged to be tasted and bitten, the way it curved a little lopsided, to bare sugar-white teeth in her sardonic smile. Her hands, with long, graceful fingers, her warm, sure touch. Her ass, smooth, round as two bread loaves under her low-riding white slacks.
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Her calm competence, her strength and certainty after the accident—on the road, and later, when she'd treated his wounds. Her blatant, frightened arousal out on the terrace. Her pain. Her fear. Her need. All of it fed his attraction. His desire for her.
And her fear. Her fear of him. Her fear of her disease. Her fear of death. He wanted to fuck her while she was full of that fear, because it was so real.
Even her wound. The incision, with its coarse, hair-like sutures. It was raw. An opening in the fragile mortal barrier to death. A mark of vulnerability. Of frail human flesh. It belied all the artifice, the grotesque masks she, he, everyone put forth for others to look at and touch. Her waxed cunt. Her tinted hair. His wardrobe, put together by a three-hundred-dollar-an-hour stylist to give him just the right air of casual urban disarray. That fucking motorcycle of his, bought with some adolescent fantasy of daring, of leaving to chance (and mad dogs with Cujo complexes) the life he'd grown so bored with.
She was looking at him, waiting to see what he'd do. He smiled, pressed his palm softly to her cheek, and took her lips in a small, tender kiss. When he looked at her again, she looked strangely startled for a woman who'd just asked to be fucked. He gave her a chance, but she didn't say anything, so he kissed her again. A little deeper this time, tasting her lips with his tongue, then going into her mouth. She kissed him back as sweetly as he was kissing her, deep but slow. A delicate dance. An exploration.
Did she want him to touch her breast—the unhurt one? Or was she lying there, hoping he'd keep his hands out of the top he'd lent her? As a test, he brought his hand down from her cheek and faintly brushed over the curve of her tit on the way down to caressing her smooth, bare thigh. She didn't flinch, or make a noise or protest. His palm 37
slid over her warm, soft skin, feeling the strong muscles in her thighs, the firm round curve of her ass, the dip of her at the small of her back, taut and narrow, the softer, vulnerable feel of her belly, the ridge of ribs as his hand glided up, in the heat of the air trapped between her body and the shirt, and curved over the firm swell of her breast, over the soft smooth skin he'd seen was pale and free of tan lines, and, just lightly, his fingertips brushed over the raised, textured flesh he remembered as a delicate pink, over her hard nippl
e. She just went on, breathing deep, kissing him. With the pad of his thumb he pressed that firm nub of pink flesh against the side of his index finger, his whole hand gently squeezing her breast, and she sighed softly against his mouth, arching against his body.
For a while he went on like that, kissing her, caressing her as slowly, as carefully as he would a virgin, noting with pleasure, but also with a discerning concern for how it was all going for her every little sigh, every writhing movement, striving for her arousal, on guard for any sign she was anxious or afraid. Maybe he needed her fear, the way some people need love, to feel assured and alive and complete, but he wasn't such a selfish ass that he'd take it at her expense on a night like this. There was very nearly as much pleasure, as much satisfaction, giving her what she needed, as taking what he did.
He'd had her sighing and wiggling so long, he knew she'd be wet. Savoring the thought, the anticipation, his hand left her breast slowly, took its time over her belly, the skin hot and smooth, back and forth between hip bones, feeling the architecture of the body under that hot, tender flesh. The edge of her panties. The feel of the silky fabric under his fingertip sent a surging force to his cock. He loved that, touching that article of 38
clothing, knowing he was about to go under, touch her sex. It didn't matter that he'd been there already with his mouth. The anticipation was fucking hot. All his fingertips touched down, just below the little belt of elastic along the top, and slowly slid down over the slippery nylon. What color? He'd forgotten. Even through the panties it was obvious she waxed. No pressed down puff of pubes, no rough stubble. Perfectly smooth. Down, down, over the little hillock, down, to the soft contours at the apex of her thighs, the narrow hills and the hidden fold of valley between. His cock throbbed in anticipation, aching to press between, dip into her wet heat.
With his middle finger, he rubbed gently along that little valley, feeling that the crotch of her panties was moist, hearing her little groan as he teased her clit through the thin fabric. She spread her legs a little, and her hips arched a little now and then, pressing her cunt more firmly into his hand. Sensing her eagerness, he finally slipped his hand inside her panties, circled his fingers a few times over the delicious soft smoothness of her waxed mound, then curved his fingers down, between her open thighs, and found her silky wetness with the tip of his middle finger. Fuck, his dick was throbbing. He took his cunt-wet fingertip up to her clit and painted it with her juice, enjoying the twitch of her pelvis and the sound of her gasping a breath through her clenched teeth.