Sacred Revelations

by Roxy Harte

  “Is that what you did?”

  “No.” He shakes his head, standing, putting us shoulder to shoulder. “I’ve been back. I’ve done seminars in Cincy. I always stop by the house. Mom’s great. She doesn’t really talk about my lifestyle, but there’s no condemnation either. My dad…he’s always away when I visit, at the hospital, golfing, something, anything. I disappointed him a long time ago. He hasn’t forgiven me. I did everything I could, but over the years, we never really reconciled, even though I flew in to take all the final exams, making the money and time spent on med school not a total loss. I had the M.D. following my name after all. But it wasn’t the same. I wouldn’t be carrying on the family tradition, I refused to join the family practice. Worse, I didn’t want the white picket fence dream.”

  I roll him over so that he is on his back, looking up at me. I catch his chin in my hand as he turns his head away, pulling his gaze back to mine. “You’re wondering what it’s going to be like when you get the phone call that your dad died?”

  “Maybe. Or I could just be missing the white picket fence.” He sighs. “I really don’t want to talk about this. I want to sleep. I want to stop thinking for a while. I want you to go to bed, too, with us.” He scoots, pulling Kitten with him to make room for me on her other side. She sighs, wrapping around him in her sleep.

  “Three in a bed?” I ask, arching my brow. “Is that even legal in Kentucky?”

  “I didn’t take you for a man who obeys the laws of the state you’re in.” Garrett laughs and it’s a good sound to hear after the day we’ve shared. “Now who’s scared?”

  “It’s too early for bed.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’ve been awake forty-nine hours at this point. I could really go for some sleep.”

  “Nothing else?” I tease, smirking as he squirms uneasily against Kitten. His guilt is palatable and I enjoy torturing him. We still haven’t talked to Kitten about a ménage à trois for real. And honestly, I don’t see the point. Garrett has always been and always will be monogamous. I don’t see that changing. I lean over Kitten, brushing her in her sleep and she snuggles even closer to Garrett. Bending closer, I bite his cheek, whispering around the fold of skin between my teeth, “Come outside and play with me?”

  “Only if I can snore through it,” he answers sarcastically.

  I laugh outright, pulling away from him, leaving his face unmarked, though I really wanted to mark him.

  On a more serious note, he asks, “The club is opening its doors for the evening in an hour, did you call anyone?”

  “Anyone as in to say that neither one of us are going to be there to run the show?” I ask before assuring him, “Lewd Larry’s would survive without us, but yes, I gave George a courtesy call to let him know what was happening.”

  “Thank you,” he says, patting the empty spot of mattress. “Now, come to bed with us.”

  Too tired to argue, I pull my T-shirt over my head and push off my jeans. Naked, I climb in beside Kitten, but not spooning.

  I awake, chilled and very alone in the bed. Still and silent, I locate Garrett and Celia by sound, then, as my vision adjusts, by sight. Garrett holds her in his arms, pinning her between him and wall. That they are having sex is immediately obvious—raw, passionate, rough, pounding, up against the wall, screaming sex. I watch, seeing no reason not to, enjoying the show enough that I am fully erect when they stop moving, both convulsing into each other.

  No words are exchanged as Garrett pulls away, bringing her with him to carry her back to the bed, where he tucks her between us. She rolls onto her side, wrapping her arm around my waist and snuggling her face deep into her pillow without a word.

  “I’m sorry we woke you.” Garrett pulls the blanket and covers all of us back up.

  “I didn’t complain.”

  “I just needed a release, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t stop thinking.”

  “Are you done thinking now?”

  “Yes.”

  “So we can all sleep now?”

  “Yes.” He sighs and it is a harsh, shuddering sound.

  Reaching over Celia, I wrap my fingers around his bicep, giving a small squeeze. “It’s going to be okay, Garrett. Morning will be here before you know it.”

  “It’s always worse at night,” he says and, in the dark, I nod, understanding exactly what he’s feeling if not what ghosts are haunting him. We all have those people, places, regrets that we spend all day hiding from, but in our wakeful thoughts and uncontrollable dreams, we brave the battle night after night. My ghost is Eva and some nights it is better to not sleep at all than fall victim to the memories relived in my dreams night after night.

  Chapter 26

  “To breathe is an affliction requiring real courage. At this hour of the night the only anodyne for such sadness is the diversion of sweet flesh itself.”

  -Richard Wright, The Weekend Man

  Kitten

  I awaken, at once wide-eyed, realizing that the nightmare wasn’t a dream at all, but fact. My father is dead. With my awareness comes the moment it dawns that I am snuggled naked between equally naked Garrett and Thomas, a cage of their arms and legs wrapped around me. I vaguely remember the sex. It was powerful, feral, brief, and I am sore as a result. Shoulders aching, I shift to release the pressure, and realize without a doubt that the muscles of my ass cheeks and thighs are a firebrand of pain. I hold very still. Still enough to relax and let the pain pass. Still enough for the memory of last night to come racing back.

  I’d awakened in Garrett’s arms as he pulled me from the bed, saying, “I need you, Kitten.”

  Carrying me across the room, he’d received my assent in kisses…hard, fast, passionate, breath-stealing kisses.

  “Fuck me hard, Garrett,” I’d whispered, coming up for air. “Make me forget why I’m here.”

  Standing me up, pressing my back and hips against the wall, he posed me, hands high above my head, as though I was chained there, and although no chains bound me, my hands stayed in position, even when he went down on his knees and pulled my clit into his mouth. I held my hands high above my head, even as I bit the inside of my lip to keep from screaming, as he pulled the first orgasm from my body. He held my hips tight while I convulsed against his mouth, and then he stood, kissing me, hard, deep, tasting my blood in my mouth. He forced my shoulders into the hardness of the wall. The textured wallpaper was a distracting irritation against my bare shoulders and ass as he lifted me, impaled me, his hard length an undeniable force demanding to go deeper inside me with each thrust. His hands squeezed my ass cheeks hard with each unforgiving pound, so intense were his hands I still feel the throb of ache deep in the muscles he gripped. My nails scored equally painful tracks down his back.

  He growled, grabbing my hair, forcing me to meet his gaze.

  Something happened in that moment.

  He pulled away to look at my face, locking gazes with me in the darkly shadowed room. Trapped between wall and man, I felt strength and power and emotion that had no name but whispered harsh and needy against my cheek. “You are mine, Kitten. I am all the darkness you will ever need. Let me Master you.”

  I tremble with the memory and hope I don’t wake the man on either side of me.

  Their breathing tells me they sleep still.

  Reaching down, I tentatively touch my pussy lips with my fingers. Dry. Painful. God, really painful, this is going to require triple antibiotic ointment and a few days recovery time. Abraded pussy lips…just in time for the funeral…a constant reminder of the whore I am. Thank you, Garrett, for that.

  “I’m yours.” That’s what I’d said to him last night. “I’m yours, Garrett, forever and always.” But lying here, between the two of them, I wonder, did I mean it? Did I mean exclusively Garrett?

  I don’t remember him returning me to the bed. I don’t remember Thomas coming to bed at all or being there in the middle of the night. Did he hear us? Did he see us? Oh, God. Thomas watched me have sex with Garrett. I can
’t reconcile any other conclusion; however, my brain can’t even go there this early in the morning, not without coffee.

  Equally strange is unraveling my body from the grip of two naked men.

  I want to wake up and find that all of yesterday was a dream, but I know that there is no waking up from this as I pad silently over the plush carpet to the window. Pushing aside heavy foam-backed curtains, the view from the room slams me back into the middle of my nightmare. It is still dark, not middle-of-the-night dark but not yet dawn. My hometown glares at me. The Waffle House across the road was a home away from home my high school years, every penny saved for college a drop in my sanity bucket. From here, I can see the glimmer of glittering city lights—white, red, yellow, green—reminding me that Cincinnati really is just across the river, the skyline I grew up with. Tears well, sudden and unwelcome. I have come home. The pain is more than I can bear.

  Ashamed of my nakedness, I pull on the shirt and shorts borrowed from Charlie.

  “Celia?” I turn and face Thomas, folding into his warm solidness when he holds open his arms to me. Memories of last night and the intense pounding I took against the wall from Garrett come back and, for a moment, I am embarrassed. Knowing that Thomas was there, even though it was dark, what he didn’t see, he heard. That part, yeah, in the light of day, mortifying. Rubbing my hair, he asks, “Are you okay?”

  I laugh and the sound against his chest is harsh and ugly. “How do I answer that question? My father is dead and I’m having illicit sex in a hotel room with not one but two lovers.”

  “I missed that part. I don’t feel like I had sex.”

  “Oh, you had sex, you participated by listening.” I am so glad I pulled on the shirt and shorts. Embarrassed and clothed is so much more preferable to embarrassed and naked.

  The rumble of laughter, deep in his chest, is comforting. “I don’t think it works that way.”

  “I can’t believe my life,” I whisper.

  “What do you mean?”

  “My father has never cared about my happiness and now, with this, you and Garrett, and me, I really want this to happen, but I’m here…and I feel his condemnation, I feel his eyes on me, his voice in my head screaming, “Sinner!” and all I want to do is run. I don’t want to be here. I feel like I can’t go to his funeral, that I’m too evil, too dirty. I shouldn’t go.”

  “Whether you go, or don’t go, is a decision that only you can make.”

  “I could skip it? Just not go?” I ask incredulously, my voice muffled against his chest. My eyes are open and I focus on the chest hairs closest to my left eye, dark curly hair again a solid wall of pale skin. Pale in the darkness of the room, an illusion. I know the olive tan tone of his skin tone as well as I know the pale, pale whiteness of my own. “How can I not go to my own father’s funeral?”

  “You’re going,” Garrett says from the bed. We both turn to look at him. Standing, he crosses naked to the middle of the room where he pauses, rumpled from too little sleep and swaying slightly from being only half-awake. He is unselfconscious of his slack penis swinging between his legs or the fact that we are watching as he scratches the curve beneath his left ass cheek. “He was your father.”

  I look from Garrett to Thomas, seeking any other answer and, finding none, I run into the bathroom. Slamming the door to my newfound refuge, the bright white tile walls blinding, I turn off the lights and sit on the lidded toilet in the dark. Their voices come through the door. They are not talking to me, but to each other, in soft voices. I hear Garrett’s curse through the door and try to not care what he thinks, but I do.

  I always care what others think.

  I want to please although I fail miserably at it more often than not.

  Even in the dark, the cold, hard porcelain presses in on me, confining me. It is not a good confining, like the isolation sphere. It is a horrifying confining, I imagine, quite like a grave. Dark. Dirt. Cold.

  I can’t stay in this bathroom.

  I can’t face Garrett and Thomas.

  Dark, dirt, cold…I press my hand against the tile, cold and damp. My hand sinks into the tile and I am suddenly being swallowed by the hard porcelain, but it is soft like dirt, swallowing me. I have to get out of here!

  I could ask myself what I was thinking, but the answer would be that I’m not thinking, not thinking at all, and that scares me. It makes me feel like I’ve lost my mind, but I assume if I am lucid enough to realize that I’m not thinking through my actions, then I am not quite insane yet. It’s small comfort as I sit on my mother’s grave, miles from the hotel, icy, raining sleet hitting my face, the bare skin of my arms and legs. Dawn is a mere lightening of the sky. Dreary gloom seems to be the theme of the new day.

  If I were thinking, I would have stayed in the warm hotel, not crawled through the small bathroom window to escape the cold, tile walls. If I were thinking, I would never have gotten on that plane. But I didn’t think, I did get on the plane, and now, I am here, in Kentucky, the landscape of all my nightmares.

  The sting of ice is good. It reminds me I’m not dead yet.

  That’s what pain does for me…reminds me that I’m still alive.

  I lift my face into the sting and still tears don’t come, my eyes water from the cold, from the breeze, but I shed no tears for my father.

  “I hate him,” I scream into the early morning air.

  On hands and knees, lips to the frozen granite of my mother’s grave marker, I whisper, “I hate him, I hate him, I hate him!”

  I know for a fact I am losing my mind when I hear my mother’s voice calling my name, “Sophia? Sophia?”

  The arms lifting me are solid though, and rough, not a mother’s embrace, the voice deep, panicked, demanding, “What were you thinking, Sophia? Do you want us to bury you as well?”

  Chapter 27

  “The serious thing for each person to recognize vividly and poignantly, each for himself, is that every falling-away from species virtue, every crime against one’s own nature, every evil act, every one without exception records itself in our unconscious, and makes us despise ourselves.”

  -Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

  Garrett

  Steam rolls from under the bathroom door, the scent of Thomas clinging to it. I cringe that it is his scent that brings her comfort. It makes me tired and angry and I wish to God I’d never agreed to let her find her darkness with him. I could have given her what she needed. I just needed time. I need time now, time alone with her, time to talk to her. As much as I want to please her, as much as I still lust after Thomas myself, I don’t see a ménage à trois working between the three of us. Will I always feel like the odd man out?

  “Shit.” I start toward the bathroom, but a solid pounding at the door brings me back around to see Thomas going toward the door. I stay between the two rooms, waiting to see who it is, never expecting the open door to reveal George and Jackie.

  “Honey child? Where are you?” she shrills from the sidewalk, coming through the door at full speed. “Kitten?”

  The bathroom door crashes open and Kitten flies from the room, jumping into Jackie’s arms, wrapping both arms and legs around her middle. “You came! Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  Kitten is both naked and dripping wet.

  “Christ.” Thomas sighs.

  “Is he here too?” Jackie quips. Aiming a finger at Thomas, she gives him the look that says I’ll deal with you later. She then turns to me and gives me the same look before saying, “Jesus must be hiding in this room somewhere because I know I said I’d see the second coming before I ever stepped foot in Ohio again.”

  “We’re in Kentucky,” George says, dropping their carry-on luggage in the middle of our room.

  “Same difference,” Jackie and I say at the same time. George and Thomas share a look that says clearly that they don’t understand. Jackie and I share a look that says all too well that we do.

  “How did you find us?” Thomas demands.

>   “Don’t want us here? Well too bad.” Jackie narrows her eyes and I shrug, pulling on clothes, determined not to say another word as Jackie sits on the edge of the bed, Kitten, still wrapped around her, sits on her lap. “Baby girl called, and Mama Jackie is here.”

  “Kitten called you?” I say and Thomas asks at the same moment.

  She gives us both a challenging look before pulling an edge of the blanket up around Kitten, who is now shaking in her arms. “Men just don’t understand. Times like these, crying times, a woman needs the heart of another woman to share the pain with.” She pats Kitten and rocks her. “Yes, that’s what we’re gonna do, child.”

  Thomas kneels beside them both, a towel in hand, and I think for a moment that I should have been the one to bring Kitten a towel. Kitten doesn’t move, like a child separated for a long moment from her mother, she clings to Jackie, letting Thomas towel dry her hair, and I just stand here like an idiot watching.

  “Baby girl, baby girl. You poor, sweet thing. Tell me what’s been done to plan this funeral.”

  “I don’t know. Lion is taking care of everything,” Kitten whispers.

  “Then I need to talk to him. Because certain things must be done,” Jackie insists and, whipping open her phone, she presses a button.

  “You have Lionell McCain on speed dial?” I demand.

  “He’s an important person in Kitten’s life and Kitten is an important person in my life, of course he’s on speed dial.”

  “He is not an important person in Kitten’s life!” I scream, illogical emotion tearing through my guts. I’m pissed as hell that her father died and she ran to him instead of me. Watching Thomas pull one of his overly large turtlenecks over her head, I feel like a failure all the way around and punch a wall because it will help me forget that it’s not really Lion I’m mad at in this moment. “I am her Master, damn it, and he is a non-existent ass.”

  “Thomas?” Jackie lifts her brow and nods toward me.