by Paula Cox
For a second, I think he might make something of it, but then he nods, rises to his feet, and flees the office.
Chapter Ten
Dante
I have to tell Kayla to leave.
I say this over and over to myself as she moves her things into my bedroom, as she turns and glances at me and then down at the ground, as I go to the door and lock it, go to my desk and lay out a bottle of whisky and two glasses. I have to tell her to leave. It’s bad enough having a thief here, but having a thief here who Ogre wants to torture—who Ogre might reveal to the rest of the club—could ruin everything. The entire club could crumble. Cogs could stop turning, warehouses and protection rackets and arms deals could collapse; the entire organization could disintegrate. And all because of one large-eyed mussy-haired girl.
I sit in my chair and she comes and sits opposite, walking quickly, glancing around skittishly. Pale setting sunlight glows through the drawn blinds, and my desk lamp throws up bright yellow beams from the corner of my desk, off to our right. Kayla takes her glass of whisky, which I have already poured, and brings it to her lips. She sips so quickly and such a small amount that I wonder if she’s actually sipped at all.
I have to tell her to leave.
But I don’t, not right away. I can’t. She looks too vulnerable.
“So, how do you like the room?” I ask.
“The window opens,” she says.
“Huh?” I sip my glass, enjoying the way the whisky burns down my throat, searing my insides.
“Your bedroom window,” she says. “It opens—all the way, I mean. The ones in the dormitory only open some of the way.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s true. Do you often think like that, Kayla?”
She nods shortly. “Yes.”
“Why?”
Why do I care? Why am I asking her this? I should say: Look, it’s time for you to take your petty stolen items and get the hell out of here. We can’t have a thief roaming around, causing problems. But I don’t. I ask her questions. What the hell is the matter with me?
“I don’t know,” she says, defensive. She takes another sip of whisky, and this time I notice the level drop a tiny bit.
“So you pay special attention to the exits of a place like a goddamn Marine but you don’t know why?”
“It sounds unlikely when you say it like that,” she says, and then smiles. A small smile. But, man, an intoxicating smile if ever I saw one. Just shy enough, but just warm and sexy enough, too, as though her warmth and sexiness is trying to break through her shield of shyness.
“Maybe ’cause it is unlikely.”
Suddenly, she tips the drink back, draining it, and then pushes her glass across the table. “May I have another, please?”
I pour, and push the glass back to her.
“I feel like we’re two people adrift after a shipwreck and we’re just floating,” she says, and then giggles. She immediately cuts the giggle short, as though ashamed.
“I think that might be the first time I’ve heard you laugh,” I say, and then take a sip.
“Yes, maybe,” she says. “Possibly.”
“You mentioned the Movement, something called the Movement.” I probe, asking her to explain it to me.
“It’s just a—movement,” she says weakly.
“It sounds like some kind of cult to me. Which would explain why you’re so skittish. Did they kidnap you?”
“Worse.”
The word hangs in the air, and then Kayla drinks two more glasses of whisky, me refilling her glass whenever it becomes empty.
Finally, she says: “Yeah, it was a cult. But they didn’t kidnap me. I was there from when I was a kid, and I . . . I finally decided I didn’t want to be there anymore.”
“Why?”
Kayla flinches, glances around the room. The sunlight and lamplight clash in the center of the room; everywhere else, in the corners of the floor and the ceiling, deep shadows eat the light. “I don’t share this stuff. I hardly know you. I have done everything I can to stop you from noticing me.”
“And yet I have noticed you,” I say, leaning forward, watching her intently.
She fascinates me, even as a voice in my head screams at me that I have to tell her to leave. I shouldn’t be talking with her. I shouldn’t be getting to know her. I have to tell her to leave.
But I don’t. Dammit.
“Ain’t it strange for someone raised in somethin’ like that to just leave?” I ask. “I’m sure I heard that somewhere.”
“It is.” She nods, her little short nod, wanting to get it over with quickly. “But I had—cause.”
“What kind of cause?”
“You are cutting into deep painful places, Dante.”
“I’m just talkin’. Do you want me to stop?”
“Uh . . . I want more whisky.”
“Alright, then.”
I pour her another glass, and she drains it, and then closes her eyes.
“My mother was a good Movement woman,” Kayla says, eyes still closed. “She did everything Master wanted. My dad died before I was born, and my mother raised me. And . . . And there are lots of things I could tell you about my mother, like how she used to sing to me—sing old Johnny Cash songs like “A Boy Named Sue” and “Ring of Fire,” but in secret because Cash was considered blasphemy in the Movement. I could tell you how she used to stay up late and sit on the porch in summer and knit until the tips of her fingers bled. I could tell you how she’d whisper to me about faraway places, like the Welsh Valleys or the Maltese slanted capital, places she had never been but had read about in travel magazines. But really, all you need to know is that she did her duty to the Movement and she loved me. And then, one day, she made the mistake of—”
She cuts short. She has been talking as though in a trance, the words spilling out of her seemingly without her say-so. Now, she swallows, opens her eyes. “You can guess what happened.”
“The leader killed her,” I say, knowing I am right.
“The leader killed Sandra,” Kayla says, exhaustion in her voice.
“Sandra? Sandra was my mother’s name, too.”
Kayla grins at me, the grin of a woman who has been running too long. “Then I guess we have something in common, Dante. Maybe I ought to meet your Sandra sometime. You could introduce me like this: ‘Hey Mom, this is the girl I saved from a fire and who now steals knives and forks from my clubhouse.’”
I laugh, can’t help but laugh, and Kayla giggles.
“I haven’t seen your mom around,” Kayla says, probing, I can tell. But I can’t blame her. What was I doing moments ago? “Does she live in a different state or . . .?”
I don’t tell people shit about my past, never have, never saw the point. Makes a man weak. Makes a man doughy. Pry open your ribcage and expose your heart and more often than not someone will snap loose one of those ribs and stab you right in the heart. That’s what I’ve learnt, living this life. And yet, without hesitation, I say to Kayla: “Sandra died of cancer when I was young. Lung cancer. Smoked like a chimney, so what the fuck’re you gonna do?”
I sip the whisky, hoping the heat will burn away the desire to feel any kind of pain.
“And your father?”
“Died before I was born.”
Kayla laughs again, gruffly, eyes red and tipsy. “Then we have more in common than I thought.”
“Seems so,” I say.
Okay, now I will tell her. I will tell her that it’s time to go. I’ll give her some money, help her along her way. Of course, I’ll do the right thing. But she can’t be here, not with Ogre knowing about her stealing, not with Ogre potentially getting ready to tell the boys. And not with her uncanny ability to scratch away the armor I’ve spent decades constructing around myself, my past. She’s too dangerous. But still, I don’t say it. I can’t bring myself to say it. She looks up at me, biting her lip, eyes bigger than ever, more inviting than ever.
“What about you?” she asks.
/> “What about me?”
“Anything bad ever happened in your past?”
For a moment, I think about telling her about the crevice-faced man and his worm-fingers and what nearly happened to me, but there’s enough emotion in the room already. More emotion in this room than has existed since I became President. I can’t tell her that. I can’t tell anybody that.
“Of course,” I say, pouring another whisky; the bottle is almost empty now. “Once, I stubbed my toe on the way to the shower. It hurt like a son of a bitch.”
She giggles, and if there’s a sweeter sound than Kayla giggling in this world, I’ve never heard it. It’s like a cool breeze on a too-hot day, the sweetest relief.
For a while, we just stare at each other, Kayla for once not looking away. Whether it’s the whisky or sharing with me that’s given her this confidence, I don’t know, but after staring at each other for around a minute, she stands up and walks around the desk. She is wearing a dress, her pert breasts squashed to her chest, her thin dancer’s legs pale beneath her. She walks around the desk until she is standing beside my chair. I swivel in the chair, whisky in one hand, the other going for my toothpicks. But my toothpicks are in my jacket, and my jacket is on the peg on the back of the door.
Kayla takes a deep breath, and then leans down so that we are eye level. I see excitement in her eyes, but also nervousness. She is ten years my junior, I remind myself, she is what I could have become: a runaway; constantly living in fear. I should tell her to leave.
And then she leans in for the kiss, and I lean in with her.
Chapter Eleven
Kayla
I don’t plan on sharing with him, I don’t plan on walking around his desk and looking into his jet-black eyes, and I don’t plan on initiating a kiss. At each turn, I surprise myself. I suppose I could blame it on the whisky, say that I am behaving this way because of the alcohol coursing through my veins, but the lust and the feeling coursing through my veins is thicker than the whisky.
Dante is the first person I have been close to since Mom died. Dante is the first person who I’ve been comfortable sharing with. Maybe that will pass when this night passes. Maybe my insecurities will return. But for now—I blot out my thoughts. I blot out my second-guesses and my maybe-he’s-using-me and I blot out my terror, the always-present terror that everything is on the cusp of going wrong. For once, I just listen to my lust, and my lust tells me to kiss him.
Dante leans in with me. Our lips touch. Heat erupts between us, spreading from our lips over our faces. I keep my eyes open, and so does he; we stare into each other’s eyes as we open our mouths and thrust our tongues into each other. His mouth tastes like whisky, but then, so does mine. He lets out low groans, and I moan with him.
He is wearing a T-shirt and scuffed jeans and boots, looking every bit the wild biker with his thorny tattoos and his jet-black stubble.
He grabs me under the armpits and lifts me up, bringing me to his lap. I open my legs and sit atop him, straddling him in the President’s chair. His cock presses through his jeans. I can feel it. I am usually nervous in sexual encounters, even when drunk, but now I feel at ease. I don’t know why, but I feel comfortable reaching down and grabbing his cock through his jeans, squeezing it with my hand. It is huge, so big it’s difficult to tell where the mass begins and ends squashed in his jeans. I fiddle with his belt, all the while kissing, all the while urgent signals of pleasure and lust rippling through every part of my body.
I fiddle with the belt, but my hands are clumsy. My hands are experts when it comes to stealing, or secreting away items I don’t want anybody else to see, or taking the keys from a guard’s sleeping hands, but with Dante’s belt, they are useless. Dante makes a growling noise, lifts me up by my armpits, and carries me through the door into the bedroom. He tosses me onto the bed. I land, jolt up into the air, let out a scream. But it’s a scream of delight, not of fear, and there is laughter in it.
Dante stands over me for a moment, staring down with hard, black eyes. Then he lifts his T-shirt, showing his thorny tattoo: the flowerless garden on his back spreads around his ribcage. I feel my mouth go dry at the sight of his muscles, bulging, massive, tight, honed. Without even thinking, I reach down and pull down my panties, throwing them to the floor. My pussy is naked and wet, ready. Dante tugs down his jeans.
His cock really is massive. It springs up, long and thick. I swallow, nervous for a moment, wondering how a small woman like me can take something so huge. But then my lust overrides my nervousness, and all at once I’m hungry to try.
Dante leans over me on the bed, gazing down at me with those unflinching black eyes.
“Kiss me,” I say, voice becoming hoarse, as if what I am feeling is too much for my voice to handle.
He presses his lips hard into mine. I close my eyes now, sinking into the pleasure, and lift my hands to his back. The muscle bulges against my hands. I dig my fingernails into his skin as the kiss lengthens, our tongues stroking over and over, and then as his hand reaches down my belly and to my pussy, I dig my nails in deeper.
He presses his finger down on my clit, hard, harder than any man has ever pressed his finger on my clit. It takes me by surprise and I break off the kiss and throw my head back and almost let out a cry. Then I remember that there are probably men in the next room, and bite down. Dante stares down into my face. I get the sense that he’s enjoying watching the pleasure he’s giving me, and so I arch my back as he rubs my clit. The clit—it is magic, surely. At least the way Dante touches it. He goes side to side, and then around, and then, when he has warmed it to his touch, he presses down hard again and rubs in earnest.
I close my legs around his hand. An orgasm is something a man has rarely given me, something I have always had to give myself. But now, as Dante rubs me, I feel one approaching, the first tickles of wind before a hurricane. He rubs quicker, his breathing getting quicker, too, and I find that so damn hot, that just getting me off is getting him off, too, that the tickles of wind become gusts, gusts of euphoric wind moving through my body, causing my muscles to become tight. I close my hands into fists on his back, and then—
“Yes, yes, yes,” I moan, or hear myself moan. I am faraway, caught up in the hurricane.
The orgasm blows through me, touching every part of my body. I squeeze my legs around Dante’s hand, telling him with my thighs that I want him to keep rubbing; I cannot tell him with my lips, they are too busy moaning. It starts at my clit as a point of extreme heat, and then spreads up through my belly, hotter for the whisky, and up and up to my breasts and my neck and my face. I feel a flush creep up my neck to my cheeks. My toes curl. I bounce on his hand, taking more pleasure, getting hotter, deeper pleasure. And then it passes, and Dante removes his hand and stares down at me, wide-eyed. His eyes are still black, but they are swirling horny pools of black.
“I need you,” he says, his voice choked.
“Then take me,” I reply, my voice just as choked.
He looks at me like an animal ready to fuck, and it drives me fucking wild. He reaches down and grabs his cock and guides it to my waiting, aching pussy. I am so wet that when the tip of his huge cock touches my hole, it opens for him straightaway. The biggest cock I have ever seen—and I just open for him. I am letting him in, emotionally and physically. I am in new territory here.
He thrusts his hips, and the tip of his cock pushes ahead of the base, thrusting deep into my pussy, the tip touching my deep, hot spot and the base pressing against the walls of my pussy. Pleasure, burning, fills me down there until I cannot feel any particular sensation, only an overwhelming sense of heat. I want to look up into his face, but the pleasure is too intense. My eyes are blurry with it.
Then we begin to fuck, and I am lost to the world.
He pounds into me and I take all of him, as hard as he can give it. We are both too horny and too hungry to start slow. It is rough, quick, hard, a pounding that throws us both right into the midst of the pleasure at once. I li
ft my legs and bounce up and down on his cock, the sheets rubbing against my back, sticky with sweat, and with my hands I grip his bulbous shoulder muscles, using them as handles to better bounce up and down. Dante thrusts up, angling his cock so that it smashes into my sweet spot perfectly; each thrust sends ripples of pleasure throughout me, ripples which soon become waves, and then tsunamis.
I moan loudly, no longer caring that people might hear. Let them hear! This is our moment, nobody else’s, and I will not be quiet for it. I bounce, fast, faster, until we have reached a perfect, rough rhythm, until his cock is drilling into me and I am bouncing in time with the drilling. Until the tsunamis of pleasure are roiling so quickly through my body I hardly have time to react. Sweat slides down Dante’s forehead onto me, and I hardly feel it, only the heat of it, the heat of him, on and in me.