by Ellie Danes
I stood up straight to help her, ripping off my belt with a snap in one fluid motion. She attacked the top button of my jeans and I grabbed her by the wrists, leaning in close so that I could whisper into her ear, “Slower.”
A coy smile played across her lips, and she stared mischievously at me as she slowed her movements down and pulled on the waistline of my jeans. I went in to kiss her again, but she pulled away with a spark in her eye, teasing me by making me chase her lips. One of her hands came up to my neck and she gripped it tight, making me throb even harder inside my jeans. I could feel her hand undoing my zipper before she put the whole of me in her fist.
“I want all this. Right here.” She bit my ear.
I pushed her from away from undoing my fly so that I could finish taking all of her clothes off of her. I yanked her bottoms off, revealing panties with lace weaving intricate patterns, and freckles on her thighs. I ran my finger underneath the elastic band of her waistline, hesitating to make sure I had permission. She gave it to me by once again placing her own hands on top of mine. I looked into her wide, bright eyes, ablaze with nervous anticipation, as we slowly pulled down her panties together. I dove into her lips again and we shut our eyes. I ran my fingers through her golden hair, rays of sunlight slipping through my grip, and took a hold of her head with one hand while reaching down in between her thighs with the other. Impatiently, she reached out and shoved my pants and briefs to my knees, our lips still locked together. She clawed my lower back, shoving me deep and hard in between her legs.
She threw her hands against the cement wall of the basement as I slid inside, groaning and noticing the fog that was accumulating on the slit of a window a few feet above Brittany’s head. I wondered if anyone could see us. I told myself, let them watch, as I rocked deeply into Brittany, back and forth. She told me to go faster, and at first I slowed down, just giving her the tip of me until she begged for the rest. Then, I started to ram into her, banging the washing machine so loud I was sure that the entire building could hear us.
Brittany brought her arms around to my back and slid them under my shirt which was the only article of clothing I hadn’t taken off yet. She scratched down my shoulder blades, her cheeks fiery red and her breath heavy as she started to say the naughty things running through her mind. “Next time my father is over, I want to make him wait in my apartment and then go into your room and I want you to make him hear us.” She started to put pressure on my back, pulling me hard against her to the rhythm I had set.
“I want you every day from this moment forward,” I told her. “I want to drive you to art school where you’re living your dream and happy as hell and I pick you up every day to take you home and have you all to myself.” It spilled out of me, and the instant I said it, I told myself I had ruined the moment with mush and emotion. I hated revealing that side of me to anyone, ever, especially someone like Brittany.
She put a hand on my chest, stopping my thrusts. “Please, don’t be leading me on, Dalton.” Her words halted me. “I want this too much…it’s scaring me.”
I cupped her cheek in my hand, forgetting all about how she was naked in front of me and that I was still inside of her. “I’m scared with how much I’m falling for you, Brittany.”
“I know this is what I need, and what I want, and that no matter how bad my father says you are for me that you’re really good for me. I’m just afraid to disobey father. Talia disobeyed my father and ran off with a bad boy, and it got her killed.” She blushed. “That was my sister’s name.” She lowered her eyes and seemed to be internally reprimanding herself for telling me Talia’s name, but I already knew the whole story.
Talia. Her sister’s name pierced straight through the tattoo on my chest to my heart. Brittany hadn’t named the man who had killed Talia, but I knew that name, too: James Krall. The image of Talia’s face rushed through my mind and filtered over Brittany’s face, my imagination accentuating the features that the two sisters shared. I searched Brittany’s face for signs of Talia and spotted the same upturned nose, the same freckles in the eyes, the same squint she made while trying to smile through pain, right now smiling through the pain of mentioning her sister’s name.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bring down the mood.” She took her hand off my chest and covered up her breasts self-consciously after she noticed my speechlessness and the look of pain that had flashed across my features.
I was experiencing a multitude of emotions ranging from wanting to run as far away from Talia’s sister as I could and hiding forever, to smashing my fist into the washing machine out of anger that I had been unable to protect Talia who I had loved but who I had only dated a short time before she had gone off with James Krall.
Instead of doing either of those things, I leaned back in toward Brittany. “You didn’t bring down the mood, I promise.” I lightly kissed her, and instead of transitioning back into roughly wrestling on top of the washing machine, I began to slowly ease into her. We began making love.
She wasn’t Talia—she never would be, and I didn’t want her to be. I would always love Talia, and I had sworn to myself that I would never get involved with anyone else ever again…but Brittany wanted my heart and had managed to melt the ice I had coated it in. When I was with Talia I had never met her family. She had kept me out of her family life with the reason being that her father was too overbearing. Now that I had met her sister, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t recognized Talia in her instantly, and then I realized to myself that I was attracted to Brittany for entirely different reasons than the ones that had attracted me to Talia. Brittany was her own unique woman, with a fire inside of her that burned bright and hooked me in such an irresistible way that I felt I could never escape the gravity of her beautiful sun.
I sent a prayer to wherever Talia was, asking her to guide me and tell me if this was the wrong thing to do. I didn’t get an answer right then, but Talia was never one to respond to any question right away.
Brittany and I left sweat and fluid dripping off the washing machine and we ended in each other’s arms on the floor. We talked about each other’s dreams before making our way upstairs, hours later. I walked her to her door before heading off to my own apartment and gave her a kiss on the forehead goodnight.
Chapter 16
Brittany
I doodled all through class, not paying attention in the slightest to my teacher. Josephine sat next to me, nudging me to focus, but all I could think about was the night Dalton and I shared in the laundry room together. As I sketched in my notebook, I imagined painting for a living.
Josephine leaned over to whisper, “Stop grinning like that, you look like you’re having an orgasm to Mr. Potter’s lecture.”
“I can’t help myself,” I whispered back.
Dalton brought out the best in me, I could see that now, and he challenged me to do right by myself. Without him barging into my life, I didn’t know if I would have ever smiled again like I was now. I didn’t know how a guy like him did it, but he was slicing his way past the barricade I had put up against every man who had approached me since Talia’s death. I still didn’t trust most men, but I trusted Dalton. I still didn’t understand him, and I could sense he had many secrets that made it so maybe I shouldn’t trust him, but I couldn’t help myself.
“You’re really good at that,” Josephine said as the lecture ended, referring to my doodles.
“I know,” I said, confident in my skills. A short while ago—before Dalton had encouraged me back into my passion—I never would have agreed with Josephine.
I walked back home after class, the entire time craving the sight of Dalton and anticipating seeing him in the hallway or in the courtyard. He wasn’t anywhere I could find him when I got back to the building, and I decided to spend the rest of the night painting instead of studying. I was going to paint Dalton a portrait, and I giggled to myself when I decided to paint him as a bulldog. That’s the animal he resembled most to me, and I thought it suited him.
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Halfway through the painting, much later in the evening, I heard a car door slam outside of my window. I went over to spy on who had caused the sound. Dalton was getting out of the car of that creep I’d seen parked outside the building a few days earlier. It wasn’t Dalton’s father’s assistant, but a stranger I recognized as the man who had stalked the entryway of the apartment complex the night Dalton had brought home the painting of fire trapped inside a birdcage.
Dalton didn’t see me peeking from behind the thick blinds my father had asked to be installed before I moved in. Seeing him leave the stranger’s car brought my trust in him almost completely crashing down, causing all the fear and concerns I’d experienced surrounding Dalton’s bad boy persona to flood my mind.
“Perhaps I allowed him into my heart too soon,” I whispered, looking back at the half painting I’d created for him. The top half of a bulldog, just teeth, jowls, and piercing eyes, stared back at me from the canvas. Faintly, I heard Dalton’s footsteps come down the hall and then stop until my ears registered the opening and closing of his apartment door.
“It’s probably nothing,” I said to calm myself, trying to hold onto my trust in him before it was fully displaced. I knew he was hiding something, multiple somethings, and I had known it from the moment we met, but I would let him tell me in his own time.
Suddenly, I heard Dalton’s apartment door open and close a second time. His footsteps began approaching my door. With each footfall, I thought back to the laundry room and him moving deeper and deeper into me, syncing each thump of the washing machine in my imagination to his actual footsteps approaching from down the hall. They stopped just outside my room, and I jumped when he knocked on my door. Quickly, I hid the painting in one of my kitchen cabinets, and went to let him in.
When I opened the door, Dalton’s tousled, brown hair was clinging to his forehead with a thin layer of sweat and dirt.
“I have something I need to tell you which I should have told you last night,” he said, not waiting for me to ask him inside.
“Me too.” The words came out without my thinking about them. “I think I’m in love with you, Dalton.”
I was shocked at my own words, especially since I had just seen him leave that stranger’s car, and adrenaline coursed through my entire body.
Dalton slammed his mouth shut quickly as it had dropped open in shock. After several minutes of silence, I started to regret my confession of love. I really had let Dalton into my heart too soon.
Chapter 17
Dalton
Today I had accompanied Tommy to a job. We had paid a man named Phil Whistler a visit, and Tribado had joined us. I had read about Phil in the envelope Tommy had delivered to me. Phil was in a relationship with Francesca Veron, a distant friend of a member in the gang, and a few of our members had been tasked with tailing him the past week. Five of us had headed to Phil’s apartment at a time when we knew he would be alone and his girlfriend was out at work.
The five of us had memorized the information from the envelope: Phil was an abusive boyfriend, constantly leaving Francesca with bruises and cuts in places no one could see. She had come to her friend in our gang and asked for assistance. Today, we were going to show Phil that we were always watching and if he continued to harm Francesca, then we would harm him even worse. What troubled me was that Francesca still wanted to be with Phil, and didn’t want us to hurt him too badly.
“What if he hurts her even worse after we show up?” I had asked that question every time I had been asked out for a job. Each time the response I got was, “We’ll cut his manhood off.” This answer never quite satisfied me, and I never knew what happened to the offenders after our visits. Most of our visits didn’t progress into violence, and only once had I seen Tribado torture anyone. It had made me sick to my stomach, and ever since then I was restricted to lookout duty.
Today, though, had been different because Tommy had told Tribado about when I’d told him I wanted out of the gang. Today I had witnessed four men beating up on one man inside Phil’s living room, midday trash television drowning out Phil’s screams as I watched in horror. Tribado barked at me to join in or get my own fill of a beating, and once again I vomited at the sight of violence.
“It’s not like you haven’t done this before. What the hell is wrong with you?” Tribado had spat at me. Then he grabbed me by my shirt collar and dragged me over to where Phil lay spitting up blood on the floor. “Hit him.”
I couldn’t.
Tribado socked me in the gut when I didn’t obey at first, and a large ring on his middle finger dug into my kidney as he did. “Hit him, or maybe you don’t value Brittany enough.”
I whipped my head up in shock, first wide-eyed at Tribado and then glaringly at Tommy. My queasiness instantly disappeared and rage took its place, an old sensation climbing through my skeleton. The old Dalton was slowly pouring himself back into my blood, and with a crack I slammed my fist into Phil’s chin.
When we were done and Phil was bruised and spitting blood from his mouth, I washed the blood off my knuckles in Phil’s bathroom and looked in the mirror. James Krall seemed to stare back at me with my own eyes.
In that moment, I formed my plan on how to remove myself from the gang, and it involved bringing the gang down completely. I could no longer permit such violence to continue, even if it was in the name of protection.
When I’d gotten back to my apartment, I’d felt ill. I hated that I’d been a part of that violence. Sure, the guy deserved it, but this was no longer the way to do things.
My life had to change, and it was up to me to change it.
I’d called my father. “I’ve fallen in love with Brittany. Nothing you can say will change the way I feel for her.”
“Stop being a dumbass,” he said. “This is just so you can secure your access to the money.”
“I don’t give a damn about the money.” My voice was strong with conviction as I paced my bare apartment. “If you want to kick me out, then you should.”
The line went silent, and I wondered if he’d hung up. “Are you still there?” I asked.
He cleared his throat, then said, “If you make an honest woman out of her, then you will get access to the money. But if you tarnish my name by creating a scandal and if you break the rules of the trust fund, then you will never see a penny.”
My mother spoke up. “If you marry her before your thirtieth birthday, you’ll have every penny of your millions.”
“Mariah,” my father barked, “get off the other line. And most of all, don’t contradict me.”
Her voice was quiet. “He’s still got two more years, August.”
“But if he screws up before then, I am stuck with an even more complicated problem.” Addressing me again, he said, “Court her as defined in the rules of the trust fund outlined by your P.O., and if I find out you’ve done otherwise, then forget about your millions.”
I had followed the rules about gaining access to my money through marriage religiously until I had met Brittany, and by following the rules I meant not giving a care in the world about them. I had ignored searching for a partner completely and turned down any and every woman who made a pass at me ever since Talia. I had only broken the rule about not engaging in criminal activities, and at first I didn’t consider my vigilante gang to be a criminal activity until Tribado had taken over. Then, after meeting Brittany, I had consequently broken practically every rule concerning how I should interact around a potential partner which I was courting for marriage.
All of that had led me here, to Brittany’s door. Now, I stood in front of her. She had just confessed that she was possibly falling in love with me. My heart sank, knowing that her feelings would change after I told her the truth I should have divulged after we had made love.
“Oh,” was all I could manage to respond. I wanted to tell her I was falling in love with her too, that she was the only girl in the world for me. I wanted to grab her by the hands and take her away from this
place, away from her overbearing father to a place where she could truly be happy. That was impossible now as I took the plunge and came right out and said it. “I assaulted James Krall.”
As I said his name, Brittany’s face went pale and she took a step back from me as if I was a mad dog with foam leaking from my lips.
I couldn’t end my confession there, though. “I had dated Talia before she dated James, and I saw everything he did to her. I couldn’t take it, and I blacked out. When I came to, I was standing over James and covered with blood. He was in the hospital for six months, I was in jail for six months. I was in there when he…” I couldn’t finish the sentence, couldn’t admit that Talia was gone forever even after so many years. “I thought you had a right to know, and I know this will probably change how you feel about me. That’s okay, I understand that, but can we still be friends? I’ll always be here when you need, and after I fix one last thing I’ve been neglecting in my life, I’ll always be here to protect you when you need me.”
Brittany waved at me to stop talking, then slowly opened her mouth. “Please, leave.”
“I’m sorry,” I blurted, grasping at any chance to remain in her life as it dawned on me that this could be a fool’s dream and I would lose her forever.
“I need time to digest this.” She shut the door on me and I stood in front of her closed door, my arms limp at my sides and my knees shaking violently.
Chapter 18