She told herself to stop, but there was the throbbing between her legs that was calling attention to itself. It made her realize she had lied. When she told him she wanted to take it slow, she had meant it. Then. But that declaration seemed a million moments ago, before her fingers touched him again, felt the heat of his flesh melding with her own.
He bent to kiss her wrist, and the touch of his lips was the catalyst she needed. The permission to betray herself again.
She pulled her hands away, and he looked up like a child whose treat had been cruelly snatched away. She smiled and circled him. Then slowly she lowered herself to her knees, reached over, unbelted and unbuttoned his pants. Slowly, pulled down the zipper.
“But I thought you wanted…” he started.
“That’s what I thought I wanted.” She released him from his constraints. “But right now, this is what I want.” She took him into her mouth.
She heard an intake of breath, then a moan that seemed to reverberate through the rafters of the room. She felt the muscles of his thighs tighten beneath her hands, relax, tighten again. Her tongue circled the furrowed flesh, running rings around the natural grooves. She tasted him, realized that she liked it. Liked the tang of the moisture leaking from him. And the strangled animal groans her ministrations elicited.
There were pauses in his breathing, followed by strained exhalations. Then a sudden weight of a hand on the back of her head, guiding her. She took his cue, began sucking with a pressure that drew him farther inside her mouth. Yet there was more of him than she could hold.
He was moments from coming. She could feel the trembling in his limbs. But suddenly he pushed her away, disgorging his member from her mouth with the motion.
He shook his head. “No, not yet,” he said breathlessly. “Why don’t you join me?” Before she could answer, he stood up, pulling her up with him, and began unbuttoning her blouse, almost tearing the seed pearls in the process. The silk slid from her skin and fell to the floor in a languid pool of golden-brown. He hooked eager fingers beneath her bra straps, wrenched them down. Within seconds, she was naked from the waist up, and the current in the room, as well as the excitement of the moment, teased her nipples into hard pebbles. His fingers gently grazed them, then he grazed each with his tongue. Her knees buckled.
“How far do you want to go?” he breathed. “Because I don’t want you to do this just for me.”
Her answer was to reach for the button of his shirt, then stare into those green, almost hazel eyes. “I’m not doing this for you. I’m being totally selfish. I want you…your body…” She pushed the shirt over his shoulders, yanked it down his arms.
“Hey, what about my mind?” he grinned.
She smiled. “Some other time. Right now, nature calls.”
They undressed each other quickly, and as they stood naked, his eyes roamed the landscape of her body with undeniable appreciation. Then without ceremony, he pulled her to the floor on top of him so abruptly that she let out an “oomph.” His hands gripped the plump cheeks of her ass, began kneading the soft flesh. She felt his hardened penis against her stomach and began moving against it, causing him to inhale sharply. His hands soon stopped their kneading and replaced the touch with soft, whispery caresses that caused her crotch to contract with spasms. One of his fingers played along her crevice as his lips grabbed hers and began licking them. His finger moved to the delicate wall dividing both entryways, moved past the moist canal, up to her clitoris, started teasing her orb just as his tongue began playing along hers. She ground her pelvis against him, desperately claiming her own pleasure, listening to the symphony of quickly pumping blood and intertwined breaths playing in her ears.
He guided her onto his shaft. Holding her hips, he moved her up, down, in an achingly slow and steady pace that was thrilling and killing, for right now she thought she could die with the pleasure of it, the way he filled her, sated her. She felt her eyes go back into her head. She had heard about this phenomenon from other bragging women, and had thought they were doing just that—bragging. But now she knew how it could happen.
“Ooooh, fuck,” she moaned.
“My thoughts exactly,” he whispered back and with a deft motion, changed their positions until he was on top of her. Straddled on his elbows, he quickened his thrusting, causing a friction that drove her to a climax she couldn’t stop. Her inner walls throbbed against the invading hardness, and she drew in shallow breaths as her lungs seemed to shatter with the rest of her body.
She put her arms around his waist and wrapped her legs around his firm thighs. His body had the first sheen of perspiration. She stroked along the dampness of his skin, then reciprocated the ass affection with gentle strokes along his cheeks.
“I want…I want…” he exerted but couldn’t seem to finish the sentence. Instead, he placed his mouth over hers until she was able to pull his ragged breaths into her needy lungs. The wave that washed over her once had hardly ebbed away before it began building again. Now his pace was frantic, his hips pounding her body into the carpeting, almost through the floor. Not one for passivity, she pounded back just as hard and eagerly met each thrust. The wave was gathering force, this one threatening a cyclonic power that would rip her apart, render her in pieces. She didn’t care. His desperation was born of sex, but also, she knew, of anger and frustration. He was expelling his demons inside her, and she was his willing exorcist.
She reached a point where she wanted to devour him, subsume his body into hers in every possible way. Instinctively, she began nibbling his lips and drawing them into her mouth as though she would swallow them. At the same time, her other lips sucked along the piston that was drilling inside her, and her canal pulled him up even farther.
She was going to come again—now. She felt the beginning of a tremor in him that was steadily growing. They would leave this torrent together, ride the wave at the same time. She clutched his hips frantically, pushing in…in…in…and then he flooded her, and deep in the nether region of sane consciousness, buried beneath the morass of sexual mania, a little voice admonished that they had just done something stupid. They had forgotten protection. But it was too late now, now as her vaginal muscles joyfully squeezed out every bit of moisture it could sap from him and mix with her own.
The “ohh, God” that escaped from her was both a vocalization of the blessing of mind-numbing pleasure and a curse on the reality that she would now have to test herself and deal with the consequences.
He gave one final heave, then collapsed his full weight on her for a few seconds as she breathlessly relived the déjà vu of their first encounter. A few more seconds passed and he finally shifted off her, and she was able to breathe again. His own breathing was distressed. But as she peered over at him, he seemed much more relaxed.
“Can you stay the night?” he asked once he could breathe.
She started to shake her head no. It didn’t seem like a good idea. She had no change of clothes for work tomorrow, would have to get up that much earlier to drop by her apartment to dress before heading to the office. But then she detected a desperation in his eyes that he wasn’t even trying to hide. She reached over to stroke his chin.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, and realized she had almost cooed like a mother to a child.
“I need you,” he said so baldly that her first reaction was the caution one got when a seemingly normal person, on further acquaintance, doesn’t seem quite as normal as one thought. Because his words were those said to someone you loved, someone you had invested time and emotion in. They were too blatant, too fraught with complications. She didn’t want any complications in her life, not now, not for a long time.
But she turned to those eyes and couldn’t find the word “no.” Instead she nodded. He rose from the floor then and held out his hand. She took it, and he helped her up. Then, still holding hands, they walked to the stairs and ascended to the bedroom.
Blood was everywhere. On the walls, which were already stained with vile
human secretions; on the wooden floor, where the viscous fluid slowly seeped into the fibers of the wood and pooled between the crevices of the boards. Soon, the hue would be an indelible tale-tell witness of what had happened, long after every other evidence had been disposed of. Long after her voice stopped haunting his dreams. Long after he was laid cold in his grave.
He bent to run a finger through one of the cork screw curls. Its end was soaked with blood. The knife felt warm in his hands still. Actually, it was the warmth of her life staining it.
He turned her over and peered into dulled brown eyes that accused him in their lifelessness. Gone was the sparkle, sometimes mischievous, sometimes amorous, sometimes fearful—that used to meet him. Now, the deadness of her eyes convicted him where he stood, even if a jury would never do so. The guilt of this night, this black, merciless night, would hound his waking hours, haunt his dreams, submerge his peace, indict his soul. There would now always be blood on his hands. For that reason alone, he would never allow himself another moment of happiness. Not that he would ever find it again. What joy he would have had, might have had, lay now at his feet in her perfect form. Strangely, in death, she had managed to escape its pall. Her skin was still luminescent, still smooth. If it weren’t for the vacuous eyes, the blood soaking her throat, the collar of her green dress, the dark auburn of her hair…he might hold to the illusion that somewhere inside, she still lived.
He reached a shaky hand to touch her cheek. It was warm, soft, defying death even as it stiffened her body.
He bent further, let his lips graze hers one last time. Their warmth was a mockery. Her lips were never this still beneath his. They always answered his touch, willingly or not.
He saw a tear fall on her face, and for a second was confused. It rolled down her cheek and mixed with the puddle of blood. He realized then that he was crying. It scared him. He hadn’t cried since he was a child. But now, another tear fell, and another.
Through his grief, he knew what he would have to do. She was gone. There was no way to bring her back. Her brother would be searching for her soon. She wasn’t an ordinary Negress. She was the daughter of a prominent Negro publisher, now deceased, and the widow of a prominent Negro lawyer. She had a place in their society. So, yes, she would be missed. There would be a hue and cry for vengeance if it were ever discovered that she had been murdered.
Which was why he could not let her be found.
He knew what he had to do. It wasn’t her anymore. It was just a body now. Yet, he couldn’t resist calling her name one last time.
“Rachel.”
Then he began to cry in earnest.
Tyne pushed through the sleep-cloud that fogged her mind. The dream-world still tugged at her, reached out cold fingers to pull her back. But her feet ran as fast as they could, ran toward the name hailing her, pleading with her to hurry. The name reverberated around her…“Rachel…Rachel…Rachel….
“Rachel…Rachel….”
The sound woke her. She slowly opened her eyes, lay there for a moment, not remembering. Gradually, disorientation gave way to familiarity. Shaking off sleep, she became aware of her surroundings. Recognized the curtains that hung at the moon-bathed window, saw the winged-back chair that was a silhouette in front of it. Sometime during the night or early morning, he had retrieved her clothes and laid them neatly on the chair’s back.
He was shifting in his sleep, murmuring. Then she heard the name again, just as she had heard it in her dream. “Rachel.” He strangled on the syllables, his voice choked with emotion—with…grief, she realized. She sat up, turned. His back was to her, shuddering. He was crying in his sleep. Was calling to a woman—a woman named Rachel. Someone he’d never mentioned before. And obviously a woman who meant a lot to him, and whose loss he freely felt in his unconscious state. So he’d lied about never having been in love. But why?
A pang of jealousy moved through her, pushed away affection, gratification. She didn’t want to be solace for some lost love he was still pining for. Didn’t want to be a secondhand replacement to someone else’s warmth in his bed. She looked over at the clock. It was almost four anyway. She might as well get home to get ready for work.
She shifted off the mattress delicately, grabbed her clothes from the chair, and started for the door. She would dress downstairs to make sure she didn’t wake him. She turned at the door to look at him. The shuddering had stopped. There was only the peaceful up and down motion of deep breathing. She opened the door, shut it lightly and made her escape.
Chapter 23
R hea looked again, covertly darting her eyes from the woman to a row of books sitting on a nearby table. But the glance confirmed what she had suspected for moments now—the woman was staring at her. Had been staring for some time.
Rhea looked around the room. There was a black girl, about her age, a few tables over reading a book. In a chair beneath one of the windows, an older black man sat leafing through a paper.
So why was the white woman staring at her? Yet there wasn’t that look of disdain, the curling up of the nose to say: “What are you doing here?”
It wasn’t a sexual thing, either. She wasn’t getting that type of vibe. Besides, the woman had to be in her fifties, with graying hair and not-so-supple skin. Still, she was nice-looking for someone that age. No, it wasn’t that. It was more like…like the woman was trying to figure out whether she knew Rhea or where she knew her from.
Rhea realized she had let her glance last too long. Because now the woman was rising from her chair—and was walking toward her. Rhea quickly tried to feign interest in one of the reference books she had just opened. But the woman stopped at her table and stood over her. Rhea recognized the scent of Tabu that her mother used to wear.
“Excuse me,” the woman said, her voice a soft rasp. “I don’t mean to disturb you, but may I speak with you for a moment?” Before Rhea could come up with some reasonable excuse why she wanted to be left alone, the woman sat down in the opposite chair, setting her large purse on the chair beside her.
“I really got to get back to my studying, so if you wouldn’t mind…” Rhea started.
“Yes, I know,” the woman interrupted. “Your ‘studying’ is why I’m here…at least, I think it is. I can’t be quite sure. My premonition wasn’t too specific. But I knew I’d find you here. I need to talk with you.” The woman stopped, looked around the library with interest. “I always liked the Newberry, but I admit I haven’t been here in quite a while. I see they’ve changed it some.”
Rhea’s exasperation was rising. Usually, she was over-accommodating to the point that friends used to take it for granted that she would do whatever requested, no matter how extreme the favor. Her grandmother got after her about that. “You let people walk over you enough, you won’t be able to wipe off the shit they leave on you.” Only recently had she taken the words to heart. Some people didn’t like it, so she was down by a couple of “friends.” Still there was something about her, maybe her youngish face, that made her too approachable by beggars, fools, and crazy people. She was pegging the woman as the last of the three.
“Look, I really don’t have time.”
The woman was reaching into her purse and pulled out a pack of Camels, looked up as she seemed to remember where she was. Shaking her head, she put them back. “What was that? Oh, yes, I won’t bother you for long. And no, I’m not some crazy woman. I’m something loopier than that. I’m a psychic.”
Rhea had had enough. She slammed her book closed, rose to leave. Then the woman said something extraordinary.
“I need to know who Rachel is.”
Rhea froze in the middle of pushing back her chair. “What?” But, of course, it was a coincidence, or something like that because…
“Rachel is the name; I’ve been hearing it quite a bit lately. Yesterday I had a premonition of you sitting here at the Newberry, and I knew I had to find you. I’m not certain what your connection is to this woman. I have to admit, sometimes my signals
can be off a little,” the woman said, staring at Rhea’s face curiously. “But I have a feeling that I’m right on target. You see, I think Rachel is the key to something that I need to find out. So I need you to tell me about her.”
Rhea didn’t know whether to sit down or leave. Her instincts were divided, pulling at each other.
“I hope I don’t have to do some parlor tricks to keep you here. By the way, my name’s Carmen, Carmen Carvelli. And I think your name is hhhmm…Thea? No, not Thea, but something close to it.”
Rhea’s legs felt shaky and she finally sat down. The woman leaned forward. “I didn’t come here to shock you, or to bother you. But I do need information from you. It’s very important. So please tell me, who is Rachel?”
Rhea only knew one Rachel. It was impossible that this woman would know that. Maybe her grandmother had told her….
“How do you know about Rachel?”
The woman’s smile was docile, but Rhea could see the exasperation in her eyes. “Like I told you, I’m psychic. Guess I’ll have to prove it, won’t I? Um, let’s see…” She stared at Rhea, a look that went on a little too long, and now Rhea was starting to worry about her safety. She peeked over at the overweight librarian, but even if she called out for help, his girth would impede an immediate response. Which wouldn’t help her if this woman had a knife or a gun.
“You’re going to get a B on your history final, and let’s see…yes, I believe you’re going to get an A in music. So, you’re a violinist? I know, you don’t believe me now, but wait a week. That’s when your grades are due. Then if I leave my number with you, you’ll call and tell me what I need to know?”
Rhea didn’t know what to think. Of course, there were ways this woman could have found out about her courses. Maybe, she was even stalking her. Still those grades would be nice—if it were true. Rhea admonished herself for the thought. There was no way.
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