by Jenna Barton
“Whose hair is this?”
It wasn’t a rhetorical question. It was a decision, just like Claire wrote about in her notebook, and it was one I’d made at some level weeks—months?—ago.
“Yours, Sir.”
Hair was nothing, really. Something that was essentially dead. Something I hardly considered and never fussed over like other women seemed to do. But dominion over it, for this time, was no longer mine. And it became more than hair.
My thigh muscles shook and I jerked, unable to catch the tremble before it registered against his body. He pulled his hand from my hair and dragged his knuckles across my temple and down my cheek, his eyes still fixed on my reflection. His hand opened, and his index finger traced over the shape of my lips, my chin, across my jaw. It came to rest.
“What’s this, Erin?”
I looked up at him, not in the mirror, but over my shoulder, and barely constrained a giggle.
“Um…” I turned to him. “That’s my nose, Sir.”
“Yep.” He reached past me and returned with a tissue, passing it over my nose before tossing it theatrically over his shoulder. “And whose is it?”
“If you want it, my nose and everything in it is yours, Sir,” I said, and I lost it. The absurdity of it all tipped me forward, laughing, against his chest.
Suddenly what was happening was lighter. We were his fingers digging into the spot below my behind that drove me to helpless giggles. We were the sound of our laughter mingling together as it filled the bathroom. Even the candlelight seemed to flicker in time with us.
“All right,” he said once we’d regained our composure. “Don’t forget, now. All mine.”
“Okay. Got it.”
“What about these?” He cupped my breasts in his hands and bent to them, grunting as his head bobbed in time with his mouth. He took one nipple, then the other, between his teeth. I squealed and swayed as he moved between them again and again, clutching at his shoulder to steady myself.
“Yours, Sir,” I said on a gust of breath as his teeth sank deep into my skin.
“Hmm?” His head slanted and one wide-pupiled blue eye turned to me. His eyebrow rose and his teeth closed, so much harder. “Hmm?”
“My um…my breasts, Sir. Your breasts.”
“No,” he said, rising, and slapped his hand across the crest of one nipple. The sting of it sent me whimpering, arching toward him for more. “These are my tits, girl. Mine. Tell me.”
“Your teeth…no, tits—your tits, Sir.” God, if he’d do that to them again, I’d call them Bipsy and Buttons.
“They are.” He bent and drew his tongue over the reddened skin he’d just made. “Mine.”
In the mirror beyond us, I caught sight of a couple. Him, broad shouldered and tattooed, bent deep from his waist and moving his head from side to side over his partner. Her, arched back and cradled into his arms, her hand resting across his shoulder, fingers curled into his hair, her face flushed and heavy-lidded, so turned on by him and for him and by herself with him. She looked at me. And though I’d been unsure I’d recognize who she was when I finally looked there and saw her, I knew exactly who was looking at me.
“It’s me,” I whispered to that woman. “This is me. And us. This is us.”
His head rose, and his reflection grinned at me.
“Yeah, it is.”
Standing, he eased me back to the soles of my feet as his hand settled on my back and sent us scuttling toward the door behind me. His hips ground against mine, raising me to my toes again, and his lips dropped to my ear.
“You know who you belong to, don’t you, girl? Now you won’t feel like you’re going to float away again.” His fingers spanned the column of my neck, cupping my jaw into his hand. Just inches, and he could grasp my throat, crush his fingers into the delicate cartilage under them. He could, but he wouldn’t. But he could. And that openness, balanced on a pin’s point, made me and my reflection finally unite as one.
I trusted him. Trust was my aphrodisiac.
“No, Sir.” I blinked hard, inhaling. Not the time to cry, no matter how strong the sense of joy surged in me from freedom and completion of something—the something—I’d been toying with for most of my adult life. “I can’t be alone when I have so much of what’s yours with me.”
“That’s right.”
Sir smiled down at me with Walt’s smile, the easy half-grin I always saw first when I thought of him. Two facets of him melded as I studied the gentle rises and weathered falls of his face. He leaned down and kissed me, then stood, dragging me along the length of his body as he rose until we were eye-to-eye.
“Wrap your legs around me, baby.”
Once I’d convinced the muscles in my abdomen that they could really constrict like that, I struggled and finally managed—inelegantly—to lock my legs around his waist. He balanced me against one thigh.
Hand thrust between my legs, he said it again. “Mine.”
I smiled, even laughed a little because of course that was his too and shook my head so emphatically, a few strands of hair tumbled across my face. “Yes. Oh my God, yes, that is absolutely yours.”
He went still. I’d never felt a blatantly predatory intention from him before, his evaluation and consideration always a more sensual tease. This wasn’t. It was Lucy, the cagey cat eyeing an unguarded bowl of cream. It was Tate skimming the tip of a cane over Gala’s purpled backside, and finding that one deep plum stripe that sent her screaming for more. It was Paul’s hands snapping a lock into place.
“It’s not a that. It’s my pussy. Don’t call what’s mine that.”
He was waiting for me to say it. No yes, Sir would suffice. My breath turned to shallow pants and my lips turned dry under them.
“Not…”
“It’s not a that.” He repeated and pressed the heel of his hand against my mons. “It’s my pussy.”
“Can’t…”
“Yes, you can. Tell me what this is and who it belongs to.”
I needed to have my hands in front of my face and needed not to be naked and needed my feet on solid flooring. The light around us dimmed and I wobbled, grasping at his shoulder. “Can’t.”
“Erin.”
“I need down. Now.” Pushing against his arm and realizing too late it was the one he’d shattered, the one that had delivered him from the horrible months of hazing and assault he’d endured as a cadet. I squirmed against the door. “I can’t.”
His voice softened, and his touch did too. “You can do this. Tell me what this is.”
Finally I gritted my teeth and shoved my shoulder against his. “Red. Put me down now.”
He stepped back, lowering me to the floor. I heard him say “shit” under his breath and he stepped back. “Erin? What happened?”
“I need to get out of here.” My breath came harder and faster. “Please, I need air.” I fumbled behind me, grasping at the doorknob with shaking fingers.
“Here. Erin, here, let me. Baby, stay still and let me open the door.”
“No! I can do it myself.” I found a hold and wrenched the door open. Behind me was dim, cool space, expansive and familiar. I stumbled over the runner under my feet, fighting for footing all the way to my bedroom.
Walt nearly folded over my back, reaching for my arms, saying over and over in a stern, efficient tone, “What’s going on, Erin? You gotta talk to me. What’s happening?”
“I need—” I twisted away from him, turning for the bathroom.
“Hey, no, will you stop?” His hands closed around my arms and held me before him. “Now, take a breath and tell me what’s happening.”
I looked up at him and my teeth began to chatter, from adrenaline or the chill in my bedroom.
“Let me get your robe. Stay here.”
When he came back, he held my bathrobe open to me as I reached for it. The acrid scent of a snuffed candle wafted behind him.
“I can do it,” I said, grasping at the sleeve.
“Here, I’v
e got it open for you. Just step into it.”
I folded my arms across my stomach. “Walt, I can put on my own bathrobe.”
He looked at me closely for a few seconds and, lifting his chin, handed it to me. Once I’d cinched it shut, I crawled across my bed and between the sheets where we’d been together just hours before.
“Can I join you?”
I pulled back the quilt for him and lay down facing his usual space, tucking the edge of my pillow under my chin. Once he was settled beside me, Walt reached for me.
“I’m so—”
“Don’t—” he said over me.
“Okay.” Without a sorry to offer, I was effectively lost for words. I looked up at him, silenced.
“What happened?”
I glanced down at my fingers, winding around the thick white belt holding my robe shut. “It’s ridiculous.”
“No, if it set you off like this, I’d say it isn’t ridiculous at all. Did I hurt you?”
“Oh no,” I rushed to say. “That was fine. All of it. I’m sturdy, you know?”
A corner of his mouth lifted a little. It was like manna from the heavens and the tension between us began to ebb.
Instead of paying attention to important things—to Walt, smiling again, chest bare and lying beside me—I closed my eyes at voices from the past, like old recordings looping over each other, cutting in at illogical junctures. A guy Ardhi knew at MIT, come to visit him in Los Altos, telling a joke about “a Lebanese woman’s gyno.” My mother and Dani fighting in the single bedroom of our apartment in San Jose, the one from our junior year in high school.
“Did you say no? Look at that skirt, Dani. No wonder he was pawing at you. You can’t just throw your legs open and let any guy who shows interest in you get in your panties. Do you want them calling you an easy piece of pussy?”
I rubbed at my face. “I have to tell you.”
“I’d like for you to.” Walt dug his body further into the bed so we were eye-to-eye. “But you don’t have to.”
“Your feet are going to go to sleep, hanging off the edge of the mattress like that,” I said, unable to disguise a laugh.
“I’ll be all right.” He smiled again, broader this time, and pushed a strand of hair from my cheek.
I had to say something. It was ridiculous and illogical and very obviously some kind of tic I’d developed over the word—and it really was just a word.
“I hate that word, Walt.”
“What word?” His eyebrows drew together and I knew he was cataloguing the scene. Finally he looked at me and scratched his earlobe. “You mean pussy?”
I flinched at it, drawing into my robe.
“Oh.”
“It just…it sounds…”
“It’s coarse.” He grinned. “I admit it. I mean, I wouldn’t have said it to my grandmother.”
I giggled in spite of the awkward space we’d stumbled into. “That’s a relief. But, after what you’ve said about your grandmother, she would have literally washed your mouth out with soap if you said something like that to her.”
He laughed. “If she could’ve caught me.” He held out his hand to me and I slid my fingers between his. “Sometimes I worry about you. I see how you are about your body on occasion. How covered up you keep yourself.” His hand closed around mine and he dipped his lips to my knuckles. “Erin, did something happen to you? Someone hurt you?”
“Um…no. Not me.” I wanted to protect him from this part of me. It was too close to his own deep fractures in Tennessee. “Dani.”
“Someone hurt your sister?”
“I—it’s that, yes. Or I think it is. It was when we were in high school. I only overheard her telling Mom and I wasn’t sure what to ask. I think she might have been trying to tell Mom about a date rape or a really aggressive guy.” I smoothed my hand over his bicep once, and then again. “I don’t want to upset you by talking about this.”
“Hey, I’ve heard plenty of shitty stories about people’s pasts. They’re not about me.”
“Okay. Um…well, it is that word. Kathy—my mom? She…she yelled at Dani when she tried to tell her, and blamed her for what she was wearing and for being available or too easy, I guess. And I know it’s irrational. But she said that word when she was yelling at Dani. I hear it and it makes me feel dirty.”
“Bad dirty?”
“Yes.” I dropped my hand to the belt on my robe. “I’ve never been convinced there is a good dirty, or at least one I could be.”
He looked at me, considering something for a long stretch of seconds. “Can I hold you?”
“Yes,” I said, nodding quickly. “I’d really like that a lot.” There was so much more I needed to, and should tell him. But for the moment, everything I’d told him was enough.
Chapter Sixteen
ON HIS WAY TO CRUSTS, Walt turned memories of Brady over and over in his head. He would have liked Erin a lot. He knew in his gut, Brady would tell him to really try with this girl, that she fit with him, could even hear Brady’s voice saying it to him.
“I’d say she’s the smartest decision you’d ever made, Bubba.”
Just like he’d been over Melissa and his grandparents, and the bullshit with Joyce and Zane during his time in cadets at Clemson, Erin was in the same predicament. Stuck, feeling ashamed of something she hadn’t asked to be part of, and sure it was better to keep it to herself. The easier, softer way was dragging her down with it, smothering her.
Brady was the most bull-headed person he’d ever met. Worse than him, worse than Lu.
You have to fight back, Bubba.
It’ll get worse that way. They’re gone after this year, Brady, just fucking drop it.
When he sat down at Crusts and explained the plan to Claire and Lu, it still made sense to him. Lucy had other ideas.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” She glared at him.
“Lucy!” Claire hissed, eyes darting toward the kitchen doors. “Miss Ernie will hear you!”
“You’ve been asking me that for close to twenty years, Louis. Haven’t you figured it out for yourself already?”
“Walt, I’m serious. You don’t fix emotional stuff with playing. Especially with a headfuck.”
“It’s not a headfuck. She’ll have an idea of what she’s going into.” Before Lu could jump back at him again, he added, “And she’ll know she can end it at any time. Not red out, but just end it. Different dynamic, no D/s.”
“Oh, really? You so sure she knows the difference if you ask her to do this? Speaking of, you two just started trying D/s and the last time you did it, it went south. Now you’re going to sit there and tell me you can take this woman up against a trauma—really knocking at the door of a public consensual non-consent scene in the middle of a bunch of vanillas, if you asked me—and do it in public, and it won’t blow up in your face?”
Walt shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Well, I’m not bailing you out of jail, you stupid fuck.”
“Hey, there, watch it with the sass.” He folded his arms across his chest. “May I remind you, you’ve done more in the middle of a Clemson homecoming game.”
Lu’s eyes flashed as she recalled the incident, and she grinned. “Well, that was youth and alcohol and a very hot brunette named Lauren.” She shook her head and took a long sip of tea. “I don’t see how you’re going to pull this off, Wanda.”
“I don’t know, Lucy. I think this might be a good thing for Erin.”
Lucy’s head swiveled to Claire a second before Walt’s. “Excuse me, honeybuns?”
“Erin’s aversion isn’t to the word, it’s to what it means. It’s to the baggage.”
“Right,” Walt said, gesturing toward Claire.
“She’s such an overachiever, Lucy. Can’t you see it? You’re just like her, but you gave yourself permission to relax and play around with the dirty part of yourself.”
Lu’s eyebrow rose as she smirked. “Are you fucking kidding me? I wear it like Mrs. Astor’s diamonds
.” She turned back to Walt. “I want nothing to do with Erin doing this big claiming-her-inner-dirty-girl, women’s magazine-variety feminist exercise.”
Jesus, she could be vicious—and pig-headed.
“She needs to face it.” Walt ground his jaw and took a deep breath, tracing a finger across the tabletop. He pushed his lemon pie away from him, his taste for it gone. “Look, Luce, I know you think it’s a long walk between doing something like this and Erin’s…I don’t know what to call it. Body problem?”
Lucy’s eyebrow hovered. She’d been to therapy too, after the Johns family disowned her and cut her off, and was known to pay a return visit now and then. “Oh, I don’t know? Repression? Her reaction to her sister’s lifestyle by overcompensating with school and then work? Her mother denying a possible assault and calling her sister trashy in the same breath, while exhibiting the same behavior she both condemned and reinforced in that same daughter? Erin’s inability to get past first when it comes to her sexuality? A head problem. Not a body problem.”
“That’s a good summary, Lucy.” Claire nodded, giggling. “You should have been a therapist. Or an attorney.”
“The hell. Most of the Virginia Johns are lawyers.” Lu sneered, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “Sleazy fuckers.”
“Yeah, well, it sounds worse when you put it like that.” He pushed his lemon pie away, his taste for it gone. “She makes it past first. Makes it to all the bases. But part of her hates herself while she’s doing it, or doesn’t seem to think she has the right to be the one running bases in the first place.”
Walt drained his tea but failed to dislodge the knot catching in his throat. “Look, she sees it too. Hell, if she hadn’t connected the dots on her own, I never would have thought of this in the first place. The only way through a stretch of bad throws is another set of balls.”
After a long stretch of seconds, Lucy inhaled and looked at him with soft eyes. “You sound like Brady. All of these stupid baseball analogies. Stupid fucker and his baseball.”