by Sunniva Dee
“Yeah. Man on a mission and all that.” His arms tighten around me before he relaxes again and continues. “By the time I met you, I’d already learned that I didn’t have time for dating. I needed my girl to jump into a real relationship immediately, and I needed a few weeks for her to get to know me and like me before she learned the truth about my job.
“I needed her to trust my feelings for her. I needed to woe her. To make sure she enjoyed every aspect of being with me.”
“You sound so calculated. You’ve been trying to manipulate me this whole time?” The moment I ask, I know it’s not true. It can’t be manipulation when a person tells you up what they’re doing from the start.
“Yeah, I’m guilty. I’ve swayed our relationship as much as you allowed. But guys do worse during the dating dance. Like being the best version of five different guys in one, and then once you’re a couple, he’s neither of those people. I wanted to skip that part. Be with you and be the best me I have in me with you, always.”
I scoff. “That’s nice, but look at you. A person with as many exes as you can’t possibly feel much for number fifty-two. I’m just another girl you like slightly better than the crowd, a chick from your serial harem, and that’s bullshit.”
“Shh, relax. Please? You’re working yourself up.” His mouth caresses mine. I don’t pull away, but my lips are stiff against his.
“I admit that you started out that way, but it’s a human thing for a person to do, you know. I had a few walls up to guard myself.
“You are so beautiful. Those big innocent eyes made me want to own you and treat you so well you forgot yourself. You’re my type, I’m not going to lie about that.
“But then I did get to own you, and it was staggering. You were there so fully, so in our moment. You let me lead you through your body, and you sensed everything I gave you. You’re a cat, Savannah, arching into my hands, fucking rippling like water that forms around me. You’re addictive.”
My stomach tightens at the memory of the exquisite way this man guides us to ecstasy. He blinks, savoring gone pleasures too.
“But it wasn’t just that. You and I, we joked. We talked. You entrusted me with your fears and your secrets. You welcomed my help—even with your mother, you did, and that was huge for me. We had so much in the beginning, and it killed me when it disappeared. It was like being expelled from a heaven I hadn’t even known to miss.
“You’ve had names for what we were or weren’t, Savannah, but those names never changed what you were to me. You’ve been my girl the whole time, and apart from Silk, us is the longest I’ve ever had.”
I open my mouth to reply, but Ciro isn’t finished.
“I’m twenty-eight years old. I know what I want, and I don’t mess around. I want you. I want you so badly I’ll do anything to keep you. These ups and down, the breakup, the distance has only solidified the one thing I know for sure, and that is that I love you. I mean business, Savannah. Long-term business.”
I let out a sob. “I feel so much for you too.”
“Good.”
“No, it’s not. You know I’ve had a hard time thinking of you with other women.” He wants to cut in, but I cover his mouth. “It helped to meet Ana and Aaron. I saw how he looked at her, how completely he accepted her other world.”
I exhale. Get ready for the rest of it. “Then you came with me to my mom’s, and again you helped me coax her out of a crisis in the smoothest way possible. I was so full of you after that I believed I could do us.”
I don’t like the tentative smile on his face. It’s like I’m giving something only to snatch it away in the next instant. “For a moment, I thought we could be together. I thought I might not question your loyalty to me. I’d keep to the rules of smart porn-star girlfriends and boyfriends and not visit you at work. I wouldn’t watch gifs you’re tagged in on your social media or read the fans’ comments. I’d do it right.”
“Savannah, baby girl, I—”
“Ciro, I never told you what I was doing at your house the day Silk was there. I was there to tell you I was ready to be your girlfriend again.”
He groans. Drops his hold on me to scrub a hand over his face. Then he curses under his breath. “She shouldn’t have come.”
“She did because she needed you.”
“I couldn’t shut the door on her! She’s been through so much.”
“I know, and that’s exactly my point.” I draw back to caress him. Watch my own fingers as they trace his temple and run down the hollow of his cheek. Light stubbles. God, I love him. I do love him, and this hurts so much.
“I’d come to terms with living with your job as our shadow. I wasn’t going to let myself freak out over it anymore because you kept telling me, kept showing that you wouldn’t attach your heart and mind to another woman.
“But now...” I chew on my lip. There’s a lump growing in my throat, and I have to swallow it before I can continue.
“If I not only have to struggle with your job, if I can’t trust that I have your heart— If Silk or another woman can bounce in at any moment, then I’d be a fool to give up Status Quo for you.”
I expect him to rebuke me. Reason with me. Instead I get silence. It stretches on, longer, wider, until my lump is replaced by the threat of tears. I can’t let them sieve out right now. It’s not a good time.
He cradles my head tenderly and pulls me toward him until his face buries in my hair. With his nose, he runs a path down, freeing my throat and my ear of cover and leaving me open to him.
He kisses me there, wordless pecks at first, leaving dampness that cools in the night air. But then he laps, suckles—loves—I’ve bared my grit to him, and this is what he does; he worships me.
The world can’t be this ironic, can it? How can he be how he is? There must be a ruler up there with a magical finger pointing at me, now, saying, “There.” Zap! “Let’s see how she handles this.”
But then that ruler is gone. He’s gone, because Ciro is all there is. A benevolent moon lends shine to his skin. It glows as he lays me down and fans his hands open under my shirt.
Fears have the ability to melt.
I respond. I arch up for more. A thigh presses between my legs, spreading me open and rocking against my core. I moan. I seek his touch. We’re not close enough, not warm enough, and he knows when I can’t wait for him anymore.
He should have let me go, but as he pushes my pants down, as the harsh breeze of the ocean hits me down low, I realize what he’s doing.
Wordlessly, he argues with me in the way he knows best. Wave after wave of pleasure runs through me with the slickness he pulls, with each moan he draws, for each jerk against the sand.
When he presses inside of me, I whimper, and it’s our first time all over again. He’s hard. His width forces me open, demands that I take him, and tonight he doesn’t ask if I’m okay.
Tonight, he keeps my hips still when anxiety tenses my muscles. Hotly, he breathes against my throat. He groans and eases inside of me so slowly he trembles.
“I don’t care,” I hiss. “I don’t care if it hurts.”
He doesn’t answer, doesn’t heed me. Slowly, he feeds himself into me until I lift off the ground for more. His stab is deep red desire, heat piercing through my abdomen. I squeal. He doesn’t ask if I’m okay, doesn’t ask, but I am so, so okay.
I’m a quivering mess when he stills over me. My eyes transfix on his face as sure hands move down until they clench around my waist. He stills me in position like he has plans.
My heart kicks into a frenzy. It’s “Flee! Now!,” but I am swollen and drenched with the most primal of urges. We’re joined to his hilt, and I start to contract around him.
Pained, he shuts his eyes. “Can you take more?”
My noise of consent makes me sound wounded. Pleasure and angst-ridden anticipation make me shake.
/> “Goddamn, you’re delicious,” he mutters. “I’m going to ride you.”
He pulls out a little, my love canal closing around him and wanting him back inside. I’m about to complain, but then he drives into me with such force that I rock upward on the sand, head off his jacket and grating against the ground.
I let out a Nngh, lose my breath but don’t have time to gather myself before he repeats it, faster, more, time after time, until that hot stab of pleasure piercing through me becomes a constant way-too-much!
I hold onto him, whining. My arms are around his neck and my legs circle his behind. The new orgasm takes me hard and runs off with me. He doesn’t even acknowledge it as he drives me toward the next without mercy.
“Oh God!”
Like he promised he rides me. There are no words, just gasoline, more and more gasoline. It’s Ciro convincing me that I want this, that I can’t be without him. I drop my arms from around him, and I am alight with his fire.
I’m not sure if I come down all the way because he’s hammering into me, not allowing me to think. I am the flames he builds and builds and builds. I am senses only, and he has done this to me.
Faintly, I notice the sand digging under my nails. I’m clawing, wanting to ground myself. I can’t.
Ah how long can he keep going?
When I think that he slows down, it’s to turn me in his arms. With my back toward him, he lifts my hips enough to ram inside of me again, and I am gasping, pulsating. I am disaster.
27. GIFTS
On that beach, he flared me open until I was bawling. It was my soul he exposed with the ferocity of his touch. Could a therapist have achieved what Ciro did?
It’s been a month since that night, and he understands what happened to us. It was in desperation, he says, a last rogue attempt at making me change my mind. But it was also him absorbing as much of me as he could before I left him one last time.
“I wasn’t going to pursue you after that. When you cried, I thought I’d gone too far, and I steeled myself, preparing to lick my wounds alone in my den.” He leans over dinner on the funkis-bunker balcony and directs my chin so his lips find mine.
I’d hurt for Ciro with his ignorant parents and sex-crazed drug-addict past. But suddenly, it was my own mud that exploded out.
“I lost it down there,” I remind him. “You were so strong, and I didn’t know how long you would keep possessing me. You even took over my brain. It made me see these things with crystalline clarity. And here I am, now. I’m taking my chances and cutting my losses.”
“Happy one-month anniversary.”
“Happy monthiversary, love.”
“I’ve got something for you.”
“Oh no, no, you don’t.” He’s going to flop to a knee with that ring again! I know he still has it. I’ve seen it in a drawer in the bedroom.
“Don’t look so scared.” He shoves a small jewelry box over the table while I shake my head.
“Come on, open it.”
“Can I open it in a few years?”
“No, it’ll go bad.”
I glance up quickly, oozing hope until I see that he’s joking. I suppress my groan. Can I turn him down a second time?
Only crazy people ask other people to marry them after a month. Only reckless people accept. So far, I’m already outside my comfort zone in the reckless department.
With trembling fingers, I pry the box open. And inside…
Is a beautiful necklace!
“Yes!” I exclaim.
“You like it?” He’s already brimming with pride.
“Of course I do!” As soon as I saw the chain, I was so relieved I forgot to study the pendant. I look down again. And frown. A hibiscus rests perfectly poised between two flamingo lilies. They’re so beautiful. Really, they are, down to the last intricately veined petal.
“It’s platinum, and the crusts of yellow stones you see are diamonds. They’re small, but there was no way to make them bigger on the spadix without taking away from it.”
“Spay… dicks?”
“Yeah, the tails in the middle of the flowers.”
“Ciro. Baby.” I know I don’t sound happy anymore. I sound chiding, and that’s okay with me, because yes, my boyfriend loves sex and clearly also sexual symbolism. But come on. He wants me to wear his bunch-’o-dicks around my neck now? I’m starting to miss the engagement ring after all. “Enough with the dicks already.”
“Spadix. Not dicks.”
“Whatever, you always give me dicks.”
He frowns too, but in an effort to understand me. I huff. “The flowers. You drowned me in these flowers for about a month straight.”
“Not straight. It was three different periods.”
“Okay, a total of a month. Anyway, no need to play coy, here. Sam told me. See?” I point at his spay-dicks, the proud, yellow cocks standing at attention on the pendant. “I know what you were doing. You were besieging me with an army of flower dicks.”
There’s a moment of stunned silence before Ciro crumbles. I don’t know if I should laugh with him or slap him back to his senses. He starts to repeat my words, a few here and there between his guffaws, while I sink back into my seat with my arms crossed.
“Oh baby girl. You’re priceless. ‘Bunch of dick,’” he repeats for the fifth time, and truly it’s not that funny.
A minute later, he’s apologizing, and I’m scowling. He loves me, he says. So much. It was cute, he says, and he wasn’t ridiculing my interpretation of it, and no, he doesn’t at all think it means I’m a complete deviant.
Unfortunately, he can’t keep an innocent expression on the last part. When I’m about to get mad again, he pulls me into his lap and kisses me. Funny how much easier it is for him to suck away my anger.
“So what’s with the hibiscus and the flamingo lilies?” I ask afterward.
“I’m superstitious. I believe in giving the right vibes to the surroundings, to maybe harvest what you need in return.”
He nuzzles my neck. “Hibiscus has different meanings depending on place and time, but it represents the perfect woman and perfect wife. Back in Victorian times, a man would give hibiscus to a woman to acknowledge her delicate beauty. So, you see, I had double reason to give them to you.”
I purse my smile under control. “And the flamingo lilies? Were they you?”
“Ha, no. I don’t feel like I need to represent myself.”
“Then what? Just flowers?”
“Not just flowers. From the beginning, I wanted to be the one who made you happy. I wanted you to look at me and smile with that gleam in your eyes, and I instantly knew that I couldn’t allow you to lack for anything.
“I want you to have everything you want. All you need is to point, and it is yours. That’s why the flamingo lily was perfect for you. It symbolizes abundance and happiness.”
Gah, Sam and his stupid twisted mind. I gave the sorority girls my perfect-woman, abundance-and-happiness flowers too! I want them back now.
I force a hot-cheeked smile and am rewarded with a chuckle. “Plus, they’re both red,” he whispers. “A deep, deep red, the color of love and passion and undiluted lust and a hell-of-a-lot of desire. I always want to fuck you senseless.”
“You ass. You almost had me crying, there, and bam, you ruin it.” I grin.
“Wait, I have another gift. I bought us a Bobo-the-Clown nose.”
“!”
The call doesn’t come in the middle of the night this time. I’d talked to my mother the night before, and she’d seemed fine. A little twitchy thoughtwise, but not too bad.
I’m cleaning my room. I’ve spent hardly any time at my own house over the last two months so it’s dusty here. It’s three in the afternoon on a perfectly fine Wednesday, and afternoon phone calls is just one of those normal things.
�
��Hey, Mom.” I pull a wet cloth along the bookshelf, appalled at the layer of grey fluff I amass. “What’re you up to?”
Labored breathing is my first sign that something is wrong.
“Mom. Hello?”
“Savannah?” She says my name like she wasn’t the one calling.
“Mom, are you okay? Where are you?”
She must be walking, because I hear the rhythm of her footsteps in her voice. Cars, lots of cars around her, honking.
“I don’t know!” There’s panic in her voice. “Savannah, I don’t want to be here. I was stopping them. They got mad.”
“Who were you trying to stop?”
“The cars, of course. They could hit the mountain lions.”
“What?”
A prolonged honk drowns her out, but then she’s back, hiccoughing with fear.
“Are you on the road somewhere?”
No answer, just hiccoughing.
“Did you just nod, Mom?” I try.
“Yeah.”
“Get off the road. Get to the side. Please, Mom! They’re going to hit you. I’ll come for you, okay? You cannot stand in the middle of the road.”
More cars, angry drivers careening by on honks and revved engines. Mom yelps.
“Are you okay?
“Listen to me.
“Listen to me!”
I start to hyperventilate. If I lose it too, who’s going to save her? One of the angry drivers? Where are people’s compassion? Can’t they see she’s not well?
“Yes?” Her answer is tentative.
“Are you walking to the side?”
“But the mountain lions.”
“They’ll see you at the side of the road and won’t pass you,” I say. “You’ll be like the school traffic guards.”
“Yeah...” She’s walking again.
“Are you on the side of the road now?”
“Uh-huh, by the ditch.”
“You don’t know where you are? I want to pick you up, but I need to know where to go, Mom. Think.”
“By the waves.”
“The ocean?”