Count On Me

by Abigail Graham

  The doors open and nothing happens. Then the first child, a little girl, steps out. Haltingly, slowly, more join her, then more, forming a crowd around the vehicles. One of the seated couples…no, a pair of the seated parents, finally jump to their feet and run over, scooping their daughter up in their arms.

  Then the dam bursts and they run together. Laughing, crying, embracing and spinning in place.

  I have to cover my mouth. Hot tears burn on my cheeks.

  “You…”

  “I can’t undo everything I’ve done, but there are ways I can start. You were right. I wanted to free my people and I put them in chains instead. I was trying to make a heaven and instead I made a hell.”

  I can’t talk, my throat is too dry. I want to tell him something but I don’t know what.

  “This will continue whether you stay or go,” he says. “I will make this right. I cannot die a man you would hate. I only beg you to stay, so that I can become a man you could love. They need this. I need it. I don’t want to be Hades anymore. Lead me into the light, Penny. Please.”

  “I don’t know yet,” I choke out. “I’m sorry but I don’t know. I need to go home. I need to see it again before I decide.”

  He holds my hand hard in both of his. “I know that now. I understand that I cannot grip the world and crush it into a more pleasing shape. I tried to escape the madness of my fathers… But it took root in my soul and twisted me, ruling my land and people while I looked away in disgust at what I was doing. You’ve broken my armor, Penny.”

  I try to speak but can’t. He dries my tears lightly with a caress and holds me until my breathing steadies, and gives me a little push.

  “You are responsible for this. Go see them.”

  Trembling, I walk over to the crowd. I don’t know if anyone has told them, but they know somehow.

  They…they bow. They get down on their knees in front of me.

  “Stop,” I bark at them in their language, “get up, stand. Don’t kneel before me.”

  It takes them a minute to listen. Then the hugs and kisses to my hands start, and I’m jostled around by joyous, weeping parents. I can’t stand it much longer, and have to run back to my prince. I stay at his side while we tour the festival.

  There’s food, fresh fruits and vegetables, and traditional delicacies, and everyone wants to feed us. After an hour I’m so stuffed I can barely walk.

  Then the dancing starts.

  The biggest square in town surrounds a huge statue of one of the prince’s ancestors, maybe the first one, his armor of black marble inlaid with gold, helmet tucked under his arm.

  I don’t think he was meant to be covered in flowery wreaths and decked out in a big, plumy hat. Nor surrounded by people dancing. The dance is fast, rhythmic, in time with the band playing on the stage at the far end of the square. They sing too fast for me to even try to make out the words.

  I’m distracted anyway. Kristoff pulls me out into the open and spins me around, and the dance starts. It feels like flying, most of all when he grabs my waist and tosses me in the air, catches me, and spins around with me until I’m dizzy. A fruity punch like Sangria is passed around in clay cups, and after a few gulps I get a very solid buzz going. When he sees me swipe my face clean with my sleeve, my prince laughs at me.Loud and long.

  I stand there and smile dumbly, shocked at the sight. I’ve never heard him laugh before. I’m not the only one staring. He snatches one of the clay cups and drains it, pinkish punch running down his chin, and the dance starts again.

  After a few more we’re both giggling and dizzy.

  He feeds me a sausage on a crusty bun to sober me up, then some grapes, plucking them from the stem one at a time to pop them in my mouth. I nip at his fingers before I chew them and swallow them, so sweet they almost make me sick, but I can’t stop craving more.

  This goes on throughout the day. By the time the sun has passed its high point and begins to sink toward the mountains, I’m exhausted, sick to my stomach, still tipsy, and giggling like a fool as he literally carries me over his shoulder and puts me back in the car. I flop down on the seat and when he gets in the back with me, I crawl on top of him and kiss him and mingle his heat with the sweet taste of the liquor.

  Whatever he said about comporting myself apparently went out the window during one of these festivals. My dress is a mess, the laces pulled loose, and the big buttons on my blouse are half undone. He stops himself when he realizes he’s just shoved his hand into my blouse and squeezed my breast. I bounce on his lap and giggle and laugh at nothing.

  Even the castle is a less dreary place. While we were gone the servants hung flowers and bright banners from the battlements and gargoyles, and the black, brooding stone is suddenly alive with color, like flowers springing from the darkness of the earth. I stand there and stare at it in the reverence only a drunk woman can muster, and jump up to kiss his cheek.

  “Why all this?”

  I though the festival was over, but music blares from the courtyards. The servants are free for the day, too, it seems.

  “No more winters,” he declares, holding me by the waist. “Today begins the summer of my heart. Dance with me.”

  How can I argue with that?

  We dance until I can’t stand up, then sit on benches in the great hall. No throne, only long tables covered in food, so many things I’ve never even seen before. I eat onion soup from what he calls a trencher, a hollowed loaf of bread, then tear it apart and eat it. There’s wild boar and goose, goat and pheasant, and I can barely eat more than a sliver of each, just enough to enjoy the taste before moving on.

  Kristoff stands and claps his hands, motioning, and I burst out laughing like a lunatic as the servants carry out an enormous platter piled high with hot, steaming cheeseburgers. I grab one and so does he, one in either hand. I don’t know how he eats it all.

  The party gets wilder and wilder as the night wears on. Before I realize it I’m up on top of one of the tables in a wild dance where partners are passed from person to person, spun around and around until I’m in his arms again.

  By nightfall I’m exhausted, stuffed, sweaty, and very thoroughly drunk, babbling to the crown prince of Kosztyla about the first time I ever drank, when I downed half a bottle of grape vodka and it all came right back up, as if it hit my stomach and bounced back. The prince laughs and everyone else laughs, either because the story was hilarious or there is nothing quite as funny as a room full of laughing people.

  Eventually I’m in his arms, carried up to his private quarters, moaning and queasy from all the food. I lie there as he strips me down on the bed, pulling the clothes away until I’m in my birthday suit, shivering on the silks. He joins me and pulls covers up, and I lie there moaning for half the night until I finally pass out.

  When I wake up my head is hammering and I run to the bathroom, uncaring of the cold stone under my bare feet as I fight back the urge to puke. The prince follows me, and as I kneel over the toilet, laces his fingers in my hair and holds it back.

  Kneeling naked over the toilet, I can’t be very sexy, but you’d never know it from the way he looks at me. I end up keeping it down with a great struggle, and plop on the floor, beet red.

  He gingerly draws me to my feet and gives me a light pat on the ass. “Clean up and put on a dressing gown, so I may have breakfast brought.”

  “Ugh, I can’t eat.”

  “I command it,” he says mockingly, and kisses my cheek.

  After I’m dressed in a fluffy, heavy robe and slippers, I join him in the “solar” (what a weird name for a room) and eat a light breakfast of fruit and bread, served with cranberry juice and a half glass of tomato juice, no vodka.

  “No hair of the dog, huh?”

  He smirks. “I thought it unwise. I can’t have you unloading your breakfast all over my shoes while we meet with the German consulate.”

  “Meet with the what?”

  It’s in advance of the trip to New York. This apparently requires
I step up the complexity of my dress. Back to the princess outfit, but I don’t mind it this time. Green again, he likes me in green. I think I look ridiculous but after I’m all laced up and adjust my skirts, he looks at me reverently.

  “I’m glad you decided not to wear a cream-colored dress when I asked. I don’t want to see you in a lighter shade until our wedding day.”

  I almost correct him but stop myself. Every hour that passes, the trip to New York grows closer. I was hot for it not long ago, somehow convinced even after I slept with him that I would be able to leave, but now I’m not so sure.

  My home, where I come from. Not New York, but the United States. I’m going to see my parents again…if I call them, which I haven’t yet.

  The meeting is at eleven in the morning, in the great hall. I can’t follow much of it, since it’s, you know, in German, but I smile and try to pick out a few words. They sound angry, I know that.

  I end up…hanging out with the ambassador’s wife. I say a few sentences to her through a translator, and we eat brunch. I can’t wait for it to be over and when it finally is, I try to keep myself from leaping up to run over by the prince so he can rescue me from Castle Awkward.

  “What was all that about?” I ask him when it’s over.

  “The Americans wished to convey through him that they wish your immediate safe return. Your parents have made quite a noise with the authorities demanding you come back.”

  I stop in my tracks.

  God, why did this have to happen? I start to wonder if I was hoping they’d just forget about me completely.

  Dinner is very quiet. I stare at my plate and push the food around, not really bothering with it. That night I sleep on my side, facing away from him. He doesn’t press me, though in the morning we wake tangled again.

  This feels so good. I feel like I was made to be here, like he was made to hold me. From his steady breathing I can tell he’s still asleep as I blink and yawn, stifling the noise with my hand so as not to wake him. Very slowly, over the course of several minutes, I turn around in his arms and face him, so when he does wake up my face will be the first thing he sees.

  Sleeping naked still takes some getting used to. His hands are rough and the long scar across his midsection is bumpy and coarse, but the rest of him is almost too smooth, his skin too soft. Touching him comes naturally. I explore gently, feeling his ribs. From my slow touch, I can feel where they were broken once, or maybe multiple times, just a little bent and thick where the fracture healed over.

  He makes a small sound and I think he’s going to wake, but his eyelids stay pressed shut, his eyes darting back and forth in a dream. His expression hardens a little and he pulls me closer to him, his face sinking into my frizzy bed-hair. His breath tickles my forehead and his lips graze my skin.

  He’s so warm, and of course he has a raging hard-on. I tuck myself closer to him, twining our legs together, so I can feel his cock against my stomach. He shifts in his sleep and grinds against me, and I urge him on with a gentle stroke, my fingers move slowly up his shaft then back down again. I squeeze the thick head in my palm a little and stroke him again.

  A little lick wets my palm, and I start to stroke him off in earnest. I can’t tell if he’s awake or not, exactly, as he gasps. Then his eyes flick open, distant and unfocused until they lock on mine. I greet him with a little kiss and faster strokes with both hands as he holds me tight against him.

  He grunts hard, and hot cum coats my belly in thick spurts, sticking to my hands in the process. I bring my hand up, flicking the covers away with my arm, and taste him, sucking his seed from my fingers with pursed lips.

  Overcome and still hard, he pushes me on my back, lies on top of me, and buries himself to the root in a single thrust. I cry out in pain, squeezing his hips to lock him inside me and stop him from moving. We stick together as he begins to thrust, my pleasure mounting with each push, filling me. Whether he’s half awake or the sight of me tasting his cum from my fingers drove him wild, he’s not gentle. At all.

  I like that. I don’t want gentle this morning. I want him to make me feel it later. I’m certainly feeling it now. It’s a good thing I was sopping wet for him as he takes me in long, full-body thrusts that slide me back and forth on the featherbed. He lifts up, pushes his knees under me, takes me by the hips, and pulls me into him, his fingers leaving red marks in my sides and ass as he drives into me hard, his thrusts growing more urgent at the sight of my back arching and my stomach quivering and sucking in every time his thick shaft reaches all the way in and draws back.

  I dig my arms into the bed and launch myself at him. He topples backward and them I’m on top, our lips locked as I thrash my hips of him in a steady, rapid rhythm. The faster I go the more intense it grows until my breath comes in ragged gasps as I hold it in, trying to stop the inevitable.

  When he comes for me I grip him hard with my legs and squeeze my whole body before falling back in a quivering heap, his cock sliding out of me as I flop on the bed. My legs shake like leaves as I get up, the aftershocks still slipping through my body in cold twists, bend over, and wriggle my ass at him, urging him to chase me.

  He catches me in the bathroom and pushes me into the shower, up against the wall. The water cascades over us both and I cry out as it starts out freezing and quickly turns steaming hot as he takes me again, holding me by the ribs and entering me with a single thrust, ramming home with an urgency born of the unspoken fear that today I will leave him, this will be the last time.

  I wriggle loose of his wet hands and he bends his knees and thrusts into me against the wall, our bodies locked together, staring steadily into each other’s eyes. He comes so hard it hurts, and I join him shortly after, my toes curling in the air as he lifts me bodily from the shower floor with his thrusts.

  Pleasure falls over me like a curtain, pulls through me like ropes, slides through me in waves, crashes from the tips of my toes to the cold, tingly shock in my scalp as I grip him iron tight with arms and legs and body, and it feels like all the barriers between us fall, like I’m sinking into him, lost forever as I draw him deeper inside me and swallow him up.

  When he lets me down, my legs shake and I can barely stand, but I feel sultry, wicked, and grind my ass against his cock, wiggling it as I look back over my shoulder.

  He pushes me against the wall and I feel a quiver of fear.

  “My princess is ready to give me everything, it seems?”

  Does he mean…

  He backs off when he sees the look on my face and uses his fingers to sweep water-sodden locks out of my face. I grin.

  “Maybe,” I tell him, raking my nails down his stomach toward his throbbing cock, “if my prince is worthy.”

  He pushes me against the wall and kisses me. He never stops kissing me even as he washes my hair and scrubs my stomach with a bar of soap, and his hands rarely leave my body. I like it when he touches me while I’m wet, the way his rough hands glide so smoothly over my skin, raking me with shivering delight, and the little nip he gives me at the back of my neck makes me want to bend over and wiggle my ass at him again. Mount up, your grace.

  It’s time to go, though.

  My stomach drops as he dries me off. He insists on doing it himself, as I sit on a wooden bench. He dries my hair and my arms, and rubs the towel around each of my fingers, my legs and toes. All the attention makes me self-conscious, and I end up sitting there hugging myself to hide my chest, legs squeezed together as if I didn’t just jerk him off all over my stomach before he fucked me. Twice.

  “You are cute,” he says as he stands to dry himself.

  “Uh-huh,” I say, watching him sweep the rivulets of water from his sculpted form, almost drooling at the sight of his big cock between his legs, still half hard from giving me a pounding that, yes, I am going to still be feeling later.

  “We do not have to go at all if you do not wish it so,” he says softly, touching my shoulder.

  I rest my cheek on his arm. “Part o
f me just wants to stay. I like this. I like it being like this. But I have to see my home again. I have to know. Hades let his bride go home for half the year, but you don’t seem the type to let yours leave for that long.”

  He kneels in front of me, takes my hand, and kisses it.

  “Tell me you love me and I will give you the world.”

  I stare at him.

  “Ah, figuratively. I assure you.”

  “I need to get dressed.”

  “If I could I would bar you from ever wearing a stitch again. I like you like this.”

  To prove it, he grabs my ass and pinches me as I stride past him, and chases me out into the bedroom. We almost end up on the bed. When I say almost I mean I fall back over it and he almost fucks me right there but pulls back at the last second, tracing his fingers down my stomach as he steps to the wardrobe to take my clothes.

  There must be some reason why he insists on dressing me. I don’t argue. I like it, and I like returning the favor.

  He looks different from when I first saw him. Smiles come easier to his lips and he laughs when I say something silly, and he pulls his hair back instead of letting it hang all over his face, and he puts on black clothes as though he resents them now, not like he’s swathing himself in his chosen color.

  It’s time to leave. It’ll be a nine-hour flight.

  I’m going home.

  I think.

  10

  I’ve flown exactly once in my life, three times if you consider the connectors different flights. From Philadelphia to Madrid to Basel to Solkovia. The plane that carries us to New York unnerves me when I first see it. It’s so small, and sleek; more like a rocket ship. I’m a little scared to ask how fast it goes.

  Once inside, though, it’s just a plane. I don’t notice any difference in speed and let out a slow breath once it levels off. My seat is huge and plush, twice as wide as an airline seat. To my surprise, though, I don’t drift off to sleep, even after I drink a tiny glass of sweet liquor to calm my nerves. I feel a growing sense of dread as the land below gives way to ocean, sapphire blue as far as the eye can see.