A Kiss For You

by Rachel Van Dyken

  “You don’t know shit!”

  Breaking free, I headed to the front of the house, away from the party, and away from King. I needed to be alone. I needed to think. King caught up with me easily, each one of his strides accounting for at least three of my own.

  “I’m done with nice, Pup,” King shouted from close behind me. I continued marching away, trying to put some space between us.

  “You’re done being nice?” I called back over my shoulder. “You’ve never been nice. You’ve lied to me and toyed with me, and that is not nice.”

  King caught me from behind just as I approached the first pillar under the house. He pushed me up against it and pressed himself to my back, his erection prodding the seam of my ass.

  “Bear is nice,” I said with my cheek pressed sideways against the pillar. “Bear offered to take me in. He wanted me to stay with him at the clubhouse. He wants me to keep his bed warm, fuck his brains out. Told me he wanted me on the back of his bike.”

  “What the fuck did you just say to me?” King hissed into my neck, his teeth against my skin. I didn’t let that stop me from raining down my wrath on him. He deserved every last bit of it. I spun myself around in his arms, but he was too fast. Before I could bolt, he had me pegged against the pillar, my back to his front. His eyes darkened. A vein pulsed in his neck. His jaw was set on a hard line.

  “You heard me,” I said. “I was going to say yes, too. I was going to go with him and let him put his hands on me. You saw us. He was about to kiss me. I was going to let him.” I was wild with power, crazed with lust, and completely reckless of the consequences of my actions.

  I was free.

  I gave zero fucks.

  It was fucking amazing.

  “What the fuck have I been telling you?” King roared pushing his knee between my legs, spreading them apart until I was straddling his thigh.

  “Nothing. You’ve been telling me nothing but some fucking bullshit about being yours for weeks now.”

  “Newsflash, little girl. You were mine from the first moment you walked in on me fucking that girl on my table. You were mine then, and you’re mine now.” King looked as if any control he had was gone. He’d snapped.

  I didn’t care.

  “You’re a fucking liar,” I spat.

  “I’ve never lied about that. You. Are. Mine.”

  “Fuck you. I don’t belong to you or anyone else!” I yelled. King pressed his forehead against mine.

  “I’m only going to say this once more. You.” He thrust up against me, his erection against my core, and I gasped. “Are.” He did it again. This time, I had to put my arms on his shoulders to prevent myself from falling. “Mine,” he said, hammering in his point with another thrust of his hips.

  I pulled back and looked him dead in the eye. “Fucking prove it,” I challenged.

  King growled and pushed his hands up my dress, forcefully ripping my panties down my legs. We were in the shadows, but anyone walking by the side of the house could see us. The instant he touched me, I was too lost in sensation to care.

  Zero fucks.

  King kissed me. An all-encompassing kiss. A possession. He wasn’t kissing my mouth. He was claiming me as his, and I was going to leave my mark on him in every way I could.

  My entire body ignited into the flame he’d been stoking inside of me for weeks. He kneaded my breasts through my dress and attacked my neck with his lips. He lifted me up and wrapped my thighs around his waist. I grunted in frustration, gyrating against his erection. I couldn’t get close enough. I couldn’t find the friction I needed.

  “You a virgin, Pup?” King asked wickedly.

  “You know I don’t know that,” I panted.

  “Cause I’m letting you know right now that there won’t be a question if you are after tonight. I’m going to be buried so deep inside your sweet pussy you won’t ever again forget who owns it.”

  He pushed down my dress, exposing my breasts, then yanked up the bottom until I was naked except for a scrap of fabric lingering around my midsection.

  “Fuck yes,” he hissed through his teeth.

  After that, we were all hands and mouths. Touching, exploring, needing, biting. Teeth clacking together in an effort to get closer to one another. It was sloppy and wet and wonderful, and it wasn’t enough. King reached down between us, released his belt, and pushed down the front of his jeans. His erection sprang free. Smooth, soft, and hard as stone prodded up against warm and wet, seeking entrance.

  “Yes,” I breathed. I was ready. I needed him inside me more than I needed to breathe.

  King lined up his cock with his hand, and in one long thrust, he was inside of me. He groaned as he pushed his way into my tightness, stretching and filling me until I thought I was going to fall apart from the inside out. It hurt, but it was a pleasurable kind of pain, caused by the unfamiliar feeling of being so full.

  The pain he caused was a pleasure all its own.

  “Fuck yes,” King moaned, now fully seated inside me.

  I groaned loudly, not caring who heard me. King thrust up inside me, and my insides clenched around him. Every time he pulled out, he rubbed against that spot inside that made me see stars before thrusting angrily back in.

  Again and again.

  “I told you,” he said. “I told you you’re mine. This pussy. This pussy is mine. Don’t fucking forget that shit again.”

  He thrust hard and angry. I took him. All of him. His cock. His anger. His possession. I let him claim me with his kiss, his cock, his words.

  We were fighting with our sex.

  A back and forth.

  A give and take.

  With our sex, we told each other I hate you and I want you and I don’t want you to leave.

  “Fuck, Pup. Fuck. I knew it. I knew it would be like this,” King said breathlessly.

  A pressure was building inside of me that was ten times more powerful than when King had made me come on his fingers. Growing with each stroke. Faster and faster he plunged into my depths until he didn’t just give me an orgasm; he ripped it from my body.

  I shouted out my release as I came and held onto King for dear life, tightening my thighs around him, digging the heels of my feet into his ass as he furiously pumped into me. I saw stars, bright and vivid, dancing in front of my eyes until I thought that I might pass out and die right there in his arms. Maybe, I did choose King being inside of me over breathing, because I couldn’t seem to catch my breath.

  “Look at me,” King ordered, his voice deep and raspy like he was trying to hold onto his control. I was too lost in coming down from my orgasm high to pay any attention to what he was saying. “Look at me!”

  This time he emphasized his words with a thrust of his hips. I moaned and opened my eyes.

  “Don’t look away,” he ordered, holding my gaze as his cock hardened and twitched. He groaned as he came inside of me, spilling his wet warmth into my depths.

  We’d said all the things with our bodies that our mouths had failed to communicate over and over again. He’d told me that I was his before, that I belonged to him. But before that night, I hadn’t believed him.

  It was what his body told me that took me by surprise and shook me to my very core.

  He was mine.

  Doe

  “Come with me,” King said. Righting my clothes, he took my hand and led me back to the pier. When we passed the bonfire, we were greeted with a lot of whistling and applause.

  They’d obviously heard us.

  I didn’t care.

  We sat on the dock with our legs dangling over the side. The fog had lifted off the water. The full moon cast our shadows over the glass-like bay, making it appear like black ice.

  King held my hand in his, and when I tried to pry it away, he tightened his grip.

  “King,” I started.

  “Brantley,” he corrected. “Call me by my first name.”

  “Brantley,” I said, testing his name out.

  “I hated i
t growing up, but for good or for worse, it’s the only thing my mama ever gave me. Grace is the only other person who uses it.” He paused, then added, “I like the way it sounds when you say it.” His serious tone and soft eyes made me question where he was going with this, but then, it hit me.

  He was letting me in.

  “Okay, Brantley, what else you got?” I nudged his shoulder. He took a deep breath.

  “You know about Max?”

  I nodded. The girl we went to see, the one from the picture. “Your sister.”

  “Pup, Max isn’t my sister,” King admitted.

  “Then, who is she to you?” I asked. If she wasn’t family, then why did he have so much interest in her?

  “She’s my daughter.”

  Holy. Shit.

  “Your daughter?” I asked, my throat tightening.

  “Yeah, Max is my daughter. She’s the real reason why I went to prison, and only Preppy and Bear know the truth about her.” He squeezed my hand tighter. Looking out over the water, he seemed pained to be recalling memories associated with Max. “Do you want to know the story? Because you asked me if I wanted to let you go or keep you, and I want to let you in. I want to keep you, but it’s a hard story for me to tell. I’ve never told it to anyone. The only people who know were there in some way.”

  “I want to know.”

  “Do you know why I was in prison?”

  “Because of your mom.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “I don’t make apologies for the things I’ve needed to do for the sake of business. Preppy and I had shit lives growing up. We did everything we could to turn it around for ourselves, most of those things were far outside the law, but we did it. Shit was amazing for a while. But my anger would get the best of me, and I would almost always be the one who ended up in jail here and there, usually just overnight. Sometimes, for thirty or sixty day stretches, depending on the charges. The other players in the game we play know the rules. They also know that when you step out of line, things happen. Things that make you dead. But this wasn’t one of those times. I didn’t pull a trigger, or use a knife, or send someone after her.”

  “Your mom?” I asked.

  He nodded, then told me his story.

  By the time I was fifteen, Me, Prep, and Bear were our own little crew. Just three young shitheads who just wanted to have a good time, get laid, and make some fucking money. Surprisingly, we did make money. Enough for me to buy the house.

  The three of us were on top of the world for a while. I’m not gonna lie. It was the best fucking time of my entire life.

  But then, I got pinched. It wasn’t the first time, and it wasn’t for anything I should’ve actually gotten pinched for. A stupid bar fight in an upscale place Preppy wanted to check out across the river in Coral Pines. Some shitty tourist spot.

  I was talking to a girl when some pink sweater-tied-around-his-shoulders douche-bag stepped to me for talking to her. We got into it, broke some shit in the bar, chairs, glasses, tables.

  I’m covered in tattoos, and I have a record. He’s got a pink fucking sweater tied around his shoulders. It was easy to figure out which one of us was going to jail when the sheriff showed up.

  I got ninety days because of my priors. When I was in County, this girl I used to screw around with showed up for visitation. She was as big as a fucking house. I thought that she was going to give birth right there in the visitors’ room. She told me the baby was mine, said that she wanted to raise it with me when I got out.

  I didn’t think much of the girl, but she was nice enough, and after I got over the initial shock of it all, I was really excited to be a dad. I made a plan, made promises to myself that I was going to be a good dad, especially since I could only narrow down who my father was to every man in town except Mr. Wong who ran the corner store, for obvious reasons.

  I wrote the baby letters from prison, though Tricia didn’t know then if it was a boy or a girl. She’d said they tried to find out on the ultrasound but he or she was moving around too much. It was exactly what I needed. And then it was what I wanted.

  Sure I had money, but the baby gave me a reason to want more out of life.

  Purpose.

  The morning I got out of county, Tricia was supposed to pick me up but never showed. I walked to a payphone to call her, and when she answered, she told me she’d had the baby the week before.

  A girl.

  She’d named her Max, the girl name we picked out when she was still pregnant.

  I asked her where the baby was, and she mumbled something about it being too hard and that she couldn’t handle it. That the whole motherhood thing wasn’t for her. She said she wasn’t coming back. There was a lot of noise in the background, glasses clinking, music. It sounded like she was at a bar. She was shouting into the phone.

  Where the fuck is she? I kept asking her over and over again. For a second, I thought she was going to say she gave her up or something, and I was already thinking about who the fuck I was going to have to kill to get her back when Tricia said something that surprised me and turned my stomach.

  I LEFT HER WITH YOUR MOTHER

  Before that day, I hadn’t seen my mom but a handful of times in years, and none of those times were on purpose. Most of the time, when I ran into her, she didn’t know who I was. The very last time I’d seen her, she called me Travis and asked me how Bermuda was.

  As soon as Tricia told me where the baby was, I hung up and called my mom, but the phone line was dead, and I didn’t know if she had a cell.

  I took a cab to Mom’s and called Preppy to meet me there.

  I got there before he did.

  I knew walking up to the door that something was wrong. I could feel it in my gut.

  I banged on the door of her apartment until my knuckles bled, but there wasn’t any answer. I could hear the static from a TV inside. I screamed out for my mom, but there was no response. I was about to turn around and walk away, check with some of the neighbors to see if she even still lived there, but then I heard it.

  I heard her.

  My Baby.

  Crying.

  My baby was crying.

  Not just a little cry or a cranky cry, but a strangled cry straight from the gut, the kind that says that shit ain’t right.

  It’s like she knew I was there, and she was calling out to me.

  I kicked in the front door. The living room was dark except for the TV. When I took a step, trash got stuck on my shoes, fast food wrappers, cigarette butts. The counter was littered with garbage. The trash can was overflowing. Flies circled the kitchen sink which was piled high with dirty dishes.

  I heard her cry again. It was coming from the back of the apartment.

  I ran into one of the spare rooms and turned on the switch, but nothing came on. It took a second for my eyes to adjust to the dark, but when they did, I saw this little baby, this beautiful, scared, skinny, little baby, no bigger than half my forearm, covered in shit from head to fucking toe. Her eyes were red and crusted over from crying. She wasn’t in a crib. She was lying on a dirty sheet on the floor. No bottle. No blanket. No lights. No nothing.

  I gently scooped her up in my arms, and she weighed practically nothing. Even though she was visibly hurting and I was hurting for her, I remember that first feeling of holding her. Before she was even born, she became the most important thing in the world to me, but holding her sealed the deal. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for her. Nothing.

  I would hurt anyone and everyone who ever made my baby cry like that again. I would burn down cities for her.

  I fell to the ground with my back against the wall and rocked her until she calmed. I told her about all the things I was going to buy for her. I told her that daddy was here, that she was safe. I got up and found the cleanest towel I could and wrapped her up in it. She settled against my chest and fell asleep.

  I was fighting mad. Deeply disturbed. And completely in love. All at the same time.

  I was leaving with Max
in my arms when the light from the TV flashed, and I saw a shadow in the La-Z-Boy.. Sure enough, it was my Mom. Next to her was an empty bottle of some cheap fucking whiskey and an ashtray full of little bags of leftover crystal.

  She didn’t take care of my newborn baby because she was too fucking busy getting drunk and high.

  Max would’ve died if I hadn’t gotten to her in time.

  It was that thought that set me off. It still pisses me off to this day, and it makes remembering what happened next a whole lot easier to digest when I recall the memory.

  Rage consumed me. The kind that makes you want to rip out someone’s throat with your bare fucking hands.

  A lit cigarette hung from her bottom lip, an open newspaper on her lap. Her face was covered in pock marks and her skin was draping off of it like it was melting. As much as I wanted to hurt her, it was like the fucking karma cosmos or whatever aligned, because the lit cigarette fell from her mouth, and the newspaper ignited.

  I stood there and watched it happen.

  I was happy. It couldn’t have gone better if I lit the fire myself. It was a horrible way to die, but knowing what could have happened to Max, I really didn’t give a shit if it was the most horrible death imaginable. To me, in that moment, she deserved it.

  I still feel that way.

  Mom’s chest rose and fell, so I knew she was alive, but she was so far gone into whatever high she’d been chasing that not even a fire on her lap disturbed her.

  When the paper fell to the ground, the carpet caught fire. The light from the flames allowed me to get a good look at the place. There wasn’t a section of the floor that wasn’t covered in filth and rusty syringes poked out of the couch like it was a pin-cushion.

  When the flames got higher, I made the decision.

  I turned around and left.

  I felt the heat behind me as I walked away. I was halfway across the street when the windows exploded and the glass shattered.

  I bought diapers, bottles, and formula from the nearby convenient store and hosed Max off in the restroom the best I could. It took me ten minutes to figure out how to put on the diaper.