Alice Close Your Eyes (8 page)

CHAPTER TEN

The loss of the secret of my nicks is a heavy blow. Since I started laying them at the age of ten, no one other than the occasional doctor has seen them. But my initial dismay has faded, has shifted to a strange exhibitionist thrill, the almost-sexual release of knowing he’s uncovered my secret. He’s pushed farther into me than anyone has before.

Something is changing in him, too. I can see that he believes he’s found some sort of key, something he’s been looking for, a missing piece to the puzzle of me. He’s harder on me now. He pinches me; he bites and pulls my hair. He demands all the space inside me when we fuck. He watches my reactions, catalogs the things that get us both off.

Outside of bed he’s become tender, even doting. He’s working his way around my rickety bungalow, fixing the leaky plumbing, replacing the screens and faucets. He arrives one Saturday with two friends and a truck bed full of lumber, and together they rip up my old porch and replace it. The next weekend he shows up with brushes and buckets of paint, and we work our way from one end to the other, with the music turned up and a hash pipe glowing on the steps. The next day, when the paint is dry, he bends me over the sturdy new bannister. I come twice, the scent of sawdust and turpentine in the air, and leave a row of half-moons with my fingernails in the fresh paint.

* * *

“Truth or dare?” Jack says.

I hesitate, weighing my options.

We’re in Jack’s living room. Midnight has long since come and gone, in a haze of sex and weed and lukewarm wine. I’m wearing his linen shirt and nothing else, having lost my panties in a bet two hours before.

“Truth,” I say.

Jack starts making chicken noises that end in a burble from the candy-striped bong on the coffee table.

“Bite me,” I say. “Truth.”

He exhales, slouches back against the cushions. His bare chest gleams in the firelight, the skin wrinkling over his abdomen like folds of thick velvet on a table. He takes off his glasses and cleans the lenses with a corner of the blanket we’ve dragged in from the bedroom.

He’s working on a pirate ship. The pieces are laid out neatly across the coffee table: masts like matchsticks, delicate twine for the ropes. He has tossed out the “faggoty” skull-and-crossbones decal, saying that the shape and color are enough to indicate its rogue status.

“Give me a number,” he says. “How many men have seen that tattoo on your pussy?”

I roll my eyes and drop a tiny ball of weed into the cup of the bong.

“Seriously? Why are men always so obsessed with statistics?”

“We like to know our place in the batting order.”

“You’re up, stud, isn’t that enough?”

“No.”

I flick the lighter and set the weed aflame. Smoke begins to fill the chamber. I breathe it in, hold it, let it go. “Well, as it happens, the tattoo is a fairly new addition and you are the only man to have seen it. Other than the guy who put it here, that is.”

“Fuck. That’s not what I meant.”

“Then you should’ve said what you meant.”

“How many men have fucked you?”

“Sorry, your turn is over.”

He smiles lazily. “What was it like, having a male tattoo artist do that piece?”

“I don’t know. Kind of surreal...”

“Did it turn you on?”

His deep, quiet voice melts through my buzz.

“Yes.”

“Did it make you wet?”

“Yeah. I could feel his breath on my hip.”

“Mmm-hmm. Did you wish he’d bend you over and fuck you, right there on the table?”

I lay back, prop my legs over the back of the couch, angled so that Jack won’t be able to see between them. With my head tipped over the edge of the seat cushion, I watch the upside-down flames and the flickering yellow light on the ceiling, as though a super-8 movie is about to begin.

“No, I wanted him to finish my tattoo.”

“Liar.”

“It’s my turn, anyway. Truth or dare?”

“What do you think?”

“I’m running out of dares.”

“Not my problem.” He runs a hand up my thigh.

I mull this over. He has already collected his mail from the end of the driveway, naked, singing “California Girls” at the top of his lungs while I watched from the doorway, wrapped in a blanket, shaking with helpless laughter. He’s shameless and cannot be humiliated. I decide on a different approach.

I open my legs, let one foot rest on the top of his thigh. His back grows rigid and his hand begins a downward slide from my knee.

“Don’t touch,” I say. “And don’t look. Not for thirty minutes.”

He groans. “Thirty stoned minutes, those are like dog years—”

“Hands in your lap.”

“Fuck.”

At first I think he won’t take the dare. Then he tears his gaze from between my legs and sits in mock chastity on his side of the couch, fingers interlaced, knees together.

“Truth or dare,” he says. “Goddamn, I want to look at you.”

I unfasten the button between my breasts to let his shirt fall away.

“You’re doing great,” I tell him, nudging his swelling hard-on with my toes. “I think I’ll take the dare, since whatever it is, you won’t be watching.”

“Aren’t you clever.”

He leans forward to pack another hit. I blink up at the ceiling, watching the patterns of light through half-closed eyes the way you’d watch clouds go by from a picnic blanket. I imagine the gurgle of the bong as a creek running nearby. I close my eyes, then remember that Jack’s dare will need to be monitored, and open them again.

“Here’s the dare,” he says, exhaling. “You’re going to find someone. A guy, whoever you want. You’re going to break into his house, and you’re going to take me with you.”

“No.”

“Can’t say no. You agreed to the dare.”

“That’s not—”

“That’s the dare.”

“Jack. If I get caught in some strange guy’s house, it’s bad but sort of ridiculous. We know that, right? But if you get caught, or we get caught, that’s another thing altogether. No one is going to laugh it off and send us on our way.”

“So you’re afraid.”

“I’m cautious.”

“I thought you had balls.”

“Yes, well, if you turned your head, you’d see that I don’t.”

“Fuck. Is it thirty minutes yet?”

“Not even five.”

He leans back, staring straight ahead of him. I follow his sight line and realize he can see our reflection in the glass door. Our images float like spirits on the night sky, dancing orange and purple, our pale skin warmed by the firelight. A ribbon of gold highlight flows across his shoulders. My torso is a horizontal slash on the couch, which is sunk in the shadows so that we appear to be levitating over a murky abyss.

Our reflections gaze at each other.

“Take the dare,” he says. “And have another hit.”

I blink. The dimensions of the room feel strange, as if the walls are closing in.

“Fine,” I say. “It’s my turn. And I’m gonna need a truth.”

Jack is silent. I wait, unable to judge the passage of time, floating in the moment with only the last feeble pops of the dying fire to penetrate the buzz in my ears.

“What do you want to know?” he says at last.

I get the impression that any question would be unwelcome, but I’m full of courage.

“What really happened with Rosemary?”

His face remains hidden in the reflection, so I turn to watch his profile. His nose has a small bump along the bridge, as though it’s been broken—possibly more than once.

He turns to face me. A muscle in his jaw twitches.

“That’s thirty minutes. Time for your next dare.”

“That’s not even close to thirty minutes. And what if I want truth?”

“Forget it. Come with me.”

“No, I’m comfortable.”

Jack gets up and stands for a moment looking down at me. I begin to feel self-conscious; I press my thighs together and pull his shirt across my breasts.

“Get up, Alice.”

But he doesn’t wait for me to move. He bends over and scoops me off the couch. I watch us leave the room through the scattered reflection in the window, and turn the corner to his bedroom.

He tosses me on the bed and goes to his chest of drawers. When he turns back, I see what’s in his hand.

“No no no.” I’m scrambling up.

But Jack is right there, blocking my path. He won’t let me get to my feet.

“Shh,” he says. “You’ll be fine.”

“Jack—”

“Don’t you trust me? Look where you are.”

I blink and try to clear my head. I’m drunk, annihilated on weed. I have been alone with Jack for hours now. He’s been all over me. Inside me. It’s too late to worry about shifting the balance of power, too late to parse degrees of control.

He begins to slide the sleeves of his shirt down my arms.

“You don’t want to do this for me?”

I try to improvise.

“No, it’s just that I read that Stephen King story, you know the one, where the guy dies and the wife is handcuffed to the bed, and—”

Jack smiles.

“I’m thirty-two. Swear to God, I won’t die on you.”

My heart races, and fear begins to burn through the weed and the wine. “Please, Jack, let’s do something else.”

“This is a dare, baby, you don’t negotiate a dare.”

“I didn’t ask—”

He reclaims his shirt. I shiver and cross my arms over my chest.

“I don’t need you to ask. Give me your wrist.”

He stares down at me. I felt so in control just minutes ago. Ordered him to look away, teased him and made him wait, enjoyed the power of my body over his. But now the tables are turned and I realize it was only a trick of the mind. He’s been in control all along.

He dangles the handcuffs by one thumb.

“Don’t make me say it again.”

Something in his expression silences me.

I hold out my wrist. The handcuff closes around it with an ominous click, like the bars on a prison cell clanging shut. The steel feels hard and uncomfortably heavy against my bones. My cheeks burn and a treacherous prickle creeps into my eyes and nose.

Jack gives me a gentle backward push. He fastens the other cuff around the bedpost and snaps it closed around my left wrist. I press my face to my arm and fight back the rising claustrophobic panic. He drapes a scarf over my eyes and ties it behind my head.

Just like that,
I think wildly.
Just like that, and I’m helpless.

I twist my arms, feel the weight of the steel. The metal clatters against the bedpost. When I pull harder, the cuffs bite into my skin. I squeeze my hand together and try to free myself.

“Shh,” he whispers against my ear. “Don’t fight it.”

He lays his hand over my heart.

“Are you afraid?”

A screw tightens in my throat. My voice is a choked whisper.

“Yes. Please—”

“I know, baby, shh.”

He sits up and I feel him look me over. His presence seems to grow in my mind. The things I worried about—being left here, being exposed or hurt—seem both amplified and unimportant. My mind is swollen with Jack. Why does he need to see me this way? What does he want that I can’t do with my hands and eyes and mouth?

I press my knees together.

“Jack,” I whisper.

“I just want to look at you,” he says in a low voice.

My breath rushes past my lips. My head swims; the room is filled with Jack. I’m drowning in him, trying to keep my head above water.

He bends to kiss me. His cheek scrapes my skin. He nuzzles into the crook of my neck and draws his nose along my jaw.

“God, you smell good,” he says. “Spread your legs, I want to see.”

He backs away and I hear him at the side of the bed.

Somehow all the things we did before seem a lifetime away. I don’t want to open myself that way, let him stand beside me and stare. I want him to cover me with his body, to distract me with sensation. I can’t make myself do what he wants.

His hand closes around the back of my knee, and he pulls me apart. One leg, then the other. This is easier, this passivity. Still, when he circles the bed, it takes all my will not to close my legs, curl my body, scream for him to stop looking at me. My heart rolls and gallops; air sweeps past my chilled lips in swift, quivering gusts. My skin flashes hot and cold, damp with anxiety.

He stops at the foot of the bed.

I turn my face into the pillow and choke back a hysterical sob. The handcuffs seem unnaturally heavy and confining and cruel. I want to beg him to fuck me, if only for the sake of being covered. Anything,
anything
would be better than this. A hard shudder courses up my flank. My mind floods with an incoherent, all-encompassing plea.

Please please please...

I think I hear him laughing. Then a zip and the shush of his pants dropping.

The bed sinks under his weight. His fingers close around my ankles, slide up my calves to my inner thighs. I hold my breath and feel his body’s reaction to my scent. The stiffening of his fingers, the long slow inhalation followed by a stuttering groan and an incantation of muttered profanity that draws an unwilling contraction from deep inside my body, as though he has summoned some mysterious female archetype asleep inside me.

A bead of moisture rolls down the crack of my ass, tickling.

He settles over me. His tongue sweeps slowly up the crevice of my body. His voice is a rumbled murmur that I feel rather than hear, a vibration against my labia, a tightening of his lips. His stubbled jaw scrapes my thighs. He sucks my clitoris, plucks with his teeth, circles with his tongue.

Now I can’t be still. I twist my arms, wishing they were free so I could twine my fingers in his dark hair and hold him to me, make him fuck me with his tongue and relieve this hollow ache in my belly. Heat springs up under his mouth. I arch my back and he covers my bare breast with his hand, rolling my nipple between his fingers. And it doesn’t matter that I can’t get free, because his freedom is enough. He knows where we’re going and how to get there.

The heat and pressure begin to break me. I moan and raise my hips to his mouth.

“That’s right,” he says around me. “I want to taste you, baby, come for me, that’s it....”

He bares me with his fingertips and pinches my clitoris between his forefingers, with his tongue between them and his hands holding me open. That is unbearable, a pleasure so intense it draws hot tears from my eyes. My climax zips like a fuse from the tips of my fingers and toes, up my thighs, down my ribs and explodes under his mouth with a force that lifts me right off the bed. He braces my hips, following relentlessly, not satisfied until he’s drawn a second shattering orgasm into his mouth, until I am broken and trembling in his arms, and begging with all my mind to be filled.