Secret Sins: (A Standalone) (10 page)

Feelings. Joy. Lust, fear, gratitude surprise arousalhatedisgustangerlovelovelove.

Lubricated with Quaalude and a narrowly avoided rape, they crushed me into sentence fragments. I couldn’t get anything out that made sense. I was crying a flood of shit I’d held on to for months. Maybe years. Maybe forever.

The room was empty except for Indy and me. Strat had taken Hawk out by the collar. Indy had shouted
out
and closed the door behind all the gawkers.

Indy took me by the chin and looked in my eyes. It was getting dark, and I was covered in tears, but he saw enough to let my face go. “They’re dilating already.”

I’m fine
. I thought it but couldn’t speak.

He picked me up from the shoulders and under the knees. My other wedge fell off as he carried me

where are you taking me

to the futon, where he tried to set me down

I don’t think so

but I held onto his neck and pulled him down until his face filled my vision

see? I’m not crying anymore

and he put me down but stayed close. He looked reluctant, but his pupils were like bowling balls. He was with me on whatever plane I was on. The pupils didn’t lie. He’d popped whatever I’d been fed, or some other inhibition-reducing drug.

is it now? Make it now

He smelled like a man. My brain wasn’t making sentences but

musk and sweat and chlorine from the pool

the scent alone drove a spike of desire between my legs so hard it was almost painful. I arched my back from it, and my eyes fluttered and my lips parted and

“It’s the lude, Cin.”

everything felt good while the potential for more good feeling seemed like a limitless void I could fill right now, right there. I put my hand between my legs and rubbed myself over my shorts because

oh God so good so good

all the void was inside me, and I had to fill it up. He had to fill it up. He had to. He was beautiful, and I loved him. The little voice inside my head that said that was the drugs talking. I knew that voice was on to something, but I didn’t care.

I took Indy’s hand and put it between my legs. I was so hot he sucked air between his teeth when his fingers landed there.

“I want you,” I whispered, suddenly aware enough to put together three words.

“No, you don’t. It’s the—”

“The lude. I know. I can say what I feel.”

I spread my legs and

are you really doing this?

moved his hand under the crotch, and his fingers pushed the rest of the way through, until he felt how wet I was.

“Holy—”

“Oh my—”

“—shit.”

“—God!”

He ran his fingers along my seam, and the second time over my clit, I exploded, mouth open, silent, muscles tightening, knees bent.

It was the most powerful, yet unsatisfying orgasm I’d ever had. I needed more. I was empty. Full of emotions. Full of joy and lust and a swirling ambition, and in the vortex of those was a centripetal void shaped like his body.

He thought for a second/million years and put his lips on mine, opening his mouth, giving me his tongue.

This is it
.

I trusted him. The weight of his body, the thrust of his hips pushing the shape of his dick to me. I grinded against him as if it was my job. I was going to come all over again, clawing at his shirt, pulling it over his head. The arousal was so deep I couldn’t see past it.

“How old are you, Margie?”

“Eighteen.” I pulled off my tank top. “Give or take.” I wasn’t in the habit of wearing a bra, and I didn’t even have the shirt all the way off before I felt his teeth on my nipples.

“I’m twenty,” he said.

“Nice to meet you.”

He pulled my shorts and underpants off in one move and kneeled between my open legs. His bare chest had a dusting of brown hair and a tattoo of a treble clef with a bird over his heart. I reached for his waistband, but my arms weren’t long enough.

He grabbed my wrists and put them over my head, pressing them to the wall, and kissed me. “I’ve wanted you for a long time.”

“I know.”

“I shouldn’t,” he said. “You’re not straight.”

“Neither are you.”

“True, true.”

He rolled off me and lay on his back. He hooked his thumbs in his shorts, picked up his butt, and pushed them off.

His dick.

My heart dropped to below my waist. I wanted that beautiful thing. Maybe I did have a dick-shaped hole because it went on fire at the sight of it. I straddled him as soon as the shorts were off.

It was the lude. I couldn’t even think. He pushed me down, the length of him on the length of my seam, rubbing where I was wet. I slid up and down, a tease of the act itself.

“Ludes make you come so many times,” he said. “So do it. Come now.”

The words. I didn’t know what words could do. The permission cast a shadow with the light of inhibition. I ran myself against him, clit to cock, and came again, fingers digging into his shoulders. I took a breath to wonder if I was doing it right. I looked to him for cues and knew I must be all right because he was biting his lower lip, pushing against me.

Sex was so good, and I was still a virgin.

“Yes,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“You’re so hot. So hot.” He took his dick by the base and shifted it to me.

I positioned myself over him then

this is it, Margaret

pushed down. His face knotted with concern when

now or later but now is better

we hit resistance but

“Wait,” he said.

I pushed down hard, and something ripped. Something hurt. I froze for a second with him buried inside me, surprised at the stretching pain at my opening and the snug fit inside.

“You didn’t tell me.” He breathed it, gritting his teeth not in anger but a need to keep his head on straight against the knowledge that his head wasn’t his own.

I needed him. I couldn’t pretend I was experienced or even competent. I’d seen what I’d seen and knew what I knew, but it wasn’t enough. The Quaalude made me eager and optimistic, flooded with the feeling that nothing could go wrong.

“Show me what to do now,” I said.

He took me by the back of the neck and pulled me over him until I was an inch from his 33rpm eyes and I could taste the whiskey on his breath.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I’ll already remember you forever. You gonna make it count or what?”

He stroked my cheek with his thumb. His words were hard, but his tone was a caress. “Are you sure you don’t have a set of balls somewhere?”

“You should be the last one to ask that.”

“You’re really special, Margie. You don’t need me. You don’t need anyone. That’s what I was afraid of all this time, that I’d end up inside you and I’d never see you again.”

How many minutes had passed since Hawk made me swallow? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? The room had gone from deeply angled sun to a wash of blue, yet time was nothing.

I didn’t understand any of what I was feeling. The unmotivated elation caused by the drug I’d been force-fed was a bucking stallion behind a wood fence. With every kick, the lock bent. Soon the fence was going to crash down in a splintered heap and I was going to promise him an eternity together for another and another and another orgasm.

“Do I move like this?” I shifted my hips in a circle and drove down until I felt a pressured pain deep inside and my clit rubbed against him.

He groaned. That was good. He took my hips and shifted me up then down again.

“Like that,” he said, hands running up my waist to my tits. He pinched them, and a new shot of pleasure ran down my spine.

I moved up then down until he was deep in me.

“Push against me here.” He took a hand off my tit to press the front of me against him, so my nub rubbed against his body.

I gasped.

“When you come up, angle yourself so you get it the whole way. Go.”

I did what he said, letting my clit feel the length of him. “Oh, God. That’s. Fuck.”

We moved slowly, up and down, pressing deep, the friction and pressure bringing me close to a third orgasm.

“If I make you come on your first time—”

“Gold star. Fuck. God. Gold star it’s so good.”

“You have to come soon. Please come soon I’m so-close-no-I’m-there.” His eyes closed, and his jaw got tight.

I thought the drug had made me feel good already. I thought it had aroused me more than normal, but I wasn’t even halfway there. The bucking stallion of emotion broke through the gate, and I was blindsided by a rush of joy. I cried out from the chest-bursting, brain-exploding emotional high. My world washed bright yellow, and as I dropped down on his dick, deep and hard, my orgasm flooded orange, deep red, explosive, centered on cunt and mind, mixing at the heart of something so vivid I couldn’t see who I was past it.

I dropped on top of him, barely breathing. His chest heaved under me.

“Gold star,” I gasped. “I’ll remember you forever.”

He laughed. “You haven’t even started to remember me.”

1983

Strat died about six months after the last time I saw him, and I found out about it six months after that. I was in the library, catching up on schoolwork with a newfound ambition.

The library magazine rack was in front of my Debate Team materials, and I stopped when I saw Strat’s music-strewn bare chest on it. I bit my lower lip. I’d been home a month and hadn’t called him or Indy. I didn’t want to explain about the baby or whose it was (or wasn’t). I didn’t want to revisit any of it. I was a new woman.

But he was majestic, and the photo was dark in a way that made it mysterious. I was curious.

1982 – The morning after the night of the Quaalude

The morning after I’d had a Quaalude shoved down my throat, I woke up on the couch with a headache. Indy was already in the kitchen, slogging down a glass of water.

“Where’d you go last night?” he asked.

“Good morning to you too.” The light tasted too yellow. The air hurt. The floor and sky were too loud.

“Here.” He shook three aspirin out of the bottle into my palm. The circles were too perfect and too white, the big B etched into them too capitalized.

He filled a glass of water for me. I washed the pills down and drank the entire glass.

“Thank you,” I said, handing the cup back.

He took it then took my wrist and pulled me toward him. Bone creaked on bone, but it didn’t hurt. I let myself lean on him.

“I have to tell you something.” He spoke into my ear and stroked my back. That didn’t hurt either.

“Mmm.”

“I want to take another crack at last night, but without the ludes.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Or Strat.”

I swallowed.

Jesus.

Last night.

I hadn’t forgotten as much as I’d woken up feeling like I had Dengue fever or something. But, yeah. Last night had happened.

I leaned back until I could see his eyes. “I think I just need to sleep today.”

“Are you okay to stay?”

I shook my brain. Yes. I was supposedly on a camping trip. I hated camping, but I’d had to lie.

Right? I had to wrap my life in lies.

“Indy, I have to tell you something. After I tell it to you, you’re never going to want to see me again.”

He did something that took my breath away. He leaned over and swept my feet from under me, getting his arm under my knees. “Never tell me. Never say it.”

His lips tightened a little, and without saying a word, I was sure he knew.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

I help up my hand. “Open pledge.”

He laughed, and though it was loud, it didn’t hurt my head. “My hands are occupied. Assume it’s up.”

“Swear you don’t want to know. Swear you’re already okay with whatever I was going to say.”

“I do. Close pledge.”

I slung my arm around his neck, rested my head on his shoulder, and let him carry me to his room.

I had a life in the weeks that followed, but not much outside Indy. I helped with the studio, hammering and painting, getting boxes and running cables. I could have done that forever, lost the world and gained my soul.

But there wasn’t a soul to be had.

1994

“Evidentiary privileges,” Drew said, sliding a box up high.

I gave him the next one. It was after dark, but we were almost done. I’d spent the entire process watching the veins on his forearms, the way his biceps strained his shirt, the movement of his lips when he spoke.

“I just did that one,” I complained.

“You don’t get to stop until you can bill two-fifty an hour. Evidentiary privileges.”

I picked up another box and brought it to him. They weren’t heavy. “Attorney-client. Doctor-patient. Spousal. Priest-penitent.”

He pushed the box to the topmost position in the pile, and I gave him the last one.

“Done.” I slapped my hands together.

“Contracts, quick—”

“You can’t go from evidence to contracts like—”

“Construction. Give me rescission remedies.”

I put my hands on my hips. He was making it hard, and I loved it. “Builder in breach. No remedy. Owner in breach. Builder gets market value of work done.”

He stepped toward me. “Land sale,” he said in a velvety, non-demanding tone.

“Payments less land value.”

He touched my elbows, pulling them toward him, so they weren’t impatient angles on my hips. “Sale of goods.”

I let my arms go around his waist. I wanted him right there, on a stack of boxes, breathing mildew and old air. I’d been with a few guys since Ireland, but I’d never felt so comfortable. Had he only been back in my life a day? Had it been just that morning when he knocked into me in the waiting room? I felt as though we’d picked up where we left off.

“Are we still in rescission?” I purred.

“You’re really cute when you’re buying time.”

“The contract is canceled and either party can sue for breach.”

I tilted my head up, breathing in his Drew/Indiana-ness. I could practically taste him.

“Not quite.” He spoke in breaths, his lips grazing my face. “Non-conforming goods need to be established before cancellation and injunctive relief.”