Tasting Fear (45 page)

Her eyes softened. She set down her coffee and reached across the table. “There’s a reason I was asking those questions about the bust.”

“Yeah?” he asked warily. “What?”

“I wondered if it was something we had in common,” she said. “I was in the middle in a big drug bust once, too. When I was a kid.”

He stared at her, mouth stupidly open. “Huh? You?”

“Me,” she said. “It sucked. As you are highly qualified to agree.”

“But aren’t you…didn’t you…” He racked his brains for the details Duncan had given him about her background. Italian nobility? Priceless art? Drug busts? What the fuck? This did not compute.

“My two sisters and I were all adopted,” she said, answering his silent confusion. “Lucia took us in as foster kids. I went to her when I was eleven. I got lucky. Nancy and Nell had to plow through years of bad ones before they found Lucia. I hit pay dirt right off, on my first placement. Lucia was amazing. And I got two kick-ass, readymade sisters in the bargain. They were the best.”

“And before?” he prompted.

Her face clouded. “Ah. Before. Well, my mom was a junkie. And the men she took up with were all dealers.”

“Jesus,” he muttered.

“I got used as a sentry,” she said. “Deliveries, sometimes, too.”

“No fucking shit!” He was aghast. “How old were you?”

She shrugged. “Eight, nine. Red pigtails, freckles, ruffles. Who would suspect what was in my Winnie the Pooh knapsack? I liked it, at the time. It made me feel important, grown up. Useful.”

“Used,” he corrected, harshly. “Anything could have happened to you! A little kid, for drug deliveries? That’s fucking insane!”

She made a dismissive gesture. “Duh. But anyway, the shit came down. There was a shoot-out. My mom’s boyfriend, Randy, got killed in the bust. And my mom went to prison.”

He winced. “Tell me you weren’t there when it happened.”

“I wasn’t,” she assured him. “I was at school. And I didn’t cry for Randy. He was a real zero. I have him to thank for this.” She held up her wrist, with its barbed-wire tattoo. “This was his idea of a joke.”

He stared at the fuzzy, faded tattoo, anger simmering inside him. “All I can say is, the list of people whom I want to dismember and grind into the dirt on your behalf is growing,” he said.

“Thank you, but it’s ancient history. So, how did the bust shake out for you? Did you end up with Child Protective Services, too?”

He shook his head. “No. I just took off.”

Her eyes widened. “Alone? At fourteen? How did you live?”

He hesitated for a moment before replying. “Barely,” he said. “So what about your mom? Is she out of prison?”

Vivi shook her head. “No,” she said. “She OD’d in prison. About eight months after she went inside.”

He flinched, sucker punched. That was what he got for trying to distract her from his own story. “I’m sorry,” he said, helplessly.

She gazed intently into her coffee mug. “It was a long time ago,” she said. “And I was as lucky with my second family as I was unlucky with my first. So I’m okay. You can relax, Jack.”

They listened to the wind in the trees outside. He reached out until he touched the flower tattooed on her chest. “That perfect combination of toughness and a good attitude,” he said quietly.

She blushed. “You’re doing it again, Jack. Saying all the right things.”

“Is it working? You want to grab me again?”

Her devastating secret smile turned dazzling. She got up, came around the table, sat down on his lap, and hugged him.

His arms encircled her. He was speechless. His dick was stone hard against the pressure of her ass, but it wasn’t just that. He just couldn’t believe she was there, draping herself over him, holding him. She was so beautiful, so special, so shining. Like a unicorn, laying its head in his lap, and him breathless with the wonder of it. And so turned on, he could barely suck in a lungful of air.

She gasped as he stood up and swept her into his arms, heading up the stairs. “Jack! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Being masterful,” he said. “Stop giggling. Get into the vibe.”

“Hail, O conquering hero,” she gasped out, between giggles. “Do with me as you will, my wild warrior lover. How’s that?”

“Works for me.” He shoved open the door to his bedroom with his foot and set her on her feet. They faced off, breathing hard. Her color was high, her eyes were shining. He tossed off his shirt. Vivi whipped off her tank. Call and response. He jerked open his belt, popped his jeans buttons. She yanked loose the drawstring of her skirt, let the garment puddle around her ankles. So beautiful. It unraveled him.

“Turn around,” he said hoarsely. “Let me see your ass.”

She obliged him. He came up behind her and knelt, his hands sliding down over her ribs, her waist, and clasping her hips.

He pressed his lips against the swirling mandala tattoo at the small of her back. “So what’s the story with this one?”

“Oh.” She shivered as he licked her there, his hand sliding up between her legs. “That was a celebratory tattoo. To mark the occasion of getting away from Bri—from the crappy ex that I mentioned before. I called my buddy Rafael on the day that the shit definitely hit the fan, and he whisked me away in his van, which is now my van. Drove me to my first crafts fair, in upstate New York. I had a good day, sold a bunch of stuff. After, we celebrated with buffalo wings and beer and a tattoo. Rafael got a dragon tattooed on his butt that night, if I remember correctly. I was a little more conservative.”

He turned her to face him, his eyes level with the contours and involutions of her groin. Breathing in the hot, heady smell of sex. His cock ached with eagerness. He placed her hand on his shoulder to steady her and lifted her delicate foot. She teetered, giggling, as he touched the tattooed images of the crescent moon and star on top of her foot. “And this one?”

“No story with that,” she admitted. “I just thought it was pretty.”

“It is,” he said. All of them were. Fit embellishments for her vivid beauty. Even the barbed wire around her wrist had its own poignant grace.

He gazed up at her pink face, her dilated eyes, the whole perfect length of her sweet body. Her pussy, still shiny and flushed, poking proudly out of her labia. “What an incredible view,” he muttered.

He rose to his feet, moving behind her, his cock prodding the back of her thighs, and slid his hands around her. Clasping her waist, sliding his hand down between her legs. The damp seam of her pussy beneath his fingers.

“I want to take you from behind,” he said. “Is that a problem?”

A fine tremor went through her, but he couldn’t tell if it was fear or desire. He nuzzled and petted. Waiting until she gave him a plainer answer. Several breathless minutes went by. She began to writhe and make keening sounds in her throat. His hands grew bolder.

“It’s okay,” she whispered, finally.

He let go of her, stepped back. “Show me, then.”

She shot a puzzled look over her shoulder. “Show you what?”

“That it’s okay,” he said. And waited.

It worked again, as it had before. She thought about it for a moment, her full, rosy lip caught seductively between her teeth.

Then she straightened her spine, tossed her hair back, and sauntered over to his bed. Taking her time. She climbed on, positioning herself on her hands and knees, presenting her perfect ass. She looked back, with that secret smile, and parted her thighs, undulating. “Convinced?” she purred.

He didn’t bother to reply. Seconds later, he was in position, condom in place. His fingers rejoiced at her flawless skin, her lithe muscles, her sweet curves. He teased the secret shadows of her pussy while he kissed the mandala tattoo, playing her quivering clit.

She squirmed and moaned, wet and hot, but he took his time easing inside. The tight, hot clutch of her was sweet torture on his cock. She clung to him, her pussy flushed and full, like a juicy, suckling kiss. He let her rock back to take him in, a little more each time, until he was buried deep. Then some gasping, panting minutes of stroking and petting, licking her back, working her clit, and she started to make catlike sounds, pressing back. Demanding that he move.

Yes.
Now she was ready to ride.

He thrust, hypnotized by the sight of the shiny pink lips of her sex clinging to his shaft. He withdrew, gleaming. Drove in again, again, seeking the strokes that made her soften and yield, using that subtle, inner awareness he’d never known existed until he’d made love to her. Now that he’d discovered it, he was strung out on it. Life was going to be so flat, so flavorless, without her.

That realization stabbed in like a blade. His hands tightened on her hips. And something in him cracked wide open.

He lost control. Rammed into her with the energy of a lifetime of unsatisfied need, seeking that blinding moment where he wouldn’t have to think, or feel. Or fear.

It hit. He exploded into nothingness.

When he finally surfaced, she was wiggling beneath him on the quilt, kicking at his ankles. “Roll over,” she said tartly. “I can’t breathe.”

He rolled over, and she pulled away, sitting up. Her eyes were wide. “That was, um, intense,” she said, her voice small.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Did I hurt you?”

“A little. It was exciting. I came, of course. You always make me come. But you weren’t with me anymore. At the end. I felt…alone.”

He didn’t know what to say. He felt her withdrawal like a cold wind. He reached out, but she shrank back, and he let his hand drop.

“I’m sorry,” he said, feeling helpless. “Get in bed,” he pleaded. “Wait for me while I go take this thing off.”

“Okay.” She didn’t move. He waited, until she rolled her eyes, wiggled across the bed, and slid between the sheets.

“You won’t go?” he demanded. “Promise?”

“No,” she said softly. “I promise.”

He smoothed the quilt over her, his face reddening. He was afraid she would disappear. He was a goner.

“The sooner you go, the sooner you’ll come back,” she said.

He stared at himself in the bathroom mirror, clutching the sink. He turned on the cold water, splashed his face, tried to think clearly. Abandoned the effort, after about five seconds. Useless.

All he wanted in the world was to fuck her again. Hold her again. Wrap himself around her in a grip that she could not break.

He wiped off his face and grabbed the little wastebasket from under the sink. Stupid to run back and forth every time.

She was still there when he got back. Holding the covers open for him. He slid into bed and grabbed her.

Her face softened into a smile. Something tight in his chest uncoiled. He resisted the sensation, automatically, and then yielded to it, with a shudder of backed-up emotion.

He arranged her so that her head was cradled on his shoulder, her arm resting on his chest, her leg flung over his. He stroked her back, and felt her heart beating under his hand, until she fell asleep.

So soft. He stared at the swirls of red hair tickling his nose, his chin. Her slender shoulder. He loved her scent, the soft moist bloom of warmth of her breath against his shoulder. He memorized the curve of her spine. If he concentrated on these details, and thought of nothing, he could cling to this emotion that was vibrating inside him, like a tightly strung instrument. Part of him wanted to shove it back into the darkness, but the feeling sang on, a fragile, stubborn thread. He clung to it, counting the rise and fall of her breath. Keeping the rest at bay.

Late afternoon eased with the smoothness of a sigh into twilight. He barely noticed. He could lie there forever, feeling her ribs rise and fall. Letting that strange feeling vibrate inside him.

Contentment? No. He rejected the word. He was familiar with contentment. He was contented with his house, his work. Lucky, to spend his days with the smell of the earth and rain, the sun, the flowers. That was contentment. This feeling was new. It was a long, quiet hour before he dared to put a name to it. It felt like happiness.

Behind that word were doors in his mind that had been locked for years. Like when Randy left, when he was eight. Deborah, who always insisted that he call her Deborah instead of Mom, told him that Randy had to go and find himself. “I gotta have space,” Jack remembered him saying, very loudly. Jack remembered thinking that was dumb. It was the Oregon desert. There was so much space, it gave him the willies.

But Randy needed more. He took down his teepee, threw it in his truck, and drove away. Jack remembered standing there, bewildered, while Randy’s truck got smaller. Jack wondered sometimes if Randy was his father, but Deborah was somewhat vague on that point.

Then they’d stayed with Jim and Consuela, in the Yakima Valley, until Deborah met Manuel. They moved into Manuel’s trailer in the peach orchards. Manuel taught him Spanish, how to fight, how to change the oil in a car. Then Manuel got in trouble because he didn’t have a green card, and had to go back to Mexico. After a while, Deborah decided she had to follow her heart and go to Mexico, too.

“You’ll stay with Tavia,” she told the totally freaked-out Jack.

“But why can’t I come?”

“Oh, it’s complicated, baby. But I’ll write you letters, and I’ll send for you real soon. You’ll love it with Aunt Tavia. Her commune has lots of kids, and a swimming hole, and a tree house and everything.”

Off he went, to Tavia’s commune, near Olympia. He got letters, but they came less and less frequently. He was just getting used to it when Tavia fell in love with Mick, a guy from Oakland, and decided to move to California with him. Mick didn’t want Jack to come. “The family thing is just not my scene,” Mick said firmly.

So he went to Uncle Freddy’s place in southern Oregon. In the meantime, Deborah broke up with Manuel, who was “too enmeshed in his culture,” the letter said. She decided to go to India to study yoga with a guru, “to get her head straightened out and recover her sense of self.” Shortly after that, Tavia broke up with Mick, left Oakland, and moved to Los Angeles with a guy named Mike.

Jack had trouble keeping it all straight. But he liked the mellow, benevolent Uncle Freddy. He liked the garden, the farm, the mountains. He had almost begun to allow himself to think of the place as home when the bust happened. The time he most hated to remember. He hadn’t thought of it in years. He stared at the barbed-wire tattoo around Vivi’s slender wrist. Tracing it. And realized that her eyes were open. Studying him.