Sing

sensitive, and you glance up at me like you know it. You suck it again, and release it to the cold.

Then you warm it with your mouth, and you bite.

I arch my back. I thrust my hips into you. I moan your name.

‘Behave,’ you say, pushing my chin up so I can only see the ceiling. ‘Don’t move.’

You roll the wet nipple under your fingers, then move to the other and do the same. Suck, release. Suck, release. Suck, bite.

I am on fire.

You kiss my belly, my legs, and I feel your fingers inside my thigh. You’re brushing them toward my cunt. It quivers. Then you flick my clit like it’s a crumb on your pant leg. You do it hard, and I bite my lip. It stings. Then it fills up with pleasure.

You do it again and again, while kissing inside my thighs. I’m trying not to wiggle, but everything in my body wants to arch toward you. You hurt me with your fingers, then stroke. I burn with the pain, but it only makes the pleasure more unbearable. It’s not enough to make me come.

I want to beg, but you told me not to speak.

I’d take you anyway you’d give yourself. I’d have you in my mouth, my ass. I’d crawl on the floor to have you, and to be honest, you’re barely even touching me, but you have complete control over me. Just with your fingertips.

And when you draw your tongue over my cunt, my toes, my eyes, my fingernails feel it.

Then you do that thing.

With a flick of your wrist, you undo the knots at my ankles. You stand up and tell me to get my clothes on. We’re going out.

“You are fucking with me,” he said.

“Turnabout’s fair play.”

He smiled, then caught his lips between his teeth. “It hurts when I laugh.”

“I wasn’t joking.”

He put his hand on my cheek, brushing the skin. Even sick as he was, the feel of his body on mine was electric.

“Can you stay?”

“I have something to tell you.”

“You love me.”

“My God, Jonathan. I’m crazy with loving you.”

“Feeling’s mutual. Now, what were you going to tell me?”

“I need to go see my mother. In Castaic. I’ll be back late, but I’ll come right here.” I wrinkled my nose to let him know it wasn’t a vacation away from him or his hospital room.

“Lil can drive you.”

“You bought me a car.”

“Let me take care of you. You can rest in the back. Put your feet on the seats.”

I turned and put my lips to his palm. “Go to sleep, darling.”

“It’s a long drive.”

I kissed his mouth. His lips were dry, but responsive, and his face scratched mine. He put his hands on the sides of my face and pulled me close.

“You trying to shut me up?” he said.

“Yes.”

“I hate being like this.”

“You can boss me around when you’re better.”

I put my head on the mattress next to him and he stroked my hair. I watched the clouds move across the sky, humming a tune that may or may not have been Collared. When I knew he was sleeping, I slipped away.

CHAPTER 14.

MONICA

I took a white-knuckled drive up the five freeway, past all signs of civilization, past subdivision after subdivision, up a bifurcated mountain and back down it, the bestfuckingthingever drinking gas like a frat boy at a kegger. Everything was dead, flat, dry. Then it hit. Castaic. Burned dry. All the garage doors faced the street like mouths stretched into a closed grimace, and front yards that had not been flattened by concrete were neglected and brown or tamed and green, with sad blowup snowmen and fat, jolly Santas placed wherever they landed, scorched by the sun, smiling in the unforgiving landscape. Even the mountains ringing the town looked compacted under the weight of the sky.

Or maybe that was just me.

Big girl pants.

Maria Souza-Faulkner had two settings. Park, which meant she was passive, sweet and slept seventeen hours a day, and Fourth Gear, which meant she was in full on rage with an eye to wiping the world of sin. Kevin had suggested she was bipolar. I’d laughed, not because he was so wrong, but because she’d never do something as sensible as see a doctor to figure out why she was crazy. Dad had loved her through all of it, when he was around, so obviously, there was no need to fix what was functioning just fine.

The house, a one story beige box with a two car garage and a front door set back twenty feet behind it, had fallen out of repair. Dad wouldn’t have allowed it, and spent his time in the states painting, plastering and gardening. The young citrus he’d planted had a few leaves on the twiggy branches and the front lawn looked like an infield. I didn’t know how long she’d been stuck in park, but judging from the look of the place, it had been at least through the beginning of the summer.

My mother answered the door in a long polyester thing that fell over her curves in a way that was modest, but sexual at the same time. Like me, she had a body that was hard to hide, and unlike me, she kept trying. She was a Brazilian beauty my dad had met on some unholy peacetime mission. Five eleven. Early fifties. Darker skin than I’d been given, but the same dark eyes and hair. Catholic as only a South American girl can be. And that was the rub. She believed in the infallibility of the Pope and the virginity of Mary long after anyone else with a brain had moved on.

“Hi, ma.”

She hugged me warmly, and after a second, I hugged her back, but she held on longer than I thought she would. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. We’d just forgive each other. She moved out of the way and I stepped inside.

She saw the car. My immediate reaction was to make excuses for it. It was borrowed. I was returning it. I didn’t ask for it. Then I decided to shut up. I didn’t come to fight and I didn’t come to lie.

She closed the door without saying anything.

The house was hermetically sealed against the desert heat and dust, and the artificially cooled air was stale and thin. Everything was beige. Dad had hated beige, but my mother insisted, and when she insisted, she got what she wanted.

Well, everything permanent was beige. It seemed like whatever had been moved in was a color, and a bright one. African masks and Mexican blankets. A hand-carved teak partition blocked a window draped in Ikat fabric. Stacks of travel books stood in front of the stuffed bookcases. It looked like my mother had gotten the shit stamped out of her passport.

“You came,” she said.

“Yeah.” The couch had a pillow on one end with a case that matched the bed sheet balled up at the end of it. She was sleeping on it, probably regularly.

“I don’t think we can save the house,” she said.