“How does he look?” I whispered to Leanne.
She put her thumb up and smiled, then took off down the stairs with a wave. Sweet girl. Too bad she was never around.
“I have to be here, Ed,” I said as I bounded up to the fourth floor.
“I’m not saying I don’t understand. I was at the show. I saw it. What I’m saying is, I don’t know if I can herd these cats again.”
“Tell me what hoop I have to jump through to get a reschedule and I’ll jump it.” I strode through the waiting room, past two sisters and a mother. Margie indicated a room at the end and I went in. Sheila was with him, the most vulnerable-seeming of the bunch. With wild wheaten hair and four children born close together, she was the one most visibly upset about her brother.
“When can you do it?”
Margie yanked me into a recovery room that looked like all the others. Jonathan was there, lying on his back arms on top of the blankets and tubes everywhere.
“Next week. I think he’s going to be better.”
“I need a guarantee.”
I touched his arm, and he opened his eyes. When he saw me, he winked.
“Guaranteed,” I said and hung up the phone.
“Well?” I said to Sheila, “It went okay?”
“Yeah. They just pulled a tube out of his throat and unstrapped him.”
Jonathan picked his hand up and flicked his fingers to Sheila. The international sign for shoo. She started to object but Margie grabbed her arm. “Come on. The kids need you.”
“Onna has them.”
Margie pulled her out, but Eileen, Jonathan’s mother strode in.
“Ma,” Margie said. “You were just here.” But Eileen ignored her.
“Jon,” she said, standing over him. “How are you feeling?”
“Tired.”
“Should we go?” She put her hand on my arm, as if I was going out with her.
“Yes. I mean, let me talk to Monica for a minute.”
She smiled, the biggest, fakest thing I have ever seen in my life. “Of course.”
“Oh, ma?”
“Yes?”
“Spot for Christmas Eve.” He pointed to me. “Okay? Don’t forget.”
“Of course,” Eileen said, then looked to me. “You’re free?”
“You bet,” I put on my customer service smile. Once she was out I sat next to him. I didn’t say anything, but somehow he intuited what I was thinking.
“That’s just how she is.”
He looked as pale as death, and his body was flat under the sheets as if he could have just sunk into them. And his face. His face looked slack, inactive. His eyes were unfocused and the lids didn’t want to stay open. This wasn’t Jonathan. This was some other, powerless man who didn’t yank my head back by the hair as he pounded me from behind, or fuck me in such a slow and controlled way I felt every inch of my orgasm. This wasn’t the man whose name I’d cried into the night; the man to whom I entrusted control, to whose dominance I submitted. This was another man entirely, and I loved him.
I took his hand.
“You look like shit,” I said.
“You look like an angel.” His voice crunched like gravel under a tire.
“I should tie your elbows behind your back with a belt and spank you until you scream. To get your voice back. Works every time.”
A smile curled the side of his mouth.
“A week,” he croaked so low I had to put my ear to his mouth to hear him. “I’m going to do unspeakable things to your body.”
“Really?” I kept my face to his and my voice low. “Like what?”
I realized I’d asked too much of him when he licked his lips, paused, and said, “Secret.”
He’d love to tell me, I knew that, but between having his chest cracked open and the tube down his throat, it probably hurt to speak.
“I know already,” I said. He raised an eyebrow. “I can read your mind.”
“Not this. It’s filthy.”
I reached over until my body bridged his and touched his ear with my lips. “The great and powerful Madame Monica will predict the future with utmost certainty. Are you ready to hear your destiny, young man?” I looked into his eyes so closely I could see the blue flecks.
“What’s this gonna cost me?”
“Everything.”
“Worth it.”
We are in your house. The living room. I’m naked from the waist up, and you’re in jeans and a polo shirt. You’re looking at me like you want to eat me alive, but you’re not. Yet. You’re waiting. You’re thinking. You’re constructing the next minutes of my life like a movie director blocks a scene.
You tell me to take my pants off, and I do. You watch. You like my body. The way my breasts hang when I bend over to release my feet. My ass when I bend at the waist.
When I step out of my jeans fully, you step toward me in your bare feet. I look nervous. You tell me to stop my hands from twitching, and when I cast my eyes down and say ‘yes, sir’ you can feel the power surge in you, that everything’s under control. Everything’s going to be all right, unless it’s not. What you have planned can go terribly wrong. The worry bothers you.
You ask me my safeword, and I tell you to shut up and fuck me.
‘Oh Goddess,’ you say. Then you take the hair at the back of my neck and pull until I’m looking at the ceiling. My lips part, and I sigh.
‘Say it. Or you can put those jeans back on and go home.’
I mouth the word tangerine, but don’t use my voice.
You look down at me and you say, ‘say it.’
I whisper it so softly you can barely hear it.
You spin me around and shove me into the kitchen. I start to turn back to you but you bend me over the butcher block. You are sharp and violent, and when you see me cringe, your dick gets hard. You want to see me scream. You need it.
You.
Need.
It.
Your dick is out, a throbbing piece of meat aimed between my legs. There’s wetness emanating from me. It would slide in so easy. You’d be sucked into my cunt so fast and you’d forget everything.
‘Say it or you go home.’ You feel me quiver under you. You think you might just have me put my jeans on and leave. That would be the right punishment for making you uneasy. You slap my ass, and I yelp as if I didn’t expect it. Your hand stings, and you’re poised to do it again, when I speak up.
‘Tangerine.’
The word is barely out of my mouth and you’re fucking me, pressing my cheek to the butcher block. Thrust after thrust...you know you’re pushing the countertop against the sensitive part of my hip. I’m yours to hurt, and you know it. The things on the counter rattle as you fuck me. Salt and pepper grinders. A canister of utensils. Fancy bottles of condiments. You pull my ass cheeks apart with your free hand so you can go deeper, gripping hard enough to bruise, watching how your fingers indent my skin. My feet come off the floor, you’re pounding me so hard. I gasp and grunt.
You take a bottle of olive oil and smack it against the edge of the counter, breaking the neck. I’m startled, but you push my head down hard. The glass is everywhere. Oil splashes on the floor.
You run your hand down my back as you fuck me. The broken bottle is in your other hand. Slowly, you pour it on my back. You rub it all over me, then pour more, until a river of it falls into the crack of my ass, and you feel it on your cock. You pull it out, then slide it in again. Hard. Once. Twice. Olive oil coats us. You slap my butt again and again. I cry out in pleasure, your name on my lips.