Page 6 of Hurts So Good
She gets herself off on the store counter, in every dusty aisle, in the back seat of his car, on the hood of hers, back at her place the time she flagellated herself with a cat-o’-nine tails until the skin broke and tiny drops of blood speckled the sheets like runes. He wanted to read his future there.
Still, Julia never allows him to lay a hand on her. Her broken flesh is something sacred and forbidden. The things she shows him make him feel low and mean. Jesus, he thinks, what am I becoming? What have I become already?
It’s her blood, but he’s the sacrifice.
Always she asks him if he wants her to tell him how it feels. He does, but she never will.
Julia is smiling now, her watercolor smile, and Ryan feels himself coming undone.
He should be begging her forgiveness; instead he’s feeling for the strap. He wants to kneel there by the bed, crawl across the floor, but his own wanting is weighing him down. His weakness only feeds his rage. He’s getting a hold of it now—or it is taking hold of him?—either way somebody’s going to bleed.
“Lay your ass down,” somebody says. The voice is Ryan’s.
“Yes.”
Julia stretches out on the bed, her cheek on the pillow, watching him so serenely, eyes full of trust he knows he doesn’t deserve. With one finger he traces the ridges of her spine. He feels a shudder and has no way of knowing which of them trembles.
The sound of his open palm against her ass is not as loud as he had thought it would be, but the weight of it brings his teeth together on his tongue. The taste of blood fills his mouth.
“This is me,” he says.
“Yes.”
He smacks her again.
“Can you feel it?”
“Yes.”
Again and the red shapes of his fingers stand out clearly on her skin.
“Can you?”
“Yes.”
She rolls over onto her back, her legs spread apart. Her hands shake as she fumbles with his fly.
He kisses the hollow of her throat, and she says “Yes” one last time as he slips inside. He moves slowly even though she’s pressing up hard against him.
There’s a lot of pain here, more than a little rage, but he feels such a sense of peace pounding himself into her. The damp heat of her, the hungry animal scent of her, crushes the breath out of him, sets his severed nerves aflame. Sweat makes them both slippery, and still he’s holding onto her shoulders pushing himself higher, deeper into her. He’s made contact, made himself known, and he won’t break now.
The heat is rolling off her like a fever dream. She’s pulling at his hair. “I can’t,” he says. She doesn’t answer but digs her heels into the bony part of his ass.
He’s making some noise now. He may be trying to speak her name. He isn’t sure.
There are lights behind his eyes and a vibration inside his skin that’s a little like being torn apart, a little more like being born.
Then something’s coming loose, something’s breaking free, and he’s telling her, “Take it, take it, take it honey. Take it all, you bitch.”
And she does.
Finally, stillness—outside and inside his skin. No movement or sound but blood through veins, his and hers the same.
“Tell me,” Julia says. “Tell me how it feels.”
PANTY LINES
Sommer Marsden