I called bullshit.
It was more.
It was hard to put it all into words.
Simply put, I wanted to keep kissing him. I wanted him to keep kissing me—touching me.
I wantedmoreof whatever this was. It was feeding me in a way that I’d never known, except for when Keely and her family made me feel like I was a part of theirs. Then again, it was different. The feelings were new, even if I couldn’t place them while in the immediate glow.
What had the singer compared the intensity she had for her lover to earlier? A drug.
That was something I never expected. The pull. The push. The high from being lifted up by a cool wave.
The intensity of it almost made me pull away, take a few minutes like he did to compose myself, but on the other hand, my hands refused to let him go. I had taken his shirt in my hands and locked down. Touching him felt like touching life. I had never felt that before.
Life. In my hands. Mine.
Then, in a move so violent that I stumbled back, landing against the wall, palms out behind my back to stop myself from going over completely, he ripped his mouth from mine.
He cursed underneath his breath. The sound of it was as violent as his rejection.
For however long—a minute, a million years—I stood still. I wasn’t sure what to say. I trembled from head to toe, just like I’d done after Merv had attacked me. Then something came to mind, and before I could filter it, I spoke into the darkness. “The blood from my lip.” I pointed to it. “I’m clean.”
He stayed quiet for so long that I thought he left again.
“Don’t touch it,” he said, his voice full of warning. The tone of it ran over me like rough waves, but the coolness of it slid over blistered skin like a miracle. His voice was low, but with some scratch to it. He didn’t seem like he was doing it on purpose. I wanted to hear it again
Get your shit together, Mari! You haven’t even seen his face! He could be seriously messed up, a man who just came here to fuck you for money. Or worse. He likes to use blindfolds. Kinky shit.
Liar, liar, liar, my heart seemed to sing, all off tune and shit.He’s beautiful.
The devil was beautiful, too,my mind shot back.
“Okay,” I said, putting my hands down. I was going to remove the blindfold again when he came at me with “don’t touch it.”
“You’re poor.”
There it was again, my favorite sound in the world. His voice. I liked the rasp in it.
Wait.
What?
You’re poor.
I laughed a little. I expected him to comment on myI’m clean comment.That was why I had brought it up. I thought that maybe once he tasted the blood, he was disgusted and worried. Instead he hits me with “you’re poor.”
Who leads with that?
“Fabulously so.” I sighed. “Anyone poorer than me might as well be down with whale shit. I have no home. No job. No money. I used everything I had to get here tonight. I have no family either.” I didn’t want to get into Keely and her family. He didn’t need to know that. If he was deranged, or whatever was worse than that, better he didn’t know they existed.
“Name,” he said.
“Oh.” I took a breath in and released it. “My name is… Mari. I’m not Sierra. She…she couldn’t make it. I took her place. So about the rules…”
“Name,” he said again. “Not yours, Ms. Flores. I want the name of the man who did that to your face.”
“How do you know it was a man?” I whispered, ignoring the fact the he knew my last name without me even telling him.
