Page 16 of Devil

“You can’t!” I said, louder than a whisper now. I was panicked, squirming. A hand came back to my head, pressing my face against the cold board again. The head of his erection was spreading me apart.

“I’ll get a condom in a minute,” he promised in a murmur. “I want to feel you without anything in the way first. Just for a moment. I think I should have that, don’t you? Just a minute without anything in the way?”

He thought I was worried about a condom—I wasn’t. That honestly hadn’t even occurred to me.

I was protesting because I wasn’t ready for this, even if I didn’t know how much of that unreadiness was inherent or trained into me. I was protesting because it was too much too fast. I was protesting because the answering desire in my body felt like something much more destructive than a flood, and it scared me how much I wanted him to do the things he said while he was rubbing my clitoris. How much I wanted to feel him have to…shove in. Force it. Hurt me.

I knew then that I had to keep my desire a stranger because that wanting would lead me down dangerous roads if I let it.

He pushed, not much, but enough that I had to stretch around the intrusion, and we both made noises. Me, a plea, a whisperedstop, Bell, stop, and him a hair-raising moan, melodic and unearthly.

“I don’t think I can stop,” he breathed. My head was still shoved against the chalkboard. “I don’t even have the tip all the way inside yet, and you’re already so tight. My shy little virgin, so perfect and sweet. You waited for me.”

“Bell, please,” I begged. A tear rolled over the edge of my eyelid and onto his fingers below. I couldn’t make out much in my peripheral vision, but it seemed like he was fascinated by it.

“But you want it.”

That was true. “Yes,” I whispered.

“Then why?” A small press of his hips. Pain came with that press, a stab of it that refused to draw itself back. Another tear spilled over.

“Because I want to stop too. Bell…”

“Ry. You call me Ry. I don’t want to beBellto you like you’re just anybody else. You’re not just like anybody else. You’re mine, and I’m about to have your blood on my dick. Call me Ry.”

“Ry,” I said, my voice thick with the sob caught in my throat. “Please stop.No.I’m saying no. Please. Please.”

Every muscle in his body was quaking, interlocked with a tension that seemed like it could rip him limb from limb if he didn’t beat it back, and for a single instant, I thought he might do it anyway. I thought he might punch his hips forward and take what he wanted.

And for a single instant, I thought I might want him to.

He pulled back.

It wasn’t a full retreat. He wasn’t trying to penetrate me any longer, but he did crush me against the board, his erection pressed hard against my bottom, his face in my hair as he sucked in air like he’d just run a mile. I could feel the pounding of his heart against my back.

“This isn’t me letting you go,” he mumbled into my hair. He was still shaking. “It’s too late for you. I’ve tasted. I’ve seen. It’s too late, Birdie, because you’re already mine.”

They were dark, obsessive words. They were harassing, abusive, criminal.

He was a monster, and I was this close to telling him to do something monstrous when the studio door opened with a windy bang, carrying voices with it.

If my life were a cathedral, there would be an etched stone relief in some forgotten corner depicting this exact moment. Me pressed against the chalkboard with my skirt up to my hips and Bell behind me, zipper open, bare flesh rubbing against plush bare flesh. Him rubbing his face in my hair like it was the only thing that could keep him sane. And then the people walking through the door: the Fine Arts Department chair, the vice chair and residency program director, Father Alvarez, four or five alumni.

The stone relief would show the empty space between the door and the chalkboard, how there was nowhere to hide, no way to grasp at even the flimsiest shred of denial. The relief would show the moment the tour of the extremely Catholic college came to an abrupt halt with the revelation that their artist in residence was being fucked against a wall by her student.

7

BIRDIE

“Wait here,”Bell had told me. Sternly even, as if I were his to instruct, as if I were the student.

After the group had left with a pointedwe’ll be waiting in Father Alvarez’s officefrom the department chair, Bell had zipped himself up and ruffled his curls with impatient irritation. I remember thinking that King David himself must have been exactly like this. Young and arrogant and so entitled to anything he wanted that no consequence could possibly matter to him.

When I hadn’t responded quickly enough, he’d found my chin. “Birdie,” he’d said. It was nearly dark in the studio by then, but what little light there was had found his eyes. “I mean it. Stay here. Let me handle this. Anddo notrun away.”

“Who do you think you are?” I’d whispered back to him.

I hadn’t said it as an insult or an attack. I’d been genuinely asking. Who did he think he was that he could justhandlethis? Who did he think he was to me that I should let him? That I should listen?