Resist (Songs of Submission #6) (5 page)

Darren stepped into his shoe. “What’s it say?”

“His girlfriend from sixteen years ago died under suspicious circumstances, and the family paid off anyone associated with it. Or got them fired. For all I know, the rest of the article is about who they killed.”

“You gonna tell him?”

I slid the papers back in the envelope. “How can I? I don’t know if any of this is true. It could be someone’s idea of a short story. He’s got enough shit going on without me coming to him with this....this.... I don’t even know what this is.”

“Gabby’s causing trouble from the grave.” He shrugged on his jacket. “I like that.”

“You would. Can I use your computer? I want to look up some of this.”

“Yeah. Not that I care, but will you be here when I get back? You look like you got your walking shoes on.”

“I’m going home today.” I glanced at my pile of crap, wondering if I could make it on one trip.

“I’m thinking about Gabby’s room.”

“Move in.”

“Did you ask?”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. I’ll ask daddy if it’s ok if a boy lives with me.”

I thought that was hilarious. Darren didn’t.

Chapter 9.

The all-knowing internet revealed a big fat goose egg, but I was never much of a researcher. I did find Evert Toth, who had a masthead listing as managing editor of
elLAy
Rag
, a local left-wing free paper picked up in coffee shops all over the city. Though one might assume such a paper was trash from front to porn-filled back, it wasn’t. Some of the biggest exposes, blown whistles, and no-bullshit journalism happened inside. I called the paper, got routed all over the place, and finally ended up on voice mail. I left a message.

I walked home, phone in hand, unwilling to put it in my pocket. I had something else to do. Someone else to call.

I was many things. I was submissive. I was masochistic. I was trusting. I was a sexual slave. But obedient?

Not as much.

I rooted around my bag and found a matte white card. I stopped at the corner because if I waited until I got home, I might change my mind. I dialed the number. The voice that came over was silky smooth, betraying nothing, giving nothing.

Hello, you’ve reached the workshop of Jessica Carnes. Please leave a message after the tone, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. If you are a curator calling to schedule a studio visit, please press five
.

I choked a little. I knew what I wanted. I wanted to probe her plans. I wanted to represent myself as her friend and ally to bring back information to Jonathan, but I suddenly felt highly unqualified to protect him.

I almost hung up, but her caller ID would reveal who I was, and if I hung up, I’d look weak and manipulative. She wouldn’t trust me. She’d use me. I needed her to respect me if I wanted her to attempt to partner with me.

“Hi, Jessica. This is Monica Faulkner. I’d like to take you up on your offer to talk if it’s still on the table. Thanks.”

I hung up before I could say something stupid or laugh nervously.

Fuck.

What did I just do?

Chapter 10.

The Stock was busy. Super busy. Wall-of-drunk busy. Ass-pinched-turn-around-and-I-can’t-tell-who-did-it busy, especially considering rain threatened on the horizon. I put on a happy face, but my preoccupation reduced the power of my customer-service smile. I couldn’t check my phone while I was working, and I needed to know if Jessica had called me back. I wanted to see Jonathan’s texts, because I was sure there was at least one.

I barely had time for a break, but I ran to the bathroom. On the way out, I saw Debbie.

“I’m going at midnight,” she said. “Robert’s handling the tips.”

My disappointment must have shown on my face. Not about Robert managing the tips. The system for their division was fool-proof, which was good since Robert needed a system with exactly that name.

“What?” she asked.

“I wanted to talk to you after the shift.”

She looked at her watch. “You have four minutes.”

“I don’t want to say it so fast I offend you and lose my job.”

“So don’t.”

I’d rehearsed it a billion times, but there was no neutral way to ask. “You told me I shouldn’t have taken Jonathan seriously, and you told him I’d moved on.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don’t understand the question. He’s not usually serious. It looked to me like you’d moved on.” She shrugged as if everything had been on the up and up.

I started to feel like maybe it had been, and I was the one who had the problem. “I’m sorry to be blunt, but it gave me the impression, well...that it was...” I stopped. How had I painted myself into such a corner?

Debbie just waited for me to get myself out. She didn’t say a word or look impatient.

“Why do you want us together?” I asked. I managed to not use the word
manipulative
.

“You think I’m motivated by something other than friendship?”

“I don’t pretend to know.” Another wait. I felt as if I could hear the seconds go by.

Debbie didn’t look at her watch, and there was no clock in the hall, but when she straightened a fraction and said, “Time’s up,” I knew she was right to within the second.

Break over. Time to get back on the floor. The second half of my shift passed painfully but quickly. Every douchebag with a Hugo Boss suit or Audi keys made me want to scream. The intensity must have served me well, because my tips were more than I’d ever seen. I started to think about putting some cash away in my dwindling savings account or buying myself more pretty things to wear under my dresses.

I was snapping my locker closed when Robert came up, a little self-important swagger in his gait.

“Someone’s here for you.”

I didn’t want to smile, but I did. Jonathan had come, obviously. “I’ll be right up.”

He turned and walked off, calling behind him, “She’s by the bar.”

“Ok, thanks.”

She
?

Chapter 11.

I went upstairs with less anticipation, less heightened awareness than I would have if I thought I was meeting Jonathan. It was probably Yvonne or some random friend who was passing by and wanted to hit an after-hours.

Seeing a bar after closing, with the lights on and the music off, is much like seeing a beautiful woman without makeup. All the parts are there but made unappealing. Glasses thunk against bus trays, squeaky-wheeled press buckets make their way across the floor behind the slap and swoosh of grey-fringed mops. The staff laughs at each other’s jokes, which are invariably on customers. Guests lingered, mostly in earnest conversations about the next destination for drinking or fucking. Some clung by their fingernails, as if a change of venue would break a spell.

In the case of the Stock, the city had darkened beneath us as much as it ever would, and the sky was a burnt orange with reflected light. It was one fifteen in the morning. I had a pocket full of cash. Maybe I’d go the hell out and talk to people. Maybe I’d cling to a venue until four a.m. to avoid sleeping in my house for the first time in weeks.

But I wasn’t going out. I wasn’t getting drunk, and I wasn’t reacquainting myself with anyone. Only one woman was at the bar. It was Jessica, and she was not alone. Jonathan stood over her, and they were arguing fiercely. They looked like a married couple on the verge of a blowout, talking over each other, tense hands in front of them. I didn’t want to approach them. But something else took over.

She wasn’t supposed to talk to him. She wasn’t supposed to be in fifty feet of him. He was mine. I had a reaction that could only be described as biological. Rage filled my blood from some angry gland until my fingertips clenched and my teeth ground together.

Jonathan looked up. As soon as he saw me, he came my way like a torpedo.

“What the fuck?” I said.

He gripped my shoulder and spun me around. “Walk.”

“No.” He pushed me toward the back room. I shrugged him off. “I want to talk to her. That’s why she’s here.” He took my bicep and yanked me off the floor. “Get off me.”

He didn’t listen. He pulled me through the halls, past the few coworkers left, along the concrete floors of the back hallways. His face was stern and blank, a fixed mask of intention. He pushed me into the break room, locked the door, and drew shades over the window to the hall. When he finally faced me again, I pushed him away.

“Don’t you
ever
do anything like that again,” I said.

He pressed me against the wall and put his face to mine in a punishing kiss. I gave in to the heat, the urgency of his mouth on mine, his tongue demanding response, his hands still pushing my shoulders. I groaned into him, my voice a breath I had no choice but to take.

“I told you not to meet with her,” he said, face near enough to kiss me again.

“You’re not the boss of me.”

“Oh no?”

“Dragging me away from a conversation, trying to isolate me, you’re giving her quite a case.”

“Pick up your skirt.”

“Using sex to control me...”

“Show me your cunt, Monica.”

I felt a pool of arousal below my waist at the command. Though Jonathan didn’t hold my arms, his grip on my shoulders made skidding my hands over my skirt uncomfortable and awkward. I pinched the fabric and bent my wrists, hiking up the skirt one inch, then two. I got a fistful of cotton and yanked. The whole thing rode up as our eyes met, our breath mingling.

“So, what? You going to fuck me now?”

“I am.”

“You think that’s going to stop me?”

He put a hand at my throat, fingertips at the base of my jaw, forcing me to look at the ceiling. The restriction and posture sent a tidal wave of desire between my legs. I wanted to wrap them around him and take him inside me.

“I’ve never punished you, goddess. But I will.”

“Go on. I’m not scared of you.”

He looped his fingers in my panties and drove his fingers along my wet cleft. I gasped and moaned when he thrust two fingers in me. When he pulled them out, I felt their loss. I wanted to be filled with him, despite the fact that he was pissing me off, or because of it. Pressing his torso to mine and keeping his hand on my jaw, he put his wet fingers in my mouth.

“This mouth is mine,” he said. “It doesn’t talk unless I tell it to.”

The taste of my sex filled my mouth as he drove his fingers down my throat. I sucked them clean to please him, to please myself. The sensations caused by his forcefulness were overpowering.

He took his hand off my throat and ran it along my belly, to my thighs, inside them. He found the crotch of my panties and pulled them off. Then, without a pause, he pushed me onto the lunch table. The metal legs scraped the linoleum as he slid me back and bent my legs so my sopping pussy lay before him.

“You’re not fucking my decision out of me.”

Standing between my legs, he unbuckled his belt. “Don’t make me gag you.”

I held up my middle finger. He smiled as if he couldn’t help it then grabbed my hand and held it down, hard. His thumb dug into my wrist, and I knew my expression broadcast pain. My legs tightened and closed, but he pushed them apart.

“I’m going to fuck you, and you’re going to shut the hell up for the fucking duration.” He drove into me without an ounce more warning. He fucked me as if he owned me, my body bent, powerless, exposed.

He told me to take it, but he was the one who was doing the taking. He held the meat of my thighs, spreading my legs. The pain of his hands digging into my skin, his banging cock, him standing over me in dominion. I’d never look at those humming fluorescent lights without feeling a buzz in my cunt again.

I got up on my elbows, and he pushed me back down. “Don’t move unless I tell you to.”

“I’m going to—”

“You are not.”

I
was
going to come. A tsunami of pleasure rushed over the horizon, rising waters pooled at my feet, ankles, knees. I had another half a minute to complete oblivion. But his eyes shut and he grunted, then moaned, pushing into me slowly. He was coming, motherfucker, and he’d never just come because he couldn’t help it. Outside the first time he fucked me without a condom, he never lost control. Jonathan’s orgasms always had a purpose.

Taking his hands off my thighs, he leaned in. “Give me a number between one and ten.”

“Two.”

“Forget that, then. Between five and ten.”

“Seven.”

“That’s how many times you’re coming before sunrise. But you have to come home with me.”

“You son of a bitch. We’re playing orgasm games again?” I asked.

“You’re being a poor sport.”

I got up on my elbows, feeling done with that conversation already. “Tomorrow’s my day off, and I want to work on some songs.”