Seth (Damage Control 3)

“Just remembering some stuff. Not important.”

“You can talk to me.” Her hand is still on my cheek, and the look in her eyes makes everything inside my chest go tight and hot.

Dammit, Seffers. Back up. Regroup.

“Sure.” I turn my face and kiss her palm, making her shiver. “Let’s talk about how I’m gonna find a quiet spot somewhere and push you up against a wall, shove that little skirt up your legs and my hand into your panties. Then,” she lowers her hand and I lean so I speak directly into the fine shell of her ear, “I’m gonna fuck you with my fingers until you come, stop your cries with my mouth. And then I’m gonna replace my fingers with my cock and fuck you again, harder, faster. Make you scream.”

I pull back, and fuck, maybe I’ve scared her now, what with growling shit like that in her ear like some crazy bastard.

But the look in her wide eyes isn’t fear. She licks her lips, and

I swallow in response.

“Not playing fair,” she complains breathlessly, and shit, now I’m getting hard, too.

“Never said I was.”

Been on and off the street since I was a kid, in and out of juvie, in prison, and then back on the street. Playing fair would have been the death of me. Besides, nothing’s fair in love and war.

Or so I hear.

She’s silent, looking at me as if she can read something on my face I didn’t know was there. Her fingertips trail down to my jaw, to my neck, so unbearably gentle. I wrack my mind for something to say, something witty, something funny to break the tension.

“Do you like the zoo?” she asks, and I blink.

Must have missed something she said earlier, right? Were we talking about that?

“The zoo?” I repeat.

Brain’s frozen. Sorry.

“Do you like going there? Like, when you were little?”

Er. “Never been there.”

“That’s not possible. Every kid I know has been to the zoo. The Henry Vilas Zoo. I mean it’s not far, and…” She trails off. “You never went.”

That’s right, I never went. I was stealing, so I could buy food to eat when other kids went to the zoo and to the parks and to the damn movies. Stealing to survive, and my mom and her boyfriends took the money from me to buy themselves booze and drugs.

Shit, what’s wrong with me today? Why can’t I get out of the past? It keeps sucking me down, like a sinkhole.

She’s still staring at me, frowning. Doing that thing again, where she’s reading my expression like an open book.

Never been an open book to anyone, dammit. Worked hard on putting a lid on what I feel, what I can show to the world. And she’s seeing right through it.

“Well, then.” Her hand presses on my chest, over my racing heart. “How about going today? Would you like that?”

Go to the zoo. I open my mouth, close it, unsure of the words.

It’s not like I’m burning to go. Not anymore, anyway. Sure, there was a time I’d have given anything to go. Entry is free for the public, and once I tried getting in. Rode black in a bus from the northern suburbs, stood at the entrance, tried to explain to the lady at the door my mom was coming later to join me.

A lie, of course, and the lady realized. Hard not to tell. I was filthy and feral. She told me to come again later with my mom, as they couldn’t let inside kids unattended.

I’d been unattended all my life.

“Come on.” Manon gets up and tugs on my hand. “We’ll get my car. It’s parked just around the corner from your apartment.”

Using the backrest of the bench as support, grabbing my walking stick, I push to my feet, testing my bum knee. Still holding.