“Why not?”
“I can handle myself.”
“Nat—”
I put my hands on his face, wanting to make him hear me. “I can handle myself.”
It takes him a moment, but he nods once.
“We’re moving too fast.” I say it because I feel like I have to. Not because I want to stop.
“No, we’re not.”
I blink, open my mouth, close it again. I’m not expecting that answer.
“I know what I want, Natalie. Do you?”
When he looks at me, his eyes are alive, searching and wanting more. More than I think I can give.
“I’ve never thought,” he starts, speaking slowly, like he’s choosing each word carefully. Purposefully. Darkness casts its shadow over him and he looks away, shakes his head, exhales before meeting my gaze again. “I’ve lost a lot of friends. Cousins. Uncles. Many of them too early. Most of them too early.” He steps backward, releases me. “Time is a luxury, Natalie. One I don’t think will be afforded me.”
There’s a sadness in his words. In his eyes. And that shadow, it seems to swell behind him. Always there. Ever present.
Ready to swallow him up and carry him away.
I shudder. “Sergio—”
“I won’t waste it,” he says. He steps closer again, this time, taking my jaw in his hand, tilting my face upward. He looks at me, my eyes and mouth, and then he kisses me. It’s hard, there’s nothing tender in this kiss. He doesn’t slip his tongue between my lips. He isn’t tasting me. He’s laying claim to me.
When he breaks the kiss, he doesn’t pull back. Instead, with eyes locked on mine, he reaches under my skirt, smears his hand over the cum drying on my thigh, slips his fingers inside my panties.
“I want my cum on you. I want it inside you. I want it to mark you.” He rubs me, and somehow, feeling as raw as I do after that fucking, I’m aroused again. I want him again.
He grins. He knows it. He pinches my clit. It hurts and he knows that too, I can see it on his face, but he takes a minute to pull his hand out from under my skirt.
When he releases me, I have to grip him to remain standing because my knees are wobbling.
He wraps his hands around my arms. It takes me a minute to get my breathing under control. To straighten my legs. To process his words. To try to understand what he’s saying.
I look up at him, but am unable to speak.
“It’s not too fast. There’s no such thing. I don’t want to stop what’s happening between us,” he says, searching my face. “If I were a good person, I’d walk away, but I’m not. I’m not. I’ve done bad things. My hands are so fucking dirty. You need to know that. You do, don’t you? You know that?”
I nod.
“Do you know what you want?” he asks.
I know this is important. I know he’s important. But I can’t say that. I’m still caught on his other words.
“Do you?” he repeats.
“What do you mean that time won’t be afforded you?”
“I think you understand.”
We look at each other for a long while, the only sound is that of Pepper’s soft snores coming from the other room.
“Do you want me to go?” he finally asks. “I’ll ask this exactly once so think hard.”
I swallow, every hair on my body standing on end. Every nerve alive.
“Do you, Natalie? Do you want me to go?”
My mind is whirling, so much is happening so fast. I look away, down at my feet, at the cracked, old tile beneath them.
He squeezes my arms. “Answer my question.”
“No.”14SergioWe are moving fast but what I said to her is true. And even more true, more urgent, since I’ve met her. This feeling I’ve always had that my life would be a short one, it’s on my mind more and more and I can’t shake it like I could before. Maybe it’s because of what’s happening with my mother. The reality of the fragility of human life. My own mortality staring me in the fucking face. It’s like everything is going at warp speed. Like what I said to my father a few nights ago about a reckoning—it’s coming. It’s coming for me.
My hands are dirty.
No, not dirty. That’s too easy.
They’re blood soaked.
Maybe that’s why she draws me? She says she knows, but she doesn’t, not really.
I think back to the night of the convenience store robbery. I remember telling her to close her eyes. She did without question, trusting me, a man—a stranger—with a gun. A man who leaves destruction in his wake. To whom darkness clings. She didn’t see me take aim at the asshole who would have raped her. Didn’t see me shoot, point blank, the terror in his eyes only fueling me. Giving me power.
No, I don’t think she can imagine this. She may think she knows, but she cannot fathom the depths of the darkness that is my life. I am a monster. It’s the beast I’ve created and fed.