“A little sore. I fell running out of the house.”
Bobby ran his finger underneath the straps of my slip and peeled it away from my body. He ran his bruised and bloodied fingers along the slopes and divots, the slim bones and the soft crests. I watched him, mesmerized by his gentleness after such a brutal display of protection.
Small bruises had begun to develop from the fall and he came to his knees to softly kiss each one. I bit my lip to fight back the swell of tears. I was so full after being empty for so long, I couldn't bottle all the emotions his tenderness awakened in me.
Bobby stood up against me as I leaned back on the wall. He buried his nose into my neck and rasped, “I can't believe I get to have you.”
We had been in the shadows so long. Though there was nothing truer than how we felt about each other, it had been relegated to a dirty secret. A lie.
But now we could bask in the sun. In the light of a love so pure, it existed before we ever understood it. Before the world could ever taint it.
A tear escaped my eye as he grazed his lips along my neck, jawline and to my mouth. The kiss was so soft, I wasn't sure if our lips even touched.
“Lil, the girl who was beautiful even when she tried hard not to be,” he recited wistfully.
I smiled through the tears. Those words that had squeezed the joy from my heart years ago now filled it like a cornucopia.
“Let me make the pain go away,” my lover murmured as he flitted kisses along my glistening collarbone. I wondered if he meant mine, or his.
The pale orange light glowed against him as I reached for the bottom of his shirt and pulled it away from his sun-drenched body. Shadows settled in the vales of his muscles, glossy with perspiration as his lips traced a path down my breasts, my tummy, to the inside of my thigh.
He moaned as he tasted me. Any insecurities I had about the state I was in melted away with the heat of his mouth latched to me. Bobby slid one leg over his shoulder as his tongue drew trails along the sensitive, ripe softness.
I gripped his messy, silky hair in my fingers as my hips snaked against his mouth, lost in the pleasures of the flesh. Bobby's lips and tongue could make me forget a house was burning down around me.
Sweat trickled from my temple, along the peaks of my bust and down the underside of my breast—a collection of the external and internal heat meeting, turning me into searing flames. Bobby was the accelerant.
My hips snaked faster against his tongue, as he used it to slip in and out of me; sex with his mouth.
He moaned as if he was drinking from a flute of the sweetest champagne.
One of my hands left his hair and looked for an anchor as my legs grew weak from the pulsing thrill that ran along them. I felt around, only finding the lampshade and gripping it. The light around us shifted as the shade tilted, leaving us in darkness.
Bobby pulled away for a moment. “You taste so good.” He lapped his tongue all the way up the engorged lips, tasting the cream, and let the tip of his tongue swirl along the swollen bud.
I let out a weak cry.
He slid two of his thick fingers inside of me, curving them and caressing me. While his lips and tongue did the devil's work just outside of it. The pleasure was too carnal to be from god.
Like his mouth was the trigger, a bomb exploded inside of me, taking me down all at once. My supporting leg gave out from under me, but his strong shoulders and hand held me up. The lamp I used for leverage slipped sideways and fell to the floor, beaming unfiltered light on us. I reached for the wall behind me, looking for something to remind me I was still on this planet. That I hadn't died and gone to heaven or hell or wherever something this bad could feel this spectacular.
I called out echoes of Bobby's name. Each one weaker and more distant than the last as he fed from me unrelentingly, drawing out every last pulse of the orgasm.
Utterly spent, my leg slipped off Bobby's shoulder. He stood up as I used the wall to prop myself up, panting, my head pounding from the intensity of it all.
I could see Bobby raging through his pants, and I wanted to please him, but I had nothing left.
“Use me,” I begged. “Just do whatever you want. Take it all,” I panted breathlessly.
Bobby grunted as he scooped me off the floor and threw me on the bed. The pain had been stripped away. I could feel nothing, I could hear nothing, but Bobby.
He ripped his pants open savagely. Underneath he was bare. Like an animal hidden under cloth. His tight, angry erection peaked out from the pelt of hair that climbed up faintly to the lower part of his abdomen. Where faint lines beckoned the eyes to look below. I remember catching glimpses of those muscles peeking out from his swim trunks, when we were teens, and the uncomfortable feeling they solicited. They still gave me that sensation, a swirling in the pit of my stomach that roused an awakening through my core.
The spotlight of the upturned lamp casted behind him, like a fallen angel—dark, glowing with sweat, heaving, hungry, lustful.
This would not be long. This was a man establishing his territory. This was animal. This was primal.
He climbed on top of me, and guided himself into the warm clench of my entrance. We both let out careless groans as I tensed around his steely hardness.
Bobby thrust into me hard, almost angrily, as I held on, wailing as he impaled me over and over. But I welcomed the attack. I wanted him to let out the angst and confusion I knew lived in the pit of his belly. All the loss, the death, the guilt, the missed opportunities. Wounds he had a way of making look like they were nothing. But they were something. I knew Bobby felt every bite, every sting, maybe even more than most others could.
Bobby could be gentle, but he could also be firm. That's what I loved about him. He was fluid. He stepped up when he needed to. He did the things that hurt when he had to. But being the person who carries the burden takes its toll. And I wanted to be the one to take the pain away, even if it was just for a few minutes.
It felt too good, and it only took a few thrusts before Bobby was growling curses in my ear, his body going rigid in my arms as he grunted. As he claimed me once and for all.
We crammed into the dingy motel shower. Our spirits had lightened. The conflict still existed, but now we had a life to look forward to. One that wasn't an unending apology for feelings we couldn't help.
We stepped under the surprisingly strong stream of water together, washing away the blood and sweat.
“How's your head feeling?” Bobby asked.
“A lot better, thanks to your medicine,” I smirked.
“Tomorrow, on our way out, we should stop somewhere to check it out. Just in case.”
“If it'll make you stop asking me to, then fine.” I grabbed the teeny bar of motel soap and lathered it in my hands, tracing sweeping circles along his chest. “Are you going to turn Rory in tomorrow, or was that an empty threat?”
“I don't know, Lil,” he rued. “I don't know what's right anymore. I just hope he does it himself so I don't have to be in that position. Or you.”
“I know it's the right thing to do but . . . it's Rory.” Despite everything, Rory was still family. We were both raised to protect family at all costs.
“Yeah. I know,” Bobby said soberly. “How are you feeling about Barbie? I know what she did was terrible, but for all her faults . . . you were friends.”
I tried to go to that place inside of myself, to remember Barbie as a woman with children who like all of us, was sometimes good, sometimes bad. But my emotional energy had been exhausted and I couldn't summon her. Only the idea of her. I didn't think she did what she did to hurt me. Barbie was many things, but mean-spirited wasn't one of them. I think she was just looking for a way out of her perfect hell as so many of us were at the time. “It doesn't feel real. I don't know how I feel about her right now. But I never wanted her to die. And I know Rory didn't either.”