Mine (7 page)

“I know, but you might need to get Aunt Janet stuff, and you need to pay the mortgage, like I said. I was gonna come see you tonight, but my plans changed, so this is better. I wanted to hit you up before you left.”

“Honey, you have a restaurant to save up for and—”

“I know, Mom, but you need things too.”

She nodded. “Thank you, baby, this helps, and now I don’t have to owe Aunt Janet for the plane ticket. I felt bad about that.”

“There, see.”

She stood up, leaned forward, and kissed my cheek. “How’s Landry?”

“He’s fine,” I lied, realizing that I was more than tired and really not able to hold onto my good mood or my fake smile much longer. I loved her and I’d wanted to see her before she left, but I was beat. “I gotta go, though; he’s expecting me for dinner.”

“Of course, you go ahead and go.”

I smiled at her, my mother, Serena Bean. “You’re so beautiful.”

“You’re full of crap, but I love you.” She beamed at me. “Come around here and hug me proper and then get out.”

I did as she said, very careful not to let her put her arms anywhere but around my neck. All I needed was her bumping the gun. I would never hear the end of it, and the questions about the true nature of my business would be interminable. I was in no way prepared to get into that with her, and I didn’t want her getting on the plane tomorrow pissed off at me.

“When I get home, I want you and Landry to come for dinner. He wants to learn to make bouillabaisse, and I promised I’d teach him.”

“Okay,” I agreed. I smiled at her, squeezing her tight, unable to help myself.

“I love you,” she sighed, letting me go. “But these barrels in your ears are just—”

“Plugs, Mom,” I teased her. “Rico has barrels—they’re hollow—but I have plugs.”

She made a face. “Why you have to put those in your ears? You and your cousin? Why?”

“’Cause I like it,” I teased her. “Just like I like the huge-ass tattoo on my back and shoulders and arms that you hate.”

She had never wanted me to have the tattoo, but it had been for my father, to honor him and his belief in the afterlife, the wings around the cross to represent heaven, my testament on my flesh for him. It was enormous, covering my back, shoulders, biceps, and triceps, the lines tribal but intricate, done lovingly by my cousin Manuel, scrolling and delicate and thick and heavy, all of it flowing beautifully, seamlessly. It had taken a year for him to finish it all the way he wanted, his masterpiece. He appreciated me letting him take pictures of it to put in his book at his shop. When he had had to add onto it for Landry, finally putting color to my skin as well, he had been thrilled. I had never told him how necessary it was.

Outside on the street, I was surprised to see Conrad parked at the corner. When I reached the black SUV, the tinted black passenger-side window rolled down slowly.

“Why are you still here?”

“Because I want to drive you to Landry’s gallery, and then I won’t worry.”

I sighed heavily. “So can I go out? Can I go to a club, see a movie—I mean, seriously, how fucked am I?”

“You’re not. You don’t go near any casinos, any of your regulars, and if you see anyone out and they ask you anything, you say you ain’t working. But you do need to get out of town for maybe a week. Can Landry do that?”

I suddenly thought of his brother Chris. “Maybe. You wanna hear something funny?”

“Yeah, funny would be good. Get in the car.”

As he drove me to Landry’s gallery, Asil, I explained about Landry’s brother showing up out of the blue.

“That’s fucked up.”

And I agreed that it was.

“You’re doing it again.”

I was snapped from my explanation. “Doing what?”

He smiled at me. “Whenever you’re worried, you either rub the top of your head or over your heart with your right hand.”

“I knew about rubbing my head, but I rub my chest?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh, I wonder why.”

“’Cause that’s where the
L
is.” He assured me.

A
LONG
with my entire back and shoulders being covered in a heavy black tribal tattoo, another design had been added above the cross: a ribbon that looked like it was laid over my skin. It spilled over my left shoulder, thickening and thinning down over my left pectoral and branching out, becoming roots over my heart where the Old English
L
was, entwined with roses and thorns. That was Landry, a rose with horrible, deadly, wicked, sharp thorns. He had nearly fainted when he saw it; he had needed it there, so ready to mark me himself if I had not asked Manuel to do it for me.

I never told anyone about waking in the night to him standing over me with a knife. It was small, one of my switchblades, chosen for carving, not stabbing, but still sharp, still able to kill me. He was breathing hard, stroking himself and looking at me with glazed eyes.

“Whatcha doin’, babe?” I asked him, voice calm, swallowing down my fear, reaching for him.

He didn’t even see me, intent on my chest, tugging and pulling on his hard, heavy cock, his breath catching, his body trembling.

I waited and he let go. His seeping dick twitched as he bent toward me, his slick left hand went down on my sternum, the other holding the knife like a scalpel.

“What’re you gonna do?” I asked, reaching for him, my fingers closing around his hard, wet length.

“Carve my name in your skin so everyone knows you’re mine.”

I squeezed and he hissed out his pleasure, head back, eyes closed, his intent to cut me forgotten as he moaned my name. Rolling out of bed, I went to my knees and took his cock down the back of my throat fast and hard, sucking violently so he could feel it even through the haze of whatever had come over him.

He palmed the back of my head, as there was no hair to grab hold of, and tried to push his way in even deeper. When I brushed his hand off and pulled back, he whimpered loudly.

“Are you awake?” I asked, licking from the base of his long, beautiful cock to the tip and back again, too turned on to worry about the fact that he still had a switchblade in his right hand. I fondled his heavy balls, loving the feel of them. “Baby?”

There was only gibberish coming from him, only sounds, no words, as I licked the glistening head before stretching my lips around it, taking the length of his thick, leaking erection back into my mouth.

“Trev,” he managed to get out as I sucked and nibbled and stroked, my cheeks hollowed out with the force, my tongue creating swirling pressure. “Gonna come… swallow it all… drink me.”

I moaned and he exploded in my mouth, hot semen hitting the back of my throat as I swallowed frantically, gulping, hearing him yell, one of his hands digging painfully into my shoulder as he fucked my mouth.

Knowing that he loved to see his spunk on my skin, I shoved him off me. He froze, standing there, letting cum spurt from the flared head as he shuddered through his climax. I watched and waited, and when he was done, still frozen, I watched thick wet semen slide back down his shaft to his balls. I saw some of it drip to the floor, and some of it was on me, on my collarbone, cooling on my skin. Only then, when he was shuddering with aftershocks, did his eyes flutter as he suddenly saw me.

“Trev?”

I squinted at him as I stood up, the two inches of height I had on him still enough to make his head tip back.

“Oh shit,” he gasped, realizing he had a knife in his hand, letting it drop open to the floor.

“Jesus, Landry,” I griped, jumping back. “You never drop an open knife.”

“What the fuck?”

I picked up the weapon, retracted the blade, and placed it on the nightstand.

“Trevan?”

“Were you sleepwalking?” I asked gently, turning back to him, putting my hands on his face. I knew he did that sometimes, having had entire conversations with him when he was not awake.

“No, I….” He shivered and moved closer to me, his hands sliding over my hips. “Your dick is hard.”

Of course it was. I had just given my boyfriend a blowjob. “Never mind, what were you doing?”

“I fell asleep on the couch,” he said, fingers sliding around my painfully hard erection, “and I had a dream that you… this is like velvet in my hand.”

I couldn’t help pushing in and out of his fist; it felt too good.

“I was thinking that if I just put my name on you, marked you… branded you… that no one would ever be confused about who you belonged to.”

Instantly, I had understood.

We had been at a party earlier in the night. There was a girl who had asked me to dance and she was cute and funny. She had a snake tattoo on her upper arm, and I told her how much I liked it. She wanted to know if I had any tats, and when I said I did, she wanted to see. It was just conversation to me, forgettable. I had obliged her interest because it meant nothing, but it had meant something to Landry. It had, in fact, meant a great deal to Landry.

Later, the same girl had been cold outside where we were all hanging out on the patio. I had pulled the heavy wool sweater over my head and given it to her. She had put her hand on my back, tracing my tattoo the second time before she helped me pull my T-shirt down.

When I had gotten up and gone to look for my boy, as he had not returned from the bathroom, I found him in the hall, hugging himself tight, shivering hard.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, hands on him, leaning our foreheads together as I inhaled.

“Oh, now you love me?”

“What?” I chuckled, leaning back to look at him. “Are you all right?”

His eyes were dead.

“Landry?”

There were sudden tears.

“Oh baby, what’s wrong?”

And he had breathed suddenly, it seemed, like he hadn’t been but now could. I had pushed him up against the wall, shoved my tongue down his throat, and mauled him. I pressed into him, broke the kiss and bit down on the soft flesh between his neck and shoulder. He arched up into me, his now familiar chant beginning again.

Need me… over and over.

Always the same, like I didn’t already or could stop. And as I stood before him in our apartment later that same night, staring down into his hooded eyes, feeling the clench of his fingers on my hard, hot shaft as precum dribbled from the tip and he smeared it with this thumb, I understood. He didn’t just want to have his mark on me; it was a necessity for his continued sanity.

“Tomorrow,” I managed to get out. “Gonna go put you over my heart forever.”

The eyes were so lost and so hopeful, all at the same time.

“I swear,” I said, hand over my left pectoral. “Gonna have an
L
right here so everyone can see. An
L
for Landry.”

“On your body.”

“Yes.”

“Like a brand.”

I nodded.

He sucked in his breath. “Fuck me before I die.”

“You’re not gonna die.”

“I could. I thought I was. It felt like it before.”

Jesus. “I’ll get in bed, and you ride me.”

“No,” he whispered. “Wanna be fucked.”

I moved fast, grabbing the back of his neck, hurling him face down on the bed, landing on top of him, stretching for the lube from our nightstand even as I pinned him in place.

“You can’t do it,” he taunted me, and this too was his way. “You can’t fuck me, you don’t even want to. You want that girl that you gave your fuckin’ sweater to.”

The thoughts that consumed him were so stupid sometimes.

“We left without it, you know, and fuck her if she brings it back. Fuck her! I’ll burn it, I swear to God, and if you even try to—”

“Shut up,” I ordered him, spreading his legs, feeling the tension in his shoulders, the fatigue from where he had been clenched earlier, frozen in pleasure.

His hands were fisted in the blankets, still warm from where I had been sleeping. I dribbled lube over the cleft of his ass, more than I needed but wanting to make a mess. Gently, even though he was verging on madness, I slid my fingers inside of him, scissoring, stroking, slow but steady, relentless as I curled them over his gland, feeling him jolt under me, twist and squirm with shallow breaths.

“Can’t make me yours; I won’t be. I’ll find someone that won’t pay attention to stupid girls who say they’re cold.”

“Idiot,” I told him, adding a third finger, pushing deep, circling wide, adding my thumb from my left hand. He was whining, the words incoherent but pleading, writhing under me, and the mantra of my name became demanding. I didn’t slide my fingers free. I yanked back, and he gasped in outrage before I grabbed his tight, firm ass, spread the cheeks open, and thrust hard and deep in one long, smooth glide.

He howled his rage and drowning, devouring pleasure.

“Oh fuck!”

His muscles were like a fist closing around me, holding tight, rippling and hot. My whole body tingled as I eased back and thrust in again, deeper, shifting my angle, finding the spot that made him scream. There was the first thump of poor Mrs. Chun’s broom against our floor. We had woken our neighbor yet again.

I smiled as I pumped in and out of my boyfriend’s ass, pounding him down into our bed, bucking as hard as I could so he’d know it was only him I wanted to fuck.

“Trev!”

I knew.

I pushed my fingers through his hair, made a fist, and jerked up, arching his back, lifting his ass, putting him into a position of submission, taking away all his power. He was there only for me to use.

He was sobbing, I could hear it, and I wasn’t sure what was most needed.

“Shall I come on you or in you,” I asked, my mouth next to his ear as I reached under him and squeezed his rock-hard shaft.

Between the panting and gasping and crying, I understood that I needed to fill him up; he wanted it to leak out of him for hours.

I was too close, my control was gone, so I grabbed his shaft, stroked and pulled, and when I felt his muscles clamp down, I plunged into him, lifting him with the force.

We were a bad porn movie together—not pretty, not gorgeous, but loud and messy and sticky with fluid and awash in tears.

My orgasm was endless, and I held him tight until it was done, until the flood receded and I could realize where I was again and care. We were covered in lube and cum and sweat, and I wiped my hands on the comforter and laughed huskily in his ear.