“Let down your hair,” Ignacio snaps over the sound of a zipper, and I sit back on my heels, fumbling with the long braid that reaches almost to my knees, combing the weaves out so that it hangs loose. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m – oh…”
Without any warning, he’s pushing inside me. I make small noises as he fills me up with himself, feeling myself contract around him. He brings one hand around to my front and strokes the tiny bundle of nerves between my legs that makes me arch my back like a cat in heat.
“Baby likes that?” he asks, nibbling on my ear. He never stays angry for more than a moment. He says it’s because he’s besotted by me. I think it’s because my pussy is clenching around his cock and making his mind blurry with lust.
He is not my father, but he is like a father to me, sometimes. And other times, like now, he is my lover. Like his lust-filled mind, sometimes the lines of what we are to each other blur until they run into one another.
My legs start to shake as his finger moves faster between my legs, circling me to the brink and then backing off. My stomach drops as he takes his fingers from my pussy and slides them into my mouth. “Suck.”
I open my mouth and taste myself on his skin. But my mind is somewhere else. It’s wondering if this pain in my side might kill me. It feels like it might. I feel as if somebody has taken the fire poker from the corner, the one I use to stoke the coals on cold winter nights, and rammed it into my stomach.
I start to shake harder. It’s no longer pleasure driving me to such dizzying heights; it’s knowing that I will pass out. Black bites at the edges of my vision as I struggle to breathe. I gasp as Ignacio pulls on my hair, pulling himself deeper inside me, swelling inside me as he lets go and I feel his warm seed spurt deep inside me.
He lets go of my hips and I collapse on my front. He will be angry. I’m supposed to turn around and lick him clean. This is our routine, the same thing, every night.
“Seraphina?” he says quietly, in a tone that suggests he knows something is not right. He pulls out of me, sticky semen seeping out of me, quickly growing cold on my thighs. He gets off the end of the bed and circles around to the head, kneeling beside my face.
It’s the first time I have seen him all day; his short stubble, his dark eyes, soothe me. I am not alone. “Bambina, what’s wrong?” he asks.
“My stomach hurts,” I whisper.
“I would feed you more,” he says, stroking my cheek affectionately, “but we need to keep you small. You understand?”
I nod through the hunger that pulses in me; it is always there, an omnipotent beast that eats me from the inside out. I am always starving. I am always weak.
But this feeling isn’t hunger.
Ignacio senses it, too, I think. I feel his body tense under me as he brings the back of his hand up to my forehead. It is like ice to my fire; he sucks in a breath.
“You’re burning up, little bird,” he says, concern thick in his voice. He gets back on to the bed, pulling me into his lap so that my back is against his chest. On reflex I part my legs, and his fingers find the spot where they fit so well.
“Let me make you feel better, precious girl,” he says, his tongue on my neck, his fingers bringing me ever closer to the edge. I raise my hips greedily, wanting more, wanting relief and release. He starts to fuck me with his other hand, two fingers inside me, then three, the other hand circling my bud until I’m moaning loudly.
There are times I could almost believe that he is my father, except for times like this, the way I’m naked in his lap, my legs spread wide, my head resting back against his shoulder as his rough fingers stroke the wet spot between my legs. In the books I read, stained with mildew and covered in layers of dust, fathers do not do these things. He kisses my neck tenderly, rubbing me between my legs until they start to shake. “This will help you forget,” he breathes, his words warm on my neck.
Stars burst behind my eyelids as my orgasm finally arrives; and for a precious moment, with Ignacio’s fingers buried deep inside me, with his teeth biting softly at my neck, the pain goes away and everything is pure white light inside me.
But then he takes his fingers away, pushes me to the edge of the bed, to my feet, cold fluid running down the insides of my legs as he guides me gently to the small bathroom. “Clean yourself,” he says, turning on the faucet and filling the tiny shower cubicle with steam. “I’ll get you food, and some medicine.” I nod, not bothering to twist my hair up onto the top of my head like I normally would. I put my palms on the tiled wall and shuffle underneath the water.
“Phina?” Ignacio’s voice sounds like it is a million miles away. That’s impossible; I’ve never left this tower since the day I was born, unless you count the time I accidentally fell out of the window when I was a child. No, I could never be a million miles away from my dark love; he’s never more than a few feet away.
“Seraphina?!” More insistent this time. I open my mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. I can’t see. I can’t hear. There is a brief pain in my temple as my head hits hard tile, and then nothing.
XAVIER
I’m elbow-deep in Italian mafia blood and internal sutures when my cellphone vibrates in my pocket.
“Bro,” I hiss, catching my brother’s attention as he monitors the levels of anesthesia being pumped into the criminal on the table between us, the guy whose intestines I’m currently digging in for stray pieces of shrapnel. Liam raises his eyebrows. “My phone. Can you get it?”
Liam rolls his eyes, but he circles the table and our unconscious patient, Anthony No-Last-Name, never once taking his eyes off the vital signs his portable monitor is blinking out in red and green Technicolor. “You expecting a call?” he asks, reaching in to my jeans pocket and pulling out my iPhone.
“Holy shit,” he says, his expression grave. I never thought I’d describe a black man as pale, but I can see the blood disappear from my brother’s dark brown skin as he looks at the phone screen.
“What?” I ask, peering over. “I can’t read upside down, you know.”
“It’s The Florist,” Liam says. He’s seemingly forgotten all about the guy who he’s meant to be keeping sedated while I finish my treasure hunt inside his stomach.
“THE Florist?” I ask, glancing at the patient monitor. “Liam, Jesus, your guy’s blood pressure is—”
“Falling down into hell,” he finishes, rushing around to his spot at the head of the industrial kitchen table we’re using as a makeshift surgical bed. I’ve operated in some pretty crazy places, but I’ve never before had the aroma of frying oil stuck to the inside of my nostrils as I try to dig pieces of a special-issue 9mm bullet out of somebody.