Her Secret Pleasure (7 page)

Shock, the kind that stops a person’s heart and lungs, held him frozen. I wanted him to say something because I knew I would never be able to. His hair fell a little longer than it used to, short at the nape and longer on top, messier and more casual than Zach could ever be. The navy t-shirt he wore clung to his broad chest and fell loose around his hips, un-tucked, and I very badly wanted to press my hand against it and drag its hem up the shape of his body until I touched skin.

Despite all the wonderful memories he inspired inside of me, despite my very immediate want and need, all of it shattered all over again when he turned abruptly and fled into the kitchen, pulling out his phone urgently as if the building were on fire.

The red leather door swished back and forth long enough that I was able to hear the conversation that followed for several seconds.

“What the hell is
she
doing here, Zach?”

Silence.

“You had no goddamned right.”

Silence.

“No. I’ll take care of it.”

Silence.

Numbness filtered down through my body as everything made perfect, blinding sense. Why hadn’t Sean come to the library instead of Zach?
Because he had no interest in seeing me.
Why would Sean ask Zach to bring me here to help him after how strange and painful our ending had been?
He wouldn’t have me brought here because we’d had our end. There were no take backs.

It all made such painful sense and I had no idea how I hadn’t seen it coming.

Sean did not come back out right away so I made my way down the ladder to leave before he decided to throw me out.

The door swished open and he stepped back into the room with his head down, phone in hand. I turned away because I couldn’t look at him like this, my heart suffocating itself in my chest.

“Zach brought you here.” It was a simple statement and lacked the heavy anger he’d aimed at his brother. “I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have had him bother you.”

“It wasn’t a bother.”

I collected my mess of paint brushes, surprised by how much I’d splattered on my arms and hands. I didn’t look at him as I sunk to my knees next to the basin of water I’d been left to use for clean-up.

A sharp intake of breath sent shivers down my spine and I found him staring down at my kneeling body, his pupils large, his mouth open a fraction. He breathed in quick, shallow pants that scrubbed my insides raw. It was so hard to look away and dunk my hands into frigid water, but the shock of cold helped clear the fog from my thoughts.

I worked silently to scrub the bristles free of their paint residue. When I finally pulled my hands out I was shivering, from cold or something else, I couldn’t say.

Wordlessly he knelt next to me with a towel cupped between his hands and I didn’t meet his gaze as I set the brushes on the towel. He rolled the brushes and gently wiped the excess water from them without damaging the bristles like I’d shown him a million years ago.

 “I don’t mind helping,” I said, finally. “I understand he needed a familiar face, though I was surprised he even knew I painted, let alone where I worked.”

“I told him about your paintings.” He blinked, glanced up, and again I was captured in that blue gaze. There was nothing I could do to fight it. “Wait, he came to your
work
?”

“And my apartment, but it’s fine. Like I said, I’m happy to help. I’m happy for you both. This place is really something.”

My words fell flat, even though I meant them, but each second shut down a new slice of my heart. I stood up and started capping all the paint and arranging them out of the way in case the equipment needed to be moved in the morning.

“Thank you. This…” He stood with me. “This is awkward.”

“I was just leaving.”

I tucked my toes into my shoes, searched for my jacket amongst the tables and chairs. It felt like the morning after a night of one too many drinks. The numbness faded slowly and left a wake of humiliation that burned my cheeks and threatened very real tears I couldn’t let him see. I struggled into my jacket, nearly dumped my bag on the floor trying to collect it, and made a dash for the door.

“Kara. Kara, wait…I just didn’t expect to ever see you again…” He caught my wrist before I hit the double doors into the lounge and my humiliation overpowered my good sense. I spun to face him, my wrist caught in his hand.

“You didn’t even say goodbye!”

Sean stopped and furrowed his brow, his mouth opened in surprised silence. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d ever raised my voice against anyone. It seemed to echo in the empty room and the quiet that followed felt painful.

I squirmed my wrist out of his grasp and threw myself into the doors, through the lounge, and out into the parking lot. The humid night air hit me like a wall, coated my skin like sweat. The parking lot was nearly empty, though Davis’s car was still there and so was a smaller, sportier black convertible I guessed was Sean’s. There was no way I was going back in there to find Davis for a ride home, but I was so far from Philomel. There was nothing to do but pull my jacket across my body despite the heat and hurry through the parking lot towards the sidewalk. There was a subway stop a few blocks from the club.

I marched the whole way, a roil of messy emotions locked up inside of me. Anger, sure. Humiliation? In spades. Worse were the other feelings, the pleasure, the sense of relief the first time I laid eyes on him again. The wet evidence between my legs that he still
did
it for me. The weakness in my knees. My heart. My head. He didn’t deserve such uninhibited response but even my body betrayed me.

The city felt darker tonight, bright sky lights from downtown’s skyscrapers blocked out the stars.

The steps down were well lit and I hurried into the warm underground. The humidity below ground made my skin feel sticky despite the occasional blasts of cool air when a train passed through the tunnel. I swiped my card and followed a second flight of stairs to the next level.

The platform wasn’t empty when I reached it, though I still had ten minutes until the next night train. A man sat on the one bench with his back against the mosaic wall. Scratchy beard growth shadowed his jaw and chin and he was thin despite the definition in his arms. He glanced my way when I stepped under the platform lights.

He nodded. I sat down on the end of the bench nearest the stairs. He wasn’t threatening or even particularly mean and ugly looking, but I still put half a bench between us. I still kept the world at a safe distance.

“Quiet night,” he said. I nodded without answering. I pressed my palms to the edge of the bench and stared at my feet. “They say it’s supposed to storm pretty bad for the next few days.”

“I hadn’t heard,” I answered quietly.

“You ok?” he asked and I glanced up, surprised at his tone. “He must have been some guy.”

“Is it that obvious?”

He smiled easily. “Girls have a way of looking when a man has made them cry. Nothing else does that. Good women are wasted on us. I’m sorry.”

I shrugged and stared at my feet again. “So it goes.”

The man fell silent and so did I. Somewhere I heard the
ting ting ting
of water dripping off metal and a very distant thunder of a train passing through one of the lines.

My misery made me careless and so, so stupid. The man got up and I didn’t and then he was in front of me, blocking me between his body and the wall. He held a knife in his hand, fist wrapped around its hilt so tightly his knuckles turned white.

“Sorry,” he said and licked his mouth until his lips were shiny and horrible. “Sorry. Give me your purse. Give it to me now.”

Everything in my brain Sean had broken scrambled to understand what was happening, to understand what to do. I had pepper spray in my purse but I couldn’t move, my nose inches from the tip of his blade. I sat up very slowly as he licked his mouth again.

“Give it to me now.”

“W-what?”

Crack.
The back of his hand impacted my cheek so hard I saw stars and colors and explosions behind my eyes. The force sent me reeling from the bench onto my hands and knees on the dirty white tile. Throbbing, wet pain seeped down my cheek where his ring had hit and God it
hurt
. Everything hurt, like he’d taken a baseball bat to my body. I heard him turn my bag over on the bench and begin pawing through my things.

“Nothing,” he said, disgusted. “You have nothing.”

“I’m s-sorry,” I begged against the floor and watched as a perfect tear drop shape of blood fell from my cheek to splatter and stain a single tile beneath me. My arms shook to hold me still, too afraid to move. To even scream.

“Please don’t hurt me.”

I’d been mugged before, once, on the street outside a subway station not long after college. He’d taken my purse and my laptop but he never laid a hand on me. I’d been scared, but this was different. This man pretended to be kind and then turned into a monster. That wasn’t supposed to happen. The monsters were supposed to be
obvious
, right?

I was such a careless fool.

As if he could read my racing thoughts, he fell on me, pushed me to the ground with a knee in my back. I screamed then, like a banshee, and my voice bounced down the lonely tunnels. He groped furiously through my pockets, along the side of my body. This…this was too much. He shoved my face down against the tile and told me to shut up.

A growl of rage echoed off the tile walls and the weight of the man on my back lifted. I immediately twisted away, scrambled to my feet, and headed straight at the emergency box without looking back. I flipped the plastic door open and smashed the button as hard as I could. Adrenaline spiked my heart and sent it catapulting against my rib cage.

The emergency lights flicked on and the alarm sounded throughout the tunnels, too loud and not loud enough at the same time. I turned in time to see Sean throw my attacker into the tiled floor with a
whump
loud enough to be heard despite the alarm’s cry for help.

He kicked the knife away and it skittered off onto the tracks.

Sean bared his teeth, his muscular shoulders tensed. He growled like an animal as he fell on the man who whined and begged for forgiveness. He swore he meant no harm, but Sean gave him no mercy. He captured his shirt in his fist, pulled the man’s chest off the floor and punched him back down over and over again like a man possessed. For a split second I thought Sean might kill him, the way he beat his anger into him.

Somewhere nearby I could hear boots hitting tile, the urgency of protection against the alarm wailing
Danger
! I ran to Sean then, wanting so badly to get away from all the noise and terror.

I grabbed his shoulders, wrapped my fingers around his fists to hold him back. He stumbled, twisted into me, and somehow we ended up wrapped in each other, his hand in my hair holding my face against his chest and me with my fingers locked tight around knots of his shirt. 

7

____________

“Can I take her home now?” Sean kept his voice low, the mayhem of the station subdued. Two police officers and one of the transport authority deputies had answered the call for help, but by the time they’d arrived my attacker was on the ground moaning and Sean and I knelt several feel away holding onto each other for all we were worth. There was nothing for them to do but take our statements and haul the criminal off to jail.

At the other end of the platform, my attacker sat slumped over, hands cuffed behind his back. He bent his head down but I could see bruises the size of apples already showing through his scruff. I’d repeated my story three times already, and by the third description I was
done
. Exhausted. I didn’t care that my cheek throbbed, that my body hurt. I’d gone through the five stages of grief in about sixty seconds and now I wanted to go home.

My eyes traced the spill of my belongings across the tile. Lipstick. Wallet. Tampon. Paperback book. A pound of change. Having these strangers analyze my belongings and write down a list of all the things that made up
me
, Kara Mahoney, made me feel strangely more violated than when my attacker had done it looking for money. I didn’t want any of it back.

“We have all we need. This isn’t his first time attacking a woman, though he’s never hurt one of his victims before. He shouldn’t see daylight for a while. Thanks for your help.”

Sean shook the officer’s hand and began collecting each of my lost objects one-by-one.

My cell phone vibrated between my fingers and I tapped the screen. Marcus’s grinning face popped up, but it did not inspire as much pleasure as it usually did. I was too tired to get excited for him.

Party’s over. Changed my mind. Want to see you. Coming to get you.

I thumbed a message back.

Not home. With police. Was mugged while waiting at the subway. I’m fine. I promise. Bad guy’s in custody. Just want to go home and sleep.

Sean returned to where I was sitting on the bench. I turned my phone off when he got close and tucked it in my jacket pocket.

“How’re you holding up?” He handed me my bag, then offered his hand, and I took that too. It felt more calloused than I remembered. Too many hours of cutting and chopping and too many kitchen burns and hot pans, I guessed.

“Besides the fact I feel like the word
victim
has been carved into my forehead, I’m ok. He didn’t hurt me.” I touched my cheek hesitantly with my fingertip. I could feel a cut, but it had stopped bleeding a while ago. “Well, maybe a little. Nothing that won’t heal.”

Sean tugged my hand until I was standing. He put an arm across my back and urged me away from the crime scene.

“Come on. Let’s go take a look at that.”

He pulled me into the men’s room after making sure it was empty. I stood near the sink and Sean stepped in close to me. Too close.