Page 61 of Devil

I don’t hide my interest as I move closer to her, now sitting with my legs crossed. “Like what?” I ask, finding a nice, plump blueberry and holding it to her lips.

Just like she did with the pomegranate seeds seven years ago and just like she did last weekend with her medicine, she parts her lips and takes what I give her. Obedient and shy. Blood thumps valiantly into my sore dick.

After she chews and swallows, she sighs. It’s a forlorn kind of sound. “I don’t want to say it.”

“I’m not a priest taking your confession. I’m not doing an audit of your soul. I’m the worst thing that’s going to happen to you this year—your Lucifer, remember? Telling me is the opposite of a confession. It’s an exoneration, an acquittal. You tell me how fucked up you are, and I’ll praise you for it.”

She licks her lower lip and then looks up at me. Her eyes are always big, but they are huge like this, wide with uncertainty and maybe a little bit of hope.

“When I’m afraid of you, I feel desire,” she finally says, her voice low and tremulous like she’s actually confessing to a priest. “When I’m afraid of you, there’s this sick part of me that craves what I fear. You say you would have had me on the ground with your hand on my back, and I should be disgusted, and instead I almost wish it had happened. You use me like a toy, and I come anyway. I shouldn’t want any of this, I should beenduringthis, and yet I was devastated when you didn’t fuck me right away.”

Devastated?Oh, I like that.

“So you were right. Everything you said the last time I came. I am messed up. And I’m not sure what that means.”

She sounds so sad, and I hate it, because while I’ve always found her sadness beautiful, I can’t stand her feeling sorrow overthis—this essential part of her that matches an essential part of me.

I shift so I can press my forehead to hers and nuzzle her nose with mine. “It means you belong here, with me,” I murmur. “It means we’ll be messed up together, and when you’re in my bed, it won’t feel like anything but heaven because everything you think is wrong inside you is the absolute mark of God’s creation to me.”

Her breath shivers against my lips. “You always make everything sound so easy. So seductively easy.”

“Let me seduce you then. Be my messed-up, free-use girl. It gets me hard. It makes me obsessed. The more tangled and depraved you are, the more I’ll adore you for it.” I kiss her then, with all the tender longing in me, a gentle, chaste kiss that has her chasing after my mouth when I pull back. I find her jaw and make eye contact when I speak. “Give me your shame for the rest of the year, and I promise I’ll make a new world out of it.”

We’re so close that her eyes have to move between mine as she hesitates, that adorable crinkle in her nose.

“I hope you can,” she finally says in a whisper. And then: “Okay, Ry.”

I give her the grin that makes her cheeks go pink and another gentle kiss. “Now, I do have two things I want to talk to you about…”

27

BIRDIE

“You look different.”

I look over to where Busy sits on the small love seat that came with the apartment. It’s Friday evening, and I’ll be leaving to work my shift at Buddy’s soon, but I stopped by to see Busy and stock her small kitchen with groceries I purchased with the card Bell gave me.

It’s the first time I’ve seen her since I went to Bell’s house, nearly two weeks now, the longest we’ve been apart since she showed up at the farmhouse last winter, ragged and hunched and low.I think I need help, she’d whispered, and it wasn’t the first time she’d whispered that sentence to me, but something had been different that day. Like the years had stripped her and stripped her, right down to her bones, but in her bones was a new stubbornness she’d never been able to reach before. A stubbornness that said,I’ll give up nothing else.That said,I will live, goddammit.

And now she looks different too. Still too tired, still too thin, but no longer lank and desperate, no longer with those mean, squalid cravings scratching at the inside of her skin. She lookspresent, her eyes clearer than they’ve been in years.

“I got that big commission,” I tell her now, hoping the vagueness comes across as offhanded and not as misdirection. I tell myself that it’s not really alie—Bell has commissioned me in a way. Just for the type of labor that might be even older than carpentry. “It’s been enough that I’ve been able to work a little less, sleep a little more.”

She studies me with those newly clear eyes, and they narrow slightly. “Seems like a stroke of good luck, getting this commission.”

I have to tread very carefully right now. She wouldn’t like it, what I’m doing with Bell. I still only know a little bit about what happened in Odessa and some of the things that happened in the years after, but I do know that she’s very familiar with arrangements like the one I have with my former student. She wouldn’t want to hear me explain that this is different, that Bell is dangerous but not in the way she’d worry about, and she certainly wouldn’t want to hear thatsheis the reason I’m doing it at all.

I can’t even begin to imagine the kind of setback that could trigger.

So I settle on a noncommittalmmm.

“Seems like you’ve had extra time to spend on your hair too,” she says. “And are those new jeans?”

Damn, I should have predicted she’d notice those. Yesterday morning, Bell had woken me with kisses to my jaw and taken me to the guest room before he went to work, where he presented me with a closet full of new clothes. And just like the truck, I couldn’t even summon up a kind of prideful indignation, a righteous disgust at being pampered like the mistress of a Victorian duke, because it was all just soperfect. There weren’t racks of sundresses or silk blouses and pencil skirts, and even the handful of gowns that were hanging at the back felt like the kinds of understated things I’d choose for myself if I were forced somewhere with a dress code. The clothes were the simple items I preferred to wear, but new and of such quality that I couldn’t stop touching the hems and sleeves as Bell itemized the closet’s contents for me, a pleased arrogance to him that made me smile when he wasn’t looking.

He’d stocked the closet with T-shirts, soft and sturdy and well-made, from brands I didn’t recognize, and jeans and long-sleeved flannels from brands I did recognize and knew I could never afford. For Mass and nicer occasions, there were high-waisted trousers and white button-downs; for working in the heat, there were clothes that felt like butter and would wick sweat away from my skin. There were underthings—new bras, new panties, camisoles, and socks—all of them lavish not only in their excellent make and attention to detail but also fully practical, white, black, and beige.

“I love it all,” I told him, touching a black swimsuit hanging near the end. It wasn’t skimpy or avant-garde but quietly fashionable, much prettier than any swimsuit I’d ever owned. “I suppose if I’d guessed what you’d fill a closet with, it would have been things more for your enjoyment than mine.”