Page 71 of Devil

Her fingers are still playing in my curls, fingering the ends, lightly scratching along my scalp. She doesn’t answer, and I don’t make her, instead kissing her neck until she’s putty in my hands.

Then I lay her on my desk, work off her jeans and panties, and tongue her until she shakes and moans my name.

“I’ll make dinner,” I say as we finally redress and set aside sex for a while. “If you want to work a little more while I cook.”

“I do,” she murmurs. And then she finds my hand and squeezes it once, very quickly. A rare initiation. “Thank you for inviting me to your family dinner. I’m grateful to be included.”

I have so many things I want to say, confessions I want to make—not about sins I regret but the sins I will commit to keep her right here forever—but I don’t think we’re there yet. I squeeze her hand back and then go to the kitchen as she goes to the studio door.

“Do you hear that?” she asks.

“Hear what?” I ask, already opening the fridge.

She opens the door, and we’re confronted at once with an aria of tiny, indignant wails. A kitten, jet black with a pipe-cleaner tail and bright green eyes, has found itself on top of the unrepentant criminal’s head.

It looks at us both and then meows hysterically as if to say,What took you so long?

30

BIRDIE

“Christ, Birdie,”Bell mutters, his hand going tight in my hair. “That feels so fucking good.”

By my ear, the steering wheel moves, his free hand clenching the top as he drives us to his brother’s house for dinner. All of him is strung tight, vibrating like a violin string, and I can feel the quivering effort it takes for him not to move as I take as much of him in my mouth as I can.

I know I can’t be very good at this yet, but itisvery gratifying that he can only last a few minutes with my mouth on him, no matter how clumsy my attempts are. The giddy power I feel having someone this beautiful becoming absolutely distraught because ofmeis sinful; it’s too close to pride, the bad pride, the haughtiness condemned in the Bible. But I truly can’t help it, it’s alluring to have this effect on him—it’s addictive. It makes me quietly distraught too, the thudding pulse in his erection matched by the throbbing in my cunt, his tensed thighs matched by my own tensed thighs. It’s a curse to be this responsive to him—maybe a punishment God pre-meted out, with divine foreknowledge of my late-blooming sexual pride.

Being careful with my teeth, I push my head down even more, savoring the afflicted groan I’m rewarded with. I remind myself to breathe through my nose and relax my tongue like my surreptitious online research has advised. I know Bell claims to like my inexperience, to enjoy the process of staining my innocence bit by bit, but after taking him into my mouth yesterday, I’m acutely aware of not only my deficits as a companion but also of the imbalance those deficits create between us. He’s able to manipulate my body with every tool at his disposal—hands, mouth, cock, toys,towel—and when he gives me oral sex, he does it with an artist’s attention, with a master’s skill. That doesn’t feel fair—to him, I suppose, but mostly to me.

We hit a pothole, a small one, but the truck’s work-ready suspension means that we bounce over it, and it shoves the head of Bell’s dick right to the edge of my throat. I swallow reflexively, an automatic response to the sensation of something knocking against my soft palate, and then again, my tongue and throat moving around the plump tip.

Bell lets out a stream of curses so creative and so shocking that I nearly lift my head from his lap in pure astonishment, but his hand is now implacable in my hair, and the organ in my mouth is swelling and then he’s pumping his orgasm down my throat, his hips pressing up, his foot nearly slipping off the accelerator, his grunting breaths louder than the noise of the road underneath us.

I know he wants me to swallow anyway, but I also don’t have a choice—it’s swallow or choke—so I gulp him down and enjoy the way each swallow makes him hiss my name like an imprecation.

When he finally slumps back into the driver’s seat, breathing fast, I pull up. A thin ribbon of ejaculate leaks from the head, and I act on instinct, lapping it up with my tongue and then licking all over until he uses the hand in my hair to guide me up.

“I want to taste my cum in your mouth,” he breathes before leaning over the console for a hard, tonguing kiss. He keeps his eyes as much on the road as he can, but he doesn’t skimp on time, not letting me go until he’s satisfied.

Finally, he sits back and puts himself away, zipping up his trousers but not buttoning them. “Open up your pants for me,” he says, his attention fully on the road.

We’ve been lucky with the route we’re taking through downtown—there’s been almost no one around with rush hour over and the offices closed—but midtown is astir with people coming and going, walking, bustling, eating and drinking. I glance self-consciously around, making sure no one will be able to see into the truck, and then do as he asks.

Bell slides his hand into the open waistband of my pants and immediately searches for my pussy. His fingers deal efficiently with the gusset of my panties and the odd angle, and then two of them are inside. The rest of his hand molds over my sex, his thumb and fingers crowded between my thighs, and stays there. The fingers inside me don’t go very deep, and he doesn’t offer any stimulation with his palm; it’s not meant to do anything for me. This is something for him, some kind of comfort or reminder—reassurance, maybe. Which I think because he’s done it a few times now, mostly while falling asleep and then once two nights ago while we were watching TV. Halfway through the first episode, he’d nestled me into his side and then casually cupped my pussy for the duration of the evening, like it was just another way to snuggle, like how another couple might hold hands.

I can feel the contentment radiating off him whenever he does it, the calm, as if nothing can trouble him so long as he knows he has my cunt to take the edge off if he needs to.

It’s mortifying. It’s unspeakably vulgar.

It makes me wet every time.

He looks completely at peace now, his eyelids hooded and his jaw relaxed, a smile playing on his lips. He could be any man out for a nice evening drive around town, save for the fingers wedged inside me.

A shrill noise shatters the obscene serenity of the moment, and I instinctively twist to look at the back seat.

“Ry,” I say. “My khakis.”

Bell makes a face as he slides his hand free. “I didnotbuy you khakis.”