Forbidden Love (8 page)

“What about a reenactment, baby? I can’t go
too long without you.”

“You didn’t call me for two days,” she said.
She was willing to fold, but not without making a point.

“You can punish me,” he said. “I give you
permission to treat me like shit. You can even have extra help on
your homework…a leg up in class on Tuesday. I’ll train you
personally. As long as you don’t leak it to anybody.”

His sultry, urgent voice was penetrating her
resolve. She couldn’t give up on him so quickly—not with the
ravenous way he kissed and touched her, the ease with which her
entire body and mind opened up to him and ached for him to fill
her, the charge that ignited between them the moment they were in
the same room. She didn’t know him well enough to let some
perfectly understandable offenses get in the way of something that
could be life-changing. There must be a reason why he was lying
about his father, he just wasn’t ready to reveal it to her. She had
secrets she wasn’t ready to share, either. Don’t be stupid, she
scolded herself. He’s asking for you. He’s after you. He’s a
fucking god. And you’re going to turn him away?

“What time?” Trisha said.

The thought of making love to him again was
going to propel her through the next two days, right into his
arms.

***

“Just be careful over there,” Millie warned
her over the phone a half an hour before she was due to arrive at
his apartment. “He’s obviously kind of…unpredictable.”

Trisha was surprised, even annoyed, by
Millie’s wariness. She was the one who had set them up, after all.
“I don’t think I have to worry,” Trisha said. “He’s not going to
compromise his job here by doing anything stupid.”

Millie was quiet for a few seconds. “Just be
careful,” she said.

Rusty had left the porch light on for her,
but when she stepped out of the cab and looked up to the second
floor apartment, she saw that the windows were dark. She considered
asking the taxi driver to stick around until she got in, but he was
just as sketchy as the situation, and she waved him on. She rang
the doorbell. No response. She rapped on the storm door, then the
main door, still to no avail. Had he stood her up at his own house?
The silence was pervasive. She looked back at the empty street,
shining with frost, and at the overturned trash cans in front of
the rickety house next door.

She tried the knob, and it turned. She
stepped into the foyer. “Rusty?” she called. Her voice saying his
name sounded so mundane—he deserved the call of an enchantress. She
smiled at the thought. She supposed she needed to work on her
magical allure. He wasn’t answering. She began climbing. Her shoes
rasped over the dust on every step and kicked up a dank smell.
“Rusty…it’s me,” she tried again, standing in front of his
apartment door. Still no response. She was getting pissed. What was
this, a prank? He made a huge deal about redeeming himself, and now
he’d forgotten about her? She banged on the door and waited. She
banged on the door again. Jesus! What was his problem?

And then it occurred to Trisha that maybe she
was out here cursing him and he had actually fallen in the tub and
knocked himself out, or someone had broken in and robbed him and
left him for dead. She curled her hand around the doorknob and
turned it. With a little shove, she opened the door a crack.

“Rusty?” She opened the door farther, and
moved tentatively into the apartment.

All at once, an arm was around her neck and
another around her waist, startling her so violently that a scream
erupted from her before she could register what was happening. She
couldn’t see a thing; the living room was black, and her
consciousness was eddying into disorientation. Her heart was
thumping like a warrior’s hand on a drum, cutting off her ability
to breathe. Instinctively, she grasped the offender’s forearm with
her hands, one pushing up on his elbow and the other pulling down
on his wrist, enacting a move that she had learned in a
self-defense class in high school. She managed to twist out from
underneath him, tripping over her own feet and knocking over what
felt like a small table, but it took only a second for him to grab
at her again, swivel her to face him and lock her against his
chest. It was then that she noticed that he was wearing a ski mask.
She screamed again.

“Fucking let go of me!” she wailed, and
writhed in his clutches. “I’ll fucking claw your eyes out!”

The man said nothing. He kicked the door shut
behind him and half-lifted, half-dragged her a few feet until she
felt herself falling over the arm of the couch. He crawled on top
of her and pressed down on her before she could escape, pinning her
arms to her sides. She couldn’t think, couldn’t get air, and was
gasping. She called for Rusty again. Her voice was small and
faltered in the darkness. She was going to be raped, she knew—and
she thought about all of the consequences of that and how her life
might be finished in the next few minutes—how would she tell her
parents? How would she face the scorn and pity for her fate, the
rumors that would radiate through the campus in a matter of hours?
How would she ever want to be intimate with anyone ever again? The
man was breathing in her face, grunting and snickering cruelly, and
Trisha had to swallow back the urge to retch. She squeezed her
knees together beneath him and turned her head away, into the
grimy, scratchy plaid of the sofa cushions. What place could her
mind take her to? Where did she want to go? She could feel the
man’s erection against her thigh, and she cried out.

But wait. Her head swung back to look at the
ski mask again, now that her eyes had adjusted to the dark. The
man’s hands were scrambling to unbutton her coat and brushing
deliberately over her breasts as he pushed the flaps aside. He
still hadn’t said a word, but his breathing was quickening. One of
his hands slithered up her sweater. His skin was clammy, his hands
large.

“Where the fuck is Rusty?” She stared into
the eyes that were crinkling at her through the holes in the
mask.

“Rusty can’t help you now, sweetheart,” he
said gruffly. One of his hands moved on to the zipper of her jeans.
“You’re gonna give me what I came here for. You hear me, bitch?”
With the other hand, he held her by the throat, and applied the
slightest pressure to her windpipe.

Trisha closed her eyes and
let her body go limp for fear he might suffocate her. He was
yanking at her jeans, and she heard the jangling of a belt. She
felt him bow toward her. Her body was responding, an aching revving
up between her legs. This is
disgusting
...you’re crazy…how can
you be turned on, you sick girl? You like this…you like him
violating you…
violating
…

“Mmmm, sweetheart…you’re getting so wet for
me, aren’t you? That’s it, precious.” She felt his fingers, now,
inside her. The sensation was slick and warm. “I knew you’d come
around.” The pleasure she felt nearly stung her. It was
excruciating—forbidden.

And then his hand went away, and both of his
arms were underneath her, shifting her over so that her buttocks
were diagonally pushed into the crease of the sofa where the back
and bottom cushions met. She had opened her eyes again, and was
watching him manipulate her. As he took both of her wrists and drew
them up high, over her head, she found herself arching her chest
toward him.

“Oh, you want it, do you?” he said. “I’ll
give it to you—don’t you worry.”

She had stopped fighting. Her heart was
pounding, sending life to every one of her nerves. She closed her
eyes again, anticipating. But nothing. She opened them. He was
balancing near her.

“You want me to come in?” he asked. His voice
was more normal, now—familiar, teasing.

She nodded slowly.

“Now?”

She nodded faster.

“Like this?”

He dipped his pelvis toward her, touching her
just barely, and pulled away. She pouted. She wanted it.

“Awww…don’t mean to disappoint, sweetheart.
Should I come closer again?”

She smiled wildly, and in one swift, hard
motion, he was inside her. The maneuver jostled a yelp of surprise
out of her lungs. But soon they settled into a rhythm, her gazing
up at that expressionless mask and imagining all sorts of dangerous
things behind it, and his holding himself at a distance over her
cornered body in an act of detachment that, strangely, thrilled
her. For all of his roughness, he ended up barely touching her
body, which made her want his proximity even more. When he came
close, her excitement fluttered and yearned, and when he drew away,
it receded. As his moans intensified, she took his hips and rammed
them against hers.

“Stay,” she whispered insistently. “Stay
there! Stay with me!”

He did, and within moments their voices were
mounting together, matching the tightening tension of her pleasure,
and when the tension split open into spirals and corkscrewed
through her, he, too released a loud, shivering sigh and buried his
masked face into her neck. He lay against her for a few moments,
and she felt his rush of gratification subsiding inside her. All
that was left was the quiet, which sat on the apartment like a smug
voyeur.

Trisha pulled the ski mask up over his head.
His hair clung to his forehead in sweaty wisps.

“You’re an asshole,” she said, still
breathing heavily. “What were you trying to do, make me think my
life was over? What kind of insane ploy was this?”

Rusty laughed, then pushed
himself up into a standing position and adjusted his clothing,
buckled his belt. Even his broad-shouldered silhouette against the
living room windows, glowing from the streetlights, looked
arrogant. How dare he make her believe that she was being sexually
assaulted! Who
did
that to someone they cared about?

No one, she decided. No one!

And she was furious at herself for enjoying
it!

She pursed her lips, refusing to speak to him
as she slid her jeans back up and shifted her bra into place.

“You turn me on when you’re pissed,” Rusty
said. He switched on a table lamp, then sat down beside her on the
couch and slid his arm across her shoulders.

“And you’re so sexist when you’re being
yourself,” she snapped, lurching away from him.

“Come on, Hot Pink,” he said softly. He
stroked her chin with his finger. “I told you I’d give you a leg up
on the homework assignment.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You need to create a character based on a
time you felt vulnerable,” he said. “I made you vulnerable. Now you
have fresh material to work with. In fact…” He rose, walked behind
her to the kitchen area, and returned with a pad of paper and a
pen. “You should write down all of the emotions and sensations that
you just felt before you forget them.”

Trisha stared at him. “I can’t believe you
think that’s legitimate.”

He shrugged and grinned. “Well, it’s a
legitimate front for getting off on some dark, kinky, unexplored
desires. Don’t you think?”

She looked down at the pad
of paper in her lap. The heading said
Law
Offices of Bigelow and Chan.

“Come on. You can’t tell me you didn’t get
into that, Hot Pink. You didn’t know you had it in you, right? I’ve
got more scenarios where that came from.” He touched the hair on
the crown of her head, almost tenderly. “Admit it. You like
me.”

Like
was not the word. Without giving him the satisfaction of her
eye contact, Trisha sighed, took off the cap of the pen, and began
scribbling down some notes.

“I’ll start dinner,” Rusty said, “and then
you and I can work on that character development some more.”

“Why don’t you just ask him?”

Trisha shook her head. “How am I supposed to
say, ‘Hey—I was Googling you the other day because I didn’t trust
your story, and something really weird came up. I don’t know if you
know this, but your father is actually alive!’?”

Millie chewed her pasta slowly, eyes down on
her plate, and didn’t answer for a few moments. Trisha thought that
she seemed a little more worn out than usual, but maybe it was the
disheveled ponytail and flushed cheeks from basketball
practice.

“I just don’t see why you can’t be upfront
about it,” Millie said. “I mean, how can you start a relationship
on secrets, basically?”

Why was she being so high
and mighty about this? Trisha felt a strain in her forehead.
“That’s what I want to ask
him
. It’s not on me. He’s the one
who’s hiding things.”

“Is he someone you want to be with,
then?”

Trisha held up her hands at Millie. “Why are
you being like this? You set me up with him!”

“Sorry.” Millie shrugged and lay down her
fork. “I just want to make sure you don’t get dicked around. And
I’ve been stressed out, that’s all.”

“Well, let me tell you what I saw,” Trisha
said. “When he went to the bathroom, I sneaked into his bedroom and
studied those photos on his bookcase. I didn’t see one picture of
Daniel Treadway. There was one, with Rusty when he was little, like
five or six, and he was sitting on some stone wall, and there was
some other guy, fatherly-type, with him.”