Siren Queen(69)

She still looked hurt, but that wasn’t my concern any longer. I thought about kissing her, and then I walked around the building to find Tara.

The Avalons she smoked were rich and harsh, but it hadn’t stopped a cocky stray dog from wandering up in search of a meal. Her hat pushed back on her head, Tara scratched the dog behind the ears as he pressed ecstatically against her hand. She stood, wiping her hands on her trousers.

“So?” she asked.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “Come home with me instead.”

She smiled at that, bright and gleaming as a star, and my heart quieted at the beauty of it.

“I’d like that a lot,” she said, and I took her offered arm, limping back to the gate on sore feet and shredding stockings.





VII


My apartment on Rexford Avenue was furnished, and if it wasn’t I would likely still be setting my tea on an apple crate and sleeping on a mattress that I bought without realizing I had to buy a frame as well. After I took her coat, Tara inspected the place like a cat, stepping lightly through the rooms, flicking the lights as if amused by their cleverness.

“This is all yours?” she asked, and I understood why.

She lived with three other girls in half as much space. My family had fit the four of us and a business into a building not much larger. The apartment, empty as it was, was a luxury even as it was a burden to fill up.

“It is. Do you like it?”

“I like you,” she said, and after I latched the door, she took my hand and pulled me close.

We both had some experience with kissing. I tasted tobacco on her, strong enough that it competed with the taste of her mouth, but I sought until I found her, tracing my tongue along hers, her sharp eyeteeth, the inner sleekness of her lip. She sat down on the only chair in the room, and without asking, I came to straddle her lap, tipping her hat back so that it fell to the floor behind her. She laughed at me as I fumbled with her tie.

“I don’t have much experience with clothes like this,” I protested, and she undid it for me, unbuttoning her shirt as well. I pressed my face against her worn white undershirt, breathing in Avalon tobacco, her sweat and the trace of perfume she wore. Her hand came up to grasp the back of my head for a moment before pulling out the pins that held my hair. She wove her fingers through my hair, tugging a little until it fell dark and shining around my shoulders.

She didn’t say that I was pretty. Instead, she looked up at me with something that was more awe than worship, and it had nothing at all to do with the fact that I might be painted thirty feet high on a screen in front of hundreds.

“What do you like?” she asked. I jumped because it was what I had said to Emmaline years ago. That echo didn’t hurt, but instead it made me feel as light as a balloon floating over Hungarian Hill.

“I like you,” I said honestly, and she grinned. It made her look younger; maybe that was why she didn’t do it so often.

“Good,” she said, approving, and she reached for the silver buttons that held my dress closed.

I let her undress me, only compulsively checking that the curtains were closed once or twice. After she pulled the dress and slip over my head, she ran her hands over the cups of my bra and the girdle below, which clipped firmly to the stockings that I had ruined on my run through the fires.

“I don’t miss these. At all. But damned if you’re not pretty in them.”

I stood up from her and did the rather unflattering dance to squirm out of them and the plain drawers I wore underneath. I could have wished for a screen that I emerged from with a robe trimmed in marabou over my nudity, but I had no screen, no robe, and her eyes followed each inch of bared flesh so hard that I needn’t have worried about any awkwardness.

“Now you…”

She undressed with the casual grace of a woman who was used to little privacy, and without thinking, she laid her shirt and trousers over the arm of the chair. I couldn’t wait until she was done, however, and when she bent to remove her drawers, I wrapped my arms around her, burying my face in her back.

“You smell gorgeous,” I murmured, and she laughed.

“I smell like smoke and cigarettes,” she said, “but whatever works for you, darling.”

I led her back to the bedroom. It was dim and therefore lost at least some of the starkness of the living room. The bed was a crisp white field that I had never shared with anyone else, and Tara and I dragged each other down on it. There was a moment, our heads on my single pillow, where we watched each other, irresistible smiles on our lips. She tucked my hand under her face, and I kissed her calloused fingertips. Her hands themselves were fair and white, but the fingertips were hard, apt to catch soft fabric and snag.

We kissed again, hands moving shyly at first before becoming bolder. I found a space under the tip of her chin that made her gasp when I kissed it, and when she raked her nails lightly down my back, I sighed with need for her. I slid one leg over her to press my weight on her hips. To get purchase, I set my hands against her shoulders, pushing her down.

“Oh, so that’s the way it is?” she said, but there was a blush that told me how much she liked it.

“I think it might be,” I retorted, and I leaned down to bite her shoulder. Light nibbles at first, but encouraged by her moans, I bit harder. She was squirming underneath me as I bit her lips red, but she never pushed me away.