The Bourbon Thief(67)

He marched back into the house, slamming the door behind him.

“Tamara!” he called out ten times louder than he needed to. “Where the hell are you?”

“Bathroom,” came the small scared voice in response. He didn’t care what she was doing in there. He threw the bathroom door open and found her at the sink, scrubbing her hands with lava soap.

“Tamara?” he asked, quieter.

“I thought it’d be slimy,” she said, her voice rattling like dice in a cup. “But it wasn’t slimy. It was real smooth and slick. Like a muscle. It was so strong. I could feel how strong it was in my hand.”

“Tamara...” Levi stepped to the sink and took the bar of soap from her hand. Tears covered her cheeks and her hair was plastered on her forehead. He turned on the cold water and rinsed the soap off her hands. “Tamara, you shouldn’t have picked that snake up.”

“I know,” she said in a hollow whisper. “I thought if I missed, I’d shoot you by mistake. And if I missed, the snake might get scared and bite you. And if I missed, it might bite me and then I wouldn’t have another chance. I didn’t know what else to do. And I thought...” Levi brushed her hair off her forehead and kissed it.

“What did you think?” Levi whispered. “Tell me.”

“I love you,” Tamara said, looking up into his eyes. “I mean, I have to love you. There’s no reason for me to pick up a snake if I didn’t love you, is there? I’d have to be crazy or in love. I’d rather be in love.”

Her eyes looked crazy—wide-open with her pupils fixed on him like a blind man trying to remember how to see.

“You were scared, that’s all. Being scared makes us do crazy things. Andre drove a truck for a long time. Big rig. Some drunk girl ran a stop sign and hit him and her car caught on fire. Andre ripped the door off her car and pulled her out. He can’t do that. A man can’t rip a door off a car, but he did. Fear gives us powers we didn’t know we had. And love. They’re the same thing sometimes.”

“I loved you before the flood. And I loved you after. You’re the only thing I still love from before. You’re the only thing I love that I’ve always loved.” She raised a hand to her forehead. “I didn’t mean to say all that.”

“You can say that to me.” Levi took her face in his hands. “You can say whatever you want to me. God knows you always did.” He grinned at her, trying to connect to the Tamara he used to know. She was in there somewhere.

“When you made love to me, I felt like I did before the flood. I didn’t feel like this.”

“How do you feel?”

“Like I have to do things I don’t want to do. Like I’m meant to.”

“Meant to do what, baby? Meant to do what?”

Levi had his arms around her, and her head rested on his chest.

“There’s things God wants me to do and I don’t want to do them sometimes. And sometimes I want to do them.”

“What is it? What do you want to do?”

“I want to kill my mother.” Her voice was steely and low. She meant it. This wasn’t teenage hyperbole married to teenage hormones. She wanted to kill her mother. She wanted to do it herself.

Levi kissed the top of her head. If he could make her laugh, it would be like lighting a search fire inside her and he could follow it to the real Tamara.

“If you were trying to piss off your mother by marrying a black guy, you should have found one a little darker than me.”

Tamara’s shoulders shook. There it was, a little laugh. And there she was, way back in there. He could see her.

“I didn’t tell you what she did to me,” Tamara whispered. “I didn’t tell you.”

“What? Tell me what she did to you.”

“She...said I needed taken down a peg. She told Granddaddy that. She...”

“Did your mother beat you, Tamara? Tell me the truth now.”

Levi searched her face, but Tamara couldn’t look at him. It was all the answer he needed.

“I had bruises the next day,” she said. “All over me. I could barely move. Even my feet had bruises.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“That night was the most scared I’ve been. The snake was nothing, Levi. Nothing.”

Tamara met his eyes again.

“You won’t leave me alone?” she asked, her voice more scared than it had been when the snake sat at his feet.

“No, baby girl, I will never leave you alone.”

“Please be inside me. I’m not so crazy when you’re inside me.”

She kissed him and Levi kissed her back. He felt as crazy as she did right then and there, mad and wild from fear and relief, mad and wild from the fury at knowing her mother had beaten Tamara for the crime of kissing him. Well, they would show her, wouldn’t they?

Levi yanked her panties down her legs and pulled her gown off her arms and pushed his jeans to his ankles. He lifted her up in his arms and impaled her right there in the bathroom. She cried out as he entered her deeply. As light as she was, it was easy to lift her and bring her back down onto him, and he did it again and again, frantic with need, crazy with it. Her back was against the sink and it was a miracle they didn’t rip it out of the wall. She was so hot and wet around him, squeezing his cock like a hand, tight and open all at once. He drove into her, grasping her by her thighs, pounding into her so hard it hurt him. He couldn’t imagine how much it hurt her. But she wanted it and wanted more of it. Her arms wound around his neck and she arched into him, hips moving madly, rutting like animals in heat. She came with a moan and with her fingernails digging into his back hard enough to break the skin. He lowered her feet to the floor and turned her, bending her over the sink. Once again he sank into her warm wet depth and fucked her, jerking her onto him and pumping into her at the same time. It was brutal and she loved it. It was brutal and he loved it. The frenzy seemed to last forever. She came again with a gasp that sounded like pain. And when he couldn’t hold back anymore, he clamped both hands on her shoulders and rode her, slamming into her, using her for his own pleasure, oblivious to anything but his orgasm, and when he came, it was endless, and he emptied himself into her heedless of the danger and the consequences and the promises he’d made to himself. This was no time for sanity. He could have died tonight. She could have died tonight. Nothing mattered except they hadn’t.