Through A Glass, Darkly (The Assassins of Youth MC #1)(57)

When I came back to earth, I still gripped her hip so deeply my fingers left impressions. “Oh, God.” I released her, removing my hand from between us, too. She was inhaling deep ragged breaths, her eyelids fluttering as though she was praying. I flexed my cock inside her a few times, making her gasp and jump again.

“Oh, you!” She mock-slapped my chest. Then, with her Kegels, she gave my dick a few squeezes too.

I was impressed. “You’re not as innocent as you seem.”

She waved a limp hand. “Oh, that’s nothing.” She fell off me, slithering to one side like an empty suit of clothes. She lay on her back with one arm flung above her head, completely limp. “I learned those exercises to get back into shape after giving birth to Vonda.”

Lifting myself on one elbow, I touched her hair. “Sit up.”

I helped her do so. Even her smile was lazy, crookedly adorable.

When I reached for her hair, though, her reaction was instant. Her hand shot up, her face became alarmed. “What’re you doing?”

“I want to see you with your hair down.”

“No!”

“Why not? I’m seeing you right now with no clothes. Why can’t I take down your hair?”

“It’s wrong!” Maybe she realized that was an automatic reaction. She seemed to be thinking about it, looking at my foot. I was still wearing socks and my jeans, my dick lying against my hip like an enormous pulsating slug.

“Maybe that’s just what they told you. Maybe Jesus won’t be angry if you’re not there to wash his feet with your hair.”

“Yes…” she said vaguely, now looking at my knee. “Maybe you can see me…”

Experimentally, I removed one smooth, forked stick from her hair. A big lock rolled to her shoulders. Another forked stick, and another big lock unrolled. I felt it, smoothed it out. Because of her heritage the texture was frizzy, but her Latina blood helped make it lustrous and almost slippery. I found I could plunge my hands into it and never gather it all into a ponytail. I spent long minutes sliding her combs out and unbraiding her hair, my fingers lost in a lush, dense garden of her beauty.

She fluttered her long eyelashes. “I’ve always been afraid to let a man really see me, you know?”

“Yes. I know.”

“I certainly never wanted to let a man see me depressed. I’m much better now, thank you. What’s there to be depressed about?”

I scratched her behind the ears, like a favorite dog. “You had plenty to be depressed about, sweetness. I’m the one who’s wondering why you’re attracted to me.” I chuckled, thinking how different we were. “Talk about opposites attract.”

Instead of answering, she quoted a poem.

“You are aware of only one unrest;

oh, never learn to know the other!

Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast,

and one is striving to forsake its brother.”

“Okay. Here’s the part where I ask who wrote that.”

“Goethe. But I thought of looking it up after hearing it on Hannibal.”

I kissed her. “I thought you weren’t supposed to watch TV. Especially not horror shows.”

“Oh, we have our ways,” she said, devilishly.

I kissed her again, rubbing the crown of her skull under my fingertips. Then I realized something, and pulled back. “So you’re striving to forsake me?”

“Of course not! It means—I think—that love can be a giant cross to bear. It means you feel so deeply you are human and capable of sin. We need to learn, I think, to perceive love when it slaps us upside the head and surrender to its cleansing strength. It’s a slap to our enormous, pride, too, to admit we need love.”

“I’m not ashamed. I’m a sucker for love. I just haven’t been very good at it.” I rushed to add, “Up until now.”

She poked me in the chest. “You’re damned lucky you said that, mister.” Her expression became thoughtful again. “I often feel unworthy of you. I don’t feel that I deserve you, Gideon. How many old, used-up women have a knight in shining armor like you? Most of them are doomed to stagnate in places like Cornucopia.”

I gripped her upper arm and rattled her a bit. “Don’t say that, Mahalia. You’re more than worthy of me. I’m the one who doesn’t deserve you. Look at me. A thirty-year-old biker who has accomplished exactly nothing in his life. I keep choosing the wrong women. I can’t even have a mature, honest relationship. Up until now,” I added again. “Hey. I brought something for you.”

“You’re two years younger than me. Oo,” she said, like a little girl. She watched me rustle around in my duffel bag until I found the white box with the lid. It wasn’t wrapped or anything, but I hadn’t really had time for that. I handed it to her. “Can I open it?”

“Of course. This is for your daily use.”

She took off the lid. She looked from the box to me, then back to the box. “Um…”

“You want to know what it is.” I expected that. “Ben wa balls.”

“Ben…what?”

I was surprised she’d never heard of them. I took the large silver ball from the box. It was weighted with chains attached to two smaller balls. “Ben wa balls. You insert them and walk around with them all day, exercising your muscles. Not that you seem to need any more exercising. But it’ll remind you of me.”