Part 11 (1/2)
”No, Mom, it's really dead. I'm going to have to get it towed.”
”So how did you get back here?”
”Tony gave me a ride.”
A long pause. Amber could practically hear the wheels whirring in her mother's mind. The construction worker. The bas.e.m.e.nt. All those unanswered rings. Then a faint metallic sc.r.a.pe in the background as the curtain rings slid along the bar and her mother looked out the front window of her apartment. ”He drives a blue truck,” she said.
Oh, the disapproval in those words.
Amber knew she was supposed to be feeling something. Shame. Dismay. A twinge of what-have-you-done-young-lady? She'd just had s.e.x with a man whose house she'd never seen, whose parents and siblings she'd never met. Bad, bad Amber.
She felt marvelous.
”He sure does,” she said.
”You invited him up?”
The bathroom door opened, and Tony came out, buck naked and completely unconcerned.
It didn't look so much like a cudgel when it wasn't standing at attention. It looked almost domesticated in its nest of black curls. Lovable.
Or maybe that was just Tony.
”Yep,” she said cheerfully. ”I invited him up.”
”Amber, you need to be more careful. A man like that ... those Mazzaras aren't the best family, and-”
”Bye, Mom.”
She hung up the phone, knelt down, and extracted the cord from the wall.
When she turned around, he was grinning at her in that way he had, and her heart somersaulted backward off a cliff.
Too late to be careful, she thought. Way too late.
She stepped into his body and wrapped her arms around him. He kissed her, and then he kissed her some more, and then she kissed him back and he grunted, and his ... his c.o.c.k rose where it pressed against her hip.
He would go. Later tonight, or in the morning, he would go, and he might not ever come back.
But he wasn't gone yet.
In the meantime, she would steal every intimacy she could get. Transgress every boundary. Take every stupid, doe-eyed risk, and hand him her heart and her body.
He couldn't break her. She could only do that to herself, and she'd rather get broken this way than spend her life safe and afraid.
”I think you had more perversions to teach me?” she asked.
He ran his hand down the gully of her spine. ”Dozens.”
She sank to her knees. ”Let's start with this one.”
When she wrapped her hand around him, he said, ”Jesus, bunny.”
”Don't call me bunny,' ” she replied, and then took him in her mouth.
Chapter Eleven.
She fell asleep at around one.
Tony sat on the edge of the bed, looking out at the moon and trying to work up the will to leave.
If he stayed until morning, she would want to make him breakfast. She'd already fixed him pasta with homemade sauce from the fridge, something that had sausage in it and was nearly as good as his mother's, though she hadn't believed him when he said so.
He figured in the morning it would be bacon and eggs and Amber in that ugly pink robe, with her little satisfied cat smile, looking all mussed up because he'd spent half the night mussing her.
He wanted that. Too much.
She rustled under the blanket. ”Tony?”
”Over here.”
”It's dark.”
”I know, honey.”
”You want me to find you a candle?”
”No, I'm okay.”
He was okay because the moon was out, but more than that, he was okay because he could hear her breathing. He knew that if he lay down, he could find her again and wrap his arms around her sleepy body and hold her.
What did that mean, that she could make everything feel like it was okay?
He kept trying to tell himself it didn't mean anything. It wasn't real. But he no longer believed his own bulls.h.i.+t.
”Will you come back to bed?”
He didn't answer, and that was answer enough.
When the lump under the sheet s.h.i.+fted and sat up, he could see the shape of her face, the fall of her hair.
”Are you going?” she asked.
”I'm trying to.”
A long pause. ”Tell me why first.”