Simone
“I’m leaving my bike here and driving you myself,” Rocco says. “There’s no way in hell I’m letting you drive in this state, and a stolen car to boot. No damn way. Anyway, I have the keys.”
“I can drive,” I say firmly, trying to snatch the keys from him.
He pulls them out of reach. “No, you can’t. I’m driving. No arguments.”
“What about your bike?” Everything feels fuzzy. Ever since Rocco pulled me to my feet, I’ve felt numb, tingly all over. I wonder if this is what adrenaline feels like. “You can’t just leave it here.”
He makes a scoffing sound as he leads me to the jeep. I remember the way the jeep pulled up behind me, its bumper almost hitting me in the back. “He was going to—Rocco—he was going to . . .”
“He didn’t,” he says, his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t think about it right now. Just get in the car. I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”
“You’re the one who got me in this situation to begin with!”
But I don’t say it because then maybe it’d create a split between us and I can’t be alone tonight. I just can’t. I need someone here with me and who better than Rocco, huge and strong and immovable in his leather jacket with his killer’s instinct?
“Okay,” I murmur instead, climbing into the car.
We drive without speaking. I look down at my bruised hand and try to make a fist again. I wince.
Rocco pulls over near a drugstore. “What’s wrong?” he asks.
“My hand. I think I’ve hurt it.”
Rocco leans down, and then lifts my arm slowly and softly. He lifts it so that my hand is above my head. “How does that feel?”
“That doesn’t feel too bad. A little achy but nothing too bad.”
“And this?”
Very softly he prods the back of my hand. I wince again. “That hurts.”
“On a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst pain imaginable and one hardly hurting at all?”
“About a . . . I don’t know, a four?”
“All right.” He nods, looking at it. “You live my life long enough, you get familiar with all types of injuries. It looks like it’s bruised. You’re damn lucky that all you got from that crash is a bruise.”
“Lucky,” I repeat. “Hmm . . .”
“Well, maybe lucky ain’t the word.”
“No, maybe not.”
“I can bind it up for you so it heals quicker, and you could do with some meds to reduce the swelling, and for the pain. Wait here.”
“What else am I going to do?” I laugh pointlessly, feeling fuzzy.
A few minutes later Rocco binds up my hand. I’m shocked by how softly he can use his giant hands, how gently he turns my bruised hand here and there to wrap around the bindings. He wedges tiny cushions in between my fingers and wraps tape around them, securing them, and then gives me a bottle of water and two pills. I take them, drinking half the bottle of water.
He starts the car and we continue driving. “Simone, I’ve gotta say I’m sorry. I’m damn sorry for this. I spoke to that guy before I let him go, and he said he saw you with me, and that’s why—”
“Don’t,” I say. My voice is harsher than I intend. “If you start saying sorry, I might start thinking about it again. And if I start thinking about it, maybe I’ll agree with you that it was your fault, and then I’ll ask you to leave, and I don’t want you to leave tonight. I want you with me.” My words seem far away. I wonder if the meds have kicked in already.
Rocco nods shortly. “Fair enough.”
He stops outside my apartment building, just managing to wedge the jeep into the alleyway, and then walks around to my side and helps me out of the small gap. The door scrapes the wall, making a loud metallic noise. Holding my good hand, he leads me to the door.
“Are you coming up?” I ask.
“Do you want me to come up?”
“Yes,” I answer without hesitation. “Please.”
“Then I’m coming up.”
He takes my keys from me and unlocks the door, and then we ride the elevator up to my apartment. “I don’t know what I’ll do if I’m alone.” The tears return. I want to be strong, but I can’t shake the feeling of the cold metal against the back of my head. One pull of the trigger, and I’d had have been done forever.
Rocco wraps his arm around me and kisses me on the forehead. “You’re safe now,” he says. “You don’t have to be scared anymore. I swear on that.”
“I’m not scared.” I pull away from him, standing soldier-straight and staring straight ahead. I offer a mock stern expression. “Nothing scares me, private!” But the joke falls flat. Rocco laughs, but I can tell he’s in no laughing mood. To be honest, I’m not, either. I fall back into his embrace.
In my apartment, he sits me down and then goes into the kitchen. “Do you want anything?” he asks over the partition. “Food, wine, whatever.”
“Just water,” I say. “I . . . I don’t want to drink—drink wine, I mean.”
“Okay.”
He returns with a glass of water. Handing it to me, he sits down and watches me drink half of it down. Then he just watches me anxiously. “Maybe I should stay here tonight,” he says. “I’ll take the couch.” He holds his hands up. “And I’ll keep these to myself. But I just wanna make sure you’re okay.”
“Yes,” I say. “I’d like that.”
He hesitates, and then says, “I . . . I know you said I shouldn’t say sorry. So tell me what I can do.”
“Tell me something about yourself that you’ve never told anybody else.” This seems important, and yet I don’t know why. Nothing makes much sense this evening. I’m sitting here on the couch, but I could easily be back there in the forest. This man has seen me at my most vulnerable. Maybe that’s it. Maybe I need to expose him so I don’t feel so exposed.
“I was beaten in my foster homes, pretty damn routinely. But I guess a lot of people know about that.” He talks for a little while, telling me how he was chucked from home to home, being beaten until he got away at sixteen. I listen, rapt, contrasting his upbringing with my own. When I was growing up I never felt privileged, but as I listen to Rocco I realize I was incredibly privileged. Mom and Dad may have argued from time to time, but they never hurt Cecilia or me. “But that’s just how it goes sometimes,” he finishes, shrugging. “Some folks like to beat kids. I’ll never understand it, but there it is.”
I take his hand. “It must’ve been awful.”
“Yeah.” He nods. “I guess it was. But there was something more awful, something which really hurt me but not in the way it should have.”
“That sounds . . . mysterious.”
“It’s about another woman.” He flicks his eyes to me. “It was years ago, but—”
“Tell me,” I say.
He takes a deep breath, and then starts his story. “I was nineteen when I met Angela. She was a club girl, which basically means she was hanging around the club flirting with all the guys trying to get one of them to snatch her up. I thought she was the hottest thing I’d ever seen. She was, back then.” He looks at me again. When he sees I’m not getting jealous or weird, he continues. “I asked her out. We went to the movies. We went on quite a few dates. And all through this, I really thought I was falling in love with her. Or maybe I just told myself I was because that’s what normal people do, and when you’ve grown up in the system, you always wanna do what normal people do. After three months I asked her to marry me. I don’t even know why, exactly. That sounds sick to say aloud, but I still don’t understand. I was a confused teenager, I guess. All I knew was it was what people did, normal people. They proposed, so I proposed. I wasn’t the man I am today. Today I wouldn’t do shit just ’cause it’s what normal people do . . .
“Anyway, she said yes. I had a fiancée. She started talking about kids and a house, and deep down, I wasn’t interested in any of it. We had nothing in common. We never really spoke about anything. We weren’t even that attracted to each other. You ever been to the park and looked around and seen a couple just sitting there like they’d rather be anywhere else? That was us, but neither of us tried to stop it. We just marched ahead, planning and inviting and all that shit.
“And then one day Angela was driving from the club to our apartment and she skidded off the road. She died instantly, the authorities said. She didn’t suffer. I wanted to cry when it happened, but I felt too . . .” He pauses, looking for the word. “Disjointed, you know? I felt like somebody else’s fiancée had died. I was sad later, but not because she was dead, not just that, anyway. I was sad because I’d tricked her. I’d made her believe I was falling in love when really, I wasn’t. Really, I was just going through the motions.
“When I met you, I knew for sure I had never fallen in love with Angela.”
I watch him, stunned. I never dreamed Rocco had so much emotion within him, so much complexity. It’s like seeing him with new eyes. He won’t look at me. He must feel nervous.
“What do you mean, when you met me?” I ask.
He laughs awkwardly. “I’m not used to this talking about what’s going on in here shit.” He thumps his chest. “You must know what I mean by that.”
“I think I do,” I say. “But I’m not sure if tonight is the best time to talk about it.”
“You’re probably right,” Rocco says. He meets my eye. “But I’m falling for you, Simone. That’s what I mean by it.”
I swallow, the fuzzy feeling being replaced by lust, powerful lust, impossible-to-ignore lust. The forest keeps trying to resurface in my mind, but I batter it down. I lean forward, bringing my face close to Rocco’s. It’s like we’re animals. A scent rises into the air as if it’s mating season. Both of us begin to breathe heavily just by staring at each other. Both of us begin to think about being with the other person. Rocco’s pitch-dark eyes are full of barely withheld animalistic desire.
“Are you sure?” he asks, his voice growling with the effort to stave off his animal side.
“I want to feel good,” I say, inching forward, our lips almost touching now. “Just for a little while.”
Rocco’s entire body is trembling now. Mine is, too, so badly that I can hardly think. All I want is to forget about the forest, and right now this man—this surprisingly sensitive man—is the only person in the world who can make me forget.
“Be careful with your hand,” he says.
I’m about to laugh when he kisses me forcefully on the lips, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me close to him. We breathe frantically as we kiss, both of us completely caught up in the pleasure of it. His lips are rough, warm, everything I need to lose myself in the moment. I place my hand on his crotch, feeling the swelling of his package, already rock-hard for me. I rub it up and down, loving how quickly he gets excited, loving the urgency in the way his hips twitch as if unable to wait to be inside of me. I rub quicker and quicker, and soon his heavy breathing turns into grunting.
He grabs my upper thigh so hard it almost hurts, but his fingers moving between my legs feel good brushing against my clit. I feel my pussy getting wet. Everything feels hot and close and tingly. It’s like my body’s sensitivity has increased with Rocco’s emotional sensitivity. I’m beautifully alive to every touch, every sensation. He rubs two fingers up and down the crotch area of my pants, stroking my clit. When he presses down, I can’t help it. I let my head fall back and start moaning. I twist and writhe with his hand between my legs, savoring the heat. It feels so damn good.
“I need you!” I gasp. “I need you right now. This second.”
“I wanna see you come. I wanna feel you come.”
He falls to his knees and grabs my pants, pulling them down quickly. I help him by half-sitting up, propping my good hand on the back of the couch. Soon I’m naked from the waist down, my aching pussy bare for him, ready for him.
“Do you want this, huh?” He grabs me by the hips and yanks me to him, his mouth near my pussy. I feel his breath on my clit, whispering over my hole. “Is this what you want, Simone?”
“Yes,” I moan, loving the way he says my name. “Yes, yes, yes.”
He brings his tongue to my pussy, stroking it up one lip and then down the other, taking his time, teasing my clit by only brushing the side of it. I moan and twist, trying to get him to touch my clit. I don’t hear him laugh, but I know he’s laughing by the pattern of his breath, three distinct warm puffs on my pussy. I grin, can’t help but grin. For two or three minutes he licks up and down my lips, driving me wild with anticipation. I reach down and place my hand on his head, but don’t push him. I just move my fingers through his hair.
“You’re gonna come for me, Simone. Hard. You got that?”
“I’ve got it,” I moan. “I’ll do anything. Just—oh, yes, yes, yes!”
He grips my thighs and pulls me even closer to him, devouring my pussy with his mouth, his tongue licking my clit so fast I can barely think. I just squirm and gyrate, pulsing my hips and moving my pussy in time with his licking tongue. Soon the heat becomes almost unbearable. I close my eyes and see red. I keep thinking: Rocco the president is licking my pussy. This rock-hard biker man is licking my pussy. It drives me wild. The heat builds and builds, the pressure in my clit almost too much to handle.
The orgasm hits me like a thump to the chest. I collapse onto the couch, my body going limp as the pressure in my clit releases. It’s like there’s a tight ball of energy and now it’s exploding, spreading outward, sending sweet pleasure to every single part of my body. I curl my fingers and curl my toes, bite down, arch my head back. Vibrations move through me, the orgasm claiming me completely. I can’t stop shifting around the couch. And all the while Rocco still licks my clit, unstoppable, pulling me closer every time my vibrations send me twitching away.
When the orgasm has passed, he stands up and starts taking off his jeans, his eyes locked on my legs.
“Look at me this time,” I moan, lifting my legs for him, lying on my back. We’ve never done it in this position before. At both the booth and the rooftop, it was from behind. “I want to see your eyes, baby.”
He moves his gaze from my legs to my face, his dark eyes fixated on me. He looks like he sometimes does in fleeting moments, as though I’m the only woman in existence. Right now, nobody else exists for him, and nobody else exists for me. The forest tries to emerge in my mind, but it is pitiful next to this perfect moment. He kicks off his pants and takes off his jacket and his T-shirt, leaning over me completely naked, his muscles tensed up. I grab his arms, which are on either side of my head, feeling the immense muscles.
He reaches down and grabs his cock, guiding it to my pussy, always looking at me, never breaking eye contact. I have never felt this close to a man before. I have never felt even close to being this close to a man before. As his cock pushes inside of me, a tiny smile touches his lips. I feel myself returning the smile. It’s like we’re orchestrating this moment together. He’s not fucking me, and I’m not taking it. We’re fucking each other. I sit down on his cock as he pushes inside of me, the size of it causing momentary pain. But then my pussy is filled with fiery warmth as the tip presses up against my sweet spot.
I take my hands from his arms and wrap them around his shoulders, pulling him close to me. He pumps into me hard, but not aggressive or rough like before. Hard, but smooth, both of us moving in rhythm, building the pleasure slowly. It’s almost like we’re one person, we move together so well. Rocco’s eyes never move from my face, nor mine from his. I’m amazed that I don’t find this uncomfortable. With any other man, I would. With any other man I’d have to bite the pillow or look over his shoulder or something, but with Rocco, eye contact heightens instead of diminishes the pleasure.
Slowly, slowly, we build the rhythm until he’s sliding in and out of me hard and fast and I’m bouncing up and down on the couch, the fabric scratching my butt and my back. But I don’t care. His muscled body feels too good against mine, his abs against my belly, his pectorals against my breasts, all of him pushing down on me, trapping me—and I want to be trapped, need to be trapped by this man. Nothing else exists. Only the apartment, no, only the couch. Only this couch and this giant man, his cock repeatedly driving into my sweet spot.
I ride the pleasure, listening to Rocco’s grunts, loving how captivated he sounds. His cock feels incredible pushing right up against the walls of my pussy, filling me completely, every movement accompanied by a thousand spots of friction. I can’t take it anymore. The harder he thrusts, the more his eyes burn into me, the closer the orgasm gets. We’re hurtling through space together and the orgasm is a giant comet, and soon it’ll hit. Hit hard. And the harder we fuck, the larger it grows.
“I’m going to—”
“Do it,” he moans, pumping his hips faster. I can tell he’s struggling to contain himself. “Do it, Simone. Fucking do it.”
My body wills me to close my eyes. Suddenly it occurs to me that I’ve never had an orgasm with my eyes open. I will them to stay open as our bodies collide with the comet, as the orgasm explodes inside of me, my sweet spot becoming fire and pressure and a thousand sensations of perfection. I sit down harder on his cock as the orgasm moves through me, my vision blurry with pleasure-filled tears. Euphoria unlike anything I have ever dreamed of hits me. But I won’t look away. I grab his face, gripping his cheek with my good hand, forcing us to stay together. The orgasm claims me, throws me about the place, pumps my body with so much pleasure I can’t reason. All I think is, Rocco, Rocco, Rocco. The rhythm of his name becomes the rhythm of his thrusts.
And then the orgasm is passing and Rocco is groaning loudly, driving into me one final time as he empties himself inside of me. And we look at each other. And we smile. And it’s closer than I’ve ever been to anybody, man or woman.
As we fall apart, the connection severs. The wild, inexplicable bond that held us together for the duration of our lovemaking seems slightly bizarre now. Moments ago we were one. Now we’re two distinct people. I crawl across the couch to him, laying my head on his chest, desperate for the feeling to return.
We lie there for a long time in silence. His heart beats in my ear, and as I fall asleep the beating of his heart turns into the beating of my heart. Maybe I’m confused. I feel confused. I feel lost. Despite that, I feel as close to content as I’ve felt in years.
But there’s a feeling of dread in my belly, too, because I know a feeling like this can’t last.