Chapter 9
“There she is.” I ran down the steps and jumped on Digger, my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist. “How’ve you been, baby girl?”
I was kissing his neck like some kind of sex maniac. There was something in the way he smelled that made me feel…insatiable. “I wanted to see you the whole week,” I said between kisses.
Sherri and I had devised a system for me at the auction house. We called all over the company and got a list of jobs that needed to be done, in a variety of different departments. I brought work back up to her office, or she explained to my dad that I had gone to Appraisals, or Legal, or Marketing to do a project for them. I learned more in that week about how the business was run than I had in two years that I had spent sequestered with Melina. It was much better for both Sherri and me that I had real work to do. It even seemed to make my dad, not happy, but appeased to see me working on something. Even though he told Sherri to check carefully over everything I did.
This new system meant that I was actually busy, but it also gave me time when I was supposed to be in another department to go to Digger’s house and supervise some and answer questions and keep track of the situation there. I had made a quick side trip to the garage to say hello one afternoon, but I didn’t have time to stay and he had been too busy to do anything more than give me a peck hello and then another goodbye. We had talked on the phone but it wasn’t the same thing as holding on to him and feeling his arms around me. That felt great.
Digger was nuzzling my neck, biting me a little. “We could try this later with no clothes between us.” He could feel me shiver and he chuckled against my skin. “Sounds good to me too. Come meet my mom.”
My head jerked up. “What?”
“My mom’s in the car. She’s dying to meet you.”
“Oh, my God!” I wriggled out of his grasp and straightened out my clothes. “I just jumped all over you! I thought we were going to pick her up. She’s in the car, now?”
No, now she was standing next to the car, watching me attach myself to her son. She had probably seen a lot of women act that way in his lifetime, I told myself. I put a smile on my face and clutched Digger’s hand as we walked over the freshly-plowed driveway to his car.
“Rebecca? I’m Melissa Brody.” She looked a lot like her son, dark hair and eyes, tall and strong. She wasn’t smiling back.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said, willing myself to stop blushing about my earlier behavior. I dropped my purse and bent to pick it up. It dumped out on the asphalt. Digger squatted down to help me and between the two of us we got everything back in. He put his arm around me.
“You’re all good,” he said softly. He was peering at the house. “Is your mom here? We could introduce them.”
“No, she and my dad already headed to Louisville.” I had left the office the second my father did, saying that I was feeling sick. I thought that Sherri was probably right behind me.
My mother had insisted on going to see her mom, adamantly insisted on something for the first time in I didn’t remember how long. My father had decided he should keep tabs on her instead of me, so he went along also. He didn’t trust my grandmother at all and she hated him right back. They had fought a decades-long battle over my mom; my dad loved to score victories, like not allowing my mom to visit for Christmas, and shoved it back in my grandma’s face. But my grandmother had one important card she could always play: money.
My grandma lived very, very modestly with a houseful of small dogs, but my father knew that my grandfather had left her a mint. My father wanted that money, he wanted my grandmother to leave her estate to my mom, so he walked a careful line with her. If he pushed too hard, if she ever found out how he really treated my mom, he knew that she would leave it all to some kind of toy dog rescue organization. Maybe this visit was to make sure of the inheritance.
It felt a little awkward, the three of us standing in the driveway, so I cleared my throat and opened the door to the back seat of the Ford. “Should we go?”
Digger and his mom got into the front. “Here,” he said, and tossed something over his shoulder to me. “You’ll need something else to keep you warm if you’re not sitting up here next to me.”
I unfolded the blanket and blushed even more at the body heat reference in front of his mom. “Thank you.”
It was abnormally silent in the car as we rumbled down the dirt road. “You’d think the people around here would pay to pave it,” Melissa Brody said to her son. “They look like they have enough money to pave over the state. Cheap and selfish, I suppose.”
Great. I was making a wonderful first impression.
Digger gave his mom a look. “It’s their property, they get to do what they want. Like how you left up the Christmas decorations until June last year to piss off the neighbors. It was your house, you got to do what you wanted. Isn’t that what you said at the time?” His mom looked at him and they both cracked up. I relaxed a little bit in my seat.
Little by little, I managed to make myself start talking and even more slowly, Mrs. Brody started to respond and even talk spontaneously to me. Her favorite topic was, of course, her children, Digger and Ilsa.
“You must be so proud of them,” I said.
“Ilsa will be a doctor,” she agreed.
“Yes, and Digger, having his own business, his own house, being so…” I trailed off when she turned around to look at me over the back of the seat and I caught Digger grinning in the rearview mirror.
“Go on, Cinderella. I’m enjoying having my praises sung.”
I fussed with the blanket. “I was just going to say you don’t seem so bad to me.”
“You should have seen him as a kid. He was a holy terror,” Mrs. Brody told me. “If I heard screaming, crying, or sirens near the house, I was sure that Digger was involved.”
I burst out laughing. “He must have been such a cute little guy.”
“Cute, with the soul of a devil. I should have named him Trouble.”
“That’s my middle name,” he assured me.
“What’s his real name?” I asked his mom.
“Digger,” he said firmly. “Digger Trouble Brody.”
“Joseph is his middle name, for his father,” his mom explained. “We called him ‘Digger’ because he was always in the dirt somewhere.”
“Now I’m always covered in grease,” he said. “I’ve never been clean in my life.” His eyes caught mine in the mirror again, and I smiled at him.
“Digger was the leader of the pack,” his mother said. “Our house was the clubhouse. Always full of people coming and going. He’s always been that way.” She glanced back at me. “Until recently, when he got busy with other projects.”
I sank back in my seat. Yes, I was obviously supposed to be the project keeping him away from his friends, his life.
Digger got the conversation back on track by reminding her of when he had put all the poppers under the wheels of her car. We drove the short distance left to Ann Arbor with both of them making me laugh, talking about Digger when he was a kid and how bad he was. His mom clearly loved him like crazy, anyway. I noticed she turned around when she spoke so I could hear her well over the roaring engine of the Fairlane. Even if she didn’t like me, she was still thoughtful about my hearing.
“Ilsa!” A beautiful, dark-haired woman about my age jumped up from her chair in the apartment lobby when Digger called her name.
“You’re late,” she said, but she was smiling.
“He drove carefully. Precious cargo,” Melissa Brody answered, cocking her head at me. I hung back as they all hugged and kissed. They were so different from my family.
“Hi,” Ilsa said, breaking free from her mother and coming to where I stood a few feet away. She reminded me of both Digger and her mom, but she didn’t have the harsh strength of their features. She was just lovely. And smart, I reminded myself. I stepped forward and tripped over the edge of the rug.
Digger swung his arm around me. “This is Rebecca,” he said.
Ilsa looked me up and down. “Yeah, I figured,” she said. My smile faded. Maybe she would warm up. Maybe.
Melissa put her arm through her daughter’s and we went up to Ilsa’s apartment. She had three roommates and they were all home, talking, laughing. Ilsa pulled Digger into her bedroom to fix a closet door that she said was driving her nuts, leaving me with her mom and the other women. I cleared my throat awkwardly. “Um, I made some cookies for you all, for the apartment.” I held out the bag and in seconds one girl had opened the container and then all the roommates had their mouths full of oatmeal raisin cookies.
Digger’s mom broke off a small piece and slowly chewed it. “You made these, yourself?” she asked, raising her eyebrows, and I nodded.
“They’re delicious,” one of the girls, Cheyenne, told me enthusiastically. While they chowed on the cookies they talked about their classes. They were all in med school and they told us about the crazy hours of studying. It sounded like they were all loving it, though.
“I wish I had been able to go to college,” Mrs. Brody said. “I wanted Digger to go too. He had to work.” She looked over at me. “Did you go on after high school, Rebecca?”
“I did.” They seemed to be waiting for more. “I, um, yes, I did. I was a liberal arts major. It was, I guess, just fine.”
“I suppose it’s hard to appreciate things, when you’re given so much,” Melissa commented.
My mouth dropped open. “No, I appreciate very much…”
“All fixed. You ladies ready to go?” Digger wiped his hands against each other. “See?” he said to me. “I’m dirty again.” I caught the roommates elbowing each other and smiling, and I had no desire to understand their inside joke about Digger being dirty.
I stood up, feeling so uncomfortable. Ilsa and her mom walked out arm in arm again and I followed them. “Cheyenne is still interested, Digger,” Ilsa said over her shoulder, and her red-haired roommate shrieked in protest. “I can fix you up whenever you’re ready.”
“Shut up, Ilsa.” He sounded like he thought she was joking. I didn’t think she was.
We went to Ilsa’s favorite restaurant for lunch, a super crowded, busy deli in downtown Ann Arbor. “Is this ok with you?” Digger asked me as we went in.
I smiled largely. “Of course!” The three of them talked and laughed throughout the meal. I sat feeling like I had just failed another big test. This had been my chance to make a good impression with his family and I had already ruined it. I was letting it slip away.
I realized they were all staring at me like they were waiting. Someone must have asked me something. I looked from face to face, trying to get a clue as to what my answer should be. I nodded carefully while checking to see if I was going the right direction. “Sure,” I told them.
Digger swallowed a huge bite of sandwich and picked up my hand. “It’s too loud in here,” he said. “We’ll talk more when we go outside.” So that hadn’t been the correct response. I wondered what I had agreed to. He finished his meal and then mine while his mom and sister continued to talk. Digger handed money to his mom. “See you outside,” he said, and bent and kissed her cheek. I thought maybe he whispered something, too.
“Cinderella, you’re looking like someone stole your last cookie again,” Digger told me, adjusting me so that I was tucked under his arm.
“I don’t think they like me very much.”
“They’re fine with you. What the hell do you care, anyway?”
I stopped, stepping away. “I care, a lot. I want them to like me. I wanted them to, anyway.”
Digger pulled me over to him and put his hands in the back pockets of my jeans. “They’ll warm up. They don’t get to meet too many women I see, so they’re not used to it.”
I felt my heart freezing along with my toes. “You probably see a lot of women.”
He grinned. “Yeah, there have been some, but I narrowed it down to one. You’re not busy with some other guy on the side, are you? You know I’ll have to kill him.”
I put my arms around his neck, pulling him down to me. “You really think they’ll like me? Maybe, someday?”
“I’m not worried about it.”
Well, why would he? He charmed everyone. I rested against his chest, absorbing the warmth he put out like a hot oven.
Ilsa was coming back to Detroit to stay with her mom for the weekend. By some unspoken agreement they both got in the back seat of the Ford, leaving me to sit with Digger. No matter what he said, I was staying firmly on the passenger side. I didn’t want them to think even worse of me.
“Digger mentioned that you have a hearing loss,” Ilsa said from over my shoulder. My hand automatically flew to my ear and I turned almost all the way around so I could try to listen to everyone with my good side. “Is it unilateral? Sensorineural?”
I nodded. She started peppering me with questions. Obviously, she had read up, or they had just been studying hearing in one of her classes. She went into a lot of detail, asking me things that even I didn’t know, although I was sure all that information was somewhere in the gigabytes of medical records from the hundreds of doctor appointments I’d had over the years. I tried to answer her as best I could, rubbing my forehead at one point as I tried to remember the last time anyone had checked for damage to my ossicles and whether it was my great-great aunt on my mom’s or my dad’s side who had been deaf.
“Ilsa, quit showing off,” Digger suddenly broke in. “One thing you’re going to have to learn if you want to be a doctor is that none of your patients are interested in how smart you think you are. Shut up.”
“Digger—” his mom started.
“Nah, that’s enough,” he told his mom. “Rebecca’s not a science experiment or some case study she read about in her anatomy class. She’s a person, just like Ilsa’s patients will be people. That’s enough,” he said again.
Well, that wasn’t going to warm up our relationship. But I was glad he made her stop. I turned to face forward, feeling a little car sick, and rested my head against the seat. The day seemed to have started with a lot of promise but somewhere along the line it had gone south. Probably right about when I jumped off my steps and hung on Digger’s body as his mother watched.
“Sorry,” Ilsa said stiffly. “I was just curious.”
“It’s ok,” I said.
“I forget sometimes, what Digger said. You know, it’s not just information out of a book for you. It’s not theoretical, it’s real.”
I turned around again. “Really, I mean it. It’s ok. I think it’s better to ask and get the right information or you might think something bad. That’s what happened to me when I first got my hearing aid,” I added as an afterthought.
“What happened?” Digger asked me.
“Oh, well, my mom made me wear my hair up every day in elementary school because she was afraid of me catching lice and infesting our house, and kids used to stare at my hearing aid all the time. It turned out that they thought I was a robot because I had a machine stuck in my brain. Well, some of them thought I was a robot, and some thought alien. Either way, they didn’t want any part of me.” I laughed, remembering. It hadn’t been all that funny at the time, but looking back, I could see the humor.
“What did your teacher do?” Ilsa asked curiously.
“She made me go in front of the class and tell everyone about being hard of hearing, and my limitations, and how difficult it was. How different I was.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Melissa snapped. I jumped. “Why would she do that? It’s exactly the opposite of what she should have done.”
Oh, she was on my side. I nodded. “All I wanted was to be the same as everyone else. I remember standing up in front of the whiteboard with all of them staring at me. She made me take out my hearing aid to show it and they all said ‘ew!’ It was hellish.” I kind of laughed again, but these memories weren’t funny, at all. “I pretended to be sick for the rest of the week so I didn’t have to go to school. Actually, I didn’t want to go so much, I really did throw up, so maybe it was real.”
“Does that woman still work there?” Digger demanded.
“Digger, what would you do about it?” I reached across and touched his cheek. “It was so long ago! It was second grade, so Joaquim wouldn’t have her if he goes to Lamb’s, anyway.”
“I don’t like that,” he grumbled.
“Yeah, I wasn’t such a fan, either.”
“That’s when they noticed your hearing loss? That late?” Ilsa asked me, and I nodded.
He took my hand and put it back on his cheek. “Damn it, you’re cold again. Ilsa, is there some kind of disease that makes people cold all the time? I’m thinking she must be sick.”
Ilsa got excited. “Well, it could be a thyroid problem. Or Reynaud’s!”
“Or it could be that you’re always at a steady temperature, Digger, so you think everyone else has a problem when it’s twenty degrees outside and we put on jackets,” his mom observed. “Turn on the heat, it’s damn cold in this car.”
“My one professor says when you hear hoofbeats, look for a horse, not a zebra,” Ilsa admitted. “Last week Cheyenne messed up with that. She told someone in our building that she thought he had a brain tumor, but no, he actually didn’t.”
“My God!” her mom exclaimed. “What was really wrong with him?”
“Sinus infection. Cheyenne was pretty disappointed.”
Digger and I glanced at each other and I started laughing. Ilsa did too, after a minute.
“No offense to you, but I’m going to wait a few years before I turn to you with any medical problems,” Digger told his sister.
“Probably best if you go to someone with a license, you buttcrack,” Ilsa agreed, and she slapped him on the back of the head.
“Language!” their mom barked. “You can imagine what they were like when they were little,” she said to me. “Do you have siblings?”
I nodded. “I’m in the middle of my sister and brother. He’s still in high school.”
“Seems like a good kid,” Digger noted, and I beamed at him.
“He’s a great kid,” I agreed. “I’m very proud of him and I love him a lot.” Ian was going to be on his own tonight, however, as I had other plans: I wasn’t going to sleep at home.
We drove to the West Village neighborhood in Detroit where Digger’s mom lived and she and Ilsa hopped out. Despite the fact that we were talking more comfortably at the end of the ride, I still felt relieved to see their backs after we said goodbye. They were a tough pair.
Digger patted the seat next to him before he backed out and I slid over. “See?” he said. “They liked you fine.”
“Sure,” I said. “Fine.”
He tiled up my chin and kissed me, his tongue delving deeply into my mouth. I moaned around it. “I like you fine,” he said, our foreheads pressed together, then he dropped another kiss on my lips.
Digger pulled away from me to back down the driveway. I thought I saw the curtain move in the house, and I really hoped his mom and sister hadn’t witnessed that kiss. “What do you think, Cinderella? You need to go home for your brother?” he asked me.
“Nope,” I answered. “He’s going out with Maryam. And she may be sleeping over for the first time.” I had forced my brother to have a very embarrassing discussion with me regarding women, after which I insisted he show me the condoms he said he had and I inspected their expiration dates. I hadn’t hung out with Tracey for all these years without learning something. I thought about her briefly. I would call her back. Soon, probably.
Digger whistled. “Really, first time. You want me to talk to him?”
“I did it.”
I could feel him laughing, deep rumbles in his chest that vibrated into me. “I’m just thinking about what you told him,” he said.
“It was a little difficult.” Since I, too, was a virgin. “I mostly talked about how you have to treat a woman. His role model hasn’t been—I just wanted him to be clear about it. Maryam didn’t say she was ready to, you know, she said maybe. I told him not to pressure her in any way. I also told him that it wasn’t about his gratification, not totally, anyway. That it was going to take her longer to want to, you know, and then to, you know. That he would have to, you know.” Recounting it now, I decided there was a strong possibility that Ian hadn’t known what I was talking about at all.
“Did he know?”
“I don’t know.” I started to crack up too. “Both of us were so red, it looked like we were sunburned.”
Digger was laughing so hard he wiped under his eyes. “Maybe I’ll talk to him also. Make sure he’s got the basics down. There were a few things my dad told me that helped out a lot.”
“Maybe that would be good.”
We drove for a while in silence, across the city in the winter darkness.
“I’m taking you back to my house,” Digger said. “You’re staying with me. You know that, right, Cinderella?”
I nodded, my face against his arm. I was all red again.
“Do you know?”
“Do I know what?” I asked him.
“What I’m going to do to you.” His voice had dropped, low and husky.
My mouth got dry. “Um…”
“I’ll strip off all your clothes while I kiss you. Think about how that would feel, the two of us skin on skin.” I thought and shivered. “I’ll touch you first with my hands, run them all over your soft skin. Over your breasts, and I’ll take each one and feel, like this.” His fingers on my knee rubbed and massaged. My breath caught in my throat. “I’ll take your nipples between my fingers and pull a little, make them stand up for me. I’ll use my mouth on them. My lips, my tongue, my teeth.”
“Digger…”
“I’ll run my hands over your sweet little ass and I’ll rub there too because I love to hold it.” His voice dropped further. “I’ll touch between your legs, feel if you’re wet for me.”
My hand was clenching convulsively on his leg.
“Are you wet for me now, Rebecca?”
“Yes,” I said on an exhale. The car was suddenly so hot.
We didn’t speak again for the rest of the way to his house. We passed the electrician as he headed out for the day and Digger raised his hand goodbye to him. Then we ran up the front steps together and he shoved open the door. When we were inside, he had me up and back against it before I could say a word, and I wrapped my legs around his waist as his mouth came down on my neck. “Remember what I said before? We should try this without any clothes between us?” he growled. He moved me up and down against him and both of us moaned.
Digger took the stairs two at a time. I registered briefly that they weren’t swaying and making the scary creaking noises anymore but mostly I was pushing myself closer to his body, putting my hands in his hair, my teeth on his neck, my tongue in his ear. It was like I was possessed.
“Fuck me,” he gasped. We stopped at the top of the stairs and he ground against me again. I panted his name. He carried me into his warm bedroom and slid me down, rubbing my body over his hard length between us. Fascinated, I put my hand over the bulge and his hips jerked hard.
“My turn,” he said, looking just like the devil I’d thought he was. My shirt came over my head and his came off too. As he kissed me, he unhooked my bra with a very assured movement. I rubbed my breasts against his chest, feeling the wiry black hair tickle against me, and he unzipped my jeans and pulled. Just like he had said, I was naked before him. I felt a jolt of fear that he would be able to see the remnants of bruises, despite the ice and arnica. And then I had a bigger jolt that I was standing there with no clothes on in front of Digger and he could see everything. I started to cover my breasts but he took my hands and put them on his own hips.
“It’s like a dream,” he told me. “It’s like I’m fucking dreaming.” He held my face in his hands and kissed me, but then his touch started to roam. He smoothed over my arms and down my back, taking my butt and squeezing lightly, harder, harder as I whimpered. “Remember?” he whispered into my neck. “Remember what I told you in the car?” His hands cupped my breasts and massaged and I leaned forward into his touch. His fingers went to my nipples and pulled gently and I stuttered out his name.
Digger went down on his knees. I steadied myself on his shoulders as his mouth found my breasts. He drew my nipple into his mouth, rolling it between his lips, flicking his tongue lightly across the tip. His teeth grazed it and I made a sound of, I guess, bliss. I started to fall forward, my knees giving out, and he stood up, wrapping his arms under my butt to carry me to the bed. I fell back across it, watching Digger as he slowly unzipped his jeans and stepped free of them. My eyes locked on everything that his clothes had hidden. His cock, I said in my mind, and blushed. It seemed to grow, swelling as I watched. Oh, God.
But then Digger was lying over me, kissing me again, and I forgot to be afraid. “Are you wet?” he asked me. “Rebecca, let’s find out.” His hand deserted my breast where he had been fingering my nipple to skirt down to explore. My hips started to move, pumping onto his finger as it slid into me. “You feel good,” he murmured, then he licked across my breasts, making me lurch up toward his mouth. He continued to lick down my body and then he put my knees over his broad shoulders.
“Digger.” I picked up my head and held myself off the bed, leaning on my elbows.
“Tell me what you want.”
I didn’t know. Every emotion was swirling through me, from elation to fear.
“Watch me,” he said, his dark eyes gleaming. “Watch me as you come.” His eyes locked on mine, he reached out his tongue, and he slowly licked up through me, touching and teasing every part, holding my hips steady in his hands. It felt…I was mesmerized by his gaze and melting, wanting him. His tongue stroked against my clitoris and my eyes closed. “Watch,” he ordered. He blew cold air across me and I forced my eyes open. He sucked my clit into his mouth and my vision seemed to waver. His fingers slid back inside me, and I came, clamping my knees and thrusting my hips against his mouth. He sucked and licked through my orgasm, then he was lying next to me.
“Here we go, Cinderella,” he said hoarsely. He put my leg over his hip and with the condom on, he rolled me slowly onto my back and entered me.
I froze a little. His fingers went back to my clit and circled it lightly. He pushed deeper and didn’t stop when I gasped, just kept pumping slowly, stroking me inside and out, until I was panting again, kissing him, scratching his back, grabbing his shoulders, and coming, coming, coming hard. He pushed into me faster, then crushed his hips against mine, groaning my name. For a moment his weight was over me, all of it, all of Digger. I held him as hard as I could with my face turned into his neck, listening to him gulp the air and feeling his heart beat along with mine. He felt like he was mine. I pulled him tighter. Mine.
Digger picked up his head. He kissed me fiercely. “You’re mine. Hear me? Mine.”
He moved his hips again and I was lost.
∞
We spent the rest of that late afternoon in bed. He kissed and touched every part of me, bringing me to the brink of orgasm again and again, teasing me until I was begging him. I lost count of how many times he brought me over the edge.
Digger’s tongue was in my bellybutton when my stomach growled, loudly. He laughed. “Am I starving you, baby girl?” He smoothed his hands over my breasts and I sighed, tossing my head, ready for him again. I didn’t understand what had happened to my body, but it felt like Digger had lit a fire. I was burning with wanting him. He kissed up to my mouth. “Let’s get some food.”
We showered together first in the only bathroom that worked, and since it didn’t have a lot of heat in there, we didn’t play around. Much. At one point I had taken out my hearing aid with Digger’s eyes on me. It didn’t bother me as he watched me, didn’t bother me when he picked it up to study it. Now, as we got ready to go eat, I put it back in. Then I took my wet hair and twisted it up into a knot on top of my head.
Digger seemed to know every place in Detroit and we went to a tiny Italian restaurant for dinner. I ate half a plate of spaghetti without taking a breath. He watched me take it down. “Better?” he asked.
I sighed in happiness. “I’m great. I don’t think I ever felt better in my life.”
“Banging me agrees with you.” I almost choked on a noodle. He picked a crouton off my salad plate and grinned at me. “Let’s head back and go some more. I still want to pin you against the wall.”
I put down the roll in my hand. “I’m ready.” Digger laughed.
Before we left to go home—to Digger’s house, I checked my messages. “Oh, shoot. Listen to what Ian wrote. ‘Thanks for your help with Maryam, she hates me. Parents hate me too.’ What went wrong?”
“What doesn’t go wrong when you’re that age? You’re busting out of your pants, screwing everyone in your orbit. Women are a mystery.”
“You’re screwing them but not understanding them,” I filled in. “Screwing a lot of women, many, many women. Like, how many?”
His eyebrows shot up. “Like, you don’t need to know.” He pulled my chair over next to his and it gave an ungodly squeak. “I’m your first, Cinderella. First and only.” Under the tablecloth, his hand moved up between my legs. “Mine.”
“Digger!”
“Just want to be clear,” he told me, grinning.
It was his. I was his, all of me.