14. Trina
FOURTEEN
TRINA
It’s sunset. A week since I last saw him.
“Mamie, I’ll just let you sleep, alright?”
“Alright, baby.”
My grandmother’s taken her headache powder and is lying down, all the blinds drawn to block out the light. These migraines really lay her out. Since she can’t tolerate any light or sound there’s not much I can do to keep her company. And really, I’m not in the mood for company. I’m deep in my feelings; all I can think about is Crash.
“I’ll be in my suite,” I tell her. “Or maybe I’ll take a walk. Let me know if you need anything.”
“Trina, don’t go wandering. I’d feel more comfortable if you stayed in the rooms. Until we’re back in California I won’t feel good with you leaving my sight.”
“I know, Mamie.”
A sigh comes from the bed. “If you go on a walk, call Charles to go with you.”
No thank you. I pretend not to hear her and dip out. One thing Mamie did when she swept through my parents’ house full of sound and fury was poach our family driver, Charles. His kids are grown, he’s unattached, so he jumped on the chance to leave Tippalonga. He’ll be driving us back to California tomorrow.
He apologized for playing a part in my almost-wedding to the Reverend. He said it was the worst thing he ever did. He was the one who told Mamie I was at the jailhouse in the first place, so I could only forgive him.
Everything is going to be so different now.
I enter my own suite and quietly shut the door.
A wave of pain crashes over me.
Crash…
I’ll never see Crash again.
I go to the window and stare out to the West. Our adventure is over. It happened too fast.
I gave Mamie my word I would not contact him, but right now all I want to do is run out there towards the sunset and find him. He must be still at the hospital. I could make my way there. Talk my way up into his room. Tell him…what would I tell him?
I bite my lip. My silence was Mamie’s condition for getting Crash out of jail and sending him to the hospital. Mamie is convinced he only helped me out of greed. I had to fight tooth and nail for her to believe me, and I believe she only agreed to help Crash out of love for me and a sense of obligation.
I told her Crash saved my life– twice. And he would have done it again in that jail cell if he had the strength.
Now he’s out there, alone.
I owe a lot to Mamie, but what about him?
Mamie went to see him at the hospital and then talked to the doctor afterward. She promised me he made a full recovery. When that McCall man stitched him up and I fed him those antibiotics, it apparently slowed the infection and saved his life. I thought doctors weren’t supposed to reveal confidential patient information — that’s what they told me when I got my checkup — but Mamie is a force of nature; I’m sure they told her everything she wanted to know.
After what happened at the jailhouse I’m a little scared of my grandmother, to tell you the truth.
And mad at her, too.
She saved me and Crash both, but I’m still angry.
I can’t believe she made me promise not to see Crash again. She held me hostage with his life. Nothing I said could change her mind. I feel shattered.
If only there was a way to tell him everything I wanted to. If only I could look him in the eye and —
“Trina.”
I gasp.
“ Crash !”
We crash together like two wild tumbleweeds. Next thing I know his lips are on mine and I’m pressed against the wall, returning his searing kiss.
I break away, head spinning. Heart ready to burst. He’s staring down at me with eyes full of some unspeakable emotion. His hair’s all shaved down, throwing his strong wolfish features into sharp relief. He looks thinner, but still so handsome, still my hero.
His arms circle my waist and hold me close, his head resting on the top of mine. We stay like that for just a minute. I can hear his heart beating strongly through his shirt.
Thank you, God. Thank you!
“How did you find me?” I stammer. “Are you angry with me?”
His voice rumbles from somewhere above me, “That kiss I just laid on you would be a funny way of showing it.”
I cling to him like a burr. He smells exactly how I remember. His touch is strong and protective. The last time I saw him he was at death’s door, laid out on a jail cell floor, holding onto me. Begging for me to escape and save myself.
“Aw, Trina, don’t cry honey. Hush.”
“Crash, you’re skin and b-bones!”
“I’m a buck eighty still. Could be worse.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t come see you.”
“There wasn’t much you could do anyway but watch me sleep,” he assures me. “I should be thanking you anyway. The doctor said without your help I might have been worse. Dead.”
I pull back and cup his face, careful not to touch the healing wounds at the back of his head. “Can I see?”
“No. It’s fucked. I’m on some crazy painkillers right now.” He strokes my hair, studying my face intently. “You’re so beautiful, Trina, damn it. How can I let you go?”
Don’t let me go!
“Crash, Mamie and I are leaving tomorrow. We won’t be coming back.”
“I take it that black Cadillac in the parking lot is hers?”
“Yes, she hired our driver Charles since I can’t fly with my ID. Crash— you could come with us.”
He just looks at me, his eyes sad and serious.
He’s saying goodbye. But this can’t be goodbye.
“No,” I say, holding him tighter. “Don’t let go yet. I’m not ready.”
“Trina, if there was a way…” He takes my hand and leads me to the bed, sitting on the edge and pulling me into his lap. I wrap my arms around his neck and breathe him in. I’ll remember this moment. Every moment I ever spent with him.
Always.
“Anything is possible,” I rant. “It wasn’t possible for us to leave the cell, but we did. It wasn’t possible for you to survive that infection, but you did.”
“I have a daughter, a life–”
“A wife,” I mutter.
He pauses. “Apparently Jess is out of the picture. For good this time.”
My delusional heart soars. “Really? But — you’re a Catholic. You don’t recognize divorce.”
“Neither do you, Miss Evangelist.”
“I don’t know what I believe anymore.”
“Hey. It’s got nothing to do with Jess, honey, and everything to do with you,” he says gently, stroking my thigh through my dress. Funny enough, it’s one of my mother’s.
Mamie was taking none of Mama’s bullshit. Apparently the night I ran off, the Reverend pulled back his support from my father and daddy fled town, leaving my mother in the house alone.
Mamie caught her in the middle of a garden party.
Everything to do with you.
“Me?”
“Yes,” Crash says firmly. “You’re only twenty-three and you haven’t seen the world. This is your first chance to figure out life and I won’t get in the way of that.”
But what use is the world without him in it? I’ll never meet another man like him.
“This is goodbye, Trina,” he says. But instead of setting me down, he holds me tighter. I expect him to get up and leave, but he doesn’t.
“Where is your granny?” he asks.
“In the other room,” I reply, fighting for control over the tears that want to make me look like a lovesick fool. “She has a headache.”
“Okay.”
“You should go, Crash. I’m trying to hold it together but it’s hard.”
“I know. Trina, my sweetheart…”
Neither of us move.
“My daughter is here in Tippalonga,” he tells me, his voice a little thick. “She’s with my sister right now.”
“Is she okay?”
“Yes. She’s perfect. She just had a little cold.” He falls back on the bed, pulling me with him into an entangled embrace. I move closer, throwing my leg between his. Imagining I can trap him there. He turns on his side to take the weight off his injuries. Facing each other, his hand becomes a stronger presence on my thigh.
“I would have courted you proper,” he says. “With flowers and wine. Going dancing on weekends to all the Honky Tonks. Taking you fishing. Showing you some real whiskey.”
“I liked the mango margarita.”
“Me too,” he confesses, and I snort a laugh. I knew it.
“It doesn’t bother me that you have a daughter,” I tell him. “I love children. If we were a couple, I would look after her like she was my own.”
He inhales deeply. “You’re a good woman, Trina.”
“I would be your woman.” I struggle to find the right words. “I would do all the things a wife does, if you have me.”
“All I want is your heart. I don’t need you chasing after me with a vacuum cleaner.”
“I’ll have to, with your birdseed.”
He laughs. “I guess so.”
“You like when I tease you?”
“Of course,” he says. “‘Cause then I can tease you back, and you get mad, and you turn into a spitfire that doesn’t know if she should slap or kiss me.”
“Speaking of that…” I reach up and touch his lips. There’s one thing I can think of to keep him here.
One thing I’ve been thinking of for a while now.
“Crash, I want to ask you something important.”
“Okay.”
I take a deep, deep breath. Nothing done from pure heart can be a sin. Words spoken in the deep of night come back to me now. And the thing I know to be true, which is that God is love. I reach down and take his hand and put it slowly on my breast.
He inhales. “So that’s your question?”
“Yes,” I whisper against his lips.
He starts kissing my neck. Sucking on it. “Why?” He asks, tugging up my dress with his other hand.
“You’ve done more for me than any man ever has. This is for you. My body is for you, Crash.” Every word comes straight from my heart.
“And you’re everything I’d want in a woman,” he rasps. “Everything I’d want in a wife. I could give you my heart and you’d never break it.”
“Never,” I promise fervently. “I don’t care if it’s crazy because it’s the truth.”
His thumb grazes my panties. “To hell with it,” he mutters.“If this is the last time I see you, Trina…Is that door locked?”
Ba-dump, goes my heart.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Mamie took her headache powder and it puts her right to sleep. She’ll be down for hours.”
“Hours, huh?”
“Stay, Crash, please.”
His hands lace with mine. He leans above me, so much bigger, stronger. Crash, my friend, my protector.
I throw my arms around his neck.
Our kiss this time is deep and soft. And then, it isn’t. Our hands go where they shouldn’t. He pushes up the dress to my waist. I find the buckle on his belt and undo it. I imagined it would be harder to snap open that metal, whip the leather strap away from it, and reach for the steel button on his jeans.
“Wait,” Crash says, pulling back a little. “Wait, Trina. Darlin’. If this is what you want–”
“It is. Crash, I want you to be my first.”
He exhales. “Alright. We need — ah, fuck. Hold on, then.” He starts getting off the bed.
I’m shook.
“You’re leaving ?”
“On my honor I’ll be right back, okay?” he says. “Promise. Wait here. For the love of God don’t go anywhere.”
He throws on his clothes and ducks out of the room. He left his hat, but not his wallet.
Crash is gone for about ten minutes. Ten minutes to panic and change my mind. But I do neither of these things. Once I commit to something I go all the way. And I’ve decided this is right, and real, and going to definitely happen.
Ten minutes. I open the door to his soft knock. He throws a paper bag onto the bed, picks me up and swings me against the wall. I wrap my legs around his waist and we kiss for a long time. His tongue duels with mine; I bite his lips and I’m reminded how he tastes like cinnamon everywhere.
“You definitely got your strength back,” I whisper.
“I always did heal fast. Kissing you helps.”
“What’s in the paper bag?”
“Something for us.”
“You got a snack ?”
“Condoms, Trina.”
“Oh. Yes, of course.”
He cups my chin, his brown eyes warm. Crash’s eyes are my favorite color. “I see that look,” he says. “Don’t even think about it. We can’t raise a baby from two sides of the country, and you have school.”
“I wasn’t even thinking that,” I lie.
He kisses my neck. “You still want to do this?”
“Yes. Will you tell me what to do?”
“You’ll know what to do,” he says, and lays me out on the bed.
He pushes up my dress and lowers himself to kiss me through my panties, sucking me through the cotton fabric. Oh Lord… The bra is next. The embarrassed motion of my hands receives a shake of his head. “Don’t hide from me.”
He lies down in bed and pulls me towards him, plumping my titties into his mouth. He sucks my nipples until they tingle with the most beautiful ache. The tender sides get even more attention. Mmmmm. This is like the motel room in Cimarron. Oh Lord… His hand is doing something between his legs. I don’t know what. I’m delirious.
When he pops a nipple out of his mouth I groan, “Harder.”
“You know how much I love these?”
“I got an idea,” I tease him.
“Me too.” While I’m on top he pushes my panties down. They sail across the room, goodbye.
This part I’m not used to. His fingers playing with me. Sliding up and down, up and down, until one thick hard finger breaches inside.
“Oh,” I gasp, and gush all over it like strawberry candy.
“Look at you grabbing me. Trina you’re so sweet.”
“I like it,” I murmur against his lips. “More.”
“You know, you have to take more than just this.”
I can feel myself squeezing on his invasion. It’s incredible.
“I swear I wanted this since I laid eyes on you,” he says, his mountain accent becoming almost unintelligible. “I tried to keep it in but you turned me on so goddamned much. You don’t want to know what I pictured. I was trying to be good.”
“I like it when you’re bad.”
“You’re never bad,” he says, nipping my neck. “Are you, little virgin?”
“Yes I am.”
Something in my voice makes him pull back, suspicious.
“I watched some dirty video in the motel room we shared,” I confess, sliding back down on his finger because it feels amazing. He has two fingers inside me. Oh my goodness.
“Serious?” He growls. “Is that why I got that charge?”
“Sorry,” I whisper, but he’s laughing. “So what did they do?” He asks, nuzzling my neck.
“Lots of stuff. You were gone a long time.”
I rub my titties on his chest because he seems to like that. He changes the angle of his wrist.
“Mm! Crash…” I hold onto his jeans, tugging at the button.
“Na…not yet.” He flips me on my back and dips low. Doing that thing he did some nights before, using his tongue to smear me all over myself.
“ Crash!”
“Shush…”
The only time he stops sucking my button is when I forget myself and grab too close to the stitches on his head. He doesn’t make a sound, just goes stiff for a second. I whip my hand off his head and what he does next takes away my apology like a fast wind.
Still sucking the tip between my legs that makes me want to burst like a ripe peach all in his mouth, he starts sliding those two fingers up inside me at the same time and hitting the door to some deep inner chamber. Knock-knock. I’m moaning and rocking until I really do burst.
The creamy something coming out of me spatters his lips. He curses and starts jerking at his jeans; licking every drop off my thighs while I try in my embarrassment to push him away.
“No, no hiding,” he says roughly. “Now you’re ready for it.”
Crash rears over me. The jeans come off. The boxers are black cotton. I stare at the shape of his sex organ, his penis.
I scrabble up in panic. “Crash, it won’t fit.”
“You don’t know that. Lie back,” he orders.
Trust him. Let him lead.
His hand strokes my stomach like the finest velvet.
“Trina. I won’t touch you now. You’re gonna touch yourself. Calm down some.”
Just like when I was alone. Only this time no hiding. There’s nothing to hide. Crash wants to see it all. And I feel no shame…and the fear dissolves.
I lie back, finding his gaze.
While I do my thing he slides the boxers down his powerful legs.
Hypnotized, I watch Crash’s manhood rock out towards me. It’s big, dark red at the tip like a plum, and thick as a tree root. His hand wraps around its length and starts a slow, smooth motion. A push, a pull, pleasuring himself. I know that because his breathing deepens, and the touch of his free hand grows hungrier, groping my breasts, flicking the tip of pleasure in my privates that turns me all electric.
“Now?” I whisper.
“Not yet.”
Six feet and six inches of pure muscle and power lean over me. I reach up and touch his stomach, with its nap of dark hair making an arrow to his erect organ. I touch all the way up until I reach his broad chest and the powerful muscles there. His hand, still fixed on his own sin, brushes against my arm.
“What did they do in the video?” he asks.
“He sucked her titties…”
“What else?”
“She sucked his penis. His dick.” I sit up on my elbows again, confused by his expression. “Is that wrong?” I ask curiously.
“Sucking my cock? That’s like a level three.”
“What are we on now?”
“One.”
“Wouldn’t ‘one’ be kissing?”
“Kissing’s just practice.”
“I want to try,” I say.
“Woah, I don’t think — ” His protest dies when I get on my hands and knees.
“Aw, fuck .”
I wrap my hand around his thick base. It fills my small hand completely. He’s warm and inflexible. Smooth and big…so big. Blood pumps through the firm organ, making it throb in my hand. Clear fluid leaks from the slit in the plum-colored crown.
Here goes nothing…
I taste it.
Crash moans out loud and threads his fingers in my hair. I thought he would be bitter or have no taste at all. But it tastes amazing. Like the coconut in the mango margarita. Closing my eyes I flutter my tongue out again, lapping up the rest.
His hand tightens in my curls.
My tongue slides under the base as I take him in my mouth. He’s so big…so good…A dark unholy thrill passes through me as I smell his musk and find that manly scent almost as good as the syrup sliding down my throat. I try to see how deep I can take him. He hits the back of my throat…and pushes deeper.
Crash’s reaction is crazy. He takes a whole fistful of my hair and starts pumping me up and down, gliding deeper into my mouth. The girl in the video used her hands so I give it a try, making that circular stroking motion in time with my mouth. It’s all just a rhythm, isn’t it? Knowing somehow I have to protect him from my teeth, I make a seal of my lips and suck hard.
“ Fuck!”
I go wider, feeling more of that clear something that tastes sooo good.
I look up to make sure I’m doing it right, and the look on his face is one hell of a YES.
And then remembering something Jada said, I slip him from my mouth, bunching my lips around the tip for a sloppy kiss. Here it comes…Feeling a little nervous, I sit up and take my titties and—
“Jesus, Trina!”
I wrap him up and make a few experimental strokes. Crash’s face contorts. He’s breathing in explosions. The hand in my hair tightens as he thrusts between my titties, pumping wildly, watching everything with supreme concentration.
“Fuck, Trina, wait — wait — you don’t want me to bust yet.”
“What does that — ”
“Nevermind. Babygirl lay down, lay down… Son of a bitch, where did you learn that?”
“What level was that?” I pant. I’m out of breath for some reason. My mouth is slick with spit and his own essence.
“Ten. We’re gonna do that again but I got to– hold on. Can’t even talk. ”
He reaches for the paper bag which I didn’t even realize was next to my head.
I watch him take out a shiny square wrapper, and tear it open, his hands shaking bad.
I’m breathing hard too. Between my legs is craving something. Something I know he’s going to give me right now.
A panicked thought says Mamie is going to bust in here and see me like this, and I’ll be mortified for obvious reasons and for the fact that I’m definitely breaking my vow I would never see Crash again.
But he found me.
And I know there will be nothing to interrupt this.
“Put it inside me,” I whisper.
“Easy, easy…” His hand is shaking as he pinches the tip of the rubber and rolls it out over the thick, proud curve that is about the size of my forearm.
“Do we really need it?”
“Need what? The condom?” He grips the tip like he wants to rip it off at the very suggestion. He shudders. “That depends if you want to get pregnant.”
“Would it feel better if we didn’t have it?” I want to make him feel good.
“Of course. To fuck you bare the first time…You’re a virgin. You might not even take.” He strokes my stomach, eyes hungry. “But then maybe you would.”
“Would you marry me if I had your son?”
“You’re pushing it, girlie.” He shakes his head as if to throw off a dangerous thought. Maybe the same thought pulsing through my brain. Why did I even say that?
“Why did you say that?” He mutters.
“I was just thinking it.”
“Well, now I’m thinking it.” He grabs his covered dick and positions it at my opening. This is what I’ve always heard is sinful, dirty. It feels nothing of the sort. It feels like an old rhythm of life. Will I go to hell for this? Do birds go to hell for singing?
He moves forward a little. I clench instinctively, everywhere.
He strokes my thigh. “Relax, darlin’.”
“Can you kiss me?” I plead.
My heart hammers so hard its making me dizzy and blind. Our lips connect, his claiming, mine yielding. I can tell he’s forcing himself to hold back.
“You’re gonna be tight,” he says. “Your body’s going to resist me. That’s natural because you’ve never had a man. It feels really good — for me— when you’re tight on me like that.”
“I want you to feel good,” I whisper.
“Your pleasure is my pleasure. It’s going to hurt but then it’s going to feel good for you too, I promise.”
I hold onto his shoulders. “I trust you.”
His hip flexes.
The unbearable pressure between my legs builds and builds with no release. But I look up into Crash’s face and remember him laughing with me over that giant mango margarita and beating up the biker and telling me I could do anything.
“Babe,” he groans, dropping his head. He’s never called me that. “You gotta let me in.” The pressure becomes pain. A flicker of sparks in my vision. I bite my lip hard. “Open for me, open honey…yes…Oh.”
I love you .
He falls over me on the bed, bracing on his forearms. The muscles bulge around my head. I jump and try to move away but he drills deeper, pinning me to the mattress.
“Good girl,” he breathes.
I kiss his neck, letting him know I’m okay. It hurts a lot but already the pain’s fading…replaced with something far, far more intense.
Crash punches with his hips, finding his way deeper and deeper. All the way to my heart. I grab his back, feeling the pits of old scars and the strength in his huge body.
He’s embedded inside me.
“You can take me good, I know it. You were made for me, Trina — it doesn’t hurt?”
“No!”
He moves again…
Deeper — deeper…
My eyes roll back in my head. Invading, taking, and my whole body and soul offers everything to his siege.
“Oh fuck …” He grabs my ass with both hands and shoulders me down to the bed. “Fuck this condom,” he pants. “You’re damn near pulling it off me. So tight… ”
I’ve never seen him like this. Every stroke he seems to lose more and more control. Eyes glazed, and taking an animal pleasure from my body. From my pleasure.
It starts as a dust storm, a rambling surge of energy that steadily finds a core to tether it. He is the wind building faster, stronger, into a twister that will fly me away past everything I know.
He throws my leg over his waist and drives deeper, fucking me hard into the sheets that jump right off the mattress. I’m making sounds I never knew I could make. I’m digging my heels into his lower back and my nails into his shoulders. Inside me feels invaded, plundered, taken by my giant warrior whose love for me declares itself with every stroke.
I burst like a peach or a strawberry or whatever the hell, squirting my juices all over him. Is this normal? Is it always like this?
I love him.
His hand traps my scream of pleasure and in my ear he growls my name. “Trina. Trina?” His hand cups my face and his forehead presses to mine. Sometimes we read each other’s minds, me and Crash, and right now I think I know what he’s going to say.
He pulls up and his brown eyes lock with mine. “Trina,” he says as if he just had some huge epiphany.
“Yes?” My voice is like a sob. But I couldn’t be happier. This is the happiest I have ever been.
“Darlin’. My angel. What if we — ”
A knock on my door.
The door leading to the hall.
We freeze.
A woman’s voice calls, “Trina?”
“No,” I gasp. Crash moans in frustration and pulls out, leaving an empty ache between my legs.
“That’s not Mamie,” I mutter.
“Go answer it. Look first.”
Shoot!
Pissed, I throw the dress on, conscious of the slick arousal between my legs, and hurry to the door. Who can that be? I look through the peephole and you could bowl me over with a damned feather.
“It’s my mother ,” I tell Crash.
He’s reaching for his boxers. Or maybe his gun.
Moment ruined.
No. No, it can’t be over already.
I open the door wide enough to stick my head out. I wonder what the hell she wants.
“Yes?” I say. “How can I help you?”
My mother looks like someone wrung her out in a washtub and left her to dry in a corner. Her clothes are immaculate but her face looks worn and tired.
“Trina. May I come in?” She asks sweetly.
“No. We can talk out here.”
“Out here in this hallway?”
“Yes.”
The sweet act drops at the speed of light. “Your grandmother isn’t answering her phone,” she snaps. “I had to get Mrs. Atherly to give me a ride over here. This is unacceptable. Where is your grandmother?”
“She’s asleep, mother.”
“I need to ask her about the mortgage payment. You know, since your daddy ran off I don’t know where I’m going to stay, and the guest house at the lake just won’t cut it for me. It’s too small and hasn’t been renovated since before you were born. I know she doesn’t expect me to live there.”
So many things I want to tell her come boiling up my throat. But she taught me how to be a lady.
I’m a lady.
“Why don’t you wait downstairs, Mama? I’ll make sure she comes to talk to you as soon as she wakes up. I’ll get someone to bring you a coffee. Or you can come back tomorrow before we leave, in the morning.”
Mama’s smile is brittle. “Why don’t you go wake her up right now? You think I have all day to wait around?”
“All you have is audacity,” I tell her, and try to shut the door.
Her foot shoots out. “You’re nothing but a lowdown tramp, Trina Marie. Don’t go lording over me like you’re something. You’re just a pathetic — ”
I hear Crash getting up. Time to end this. I shove her foot hard enough to make her squeak and slam the door in her face.
“Bitch!” She screeches as I throw the lock.
Guess I’m feeling petty. I march past a bemused Crash straight to the room’s telephone. I call the front desk.
“Hello, Miss Whiteleaf? How may we assist you?”
“Hello. Can you escort Mrs. Whiteleaf from the premises? She is disturbing my grandmother.”
“Um…Mrs. Whiteleaf? She was just — oh, yes, Miss Whiteleaf. I see. Please tell your grandmother we are so very sorry,” the receptionist squeaks. “It won’t happen again — um...”
I hear her talking to someone off the phone.
“Would your grandmother like a gift basket?” The receptionist adds breathlessly. “As a sign of our deepest and most heartfelt regret?”
The devil’s horns give me a nudge.
“Yes Ma’am,” I tell her. “Please send it up to room 43.”
“Right away, Miss Whiteleaf. Security is on his way to remove — oh, there she goes. We are so terribly sorry again, Miss Whiteleaf. Rest assured it won’t happen again. Have a wonderful evening.”
I hang up and look at Crash, feeling bad for accepting the gift basket, bad for kicking Mama out and bad for making this poor girl at the desk think Mamie was going to wring her neck.
“Everybody’s scared of Mamie,” I tell Crash, struggling with a secret amusement above all of that.
“I wonder why,” he says dryly. “Did I imagine her shooting the Reverend to death?”
“She didn’t kill him. He’s just in a small coma, that’s all.”
“Right. Just a small coma.”
“The Sheriff patched it up. He never liked the Reverend anyway and he’s dead gone on Mamie. Along with everybody else.”
Crash’s raised eyebrow makes me giggle. I explain, “Since she came here she’s had four marriage proposals.” And about ten death threats, mostly from the Wilson family.
“I see,” says Crash. “Rich old lady, single…”
“Exactly.”
I look at Crash suspiciously. “How did you get in here, by the way? I’m sure Mamie would have had them looking out for you.”
“Natural charm,” he grins.
“Hmph. Jada seemed to think so.”
I tug the dress off. We’re naked again but the energy has gone so we just end up cuddling.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “Your mother sounds…difficult.”
“She takes the cake,” I grumble. “And after all she did to me, that still felt terrible. But I think she’s actually crazy. She had a hard life. And there I go feeling sorry for her again.”
“Some people don’t always deserve our forgiveness.”
“Is there somebody you never forgave?”
“Many,” says Crash, stroking my hair off my shoulders. “But for our own sake it’s better to make peace in our hearts. You alright?”
“I’m good.” I touch his waist…and lower.
He turns me over. And I feel him probe, then push into me from behind.
This is deeper.
More intimate, even, than looking at each other face-to-face.
“Baby you’re so big,” I whimper.
His hand links with mine next to my head. For a while he doesn’t say anything, just moves. Grinding deep. Drawing it out. My body smacking against him, wet and sticky.
“Trina,” he says in my ear.
“Uh huh…”
“Say I gave you my number…”
“Yeah?”
“And you didn’t forget it…”
Never. I’d commit his number to memory. Unless he plans on giving it to me right now, while he’s turning my brain to Jell-O. He suddenly pulls back and gets me on hands and knees.
I arch my back and hear myself sucking and smacking all over him. He pushes my shoulders down. “Don’t move,” he grits. “Just take it.”
“W-what?” I moan.
“What what?” I can hear him smiling.
“What — you gonna say?”
“In a year,” he says. “We do this again. All of this. More of this.”
“Oh, Crash!”
“Say something to me, Trina. Say you will.”
Heck, it’s the only thing I can say to Crash, ever.
“ Yes !”