The Crooked Shark
Maribel
I’m in his bed because I want to be.
Nobody’s chaining the doors tonight. The window’s open over the lot and the sign is humming. Hendrix is asleep down the hall with his door shut. Mateo put a Netflix movie on his laptop and set it on the chair at the foot of the bed.
I walked in and got on the bed on his side before he could offer me the other one. He looked at me. Then he lay down next to me with his shoulder against mine and pressed play.
I haven’t watched a minute of it.
His arm is right there. The ink starts at his knuckles and goes up under the sleeve of his T-shirt, and I’ve been looking at it since the day I saw his hand at the crosswalk.
I put one finger on the back of his hand.
He goes still. I trace the line up over the wrist to the first shape I can make out.
“What’s this one.”
“Anchor.”
“You don’t have a boat.”
“I was a kid and it was cheap.”
I laugh. I go up further. There’s a black flag on the inside of his forearm with the pole running down toward his wrist, and the ink is darker there, newer.
“When I patched.” He isn’t watching the movie either. “Torque did it himself. In the back room. It’s crooked.”
“It is crooked.”
“He was drinking.”
My finger stops at the sleeve. I push the sleeve up. I don’t ask. He lets me. His arm is warm and it’s harder than it looks. Under the ink there’s muscle that moves when I run my finger over it. The shapes go up over his shoulder and disappear into the shirt.
“Take it off.”
He looks at me for a second. Then he sits up, pulls the shirt over his head, and lies back down. He puts his hands flat on the bed at his sides. I know what that is. He’s not going to touch me. He’s going to let me do what I want.
And I want to.
There’s a shark on his shoulder. It’s terrible. Its mouth is on sideways.
“Don’t.”
“Mateo.”
“It’s supposed to look like that.”
“It’s not supposed to look like anything.” I put my whole hand on it. It’s the first time I’ve done that, my palm instead of a finger, and his breath goes out of him slow.
I feel it under the ink before I see it. A ridge. I press it with my thumb and he doesn’t move, but the muscle under my hand goes tight.
“That’s a scar.”
“Yeah.”
“The shark’s covering a scar.”
“Bottle. Long time ago. I was stupid and somebody was stupider.” He turns his head on the pillow to look at me. “It’s the only one I covered.”
I didn’t know that. I know the boy from the step. I didn’t know a man got a bottle in his shoulder and put a bad shark over it so he wouldn’t have to look. I run my thumb along the ridge one more time. He watches me do it.
I go down his chest. There’s a lot of him.
I take my time, because he’s letting me, and because every time I move my hand somewhere new he breathes differently.
His skin is hot. His heart thumps hard under my palm, harder than it went in the storm, and I leave my hand there so he knows I can feel it.
“Pluma.”
I go lower. There’s ink on his ribs, letters, and I turn on my side to read them.
He’s got his father’s name there, in the plain block letters a man picks when he’s not sure he’s allowed to want anything prettier.
I didn’t know that either. Mateo who doesn’t call his father.
Mateo with the name on his ribs where nobody sees it.
I put my mouth on it before I decide to. Just once, on the letters.
He says my name again, and his voice isn’t the same voice.
I lift my head. He’s staring at the ceiling. His hands are still flat on the bed and his fingers have gone into the sheet. He’s breathing through his mouth. I did that. I’ve turned men on before. This is the first time I’ve ever wanted to.
I look at him lying there holding himself still for me, and I find out that I like it. I like it a lot.
The ink goes down past his ribs and under the waistband of his jeans. I put my finger on the last shape I can see, where it dips under. When I stay there, he makes a sound. I’ve heard him make that sound one time before, in Little Havana, with my fist in his shirt.
“You’re killing me,” he says, to the ceiling.
“I know.”
“You know.”
“I can see it, Mateo.”
I can. He’s hard. He’s been hard, and he’s been lying here letting me put my hands and my mouth on him and not doing one thing about it, because the last time it happened I ran out of this room apologizing.
I remember that. I remember exactly what it felt like, my whole body going to stone in one second and the words coming out of me before I was on my feet. It happened in this bed with this man, and it was exactly this.
It’s the same thing. I’m different.
I know what it is now. I know it’s me. I know he’ll lie here all night with his hands in the sheet if that’s what I decide. And I know I don’t owe him anything for it, which is the exact reason I want to give to him.
I look at Mateo. He looks back at me, finally, and he doesn’t say a word, because he’s leaving it to me.
I put my hand on him through his jeans.
He’s hard under the denim, thick, already wet enough that the fabric gives when I press down the length of him. His breath punches out of his chest. His fingers twist in the sheet and stay there for one second. He’s still trying not to take a thing I haven’t offered.
I pop the button. Drag the zipper down. Get my hand inside his boxers and find hot skin, the slick head of his cock smearing my wrist. He lifts his hips so I can shove the jeans down his thighs, and then I’ve got him in my fist for real.
He’s heavier than the shape in the denim. Thick. The vein along the underside jumps when I stroke him root to tip and use what’s already leaking to make it filthy.
“Fuck.” His head drops back into the pillow. “Look at your hand on me.”
I glance down. My fingers don’t close all the way. I squeeze on the upstroke and a sound comes out of him that has nothing to do with being careful.
His hands come off the sheet.
One goes into my hair. The other finds my waist under the T-shirt and hauls me flush against him, my thigh over his, my fist still working his cock. He kisses me the way he did on that wall in Little Havana. Hungry. No apology in it. I open for him and take the noise he makes in my mouth.
“That’s it,” he says against my teeth. “Just like that. God, you’re good at that.”
I twist my wrist and watch his stomach go tight under the ink. His cock kicks in my hand. More wet. I spread it down him and stroke faster, thumb over the head on every pass, and his hips start moving with me.
“Mateo.”
“Yeah.” He’s looking at me now, a bit undone, mouth red. “Say it again.”
“Mateo.”
“Fuck, Pluma.” His palm slides up, under the shirt, and finds my breast. Thumb on my nipple, rough and sure. I push into it. I’m wet. I can feel it when I roll my hips against his thigh. He feels it too. His hand drags down my stomach and stops at the waistband of the sleep shorts.
I take his wrist and put it inside.
He groans, wrecked and starving. Two fingers along my slit, through the slick, and he swears again, low.
“Soaked. Jesus.”
“I want your mouth.”
It comes out before I dress it up. His eyes go dark. He kisses me once, hard, then he’s moving down the bed, dragging the shorts off my legs, shouldering in between my thighs.
“Hold the shirt up,” he says. “I want to see you while I eat you.”
He looks at me. Then he puts his mouth on my pussy.
It isn’t careful and it isn’t a test. He licks me open with a flat tongue, drags it through the wet, and sucks my clit between his lips. I jackknife, one hand in his hair, the other fisted in the shirt. He makes a filthy pleased sound against me and does it again, harder.
“There,” I tell him. “Don’t you dare stop.”
“Not stopping.” He slides two fingers into me and curls them while he works my clit with his tongue. Not the other thing. Not his cock. Just his mouth and his hand and the wet filthy noise of both. “Fuck, you taste good. Stay there. Let me have it.”
My hips chase his mouth. He pins me with a forearm because I keep lifting off the mattress and he wants his tongue where I put it. I let him. I like the weight. I like that he’s greedy for it.
“Good,” he says, pulling off just long enough to say it, mouth shining. “Come on my tongue, Pluma. You look so fucking pretty like this.”
I come hard. It knocks the air out of me. I say his name and I don’t say sorry and I don’t go anywhere. I shake through it with his mouth still on me, gentler now, licking me down. When I can see again he’s looking up the length of my body.
I’m still holding his hair. “Come here, Mateo.”
When I get my hand back on his cock, he’s so close it takes almost nothing. I stroke him fast and dirty and watch his face fall apart.
“That’s—fuck—your fist, baby, don’t stop—“
“I’m not stopping.”
He comes on my stomach with a sound that’s almost my name. Hot. Rope after heavy rope. His forehead drops to my shoulder and his whole body sags for a second, breathing hard against my throat.
I keep my hand on him until he twitches and catches my wrist. Done.
The sign hums through the open window. His come is on my skin. His mouth is wet. I am still in this bed.
He grabs the shirt off the floor and wipes my stomach, no ceremony. Then he drops it and pulls me into him, my head under his jaw, his arm over my back.
“You staying?” he asks into my hair.
“Yeah.”
“Good.” A breath. “You have no idea how good you looked doing that.”
I smile against his throat. “You talk a lot when you’re ruined.”
“Only for you.”
I believe him. I close my eyes. The bolt on my own door stays where it is, down the hall, unused. His heart slams under my palm and then it steadies, and I stay.