Leashed by Luxury: Daddy’s Mob Dream for Me

XXI. Muscle Memory

Ra and his heiress move in a quiet, coordinated rhythm around me, every escalation and next inhalation making me feel like harp strings. Knees cushioned by the puffy couch, Emmi slinks closer, thighs pressed together. Skin to skin. Hers to hers, hers to mine as she shuffles along my side, hitching up my dress. Her head slides between my raised knees, warm and wanting like a lion's pant. A small splayed hand rests above the waistband of my underwear, waiting. White gold cufflets gleaming like licked teeth.

All the while, her king steadies me, hands on neck and shoulder, speaking against my ear, voice barely above the quartz fire's spark or string quartet. “That’s it. You give, she gives. Nothing is taken.”

I shiver and swallow, shift to my right. Not cowering, but covering my core, until the tingles subside to reasonable lengths.

His paw traipses down my spine, settles on the small of my back, urging me the slightest bit forward. His pet catches the cue, swings one leg over my thigh, not mounting, just opening the space so our bodies can mingle and stay that way. Heat curls low in my abdonmen, a scribble of s****l tension. Every slow stroke of the pet girl’s thumb up my inner thigh and every quiet breath Ra puffs against the side of my face amplifies the bramble of feelings balling and brawling in my belly.

It all vaguely reminds me of something. All the evening's substances make capturing the still life slippery. Was it a moment with Giovanni and his friends? No, they're not as slender and sleek as these creatures. Something with a boarder when I was inexperienced? But those memories are hazy as smoke, even sober.

I face Ra, the question he can't know swirling in my eyes, tadpoles in a midnight tidepool. He meets me with a kiss: controlled, precise, tasting of dark wine, and, when he draws back, he keeps our breath blending. Grapes and salt, water and mint. It startles me only a little, his unvarnished gaze only an inch away, the bushy straight line of his brows betraying anger that must really be an innate intensity. Green irises, darker than Emmi's. Bayou black versus Emmi's underside rock moss. The midpoint shade between my onyx ink and Emmi's lightness.

He comes back for a brush of tongue. The boldness makes me sigh. Unexpected relief, pilfered reins. I answer in archs. Even trade. Tit for tat, just as I knew the night promised. More literally, as his pet's nimble, button- and string-snatching fingers spider up to bare my breast.

The other hand slips into my thong, hovering over bare skin shaven to an ashen dusting. In the shower, the clearing reminded me of a woodland fire extinguished and long-settled by snow. No red irritation, just smooth, tiny circle shadows offset by a triangle of skin I'll never tan. Will she taste my coconut oil? Find a hair deeper down when she plumges into making me shudder and perspire?

Her digits, in their nude, egg-curved manicure, dance above my mound, like deciding what song to play on a pinaforte, not yet moving with intent. She waits, reads my face like sheet music, until I conduct the smallest nod.

Languishing swirls learn the shape of me, while Ra’s mouth returns to my throat, building to the fever, the fervor of a delicate mauling, devouring. The great white plain of his hand covers Emmi's over my breast, the skittering heart. In quiet tandem, they never compete, never hurry, weaving the first real layer of this long exchange I know will stretch beyond this single night.

That knowing in my chest, the quiver, it catches my intrigue again. Familiar... Familial?

When Daddy sold me in a Miami motel. A few months into "our business plan" to settle debts. A shanty celebration on things "going so well, so far." A working vacation. His words, of course. I was basically a mute back then, nodding along like a narcoleptic between dreams or nightmares.

But that night was...okay? A wash, I suspect.

Remember him holding me open for a customer. Angel's hands, they seemed sanded from fading callouses, the ghostly kisses of coalmining work he gave up, to trade me the handcuffs but not the keys, once Mama kicked the bucket. Ever-present: the knowledge that the cash would keep us afloat at least another month, whether I crumbled or not.

Recall the scratchy blue motel bedspread swatched with grandmother florals. China plate pattern. How the stranger's brown hair wasn't much softer on my leg squoosh. How he looked like a coiled hedgehog from my overhead view. I wasn't exactly dissociated, but the edges blurred as I daydreamed despite the squeaky fan, spiky hair, and eventually mean fingers.

One of Angel's palms on my inner knee the whole time, a gentle hook, the way someone hangs curtains or holds open a door. The soft practiced sound of him saying, “That’s it. Just take it for us.” Like I had to be practical to make it in this family, or the real world.

The memory arrives with the exact pressure of those fingers, nevermind Emmi's daintiness or sweeter intentions.

The strange safety in danger, in being embarassed, shucked roughly like an oyster's pearl. Am I ever really the offering, or whatever people think they can root out of me, themselves while doing it?

My teeth clench, remembering my back to his chest. How he kissed the side of my neck the entire time, an imitation of love, as Angel whispered I was “being so good for both" of them.” The affection in his voice is what stings, makes me suck my teeth. Can still feel the shape of his mouth (or Ra's?) against my flesh while someone else (Emmi?) moves inside me. My vision was glued to the ceramic seashell lamp, its chips and imperfections, hypnotizing pinks and swirl curves, so art deco. Like maybe myself now, splayed beneath their high-strung chandelier, the secret eaves of their play empire.

As the parallels echo, I’m hiccuping like a speared fish, faintly flailing, imagining Daddy’s ears ringing, his side smarting. Which one is the liver on again? So sloshed, unsexy, rehearsing old hurts. I need to stop. Drop my life. Maybe roll over to start a new fire. Obligation, reluctant want, if my brain wrenches, rewires the right way, the coersion becomes captivating again. Compulsive, it can quicken my pulse. Pick myself up from the fridgid fish pilates. Raise bottom and pelvis from the floor, brocade sofa cushions.

Meet Emmi's lips and tantalizing nips, the painting of her tongue, with jaunty thrusts, until I'm trembling around the girl's pale shoulders. Breath turning to gusts: short and uneven like bitten nails. As my carretto blue manicure bites the couch.

The tight coil in my stomach winds higher, higher, achingly familiar.

So close, could pirouette off that edge.

But I'm still stacking a castle of coins to keep Anegl's world from collapsing. Let my head fall back against Ra’s rock of a shoulder, unable to give myself permission to freefall. From a string, I'm hanging, just splashing and spasming around a hungry abyss.

Squeak a squashed, helpless sound against Ra’s neck. Feel his fingers sidle up my gulping neck, cradle around to the back of my head, coaxing, "Feel it. Feel it."

But the peak never reaches its pinnacle. No matter how hard or wet or side-to-side her mouth works, no matter how I squirm up or drag her head down. No matter how benevolent the words blanket me. It's like Angel's always watching from the corner, saying I could do it better. With him.

“We have all night,” Ra whispers, petting my flsuhed forehead. “You don’t have to reach the end of anything yet. Just keep meeting what’s given.”

But after too many tries, I limply shake my head, feeling worn and wrung out like a workout rag. I close my eyes and coil. Fetal and defeated. Reach to blindly caress Emmi's sedulously spittly cheek. As if to say, You're free to go, while I am not.