Authors: Jessa Hawke
He was with his girlfriend, a dark-haired, olive-skinned Italian, because he didn’t he deserve her? Nobody knew about us, about the times we would sneak away into my room or behind the church, or even to our favorite place underneath the bleachers. Surely, that tiny thing grasping his arm as he set eyes upon me and Molly had no idea that muscled Tony Fiuconelli liked to bend me over and spread my ass cheeks with his cock, tunneling into me so that he could lose himself to the world, over and over again.
Molly kissed my cheek lightly before sauntering off slowly into the poorly-lit block on which she lived. Tony’s eyes on it burned more than her lips had; his girlfriend yanked his arm because he was staring at me, eyes burrowing into mine in a moment of uncharacteristically public feelings for the two of us. The beatings had narrowed down to isolated moments over the years, although sometimes, he liked to slap me around before or after we were done together. He was too busy now to see me much, anyway, seeing as he was helping his uncle borrow car parts. But he still came to me. The look in his eyes as he watched Molly kiss me said everything, and much more than what the girl watching us could ever voice aloud.
I guess he’s not as much a boy-diddler as we thought, she said, steering Tony back towards the faint lights of the festival.
That was the last time. I half-expected to receive a beating for my betrayal, but he just let me be. We were older then, and I was well on my way to a more respectable, quietly masculine career. I wonder often, staring at my reflection in the closet mirror, who he sees now. They say his wife has marks around her neck. Love taps.
Time passes quietly in this respectable job, and so I let my imagination take me far outside this place. I found time to wonder what Valentina’s first time with Santiago was like. I heard the marriage was arranged between their fathers, as these things go, that they saw each other only briefly before the wedding was conducted. It was a power match; the women in Valentina’s family were all matriarchs in their own secret right, and Santiago’s father was Don in our neighborhood, which spanned to the outskirts of the Italian streets and oftentimes intermingled with the Irish and Spanish sectors. So what if Valentina spoke no English? Santiago did not plan on having his wife do much except run the house and open up her warm cunny to him at nights.
Valentina, Valentina. When I first met her, she was still that girl from the old world, the one where she joined her mother in plucking olives from their trees, and was no stranger to hard labor. Whoever scoffed at women’s work never did what women do, never pounded and processed flour into thin strips of pasta, never stirred minestrone in vats to feed dozens of hungry men at any time of day or night. Valentina grew up around animals, horses and chickens, and pigs, and so she was wise in the ways of the farm, and wise in the ways of what it is that goes on between the males and females. She caught the bitch with the stud, howling and panting slightly, and so she knew to expect dominance, but never pleasure. It would only be years from then that Santiago’s use of her body would bring the vague stirrings of something lush just out of reach, and it took her all of those years to settle into the full meaning of the nature of her bountiful breasts, hips, and thighs. To understand why the low curve of her ass in tight skirts could cause men to follow her with their eyes, even after they learned of who she was. And that these thoughts, unclean as they are, pertain to men—and even women—everywhere, that eyes could be on her body regardless of the ethnic heritage of the onlooker in question.
That first night. Santiago her senior by ten years, encountering her in her silk negligee as she stood, apprehensive and waiting in front of him after she was stripped of her wedding lace. Nothing but an untouched woman. He slid one strap down her tanned shoulder, skin like satin, then the other. Her appetizing breasts were bared to the world, which was then narrowed to only her point of view. They were more areola than breast, and when Santiago bent his head to suck on them, she wanted to tilt her head back, to experience the tugging sensations with her eyes closed, but couldn’t. Good girls were not supposed to enjoy this, not supposed to feel hot under their husband’s blue-eyed gaze. And so she let him spread her fingers with his and clasp her hand; she followed him when he lead her over to the chair. There was an uncomfortable wetness between her legs when he undressed her. He did not bother taking off all his clothes, just opened the zipper on his pants enough to let his member spring free. She had seen the one on the horse—it was huge, but she supposed Santiago’s was the right size for a man. She was nude, the healthy fleshy curves of her body, thighs whiter than the rest of her, and he took her by the hand and made her straddle him. He hurt when he pushed inside of her, and she tried not to squeeze his fingers too tightly. None of it made sense anyway, she realized in Italian, as she began to move on him through the pain, the sting of which was fast passing. Her luscious woman’s body, but her little girl uncertainty; her farm child’s precociousness, but her virgin’s timidity. As he shuddered inside of her and squeezed those intense eyes shut, Valentina realized that while she could not yet speak her husband’s language, perhaps she did hold some small measure of power over him as a person.
It would take the span of many years to learn just how much power she could wield, with her mind as much as her body. When I first met the Rufinos, Valentina was still just a woman in body, but a child in the mind. She had learned enough English to talk jewelry and alcohol, and Santiago knew the bare stretches of Italian that would let him communicate with her; they were still in the master-and-sex-kitten relationship then. Part of me admires the journey Valentina would go through, becoming an equal partner in our business, refusing to be cheated out of a single cent of what belonged to her, even though she was a woman, and a foreigner at that.
The business was simple, really, and part of me always remembers, for some odd reason, Molly. I knew bankers from banks that had little to no association with the ones that belonged to our extended community, and every so often, we’d all skim a little bit off the top and transfer that over to a Swiss bank account. It was a regular course of action in those days, except for the fact that the Rufinos and I would always find a way to skim a little more, to dig a little deeper, and transfer part of it over to funnel into our own pockets rather than that of the community.
They never knew the machinations of my mind, though. I never told them that through the years, the relationship I developed with them in my mind was always rich and that I knew them both separately, together, and often better than they knew themselves. I never went back to Italy, but whenever we ran another deal together, I always imagined us making a pact, with words unspoken, that part of the money would be wired to a Swiss bank account, where I would invest and manage it until we had saved up enough to buy a rustic little villa in Toscana, where we could eat rich food and live together, the three of us, far away from prying eyes and machismo standards.
Valentina lines the pan with rippled sheets of lasagna, spreading blood-red sauce peppered with the green of spices in a kitchen that is lit by golden light. I approach her from behind, and yank open the ties of her cream=colored apron, and press her sharply against my body, knowing that she is squeezing her eyes shut at the feel of me. I reach around to catch one of her plump breasts in my hands and knead it like dough, and when I press her body into the flour, bent at the waist and spread through the legs, the Italian that comes from her mouth means that she cannot contain herself, that I have brought her back to a place that is so elemental that she cannot remember anything but her mother tongue.
In my mind, I am their darling, noticed, finally, for the first time. When Santiago comes in at the end of the day, I gently remove his clothing, piece by piece, releasing the musky male scent of him into the air. I run the water in our free-standing tub, and I lead him by the hand into it, and hold his hand as he lowers down into the water. I soap his back and chest and feel him unkink beneath my hands. Valentina enters with a towel and we dry him off, and then it is my turn. Santiago gets in behind me, and I close my eyes as his hands rub my chest, squeezing soapy water over my nipples, washing me everywhere. Valentina reaches into the water, dark eyes warm and nurturing, and cups my balls in the water, rubbing gently into my peritoneum until I am ramrod stiff in the water, but not unpleasantly so.
Later, we are by the four poster bed in the bedroom. It is light and airy and luxurious, the best our money can buy. I stand in front of the bed and I am wholly naked, but I do not feel, for the first time in my life, too skinny, too hairy or hairless or strange. Santiago kisses my neck and shoulders, and Valentina takes me into her pink-lipped mouth. I can feel the blue intensity of Santiago as he nips at the skin on my neck and drags his roughened fingertips over the sensitive nubs of my nipples, and I can see the low arch of Valentina’s back as it curves out into her big white ass, the dark curl of her hair stark against the whiteness of her skin.
Santiago takes over her mouth first with his hands, then with his own tongue, and Valentina sits on the big pink loveseat, watching us, reaching down with both hands to find her own pleasure spot, her long, loping breasts squeezed between her arms. It is here that she can finally tilt her head back and find herself in the foreignness of her voice; she can stain that loveseat with her own juices and finally feel no shame for what she can master by the skill of her own hands. It is in the dying light that permeates that bedroom in the secret hills of Tuscany that Santiago can dig one finger into my ass as he sucks me dry, and there needs to be no agony in his eyes anymore. I can deliver them both. And in the mirror, I can finally see my reflection and know that deliverance without pain is possible for me, too. Whether or not I want it is a separate question for a separate story.
They are coming now, to secure our latest deal, to discuss how to reap the rewards of deceit. They know nothing of my mind, of my dreams for us.
To them, I am, after all, only the banker.
THE END
Bad to the Bone
They call me the girl who runs with the wolves. I was discovered on the banks of the river, swaddled in a scratchy wool blanket and near death. I was hidden in a bank of river rushes, tall green grass that obscured me almost completely. How I was found, I will never know. Anyone else would have just assumed me dead or passed over the dark secret of my abandonment without giving me a second glance. The old woman who found me was regarded as the hill witch; she scooped me in her arms and took me to the cabin where two little boys, no older than two years old, suckled milk from a worn, but clean bottle in a corner of the kitchen.
I was nothing more than a mewling blanket by the time the witch got the goat’s milk warmed up. It was an old goat, and gentle, and the milk it produced was what kept me alive, even if at first, I refused to drink. The long Roman nose of the hill witch tickled my chin, and her unruly tendrils of hair made me sneeze. It was a long time that night before she could make my mouth close around the nipple of the bottle. When I finally managed to tighten my small mouth around it, I coughed and almost spit up the milk.
She put me in a nest of blankets, this creature that looked like no sex known to mankind. I was not even strong enough to squirm away from the cold, so she tucked me in. Less than a quarter of an hour had passed before one of the dozens of critters she kept around the house crept up to me, sniffing at the odd river smell that came from me, that still comes from me. Even now, whoever comes near me claims I smell like water, like tall rushes and like petrichor, the mustiness on the air after a long-awaited rain. After the critters, who as the days grew into weeks, I learned to grasp by their wriggly little bodies with my hands, not fearing their long, sharp teeth, came the two boys who lived with the hill witch. They had no names, then, because the hill witch believed that every living creature should chose its own.
It was a long time before I regained my strength, and I never did become one of those happy, round infants that are always so popular. I grew up thinking maybe if I had been, my parents might have kept me. I was a skinny baby, pale with black hair and eyes that seemed to swallow the world. The boys took a while to approach me; they were mistrustful even then, and a baby who took up the hill witch’s time was not a welcome addition to the household.
They smelled me at first, as all wild creatures do when confronted with something new. Maybe they learned their lesson from the house animals. Orion, as he would later name himself after the constellation, for the stars meant everything to him, poked at me with his fingers and poked one in my mouth. When I bit him, he let out a small howl and yanked his hand back, eyeing my mouth warily. Enoch, calling himself as a bastardization of the night, his favorite time because that is when the moon came out, tried to taste me; I grabbed hold of his tongue and squeezed with all my might. He growled and nipped at my hand, drawing the slightest amount of blood, and now he had the taste of me forever. Nobody told me that all of this was strange, that this is not how they did it in normal houses. But we were not in a normal house.