Page 33 of Property of Thrasher
He didn’t wait for my explanation. His mouth found the hollow under my ear and pressed, open and slow. I made another sound I didn’t recognize as mine. The heat behind me turned molten; the heat in me burned hotter. My hand slid up into his hair without permission from my brain, and my body leaned with a prayer, and as a problem.
I forgot to be careful. I forgot everything.
He moved with that same steady intention, not fumbling, not greedy, like he could take me apart in six motions if he wanted and he was choosing, for now, to map my body instead of dismantle. The small of my back hummed where his hand held me. My breath broke into pieces I couldn’t collect. I pressed my thighs together and felt a jolt of shame and want that made me dizzy.
And then he stopped.
Not because I pushed him. Because he felt me go tense and he read it like a road sign. The hand at my back didn’t pull away, rather it eased. His mouth lifted from my skin. He looked down at me from that dangerous height, and for a half beat, the eye-contact felt like a kiss we couldn’t survive.
“You’re nervous.” He didn’t say it like a complaint. He said it like he’d dropped a pin on a map.
I swallowed and wished there was a sink nearby so I could pretend I needed water. Something to escape. My lips tingled. I could still taste him. A part of me begged for him to ignore me and another wanted to keep going.
“I—” I started.
“I know,” he said, softer than anything I’d heard out of him. He stepped back a single step. I followed half a centimeter without meaning to, like a tide that hadn’t decided its direction. He noticed. His mouth twitched. It wasn’t a smile. It was a man learning me. I didn’t like the scrutiny of his attention.
The dryers droned. A washer hit spin and rattled hard enough that the metal table shook against my hip. Somewhere above us on the second floor, a cart squeaked along tile. Life kept going like my heart hadn’t just re-written itself around a stranger.
“I don’t,” I tried again, then laughed once, breathless and humiliated. “I don’t know how to be like them.”
“Them?” His brow lifted, curiosity uncoiling without threat.
“The other women.” The words cost me something I couldn’t get back. “The ones who know… where to put their hands and how to look at a man like they own the room already. The bunnies. I don’t,” I cut myself off before I admitted that sometimes I practiced in the mirror and still came out looking like a librarian who lost her keys. I tightened my grip on the edge of the table and forced my lungs to keep working. “I don’t know how to be that. And I’m not that.” I paused and realized I might be offending one of my co-workers sort of friends. “Not that there is anything wrong with what they do. It’s just not me.” I rambled.
For a second his eyes went dark in a way that had nothing to do with lust. It was thought. He was thinking. We stood there, steam painting a thin sheen across my forearms, his heat pulsing through our small distance like the world’s meanest space heater, and he thought about me.
“Good,” he said finally, and the word was such a surprise I forgot to be embarrassed. “We got enough of that. And you simply taste too sweet. I might not want to pass you around for a while. This could be fun, baby.”
“I, I,” the stammering just happened. I didn’t know what to do with that. “That doesn’t make me less… lost.”
He eased his hand up, palm open, not quite touching me, a question I didn’t have to answer. I leaned the tiniest bit, enough for the back of his fingers to skim the outside of my arm. Goose bumps burst like a stupid confession.
“You’re not lost,” he whispered. “You’re just not translated yet.”
“Translated?”
“From whatever the world told you to be into whatever the hell you actually are.” He shrugged one shoulder like it wasn’t the smartest thing anyone had said to me in a year. “Takes a minute. Sometimes a man helps. Sometimes he ruins it. You look like no one has ever spoken your language before.”
I didn’t mean to smile. It happened anyway, angling my mouth in a way that made the tingling worse. “I don’t know if that’s a compliment.”
“It can be,” his voice dipped like he was saying it somewhere more private than a hotel laundry room owned by a motorcycle club.
He let his hand fall, and I missed it immediately in a way that annoyed me. My breath steadied around the edges. My heart didn’t. “You came down here for Tiny,” I said, because I suddenly needed to push this conversation back onto rails I understood. “He’s been bouncing between the stock room and the office. He’s hard to miss.”
Thrasher huffed, and for a second the sound held the ghost of a laugh. “That he is. Now who is captain obvious?” he threw last night’s jab back at me.
He didn’t move for the door yet. He watched me like he was reading the manual before taking apart a machine he knew he could rebuild without it. My face felt hot. My hands wanted something to do. I lifted the fallen towel and smoothed it into a shaky rectangle.
“Last night,” I said, before I could help myself. “You were,” I winced. “Unkind. Why the change today?” What was I doing? Asking a tornado why it spun? This was truly playing with fire.
His eyes darkened. “I said shit like it is, baby. All of it meant to keep you out of trouble. Sometimes I do that sharp.” His mouth eased. “Sometimes I do it because I like to rile people, fuck with their heads. It’s who I am.”
“Who you are isn’t very nice to new people.” I retorted and instantly regretted it.
He laughed at me. “You’re in my world, darlin’. I do what the fuck I want. And I rattled you exactly as I wanted to.”
“It worked,” I told him, even though it hadn’t, not really.
