Page 10 of Pieces of Ash
“But I am not sexist,cenusa. I believe it can work both ways.”
I scramble to follow his meaning. “Both ways?”
“If I lose my wife, should I be alone?”
I suck in a deep breath, trying to focus on his words as his hand slides higher. It rests, hot and heavy, midway between my knee and the apex of my thighs.
“I don’t…I don’t know,” I answer truthfully, feeling scared and confused.
“I don’t think I should have to suffer loneliness. Do you?”
“You could…you could find someone new to marry,” I whisper, his words starting to shape into an idea that I push against, by which I am repulsed. “When y-you’re ready.”
“Why wouldn’t I be ready…now?” he asks, his voice low and mellow but underscored with an insistence that makes my stomach churn with dread.
“Tig. My s-sister. She was…she was your wife. You loved her. You’ll n-need some…some time…”
“Time?” he demands, his fingers clenching my flesh so hard that I wince. He must notice my reaction, because his fingers become gentler, petting me as though trying to soothe me. “You are so innocent.” His hand slides higher, rubbing my thigh insistently, his thumb closer and closer to a spot that the nuns and priests have forbidden us to think about, let alone touch—let alone let someoneelsetouch. His eyes are mean when he looks up at me and asks, “Do you think I married your slut sister because Ilovedher? You cannot be that stupid.”
I freeze, trapped in his intense stare.
“My littlecenusa,” he says slowly, leaning down to press his lips to my right knee before looking back up at me, “I marriedher…foryou.”
The room spins, and my stomach, which has been upset all day, heaves, bile and acid burning the base of my throat.
“F-forme?”
“I wanted you the first time I saw you. But you were only thirteen…” His voice drifts off as his thumb circles and presses. “So fresh. So young. Beautiful. Pure. Do you know what I saw as you walked down Rodeo Drive next to your stupid, junkie sister? I saw someone I could mold into my own. Someone who would be everything I wanted in a woman. Pious. Modest. Beautiful. All mine.”
This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.
“But…y-you…you were married to m-my…my…”
“You’re not listening,” he says. “I married your whore sisterfor you. All for you, my little darling. A means to an end.” His chuckle is low-pitched and pleased, and I clench my jaw toconceal a shudder. “The Bible says it’s allowed. There is no need to feel shame. It isn’t a sin for us to fuck…”
Fuckis a word I heard a great deal in my childhood when I lived with Tigín. But once she married Mosier, my mother stopped cursing, and such profanity has no place at school. Mosier and his boys curse regularly, of course, but the blunt crudeness of Mosier’s suggestion still shocks me, prompting a surprised gasp.
“…as soon as we’re man and wife,” he finishes.
As his thumb continues pressing against my inner thigh, his free hand drops from my knee to his crotch.
Man and…? He wants… No! No, this is impossible.My lungs freeze, and I stare at him, lips agape, eyes wide, burning with tears and horror.
“I have waited a long time to fuck you long and hard, my sweetcenusa. And when the beautiful virgin bleeding is finished, I will fuck you all night until sunup. And then I will come to you again. Every night. All night long. For the rest of our life together.”
He mumbles something about my being his child bride as the hand in his lap rubs insistently against the growing bulge in his pants. I shudder because his words are terrifying and his touch is revolting, and despite how crudely specific he’s being, I’mstilltrying to wrap my mind around exactly what he’s saying.
My mother was buried this morning.
My stepfather is on his knees before me.
Is heactuallyproposing marriage to me on the night of her funeral?
I lift my head and meet his eyes. They are dark and dilated. Black-coffee brown surrounded by a thin ring of onyx. Drunk with desire.Ruthless want.
“Frate, you can’t?—”
“Mosier!” he growls at me, the hand in his lap moving faster over the shiny fabric of his crotch. “Get used to calling me Mosier!”
