Page 87 of Make Me Sin (Bad Habit 2)
On an exhalation, looking into his eyes, I whisper, “I love you.”
With a growl like an animal’s, he shoves all the way inside me.
I cry out. My body bows against his. My eyes fall shut. My head tips back against the pillow. A.J. starts to thrust into me, deep and hard, over and over, one big hand beneath my head, pulling my hair, the other gripping my thigh, holding me open as he plunges inside.
So this is what I’ve been missing.
That’s the last coherent thought I have before I come, screaming his name.
There are moments that brand you.
There are moments that alter you, that you recognize, even as they’re happening, will leave you different afterward than you were before. It’s these life-changing moments that make you who you are, more so than the family you were born into or all the experiences you had leading up to them.
For better or for worse, once you’ve lived through such a moment, you can never go back.
As I lie sweaty and sated in A.J.’s arms, my head resting on his chest, our legs entangled and our frantic heartbeats finally beginning to slow, I know that this is one of those moments. I’m different from the girl I was just this morning. I’m darker. More dangerous. In fact, I’m capable of anything.
Because now there’s something I’m willing to lie, cheat, steal, or die for to protect. Something I don’t want to live without.
Or someone.
And it’s time for him to share. There can be no more walls between us, not after this.
“Tell me everything, A.J. Start from the beginning. Don’t leave anything out.”
His chest slowly rises with his deep inhalation, lifting my head. His right hand is on my scalp, fingers entwined in my hair, the left trails slowly up and down the arm I have flung across his chest.
“I was always bigger than the other boys. Even when I was little, I was always the giant of the bunch.” His voice is slow, almost sleepy, neither sad nor happy, just matter-of-fact. “My earliest memory is of fighting. I don’t know what it was about, but I was fighting a boy a few years older than me, and winning.” He pauses. “Mostly I remember the screaming.”
“The other boy’s?”
“The crowd. People were standing around us, watching. Cheering me on.”
“How old were you?”
He thinks silently for a moment. “Maybe four or five.”
I picture a child, barely more than a toddler, fighting bare-knuckled in the street, surrounded by a rabid crowd of onlookers. It doesn’t seem possible.
“Where was your mother?”
There’s a shrug in his voice. “Fucking some john.”
We’re quiet for a moment, listening to the rain. Bella is nestled at our feet, dreaming. Her paws twitch in a dream run.
“I never knew my father. Don’t even know his name. I doubt my mother knew who he was, either. It was common for the prostitutes to get pregnant in the slums; johns paid more when the girls didn’t insist on protection. There was the threat of HIV and everything else, of course, but they always paid more if they didn’t have to wear a rubber. I don’t know why.” He pauses again, and his voice turns dark. “Some of them paid more for a pregnant whore, too.”
Pressing a kiss to his chest, I close my eyes.
“The brothel I grew up in was run by a woman named Darya, but everyone called her Matushka. Mother.” His snort is derisive. “A wolf had more maternal instinct than that old bitch. Her girls had to work when they were sick, pregnant, on the rag, beaten up, starving, everything. There were even girls who were dying of AIDS who were still turning tricks. As long as you were breathing and could spread your legs, you were worth something to Matushka.”
There’s a longer, darker pause. “And if you weren’t breathing, there were certain men who would pay special for that, too.”
I lie perfectly still. I want to hear this—I need to—but I know it will gut me. I know it will be the worst thing I’ve ever heard.
A.J. exhales through his nose, a hard burst that stirs my hair. “Matushka’s girls were allowed to keep their bastards on two conditions. One: they kept earning during their pregnancy. And two: as soon as they could, the children would go to work. Not like that,” he adds when he sees my horrified look. “At least, not until they were older. Girls had to be ten before they could start turning tricks. Matushka said it ruined their insides to start earlier.”
I swallow. “And boys?”
