Up in Smoke, Page 29

  eyes. Her gasps of pleasure. The parting of her thick lips I imagine wrapped around my cock, taking me deep into the back of her throat.

  My balls tighten. My spine tingles.

  I’m downright ravenous for her. Her smell, her taste. Her fucking insubordination.

  Her fear.

  I want all of her and I want all of me inside of her. I’m going to explore every inch of her perfect body with my mouth, fingers and aching cock. Her nipples are hard and in my face, creating an urgency to dominate her body, her mind, her fucking soul, that’s about to detonate.

  I’ve jerked off three times since the shower incident, picturing her ass in the air, her back arched as she leaned against the shower wall.

  “I need more,” I groan.

  “More?” she asks breathlessly.

  I grab her by the waist and dig my fingers into the curve of her hips. I guide her to grind her hot pussy against me harder.

  “I need it all,” I rasp.

  We’re breathing in each other’s exhales. Devouring each other’s mouths. If the world burned down around us, I wouldn’t notice.

  I wouldn’t stop.

  I’m hanging on by a fucking thread. Frankie’s mouth tastes sweet, and I wonder how her pussy tastes in comparison. The taste of her I got in the shower has lingered. No matter how much time has passed or how many times I’ve brushed or chugged whiskey, nothing has been able to rid it from my tongue.

  The thought causes me to groan into her mouth, and I rock her harder against me. The warmth of her pussy on my lap is like a fucking drug. Stronger and more addictive than blow.

  She’s cocaine with legs, and I’m a fucking addict before I’ve even had a taste.

  The phone buzzes on the side table. I reach over blindly to shut it off, but I can’t reach it. I lean over to hit the ignore button when I read the words that slam the brakes on this train before it barrels off the tracks and crashes into the motherfucking station.

  GOT A HIT ON FRANK HELBURN YESTERDAY. REMOTE LOG-IN THROUGH DARK WEB. WORKING ON HIS LOCATION NOW. NOT LONG BEFORE THE FUCKER IS OURS. I’LL BE IN TOUCH.

  My brain is still processing the text when another bucket of water is doused over our heads as Zelda enters through the front door carrying a steaming casserole dish.

  “Fuck,” Frankie curses, pressing herself up tighter against my body to hide her nakedness.

  Zelda doesn’t look the least bit shocked. She places the dish on the counter and looks over at us with an eyebrow raised and a fist on her hip.

  “Shit, Rage was right. You really did name the bacon.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Smoke took off.Cold hard eyes in place of the ones filled with lust just seconds before. He tossed me off his lap and threw my clothes at me like nothing changed between us when EVERYTHING has changed. He made some excuse about a phone call and having shit to do, leaving me alone with Zelda at her place.

  I set out to seduce him, but in the process, I’d managed to seduce myself right into his arms.

  Idiot.

  I look out over the prison yard and contemplate making a run for it since now I know Zelda wouldn’t be held accountable for my actions, but I remember the ankle monitor strapped to my leg.

  Blowing myself up seems a bit counterproductive.

  We’re sitting on the back deck in silence, teacups in hand. Zelda’s lips are pressed together like she’s trying not to smile.

  “Are we going to talk about what you saw or are you just going to sit there and try not to laugh?” I ask, now fully-clothed. I pull my knees up and sigh.

  “Oh, Frankie,” she says with a chuckle. “I’m gonna do what all good Scottish mamas do and weave this situation into a life lesson you won’t understand.” She nods. “Just as soon as I figure out how.”

  “I’ll be waiting,” I say.

  “While you’re waiting, maybe, you should do something to occupy your time,” Zelda suggests. “Do you have any hobbies?”

  “No,” I say. “I don’t know a lot about my mother. She died when I was young but I found a bunch of paintings in the attic once with her name on them. I’m okay at drawing but I’ve always wanted to try my hand at painting.”

  “Why haven’t you?” Zelda asks.

  “I’ve been…preoccupied.”

  A big yellow lab comes bounding out from the weeds with a snake in his mouth, tail swinging proudly from side to side. He’s only got one eye.

  “Have you met The Warden?” Zelda asks, leaning down to scratch behind the lab’s ears. She takes the black snake from his mouth. It’s still alive, hissing and showing its fangs. “Oh hush,” she says, plucking the snake from his mouth and tossing it over the railing. “He lost his eye fighting a snake. Looks like he still hasn’t learned his lesson.”

  The dog comes over to me next, resting his head on my lap. He closes his eyes and sighs as I scratch his neck. He’s obviously not one of those dogs who needs time to get used to new people.

  “The Warden?” I ask, patting his head in long slow strokes. The dog makes a noise that sounds curiously like purring, keeping his eyes closed. “That’s his name?”

  Zelda chuckles. “Every prison needs a warden. I named him before I realized that he’s about as stern and watchful as a baby bunny. Good at catching snakes though. Now, if he would just kill ‘em instead of trying to be friends with them…”

  My mind wanders back to Smoke.

  The dog isn’t the only one who needs to learn that lesson.

  I shift in my chair. The Warden glares up at me with one eye open as if to say he doesn’t appreciate being jostled around. I scratch between his ears some more, and his eye closes once again. His hind leg bounces off the floor in appreciation.

  “He’s downright menacing,” I joke.

  “Not all who appear menacing are what they seem,” Zelda comments. I know instantly she’s talking about Smoke. I stop petting the dog who only stays a second more before darting into the yard to lay belly up in the grass under the bright sun, long tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” I say. I feel disappointed and stupid and rejected and then stupider still because the whole thing is ridiculous. I’m a captive who’s about to be offered up for slaughter, not some girl whose been ditched before prom.

  “Did Smoke tell you how we met?” Zelda asks, then, without waiting for me to answer, adds, “Of course, he hasn’t.”

  She sets down her knitting and looks out to the yard where The Warden is now scratching his back against the grass in some sort of weird lying down dance, shifting his hips from one side to the other with his legs up in the air.

  “Smoke was just a boy. About nine years old. Barney, my late husband, was a retired Navy man. He found Smoke covered in blood and dirt, wondering around the prison yard. He was half starved to death, and his eyes…his eyes were all wrong. Barney called me over, and I tried to coax the boy into the house, give him a bath and some food and shelter but he looked at us like he was a wild animal. He lunged at me with a knife. Thankfully my husband punched him before he could reach me. Knocked him out cold.”

  She laughs like it’s a fond memory and not the opening scene of a horror movie where everyone dies in the end and the serial killer heads to another town to start his murdering spree all over again.

  “What happened after that?”

  “While Smoke was passed out, I bathed him and washed his clothes but they were so flimsy they fell apart in the wash, so I mended some of Barney’s things, altering them on the fly so they’d fit him. I placed some food by the bedside. When he came to, he disappeared again. The food was gone off the nightstand, but the clothes were still on the foot of the bed.

  “Where did you find him?” I ask. On some level, I’m beginning to identify with the kid she’s describing, and it’s sitting like a rock in my gut.

  Zelda sighs, knitting her brows together, still disturbed with whatever it was she was recalling. “He was under the porch in
the crawlspace. Naked. Eating the beef stew and biscuits with his hand like a wild animal. He was shoving it into his mouth so quickly he was choking.”

  “How did you get him to come out?” I ask, my heart squeezing for a young Smoke.

  “He came out on his own, after a while. He let me dress him, but he didn’t speak, just watched me like I was an alien. We tried to get him to tell us who his parents were. When we couldn’t get it out of him, we decided to call the police, but he must have heard us talking about it because he was gone before they arrived.”

  The Warden leapt up when a bird landed in the yard. He barked and chased it back into the weeds.

  “Over the next few years, he’d come around time and again. Sometimes, he was crazed like we’d found him the first time. Sometimes, he’d just leave wild flowers on the front porch for me. He never stayed the night no matter how many times we’d ask. He never took anything from us more than a meal. I started putting clothes and food in the porch box so he could come and take them whenever he wanted. After a while, I left other things in there. Sometimes he took them. Sometimes he didn’t. Years passed this way until my Barney died. Smoke was a teenager by then. Then, it was Smoke who started leaving stuff for me. Flowers. Cash. Gifts.” Zelda takes a sip of tea. “It’s because of him I was able to keep this house after my Barney passed.”

  I know how it feels to grow up neglected. Not on that kind of scale but on some level. My heart breaks for the kid version of Smoke. Out there alone in the world. Having to find his own way. I realize the pain in my chest isn’t just for him.

  It’s for me, too.

  I reach over and grab Zelda’s hand in mine which she covers with her own. She closes her eyes, and when she opens them, a single tear drips down her cheek, getting trapped in the many lines of her face.

  “He still takes care of me, sometimes from afar,” Zelda says looking at the screen door falling from the hinge and to the porch railing which was rotting and crumbling before our very eyes. “Which is why I take care of the main house for him so when he’s around, he has a place to stay.”

  “And you still make him food,” I say, remembering the biscuits and gravy from my first morning at the prison.

  “That I do,” she smiles.

  “Wait, the main house? You mean The Warden’s cottage?”

  Zelda nods. “Yes. This house, the warden’s cottage, and the prison have all been combined onto one parcel of land.”

  “Who owns it?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

  “Smoke, dear. Smoke owns it all.”

  “Why?” I look around from the weeds to the main prison building, crumbling and littered with graffiti. “I mean, if he could afford all this surely he could afford to buy a house somewhere that isn’t so…prisoney?”

  “Sometimes you don’t get to choose where home is. Sometimes home chooses you,” Zelda says, wiping her hand on her apron.

  “Zelda, why do you think he tried to push you away all those years ago? What happened to him?”

  “He wasn’t pushing us away,” Zelda argues. “Quite the opposite. He was staying away because he didn’t want to bring his troubles into our lives. Don’t you see? He was loving us, the only way he knew how.”

  “By staying away from you,” I say with some semblance of understanding beginning to sink in.

  “Yes, and I’m afraid he still thinks that way no matter how many times I try to tell him otherwise.” Zelda smiles and shakes her head. “I wish things were simple, but Smoke…he’s not a simple man.”

  “But you two are close now? I mean, you seem close,” I say.

  “In some ways, yes. In others…well, some things never change.” Zelda stands up. “I’m going to go freshen my tea.”

  She leaves me alone on the porch. I hear barking in the distance and look up to see The Warden with another snake in his mouth. He’s tossing it around in the air like it’s a Frisbee. My eyes fall on the porch box in the corner, and I can’t help my curiosity.

  I kneel and lift the rusted metal lid. It’s empty…except for a bouquet of fresh wildflowers.

  Zelda comes back out to the deck just as Smoke comes into view carrying a huge bundle of wood over his shoulder. He’s shirtless, wearing only his jeans, boots, and a pair of work gloves. His tattooed body is glistening with sweat. His long dark hair is tied into a knot on the top of his head. He sets the wood down with ease in front of the dilapidated fence and using his hands, he grips an old crumbling post and lifts it from the ground, tossing it to the side with ease before replacing it with a new one.

  Zelda sees me watching him.

  “You know, just because a relationship doesn’t conform to the standard shapes you were taught in preschool doesn’t mean they don’t fit together. We may not all be triangles or squares, but we’re still shapes. That boy over there,” she says, pointing her teacup at Smoke.

  It sounds odd her calling him a boy especially when he yanks another post from the ground with one hand.

  “He’s my child in every way. Not every child requires three squares a day and a story at bed time. Some just need a box on the porch and the freedom to run free.”

  She gives my shoulder a squeeze. “Just give him time.”

  Time for what?

  “Time isn’t something I have much of,” I say, looking down to my hands.

  Zelda doesn’t ask why, and I suspect she knows a lot of what I’m not telling her already. She squeezes my shoulder again and sighs. “Time isn’t something any of us really have.”

  It isn’t. I look down at my lap.

  “Rage was right, you do feel something for him.” Zelda says, watching my expression. “I can’t blame you. I was always attracted to the complicated ones myself. My Barney being the most complicated of them all.”

  My eyes snap to hers.

  “I know everything, dear,” she says with a sweet smile. “Let me tell you this one thing.” She leans in close and gently tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear, cupping my cheek. “Never ever underestimate a woman, especially yourself. We are in charge despite what anyone might say or think. You have more control over your life than you give yourself credit or blame for. Also, Smoke seems to think he don’t feel things like a normal person. That he was born without a conscience or a heart but he’s wrong.”

  “He is?”

  She nods. “He is. It’s not that he doesn’t feel anything, it’s that he feels everything. And for a man capable of such atrocities it’s hard for him to justify it any other way.”

  It hits me. I’ve been blaming Smoke for ripping me away and holding me hostage, but really, none of this is his fault. It’s mine. I’m the one who stole the money from Griff and set the wheels in motion. I’m the one who embarked on some sort of deep web crusade to save the world without fully appreciating the consequences of my actions.

  Zelda and The Warden make me think of all I had in the world before I was brought here, and it wasn’t much. A sort-of friendship with Duke. A one-sided love-hate thing with neighbor’s meddling cat.

  Smoke isn’t the problem at all, I realize.

  He’s the consequence.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine