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PART II
ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS

66

MARINA FELT FUNNY. Just a tidge. Maybe she was simply aware that something was supposed to happen and she was feeling things that weren’t really there. It tickled a little in her between. Her breasts felt a little heavier and her nipples were hard. She was trying to stay in her right mind, but the trick was to remember this. Mostly she was touched by his gruff admission.

She and Trey were on their bed, Trey sitting cross-legged with Marina’s head in his lap. A small light was casting shadows in a corner. The phonograph was playing slow, husky jazz.

He was lightly caressing her cheeks and jaw, making her unable to talk. Was that the drug or him? She didn’t know, but she had to remember this.

“If you don’t,” he murmured as if she’d spoken. She must have asked. “Then maybe I’ll just have to work harder to seduce you.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like that word.”

“Seduce? What’s wrong with it?”

“It sounds sinful.”

He said nothing, but she felt his mouth at her ear. “I’m seducing you right now,” he whispered. “Making your body loosen up a little.”

That confused her. “You’re just petting me.”

“You like it, don’t you?”

“Yes. But I’ve got my nightgown on and you’ve got your pajama bottoms on.” Not his top, but she’d gotten used to seeing his bare chest.

“You don’t have to be naked to be seduced.”

She twisted her head to look at him right side up—or try anyway. “You don’t?”

“Oh, no,” he said in a funny voice. “Every time I sat beside you at church, every time my arm brushed yours, every time I smiled at you, every time I kissed your hand or cheek, every time I picked you up at school, every time I bought you a book, I was seducing you.”

There was something wrong with that, and she was happy to be able to think enough to ask the question. “You had to plan each thing? So was it all fake?”

“Sort of,” he admitted without hesitation. “You caught my eye. I wanted 1520. Boss Tom wanted to get back at your daddy. I spent a little time with you and then I liked you, but I had to figure out how to court you, what you might like. What you might not. What you weren’t allowed to do. So yes, I had to plan those things.”

“What if you didn’t like me?” she asked lazily, feeling very comfortable, like lying in a big bathtub with hot water and bubbles.

“I’d’a done it and not cared.”

“What about your baby?”

His fingers got lighter, making her shiver with sensation, and they trailed down her neck, across her collarbone, under her nightgown. “Won’t know, will I?” he said huskily. “Does it make a difference?”

She made a tiny little gasp when his fingers trailed down the front of her nightgown, between her breasts. She shouldn’t let him do this, should she? “You’re my husband.”

“Yes,” he said soberly.

“Did you ever want to be a husband?”

His fingers paused for a second or two and she wished she hadn’t asked. “I wanted to have a wife,” he finally answered, resuming his caresses. “Being a husband follows.” She sighed and melted deeper into his lap and mattress. “What’re trying to ask me, Marina?”

“Are you sorry you married me? Because of this?”

He chuckled. “No, I’m not sorry and I’m never going to be. I keep telling you that.”

“What about your needs?”

“That’s never been something I need. And I can do it myself if I’m not too lazy. Right now, I want to give, not take. Are you sorry you married me?” he asked. “Because of the bet?”

She thought. “I … ” she began, wondering if she should confess, but it was the drugs. She wasn’t in her right mind. “I wanted you to marry me when you told me you could look at me all day.”

His fingers stopped. “You did? Why?”

“You never thought I was homely.”

“That’s it?” he asked tightly.

“Oh, no. You listened to me. You remembered what I told you. You wanted me to talk to you, to tell you about myself, even though there’s nothing to tell. You brought me books. You didn’t just tell me I was smart. You made me understand how my mind works and then everything got so easy so quickly. Overnight, it seemed. My math teacher made me prove someone else hadn’t done my homework.” She paused when she realized something. “You made the voices in my head go away.”

“What voices?”

“The ones that tell me I’m homely and stupid.” She sighed because he began to caress her cheeks again. “You’ll probably think I’m a lunatic now.”

“Those voices aren’t you being crazy. They’re a habit. Whose voice do you hear those in? The Reverend Missus?”

“Not really voices. I remember the looks on people’s faces. I remember how nobody but Dot would show me how to work a problem because they thought I was hopeless, and even Dot got impatient with me. Nobody would tell me how to read the assigned literature, but now I can read everything, even poetry. I don’t ever really hear words. I see pictures, what the faces say. But then you were there and you didn’t think I was hopeless.”

“You understand your folks kept you hidden behind bad clothes and hair? Even Gio saw it after he met you up close. And they didn’t care about your marks.”

“I understand it. It doesn’t make the voices go away.”

“An’ Jimmy? Tonight? Wanting to chat you up?”

“It didn’t feel like that. I was too scared.”

“Of what?”

“That he wanted to hurt me. He looked like the type to hurt me.”

“He’s not. He just tries too hard.”

“I can tell when a boy’s trying too hard,” she said airily, “being around Dot.”

“Mm. I admit I don’t know him around women, but otherwise he’s a complete pussy.”

Her brow wrinkled. “What does that mean?”

“A coward.”

“Cowards hurt women because they’re weaker.”

“I see what you mean. Want to make a bet?” he teased lightly.

“What?”

“I’ll ask around, find out his reputation, then see which one of us is right.”

Marina blinked. “I’m right.”

He chuckled softly. “You thought I was on the up’n’up.”

Her mind cleared at the reminder and she tensed a little.

“Oh, oh, oh now … ” he cooed. “No other cat’s going to give you what I will, the bet not counting.”

“What. A nice house? A car? To make up for it?”

“I,” he whispered in her ear, “make the voices go away.”

That was true.

“And I’m not hanging my future on a dumb girl who’s ugly or pretty.”

“You didn’t know I wasn’t dumb.”

“I knew it as soon as I saw you start plugging numbers into that formula. You don’t need to know all why the numbers do what they do. You just need to know how, and Dot was trying to teach you why. Then you told me you were deliberately working to try and figure out Christie’s villain before the reveal, and geometry’s a cinch. And there you go, hopping over lily pads, leaving everybody else behind. You’ve backed me into corners like a regular old lawyer. You teach me something every day, Sugar. Only right I teach you what you can’t learn by yourself.”

“This?”

“This,” he breathed, pressing butterfly kisses to her ear, making her shiver, sigh, and relax again. “Being patient, taking my time, remembering how to make love to a woman.”

She whimpered when he ran a fingertip around her very tight nipple. It was the drugs, she told herself when she arched her back, wanting him to press harder, give her nipple a little squeeze, take her breast in his big hand.

He did. He must have known. He bent toward her and then …

He kissed her. On the mouth. Tiny kisses, light, like his fingers, his lips pulling at hers a little. “Do that to me,” he breathed. “Way I taught you.”

She did. And at the same time he flicked her nipple with his thumb. Her mouth opened with her gasp and his tongue slid in. Golly, he was kissing her that way and between his thumb flicking her nipple and his tongue flicking her tongue, she was almost floating in lovely sensations stronger than the ones she’d thought she’d imagined before. It wasn’t her imagination. She just didn’t know …

It was the drugs, she reminded herself. And a wedding ring. It was all right. It wasn’t her. She wasn’t in her right mind and anyway, she was married. She just couldn’t go over whatever line she’d crossed that made Trey lose respect for her.

She didn’t know where that line was.

“No, Sugar, don’t pull back.”

“I don’t want to upset you if—”

“Hush,” he whispered into her mouth, stroking her nipple. “You let your body do whatever it wants to do.”

She whimpered and arched her back.

“Good girl, good wife. I’m a lucky man.”

If she were in her right mind, she’d think he was talking to himself.

“Is this what being a good wife feels like?” she murmured.

“Mmm hm.”

As if someone pulled a string, she raised her hand to stroke Trey’s cheek. “I might not get anything else done.”

He chuckled.

“But then I’d be falling down on everything else and—”

“Nooooo,” he purred. “It’s after all the chores are done and I come home from work and so maybe I’ve had a little too much to drink and I’m rarin’ to go from being at work where I’ve been thinking about you and imagining you like this, touching you, being inside you like I’ve been and remembering when you were a very good wife, and I’ve been watching people get their draws in a wad, kissing and grinding and half naked, knowing what they do when they go upstairs or go home …

“And you’ve been thinking about this all afternoon, working, doing laundry and baking bread and cooking dinner. Feeling empty, wanting me inside you the way I’m going to be tonight. And I’m going to come home and stroke you and pet you and you’re going to say but Trey, breakfast’s ready and I’m going to say I’d rather eat you and breakfast can wait, because it’s just food and this is so much better than food and we can eat anytime anywhere and what’s a good wife to do when her husband would rather have fun with her than eat? She goes and has fun with him.”

She wouldn’t exactly call this fun but golly … “Fun is for later,” she repeated hoarsely, her sensations coming back—then charging through her when his hand left her breast and stroked over her taut protruding belly to the patch of curls between her legs and stroked her mound a little. She knew he’d slide his hand between her legs because that, so Sister Albright had told her, was petting.

“Right. Fun’s for later. And it’s later, isn’t it? I took the night off. We aren’t hungry. House is clean.”

Yes. Yes, it certainly was …

“Pictures and Fairyland’s closed. We feel like having a little fun. What else are we going to do? Nobody respectable is open at this hour.”

“Trey,” she breathed into his mouth, pulling at his lips with hers, sliding her tongue along his, being a good wife and feeling like this at the same time, her body tensing with anticipation.

“Yeah?”

“More,” she whimpered.

“More what?”

“I don’t know. I … ” He deepened the kiss until it felt like she would melt right into him and him into her and—

“Good girl,” he whispered. “Such a good wife.”

66

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