Page 52 of Devil

“Well,” she replies. There’s a new tightness in her voice—all the things she’s leaving unsaid right now, probably. “The first doctor was able to remove the stitches. It’s healing well, and it looks like the infection is gone.”

I walk back over and get down to one knee. I don’t ask permission to take her ankle and calf and carefully guide her foot to rest on my thigh, and I don’t ask permission to push up her jeans to look at the injury. She submits to it, staying quiet as I run my fingers over the new pink skin, completely free of those fevered smudges and threads from earlier.

My hand stays wrapped around the back of her calf as I look up at her face. “And the second appointment?”

Pearly teeth nibble at her lower lip. “It went okay. The birth control thing was a surprise.”

“I’m sorry if you were caught off guard.” I run my hand soothingly up and down her calf. “What do you think about using it? I can send you my test results so you know they’re negative.”

“It makes the most sense for what you want to do to me,” she murmurs. And then lets out a low kind of laugh.

“What?”

“It’s stupid.”

I smooth the scrunched denim back over her calf and return her foot to the floor before I stand up. “Nothing you think is stupid. Tell me.”

She closes her eyes. “It is stupid. I agreed to be your—yoursfor a year, and yet taking birth control feels like thiswallI can’t imagine myself on the other side of.”

I take her elbows in my hands and drop a kiss on her nose. She startles a little but keeps her eyes closed, so I drop a gentle kiss on each eyelid.Yours for a year.God, I love the sound of that. The only thing that will sound better isyours for the rest of our lives. “Birdie, you know that a massive swath of American Catholics are using birth control anyway, right? I’d complain that they’re hypocrites, except I think they’re right to be.”

She opens her eyes, but she doesn’t look at my face. “I know condoms are just as much contraception, but when it would beyoudoing it, you putting them on, it feels more removed. But swallowing the contraception, making the choice a part of my body…” Another low laugh. “It doesn’t make sense, I know. And obviously a pregnancy can never happen.”

Never?The word feels like a thin, deep cut inside my chest.

I push past it. I would love to put a baby in her, but only if it would make her happy. If it would make her feel miserable and trapped, then that’s the opposite of what I want.

“If you want to use condoms, we’ll use condoms,” I tell her. “I’ll fuck you any way I can have you.”

She shakes her head. “I got the prescription. They gave me the first month’s supply at the office, so I started today. They said I’d still need to use condoms the first seven days but then we can stop.”

I put my forehead against hers. “Birdie, I’m not pushing for this. I’ll push for other things, I’ll seduce you into them, but I’m not going to seduce you into taking a medication. If you’d prefer condoms, we’ll do those.”

“I’d prefer…I’d prefer not to care. There is no difference to the Church, really. Any artificial contraception is a grave matter, and I’m already having sex I shouldn’t have. I want to do what makes this year the easiest. I’m just so…behind everyone else.”

“Oh?” I ask, kissing her temple and then the joint of her jaw. “Behind how?”

I don’t know if she realizes she’s doing it, but her head tilts to give me better access to her ear and the stretch of neck below it.

“I mean everyone else has already negotiated this stuff with themselves by my age, probably fifteen years earlier than that even. They’ve negotiated how they’re going to follow or not follow the rules about sex. About having babies. They’ve decided how much guilt they’re willing to live with.”

I drag my mouth over her neck and she shivers. “Let me take all the guilt,” I say against her skin. “Let me carry the blame. I’m making you do it, aren’t I, my little bird?” My hands find her waist, warm through the thin, ribbed fabric, and then her hips. My thumbs slip under the tank top to rub at her soft skin. “You don’t have a choice. It’s all me.”

Her next exhale is shaky. “I don’t know…”

I turn her in my arms and then pull her back against me, one arm banding her in place while I reach down to find the button of her jeans. She squirms.

“Do you feel like you have a choice right now?” I ask into her ear. “Do you feel like you should be blamed for this? Am I making it easy for you to get away?” I hold her even tighter as I unzip her jeans. I shove my hand into her open pants, into the worn black cotton that hides her cunt. “Am I playing fair? Am I giving you a chance to weigh the moral outcomes of fighting me off versus giving me what I want?”

I nip at her earlobe as I find her clit. The sweet little nexus of nerve endings is already engorged. When I go lower, she’s slick, slick, slick. Just like at Evelyn, just like in my truck and up against my wall. I don’t know if it’s me or the fucked-up dynamics of consent, but even in the kinky spaces I’ve visited, I’ve never played with someone with such an immediate response to violation.

“You could tell me that the deal is off,” I muse as my fingers work between her legs. Her hips chase my hand, pressing forward or down, wherever she can get the most pressure. “You could say,I’ve had enough, Ry, and I want to leave, and I’d let you leave. Anytime, at any moment, even if I’m up to the hilt inside you. Is that what you want? You just have to tell me. Say,Ry, I want to leave, and I’ll stop fingering you. I won’t pull these jeans down. I won’t bend you over that workbench. I won’t make you face your evening prayers with a pussy full of cum.”

I move back up to her clit and she gasps. When I slide my other hand up to cup her breast, her nipple is stiff against my palm. She’s so slippery that I can hear my fingertips working over the needy place in her jeans.

“But then again, I’m not being very nice, am I? I’m playing with this darling cunt while I’m asking you these questions and making it feel so nice, so how can any of this be your fault? How can you carry the blame? The sins are light for me, Birdie, so give me as many as you’d like. Agreeing to be mine. Liking my hand down your pants. Hoping I make you come again. The condoms. The pills. The way you feel when you think about being my live-in release valve.”

She’s breathing so hard now, whimpering, squirming, but not to get away.