Amy Yamada - Bedtime Eyes

Leroy began licking the thin film of wine from my stomach, his rough tongue sliding smoothly over my soft skin. The pleasure he was allowing me was not like him at all. A wind chime whispered gently at the window, the cool notes like flowing water. Without warning, Leroy sunk his teeth into my flesh. It was a delicious feeling, as though my body were dripping onto the floor like molten wax.

“Don’t leave me, Leroy. I never want to stop feeling like this.”

Leroy said nothing. He just tickled me with his tongue, running it lightly over my skin. How I wished that his tongue could understand my feelings. The downy hair on my body was stuck to my skin with his saliva, each hair licked clean and facing the same direction.

“I’m yours,” I said with tears in my eyes.

“I don’t need you,” he replied. “I don’t need anyone.”

I gazed adoringly at his tiny nipples in the curly hair on his chest, and his stomach muscles, as hard and smooth as rocks. I wanted to kiss him all over. But even though he was within reach, I knew I could never make him mine.

Leroy buried his face between my legs and began to work his magic.

I succumbed willingly to his tongue, breathing shallow h in anticipation, eager to feel the waves of passion washing over me as they grew in intensity. But that didn’t happen.

“What I once accepted as happiness is now just the object of my hatred,” he said, thrusting his dick into my mouth to show his contempt for me. I choked, gagging on his length, struggling to breathe.

“Listen to me!” he barked. “Suck me—slowly and gently.”

I did as he said. I wanted him so badly, I didn’t care how much pain I had to endure. But he pulled his body away again.

“Leroy, I want you! Fuck me!” I screamed.

He laughed sarcastically and started running his fingers over my body.

“Please, Leroy. Please!” I begged hysterically.

I followed the movement of his fingers with my eyes as they traced patterns over my body, but when I began to writhe and moan with pleasure, he stopped and jammed his dick back into my mouth, repeating the same pattern over and over again. Eventually I was exhausted, and although I couldn’t stop wanting him, I knew he didn’t want me he was just toying with me. His fingers told me in no uncertain terms that he had already left.

“Fuck me, you bastard!” I screamed.

“You dirty bitch…” Leroy’s fingers stopped moving.

He gave me a look of utter contempt. I was crying now, desperate for his touch.

“So you want me to fuck you, do you?”

I looked up at Leroy, tears in my eyes, and nodded. He spit in my face.

“Why don’t you just kill me?”

“No,” he said quietly, “I can do better than that. I’ll leave you instead and you’ll miss me so much that you’ll grow to hate me. All you’ll have left is your memories of me and booze.”

His eyes were so cold.

“Leroy, don’t leave me! I want you! You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted!”

Somehow I thought that he would continue making love to me, even if it was only out of sympathy. But he just turned from me and said, “Looking at you now, I can see what I must have been like two years ago.”

Silence. I stared at him, stunned. I wasn’t crying anymore. I could see that he no longer despised me. There was no hatred left in his eyes.

He started to untie my hands, his big, thick fingers carefully undoing the knots, but my struggles had made them tighter. I watched transfixed as his fingers continued to work. Eventually he managed to pull apart the knots and free my hands.

“I love you, Leroy.”

For the first time in my life I meant it. I was absolutely exhausted and my wrists burned, hot and painful. Leroy looked down at me on the bed with a sad but serene expression in his eyes.

“And I once loved you, too.”

It was just an accident. Leroy lifted me up and my hand brushed against a bronze statuette by the side of the bed. My fingers clenched it and brought it crashing down on his head in a sweeping arc. He dropped without a sound. It was only a knickknack—I could hardly believe that such an insignificant lump of metal was enough to kill him. He lay motionless on the floor in front of me. There was surprisingly little blood.

“Leroy…?” I whispered.

But there was no reply.

People treated the accident like a big deal. I suppose one of the reasons must have been that Leroy was a famous jazz pianist, but at the same time, everyone wondered why such a talented guy would try to rape a nobody like me. In the end they decided he must have been crazy.

My sentence was light. The large, purple bruises around my wrists and ankles where I had been tied up painted a vivid picture of rape.

The police questioned me about the deep cuts on his hands. They said they looked like someone had tried to sever his fingers with a knife, but I said very little about it. Their opinion was that my actions were simply self-defense, and I nodded in agreement.

I guess you could say that it was self-defense. But I was protecting my sanity rather than my body. In the end, that’s exactly what I did.

When I got home, D.C. was blazing, furious about what Leroy had done to me, and angry with me for going to see him in the first place.

I was so tired I slept for days. When I finally woke up again I managed to have some of the soup D.C. made for me. He fed me himself, holding the spoon up the way he might feed a tiny bird, smiling at me every time I managed to get some down. It was a great relief to me to know that the hand holding that spoon had just ordinary fingers with no special power to work miracles. I even found myself laughing at D.C.’s jokes.

Now I can smile again, but I can clearly remember that scene under the window at the end of spring. While I still love to laugh and enjoy myself, deep in my heart I know that I am just one of those dying flowers left under the azalea bushes after all the nectar has been sucked out of them.

“She ain’t pretty. She’s okay, I guess, but she ain’t pretty at all.”

That was Jesse’s first impression of Coco. And to her, he looked like a little fiend. Just eleven years old, but over the coming months he would prove to be the cause of constant grief and pain.

Coco was looking at Jesse’s face as he jabbed repeatedly at his scrambled eggs with a fork, and already there was an uneasy feeling somewhere at the back of her mind.

Rick, on the other hand, was in a good mood. He had been happily swigging gin since early morning. But the very sight of the gin bottle made Coco feel sick after their heavy session the night before, so she was drinking iced water from a large pitcher instead.

“Ah, come on, look at her face. You can’t tell me she ain’t cute. I just can’t stop kissing her. And she’s so damn sexy, I can’t keep my hands off of her,” said Rick to his son, then kissing Coco again.

The smell of the alcohol on his breath made her feel sick and she barely managed to keep herself from retching.

Jesse looked at his father contemptuously and threw his fork down on his plate. He hadn’t touched his vegetables at all. He stood up from the table, and turned to Coco.

“I don’t eat vegetables for breakfast, okay? You got it?”

Coco was too stunned to reply. Jesse picked up his jacket and headed for the door.

“Hey, Dad. Don’t worry about me—I’ll get lunch at Alex’s place okay? You just have fun.”

The door slammed shut behind him, and Coco was left alone with Rick in the kitchen. She was relieved that Jesse had gone. She looked over at Rick, sitting at the table. He suddenly looked down shyly, downed his gin, then stood up and went into the next room. Feeling sexy, Coco went into the bedroom and got undressed, then slipped under the sheets wearing nothing but a tiny pair of panties, and waited for him. She knew that he wouldn’t be far behind, that he would follow her into the bedroom and want to continue where they had left off the night before.