Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [110]
“Yeah, plus they hated it here, especially hated me.” She let the edge of the newspaper fall. Her hands had suddenly gone to ice, and she rubbed them together like she was trying to get a fire to start.
“Hated you? Naw. Impossible.” Perry breathed as he shifted on the couch, angled his body so that he faced her, draped his arm along the top of the couch just above her shoulder. “I doubt anybody could hate you.”
“You don’t know me.”
“What you talking ’bout? I been watching you walk past my shop every workday since you started down there at Lit Brothers. I know what I see.”
“What do you see?”
He cleared his throat. He could feel his voice dipping way low again. “What do I see? Mnh, I see a hardworking, responsible, respectable, good daughter of a young lady.”
“That ain’t all you see.”
“Yeah, it is. Swear it is.”
“Watch yourself, you know it was lightning out in that storm last night.”
He laughed, and when he did, his hand fell lower along the couch back and touched her shoulder.
“You don’t see that I’m a moody bitch? That’s what people say about me behind my back; a few even told me to my face. I’m not even saying it’s false rumor. You know, sometimes I just don’t feel like being bothered with people.”
He started singing a song about a moody woman and tapped his hand on her shoulder to the beat.
“Oh, stop,” she said, and relaxed her shoulder under his arm.
“No, really, Miss Ramona, I don’t feel that way about you, that you’re a horrible person.”
“What do you feel?”
“What do I feel? Honestly?” He looked at her breaths rising and falling against the sweater. “Mnh.” He let his thumb touch the back of her neck, then up to smooth his fingers over her French roll. “What I feel right now I shouldn’t be feeling.”
“Well, then stop yourself from feeling it,” she said quickly, talking to herself as much as to Perry, the skin on her neck melting from his thumb touch.
“Ooh, but, Miss Ramona,” he said, his arm wrapping around her shoulder, pulling her in closer, “it’s—it’s strong, you know; caught me by surprise how strong it is. I didn’t even realize it was there, you know, these feelings I have for you until you came in the shop the other night and your face was showing what I guess I been feeling all along. You know, every time I saw you walk past my shop I was feeling it, I just couldn’t admit it to myself.” The more he talked, the more the fullness of her eyes drew him in, until he could smell his own breath echoing from her face back to his; his breath tinged with the scent of crystal mint Life Saver tucked in the corner of his jaw. “Mnh,” he said again. “Why don’t you tell me what you feeling, Miss Ramona?”
Ramona just wanted to touch the lines on his face, those rivers of entrenched manhood that excited her so, that were close enough now for her to breathe on. “I’ll tell you what I feel,” she said.
“What? Miss Ramona. Tell me. What?” His voice was dragging against the carpet; his mouth was at her mouth; his fingers were against her chin. He could feel his manhood throbbing all the way up in his head, pushing his logic to the smallest corner of his brain. Right now he had no logic, nor a conscience, nor a son, all he had was the tremendous calling to feel her melting-butter-type beauty drip between his fingers. “Talk to me, Miss Ramona, tell me what you feel, what you feel, baby? Huh? Tell me.” His mouth was wide open and covering her lips. Her lips were thick and soft, and he thought he would explode from the feel of them inside his mouth. “What you feel, baby?” he asked again, moaning it from the back of his throat, running his fingers along her chin down her neck, trekking across her tight berry red sweater.
And had this been yesterday she would have matched his fingers with her own, would have touched those lines in his face, pulled his chin down, parted his lips with her own. Had this been yesterday she would have led his hands all over that sweater, then under it, until his head was mashing into her chest and she was pulling him up the stairs, back to her tiny bedroom, where the roses were faded on