"Do you love me?"
There was a quiet sound of laughter amongst the bedsheets and the very faint rustling of them shifting under a turning upper body.
"Do I have to love you?"
"It would be nice, not necessary, but nice."
The room is dim, shades drawn, dark and stale with the smell of sex and liquor. Somewhere, under floorboards, behind peeling papered walls, someone is playing music, the same record over and over, he's sure that phonograph has never held another record outside of the one that currently plays. Something classical, he can only tell because there are violins in it. All classical music has violins in it in Booker's head.
She has a smile that he can see through the dark, when it lifts her lips her whole face goes with it so her eyes crinkle in the corners. He had never noticed that about another living being before, how their eyes go when they smile, that's why he thinks he might love her, the little things. Her hair curls in the back, near the nape of her neck and right below her ear, where his lips fit perfectly. She has to curl all the rest of it by twisting it and tying it like some women do, he has never seen her do it but that's how it is when he slips into bed with her at night. Those nights where it's been more losing than winning, when no amount of alcohol can drive away the memories or the wet cold that soaks down into his bones and his soul. During those nights, he finds his way into her bed and she takes him, no questions, no complaints. She takes him and warms his body and his soul with the way she fits against him, with the scent of her hair when he buries his nose in it, with how his arm fits perfectly diagonal across her chest.
With how she never lets him drown.
"Do you love me?"
It's a joking return question in the silk lined dark of the bedroom. There is a crack under the door and it lets in a sliver of yellow light from the outside hallway. Sometimes the line is broken up by feet shuffling across it. Sometimes the light turns white, and that's when he knows that another day has come. She is all pale limbs, soft, easy, stretching out against the pillows and the sheets where they make their nest. Fingers wrap up around the brass of the headboard that she said she found in an alley one day and dragged all the way home, by herself. She looked proud telling the story, even though she admitted that she had lost a glove while claiming her prize. Now, sprawled against it, with sleep heavy eyes and soft curls and skin, she looks like the prize ready to be claimed.
He studies her and her question, both visible in the twilight gloom of their day, and reaches for his cigarettes.
"Don't get ash on my sheets, Booker DeWitt or I'll kick you out." Does her voice ever not hold a smile? "I've just had them washed."
"I'd never," even with the classical music he can hear the soft roar of fire from the match after the strike. All fire roars he decided, it could be the smallest flame or a forest fire, no matter what the size, it still screams.
"I didn't mean to change the subject," a long leg slithers through the freshly washed grass of the bed and over his lap, wrapping around him, toes tucking under his hip, undoubtedly ensuring he doesn't get away.
"What was the subject again?" It's his turn to smile with his voice, amongst the smoke as she tries to tug him closer with that dainty foot. He rests a free hand on her shin, rubbing the smooth pale skin that glows like the moon in the empty dark their room. It's ours now, isn't it? I've laid claim on it, on her, these sheets. What has she to show for the claiming? He doesn't move with her pulling, the immovable mountain of Booker DeWitt, remains fast, firm, there's no give in his relaxed repose, but she knew there would be none. For all the words he hasn't said about himself, his past, she knows him. She knows there is no moving him just like she knows there is, more often then not, liquor on his breath, a slur to his voice, blood on his hands, a stain on his soul.
"Love. The subject is love."
"What a silly topic, who brought that up?"
"You brought it up. You asked me if I loved you, and, I, asked you in return."
He inhales and there's a glow to their world for a second, orange and hot, just for a moment before it dims with his exhale. In the brief instance of the far away red sun glow of the cigarette he can see the limp hang of clothes off the bed, the outline of her body under cover and the slow, gentle slope of her stomach that teases and temps when his eyes follow it's path till they run into bedclothes. It prompts him to act, and he knocks ash off the cigarette end into the tray on the bed stand before leaning over to her. The free hand on her shin slips under the covers, in search of the disappeared flesh as his lips brush right below her navel.
"Why do you even listen to what I say?"
Her back arches in the most delicious way when his fingers find her cunt, slipping inside of her, eased by the sex they had earlier that evening. She is always wet for him, willing, wanting. Some times she looks at him with such hungry eyes, fierce and mindless with their want. It takes his breath away, it gets him hard, and it lets him reveal his own hunger in return. He knows her body almost as well as he knows his own, he knows how she likes to be kissed, what makes her groan and squirm for him. How he should slowly pump his fingers in and out of her while his thumb brushes lazily over her clit to get her soaked and begging for him. He had never been with a woman before where there was no shame in sex and pleasure, where the lights didn't have to be completely out, where they could both be completely naked and exploratory in wants and touch; until he met her. Her hips rock and her legs spread and she laughs in the middle of another groan.
"Don't think for a minute, Booker, that your fingers in my snatch gets you out of answering my question."
He hums in response, his cock twitching, thickening, hardening as he watches her unabashedly enjoying his fingers, her body writhing and her midnight blue eyes half open, watching him in return. He brings the cigarette back to his lips and curls his fingers inside of her so her lips part in a silent cry and one silky, pale leg slips off the bed, the heel catching on the bed frame. There is a renewed scent of sex in the air, his arm pushing back the covers to expose her to his gaze. She was wet with initial penetration and after a bit more caressing she was opening up wonderfully under him, wetting his fingers, dampening his palm. Even in the half light he can see the dark of his sun kissed skin against her moon glow flesh.
Her fingers catch in his dark hair while her breathing comes faster, her cunt quivering and tightening around his fingers like they could give it seed like nature intended. He does not rush. Certain things must not be rushed, and this is one of them. The slow and steady build to climax is a beautiful thing, a work of art, some men rush to it, or, worse, don't care about it, but Booker loves it. The growing heat between her thighs, over her cheeks, how her eyes grow glassy, and her moans more frantic and desperate. He can imagine her knuckles whitening as her fingers tighten around the decorative brass loops of the headboard.
All goes silent when she comes. Her head back, back arched, and eyes wide he images her in her death throes. He has seen many of them in his day and he wonders, idly, fingers still pumping in and out of the vice like grip her cunt has on them, why they look so similar. At the very end, at the moment of the last breath in a man or a woman, is there pleasure? The soul releasing from the body perhaps, the blessed relief of freedom from a pain filled world; that would be a pleasure.
When she sags on to the bed, partially hung on the headboard, and when his fingers are wet he pulls them from her and puts his cigarette out in the ashtray. She is supple, limp and pliant for him when he pushes his cock inside the remains of her orgasm with a soft grunt. Her head rolls back, drunk smile on her lips and in her eyes as he begins to fuck her properly. The wet on his fingers is taken care of by his mouth, licking them clean, savoring the scent and taste of her, properly.
She fits him perfectly, tight, wet, always sublime around him, squeezing him in all the right places. She takes him with no complaint, no requests, no thought of her own pleasure, just the want and the happiness of having him inside of her. Simple and easy she arches to meet him and to rock with the pace he sets with his hips. It is heaven. The closest he will ever get to it anyway. This life that he has chosen, or that has chosen him holds very little comfort, very little promise of warmth, and the afterlife, if there is one, holds even less.
Except her.
How he plunges into her, the heat of her. How he wraps his arm around her, wraps his fingers over hers, pinning them to the cross of the headboard, how the bed sings under their movements. This is heaven. She kisses him when she can, and he kisses her in return, their bodies rocking together, their breaths coming together, while everything else in the cold, miserable world, falls away. It all disappears as his hips thrust faster, and he gets in deeper, and deeper, and every single muscle in his body tightens before snapping and uncoiling in orgasm. She responds in kind, her body shuddering and shaking as her hips slam into his, short, quick little thrusts, to get him as deep as possible inside of her and to help her get off. Her cunt squeezes and caresses his cock, milking everything it can from him. Helpless to resist, Booker spills carelessly into her and she does not protest, instead she holds him, freeing her hands and wrapping herself around him to catch him as the pleasure fades and he comes crashing back down towards earth.
"I love you," he whispers into her chest, safe, secure, clinging to heaven while her fingers back combing through his dark hair.
"That's nice, not necessary, but nice," she responds, the forever smile still in her voice.
