Posted: 12/13/15
Beta: the artful scribbler
Kew
To light a candle is to cast a shadow.
- Ursula K. LeGuin, A Wizard of Earthsea
10th October, 1998
Kew was in the market looking for supper.
She had already visited the produce section and selected some large ginger roots, papery garlic bulbs, and she had even found some Facing Heaven peppers. Normally she had to make a special trip to the Wardour Street Asian Market to find the spicy red chilies, and she was happy that Cheng had pointed them out to her. She also purchased a pineapple for Long and some mandarins for Popo.
She was going to ask Popo to cook a special supper for them tonight. Kew had good news to celebrate, and after she finished picking out some fresh meat for her small family she headed back toward their flat on Lisle Street; but first she wound her way to Gerrard Street Liquor and picked up some excellent rice wine to complement their meal and mark the occasion.
She was so happy today. Even though winter would soon be here and make everybody in London miserable with cold wind and rains, she felt as good as if it were the first warm day after a long cruel winter. On her way home from the liquor store she couldn't keep a light skip out of her ankle boots. If only Danny would come back to her tonight, her pleasure would be complete.
On the street-front below their block of flats a small Chinese restaurant kept a little Buddhist altar on a pedestal beside the door and, though she normally passed by him without a second glance, today Kew set down her shopping bags, fished some money from her pocket to set in the little green tray, and sent a thankful prayer to her ancestors. Kew and Long and Popo didn't need anymore hungry ghosts bringing them misfortunes – they'd already had enough, heaven knew. But thanks to her Danny, all of that was behind them now.
Once she'd completed her prayers and made her offering, she took up her bags, and went around the corner to the entrance of the flats above. On her way up the narrow stairwell she greeted her neighbors that were on their way out. Some of the older women, quite rudely, made her stop and listen to them complain about their ailments. Kew thought that old people were the saddest, most insufferable things in heaven and on earth. Didn't they know that young people had better things to do than listen to them describe their aches and rashes? She wanted to tell them her happy news but thought it would be bad luck to tell anybody else before she told her little family.
Long, or Lance as his school friends called him, wasn't home yet when she'd finally waded through three descriptions of itchy boils and two impertinent inquiries about where her English bloke had got to.
"Danny has a very important job now," she'd told Mr. Deng, the nosiest and most perverse of all her neighbors. "He's out making money all the time now."
"When is he going to make an honest woman of you, Kew?" he asked with a mischievous and slightly wanton gleam in his tiny slanted brown eyes.
"Someday," she told him and then, instead of waiting for him to end the conversation - as was the polite thing to do with elders - she started climbing the stairs and called back to him, "The fish is going to spoil, Mr. Deng. Tell your wife I said hello."
She couldn't stand that terrible old eel. He really was the worst.
Popo was on the couch sewing a patch on her winter coat from last year. She greeted Kew when she came in and put down her mending to help her unpack the food.
"Ooh. These oranges are beautiful Kew. Many thanks, my sweet granddaughter," Popo said smiling. She pulled out the peppers and frowned at them. "Did you buy these from Cheng?"
"Yes, Popo," she answered.
"They're no good."
"What? They're fine, Popo!"
"That man and his wife both have the demon-eye, Kew!"
"They do not, Popo! The peppers are good! Look at them."
Her grandmother went and put them in the bin.
She rolled her eyes behind her grandmother's back, but decided to let it go. She didn't want to argue with her now.
"I have great news, Popo," she told her.
"You saw Danny at the petrol station today?" she asked. "Did he ask you to marry him?"
"What? No and no," she told her angrily.
Granny sagged against the counter for a moment, affecting an exaggerated sadness. "Ah, my little Kew. How can I ever rest in peace if I haven't seen you married?"
She shrugged and advised her, "Ask the stars, Popo."
They unpacked the rest of the groceries in silence until Popo found the bottle of expensive wine.
"Ehh! Why are you wasting money on this, Kew?"
"I told you I have good news, Popo. You haven't even asked me what it is," the young woman said, her dipping, rising Mandarin taking on a distinctly petulant inflection.
"Well, tell me what it is, Kew, so I can understand why you're wasting our money on this silly wine!"
Kew was upset and she didn't want to tell her now.
"Eh, Kew! Stop making that look! It will get stuck and ruin your pretty face. Then you'll never get a husband."
"Make the kung-pao, Popo," she told her grandmother and left the kitchen.
The little old woman brought out a chopping board, a wok, and some utensils and began to prepare the supper.
While she chopped the ginger and peeled the garlic she fretted about Kew's fate.
Danny had the demon-eye. She'd seen that the first time she met him. But he had rescued them from the 14k demons who had brought them here from China with false promises of an easier life. By then it was too late for Kew's mother and Popo's only son. They had already been killed by the bobbies. And poor Kew had gone to the brothel, to work off her dead parents' debt. She was only fifteen, but those evil demon men didn't care if she was just a child.
Kew was miserable at Madame Chi's whorehouse. When she was allowed to come home on Sunday afternoons to visit her Popo, she would just lay her silky black head in her lap and cry and cry for her dead parents and beg Popo to take them back to China. But they couldn't leave the country. How could they? They barely had enough money to eat, and they weren't even legally allowed to be here in the first place. Then Danny had come along.
He met her at Madame Chi's and Kew told her later that he was taken with her the first time he laid eyes on her. Within three months, he had taken care of their debts, gotten Kew out of that filthy rat and roach infested hole, and found the three of them this spacious flat to live in. He paid the rent, their utilities, bought Kew beautiful dresses and even gave them cash for food and necessities. Danny had the demon-eye, but he had saved them.
Now, with help from Danny, Long was enrolled in a good school and he had plenty of time and energy to focus on his studies. He wanted to be a doctor, and Popo and Kew saved all their extra money for his future. He was a very bright boy, and made good marks. At least, he told Popo he made good marks. She barely knew a lick of English and she certainly didn't understand how any of it worked. But she believed him. How could he not get good marks when he spent all of his free time in his room, studying?
Long was headed in a good direction. But what would happen to Kew?
Popo knew why Danny didn't ask her to marry him, of course. It was because of where he had found her. Men wanted to marry virgins. East or west didn't matter - all men wanted a pure woman for a bride and to bear their children. But he still cared for her granddaughter. Though he shuffled and muttered and never wanted to answer questions about his job or his family, he couldn't hide the fact that he genuinely cared for Kew. Popo could see it all in his eyes.
Someday he would get bored with Kew, and stop coming around all together. Sometimes he wouldn't show up for weeks at a time, and when he came back he would only say that he'd been working, and pull a large wad of notes out of his pocket to prove it. For the past year he'd been bringing them a lot of jewelry too. Kew kept the pieces she liked and they sold the rest at a jewelry store and added the money to Long's school savings.
But someday he wouldn't want to make the sex with Kew anymore and then she could find a nice Chinese man who didn't know about her past and marry him. Since she wasn't a virgin she would probably have to marry someone older, a widower with some children that needed tending. Perhaps. It would all work out. The angry ancestors were appeased now. After all their misfortunes, they had to be.
In her room Kew sat at her small vanity and brushed her hair. Danny told her he liked long hair so she was growing hers out. It was almost to her elbows now. Every time he came back to her after he'd been gone for a while, he always said something nice about how much it had grown in his absence.
Kew looked at her small angular face in the mirror. She was almost twenty now. She was getting so old. Her mother had been married by the time she was sixteen and Popo had gotten married when she was fourteen. But this was a new time, and it was England, not the tiny village she'd lived in back in China. It was okay for women to wait until they were older to get married. It was expected really. All the smart, witty English girls on the telly didn't get married until they were in their middle to late twenties.
Danny was so good-looking, for a white man. She told him so too. She told him he was handsome enough to be in the movies.
"We go California," she told him. "You could try be in movies."
But he just laughed at her. He laughed at her all the time. He thought she was quite funny.
She missed him. He hadn't come to see her in three weeks.
She reached over and picked up a framed picture which she kept on her vanity. She had bought the frame at a little second hand store and each of the four silvery sides were engraved with the word: LOVE.
It was a picture of her and Danny at a restaurant. She was seated on his lap and she looked so beautiful and happy. He looked happy as well. He was wearing a fine suit made of a bright blue silk, and it made his gorgeous eyes glow and small creases fanned out from them. She was wearing a red silk cheongsam with shimmering green embroidery which depicted traditional Chinese dragons. She had begged him to take her out for months; to dinner, like a real date. They almost never went anywhere together.
"You ashamed of me?" she had asked him sadly.
Of course not, he told her, he was just busy making them all money. Did she want to live in an alley and eat from skips? Or did she want to stay in the nice flat he'd given her, and have lots of pretty clothes and jewelry?
She wanted him to marry her, introduce her to his mother, and have a baby with her. She didn't want to be kept, she wanted to be his wife. But Kew never said that to him. He knew.
After the dinner from the picture, he had brought her back here and had sex with her for two hours. Though he hadn't that night, sometimes he hurt her. He didn't mean to hurt her, she was sure of it. But she was so much smaller than most English women and Danny was tall, even for a white man. She always tried not to moan too loud when he was pushing himself into her with so much force that it felt like he might be trying poke a hole through her. She didn't want Popo and Long to hear them and think he was cruel. And then afterward he always stayed with her all night, and held her close, and whispered he was sorry if he'd hurt her, but she was so sexy that he just couldn't stop himself.
She always knew when he was going to hurt her and when he would be gentle with her. When he came back to her after he'd been away for a while he was always so sweet and tender. He brought her flowers, wine, and other little presents, little offerings of love. He made the soft love to her, explored her, seeking only to please her. He knew all of her secret places, every fold and crook, and he knew whether to suck, kiss, blow, or lick. It was delicious when he was in a mood to give pleasure.
But then, after he had come to be with her many nights in a row, he would get less nice. Rather than showing up with gifts in his hands, he would show up with bitterness in his eyes. He got all quiet and hard to make happy. She did everything she could think of to make him feel better, wearing the sexy little negligees he brought for her, kissing him behind his ears, rubbing his shoulders, putting his sex in her mouth for as long as he liked, and massaging his anus when she knew he was about to come. But it didn't seem to make anything better. Nothing did. And then he would disappear again.
But it was odd. Because this time he had gone away again, but he was still in the beginning gentle phase and had even brought her a little stuffed panda bear on his last visit.
She hoped he was okay. If something ever happened to him she didn't even know how to find out. She asked him for his telephone number, but he told her he didn't have one. That was a lie of course; it had to be. Who didn't have a telephone? Except people who didn't have enough money for them. But Danny was rich. He just didn't want her calling him all the time since he was so busy with his job. Whatever that was.
The strong aroma of cooking ginger and garlic filled Kew's nose. It was delicious. She hadn't got a lunch break at the petrol station today. She hated that terrible place. Her boss was always saying dirty things to her, and making terrible jokes to her about calling immigration if she didn't work over-time when he asked. He was a horrid little man. The coffee tasted like sludge, the donuts arrived stale and the customers were so rude about it to her. It was fried bread coated with sugar, not a delicacy, and they only cost 50p! So what did they expect when they bought cheap snacks at the same place where they got fuel and cigarettes? The store was hot in the summer and cold in the winter, she had to wear the ugliest uniform, and she had to take the stinky, leaky, heavy rubbish bags to the skips! She only worked there because the man who owned it, Mr. Kalpar, hadn't asked to see her documents. He didn't pay her as well as the English workers either.
So many times she was tempted to just quit. It was especially hard to stay there when Danny paid all of their bills for them. But Popo would be so disappointed in her. She always hinted around that hard times might be just around the corner, and Kew knew she was right. She might be young, but she was too acquainted with the harsh realities of life and the uncaring ways of the world to think that everything would always be this easy for them. One day Danny might leave and never come back to her.
Kew wiped a tear from her cheek. Where was he? Why had he left after he'd given her the bear? Even if he never came back she would never forget him. How could she? He had rescued her from that sick, disgusting whorehouse where she had felt that she was slowly dying with each new man that fucked her. Even if she cried, none of them cared. She was just a warm hole there, not a person. Luckily she'd only had to endure it for a few months before Danny found her.
He was sweet and gentle from the beginning.
"Ent no need to cry, luvey," he'd told her. And he'd taken a soft, clean piece of cloth from his pocket and used it to wipe her eyes and nose. No one had done that before. "I ent gonna 'urt ya, doll." Many of them did.
And his beautiful eyes were so kind. He took off his big, clunky boots and lay down on the bed beside her. He put one of his long arms beneath his head, and casually lit a cigarette.
"You speak English?" he asked.
She'd nodded, afraid to speak.
"I'm Danny," he said. When she didn't reply he asked, "Got a name?"
She whispered it, still sniffling and shy.
Danny got up and left the room for a little while. She was scared he would go to Chi and complain that she was crying. Sometimes the customers did that and then she wouldn't get fed one of her meals the next day, or sometimes, if too many of the men had complained about her, they wouldn't let her leave on Sundays to visit Popo and Long. But when Danny came back he was smiling.
"Gotchya for the night," he said cheerfully. "So we can get cozy like, yeah?"
And he had stayed for four hours. He was patient with her; slow to undress her, but quick to make her laugh, and he kissed her and kissed her. At the end of the evening she begged him to come back and see her.
"Please, Danny?" she softly asked. "I be better for you next time. I not know much yet, I just start, but I do good for you next time. Please."
He promised her he would but, by then, she didn't really believe in things like hope or happiness anymore.
But he did come back a week later and stayed with her long into the night again. And for the first time since she'd gone there, she had initiated the fellatio with him. And he kissed and licked Kew in places that she'd never before even considered might make her feel good inside. Since he was only the second customer to see her that day, she didn't feel so sore like she always did by the end of every night, and he made her sex explode and she'd cried with the pleasure of it. She hadn't known that sex could be warm and good, instead of simply painful and humiliating.
Afterward he asked her a lot of questions about her life. She cried again, when she told him as much as she could with stilted English about Popo, Long, her dead parents, and her life in China. For the first time since she had come to the wretched place she felt truly seen.
He kept coming back to see her and every time he came into the room she lit up like a firecracker with happiness. And at the end of each night she would cry when he had to leave and beg him to come again.
What she had never expected was for Madame Chi, the gross, cold-hearted woman who ran the place, to come into her room one day with a little black bag and tell her to pack her things into it because her debts had been paid and she was allowed to go home. She didn't even suspect that Danny had something to do with her freedom. She was just very, very confused, because whenever she asked them how much longer she would have to work there, they had always said that her family's debts were too large and that it would be years before she could work it all off.
But when she'd come outside, her little bag of clothes slung over her shoulder, Danny was waiting for her on the street, and he had a huge grin on his face.
She ran to him, jumped into his waiting arms, and he spun her around a couple of times and then he kissed her. Right there on the street, in front of all the people walking by them. It was exactly like a romantic ending in a movie. That's what Danny had given her. A movie star moment that she would cherish until she died.
"You belong to me now," he'd said to her when he'd done kissing her.
You belong to me. And she belonged to him still: body, heart, and soul.
Kew heard the front door close and then Popo asking Long about his day at school. After a few minutes Long went to his bedroom and closed the door. Kew knew that he was unpacking his school books and settling down at his little rickety desk to work at his studies. He was so disciplined. He was only fifteen, but just like his big sister, he'd tasted enough of hungriness and fear to understand what life could inflict on the unwary. He was hoping that with good enough marks he could get a scholarship and attend medical school. They had no idea whether he would be allowed to attend university without a legal status, but Danny had told Kew that he might be able to help him. All Long wanted to do was take care of Kew and Popo, the way they took care of him.
After a few minutes Kew went to his room and lay down on his bed.
"How was school?" she asked.
He looked at his sister, her thin frame draped over his bed. She was so pretty.
"It was good, Kew. How was work?"
He smiled at the face she made, her scrunched forehead and her twisted mouth.
"That bad?"
"It's the worst," she told him. "Today, Mr. Kalpar made me spend two hours in the cooler, restocking the beer and soda, while he trained a new bloke on the register."
"There's someone new?"
She nodded, her long hair falling into her face, so she had push it back with her little brown hand and tuck it behind her ear. "That new girl he hired last week, Andrea, already quit."
Kew rolled onto her back, stretched, and then she began to examine her nails.
"I got a new job today," she told him in a deceptively casual way.
Long looked up from his Trig book in surprise. "Really?"
A big smile overtook his sister's face as she turned toward him again and propped her head in her hand. "I haven't told anyone else yet! I went by today and the nice lady who runs the shop told me I can start next Tuesday. I'm so happy Long!"
Truthfully he told her, "I'm happy for you Kew. What sort of shop is it?"
"It's a clothing shop! They mostly just sell second-hand things, but it's so much nicer than that awful petrol station, Long. The shop is small, and there are lots of beautiful boots and dresses and the woman who runs it, Ms. Christie, she told me that the workers get a ten percent discount on the merchandise!" Kew rolled onto her back again and gazed up at the ceiling, not really seeing it, just the cute little boutique where she would begin working next week. "The dresses are so cute and fashionable, just like the girls on the telly wear, and there are jewelry displays as well. Not real jewelry of course, like Danny brings me, just costume junk, but it's still very stylish! The shop is called Second Time Around, and it's only around the corner from here, so I won't have to walk and walk through the rain and cold this winter to get to work, and the hours will be better too, because the shop doesn't open until ten-"
Long listened to and watched his sister, her happiness animating her face in a way that few things could.
When Kew had been sent to the whorehouse, Long was only eleven, and he hadn't really understood what was happening to her then. But now he knew. Long knew that she had been raped over and over when she was just his age. And it broke his heart when he thought of it. They had all been sad when the hooligans who had brought them here – stowed in the hull of a big cargo ship – told them that their parents had both been killed by the bobbies during a drug raid. They hadn't even gotten to bury them properly. They were just gone one day. But then the next day the Triad thugs had come for Kew.
He had tried to fight the men, even though they had guns and he was only a little boy, half-starved and confused. They'd just knocked him to the ground over and over while Popo and Kew had screamed and cried. The brutes had just laughed at them. Then one of them had picked Long up, carried him to the little bedroom that he and Popo, Kew, and their parents all shared, thrown him on the mattress that lay on the floor, took down his pants, and raped him.
"Maybe you liked that?" he asked afterward. "Maybe we should take you to the whorehouse, too? A pretty little boy like you would get a lot of customers."
He was in too much agony and fear to even respond at that point. He'd had no idea that a male could be raped. He didn't even know that he had been raped, not precisely, not then. He just knew that it had hurt like nothing else and made him feel so ashamed that he wanted to die.
But the man hadn't made good on his threat. They left Long and just took Kew.
And the months afterward were ingrained in his memory as well, Kew coming home on Sundays, crying and talking of them trying to run away, even though all of them knew it was hopeless. They told Kew that if she tried to run away when they let her out on Sundays then Popo and Long would be killed. They used her love for her family to keep her hostage. And that was a whole separate brand of evil.
Like Popo, Long didn't care much for Danny. But like his grandmother, he knew better than to say anything bad about him. In their family Danny was like a god, all-powerful and inaccessible. And you didn't badmouth a god, even if he was sleeping with your sister.
Kew was only sixteen when Danny had gotten them out of debt and found them this bigger flat to stay in. (It wasn't a really modern or glamorous flat; it was just less tiny and less filthy than the one they used to stay in. But at first it had seemed like paradise to them.) And Danny told them that he was twenty-five, but Long didn't believe him. He looked like he was over thirty, and what sort of man who was his age wanted to fuck a sixteen-year-old girl? A shady one.
That was Danny in a nutshell. Shady, with shifty eyes and a pet stick. He always had this stupid stick when he visited them. Mostly he kept in his pocket, but every once in a while he would take it out and start twirling it between his fingers, absent mindedly, or he would just run his hands over it. He was so odd.
And you could never pin him down. He wouldn't answer questions about himself, where he lived, where he'd gone to school, or what he did for a living. Nothing. It was all very suspicious, and Popo and Long had secretly come to the conclusion that whatever he did for money it wasn't on the up and up. But Kew adored him. So Popo and Long held their tongues. Because, whoever he was, they owed him.
Long was inexpressibly happy that Kew had finally got a job that she would like. She deserved happiness, after everything she'd gone through.
Later that evening Kew finally told Popo about her new job in the dress shop.
"And it's only around the corner, by that Thai restaurant on Gerard Street, so I won't even have to leave the flat until a quarter till. Ms. Christie said that the girls who work there get a special discount on the clothes and- "
"How much will they pay you, Kew?" was all Popo wanted to know.
"Well, for a clothes shop, it pays very well Popo," Kew said, lowering her eyes and pushing the last piece of fish around her bowl with her chopsticks. "There are these adorable displays in the window, and Ms. Christie told me that if I'm willing to stay late, I can help her dress the mannequins and arra-"
"How much will they pay you?" Popo asked again.
"Well, I won't make as much as I do at Mr. Kalpar's, but after four weeks she said she could give me a raise, Popo."
"How much will you make after the raise?"
"5 pounds an hour," she responded, still using her utensils to maneuver the fish around, creating trails through the sauce.
"Ehh! Kew! That's 50p less than you make at the petrol station!"
"I don't care, Popo! I can't stand that filthy place anymore! It's horrible there!"
"You think I like working at Lau's Laundry?! You think I like touching and folding strangers' smalls, Kew?! No! But we do what we have to so Long can go to school and be a doctor!"
"It's okay, Popo," Long tried to soothe his angry grandmother. "Let Kew do something she likes. Besides, if she gets a discount on the clothes then it could make up the difference."
Kew gave her brother a happy, grateful look. She knew he would understand.
Popo stood up and began rapidly, roughly gathering the dishes, muttering under her breath about silly girls and their fixations with fashion and how when she was a girl in China they had to make all their own clothes and she would never consider taking less pay just so she didn't have to walk so far in the rain and cold, and that's what comes of spending all your extra time watching the telly and wasting your money at the movies and now on wine too and she'd always known this would happen because single young women hadn't any sense these days.
Instead of helping Popo do the washing up, Kew headed to her room in high dudgeon, muttering under her breath about how clueless old people were and they were just jealous of young people because they knew how to have fun and old women were just all dried up and lifeless, complaining about their arthritis and their indigestion, waiting for their silly, boring knitting catalogues to come in the post, and she should have known Popo wouldn't just be happy for her.
She was interrupted from her soft ranting when she heard someone knocking on the door. It was Long. He always knocked.
"Come in," she told him.
Long came in and sat on the chair by her vanity.
"She still mad?" Kew asked.
"I calmed her down a little," he said.
He watched his sister getting her uniform ready for work the next day. It really was an awful shirt. A bright orange button-up with a patch of the petrol's logo on the upper right side; they didn't make any small enough for Kew and she swam in it. She had to wear these ugly khaki trousers and some sturdy trainers. She looked like a dustman in it.
"I don't see why she just can't be happy. Would it kill her to say, 'Congratulations, granddaughter. May your days be long and filled with prosperity.'?"
"You know how she gets about money, Kew," he said in his calm way. Long was always so unruffled and long-suffering.
"You don't know what it's like, Long. She never gets angry with you. You're perfect," Kew spat venomously.
Long didn't say anything. Popo and Kew never got angry with him. He was the baby of the family, the only male, and he was too quiet and inoffensive to create any contention. He just went to school, focused on his subjects, and tried to mediate between his grandmother and his sister.
"She'll calm down by tomorrow Kew. Don't be so hard on her. You know how she worries," he counseled her.
"We have so much money saved Long!" she whispered loudly, not wanting the neighbors to hear her through the paper-thin walls bragging about how much money they had, as they kept it all in cash, hidden right here in the flat with them. "I know why she worries. I know," Kew conceded sadly. She didn't want to talk about Danny when he hadn't been by in so long. She feared that saying it out loud – that he might never come back – could make it come true. "But whatever happens, happens. And I can't stand waking up before the sun every morning and going to that dingy job."
"I know," he assured her. "It's going to be okay. You'll be great at a job with clothes and stuff. You're so stylish Kew."
Kew was somewhat appeased.
"I have to go to sleep now, Long," she told him.
She had to get up and go to the petrol station at 5:30 the next morning.
Long left. Kew got into her pyjamas, some loose cotton trousers and a sleeveless tank top, climbed into her double bed, and finally fell asleep.
~x~}{~x~
Kew woke up.
Somebody had pulled back her blanket and a cool draft made her shiver. But then she felt a warm naked body sliding up to her and she smiled.
Danny was back.
She looked at the small digital clock by the bed and saw that it was just past midnight.
He put his arm around her. The scent of booze and his particular Danny-smell washed into her, filling her with longing and a sense of safety.
"Hmm. Danny." She whispered his name.
"Kew," he answered softly.
He started to run a hand down her side and it felt wonderful. She sighed contentedly and sought out his mouth with hers. It felt like he hadn't shaved in days and his shaggy stubble scraped against her cheeks and nose as she began to kiss him. His lips parted and his tongue, wet and firm, dipped into her sweet waiting mouth. He pushed his hand into her pyjamas, cupped her bottom for a moment, and then he began pushing them down.
She was eager for him and helped him remove them. Once her trousers were kicked down, abandoned in a heap at the bottom of the bed, he broke off the kiss and gently pulled off her shirt. And then his hands were everywhere, cupping her small breasts, tugging at her narrow hips, and fondling her sex. She spread her legs for him and stifled her moans as he began to circle her clitoris with his wise, probing fingers. Danny took one of her little nipples into his mouth and worked it deftly with his tongue, extracting more pleasure from her willing body. She threaded her fingers into his hair and groaned his name again.
This is where she belonged. Where she always wanted to be. In her Danny's arms, being made love to.
He took his time with her tonight. He made an unhurried path from her ears to her neck with his warm, moist lips, his tongue familiarizing him with her tastes and textures once more. Danny licked his way over her small crests, kissed his way through her shallow canyons, suckled into her thighs the way she loved, nuzzled his face between her legs. Her erratic breath swelled in the silence when his tongue at last found and glided into her moist pink well. He replaced his tongue with a finger and he began a rhythmic pressure to make waves of tingling pleasure, while his tongue was massaging her clitoris. She was panting, making her unique little mewls of longing, arching her hips upward, signaling him when to increase the pressure and rhythm.
"Danny!" she cried when she came, yanking on his hair and thrusting her dripping sex on his mouth.
She lay panting and quivering, her sweat cooling her heated body in the cozy darkness.
She felt Danny slide a ring onto her finger and then he switched on the lamp.
The sudden light blasted into their eyes and they both waited a couple of minutes before they could see one another properly.
As soon as her eyes adjusted, Kew looked at the ring that Danny had placed on her hand. It was gorgeous, the biggest diamond she'd ever seen.
"It real?" she asked tentatively.
He just nodded and then she really looked at him.
He looked horrible. In addition to all the neglected facial hair, he was swaying a bit even though he was firmly planted on his thighs, his eyes were wild looking, bloodshot and yellow in the corners, and deep blue crescents beneath them gave her the impression that he hadn't slept properly for days and days. Even his skin was looking rather sallow and yellowy.
"Danny!" she started, sitting up and startling him with her exclamation. "What be matter? You sick?" she asked in alarm.
"No," he told her, his voice so gravelly and worn it simply added to the idea that he might be ill. He kept furtively glancing around the room, in the corners and even at the ceiling once or twice.
"Will you marry me, Kew?" he asked, ceasing his studying of the empty air and looking at her.
"Well, I- " She broke off uncertainly. "You drunk, Danny?"
He nodded. "A bit. But would you please marry me, Kew?" he asked again.
Kew couldn't believe that he was finally asking her to marry him. She desperately wanted this to be real, but his appearance combined with his intoxication couldn't help but make her wonder if he was completely in control of his senses. Was this something he was going to change his mind about later?
Kew wanted to be his wife with all her heart, always had, but she had just never expected him to actually ask. And this was not the way she imagined him asking her either. She thought he would show up much earlier in the evening, tell her to fix herself up nice, and then take her out to a fancy restaurant and propose to her over champagne and candles. And then he would take her off to his huge posh flat or townhouse or wherever he lived, and she would finally get to meet his mother. And then they would spend the rest of the night packing her things so she could move in with him right away, and while they boxed up her pretty clothes and her pictures and jewelry – the shabby furniture would all stay here for the next poor little tenants, for of course at Danny's palace there would be beautiful, undreamed of luxuries for her to be mistress of – they would talk about how many children they wanted to have, and Danny would joke around about how he wanted to have ten, and she would act all shocked, but then she would cleverly turn it around on him and pretend to reveal that she'd always wanted to have a really big family, and then he would tell her he was only teasing and he thought that two would be perfect and she would laugh and say that's fine, because two was how many she'd always wanted as well, one boy and one girl, in that order. And everything would be perfect. A happy movie ending, just like she'd always dreamed.
He could see the doubt in her eyes. "I ent gonna change my mind about this Kew," he assured her. "Please marry me. Tell me we'll spend the rest of our lives together," he pleadingly commanded.
His eyes were so desperate; their unflinching blue were filled with a barren sort of hopefulness. She couldn't refuse him.
"Course I will," she told him. "Yes."
The two of them were studying each other in the weak lamp light, both filled with doubt and confusion.
"Ent ya 'appy?" he wanted to know.
"Yes, Danny," she assured him. But she was experiencing such a shocking, worried feeling; was she happy?
"You ent acting 'appy," he said accusingly.
"Danny what's matter? You look terrible!" she burst out.
"I'm fine, doll," he told her. "I'm fine." And he tried to smile at her but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "I just want ya to be 'appy, Kew."
"Well, I want marry you, Danny," she said. "I happy, but where you been, Danny? You look bad. You look like you very sick, Danny."
"I'm fine, Kew." He pulled her into her arms and held her close.
He lay down on the bed after a moment and pulled her on top of him. He began to carefully guide his sex into her.
"What about welly?" she asked.
"Let's make a baby, Kew," he whispered.
Now her whole face lit up. "Really!" she squealed in delight. "You mean, Danny?"
He smiled back at her - this time happiness crept out of his eyes at her - and he nodded.
Kew leaned down and kissed him while she put her hand over his and together they melded his sex into hers. She gasped into his open mouth as he began his careful strokes, making sure he didn't push into her too deep. It was the soft love tonight, the best love. Danny knew Kew preferred being on top to any other position, as it gave her the most control of the depth and pressure.
She sat up and began rocking her hips with the movements she needed to attain maximum pleasure.
Danny studied her while she worked her sex around his. Her lustrous, liquorice-black hair fell straight and smooth over her shoulders and breasts. Her pink, bow-shaped lips parted so she could take in more raspy breaths while she focused on the intensity, the sweet sensation of his hard shaft working in and out of her squelching, tight little sex. Danny reached up and pushed a curtain of hair back over her shoulder so he could feast on the sight of her small, perky breast – the slight curves, the cinnamon-colored nipple. He reached out to it and traced his finger lightly over her nipple until it contracted.
Danny simply gorged himself on her, and he reached beneath the pillow for his wand when he knew she was about to climax again.
"I love you Kew," he told her.
She smiled and said, "I love you- oh," gasp, "too," pant, "Danny!"
"Avada Kedavra!"
The flash of green light hit the young woman in the head.
Instead of going limp, and ceasing her breathing, Kew began to convulse and blood poured out of her nose.
"Fuck!" he yelled.
Danny hadn't been able to execute the curse on her with enough force – like he'd already done effectively on Popo and Long before he came to Kew's room – and she fell over, twitching and her eyes were rolling into the back of her head.
"I'm sorry, Kew!" he sobbed.
He didn't know what to do, but he had to end her suffering.
This wasn't how he'd wanted to kill her. He wanted her to be mid-orgasm, happy, in love and ecstasy. But he'd fucked it up. Just like he fucked everything up.
Danny put a pillow over Kew's head and held it there until the tremors stilled and he knew she was completely gone.
"Kew, baby," he sobbed quietly.
He pulled the limp, lifeless body into his lap and cradled her in his arms, rocking and crying and stroking her hair and face. The blood that had gushed from her nose was all over him, his hands, and his chest, and even his face as he kept leaning over to hold her head against his and give her a few last kisses.
"I'm sorry," he whispered jaggedly to her again and over again.
Once he threw his eyes around the room, as though looking for something invisible, and he cried loudly, "Ya 'appy now, ya little bitch! Huh?! Ya watchin' this, ya fuckin' stupid little bitch!"
Danny should have left Kew and never come back months ago, after he'd first signed on to work for You-Know-Who. He knew that. He knew it.
But he couldn't stay away from her. Kew looked at him like he was a hero, not a villain; not some idiot fuck-up who wasn't even a good enough wizard to become a Death Eater. This was where Danny could always come to be a good person. A competent provider, all powerful, all knowing; where he could secretly use his magic to solve every problem and nobody would "jokingly" insult him.
If Chuck, or Freddy or Mal or Tad, or any of the other men who served the Dark Lord had found out about her, she would have been killed violently. They would have done it in front of him and watched his face carefully the whole time, to make sure he wasn't 'upset' about it. "Ya know we's only doin' it for your own good, right?" they would have asked him. And he would have lost all the respect he had painstakingly carved for himself in Chuck's crew. It had happened only a few months ago when word had gotten 'round about a Snatcher that was keeping a little Muggle on the side like Danny did with Kew. He hadn't been there when it had all gone down, but he'd heard about it afterward. He should have stopped coming here ages ago.
Danny raped. He raped Muggles every once in a while and he didn't really mind doing it, but it wasn't as satisfying as for him as making Kew come. Once he realized that forcing the prettier Muggles that they robbed and tortured to have sex was sort of expected of him, he'd begun doing it occasionally to satisfy Chuck and the others. It was just something he did with his mates as a way to bond with them – socially, like getting pissed and exchanging limericks. But he'd long considered the ability to make a woman moan with ecstasy, rather than agony, to be the true measure of being a man. He just should have found himself a Pure-blood or a half-blood witch to pleasure, instead of his little Kew.
Ironically, he'd joined up with the Dark Lord because he wanted the money to keep taking care of Kew. He'd turned to a life of robbery to maintain this flat for her. But he'd been robbing Muggles on his own before Dumbledore died. It was a risky, stupid thing to do back in the beginning, and he'd never tortured or murdered any of them at that point. The Ministry enforced strict laws that were meant to prevent magicians from taking advantage of helpless, oblivious Muggles, and if he'd ever been caught at it, he could have gone to Azkaban.
But when that freaky little bitch had pretended to speak Mandarin to him in the courtyard, Danny had decided it was time to act. If anybody found about Kew…that would be it. He would be branded as a mudblood-lover for the rest of his life. So Danny knew from then until now that he would have to come here and erase her, and her little family. As horrible as it was to kill Kew, the alternative was even worse.
After a while, Kew's body lost the remnants of warmth, and his eyes dried up.
Danny got off the bed and looked at the messy lifeless body of what had been, only an hour before, the love of his life. He dug around the covers to find her clothes and gently began to redress her. When he finished, Danny went to the small bathroom, wet a washcloth, and crossed back into her room and cleaned the dried blood off her face. He laid her out neatly and pulled the blankets over her. Now she might only be sleeping. He left the beautiful, expensive ring on her finger and gave her a few last tender kisses.
As he kneeled on the floor next to her bed and thought about never seeing her again, Danny realized that he had made a terrible mistake by killing her. She was going to haunt him for the rest of his life. He should not have come here tonight.
His eyes were dry now, and his heart felt empty. But his mind was raging. Somehow, he was going to punish that fucking freak for this.
As he got up and pulled his robes on, he started to make a plan.