Kiss the Stars (Devon Slaughter Book 1) Page 4

  My last kiss had been on the beach in Nicaragua. The woman’s hair was wet, like something slimy crawling over my flesh. I didn’t kiss my victims.

  “No,” I shrugged off Ruby’s hand.

  * * *

  I watched her go down the boardwalk. From the tilt of her head, I wondered if she was crying and I wanted to see the tears glistening in her big eyes.

  I followed a block behind. When she reached her car, she fumbled with her keys and dropped them. She got down on her hands and knees on the sidewalk. I felt a predatory rush. I was beside her in a flash. “Come on, get up,” I held out my hand.

  But she shook her head. “My keys.”

  I gazed down at the sparkly clips in her bright hair, the brown roots along her tender part. I fished her keys from the gutter and offered my hand again but she ignored me. I watched her get to her feet. She reached for the keys but I slid them in my pocket. “I’ll drive,” I said.

  “I’m not drunk,” she said.

  “So?” She was drunk.

  “So give me my keys.”

  “Get them yourself.” I knew she wouldn’t.

  She hunched in the passenger seat, facing the window. “Turn here,” she said. “Make a left up at the next street.” After a few blocks, she started crying, swiping at her tears in a sneaky way, like I wouldn’t notice. A couple of times, I veered across the center line from staring.

  I said, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  We waited at her gate.

  She took a shaky breath. “I don’t know why I have to cry all the time. I hate being a crier. Maybe I am drunk. It was the worst day…unbelievable. This other teacher is such a bitch. She goes out of her way to humiliate me. And I—I just make it easy for her.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “It’s like I walk straight into her trap every time.”

  “So you’re a teacher. Is that what the books are for?”

  “I must look awful,” she said.

  Black darkened her eyes, making them all the more blue. Dark tracks ran down her face. A tear trembled on her cheek. I leaned over and kissed it, wanting to feel her salty pain on my lips.

  A shudder went through her body. Time slowed. I felt her eyelashes brushing against my face. When her mouth sought mine, I drew back. She let out a moan.

  I drove through the gate.

  * * *

  Inside, she lit the fire and candles.

  I found it pitiful and lovely, the way she clung to her rituals, as if they would save her. I cast a glance at her piano, remembering how I’d enjoyed watching her play when she didn’t know I was there.

  She followed my gaze. “Do you play?” she asked.

  I flexed my hands, looking at them. It seemed I had been forced to learn as a child. I also had a sudden memory of scraping a bow across a violin. “No,” I said.

  She cocked her head. “Do you have photographic memory?”

  I decided not to answer, and in fact to employ one of her own favorite tricks. As if she hadn’t spoken, I said, “What about you? Do you play?”

  “I don’t read music,” she said. “I play by ear.”

  She showed me her record collection, everything from the Sex Pistols’ only album to Lucinda Williams, Foo Fighters and Muse. Many of the bands I knew. A few others, like Deer Tick, I didn’t. Disjointed images flitted at the edge of my consciousness.

  “How long have you been collecting?” I said.

  Her pouty mouth turned up at the corners. “Since I was seven. I like old-school alternative. This was my grandmother’s,” she ran her hand over the shiny wood of the cabinet.

  “She’s gone?” I said.

  “Yes.” Grief washed over her.

  “Were you close?”

  She ignored me, sorting through her records, as if looking for something. Her hands were tiny with those sad bitten-down nails painted pink.

  “I loved her more than anything,” she said, after a beat. Her words hung in the air.

  “Was your grandmother like you?”

  “No…I take after my mother.” She found the record she wanted and put it on the turn table. Nirvana blared from hidden speakers. She turned down the volume. When she wouldn’t look at me, I tilted her chin.

  Her pulse beat in her throat.

  “Tell me why you cry,” I said, softly.

  She tried to look away, but I held her chin, forcing her to meet my gaze.

  I felt the full power of her sadness.

  Her face turned white. Even her lips were pale and trembling. She had never looked more beautiful. “I don’t tell anyone anything,” she whispered.

  “I’m not just anyone…”

  I cupped her face with both hands and devoured the intensity of her blue gaze, so unnaturally bright, the dark smear of her make-up. I took in her baby lips, her soft round cheeks dusted with freckles.

  Kurt Cobain’s tortured voice cried, “My girl, my girl…don’t lie to me…”

  My heart surged. Flames on the candles leaped bright orange. The fire crackled and turned red, like the sun going down.

  “You can tell me, Ruby.” But I didn’t care what she said. I didn’t care about her tragic secrets. I was drunk with her pain, wanting more.

  “My mother went insane,” she said.

  I wanted to bite her neck, bite her everywhere. I was going to break my one and only rule and kiss her. I wanted to swallow her whole.

  She gazed up at me with such open trust, my breath caught. I dropped my hands and took a step back, confused. There was a sound in my ears, like humming.

  She touched my arm. Her eyes glimmered.

  I’m sorry. Christ, Ruby. I’m so sorry.

  And I didn’t know why I was sorry. Not really, except that I was hurting her. The realization gave me vertigo, as if the earth could crumble and I would drop down into a dark abyss.

  She went to the sofa and unlaced her boots. When she took them off, she lined them up, toes pointing away. Her lips moved ever so slightly. There was a palpable energy in the room, like a clock ticking.

  I wondered why there wasn’t a clock. These old houses always had clocks, the kind you wound up every day and I could just see her tending to that ritual. But the only clock was the one on her slender wrist.

  When she curled up on the sofa, she accidentally flashed me her black lace panties, before tugging down her skirt. The sight brought me back to my senses. I didn’t like feeling weak and afraid of whatever waited with its cavernous jaws.

  Get what you came for, Devon. Think of the slutty underwear.

  I knew she was a virgin. The certainty of her virginity was like her pulse, whispering inside me. I thought: Why wear sexy lingerie and a short skirt to a sleazy bar? I remembered the old joke about would you really want your heavenly reward to be a whole harem of virgins, if you could have just one slut?

  Better make her my slut, I thought. “I saw your poster about your cat, Alceste,” I said. “Did he run away?”

  “I guess so. He doesn’t like people. That’s why I named him Alceste. You know, The Misanthrope? By Moliere?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  She was so unaware of the fact that I had taken mercy on her.

  “He’s probably dead,” she sounded morose, worried about an old cat. I thought she should go out and get a better looking cat, a sweet cuddly thing.

  I went around the sofa to sit next to her.

  I ran my hand up her leg, unhooking her stocking. I stroked the velvet flesh behind her knee. She watched me. Her pleasure stole over me. I thought of the trust in her eyes and breathed in her soapy scent.

  Leaning close, I licked her pulse. Her breath turned shallow. A sheen of sweat glistened at her temples. She watched from partly lowered lids.

  I touched her where she’d never been touched, except maybe by her own hand.

  Gently, I pushed her thighs apart. I slipped off her panties and had to kneel on the floor, to reach her with my mouth. I kissed her small patch of curls,
and pulled her closer. My tongue found her clitoris. She gasped and rocked forward. Her thighs began to tremble. I spread her legs further.

  I tried to keep it slow but she raced ahead, unstoppable.

  She arched her back and cried out. “Oh…Oh, my God.”

  I stood up and pressed her down into the sofa cushions, so she was reclined. I sat next to her again. When her eyes opened, I stared into her blue irises and listened to her heartbeat as it slowed.

  She reached for my hand. “You’re so beautiful,” she said.

  “That’s my line,” I said.

  “Please don’t go…”

  Her eyelids grew heavy. After a while, she slept.

  It was hard to tell how much time passed. It seemed like a long time and not long enough. Cold crept in, raising the hair on the back of my neck. The fire and candles went out. I felt a presence. My gaze darted to the doorway.

  Her body arched again.

  “Ruby?”

  A wave of nausea rocked me. I reached for the back of the sofa, swaying, as if on a rocking sea. A blanket of darkness came down.

  I caught a glimpse of her dream.

  Winged creatures, like comets, streaked across the sky. There were millions of them. The sound of humming came from the beating of their wings.

  6. Ruby

  THE EARTH tilted. Darkness opened, like a giant mouth. I woke.

  “Are you okay?” a voice said.

  Devon.

  He gazed down at me. His eyes looked strange, distant, as if I had interrupted him by waking. Fear coiled in my belly. I tried to remember what had happened before I fell asleep. My mind spun.

  I sat up. “You’re still here…” I licked my dry lips. I could see the porch light outside the window and the bright electronic screen of the stereo. I recognized the feel of the red velvet sofa and its smell, like my mother, tinged with Shalimar perfume.

  “How long have I been out?” I said.

  “Not long.”

  I glanced around, wondering why the candles were no longer lit. There was a cold draft in the room. I turned to the fireplace. “The fire’s out.” I checked my watch. It was barely past midnight. I stared at the second hand. How could so little time have passed?

  I scooted further back, pressing into the sofa cushions. My gaze slid to my panties on the floor and I remembered. A shiver raked down my spine. I pressed my knees together.

  “Why don’t you lie down,” his voice was low and hypnotic. He took my grandmother’s afghan from the back of the sofa. I let him put it over my lap, though I eyed him suspiciously.

  His eyes were almond shaped and dark brown, almost black, the same color as his hair that curled at the nape of his neck. His face was chiseled, his lips full. He had the kind of beauty you could only imagine. He was my Heathcliff. Of course I must have seen him before. Where?

  He looked nothing like Laurence Olivier who played Heathcliff in my grandmother’s favorite movie. When I was a girl she used to take me to the Gothic Revival downtown. I was so young but the films transported me to another time where I wished I could live.

  I thought of the pills hidden in my dresser. I had stopped taking them because they made me feel numb, but without them the line between fantasy and reality blurred.

  “What happened to the fire?” I said.

  “Wind came down the chimney and put it out,” his eyes caressed me. “Why don’t you relax? I’ll start the fire again.”

  Soon, the room was warm and candles flickered once more. He brought a pillow, and put my feet in his lap. His hands rested lightly on my legs, covered by the afghan.

  I wanted him to run his hand up my thigh, to do what he had done before. I sucked in my breath, remembering the hot burst of pleasure. But he seemed disinterested now.

  My head began to ache.

  “Did you have a dream?” he said.

  I felt like he wanted me to reveal some secret part of myself. Ugh, he reminded me of Dr. Ess. “No…” It bugged me that he was so handsome. Dr. Ess had course skin and a doughy face, at least.

  “I think you’ve been playing a trick on me,” I said. (I felt at a disadvantage, and I didn’t like it.)

  “Really?”

  “We must know each other. From a long time ago.” Like when I was twelve and first read Wuthering Heights. “I can’t remember but I think you do.”

  “No,” he said. “You’re wrong.”

  Something bitter gnawed inside me. “How old are you?” I thought his age might give me a clue.

  His eyes shifted. “We’ve never met before, Ruby. I wish we had.”

  And now, when I didn’t want him to, his hand was on my leg. I tried to brace myself against his touch but it was like willing the world to stop spinning.

  He moved slowly upward.

  I closed my eyes and fell back on the pillow.

  The most obscene images filled my mind. I reached for him, lifting my hips but he had already pulled away. I recalled how in the car, he wouldn’t kiss me. My chest tightened. Tears burned behind my closed lids.

  I kept my eyes closed. “Please go,” I whispered. I turned on my side and curled into the fetal position.

  Cold rushed in when he drew away. His footsteps retreated. When he closed the door, the sound rang out, like a shot.

  Something caved inside me.

  7. Devon

  HER NEIGHBORHOOD was quiet. I stood by the gate, thinking how different it was from China Town where sirens wailed and neon signs flashed all night.

  I lived in the heart of the red light district, in an abandoned brick building reeking of faded glamour. When I’d taken a board off one of the upper windows, I found a stained glass rose in its center. The ceilings were vaulted. Looking up from the dusty marbled foyer, you could see the night sky through a round window at the top.

  There had been a bed in one of the rooms, still made up. I’d taken off the moldy bedding and put on new. The mattress was saggy and the bed creaked. In the dusty loft, I found a haggard sofa under a moth eaten sheet.

  Sometimes I sat on the sofa, looking out the window at nothing much.

  At first, no one seemed to notice I was there. I’d replaced the locks on all the doors and came and went through the tunnel. I didn’t have electricity. (I showered at a health spa uptown, where no one ever questioned my membership. I took in quite a few of the luxuries there.)

  Eventually, the police showed up. I’d been sleeping but woke to the sound of a lock breaking. I listened to them downstairs, talking about ‘the squatter.’ I pulled on my jeans and boots, a ratty Fisherman’s sweater and went out the window.

  I jumped off the fire escape, landing silently in the alley.

  Luckily, it had been winter and the light was thin. The sky was bullet gray. Still, I grew weak, waiting for the police to leave.

  A woman came out to put something in the dumpster. She wore a shorty silk robe and furry slippers. Her thighs blushed from the cold. She smiled at me. I wanted to call her over but she was a neighbor, so I turned and started walking the twenty blocks to the other side of the tunnel.

  Later that night, after hooking up with a couple of cheerleaders at a frat party, I wandered around the superstore, looking at electronics. I felt I knew how to use them, the same way I’d known my name was Devon Slaughter. Or had been.

  I had once been a person.

  I came away with a couple of burner phones and a pocket computer. I winked at the Rent-A-Cop on my way out. After I penetrated the files at City Hall and established myself as the legal owner of 1975 Irving Street, my life got boring again. Having supernatural abilities and women throwing themselves at me, like I was James Bond, was a big fat zero in my book.

  I was worse off than Tristessa, the junkie. At least she was the epitome of sadness. I was a black hole.

  I gazed at Ruby’s house. Candlelight shone in the window.

  I thought of her antiques and all those records, the fact that she didn’t carry a cell phone, even just for emergencies. People pa
ssed by me all the time, and I got nothing from them when they were plugged into their gadgets. They were numb. I wondered if Ruby’s disdain of technology made her more alive.

  I stole back inside her house.

  She was curled up on the sofa. She’d begged me to kiss her. She had such soft skin.

  I wasn’t repulsed by kissing. I wanted to kiss her.

  I leaned down and breathed in her sweet scent, before brushing the lobe of her ear with my lips.

  And then I went around the house, touching her things.

  I found a dress on the floor in her bathroom. She wasn’t very tidy, though her shoes were lined up in the closet upstairs, and her make-up in the medicine cabinet was carefully arranged with the labels facing out.

  She had seven different shades of mascara from midnight blue to charcoal. A single bottle of aspirin had only a few tablets left.

  The nail polish on her vanity was grouped by color—reds, blues, and black.

  There was a series of oil paintings in the hall, featuring a blonde with a face like Ruby’s; all soft contours, poochy lips, big sad eyes. Her mother?

  In her bedroom, the wallpaper was printed with crimson roses. I ran my fingers over the raised edges, marveling at how bright the world was becoming before my eyes, like a Technicolor movie.

  Ah, her bed. It sprawled, strewn with big white lacy pillows. The alarm clock on her nightstand had a dial radio. On her other nightstand, I discovered two pink cubes of dice. She’d rolled snake eyes.

  The brush on her dresser was full of red hairs. I found her lingerie in the top drawer. It was soft, like her skin. My fingers struck something hard, a plastic bottle containing Lexapro, which sounded like a piece of gym equipment. The bottle was full.

  I put everything back the way I’d found it.

  Downstairs, I looked through her records. Bands like Radiohead, Violent Femmes and Smashing Pumpkins reminded me of the girl again, the one with long legs. Dark images, like ghosts played across my mind.

  I sat on the sofa and watched Ruby sleep, until it started to get light outside.

  8. Ruby

  ALONE IN my classroom, during lunch, I kept reliving Devon’s touch.

  I felt fluttery and excited and tormented all at once. He was leading me on. Toying with me, just like Henry. Did all men behave this way? Or was there something about me that attracted the wrong type?