Don’t Play in Her Garden or Smell Her Flowers
A strong set of hands curl around my upper arms, hauling me up. “What’s the matter? Did someone hurt you? You’re bleeding.” The male voice is slightly familiar.
It’s difficult to make out his face through my tears and darkness of the night. I blabber incoherent things, holding my bleeding hand out.
He takes my hand in his, rolls up my cardigan sleeve and inspects it close up. I’m fascinated with his silver lip ring that glints under the pale light of the full moon. My eyes lift and roam over his young face as he picks out small pieces of clay from my hand. Dark, thick, long bangs are swept over his forehead; the rest of his longish hair is messy and curls upward at the nape of his neck. His skin is smooth and flawless. Every feature of his face is handsome, aggressively handsome, in a strong masculine way.
My eyes drop down to his full lips again. I recognize the curves of those lips. I’ve kissed a pair like those countless times and they are almost exact. The awareness hits me like a brick to the face. “Oh my God! Lark!” I wrap my uninjured hand around his back and pull him into a tight embrace, ignoring the stinging ache in my palm. It is Falcon’s little brother. “I didn’t recognize you. You look so different.”
He laughs sheepishly, squeezing me a little, then eases out the hug. “Puberty will do that to you. It’s been what? Two years since you last really saw me?”
“I think.”
He stares at me for a moment, his eyes thoroughly scanning my dress. “I was at the funeral, but yeah. It’s been a while.” Lark glances down at the broken gnome on the ground and back up to me, his face contorting into concern. “What happened?”
“Your stupid gnome tripped me,” I laugh, wiping a stray tear with the back of my hand and dusting my knees.
His brows lift, his lips tipping up in a smile. “So you broke it?”
Feeling ashamed and stupid, I stare at my boots, the tiny black studs gleaming in the darkness. “I did. I’m sorry.”
“That’s my mom’s gnome. She loves…loved that goofy-looking thing.”
“I’m so, so, so sorry. I’ll buy her a hundred different gnomes,” I say frantically.
He laughs and gives his head a slight shake, “Nah, it’s all good. I’ll take the blame.” Lark stares at my wounded hands and knees, his brows creasing. “I can clean your hand and knees for you. It looks sort of bad.”
Before I can answer he steers me towards the patio sliding glass doors by the elbow. We step inside his dark living room that smells of welcoming French vanilla and cream wax candles. Lark carefully slides the glass together with his free hand. A gleeful voice is freely chatting and laughing away on the phone upstairs. Our eyes meet in the dark and he rolls his. “Mom gets drunk off cocktails and calls her two-faced friends to blab about the latest gossip. Tonight all the exciting news is about how Mrs. Gabai is letting Rex destroy her lovely home. I can’t wait to get away from these phony-ass people and the madness.” He shakes his head and leads me through the lavish furniture and up the stairs, to the first room on the right.
Lark pushes open his room door and I’m propelled into darkness. He pauses at the door, flipping the light switch on. Dark blue walls, plastered with gruesome videogame and amine posters come into view. I glance around, taking in Lark’s bedroom. The black sheets of his king-sized bed are bunched and unmade. Thick piles of clothes and belts and shoes blanket the floor. His desktop computer is on and his leather desk chair is spun around, facing the door. He appeared to be in the middle of something. I must have interrupted him.
A tack board splattered with pictures and handwritten notes and maps, hang above his bed. Intrigued, I move closer. Most of the pictures are of Lark, Hero, and Tyler. It’s this one particular photo that stands out amongst the rest. The three of them are huddled together with their eyes crossed and their tongues poking from their mouths. Tyler, the smallest one, is squeezed in the middle and their arms are slung over one another’s shoulders. They all are dressed in camouflage apparel, complete with large bucket hats and black hiking boots. It’s like they’re going hunting or camping.
Feeling my heart swell with an emotion I’m not sure of, I run fingers over the glossy picture.
Lark clears his throat in the background. “Come. I have rubbing alcohol in my bathroom.” Lark takes a hold of my elbow again, directing me to his bathroom that’s completely decorated in red, yellow, blue, Superman theme. He follows my gaze to the shower curtain with a huge Superman S symbol.
“Sorry. I never thought to change my bathroom. I was twelve and I thought Superman was the shit. I still think he’s the shit, but I must admit that it’s kinda awkward with a female in here.”
“I love Superman.”
He smiles, pure and genuine.
I smile back, not so pure but totally genuine.
Lark releases my elbow and opens the medicine cabinet. I hop up on the sink countertop and watch him pull down several bottles. The last time I saw Lark he was a boy, a cute and growing teenage boy, but still a boy. With his long, lean, cut muscled body, Lark doesn’t resemble the cute growing boy I remember. He has surpassed that stage with remarkable results. Lark is a young man now.
A hot young man.
“I’ll put peroxide on it before the alcohol. That’ll ease the burn,” Lark says, his hazel brown eyes serious and on mine.
Thinking these thoughts and wanting to flirt with Lark is completely wrong and immoral, he’s Falcon’s little brother for God’s sake, but the impulse is just too powerful to deny and my only other choice is to have a breakdown and feel every emotion I refuse to give into.
He grips my wrist, bringing my hand over the sink. He sees some of my scars but doesn’t linger on them too long. Lark twists the cap off the peroxide and douses my palm with the cold liquid and then my knees next. It bubbles on top of the cuts and droplets of foamy peroxide and blood slide down the basin, swirling down the drain.
Lark places a hand on my cheek. “The alcohol might hurt a little. Are you ready?”
Nodding, I bite the side of my lip.
He nods as well, dropping his hand and quickly untwisting the cap of the bottle and swiftly pour alcohol over my wounds. It burns but it’s not too bad. Lark pads it dry with a clean paper towel and then gingerly wraps my hand in white bandage.
When he’s all done I lean forward and rest my sticky forehead on his chest, my hands clenching the sides of his black graphic T-shirt. Lark supportively strokes my back, chuckling. “It didn’t hurt that bad, did it?”
“No. Thank you,” I whisper seductively. “I’m really glad you helped me.”
I feel him tense. “N-no problem. Anytime.”
I pull him closer between my legs. “How old are you, Lark?”
“Umm,” he nervously clears his throat, “turned eighteen three months ago. Why?”
“Just making sure you’re legal.” My fingers dig into his sides as I stare up at him, wide-eyed and pleading.
His hands rest on my hips and his brows draw together, and for the first time I notice that he wears thick, smudged black eyeliner on his lower lids. It brings out the gold flecks in his eyes. Lark is dressed in a black graphic-T that has a picture of a human heart ripped inside out, fitted black pants with many slanted zippers on the sides, and black boots. His style is very edgy and rocking roll.
Leaning forward, I press a kiss at the base of his throat. He smells slightly like Falcon but sweeter somehow.
Lark sucks in a sharp breath. “What’s happening?” But it’s like he’s asking himself more than me.
“Whatever you want to happen,” I purr, pulling him closer against me.
His fingers flex on my hips. “I think you’re trying to seduce me Mrs. Robinson.”
“And I think you’re absolutely right, my dear Benjamin.” Guiding his hands, I urge them up inside the skin of my thighs. They pause with defiance at the opening of my dress.
“You’re hurting, Isabel,” he states softly, his eyes narrowing and finding something I don’t like.
My hands fumble to his studded belt and begin to unfasten it from the buckle. “Make it better then.”
His head drops and his eyes shut tight, the features of his face morphing into emotions that resembles pain, desire, bafflement. Lark’s fingers bury into my flesh, causing me to groan. “I don’t know what’s more fucked up, you wanting to use me to fill an empty void or me wanting to get a taste of you because you’re pretty and smart and off-limits. You’re forbidden fruit, Isabel. You’re my brother’s ex-girlfriend and my best friend’s sister.” His hands glide up my thighs, his fingers lowering to the area under my dress and between my legs. He skillfully brushes the lace sides of my panties, gripping the delicate material in his hands.
My heart is roaring in my ears, like powerful and uncontrolled thunder.
I wrap my arms around his neck and he presses his lips to the shell of my ear.
Two fingers skillfully stroke at the wetness outside of my underwear.
Stifling a moan, I hold Lark tighter to me.
“What happens after a quick fuck in my bathroom? You thank me and we part ways, pretending it never happened? We both live with the crushing guilt and never speak a word of this to Falcon or anyone else? And when we happen to occasionally run into each, we both smile and say hasty greetings, trying our best not to appear awkward or ashamed of our secretive past? Because I can almost guarantee that’s how it’s going to go. And I respect you way too much for that bullshit.”
Lark’s fingers have me on edge. Every muscle in my body is twitching, coiled so tight. All I need is few more light strokes to reach my heavenly orgasm that I’ve been deprived of for so long now. But he doesn’t continue. He drops his hands at his sides. His chest is heaving and he takes a few backward steps, his eyes locked on mine.
What he said is too true to deny. Because of this, I burst into tears.