Snippet Sunday: MERCY

I’ve been so busy lately–in a good way! Rather than think of something coherent to talk about this week, I’m just going to post one of my fave snippets from Mercy.

     “Matthew!” I was shocked to open the door and find him standing there. He’d never been to my place. It was a mess. I looked like hell in my ratty pajamas, my eyes red and swollen from crying. “I really can’t play.”

     “I know.” He breezed into my apartment, a market bag in his hand. “I haven’t come to fuck you.”

      He reached into the bag with a flourish, like a magician about to pull a rabbit from a hat. Instead he pulled out a pint of ice cream. I burst into tears.

     “I swear I’ll throw this at your head.” He turned his back on me. “Get into bed.” He rooted through my kitchen drawers until he found a spoon and returned, crawling under the covers beside me. It was just a twin, which made him seem even larger than usual, and he had to scoot close to me to not fall off the edge. He looked out of place in my tiny, messy apartment, and yet, right at home. Thinking about that, how easily he adapted to my squalid little surroundings, made me burst into emotional tears again.

     “Enough. Quit your crying. What happened?” I think he thought I was crying about my knee. I explained how I’d fallen, that I wanted to stay off my knee as a precaution. He was highly suspicious even then of my injuries, the pain he suspected I felt.

     “How long will you be off?”

     “Just tonight. Long enough for it to rest. To make sure there’s no serious damage.”

     He looked at me still, hard and assessing, and then decided not to speak. Instead, he pressed the freezing pint of ice cream to my nipple, and smiled broadly when I shrieked.

     “Are you hungry?”

     “Yes,” I said, although I wasn’t. He ended up eating most of the ice cream himself. Ice cream wasn’t something dancers ate before bed, but I took a few small bites to mollify him.

     “Look at you. Take a real bite!”

     “I am!”

     He scooped a huge spoonful from the bottom of the carton. “Open up.”

     I laughed as he brandished the spoon at me. “Matthew, stop!”

     “Open your fucking mouth.” He fed me the spoonful, letting me lick it off slowly instead of shoving it all into my mouth the way I think he wanted to. I teased him a little, using my tongue to do things to that ice cream that I usually only did to him. He chuckled. “That’s right, you eat it all, you little fuck.”

     “You’re trying to make me fat.”

     “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

     We laughed there together on my small, lumpy bed. I looked over at him, Mr. Matthew Norris sitting in my pitiful apartment, and I thought I would just die. I was so hopelessly in love with him. I looked away, because his blue eyes were bright and burning. Don’t look at me. You’ll see.

     “I wish we were down in my basement,” he said in a voice gruff with lust.

     “I do too, Matthew.”

Oh, sigh. Matthew Norris. If only he were real…