This Cavalier smells like stale cigarettes. Foggy from the night heat of another oily Indiana summer. The engine sounds like baritone sandpaper, but dad’s proud of it. He’s forty-two, only twenty years older than me, but the cartilage in his joints is rusted from years of construction labor. His mortar and pestle knees have powdered the tissue into nothing. He grips the steering wheel, and I watch his dusty red knuckles rise like a Martian mountain range. It’s hard to hate a man with workman’s hands.

I don’t want to cheat, and he knows it. But he’ll push anyway. I haven’t caved yet, but I will, and he knows that, too. I’m coming straight from work at the menswear store. It’s a job I’m lucky to have, but every dime goes to the house. To my parents. Being in this situation in my twenties isn’t ideal. It sure as hell makes it hard to land a date when you don’t have any spending cash. I loosen my thrift shop tie. Suddenly I feel like I’m swimming in this suit, and not just because of the heat. On top of everything else, this car has no air conditioning. I don’t like sweating around my family. I never have, and I don’t know why.

I think maybe this is like stealing bread to feed your family. I’ve seen him do that, too. I helped once or twice. But this was stealing bread from his cousin’s family and giving it to ours. Although it’s not really stealing. It’s cheating at a poker game. Or maybe it isn’t really cheating, either. In poker they call it “talking across the table,” except we’re talking before it.

Is it cheating to conspire? Or does it only count when you’ve done the thing?

“If we come up against each other, fold to me,” he says, glancing at me over his drugstore readers. “I know you wanna win, but I’m a better player. You’re too indecisive, too flaky. You don’t know how to bluff. You’re too in your own head. It’s not dishonest when everyone’s in on the game. It’s strategy. They expect you to lie, and part of the fun is guessing when you’re doing it.”

I reach for a cigarette from his pack and light it. Over the darkening street, a spider web of tarry asphalt spreads out over busted concrete. I feel stuck. I can hear pebbles popping under the tires as we drive, more and more as we get into the gravel alleys of the neighborhood. This place is a relic of the seventies. Flat-faced shacks with pocked and oxidized aluminum siding sleep in military rows over the grumbly landscape. Great oaks grow up from dirt and crab grass, like an angel stepping in shit. Dad squints as he drags the last of his cigarette and flicks it out the window.

“This is our last pack,” he says, strained as the smoke weeps out of his thick lips. “I left your mother at home with nothing.”

“What if I know I’ve got you beat?”

“You won’t, so don’t.” His cigarette dances as he speaks. “Even if you do, putting me out of the game guarantees we lose. You don’t know how to bluff. The odds are never in your favor, you get me? You gotta bluff sometimes to turn things right for you.” He grabs the pack and shakes it. Only a few cigarettes left. “I know it sucks, son, but we don’t have a choice. I’ve got to make some money here, or we don’t eat, know what I mean?”

“Yeah.” That’s all I can say. It’s out of my mind. Not worth worrying about. Settled.

We pull up to the house and park on the rocky street. His cousin Ron’s house is just like the others: one short story, stony grey aluminum, lonesome in a litter.

As we walk in the back, Ron’s wife passes us with a basket of their kids’ laundry of little socks and shorts. When we were kids, I used to dream about what her skin felt like. Olive-toned, lean. Sharp-featured. A wide mouth, and an attitude like a cleaver. She locks eyes as I pass, a long, deliberate glance. Her dark eyes walk slowly with me, from the shadows of her coal-black brow. Her face is framed perfectly by her short hair, cut sharp as her jaw. She was sixteen when I was ten. I wanted to do something to her back then, but I didn’t know what.

Whatever it was, I couldn’t imagine getting close enough. Touching wasn’t enough. I needed to wrap all the way around her, coat her in me, and seep inside. I needed to feel every strained muscle, every wet breath, every pulsing part of her. Every tingle. I wanted to be the lightning in her veins. She looks incredible, still. She finally looks back to her laundry as I enter the narrow stairwell to the basement.

The basement is unfinished, but Ron’s made a little casino oasis of it. He’s got three well-crafted poker tables that he built himself. Two are set up for tonight’s game. He’s also got a craps table set up with a crook, and a Rembrandt palette of chips in an old refurbished humidor. In the back corner, just around the other side of the water heater and furnace, are two polished slot machines. There’s a mini-fridge set up on two sawhorses and an oak two-by-twelve, filled with Coors Light and Stoli. If I looked in the freezer, I’m sure I’d find a bottle of Crown Royal. The others will bring coolers of beer, mostly Coors Light, since that’s what everyone can agree on. In the back corner is a pool table; something to do when you get put out of the game. I grab a beer from the fridge and slip a pool stick from the rack. “Cut throat?” I ask. Dad and Ron cue up while I rack.

“Josh’ll be high, since he’s racking,” Ron says. “I’ll be mids.” Ron’s a short, husky guy, with dark wide-set eyes. He’s got a head like a dirty red bowling ball, and his black hair is faded and jelled. His ratty goatee hangs around full lips. “I just finished that pinball machine,” he says. “Fuckin’ tits, ain’t it?” The machine is lit up bright, with a marquee of bulbs snaking around the chrome frame. The backbox display has three naked women. A white blond in the middle, a geisha on one side, and on the other a black lady with a wooly thick bush. The side art has the same women, but looking back over their propped asses. The ball shooter lane is a two-foot prick, and the playfield graphic is a pair of spread legs with a flaming red bush at the top. That, of course, is the goal.

Ron fucks around on his wife. So do most of the guys in my dad’s family. Ron always has a new story whenever we come. Some girl he met here or there, working on their plumbing or at some bar on a long call in another town. But he doesn’t leave out Crystal. It’s been a routine to tell us, in elicit detail, about their Friday bondage sessions just before everyone starts showing up for the game. Crystal had brought with her into the marriage an erotic circus of cuffs, bars, straps, chains, every sort of gag imaginable and some imagined only by her, a rainbow catalogue of tape, and an assortment of dildos that look like an abstract art installation. More than once I’ve found an uneaten apple with teeth cuts, and once I got a piece of duct tape stuck to my shoe that had lipstick on it. That’s without mentioning the tailored furniture and devices they’ve constructed together, which we’ve also heard about down to the cubits and fasteners. Between Ron’s craftsman hobbies and Crystal’s dissertative knowledge of immobilization, I figure the local hardware store knows them both by name.

“Josh,” Crystal calls down after me, tearing me away from the menagerie of images I’ve just described. The cheap wood whines as she descends to the basement. She’s put on a leather jacket, and her forehead’s already gleaming with sweat. “Can I get your help for a second?”

“What is it, babe?” Josh groans as he takes a shot. “I’ll get it.”

“Nothing big,” she says. “You can keep playing. Josh can handle it.” Ron glances over his shoulder at her, then at me, before returning to his cue ball. I can’t look him in the eye. Now he knows it. But I go anyway.

“In here,” she says from the hall as I reach the top of the stairs. I notice the fruit bowl on the counter has no apples in it, just a half-eaten banana with the peel folded around. I turn the corner into the hallway, and nearly collide with her. The narrow passage puts us face to face, almost touching. I can smell the day’s sweat on her, the tinge of her right in front of me, her chest rising and settling, wrapped tight in her tank top, under that almost inexplicable leather jacket. It’s eighty-five degrees inside this house. She wipes the beads from her upper lip and folds her arms with a huff.

“There’s a box in the top of the closet I can’t reach. Black shoebox. My coupons for the week.” I don’t know why she’d store coupons in a place she can’t reach. She’s taller than Ron, too, so he wouldn’t have put them there even if he did give a shit about coupons. I pull it down and hold it out for her. It’s been spray-painted glossy black. The heat makes my fingers stick to it. I can see freckles where it’s peeled from handling. She leaves it in my hands as she opens it. Inside are a tangle of cuffs and chains and something like a bit you’d put on a horse. A very small horse. A human-sized horse.

“These are not coupons.”

“No,” she says, in a crushed velvet voice. “No, they’re not.” She unzips a pocket on her jacket and pulls out a motel key. She drops it in the box, closes it, and pushes it toward me.

“What are you doing?” I look past her, at the drug store portrait of her eight-year-old daughter.

“What I want.” She folds her arms.

“You’re married.”

“So is he.” She draws a deep breath and sighs. “I’m not blind, and Ron’s not stupid. I’ve seen the way you look at me every time you’re here. You’ve wanted a taste of me since you first woke up to it. He already thinks we’re fooling around, so let’s make it worth it. I’m going to that motel tonight.” She creeps in close enough to feel her breath on my chin. “When I’m not here, I’m on my own time. I’ve got some time for you, but not enough to come on soft.” She reaches up and runs her hand down my neck. “Don’t flake out on me.” She turns to walk away, but turns back for just a moment. “I won’t have an escape plan.”

We both move back through the living room and kitchen. I watch the light roll back and forth over her leather shoulders, and her ass bounce one cheek at a time. I want to run my hands up her jacket, into her shirt, and thrust my hips into her from behind. I want handfuls. Mouthfuls. I want to bite her neck and suck the sweat off. Instead, I pass her. She eyes me as I go downstairs.

“Crystal’s been out this weekend,” I hear Ron say as I come down. He sips his beer and eyes me as I approach the table.

“Yeah?” Dad says. “What for?”

“She thinks I’m fucking around on her. You know, that kind of bullshit.” He takes another sip. “She’ll be all right. I’m probably just gonna have to lay low for a while.”

“How’s it been?” I ask. “Being alone, I mean.”

“Oh, I ain’t been alone,” he laughs. He looks up at the ceiling, the upstairs floorboards, and dips his voice. “I met this chick at a house I was working on. Get this, man, it’s the guy’s daughter. She keeps coming out of her room, asking me bullshit questions about plumbing, and I know what’s going on, y’know.”

“She was wanting something, huh?” Dad laughs, taking his shot. The balls crack and spin across the felt.

“Fuck yeah she was. Gorgeous, too. She couldn’ta been more than eighteen, man, and great big titties. I love my wife, but you gotta be crazy to say no to something like that. She said she wants to see me again. So I’ll let you know how that goes next week,” he laughs. “I’m gonna bring her over here. Might have to break out the toys. Show her some shit she ain’t never seen before.” When he laughs, his face glows like a baboon’s ass, two great red cheeks and a brown hole in the middle, quilled with wiry black hairs.

The stories have gotten worse and worse every weekend, which makes me question how true they are. The man’s a short ball of grease and tattoos. You can only be so charismatic, to use a criminally charitable word. He’s losing his wife, so it’s no wonder he’d come up with stories to save his pride. I never could figure out how they ended up together. Seeing them is weird, but hell, weird is Crystal’s thing. Ron says the kidnap fantasies flare up every time a new season of Without A Trace drops. He’s had to call off work to deal with his wife. I can blame him for a lot, but not that. I think if I had a wife like Crystal, I could get into just about anything if it made her crazy.

Ron gets a text message. The door upstairs pounds shut, and the screen smacks the jamb.

“She says she put the kids to bed,” he reads, “and she’ll be back later. Whatever. Who’s shot is it?”

“Mine,” I say. “We starting the poker game at ten?”

“Same as every other weekend. Why, you got somewhere to be?”

“Running out of smokes,” I tell him. “Just wanted to see if I’d have time to hit up the gas station.”

“You really oughta quit,” he says.

“Yeah, I–”

“You really oughta quit.” He stares at me just long enough. He leans over the table to take his shot. Dad looks at me over Ron. What the hell was that? He nods up, indicating Crystal. You two…? I shake my head, but he sighs.

“Well, I need smokes, anyway,” Dad says. “Here’s a ten.” He hands me a crumpled bill from his front pocket. “Grab a pack and get back quick. Don’t fuck around,” he grins.

“What about the game?” I ask. Ron shoots, and the cue cracks against the twelve ball, sinking it with a leathery thump.

“You’re out,” Ron says.

As I walk down the crumbling concrete steps in the backyard, I get a text.

Went to the store incase u chicken out n dont bring the box
ill be tied up come save me haha
see u soon ;) :X

I drop into the Cavalier. Ron’s suspicious, and I haven’t even done anything. I can’t leave Crystal tied up in a strange motel. God only knows what story she’d come up with when someone found her there. What if it was the truth? That she was waiting for me? It wouldn’t matter what I said after that.

She’s naked and glowing orange under the dim motel lamps. I can see it. Stretched out, roped to the bed, muscles taut and twisted, belly and breasts rolling with every heave. I can taste it and feel the flick of a hard nipple on my tongue. I can feel the bump of her pussy on my lips, smell the sap of her. It’s wrong, and I can’t get it out of my head.

Kentucky Avenue dances in the humid twilight. The Cavalier rumbles through the heat, cackling mean at every pothole. My phone rings. It’s Mom.

“Hey, honey, I was wondering what time you and daddy were going to be home.”

“We haven’t started the game yet. I’m out grabbing smokes. Go ahead and have dinner without us.” My voice is quick. I’m trying to get her off the phone, and I don’t feel good about it.

“That’s okay, we’ll wait,” she says with a sniff.

“All right. I’ll see you later tonight. Bye, mom.”

“Love you bunches,” she says. I click first.

“Son of a bitch.” I throw the cell phone in the cup holder. The steering wheel groans as I clench it. There’s no food at the house. We’re gambling with the fucking food money. If I cheat, we’ll lose. He bluffs. He always fucking bluffs, and they know it. The only thing worse than being a liar is being a liar that everyone knows is a damn liar. I can’t call him out. It wouldn’t do any good. He’d get angry, mope for two weeks. He’d lie in bed drinking coffee and watching TV, dreaming up some quick fix like a yard sale or Craigslist ad to flip shitty furniture he found in the trash. Our garage is full of that kind of crap. This is the cycle. Just enough to scrape by, and less than enough left to gamble. I want out of this, but I can’t leave. Mom’s at home with my little sister, and there’s no food. They’re waiting on us to bring it back. I can’t get out.

God, just give me a day. Give me one fucking day out of this.

***

The White Flag Inn is a two-story stucco graveyard of doors and buzzing lights, sweating in salmon pink, flickering with the rambling shadows of moths and June bugs. The sign out front rises like a desert obelisk into the lazy purple sky, advertising free HBO. The stretch of concrete in front of the rooms is pocked and cracked, busted heavy, with tufts of grass sawing through the pavement. A waterbug scurries down the door and into one of the tar-lined cracks in the long porch. The idea of an angry sigh is absurd to me as I jam the key into the deadbolt. Through the paper-thin walls, I hear bedsprings shriek and settle.

The second the door is open, she’s on me. She grabs a fistful of my shirt and tie and pulls me inside. I’m too pissed off to screw around with it, and before I know what I’ve done, she’s against the wall, her arms wrenched in my hands, and we’re staring at each other. Her eyes are black in the dim motel light. She’s already breathing heavy. I feel like I’ve caught an animal. Whatever anger I had is something else, now. She wants to strike, but I’ve got her pinned to the wall. Her eyebrow twitches as a smile stretches wide across her face.

“Take it out on me,” she says, swallowing hard.

“Why aren’t you tied up?”

“I’m not a fuckin’ idiot,” she laughs. She twists her arm out of my grip and grabs for me, but I let her go and step back. “You really think I’m gonna leave myself tied to a motel bed in the middle of white trash hell? What if you didn’t come? Maybe you’re chicken shit.” She looks me over. “Where’s the box?”

“I didn’t bring it.” I look her over. She’s topless under that leather jacket. Somehow her jeans look tighter than when she left the house. The room is warm and humid. The light ripples down the sweat of her belly and disappears into her pants, in the gap behind her wide belt.

“I don’t go for chicken shit.” Her hips rock as she slinks close. “But you’re here, so maybe you’re not.”

“I didn’t come here to sleep with you.”

“Good, I’m not tired,” she snickers. She props a hand on her cocked hip. Her nipple peeks out from the jacket–a tingle shoots up my thigh like the lights on a landing strip. Enough to put me at attention. “The box had the easy stuff in it. Now we gotta improvise.” She huffs. “You know, Ron may be ugly, but he’s got one thing on you: he’s a man.”

She knows exactly what she’s doing. I’m not stupid, but now I’m angry again. I want to tell her I don’t want to do this, but it’s a bluff, and she just called it. “What do you want me for?” I demand. “Why am I here?”

“It’s not complicated,” she says, rocking over to me. “You kidnapped me and brought me here. You’re gonna tie me to that bed, and then you’re gonna fuck me. Hard. You’re gonna fuck me harder than you’ve ever fucked in your life, over…and over…and over again.”

“You think that’s what guys want to hear...”

“And when you’re done, I won’t be able to escape if I wanted to. I won’t be able to walk. And I don’t give a single quivering shit what you think you want to hear.”

I loosen my tie, slide it from around my neck, and grip it like a belt in both hands.

“It’s a start,” she says, mockingly. She holds her wrists out and sighs. I go to tie her hands, but she grabs it and pulls it up. Now it’s tug of war. “You’re going to have to work for it. You’re going to have to get your hands a lot dirtier than that.”

I let go of the tie, and she stumbles back, but I sink my fingers into her pants and grip her belt. “I don’t have time for this. The game starts in half an hour.” I drag her to the bed and push her. I wipe her sweat on my chin and loom down. She falls to her elbows as my fists sink into the bed around her. Her legs shoot up and wrap around my waist as I push into her, pressing my lips hard into hers. I run the tip of my tongue across her lips and her mouth roars open.

For a moment we’re two animals trying to eat each other. I stand up, pulling her with me. She smacks her chest to mine, and I stumble with her across the room and slam her against the wall. We pause for a breath, painting each other in the sweat of our foreheads. I move down to her neck, licking, nibbling, lapping her up. She rips my jacket down from my shoulders. I push her hard against the wall so I can throw my arms back to let the jacket fall. She puts her hands on my shoulders and bounces over and over, grinding into my bulge. I grab her wrists and smear them up the wall, holding her hard to it. We kiss like savages, splashing all over each other.

I peel her off the wall and swing her to the bed. She opens her legs to drop down, and I slide off my soaked shirt. We undress, and her pants are off like they were on fire. All I want is to eat. It’s insatiable. I’m ravenous for it. I go down, and her heels dig into my back. It smells like the wild, but I know I’ve got to pace it. I draw kisses up her thigh. One…two…three. I drag my nails up her legs, a hard tickle, then I bite the tendon; her leg twitches–”Nng!”

Her heels dig deeper, and I reach up and clench her hips, digging my thumbs into her cheeks. I lick the bottom of her pussy. One…two…three. I pat at it with the pad of my tongue as she closes her eyes to the sky and moans from the bottom of her throat. I drag the tip of my tongue up and dig soft into the lips. I know she senses that I’m moving up, so I pull back and start again. I bite the other tendon and dig my nails into her hips. “FUCK. H’uhhh-ohh.” She lets go of my shoulders and grips the pillow.

As I move up, I look and see her neck stretched out and the light glistening down the length of it. Not an inch of her is dry, now, especially not where I’m going next. I kiss at the top. I wrap my mouth around the bump and suck. I use my lips at first, like wiping a spoon clean. This calms her down, moaning softly. Then my tongue punches in and laps the inside, straight up, catching all of it, and flicks her clit like a switch. She kicks off, and her moan trills with the quiver of her legs. And then I back off. I’ve got to get inside, but she presses her hand out against my chest and holds me away.

“Bad things happen here a lot,” she says, swallowing hard. “They don’t check on screams. They just call the cops.”

“Well, I hope they know the difference between a good scream and a bad one.”

She smiles. Something bad is coming. She screams out. It’s not a good scream. I scramble up and clap my hand over her mouth.

“What the fuck are you doing? If you wanna end this, that’s a good fucking way to do it!” She giggles behind my hand, then tries it again. I press harder. The sweat seeps between my fingers. It muffles her enough that I calm down a bit. “Why? What do you want? Just, whatever it is, just tell me what you want.” She slackens and settles down. I slide my hand away, but not too far.

“You’re gonna have to shut me up. You better put something in, or something’s coming out,” she says. I position myself to push inside her, but she slides up and away. “Not my pussy, asshole. My mouth.”

I slide off the bed and pull her up by the hair. I’m hard as a rock, and I’m worried this is going to get me off, but I don’t know what else to do. I’ve got a grip on her damp hair down to the scalp, but when I push her closer, she just looks up at me, shut tight, like there’s some kind of password.

“Open your mouth,” I grunt as I shake her head. The saliva smacks as she opens up and takes it in. She glides in and out, lips sealed around me, cradling me in her tongue. She pumps a few times, humming softly, but after a moment she tries to pull away. I hold her head and push into her–mmm’g! She grabs my thighs and pulls me in just as much as she’s pulling her head away. I’m starting to get it.

She gulps every time I hit the back of her throat. Her nostrils flair just to breathe. We get into a groove, in and out, in and out, playing at resistance. That’s what she wants, to play at resistance. I think I can do that, as long as she doesn’t want me to hurt her. I’ve got to draw the line somewhere. I’m losing focus thinking about it; I fall out of the groove. In a split second, I can read her and know she’s done. I let her go, and she falls back on her elbows. I’m glad I didn’t get off, but now I only know one thing left to do.

I push down into her again, but as I get close she moves so fast that I don’t know what happened until my cheek’s burning. She hit me. She raises her hand, but I grab her wrist.

“Don’t do it again,” I say firmly, trying not to get angry. “I’m not into it.”

“Then you better do something about it,” she says. “I’m gonna hurt you, and I’m gonna get loud. What are you gonna do if I get loud? Your hand didn’t work. Your cock didn’t work. What’ve you got left, boy?”

I grab both her wrists and roll on top of her, pinning her to the bed. She smiles; something bad is coming. Before she can scream, I let go of one of her arms and slap my hand over her mouth again, squeezing. She digs her nails into the small of my back and claws all the way to my shoulder. ”FUCK,” I shout, swatting her hand away. “I told you, I’m not fucking into it!”

“You don’t have enough hands to stop me. I guess you should’ve brought the box.”

“Fine, all right, it’s in the car. I’ll get it, just… just don’t get the cops called on us.” I get up to grab my pants, but she stops me.

“Don’t ruin the mood,” she says, opening the nightstand drawer. She pulls out a roll of duct tape. It’s brand new. She bites the wrapper and tears it off. “I figured you’d puss out, so I stopped at the store. They don’t sell toys, just tools, so here you go.” She tosses the roll at me.

“It’ll only take a second, I can...”

“Kidnappers don’t use play cuffs. Fix the mouthy bitch, handyman.”

“I don’t think I want to do this. There’s a playfulness to that other stuff, I guess, but this has a… violence to it. Why tape?” She stares down at her arm, pressing her fingers into it and pulling them away, feeling the tackiness.

“You know,” she says, stretching her mouth, “when you sweat a lot, when it dries it sort of feels like a coating. It’s skin-tight, and you can feel it pulling when you stretch. Like being stuck inside yourself.” I shake my head. I don’t get it. She looks at me like wisdom down on sympathy. “Sometimes it’s nice to have something you can break out of.”

“Look, I’ll just go out and...”

“Go ahead and open the door. That’ll make it easier.” I’m starting to hate that smile. “Finish what you started. But don’t be awkward about it.” Her face goes stone sober. “Take it out on me.”

Something in me resolves it. If it gets her going, why should I care? Maybe I’m making something out of nothing. I don’t want to leave it like this. I want to satisfy her, and she’s told me exactly how to do it. She has her own reasons, and that’s enough. I grip the roll and slink back toward her. She starts to sit up, but I push her to her back and climb over her. I set the roll aside and grab her wrists, pushing them over her head and holding her down. I take both wrists in one hand and run the other through her hair, but my finger catches in the wet tangles. She winces and hisses, and I pull my hand out. I grab back at her wrist and lean in to kiss her. It’s clunky, teeth knocking teeth. I can’t get my rhythm now, and she can feel it. She rips her arms loose and digs her claws into my ribs. Her thumbs slide up to churn at my nipples, and like a switch I’ve got to get off. She sinks her nails and pulls me close, lapping at my face with her tongue. She locks her hips into mine and grinds, rubbing me hard again.

“Better?” she asks. I nod, gulping heavy breaths. “Good. Now if you wanna get me off, you gotta fight me off.” She claws my back again, all the way up, and grabs my hair. For the first time in my life, I’m turned on by pain, but I still want it to fucking stop. I grab her shoulders and break away with my elbows. I pin her arms with my knees, but that leaves me swinging dangerously close to her mouth. She lunges up to bite it, but with both hands free, I’ve got her. I’m sitting on her belly, but everything below is flailing. I’m riding a bull, and she’s smiling wild. She’s fighting hard and wants to lose.

Now’s the time. I clap a hand over her mouth, and with the other I reach back and spank her ass, hard. She squeals and tries to tear loose, but she can’t twist enough to throw me off. I’m starting to figure it out. I didn’t think this could be fun, but seeing her like this is… it’s like breaking out. I could wrestle like this all night, but that’s not what she wants. I spank her ass again, because I like her squeal, and now I’ll do anything that gets her crazy. Again. Again, then something changes. She suddenly stops and looks up at me with fury in her eyes. She growls behind my hand, and I can feel it rumble in her chest. I can feel her mouth twist into a smile. Her warning and her sign.

I squeeze her mouth as I grab for the tape. I’ve only got one hand free, so I try to use my teeth to pull out a strip. She settles down, suddenly still, just to watch me. She gulps heavy breaths and slowly pulls away from my hand. She lets me have it back, just for this. The bark of peeling glue makes her flinch. I cut it with my teeth, and just as I do, she draws a breath and opens her mouth, so I clamp it again.

“Keep it shut.” I wipe the sweat from her mouth so the tape will stick. “Are you gonna keep quiet?” I pull my hand away and hover the tape over her. She bites her lip, staring at it.

“Fuck y–ummph.” I drop the tape over her mouth, and she throws her head back with a rolling moan like I just hit the spot. The strangeness of this whole situation hits me, but somehow I just want to know how weird she gets. How far does this go for her? I grab her hair and pull her head back to me. The tape is loosening, so I press it into her lips, so tight it squeaks under my thumbs. It sticks so close I can see the outline of her lips. Still, she opens her mouth, and it loosens enough for her to speak.

“It’s probably good that you’re this bad at tying up girls,” she snickers. “But I’m gonna teach you some things. First, don’t be nervous. A lot more of us like it than you think. Second, tape doesn’t work like on TV. You’ve gotta wrap it–especially with all this sweat.” She nods over at her clothes on the edge of the bed. “Grab my panties. Shove them in my mouth, then wrap the tape around my head.” I turn to grab her panties, but she gets loose and grabs my cock. She squeezes it just enough to pull me back, and laughs. “You’ve gotta do something about the rest of me, first.” With a look of sympathy, she lays down with her wrists against the bars of the bed. I stick the edge of the tape to her wrist and wrap the roll around the bar. Then the other. “Good. Now you can gag me.”

I grab her panties. They’ve got that musky feeling, from dried sweat. I ball them up, and she sticks out her tongue to welcome it. I shove the panties, and she pulls them in with her lips, then smiles with a little cloth bit between her teeth. Then the bull is back. She kicks and flails, squealing through the panties. I drop down and sit with all my weight on her hips. She’s pinned and fighting it. She glares at me with a playful grit, her nose scrunched. I stretch the tape out again, but she throws her head to the left and right, dodging it, so I slap it to her cheek and press it down. It sticks enough for me to pull her up by the hair and start wrapping. She settles just enough to let it happen without abandoning the fight, growling through the gag. I cut it with my teeth and stick the end to her chin. She calms herself, in the final moment.

She stares at me. She has words, but she can’t speak them. I know what they are.

I smack her cheek and grip her jaw, then I throw her head to the side. I crawl back, creeping down to her chest. I lick a slow loop around her nipple and flick it with my tongue. She moans softly. I take a mouthful and suck, vibrating my tongue against the tip. She starts to whimper and heave. I work the other a bit, and then I slide back up to look her in the eyes. I nod softly to let her know, and then I slap her thighs apart. “Open!” I lean down and loom, eye-to-eye, as I slip in. Her eyes shake open wide, filled with shock. She moans hard and snaps her arms in, but they’re bound tight to the bed. I start slow, gliding in and out as she gets wetter and wetter. We grind and grind, and I stay tight to the top inside her. She makes sounds of protest, but moves with me.

She’s noisy. She wants to hear herself. She slams her hips into mine, and I start pumping. I dig my hand into her hair and grip tight, pulling her head back. I lap at her neck, nibbling and biting as I build up the push inside. We find the groove, and she slams her hips again, until we’re crashing into each other over and over. I rush like a battering ram–boom, boom, boom, boom. I’m storming the castle and taking the queen. I can’t help but grunt with every crash and growl with every pull. She tries to scream between squeals, but she’s wrapped too tight; the tape pulls at her cheeks. I make a big thrust, pushing her body to the top of the bed. I’m all the way inside, holding her up. I grip her shoulder with one hand and her ass with another, forcing her into my hips, and I use the base of me to massage her in tight circles, punching just a little harder at the top of each wave.

Her eyes roll back, and her shoulders shake. We’re almost there. I take longer strokes, massaging the inside of her, throwing my weight in just at the end, matching with a spank. I pull back, then crash. Back, then crash. Back, and crash. She rumbles. She seizes. And with one last crash, I wrap myself all the way around her, skin to skin, coating her with every inch of me, and every limb stretches out from her like she was filled stiff. She screams as I burst and flood her. It pulses around me, and oozes out of the seal between us. She gasps for air behind the gag, chest heaving, muscles quivering. I push soft, slow, coaxing out every last drop. Every last tingle. At last, I lay down on her, all the way inside.

We lay like this without a word. Just breathing, soaked in each other.

***

Driving back, I keep thinking about what I saw as I was leaving. When I left the motel, Crystal was washing off her face.

“How do you feel about this?” I asked, too carefully.

“About what?” She was standing naked in the fluorescent light by the sink, stretching her mouth in the mirror. It was red from the residue. She looked tired. Not exhausted and satisfied. Just tired.

“Isn’t it…I dunno, weird to you at all? To be taped up in a dirty motel? To want to be treated like that? I don’t know how to feel about it.”

“I just sucked on a rod of raw meat between a patch of wiry hair and a wrinkly flesh sack. You drank up a hatchet wound in the swamp between my legs. Do I think wanting to be tape-gagged is any weirder than getting turned on by any of that? No.”

She had kept the first strip of tape, the one that had loosened. She stared down at it, at the imprint of her lipstick. I’m not sure what she saw there, but I had to get back. The game had started a half-hour ago. Something had happened here, and it was more than kinky sex. Part of me didn’t want to leave until I figured it out, but I had to go.

***

I catch Ron’s glare as I walk down into the basement. I look away, but I can feel him staring until I reach the floor.

“Sorry,” I say. “I ended up having to go home and drop off some cigarettes to Mom.” That gets a glance from Dad. Twelve people fill both tables. It looks like they’d been playing blackjack while they waited. I take a seat at the second table, as far from Ron as possible. He always sits at the first table, facing the stairs. I sit where I can see mostly his back, but just enough of his eyes to catch their movement.

Without much fanfare, the games begin at both tables. Winner takes home a hundred and thirty dollars. The total of all the buy-ins, plus any re-buys. The first half of the game goes pretty quick. People drop out regularly as the hands drift by, wandering off to play pool or craps or slots. Ron props open a rusty window to let some of the smoke out. There are four players left at the final table: Ron, his dad Denny, my Dad, and me. Dad and I are six beers in. Ron dipped into the vodka early on, but you’d never know if he was drunk. Their tells become less telling as they drink and their concerns sweat off. Denny scratches the peppery stubble on his gaunt cheek. Dad notices it.

The flop drops, showing a jack, a king, and a deuce. Ron glances down at his cards, then at me. He looks over at Dad, who’s watching Denny. Denny looks at the clock. Ron glares at me, tapping his cards on the table. He purses his lips and nods slowly. His eyes are tired, drenched in accusation. Denny bets a hundred. I call. Dad calls. Ron folds. The turn is flipped: a king. Denny scratches his stubble again, and again Dad notices. Ron shuffles his chips, occasionally peeking up to see if I’m watching. I am. The screen door upstairs squeals. The handle jiggles and the door opens. Without thinking, I glance up at the stairs, and when I look back, Ron is chewing his jaw at me.

Dad looks down at his cards and nods. Denny calls all-in. The bet’s on me. Denny’s fat stack and Dad’s short, so as long as I’m careful, I stay in the game either way. Ron’s burning, like somebody spanked the baboon. His suspicion is as good as fact to him. I was scared when I came in, but now I find myself staring back.

“What the hell are you looking at me for, cocksucker?” Ron laughs. I’m out of the hand.” I look down at the cards on the table. Denny bet slow on the flop, but ran all-in when the king dropped. He’s bluffing. Trying to scare us off because he’s got jacks. If someone’s got a king, he’s gone, but he’s risking that they don’t. I peel the corner of my cards up from the table, as if I’d forgotten my pocket twos. I think I’ve got Denny beat with the trips.

“Denny’s already out,” I say to Dad. “Whaddya think?”

“I think you’re both out,” he smiles. He squints at me over his glasses. He’s going all-in no matter what I do. He wants me to fold. The table is watching, and they think I’ve got the king, giving Denny enough rope to hang himself with. Or they know I don’t have the king, because no one thinks I can bluff. It could be either. I’m not sure, now. A fog is setting in; I think maybe I gave myself away. If I fold, they’ll know I’m giving it to Dad. I’m staring at him. I’ve just realized it.

“You gonna do something, boy,” prods Denny, “or just keep talking across the table to your old man?”

Shit. He knows. I have to do something. It doesn’t matter what, as long as I do it confidently. I push my whole stack in. Dad sits back in his chair, and a frown that others might mistake for thoughtfulness weighs heavily on his face. I messed up, and he’s making sure I know it.

“Well,” he sighs, “I can’t fold trip kings, can I?” He pushes his chips over. “All-in.”

If I win, Dad’s out and Denny’s short stack. If Dad wins, the game goes on with all four of us. If somehow Denny wins, it’s just him and Ron. But it doesn’t matter what happens, I’ve messed up. Even if we win now, we didn’t win. He won, and I almost lost us the game. He’s right. I don’t know how to bluff. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I got caught. All it takes is one king to beat me.

The river flips. Queen. Dad slams his hands on the table and laughs like a man who’s just been given a clean bill of health. “Wow! I can’t freakin’ believe it.” I know what just happened, but I can’t fathom why he did it. He was bluffing the whole time. He wouldn’t be excited about a queen if he had a king. He was chasing the straight. Unless he had a queen, too, and now he’s got a full house. Unlikely. Anyway, his straight would still beat Denny’s two pair. He throws down his cards, laughing with relief. He caught the straight. I throw mine down, at least glad Dad won the hand. Until Denny throws down his cards. A jack and a king. He had two pair from the flop. He bet slow to drag us in, then hit the full house and bet hard to make us think he lost his edge. It worked. Dad’s excitement falls to his feet, but he hides it well enough.

“Well, fuck me,” he sighs, adjusting himself in his chair. I guess not.” He nods. “Good game, Denny.” He pushes all his chips over, and scoops mine in with them. “Well, we better finish the beers and get home. The wife’s waiting on food and cigs.” He catches himself, “Oh, well, food anyway.”

I light a cigarette. My hand is shaking. Denny was playing my dad, not me. This suit feels big. The residue of beer in my mouth makes me nauseous. I can feel my feet sliding around in my dress shoes, like they’re too big for me. I’m back at the motel, with a woman telling me how to fuck her right, in the weird way she likes it. My cigarette tastes like a house fire, and I choke. The world is hot. I need a break.

I finish my cigarette outside and light up another. I sit on the old metal swingset in Ron’s backyard. It creaks as I sway, my feet planted in the dirt. I need to get these pants hemmed up. They’re bunching, too long. The screen shrieks open, and Dad appears in the doorway.

“Come on, we gotta go.”

We sit in front of Ron’s house with the car running. Baritone sandpaper. Stale cigarettes. Just when I think the ride home is going to be silent...

“What the fuck was that, Josh? Why didn’t you just fold to me?”

All I can do is shrug. “I don’t want to cheat for you.”

“Ron’s an asshole. Fuck him–no, fuck him. Okay, so you don’t want to cheat for me. How about for your mom? How about for your baby sister? They’re gonna have food tonight if she’s the only one that eats. The money we had before this might’ve fed us tonight, but what about tomorrow night? What about the rest of the week? I’m trying to feed us, and your goddamn pride is getting in the way. You did the same thing last weekend, and it put us here, back at it, where you get to fuck it up again. Do what I tell you, and we’ll win. Stop thinking about yourself and do what I fucking tell you to do.”

I see a flash of Crystal’s face, screaming through the tape wrapped around her head. My stomach sinks, and a lump of acid rises in my throat. When I was winning, it felt good thinking about her, even like that. Now the whole thing feels disgusting. I think about her staring down at that strip as I walked out. No permission could make me feel good about that, but in that moment I felt like I’d understood something that Ron never did. I can’t say what it is, but there’s something. How could she submit so grotesquely and still have all the control? Ron doesn’t know what he’s got. There’s something in that woman that can’t be taken away, and she’s trying to find it.

I realize as I’m thinking on all of that, we still haven’t moved, and my father’s been silent. His apish hands grip the wheel. Martian mountains, white-capped with tension. Water on the dead planet. He tucks his head into his chest. His back and shoulders rumble, rhythmically at first, then discordant. He weeps. Quietly, then a barking cough. I’ve never heard this sound before–never seen him like this. It’s worse than silence. I don’t know what to do, so I light up another cigarette. Halfway through it, he dams up the tears, now just a fluttering breath. He leans out the window, closes a nostril with his thumb, and blows snot from the other. He swallows and sighs as he sits back in his seat, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

“Who raised you that you’re like this?” he asks. “You’re a good person, y’know. Jesus.” As he says this, Crystal carries trash out to the bin. “She’s hot as hell, man. I can’t imagine why Ron does the stupid shit he does.”

“He’s an asshole,” I affirm, almost whispering.

“Yeah. You don’t know how hard it was to take the twenty he gave me. I told him we were struggling. He gave me back our buy-in. We can get smokes and stuff for hotdogs.” He grabs for the pack I bought when I left. He opens it and stares inside. “How many cigarettes did you give mom?”

I can’t look at him. A spider web of tarry asphalt spreads out over the busted concrete. I feel stuck. The streams of tar stretch out as far down the road as I can see, out into the darkness. It reaches up into the driveways, right up to the garages and doors. I imagine them spooling into the houses like tendrils, binding up the residents. I imagine it creeping into the motel, cocooning the bed in sticky blackness, and Crystal sighing as it forms a chrysalis.