King of Her Desire

60

This time the song is just incredibly sexy...but the chapter is definitely EXPLICIT...

She saw the hurt in my eyes. I could feel it in hers.

"Somebody teach you that? That men hit?" I asked her.

But she squared those shoulders and said, "Where I was."

So in Spanish I said, "But you're here now. And you know me."

"I know nothing," she said. And tears started welling up—scared the hell out of me that she said that. Felt that. It couldn't be true...

"Those kids are home because of you," I said—still in Spanish. "You did all that for somebody you don't know?"

She sighed and folded her arms like she was trying to protect herself again. So I put my hands on her shoulders and said, "Whatever it is, tell me."

And she closed her eyes for a moment as if she was counting to ten before joining the Spanish conversation with, "It's like...a marriage. What she wrote, it's what they say when you marry someone. Ben said."

"Oh, I don't think—"

"I don't like to think it," she said. Eyes open. Earnest. "Because that woman also saved my life. It was her who got the plane, her who told them that I was going to work for her. And she never made me do anything. But you're like the husband now. You have the money, you have the power. She has to depend on you. And you love her so much..."

I have to be honest: it gave me chills that she thought that. Or maybe that I hadn't thought that.

But I said, "Do you really think she'd do something that devious?"

She looked away again. And then she did that hand wringing thing and gave me the saddest eyes I'd seen since the day she fell out of that shed down in Mexico all bloodied up, and said, "I would! I would do...anything!"

"Aw, man—"

"And I don't have worldly goods," she cried. "All I have to give you is this! Me!"

I reached toward her but she backed away and said, "No, listen! Because to me what she did...it means that..."

She couldn't even say it. And I didn't dare say anything, either, as wound up as she was. So I hung there feeling all kinds of pain—her pain, sort of radiating out of her and filling us both up.

And then she shook her head and sighed and said, "When I saw you that first day...on the beach...I didn't believe you were real. You were like, from a magazine or a movie—no real person looks like that. And you were so nice. So if the work was very hard or somebody was mean to me, I would think about you and be so glad that I could see you the next day."

"I thought you were beautiful, too. I thought you were too good for me, to be honest. Couldn't get over how sweet and strong you were. I was afraid to even talk to you almost..."

She paused to let that sink in. Almost like she didn't believe she'd heard it.

And then she said, "I told you how I was afraid of the day you'd be gone. Because I knew my life. How it would go. One day, some man would ask to marry me and my relatives would be glad—one less mouth! One less burden! And then I would live in a little tiny village in a little tiny house with too many children and not enough money. Or maybe those gang men would take me and nobody would ever see me again. They just disappear, those ones they take. You don't know if they're dead or alive..."