A Trap Within A Trap

Chapter 17

"Are you awake?" she asked speaking into his curly chest hairs. Jaquez did not respond. They lay together in the calm night both enjoying their unspoken shared fantasies (these being of the rated G variety). Since they are always in such a frenzy to enjoy every moment they have together, gentle time is usually left unused to vocalize and compare such fantasies. Marisa's head lay on Jaquez's chest, allowing the secret love they shared to pass between them after exchanging their bodies. They had both fallen asleep due to sweet exhaustion. She had awoken long before him, and enjoyed considering a world less hostile towards their lives being intertwined, maybe even in holy matrimony.

Day dreaming of meeting him in another life where he'd be a college graduated working square, while maybe she had a normal childhood. Public schools, a family that was full of unconditional love and not the unrequited brand of a crime syndicate which she endured her whole life until now. Laying within their fictitious house in the suburbs with the kids asleep tired after a family trip to the park.

"Yeah ..." she continued without out encouragement, fully aware of him being awake due to his breathing pattern change. "I was just thinking ..."

"What are you thinking about?" Jaquez replied with palpable annoyance while rolling his eyes, and taking in a deep breath.

His passive aggressive response ignored, and her own silence now being her tactic.

"Come on Boo. Please don't start." He felt her face grimace against him in his not so subtle failed deflection. He sighed "Marisa I know you want more baby, so do I, but you know how fucked my life is right now."

Stillness.

"Yo shit ain't exactly peachy either." He followed up with. He meant the sarcasm and expected the fire breathing bitch to come fourth, but to his surprise ...

"I know she whispered low as she buried her face into his chest, her increased yet stuttered breathing rate gently puffing at his chest hairs.

This was the innocent side of her only he knew, and it usually scared him. "I didn't expect this new shit from Feed to come up, but you know it's shit that I could ... I mean we can use to set my own ... our own shit off, and burn your pops and my baby mama too. This is the way to an even better jump off than we both planned back when I was locked up. And with this Mojo shit I could take the world Marisa! You tell me this ain't what you want."

He realized that where the second woman he had ever fell in love with's head rested, was now soaked with warm tears. 'Nah I gotta be sure she's wit me on this, cuz if she jumps out the car when we get on the highway she could get me, my kids, everybody killed.'

"So you gonna be the little girl Feed always said you'd be?" He felt her tense from the blow he knew was beneath the belt. She raised up slowly sitting up, pushing on points on his chest he knew she meant to inflict pain through. Pressure points taught her as most of her brethren from young ages only for self-defense is what was told to him.

A sense of regret surged through him. Not for crossing the line, rather because he had not considered the consequences of his ultimatum. 'What if she really jumps out?! Better to know now. But ... would she then be my enemy?'

He looked at the same woman he had been sharing his love with in a new light. Everything seemed to darken as she froze still inches from his face, steely eyed. It seemed as though she was holding her entire body up from just her fingers in many of the soft parts of his body. On a scale from one to ten, ten being "Bitch get off me! You tryin to kill me!" he was at a fifteen. Jaquez felt as if he was beginning to lose the capacity to breath past the fire shooting from her fingers into his body. The question she asked moments ago played in his head in irony "What are you thinking." 

The pain from her pressure increased, yet just when he made the decision to act she spoke "Ride or die." Exhaling he put on his best smile "Dass wassup." he said as he released the grip of the machete he routinely kept under the top mattress where ever he slept, as his dad had taught him. One of many remnant tactics passed down from an escaped Cuban, now in exile.

"I love you to boo." He finished pulling her back down to her former resting place. He closed his eyes 'I never wanna love you till you bleed to death.'