The Drazen World: Color Me Wicked (Kindle Worlds Novella) Read online

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  Color Me Wicked

  A.R. Hadley

  Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  Table of Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ALSO BY A.R. HADLEY

  AUTHOR BIO

  Therefore let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.

  — 1 Corinthians 10:12

  ONE

  Man

  Men

  Shadows and sounds

  You'll never crawl inside my skin

  You think you understand

  Play songs

  and cry

  My tears leave trails

  and they fade with the rain

  Washed out to the river

  and oceans

  Never to be

  “What are you writing?” he asked.

  I tapped my pencil against the notebook. What was I writing?

  Never to be...

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  ...heard of again

  Not an echo

  No tribute

  Only salt

  Only…

  Tap.

  Dreams.

  "Dee, I asked you a question."

  "Fuck off."

  He yanked the notebook off my lap like a petulant child and began to read it to himself. Except he mumbled the words, my words, under his breath. His lips barely moved.

  I put my elbows on my knees and leaned forward, pressing my chest toward my shaky palms.

  If I had a paper bag, I would make good use of it.

  "Deirdre," he said in amazement as he stood.

  I sat up straight and clutched the crucifix hanging from my neck. My poem seemed to swim in his eyes.

  "Why didn't you want me to see this? Is this about me?"

  Fuck. Was every man an egotistical maniac? I thought he was different. He was a painter, had been homeless for Christ’s sake.

  "I don't divulge what inspires me." I grabbed the notebook out of his hands.

  He came and sat next to me on my orange, flowery sofa. His ass sank into the soft 1970s cushions. He tried to push my hair behind my ears.

  "Maybe I should try to paint this color,” he said, his fingers grazing my face.

  I swallowed.

  He had never been so close to me. He smelled like charcoal and rainwater. I must have been staring at his lips because his expression said he seemed to think he’d caught me doing something naughty.

  "Do good Catholics believe in fucking strangers?" he asked.

  I sucked in a sharp breath. "You're not a stranger."

  Why was this man having such a weird effect on me? I had seen him piss on the street, yet that didn’t change the sensation I felt as he touched my hair and my face in a way he hadn’t dared since he’d first stepped foot into my tiny, little Los Angeles apartment we platonically shared.

  Tingles coated my spine.

  I stared into his eyes, and then I fixed my gaze back on those lips.

  "Ask me to kiss you, Dee,” he said while tucking the hair behind my ears. This time he held my wayward curls in place. "I thought you were incredible the first time I saw you."

  "Bull." I shook my head and tried to swallow a grin.

  The first time he saw me I’d been decked out in my camouflage jacket, combat boots, and my holiest pair of blue jeans. No makeup. And my red fucking hair had been even more erratic than normal — a pile of snakes coiled and ready to strike.

  "You weren't like the others." He twirled a strand of fire around his index finger.

  "You don't know what you're asking for," I said, taking a hold of his cheeks.

  I kissed him.

  The second my lips touched his, I realized I could no longer deny I had been wanting him for weeks. It wasn't a magical movie kiss, but it came charged with an immense sense of relief.

  I felt powerful.

  Alive.

  As soon as I slipped my tongue inside his mouth, I could feel the power shift.

  He took control.

  He stood on his knees and pushed my jacket off my shoulders without breaking contact. My heart beat through my shirt, probably knocking the cross up and down over my breasts. He stroked my nipples through my cotton tee as I moaned into his mouth. I worked the fly of his jeans, and in no time flat we were naked on the couch, clawing and groping each other like two lusty teenagers.

  "I have condoms somewhere." I pushed off him and stood, bumping my head on the stupid lamp hanging in the center of the room. "Fuck." I was too damn tall, five foot eleven, an Amazon with Medusa hair. I had about an inch over him.

  We were mismatched.

  But we were both creative, we both understood the shelter. We had certain things in common.

  Did I want him inside me?

  "Hurry, Dee," he panted, ass on the couch, stroking his dick.

  I hadn't often watched a man pleasure himself. I liked it, his hooded eyes, the way his whole posture changed. He exuded a virility he never seemed to possess when he had the paintbrush in his fist.

  I tore my eyes away from the promise of his dick, made my way into the bathroom, found what I needed, and returned to the couch.

  I knelt in front of him. "Let me," I said, my voice unrecognizable and full of lust. After sliding my hand up and down his shaft, I put my mouth on the moist tip.

  "Dee," he sucked in the sound of my name as I sucked in the taste of him — rainwater and charcoal mixed with cum. I pleasured him until he made all kinds of incredible noises, but I stopped just short of him spilling down my throat.

  I ripped the foil packet and stretched the rubber over his length.

  "Oh, baby,” he groaned. “I haven't made love to anyone in months."

  Maybe he meant years if he actually called it that.

  Making love?

  Seriously?

  Maybe this guy was as old as my couch. He couldn't be. He was young. Still, he had spoken those words as if the last time he made love was under a disco ball and he had been tripping on acid. God. What if he had done hard drugs? Or still did? Used needles?

  Shut up, Dee. You need this fuck.

  I straddled him. He grabbed my hips.

  "What is it?" he asked.

  Silent at his question, I put away thoughts of heroin-filled syringes and meth labs as he began to run his finger along the edge of my lips.

  "I liked watching your mouth on my cock." He bounced me gently. "I need to know what you feel like, Dee." He rubbed his tip over my clit. "Show me."

  I arched my hips and sank myself onto him. Fuck, he felt good. Better than good. Amazing. I hadn't been with anyone for months either. I’d suffered it all. I had given up the drink, sworn off men, and thrown myself into work — filled a dozen note
books with fickle poetry and managed to talk my brother, Jonathan, into buying me a bike shop.

  Not having sex had been penance for my moods.

  I would take back the reins right now.

  I lifted my body and then sank down. Hard and repeatedly. Over and over. He held my breasts, stroked my nipples. His facial muscles twitched, and for some reason he kept looking into my eyes.

  "Stop staring at me," I gritted through my teeth.

  "You're beautiful."

  I took him harder.

  "Shut." Slam. "Up."

  He flicked my nipples until they burned, until he caused me to make noises that sounded like weeping. Meeting my thrusts perfectly now, he bucked his hips.

  "Beautiful," he groaned. "Are you close?"

  "Mmhmm." I bit my bottom lip.

  "Open your eyes, Dee."

  "Stop talking to me." Jesus, I sounded terrified.

  He squared my hips. The strength of his grip forced my eyes open. Nails clawing into my skin, he guided the fuck now, torturing me with his dick and his blue-eyed stare.

  "Come with me, baby. Yes?"

  I nodded. My lip was probably bruised, welded between my teeth. The pain was exquisite. Everywhere.

  He guided me up and slammed me down. God, he was strong. I could see the veins in his arms in my peripheral vision, but I stayed locked onto his demanding eyes.

  "Come. For. Me." He jerked inside of me, tilting his head back, and moaned wildly.

  I rode his body, squeezed his hips, until I was a big sack of jelly lying across him, panting and coming down from the first orgasm a man had given me in... one, two, three... eight fucking months. My penance was over. I had paid the debt of being born into a wealthy family time and again.

  Maybe I could finally have a celebratory drink.

  One…

  little…

  drink.

  No one needed to know.

  I wiped my face, wiggled my hips, and stood.

  He tossed his head back and stared at the ceiling.

  Now standing in my tiny kitchen, I looked for a trace of something resembling a bottle or a flask, something that could numb the noise playing constantly inside my head:

  Such a fuck-up. Such a fuck-up. Such a royal fucking fuck-up.

  Sleeping with a guy who probably doesn't have a last name or you wouldn't bother to know it.

  Deirdre Drazen — the whore.

  The cross was the only thing I wore, that and the dissatisfied expression of a woman who begged to be anything but beautiful. The woman who begged for a drink.

  Damn. It.

  Shortly after I started to slam cabinets, he came into the kitchen — condom discarded but still nude, a satisfied smile on his face. He stepped up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. I jerked in his embrace.

  “What is it?” He released me but then kissed my cheek.

  I needed to erase all of this. My life. My existence. Maybe I could go do some paperwork at the shelter. There was always something to do there.

  “I'm thirsty,” I said. Half truth. Half lie.

  I stood in the center of my ugly two-by-four kitchen while lover boy poured me a glass of water. Snatching it out of his hand, I swallowed bullshit down my throat just like I did every other day of the miserable week.

  TWO

  "Your eyes are a shade of green I've never seen," he said as he handed me the joint.

  I took a hit and flitted my green-green eyes his way. Flitted. I didn't do that shit. It must have been the pot. And it must have been fucking good because the last time I’d smoked, it had only made me paranoid and crazy. Maybe this man was changing me, and the grand thing about that was that I hardly knew him. I liked it that way. What did I know?

  I should make a list in my notebook…

  1. He didn't like to talk about his family. (Neither did I.)

  2. His eyes were blue as sapphires, and his jaw was kind and rough from several days’ worth of dark stubble. (Did he keep a razor?)

  3. He kept his paint tubes and brushes clean and his ink-colored hair messy.

  4. He fed stray cats behind the building, using whatever money he scrounged selling portraits or landscapes on the sidewalks of Venice Beach.

  5. I met him at the shelter.

  List over.

  Because my father, Declan Drazen, would surely shit a brick if he knew detail number five. My entire family would. Six sisters. One brother. My mother. My sister Fiona would rub my nose in it for eternity.

  Fuck them all.

  Jeremiah wasn't the first homeless person I had offered my roof to, a place to regain dignity, get a new start in life. Even if the new start meant sleeping on top of my old, worn-out sofa with a simple cotton sheet for cover in my tiny matchbox apartment.

  I decided right then — watching Jeremiah ready his brushes — that even though I had already let him inside my body, even though he had seen my notebook, I would not share my bed with him.

  That would be a novelty.

  He put the joint in his mouth, inhaled, and squirted paint from different tubes onto the cardboard.

  I needed to add something to the list.

  6. His hands. Calloused and wide, with just the right amount of hair on the knuckles.

  "I want to do your eyes," he said, blowing out clouds of smoke with those strange words. He swirled the paints together on the strip of cardboard then snuffed the joint out beside the pools of acrylic. "I don’t know if I can get the color exactly right." He peered into my irises, making me uncomfortable. "What kind of green would you call that?" he paused. "Jesus." He peered deeper, locking his blue gaze on me for what felt like an eternity. "They’re like emeralds."

  "Don't paint me, Jeremiah."

  He shifted in his seat, dipped his brush into the goo, and applied it to the canvas. "Don't be self-conscious. It doesn't suit you."

  I watched his fingers work the brush. He hypnotized me. His jaw was rigid, angled. He held his thighs taut and steady, focused on each detail he created out of nothing.

  He was a controlled mess of functional creativity.

  Like me.

  I wanted to write him. Not just lists. Write his soul in words and then lie down in the letters and fall asleep.

  "Where did you grow up?" I asked.

  He eyeballed me then flicked his stare back to the board, toward the shape of a woman's head. Mine. "Virginia."

  "Really?"

  "Really. Just outside DC. My father worked for the Pentagon."

  "Is he alive?"

  He stopped moving the brush but kept his eyes straight ahead.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I can be blunt."

  He smiled. "It's the oldest story in the book, Deirdre." Starting in again with the brush, his movements a symphony, an ease I needed to replicate, he continued, "I wanted to paint or act or dance, and so I moved out here with nothing. He said if I left, that was it. The end of our family arrangement."

  The face he was working on became harsher, the cheekbones drawn, the woman's presence almost menacing.

  "Did your mother support you?"

  "I was seven when she died."

  I stood and began to pace. My upper lip became consumed by teeth.

  Did I still have a bottle of something somewhere? Under the mattress? In the old suitcase at the top of my closet? He could use a drink.

  I continued to chew on my lip as if it were a stubborn cap of Stoli I desperately needed to unscrew.

  "Sit," he commanded. "I need to see those cat eyes. And back up. Stop looking at what I'm doing. It's a surprise."

  I let out a breath as I released my tender lip and sat, hands planted on my thighs.

  "Geez, Dee. Maybe you should light another joint. Loosen up." His shoulders shook. "Relax. This isn't church." He stole a glance at my black cross.

  I touched it. The texture and shape pacified me more than any substance could.

  "Do you want to tell me about yours now?"

  "My what?"

  He
smirked. "Your family."

  "Fuck. No."

  He eyeballed me and chuckled. "Where are you from?”

  I laughed. Insidiously.

  "Are you poking fun at me, Dee?"

  "No." I covered my mouth then tried and failed to tuck my curls back.

  "Shall I make up your story as I make up your eyes?"

  Leaning forward, I craned my neck to try to see those fucking eyes he wouldn't shut up about.

  "Uh-uh. No peeking. Sit back. Be a good girl."

  I scoffed while still habitually trying to make the fire stay put. Why did I have to be the only one in the family with fucking curls?

  "You are one of many," he began.

  Great. He wasn't kidding. The painter was also a storyteller.

  "You're not the youngest. Maybe … middle-ish. Your family came from money, but you like it here." He glanced around my tiny box. "You need to help people. You can't stop yourself from doing the things you love. From righting wrongs. You have compulsions."

  "Are you done gazing into your stupid crystal ball?"

  "I am done," he said. "Stand up."

  "Why?"

  "Do it." He yanked his eyes toward the canvas, indicating I now had permission to peek at his hard work. "Look at your eyes, baby."

  I did.

  Remaining seated behind me, he placed his hands on my hips … just enough to let me know he existed.

  I couldn't comprehend what I was seeing. It wasn't like peering into a mirror. This thing he had created with his fuck-all hands said things to me.

  It told me I was something when I knew I was nothing.

  I couldn't keep listening to it. It screamed at me. And as I walked away from the portrait, a tear slid down my cheek. I wiped it off quickly, folded my arms across my chest, and tortured my lip some more. "How did you know?"

  "What?"

  I looked over my shoulder. He had put my decorative face on the floor and already had another bright white square on the easel. A clean one. An undisturbed one.

  I heaved an enormous sigh of anything but relief. Most of my next words came out as a loud exhale of carbon dioxide. "I have six sisters. One brother. I was born here — in this shithole excuse of a city where humanity is concerned about blowjobs and lip jobs and where everyone is a fucking commodity.”