Page 24 of João
“I…I want you,” I said as simply as I could because that was what worked between us.
“Nah, you had me, but you decided this was more important. And I get it. I really do; kink is my life. So how could I be hurt by you choosing to want this side of me and not my heart?” His breath smelled like whiskey and broken promises, and I wanted to kiss away all the hurt he hid from me.
“How can it be this serious if you haven’t even touched me…kissed me?” There was no filter; everything tumbled out of me. My body dissolved against his. He dropped one arm from the wall, his fingers trailing slowly along my jaw, skimming down the column of my neck, then curling under my chin. My breath caught. With the slightest pressure, he tilted my face to his, and suddenly, there was nothing else to look at but him.
“Merda. So this is what you wanted? For me to fuck you on the first date? For me to take my liberties even though you clearly are a very, very good Christian girl, mi boa menina? You don’t want my kisses. And you certainly don’t want my touch.”
“Yes, I do…I do.” Goodness, he had me begging, and I wasn’t ashamed of it. I undulated my hips against his lower half to find him straining hard against his pants. A sharp hiss slipped between my teeth, and João’s eyes squeezed shut, lashes fanning against his cheek like soft, dark blades. How had I missed those pretty lashes? When he looked up again, dark obsidian orbs punched through me — raw, ravenous. I flinched as if I could dodge the hunger burning in his eyes.
“Nah…you don’t want this. You don’t want my dick.” At the words, he pressed his length against me, the heavy heat cradled at the bottom of my belly. I chased the contact, getting on my tippy toes to feel him there.
There.
“Mmm.” A sound emerged from deep down in my core.
He pulled back before I reached my goal and I almost screamed. “Because this dick, this mouth, these hands will ruin you. If I let you taste…there is no church-going simp nigga that will ever compare to me, and then what? Who’ll take care of your pussy and your heart once you’re done with your little kink experiment?”
Experiment, I… This was too much. I had no words. I just wanted a taste of his lips; nothing else mattered.
“João, this is not an experiment. This…this is important. I don’t want to live not knowing how it feels to explore this side of me.”
“Okay, and when you explore it, are you gonna stuff it back into a neat box and put it away? When you find a new church and a new man to guide you in the path of God, will you say goodbye to all of this and go back to pretending this is unimportant to you?” João’s lethal gaze scorched every inch of my skin. Only his touch would make it better, I was certain.
“It seems to be working for you…the compartmentalizing, I mean. You seem to leave your need for love and affection in a box and focus on your kink, so there. We’re two sides of the same coin.” I wasn’t certain where the venom came from but it coated every word, hurling it at him in quiet recrimination.
“Ahh, claws. I knew you had them in you.” He pressed his hard length against me once more, the brief contact calculated to drive me wild. But I held my ground, no matter how ruined my underwear was by the flood he caused and how much I wanted it off and him inside me, filling me until there were no words left between us.
“Come by the club. I’ll get you in. And you can get your season.” João stepped back away from me and all the air escaped my lungs. The heat in the room simmered down as a draft of cold sneaked up around me.
“Will you…are you gonna be my Dom?” I asked, dreading the answer. João swaggered over to the door, his broad back and shoulders tense. He faced me once more, his expression void of any emotion.
“I explained my boundaries loud and clear to you. And you know what I want from you. When you’re ready for that, let me know. In the meantime, do your exploring,” João said, then disappeared through the door, leaving me to pick up the pieces of what could have been but never would be.
the family
JOÃO
The aroma of charcoal and sizzling meat wafted around Jardel’s backyard, the white plumes emanating from his grill an invitation to relax and enjoy the warm Sunday in the company of my siblings.
Relaxation eluded me; memories of Gisele at the munch flooded my peace, robbing me of any calm. When I saw her arrive, every atom in my body demanded proximity to her, but her presence in Old Man Joe’s bar explained her short texts and busy brushoffs. She had probably worked her way to letting me down gently. A man knew when to take a step back, but fuck, I wasn’t ready to give up on what it could be between us.
“What’s up with you, o irmão mais velho?” Sal said in her accented Portuguese, sitting next to me on one of the lounge chaises. She’d taken to calling me her eldest brother after she retired calling me Master Q. That shit ain’t sit right with me, having my little sister call me by my kink honorific—no matter if her friends knew me by that name before she ever knew she was my sister. So I accepted the eldest brother’s nickname with equanimity.
“Nothing much, irmãzinha. And you? You good? How’s the new video game coming along?”
“A mess. A whole mess. I can’t get this part to flow the way I want it to; it’s so frustrating,” Sal said about the newest video game she was designing. Her husband Devon approached us, sitting next to her. Their road to each other had been a fucked-up one because of our dead father, may he rot in hell. What started from strife blossomed into a tight union, with Sal and Devon developing a shorthand where they both enhanced each other’s strengths and soothed their weaknesses. It was the type of union I aspired to, even though I hadn’t actively searched for it until Gisele.
“Don’t listen to nothin the likkle Empress says. Video game’s straight fiyah.” Devon laid his arm around Sal’s shoulder, then buried his face in her afro puff. I nodded, satisfied my sister was well taken care of. Devon and I hadn’t had the best of introductions, but trust had built in the past year of knowing each other. The feeling of well-being fizzled quickly, leaving the same emptiness that plagued me incessantly.
“João, João.” Sal pulled me away from my musings. Devon had wandered away toward the grill where Jardel, Joaquim, and Jonathon were chatting. Both Jardel and Joaquim were having a good day; lately, since our father’s death, both had had some tough days. Even though none of us had been close to Julio João Souza anymore, my younger siblings had said goodbye to any possibility of a reconciliation with the man who raised us. On the other side of the backyard, Solange and Nevaeh set up the table for our dinner, and again, a sense of completion, of work well done, flashed through me, chased by numbness.
“Hey, you know, we’re a little worried…” Sal started.
“Little sis, it ain’t anyone’s job to worry about me,” I reminded her. Sal’s scoff didn’t surprise me. None of us were known for letting things lie without having words.
“What do you mean it’s no one’s job to worry about you? That is ridiculous. You got all of us, and we do worry regardless of what delusions you’re under,” Sal said. In the corner of my eye, I could see Jardel and Joaquim watching and Joaquim moving toward us. Jardel stopped him, and Joaquim shrugged him off and nodded.
“I told you she was gonna do her bull in a china shop act,” Joaquim said loud enough for Sal to flash him her middle finger.
