Ashs fire, p.24
Ash's fire, page 24
“Yes,” he said.
“I don’t care what happens, I’m not deserting you. I’m coming to see you.”
“Please don’t,” he said. “Not now. I can’t. I’m angry.”
“Then work it out when I’m there, I can take it.”
“I’m not going to take my anger out on you, Jordan, are you crazy?”
“Yeah, maybe I am,” she said, “I’m not giving up on you, Ari, I don’t care what you say or what you do, I’m coming over later tonight.”
Simon was nowhere to be seen. She threw some bills on the table, and left. It was time to do the best thing on the worst day of her life.
****
“You came,” Ari said as she walked through his door that night. “I’ve just been charged with murder, and yet, you came.” He looked ashen.
Jordan tilted her head back in as good a rendition of her sassy look as she could. “You don’t scare me, Maestro!” she said, aiming for lightness, missing the mark.
Still, she was there. If there was one moment in all of eternity in which Ari needed her loyalty, this was that moment. If there was ever a man to whom she wanted to give her presumption of his innocence, Ari was that man. I believe in you, Ari Ash, and I will prove it to you.
She hugged him with all her strength, clung to him, but hard as she tried to mesh with him, she still felt the wall between them. Jordan’s tormented thoughts scurried around in her head like frenzied black spiders. Hundreds of little spiders, thousands of tiny, bristly legs, raced inside her, spreading anguish throughout her body. For a brief moment, she wanted to ask him if he was at Crystal’s studios. She was hoping he would still say yes, I forgot to tell Hargill I went there because—and here he would state some innocuous reason, and they would both laugh about it. Please, Ari, she begged him in her head, please say it. All I have to go by is my heart. There was nothing to ask, this wasn’t a matter of evidence, or motive, or anything legal. This was a matter of personal strength in the face of adversity.
But Ari was silent.
“How are you holding up?” she asked him gently.
“Not so good,” he said, and his voice was flat, its resonance gone. “This inaction is extremely hard. And I’m so angry, I’ve never been this angry in my entire life.”
“My brave sweetie,” she said softly, holding a tight rein on her voice. “I admire your self-control.”
Jordan buried her face deep in his mass of tangled hair and breathed in deeply its enticing scent of wet leaves and resin and dust. You’re hiding, you’re afraid of him. She pulled her face out of his curls and let herself feel. The bright and lively uncertainty that was a happy part of their relationship turned into a cold sea of fear. She felt as if she was drugged, as if reality wasn’t real at all, but rather, a series of alternate choices. She searched Ari’s face for the answer but she knew that the only place to look was inside her. She reached up and kissed his lips, then deepened her kiss.
Jordan’s body woke up, punching a big hole through the invisible barrier that clung to her. The barrier shattered. She pushed Ari towards the sofa and sat on him, kissing him, over and over, hard. She bit him. Swimming in his mouth, she made big, dizzying swoops, her hands tearing at his long, soft curls. Tumultuous waves broke inside her, drenching the spiders in her head.
The sky outside was a flat black. No stars shone, and the orange haze swam up and reflected in the thick cloud cover. The embers of Ari’s sexy, inquisitive gaze were nearly extinguished. His eyes shone a dark, impermeable light. And yet, even in her doubt and fear and confusion, Jordan wanted him more than she ever did. Every muscle in her body reached, every tendon stretched, every skin cell cried out. Her insides thudded dully, yearning. A deep, disorienting voice that resided within her since the first time she touched him, yelled, feed me! Connect with me! Jordan’s body began its familiar climb from hot to scorching heat.
Jordan locked her thigh around his and pushed him down on his back.
“Get away from me,” he said, a look of anguish in his eyes. “Go back to your husband, Jordan, you don’t belong here.”
“No!” she cried into his face. “You can’t make me!”
“I’ve killed people, many people, I’m a killer,” he choked.
“Shut up! Nothing you can do will make me go away!” And she covered his mouth with hers to shut him up.
Jordan threw all of her clothes on the floor. Ari lay, dead like driftwood. She rubbed her naked skin on his clothed body with the mounting frustration of a teenager. Her desire grew inside her like a beanstalk on steroids. She tossed aside evidence and indictments and suspicions and old army stories. She wanted Ari, her Ari, and she wanted him now. Frantically, she pulled at his clothes, and softened, he let her. Jordan pushed his pants down, pulled his T-shirt over his head, and he helped her. Last came off his fitted boxers, thrown to the floor, ignored. They could’ve been pink with golden hearts and she wouldn’t have noticed.
Finally, Jordan could rub herself against his naked skin, against his hairy chest and muscular belly, and so she did, with mounting urgency. She bit his mouth, and sucked on it as if it held the last of the planet’s oxygen. Her hands grabbed his face, then his hair, his shoulders, his arms, tearing at patches of skin, trying to catch muscle with it. Her teeth bit his flesh and tasted his skin, warm and masculine and Ari-scented. She felt fear and anxiety and love and desire and a myriad other emotions, all spinning around her, whirling inside her, throwing her upside down. Jordan rubbed her entire body on him, frenzied, dazed. Her nipples chafed against his chest hair, the skin on her belly creased and stretched painfully against him. She felt his hard masculinity pushing all the way from her pubic bone to above her bellybutton, and she pressed hard against it and then, harder.
Ari rose, grabbed hold of her, and carried her to his bedroom. He threw her on the bed and took her breast in his mouth. His teeth bit her as his whole mouth sucked on her, taking in more and more of her breast. Jordan cried out. Searing arrows shot from her nipple to her entire breast, then to her chest, and on to the farthest reaches of her body. Ari’s hands held her waist, squeezing her until she lost her breath. As time stretched she felt his mouth get hungrier, his hands holding on tighter, and his eyes came up to look at hers. Jordan stared at a man losing his control.
Ari pulled her leg over his head, and flipped her on her belly. He reached for his t-shirt, rolled it and used it to swiftly tie her wrists to the iron headboard.
From behind her shoulder, Jordan stared at him. The spiders in her veins woke up, their legs twitching.
He looked at her face briefly, but the corners of his luscious mouth did not turn up in their familiar mischievous smile.
A rush of adrenalin shot through Jordan’s veins. Why would he be playing games now? Was this a game? He controlled her every move with nothing more than a glance, so why tie her up? And she couldn’t see behind her. Jordan tensed and her heart pounded.
With one fluid motion Ari parted her legs and pushed himself into her, hard. Her fear of the unknown excited her. Her inability to resist excited her. Her not seeing him made her heart race. He leaned into her, and pushed against her in slow, calculated, strong motions. Slowly, methodically, he reached deep within her, pushing her down into the bed, making her feel pliant, malleable. Every upswing into her, shot sweet pain from deep inside her. With every push, Jordan released a soft moan, sank a little lower, melted a little further.
All of a sudden, he pulled himself out of her, and she gasped.
“Come back,” she moaned softly, but she couldn’t see Ari’s response. He was silent, somewhere behind her. Jordan’s heart pounded, her breath was shallow. She heard him rummage, and realized he was rifling through her bag. She was on her stomach, tied up, frightened by his dark mood, but her body ached for him, vibrated, hungry. She took shallow breaths, her heart pounding, disoriented, and so aroused that if she wasn’t tethered to the bed she would have floated in the air.
Ari came back to sit on the bed behind her. She heard the familiar sound of her tub of body-butter opened, and smelled the cheerful, summery scent of lemon-verbena as it diffused through the air. She heard the squishy sound of dolling out of the thick cream and then she felt Ari’s hands, wet and smooth and cool, sliding on her skin, so sunny, and soothing, until its temperature evened with hers. He slathered her back, and thighs, and finally, her behind, in big sweeping motions of his powerful hands, like trapeze acrobats flying through the air. His touch changed, and his rubbing became purposeful, methodical, harsh. She felt his hands slide between her butt cheeks and she tensed. Jordan strained to look at him, to read his eyes, but couldn’t.
He penetrated her behind with his slow, steady, resolute thumb. Jordan curved her back involuntarily, groaned. She didn’t know this touch, and it set her on fire. She wasn’t conscious, yet not unconscious, stepping through a new door and into unknown territory. Ari held her down with his hand on her back, and leaned forward to whisper in her ear, “Easy now.” He bit her neck, taking small nips at first, then bigger ones, leaning into her, all the while thrumming his thumb in her behind, making her wild with this sharp, unfamiliar touch.
When she stopped bucking, he glided his other hand under her, and found his way to the exact position on her clitoris. Jordan gasped. Ari began stroking her with his expert fingers, while penetrating her behind, each hand with its own rhythm, its own music, creating a wild harmony.
After a while, he gently pulled both his hands away from her and again, she gasped. “Don’t stop,” she begged, not seeing, not wanting anything but his magical hands on her, in her. Ari opened the tub of butter again. Again, he glided over her skin meticulously, evening out temperatures, soothing her skin. And again the soft and happy scent filled her nostrils. Jordan anxiously awaited his next move. Her body filled with so much anticipation, every muscle stretched as far is it could, bruising against her bones.
Ari leaned on her, whispered in her ear, “Are you ready?” and she nodded her head, surrendered to him. And then she felt his erection against her behind, push into her, firmly, slowly, letting her relax into him with each, slow wave. Jordan was electrified. Her entire body pinpointed into a searing center deep inside her. As Ari developed a slow rhythm, she adjusted to his breath, and adjusted to his manhood, to his weight, to his teeth in her back, to his hands, she felt like putty, molded into the shape he wished for her to be.
When he was deep inside her, his hand reached under her again, found her clit and played fire music on her. Jordan slipped out of her awareness and into an alternate state. She lost all knowledge of life outside of Ari’s weight, the deep, searing pleasure-pain he caused inside her, his teeth on her neck. Her only reality was her body, obeying Ari’s command, accepting his hands, hearing and reacting to every nuance of his motions like an eager piano key. Jordan was a body and nothing else. Pleasure, wilder than she thought possible, engulfed her. The room around her disappeared, the lights were no longer blazing, she had no idea where she was and it truly didn’t matter. She had turned into pure, wild pleasure.
Her hands were bound, her body was held down, yet she felt completely free. Holding on to nothing at all, Jordan’s body soared. Slowly, as Ari’s motions grew deeper, harder, pain started spreading inside her. It was pain as never experienced before, pain that penetrated her soul, and challenged her to seek more. Pain and pleasure meshed. Ari’s weight on her, his motions inside her behind, on her clit, his teeth buried in her neck, drove her into ecstasy.
In one spectacular moment, the ground dropped from under her, and she fell, swirling, climaxing like never before, tumbling into a new reality.
As the flood subsided, Jordan burst into tears, and great big sobs escaped from her chest and washed her clean of the boundless fear that filled her.
As she cried, Ari released her hands, turned her over gently and wrapped her in his arms. He held her, and kissed her eyes, and whispered in her ear, “Sweetie, it’s okay, cry, my sweet.”
“I will always want you, no matter what happens,” she said to him between sobs.
Ari stood, walked away, and Jordan heard the water running. When he came back he lay next to her. “Hug me,” he said.
Jordan hugged him with all the strength that she had left in her softened body. She rocked him rhythmically, kissing him a thousand little kisses. Renewed, Ari rose to lie on top of her, gently slid his hard manhood into her. Slowly, deeply, it was his turn to rock. Ari made gentle love to her, cresting and falling, gathering and releasing, again and again, and she met him, pushing down against him. Deeper and deeper, he bore into her, gazing into her eyes. Jordan kept looking, holding his eyes with the power of her love for him. And when he quietly climaxed, Ari’s eyes stared at hers, clear, full of love, and their color changed back to the color of the Mediterranean Sea on a bright winter’s day.
Chapter 36
Monday, December 10
The next morning, Jordan knocked on Judith’s door.
“I know you don’t have much time,” Jordan said, sporting her raccoon look.
Already in her dark gray work suit, her kids already at school, Judith had time for one cup of coffee and a cigarette.
“A cup of coffee and a hug?” Judith asked, hugging her friend.
Jordan swallowed her tears.
At Judith’s professional-quality espresso machine, she asked, “Not much sleep, again, what’s going on?”
Heartbroken, Jordan told her friend about the charges, the evidence, about her fear, about the time that was running out faster than Simon’s Challah on Friday morning.
“You haven’t told him about Hargill’s threat?” Judith asked.
“No, he has enough to worry about.”
Judith stopped to give her friend another hug. “It’s all on your shoulders,” she said. She loaded the espresso machine with her favorite blend and turned on the steamer. “You know I love you, and that I’m here for you, right?”
Jordan nodded.
The machine started hissing and Judith lifted the milk jug onto the nozzle.
“I’m so afraid for him,” Jordan said. “He keeps everything bottled up inside, he doesn’t share with me how he feels, probably not with anyone, he must feel so trapped, so helpless, I can’t even imagine how horrible it must be. And I can’t help him, and now there’s a trial in less than a month. And he doesn’t have an alibi and there’s that coin that puts him in Crystal’s studio.”
Fragrant lattés in hand, they walked outside. The birds chirped, and the air was cool and dry.
“Have you thought of a frame up?” Judith looked worried as they walked out to her patio. Judith rarely looked worried.
“We’ve found absolutely nothing that suggests someone else was involved. Sam put the best people on it.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, dear.” Judith lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.
“It makes no sense. How can we not know what happened? How is that possible? I need to know what happened!” Jordan drank half her coffee in one gulp, not tasting it. “I can’t live like this, in a cloud of doubts and suspicions.”
“Ari keeps saying that he didn’t do it?” Judith asked.
“Of course!” Jordan stared at her friend. “Do you think he did it?”
Judith’s dark, slanted eyes narrowed into two thin lines just a little thicker than her eyeliner. “No, I don’t, but what I think doesn’t matter. It’s the court that matters.”
“Sam is an excellent, excellent lawyer, but Ari can end up in jail,” Jordan’s voice broke. “It will kill him.” She got up, walked over to Judith’s kitchen, poured herself a glass of water. Then she came back and paced. Judith smoked.
“Why is Hargill after Ari? What does he want? Not the truth, obviously.”
“He’s interested in convicting at any cost?” Judith asked.
“Hargill is all about Hargill. I met him. I know the type. He’s out to get Ari the celebrity because it fits into his career path.”
“Do you hear yourself?” Judith blew smoke, staring at her friend. “Jordan, wake up! Ari’s confused you. Hargill is a respected homicide detective.”
“So, if I’m confused, why don’t you try to explain how come Mister Respected Detective is after Ari, when Ari has zero motive. You see why I need to find the truth? I can’t entrust Ari’s freedom to the hands of an unscrupulous cop.”
Judith looked at her sideways. “There’s Sam. He’ll do his best, won’t he?”
Jordan stared at her friend. “I hope so,” she said. A thought as black as the blackest night wormed itself into her head. Will Sam do his best?
Jordan thanked her friend for coffee, and left, more agitated than when she had arrived.
Sitting in traffic on her way to work, Jordan’s fears for Ari mixed with her fear of Sam. Her mind started screening those horrific scenes again: Shira being laughed at in school. Your mother is a whore, nasty kids would yell at her, she cheats on your father with a murderer. And Sam’s heart will break. And his business will be ruined.
And then the scene of Sam selling out Ari bled into her head. It will be a little thing, a small mistake. A hint thrown on the courtroom floor right after Sam will move out of their house. How can you think that of Sam? she screamed at herself. He will never, ever do something like that. Sam will never sell out his client! But the thought kept bouncing back. Sam will let the court convict, to keep Ari away from her.
Chapter 37
Sunday, December 16
She waited until Sunday with her decision. There’s no other way. You have to do it even if it kills you.
She called Ari, invited herself over, and then dragged herself four flights up the stairs, to Ari’s rooftop. She stood, looking at the deserted Gordon Beach.
“We can’t continue seeing each other, physically,” she said and couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of her own mouth. She looked at him, her eyes wide open, praying her courage would hold. She tried to push the searing pain out of her mind on yet another bloody Sunday.
