Me, I guess.
There was no getting around it.
My nipples hardened into jeweled peaks every time I remembered being filled up, clutched tight, and fucked in the face. It was hard to understand that my deviancy could exist separately from my identity, but I forced myself to carefully detach the two, like stuck pages in a magazine.
I did research on it, found out it was called pain play, rough sex, Domination and submission.
I found examples of deviancy in art, because that was a medium I always turned to for solace and for understanding. I found a Rembrandt sketch of a monk breaking his vows with another man in a field of corn. My favorite artist, Pablo Picasso, had a rather astonishing collection of erotic art, including La Doleur, a painting depicting a woman shamelessly fellating a man in the same manner I had sucked off Tiernan. Artists from Michelangelo to Cezanne and Correggio who had painted scenes of the beautiful mortal, Leda, seduced or raped by Zeus in the form of a swan. The same Japanese artist known for the famous The Great Wave off Kanagawa created an erotic tangling of a nude female and a massive sea monster.
It proved to me that humanity had always been transfixed by the sharper edges and darker corners of sexuality. It soothed me to know that if I was a deviant, so were many of the brilliant artists I’d idolized since my youth.
My sexual predilections were mollified, but not the painful, unreliable stirrings of my heart.
I couldn’t research how I felt about Tiernan because I didn’t know how to put it into words.
I was, in a sense, captivated by him. In the way a child was afraid of the monsters under his bed yet refused to look beneath it, to banish them in the light forevermore. Some part of me liked that I didn’t understand him, that he could be cruel and heartless, then unquestionably, erratically kind.
Case in point, the day after he fucked my throat raw and told me I was a better whore than my mother, he took Brando to an appointment with the top neurological surgeon in New York City. They had him on a new regime of drugs meant to help with the increasing frequency of his seizures. They also had him booked in for laser interstitial thermal therapy in January when he was off school for winter break.
I’d locked myself in a bathroom stall at Sacred Heart Academy in the middle of my fourth-period math class to cry when Brando had called from Tiernan’s phone to tell me the news.
And then today, when I’d returned home from school exhausted from a chemistry exam I’d stayed up the entire night prior to study for because I needed perfect scores in the subject to go on to university for art conservatism, he’d rocked me again.
I’d stared at the lion’s head door knocker for a long moment while I gathered my composure in case I saw Tiernan and was forced to interact with him before I pushed into the house.
Chaos met me.
The house rang like a cacophony of bells with child and adult laughter and a distinct noise that was unmistakably canine.
A deep, alerting bark.
I blinked as my eyes adjusted to the dark of the entrance hall, then gaped as clamor sounded in the hall leading back to the kitchen and seconds later a streak of grey shot into the hall between the legs of a suit of armor.
It came bounding toward me on legs capped with white feet, its compact body shaking with the force of its wagging tail.
The dog didn’t slow down as it reached me, barreling into my legs, then weaving around them like a herding sheepdog.
“What the hell?” I asked before I could curb my language because I noticed Brando had come into the hall after it, followed shortly after by Walcott and Ezra.
“Anca! He heard you at the door and he got so excited,” Brando cried, laughing with pure joy as he sprinted across the hall to my side, then sunk to his knees.
The dog abandoned me immediately, jumping up to place his paws on Brando’s shoulders so he could lick at his face. My little brother giggled, the sound scouring through me.
Brando had always wanted a dog but we hardly had the money to fend for our family of three as it was, let alone after introducing vet bills and dog paraphernalia.
“Whose dog is this?” I whispered, suddenly as hoarse as I’d been the day after Tiernan fucked my throat.
But I already knew, with sinking clarity, whose dog it was.
“Mine!” Brando cried as the dog pushed him onto his back and peppered his face and hands with doggy kisses. “His name is Picasso, like after your favorite painter. Do you like him?”
He was worried I wouldn’t, knowing I’d spent years telling him that he couldn’t get a dog. Jealousy and resentment warred with gratitude in my chest, a tug-of-war over the swampy ground of my heart.
“He’s beautiful,” I murmured, which was true.
He looked to be a silvery grey pit bull mix of some kind, with big blue eyes and a sloppy grin. He wasn’t nearly tragic enough to be named after Picasso, but I loved that Brando had tried to think of a name I’d like too.
“He’s a trained seizure dog,” Walcott explained as the two gentlemen crossed the hall to our side and Ezra closed the open door behind me. “Ostensibly, he should be able to detect when Brando begins to have an aura and alert us or protect him until someone can get there. Picasso will lie against his body to keep him stable during the seizure or clear the space around him of clutter so he doesn’t harm himself.”
“What?” I whispered, something indistinct clutching my throat.
Walcott’s kind eyes were warm on me as he stepped closer to squeeze my shoulder. “We all saw what happened in the kitchen and none of us want that to happen again. Tiernan started searching out the best training facilities the night after Brando’s episode. When it happened again last week, he paid to bypass the waitlist.” Walcott shrugged as if it was no big deal, as if my heart wasn’t exploding in my chest. “We all have to have training for the next three weeks to make sure we know how to handle Picasso, but after that, he should be able to make a real difference to Brando’s life.”
There was something wrong with my knees. They wobbled like poorly set gelatin. Before I could lock them tight, they collapsed, taking me to the ground. Seconds later, Picasso himself was on me, licking my chin.
“He likes you,” Brando told me proudly, scooting over on his bum so that he could wedge himself between my splayed legs and rest against my chest. He called Picasso to him and the dog happily curled up on his lap with his chops on Brando’s chest, tongue lolling.
“Do you like him, Anca?” he asked again, tipping his head back, then giggling as the dog licked his chin. “Can I keep him? Tiernan told me it’s my late birthday present!”
Emotions clogged my throat in an ugly, swollen mass that made it hard to breathe let alone talk, so I only nodded and kissed the side of my little brother’s curly head.
Ezra caught my eyes and signed slowly because I was still getting the hang of ASL, Tiernan is in his office if you want to speak to him.
He meant if I wanted to say thank you.
I flinched slightly at the mention of his office, the scene of my sexual crimes. Slowly, I shook my head at him and hugged my brother tight before I let go and surged to my feet.
“I’m going to go for a run,” I declared, desperate to get out of the house before I broke down for everyone to hear.
Ezra and Walcott frowned in tandem, the latter saying, “I don’t think Tiernan would like that. He, uh, doesn’t want you gallivanting around Bishop’s Landing. It can be a dangerous place.”