Nothing hurts. Kate is alive, and she's safe, and she's well, so this must be a dream. There's no dirt in the creases of her elbows or powdering her hairline; the seedy roadside smell has been washed from her hair and she smells like lilies. (Smells like a funeral home in here, Richie had said, nose wrinkling.) Her blouse is a white heap on the hotel bathroom floor; her jeans are dripping dry over the towel rail. This place is nicer than anywhere Dad would have ever taken them, and it shows in the towels and the floors, the paintings on the walls, the television on the far side of the room sitting untouched and inert. No roaches, no unexplained stains. The paper-capped drinking glasses have never been touched. The cigarettes on the bedside table have never been smoked. The gun on the dresser has yet to be fired, and here they are.

The two of them don't talk here. That, too, has something dreamlike about it, and it makes it easier, more muted and a little less volatile -- he won't get called anything he doesn't like, and she doesn't have to remember how he sounded barking threats or talking tough, and really he could be anyone, anyone at all. No noise. No questions.

Kate's spread-eagle on a California king-size bed. He starts at her ankles and works his way up. His lips press against the dry white side of her foot and drag against the sharp knob of her ankle, fluttering against the web of veins that show up blue, against the tough skin of her calf and the tenderer places up north from there. She squirms back and parts her knees to let him up and when his mouth brushes the soft spot on the inside of her knee there's a spasm and a sharp jerk and a burst of unfamiliar heat at the junction of her thighs that sends her reeling. Either Richie feels it too, through the contagion of their touch like a burst of static on the radio, or she's just kneed him in the face in response, because he drops his head like he's ashamed. She wishes she could reach down and press her hands through his hair -- pictures it clearly in her mind, though she's too dead-tired and unstrung even to sit up.

She's afraid to know where his head's at. Richie Gecko is a killer and he knows how women fit together, he has taken women apart. This is an exercise in trust. His cautiousness has her all strung out and she tries to urge him on without words, which makes for a whole minefield of its own -- his hands know where they ought to go, big and broad, and they course with energy. For a moment one of them rests square against her flank, scratchy with bandages, and perversely she recalls a scene from church, some baptism or some laying-on of hands. People wouldn't do it if it didn't feel good.

Kate shuts her eyes --

(she's thirteen years old and she's been homeschooled all her life and now she's sitting here sticking to a sweating vinyl bus seat while a boy she doesn't know hisses in her ear --)

--and when she opens them Richie's head is in her lap, her naked belly stands out in goosebumps. Kate looks down at him over a landscape of breakable flesh and feels his admiration like a hand passing over her. She wants to see what he sees. He has hunkered down before her like a chained animal and she has permitted it. His glossy dark hair has been knocked askew, and a muscle batters in his jaw, whether from benign concentration or the effort of not tearing her to pieces she isn't sure. Richie is strangely determined to get this, more than anything else she can give him. Kate is breathing tight small breaths through a throat petrified with fearful want and he is--

(you know what cunnilingus is? do you--

she has heard the word, but she does not know, and a boy's sharp knees are pressing through the vinyl of the seat back and every bump in the Texas road jostles them hard into her own back. she can smell his breath. she prays for him to leave her alone, and her hands grip tight in her skirted lap.)

--nosing against the roundest part of her thigh, plucking up little pinches with his lips. His hands on her legs are incongruously still; she's felt more exciting caresses at church basement lock-ins. He doesn't try to feel up her soft skin or work his fingers under the elastic of her panties, which are printed with little gold keys. Keys, for God's sake.

Richie is decidedly single-minded. In her mind's eye she's watching him worship someone else entirely, transfixed with the poison arrow of another woman's look -- but Kate is no vision, she's soft and prone and belly-up on a hotel bed. This must be grotesque, seen from outside, the preacher's daughter giving it up to a psychopath. From the inside, the two of them are complete, and locked close together for a good reason.

Maybe he wants to make atonement for the other places he's put his mouth. Kate imagines the smell of liquor, raw and sweet. Something else twines up through the corridors of her imagination -- something like smoke.

He mouths at her through her panties, sending her squirming and locking her legs together as if she can bar him, as if she even wants to when she hardly knows what this is except that she wants it. Richie's glasses lie folded against the patterned bedspread. Kate palms them and squeezes until the frames cut into her hand. Her own vision is starting to go blurry from mis-focus and she tries to focus on the little slip of bare skin visible beneath his collar, the trimmed-up nape of his neck, the impossible breadth of his back. Anything but the insistent motion of his mouth and the awareness of teeth behind lips like a folded pocketknife, waiting to sink deep into her baby-fat leg and to scratch out her heart. Like a monster's. She must try not to be afraid, or he'll smell it on her like chlorine, if she can't make it good for him by wiggling around or faking something noisy. Seth might have fallen for it, but he'd have screwed her and gotten it over with. Seth would never have laid her out and kissed his way up to her knees except to make her laugh, or to scare her. Seth isn't here.

(you know what cunnilingus is? it's when you kiss a girl on her cunt--

She is thirteen and has never heard this word before. It makes her flinch but she doesn't say a thing.)

This isn't what she wants to remember now. She wants to remember something nicer, some moment of tenderness or affinity or innocent desire that she can extend to him as a peace offering. To strike a chord and listen for a hopeful echo. Her mother used to teach a Bible study out of the Fuller family basement all about courtship and marriage, all about what married couples could do to please each other. It didn't include anything like this, Kate would be willing to bet. She is holding her breath.

His nose and mouth are pressed to the cleft of her, his breath damp and snuffling. Kate arches her back and digs in her heels against the hospital-clean bedsheets. Her hands dig in until her knuckles stand out white. This isn't happening. This isn't happening here, to her.

His own thoughts stray into Kate's, like a cup overflowing, and she doesn't envy any of it. Anticipation buzzes through him like electricity, edged with sick dizzy insanity, and the steady effort of deliberate focus is like a held breath. It hurts, and makes everything a little darker around the edges. He's trying not to think of anyone else -- the other woman, whoever she is, or Seth, wherever he may be. Kate has abundant experience of having to clear her mind before her thoughts can wander, and she tries to will some of that into him, to send it from her veins to his. A little quiet.

Richie stops before he gets to the bare heart of her, just to breathe, head raised and cheek against her thigh. Dark eyes blinking in the yellow artificial light. Maybe they were blue before, but they're dark now.

She peels down her underwear before he can -- rip it off her, or whatever it is he'd do if allowed his own way. Just as well, because he is afraid to touch her with his hands. He hangs over her like a lead blanket at the doctor's office, and kisses down the cradle of her hip. A lily among brambles, glossy and smooth and thornless, navel like a winecup -- but Song of Solomon is holy love from start to finish, joyous and passionate sacred verse, and none of this feels pure. She doesn't want to stop.

A stiff finger slides in wetly and makes a methodical sweep, like he's inspecting a lock or cleaning a gun. Something in her tightens up with a twinge; he murmurs an apology, but she waves a bloodless hand, all clear, go on. Go on.

He has teeth in his mouth and could bite her just as easily as kissing her. The press of them against her clit is almost too much to bear, and his tongue works against her in long steady strokes -- almost raspy, like a cat's, she hadn't guessed that and couldn't have possibly, how wrong is that -- and she breaks the silence with a broken little cry. As much surprise as anything else. Wet traceries of skin on skin, awful and fraught as a finger on the trigger; she can hear his sounds too, sharp and determined, and tries to imagine what it is he feels beyond the ambient static she's picking up from their conjunction.

He is sick, he is alone, he drinks her up with mad dedication -- thirstily. She is sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb. She is better than wine. She closes her eyes and sees scarlet.

Kate is alive, she is safe, she is well. She is lying back and letting a man eat her up. He doesn't stop, or he must feel how close she is because his grip on her bare leg tightens with a flutter and something inside her breaks loose in a spasm. It isn't fireworks or blinding lights or heavenly choirs, it is a tight core of painful exquisiteness and she comes gasping.

(Better than wine, maybe, but hardly better than blood.)

Not gone, not bled out in a second but diffused like spray, that awful sick-sweet warmth bathing her whole body like a pain. Richie rolls over onto his back, smack-dab between her legs. His long body lies half off the bed and half on; his head lies heavy against her leg, where a red smear stands out -- his, not hers, from his ripped-up palm. Her hands find his pitiful cheek, half-blindly. Fingertips brush skin in a half-hearted caress, and she can almost feel him tremble.

Kate looks down at him through a smudge of eyelashes. His nose and cheeks and mouth are shining wet; for a moment she imagines them dark with blood.