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I come.

I come so hard my eyes roll back. My whole body seizes up on that dresser, my pussy clamping on his cock in long hard pulses, my legs locked around him. I scream. I scream into his hand till my throat hurts, and he holds it there, crushing it over my mouth, and I’m shaking and shaking and he’s still fucking me.

He comes deep. Buried all the way inside me. I feel him jerk. I feel it hot and thick, pumping into me, and he grinds into me with every pulse, pushing it deeper, his hand spread over my belly under my dress, pressing down.

Keeping it there.

He stays inside me a long time. Longer than he’s ever stayed. Holding me on that dresser with his hand on my stomach and his mouth against my ear, breathing hard.

When he finally takes his hand off my mouth, I can’t talk. I can’t do nothing but breathe.

Downstairs, Mama’s voice comes up the stairs.

“Dylan! Pie!”

* * *

We go back down.

I’m in my old sweats. My church dress is balled up in my bag. My legs are shaking so bad I’m holding the banister. He walks down behind me, tucking his shirt back in.

Everybody’s in the living room watching the game. Nobody looks up.

Except Mama.

She’s in her chair with her slice of pie on her lap and her glasses on the end of her nose. She looks at me. At my face. At my sweats. At the way I’m walking.

Then she looks at Sasha behind me.

She takes a long, slow bite of pie.

“Mm,” she says. That’s all.

I want to die. I want to crawl under that house and die.

When we leave, she walks us out to the porch. Tasha’s already in the Civic with her music on. Misha’s holding the door of the Escalade. It’s dark, and the streetlights are on, and Mr. Washington’s still on his porch.

Mama hugs me. Long and hard. Then she holds my face in both her hands, her soft hands that smell like Jergens, and looks in my eyes.

“Are you happy, baby?”

I open my mouth.

I think about the gate. The guards on their knees in the driveway. The man bleeding on the white rug. The trunk. The glass. His hand over my mouth upstairs, not ten minutes ago, in my bedroom.

I think about waking up to the ocean. Sleeping eight hours. Not soaking my feet in the staff bathroom at two in the morning. The way he looked at Mama tonight and didn’t back down.

The way he looks at me.

“I don’t know, Mama,” I whisper. “I think so.”

She studies my face a long time.

Then she lets go and turns to Sasha.

“You heard her,” she says. “Think so. That’s not good enough. You got work to do.”

“Yes, ma’am.”