Free Matala by Craig Holden Page A

don’t know.”
    â€œWe should get money while we still can. He may shut off the card.”
    â€œWould he do that?”
    â€œOh, yes.”
    â€œMaybe we can get the tickets, too.”
    â€œGood,” she said. “Let’s hurry. Then we can have another drink. Someplace that’s very, very not American.”

    W HEN THEY WENT IN, THE room was so dark that Darcy had to orient herself, even to find the bed. They were drunk, and buzzed as well from walking in the Venetian night and from the making out they’d done on another dark bridge somewhere in it. They’d held on to each other for a long time and pressed themselves together again, and she told him she wished it was an empty room they were going back to.
    She listened now to Will undressing and tried to see where Justine was lying. Then she noticed, in the corner of the room, a floating orange bead, an ember. Justine was in the chair by the window, smoking. The glow brightened when she drew on it and threw an orange cast over the bedspread and Will’s boxer-clad body as he got beneath it.
    â€œC’mon,” he whispered. He hadn’t noticed Justine. Where, Darcy wondered, did he think she was? But he was just drunk. He wasn’t thinking about anything. Well, maybe one thing.
    She thought to say something but didn’t know what exactly. And she thought Justine might speak to them, but she did not. The room remained silent. Will snuggled in and pulled the covers up to his neck. The orange light rose again, then fell.
    It made her suddenly angry, Justine sitting there like that, silently chastising them, watching them, judging them. Darcy knew she was judging them.
    She undressed—all the way. She hoped Justine could see every inch of it. She took off her shoes, socks, jeans, and the long-sleeved T-shirt she’d been wearing, and then she undid her bra, dropped it, and slipped out of her panties. She stood in the chill dark air so that when the cigarette glowed, it would illuminate all of her. Look at this, old woman.
    Then she went around and got in the bed. The cold new sheets felt wonderful against her bare skin. Will lay in the middle, where he had slept the night before, between the women, though now it was only the two of them. Darcy turned her back to him and moved into him as she had that morning, shifting and moving it against him. He had an immediate erection or, rather, a continuation of the one he’d been pressing against her and that he’d probably had in some state since that morning. Poor man.
    She reached behind her, took his hand, and pulled it over so that it lay against her belly. She continued to move against him and felt him move against her. As silently as they could, they writhed. She shifted her legs so that they were slightly parted and reached back again, found his cock, and guided it into her. And they moved that way, quietly, subtly, but enough so that before too long she felt him begin to climax. And she felt herself going with him. She wanted terribly to feel him come inside her, his warmth, knowing that she had caused it and that Justine was sitting there, hearing if not seeing it all. Will moved his hand to her breast and gripped it. He pressed his mouth into her back, into her hair, and he came so hard, she could hear his teeth grinding, could feel his entire body spasm. She took his hand in both of hers and held it tightly until they had finished.
    He lay back, touching her still, but relaxed.
    It was then that Darcy heard, in the quiet of the darkness, a sound she had not thought it possible to hear. It came from the chair by the window in the corner of the room where the orange glow had now been extinguished. At first she thought she must be imagining it or that Justine had had too many cigarettes or that all the speed was making her nose run. But as Darcy listened, she knew that Justine was weeping. And the thought of it made her dizzy with the power she held, and a