He reached out—slowly—and lay his fingertips on the blue line. For a moment he felt a shock, like the one the man in the bar had given him. But he didn’t draw his hand away from the slit the woman held open to him. Under his fingertips he felt the tremble of the blood inside.
Her eyelids had drawn down, so that she looked at him through her lashes. Smiling. “Don’t go…” He saw her tongue move across the edges of her teeth. “There’s more…”
She had to let go of the edges, to guide him. The skin and flesh slid against his fingers, under the ridge of his knuckles. He could still see inside the opening, past her hand and his.
She teased a white strand away from the bone. “Here…” She looped his fingers under the tendon. As his fingers curled around it, stretching and lifting it past the glistening muscle, the hand at the end of the arm, her hand, curled also. The fingers bent, holding nothing, a soft gesture, a caress.
He could barely breathe. When the air came into his throat, it was heavy with the woman’s sweet smell, and the other smell, the raw, sharper one that he’d caught off his uncle.
“See?” The woman bent her head low, looking up through her lashes into his eyes: Her breasts glowed with sweat. Her hair trailed across her open arm, the ends of the dark strands tangling in the blood. “See—it’s not so bad, is it?”
She wanted him to say no, she wanted him to say it was okay. She didn’t want him to be frightened. But he couldn’t say anything. The smell had become a taste lying on his tongue. He finally managed to shake his head.
Her smile was a little bit sad. “Okay, then.” She nodded slowly. “Come on.”
The hand at the end of the arm had squeezed into a fist, a small one because her hands were so small. The blood that had trickled down into her palm seeped out from between the fingers and thumb. With her other hand, she closed his fingers around the white tendon tugged up from inside. She closed her grip around his wrist and pulled, until the tendon snapped, both ends coming free from their anchor on the bone.
She made him lift his hand up, the ends of the tendon dangling from where it lay across his fingers. She had tilted her head back, the cords in her throat drawn tight.
“Come on…” She leaned back against the pillow. She pulled him toward her. One of her hands lay on the mattress, palm upward, open again, red welling up from the slit in her arm. With her other hand she guided his hand. His fingers made red smears across the curve of her rib cage. “Here…” She forced his fingertips underneath. “You have to push hard.” The skin parted and his fingers sank in, the thin bone of the rib sliding across the tips.
“That’s right…” She nodded as she whispered, eyes closed. “Now you’ve got it….”
Her hand slid down from his, down his wrist and trailing along his forearm. Not holding and guiding him any longer, but just touching him. He knew what she wanted him to do. His fingers curled around the rib, the blood streaming down to his elbow as the skin opened wider. He lifted and pulled, and the woman’s rib cage came up toward him, the ones higher snapping free from her breastbone, all of them grinding softly against the hinge of her spine.
His hand moved inside, the wing of her ribs spreading back. Her skin parted in a curve running up between her breasts. He could see everything now, the shapes that hung suspended in the red space, close to each other, like soft nestled stones. The shapes trembled as his hand moved between them, the webs of sinew stretching, then peeling open, the spongy tissue easing around his hand and forearm.
He reached up higher, his body above hers now, balancing his weight on his other hand hard against the mattress, deep in the red pool along her side. Her knees pressed into the points of his hips.
He felt it then, trembling against his palm. His hand closed around it, and he saw it in her face as he squeezed it tight into his fist.
The skin parted further, the red line dividing her throat, to the hinge of her jaw. She lifted herself up from the pillow, curling around him, the opening soft against his chest. She wrapped her arm around his shoulders to hold him closer to her.
She tilted her head back, pressing her throat to his mouth. He opened his mouth, and his mouth was full, choking him until he had to swallow. The heat streaming across his face and down his own throat pulsed with the trembling inside his fist.
He swallowed again now, faster, the red heat opening inside him.
It was lying on the bed, not moving. He stood there looking at it. He couldn’t even hear it breathing anymore. The only sound in the little room was a slow dripping from the edge of the mattress onto the floor.
