You Already Know
Twelve Erotic Stories
Charlotte Stein
Mischief
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
The News Building
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
Copyright © Charlotte Stein
Cover images: Shutterstock
Charlotte Stein asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This collection is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780008179281
Version: 2015-12-16
Contents
Copyright
You Already Know
Four For The Seesaw
I Have You
Don’t I
Heavenly Shades
I Am
New Dress
Dancing On The Edge
Heat
Thief
Oppositeland
Falling
More from Mischief
Acknowledgements
About the Publisher
I tell him not to, I tell him, ‘Get the fuck out of here,’ but he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. He’s as big as a bull, as big as a brick wall, and he just bulldozes right into the store and takes Mickey D around the neck as though he’s nothing, and throws him over the counter.
Of course, everyone knows Mickey D is no good. He shirks his responsibilities, as Mr Kirkpatrick would say – but that doesn’t mean he has to be thrown over the counter. It doesn’t make it right and fair that this bull has him crying and bleeding on the floor of Mr Kirkpatrick’s store, for something he owes or something he has or has not done.
Even I know that. I’m pathetic, and I’m weak, and I don’t know anything about drugs or whatever this guy is into, but I understand that much.
‘Stop,’ I tell the bull, and he turns and looks at me with his mad, blazing eyes.
Only they’re not mad and blazing at all. He looks wounded, I think, like someone stuck him in his side. The matador waved his cape and he charged, and now there’s a lance through his body. Soon he’s going to bleed out on the floor of this little grocery store, and no one will care because he’s the guy who threw Mickey D over the counter.
He’s the guy who works for some drug lord or thief or pimp, and nobody cares about guys like that.
Least of all me. I just stare at him and stare at him, until he steps back from the counter. Mickey D is crying somewhere behind it, snottily, but the bull pays no attention. He just looks at me until I notice other weird little details about him.
His eyes are the colour of melted chocolate. He has a tattoo on his arm – a big Star of David. The grain on his shaved head is the colour of a million little iron filings, so rich and real I can almost imagine them sifting through my fingers.
Even though there’s nothing to sift.
And then he backs off, and walks right out the door.
* * *
Next time I see him, he’s not beating the shit out of anybody. But the stench of a million battles hangs all over him, like a soldier returning from a war he didn’t want to fight. He’s leaning against the truck he drives around in, shoulders too tense for someone who’s meant to be looking casual, cigarette dangling from one hand, unsmoked.
He flicks it away when he sees me coming down to open up. It’s 6 a.m.; the light is the same colour as that grain on his head. On his face now, too, because he hasn’t shaved and there are deep shadows around his too-curved jaw.
There’s something in his face, I think. A roundedness all over that cuts against the sharp masculinity he wears everywhere else. It’s in his eyes, too – those eyes that aren’t like chocolate at all. They’re deep and fathomless and when he calls out, ‘Hold on there a second,’ they tell me a thousand things he doesn’t want to say.
I’m just not sure what all of them are.
‘Hold on there,’ he says, and I think about Mickey D flying through the air. I think about him panting, full of rage or aggression or something else altogether, and I want to run. I want to tell him, ‘Get the fuck out of here,’ just like I did in the store.
But I don’t.
‘Your friend,’ he says, then pauses as though he’s waiting for me to recall who he’s talking about. He licks his bottom lip, and I notice it’s very fat and full, and also chapped. ‘He did some bad shit, got it?’
I don’t know what to think. It’s like an explanation, only not. It’s like an explanation he needs to punch into my gut, though I’m surprised as anyone to find I’m still standing when he’s done. I go one worse than that, in fact.
I blurt out: ‘Is that all you’ve got to say for yourself?’
And I don’t even know how or why. It just comes out of me, as jagged as I thought he was, and when I’m done he stares at me like I’ve gone mad. Maybe I have. He could punch me for real right now and I’d go down so hard, so hard. Hell, he wouldn’t even have to punch me. He could just swipe me with the back of his hand and I’d be bloody and sore tomorrow.
But he does none of those things. Instead he runs a hand over the bristle on his head, and when he does I see his knuckles are as raw as fuck. They’re not just bloody – they’re split and scraped and there’s a glimmer of something shiny in amongst everything, as though somehow he’s gone right down to the bone without