Check & Mate

by Ali Hazelwood

I could shove my nipple in your mouth and you wouldn’t be able to latch on to it.”

“You should stop swearing in front of twelve- year- olds. Mrs. Vitelli says that my brain’s still all squishy. I’ll probably end up in juvie if you swear just once more.” “Fuck.” “Here goes another promising young woman.”

We don’t quite kick Russia’s ass, but we spank it a little bit.

“And if you decide to continue torturing yourself, could you use your headphones?” Oz glares at me from his desk. “Some of us are not unlearned prodigies mistakenly assumed to be Nolan Sawyer’s new concubine. Some of us have to actually practice chess.”

“I’ve got you, Mallory. Nothing bad is going to happen. You can let yourself want this, because you already have it. You have me.”

Nolan returns from the kitchen and, instead of taking a free seat, lifts one leg and slides between me and the back of my chair.

I remember how much Nolan hates the Grünfeld only after he groans and sinks his teeth into my earlobe.

“Why would you keep something that makes you think of me?” I feel him shrug. “Because I think of you anyway, Mallory.”

“Are you real?” The air between us swells, overflows. “Sometimes I’m scared that I imagined you. Sometimes I think you’re only in my head.”

And then sober when he pins my hands above my head, in a way that suggests that he might not know what he’s doing but he has plans, fantasies, strategies, a rich interior world that will be put to use, and . .

But if you unzip your asshole and pry your head out of it,

But life is too long to be afraid.”

Years spent carrying grudges, talking yourself out of things that might make you happy? They go slowly.”

“Pretty sure that’s position number thirty- five in the Kama Sutra,” Sabrina mutters, which degenerates into Mom having to explain what creative intercourse is to Darcy.