Leroy and I whispered about the cake while he lay on top of me on their black leather living-room couch, finding his way, unprotected, into my silky young softness for the second time that night. We had been doing this behind his wife’s back for months. He made my heart beat fast and my blood race through my body so strong and hard my baby’s heart started beating too. My baby screamed and glowed red when it roared to life inside me, but Leroy and I didn’t see or hear or know.

“Forget that burnt cake … this all the chocolate I need right here,” Leroy whispered to me, and I didn’t know how to respond. I was just fifteen then, still spoke only when spoken to, tried not to curse in front of grown folks or wear clothes that hugged my shape too tight. I still wanted to be a child, but my body just wasn’t having it. So I said nothing at all. I just lay there in a slick mist of our sweat. My head slid closer and closer to the arm of the leather couch until I was bumping it hard. I made tiny, quick sounds until, dizzy from the friction, I stopped him.

“Leroy, that’s too hard.”

My pleas only excited him.

“All this body, and you can’t take it?” His grubby hands with their dirty fingernails pinched strong at my hips, right on top of stretch marks gilded by a recent growth spurt. He rocked inside of me with even more force.

I said no, but he ignored it. I had to push the word out and around his tongue when he finally kissed me, a half hour into it, for the first time that night. Kissing was something I knew how to do, something I liked, something I had practiced and prayed for, the only thing—really—I had wanted in the first place. My girlish noises became natural and smooth, no longer pained and hesitant. My lower back lost its arch with each twirl of our tongues. My breath evened out when I felt Leroy crushing deeper and deeper into me. So I took my hands from his back to his tough hair, but then he just slid them back down to his fast-pumping behind. He sensed my thaw and started the frantic movements that would move my head up again. He didn’t have the sense to know my inexperience demanded he kiss me like we were slow dancing.