by Skye Warren
She sent me a guilty look. “I’m just talking your ears off, aren’t I? It’s not often we have visitors here. It’s good to talk to another woman.”
“Not at all.” I smiled. “I don’t…I haven’t gotten out much, so this is nice for me too.”
“You know,” she said, a smile playing at her lips. “I’m so glad you’re here. I know I said that already, but I…I can just see how happy you make him.”
I kept my gaze on the carrot I was grating. “I don’t know about that.”
“Oh, it’s right there in his face, the way he looks at you, the way he talks about you. I recognize that.”
My throat constricted as I imagined him looking at some other woman, talking about her, even though by all accounts I shouldn’t care. But maybe this would be an opportunity to learn something new about him, to gather a new puzzle piece.
“Who do you recognize it from?” I asked, and my voice came out husky.
She looked at me, surprised. “From James. When we were together, still dating. He didn’t admit it was love for a while, you know men, but I knew. And I just gave him patience, you know? He came around.” She laughed a little, gesturing toward the house. “As you can see.”
“Oh.”
Her nose scrunched. “You thought I meant some other woman? No, Hunter’s never been in love before. At least, not that I’ve ever seen. In fact, I’m pretty sure he never expected to be.” Sadness weighed down her smile, and her eyes looked into the past. “But life can take us to crazy places. I like to think things turn out for the best, you know? No matter how we got here.”
“Right,” I said, but my voice cracked.
Her gaze met mine, her green eyes filling with concern. “Is everything okay with you? Here I haven’t given you a chance to get a word in edgewise. If something is bothering you, I’d love to lend an ear.”
“No, I…” What could I say to that?
“I know men can be stubborn sometimes, always thinking they know what’s right for us. It’s damn annoying, that’s what it is.”
I gave a watery laugh. It was a little funny, that everything she said was so true…and yet hopelessly irrelevant to us. Hunter and I weren’t in a real relationship.
“I don’t think it’s the same,” I tried to offer by way of explanation. “As you and James. You seem so happy together.”
“We are.” Her gaze darkened with remembrance. “It wasn’t always that way though. There were some bad times.”
I was tempted to ask what they were. Not out of morbid curiosity. I wanted to see if they were anything like mine, either back home or with Hunter. I wanted to know if there was hope for me.
“How did you know?” I asked instead. “How did you know everything would be okay when things looked bad?”
“I didn’t.” She thought for a minute. “I guess at some point I found faith, in myself, in the world. Hunter helped me with that.”
Hunter helped her with faith? Shock ran through me, but then I remembered the rosary that hung in his truck. Was he religious at some point? Was he still? And if so, why the hell was he doing this? This wasn’t even a puzzle piece. It was the torn off edge of one. A hint of something broken.
I opened my mouth to ask her what she meant exactly, but just then Billy ran inside. He begged for a snack from Laura who insisted he wait until dinner. James and Hunter followed. James stood behind Laura and gave her a wraparound hug that hurt my heart to see. It was like someone had taken a picture book and made it real. Exactly the opposite of my life right now or ever.
I stiffened when I felt Hunter come up behind me. He slipped his arms around my waist, mimicking James’s actions. It felt like a mockery, and tears stung my eyes.
“What’s wrong?” he whispered.
“Like you care,” I muttered, my voice wavery.
“Don’t be mad,” he said, and I hated that he said that. I hated that I responded to that inside, softening a little. The truth was, I didn’t like to be so full of rage and fear. It was like carrying around poison inside me, infecting me worse than the world around me. It was a relief to loosen the valve and let a little bit out. I sank back into his embrace.
His arms tightened on me. “That’s my girl.”
James and Billy began to set the table while Laura gently chastised them for their rough handling of the dinnerware.
I shut my eyes against the wholesome sight. “Why are you doing this?” I whispered.
I didn’t expect him to answer me. He never had before. But I felt the tension that ran through him and was reminded of that jagged piece of the puzzle.
A burst of laughter pulled my attention to the family settling down at the table. Laura looked over at us, clearly happy to see us linked this way.
“How long are you planning on staying?”
The question was directed at both of us, but we all knew she was asking Hunter.
He was quiet a moment, then he said, “I’m not sure. Not too much longer, I think.”
The phrasing was strange with a special weight on the words. I got the idea that he wasn’t answering her but me. Why was he doing this? He wasn’t sure. And the one always at the tip of my tongue: how much longer would he keep me? Not much.
Which was exactly what I wanted, so there was no reason to feel disappointed.
Laura’s pretty face fell. “Oh, but you two should stop by again on your way back through.”
The way back? That implied that Hunter had a home somewhere and Laura knew where it was. It implied we were going somewhere and would return. Hunter must have felt me tense, because he squeezed my hips gently.
The timer went off and Laura pulled the steaks out of the oven.
Hunter turned me in his arms. His eyes were clear in the waning afternoon light of the kitchen, and Laura had been right—he looked happier. I remembered how he’d been in the diner, mysterious but also…scary. Intimidating. And kind of sad. Laura seemed to think the change was due to me, and I couldn’t really be sure. It shouldn’t matter to me if it was true, but it did.
He pushed my hair from my forehead and pressed a kiss there. “Are you okay here? Do you want to leave?”
His solicitousness felt at once foreign and comfortable. He was a little crazy, swinging back and forth between cruelty and kindness, but I sensed that the former was an act, a meanness he forced on himself as much as me. This seemed natural, and I decided to embrace it for the night. Ironically, he would be himself for once, and I would be the one playing a role.
We ate dinner while James regaled us with tales of fishing with Billy at the nearby river. Apparently this house butted up against an area popular for camping and inlaid with trails.
I ended up telling them about all the places we had been. We’d ended up going through Little Rock after all, though I left out the fact that Hunter had bribed the owner of the bath house so we could have a private room in the hot springs, which was technically against the rules. I told them about digging for quartz crystals and showed them the necklace Hunter had ordered made from the pink-tinted gem I’d pulled from the earth with my own hand. I told them about rock climbing and fly fishing and then ran out of time and breath before I’d even gotten to tell them all the things we’d done.
Hunter had been very true to his word when he’d promised to show me new things.
Strangely enough, we’d come closer to my end goal. I had mapped the route enough times to know that I would probably have passed through here on my own if I had made it this far. Kind of weird that Hunter had been going the same direction. Or had he driven this way just for me? I knew he’d looked through my things, which would include the picture of the dam.
The idea that he could have done something that nice for me was too much. It expanded my chest so I couldn’t breathe. It was easier to ignore the good along with the bad, and pretend we were just a regular couple on a little road trip to nowhere. A couple of wild explorers with no bond at all.
I laughed alongside them during dinner, includ
ed like we were some sort of extended family on holiday…or at least how I imagined that would be. I didn’t have a large family—only my mother, and I doubted I would even see her again. Even though our relationship had eroded to almost nothing, I missed her. I especially missed her when Billy grinned at his mother and told her he loved her with his mouth full.
We finished dinner with some frosty chocolate pudding, the perfect conclusion to an idyllic day. It was made of plastic, this day, pretty to look at but an imitation nonetheless.
After dinner we cleared the table and continued quiet conversation until James whisked Billy upstairs for his bath. Laura mentioned something about fresh towels for us and disappeared, leaving Hunter and me at the table. I wondered if Laura had engineered this so we would be alone, but that didn’t make much sense as we’d be alone together all night. She’d already told us which room was ours—the bedroom downstairs in the basement. One bedroom, one bed.
Hunter toyed with his mug from after-dinner coffee, apparently lost in thought. I should have been nervous, wondering what would come next, but somehow I wasn’t. We’d have sex tonight, probably. And it wouldn’t really hurt, would it? It wasn’t like Hunter could be rough with me while the family was just upstairs. It would be regular sex in a regular house…exactly what I’d always wanted and all of it made in sand, destined to melt away with the next salty wave.
“Hunter,” I said.
He grunted softly, though his eyes remained fixed on an unseen destination in the distance.
“How did you meet Laura?”
His gaze met mine. Turbulent. Pained. “Why do you ask that?”
“She seems to trust you.” And I want to trust you. But how can I do that? Help me.
“She came to me in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
His smile was sad but tinged with something sharper—something like hatred. “There are men out there who would hurt a woman. Emotionally. Physically. Can you believe that?”
I didn’t answer. My heart thumped in my chest.
“I couldn’t, at one time. Couldn’t imagine what would make someone be cruel like that. It didn’t seem human.”
“And then?” I whispered. What changed that you are the way you are?
“And then I realized we aren’t all human, at least not the way we were supposed to be. Sometimes our soul dies and then we’re just…muscle and bone walking around, with no purpose, no morals to contain us.”
I remembered the way I had felt in that motel room: only skin, no heart. Only a body, no feelings.
“What made you that way?”
Something glittered in his eyes, something that made my breath hitch in my throat. “You know, don’t you?” he asked. “You know what would make a person like this. What might take away their power, their consent.”
He spat the last word, as if it were vile. What was he saying, that he had been raped? It didn’t seem possible. And yet, I knew it was true. It was as much a confession as I could ever hope to get. It was a crucial piece of the puzzle even if I couldn’t yet step back and see the whole.
I wanted to cry but my eyes were dry as bone, wide and shocked. He was strength and vitality, how could someone…? How could anyone…? But they had. He’d fought off three men at the diner, but somehow one man, or maybe more than one, had overpowered him enough to do that. How helpless he must have felt, how worthless.
“I’m sorry.”
He sucked in a breath. “You would apologize to me? After what I…”
My insides twisted at the few words of admission, the small sign of his guilt. “I let you.”
“Don’t fool yourself. I made you do it. You aren’t responsible for any of this. I absolve you.”
I absolve you. The words didn’t sound as strange as they should have spoken out loud.
“Your room is ready,” Laura said cheerfully, emerging from the hallway with the basement. I wondered how much of the conversation she had heard, but her eyes were guileless, her small smile genuine.
I almost wished she had heard, so someone else could know without the pain of telling her. But she was clueless, and I was still alone.
Hunter seemed to recognize my disappointment. He smiled sadly. “You won’t find friends here. At least, not ones who will stand up against me.”
* * *
I lay awake, held captive by the iron-hard bands of his arms, clenched in his legs, completely imprisoned by the hot brand of Hunter’s body. He overpowered me, overheated me until I sweat and wriggled uncomfortably in his embrace.
“What?” he said, slurred.
I froze and remained still for a few minutes until his breathing evened out, then I pulled gently from his arms. I made it to the edge of the bed when he caught my wrist. He tugged me back, and I slammed against the hard wall of his chest. Breath whooshed out of me.
“Where are you going?” His voice was gravelly with sleep.
“Drink of water,” I managed to get out.
He released me. “Go then.”
I stumbled to the bathroom and cupped the water from the faucet in my hand, sipping it, gulping it down greedily while I wondered if I’d lost my one chance to get away.
The bathroom light shut off, plunging me into darkness. My hands fell open, splashing water in the basin. I felt the air rustle behind me then his hands grabbed my hips, yanking down the underwear I’d worn to bed. I grasped the edge of the counter, expecting him to enter me from behind.
Instead he spread my legs even farther, so I could barely keep my balance except for his hands supporting my thighs. Then I felt the touch of his tongue on my sex, gently running over the outer lips and between. He suckled me and kissed me, and I understood it to be an apology in the dark, a plea for relief from the anger I harbored for him. But anger was like a flame and without fuel, it would gently peter out. I was awash in pleasure, rocking gently against his face, completely succumbed to wherever the currents would take me.
His lips found my clit, sucking me, nibbling me. He licked there insistently with the hard, insistent press of his tongue, and I cried out softly and came in small shudders, feeling wetness spill from my sex into his mouth.
When I had come, I tried to move away, but he held me in place, leaving bruises in the soft inner flesh of my thighs as he held me open for more of his mouth. The curl of his tongue, the lightest touch of his teeth. My fingers ached from holding onto the counter, but I thrust my hips madly, wildly, until I came again and a tear ran down my cheek.
He released me then, but only to pull me over to the bed. He tossed me onto the sheets like I weighed nothing, like I was nothing, and I splayed there, waiting patiently for whatever he would do. He shrugged down his jeans, and even in the dark I admired his form. Now I could only see the lean lines of his silhouette but I knew from experience how his abs were marked by the muscles there, his hips sloping inward, his body beautifully formed.
He climbed over me, straddling my face with his knees. He liked it this way, I had learned. He liked the control it gave him, and maybe now I understood better why. I could do nothing but take the broad head and thick shaft into my mouth. He controlled the depth, the angle—everything. I couldn’t even move my hands, my arms trapped tightly to my sides.
He pushed into me again and again, rocking and rocking, muttering about how fucking sexy I was, how he couldn’t control himself around me, how he wanted to do everything to me, everything, everything and I would let him, wouldn’t I?
“Wouldn’t you?” he asked me, but my mouth was full of him, and I could only mumble a muffled answer, my tongue undulating futilely against the underside of his cock while I said yes, anything, everything.
“You trust me, don’t you?” he asked. His eyes were black in the dark light, glittering down at me. He pulled out so just the tip was in my mouth and leaned down so that his mouth was closer to my ear.
“You trust me not to break you?” he whispered.
And it was ridiculous, of course, because
I couldn’t trust him at all. I knew that and so did he, but I nodded, rocking the hard, pulsing flesh in my mouth as I did so. He released a small amount of precum, salty and sharp on my tongue. The taste of it made my sex clench and liquefy, because we were in tune like that. Even when our mouths spoke lies and our hearts cried out, our bodies knew how to communicate with each other.
At my acquiescence, he reached back and pushed my hands to my sex.
“Touch yourself. Make yourself come.”
I rubbed the same way he had rubbed me, fingers pressed against the hard nub and pushing, frantic.
He pushed back inside my mouth, deeper this time. Slow and steady but farther in. In fact, I hadn’t realized how far he could really go—that he must have been holding back all this time. He hit some barrier, and I felt my eyes widen, panicking.
“Keep fucking yourself,” he muttered, and my fingers sped up.
With a grunt, he pushed deeper, popping back into my throat, and I felt my eyes roll back. It stretched and pained me, but my sex throbbed with the entry, welcoming him. I kept rubbing my clit, and it felt almost like an orgasm but instead of a few short pulses, it seemed to climb even higher.
He reached down and covered my nose, pinching gently.
“We’re going to do this,” he whispered, though I wasn’t sure who he was talking to.
Tears streamed from my eyes and fell down the sides of my face. He was blocking all my air, with his cock, with his fingers, but the weirdest part of all was that my fingers never stopped.
Everything grew hazy and dreamlike, like the whole world going out of focus except for the sharp and blinding pleasure of my sex. I might have screamed around his cock as I came, shuddering and begging and feeling more than I had ever thought possible.
I was reborn in that moment, burst into flames like a phoenix and floating in pieces to the ground. There was scorching pain and hope for a future unknown. I felt his cock pulse in my mouth, felt the seed flow down my throat, filling me up and keeping me warm—giving me sustenance to rise up from the ashes.
He released me, pulling his erect cock from my mouth and curving his body around mine as if to protect me, but from what? From him, came the answer deep inside me. Tears slipped down my cheeks—no longer mine. His.