Again with the questions.
“You ask a lot of questions.” I moved my hand to his hair, letting the silky strands sprout from between my fingers. “Why? Are you going to rescue me from my past, David?”
He pecked me on the lips softly, lingering there. Slowly, he caressed my tongue with his while running his knuckle along my jawline.
“You’re hard,” I whispered into his mouth. He nodded almost imperceptibly. He weighed heavy on me and I took it, wanting nothing more than to stay securely underneath him as long as he would let me.
When the kiss grew more urgent, he tore away from me. “I’m getting distracted. What’s the rest of the story?”
“Hmm?” I asked sleepily. I opened my eyes, wondering if I could convince him to keep kissing me. “The rest? Screaming. Blood. Hospital. Really, that’s all the detail I care to remember. I hate hospitals. Blood scares me blind.”
“That’s why you were in shock after Mark’s attack,” he said.
I nodded. “The knife and the blood—it took me back to those moments.”
He swallowed. “How old were you?”
“Thirteen.”
“Fuck. Does it hurt?”
I cocked an eyebrow at him. “No, of course not.”
“You flinch when I touch it.”
“A reflex, I guess. I can’t control it.” The room quieted, the only sound a pair of mirrored breaths.
“Protecting you from your own mother,” he murmured finally. “I don’t know anyone who could do that.”
“It was a long time ago. It never happened again. My dad left her the next day, and we started over without her. She never got over it. She thinks we abandoned her.”
David’s brows furrowed as my words trailed off. “What is it?”
“Nothing, it’s just weird to talk about this in any depth. I haven’t in so long. Not since it happened.”
“How? What about . . .?” He hesitated. “What about with Bill?”
I let my eyes roam David’s face. That might’ve been the first time I’d heard David acknowledge him by something other than “your husband” and sneer.
“Nowyou can say his name?” I said with a laugh, which promptly turned into a yawn. “No, you’re right. I forgot. Of course I told Bill.”
I closed my eyes, half-giving in to sleep, half-feigning it so David wouldn’t see the truth. I’d just confessed one of my most personal, formative experiences to him—something I hadn’t even shared with Bill. How could I admit that without scaring David? Without confirming his earlier accusations that my friends, family, and husband all let me get away withfine?
How would he react knowing I’d avoided this topic with Bill for our entire marriage, only to open up for David within a single night?
27
Iawoke with puffy eyes, soft, unfamiliar sheets under my skin, and raw stickiness between my legs. Hard, strong arms clutched me from behind, locking me to a strange body.
A body that had trapped and devoured and owned me the night before. That had both pushed me to my limits and cushioned me with the warmth and safety I’d needed to give David everything. Guilt flowered as I remembered what I’d done, but my muscles clenched at the memory of all that’d been done to me.
David stirred. He lifted my hair and touched his lips to the curve of my neck, causing my eyes to flutter shut and a moan to escape.
“Perfect,” he whispered into my skin.
At the deep voice that I was already coming to know too intimately, my body tensed. My eyes flew open. The dark had lifted and in the cruel sunlight, all that lay there was the truth.
I lifted myself up on unsteady arms, carefully avoiding David’s always-penetrating stare. We couldn’t have slept more than a few hours. I glanced around a sprawling white bedroom with colorful art that I was too unsettled to really take in. Sleek, black pendants hung from the ceiling on each side of the bed. A wall of gray-shaded stone framed the headboard.
