“Tomorrow,” I tell her, clasping the other cuff to my own wrist.
She can wash me – and this whole fucking night – off of her in the morning.
Chapter 19
Aurora
I wake up with a heaviness in my limbs and a stickiness on my belly and between my legs. Curse isn’t in the bed, but he was last night. I remember it viscerally.
He made me come.
The first orgasm of my life.
He groaned like he was dying for me.
He didn’t let me touch him.
He called me his angel.
That last one is the most confusing. It didn’t sound sarcastic or cruel when he said it. It sounded like it had just…slipped out. In the heat of the moment. Like he never would have said it otherwise.
My fucking angel.
The fake name he chose for me was Angela. I didn’t think about it before, but doesn’t that mean angel, too?
Maybe it’s some bad fucking joke. Calling me an angel when I can’t even come close. But of all the characteristics I could assign to Curse, of all the things I’ve learned about the adult version of him, I can’t say that having much of a sense of humour is one of them. I can count the number of times I’ve heard him laugh on one hand, and it always comes out dark and mirthless.
I sit up in the bed. There’s no handcuff on me now. I hated that I experienced a stab of disappointment when he brought them out again last night. Even after what happened between us, nothing’s really changed. He’s still the monster using me for his brother.
I’m still the one who will one day be free of him.
Of all of them.
Starting with washing his come off of my skin. I strip out of the dirty nightie as I walk to the bathroom, tossing it to the floor. The skin of my stomach feels stiff from the fluid that has dried on me like glue, and my core goes hot and tight when I remember the sensation of it spurting down onto me. He was frightening and beautiful and all-consuming when he came. Somehow both powerful and vulnerable at once.
In the shower, all evidence of last night gets rinsed away. I use soap to fully erase it from my skin, washing every bit of my body before moving on to my hair. When that’s done I step out, grabbing the towel. As I wrap it around myself, Curse walks in.
“Stay here,” he says, pulling his shirt off over his head. “I’m going to shower, too.”
“I still have to do that?”
Since we’ve come to his house, I haven’t had to be in the bathroom for his showers. So far, he’s been doing it while I’ve been sleeping. Not today, I guess.
“Yes,” he says. “I won’t be long. We’re leaving for Toronto today.”
I watch the ripple of his muscles beneath the tattoos, making the ink bunch and stretch. He kicks off the rest of his clothes, and for the first time, I glimpse his cock in the full view of bright bathroom light. The long, ruddy organ of it. The dark hair at its base. Besides his face, it’s the only part of him that’s not tattooed.
It twitches, and I gulp. When I raise my eyes, I find Curse watching me. Something sparks in his gaze, a violent flicker in the unending dark, and then it’s gone. He turns away from me, like it doesn’t matter that I’m there at all, and steps into the shower.
I can’t stay in here any longer. I don’t want to.
I won’t.
When the water turns on, I spin on my heel and leave the room.
It doesn’t take long for him to come for me.
I haven’t even dropped my towel to get dressed yet when strong arms grab me from behind. The towel falls, and I yelp as I’m borne up and over Curse’s shoulder. Like I’m nothing but a sack of potatoes.
