The visual stimulation forces light into the darkest corners of my mind.
I’m back. I’m with her. One hundred percent hers the way she feels one hundred percent mine as our bodies connect, and the revulsion recedes under a wave of belonging, a sensation that everything we’re doing is exactly how it should be.
The force of her cries increases until her muscles quiver then convulse, pumping along my length, flooding me with so much pleasure that my mind whites out with the joy, with the power and the intensity. Everything builds until my balls draw up, my body becomes mindless with rutting, and finally I feel the thrilling forceful burst of orgasm, exploding inside while her muscles milk me for every drop, collapsing on top of her in the compulsive animalistic bliss of release.
Everywhere we touch extends my joy. My chest against her back, my cock in her cunt, my hand still being crushed into a new shape by her tiny fingers.
I laugh against her back, needing to let some of the emotion escape before it overfills and drowns me. When I roll to my side, I take her with me, folding her inside my embrace, drawing my legs up until hers are pressed close against her chest.
“Not bad for a newbie,” she mutters, giggling as I squeeze my arms tighter around her. She squirms out of my hold until she can twist to face me, her hand reaching out at an awkward angle to cup my face.
Our eyes meet and I can’t look away, absolutely mesmerised. I never want to let her go.
“Your wrist…” Her face creases in concern as she examines the injury, nostrils pinching tight with worry.
“It’s fine. Just a flesh wound.” I pause for a second, then have to ask, even if it hurts both of us. “Did my dad pay you to have sex?”
She nods, then chews on her lip. “It wasn’t full sex, just a blow job. I’m sorry I lied to you.”
“When was it?”
A tear drops into her hairline, and she sniffs back another. “Not long after I started working there. A year ago, I guess. He propositions all the girls.”
And it doesn’t take a maths genius to work out the calculation that she must only have been seventeen and barely that.
Her fingertips investigate my face, touching my cheek, my lips, thumb stroking the tender patch of skin at the top of my jaw. “What happened? Didn’t it work out like you thought?”
I shake my head, not as an answer but because I can’t answer, closing my eyes to get away from the scrutiny.
The rage that consumed me earlier has gone, burned off in a wildfire of lust. The self-hatred is still there, hard to look at, hard to deal with, its spikes burrowing under my skin, taking swipes at my ego until I feel it flake apart.
“Talk to me,” she begs and a minute ago I thought there wasn’t a single thing on this earth I wouldn’t do for her, but now my chest snaps shut, the barriers thumping into place.
Evie splays her fingers across my chest, and I drop my forehead to hers, resting there while our breathing settles from the physical exertion. In synch.
“Do you think it was easy, doing everything you’ve asked me to do?”
My eyes startle open, locking straight onto hers. And the answer is obvious. I’ve seen the stain as she tries to fit in, struggling with the things I do every day without thinking.
“Were you just going to leave while I was sleeping there? Utterly defenceless.”
“No, I—” But it’s a lie because if I had the guts, I’d be long gone.
If I had courage, I would have died before I met her.
“Do you think you’re the first person to come home to find someone you love dead? If you think Ant’s fucked up now, you should’ve seen him back then.”
And my mind spins because it hadn’t even occurred to me. “Your dad?”
“He overdosed so quickly the tourniquet was still wrapped around his arm. Ant collected me from school, and we walked in and he…” She shakes her head, throat working as she fights against the tears. “I’ve never seen someone who looked so grey.”
“I didn’t notice.” The words catch and I close my eyes, opening them again when she bumps me. “She was curled on her side how she always used to lie on the bed. I bounced the mattress to wake her up, thinking it’d be funny.”
The images slowly fill my head, the ones I usually fight against, forcing back into the shadows for some magical future date when I’m well enough to handle looking at them. Some magical date I know will never happen.
“She hated me. In those last few weeks, that’s all I remember her saying.” I give a rueful laugh. “Well, not saying so much as screaming it in my face.”
The pain of the admission tears at me, claws ripping away my feeble attempts at self-preservation, but Evie smiles. She kisses me softly, gently, her palm still resting against my chest.
