But the other half of me, the one that has always only ever wanted to protect her – most of all from myself – is howling with the fact that I have failed her so fucking badly.
This won’t happen again.
It was never even supposed to happen twice.We’ve consummated the marriage now.The clock has begun ticking.Thirty days to Aurora’s freedom.
I don’t tell Aurora about the vow I’ve just made to myself.My internal promise not to touch her again.Instead, I tell her that she needs to get up, to clean herself up, and go pee before falling asleep.She lies there so long I think she may have fallen asleep already, and I’m just about to pick her up and bring her to the bathroom myself when she rolls over and gingerly eases herself into a sitting position.
“Oh, no,” she gasps, standing up so fast it’s like the bed has burned her.“Oh, the beautiful bedding!”Her hand covers her mouth, and she looks fucking distraught.I follow her gaze to the bloodstains on the duvet.“It’s so dirty!”
I wouldn’t consider this dirty.Not when her blood is like fucking holy water to me.
Her eyes crawl to mine, and I already know she’s gearing up to apologize.
“Don’t say it,” I warn her, snatching the duvet from the bed.“I don’t ever want to hear you apologize for this.”
I’m the one who made her bleed.
And I’m the one who made her come.
Her lips press into a hard line, and without another word, she heads for the bathroom attached to this bedroom.I hear water running then, but it’s not the tap.She’s in the shower.Again.
I follow her into the bathroom, peeling the condom from my shaft, tying it off, and tossing it.There’s a line of demarcation where the condom sat snugly on me.The place where her blood touched me, and the place it didn’t.I could wash up, too.
I don’t.
With Aurora still in the shower, I return to the bedroom.I have a feeling she’s not going to want to sleep with this bloodied blanket, so I deposit the duvet in the corner of the room, finding a big throw blanket in one of the drawers beneath the TV.I’m just laying it over the bed when I become aware of Aurora’s presence in the bedroom with me.When I turn, I find her crouched beside her suitcase, a pair of underwear in one hand, a pad in the other.She stands, then flushes pink to find me watching her.She’s still naked, fresh from her shower, and already the promise I’ve made myself wavers.Her nakedness is all-consuming.Her skin a revelation.I can’t stop staring at the little points where her hipbones protrude, but so fucking gently, because no part of her could ever be truly sharp.
Although, as I become aware of a stinging in the vicinity of my shoulders, where she was gripping me, I realize that maybe that’s not true.
I let Aurora put on her pad and underwear in peace, retrieving the handcuffs and waiting for her in the bed.She comes to me after slipping on pyjamas – baggy flannel pants and a shapeless T-shirt.Like this, with her soaked hair scraped back, wearing an outfit that has more in common with a fucking potato sack than actual clothing, she should look like a drowned rat.
But she doesn’t.She’s so goddamn gorgeous it makes my throat seize up.
She offers up her hand without argument or complaint.I close the handcuff over her wrist.
“My left wrist tonight,” she says in raspy voice.“I guess that kind of makes sense.”
“Why?”I ask as she draws the blanket over herself.“What do you mean?”
She doesn’t answer me.It’s only long after she’s fallen asleep that I remember it’s the left hand that should wear a wedding ring.
All in all, we spend three more days in the Springwater house.I would have liked to have gotten on the road again sooner, but it took a while for the roads to be cleared of all the fallen branches and hydro wires.I spend those three days like a moon caught in Aurora’s orbit, hovering around her, but never touching her.She touches me, though.In sleep, she comes to me, wraps herself around me until my breath is hissing between my teeth and my throbbing cock is clenched in my fist.
Only a few days, and I’m already going into withdrawal.
Pretty grim fucking sign for my future once these thirty days are up.
But that’s still twenty-seven days away.I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.
Or maybe I won’t.Maybe I’ll put a bomb under it.
I wonder what Aurora would do if I reneged on our agreement and didn’t grant her the divorce I’d once promised.If I told her, sure, she could go ahead and build a new life.But it will be a life with me in it, forever and always.Her lawfully wedded husband.
She’d probably hate me even more than she does now.Or, maybe go back to hating me, because I haven’t sensed much of that hatred in her lately.She hasn’t called me a monster, or told me that she never wants to see me again.It’s more than a little ironic that the one thing that would probably bring her hatred for me surging back is also the thing that would force her to stay with me: me tearing up our agreement and deciding to keep her.
I suppose she could always just try to divorce me on her own, without my permission or assistance.But by then, all her inheritance would have been transferred to me, and therefore Elio.She’d have no money without the allowance I’ve promised her.Not a single fucking penny to her name.Nowhere to go and no one else to turn to.
Of course, all of this is only theoretical.I’ve got nearly four full weeks until we arrive at that point.Not to mention that we’ve got to cut Alessandro Messina’s guts out before any more decisions get made.Because I am absolutely not sending her back out into a world that still has that Messina worm crawling through it.
