The air comes smoother and cleaner into my mouth. My lips part around fresh air, and I sag into the mattress, utterly relaxed.
Samick’s hand comes back to my face, then brushes the strip of fabric away from me. I feel it slip over my cheek before it falls to the sheets.
His hand slips away from my mouth, fingertips dragging down my bottom lip, over my chin, then down my body to rest on my hip.
In the dark, he’s unmoving. Like he just kneels there between my legs, and watches me breathe, watches as I almost fall into post-orgasm sleep.
It’s like every ounce of tension in my body has been released.
Gently, his slick hand strokes my inner thigh, as though he’s angled his knuckles closer to my smooth skin and he helps bring me down.
It’s only when I start to fidget in the blinding darkness that he moves. Shifts away from me, hands leaving my body, and then I hear quiet footsteps leave the room.
I close my legs.
And wait.
It’s only a moment before he returns— with the torchlight glaring over papered walls and the wet patch darkening the floral sheets.
He sets the torch down on the nightstand, then drops onto the bed. The mattress dips, rolling me onto my side—and into him.
His gaze cuts down to me.
Before I can worm away, he huffs an annoyed breath and forces his arm between my waist and the mattress.
He tugs me closer with one hand, and with the other, grabs the quilt from the floor. The cover isn’t on it, so it’s cold as he drapes it over us. I wonder if the person who lived here was in the middle of making or stripping the bed when all hell broke loose.
I heave an irritated breath, then wiggle in Samick’s hold until I find a reasonably comfortable spot. I find it. Rest my head on his shoulder, my hand on his chest, and I watch the light ghost over his pale skin.
But with the direct stroke of light, this close up, I notice scars for the first time. They blend into his complexion. Some are ribbed, some short, others wide. But it’s a plastering of scars all over his chest.
I trace a long thin one. “What happened?”
He’s quiet for a heartbeat before, “War.”
I stop tracing it.
The reminder of what he is, what he’s doing here, what he’s done to other places and other people, sinks my gut.
I shut my eyes on the light.
FOURTEEN
After a whole dead-to-the-world sleep, I wake up to a drool rash on my cheek and the light of the torch is out.
For a while, I stare in the direction of the torch, left on the nightstand—but I have to feel around for it in the darkness.
There’s something puzzling in the first few minutes of waking in a blackout.
Maybe in sleep, my body forgets that darkness is permanent around me, and so when I wake up, it feels like waking up in the middle of the night.
I just know my body clock feels out of order as I scrape the torch off the bedside. My thumb presses down the familiar switch on the side.
But the light doesn’t come on.
I try again.
Disappointment deflates me. Batteries are dead. Samick didn’t turn it off.
