9. Chapter 9 #2
His teeth gleam in the darkness as he fights for the upper hand, and something else gleams too: the sharp edge of his knife. Before I have time to react, he pins my wrists above my head in one hand, and in his other, he holds the knife, and he presses the blade to my throat.
This again. Shit. This time, it’s for real.
Panting, I try to fight, try to struggle, but Noah pushes the knife so hard against my throat I can barely breathe.
It’s the blunt edge, not the sharp one, but it still hurts like a bitch.
Noah is panting too, showing more emotion than I’ve seen since that time in the bath.
He’s scowling, mouth twisted in a snarl.
I try to buck and heave him off me, but he’s way stronger than I am, especially in my weakened state.
I don’t have a chance.
I go limp, head tipped back in surrender, calling his bluff this time. “Do it.” My pulse soars in my ears as I await that pain. The adrenaline surging through my veins is hot and scalding. “Do it!”
Noah’s eyes widen, and his mouth parts. “I?…”
Taking advantage of his hesitation, I try to buck him off me again, but all it does is make the knife slip. It cuts through my shirt and bites into my bicep. It’s a shallow cut, but it still hurts like hell.
“Ow!” I yelp.
Noah leans back. “Shit. I’m sorry, Ash.”
“You don’t look sorry,” I snarl, my fury overriding the pain.
“I’m sorry for that too.”
“Not sorry enough.”
We breathe heavily, staring at each other. Then the strangest thing happens.
Noah goes limp too. His grip on me loosens as he drops the knife, and it clatters to the floor by our side.
I waste no time in taking my chance; it might be the only one I’ve got.
I heave myself upward, bringing Noah with me, and there’s little resistance as I flip our positions, pinning him to the bed with his wrists in my hands.
We’re both panting, his breath puffing against my chin, but from his crazed, angry expression from earlier, nothing remains.
Now his face is blank again, infuriatingly so.
No fear.
No anger.
Just?…?nothing.
With a scowl, I let go of his wrists to wrap my hands around his throat instead. He sucks in a breath before he surrenders to that too.
He just looks at me, those black holes for eyes fixed on mine. His skin is burning hot, pulse tapping furiously against my fingers. Even though he doesn’t struggle, his body is desperate for life.
I bear down on his windpipe. Hard. Harder. I’ve never tried to strangle anyone before, but I believe you have to apply quite a bit of pressure for the desired result.
His face goes red at first, then a faint shade of blue. I can’t see that well in this darkness, but still, he doesn’t give an inch of struggle. He could overpower me easily if he wanted to—he did before—but for some inexplicable reason, he doesn’t.
Why? Why don’t you struggle?
My eyes fill with tears of frustration. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Either he’d kill me, or I’d kill him, but we would both struggle during it.
I can’t kill a man who doesn’t struggle.
I can’t kill a man who makes it seem as if he wants me to kill him.
There’s no sense in it, but somehow, through all my heightened emotions and fear, my desires shift. Having him panting and warm and soft underneath me does something weird to my insides.
If I can’t kill him, I need to make him react instead. I need to disturb him, the way he disturbs me.
After bearing down one more time, I let go of his throat, and—hands braced on the mattress—I lean into his face and press my lips to his.
He tastes like coffee. Smells like rain. And he’s warm, so full of life. There’s no struggle at first, just a couple of desperate pants through his nose as he catches his breath. It’s hardly a kiss, to be fair—just two slack mouths smushed together, but it gets me the result I want.
Noah inhales a sharp breath, clutches my shoulders with both hands, and shoves me away.
“No,” he says roughly. “Stop.”
“Why?” I grit out.
“You don’t want this. You can’t want this.”
The uncertainty in his voice is laced with disbelief, with fear, and I thought I’d revel in that fear, but it only makes me feel like I’ve violated something between us. Like I’ve done something wrong, even though he’s the one who imprisoned and drugged me.
My lips are tingling. Something else is too, further down my body.
I get off him and land on my back. Noah stays beside me on the bed, and together, we stare up at the ceiling for a long time.
“I thought you were straight,” he says finally.
“I am.” At least, I think so.
“Then what the hell was that?”
“I don’t know.” But I do know.
I didn’t do it because I wanted to kiss him, surely not. It’s just like he said: I don’t want this. I can’t want this. All I wanted was to get a reaction out of him, and for some reason, choking him wasn’t enough to do that. A kiss did a better job. It’s not my fault I—
“You got hard though,” Noah says.
“No, I didn’t.” I did. My dick presses tight against the fly of my jeans, trying to get my attention, as if it knows something that has previously been hidden from me. I glance over to Noah’s crotch, but it’s decidedly flat. No erection in sight.
Fuck, what is wrong with me?
I slide my eyes up to Noah’s face. In profile, it’s like a painting, with his smooth pale skin, pronounced lips, strong but delicate jaw, and high cheekbones.
While his expression has relaxed, his body is still tense; I feel it in his arm lining up against mine, and I sure felt it when his pulse fluttered against my palm and when his hands shoved me away.
But it wasn’t enough.
I need him to scream. I need to see his blood, need him to writhe in agony, like I have. Maybe then I’d be satisfied. Maybe then I’d feel something other than this dark numbness overtaking my heart.
Not right now though—right now, I’m too tired and rattled from what just transpired between us.
Maybe it wasn’t fair to kiss him like that, but who’s the unfair one in this situation, huh? I can think of several things I can inflict on him before our score is settled.
Noah glances at me. “We need to take care of your arm.”
“It’s just a scratch.”
“Let me see.”
I hold my arm out, and he takes it in a confident but careful grip and rolls up my sleeve, exposing the cut.
“You don’t need stitches, but it needs to be cleaned.”
“Just leave it until tomorrow.”
“No.” He rises from the bed, and I mourn the loss of his warmth. Fuck this cold-ass basement.
He returns with a first aid kit and proceeds to clean my wound and cover it with a Band-Aid.
“There.” Discarding the first aid kit, he rejoins me in bed, and we lie on our backs, staring up at the ceiling.
Strangely enough, it doesn’t feel awkward or even scary to be next to him like this. Maybe I’m just too numb to feel much of anything. I felt something when I kissed him though. I felt too much.
His thumb grazes the edge of my shoulder—a thoughtless touch but a tender one. A jolt goes through me, traveling from where he’s touching me, to my chest, to my gut, and finally, my?…
I rip my arm away. “Shut up.”
Noah blinks. “I didn’t say anything.”
“I meant?…?let go.”
Let me go. Let me leave. The words hover at the tip of my tongue, but a great sadness washes over me at the thought of saying them out loud. What’s the point of begging if no result will come of it? I’ve tried fighting him. I’ve tried so hard. And I’m tired. I just want to rest for once.
As usual, Noah withdraws his touch whenever I ask, and another wave of silence washes over us.
I sigh, squirming a bit to make myself more comfortable, but the bed is so small it only scoots me closer to him.
I turn to my side, while Noah stays on his back.
His eyes are closed. He looks relaxed, peaceful, the pale line of his throat bobbing as he swallows.
“Thank you,” I mumble.
“For what?”
“For taking care of me.” As if he wasn’t the one to cut me in the first place, even if it was by accident.
“You’re welcome, Asher.” His voice is soft, and a shiver goes through me—a sweet, tingling sense of relief.
Shit, this is getting bad.
It would be so easy to just let go. Give in. Every fiber of my being is begging to let him take control, to let go of my own will, my own self?…
It’s what I always do when people like me.
Lilith pursued me, so I let her. That guy in the bar wanted to jerk me off, so I let him.
I always thought I was straight, and that time in the bar bathroom didn’t really convince me otherwise, but maybe I was just too high back then to properly live in the moment.
I can’t deny it was kind of hot when that guy gripped my dick much harder than a girl would, growling in my ear, “How’s that feel? Good, yeah? Are you going to come for me now?”
I did come, quicker than I usually do, and the guy chuckled and wiped me down with toilet paper.
He gave me his number after, but I never texted him, so that was that.
I didn’t reflect any further on it. It was just a thing I did for fun, just like I always do shit for fun when I’m high. I just go through the motions.
I only went to college because my friends were going. I only got together with Lilith because she pursued me. I only let Kayla kiss me and then almost kiss me again because I was too fucked up to stop it.
I let people do with me what they want, because at least they want me. My sexuality is something for other people to enjoy—a value I can bring to them, as little as it is. God knows I don’t have much else to offer.
But Noah?…?Noah doesn’t let me give myself to him like I give myself to others.
I kissed him, for fuck’s sake, yet he claimed I didn’t want it.
What if I do want it? Fuck, I can’t make sense of anything anymore.
This place is playing tricks on me. You’d think my thoughts would be more coherent now that I’m sober, but no.
I grit my teeth. This isn’t good. In fact, it’s fucking awful and wrong. I’m wrong to want him, and he’s wrong in everything else. At every angle of our fucked-up relationship, he’s in the wrong.
Except?…?Except when he’s tender with me. Except when he sees in me the same wounded creature that seems to reside in his own heart—that curled-up little thing that begs for affection but doesn’t know how to ask for it.
Part of me wants him to ask for it. Part of me wants to ask him the same.
Beg him. But I can’t. I can only lie here, silently, in bed with my captor, feeling our strange connection grow deeper and deeper.
That connection comes with the desire to know more about him, where I never wanted to know anything about him at all.
I’m not even sure what has shifted between us. I’m not even sure anything has. Maybe I’m just losing my mind. Maybe the drugs have eroded my sense of self, and without them, I’m nothing. An empty husk. Maybe I need Noah’s help to fill me up and make me feel something again.
“What was her name?” I ask, picking a subject at random.
“Who?”
“Your aunt.”
“Carol.”
“What was she like?”
The corner of his mouth twitches into a half smile. “Kind. Stubborn. She enjoyed the little things in life, like books, the garden, and our animals.”
“You took care of her?”
“Yes. For a long time, as her illness progressed. Do you know about ALS?”
“Not really,” I say with a shrug. “Was she in a lot of pain?”
Noah nods. “One day, she told me to bring a bunch of her pills from the cabinet. Then she told me to put them all in her palm. She could barely bring them to her mouth at that point, but?…?she took them. I kept watch over her. Held her hand while she passed on to the other side.”
Fuck, okay?…?That’s pretty sad. Really sad. No wonder he’s like a shell of a human, having been through a thing like that.
“Did you—” I bite the word off, frowning. “Did you know that was what she wanted? Beforehand?”
He shrugs. “We had talked about it. One morning, she was ready.”
“Kind of an asshole move, don’t you think?”
“What?”
“Forcing you to participate in a thing like that?”
“She needed me to help her,” Noah says slowly. “And I was happy to ease her pain.”
“Yeah, but still. She left you alone. It must’ve been hard for you.”
“It was. It is.”
I search for his hand in the dark, and I wrap my fingers around the soft edges of it. “It’s okay.”
I glance at him to see silent tears running down his cheeks. His Adam’s apple bobs as he tries to hold them back.
“It’s okay,” I whisper again, squeezing his hand. “Do you want to sleep?”
Noah glances at me, eyes gleaming. “Here?”
“Yeah.” I scoot over, leaving more room for him to turn on his side. I line up against him, spooning him.
In this position, I could easily hook my arm around his throat and choke him out. Even so, he lets me do this. I inch closer up against his back and slide a hesitant arm around his waist. There, I lay a hand over his heart, feeling the beat of it against my palm. Thump, thump, thump.
“It’s okay,” I whisper into his ear. “You can cry.”
I can’t believe I’m doing this, but somehow, it feels more right than anything else in my life. Just for this moment, I want to forget once more about the external factors keeping us apart. Just for a little while, I want that connection to stitch us together.
Bit by bit, Noah lets go of the tenseness trapped in his body.
He relaxes into my embrace, and he lets the tears come, not holding them back any longer.
I fall asleep to his soft, hulking sobs, soothed by the fact that with my help, he can let go of at least a piece of his grief, however little, and that I can be there for him, holding him through that pain.