11. Chapter 11
Asher
Strange things have started to happen when Noah leaves me alone.
On one hand, I’m relieved to be rid of his overbearing presence and emotionless stares.
On the other hand, my situation is such that I have nothing else to occupy my mind but him.
Well, it’s either him or drugs, and drugs hurt to think about when I can’t have them, so the choice is pretty easy.
The problem is my thoughts have taken a turn. For the worse, I don’t know, but it’s certainly unnerving.
Instead of hating him and wanting to escape him, I now stare at my hands, trying not to think about how much I want them on his skin. Or in his hair. Anywhere he’d let me touch him. Visions plague my mind—visions of making him pant and squirm with my hands on his throat and my lips on his?…
I groan, turning to my side. What the fuck is wrong with me? It’s wrong to think those things, and it’s weird too. He’s weird, which I of course already knew. He’s the weirdest person I’ve ever met, and it’s a cruel twist of fate that I ended up in his basement.
I have nothing to do here, and I can’t help that my body reacts in accordance with my thoughts—heating up and hardening in places and ways I’ve almost forgotten.
Down in the deepest dredges of my withdrawal, I didn’t think about sex at all, but after yesterday, and after this morning, it’s constantly on my mind.
Not even sex, just?…?touching. It’s so interesting, so?…?thrilling?…?to see Noah’s reaction to being touched in ways he’s never been. Empowering is what it is, to make him shiver at the mere brush of my fingertips.
My captor, my kidnapper, reduced to a shuddering mess under my touch, and him touching me in toe-curling ways, in shivering ways. When he brushed his knuckles down the line of my throat, I realized I was getting hard again, and that fact startled me more than the touch itself.
Noah being a guy when I always thought I liked girls is jarring enough, but along with the impact of what he’s done to me, it scares me. I’m scared of my own desire and doubly scared of how little I care.
The thing is, I just want to feel good for once, after so many days of feeling like shit. If I can do that by exploring this fucked-up thing between me and Noah, with no drugs involved, would that be so bad?
I don’t know. As I told him this morning, I’m not really thinking straight right now.
The drugs are gone from my system, but thanks to Noah, my skewed sense of reality is just tilted in a different way from before. A worse way? I’m not sure. They’re certainly disturbing, these thoughts I have. These desires.
When I’m alone, they feel even more intrusive and strange. The only time I feel even remotely all right is when Noah is here with me. Where the hell is he? He’s been out so long. Daylight is fading.
Fuck, am I missing him now too? Isn’t wanting him torment enough?
He’s got me in his mercy, locked up, holding my freedom in his grasp.
If something happens to him, I’m dead. I’ll be stuck here; I’ll rot, I’ll starve to death, and it’ll be his fault.
He wanted to save me, huh? Well, what’s going to happen if he never comes back?
What then? So much for saving my life. So much for taking care of me.
Fuck him! I slam my fist into the wall, sending a stinging ache through my knuckles. At the same time, the house shakes as the front door slams shut.
He’s home again. Finally .
As I wait for him to come down into the basement, I hear him rumbling with something upstairs.
I wonder what the rest of his house looks like.
Considering the size of the basement, it has to be quite big.
I imagine his aunt furnished it. Maybe some dark wood and old, stuffy furniture?…
Not exactly my style, but I’d do anything to see it regardless.
I look longingly out the little window by the ceiling. The snow is a couple of inches lower now than on New Year’s Eve. I’d do anything to feel fresh air on my face again, yet I haven’t fought hard enough to get out of here, all things considered, and that’s wrong too.
Everything is wrong—even my relief when I hear Noah’s footsteps plod downstairs.
I hate the way he never smiles. I hate how careful his touch is when he uncuffs my wrist. I hate everything about him, yet I can’t help the unbidden warmth coursing through my frozen body when I see his face.
“What took you so long?” I snap, refusing to let my real emotions show.
Noah stops for a second, frowning. “Was I out that long?”
“Yeah, thanks for leaving me down here all day,” I say sullenly, knees drawn up to my chin. “I’m starving.”
“I’m sorry.” His boots thud against the floor as he approaches. I shiver, longing to feel his skin against mine, his heat. Something about the air in this basement drags the cold into your bones. “I caught a rabbit. I’ll make us a stew for dinner.”
“Fine,” I mutter. Right now, I’m hungry enough to eat just about anything.
Noah empties my buckets and refills my water bottle when I ask, and after that, he goes back up the stairs to make our dinner. Fuck, I don’t want him to leave. I wrap my arms tighter around my legs and look up at the ceiling until he comes back, silently rocking back and forth.
He returns with two bowls of rabbit stew made with carrots and cabbage, along with a piece of sourdough bread. I devour the meal in minutes, while Noah sits on the chair opposite the bed and picks the bread apart carefully with his long pale fingers.
“Are you full?” he asks.
“Full enough.”
“There’s more. I’ll bring you some.”
“No.” I pat the side of the bed. “Come here.”
He hasn’t finished his food, but I’m feeling impatient, and he’s taking too long. He dips a small piece of bread into his bowl and scoops up the last of the stew. He chews slowly, watching me with tense hesitation in his shoulders.
“Come on.” I pat the bed again and lie down on my side, unable to hide a smirk. It’s pretty damn adorable—his hesitation.
“I should check on the—”
“Please, Noah? I’m cold.”
Finally, he approaches the bed and lies down, facing me. Something stirs deep in my gut at the sight of the flush creeping up his neck, and desire strikes me hard and fast. He’ll let me do this. I’m sure of it.
I lift a hand to stroke a strand of hair out of his face. “Tell me.”
“T-Tell you what?”
“Tell me where you want me to touch you.”
His flush deepens. “Maybe?…?my neck?”
I smile at his lack of hesitation and place two fingers behind his ear—the softest touch. Then lower, to the tendon at the side of his neck. Three fingers now, four, and Noah swallows thickly.
“Close your eyes,” I whisper.
His lashes flutter closed, and I brush my thumb over his Adam’s apple, letting the grip get bolder, harder, laying the full weight of my hand over his throat. Not hard enough to restrict air or anything. Just touching him. Just holding him.
“You’re sensitive here,” I mumble, brushing my fingers behind his ear again. “Did you know that?”
“No,” he says, the word barely more than a breath.
“And your neck?…” I slide my fingers into his hair, twining his long black strands in my hand, gripping tighter now, more demanding.
“Asher?…”
The hint of hesitation in his voice only spurs me on. I inch closer, arching my body against his, longing for more of his skin on mine. His pulse thunders under my thumb, and I pull him in, closer, closer, until our lips are inches apart, but then?…?Something changes.
His body goes stiff like a board, unresponsive, as if he doesn’t want this. As if he doesn’t want?…?more than this. Whatever twisted thing I’ve started.
Panting, I pull away from him, my cock painfully hard, adrenaline surging in my veins. We roll to our backs, and the room fills with our labored breaths.
I glance at him. “You said you weren’t a virgin. But you are, aren’t you?”
He sucks his lower lip into his mouth, looking stupidly adorable. “I never said I wasn’t.”
My eyes widen. “Wait a minute. Last night?…?Was that your first kiss?”
He glances away, not giving a reply. His silence is answer enough.
“Fuck, I can’t believe this.” Overcome by a weird sense of relief, I start laughing.
This explains it—why he’s so uncomfortable with any sort of innuendos or intimate touching.
It explains why he refuses to accept my proposal of sleeping with me in exchange for letting me go.
“Fuuck.” I laugh so hard that tears form in the corners of my eyes.
“What?” Noah mutters, the same stiffness in his voice as in his body.
“How old are you, again?”
“Twenty-one.”
“And you’ve never?…”
“No.”
“Haven’t you ever wanted to?”
He shrugs. “Sometimes, but?…?people don’t tend to look at me in that way. A guy at the gas station I worked at asked me out once, but I wasn’t sure what he meant, so I declined.”
“You weren’t sure what he meant?” I smirk and roll to the side again, swiping at the strand of hair that seems intent on falling into Noah’s face. “Seems like there are a lot of things you’re not sure about. Things you haven’t experienced yet.”
“I know.” He’s quiet for a moment before he asks, “What does it feel like?”
“What? Sex? Well, it feels nice, I suppose. There’s a reason most people are so obsessed with it. But for me, I don’t know?…?It’s never really been about the sensation itself. It’s more about connecting with the other person, or more like?…?the validation. That sort of thing.”
Noah nods slowly.
“Have you ever thought about what you’d want it to be like?” I ask. “Your first time?”
Noah shrugs, trailing his hands over the sheets in thought. “I’d want it to be?…?intimate. A connection, like you said.”
I grimace. “You want it to be special. Well, sorry to tell you, but you’ll be disappointed. We tend to build it up to be this huge, life-changing thing, but it rarely is. This isn’t just my opinion, by the way—you can ask anyone.”
“What was your first time like, then?”