1. Selene #2
I imagine his hands. Those massive hands, calloused from construction work, rough against my skin.
I imagine him pinning my wrists the way he pinned his command, holding me still while he does whatever he wants.
I imagine his voice, gravel and German-tinged, telling me I'm late, telling me not to touch myself, telling me I belong to him, telling me exactly how to move and exactly when to stop.
I come screaming into the pillow, my hips bucking against my own hand, the orgasm tearing through me with a violence that leaves me shaking and hollow and somehow still ravenous, still wanting, still angry at myself for wanting.
I lie there, panting, my hair stuck to my forehead, the sheet twisted around my legs like restraint.
The house is silent. I strain to hear anything through the wall that separates my room from his, but there's nothing—just the distant hum of the ocean, the creak of the house settling, the blood rushing in my own ears.
Then: a groan. Low, broken, unmistakably male.
My name.
He says it like a curse, like a prayer, like something torn from him against his will.
"Selene."
The sound is muffled by the wall but clear enough to burn itself into my spine, clear enough that I know exactly what he's doing in the room next door, exactly what image he's holding, exactly whose hands he's imagining on his body.
I lie frozen, my breath caught in my throat, my body still slick and sensitive from my own release.
Through the wall, I hear his breathing—ragged, desperate, controlled even in abandon.
The rhythmic creak of his bedframe. A sound like a fist hitting mattress.
Then silence. Then more silence, stretching until I think I've imagined it all, until I think it's my own heartbeat I'm hearing, my own pulse.
Then, finally, the distant rush of a shower.
I don't sleep. I stare at the ceiling, counting the hours until morning, telling myself I'll leave, I'll find another sublet, I'll sleep in my car in a Walmart parking lot before I spend another night under this roof with this man who listens through walls and touches me like he already owns the deed.
I don't mean a word of it.
At 6:47 AM, I wake to the sound of footsteps in the hallway. Heavy, deliberate, stopping outside my door. I sit up, clutching the sheet to my chest, my hair wild, my eyes probably swollen from four hours of fractured sleep. The door doesn't open.
I hear him breathing on the other side. I know it's him—the weight of his step is unmistakable, the way he moves through space like he owns the air itself, like gravity arranges itself around him. I hold my breath, waiting for a knock, a command, anything.
Nothing.
Then footsteps again, moving away, descending the stairs.
I exhale, shaky, and force myself out of bed.
I pull on the same sundress from yesterday—it's clean, it's all I have until I dig through the garbage bags in my trunk, and I'm not letting him see me vulnerable in pajamas.
I brush my teeth, splash cold water on my face, and open my door.
He's waiting in the hallway.
Leaning against the wall opposite my door, arms crossed over his chest, dressed in the same black t-shirt and dark jeans from yesterday.
He looks like he hasn't slept either—there are shadows bruising the skin beneath his eyes, a tension in his jaw that wasn't there when he opened the door for me.
But his eyes are the same. Ice-blue, cutting, focused on me with an intensity that makes me want to step back into my room and lock the door and never come out.
"I told you not to," he says.
His voice is quiet. Cold. Not angry—worse. Disappointed. Like I'm a student who failed a test he expected me to pass, like I'm a project that didn't meet code.
"I don't know what you're?—"
"The walls are thin," he repeats, pushing off the wall.
He moves toward me, and I retreat until my back hits the doorframe, the wood pressing into my shoulder blades.
He stops six inches away, close enough that I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes, close enough that I can smell the coffee on his breath, the soap on his skin, the same sawdust-and-bourbon darkness from yesterday intensified by sleep and proximity.
"I heard you," he says, his voice dropping lower, becoming something that vibrates in my chest rather than my ears. "Every gasp. Every moan. My name on your lips when you came."
My face burns. I want to die. I want to melt through the floorboards and disappear into the earth beneath this house, into the foundation he probably poured himself. "You were listening," I accuse, but my voice cracks, betraying me with its breathlessness.
"I warned you." His hand lifts, and I flinch, but he only tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers lingering on my jaw with a gentleness that terrifies me more than violence would.
The pad of his thumb traces my lower lip, pressing once, withdrawing, leaving me parted and panting.
"Tonight," he says, his thumb still hovering near my mouth, "you'll be quiet.
Or you'll come to me, and I'll make sure you have a reason to scream. "
He drops his hand and walks away, down the stairs, his boots echoing against the hardwood with the finality of a judge's gavel.
I stand in the hallway, my back against the doorframe, my lip still burning from his thumb, my entire body vibrating with a terror that doesn't feel like terror at all, that feels like recognition, like relief, like finally being seen by someone who doesn't look away.
The window in my room is still stuck open fifteen inches. The August heat is already building, pressing against the glass like a living thing. And somewhere in this house, my stepbrother is waiting for me to break the rules again.
I already know I will.