22. Daphne A Christmas Memory
twenty-two
Daphne: A Christmas Memory
A Memory
“Thay,” I smiled against the spot where his dimples rarely showed. “Come on.” I nudged him, trailing my teeth along his jaw. “It’s Christmas.”
“Goddammit, witch,” he grumbled, turning toward the wall with a heavy thud. “Christmas doesn’t exist for our kind. Go back to bed.”
“I could do that, but…” I hooked my hands over his shoulder, binding his hips against me. “I got you a present.”
“With all that money you have?” he teased, tugging the covers tighter over us. “I hope we can eat it or use it to keep warm.”
“You know what they say?” I whispered into his ear, catching the scent of soap and sweat along his hairline. “The best gifts come from the heart.”
“Yeah, well, look around you, pretty girl,” Thay groaned. “This is all the heart Seattle ever did for us.”
I pressed into him, sliding my palms over his chest, until he gave in, folding into me and letting me take more of him.
“Does that mean you don’t want it?”
“What I want is for you to go back to sleep.”
“But Thay,” I breathed, brushing my lips along the nape of his neck. He swallowed a moan I felt straight in my stomach before swatting me away. “It’s Christmas.”
“Ugh,” he growled into the wall before finally turning to look at me. “You’re so goddamn annoying.”
“Why?” I cheesed a grin in his direction, determined to make him feel the sparkles illuminating beneath my ribs.
“Because we are creatures of suffering, Daphne. All this Christmas shit should have been the first thing it took from you.” He grinned, biting at me before pulling me into his chest. Leave it to this asshole to tell trauma jokes on Christmas morning and actually make them funny.
“It is like a double curse,” I sank into him, peering up through the storm of skin and muscle that held me.
“Holiday fuckery at its best,” he snarled, pausing for a moment to breathe me in. “But I’m glad it didn’t,” he breathed, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear. “Take it from you, I mean.”
“Thay?” My voice went soft, pirouetting in the dust motes playing in the half-light. His eyes darted around my face, reading my expression until his breath shifted.
“What is wrong?” His chest hit mine, causing my legs to spread wider to accommodate his hips. He was always hard in the morning, but I couldn’t help but notice the way it pulsed whenever he pressed up against me.
“Do you ever think about it?” I asked, running my fingers through his hair.
“What would it be like to sleep in without you constantly waking me the fuck up? All the time!”
Even his fake smiles did things to me.
“No, um,” a strange heat hit my cheeks, and I squeezed my eyelids shut, attempting to hide my embarrassment. Thay’s dick jumped, and I did not know what it meant.
“Stop being so fucking cute,” he nudged at my face with the edge of his nose, smiling against me until I felt safe enough to reopen them.
“I mean, what would it be like if we… What would it feel like if we…” Thay waited, his piercing eyes burning holes into the center of mine. “You know. Made love.” I said in a whisper, immediately making a face at my chosen words.
Sex seemed too simple.
Fuck? Too cold.
But making love was something hairy people did to each other in the eighties.
“Not make love,” I snapped my eyes shut, listening to him laugh at me. “You know what I mean!” I nudged him hard in the chest, but he didn’t flinch, only grabbed my wrists and pinned them down.
“I told you to stop.” Thay’s lips hovered over mine in a playful dare. “Why is that what you got me, Daphne? You? From the heart?”
A ball of air lodged in my throat, sliding down in a zigzag pattern that made it difficult to breathe. I could not tell if he was being serious or just liked to see how far he could push me beyond that invisible line he refused to cross.
“No,” I admitted, pointing to his nightstand.
“I bought you the Winsor & Newton paintbrushes you’ve been eyeing since birth,” I beamed, watching several shadows move over his face.
“And before you say anything, I’ve been taking extra shifts at the diner when you are out on surveillance.
I can’t stand going to bed alone, and well, I wanted you to have them. ”
“Those brushes are hundreds of dollars, Daph.”
“Yeah, but you’re worth it,” I shimmered. “To me.”
Thay released my wrists and scrambled around the bedside drawer until a piece of paper hit my chest.
“What is this?”
“It is your present,” he nodded.
“Thay?” I scowled, reading the payment receipt for the rest of my tuition. “How the hell did you get the money for this?” Financial aid covered most of my fees for midwifery school, but I still had to pay a small portion.
“Not just me. Wolfe. Blade. Jessie and Nathem all pitched in too. We would not let you miss out, Daphne. Not after how hard you worked to get in.”
A crackle hit my chest, forming drops of rain in the corner of my eyes.
“Daphne,” Thay’s tongue swept slowly up my cheek to catch my tears before they fell.
“It is too much,” I whimpered, the heat of his body creating clouds around my senses.
“Yeah, but you’re worth it,” he trailed his touch down over my earlobe until he found the slope of my neck. “To me.”
The taste of snow clung to the air, creating seasons within our four walls, but I barely noticed. Because even when we were freezing to death, he made everything warm.
“Daphne,” he spoke against my lips, moving, heating my core, titillating the quietest moments deep inside me into sweeping hues.
“And the answer is yes,” his foggy breath billowed over us in the form of smoke. “I think about fucking you every second of every minute, every goddamn day.”
It would be a month before he finally took me, slow and physical, breaking every inch until I folded under the body climax.
The pressure of a soul grinding against another, lighting pathways in a nervous system that I did not know existed.
Sending sensations between my toes that kissed into the follicles of my hair.
He still did not kiss me, but it did not matter.
It was violent in the way Argento painted Suspiria with such pretty colors.
I was complete, and then…
I was empty.
Dead.
Left in the graveyard beneath his headstone.
Because he gave me all of himself and then walked away… like it never fucking happened.