Chapter 18
BELL
I show her everything else downstairs—the door to the courtyard, the pantry, how to use an app on her phone to arm and disarm the security system—and then I grab her bag and lead her upstairs.
My heart is still thumping from showing her the studio; I hadn’t realized how much her approval meant to me until we were standing there and she was assessing everything with that quiet, Birdie way of hers.
You couldn’t have had this done between when you found my address and this morning.
God, if she only knew.
“Was your boss upset when you told him about your change in hours?” I ask her.
I take pride in the fact that I didn’t force her to quit altogether, even though I really fucking wanted to.
The idea of her working at some desolate outpost on a state highway with nothing but the blear of fluorescent lights and the grim little displays of trucker supplements for company makes me want to smash through a wall, but I have some time to win this fight, to convince her that she doesn’t need that shitty job and that by the end of this year, we’ll have made something better for her life than sour coffee and linoleum floors.
“Yes,” she answers in a small voice. “He was upset. But there aren’t many people who can take the night shift right now, so he’s keeping me on. At least until he finds someone else.”
I’m glad she can’t see my face right now. I don’t want her to think I’m irritated with her, but I am profoundly irritated. And jealous. Already tallying up those hours she’ll be forty-five minutes away, stocking cans of Red Bull when she should be warm in my bed with my mouth on her.
When we get to the top of the stairs, Birdie makes both the correct assumption and the incorrect one.
She intuits that the largest room up here is mine—and she’s right about that—but then she turns to walk across the metal bridge to the other room on the mezzanine, as if she’s going to sleep in the guest room. Like hell she is.
I’m still holding on to her hand, and I don’t budge an inch when she tries to walk off in the other direction.
She halts when my hand around hers keeps her from walking any farther, and she turns back to me with a cute little line between her eyebrows and a scrunch in her nose.
“This is my room,” I say, tilting my head at my bedroom door. “You’ll stay here. With me.”
She swallows, her eyes moving from my face to the door. She looks like she’s braced to find the bodies of Bluebeard’s wives on the other side.
I don’t say anything to comfort her. I like pulling her into my bedroom while she’s got that terrified but trying not to show it face…
and I’d also like to pull her against my chest and kiss her hair and tell her she has nothing to be afraid of, even if it would be something of a lie.
I meant what I told her in the barn—she’s not in danger of physical harm beyond whatever bruises rough play might leave—but the bedroom means exactly what she thinks it means: I’ll be getting my money’s worth there, and everywhere, of course, but especially in that room.
In the morning, at night, in the shower, in front of the closet when I get dressed before work.
And anyway, I also meant what I told her about wanting to be less careful with her than I normally am.
In the past, I’ve enjoyed the uncertain flash in someone’s eyes when I fastened leather cuffs around their wrists or snapped a flogger in the air, but always with negotiated limits between us, a safe word, a mechanism for situating the fear within consent.
With Birdie, I told her I was a monster and that I wanted to devour her whole for a year, and she looked at me like I was monstrous and then agreed. There isn’t a word for how that feels. What it does to me.
So I pull her into my room, and she looks, in fact, like she’s been kidnapped into a monster’s lair, spirited under a fairy hill, or stolen into the underworld.
But still she stands there with her free hand balled at her side and her pretty lips pressed together, a determined set to her dainty chin.
She will be brave; she will endure anything if it means her sister will have some semblance of a future.
Which I’d surmised. It’s why I didn’t offer anything to Birdie, even though she deserves a trust fund and relief and rest and a world that sees in her art exactly what they saw before it all came crumbling down…
before I made it crumble down. She’d never accept anything like this if it was only for herself.
But for her twin, she’ll bear anything. Even me.
It’s sweet.
I face her, still holding her bag on my shoulder, and I dig my hand into her hair, my mouth going a little dry when I see the dried cum there. Just a few little flecks, but it makes me violently hard.
She’s stiff and scared, eyes big, probably afraid I’ll yank on her hair or use it to force her over to my bed. But I merely lean in and press a kiss to her slender jaw. And then to the corner of her soft mouth.
“Do you need to sleep?” I pull back to see her blinking at me, maybe wondering if this is some kind of trap, if she can tell me the truth without displeasing me.
It’s important to me that she knows she can be, that she should be, that I want everything of her, every thought, every feeling, every flicker of her neurons.
Every drip of serotonin and epinephrine.
“When I said free use, that includes access to how you’re feeling,” I tell her, sliding my hand out of her hair and down to the nape of her neck.
I rub the side of her throat with my thumb.
Her skin is so fucking soft. “I’m staking a claim to your honesty just like I’ve staked a claim to your cunt. ”
That sends a scared, shivering breath out of her, one I feel swell her throat and push against my thumb, and fuck, I want her so badly. I want to push her down to her knees and feel those breaths shivering over my skin. I want to feel that throat quivering around the aching tip of my cock.
I also want to put her in a hot bath and work the shampoo into her hair and cover her eyes with a washcloth when I use a cup to help rinse it out. I want to sit against my headboard and tuck her against my chest and run my palm up and down her back until she falls asleep in my arms.
I am being eaten alive from how much I want both at once.
“I’m a little tired,” she says finally after a brave little gulp. “But I don’t know how you want the days to go or when you want to start…”
I wait, but she doesn’t say anything more. Her eyes are now down and off to the side.
I take pity on her. “We’ve already started, Birdie. You don’t need to dread it any longer because it’s already begun. The cemetery, remember? Let me worry about how the days will go. For now, you’re going to take a shower and then crawl into my bed and sleep.”
I let go of her neck and take her duffel into the en-suite bathroom.
She follows me slowly, warily, like she’s not sure if she can trust me, and that’s good; she’s smart not to trust me.
But this is one thing she will learn quickly, and it’s that I will move heaven and earth to see her eating and sleeping as much as she needs.
The idea of her dozy and cuddled under my covers, of seeing the apples of her cheeks properly rounded…
it’s just as viscerally sexual as the idea of fucking her.
I show her how to use the shower’s controls and where I keep the towels.
And then I show her the drawer under the double sink with a new toothbrush still in its package, toothpaste, unopened tubes of moisturizers.
Her eyes dart to me when she thinks I’m not looking, and I already know the question I’d see in them if I could look at her properly.
She’s wondering why I have all this, if it’s for her or if it’s because I have so many guests trooping through my bedroom that it’s become necessary to keep a stockpile of toiletries.
Am I a stalker? Or is she just one of many?
Hopefully she’s already beginning to grasp the answer to the first question. It will be more comfortable for her the longer she has to get used to the truth.
“It’s all for you,” I tell her. “And we can always get something else if you don’t like these.”
She picks up the jar of imported shampoo and screws open the lid. “It smells like apples,” she says, surprised.
“I didn’t know what brand you used, so I found something that smelled the closest to what I remembered.”
A self-deprecating twitch of her mouth. “My brand isn’t imported from Italy, that’s for sure.”
I make to leave the bathroom and then I pause. “You’re the first person to stay here overnight, Birdie. You’ll be the first person I’ve ever lived with.”
“Oh,” she says, and I was right, it had been a question scratching the inside of her thoughts. And then, like she can’t help herself, she asks, “Really?”
“Really, pretty bird.” I smile at her. “No need for jealousy.”
Red comes into her cheeks. “I wasn’t jealous.”
I don’t push the issue. As much as I love the idea of her feeling possessive, I want her honesty more.
I want her confidences, her queries, even her accusations.
It’s not a surprise—I’ve had a very long time to think about this—but I am struck again by how much I just want her words, no matter what they are.
I want her opinions about shampoo; I want her coffee order; I want her turning to me in the truck to ask if I remembered to turn off the lights in the warehouse before I locked the door.
I want her to talk to me. So much. Her voice is like the music of Heaven for how rare it is for mere sinners to hear.
“Take as long as you want in the shower,” I tell her. “The hot water won’t run out.”