Chapter 14
Grace
Nate stays inside me, softening slowly as I breathe.
I become aware that the fire has heated the room to an almost uncomfortable degree.
My body is unspooling slowly, whispering with pain.
It’s not the usual kind. There’s no inflammation here, no air hunger.
Instead, I’m sore deep inside in a way that is unfamiliar.
And I’m aware that Nate’s mouth is at my throat as I try to put myself back together.
I swallow as I feel his teeth on me. He’s marking my skin, probably on purpose.
There’s a word for a woman like me, but I don’t let myself think it. My eyes feel swollen from all the tears I’ve cried today, and I desperately need a moment of privacy.
“S-stop,” I finally say. “I need to—”
“Does my wife need something? The bathroom, maybe?”
His voice is proprietary, but he removes himself. I wince at the trickle of fluid on my thighs. I want to disappear. Sink away. Wake up again this morning, before everything changed.
“Grace.”
I curl in on myself. I can’t respond. I won’t.
Then—oh God—his hands are on me. He pulls me across the sheets, forcing me to uncurl.
“You’re not going to shut me out after letting me in,” he murmurs. “Let’s go.”
He carries me past the fading fire, into an ensuite bathroom. I don’t register anything except Nate’s expression, brows narrowed, eyes sharp. I look down, refusing to engage. I need to get away. There’s no escape, but the urge to run remains, a phantom limb he lopped off.
“I’m going to check you now,” Nate says, “then you’re going to use the toilet. After that, I’ll tidy you up and get you ready for bed.”
He seats me on the counter, in the space between two sinks. I look down at his feet, bare and solid on the tiles.
“Let me see.”
My shame twinges, and I shake my head.
“You’ve just had sex for the first time in months—if not years—and we both know it wasn’t gentle. Open your legs now and let me take care of you.”
I’m trembling where I sit. “Please.” I swallow. “Can’t I have a minute alone first?”
“No.”
I look into his eyes, pleading, but there’s no mercy in Nate. Only that undimmed, lupine light.
“If you don’t show me, I won’t leave you alone for one second. And I know you have to pee.”
My bladder throbs as I tense my lips into a silent line. I pull my knees apart, just a few centimetres, but it’s enough. Nate slides between my thighs, fingers on my hips.
We’re naked and the bathroom is bright and I can’t do this.
I try to push him away.
“Ah, ah, ah,” he murmurs, catching my wrists. I wince. There’s a ligature of redness from his grip, and I feel similar aches deep within my belly. “I’m going to explain this to you, and I want your attention. Do I have it? Nod yes, Grace.”
Biting my lip, I nod.
“You are mine. That means I will take care of you. Before, during, and after. And you’re never going to refuse my aftercare. Once that’s done, you get a breather then a debrief. That’s how this will always go. Do you understand?”
His words stir something unpleasant within my mind.
There’s a structure here, a mental foundation that will help me accept exactly what he’s offering—the kind of care that only comes after the hurt has been installed.
Mother taught me this. Nick reinforced it.
And now Nate wants the same thing from me: compliance after destruction.
“Fuck you,” I whisper, words I’d never say to Mother or Nick.
I prepare myself for an angry reaction, but Nate surprises me. There’s a dark chuckle rather than an outburst, and a tender hand in my hair rather than a grip at my wrists.
“I love the mouth on you,” he says, conspiratorial and charming. “Run it whenever you want, little heart. See what happens.”
I glare despite my nudity, the cold counter, and the medical atmosphere. Nate’s hands smooth along my thighs, and I realise with biting clarity that I haven’t shaved my legs in weeks.
That’s the last thing I should care about…
Yet it’s the only real thought I have as Nate opens my legs wider. I let my mind go blank as he bends to look at me. He’s seen everything already, but this form of intimacy makes my teeth ache as if I’ve been grinding them all night. I gasp when his fingertips touch my opening.
“Hurts, eh, love?” He withdraws. “You’re not bleeding, but we’re definitely not putting anything inside this pussy for a couple of days.”
“A week,” I correct automatically, my mind pulling up the chart I keep of my monthly cycle.
His brows go up. “This won’t take a week to heal.”
“I keep a chart,” I explain, wanting to set a firm boundary. “I’ll be fertile in a couple of days. No sex for about a week.”
His eyes turn thoughtful. “A chart? Is it on your phone?”
“Why?”
He reaches for a towel, which he wraps around me, covering my nakedness. I pull it tight, sighing at finally being allowed to hide a little.
“Where do you keep the chart, Grace?”
My relief dies. There’s no hiding. Taking in the careful arrangement of his features, I have a sense of premonition, a gathering dark that’ll descend any moment. What does he want with such personal information?
I shrug, then glance pointedly at the door. “You said you’d give me a minute if I let you check me?”
I frame it as a question, unwilling to make it a demand, sensing that doing so might end with the towel being taken away, and my being forced to sit on the toilet in front of him.
Nate acts as if I’ve said nothing.
“It must be a phone app. Or is the chart in your bullet journal, alongside all those orange and blue days?”
Of course it is.
He sees the answer in my eyes and nods. “Good. I’ll have the moving firm overnight it. I’ll go make the call. You take your minute alone.”
With that, he leaves the bathroom. I’m tempted to go after him, to demand what he intends to do with the menstrual chart.
My protesting bladder and the desperate need to take a breath keep me here.
I listen to his voice through the door, clearly on the phone, then I approach to lock it as quietly as I can.
It’s one of those little buttons that can be disengaged from the outside with a hairpin, but it grants me the illusion of privacy.
I relieve myself, wincing at how it stings, then I consider the door.
Nate’s voice is just audible. Mother’s face pops into my mind without warning, the way she might look if she heard someone going into the adjacent townhouse in the dead of night.
She might confront them. She might ignore them.
It occurs to me for the first time that I should call her and reassure her that I’m okay, that Nate is—
I stop my spiraling thoughts by looking into the mirror.
Peering back is the woman who let a man fuck her the same day her husband died.
She’s a hollow-eyed wraith with love bites on her neck and nothing but a white towel and a flimsy lock for protection.
I try to see some kind of redemption for her, some future she might look forward to.
The door handle jiggles, and I already know what the woman in the mirror will do, even as her puffy eyes flash with defiance.
She’s going to walk to that door and let the man in.
She’ll let him run the shower until it’s nice and warm.
Then she’ll let him clean her everywhere, touch her everywhere.
She’ll sit passively while he puts arnica on her wrists and a warm compress on her vulva.
She’ll settle down in the circle of his arms for the night, sleeping like someone whose body is whole and trustworthy, and whose husband loves her without pain.
I meet my own eyes in the mirror, seeing the decision reflected back at me, already made.
Then I watch myself let Nate in.