Chapter 25
25
FIONA
F uck Madden Kelly. And fuck the fucking chlamydia he gave me as a fucking going-away gift.
It had to be him. I’ve never let anyone else go bareback.
Doctor Prescott is matter-of-fact. Three million people a year get infected. It’s easily cured with a week of antibiotics. I should keep taking my birth control pills. Contact all my partners from the last six months. Test again in three months. Have my partner wear a condom for the next week.
There’s no partner for the next week.
At first, I tell Patrick I’m hung-over after he fed me all those milkshakes. I go to bed, and he goes out for a run. He’s started doing that every afternoon, leaving the apartment for a couple of hours. When he gets home, he watches something in the living room, keeping the TV so low I can barely hear it.
Next, I say the meds make me sick to my stomach. He makes me plain rice, which would be wonderful if I really felt like I was going to puke, but instead it just makes me feel more sorry for myself. The next day, when I tell him I’m still sick, he goes out to the store and buys fresh bread for toast, along with applesauce and bananas. I eat everything he fixes for me, but I’m starving by bedtime. I don’t dare tell him I’m lying.
Then, I pretend to have a migraine. He leaves me in the cool bedroom with the shades pulled, and he brings me fresh water and painkillers every four hours. Sometimes I swallow the pills. Sometimes I palm them and flush them down the toilet.
Patrick’s taking antibiotics too, even though he wore a rubber. The doctor said it was a good precaution. If he’s feeling any ill effects from his own meds, he doesn’t say a word.
Each night, he sleeps with me in the big bed, but that’s all we do—sleep. I’m grateful for his arm around me. It weighs me down, anchoring me to the mattress, keeping me from floating off into my usual nightmares.
I feel so stupid for getting this disease. I feel dirty, no matter how many times I take a shower. I feel ashamed, especially because I might have made Patrick sick too.
We finish our packs of baby-blue capsules at the same time. Patrick goes out on a run and comes back with a bouquet of white daisies. I put them in water and head back to the bedroom for a nap.
When I wake, I take yet another shower. I go to my closet, but the leather and lace make me want to puke. I tug open my dresser drawers, but the options there aren’t any better.
Instead, I sneak open the drawer Patrick is using. I find one of his T-shirts and a pair of his boxer-briefs. I remember that I still have his hoodie and his sweatpants hanging in the closet, the ones I wore when we left Philadelphia.
I wear them for three days straight, only taking them off to shower, every morning and every night.
When I come out of the bathroom on Wednesday morning, my body is wrapped in a towel. My hair, too. His clothes, the ones I’ve been wearing, aren’t on the bed where I left them.
Patrick leans against the closed bedroom door, his arms crossed over his chest. He’s wearing jeans and a black T-shirt that’s a twin to the one I’ve had on. His feet are bare on the hardwood floor.
My heart starts to jackrabbit, but I tell myself I’ll be fine. I’ll just get a different T-shirt. I cross to the dresser and open the drawer where he keeps his clothes.
“Don’t touch my feckin’ things.” His voice is mild, like he’s commenting on the weather. They say it might rain today. It’s hot for this time of year.
“I’ll wash them with my laundry,” I say. The cool khaki of a T-shirt and the clean white cotton of his shorts vibrate against my fingertips.
“Put those down, or there’ll be consequences.”
I snort a little, because the type of game he’s talking about seems ridiculous now. Turning my back to him, I pull the boxer briefs on under my towel. Once my ass is covered, I feel more comfortable baring my back so I can pull on his T-shirt.
I’ve dropped my towel, and I’m about to pull his shirt over my head when his arms close around me from behind. His fingers circle my wrists. “You’re not very good at following rules, little girl,” he growls by my ear.
I don’t fight him. I don’t want him thinking this is a game. “I’m not your little girl,” I say.
He kicks my towel out of the way. When he pulls me closer against his body, his abs flex against my back. His forearms tighten around my ribs, pulling my hands up to my chest. The storm clouds that surround his lighthouse tattoo look like they’re leaking from the side of my breast.
“Let me go,” I say.
He lowers his lips to my neck, to the pulse point beneath my jaw. I squirm to escape his kiss, twisting around to face him. The clean T-shirt I’m trying to put on is crumpled in my fist.
“Stop it,” I say, but he only pulls me closer. “Dammit, Patrick! Leave me alone!”
I push at his shoulders, and he lets me go. I take two steps back, until the mattress hits behind my knees. I try to cover my chest with his shirt.
He asks, “What’s going on, little girl?”
“What’s going on?” I laugh a little as I repeat his question. He’s not going to leave until he makes me say it out loud, so I might as well choke out the words and get him to leave me alone. “I’m gross. That’s what’s going on.”
I don’t like the look on his face, the softness, the kindness. It scrapes something slimy that pools beneath my lungs. I’ve made a mistake these past few days, hiding inside soft clothes. Right now, I’d give anything to be laced into my sexiest corset, to be poured into one of my vinyl dresses. I need the armor. I need the defense.
It’s too late to build a wall with clothing, so I try for the next best thing: words. “The pussy you said was the prettiest you’ve ever seen? It’s disgusting. I’m disgusting.”
“That’s enough,” he says, and I didn’t realize I was shouting until I hear how quiet he is.
I try to retreat when he closes the distance between us, but there’s no place left to go. I flinch when his palm cups my face, when his fingers frame my cheekbone. I try to turn my head away, but he won’t let me.
“You got sick,” he says. “And you did the responsible thing. You went to the doctor, and now you’re cured. You’re not disgusting. You just had sex with someone who’d had sex with someone else.”
“Fucking Madden Kelly,” I say, filling the words with ten days of venom.
“Language, little girl,” Patrick says.
It’s a warning. He’s told me he doesn’t want me swearing in bed. It’s a test, too, because we’re not in bed yet, and he wants to know if I’ll take the gift he’s giving me. And it’s a promise, because if I accept, he’s going to fuck me. And this time, there won’t be any sleeve of latex between us .
I lick my lips. I close my eyes. I feel him waiting, waiting, waiting. And finally, I force myself to say, “I’m sorry, Daddy.”
He shifts his hand to the towel that covers my hair and gently, gently, he works the terrycloth loose. Wrapping his fingers in my damp hair, he pulls me close for a kiss.
This time, I go. I let his mouth heat against mine. I let him tilt my head to a better angle. I let his tongue force open my lips.
My knees start to buckle, and he follows me down to the bed. He lets me pull his T-shirt over his head, lets me toss it onto the floor. But when I go for the zipper on his jeans, he pushes my hands away.
His denim-clad leg presses between mine, and my knees drop to either side. He tightens one hand on my hair and slips the other inside the fly of the boxer briefs I wear.
I stiffen as he strokes my folds. “Don’t do that, little girl,” he says, and he slips one finger inside me. “Don’t do that to me.” He pushes deeper inside me. “Don’t do that to yourself.” He curls his finger and does something devastating.
In just a few ragged breaths, I’m stretching and I’m melting and I’m balanced on the edge of a cliff. Even if I wanted to shut him out, I couldn’t. Not when he makes me feel like this.
“More, Daddy,” I whisper. “Please give me more.”
He adds a second finger. At the same time, he tightens his grip on my hair. Now when he strokes me, my clit begins to sing.
My brain believes what he’s told me, that it’s not my fault, that I got sick and I got clean, and everything’s all right. But my body doesn’t have the message yet. It needs punishment. It needs to be redeemed.
“Harder, Daddy,” I gasp.
My damp hair squeaks beneath his fist. Inside the boxer briefs, his hand moves faster. His strokes are longer. I shift my hips to catch the heel of his hand against my clit.
I bite my lip. I point my toes. I’m close, so close, almost, almost there.
“Please, Daddy,” I moan. “Please, please, please… ”
He releases my hair, and I cry out because that’s not what I want. That’s not what I need. I thought he knew me better than I knew myself, and I’m devastated to learn that I’m wrong.
But then he asks, “Is this what you want, little girl?”
His left hand, the one that was pulling my hair, closes around my throat. His thumb digs in beneath one ear. His fingers tighten on the other side, and the heel of his hand lowers against my voice box. Slowly and steadily, he starts to squeeze.
My knees slam closed. My heart somersaults against my sternum. My lungs burn like acid, even though it’s too soon for them to starve, too soon for me to suffocate.
Every cell in my body is dipped in gasoline, and I can’t run, can’t fight. All I can do is freeze.
But no. That’s wrong. There’s one more thing I can do, one last way to save myself. Patrick told me, the first time we fucked on this bed.
“Bunbun!” I gasp, praying to all the saints I don’t believe in that what he said was true.