28. THEO
28
THEO
My hands tremble slightly as I pull out a cigarette, pacing in front of the bar, waiting for her. I think of her legs pressed against mine and how her neck smelled like lavender and summer. How soft her stomach was through the fabric of her dress.
‘Fuck,’ I hiss into the empty street, my voice scratchy as it echoes down the archways. Just as I’m about to relive the memory of Magdalen against me, another memory surfaces. It catches me by surprise, as it always does. My heart beats faster as images of the attic resurface in infrared. Forcing me to remember the details. The dust settled across the cardboard boxes. How their bodies were unnaturally tangled together, all elbows and creased clothing. The tear in her skirt. Fuck me. I need another drink.
‘I’m good to go.’ Magdalen appears beside me and the memory sinks back into the shadows.
She looks off towards the small alleyway of closed cafes and bars, avoiding my gaze intentionally. I light another cigarette. Her hair lifts in the early morning wind, and twisted pieces of dark red float around her face. I try to calm my nerves, to forget about everything. It’s like I can feel her skin imprinted against my own, burning herself on me. We stay like this for a moment. Her looking away. Me looking at her. The soft sound of filtered paper burning with each drag. I throw the cigarette and watch it roll into one of the cracks in the cobblestones. Maybe one day, I’ll stand right here and look at that discarded cigarette and remember that life was fucking beautiful with Magdalen against me on a pool table.
‘Great, it’ll be easier to get a cab at the Po,’ I say, staring straight ahead, and walk past her.
Magdalen stays behind me, but I can see her from the corner of my eye with her arms crossed in front of her, looking anywhere but at me. Of course she’s angry. I scratch the back of my head, desperate for another cigarette, unsure of where to put my hands. Should I apologize for touching her? For making things weird? But even that feels wrong. How can I apologize for something I wish could never end?
We continue walking for ten minutes with her behind me like two ducks in a row before I hear her sigh. When I don’t say anything, she coughs obnoxiously, trying to catch my attention.
‘What is it, Magdalen?’
‘Stop walking,’ she commands, her voice serious. I pause, my heels digging into the street, but my gaze remains fixed on the river ahead. Somehow, I know what’s going to happen. It’s in the pit forming deep in my stomach.
These years away from Chivasso, I thought I had become someone better. In the absence of my father’s influence, that the good parts of me had come out. But here I am, making the same fucking mistakes I made seven years ago. It feels like I’ve walked full fucking circle. I remain frozen, unable to look at her. Because if I do, I know exactly what I’ll do. How deeply I’ll fucking consume her.
I hear her shoes against the pavement, hear her dress glide against her thighs as she walks. And then I feel it. Her body right behind me, warm and soft without even touching me. My spine stiffens, wanting so fucking badly to lean into her, for her warmth to become my warmth, to share her softness. But I don’t move. I feel fingertips brush my shoulder, then press down, turning me to face her.
Magdalen stares into my eyes, her brows knitting together as she examines my stiff posture.
‘What happened to you?’ she questions. ‘One minute you were there and then it was like...’ She shakes her head, trying to piece together the words. ‘It was like you saw a ghost.’
The hand that was on my shoulder lifts and slowly comes to brush away a piece of hair that’s fallen in front of my face. Her touch is so light, so careful. I stifle a moan.
‘It’ll be hard to get a cab at this time.’ My voice sounds like the gravel in our driveway, cold and small. I try to look past her, but it’s impossible not to see her. Magdalen narrows her eyes, and suddenly her fingers are gripping my chin, forcing me to look at her.
‘I consider myself a woman with a bit of intelligence.’ She steps towards me. ‘I’m at Oxford, you know.’ Her grip doesn’t falter.
‘Yes, I know,’ I murmur.
‘I know what attraction looks like, or at least, what it’s supposed to look like,’ she stutters, her vulnerability exposed. But she continues closer, and I can feel the distance closing between us, a tangible force pulling us together until her breasts barely skim the buttons of my shirt. I should step back. I should turn away. I should chalk this up to drunken flirtation.
‘What do you want me to say, Magdalen?’ My voice comes out sharper than I mean. Beautiful Magdalen Savoy would run back to England if she knew the things I had done, the secrets I’ve locked away so well.
‘I don’t want you to say anything.’ She sighs, looking up at me with a frown. Her hand slowly releases my chin, her eyes meeting mine with heat. ‘I want you to kiss me.’
I blink. Air seeming to have left my lungs, I stumble backwards and try to laugh off her request, but it comes out as a weird groan. ‘Excuse me?’ My voice lowers. Maybe I misunderstood. Maybe she just confessed that she wanted me to kill her.
‘I want you to kiss me, Theo.’ There goes that fucking idea. Her eyes are bright even in the darkened archway.
‘Why me?’ The words rush out: ‘Magdalen, you could go up to anyone in this city and they’d devour you in a heartbeat.’ I try to remember the reasons I should turn back to the street to look for the cab that was so important three minutes ago.
‘I want you to devour me.’ She whispers it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. ‘I want to kiss someone tonight, and I want it to be you.’ Letting my eyes fall to her lips, I moan, gazing at the perfect outline, instantly knowing it’s a mistake. But fuck it. Forgetting everything I’ve promised myself not to do, I step closer. Just for a minute. I’ll stay right here for just one minute, and then I’ll walk away. Lost in the slope of her nose, the dark shadows of her eyelashes. A minute passes. I keep staring, transfixed. Her eyelids flutter, and suddenly, I feel her try to step back.
‘Ok, I’ll take the silence as my cue.’ Her blush is so bright, I’m surprised I can’t feel her heat from here. ‘Sorry, I thought—’
It’s only then I realize I’ve just been staring at her without saying anything. As she tries to take another step back, I grab the back of her neck, pulling her to me.
‘Magdalen, don’t you even think about walking away.’ With my other hand, I slowly brush her cheek, admiring the soft dusting of freckles across her face, the one above her eyebrow, before pushing us both against the archway.
‘You’re killing me,’ I whisper. ‘You’re fucking killing me.’
‘I’m not the one who cornered me into a side street,’ she says breathily, humour bright in her eyes.
‘I’m not the one who asked me to fucking kiss them,’ I counter.
She laughs, exasperated. ‘It’s just a kiss. I’m not asking you to fuck me in the middle of Torino.’
‘Now there’s a thought,’ I murmur. Hearing her say those words is enough to do away with the small semblance of restraint I have.
My hips grind into her, knowing she can feel how hard I am, but I can’t find the will to care. For a selfish moment, I want her to know that I could hike her dress up and slip my fingers underneath the thin fabric and find how wet she is for me.
She started it.
‘You really shouldn’t say fuck around me.’ Dipping my head to her, my lips lightly graze hers, and an instant heat spreads through me, settling deep in my stomach. A hunger overpowers me. Feeling intoxicated with the humid heat and her scent of that fucking lavender, I stop myself from sinking my teeth into her neck just to taste how delicious I know she is. ‘I have an incredible imagination.’
She moans lightly, and it’s enough. My tongue licks her full bottom lip, hands wrapped around the base of her hair to get her as close as possible as I continue to explore her mouth in any way she’ll let me. Our bodies are flush against one another, each of us trying to get closer, and as if reading my mind, Magdalen arches her pelvis to press against my hardness, grinding against me as I trail my mouth down to her neck, marking her with bites along her soft skin.
‘Oh wow,’ she exhales.
‘That’s it,’ I growl, shifting so that my thigh tucks in between her legs, giving her access to the friction she wants as I continue to taste her lips. She sucks in a breath as her dress rides up her thighs; the only fabric separating her bare sex and my leg is the thin cotton of her underwear and these too-tight trousers. ‘Let me make you feel good, baby.’ Stealing a glance to look down between us, I groan loudly as I watch her hips grind against me. This should be illegal. This should be fucking illegal.
‘Baby?’ Magdalen laughs but I reach down, rubbing her with my finger this time, cutting her off. Magdalen bites her lip, hard. Eyelashes fluttering closed.
‘Are you laughing at me again?’ I say while rubbing her faster. I’m so fucking hard it’s difficult to stand up straight.
In comparison to my sexual history, dry humping on a sidewalk seems relatively tame, but the sight of her so undone is enough to send me over the edge. For a moment, I truly believe I was born to make her feel good.
‘Never, baby .’ She opens her eyes, taunting me. My vision starts to dot with how turned on I am.
‘Don’t call me that if you don’t want me to come right now.’
Sucking on the thin skin beneath her ear, I grunt out before thinking, ‘Use me, Mag, please.’ And snake my hands to grip her ass, helping her find a rhythm. She lets out a soft cry as I put pressure on her backside and grind my thigh harder into her.
‘Fuck, that’s beautiful,’ I pant. Watching her chase pleasure from my leg makes me think I’ll come without her even touching me. Does she even realize the effect of her dress bunching up around her hips? I think back to my earlier request to have someone else devour her and I grip her harder. Wanting her pleasure and firsts to be mine. Her tanned thighs glow against the white of her panties, and the desire to sneak my fingers underneath the band and sink them into her is too tempting.
‘Theo,’ she moans. ‘I think—’
But just as she’s about to either confess her love for me or tell me she’s coming, a car alarm goes off somewhere, followed by the sound of teenage boys kicking cans off the street. I jerk back, my knee sliding out from between her, creating a painful distance between us. While my body reacts before my mind, I’m caught in the murky in-between of my desire, drowning in a deep, utterly cold part of myself. It takes me a moment to look at her and not wish I was inside her, my fingers pumping hard as she finds release. What would she sound like if she came? Would she whimper softly, trying to quiet herself? Would it feel so good that she’d moan loudly, knowing nothing but the long pulse of release I gave her? But I blink, dizzy from the darkness of the night against the flush of her cheeks. She stares at me, breathless and flustered.
What the fuck am I doing?
I adjust myself underneath my trousers, knowing full well my erection is visible. Her eyes look down, noticing. And then I see all the bitter details that the night-time has tried to hide. The black cracks in the marble pillars. The dirty graffiti behind the wall I’ve pushed Magdalen against, staining the pink satin of her dress. The ugliness of who I am never gets easier to face, and it hurts to know I’ve brought her down into it with me. Who the fuck do I think I am? Ravishing her on the sidewalk like a degenerate lurking the streets for a quick lay? Silver streaks of moonlight emphasize the indentations where I bit along her collarbone. Dread sinks heavily inside my stomach, settling over me like barbed wire, cutting into the smallest parts of me.
‘What’s wrong?’ Magdalen self-consciously lowers her dress, looking around to see the cause of my distance. I sigh, already missing the sight of her thighs around my own. Biting the inside of my cheek until the metallic sting of blood fills my mouth, I dip my tongue inside the shallow until it stings so badly my eyes water.
‘What’s wrong?’ I repeat, my throat numb and scratchy. I feel dirty, knowing I’ve stolen her first time to chase a few moments of pleasure. ‘What’s wrong is that this is fucking stupid.’
A fissure has erupted between us. Hot lava seeps through the opening, spilling over me, and I feel ready to burn everything down with me. Her face contorts from confusion to deathly cold in a second.
‘The only reason you’re kissing me is because you’re too afraid to fucking talk to anyone else,’ I sneer, wanting the fire to burn faster. I regret the words as soon as I say them, but I’m proud I’ve found something so disgusting to say when all I want to do is kiss her better. Remembering how no one seemed to notice her at the dinner table or at the club. The lava blisters my skin, lining the inside of my throat with deep lesions, begging to spill more cruelty.
‘You crawl to me to get out all your sexually repressed fantasies because I’m the only man you know that doesn’t need to talk to hook up.’ Someone in the distance pushes up the rolling gate of their store. ‘Humping my leg like a teenager. For god’s sake, Magdalen, what part of that did you think would be enjoyable for me?’
She stares at me, her face calm, breathing deeply before tilting her head. ‘Are you done?’ There’s a slight tremor in her voice, but she seems otherwise indifferent. Her eyes pierce my skin.
‘You should get a cab.’ My gaze stays at her collarbone, unable to look higher.
‘You’re a fucking coward. You say a few mean words to me so you don’t feel guilty about getting with your sister’s best friend, and then what? You think I’ll forget that your dick was digging into my stomach after just one kiss?’
She thinks my apprehension is because of Anika. Good.
‘Just because I can’t control my body’s natural reaction doesn’t mean I like you, Magdalen,’ I spit out.
She opens her mouth and then closes it, blinking a few times before looking at the ground.
Bile rises in my throat. ‘Maybe if you had an actual conversation with a man, you’d know that.’ The final blow.
It’s as if her hurt has manifested into a tangible barrier between us; I watch her strength finally bend into an ugly and irreversible hatred for me. I’m doing this because I care , I think. Because she deserves better , I think again, because I don’t believe myself the first time.
‘Oh, right,’ she says quietly. ‘I, um... I didn’t realize that, that you didn’t need to be attracted...’ She stutters, looking at me, hurt deep in her eyes. Pain and regret, her dress cementing over her body, no longer moving with the breeze. ‘I forget how easily the male mind can be persuaded.’ She feigns a laugh. She’s speaking to the floor, then in the direction where the cabs pool.
‘Yup,’ I add. ‘Quite easily.’
Magdalen flinches, then tries to wipe away the bruises my lips have made on her skin. I feel sorry for her reflection tomorrow morning.
‘To the cabs I go.’ She smiles and starts towards the river. She’s slow, taking her time, arms wrapped over her chest like she’s cold. It’s as if I’ve taken the heat out of her summer.
‘Magdalen,’ I yell. One more minute . I just need one more minute. It’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever done, but it’s compulsory. One more fucking minute.
Turning, staring at me blankly, she asks, ‘Yes?’ She looks fragile and delicious all at once.
My voice comes out harsh. I smirk, fuelled by the pain. ‘Don’t tell Anika, okay?’