Chapter 33 Dex - Past
thirty-three
Dex - Past
IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT.
I’d always intended to bring Jonah here eventually. I wanted him to know my scars. I just didn’t expect that he’d see the wound first.
When we were done here, if he still wanted me, I’d make sure he knew everything.
All my secrets. I hadn’t told him about my past, had been very careful not to reveal it to him, not to burden him with it.
But it was too late now. He knew. And if he was going to see the festering wound I carried with me always, then he should know the weapon that caused it.
I didn’t want this to be the way he found out about it.
I thought maybe we’d be able to avoid it happening like this.
Because when Jonah was with me, the nightmares weren’t.
Until last night. Hours after experiencing his touch—wanted, craved, perfect, safe—and my mind had twisted.
The demons I’d thought were missing when I was with him were only sleeping, and they’d woken.
They’d tainted us, forming vivid pictures of another time, another touch—unwanted, despised, repulsive, unsafe.
The nightmares were his way of reaching me, even from here, beyond the veil of death. His touch corrupting the best thing I’d ever had. My rabbit.
“Who’s body is here?” Jonah asked me.
I’d brought him out here, to this dreadful place, and he hadn’t questioned it.
I’d isolated him here in the middle of the forest and told him about the first body, and still he didn’t have any fear of me.
All I could read in his eyes was a genuine desire to know me.
To understand me. I just hoped he wouldn’t regret that when he did.
Jonah had dropped his walls for me, and it was time for me to do the same, to let him see all of me.
“His name was Pierce.” The name alone felt like a curse. “He was my mother’s boyfriend.”
Jonah’s hands clenched into fists at his sides, that fire that had once been directed at me igniting, blazing hotter and fiercer. It wasn’t directed at me anymore, but at the ghost of the man who had hurt me. Now his fire burned on my behalf, and I loved it more than ever.
“And…” I knew the question that was coming before it even left his lips. “You killed him?”
I searched his eyes, looking for the fear that should have come with a question like that. It still wasn’t there, as though whether I was a murderer wouldn’t change anything between us; he just needed to know.
“No,” I answered honestly. “But I wish I had. I wish with everything inside me I’d had the chance to make him pay for what he did to me.”
Jonah’s eyes burned, fire into lava, molten, liquid rage filling his eyes and seeping out, trickling down his cheek as he nodded once. “So who killed him?”
I felt a smile pull at my lips—a disguise, a mask—because that was the rest of the wound. “My mother.”
“For what he did to you?”
I laughed. Mirthless. Bitter.
“No. You know, all these years and I never asked her why. Figured she might put me in the ground right beside him. She would if she ever knew what we’d done.”
More tears. His brow furrowed as if he were fighting rage with rage. Fire with fire. I’d always found his rage so beautiful, but it was so much more when it burned on my behalf. It was ethereal. It was sanctifying. It was holy. No one had ever cried for me before.
“Then she should be in the ground with him.”
Vindication. A weight on my chest I’d carried for years easing, cracking, crumbling. I could breathe deeper.
“Maybe,” I admitted. It wasn’t the first time I’d thought it.
His eyes turned away from me, and I felt more vulnerable without them than when he peered right into the center of me. He glared at the ground, as if his anger could seep beneath the dirt and find the soul in hell that had hurt me. “When?”
“When did I bring him here?”
“That too.”
“Ah, when did he hurt me?”
“Yes.”
“I was thirteen the first time.” Jonah’s jaw clenched.
I’d thought it would be difficult to tell him, to let it out after all these years.
It wasn’t. Rather than letting it out, I was letting him in.
And letting him in was the easiest thing I’d ever done.
“Sixteen the last time. That’s when I brought him here. ”
He nodded again. Processing. “And…” He hesitated a moment. “He touched you… the way I touch you?”
“No. Not like you do. Never like you. Your touch is wanted, Rabbit, always. His wasn’t.
” Even though Pierce told me it must have been, because I’d reacted to it.
Against my will, I’d reacted to the foul hands that touched me, even as they burned.
My body listened to him instead of me. I hated him for that too.
Jonah stepped closer to me, his hand unclenching to rise to my cheek. His touch was warm even though his hand was cold. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know, Rabbit,” I told him.
“No, I don’t think you do,” he said firmly. So certain. Like there really was no doubt in his mind. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know that.” Something inside me squirmed uncomfortably under his gaze.
“It wasn’t your fault, Dex.” His tone was so rigid. Immovable. Steady.
“I know,” I whispered. The thing inside me bubbled and oozed under the fire in his eyes. Black ichor. The guilt that seeped from the wound.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“I—”
“It wasn’t.”
I sucked in a breath. I’d told myself those words so many times, over and over like a mantra. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault. It felt like a lie.
His palm guided me to him until his forehead pressed against mine, his eyes blurry this close, but still on me fiercely. His gaze still burned the thing inside me that had made a home in my soul like a parasite in the wound.
“It wasn’t your fault.” He spoke directly to it. Intimidated it. It shifted inside me, hearing him in a way it had never heard me. “It wasn’t. You didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t your fault.”
I choked. A strangled, awful sound rose from my depths as it broke me. Tears flowed freely, cleansing me the way I’d hoped the ocean would cleanse me the night I brought the body here. “You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“H-how can you know that? You don’t know that I—when he—I didn’t like it. I didn’t want it, but he touched me, and I—I couldn’t stop myself from reacting to him.”
“It. Wasn’t. Your. Fault.” Every word spoken with intensity. With purpose. “I’ll tell you that as much as you need me to. Every hour of every day for the rest of our lives. It wasn’t your fault.”
I sobbed again, the parasite inside me burning away.
“It wasn’t your fault. It was his fault. All of it. And when I get to hell, I’ll make him pay for what he did to you.”
I smiled even as I sobbed again. “You’re not going to go to hell, Rabbit.”
“Of course I am,” he said, his voice softer now. Tender. He’d scraped the ichor off the wound, and now his words soothed over it, tended and cared for it. “I’m in love with the Devil. There’s no place I’d rather be.”
I fell to my knees, and Jonah fell right along with me, his arms around me, holding me as I cried as much as I’d cried the day I’d brought the body here. More. I cried harder because for the first time since I’d lost my father, there was someone here to listen. To care. To soothe.
Jonah held me through it all, until there was nothing left for me to give and I felt hollow and empty inside.
Because the ugly thing that had always eaten away at me had finally left.
It might come back, and that might be soon, but I didn’t have to face it alone anymore.
I had Jonah, and if I didn’t believe myself, he would tell me. I’d always believe him.
“Will you tell me what not to do? So I won’t hurt you?” he asked once I’d calmed down, pulling back to search my eyes.
I smiled at him and nodded softly. “You won’t h—”
“I don’t want to risk it, Dex. I don’t want anything I do to make you uncomfortable.”
“It might be different, because it’s you,” I told him, because if there was anything Jonah wanted to do, I wanted to do it with him. “It’s just… he would… when I was sleeping… that’s when…”
“Okay.” He leaned in, his lips pressing against mine softly. “I won’t touch you while you’re sleeping. I promise.”
“But if you want to, then—”
“No.” He silenced me with another kiss. “I don’t want anything that isn’t good for you too. If it’s not good for both of us, then I don’t want it at all. I’m more than happy with what we already have, and if that’s all we ever do, it’s more than enough for me. Do you believe me?”
I nodded, because I did.
“So you just tell me anything that makes you uncomfortable and we won’t do that. Okay?”
“Okay. Later, though?”
“Of course.” He kissed me softly again. “Whenever you’re ready.”
I hated that there were things that had been ruined for me.
Things I’d never get to experience the way they were supposed to be experienced the first time, and every time after that.
I couldn’t have him touch me in a sexual way while I was sleeping.
I couldn’t have him give me a blow job. I couldn’t bottom for him.
Those things were tainted, taken from me, and it felt like now I was taking them away from him in a different way.
Denying him the experience of even trying them.
More than anything, I didn’t want Jonah to feel like he had to be cautious around me, or for him to treat me like I was weak, fragile, broken.
I loved it when he got needy, when he was demanding and selfish.
Especially when it came to sex. It had taken him time to relax around me and be confident like that. I didn’t want to lose it again.
I kissed him again, gently at first, then deeper. He matched me, softly, cautiously, until my tongue pressed into his mouth and his was eager to meet it. Until he kissed me back the way he always did.
When our lips parted, I rested my head against his again, the tip of his nose cold as it brushed against mine.
“So…” I smiled softly. “You’re in love with the Devil?”
Jonah huffed, rolling his eyes. “Apparently.”
“Would you still be in love if I had killed him?”
He looked at me for a long moment, processing, before he spoke again. “I would.”
I believed him.
“I love you too, Rabbit.”
I kissed him again, deeper. I wanted him, craved him, needed him in ways so much more than sexual. He kissed me like he understood. Like I wasn’t tainted.
“I need to feel you.”
He nodded softly. “Take me home.”
“Are you sure?” Jonah asked me, his skin flushed pink and bare beneath me.
“Don’t do that,” I pleaded with him, stealing his lips again. “Don’t treat me any differently.”
“I’m not.” He spoke between kisses. “I just—” I silenced him with another kiss, not wanting to hear it, because if he felt like he needed to check in with me when I said I wanted to do something, then he was treating me differently.
“I—” another kiss. Jonah shoved my shoulder, forcing me to release his lips.
“Will you fucking let me speak?” he snapped.
I sighed, an ache in my chest. “What?”
“I was just trying to say, you got fucking injured last night. If this position hurts, we can just lie down like we did last time.”
I laughed softly, relief easing the tension that had built in my chest.
Once we’d arrived home, we’d wordlessly taken a shower together.
I washed him, and he’d done the same to me, cleaning away the remnants of that forest from our skin.
Now I was more desperate to feel him than ever.
To have a connection with him that brought us as close as physically possible.
I didn’t think I could take it if he rejected me right now.
But he wasn’t. He was accepting me as I was. Even knowing what lived beneath my skin, he still wanted me—still loved me.
“I’m okay, I promise.”
He nodded. I reached for the lube and kissed his lips as I uncapped it.
Refused to leave them except when we needed to breathe as I opened him up with my fingers.
Then I was pushing inside him, where I needed to be.
Where I belonged. And he accepted me like he always did.
Until my hips pressed against his ass and I was home.
It wasn’t possible to be closer to him than I was right now, but still I wanted to be.
I didn’t even want skin between us. I wanted to become this beautiful grotesque combination of the both of us, where there was no place he ended and I began.
I wanted to fuse our bodies, our souls, until there was no way we could ever be separated. But I suppose this would have to do.
I fucked him in short strokes, barely able to bring myself to pull back before I was plunging deeper again, as far into him as I could reach. His hands were on my back, nails biting into my skin as he angled his hips for me.
When he came, he did so with my name on his lips, and I followed him, pouring myself inside him as tears of bliss streamed down his face. Again he was crying for me. Tears that I treasured, that I tasted as I licked them from his skin.
Then I collapsed onto him, and he held me. It felt so good to be held by him. To know the person holding me knew exactly what was in his arms and he was still choosing to hold me anyway.
“I love you, Rabbit,” I whispered into his neck.
“I love you too, Devil.”