Chapter 34 THEO #2
Her trust issues are still a big problem, though. She’s still not entirely open with me and hides her feelings from both of us. It’ll still take time to get her fully adjusted, and I don’t feel like losing any of the progress we’ve made.
From the long, low moans coming from the bedroom, I know Alex is close, but she hasn’t come yet, so I still have to wait.
I keep poking around in Danny’s computer, but I’m not finding much else of interest. His taste in porn skews exclusively towards teen girls, he’s got a bit of a gambling issue, and he’s been sleeping with a coworker’s wife for a few months – all shit that I don’t care about.
I navigate to his photos, which are mostly photos of him with his family and Alex.
There are so many photos of him and Alex on vacation, always stretched out somewhere on a sunny beach.
I wonder where she’d like us to vacation together once I’m off parole.
Knowing Alex, somewhere with lots of wine and huge art museums, but I don’t know where I can even go after being incarcerated.
I’m thinking about that as I absently open up the videos folder, but I stop dead when I see a folder labeled BUNNY.
I click it open to see dozens of thumbnails of him and Alex fucking, and one subfolder labeled FF.
I get up, pour myself another drink, and leave the room, making a beeline for Alex.
I’m not doing it. I can’t watch those videos.
I can’t watch him fuck her. I already know Danny was abusive, and I don’t want to see Alex be miserable.
I’m just going to stand in the doorway and drink and watch Alex come for me.
I watch her chest flush as her body shakes and listen to her gorgeous, stifled moans as she does exactly what I told her to do.
Then I finish my drink and go watch the videos, because I can’t help myself.
Thankfully, most of the videos are boring.
Alex’s orgasms are so fake it’s kind of funny.
They’re studied, like she watched a lot of porn and mimicked it, which is possibly exactly what she did.
She does the right things, makes the right sounds, but she’s fucking lying.
Either she can lie to other people much better than she can lie to me, or Danny didn’t care enough to notice.
I notice with a level of juvenile satisfaction that there’s an apparent size difference between Danny and me, not that it matters. The thing that actually matters is how different Alex is with him. She’s so unenthusiastic, and it seems like she’d rather be doing anything else.
A long, sweet, keening sound echoes down the hallway, and I force myself to stay at my desk, eyeing the subfolder with unease before I open it.
It has a few dozen videos, and I can tell from the thumbnails that these are apologies.
I click on one, then another, getting progressively angrier as I watch them.
He makes her beg forgiveness for the dumbest shit before he brutally fucks her face.
It’s not rough the way Alex likes, it’s meant as a punishment.
How he talks to her makes me sick – he’s degrading her in a way that’s obviously not supposed to be enjoyable, and I can tell he’s actively trying to hurt her feelings.
His favorite thing to call her is a stupid, worthless, pathetic fuckup, and it makes me sick to my stomach to hear it over and over and over.
Alex cries in the earlier videos, but her face is relatively blank in the later videos, her eyes glazed over, and I can’t tell if she’s drunk or zoned out or both.
Either way, she looks like she’s just not there.
I’m fucking nauseous. Nine years of this?
I think about her reaction to being asked to apologize back in October, and I stare down at my feet, my head in my hands. I have been such a shitty boyfriend by accident.
I close out of Danny’s computer and take deep, shaking breaths as I leave the office because I’m so fucking furious. I go to the basement and sprint on the treadmill for a few minutes, thinking about killing Danny the entire time, which helps calm me down.
Once I’m calmer, I go back upstairs to Alex.
I lean in the bedroom doorway and watch her writhe on the bed, listen to her whine and take harsh breaths through her nose, watch her shake as she starts to come again.
Suddenly, being tied up and used isn’t what I want for her right now.
She likes it, I like it, but I can’t get that blank fucking look of hers out of my head.
I can’t stop hearing Danny tell her what a stupid, worthless bitch she is.
I want to be tender with her right now, treat her with the kindness she didn’t have before, wrap her up in my arms and make her feel safe and warm and secure.
I need her to know she’s loved.
I get undressed slowly, watching her. She’s so different than I thought she was, and I don’t know how to handle that. I don’t know how to help her with all the hurt she’s been through, but I can do this, I can make her feel good.
I kneel on the bed, and she makes an excited sound, tilting her hips up a little as I pull the vibrator out of her slowly and untie her, massaging the stiffness out of her legs and hips, which makes her purr behind the gag.
I unfasten the nipple clamps and slip the headphones and eye mask off, and her eyes are heavily lidded and adoring when they meet mine.
I unbind the gag and slip it out of her mouth, massaging her jaw gently, and she hums in pleasure.
“Welcome home,” she murmurs, her eyes closed and her face dreamy. A thrill goes through me, and I know I’ll do anything to hear her say that to me every day for the rest of my life.
The thought makes me slightly uncomfortable, for some reason.
“Hi, sweetheart. You were so good for me while I was gone. What do you want as a reward?” She smiles and laughs a little, keeping her eyes closed and leaning into my touch.
“You,” she whispers.
I’m grateful her eyes are closed, because I’m so fucking in love with her and I can’t hide it anymore.
I bite my tongue and unfasten her wrists, and her hands go immediately to me, loosely holding my shoulders.
I make love to her slowly, saying anything I can think of to tell her how wonderful she is.
Her orgasms are long and languid, almost like they’re going half-speed, and once she can’t handle any more, she pulls me tight and begs me to come for her.
I hold her in my arms after, loving the way she drapes herself across me and falls asleep instantly. I stroke her hair gently and stare at the ceiling, anger flooding back into my body.
The second I get off parole, I’m going to fucking kill him.
***
“What happened with Danny?” I focus on caramelizing the onions, not looking at Alex when I ask. I’ve found it’s easiest for her to talk to me about hard things if I don’t look at her, but I watch her out of the corner of my eye as she sips her wine.
“I told you. He pulled a gun, and I ran.”
“No, I mean, how did you end up with him?”
“Oh. Um, I don’t know.” I frown over at her, and she looks up at me and shrugs.
“I don’t, kind of. One day, he showed up and blew up my life, and then he was always sort of there, texting me, calling me, telling me he’d take care of me, shit like that.
” I feel a twinge of discomfort that I shove down. What a fucking prick.
“Then he, um…we…he…anyway, then we were together.” I don’t push it, but I’m nauseous thinking about what she’s not saying. She shrugs, draining the glass of wine and pouring herself another glass.
I look back at the onions, and I wait.
“I…I think Danny was able to get me to do things and make choices for me because I was so lost after my parents died. I was trapped inside the feeling that I should have been in the car with them. I was supposed to be, and I wished I had been most of the time.”
I wince. “What do you mean?”
“Um, my parents and I got into a fight right before they died. I got a D on a calculus test, and I thought it was going to fuck my life up.” Alex laughs bitterly.
“It did, kind of. I ditched track practice to get drunk, and I forgot we were supposed to go to this gallery opening of my mom’s that night because I didn’t put it in my fucking planner.
My parents came home to get me, and I was shitfaced, and they were furious, telling me I was ruining my future with my irresponsible behavior.
I got so mad at them because they expected so much out of me, and I was so fucking tired of it.
We got into this huge screaming match, and they left me at home, and they got hit on the way to the gallery.
” Alex’s face is bunched up, her hand covering her mouth, and I can tell she’s trying not to cry.
“The last thing I did before they died was disappoint them,” she says, her voice watery, “and I thought it was my fault they died.”
“It wasn’t,” I say softly, and she lets out a bitter laugh.
“I know that now, but when I told Danny I felt that way, he made me feel like I had to be perfect to make up for it.”
“Motherfucker.” She nods and takes a few deep breaths, rubbing her arms in a soothing motion.
I want to hold her, but I genuinely don’t know if it’s the right thing to do right now.
She’s never been this open before, and she seems reluctant to keep going.
She pours herself another glass of wine, and I eye the nearly empty bottle as I wait for her to keep speaking.
“It started slow, you know? He made everything so easy for me at the beginning, and then once I kind of realized what had happened, I had no idea what to do. I got mad at him once, and then I found out I didn’t get to be mad at him.
He told me I was spoiled and immature, that I didn’t know how to be a good wife, that he needed to show me my place, that he took care of me and I needed to take care of him.
” I grit my teeth and move the onions around, focusing on my breathing.