31 #3
I consider refusing for a single, stupid, reckless second.
Then I remember how every threat that leaves his mouth is already halfway done.
A spike of urgency shoots through me. My fingers jerk to the hem of my jumper before sense can rot into courage.
I drag it over my head too fast, the cold air biting my skin as the wool drops at my feet.
My hands reach for the button of my jeans next.
His eyes remain on them while the button slips between my fingers.
I push the denim down, breathing too hard, too loudly, until I step out of the jeans.
His gaze falls to the pale curve of my shoulder, the light blue strap of my bra glinting over it, ridiculously fragile under the force of his attention.
His voice lowers. ‘Everything, Leah.’
Reaching behind, my hands fumble with the clasp as if it were a cruel puzzle. When it finally gives, the straps slip down my arms, and humiliation rushes in so wildly my hands fly to my chest all on their own.
Elias begins to tilt towards me before the bra hits the floor, one hand planting against the wall beside my head as his shadow cuts the light from me.
He looks down. Not hungrily or rushed. He does it as if cataloguing every tremor I fail to hide, memorising the shape of me.
My fingers stall at my sides. I can’t make them push my underwear lower.
When his eyes lock with mine, I feel that featherlight sensation before he gently claims my hand. He guides it down until his fingers wrap around mine and hook my thumb beneath the waistband. Then he begins to push.
His cheek comes against mine, warm against skin chilled by the room and the tiles at my spine. His mouth is close enough that the word moves over my pebbled flesh before it even reaches my brain. ‘Lower.’
My body obeys. His hand trails up my arm as I do, leaving heat where there shouldn’t be any.
When the last of my clothes falls, he hooks them with his foot, scraping them across the tile until they shoot out of the space and land somewhere on the bedroom floor.
Then his other hand plants on the other side of me against the wall. I hear the same metallic shift of the showerhead just as it appears in my vision.
‘Now me.’
My lashes flutter. Somehow, the syllables won’t arrange themselves into meaning.
Then they do.
And my breath cuts into my throat.
The part that leaves me nowhere clean to stand, though, is that his want and mine are not entirely different. It doesn’t make the threat disappear, just makes the wanting harder to separate from it.
I have wanted to see him since a prison table kept him safely on the other side of me. Wanted to know whether the body beneath all that control was as severe as the rest of him – and not just through my lens.
My hands rise, catching the hem of his jumper and dragging it up. The sleeve snags on the showerhead, but he tears free the rest himself and throws the jumper backwards, muscle rippling through the effort.
Then he steps in, crowding me until my chin nearly brushes the hard plane of his chest where the inked chains plunge viciously into the middle.
I reach for his trousers slowly, fingers unsteady on the fastening.
It gives.
As I pull the fabric down, my knuckles graze the unmistakable tension at the centre of him, and my throat works around a swallow.
His eyes drop to my collarbone and stay there as if he felt the movement against his own mouth.
Rough and impatient, he strips off his socks.
Just as my heart is about to splinter, his hand closes around my knee. He lifts it and air leaves me in a sudden rush when he sets it high against the warmth of his thigh, opening me to the shock of cold air.
My hands push against him, desperate for a sliver of space, air and mercy, but the effort is laughable. And still, I can’t make them push him away completely.
‘Why do you keep punishing me like this?’ I ask. No answer comes. ‘If you hate me so much, you can just send me away. You can leave me in the snow.’ I keep feeding the space with worse possibilities, if only to stop my body noticing how close he is. How the rigid size of him grazes my thigh.
His eyes hold mine, his lips are pressed firmly shut, but his hand only slides down the length of my shin in a slow, measured line until it reaches my ankle and peels the first sock away. He lowers that foot, takes the other, and does the same.
A low hum rises in the back of his throat. It might be startling if I didn’t remember the tune from that first night in the cabin. That same fractured melody he offered to the fire while keeping me close.
My skin draws taut as he leans past me, one hand reaching for the mixer control while the other keeps hold of the showerhead.
The pipes groan inside the walls.
The first splash hits the floor between our feet.
Steam begins to curl around us, softening the world.
And somewhere, drowned out by water and his voice, I hear myself whisper, ‘Please…’
The worst part is that I don’t know whether I’m begging him to end this by stepping away.
Or by finally giving me what he keeps holding back.