Chapter 3
The Most Beautiful Torture
I wake up in darkness, stiff and sore and discombobulated. The metal of the container floor is painfully hard underneath me, and it's stiflingly hot, and despite the shirt over the bucket, the smell of stale piss is overwhelming.
I blink into the darkness, taking stock of the non-visual cues: the ship is still rolling gently so we're still sailing somewhere. I hear a voice yelling indistinctly above and behind me but it's too muffled and faint to make anything out.
Other than being hot, achy from sleeping on a metal floor, and sick to fuck of the darkness and the unending boredom, there's not much to take stock of.
I can't even express how great it is to have a companion in here, although I know it's shitty of me to be glad someone else has been kidnapped. It's a confusing feeling, let me tell you.
Speaking of confusing feelings: I'm lying down on my back, and there's a warm weight on my belly. Story. Her ear is on my navel and her breath huffs hot on my skin. Her hands are tucked under her face, stuffed between her cheek and my belly.
I clench my jaw and focus on breathing, focus on thinking about anything at all other than how close Story's face and hands are to my crotch and the mindless, ravening beast contained therein.
She's asleep. She's not thinking about that, now or ever. She doesn’t feel about me the way I do about her, and there's no point dwelling on my feelings.
Tell that to my dick, though. My brain is aware that the placement of her face and hands is completely meaningless and irrelevant to her feelings regarding me. My dick, however, is insisting otherwise, contrary to all evidence, because as everyone knows, penises are stupid.
I close my eyes and just breathe. Meditate.
Don't think, don't feel.
I am without desire.
I am without thought.
I am a bodiless point of awareness in the darkness.
This works for a while, and I even start to feel a bit drowsy again, because what else is there to do?
But then Story shifts, turns her face into my belly and snuffles sleepily, rubs her mouth and nose against me. Grumbles wordlessly, trying to find a more comfortable position. I hold utterly still as she shifts and tosses, finally settling again.
Now, torturously, her face is even closer to my zipper, and one hand is resting on my zipper.
"Doesn't mean anything," I whisper to myself, willing my dick to cooperate and stay calm.
My dick has other ideas.
My dick takes the placement of her hand as an invitation to grow to full erection in approximately ten seconds.
I grit my jaw and exhale slowly through my nose and picture in my mind the steps to stripping a pistol.
I think about the time Cal and I found a dead sea turtle washed up on the beach—that was awful.
I think about the swarms of mosquitoes the size of parakeets in the Alaskan interior.
I think about moldy bread. Squirming piles of maggots at the bottom of a trash can.
Nope. Still so erect you could use my dick to build a 19th-century circus tent.
"Corpses. Nuns. Dead puppies. Vomit." I whisper this to the shadows all around.
Story whimpers in her sleep, snuffles into my belly again with that fucking adorable little rub of her nose.
Her hand, the one resting on my zipper, tightens.
"Goddammit, Story," I whisper to myself.
I don't dare move. I'm not sure I'm even breathing. I desperately need Story to move her hand, but the tenuous thread of my sanity is currently being held in place by my death-grip on my own thighs.
Story makes another sleepy, waking-up sound.
God, please wake up. Please.
Her hand tightens, loosens, tightens. Fuck, that's torture.
"Mmm?" Her voice is thick and slow and heavy and sleepy. "Killy?"
"Yep,” I whisper, my voice a hoarse, ragged rasp.
"Mmmm." She does the nose-rub thing again, and then stops. Squeezes me, cupping my aching shaft. "Um."
"Yeah. You can, um…let go. Now. Please."
She does not let go.
In fact, she does the opposite. She squeezes me again. "Oh." A tense pause. "Killy, you're, um…"
“Yeah. Sorry."
A breathy giggle. "Sorry? For what?"
"Um…" I'm gripping my thighs so hard my fingers hurt, and force myself to let go.
I circle her wrist and tug her hand away.
"Nothing." I shift, indicating I want to stand up, and she slides off me; I lurch to my feet and stumble along the wall a few steps, away from Story. "Nothing," I repeat. "Never mind."
"Did I…" a pause. "Is that because I was…"
"You were sleeping," I fill in when she trails off uncertainly. "I just…I need a second."
The ship rolls and rocks over a steep wave, and I brace against the wall until we're settled again. I hear shuffling, and then what might be the sound of Story stretching—one of those tight, taut groans that you do when you're in the middle of a stretch.
"I'm sorry, Killy. I wasn't trying to…" she trails off again, and I hear her voice approaching me from behind.
"I know," I whisper, doing breathing exercises and imagining the most horrible things I can think of, like someone throwing a bag of kittens into a pond.
It’s not working at all, and the mental images only fuck with my emotions and do nothing to make my penis less excited about the absolutely nothing that's going to happen. I abandon the morbid mental image strategy and focus on just breathing.
Which works for the ten seconds it takes Story to slip up behind me, so close I can smell her, feel her, hear her soft breaths.
"Killy, I didn't mean to—"
"I know," I snap, with more heat than I'd intended. It's just that she’s right behind me, and she’s resting her chin on my shoulder, and her breasts are pressing softly into my back, and it's fucking torture. "It's fine."
"You don't sound fine."
"I just need a second."
"Killy," she murmurs. "You're acting weird."
“No, I'm not," I counter, lying through clenched teeth. "I'm fine. Just…I just need a second to get things under control."
Story just huffs, and it's sarcastic. "You're a shitty liar, Killian."
Brutal, destructive honesty firehoses out of my mouth before I can stop it.
"Yeah, well, excuse me, Story. I’ve been alone in the fucking dark for what you say is almost two weeks.
Solitary confinement in a pitch-black fucking container.
It's hot. It smells. They feed me once a day and it's slop I wouldn't feed to pigs. I'm scared. I'm lonely. I'm worried about my sister, and I’m worried about Cal, and I hate that you’re here, but I'm also selfishly glad you are. I'm glad I’m not alone, and it feels shitty because it means you’re a hostage too, and you’ve been through enough; you don't need this shit too. And then I wake up with you on my lap and your hand on my dick, and I’m well aware it’s not like that between us for you, but my dick doesn’t know that, and I’m trying like hell to get control over it, but it's not working. "
"That's…a lot, Killy."
“No shit."
"When you say it's not like that between us…for me, what did you mean?"
"Nothing. Never mind."
"Killian."
"No, it's nothing. I didn't mean anything. Don't worry about it."
"Again, you're a shitty liar. Just tell me the truth."
"No." Yes, dammit, I'm aware how petulant that sounded.
Story laughs. "No?"
I let the lurch of the ship over the crest of a wave shuffle me forward, out of her reach.
Of course, she just follows me, sidling up behind me again, and now she's pressed up against my back even more fully, even more torturously, her breasts squished against me, chin on my shoulder, hands on my back near my shoulder blades.
"Killian." Her voice is faint and soft.
"Story, don't."
"Don't what?"
I step forward out of her reach. "Ask questions you either know the answer to or don't really want to know the answer to."
"Which do you think it is?"
"I don't know."
She follows me again, and the ache is unbearable, made worse by her proximity, by the soft warmth of her hand on my back, now sliding gently around to my chest. "Killy."
"What, Story?"
"Why are you mad at me?"
"I'm not."
“You sound mad."
"I'm not mad."
“You've never snapped at me like this before. I just want to know what's going on."
"I told you. I woke up with your hand on my junk. I know it wasn't on purpose, and it's fine. I just need a second."
"But you said it's not like that between us for me."
"I misspoke."
"No, you didn't. Why are you lying and evading?"
"Because this is awkward and I'm confused!" I snap, almost shouting. "And this doesn't seem like the best time to have this conversation, anyway.”
"What conversation? And if not now, when? We literally have nothing else to do."
"I know."
"Because when you say it's not like that between us, you're referencing the fact that my hand was on your junk. And then you say it's not like that between us for me, which implies, more or less directly, that it is like that for you."
I groan, sagging against the wall. "Story, please. Have mercy. Don't make me go there."
"Go where?"
I groan again. "You're relentless."
“About most things, yes, especially when there’s something I don't understand, and I don't understand this whole interaction."
"I was…affected," I say through my clenched molars. "Physically. By your…closeness…to certain portions of my anatomy. All I meant was that I know it wasn't intentional."
"No, it wasn't. I was asleep."
"I know."
"But it seems like there's something else going on."
Her mere proximity—let alone the totally innocent and platonic hand on my sternum—is enough to keep me throbbing like a hammer-smashed thumb and as rigid as a steel beam.
I just can't make myself say the truth. Rejection sucks.
"Talk to me, Killy," she whispers. “We’ve always been honest with each other."
I bark a laugh. "Sure, but we've never really had any big conversations, have we? Not about heavy or important stuff."
"So there is something important going on."
"Shit. No."
"Killy," she says with a laugh. "You're being super freaking weird."
"No I'm not." Her hand starts to slide down my sternum toward my stomach, and I grab her wrist. "Don't."