Chapter 23 #2
Almost as soon as he did, I began pacing nervously around the apartment since standing still would have been unbearable.
Of course, I knew Einar would be furious with me.
Right about when I fired the first arrow at Albert, somewhere at the foggy back of my sleep-deprived mind, a brief vision emerged of Einar shouting at me angrily.
Rather unfortunately, it never occurred to me in my muddled state to consider that he might beat me.
Such a transgression against chivalry seemed unthinkable at the time, despite his explicit warning of the day before.
Yet no matter how much our mutual affection grew, our relationship was not on an equal footing.
Dazzled by my infatuation with Einar, I had almost forgotten that I was his to command.
And that disregarding his commands could have consequences well beyond a quarrel.
The apartment was dim and full of shadows in the feeble early morning light.
Yet I could see plainly as day that Einar deciding to take vengeance on me for my disobedience was not entirely out of the question.
The floor creaked under my feet as I marched to and fro like a caged animal.
Scared just as much as I was perversely intrigued.
My upper arms hurt dully in the spots where his fingers had closed on them.
I rubbed them gingerly, recalling all too vividly the manner in which he had escorted me upstairs.
I realised that I was trembling. I was beginning to feel nauseated too, shocked more by the recollection of Einar’s abrupt violence than I had been when its execution was taking place.
As much as I found Einar’s total physical advantage over me maddening and knee-weakening, as much as I had fantasised about all sorts of uses for his splendid strength, the idea that he may do me serious harm was still wildly repulsive and all the more terrifying for the trust I had placed in him, for the safety I had thought to have found in him.
I tried in vain to expel images of snapping limbs and knocked-out teeth from my mind, feebly attempting to convince myself that he wouldn’t do that to me. But the truth was I didn’t know what he might do.
Although ... knowing him, I expected his to be a dignified, methodical, cold kind of fury.
He would likely be fully in control of his temper, potentially merciless but not unreasonable.
With luck, he would consider it stooping too low to beat me the way he would another man.
I shivered some more. Looking out on the forested mountain slopes from the living room window, I realised that pacing around did nothing to dispel my anxiety, and I stopped in my tracks.
Einar would thrash me with a belt like an insubordinate schoolgirl, I decided was the most likely thing to occur, and savagely at that, but without causing any permanent damage. Yes, that made sense. He would want to be able to tell himself he was teaching me a lesson rather than taking revenge.
I could bear that, I tried to convince myself.
At worst, I would not be able to sit comfortably for some time.
In all fairness, it would not be completely undeserved.
An unhinged sort of relief flooded me, and with it, the earlier shameful curiosity came back, its wings flapping low in my belly and fuelling an unexpected breed of bravery.
I would suggest that mode of retribution to him, I decided. Better not let him think of anything worse. I might even get on his good side by voluntary submission to his will.
The door swiftly opened with a bang, and Einar marched back inside in a stride, disturbing my anguished thoughts. As he advanced towards me, I let out a positively terrified yelp and cowered slightly, backing into a wall. My inadvertent reaction froze him in his tracks.
“Ren, what the hell?”
The light from the window didn’t quite reach his face, and so his expression was largely concealed from me. The whitely gleaming coffee table was directly in between us, I noted, grateful for a potential obstacle in his path to me.
“Listen ...” I forced myself to say, my voice unsteady.
“I am,” he assured me levelly.
“You’re r-right to be furious. What I did went completely against your wishes.”
I cursed myself internally for the choice of word. I needed a better one to acknowledge his authority over me, loath as I was to do it.
“Against your instructions,” I corrected, deciding that orders would have taken it a notch too far.
“So it did.” He nodded, breathing audibly through the nose. “Ones from yesterday, mind, so you can hardly claim to have forgotten.”
“I didn’t forget,” I assured him quickly. “And the way things stand between us, that is to say, I have to assume that you might want to ...”
I searched for the right word frantically, but I felt as if the cogs of my exhausted mind were running at full speed, but without interlocking and so without rendering results.
“Punish me,” I completed the sentence after what seemed an eternity.
I saw Einar frown, but he said nothing, and the word hung heavy between us.
“If you’ve decided to do that, then I won’t try to talk you out of it. But please don’t knock me around. It could go wrong very easily, and you need me to take Vizzavona. I won’t be much use to anyone with a broken limb or even a broken finger ...”
I rattled on about his potential to inadvertently cause me serious damage. Even in the dim light, I saw his eyes go very wide. I wasn’t sure how to interpret that, but set firmly on my course, I ploughed on unhappily.
“That is all to say, if you do feel like you have to, uhm, punish me, then ... use a belt. You know what I mean.” I felt blood rushing hotly underneath the surface of my skin. “If you do, I promise I won’t resist you. As far as I can help myself.”
He shifted his weight, straightening up. And then he trapped me in his gaze, the pools of his eyes cool and impenetrable. Finally, I couldn’t bear it anymore and submitted the polished wooden floor beneath my feet to the same level of scrutiny.
Einar made a rumbling noise in his throat. I looked up again.
“Come here then,” he told me simply. Smiling odiously, he crooked his finger at me.
I felt myself deflate, tears prickling in the corners of my eyes.
I wobbled towards him slowly and unsteadily, my heart in my throat, until I stood directly before him.
I stared into his chest, expanding and then constricting with each breath.
I squeezed my hands into tight balls. Waited for what seemed a very long time.
“Now, can I hold you, Ren?” A mild voice finally spoke from above me. “Just that, I promise you.”
Unable to form anything resembling words, I forced an indeterminate kind of noise out of my throat.
He interpreted this as an assent and put his arms around me.
I stood on my tiptoes to reciprocate, burying my face in the fabric of his shirt, inhaling the faint masculine musk of him.
He kissed the top of my head, his hand running up and down my back soothingly.
I exhaled loudly and likely would have collapsed had he not held on to me fast. I wondered just how it was possible to feel so comforted in the arms of the person I had feared in the first place.
“Did I really scare you so badly?” he asked me softly, regretfully.
“Well, what was I supposed to think?” I grumbled into the fabric of his shirt. “You weren’t exactly gentle with me on the way up here.”
“No, I wasn’t. But I didn’t expect to cause your imagination to run quite so wild. I’m sorry for that.”
I noted that he didn’t apologise for his manner of bringing me to the apartment. And that the implication of what he said was that he had planned for me to be scared to some degree. He did want to teach me a lesson then. Just not using the methods I had anticipated.
“Thinking what you were thinking, that little speech must have taken a great deal of courage.”
I looked up to bask in the warmth of his smile. My heart was starting to slow down, and my breathing was becoming regular again. I rested my head on his chest once more, gripping the fabric of his shirt. He reacted to this by tightening his own grasp on me. His heart thumped steadily in my ear.
“I was quite certain you’d want to do it just to keep peace with Albert and his lot.”
I felt his chest heave with laughter against my cheek.
“Yes, that would have made some of them very happy, no doubt.” He stroked my hair. “It was the main reason I made such a show on the way here with you. Let them imagine the rest, though, aye?”
“Shall I pretend to scream and cry, begging you to stop, while you smash a few things around?” I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Make sure they really get their money’s worth?”
He chuckled again.
“Nah, I’m too knackered for that sort of thing. Besides, I spoke to Albert, and he’s actually willing to let the whole thing slide on account of us all being a bit tense. He doesn’t dislike you nearly as much as you think.”
I scoffed, and Einar looked at me with a humorous twitch in his mouth.
“Just so that we’re clear, and I hope we can agree on this.
” He broke the silence after a while, and I glanced up to see something dark come alive in his eyes, like an ominous shadow underneath an ocean’s surface.
“The next time you cross me like you did today, the very least you can expect are a few handprints on that perfect arse of yours.” He gave me a hefty spank, and my skin tingled pleasantly with the impact.
“Especially if you have the audacity to actually suggest yourself that I punish you. I mean, you can’t reasonably expect me to resist that sort of temptation more than once, can you? ”