Chapter 20
THE ARGUMENT
As down on my spirits as I was, I was utterly ravenous once coming up the stairs. After all that time in the basement, I realize I hadn’t eaten today—the emptiness now roaring to be noticed. My snack plate left forgotten after looking for Carya, whom I still haven’t found.
I devour leftovers from the night before and make my way to the library, but the soft meowing at the front door has me scrambling to open it. Carya bursts through the door at the first hint of an opening. My heart eases, so very relieved to see her.
I pick her up. Filthy is putting it kindly. Dirt and leaves cling to her orange fur. She hasn’t been outside since we came here, being that I wasn’t sure what animals live in the wild here, and I didn’t want to risk it. So how she got outside, I have no idea.
She even has a faint smell of must and earth emanating from her slinky body, much like the basement I just came from. A cat this dirty should be bathed, but she must read my mind because she darts off before her feet even touch the tile.
The knock on the door is abrupt. Each event today is happening before I can collect myself from the one prior. Opening the door again, I find Ry pacing about on the other side. There is a fire in his eyes. An angry, all-consuming fire.
“Is everything alright, Ry?” I ask, getting annoyed that he hasn’t been able to speak a word yet.
“I’ve tried calling,” he bites out. “Where have you been? What is the use of a phone if you don’t answer it?” I have little patience for men who think that people should be at their beck and call, so my annoyance grows.
“I’ve been here. Sleeping,” I say. Trying to diffuse his agitation, I add, “Can you take a minute and just chill out, please? Your aggression is not necessary…like, at all.”
Ry places his hands along the doorway above his head. He closes his eyes, taking a deep breath through his nose. I watch the angst coil out of his body. Much better.
It’s darker out now, and as Ry stands there, I can smell the last bits of warm southern air surround us. Finally calming himself enough, Ry opens his eyes and meets my own.
“I’m sorry, Jade. I was worried, and then I felt…I thought something happened to you,” Ry explains, as a more leveled man emerges.
“It’s OK, but there are few places I could get into trouble around here.
I know almost no one, so seriously, you shouldn’t worry.
” I say reassuringly. And then with a tilt of my head, I lightly chuckle, “Although, you did say the trees themselves are dangerous. I guess they could always swallow me whole.”
I tip the corner of my mouth up, thinking he’d be amused, but the look he shoots me makes it clear he is anything but.
OK, no room for jokes today. The headache from earlier still lingers under my temple, making my tolerance for this man, who thinks he can project his illogical worry onto me, almost nonexistent. I try my hardest anyway.
“No, you don’t get it, Jade. You make me feel things. Things I’d rather not,” he confesses.
He makes his way through the door and closes it behind him. He is mere inches from me, and I can’t help but place my hand on his chest, palming his racing heart in my hand. Whatever he has been going through over worrying about me, I can feel there.
I glance up into two eyes that are fierce with fear and angst. Ry tilts his head down and our foreheads meet in a soft understanding.
“Just please answer your phone from now on,” he asks as a nervous plea.
“I’ll do my best, sir.” I can’t object to his worrying, even if it’s a little over the top. I reach my hand up and graze his jaw. The sharp shock that never stops every time I touch him, shoots down my hand and seeps into my being. I can feel his care and his relief that nothing has happened to me.
But something new lies there. Is it hunger, perhaps? A hunger that feels guarded. Too restrained. Building to a head like a predatory bird waiting for the right moment to swoop down to claw its prey.
Before I get too carried away with what I think he feels, I touch my lips to his. A sure way to alleviate this endless mind chatter with a single action. It works.
Ry’s kiss is deep and pressing, like he wants more of me than I can give. It's discomforting. He grabs me closer, rougher, slamming me against the wall in his urgency. My head hitting with a thud. He is brasher than normal, but not unwelcome.
He must’ve bitten my lip—I taste metal as our tongues slide against each other. He grows even wilder once he tastes what I do, and he fists his hand around the band of my sweatpants, pulling them so tight I think they’ll rip.
He releases them, his motions harsh and provoked. A hint of chaos wraps around me. Not the normal Ry I’ve gotten the last couple times we’ve put ourselves in this position.
Ry then grips my wrists with the same hand and holds them over my head. His mouth moving to my neck, and his length hardens against me as he presses the weight of himself onto me. I adjust my legs to welcome him, but he must need to know for sure.
His other hand dips beneath the band of my sweatpants, and he moves it lower and lower until he feels the pool of swollen arousal between my legs. Now it’s clear. I want him.
He mimics an unleashed animal growling against my skin. And I feel what he has become. Something primal. I have been waiting to be unleashed with him again—even if he may eat me alive.
I rock against his fingers as he moves them closer to my core. One finger, then two. Just as I feel I may burst with the fullness inside, he squeezes in another, all while his mouth roams lower down my tank top and he licks my nipple through the fabric.
He is sucking and I am grinding myself on his fingers, which move in and out of me. My toes barely touch the floor as his hand still captures my wrists against the wall. Both of his hands being the only thing keeping me afloat. Suspended in his grasp is where I long to be most.
“I want you to come for me, my sweet succulent. I want you to make a mess of my fingers, so I can lick them clean.” With those words accompanied by his warm breath against the peak of my wet, stiff nipple, I am lost.
I squirm against him, but he pins me so I can barely move, his fingers still curling in and out of me. I let out a scream of pleasure as he nibbles the small bud of my nipple, piercing through.
And as I come down from this thrill, my mind flashes.
I see my blood spilling in the river over the bridge, my body hanging limply from a rope in a castle I’ve dreamt of before.
My blood seeping into the roots of the large hickory.
No, I will not let this moment be ruined. I focus again on my physical senses.
His mouth moves slowly back up to my neck as he lowers me down, and my body stands limp and tired from my release. I watch as he takes his fingers out of my sweats, bringing them to his blood-smeared mouth as he follows through on his threat.
“Open your mouth,” he orders and pulls my hair so I’m looking straight up at the ceiling. The odd angle of my head causing my neck to ache as he pulls my hair harder still.
The collected lover by the fire? Gone. He looms over me with my mouth open, and without warning, spits what he just licked off his fingers of me into my mouth. He then loosely grabs me by the neck, using his thumb to nudge my jaw up and close my mouth.
“Swallow.” I do. In this moment, I’m afraid of what will happen if I don’t obey him. He scoops me up with one arm under my behind, tossing me over his shoulder, where he takes me upstairs to the bed and fully has his way with me.
As he does, the outside matches the bed we occupy. Wind rushes against the house, and the house talks back in groans and creaks. Branches from the nearby trees crawl along the white walls in shadow form, growing and stretching from the light of the moon.
I am left with many thoughts when he finishes. At times, I was close to telling him to stop, but the force felt warranted. And before I could say anything, I was lost to the pleasure again.
But this experience with him was different. That is certain. And what do I know of him truly? He has so much darkness clouding what’s within. But I gave him no reason to think I wanted him to stop. And if this is nothing to him, he doesn’t make it seem that way.
We barely know each other, although I feel as if he’s been written deep in my soul long ago. His essence slowly melted into every fiber of my being. I’m not sure how, but a large part of me calls out to him as if it has been there all along.
“I found something odd in the basement today,” is all I can seem to muster. He instantly sits up and looks at me like I told him the sky was falling, which seemed it actually may have while we were doing the deeds we just performed.
“What do you mean?” he demands, his voice making me timid. Again. I am not normally one to retreat when I am spoken to with the aggression he does, but it’s as if an unknown memory makes me instinctively close up.
“There were these two doors. And…this may sound odd, but this ring I found the day I met you at my shop, it fits perfectly within a nook on one of the doors. It was as if it belonged there.” I look to him, hoping I haven’t scared him away with my confession. “…isn’t that bizarre?”
“I told you not to go down there,” he yells, and stands up harshly from the bed. His hostility bites, and I’m infuriated with how he thinks I need to obey him like I’m his. The man I adore has been nowhere in sight today. Only a controlling masochist seems to have taken his place.
“Last time I checked, this was my house. And what is your problem with the basement, anyway?” I find my voice, speaking with assurance.
“What happened down there? Where is the ring? I knew it; I felt it. Damn it, Jade,” he continues as if he is doing nothing wrong.
“You don’t understand the danger that awaits you in that basement.
I’ve been trying to keep you away for a reason.
I need us to have one life that isn’t torn apart by this damned promise…
” What does he mean by promise? And how can he think this is an acceptable way to speak to me?
“Well, nothing happened anyway,” I say, trying to stay calm and be the steadier one. “When I put the ring near the doors, these roots seemed to grow. It was like a reaction to it or something—like a barricade. I put the ring back in my desk after it poked me.”
The last comment breaks whatever composure he had left.
“What do you mean it poked you?! You bled? Fuck!” He all but screams the last word. He grabs my hands, but I pull them away. I can no longer enable this type of treatment.
“What is wrong with you? Why are you so angry?” I ask, holding in my tears, putting more and more space between us.
“I need to know if it made you bleed, Jade. Tell me now!” He’s frantic with his words, and his hands grasp at my shoulders. I can’t pull away this time. Tears well up in my eyes, and it’s all I can do not to let them fall.
“The tiniest bit, but I’m fine,” I barely choke out. “It was just a prick.”
“You are so far from OK, Jade. This explains so much. I cannot save you now.” I don’t like the way he is saying my name. Full of anger and hunger, like he wants to be the one to make me bleed.
His eyes change then. And I watch his scars rise before my eyes, but he gets out of the bed to look out the window before I can see what they become.
The tension spilling from him is so thick I could cut it with a knife.
And I can’t be sure I saw what I did, but before he turned, it looked as if those scars were forming into branches.
I’m not sure what terrifies me more—the thought I’m losing my mind, or the man standing in front of me.
“I need…I need a minute. I am going to start a bath,” I say to him, tears actively running down my cheeks. I find my will to stand up, my shaky hands wrapping a floral sheet around my naked body. “I think it’s best if you are gone by the time I come out of the bathroom.”
He says nothing, but I know he will be gone, because how can one stay after a moment like that? I ask one more thing.
“And I’m a grown woman. Who on earth do you need to save me from?” It’s more of a rhetorical question. One I don’t expect him to answer. His voice does come, though. It’s not until I’ve closed the bathroom door, but I hear him clearly.
“From me.”