Chapter 8 #2
Well, I was six. I’m twenty-eight now, but I still feel just as ridiculous, holding this bar he bought me because he knows I like lemon. This bar he wants me to eat so I don’t pass out on him and cause him even more trouble.
With numb fingertips, I open the package.
There’s a pale yellow coating on the bar, sweet and lemony on the outside, crumbly and more vanilla-flavoured on the inside.
But I barely taste it, forcing the chalky texture of it down my throat, over and over, until the bar is gone.
I cough slightly, then rise from the bed, mumbling something about needing water.
In the bathroom, I fill one of the cups on the counter and chug it. I’m thirstier than I realized, and the water feels good on the way down. But once it all hits my stomach, queasiness spreads through me. I don’t throw up again, at least. Thank God for small mercies.
When I place the empty cup back down, I catch sight of myself in the mirror and grimace.
At least all that dark, streaky makeup is off now.
I don’t look anything close to normal, but I look ever-so-slightly more like myself.
But I’m paler than usual, and that’s saying something, because I’m not someone who has any hint of a tan to begin with.
My hair looks pretty bad, caked with hairspray, and I wince when I try to get my fingers through it.
Without being consciously aware of even making a decision, I strip out of my clothing and leave them in a soft black pool on the floor. Shivering slightly, I hustle over to the shower, starting it up. It takes a second for the water to heat up, but once it does, I step fully into the glass stall.
It’s only then I notice that I haven’t even closed the bathroom door. If Curse comes here now, he’ll see me naked through the steaming glass. But the doorway is empty, and no matter how many times I glance over there while I shower, that doesn’t change.
It’s good he doesn’t want to spy on me in here. It’s good I don’t have to worry about that from him.
At least, that’s what I tell myself. But a pathetic part of me, a part of me still burdened with a squishy, six-year-old heart, whispers that it’s because he can’t fucking stand me.
He withstood the annoyance of me clutching needily at his arm in my sleep the same way he forced himself to eat that lemon granita all those years ago.
He feels sorry for me. And now he probably doesn’t even want to look at me.
Well, at least the next time he looks at me I’ll be clean.
I wash my hair twice with the drying blue shampoo in the shower.
There’s no conditioner or body wash. The shampoo must be one of those shower gel/shampoo combo deals, so I wash my body with it, scrubbing everywhere until my skin feels raw and my fingers are wrinkled.
When I’m done, I take the only full-sized towel and quickly dry off before wrapping it around myself like a short strapless dress.
Because I’ve left the door open, the mirror isn’t too steamed up, and I see Curse the moment he steps into the room.
I retreat towards the sink in surprise, holding the towel tightly to my body.
“Jesus! What now? I didn’t puke again,” I tell him. “I just took a shower.”
Pretty sure I don’t need a chaperone for that. And he must at least partially feel the same way, because he didn’t make an appearance in here until I was done.
“I know,” he says. “I heard you turn the water off. Now I’m going to take one.”
“Great,” I snap. I need to be out of this room. But he catches my arm when I attempt to walk past him. The dark strength of his fingers splays over my scrawny bicep. I catch a glimpse of letters tattooed on his knuckles – F L O R E.
“What is it?” I keep my towel in place with my free arm.
Why won’t he just let me go?
But suddenly, I know why. He’s running up against the same worry he had about sleeping earlier.
“Oh, you can’t be serious!” I gasp. “You think I’m going to try to run away while you’re in here?” My stomach flips, and my voice goes hoarse and high. “You can’t be thinking of handcuffing me to you while you’re showering!”
His eyes flit from his hand on my arm to the beads of water running down my neck. Then, he lets me go. But he doesn’t let me leave the room.
“I need you in here with me,” he says. “I need eyes on you.”
“Eyes on me…while you…” I flap my hand towards the shower.
He gives a nod, then pulls his shirt off over his head. I see only the briefest ripples of hard, tattooed muscles and a line of dark body hair disappearing into the waistband of his jeans before I bolt.
His arms seize on me from behind at once, drawing me forcefully back up against his bare chest.
“Don’t even try it,” he breathes against my soaked hair.
“You leave this room while I’m showering, and I will come, wet and naked, to find you.
” My heart contracts. Absurdly, my thighs clench.
“I will cuff you to me,” he goes on without emotion.
“And I will drag you back in there with me. Understand?”
Do I understand? Oh, I understand, all right. He doesn’t trust me. And if I don’t do what he says, I’ll be bound to him beneath the hot spray of that water. Tied to the dark and beautiful violence of his body, without the barrier of clothes between us.
My thighs give another treacherous clench.
“I understand,” I hiss, trying and failing to pull out of his hold. “Let go of me!”
His hands fall away, and I clutch desperately at my damp towel as if it can somehow protect me.
When Curse sheds his pants and underwear, I wrench my gaze away, turning my whole body towards the door.
He said he needed me here in the room with him.
He didn’t say we had to make eye contact through the steam.
My breath hitches, my muscles jumping in nervous anticipation when the water starts.
A part of me almost expects him to change his mind and go get the cuffs after all.
To assure myself that isn’t what’s happening, I risk a glance at him in the mirror.
I’m not brave enough to look at him straight-on.
But even just the fogged version of him in the mirror makes my knees turn watery and weak.
He moves with deadly power, an electric sort of grace.
His body is so huge that he should seem bulky and brutish, but he isn’t.
There’s a dangerous elegance in the inked lines of his frame.
The heavy strands of his soaking hair. The long fingers as they glide and scrub.
With the angle of the mirror where it meets the countertop, I can’t see below his waist right now.
If I could, would I still be looking?
His eyes meet mine in the mirror.
I flinch and avert my gaze, my body rigid, my attention elsewhere for the rest of the time in the bathroom.
I shouldn’t be surprised that, like just about everything else he does, he showers with a ruthless efficiency.
I don’t think the water’s running for five full minutes before he turns it off again.
With my back to him like this, every other sense is pitched towards him.
My ears strain to catch the sound of him stepping out of the shower. I don’t wait for permission to flee.
And that’s what I’m doing, really. Fleeing.
Running from his nakedness, from the silence of his dark power, from the foreign feelings welling up inside me in response.
When I reach the bedroom area, I’m shaking badly as I try to piece together why I spent so long watching his reflection in the mirror.
Male nakedness has always been abhorrent to me.
I try to get my breathing under control, pacing the room and coming to a stop before the window.
Outside, the storm has abated. Everything is covered with white velvet.
It looks like earlier snow from the season hasn’t even had the chance to fully melt yet, so this new snow only adds to the big banks and mounds.
One mound is suspiciously absent.
“The car is gone.”
“Yup,” Curse says, startling me. He’s in the room with me, wearing his pants but nothing else. “I let some contacts know it was available not long after we first got here. When you were in the bathroom.”
I guess it’s good that vehicle – and whatever evidence it contained – is already on its way out of the country. But now I feel oddly trapped. We’re in this tiny motel, practically snowed-in, with no way out.
“Someone will bring by a new vehicle for me soon,” Curse says, as if all the fears and worries inside my brain have been splattered along the wall for him to pick apart and examine. “Once the roads have been cleared.”
“And then what?”
Curse’s hair is curling slightly as it dries. The wet locks are tousled, falling over his brow. Once again, I want to touch him. Once again, I hate myself for it.
“Then we move on. To Montreal.”
“Montreal,” I echo, letting the word sift over my tongue. I haven’t been there since I was sixteen. “Is that where Elio is?”
Curse stills. I get the sense he’s suddenly watching me much more closely.
“No,” he says slowly. “Why are you asking about Elio?”
I frown, then shrug. “Because I know he’s been in charge since Vincenzo Titone’s death. And I know you do his bidding. So if you’re bringing me to Montreal, I assumed it was because he told you to. Because he sent you.”
A muscle in his jaw tightens. His eyes scan me, like they’re looking for something, but for what, I couldn’t say. Eventually, he just shrugs, too.
“Elio is in Toronto. His wife Deirdre is pregnant, so he’s staying pretty close to home these days. I’m out here to keep the peace after all the shit that went down at Valentina’s wedding.”
“Oh, to Darragh Gowan? I heard that she married him.”
But he shakes his head.
“No. Her first wedding, the one in Montreal. To Sal di Mauro. Bikers shot the place up. Killed Sal and got Uncle Vinny pretty good. Since taking over, Elio has brokered a deal with them that’s keeping everybody’s blood mostly inside their bodies these days, but who knows how long that’s gonna last.”
“So to make sure everybody’s behaving, he’s got you out here?”
He nods, but none of this really answers my question. None of this tells me how New York, Marco, my wedding, me all fit into the picture.
“You’re not handing me over to Elio, then?”
I don’t think I’ve seen confusion or surprise on Curse’s face in more than twenty years. But his eyebrows twitch with it now.
“No.”
“What about Darragh Gowan? Or to a biker in Montreal?”
It hadn’t occurred to me before that I might be some kind of bait or prize to keep an MC boss happy in this new deal Elio has struck. But it does now, sending ice into my veins.
There’s tautness around Curse’s eyes. Pulsating tension in his jaw and shoulders.
“No, Aurora,” he says with a quietness that feels like a warning. “I’m not handing you over. I’m not giving you to fucking anyone.”