6. Deirdre
Deirdre
A s much as I don’t want to admit it, when Elio comes, there’s something violently beautiful about it.
About him. Every carved muscle straining beneath scarred skin, the tendons in his neck tight, his face flushed in a way that almost makes him look younger, amplified by the messy fall of rogue locks of hair tumbling over his forehead.
But make no mistake, there is nothing innocent or boyish about this man.
Another aftershock of my orgasm rushes through me, sending a stinging flutter over Elio’s hardness. I’m so wet down there, and I’m terrified to look and see how much of it is blood.
I can’t believe I let him fuck me again.
Did I even let him? Everything is such a hot, chaotic blur in my mind, pain and pleasure and need and shame all intermingled until it’s a swirling mess I can’t make sense of.
One thing I do remember clearly, though, is the stupid way I rocked against his erection when I thought that he was asleep.
My cheeks flood with heated colour at the memory of how brazen the act was.
So fucking dumb. Because look where it got me – coming and bleeding on his cock again.
I try to focus hard even as Elio gives one more gentle rock inside me that makes stars explode behind my eyes.
I never said no.
How can I honestly tell Elio I don’t belong to him, how can I ever extricate myself from the dark pull of him, if in the heat of the moment I can’t even do that much?
Hell, my arms are wrapped around him right now! Like I’m the one pulling him closer instead of the other way around.
I can tell him I don’t want him but we’ll both know that I’m a liar.
But wanting someone isn’t the same as accepting them or loving them. I can want things that are ultimately bad for me. Maybe that’s just human nature.
Drugs. Booze. Elio.
All addictive.
All toxic.
Elio braces himself on his elbows, his forearms bracketing my head as he lowers himself, pressing his bare chest to mine. The contrasting hardness of his muscles against the curves of my breasts creates a visceral, primal reaction that makes me clench around him again.
He grunts sharply against my throat in response, dick twitching once inside me before he pulls out.
I hate the whimpering sound I make, but I can’t stop it. A rush of air hits my wet flesh and the lack of him makes me feel cold. I shiver.
Then I jerk in surprise as I’m lifted right out of the bed. I clutch Elio’s neck, suddenly afraid that I’m going to fall even though I know he’d never drop me.
He strides into the bathroom adjoining his bedroom, bumps the light on with his elbow, then plonks me down on the toilet before retreating a couple of steps to stare at me. At some point, I guess right before he picked me up, he put on his underwear, tight and black.
I realize that I’ve never actually seen him wear another colour before. Except for his white pocket square that night at the gala, that is.
“Pee,” he says, a single word of command.
“I can’t… I just… What?” I give my head a shake, trying to come up with something more coherent than that. My brain feels like it’s made of pudding or something. My body is still floating on the wobbly wave of the orgasm he just coaxed out of me.
Or demanded from me.
“Go pee.”
“No, I heard you,” I say, scrubbing the palms of my hands over my eyes. “I just need a second to… recalibrate.”
Recalibrate. That’s a pretty good word. Maybe my brain isn’t fully pudding after all.
“Knocked you off balance, did I?” Elio asks, and I snort, because that’s one heck of a euphemism for what just happened.
The pudding feeling is back. I can’t come up with a retort. So instead I just turn and take some toilet paper from the roll, folding it over and over until it’s a tight rectangle. Then I hold it and stare at it, like it’s going to help me somehow.
“Go pee, Songbird,” Elio says again after a moment of silence.
“I can’t pee when you’re standing there staring at me!” I snap, hot and cold prickles of embarrassment running all over my body. I know he’s right, though, and that somehow makes this situation even more annoying.
I wouldn’t have to be sitting here on the toilet, muscles shaking, blinking like a confused mole rat in the brightness if he hadn’t fucked me again.
But he probably wouldn’t have fucked me again if I didn’t let my arousal take over when I rubbed myself on him before.
Caught you, Songbird . He said it so… devilishly.
I heard the grin in his voice, like he was reveling in discovering my need, my wantonness.
Humiliation makes me want to melt into the floor, and that makes it even harder to relax and pee.
“Can you go away please?” I grit out, tugging the sides of my pyjama top together so the garment covers me up.
I can’t do it up properly, though. Most of the buttons have been popped off, and the ones that remain correspond with torn button holes.
It’s a shame, and it makes me feel oddly bereft.
To see this pretty, cozy, silky thing get ruined.
“Thought I already told you that that isn’t happening tonight.”
“So you’re just going to stand there and stare?”
“Yup. Until you pee. Then I’m going to make sure you wash your hands like a good girl. And then I’m taking you back to bed.”
“I don’t need a supervisor for that. What the hell? I always wash my hands! If anyone needs to wash their hands, it’s you!”
He’s still got his mismatched one glove on, one glove off thing happening. He raises his bare hand up to his face and distinctly avoids looking at it, keeping his eyes on me while he inhales hard.
When his hand falls away, it reveals a crooked smirk.
“Don’t really want to wash them now.”
Jesus Christ.
I guess he’s mostly joking, though, because he does stroll over to the sink, tug off his remaining glove, then give his hands a scrub.
After drying them, he opens a drawer beneath the sink and pulls out a new pair of leather gloves, pulling them on in quick, practiced movements.
Before he closes the drawer again I see a veritable sea of leather in there.
There have to be dozens of pairs in there.
“Have you always worn gloves?” I ask, gripping my toilet paper tightly. “Since… Since then? When you were a kid?”
Without his shirt, I can literally see the muscles in his back tighten up in response to my question. I chew my lip, wondering if he’s going to be pissed or just ignore my question entirely.
But surprisingly, he does neither of those things. He turns around to face me, leaning his hips back against the counter, crossing his arms over his bare chest.
Wearing only underwear and leather gloves, he should look absolutely ridiculous, but somehow he doesn’t, and I don’t even understand how that’s possible, but there it is.
“No. I didn’t start wearing them right away,” he says. When he speaks, his voice and words are very even, very careful, not even a hint of emotion bleeding through.
“When, then? Why?”
“We came over here in the summer. August.” The scarred side of his face twitches on that last word.
If they came here right after the fire, then his mom must have died in August. “My skin was too fucked-up, and it was too hot to wear gloves. And then, even in winter, I didn’t wear them because my skin was still a mess and having fabric rubbing on them was annoying.
And then it was summer again. Honestly, at that point, it never even really occurred to me to cover them up. I just didn’t look at them.”
I take a shaky breath, willing myself not to let any tears fill my eyes.
But it’s hard. Because thinking of someone that young – only fourteen – not even able to bear looking at a part of their own body, makes me want to break down.
And I know that the last thing Elio would want is my pity.
If he sees that, he’ll shut down completely, and I really don’t want him to.
I want to hear the rest of the story. I want to know what’s happened to him, what’s made him who he is.
“One of Uncle Vinny’s contacts in Montreal who helped us get settled ran this fur and leather shop.
Coats and wallets and shit like that. It was our second winter here, and my uncle made Curse and me go over to his buddy’s shop to help unload a big batch of new inventory.
Even after almost twenty years, I still remember how opening all those boxes made my hands hurt like a motherfucker. ”
He stops, looking lost in thought for a moment, then shakes his head.
“Anyway, I opened this one box, and it was just pair after pair after pair of men’s leather gloves. All black. Big seller for the season, I guess. And I don’t even know why, but instead of putting them away like I was supposed to, I took out a pair and put them on.”
He pauses again, this time for so long I think he’s finished speaking. But then, as if waking from a dream, or coming up for air, he breathes in sharply and continues.
“I was able to look at my own hands for the first time in more than a year,” he says, and I don’t even dare to breathe for fear of interrupting him.
There’s an instinct inside me that tells me Elio doesn’t tell this story to anybody.
Ever. That he might not have even told it to me under different circumstances, or on a different night.
“There was no scarring,” he said. He stares down at his hands now, flexing them in the air like he’s both looking at them in the present moment and remembering looking at them in the past. “No redness, no memory of fire burned into my skin. There was just this smooth, perfect, opalescent black. Fucking flawless. Like my hands were made of fucking iron or something. Like they weren’t even mine. ”
He lets his hands drop.
“Ricky must have seen something on my dopey face and took pity on my sorry ass, because he let me keep them and gave me a bunch of extra pairs too. I’ve worn leather gloves every day since then. Does that answer your question?”
“Yes,” I say quietly.
“Good. Did you pee yet?”
“No.” I sigh.
“Well then.” He gives a short nod. “You know what to do.”
And I suppose I do. Because he’s told me.
I cast my eyes down to my feet on the floor, force myself to relax, and finally pee.
“Good girl,” he says, never letting his gaze stray from me as I wipe and then flush. I grimace at the red splotch on the toilet paper as it swirls around the bowl and then disappears.
As promised, Elio makes sure I wash my hands, looming behind me and handing me a towel at the precise moment that I need one.
He stays close as I fetch new panties and a fresh pad and then slides into bed behind me.
He curls a strong arm around me, hoisting my back against his chest and nestling his chin atop my head.
At least there’s no erection pressing between my thighs this time, no unbearable, throbbing arousal inside me, but I still don’t think I’ll ever be able to sleep like this.
Except I’m absolutely wrong. Because sleep comes for me, and it comes quick.
When I dream, I dream of leather.