Chapter 16
Aurora
True to his earlier words, Curse barely lets me out of his sight for the rest of the day.
Though it’s an odd sensation, because though he’s not willing to let me go far, I also get the sense that he’s avoiding looking directly at me.
After dressing and replacing the bandage at the side of my head, we exist around each other in strained silence.
I spend most of that time thinking about what happened in the shower.
If Curse thinks about it, too, it’s impossible to tell, everything locked behind the blank mask of his face.
Whenever the tension becomes too much, I tell him I’m going to the bathroom.
Short toilet breaks are the only time he allows a door to close between us – but only if I use one of the small inner bathrooms without a window in it.
Dinner, too, is eaten without words, the only sounds being the clink of cutlery and the relentless drive of the freezing rain outside.
It hasn’t let up at all, and every hour in the storm thickens the ice encasing everything.
Perhaps the ice will encase us, too. Trap us together in this house with no hope for escape.
The thought should be a horrifying one. But it’s not.
When darkness falls, it’s split by the snapping whip of lightning. Thunder muffles the sound of my footsteps as I ascend the stairs for bed. It muffles Curse’s as well. I don’t hear him close behind me on the stairs. But I can feel him.
Curse has brought our bags up here earlier.
In the same bathroom as before, we brush our teeth.
We do it together, side by side, at the twin sinks sunk into the countertop.
His huge form dwarfs mine in the mirror.
There’s an absurdity to the scene, and at the same time, a poignancy.
The sight of Curse and me, side by side, doing something as mundane as brushing our teeth together, feels like a glimpse into some other secret life. Some other version of us.
Curse and Aurora in another universe. Another time.
Does he share that disconcerting sense of slippage, too? The sense that we could have been something together, or at least been something else, if things had only turned out differently? Is that why he merely answered, “Another time,” when I asked him about his A tattoo?
Curse shows me into a large guest bedroom with warm lighting and a bed wrapped in sumptuous green sheets and a cream-coloured duvet.
Across from the bed is a flat-screen TV hovering inside what looks to be a custom-created set of shelves and storage, constructed from dark wood.
Maybe we can turn the TV on. It might puncture the seal of the silence that’s been around us all day.
I’m just about to mention the idea to Curse when lightning and thunder explode in terrific unison.
A half-a-heartbeat later, we are plunged into darkness.
Without another spear of lightning, without electricity, without the stars or the moon or a single streetlight outside, I’ve become entirely incapable of sight.
The blackness is blinding, and so disorienting that I feel suddenly sick.
I twist my head this way and that, searching for something, anything to anchor myself in this endless night.
“Aurora.”
Shuddering, I collide with a warm, bare chest, hands strong and steady around my upper arms. It’s only then that the lightning returns, searing Curse’s face into my vision as he tilts his head down to me. It’s only for a second, and then he’s gone again.
But no, not really gone. Though I can’t see him, I can feel him. Smell him. My hands are splayed on his chest. His fingers slide, down from near my shoulders to my elbows.
How did he even find me in that opaque black? And so fast, too. He was all the way across the room when the lights went out.
A silly question, perhaps. The darkness is his domain, after all.
Curse doesn’t let go of me, but starts walking, forcing me into shaky backwards steps.
I don’t have a clue where the bed is now, so the sudden pressure of the edge of the mattress at the backs of my knees comes as a shock.
My legs collapse, and now I’m seated on the edge of the bed.
Even with the mattress firmly beneath me, I’m not ready to let go of him.
Or, rather, for him to let go of me. I keep my hands on him, letting them drift down his chest to his belly.
My fingertips register the sharp contraction of his abdominal muscles at the same time that he hisses in a tight breath above me.
Though he’s not got on a shirt, he does have pants. I find the waistband of them, slung low on his lean hips, then halt.
“Are we…” I lick my lips. “Tonight…”
“Are you asking me if we’re going to consummate the marriage now?”
He is still entirely invisible to me. It’s as is the darkness itself is speaking.
“Yes.”
Another spasm of lightning. Another monochromatic slice of him in the room, all scorching edges, burned into my brain like a film negative. Another symphonic boom of thunder.
“I hadn’t planned on waiting,” he replies. I’m not entirely certain, but I think I can feel his fingers touching the ends of my hair. “But if you need more time to heal,” he continues, “then I will.”
It’s a small mercy. One I wouldn’t have expected from him, in all honesty. But he isn’t gentle at the best of times. And if he’s not capable of that sort of physical control, maybe he wants me to be as ready for the onslaught as possible.
But I don’t want to wait. I don’t want healing. I don’t even know if such a thing is even possible for me anymore.
I want pain. I want to tear in two.
I want him.
“I don’t need more time,” I whisper. My hands drift down, and my stomach flips madly when I find him already hard beneath his sweatpants. I stop, though, waiting for any sign that he doesn’t want this. That I shouldn’t be touching him here.
None comes.
But he doesn’t urge me on, either. Doesn’t give me a single word of encouragement. And the thought of touching someone this way when they don’t want it, even if their body is responding, is so abhorrent that hot tears bite at the backs of my eyes.
“Is this alright?” I choke out.
“Nothing,” he says over my head like smoke, “since Sicily has been alright.”
I understand. It makes sense. In Sicily, he still had his mamma. His life was recognizable and good. He was a child who smiled easily, laughed at jokes in a language I couldn’t understand. Who befriended me like it took no more effort than breathing.
But then came the fire.
And then he was gone.
And all that was left for me was that bed in that room in that house.
Nothing has been alright since Sicily. Not for him. And not for me.
When the tears finally spill over, I’m sure they’re silent. But Curse somehow knows about them anyway. His thumbs slide up my cheeks, collecting the salt on his thumbs.
“My offer from Montreal still stands,” he says gruffly. “You can do everything. Be in control. Be on top. I don’t have to touch you.”
“No,” I say with a sniff. “I want…”
I want him to touch me. I want him to want to touch me.
“I need you to do it.”
He withdraws from me, and I almost cry out in response. But when I hear the sound of a zipper undoing, then rustling, I know what he’s doing.
He’s getting a condom.
My pulse pounds in my chest and between my legs. While waiting for him, I quickly peel away my clothing, until I’m shivering and sightless. The room is abyss without him.
When he returns, the first thing I feel is the whisper of air over my bare legs.
Then, the heft of his knee between them.
Blindly, I reach for him, my right hand bumping his cock in the process.
I hasten to pull my hand away, because he never actually told me it was alright to touch him there, but he seizes on my wrist and pulls it back.
“Right here,” he groans, forcing my fingers around him. “Squeeze me a bit. Fuck. Yes. Like that.”
I do exactly as he says, giddy, nearly fucking delirious, with the way he apparently wants me to touch him.
I wrap my fist around him, trying to copy what I saw him doing in the shower earlier, squeezing and stroking.
His flesh is a marvel, velvet heat and metal.
There’s no condom on him yet, and I swallow a moan as I trace the shape of him in the dark.
Without being able to see him, every other sense feels exquisitely heightened.
My body thrums, my fingertips rejoice in the swollen line of every vein, every throb and twitch, every bead of moisture I find, then smear, at the molten silk of his tip.
I love the feel of him here, and I take extra time to stroke that slick place, my breath hitching at the way his shaft jerks in response.
“Fuck.” He’s suddenly out of my reach. I hear something tear, then become aware of movement.
A moment later, he guides my hand back to him.
This time, there’s a barrier between his skin and mine, thin and supple, but not the same.
Stifling the disappointment I feel – because such an emotion is ridiculous, I’m glad he’s using a condom – I stroke him again.
“Gonna get you good and fucking wet,” he grunts. “This is probably going to be quick. Rough.”
Everything in me gives a glorious throb at the promise of his words. Because I want his roughness, I want the harsh drive of his body into mine. The ache of it all. The pain that binds me to him.
The pain that makes me come.