9. Selene #2
I find the screwdriver in the garden shed, the one Silas used to hang a shelf for my mother three weeks ago, before any of this, before I knew what his cock felt like splitting me open, before I knew that love could feel like drowning and flying at the same time.
I work the screws loose, one by one, my palms blistering, my arms aching, my bandaged feet leaving prints of blood on the grass.
The board comes free with a groan of protesting nails. I drop it into the hydrangeas and hoist myself through the gap, my hips catching, my torn dress riding up, my knees scraping on the sill. I land on the carpet of my bedroom with a thud that sounds like a thunderclap in the stillness.
I do not stop. I move through the dark house like a ghost, past my mother's closed door, past Richard's study, up the stairs to the second floor where Silas's room waits behind a locked door.
The hallway is narrow, the carpet worn, the air thick with the smell of old wood and his bourbon and the lingering scent of us from this afternoon.
The lock is simple. A privacy lock, not a deadbolt. I find a bobby pin in my hair, straighten it with my teeth, and work the mechanism with shaking hands. It clicks open with a sound like a sigh.
He is in bed, the sheets tangled around his waist, his chest bare and heaving, one arm thrown over his eyes. His cock is hard, visible through the thin cotton, ten inches thick and curved and straining against the fabric, a physical manifestation of everything he is feeling and cannot say.
He does not look up when the door opens. He knows it is me. He has always known.
"I told you," he says, his voice rough, broken, the voice of a man who has been tearing himself apart for the past twenty minutes. "I told you. You're mine. Rules be damned. Months be damned. Everything be damned."
He throws off the sheets. Crosses to me in three strides.
Lifts me, spins me, presses me face down onto the mattress with my arms pinned above my head and my ass in the air and my torn dress bunched around my waist. He does not undress me.
He does not undress himself. He shoves his jeans down, frees his cock, and plunges into me in one brutal thrust that splits me open and fills me completely and makes me scream into the pillow.
"One month," he growls against my ear, his hips snapping forward, driving deep, his pubic bone grinding against my ass with every stroke.
"One month. Is one month too long. Is one fucking month too long for you, Selene?
Does it feel like one month is possible when I'm inside you like this?
When you're clamping down on me like you'll never let go? "
"No," I sob into the pillow, my fingers clawing at the sheets, my back arching to meet his thrusts. "No, Daddy, no, it's too long, it's forever, please, please?—"
He flips me onto my back, my legs thrown over his shoulders, my knees pressed to my chest. He enters me again, deeper this time, the angle brutal, his thickness dragging against my front wall with every stroke, the ridge of his crown catching on the spot that makes my vision blur.
He is enormous, impossibly big, stretching me until I burn, until I tear, until I am nothing but heat and pressure and the desperate need for more.
"Count," he commands, his thumb finding my clit, pressing hard circles that match the rhythm of his hips. "Count every stroke. One, Daddy. Two, Daddy. I want to hear you."
"One, Daddy," I gasp, my voice breaking, tears streaming down my temples into my hair. "Two, Daddy. Three, Daddy. Four—oh gosh—five, Daddy, please?—"
He does not slow. He fucks me with the desperation of a man who knows this might be the last time for thirty days, who is trying to imprint himself on every inch of my body, who is marking me from the inside out so that no amount of separation can erase what he has done to me.
The mattress creaks beneath us, the headboard slamming against the wall, and I pray that Stella sleeps with earplugs, that Richard's room is far enough away, that the house is swallowing our sounds because I cannot be quiet, I have never been quiet with him, and tonight I am screaming.
"Who do you belong to?" he demands, his hips pistoning, his balls slapping against my ass, his hand wrapping around my throat, not squeezing, just holding, just claiming. "Say it. Say it while I'm inside you. Say it while you're coming apart."
"You, Daddy," I scream, the orgasm building like a wave, like a storm, like the end of everything. "Yours, Daddy, always yours, only yours, forever?—"
I shatter. The release rips through me with a violence that borders on pain, my back arching off the mattress, my legs trembling around his shoulders, my walls clamping down on his cock so hard he groans, a sound torn from somewhere deep and animal.
He follows me over the edge, pouring into me, hot and thick and endless, his seed filling me until I feel it spilling around his shaft and running down my thighs to stain the sheets beneath us.
He collapses on top of me, his weight pressing me into the mattress, his cock still pulsing inside me, still hard, still claiming. His face is buried in my neck, his breath hot and ragged against my pulse, his body trembling with the force of his release and the grief of what comes next.
"One month," he whispers against my skin, his voice raw, broken, the voice of a man who has been to hell and is being sent back. "One month. Then forever. You promise me. You swear it."
"I swear," I breathe, my fingers tangling in his hair, my legs wrapping around his waist to keep him inside me for as long as possible. "I swear, Daddy. One month. Then forever. I'll wait. I'll survive. For you. For us."
He holds me until dawn. We do not sleep. We do not speak. We lie tangled together, his cock softening inside me, his hand spread over my heart, feeling it beat, and we watch the gray light creep through the curtains and turn the room from black to purple to gold.
When the first bird sings, he pulls out slowly, carefully, and the emptiness is immediate and devastating.
He helps me from the bed, straightens my dress, brushes the hair from my face with trembling fingers.
He walks me to the window, lifts me through the gap I created, and holds my hand as I lower myself to the grass below.
"One month," he whispers, his fingers pressing kisses to my knuckles, his eyes black and burning in the gray morning light. "Then forever."
I nod. I cannot speak. My throat is closed around the words I want to say, the promises I want to make, the love that is threatening to drown me.
I turn. I run across the lawn, through the hydrangeas, back to my window. I climb through, replace the board as best I can, and collapse onto my bed, his seed still warm inside me, his marks still fresh on my skin, his voice still echoing in my skull.
One month.
The first day passes in a blur of Mom's watchful eyes and Richard's guilty glances.
Mom has taken my phone and boarded my window properly, with screws I cannot reach from the inside.
She drives me to a therapist in East Hampton, sits in the waiting room while I speak to a kind woman with gray hair who asks about my "attachment issues" and my "risky behavior.
" I smile and nod and think of Silas's cock inside me and count the days until I see him again.
The therapist gives me a prescription for anxiety medication that I flush down the toilet. I don't want to be calm. I want to feel every second of this separation as a physical ache, a reminder of what I'm fighting for.
Maya was supposed to leave on Sunday, but she stayed longer than planned, stuck by the circumstances she couldn't control.
She finally leaves on Thursday morning. I watch her pack from my bedroom window, her movements sharp and angry, her jaw tight.
She doesn't look up at me. She gets in her car and drives away without a wave.
A few hours later, a text comes through on my mother's phone—Maya sent it to her, not to me.
"Tell Selene I love her. But I can't watch her destroy herself. "
I stare at the words until they blur.
The second day, I find a note in my lunch bag. His handwriting, blocky and urgent, the letters pressed so hard they tear the paper. "The construction site. Midnight. Come."
I wait until Mom sleeps, until Richard's snoring fills the hallway, until the house is still and dark and safe. I climb out the bathroom window, a smaller gap she overlooked, and run three miles through scrub pine and salt marsh, my feet tearing open again, my lungs burning, my heart singing.
He is there on the plywood, waiting.
He doesn't ask how I got out or about the bandages on my feet or the dirt on my knees.
He lifts me, presses me against the stud wall, and takes me with a desperation that makes the first night seem gentle.
He is bigger, harder, more frantic, his thrusts wild and uncontrolled, his hands rough, his voice a constant growl of mine and forever and don't leave me.
I don't leave. I stay until the first gray light, until I have to run back or be discovered. He helps me through the window, kisses my bleeding feet, whispers promises into my skin.