Chapter 8 Roxana #2
All that means is that the one sure way to trap a man’s attention in a vice grip that won’t let him go is to make him see you as his conquest. And true art lies in making him see you as a conquest without ever becoming his prey. That is where I failed in my marriage.
I take a deep pull on the cigarette, holding its fragrant vapours in my lungs for as long as possible to maximise their effect, before exhaling through my nose.
I’m about to do the same, but then I realise that my life may only last as long as the cigarette does, and I restrain myself to only a modest puff.
“Well?” I nudge Wilson.
“Oliver Whitcombe, Charlotte Hensley, Amelia Fairbourne, Henry Blackwood—”
“Fucking fantastic!” I interrupt him to praise his efforts. “Blackwood was such a creep.”
“Iris Blackwell, Edmund Vale, Jonas Redgrave—”
“Aw, too bad, I liked Jonas. I liked looking at his ass. Ah well. That’s okay. I’d like to thank you for Vale. Bastard made it his personal mission never to let the world forget that I used to be Silas’s student.” I ash the cigarette into the sink.
“Clara Ravenshaw, Rowan Ashe, Lucian Harrow, Tessa Whitlock.”
“Imagine that! This campus without Ashe’s constant bronchitic wheezing! And without Harrow’s sweat stains and Whitlock’s hideous floral dress. Remember the way it always got stuck between the cheeks of her lardy ass? Oh, this place is going to be so much more palatable now.”
That something in his face solidifies into a smile. It is a faint one, but it is there, and it’s giving me hope.
“What, you thought you were the only one who wanted to shoot them?” I reciprocate it. “Trust me, mate, plenty of us have fantasised about it often enough. The only difference is that you got up and actually did it.” I raise my hand with the cigarette as if saluting him with a glass.
As I do, I realise that it’s almost gone and a fresh surge of terror crashes over me.
I ash the cigarette, the little flame eating steadily through the last bits of tobacco.
I gulp, raising my eyes to his, only to find him observing me keenly without blinking and with a now distinct smirk playing on his face.
“Be good if you got Owen Pembroke too, by the way,” I suggest, attempting my own smile; complicit, with just a hint of seduction. “Creep groped me at a party once, and when I told Silas, he said it was my own fault because of the dress I wore.”
“Owen Pembroke,” Wilson nods solemnly, repeating after me. “Do you want one more?” he asks, indicating my cigarette.
“Yes!” I toss the stub to the ground and shake another smoke out of the packet. “Come to mama,” I chirp stupidly before sticking it between my lips and lighting up.
Wilson chuckles, the sound low and guttural, but not menacing in its quality.
“What?” I ask in between draws, smoke clouding my vision.
“You,” he responds simply and lowers the shotgun. “I’m enjoying you. I’m enjoying you a lot.”
The fluorescent panel above our heads flickers, light and shadow dancing on Wilson’s face. His lips part to reveal his buck teeth. With each eerie flash, something new is exposed in his familiarly benign, chinless visage. Something lascivious. Something ... leering.
Something that makes me regard him in a sexual way for the first time ever.
I sense a shift in the atmosphere between us, and even as my mind continues to race, my body’s rhythms settle, my heart rate slowing down, my breathing deepening, my very cells picking up subtle signals that the danger is over.
Making me realise, if not quite believe, that I feel safe.
“Of course you’re enjoying me.” I toss my head back and blow out three perfectly round smoke rings. “I am an enjoyable woman.”
On a wild impulse, and cautiously, so that it is noticeable but not overtly intentional, I spread my legs a little further apart.
I feel the thin strip of the thong sink deeper between my ass cheeks.
And at the same time, I realise that the whole area feels cold with moisture, excited blood rushing underneath the sensitive skin.
Wilson’s strangled noise, low but potent, tells me that he’s noticed my arousal.
Do I want him to fuck me for reasons other than to have a better chance of surviving this?
Well, I’ll be damned. Who would have ever thought? But no, it’s not really about Wilson as I knew him. It’s about this new, dangerous Wilson, this dark, novel ... personality ... of his that holds all power over me, that brushes against something deep and dormant inside of me.
The second cigarette is finished, but I’m too powerfully intrigued to feel scared anymore. Too powerfully intrigued even to be acting coy.
I spread my legs even further. And I reach between them and through the tear in my pantyhose. My fingers brush against my flesh, delicately and sensually, as I pull my thong to the side, allowing Wilson a full view of my cunt. Not necessarily in an invitation. More as a confession. A communion.
Look, I speak not with words, but with every lustful throb, with every glistening bead that adorns my entrance. Look at what you’re doing to me. I see you now! Can you see me? You and I are but mirror reflections of each other.
And the tightening of lines around his mouth tells me that he does see, and a wave of visceral relief washes over me. My whole body slackens, relaxing in a way it never has before.
“I’ll be back for you, Roxana,” Wilson says, and to my great surprise, he pronounces my name not the way the English do, but with a hard rolled ‘r’, like people in my homeland.
He pushes the door open with a creak.
“Where are you going now?” I ask him.
He gives me one last look before departing with words spoken in a flat, is-it-not-obvious tone of voice, “Why, I’m going to kill Owen Pembroke.”
The minute he’s out of the room, the light stops flickering. Sliding off the counter, I stumble towards the nearest toilet cubicle and throw up violently.
Present day
My eyes flutter open. I’m lying on my back in the doorway, the upper half of my body resting on the warm, soft bedroom carpet and the lower half on the cold, hard bathroom tiles.
Looming over me, Silas’s face comes into view. Over the rich crown of his hair, I can see the light fixture above our medicine cabinet, glowing softly orange.
My eyes meet his, dark and unnatural. We stare at each other for what feels like an eternity, in a silence louder than church bells are at 7.00 a.m. on a peaceful Sunday morning.
“You’re here,” I say when the stillness grows oppressive; a simple, ambiguous phrase that doesn’t fully give away my mounting suspicions.
“I am here ... Roxana,” he says my name after a momentary hesitation, pronouncing it with that perfect, Romanian rolled ‘r’, and as he does, a sinful smirk carves itself onto his face.
The light fixture above the mirror winks at me with a flicker.