Chapter 5
“You don’t sound too sure,” I taunt as I circle her with measured steps, my finger trailing along her shoulders until I’m standing in front of her again. When I stop, the tattooed key on my finger lines up with her lock at the dead center of her chest.
For a moment, just a moment, I envision myself reaching inside and holding her heart in my hand where it belongs, feeling the soothing beat of it against my palm. I crave that intimacy with her. Instead, I settle for conversation.
“Is that your final answer?”
“Yes,” she breathes hesitantly, like she doesn’t want to give life to it, doesn’t believe what’s coming out of her mouth, because then she’d have to contend with the inevitability of me.
An errant pain wounds me at the reminder of what I’ve become to her—forbidden, forgotten, a cursed memento of everything she’s been through.
She treats us like Pandora’s Box. Like everything in our past is a powder keg that must be kept locked away and armored, or it’ll blow everything up. But the opposite couldn’t be more true. That’s where the answers are; that’s where our salvation is. Trapped, stuck, stagnant.
We can’t go on like this. I refuse. I’m so close to opening the door she slammed between us.
But the tormented man within me isn’t quite ready to walk through it and let it all go.
Not when I was the one left inside the crumbling walls with our demons.
Left behind, they tore into me, slashing, biting, digging into my flesh, my mind, my soul.
I’ve always tried to be a good man. But I’m not coming out the other side of this fully intact.
Some of the best parts of me have gone necrotic in the depravity of her absence.
I didn’t allow bitterness or cruelty to fester in those holes that were left behind, but I wasn’t left unchanged.
There’s a voracious need to be whole again.
And at this moment, only one thing can help me get there.
“Say it,” I demand. “Say it again.”
“Hawthorne…” Her voice cracks.
The breath is knocked out of me, words forgotten in favor of savoring the high.
“Is it really you?” Her head tilts to the side; she’s trying to assess me even with a blindfold. Holding back a sigh of frustration, she purses her lips, but her flaring nostrils give it away.
I would never make her truly suffer, but there’s a twisted sense of satisfaction in watching her squirm a little bit.
I don’t see the harm in indulging myself; we both know she’s safe.
I crave that friction, I want her to be frustrated with unfairness like I have, I want her to feel the relief when she accepts what I’m offering.
I want her to cling to me like a lifeline again.
Sol says my name like a question, but I know there’s no confusion between us. She’s just not ready to accept the reality of her situation. I refuse to be alone anymore. I can’t live in the residual haunting of our past; I need her to be present. I refuse to cave until she is.
“Are you telling me you can’t feel it in the air, all that devotion curling around us in aromatic plumes?
The dewy need of it on your skin, the weight of everything we are and can be swelling between us?
” I can hardly breathe around it. But instead of fighting it, I let it choke me.
I could suffocate on the fumes, what a heavenly asphyxiation.
She remains silent, and I know it’s because she can’t lie to me. The denial is a reaping pepper on her tongue, a scorching heat that will only worsen if she breathes air into it.
Of course, I want answers, but only if they’re overflowing with honesty. Half-truths and avoidant omissions will only taint the sweetness of her return. The sense of urgency that’s nipped at my heels every waking moment died between grabbing her and the drive home. I can take my time.
I allow myself the luxury of simply looking at her, appreciating her like a piece of fine art. Admiring and resenting all the new brush strokes the world has left on her that I didn’t get to witness.
There was a time when I would notice a new freckle before her, when I knew every millimeter of her body.
We both have new scars, visible and hidden.
When she’s ready, we’ll bare them all. In the meantime, I’ll settle for the satisfaction of peeling back the layers to reveal the woman I’ve loved for the majority of my lifetime.
“Let’s see if we can jog your memory. Erase some of that doubt.”
Her only response is her sharp intake of breath and the reflexive struggle of her feet against the restraints. Sol’s not going anywhere. All tied up, she’s completely at my mercy. I plan to make the most of it.
So be it if she’s angry with me later. I’ve never been afraid of her lashing out. I love every side of her. Crave every reaction, every word, every sign of life that I greedily soak up after such a drought. Every ebb and flow, every hard wall she throws up, every soft admission.
The only thing about her that I can’t accept, refuse to, is her decision to leave me.
Running my thumb along the seam of her lips, the heat of her mouth is a tempting invitation. Slipping my finger inside is like coming home after being out in the snow.
“Sol,” I groan at the sensation that’s like getting into a thermal spring. My shoulders drop a few centimeters, a small release of tension. More so when her mouth floods with saliva, a natural reaction that she couldn’t deny if she tried. I swim in it.
Her tongue trembles, the muscular organ eager to taste me, but her willpower is stronger. Unsurprisingly, she rejects the urge to accept this offering.
“You can’t tell me that this pretty mouth doesn’t remember the taste of me.
” I press my thumb down on her tongue, fighting the temptation to sink inside her throat with her at my disposal like this.
But I want her to be an active participant the first time she takes my dick.
I want her eager for it. I want her to take me with teeth and nails.
I want her soft and pliant. I want all of it.
But she’s giving me nothing; distant and stubborn, she sits there.
I sigh, removing my finger. “I guess I’ll come back later when you’re ready to talk.” Without further hesitation, I make for the door.
“Wait,” she calls out just as I reach for the handle. “Untie me. If it’s you…”
“If?” Hands tied or not, she knows how to land a blow.
“I don’t believe what I can’t see.”
“A little close-minded of you, isn’t it? I’d think you, of all people, would trust your intuition.”
“Trust,” she scoffs. “Trust doesn’t belong in my world. Intuition, trust, those are all different words for risk. I can’t afford that, especially not now.”
“You’re safe. You can trust that.”
“Safe?” Her laugh is cutting. “We’re not safe. If it is you, bringing me here was the most dangerous thing you could possibly do—for us, for yourself. You must have a fucking death wish.”
“If wanting you is a death warrant, then sign it in my blood. I’ve died for you once. I’d gladly do it again.”
She flinches back as if I’ve slapped her with the abrupt reminder of that drunken night in my living room all those years ago.
It might be a shock to her that I still feel that way, but it’s not to me.
I mean it, irrevocably. I won’t let it come to that, but if it were the only way, I wouldn’t think twice.
Having her here sharing the same air as me, speaking my goddamn name, that’s worth everything.
“Don’t say that,” she pleads.
“Then I won’t say anything, but you will. Talk to me, give me answers.” I come crawling back to her, abandoning my plan and clinging to the hope that she’ll see what’s right in front of her.
“You want an answer? You want something you can sink your teeth into? Fine.” Backed into a corner, her claws come out.
I see them gleam before she even speaks.
“The first chance you give me, I’ll run.
” The threat slices into me, allowing some of that desperation that courses through my veins to ooze out.
She’s never been one to give in first. I love that about her.
I’m happy to tell her what I want, ask for it, demand it.
I have no shame when it comes to her. Usually.
Right now, I’m inclined to make her work for it.
I won’t torture her like she did me, but toying with her a little can’t hurt. She can take it.
“Careful, Nightingale.” I lean so close that our lips will touch if she so much as breathes heavily. “Talk like that and I’ll have to handcuff us together.”
“You’ve lost your mind.”
“Of course I did. Without the sustenance of your love, without the certainty of your true north, I’m a man lost in the dense forest, scavenging for survival. I don’t intend to go back.”
Slipping my fingers beneath the blindfold, I tug it down to her neck and revel in the recognition in her eyes.