Chapter 27
Chapter twenty-seven
Eden
“Restraint”
The door had shut behind him harder than it needed to, with unnecessary force.
The sound echoed in the room, reverberating in the hollow space he left behind.
I stared at the door like he’d come back a few seconds later, like he didn’t just say something so raw that it still hung in the air like smoke.
But he didn’t come back. I sat in the chair where he’d been working earlier, staring at the folder he’d left open.
I didn’t touch it, but I wanted to know what he was carrying.
There were photos of men, notes in handwriting that were too precise to be careless.
So he was planning something, and I knew better than to ask what.
I looked from the napkin in my hand, to the rain-slick world outside, then back at the empty motel bed.
Maybe I was stupid, doing what I always did: holding broken things too tightly, thinking I could love them into healing. Halo didn’t need love, though, not the easy kind. He needed someone who could stay, someone who wouldn’t look away when it got dark.
God help me, I was trying to be that person for him. Even when he ran and closed the door like he’d rather drown outside than admit what he was feeling. I didn’t go after him; I had learned that you couldn’t chase someone like him. I could only wait and be here when he came back.
Ten minutes passed, maybe fifteen, and then I heard the sound of his wet footsteps outside, followed by the soft protest of the door opening.
He came in and went straight to the bathroom to retrieve a towel, drying his hair with a rough tousle.
I didn’t move from my place in the chair, expecting him to say that I shouldn’t be looking at his notes, but he didn’t.
He just moved over to the window, leaning against it and staring out like a stupidly handsome gargoyle.
He acted like if he looked away for just a moment, something would sneak past. I wondered if he was more concerned about something getting in or me getting out.
I stood and approached him, trying to keep my bare feet quiet on the carpeted floor.
At my first step, Halo turned his face just enough to look at me with a sidelong glance.
“What?” he asked, voice gruff.
I swallowed back the fear I had, that trepidation. Not fear of him hurting me, it was another kind of fear. The kind that came from caring too much about someone who might not let you. Because I was afraid he would run again.
I couldn’t stay in this standoff anymore, not after the way he’d looked at me before he left. It felt like he was handing me pieces of himself, even if he didn’t know it. I knew there was some part of him that cared about me; there had to be after what he said and the way he looked at me.
“What are you afraid of?” I asked.
I took a leap of faith, taking a step forward and turning him towards me. He resisted at first, the gentle tug of my hand on his shoulder no more than an inconvenience. He didn’t have to turn, but he eventually did.
His chest bumped into mine, and I braced myself on his hips as I struggled onto my tiptoes, brushing my lips across his. It was just a whisper of contact, a dare. I was testing the waters.
He didn’t react. In fact, he didn’t do anything.
I searched his eyes, looking for something, but they might as well have been a mirror reflecting all of my own uncertainties and insecurities right back at me.
His brow creased so faintly that I barely noticed, and his eyes betrayed him with a brief flick to my lips before he resumed focused eye contact.
I kissed him again, wrapping my arms around his neck as I anchored myself to keep my balance.
He stood still, not reciprocating. My mind begged for his lips to part, anything.
I pulled away, looking back at him but other than the tensing of his jaw, it was as though I hadn’t done anything at all.
Honestly, it would have been more comfortable if he’d pushed me away, but he just continued to stand there.
“If you do that again—” His voice was a low, rough rumble in his chest.
It was a threat, but I didn’t care. I kissed him on his jaw this time, and then his neck.
“What are you going to do?” I whispered.
His restraint snapped before my very eyes.
Halo was quick when he needed to be, and it surprised me that a man that size could move so fast. He snatched me into his arms before I had time to gauge his reaction to what I’d said.
I wrapped my legs around his waist, and he pushed us back towards the dresser where the television sat.
As soon as my ass hit the top of the dresser, his mouth was on my neck, my collarbone.
His hands were under my shirt, palming my breasts through the lace bra, and then he was under it, fingers teasing my nipples until the sound he pulled from my throat didn’t even sound like me anymore.
I kissed him then, or maybe he kissed me; I couldn’t tell where either of us started. It was a feverish collision.
The kiss was long and deep, like he was drinking everything I had to give him. My hands fumbled with his belt, and he helped me, yanking it loose with a violent snap as our bodies ground together through layers, friction between us building.
“Tell me to stop,” he growled as he grasped the waistband of my pajama pants. He pressed his forehead against my cheek, rocking into me as he waited for me to tell him this was enough. He would stop if I asked him to. I knew it.
“You touch me, or I’ll scream.”
It was all he needed to hear. He jerked my pants and panties off at the same time. In one brutal motion, I heard the fabric tear. I gasped, trying to stifle the sound so I didn’t… what? Scare him away? Scare him away? Was that what I was worried about?
In the next moment, he shoved the tv onto the floor with a crash and spun me around until I was on my back along the length of the dresser. My legs were on his shoulders, and then his head was between my thighs.
“Hal—oh, oh my God.” His name broke apart on my tongue, disintegrated into breathless noise as his mouth claimed me.
My hand flew to my mouth, but it didn’t stop the sounds: the heat, the wet intensity of his tongue working me with ruthless precision.
He didn’t hesitate. There was no more fear in his touch.
Just desperation. Like he was making up for every second he’d spent resisting me.
He was consuming me with his mouth like he was starved for the taste of me, like he'd held back so long it had mutated into something feral.
His tongue moved with slow precision, teasing, tasting, until my back arched and my hands scrambled for anything to hold.
One found the edge of the dresser, the other tangled in his hair.
I bit into my own hand, trembling, as if that could keep me from unraveling under him.
My climax was building so fast that I couldn’t breathe – too fast, really.
The excitement and anxiety of the entire situation amplified everything I was feeling, and I wished my body would just slow down so I could savor this.
But Halo didn’t stop. If anything, he grumbled into me like my restraint offended him, like he needed to pull every single sound out of me as punishment for the silence I tried to maintain.
This meant something to me. I had the sickening feeling that it meant something to him too, and that’s exactly why he’d hate himself for it later. That realization struck me in the chest.
It made my eyes sting. Don’t cry, I told myself, biting my palm, breath hitching in my throat. Not from pain or from pleasure, but from that terrifying swell of emotion that shouldn’t be here. Not now, with him between my thighs and his fingers digging into my hips like he wanted to tear me apart.
I came against his tongue, my core twisting itself into knots before it came crashing apart.
I made a helpless sound in my throat. My body was jelly, floating, raw and I wasn’t sure I could have moved if I wanted to.
I could feel his own breath hot against me as I pulsed and tightened, he was panting.
He pulled back slowly, breath ragged, lips and jaw glistening.
He looked dazed, like he’d just surfaced from underwater.
Halo grabbed my thighs and pulled me back against him, reaching down to unbutton his pants.
Yes, yes, yes. A thousand times, yes. I tried to grip something, anything, my nails scraping against the wood. This is what I wanted. Finally.
Then his eyes met mine, his hands froze on my hips, and his breathing turned erratic.
I saw it happen in real time: the fear, the self-loathing, the weight of everything he hadn’t said crashing down on him all at once.
I saw the second it hit him that he'd broken his stupid rule.
His hands slacked, his entire energy changed as he looked down at me.
I reached for him, but he stood frozen, like if he touched me again, it would destroy him.
“Fuck,” he growled, voice breaking into a panicked pitch. He turned away from me and ran his hands through his dark hair. His whole body shook with restraint he barely managed to claw back into place.
“Halo…”
“You don’t understand,” he said hoarsely, voice like broken glass.
“I do.”
“This is just going to hurt you. I’m just going to hurt you.”
“You didn’t,” I said quietly, struggling to sit up. “You didn’t hurt me. That was—”
I slid off the dresser, trying to gather my clothing and thoughts, but my legs were shaky and my chest worse. I was exposed, literally and emotionally, and he was already retreating back into that shell.
“You don’t understand,” he repeated, stepping back again. “You think you’re in control, but you're not. This is just going to make all of this harder on you, harder on me. You almost let me…”
He cut himself off and looked away like the thought disgusted him. I tried to reach for him again, trying to close the space he was tearing open between us, but he stepped away again like one more touch could unravel him.
“Fuck, Eden.” My heart sank at the way he said my name like it hurt.
I wrapped my arms around myself. “You don’t get to keep doing this. You don’t get to be the one who touches me like that and then pretends it was a mistake.”
“It was a mistake,” he rasped.
I didn’t flinch, but it felt like I did inside. It made me feel like I was crumbling, falling apart right here in front of him.
“I chose this,” I whispered, my voice so small. “I’m a big girl, I know what I’m doing.”
“You don’t know me. I don’t exist. This?” He motioned to himself. “Me? It’s all fake. I kill people for a living. I like it. I’m good at it. I was supposed to kill you. Do not forget that.”
His voice faded as he walked to the bathroom, kicking the television as he went.
But I knew that silence now, and it wasn’t apathy.
It was fear.