Chapter 5 – Vale
THE TRUTH IN THE WINDOW
VALE
Ijerk awake, sitting upright in bed, breathing hard.
Sweat coats my brow, my neck, and my heart’s pounding in my chest. I grab my own neck, searching for a wound but there’s nothing there.
My vision won’t focus through my confusion.
I rip the sheets off me as if there are snakes slithering around my body.
The feel of the material is too coarse against my overly sensitive skin.
I jump out of bed, running to the sleeping porch, making my way out to the platform and into the pouring rain. The cold rain soothes my heated skin. I search in the darkness for him, but he isn’t there. Why isn’t he there?
I’m breathing hard as I search, eyes blinking at every rain drop. There’s no sign I’ve been out here tonight. The telescope is covered and the stool is inside the sleeping porch. I don’t understand what just happened. It felt so real.
My skin prickles with awareness when my clothing becomes waterlogged and heavy with the rain.
I glance at Oliver’s house. The lights are on.
Several nice cars are parked out front in the circle.
I’m close enough to see into one set of bay windows.
That must be his bedroom up on the second floor because he’s there with someone.
Oliver has a woman’s back plastered against the wall.
I can’t look away as he thrusts his hips up into hers.
Her legs wrap tighter around his waist, desperately trying to hold on.
His pants are slowly falling while he dips his tight ass between her legs, his muscles clenching with each thrust. She’s moaning, but I barely hear it over the rain.
I see her head tilt back in what I think is pleasure.
I’m so glad I can’t see her face through her veil of messy blond hair.
He drags her to the window, bending her over and thrusting inside her again.
Her hands hold on to the window casing, and her tangled hair hangs over her bent head, reminding me of a rag doll as he slams inside her, just like in my dream.
Her body jerks forward, her head slumps farther every time he thrusts his hips.
I take in his chest, barely covered by an unbuttoned dress shirt, his muscles cut like chiseled stone.
With every forward thrust the muscles of his abdomen work, clench and release.
He’s using his entire body to force himself inside her.
I trace the outline of a tattoo on his chest as he moves.
Though I can’t see the entirety of the art, the shape vaguely reminds me of the red dragon on a Welsh flag.
Then I look at his face and he’s smiling.
He’s at ease in this sexual act. His eyes are closed, his head tilted back on a long, graceful neck, and his thick black lashes create dark shadows under his eyes.
His face is achingly beautiful, his pale cheeks flushed pink, unaware of my intruding gaze.
Is this what it would be like to be with Oliver?
Would he look so content if he were inside me instead?
Is the woman enjoying herself as he almost violently plows into her?
With her head tilted down, I can’t tell.
But I don’t want to see her. I never want to see her face.
This is all wrong. I don’t want to know who she is, yet I admire that she gets to experience this—Oliver’s attention, his lust. I wish it was mine. I wish he was mine.
He grasps her hips and it looks painful, his fingernails digging into the flesh where her dress is rucked up around her waist. They create a brutal rhythm with one another. He jerks her backward with every savage forward thrust. It looks like she’s barely able to hold on.
Her moans are louder now, almost screaming.
I hear her cries and somehow that sound, her voice, it breaks my heart.
It hurts. There’s an intense physical pain in my chest, a burn searing me from the inside.
Oliver is a fantasy and nothing more. He’s just a dream.
He’ll never want me. I’m just a girl, no matter how much I want to be a woman.
My hand is over my heart as I take one last look at his beautiful face. It’s as if I need to hold my heart inside my chest or all those tiny pieces will seep out into the world, then be lost on the barest wind. I’ll never find them again. It’ll never be put back together.
Before I can turn away, his eyes open and he looks right at me.
I can’t move when our eyes connect. He watches me while he fucks her.
He licks his lips, then his eyes soften sweetly, like he understands how bad it hurts for me to see this.
His head tilts to the side, his jaw tensing, his face pained with something I don’t understand.
Oliver leans forward and places the palm of his hand onto the glass. He’s asking me something. My body understands the request, and I lift my right hand from my heart. I hold it up as if we could touch through the windowpane.
Then he tilts his head back quickly, baring the long line of his neck again. I hear his groans. I’m so hyperfocused on that beautiful sound it drowns out her moaning. An audible gasp escapes my lips and my thighs clench together.
This is what he looks like when he comes.
This is what I’ll never know with him. Seeing him like this is a gift as much as it’s a curse.
I’ll remember this beautiful moment forever, be tortured forever.
Tears form in my eyes as I watch him pull out of her, pulling his pants up quickly to cover his cock before I can see it.
She staggers away as she straightens her dress to cover her breasts, jerking the skirt down. He saw me watching him. He knows. He looked right at me.
This is so wrong.
What the hell is wrong with me? Why didn’t I walk away? Why did I watch?
I’m soaking wet by the time I run inside.
I get to my bedroom and lock the doors. I strip out of my wet clothes and dry off as quickly as I can before putting on some pajamas that cover most of my skin.
I feel dirty, guilty. I’m ashamed of my lack of control.
My heart is pounding in my chest as I wipe the tears from my face. Why did he have to look up at me?
My phone starts ringing. I race out of the bathroom to grab it, worried it’ll wake up Gramps. I say hello in a breathy voice unable to hide how shaken I am.
“Did you enjoy watching me,” he says with amusement in his voice, and my cheeks flare with heat.
“I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry,” I explain. And it’s the truth. I never wanted to see him like that. Not with another woman. It should have been me.
“Don’t worry, I forgive you. I won’t tell Nick, but you need to do something for me,” he says in a smug tone.
I can’t imagine what he’ll ask of me.
“Next time you watch me with a friend, I want you to touch yourself. I want to watch you come.”
Surely he isn’t serious. Is he making fun of me? What a dick!
Anger boils inside me. The flames burst free and I swear I’m taken over by a rage so great I feel like I’m going to explode with it. “You’re a sick pervert, do you know that?” I say, stronger than I really am. I’m putting on a false bravado, but it’s not for him, it’s for me.
“Pervert I may be, but you like it. The way it is between us. I know you watch me. Don’t be afraid. I won’t touch you, baby. I’ll just watch.” The way he says he’ll just watch, makes my thighs clench and my heart beat in double time.
I can’t stop the tears that suddenly spill over onto my heated cheeks.
I’m sitting on the side of my bed, holding the phone to my ear as I listen to his soft breathing and think about how to reply.
“I don’t want to watch you with another woman,” I whisper.
I don’t want to tell him what I really think, how I wish it’d been me.
“A man, then? Would you like to see me fuck another man? Do you want to see me get fucked maybe?” he asks, and my mouth gapes open, my cheeks burning. It’s the last thing I expect him to say.
“No! Oliver, I don’t want to watch you fuck someone else.
That’s not what I want,” I lie, my wheels turning.
I wonder what it’d be like to watch, knowing he knows, knowing he likes my eyes on him.
I’m a sick person. I didn’t agree with my father the first hundred times he told me, but I agree with my father now.
I am some sort of demon, lost to my desires. Now I know I’m bad, and it hurts.
“You could’ve fooled me, Vale. What’s the fantasy then? What do you want from me?” he asks, frustrated. “I’m waiting.”
This sick son of a bitch actually wants me to tell him my fantasy. He’s curious, interested in my desires. Though I doubt it. He’s probably just messing with me. “I don’t think we should talk about this.”
“Because you’re oh so young and impressionable,” he says, then laughs with a callousness I hate.
“I think you know better, but you don’t care.
There’s a saying, stop me if you’ve heard it, that goes, ‘You’re old enough to know better and too young to care.
’ Vale, you don’t give a fuck and you know it. ”
If he’d said it any other time, just in a chat, I probably would have laughed and agreed.
I did know better, but I didn’t care. Oliver sees me so clearly, I feel exposed.
I don’t know how to hide from him. If he came here right now and spread my legs .
. . well, you understand, I’d let him. I wouldn’t care if her perfume was on his skin. I’d gladly let him ruin me.
I think that makes me fucked up.
“If I came into your bedroom right now you wouldn’t protest. If I ripped your clothes off and pushed you down into those obnoxious pink sheets, you wouldn’t tell me no. You’d beg me to touch you,” he says, somehow voicing my own naughty thoughts, as if he knew exactly what I’d been thinking.
“If I kneeled next to the bed and spread your legs, opening those creamy thighs. If I licked your slit till you came in my mouth, your sweet nectar on my tongue, you’d let me.
All the while you’d beg for more. Do you want to know why?
” He pauses for me to answer the question, but I can’t say anything, he’s fried my brain with those dirty words.
“I’m your fantasy breathed into existence.
You want me. You want me to teach you every naughty, filthy, disgusting thing I can do to a woman.
You ache for me to do those things to you, and if you’d just dip your fingers into your panties right now, you’d find yourself wet and ready for me.
There’s no shame in your desire. Whoever taught you that, they’re wrong. ”
“I don’t know what to say to you. I can’t,” I whisper, the tears still coming. My breath hitches, and I’m sure he knows I’m upset.
There’s a knock at my window and I look up in fright.
He’s standing there in the rain. My eyes are huge when he enters through the sleeping porch, through the door I swear I locked.
He removes his boots by the door, then he takes off his jacket and drapes it over an old kitchen chair.
He steps closer and grabs the towel from the end of my bed, drying his long, dark hair as it falls around his face.
“Why are you here?” I ask, more in shock than anything else.
I sit the phone down on the end table, then stare at him.
He’s soaked and gorgeous, his long hair curling around his jaw and neck.
He’s so beautiful it hurts to look at him.
Why is he here? I don’t understand, and I doubt he’s going to explain it anytime soon.
He’s going to destroy me. He’s right, I’d let him. Who wouldn’t?