17
My next breath rasps in and stalls halfway down as I look up at Elias.
His lids no longer hang heavy over pale eyes that are now fixed on me with sharp focus. It makes him look like another man entirely. The same handsome face. The same impossible blue.
And the devil looking out through it.
‘I let you exorcise yours,’ he reminds me. ‘You let me feed mine. That was the grace, Leah. Remember?’
I nearly swallow my tongue.
Why do I keep forgetting that whatever I take from Elias Crane, he’ll take twice as much from me?
‘Come along.’ He steps away from me, taking the air with him.
The foreboding claws at my spine as I take that reluctant first step.
The table is already set, the soup half-cooled in our bowls. One mushroom cap is missing.
He sits first.
I reach for the chair, but he pulls it back with his foot.
My hand stills on its backrest. I don’t try pulling it out again.
‘From now on we eat from one plate. One bowl. Drink from the same glass.’
My brows come together as I roll those words in my head.
Outrage is the first instinct. But it dissolves as I hold his eyes with mine and find no mockery in them.
Sleeping in his bed together. Living together. Eating from the same plate…
It doesn’t feel like mere taunting, possessiveness or control. Those would be easier to hate. This feels like something older and wounded – like a need to erase the line between what’s mine and what’s his, the space between our bodies, hunger and thirst, shame and witness.
I wonder if what he’s doing reaches far beyond blatant punishment for meddling with his future. Or perhaps it reaches further inside himself.
My ribs pull tight.
Maybe being separated feels like abandonment to him?
Maybe privacy feels like rejection?
I stop myself right then and there. A small, sane piece of my mind screams back at me: How could I still feel sorry for this man?
‘How would that work?’ I ask calmly, framing it away from a protest.
The lack of it intrigues him. His chin tilts slightly in surprise.
Did he want me to fight him?
‘I’ll let you choose.’
My mind tries to dress it up as kindness.
I glance at the chair, then back at him. ‘May I sit?’
Instead of unhooking his foot to release the seat, he swings his knee sideways and exposes his lap.
He won’t get a reaction from me.
Reaching for the bowl with one hand and the plate with the other, I school my expression, withholding anything he might latch on to.
‘Come here,’ I order quietly without looking at him. His pupils widen. His fingers curl once against the edge of the table.
He’s on his feet before I finish turning towards the fireplace.
I sink next to it, nodding for him to sit in front of me by the couch. He follows, sprawling lazily until his entire body crowds me. Too close.
But I don’t give it meaning. I meet his challenge with courage, keeping the exact distance I decide is enough.
One spoonful of soup. I lean in as he opens for me.
The next is mine.
His eyes follow the motions.
That first taste has his shoulders easing a little. With the second spoonful, he bends one knee and rests his elbow loosely against it.
I bring the mushrooms, feed half a cap to him. But as I reach for another, his fingers come around my wrist suddenly, and he turns my hand back towards me until the mushroom touches my lower lip. His grip loosens.
Is this the same man from before?
We chew, swallow, reach for another bite.
One after another, the mushrooms disappear from the plate.
The rhythm feels horribly domestic, and my gut twists from it.
Because it almost works; for a few spoonfuls, the horror wears the mask of care.
It’s not even the humiliation folded neatly into a choice that isn’t one.
It’s that he lets me move inside the cage he outlined and calls it freedom.
It’s that he allows me to feed him, arrange him, decide what shape he takes as long as every path still leads back to him.
My pulse knocks hard against my sternum, but beneath it there’s a terrible understanding that this might only be the first lesson.
What happens later? What happens tonight?
Will he teach me the rules of the house and what happens when I forget them?
How big a portion of my sanity would those rules take from me after tonight? How often?
Like a sated bear, certain I’m not going anywhere, he stretches lazily across the floor.
Even the fire paints his face in soft gold instead of hard-cut shadow.
It’s a lie. I know it is. Every instinct screams it is so. A lull – not a change.
But sitting here with him so docile and warm at my feet, sharing the meal with him, I’m right back in that bubble, forgetting the bars and starting to call the cage home.
‘Repeat what I taught you about the animals,’ he murmurs.
The room goes quiet and harsh at the same time.
I push the bowl along the floor and raise my eyes to him.
Not told me. Taught me. He’s sanded the command down until it sounded useful.
Even as he holds a stern look on me, he still allows me a breath or two to settle into the change of pace. Nothing else leaves his mouth. My skin pulls tighter around every moment.
‘Clear the threshold,’ I say quietly. The sharpness eases off his face. ‘Chip the ice with the ice chopper. Use the slope entrance to the shed. Straw on the floor to keep the cold off the chickens’ feet.’
He gives a soft incline of his head, waiting.
My swallow catches halfway down.
What’s next?
‘Crates.’ The word rolls out on a low, pleased rumble.
‘Pack them with straw. Heater on. Solar battery check.’
His head falls back softly against the armrest, but his eyes remain on me. The fire catches the edge of his jaw, casting its glow over his stillness too carefully to let it look like rest.
He observes me soundlessly. Like he used to. As if measuring something invisible on my face. How much fear there is. Or shame. How much pressure before I crack instead of bend.
A short while passes with only the fire crooning beside us.
Does he know I’m damaged enough to be thinking about taking pictures of him like this, instead of worrying what he might do next?
His mouth softens, but what comes out of him next has my spine snapping up straight.
‘My demons need a breather, too.’
I clench my teeth as fear breaks through me like an avalanche.
‘Bring a book,’ he commands. ‘The one with the red covers.’
A book?
The word won’t allow itself to fit itself anywhere near what I’d been bracing for. Then my mind loops on red.
And when it clicks with the memory, heat spreads viciously over my chest, my thighs pressing together on instinct.
Not a book. It’s the book – the filthy, explicit dark romance he once read aloud to me in the visitation room.
I stand on shaky legs and head into the room. My fingers barely close around the paperback as though it might bite.
Then I turn, my eyes taking him in through the doorway. And my body locks up.
He’s stretched on his side a few feet from the fire, gaze fixed on the flames.
The white bearskin beneath his heavy frame steals the light and throws it back over the hard slopes of his arms, the long line of his body – turning him into something lifted from a book about ancient heroes and monsters.
I glance sideways at the camera.
Breathe.
No.
Beauty is how I got close enough to be taken.
Abandoning that thought, I make my legs cross the room even though my shutter-finger begins to itch, and I offer him the book. The moment he takes it, I try to pull away – but his hand closes around my wrist and tugs down gently.
‘Read,’ he rumbles. Then, calm as a trap: ‘Sit here.’
He draws his arm back, opens his knees, exposing the space in front of him – an invitation with a clause that has me right between his thighs.
Good Lord… What is he planning to do to me?
Outrage climbs up my throat, but the wind takes that moment to whistle it right back down into submission. Heat floods the line of my spine, crawls up behind my ears and steals my next breath.
‘What the hell do you think this is?’ I snarl low, unable to keep it in.
And I don’t mean only this domestic illusion he keeps trying to make real—
The fury is aimed at myself too; at the gooseflesh spreading over the parts where the heat of his body is about to collide with mine.
‘My demons, you know,’ he says flatly, eyes on me. ‘They get volatile if they’re not fed regularly.’ He casts a flat gaze towards the window near the front door where the blizzard is punishing the glass. Then it falls to his hand resting loosely beside his thigh.
My teeth clamp together. I force air in.
There is no way for me to test what his limit is.
Swallowing the protest that starts burning beneath my tongue, I glance again towards the snowstorm battering the glass as if it were my spine instead.
And my body sinks down in front of him until I can feel his breath at the back of my neck.
His chest radiates through the space between us, warming my back.
There’s no contact – just the suggestion of it.
The threat of it. Like standing too close to the fire and pretending I’m not blistering.
He purrs over my shoulder, ‘I want you to read it aloud.’
‘You could get a telly and watch porn like every other decent psycho,’ I snap, but rein it in at the last second.
A low, rough sound rolls out of him. I flinch, not sure if it was a growl or a laugh.
‘I’m not very comfortable with observing such contact,’ he says in all seriousness.
There’s no smile in the notes. No hidden demand. Not even a philosophical quotation thrown in.
My mind slows. My heart stills.
It’s the first thing he’s offered me that isn’t a blade turned sideways.
I stare into the fire. Keep calm.
‘What I know about intimacy is… corrupted,’ he says quietly. ‘I’d like to understand it more.’
A cold sort of disquiet slides under my ribs.
I hate that part of me thinks I should feel lucky he’s choosing words over hands. I hate even more that another part of me wants to answer the pain in his voice.
The black rose blooming over the red cover invites my gaze. I’d placed it in his hands before I understood what I was really handing him. Back then, he’d approached the story with that strange dry humour of his, as if it only amused him.
But now… with this grave honesty spilling out of him, I wonder if he’d recognised something in those pages, took it as a study. Catalogued it. Measured it against himself. Tried to understand the desire from the pages.
My fingers tighten around the paperback as I stare at the illustration, roiling the questions in my head.
One beat. Two.
Oh God.
My lungs seize.
‘Has someone hurt you?’ I whisper without thinking it through. I regret it as soon as it’s out.
He holds his breath.
I hold mine.
In that space, the question sits between us live and writhing.
His exhale comes out slowly, with the old instinct to seal every door before I can see through one.
And in the same soft and absolute voice as before, he says, ‘Start reading.’