Chapter 59
GRACE
“Something is terribly wrong, isn’t it?” Grace asked during the carriage ride home.
“It will all get sorted,” Drasko answered in an eerie voice.
“Drasko, look at me, please,” she insisted.
He had not met her eyes since they left Mr. Cuttler’s house.
The news had stunned her. This was some charlatan’s trick. She had lived with pain for years and gotten used to it. With Rivka’s healing, she was getting better. So much better! During the last year, the pain had only come back once.
“They will finally go away,” Rivka had promised, and there was no other person Grace trusted more.
The visit to the doctor had scared her. Whatever was said behind the door left Drasko unsettled, and she wanted an explanation.
He took her hand in his but still didn’t look at her. “It is all part of the plan,” was his answer.
“Drasko!”
He finally turned to meet her eyes and smiled—oh, so insincere.
She cocked her head, searching his face for the truth. “At last, you tell me everything. At last, things between us are changing. At last I know who I am, and you still hide the truth.”
The cold Drasko was back, with his patronizing gaze and careless dismissal. “I told you a lot of things. And there is more you’ll find out when the time comes. What I promised is that you will be safe, darling.”
That darling was back. There were many variations of how he said it, and this time it was the shade that he used to keep his distance.
“It’s not my safety I am concerned about,” she murmured, disheartened.
“I need to think, Grace. Please… I need to figure some things out.”
And she shook her head, scared by the hint of desperation in his voice.
Dinner passed in silence. The confessions had stitched together her past and her feelings for him. Yet she felt things were falling apart again, and there was no way to get to him, the stubborn man that he was.
Drasko drank more than usual, barely touched his food, and after dinner, studied her in silence for the longest time until he asked, “Will you play for me?”
He sat on the sofa in the music room, a glass of whisky in his hand, his tie and vest off, his shirt unbuttoned at the neck.
Grace cherished the sight of him—at home, undone, in her musical citadel.
“Will you play one of yours?” he requested.
Grace switched off the main light, leaving on the sconces that cast a dim light around the room. She lit a candle and set it on the piano.
“I have had a recurring nightmare since I was a child,” she said, brushing the piano keys with her fingertips but not playing yet.
“It’s always so real. A monster attacking.
Claws. Fangs. Roars. He is about to take the thing I love the most.” Tears burned her eyes.
How could she have known that her nightmare was a memory?
“So, I yell at the monster. Terrified, I scream and scream.” Her voice shook. “And scream…” she whispered.
“Is that how it ends?” Drasko asked softly.
“Right before I wake up, the monster is always yanked away from me. I never know the force that does it. Never see it.” Until now.
She finally looked at him, drowned in his luminous green eyes, so sad tonight.
There he was—the husband she’d never wanted, the man she’d feared for years, the person who had haunted her with memories she had so desperately tried to bring back.
What a difference a few weeks could make!
She studied his weary face, his green eyes searching hers. He was the same husband she was now deeply, irrevocably in love with. That same man who now made her feel cared for and loved.
The two of them were bound by the pain of the past. He was her past and present and future. He put the broken pieces of her together. In return, she wanted to heal his scars. What good was the music that she played for thousands if it couldn’t heal the person she loved?
“ In the darkness of my dreams, ” she sang quietly and pressed the first chord of the keys, her eyes still on him.
Something shifted in his gaze. His chest rose with a deep inhale.
“ In the lightness of your eyes .” She smiled and played another chord. “ Whispers drifted from the past .”
The words started floating out of her, in sync with the music, the gentle sounds of D Minor, soothing and sad but also full of hope, the nightmare story laced with a fairytale of the daylight.
She played about Rakshasa, the song she had written when she first learned about it, then changed it later, when she got to know the beast better.
She sang for Drasko. She always had. But this time, he knew it. This time, she wasn’t hiding. This time, her voice and music filled the room, scaring away the shadows into the corners.
When the song was over, Grace slid her hands off the keyboard and looked at her husband.
He stared down at the empty glass in his hand, chewing on the inside of his cheek, the look so haunted that it scared her.
She rose slowly and walked up to him. “I want you to forget.” She took a seat next to him and leaned into him. “Tell me how. I want you to stop thinking, at least for tonight.”
She started undressing him. He started undoing her garments. His eyes lingered on her body, no lust in them, just some vague sadness. As if he was trying to memorize this moment. As if it was the first and the last time they were together.
Grace wondered what made him so quiet tonight, so patient. Puzzled, she studied his face, searching for the cause of his sorrows.
“When I first saw you, I was swept away,” he said quietly, bringing his hand to her face and tracing the contours of it with the tip of his forefinger.
“When I first heard you play, I was mesmerized. When I first heard you laugh, I was envious it wasn’t me who made you happy, because once upon a time, I could.
Once upon a time, I was your favorite person, and then, a decade later, you wouldn’t speak to me.
And then I married you, Grace. I was scared senseless that day, I can admit it now.
I dreaded the minute you’d tell me you hated me. And you did.”
I didn’t mean it , she wanted to say but stayed silent.
“When I first had you,” he continued, “I knew two nights would never be enough. I made a promise to myself to make you happy so that you always wanted more. I won’t chase you, won’t force you into anything, Grace.
I will always love you and hope that one day, you forget that perhaps you don’t feel the same. ”
The words stung her. How could he? After what they had said last night and this morning, he dared to assume that she didn’t feel the same.
“You are so smart, Drasko,” she said, wanting to be harsh yet sensing there was a reason behind his somber smile. “And such a fool. So blind in your assumption that my feelings are any less than yours.”
“Grace, I am?—”
“Shh,” she quieted him. “You need to stop talking.”
She kissed him, knowing that before, their intimacy was what stitched together the feigned resentment and the growing desire. Perhaps, now she could show him how much she needed him, wanted him, craved him.
He wasn’t in a hurry to take her. And she let her hands explore him, studying the sensation of the scars under her palm when she cupped his face.
His hands on her body moved without purpose, not chasing the high.
His lips hovered above her skin between the prolonged kisses, as if tasting her.
His fingertips skated across it as if trying out a new tune.
Like a musician.
When Grace practiced her concert pieces, she did so with deliberate stubborn intention. And that was how Drasko navigated his life.
When she composed her songs, she let the tune lead her, replayed the same parts with variations, listening to the right notes, tasting them.
That was how Drasko was tonight, mindlessly following some inner tune.
“I want to take my time with you,” he said. “And not here.”
He picked her up in his arms and carried her out of the music room.
And in his bedroom, he laid her down and bathed her with kisses again, so expertly sliding off her stockings and undergarments that she didn’t notice when she was bare in his arms. His lips found the scars on the inside of her arm, kissed the traces of Rakshasa, then kissed her belly, the skin around the scar that hid the source of her pain.
Grace tried to keep up, wanted to soothe his scars too, but he was in charge tonight, on some quest to learn every inch of her. She had intended to make love to him. Instead, he was loving her body so fiercely, it left no room for anything else.
She let go, let him open her in shameless positions, caress her where it ached with need, kiss her where it burned for him, invade the parts of her that now belonged to him only.
The night morphed into hours of passion.
Drasko took her again and again, invading her with his fingers and tongue, then taking her again as she was already smeared in his spend, the two of them a hot needy mess. His movements lost rhythm and became sporadic. And she drowned in him.
After hours of love-making, they still longed for more. And as they lay entangled on the sheets damp with their desire, they couldn’t stop kissing and nipping at every inch of each other, their skin raw, lips swollen, muscles aching.
Her scars pressed against his. They were puzzle pieces of time that had finally snapped together.
Grace was happy. She rested her head on his shoulder. Her fingers stroked the dusting of hair on his chest. She did not speak. Neither did Drasko, now and then kissing the top of her head.
But through this happiness, there poked a sense of unease. His tenderness felt like the last wish of a condemned man.