Chapter 12
Theo
Now
I know the second my eyes part open that I’ve been stabbed.
A sharp, stinging sensation goes up my abdomen and my first conscious thought is a single name. Holly. I look down and see the glint of her scalpel still lodged inside my stomach.
My temples pulse as my vision adjusts to make out the inside of a car. My car. I try sitting up and realize that my wrists are tied together with…rope?
“Oh, good. You’re awake,” Holly says, sitting in the passenger seat next to me. Her voice lures me in like a pinprick of steady light in the static darkness. “I was beginning to think I killed you by mistake.”
I try sitting up straight, coughing and falling back as the pain kicks in. Fuck, fuck, FUCK.
Holly simply huffs a laugh and rolls her eyes as if to say, “This man. Love of my life. Such a little drama queen.” She shifts forward in her seat and runs her fingers through my hair. They move towards the back of my neck, her gloved fingers scratching against my skin, making me sigh in pleasure.
“Tell me something, Carter.” Her sweet voice soothes the stabbing pain in my stomach.
Anything, my love.
“It’s been a long night for both of us, hasn’t it?” she says.
I close my eyes and nod.
“Why were you following me?”
My lips curve. “You…smell nice.”
“Why were you following me?” she repeats, her voice suddenly chilling.
“What is…that? Vanilla?”
A disgruntled sound leaves her throat, and she grabs a fistful of my hair and pulls me upright.
A sharp breath fills my lungs and my jaw clenches.
My eyes flutter open and for a moment I can’t move.
The most stunning, most beautiful, most brutal creature I’ve ever known is sitting next to me and running her fingers through my hair.
Faint smears of red still mark her cheeks and forehead. Faded smudges of blood.
I have never wanted her more.
I want to grab her by the back of her neck and bring her mouth to mine. I want to lick her plump lips, and I want her to bite mine. Hard enough to draw blood.
I want to make her scream, and I want to make her come. I want her on top of me, under me, around me — I want her fucking everywhere. Everywhere.
She leans closer and pushes the scalpel further into my abdomen. “Don’t make me repeat myself a fourth time, Theo. Why were you following me? Why did you ask me to come here?”
My heart riots, blood humming through my ears.
Her nose almost brushes against mine. Hardly.
It’s the lightest of touches, but I’m pretty certain that I melt from the inside.
She’s so close. I could so easily lean down and kiss her.
I could tell her that she’s amazing and brilliant and so fucking beautiful — wait a damn second.
I frown. “Ask you to come…here? I-I didn’t. ”
Of course, the one time I’m actually honest with her, she refuses to believe me. “You’re really not in a position to lie to me. But in case you’ve forgotten, let me remind you.” She grabs the protruding handle and pulls the scalpel right out.
“Fuck!” I grip onto the wound with my tied-up wrists, trying to keep the blood from seeping out. “What the fuck was that for?!”
Holly stares at me like she wants to kick me in the kidneys, and I apologize for swearing.
She dangles the gory scalpel in front of my face.
“Now listen here, you buttfuck —” My brain tunes out as her pretty little gloved finger runs along the edge of the blade.
Over the blood. My blood. Up and down. Up and down.
It’s an eleven blade. No more than four inches long.
Not much damage can be done with an eleven blade.
Not like this anyway. If she really wanted me to suffer, she’d have to cut open an artery — axillary or perhaps the carotid depending on her mood.
But all she did was slightly insert it into my abdomen. Which can only mean one thing.
Holly doesn’t want me dead. Not yet.
A blush warms my cheeks. I try not to let it show, which isn’t hard given that I’m bleeding profusely and also, it’s quite dark outside.
“You’re going to start behaving —” Holly goes on — “or else I’m going to take this fucking knife and shove it so far down your throat that you…why…why are you laughing?”
I try not to. Really, I do. “You want…me to…to behave, huh?” A throbbing sensation goes up my torso.
There’s blood all over my fingers. I think I’m going to be sick. “You know…Hollister…one of the biggest myths of dominant and…subordinate relationships is that men…always act as the…dominant ones, whereas women…women are more compliant and obey —”
“Theo,” she warns, a hint of worry in her voice. She looks down at my torso and then back up again.
I feel myself growing lightheaded. “I’m just saying, Hollister… that with the right motivation…I can see myself…being a good boy for you…”
“Theo.”
“Well, a good boy in…certain situations and a bad boy in…others —”
Holly puts her hand over my mouth, clamping it shut. “Oh my god. Shut. Up.” Her gaze flicks down to my stab wound. “Why on earth are you bleeding this much? I didn’t even put it all the way inside!”
She must feel my smile stretch underneath her palm, because the brief concern in her eyes disappears, giving way to absolute abhorrence. “Don’t even think of making a sex joke right now.”
My grin widens. “Yoph wiph iph ma comphnd.” Your wish is my command.
Hesitating for a minute, Holly lets go of my mouth and wipes her palm on the side of her jeans. I have to physically stop myself from groaning in resignation. No, come back, love.
She leans back to unzip her fanny pack and pulls out a tiny metal box, setting both, the box and the blood-stained scalpel, on the dashboard. “Take off your shirt,” she orders.
“Take it off yourself.”
“Theo.”
I raise my tied-up wrists to undo the first few buttons of my white shirt, getting red splotches all over the collar.
Holly opens the metal box, taking out a pair of forceps and a roll of thread.
Wait. Is she…is she going to stitch me up?
I release a deep sigh and try to tame the flutter of nerves in my stomach.
While slightly on the “murdery” side, my love still has a lot of heart.
I’ve always known that. But Holly wouldn’t stitch me up.
She wouldn’t. Would she? Oh god. My head feels like it weighs a hundred pounds.
My skin turns clammy. I feel overwhelmed.
Fuzzy. A deafening rush of pressure surges through my chest.
She unbuttons the rest of my shirt and lets it hang off my shoulders. “What the fuck, Theo.” Her fingertips brush against my chest, sending a shiver down my spine. “You’re bleeding like a crazy person.”
With a warm palm on my bare shoulder, she assesses my injury with a careful touch.
I don’t know what to do. What to feel. I’m immobilized by her touch.
There’s a flash of trepidation in her eyes, their scrutiny cataloguing the details of my injury.
My brain entertains the thought of Holly Moore’s delicate fingers stitching me up for maybe half a second before she shoves the suture kit onto my lap and sits up straight. “Fix it.”
I raise a single eyebrow.
Holly just frowns. “What? I’ll untie your hands, but I’m not going to fucking do your sutures for you. It isn’t my fault that your body is so dramatic.”
I blink.
“I’m the one who stabbed you. Me.” She uses her hand to spell the last word out as if I’m a three-year-old. “How stupid would it make me look if I’m also the one who fixes you?”
My face contorts with a grimace as I manage to grab the suture kit off my lap and fling it back at her. The box barely hits her knee and falls to the floor of the car.
Holly’s nostrils flare. Her eyes meet mine — fierce and unrelenting. “No.”
“Please, love…”
A brief pause. A minute? A few seconds? Who knows? But ultimately, she grumbles something incoherent and bends over to grab the kit.
Smiling, I lean back and take laboured breaths through my mouth, watching as she uses the forceps to expose the side of my wound to check how deep it really is.
“I don’t have any lidocaine so try not to scream or else I’m going to sew your mouth shut.”
I laugh and the pain webs my body like a fine mesh to coat the numbness. Teeth gritted, I grind out, “Y-yes…ma’am —”
Holly pushes the needle through my skin at a 90-degree angle about a centimetre to the right of the wound and a tight cry escapes my mouth.
MOTHERFUCKER! My skin splits beneath the ligature.
I hear it. Tears sting my eyes, the pain in my torso radiating up my chest and into my neck.
I think I’m going to pass out. Once she’s gone deep enough, I feel her twist her hand clockwise and the needle starts tearing through my skin, coming up on the other side of the wound.
Yup. Definitely going to pass out.
She pulls the thread through the raw edge of the cut and pierces the other side with the curved needle.
If I have to give my pain a colour, it would be white for Holly’s top or yellow for her pretty hair.
If I have to give it a texture, I would say it’s smooth, simply because everything is just passing me by like I’m sliding through a tunnel until that moment of absolute relief when I feel the touch of her thumb passing over my skin about a centimetre to the right of the wound.
She releases the needle and uses her left hand to hold the thread, wrapping it twice around the tip. Pain slides down my throat.
“Don’t for a second think I’m doing this to help you,” she mumbles. “I just need you awake and conscious for the hundred and one questions I have for you — stop fucking bleeding all over the place!”
I let out another pained whimper, a flush climbing up my neck and into my cheeks.