She did well, for someone on the injured roster.
He went slow. Torturously slow. Drying her off, laying her down, oiling her skin, inspecting all the hurts and scars and rough patches with gentle fingers and a gentler mouth. The time she fell through a glass coffee table. The time a chain cut open her hand. The time Sunny pressed her arm to a hot oven. Belts and medals and trophies. The bullet wound, still pink and glossy. He looked so reverent, so transported, she had to shut her eyes. He let her lie still and quiet and then asked, quietly, if things would feel fairer if he were naked too. She nodded into the pillows and heard him kicking things away. When he was done she felt his weight dip the mattress behind her. He reached for her tentatively and waited until she said it was okay for him to come closer. And even then he just held her, skin to skin, speaking softly into her neck only when he thought she might be falling asleep.
“I’m sorry,” Hwa said. “I’m sorry I’m not … doing more.”
“I don’t need to be seduced, Hwa. I just need you to be here, and alive, and safe, with me.” He paused, and nestled a little closer. He stroked down the length of her spine, his touch reminding her of the way his voice would shiver down her nerves when he spoke to her from across town. This was better. Much better. “Although if there’s anything in particular you feel that you need, please tell me.”
Hwa rolled over to face him. It was more difficult than she had imagined it would be. Her body didn’t want to move. And her eyes didn’t want to meet his. “I just…” She swallowed. “I just don’t know how to do this.”
He gathered himself around her carefully. “You don’t have to do anything. You’ve had a shock. You’ve had three months of shock. It’s all right if you want to process that. It’s probably healthy. But it’s also all right if you want to forget about it, for a little while.”
She deliberated on that for a while with her eye in the hollow of his collarbone and her ear tuned to his breathing. If he noticed the tears on his skin from her good eye, he said nothing about it. Just kept up that light but insistent stroking down her back until she felt boneless.
He flinched when she finally reached for him. Gasped and shuddered like she was made of fire. It felt like triumph, like finding an opening in an opponent’s defenses. “All you ever had to do was this,” he whispered. “I made that rule for myself. That if you started it, I’d finish it.”
“Like a fight.” Hwa’s mind drifted with her hands. She wished it were a fight. Then she would know the moves. She would know how to read him. She froze, and he froze with her, a question on his face. “That night. You came back here with vodka. Chilled vodka. Because you knew I was here waiting.”
“Yes.” He smiled and buried his face in her neck. “I hoped that night might end differently.”
“Like this one?”
“Like this one. If you want.”
She did want. She wanted powerfully.
It didn’t hurt as much as she thought it would. It did hurt. But after all the other pains she’d endured, the vague knee-scraping sensation between her legs wasn’t all that bad. Stranger was the sense of her muscles accommodating something new. It felt like things had shifted around in there. That was weird, until it wasn’t. But it was still better than not having the sensation—by the time he was inside her, he’d cranked her past the point of words. So she didn’t ask for what she wanted and simply flipped him over and climbed on top.
She thought that would have done a number on her back, but she felt fine. Better than fine, actually. A little bowlegged, but even her knee felt better. Apparently a bunch of dopamine rushes were good for the body’s healing process. They certainly left her sleepy. And this time, he let her close her eyes.
But when she woke, Daniel was gone.
Hwa put on his shirt and moved out into the living room. There was a martini shaker and two glasses out, but Daniel wasn’t there. She went back to the washroom. Maybe the bathtub. But no. Gone. And no note.
Maybe he was getting food. But they had plenty of stuff in the fridge. They. That was weird. They were a them now. Bizarre. And yet also not. Since meeting, they’d spent almost every day together in one way or the other. This was just another way of being together. The bizarre thing was him wanting her.
“Prefect?”
“Ready.”
“Prefect, where is Daniel?”
A long pause.
“He is with Joel, on the top floor of this tower.”
“Is Joel all right?”
“He is with Calliope and Layne and Sabrina and Eileen.”
Adrenaline poured ice water over her dopamine haze. Fear replaced buzz. Her afterglow flickered out and went dark.
“What?”
“We are all here, Hwa. Waiting.”
18
Killer