And when I ached too much, when every part of me was shattered and wide open, he pressed his thumb against my lips and I sucked hard, licked the pad of his brilliant fingers. Without waiting for a breath, he split me open with his thickness and pressed a finger between my ass cheeks and filled me in every hole, and climax after climax shuddered my body, leaving me empty of anything except the desire for more, more— For hours he took me, used me, and gave me back myself.
When he was done at last, my breath was jagged in the air. My eyes were closed and I only felt his fingers at the ropes around my wrists. The knots loosened and opened and then he was rubbing my wrists with his hands, massaging them deeply.
I opened my eyes and saw him examining my wrists, the red lines from the rope standing out brightly on my skin.
“Would you like to get rid of them?” he asked softly.
“What?”
“The scars. Do you want the surgery? We could clean them up for you.”
“We?”
“I have an old friend. He’s a cosmetic surgeon.”
I looked down at the white seams on the insides of my wrists. They caught the light and gleamed, just for a moment, shining brightly. Like my soul was peeking through the thin parts of me.
“You would be there?”
“I would assist.”
I raised my eyebrows as he lay down beside me. His hand cupped my breast and he nuzzled into the side of me. I had never thought about getting rid of my scars. Even in the summer, I would wear long sleeves to hide them. To be able to walk around freely, without worrying… it was tempting.
“You would assist, because…”
“For one, there’s nobody else I would trust to come into my home.”
“Oh! You would do it here?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“You know where, kitten.”
I thought of the kitchen table, the straps. The blood.
The man he had murdered. He was a murderer.
My inner self was more intelligent than my outer body, and I squirmed uncomfortably, thinking about the idea.
“You wouldn’t be tied,” he said. “You would be drugged. Local anesthesia.”
“I wouldn’t be zonked out?”
“No.”
“But this friend of yours, then, he would know about us? About you?”
He blinked deliberately. Stalling. There could only be one reason for his hesitation.
“He already knows?”
“He’s… he’s like me. In certain ways. In others, not so much.”
“How so?”
“He’s much less patient than I am.”
I stared at the man who had tied me up and teased me to the edge of insane desire. Someone worse than him?
“You’re skirting the question, kitten,” he said.
“I…”
I looked down at the lines once more. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine them gone. Tried to imagine my skin bare and unpuckered again. The image in my mind was of myself, but younger. Fifteen. Before I had taken a knife to my veins.
“No.” The word left my mouth as if of its own accord.
“No? You don’t want them removed?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
I turned my face up toward him. I thought of the box inside his closet. All those pictures of him as a boy, covered in bruises.
“Why do you keep those photographs?”
His jaw clenched, sending the vein at his temple pulsing. He took a deep breath and relaxed.
“I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t remember the pain.”
“But you’ll feel the pain of the past no matter what,” I said. “And remembering this way… it shows you the danger inside of you.”
“It reminds you how dangerous you are?” He smiled. “How dangerous are you, kitten?”
“I’m more dangerous than you. Suicide is the ultimate escape route.”
“Is that what it was? Escape?”
“Maybe.”
He paused, looking down at the scars on my wrists.
“I wished that I could escape,” he said. “I wished it every night when I heard her crying. I wished it every night when he came up to my room. And one night, when he swung the door open, his belt already half-undone, I wished that he would go away.
“I wished that he would go hurt her.”
“Gav—” I wanted to stop him from telling me this. This was a confession that I could not comprehend. As bad as my parents had been, it had never been that bad.
“I wanted him to stop hitting me and hurt her instead. And he did. He hurt her so bad that I did something I never did. She screamed and screamed and finally I couldn’t take it. I ran downstairs and into their room, something I was never allowed to do. Not under any circumstances, understand? And there he was, with the knife. And there she was, the blood soaking into the carpet like a dark wine stain. She was still beautiful.”
His shoulders shuddered. His mouth twitched.
“Still as beautiful as the day.”
“You don’t know what happened to him? Your father? You don’t know where he is?”
“No. If I did know, I would be there right now with a syringe in one hand and a father’s day card in the other.” His mouth quirked. “I’m a terrible son.”
“You’ve never had a chance.”
“Maybe. Maybe I should have killed him before he killed her.”
His eyelids fluttered at that, cast down.
“So you don’t want to remove your scars?” he asked again, quietly.
“No.” I was firmer now. Resolved.
“Why? Because you might forget? Is that the only reason?”