All the blood drains from my head, a heady feeling taking over me as my eyes lock on his for the first time since the day he fed me lies so he could kill me. The day he put his own life at risk so that I could live.
I should have known. It was too easy to find him. Sam was never in hiding. He was in waiting.
He stands there before me, his faded red t-shirt clinging to his sweaty chest, his ripped jeans snug against his frame, his face, beautiful, yet corrupted with scars, and his eyes—eyes like a nocturnal creature that has hunted and tortured, that has killed me and brought me back to life—they stare into mine. There is no uncertainty in them. This is exactly where he expected to find me one day.
I grip the gun, willing my arm to pull it, but it locks up. I'm frozen by the sight of him. Distance was my power, proximity is his. Now that I am here again, I want to drop down to my knees and cower before him like a subjugate to her king. It's beyond rational thought. It's been trained into me. It's conditioned into my mind, body and soul.
I want to be in his favor. I want to be good.
The temptation of the carnal is too strong to be subdued by abstract concepts of right and wrong. The only real thing is him, here, right now. I know what he's done, but this person before me, calm and assured, he's not the wild person behind the mask. That's someone else.
My hand lets go of the gun and I slide it out of my pocket.
“Sam—” I utter, a whimper.
I don't know what I am supposed to say right now. And I've learned not to expect words from him. He takes the hand, the one that a moment ago was just holding a weapon, and pulls me into the house. The door slams behind me as he pushes me up against a wall, so hard it beats the breath out of my chest and the bag hanging on my arm falls to the floor. I see flashes of the danger he poses, the bright sun reflecting off of the pale aquamarine just like it does the sea—beautiful and deadly. How many people have been seduced by the endless ocean, thinking they could conquer it, and were never seen again?
My heart rages in my chest, taking me back to the very first night he had me. His lips tremble with a hint of a snarl. A faint sound—almost like a purr—rumbles from his throat. Like a predator, he pounces.
It's repugnant, the way I feel when he presses himself against me. The fact that my body lights up like a pilot switch, giving into everything I shouldn't want. That I can forget everything inconvenient just so I can feel this moment in its purest sense. I can close my eyes and be that girl who didn't have a choice but to enjoy this, for her own survival. I can tell myself I'm in his house alone, and I have to let him have me. But I know I passed that point a long time ago.
The way his lips taste my lips, my collarbone, the curve of my chin, my shoulders. The way his teeth graze parts all over, instantly brings back the high of being craved by a man so dangerous, having a power over him that I know no one else has, no matter how many tokens are in that box.
I make the decision at that moment not to be a victim. I came here, I had the gun and I didn't use it. The very first night he gave me a choice. And now I am making another. I grab at him, pulling at his shirt so I can feel his skin again, hot and slick with sweat. This can't be wrong. The way I feel like I belong here. The way out there, I feel unsettled. But here, pinned to a wall by the most dangerous man in L.A., I feel like I'm home again.
Tears run down my face as I abandon every principle I ever stood for. I don't just abandon them, I scorch them. I blaze them to soot. Sam pulls off the sweater I'm wearing and then at my dress, so the top falls down and its weight pulls the rest of it to the floor.
I manage to yank off his shirt, and I taste him—his sweat, his smooth skin, and then his rough skin, like those maps I played with as a child, where you could feel the rugged topography lift off the paper like braille. I'll take it all, the soft and the jagged.
Little dashes of paint and plaster stain his skin. It feels familiar. The way he used to come to my place after a long day of working to bring me food. I could tell he was tired. But he took care of me still. I'd study them for clues about his life out in the world, hoping they could aid me somehow in an escape, but now, it's fondness I feel looking at them.
I bury my face in his neck, inhaling his faint musk mingled with soap. A rush—like all the blood pooling down at my feet and rising up through my head—inundates me. Seeing him, feeling him, tasting him, smelling him—I am right back to that last day, like he never left. Like nothing exists except us. Like right and wrong is something outside of us. It doesn't matter here. Everything we were and did doesn't matter when it’s just us. We become renewed.
He turns me away, pressing me up against the wall, biting the back of my nape and shoulders. We'll do it like the animals do, because he's not a man, he's a savage.
“Say it,” Sam growls.