He won't speak. He's already shown too much. But I have to keep this dialogue open. I am more to him than he is willing to admit, and I have to remind him of that. And if I'm not, I have to convince myself of that to believe I can survive this.
I slowly come to my knees, so that I am nearly face to face with him.
“I can't read your mind. I don't even know your name. But I feel like I know you—like you know me—more than anyone I've ever known.”
I raise a trembling hand to his face, to the side that was hurt a long time ago. It's a risk. This could all backfire terribly, but I don't know any other way. I only know how to care for people. It's always been my instinct. I've seen the power tenderness has. If there is any sliver of a soul inside of him, he craves it somewhere deep inside. Maybe that's why he took me: underneath all the animus was someone who just wanted what he saw through each of those windows.
I move my hand so slowly, there are moments I wonder if I'll ever reach him. I wait for him to slap it away and storm out, or to throw me on my stomach and take whatever he wants. But he's frozen as my palm and fingertips rest on his cheeks.
“I don't know what I'm doing,” I confess. “Please tell me you do. Because I'm not supposed to want this, but your face…” I say, dipping close, so my lips graze his. “You terrify me, and yet I could look at you all day long…”
I plant a soft kiss against his pillowy lips. He's stern, and I stiffen, confused by his lack of response.
“No,” he says.
“Oh, I—” I stumble on my words. Feeling embarrassed and exposed. Rejected by the man who stole me. Maybe there is nothing inside of him that craves to be needed like I had hoped.
I pull my hand away but he snatches my wrist. I gasp.
“No—” He yanks me towards him in one sharp movement, so that my body, cool from the damp nightgown presses against his hot chest. His cock is pressed against me, everything about his body is a yes despite his words. “I…don't know what I'm doing,” he confesses.
He grabs my ass so hard I gasp, launching me off of the bed and into his arms. I wrap my legs around him, letting him carry me away from the bed. The smell of man and sex and whiskey overtakes the stench of the old breakfast across the room. The pale walls and floors fade into a blur as the colors of his skin, hair, and eyes sharpen. He kisses me so hard, my lips sting and I kiss back just as hard, trying to return the pain he makes me feel: Agony doused with pleasure. Sin blended with deliverance. Captivity leading to a type of freedom I never had outside of these walls.
I wrap myself around him, touching him, trying to get as close to him as I can, so that I can become a part of him, a part he could never destroy, but at the same time, I want to keep watching him. He's more than the fantasies I imagined when I thought about who would be under that mask. His face tells a story. I want to know it. I want to know him. Then I could make sense of this all.
He thrusts me up against a wall, expelling the breath from my chest, as he bites and sucks on my neck and shoulder. I graze my lips against his lips, his cheek, his temple, the salt of his glimmering summer skin seasoning each kiss. It's messy and desperate, but it's so good to be on his side. When he wants me, he wants me wholly and completely. I thought being loved was the most gratifying feeling. No, it's being obsessed over. It's having someone so infatuated with you that they would risk everything to have you. That is a high that love can't touch. Love is a slow burn, a stockpot simmering to soften the heart. But this—this is a flash flood, it's the smoke billowing when a steak hits a hot pan. It's threatening, but its fierceness is the very thing love dilutes.
He pulls away roughly, taking a sudden breath, like he has just snapped out of a trance.