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Though it’s a nearly impossible task, I try to focus on the surroundings to take my mind off my hideous reactions to Elio. Curse is still on my other side, but I’m barely aware of him or anyone else as we walk. Elio commands everything, including my attention.
We end up in a space I don’t recognize. I’ve been to the AGO before, but it’s been a while. I know it’s been under construction recently, and this must be the new wing Valentina mentioned. It’s a vast, glittering space with pure glass all along one towering side, leaning inwards at the top, creating a half-pyramid effect. The space is dotted with beautiful people admiring various art installations, sculptures and other three-dimensional pieces in the centre of the space, with paintings and sketches and textiles on the inner wall. At the far end of the space, there are long tables with food as well as a bar with a bartender handing out drinks. Near the food is an area free of tables and art pieces, and a few couples are dancing to music played by a small string quartet.
“There you are!”
A familiar voice cuts through the music and the chatter. Valentina hustles over. You’d never know based on how she moves that she’s wearing shoes that should be considered hazardous to human health. My own feet are already aching, my arches contorted. If I tried to run like her, I’d break an ankle.
Or my neck.
Elio doesn’t move his hand as his cousin joins our group. Valentina’s lashes are so long and fluttery it’s impossible to miss the way her gaze dips there before bouncing right back up.
“Oh, shit, your hair! I didn’t have time to spray it after you took out the rollers!”
I reach up, wondering what she’s talking about, then remember the snow that fell on me which has no doubt melted and changed the style. My natural hair is a weird combination of straight and wavy at the back and curly at the sides and front. A quick brush of my fingers lets me know that little baby hairs are springing up into ringlets around my face. I try to smooth them, then stop. I shouldn’t care what I look like. If my hair is presentable enough. I don’t even want to be here at all.
But when I stop fussing with my hair, Valentina takes over. Even in her heels she’s shorter than me, because my own shoes negate any height hers add. She stretches, frowning and smoothing, muttering about hairspray. I’m about to ask her to stop, to shy away from her touch, when something happens that makes me freeze.
It’s the brutally slow and unbearably erotic movement of Elio’s hand against my skin. He glides his hand in a smooth, small circle against my back, his fingers caressing my hip until I can’t make a sound, can barely breathe. I squeeze my inner thighs together and close my eyes. The sensations of Valentina fiddling with my hair die away, along with everything else, until there’s only Elio. Elio and the leather-smooth slide of his hand on my blistering skin.
His hand dips slightly lower, and I feel a new tension enter his grip, jarring him into sudden stillness. Fuck. He’s realized I have no underwear on. There’s no way he hasn’t. His fingers are well beneath my dress now, past where the top of panties would sit on my hips, and even with the gloves he’d be able to tell there’s no extra fabric down there.
We both remain still but not still, frozen but vibrating beneath the silence. Then, there’s a tiny movement from him. The cricking of his index finger against my hip – oh, hell, it’s basically the top of my ass, who am I kidding? I think that slight nudge of his finger is to make doubly sure what he felt was real. Or rather what he didn’t feel, what isn’t even there to feel.
He does it again. It feels like he’s cricking that finger inside me.
I constrict around nothing.
“Jesus, you don’t need to squeeze your eyes shut and screw up your face like that,” Valentina admonishes. “You’d think I was pulling your hair out or something.”
My eyes fly open, and the world rushes back.
Valentina’s hands fall away from my hair, and she shrugs. “That’ll have to be good enough for now.”
Elio doesn’t say anything, merely increases the pressure of his palm, and I’m suddenly propelled forward. Valentina lunges out of the way so that we don’t collide as Elio steers me forward.
“Where are we going now?” I ask as we move through the room. He doesn’t answer with words. He simply stops and turns to face me on the dance floor. The quartet is playing something slow and lovely, a song I don’t recognize. Hand still plastered to my skin, he nudges me until I stumble closer to him, my hands rising to land on his chest. And I hate it, hate that I’m using him to steady myself, to keep my balance. I’m about to rip my hands away when Elio bends and gives a single word of command:
“Dance.”
Un-fucking-believable. He expects me to dance with him? I feel like a marionette, like I’m nothing to him but a prop to perform at will. And when his hand starts doing that slow circle thing on my back again, making my insides turn viscous and poisonous and hot, I realize that if I am a marionette, he controls more of my strings that I do.
Maybe even all of them.
“Put your arms around my neck,” he commands. With a soft grunt, he raises his left hand to my hip. With his shoulder injury, I wonder if the movement hurts. I hope it does. I hope the simple act of holding me hurts for the rest of his life.
And at the same moment, I hate the hurt. And the guilt.
You don’t walk away banged-up but generally uninjured from the car accident that killed your mother without guilt imbedding itself in your bones like shrapnel. I didn’t realize how deep that guilt went, how much it’s screwed me up, until now. Because I can’t even be fully satisfied that Elio’s injured. I know it was only because he didn’t want to let someone else damage what belongs to him, an act of pure possessiveness rather than protectiveness, but that act, that injury, twists inside me now. Makes me feel like I owe him something. Something far greater than the millions of dollars I already do.
Elio’s grip tightens on me, and his tone is dark when he speaks again.
“Don’t disobey me, Songbird. Not in public. Not here.”
I still haven’t put my arms around his neck like he told me to. I wonder what would happen if I pulled away. If I screamed and caused a scene.
Elio’s earlier words come back to me in a haunting rush.
This city is a snake pit. The only one who can keep you safe here now is me.
