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Now she’s even more pissed, and she starts to fight me. But she’s so small.
And I’m not.
Even with my injured shoulder, it’s easy to flip her until she’s laying across my thighs, ass up. I wrench down the stretchy pyjama pants and panties until she’s bare. I don’t miss the trembling intake of breath, the anticipation that’s already building in her even though she doesn’t want to show it.
“Lie to me again and see what happens,” I murmur, the leather of my glove and inch away from her creamy skin.
“I hate you,” she whispers.
I chuckle darkly in response, but don’t spank her yet, because I highly doubt that’s a lie.
“You may hate me, but there’s a part of you that wants me. Wants this.” My fingers twitch, waiting for her to deny it, but she doesn’t. “Gone silent on me, Songbird?”
“What am I supposed to say?”
I can’t see her face like this, just the damp curtain of her hair.
“I’m not going to just say yes, am I?” she continues. “But if I say no, you’ll spank me, and I’ll like it for some fucked-up reason, and I’ll just prove you right anyway. There’s no good answer to that question. I’m trapped and you know it.” She lets out a breath and wiggles slightly. “I shouldn’t like any of this. You’ve broken something inside me. Made me as twisted as you.”
I laugh out loud at that, because the idea that my beautiful, innocent little Songbird could be as twisted as someone like me is absurd.
“I haven’t broken anything,” I tell her softly. I lay my hand gently on her skin. She spasms under my touch, expecting more pressure, but I keep the touch soft. “I’m just responding to something that was already there.”
“No way. I wasn’t like this before,” she hisses adamantly.
“You make yourself come by depriving yourself of fucking oxygen. You pleasure yourself and punish yourself at the same time. You gonna tell me you only started doing that after you met me?”
She stills, and then it’s like every muscle in her body goes slack. She sags downward onto my lap, deflated by the realization that I’m right. I’m right that she likes desperation and discipline and deep discomfort. And she has for a very long time.
“When did you start doing that?” I ask her. My touch on her is still gentle. So is my voice.
I can’t remember the last time I spoke to someone this softly. Maybe to Curse or Valentina when they were kids. It’s been years. But I’m glad I manage it now, because maybe it’s the quietness that makes her actually respond honestly.
“After my mom died.”
It’s a choked and tiny whisper. But it explodes in my head like artillery fire. There’s smoke all around me, smoke inside me, and suddenly I can’t think or feel or see. I grab Deirdre, haul her upwards and against me, clutching her to my chest like I can drag her out of the hole that I know all too well. Because it’s a hole that’s been hungry and dark inside me for twenty years, swallowing everything that matters. Flames dance at the edge of my vision, and I focus everything I have, everything I am, on holding her.
I can tell my eyes are wide open even though I can barely see anything. I blink, then close them, burying my nose in Deirdre’s damp hair.
Her voice filters through the past, through the present, through the smoke and the flames and the pounding in my head.
“Elio? Are you hugging me?”
I don’t respond, just hold her tighter. Slowly, the scent of smoke fades, and when I open my eyes, I can see again.
My voice is thick when I speak into her hair.
“When you want to feel that way, when you want to not breathe, you come to me. You don’t do that alone. Not anymore.”
She doesn’t move or speak for a long moment. But she doesn’t pull away either. Just lets me hold her even though I should have let go of her by now.
And then, in a movement so tentative and slow I might have missed it if I weren’t keyed in to absolutely everything she is and everything she does, she lays her head on my shoulder.
Somehow, through sheer force of will, I remain upright and breathing while that small, simple movement makes my fucking heart stop.
Chapter 29
Deirdre
