My stomach knots.
“Multiply by eleven.”
My brain stalls out on that. Setting the decimal aside, I manage the calculation in parts. Twenty. Then six. Then the point five. “Two ninety-one point five.”
Malcolm’s lips torment my throat, the rough sensation of his facial air sending jolts of unfamiliar things through me.
I’m surviving, and everything’s fine. I’m surviving, and everything’s fine.
He licks.
I gasp, crushing his hands in my grasp.
“Too far?” he whispers.
I can’t vocalizeno, so whatever comes out instead is pitiful, a whimper, a shivering breath, a whine.
“Are you done for today?” he asks.
Eyes squeezed shut, I shake my head.
A low, curious murmur leaves him. “No, huh? You want more?”
My heart runs rampant.
Lifting his face, he looms over me, evil. “You wantme?”
I want…to be normal. I want to want him without fear or my brain self-destructing. I want to fall into the moments when he catches me off guard and all I can think about is how nice it is to be touched so gently and with such intention.
The frantic desperation Malcolm’s been so good at showing me has no place here. Here, he’s calm, careful, in control.
It drives home this truth that the thing he’s desperate for isme, not my body. He wantsme. He doesn’t care about possessing someone who’s never been soiled before. He’s not after the high of staining me like that.
He just wants to be with me.
All he wants is to be with me, yet I need distractions just to tolerate what regular people enjoy and desire.
Malcolm touches his forehead to mine, and I ease. Even though his face is so close to mine, and his breath is against my lips, and— “Precious dove,” he whispers. “You need to tell me what you want.” His fingers release one of my hands and travel down my arm and side to plant against my waist. “You need to teach me what you like.”
What I like? I’ve never really let myself have that before. In case it might be taken away from me. In case I’m not allowed to.
But, slowly, I’m coming to believe that there’s one thing in this world too stubborn and monstrous to ever be taken from me against its will. There’s one thing I’m allowed to have. There’s one thing that’s as much a mix of punishment as it is a mixof delight. This universe, that’s always seemed out to get me, doesn’t know what to do withhim.
“I like you,” I say.
He chuckles. “And if that’s not proof that you’re capable of growth and progress, I don’t know what is.”
I shrink, cruelly reminded that I’m supposed to be growing and making progress. “It’s almost June. And then it’ll be almost Flag Day. And then…”
“Andthenwe’ll either kiss, or we won’t.”
My heart stops. “What? But—”
“But nothing, Azalea. There’s nothing saying we can’t kiss afterward if it doesn’t happen that night.”
Nothing except the fear in my skull that says if I don’t push myself toward this like a goal, it’ll never happen, and I’ll never be able to try again, and who knows if breaking this plan will send me into a relapse?
It’s been weeks of building up to even just what we’re doing right now.
