Page 136 of These Tears

‘Please…’

‘Answer me, Leah,’ he says, turning my head until his lips are inches from mine.

My hearing narrows around his voice. I don’t know which answer he wants. I don’t even know what question he is really asking. Does he mean whether I’ve ever gone down on my knees? Does he mean the jam? The exact choreography printed on the page? Or is this one of those cruel little philosophies he whips out in the worst possible moment, when the question is never just the question?

Every possible truth fragments into consequences before it reaches my tongue.

‘I’m not sure how to answer that. What do you mean?’ I ask carefully.

His free hand travels to my knee closest to him.

I go rigid.

He presses his forehead to my temple, almost tenderly, while his thumb begins to circle the joint through the fabric of my tracksuit bottoms.

My skin feels too tight. That fluttering sensation low in my core starts stirring, and shame drags over me like a cold, damp veil.

‘Did you ever kneel between a man’s thighs,’ he starts softly, each word placed perfectly, ‘take something sweet onto your fingers, and use it on him before putting your mouth where your hand had been?’

My mind blanks.

Then it surges with images of skin, old rooms, old versions of myself I thought I had buried in the distance. They rise quickly, stoking something hot and humiliating inside me.

But his voice keeps bending them out of shape, turning them into his breath at my temple. His thumb moving over my knee. His body moving against mine.

Every memory warps until it is no longer someone else’s face above me, no longer someone else’s body in my hands.

It’s Elias.

His mouth.

His eyes.

His touch.

And my mouth… answering.

I shut my eyes.

‘Not like that,’ it comes out of me.

His every intake of air against my cheek is a battle won, every exhale a battle lost.

Then his voice breaks through it. ‘She never had her mouth on me.’

It cuts clean through the fever.

I still.

The heat in his voice still lingers as his thumb keeps drawing circles over my leg, but it has changed shape. As though whatever he remembers has reached through the desire and twisted it.

I realise then… this is not seduction. Not punishment.

It’s confession. It’s a study.

As everything settles into place, my eyes open slowly. The rest of me doesn’t move. The fire crackles ahead to remind us we’re still trapped in this damnation, and Elias keeps pouring confessions against my skin as if history is trying to claw itself out of his throat and tear straight through us both.

‘She never gave me pleasure without wanting something from me,’ he says, quieter. Almost flat. ‘I was too young to know that wanting her didn’t mean she cared about me. Not in the way she cared, at least.’