Page 137 of These Tears

My stomach turns over.

The horror creeps in by degrees, then drowns me all at once.

I fix my eyes on the next line of the text to keep myself from falling into his grief.

With his forehead still pressed into the side of mine, the questions begin rearranging themselves.

Mine were never the answers he was after. He is holding them against hers. Against whatever this mysterious woman taught him pleasure was supposed to mean.

My throat works around a swallow, and that familiar reckless surge of sensations overcomes me.

‘Elias…’ I whisper.

His fingers knot tighter in my hair, but they’re not pulling. It’s as though he’s holding on to me, instead. So I relax a little in his grip, let him moor himself to my body.

‘Even later, when she made me love her—’

My mouth closes with a click, and I hold my breath as if afraid even that small movement of my chest might send him retreating into himself.

‘—I always wondered what people found so appealing about seeing someone on their knees for them.’

Silence descends.

He goes rigid beside me. Something in me gives way beneath it.

For a few damning seconds, captor and captive fall away. So do monster and mistake.

There is only the bleeding wrongness, the raw ache at the core of me, the book open across my lap. And Elias, dragging a truth out and burning us both with it.

The answer rises in me before caution can kill it. ‘It only feels good if it’s theirs to choose.’

He bites down on a breath. The hand at my nape loosens entirely before it tightens again.

I lean into it further, then realise what I’ve done and go still with shame.

‘And you?’ he whispers. If he weren’t so close, I would not have heard him.

I give it a beat or two.

Fear still sits in me, because I don’t know if he will take the answer as permission to do something worse.

So I cling to the only solid thing there is: this crooked reality he was given; this poisoned version of want and pleasure and hunger. It’s not to fix him. It’s not to save myself. But I can tell him the truth without letting her have the final word.

‘When you care about someone, giving can sometimes feel better than receiving. Because, for a little while, you get to be the reason for their pleasure.’

The tip of his nose grazes my cheek as he moves lower. Breath shudders in the small sliver of space between his lips and my neck, leaving gooseflesh.

He offers no reply at first. Then his mouth passes my hairline at the back and my body flares like a beacon despite everything.

‘Do I disgust you now?’ he asks.

As if to escape the question, my body starts pulling away from him, but he drags me right back into him.

‘No, Elias. You were taken advantage of.’ I hesitate. ‘Having something dark tangled up in you because of it doesn’t make you disgusting.’

He gives a brief, humourless chuckle.

‘Everyone likes to say that until what’s in the dark looks back at them.’