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I sit down on the mattress and tug off my shoes while she stands and watches me. Nudging the shoes aside, I pull her towards me, between my legs, my hands on her hips.
Her own hands automatically move to my shoulders.
“You don’t want to be alone tonight.”
Her fingers burrow into my shoulders, her blunt nails not hurting me in the least as she whispers, “I fell asleep for a few minutes, and I saw myself drowning in blood. It wasn’t mine. It was Lorraine's. And I kept screaming but there was nobody there.” She swallows with some difficulty before admitting, “I’m not good with nightmares.”
Such vulnerability.
Today, she was shaken apart, and the things she is revealing, she would never have done so normally, so I take the gift she offers and hold it to me.
“Tell me what you want from me,” I ask her. “I’ll give you whatever you want.”
There is such a starkness to my words, exposing my deepest desires, hoping that she catches on to the desperation in my tone. I want to lay the world at her feet, if she would only ask.
She moves closer to me, and the darkness in me watches with bated breath.
“I don’t want to sleep,” she confesses, her voice low. “I don’t want to think tonight. I don’t want to be in control tonight. Make it go away. Make everything go away.”
It was a demand, a plea, a desire to give up the tight control she had over herself, just for tonight.
For tonight, she wants to give me the reins.
My hands tighten on her hips as I gaze into her brown eyes that look so lost tonight. “Are you sure, Eve?”
She nods. “Just for tonight.
“Just for tonight,” I repeat.
Then I take the reins.
12
Eve
I tossed and turned, images of Lorraine devouring me, taunting me; when I finally sit up in bed, frightened, disorientated, terror is in every inch of me, sweat clinging to my back, my hair.
I spent five years fixing my mistakes, fighting for myself, controlling every aspect of my environment just to make sure that I would never become a victim. And today, while I haven’t become a victim, somebody for whom I feel responsible, a young woman, was victimized at my workplace. She pleaded with me to fix her, to help her, and I was unable to do anything.
So, when I went to Zayn, I knew what I needed, and a part of me had wondered whether he would go through with it. The fact was that if I had to give up control to anyone, it would be him.
These past few weeks, they had altered our relationship, made me see him in ways that I had blinded myself to, and tonight, well tonight I needed him to tear me down to my very bare essence and then build me up again.
Is this a mistake?
I stare into his cold blue eyes, his large hands on my hips, keeping me in place.
Does he understand what I want? What I need?
Zayn’s hands move over my waist before they reach out to undo the buttons that I actually managed to fasten. His every movement is purposeful, and I watch with bated breath, my skin quivering where his fingers brush.
He doesn’t undo all the buttons.
Just where they fall short of my chest.
My stomach, my navel is bare to him, and he parts the shirt, exposing my scars to him.
He looks at them, his head cocking, like that of a wild animal that is suddenly curious. His fingers lightly brush over the stretch marks, the white line where the doctors inserted the scalpel to remove Mila from my body when I passed out during labor, the second scar when they had to move fast because my body went into shock.
