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She flinches at my approach, amusing me, and then gives up bothering with that thought of trying to avoid me. She needn’t flinch, anyway. I’ve got no more left to give for now. I’m as bone tired as she is. Exhausted by the sordid actives I’ve put my mind through, and drained of the constant fight I’m trying to dampen down inside of me. Maybe we should both sleep until we wake. We’ll leave then. Head home to our existences and find solitude again.
The belt I used gets picked up from the floor and threaded back into place, and I search for her dress amongst the debris of toys discarded around us until I find it off to the side. I pick it up and instantly smell the scent of her all over it, the same scent that permeates the room around us now. Potent. Seductive and acutely compelling. It’s enough for me to watch her again, mind casting images of her at home with me, in my bed with me. Breakfast. Dinners out. Walks around parks like other people do.
I turn away from her and those thoughts, trying to ignore the image of sitting somewhere and discussing life with her, opening doors and telling the truths I have to tell.
“Gray?”
“What,” I snap, frustration etching in, as I turn to look at her.
She’s standing up with me, her hand hovering in the air as if she was about to touch me and all her battered skin on display for me.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says, taking the dress from me instead and moving away into the shadows. “There’s nothing else to talk about. You’ve made your point.”
Good. I needed to. She needed to hear it and I needed to make sure she did, regardless of my own mind’s confusion. This is all it was. One dance.
And it is all it will ever be.
Chapter 17
Hannah
Ihiss at the feel of the water pelting down on me, exhausted by the sense of near shrapnel pummelling me and try to ignore the fact that he’s left me alone here. He carried me here under my protest, put me on the bed, looked at me for a while in my beleaguered state, and then walked out of the room with no other words.
My fingers tap the screen, unable to find sense in that. We were together. Two. Seamless. Almost bolted together in whatever that became in that dark room with its dark corners and dark sentiment. And then – distance. I lost him.
Separation.
Everything’s so painful now, as if the time between that room and this has given new meaning to the battering and bruising. Blood leaks down my skin, red droplets of it forming a trail of crimson water swirling away into the drains. I stare at it, remembering the feeling of him inside my ass, the pain that came with that, and then the pain that came after that.
An arm suddenly reaches in and pulls me out of the shower, gently wrapping me into a towel and easing me down onto the side of the large, ornate tub.
“No showers. Stay there,” he says, switching off the spray.
I frown at him and watch as he begins running a bath, his fingers swishing the water about and adding various things from the cupboards. I don’t know why he’s bothering with care of any sort. He doesn’t care. It’s not real here, as he said. And now the drugs aren’t swimming about in me, clouding and confusing me, I know that, too. We fucked. He took and I gave. Repeatedly. Bitterly. Just as I asked him for. Nothing more, no matter how my heart is beginning to ache at that thought.
It’s confusing.
All of it.
Bubbles start forming in the water, heavenly smells drifting around the room to adjust my mind’s deflated state that’s come from nowhere. Lemons and lavender, fresh morning flowers and dew. So steamy and hot, more and more bubbles erupting on the surface. The towel gets taken from my shoulders and abandoned to the floor, my still shivering body lifted and gently lowered into the depths of loose heat.
He moves away from me to sit in a chair, eyes watching me carefully as I slip further into the bubbles and let them soothe my throbbing limbs and tattered skin.
“You don’t have to stay,” I whisper.
“I do. I’m possessive like that. And I like looking at you.”
Possessive? He’s just told me I mean nothing to him other than this place, and now he talks of possessive? I close my eyes to his devoid stare, part infuriated by the look of it if it means so little, and sink further until I’m under the water and away from him. Perhaps I’ll stay here. Drown for a while and enjoy it like I did before. Maybe then I can find myself again rather than be lost in this haze that happens whenever he’s near me.
When I eventually break the surface to start washing, he’s nowhere to be seen. I can hear him, though. He’s out in the bedroom, talking to someone quietly. The main door closes to the room softly, as I finish washing my bruised skin, and I watch him come back into the room, a towel wrapped around his waist this time.
“Better?” he asks, as he sits in the chair again.
I nod, not knowing how to answer if I’m better or not. I feel less pained, but that doesn’t seem to make anything better at all. I rise from the water with this enduring sense of loss, not understanding why it feels so prevalent in my mind. I knew. I did. He told me and I knew it would be no more than this one night - these few nights while we were here. Enjoy myself, he said. Get lost in it, but remember who you are. And now I’ve found another me here. I have. I’ve found her, and I’ve lived her and yet now because of his words about leaving I feel like I’m broken again.
He’s by my side suddenly, another large, clean towel held up for me to climb into. He wraps it around me and lifts me from the bath, our eyes finding each other because of the close proximity. Minutes. Hours. However long in his arms. I don’t know here anymore. Time seems irrelevant. Endless and yet limited because of this man in front of me. And he’s frowning again. I don’t like it. Never have. Where’s his smile gone? The dirty one or the happy one. Either or. Just the one that makes me feel warm and contented.
My hand brushes his jaw, fingers trembling over his lips as I think of them on me, of him inside me. There was something other than just here. Thereissomething other than here. It’s real and alive in us, connecting us whether he says it is or not.
