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What we did last night feels like the next step, despite the fact I’m well aware there is a lot of ground to cover in the conversation department.
She waves her plate away, pressing her hand to her belly, which I can’t see. “I’m stuffed.”
I arch a brow. “What’s on the agenda for today?”
She leans back in the chair, and you’d think the weird positioning and partially reclining in a hard dining chair wouldn’t be hot, but Scarlett looks hot. I think I’d get hard at her flossing. “It’s actually a solo scene today and I’m looking forward to it.” She plucks a piece of strawberry off the plate, tipping her head back to drop it in. “Okay,” she cautions, “that was the last bite.”
I finish packing our lunches while she gets dressed, and while I dress, she does the dishes. I don’t want her doing the dishes, and when I appear in the kitchen as she wipes her hand on a dishtowel, I let her know as much.
“I do the dishes,” I say, my tone unwavering. “You eat, you enjoy. I cook, I clean.”
Our eyes idle. I reach out and take her by the front of her throat, my thumb aligned perfectly with her pulse. “I want to take care of you in all ways, Scarlett, and I want you to let me. Will you let me?”
She swallows, and blinks a few times. I’m on the brink of rewording myself, making sure she knows I’m not trying to control but please. Only ever please.
“Okay,” she breathes. “I just don’t like being useless.”
I’m glad I didn’t release my hold on her yet. “Is that something he said to you? Is that something he made you believe? That you’re useless?” I have to really control my anger, because rage sears up my throat, burning my mouth.
She nods, and attempts to drop her gaze, yet another thing she likely learned from being his fucking beaten down dog, his punching bag.
I drive her face up to mine, pressing my thumb into the underside of her chin. “You are not useless. And not doing dishes or folding clothes does not make you useless. If it did, a significant proportion of the male population is, by that definition, useless.” I crash our mouths together, surprising both of us really. “Understand? Understand that cleaning a house doesn’t define a single fucking thing about you?”
She nods in my grip, and it’s the last time I ever want to feel her throat slide against my palm if we aren’t in bed.
I let go, and we walk to the car together, heading to work… together.
Words are waiting, this I know. But we are, for all intents and purposes, together. And I’ve already come farther than I ever dreamed, because of her.
The scene is hard to ignore, because when you’re dating a beautiful on the inside, gorgeous on the outside adult film star that silences a room with her soulful solo scenes, ignoring is very fucking hard.
But so is my cock if I watch.
So I busy myself away from the set, the set I built for her, and work on the open electrical panel on the back wall, beneath the security feed. Out of the corner of my eye, in my faded and fuzzy peripheral vision, something on the monitor moves. There’s movement in one of the many squares on screen, but it’s mid-morning, and cool out. Breezes and rains carry all sorts of things through our parking lot, but for some reason, this morning, my soul goddamn full to the brim and my gorgeous girlfriend acting her heart out just feet behind me, I look up.
I look up and let my gaze scatter over the squares, and I don’t know why.
But then my happiness drains, my face falls, and at my sides, my fists ball. I bring my face closer to the grainy surveillance but the thing is, this isn’t the nineties. Even grainy, these are pretty fucking good quality. But I wouldn’t need the high definition or 4k bullshit right now anyway.
I’d recognize that pathetic gait, that revolting presence. He paces at the steps to the back door, mouth running silently from the screen.
I lift my hand to my waist, unclipping the utility belt I wear here daily. I don’t let it drop to the floor and disrupt everyone. Instead, I drape it over a metal guardrail near the exit door, and very fucking quietly, slip out back.
He stops. He looks at me. I’ve got four cement steps on him, but I’d rather it be as fair as it can. I jog down the stairs and step right in front of him, a few feet of space between us.
His snort is vile. “So you’re him, huh?”
“I’m him,” I reply, because whateverhimhe’s fucking referring to, I’m it.
The new boyfriend? The guy who answered the phone? The man who takes care of her? The man who will fucking kill anyone who tries to fucking harm her? I’m him.
He snorts again as realization settles into me. I really want to hurt this man who hurt her so fucking badly. And I’ve never been violent. Even in the aftermath of Addie, when I was so angry with Valerie, I was never violent. Stupid and cruel, yes, but violent, no.
I’m thoroughly different now given everything that’s transpired, and I feel that now, in the rapid pulsing in my throat, and fiery anger that races through my veins. She’s changed me, and I’m no longer the same man. I’ve dragged some of my past, carved something new, and she’s added onto that and now I’m a different man than before.
I am hers, and I will stop at nothing to protect her.
“You’re just a fuckin’ placeholder,” he laughs, the noise making hairs of awareness lift off my neck. “You’re just someone she’s using for cum like the whore that she is.”
