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She pulls a face at me, then turns to climb into the bathtub. She crouches and slumps back, splashing hot water across my trousers.
I raise an eyebrow. “Gracefully done.”
She gives me the middle finger and lies back with a sigh, eyes closing in relief so profound I can almost feel it. When she reopens her eyes, it’s to throw me a scornful look.
“Like what you see, perv?”
“What’s there to like?” I kneel at the side of the bath and rest my arms on the edge of the tub. “You look like something my dogs would drag in from the woods and spit out at my feet.”
She rolls her eyes and flicks water at me. “Fuck off, then.”
“And let you pass out and drown? Not when you owe me a rematch.”
“You’ll get your rematch,” she mutters. “You’ll still lose.”
“Stay alive and prove it.”
“Don’t worry.” She gives me that cocky smile, a hideous stretch of her bloodless lips. “I would never give you the satisfaction of my death.”
Sick and injured as she is, her arrogance borders on madness, and I can’t help but be impressed. This kind of resilience is a rare quality—especially in a victim.
“Are you just going to lie there,” I ask her in a gentle tone, “or are you actually going to wash yourself?”
She throws me a glare. “You do it if you care so much.”
Normally, bathing another person is something I would consider too servile or too intimate. But there’s no intimacy between Willow and I. Everything between us is characterised by a cold sharpness, as if a wall of translucent ice spikes separates us. The mutual hatred we hold for one another—her obvious disdain for me and the profound antipathy I have for her—is a void through which no affection could ever travel.
Maybe this is why I take a sponge from the cabinet at my side and lather it with soap. Cleaning Willow is something that feels clinical and impersonal, like washing a car or a dog. Of course, I pay people to clean my cars and my dogs—but I have the feelingthat paying someone to clean Willow wouldn’t feel quite the same.
She sits in the middle of the bathtub and stays completely silent as I rub the sponge over her back, her shoulders, her arms. I pour shampoo onto her head and rub it through the black strands, then I rinse it all away until her hair gleams like black lacquer, outlining the shape of her skull, neck and shoulders. She stands to let me wash the rest of her body.
When I reach her side, I pause. I let the sponge fall from my hand and land in the water with a quiet splash. I spread my fingers over the purple bloom of the enormous bruise, just like I did in my dream. Touching Willow doesn’t feel sexual, but it’s exciting nonetheless, like holding something venomous.
She looks down at me but doesn’t say anything. She seems both unsurprised and disinterested. I press down, digging my fingertips into the bruise as if I’m trying to claw it off her body.
“Does this hurt?” I ask, looking up at her.
Her eyes are dark, her eyelashes are wet. Her skin is flushed from the hot water or the fever—probably both. There are no emotions on her face, only the unexpected, chaotic beauty of her.
“What do you think?” she answers.
There’s no anger in her voice. It’s quiet, as quiet as the murmur of the water shifting around her legs. Almost bored. But the blood has drained from her face, and there’s an ashenness to her lips that wasn’t there before.
I press harder into her wet flesh, half wondering if my fingers could leave imprints in the bruise, darker petals on the dark bloom.
“Tell me,” I command her.
“You couldn’t hurt me if you tried,” she bites out.
“Then I’ll keep trying.”
Maybe bathing Willow wasn’tsuch a good idea after all.
Maybe it’s the skin-on-skin contact, maybe it’s her bruises. Or maybe Willow just excites me. She holds a strange place in my esteem, somewhere above other women but lower than my dogs. I don’t cherish her, nor do I wish her particularly well. Her demise would do nothing to stir my emotions.
And yet I’m excited by her. I stand in the doorway to the bathroom, arms crossed and silent as I watch her climb out of the bath and wrap herself in a towel. My heartbeat is accelerated, my blood pounding thick and heavy through my veins. The telltale blood rush of lust hasn’t quite reached my cock, but every other part of me is on high alert, like it is during a fencing match.
Striking Willow with my foil, scoring points on every delicate, bruised part of her, would be quite satisfying, but so is touching her. Because I want to keep doing it.
