My mouth goes dry.
“You are so fucking perfect,” I murmur into her hair. “Butyou refuse to tell me exactly what is going through your mind.”
She lets out a stuttered breath. “I’m afraid.”
“We go as far as you want.”
She shudders against me. The foundations of her walls crack in the distance, and she seeks refuge right here. As she should.
“If there is one thing I am almost sure of, it is that you know to do this. But I need you…” I hang on each word as she shifts her hips in my lap with another acclimating touch, “to make me stop. Hold me in place. Tie me to the bed. Force the world to go quiet. Give me a space where I can enjoy existing.”
The heat pulses between us. Insistent. Maddening. It lifts me up, higher. Bolder. Something rests over us. A hum.
I had been right. I had read her like the back of my own hand—it was as if she’d been made just for me.
She misinterprets my silence. “I know it sounds strange?—”
“No.”
“—I’ve just always been like this. I shared it with Daniel and then… you know. Sometimes I wish I could replace those memories with happy moments. Ones that I could control.”
“I think it is beautiful. I understand.”
She pulls back, flushed. “Wait. What? You don’t think me strange?I think I’m strangefor wanting this. Sometimes I feel so scared. Scared of what I am, what I did, what I could do. Never having control again. But over the time I’ve spent with you, I’ve realized nothing scares me more than never being known completely. I want you… to be the one to know me.”
I kiss her again. “Then let me. Let me help you fight the monsters. Let me patch up that scar. Do you want me to hold your wrists?”
She nods. “And my legs.”
A smile spreads over my mouth.
“I will take care of you. Right now, you are mine to break. Mine to put back together.”
I pull out the pins in her hair, letting it fall down. She watches me with wonder. Then I lock both of her wrists in one hand, and hold them above her head. My hand is so large it wraps around more than her wrist, covering her palms and fingers too. She tries to move, testing the strength of my grip.
“Is this still all right?”
Somehow. She manages to thread her small finger through mine and I stop breathing.
“I will tell you if I need you to stop.”
Another promise.
Trust. It ripples off her in waves, giving me an endless supply of intoxicating power.
I guide her backward onto the mattress. Her hair fans across the pillow, and for a moment, I can only stare. The firelight paints her skin in shades of gold and rose, highlighting the delicate curve of her collarbone and the rapid rise and fall of her bare chest.
Under my gaze, she holds her breath.
“You are beautiful. Please don’t forget to breathe.”
And then I dip down to kiss her again. Starting at her throat, I touch each part of her arms, shoulders, and ribs, feeling the softness and the muscle, and listening to her perfect heart.
Rising, I use my shirt to tie her hands to the corner of the bed.
She sucks in a sharp breath, but doesn’t tell me to stop. So, I push her dress down to where it snags on her hips, I trace words in her freckled skin that she would never identify. Sweet words in my language.
"You don't know what you do to me," I say hoarsely against her navel. “What you have always done to me.”