Page 59 of Razors & Ruin

I’m paranoid, that’s all, pulled every which way by the fear that the note’s author will make themselves known. If it was Nellie, it’d be a relief, but I don’t believe it.

My woman is a jealous, possessive wretch. She hasn’t got a screw loose; there isn’t even one that was fully tightened in the first place. But she is not merely crazy.

She’s crazy aboutme. And that is how I know I’m wrong.

We can go anywhere, Veronica. Anywhere.

I don’t want to. Dammit, Currer. I told you—Gerald and I, we want to sort things out.

He doesn’t love you like I do!

No bad thing! You frighten me, for crying out loud. I was naive, but not anymore. It’s over.

You don’t get to decide, Veronica. Give me the baby.

If you so much as touch Johanna, I’ll?—

I sit bolt upright and gasp like a fish out of water, my heart galloping.

Nellie sleeps naked on her front, the moonlight picking out the individual bumps of her vertebrae, and I stare at her, trying to reassure myself she’s real.

She’s recently taken to a nightcap of a sleeping draught, saying it stops her waking too early in the morning, but in my opinion, it’s enough to knock out an African elephant.

That fucking dream again. It will not let me be, stalking my subconscious, driving me out of my warm bed and into the cold loneliness of the shop, where I pour a large tot of gin.

I wish I understood what was happening. My head feels like it’s full of broken glass, splinters of something irretrievably broken, and it’s new to me.

Not that I’ve evernotfelt broken, but there’s a fragility to it that sickens me. After my earlier musings on paranoia, it occurs to me now that the person I trust least in this world is, in fact, myself.

What did I do to Veronica? Why, after all these years, does she come to me in my sleep, ever less the sweet lover of my youth and more a stranger?

It’s moments like these when I need Nellie most, but I feel too raw and porous to let her near, and I can’t find it in myself to go through the rough, bestial fucking we do when one or both of us needs to relieve some pressure.

I drain the gin and head back into the bedroom. My love has rolled onto her back, her scars silvery in the moonlight, and my mouth goes dry at the sight.

Her breasts rise and fall evenly as she sleeps the dreamless twilight sleep of the lightly drugged.

I can take what I want without having to give her anything. She will never know, and I’ll get to feel her acceptance and understanding without the corresponding vulnerability.

I don’t want her to see me this way, but I do want her to take me. To relieve my tortured mind by being a receptacle for my seed, a depository for my vitality.

I take her ankles in my hands and slowly slide her legs apart, banking on her remaining in position. She is too out of it to resist, and I climb onto the bed between her thighs, my cock already stiffening as I take in the view.

Her pussy is pink and smooth, darkening where her tightness calls to me.

I work myself up to full mast, breathing through my nose so I don’t moan aloud. Leaning over her mound, I spit carefully on her slit, watching as my saliva runs over her inner lips and into her pretty hole, and it’s all I can do not to plunge in to the hilt.

With a quiet hawk in the back of my throat, I pull up a good mouthful and do it again, sure she’ll stir. Her pussy shines, ready for me, but she remains a thousand miles away.

Is it possible Nellie will sleep through this?Fuck me, I hope so.

I’ve never fancied myself for a necrophile, but there’s something about her utter submission, unchosen by her and unearned by me, that makes me feel the same godlike power as when I take a life.

Her body, hijacked in the dead of night, used for my pleasure. What a tonic!

I rub my tip over her entrance, easing inside, but she doesn’t move a muscle. Her pussy is awake, though; it seizes at theintrusion, and the resistance meets with my instinct to force my way past it.

My cock sinks into her velvet channel, the heat suffusing every over-engorged inch of my shaft. I sigh with bliss and pull her closer, pushing her legs wider so I can bottom out.

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