Page 28 of Deception

“Tomasz…” she pleads.

Fuck. Fuck!

The sound of my name on her lips is my undoing, and I pick up the pace again, rutting into her without pause or relent. The only thing I want to hear again is my name howling from her mouth.

“Please,” she cries, hands clawing at my shoulders as I stroke out and shallow back in, slowly at first, teasing her and me. “Please…please…please…”

Fuck, it’s too late to stop even if I wanted to. As I drive into her again, bottoming out, I come inside her tight cunt. Spurt after spurt, I thrust and thrust as she sobs my name. Tears track her temples as her eyes hold mine, her pussy holding me deep as she comes for me.

“In the end,” I pant, licking my name off her lips. “In the end, Red, I always win.”

Her tears are heavy, and for a small fraction of a second, I think that she’s going to finally submit to me. That she’ll finally accept that I’m the only one that rules over her. How wrong I am.

Even with tears rivering down her face, and her body boneless for me, she levels me with a rawness that robs me of my breath. “You’re not the first man that’s fucked me. You’re not my first?—”

“But I will be your last.”

A dark smile tugs at one side of her lips before she retorts, “That would actually require you to kill me.”

Even now, she finds something to taunt me with. I followed through on one promise, and now she teases me with another. It’s a pity I didn’t threaten to keep her instead.

11

LUCY

Dirty. It doesn’t matter how many times I wash. Whether I scald my skin or scrub it within an inch of its life. I feel dirty. Angry and confused.

I’m a traitor.

Tossing one more time, I turn to face the full-height windows. The sun is coming up tediously slow, as though the night is trying to desperately hold on for just that bit longer. Long enough to taunt me with the shadows darkening the corners of the room and distorting the painting above me. Gods and angels caught between righteousness and sin.

It’s impossible to ignore the ache of my muscles as I roll onto my back. A long sigh pushes from my lips, something between a groan and hiss, as my foot throbs along to the burn in my limbs.

“Fuck,” I spit, pushing myself up with a shuffle into the headboard as I peel the cover off me and look down at the bandage on my toe.

That’s what you get. The voice in my head bites at me at the same time as I recall one of my headteacher’s favourite sayings:Every sin has a price. Every wrong has a penance.

I hated Catholic school. Hated that it encouraged us to fear the darkness rather than pushed us to see the goodness of the world. It always confused me that they would constantly reference sin, punishment, and eternal damnation instead of hope and light.

The bedroom door swings open, and I half expect Tomasz to stand in the open doorway instead of the maid that comes to deliver my breakfast and fresh clothes. Her steps falter when she finds me naked, but quickly, she shakes the surprise off and wheels in the cart with the same austere-looking rye toast and boiled egg as always. The smell alone makes my stomach turn. The thought of eating anything right now, however, has me leaping out of the bed and stumbling to the toilet.

Nothing comes. Heave after heave. Doesn’t matter how many times I wretch, I’m fucking dry. Inside and out.

Clearing her throat, the maid walks in with a sheet held up in front of her as though she’s preserving my dignity even though she’s seen every inch of my body. Twice a week, she shaves my legs and any other unwanted hair. Not once has she shown me any sympathy, except for right now, as she gently drapes the sheet over me and stands beside the toilet, waiting while I stare into the bowl.

“Thank you,” I tell her as I push up onto my feet and head over to the vanity, trying to remember if I’ve ever heard her name. Instead of adding to the already rampant mess, I ask her, “What’s your name?”

Feels wrong that we don’t know each other’s names. This woman has scrubbed me clean and groomed me. Knowing each other’s names isn’t what’s going to make things weird or even make us friends. She’s still the servant taking care of her master’s pet.

Ignoring the sting of my thoughts, I tell her, “My name’s Lucy.”

“Elif,” she whispers back, as though our verbal exchange is forbidden.

Quietly, she goes about picking up the broken pieces of the china soap bottle along with the other debris from last night. Meanwhile, I stand in front of the mirror looking at myself. As my heart picks up its rhythm at the memory of everything that happened, my belly lurches. I keep waiting to feel sick again, but while I examine the marks Tomasz’s hands left on my body, I shiver at the cold that assaults me. My stomach twists at the ghost of his touch. I can still feel his hands on me, hot and rough. Unforgiving. The echo of his presence inside me is inescapable, making my body wring itself that bit more so that it tenses and clenches.

Fuck, it misses him.

The discomfort of feeling so empty has never been this overwhelming. Pressing my legs together, I edge flush to the vanity until the marble top grinds into my hip bones. Like when he was standing behind me. For an instant, I swear I can feel the heat of his body pressed to my back with the pain fizzing from my hips to my pulsing core. Hard. Strong. Unyielding. Tomasz is impenetrable. Even when he unravels, there is something so forthright about him that makes me question all the things I know.

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