Page 78 of His

I did not want him to leave, but I did not know if I could force him to stay.

“Kitten,” he murmured.

“I’m here,” I said softly. The morning light had turned the room gray, but when he opened his eyes I saw the glint of blue-green that always swirled there below the surface.

“You didn’t leave.”

“Your arm was kind of in the way.”

He smiled and rolled over. I felt cold without the touch of his skin on me as he sat up on the edge of the bed.

Had we really slept together like this? Like lovers, entwined like two strands of frayed rope amid the silken sheets?

Was I falling for this monster? Was he a monster?

My eyes refocused on his back and I saw that he was looking at me. I reached out and touched his skin gently. Imagining the belt. Imagining the bruises.

Don’t touch the butterfly’s wings.

“What do you want from me?” he asked.

“What?”

“Today. Do you want the same thing?”

I wanted to tell him the truth: that all I wanted… was him. I wanted him to stay with me, to hold me, to pin me down and torture me with kisses like he had the first time. God, I wanted all this and so much more. But I couldn’t let him know how much of a hold he really had over me.

Not for the first time, I wondered if this was all a trick. Then I remembered the photos of the boy, and I swallowed my doubt. No, he was real. This was all real. The note of desire that crept into his speech when he talked to me, that was real too.

“What do you want?” he repeated, wearily. As though preparing himself for the Sisyphean task ahead: to try not to kill anyone today.

“I don’t know.” I didn’t say the things I wanted to say.Come to bed.Kiss me.

Make me yours.

“How about a trade?”

He sounded so reasonable. So rational. As though I was a fair partner in this deal. He knew it wasn’t true. But I finally understood a corner of that sorrow that had been beaten into him. I understood the need for him to pull a veil over what he was doing.

He was not the only one here who was ashamed of the past.

“A trade.”

“Question for question.”

“That means you’re staying.”

“That’s part of the trade. But that also means you’re staying with me.”

The hint of desire in the curve of his lip. I saw all of the little things. I saw them, but did he want me to see them? Was he twisting me around him again with emotion?

I couldn’t shove the thought back into a dark corner of my brain. It was apparent in every movement he made.

He wanted me.

And I wanted him.

It may be delusion, but if it was, then it was the most delicious delusion I had ever tasted. His touch sent shivers of sparks through me that danger alone could not account for.

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