Page 43 of His

I’d lied to Gavriel. My stepdad had been horrible to me, sure. He’d beat my mother and me too, sometimes. But the numbness had started creeping through my body long before then.

The first emotion to go was happiness. It went hiding one day, and I thought it would come back, but it didn’t. I searched for it for a while, then one day I stopped searching. I had forgotten what it felt like, or why I was searching for it in the first place.

Then I couldn’t feel sadness. No sadness, no frustration. When bad things happened, I would have to force myself to frown, as though I cared whether or not our baseball team had lost, or whether or not a character in a movie died. I didn’t care when my tests started coming back with failing grades.

Anger was the last one, and I clung to it for a while, yelling at my mom for my stepdad’s faults. Then even the anger left, and I was alone with nothing but a barrier in my brain that kept me from feeling a thing.

Some people can’t feel pain on their skin, I read once. They touch a hot stove and don’t even notice. It was like that, but with everything. It’s not that the feelings weregone,really. They weren’t. They were just buried so deep inside of me that I didn’t even want to think about what would happen if they came back.

Sorrow and happiness both, sunken into the tissue of my body. Hiding under layer after layer of skin, invisible. Like an empty box wrapped and put under the Christmas tree to tease.

Unwrap me and there’s nothing left.

Gavriel’s hand was moving down my neck, now, the washcloth cleaning off every inch of my skin. Here, trapped in this house, trapped in this bathtub, I had nothing else to think about but the sensation of his hands on my body. I wasn’t worrying about getting enough hours for work, or being able to pay off my bills. The only thing that my mind had to think about washim.

And oh, God forgive me, he feltgood.

Was he evil? Truly evil? Was he good, as he claimed, killing only evil men? I didn’t know, and my body didn’t care.

His hands moved down and over my breasts, and I let out a small gasp as the washcloth grazed my nipple. Gav leaned forward. I could hear his breathing in my ear, and his dark hair was partially reflected in the ripples of water. But he didn’t say anything.

No, he said nothing, but his hands said it all. As he switched the washcloth from one hand to another, his fingers cupped my breast, sliding back and forth, letting the weight sway in the water. Then his thumb moved up, tracing a circle over my already erect nipple.

He knew how I felt. He had to know. My breathing was shallow, and he’d done this before - back on the table. Now, though, he was more gentle, his strokes like a soft breeze over my skin. He cupped another hand of water and held it to my collarbone where the silver hearts lay against my skin, letting the hot water drip down slowly.

Before, I had struggled against him. Struggled against the straps that held me down. Now there was nothing holding me down, and yet I did not struggle.

What could I have done?You might ask this. You might forgive me for giving in. There was nothing I could have done, not really. But the truth was that I had spent the last of my willpower in our conversation, and I did not want to fight any more.

No, it was that I did not want to fightthis. Not when the washcloth stroked my nipple so slowly, not when he squeezed my breast slightly and made me moan in the back of my throat. The ache that I had not yet gotten rid of surged between my legs, swelled in the hot water.

At the sound of my moan he nuzzled the side of my head, his mouth against the bottom of my ear. His arm crossed over my chest and held me tight as he kissed me on the neck just below my ear, and made me moan again.

I was melting in this bathtub, melting under the pressure of his hands and the heat of his breath on my skin. He kissed me again and his tongue curved out, caressing the bottom of my earlobe, sliding hot and wet until finally he sealed his lips around the lobe and sucked, his tongue still teasing the strip of flesh between his lips.

“Ohhhh.”

In my mind I was already making excuses, constructing a story that I would tell the world once I escaped.

I did it to make him trust me, I would say. I wanted to trick him into thinking I was attracted to him. It would be a good story, and maybe I would be able to make myself believe it, later.

If I had to stand before God, though, I would not be able to lie - I wanted him badly, wanted his tongue on more places than just my ear. Wanted him inside of me, this murderer, this kidnapper, this monster. I wanted everything he had to offer me and more.

This, too, I would lie about: when his hand slid down between my thighs, I parted my legs to give him access, I arched my back and groaned again as his fingers found me and slid down, curved, pressing perfectly against the spot where I needed relief.

Tension licked through my nerves as his mouth moved down to my collarbone, licking, sucking, breathing alternately hot and cold on my neck. His two fingers slid into my body and I whimpered as he let his teeth graze my shoulder, his lips soft and delicious and sinful, oh so sinful.

He moaned along with me as his fingers thrust deeper, then out again. His breath matched my own. It had been my choice to kiss this man and I had chosen wrong, and the penalty was the ache that he sent running through my limbs as his fingertips pressed down into me, the ache that rose and rose, never bursting, no, every time I was close he retreated and I twisted in his arms, unable to find release.

He kissed the side of my jaw as his fingers worked into me, the pressure inside of me mounting and mounting, like heat would expand out the air in a balloon. I was stretched thin, my nerves vibrating with pure desire. God, I would never admit this later, but the desire that tore at me cared nothing about the man making me desire him, cared nothing about his innocence or guilt. It wanted only release. So much pressure. So much.

My hips bucked against his hand, water splashing at the sides of the tub. Suddenly, he was gone. I gasped as he pulled his hand back, his fingers one second there and the next second not, and my body felt so empty, so open. I clutched for his arm but he was already drying off.

“What… why…” I stammered. He gazed at me levelly, and my protests died in my throat. Who was I to ask him for satisfaction? Guilt flooded my body, and my cheeks turned hot, hotter than the water in the tub that was already cooling off. We had been in the bathroom for a long time, and the suds from the shampoo had already been absorbed back into the bathwater.

“Why did you do it?” he asked.

“What?”

---