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“I hope you’re comfortable, O’Connell.” His gaze ran over my bound, spread body before finding me again, the dark look there sending a delicious shiver up my spine. “You’re going to be there a while.”
Sixty-Three
ALFIE.
My Lo lay across my chest, fast asleep. The burnt sunrise shone in, setting fire to her hair and warming the room. A ray of light struck us and I’d be damned if I let the sun disturb her sleep. I slid out from underneath her as carefully as I could and crossed the room to close the drapes, plunging us into darkness.
Undisturbed, she lay sprawled across the mattress, nuzzling into my vacant pillow. The cold space inside me lit up, the sight of her warming me through as it always did. She needed to rest and so did I, but I couldn’t, not yet. Resigned to the wait, I took my usual place on the chaise-lounge to begin my watch. I was tired, bone tired, but I couldn’t sleep yet. I had to wait.
‘I kissed Bradley.’
I gritted my teeth, a fresh wave of pain striking me deep and sharp. I could have strangled her and done worse to him. Thank God for Elliot. Elliot who had sent me a single text earlier.‘Forgive her, you fool.’
I was trying, but forgiveness required understanding. I did understand why she’d done it, I understood completely, but it didn’t help. It hurt anyway. It would take time. That’s what the last remaining piece of my rationality told me and I tried to believe it. I didn’t have any other choice. My Lo wasn’t vindictive or a liar, she was just scared, and that man offered her a security I didn’t. That was my fuck up, but how the hell did you offer someone security? I could give her money but she would only laugh at me, throw it down a well, and make a billion wishes for a billion blueberry muffins. How did you make someone feel safe? I had no idea, but I was trying to learn.
My eyes stung, yearning for sleep, but I fought the urge to give in. I ran a hand over my face. My finger touched on the raised scar on my brow, but even that didn’t haunt me so much anymore. Now, when I looked at it in the mirror, instead of feeling shame, it reminded me of her face when I’d told her I’d gotten it from falling out of a tree. She’d given me that look, the one where she scrutinised me with those X-ray eyes and said, ‘You know I know you’re lying, right?’ Of course she’d known I was lying. She was too damned perceptive for her own good.
I ran my fingers over the scar. It was the only time I’d known my father to be careless. His damage was always placed where it could be hidden. It was also the only time his violence had been justified. I’d earned this scar. I didn’t care what Elliot said—I deserved this, and I was glad I had it to serve as a daily reminder of the monstrous things I’d done. Not that I needed it. I had another living reminder that did that job very well.
My Lo stirred, shifting onto her back and baring her breasts to the darkness. I held my breath, wondering if it was time yet, but after a moment she settled again. I settled too, back into the plush cushions, resigned to a longer wait before I could finally sleep. But I didn’t mind it. I watched her sleep and meditated on the rise and fall of those lush peaks, on her slightly parted lips,on the faint marks on her wrists where my tie had dug in. The tie was still loosely wrapped around the bed frame, no longer useful. I’d managed to keep her tied for all of one fuck before I’d missed her touch too much and had to release her. I almost laughed to myself at how screwed I was.
I couldn’t stop looking at her. Her hair scattered around her, a firelit mane. God, I loved her hair—the only part of her that refused to submit to anyone, even me. It was wild, untamed and full of colour. The way it moved when I fucked her…What I’d give to watch her ride me or to watch those lush lips wrap around my cock as those deep blues peered up at me. But I couldn’t allow it.Pleasure. There was a time when I deserved all of it. Now, I didn’t want to see her like that. I didn’t deserve her worship.
Lola O’Connell.
LolaTell.
A smile dared to tug at my mouth and I sneered it away. My mother and sister were going to hate her and I felt the urge to wrap her in armour to protect her from their vicious barbs. Elliot said that I underestimated her, that she could handle them. That was probably true. She was fierce. Or rather, she had been fierce but that was changing every day, and as she grew weaker I saw more of my father in myself. He would have been so proud to see her kneeling at my feet, crying as I pulled her hair and shamed her. ‘Good job son, I knew I’d make you strong eventually. Now you and Charles finally have something to bond over.’
I hated it. Hated seeing the light go out of her eyes every time I warped her. In these quiet, night-lit moments I could play over what I’d done and see how I’d gone wrong. The night after that grey dress, that fucking dress, I had sat right here and played the day over—every wrong move I’d made. I hadn’t meant to hurt her, I just needed her to stop making me soweak.
When she was around I prayed she would never leave and when she was gone, a part of me prayed she would never come back. It was a mind-fuck of a dichotomy, but before her I had been safe. I was dead inside but I knew the rules, knew how to operate, but with her? Every day I got closer to bending the knee and that night as she’d held me in the water and spun her flower-filled fantasy for me, she had offered me too much. I’d panicked and she had called me on it so easily.‘Do I fit in your box now?’That had split me. The problem was that I didn’t know what the right moves should have been until she’d explained them to me and then they seemed so simple. It was frustrating. I wasn’t used to feeling so inept.
In that moment, I didn’t have the right words. All I could see was her slipping out of my fingers and I began to panic. I knew she could see that too, my panic. She saw everything of me, every look dissected me, searching my mind for my hidden thoughts. Maybe one day I could let her see them but not yet. I had to secure her first. I knew that wasn’t fair, to cage a wild creature, but if I didn’t she would fly away and leave me, and I was too selfish to allow that. I would just have to learn how to make her happy in my cage with me. I was getting better at that but it was difficult to understand when such trivial things made her happy. A cotton dress. Ice cream. Poking playful fun at me. That had been a new experience. Laughing at the idea of me wearing Hawaiian print shorts...Such a peculiar girl.
“I’ll leave with you.”
I should have felt something, happiness or relief, but as she and I both knew, an agreement gotten over a barrel was worthless, so my work wasn’t over yet. She’d seemed sure of her words, but whether she’d be sure of them in the calm light of day was another matter. I couldn’t let up, not yet.
Burnt light began to filter through the drapes but it wasn’t enough to wake her, just enough to light up her skin. She stirredagain with more intent this time and my heart lurched for her. She was weakening to my will and my guilt-gilded dagger twisted deeper each time I won, but it also brought me closer to keeping her, so how in the hell could I stop?
Her breathing caught…it was time. I slid into the sheets beside her, moving like a ghost so as not to wake her from her whimpers. Her brow creased as her nightmares took hold and her lower lip trembled. That lip that looked best between her clenched teeth as I plunged into her. She let out a small mewl and I twisted inside. I settled next to her and wrapped her in my arms, settling in for the long wait.
Sometimes she cried for her mum, the name rasping from her throat like a drowning woman gasping for air, but not always. The first time she had done this, I’d sat and watched, feeling more helpless than I ever had before until it finally ended. When the morning came, she didn’t mention it. I’d watched her, waiting for some sign that she was keeping it a secret, but eventually, after the fifth or tenth time, I realised that she just had no idea it was happening and I decided that was probably for the best. My Lo was so damned proud, she wouldn’t want me seeing her like this.
The twelfth time, I’d worked up the courage to stroke her hair, and to my shock it had soothed her. I’d had visions of her waking, biting my bold hand off and laughing in my face for being so weak, but it never happened.
Over the months, I’d grown bolder and the bolder I grew, the quicker her nightmares were over. Now it was natural, to stroke my fingers down her spine, to kiss the top of her head, to hold her until it was over. A single tear slipped from her squeezed shut eyes and I caught it with my thumb and popped it into my mouth, destroying the evidence.
I held her closer, feeling the rapid rise and fall of her chest as she fought an imaginary drowning.
My Lo was brave. Braver than me. She welcomed her ghosts in, patchworked them into a cape and draped it over her shoulders like she was some kind of survivor superhero with her middle finger up to whatever would try to break her next. Her strength made me braver. Each day I could look at myself easier, each day I considered colour. I would never be a Hawaiian shorts man but blue socks? Yeah, maybe I could wear blue socks.
Each day passed and my frozen insides thawed out, my razor sharp edges smoothed over. I could see a future and, for the first time, it was one that I wanted. I saw a million roads in front of me and I didn’t give a damn which one I ended up on as long as she was my backseat driver.
Each part of her was made up for me—the curve in her spine, the crinkle in her nose when she laughed, laughter which she gave away like it didn’t cost her a damn thing. She soothed the battered boy inside me and I thanked whatever deity was up there for sending this foul-mouthed angel to fix my fucked up wings. I swore to them every night when I held her through her terrors that I would keep her safe, always. I would keep her mine.
I awoke in my favourite place on earth. She was still asleep, but herneed—the only part of her that didn’t intimidate me—was wide awake and knew what it wanted. I knew she thought it was always me that fucked her awake, and sometimes it was, but I wondered if she knew how many times it was the other way around.