Page 9

Amber’s taking her time in the bathroom, the water still running which is good because I need to search her room. I tried doing it yesterday but she was in there almost the whole day, playing on her cello.
I frown when I remember that she didn’t technically play. More like played around and then it was silent in there for hours. My brilliant, little cellist is blocked. But I’ll make sure she loosens up within time. With her music and with me.
Walking into her bedroom, I inhale the smell of her that seems to be sticking to the walls. Leaning my head back I pull in as much as I can down my lungs. Her room reminds me of her, clean and polished with a queen sized bed and linen curtains in the window.
She left a pile of her clothes on the floor before walking into the shower and I pick up her skirt, smelling it, breathing the area that crinkled up in between her legs. Smells like concentrated ecstasy and I grind my teeth when my mouth waters with need.
Walking over to one of her drawers, I open it, finding neat rows of lingerie and picking up one of her thongs, I imagine it decorating her spiffy ass. The colors remind me of jewels, emerald green, ruby red...
They’d look like pieces of art on her feathery skin. Skin that I can’t wait to brand with little love bites.
Skin that will only ever feel my teeth and my claws and nobody else’s, I’ll familiarize her with my touch, make her used to it, make her addicted. I want her undone, so greedy for me that every day that I come home from work I want to find her naked in my bed, baring the most intimate part of her to me.Her body needs to be exposed. Her heart exposed. No walls between us. Not like there are now.
But if I’m going to have that, I’m going to have to tell her the truth about me. Tell her who I really am and that I have come for her. Then I want her to welcome me with open arms. No pushing away.
No fucking pushing away. Ever. She can’t do that to me.
It would kill me. Make me feel like I’m under water again. Drowning. But this time there wouldn’t be no surface. No surface without her. No air. Only a choking stone cold, that would paralyze me from the inside.
I drag a ragged breath and close the drawer before walking over to her desk and sit down in front of her computer. Her desk is spotless but still personable, a yellow, plastic flower, a half-eaten tootsie roll and a small stack of books and I throw a glance at the titles.
Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde... They look untouched and no wonder because the books in her bookshelf are all Amish romance and women’s fiction. It makes a smile pull at my lips at her attempt to bring something with more of a bite into her life.
She thinks she has to because she’s insecure. Because some asshole has told her, her music isn’t good enough. I want to crush anyone who’s against her in my fist. Give them what they deserve.My eyes return to the screen and I search for her website. I’m already familiar with it. I’ve read every one of her blog posts several times. So many times that I’ve almost memorized them.
I know her dream and aspiration is to play abroad. I know her dream is to be signed. I know she gets stressed whenever she’s had a bad concert and that she always comforts herself with a bowl of pistachio ice cream.
But I’ve never had access to her website this way before, never been in this much control. And maybe that was a good thing because I do not fucking like what I see.
Bile rises in my throat when I read her inbox. There are messages from men, asking her to take off her clothes when she’s on stage the next time, asking her to spend a night with them in exchange for money.
Asking her to send them pictures of herc...my fists clench in fury...cunt.
Their words make my heart hammer in my chest, throwing a haze over my eyes. There’s so many of them. Did she read them? She must have. She must have read what they think of her, what they want from her.
Want what’s mine and grabbing one of her pens, I shove the tip into my palm, making it hurt just to make sure that I don’t destroy the computer. I feel that familiar shove in my chest that pushes me to take action and it takes all my willpower to not throw the computer out the window.I decide to just delete every message coming from a male, cursing every single one of them as every one of their disgusting messages disappear. But it doesn’t end there. There are messages from women too.
Jealous ones. Messages that are green with envy. Wounding.
I can’t have Amber reading them. It’s bad for her and knowing how sensitive she is right now, I couldn’t live with myself if I allowed someone to hurt her like this.
Seeing no other option, I terminate the domain.
When the question “are you sure?” pops up on the screen, a satisfied grin spreads over my face and I click on yes. She’s safe now. Shielded.
The website disappears, a feeling of calm spreading in my body, leveling out some of the raging jealousy I felt when reading those messages.
A jealousy I can’t ever let myself feel again. It’s dangerous. An entity of its own that even I can’t control. Getting up, I search through the rest of her room but I don’t find what I’m looking for and I let out a low curse.
Where the hell did she hide them? I need to find them. Are they even in her house? I need to know...
A low humming travels into the room from the hallway and I go rigid. She’s out of the shower and she’s going to walk in any second and I’m still here.
She can’t find me like this. I wouldn’t be able to give her a good explanation. To my annoyance she doesn’t have a closet where I can hide and having no other choice, I dive under her bed. There’s a fluffy sheet on her mattress, the frill going almost all the way down to the floor and giving me a good cover.
I don’t breathe when I catch her walking in, leaving wet footprints over the floorboard and her ankles look so clean, that I almost brush my knuckles against them. She’s still humming to herself and I bite my tongue when she drops the towel.
Torture. An exquisite pain ripping me up from the inside.