Page 29 of Jazz
“Because you need to eat.”
“Is that it? I need to eat?” I mocked. “What’s the point?”
“Normally it keeps you alive.” There was a hint of something lighter in his voice.
“Yet you bastards won’t.”
He paused. I could hear the faintest of sighs leaving his chest. Slowly. He was trying not to let me hear it.
“Fucking answer me, Chase. What’s the plan? What are you going to do with me? Cos I don’t fucking like surprises.”
“You know already. You’ve heard everything.” That lightness was gone now. That deep, dark tone of his returning.
“Fuck your sandwich. And fuck you. You think I’m going out of here as Grim’s plaything? I’d rather fucking die.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” his voice was deeper than I’d ever heard it now. And even the surrounding air seemed to have grown colder.
I shivered.
“I’ll get you a blanket.”
The bed creaked and moved. Then footsteps. He didn’t try to hide them, and I listened as they moved away from me. Something wooden moved. I narrowed my eyes, concentrating. A wooden door? But not the same sound as earlier.
I hadn’t heard him step back towards me, but the slightest flick of something moving over my body set my brain screaming alarm bells all over.
“You have a choice here, Jazz…” he’d started, but I didn’t let him finish that.
“Fucking choice? I’m fucking strapped to a fucking dirty bed. Where’s my fucking choice? I can’t choose to sit up or roll over. And I can’t choose to defend myself from you lot. And why? Because my brother is a King. Not me. I’m not a King, yet you fucking take me.”
The frustration was cracking in my voice. The back of my throat was burning. My eyes burning with it. Would the blindfold mop my tears? Would it stop them from falling? He couldn’t see that. I wouldn’t let him or them see that.
Chase was quiet. His scent drifted away. Walking away, leaving me. Too fucking coward to respond.
The sandwich must have been close. I could smell the bread, the saltiness of ham. It filled the air, thick and heavy, crowding my lungs until I could almost taste it. My mouth watered against my will. The tang of it cut straight through the grime and sweat that coated my skin, teasing me, taunting me. My stomach clenched so hard it ached, rumbling loud enough I was sure he could hear.
Turning my head, the only movement these ties would allow. My stomach growled, filling the room. I didn’t want to eat his sandwich. I didn’t want that fucker feeding it to me like a child. But I was so fucking starving, and the warm, yeasty smell of the bread in the air, after days of nothing, was enough to make me break.
But suddenly he was back. I smelt him first. The scent didn’t drift in. It just appeared beside me, and I jolted. He didn’t say a word, but I felt his fingers over my wrists, unzipping the leather jacket sleeves, pushing the material back. I clenched my teeth, not knowing what was coming next. But what came was something warm. And wet.
I jumped, the water stinging the open flesh. His fingers tightened on my wrists.
“I know it stings,” his voice was a low rumble over the top of me. “But these are going to get infected.”
I nodded in silent consent. Letting him wipe the warm water over my wrists, wincing at each sting, at each pass of warm soaked cotton wool.
“This bit is gonna sting like a bitch,” he mumbled.
I had no time to prepare. The liquid burned through my flesh like acid. And I couldn’t recoil. Couldn’t escape. The rope held my arms in place. It felt like the scab had been ripped open to the bone, winter poured into the cuts, and I gasped before I could stop it, a small animal sound I hated. Every pass of the soaked wool set the nerves screaming again, and I curled my fingers uselessly against the ropes. He held me tighter, solid and steady, that pressure both anchor and cage.
“I know,” he murmured into my hair, voice low and with something almost like pity hiding under it.
I wanted to hate him for touching me, for being the one to do this, and a part of me did, but the other part, the one that was raw and human and stupid with pain, leaned into it because it meant someone was trying to fix it. The sting blazed, then dulled in slow crescendos, and with each pass the world narrowed to the smell of alcohol and the sound of my breathing.
“Well done, Tiger,” he praised.
I should hate his voice. Hate him. I was really, really trying. But that low velvety rumble. It sent my insides into a chaotic dance. His hands didn’t leave my arms, fingertips smoothing over my skin. Rough and gentle all at the same time.And thanks to the sting of the antiseptic, and the riot of my nerve endings, that touch of his fingers, stroking over the delicate skin under my wrists, was pushing me into a stupid, hot oblivion. I needed to hate him. And I needed my fucking body to hate him too.
“What are you doing?” I asked, but my voice betrayed me, coming out as a hoarse whisper.