Page 104 of Smut Lovers
Oh, she knew the statistics. They were plastered all over the health department in town, laminated data that touted, “ Domestic Violence: Leading Cause of Injury in Women 15-44,” or that one poster that said, “ Stalking is a Crime!” She knew her own mother had fallen for a similar man, the boy scout, the one all the girls fluttered around, the one all the boys looked up to.
She knows that what her mother wasn’t strong enough to do was what had killed her.
She’s lucky, in a way. That her own father had taken his life rather than face his sins. But still, how fucking lame .
Instead, she laughs at his crass comment.
It’s tight. Airy. The one he hates, because he knows she’s faking it, but she can’t stop herself from looking him dead in the eyes when she does it.
Her hands are shaking now in the towel, gripping it so tight she’s surprised water doesn’t spill onto the floor.
He doesn’t move from his spot at the table.
She isn’t entirely sure that’s a good thing.
She juts her chin to his bowl. “You want any more?”
He doesn’t respond, but his eyes roam up and down her body.
leaving icy trails. Suddenly the long skirt of her dress can’t cover her enough.
The short V at her neck feels like it’s exposing her to the world.
Georgie tries to suppress the shiver, but she can’t stop her knees from buckling or the nervous swipe of her tongue across her bottom lip.
She leans against the counter behind her.
When Evan gets up from his chair, the wood scrapes behind him.
He picks up the bowl, eyes fixed on her. Georgie feels like an animal trapped in a cage. Feels like those little foxes they used to send hound dogs after, and Evan?
He’s the prize winner.
He can smell her fear; she knows it cause she can see the tightness in his jeans. She knows what game he wants to play before he’s rounded the table.
Once upon a time, she used to love this game. She liked the way he stalked towards her, the way her hair prickled on end. Now, though, she knows that Evan doesn’t care to stop. That her blood turns him on just as much as the apex between her thighs.
She used to like blood like that too.
Before.
Before he stopped pretending to care about whether or not she lived after.
She swallows hard, watching him as his head turns this way and that. He’s teasing her now, dancing his way toward her in jerky movements that hitch her breath. Make her skin jump. When he’s near her, he sets his bowl on the counter between them so softly you can’t even hear the glass clink.
“Ain’t hungry for just food anymore, Georgina,” he says. The sound is soft, as light as it is deceiving.
She has to bite her teeth around that name; God, how she hates that fucking name.
“It’s been a long time, baby.” His finger comes up to her shoulder, playing with the sleeve of her dress, making her shiver. His cologne is clogging the air, sickly sweet and nauseating. “Your man’s home. You fed ‘im a good starter, but he’s ready for the main course.”
She kicks the corners of her lips up, up, up. Her eyes are screaming as she speaks, “Don’t you want dessert first?”
Neon-smile, neon-smile, neon-smile.
“Do I fuckin’ look like I want dessert?” Irritation flickers around the edge of his lips. His fingers curl around her bicep, squeezing; if he had nails, she knew they would dig into her enough to draw blood.
She doesn’t reply, though. Her other hand shakes as her mind runs ragged, trying to come up with something—anything—for them to do besides go to the bedroom. It’s a sorry time to be empty-handed.
Her stomach hurts. It falls from its place into her toes.
She can feel her blood in her fingertips.
She swallows hard. “You want a drink, then? I can make you a good one, we can–”
“ We can get to the room. I’ve had plenty to drink while I been away.”
That was the damn truth. His eyes are yellow where they should be white, glassy, leaking at the edges. She could see her reflection staring back at her like a mirror, nothing behind them but a dark, empty void of space that ate up everything good in its path.
“That so?”
“Yeah,” his voice lowers, barely a whisper, “And I realized somethin’, baby.”
“What’s that?” she asks, afraid to hear the answer but desperate to drag the seconds into minutes and minutes into years if she can, anything to keep him standing here and no closer, but preferably much, much farther.
“I realized I been mistreat’n you.”
Nononono .
Georgie freezes, afraid of what or where his thoughts were going. Something like this doesn’t make sense, not with the man she knows. Somethin’ like this could send him in any direction, any which way.
“Whatcha mean, hon?” Her teeth grind so hard her eyes see spots of color as the lie is excavated from her lips, “You’re silly talkin’.”
“No,” he shakes his head, lips pursed to the side of his face. His eyebrow raises slightly. “You know it, and I know it. I ain’t been takin’ as good care of you as I could’a been.”
She hesitates, wondering if the move will be worth it, distracting enough to keep him here, or whether or not he’d take the bait.
She smiles harder, tentatively, shaking her head. She rests her hands on his chest. “Not at all—”
His fingers curl around her wrists, bending them back slightly, walking her backward until her back hits the other counter.
She can feel the heat of the oven, still simmering, still boiling, at her hip.
Her fingers tingle as her imagination and anxiety take over, imagining Evan dipping her hands into the pot or shoving her face there.
It flashes across her eyes like her own personalized horror movie as his hips lock her against the counter.
He’s so fucking hard. The whimper that escapes her tongue burns through her, flushing her cheeks.
“Ain’t been givin’ you ‘nough attention, have I? That’ll change now I’m home.” The hate creeps up her neck, the red of it. Imprints on her spine as it curls in on itself. Evan’s lips are on her ear now, his breath heavy, spoiled, “Hey now, hey, why so many tears?”
He gathers her wrists in one hand, ducking under them so she has no choice but to hug his shoulders. Try as she might, he’s stronger than her, even after the classes, after the training, it all goes out the window now that he’s here in front of her.
It’s a losing battle, pulling and tugging without knocking over the pot of boiling pizzole and hurting herself in the process.
His fingers are deft as he pulls at the buttons at her stomach, starting halfway, plucking them up. “Don’t you want me, baby? Cause I sure fuckin’ want you.”
Georgie doesn’t answer; just tries to breathe while he works on her dress. He lets her hands hang limp across his shoulders and drags his own down her body to grip at her hips. He’s pulling her towards him, and without warning, he slams her up against the counter.
The pain isn’t blinding, but it’s been three months since she’s had pain like this, so it smarts, lighting her world up with a gasp, snatching the air out of her lungs and her throat.
The counter is clean, spotless from her earlier stress cleaning as she agonized over Evan’s unexpected return.
Now there is nothing to grab hold of or defend herself with.
Tears collect, falling in hot tracks down her cheeks.
Evan’s seen them too, even if she doesn’t know when they started or how.
“I missed this.” He breathes her in. One of his hands comes up to grab her chin, squeezing her cheeks so hard her teeth cut the insides.
She tastes blood in her mouth. He uses her face as a lead, pulls her in close until he’s got her struggling on her tippy toes, craning her neck, “Missed you. God, I fucking missed you.”
Georgie’s worst nightmare plays on a loop in her head as his lips close in. Bile rises in her throat. The alcohol on his breath sours the air between them, so little of it that there is, burning her eyes.
He’ll kill her, she knows, if she throws up on him.
Maybe that’s why she grabs the pot.
It isn’t her mother’s cast iron. She wishes it was, but she might not have been able to swing it out the way she does if it had been. It hits with a thick sound, flesh hitting the side of the pot. A sizzle she’s afraid to identify. Liquid splatters across his face and onto the floor.
She doesn’t feel the burn even though she knows it splashes on her too, drenching her skirt that sticks to her skin like magma.
Evan howls, a raw, ripped, and mangled sound that comes from something primal and inhuman inside of him that she’s seen one too many times.
She doesn’t think she’ll survive another.
She doesn’t know when she drops the pot either.
All she knows is the burn under her feet as she scrambles away.