Page 139 of Violent Possession

We stay like this, frozen. My hands are still clasped around Griffin’s waist, but I feel his heat as a reminder that, no matter how much I try to transcend it, I am a slave to the same flesh.

The fury is dissolved in spasms of pleasure and pain. There is only a sudden, childish fear of not knowing what to do next.

I pull away from him.

Griffin loses his footing and falls, sliding down the wall. He hits the floor on his knees first, then his arms hang heavy—only his chest rises and falls, panting, the effort of breathing now new and painful.

The sight of him, so raw and exposed, causes me deep discomfort. It is an intimacy that I didn’t seek, a consequence of my loss of control.

My first instinct is to restore minimal order.

I compose myself. I adjust my clothes back in place. I avoid looking at him. Every second of silence exposes the disaster of what I have just done.

He says nothing.

I walk to the counter, strangely unstable, and pour myself another shot of vodka. I down it in one gulp. The alcohol burns, but it doesn’t purify.

Griffin is still on the floor, but now he is looking at me. His eyes don’t lose focus; they don’t look away. It’s as if he’s studying me, looking for something that neither he nor I can define.

“Get up,” I order. My voice comes out sharp, much more so than necessary. I break his gaze before he does.

For a moment, I think he’s going to challenge me, but he moves. With each movement, Griffin seems to be relearning how to use his own body: his arms rest on the wall, his legs tremble, his face contorts into a grimace that is more contempt than pain. He pulls up his pants as if it makes no difference, leaves the button open, deliberately exposes the failure of his composure.

I see the blood drying at the corner of his mouth, the red-marked skin where my nails dug in, and yet, what stands out most is the clarity of his eyes. He looks at me like he won, somehow, just by still existing whole.

“Give me a shot,” he says, hoarse.

I hesitate longer than I’d like to admit. My hands, which minutes ago were crushing Griffin’s dignity until he turned to dust, now tremble almost imperceptibly. The domestic ritual of alcohol becomes a kind of truce: I pour another glass, place it on the marble island between us. Griffin maneuvers his devastated body to the counter.

He takes the glass with his left hand—always the left, I realize—and empties it at once.

The air is saturated with something else now. It’s no longer the feverish sexual tension; it is something quieter, more dangerous. It’s the knowledge of what happened, and the uncertainty of what it means.

I lost control.Hemade me lose control. And we both know it.

I could easily let him go and sort himself out, but the image of him arching under my hands still pulses in my synapses. I feel a foolish urge to apologize, which disgusts me. I never learned to deal with guilt. Only to contain it until it explodes.

“Turn around,” I order.

Griffin raises an eyebrow. A glimmer of his usual defiance returns. “Haven’t we had that part of the night already?”

“Turn,” I repeat, walking around the island. Griffin hesitates, but spins the revolving stool, showing me his back.

He is all torn, wounded by glass, blows, and painted with dried blood and recent bruises. Still, there is a raw beauty in the alignment of his spine, in his broad shoulders, in the way he doesn’t allow himself to shrink.

I go to where I abandoned the first aid kit before I lost control.

I place it on the island. I soak gauze in antiseptic and touch the first scratch on his back.

Griffin shudders all over, but makes no sound. He is so proud that he turns every gesture of care into a new battlefield. I clean the dried blood, press the gauze around the wounds. He doesn’t back down. I feel his breath quicken, but he holds on tight to the counter.

“You’re impulsive to the point of stupidity,” I murmur.

He laughs humorlessly. “And you’re a control freak dictator. We’ll call it a draw on that one.”

I apply gauze and ointment to his ribs, where a purplish bruise is growing under the skin.

“You knew what you were getting into when you took me out of that arena,” he says, lower.