There are pictures on the wall here: giant, abstract prints that might be Dali. I smell something cinnamon, hear the swishing of a ceiling fan. He steps fully inside and shuts the door behind us. Then he turns around, giving me a full view of the room. Like the foyer, it’s enormous: the size of at least three normal master bedrooms. There’s a sitting area with two couches and a chair, and a whole wall that’s a bookshelf.
Immediately, I can feel his ownership of the room. It’s hard to say how, but I just know he’s spent a lot of time here. Still, he crosses the Oriental rug slowly, moving almost hesitantly toward the bed.
It sits up high, and is draped in soft gray silk. There’s a crimson blanket laid across the foot of the bed. Piled against the headboard are dozens of gray and white silk pillows.
I look up at him again, but his face is unreadable as he lifts me onto the bed and lays me in a nest of pillows. I curl up on my side, warmed by how gentle he’s being with me. I hold my breath as he climbs over me and settles his big body right behind mine.
Oh.
I feel him lying down, like I am, then I feel his arms close over me. He pulls me against his hard chest, then drapes one strong leg over both of mine. He presses his face into the tender spot between my shoulder and my throat. I nuzzle my cheek against him, and his hand starts to gently stroke my hair.
From out of nowhere comes the crimson blanket, spread over us both.
I can feel him scoot a little closer to me: his crotch against my ass, the muscular contours of chest against my back. He starts to rub my hair with his bandaged hand, while his other one traces firm, relaxing lines on my shoulders.
“Thanks,” I whisper.
His big, warm hands speak for him. With one more glance around the room, I let my eyes slip shut, focusing on my breathing as I move from feeling just ‘okay’ to almost relaxed.
No words are exchanged as he strokes and rubs me. I feel him harden against my ass, but I don’t rock against him. I love what he’s doing. The way he’s trying to comfort me, even though he hasn’t said a word. I love the way he lifts a remote and the lights around us dim, so that the one large window in the wall beside the bed spills milky light into the room.
“Thank you,” I say again, as his hands knead my neck.
“Don’t thank me.”
His voice is a delicious rumble, shooting warm pleasure between my legs. I rock my ass gently against him. I can’t seem to help myself.
“Lie still,” he murmurs.
He strokes my hair, my back, my shoulders. He runs a finger over my ear and presses his face into my hair. Sometimes, as he works, I feel the warmth of his breath against my neck.
I feel myself start getting wet. I rock my ass against him, feeling needy. There would be something wonderful about doing this here. It would be a way that we could own this place.
“Still,” he whispers through my hair.
But it’s too late. His hands have put a spell on me. Without a word, I turn over to face him, frame his face with my hands. My heavy-lidded eyes meet his right before our mouths collide.
His lips are soft and tender, but they don’t kiss me back. Not much, at least not in those first few seconds. He puts an arm around me and tries to pull me to his chest. I let him, because I want to feel enveloped. Safe.
It’s not protective, though. The way he holds me, as we both lie on our sides, facing each other, is different than it was.
Sorrowful: that’s how this feels.
I want to take that away.
Still facing him, I kiss his throat, nibbling and sucking my way down to the collar of his sweater.
“Mm,” he moans.
“Let’s take this off.”
He doesn’t move as I tug at the hemline of the shirt. I tuck it over my head, run my face along the hard warmth of his chest, and use my lips to feel around for a nipple. When I find it, I nip it with my teeth, then suck.
His chest rises and falls with deeper, longer breaths.
I reach down and wrap my hand around his thick erection, and he starts to pant.
“Luke,” I whisper.
I slide my tongue into his mouth and rock myself against the head of him. I press his cock against my leg, and tug and stroke it. When he tries to find his equilibrium again, I surprise him by unzipping his pants and reaching inside.
I’m rewarded by the sound of his breath catching. I grin as I cup his sac through the cotton of his boxer-briefs, while my other hand works his shaft.
When I’ve got my rhythm perfect, and he’s rocking himself into my hands, I brave a look at his face. He looks rapt. Relaxed and blissful.
So I’m surprised when, a few seconds later, he grabs my wrists and pushes my arms over my head. The peaceful expression on his face dies, replaced by something harsh. Using his knee, he nudges me onto my back and straddles me. I can feel the weight of his erection in between my legs. I rock against it even though his hand around my wrists is almost painful.
Still holding my arms over my head, he covers my mouth with his and lets his bandaged hand rove under my shirt. He cups my breasts and strokes my sides, then lets my hand go.
“Take it off.”
I obey brainlessly. I’m hot and throbbing in between my legs. I make quick work of my shirt and bra, and watch his face as my nipples harden in the heat of his gaze. He captures my wrists again, and leans over me to kiss my throat. His other hand rubs me through my pants.
He presses my wrists against the pillows. “Don’t move,” he says sternly.
He takes down my pants, pulls off my panties, and presses his warm, smooth cock between my thighs. He starts to rock against me as his hand recaptures my wrists.
His breaths are loud. His lids are low.
I thrust my pussy against his cock, and it’s like I flipped a button on him. He pauses for a moment. Then, with a dark glint in his eyes, he spreads my lips, leans his head down, and starts to lick me ruthlessly. I can hear the air hissing out his nose as his tongue drags through my puffy flesh. He lolls the tip of it around my clit, making a slick circle, teasing the sensitive nub until I’m coming off the bed.
With his tongue still exploring my folds and my knees clamped around his head, he reaches behind him. I hear a ripping sound, and a minute later, he lifts his head and leans over me, tying my wrists with what looks like a piece of wooly fabric from his sweater.
The knot is so tight, it almost hurts, but I’m too aroused to care.
With his cock pressed against my creaming pussy, he places my arms above my head and sucks my nipples while he rocks his hips against mine.
When I’m almost crying from the intensity of my arousal, he takes himself in hand, parts my pussy lips, and feeds his length into me: first the smooth, round head, and then the thick, veined hose of his shaft.
Centimeter by centimeter, he invades me, till he’s all I know. Until he’s balls-deep and I’m alight from the blissful, stretching length of him.
He presses one of my shoulders down with his hand, and with the injured one, he strokes up and down my sides while pumping in and out of me.
Pumping turns to the most violent sort of thrusting. Every time he pulls out and punches back in, he stabs so deep inside, it makes my toes curl. I have to bite back screams. He pounds me so hard I feel weak. My lids grow heavy as his dick pounds me. I feel his balls bounce off my taint.
I fight against my binds, because I want him deeper inside me. I want to grab his ass and lift my hips to meet his. Instead, his hips keep working like a piston, driving his cock into me time and again. He presses down against my shoulder as he fucks me.
In and out, in and out, in and out. He’s so big, I’m sore already. When he leans over me and laces his hands through both of mine, I shut my eyes and open my legs wider for him.
A few more harsh thrusts, and I can’t take it anymore. I come with a loud cry, squeezing his hands, and I can feel his body shudder as he comes with me. He spills inside me, but he doesn’t pull out.
&nbs
p; He sinks down on me, leaning to his left side. His eyes, on my face, are wide and strange.
I look up and down him and gasp. “Oh my God. Your hand.”
The bandage around his right hand is spotted with blood. From where I squeezed it. While I was getting off. “Luke—I’m so sorry.”
His head is down, so I can’t see his face, can only see his shoulders move as he pants.
“Are you okay?” I try to lean up, and find I can’t because my hands are bound. I lift my head. “Can you untie me? Let me see it?”
He pulls out of me with a little hiss, and I watch his jaw tighten as he grits his teeth. He holds the right hand up, and a trail of blood rolls toward his elbow.
“I’m so sorry. I just…wasn’t thinking. How stupid is that? I feel awful.”
His brown-green eyes meet mine. They’re wide and stark, but as I stroke my foot over his calf, they soften.
Then he’s off the bed, disappearing through a door I hadn’t even noticed until now.
Silence unspools all around me. Then I hear the sound of something breaking.
CHAPTER THREE
Leah
My stunned ears quickly peg the sound: glass shattering. The first blast of noise makes me feel like I’ve been kicked in the chest. Waiting for silence is instinctive, so for the next second, I freeze, my heart pounding so hard I think I might be sick.
But silence never comes. It’s as if there’s a China shop on the other side of the door, and he’s trying to break everything in it.
I don’t think about how my hands are still bound, I just roll off the mattress. My ankle folds under me as I land on the rug, but somehow I manage to keep my balance as I stagger to the door and start grabbing the doorknob.
CRASH!
Crash!
CRASH!
I look down at my hands, and then I start to struggle against the wool. I press my face against the door. “Hansel! LUKE! LET ME IN!”
Crash!
Crash!
“LET ME IN!”
I turn circles as I tug against his knot, but the more I struggle, the tighter it gets. Calm down, Leah. I know knots, and if I’m right, this is a constrictor knot. The kind you can get out of. I take a few deep breaths and try to ignore the awful cacophony as I work my hands free.
The sound of glass splintering is startling each time. I keep flinching, but I need to think. I pace over to the nightstand and start going through the drawers, looking for...what? I open the door to an empty closet, where I grab a wire hanger and dash back to the door he went through.
I bend the top of the hanger to try to pick the lock before I realize the doorknob is backward. I turn the lock, then try to turn the door. It works. So he turned the lock as he went into this door? He intentionally locked himself in? What the fuck?
I can’t move or breathe as I stand there, shaking. I’m scared to open the door now.
Something else shatters, and the urge to save him fuels my actions. I pull open the door, and my soul freezes inside me.
For the longest, sickest heartbeat, I’m not even sure what I’m looking at. A house of mirrors? A bathroom? I can make out tile, and shards of mirror everywhere, and over to the right, crouched in the middle of the rubble, Luke, curled over, bathed in blood and shaking violently.
I hurry over to him, dodging fragments of mirror. Feeling them pierce my feet as I stretch my arms out toward him. “Luke. Oh Luke. What happened? Please talk to me. I’m sorry we came here. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I crouch down in front of him, grasping his face in both my hands. My fear kicks up a notch when I feel how damp his hair is, and how heavy…how almost limp his head is in my hands.
“Luke—please look at me.”
The room seems to vibrate around me as his eyes shift slightly from where they’re fixed on a pile of broken mirror. As soon as his gaze drifts into mine, his eyes widen, and he starts tugging in the deepest, loudest, weirdest breaths I’ve ever heard.
One second, he’s crouched there by the counter. The next, he’s moving, stepping through the glass and headed toward a glass-walled shower stall. I rush after him, grabbing a towel from a wall rack as I do, and tossing it on the floor. I walk over it, pull the shower door open, and find him in a corner, covering his head with both his arms and breathing in big tugs.
Shit, he’s hyperventilating.
I lunge for him, sink down on my shins, cup my hands around his mouth, and cover his lips with mine. I grip his head between my hands and hold his eyes with mine.
“I’m here. I’m here with you. I’m here. Leah is here.” His cloudy gaze clings to hers, and I’m wrenched by the desperation there as I chant, “Leah is here, baby. Leah is here.”
His body, so awfully taut and frozen, starts to tremble violently again, and the gasping starts anew. I press my lips against his cold ones. When his mouth opens, I open mine as well, so he’s sucking air out of my lungs. Even as the gasping sound quiets, his shaking seems to intensify. Gripping his upper arm, I rise on my heels and turn the shower on, pointing the showerhead across the way from us and setting it on HOT in the desperate chance the steam might stop his shaking.
Facts congeal inside my shocked brain: we’re in a bathroom I think; something terrible is going on; we shouldn’t have come here.
His hands, hanging in between his knees, are swollen and dripping blood. The blood gleams more than I think it should, and I realize with a splash of bile in the back of my throat that it’s because there’s glass all in them both.
I start to sob as I try to check him over, needing to see where there’s glass in him. Wondering how to know if he’s in shock or what is wrong.
“I don’t know what to do. Don’t want to hurt you. I think you need a doctor,” I cry. “Oh God.” I want to hold him, but I’m scared to touch his arms or hands. I grab his head and pull it to my chest. His shivers vibrate through the both of us.
“I’m sorry I told her. I’m sorry,” he gasps.
‘Sorry I told her’…?
A shiver rips through me. “Hansel, is this Mother’s room? Her dressing room?”
His big eyes hold mine, and he holds his hands up. “Pull the glass out. Pull it out!”
“Is it hurting you?” Of course it is!
“Pull it out, please. Please!”
“Okay! Hold on!” Out of the shower and back into the funhouse. I can’t tell one part of the room from another; all I see is shards of mirror everywhere. I start throwing cabinet doors open, and a second later, there it is again: the awful gasping. After a few doors, I see a small, red, plastic box and scoop it up, then dash across the room with no care for my feet, which are stinging by the time I’m back inside the shower with him. I’m greeted by his wide, wild eyes. “Liquor,” he gasps. “Cabinet.” He nods once at me, and I dash back to the cabinet where I found the kit. He’s right: I find a handle of Vodka there and almost fall carrying it back to him.
I open it and hold it to his mouth, spilling it all over both of us as I pour it in. He chokes and gasps.
“Sit down.” He shifts back into the corner, and I dump a bunch of vodka on my hands—something I remember from an old western movie.
I tear into the first aid kit and find some bandages. No tweasers or anything of the sort, so I grab his right arm at the elbow, ease it over my lap, and sob some more as I look into his eyes.
I don’t know how to get it out.
“I don’t know how.”
“Get it out,” he gasps. “It hurts.”
That’s all the incentive I need to start pulling the shards out of his hand. One, two, three, four… They clink on the tile, and blood drips faster all around me. He moans as I extract a dozen awful, gleaming slivers of the mirror and grit my teeth to keep from throwing up.
“I can’t get it all,” I cry.
He shuts his eyes and pulls the hand I’m working on away from me. With the other arm outstretched, he leans against the corner of the shower stall with his eyes shut. “More vodka,” he says i
n a voice that vibrates.
I bring it back to his lips, worried by how much his right hand is bleeding in his lap, worried by what the fuck happened in here. With his right arm raised, so that it hovers over his mouth, his eyes find mine. “You can go. Can you? Leave me here,” he rasps.
“No way. No. Come with me.” I grip his shoulder. “We need to leave. I love you, Luke. I will never leave you. Just get up and come with me.”
He starts to shake so violently again. He’s holding out his left hand now. It sparkles as it trembles.
“Don’t say that,” he rasps.
“Do what I say.”
I leave him in the shower and get a towel, and come back to find him hunched and shaking, maybe crying. I can’t tell. I turn off the water.
“Come on. It’s okay. Let’s go to the car.”
I get him up and walking, and we somehow make it across the glass-covered floor and back into the room where we… where this…
His breaths are fast and shallow as we start back down the pale green hall, both nude. I think about driving in the buff, and then the kitchen: phone; call 9-1-1.
In the kitchen, he sinks down to his knees and somehow grabs my thighs.
He grips his hair with one of his hands, and every time he moves, he sobs, “It hurts.”
“I know. I know it hurts. I’m so sorry, Lucas. I’m so sorry.” I wrap my arms around him and hold on. He seems to shrink away from me.
I look around the room, but I don’t see a phone. He holds his hand out to me, showing me all the glass in it; the blood drips; I note the old scar at the center of the action.
I look back down the hall. I left my cell phone in that room. “Wait here! I need the keys. Wait here, okay?” I prop the bottle of vodka in his hands and start to dash off, for the car keys.
“It hurts,” he moans. “It hurts.”