Darkroom

by Poppet

  "You must be a very dirty angel for him to put that on you permanently."

  "No comment."

  Coming back past me, he halts, staring down at me as he leans against the counter behind him, lifting my wrist, "And this? From Victor?"

  I nod, feeling a hot rush of prickles in my eyes as I recall the day I got it. That day I came so close to losing him.

  He stoops to look into my face, "Hey. Everything okay?"

  I nod again, retracting my wrist from his hand. You're way too close cowboy.

  "Is something going on with you two?"

  Rubbing my hands over my stomach I remind him, "A baby. Just a baby."

  He keeps moving to return the mitts, "Hormones messing with you?"

  "I guess so."

  He sings as he walks back past me, "The outside smells so sweet, well it swept me off my feet, but now that whole truth has been exposed-" Picking up the tray, his focus returns to me, "- strongly in favour is now violently opposed."

  Turning I walk away from his obvious innuendo, pausing to look back at him with a different lyric from the song as it comes up, "- Clearly, blind faith has cost me dearly."

  "Heavy on my conscience, how my actions helped to stop us," he retorts, using the lyrics.

  Before going outside where Victor is waiting, I turn and confront him, "What the hell is going on?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  His expression is convincingly confused.

  "Nothing." I turn and walk quickly back to Victor. I'm losing it. Missing recollection, misreading Victor's best friend. The last thing I need is to accuse him of something he's not guilty of. Sighing heavily I flop down back on my recliner next to Victor.

  "What's the matter angel?"

  Shaking my head, I pull my sunglasses back on, "Hormones."

  He laughs. Whispering in my ear to the same song, " – Something in the clouds that will only serve to hold us down, and finally we turned around." He leans in and places comforting kisses in my neck.

  Wrapping my arms around his strong neck, I take comfort in him. Pulling away slightly, I search his eyes as I whisper while Pete puts dishes down in front of us, "I trust you with my heart and soul."

  His smile fades as he stares at me with intense seriousness. Pulling my head tightly to his mouth, he kisses me in a strange way. Hard to define except to say, passionate, tender, possessive, manly. What a lame way to think of a kiss, but it's manly.

  An hour later, just as I tilt my head back and close my eyes where I'm sitting in the Jacuzzi, Victor's hand rests on my shoulder.

  "I'm going for a shower. I've told Pete to stay with you."

  Sighing inwardly at this prospect I nod, opening my eyes to look at him as he plants an affectionate kiss on my mouth. I watch him walk away into the shadows of inside the cabin as Peter slips into the water opposite me. Closing my eyes, I ignore him. Which lasts all of two minutes. His long legs stretch out, brushing against mine as he gets comfortable.

  "Are you aware that your white bikini becomes transparent in water?"

  My eyelids virtually rip themselves off with alarm as I connect with his smoky stare. Shit-head. Lazing with his arms stretched out on either side of him on the wood decking, biceps bulging, with a very self-satisfied smirk on his face.

  "Listen Peter, did I do something last night that might have given you the wrong impression or something?"

  "Define wrong impression."

  "Did I come onto you?"

  "Do you think you would do that? Do you secretly doubt your love and devotion for my best friend?"

  "Are you evading answering my question?"

  "Do you always answer a question with a question?"

  Sitting up, then remembering what he just said, I sink below the water level for modesty, "Just don't get too friendly. I adore Victor."

  He lowers his eyelids, staring at me through slits, "How do you think he's going to feel when I tell him you told me not to be friendly?"

  "Stop it! You're fucking with me."

  He laughs, it's deep and indulgent, "Oh Shauna. Is that your fantasy?"

  I can feel my cheeks getting blistering hot. "No dickhead. Stop twisting my words around."

  He shrugs nonchalantly, "Hey, you brought it up. I'm just here because you're Victor's precious cargo. He wants to make sure you have someone around in case you slip and hurt his clone inside you."

  I look away insistently, staring out at the sun dancing with afternoon flirtation on waves.

  "So how did you hook the world's most eligible bachelor? What do you bring to the table?"

  Staring back, anxiety twisting my insides, "World's most eligible bachelor? Would you fuck off."

  "Okay, mild exaggeration, but come on … how did you do it Dirty Angel?"

  "I didn't do anything. And don't call me that."

  "Did you deliberately get pregnant?"

  Leaning forward I can't keep the venom from my tone, "Are you accusing me or simply insinuating? No I didn't. Ask him. He knows I use contraception. Interrogate your best friend!"

  ***

  What am I doing? She's my angel, my resurrected angel. She's all mine. Without the brainwashing or fragmenting, she trusts me. Leaning my arms heavily against the tiles above the taps, three jet sprays needling my back, the shock of anguish wells up like an alien life form after incubation. I'm infested with emotion.

  I don't know what happened with mom, but this is the first time in my life where a woman has touched me out of love. My first experience with trust. She's giving it to me like a child. She's a shadow, or she was. I should be protecting her like the child that she is. Her and my son. It's my duty to her now, to keep both of them safe.

  Was Alpha wrong?

  Live joyfully with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life which He has given you under the sun--all the days of futility. For that is your portion in this life and in your work at which you toil under the sun. – Ecclesiastes 9:9

  But then Alpha would say; A gracious and good woman wins honour for her husband, and violent men win riches but a woman who hates righteousness is a throne of dishonour for him. Proverbs 11:16

  But Titus two verse five says; To be self-controlled, chaste, homemakers, good-natured (kindhearted), adapting and subordinating themselves to their husbands, that the word of God may not be exposed to reproach. She has been this good. I cannot fault her. I cannot.

  I am in conflict. Titling my head up into the spray I try to wash this weakness away. But Father's teachings do not leave me. Like a ghost haunting my soul, I hear the words I have not lived by. Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the innermost parts of your house; your children shall be like olive plants round about your table. (Psalm 128:3) ~ Let your fountain of human life be blessed with the rewards of fidelity, and rejoice in the wife of your youth. (Proverbs 5:18) ~ between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously and to whom you were faithless. Yet she is your companion and the wife of your covenant; (Malachi 2:14)

  I have sinned. I have fallen. I have dealt treacherously with the flesh of her. She is my wife in body, in the eyes of God, we are one. She wears my ring, we have an oath already. She showed she is fertile and has not been unfaithful to me. The covenant is set, Alpha cannot disapprove now. I am the Lord of my house and we've met all of his conditions.

  "What have I done?" Fuck! I let my disciple violate my wife. You stand upon your sword; you commit abominations and each of you defiles your neighbour's wife ~ Ezekiel 33:26

  So it was foretold by the prophet. Father already knows I would fall. This flood of emotion is relentless. Shaking with shame in the mists of spraying water, I hide my face in horror. We achieved all we set out to achieve. She is no longer the sinner. I am.

  And did not God make you and your wife one flesh? Did not One make you and preserve your spirit alive? And why did God make you two one? Because He sought a godly offspring from your union. Therefore take heed to yourselves, and let no one dea
l treacherously and be faithless to the wife of his youth. Malachi 2:15.

  We have become one flesh. Our child is us as one flesh.

  Bitterly angry I hit the wall. Harder, faster, forcing the pain to get this torrent of shameful tears to abate.

  "Victor?"

  Gasping with shock, whipping round so fast I almost slip, she stands in transparent beauty before me. Snatching her wrist I pull her to me, into the warmth of the shower, rocking her, smothering her sad face with kisses.

  "I love you Shauna. We've become one."

  Oh God. It's true. This? This is what love feels like?

  Chapter 44

  A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.

  ~ Ansel Adams

  He's different. He hides his emotions so well that finding him crying in the shower, hitting the wall with dull thuds, caught me completely by surprise.

  I wanted to speak to him privately about something that's been plaguing me. I'm tired of the Peter shadow. Our life has nothing to do with him, and there's something about him which unsettles me now. He basically accused me of being a cheap harlot after Victor for his lifestyle, when I knew nothing about any of it until just recently. Vic proposed before I told him I was pregnant, and Peter's assumptions irk me. And what's with his veiled flirtation? Fucking creep.

  I don't know what happened. He's not telling me. Instead he's being typically male and making it physical. I'm not sure how to react, because I fell in love with him for his commandeering control. He knows how to play my body, there's no denying that. I've always preferred rough sex to the sickening gentleness that most women seem to pine for. I love it when he bites me, twisting my body into different positions with his forceful hands. That's a quality which captures me to him like a fly in sticky honey. The way he holds my neck when he kisses me; how he can walk into a room, lifting me up and abducting me without so much as a hello.

  I'm not 'typical". That night in his home when he kept me bent over the dishwasher, it's moments like that which sealed my attraction to him. The way he silently announces his desire by pressing himself against me, and I still get a thrill when I watch the way he reacts when I go down on him. This is why we work. We've never needed words. Words most of the time are used for manipulation. They become meaningless when you hear them too often. But a spontaneous kiss in my neck, makes me weak and needy. The way he sneaks naughty moments, the way he did when I sat in his lap with Peter right next to him, it turns me on to the point where it's all I can think about.

  And I have no idea who this Victor is who's smothering me in tender kisses. Tracing every pore with his hands and tongue. He's never been this gentle, it's alien. God, I hope he's not dying or something.

  He watches me intently as he brings me back to the brink of mental clarity, staring deeply back into his eyes, they change so completely as he climaxes again, the surgeon's precision that he applies to everything makes me shudder with pleasure simultaneously.

  Catching my breath, I trace his lips with my fingertip, "Is everything all right? Should I be worried?"

  He has both hands gripping my head, his forearms leaning heavily on my hair, pinning me in place like a bug on a board. His expression is intent, serious, as if he's willing me to understand. Leaning in he places his forehead on mine, it's slick with heat.

  With our noses touching he whispers, "There are many layers to relationships. I don't show you what you mean to me often enough."

  "Yes you do," I whisper back.

  He rolls, pulling me to lie on top of him. Sitting up I stare down at this changed man I know as Victor. "Whatever it is, please trust me enough to tell me."

  Hands cover my breasts, his eyes staring at my abdomen, "What does it feel like?"

  "You inside me?"

  "My baby inside you."

  "It doesn't feel like anything yet." I am so tempted to say 'our' baby, but I know what he means. He's sending off waves of vulnerability right now and I don't want to shake his fragile emotions.

  "Victor, I'm sorry."

  His dark brown eyes snap from my body to my eyes, "What for?"

  "This entrapment. I didn't fall pregnant deliberately, I promise."

  His charming face morphs into a scowl, "Do you think that's what I think?"

  "Peter hinted at it. I promise you it was an accident of nature."

  "It wasn't a fucking accident. It was destiny."

  Apprehension claims my lungs in constriction, worried I've upset him, I caress his chest. "I love you. Honestly I mean it. I really do. I fell in love with you not because of this secret lavish lifestyle you have. I fell for you, not the stuff you have access to."

  "Shauna, what the hell?"

  "You were angry in that shower. And I know it's my fault."

  He sits up so fast, twisting me under him as he holds my chest down with an insistent hand, "Whatever he said to you, ignore it. It doesn't come from me." His face wrestles with so many emotions that I'm concerned he's having a breakdown. Maybe it's cabin fever from being on a boat so long? "Listen angel, I'm not accustomed to caring about anyone the way I care about you. It's hard for me to express." He pauses, and I can feel the hand on me trembling, "I proposed because I'm going to make you legally mine. You're a part of me now." His voice drops so deeply that his words are barely audible, "I love you."

  The way he said it, the ginormous amount of emotion drenching those three words, it cuts right into me. My own emotions surge, tears spill as I grab his head, kissing him feverishly. I get it now. He's as emotional about what we're living through as I am, but he feels like a man can't show his emotions. I am so grateful for this moment of vulnerability between us.

  "I love you. I love you with everything I am," I whisper intimately back. I pause, unsure of how to broach the subject on my mind.

  "What? Tell me."

  "How do you know me so well?" I smile back at his amazing intuition.

  "You get a pensive expression when you're working up the nerve to tell me something."

  He leans back, propping himself against the velvet headboard. He must like black a lot, because so far everything he owns is monochrome and black. Black and one other colour.

  Resting my chin on his hip, I trace the hairs to his navel absently with a finger. "I don't want a big wedding." There, I said it.

  "And this made you nervous, why?"

  Lifting my eyes, gnawing my lip, I'm afraid of how this is going to sound now that he's made me aware of his wealth. "I don't want my parents to know I am pregnant before marriage. I'd rather we got married quickly and quietly, and then just spring all the news on them at once. Hiding the pregnancy from them as long as possible."

  His eyes darken as he stares at me enigmatically without saying a word.

  "Victor, I don't care about your money. I'll sign a pre-nup. I don't want your family at my throat. Just make sure you set aside provisions 'in case' for our children. I'm not saying this because I want to land you quickly before you change your mind. I just … "

  "When? Are you saying you'll just pop into the magistrate's office with me, sign the papers, and that's our wedding?"

  God he makes me sound so cold and calculating. "Something like that, yes." Closing my eyes, unable to stand the tension of his judgement, I wait for his reply.

  "Your wish is my command. We'll do it as soon as we land."

  Snapping my eyes open, I can't believe it! "Really?"

  His smile tells me it's okay. "I hate crowds, this works for both of us."

  Sliding my hand, I hold what's right next to my chin, feeling lasciviously naughty, running my tongue up him slowly, keeping my eyes on his.

  "Promise you'll be this good to me for the rest of your life and I'll make you my wife before this time next week."

  "I promise."

  His smile is boyishly wicked, his eyes still containing many layers of expression, none of which I recognise in him, but he closes them as his hands move into my hair. Closing my own eyes, I relish
the feel of his smoothness against my tongue.

  Chapter 45

  Spiritually driven work constitutes the core

  of a photographer's contribution to culture.

  ~ William Albert Allard

  It's perfect. This way her parents won't interfere. She's so trusting that she'll sign whatever I put in front of her. Again I receive confirmation that God's hand is on our union. He delivered to me the one obstacle still in my path. I needed to convince her to marry me quickly, and now I look like the loving hero for agreeing to her terms, instead of casting suspicion on myself being the one having to do the convincing. It's utterly flawless in perfection.

  Marriage is the last step to keeping her alive. It's the last condition for Alpha to withdraw the final judgement on her. Covertly while she sleeps, connecting via satellite, I phone Seth to organise the papers. I want them ready to sign the minute our feet hit dry land. I've already ordered Peter to return us to port, which he says will take four days. He didn't seem very happy with the news. I know he feels territorial about me. She's seen as competition, which she can never be. The bond of Vengeance and his first disciple cannot be undone. Not by anyone. It's times like this that I'm pleased we each have a field of speciality. Matt isn't just a lawyer, he's also legally qualified to marry us. And all it takes is the five minutes to scribble signatures and dates down.

  Standing in the doorway, I watch her seraphic face in deep relaxation as she sleeps. I have told her I love her so many times. I meant those words as an angel to the fallen. I love her enough as God's right hand, to try and save her from her sins. I love her as an angel loves those he's set to protect. For the first time she's allowed me to feel what a man feels. I know I'm in a human body which bleeds.

  But this human body has never experienced what she has given me. She gives willingly with devotion. She kneels at the altar and prays. She drinks from the fountain of my body, and in my generosity, I allowed it, it sustains her. I knew the only way to keep her from sinning was to appeal to her lascivious nature. I see the smile reaching her eyes when I grab her ankles and hold them next to her head. Sex is her definition of love. I've been forced to communicate with her, at her own level of understanding.