by Box Set
“Aargh!” I groan out, arching.
“Shit!” He crouches over me on all fours, his knees pressing into the mat on either side of my body. “Are you all right?”
“The mats aren't that soft, you know?” I roll onto my side, my face taut with pain.
“Ohhh, Blaire, los siento, baby,” he says he’s sorry in Spanish. He runs a large hand down my spine, over every curve, kneading out the pain. “I didn't mean to hurt you. The mats are supposed to be quite thick.”
I start to say, “Well they're not,” but then I find myself leaning into his touch like a dog being petted, my stomach coiling with sinister desire. Why the fuck is this happening to me? Why can't I go one day without desiring him?
While I'm bathing in his touch, practically humming in delight, he whispers in my ear, “Are you gonna kiss me again so you can beat me, hmm? Because I really don't mind.”
I smirk up at him from the side, and I can't help thinking, does he want me as much as I want him? I sense that he does, but I can't be one-hundred percent sure that this isn't his agenda—to have me utterly under his spell.
Charlie looks like he's going to kiss me. His face is dripping in want as he comes closer to me, his eyes flickering between mine. I playfully tell him to piss off, pushing his mouth to the side. One more kiss and I'm not sure I'll be able to stop.
Taking my hands, he helps me to my feet. “You all right?” he asks with genuine concern, giving me the once over, his eyes sweeping up and down my body. “Does your back still hurt?”
“No.” I roll my shoulders, trying to iron out the tension. “I'm fine.”
“Here,” he says, circling with a single finger. “Turn around.”
“Why?” I can feel my heart hammering in my chest. “What are you going to do?”
The way he smiles at me, it makes my heart race.
“Turn around,” he says, still circling his finger as he flicks up his eyebrows. “C’mon, chica. You'll be glad you did.”
A bit wary, I do, and to really fuck with me, he puts his large hands on my shoulders. He massages me there with sure, gentle fingers, getting into knots and kinks that I didn't even know existed. It feels so good that I sigh and let my head fall back. I can't resist closing my eyes for a moment either, imagining that he's doing this to me while I'm naked and withered after an orgasm.
“Feels good,” Charlie whispers in my ear from over my shoulder, “doesn't it?”
Ugh. I groan internally. I'm living in my own sexually repressed hell, and it feels like things are just getting started.
20
Over the coming weeks, I adjust to living with Charlie.
After the way he dropped me in the gym the other day, he's a little delicate with me when we spar now, but it's all right. I don't want to get too physical with him anyway. I'm trying to control my hormones, so his guilt for hurting me has worked in my favor.
I also don't hide away in my room during the day anymore, reading the books he brought me. I come down for lunch as well as breakfast and dinner. Though, we never eat breakfast or lunch together. I always get up too late to share breakfast with him, and he's always working at lunchtime.
Today however, he isn't working, so I'm indulging myself in his company, making us both a sandwich before he disappears again. We eat standing in the kitchen, Charlie leaning against the countertop next to me, topless. I'm not sure if he owns a bloody shirt anymore.
“You know you've been down for lunch every day this week?” he says, flicking crumbs off his chest.
“Yeah, so?” I have a sip of orange juice but it barely quenches my thirst. “Is that all right?”
“Course it is,” he says softly. “You can do whatever you want here, Blaire.” He reaches for my glass so I give it to him, and he finishes off every last drop of orange juice. I watch the Adams apple in his throat bob up and down, captivated. Everything he does captivates me.
“Why have you only just started coming down during the daytime, hmm?” he says, leaning past me to put the empty glass in the sink. “You've been here for over a month now.”
“Maybe because I didn't like you before.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. “Not that...you know...I don't mean...” I blink at him, internally cringing.
Why did I just say that?
“So,” he says amused, licking his lips, “you like me now, huh?”
I exhale under my breath. He isn't offended.
“Hmm?” he hums, flicking up his eyebrows for an answer. “Yes? No? Maybe?” His eyes thin. “Maybe a little?”
“You're all right, I suppose.” I shrug, and try not to laugh at him. I bite a chunk out of my sandwich. He is all right. Nothing like I thought he'd be.
He laughs at me, his eyes glittering, trapping me in his spell. I could stare at his wicked blue eyes all day long.
“Well, that's better than you hating me, I guess,” he says, having another deep bite of his sandwich.
“Why don't you have a girlfriend?” I blurt out. I'm not ashamed to ask. I've been wondering for weeks now, wondering that if he does have a girlfriend, who she might be or what she looks like.
He coughs and punches his chest, almost spitting out his sandwich.
“I mean, you probably have a girlfriend. I just assumed.” I put down the last of my sandwich and hide my hands in the sleeves of my sweater, looking up at him innocently. “Sorry. I'm not prying. I just wondered, is all.”
“No.” He laughs, wiping his lips with his fingers, smirking down at me. “You don’t have to be sorry.” He's still laughing, trying to swallow down his sandwich. “I've had plenty of women,” he explains, but says he couldn't be bothered to make the effort with them. “I work all the time, so I don't have time to fuck about with mujer.” Women.
I incline a brow at him.
“Except for you, but you're different.” He winks at me, polishing off the rest of his sandwich by popping it in his mouth.
I look away from him, my cheeks warming up. Gathering the dirty dishes, I drop them into the sink, then I wipe down the sides.
His words are like a mantra in my head. I don't have time to fuck about with women. Except for you. Why am I so flattered by that?
“Blaire,” he says my name after a while of silence. When I peer up at him, I find he's giving me an unusually cautious stare.
“What?” I shove the butter and the salad away in the fridge.
“I want to ask you something,” he says, then he pauses for a moment, chewing the inside of his mouth. “But if you don't want to talk about it, then that's okay. Just say so.”
Crossing my arms, I rest back against the kitchen counter.
He crosses his arms too. “You said you don't remember meeting Maksim, right? Nor do you have any memories of being young.”
My eyebrows draw together.
“What's your earliest memory?”
My frown intensifies. “That's a bit random, Charlie.”
For the past few weeks, he hasn’t so much as mentioned my past, and now he wants to know what my earliest memory is?
He lifts his shoulders in a shrug. “I've been meaning to ask you for a while now, but I didn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. You seem relaxed with me now.”
He's noticed. Fuck, that's so humiliating. I don’t want him to know that I’m comfortable around him. It gives him all the power.
“Do you mind telling me?” he asks, holding my gaze with trained enthusiasm. “I'd like to know.”
“Um...” I run my teeth across my top lip. “I guess.” I don't answer his question right away. I'm not shying away from it, which is bizarre to my nature. I'm actually digging into my thoughts, so I can explain myself to him. I want to explain myself to him. I want him to know me. Or, I want him to know what Maksim will be okay with him knowing.
What I recall isn't a memory, per se. It's more of a feeling. A feeling of coldness and total darkness, claustrophobia, and absolute quietness for long periods of time. There's also th
is damp smell that I can never escape in my dreams. I tell Charlie this, laughing uneasily. “I don't really remember much before I was thirteen, and what I do isn't exactly clear enough to say it's a memory.”
“What isn't clear?” he asks, tipping his head. He looks puzzled with my answer.
I glance down, then back up at him. “I can't tell you that.”
He nods a few times, understanding my unspoken words. “Are those memories like the feelings you remember? You don't have to tell me if you don't want to.”
I take a moment so I can find the words, but all I come up with is, “They're sort of like those feelings, though fuzzier.” I won't elaborate more than that because all those unsure memories have something to do with Maksim and how he conditioned me. From what I can gather, I was drugged and forced to endure sleep deprivation for extensive stretches of time. The objective was to ensure my mind was open. During these times, images and videos would flash through my mind, images of a girl protecting her lover, slaying man after man and woman after woman. The first time I saw those things, I was petrified. They never stopped filtering through my mind's eye until I could control my heart rate, as Maksim's voice would command me. When I could control my heart rate and my fears, I was allowed to sleep, but only to Maksim's voice. To his promises and the promises he made me commit to. The constant reminder that I fear nothing but Maksim's safety, that I live to worship and protect him.
Then there was the pain. Most of all the aches and pain. The stretched out feeling of hanging from my arms. Being drowned in cold water while my hands and feet were in scorching hot water. Electric shocks that made my entire body spasm with agony. Beltings.
It all sounds so sadistic, even to myself as I recall the ‘memories’, but it's not. It made me who I am now. A fearless combatant.
“Don't you think that's strange?” Charlie says softly, glowering with confusion. “How you can't remember much?”
I shrug with indifference. “What isn't strange about how I grew up?”
His eyes swim with something I've not seen before...sympathy?
My chest does this odd squeezy thing.
It's definitely sympathy.
“Don't feel sorry for me, Charlie.” I turn away from him and busy myself with washing up, barely registering how hot the water is. “I'm not worth it.”
“That's subjective to think you're not worth feeling sorry for,” he says. “Regardless of what you've done, you're just a kid, really.”
A kid?
“Don't you know who I am?” I leisurely peer over my shoulder and scowl at him. “Don't you know how many people I've killed? How many lives I've ripped apart?”
“Yeah, I'm quite aware.” He doesn't react with disgust, as I thought he would, but that just annoys me. He should find me repulsive and evil. He shouldn't want me as he does. The only reason I've never questioned Maksim's fascination with me is because we're both deeply sick.
“You know”—I snatch the towel off the sink so I can dry my hands—“just because I’m innocent or whatever, it doesn't mean I'm some sweet, blameless girl.” I give him a hard, wolfish look. “I don't deserve your pity. The only thing I deserve is a guaranteed ticket to hell, and you'd do well to remember that.”
“I didn't realize you regard yourself with such high esteem.”
“What's that supposed to mean?” I ask, flinging the towel on the countertop.
“Well, ever since I met you you've been emotionally constipated, and now you're...” he shrugs, his arms still folded over his chest. “I never knew you felt guilt for the things you've done.”
I snort, affronted. “I don't.”
“I think you do,” he says under his breath. “You just execute a great job of blocking your emotions out,” his eyes taper as he says that, like he knows how I feel deep down at times. “You should ease up on yourself. Half the people you've killed probably deserved it.”
“And the other half?” I remind him that some were innocent, and I remind myself what real guilt feels like. I once killed a man who worked at the club for stealing a hundred pounds off Maksim, even after he told me it was to put the gas on and get some food for his kids. It was a cold English winter at the time. He had a nasty cough, was constantly coughing up phlegm because he was ill. While I felt pity for him, it didn't stop me from slitting his throat to make a point of him. Then came the guilt. For days I couldn't sleep. I kept seeing his face in my closed eyes, the photo he showed me of his kids who were barely five years old. He said they all had the flu and because they were illegal immigrants, he couldn't take them to a doctor.
Now, they have no father, and that's because of me.
“Collateral damage,” Charlie says frankly, and there isn't an ounce of pity in his eyes now. “It happens in the best of wars.”
Silence wraps around us as we stare at each other in a moment of reflection. I have no idea why I'm even talking to him like this. For weeks we've been teasing each other, falling under a spell of desire, and now...
Why did he have to ruin things? Why does he want to know what darkness I've suffered? Is that how he's getting his kicks now?
“Let us get a few things straight,” I snap, pointing at the ground between us, guilt trickling through my frosty heart, “I don't feel culpable for anything I've done.” I try to convince myself. “I don't care about who I've killed or who I've tortured, and I don't give a shit about your stupid, curious questions, either.” I want to keep going at him, but I can't stand the way he's looking at me, outright unbothered by my ominous confession.
I try to leave the kitchen but Charlie sidesteps me, blocking my exit with his tall, muscular body.
“Blaire, calm down,” he says. “I told you if you didn't want to talk about it, all you had to do was say so.”
My teeth grind, and I fist my hands. “Is this what you're trying to do? Splay open my emotions?”
He doesn't answer me, just stands there in a deadpan fashion.
“Good luck with that,” I say, huffing at him. “It'll take more than sly humdrum conversation to achieve that.”
Barging him with my shoulder, I head out of the kitchen and go up to my room. I don't come down for dinner, not even when Charlie knocks on my door and asks if I'm hungry. I curl up in the middle of my bed and shut off mentally, trying to forget this afternoon ever happened, trying to forget that man's face.
I'm quite stupid really, to think I could live in a world with Charlie where only peace and desire exists side by side until I go home. Of course he's going to want to know who I am inside. That's his objective, isn't it?
21
The next morning, my erratic period comes.
If there's anything I'd like to avoid, it's this time of the month. I am never myself when my period comes. I'm withdrawn, morose, and so uncomfortable it's beyond belief. I always try to keep it together and remain as Blaire as I can, for Maksim doesn’t take too kindly to me being in a mood—he'd whip me to death until I learnt to control my mood. But here, however, Maksim isn't about, so I'm not quite sure how I'll cope with my period and that bothers me. Charlie has been all right up until now—minus yesterday afternoon with his prying—and I don't want to rock the boat by being overly rude. I've enough emotions to deal with, let alone his wrath.
Feeling like bugs are crawling under my skin, I wake in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom, knowing exactly why I feel the way I do. My throat is a bit sore, as if I've been screaming my head off in agony. I hand feed myself some cold water from the sink to soothe my throat. Then I search through the vanity cupboards for some toiletries. All of what I need is in here, surprisingly. It seems Charlie has thought of everything.
I sort myself out and get back into bed where I lie staring through the window for hours, the blanket draped over my waist. The sun hasn't risen yet. The sky is like a sheet of black silk, slipping down the horizon that's half alight.
I toss and turn for a while, hoping for the sun, but I just can't relax. I'm too tense and it
ching to do something. Anything.
Slugging it out of bed, feeling bloated and heavy, I dress in the usual and patter downstairs to the kitchen barefoot.
It's quiet in the kitchen. It feels empty without Charlie around. I've come to like him being around. It's so weird.
I make some toast and take it to the dining table, where I watch the sun rise through the back doors with burning pink rays.
“Blaire?” Charlie says, entering the kitchen. “I wondered where you were.”
I turn in my chair to look at him in the doorway. He's on the phone, wearing jeans over black boots and a white t-shirt that boasts all his muscles. His fucking hair is pulled away from his face, too.
Great.
A warm feeling travels right through me, making my skin flush. I'm suddenly aware of how tight my black sweater is across my swollen breasts, and how tight my trousers are against my sex.
It seems my desire for him has magnified.
This can't be happening to me. Not now. Not while I'm already uncomfortable in my own skin.
“Morning, Charlie.” I drop my gaze to the now empty plate, too pissed off with everything that's going on inside me. I wish my car was here so I could go for a drive or something. I feel like I've been stuck in this damn house for years rather than weeks, lusting after him!
“I'll call you back.” Charlie hangs up the phone, and then I hear him wandering over to me, his feet heavy against the kitchen floors. “What's wrong?”
I keep my eyes trained on the plate, clasping my hands together in my lap. “Nothing.”
He pulls out the chair to my right, making it scrape against the floor, and sits down. He's showered. I can smell the clean soapy aroma of his skin.
“I know there's something wrong.” Gently touching my hands under the table, he grasps my attention for a split second, but then I look away.
“Did I cross a line with asking you those questions yesterday?” he says softly. “Have I upset you?”
“What?” I frown up at him. “No, Charlie. I don't hold onto irritation for very long, as I'm sure you've noticed.” I have to look away again. I can't stand that intense blueness in his eyes, not this morning, and I can't stand it when he wears his hair back. He's too handsome.