by Chloe Cox
But Marcus was not most people. Marcus just kissed me on the temple and said, “I’ll make sure he’s ok.”
And then he climbed back out of my window. I was paralyzed with fear until he came back, but the key is, he did come back. Marcus climbed back in, smiling at me.
He said, “I checked on him. I climbed that tree—you know the one next to that side of your house? He’s not even sleeping with a blanket. He’s all stretched out.”
I actually smiled a little bit, my relief was so profound, but it was twinned with this sense of doom, like I couldn’t see any way for it to get better. I said, “Marcus?”
“Yeah?”
“Lie to me. Tell me I won’t always have to feel like this.”
“Don’t have to lie,” he said, and pulled me back against his chest. “You’re going to be ok.”
It sounds so stupid, I know. Like such a simple thing. But that was the first time I remember letting go, even a little bit. I have tried and tried and tried to figure out why it worked. Why in the end that Marcus was the only thing to get between me and my fear of losing my brother, or between me and my fear of never getting better. Why I would believe it when Marcus said that Dill was safe, but wouldn’t believe my own lying eyes, my own common sense.
I think, in the end, I just trusted Marcus more than I trusted anyone else. Even myself. He was always there. He was always in control.
And he did this, check on Dill for me, every night. He would check on Dill, and then he would lie next to me until I fell asleep, every night, for months. He’d have to wake up before the Mankowskis and sneak out, and he’d stay up late until I fell asleep. He couldn’t have gotten more than a few hours of sleep a night the whole time. And he just kept doing it until slowly my fear began to recede, until slowly I began to regain some degree of control over my wildly terrified mind.
He made it seem like he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
So since my parents died, lying next to Marcus Roma is the only way I’ve ever felt truly safe. It’s the only time I haven’t been afraid of what the world might do to me or the people I love.
So I’m thinking about all of this again because now, tonight, I finally remember the full body of terror of those nights when only Marcus could comfort me.
Lucky me.
I feel the ghost of it every time there’s a sudden noise. Every time the neighbor’s screen door bangs in the wind. Every time a leaf scuttles down the street.
It’s not even that I’m afraid that the man will come back and break in. It’s the old fear, the irrational one, only this time it’s broadened in scope. It’s no longer specific things happening to Dill; thank God I’ve managed to train myself to stop doing that. It’s looser than that, amorphous, this thick, insidious black cloud of dread that I can feel closing in on me when I think about the house. About the developers. About everything that’s happening.
Because I’m losing control of my life again.
Let me be clear: I think of myself as a rational person, albeit one sometimes beset by irrational feelings. And I know that I’m not actually in control of my own life, or at least not very much of it. But pretending that I have some say over what happens to Dill and me is what gets me through each day. And anything that shakes that illusion sends me right back on this path to sleeplessness.
Except. For. Marcus.
He is, to this day, the only person, thing, or whatever that can make me feel like I have no control and like it. The rules, for some unknown goddamn reason, simply do not apply to him. My attraction to Marcus, and the way it makes me lose control, the way it makes me feel like a mindless animal, the way it makes me lose my mind? Giving up control to Marcus? It’s a relief.
And it’s the only thing that can distract my mind from those self-destructive patterns of thought, from spinning around endlessly, thinking about all the ways that things can end badly.
I am too tired, lying here, torturing myself, to continue to question why.
I just want to feel safe again.
I force myself to get up and walk into the darkness of the rest of the house. I force myself to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I force myself down the stairs. And the truth is that with every step closer to him, I feel better. I wish it weren’t like that. I wish I weren’t like this.
But I am.
He’s not asleep. I see him move as I come down the stairs; I see that he’s heard me. By the time I walk through into the living room, he’s sitting up on the couch, shirtless, his arms resting on those powerful legs, and he’s looking up at me. Waiting.
All I have to do is put my hand out. By the time I manage to say, “Please,” he’s already stood up and taken it.
I lead him back up the stairs in silence, my body suddenly feeling the cold of the night. When I get frightened, truly anxious, on the constant verge of a panic attack, I get overheated. Afterwards, I’m freezing. Just holding Marcus’s hand has brought me far enough back that I can feel the cold again. By the time we get back to my bed I’m shaking.
Marcus lets me lie down, and then, almost as if he’s been in my mind, watching those memories with me, he lies down next to me, just the way he used to. Maybe it’s just reflex for him, too. Maybe we just know how to be with each other. But he slides his arm underneath me and pulls me to his warm chest and holds me there until I stop shaking.
It takes me a few minutes to realize how tight he’s holding me. Like he’s scared. Like Marcus Roma is actually scared of something. And I realize the only thing that could scare him is what I said to him downstairs, what I threw in his face, like I wanted to hurt him: that someone hurt me, and it was his fault. Because as much as I don’t trust him not to disappear on me again, I know him well enough to know that this is killing him inside.
Maybe Marcus needs to be close to me right now, too.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I whisper.
He doesn’t say anything. Just holds me closer.
“Marcus, please, listen to me.” I take another deep breath, and suddenly I’m glad I’m not looking into those eyes right now. I don’t think I could say this if I were.
I say, “I always thought, because of how you taught me to fight, that I could defend myself, that I would always… I don’t know. That I would always be safe in that way. It was terrifying to find out that I wasn’t. I felt like I needed you, then, Marcus, I can’t lie about that.”
A strangled groan tears from his chest.
“But maybe something good came of it, too,” I say quickly.
“Good?” he says. He doesn’t believe me. He sounds tortured.
“Yeah, good. I needed to know I could deal with life without you. I think maybe I needed that more than anything, otherwise I would always wonder. I would always be afraid.”
We start to talk about it, slowly. About what it was like for me when he left. And he lets slip a few more details about what it was like for him, haltingly, struggling with what to say. I’m mindful, the whole time, of what he said before: maybe I should believe him. Give him the benefit of the doubt.
It sounds so crazy, but then he says things like this:
“I did bad things while I was away from you,” he says, his arms tightening around me. “I hurt people, because I had to. I turned into something evil.”
I start in shock, and try to turn around in his arm, wanting to look at him. He won’t let me.
“No,” I say. “I don’t care what you did. You could never be a bad person, Marcus. It’s not in you.”
And he couldn’t. I know this like I know the sun will rise tomorrow: Marcus Roma is a good man. It’s just that he might be a good man who doesn’t love me quite as much as I love him. Who doesn’t need me, the same way I need him.
Can I live with that?
“I left you,” he says. “I let that happen to you.”
“Marcus, the only time I’ve ever felt safe is when I’m yours.”
I feel a shift in him. Those words—when I’m yours—they
mean something different, to us.
“You are mine,” he says softly.
His words make me clench. I can’t help it. There’s such a specific memory attached to it. The end of that summer, before he left, me telling him I liked it when he was forceful in bed. That it made me feel like I belonged to him. And it made me feel safe, too, safe and free to have him take me like that, in the weirdest freaking way. I have thought about this so much, especially since that night at the bar, and I don’t pretend to understand it. But with Marcus, only with Marcus…it is right.
Heat is pooling between my legs.
It’s like it’s set off a switch. This driving need, this fire—I need him to put it out. I need Marcus to help me feel better tonight, in all the ways that only he can.
There is just no in between with him. With us. He doesn’t just make me feel safe—he makes me feel wanted. And wanting.
It. Is. Insane.
And yet I can’t trust him not to break me all over again.
On the other hand, if I’m already broken, what does it matter? If I can’t be in control of my own life, I want to be in his control. Right here, in this bed.
“Marcus,” I whisper.
He tightens the arm he has wrapped around me and nuzzles the back of my head. The best big spoon ever. My head is resting on his huge bicep, and I turn my face to kiss it.
I feel him stiffen.
“You remember how I told you what I liked, sometimes.”
“Yes.” His voice is gruff. I can tell he’s still so careful, like he’s afraid I might break.
But I need exactly the opposite from him right now.
I reach down and take the hand he has resting over my waist in this way that still manages to be chaste, to be so careful of me, and I squeeze it once. He kisses the back of my head and I smile, because he’s still so considerate. I know he wants me; I can feel him harden against my butt. And I know he’d just suffer all night if that was what I needed him to do.
I take his giant hand and press it against my stomach. I let myself feel the thrill of it there, where my tank top has ridden up and it’s just my bare skin. I don’t think I will ever get over the feel of his skin against mine. There is nothing in the world like it, and I close my eyes and savor the little dancing lightning bolts that shoot out from the place where he touches me, traveling all over my body, bringing me to life.
I feel Marcus’s muscles tense.
“I want to know how badly you want me,” I whisper. “That I’m yours.”
His hand is so heavy it’s almost comically difficult to move it, even though I know he’s helping me. He’s letting me lead, for once. I’m tempted to tease him about it, but I don’t think it will last.
Especially not when I put his hand on my breast.
I’m rewarded with a deliciously low rumble, deep in his chest. His hips move slightly, pressing the length of his hardness against my buttocks, and I don’t even think he’s aware of it. He’s tight, tense, taut, like a line about to snap.
I will always admire his self-control.
“Lo,” he says. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure, now. I can do…I can handle sex with you. And I need it right now. I need to feel that.” I lick my lips. Admitting that is somehow more of a turn on. “I don’t know about anything else.”
I have to be honest.
He shifts his weight, pushing himself up on the arm that I’ve been resting on, and I turn my head back to meet his eyes. They glitter in the dark, the only two points of light in the world.
“I want you,” I whisper.
“Don’t do this if we’re not going to do this,” he says, “because I can’t take it.”
I’ve never seen him look like this. Pleading. Almost like he’s begging.
I wet my mouth, and remind myself that I’ve resolved to tell the truth.
“You know what I need. I need to be yours again,” I say simply, my neck straining to look back at him. “Yours.”
And he does know what I mean by that.
There’s a pause.
Marcus looks at me like I’m the only thing that’s ever existed for him. He looks at me like he will never look at anything else, ever again, in his life. He looks at me like he wants to love me, devour me, and own me all at once.
And then that giant hand squeezes my breast, hard, so hard I yelp and I think I almost come right there, and his hot mouth is over mine and kissing me, claiming me, while his other arm curls around and traps me where I am. He holds me prisoner like that while he kisses me, while he toys with my breasts, pulling my tank top down to get at the bare flesh. He has me on the edge already, panting when he lets me up for air, arching my back when he rolls my nipple in his fingers, pushing my butt into his lap just so I can feel him against me.
I don’t even know how long he tortures me like this. I’m delirious from the outset, immediately soaking wet and moaning, immediately mindless from his kisses. He pulls back from kissing me, his arm tightening around my chest from underneath just long enough to rip at my shorts, pulling them down around my hips. His hand dips between my legs and into my slit, and I hear him groan when he feels how wet I am.
It sets him off.
I can feel the urgency as he rolls me partially onto my stomach, pulling my shorts down over my butt, down past my knees. I only just kick them off before he’s pushing his leg between mine, spreading them. Not wide, just enough. He can’t wait.
“Yes,” I beg.
He’s already there, hard as rock and thick and pushing past my entrance. I barely have time to moan, a strangled cry torn from my throat, and he’s thrusting into me.
I gasp, eyes wide, face pushed down against my pillow. He’s always big, but like this, with my legs not fully spread, he’s so, so much bigger. It’s mind-blowing.
He holds me down for leverage and drives in even deeper. I let out a wail, and I swear to God, I think I’m about to come before he’s even fully inside me.
“I fucking love you, Lo,” he says. “You are mine.”
His knee pushes my legs farther apart, spreading me, and he plunges into me fully and I really do scream. I don’t know how he’s gotten me like this so quickly, facedown and on my forearms, his weight on top of me, his cock inside me, but it is exactly what I needed.
I’m wailing now, the noises coming from me punctuated by his thrusts as he pounds into me. He pauses, leans back slightly, his hands finding my hips. Then he hauls me back onto him, impaling me and spreading me farther, and I scream in pleasure.
I’ve lost control.
I feel free.
Marcus gathers my hair at the back of my neck, never missing a stroke, driving me higher with every movement, and pulls my head up just enough so that I can see him over my shoulder when he leans over me, his abs flexing as he fucks me from behind.
“You belong to me like this, Lo,” he says.
“Yes,” I stutter. Speech is leaving me.
Marcus falls on me, his mouth by my ear.
“And I’m yours,” he says.
I feel his teeth close around my neck, holding me in this position, possessing me completely in this primal, animal way, and it sends me into a frenzy. I moan, I beg, I plead. Marcus growls into my neck and his hands cover mine, curling around the sheets, while he drives his cock into me over and over and over again.
I come screaming his name. It’s the only word I can remember.
I’m still twitching from aftershocks when he pulls out of me and I whimper, not wanting him to leave. He’s still hard. And when he rolls over so he’s sitting back against the headboard and pulls me on top of him, I realize we’re not done.
Marcus and his self-control.
“Can you sit up?” he asks me. He’s holding me up like a rag doll, moving me around where he wants me. It makes me ready all over again.
“Yes,” I say, only it sounds funny, because my lips have that pins and needles feeling and talking is weird.
Marcus moves me on top of
him, straddling his lap, his erection pressed against my naked sex, reaching up my lower belly. I look down and stare at that for a second: his thick, swollen, magnificent cock, still shining with wetness, pressed hard against my fair skin. I feel the pressure of it, the promise of it, and I think I’m kind of transfixed.
“Lo,” he says. “Look at me.”
Ha.
I do. His hair is messed, and there’s sweat on his brow, and his jaw is tense while he waits for me. But oh sweet Jesus, those eyes. They look at me and I see everything. I see our past together, I see every time he’s wanted me, every time he’s been there. Every time he’s made me feel like this. I see his grief, his love, his regret. And I know that there’s no one else who can see me like this, like I am right now, because there’s no one else I can be like this with. I didn’t even know this part of myself before Marcus. I didn’t know what I liked, what I could be.
He helps me be all of me.
And he loves all of me.
I can see that love in his eyes. God, I can see it, and I can’t protect myself from it, because I love him, too.
I am fucking doomed. And I’m not sure that I care anymore.
“Take this off,” he orders. His hands are playing with the edges of my disheveled tank top, but I can tell from his voice: He wants to make me do it, because he told me to.
He’s watching me.
Why does this feel more intimate than what we just did?
I lick my lips and try to hold my body still, my body that’s still shaking from that last orgasm, still off-balance. I want to grind against his dick so badly, but somehow I know that’s not how this will work. So I do what I’m told. I keep my eyes locked with his as my fingers find the bottom of my shirt and pull it up over my body. His hands follow, finding my naked breasts, grabbing them in two handfuls. He surveys them with a kind of satisfaction that turns me on even more, and I can’t help but smile, sitting in front of him, naked for him.