I Am Grey

by Jane Washington

  But that space didn’t belong to me, it was someone else’s.

  I pulled the dress over my head, breaking my eye-contact with the window, and then there was a sharp intake of breath behind me. I spun around, realising that I hadn’t closed the door after Mag.

  Nicholai was standing there, his hand on the doorknob, his eyes drilling into mine. The crystal blue colour was wavering, trying to melt into something darker, indicative of an internal struggle. I could see the tension in his frame. He wanted to come closer. He wanted to break eye-contact and fill his eyes with what I had revealed.

  “Mag said you were looking for me.” He finally spoke, his words almost harsh.

  I nodded. I wasn’t sure what else to do. He made a sound—some kind of groan that rang through me. Defeat. He took a step forward, closing the door behind him. His arms moved to cross over his chest, his muscles swelling as he tried to contain the tension in his own body. I reached behind me and unclasped my bra, pulling it away from my chest. His eyes flicked down to my breasts, his exhale heavy.

  “Don’t, Mika,” the words barely registered. He didn’t mean it. I dropped the garment to the tiles and he swore, his eyes now cloaked in dark hunger. “Don’t fucking stop there.” His voice was a growl, now, and I hooked my thumbs into my panties, pushing them down my legs.

  The way he stared at me had my whole body shaking, liquid fire racing through my veins. My skin was flushed, my breaths felt very obvious, the drawing of air suddenly a laborious task. I wasn’t sure what I wanted from him—what I wanted from this encounter. This wasn’t about letting people do things to me, as I had with Duke and Trip. This was about taking something for myself, even if I didn’t know what exactly it was that I wanted.

  You and me, it’ll never happen. That’s what he had said, but now he was looking at me as though he could close the distance between us and make it happen all over the bathroom floor.

  “Fuck.” He shook his head. “We’re not going to fuck. I’m not going to do that to you.”

  “Touch me.” My reply was instant, making it known to both him, and myself, what it was that I wanted. I wanted Nicholai’s touch. I wanted the brand of his skin on mine. It was the same feeling that I had had the first day, in his office, staring at his little plants. I wanted to be his. Something he cared for, something he nurtured. I hadn’t had a very good reason to think that way, back then, but now I had a better reason, and it was remarkably simple. Nothing had changed. That was my reason. I still wanted him. I still needed him. He still affected me.

  “Touch yourself,” he demanded, his words rough with a mix of regret and need. “Your tits, now.”

  I reacted instantly, cupping my breasts, my fingers digging into the soft flesh. I needed more, though, and I allowed my fingers to glide across my nipples, to explore my own shape, to rub against every inch of skin that his eyes focussed on, as though my hands were his own.

  I could see the struggle in him: the need to do the right thing. The need to keep his desire in check. The need to push this even further than it had already gone.

  “Lower.” The latter need won.

  I dipped both hands lower, one brushing over my belly while the other slipped between my legs. I focussed on the bulge in his pants, where the material had become strained, the zipper tested. His hand slipped down, pressing against where he swelled, and he groaned. I could feel the answering rush of wetness on my fingers.

  “Fuck yourself, Mika. Like I need to. Like I can’t.”

  And I did.

  All I could focus on was his hand pressing against himself, rubbing slightly, drawing deep, gravelly sounds from his throat. I loved how I affected him but I also loved how he affected me. I loved the feeling swelling inside me: the need and the want and the fire that swept me up. I loved that the more I lost myself, the more he struggled to contain himself. I loved that as I neared the edge, he snapped.

  He was before me suddenly, his hands on my face, his lips crushing mine.

  “Cum,” he muttered, his hand suddenly wrapping around my wrist, forcing my fingers deeper.

  I shattered, crying out into his mouth, and he grunted, tasting each one of my cries, his tongue finally pushing into my mouth and his arms wrapping around me. The kiss was full of violent need, violent release. I started crying, and his lips left mine, travelling to my cheek, kissing away each tear. He was shaking, I realised. His erection was pushing up insistently against my stomach, and the more I slumped against him, the more I could feel it throb. I started to reach for him, but he caught my hand, and then my other hand, leading me to the sink.

  He was washing my hands, I realised, as he massaged soap into my palms, directing them under a warm stream of water.

  “I shouldn’t have done that,” he whispered from behind me, the scratch of his facial hair against my shoulder, his breath scattering across my neck. There was so much fear and regret in his voice, even though he was still hard, pressing insistently into the curve at the base of my spine. “Baby, I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t,” I said.

  My eyes met his in the mirror: smoky, tremulous blue—mixed with my own glassy, coral green. Together, we were an ocean. But alone? I was just something washed to the sand in his shore. I needed to be that violent force with him, not some broken thing that might be found dried up and forgotten the next morning.

  “Don’t apologise.” I tore my eyes away from his, looking back to our hands.

  He was so careful, so gentle. He finished washing me, and then his hands were at my hips, turning me around. He wet a washcloth, passing it between my legs. I jumped a little, because I was surprisingly tender, and he loomed closer, his face hovering before mine, his breathing momentarily deepening—but he quickly drew away again, swapping the wash cloth for a towel. The door clicked, then, and he dropped the towel. We both turned to look at it. My heart grew suddenly very cold, and a shiver worked its way into my limbs. Was I going into shock?

  “What was that?” he asked. I didn’t answer.

  He shifted me to stand against the other wall, and then handed me my dress before striding to the door and pulling it open. He stood there, staring into the corridor beyond, and I quickly pulled my clothing back on.

  “I’ll be right back,” he muttered, stepping through the doorway and shutting the door behind him.

  21

  Psycopath

  Nicholai

  I had to leave. If I had looked back at her, I would have stopped myself. I wouldn’t have been able to walk away—but walking away was exactly what this situation needed because there was a pretty good chance that I’d just fucked up Mika Grey’s life for good.

  “Jen.” I snapped the word, tapping on the door to Mag’s guest bedroom.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out where the woman would hide. I knew her well. The door cracked open and I stepped through, closing it behind me. Jen was sitting on the bed, tears streaking down her face, her cell phone clutched in her hands. I searched her arms, and then her legs. Sure enough, there were nail gouges marking the skin of her upper arms, half-hidden beneath the sleeve of her dress.

  “You promised,” I said, wincing at how emotionless my voice sounded.

  The more she did this, the less I cared. That made me a terrible psychologist, in a way, but it also made me human. Our brains were designed to protect us from danger and pain. For too long, Jen had blackmailed me with self-abuse. I would break up with her and she would threaten to kill herself. I knew on some level that she was bluffing, that anyone selfish enough to manipulate a person so drastically was also too selfish to end their own life, but I was also ... imperfectly myself. I had a hero complex. I couldn’t stand the thought of someone hurting themselves because of me.

  So I let her hang around. I let her call herself my girlfriend even though she wasn’t. I let it go on for too long, and now this thing that I had allowed to fester was sitting on my sister’s guest bed, stained with tears and ready to tear down whatever temporary euphor
ia I had felt watching Mika Grey give in to me.

  “You can’t see her again.” Jen’s voice wobbled, her face flushing with blotchy colour. She held up her phone, showing me an image.

  It was Mika, her clothes on the floor beside her, her hands on her breasts. Fuck.

  Fuck.

  Too many emotions slammed into me all at once, and for a moment I struggled to breathe at all.

  “It’s a video.” Jen’s hands were shaking as she shoved the phone into her pocket. “I already uploaded it to my cloud. You’re a disgusting pervert, you know that?”

  She stood, and was suddenly pressing against me, her hand working to get into my pants. I grabbed her wrist, shoving her away.

  “Get the fuck off me.” My tone was too rough, my actions too aggressive. She flinched.

  I felt hatred in that moment. Pure, unadulterated hatred.

  “What do you want?” I asked her, as she cowered against the wall.

  She was being dramatic, trying to make me feel bad. I had never hurt her and I never would. I wasn’t exactly the type to march in a feminist rally—mostly because I wasn’t the type to march in any kind of rally—but I also knew not to use my strength against any person who was weaker than me: man or woman.

  “I don’t want you to see her again.” Jen moved back to the bed, sitting on the edge.

  She was wearing a flower-print dress beneath a long black cardigan, and she pulled up the skirt now, bunching it around her thighs. I felt a roll of sickening premonition roll through me.

  “You like this kind of thing?” she asked me, pushing her panties down her legs and exposing herself to me.

  There were scars on the insides of her thighs—a reminder, just for me. A reminder not to walk out of there and cut her out of my life completely. A reminder that I was weak. A pushover.

  “I don’t want to do this,” I told her, fixing my eyes to the window behind her.

  Hopefully Mika had left already. Jen wasn’t stable—I didn’t want them running into each other anymore.

  “Yes. You do,” Jen told me. “All men want to do this, and you’re a man. What did you say before? You want me to fuck myself?”

  “I wasn’t saying that to you. I was saying it to someone else.”

  “No, it was really for me, wasn’t it, Nic?” A moan caught in her voice, and I tried to curb the acidic feeling that was creeping up the back of my throat. She moaned again. “Am I making you hard, baby?”

  She was making my balls retreat up into my body, but I couldn’t say that. I still wasn’t looking at her, but I could see enough through my peripheral vision to know exactly what she was doing. She was trying to copy Mika.

  I closed my eyes, blocking it out.

  I didn’t want that memory destroyed.

  “Watch me,” she moaned, somehow getting off on the act despite how obviously I didn’t want to be there. “Watch me or I’ll make you regret it.”

  I opened my eyes. Get the fuck out of this house, Mika.

  “Yes,” she cried out, not even trying to be quiet. “Yes. Fuck. Yes, you love this. You love me. Nic. I love you.”

  I turned, sending my fist into the wall. Jen didn’t even seem to notice as she fucked herself to orgasm. The plaster cracked around my knuckles, my hand breaking through and punching a clean hole in the otherwise unblemished, lilac-painted surface. I’d have to apologise to Mag and Clay. Maybe I could come around next weekend and fix it.

  Jen had quietened, and I turned around to find her slipping her panties back on.

  “Let me see your phone?” she asked me calmly.

  “No,” I replied.

  I should have walked out. I should have told her to back off. I should have demanded that she delete the video. Anything. Anything at all. She had trained me; punished me by hurting herself whenever I walked out on her, whenever I did something to upset her. It was a complicated thing, to know that something was bad for you and be unable to walk away from it all at once.

  “I’m going to text her off your phone, tell her that you don’t want to see her anymore. Hand me your phone, Nic.”

  “No,” I repeated. What the fuck was I doing? Trying to buy time. Trying to keep her talking until I could figure out exactly what to do with her. “You’re going to delete the video, and you’re going to make an appointment to see someone, Jen. To talk to someone about your issues.”

  “I could talk to you,” she offered, slipping her hands around my waist, her breasts suddenly pressed to my chest.

  I disentangled her, pushing her away again. “That would be a conflict of interest—”

  “Exactly,” she cut across me, smiling. “A conflict of interest. Like you telling that poor girl to touch herself. The video shows you, too, Nic. I can send it to the school.”

  “I don’t work at the school anymore.”

  “I can send it to the clinic, to your supervisor, to your dad. Don’t you think they’d all like to know about your conflict of interest?”

  The reality of how trapped I was suddenly slammed into me. The choice of walking away disappearing as though it never existed. I had struggled to escape our toxic relationship for so long, unable to decide if I could risk it or not. Unable to decide if I could live with the consequences of her possibly hurting herself, or worse. And now, suddenly, I knew. I wanted out.

  I could deal with those consequences. I wanted nothing more to do with this selfish, fucked up person. She wasn’t the one I wanted to save, and she wasn’t mine to take care of. I also wasn’t hers to fuck with, but now it was too late, because now the choice had been yanked away from me. The choice wasn’t so simple, anymore. It wasn’t a choice to walk away or stay or a choice to live with how she would punish me. It was a choice to lose my job or not, to destroy my career or not, to cause a ripple through Mika’s life that she may not recover from. She could pretend that she didn’t care about people hurting her, using her, discarding her. She could pretend that she didn’t care about the boy who had kissed her, who had set fire to her home. She could pretend as much as she wanted, but no amount of pretending would cover up the reaction she might have over that video being released.

  I shoved my phone at Jen—hating myself more and more with every second that she spent on it—until finally, she sighed and handed it back.

  “I wouldn’t do that to you, Nic. You’re the love of my life. This is something unforgiveable. I understand that. So … I won’t send anything.”

  “You were typing something.”

  “I set a reminder in your calendar.” She smiled.

  It seemed that she was trying to look bashful, but I couldn’t see any expression on her face, now. I could barely even look at her. Every part of her disgusted me. I quickly opened my calendar and sure enough, there was a reminder set for the next day.

  Dinner with Jen.

  Fuck. My. Life.

  “I need you to delete that video,” I told her. “Right now. In front of me.”

  She stepped back, her hands moving to protect her pocket. She was laughing nervously.

  “I can’t do that.” She shook her head. “You won’t see me anymore if I do. I can see it in your eyes. You want to be done with me, don’t you, Nic? But if I keep this video, you won’t leave me, and then eventually ... eventually you’ll love me again. You just need time.”

  In that moment, I really wondered if I was above hurting her. I could overpower her and take the phone. That would solve all of my problems. Jen probably wouldn’t like me anymore, Mika would be out of danger, and I would be free to see whoever I wanted to see and not see whoever I didn’t want to see.

  The only problem was ... Jen was already fucked up. She didn’t need me adding to her issues, and as much as I didn’t want to care, I couldn’t ignore what this would mean to me, as a person. I was in this mess because of my own cowardice. Jen was still obsessed with me because I had never forced her to speak to a professional. I had allowed her to still have contact with me, to still look up to me as the centrepi
ece of her obsession. I could have ended this before it exploded, but I didn’t. These were my consequences.

  “Jen ...” I swallowed down my rage, schooling my expression into something calm. “I need you to delete that video. I can’t bring you back into my life in the way you want if there is no trust between us. Delete the video. Do it right here, with me watching. Show me that I can trust you.”

  Her smile trembled into existence: vulnerable, unsure. It was a true smile, and for just a second I almost felt sorry for her.

  “I understand what you’re saying.” She sucked in a deep, trembling breath. “I don’t need the video. Not anymore.”

  She pulled out her phone, and I watched as she opened her cloud account. She deleted the video quickly, and then went into the saved videos on her phone, deleting it from there, too.

  “Are you happy now?” She tilted her face up to me, and I swallowed back the urge to say something cutting. It wasn’t necessary.

  “Yes,” I replied calmly, opening the door and taking a step away from her.

  “Will I see you tomorrow night?” The vulnerability was back, the tremulous hope that might have warranted sympathy in a completely different person.

  “No.” I watched as her face fell, her hopes crumpling, the darkness flashing over her expression quicker than I had expected. “You won’t see me ever again, if you know what’s good for you. This—all of this—is over, Jen. Goodbye.”

  I shut the door just as she spluttered out a response.

  “You’ll regret this, Nicholai Fell.”

  “I’ll add it to the list,” I muttered into the empty hallway, walking back to the bathroom.

  It was a dim hope, but I checked it anyway. Empty. I moved to the stairs, taking them two at a time until I landed in the kitchen. Also empty. I ran to the door, shoving it open. A storm had broken out, ending the party. Crap littered the lawn, sodding towels hung over the railings beside the pool. The temperature had also dropped, driving everyone into the warmer depths of the house. I could hear music thumping from the basement, but I already knew that I wouldn’t find Mika down there.