Best of 2017

by Alexa Riley

  "What is it you think you are doing?" he snaps.

  "Getting dressed," I answer.

  I can see his longing to punish me. To hurt me. To push me away. But I also see the relief hidden behind those harsh emotions. I’ve seen him vulnerable now, and it has changed everything between us.

  Even now, the tension still lingers. The chemistry that neither one of us can deny. His palm throbs with the craving to pull me closer. To keep me at arm's length so I can never run away from him. But I think that even Javi knows he is powerless to this force now.

  He is softening. Bit by bit, I am chipping away at his armor. At his insecurities. I have seen this transformation. I have no intentions of stopping it.

  I point to the comb and scissors laid out on the counter.

  "I thought I might give you a haircut today," I tell him softly. "If you'd like."

  His eyes move over the comb and then my face. I won't get a firm yes from him. I can already feel him slipping away. It needs to be now. I walk to him and take him by the hand. A hand that is so much larger than mine. A hand that can inflict pain and pleasure in equal amounts.

  I stroke my thumb over his palm and smile up at him. Soft. Vulnerable. Nervous. I want him to say yes.

  I pull on his arm, and he follows. And when I gesture to the chair next to the sink, he sits.

  The chair is small, and he is large. Still naked. He doesn't like it. So I remove my towel and wrap it around his shoulders before placing another over his lap. Towels so large they swallow me whole look like mere scraps on him.

  I spread his long hair out and reach for the comb. I don't know how much he'll let me cut off. I don't know if he's even had a haircut since he was a child.

  "How short would you like it?" I ask.

  He's quiet. Tense. Annoyed.

  "Just cut it all off," he answers.

  So I cut. And I cut some more. And I keep cutting, waiting for him to erupt. But he never does. When it's short enough, I pull the electric razor from the drawer and start to trim.

  It’s a long process. But he does not complain. The longer I work, the more relaxed he becomes. When I am finished with his hair, I move onto his beard. Trimming it to a more manageable level. One that highlights the strong features of his face, but still hides the scars lurking beneath.

  And when I am finished, I hand him a mirror. He stares at his reflection for a long time. I don't know what to expect. I don't know if he likes it.

  He simply hands me back the mirror and grunts.

  "Are you done?"

  “Yes.”

  He gets up and tells me to finish getting dressed while he walks down the hall to his own room.

  I know what will come next. I hasten to put on my dress and wait for it. I wait for his fury. His yelling. And just as I feared, he appears in the doorway a moment later. This time, he is clothed in jeans and a tee shirt. But his fists are locked at his sides. The vein in his neck is pulsing. And his eyes are lasered in on me.

  "Where are they?" he demands.

  "You don't need them anymore," I whisper.

  He stalks towards me, and I scurry back until I hit the wall behind me. He corners me and grabs my face, rough and dominant.

  "Where. Are. They?" he roars.

  It takes every ounce of courage I can muster to do what I do next.

  I yell back at him. The way he always yells at me.

  "You. Don't. Need. Them."

  He stares at me in disbelief. Then annoyance. And I wait for it. Wait for him to blow. To flip. To say he's going to punish me. To threaten me and scold me and have his way with me like he always does. But this time, he is waning.

  There is uncertainty in his eyes. He wants to believe me. And I am not about to let this opportunity pass me by.

  "I have already seen you," I tell him again. "There is no reason for you to be lurking around here with your face covered in shadow all the time. Especially not now that you've had a haircut."

  He searches my eyes. Looks for the lies hidden within my words. I take him by the hands again, and he lets me. He lets me touch his face.

  "Is it so wrong of me to want to see you?" I ask. "Can you not believe that perhaps I am telling the truth, Javi? That perhaps I actually find you incredibly handsome."

  He doesn't respond, so I continue.

  "Things are always worse in our own minds," I remind him. "You should know this better than anyone. The way you exposed my fears and exploited them when you brought me here. The words you played on repeat. The ones you knew would hurt me most."

  He looks away. And for the briefest moment, I thought I saw shame in his eyes. But he does not voice it. He does not allow me to witness it again, either.

  "Your scars mean nothing to me, Javi. Please. I am only asking you to try it."

  "I want them back," he says again.

  But his voice has lost the harshness from before, and he does not demand that I bring him the hoodies now.

  Instead, he simply leaves the room.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  JAVI LOCKS himself in the office over the course of the next three days.

  He has not asked me for his hoodies again. From the rare glimpses I get when I catch him in the hall, I know he is walking around without them.

  I am lonely.

  There is a hunger inside of me that I can’t defy. I ache for his body against mine. The smell of his skin. The vibrations of his voice. I lay in bed at night and wonder what he's doing. I wonder how to break through the walls he has built so high around his heart.

  And then I wonder why I want to. Why am I still so broken for him?So willing to overlook the things he has done.

  My mind and heart are divided.

  I don’t know how to find peace with either decision when they both hurt so much. It is ripping me apart. I can love him or hate him, but I can't go on feeling both.

  I write in my journal. I play at my piano. And I sing songs with words only he can hear. But still, he does not come.

  My heart is melancholy, and I think of my father too often. I wonder where he is. If he's even still alive. I wonder what he would tell me to do if he were here now. Then I remember it wouldn't matter. Because I have always been on my own. Even when he was there, the solitude was an ever-present guest. He was consumed with work, and I was consumed with vying for his attention.

  My soul is tormented by the mystery of his fate. The unknowns that still linger. But even so, there is peace in my bones. Peace that wasn’t there before.

  I am at ease with the knowledge that Javi needed him too, in his younger years. Regardless of whatever happened between them, Javi did love my father once. He looked up to him. And I know my father loved him too.

  Now, only questions remain. Questions I am not certain I will ever have the answers to. Not until Javi is ready to share them.

  The doorbell rings again this afternoon, and this time I do not race to see who it is. Javi locks eyes with me before he moves towards the door. Searching for what he is so certain he will find there.

  Hope.

  Hope that someone else has come to save me. But that is not what he sees. I know, because it is not what I feel. I ignore the visitor and continue the business of writing new lyrics.

  It is only River anyway. He comes into the kitchen to snatch an apple from the counter before he follows Javi into his office. They shut the door behind them and remain there for an hour. And when River leaves again, Javi emerges.

  Agitated.

  He looks at me, and I do not like what I see there. I don't like the doubt in his eyes. The shift in his mood. He seems cold now. Shut down. I think he's going to punish me again. He's going to push me away or hurt me. But that isn't what he does.

  He goes to the gym. And stays there for two hours.

  Punishing himself instead.

  I'M SOMEWHERE between worlds when Javi startles me by removing the book from my hands and setting it on the table beside me.

  The conservatory is dark now, apart fr
om the glittering lights of the stars above and a solitary lamp on the table beside me. The roses are fragrant, and the air is warm, and there is something else in the room between us.

  A new energy. A strange energy. An exciting energy.

  Javi bends down and scoops me into his arms, carrying me to the bathroom. He places me on my feet again and removes my clothes before starting the bath.

  I don't question his actions.

  We are both silent when he helps me into the bath and begins to wash me. Shampooing my hair and cleaning my body with his hands. When he is finished, he moves to pull the plug, but I stop him.

  "Don't," I plead.

  His eyes are absent of the turmoil I saw there earlier. He is softer now. And I don’t want to waste these moments, which are so rare with him.

  "Will you let me wash you?"

  He is silent and still for a long while. Too silent. Too still. I don't know what he's going to do. Not until he removes his shirt and unbuttons his jeans and discards them on the floor beside my own clothes.

  Then he climbs in behind me, pulling me into his arms. He does not let me wash him. But he holds me. And that is more than I had hoped for.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  WHEN THE WATER IS COLD, Javi helps me from the tub. He dries my hair with a towel and then my body too. He uses the same towel on himself, and I watch.

  Then he takes me by the hand and leads me back into the library in the conservatory. He pulls one of the chairs onto the hardwood floor and cups my face in his palm.

  "Do you know what I need from you, my Bella?"

  His voice is gentle. Filled with want. And it doesn't matter what he needs from me because whatever it is, I will do it.

  I nod. He kisses me.

  "Good girl," he says. "Now stay right here."

  I stay in place while he walks back across the room and returns a moment later with a cup in hand. A cup that I recognize well from my early days with him.

  It is filled with dry rice. Rice that he scatters on the floor beneath me. I swallow and look up into his eyes when he is finished. Wondering if he is angry. Wondering if I've done something wrong.

  But that isn't what I find. Today, I only see need. He needs this from me. And so when he asks me to kneel, I do it without question. It has been a long time since he punished me this way, and I have forgotten the pain. But I bear it.

  For Javi.

  For Javi, I would bear anything. The thought scares me. Excites me. Confuses me.

  He sits in the chair in front of me. Naked. Hard. Swollen. He spreads his thighs in offering, and I lean forward to take him into my mouth. I draw him in, and he strokes my cheek reverently.

  "Good girl, my Bella. That's such a good girl."

  I work him over for a long time. Until my knees are on fire from the pain and I'm certain he's about to come. But he stops me before I can get him there.

  He grips me by the hair and leans down to meet my lips. Kissing me in a way that he never has before. Like he is worshipping me. Like he is tasting me for the first time. It goes on until I am dizzy. And then he instructs me to lay back.

  I do.

  My knees are grateful for the reprieve, but my back smarts when the tiny grains of rice dig into my flesh. The pain is soon forgotten as Javi kneels down before me and squeezes my thighs in his palms. He buries his face between my legs, and his tongue inside of me.

  I cry out and jolt against him. He presses his palm into my stomach, holding me in place while he pleasures me.

  I come hard.

  And then I reach down and touch his face. I beg him for more. I plead for him. Javi leans back and drags me closer. His knees digging into the rice as he drives inside of me in one solid stroke.

  He squeezes my hips and angles them for his pleasure, thrusting in and out of me with violent need. Grunting and slapping against me as he stares into my eyes.

  It goes on forever. Until he can't hold himself up anymore. Until my body is completely limp in his arms. Until he finally roars out his release and then collapses beside me.

  We lay there for a long time. Catching our breaths. Entranced by each other. I can feel that shift again. A barrier being swept away. It’s liberating. It feels like progress. We have come so far together, extricating ourselves from the prisons of our hearts.

  He kisses me again, and it's sweet.

  Then he lifts me into his arms and sets me down on the chair, brushing the grains of rice from my skin and kissing the swollen flesh with his lips.

  "Such a good girl, my Bella," he tells me again. "Would you like your reward now?"

  I nod because it does not feel like a trick. Javi dresses himself. And then me. He retrieves a remote and turns on a projector I never knew existed in this room.

  Fear twists in my stomach, but one look from him quickly snuffs it out. This is not a trick. Not this time. He brings me into his arms, turning me to face the screen. When it comes to life, I am surprised by what I see there.

  A YouTube video. Of me. Singing at the piano. In Javi's house. Here at Moldavia.

  Nobody else would know it, but I do. The room is black. So black. And I am playing one of my new songs. One that I sang for him. One that I wrote about him.

  The video is public, for all the world to see. My chest squeezes as he scrolls through the comments. I'm expecting the worst.

  I close my eyes and try to turn into him, but he guides my face back towards the screen and whispers in my ear.

  "Open your eyes, Bella. This is your reward."

  I open my eyes. And I read. The comments are not what I expected. They are positive. Uplifting. The listeners say how much they like the song. How they miss my voice. How they hope that I will put out more.

  And there is more of the same, the longer Javi scrolls. I don't know how it's possible, but it is.

  "You uploaded this?"

  "Yes," he answers. "They miss you, Bella. It is not fair for me to keep your voice only to myself."

  I turn to him, and this time, he lets me. And he does something else.

  He wraps his arms around me and presses my cheek to his chest. And then he dances with me. Humming along to the music that I made. Music that I didn't even realize he recorded.

  I wrap my arms around his waist, and I relax in his arms. For five minutes, nothing else outside of this room exists. For five minutes, Javi lets me inside. And in those five minutes, my emotions become so clear.

  I am in love with my captor. He is my tormentor. My greatest source of pain and fear. But somehow, he has also become my sanctuary.

  My whole world.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  BELLA IS IN MY BED.

  The same place she has been every night for the last three weeks. She came to me on her own, and I could not bring myself to ask her to leave.

  Even though I know it makes me weak. Even though I still question at times if it’s real, or if she is even more skilled than her father at trickery.

  She continues to come here, night after night. Curling her body into mine and wrapping my arm around her. She wakes in the morning and cooks breakfast, humming pieces of new music every day.

  She seems happy. And this was not the way it was meant to go. This was not the way at all.

  But when she kisses me this morning and looks up at me with sleepy eyes, I think that perhaps I never really stood a chance as far as Bella was concerned.

  I think of Ray, and he seems like a distant memory now. My Bella does not speak of him. And I often wonder if she thinks of him. If she misses him, still. If it’s true, she doesn’t say.

  Each night, I go to bed with a new resolve. That tomorrow, I will punish her. That tomorrow I will make her pay. But each dawn, my resolve is gone all over again.

  My pulse hammers in my throat when she looks upon me. When she touches my scars and does not recoil. When she begs me to fuck her.

  I do not know what she is doing to me. She is poisoning my mind. Ruining my plans. Making me forget my revenge. I
should be furious with her for doing this. But instead, the contempt I feel is for myself.

  I know that it cannot last. I know that my own mind is playing tricks on me. That given a choice, Bella would leave me. Because I have conditioned her to be this way.

  It is an illusion. A temporary illusion. And in time, the spell she is under will fade away, leaving only her bitterness and her own desire for revenge.

  If we continue down this path, I would let her take it. I would let her take my life to satisfy the inevitable darkness that lies buried in her heart beneath the lies. Because Bella cannot ever truly care for me. That was not the way this story began, and there’s no changing that now.

  She is a weakness. One that only metastasizes over time. And this is why I must act now. Before it is too late.

  Today, I decide, is the day.

  There is no other choice. I can no longer give in to the temptation of her. Which is why I climb from the bed before she can say a word. Before she can touch my lips, or ask me sweetly to be inside of her.

  I tell her there is something I must do before I dress and leave the room.

  I wait in my office until she is up and about, moving around the kitchen. And then I text River my instructions. When his reply comes through, I retrieve my toolbox and move to the entryway.

  The window is stiff, and it must be pried from the place it has rested for so many years. It groans loudly, and I do not have to look to see if she is watching.

  I can feel her eyes on me. Curious. I can almost hear the questions in her mind. And it is exactly what I wanted. So I do not know why I feel so ill. I do not know why I hesitate to answer when River’s call comes through exactly as I asked.

  I want to look at her. I want to see her one last time. But I don’t. Because I know it will only make me change my mind. It will only make me weak.

  With a stiff greeting, I answer River’s call. He mumbles into the other line, asking me what’s up. I tell him to hold on. I shut the window, but I do not lock it.