Thousands

by Pepper Winters

  What would I have to do to tame the rioting need in my blood? How would I exterminate the acidic guilt in my veins?

  “You could play me.” Her soft voice wavered as if her offer wasn’t given entirely willingly. As if her trust made her say it and not her lust. Pain and confusion once again lived in her gaze.

  I’d done that.

  I’d taken her trust and twisted it into doubt.

  I whirled on her, pointing at the door. “Get out.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. Get out. Now.” I couldn’t look at her without snapping. I couldn’t touch her without breaking. I needed her so goddamn much, but I couldn’t have her. She trusted me to keep her safe. This was me honouring that trust even while she begged me to break it.

  She was the worst kind of creature.

  Never trust me, Pim.

  I don’t trust me.

  My family doesn’t trust me.

  Never fucking trust me.

  Slowly, she climbed off the bed and came toward me.

  I turned around, keeping my back to her, doing my best to keep up the barricade and icy request for her to leave.

  She sighed softly. “I don’t want to go. And I think you don’t want me to go, either.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I want.”

  “It matters, El.” Her touch landed on my shoulder blade making me shudder with supernovaing desire. My gut twisted into knots as I shrugged her off. “Everything matters.”

  The aggression in my spine turned to barbwire as her palm returned, heating my muscles, delivering love even while I was cruel.

  Please, Pim...leave.

  Pressing her forehead against my back, she murmured, “I want to tell you something.” Her voice remained low like a lullaby as if she could somehow convince me to return to bed and prove she was right to give me her trust.

  I didn’t buy her convincing.

  I didn’t relax even though it killed me not to turn around and take her in my arms. I wanted to apologise and explain, but I couldn’t, because how could I tell her that earning her trust was the one thing I never wanted to hold? That I needed her to treat me with suspicion. I wanted her constantly aware of me, so I never let down my guard.

  I could fall in love with her, but I could never trust her because I could never trust myself.

  Before I could command again for her to leave, she whispered into my taut rigidity, “I have a theory.”

  My ears pricked despite myself. “A theory?”

  Her lips landed on my spine, twin warm cushions slightly damp and trembling. She spoke into my back. “It’s only a theory, and like all theories, it needs to be tested. But...I want to test it.”

  Kissing her way around my ribcage to the slightly ticklish sides, she moved around to my front where my dragon hissed. I stood frozen to the carpet as her eyes entreated mine. “I need you as much as you need me. I don’t want to leave. I want to stay. And I want to kiss you and touch you and lie down with you on top of me. I want to have sex with you. I think you want that too, and my theory is that if you let go—”

  Her touch had pulled me under her spell only for it to shatter the second she said ‘let go.’

  I rose to my full height, taking a step back and breaking her hold on me. “You expect me to let go?” I chuckled with disbelief. “Just like that. I’ll snap my fingers and...let go.”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “Let whatever desires inside your mind loose. Don’t try to fight them. Don’t try to control them. Just...be with me. Give me everything.”

  I laughed icily, pinching the bridge of my nose to try to combat the headache caused by her insanity. “We’d never leave this room again.”

  Her hands clenched. “I don’t believe that.”

  “You don’t believe I wouldn’t be able to stop? That I wouldn’t ruin you? That I wouldn’t take utter advantage of you?” I chuckled again with every self-hatred I felt. “I know what would happen, Pim, and I’m not willing to be your little experiment to prove me right and you wrong.”

  She pursed her lips, a touch of anger highlighting her cherub cheeks. Her hair glistened from the skylight above, sunlight pooling around her as if she was some guileless goddess trying to tempt me into damnation. “That’s what you believe. What about what I believe?”

  “What you believe?”

  The only thing I could believe was how senseless this woman was. She needed to leave. Instead, she stood there, daring to debate me on a condition I knew inside out. Trying to school me on my own bloody theories when she had no clue what she was talking about.

  My forehead furrowed, deepening my stress headache. “Tell me, seeing as you’ve known me all of a few months. Tell me how wrong I am and over-dramatizing this condition after living with it for my entire useless life.” I waved my hand patronizingly. “Please, go right ahead.”

  She clutched her fingers together as if gathering fortitude from herself. “You think you’ll slip into obsession. You think you’ll—”

  “Wrong already. I don’t think. I know. And obsession is too light a word.”

  “What would you use then?”

  I barked a laugh at the ceiling. “I don’t know. Life-consuming addiction? Common-sense abdication?”

  “Whatever it is—” Pim growled. “You said so yourself that you’ve found ways to master it. I don’t see you obsessively cleaning or folding or tiny tics and twitches you can’t stop.”

  “That’s because you don’t look hard enough.” Even now, my fingers twitched in a chord from A minor to B flat, splitting my brain into two halves so it couldn’t form one concise thought and overpower me. That was a tool I’d always used—even as a kid.

  Her lips thinned in frustration as she glanced at my constantly moving fingers. “I look harder than you think.” She eyed me up and down almost in pity. Goddamn pity. “I’ve been watching you, Elder, and I have my own theories about you.”

  “And so far those theories have been entirely based on fantasy and not fact.”

  She shook her head sadly. “I don’t think they are. And I’m willing to test them. To use myself as the experiment if it means helping you.”

  “Helping me?” I snarled. “I told you, I don’t need helping.” The longer this conversation continued, the weaker I became. I was a fraud already—I’d admitted as much. For her to hack at my knees and make me fall even further wasn’t just cruel, it was barbaric.

  Pointing at the door, I cursed the shake in my arm. “Leave. Now.”

  “I’ll go. This time.” Her cheeks heated. “But next time? I’m not letting you say no.”

  “Next time?” I laughed. “There won’t be a next time. This was all a mistake caused by you disobeying me.”

  She headed toward the door, glancing over her shoulder. “And like I said before...if you think I’ll obey you on everything...well.” She smiled sadly. “I respect you, Elder. I care for you, and I’m willing to trust you to see if we could work together and have another element to this connection between us. But if you think I won’t disobey you again? If you think I won’t run to your aide when you try to banish me, or that I won’t speak my mind when you’re being an idiot, then you might as well charge full steam to England and say goodbye because I guarantee this is only the beginning. I’ve found my voice, and under no circumstances will I shut up just because you don’t want to hear the truth.”

  “Fuck.” I stormed toward her. “I don’t have the patience to beat sense into—”

  She held up her hand, back stepping over the threshold as if I was a raging bull and she was the bright crimson flag I wanted to rip to smithereens. “You don’t need patience. Mine has run out anyway, so I’m leaving. But I have a theory. I’ll say it as many times as required. This theory is based on fact and body language and other tools my mother taught me—not fantasy or whimsy. You might not like it. You can argue against it until you’re passed out on the floor. But one day I will find out if that theory is correct.” Her eyes glittered with
tenacity. “I’ll put it to the test, and then one of us will owe the other a huge apology.”

  I crossed my arms to prevent wrapping my fingers around her neck.

  Who was this self-assured minx sent to undermine me? How did she make me so hard and achy my bones were brittle and body totally foreign and alive?

  I forced out, “We’ll see about that.”

  “Yes, we will.” With her chin held high, she gave me a little wave. “Goodnight, Elder. I hope for both our sakes we sleep well tonight.”

  “I can safely say I won’t.”

  “Me, either.”

  “Good.”

  “Fine!”

  We stood glowering. More juvenile arguments burned my tongue. I wanted to grab her arm and drag her back into my room. I wanted to snag her hair and kiss her stupid.

  But with a condescending sniff, she glanced once more at the pounding erection extremely visible in my track pants, tossed her hair over her shoulder, and padded down the corridor without a backward look.

  I slammed the door.

  And didn’t sleep a fucking wink.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ______________________________

  Pimlico

  ENGLAND.

  The land of my birth.

  The land of my parents—one dead, one in jail.

  The land of my death and slavery.

  Sailing into South Hampton filled me with dread rather than homecoming. Why was I back here when my childhood apartment had been sold, my mother was locked up for twenty-plus years, and I had not one friend to stay with?

  Elder joined me on deck as the Phantom slowly traded open seas for the gloomy shore of an industrial city. A light drizzle fell from the grey clouds above; a perfect memory of the mercurial moods of England. I already missed the gentle swell of the ocean and the unhindered sunshine dappling the yacht with sunbeams.

  Ever since our argument two days ago, Elder had studiously avoided me. I’d caught him smoking a joint outside his room the night after. We’d shared a very stilted dinner, and I half expected him to find me on a lifeboat and star-gaze once he’d finished smoking and was mellow enough to be near me without wanting to yell at me.

  But he hadn’t.

  I’d star-gazed on my own.

  And my anger and hurt grew from an annoying pinprick to a throbbing bruise.

  We’d had our first argument, and neither one of us had apologised or moved to end the residual feud.

  I wasn’t above being the first to admit defeat and withdrawing my threat to test my inconclusive theory. That was—if Elder stopped avoiding me or, when he was in my presence, stopped filling up the awkwardness with mundane comments about seagulls, yacht maintenance, and upcoming shore endeavours.

  He’d said he was exhausted living the way he did. Well, I was exhausted begging him to lean on me a little and forgive me for wanting to be beside him when danger called. I wouldn’t apologise for disobeying him, and I definitely wouldn’t apologise for running to his side.

  It should make him feel loved, not smothered.

  My blood iced over again with annoyance, coaxing me to give him the cold shoulder, but England spread before us. Conversation would have to be indulged in and token sightseeing endured.

  Whatever happened in the future, today had to be the moment where we ripped off the Band-Aids from our mutual wounds and cleared the air.

  Something would snap if we didn’t.

  Something was already fraying.

  I couldn’t continue to wave the white flag without moving forward because we couldn’t continue to coexist this way. The barricades and distance had only worked when I was still healing mentally, physically, and sexually. Elder could endure me on his boat because I hadn’t healed enough to tell him who I truly was.

  Hell, until recently, I’d forgotten who I was. Or perhaps I’d been stolen too young to ever fully develop into who I should’ve become.

  I might never know who Tasmin might’ve been. Now, I’d been shaped by those experiences that’d fractured the old me. I’d persevered and matured and found I had a temper to revile his. I had dreams to challenge his. I had needs that ran parallel to his if only he trusted that I could cope with whatever it was he gave me.

  Stealing a glance at him, my heart swooned a little as the sea breeze tangled in his blue-ebony hair, and grey drizzle added severity to his already severe face. His nose, his cheeks, his stubble-covered chin—all of it screamed the same message as his eyes: tread in my stead and don’t deviate. Do not make my life any harder than it is even if it could be made great if I actually gave in and tried.

  Just tried.

  If he was so terrified of sleeping with me with no end barrier, then tell Selix to stand by with a tranquilizer gun. Have safeguards in place to experiment with different methods because the one he was currently using....It wasn’t working.

  For either of us.

  I’d healed enough that his distance was no longer welcome, and pity for him, I’d learned how to read him and knew he didn’t want to be estranged from me either.

  For a girl who’d begged for a life of no physical connection after rape, I’d changed my mind quickly where he was concerned. My adaptability surprised even me. My tenacity to keep forging ahead, leaving the darkness behind where it had no power over my future was my true strength.

  I might not have muscles to overpower evil, but I did have a strength of mind that ensured I wasn’t beaten. I no longer wanted to be Pimlico, the mouse. The girl who might have teeth but was still happiest not using them.

  I wanted more than that.

  My teeth had grown to fangs.

  And although I was free from my past, I was still trapped.

  Elder was now my master, and I was still in a cage.

  I want out of that cage.

  I didn’t know how we’d taken on the roles we’d been custom designed for, now that I’d opened my eyes, it was painfully obvious.

  I might be in a cage of his doing, but he was in a cage of his own making. A cage he was born into just from the way his brain had formed from the womb. It wasn’t his fault, and I had to remind myself not to take his surliness or pig-headedness personally.

  My theory that he thought in threes—my concept based on watching his fingers dancing and the common waltz whenever he did something...was dying to be tested.

  If he’d just heard me out, I would’ve given him my hypothesis. I would’ve listed all the reasons why I thought it would work. I would point out that whatever he was doing was discounted easily the moment he hit that magic number.

  Obsession had laws too.

  I just needed to learn more about his to convince him.

  “Over two years and you’re finally home,” Elder murmured, his shoulders rounding as he sank deeper into the moleskin jacket he’d thrown on. The tan material turned darker with little circles as the mist steadily turned to rain.

  I’d also dressed in a jacket—mine down to my thighs with a large wraparound belt and oversized buckle. Clothing was no longer optional but wanted—especially to ward off the familiar chill in England.

  “Yet it doesn’t feel as if I’ve been away a day.” I kept staring at the horizon, refusing to look at him. My heart hiccupped at the truth. Everything that’d happened and the reason I’d been away for so long was suddenly nothing more than a single paragraph on a long letter of my life.

  Two years was nothing.

  It could be scribbled out or erased or torn from the page and burned.

  England meant nothing to me because it had taken everything I’d cared about and cast me out. The only thing I wanted here was locked away out of reach.

  You couldn’t scribble him out, though.

  Looking at Elder, I didn’t think I could ever erase him or scratch off the letters he’d written on my heart. No matter how much or how little time we spent together.

  He was permanent. Inked. Tattooed.

  And if he didn’t start trusting me to share his life an
d help him, he would also be thrown overboard.

  His lips locked tight as he peered at the harbour and the other vessels moored along the shore. There were no steam-propelled boats or coal-powered cargo ships these days, but the haze of working-class toil painted South Hampton in a dreary light, no matter the new glitz and glamour of restaurants and cafes intermixed with warehouses that’d stood tall for centuries.

  A massive clock, housed in its coal-blanketed brick tower, chimed the time at two p.m.

  Elder quickly glanced at his watch, a scowl painting his face. “Shit, we’re late.”

  “Late?”

  “The Hawks ball is tonight.”

  My heart raced. “Tonight, tonight?” I looked down at the black pea coat I wore, hiding the simple long-sleeve navy dress beneath. I looked the part of sleek heiress arriving on her floating expensive island, but beneath the rich fabric and heavy wool, I wore no underwear.

  I was still a little wild. Still a heathen at heart. Wilder than I should probably be and slowly relearning who I was. I might not be Tasmin and might be growing out of Pimlico, but I still didn’t know who I wanted to be.

  I had opinions. I wanted to voice them.

  I had dreams. I wanted to live them.

  I had desires. I wanted to enjoy them.

  I had fears. I wanted to slay them.

  Was I so different from everybody else, or was I normal? Was I sane in my desire to put my safety on the line to prove a point with Elder? Would any woman in love do the same for a chance to fix the one she wanted? Were there other girls who hated the restriction of elastic and lace? Who never finished university? Who’d been initiated into sex in the worst possible way, only to find that on her own terms, she was a hot-blooded female who needed sex in her life? Who needed to be touched and kissed and to feel a man filling her?

  Am I so different?

  And if I’m exactly alike what makes me custom designed for Elder?

  Why did I think I had the right to fix him? Why did I believe I could test a silly theory? Would another woman do such a thing?

  How does anyone find a soul mate if we are all the same?

  “What are you thinking about?” Elder turned to face me, his eyebrow raised and lips half tilted. The smile didn’t reach his eyes as if he’d placed himself behind prison bars and reached out to me behind them instead of giving me a key to join him.