by Cole McCade
“Oh. Yeah.”
She edged closer to the bed, scooting just close enough to reach out and catch the cord in her fingertips. He didn’t move, but chill amusement radiated from him in waves, his mouth twitching, his eyes knowing. She scowled and snatched the iPod from his grip, dragging it with the earbuds as a tether.
“It helped,” he murmured.
She stilled, clutching the iPod against her chest. “You like music?”
“I think any living thing can be said to like music.” He tilted his head, eyes lidding. “Our bodies move to endless rhythms, and music only gives them voice.”
“That’s a long way of saying ‘yes.’”
A flat look flicked to her. “Do you want me to say I liked your taste in music? Shall we lay on a grassy hill and hold hands and share earbuds, now, while the clouds scud by overhead?”
The smile that had started to creep over her mouth died, crushed between her thinning lips. “You don’t have to be a dick about it.”
She turned away. Might as well finally get out of here; clearly, he was fine. Her clothes had been left folded atop her backpack and boots, in the corner. It was time to get dressed, move on, and forget him. Forget all of this.
A prickle of warning—his heat close, raising a shriek of alarm that dragged its teeth along her skin—barely gave her a second before his arm snared around her waist, an iron band that dragged her back and ripped her off her feet. He shoved her down to the bed. She screamed, breathless and high, as the mattress punched between her shoulder blades. But the noise from below swallowed her cry, loud thump and sway in time with her reeling heart. His bulk crushed down on her, strong legs flanking her hips, his weight pinning her thighs, rough hands catching her wrists, fitting around them as if they belonged. His fingers found the fading remnants of her bruises and fit into them like bullets sliding into place in the chamber.
He blocked out the light, a dark silhouette looming over her, the shadow of a nightmare with a hunter’s fiercely glowing stare. She kicked and twisted, hissing furiously, rage and terror combusting inside her with a phoenix’s flame, rising up from the ashes of her heart.
“The fuck—Hart, get the fuck off me. Your fucking leg—”
“Is fine.”
“Then get off!”
“No.”
No, he said, while she screamed her own no inside for a million different reasons. She’d been in this situation with him too many times and she wasn’t doing this again—wasn’t letting him touch her, use her, humiliate her, abandon her. She wasn’t a toy. She cursed him wildly as she fought until her voice came out in shrill shrieks of fury, singing through her with electric tension, and if he didn’t let her go she would set the world afire with her wrath.
He remained ice to her fire, unmoved, unmovable. That blankness in him frightened her, a high crushing fear that pushed up from her stomach into her esophagus, rising toward her mouth in a lump. She pulled on her arms until they hurt, pain lancing along her bones in lines of light under her skin, her breaths going down like nettles as she panted. His fingers tightened, digging in harshly, until she winced and cried out as he pushed her wrists against the bed.
“Be still,” he commanded.
She stilled not because he’d ordered it, but because she hurt. Deeper than the cruelty of throwing herself against the immovable wall of him, a low and tired hurt she didn’t understand, one that felt almost like betrayal.
Betrayal. That was a laugh. As if Hart owed her anything.
She looked up at him mutinously, clenching her teeth together, refusing to say another word and just waiting. Waiting for whatever game he wanted to play right now, waiting for him to use her and hurt her and throw her out just like she’d done to hundreds of men over the years.
Just as before, he clasped both her wrists in one hand, pressing them up over her head and into the pillow. She closed her eyes tight, bracing for the assault. Bracing for the unwanted surge of heat from her willful, wanton body that already tingled with anticipation, a clutching feeling deep inside, waiting for his touch with an eagerness she despised when she was already so helpless underneath him, vulnerable with her skin bare under the loose shirt.
But there came only a faint brush to her cheek. A touch as fine yet rough-edged as raw silk, skimming along the crest of her cheekbone, tracing down to her jaw, stealing her breath with the slow care of it. He touched her as if she were a butterfly, and would die if he rubbed the shimmering dust from the sweet, bright translucence of her wings.
“Where is she?” he whispered huskily. “Where is the little girl who thought she had wings?”
Her angry retort clotted in her throat. Her eyes flew open, and she stared up at the forbidding crags of him, into alien silver eyes that had lost the last of their humanity on some long-distant battlefield. Eyes like those could never understand the hurt he’d carved into her with that simple question.
“She was just a story,” she choked out. “She’s not real.”
“She is.” His fingertip outlined the shape of her jaw, following its curve from just below her ear and taking the plunge, sloping down toward her chin. Trembling awareness turned the wash of delicate friction into the focal point of her body. “Why did you let her go?”
“Don’t. You don’t get to do this.”
“If I don’t…who will?”
Her tongue felt thick and bloated, and she couldn’t speak. Couldn’t scream out the obscene and filthy and hateful things in her heart; couldn’t sigh the beautiful and fragile and aching things jealously guarded underneath. She only shook her head, trembling deeper and deeper with his every touch, as he gripped her chin between thumb and forefinger and tilted her head up until there was no escape from the hard sharp thrust of his gaze.
“Answer me, Leigh. Has anyone ever pushed you to be more, instead of telling you you were less?”
Memories caught her in their current and dragged her under, drowning in things she didn’t want to remember; she closed her eyes, but the black behind her eyelids did nothing to block out twenty-six years of things she’d tried to forget. Twenty-six years of being told I wouldn’t expect you to understand and not right now, honey and girls like you don’t have to worry about that. Twenty-six years of that patiently distant look that said they weren’t even listening, that indulgent smile when they didn’t even notice she’d stopped mid-sentence because not one word was going in. Because nothing she said mattered. Because girls like her were only good for one thing, no matter how you dressed it up.
One kind of whore or another, only one came with a ring and a mortgage.
She gulped back a harsh sound and opened her eyes to glare up at him through a misted sheen. “No.” Her jaw locked so hard it hurt to creak it apart to speak. “I don’t need someone to tell me that. Not you. Not anyone. I know I’m more than people think I am. That’s not for you to decide.”
“No. It’s not.” He tilted his head, pale eyes flicking over her face as if searching for a vulnerability to strike; his fingers constricted cruelly on her wrists. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I don’t know you.”
“How fucking kind of you to admit that.”
“I promise you, little mouse,” he breathed, “there’s not an ounce of kindness left in me.”
His grip tightened, fingers digging into her chin. She hissed, jerking back, but he held her in a grasp of steel, hand spreading to cup her jaw until it felt like it would break, crumbling like brittle chalk in his hold. Down that harsh touch stroked, fingertips vicious against the soft place under her jaw that shivered sweet panic over her skin in trickles of ice water. She stopped breathing as if he’d petrified her lungs with those basilisk eyes, entire body frozen save the slam of her heart beating itself painfully tender against the inside of her ribs.
“You like having all the control, don’t you?” His fingers closed over her throat, pressing down until she made a low choking sound and her pulse bounced off his palm with every racing thump. The hot thrill of fe
ar probed down between her thighs and squeezed, delving so deep it felt like the touch of an invisible lover slithering into her to plunge and stroke. “Stringing all these little boys along while they pant after you and paw at you, when they can never really touch you.”
She inhaled desperately, dragging thin wheezes of air past her throat, back arching off the bed as she fought for some slack in his hold, fought to find breath to speak. To scream loud enough for Gary to hear, for him to come save her from this broken wild animal in the shape of a man.
And to save her from herself, when she simmered with a slow licking burn as the whorls of his fingertips branded into her flesh.
His eyes narrowed. His grip relaxed subtly, but it was enough for her to swallow in panting gulps. “Answer me,” he said again.
“I…nnh…” Every word was like tonguing needles, her chest half-collapsing, but still she glared at him, twisting beneath him, kicking her legs uselessly under his bulk. “S-so…so what if I do?”
“I don’t like being controlled.”
He leaned down, and she clenched her eyes shut and braced for pain. Instead came only the soft brush of his lips—yet at that lightest touch, shivering sensation tingled through her lips, as if dormant nerve endings had come to life. He tasted her mouth, chaste. Almost tender, with a warmth that hurt more than anything he could ever do to her body.
“And,” he whispered, kissing the syllables into her flesh, “I want to touch more than just your skin.”
Then he was gone. Gone and leaving her gasping on the bed, clutching at her sore throat, fingers fitting over the bruises he’d left carved into her like craters. He’d left her twisted up inside and struggling not to let out the sobbing scream of pure raw hate that twisted thorny knots around her soul and spun her every which way until she didn’t know up from down. She wanted him. She wanted him, wanted the way he hurt her and the way he cut her and the way he dug everything out of her that she’d tried to bury—but God she loathed him, loathed feeling this when she’d never wanted to feel anything not of her own choosing again.
“I hate you,” she rasped out, forcing her eyes open as the bed shifted from his weight lifting. The powerful line of his back was an impassive wall to dash her fury against, but she threw it at him anyway, flinging words that cut her mouth like knives. “I hate you! I hate the way you look at me, the way you talk to me—I hate you I hate you I hate you!”
“Maybe you do.” He tugged his shirt from the back of a chair and shrugged it on; the crow curving over his shoulder flexed its wings across his bicep. His hair fell across his face in an inky sweep as he glanced over his shoulder, locking on her. “But I bet it’s the first real emotion you’ve felt in a long time.”
She didn’t say another word. She wasn’t giving him another opening to get his hooks into her. Fuck him and his games. Fuck him and his hot and cold Jekyll and Hyde act. Leigh crawled out of the bed and steadied herself on shaky feet. The world reeled, her head still swimming from oxygen deprivation, her lungs still heavy as stone, but she didn’t let that stop her. He could say whatever she wanted; she didn’t have to stick around to listen.
Under his watchful eye, she gathered her things with fumbling, clumsy hands, piling her clothes and bag and boots into her arms before walking out with forced, deliberate calm.
And he didn’t do a thing to stop her.
* * *
She made it to the stockroom behind the bar before she collapsed.
Only by sheer luck did she make it without being seen. Gary was busy at the far end of the bar, while Jimmy tried to break up a brawl—probably over a girl, it was always over a girl—and the Mac truck of a bouncer was nowhere to be seen. All eyes on the fight or in the bottom of a glass, and not one on the woman stumbling behind the bar with the necklace of bruises that throbbed with pain in time to her pulse. Hidden in a corner behind the rows of dusty bottles, she huddled against the shelves in a trembling heap—then swore and jerked her clothes on. She nearly ripped her panties and dragged a few more new holes in her fishnets, her every other breath turning into a cough when it scratched up against the pain in her throat.
Fucking asshole. What was wrong with him? What was wrong with her, that she’d lain underneath him with his fingers around her throat and only wanted him to squeeze tighter, chasing the thrilling edge of autoerotic asphyxiation? God, did she have some kind of death wish?
She closed her eyes and pressed her fingers to the bruises, hissing and wincing at the contact to the too-hot skin. No. No, she hadn’t wanted Hart to kill her. She’d wanted him to do exactly what Sister Mary Anne had done once, so long ago, the day Leigh had ruined the nun’s life:
She’d wanted him to hurt her, then love the pain away.
And she’d trusted him. She’d trusted that he wouldn’t hurt her any more than she wanted to be hurt, when he’d given her no reason to—other than something in those blank, quiet eyes that said while he might be a killer, he’d rather die than have blood on his hands again.
God, maybe she was broken.
With a hoarse sound, she snatched up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. She didn’t want this. She didn’t need this.
It was time to move on.
She strode out of the stockroom and slipped out from behind the bar, pushing her way through the crowd, past hot glances that licked over the flip of her short little skirt and devoured her bare thighs. Those glances had no pull on her tonight. She made it to the door before Gary’s voice caught up with her, her name ringing out over the clamor, her hand on the latch bar. She didn’t even look back. The door swung open ahead of a hard shove, and she stepped out to let the muggy summer night swallow her whole.
Part of her expected the door to squeal open after her, squeaking on its hinges, Gary demanding where you think you going, girl? She hunched her shoulders and walked faster, soles slapping fiercely against the sidewalk. By the time she reached the end of the block, she realized he wasn’t coming. Good, she told herself sharply, hugging her hoodie against herself. Goodbyes just made things messy and complicated.
She hadn’t said goodbye back then, either.
She cut into a side alley and came out one street over, stopping only to dig out a clove and light up, letting it numb the ache in her throat until she no longer felt like she was trying to breathe through a clenched fist. The cigarette was just a trail of ash in her wake and a butt stubbed out on the sidewalk by the time she made her way back to the pawn shop. She’d been afraid it would be closed; most of the uptown pawn shops shut their doors at a decent hour like any respectable business.
This wasn’t one of those pawn shops, and the OPEN sign flashed neon gold in the window, calling to the kind of people who would only come, furtive and desperate, to its threshold after midnight had already tolled.
Security bars accordioned over the door and windows now; Leigh tried the door. The lock jerked against the frame. She stretched up on her toes, peering inside. Maxi leaned her thick, soft arms on the counter, her tattoos crawling under the dirty florescent-flicker lights, her Harlequin open in one hand—and the other pointing at Leigh, motioning something, her lips mouthing words. Leigh squinted.
“The what—the passer? Oh.” The buzzer. Then she noticed the intercom next to the door. She hit the Talk button. “Hello?”
Through the glass, Maxi leaned back on her stool and punched the intercom box on the wall. Her voice brayed out of the speakers and into Leigh’s face. “Whaddya want?”
“Hi, um…you sold me a camera the other day?”
“No returns.”
“No, I have something to sell.”
The woman eyed her through the yellowed glass, lips working over her gum, eyes narrow and shrewd. Then the intercom chimed again, and she muttered, “Come on in” before the door lock released with a harsh and jarring buzz.
Leigh pulled the door open quickly and slipped inside, then lingered on the threshold. She suddenly felt like she didn’t belong here. The pawn shop was a differe
nt place after dark, the lights turned low, the silhouettes of the merchandise somehow menacing. Like she was in an abandoned toy shop, haunted by the ghosts of everyone who’d left their imprint on these forgotten and abandoned treasures.
“Well?” Maxi barked.
Right. Leigh pushed herself to the counter, slung her backpack up onto the glass, and unzipped it to rummage inside, shoving her arm in past the odds and ends of her camera and underwear and notebooks and the books she’d snagged on the library’s free paperback days. Down in the bottom, in the little secret pocket normally reserved for traveler’s checks, was a hard circular ridge. She fumbled inside until she touched the coolness of metal and the sharp slick edges of gemstones, then retrieved her wedding ring, the edges of the setting catching on the backpack’s weave and pulling at the threads until she snapped it loose.
Even under the dingy light the platinum band shone with its own glow, a silver-white halo that caught and sparkled on the pale teal edges of a translucent row of precious gems the size of her thumbnail. She remembered how proud Jacob had been, telling her about the stones.
Grandidierite, he’d said with a smirk. It’s only found in Madagascar. Better than diamonds. Twenty thousand per carat, babe.
Just in case she hadn’t been aware of her price tag.
Ha. Useless, expensive decorative object. That’s me.
The heavy weight of the ring in her palm felt like a millstone around her neck. The ring was the only thing she’d really liked about her marriage. Not for the amount he’d spent; there was something sick about carting around a useless decorative object that could have paid their housekeeper’s annual salary a thousand times over, or fed the entire homeless population of Crow City. No—the ring had somehow always seemed pure, with its clean cool lines and the sweet sea-and-sky color of gemstones as transparent as water. It was the kind of ring a girl would have dreamed of, back when she still thought she had wings and had ideas about what being married would be like.
Letting go of the ring felt like letting go of that. Of that little girl’s daydream, one that had turned less into a nightmare and more into one long and dreamless night.