Raphael

by Tillie Cole

  Maria yelped as Raphael cast out his arm and gripped her wrist, his teeth bared. Fire lit in his eyes, replacing the sadness with what looked like naked hatred. Maria tried to pull back her unwanted touch, but Raphael’s grip was strong. “Do you want to die, little rose?” he asked calmly, but with threat in his low, exhausted voice. “Do you want me to wrap my hands around your pretty slim neck and end you now?”

  Maria stayed quiet, and as if she were facing the most dangerous predator, she dropped her eyes, body sagging, becoming pliant. She wanted to show she was no threat, that she only wanted to be of comfort. Raphael squeezed her harder. Maria fought back a whimper, but then he threw her hand aside. “Get back to bed and don’t bother me until morning.” Despite his harsh words, she could hear the raw pain in his dismissive tone. Hear the fragility of his heart.

  Maria knew she should have turned but, defiant, she stayed still. She knew she should have kept her eyes downcast like Raphael had ordered her from her very arrival in this mansion. But she didn’t. She disobeyed it all.

  Maria raised her head, meeting Raphael’s ever-furious gaze. He made to move toward her, but she stepped back. She pictured the reflection of her naked body in the bathroom. How she had failed once again to face her scars. Meeting Raphael’s lost and haunted gaze, a wave of courage overcame her. Maria acted immediately, just in case she lost her strength. Lifting her hands, she brushed the straps of her dress off her shoulders. Raphael’s nostrils flared when her body was bared. Maria had shown him most of her body over the past weeks. But she had never rid herself of her dress; he had never removed it. She had never so boldly displayed her body for his eyes. She hadn’t even bared it fully to herself.

  Raphael’s jaw clenched. Maria saw his length begin to swell. But it wasn’t about sex right now; it was about commonality and understanding. It was about compassion . . . about pain and darkness shared.

  It was about healing.

  Ignoring her weakening legs and arms, Maria began to lift her hair. Raphael was rapt, watching the long strands lift inch by inch until Maria had made a messy bun on the top of her head. She wound the hair around and around, tucking the strands under until her hair was secured out of the way. His eyebrows pulled together curiously.

  Maria fought the fear clawing up her throat. Closing her eyes, she began to turn. She feared her legs would give way, but she held strong as she revealed her back to Raphael. Five years. It was five years to the day that she had been taken. Five years since her skin had been stripped from her body. Since she had been bound and gagged and placed in the darkness of a coffin.

  Maria’s eyes opened, and she focused on the ruined picture Raphael had destroyed only hours before. It had been of a white dove in flight, soaring through a crystal-blue sky. Only now the dove was ripped apart, the canvas ruined, and the blue sky fragmented into nothing. “His name was William Bridge,” she confessed, the dark memories releasing from the inner prison in which they had been buried. “I didn’t know it until much later, but he was a janitor at my school. He had been watching me for months before he came for me.” Maria fought through her thick throat. “I don’t know why he had singled me out from any other student. It was never discovered.” She paused to gather her composure. “When I was sixteen, he broke into our home.” She kept her voice steady, even though her pulse was firing at the speed of light and the visions of that night were crushing any joy she had ever been able to feel. “He killed my father. Then my brother. He killed my mother.” Maria felt a tear escape her eye, but she didn’t wipe it away. Her hands were paralyzed at the knowledge that someone was seeing her back. Even she had not been able to look at it, growing her hair so long that it had become her shield. Protecting her from the past she had been running away from for so many years. “He didn’t kill me,” she continued. “It wasn’t about death with me. Instead he captured me and took me to his home, deep in the countryside. The home where he took all his victims.” Maria inhaled a shuddering breath. “He placed me in a coffin. In a metal coffin with tiny vents so I could just about breathe.” She closed her eyes and was immediately taken back there. Fear, so strong and intense that it was crippling, took hold of her body. But her confession poured from her lips. She knew once she had opened up about that time, she would never be able to stop. Maria curled her arms over her naked breasts and tried her best to keep her composure. “He kept me there for days, only opening the lid to give me enough water and hunks of bread to keep me alive.” In her stomach, Maria felt the endless pit of despair that had kept her company all those months form once more. “I was starved and kept in the coffin for so many days I thought I would die.” Maria’s face became flooded with tears; the room before her blurred. “Then he came for me.” Maria flinched at the memory of the bright sun blinding her eyes after so many days in the coffin. She remembered the pain in her body as she was forced to walk, her muscles cramping at being awoken from their forced sleep. She recalled the pounding headache from lack of food. Maria glanced down at her naked body. She recalled the bones jutting out from her sallow skin, how her stomach concaved and her legs and arms were nothing but pale skin draped over bone. Maria sobbed, but she kept speaking. “He tied me to a wooden table by my wrists and ankles, stomach down. That’s when he began slicing into my flesh. Stripping the skin off my back in pieces, as if I were a cow and he was collecting my hide.” Maria felt the knife in her back as though she were back on the table. She held back her scream as she felt the skin being pulled from her wasted muscles. “When he had taken what he wanted, he placed me back in the coffin, face down. He left me there in pain, no relief. He fed me through a latch in the bottom of the coffin. A hole out of which I could vomit when the pain and infection became too much.” Maria shuddered as she remembered those hazy days of nothing but agony. “He only ever took a small piece of my skin at a time. Leaving me for weeks in between.” She shook her head. “I didn’t know why. I was so far gone mentally and physically I never considered it.”

  She took a deep breath. “I knew I was going to die. I knew I was going to die in the darkness of the metal coffin, and no one would ever miss me. My family had been killed, all so he could take me and strip me of my flesh. I had no one left to love me if I escaped. It was futile.” Maria felt a stirring in her stomach, the familiar flicker of strength she had managed to muster that fateful day. The fight. The will to survive despite it all. “I was never a religious person. We didn’t attend church. My parents were more new age than organized religion. But as I lay there, I prayed to God that if He would just free me, I would dedicate my life to Him.

  “I was delirious, speaking to a deity I had never entertained before. I was close to death’s door when I heard people rushing into the room. Many voices that I was sure I was imagining. I heard my name being called.” Maria smiled through her pain. “I thought I had died and I had arrived in heaven and the voice I could hear was my mother, welcoming me home.” Maria’s voice cut out, and it took her a few minutes to gain it back. Clearing her throat, she said, “The lid of the coffin was lifted, flooding me with light. The brightest light I had ever seen. The sound of a gun fired in the distance. Gentle hands lifted me from the coffin. Hands that weren’t those of William Bridge, but of a man in navy blue. A man who whispered to me that I was safe. That they had found me. That I was going to be okay.” Maria closed her eyes and lifted her face to the ceiling, as if she were back in the brightness of that day. “But all I could see was the light shining down on me like it was a spotlight and its beam was cast directly on me.” Maria smiled. “It was God, I knew it. He had listened to my prayer. He had saved me in my darkest time. And I knew it was for a reason. I just didn’t know what that reason was.” Maria’s eyes rolled open, and her mind was clear. But I do now.

  “I was the only one who survived,” she said and felt the weight in her chest she had lived with for years. “Seven girls were in his house, all in coffins.” Guilt flooded her veins. Guilt she had never been able to shed. “I was the only o
ne they had found alive. All of us had been stripped of skin and starved. But I still breathed. My heart still beat. They had killed William Bridge when he tried to fire at the officers who found us. Our captor was dead . . . and I was the only one who was freed.”

  Maria felt the cold air wrap around her exposed, naked body. Raphael didn’t speak. Her heart plummeted. She’d hoped he would have taken solace, some comfort, from the fact that she too wore scars that had been inflicted upon her. That she too was damaged, arguably beyond repair. She thought he might have understood . . .

  Maria’s head hung in disappointment. Her hands dropped to her sides, and she was about to turn when she suddenly stilled, feeling soft lips pressing a whisper of a kiss against one of her scars. Maria froze, her eyes filling with tears as she felt Raphael’s hands take hold of her hips with the gentlest touch she had ever received. She held her breath as he kissed along every strip that had been torn from her flesh. Every deep-red, thick scar she knew he was seeing—ones she had never seen herself.

  Maria stayed where she was as Raphael worshipped her ruined skin like a pilgrim at her altar. The gentle touch began to eradicate all the frayed memories and feelings from her mind and heart. The night was silent and the moon basked them in its glow. Maria felt as though they were on a stage, two scarred souls finding one another in the unlikeliest of settings, something strong and unyielding pushing them together, each easing the other of their terrors and pains.

  Maria’s eyes closed as Raphael’s hands traveled up her sides, over her ribs, and back down. Caressing her with such warmth it made her heart skip a beat. She felt him rise to his feet. He had been crouching down to her ruined flesh. Revering, worshipping . . . adoring.

  His hands on her arms, Raphael turned Maria to face him. She kept her eyes down. He placed a finger under her chin and lifted her head. When she met his eyes, they had lost their coldness, and in its place was an amber glow. He was so tall and imposing. Yet she had never felt so safe.

  Raphael leaned forward and timidly lowered his mouth to hers, hovering just over her waiting lips. His eyes met hers, searching for something she didn’t understand. Then, unsurely, he pressed his mouth over hers, and Maria felt as though she were back in the path of the sun, being blinded by the deepest form of grace. Warmth spread along her bones and limbs; peace infused her blood and pumped through her frail heart, reviving it with something akin to contentedness.

  When Raphael pulled back, he reached down and lifted Maria’s naked body against his own. She placed her hands on his thick shoulders and kept his gaze as he walked them to the bed. He laid her down on the soft mattress and climbed over her body, blanketing her, keeping her safe. Maria’s hands never left Raphael’s skin. Her fingers journeyed over his scarred flesh and tattoos. They threaded under his arms and caressed his back. Raphael’s eyes closed as she worshipped him in return, touching the wounds that traveled deeper than his flesh.

  Raphael tilted Maria’s face up by her chin, and he stared into her eyes. He kissed her again. She moaned as his tongue slipped into her mouth. Maria wrapped her legs around Raphael’s waist, arching her back when his hand slipped between them and ran along her core. His familiar fingers caressed and massaged her until she broke from the kiss just to catch her lost breath. Raphael kissed along her neck, her throat, and over her cheeks. His mouth never broke from her, even when she felt his length grow hard and heard him hiss with the pain his caged device would be bringing. Raphael pushed a finger inside her, and Maria cried out softly, her whimper more of a sigh. She didn’t overthink what was happening. She just felt. In five years she had kept what had happened to herself and only herself. With Raphael, she had opened a door she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to re-close. Wasn’t sure she even wanted to.

  Raphael’s finger moved from inside her, and she watched his face as he reached downward. It took her a minute to realize that he was squeezing his penis, fisting it in his unyielding grip over the silicone cage. A wave of sadness engulfed her. She wanted him freed from whatever it was that made him need such pain and violence to be intimate. When she looked into Raphael’s eyes, she froze. She saw something in his golden gaze she had never seen before. Not in any man’s eyes. Vulnerability. Stark vulnerability.

  Raphael didn’t speak, and Maria basked in the silence. Her vows as a nun made silence a sanctuary for her fragile soul. It was perfect, as Raphael tipped Maria’s hips up and pushed his length inside her, that there were no words being exchanged. No cries of pleasure or crude groans. There were only labored breaths and the feeling of such heavenly freedom.

  Maria gasped, cinching her thighs together when Raphael’s movements became painful. He stopped, watched her for a signal to continue. This man, this broken man who was so violent and aggressive, so domineering and dark, was waiting for Maria to move.

  Giving her control. She wasn’t sure if he knew it. But he was.

  Tears flooded Maria’s eyes as she lowered her hands to the bottom of his back and guided him back inside. Her eyes squeezed shut as he pushed forward. She held her cry captive in her mouth as he broke through her virginity and filled her to the hilt. Raphael paused as Maria tried to catch her breath. Holding his gaze, she nodded, telling him without words to move. And he did. He rocked into her, his jaw clenching as his length pushed in and out, each movement less painful than the last. Sweat glistened on their bodies, and the moon cast their skin in an ethereal glow. Maria couldn’t look away from him, the man who she knew still wanted to kill her. Something had happened to him in his past. She didn’t know if he would ever share what. But whatever it was, it had made him believe that his only option was death and violence and sin.

  Pausing, Raphael gripped Maria under her behind and pulled her up. He kneeled back and brought Maria to straddle his lap. Raphael guided her hips, rocking in and out of her. But Maria couldn’t stop the tears from falling when he moved his hands up. Slowly and softly, he moved his hands to her back and stroked her scars. Her bottom lip shook, but when she looked into Raphael’s eyes, she saw a desperate unspoken need in them. Maria moved her hands from Raphael’s shoulders and down to his scars, the large red welts that crisscrossed in jagged stripes. And they didn’t stop. As they rocked and moved, sinking deeper into each other, their hands praised their scars. Scars that no one saw and that were never spoken of. The secrets they both kept, the demons that lived buried deep in their souls.

  Raphael moved faster and faster until Maria grew breathless, pressure building at her spine. His eyes flared and his thrusts became erratic. The sight was too much for Maria. Rocking her hips faster, she chased the pleasure only Raphael could bring. Raphael matched her pace, crushing her to his chest. And as his lips pressed softly against hers, his tongue filling her mouth with the sweetest taste, Maria shattered apart, eyes closing, basking in sunlight once more.

  Raphael roared and stilled. His warm release soothed Maria in ways she hadn’t thought were possible, calming the anguish her past had unearthed.

  She rested her forehead against his. And they both held on tight. They didn’t speak. Raphael slipped from inside her and laid them down on the bed. He looked down at his cage-covered length. Maria followed his gaze, blushing when she saw a smear of blood. But before embarrassment could take her in its grip, Raphael rolled her onto her back and spread her legs. She watched him, breath held for what he was about to do. He moved slowly down her body, then pushed her legs apart. Raphael ran his hands along her inner thighs and to her core. Maria flinched at the sensitiveness, but then her heart melted when Raphael kissed the path where his hands had just been. Kissed her thighs until he reached her core and gently licked along it. Maria’s eyes fluttered shut at the devotion he gave her. She didn’t even dwell on the fact there had been blood, blood that he had consumed. Raphael was the master of her virginity. Her blood was his.

  He kissed and calmed her, then raised his head and came back to lie beside her, chest against chest. Raphael reached for Maria’s bun and pulled, releasi
ng the long strands. Her stomach flipped when she saw his eyes flare as her hair shrouded them, blanketing Raphael’s shoulders and arms, creating a cocoon for them to hide behind. Maria wondered if she should move. If she should go back to her bed. As if reading her mind, Raphael pulled her closer, and ordered, “You’re staying in my bed tonight, little rose. You’re staying right here.” He closed his eyes and, with his arm around her waist, quickly fell into a deep sleep. Maria ran her finger along his forehead. The lines that had been so prominent had disappeared. No strain. No pain.

  Maria closed her eyes and held him in return.

  Two broken souls entwined.

  *****

  It was the years of rising at dawn that made Maria wake so early each day, before the sun and while the rest of the world still slept soundly. Including Raphael, who was still curled around her, the purity of peace on his beautiful face.

  Maria took advantage of his sleep and drank in his features. She felt raw but revived at sharing her past with him. And opening up about her past had somehow made the darkness that lurked ever close fade.

  Birds began to wake outside the windows. But the sun was still asleep.

  Maria moved as quietly as she could, shifting out from under the heavy weight of Raphael’s arm. She froze when he stirred, but his breathing quickly evened out, and Maria slipped from the bed. She went to the bathroom to freshen up and brush her teeth. When she came out, she looked to the locked doors. Maria needed to leave these rooms. She needed to clear her head. She understood she was a captive, knew she didn’t have the right to wander as she pleased. And she had no intention of escaping. She just needed to walk. To get some distance, and pray upon what had transpired. To rid her mind of the lingering painful memories that had been hard to relive.