golden horse, but a lady nonetheless.
Nothing about this is ladylike. It’s not even human, this grief inside me.
Christopher doesn’t look shocked. He looks at me like I’m the same as always, like he always knew that I’m a she-devil, a siren. A mythical creature with eyes that will turn a mortal man to stone.
He isn’t mortal. He burns under my gaze. “Go ahead,” he says from the floor, leaning back, offering up his body to me. “Take what you need. Let me give it to you.”
The words should be enough to jolt me back to sanity, but I’m too far gone. I gasp him everywhere, everywhere, my nails raking him, my teeth bared to him. He pushes his hands above his head on the floor, as if they’re chained there. As if he’s Prometheus and I’m the fury of the gods, torturing him until the end of time. And he likes it. He likes it.
I rock my hips over the hardness pressing his jeans. He jerks against me, unable to hold still at the heat of my covered sex, at the rock of my body, even though he accepted my pain in silence.
My head falls back, and I close my eyes. It’s like water to let my hips move over him, liquid movement, the path of least resistance to rub my clit against his erection. Pleasure arcs through my body, sharp through the muted agony. It’s almost unbearable, the friction too much. I make myself feel it, and my climax rises with an overwhelming hurt that comes from deep inside. I rock and rock and rock—and against him with a terrible cry and tears streaming down my cheeks.
It fills my head, the knowledge that I will never see her again. We’ll never watch an old movie. She’ll never tell me that I’m strong and brave and good, because I’m not, I can’t be. I collapse on Christoper’s battered chest, sobbing salt-tears into his cuts.
His arms come around me, and he soothes me with nonsense words, with soft caresses. I know with certainty then that no frat boy, no other man could have withstood me. Only this man, more god than human. He absorbs all my grief and pain into his body, and I know he’s strong enough for more.
I cry against him for what I’ve lost, but more than that I cry for what was never found.
For the love my mother never had. For the peace and security in those black-and-white movies that never came true—and now they never can come true. She’ll never know how it feels to be held forever.
And the worst part is, Daddy never knew it either.
They could have been everything together. Instead they were nothing.
The fabric beneath my cheek is drenched in tears. The floor hard beneath my knees. Through my tears I come to realize that we’re lying on the floor, my body draped over Christopher’s, his cock still hard between my legs. “I’m sorry,” I mumble, reaching for him, fumbling. “Sorry.”
I’m not sure what I can offer him with my heart still broken, not sure why he’s even still aroused when my eyes are red and puffy like this, but he stops me with a sharp sound.
“Absolutely not.” His voice is rough with need, but his tone leaves no room for argument. As if we can’t cross some invisible line of sexual ethics that says I’m allowed to rub myself off on his body, but he himself can’t come. It’s ridiculous, especially when he’s throbbing the inside of my thigh. He must be in pain. But then he pulls me down to his body again, pushes my head on his shoulder. I sink into the cradle of his body. That’s all I needed—an orgasm, fast and rough. A forceful cuddle. And sleep claims me, dragging me down into the inky black.
When I wake up again, it’s the middle of the night.
Christopher’s face looks softer in the moonlight. This man has been jerked around by my family, his life twisting at our whims. First my father’s will and then my mother’s Death Plan. He’s so beautiful and tortured. Maybe the best thing I can do is finally leave him alone.
Last night feels like a dream.
The only thing I know for sure is that I can’t stay in this house.
I’m half asleep as I find my keys and head out the door—without my purse or my phone. I don’t need those things, not for what I need to do. Not for where I need to