Pretty Broken Things - Melissa Marr Page 0,51

he lets me know I’m not special: plenty of women have touched him. That, too, is about power. It’s how he tells me I’m replaceable.

I’m not. There is no one in the world who can give him what I can. We both know that. I let the illusion stand though. It serves both of us well to pretend I don’t matter to him.

“Once upon I time, I was with Reid. He . . . hurt me. There was a tub. And red. And I wasn’t sure I’d survive.”

Now, Michael looks at me like I’m special.

He puts my arms through the straps and turns me around. It’s oddly non-sexual, as if he’s afraid to touch my breasts. He hooks the back, not quite as tight as it should be, but I’m not going to complain. Complaining is bad. That’s a rule.

Softly, I say, “Can you . . .”

“What?” he asks.

I turn so I can see him, reach into my bra and pull my breast upward so it’s settled in correctly. I don’t need to, not really. What I need is for him to see me sexually again. “Can you do like that, but on the other side?”

He complies, trying to be clinical, but I catch his wrist and force his hand to stay where it is. At the same time, I press closer to him so my breast is filling his hand.

“Tess . . .”

I pull his wrist tighter to me, letting him feel how hard my nipple is in his palm. “I had a nightmare, Michael. I’m not any different than I was when you were pounding me into the mattress earlier tonight.”

“Point taken.”

I release his wrist, and he keeps his hand where it is. He watches my face as he slides his palm to the side so he can pinch my nipple. This, this is what I need. I don’t want to be the woman in the memory he glimpsed. I don’t want to be the person who bled because Reid was angry and the other woman was already dead. I don’t want to be the one responsible for her death.

And I really don’t want to be the one who had to beg to stay alive.

I want to be a woman so caught in this moment, this place, that I forget my past. I want to forget—not forever, but just for a while—that Reid existed. I’m not Teresa. I’m not Tessie. I’m Tess. Stronger than Teresa, built from her broken pieces. Stronger than Tessie, whose pieces were stitched together by Reid’s will and word.

I walk forward, pushing Michael back toward the bed.

“You don’t need—”

“You want me to feel better, right? This will help.”

He backs up until he bumps into the mattress. “I don’t see how this—”

“Shut up, Michael.” I drop to my knees and fumble with his trousers. It’s been a while since I’ve had to do this with my left hand. It isn’t as graceful as I like to be when I’m acting the seductress, but Michael is a man. Men are compliant when women go to their knees.

He lets me have control.

I fumble through button and zipper and tug his trousers and boxers out of the way, careful not to let my bloodied hand touch them. A fleeting thought that I’ll have to deal with blood on the floor after all crosses my mind, but then Michael objects again, “Tess, you really don’t need to do . . .”

I remember the things Reid taught me then: Good wives don’t have to die.

I am a good wife.

I am.

Afterword, I tell Michael about the day I knew that I had to leave Reid—even though I know he’ll write it in his book.

Or maybe because he will.

Maybe writing my story in ink on my body isn’t enough. Maybe I need Michael write it, maybe that’s why I wanted him all along. He’s doing it. I know he is. I haven’t read it, and I know he lies. It’s what men do. It’s what writers do. It’s what I did to stay alive.

26

A Girl with No Past

“Get in.” He pointed at the tub.

When I didn’t move, he set the bottle of wine down on the bathroom counter hard enough that I flinched. Red wine. That means it was for guests. Reid liked white. It was cleaner. He liked everything to be clean.

And good.

I tried to be those things for him. I really did. Sometimes, the rules shifted, and Reid didn't tell me. Sometimes, he liked to explain my mistakes. He watched

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