ever done, and Leo is wound tight around it. He feeds me inch after inch until something in him snaps.
His hands go back to my hair and his muscles work under my palms. Working to hold him upright. Working to keep him standing. He says something that I don’t hear over the rush of blood in my ears, the beating fear that I’m choking, I’m choking, and then he surges forward and comes.
Hard.
I can either drown or swallow and instinct takes over. He tastes like salt and hurt. At some point it peaks and his hands gentle in my hair, both hands pulling me close, one sliding down to the back of my neck.
When he’s spent he pulls out, but he keeps his hands where they are. I rest my forehead against his thigh and breathe. The air has never felt so good in my lungs. Leo’s running his fingers through my hair in an absent way, like he’s still floating. A quiet warning sounds in the back of my mind. I know. I know. This isn’t over. I can’t take back what I’ve seen. I know. But I don’t want to let go.
His breathing settles. And the warning gets louder.
I stay on my knees.
15
Leo
I come back to my body. A cage of flesh and pain. My return is abrupt.
And it.
Is.
Agony.
I have my hands in her hair, her soft, spun-gold hair, and the way she’s touching me—like I didn’t just hold her by that hair and fuck her throat until tears ran down her cheeks, like I didn’t punish her for no other reason than I wanted to—is gentle and intimate and unbearable.
What am I doing? What the fuck have I been doing?
Anger and pain collide in a black, roaring storm and I wrench my hands away from her hair like they’ve been burned. They are burning. To touch Haley is to be flayed alive. She saw. She’s here. She fucking saw.
Haley scrambles backward, an animal caught in a hunter’s beam, and it should make me feel sorry for her but those huge, innocent eyes are oxygen to flame. A lit match to gasoline. I hate that she’s here. I hate that she saw. This rage is too large to be contained, too big for muscle and bone to keep in. I hear myself snarl and she startles, getting up to her feet, staying low. As if that could save her.
I’m beyond saving.
I’m so fucking pissed that it’s acid on open wounds, and at the middle is a secret, desperate humiliation that I will do anything to shake loose.
Haley is frozen, one hand up, showing me the whites in her eyes. “I’m sorry.” Her voice trembles. “I didn’t know—I’m sorry.”
I reach one hand out before she can run and coil my fingers through her hair, hard enough that she yelps, her face contorting with pain. “You’re not sorry enough.” My voice sounds nightmarish even to me, and Haley flinches at the sound. “The strap wasn’t enough to teach you your place, was it? No, it fucking wasn’t.” Haley comes with me when I leave the bathroom. She doesn’t have any choice. My grip is so tight in her hair that she can’t breathe. She struggles to get her feet under her.
“Leo.” It’s a begging gasp and it yanks at something far under the surface of me. Beneath the torn skin and the scrambled nerves. Deeper. Older. “Please.” In the bedroom I let her fall next to the bed. She gets up, eyes wide, the color drained from her face. I’m between her and the door. She could try to climb backward but there’s no way she makes it. Haley holds up both hands. “We could talk about it. You’re—” Fast breathing. Hard breathing. She’s cornered and ready to run. “You’re hurt—”
“No.” Haley snaps her lips closed, lifting her chin to keep her eyes on me. I’m so close I can feel her heartbeat through the air. This is how you hide the things that eat you alive. You crowd in. Take up all the space. No one can see your secrets if they’re hidden behind power and rage. “I’m not hurt. But I’m going to hurt you. You want to know what it’s like? I’ll show you. I’ll whip you hard enough to leave scars. Hard enough to bleed.”
It’s not true. I don’t mean it. A person like Haley, who sobs from a strapping and blushes when it makes her wet, could not survive what happened to me. Wouldn’t survive.