I choke and he grins, backs off.
“I—”
But I don’t get to finish. I only have time to take a quick breath before he’s pushing in again, his eyes darkening as he moves faster and I’m aroused watching him, tasting him, looking up at him as he towers over me, controlling me.
A moment later, he mutters a curse and pushes deeper still, and I feel him throb, feel his release and when I do, I come too. I come on my fingers, moaning around him, tasting him, watching him.
When it’s over, when he’s finally empty, he pulls slowly out and crouches down. Kissing my cheek, he holds my chin with two fingers. He looks at me and smiles.
“Swallow.”
I want to, it’s just so much. I nod and he brings his thumb to the corner of my mouth to wipe it clean.
“All of it,” he says, and I swallow again. When I do, he kisses my mouth and I wonder if he tastes himself. I kiss him back.
A few moments later, he lifts me in his arms and lays me on the bed. And when he climbs in beside me, I turn to him, burrow into his chest, liking the feel of his arms around me. He pulls the blankets around us and I feel safe for the first time in too long to care that I’m lying in the arms of the man who should be my enemy.
13
Cristiano
I’m back again. On the cold marble floor lying in a pool of my own blood. Men are yelling, my brothers sobbing. My sister, I didn’t even see her. They killed her in her room.
My mom…she’s begging, pleading for the lives of her children. She’s not even asking to be spared herself. But he doesn’t care. He’s laughing. I hear that too. And I open my eyes just enough to see him lying on top of her. To hear him breathe heavy while she lays still whimpering. He has the knife at her throat and this time when he says the words, he looks at me.
Is that how it happened? Or is it my imagination perverting the memory.
His mouth moves and his grin makes him look like a mad man. I hear the whisper, but not the words. Never the words.
I know this dream. This nightmare.
But then it shifts.
The chaos is gone. No guns. No screaming women. No sobbing children.
Words sound around me, making no sense. A man and a woman. An argument. Lights overhead too bright after so much dark. The smell is clinical. The room, when I glimpse it through heavy-lidded eyes, harsh white.
“It’s too much…permanent damage.” It’s the woman’s voice. She’s trying to whisper but the words are hissed like she’s angry.
The man’s words are incomprehensible, just murmurs. He’s calmer than she is. Then everything goes quiet. Almost everything. The only sound I hear is my voice.
I feel the prick of a needle. It doesn’t hurt. I’m used to it.
Then another sound. Shoes on the floor, low but there. Hearing is my only sense. Well, that and smell. And I can smell a familiar scent.
I open my eyes with a sharp breath in. It takes me a minute to remember where I am. I scrub my face, looking over at Scarlett lying beside me. She’s undisturbed.
My phone buzzes with a message alert. I check it and see four messages all within minutes of each other. That’s what must have woken me.
I open the text window. It’s Antonio telling me to call him. I assume it’s an update on the destination of the boat that held Scarlett and where it went to on its last four voyages. The other images are of some broken-down room. A shack almost. Inside are scraps of clothing, remnants of food containers. Stains on the floors and walls. More on the single rotted mattress.
Scarlet mutters something. I look down at her, see her lips move, her forehead furrow. I doubt either of us will ever sleep peacefully. We’ve seen too much.
“Shh,” I tell her.
Her hand opens, fingertips brush my chest and she says one word. “No.”
“Shh, you’re safe. Safe.”
As if she hears me, she quiets, her breathing leveling out.
I climb out of the bed, draw the blanket up over her shoulder and pick up a discarded pair of jeans. Pulling them and a sweater on, I walk out of the bedroom barefoot, running a hand through sleep-mussed hair.
The first part of the nightmare is the recurring one. It’s the one that keeps me from sleep.
The second part though? That’s new. I don’t know if it’s a dream or a memory. It has the feeling that memories do. There’s a texture to it different than dreams.
I have a takeaway this time.
The man was my uncle. He’s been wearing the same cologne for as long as I can remember. Something made especially for him. My father used to make fun of him for that.