His body was pure muscle and power, and I wondered if we’d have the same outcome if James was here when Derek came at me. Only his blood wouldn’t be stained on my hands.
“All right,” he murmured over his shoulder. “Stay here.”
Standing meekly in the corner, I perked up. “What?”
James ran a hand over his face, trying and failing to smooth out the lines tonight put there. “The only thing I’m going to ask you to do is scrub the floor after he’s gone. I’ll handle everything else.”
A protest went to climb my throat but… stopped. It slid back down to my cramping stomach where it stayed. I nodded. James gave a small nod back, like he was thanking me for not arguing or disobeying him like I always had to.
Tonight, I didn’t feel very much like arguing.
James turned and walked towards the bathroom, curling his hands around the plastic tarp along the way. He took it into the bathroom, and that’s where he stayed for almost twenty minutes with only a few thuds and groans to pass the time. He came out to grab the jugs of bleach, and I had to look away.
Blood smeared his thighs and painted his hands a criminal red.
God, what the fuck had I done? No. I had to stop bringing Johnny’s God into this. He or she or it had nothing to do with this mess.
This was all me and the devil in my soul that signed my fate to hell years ago.
James came back out several minutes later and told me to turn around.
I did.
The noise of plastic scrunching and creaking stabbed at my stomach, and I pinched my eyes closed, bracing my hands up against the corner wall.
Even with my eyes shut, I still saw him, still knew James was carrying my mistake out the door, tidying my fuck up.
The door closed, and James disappeared for several minutes without a word.
I didn’t move from the wall.
If I left the wall, I’d collapse.
Without James to hold me up, I was empty skin and nothing more.
Before he even stepped back into the room, I felt him. The heavy boots he’d shoved on to walk down to the car thudded in my soul with each step he neared. His heat traced nails up my back, bringing my shoulders back at attention for him.
And his smell.His fucking woodsy scent attacked me through the walls, chewing the space down between us until it smacked my senses empty of anything but him.
A thrill winded through my head, spinning it on an axis I didn’t know even existed as the door opened back up, and I snapped in a burst of strength around to James.
I found him across the room and he found me too, and holy fuck did it feel magnificent to be found.
A breath rattled my chest, inundated by tingling nerves all dedicated to the look James was giving me. I wanted to go to him. I knew he was weak for me in ways I’d rather not stoke, but right then, I wanted to set us both on fire.
I wanted him to want me like he shouldn’t so that I could fall into him and scream. Fall into him and cry. Fall into him and lose myself for fucking good. I wanted to hit him. Smack him. Hug him. Kiss him. Tear his back apart with my fingernails and watch the red marks split into wings he could use to fly away from me only so I could climb up the sky and find him again.
And then he’d push me off, and I’d nose-dive and shatter and finally be done with it all.
James broke our connection to trek across to his bag and stuffed a spare pair of underwear into the jeans he’d taken off earlier and grabbed his shirt. He threw the clothes over his arm and disappeared into the bathroom.
When he came back out, he had every bloody towel he used wadded up beneath his arm, unphased at this point by the other man's blood that was dried over his flesh. On his legs, arms, chest, feet.
"There’s half a jug of bleach left. I cleaned up as much as I could, but you need to scrub the grout and bathtub. I left the scrub brush for you laying in the tub.”
I agreed without saying a word and slowly understanding his.
“You’re going alone?”