“Listen to me. I will never, ever let someone hurt you like that again, Faye, I swear to fucking God. If Vincent Blackthorne comes anywhere near you, he’ll fucking regret it.”
She smiled, but shook her head. “You don’t understand,” she said.
And there we were a fucking gain. “Everyone keeps telling me I don’t understand, but I understand it perfectly fucking clearly. He’s a cunt, and you were so into him, so fooled by him, you just couldn’t see it.”
“Maybe.”
“Definitely.”
“I liked it,” she whispered. “It makes me feel sick, but I liked it, afterwards, I mean. He made it feel beautiful afterwards. He was so proud.”
“I’ll fucking bet he was.”
Her eyes were glistening with tears. “I promise you, he was. It’s hard to appreciate, I know, but loving him was intense, and mostly it was beautiful.”
“So why are you here? If it was so beautiful? What did he do to you, Faye?” I went in for the kill, but her sharing streak was done. She stiffened, and moved her hand down to grip my wrist.
“Make me come,” she hissed. “Please.”
Her grip was demanding, needy.
“I’ll make you come,” I said, and it took all of the strength in me not to give in to the beast and lose my shit, not to grab her fucking phone and call that fucking cunt and tear him a new fucking asshole. No, I wouldn’t phone him, I’d find him. I’d find the sick, twisted sack of shit and I’d show him what I thought of him. I’d give him exactly what was coming to him for everything he’d done to her, taken from her, taken fromus.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please, Andy, make me come.”
I was back with her, back in the room, forcing the venom away where she couldn’t see it. I lifted myself from the bed, taking her with me. So naturally she dropped her feet to the floor and turned to me, so naturally I held her and kissed her pretty mouth before I lowered her back onto the mattress. I pushed her thighs apart, and knelt between them, and she didn’t utter a sound as I pulled those filthy silver rings apart, so gently but so firmly, with my teeth gritted and my hackles raised.
I took her hand and pulled her to her feet, and I marched her out of there, straight to the bathroom where I lifted the toilet lid and dropped those rings in her open palm. She looked at me and her eyes were glistening, heavy with secrets and pain in a way that choked the air out of me.
She dropped them into the toilet without hesitation, without a word, without so much as a sound, and I pressed the flush and sent those seedy little rings right where they belonged. We stood watching the water take them away, her head against my shoulder and my arms around her waist and there were no words needed. No words that would have cut it.
She was deep in thought when I coaxed her back to bed, following meekly with dainty little steps. I pulled back the bedcovers and welcomed her inside, and then I made her come, as promised.
It was slow and tender, my mouth guiding her to orgasm with absolute concentration, absolute care, and when she crested it was beautiful, her fingers against my scalp, kneading but not demanding, her pussy fluttering, wet against my tongue in a way that knocked my senses. She came hard but quietly, a sweet expulsion of moans as her hips rose from the bed, and then she was spent, loose-limbed with ragged breath, her fingers tickling my scalp as I kissed my way down her thigh.
My cock was hard, but I ignored it completely, climbing alongside her and holding her close, my legs hooked around hers, my arm around her waist. She wriggled back against me, and she sighed, wrapping herself so totally in my arms that my face was pressed to her hair, and her breath was hot on my skin.
And then she went to sleep.
But I didn’t.
I didn’t sleep a fucking wink.
***
Faye was quiet the next morning. We both were.
We ate breakfast in silence and headed over to the club earlier than usual. She chewed her nails as we crawled through traffic, and my knuckles were white on the steering wheel, but at least I had an excuse.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she said, but her eyes didn’t leave the road ahead.
“Not really. Do you want to talk about it?”
She shook her head. “It’s over. With Vincent, I mean. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“And what about us, Faye? Do you want to talk about that?”
“Not really, Andy, no. Not now.”