What kind of girl, what kind ofwifewants that?
I feel as if I’m going to shatter, come apart at the seams.
My face flushes with the memory—all of me flushes, my skin burning with need. I tease my clit as he speeds up, holding on to my pleasure by a thread, my thighs trembling as his hips jerk against me. As he groans out more encouragement, the words slipping from his lips in a torrent as he starts to shudder, his cock hard and swollen and throbbing inside of me. Then he’s coming and I can too. His body arched as he shoves into me hard, and I can feel the hot rush of him inside of me as I start to convulse, clawing at the blankets as the tidal wave of pleasure crashes over me.
I can feel him dripping out of me, sliding down my thighs, and he hasn’t even pulled out yet. How much did he come to make it feel like that? He’s still thrusting, still arched against me, his fingers digging into my hips, his face contorted with the same pleasure that’s still pulsing through me.
At that moment, I don’t want this to end. I don’t want to stop. I want to pretend that I don’t know what kind of man he is or what he’s done, only that in certain moments, in bed together with the sun shining over us just right, after a night of passion, I feel a connection between us that I can’t deny.
One that I’m not entirely certain I want to.
* * *
My eyes fly open,and I realize with a start that I’m not really in the apartment back in Moscow. I’m in bed at the cabin, and I’m acutely aware of what I was just dreaming of.
Viktor. Viktor andme, the way we were that last morning before I was reminded of who he was and before I was abducted.
Before my whole life fractured.
The cabin is quiet, and I turn my head carefully, looking to see what time it is. It’s early morning, about six, and I need to go to the bathroom.
I’ll be damned if I’m not going to make it there on my own.
I push back the blanket slowly—very slowly. It’s an effort to get up, every part of my body aching, throbbing, burning. It hurts so much, but I refuse to give in. I refuse to let it keep me here, pinned to a bed, unable to do something as simple as getting myself up to go pee.
I couldn’t fight them off, but I’m going to fight this.
Each step is excruciating. It feels as if it takes forever just to swing my legs over the edge of the bed, just to push myself up from the mattress and stand up. Each step feels like a massive effort, but it feels like a small win, too.
Each step is one that I wasn’t sure if I was going to take again.
My toes press against the hardwood floor, and it feels cold. It feelsgood, though, like being alive. Another bolt of pain shoots through me, and just as quickly, I want to sit back down.I can’t do this,I think, my toes curling against the hardwood floor, and then out of nowhere, I think about Ana.
Ana, who hasn’t managed to walk since Franco attacked her. She can’t even stand up, and at least I’m doing that. I can’t give up now.
I have to keep going.
Thankfully, there’s a bathroom attached to my room, so I don’t have to worry about covering up to go out into the hall. It’s all I can do just to get out of bed. I don’t have the energy to wrap a blanket around myself on top of that. I try not to think about the fact that I’m naked, tottering to the bathroom like a wounded deer. I try not to think about what that would look like if anyone saw me right now.
It’s too embarrassing to think about, honestly.
By the time I make it to the doorway of the bathroom, it feels like an hour has passed, although it’s probably only a couple of minutes. I have to grab ahold of the door for a moment to steady myself, taking long, deep breaths that feel as if they take all of the energy I have left in my body.
I hate that it feels like a victory that I managed to go to the bathroom on my own, but at this point, I know I’m lucky to be alive.
Everything changed so quickly.
I know better than to stop and look in the mirror. I don’t want to see what will be reflected back at me. But at some point, I won’t be able to avoid it. It might as well be when I can do it alone, for the first time. When no one can see my reaction but me.
There’s a large oval mirror above the sink in the bathroom, big enough for me to see my body down to my hips. It’s enough—too much, really. I can see all the cuts and bruises, patchworking their way across my flesh in a grotesque pattern that looks nothing like the body I’m used to inhabiting.
I don’t feel like myself. I’ve never felt so distant from it, not even after my parents died, and I was mired in grief, not even on the morning of Franco’s funeral when I had no idea what the future would hold.
I feel numb, broken, and entirely unsure of who I’m supposed to be after this. How I’m supposed to be Viktor’s wife, or anyone’s mother, or anything else, when I don’t even feel like a person.
When I feel like an empty shell.
I can still feel the echoes of the dream clinging to me, but it feels like it happened to a different woman. Like it’s a story that someone told me that I can’t quite fathom actually happening.