There’s a slight whine in his voice, almost a plea, as if he wants me to know that he tried. As if he’s trying to ask forgiveness for what he’s doing, but I can’t form words to respond to any of it. My heart is in my throat, choking me, my breath coming in quick pants, and my pussy feels swollen and tender, my clit aching. I want to touch myself so badly it hurts, but I know deep down that I’d be punished for it—and I can’t let myself fall that far. I can’t touch myself for him while he watches; give him the absolute proof of how terribly I want him at this moment. I’m not even entirely sure it’s him that I want—justpleasure.
“Fuck!” He cries out suddenly, grabbing the bedpost at the foot of it as I feel him leaning forward. “I can’t stop, I can’t, I need to come, I need it, I can’t—”
The words come out of him in a flood at the same time as his cum, the heat of it splattering against my ass in a sudden, startling rush. I feel it spurting over my ass and the small of my back, hear his pleasured groans, his gasping as he marks me with it. “Fuck, oh god, it feels so fucking good, fuck—”
I feel him smear his cockhead against my burning flesh, and then suddenly, he stumbles back. I twist around again despite his instructions, and I see him shuddering, his hands clenched at his sides, his half-hard cock still exposed as he stares at me.
“Get out!” Alexandre shouts suddenly, and I can see he’s shaking harder now, his eyes wide with horror as he looks at me. “Get the fuck out! Clean yourself up—”
I bolt away from the bed, dashing for the door, my skirt falling around me and sticking to my cum-covered ass and back and thighs. I fling myself out into the hall, and as I glance backward once, I see something that stops me in my tracks for just a moment before I keep running, back to my room.
Alexandre is on his knees on the rug, bowed forward, his face in his hands as he shudders, his entire body shaking. I can hear the sobs coming from him.
He’s crying.
13
ALEXANDRE
What have I done? Oh god, oh god, what have I done?
I feel as if I’ve woken up from some horrible nightmare as I stand there, the vision of Noelle swimming to life in front of my eyes, her dress bunched up around her waist, and her palm-reddened ass and back streaked with my cum. I want to believe it’s a dream, that I can wake up and the sight will be gone, but I know that’s not true. I glance down, seeing my half-hard cock hanging out of my trousers, and I know what I’ve done.
I lost control.
I didn’t fuck her. I stopped myself from doing that much. But this is no better.
The marks of my hand are on her ass. My cum is all over her. I violated her, as surely as I did Anastasia—except this time, I did it myself. I hurt her.
She brought it on herself. She snooped for the key. She went into Anastasia’s room. She—
I see Noelle twist around to look at me, her face reddened with shock, tear-stained. Horror fills me, disgust and shame at what I’ve done, and I scream at her without meaning to.
“Get out! Get the fuck out! Clean yourself up—”
She bolts away from the bed like a frightened deer, and why wouldn’t she? I remember the rage that washed over me when I heard her in Anastasia’s room, filling me like a fever, obscuring my thoughts and reasoning like a fog.
I’d seen her in the room, and all I’d been able to think of was Anastasia betraying me, how she’d let Liam touch her, come for him, and gone with him. It broke something in my mind to see Noelle standing there, touching Anastasia’s jewelry box, looking at her things. Defying the one thing I’d told her not to do, just as Anastasia did.
I fall to the floor, my knees hitting the rug, bowing over with the pain flooding me. I cover my face with my hands, shuddering and moaning as I start to sob, knowing that I’ve lost. I lost my mind and my temper, and now I know I can’t ever be freed of the parts of me that are broken. I can’t be healed. I can’t be fixed.
The cracks in my soul are too deep to ever be filled.
Anastasia’s leaving me should have been proof enough of that.
I wish the bullet had killed me,I think dimly as I hear Noelle’s footsteps fleeing down the hall.I wish Liam had aimed better. I wish Yvette hadn’t stepped in. I wish that priest hadn’t helped. I wish I’d died in that hotel room like they all wanted me to, and I could be free of this. The darkness, the demons, everything I wish I wasn’t.
I wish I’d died with Margot all those years before.
I’d thought about it, that night, as I’d cradled her broken and bleeding body in my arms in the barn, after my father beat me and left me there next to her. There was a knife nearby, the kind used for cutting open hay bales; it would have opened my wrists. I could have bled out next to her. I’d told myself that I was staying alive to bury her, that I would die in her grave, or on it, but when the time came, it was only that I was a coward.
I always have been, deep down.
I crawl into the bed, hot tears still running in furrows down my cheeks. I curl on my side, the ache spreading through me like poison, grief, and pain so deep that I can only think of one way to exorcise it.
I’m certain I can still smell Anastasia in the bed, the scent of her skin, the perfume I’d once given her to wear. I reach for the pillow she slept on, pulling it close to me, feeling my chest ache with the need for her. “I miss you,petite poupée,” I whisper into the down, sobs still wracking my body. “My little doll.Tu me manque—”
I ache for her. “Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps,”I whisper, remembering the night in the library, when I’d read her poetry by the fire.The library that Noelle loves so much.