I knew the real one would look different, but I never anticipated the thrill it gave me to watch her muscles seize, to watch her hands move faster over her body. My balls still ache from the power of my own orgasm from watching her pleasure herself. My lips tingle with the urge to praise her because I saw the reaction she had when I did it in the bathroom.
The guilt I saw swimming in her eyes was also part of the reward. She did it because I told her to. She enjoyed it because she couldn’t help herself and then she hated me for it. Each aspect of the entire interaction pleased me.
“Eat something,” I tell her, pointing to the tray of food situated between us before reaching for the remote on the bedside table.
Raya doesn’t look impressed. She doesn’t ooh and ahh when I press a button, making the television glide upward toward the ceiling, out of the footboard. Expensive things, top-notch technology, isn’t something new for her. She’s lived a life of leisure and excess. Despite having all the things that I have now, it pisses me off the life she’s been handed.
She’s not the type of person who has ever had to worry where she’s going to sleep at night. She hasn’t had to concern herself with where her next meal is going to come from or what she would have to do to earn it. Hell, she probably thinks she’s roughing it, to spend a night in line, waiting for concert tickets with a group of her friends. Her bodyguard would be there of course. They’d never leave her unprotected.
She’d be exhausted the next day and make a social media post about the trials and tribulations she suffered. She’s nothing like me. She couldn’t comprehend the things I’ve been through. The things I’ve had to do just to survive. I have no doubt Raya Reed is the type of person who would make a monetary donation to a women’s shelter, brag about it to the people in her life, and honestly feel like she has made a damn difference in the world.
What I have now looks nothing like what I had fifteen years ago when I had to scratch and scrape and make sacrifices and give up bits and pieces of my soul to have what I have.
I take pride in my home. I take pride in the things I’ve worked so hard for. I haven’t gotten them in the most legal way but I have fought hard to have everything I possess. Blood sweat and tears. Isn’t that how the saying goes? Granted, it’s not always been my blood, my sweat, my tears, that have earned me the things that I have.
But it takes a certain kind of person, with a certain level of dedication to hurt others in order to get what you want and what you need. No one batted an eye when I was the person screaming and crying and bleeding for them to get us a leg up. Why should I care if I earned the things I have in the same way?
I point the remote at the television, scanning slowly through every channel. I pause and read the description of each and every pornographic movie on the listing. I don’t want to watch porn. It wouldn’t make this situation any better and being in the bed beside her with the echoes of skin slapping against skin wouldn’t end well for either of us. Just as I expect, she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t tell me that she refuses to watch anything that I would choose. She doesn’t make a suggestion. She doesn’t ask for a certain show. She just sits quietly like a little church mouse, hoping not to be noticed.
I settle on a syndicated television show, starting with season one episode one, before dropping the remote to the bed. She doesn’t pick up something to eat from the tray until I do. Although it annoys me that all she’s doing is mimicking my exact behaviors much the same way she did in the bathroom, only touching herself harder, only moving her fingers faster when I did the same, I don’t say anything. She has to eat. I may be a depraved monster that has abducted her and forced her to come on her own fingers, but I don’t want her to waste away into nothing.
She doesn’t eat with the same gusto that I do. Maybe she doesn’t feel like she’s starving after an intense orgasm the way I do.
I’m in a generous mood, so when I notice her favoring the strawberries over the grapes, I eat the grapes, leaving the fruit she desires for her.
The television rattles on, neither one of us speaking even as I climb out of the bed and place the now empty food tray on the table across the room.
Her eyes are on me rather than the television when I re-approach the bed, but once again, she doesn’t say a word as I climb up to join her. It only takes about ten minutes of my naked skin in the open air for me to begin to feel discomfort. I get the first real reaction out of her in over an hour when I shift my body and lift the covers, joining her under them.
I don’t touch her, but that doesn’t keep her from thinking that I will if I decide to take those liberties.
I don’t make the mistake of thinking that she wants me there, even though she doesn’t ask me to leave. That would be crazy. This woman may do what I want her to, she may obey my commands, but she’s never going to want to.
I push the limits of her sanity as I inch closer. Still without touching, I close the distance until I can feel the warmth of her skin against mine. The heat radiating from her own body soothes me. It makes me once again realize that this woman may be more dangerous to me than I could ever be to her.
Chapter 12
Raya
I swear my heart is skipping beats every couple of seconds. I’m naked. He’s naked. And we’re under the covers of this big bed together.
He purposely scooted closer to me, but once again, he’s not touching me. It’s the threat of it that scares me so much.
He seems completely engrossed in the show playing on the television. I know better than to think that he’s not paying attention to me. It’s weird how attuned to me he seems.
With him this close, it’s easy for me to dart my eyes to the left and take in his features. I do it cautiously, my eyes darting back to the television screen repeatedly.
I take in his facial features first. His eyelashes are long, brush the apples of his cheeks when he blinks. The blue of his eyes would almost be mesmerizing. It’s a color a woman could easily get lost in.
If things were different in my life, I know I’m the type of woman that would get lost in such spectacularly blue eyes. It’s impossible to do that now that I’ve seen the monster behind those eyes.
My second glance lands on his jawline. The stubble there is a golden brown no more than a quarter of an inch in length.
It makes me wonder how long it’s been since he shaved. Three days, five days, a week? I have no idea.
It’s not often I see men in the process of growing a beard. Either they’re clean shaven or the beard is always in place. The process of it is fascinating to me.
I clench my hands in my lap, the movement concealed under the blankets. The tips of my fingers tingle with some weird urge to touch his face, to see what that stubble feels like against my skin, hitting me harder than it should.