I snatch my hand from his fingers, irritated I’ve let myself become a mush of emotions and frantically squashing the thought of anything but research, regardless of how comfortable my fingers feel under his lips. Men like Blaine have nothing to offer but smut and deviance, no matter the unparalleled thoughts that are currently filling me with anything but those visions. Fucking man.
“Why are you doing this, Blaine? We were talking about you, not us. There is no us. There can’t be.”
He just raises a brow at me and turns away to start weaving through the crowd again, leaving me without an answer and questioning if my opinion is even relevant to how he thinks.
I watch him go for a few moments, considering what the hell he’s playing at, even if I can’t deny the pull I feel to him. Why would he push that? Why? It must be a ruse, something that his kind do perhaps. Something to lull us mere mortals into submission or servitude. Actually, maybe it’s just a way of him showing me something that I’ve asked for. Not that I’m sure what, unless he’s trying to make me fall in love with him, which, quite annoyingly, appears to be working.
A snort leaves my nose at the thought of it all. Alana Williams in love with a sadist. Blaine Jacobs at that. It’s preposterous, regardless of the way his hands tightening on my body makes me crazy, or this strange sense of love that keeps infiltrating coherent thought. I’d call the whole venture a story if I could, a woman, me, being swept off her feet by the big bad monster. Little red riding hood springs to mind. It’s annoying, making me think about things I have no right thinking, including romance that he clearly won’t know anything about. I don’t even know who he is. Christ.
I eventually flick my eyes around the restaurant to see a selection of eaters just gawping at me as I hover in the middle of the floor like an idiot. I’d almost forgotten where I was. The thought of professional ineptitude makes my feet move, springing me forward into action instead of labouring in this wistful state of irrational thought. It’s the sort of endeavour that might just go and spank a sadist for confusing this further than it needs to be. Stupid man. Beautiful, but stupid.
The words don’t entirely ring true when I finally find him again. He’s outside on the deck, overlooking a view of the town and staring at it like the weight of the world is on his shoulders.
“Where are we anyway?” I ask, not necessarily interested in the answer but needing to say something to get conversation flowing again.
“I think you should go home.” His words stop me in my tracks, barely able to move my feet for the sudden loss that strikes my heart. It pierces the core of me, rendering me near speechless as I attempt to stay strong and in control. “I can’t do this with someone like you.”
“Why?”
“You know why,” he says, his head dropping a little as he turns to look back at me. My heart flounders further at his inspection of me, casing a flurry of foreboding to crawl over my skin. “I should never have started with you. I should have protected you from this, not advanced it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I reply stupidly, knowing full well what he’s talking about and neither ready to disband the feeling, nor amass it further. “You’re just confusing this into something it isn’t. We can carry on as is. There’s no need to …”
“Stop, Alana,” he says as he starts walking towards the door of the restaurant, his body moving as efficiently as it ever does but with a sense of hesitation that shows me I’ll only have to speak to stop his momentum. But why should I? It’s not like this is a love affair; it’s not. It’s a mission of intent, one that shouldn’t involve feelings or sentiment. He knew it when we started, as did I. Unfortunately, the sight of his hand grabbing the handle to walk away, pressuring me into an answer, almost forces words from my mouth I haven’t got my head around. “This should finish before it goes wrong. You know I’m right.”
“No.” It’s out of my mouth before I’ve got a sensible reason for saying it, my own fingers reaching for his back without any understanding of why. “Blaine?” He turns his body around fully to look at me, waiting for me to confirm the rest of my thoughts, but I’ve got nothing else to say. What am I supposed to say? I think you’re right? He can’t be, and neither can I. Neither one of us should be letting any of this emotion in. It’s just sex and kink. The things I needed to know about to write my book. It’s not …
“What, Alana?”
“I…” Nothing. No sense. No opinion. I can’t find anything to make this seem plausible as my head confuses itself further and sends me spiralling into mouthfuls of illegitimate ramblings. I can’t even spit them out under his gaze, already knowing he’ll see through the lies anyway. It’s the lack of my pills. It must be. I’m confused and irrational. Unable to make a coherent decision for all the possible repercussions of such idiotic thoughts.
“I can’t fuck unless you are in pain. Do you understand that?” Oh god, what a thought. It only adds to the muddle of my mind, making me gaze at his face and wonder what life with that would be. It’s overwhelming, regardless of his beauty and the fact that I see the insecurity in his eyes as he says it. He’s as lost in this as I am, barely holding enough rational thought in his own mind to help me make up mine.
“I know, but what if...” What if he changes? What if us being together changes that? I mean, he’s normal as well. A human. A man. And does it matter anyway? I like the way he handles me. I enjoy its tension, no matter how much I’m trying to suggest it’s just for my book.
He shakes his head.
“It will never go away. It will never subside. It will only get worse.”
The statement makes me chastise myself as I look at the floor, considering any option available and remembering the pain already imprinted on my back. There aren’t any, and he’s right. If this goes any further than it already has I will fall in love with him hook, line and sinker. If I’m honest, I’m already skating down that slippery slope full tilt, my fingers grasping onto my book in the hope that it offers me a reason for being so stable against him. This, us, is something so much larger than simple words. I know that when I’m writing it. I can feel it in my chest when I scrawl the scenes, relaying them as love rather than fucking, regardless of Priest’s revelations.
“Yes, I know,” I reply eventually, my eyes meeting his and searching for a sense of clarity.
“I won’t promise you anything.” That’s his clarity. It’s crystal clear and full of such candour that I know I’m winging my way into hell’s embrace, barely giving sense to the worry of it and hardly bothered by the consequences.
“Yes.”
“I’m a fucking asshole.” He says it as if it should make a difference. And it should. I know it should, but something about the way he caught me makes me know there’s more than just that. There has to be, doesn’t there? “If you come with me, Alana, you come with no hope of more than it is.”
He stares, his mouth flat and solemn, as if this should be enough warning of the unending storms that will batter my body. The thought makes me realize that catching me requires me to fall first, possibly without thought or consideration to the rights or wrongs of leaping. It was the same beneath the water, the same on my knees. It’s the same all the time. But he always catches me, doesn’t he? Whether he likes it or not. It’s inbuilt in him, maybe only for me, I don’t know, but he will catch me if I ask. He might be an asshole, but he’s an honest one. One I want to spend more time with. One I’d like to enjoy outside the bedroom, too, learning about him and myself in the process. He’s the most handsome thing I’ve ever seen and as debilitating to regularity as I’ve ever encountered. He electrifies me, rendering anything other than this thing between us near inconsequential.
“Why aren’t you running, Alana? What do you want?”
“I…” Love, that’s what I want, no matter how much I’m standing here trying to dismiss it or argue about it. The thought scares me to death as I finally acknowledge its depth inside me, my legs backing me away from him s
hakily as I do.
“That’s exactly what you should be doing,” he says, holding the door open and nodding at it as if I should use it. “I was wrong to start any of this with you. I knew in the beginning.” Did he? That means he must feel the same way. He wouldn’t have continued if he didn’t. In fact, he tried to stop it, didn’t he? He said no, tried to put me with someone else. He did it after the pool, after the bedroom, after whatever was starting on the stairs. It makes me stop, and look at him again, barely restraining the need to kiss him and tell him how I feel.
“But...”
“No. I won’t push you further. It’s already been enough,” he says, tension flowing out of every part of him as he slams the door he’s holding open and pockets his hands.
“But I think...” It leaves me unconsciously, my brain unable to stop my mouth’s movement.
“What? You think you love me?”
Fuck.
My tongue licks my lips, trying to contain the need to tell him. It’s irrational and unreasonable. It’s hardly even a recognisable emotion to me, having barely touched on the thought before him. I’ve never felt its complexity, never felt its draw, I’ve only written it, but I know it’s more than I’ve ever felt before. It’s a consuming energy, binding me to him without any lucidity. We haven’t dated. We haven’t talked. We haven’t even just had a drink together, walked along a beach holding hands. Nothing. And it’s only been such a short amount of time. People don’t fall in love like that, do they?
I glance at my fingertips, searching the ink stains for clarification of feelings I can’t quite explain. Perhaps that’s what the staining does—perhaps it blindly opens up windows and avenues for more, little care for wellbeing or safety recognised as they come. But try as I might, and regardless of my acceptance of the facts, I can’t get the words out. Does anyone love someone like him, and if they do, are they considered sane? They can’t be. It’s madness. Utter lunacy.
“I do.”
My hand shoots to my mouth, trying to recall the words or at least search for other ones to counter them. Instead of finding anything, I just stand here wondering what might come back at me. For once in my life I’m in my own story. It’s one filled with confusion and a myriad of reasons to run. I know that. It’s turbulent, and will be filled with a passion I know nothing of nor hardly dare entertain as acceptable. I shouldn’t be doing this. I should be running backwards, or forwards, or anywhere rather than into his hands, but I can’t stop myself.
He looks as shocked as me in some ways, his frown descending to counter my words. It only emboldens my thoughts, making me realise he’s as tangled about the right thing to do as I am. We should both walk away, shouldn’t we? I should leave him in his world and head back to my own, remembering a time when I dipped my toe into unknown waters and enjoyed its strange romanticism.
“I can’t...”
He doesn’t finish the sentence, or perhaps it wasn’t a sentence to finish. I don’t know because he just turns, opens the door again, and leaves me, the flash of his hand the last image I see as the door swings closed behind him. My own body turns from the vision, my eyes searching the skyline of the unknown town for answers I haven’t got, as my arms wrap around me. There’s nothing there to help or guide me. No answers other than the one I just announced out of my own mouth. I love him, or am certainly falling in love with him. It might be unreasonable, and of no use to my emotional well-being, but I do, or I am. And having told him that, he’s left me here alone, giving me nothing in return for my offering other than the sight of his back. Perhaps that should be warning enough. Perhaps I should lock that image into place and remember that he does not feel the same, and that he will not give me any compassion or love, but I don’t because I know he will, irrespective of the fact he’s left me here. I wish I understood the instinct that tells me that. I wish I could explain it to myself and let it hold me in its warmth, but I can’t, and yet nothing stops a smile from spreading onto my face at the erratic thoughts. He’s out there somewhere, thinking of me. It doesn’t matter that he’s left, and it doesn’t matter that he’s confused, because I know he’ll come back. He hasn’t finished with me yet. I am uncompleted business, a work in progress. Try as he might, he won’t be able to abandon whatever this is. He would see it as a journey incomplete, a venture uncontained. He’s the one who has run, not me. It will irk the living hell out of him as he searches his own emotions, trying to deny them, just as I have done. Well, no more for me. This is what it is, and will be whatever it will become. My story will play out one way or another, either finishing with grand gestures of commitment or relegating itself to clandestine adventures alone. I will not control its destiny like I do everything else in my life. He will.
I sit eventually, my feet propped up on the balcony as I relay the thoughts in my head into my notebook. It’s cleansing in some ways, chaotic no doubt, especially without my pills or his aura to stabilise me, but it’s instinctual to write it regardless. And all the time I do, I feel my mind willing him to walk back through the doors and rescue the moment from its unclear ending, my body screaming for the same resolution to its new ceaseless ache for him. But nothing happens as I continue writing, scribbling each and every jumbled thought that enters my head to try to find sense in it all. It comes eventually, though—the melancholy, the sense of abandonment in a moment of beauty. It flows so well after a while that I begin to lose myself in it, hardly thinking of Blaine at all in the present tense, rather imagining a love story unfold in my imagination that endures countless barriers, breaking through them with only one destination in mind. It makes my smile grow wider as I scrawl the words, imagining a future for a pair such as these. It reminds me of the beach at his house, and of the waves crashing in the background, two lovers walking together and overcoming whatever rationale keeps them separated. Sadism be damned. There is hope in these words, love that connects beyond the reality of the average existence. It binds in a more truthful way.
I lift my head from my scribbles, gazing over the rooftops to the far side of the small town and remembering his words. He was right. It’s full of honesty and trust, more so perhaps than the normal pronouncement of love. To give yourself to someone who wants to cause pain, needs to even, to offer them that with no recriminations and bathe in the glory of their honesty, too? That’s a love unencumbered by restriction or temptation. It’s a love offered without thought for its boundaries, but it’s also something one needs to truly delve into to appreciate. It’s something I have not yet done, not with any real sense of attachment, anyway. The thought makes me frown, my back rubbing against the metal chair to sense him there. I might have taken him inside me, felt him on my skin, and I might have had my hands chained, but I’m quite sure I haven’t felt what he knows he can do, will do even. He knows the end of this journey, doesn’t he? He’s been there, knowing what he’ll do to someone who offers themselves freely. That’s why he’s left. It‘s why he won’t answer the question about loving before. He’s scared. And because of that, it’s all in his hands to bring himself back to me.
I’m not sure how much longer I sit here writing, but by the time I finish the last page of my notebook, I realise night’s drawing in around me. Dusk settles over the town like a low fog, clouding what was sunny a short time ago and making me shiver against the evening chill. I pull my cardigan around me for protection against the cold. Maybe he’s not coming back. Maybe he really has left me here alone to imagine fantasies that aren’t real. I delve into my bag, searching for my phone in the hope that maybe he’s sent a message, only to find that I have no power. Well, I suppose if he’s not coming back then I need to find a hotel, or maybe even think about getting myself home somehow. I don’t even know where we are. It’s a town called Braysville. That’s all I’ve got. The roads here were just back lanes, all off the beaten track giving me no idea where I am in relation to big cities, certainly not Manhattan. I’ve done no travelling in America since I’ve been here, only the signings that t
he publishers pay for. I’m usually whisked there in whichever manner is quickest, not giving me any time to actually see any of the locations or ponder their merits. It’s yet another thing that troubles me lately. For all my wealth, I’m not allowed time to discover the reason why I work so hard? It’s as tiresome as the monotony of the same book after book I’ve been producing, draining what little of my soul I have left.
I stand up, looking over the barrier down onto the street to see if there are any motels around. There are none that I can see from here, but there has to be one somewhere, so I resign myself to that fact and scoop my notebook into my bag, ready to head on with my life to some degree and leave, but I can’t. My feet don’t want to. They want to stay here and wait, still trying to tell me that he will be back. It’s the same sensation that told me he’d rescue me. It’s in my guts, low down, somehow connected to my feet at this moment and refusing to let me move. I snort out a laugh, amused at my inability to control my own body because of Blaine. It’s ponderous, making me forget all my questions and eventually just try to accept the instinctual pull. It’s here, buried inside me and urging me to do the right thing by my body. A cocktail of both insecurity and advancement, rising though my veins and linking me to something I neither appreciate nor am quite ready for. It’s wondrous really, a defining of something other than the norm. Almost reminiscent of past lives, telling me I’ll find the path eventually regardless of my current confusion.
The door opens behind me. I hear it and tilt my head as I keep staring out at the view, my arms resting on the rail’s edge. It’s him. I know it is. I can tell by the quake that flutters my skin regardless of the space between us. It intensifies the feeling inside my bones, wakening them and reminding me of the feel of him holding them. Such strength lingers in his grip. Some would call it bruising, maybe even define it as simply a murderous touch, but having listened to my insides, having registered the bond that’s happening, I can’t say it’s to do with the pain he causes. No, it’s the holding that’s more relevant this time. I can feel it, as if it wants to engulf my torrid mind, emptying it of its concerns and trials. It’s releasing in some ways, elevating me past the constancy of multiple names and words. It calms me, making me see only him inside there. Him and his mind.
Once Upon A (Stained Duet Book 1) Page 30
