by Peach, Hanna
I feel the ties loosen and slip away. He leans against the headboard and pulls me against him so I’m nestled with my back against his chest. His arms wrap around me. Using his thumbs he caresses the marks around my wrists where I pulled against my restraints.
“Cade?”
“Hmmm.”
“What do you eat for breakfast?”
I can feel him chuckling behind me. “Why? You want to cook for me? You know I can’t stay for breakfast, kitten.”
“I know. I just…” Will I sound silly? I sigh. “It just feels weird to be so close to you and not even know what you eat for breakfast. I guess I just wanted to know.”
He relaxes behind me. I think he understands. “Oats. Sometimes I chuck a little fruit into it. Eggs if I have more time.”
“And do you read the paper?”
“Yes.”
I smile. Any piece of information I get about him makes me smile. It’s like every time I know a little bit more about him, he becomes a little more mine.
We finish our routine. I shower first, alone. Then he does. He takes in his overnight bag with him so that he can dress before he comes back out again. Just as the bathroom door unlocks a small hope blips in me that maybe this time he won’t have dressed yet or maybe he has left his shirt off. Every time, my heart sinks.
We settle in to sleep with him behind me, one arm wrapped over me. But in the soft dim shaded silver with moonlight filtering through all the open windows, I can’t fall sleep tonight. I stare at the silhouette of the dining table and the small kitchenette. I see myself cooking eggs for Caden at the stove. He would come up behind me and nestle his nose in my hair and whisper good morning. We would sit down together and I would slip the paper by his plate and look at him across our breakfast table. He would smile back at me and reach across for my hand.
Stupid girl. It’s no good for me to wish these things. It is no good for me to dream. The images dissolve and a sadness falls over me like snow. No, we aren’t normal people and we aren’t a normal couple. And we will never be.
I am startled out of my thoughts when Caden’s breathing deepens into the rumble of a light snore. Cade has fallen asleep before me. He has never fallen asleep before me. He is a light sleeper and he always seems to wake as well if I ever wake in the night. Suddenly I am completely aware of him behind me. I can feel his chest pushing at my back with every inhale and his breath moving my hair with every exhale.
I want desperately to know what he looks like when he’s sleeping. I could turn and look at him. Just look at him. Just one look. No harm in looking, right? I wouldn’t be breaking any rules…
I start to turn, slowly, shifting minutely so as not to disturb his arm laying over me then pausing so as not to wake him. I tense up when he shifts. My heart is beating heavily but steadily. He mumbles something. And I close my eyes and pretend to be asleep. He’s going to wake any minute now. Any minute now.
I hear him mumble again. Then he seems to settle. He didn’t wake? When I hear his breathing even out again, I count five full excruciatingly slow minutes before I open my eyes and start to move again. Slowly, slowly, he comes into view as I turn to face him.
If it is possible, he’s even more beautiful when he’s asleep. The hardness of his jaw has softened and his lips fall into a relaxed pout. He looks young and vulnerable. I can’t help the smile that pulls at my lips. This big loving bear of a man is mine. My Cade. I want to press my lips to his. I want to touch his face. I want to brush the hair from his forehead. But I don’t. Surely it will wake him.
Then my eyes travel down his thick neck and to his wide chest. I have never laid my hand on his chest but even through this thin dark t-shirt I can see the fullness of his solid muscles. The skin that peaks out from the top of his shirt teases me with the start of dark curls. My fingers flinch out, but I hold them back. I am aching to touch him. But I can’t. I shouldn’t.
Rule number two: He can touch me, but I can’t touch him.
Why the hell not? a voice in me demands like an obstinate child. He is mine, surely I can touch what is mine.
No. No. Those are the rules. Remember the rules.
So I stare at the patch of skin I can see at the top of his shirt. I wonder what the skin there would feel like. Hard yet smooth, I imagine. I can’t tear my eyes from his skin. Do I dare?
Just one touch when he is asleep. Just one. There is no harm in that, is there?
I check his face. His eyes are still closed. He sounds like he is still asleep.
Just one touch. He would never have to know.
I am barely breathing as I bend my elbow and lift my hand. My movements are torturously slow, a contrast to the rapid increase of my heartbeat. Slow. Controlled. Closer. Closer. I pause an inch away from his chest. Did his breath hitch? My eyes flicker between his face and his chest. No. I don’t think he’s awake. His breathing is steady and he hasn’t moved.
I uncurl my fingers and brush the collar of his shirt, lightly. I thrill with the forbidden contact. But I still haven’t touched him. I reach out further until my fingertips brush at the hair at the base of his neck.
He moves so fast my body jolts. His fingers clamp down on my wrist so tightly I swear it almost breaks. His eyes open before they narrow.
“What the hell are you doing?” His voice pools like blackened liquid in my ears and it give me chills.
I gape but nothing comes out of my mouth.
“I said, what the hell are you doing?” he yells.
For a moment I can’t speak. My body and my heart are frozen in ice and I am numb except for where he is gripping me. Gripping me tighter than he has ever gripped me before. And I realize he is hurting me. I try to pull away, but his grip tightens.
“You’re hurting me,” I whisper as I fight the urge to cry. Caden is hurting me. He means to hurt me.
“You’re hurting me, Jacob”
“I’m hurting you? You’re fucking hurting me, princess.” He slams his left hand against his chest and it makes a sharp deep thudding noise. “Right here. You’re hurting me right fucking here.”
Caden looks down to my wrist. As if he just realized it, he snatches his hand away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” The darkness fades from his eyes. But it’s replaced with a ghost.
Then the glare he gives me is so unkind it crushes me.
“What were you doing?” he asks again. The volume of his voice has lowered, but his words are short and clipped and it pinches at my heart.
“I’m sorry. I just wanted to look at you. You look so peaceful when you sleep.”
His eyes narrow even further. He knows that I’m lying.
“Turn around.”
I do. But he doesn’t throw his arm around me or tuck me into his body like he usually does.
“I thought you understood the rules. I thought I could trust you.” His voice is hard and devoid of warmth. I fight the urge to shiver.
“You can.” I whimper. Shit. I’m an idiot. Stupid, stupid girl.
“So why would you try to go against me?”
I want to scream at him, “Because this urge to know you grows with every night we spend together. Because I wear this curiosity under my clothes and it’s rough and itches at my skin. Because I burn with unfairness that you can see me and touch me but I can’t see or touch you back.” But I don’t.
“I would never deliberately hurt you, kitten. Never. But if you try to break my rules again… it would have to be over between us.”
“Over?” My voice shakes. No. Over a stupid rule? But why? That doesn’t even make sense.
“How can I be with you if I no longer trust you?”
I go cold with fear. He can’t leave me. He can’t. I’ll die. The emptiness and loneliness that was there before he came into my life will yaw wide open and swallow me and I will starve in this desert of my own making.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble. “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.” I squeeze my eyes shut and pray that I can keep this curiosi
ty at bay.
“Go to sleep,” he orders.
I don’t argue. “I’m sorry.” I say it again, hoping that it makes a difference.
I lay there terrified. Terrified because I can feel that this need to uncover Caden is growing into something I can’t contain anymore. Even at the risk of losing him forever. Am I sadistic? Am I so messed up that I am trying to sabotage the only happiness in my life?
Strangely enough, the risk of losing him just makes the need to get inside his life that much stronger. The more I know about him, the more I need to know. I can see this vicious cycle tunneling out into my future, turning back upon itself over and over until it disappears into a single point. A single fixation.
I can only pray that the next time I break his rules, I won’t get caught.
By morning, like always, Caden is gone. As I wake, I am left scrabbling for a ghost and clutching at sheets that have already gone cold. For a moment I wonder if I have dreamed him up, if Caden is only a figment of my imagination. Then I feel the lovely tenderness between my legs and the slight soreness around my wrists and I know he is real.
I shut my eyes as the wave of emptiness rushes in. I miss him already. I try to force myself to sleep so I can go a little longer without the sinking, bludgeoning knowledge that he has gone and that I don’t know when I’ll see him again.
But sleep doesn’t come, not when the pillow smells of his hair and the sheets smell like us. And the scent of rose petals release into the air around me as I roll over them and crush them. A sharp need tightens my belly as I remember how the roses came to be scattered around the bed last night.
I wonder if I’ll ever be able to smell roses again without thinking of Caden. Even if it was someone else giving me those roses. He didn’t lie when he said he would ruin me for all other men.
Chapter 11
I started kickboxing almost five years ago after watching two guys go at it in a gym. I tried it and loved it. It helped pull me out of my depression over… Jacob. The things I don’t talk about, even to myself. It became my way of taking my power back. Back into my own hands and elbows and knees.
Now it is one of the only constants in my life. When you have moved around like I have and may need to move again at any minute, trust me, you need constants, anchors. I have always been able to find a gym to train in wherever I go. I don’t need special equipment, just me, my fists and my knees and my legs. It is one of the few things I can take with me anywhere, and no one – no one – can take it away from me. It is mine.
Kickboxing keeps me fit, and I feel stronger for it. And this feeling of strength has grown thick enough to almost cover up my ever-present fear. Almost.
I enter the boxing room of the gym and wave to my kickboxing trainer, Mick. He heads over to me and greets me with a nod. “You look like shit, kid.”
“So do you, old man.”
Mick holds up a thick rectangular pad about the length of his torso for me to hit and knee. I start out light with a few warm-up rounds of well-worn combinations. Left-left-right.
“Elbows in. Guard up, you stinkin’ pansy.” Oh, yeah. Everyone, meet Michael O’Leary, or Mick for short.
Mick is an Irish immigrant, tall, thick and pale with a reddish hue to his brown hair. He’s an ex-cop who spends his time between kickboxing and boxing coaching. Sometimes he moonlights as a private investigator for one of his other ex-cop buddies. Usually I would be a bit wary of spending time with a PI, but Mick stays out of my shit and I stay out of his. I’m pretty sure he’s got problems at home with his wife, or ex-wife, or something. But I don’t ask and he doesn’t tell.
Besides, I doubt that he would find much on me anyway even if he did decide to look. I officially dropped off the face of this planet five years ago.
We move on. Left-right-left-right-uppercut.
“Jesus, is that all you got? My eighty-year-old grandma can hit harder than you.”
We move on to elbows.
“Drive from the hip. From the hip. This isn’t the fucking ballet, God damn it.”
I sometimes wonder if he practices his insults at home. I swear they get more creative the more I train with him. Some days, when I’m having bad days, his insults make me angry. But then I hit harder and soon I feel better.
Finally we move on to knees then kicks. My two favorite. I love kickboxing because it lets me use my legs and knees in a fight. A woman’s strongest part of her body is her legs. I fucking love my legs for this reason. In five years my soft twiggy legs have grown toned, curvy and powerful. I’d like to think that anyone I knew from back then wouldn’t recognize me now.
At the end of our session I am sweaty and grunting with a kind of happiness as the adrenaline swims through my bloodstream. Mick grunts and throws a towel at me. “You did alright, kid.”
I nod. In Mick-speak, he means he’s happy with my progress.
Chapter 12
Only mornings later I find a letter in my mailbox on my way back from a quick trip to the corner store. A note? So soon after I just saw him? I am so surprised, I tear it open as I climb the steps to my apartment.
Shaftesbury Hotel, Tonight 6pm, Suite 413
I frown as I unlock my door, juggling the note, the empty envelope and the bottle of milk in my other hand. Tonight? He means for me to meet him tonight?
Inside my apartment the small radio I left on before I headed out is blaring the news, distracting me; a robbery, another terrorist bombing in the Middle East, and a young girl was found murdered last night, shot in the forehead execution style. I flinch and rush to shut the radio off. No news. I can’t listen to the news.
I turn back to the note Caden left me. Usually the note arranges the meeting for several days later. He has never sent me a note to meet him that night. An odd feeling creeps over me. But I push it away and try to just be happy that I get to see him so soon. I head off to have a shower and get ready for my lunch shift at work. But this uneasy feeling won’t wash off.
Later that evening I am walking into the lobby of the Shaftesbury Hotel downtown. It’s one of those grand luxury hotel chains that made its name in the roaring eighties, their significance diminishing with the rise of the middle class and popularity of the boutique-style hotels. The lobby is grand and gilded in a way that seems almost dated now. Too much mahogany and gold everywhere. Still, the concierge is friendly when I enter the lobby, and he directs me towards the mirror-paneled lifts with a nod.
Suite 413 is on the fourth floor. The lift door opens onto a wide corridor paneled in more mahogany and trimmed with delicate Victorian light fittings. I knock on suite 413, an odd sense of nerves mingling with the usual rush of anticipation in my veins.
The door opens and Caden appears. The first thing I notice is the flash of relief across his face before he lunges for me. He grabs me and pulls me to him without saying a word. His mouth finds mine. His kiss is firm and intense and his tongue dips hungrily into me. It feels… desperate. Like this might be the last time we see each other and he is trying to suck every last drop of happiness that he can from my lips before it’s too late.
Oh God. Something isn’t right.
I pull away. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
He latches his mouth onto mine and silences me. But I know he’s lying.
I am pulled into the suite and the door slams behind me. Caden won’t tear his mouth from mine or his hands. God, his hands are everywhere and they are grabby and needy and frantic. All his usual composure – his control, his desire to draw things out – are gone. Left behind is just this… this raw need.
Before I can comprehend what is happening, my dress has been unzipped and yanked off me. He pushes me up against the wall hard. Almost too hard. He slams forward into me, trapping me. My breath is stolen from the force. He pushes his face into my neck, forcing my head to tilt back, and begins to bite and suck so hard that I can feel the flesh underneath his mouth bruising. He forces a hand in between my back and the wall, and my bra is s
tripped from me. His hands dip to my hips–
“Caden, wait.”
My voice seems to reach him and he tenses. I push him back from my neck so I can see him. I notice his eyes. Undiluted and wild, he can barely hold my gaze. But there is a pleading, insistent begging. He needs this. Whatever has happened, he doesn’t need me interrogating him; he needs me to make it better.
“Have me,” I say.
Relief floods his eyes and he pulls the red silk tie I’ve only just noticed from around his neck. He crosses my hands over my head and begins to bind my forearms together. As he raises his arms I smell a hint of must and sweat. I study him closely as he binds me. What else have I missed?
I notice the bags under his eyes and the stubble across his jaw. He’s tired. He has barely slept. Perhaps he hasn’t slept at all. He definitely has gone a day or two without shaving. I want to kiss his face and his eyes and his jaw, but I don’t move. He looks so stern that I am scared to show him this tenderness at this moment. My eyes lower. And I notice his button-up shirt is wrinkled. His shirts are never wrinkled.
What has happened that he would go without sleep? And without time to shave or change his shirt or shower?
Cade breaks through my thoughts by pressing against me in a fierce kiss. I feel like I am melting between his hard body and the wall. His hands slip to my hips. In a single violent move, my underwear is torn from me. Before I can take another breath my eyes are covered by his large hand and everything goes dark.
I hear him unzip his pants. Almost instantly I feel Cade between my legs. His other hand grabs around my ass and he lifts one leg to spread me. He enters me in one swift push and starts to move furiously inside me.
My body responds with a violent pleasure. My back thuds against the wall as he grinds into my hips. I can feel his breath coming hot and fast against my cheek. He has never been so rough with me and it scares me and thrills me at the same time. I can do nothing except let myself be taken.
