by Meli Raine
I try to turn around, to look at him and kiss him and say yes with my bruised body and battered heart. He tightens his grip on me.
“Not yet,” he demands. “I watched you, the curve of your spine as you turned to the right. The way the air loved your ribs, displaying the gentle slope of your breast against bone. How the light honored you like the queen of the sun. You became pure beauty when you let me look at you. Your eyes aren’t just mirrors of your soul. Your entire body makes me realize my eyes have spent my whole life gazing at shadows. You’re the only person who is real. Alice’s painting captures that,” he says, his throat tight, his hands tighter against my torso, “but I want to make you even more real. Let me do that, Jane,” he continues as he slowly pivots my body until I’m facing him, my breast grazing against the buttons of his suit.
I answer him with a kiss.
In the middle of our tongues playing with each other, his taste like ambrosia, he lifts me into his arms and carries me down the hall, open and victorious, until we’re in the guest bedroom Alice had ready for me when we arrived. He sets me down on the bed and I stretch, arms wide open, nipples tight and needing more than his gaze.
So much more.
He reaches for his belt buckle, releasing the end of the leather belt, shrugging out of his suit jacket. With open pants, he changes course and gets out of his business shirt.
It’s my turn to watch.
Suits are, by their very nature, conservative. They are neat packages of conformity, designed for the man wearing them to blend in. That’s why special agents and bodyguards wear them. A suit conveys authority. Power. Structure.
Watching a man remove the symbol of public dominance is a delightfully sensual sight. The prospect of naked, private dominance leaves me breathless.
Broad, bare shoulders reveal themselves as he strips out of the fine white cotton, folding the shirt neatly over the back of a wooden chair next to the bed. He stands there, bare chested above his pants. Hands on hips, he pauses and lets me enjoy the view.
Less than a minute later, he’s nude, stretched next to me on top of the made bed, one knee between mine, one of my legs already around his waist, wanting him more than I’ve ever wanted anything or anyone in my life.
And for once, I get what I want.
For a fleeting second, every single critic pours into my mind, undermining what Silas and I have right now. All the tweets, every Facebook threat, emails and blog posts and doctored images and memes run like a horror film behind my closed eyelids, a flicker palace of pain and shame. It’s overwhelming and constant, a long, unyielding death march through the worst humanity has to offer, all in the name of judgment. At times like this I can’t shut it off. Trying to compartmentalize it only feeds the beast.
Love is the antidote.
Do I have enough?
“Hey,” Silas says, sensing the swirling void of inhumanity inside me. “Let go, Jane. They’ll drag you down if you let them. Don’t let them.”
Tears fill the corners of my eyes. I fight them, but his words give me another avenue, one I hadn’t considered. “I’m not the one clinging, Silas. They are. They won’t let go of me.”
“Give them nothing to hold onto. Hand yourself over to me. Every part. Every piece.” His kiss lands in the valley between my breasts, a sweet press of lips that brushes a sigh from me, the sound rasping like a cleanse, a surprise spring shower, a rainfall during the April mountain melt.
“How?”
“I don’t know the how. I just know the why. Do it because I love you.”
I know I’m breathing. I feel it. My body works, pressed against his. But did I just hear what I thought I heard?
His chin rests where his lips just were, eyes on mine as I look down and see my future in those beautiful swirling blue irises, framed by long lashes that beckon. “Yes. I love you. Give yourself to me so I can keep them at bay. They don’t deserve you. Not your body, not your heart, not your mind. And definitely not your memory. Don’t let them do that to you. Destroyers live for the space they can take up, for the lives they can end, for the love they can vanquish. They can’t create. They don’t know how. And in their frustration at their inability, they only have one weapon: annihilation.”
Riding up the planes of my bare skin, my nipples dragging along the dusting of hair at his chest, he comes to rest on me, thigh bones long and lean, belly tight and soft. Those big arms cage me in, fingers brushing stray hair off my face. Soulful eyes meet mine, the air between us redolent with our sex, our unique imprints. Inhaling deeply, I breathe in his truth.
“They only know one way, Jane. You have universes to explore with your capacity for love. Don’t let one limited world define you. Don’t let it contaminate us.”
And with that, my heart snaps in two.
“Never,” I say fiercely. “Never. I don’t want them inside my head. I don’t want this, Silas. Please make it go away.”
“You have to trust me.”
“I do!”
“Then show me.”
“How?”
“By letting me show you that I am trustworthy. Give me your body, Jane. All of it. Every bit.” He kisses me, a full and thorough kiss filled with decadent promises, a kiss that pushes every boundary and asks for more space, more freedom, more license.
Just more of me.
“You have it. All of it.”
“I want your thoughts, too. When I’m in you, I want to fill you. I want you to be completely and utterly mine. No one else’s. Mind, body, soul, memory, heart–”
“I love you,” I confess, the words so heavy. So true. I need to say it back to him, to complete the open circle between us.
As he kisses me blind, his fingers find me soaked for him, one stroking down to my deep wetness, gliding back up to make me gasp and grind against his hand. Two fingers make a slow journey down and suddenly I’m at his whim, my body crying out for release, my mouth against his as he takes me, captures me, completes me with wordless, endless power.
“Heart. Soul. Body,” he says against my open mouth. “All of you.” His fingers stop, the pause like a heartbreak. “All of you.”
“Yes,” I gasp, the plea evident. “All of it. All of me. Take me, Silas. Please. And if I don’t know how to let you take me, take me anyway and teach me.”
A silent roar rises up from his body as he swells, bigger and broader over me, his fingers playing a dangerous game as I seek the perfect friction point to writhe in his arms, my hands useless, the world centered on all of the ways he is cracking me open to find my truth. Each nerve ending dances on my tongue as he kisses me with a demanding edge that says all I have to do is let go of whatever’s holding me back and he will catch me.
So I do.
His hands encircle my waist and pull me up, as I gulp air, trying to get hold of my body, which is coming and coming and coming as he touches me. Suddenly, I’m on my knees, his hard thighs pressed against my ass from behind.
“What are you doing?”
“I want you to come.”
“I am,” I say, my voice a low purr.
“I want you to come without a kiss, without me in front of you. I want you to come in a way that is fully focused on you. I’ll make you come. You need to make yourself let go. I can’t give you that permission, Jane. Only you can.”
“I have no problem,” I choke out as he unrelentingly touches me, like this is a game, a race, a pleasure marathon.
“I want you to take from me. I want you to give yourself to me. You need to empty yourself so those voices that plague you have nothing to grab.” He squeezes one breast, his hands suddenly on me, both nipples teased until I cry out. “This is about you,” he urges as one of his thick thighs shoves mine aside. Air, cool and dangerous, breezes across my open ass and a tingle of fear and arousal makes me swell with even more need.
If that’s possible.
The second he enters me, my wetness more than enough to make the feeling divine, his fingers are stroking me be
tween my legs, the twinned sensations making me lower my head, biting the pillow. Oh. My. God. I didn’t know I could feel like this.
I didn’t know a man could make me feel this.
Silas’s slow, controlled thrusts are like a staircase of pleasure, each move inside me another step climbing higher and higher, and then all I see is red, explosions of color and light behind my closed eyes, my body shaking in full, walls clamped down on him so hard, he moves with effort, his breath on my shoulder blade a reminder he’s there.
Because I disappear.
I fade into nothing, the release so strong, it’s almost antimatter, his bold control fraying as he pushes harder, deeper, soulfully into me, our bodies now all about carnal pleasure. No sound matters. No movement is too much. I obey his command:
Give in.
Oh, how I give in. Free fall feels so, so good.
As he comes inside me with a series of pushes so hard, I cry out again and come, I pull him in through sheer force of ecstasy, making him stay inside, turning the tables. Silas has no choice for a few seconds. I won’t let him go.
I won’t.
I have all the power.
And then I collapse.
The sound of my breath comes from thousands of miles away, yet it is enough. The feel of his delicious body blanketed across my back and ass is enough. The push of my hair against my ear as he, too, finds his breath is enough.
This is enough.
Nothing else matters.
A phone buzzes. Silas groans against my shoulder.
“Go,” I tell him.
He pulls off me, the cold air like an ass slap. He reads his phone. He winces.
“Damn. I have to–” The consummate professional, he’s already dressing as he starts to explain.
“I understand.” I’m reeling, but I have to let him go.
“I wish you didn’t have to.” I watch him as he dresses, the quick work he makes of it nothing like the slower undressing from earlier tonight.
Blissed out, I don’t want this to end, and yet... it has to.
“I wish I didn’t, too.” He’s already halfway out the door when he circles back and gives me a quick kiss on the cheek.
“We’ll talk more later,” he says. His eyes carry so much more meaning.
“Yes,” I say, and then I drift off, completely gone.
Safe. Sated.
In the sanctuary of us.
Chapter 17
Old-fashioned coffee makers can be programmed, and that means I awaken to my favorite scent.
As I turn over in Alice’s guest bed, I inhale, breathing deeply from the pillow where Silas rested last night.
Coffee is now my number two scent.
He had to go back to his assigned guest room. Decorum is in place for a reason. I understand, but at the same time I miss him. How quickly I’ve grown accustomed to having him in bed, naked, his presence a reminder that I’m a human being and not a scourge.
Birdsong fills the air outside my window. Sunlight streams into the white-walled room, making it feel bright, like I imagine heaven to be. I take a moment to inventory my body. Being in my head is easy.
Staying connected to all of the pieces of me that move me through time and space is much harder.
Drew’s team is hired to protect my body. No one helps me to protect my mind, heart, or soul. It’s not Silas’s job, but then again, sleeping with me isn’t exactly in his employee manual, either.
My phone says it’s nearly 10 a.m., which means Silas should be up by now, surely. I let myself stretch slowly. Last night was remarkable.
It takes time to settle into the crevices of my skin.
The room is so quiet.
Peace comes to us in many forms. Visual peace means clean lines and harmonious light. Tactile peace means freedom from unwanted touch. Auditory peace usually means silence.
In the naked silence I find a serenity.
And a strange, foreboding fear.
As I stay in bed, on my back, I look up at the white ceiling, the light coming in just so, turning the room into a warm asylum, far from the madding crowd of amateur shame artists. It’s an art–it truly is–to find and exploit the soft spots in people online.
As I sit up, I smell him. Smell us. The sheets are thick with the musk of desire fulfilled. It’s a pleasant scent, so private. So hidden. You have to be one of the participants to savor it, to let it inhabit you and turn scent into memory.
Conjurers and wise women know that kind of emotional alchemy.
So, too, do we now.
All the day’s insults and injuries float through my head as I stand, assaulting me with thoughts of the outside world and the calamities brewing and exploding in a whirlwind around me. This reprieve has been wonderful.
But reality means Mandy’s death is a press event, and I’m at the heart of it.
This is the tragedy: Mandy’s death.
There is a secondary tragedy, too: that I cannot properly mourn her. Or Tara. Or my mother.
I’m given no time to weep. All I’m allowed to do is deny. Run. Submit.
Silas has given me another space. A space we create, where I have more choices.
I choose him.
I dress quickly, quietly, eager to get a morning cup of coffee and to sit in the playful light with Alice. The hallway is dimly lit, an interior corridor untouched by natural light. As I walk into the big, open studio, I find myself smiling.
Twenty minutes later, I’ve had two cups of coffee and all the solitude I want. Craving interaction, I peek outside. A dusty wind blows in the space between the studio and the main house. Shutting the door, I pad around to the bedrooms, wondering where Silas and Alice might be.
As I walk past my guest bedroom, I hear my phone buzz. When I reach it, a text from Silas simply says: In the main house. Duff’s outside the door facing west. Will be back soon.
Well, there’s one answer. What about Alice?
She’s not one to sleep in so late. Her bedroom is next to mine in the guest wing. I softly rap on her door.
No answer.
The front door opens, a woman’s voice humming softly under her breath, a jaunty tune with a beautiful, low melody. A person could dance to that song. My hand is on Alice’s doorknob but I release it and walk toward the kitchen, nearly colliding with the housekeeper, Delia, who holds her hand over her heart and gives me a wide-eyed stare.
“Oh! Ms. Borokov. Sorry,” she says, the humming stopped abruptly. She’s all business. I wonder if she’s an undercover agent, pretending to clean. “I didn’t know you were still here.”
I smile at her. “Am I supposed to be gone?”
“No, ma’am.” Her pinched face makes it clear she wishes I would leave. “Just that Miss Alice didn’t call for lunch to be made, so the staff assumed y’all were gone off somewhere.”
I frown and look at Alice’s door again.
As Delia walks past me and goes into the room where Silas slept last night, humming again as I hear the sound of fabric being fluffed, I reach for Alice’s doorknob.
Tap tap tap.
Trepidation sets in like gravity, a deep and heavy burden I take on because I truly cannot turn away. Turning the knob, I tell myself I’m being silly. I tell myself Alice is fine. I tell myself all sorts of fantastical things because in the end, I know.
I just know.
She’s in bed, the sheets peaking at the fine edges of her bones, her head tilted to the right, mouth open just enough to see the lines of her teeth.
And the sheet does not move up and down with the steady breath of the living.
“Oh, Alice,” I say, the words coming out in a long, mournful sigh, her name a whisper on a spirit’s wind. Peace may come in silence, but death does, too.
And death, unlike peace, is merciless.
I don’t have to touch her to know. I don’t.
But I have to touch her for another reason.
Love.
Her hand is cold but still soft, the gnarled kn
uckles a roadmap of a long life. They hold the history of so many adventures. The synovial fluid stores memories of paintings, Alice’s heart spilled out onto the canvas and smeared with a brush made of vision and art. Her mouth is open slightly, the skin of her face slack. Death looks safe on her. Alice wasn’t a safe woman. Risk personified, she would have hated knowing she looked so restful, so serene.
I’m crying before I realize it, my hand clinging to the dry, papery surface of her palm. We’re programmed to expect other human beings’ bodies to act in specific ways when triggered. A dead body cannot react. Maybe that’s the very definition of death: the inability to respond. Perhaps ghosts are just dead people who can’t let go of action and reaction. Who still harbor impulses to follow the laws of physics.
All of these thoughts race through me as tears run freely down my face, onto my shirt, one perfect wet circle landing on Alice’s vein-covered hand.
“Alice,” I whisper, hoping that whatever part of her lingers in the room can hear me. If I can only make her know how important she is to me. If I can somehow reach her in this in-between, then I can let her go. I don’t want to. Her love has been such a touchstone these last few weeks.
The problem with death is that all agency is stripped away. You truly have no choice.
“Alice, thank you.” I lift her hand and kiss it, my lips wet from my own salty tears, her skin cold. “Thank you for teaching me how to look inward. Thank you for teaching me where to find beauty. Thank you for showing me love when the world just wanted to plant hate inside me.”
Footsteps grow louder until I hear them right behind me, a tiny scream making it clear that it’s a woman behind me.
“What happened? What did you do?”
I turn around to find Alice’s housekeeper holding a set of bedsheets, all neatly folded, in her arms.
And then she turns her head toward the main house and starts shrieking: “HELP! HELP! SHE KILLED MISS ALICE!”
Chapter 18
Angel of Death Jane Borokov Does it Again
Calamity Jane
Watch Out, Jenna! Jane’s Coming for You
