“What did you do?” And the way his eyes zeroed in on mine, it was like he knew that the simplest answer wasn’t the truth.
This time it was me who pulled back from him, climbing onto the bed and kneeling, my eyes unable to leave my hands clasped in my lap.
“After I found them… everything hurt. So much. S-so much.” Shit. My voice was shaking already. Fear. Shame. My body didn’t discriminate; it felt them all. “I locked myself in my room and I lost it. I couldn’t understand… I couldn’t process… the pain. It didn’t make sense that I could hurt so much without being physically hurt.”
I hazarded a glance up at him. I could see the sheen of sweat coating his chest. The quiver of jaw tightening with each hot, harsh breath.
“S-so I hurt myself.” A tear fell onto my hands. I was wringing my fingers so tightly they were starting to turn purple. “I… cut myself… to give it a reason. A purpose…”
With a strength that could have taken down Goliath, I forced my hands apart, letting my fingers trace over the faintest white scars that littered the tops of my thighs. Practically invisible unless you knew what you were looking for.
The bed dipped as he climbed on it. The brief thought to escape to the other side quashed when he gripped my thighs and spread them to make room for him.
It felt like there was a bench press resting on my chest and each inch he bent closer to my legs to stare at the scars was another fifty-pound weight added to it.
His gaze rose to mine. There was a dam about to burst behind them as he bit out, “You will never do this again.”
My mouth parted but I quickly recovered enough to nod jerkily. Even if he hadn’t demanded it, the person I was now, no matter how hurting, would never be that lost girl again. I might not know exactly where I was going with my life, but wherever it was, it would be for me and no one else.
The hands that were on my legs cupped my face as his lips crashed down on mine. They sealed in my promise. Forced it down my throat and into my soul. His kiss warned that going back on my word meant certain death.
“You want to feel pain?” he taunted against my lips, biting and nipping at the now-swollen flesh. I yelped when one of his hands dove right between us and pinched my clit. “I will give you pain. I will make your body burn for me.”
I wanted to tell him that I had no plans on ever hurting myself again. I wanted to tell him that I’d come a long way with Dr. Shelly, but the mental healing that she’d helped me find was nothing compared to the emotional one that loving him had done.
Oh my God.
Oh no.
No. No. No.
My gasp was swallowed by his mouth, his tongue holding mine at bay from confessing to the truth that had been buried inside me from the start.
I loved him.
I loved him even when I’d loathed him.
“I told you I’d punish anyone who hurt you.” I whimpered as his finger circled mercilessly over my sex. “And that includes you, ma petite.”
The next instant he was off the bed and I collapsed forward only my palms, sputtering for air.
“Turn around. Bend down on your elbows.”
Pain. Please. Loathing. Love.
I wanted it all. So, I complied without hesitation.
I loved him. So, what did I do now? Did I… tell him? No. Not that.
My eyes sprung open when I felt one of his hands squeezing my ass. Warmth spread over me knowing my privates were completely bare to him. Fuck.
“I’ll give you pain, Troian,” he said with the coarsest whisper. “I’ll give you pain so perfect…”
I screamed at the first crack of his palm against my ass.
“Don’t move,” he commanded.
Tears pooled in the corner of my eyes that were squeezed shut. One of his knees sunk onto the bed. One hand returned to my clit and the pleasure of his gentle touch quickly outstripped the burn on my ass.
“Don’t move,” his growl repeated.
That time… and the three times after it… when he spanked me, my body revolted, hurting from the pain and humming from the pleasure. By the last assault, my pussy clenched so tightly I knew I would come if he hit me again.
Then the weight from the bed was gone. A second later, cold liquid squirted between my ass cheeks.
It was happening. This was really happening. Léo had taken my virginity and now he was going to fuck my ass. Goosebumps covered every inch of my skin. There was no way he was going to fit.
His fingers rubbed in the lube around my puckered hole while the other hand returned to my hungry pussy.
“Do you want this, Troian? It’s going to hurt… more than before.”
And for some reason, all of that turned me on even more. “Y-yes.”
“Of course, you do,” he chuckled darkly. “Ma petite loves when my body hurts her. She loves it because she knows it kills me.”
I let out a hiss as he pushed a finger—his thumb, maybe—into my tight hole. The lube let it slide in with relative ease, but it still burned. He increased the pressure on my clit and suddenly, the burn wasn’t bad. I needed the painful fullness. I craved the burn.
“You know what else she’ll love?”
I cried out when his finger pulled out with a pop, my forehead dropping onto the mattress. I couldn’t tell if I was sweating or crying or both.
My frantic breaths crashed to a halt when I felt the blunt head of his erection at my puckered entrance.
“She’ll love being stretched so full it feels like I might rip her in half.” He pushed into me, stopping just as my muscles squeezed and sucked in his head.
“Léo—” I pleaded. He wasn’t going to fit. This burn was not like the thumb. It was not borderline pleasurable. It was one-hundred-percent pain.
As if to answer me, he pushed forward another inch and it felt like he was literally tearing the muscles apart to get inside. I hated it. I did. And, inexplicably, I still loved it.
I loved the way his body was literally shaking from the pleasure of being inside me. I loved the way that his cock swelled even thicker every time he paused to try to hold onto some semblance of control. I loved the way he still toyed with my clit because he knew this was hurting me and he wanted to make it better.
We both groaned in unison as he sunk deeper. Farther and farther inside until I felt his balls meet my slick pussy.
“Mon Dieu, ma petite. Je mors.” My God, I’m dying.
Me, too, I thought.
“And she’ll love the way her tight little ass will greedily try to swallow up all my cum. Desperate for it. Just like her pussy.”
God, how did he know these things? It was so bad. I was a scientist. I knew how things worked. I grew up in a world of calculated outcomes. What he hinted at was a giant risk. A crazy risk. Irresponsible and ill-thought. And I wanted it just like I wanted him.
Love bears no consequence.
His body froze, but his hands kept moving. One circled lightly on my lower back while the other circled hard against my clit. And then I was moving. Or trying to. It hurt, but it hurt more to not chase the orgasm he was teasing me with. So my hips rocked, searching for his expert fingers, and with a strangled grunt he pulled out and slammed back into me.
At first all I could feel was his fingers—teasing, circling, rubbing. Then the promise of my climax let me feel more—the fullness of him that consumed my lower body. And then, each time he pulled out felt like a loss even though each time he pushed in still felt like an invasion.
He pinned my hips steady as he rocked into me, taking all of my sanity with him.
“From now on,” he warned with a low growl, pumping his swollen cock all the way inside me until I jumped, “the only thing that gets tattooed on your skin is my touch, the only thing that gets to cut into you is my teeth.” The shiver that ran up my spine was warm and welcoming. “From now on, the person who marks you is me.”
I exploded around his words. Crying his name, my hips jerked as my body spasmed around everything
that filled me. Wave after wave, I felt a pleasure that I’d never experienced before as my lower body seized around him.
“Ahh… mon Dieu…” I barely deciphered his strangled growl before I felt him come.
For the first time, I felt him come inside me. I felt the way his cock pulsed over and over again, spurting deep inside me, slippery and warm.
I felt like a rag doll that was only held together with a rod up my back—and when he slid out of me, that support was gone, and I collapsed face down on the bed. Next thing I knew, I felt a soft warmth between my ass cheeks cleaning me. Gently, Léo turned me over, leaving the cloth under my ass in case more of his desire leaked out. A groan tried to escape but failed when he spun me so that my head was at least near a pillow.
“Never again, Troian,” he rasped.
The only strength I had left was to peel my eyes open to see him staring at the faint marks on my legs, his finger brushing back and forth lightly.
“Promise me.”
I swallowed. “I—” I coughed to clear my throat. “I promise.”
It was like the weight of the world had been lifted from him. And then, to my shock, I watched his head dip lower and lower until I felt the soft brush of his lips on the tops of my thighs.
He was kissing my scars… My past… My weakness…
He was kissing me.
It didn’t make it better. But he acknowledged me. He saw me through the things that I’d done… and isn’t that what we all want in life? To be seen… to be heard… to be loved… in our moments of greatest weakness. To know that we are not alone.
Tears streamed down my cheeks now. I loved this man. With his anger and brooding and melancholy. I. Loved. Him. I cried for how much I loved him, and I cried because I knew I couldn’t tell him. Not right now.
So, I held on tight when he finally pulled me into his arms. I breathed him in and let the steady beat of his heart try to hammer into my mind that sooner or later I’d have to tell him that we… that this was for keeps.
I hummed as I helped Paolo wash the dishes after dinner. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so happy that I hummed absentmindedly while I did things. I couldn’t remember because I don’t think it had ever happened before.
“Everything is… going well?”
“Yeah,” I said with a smile. “Really well.” Superfluous but I couldn’t stop from saying it.
I guess I wasn’t the only one to take notice of the humming. Then again, it wasn’t just the humming. It was everything about me over the past two weeks. I’d basically lived with Léo over break. Every night we spent in that tiny studio apartment where there was really only room enough to make coffee and fuck. Neither of us seemed to mind.
Alright, there was also enough room to draw. My favorite were the mornings when I woke to Léo not in bed next to me, but at the foot or the side, the leather-bound book on his lap as he sketched me. Sometimes they were exactly what he saw. Other times, they were me with my legs spread and my hand between them. Or they were me kneeling on the bed with my head tipped back and my hands squeezing and pushing my tits together. Sometimes, I posed for the drawing after the drawing was already done…
We’d ventured out to get food when absolutely necessary. One day—it might have been Wednesday—we even made it for coffee. I finally convinced Léo to take me to the Bean. Public places were flirting with danger. But the entire class knew how he picked on me and my work and of course, that meant I had to work over break to get my grade up. It was almost comical the amount of distance we tried to keep between us for the forty-five minutes that we lasted there. I remember that I asked about Paris; he told me it was a smelly shithole and then we both laughed because he was joking and it was the first time his eyes didn’t look so deep and so lost.
And the laughter. It became more frequent. We pulled it out of each other’s broken cracks and let it bloom in our light. But inevitably, the need to touch each other became so strong it made me sick and after the third time he adjusted his pants, we called it quits and spent the rest of the afternoon in bed.
That was the day I began drawing him. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. It might or might not have anything to do with art, but even after I forgave my dad, I knew my future wasn’t chemistry. Now, I could look back at that part of my life without the need for his approval or attention blocking my view. Now, I could see that even though I was good at it, even though I didn’t mind it, I’d never chosen that path for me; I’d done it for him.
My mom was worried at first that the homebody was all of a sudden never home. I explained that I was working or out doing stuff with Kev (who was actually with Jake for the week meeting his parents according to the daily update texts.) But, along with the regular phone calls to my dad, what really calmed her was that when I came home, it was with a stupid, shit-eating smile on my face.
Last night, I teased him about not liking Baudelaire. He demanded to know why I was obsessed with the man. (I wasn’t.) His poems were just the thing I needed at that time. His words tethered me to the reality that I was desperate to let go of by explaining emotions that seemed inexplicable. Reading that book was the only safe place I had to feel. And when I told Léo that—how Les Fleurs du Mal made me feel—he promptly insisted that he’d show me what it was to feel something while I read those poems. Translation: He sat me on his cock and had me ride him while I read aloud the French words.
Note: Being the Frenchman he was with stereotypically high linguistic standards, orgasms were withheld for poor pronunciation.
Let’s just say, if I did make it to Paris, I could recite ‘Au Lecteur’ and ‘Le Cygne’ perfectly.
My body heated at the memory.
“I think that one is dry,” Paolo interrupted my thoughts. I’d been drying the same plate for five minutes and there was now a wet stack waiting in front of me.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
I heard his soft chuckle but ignored it. “We’re glad to see you happy, Troian. Especially your mother.”
I was happy. But my happiness had an expiration date.
We’d been back at school for a week and reality sunk in like the first frost after the fall. I thought it would get better. The needing. The goosebumps. The stomach flip every time he looked at me. It didn’t. I missed not pretending around him. I missed kissing him any time I wanted. I missed teasing him with my body because there was no one around. Now it was back to distance and heavy stares, stolen moments and quick fucks in his office after every class.
Talk of finals began and that meant only a few more weeks left to the semester. A few more weeks with him.
“I can… finish up here, Troian, if you want to go hang out with your mom,” Paolo offered, kindly not mentioning how I still hadn’t touched the stack of plates in front of me because I was too lost in thought. “I think she would like that…”
“Oh… okay.” I nodded jerkily, leaving him to it while I searched out my mom who I found curled up in the living room reading on her iPad.
“Hey, sweetie,” she acknowledged me with a soft, tired smile.
“Hey.”
“Thanks for having dinner with us tonight. I know you’ve been really busy lately.” Her smile grew when I sat at the other end of the loveseat opposite her instead of on the chair in the other corner of the room.
I nodded and pulled out my phone. I wanted to text him. I wanted to so bad. It was like the shiny red button in front of me that said, ‘Do Not Push.’ I needed to push it.
“You seem really happy, Troian,” my mom mused quietly.
Startled, I looked up from my phone. “I am… I think.”
I was happy. When I was with him, I was happy. When I was here and I had time to think about how much I loved him and that he didn’t know… When I was here and I had time to remember that there were only a few weeks left and then I had no idea what I was going to do because I was going to school here and he was going back to Paris… I wasn’t so happy then.
&n
bsp; “Dad says ‘hi’ by the way,” I blurted out; he’d called right before dinner
Her eyes widened a fraction. We had the same eyes, I realized.
“I’m so glad you are talking, that things are getting better.” She smiled. “I would have supported your decision either way, but I know how much your father loves you.”
I nodded. “We’re working on it. I know… I know he wants to see me. He says he misses me.”
Her face fell and I didn’t understand it until she spoke. “Are you going back then? To Washington?”
“No!” A tad too enthusiastic. But her face immediately brightened. “I mean, the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. I don’t… think I want to pursue chemistry anymore. I think that was for him. Here, I’m doing something for me.”
“I’m glad, Troian,” she smiled like only mothers do. “I like having you here.”
It dawned on me. All these weeks. All the time spent in the house. Even the time not spent in the house, but coming and going. It meant something to her. She hadn’t been a part of my life for a long time—because of distance and because of me.
I cleared my throat and explained what I’d originally meant. “Dad wants to come here… to visit me.”
I wasn’t sure how she’d react. My parents hadn’t been in the same state, let alone the same room since the divorce.
There was a moment of surprise, but no hesitation. “Of course. Whatever you want. Whatever you need.”
“I’m not ready yet,” I clarified. “I just… when I am, I’d like to see him.”
“Of course, sweetie.” She reached over and squeezed my hand before sinking back to her side of the couch.
“Can I ask you something?” I chewed on my lip and tucked my phone underneath my legs. It was better this distraction than messaging or calling Léo.
“Of course.”
I pulled my knees into my chest. “Why did you leave Dad?”
The Fall of Troy Page 29
