‘You like taking. You only want me to give until the moment you're ready to take,’ she says on a sudden inhale, as I stroke my thumb against her clit.
‘That how you see me?’
‘It's how you are.’
I slide my fingers out, and puff like a dragon. ‘Amy, something’s happened, hasn’t it? Hell, it feels like you need to get something off of your chest but then something stops you. Like you’re scared . . . Just tell me what the fuck is going on. I figured after the other night we were getting somewhere. Turned a corner. Figured things had changed between us. But it’s like you’ve gone back into that little box you made for yourself and you’re shutting me out.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to, it’s just I need time —’
‘No, Amy, I’m done with you pushing me away. This ends now.’ All the menace is gone from my voice. ‘I’m done being a fucking painkiller. It was good at the start. Fucking ace, baby. I gave you whatever you needed from me. Took whatever I could get. But it’s not cutting it anymore.’
‘What do you want?’
I love her. That counts for something. Allows me to be the one to save her.
‘I want to be your rock, baby.’ I want to fuck those words into her, hoping Amy finally gets it. ‘That’s what I want.’
Sitting up, she scoots down the bed, unlaces the combat boots I’m wearing and takes them.
‘What’re you doing?’ I say. ‘Did you not hear me?’
‘I just want to get you out of your clothes.’
I don’t say no, so she grasps the waist of the trousers, where they rest at mid-thigh, and pulls them off. When she unbuttons my leather jacket, I half sit up and shrug out of it, before lying down again. She looks at me naked on the bed.
‘I said, what’re you doing?’
‘Just trying to —’
‘You don't ever touch me.’
‘I won't if you don't want me to.’
It’s a first. Amy’s never gone down on me, and fuck does it swing me hot.
‘Go ahead,’ I say, tucking one hand under my head, watching her.
She runs her hands over my chest, my core, up my thighs, hardly looking at where her hands travel, aware of my gaze on her. She strokes her thumb over my nipple and draws it into her mouth. I laugh, but don’t stop her from sucking on it until it’s a small, hard bead under her tongue. She moves down to my cock, half hard and aching. Hesitates.
‘Don't be shy,’ I say.
She glances up at me, embarrassed, and lowers her gaze before licking up the length of my cock. When she takes me into her mouth, I put my hand on her cheek and say, ‘No, look at me.’
I stroke her hair back, watching her, not forcing her. When I’m close to the edge, I hold my hand on the back of her neck to set the rhythm of it.
Afterwards, she lies between my legs and rests her head on my abs, feeling the steady rise and fall of my breath.
‘Why’d you do that?’ I say. ‘You think I’ll forget the conversation we were having?’
She stares at my scar. It’s old, long faded to white, and lies above my left hip. A thin line, a few inches long, with one ragged end. She runs her finger over it, and says nothing.
Gone, just like that.
And it does something to me. Short circuits my last goddamn fuse.
I shoot up and catch her hand, squeeze it in mine until I stop myself from crushing it. When she looks into my eyes, I know she sees rage.
I’m at a complete fucking end. What else can I do to fucking help her?
I get off the bed, tower over her and rasp, ‘I'm done with this.’
‘For good?’ she says.
Does it give you a spark of hope to be rid of me?
‘You'd like that, wouldn't you? No, not done with you for good. Not by a long fucking shot, Amy. Just done with this bullshit merry-go-round tonight.’
The look on her face makes me want to kill someone. Done with her? Hoping I'm done with her? If I’m done with her, will she leave? Or will she figure there’s something worth living for here, if I’m done with her?
That scar. Fucking thing burns under my hand, like it did when it first happened. She did that, touched it and made it like it’s new again.
I move my head side to side, slowly. ‘I don’t get you, Amy. And I don’t know what else I can fucking do to get through to you.’
You’re in a bad place, Amy. Where the monsters go. But it’s only in the bad places . . . that I can get to you.
Then I knock the nightlight off the nightstand, and I am the thing she likes me to be.
Her monster in the dark.
50
YOU
‘Go to sleep,’ he says, after coming back to the bed an hour later.
He pulls my head down on his shoulder. Going to sleep is easy when he is there, my face pressed into the familiar animal smell of him. But when I wake up in the dark a little later, I’m alone in bed.
When I opened the Black Magic Box six days ago, it let out all the monsters.
After watching my sister’s fake wedding DVD, I can’t leave Shepherd’s side. Hiding in his black shadow, in his darkness, I feel less afraid of the dark.
Where did he go?
He never sleeps through the night with me. I’m not even sure if he sleeps, only that he sometimes insists I sleep next to him. Sometimes, I wake to find him in the chair in the corner of
