Over the next hour, as Dara nursed her beer and danced in place to the music, she was aware of her husband standing right behind her, his free hand sometimes massaging her shoulder, sometimes caressing her waist. When she’d finished her drink, he took it from her and went to pitch the empty cups into a recycling bin. When he came back, he looped an arm around her neck and ground himself against her backside. She laced her fingers with his, brought his hand up, and grazed her lips across his knuckles. It wasn’t long before he leaned down and growled into her ear, “This band’s not so hot. You want to get out of here before the traffic gets bad?” She nodded eagerly, and he led her back through the crowd again, this time toward the exit.
At the car, he stopped and kissed her fiercely on the mouth.
By the time they got back to their apartment, neither of them could wait much longer. Dara dragged Jason into the bedroom by his belt loop. He spun her around and stripped the clothing from her body. He kissed her again, scooped her up, and tossed her onto the mattresses. Even as she was giggling in delight, he was unbuckling his belt with one hand, stalking closer to the bed with a hungry luster lighting his eyes. He slid the strip of leather from around his waist and used it to secure her wrists.
There were certain things only Jason could do for Dara, she’d quickly learned upon marrying him, ways only he could satisfy her. This, she thought as she shattered apart in ecstasy for the fourth time that night, this was like an itch only he could ever scratch.
“I love you,” she murmured, feeling tears of affection and gratitude trickle from her eyes.
“Love you, too, Babe.” Jason brushed a tear from her cheek with his exquisite lips, nibbled her ear. Then he gave one final, forceful thrust inside her and found his release, too, groaning against her neck.
They didn’t go to sleep right away. As usual after they had sex, they lay awake in bed awhile, talking.
“That office party’s coming up this weekend,” he reminded her. “You want to go?” The way he asked was perfunctory, like he already knew as well as she did that the answer would be no. Psyching herself up to to go out to a concert every once in a while was one thing. Attending a party where Dara would be expected to actually converse with a bunch of strangers was another. Just the thought gave her the heebie-jeebies. Jason knew that.
Sure enough, he seemed unsurprised when she shook her head. Something glimmered in his eyes for a second, though. Disappointment, she guessed. But he hid it quickly and, as usual, didn’t pressure her to change her mind. “Alright,” he sighed. “I’ll just go by myself for a while, then. Be home as early as I can.” He drew her under him and started kissing her again.
But Jason didn’t come home early. The night of the party, it was after two in the morning before he finally stumbled home. Dara heard his key fumbling in the lock, heard the door slam into the wall as he banged it open. “Dara?” he bellowed up the stairs.
“Jason?” Relief washed over her at the sound of his deep voice. She tossed aside the book she’d been staring at and bolted from her desk chair. She’d been sitting there for hours, fully dressed, with her purse at the ready in case she decided she needed to go out searching for her husband.
Their apartment was above their garage, with the front door at the bottom of a carpeted stairway. She hurried into the living room and dashed down the steps. Jason loomed in the doorway, the porchlight casting his face in shadow. He seemed to be barely holding himself upright, one hand braced against the jamb. “Jason, where have you been? I’ve been texting you and texting you.” She held up her phone to prove it.
“Dara,” Jason groaned. “Dara, I’m so sorry…” He sagged against the doorframe.
Dara gasped and wrapped her arm around his waist, letting him lean on her for support. She dragged him inside and kicked the door closed. Then she struggled with him up the stairs and across the living room, where she lowered him to the couch. He sat there with his arms splayed, looking up at her from beneath heavy eyelids. There was something off about his complexion. Something terribly wrong with him. Cold fear curled up her spine, snaking around her heart.
“Jason, what happened to you?”
“I didn’t mean to. I never wanted to do anything like that. Didn’t want to hurt you…”
A new feeling of dread crawled over Dara’s skin when he said that, and she asked, “Did you do drugs? Did someone at the party give you something?” Jason drank in moderation with no trouble, but she knew he’d had issues with drugs when he was a teenager. Pot and speed, mostly, but also some cocaine. He’d been clean for years already when they’d met, and in the decade since, he had never relapsed. She’d always known it was a possibility, though. Now she braced herself to hear the worst.
But Jason shook his head against the back of the couch. He slipped off his glasses and dropped them on the end table, pressed his palms to his eyes and rubbed hard. “No. Don’t remember anything like that. And I only drank a couple beers.”
“Well, something happened.”
Dara watched her husband sit up and try to take off his jacket, flailing his long arms with an alarming lack of coordination. She reached out to help him. And that was when she noticed the blood streaking his t-shirt and dotting his jawline—and smeared all over his neck.
“Jason, you’re hurt. You’re bleeding!” Dara’s heart transformed into a jackhammer, knocking crazily inside her chest. Forgetting about the jacket, she ran for the nearest
