He turns and strides out with me dangling on his shoulder like a caveman’s prize. At first I think he’ll throw me on Carter’s bed and take me there—Freudian revenge—but instead he marches us back to that one bare room. The only place in this house where he hasn’t witnessed a rape: That’s where he wants to commit one.
Jonah drops me back onto my feet. I try to spin away from him, but he slaps me across the face. Hard.
I stagger into the wall, my back pressed against the carved wood. It’s all right for Jonah to hit me during one of our games; that’s in our rules. As long as he doesn’t intend to injure or scar me, I’m his to smack around. But actually having him do it, that hard, shocks me more than I’d realized it would.
“You don’t think it can get worse?” Jonah mutters. I realize what he’s holding in his other hand; it’s a tub of petroleum jelly. “It’s about to. ”
With that he shoves me so hard that I fall, knees jarring against the floor. My cry of pain is genuine. He’s still within our boundaries, but only now do I realize how comfortable I’d become within our games. Not since the first time he took me has this fantasy felt so dangerous. So real.
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“Brace yourself. ” Jonah gets down on his knees behind me and grabs my hair again. “Find something to hold you up, or else I’m going to fuck you through the floor. ”
I’m only a few paces from the fireplace, so I crawl toward that, grabbing the marble pillar with both hands. My breaths are coming so deep and fast that I’m panting, and the marble feels good against my sweaty hands.
“Spread your legs. Wider,” Jonah commands me. I obey. The plastic clatter of a lid hits the floor—and then I feel Jonah’s slicked fingers at the entrance to my ass.
Oh, God. He’s only ever fucked my ass once. It scared me beforehand, during, and ever since. I came so hard, but with a vibrator, something we don’t have now. This time, it’s enough for Jonah to humiliate me. To subject me to something I’ve always found frightening and shameful. Maybe he even wants to hurt me.
Silver, whispers the voice in my head. But I don’t need the safe word. Not yet. This scares me, but it excites me even more.
Two fingers inside me now. Three. My body stretches around him, and my face flushes hot as I imagine how he must see me in this moment. The cheek he slapped burns, and tears are welling in my eyes.
He notices. “Cry for me again. Cry all you want. Doesn’t do a damned bit of good. ”
I don’t feel the need to weep. It’s shame coming over me now, deep primal shame. That’s enough to turn my face scarlet and scramble every thought in my head. Enough to drive me wild.
Silver, I think. I say nothing. Because shame is something else Jonah gives me, something I enjoy so much more than I want to.
Jonah’s pants slip further down his body with the rustling of wool, the clinking of his belt. The head of his cock presses against the entrance to my ass, firm and insistent. “Don’t you want to beg me? Even just to use your cunt instead?”
“Would—” My throat closes around the word. “Would it make any difference if I did?”
“No,” Jonah says, and he pushes inside.
Fuck. My jaw drops. The aching burn is so intense it’s as if I’m being turned inside out. Jonah’s enormous cock presses deeper into me—slowly, but without ceasing. I moan in defeat, and yet also in pleasure. Jonah has erased every objection, every coherent thought. Now I am nothing but his vessel.
Then Jonah starts fucking me in earnest, his strokes going deeper and faster. The petroleum jelly slicks me enough that the friction doesn’t hurt; that doesn’t change the fact that I feel split apart. Speared. As he speeds up, my joints rock and I have to brace myself harder against the mantelpiece. My hair swings around my face, tendrils sticking to my sweaty, flushed cheeks.
“I’m using you. ” Jonah’s growl is one of animal triumph. “You’re only in this world so I can use you. ”
He grabs my hair again, tighter. Again I shout in pain, but Jonah doesn’t even hear. He’s slamming into me now, the slap of his body against mine echoing obscenely in the small room. Through the haze of arousal I can see only the empty fireplace in front of me, the ashes left behind. It’s like I can’t feel anything in the world but his cock, the way he’s taken me over completely—
The pleasure swells inside me. It has little to do with the way Jonah’s abusing my body, everything to do with my twisted satisfaction in that abuse. All I know is that the more savagely Jonah fucks my ass, the more desperation in my wordless cries, the better it is for us both. Jonah has set his demons loose, all of them, and we are holding absolutely nothing back.
A thrust, and my arousal peaks. Another, and it goes higher. Jonah pushes me, and pushes me, and even as my body has begun to burn, the world has gone dark and sparkly around the edges. The next time Jonah buries himself balls-deep in my ass, he pushes me over the edge. I scream the raw sound of orgasm, hands shaking against the marble pillar, Jonah’s cock still pumping inside.
If Jonah knows I came, he doesn’t acknowledge it. He just keeps going. “You bitch,” he pants. “You fucking bitch. You think this is as bad as it can get? We’re not even close. Wait until you find out what I have for you. ”
What next? I can hardly think. I want to collapse into postorgasmic jelly, but instead I have to keep bracing myself against his assault. Will he use me until I collapse? I shouldn’t want that as much as I do.
All right, I think. All right. Complete surrender can feel so sweet.
“Just wait. Then we’ll know what it takes to break you. ” Jonah slams into me again, so hard I wince. “What it takes to destroy you. ”
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Yes, Jonah, yes, do whatever you want with me. I have no choice. I’m yours to do what you want with—anything you want—
Suddenly he jerks back. His cock slides from my body. Despite my exhausted shaking, I try to remain braced. God only knows what he’ll do to me next. But when he remains quiet for a few moments, I dare to glance over my shoulder at him.
Jonah is rising to his feet, his still-hard cock jutting from him. His eyes are glazed like a man in a trance, and he’s started shaking even harder than me.
“Silver,” he says. “Silver. ”
It takes a moment for this to sink in. “You—you need to use the safe word?”
He nods as he takes a step backward from me, then another, until he thuds against the wall. Then he slides down it and curls into a ball, drawing his knees up until he can lean his head on them, hiding his face.
Jonah gets to have limits too. Whatever we found in this house—whatever primal scene he was reenacting—it finally took us to his limit, and past it.
Slowly, still naked and glistening from the Vaseline he used, I crawl toward him on trembling limbs. He doesn’t acknowledge me until I sit beside him and gingerly slide one arm around his shoulders. Then Jonah leans against me, burying his face in the side of my neck. His breaths catch in his throat, and I wonder if I will finally see this strong, implacable, unbreakable man start to cry.
I don’t. He holds it together. But we have to sit in this nightmarish house, in this barren room, for a very long time before either of us can move. Even then, we do not speak.
Nineteen
“You’re sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. Can we just not—”
“Okay, Jonah. It’s okay. But you’d tell me if I needed—if we needed—”
“Just come here. ”
We’re back in our room at the Drake Hotel, Jonah’s half-dressed in his undershirt and socks as he crawls into bed and holds his arm out for me. Despite the muscular strength evident in every sinew of his body, I see only the vulnerability in him. His gray eyes have never looked so haunted.
I slip under the covers beside him, still in my jeans and bra. Jonah wraps his arms around me, both giving comfort and seeking it. My body’s soreness matters little compared to the tension I feel in his e
very limb.
This should feel like sanctuary. A place of rest. Instead all I can think is that, at Redgrave House, I saw Jonah begin to shatter—and that process is still taking place. What happens when he’s totally fallen apart?
He won’t. Jonah’s stronger than that. You’ve both faced terrible truths, alone, for a long time now. You have the ability to face them together.
So I tell myself, and so I believe. Yet the person who needs to believe it most is Jonah, and right now, I doubt he could even hear me say the words, much less acknowledge their truth.
Finally I understand more of what Doreen was trying to say to me back when Jonah and I first reunited. She warned me about our limits, about how much more difficult a relationship becomes without them. I thought she was warning me about intense games like the one we just played out in Redgrave House, but that wasn’t what she meant at all.
She meant that when people push beyond their boundaries, we have to discover what lies on the other side.
What hides within Jonah’s darkness? I know it, roughly; I recognize its shape. But the full dimensions of his pain remain murky, perhaps unfathomable.
As I hold him tighter and close my eyes, I find myself remembering antique maps I’ve studied. In the margins, upon seas no Westerner had ever traveled, the calligraphy reads: Here be dragons.
• • •
We don’t sleep well that night. Jonah’s bad dreams jostle me awake, again and again. When I gently shake his shoulder, he regains consciousness just enough to put his arms around me once more. That helps him for a while.
But never for very long.
• • •
Jonah’s solemn silence continues the next day, all through our checkout from the hotel and our ride to the airport. I’m exhausted and worried, and I keep biting my ragged lips, which are chapped from the unfamiliar cold. Elise has drawn back into herself; she sits in the front passenger seat, the collar of her white leather coat turned up, staring into the distance.
Thank God for Maddox. “Like I’d make you guys take a taxi,” he says as he steers his McLaren sports car through the salt-crusted streets. “You’re my family. Why would I turn you over to some Uber driver?”
“I hear some of those drivers are dangerous,” Elise murmurs, without glancing toward her brother.
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“You’d be fine with us,” Jonah says. He’s staring out the window at the cityscape around us, which grows less spectacular, more humdrum, as we get farther from downtown and into the burbs. I’d worry Jonah was upset with me if it weren’t for his leather-gloved hand over mine. He holds on tightly, never letting go for a moment.
Some guys with luxury cars freak out at the slightest hint of damage or even wear. Maddox, however, obviously understands that cars are for driving. Sludge and spatter don’t deter him as he darts in and out of traffic, determined to get us there in plenty of time. Yet he has enough attention left over to detect the strange, flat silence in the car, which he combats by turning up the satellite radio. Latin piano music cascades through the car, rippling like sunlight on water.
Jonah’s murky temper makes sense to me. Yesterday he found his breaking point, and it’s going to take him a while to pull back from that. I’m quiet mostly because I’m worried about him, and tired. Maddox has to drive. It’s Elise’s silence I don’t understand.
I mean, yesterday, we shut down Carter Hale. Embarrassed him in front of the airline’s board of directors, and made it clear that he can’t dominate his children one day longer. Shouldn’t she be elated? At least, you know, happy? Maddox seems cheerful enough—
Cut it out, I tell myself. Elise’s mood is her own business. You’re only thinking about her because that doesn’t hurt as much as worrying about Jonah.
We get to the airport and say our farewells to Maddox in the usual jumbled line of cars and suitcases. As taxicabs crawl past us, Maddox embraces Elise, then Jonah, who wraps his arms around his little brother as if Maddox were the one who needed protection. When Maddox turns to me, I’m pleasantly surprised at how natural it feels when he hugs me too.
“Be there for Jonah, okay?” he whispers into my ear. “He needs to let someone take care of him for once. ”
“I’m figuring that out. ”
I kiss Maddox’s cheek, and he rewards me with a smile.
After the usual tedium of airport security, we sit down in what passes for a decent restaurant in O’Hare and have the most awkward family lunch ever.
“You’ll be okay in Texas?” Elise asks Jonah. “The police aren’t—they won’t give you any trouble?”
He shrugs. “They don’t have anything new to give me trouble about. ”
“They didn’t have anything in the first place,” she points out. “That didn’t stop them. ”
“It’s going to be fine, sooner or later,” I interject. Hopefully sooner.
Jonah finally snaps into focus as he turns his gaze on his sister. “And you’re going back to Griffin?”
She freezes—seemingly literally, with her entire body going stiff, and her skin turning pale. “Are we going to have this conversation again?”
“So that’s a yes. ” Jonah sighs heavily. “Does he still make you live in that slum hole of an apartment?”
Elise lifts her chin. “Griffin doesn’t want to be supported by my money. I think that’s honorable. ”
“Fine. Great. He can pay for his own place. But he could let you live somewhere decent, or accept that living with you isn’t the same thing as mooching off you. ”
“He’s proud, okay? It’s not the worst thing. ”
“He can’t handle the reality that you’re richer than he is and always will be. So he controls you. Is he still picking out your clothes?” Jonah’s eyes narrow. “Is he still picking out your friends too? How long before he demands that you cut one of us loose? Or maybe he wants to push your entire family out. ”
Elise goes very still. I think Jonah believed he was exaggerating, but he hit it exactly. Griffin wants Elise to separate herself from her family, and she must be considering it.
Elise whispers, “You don’t understand. You never will. ”
Jonah’s cool anger cracks, and once again I see the raw pain he usually hides so well. “I’ll be back,” he says as he gets up and wanders in the general direction of the restrooms. Really I think he’s going to walk out of sight and simply stand there for a few minutes, regaining his composure.
Now Elise and I are alone for the first time ever, and I have no idea what to say. So, tell me about Griffin! Yeah, no. And what else do we have to talk about? Maddox, I guess—though as I recall, Maddox wasn’t fond of Griffin either. But just before I start spouting some inanity about the cold weather, I see a single tear well in Elise’s eye, then trickle down her cheek.
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“Hey,” I murmur, offering her a Kleenex from my purse. “It’s okay. ”
“Is it?”
My instincts tell me to despise Griffin just because Jonah does. Still, I know what it means to share a bond that the majority of people could never comprehend. Maybe Elise and Griffin understand each other in ways the rest of us can’t see. “If Griffin makes you happy, then nobody else’s opinion about your relationship matters. Not even Jonah’s. ”
Elise looks up at me, and after a moment she smiles. Yet that slight hesitation has told me the one thing she doesn’t want anyone to know, the fact that vindicates Jonah completely: Griffin doesn’t make Elise happy.
“Brothers are always overprotective,” she says, trying to sound blithe. “Aren’t they?”
“Never had a brother. ” I often wished for one. A big brother might have believed in me and kicked Anthony Whedon’s ass.
“Well, they are. ” Her china-doll face finally dimples as her smile turns genuine. “I have to say, growing up the way we did—it’s just so surprising that Jonah turned out to be so traditional and . . . uptight. ”
Say n
othing. Don’t meet her eyes. Eat your breakfast.
“Good for him, I suppose. ” Elise sighs. “We all have to find our own ways out. ”
Here, at least, we completely agree. “Yeah. We do. ”
• • •
Our flight passes with hardly a dozen words exchanged between Jonah and me. Again, he’s not freezing me out; when his arm isn’t around my shoulders, he’s holding my hand. For now, however, he’s wrestling his inner demons in silence. I want him to open up to me about it, but a crowded airplane is hardly the time.
After we land, every phone onboard is in its owner’s hand, being snapped back out of airplane mode. Texts cascade in front of my eyes, most of them from Carmen.
I just realized your trip to Chi-town probably means you won’t have time to get ready for the New Year’s party—
Oh, shit. I agreed to throw the booze-free party for Geordie, didn’t I? What with the Marks-Hale family turmoil, I completely forgot.
Before I can groan, however, Carmen’s next texts come through.
I decided I’d throw one instead. Arturo and Shay are in, and they’re inviting a few friends.
All you have to do is figure out WTF we’re supposed to drink. Gotta be something more festive than ginger ale, right?
Geordie says he’s looking forward to it. We took the tree down for Arturo & company today—super fun.
I bite my lip to keep my smile from becoming too unbearably smug. Looks like the field is ripe for a little matchmaking. If Geordie and Carmen even need it.
“We have New Year’s plans, by the way,” I say to Jonah as the plane taxis toward the gate. Men in fluorescent orange vests hurry around on the tarmac outside our small oval window. “Sedate, but good. Does that work for you?”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
“You might have been planning to surprise me with tickets to something swanky. ”
He glances at me, and the faint glint of humor in his eyes heartens me. “Do you really want to go to some big fancy party?”
“Nah. I can do that anytime. ” Maybe I should explain Mardi Gras balls to Jonah before I invite him to one in February. “But I expect the unexpected from a guy who once swept me away for a romantic fling in Scotland. ”
Jonah kisses my temple. I thought leaving Chicago would help a little, putting some space between Jonah and his worst memories. Yet I still sense the weight pressing down on him. Last night he gave in to his most brutal demons. I can forgive him for that—there’s nothing to forgive. Jonah can’t forgive himself. He said the safe word because he was scared of what he was becoming, or what he might do.