I decide to get up.
I feel foolish and reckless for what I’m about to do, but I don’t care. If he’s going to get rid of me tomorrow, what does it matter how this turns out?
My bare feet move quietly across the hardwood floors and then through the center of the house. Placing my reluctant fingertips on the door lever outside Victor’s room, I pause before pushing it down gently. The door clicks open and I walk inside. I see him across the large space, lying on his back, his head fallen to one side, facing me. His eyes are closed, his breathing steady. The sheet covers only his midsection and thighs, leaving the rest of his naked body exposed to the chill in the air. I recall earlier in the night when he was on top of me, pressing himself into me from behind and it makes my stomach and hips quiver.
I move closer, trying to stay as quiet as possible but at the same time wondering why be quiet at all. He’s going to know I’m in here eventually, and well, that’s kind of the point.
Stepping up to the side of his bed, I watch him for a moment, how his toned chest rises and falls with every quiet breath. How his lips are unopened, pressed gently against each other, signifying that whatever he’s dreaming, if he’s dreaming at all, it’s peaceful, undisturbed by the violence that eclipses his life. Like me, the nightmares of his experiences have long since vanished, leaving only a morbid sense of normality to which nightmares no longer deem fit to visit.
I slip off my shirt and drop it on the floor.
Pressing my hands and knees against the bed, I crawl onto it, straddling his waist.
In only a second, the back of my hair is wrenched in his hand and his gun is shoved underneath my chin, forcing my neck backward so far that I fear if I move it’ll snap.
I don’t say a word, but I’m not afraid. I don’t know for sure if he would kill me or not, but I don’t fear him either way.
He winds his fingers tighter against my scalp and I feel the cool barrel of the gun trailing down the center of my neck. But more than that I feel his hardness between my legs and the knowledge of the gun being anywhere on me takes a backseat.
“If you’re going to let me go,” I whisper, unable to see his eyes, “then let me have this one last thing from you.”
He pulls my head back even farther. The gun is pressing into my stomach now.
“I’ve never been with a man that I wanted to be with,” I say. “I want to be with you. Just once. I want to know what it feels like to be the one in control.”
He’s conflicted, I feel it in the heat emitting from his skin, in his tense, uncertain movements. In one instance the gun digs deeper into my gut and I feel like my hair is about to come out within his hand. But then he relents, loosening his grip just a little, allowing my neck some reprieve. I can see his eyes now, peering up at me so deadly and yet so seductive even though I know he’s not doing it on purpose.
“You can’t be in here,” he says, also in a whisper.
I feel his eyes on me, sweeping over my body, my bare breasts, downward to where my naked thighs are latched loosely around his hips.
“I don’t care, Victor.”
His gaze moves back to my face where he studies the curvature of my lips.
Then I witness something else flash over his eyes, something frightening that I’ve never seen before in him and I tense up within his grasp. He studies me quietly as if I’m something to be ravaged and then ultimately…killed. Despite my growing fear, I still want to be right where I am, trapped in the merciless arms of a killer.
Without releasing me he raises his back from the bed, the arm with which his hand is speared painfully within my hair is pressed against my shoulder. I sit straddled on his lap, both of my naked thighs touching his sides which warm my skin in the same way I pictured it. I can tell that he is completely naked underneath that thin sheet that separates us.
“If you want to kill me, then do it.”
His lips move closer to mine.
“But if you do,” I say breathily, “let me be with you first, please….”
My eyes close of their own accord. I wait for whatever is going to happen; death or sex I welcome both, my body stiff against his, my heart beating so fast I feel it in my head and in my fingertips. When I feel his lips brush against my own, I wilt.
But when I feel the cold metal against my temple, my eyes slowly open to look into his again.
“This can’t happen, Sarai,” he says.
I lower my lips to his. “Yes, it can,” I whisper onto them before covering them with my own.
My thighs tighten around his waist and I feel myself pressing against his erection, tremors moving through my pelvis and down into my knees. I lift myself up and yank the sheet from between us, setting myself back down on his naked lap, instantly feeling the stark difference the sheet made. I grind myself against his cock, feeling his hardness through the fabric of my panties and it makes me tremble.
But I can tell he doesn’t want this. He doesn’t push me away, but he’s conflicted.
“Please, let me have my way with you,” I say, looking down into his beautiful eyes.
He searches my face, his fingers gently touching my cheeks, a look of uncertainty in his features as though this exchange between us is something entirely new to him. I can tell that he’s probably never been with a woman he could not ravage and spoil and tame. And while I think I prefer him that way, right now in this moment I want to be the one who makes all of the decisions.
I’m unsure why, but that doesn’t matter.
I feel his body relent even more.
I press the palms of my hands against his rock-hard chest and push him gently against the bed, hoping that he’ll let me.
He does. He lies down, leaving his hands to rest on the tops of my thighs. We look at each other and no words are spoken. They aren’t needed. Tucking my middle finger behind the elastic of my panties, I slip them off one leg at a time, and I never move my eyes from his.
Feeling him between my legs, skin on skin, alone is overwhelming. I lay forward, wanting all of him, the warmth of his chest against mine, the heat of his breath against my neck. Everything. I kiss him hard and deep, his tongue tangling with mine in a dance of dominance, his fingers pressing into the back of my head until he drags one hand down the length of my body and to my hip. He squeezes it, thrusting his hips toward me. He wants the control so bad, but I remind him that it’s mine by pushing my hips back against him and holding them there.
When he gives back the control, I peck him lightly upon the lips and then both sides of his jawline.
He watches my face, glimpsing my lips, wanting to taste them.
And then I start to cry.
I always cry when I’m angry.
I’m becoming someone else, that girl lost at fourteen-years-old, forced to live a life of bondage and pain and broken dreams. Flashes of Javier’s face go through my mind erratically. I feel like I’m on a merry-go-round and it’s spinning so fast, all of the faces of Javier come and go before I can reach out and grab one. I can’t get my hands on just one so that I can beat it to death. And I just cry harder, screaming out into the night and before I realize what I’m doing, Victor has become the face of Javier that I can’t otherwise catch. I swing my fists at him, beating him over and over again on the chest and on his arms and he doesn’t stop me. Because I know only he can understand why I need this moment so desperately.
Yelling into the night, I let it all out. Tears barrel from my eyes.
I collapse on him and he engulfs me in his arms. I can’t catch my breath as I sob into the crook of his neck.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Victor
Beautiful but defeated and damaged. Damaged for the rest of her life and no amount of emotional mutilation will ever fully give her back her innocence. The girl is a ticking time bomb, a danger to herself and very possibly to others. I wasn’t sure before, but now I know that she is more unstable than I ever could have imagined. And because she is so skilled at hiding it, not on
ly from me but also from herself, she is more dangerous than I am. I am discipline. Sarai is rage. I am aware of my choices at all times. Sarai’s choices are more aware of her, lying in wait to decide for her based on the severity of her mood with no intention in leaving her any conscious control over it.
I know what I have to do.
I cradle the back of her head in the palm of my hand, my gun resting beside me on the bed in the other. I feel her tears soaking my shoulder, her body wracked by sobs that coalesce into my muscles. And her sweet spot still presses against my cock every time her body tenses. But I leave her there despite the moral need to pull away.
“Sarai,” I whisper against the side of her head, “I am sorry.”
I raise the gun slowly behind her.
She tilts her head and lies her cheek against my chest and I pause, waiting, though I don’t know for what. Her sobs begin to settle, her left hand drawn up near her chin where her fingertips rest lightly against my collarbone.
“I have an aunt in France,” she says softly, distantly. “My mother’s older sister. I know France is a long way, but you don’t have to take me there, just help me get on the plane.”
I raise the gun a little higher, settling the barrel at the back of her head, but not touching it. I don’t want her to be afraid before she dies and although I know she fears nothing, death is something we all fear in our final moment even if only the smallest part of us is conscious of it. I don’t want her to fear it at all and she can’t if she doesn’t know that it’s happening.
“How old were you when you became what you are?” she asks.
Caught off guard by the question and maybe more-so by the shifting of the mood, I hesitate before answering.
“I was nine.”
She sniffles and wipes her eyes with the hand near her cheek.
“You were very young,” she goes on. “I guess in a way like me, you never had a chance to live a life of your choosing. I guess maybe we aren’t really so different from each other.” She pauses. “Except I might be more like your brother than I care to admit. He’s as angry as I am.”
I release my finger from the trigger and slowly, so she doesn’t know, move the barrel away from the back of her head.
“It must’ve been hard growing up with Niklas,” she says.
I set the gun back on the bed next to me and before I know what I’m doing I’m cradling the back of her head in my hand again.
“Yes,” I answer, “considering the unconventional circumstances.”
“Instead of who’s the better baseball player it was who’s the better killer.”
“No,” I say. “Niklas never tried to be better than me, he only wanted to be my equal. We never competed with each other, but he’s been competing with everyone else who has ever been close to me for as long as he’s been alive.”
“Close to you?” she asks.
I nod and lightly comb my fingers through her hair.
“Vonnegut, Samantha, my mother, our father,” I say distantly as I picture these events, staring up at the scaling ceiling. “And now you.”
I hear her sigh, but she doesn’t raise her head.
“You see that you have one thing that I don’t,” she says carefully, though I get the feeling she’s saying it more to herself. “You have someone who loves you and who is loyal to you and who will kill for you.” She raises her body from mine and stands up from the bed. Then she looks down at me. “You are very fortunate to have him, Victor.”
She takes her panties from the end of the bed and slips them on. Then she picks up her shirt from the floor and pulls it over her long, disheveled hair and over her breasts.
“I am grateful,” she says looking back, “for everything you’ve done for me. I guess in the end none of it will really matter, not saving my life, or sparing it. But I’ll always be grateful to you.”
Sarai leaves my bedroom, but in a sense she has taken me with her.
For a length of time unknown to me, I stare up at the ceiling, picturing the way she looked before she left, how she used me to take revenge on Javier. In the beginning, I know she didn’t come into my room for that. She wanted to be with me. She wanted to feel something she’s never felt before, but rage and vengeance were not part of her plan. Self-destruction was not part of her plan, and despite using that moment to release some of the hatred inside of her, the only thing I sense that it did was make her realize just how fucked up she truly is.
The dark, melodic sound of the piano carries softly through the house, breaking me from my trance-like daze. The piece stops three times and begins all over again as she tries to get the keys right. On the fourth try, her fingers move more confidently over the keys, fluid and careful and perfect. And before long I find myself standing beside my bed and stepping into my underwear. The piece carries on, so elegant and beautiful and heart-wrenching that it draws me from my room and I’m helpless to fight against it. I take the hallway in a quiet stride, following the sound. The music gets louder, Moonlight Sonata in its most sorrowful interpretation yet, filling the vast, empty space all around me.
I stand silent and still at the arched entryway leading into the piano room. And I watch her unlike I’ve ever watched her before. She owns me in this moment.
I close my eyes and let the music course through me; shivers sweep over my skin like faint ripples on the water’s surface.
But I’m awoken from the lure all too quickly.
The music stops as Sarai becomes confused by the keys. Although disappointed that it came to an end so abruptly, I stay where I am hoping that she’ll pick up where she left off and finish the piece out. Her soft form appears vulnerable, fragile in the faint moonlight enveloping her from the window, a halo-like light around her body, illuminating the ends of her hair.
Please, just play it, Sarai. Don’t think about it, just play it.
She starts again from where she stopped, but after a few keys she gives up. Frustrated with herself, her upper-body arches forward, her hands gently touch her forehead.
I sit down beside her on the bench.
“I’ll teach you,” I say, arching my fingers on the keys. “If that’s what you want.”
She turns her head to look at me and as she does, I know that she’s wondering if I’m only referring to the music.
She nods slowly.
I start from the beginning and play the piece all the way to the point where she stopped. And then she tries again. And again, until my guidance sees her through and she’s in control of the keys the way she was before, the way she brought me into this room. It haunts me, every somber second of it, so much so that my closed eyes brim with tears, but only my heart can manage to shed them.
The piece ends at the end this time and silence fills the space around the two of us.
“I don’t want to sleep alone,” she says gently.
And I don’t force her to. Sarai falls fast asleep curled up next to me in my bed. Right where I want her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Sarai
When I wake up the next morning the sun is bright through the massive window even though the curtains have been drawn. I’m alone in the bed, but I know I’m not alone in the house. It was Victor’s dress shoes tapping against the floors outside the room that woke me. My heart is exhausted, but my mind and my body feel refreshed. I can’t remember the last time I slept that soundly.
I don’t think I ever have.
I raise my body from the mattress, untangling myself from the sheet. I can’t believe I did that last night, but I did and it’s over with and I can either face Victor and not be ashamed, or hide away inside this room for the rest of my life.
I choose the realistic.
As I step outside of the room, I wonder why we didn’t get up before dawn to leave like he had planned.
He’s sitting in the living room alone when I walk in, fully dressed in his best suit with his usual bags sitting on the floor next to his feet, minus the bag with the money. There’
s a newspaper in his hands and a mug of black coffee on the table next to the chair.
“Why didn’t we leave earlier?” I ask walking the rest of the way into the room.
He lowers the newspaper and then decides to fold it halfway and set it on the table next to the coffee.
“I thought you could use the sleep.”
My face flushes inwardly, failing at my attempt to not be ashamed of my sexual tirade, but really I doubt his answer had anything to do with that.
“Thank you,” I say.
I raise my eyes to him again. “Looks like you’ll have to buy me another pair of shoes,” I point out, pressing my bare toes into the cool, hard floor, my hands clasped together lying on my backside.
The shoes he bought me before had been left at Samantha’s when we had to get out of there in a hurry. I’ve not had the best of luck with shoes as of late.
“It has already been taken care of,” he says crossing one leg over the other and straightening his vest.
I gaze around the room, looking for department store bags or maybe some women’s clothes that had been left here for whatever reason.
A short middle-aged woman wearing a navy blue scrub uniform comes through the front door carrying a gaudy purse on one arm and several oversized store bags on the other. A set of keys jangle in her hand after she closes the door with her hip. She manages to drop the keys into her purse, twisting her wrist awkwardly to reach it.
“Oh, you must be Izabel,” the woman says bright-eyed. “I’m Ophelia. It’s nice to meet you.” I nod and introduce myself even though she apparently already knows my name, well the name that Victor gave me, anyway.
She drops her purse in the middle of the floor and walks across the large space into the living room towards me, the store bags still dangling on her arm and by the looks of it, starting to cut off the circulation.