There is a silence then, and it is a silence more full of tension and volatility than any I’ve ever felt.
“How can you not see, X?” This, so quiet I have to strain to hear it.
“See what, Caleb?”
“See that you’re special, to me. I keep you apart. I keep you for—for myself. Those girls, Rachel and the others, I’ve got to give them away. They’re all fucking damaged, and I’m trying to make them whole. I know you don’t get it, but that’s what I’m trying to do. I don’t sell them, I match them. All of them, each one, they’ll all get matched with someone who will appreciate them, even love them. It works. I’ve seen it work. But in order for them to go out and be the wives they need to be, they have to feel beautiful. They need to feel their own self-worth. And when they come to me, when they enter the program, they don’t.”
A few paced steps brings a body I cannot ignore to stand beside me. A long index finger touches my cheekbone, traces its curve. “But you, X. You’re special. I always knew you would be. When I first found you, I just knew I had to help you. And yes, I was eventually going to put you in the program. But I couldn’t. Ican’t.”
There is a flaw in this logic, somewhere, but I’m dizzy, lost. Heat overwhelms my senses, the sudden and unexpected rush of truth drowns out my logic. Hands span my waist, gripping with fierce need. Lips touch my earlobe. There is tenderness, here, and it is so alien and so welcome.
“Why?” I whisper it. “Why can’t you?”
“I can’t give you away to someone else, because you’remine. You belong to me. I can’t share you. Iwon’t. You’re...” Adam’s apple bobs with a hard swallow. “Youmeansomething to me, X.” Behind me now.
I’ve never heard such things from this mouth. Never seen such intensity or openness. I am flooded with doubt.
Lips touch my throat, and sorcery subsumes me, weaves into the dark thrall of its warp and weft.
“Don’t you feel it?” Broad, powerful hands on my belly. “Don’t you feel...us?”
Oh, that word.Us.It means belonging. I want it. I want to believe.
“Do youfeelit, X?”
“I feel it, Caleb.” And I do. I do.
I shouldn’t, but I do. I am weak. So weak.
I am falling under the spell.
My thighs tremble, my belly quivers and tightens. Need pulses in me. The hard body behind me is huge and powerful and incites something hungry within me. I cannot help but lean my head back, baring my throat. One huge hand slides up my body, cups my breast, and then curls around my throat, gentle,but insistent. The other skates down my body, over my belly, down between my thighs. Cups me, there. Fingers curl and gather the edge of my dress, lift it. Inch by inch, my thighs are bared. Then my hips. Then the black sheer mesh over my privates, the skinny string around my waist.
One hand at my throat, the other at my core. One cupping, the other clutching. One clamped with enough pressure to render me tremulous with a hint of fear, the other digging under silk to find flesh, stealing my breath.
“You’remine, X.”
I can only moan in response. Fingers curl, slip in, find me sensitive and needy, press just so to set me shaking, knees weak.
I come, quickly and hard.
But I’m not done. Oh no. While I gather my strength to stand up on my own, the fingers slip out of me and unzip trousers. My dress is up around my hips, hot breath on my ear, and now my underwear has vanished, leaving me bare from the waist down, the air cool and my damp core hot. I hear shoes kicked off, pants and belt thud on the floor. Feet nudge mine apart, and a hand pushes me forward. My bottom is bared, exposed. I drip with need. I ache. God, I ache.
The hand on my throat has not slackened its grip, and now, bent forward, that grip is all that keeps me from falling over.
A deep-throated groan, and I am filled. Deep, slow, and hard.
“You feel it, X? You feel us?”
I don’t know how to fathom this. Words have never entered this equation, have never been a part of this act. “Yes, Caleb.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I feel it.”
But it’s the same, still. Despite the words, despite the palpable emotion, it’s the same. I see only the floor. Feel only what I’m allowed to feel.
But then something changes. A thrust, another. I moan, stumble, shake, only the hand on my throat keeping me upright. I’m dizzy with lack of breath. I’m not being choked, but it is still limiting my oxygen.
