After the incident with Brian at school I don’t see Elio for three days. I still go to class, accompanied by Enzo now, and I have to admit it’s a hell of a lot easier to concentrate without Elio’s menacing bulk beside me. I’m still with a gangster, but Enzo keeps his mouth mostly shut. That and the fact he doesn’t make me attend class with my tender ass covered in his dry come means going to school with him is practically mundane.
I don’t see or hear from Brian either, which is a relief. Getting his nose smashed in must have finally gotten it through his thick head that we’re done. Sometimes, at night, when Elio hasn’t come back, I replay that punch over and over again. The swift, decisive arc of Elio’s fist. The crunching of bone. I want to hate the violence of it. But something in that violence calls to me more than it repels me. It feels good to be stood up for, to be protected, even if the person doing the protecting is the most dangerous one of all.
On the morning of the fourth day, I still haven’t seen Elio. There’s no class today either, so I have nothing to distract me and nothing to focus on. And I need distraction, today of all days. I’ve been avoiding thinking about it, avoiding confronting this date the way I do every year. And every year, it still manages to sneak up on me and get its hands around my throat.
The anniversary of Mom’s death. The anniversary of the night we crashed.
I do some homework, tapping away on the keyboard of the laptop Elio bought me, as if I can escape into academia. But as the minutes turn to hours, and evening approaches, a sorrow-soaked dread starts closing in on me. Every few words I type get blurred with choking tears, until I’m rising from the small desk and almost blindly stumbling out of the room.
I ignore Robbie, who dutifully follows me from his place at the top of the stairs as I descend. Getting out of the room was good, I decide. I don’t feel quite so claustrophobic. Normally, on this day, Willow would come get me out of the house. We’d go see a movie or something. But I still haven’t heard from her since that first email she sent, and there’s basically zero chance she’ll be breaking me out of here tonight.
I swipe at my eyes and wander into the living room that leads into the kitchen. There’s floor to ceiling windows here, and heavy, beautiful snowflakes drift down onto the towering pine and spruce trees all around the property. The ground is velvet white, the sky darkening like a bruise.
He still hasn’t come back.
I get it. I get that I’m a prisoner here and that he can walk in and out of this house anytime he likes while I cannot. But something about this – about him not being here on this night of all nights – feels worse than usual. I can’t hide from the fact that if anyone would understand how I feel right now, it would be Elio. He may never tell me what happened with his mom in his own words, but his wound matches mine in the deepest and most painful of ways.
And right now, it hurts that he’s not here. It’s terrible and shameful and maybe I’m just insane with grief, but I want him. I fucking miss him, God help me. God help me.
I watch the snow falling. As the sky steeps itself in darkness, the snowfall gets heavier, thicker, until I can barely see the trees outside. I probably would stand there all night, numbing myself with the sight of the snow, if the sound of the front door opening and closing didn’t make me spin so fast I almost fall over.
Elio.
But it’s not Elio. And the resulting disappointment shatters any illusion of numbness. Tears choke me, and I try to swallow and blink them back as Valentina takes off a pair of boots and heads for me.
“Hey! My mom sent me over here to grab something from the kitchen. We’re out of the good balsamic, but Rosa has some. Have you heard from Elio, by the way?” Valentina stops in front of me. Her red parka is dusted with rapidly melting snow, as are her long, fluttery lashes. “Are you OK?”
“I’m fine.” How many times have I said that?
How many times has it been a lie?
Valentina squints at me for a long moment, and I muster a tight smile. Then she sighs.
“Papà doesn’t like when Elio and Curse drop off the map like this. Neither of them are answering our texts or calls. Although…” Her eyes brighten, like she’s just gotten a wicked idea. “Maybe if you texted Elio, he’d actually deign to answer.”
“Yeah, right. He didn’t even tell me he was leaving in the first place. And I don’t even have his number,” I say, and the words come out much more bitter than anticipated. I wonder if Valentina notices that. If she does, she mercifully doesn’t comment on it.
“I can give you his number. I bet if you texted or called him right now, he really would reply.”
Honestly, screw that. Yes, I want to see him, but I’m also more and more pissed that he just waltzed out of here and away from me. I’m not pathetic enough to call him after that.
Before I can stop her, Valentina’s grabbed my phone out of my back pocket.
“Hey!” I say, stretching my hand for it. But she hustles out of reach.
“Relax. I just want to add Elio’s number to your contacts. What’s the passcode?”
I clench and unclench my fists, deciding if I should unlock my phone for her or not. I don’t need Elio’s number in my phone. It’s not like I’ll ever use it.
But… maybe…
Maybe it might be nice just to know it’s there.
“I’ll unlock it.”
She holds up the phone for me, and I draw the pattern to unlock it. Valentina goes to my contacts and starts typing. Once she’s typed in Elio’s number, she hands it back, leaving the name field blank. Still annoyed with this whole situation, I name the contact Monster.
At the last moment, without even knowing why I do it, I add My in front of it.
“I added my number in there as well,” Valentina tells me.
I look, and see her number and name, along with a glittery heart and kissing lips emoji at the end.
“Look, I’m not gonna make you call or text Elio, but if you do, and he responds, would you let me know?”
I have absolutely no intention of calling or texting him, but I nod anyway.
“Thanks,” she says with a smile.
For a second, I almost ask her to stay. To hang out with me, distract me. But before I know it, she’s gotten her bottle of balsamic and has disappeared back out into the snowy night.
I stay in the living room a while longer. There’s a massive TV down here, and I turn it on and stare at it blindly. I think it’s a cooking show. Or maybe a travel show. I’m so disconnected I don’t even know. The entire time, Robbie watches me, and when I can’t stand his eyes on me anymore I trudge back up the stairs, heading through Elio’s room into mine. My laptop has long since gone to sleep, and the lights are off, making the room dark and still. And empty.
Coming back up here alone was a mistake. Because it’s dark just like that night was dark. Dark until headlights shone through our windshield, forcing my mom to crank the wheel and send us careening off the road. I can still hear her yelp of terrified shock, the rapid turning of the steering wheel. I don’t remember the impact of the crash itself. Just the breathless moments before. The pure terror of sliding and sliding and not being able to stop. The tires didn’t squeal. They made this wet grinding sound across the snow and slush, and it fills my head until I’m desperate to hear anything, anything besides that sound.
I don’t even know what the hell I’m doing when I fish my phone shakily out of my pocket. I don’t call Valentina. I don’t try calling Willow.
I call my monster.
And he answers on the very first ring.
“Songbird,” he drawls silkily.
I don’t even realize I’m crying until I hear the thick tears in my voice when I reply.
“Elio.”
The smooth satisfaction of his voice vanishes. His next words come out sharp and strained.
“What is it?”
What am I supposed to say? My mom died and I’m sad and lonely and the only fucking person on the planet I’m reaching out to, the only one I want right now, is the monster who locked me up and walked the fuck away.
Absolutely not. Instead, I retreat into anger.
“Where the hell have you been?” I practically spit.
I expect him to make some joke, to say Miss me? in that cruel and knowing tone like he did last time. But maybe it’s the tears he hears in my voice. Or maybe things have started to change between us since then. Because he seems serious and sincere when he replies.
“I had to straighten something out up north. Weather’s been too bad to fly or drive back the past couple days.”
“You… you could have told me that,” I whisper, feeling like a fucking idiot. Why did I call him? What did I hope to gain from this?
“Are you telling me you wanted to hear from me while I was gone?”
I want more than to hear from him, and that’s what pisses me off the most.
“No,” I snap. “Take as long as you need up north. In fact, don’t even come back at all if you don’t need to.”
“But I do need to,” he counters instantly, and it sounds weird. Too loud. Like it’s coming from behind me, all around me, rather than from my phone. “Because this is where my Songbird is.”
I gasp, and my phone falls from my hand as I turn and find him there. My emotions form a cacophony inside me, a chaotic, jumbled song of fear and sorrow and anger and relief.
“You’re here,” I whisper, taking in the sight of him, wondering if my grief has conjured some kind of hallucination.
“You’re crying,” he replies softly. He steps into the room, further and further into the darkness with me, like some onyx angel, no, some demon who’s not afraid of the shadows. Who’s not afraid to go as far or as deep as it takes to reach me. His leather gloves are cold when they graze my neck. He must have just come in from outside and sprinted up the stairs.
His mouth is warm though, warm when it finds the tracks of my tears, kissing the salted liquid from my skin. That warmth seeps into me, turning molten, turning to something that burns all the way down my spine. Scorching need obliterates everything else inside me. Bludgeons the sadness, a cauterizing plug to a bleeding fucking wound. My mouth opens and searches for Elio’s blindly as my hands grip the front of his shirt and pull him harder to me.
He claims my mouth and walks, backing me up until the backs of my legs collide with the bed. My stomach flip-flops, because even after everything we’ve done in these rooms, we’ve never been in a bed together and I know what it means. I know what it will lead to, and I don’t care and can’t stop it. Not now, not tonight. Not when this need has eclipsed everything I thought I ever knew.
Elio’s hands find the hem of my sweater, tugging it upwards. I stop kissing him (if you can even call it that, because my movements are desperate and messy) and let him pull it off. I didn’t bother with a bra beneath the sweater today, and every muscle and nerve jumps to attention when Elio’s gloves skim over my nipples.
“You’re still crying,” Elio murmurs before lowering his head and sucking my right nipple into the demanding heat of his mouth. I cry out, my back arching, and bury my fingers in his hair. He’s right. I can feel the warm liquid coursing down my cheeks.
“That’s because… tonight…” I breathe, my words halting as pleasurable pangs echo outward from my breast. Elio gives one last, long suck before letting go and pinning me with a dark gaze.
“I know what tonight is.” And just like that, he has me. He’s got me in his grip, because he knows what tonight is and he knows what I’m feeling and I don’t need to say a single word. I don’t need to speak or explain because he already knows.
“It’s why I drove like a bat out of fucking hell all day to get here when we couldn’t fly back,” he continues softly, undoing the button and zipper of my pants and sliding them downwards.
He came for me. He came for me because he knew I would be hurting.
He knows what I need, just like he told me. He knows what I need and what I fucking need right now is him.
His jacket comes off, then his shirt, then his pants, and then I’m flat on my back beneath him, marvelling at the brutal planes of his body, the heaving of his chest, the frenetic, consuming gleam of his eyes. Some of his hair falls forward into his eyes, and for the first time I don’t stop myself from brushing the unruly strands back from his forehead. It’s an undeniably tender motion, and I stroke down to his jaw.
“You came for me.”
A flicker of agony passes over Elio’s face, and he presses his face against my hands. His voice splits the darkness.
“I will always fucking come back for you. Even when you don’t want me to. Even when you scream and beg and cry for me to leave, even when you push me away, I won’t go. I will come back every single time, do you hear me? I will fucking be here. Always.”
The always part should alarm me, because always was never part of the plan. I’m not staying here, not with him, not forever.
But right now, I don’t want to think about that. I just want to lose myself in the drugging reality that there’s somebody who would never abandon me, never lose me, never let me go. He’s solid and so fucking warm and God, he’s taken his gloves off, his scarred hands running up and down my body, taking possession. One hand settles between my legs, sliding through wetness until I pant and tremble.
The other settles around my throat.
“Right now,” Elio whispers against my temple as he works my clit in expert, erotic circles, “you need to feel something other than what you were feeling earlier tonight. You need pleasure. You need oblivion.”
I nod, even though it’s hard with his fingers closed around my throat, because he’s right. He’s ripped me open with a few well-placed words and now he’s the only one who can put me back together. He gently presses on my throat, and I choke out a moan, my eyes rolling back in my head as my pussy clenches.
“You need this, don’t you, Deirdre?”
I can’t even nod now, let alone speak, because of his grip. But I don’t need to, because he knows the answer just like I do. I need this. I need to let go of some control. Let him take away my breath and take away my pain.
He slides a finger inside me, and I try to gasp, but barely get half a breath in my lungs.
“I’ve strangled men with my bare hands,” Elio suddenly rasps, and I must be perverted because my pussy clenches again. “I know how much pressure to exert. I know when to stop.” His hand tightens around my throat, and my breathing becomes the barest whistle. “But even so…” He crooks his finger inside me, stroking firmly until I’m shaking, the blood roaring through my body as it searches for oxygen. “Tap my shoulder twice to make me stop.”
I’m already on the cusp of coming, about to fall the fuck apart, but Elio stops the movement of his finger.
“Tap my shoulder once, now, to show me that you understand.”
My hands feel like they’re made of lead, but I raise my right one and tap his shoulder.
He groans. “Good little Songbird.”
He starts working his finger again, firm and fast and filling me, adding another while clamping down on my throat until all I can feel is the desperate, breathless writhing inside me. That panicky pleasure that narrows my focus of feeling to my chest and the place between my legs. I don’t even know if my eyes are open or closed – everything is black. The oblivion he promised me is rising, constricting all around me, a pulsing, living darkness that expands inside me until I come.
Just as my insides clamp down on Elio’s fingers, he pulls them out. At the same moment, he releases my throat. Instinctively, I suck in a huge, raw breath, the explosion of oxygen only adding to the intensity of the moment. I’m flying and falling at the same time, and only Elio can anchor me. I reach quivering arms around his neck, pull him down to me just as I feel pressure, pressure right there. A searching nudge, and then the violent forward motion of a thrust inside.
Pain surges up alongside the pleasure. My mouth falls open in a soundless scream as Elio completely fills me, stretching me, breaking into me. Breaking down the last of the barriers between us. I’m crying again – I can hear the sobs more than I can feel them. Because all I can feel right now is him. The pain of him inside me. The searing juncture of our bodies.
Elio lets out a ragged sound, then thrusts again. My arms are still around him, and I’m squeezing, holding onto him. I could tap his shoulder twice. See if that would make him stop. When he thrusts a third time, harder, I almost do it because it hurts too fucking much.
“Does it hurt, Songbird? Fuck, I can feel you opening for me. Feel you bleeding for me.”
Two little taps. That’s all it would take.
Elio’s moving faster now, and something in the angle has changed, because even though it still hurts there’s something new undulating behind that pain. The wetness of my orgasm and the blood of my lost virginity eases the way ever so slightly for Elio’s girth until he’s grinding even deeper than before, hitting a screaming, shuddering place inside me that makes me feel like everything is loosening and tightening all at once. I’m going to come again. I’m going to come, even while I’m hurting. He’s going to make me. It’s building so intensely I almost feel like I’m going to pee myself. One of his thumbs starts rubbing hard against my clit, and I know I’m nearly gone now.
“Every time I pull out I can see your blood on me,” Elio groans. “You’re claiming my cock with your blood the same way I’ve already stained you with mine. That first night, Songbird, do you remember? When I got shot and bled all over you.” He seems to lose his rhythm, his hips snapping chaotically as he breathes. “I would have fucking died for you that night.”
The bandages on his shoulder scrape against my wrist as I cling to him. Cling to the man who I should be doing everything I can to run from. But I can’t run – not now. Not while my body is reacting like this to his. I moan through the tears as my pussy convulses.
“Yes,” Elio hisses between clenched teeth. “My sweet little Songbird. My good fucking girl. Come on my fucking cock just like that.”
And once again, like so many times before, I cannot help but obey. I scream, muscles clamping down on his so hard I can tell it’s affecting his movements. He jams himself further inside as white-hot stars spin out in my pelvis, scattering and shattering. I’m so tight around him, so fused to him, that I feel it happen. Feel the throb of him deep inside as he shunts his hips forward for the final time.
He’s coming, shuddering and tensing and coming, coming, coming so hard inside me. As his desire spills into me and mixes with my blood, he lowers his mouth to mine and says directly against my lips. “We are fucking bound together, you and me.”
As aftershocks of my orgasm wrack my body, my pussy squeezing him like I can’t bear to let him go, I know that he’s right.
There’s no way to come back from this now. Not for him.
And not for me.