Page 83 of When Sinners Fear
She doesn’t answer right away. “Okay.”
We sit a while longer, unspeaking. Short of the free air around us and the ability for us both to walk away from where we are, it’s like we're back there again – holding onto each other before the next round of pain comes. I frown and think back on that time, remembering, letting it fill me with all the reasons why she’s become a part of me. It seems so long ago and yet it's there all the time, binding us somehow. My lips quirk at the imagery of her under me, of her hands clinging to my neck while I took her innocence from her.
“I might need that fucking now.”
She snorts. “That’s not desperate romanticism.”
“Believe me, it's excessively desperate.”
“I thought we were going to a realtor.”
I stand and pick her up from the bench, shrugging her up to me. She folds her arms around my neck and lets me carry her back to my car. “We’ll do that tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
The drive back to her apartment is short and hurried, and we’re a desperate mess of hands and lips the entire way up the stairs. Stunned students get in our way, and I glare at every single one of them until the door crashes in behind her, and I’m all over her like a dog. She gasps and quivers with every wrench of her clothes, and I keep her lips connected to mine as much as I can until we’re both naked.
I push her away gently at one point, so I can look at her nakedness. Barely any bruises are left showing on her skin. She’s almost porcelain again now, cleaned of that time and fresh. They'll always be there as far as I'm concerned, though. They’re marked in. By me. Mine.
“You’re still not healed,” she murmurs, stepping back to me. Her hands go to my chest, soft fingers lightly running over the burns on display. “These should be covered. They’ll scar.”
“I want the scars. They’re my memories.” She kisses one of them and slowly makes her way up to my face. The kiss turns long and deep, and my hands cradle her head with a desperation I’ve never felt before. “They’re my memories of you.”
~
Her hands are splayed on the wall, and I’m buried as deep inside her as I can be. Water sluices down on us still, but all I can feel is the tight ring of her clamped onto me as I come. My lips drop down to her neck, and my hand goes to her stomach. Her fingers cover mine instantly, and we both wander between her clit and the place where new life is growing. It’s all soft and calm after that, all roaming and peaceful. A father. Parents.
“I’ve never had sex in the shower before,” she says.
“You’ve barely had any sex before. Period. Something I intend to change." I slap her ass, hard, and listen to the surprised yelp, as I walk from the tiny fucking cubicle. “Get dressed. We’re busy this morning.” I pick up a towel and run it over my head. “First, we’re feeding you, and then we’re housing you.”
She steps out and into me, kissing my fucking nose for some unquantifiable reason. “You make me sound like an animal. And I can’t. Not until later. I have work.”
“What work?”
She walks off into the small space she calls her place, which is more like a walk-in closet than an actual liveable room, and picks up a textbook. “Volker Heine’s use of macroscopic and microscopic physics to predict collective and structural properties.” I pull my pants on and take the book from her, flicking through the pages. “I’m only halfway through the analysis, and I need to factor it into my overall research paper. I’m behind.”
“That doesn’t work for me today. You eat, I’ll learn the second half of this, and then you can ask questions later and pretend I’m your professor.”
“Kinky.”
My smile broadens. We could play with that, but, for now, I finish getting dressed and sit on the single bed, waiting for her to get ready. It’s a revelation for me to watch. She’s shy about it, choosing to almost hide herself beneath towels as she pulls a dress on and then shrugs into boots.
“We do need to talk about some things, Knox. This is all well and good, but your life and what you do still needs discussing.”
“What I do needs zero discussing unless you’d like to be fully on board in the business.” She turns her stare at me, aggravated with my tone, no doubt. “You know what I do; don’t push me on the dynamics of something you don’t really want to hear or understand. We’re separate from that for the time being. Dry your hair.”
“Why?”
“You might catch a chill. I told you, protective.”
“No, I mean why are we separate from your life?”
“We’re here. I’m there.”
“And what about when I’m not here?”
“Then we’ll discuss what needs discussing. Until then, let it lie, Peyton. We’ll argue and then this turns somewhere neither of us wants. Give me time.”