A shadow passes over his features, thunderous and quiet, almost as if he’s…angry. Why the hell would he be? I’m the one who’s angry. I’m the one who was forced out of my safe cocoon to be here.
“Give me that bottle, Lia.”
“No! And stop calling me Lia!”
My hands flail about and I hear the crack before I see it. The bottle hits the wall and crashes against it. White liquid soap drips down my hand and onto the ground, and then a trail of blood follows.
A broken ceramic piece has sunk into my skin. A sting of pain explodes on my flesh before blood flows from my palm. I release what remains of the bottle, letting it crash to the ground.
“Fuck!” Adrian hurries toward me, plucks the piece out, leaving a small gash that burns when soap mixes with the wound.
Adrian throws the bloodied ceramic piece in the sink and wipes the soap away. His brow furrows over his darkened eyes and his lips thin into a line.
I squirm against him. “Let me go, you monster! Let me go!”
“Stop,” he orders and I flinch, going limp.
The word, although singular, is so authoritative that my muscles have locked together at hearing it.
Adrian grabs a beige towel, runs it under the sink, and presses it to my palm. He releases a breath when the blood doesn’t soak it for long. As if he’s worried about me. As if my well-being means shit in his agenda.
Why is he acting like this? I just can’t understand why he’s not the callous devil he should be.
His attention doesn’t break from my palm as he speaks, “I don’t know why you’re behaving like this all of a sudden, but why don’t you tell me?”
“Are you trying to pretend that you don’t know?”
“Know what?”
I purse my lips. A second ago, I was so certain it wasn’t a nightmare, but now, I’m not so sure. However, the bite mark and the tattoos couldn’t have been a figment of my imagination.
“You raped me just now.” My voice starts low, then grows in volume. “You forced yourself on me, even when I begged you to stop!”
Adrian’s hand pauses at my wound and he meets my gaze with his darker ones. For the first time since I met him, I really, really wish I could see behind those eyes. Just to know what’s happening in there. What type of thoughts go into his abnormal brain?
“I didn’t rape you,” he says ever so casually.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“You should.”
“I know what I felt.” It was too vivid of a nightmare, too…real. So real that I can still feel his thrusts in me.
“If I wanted to fuck you, I wouldn’t need to rape you for it.” He glides the towel over my hand. “What made you think that I did it?”
“I just told you, I felt it.”
“Felt it how?” His voice is too calm for this conversation. Too infuriating. I want to reach into his armor and yank him out—that is, if there’s anything to yank out. Sometimes, he seems like a shell.
A nothingness that can’t be touched or altered.
“What type of question is that? I just felt it. Besides, I bit my hand when you raped me and look!” I show him the teeth marks on my non-injured palm. “How do you explain this?”
“You could’ve bitten your hand while you were sleeping.”
“That’s not possible, because I sleep completely still. Besides”—I motion at his ink—“I saw your tattoos when I never have before this moment.”
“You could be projecting seeing them now to the past.”
“That doesn’t make any sense! You think I’m an idiot?”
“And you think I’m under the obligation to explain myself to you?” His voice loses all casualness, lowering, hardening, stifling. “I don’t need to force myself on you and, therefore, I didn’t rape you. It must’ve been a nightmare.”
“It couldn’t have been a nightmare. I don’t dream.”
“You probably just started.”
“Don’t try to make me seem crazy. I’m not.”
He stops gliding the towel over the wound. “Are you sore?”
His question catches me off guard and I pause as my legs clench together.
“Are you, Lia? Because if, as you said, I raped you, you wouldn’t be able to move.”
“I…”
“What?”
“…Am not.” Aside from the soaked panties, there’s no discomfort whatsoever between my legs or in my muscles. Considering it’s been a long time since I had sex, I would be sore.
“There. Your answer.” He tosses the towel in the sink and reaches into the cabinet, retrieving a first aid kit.
His shoulder muscles strain with the motion and his tattoos expand. I want to study them, to see if there’s a symbol I recognize, but his full nakedness doesn’t help me in my quest to focus.
I really don’t want to be ogling him right now.
Forcing my gaze away, I concentrate on an invisible dot on the opposite wall. A sense of relief slowly creeps over me at the thought that it was indeed a nightmare.
I don’t care if it was my first, or that it somehow matched so close to reality. Maybe that’s what happens when you don’t dream; your very first one is a visceral, horrifying experience.
The reason I desperately want it to be a nightmare isn’t only because of mental damage. It’s the fact that I didn’t fight. The fact that I orgasmed. The fact that I was touching myself to that disgusting act.
Pushing those thoughts away, I try to breathe, even partially, considering that Adrian’s still here and his presence always steals some of my air, if not all.
He gets a Band-Aid and puts it on the small cut in my palm. “Don’t ever do that again.”
“That?”
“The bottle. You should’ve given it to me when I told you to.”
“I wasn’t exactly thinking straight,” I mutter dismissively. But if I thought that would propel him to let it go, I’m far from right.
Adrian’s eyes darken and the air thickens in response to his mood. He towers over me until I have to tilt my head back to look at him as he repeats slowly, “You weren’t thinking.”
“I…wasn’t.”
“You’ll think before you act from now on.”
“Okay.”
“Not okay. Say it.”
“I will think.” Jeez. What is wrong with him?
“Go shower and change. We have breakfast in half an hour.”
I didn’t even realize it was morning yet since the curtains in the bedroom are closed. “Okay.”
He narrows his eyes. “Drop that word.”
“Why?”
“And stop talking back to me.”
“I’m merely asking why.”
“Because it doesn’t suit you.”
“More like it doesn’t suit your wife,” I mumble.
“What did you just say?”
“Nothing,” I blurt at the severity in his tone. This man is really not to be messed around with.
Using the towel, he picks up the pieces of broken ceramic, one by one, but instead of tossing them in the trash, he takes them with him on his way out.