I’m Scarlett come home after the war, the place a husk of its former self. The walls aren’t blackened with fire, but they might as well be. The house rings hollow.
Christopher puts me to bed with gentle insistence, undressing me like I’m a child. I press my face into his chest and breathe deep, taking comfort I don’t deserve from his scent. My mouth opens to taste him, to bite him. I would swallow him whole if I could, but he sets me back an inch. “Not tonight,” he says, and I hiss at him like an animal.
“Yes, tonight.” This is when I need him—rough and animalistic. If he won’t hurt me then I’ll hurt him. It’s the only thing that makes sense in this topsy turvy night. It’s the only thing I can trust.
I grasp his shirt and press myself against him, my lips mashing his. It’s isn’t graceful or seductive. There’s a violence inside me that needs to get out. I bite at his lips, but it seems to work. It seems to work because his breath catches. His body goes stock still—not in the way where he’s fighting me.
He’s still in the way where he’s fighting himself.
I give him a rough shove, and he lets himself step back. “Fight me,” I say, panting.
A low growl. “You don’t want this.”
I want it to stop hurting inside me, and maybe if he hits me, maybe if he hurts me, I won’t be able to feel the ache on the inside anymore. All I need is one minute of relief. All I need is one minute to forget. I step forward and raise my hand—he catches my wrist.
His face is in an inch from mine. “You don’t want this,” he says again, but this time it doesn’t sound like concern for me. It sounds like a threat, and my body responds with a rush of adrenaline. My heart pounds ten thousand seconds in the time it takes him to let me go.
And then I’m on him, climbing his body, knocking him to the floor. He cushions my fall with his body, his grunt half pain, half pleasure. I scratch my nails down his chest, and even through the fabric of his shirt I know I’ve drawn blood. A sound escapes me—something angry and grieving and wild.
He should be scared of me right now. I’m a little scared of this. God knows Sutton would be; he only ever treated me like a lady. Skittish like his beautiful golden horse, but a lady nonetheless.
Nothing about this is ladylike. It’s not even human, this grief inside me.
Christopher doesn’t look shocked. He looks at me like I’m the same as always, like he always knew that I’m a she-devil, a siren. A mythical creature with eyes that will turn a mortal man to stone.
He isn’t mortal. He burns under my gaze. “Go ahead,” he says from the floor, leaning back, offering up his body to me. “Take what you need. Let me give it to you.”
The words should be enough to jolt me back to sanity, but I’m too far gone. I gasp him everywhere, everywhere, my nails raking him, my teeth bared to him. He pushes his hands above his head on the floor, as if they’re chained there. As if he’s Prometheus and I’m the fury of the gods, torturing him until the end of time. And he likes it. He likes it.
I rock my hips over the hardness pressing his jeans. He jerks against me, unable to hold still at the heat of my covered sex, at the rock of my body, even though he accepted my pain in silence.
My head falls back, and I close my eyes. It’s like water to let my hips move over him, liquid movement, the path of least resistance to rub my clit against his erection. Pleasure arcs through my body, sharp through the muted agony. It’s almost unbearable, the friction too much. I make myself feel it, and my climax rises with an overwhelming hurt that comes from deep inside. I rock and rock and rock—and against him with a terrible cry and tears streaming down my cheeks.
It fills my head, the knowledge that I will never see her again. We’ll never watch an old movie. She’ll never tell me that I’m strong and brave and good, because I’m not, I can’t be. I collapse on Christoper’s battered chest, sobbing salt-tears into his cuts.
His arms come around me, and he soothes me with nonsense words, with soft caresses. I know with certainty then that no frat boy, no other man could have withstood me. Only this man, more god than human. He absorbs all my grief and pain into his body, and I know he’s strong enough for more.
I cry against him for what I’ve lost, but more than that I cry for what was never found.
For the love my mother never had. For the peace and security in those black-and-white movies that never came true—and now they never can come true. She’ll never know how it feels to be held forever.
And the worst part is, Daddy never knew it either.
They could have been everything together. Instead they were nothing.
The fabric beneath my cheek is drenched in tears. The floor hard beneath my knees. Through my tears I come to realize that we’re lying on the floor, my body draped over Christopher’s, his cock still hard between my legs. “I’m sorry,” I mumble, reaching for him, fumbling. “Sorry.”
I’m not sure what I can offer him with my heart still broken, not sure why he’s even still aroused when my eyes are red and puffy like this, but he stops me with a sharp sound.
“Absolutely not.” His voice is rough with need, but his tone leaves no room for argument. As if we can’t cross some invisible line of sexual ethics that says I’m allowed to rub myself off on his body, but he himself can’t come. It’s ridiculous, especially when he’s throbbing the inside of my thigh. He must be in pain. But then he pulls me down to his body again, pushes my head on his shoulder. I sink into the cradle of his body. That’s all I needed—an orgasm, fast and rough. A forceful cuddle. And sleep claims me, dragging me down into the inky black.
When I wake up again, it’s the middle of the night.
Christopher’s face looks softer in the moonlight. This man has been jerked around by my family, his life twisting at our whims. First my father’s will and then my mother’s Death Plan. He’s so beautiful and tortured. Maybe the best thing I can do is finally leave him alone.
Last night feels like a dream.
The only thing I know for sure is that I can’t stay in this house.
I’m half asleep as I find my keys and head out the door—without my purse or my phone. I don’t need those things, not for what I need to do. Not for where I need to go. Isn’t that what a library used to be? A place where you didn’t need money to read. Where you didn’t need the newest, biggest iPhone to learn something about the world.
An outdated idea. A defunct building. The world still needs books and knowledge, but it’s not going to get them here at the long-closed Tanglewood Library.
There’s no saving it.
No saving me.
The library looks almost sinister in the moonlight with its rough planes and jagged edges. The girl stands at the corner, selling her body. She’s breaking apart, just like the building. I should give her whatever cash is in my wallet—except I didn’t bring my purse. There’s nothing but my hands now. That’s all I ever had, the ability to create. The ability to destroy.
Harper St. Claire distilled down into a single goal.
She gives me a strange look, a little concerned, mostly wary. Like an alley cat I’ve disturbed in the middle of her dinner. “What are you doing here?” she spits.