Page 191 of These Tears

Another.

Gooseflesh races over my skin in small, treacherous waves beneath his gaze as the stream delivers exactly what he wants.

Elias watches each one ripple across my face. And for a damning space of time, he is so still, his breath warm against my mouth.

I don’t notice his free hand leaving the wall above me and shifting to the shower’s flow control. The pipes groan in rhythm with my ragged breathing.

‘You’re too quiet,’ he says. ‘That’s not right.’

The meaning reaches me one broken breath too late.

The handle shifts.

The pressure strikes harder, and I jerk. A startled sound tears from my throat – too sudden to be swallowed, too broken to be called anything dignified.

The water drowns most of it. The walls take the rest.

His nostrils flare. My face stings with fury and burns with desire.

The spray can muffle my voice, but it cannot silence the part of me still determined to turn this back on him.

‘Too much…’ I gasp, trying for modesty, but modesty doesn’t live here tonight. Not with the spray hard against my core while his gaze unravels me.

The handle moves again and I pull away with a shameful squeak. He’s already shaking his head.

‘We’re not coming out until you… finish cleaning,’ he rumbles.

Has his voice changed? As if the roar he swallowed managed to rip his throat to shreds.

‘It’s too strong,’ I say through my clenched teeth.

And I can’t believe I do. As though I’ve given him permission to do this. It lands hard and batters my pride harder.

The control handle complains as he moves it again, softening the onslaught of the spray further.

He doesn’t take his eyes off me.

I let a shameful breath fall, but I can’t tell if it’s from exasperation or wrath.

It feels like an eternity has passed before I gain enough courage to angle the spray again.

My lids fall shut upon contact and I bite down on my lip to keep the moan from leaving my mouth.

‘Look at me,’ he whispers. Shakily.

I meet his eyes.

A sharp gasp invades me, but not just from the pleasure.

A soft sound falls out of him before he locks his jaw, his throat working around nothing. The hand beside my head curls against the tile until his knuckles whiten before he forces it flat.

I almost drop the nozzle.

His jaw trembles once before he locks it down.

The thought that comes over me is rotten, but it comes anyway.

Some damaged, decadent fraction of my soul starts to reach for his to drag it down with me. I want him ruined by his choice – I don’t want to take it from him in the dark and name it his fault afterwards. I want to prove pleasure can be chosen even inside a nightmare – even while he is taking that same choice from me. I convince myself it’s to save him from that awful chain of the past.