An Eye For An Eye (The Club)

One

JUDE

“Who’s there?” My breath shook with awareness that sent tingles up my spine. My hands grasped sheets and reached out instinctively into darkness. My chest felt pressure as my heart pounded in anticipation.

Two months this time.

Sixty days since the last time.

The scent awakened me, a sharp tang, faintly metal and covered by musk and male. His presence inside the house was felt long before he made himself known to me in my darkly isolating world. Frustration built quickly as did my hope. How dare he do this–again.

My body reacted before my mind had a chance to catch up and warn myself how much this was a bad idea. Skin tightened, and my body flushed. I’d never felt such heat course through my body. It was like a bowl of melted vanilla ice cream, a pool of something syrupy sweet on a hot day, yet never touched or tasted as I disintegrated in his arms. It was always that way, my traitorous body primed for him, and his buzzed with energy that found me wherever I went like a heat seeking missile.

He was danger personified and my greatest mystery. I didn’t know his identity and that alone should have terrified me. I never once heard his voice, but I recognized his other attributes. On the rare occasion he came close enough to let me touch him…I let my hands explore every part of him I could reach. The small depression in his spine between his head and neck always bore a fresh dampness only a shower could bring. My fingers would curl, and my middle finger slipped against his skin to rub the spot earning me an appreciative groan, but nothing else.

Metallic might have been a better way to describe the coolness of his aura. My world was devoid of most colors, but there had been a time I would have seen him as cool blues and polished silvers. I imagined us both as two damaged souls dancing a dangerous thrust and parry. Perhaps that’s why he sought me out. Maybe that’s why I let him come to me in the darkness of my world. We were two parts of the puzzle, neither complete without the other.

Robbed of my sight left the rest of my heightened senses overloaded and rapid firing when he visited me, but unable to identify him. He came sporadically, always in the dead of night. My sleep cycles were already disturbed by my blindness. No medication helped regulate my circadian rhythm, except to make me more disorientated than usual with a bout of vertigo making me wish I was on a roller coaster. I’d given up on medicine fixing me anyway. He became the pleasant expectation taunting me.

People would think I was crazy having some stranger in my house. Part of me did think I often treaded on the border of insanity as alone as I was with only him, uninvited as he was into my world. He left me on the brink of pleasure and unsatisfied out of some fucked up sense of honor. I was as much at fault for my state as he was, but I continued to let him touch me even if briefly.

I hated him.

I was so achingly alone.

But…part of me wanted him more.

Weeks, months even would pass, between the times I…felt him. The first time, an entire year had gone by before I felt his presence again. I swore he was in my house that day, standing there watching me. It was another week after that before he made his presence known. I had no name, nothing to go by except for his nocturnal visits to my home and the alluring scent of danger he filled me with. The excitement I would never seek out on my own because of my…limitations.

“Hello?” Tonight, my sleep disorder kept me unsettled. I tossed and turned as rest eluded me. On a sigh, my arms stretched searching. I grabbed for the silky robe I had place over the chair next to my bed steadying myself to take another step. Slipping it on, the liquid fabric covered my nightgown, belting it at my waist in a sloppy bow.

I had a feeling he would come. Primping, I visited the spa in town and got my usual waxing and polishing. The esthetician was a new girl and she wasn’t particularly gentle in her application, my skin felt raw exposed as it was. I could never manage a razor shaving my delicate parts with limited vision inside a slippery shower stall. I wasn’t stupid or particularly vain, but a girl needs to know her business is taken care of properly.

Still no voices replied to mine, just the sound of my door opening and clicking shut. Smiling, I called out to him. “I know you’re here. I can…feel you.” It was dumb to say, but when the other person refused to give you a verbal acknowledgement you either begin to believe it’s a specter or that you’re actually going insane.

“Answering is the polite thing to do,” I grumbled to myself. “As if you were ever polite.” Shuffling carefully through the door of my bedroom on bare feet, my toes chilled. Texas could get bitter cold at night, even if you could cook eggs on the pavement during the day. I saw it once as a little girl. A nice trick science teachers demonstrated on the playground. Science…now there was a memory better left to the dark recesses of my mind.

I swayed with dizziness and closed my eyes against the hazy blur. Clenching my fists for a moment, I collected myself; reorienting to my home’s layout and what I might say to him next. My sight was a mostly colorless world of dark blurred shapes in limited light and virtually nothing under the glaring sun cause by chemical burns and cataracts.

The accident.

Pain.

Things I needed to make peace with.

Clutching the door frame, I moved into the hallway each step in nervous anticipation. Would he touch me? Where would he start? I imagined his fingers trailing down my arm feather soft starting at my shoulder. A chill

that began in my toes traveled up my body in a full shake jerking me against the wall causing me to bump my shoulder. Would I tell him no when he got too close to crossing the line grazing my skin with his rough finger tips? How long would he leave me for this time? Was his leaving meant to punish or protect me?

A clatter from the kitchen forced me to turn my head listening, half-smiling and waiting, honing in on the sounds before heading in a different direction down the hall. Smirking, I guessed my guest didn’t like the dark either...or the kitchen pan I left on the floor in his obvious path. He deserved it, after all what’s good for me is good for him. I clutched my arms around my stomach, a shiver racing down my spine.

A sniff of the air and I knew he was there, front and center. I took a step forward anyway bumping into hard flesh to whisper coyly. “Miss me?” A low huff of his minted breath was the only acknowledgement he gave me before his large calloused hand cupped my cheek tenderly and dry lips grazed my skin. I loved this weirdly twisted thing we had. His thumb caressed my lower lip pulling it down. Opening my mouth, I let my tongue slip out and lick his thick digit twirling around salted skin.

He pulled back and I taunted him saying, “Do it.” Grunting, he pushed his finger between my lips. I sucked his thumb succumbing to the taste of his skin which boiled my blood hotter. I wanted to start with his lips on mine and finish with his cock deep within so badly it physically hurt this dance we were doing. I’d never been with anyone before, but I’d read enough and giggled with high school girlfriends before everything had changed. I knew enough to make it work and standing here in limbo did nothing for my fragile psyche.

His arm snaked around me, and pulled me into his embrace a bit roughly, his back now against the wall. This dance was erotic, a private show for two. I imagined spotlights on us as we gyrated together. Chances where if I saw him in person, I might run screaming in terror, knowing there was something utterly dark about him, so over the top alpha and barely reigned in. Why else would he visit me like this?

Something about my blindness made me brave and a little stupid. I skirted tumultuous ground as my mystery man guided me back against the wall softly this time. He pressed me against the solid surface as one hand buffered me gently and the other pushed my arms up above my head briefly. I whimpered as he grunted. I swear he said something like, “so soft,” but no words came from him, just the exhalation of his breath tickling my flesh. He pressed his hard body against my hips lining me up to his shape. Each encounter over the past three years was further down the rabbit hole of oblivion, the kind that damages your soul.

“Who are you?” I asked him as he released my arms. I clutch his buttoned dress shirt to hold myself steady. My fingertips circled the small buttons and his head hung down, lips grazing my hand at his top button around his thick neck. His fingers clutched my robe pulling it taught to expose my shoulder letting his head rest there in the crook of my neck. His lips touched me briefly again and I felt the soft fuzzy stubble of his shaved head. I wiggled rubbing my core against him and he shifted lips pulling at my neck like I’m his last feast. If he were a vampire I’d willingly let him suck me dry if only to end this misery I lived in.