When I drag my gaze to her eyes, she’s watching me. I set the pajamas aside. I cup her face, my thumb brushing her lips, knuckles sliding over one taut nipple as I drop to my knees before her. She swallows, weaves the fingers of one hand in my hair when I turn my attention to that small patch of soft hair and open her. I inhale her clean scent, then run the pad of my tongue over her. She shudders, and her fingers tighten. I lick again, hearing her moan when I nip at her clit. When I lift one of her legs over my shoulder, she holds on to me for balance.
I take her slowly. I rarely make love to her. We normally fuck. We fuck hard and rough, but this is different. Tonight, she needs soft. And I give it to her first with my tongue, devouring her, her taste and her scent an aphrodisiac. And when she comes, her standing leg buckles, and she leans into me, moaning, her grip on me so tight it’s like she’s pulling my hair out.
When she goes limp, I lift her thigh from my shoulder and stand, carrying her to the bed to lay her on her back. I climb between her legs and kiss her with my mouth still wet from her. Her hands come around my waist, one settling on the scar on my back as she kisses me, a deep, slow kiss. Perhaps it’s not only her who needs soft right now.
I slide easily into her, thinking the impossible as I do. Three little words that I can never utter. The only ones I can think. I can feel. It would be so natural. So easy to say them. But the consequence would be fatal.
So I make love to her without ever saying the words. We watch each other without speaking. We kiss, never taking our eyes from one another. Tonight is not even about reaching a climax. It’s her clinging to me and me clinging to her and possibly being the closest we’ve ever been. As close as two human beings can get without burrowing beneath the other’s skin.
I pull out before I come. I’ve been careful about that, although I know I should use a condom. I just can’t with her. I need her heat. Skin on skin, I need to feel her.
When it’s over, we lie together, her on her back, me on my side holding her. Her fingers play over the scar on my back.
“Theron,” I say.
She looks at me, and it takes her a minute to understand.
“At his twenty-fifth birthday celebration.”
Her eyes grow more alert, and she turns toward me, fingers coming to my face.
“It’s when the Montgomery men receive the first installment of our inheritance.”
She doesn’t speak, just waits.
“I’m going to tell you a secret, Mercedes. Something I’ve never told anyone.” I brush a strand of hair that’s fallen across her forehead, and for a long time, I just look at her. It’s so long she must think I’ve changed my mind and gives me an out.
“You don’t have to tell me.” She sounds disappointed but unsurprised.
“I want to.”
She waits.
“We had a celebration on his birthday. I already knew the truth by then, but I didn’t know what my grandfather had planned. He was a cruel man. I think that was the day I realized how cruel even after everything I had seen.”
Mercedes curls into my side. I draw the blanket up to cover her when she shivers, and although I don’t look at her, I can see her in my periphery. She’s watching me intently.
“After the meal came time for cake, and before that, Theron would sign the papers. I had done it the previous year, almost to the day. Theron was the only one at that table who was truly excited that evening. Almost buoyant. Maybe my mother and I both suspected my grandfather’s plan. His strange glee at dinner gave him away.
“Once dinner was cleared, my grandfather laid out the papers and uncapped the pen. He signed his name to the forms and then stood back and watched my brother. Watched him as he read the pages and understood what was happening.”
“What was it?” she asks after too long a pause.
I look down at her eager, open face. “He isn’t a Montgomery. Not by blood.”
“What?”
“My parents’ match was not a love match, but so few are. She had an affair. And Theron was the product of that affair. My grandfather learned the truth when Theron was fifteen. Thankfully he was away at school when all hell broke loose within the walls of the Montgomery estate.”
“What did he do?”
How much do I want to tell her? I’ve come this far. We’ve come this far.
“He punished my mother.” A long silence draws out, and I have to force the next words. My confession. “And I stood witness.”
“What do you mean?” she asks with a tremor in her voice. I’m sure she is remembering the punishment room.
“He made her strip. Made my mother strip naked in front of me. And he whipped her raw.” Mercedes’s hand flies to her mouth. “The scars go from the tops of her shoulders to the backs of her ankles.”
“Oh, my God.”
“I stood and watched. I listened to her scream and sob and beg him to stop.”
“Jesus.”
“And I did nothing.”
“Judge, you were sixteen years old. A boy.”
I shake my head. “He made her believe if she paid the price, he would accept Theron. Someone had to be punished, after all. She sacrificed herself for her son.”
“Oh…”
“She was noble once. He broke her of that, though.”
She straddles me and cups my face with both hands. It takes my eyes time to focus on her because I think I was gone for a minute there. Back in that room. Back to the sight of my mother enduring my grandfather’s wrath.
“And when Theron learned the truth the night of his birthday, the night he should have celebrated a sort of coming of age, he changed. It happened before my eyes. He asked me if I’d known, and I couldn’t answer him. I didn’t need to, though he saw it on my face. I still remember how he hugged me. And how the knife felt sliding easily into my back. The pain of it. And then not much else.”
“Jesus Christ.”