The Enigma (Unlawful Men)

I reach the stairs and grasp the handrail, my feet taking the steps fast. I only make it halfway down before my wrist is seized and I’m swung around. Pain radiates up my arm, his hot skin heating my wounds, and I hiss. I expect him to drop his hold. He doesn’t. I expect him to apologize. He doesn’t. I look up at him, damn tears clouding my vision.

“Maybe you’re right, Beau.” He takes a few steps down, maintaining his hold, until he’s looking up at me. “Let’s just fuck. Every morning. Every evening. All fucking day, let’s just fuck.”

“Fuck you,” I whisper, my treacherous body singing for him. Begging. “So you can build a library of videos of us?”

“I didn’t hear you complaining when I got you off while we watched it together. I bet you weren’t complaining when you fucked yourself with your fingers when you watched it alone.”

I blink, looking away.

“Don’t turn away from me.” He grabs my cheeks and forces my face to his. His eyes are raging. His body poised, ready to pounce. “It’s time to show your hand, Beau. What do you want from me?”

“Escape.”

“Why?”

My teeth grind under his fierce grip. “I want escape, and I don’t want to be forced into explaining why. What do you want from me, James?”

“Peace.”

I recoil, stunned, and my eyes fall to his shoulder where his scarred skin ends and the perfect, flawless flesh of his chest begins. “What happened to you?” I whisper.

“I got caught up in an explosion.”

My body jolts, staggering back, and I grab the handrail to keep me upright. James’s hand falls from my face, and I gaze at him, shocked to my core. An explosion. My arm is suddenly burning, my head invaded by screams. And in James’s eyes, I see a replay of the scene, of frantic people running, escaping the fireballs bursting up to the nighttime sky. Escaping the vicinity of the car I’d got out of only ten minutes before. The car where my mom burned to nothing. I look at my scar that pales in comparison to the beast coating James’s back. And shame grabs me. Shame I can’t bear. “How?” I whisper.

He removes himself, stepping down a few more stairs, putting too much space between us. “Right place, wrong time,” he replies stoically, and I can see with perfect clarity that he’s struggling to talk. Which begs the question why he’s been so adamant about sharing secrets. “Do you want to know more?” he asks, offering to kill my curiosity with information that I honestly don’t know if I want. Or, selfishly, can handle. And, again, will I be expected to reciprocate?

I know nothing right now, nothing at all. Except one thing. I extend my hand, my lip quivering, and wait for him to accept it, and he does, slowly, watching as our bodies come together again, albeit only our hands. It doesn’t matter. It’s still earthmoving. I move in, taking the steps down to meet him, and curl my arm around his neck, burying my face there. It’s not an answer to his question. James knows that. I’m simply instigating what we both need. To give each other control.

He slips his forearm under my ass, lifts me to him, and carries me back to his room, placing me gently on his bed. He crawls up, spreading his body over mine, and my hands circle his back and stroke over his scars as he draws faint lines up and down my damaged arm.

I doze off to the sound of James’s light breathing close to my ear, his lips on my throat.

His soul blending with mine.

39

BEAU

I wake with my cheek on James’s chest, the sun rising over the buildings, the weight of my thoughts still heavy on my mind. I gently ease myself up, being careful not to wake him, and I stand at the edge of his bed watching him. He looks so peaceful. So serene. Every muscle on his face is relaxed, smooth, nothing cutting his features or tarnishing his handsomeness. Last night, something altered between us. Understanding. Yet, ironically, I don’t think either of us know what we’re trying to understand.

Pulling my eyes away from him, I find a T-shirt and pull it on as I go down to the kitchen, collecting my strewn clothes and purse as I pass, checking my cell, certain I’ll have plenty of missed calls from Lawrence. I’m wrong. There’s nothing. My mind wanders to the standoff outside the house last night, to my uncle’s face. The disappointment. The judgment.

I sigh, flicking on the coffee machine, looking out of the window, following the path of a bird as it flies across the tops of some nearby buildings, gliding gracefully, swooping and climbing. Swooping and climbing. So free.

The machine churns in the background, and I rest my forearms on the counter, my eyes circling, following the bird. Its moves seem to become more elaborate, its swoops lower, its loops bigger, like it’s aware I’m watching. My own private performance.