A Study in Scarlett Ch. 02

She started to shake her head from side-to-side, almost unnoticeably at first, then with energy. Her mouth twitched a bit and her tongue slipped out to taste the air. She tested both for a few seconds as if rediscovering their function before finally saying in a shaky voice, "We have to go. He's coming."

"What?" I asked, confused and more than a bit frightened at her dramatic words.

"He knows! Oh God, he knows. I thought I could keep it from him but...God. William, he knows!"

It felt like my intestines had suddenly filled with ice. I fought back a shiver and did my best to keep my tone comforting and even. "Scarlett, what are you talking about?"

"He's crazy. I mean, I knew he was crazy, but I never realized just how fuckin' crazy. I thought he was going to kill me."

"Who? You're not making sense. What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Russ! It's Russ."

"From the club?"

"Yes from the fucking club! Are you stupid? Russ from the fucking club. The big fucking guy with all the money who just fucking beat the shit out of me!"

"What?' Everything felt sort of hazy.

"Russ! With the goddamn mustache?! He found out about us. He hit me, William. He hit me and fucked me and then fucking hit me some more!"

"I don't understand. Tell me everything."

"Are you not goddamn listening? He knows about us. He's coming! We have to fucking go!" She untangled herself from me and rose to her feet as she spoke, each muscle seemed tense as if she might bolt at any moment.

"Scarlett, you have to tell me exactly what is going on." I stood up with her and placed my hands on her shoulders.

"Fuck, Wil-"

"I can't help if I don't understand. I know it's hard, but you have to tell me the details."

Her eyes bounced from me to the door several times, her posture so coiled that I thought she might actually try to make a dash for it.

"You have to calm down. No matter how bad it is, we can face it together."

My hand slid down her arm to hold her hand. She squeezed it back with enough force to cause pain in my knuckles. Nearly prancing with anxiety--one of her heels had fallen off during her collapse so that she bobbed up and down on uneven limbs--she did her best to reign herself in. She tilted back her head and she closed her eyes before letting out several long, deep breaths. Her hands smoothed and re-smoothed the front of her ruined dress. After a few minutes of this, she stopped jittering and met my gaze once more. The fear was still powerful but her eyes seemed a bit slower in her head.

"But William, what if he shows up and-"

"Then, I'll deal with it."

She just nodded her head, seeming less than convinced. Still, understanding that I needed to know the situation, she said softly, "Okay."

"Thank you. I can only guess at how hard this must be for you."

"William?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I get a bath first?" Her face was such a mask of desolation that I feared I too might start to cry. I felt guilty for having asked anything of her.

Without reply, I reached my hands beneath her and scooped her up, and, with as much care as I could manage, carried her to the bathroom, which was aseptic and without frills. Mandy had favored minimalism in hygiene and Scarlett had possessed no real drive to redecorate what was a mostly functional room, so the room remained a stark, sparse place with checkered black and white tile and silver fixtures. I kneeled down on the fuzzy black rug, still cradling Scarlett who clung to my neck with both arms, and started running the water for the bath with one hand while the other steadied the woman in my arms. I tested the water until the temperature seemed acceptable and, thinking she might be appreciative of the extra concealment, added a bit of bubble bath. When the tub was full, I wordlessly undressed Scarlett, almost juggling her from arm to arm, peeled off her ruined dress and threw it in the far corner, then lowered her slowly, inch by inch, into the sweet heat of the water.

She didn't say anything either, only releasing the slightest of moans upon sinking into the bubbles, and turned her face away from me as she laid on her back in the bath. We waited like that for a while, silent except for the soft tide of the bathwater flowing around Scarlett's body. Not knowing what else to do, I rolled up the sleeves of my button-up shirt, picked up a sponge, and gently began to wash her.

I moved too slowly, wary that the slightest misstep might send her back into hysteria. I made a deliberate show of soaping the sponge, holding it up so that I was sure Scarlett, even turned as she was, could see what I was doing. When she didn't tell me to stop, I slid the hand with the sponge under the canopy of bubbles and began to heedfully cleanse her. I had never touched anyone, or anything, more delicately or with more control. I moved my hand in small, ponderous circles and did my best to relax myself, my muscles, even my breathing, as if she were made of powder and an errant breath could scatter her away. For her part, she remained mostly motionless, eyes closed, moving only occasionally to allow me better access in my cleaning. After several minutes, I was almost to the point of stopping due to her unresponsiveness when she rolled over with great care and placed her face on the back of her hands which she folded on the edge of the tub. Taking this as a sign, I continued to gently scrub her backside, being sure to be both considerate and thorough. I tried to lose myself in the task, to not think, to not notice the bruises, to not worry. I focused on the rippling of the water and the quiet splashing. I was so efficient at this that when Scarlett finally spoke, I was somewhat startled.

"He's always been obsessed with me. It's scary. I've tried to tell him that I'm just a dancer, that what he and I had wasn't serious, but he wouldn't listen." Her voice had a strange hollow quality.

I froze. The water sloshed over my bated breath. I wanted to ask a thousand questions, to scream, but the sound of her words, tinny like her throat were made of aluminum gave me pause. The moment seemed so fragile, and I was worried I would crush her with a stray word, so I just resumed washing, waiting for her to continue.

"It was just for the money. He had so much of it, and I thought, 'why the fuck not', but it just spiraled out of control."

"You slept with him?"

"What? Yes, of course I did."

I lowered my head and just stared at the bubbles. The overwhelming paranoia, the jealousy foamed inside of me, but, knowing this was not the time, I struggled to fight it down. She grew quiet again. I washed absently. When she did speak again her words were strained.

"William, are you upset?"

I said nothing, knowing that I was being unfair but unable to completely stop.

"Please, don't be, baby. I can't handle you being upset right now."

"I'm sorry. I'm not trying to be difficult."

The water sloshed without accompaniment for a few minutes before I finally spoke. "Tell me. All of it."

"William, I don't..."

"Please?"

She sighed, then, looking down into the bubbles spoke in thin, measured sentences. "There isn't much to tell. He came into the club one night. I danced for him. I guess he liked what he saw. He came back. He came back a bunch more. He overpaid. He bought me for entire nights. I flirted with him. I more than flirted. You okay?"

My soapy hands had clenched into fists. Even the thought of her with him, laughing on his lap, filled me with fire and anger, and slithering, unwelcome tendrils of lust. I did my best to relax. I nodded my assent.

"One night, after a few beers, he offered me three grand if I came back to his place and spent the night. So, I, uh, f-fucked him. The next morning, I told him it was a one-time thing, but he offered me six grand this time and I...fucked him again. I-I, uh, he...."

She trailed off after seeing how tense I had become.

I knew I was being inappropriate, that it wasn't the time, but I couldn't help it. Envy boiled in my belly and the steam climbed up my esophagus and into my brain, clouding everything. My next words were biting and laced with venom.

"Was it good?"

"What? William, stop!"

Did you like it? Was his dick big enough?"

"Why are you do-"

"Did you cum?"

"Yes! Okay? Yes, I fucking came! Are you happy now?!"

I couldn't decide if I wanted to hit her or fuck her.

"What's the matter, William?! It's okay for me to be a whore when it suits you, but not otherwise?! Fuck you!"

With that she sat up in the bathtub, gritting through pain as she did so, and tried to punch me. I caught her wrist. When she threw the other hand I caught it, as well. She struggled but I held her fast. Emotionally and physically drained, Scarlett wasn't as powerful as usual and no matter how mightily she fought she could only create the smallest bit of leeway. Even in these limited dimensions, however, she battled, pounding at my chest with tiny, ineffectual hammer-fists that did little besides soak the front of my shirt with sudsy water.

"I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you. I hate you." Soon, tears and fatigue stilled her fists and dampened her voice. "I hate you. I...hate you. I hate...you. I hate him. I hate him. I hate him so much. So much, William"

I held her to me while she cried and she wrapped her arms around me in surrender. I felt ashamed for my outburst but didn't trust myself to speak. Eventually, she stopped sobbing, but didn't cease clinging to my neck. Unbidden, she started to speak again, even more softly this time.

"Everything changed after I slept with him. He became possessive and angry. Wanted me to move-in and stop dancing. When I refused, he started throwing things, got up in my face, called me names."

I felt even guiltier about my jealousy.

"I tried to stop seeing him, to get away, but he was relentless. He would show up at the club, threaten clients who took a fancy to me. I tried to get Lorraine to kick him out, but he would just wave money at her and she let it go. I-I, uh, just couldn't anymore. I know you and I aren't, like, a thing, but it felt wrong. I felt wrong. I broke it off."

"You did?" I looked up startled, and found her eyes rimmed with tears.

"He flipped out, William." As she spoke her emotions ran back into her voice. "He got so mad, and asked me why, and just who I thought I was. I told him that I was in love, and he asked who it was, and I told him with you, and he just got even angrier. He pulled me out to his car an-and...He hurt me. He hit me and told me I belonged to him, and that I couldn't ever see you again, and if I did, he'd kill me!" She broke down after this.

"Honey," I tried to calm her. "It's okay. We'll call the police and get a restraining order. He won't be able to come within a mile of you."

"No!" she said a little too loudly, her eyes wild with fear. "You don't understand! He's rich. The police won't touch him."

"Scarlett, look at you. They will over this. Plus, there had to be witnesses, at the club, people who saw him drag you out?"

"Strippers, William! Like me! You think they're going to believe someone like me? I'm just a whore to them."

"Scarlett, we ca--"

"No! Even if they did believe me, you don't know him. He has such a temper, William. He would walk right through a restraining order. This isn't the first time...."

"What?! He's done this before?!"

She nodded her assent.

"That's it, I'm calling!"

"Please, no!" She clutched at me, leaving wet hand prints on my sleeve. "He said he'd kill you, too! He made me tell him where we live. He said if I'm not packed and at his place by four a.m. he's coming over and he'll kill both of us. William, don't. I could never bear it if something happened to you. I love you."

My heart skipped as she pulled herself up to bury her face in my chest. She soaked my clothes as she smashed herself against me, sobbing. I barely noticed.

"What did you say?" I couldn't catch my breath. My heart seemed electrified.

She mumbled something unintelligible into my soggy shirt.

"Did you say you love me?"

She pulled her face back and tilted her head up slightly to stare into my eyes. Her face, swollen by tears and violence, was still so beautiful. Her dark red hair felt slick against me as I held her. To see her, the most confident, magnetic woman I had ever met, like that, so vulnerable, so powerless, sent lightning through my core. When she spoke, it was with a sweetness I had never heard from her.

"Of course I love you, William. You mean everything to me. But we can't be together anymore. Russ, he'll....I can't risk it."

"Say it again."

"What, about Russ? He'll ki--"

"No, that you love me."

"I love you."

I couldn't help it; I kissed her. It was purely reactionary, knee-jerk, like she had struck some nerve deep inside me and forced a response. She pulled back at first, but then slowly, like a flower opening for the sun, she began to kiss me back, tentatively, then with growing need. It was a kiss fit for someone else, someone from a black-and-white movie or the hero of a Victorian novel, certainly not for me, a beast, a sinner, a creature of the blackest desires, but I drank it up regardless. We kissed, and kissed, the house still except for the softest of moans and the quiet sound of the water from her hair dripping onto the tile. We kissed until the bubbles dissipated, and still we did not relent. It was only when the water cooled and then became chilly enough to cause Scarlett to shake that we broke our embrace, and even in then only for a few instants.

"Take me to bed. Make love to me. Erase this. Take it all away."

Once again, I scooped her up, still wet and dripping from the bath, and carried her through the house, this time to bedroom, where I placed her on the bed and climbed between her legs before drawing the covers around us like a curtain, shutting out the outside world. We kissed incessantly, pausing only for quick breaths and small nibbles. The covers and bed sheet quickly soaked up the water from her skin. We stripped me of my clothing together, balling it into a little pile that I hurriedly kicked to the foot of the bed. Her hands were cold but eager, as was the rest of her, and she pushed her damp flesh, chilled from the bath water, against me in all possible ways. I met her touch enthusiastically, despite its temperature, and tried to pour my warmth into her, to press our bodies together until we merged as one. We did merely that for almost a half an hour, until her skin was once more flushed with warmth and her shoulders free of trembles. Afterward, it was her turn to heat things up.

She reached down and grasped my cock, already semi-hard from all the contact and began stroking it as she talked, only breaking her kisses for a few words at a time.

"I *kiss* need you, William. *kiss* I need you, *kiss* all of you, inside me. Make me *kiss* yours. Wash away his touch *kiss* with your love." And with that, she guided my cock to her wet entrance and eased it in before wrapping both her arms and legs around me in a tight embrace.

Her body, once frigid, was now ablaze, and her pussy, hotter still, was the heart of the conflagration. Joyously and with a need, she pulled me into the blaze.

Her nails dug at my back, as her mouth ignited new fires against my lips, neck, and shoulders. It built around me, a canopy of heat, and in it, nothing else mattered.

"Yes, William. Make love to me one last time."

I sunk my fingers into the soft flesh of her hips and thighs. I rode her while she, like a ship of flame, tossed beneath me, writhing and clasping me to her. Even battered as it was, her face was glorious in her ecstasy. The eyes, tinged by the blue-black of her injuries, began to roll back, and her lips split in two places, stretched into the beginnings of an orgasm. She was so beautiful, and mine, all mine, and I would do anything to protect her, to keep her with me.

"No. I won't let him hurt you. I won't let him keep us apart."

"We don't have a choice. The police—" She could barely keep her voice steady as her orgasm mounted.

"We don't need the police." I was carving into her now like a blade, red hot, heated by her fire.

"William, wh--oh my God--are you saying?"

"I'm saying...let him come."

"William, he'll kill you." She did her best to give me a concerned look even as the muscles of her pussy began to contract in earnest.

"No. Not if I'm ready. And if he breaks in—oh—it's self-defense."

"William, no. You're talking about murder."

"It's not murder to protect the woman I love. You're mine. I won't let him touch you again!"

"William—fuck—I can't let you do that. It's too dangerous."

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes, baby."

"You can't."

"I can"

"Oh my God."

"Let me protect you."

"Oh fuck."

"Let me do this for you."

"No." She squirmed beneath me.

"Yes. Tell me yes."

"No. Oh! No."

"Let me take this away."

Her mouth moved to form another "no", but as it did, the force of her orgasm hit her like a wave, washing away her sensibility and her reluctance.

"Yes! Oh fuck, yes, William. Do it! Do it. I'm tired of being afraid."

"You won't have to be anymore."

"And we can be together, just us, just like this. I love you. I love you. Fuck! Oohhh. Always. Fucking always. Own me."

She kept talking, barely intelligibly, as she came for what felt like an eternity, the words tumbling out of her, one falling over the other. It didn't matter. I wasn't listening. I too was lost, adrift on the current of her euphoria, out of my body, out of my mind, looking down on the goddess beneath me. Eyes closed, hips bucking, arms and legs wrapped about me rapaciously, she was a vision of love.

Love. My mind fumbled with the word. My senses scrambled to understand it, to hear it, to taste it, to draw it close and inhale its scent. It was like nothing I had ever experience. I had thought I had been in love before, with Mandy, with a few before her, but I hadn't. With others, love had seemed a pressure that they had raised in me, like a bubble in my chest, warm and soft and full of positive feelings. Those women had made me feel like a cheerful song on the radio, or the end of a happy movie: something placed in me, something manufactured by Hallmark to sell greeting cards. This sensation that I had--lost between Scarlett's thighs, her confession of affection still ringing in my ears—wasn't of something found but, rather, the realization that something was missing, that perhaps it always had been. It was like discovering that before I was born, still just a fragment of me in the bright pulse or dark void of that unknown in-between, something had been taken from me--a piece, about the size of a soul--and that I had spent my entire life, unknown to me, searching for it. Then, only an instant later, it was the impact of finally finding that piece lodged firmly in the center of the gorgeous woman under you.

I was in love.

The absurdity of it chased around my mind. It filled me up and emptied me out, deconstructed and remade me, all in the span of one long, squeezing female orgasm. I became aware, almost absently, that I was cumming too. I was glad. She deserved it. She deserved all of me. I made no sound as I filled her--though I was obscurely cognizant of Scarlett's litany of moans and exclamations--no words of victory or enjoyment, no grunts or whimpers, just the smallest movement of facial muscles as my lips curled into a small, satisfied smile. It was the smile of a fanatic, of the religiously saved, the grin of the madly contented.

I stayed above her, perched between her and thrust inside, willing myself to cum more, hoping that it would never stop, that the moment, the instant of consummation, would never end. I felt each drop of my seed that entered her. I pushed it as deep as I could. I wished for us to fuse, for the world to end, for us to burst into flames and enter the sky together as smoke.