Empty.

This house. My soul. Victor’s soul. It’s the only word suited for the way I feel, the way that I believe Victor feels, though him more-so than me.

How can anyone go through life so surreptitious, emotionless, so unattached to anyone or anything? When I look into his eyes I see something there, although dormant and completely indistinct, I know it’s there. And it’s powerful. I want to understand it, to feel it, to taste it on my lips.

As the thunder begins to fade as it moves off in the distance, the rain fails to a soft drizzle. I can’t hear it anymore, but I can still see it streaming against the glass in poetic rivulets. The chill in the air raises goose bumps on my bare legs even underneath the covers, evoking visions of Victor lying next to me to help keep me warm.

I decide to get up.

I feel foolish and reckless for what I’m about to do, but I don’t care. If he’s going to get rid of me tomorrow, what does it matter how this turns out?

My bare feet move quietly across the hardwood floors and then through the center of the house. Placing my reluctant fingertips on the door lever outside Victor’s room, I pause before pushing it down gently. The door clicks open and I walk inside. I see him across the large space, lying on his back, his head fallen to one side, facing me. His eyes are closed, his breathing steady. The sheet covers only his midsection and thighs, leaving the rest of his naked body exposed to the chill in the air. I recall earlier in the night when he was on top of me, pressing himself into me from behind and it makes my stomach and hips quiver.

I move closer, trying to stay as quiet as possible but at the same time wondering why be quiet at all. He’s going to know I’m in here eventually, and well, that’s kind of the point.

Stepping up to the side of his bed, I watch him for a moment, how his toned chest rises and falls with every quiet breath. How his lips are unopened, pressed gently against each other, signifying that whatever he’s dreaming, if he’s dreaming at all, it’s peaceful, undisturbed by the violence that eclipses his life. Like me, the nightmares of his experiences have long since vanished, leaving only a morbid sense of normality to which nightmares no longer deem fit to visit.

I slip off my shirt and drop it on the floor.

Pressing my hands and knees against the bed, I crawl onto it, straddling his waist.

In only a second, the back of my hair is wrenched in his hand and his gun is shoved underneath my chin, forcing my neck backward so far that I fear if I move it’ll snap.

I don’t say a word, but I’m not afraid. I don’t know for sure if he would kill me or not, but I don’t fear him either way.

He winds his fingers tighter against my scalp and I feel the cool barrel of the gun trailing down the center of my neck. But more than that I feel his hardness between my legs and the knowledge of the gun being anywhere on me takes a backseat.

“If you’re going to let me go,” I whisper, unable to see his eyes, “then let me have this one last thing from you.”

He pulls my head back even farther. The gun is pressing into my stomach now.

“I’ve never been with a man that I wanted to be with,” I say. “I want to be with you. Just once. I want to know what it feels like to be the one in control.”

He’s conflicted, I feel it in the heat emitting from his skin, in his tense, uncertain movements. In one instance the gun digs deeper into my gut and I feel like my hair is about to come out within his hand. But then he relents, loosening his grip just a little, allowing my neck some reprieve. I can see his eyes now, peering up at me so deadly and yet so seductive even though I know he’s not doing it on purpose.

“You can’t be in here,” he says, also in a whisper.

I feel his eyes on me, sweeping over my body, my bare breasts, downward to where my naked thighs are latched loosely around his hips.

“I don’t care, Victor.”

His gaze moves back to my face where he studies the curvature of my lips.

Then I witness something else flash over his eyes, something frightening that I’ve never seen before in him and I tense up within his grasp. He studies me quietly as if I’m something to be ravaged and then ultimately…killed. Despite my growing fear, I still want to be right where I am, trapped in the merciless arms of a killer.

Without releasing me he raises his back from the bed, the arm with which his hand is speared painfully within my hair is pressed against my shoulder. I sit straddled on his lap, both of my naked thighs touching his sides which warm my skin in the same way I pictured it. I can tell that he is completely naked underneath that thin sheet that separates us.

“If you want to kill me, then do it.”

His lips move closer to mine.

“But if you do,” I say breathily, “let me be with you first, please….”

My eyes close of their own accord. I wait for whatever is going to happen; death or sex I welcome both, my body stiff against his, my heart beating so fast I feel it in my head and in my fingertips. When I feel his lips brush against my own, I wilt.

But when I feel the cold metal against my temple, my eyes slowly open to look into his again.

“This can’t happen, Sarai,” he says.

I lower my lips to his. “Yes, it can,” I whisper onto them before covering them with my own.

My thighs tighten around his waist and I feel myself pressing against his erection, tremors moving through my pelvis and down into my knees. I lift myself up and yank the sheet from between us, setting myself back down on his naked lap, instantly feeling the stark difference the sheet made. I grind myself against his cock, feeling his hardness through the fabric of my panties and it makes me tremble.

But I can tell he doesn’t want this. He doesn’t push me away, but he’s conflicted.

“Please, let me have my way with you,” I say, looking down into his beautiful eyes.

He searches my face, his fingers gently touching my cheeks, a look of uncertainty in his features as though this exchange between us is something entirely new to him. I can tell that he’s probably never been with a woman he could not ravage and spoil and tame. And while I think I prefer him that way, right now in this moment I want to be the one who makes all of the decisions.

I’m unsure why, but that doesn’t matter.

I feel his body relent even more.

I press the palms of my hands against his rock-hard chest and push him gently against the bed, hoping that he’ll let me.

He does. He lies down, leaving his hands to rest on the tops of my thighs. We look at each other and no words are spoken. They aren’t needed. Tucking my middle finger behind the elastic of my panties, I slip them off one leg at a time, and I never move my eyes from his.

Feeling him between my legs, skin on skin, alone is overwhelming. I lay forward, wanting all of him, the warmth of his chest against mine, the heat of his breath against my neck. Everything. I kiss him hard and deep, his tongue tangling with mine in a dance of dominance, his fingers pressing into the back of my head until he drags one hand down the length of my body and to my hip. He squeezes it, thrusting his hips toward me. He wants the control so bad, but I remind him that it’s mine by pushing my hips back against him and holding them there.

When he gives back the control, I peck him lightly upon the lips and then both sides of his jawline.

He watches my face, glimpsing my lips, wanting to taste them.

And then I start to cry.

I always cry when I’m angry.

I’m becoming someone else, that girl lost at fourteen-years-old, forced to live a life of bondage and pain and broken dreams. Flashes of Javier’s face go through my mind erratically. I feel like I’m on a merry-go-round and it’s spinning so fast, all of the faces of Javier come and go before I can reach out and grab one. I can’t get my hands on just one so that I can beat it to death. And I just cry harder, screaming out into the night and before I realize what I’m doing, Victor has become the face of Javier that I can’t otherwise catch. I swing my fists at him, beating him over and over again on the chest and on his arms and he doesn’t stop me. Because I know only he can understand why I need this moment so desperately.