Page 107 of Stutter

It’s not much longer before we’re both dried off, he’s moisturizing me with actual lotion this time, and then we’re in bed with my new book of poems. I’m wearing his large Henley that fits me just right and the leg warmers Elena gifted me. I’m lying with my back on his bare chest, his hands on my hips.

“Damon?” I ask.

His chest rumbles. “He’s finishing up end-of-the-semester evaluations he did for certain students who are trying to transfer out for their parents. He should be done soon.”

I shift a bit to get a little more comfortable, his hands never moving from where they’ve found purchase on my hips, simply moving with me. I open up my new book, turn to the table of contents, and begin to read out loud, letting his favorite poem,the one etched across his body, becomemyfavorite poem. Though I’m at peace, here, with all of my men under the same roof, and I should feel safe, I can’t shake this wiggling feeling in the back of my brain where soft alarms are still blaring. It’s an inkling I can’t get rid of.

Who was that guy Axel was talking to at the holiday party? Why did he look so familiar? Why did the music in my head begin when I saw him?

“Where did you go, Angel?” Maverick asks, the pad of his thumb warm rubbing circles on my hip.

“Hmm?”

“Just now. You were reading so clearly but your words began spacing out. Where did you go?”

I close the book of poems, and turn to him, trying to get on my knees but he refuses letting me go, so I twist to fit my body, molding it to his. I place my hands on the strong parts of his shoulders leading to his neck, loving the warmth against my palms, the way the ink on them stops where the collar of his shirts begin.

“It’s… not over.” I manage out, even though my voice is tired and my jaw is exhausted from reading out loud.

He eyes me curiously. “What makes you say that?”

And so I tell him. Using both my words and my hands, telling him everything from the party that I can remember.

“Did you ever find out who A is?”

I shake my head.

“Could this be him?”

I lift one shoulder and let it fall.

His lips twist from one side to the other, scrunching his nose. I lift a hand to push his glasses up by the frame and then run my thumb over his stubbled jaw, dying to feel the growth between my thighs. It suits him well. I love it. I place a kiss to his cheek and lean back again to look into his peridot eyes, waiting for permission to slip onto his lap. He gives me one curt nod, but I take it, opening my thighs to straddle him, putting my weight on him so I can snuggle into my beast, and love him the way he deserves.

But who out of the two of us is the real beast?

Where he’s had to kill in order to keep himself alive, or to get rid of real evil. I’ve killed because I’m a spiteful, angry, rage-driven woman. Fuck, I’m a psycho killer that hears music while she kills. How deranged can I be? If I ever told Damon this… ugh… he’d put me in a psych ward and then become the lead doctor on my team, probably.

Does Maverick still think of me as a monster?

“You think this goes all the way to the top, don’t you?” Maverick finally asks, breaking the silence and the way my thoughts are beginning to run rampant. “There’s still one last initial you need to…take care ofin order for you to feel done? To be able to move on?”

I close my eyes, nodding into the crook of his neck. Because yes, that’sexactlywhat I’m feeling and now that he’s said it out loud, I feel like that’s what I’ve been too afraid to think of. When I had gone back to the Monroe Library on the RMU campus and checked out the alumni yearbook for the year I was assaulted, there weretwo hundredA names – seventy-two of them were women, and knowing Ashleigh had been one of them, that eliminated seventy-one of those names, and I eliminatedher.

I hate feeling lost. I hate feeling like I don’t know where to begin. But I alsolovebeing underestimated. I’ve loved playing the dumb mute in the corner of the room these last few months, gaining intel. I’ve loved being the exotic dancer in moth wings learning secrets no one else is privy to. Being underestimated makes my kills that much more satisfactory.

“Is she asleep?” I hear Damon’s voice from the doorway.

“No. Just cuddling.” Maverick replies, gripping my tatted thigh, rubbing it up and down from the tip of my vine that meets my hip down to the outskirts of my knee. I know what he’s doing when he touches me like this, it’s the same thing I do with his – commemorating it to memory as though it was his own.

“When we get back to Kingston, we should probably stay a night at your place.” I hear his voice so much closer, along witharticles of clothing falling to the ground. I turn my head to watch Damon undress. He’d already showered while Jonas and I were finishing our goodbyes with Elena, giving us privacy. I think he knows how much she’s come to mean to me in just these few short weeks.

“If you think that best,” Mav says, now squeezing where my hip and thigh meet. “You like what you see?” he whispers in my ear.

“Yes.” I rasp, seeing my very dirty doctor stripping to his thermal pajama bottoms. God he’s hot. Who knew all those muscles were under all those scrubs he wore at Lorne Wood? I face him in Maverick’s lap and make the sign with my hand.“Beautiful.”

Damon smirks, the small divot in his chin deepening and when he climbs into bed, I practically drool at the way he prowls toward me. The defined muscles in his chest and arms so pronounced, even the veins in his arms look extra juicy. A loose curl of his hair falls forward. When he reaches me, the kiss he delivers is chaste, but it doesn’t mean less.

After our ‘talk’ in his office before Spain, I’m doing better to let myself be handled like I’m treasure.Histreasure. It’s hard. I just sometimes don’t know how to handle kindness. But I’m getting better at accepting the way he loves me.

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