Page 79 of Carrick
The door opened slowly, the hinges barely creaking, like even they knew better than to break the quiet. I looked up from the couch, still holding the cloth I’d used to polish the violet wand. It lay in front of me on black fabric, chrome catching the low amber light, attachments arranged in perfect symmetry.
She stepped inside like pressure before a storm—no thunder, no flash, just that thick, electric stillness. Her silence filled the room before her footsteps did. She didn’t look at me, didn’t speak, but her presence landed hard. Not fragile. Not broken. Just full of everything she was holding in. It pressed into the air between us. Grief hadn’t cracked her open yet, but it was rising. It was the kind of weight that doesn’t scream—but drowns. AndI knew, the second I saw her, that she wasn’t here for games. Wasn’t here to flirt with the edge. She was here to break. And she needed someone who could hold her through the shatter.
I stood slowly, setting the wand down with a final sweep of the cloth. Its shaft gleamed like silver lightning beside the neatly arranged electrodes—each one laid out with clean, deliberate precision. Behind her, the door clicked shut. Then she turned the lock. That sound—sharp and final—cracked through the quiet like a starter pistol.
When she faced me, arms crossed and chin lifted, it looked like defiance. But it wasn’t. Not really. It was armor. The last piece of it, worn not to push me away, but to hold herself together a little longer. She looked like she was daring me to ask if she was sure. But I didn’t need to.
She wore a black robe, cinched at the waist. Bare legs beneath. No hesitation in her steps, no noise on the floor—just that slow, deliberate grace, taut in the line of her shoulders. No lipstick. No eyeliner. No war paint. Just Bellamy. Unarmored. Raw. Breathtaking.
Her eyes were rimmed in red—not from crying, but from holding the tears back too long. From holding everything too long.
My voice came low. Grounded. A dark promise beneath the surface. “You ready for this?”
She nodded once. Then again. Slower. Her throat worked around a swallow. Then her voice—soft, rough-edged. “I don’t want soft.”
I moved toward her slowly, like approaching a live wire. “I’m not giving you soft.”
“I want the wand,” she said. Her gaze flicked to the black cloth laid out on the worktable.
I didn’t miss the way her breath caught—just a little. Not in fear.
Inwant.
“I know.”
Her hands tightened against her arms. Her chest rose and fell faster now.
“I need it to be real,” she said. “I need to feel something that cuts through all the rest. Something I can’t hide from.”
I stepped closer, close enough to feel the heat rising off her skin. Then I lifted my hand, slow and deliberate, and tilted her chin up with two fingers until her eyes met mine. There was no plea in them. No stubborn bravery. Just desperation—bare and unguarded, wide open in a way that hit me harder than any scream.
“You’ll feel it,” I said, my voice low and steady. “Every second. Every crackle. Every pulse. But more than that—you’ll feel me.”
Her lips parted, breath catching as the space between us thickened. I hadn’t even turned on the wand, and still the air buzzed, her body already sparking with anticipation.
“And when it’s too much?” she asked.
“I’ll still be here.”
She flinched at that—not back, but inward. Her breath stuttered, and for a moment, I thought the tears might come. But she held them. Just gave a single, subtle nod. And I knew.
Tonight wasn’t about teasing her with the edge—it was about dragging her past it, not into pain but through it, stripping her down to something raw and trembling and real.
“Strip.”
The word landed with precision, no seduction in its delivery, no soft invitation—just command, heavy and deliberate, and the thrum of surrender that followed. She obeyed without hesitation, hands gliding to the belt at her waist. The robe slipped free, unraveled, and fell. One seamless movement. Silk tumbling from her shoulders, whispering against her skinbefore pooling silently at her feet like it had never belonged there at all.
She stood in the amber light, utterly bare. No bra. No panties. No hesitation. Only skin—flush blooming beneath my gaze, electric with tension already coiling in the room between us. She wore the faint traces of our past etched across her body like an unfinished map. Bruises lingered at her hips like fingerprints. The ghost of a bite curved beneath her ribs. They were fading now, softened with time—but I remembered every one, remembered how they bloomed, how she’d begged, how I’d claimed her. And tonight, I would write over them.
Her breathing was quiet but uneven, chest rising and falling with that telltale urgency. Her nipples stood tight, drawn more from anticipation than air. She didn’t speak. Didn’t shift. Didn’t avert her gaze. The silence grew, stretched taut with hunger and heat, and still, she held her ground—open, present, and waiting.
I watched her like a man starving. Like she was prey I’d already cornered. Like she was already mine. “Fuck,” I muttered, the word thick on my tongue, more exhale than sound. My gaze dragged over every inch of her, throat tight with hunger. “Look at you.”
She didn’t flinch at the ache in my voice. Didn’t shy from the weight of it. She stood there like she was built for worship and ruin, radiant and unshaking, the very picture of surrender laced with fire. A goddess made flesh. A woman who knew exactly what she was offering. Shoulders back, spine long, her legs parted just enough to show me what she needed devoured—what she needed claimed.
“You want to be used tonight, sweetheart?” I asked, taking a step forward, slow and deliberate, my voice dipped in something dark. “You want to be my pretty little plaything?”
She nodded, lips parted, breath catching in her throat, but I stopped her with just a look. “No, baby. I need to hear it. Say it out loud.”
