Page 65 of Swerve
“Do you like eggs?”
“Yes. That sounds good.”
A few beats of silence hang between them, and then he heads for her bedroom while she turns toward the kitchen.
In the bathroom, he turns on the shower, pulling off his sweaty shirt. There’s a rap at the door. He opens it, and Emory hands him a white mug of steaming coffee. “That looks great. Thanks,” he says.
She stares at his bare chest, her eyes snagged there just long enough to allow the return of that same awareness he’d felt last night. She looks up, meeting his eyes with an uncertainty that makes him wonder about that doctor from the hospital and whether he makes her this uncomfortable.
“I thought you might like a cup,” she says, her voice low now and a little uneven.
They stand there, locked in a moment that could have been a second long or a hundred. All he knows is that the pull of temptation is as hot as the coffee she’s just brought him. “I won’t be long,” he says. He takes a deliberate step back and then closes the door.
Mia
“I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that’s where they begin. Their great skill is their capacity to escalate.”
?Markus Zusak
ONCE WHEN SHE and Emory took a vacation to Saint Martin for her sixteenth birthday, they spent an afternoon in the hotel spa that overlooked the ocean. They’d had facials and massages, gotten themselves caked in a full-body clay detox thing that causedtheir skinto tingle and then glow afterwards.
The spa room there had looked much like this one—low, soft lighting, white walls with a special bed in the middle made to look inviting with its white sheets and soft white blankets. It had smelled like this one too. Eucalyptus and mint and citrus layered together.
But despite the similar appearance, this placewasn’t actually anything at all likeSaint Martin. In this room, she is lying flat on her back, staring at the ceiling, her wrists and ankles anchored to the bed with some kind of special clasp to prevent her from getting up.
She’d tried. So many times now that she knows there will be rubs on her skin. She doesn’t care though. If she thought it would do any good, she would jerk at the bindings until she freed herself, not even caring whether she left behind a part of herself in the trap.
The heavy door at the side of the room opens. A woman enters. She’s dressed like a doctor, white lab coat over white pants. Serious, black-frame glasses on her face. She walks over to the sink and washes her hands.
“Hi,” Mia says, staring at her back.
She doesn’t answer so Mia repeats, “Hi.”
The woman turns, still without answering, and walks over to pull the sheet and blanket off Mia, exposing her nakedness beneath. She studies her dispassionately, up and down, as if she’s observing a new car she’s considering buying.
Crimson heat stains Mia’s face. “What are you doing?” she asks.
“I am Helga. I will need to shower you,” she says in a thick German accent, not meeting Mia’s gaze. “Can you do this without my assistant, or will I need to call him?”
Mia knows who the assistant is. The same hulking man who had escorted her from the other room to this one. The one who had ordered her to undress and refused to turn his back while she did. The one who let his eyes take their fill of her as he strapped onthe restraints. The thought of him watching her be showered made her instantly nauseous.
“No,” she says. “He doesn’t need to be here.”
“Good. I have a remote in my pocket. Should I push the button on it, he will be inside the room within fifteen seconds. I believe you have already been warned as to what will happen should his powers of persuasion be necessary.”
Mia nods. She doesn’t trust herself to speak because the scream at the back of her throat will no doubt bring about exactly what the woman has warned her about.
“Excellent,” the woman says, removing a key from her white lab coat and unlocking each cuff. “Stand up and walk to the shower, please.”
Mia does so, trying not to think about her nakedness, realizing modesty is a long-gone luxury.
The woman opens the shower door, beckons her inside with one hand. Mia stands with her back to her, closing her eyes on the futile hope that she can block out what is happening to her, somehow lessen its impact.
The water turns on, runs for a few seconds, and Mia feels it hit the center of her spine. She draws in a sharp breath. The woman rinses her entire back and legs, orders her to bend over and aims the spray between her legs. Tears well in Mia’s eyes, but she bites her lip to hold them back. The woman turns her around and does the same to her front side. When she finally turns off the water, she picks up a bottle on the wall shelf and proceeds to squirt Mia from head to toe body with its contents. The smell is a familiar antiseptic smell, and she realizes she is being sterilized.
Humiliation threatens to choke her.
Next, the woman pours soap onto a white washcloth, and then cleans every inch of her with that. She works as if she is preparing an operating room for surgery and every inch must be impeccably sanitary.
