Colour Series Box Set (102 page)

A few weeks ago I got a letter by courier from Amya, I have no idea how she found me, but she hasn’t told the rest of them where I was. She just wanted me to know that they worry. It made me feel terrible, I hid the letter from Mathew and tried to push it out of my mind. I saved her number to my new phone and texted her one message.

I am fine please leave me alone. I am happy here.

She didn’t reply and I think she just wanted me to know that somewhere they knew I was gone. I was happy to be gone.

I was cooking when the world ended for me again. Jameson was hovering under my feet in the desperate hopes that I would drop something and he could eat it. My phone chimed on the counter, I thought it was Mat, the old lady is on her last days and he said she has given him a date for her suicide. I hope it was him with a sexy message telling me to wait in the room, or to be ready for a good spanking. I loved the surrender that I was able to give him when we had sex, I had always controlled my sex life it was never about passion it was about the kill after. Now it is raw passion, feelings that come alive as actions. I wipe my hands on my apron and touch the screen to see what it is he has planned for tonight, one message wrecked me. In one second I was ruined.

Avery, I know u r are happy but ur father has been killed. My heart won’t let me bury him without u here. Please come home.

I felt myself cracking and the pieces are falling to the floor around me where I end up in a puddle of my own tears. Jameson sits next to me resting his head on me, it’s like he just knows the heartache is unbearable. The sun has set and the air is cold even though it is spring already the nights get icy here. I’m still stuck on the floor in the kitchen when I hear the front door, fear seizes me, I have broken all the rules and I scramble to stand. When I do I see his face go from angry disappointment to care and concern.

“Avery?” He approaches me with caution, I wonder some days if he still thinks I might kill him. When he gets closer I collapse on the floor again. “Avery what’s wrong?” He sits down next to me. “I’m not angry, I won’t punish you. Just tell me what happened?” He’s holding me. I hand him my phone because I don’t think I can say the words out loud yet. I have lost people before this, I was born into loss, but never have I felt it. The deep agonising pain of knowing my father is gone, is made worse by that the last words we spoke were in anger. That hurts the most, I know that my words were like daggers to him and I can’t take them back I can’t even say sorry. Mat holds me as I sit on the cold floor and the pieces he has worked so hard to put back together just fall apart. I was a shitty daughter and I will never get the chance to right that wrong. I feel this in the deepest parts of me, but it aches a little less because he holds me tight and tells me it will all be okay. And I believe it will be.

We stay there for ages, I feel stiff and weak when he carries me to bed and kisses my forehead.

“I’m going to go take care of the old lady, then tomorrow I will take you home, baby. I will be there. I’m not just going to leave you, if you still need me, I will be with you.”
If? Is he serious? Of course I need him, there is no if, I need him more than ever.
I sniff away my tears and wipe my face with my hands.

“Thank you.” I muster the two little words that cannot even express the gratitude in my heart, because I know that had I not been here this would have ended me. It might still.

When he came back late that night I could tell his heart was as heavy as mine, something was weighing on him too. As he held me close, I felt the sinking feeling that today was the beginning of the end of us, I don’t want to let him go. I try to show him, I turn and kiss him. He kisses me back and it feels like goodbye, so I kiss him harder. His hands tangle in my knotted hair as he pulls me onto him, the fire is there like it has been since the very beginning only it is just smouldering tonight. I pull at his shirt, trying to get at the skin below, to get to him to cling on with everything I have. Straddling him, I pull my dress up over my head, my tattoos and breasts right in front of him. The dark glint is back in his eyes as his hands pull me back to him by my nipples, the sharp pain makes me squeeze my thighs against him and I can feel the buckle of his belt rub against my lace knickers. He shoves me off him and onto my back, he kneels between my thighs towering over me, the grin I want to see is missing from his face as he pulls my underwear to the side and slides a finger inside me. My body bows to let him go deeper, I crave the way he makes me feel. His fingers continue as he bends over me and kisses my skin. His kisses never land on the coloured side, the clean slate the empty side where the pale whiteness I inherited from my mother glows in the dull light. His lips are warm against my cool, exposed body and the slightest lick of his tongue drives me closer to the edge. I need this so much, I need him. I try so hard to follow his rules, I let him touch me and make me feel, but my hands can’t stay away tonight and I slide them over his shoulders digging my fingernails into his flawless skin. I feel the growl of disapproval on my skin as he bites me. His fingers are gone in a second, making me gasp loudly as he pulls himself away from me and back onto his knees. I lift up onto my elbows so I can see him unbuckle the belt and pop the top button of his jeans, I catch myself biting my lips and wanting to touch myself.

“Roll over, Avery, hands under the pillow.” There he is. I do as I am told although I wouldn’t mind having my ass smacked. I sense it isn’t what he needs. My knees are pushed up underneath me so my ass is up in the air, I turn my head to the side so I can see him in the mirror on the wall beside us, he slides off the bottom of the bed and steps out of his pants. I can only see his shadow from this angle, a shadow that shows me his hard cock and masculine shape perfectly. The dark outline on the wall reflected in the mirror as he stalks back onto the bed. Smack. His hand lands across my thighs that I have squeezed together in anticipation and the desperate need for relief. The tearing sound as my underwear is ripped at the side seams is amplified by the look on his face as he does it with malice. Mathew’s angry and hurting and I want to fix it,
this is fixing it. Let him use your body to feel what he needs to feel.
There is a distinct difference between feeling sex and watching it, as I watch him bury his face in my cunt, my body reacts but my mind is on the image I see. His tongue tortures me in the best way possible, fingers digging into the flesh of my hips as he holds them still so I can’t control the pressure. Mathew is in control. Our breathing is the only sound in the room. Heavy breaths hissing in and out. I suffocate my moans by biting my upper arm. I can see his hand wrapped around his cock as he strokes himself to the same rhythm of his tongue the visual makes my back arch and his grip tighten on my thigh, where I’m sure his fingers will leave marks. The skin has gone white around his fingers. I see it in the reflection of us as he lets go and I lose the feeling of his mouth against me. A whimper escapes as he drapes over my whole body, I feel his cock as it rests against my ass. “I’m not done yet,” he whispers over my back and I sigh in both desire and relief. “Stay still, Avery.” An instruction, a rule to follow. My body tenses to keep from moving and I feel the thudding in my chest, I’m waiting to fail and feel the punishment. I can never stay still. His hand slides down the side of my body, I watch it travel from my breast to my ass and he shifts to fit it between us. He touches me and I want to move but I try not to. “Still.” He reminds me. His fingers move the wetness from earlier up to my ass. He knows that is a no, the one thing I won’t do.
He knows.
My muscles are so tight they begin to ache and fear makes me shake, I cannot stop it. I want to yell out at him to stop, but I can see his face in the mirror and I know he won’t listen even if I do. “Please.” I let out one soft whimper as his finger slides in causing pain to ricochet through me. “Still, I need this. I need to take this from you, Avery. I need to cancel him out before we go back there.”
He knows that Eiran hurt me, and that the fear of that agony rules me.
“Avery, I’m going to fuck your ass tonight, how much it hurts is on you.” He wants to hurt me, I try to tell myself it is to fix me but this isn’t about me tonight. My grief and pain is forgotten in his need to know I would give up myself for him. I stop watching. I close my eyes and let silent tears snake out as I feel him moving his finger inside, the pain I fear is there but I wanes with each stroke. Mathew has told me about self-sacrifice and giving yourself over to helping other person is the thing that makes us human and I know that is what he is trying to tell me now.
Put him first, give him your pain because he needs it. I have learned to be human it doesn’t take away the fear of my past though.
Amazingly as I accept this and surrender the pain is forgotten—all of it. The pain of my father dying, the pain of losing Callum, the agony of killing Eiran and I don’t even feel my skin tear as he pushes into me. I don’t feel the blood curdling scream leaving my lungs. In my pain. I’m human. “Finally . . . my angel, you feel,” Mathew says as he rocks inside me, my eyes are open and I watch now. The furious movements of his body against mine, the way he is holding onto me keeping me still, taking what he needs not giving me what I need. The scars of my youth are finally healed, Mathew is sad because he fixed me. I know he’s getting ready to be done with me. It smothers my happiness and I feel like I am waiting for the world to end as we both orgasm. My body quakes below his as he comes inside my ass. The one place I asked him not to touch. The thing I gave to him anyway.

“Why did you need to fix me?” the words come out with my tears.
Why? This hurts me. Everything fucking hurts now.

“Because I couldn’t save someone once. Now I need to save as many as I can to make it right.”

I feel his pain with my own as he cleans me, the warm cloth stings where he wipes me. I let a hiss out. He kisses me softly on the back and pulls me to lie against him. “I don’t want you to leave me.” The begging in my soul can be heard in my voice. “Not yet, angel. Go to sleep. I’m taking you home soon.”

If you truly loved yourself you could never hurt another.

THIRTEEN HOURS IN
a car is long even when you’re not sad. Avery is sad so the drive is painful, her father is dead and she carries guilt and grief over it. But more than that she’s afraid. With every kilometre drawing us closer to home, her fear consumes more of her, she’s reverting to the girl who was so afraid to feel that she was hollow inside. It is too soon for her to go back, she only just set herself free. My time with her is almost up, I saved her from the end I knew she was going to find and set her on a new path. Now I have to let her go without hurting her too much. With every goodbye in life, we learn something, I have said many goodbyes—they always follow a hello. I knew that I would have to set her free or give her peace. When we are almost halfway through our journey she asks me quietly. “Who was the one you didn’t save?” Those two violently beautiful eyes look right inside me.

“My sister.” No one has asked me before, no one ever bothered to know my why.

“What happened?” She holds my hand over the gap between the seats.

“She had cancer . . . leukemia.” I look at the road and remember her bald head and sad eyes. “She begged me to kill her, she couldn’t take the pain any longer. I couldn’t do it. I let her suffer until she did it herself.” I let her down and I will never stop trying to make that feeling go away.

“I understand it now.” Avery looks away out the side window and I believe she really does. We stop at every single service station so Jameson can pee, I have come to accept he isn’t mine any longer. He is her dog, the traitor.

The wine estate she calls home comes into view in the early hours of the following morning, the birds are awake but the sky is still dark. She gets out and punches in a security code to open the giant iron gates that keep the world out. Instead of getting back in the car, she starts to walk up the gravel driveway and I follow slowly in the car, the headlights lighting her way. The big white gabled home is situated at the end of it, Avery uses keys that she has been swinging between her fingers for hours now to open the gate and door. I wait a minute, not sure yet if I’m welcomed to join her, when she turns around and looks at me, waiting. I get out and we enter the house together. Jameson is at her heels right away. The eerie silence of this whole place makes me feel like I’m trespassing on her life. She flips on lights as we go, the long passage ends in an open lounge and kitchen. Avery goes straight to the kitchen, fills the kettle and turns it on. She’s learned not to drink alcohol as a crutch so coffee is her go-to drink when she needs comfort now. I sit on a bar stool at the island leaving the space she has created between us. When the sun rises in a few hours, it will be the day of her father’s funeral and I know that she will need me close then, now she needs space. After coffee and retrieving our bags from the car we sleep for a few hours tangled in each other on the couch, there are beds but she didn’t seem to want to sleep in any of the rooms.