“Uh, Tor—” Sam began.
“I’ve got this,” Nina interrupted her, taking me gently by the arm and leading me back to the bathroom.
“Yours,” Samantha agreed, and waved acquiescence as I looked from one to the other in confusion. What the fuck?
“Nina, what?” I asked as I let her direct my steps. I was really tired and just wanted to get to bed.
She flipped the light on and turned me to face the mirror, her hands warm on my arms. She stood behind me.
Holy shit was right. I was covered in scratches and bruises, from just under the jawline to whatever disappeared under the towel. Named and claimed? Trace had staked me out as surely as if I’d been a gold rush tract—there was absolutely no mistaking exactly how those deep red marks, which were only beginning to blossom into the dark purple they’d become, had originated. Not even my arms had escaped her design.
“She scratched your face,” Nina said, her voice taking on an edge that I knew was anger, as she pointed at my reflection. I craned my head at an angle to see. She was right; two clear red lines ran from my cheek to just under my chin.
Nina peeked down the towel behind me. “Turn around,” she said, that edge in her tone even sharper, “and take a look at your back.”
Shocked speechless, I did, twisting my head. I stared, and stared some more, because my back was well scored, some grooves so thoroughly etched that the edges still seeped red. I looked back at Nina and didn’t know what to say.
“Tori…” She rubbed her face with her hand, then ran it through her hair. “Tor, I don’t care if you get laid, I don’t really care what you’re into so long as you’re okay, but Tori…” She carefully touched my shoulder. “Are you okay with this?” She stared up at me, her eyes a combination of deep blue center and gray outer edge. It struck me in that second how similar that gray was to Trace’s, how that color fascinated me.
I sat back against the counter. “I…I don’t know,” I answered, thinking as I spoke, because I hadn’t known how marked up I was. All I did know was that I had left there feeling strange.
Nina got some cotton balls and hydrogen peroxide from the cabinet.
“You don’t have to know right now,” she said as she moistened one and applied it to my cheek. It stung lightly as she drew it down. “Just don’t let anyone touch your face,” she said, and tweaked the tip of my nose. “That Del Castillo face is too pretty to get marked up.”
I chuckled and let her continue to swab my face and neck.
“It’s…it’s weird, you know?” I said as she turned me around so she could reach my back. Ugh, that stung too.
“What is?” she asked as I watched her concentrate first on one mark, then another.
“It’s just…” I sighed and tried again. “It’s just so different, you know?”
“Hmm,” was all she said. “Sit still, this is gonna sting a bit more.” She dabbed at a point on my shoulder. “Different how, Tor?”
“Ow!” I exhaled sharply. She was right, that
had
stung quite a bit more, and I involuntarily flinched.
“Sorry, sorry. You’ve got a few like that.”
“It’s okay,” I answered, tired and subdued. It was strange in a nice way, Nina cleaning up my boo-boos like she had from time to time when I was a kid. It hit me that Nina had never lied or exaggerated to me; she’d meant everything she’d said. She took care of me the way I used to take care of Elena, the way I still did, like a favorite little sister, which meant I could trust her, with anything.
“Different how, Tori?” she asked me again.
“I don’t know, it’s just so…it’s not like it was with—” I shut up, because I didn’t want to argue about my ex-girlfriend with Nina, not after the way I’d been such an ass about the whole thing.
“You mean, different with this girl than with Kerry?” Nina asked softly, soothing cotton along my arm.
“Yeah,” I said, quietly. I was tired, confused, and uncertain.
Nina nodded. “That makes sense,” she said, “different people and all.” She took my chin in her fingers and inspected my face, then focused on my cheek again and dabbed at that too.
Her touch was so comforting and I was so tired. Good hands, I thought, Nina has good hands. It was an observation I’d made in class, during practical lectures. Some of my classmates, some of my instructors, they had this way of taking a pulse, or applying a bandage. They had a deftness, a knowingness in their fingertips that translated into a sense of security, a knowledge that the hands doing the work held strength, compassion, and competence. Nina had that sure touch; she would have made a good EMT, I thought, as I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. Very good hands.
“So what’s her name?”
“Hmm?”
“This one who’s so…what’s her name?”
“Oh, it’s Trace…” I thought a moment, trying to remember her last name as Nina applied another drip of peroxide to my face, “Trace Cayden.”
The sound of the bottle smashing to the ground, the impact magnified in the tiled room, echoed alarmingly around and in my head, making my eyes snap open on Samantha standing in the doorway as Nina shook her head.
“You okay?” Samantha’s face was a study in concern.
“Oh, man, I’m sorry, I’ll get that,” I offered, hopping down from the counter.
“I got it. I’m not that pregnant yet.” Nina smiled at me, but her eyes were silver.
Samantha stepped into the room, and we collided as we both bent for the peroxide. She got there first and my towel slipped as I straightened. I caught it quickly, but not quite fast enough.
I heard Nina’s sharp intake of breath, and the color drained from Samantha’s face. Her lips set into a thin, grim line, but her voice was soft. “Let me see.”
I shifted the towel and looked down for myself, and there, in the only spot of skin that hadn’t been scratched or torn, across the bony parts of my chest and dipping between my breasts, was a bruise, a pattern.
“It’s a cross—technically, an iron cross,” Samantha said in the same low tone as she very gently covered me back up. She and Nina exchanged a glance.
Trace had put that there, not the first time, not even the second, but sometime before I’d left, when I’d let her lie on top of me and jerk me off. It had been a mind-blowing combination of drunken haze, cunt-throbbing thrill, and that knife-edge blend of pain and pleasure as she’d sucked on my chest and made me come.
Exhaustion swept over me and I yawned. “You guys mind if I go to bed? You can explain it to me tomorrow.”
Samantha’s expression cleared as suddenly as a cloud break. “Sure, and no worries about breakfast tomorrow, I’ve got it, okay?” She gave me a kiss on the cheek, a quick hug, then left the room.
Nina lingered a moment. “You feel all right?”
“Yeah, just really tired. Must have been the afternoon drinking.”
Nina nodded. “If you want to talk…”
I smiled at her with as much cheerfulness as I could muster as we walked to my room. “I’ll find you. Don’t worry.”
“Cool. Sleep well, then.”
“Sure, you too,” I said as I reached for my door.
“Hey, Tor?” Nina stopped me and placed a careful, warm hand on my shoulder.
“Yeah?”
Nina’s eyes earnestly searched mine. “You…you know I love you, right?”
“Of course.” From the way her mouth curved, I knew she wanted to say more even as she hesitated.
“I’d never violate your privacy or ask you, I mean…” She shifted her hand from my shoulder to touch my chin before she dropped it. “You’d tell me…if you had a problem, I mean?”
I was touched, truly touched by her concern. Things had gone maybe a bit further with Trace than I was used to, but really, I was okay.
“I’m fine, honest. It’s just a couple of scratches, nothing to write home about.” I smiled down at her as reassuringly as I could.
“Oh, hey,” I asked as the thought occurred to me, “do you know if it’s a boy or a girl yet?”
Nina shook her head and grinned at me. “Good dodge, Tori, good dodge. And to answer
your
question, there’s a lot of movement going on, so no one’s certain yet.”
I nodded. “That happens. I guess, ah, you guys should get some rest, right?”
“We probably should, and you probably should too. Good night, Tori.” She kissed my cheek.
“You too,” I said as I kissed her in return, then opened my door.
That…was weird, I reflected as I took off the towel I’d been wearing and hung it on a hook next to my closet. Fuck pajamas, I thought as I went to my bed; my skin was too sensitive to handle even the lightest clothes. I sat on the edge of the bed and as I did, something on my dresser caught my eye—the present Kerry had given me, still unopened.
I pulled it down and stared at it, with no idea what it could be, but there was only one way to find out, and I teased the folded edges carefully, not wanting to tear the paper or rush the discovery.
Once the paper was off, I folded it carefully and put it on the night table. I held a box, a white box, and after slicing through the tape that held it closed on either end, I opened it.
On top of the carefully folded tissue paper lay a letter, which I pulled out first.
Tori,
I read in the lamplight,
I know, I know, you’ll say it’s too soon, because you like to hedge your bets, but still I hope you’re celebrating what I also know has been a very successful day for you. I know how hard you’ve worked for this and how much it means to you.
At first I was shocked, then I realized I shouldn’t have been when I found out who you’re related to. Well, it makes a lot of sense, Stud, you’re a lot more alike than you think, and Tori? I’m sorry I hurt you, I never wanted to do that.
I know, I know, I pushed and I did things I shouldn’t have, but as I watched you fall in love, first with your class, then with the ideas behind it, I realized, this is you, this is what you’re going to do. Tough guy, I can’t stand the thought of getting a phone call one day telling me you got hurt.
You deserve your chances, you deserve the best, you deserve a lot more than me.
You’ve got good hands, Victoria Scotts, and you’re going to do great.
I miss you, I love you, and I hope you’ll be careful when you’re out there.
Love always, Kerry.
After I’d finished reading her note my chest hurt in ways I didn’t know it could, and my eyes stung, sharper than the etchings on my back or shoulders did. I reached under the paper and felt with careful fingers, removing what I found.
I don’t know how long I sat there with it in my hand while I buried my face in the other and cried.
It was blue. My favorite shade of blue. A Sprague Rappaport.
Is there life-threatening hemorrhage? Control bleeds. Treat for shock as necessary.
Trace called me two days later. “How’re you feeling?” she asked in that throaty purr that stirred me.
“I feel…fine,” I answered, “though that first shower was a bit, uh, sharp.”
“Ah well, at least you could
walk
,” she laughed, “and you look great naked.”
Even though I knew she couldn’t see me, I could feel the warm rush of blood race up my neck and flood my face. I didn’t know how to answer, because I still didn’t know how I felt. I remembered, quite vividly, how savagely that fuck had gone under her urging, but a part of me couldn’t help but think the entire time that it had to hurt and I would never, ever, have done something like that with someone else, except that I had, with her, and the memory throbbed through my groin to swell my clit to a pounding urgency while guilt tugged at my head and killed my words. I couldn’t reconcile the guilt and the memory of the fuck, which seemed to go against everything I’d ever known, the polar opposite of what my instincts usually were, but instead dug deeper, to another place, a different level, a level that I’d never visited before—and when I was in that place, I felt so out-of-fucking-control good, but in a very frightening way.
“I think I still owe you a dinner,” Trace drawled into the silence, “and at the very least, that cup of coffee.”
“We never did get to that, did we?” I laughed.
We arranged to meet later that night, and it was a nice evening. She made cappuccino quite well, and we supposedly watched a couple of movies, which we really ignored instead and talked about life in general, and of all things, school in particular because it turned out Trace had gone to the same college I went to, and we’d had quite a few of the same professors.
The talking evolved into closer physical proximity, which evolved into our wrapping around each other in an extremely sensual make-out session, but as tempting as Trace was at that moment, and she was the first person in a long time who almost made me come with my clothes on, and as much as she said it would be fine if I blew off work the next day, because, hey, I’d be working on the rig soon enough, I still had to get up, still had to deal with that checkout line.
When I asked her not to mark my face up again, she laughed and agreed, then left me a clearly visible ring of red marks around my neck.
And…I still wasn’t entirely comfortable with what we, no, what I, had done, the last time we were together. I still couldn’t even begin to find the words to describe it, but I didn’t feel right. I was glad she didn’t push it further—I don’t think I could have said no.