Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 84533 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 423(@200wpm)___ 338(@250wpm)___ 282(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84533 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 423(@200wpm)___ 338(@250wpm)___ 282(@300wpm)
“I hope it’s not broken,” he said, and I shook my head. I didn’t think it was. Likely just a bad sprain. My fingers brushed over his foot. It was easy to break the bone there, but the swelling and purple skin led me to believe it was more in his ankle.
“Tell me where it hurts,” I forced myself to say, head down, my hair a veil between us. The little lamb gasped. Because I’d spoken, or at the rough, unused sound of my voice? I did speak to myself sometimes, or to the animals or vegetables I grew, so I didn’t forget how. I also read out loud to myself, wanting to keep my voice usable, though mostly I chose not to.
With my beat-up hands, I pressed lightly on the bone along the side of his foot, looking at him through my hair.
Cyrus shook his head. Our gazes stayed locked, my fingers slowly working up his foot. He didn’t use words at first, but I could tell that the higher I got, the more pain he was in, until I reached his ankle and he said, “Yes. There.”
I took the ice pack and placed it on his skin. He trembled, and I looked down. Looked at the foot of another man resting on my knee. At how pale it was compared to my sun-kissed tan. His nails were perfectly trimmed. He had a slight dusting of hair on his big toe. Veins ran the length of his foot, attached to fuzzy legs.
It was strange seeing someone touch me this way. I’d fucked Hillary when I was sixteen. She had been nineteen and was the newest on the path to Enlightenment. She’d only been there six months when it started. I was drawn to her because she was the closest person to my age I’d ever spent any amount of time with. What I’d really wanted was a friend, but Chosen had said that even though she wasn’t worthy of me, he thought I should enjoy her physically. Men were sexual beings. We needed to fuck, and he wanted me to start early. That was something else my mother hadn’t known about.
I’d gone without until I was twenty-one, and then it had been Debra. I paid her for sex, but it had only taken once for me to realize that much like Hillary, it felt wrong. Ever since then, it had only been Bruce. But that was just an action, a means to an end, a way to have an orgasm. It didn’t feel intimate the way his foot on my lap did.
I hated the fact that I loved fucking so much, that I always yearned to bury my cock in someone, because it made me feel like Chosen. He’d slept with most of the women in The Enlightened, acted like it made him powerful.
Cyrus’s foot fell off my lap when I shoved to my feet.
“Ouch. Shit,” he cursed, but I ignored him, walking away, needing space. It was one thing to do that with Debra or Bruce, give them money and put my dick in them, but it was something else entirely to have someone here I wanted, someone I coveted.
I didn’t want to touch him again.
I wanted to touch him everywhere.
“Wrap it,” I growled with my back to him.
“Why the fuck did you do that?”
I turned to see him with his foot on the couch. He grabbed the bandage from the kit and fumbled, trying to wrap it himself.
Leave him. This isn’t your responsibility. He is nothing to you.
But my feet moved of their own accord. I jerked the bandage from his hands and began wrapping his foot. Once I had it covered, I propped the limb on a pillow so it was elevated, pressed the ice to it again, then stalked to the chair on the other side of the room to watch him.
I craved space as much as I craved his skin, but I couldn’t leave him alone in my home.
“Why did you bring me here?” When I didn’t respond, he added, “Are you taking me to my car tomorrow? It’s my left foot, so I can drive.” At that, I gave a simple nod. “So…I’m supposed to sit here all night with you watching me?”
I ignored him, and he sighed, maneuvering himself so he lay down.
We sat there in silence, for an hour, maybe two. He watched me, and I watched him, wondering what he saw in my eyes. Something wild? Angry? Wrong? Strange? Did he know that his gaze bled with sadness? That I could see that he was even more alone than I was? That for the first time in my life, I almost felt like I saw myself in someone else? That made me want to hate him…made me want to possess him too.