Page 15

Eight

Sawyer

Everything got a bit easier after the omelette. Partly because I was probably being irritating because I was hangry and partly because we just got some time to find our groove. It’s been about a week and Harry and his goons have stayed away. We have established that he cooks, and I clean up. This was unanimously decided after I inadvertently served medium-rare chicken on one occasion, and crispy burnt rice on another. So my cooking privileges have been revoked.

I have, however, become the voice of popular opinion on his culinary creations. Each day I dutifully hop up on the side and shut the fuck up, for which I am rewarded with basically zero-calorie snacks. It turns out I actually quite like cucumber strips, carrots, peppers, spring onions, and various other cast offs and cut outs.

Day by day Nik’s been physically recovering more. I wouldn’t say he’s healed, but he’s walking more than shuffling yet still grunting more than he’s really talking. His “no questions” rule really fucked me up there.

I reckon we’ve upgraded now from co-hostages to housemates, which means we were basically both right. Which, being totally honest, makes a nice change. He’s typically right about everything, but I have tried to table the motion that actually if you only speak fifty words a day you can choose to use them to be right, if you speak five thousand words a day statistically you are more likely to make the occasional mistake. For my efforts as a statistician I was rewarded with a whopping… “hmph”.

The thing I love, I mean, I guess enjoy with Nik is that if you pay attention, he communicates a lot. He just doesn’t use his words, or like being told to use his words. The very slight smile when I especially enjoy a dish is a giveaway. He does laugh at my jokes, he just does it on the inside, like a hard man.

There are little things I look forward to each day now. Like the way he will now manspread like an eagle, but allow me to stretch my legs over him. Or if I fall asleep watching the TV he’ll speak gently and wake me up rubbing the back of my hand, which is certainly a pleasant upgrade from the backhand double-tap on the shoulder I was getting.

One moment that lives rent-free in my head though, was when I not only successfully called icing at the hockey, but jeered and cheered at the hit and subsequent fight at the right moments, for the right team. It’s hard not to get enthusiastic about a team that plays so many times per week. I mean honestly, football fans sit through ninety minutes a Saturday. We get an hour of play like three or four times a week. And fights. We get fights. Anyway, we’re tied at four-all and get a power play in the final minutes of the game, and I got genuinely excited. Not fake pick-me excited like I used to for Arsenal for Dan’s benefit, but actually excited. I sit down, entirely captivated and catch Nik leaning back, actually smiling at me. Just for a few seconds. But it did things to me.

The real tell though, is how he so consistently seems to be able to read my internal world. At first I thought it was condescension or even confrontation. But he knows when I’m cleaning because something needs cleaning, or when I’m mentally revisiting places, and he knows how to talk to me when I start losing my grip.

At first I thought I was trying to goad reactions from this stubborn, ignorant man. Now I’m starting to think that he communicates through his actions. The biggest shock now, is that I don’t want him to leave, and I definitely don’t want Dan to come back. That’s one of those problems that I’m pushing to the back of my mind. It’s really weird, because we don’t speak all that much and I still know the square root of fuck all about him in any meaningful way. I know nothing about what’s going on in his head, and we all know he isn’t going to tell me. But I know what it feels like to be in his presence, and I am here for it. I could just drink it in. I don’t even have the words for it.

There is one problem though, tiny thing really. Barely worth a thought. When you live with someone, you often see bits of their flesh, and that’s cool. I have seen every glorious inch of him. And it haunts me. Like in no small way. I’m standing here now in the shower, smiling thinking about him in a not-like-that way. Then I close my eyes, and I see him in a very much like-that way.

Lord have mercy, there’s nothing for me to imagine about how he looks. I know how he looks, which is part of the problem. And with that information, I can imagine how he feels. I fucked up jumping myself onto the worktop. Maybe I could’ve gotten him to put me there every day.

He could put me wherever he wanted to put me. I can’t help it, my clit is throbbing at me just thinking about what he could do to me. My hand drifts from my neck, where I’d almost been clutching my pearls, following the steaming water droplets down my centre and gripping myself because I just can’t imagine him being gentle. My fingers slip against the suds, my skin still slick from the thickest, most luxurious shower crème I could find.

I wouldn’t want him to be gentle, I almost make myself bleed biting my lip so hard. He has so much control that I bet if he lost it, if he let himself go it would be like bringing a demon home. My middle two fingers dance in circles, teasing myself drawing out the anticipation while I think about his hands, his teeth buried into me.

The water washes over my back and I lean my front into the wall, pushing myself back. I lift my leg, putting my foot on the shower seat. Reaching through I run my fingers from front to back a few more times, teasing myself at the entrance before finally allowing myself in.

Before I even realise it, I lose my footing on the fucking floor layered with shower crème. Friction betrays me, my head meets the wall, my knee meets something, my ankle twists against the railing and I’m now in a heap. Being waterboarded by the hot water, and in a considerable amount of pain, my tears only hidden by the fact that I’m almost drowning right now.

Then I hear the sound of doom. The landing floorboards, at breakneck pace. Before I can stop him, he’s there. Towering over me, obstructing the mood lighting.

Through my pained tears I just manage “I fell” I desperately try to cover myself up with my hands, but everything hurts.

“I see”

I try to cover myself up some more. Come on, muscle man. Do something useful. He moves almost in slow motion, or at least it feels that way. Step one, turn off the shower. Well, that’s annoyingly logical, actually.

“What have you hurt?”

I’m an emotional wreck at this point “everything” is all I manage before I start sobbing because my knee is throbbing, my ankle is giving me sharp smarts every few seconds and honestly, I’m just so desperately embarrassed.

“Can you stand?”

I shake my head. And then it dawns on me. He’s going to have to lift me out. Is it possible to be abjectly humiliated, indescribably horny, and somehow thankful all at the same time? As he moves in to help, the light shifts and I realise he’s only in his boxers. His perfectly fitting, crotch-emphasising, quad-gripping boxers. Oh no, I might have to fall in the shower multiple times per day. It might actually be worth the pain. He drops to one knee in front of me and places his hands on my thigh, just above my knee. It doesn’t hurt, until it does. Then he does the same to my good knee.

“I’ve not hurt that one”

“I know” and he carries on and honestly I don’t mind, but I do move my hand to cover myself, because I wouldn’t be surprised if he could see how much I’m enjoying this first aid inspection.

“Some swelling, but the joints aren’t dislocated. Probably sprained” I just nod, doe-eyed because I can’t even deal with this right now. “I’m going to help you up” I nod again “put your arms behind my neck”

Yes, sir. So much yes, sir. And I do, but I look down at myself, because honestly if I look into his eyes right now I can’t even bear to think about what I’m going to do and I’ll ruin everything. My body is my body. Feeling doesn’t mean I have to act on it. A cheeky minute to myself is very different to cheating on my incarcerated boyfriend of several years.

He stands with one foot in each corner of the shower cubicle, my hands around his neck, and one of his hands braced against the wall. He does the deepest squat, slides his hand directly under my ass - Sir! - and scoops me up “wrap your legs” he instructs, but to be honest I was instinctively going to anyway.