The Dirty Series 2(11)

Is that all this is? says the little voice in my head, but it’s struck down by the rest of my body, which is dying to have him inside me again.

This is who he is, the one behind all the barriers put up in public, behind all the social constrictions, behind closed doors.

With me and me alone.

It’s a great fucking deal, if he would just—

At that moment he crashes into me with such a powerful thrust that it takes my breath away, crushes my chest into the bed, makes my pussy clench around Christian’s steely hardness. I’m moments away from climax, and I squeeze my eyes shut, gasp in a breath, and feel my body respond to him, going higher, higher, higher until I’m careening over, crying out into the mattress. Moments later I hear Christian’s answering roar as he pins me back against him and comes hard, his hips spasming even as he stays buried deep inside me.

We’re frozen in that position for a heartbeat, then two, and then he pulls out and falls forward onto the bed, maneuvering up to the pillows while he turns me over onto my side with one hand, his arm wrapped around my waist.

He doesn’t say anything.

It’s not long before his breathing steadies and slows.

I lay there next to him, feeling his chest rise and fall. The room darkens as the sun sets behind the buildings. My mind is too hyped up to sleep, too caught up in the electrifying encounter we just had.

When I can’t stand it any longer, I gently disengage his arm from my waist and slip out of bed. I don’t want to put on my outfit from the office—a sleeveless dress and a short-sleeved blazer—but I don’t have any other clothes with me, so my first stop is Christian’s walk-in closet. In one of the lower drawers, I find a pair of lounge pants and a plain t-shirt that smell like him. I throw it on, luxuriating in the softness of the cloth.

I don’t want to look at my phone in the dark room and risk waking him up, so I pad down the hall to his den, with its bookshelves and leather furniture. There’s a certain armchair I’m dying to sink into.

There’s a small table lamp in the corner that gives the room a really pleasing glow. I shut the door closed behind me. The armchair, tucked in the corner and surrounded by shelves full of first editions and other of Christian’s favorites, is both plushly soft and supportive. I curl up in it, tucking my legs underneath me in a comfortable and relaxing position, and sigh. Pure satisfaction.

I’m about to unlock the screen of my phone when something on a nearby shelf catches my eye. It’s a journal like the other ones I saw at the Cottage—exactly the same, but it’s all by itself.

I bite my lip. I shouldn’t snoop. Absolutely not. And if I do, I’ll feel compelled to admit it to him later.

It’s probably just an archive of teenage angst in written form.

I pull the journal down from the shelf and start to flip through it.

There are pages and pages of neat handwriting, so neat that it actually makes me want to put it back. This kind of writing doesn’t seem like it would be something the party animal Christian that I know would write, and suddenly I’m struck by my actions, and what a fucking terrible invasion of privacy this is.

I turn the journal over in my hands to close it, but my nail catches on the back cover, revealing the very last page.

There, scratched in a panicked scrawl, the writing appearing so different from that which has been written throughout the rest of the book, are words that make my heart thud with anxious fear.

WHAT HAVE I DONE

I HAVE TO BE HIM

FOREVER

FOREVER

FOREVER

My stomach lurches and churns as my mind spins into overdrive. This is some kind of joke, right? Or some kind of teenage outburst? The hairs prickling up on the back of my neck tell me I’m wrong. This is something I was never supposed to see. Something nobody was ever supposed to see.

I’m flashing back, reflecting and piecing together one memory after the other, of all the things I’ve seen Christian do since we met on that rainy day on the sidewalk. Then I remember the way he froze up when I asked about memorials during our very first meeting. The way it pissed him off when I said he was like a different person at the Bowery Mission. The way his face went white as a ghost when that man, Matthews, called him by his brother’s name.

His brother’s name.

Elijah.

Then the final piece clicks into place, and I clap my own hand over my mouth to keep from screaming.

Christian’s tattoo.

My eyes lingered on it that afternoon at the Cottage, tracing the lines, trying to make sense of each of the sections.

Carolyn’s voice haunts my thoughts. They got matching tattoos the same week that he died.

In one of those sections of the tattoos, between the silhouettes of various predatory animals, is an intricate design. If you look at it for long enough, it resolves into a letter.