Mine

The rest of the night was that.

Elena moved through the room like she owned the air in it, and she kept me at my side, her hand on my neck or my wrist or the small of my back, and woman after woman came to her, and some of them asked and some of them did not ask and Elena chose which ones and she offered me the way you offer a bottle, tilt of the head, murmur of permission, and each time a cold mouth found my throat or my wrist and each time the white hurt bloomed and the room went gold and each time I came back to myself shaking and held upright only by her hand.

And she watched.

She watched every time. She watched their mouths on me. She watched my face go slack and my breath go ragged and my knees go soft, and her eyes got brighter and brighter, and by the fourth woman her hand on my neck was trembling, and by the seventh she was pressing her thighs together when she thought no one could see, and I could see, because I was always watching her, always, even when I was not supposed to be looking at anyone.

I did not understand it.

She had spent weeks reminding me I was food, rationing me, keeping me on a leash pulled so tight I could barely breathe, and now she was handing me to strangers, and her hands were shaking, and there was colour in her cold still face that had not been there an hour ago. I did not understand. I was food. She had said so. She had made me say so. But food did not make you tremble. Food did not make you press your thighs together in a room full of watching eyes.

I did not understand, and I kept watching, because watching her was the only thing I knew how to do.

We did not make it to the car.

She pulled me into a narrow room off the main floor, a storage room, dark, empty, and she shoved me back against the wall and she was on me before I could breathe, her hands in my shirt tearing it open, her mouth on mine, and she kissed me like she was trying to consume the taste of every woman who had touched me, wipe them out, replace them. Her hand found me through my clothes and she gripped and I arched off the wall and she laughed against my mouth, low and broken and furious.

"Mine," she said. "Do you hear me. You are mine. They get the blood. The rest is mine. Do you understand."

"Yes. Yes, Elena."

"Say it again."

"I'm yours. Only yours."

Her hand moved and I shattered against her and she swallowed the sound with her mouth and when she pulled back she was shaking and her eyes were wet and she looked at me with something she could not push back down no matter how hard she tried.

"You did that on purpose," she whispered. "You looked at me. While she was on you. You looked at me."

I had. I did not know why it mattered. I had looked at her because I always looked at her, because she was the only fixed point in any room I was in, because my eyes found her the way my blood found the marks on my neck, without choosing to. I had not done it to do anything. I had not understood it would do anything. I still did not understand what it had done, only that her face had changed when it happened and had not changed back.

"I didn't," I said. "I just looked at you. I always look at you."

Something moved through her face that I could not name. She slapped me. Not hard. Just enough to sting, just enough to remind me, and herself, who was holding the leash. Then she kissed the place she had struck and she smoothed my ruined shirt and she took my hand and led me back out into the candlelight and the watching eyes and the low sweet pull in my blood, and she did not let go of me for the rest of the night.

I stood in her shadow, marked and wrecked and tasting of her, and I tried to fit the pieces together. Her shaking hands. The colour in her face. The way she had dragged me in here and torn me open. The way she had looked at me after. The slap. The kiss on the sting. The hand that had not let go.

I could not make them fit. The pieces did not make a shape I knew. I was food. She had said so. But the woman holding my hand through the candlelight was not holding me the way you hold a meal, and I did not know what she was holding me like, and I was afraid to look too close at the question in case the answer was something I could not survive.

So I let her lead me, and I watched her, and I did not understand, and I told myself that was enough.