Giving

The fifth night she came to my room.

Not the play room. Not the garden. My room. The room with the bed that smelled like her. She came in carrying things draped over her arm, dark fabric, silk, and she closed the door behind her and she stood with her back to it and she looked at me and for a long moment she did not speak.

I was standing. I had eaten that day, all of it, because she had told me to and because I wanted to be strong enough for whatever she needed. I had slept, finally, a thin shallow sleep full of her mouth and the garden and the sound of her voice saying I can't. I was cleaner, steadier, still thin, still marked, still hungry, but upright. Present. There.

She crossed the room to me. She laid the silk over the back of the chair by the window and she stood in front of me and she put her hands on my face, both of them, and she held my face between her palms and she looked at me with an expression I had seen once before, on the floor in the dark, when I was dying, and I had thought I imagined it.

"You stayed," she said.

"You told me to."

"I told you to stay and you stayed and you wasted away in this room for me and you did not open the door."

"No."

"Why."

I did not know how to answer. I did not know why. I knew only that the alternative did not exist, that leaving was not a thing my body understood how to do if it meant being somewhere she had not put me.

"Because I'm yours," I said.

Her face did something. The mask cracked. Not the hairline fracture of the garden, not the small slips she recovered from. A real crack, visible, structural, the kind that changes the shape of the wall. Her mouth opened and her eyes went bright and wet and her hands on my face tightened and she pulled me to her and she kissed me and it was not like the garden, it was not controlled, it was not patient, it was desperate and deep and her mouth moved on mine with a hunger that had nothing to do with blood.

She kissed me for a long time. Her hands moved from my face to my neck to the collar of my shirt and she gripped it and she pulled and the buttons gave and she peeled the shirt off my shoulders and her cold palms found my chest and she held them there, flat, over my heart, and she broke the kiss and she stood with her hands on my chest and her forehead resting against my collarbone and she breathed.

She stepped back. She reached for the silk on the chair and she took my right wrist and she raised it above my head and she wrapped the silk around it, slow, careful, winding it twice, three times, and she tied it and she took my left wrist and she raised it to meet the right and she bound them together. She looked up. I followed her gaze and I saw it, a hook set into the ceiling beam, centered in the room, a thing I must have looked at a hundred times and never seen. She looped the long end of the silk over the hook and she pulled and my arms rose above my head and she kept pulling and my heels left the floor and I rose onto the balls of my feet and she kept pulling and I stretched, my calves flexing, my heels lifting, until I was on my toes, the silk taut above me, my body pulled long and open and held, the weight of me balanced on the points of my toes, every muscle drawn tight, every line of me visible, every part of me offered.

She tied the silk off on a ring set low in the wall that I had also never seen and she stepped back and she looked at me and her face was the assessing face, the patient face, but her eyes were bright.

She undressed. Slowly. She pulled her dress over her head and let it fall. Nothing underneath. She stood in the candlelight and she was pale and perfect and cold and I pulled against the silk without meaning to and it held and my toes took my weight and my calves burned and the holding undid me, the way everything she did undid me, the restraint and the stretch of it, the way it made choice disappear and left only sensation.

She came to me. She put her hands flat on my chest, over my heart, and she stepped close and she stood on her toes and she kissed me, softly, on the mouth, and I felt her lips tremble against mine and I opened for her and she deepened the kiss and her tongue found mine and her hands slid up my chest to my raised arms and she traced the silk at my wrists with her fingertips, light, and she trailed them back down, slow, over my shoulders, over my collarbones, down the center of my chest, down my stomach, and the stretch of my body made every nerve closer to the surface and her fingers burned trails wherever they went and I shook under her hands and the shaking made the silk creak above me and my toes adjusted and my calves screamed and I did not care.

She pulled back. She stepped to the side and she walked around me, slow, one full circle, her hand trailing on my body as she went, across my chest, over my shoulder, down my outstretched arm, across my back, over the other shoulder, back to my chest, a continuous line of cold contact that left heat behind it. She stopped behind me. I felt her hands on my back, flat, and her mouth between my shoulder blades, and her lips dragged down my spine the way they had in the play room, vertebra by vertebra, but slower now, much slower, and the stretch of my body pulled the skin of my back taut and I could feel every ridge of her tongue against every vertebra and her hands came around my waist and her nails dragged along the crests of my hipbones and I arched away from her and the silk caught me and held me and my feet scrambled on the floor for purchase and found only the points of my toes and I heard myself moan and she paused with her mouth at the small of my back and I felt her smile against my skin.

She came back around. She stood in front of me and she lowered herself to her knees, slow, her hands sliding down my sides as she went, and the loss of her hands at hip level made me sway on my toes and the silk took the weight and I hung and she knelt in front of me and she looked up at me and her eyes were very bright and very soft and she put her mouth on my hip, on the bone, and she kissed it and then she bit it, gently, and the gold flickered, warm, and she moved her mouth across to the other hip and kissed and bit there too and the gold flickered again and my body pulled against the silk and my calves seized and she put her hands on my hips to hold me still.

She moved lower. Her mouth traced down from my hip, along the crease where my leg met my body, and I stopped breathing and her hands on my hips tightened and she dragged her lips along the line of my thigh, down to the marks on my inner thigh that the garden had left, the old bite marks, and she put her mouth on them and she kissed each one, gentle, and I felt them pulse under her lips, the gold stirring, and she moved to the other thigh and did the same, her mouth on every wound the garden had left, and the tenderness of it was more devastating than any cruelty she had ever shown me.

She moved back up. Slowly. Her mouth on my stomach, my ribs, the hollows between, her tongue tracing each ridge of bone that the wasting and the stretch had revealed. She stood, kissing her way up my body, her mouth on my chest, my collarbones, my throat, and she reached the marks on my neck and she paused and she breathed against them and I felt them sing and she did not bite. She dragged her lips across them, wet and cold, and I arched toward her and the silk held me and she pulled back and she looked at me and she shook her head, slowly, and the denial was gentle this time, almost apologetic, and she said, "Not yet."

She stepped back. She crossed to the bed and she sat on the edge and she looked at me hanging from the ceiling in the center of the room, naked, marked, stretched taut, trembling on my toes, and she tilted her head and she studied me and I could see her deciding something, weighing something, and her face was not the mask, not fully, there was something open in it, something she was allowing, and she sat there and she let me see her looking at me and she did not hide the wanting in her eyes.

She stood. She walked back to me and she knelt again and she put her mouth on me.

I stopped thinking.

She took me in her mouth and the cold of her was everywhere and her tongue moved, slow, deliberate, and her hands held my hips against the tension of the silk and I pulled against it and it held and I arched into her mouth and my feet left the floor entirely and I hung from my wrists and she pressed me back, firm, and she took her time. She brought me up slow, a long climb, her tongue circling, her lips sliding, and when I got close, when the edge was right there and my body clenched and my breath went ragged, she pulled her mouth away and she looked up at me and she waited. She let me come back. She watched the need roll through my face and subside and then she put her mouth on me again and she started again.

A second time. Slower. She brought me to the edge with a patience that was its own kind of torture and she stopped and she waited and I sobbed and my legs gave out and I hung from the silk and my body swung and she watched my face and her eyes were wet and she put her hands on my hips and she steadied me and she waited for me to find my toes again.

A third time. She used her hand now, her mouth on the marks of my inner thigh while her cold fingers stroked me, and the combination was unbearable and I was at the edge in seconds and she stopped and her hand lifted and she sat back on her heels and she watched me hang from the ceiling and shake.

A fourth time. Her mouth again. Deeper. I could feel the back of her throat, cold, and my hands fisted above me in the silk and my calves were cramping and my whole body was shaking, not just from the need but from the position, the sustained stretch, the hours feeling like minutes or minutes feeling like hours, and I was crying, openly, the tears running down my face, and I begged her. "Elena. Please."

She pulled her mouth away. She sat back. She looked up at me and her face was wrecked. Open. Unguarded. The wall was down. Whatever she had been protecting, the weeks of denial and distance and cruelty and the play room and the garden and all of it, it had been building to this, this moment, her face below mine without the mask, and her eyes were wet and her lips were swollen and her chest was heaving with breath she did not need.

She stood. She crossed to the wall and she untied the silk from the ring and she took up the slack, slow, lowering me, and my arms came down and my heels found the floor and the relief in my calves and my shoulders was so vast that I cried out and my legs buckled and she was there, her arms around me, catching me, and she unwound the silk from my wrists and my arms fell and they were dead, tingling, useless, and I collapsed against her and she held me up. She is small. She is smaller than me. And she held me up as though I weighed nothing, her arms around my waist, my head on her shoulder, and she walked me backward across the room, step by step, my feet dragging, and the backs of my knees found the mattress and she lowered me down onto the bed and she followed me down and she pressed me flat and she lay on top of me and her cold body covered mine and she kissed me and I could taste myself in her mouth, cold and strange, and she kissed me deep and slow and her hands found my wrists and she pressed them flat above my head onto the pillow and she held them there and I understood that the silk was gone but the restraint was not, she was the restraint now, her hands on my wrists, her body on my body, and I stayed where she put me.

She reached between us. She took me in her hand and she guided me and she lowered herself onto me in one long slow movement and we both stopped breathing. She was cold inside. Cold and slick and tight and the sensation was so overwhelming that my vision went white at the edges and my hands clenched in her grip above my head and she held them there and she did not move and I did not move and we lay there joined and still and breathing and her face was above mine and her eyes were open and wet.

She moved. A slow roll of her hips, experimental, and the friction was exquisite and annihilating and I arched up into her and she pressed me down with her body and she said, "Still. Let me."

I went still. I let her. She rolled her hips and she found her rhythm, slow at first, grinding, her body pressed flat against mine, her mouth on my neck, on the marks, and she moved on me and she took what she needed and the sounds she made were not the controlled low sounds of the play room, they were raw, they were lost, they were the sounds of a woman who had been starving herself for weeks and was finally, finally allowing herself to eat.

She rode me and her hands on my wrists tightened and she pressed her forehead to mine and her breath came in sharp bursts against my lips and her hips moved faster and I felt her building, felt the tension in her thighs, the trembling in her stomach, and she leaned down and she put her mouth on the marks on my neck and she breathed against them and I felt them sing, sing, sing, and she said, against my skin, her voice breaking, "Now."

She bit.

The white hurt came and the gold light came and she was around me and on me and in me and I broke. I broke completely. The release and the feeding hit at the same time and they were one thing, one vast annihilating wave that started at my throat where her mouth was and ended everywhere, in my hands and my feet and the back of my skull and the root of me, and I heard myself making sounds that were not words and did not need to be and my body arched up into her and up into her mouth and I spilled inside her and the gold took me and the hunger went quiet, went silent, went still, the way a room goes still when the right person finally walks into it. The marks sang. The peace came. The deep total peace that only her mouth on my neck could bring, the answer to the thing I had needed and could not name, and I sank into it and I let it take me and for the first time in weeks, in months, the world was quiet.

She pulled back. Her lips were red. Her eyes were bright. She did not pull away. She collapsed forward onto my chest and her cold hand rested over my heart and she did not speak and I did not speak and the silence between us was the loudest thing I had ever heard. I felt her body go slack against mine, felt the tension drain out of her, felt her weight settle, real and present and warm with my blood inside her. She lay on my chest and she breathed and she did not move and I lay beneath her and I felt her heartbeat, or the absence of it, the slow steady nothing pressed against my ribs, and I put my arms around her because they were free and she let me.

She let me hold her.

I slept. And for the first time since the stairs, I did not dream of the door.

I dreamed of her hand on my heart, and the slow steady nothing of her heartbeat against my ribs, and the marks on my neck singing, and the quiet.