Regret is the Punishment novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: No Promises

He didn't speak on the drive.

His truck smelled of smoke and coffee, and his knuckles were white on the wheel.

I watched the lights of Port Calder go by and said nothing either.

I knew where we were going before he turned into the lot.

It was a brick building two blocks from the hospital, with a laundromat on the ground floor.

He had rented a furnished one-bedroom there the day after the fire, so he could run to Darla in four minutes.

He unlocked the door and held it open without looking at me.

Inside there was a couch, a card table and a single lamp.

A drawing was taped to the refrigerator, a stick figure with a hose and a very large red truck.

Darla had made it in the spring.

I stood in the middle of the floor with my wrist still aching.

He shut the door and locked it, and the click went through my whole body.

"Show me," he said.

I held out my arm.

He took it in both hands and turned it under the lamp.

There were four red marks on it, in the shape of Cyril's fingers.

Jerome bent his head and put his mouth on each one in turn.

It wasn't gentle, and it wasn't soft.

His breath was hot against my skin, and my knees went weak.

"This changes nothing," he said against my wrist.

"I know."

"I want you to hear me. Nothing."

"Then stop talking and do it."

He lifted his head.

His eyes were dark and wrecked and hungry, and I would have done anything he told me.

"Don't tell me what to do," he said.

"Then take it. Take whatever you want. I don't care."

He had me against the wall before I finished the sentence.

My shoulder blades hit plaster, and his mouth came down on mine, rough and hot and tasting of burnt coffee.

I dragged my hands up under his shirt, over the hard heat of his back.

My fingers found the old scar along his ribs that I had traced a hundred times.

He ripped my cardigan open.

Buttons skittered across the floor.

He pushed my sweater up with the heel of his hand, and bit my collarbone, and I made a sound that was almost his name.

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