Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 114247 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114247 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
I tried to lift my head, but I couldn’t find the strength. And I was cold. I was so cold. My eyes began to close, but I didn’t want to sleep. I thought of him in my sleep. It hurt when I slept. I wanted to stay here with Maddie. I needed to stay awake.
“Flame?” Maddie’s voice forced my eyes to open. “You need to drink. You are dehydrated. Severely dehydrated.” I watched her as she got to her feet. My body twitched, bracing to stand when I thought she was leaving, but she just walked to the kitchen and filled up a glass with water.
Maddie brought it over to me and sat down. “Can you lift your head?”
I forced my head to lift. Carefully, Maddie brought the glass to my lips. And I stared at her the whole time. I drank the entire glass and Maddie placed it beside her.
“You should sleep,” she said soothingly, but my body twitched. Maddie jumped at my sudden movement, her eyes widening. “What is wrong?”
“I don’t want you to leave.”
Maddie took a deep breath, and she blushed again.
“Why do you blush at things I say?” I asked, as her cheeks turned pink. I had to fight to breathe at the sight. It made my heart beat harder.
Maddie dipped her head. “Because I like what you say. It makes me feel… I do not know… special, when I am with you? It…” She held her hand over her chest, over her heart. “I feel it right here.”
“You are special to me,” I answered honestly.
Maddie glanced away, then when she stared down at me again, she was smiling. I liked it when she smiled. She didn’t smile much at all.
“I will stay, Flame. While you sleep, I shall stay.” She stood and walked to my bed. It had been moved into the middle of the bedroom. I watched her pull off the linen, linen covered in blood, and leave it by the door. She looked around, then asked, “Where do you keep the linen for the bed? I will dress the bed so you can sleep on clean sheets.”
“I sleep here,” I said. Maddie cautiously walked forward. Her forehead was pulled down again.
“You sleep on this floor?” she asked quietly. “Over this hatch?” Her voice had lost strength.
“Yeah.”
“Every night?”
“Yeah,” I answered again.
“Without linen or bedding? Just you on this floor?”
“Yeah.”
Her face straightened and turning, she said, “Okay.”
Maddie moved to the only chair in the room and pulled the old blanket off the top. She walked back to me and held it out. “May I cover you with this? Your skin is shivering because you are exhausted. You need to be warm.”
“I’m always cold when I sleep,” I told her. Maddie’s hand tightened into fists on the blanket. “I’ve always slept in the cold.”
“There is no need.” Her words confused me. I tried to find an answer for why I should be cold, but I couldn’t. I’d always been cold in my room as a kid, and then in the cellar. But I couldn’t think why I had to be cold right now.
Maddie moved to stand above me, and said, “Use this blanket, for me? Please…”
I nodded my head, and braced for the material on my body. Maddie laid it over me, but she didn’t touch me.
The blanket felt strange on my skin. Another new feeling burst into my stomach. Maddie was the first person ever to want me to be warm. The first person to ever care since my mama.
I tracked Maddie as she stood still, her back turned to me. Her fingers were tense, but then she turned and looked down upon me. The expression on her face was new. I thought I knew her every look but, in this one, her lips were tense and her shoulders were pulled back. Then she lay on the floor in front of me again, her hand landing just an inch from mine.
Her cheek pressed flat to the wood. “Sleep, Flame. I will not leave you. I will stay right here until you are awake.”
My eyes began to close, darkness pulling me under. But the last thing I saw was Maddie’s green eyes, still staring at me. And even when the dark closed in, the darkness that I hated, her eyes shone bright. They chased away the pain.
Chapter Twelve
Maddie
He slept soundly.
He barely moved. The only movement was of his chest rising and falling with deep and peaceful long breaths. This lulling sound helped me relax, but each time my eyes drifted to a close, all I could see was Flame rocking against the wall, hands on head as he hummed.
I was convinced that he was not even aware he was humming. It seemed to me that he was trying to block something out of his mind. I sat frozen in fear at what it could be, when his eyes lifted to look at me. Yet they did not see me. He focused on something behind me. Something that caused his face to turn ashen, his eyes to bleed out life.
I squeezed my eyes shut when I remembered him staggering over to this hatch in the floor, and how he fought to remove his leather pants and… Lord… to touch himself. Roughly, painfully, and at the same time slicing his blade across his flesh eleven times. His entire body was covered with tattoos. Every part of him pierced. Every so often my eyes would catch sight of a strange scar, boasting two raised lumps. I had no idea how one could acquire such injuries.
And he found release on the floor, his back hunched forward. But not like he was in a pleasurable rapture, rather he was so pained by the manner of his release that it caused his body to expel his seed.
Then there was the vomit.
I remembered the vomit. I remembered it well. Because after Moses would take me as a child. When he would tie me down, rip through my womanhood and take me to rid my body of evil, I would vomit. It was part of the course. My shame, expelling the shame the act had caused.