53 - The First Piece

He knew. 

She would've played the whole night out as though nothing unusual had happened, but now Delaney didn't have to.  

He knew.

The look in his eyes told her as plainly as if he’d spoken the words.  Without being told, Jon understood the fear, confusion and grief that was trying its best to swallow her whole, just like he’d understood everything else about her. 

It was only a matter of convincing him to take that knowledge and use it for her salvation.

“Se chreiázomai.  Me kánei na xecháso.”

The loose hand in her hair clutched as he darkly commanded, “English.” 

“I need you,” she translated, the pleading breath stripping away her last protective layer.  “Make me forget.”

For the first time in her adult life, Delaney lay fully exposed to another person.  The door on her closet of skeletons was nothing but splinters, revealing the aching mess that lived inside, and all she could do was pray to God that Jon was as trustworthy as she believed.

This hidden pocket of anguish was her darkest, dirtiest secret.  It's very existence was a source of humiliation, but she didn’t know how to exorcise the disfigured demon of despair without sacrificing herself in the process.

Losing herself was not an option.  She'd fought too long and hard to keep living when it would've been easier to curl up and die.  This demon had been long-trained to stay under lock and key, but now there was a glimpse of freedom, it wasn't going to quietly succumb this time.  Not without help.    

“You don’t need to forget, Mou.  You need to fucking deal with it.”  Marbled blue eyes grew heavy  with the same distress that Delaney suffered from the unexpected encounter with his daughter. 

The girl had been perfectly lovely, but suddenness of her appearance had been painfully startling, and Delaney didn't have time to brace herself.  There wasn't a spare second to check the lock on the closet, and the ghost of Violet slipped out, preventing Delaney from seeing or hearing anything else in that hallway.  

She’d barely been able to be civil and excuse herself before the ghostly presence became unbearable. 

Back at the guesthouse, it took three shots of whiskey and a bath before she could greet a returning Petra and Pearl with some semblance of normalcy.  Fortunately for her, the two of them were both still so enamored with the Hampton party scene, they yammered non-stop from the time they arrived.

Neither one noticed anything unusual about Delaney.  It had only taken Jon a glance to notice.

“I know that I need to deal with it,” she choked, throat aching from the acid that had been churning high into her esophagus since meeting Stephanie.  “But I can’t right now.  You did this to me.  You brought me here.  You have to fix it.”

Please be the man I think you are.  Please help me.  

After a nearly unbearable silence, hard fingers knotted to sharply yank her head all the way to the pillow.  His flattened mouth barely moved when muttering, “I’ll fuck your pain away, as long as you promise me one thing.”

“What?”  Hope gave her the first breath of relief, and Delaney purposefully tilted her head enough to cause an extra tug at her scalp.  The resulting physical pain was her second.

“Tell me this is just an escape and not a fucked-up way of punishing yourself.”

Her psyche wasn’t that badly impaired – she didn’t think.  The darker side of sex was only a jolting reminder that she was still alive, and that living could bring pleasure in the wake of pain.  It wasn’t some sadistic disciplinary tactic.

“This is an escape.”

“Not convincing enough.”

“It is,” she insisted, stroking a coercing hand over the taut muscles of his neck.  He was on the verge of agreeing.  “I don’t accept blame for what happened.”

Much.

That quickly, his hand vanished from her hair and purposeful footsteps strode to the door, where he flipped the lock.  Jon’s jacket hit the chair, followed by his t-shirt as he ground out, “Get naked.”

Shimmying out of her panties, she watched the man whose jaw was set in an angry line.  Why was he so upset?  She wasn’t asking him to do anything out of the ordinary for them.  Their sex life solely consisted of this, yet he kicked away his shoes and jerked open his belt without looking at her. 

Delaney lifted the cotton nightgown over her head but then held it close.  His behavior was making it hard to bare her body fully as she’d bared her weakness.  The longer he refused to meet her eyes, the more she wondered if she’d made a mistake.  Had she put too much faith in him just because she yearned for someone who understood?

“Jon?”

“Spread your legs and be quiet.  Don’t make a fucking sound,” came the terse commands as denim pooled at his feet.  He kicked it away and reached for the discarded t-shirt, throwing it at her.  “Use this if you have to, but I don’t wanna hear you.  Petra and Pearl aren’t getting a free porn soundtrack.” 

Stung by his ruthlessness, she let the lump of black cotton lay untouched on the bed.  This wasn’t the kind of hurt she had in mind.  Until now, she hadn't believed he was capable of this kind of hurt and the discovery was too much to accept tonight.  

“If you’re going to be a jerk, then forget it.  Just go.”

On the verge of climbing back into bed, he froze with the exception of one eyebrow that arced high.  “Excuse me?”

“Get out.”  Her hands shook when throwing the shirt back at him.  She’d had years of practice at channeling her pain into something else.  Anger wasn’t usually at the top of the list, but it would do in a pinch.   “My sexual preferences don’t entitle you to treat me like I’m somewhere below whale poop on the evolutionary scale.  I don’t get off on being demeaned that way.  Ái gamísou!”

Jon knew this round of Greek was nothing like the last.  He doubted that the angrily spit words were sweet or begging, but he wasn’t in the mood to ask for a confirming translation. 

She was fucking killing him.  All he wanted to do was take her in his arms and kiss away the heartache, but she stubbornly demanded the opposite and ensured that she got it by pointing the finger of blame at him.  He didn't mind taking the blame but hated that it turned what they did from pleasure into an unwelcome chore. 

Sharply kicking aside the shirt that had landed on his foot, Jon planted one fist on the mattress and bent low to anchor her chin between his thumb and forefinger. 

“Listen to me, Madame Whale Shit.  I got nothing but respect for you, but I’m frustrated as fuck that this is your coping mechanism.  You’re forcing me to be an enabler and it pisses me off!”

“Mi gínese malákas!  I’m not forcing you to do a mother trucking thing,” was her hot denial when smacking him away and jumping out the other side of the bed to jerk the nightgown back over her head.  “How many times do I have to tell you to get out?”

“Keep going.  I’ll let you know when you get there.”  A growl bigger than her spilled forth when Jon rounded the foot board to an elbow and drag her close, but he was unfazed.  She couldn’t be any more incensed than he was, and it was barely leashed when demanding, “Look at me.”

“Kiss my aspirations.”

“Goddammit, look at me!”

It took a firm shake of her arm to get Delaney’s impudent little face tilted upward, and when it was, her Greek temper was flaring.  Irises glowed lightning white, clashing violently with his and without a trace of her previous vulnerability. 

“I’m looking.  Now will you get out?”

God, he wanted to kiss the fearless sass from her mouth.  To throw her down on that damn bed and take her the way she’d begged him to.  If it was up to his libido, that’s exactly what he’d do, but it wasn’t the cure-all Delaney tried to use it as. 

Tonight, it wasn’t what she really even craved.  It definitely wasn’t what she needed.  

Tonight, like the night he found out about her daughters, she was completely transparent to him.  That meant Jon had no trouble identifying her real desire, and it was time to step up and prove he was the man who could fulfill it.

He endured the white-hot bolts of painful fury she pelted at him and adamantly held his stance.  “No.  Ask me what I see.”

“Don’t play stupid games,” she grumbled, averting a face awash with sheer rebellion. 

Rebellion didn't mean dick to a determined Jon.  He was bigger than her, and by God, she would get what she fucking needed if they had to destroy this room in the process.

Wedging a determined hand against the bend of the little spitfire’s neck, he grasped both sides of her jaw. Unsurprisingly, she fought against the pressure that forced her gaze to his, but she fought from stubbornness and not the fear that would make him stop.   

“Ask me… what I fucking see, Delaney.”

Oh, she was pissed.  On a scale from one to ten, she was a solid fifteen, and the fury looked better on her than anything Sephora had to offer.  Wrath was her color.   

“What do you see, Jon?”

The question was spit so derisively that he wore the spray from it, but he didn't give a fuck.  She’d given him the opening he wanted.

"I see your soul."  

White lightning lost its flash under a sheen of moisture.  The subtle film of wetness both flooded color back into her eyes and brought Jon his first sense of peace since arriving home tonight, for which he was grateful.  That peace slowed his pulse, reined his temper and gentled his voice to deliver the rest of his words with the proper tenderness.

“Your soul, Mou.  I see it plain as day, and it’s the most beautiful thing I ever saw.”

Delaney hadn’t heard those specific words for many, many years.  The emotional poignancy hit her hard at first, but she was certain Petra had included them in her soulmate story on the porch last night.  Jon couldn’t have come up with that on his own, and now the son of a nutcracker was using her Papa’s heartfelt litany as a way to mock her. 

Angrily blinking away the tears of insult and sentimentality, she snapped “You think that’s funny?”

“You see me laughing?”  He placed renewed pressure against her jaw, ensuring that she saw nothing but blue eyes and black pupils when he softly demanded, “Do you?”

Sharply flicking her focus from one moiré iris to the other, she found no trace of laughter, humor, lightness or mirth.  There were only mottled blue specks of sincerity, and she zeroed in on the melding of darkness and light in his left eye.

He was serious.  So, so serious. 

“What are you saying?” There was scarcely enough air inside her to pose the question, but if it meant using her last breath, so be it.  She would die asking, even if the answer killed her.    

“You know what I’m saying, Mou.”  He relaxed his hold so that a gentle thumb could stroke the line of her jaw.  “I see you.  I know you.  That’s why you’re gonna listen when I tell you to stop using brutal fucking as a barrier to separate yourself from the heartbreak.  It’s time to fill in the broken pieces, baby.”

If there was an appropriate response to be made, Delaney didn’t know what it was.  If she did know, she wouldn’t be able to push it through a throat swollen with emotion.  All she could do was let instinct guide her and ease a palm to his nape, pulling him down until their mouths settled together with a sweetness she’d never tasted before. 

Hands that had been used to exert authority now cradled her in a grip that wouldn’t bruise a flower.  Fingers that had knotted her hair in domination now caressed with benevolence.  The man that had taken her more brutally and relentlessly than any before him now savored her like his cherished wine. 

Sipping.  Sampling.  Savoring.

“We’re not fucking like animals this time,” succulent lips whispered against hers as exploratory hands skated under her gown.  “I’m gonna own you in a new way.”

“How?”  The hushed query seemed loud in the cocoon of serenity that was knitting them into its essence, but she couldn’t withhold it. 

“Like no one else ever has.”

The simple explanation clarified nothing but was enough for Delaney as he slowly backed her toward the bed.  Downiness enveloped them as he laid them down, his tender mouth fused to hers – making love to it as his fingerprints seared into her skin with nothing more than a glissade of friction. 

There was no pain that night. 

There were no screams of ecstasy.

There was only the inaudible coupling of two souls in which Jon claimed hers and Delaney saw the true beauty of his.  Together, they put the first shattered piece back into her broken heart so that the healing could begin.