Tears of Tess (Monsters in the Dark #1)(94)

I tried to recapture Q’s mansion on my tatty sketchpad, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get it right.

I reconnected with Stacey, and friends from uni, and started looking for work in the property industry. I coasted through life in a semi-aware state. Smiling, laughing even, but everything was muted—covered by a filmy screen, never letting me see bright colours, or smell rich scents, or enjoy exquisite pleasure.

Thirty-six days after Q abandoned me, two things happened that rocked my bland world.

Brax subtly changed. I noticed he spent a lot of time putting out the garbage. I didn’t care, and only curiosity made me follow one night.

Sneaking outside our apartment block, I found him talking to our neighbour across the hall. She had her face in Blizzard’s fur and a look of adoration in her eyes for Brax.

My fingers convulsed as my heart raced faster—the first spike of emotion in a month.

I never stopped to consider the life Brax led while I played kinky slave with Q. He cared for her—the tentative sweetness he’d shown me when we first met—glowed in his eyes.

Oh, my God, did he resent me for coming back into his life when he thought I was dead?

I was so selfish to never consider it. After the first morning, we pretended as though nothing happened. We never discussed it, and I never complained when we didn’t have sex again. I didn’t want to admit it, but living with Brax, accepting his kisses and hand-holding, felt like I cheated on Q, which was idiotic and frustrating as hell. But my body hated me for betraying my master. Subsidizing real Q for dream Q, I grew wet while I slept, and trembled for release.

I lingered like a voyeur as Brax helped the girl stand, holding her for a moment longer than necessary. The look of implicit excitement in her eyes made me yearn. Yearn for another.

I waited for green jealousy. I waited for rage. I waited for anything…something to show I cared.

Nothing.

Brax laughed at something she said, ruffling Blizzard’s head. A smile slowly bloomed on my lips.

Brax liked another. He no longer used me as his crutch, and I no longer needed him as mine. Realization thundered with a hundred drums and lightning bolts.

Happiness. Freedom.

Brax didn’t need me.

I’m free!

Emotions frothed and stirred. The leash tying me to Brax—the one woven and threaded with obligation and friendship—snipped, leaving me unbelonging.

For the first time in my life, I was mine. Completely alone. No one had a right to me. No one owned or claimed me. Blazing joy blew away my mediocrity, my need for people to care.

I cared for me. Je suis à moi. I am mine. The French affirmation was ridiculously perfect.

I whispered it, tingling with possibility. “Je suis à moi.”



*



The next night, I said goodbye to Brax.

While he went to put the rubbish out and flirt with the neighbour, I pulled an old backpack from under the bed and packed. Turning on the radio, I bobbed to pop music, welcoming a new beginning.

Clothes I didn’t like, accessories I no longer cared for, I stuffed in the bottom. For the first time in my life, I was going out on my own. No back-up plan, no safety net. No one to rely on but me.

I didn’t have a destination in mind. But I knew I wanted to make good on my promise. The promise I gave to the woman who tattooed me in Mexico. I told her Karma would bite her ass. I wanted to be that Karma. I wanted to hunt and hurt every person involved, and stand up for all the women who didn’t have a happy ending like me.

I was done being weak and passive. I’m done being Tessie.

Looking at my newly plastic-wrapped wrist, I smiled. Over the past month, I’d had the middle of the barcode lazered off. I embraced the pain; after all, Q taught me pain was pleasure.

He roared into my head.

“Only think of me and what I’m doing. There is intimacy in pain, esclave. Let me make your pain my pleasure.”

I shook the memory away, ignoring the clenching between my legs. God, I missed him. Missed his egotistical coolness, his super-hot violence.

But I thanked him, too. Without his cruelty, I would never have found the core of iron deep inside.

Smiling, I traced the small bird in flight trapped between the two ends of the barcode. Beneath the sparrow were the numbers: 58.

It was morbid. Wrong on so many levels to brand myself as slave fifty-eight, but Q was the highlight of my life. The poignant centrepiece who would never come again.

When I was old, married, bored, and drained, I wanted something to remember him by. The tattoo of bird and number would always hold those memories. A lock box of sadistic pleasure available to relive in the privacy of my mind, whenever I needed a shot of fire.

Sighing, I grabbed the last thing in my wardrobe.

The grey dress I’d left Q’s home in. A song switched on the radio.




Your touch consumes me, frightens me, beguiles me

you want to capture me

I want to be your victim

you want to ruin me

I want to be your broken

you show me your darkness

and I’ll give you my light




The lyrics slapped me around the head, and I stared at the dress for ages. My heart didn’t know if it wanted to beat or die. In a horrible moment of disgrace, I sniffed the material. Soft lingers of citrus and sandalwood gripped my stomach with love and hate. Two equal feelings, so different, yet not different at all. They were both one thing: passion.