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Pretend there was no love so sweet that you would have died for it, pretend that it does not belong to someone else now, pretend like your heart depends on it because it does. Pretend there is no wreck — you watched the train go by and felt the air brush your face and that was it. Another train passing. You do not need trains. You can fly. You are a superhero. And there is no kryptonite.
- DAPHNE GOTTLIEB
He finds her in the study.
Grace wishes she could stop her chest from heaving like the drowning man who’s just been pulled from the river and laid on the bank of it; but her breath escapes her no matter how fast she chases it. Her lungs never fill properly and her throat feels like it’s been stuffed with hot coals.
When Daniel meets her eyes all Grace finds in them is pity. Ugly, awful, pity. It makes her want to slap him across the face.
“I’m just came to get a drink,” he says. From this close Grace can smell all the alcohol he’s already soaked himself in.
She wonders what would happen if she lit a match.
God, she feels so stupid. Her hands are trembling and she doesn’t know how she’s not dead yet and Grace feels so, unbelievably stupid. Is this what she gets for those girlhood dreams of marriage? Of the white dress, the way the warm sun might look on a cloudless day, the sweet boy with a warm smile and soft eyes, who would hold you like you were the most precious thing in the world to him? Was this her punishment? Was that something that she deserved to be punished for?
Daniel pours himself a drink, honey brown liquid in a diamond cut glass, and his hand settles around it the way other men settle into their graves. Once he sits in one of the old, ornate chairs strewn about the study, body like a puppet with the strings cut, Grace watches him watch her.
(She’s met Daniel once before this.
Before this night turned from living dream to waking nightmare; white bouquets of flowers torn up and swallowed whole by the evils of the world. Before all the blood and the dark pits and the sharp edges.
It was a bar. She and Alex sat across from Daniel at a table, rings of moisture from the bottoms of beer glasses worn and pressed into the wood. In this moment, he’s the only member of Alex’s family Grace has ever met. And they’ve only just met. Grace has only just let him wrap his hand over hers and say Daniel and she has only just replied in kind with Grace and he didn’t return her smile, but he looked at Grace and sometimes he’d get this glint in his eye like he already knew her. He already knew everything about her. Under the table, Alex’s hand on her thigh, and all Grace can feel is laid bare and open for his brother. Grace squirmed in her seat.
Later, Grace will decide it was all for show. After Daniel started hitting on her, voice trying to drip honey but only dripping sour alcohol, turning everything into a joke. After Alex started rolling his eyes, playing with her fingers, laughing out of the corner of his mouth. After that Grace decided she was imagining it. That it wasn’t real. And if she hadn’t imagined it, she was simply just wrong. Or it wasn’t genuine.
Most importantly: she’ll decide it doesn’t matter.
Grace thinks, now, that she was probably wrong.)
“I have to call the others.”
He doesn’t. Grace watches him watch her. She watches him in return.
His legs are spread wide, a mimic of the chairs own legs that end in delicately carved feet and filigree. His tie lies forgotten around his neck, the hangman’s noose no one has ever tightened, and he balances the glass he holds on his own knee. He’s slouched, red-rimmed in his eyes and his mouth is wet and his beard and hair unkempt.
Not for the first time, Grace thinks about how handsome Daniel is.
He is everything Alex isn’t.
But she knows all the stories Alex has told her. Grace wonders, though, how much of these brothers seemingly existing at two opposite poles of themselves, is because of Daniel. She wonders how much of Alex has really just been Daniel all along. The product of a brother who just wanted things to be better.
She’s reached out and touched this family that isn’t hers, Grace realizes. And now look where it’s gotten her.
“Then,” Grace finally manages words, her voice coming from her chest and throat all rough around the edges. “Why don’t you?”
Daniel doesn’t say anything. He keeps looking at her. He lets out a careful exhale through his nose and takes a long sip from his glass. On the table beside him is the gun he walked in with. Grace’s gut twists into a single, hard knot. Her skin prickles.
He takes a second sip barely a second breath after the first one.
And then, Grace makes a decision.
When she approaches him it is careful, quiet and purposeful. Grace counts to three between every step. Left foot, one, two, three, right foot, one, two, three. Like a tightrope walk. Like the mutinied captain making his walk down the plank.
“Why don’t you?” Grace repeats. If this were another game, Grace thinks, like poker, she might be winning. Or, at least, she’d know all the cards Daniel was playing with.
She’s standing in front of him now, and he has to tilt his head up to meet her eyes. It feels nice: this modicum of control when control has felt so stripped away from her all night.
Grace slides into Daniel’s lap. Lifting the hem of her dress and placing her thighs on either side of his, knees pressed into the edges of the chair. Grace swears she’s about to slip, but then Daniel’s hand settles just above her knee, cold but clammy, and she’s anchored there. No going back now, Grace thinks, settling against him. Daniel’s legs are closer together now, the perfect perch for her, and the rest of her is almost flush against his chest.
He hasn’t said anything. Just watched her. Grace says, “do you want to kiss me,” and it’s not really a question but more of an encouragement, and still, he says nothing. His hand touches the small of her back. Grace is reminded of earlier, of taking wedding photos, when he settled his hand in the same spot. It had felt warmer, then, even if it set her on edge.
Daniel still hasn’t said anything when he pulls Grace towards him with that hand on her back and fits his mouth against hers.
It’s like lighting a fuse; Grace shifts against him, falling further into the chair, further into his lap, further together. The hand just above her knee slides higher and higher under the layers and layers of her dress. It’s on her thigh now, goosebumps blooming on her skin in the wake of the touch. Between her legs, Grace can feel Daniel’s hand on her inner thigh, and the fabric of his dress pants, and, at the center of them, that all too familiar ache.
Grace once had a foster family who read the Bible as if it were a history book. She remembers the story of Eve and Adam and the snake in the garden. She supposes, in this situation, she is Eve. Alex is Adam and Daniel, with his hand high up on her thigh under her dress, fingers against the soft flesh, pressing down, is the snake. But that doesn’t feel right. Maybe Daniel’s not a snake. Maybe they are all the snakes. Maybe there are no snakes. Maybe they are just a woman and a man but it’s easier to pretend there are monsters.
Daniel’s mouth moves against Grace’s, warm and doused in alcohol. She doesn’t know where he put the glass he was nursing. She doesn’t remember seeing him set it down. Underneath Grace’s wedding dress (and she tries not to think about that too much: her husband’s brothers hand under her wedding dress, his wet, red mouth on her red, wet mouth. Grace wet between her legs for him at just the feeling of him underneath her), Daniel’s hand presses shapes into the softness and suppleness of her thigh. Brings it up higher until, if he reached out far enough, his fingers would brush the lace of Grace’s panties. He’d probably be able to feel how wet she is. Grace’s hands stopped trembling the moment she made her decision, but now her legs tremble through the strain of holding herself up.
If she tried to tell herself she didn’t want him she’d be lying. Daniel has always offered up something harder than his brother could ever. Even his features — the dark hair and dark brow, dark eyes, sharp jaw, the long column of his throat that leads into sharp collarbones. Grace has met many men over the years; she knows Daniel is the type of man who will hurt you if you let him.
She sees herself in Daniel. The desperateness, the razor edges, the smile that doesn’t always reach the eyes. He is broken apart. But so is she.
Grace pulls away from Daniel’s mouth and he chases her. His eyes are closed and his mouth is wide open and his bottom lip drags across her chin instead of managing to actually kiss her, his attempt to keep the two of them from breaking apart.
His hand slips further up her thigh so he’s cupping Grace’s hip bone now, fingers digging in and bunching up the fabric of her underwear. The hand at the small of her back moves. It blazes a path of fire around front to her stomach and up her chest. Grace can hear the way the skin on his palm catches against the lace of her dress.
Daniel’s hand cups her breast. He must feel that she’s not wearing a bra because he runs the pad of his thumb over Grace’s nipple through the material. She can’t keep the gasp locked away inside of her.
“I can’t take this off,” she tells him. She means the dress.
“I know,” he replies. His face is dark and shadowed and Grace thinks maybe this is it. She said the wrong thing. Reminded him of the wedding dress. The bright white an upheld, archaic symbol of purity. Maybe this is where the spell breaks and Daniel snaps out of it, and he’ll grip her hard and hold her down and tell his family he’s found her and then Grace will die.
In a moment of panic, she grips Daniel through his pants. He’s hard against her hand.
Their eyes meet. For a long moment — a moment that feels too long for the night Grace is having, a moment that feels long enough to be dangerous — neither of them speaks. Neither of them moves. The old house, seemingly a creature of it’s own, a monster who has swallowed them all whole, feels like it breathes in and out around them.
“Do you,” Grace starts. She decides she’ll rephrase it. Daniel’s fingers fit against the spaces between her ribs. “I want you,” she says this time, instead. “I want you to fuck me.”
She kisses him again. There’s more teeth this time. Grace bites at Daniel’s bottom lip and digs her fingers and nails into his shoulders and she has half a mind to think Daniel will do the same. But he doesn’t. His mouth stays pliant and open and soft. His grip is grounding but not harsh. Grace isn’t sure if that’s by accident or on purpose. She’s not going to ask.
Before she even registers Daniel’s hand is moving, it is at the very apex of her. She blinks and suddenly his heel is pressing between her legs. “Are you sure?” He asks her.
Grace chokes around her own breath. Her whole goes pin-straight for half a second, before she is shamefully trying to ground herself down against Daniel’s hand.
She barely registers the question. When she does she thinks, what a stupid question and that Daniel must be joking. But then his gaze tells her different; his hand is still and so are his eyes as he takes in her face. Her mouth and cheeks painted with uneven strokes of red.
What a stupid question, Grace thinks again. Then, she says, “yes.”
Daniel pushes the fabric of her underwear to the side and gets two fingers inside of Grace as soon as the word escapes her. Daniel moves in a way that tells Grace that this part — when all the teasing is over and the faux-coyness is stripped away — this part Daniel is good at. The straightforward part.
Grace is surprised by how quickly they have gotten here. How quickly Daniel responded. How quickly her own body responded in turn.
Maybe she should dwell on that longer. Think about what it means. Think about it in the context of the three of them: her and Daniel, but also Alex. She’s still wearing her wedding dress. She should spend longer on that.
But then Daniel’s thumb starts massaging her clit, fumbling, slippery pressure but pressure all the same, and Grace couldn’t think of much even if she tried. There’s so much fabric it’s hard to really do this properly but Daniel is doing his best. It’s enough to have Grace panting above him, chest heaving the way it was when he first found her in this room. Between her legs Grace still aches and Daniel keeps shifting, as best he can, to relieve some sort of pressure on his cock.
Outside of this room, Daniel’s family are still armed with crossbows and antique guns and seemingly medieval torture devices. They are still hunting her. Somewhere in this house, in the low yellow light and what feels like endless maze of halls, Alex must be looking for her. Somewhere, Daniel’s wife wants to spill Grace’s blood.
Grace wonders the last time Daniel might have done this to her. Coaxed his wife open with his fingers. Panted wet breaths into the curve of her neck. Do they do this often? There’s no love lost between them, as far as Grace can tell, but you don’t have to love someone to fuck them. Maybe they used to do this but not much anymore. What was it like the first time? Do Daniel’s hand feel as big as they do against Charity’s waist as they do against Grace’s? Does he take this kind of time with her? Do they kiss? Without the obligation, does Daniel touch her at all?
Grace groans when she feels the sudden absence of Daniel’s fingers. Her thighs are slick. Daniel’s hand, she feels it for a brief moment brush her inner thigh, is sticky too. He pushes his other hand under the sea of fabric that is Grace’s dress and he’s sliding a finger from each hand under the waistband of her underwear and pulling down, just a little, so they’re caught around Grace’s thighs.
“Say it again,” Daniel says. His hands are still under her dress. Grace looks down at him. Daniel looks back up at her. Somewhere in the house — Grace can’t tell how far or how close — there is a crash like someone has dropped something, or broken a window. The sound doesn’t startle Grace nearly as much as it should.
“What?”
“What you said earlier,” Daniel replies. As if Grace didn’t know what he meant. “Say it again,” he repeats, then adds, “say you want me to fuck you again.”
His voice is low but it is not a whisper. It sounds dragged over sandpaper. It sounds guttural, like Daniel’s swallowed a fish hook and it’s pulling these animalistic sounds from somewhere deep in his chest. Grace isn’t sure she could deny him even if she wanted to.
“Daniel,” Grace slides as close as she can. His hands on her hips hold her steady as she deliberately does her best to grind herself against his abdomen, as much as she can through this cage of fabric. She grips his face in both of her hands and does it a second time. “I want you to fuck me.”
That’s all it takes to have Daniel fumbling with his belt buckle, his button and fly. That’s all it takes for him to wrestle his dick out of his pants and into his hand. He’s using the same hand that he had inside of Grace barely a moment ago. Daniel strokes himself twice, top to bottom, and it mixes wetness.
It takes a minute for them to situate themselves. What with the all haphazardly pushed aside clothes, all the extra fabric, the lack of room on the chair. But they get there. The feeling of Daniel’s cock sliding slow into her convinces Grace it was worth her time.
He’s longer than Alex, but Alex is thicker. Daniel’s hips are largely trapped to the chair that holds the two of them, so Grace is left to do most of the work. Her muscles have felt strained since she started running; her bones ache and her lungs protest but still, somehow, she finds it easy to rock against the stretch of Daniel’s cock inside of her. She wishes she could lift herself off of him properly — get himself almost slipping out of her and then bringing him back — but she lacks the room on the chair or grip of anything to really manage. And so they’ll have to settle for this.
It’s still good. It still pulls apart something deep inside of Grace like cotton candy, until she hardly feels like a presence in her own skin. It’s almost as if she can see herself from above: watch the way her throat stretches out when she throws her head back, groaning as Daniel touches something deep inside of her. Watch Daniel use two hands on her hips to guide her rhythm, move his own hips as much as he can to meet Grace somewhat, watch him watching her lose herself in him.
Daniel’s almost solemn the whole time. A look of quiet determination, of guilt, maybe, bubbling below his outward expressions of pleasure. Below things like the bit lip, or the blown pupils, or the small, muted moans.
When Grace comes it’s with Daniel’s name on her tongue and his mouth on her neck. She says, “Daniel, Daniel, Daniel,” like a prayer, or maybe a plea. Later, she’ll think: she begged him. It wouldn’t be the last time she’d do it either. Daniel’s face gets all screwed when his orgasm follows hers. He comes inside of her. Grace thinks if she dies tonight, who cares? And if, somehow, she lives until morning, buying a morning after pill will be the least of her problems. Marching up to the pharmacy and mumbling her request to the person behind the counter might make her feel normal again.
The room goes quiet and still after they’ve both finished. Daniel pulls out of her, even pulls her underwear back over her ass. They’re ruined, at this point. Grace is a mess between her legs.
Daniel’s forehead rests against just below the jut of Grace’s collarbone. She still has her arms wrapped around his shoulders. The lace of her dress is starting to itch. She wishes she could take it off; peel it the way the skin of an apple peels off with the press of a knife. But she can’t. Not here, not now.
“Daniel,” Grace whispers. Neither of them move. “Daniel, you - you can help me.” Daniel sighs, and Grace can feel it fan out against the skin of her chest through fabric. “Please.” She begs.
She begs him. Again.
She’s off his lap in an instant: half gently pushed, half pulling away of her own volition. It takes her a moment to be steady on her feet. As she moves backwards, the light from under the door catches on the metal of the gun on the table. Grace thinks she hears what might be someone coming down the hall.
“This doesn't end well for you,” Daniel replies. “I just don't wanna be the one to serve you up.”
“Daniel, I'm begging you.”
“I'm really sorry about all this.” God, it almost sounds like he means it. “I’ll give you a ten second head start.”
Grace runs.