A shocking revelation

Violet

Ethan grabs the knife by the blade and the fear he’ll cut me with it propels me to jerk my hand back, the knife slicing his palm open. An impulsive gasp burst from my lips. 

He doesn’t let go of the blade. He’s tightened his grip around the tip where he’s held on to when I pulled the knife. 

My eyes rivet on the gory sight of blood cascading down his hand. If he’s in pain, he doesn’t show. Not even for the slightest.

I let out a shaky breath, and as he attempts to pull the knife, not caring about his wounded palm, I willingly splay my hand to let him have the knife. As soon as I do, he grabs my neck with his unscathed hand and leans closer. His grasp is surprisingly soft.

He skims the flat of the blade down my cheek with his bloodied hand, painting my face with his blood.

He edges the knife to my chin, craning my neck upward so that our eyes meet. The fear he’ll do something untoward to me traps my breath in my lungs and my muscles tense.

“Do you have any idea what’s going through my head right now?”

He begins tracing the point of the knife down the column of my neck. I swallow the lump in my throat, my eyes fearfully following the slow, ominous movement of the knife.

“But in retrospect, I’ll pardon you just this once.” With every word, the knife slowly descends my torso until it gets to my breast and he painstakingly circles the knife’s point on my areola repeatedly.

My body goes into hyper-drive as an overwhelming sense of discomfort ripples through me, but I’m too afraid to react or even move a muscle.

“Pick up the knife again and I’ll make sure you drive it through my heart. If you can’t, I swear I’ll fuck you with it. What a juicy fuck that will be! You’ll enjoy it, won’t you?

His threatening utterance doesn’t strike me as a question until he yells, “Huh?” 

I shudder, briskly shaking my head. “No.”

“Of course you won’t, so you better be a good whore.”

He steps back. The knife clatters on the floor as he flings the knife aside. That’s when my sanity returns and I can breathe fine again. It doesn’t take long before my conscience overcomes me. I had just attempted murder on him.

“I’m sorry.”

He shoots me a frosty gaze. “No, you’re not. You weren’t sorry for messing with my emotions — how can you be sorry for something as minor as cutting my palm?”

“It was a long time ago, Ethan. We were kids. I couldn’t apologize because—”

“You adults blame the reckless lives you led when you were kids on childhood, which I find repulsive. Let me tell you about the kid I was. I was a kid with a clear sense of morality. A kid who knows what he wants, and from the moment he sets his eyes on it, it becomes his until God knows when he gets over it. If he ever will.”

What have I gotten myself into? Ethan isn’t just crazy, but he's possessive altogether. Why does it have to be me?

“Come here.” He grabs my hair with his unwounded hand, eliciting a pain-driven moan from me.

As he moves, dragging me behind him, the pain and pressure in my head wrench unsteady whimpers from me. He doesn’t release me until we get to the bathroom.

He fetches a first-aid box from the cabinet and forces the handle into my hand before going to sit on the bathtub ledge. “I won’t bleed out.”

If only he knew how eager I am to stanch his blood and clear the sickening tang of it in the air. Above all, I want him to feel better.

I place the box on the marble counter of the floating vanity and unlatch it, retrieving the necessary items I need for the treatment.

 I take his bloodied hand and splay it. The gory sight of his deep wound sends a shiver down my spine, and bile stings my throat when nausea kicks in. Regret settles within me. I regret reaching for the knife, even if it was only to scare him off.

And is this what he calls minor?

I upend a bottle of saline solution to wash the surface of the wound, having used my thumb to apply pressure on it. It only comes to my notice that he’s been staring at me when I detach from my feelings and look up at his face.

His gaze is, if I may say, busy. Too many emotions in those chartreuse eyes, which makes it difficult for me to read him. All the same, his gaze is so intense my knees go rickety. I can barely breathe.

With care, I roll a gauze around his wound. Just as I’m about to snip off the excess gauze with a trauma shear, I hear him say, “You’ve done it in the shower before, haven’t you?”

I don’t say a word. I rather take it in stride and focus on what I’m doing, but that’s if he lets me finish.

He springs to his feet and swiftly curls a hand around my throat, driving a grunt from me. Roughly, he pushes me backward to the shower glass enclosure by my neck and opens it. Only when my back collides with the marble wall does his grip go flabby.

He runs the shower, and the second the cold water lashes down on my skin, I gasp with a shiver.

A thick silence settles over us as we look into each other's eyes, a medley of carnality and spite dancing in his eyes.

“Remember that day by Lime Lake when your dress got soaked and your nipples started poking out from under your white T-shirt?” He inches closer, our lips only a hairbreadth apart as he says, his silky voice taking on an erotic edge, “I thought of a lot of things to do to you when we grow up. Crazy, isn’t it?”

He chuckles throatily.

“Now that we’re adults, trapped in the same space. Oh, Vio, you can never imagine what I have in mind for us.”

He lowers his eyes, settling them on my chest. I realize that the water has soaked my satin robe till my nipples are visible. Swiftly, I cross my hands over my chest to cover them.

“I…”

I bolt out of the bathroom cubicle the second his hand leaves my neck, surprised at my successful attempt. I gingerly trot on the marble floor. One reckless move and my wet feet will send me crashing to the floor.

He comes after me faster than I can ever be on a wet floor, but luckily for me, I make it to the room. Not so lucky, as he seizes me again by my hair and yanks me to his body, his other hand wrapping firmly around my throat.

“All this is a joke to you, huh? I’m a joke to you?” he raves with fury. “Playtime is over, Vio. Now let me show you how much trouble you got yourself and your family into when you signed that contract.”

He grabs my hair again and that makes me cry out. Then he drags me to a wall-mounted full-length mirror in the corner of the bedroom. As we stand in front of the mirror, he wraps a hand around my midriff, his other around my throat in a softer grasp.

“Look at us, Vio. We were supposed to be a beautiful match made in heaven, but your slutty nature ruined it for us.” Releasing my neck, he tucks a strand of wet hair behind my ear.

“Vio. You became mine from the moment I set my eyes on you. The girl who walks past the coffee shop where I worked, every morning. Her blonde hair, her fine straight legs. She drove me fucking crazy.”

Ethan’s gone psycho and he can’t possibly blame me for that.

“I haven’t brought a soul to this house. You’re the lucky one for a good reason.”

He snaps his finger and the mirror shifts to the right as the wall partitions into the size of a doorway. I am shocked by the transformation unfolding before my eyes.

Ethan grabs my wrist and takes me into the exquisite bedroom, but what I see after we get inside knocks the air out of me. I freeze.

The bedroom mimics a sex dungeon, featuring a striking red and black theme. What petrifies me are the photographs strewn like rose petals all over the floor.

While I was struggling to survive, someone was busy stalking me and taking photos of me.

Sad and afraid, I turn to the left and see Ethan smiling like he’s done something applaudable while I’m in tears. “You’re a psychopath, Ethan. You’ve been stalking me for over five months.”

“You’re already freaking out when I haven’t shown you why I brought you here.” He steps closer and pulls me into his arms, my back to his body as he wraps his arms around me. “Vio. You became my wife… because I made it happen.”