The Swan and the Jackal

Chapter Sixteen

Fredrik

Taking the steps one at a time, I make my way slowly into the basement with a boulder sitting in the pit of my stomach. The concrete is cold against the bottoms of my bare feet, the air getting cooler as a winter storm begins to bear down on the East coast. I make a mental note to be sure to turn the heat up significantly when I go back upstairs so that Cassia stays comfortable down here.

But all of these random thoughts are just my way of shoving the inevitable moment I know is sure to leave me reeling into the back of my mind for as long as I can before I’m forced to confront it.

When I step off the last step, I can’t help but glance over at the television behind the protective glass to see the view from my bedroom. That boulder in my stomach starts to burn painfully when I picture what Cassia just saw. When I picture what I almost did. When I realize how much of a bastard I really am that I was going to make her watch.

I turn the television off.

“Cassia?” I speak up softly.

She doesn’t respond right away. She lays on her side with her back to me, her body covered only by the thin material of her nightgown. I feel a desperate urge to go over and cover her with the blanket so that she doesn’t get cold. But I don’t. Not yet. I’m unsure if she even wants me there. And I’m unsure why that even matters to me. What she wants. When did what Cassia wants first become my priority? I want to say ‘just moments ago’, but that would be a form of denial and I think I’ve been in denial for far too long. Cassia has been my priority for a very long time, since shortly after I brought her here. And I’m only just now allowing myself to believe it.

“Stay away from me,” I hear her say in a small, wounded voice.

Compelled by her rejection, I move toward her instead of away.

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” I say, stepping up closer to her bed. “I never wanted to—”

Cassia rolls over and springs to her feet so quickly that I barely have time to react.

“I said stay away from me!” she shrieks, tears shooting from her anguished eyes. “I hate you! Bastard, I hate you!” I’m directly in front of her in a flash with her small fists pummeling my chest.

I let her hit me as hard and for as long as she wants, taking blow after stinging blow deservingly. Sobs rattle her entire body, her eyes are clenched shut so tightly that I wonder how tears can continue to seep through her lids at all. She screams at me, so vociferously and strained that I know it must be shredding her throat.

“I’m sorry,” I say softly behind her screams, still trying to understand why I’ve even apologized. And it’s in this moment that I realize the shackle isn’t locked around her ankle.

Confused and panicking a little inside, I want to ask her how she got it unlocked, but I can’t as it isn’t the right time.

Her fists pound my chest some more, until finally I seize her small frame in my arms and crush her against my heart.

My hands are shaking.

Why are my hands shaking?

The backs of my eyes sting and burn. It feels like a fist has collapsed around my heart restricting the blood flow, and that hot boulder in my stomach has grown to encompass all of my chest, robbing me of my breath.

Sobbing into my body, at first Cassia tries to push me away, but I refuse to let her go. I want her here, now more than ever. Because it’s where she belongs. Her fingernails dig into my chest muscles. Her cries break my heart over and over again. But I just hold onto her tighter until she relents and her body collapses into mine.

“I hate you,” she cries, slowly letting go of anger and surrendering only to pain. “I hate you…”

I shut my eyes softly and press my lips into the top of her feather-soft blonde hair.

I know she doesn’t hate me. She loves me. She loves me more than she’s ever loved anyone or anything in her whole life.

How can Fate be so fucking heartless and cruel? Was what Life did to me as a child not enough?

I squeeze her tighter.

“Cassia, I’m sorry.”

“Why didn’t you just put me in the chair?” she cries. “How could you do that to me?” Her fingertips press harder into my bare chest muscles. “Break my body! Break my will, Fredrik! But don’t break my goddamn heart!”

“I’m sorry…”

It’s all I can say.

It’s hard to say anything else when you don’t even understand your own feelings, your own reactions. When you’ve come to the realization that there’s more to you than you ever wanted to believe. I feel like I’ve just been introduced to a man who looks exactly like me, yet is so very different on the inside that nothing makes sense anymore. I’m staring into a mirror at my doppelganger and all I want to do is kill him fucking dead so that I can feel normal again. So I can be in control again. So that I can go back to not caring about her again.

It’s so much easier when you don’t care.

“I couldn’t do it,” I whisper into her hair about Gwen.

I feel her tears warm and wet on my chest.

“I wish she was dead,” Cassia says through gritted teeth. “I hope Seraphina is dead by the time you find her.” She pushes away from me and I finally let her go.

Cassia takes several steps backward, her small fists clenched down at her sides, her angelic features twisted angrily, resentfully. I’ve never seen her like this before, so defiled by indignation, and it’s a tragic thing to witness in one so kind and beautiful.

She locks eyes with me and there’s something else in them I’ve never seen before. Fury? Retribution? I can’t be sure. And then just when I intend to explore it further, it disappears from her face and is replaced again by pain and heartbreak.

Cassia falls on her bottom against the soft rug covering the floor. I move immediately to crouch in front of her, balancing myself on the front pads of my feet. She cries into her opened hands and I reach out to pull her into my arms again, but she refuses me, raising her brown eyes to mine full of defeat. Withdrawing my hands, I sit down fully against the rug with my legs splayed and my knees drawn up with my forearms resting atop them.

She says softly, “Why can’t you love me back, Fredrik?” and every word is laced with sadness which breaks my heart into a million tiny shards of glass. “What is wrong with me that you can’t love me back?”

I shake my head rejecting her self-depreciation and reach out to touch the side of her face. “Nothing is wrong with you. You’re perfect in every way, Cassia.” I brush the edge of my thumb against her jawbone. “Don’t let my imperfections as a worthless human being make you feel like less of a person—you’re a better person than I could ever be.”

She stares back at me—her eyes welled up with tears—with enough heartbreak that if she wasn’t so strong inside it would surely kill her.

“I don’t care about your imperfections, Fredrik.” Her hand falls atop mine still resting against the side of her cheek. “I just want to know why you can’t love me.”

My gaze strays.

“I can’t love anyone,” I say in a quiet voice.

“That’s a lie,” she says equally.

She moves in-between my legs, keeping her knees bent and her gown covering them.

“That’s a lie and you know it.”

I look up even though I don’t want to face her. Because she’s right.

Love is a wicked game, I think to myself, remembering what Seraphina sang to me on stage one night in New York sometime after we met. Wicked Game. Because just like Cassia, Seraphina was once a singer. And as I recall Cassia admitting to remembering everything about Seraphina, I realize that right now in this moment with her, I don’t care. I don’t care to know what I’ve waited so long to find out.

I just don’t care….

Cassia’s soft lips touch mine and my arms are around her little body before I realize what I’m doing. I grab her against me, pressing her thinly-covered breasts into my bare chest, my mouth collapsing about hers hungrily as I kiss her unlike I’ve ever kissed her before. Her warm tongue tangles with mine, her fingers press into the back of my neck, mine into the flesh of her bottom as I hoist her onto my lap. Pushing her gown up and out of the way, her bare thighs straddle my waist, and still without breaking the kiss I dig my fingers in deeper, moaning into her mouth with anticipation.

She bites down on my bottom lip, breaking the skin. The stinging pain sears through my mouth and travels down into my stomach, warming every part of me and making other parts ache and throb with need. I taste the blood in my mouth, and she just kisses me harder as if wanting to taste it herself, to share it with me.

Gripping her bottom vigorously, I force her hips toward mine, pushing my hardness against her until I can’t stand it anymore and I race to get her panties off. I yank and pull blindly, our eyes closed, our lips still locked in a devouring kiss, until I finally get them off and her naked legs fall around my waist again.

She pulls back and looks into my eyes, her arms draped around the back of my neck. Her lips touch mine again lightly, one hand falling to find the waist of my boxers. Softly pushing her hips against mine, it drives me crazy feeling my cock pressed into her through a thin layer of fabric which feels like the difference between ecstasy and Hell. Moaning against her lips, I raise my ass from the floor enough to give her access to get them off. But impatience takes over and I grasp her around the waist with one hand to hold her steady while wrenching them off the rest of the way myself with the other.

Flesh on warm flesh, she presses herself into me, peering into my eyes with her mouth gently parted. I want to taste her lips again, but I study them instead, the plumpness of her bottom lip, the perfect little indention of the top, just below her nose. Her breath smells faintly of mint. The natural scent of her skin which always sends me into a brief high when I’m this close to her.

“I am yours. Always.” she whispers onto my mouth and kisses me once, pressing the warm wetness between her legs against the aching stiffness between mine. “Even if you can’t love me the way you love her, I’ll always be yours.”

I grab the back of her head in both of my hands and crush my lips against hers, stealing her breath away and replacing it with my own. I ache. Every part of me aches. For her. Only for her.

I need to kill someone to wash these feelings away, but in this moment I can’t do anything but give in to them.

Grasping her firmly around her back, I push myself to my feet with her legs wrapped around my waist, carrying her to the bed where I fall between her thighs.

I gaze down into her eyes—What am I doing?—and secure her head with my hands on her cheeks. The warmth from her thighs I feel on either side of me, the softness of her flesh. So delicate. So innocent. How can I do this to her? How can I do this to myself?

“I’m sorry, Cassia,” I whisper and lower my body onto hers. She never takes her eyes off of mine, her fingers dancing against one side of my unshaven face. “I’m sorry for everything I’ve done to you…and for what I’m about to do.” I kiss her deep and hungrily, and slide my cock into her with careful, predatory intent.

The sweet sound of her whimpering as I enter her only makes me want to go deeper. Her thighs tremble at my sides, her fingers dig into the skin on my back. Break the flesh, Cassia, I say only to myself.

She does break the flesh and my body reacts in such a primal way that I can’t help but hurt her as I force myself inside of her as deeply as I can go. Her neck arcs and her arms come up behind her, seeking the wall behind the bed. I can’t bring myself to ask if I’m hurting her. I want to hurt her. I want to feel her breaking beneath me, to see the tears in her eyes, to hear the shuddering of her breath. I want to know that she wants the pain as much as I need to inflict it.

Tiny moans and whimpers move through her throat as I thrust into her. She’s so small and tight that I feel like her first all over again.

All over again…

Almost losing control too soon, I force the feeling of ecstasy back for as long as I can, rotating my pelvis against hers to hit her sweet spot. She pushes her hips forward, her thighs tightening around my waist as if she could crush me with them. “Don’t stop,” she says breathily, “please don’t stop.” And I push harder until she breaks the skin on my back again with her fingernails and it sends me over the edge. I devour her lips as I empty myself inside of her, moaning intensely into her mouth. Her thighs strengthen as I feel her tighten and throb around my cock. She whimpers again, arcing her head back against the mattress, her breathing out of sequence as her body melts into oblivion beneath mine.

What have I done?

I gaze into her eyes, holding myself deep inside of her, and I brush her cheeks with the pads of my thumbs. Her eyes, filled with so much love and innocence, they only briefly detract my need to cut her back with my blade and lick the blood from her wounds. To bond with her the way I bonded with Seraphina.

I want to do it.

But I know that I can’t. I’ve taken it too far with Cassia already. I can’t allow myself to take her all the way, or then I would truly be the Devil.

I press my lips to her forehead. She smiles up at me softly.

I’m no better than Seraphina…

Intent on stopping this, I start to pull myself out of her, but her legs tighten around my waist as she holds me still.

“Don’t go,” she whispers, her fingertips touching my lips, her other hand winding carefully within my hair. “Please don’t go.”

She kisses me lightly.

I try to avert my eyes, because I’m ashamed for what I’ve done. It isn’t the first time I’ve given in to Cassia like this, it’s not the first time I’ve slept with her in the year she’s been my prisoner. But it is the first time I’ve done it with something more in my heart than darkness.

“Cassia, I shouldn’t have—”

She shakes her head softly against the mattress. “Please stay.” Her smile fades and she suddenly appears dejected, but I feel like it’s not an attempt to keep me here.

It’s something else.

Her head falls to the side and she looks out at the room as silence descends between us. I wait patiently, though hanging onto her sudden change of mood with an impatient and conflicted heart. I feel like what’s left of my world is about to be pulled from underneath me.

“I was ten-years-old when I met Seraphina,” she says in a distant voice that seizes every fiber of my consciousness. “She was my best friend…until she murdered my parents and was sent away.”

A tear moves from the corner of her eye and pools around her nose, resting in that little indention above her lip.

I swallow down her words and say nothing because there’s nothing more to say. I know now that everything is lost and I’m never going to get it back.