CHAPTER TEN
I wasn't going to go in the little surveillance closet. Really, I wasn't. I'd thought about it as I'd gone through the motions of the rest of the day. The events seeming to eek by slowly, and yet quickly. By six o'clock I had decided I wouldn't go in that little room. Not tonight, not ever again. I felt steadfast on my walk home through the crisp evening air, the sunset a mixture of orange, blue, and pink – warm amongst the chill.
But now I stood in front of the screens, my hands moving, it seemed, of their own volition, adjusting the settings to reveal room Z15.
I sucked in a breath when Aaron filled the screen. He was shirtless, revealing a pale, extremely cut, heavily tattooed chest. The throne alone, a place to call home. The words were bold, thick script across his upper chest. The rest were a series of smaller lettering of different fonts, seeming to fill his skin like a canvas.
The patient uniform shirt he wore had hidden a work of art – and not just the tattoos. I stood motionless and watched Aaron, filling the large screen. He hummed his song, while he did chin-ups from the rafters of his room. His lean form glided up and down, as if the movements were effortless, easy. As if he did them all the time.
He must, with a body like that.
After what seemed like a hundred reps, he let go with one arm and continued to pull his body up and down, up and down, over and over, with just one arm. He was like some sort of robot, a machine programmed to do this movement over and over and over. Monotonous perfection.
I tried to think about the last time I had done something as simple as a push up.
Years and years and years and years ago. High school?
I couldn't even remember, that's how long it had been.
I continued to stand. I still wore my work clothes. Changing into one of my nightgowns would have made it more intimate. It's how I convinced myself going in here was okay. He was my patient, I had reasoned once inside the house. He wanted me to watch him, maybe he was going to reveal something, something that would help me break through to him – help me treat him. That's why I was here – to help him. Watching him had nothing to do with me.
"See, I'm a good person," I said to myself.
Saying it out loud doesn't make it true, Adeline.
I pushed my inner voice away. I watched Aaron as he went through some sort of work-out routine. The chin-ups were followed by push-ups. His long, lean body stretched out on the white floor, moving up and down in rapid succession.
How tall is he?
I realized I didn't know. Every time we came into contact with one another he was forced into sitting at the table in his room before I came in. He looked tall, I decided, taller than my five feet seven.
Would he tower over me?
I shook my head. It doesn't matter, Adeline.
Sit-ups came next. The muscles in his abdomen couldn't become anymore defined, I decided, but on he went.
I rubbed my palms against the back of my beige dress pants. They were sweaty, sticky. These pants were probably the least appealing pair of pants I owned – a little too big, unflattering. I'd worn them today because they helped my resilience. Unattractive clothes would deter him. He wouldn't find me attractive in loose, ugly pants.
How do you know he finds you attractive at all?
I swallowed. He probably didn't.
I watched as he went through the motions of other exercises. I hadn't worked out in years. My body was far from perfect. My hips too wide, my legs too thick, my skin softer where it should have been more lean. Men in my past had been certain to point that out. I didn't have model-type body perfection.
Anthony, my ex, appeared in my head. He stood in front of me, his sandy-red hair short. He didn't love me anymore. He had stopped a long time ago, but for some reason I had wanted to hang onto something that had probably never existed. I had never been good enough for him. Someone else was better for him, and he made sure I knew it.
The sound of running water made me blink. My eyes shed their own water. Just two droplets. I hated them, and brushed them away. Aaron stood in the corner of his room now. Naked.
I sucked in a breath. This was wrong. He was my patient. I should have looked away.
I didn't.
He had turned on the water in the little corner shower. There was no curtain. Just Aaron and the water. It cascaded over him, a curtain of clear liquid. His back was to the camera. Shadows of Death. The words stretched across his shoulders in old English lettering. Fear No Evil, inked across his lower back. My fingers twitched against the damp fabric of my pants. Touch. I wanted to run my fingers against the dark lettering. Would I be able to feel the ink inside his skin? Would it be warm? Or would it be cold like the one who broke him?
But then he turned around.
I should have left the room. I should have gone to my bedroom, taken a sleeping pill and called it a night.
I didn't. I stood there in front the screen and watched Aaron. To say he was magnificent would have been an understatement. He was perfection. A mottled, breathing, body of aggression. Violence. The papers had said so. His eyes, his words, the ink his skin, they said so. A murderer – self-proclaimed. A terrorist. A monster.
And I wanted him.
I admitted it there inside that tiny surveillance room. My hands shook as I stripped off my coat. The smooth buttons on my shirt didn't care that my fingers trembled. They came undone just the same. Until I was there. Naked. In that room, alone. With Aaron.
He stared at me through the camera. His lips moved, the water dripping down his face as he sang the words of his never-ending song.
He knows I'm watching.
He was hard all over. Including the thick length that protruded from the deep V between his legs. He stood still in the water, staring at the camera. At me.
I suddenly felt raw, exposed, vulnerable. My chest heaved. What would he think of me now?
His slender fingers tapped against his thigh. I watched them.
What would they feel like against me?
Would he tap his song against my skin? Would he whisper it against my neck? Would I be able to feel it like a soft caress, a murmur that prickled down to my toes? Would it make my toes curl? Just the thought made me flex them against the cool wood floor.
No.
I knew better.
"Just one letter. Just one letter. Just one letter away. So close. Too close."
Aaron Whitman would be anything but soft. There would be no whispering. No soft caress of my skin. He would bury his nails in my flesh. He would bite into my skin with his teeth, until his song was a reverberation from inside my veins. Until we were nothing more than just that – a reverberation of his reality.
Violence.
I don't know when I started. When I moved my hand to the wetness between my thighs, but it was there. I hadn't touched myself since I met Aaron Whitman a month ago. I had been afraid of who I would think of – of who would be in the dark places of my mind when I came to orgasm.
Too late now.
I touched myself, my free hand, braced against the desk, my eyes glued to the screen where Aaron ran his hand up and down his length, the water raining down on him. A threatening ache built inside me, determined to break me. To shatter me.
You're better than this, Adeline.
But I wasn't. And when I came to orgasm a few minutes later, it was to the sound, the image of Aaron Whitman as he came in the shower inside the screen in front of me.
The satisfaction inside me didn't come from the orgasm that made my body shake and twitch. The song on his lips had stopped. It came from the word he spoke as he came.
"Violet."