EVE
Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Romans 6:12
Soft light touched my face. My closed eyelids turned a warm, creamy pink. Warmth caressed my face.
I was still locked inside my head, sleeping in bursts, but never really falling deeply. Not wanting to open my eyes to see the room, I refused to move. Pain radiated along my body.
The sting of my bottom was still there, my arms like jelly from having been held in one position for so long.
I remembered cringing when Jacob entered the room. I was so sure he would punish me for having moved.
Cowering down against the sheets, I waited for the strike that never came. His behavior, as usual, confused me.
Always changing his skin, it was a dance of opposition: sweetly caring for me in one minute before turning around to abuse me once again. I couldn’t hold his behavior against him. I only wondered how long it would take him to realize what I’ve known all along:
I’m not worthy of him. No amount of pain would cleanse the deep-seated lust I had for him.
Yes, I was loyal. So loyal that I was willing to undergo any transformation he demanded of me.
My name, my image, the very essence of my being was in his control…but I hated him still for having chosen me.
I was not worthy.
And I would never be worthy.
I would endure the abuse until I ultimately failed. I would leave him when I died. I sold my soul to his image. Gave up my freedom just so he would draw near.
I ached and I cried.
And still…I wanted him.
A door opened in the room, but I refused to look at him. I was too ashamed.
Turning my head toward the wall, I wished I could curl my body over itself in protection of the pain or desire he chose to deliver.
His instructions were firmly planted in my head. I knew that I should open my robe to entice him.
But, I couldn’t.
I was drowning slowly in suffocating disgrace.
Bracing myself for his attention, I was caught off guard by the sound of the chair legs scraping across the floor, the scream of wood against wood followed by a heavy thud and the susurration of skin.
Curiosity bested me and I allowed my eyes to crack open, squinting against the minimal light that bathed the room.
He sat in the chair, his elbows resting on his knees as he scrubbed his hands over his face. Shoulders slumped as if weighted by some unseen force, he neither looked at me nor attempted to speak. Stress radiated off him in obtrusive waves, light appearing to bend in refusal to touch him or brighten the dark shadows that concealed his features.
Minutes passed while I stared at him, anxiety building inside until I was in pain.
He was sad, scared or upset in a manner that somehow broke him. But I knew that couldn’t be true. Not Elijah – or Jacob – or whatever he wanted to be called.
Never before had he made himself vulnerable; not to me or to any other person in our group. It simply wasn’t something he was capable of doing.
He was too strong, too perfect in any way to allow evil to defeat him. He was too close to God to lose.
That was the type of person he embodied, not this hunched over man, hiding his face from me and sitting so still that I wondered if he was breathing.
“Jacob?”
I couldn’t take it any longer. The quiet in the room was deafening. It wrapped around me like a thick blanket threatening to cut off the air from my lungs.
“I need to send you away.”
Spoken so low that I could barely hear, his words echoed in the space, haunting by the way he’d whispered.
“What do you mean?”
Fear and terror, my ever-present companions, thrummed through my veins, chipping away at my resolve with each beat of my heart. I could feel them crippling me inside, my lungs no longer working to pull in large amounts of air, my brain no longer functioning because of the thick emotional soup his words had caused.
“You need to go back to my brother.”
There was no remorse to his voice, no sadness or anger. Almost spoken without any hint of intonation, his words were intended for nothing more than information, and yet, somehow, they cut me deeper than if he’d struck out at me physically.
Shaking my head, I opened my mouth to argue, but I was frozen in place when he pulled his hands from his face to look at me.
His eyes were empty and haunted, evil peeking out at me as if I’d dared to look at it first.
I never looked at evil, never broke a rule he’d established so many years before. My eyes were always trained to the ground. The only thing I’d allowed my eyes to see was him. But when I looked at him now, I didn’t see love or forgiveness. I saw hatred mixed with lust, the shiver of violence mixed with a dangerous threat.
“You have to leave tonight. I’ll take you back to the compound and all of this will be over. I’m sorry, Sedra. It’s the only way.”
No.
I didn’t understand him and I shook my head again to tell him so. Nothing he’d said over the past couple of days had made sense.
I was failing his test.
Anger coursed through me. Anger at him for having chosen me when I wasn’t strong enough for whatever purpose he had. Anger with myself for loving him still.
There were no words I knew that were strong enough to describe what I felt when I looked at him. But there were words that could describe what his threat to send me away felt like:
Complete and utter devastation.
There was nothing left inside me, no hope that I’d recover and lead a life away from him. Except for a few memories of my past, I knew nothing but him.
He was my world…my salvation.
“Are we returning to the compound together?”
“No.”
Confusion rattled my thoughts even further, but then I remembered.
He warned me that he wouldn’t make sense; that he would attempt to confuse me in a bid to test my loyalty.
I wouldn’t fail him, not now when it was so easy to obey what he’d ordered.
Jacob never moved from the chair, never bothered to look up at me when he fell back into a deep silence.
I had to move before my own fear froze me in place, rendering me useless in my loyalty and faith.
Taking a steadying breath, I blew it out while watching his unmoving form in the chair. He couldn’t see me, not with his hands covering his face once again.
I crept quietly from the mattress, ignoring the pain in my body that intensified with every contraction of muscle across bone.
On hands and knees, I crawled to him, slowly creeping across the wooden floor until I was at his feet. I pressed my cheek against the warmth of his leg. He jumped at the contact, never pulling his hands from his face.
He was hurting and I didn’t know what to do or what to say. I’d never seen him show weakness before. What was so bad that it could render him so silent and still?
I was his Eve…the woman who would lead him into the destiny he deserved. That’s what he always told me. His voice echoed in my head like the haunting words of a distant phantom.
I was his Eve.
I was his hope.
I was his beginning and his end.
Because he’d told me that’s who I was.
With shaky hands, I touched his legs, slowly allowing my palms to travel up his pants, never going past the knees, but simply letting him know I was at his feet awaiting anything he needed me to do.
He didn’t move in response - not a twitch.
I moved higher.
Pushing up on my knees, I ran my hands over the tops of his thighs, delighting in the feel of his muscles pulsing with tension. The small reaction was enough to encourage me to go farther.
His face was still buried in his hands, anxiety rolling off him in waves of suffocating heat. He didn’t need to speak in order for me to know he wanted me at this moment.
We would always be connected that way.
“I am yours.” I whispered softly, putting all the strength I could gather into my words.
He didn’t respond, didn’t pull his hands away so he could see the faith and conviction in my expression. I breathed out heavily, gathering even more strength I didn’t have.
With shaky hands, I reached for his shirt, slowly pulling it from where it was tucked neatly into his pants.
“I am faithful. I am loyal. I am yours.”
Words spoken so many times over the past few weeks, I’d said them enough that I believed them. Through pain I’d been reborn to him.
No longer a daughter or a sister - I was his alone.
Releasing one button and then two, I peeled the material of his shirt from his body, revealing the heated skin of his abdomen to my eyes. My breath blew out from my lips to brush across his body. Smiling, I ran the tip of my finger over the sculpted muscles, delighting in the way they moved in response to my touch.
I looked up as he pulled his hands from his face. Jacob stared down at me, unmoving and silent, but yet communicating everything he was thinking by the way he stared.
“Let me heal you,” I begged softly.
Two more buttons and another, his strong chest now exposed to my eyes. I ran my palms over his skin, lost to the feel of the masculine strength in his body.
Reaching for his collar, I pulled at the white tab to remove it from his shirt, but his hands moved so fast I wasn’t able to pull it away.
Grabbing my wrists, he squeezed and my hands opened, a startled cry escaping my lips from the pain of his hold. I looked up at him, seeing lethal anger and seductive rage behind his eyes.
“Do you have any idea what I’m capable of? Do you know what I’ve done?” He spoke on a breathless whisper.
My body trembled in response, but I was his faithful bride, one who would walk with him through the gates of Hell if he asked.
“Do you?” He yelled and I tried to jump away, but he gripped my wrists tight. I was unable to distance myself from him.
“Do you?”
I screamed in response to the volume of his voice, to the anger that was evident in his words. Tears erupted from my eyes and I thought the bones of my wrists would snap under the force of his hands.
“Please Elijah…” I shook my head remembering what he’d told me. “…Jacob. I’m sorry. Please… I want to help you. I have to help you. I have no choice.”
Begging and pleading: they were what I did my entire life.
Suffering silently while he held my fate in his hands, I was destined for him and his beliefs, terrified by him as well as in love with him. I could be bound and gagged, whipped and beaten to the point of imminent death and I would still crawl to him if it meant I could seek comfort in his arms.
That is how I felt about him.
I refused to let myself fail.
“I don’t care what you did. I don’t care what you will do.”
He lifted me by my arms, setting me on my feet so that I stood shivering in front of him. Finally releasing one wrist, he reached up to pull my head down to him, placing my hand that he still held against his chest.
His heart beat was steady and strong beneath his skin, my body shaking just for being allowed to touch him.
With his palm against my cheek, he studied my face, his once heavy breath now slowing to match the speed of mine.
Our mouths were inches apart. Our breath mingling in wicked temptation.
He held me in awe. Like an idol, he personified everything that I thought was pure and good. He was my guide and protector, my life and salvation.
His eyes narrowed, confusion wrinkling his brow. “Do you not understand any of what’s been done to you? You should care what I would do, Sedra. You should want to protect yourself.”
Sighing heavily, he pushed me back to stand from his chair. I jumped when he reached for me, unable to control the anxiety thrumming through my veins. The movement was made on instinct, but I forced myself to still, to allow him every part of me that he desired.
His hands closed around the open sides of my robe. Parting the material, he stared down at my body with heat behind his eyes. And just when I thought, I’d drawn him in, he closed his eyes and closed the robe around me.
“If I tell you something, do you promise not to cry or scream?”
I didn’t move except to nod my head in response. His fingers brushed up against my abdomen, the contact enough to comfort me in my confusion.
“Sit down on the bed, Sedra.”
There was no hesitancy in my obedience. Stepping back until my legs met the side of the bed, I sat and waited for him to speak.
“I’m not who you think I am. I’m not the man you married.”
I shook my head, denial manifesting in the movement of my body. He told me he would lie. He told me it would be confusing. By faith alone, I would see through the mistruths. “No…”
Stepping forward, he knelt down in front of me, reaching up to grasp my chin in his hand. Forcing me to face him, he said, “Yes, Sedra. Yes. What I’m telling you is the truth. For once in your life, you are hearing the truth.”
Jerking my head away was useless. Each time I tried, he gripped tighter, finally becoming angry and gripping the sides of my head with both of his hands to keep me looking in his direction.
I was tired of the lies, of the puzzles and torment. Everything inside me was spinning with the thick sludge of confusion that he created.
It was too much, all of it: The lies, my fate, his destiny. I wasn’t strong enough for the pressure or the pain. I wasn’t pure enough to walk in grace and lead him where he wanted to go.
“Stop!” I screamed, but instead of releasing me, he pushed me down on the mattress, hovering over me with the anger I was so used to seeing in his eyes.
My mistake was quickly realized, but it was too late to take it back. I’d awoken the monster inside him that I’d somehow forgotten existed.
His chest moved with heavy breath, his eyes wide, the cords in his neck sticking out with barely contained rage.
Fear flooded my system, paralyzing me where I lay. I knew not to fight, not to look away from him. To do so would bring only punishment.
How easily one could forget previous pain when a kind hand is there to soothe it. Black and white, night and day; he was two people, both tucked away into one body, one heart, one soul that was so much greater than me.
He lied.
He always lied.
Yet, I was left to believe those lies because they were the only truths I knew.
“Never…” He spit out his words while struggling against his rage. “…ever speak to me like that again. Ever.”
I shook my head and felt my growing panic tremble across my body. When he was angry like this, he was violent. So painfully violent.
“I’m sorry.” I breathed out, hoping, praying, that my submission would calm him.
He liked it when I submitted to him. He enjoyed the infusion of erotic power domination gave him. It was as if by controlling me, he was able to siphon the strength from body, further building his own.
Jacob let me go as quickly as he’d touched me, stepping back and shaking his head of the confusion so obvious inside him.
Sitting in the chair with a heavy thud, he immediately resumed his former position: head in hands with his elbows propped on his knees.
“You have to go.”
I shook my head, silently refusing his continued lies. He wouldn’t send me away. I wouldn’t let him.
Pushing up from the bed, I bit my bottom lip to stop it from trembling. My body shook with the apprehension I felt, but I had to be strong.
I had to seduce him.
Slipping the robe from my shoulders, I allowed it to fall and puddle at my feet. I straightened my spine and stepped closer to him, using my knees to push his legs apart. Standing completely still, I waited for what I knew would happen.
He leaned back in the chair, his face tipped up to look at my body. I didn’t look down at him, didn’t acknowledge the fact that I shook violently with the need for his warmth.
I wasn’t a person. I wasn’t an opinion or something separate from him. I was what he needed, an object, a desire, a cloak that would shelter him from whatever pain existed inside.
I was a distraction.
I was his light.
I was the woman who belonged beneath his steady hand.
My eyes were trained to the wall behind him, my body still…waiting.
Fingertips touched the sides of my legs and I breathed out the air I’d been holding.
Slowly, softly, dangerously, they dragged up, not a caress, but a tease.
Refusing to move, I let him explore me, let him look and touch, lead and command. Words weren’t necessary in this. I knew what he needed from me.
By the time his fingers reached my hips, his hands were shaking.
He gripped me, those same fingers pressing down until the nerves beneath my skin came alive.
The chair creaked as he leaned forward, my feet moving only when he tugged me to him.
Leaning toward me, his breath was a fan of heat across my abdomen, his lips just inches from my skin, teasing me – toying with me.
I was coming undone.
He was letting go.
Only God knows what would have happened if somebody hadn’t knocked on my door.