“Is this what you want?” I hushed out.

Maddie’s face flushed with redness and, bowing her head, she whispered, “It is what I dream. Everything I wish could happen for me, to me… with me, is drawn on those pages.” Maddie shrugged. “I live my life on the pages because I am too afraid to live them in real life.”

My breathing stopped, then I rushed out, “You… you want to touch me? You want me to touch you? Like your sketch?”

Maddie’s gaze then fixed on mine and she laid her hand over her heart. “In here I dream it could be true. And I pray… I pray that maybe one day it could happen for us.”

Pulling back the sketchpad, I stared at the perfect pencil drawing of me holding Maddie and shook my head. “I would hurt you,” I croaked, “the flames, the evil—”

“Are not there,” Maddie interrupted. Keeping her head down, her cheeks still flushed, she shuffled forward and said, “I held you before and I was fine. You have laid your hands upon me and I was fine.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but something inside stopped me. Maddie moved forward again. “And there is nothing you could do to me that has not already been done before.”

My stomach clenched, wanting so much to believe what she said. Maddie moved the final few steps until she stood right beside me and asked shyly, “Do you… ever think about me, too? Do you ever wonder what it would be like to touch me, too?”

I gritted my teeth and nodded my head. “All the time,” I confided, “I think about it all the fucking time.”

Maddie lowered herself to the floor in front of me. With her hands tightly clutched in her lap, she kept her head lowered and whispered, “Would you like… would you like to try?”

Chapter Seventeen

Maddie

I felt my heart would rip free from my chest as I waited for Flame’s response. As much as I did not think I could do this, that I would not be able to touch his hand, or more, I wanted to try so badly. In this moment, after seeing him so torn apart, reverting back to the memories that kept him jailed behind high walls, I wanted so badly to be able to hold him. He deserved my affection.

I believed that I too deserved affection.

Flame’s nostrils were flared as he stared down at my sketch. I joined him too, seeing what hope occupied my mind most days.

Then just as I felt Flame would not be able to try, he placed down the sketchpad and took a deep breath. As his near black eyes met mine, I shivered. His eyebrows pulled down. “Why’re you shivering?”

Smoothing my hands over my bare arms, I replied, “I am cold.”

Flame glanced over his shoulder to the fire I had lit just before he came in and he got to his feet. I could see how weak he was after he had expelled himself on his floor. And I also imagined the gravity of what we were about to try was making him just as nervous as I.

“Let’s go by the fire, it’s warmer,” Flame said and gestured me forward. I got to my feet and slowly followed behind, each step feeling as though any strength I had was slipping away.

With each step, all I saw in my mind was Moses’ hand skimming up my leg. I felt his hand grip between my legs and push his finger inside. I could see all of the disciples, after Mae’s departure, coming for me.  I could feel their hands on my wrists and ankles holding me down to a table, and I could feel the kiss of cold air brushing my skin as they ripped my garment from my body, prizing my legs apart, taking me over and over again. I would pass out, only to be awakened by a hard thrust pushing inside of me, the disciples working hard to eradicate the sin from my soul.

But it was their hands, their calloused rough hands skirting over my flesh that I could not stand. Their fingers palming my breasts, their fingers scraping over my folds, stabbing inside.

“Maddie?” Flame’s low graveled voice cut through my thoughts. When I looked up, he was sitting before the fire, his large body hunched over, as though he was broken, as though his fear was as intense as mine.

And my heart broke at the unfairness. The unfairness of us two, so fearful of what nightmares the deliberate touch of another might evoke.

“I… I am finding the thought of touching... fearful,” I whispered. Flame’s shoulders sagged even more.

“Me too,” he admitted, so quietly that I nearly did not hear him.

Inhaling a deep breath, I walked over and sat before him. The heat from the fire immediately warmed my skin.

Under the heat, I moved to lay on my side, my hand flat to the floor just in front of my face. But my eyes never left Flame, and he was watching me the entire time, his head tilted slightly, as if in wonder.

I remained silent, the crackling of the burning of wood the only sound, until Flame moved his large body and laid before me too. His hand flattened to the floor, resting mere inches from mine. But our gazes were locked.

Feeling my heart dance in my chest, I asked, “Are you scared?”

Flame’s jaw clenched and he nodded his head. “Yeah,” he rasped out. “I’m fucking scared I’ll hurt you.” He released a pent up breath, adding, “But I want to know what you feel like. I want to know what your hand feels like on mine. Like your picture.” His eyes dropped and he said, “I can’t get that fucking picture from my head.”

My fingers curled and straightened, carefully replacing themselves back on the wooden floor. And feeling I needed to talk, I said, “Except from you,” I inhaled, fighting my nerves to keep on going, “I have only been touched by men who wanted to hurt me.” Flame stiffened, and by the quick rising and falling of his broad chest, I knew he was getting angry. “Every night that I sleep, I feel them touching me. I wake in a cold sweat, my nightdress drenched because I relive what they did to me.  I feel the pain, I feel their unwanted intimate touches, the burns, the lashes… the blinding pain.” My throat clogged with a heavy lump. But I forced it back down, to say quietly, “But I want it to stop. And I do not know how. I see Mae and Lilah with Styx and Ky, and I see that they have found a way. Through love, they have found a way.”