Uncaged

Growing pains

Sorry for the extremely late update, it's been really tough lately and I'm finding it increasingly hard to function, let alone write something vaguely resembling substance. I should edit this and I might later but you beautiful humans have waited long enough and deserve to read my garbage. Thank you all for the votes and kind messages, they really do help.

......

She didn't sleep through the night.

It wasn't a surprise. Lately, her sleeping habits consist of waking up late in the afternoon after having slept erratically throughout the night, only to succumb to exhaustion near dawn.

After our bath, she passed out for a few hours, curled up against my side with my arm wrapped firmly around her waist and her head on my chest.

But our bliss didn't last. Near three am, she woke with a sudden start. Rolling away from me, she sucks in hungry staccato gasps that fill my stomach with dread.

I fight the urge to comfort her, choosing to lay still and try to keep my breaths heavy and even, feigning sleep.

A muffled whimper sounds and I hear a slap of flesh and I envision her hand slapping against her mouth. I force myself not to move, shoving Jasper into the furthest reaches of my brain, surprising he didn't resist. In fact, he barely lifts his head, the only sign of his irritation was the spastic flick of his tail.

The air around me grows thick and uncomfortable and the muscles in my shoulders bunch so tightly, any second they could snap. But still, I didn't dare move, deciding to give her a minute to herself without me silently hovering over her.

It's moments like these when her feelings of panic and terror take up too much space in her heart for her to have enough wherewithal to search mine, or at least I hope so.

The sheets rustle and the mattress dips and I feel her sitting on the end, undoing the coiled plastic hair ties that by some miracle of physics somehow manage to hold her hair aloft. I picture her anxiously pulling at the gigantic mound of hair piled high at the crown of her head, shaking at the tangled mess when the elastic catches and massaging at her sore scalp the moment her mound of curls are set free.

The back of my eyelids shines white for a second before fading with the sound of a long rattling exhale. Some fabric rustles and a pile of it drops on her side of the bed. Did she just take off her clothes?

I feel her eyes on me and I curl my toes in an effort not to look.

She stands and I hear her bare feet pad softly on the hardwood, stopping at the foot of the bed. Her gentle fingers down the length of my exposed ankle, I almost jump if it weren't for the wave of calm that follows. The next thing I hear is the sound of the bathroom door softly clicking shut.

I open my eyes to the vacant spot beside me, hating the way it looks without her. Reminding me of how cold and lonely it looked in the weeks of her absence, so miserable I couldn't bring myself to sleep it without her.

I can hear her pacing back and forth, muttering to herself in broken Russian, so disjointed and under her breathe I can't distinguish between her native tongue and mine, not that I know more than a few choice fraises in hers. But I don't need to be a native speaker to hear the panic in her voice.

Did she regret it? She must, why else would she be pacing a hole through the bathroom tile. Was I too hard on her yesterday, pushed her into something she hadn't wanted? Had I pressured her? the thought makes my blood run cold and my heart drop into my stomach. No, no she asked me to, more than once, it was consensual...wasn't it?

The memory of her writhing beneath me flashes in my mind's eye. Her soft, glowing skin, rubbing against mine, her neck craning to the sky and her high-pitched breathy moans. Clinging to me, her hands fisting in my hair, curling around my neck, kneading my shoulders and smoothing over my back and down my front, anywhere and everywhere she could, as they sent waves of shocking desire coursing through me. The way she held my face in her hands and watched, eyes glowing and full of anticipation as she gave me unearthly pleasure, so transcendent I thought I'd die.