A Shade Darker ✔️

{Chapter Forty Seven}

Don't worry, be happy

August 22nd, 2017

Ashley

I breathe deeply in my drowsy state and roll over once, burying my nose deeply into the warm skin between Mike's shoulder blades. Although the light sounds that I had begun to decipher begin slipping away again, the harsh slap of a whip is still fresh and clear in my mind.

Smack. Thrash. Smack. Hit. Slap.

When the sounds in my mind end, I feel myself waking again to the stir of my husband. Warm and naked by side, now torso to torso with his arm snaked about my hip.

The smacks of the whip in my dreams sounded so real that I was relieved to feel him still warm and present next to me.

I keep my eyes closed and wrap my arms around him, my fingers seeking out the textured scars on his back from where the whip had struck him countless times before.

One of those times having been of my fault. I cringed in my waking of slumber, ready to leave the memories behind.

The hand resting warm and relaxed on my back moves with the first sigh drawn from the waking man next to me. The palms are soft, growing slightly rough and calloused around the fingertips that have touched my body, heart, and soul nearly everyday.

I take my hands from his back and press my thumbs lightly against his eyelids, feeling them flutter. I take them away and soon the blue orbs are staring into my boring brown ones with a smile and reflection of sunlight entering through the window.

The same smile lifts upon his lips in a groggy, messy looking awakening upon him. A new day has started, but yesterday has not completely vanished from mind. I can still smell the candle we had burning in the air, faint but present. And I can still feel the tenderness between my legs, and the stiffness in my back and shoulders from arching them against the hard floor last night.

I keep my hands on his face, feeling the outline of chin, jaw, and ear. And on it's path upwards, a small faint scratch of stubble that seems to glitter in the sunlight like diamonds.

He closes his eyes and I can see the internal fight he has with himself, debating whether or not to leave my grasp or to stay a little longer.

Suddenly though he sits up and the blanket falls to his waist in a heap of cloth. He rubs a hand over his face and with a struggled noise stands from the floor.

"I'm in need of a bath..." Another rub over his face with a lazy hand "And perhaps a shave as well" He turns a head over his shoulder and looks back at me with a curious smile.

Drowsy still, I smile back but rise into a sitting position and frown at the sticky feeling plastered to my thighs.

I pull the blanket around me and pretend to look for my robe.

"The swelling's gone down" Mike comments, standing near the door in nothing but his pale skin that seemed to be glowing in the light of the window.

"Huh?" I grab my robe next to me and then casually glance down.

One day a stomach is flat, the next and it's swelled up like a balloon. Now it seemed as if my balloon had earned a small hole and the air had slowly been leaking out overnight. The swelling of a pregnant stomach I realized, had in fact gone down a great deal.

It made my suspicions rise, wondering if this was normal. But I concluded quickly that nothing with me would ever be normal again, so why worry?

"You go ahead, I'll come join you in a minute" A small flicker of disappointment and more curiosity lightens Mike's face and emotions. But as quickly as it appeared, it had vanished with the nod of his head.