[ March 4, 2004 ]

ANN

Morning or the closest thing to it. I wasn't even sure. All I knew was ... I was existing.

Can't say what I was feeling. Not sure I was.

The hotel room was that dirgy kind of darkness that seems to only be there when you wake up and you have tied one on the night before and there's this part of your psyche that wants to protect you from reality.

I had to pee. There was a leg pressed over my bladder that made it so much worse.

Stale. It's how the very air felt. Like something had died and it was lingering on, refusing to really go. I think it was his testosterone that clung to him like cheap aftershave.

I shoved on his knee and he grunted, grudgingly giving way just a bit, his leg re-positioning down toward my thighs. But when I tried to get him off me so I could roll out of bed, his hand clamped around my waist.

"I have to pee," I said; this plain voice with no feeling other than slight irritation.

Winning my release from him, I rolled away and fell to my knees as I tried to get out of bed.

'Fuck,' I whispered inside my head. This was more than aching. This was what it felt like after ...

Struggling to my feet, I zigzagged to the bathroom. Sat and pissed good and long. Burning sensation to go along with the pain. In the dim recesses of whatever passed for a brain, I actually realized pain meant I could feel something.

In the dark of the bathroom, I stared at the wall before me. Tried to remember if I'd even seen the wallpaper pattern in there. The night before began to wash over me and I shut my mind to it. I heard the bed creaking and it brought me around. I was washing my hands, standing at the sink, seeing a shadow of me reflected in the mirror. Some kind of morbid curiosity made me turn on the light.

My eyes moved slowly down my body. I could see down almost to my knees. I have never felt this way in my life -- where I'd be feeling rewarded to have such evidence of abuse on my body. I pushed in at a particularly deep bruise forming on my upper arm. Felt oddly comforted at the dull, deep throb of pain that gave me.

Caught the movement of his reflection in the mirror and I watched him move into the bathroom until he was standing behind me. Our eyes met. I swear we might have both had the exact same expression of defiant satisfaction on our faces. I noticed a livid bite wound on his chest and a few red-blue kiss marks on his neck.

His eyes studied every bruise he'd put on me. He touched his fingers along the bite mark on my breast.

He stepped to my side and his hand dropped between my legs, prodding me to widen my stance so he could see what visible damage he had done there. He was getting an erection and the sight of it made my insides contract.

"Does it make you feel like more of a man that you've marked his woman like this?" I whispered to him.

A beat. Then he nodded twice, these short almost imperceptible nods. Now intent on touching me there and seeming pleased when I jumped at the roughness of his touch.

"He won't care. I'm nothing to him. I doubt I ever was," I told him.

His eyes flicked up to mine and I saw tears there. He never tried to hide them from me and I felt this might have been when I saw the real rawness of his emotion, the thing he felt underneath the anger ... or maybe it was just that his fury was invoked by his anguish.

But whatever ... he stepped behind me and his hands shoved on my shoulders until I was bent over the cabinet. I saw tears lightly coursing on his cheeks and his eyes were watching intently as his hand positioned his cock. And then he was shoving into me. Not brutally but without a care as to what I might have wanted.

I was a nothing.

A receptacle.

A tool to cause pain to the man who'd stolen his wife.

And all he wanted to do was fuck me because it was the only energy he had left in this morning to divert the pain from his mind, I think.

And me ... I am one sick puppy, I tell you.

Had I really discovered in that long night that I might have liked this? Perhaps so. Or perhaps it was the old self-destructive side of me coming out to play. Or maybe it was a bit of both.

But he hitched inside me and I gasped at the pain but I arched my back and spread my legs for him.

He fucked me.

One last time.

By the time he came, I wasn't even watching anymore. I couldn't. I'd watched for a long time but then I finally just couldn't. It wasn't worth it to me anymore to see the anger we both were holding on to like it was our right. But then there was this other thing in our eyes whenever they met ... like we were both ashamed we'd done this ... ashamed to have used what had been a sexual attraction between us as a weapon against each other and against them. I put my face down on my arms and just let him fuck me as I stood there before the mirror, hunched over the cabinet where the sink was.

He pulled out as soon as he came. I stayed where I was and listened to the bed creak as he crawled back in. Long minutes passed by. Eventually, I gathered my resources enough to grab a washcloth, soap up whatever skin seemed to most need it ... especially between my legs ... wouldn't look at the cloth each time I rinsed it out.

I was almost dressed before he spoke to me.

"Do you need any money?" he asked me.

"I'm not the whore. Your wife's the whore," I told him.

He was out of the bed in an instant and he slapped me. But not that hard. I wondered if the fight had gone out of him but then I saw his eyes. I would not have wanted to have been either Uma or Terry in that moment.

And then a shift in his eyes as he looked at my face and murmured some stupid shit about not meaning to hurt me, that it had not been his intent ... his fingers shook as they stroked my cheek as if to erase the sting his hand had just caused. I jerked away from him, annoyed he'd apologize. Why in fuck's sake would I want that? He owed me nothing but what I'd forcibly taken from him in that night.

An insane flash of nothing and he was kissing me. Too hard. Too overpowering. It was much worse than the slap.

"You will be my mistress now," he said. "Last night, we each took what we needed from the other. From now on, you will see the kind of man I can be when I am good to you."

Bullshit. If he thought for one minute that I'd stick around and be part of his fucked up life, he had to be a lot dumber than I'd imagined him to be. I'd never fucking see him or any member of that cult of a family again. But for once in my life, I took the easy way out. I lowered my eyes and nodded at him. When he went back to the bed, I finished dressing, grabbed my purse and was heading for the door. I looked back at him. He was lying up against the headboard, staring into a blank space only he could see.

At the rental car, it took me at least five minutes just to get the door open. I dropped the keys twice. Then fumbled with inserting the key into the lock for so long that I thought maybe the key didn't work anymore.

Huge sigh of relief to finally slide behind the wheel. I sat and stared out the windshield for so long. Where would I go? What would I do? Who would care?

Ended up just taking the first road that took me out of London. Heading south. Hours later, I finally thought I could stop and be safe from detection. Drove around a section of Portsmouth until I found a place I could buy booze. Stocked up. Found a hotel. Holed up.

Two days were lost to me.

By the time the scotch ran out and I'd been through the dry heaves and the fluttery feeling of knowing you were going to live, I was aware of every single place on my body that hurt. We'd really done some damage. The bruising was worse. More blues and purples had popped out on my body. I saw bite marks I hadn't before. There were scratches I'd never noticed and for some reason, I hoped that I'd left scratch marks on Max's back.

"Why are men such shits?"

He shifted against me. Adjusted my body as if by rote appreciation for how a woman should fit against a man's body. He was sitting on the floor with me, his back against the foot of the bed while I was straddled over his groin, still locked in our final position even though he'd long since softened and drifted slowly out of me, sliding out on wasted fluid. I don't really remember being able to feel anything sensory in that moment. Seemed more than anything that I was just in an endless void. I just said what came into my mind.

A mind, I grant you, that was not functioning as it should have been. A mind that was basically detached from the soreness the body probably would have been in touch with if I'd been in touch with much.

I shrugged off his hands as they stroked my hair. Turned in his arms, plopped onto the floor between his outspread thighs and just leaned back against his chest. Thought about how Terry would have been smoking maybe in that instant and I could have asked for a puff. Could feel the way his fingers would have felt against my lips as he would have held the cigarette to my mouth ... his familiarity with how my body worked so instinctive that he wouldn't have even needed to look at me to find my mouth.

"You know what I just cannot figure out, Max? Why would any woman cheat on a man like you anyway?"

He raised a knee and shifted again; his arm came around my waist as he moved, uncomfortable in this position, wanting to adjust his weight, latching on to my body to keep me with him as he did. When he settled finally, I sat up and lifted his arm off me. Leaned my chin on his upraised knee.

"You have no idea how much I hate her. She's got someone like you to love her so why did she have to go and take Terry from me?"

He sighed and I felt his hand drift slowly down my spine. I didn't have the energy to shake it off. I was almost drifting into another raw area of my psyche when he answered me. "Perhaps it wasn't us? Perhaps they simply fell in love and we were just the poor fools standing in their way?" he suggested.

"Love." I laughed when I said it. "Yeah. Love. It never lasts, though, does it? You think it will when you're in the midst of it and you just never see it coming when it dies. I thought we were happy. But he was just lying to me, wasn't he? Fucking men. You're all such shits."

He didn't answer me until I turned around and leveled him with a challenging glare. He gave me an even tougher glare back. It shocked me how my instant reaction was to think he might have been sex incarnate in that moment of tough, uber-man.

"What do you expect?" he asked me coldly. "You flaunt yourselves in front of men, move freely about and behave like men. So if men treat you as easy prey - how can you be surprised? You believe it is your right ... that you have as much right as a man to have pleasure -- then the natural conclusion is- he will take it from you without even the bother of courtship or pretence and move on. Much as we are doing now?"

"I see. So I asked for this, Max? That's it? Well, now, isn't that just like a man to rationalize this away in that particular manner! How nice that you're able to make this my fault because I was a bit too uppity of a woman. For pity's sake, Max, at least go all the way and tell me how I wasn't woman enough for him. Tell me how a woman like Uma is always the paragon of all that a woman should be. Tell me all about how your perfect wife is so very much better than I'll ever be. Your perfect wife, Max. That same perfect woman who's cheating on you."

His hand wrapped around my neck in this instant reaction ... anger flared into a roar in his eyes as I laughed at him ... he squeezed in ... I felt cold, unblinking hatred. I saw Terry before me. I went wild with the bitterness of my rage. I struck out at him, pummeling his chest and face and shoulders.

Max's hands grabbed for my wrists and I fought tooth and nail.

Tooth and nail.

I never had thought what that meant before. But it was a flashing series of lights inside my brain ... as my teeth bit at any part of his body that came close enough for me to lunge at and my nails dragged as deeply as they could into any bit of flesh they could rake ... I realized I was fighting him with tooth and nail.

He was doing his best to control me as well as himself ... and I knew that was maybe the main reason I never checked myself. I think maybe that was why I just felt like I could revel in my lunatic rage because some part of me knew I was safe with Max whereas another man would have taken real advantage and beat the ever-loving crap out of me. But I swear to God there was a large part of Max that got into it, that saw the perfect avenue for expending his own rage at what was happening out there in the world as our spouses left us in the dust.

The carpet felt so rough against my breasts. His knee was shoved up against my cunt. I cursed him so loudly until he shoved a hand over my mouth and I bit down on his palm. He barely grunted into my ear; a moment later, he'd wrestled me into submission only because he had total control of my body and he was shoving up into me. I stopped biting his hand and he released my mouth.

I honestly don't want to remember the sex. I hate that I came like that. I hate that it felt so good to me to come like that. I hate that it felt like I was coming for Max and wishing Terry was witnessing it. I hate that I felt sorry for Max when he came because he cried out to Uma.

Even long after, my eyes never shut. I was watching the ceiling and then looked over at him, absent-mindedly reached a hand out to where he was sleeping next to me. The carpet beneath me and chilled hotel room air around me. No warmth, no softness. Maybe that's why I reached out and let my hand touch his belly. His face seemed locked in a frown; his eyes shut to our surroundings; his mind far away from me.

"You're wrong about me, Max," I whispered in his direction, knowing that he wasn't listening. "He was all I ever loved. I have never wanted another man."

My God. What I'd goaded Max into that night.

Rage had turned on me. And there I stood days later. With the reality that what I'd done in that night hadn't helped. Not one bit. It just made it worse. It made me worse. So much worse.

Worse than a whore.

My eyes met in the reflection and my heart felt like it'd just ripped itself in two. A ragged tear, not a clean break. A physical pain that matched the psychic pain. My arms hugged in around my gut and I dropped to my knees in agony. Mouth open in dry sobs. Forehead slowly sinking to the cool tile of the floor. Rocking there on my knees and finally the tears came to me.

They racked my body. My wounded howls echoed against each other in that small bathroom. My mind reeled from the pain that was making me bleed tears. And still I cried.

I needed to get drunk again. I needed to blot this out. I wasn't strong enough. I just wanted to understand why. I needed someone to help me.

I needed ... I needed Terry so badly in that moment that I thought I'd die at the realization that I couldn't depend on him ever again.

Cried myself into exhaustion and I woke up the next morning with no recollection of where I was. And when I opened my eyes and saw that it was a hotel room, the memory washed over me.

Seeing him fucking her.

Fucking Max as revenge on them both.

I could never go back again. I couldn't ever take back what I'd done. I couldn't believe I was really that kind of person.

Lying there curled in a fetal position and my thoughts finally turned to the future. What was I going to do?

What day was it?

I called the desk and asked them the date.

Four days had disappeared on me while I'd been up in that room. I could account for three of them ... was I really that far gone?

What was I going to do?

That's when I realized the numbness was back. It was how I'd felt when I'd first started running and ended up in France. I'd been smart then. Knew I didn't want Terry to find me and I'd hidden from him. Had to be just that smart now. Had to figure out where I wanted to be, what I wanted to be doing and how I'd get there undetected or at least one step ahead of him if he was looking for me.

Went to take a shower. Had this flash of a memory of taking one the instant I got in this hotel room. No, not the first instant. The first moment there, I'd poured scotch in a glass and slugged it down. Took the bottle and the glass in with me to take a shower. Had stood there in scalding water and scrubbed my skin. And scrubbed. And scrubbed until I got all the semen and blood off me. Rid myself of his stench but not of my guilt and pain.

On this fourth day, it took that shower to make me move with purpose. Looking in the mirror after drying off my skin, I realized that the worst markings from my night with Max would be hidden under clothes as long as I wore slacks, a turtleneck and long sleeves. I could disguise the fading ones on my face with makeup and sunglasses.

My fingers were unconcerned as I pushed in at the purple around my right eye socket. Black eye? He'd never punched me ... so how did this happen? The memory bloomed inside me and cracked the moment into a million splinters of guilt.

"Tell me now that you don't want another man?" he whispered against my ear. His voice was this unholy mix of untamed victory over a rival and untainted need of reassurance and uncompromising domination over my femininity.

"Oh, God, Max ... please ..."

I never got to complete the thought. I was instead only able to whimper and then cry out incoherently as I gave in to what he was doing with my body. It was the only unpainful pleasure I'd allowed him to give me. He knew what he was doing. I didn't. I had asked and he was giving me something just to give me a taste of what he could be like if this hadn't been a night of revenge on others but had instead been about us.

So I gave in. But instead of tiring me out after I came like that, it fired me up. Just on the verge of his coming, I twisted away from him so I could experience what he'd taste like to come full into my mouth when he was this engrossed in seeking his release. He was not expecting that move and he reached to pull me back. But I was already thinking he'd lunge one way so I lunged in a different way and when I did ... my innate clumsiness got in the way as I turned my head suddenly in the exact wrong direction and connected solidly with his elbow.

Next thing I knew, I was flat on my face with my hand over my eye, rocking in the new pain. Somewhere inside me, I was just on the brink of coming again as I'd felt this surge of pleasure at the pain. Dying just to feel something other than numb inside.

"Turn over. Let me see," he said roughly to me, even as he was forcing me to comply. His fingers scraped my hand off my face. He gave me this annoyed 'tsk' as he examined the damage. I was fine until his eyes suddenly went soft on me and he whispered, "Wait here. I will get some ice from the other room."

"Fuck, Max. You think I give a shit about a shiner? Come back and just finish this. You haven't come yet. Let me ..." I groped for him. His hand caught my wrist and checked my move. We took one look at each other and our mouths were open ... and we were locked in this obscenity of a kiss until he gentled out of it.

"I didn't mean to hurt you," he said, still trying to make this what it shouldn't have been. Like he cared?

"Oh, so what? It's one more bruise. Here ... I'll even us up in the damage department."

I went to knee him in the groin ... this instant move on my part just to piss him off and get him ramped up at me again. But his reflexes were sharp ... his ankle was too ... my knee bounced off where he'd blocked me from connecting with his groin and I was clutching my knee, knowing yet another bruise would be popping up there after that.

"That will hardly do either of us a favor, will it?" he said as he slithered in between my thighs and went into me. I struggled against his onslaught but he had never had any real trouble subduing any woman, I would imagine. We slid somewhere on the razor's edge between passion and violence ... one rocking thrust against me too many and a violent, passionate coming did me in.

Somehow, the fight left me for a while. Perhaps the combination of fatigue, both mental and physical, along with aching soreness that I could finally feel ... perhaps these things just sapped me. I might have fallen asleep the moment the aftershocks leaked away.

When I came to, something cold and hard was pressed in over my right eye. I looked at him with my other eye. We just stared at each other. He looked as numb as the ice he was using to help keep my eye from swelling.

"It wasn't your fault." My fingers touched at his chest. I pushed in on a bruise I'd given him. "Does this hurt?"

He never even flinched. Instead, he shrugged my hand away and sat up. "Hold this in place."

I cupped the towel filled with melting ice to my face and let him wash my crevices with a wet, soapy washcloth. I closed my eyes. I couldn't feel anything. His touch was too gentle to be felt by a woman hurting as badly as I was. I hated it.

"I think you were right, Max. I wish I'd been a different kind of woman. Maybe he would still love me."

Cold desperation. I'd never be able to face Terry again. He'd never forgive me for what I'd done. If he saw me looking like this ... God, I was so ashamed and so destroyed.

I needed to keep running. There was only one place left that could give me sanctuary. There was only one thing left I could do if I wanted to survive. All I had to do was get home without him finding me. All I really wanted was to disappear.

Called room service and ordered a sandwich just to have something in me. Asked for two Cokes because I was dehydrated. Packed as I dressed and by the time the food was there, I was well on my way to formulating a plan. He had to know I'd been in London. I'd flown in without even bothering to hide my tracks because in some way I wanted him to know I was going on with my life. But now I was back to running. Decided I'd not fly out until that night because there was no way I could fly under anything but my own name and if he was tracking me, he'd keep tabs on the planes. But at night, he'd be less likely to be notified until the next morning if he had my name flagged. And by then, I'd be in the States and could move around easier without detection.

Drove back to London and headed for the airport to drop off the rental and book a redeye to Chicago. From there, I booked a flight to DC to throw him off my trail but instead of getting on the plane, I rented a car and started driving south. Still had plenty of cash and didn't use my credit card so he couldn't track me. Got into Chattanooga on pure adrenalin and panic.

It had dawned on me about the time I was booking through Nashville that I had more things to worry about than Terry. I had a job that I hadn't reported in on in over a week. In Chattanooga, I took a hotel room, turned on my cell phone and called in to the assignment desk.  Told them I'd had a personal emergency and needed another week off. Only caught a break because I had such a good record.

They told me to check my email for messages. Said they'd taken a few from Terry. He had been worried, they said. Figured they were already putting two and two together about the nature of my personal emergency from that.

Checked my email. Overflowing. Deleted the ones from Terry without reading them. Two from Dino got the same treatment. Read the one from Heather. So I called her. Got her machine. Told her I was safe.

Slept for only four hours. Got antsy. Started driving again. Made it into New Orleans the next day. Stopped at my lawyer's office.

Drove to Pensacola because I knew where the key to my uncle's cabin on the beach was secreted. Figured it was the best place to hide out until I could think a little clearer. Should have known Terry would know me well enough to have thought of all my hiding places.

He found me there two days later.