Chapter 5: The Lesson
He walked her to her apartment door, a silent sentinel at her back. The elevator ride up had been wordless, charged with the unspent energy of everything shown and said. Lex fumbled with her keys, the metal clinking loudly in the quiet hallway. Frankenstein waited, hands in his pockets, watching the numbered lights above the elevator doors as if they might convey some urgent message.
Inside, the apartment felt different. The morning light slicing through the windows was too bright, too exposing. It lit up the dust motes dancing over her knives, gleamed off the steel toe of the single boot on the shelf. She was hyper-aware of the space, of him filling it.
“Can I get you anything?” she asked, the hospitality automatic, hollow.
“No.” His voice was soft. He stood just inside the threshold, observing her space with a scientist’s detached curiosity, though she saw his eyes linger on the boot, on the precise arrangement of the blades. “You should rest. Your system is depleted from adrenaline and emotional fatigue.”
“I don’t think I can sleep,” she admitted, hugging herself. The ghosts of old touches, the ones that left marks, felt closer in the wake of her confession.
“You will.” It was not a suggestion. It was a statement of fact, calm and immovable. “Go. Change into something comfortable. I will be here.”
She retreated to her bedroom, leaving the door open a crack. She stripped out of her jeans and tank top, the clothes feeling like a second skin she needed to shed. She pulled on a soft, worn pair of black sweatpants and a loose grey t-shirt. No seduction here. This was about survival, about testing his claim that he could look at her mundane, broken self and not flinch.
When she emerged, he had not moved. He stood at the wall of windows, his back to her, outlined in the hard city light. He looked like a statue commemorating some ancient, silent war.
“Bed,” he said, without turning.
She obeyed, sliding between the cool, crisp sheets of her minimalist platform bed. She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, her body rigid. She heard him move then, his footsteps silent on the polished concrete floor. He appeared in the doorway, a silhouette that seemed to drink the light from the room.
He approached and sat on the edge of the mattress, the fabric dipping slightly under his weight. He didn’t touch her. He simply looked down at her, his expression unreadable in the dim room.
“Close your eyes, Alexandra.”
“I’m scared to,” she whispered, the truth ripped from her.
“Of what?”
“Of what I’ll see when I open them. That you’ll be gone. That this was… pity.”
A low sound escaped him, not quite a sigh. “I do not traffic in pity. It is a worthless currency.” He reached out then, but not for her hand. His fingers brushed a stray strand of platinum hair from her forehead, the touch so light it was almostimagined. “Sleep. I will keep watch.”
She closed her eyes. The darkness behind her lids was a relief. She focused on the sound of his breathing, slow and measured, a metronome in the quiet. Minutes ticked past. Her muscles began to unclench, one fiber at a time. The bed was soft, her body was heavy. The edge of panic began to blur.
But as she drifted, the old memories surfaced, not as images, but as sensations. The grip of a hand that wasn’t his, the cruel pressure, the feeling of being trapped, small, and worthless. A whimper caught in her throat. Her eyes flew open.
In the gloom, Frankenstein’s gaze was luminous, focused intently on her face.
Without thinking, her hand shot out from under the covers and grabbed his wrist. His skin was cool, the tendons strong beneath her fingers. She felt the raised line of that long, ropey scar under her thumb.
“Stay,” she breathed, the word barely audible. “Not just there. Here.”
For a heartbeat, nothing. Then, centuries of restraint dissolved.
He moved with a speed that should have been terrifying, but wasn’t. It was sheer, inevitable purpose. In one fluid motion, he was over her, caging her with his arms, his knees bracketing her hips. He didn’t crush her; he surrounded her. His face was inches from hers, his eyes burning with a blue fire she had never seen.
“Are you certain?” His voice was a raw scrape of sound, all polished civility gone. What remained was something primal, honed over hundreds of years of want and denial.
“Yes.” It was a gasp.
He kissed her.
It was not soft, not exploratory. It was a claiming. His mouth landed on hers with a hungry, devastating precision, his lips parting hers, his tongue sliding in to taste her. She groaned into him, her hands flying to his hair, tangling in the silken dark strands. He kissed her like a man starved, like he was drawing some essential sustenance from her breath, her whimpers. The scent of him—old books, ozone, and something deeply clean—flooded her senses.
He tore his mouth away to trail hot, open-mouthed kisses down her jaw, her throat. His hands pushed under her shirt, his palms scorching against her ribs. He found the first scar, a knotted line along her lower abdomen. He didn’t avoid it. He licked it. A long, wet, deliberate stripe along the flawed terrain of her skin.
She arched off the bed, a broken noise escaping her.
“You see?” he murmured against her stomach, his breath hot. “Every mark. Every repair. It is a history. It is you. And I want to know all of it.”
He yanked her shirt up and over her head, tossing it aside. The cool air hit her skin, followed instantly by the heat of his mouth on her breasts. He took a nipple into his mouth, sucking hard, his tongue flicking the peak until it was a tight, aching bud. His other hand palmed her other breast, his thumb rubbing circles that made her thighs tremble. He switched, giving the same brutal, exquisite attention to the other side, biting down just enough to make her cry out.
His kisses descended again, lower, following the map of her past. Each scar on her torso, her hips, the long one along her inner thigh from a shattered piece of patio furniture—he kissed them, licked them, whispered against them. “This one,” he would say. “Tell me.”
And between gasps, she would. “The fireplace.” “The car door.” “The belt buckle.”
And each time, he would worship the marred skin with his mouth, as if transforming the memory from one of pain to one of sensation, of his sensation. It was an exorcism performed with lips and teeth and tongue.
“Frank… please,” she begged, writhing, her sweatpants feeling like a torturous barrier.
With a low growl, he hooked his fingers into her waistband and dragged them down her legs, along with her underwear. He discarded them, then knelt back, taking her in. She was naked, exposed, every flaw visible in the slanting dawn light. She forced herself not to cover herself, to meet his gaze.
His eyes drank her in, a dark, possessive hunger etched into every elegant line of his face. “You are so fucking beautiful,” he swore, the obscenity sounding like a sacred vow. “Every shattered piece.”
He shrugged out of his sweater, then his own shirt, revealing the torso she had only felt through fabric. It was a landscape of power and ancient violence, sleek muscle overlaid with those same silvery lines, the mottled patch, the puckered scar. He was a monument to survival. And he was hers, in this moment.
He leaned down, kissing her deeply again, his bare skin sliding against hers. The feel of him, the sheer, solid reality of him, shattered her last reserve. She wrapped her legs around his hips, grinding herself against the hard ridge of his erection still confined in his trousers.
“Now,” she demanded, biting his lower lip. “I need you now. No more waiting.”
A sharp, approving smile touched his mouth. He unfastened his trousers, freeing himself. She looked down, her breath catching. He was large, thick, veined, and vividly alive. He watched her look, his hand stroking himself slowly.
“Tell me what you want, Alexandra.” His voice was thick.
“I want you inside me.” The words were filthy, direct. “I want to feel all of you. I want it to hurt in a good way.”
He needed no further invitation. He positioned himself at her entrance, the broad head nudging against her wetness. He was stretching her, a delicious, burning pressure. He pushed in an inch, then stopped, his whole body trembling with the effort of his control.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
She did. Her green eyes locked on his blue ones.
He drove home in one relentless, deep thrust.
She screamed, a raw, unfiltered sound of pleasure-pain as he filled her completely, stretching her to a point just shy of unbearable. He held there, buried to the hilt, letting her adjust, sweat beading on his forehead.
“Fuck,” she sobbed, her nails digging into his scarred shoulders. “Oh, god, fuck.”
He began to move.
It was not gentle. It was a ruthless, pistoning rhythm that shook the bed frame, that drove the breath from her lungs with every snap of his hips. Each stroke dragged against a spot inside her that sparked white-hot behind her eyes. The sound was obscene—skin slapping against skin, wet, sucking noises, their mingled grunts and moans.
“Is this what you wanted?” he gritted out, his composure utterly shattered. His hips hammered into her, his balls slapping against her ass. “This hard? This deep?”
“Yes! God, yes, just like that!” She met every thrust, lifting her hips, taking him even deeper. The coil of tension in her core wound tighter, a scream gathering in her throat.
He shifted his angle, driving upwards, and the world fractured.
Her orgasm ripped through her without warning, a violent, convulsing wave that clenched around his cock, milking him. She shattered, crying out nonsense, her back bowing off the bed.
The sight of her coming, the feel of her tight channel spasming around him, broke his control. With a final, savage groan, he plunged into her one last time, holding deep as he pulsed, jet after hot jet of his release filling her. It seemed to go on forever, a torrent of centuries of withheld want.
He collapsed onto her, his weight a crushing, welcome anchor. His face was buried in her neck, his breath coming in ragged gusts against her damp skin. She could feel his heart hammering against her own—a frantic, mortal rhythm in his seemingly immortal chest.
They lay like that for long minutes, glued together by sweat and spend. Slowly, carefully, he rolled them to their sides, slipping out of her. A sticky, intimate wetness trailed down her thigh. He pulled her back against his chest, his arms wrapping around her, his hand splaying possessively over her stomach.
The first pink rays of true sunrise were painting the skyline outside her windows.
He nuzzled the shaved side of her head, his lips against the delicate shell of her ear. His voice, when it came, was quiet, hoarse, and utterly certain.
“The bridge is built, Alexandra.”