Scarlett couldn't remember the last time she'd initiated a kiss. She berated herself for all the lost time, wishing she could draw those wasted nights back around her like a cloak, to warm her against the chill of his impending desertion.
While part of her longed to go slowly, to savour the feel of Rhett's skin underneath her own, Scarlett knew she could not afford such luxuries. The kiss she gave him now was not gentle and lover-like, nor was it one of unbridled passion and lust. Instead, it was the desperate and hard kiss of someone revealing their hand despite knowing they've already lost the entire pot.
Rhett tensed beneath her, his lips turning from warm flesh to icy granite. Terrified he would stop her, Scarlett broke the kiss and took Rhett's aging face between her small hands. Forcing him to look into her wide green eyes, Scarlett whispered pleadingly, 'Please, Rhett, let me have tonight. I'll let you go in the morning, I swear I will, but I couldn't bear it if you left now, not when I love you so.'
Unable to hold his gaze, Scarlett dropped her head and showered Rhett's jaw and neck with kisses. Her hands roamed over his chest, exploring a body she had neglected for years and now had mere moments to memorise. She had never touched him like this, had never wanted to, but now it was as if a dam had burst, washing away all of her previous reservations.
An age passed before Rhett moved, his hand rising from the mattress to lodge itself under Scarlett's chin. She screwed her eyes shut, like a child hiding from the monster under its bed. If she couldn't see it then it wasn't real. He couldn't leave her if she didn't watch him go.
'Scarlett, look at me.'
She refused, taking comfort in the solid darkness behind her lashes. She could keep him here, tangled up with her, for as long as her imagination held out.
'Scarlett,' he repeated, annoyance ringing in his voice like the chime of a clock.
Thirteen.
Unlucky for some, and yet, beneath his irritation, Scarlett thought she heard the ghost of a laugh. Her heart rose to meet the sound. It had been months since she'd heard it last, and years since she'd been the one to inspire his amusement. It was as if her show of immaturity had transported them back to the honeyed time when her every action had entertained him, a time before his love for her had begun to die out.
Maybe it wasn't so hopeless. Perhaps, given enough time and gentle encouragement, Rhett's feelings could be coaxed back to life. Encouraged, Scarlett found the strength to open her eyes and look at him, her breath catching as she took her husband in.
His eyes were a deep, foreboding shade of black. His expression was guarded, as wary as a dog in the night, and yet the mask which had fooled her for so long had slipped a little, allowing her to read traces of confusion and anger, overlaid with a lifetime of regret. She remembered how, years ago, he'd taken great pleasure in undressing her with his eyes. Now she felt it was her inner thoughts he was striving to uncover.
Determined he should succeed, Scarlett poured her heart into her eyes, feeling them grow heavy under the weight of her love and heartache. Rhett stiffened, no doubt shocked to be granted entry into her soul after years of being shut out in the cold.
They lay in silence, their breathing slow, and shared a look which told them more than years of talking had ever managed.
'You'll let me go.'
It was not a question, but Scarlett nodded her head anyway, desperate to win this one last battle.
'Very well,' he concurred. Scarlett did not know what had prompted him to give in. Perhaps he was touched by her genuine show of affection after having thirsted for it all these years. Perhaps he wasn't ready to let go of their marriage yet, either. Probably, she thought sadly, he was simply too tired to fight any longer and reasoned that giving into her demands now was the best way to escape her hold in the long run.
Biting her tongue to stop herself from grinning in triumph, Scarlett pursed her lips expectantly. When Rhett's hand tightened under her chin, pulling her back down for a chaste and cautious kiss, she could have cried for joy.
Her happiness turned to confusion when Rhett broke the kiss and lay back down on his pillow. Darting her eyes up to meet his, Scarlett saw not the dismissal that she had feared, but a look of complete surrender. Rhett was going against his domineering nature to grant her absolute control. For one night only he was placing himself at her mercy, allowing her to use him as she saw fit.
Scarlett scrambled to decide what she needed most. She considered spending the night talking as they'd loved to do on their honeymoon. Curled up together like kittens in a basket, they had whiled away the lonely hours by telling tales of their pasts, Rhett often making Scarlett giddy with laughter as he regaled some particularly scandalous escapade or other.
While the idea appealed to her, she did not know how to begin. The last few years had seen their conversations dwindle into an endless, tired parade of cruel insults and stinging barbs. She had all but forgotten how to speak to him civilly, let alone with love rather than hate in her heart.
Besides, what did they have left to talk about? Everything that had once tentatively held them together was gone now. Melly; Scarlett's businesses; their contempt for Atlanta society...Bonnie. Dear, darling Bonnie. She had been the very best of them, an angel sprung forth from two jaded devils.
Scarlett wanted nothing more than to spend the night reminiscing about their child, bringing her back to life with every cherished memory. But she knew that Rhett would run at the first mention of her name. Scarlett had lost all right to speak of Bonnie the moment she'd accused Rhett of killing her. Some wounds cut too deep to heal. Some words could never be taken back.
Rejecting the idea of drawing Rhett into conversation, Scarlett considered lying down next to him and going to sleep. It would be the first peaceful night she had spent in months. How she had missed the shape and warmth of him. Since banishing him from her bed, Scarlett had tossed and turned her way through many a restless night, wishing Rhett would throw open the unlocked door and wrap her up in his arms. She recalled how he used to splay her long hair out across his throat while they slept, a gesture so simple that she had always overlooked it, but which now made her heart ache dully in her chest.
Yet even with Rhett beside her once more, Scarlett knew she would not be able to find peace. Her mind was too overwrought for sleep, filled with images of Melanie, Ashley, Rhett, and all of the other people she had naively considered to be her friends, but who'd finally revealed themselves to be nothing but strangers.
But if sleep and conversation were off the table, what remained?
A hazy, heated memory of the aftermath of Ashley's birthday party drifted into Scarlett's head. That had been a turbulent, terrifying night, unlike any other in her short life. It had untethered all her deep-rooted beliefs about marriage and wifely duties and opened her eyes to a different type of life, and a richer vein of love.
That night Rhett had swept all of her fears and concerns aside until all that remained was sensation: the feel of his rough skin against her smoothness; the sound of his deep, guttural groans against her soft whimpers; the pungent, heady taste of his sweat against her honeyed wetness.
It had made her heart pound like a drumbeat in her chest, calling her out of her apathy and into the writhing theatre of war, where the sweetest of pleasures was indistinguishable from the sharpest of pains.
Lying above Rhett now, Scarlett could feel her buffeted spirit weighing down upon her like a boulder on her back. How had it come to this? How had two people capable of such passion been reduced to these ragged spectres, doomed to haunt the wasteland of their once full lives?
She wished with everything she had that she could go back to that night, could discard the intervening years as easily as her widow's weeds and scale those dizzying heights once more. Looking back, she couldn't understand how the encounter hadn't alerted her to Rhett's feelings. His every touch had screamed out his devotion while she had lain ignorantly by, too wrapped up in her own pleasure to notice his.
She had been as much of a fool that night as she had been every other, carelessly throwing away opportunities to be truly happy, in a way that life with Ashley could never have made her. But she knew that no amount of I'm sorry's or Please forgive me's would change what had been and gone.
Scarlett sighed. No more words now. It was time to act.