"I'd lost myself in the abyss of someone else's tyranny...again." Cassandra Giovanni, Love Exactly

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XXXIV.

Cressie was quite certain her heart had ceased to beat the moment that Jem had rounded her privacy screen, and it had not restarted in the several moments that she had been standing before him in a scandalous state of undress.

Jem had to have lost every bit of his sanity to have found his way to her there. What on earth was he thinking? How had he managed to get in? Did he not realise the danger that he was in? The danger that they were both now in. Had Imelda caught him in her bedroom, Cressie could not even fathom the consequences.

And yet ...

And yet, Jem was still standing before her, with her, even after all this time. His coastal gaze washed over her as she stared into the hue of her favourite colour. His dark hair was curlier at the ends near his forehead, where the sweat from his exertion still glistened. He was not so formally attired as he had been, and as he usually was, during his calls. His cravat had been abandoned and the top buttons of his shirt were undone. He had also forgone his waistcoat. The linen of his shirt clung similarly to the planes of his chest in a way that Cressie found to be blush-inducing.

Jem was terribly handsome. He was also terribly foolish. In that moment, Cressie wished she were not so preoccupied with the former thought.

If Jem was any bit as distracted by her form, he did not display it. Cressie had not realised that she had been standing before him in nought but her drawers for the shock. Her scarlet cheeks had to have betrayed every reckless thought that was racing through her mind.

"I am sorry for frightening you," Jem uttered quietly. "I realise ..." he paused sheepishly, "I realise how incredibly peculiar this intrusion is, and that ..." His eyes shifted, and his composure waned for a second, and Cressie felt a stir in her stomach.

Cressie bit down on her bottom lip to focus on something that was not her erratic thoughts or the nervous fluttering in her stomach, but the moment she did, she heard Jem suck in a breath.

"Don't do that."

"What?" Cressie whispered.

She watched as Jem's jaw clenched and unclenched, his eyes boring into hers. Her heart still felt as though it was suspended in time, though she had long theorised that it no longer resided in her own chest. Perhaps the reason it felt this way was because the person to whom it had always belonged was standing right there in her bedroom.

Cressie knew she ought to have been afraid. She had spent the last five years of her life learning to be afraid of things that no usual person would ever find frightening.

She had learned to fear food. She had learned to fear certain styles of dress. She had learned to fear the dressmaker's tape measure. She had learned to fear her own voice and her own thoughts. Cressie had learned to fear her own shadow, and in doing so, she had completely lost herself.

She had been schooled by a man who had vowed before God to honour her. Everett had broken every vow he had made, though, could a man of honour ever make such a vow?

But in Jem's presence, Cressie was not afraid. She felt no semblance of fear. For the first time in a very long time, Cressie felt more herself then she did the weak lamb that Everett had moulded her into. The fog that had been clouding her mind for the longest time was clearing. The shackles were loosening. She was swimming up towards the surface, ready to finally take a breath.

Cressie did not know what reason had brought Jem to her bedroom, but it could wait. She took one step towards him, and then another, those two being all she needed to find his hands. The moment she reached for them, Jem bypassed her fingers, and his hands found their way to her waist.

The feeling of his hands on her waist, separated from her skin by only a thin piece of cotton, sent a shiver down her spine. Cressie could see Jem's kiss in his eyes before his lips found hers, but the moment they did, Cressie completely lost any inhibitions that may have been lingering in the back of her mind.

She felt the floor disappear beneath her feet as Jem lifted her up into his arms, and Cressie felt completely bathed in a sense of safety that should not have felt so foreign to her.

Her fingers found their way into his hair as she kissed him with a passion that had been long forgotten. She smiled against him as her hands travelled to his cheeks, where she could feel the subtle prickle of his jaw. Cressie was barely aware of her surroundings, or the fact that Jem had carried her out from behind the privacy screen.

But all too quickly, she was suddenly returned to her feet, completely breathless, and Jem was ten feet away from her.

He was near her dressing table, equally as breathless, his cheeks flushed and his eyes ablaze as he stared at her.

"Why did you stop?" Cressie asked, her voice embarrassingly thick.

"Cressie," Jem said, in a tone that he had probably meant to sound firm, yet it came out just as husky as her own. "You deserve more respect than this. You deserve everything."

Cressie felt a spark of defiance, of fire, deep in the pit of her stomach. She felt the flicker of the fight that had long left her, and it filled her lungs as she spoke. "I deserve to choose my own fate. I deserve a say in my own life. I deserve to decide, Jem!" Cressie said emphatically. A tingling sensation travelled down all of her limbs, right to her fingertips and the tips of her toes. It felt like power, like she had regained control over every morsel of her body.

Jem's expression softened as he looked upon her, in a way that only he could. It was as though he was seeing Messy Cressie, the person she truly was, and the person only he could appreciate.

"You kept the conch shell," he whispered.

It took Cressie a moment to comprehend his words. Her eyes briefly flicked to the trunk at the end of her bed, where, indeed, the conch shell that he had gifted her five years earlier was hidden. Perhaps at any other time, she would have chastised him for opening her trunk, but she could only assume that he had a good reason.

"You gave me the ocean," Cressie whispered back.

"I would give you anything." Cressie could hear the love in Jem's voice as he uttered the most devoted of sentences. But in his eyes, she could see that something was keeping him from crossing the room once more to her. And then he said it. "You are another man's wife."

Cressie shook her head. She wouldn't hear that word; she would not hear herself be described as a wife. What she had become was not a wife. "I am another man's caged bird," she bit back as she lifted her left hand to look upon the wedding band that resided there on her ring finger, "and I have had enough." Cressie pulled the ring from her finger, and as it passed over her knuckles and then settled into the palm of her hand, it felt as though she had untied her own noose.

A smile tugged at the corners of Jem's mouth, before it spread across the lower half of his face as he looked upon her with such pride. "Messy Cressie," he breathed, shaking his head. "There you are."

"I'm here," Cressie said with determination, "and I am not going anywhere."

"Oh, yes, you are." Jem marched towards her then and collected her once more in his arms.

Cressie decided then and there, that there was nowhere she would have rather been.

***

Cressie awoke with a start. What time was it? For how long had she been sleeping?

She was immediately aware that she was not alone in her bed, as she could feel the warmth of the hard body beside her.

"Are you alright?" Jem whispered into the darkness. His voice was not tainted by sleep. He had clearly been awake.

Cressie felt a comforting hand trail down the length of her back, and then back up again. Lord, how easy it would have been to imagine that it all had been a dream. But it wasn't. Jem was here, beside her.

Cressie turned to the table beside her bed and reached for the oil lamp that she knew was there. She immediately illuminated it, and her bedroom flooded with golden light. She blinked several times as her eyes adjusted to the light, before she rolled back over to find Jem watching her.

He was sitting up a little, leaning against the quilted headboard of the bed. His lower half was covered by the bed linens, but his upper torso was bare. Jem appeared pensive, his eyes more serious than the passionate blue they had been some hours ago.

Cressie's throat filled with dread. "Do you regret staying with me?"

Shock crossed Jem's face as he reached out for her immediately. He found Cressie's waist underneath the covers and pulled her to his side, cradling her into his chest in seconds. "Never," he promised her. "I only wish that this was going to be easy for you. I do need to tell you about why I came in the first place ... but I cannot help but worry about something else."

"What?" Cressie whispered against his warm skin.

"If ... if there's a child ..."

Jem could not even complete his sentence before Cressie interrupted him. "There won't be." Cressie's mind immediately brought her to the memory of the relief that she felt every month when her courses came. Her barrenness had been a source of joy for her, one of the only sources. She had never carried Everett's child.

And she would never bear Jem's. And that realisation did not bring her joy. Not even close. In fact, Cressie felt a pang of a sort of pain that she had never felt before.

"I cannot have children," Cressie confessed, almost soundlessly.

Jem was quiet for a moment. Cressie was certain that it had been over an hour before he spoke again. And all that he said was exactly what she had needed to hear.

"I love you." And then he leaned down and kissed the top of her head.

Cressie blinked away a wayward tear which dropped down onto Jem's skin. When he felt it, his grip tightened on her ever so slightly.

"I'm going to get you out," Jem uttered quietly. "That was what I came here to tell you. I was always going to need help, and so I wrote to your mother."

Cressie stiffened, before sitting bolt upright in the bed. "Mama?" she gasped. "You have heard from her?"

"I have." Jem nodded. "And she is coming to help."

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Hope you enjoyed it!! 

An Innocent Affair got a little bit not innocent hahahahaha. But it's all good because Mrs Martin is going to come and it will all be so easy and then everything will be fine, because that's my reputation - easy and drama free :)

MUAHAHAHAHAAHAAHAHAHAAHAHA dw friends, we'll finish off with a bang :P

There's always room for more drama and suffering. Always. It's a littleLo story, after all hehehehe.

Alright, sleepy time for this drama addicted gremlin. Nighty night!

Vote and comment xxx