Stacey sat up with a gasp and scrambled to the shower. She sat under the warm spray, scrubbing her skin until it turned red.
What had she done?
What had she done?
Why on earth had she behaved like a nymphomaniac?
Had she been drugged?
That hadn't been her. It really hadn't been her.
Stacey hugged herself, shaking in panic at the embarrassing and disgusting flood of memories. Her hands wouldn't stop trembling.
If she'd been drugged, how? Whichever way she looked at it, she was never, ever taking drugs or getting drunk. She didn't even know how it had happened.
Crazy. It was all crazy. She'd gone mad. There was no other explanation for it.
When Thieren walked into the bathroom, called by her concerned attendants, she shrank into a corner of the shower cubicle, hiding her face in her knees. With a sigh, he turned off the shower and draped a big, heavy bath towel around her shoulders. She tried to fight him off at first but couldn't do anything against his strong, silent resistance. In the end, she curled up into an even tighter ball, shivering.
With a deep sigh, Thieren placed her in the bed with the help of Elsa and Anna, exchanging the wet towel for a drier one, after gently patting her dry. With a hairdryer, he carefully dried her hair, combing his fingers through it slowly. In a low voice, he talked to her, stroking or patting her back and head.
Stacey felt that her life had recently been overly eventful. Things had happened one thing after another and she was struggling to come and keep up with it all. The last few months of her life had happened in a blur. Like a weird dream with snatches of painful clarity, before something else happened to send her to the brink again. She felt like she had lost touch with reality and who she was, not only that, with daily life too.
Her memory of the past week or so - wait, was it a week? Or was it more than that? Whatever. The past however long. Start again. Stacey's memory of her recent past felt like the memory a drunkard might receive after a night of being plastered and going wild. It wasn't funny. It was downright frightening.
If she thought beyond that, that lady with the shiny, black high heeled shoes had been doing something to her and her memory. Then there was the first night she and Thieren had… Stacey swallowed and took a deep, shuddering breath. She couldn't remember that night very well. When she thought of this, she could see animals mating in her head and a strange feeling would start to overtake her.
It made her feel queasy and her head hurt.
She hated Thieren, and yet she needed him and relied on him so much now. Stacey felt that the contradiction was irreconcilable, but then, how could it exist? The fact that she needed him to comfort her and was willing to lay in his arms while he patted her, otherwise she felt like she might go crazy again, it made her hate his proximity and touch at the same time. It made her loathe herself.
Clutching Thieren, she wanted to look into his eyes and beg him, plead that he never touch her in that way again. That he would leave her alone and perhaps not even hug her like this again… but she couldn't bring herself to say it. Could bring herself to look him in the eyes. She was too ashamed of herself. Especially because she had the feeling that one day, just one day, she might need his comfort like this again. If she pushed him away again now, what would happen if he also totally rejected her and refused to help her anymore?
What if, God forbid, he gave up on her?
Would he?
She relied on him so much, what happened if one day he had enough of her?
What if, after all these days and those kinds of activities, she got pregnant? What would she do? If she had children, what was she going to do with herself? She definitely didn't think she'd be able to bring herself to abort her own baby, but in the same token, she doubted she would be allowed to here on Gaius. It was probably against the law.
Good point. That was a point, but it wasn't the main point.
Stacey felt like she was going off on tangents here, trying to escape the reality of what she had been doing the last few days with Thieren. And enjoying it. Wanting it.
Was that really her? Even if she had been drugged or drunk or gone crazy or something, what she wanted to know was if some small part of her had really - no, that wasn't what she wanted to think. What she wanted to say was she hadn't been ready. Thieren had still disgusted her. She hadn't been ready.
She still wasn't ready! The thought of doing those kinds of activities with Thieren made her feel like she had ripped herself to pieces and dragged herself through the mud. It was disgusting. Dirty. Filthy. Awful.
Vulnerable.
Oh help. She had been and was now, feeling scraped raw and utterly vulnerable. Helpless. Weak. Worthless.
Why?
Why did these things have to happen to her?
Why her?
Why did it have to be real?
Why couldn't it have just been a story someone made up and wrote for a trashy novel?
God, help her.
Stacey didn't know what to do with herself anymore. What to think of herself. How to look at herself. She'd been exposed to the world and felt like the world had trampled on her in disgust.
How was she meant to keep living with herself?
How?