"To be twisted by something, a shame without a sin."
She was sitting on the couch, legs tucked under her body as she leaned against the arm of the couch, a blanket draped over her as she read the book in her hands she had been working on since she got off of work for the weekend, and was about a hundred pages in a few hours later. There was six hundred to go.
It was mid-October, and the air was crisp, the Eastern Tennessee winds blowing the fiery orange, muted brown, and sunny yellow leaves across her yard. It was dark, just a little past four thirty, with just enough sunlight left to give the otherwise waning sky a tint mixed with dark and light blue. Every once in a while, Iriye would glance up from her book, and become entranced with the scene outside the window next to the large television mounted onto her living room wall.
Her eyes had finally wandered from her window after her mind had blanked out, and found the words that pulled her into the fiction world she had developed a connection to. Her mind was empty except for what she was reading, and taking a part of within her own mind, and nothing else really mattered in that moment. She was lost in that made-up world, forgetting the one she actually belonged to.
A vehicle flew down her street, passed her house, and then reversed back, then into her driveway. When she looked up, she immediately knew who was driving that cerulean truck with the rust around the cab doors. He jumped out, and tripped over his own long legs, letting out a loud curse that had Iri chuckling quietly. The jeans he had on were loose on hips, his belt nowhere in sight, and his shirt was half tucked in. She could spot the green and purple bags under his eyes, even with how far away he was, having had parked all the way at the very edge of her drive.
"What is wrong with him?" Iri had never seen the man look so ruffled.
It had been a few days close to two weeks that he had been coming to see her, and it wasn't every day. Sometimes they just sat and watched TV, Iri usually holding him somehow in his arms, and while she could lay with him all day, any day if she wanted to, and if they both could, they had only slept together intimately one other time besides the first. Iri didn't want that to define what they had, what they were growing to have.
She learned that her door was unlocked when he barreled through it with more force than the simple task of turning a knob warranted, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he looked down the hallway that branched off the mudroom, towards one of the guest rooms situated down the hallway, "Iris?"
She flinched at how loud he was speaking, but waved her arm regardless, knowing that those keen eyes of his would catch the movement. He couldn't yet feel out the room and spot her based on the way his body reacted to his surroundings. He hadn't yet associated the heat that rushed over his body, the electricity that made his hair stand on end any time that she was near. "I'm in here, Micah."
His head turned so hard that she heard the bones in his neck pop, and those eyes of his were dancing as they landed on her, but his expression was severe, livid, even, as he made his way to her.
Her curious eyes were watching him with that same interest they always held when it came to the man with the permanent smile. He was a few feet in front of her within seconds, and as Iri looked up at the man, she could immediately tell that something was off about him.
His pupils were so dilated that she could just barely make out the color of his eyes, just a small ring around a black marble.
"What did you do?" She asked with a sigh as she stood up, and directed him towards the single seater, but he was out of her arms in seconds, and his lips were on hers so quickly and roughly that Iri immediately felt her lip split as her own teeth dug into the sensitive skin.
