*The following chapter contains mature content that might not be suitable for certain readers.* 

With chaste heart and pure

Eyes

I celebrate you, my beauty,

Restraining my blood

So that the line

Surges and follows

Your contour,

And you bed yourself in my verse,

As in woodland, or wave-spume:

Earth's perfume,

Sea's music.

It had taken a while but they had gotten used to waking up besides each other. They still had separate mattresses and separate bedding but after that night, he had woken up to the sight of her right beside him. He couldn't forget the way she had allowed him to wind his arms around her or the way she had held on to his hands even though he must have hugged her for what seemed like hours. She was silent after he had gone to sleep and he hadn't felt even a gentle sway of the curtain between them as she pulled it down. He hadn't felt her mattress bump gently against his nor did he hear her as she slipped beneath her covers.

He had only woken up to the sight of her light freckles over her cheeks and her red lips that had opened slightly as she slept. Her braid was messy and strands of her dark brown hair escaped its hold as she tossed in her sleep but he liked the way it looked. He couldn't deny his attraction to her- in any sense of the word. The hot Summer air left room for thinner cotton pyjamas that moved and swayed with her body. She would never realise as she slept that her v-neck collar had dipped just a little lower as the hem of her t-shirt was caught beneath her arm. Her collar had dipped beneath her shoulders, between her clavicle and had exposed the light brown skin of her cleavage to him. It was clear of all bruises and marks and her skin looked smooth and soft as her chest expanded and contracted with every breath she took.

He couldn't deny the fact that he wanted her very, very much but he could never ask it of her. He, of all people, knew what it felt like to never have control of his own body. He knew what it was like to never have control over anything and that was what she craved more than anything else. She needed control. She needed to know that her body was her own to share with whomever she pleased and if waiting for her meant that she would find that- he would do it for her. He didn't want to hurt her. He didn't want to ever think that she would cry in a bathroom, alone and bruised and sore because he taken what he wanted before she truly wanted him to. He never wanted to imagine her lying on the floor of the shower, rubbing uselessly at the raw, bruised skin between her legs and crying because it had hurt so badly. He could never, ever do that to her.

He would never do that. He would never be his father...

"Mama?" His voice was small and his words were not yet fully developed but he knew something was wrong when he heard her cries echo throughout her huge bathroom. He didn't like the sound of her cries. It was wrong. She wasn't supposed to cry; she was supposed to hug him and hold him when he cried but she was never supposed to cry herself.

"Is iets vout?" He asked, remembering the words she used whenever he felt sad.

"In English, baby." She smiled lightly, wiping away her tears as she opened her arms to him. "You know daddy doesn't like Afrikaans." He walked slowly towards her, confused at the way she was sitting. Her dress was raised to her hips and her legs were opened. She had blue marks all over the tops of her legs that had been coated with a thick layer of zambuk causing them to look almost glossy.

"What's this?" He asked, poking lightly at the marks dotting her legs.

She wiped her nose with the back of her hand before wrapping her arm lightly around his stomach as he settled against her. "It's nothing, baby."

"Does it hurt?" He looked at the marks closely. They looked like the blue marks he had on his wrists when his father pulled on them too tightly and those would always hurt him.

"No." She shook her head, tickling his tummy gently. "Daddy was just showing me that he loves me, that's all."

"Then why were you crying?"

She looked down at him oddly. He was far too smart for his age and it worried her because she couldn't lie to him if he knew she was lying. "They were happy tears."

"What are happy tears?" he couldn't understand the concept. Crying was reserved for when a person was scared or sad. Why would a person cry when they were happy?

"Sometimes your heart feels so happy that it bursts and when that happens, all the happy bits have nowhere else to go except to your eyes and they look like tears but they're not."

"Oh." His green eyes gleamed under the lights above them as he gazed up at her. "Do I make you happy?"

She squeezed him softly, kissing the top of his head. "You make me very, very happy."

"You make me happy too." He smiled up at her, his white little teeth glittering up at her.

"Someone's been brushing his teeth every day."

"Twice a day."

"That's my boy." Her voice was soft as she ran her fingers gently through his hair, barely aware of the dampness beneath her fingers as her tears fell silently onto the light blonde strands...

Nakedly beautiful,

Whether it is your feet, arching

At a primal touch

Of sound or breeze,

Or your ears,

Tiny spiral shells

From the splendour of America's oceans.

Your breasts also,

Of equal fullness, overflowing

With the living light

And, yes,

Winged

Your eyelids of silken corn

That disclose

Or enclose

The deep twin landscapes of your eyes...

She had noticed him following her for days already. She knew him, recognised him but never truly knew who he was until she had seen him walk into the restaurant almost a week ago. He would come in, sit down, order only a plate of chips with fried fish and leave.

Then he would stay in his car, keeping his eyes trained solely on the shop before him making note of her every move. He worked as an independent investigator and she knew her mother had hired him far too many times to count over the years. Tasneem knew it was only a matter of time that she was found and she was sure that even 4 months was too much to ask really.

She was never scared of him. Whenever he had gone to their home when she was younger he would always be polite and courteous with her. He would greet and ask her about school and about her subjects. She knew he had two daughters similar to her age and a son a few years younger. His hair was a peppered grey and his paunch was rather prominent but he had kind eyes and a nice smile. She wished they could run away again and pretend that she had never seen him. She wished that they could truly disappear one day and never be found but their lives were real and wishes don't always come true in real life. She knew that he had already seen Riaz and she was sure he had followed her home but what could she truly do about it?

"There's a man in front who's looking for you." Mr Umar said gruffly as he walked into her small room. "He's been here almost every day for 2 weeks now."

"He's from back home. He works for my mother." Tasneem said while pulling off her apron.

"I don't like it. See that he never comes here again." Mr Umar said softly ensuring that no one would overhear him.

"Okay..." She wiped her hands one last time on her jeans before she walked back out on shaky feet. Now that it came down to it, she wasn't actually feeling very brave at all. She walked slowly, prolonging the actual meeting but she could never say why.

"Miss Domingo." The man stood up, grasping her hand in a firm handshake.

"Yes?" She pulled her hand back almost immediately before wiping them subtly on the material of her jeans. "I know you, don't I?"

"Yes, you do."

"I just don't know your name." She said, refusing to acknowledge the chair he had pulled out for her.

"My name is not important." He dismissed her disguised question. "What is important is that I've finally found you."

"Does," she cleared her throat uneasily, "Does she want me to come back home?"

"Your mother didn't hire me." He said slowly, enunciating each word carefully. "Your brother did."

"Oh." Her mind had frozen over his words. She didn't know how to react to it.

"He's angry."

She paled at his words remembering all the times she had angered him in the past.

"He wants you to go back home."

"That's not my home."

She had said it so softly that she was sure she hadn't said it at all.

"Pardon?"

"That's not my home." She said, louder.

"Is this your home?" He asked, looking pensively up at her.

"Yes."

She couldn't go back.

"So what do you suppose I tell him?" He asked, watching the way her fists clenched and unclenched over and over again.

"I'm not going back and he can't force me to under the South African law. I'm 22 years old. I'm not a child and I'm not his child." Her chest was heaving as blood rushed throughout her body. Her heart constricted painfully in her chest as her lungs expanded madly forcing air into her system. "I'm married and I have a life here now and I'm not going back."

"You're married? To that boy that walks you here every morning?"

"Yes." She felt as if her throat was rubbed raw with her words.

"I know him." He crossed his eyebrows as he thought hard about where he had seen him before. "I sometimes do work for his father."

"Please leave." She said softly, standing up straight once again. "My boss doesn't like you very much and he's asked that you never come back again."

"Your brother won't be very happy about this." He said, standing up slowly as he gathered his summer coat in his hands.

"Please leave." Tasneem said once more. Her shoulders felt heavy and her eyes burnt with his words.

He found her. He knew where she was.

She would never go back.

Never.

"You won't leave me?" He was lying behind her with his arm clamped around her waist as if he was shackling her. "Right, you'll never leave me?"

She didn't answer him. She couldn't say a word to him as she laid still praying he would let her go.

"Right? Answer me!" He tightened his hold over her, pushing his hand deep into her stomach.

She shook her head but said nothing else as she curled into herself. She needed him to leave so that she could get up and wash his filth off of her.

"Good." He kissed her naked shoulder softly, before pushing her to lay down beneath him.

"No please..." Her voice cracked as his hands flitted over her chest. "I'm tired."

"Fine." He kissed her lips softly before moving back to look at her. "I suppose I got a bit carried away today."

She nodded her head once before she looked back down at her hands.

"I'm sorry." He kissed her lips softly once again heralding no response from her...

He leaned back to look at her, lifting her chin with his index finger before he brushed his lips over hers once more yet still she lay unresponsive. He leaned back, glaring at her as she stared off into nothing before he leaned in again...

He wasn't gentle when he kissed her for the fourth time and deep inside- she wished she had just kissed him back.

But she never could...

Your body- from what substances

Agate, quartz, ears of wheat,

Did it flow, was it gathered,

Rising like bread

In the warmth,

And signalling hills

Silvered,

Valleys of a single petal, sweetnesses

Of velvet depth,

Until the pure, fine, form of woman

Thickened

And rested there?

He walked into their flat past 9 at night. It was dark inside even though they had electricity that night. The hallway outside was brightly lit but inside it was pitch black. The moon wasn't even shining and what little light came from the bottom of the doorway was lost in the vast expanse of darkness before him. "Tasneem?"

He switched in the light slowly, wondering if she was even home, when he saw her still form sitting above her mattress. "Hi." She turned around look at him as he stepped closer to her. "I'm sorry, I didn't really feel like sitting with the lights on today."

"It's fine." He sat down beside her, wincing as his back curled around a fresh bruise.

"What happened to you?" She asked watching him move around uncomfortably.

"Mr Jacobs asked me to fight this kid he's training but he was fighting dirty."

"Oh..." She leaned back to look at his back. "Where does it hurt?"

He lifted the bottom of his t-shirt allowing her to catch a glimpse of the large black-purple bruise forming along the side of his spine.

He felt her poke gingerly at it, wincing as she touched a particularly sensitive part. "Sorry." She moved her hands away before she stood up to fetch her handbag. "I don't have much for bruises, but this will have to do." She pulled out a small, round, green metal tin from her bag before twisting it open.

"That's fine." He turned his back to her, shifting slightly as she touched his spine with her cold fingers.

"I'm sorry." She mumbled, rubbing her hands together before dipping her fingers into the hardened, green balm inside. "How big was he?" She asked, rubbing the balm over his bruise as gently as she could.

"About my size." He grimaced as she neared the blackened centre.

She didn't reply, distracted by the light pink marks along the length of his spine...

Her hands felt warm over his skin as she rubbed further and further up his back, exposing more and more of his skin as she did so. "This is a really nasty bruise. Have you seen it?"

"No. How big is it?" He turned his head to look at her as she looked down at his back.

"It starts here," Her hand brushed softly along the base of his spine, "And carries on..." Her voice softened as she trailed her fingertips slowly over the bottom of his back moving upwards along the little pink marks lifting his t-shirt further and further as she went along...

"Till?"

"Till..." Her hands were still cold as she moved up his back, her fingers dancing gently along the giant bruise marring his skin, "Here." She stopped, tapping his skin gently with her index finger.

He only nodded his head, ignoring the fact that almost half his back was exposed and that she could see every mark that had criss-crossed his skin.

She carried on rubbing the balm into his back, forgetting what she was supposed to be doing as she felt his skin beneath her fingers. Her mind was still occupied by what had happened during the day and no matter what she tried to tell herself, she couldn't not feel afraid. So, so deeply afraid that she was sure all of the vessels in her body was exhausted of it. "My brother knows where I am."

Her voice was soft, almost a whisper as she spoke to him. She carried on rubbing his back, gently massaging all the knots that had formed in all his muscles. "He sent someone to look for me and he finally found me."

Riaz turned around, breaking the fine link between them as he looked fully at her for the first time that evening. "How do you know?"

"He told me himself."

"Who told you?" He asked, his brow furrowing in worry.

"I don't know his name. I only know that he does work for my mother sometimes." She sat down on her knees, burying her hands beneath her legs as she spoke. "I don't want him to know where I am..."

It felt as if he was invading her body all over again. Finally, she had found something that was never tainted by him and now he knew about it. Just the fact that he knew about it and thought about it made everything feel dirty all over again. It felt as if he was walking with them down the street, and eating with them at the table and sleeping right beside her on her mattress. It seemed as if the day before was nothing but a beautiful dream that had popped as soon as the sun rose again. She was good- She was in a good place with Riaz and she was forgetting what it felt like to be dirty all the time. To feel disgusted with her own body...

And then he came and he took it away from her again. To know that he would think about her in his sick ways made her feel as though those thoughts were not thoughts at all but they had somehow transformed into a phantom reality that she couldn't escape.

"If he knows where I am, this place won't be..." she bit the corner of her lip, "Mine. It won't be mine anymore. He'll know about it and he'll take it away from me." She knew how irrational she sounded but she couldn't help but feel as if just the thought of him setting foot anywhere near her would shatter her illusion of normality once again. He'd destroy what she had only to replace it with her true normal... The one he had created for her. "I don't want him to take it away."

She had one night before he would find out. She had one more night of her magical normality. ''I want to be normal with you. Just for once, I want to be normal with you."

It is not so much light that falls

Over the world

Extended by your body

Its suffocating snow,

As brightness, pouring itself out of you,

As if you were

Burning inside...

She moved closer to him, allowing his knees to brush against her own bare ones.

"What does normal mean?"

She stood up slowly, walking towards the light switch at the door, unbraiding her hair as she did so. ''It means that I want to forget what it is that we're scared of." The lights switched off with a resonating click before she walked slowly toward him in absolute darkness. He hated the way the darkness lingered no matter how many times he tried to blink his eyes or how tighty she curled her hands around his own. He could feel her chest brush against his thin t-shirt as she stepped closer to him. She could feel his hand shaking beneath her own, fraught with nerves and adrenalin as the darkness set in all around him, suffocating him.

"You can feel it, can't you?" His voice was right by her ear as he spoke.

"Feel what?"

"You know." He couldn't say the words, unable to force it out of his throat.

"You're scared." She rubbed her thumbs over his knuckles as if to soothe his fears. ''I'm scared too."

''I won't hurt you."

"He hurt me..."

"What did he do to you?" Their voices were hushed in the dark as if the darkness itself was alive and listening in on their secrets.

"He touched me. He never asked me if it was okay or if I wanted it but he touched me anyway." He could feel her thick, rounded thighs brush against his own as she stepped just a little closer.

''I would never touch you without your permission." He promised, repeating the words he had said once long ago.

''I know you won't." He could hear the smile in her voice as she squeezed his hand slightly. "I want you to- I want you to touch me but I don't know if I'll be able to tell you that it's okay." She confessed, unaware of the spike in his heartbeat as he heard those words.

"You want me to touch you?" He asked cautiously.

"Yes." She repeated her words carefully, reminding herself that she truly did want it.

"Can I-" she felt him move her left hand beneath his own to rest on her right wrist, "Can I touch you here?" He asked softly, never truly touching her skin himself.

"No." She never wanted him to touch her there.

"Can I touch you over here?" He asked softly, his voice sounded husky to his own ears as his throat constricted more and more with each second.

She couldn't reply, feeling her hand trapped between her own arm and his large, warm, soft palm.

"Can I?" He asked once again, awaiting her hum of acceptance.

"Can I touch you here?" He moved their hands slowly, the edges of his palm brushing lightly against the skin of her arm as he roved over her shoulder.

"Yes." Her breathing seemed laboured and deep and she was sure he could feel every heave of her chest against his own.

"And here?" He asked softly, his ears pricking at her intake of air as their hands moved gently over her collar bones...

"Yes..."She could feel the rush of air hit the back of her nose as if it were a wave of water crashing against her.

Their hands delved lower still...

"Here?"He asked, feeling her warm breath against the top of his arm as she leaned her forehead to rest against him. She couldn't understand what it was that she was feeling but her body had begun to feel warm all over at his soft touch and gentle caress.

He could feel her nod her head gently before allowing their hands to drop even lower, resting over the smooth skin right above her heart. Her hand had been the one to touch her own chest but she could feel only tips and edges of his fingers graze softly against the thin lace of her bra...

He could feel her heart hammering beneath his fingertips as he touched her, awaiting her reply.

The slight bump of her head against his arm signified her acceptance before they moved their hands just a little lower, travelling over the hard, firm skin of her curved stomach.

"What about here?" His voice was impossibly low, barely even resonating within the room as if he shielded all of them even from the darkness itself...

The base of his palm rubbed against her bellybutton, allowing him to feel the way it contracted beneath his touch.

"Yes..." her words were the softest of whispers as she gripped his arm with her left hand slowing his hand over her right....

He moved their hands lower still.

His palm trailed against the waistband of her pyjamas... "You have to stop me now Tasneem."His voice shook as he leaned down to speak into her ear. "You have to stop me."

Yet her hand only tightened its grip over his arm as his hand descended even lower...

"Please stop me." He asked once again, as his fingers trailed beneath the thin material of her striped pants.

As brightness, pouring itself out of you.

Her fingers were shaking against her own stomach as she shut her eyes tightly...

As if you were

Burning inside...

Her hand clenched and unclenched itself against his arm as time seemed to have slowed down all around them and the sound of the crickets outside their window seemed to have amplified as her breathing deepened with each passing second...

"Stop me."

Under your skin the moon is alive...

She didn't stop him...

She couldn't...

Under your skin, the moon is alive...

She couldn't...

A/N The poem used in this chapter is called Ode to a naked beauty by Pablo Neruda.