Tabula Rasa

Chapter 81

Calina stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Her hair was tangled and sweaty and stuck to one side of her head. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy. The skin around her mouth was red from the friction of Matt's beard.

She looked a mess.

But she felt...kind of wonderful.

Blissed out and relaxed, her emotions steady for once. She wasn't battling with several feelings at once, or swinging on a pendulum from one extreme to another. She felt like she was just...hovering in between. Floating there in the centre, calm and loose.

Maybe it was thanks to the solid eight hours of sleep she'd just managed - the longest stretch of rest she could remember since waking up in Wakanda two months ago.

Or maybe it was due to her breakdown last night. Maybe that cathartic release had drained her dry and her emotional tank was empty, the gauge in the red.

Calina splashed some water on her face, patting the cool liquid over her sore eyes. God, she hadn't cried like that in...her entire life? One moment she'd been riding the euphoria of her second orgasm of the night, feeling Matt come inside her, his hands leaving trails of heat and pleasure as he swept them up and down her back...and the next she was in tears, sobbing uncontrollably.

She'd long since given up trying to rationalise her emotion outbursts. Dr Gossard had worked with her in the beginning to identify the triggers that set her off, but there didn't seem to be a set pattern. Her bouts of anger, her crying fits, her panic attacks...they were unpredictable and random, for the most part.

For the most part.

She had a feeling she knew what had caused her tears last night:

Five years without touch.

For five - no, nearly six - long years her only human contact was the impersonal ministrations of the medic who treated her wounds, the painful blows from her enemies, and the too-rare hugs from Karen and her daughter.

She'd grown up deprived of the comforting embrace of others - the Red Room trainers weren't exactly the nurturing touchy-feely types. But in the year of freedom she'd had before Thanos' snap, she'd gotten used to touch - to Matt's touch especially. To the way he kissed her. To the way he made love to her. To the way he felt moving inside her...

And to all the more innocent - but no less intimate - caresses that became a part of her normal life. Like the hand he'd place at her lower back as he followed her into a room. The brush of his fingers against hers as he passed her a cup of hot chocolate. His thumb rubbing circles over her knee as they sat together on the couch, her legs draped over his lap. His arm wrapped around her waist as they fell asleep in bed at night...

But for nearly six long years she'd lived bereft of his touch. And she'd deprived herself of anyone else's, isolating herself behind the walls the serum created, unaware of the damage she was doing to herself.

Yet all that time, her skin had hungered.

A hunger that had been slaked last night. Matt had kissed every inch of her. He'd brought her to climax with his tongue and his touch, and he'd pressed his body against hers as he'd moved inside her...

It had been so much contact, all at once. Her body couldn't contain the relief and the joy and the pleasure she'd been feeling...so she'd come apart.

But Matt had been there to hold her tight, to gather the loose threads of her and pull them back together. And when her tears had finally subsided, she'd been able to sleep. Deeply and dreamlessly for hours in his arms.

So maybe it had been the release of tears; or maybe it was the good night's rest that was responsible for her feeling so peaceful this morning. Or maybe she was overthinking it, and all she'd needed was to get laid.