Summary: Pritkin POV during his healing scene at the end of Curse the Dawn. So, spoilery, if you haven't read that book.
Disclaimer: It all belongs to Karen Chance; I'm not making any profit off this work. This is a piece of fiction, written merely for the sake of entertainment

I'm going to Hell.

That's what I told her as we sank to the floor, her body beneath mine. My blood has speckled her clothes, and I feel the artery beneath the makeshift tourniquet pumping against its restrictions, against the power that is trying to knit cells back together. The pain of the gash, of the curse still wiggling its way through my flesh is secondary however, to the feel Cassie's skin under my palms.

I'd almost forgotten my own strength, and I think she might bruise from my grasping fingers, my lips that ask for so much. I can't help it; I gentle the kisses and my hands as much as I can, but the scent of her rises up against my nostrils and flicks some switch deep in my brain.

I know I'm talking; I hear her voice. But it as if it is from a distance. My control is slipping, so quickly. As if I ever really had any around her in the first place. Her hands are like brands on my skin, and I enjoy the burn too much, far too much. I can't let this be about me, even though she ordered it to be so.

The trousers slip down her hips easily. She really is far too thin, and some part of me laments that, while the majority is breathing in the sweet, heady odor of her arousal. The thin cotton that separates my tongue from the quivering heat of her is so so damp, and I lick at it, exhale a whisper of breath against the pesky barrier.

My eyes slip closed as something liquid loosens its grip around my spine and seeps upward through my skin. Distantly, I feel it surrounding us both, twining with her energy and siphoning off particles of it. My injuries knit themselves one by one as I bury my face against her center and relish the sound of her moans.

I think I could go on like this forever, pleasing her and feeling her writhe in pleasure. But then she touches me, small delicate fingers tracing over where the cursed flesh had once been. Her thighs tremble against my shoudlers, the skin creating shivers of friction, and it's suddenly not enough.

I want all of her. I want her so badly my teeth ache and my neck muscles feel like snapping from the tension of holding on to that last thread of control with all of my might.

I've been to Hell, and one day I may go back.

But it will not be today. It will not be because I lost my grip when something so precious was within my hands.