you really should listen to this song.

can you feel us now?

can you hear us now?

Otzeki: True Love

XVI

The hard vinyl of Grim's piercing table is cool under my palms, both of them warm with wanting to touch him and all the effort it takes not to. I sit on the edge, black boots swaying slowly to the aggressively sensual metal lullaby flowing from the speakers down the hall, and my cheeks deepen ever-pinker while his pulse takes mine to task.

Not so fast, his heart says.

Hard.

Harder than that.

Every beat fills me and the room with heavy heat while I watch him - not his reflection - the real him, prepare to mark me again.

Tight-lipped as he always is when we're awake and alone, he arranges things on the small steel table without a word while I gaze at his Adam's apple and ache to feel it between my teeth. The tension stretched from his jaw to his collarbones teases me, while the sweater I love - the threadbare black one that hangs off his shoulder - dips to the top of his left bicep, revealing where the carbon-dark ink that covers his whole arm starts.

Or ends.

I can't tell.

Somber copper locks fall around avoidant, grey-green eyes as he turns to me, stainless steel needle in obsidian-gloved hands. A slick rush of anticipation swims through my veins, and I reach up to tuck my hair behind my ear.

"Hold onto the table." His voice is warm with warning, a wisp of smoke whispering, run. I dare you.

I do as he says, gripping the table's edge with both hands as he leans in.

My knees part naturally, but Grim steps beside instead of between, and the half-lush half-lethal scent of him is so thick I can taste it. Myriads of butterflies fill my chest with fluttering, making it impossible to breathe in anything but a shallow serenade, and my blush spreads to my chest, down my middle. It dips past the undone fly hidden below my own black sweater and skims down both of my unsteady legs as he pushes my hair back, tucking it behind my ear like I was about to, and I wonder if he can feel it.

The rise in my temperature.

The neverending need burning off me in small swells.

Some of it inborn.

Some of it endowed just to him.

Can he smell his scent all over my skin?

Can he taste the sedative he craves, spilling little by little over my bottom lip as his fingers find my ear and tilt my head and send everything afloat?

"Deep breath," he bids, closing in as I obey, filling my lungs, my blood, all my senses with his nearness.

He must tell me to let go, because the next thing I know I'm breathing out. My earlobe is stinging and he's switching sides, already touching my hair and my other ear and telling me to breathe again.

"In," he presses, vexed breath caressing my cheek while the ominousness in his tone sinks so deep it hits backbone.

My whole frame arches toward him as I do it. I breathe in and then out around a pinch of pain, and then he's walking away, a tall shadow of coal-colored cotton and broad shoulder blades. An infinite canon of gloves snapping off and used things hitting the bottom of the trash can. A fantasy of imminence and intimacy I can still feel because it's not a fantasy.

It's real.

He's real.

This is all real.

Anchor's laugh down the hall. The small hot hurt thrumming from my earlobes. Grim's charcoal leather jacket, hanging in the corner beside a calendar I never noticed, flipped to January.

My stomach drops.

That can't be right.

January?

What about December?

And November?

"Let me ask you something," Grim says, suddenly casual, drawing all my attention as he tears off a paper towel, drying light and dark hands together.

I nod, caught off-guard between the weight of deja-vu, so much lost time, and the base taste of harm I let this man bring me.

Again.

The whole world seems to sway with his steps. My heart skips with each one. I feel lost and shook up. I'm exhausted but my head is reeling so fast I. There's no pattern to my pulse, and when what's mine comes close enough to touch, all his butterflies go wild in my ribcage.

Walking around me, he stops behind my back and uses his boot to knock some lever that takes gravity away. The table lowers a few inches, and I'm nothing but nerves as he turns it. Nothing but bated breathing and beating wings as he makes me face the mirror on the back wall I've never noticed. I am all softness as I stare at us. All tender and trembling and slick-feeling as I see how harrowingly good my lover looks, looming tall behind me.

Eerie fear fills my throat like the sea into a sinking boat. I don't know what's happening, but my entire body is fervently aware of how close he is. It makes me want him even closer, but this is new territory, and I'm not in the lead. I'm not in control, but I'm along for the ride no matter what it is, and the longer I gaze at our reflection, everything that isn't in the mirror starts to blur.

That's when Grim leans in.

"There's just - " His tone is bold, tinged with cockiness I only get when he's dreaming. His movements are just as dauntless as he reaches for my sweater, taking all the air in the room away as he pulls black and white stripes up and over my head in one quick tug.

Knit-cotton disappears as he tosses it somewhere out of the mirror's frame, and I'm bare from my undone jeans up.

"One thing," he continues, taking my hands and bringing them to the table's edge, telling me without words to hold on. My breaths shake as he nudges my head next. Guiding me by the chin. Bidding me without speaking to stay facing forward.

Every synapse fires as I watch our reflection. Every naked nerve ending surges open while heartbeats throttle my veins with unconditional yearning.

Is this what shock feels like? Am I in shock?

"That I can never figure out," he finishes.

It's too much to take in all at once. I'm too exposed, too soft for him, too enamored with this attention. I want it all too much to keep my eyes open as his ink-cloaked arm snakes around my stomach, guiding me back to himself as he pulls my hair over my shoulder with his unmarked hand.

In the dark behind my eyelids, my whole body becomes a pulse. Everything is so warm it's stifling, and deep in my throat there's this timorous need to tell him to be careful. I'm so soft. He could hurt me. But his nose graze my neck, stealing my voice as he breathes me in before cutting a hard exhale, coating my nakedness in heat so rough I can't breathe.

I can't do anything but feel him touching me.

And it's like he knows it.

He knows.

My head falls back to his chest as his uninked hand dips inside my open jeans, pushing them down just enough, and his moan melts into my blush as I rise helplessly into his boldness.

"If the gods don't want you to mate," he whispers, insistent fingers finding me, feeling me for the first time. "Why'd they give you such a hot little cunt?"

My cheeks burn so hot it hurts. I gasp hard as my hips lift higher, and Grim hums a coaxing sound behind my earlobe, digging his nose just below where he pierced me. Where it still hurts. Where it makes me whimper and writhe. His mouth opens against my throat as he deepens his claim, parting me with purposefully brazen strokes.

"If I'm not your mate," he purrs lowly, his voice just as irresistible as his touch. "Why's it get so wet when I'm around?"

The words pour hot and heavy down my skin just like I'm pouring for him.

"Why's it so fucking sweet on me?" He taunts, sliding inside the little sea I've become in his hands.

I can't answer.

I still can't breathe.

I can't even open my eyes.

I can't do anything but ride his derisiveness, and all I can think is please.

Please don't be dreaming.

Please let this be real.

Please please please let me have this.

Pushed down denim digs into my thighs as I strain to open wider, and fierce prey finds where I'm so achingly sensitive it feels like my heart is right under his thumb.

"If they made you just to ache, why'd they give you this?" He asks, drawing a ring around the smallest, most vulnerable part of me so possessively, I can't help crying out and pulling back.

But there's nowhere to go.

Trying to get away from his hand only pushes me tighter into his arms.

Grim's heart wages war between my shoulders, forcing my own to pound through my body like thunder while he circles my clit with Orphic fingertips, making me tilt and shake and rock until I can't help it. I'm twisted against him and riding his touch and coming in bone-shaking waves. Panting and dizzy and wet all over. Wet like rain. Wetter than anything -

"Look," the only man who's ever touched me this way whispers. The smirk in his voice is darker than I am wet. Dark like what I know is inside me. Dark I forgot about and am suddenly terrified of.

"Look, baby."

I don't want to, but his blacked-out hand is on my jaw, turning my head from his chest to the mirror. From what felt like a dream come true, to the most vivid nightmare.

Lips I covet hover over my shoulder, his face half-hidden behind me while pure black spills from my neck to my chest, coating my stomach and breasts in streaks and drips while panic swallows me whole.

Grim moves at the same time, disorienting me as he takes my boots, my socks, my jeans, everything away and gets liquid darkness everywhere. His ink-black hand leaves a sodden print on my hip as he draws me to the edge of his table while his clean hand pushes me onto my back.

From this angle, everything that isn't him spins quickly into a lightless backdrop.

There's no ceiling mirror where there should be.

No room around us.

Just him and the dark and I can't tell where one starts or the other ends.

If it came from him or me.

It's on his mouth and dripping from his marked hand, smeared across my ribs and seeping from his tongue when he licks his uninked thumb, painting it black before he rubs it over my open lips, coating my cry in a wet shadow before sliding inside to stain my tongue.

I don't need a mirror to know that's all it takes to fill my mouth with endless darkness. To make it match his mouth. To bring the River Styx up to my lungs in steady, unstoppable waves.

Grim's grin is pitch black as he towers above me, holding me frightened in place with one hand while he unbuckles his belt.

I don't need to look to know his hips are drenched in slick shade. I arch and twist as his thumb circles what feels like my heart and he presses my thighs apart, his grip soaked and slipping with so much darkness.

I'm drowning him in it.

It's sinking me straight to him.

And still he wants more.

"Do it," my lover half-goads, half-coaxes, impatient as he grips my jaw and makes me meet his black eyes while he fills me like a flood. "Wake me up."