You can sleep, sweetheart.
you enter slowly because you know my room
and then you crawl your knees off
and you shake my tomb
Deftones: You've Seen the Butcher
XX
It's night when I wake.
I don't remember turning my bedside lamp on, but it fills my room with a pale opal glow. My hair is inextricably tangled and my whole body is wracked and weak. My fever feels deeper than ever and my mouth is bruised with hunger. The private crying in my ears has engraved itself in my heart and it's throbbing so hard the baby-soft hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I curl around myself. A chill trembles through me when I dare to breathe, leaving my bottom lip quivering and my arms crawling with phantom needles.
Hard heartbeats double-up as I blink hard and narrow my eyes in disbelief. I blink again, but I'm still unable to believe what I see.
Even when I run my fingers over the tiny mortal responses to shock and arousal, I don't trust them. They feel real, but they can't be.
I'm dreaming.
It's the only explanation.
A gravely low growl lures my eyes from impossible goose bumps to the dark-filled window.
In the dream, I shove nested blankets hastily away with a sudden surge of intuition, but my limbs are lead-heavy and unwieldy. It takes too many distressing seconds to get to my feet, and my legs are completely unsteady. I falter and sway with each step while the growl grows closer. So close I feel it reverberate in my bones as I lean against the window's frame for balance.
Outside, everything is in its right place. Every quaint little house is perfectly quiet and every quaint little mailbox and tree and porch swing is perfectly still while uncertainty only consciousness brings rises through the middle of me.
Am I dreaming?
How do I know?
Does it matter?
My pulse quickens exponentially, each beat flowing into the next, making the flood of it fuller. Faster. Harder, like it only does when -
Coming steadily closer, the growl of Grim's engine settles to a slow purr as low beams light up the street. Thousands of homesick swallowtails flutter wildly, a fading fire flickering back to life between my lungs. A rush of heat washes over everything, breathtaking, heartdrowning, butterflyfrightening - covering me in an instant and unstoppable, full-body blush as my punisher draws near.
The familiar softening of all that I am is a physical assault.
An onslaught.
Heaven.
I love and hate it just like the first time, and I missed it so much I can hardly stand. My knees sway. My backbone slips, but more than anywhere else, I feel it in my lips. My tongue. My mouth goes so soft my own delicate fingertips feel like a storm as I trace where it parts, and I'm overwhelmed with how warm I am. How lush. How made purely for opening.
For holding.
For soaking sweetly and swallowing deep.
Headlights creep along the border of our dark front yard, and I lean back against the wall, out of view but still looking. The Nova's low rumble inundates me from pulse-filled ear drums to tightly curled toes, sharpening my hunger with my prey's proximity.
Even outside the house, Grim's heart forces mine to match his pounding cadence, charging my chest with such desperately strong beats that if I was sleeping, I'd wake up afraid it was going to break my ribs.
He's here, every soft pink part of me sings. He crossed the line. He couldn't stand it. He wants me. There's no other reason for him to be on this street at this hour.
Just me.
He wants me.
Slowing immeasurably down, the shadow of his profile turns slightly as he passes the two-story house Alice shares with me, and I remember the lamp on my bedside table is still on. The shiny black Chevy keeps moving, and I can't help but wonder if the nacre-soft glow in the upstairs window satisfied whatever drew my insomniac here, or if it only stoked it.
Glaring red tail lights blind my eyes for a single second. Then I'm moving. Flying down the stairs. Out the door as growling that pulled me from sleep fades further away with every soaring step. The distance of his heart is merciful on my attenuated pulse, but I can't bear it. I don't want mercy.
I want worship-swollen lips and tender-sore hips.
I want ruthless endurance and obscene derision.
I want him unbridled. Unthinking. Dream-fucking me until tears roll down my cheeks like hot little diamonds and melt into pitch black oil slicks on his sheets.
I want him too close for comfort.
I want him to the hilt.
I want him to the bone.
All over me like the ocean. Buried so deep no one will ever find him. I want to bathe in what he's fought like hell to save.
I want his soul.
His soul to keep.
His whole soul inside me for always.
It's so intense suddenly, the craving to finish him. It's so cogent, so all-consuming, I don't even feel the first mile go by. Wanton, urgent thirst is all there is now, and it doesn't care how weak I am because it grows stronger with every footfall. It doesn't care that I'm wearing next to nothing because I left on impulse and it doesn't care what drove him to drive by tonight.
Just that he did.
He came to me. He broke the barrier, and now it's as wide open to me as I've always been for him.
All that's left is to take what's mine. Even if it takes days to finish him off. Weeks. Months - my whole body blushes at the thought of so much time, of getting to stay down on him for so long - I'm not coming up for air until the most precious and sacred part of him is locked inside me.
The last drink is all there is now.
The kiss that will seal his spark in my darkness forever.
It's all I can think of, all I need, all I can feel as I cut between hemlocks in leaps and bounds so swift, my feet barely touch the ground. I follow the path I know by heart and thrive on how much better it beats with every step closer, tattooing the inside of my chest as I jump across starlit streams and drumming eagerly in my ears when I finally tear through the thicket.
Birds and bats startle into flight as I step out into the nightime-lit glade. Wolves howl at my back. A rough wind blows, and my pulse surges against a thousand pins as I lift my eyes to Grim's empty A-frame. Silhouetted by the full moon's reflection in the creek rippling behind it, the cabin stands empty, but not for long.
There's no snow to reveal the inhuman prints my human feet leave as I approach, but my bare soles are slick. My steps to his door are hardly visible in the wet grass, but inside the cabin they're very apparent.
I want them to be.
Leaving a cloven little trail of damp-dark tracks through his kitchen, across his living room carpet, into the bathroom, I take off the white tee and black briefs I ran here in and shower completely clean.
So there will be no prints leading to my hiding place.
So there won't be anything on my skin in the morning but him.
Back in the living room I missed like home, I grab a match from the mantle and crouch in front of the hearth, lighting a fire it's no longer too much too soon for. One flame spreads into many as I stand back up and toss my clothes in to burn before turning.
Drawing my fingertips over the teakwood table, the wall of book spines and the antique map of the windy city, I mark everything with my touch all over again and take the stairs just like I did my first night here - drunk with desire and high on need.
Fantasies twist through my mind just like they did then, muddled now with memories, dreams, and nightmares. They all swirl and overlap and wind so tight there's no telling them apart as I round the top of the steps, and his scent drags me under like the hardest drink.
Returning to Grim's room is even better than entering it the first time. Air that's laden with hits of black flint and watermint leaves, orris root and swelled ripe stone fruit goes straight to my head. And this time when I trace the folds in unmade sheets, it unlocks fleeting notes of my own scent, what's left of it, as delicate as powder down.
I smile in cool silver moonlight, loving that even though he's the one who separated us, he's been haunted too.
I don't get in and roll around for the same reason I only revealed half my tracks.
I want him taken totally aback. Unnerved. I want him questioning what's real.
If anything has ever been real.
I want him mad.
As mad as he's made me.
Bound more than even a madman is.
I want him lost.
To me. For me. With me.
Beneath me. Inside me. All over me -
Trailing the lightest touches over potted valerians, heavy headphones, and the frame of his closet, I pull the door shut and crouch down in the farthest corner. Shrouded in the darkness of my favorite hiding place, I close my eyes and reach up to brush sweater sleeves while I swim in the sound of my heart beating the same single-syllable vow it made months ago.
Mine.
Mine.
The throb of it comforts me at first, like the word is being fulfilled, but it dips from gratifying to impatient the longer I wait, and time is two-faced. Nothing feels real. Everything feels real. I have no way of knowing how long goes by. All I know is with every moment, I become tighter and deeper tethered.
Less human.
Less demon.
More junkie.
More fiend.
Waiting grows more oppressive every second. My lips tingle from the restless tracing of my fingertips and my tongue has never felt so silk-wet. My mouth aches from not being able to close. Even after the punishment of so much time apart, it's still locked open in waiting for him, filled with the need for fullness while my legs suffer the same, kept apart and quivering in ardent anticipation.
By the time growling fills my ears again, I'm fit to be tied.
Bound down.
Laid into and never, ever let up.
I'm such a heedless mess of lust-laden hunger that I have to cover my mouth once he cuts the engine because I can't help the fervid little sounds slipping into each breath as he gets out.
Steady steps pause halfway across the grass, shifting a second before continuing, and I know he's seeing how I left the cabin's door.
Wide open.
Black-hole heavy, Grim's pulse pounds so hard my whole body throbs with the blunt-force return of it to my chest. Curling around beats I missed so badly, I shrink smaller into the corner as he continues walking. A shade quicker than before, steps weighted with daring push me deeper into the rut he already has me in. So deep that when he finally enters and finds my trail across the floor, his heart hammers so loud the physical pressure of it besets me on all sides.
My lips part wider and I struggle for more air as I listen to his careful boot steps. I wish I could see his face, how his eyes narrow or dilate as he follows clefted tracks to where they disappear. Where bathtub porcelain is still beaded-wet from my shower and how frosted glass still holds warm hints of condensation. Where he stands bewildered and unsettled for a few seconds, breathing air he can't get enough of before heading back to the living room.
Where the fire I lit is crackling at its full height now.
Where I sipped his tea and smoked his weed and traced the circles from his sketchbook between my legs day in and day out for months. Where I reveled in his tee shirts, bare from their hems down, and fantasized about him coming home, taking advantage of the open invitation of me on his couch, more afternoons than he'll ever know.
Blushing so hot I'm panting, I bite my purposefully-shaped bottom lip and strain through staying put, but my jaw draws my mouth back open, and my legs long to close the distance between us. I want to go down to him so much I can taste it, flirtatious and sweet on the back of my tongue. I'm so enthralled I can smell how he moves the air in the cabin, the scent of fire storming the stairs ahead of him.
Flanking him on all sides like rolling, vicious cumulonimbus.
Seeking.
Finding.
Covering me without contact or permission.
As wholly as I want the man that smells more like an inferno with each step, a chill grips my backbone. Pinpricks of panic pour across my skin while dread seeps into my veins. He climbs closer, and I cower farther into the back of the closet, pulling my knees to my chest in an effort to muffle my heartbeat.
The sudden fear that he'll hear it mimicking his and mistake me for subservient wraps around my neck like a hand, dripping with darkness.
I want him to find me, but how I'm meant to be - on my knees, mouth around him, swallowing every inch like the ravenous wraith I am.
I want him to find me taking what's mine.
Not hiding.
Not afraid.
Keeping as quiet as I can, I hold my breath as he takes the last stair, but the nearness of his heart pulls my own into my throat, flooding me with earsplitting, mouthwatering beats. The heedful rhythm of his steps across the room rends every already blushed-supple part of me softer than the wake of a falling star while his pulse barrels against my eardrums. A teardrop flickers and burns down my cheek, coming apart on my knuckles as I listen to him open his sketchbook, and my lonely, unhallowed heart detonates beat after depraved beat between my lungs, matching his violent lead as he turns page after page, searching for something before tossing it aside. It lands o
He heads back to the staircase, and every step down hurts more than the one before it. As he makes his way through the living room, then the kitchen - no longer moving carefully, walking right over my tracks - the worst fear creeps over me.
The sound of a door sliding open has me on my feet before I can blink. I'm blindsided out of the closet. Soaring down the stairs. Ready to chase him anywhere. Everywhere -
But his footsteps slow to a stop on the cabin's back deck, and I freeze on the last stair, listening.
He doesn't move for a second.
A minute.
A millenia.
That's how it feels to be stuck in fight or flight.
I could stay still right here, waiting for his next step while I fight the urge to crawl wherever he goes and tell him the truth - that I know he can only stand me on my knees.
Or I could do it. I could go to him. Naked and aching as I am, I know I'm too vulnerable - too warm, too wet, too willing to do anything for even Grim to deny.
He came to me. In the middle of the night. He sought me where I sleep. He wants me. I know he does.
But I also know not to underestimate his mean streak.
And the thought of him sending me away again is too awful to even think.
So I slink along the walls like a shadow, unsure where his grey-green eyes might be. I follow the fire-warmed scent of wild iris and black powder to the floor-to-ceiling window-doors at the back of the house.
Where he left one slid-open like an invitation.
Where nighttime's pale glow seeps across the carpet like an iridescent pool, threatening to expose me if I take another step.
Where I finally see my prey for the first time in weeks, profiled in full white moonlight.
Standing in the center of cherry oak decking with his back to me like a wall, Grim pushes his black hand through long bronze disorder and stares at the stream of gleaming clear water, crashing gently over and over sticks and stones. The soaked whisper of it seems to be washing over him, smoothing the edges of his nerves enough that my own ease a little too.
The second they do though, he shifts, throttling me back to breathless. Shrinking tightly into the corner, fully hidden and sorely hyperaware of his every movement, I peek one anxiously wide eye out just enough to watch him bring an adirondack chair from the cabin's top step out to the very middle of the deck, and settle into it like a throne.
The fine-lined, crimson Creation of Adam tattooed along the nape of his neck rests above the back of the chair as he sits, while the only jewelry he wears, the Star of Ishtar that's supposed to ward off evil spirits, sways from the small chain in his earlobe. Its futility is more endearing than ever as he leans back and stretches his legs out, openly daring whatever broke into his home to come out now. Show itself. Engage him.
Cloaked in midnight, my lips curve into my cheeks.
I've been too soft on the man who makes me so soft it hurts. I've let him feel like he's in charge. I've let him be in charge. It's been too long since I've put him in his place. Since he had to wait. Since I made him ache and strain and beg.
That's how we got here.
But this is also where it ends.
I'm dragging Grim back to where he belongs tonight.
Breathless underneath me.
Then I'm going to finish him.
While he sits in wait, I slip from concealment to lurk so close to the wall of windows that my toes hit the bottom sill. The sheet of glass feels so frozen my breathing hitches, but any contact feels like a reprieve at this point.
Stepping incrementally closer, my shaky-shallow exhale fogs the pane.
Outside, my lover tugs his hood up, warming himself while my own temperature drops.
As patiently as I can, I wait however long it takes for him to give this up. To come back in for a shower. To head upstairs to bed. Lifting my hands, I press them to the only barrier left between us as I bide time. The glass is so cold my eyes fall closed around a shiver so sharp, so quick, it's like being pierced again. My knees waver, and like a reflex, I let out a slow breath that leaves me in chills of adrenaline deep enough to swim in.
I'm dreamy with eagerness, pressing my palms to the cloudy pane like a wanton hallucination, and I can't tell you how long I wait for him like this.
A few seconds maybe.
A minute.
Forever.
Long enough that it starts to feel like I was born right here. Up against the glass. Just like this. A tremble-kneed, needy-mouthed teenager. Perfectly and purposefully shaped. Already in heat. Already marked with his metal. Pink with a heartbreaking crush and soaked where I'm softest like he's already touched me.
Torturous anticipation drags my eyes open as a freezing breeze blows in. Even with the fire still burning high at my back, I can't wait to steal his heat. For his breath to burn my cheek. I can't wait to make him fucking sweat -
Stealing silently to the sliding door, I dip one foot into its open frame and blow a heady breath outside. Winter wind steals it straightaway, nipping bitterly at my naked skin as I step my other foot over the threshold now. Gathering a deeper breath, I purse my lips and send out my spell with all the force my lungs can muster.
Frigid February air diffuses it in every direction, but some of it finds him.
I can feel it.
Rooted so deep in his brainstem he can't consciously register it, Grim's most innate nerves fire in recognition of my proximity and it fills me with the basest of instincts. One bare foot is outside before I know it, then the other, and my pulse is a hundred war drums in my ears.
Bringing my open palms under my chin, I shoot another hypnotic breath toward this man like an arrow, a direct hit that drops his shoulders and slouches him low. Sleep takes immediate hold of his feet, then his limbs. It lulls his head slightly to the side, closes his eyes, and winds around his ribcage as it sinks in.
He needs a little more to be fully out, but I can't slow down.
He's close enough to reach now, and I can't stop.
Stepping soundlessly around the lounge chair he's chosen for his last stand, I trail my fingertips over placid shoulder blades and lean down toward his lips in a swift soft rush.
His eyes open halfway. I see them take me in, and I let him. I want him to. I'm leaving this place with his whole soul. The least he can have is a glimpse of me. A souvenir. A half-dream, half-memory token of our time together. I want him to dream of me this way always. Always -
Pushing a soporific sigh into Grim's ever-eager-for-it lungs and feeling languorous rest engulf him, I slip down to straddle his lap, brush my hands along his cheekbones as I lean in, and kiss the mouth that's haunted all that I am for six relentless months.
I've never kissed anyone before, so there's no comparison for this.
But it feels just like a promise.
Impossible goose bumps are back, tingling all over my exposed skin while open lips opening lips make me think of flowers taking root. Sensing what they need and spreading to get it. Digging through the dark. Growing stronger in it.
Grim doesn't know he feels it too, but his body does. Fiercely lush lips part with mine, and we kiss so intimately open and wide, the sky comes apart above us. Night's canopy unfurls into clouds of shared breath and warm pressure, gathering me closer by the docile small of my back.
Melting against his frame like snow too close to fire, I seek his tongue and feel my whole self fall for the heavy slide of it to mine. I've only ever been addicted to one thing, and this kiss instantly rivals it. Heat and beckoning and the thunder of Grim's hum filling my mouth are a brand new kind of captivating.
I can't get enough and neither can he.
The man who almost killed me kisses like he needs me to live.
Like an addict.
Like he's every bit as lost in this as me.
His mindless desperation only feeds my own. Between hot half-breaths and kisses deeper that sex, I'm vaguely aware of aggressively fervent hands at the submissive base of my spine, urging me like the heart of a storm to sink down. All the way down to him. A gratified note escapes my chest as I do, the small sound of a single butterfly, burning between our lips as I roll my naked weight against how much he missed me.
How hard I still make him.
How unforgettably good he feels between my legs.
No longer cold, I lift for air, and Grim groans as I break my mouth from his. He bends his neck, not ready to stop as I hover less than a whisper above him. Parted and pouting, his kissed-soft lips are irresistible as he tilts his hips up and into me, seeking soft warmth, soft rhythm, soft pressure -
I rock against my hunter like the softest sea, sliding my fingers through his hair, under his hood, pushing it off as I return to his mouth. Tangling messy locks like thick silk flames in lustful fists, I hold onto the only man I've ever feared by his roots as I slide my tongue over his gold fang. Licking the corner of his open grin. Lapping at his tongue like a heady stream of lotus mead -
My shameless kissing makes every part of him harder than humanly possible and gets me so drunk I'm pulling him closer without realizing it, scraping my nails against his neck as he lifts his hips higher and leans forward to the edge of the chair, offering the full denim-covered length of himself for me to ride.
I do it.
Naked as a nymph, blushing just like a bride, I ride him like I've always wanted to.
Like he's mine.
Light and dark hands besiege my sides like waves as I roll over and over him. He drags me lower. Closer. Giving me no reprieve. Nowhere to go except him. Holding me in place so tightly the unforgiving shape of his ache makes my legs shake, Grim moves with me as I kiss him deep. Helping himself to my helpless heat, he rocks upward and doesn't let me stop rolling.
All over all of him.
Not just his cock, but the entirety of him. He grounds me to himself and the more I move, the more I feel him for what he is. The trap he's always been. The cage I never wanted to open. The rut I never really wanted to leave.
But if only one of us can survive this -
Ask me how it feels to climb the walls.
To pick the lock.
Ask me what it's like to unleash the monster I've always been.
Hard teeth drag an untamed mark down my neck as I rise in his arms, a wisp so slick, so sinister, not even a nightmare can hold me. I let my head fall back and his jagged kiss graze my chest, closing my eyes and basking for a moment between the moon and his mouth. The heavy-wet anvil cloud of his tongue and threat of his bite right over my pitch dark pulse while his hands creep like chain-lightning up my back -
I don't want to ever, ever be free of this trap.
It feels too good.
Even when it hurt me, belonging to him has been the closest thing to love I've ever known.
But I wasn't made for love.
I didn't inherit Nyx's heart of darkness just to trade it for some butterflies.
I wasn't bled from Eisheth by her own hands to die enthralled to any man.
Not even this one.
Leaning up, I grip mine for the taking by his pretty jaw and stun him with a breath that instantly loosens his grip. The low, ragged sound of his frustration melts on my tongue as his head slips back and his hands fall slack on my hips, every part of him drifting out into Morpheus' arms instead of my own.
Dark instinct rushes my veins, making me feel more alive than I have in months. Dragging him closer to the edge of the chair by his godlike hips, I sink to my knees with one hand unbuttoning his jeans and one lower, tracing the prodigious extent of his need beneath burning denim.
Slowing down, I savor undoing him, reveling in how restless his body is even in rest. He's always hard when I'm near. Always ready for me because that's how it's supposed to be, but he's more than just hard tonight. More in need than I've ever seen when I finally release him, he's wet all over the head of his never this hard cock. Slick with craving and brutally full for me, he tilts his hips toward my touch, and I let him feel how close my mouth is. How open I am for him. How warm and sweet I'll be.
One last time.
Giving Grim nothing but downy-wet breath and teasing-soft hints of my tongue, I lap every trace of rose water from his skin, but it only makes more swell. There's enough all over the heavy tip to make me dizzy, and every slow lick I give him brings twice as much forth.
Like he can't stop.
Like as long as I keep my tongue on him, he'll never stop.
Drunk on the thought, I take him from where he's aimed at heaven into the hell of my mouth. I bring him where he belongs with insatiable swirls, and return to my own favorite place with a hum that resonates in my bones.
It's even better than the first time.
It's better than every time put together.
I kiss him wet and sweet all the way down, caressing the base with affectionate lips and licks while his heart pounds in my mouth. So filled with him tears streak my cheeks, I lean closer, my knees digging against deck wood while I angle my whole body around drawing out his pleasure.
The slow flow of it only increases the more I suck. It doesn't stop no matter how much I swallow. He can't stop feeding me, and I don't ever want to let him.
Just like the first night, I cover him in the covenant of my kiss for hours, and it's like we were never apart at all. He still knows just how to fuck me, because it's the same way he needs to fuck.
All the way deep.
Rubbing against what he does to my pulse.
How high it fills my throat.
How hard something so soft can beat.
My most relentless lover pets me while he gives me more than what I need, his hips lifting freely through sleep and ecstasy as night surrenders to the faint unfolding of day. He never stops inundating me with how much he has to give. His own inherent desire. A languid overflow between my lips. Buried and neglected for years, brought to the surface over the last few months, there's so much rose water brimming inside him that weeks of starvation are slaked far before he's even begun to truly come.
Drunk like I've never been, warmed with his generous affection, I lean back in the cool air and love the hard, helplessly spilling head of him on the petal-tender center of my tongue, lapping passionately where I can taste him best.
But Grim can't get deep enough.
His entire body purrs when he guides me back down and I take all of him back, coating all of him in my pulse and letting his soul seep deep, deep all over my heartbeat.
We take turns, swaying back and forth between our yearnings, but my tongue never, ever leaves him. Even when the hazy hint of first light swims through the trees, and I shift higher on my knees, easing up with a slick whimper to worship the brimful end of him, I keep my mouth on his body like my life depends on it.
Slouched low in his throne, both hands loose in my tangled hair, the man that's more mine than his own now groans into the wild wintertime. More beautiful than ever, he pants as the blade of his jaw falls slack, and I push his clothes up with my free hand, exposing his stomach. Tracing my touch from the white feather on his hip to the black kitten climbing his side, I push black cotton higher still. Exposing the sphinxes on his sternum and the metal in his chest that matches mine, I rest my hand right in the middle. Where I can feel every beat of his heart.
Gazing up, devotion aches through me.
I'm overcome suddenly with how much I adore him.
And how horribly sorely I'm going to miss him.
It comes over me so naturally, I don't realize I've brought my other hand up until I feel my fingers slip between my lips and the soaking wet tip of him. Getting slick with what he's still so filled with and making him lift his hips. He moans like he loves it, and I hold him on my tongue and caress him more, getting what I want all over my fingertips before withdrawing.
Taking him so obscenely deep it makes us both moan, I spread my knees and arch my hips as I touch between my legs, rubbing rose-soaked fingers all over where I'm swelled-desperate for contact.
I'm too wet to know for sure but I swear, I swear -
Just the slightest slide of his come feels heavy to my softness.
Like it weighs more than me.
Like a velvet magnet when I dip my fingertips inside.
Even muffled around the full depth of him, the sound that escapes me is so pure, so innocently, naturally covetous, so human, I hardly recognize it. I'm moving mindlessly, my fingers going back for more, stealing some of the overflow from his cock and my tongue, and sinking it where I'm most delicate.
I do it again and again, and I must become too greedy at some point because Grim catches my hand and brings it to his hip. Still very much asleep and dreaming, he slides my palm under his, up his exposed stomach, reminding me why I'm here before letting go to cradle my crown.
"Stay on me, baby," he bids under a coarse breath.
I don't even need to touch anymore. His voice and the thrill of heeding it, the possessiveness in his unchecked touch, knowing how much I'm pleasing him, and the weight of his soul sinking into the little sea he makes of me is all more than enough to pull every star from the wide open sky.
Down.
Into wide open me.
He must feel it when I come because he grows impossibly harder along my tongue.
Pouring over even more than before, harder than his body should allow, Grim pushes deeper, and I feel every star he's filled me with break open. I'm coming again, coating him in love notes and wanton licks and a thousand deceitful kisses.
He lifts his hips while his hands hold me low, asking for a thousand more, and I bathe him in them like starlight.
Opening my heavy eyes, I watch his whole frame revel and strain as I give him all my affection. Lips apart, brows dug together, clothes still pushed up, he's the one rutting now, filling my eager throat with wholehearted strokes while his stomach tenses around ragged breaths and cadent moans, giving way to a gravel-jagged chant.
"Take it," he pants, tilting his hips, offering his soul like a dare. "Take it."
Naked on my knees for both our worlds to see, I carry out the promise my body's been making to his for months. I do exactly what I was created to, three thousand years ago.
I drown this man in my mouth and let him flood me with his cock, and I know with the first true pulse -
This is it.
The slow flow of his pleasure swells to a downpour of warm summer rain, and no part of him fights any part of what's happening. Touching me anywhere and everywhere he can, he grows unbelievably harder as he comes, preternaturally thick pressure throbbing between my beholden lips as he gives to me in waves. Soothing and pleasing me with both hands in my hair, thumbs stroking my cheekbones as I swallow and swallow, he begs breathlessly for me not to stop.
I don't want to.
I want it to last forever.
I want him to always, always be giving himself to me this way.
Arching hips that have never been tame, Grim holds me close and pushes as far as our bodies allow, coming so deep I taste him in my ribcage, between my lungs, all over my heart.
"Don't fucking stop," he whispers, warning in his tone as he eases from my throat to my tongue to finish where I love him most.
Blushing as hot and sweet as spring, I seal my lips and lap at his offering like the hell kitten I am.
Rose water flows onto my tongue like a current. His soul, his whole precious soul feels so good inside me I'm soaring over the edge. I've never come before I met this , and he's never, ever made me come like this. Covered in goosebumps and filled with broken-open stars. Soaked down both my thighs. So deep in euphoria I'm shaking. Weightless in my body but weighted completely to his -
Grim holds me to him as everything he has begins to ebb, not letting me miss a single drop.
Even when it finally stops.
He's entirely, indelibly inside me now, and reluctant to let me go, but everything feels heavy.
Every part of me, everything around me, everything everywhere feels heavy in a way I can't process. Dark and light hands must slip from at some point because I'm slipping, melting down his legs and curling around his boots, swimming in the strangest bliss. His soul makes me feel like floating, but I'm laden with gravity.
Tiredness I can't fight weighs on my lids, and as much as I want to keep my eyes on him, this might be the last chance I'll ever get to sleep. To dream. There's no way he'll wake before me now that he's empty, and even if he did, he wouldn't know what to think or believe.
Slouched low, the man who's no longer prey drifts to rest in the forget-me-not glow of first light, his sedated pulse lulling me from within as I close my eyes at his feet.