It didn't hurt like it used to.
It hurt something new. Something fresh, something raw.
A scraped knee, snapping a blissful afternoon into a world of reality and gravel, dirt lodged deep within the wound.
Nothing like the old, dull ache in the back of his chest, the lingering want of something closer, but no desire to chase after a neglected passion that, when acknowledged, may bubble forth in full.
It was not clean. His blood bled and clotted with bits of poisonous black bile. It was not fair to her, but now it was not fair to him. How cruel the missing years had been, how dry, how empty.
He closed his eyes, searching the rooms of his palace, looking for the bottled up memory of her. It was in the square box on the bed, and whenever he opened the lid, he could feel her hot breath encasing his walled-up soul. Her cool fingers burning imprints on his neck, the adrenaline of the drop only enhancing the rush, rush, rush of blood spiking through his chest, spearing his stomach, roaring in his ears, his head. Rolling, reeling, reimagineing the dark pockets in his heart, the heat from her touch clicking through doors he was forgetful of locking.
Her scent got stuck in his mind long ago, breaking down his once-solid boundaries, ghosting his nose every so often, teasing, taunting. The slightest hint of her perfume snapped his head around, only to be held in constant disappointment.
The smoothness of her hair under his fingertips, her soft, pale skin, her small head cradled in his large hands. The fire of her lips and the edges of her teeth. The way she had kissed him back, how her body had molded to his, a force greater than magnetism holding them together for that far, far too short an intimacy.
Her eyes were wide now, doleful. Reflecting a pain that finally hit home, that now impaled him like the sharpest of arrows, white hot and fresh from the coals. His heart bled for this woman, ever so slightly, as he would slowly admit to her pout. Now it was he who carried the burden of an unattainable want, an insatiable need for something so scarcely out of reach that it stung twice as much, knowing how close he had become.
She assured him she was attached to his obstacle. Her smile was small and her reasons were vague and she looked as miserable now as she did when he had stupidly, stupidly cast her aside, deemed her a tool to a higher means. His path was blocked due to his own blindness to a solution that so easily dawned on those around him.
It was as if, in that one fierce kiss he had given her, their emotions had mingled, mixed, and returned morphed and changed. She had taken his platonic feelings and his apathy and tried to build a bridge over the crushing, rushing river that was him, that flowed forcefully and fast into the caverns of her heart. The river that, when she tried to cross, the currents would sweep her down, dragging her deeper into her love of him. Her bridge looked flimsy, full of holes and made of weak stones, affected by that gaze he cast upon her. The gaze that made her subconscious question if she had properly crossed to the other bank and gotten over his dastardly smirks and cutting intellect. She hadn't; he could see it in those brown eyes, in the way she looked at him when she dazed off into herself.
He could look at her with nothing but love, her overpowering feelings transferred to his core. He was surprised at his self control, missing her lips in his sendoff, his blessing. If it could make her happy, it could make him happy, too, even if only for the smallest shard of time.
And that was all he needed, for if he concentrated, he could feel her pulse dancing quickly under his hands, the taste of her passion, the flutter of her chest and the grin she wore with a certain pride, the sudden hitch of her breath as he swooped in like a raven and engulfed her body with his. He chased the ghost of her touch like a fleeting dream.
And he could wait, wait for an eternity with the searing embers of her kiss, the faded embrace dancing on the hinges of his memory.
As long as there was a promise of her discovering that inside him, somewhere deep and somewhere vulnerable, there brewed a love, just for her.