“Not yet, sweetness…” My voice is gravel as I deny her what we both crave.
Hands twisted in the hair spilling down the center of her shoulders, I tug her head back and drop my forehead to her chest, seeking the frenetic drum of her heart. I fashioned the idea of her from the most violent part of me, aware of the dangerous trade I was offering.
But my beautiful muse was so much more than I could have dreamed.
When she nearly slipped into the void, I used my own blood to charge that first seal on her shoulder. A damn hermetic seal, locking her up tight. But it’s what she needed at the time, after her mind refused to accept such a horrifying reality. The threat of her mental state unraveling was clear. So I made a choice to lose her in order to save her.
The most selfless I have ever been.
But I almost damned us both.
When our chaotic nature threatens to destroy us, we need a scapegoat.
There’s an exchange, the scales have to be balanced.
I would be that sacrifice. I would harbor the darkness for her. I would eat that pain to prevent her destruction.
“We are the high and low notes,” I whisper across her collar, fusing myself with her and invoking the dark spark of creation between us that can only be reached through violence.
And then violence itself becomes beautiful. It’s almost too lovely, like staring into the hottest flame of an ember, almost unbearably ineffable.
If she kills me in return, I hope she creates something just as lovely.
I tear a wrist free of the belt and whip the strap around her neck. I gather the slack in a fisted hand, choking up on her throat. Her striking eyes flare wide, her emotions strangle my lungs as she gasps for oxygen, sealing my throat shut.
Breathe, I mentally intone, allowing her to pull in a single breath past her constricted airway before I tighten the strap.
“Trust me,” I whisper over her lips, her fear and anguish choking my goddamn throat.
Halen doesn’t reach for the belt. Her nails dig into my shoulders, her inner walls clamp hard to nearly level me, but her gaze stays with mine.
I stay lost in her eyes as I fuck her, one hand fisting the leather strap, the other fastened to her shoulder from behind, forcing her down against me in ruthless need to sink deeper inside of her, delivering my ruthless offering to break my lovely muse.
It’s there in the spark that ignites in her eyes, the beauty in the chaos, the harmony, the melody, the burning ember I’m unable to define that I only ever see within her silvery gaze. The balm for her heartsick soul.
Peace.
Peace is the balance to violence.
One cannot exist without the other.
One is the answer to the other.
As Halen is falling under, asphyxiation dragging her beneath consciousness, the surrender to her peace overwhelms her senses, and serenity sweeps through her with such power, damn near taking me under right along with her. I hold strong, letting my muse be swept out by the current.
Her wet eyelashes glisten as tears gather beneath her shuttered eyelids. The demand to taste her sweet tears rips through me with annihilating force, and I choke up on the strap once more, stealing any hope for one last breath…and the tears spill over, trailing down her cheeks in enticing, shimmering streams.
I hold her there, suspended between sleep and wake, heaven and hell, marveling at the tears streaking her face. So beautiful and serene, her features cast in unearthly perfection. I kiss her lips delicately before I lick the salty path of tears, tasting them on her skin and lapping at her like the fiend I am. I murmur a Latin chant, my vow to always find her in the darkness.
Then I release the strap.
She gasps in a breath at the same time I thrust deep inside her, shattering her from the inside out.
“Oh, god… Kallum—” she cries out as her inner walls clench around me, so goddamn tight, her orgasm spiraling her over the edge.
“That’s right, sweetness.” I groan and drive inside her in brutal demand, my fingers digging into her thighs to bring her down against me harder. “Commune with me, your fucking god.”
We are divinity.
An answer I’ve been searching for my whole damn life, found right here in her sweet embrace. The goddamn devil would need to rise from the bowels of hell to steal her away from me now.
Her climax climbs to a crescendo, her body trembling in my arms as I deliver relentless thrusts to destroy us in the purest state of ecstasy. The release of her pain is so fucking exquisite, it expels me right from the abyss.
As she begins to come down, her hips still writhing against me in desperate want of friction, her wetness a conduit to ignite my dark soul, I band my arms around her and thrash inside her throbbing cunt. My muscles are fire as she rends my orgasm from deep within me, my steel cock pulsing with my pending release.
“Fuck…” I groan. “Goddamn, I love your sweet, perfect pussy.” I drag my fingers down her back, feeling the tantalizing scrapes on her skin from where I bound her to the tree. I bury my mouth against the soft junction of her neck and shoulder, a growl wrenched from the base of my chest as I sink my teeth into her flesh. The sweet tang of blood takes me crashing to the depths, that pure hit of illusive satisfaction grasped for only a fleeting moment—but it’s fucking heaven as I come, spilling deep insider her, rocking her hips to fuck her deeper still and take all of me.
My skin aches, the fire in my chest dampened to a smolder as I caresses her back in gentle strokes, inhaling her sweet, addictive scent.
Her fingers curl into my hair as her languid body rests, draped around me. “I could stay here,” she says, clutching my heart in a vise.
I tighten my arms around her. “I’m never letting you leave.”
One reprieve where I kiss her slow and tenderly in maddening yearning, my appetite for her insatiable. Then I take her with ravenous hunger all over again.
I fuck her until she’s pliant in my arms and we’re a tangle of body parts, fighting to fuse closer, fading into one another. I let her shatter against me over and over, consuming her breathy cries, baring my soul to her and letting her fire cleanse me in a way no philosophical canon ever could.
I’m still inside her when exhaustion claims her body and she falls into a heavy sleep. I hold her to me for a while longer, memorizing the sensation of her skin against mine, the sound of her tiny breaths. Stroking the sigil on her thigh, unable to purge the desire for her from my mind.
This is my weakness.
I was never able to let her go.
Averse to remove my arm from around Halen and leave her like this, I place a gentle kiss to her forehead. But there’s unfinished dealings to address, and a holding cell I have to return to.
Using the dwindling candlelight, I stare into the mirror and reverently trace my fingers along the sigil she engraved in my flesh, a devilish smile twisting at my lips. My moon goddess branded me with her celestial crescent.
I blow out the flame and then toss the bloody cloth along with the rest of the used supplies in the fireplace, removing all traces from the mansion. Like the Harbinger never existed.
The darkest hour hovers on the horizon, a reminder that there are still things to handle before the light breaks. It’s always darkest before dawn—a summons to spark the blackest of magicks.
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18
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HERMETIC SEAL
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HALEN
