Page 144 of Heart So Hollow

It doesn’t sound like my voice, but it is.

I push his knees down and climb over his legs into his lap. And this time, when he tightens his belt, I stay submerged longer in his oxygen-deprived euphoria. Instead of struggling against his iron grip, I grind against him with desperation and brush my breasts across his face while I do it. This time, the tears streaming down the corners of my eyes feel like a dam breaking and the first breath he gives me feels like waking up after a years-long hibernation.

Before I can open my eyes, I feel Colson’s tongue trail up my face and lick the saltwater from beneath my eyes, “You’re such a good girl for me,” his deep voice rumbles in my ear.

I’m crazy—certifiable—clinging to this man after he nearly choked me unconscious. I shouldn’t trust him as much as I do.

“What happens after you get your fix?” I ask between breaths, “Do you move on to your next obsession?”

That’s how it usually works, isn’t it? Aren’t infatuations and vices like fireworks; intense displays of shock and awe until they inevitably fizzle out into darkness?

“No,” Colson pulls the belt loose from my neck and drops it onto the bed next to him. Then he reaches up with both hands and gently rubs his thumbs over the red blotches forming on my throat, “It never ends because there’s nothing after you. I don’t get bored because I’m consumed by you and I’ll always need to chase you. You are, in the most concrete and unequivocal sense—” he wraps my curls around his fist and gently brings my forehead to his, “my only.”

“Is that why you stopped cutting yourself?” I press my palm against his chest, feeling a tiny shred of guilt that I have no business feeling, “Please don’t put that on me.”

Colson gazes up at me with an expression I can only describe as admiration. After a few seconds, he reaches behind his back to his pocket. When he brings his hand back around, he’s gripping something black in his fist. He rests his hand on his stomach, inches from my pelvis, and flips open a black knife with a sharp click. The blade is about four inches long, black metal with a serrated bottom that gives way to a smooth, razor-sharp edge.

“I can show you how it feels,” he slowly toggles the blade back and forth like a metronome, “when you’re so numb that you start to wonder if you’re already dead. But when that cold blade slices through your flesh and draws blood,” he smiles with a long blink, “it’s like finally taking a breath when you’re about to drown.”

Finally, I scratch the itch and ask him what I really want to know, “What makes you feel so numb?”

Colson stares down at my abdomen, as if in a trance, and sways his knife back and forth at the same pace.

“You remind me of who I used to be, a long time ago,” he tightens his grip on my waist with one hand and lifts his knife with the other, “and when I saw you for the first time, it felt like I found myself again.”

When he touches the dark blade to my skin, all the air leaves my lungs and I don’t dare move while he tracks white lines up to my ribs. Goosebumps skitter over my shoulders and down my back as I watch him trace spiderwebs over my torso. Before long, he drops his hand and slides his thumb between my thighs where I’m leaving a slick spot on his stomach. My breath catches when he brushes over my clit, running circles over it while he teases my skin and threatens to nick me any moment.

My eyes flutter as I move with his hand, the tip of his blade catching and leaving a constellation of tiny red dots over my torso. The orgasm builds deep in my belly, eliciting a high-pitched moan as it slowly works its way to my core.

“Do you like the pain I give you?” Colson murmurs as my hips roll against his hand. “Do you love what I can give you, that no one else can?” his voice crescendos as my muscles tense, sending a shockwave down my legs.

I don’t feel his knife at first. I don’t feel him slice the blade across my rib at the exact moment the wave of ecstasy crashes into me. But soon enough, the stinging pain tears through the dopamine like a tornado splintering barn wood. I let out a scream, shuddering and cursing as I watch a red ribbon unfurl across my skin and slowly seep down my torso.

It’s a superficial cut, but enough to shock me and hurt like hell. It’s an instant high, a wave of adrenaline I want to wrap myself in like a blanket. I close my eyes so all I hear is me sucking deep breaths through my teeth and all I feel is Colson’s hands running over my skin.

“Open your eyes, baby,” his lilting voice brings me back, “you’re not dead yet.”

My eyes fly open and I mutter another curse when I feel the sting of my cut. I look down again at the six-inch slash oozing garnet blood across my otherwise smooth and unremarkable skin.

“It hurts,” I gasp, “fuck, it hurts.”

“It should,” Colson gazes up at me, “because there’s nothing dead about you. I could bleed you dry right now and you’d still have more life in your eyes than I do in my entire body. Even if I’m never able to feel like you do every day, just being with you is the closest I can get to being whole.”

He lifts my torso to his mouth and runs his tongue under my breast, trailing the dripping blood to its source. I wince at the sting of him sucking the wound, but he holds me firm with both arms, grinding me against the thick ridge of his cock straining against the fabric between us.

“Colson,” I breathe into his thick, feathered hair, “you’re not dead, either. You’re real, and you’re alive, and I want to feel you inside me.”

When he lifts his head, his lips are tinted with ruby and his chest is smeared with rusty streaks of blood, “Can I have you bare?” he asks while he massages the small of my back.

I take a breath and open my mouth, but nothing comes out at first, “Um,” I swallow, “are you clean?”

He nods.

“How do you know?”

“Because I got tested.”

I don’t miss a beat, “When?”

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