Page 106 of Sick Bargain

The confession hits a crescendo, and heat radiates from the centre of my chest. I stop breathing, consumed by bliss and scared of his love, filling his ass with the proof of my pleasure. Remiel’s hands come back to where they started, weaving through my hair to tug my face to his. He whispers his love against my lips and then kisses me as his cock throbs in my hand and coats me in his mess. My ass muscles clench and a breath whooshes out of me, and on that breath, I say, “I’m obsessed with you.”

35

GIVE ME FEAR

REMIEL

I’m obsessed with you.

He loves me. In whatever way makes sense to him, he loves me, and I’m so struck by his admission that I don’t notice our bodies have gone from rigid to relaxed, cum slicked between us, and Krypt’s usually volatile energy is calm.

In a move so unfamiliar to him, he pulls back to look at me… almost sweetly. His eyes on mine—his beasts gentle and slumbering while my heart thrashes. Because… because something feels different.

Yes, I want him to love me. I want him to be obsessed with me. I want tender moments and savage ones. But this moment, the one that’s become the epicentre of our forward trajectory, the declarations and the words with meanings that mark the progression from before he loved me to after he loved me… it doesn’t feel right to have him so timid.

“Why are you… you said you don’t respond to soft.” I tilt my head at him, confused by his reaction. Because if Krypt is going to love me and obsess over me, I want him to do it as himself. Not as a version of himself he thinks he needs to be to appease me. “Why are you being soft?”

He squints at me, a beast or two waking up within him. “You just survived The Mad House, played me your music, endured a fuck, and told me you…” he swallows the end of the sentence. “I don’t want to hurt you right now, Remiel.”

I’m pathetic because it hurts me that he doesn’t want to. “Then don’t, but you still have to be yourself! I’ve never felt this… comfortable and at ease around you.”

“You want me to hurt you?” His voice is mocking. “No.”

My eyes widen and my anger flares. He’s telling me no? After everything he’s done to me and every instance he’s refused to listen to my no? Fuck that. Fuck him. I push myself to sit on the edge of the rock, and when he backs away, I grab a fistful of his shaggy hair and tug so hard a few more beasts brew.

“You don’t get to say no to me.” I glare at him with a hardened expression I’ve never had before. A power I’ve never felt before.

“Don’t I?” he mocks, still thinking I’m beneath him. “What the fuck is it you’re actually asking for here? Pain?”

“No.”

“Pleasure?”

“Maybe.”

He nods at my abs, still slick with cum from minutes ago. “Tell me what you want, Remiel.” He leans forward instead of away, close enough that the silver of his eyes swirls turbulently. “Fucking tell me.”

“Scare me.”

His nostrils flare.

“Fear. I want fear.” My chest heaves and my heart hammers, the admission monumental because it’s the first time I’ve asked for it. “Don’t obsess over me as someone other than yourself. You scare me, Krypt. Keegan. You scare me, and I fucking like it when you scare me, so stop treating me?—”

I scream when he hauls me to my feet, the brands on my wrist burning under his tight grip. Krypt doesn’t care. He said he didn’t want to hurt me, but he has no problem following through when his foundation is being questioned.

He drags me across the cave, pulling me deeper and deeper into a dark spot with a low ceiling, my sock feet scraping across the stone floor and my skin turning red under his grip. I scream the whole time, begging him to stop, to let me go, to tell me what he’s doing! But he doesn’t, and I love that he doesn’t. Because something about the way he makes me terrified is invigorating, and this is exactly what I asked for.

Throwing me onto my stomach, Krypt pins me down with his knee. The real fear begins. Because I’m looking down. Down. Down. Down. Into a black abyss with no bottom and no end, and for all I know, it could go straight to the pits of Hell. The upper half of my body hangs over a cliff’s edge. A cliff, in the middle of a deep cave, proving that depth has no bounds.

“Look,” Krypt growls at me, his voice back to jittering. “Look and see your fucking future if you piss me off again. You don’t want to know how many people have pissed me off and ended up down there.” He pushes on the back of my head so hard my body slides and I scream into the abyss, listening to my terror echo back at me from the vastness below. “Happy?” he asks.

“Yes,” I whimper. “Because this is you! The real you. Keegan and Krypt together.”

He laughs, and the way it reverberates off the cave’s walls is debilitating and grossly harmonious. “This is you, Remiel! You! You’re the one who craves the fear. You’re the one who sinks under a love confession but comes alive as soon as your life hangs in the balance. Can I love you now? Can I love you while you’re terrified of me?”

Yes. Yes. Yes. Because something is terribly wrong with me. I’m no longer suicidal and tempting death, but I still crave thedanger and the lashing of anxiety that reminds me I’m alive. Terror wakes me up. Fright brings me to life. When every hair on my body is erect, I spark and snap, thriving because it’s such a blatant reminder of who I am, what I have to live for, and how much stronger I am now.

Before Krypt, fear rendered me useless. Gregory Malone stalked me through the streets of Moros and turned me into a scared little boy. The constant worry of suicide filled me with so much dread that I hid for half my life. I forgot to live it because I was so scared of it ending.

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