Page 86 of Sick Bargain

About fucking time he came back around. I grin against his mouth. “Prove it.”

His hips lift, and his cock hits deep enough to steal my breath. I plant my palms beside his head, bracing myself while my wrists burn. I dip my head to peer between our bodies, watching his cock drive into me. It’s surreal, honestly. This man. Me. Sex that mingles cravings with fear and pain, started with rape, and somehow awoke a part of me that’d been slumbering under my blanket of indifference. I know these desires are wrong, but fuck, they feel right.

“Look at me,” Krypt rasps, his voice back to being abrasive and jittery.

I snap my gaze to his, lost in the swirling silver and chains that rattle within. Our bodies rock together, knowing what to do even though this is new for both of us, but our eyes never disconnect.

“How can you do it?” he asks.

“Do what?”

“Hold my eyes.”

I never could before. As Keegan growing up, I couldn’t look into his eyes without shying away. I misunderstood him and saw his monsters instead of the chains they rattled. I saw hisintensity and didn’t know how to handle it. But since meeting him as Krypt, something changed in the way I perceive him.

He’s still intense. He still has monsters. I still don’t fully understand him. So maybe I’m what changed. I turned dire, and the lenses that direness forced me to look through saw things differently. Instead of his insanity intimidating me, it intrigued me, like Ophelia’s moment of death. I stare because I see the beauty in his confliction, the pain in his misunderstanding, and the struggle he lives by not understanding himself. Krypt is as much of a mystery as Vile House is, but now I can see him.

“Because mine are finally open,” I tell him.

Krypt trembles for a moment, as if that declaration has forced feelings upon him he isn’t ready to feel. I wondered why he wasn’t obsessed with me all my life if he’s this obsessed with me now, but I think I have my answer. I never looked at him like this before. He never felt seen by me. He didn’t care about me because I didn’t care about him. Once seen, eye contact comfortable, he latched onto one of the only people brave enough to look into his eyes. Me.

He closes his eyes, breathes deeply, and when they open again, every single one of his inner beasts blink back at me.

Oh, there he is.

He flips us, slamming me onto my back hard enough to rattle my teeth. His cock slips free, but he hikes up my legs and slams back in, drawing a ragged moan straight from the depths of my soul.

“Finally,” I groan, digging my fingers into his forearms. “I’m not the hero.”

Krypt grabs my wrists and pins them beside my head, no longer caring about my burns. “You’re fucking nothing, Remiel.” He slams into me, but his movements take on a rocking motion that doesn’t match the complete obliteration he has planned. He wants me to be nothing, yet he always gives me that inch…a tiny fraction of a chance to take the power back and becomesomething. It might be minuscule and ass-backwards, but he’s the only one who has ever given me a hazardous shot.

I rip my wrists free, feeling my skin peel against his hold. I don’t care, because this is more important. Weaving my fingers into his shaggy, dark hair, I hold firm and force him to look at me. My legs wrap around his hips, stretching my stitches, burning brilliantly.

“I’m not nothing,” I seethe at him, letting some warped version of love and admiration filter into my voice. I speak better with a cello, but the notes of my vocalization will be enough—Krypt knows my music. I snug up my legs until his cock is as deep as it will go inside me, my blue eyes on his thrashing silvers. “I’m whatever you turned me into. You woke up all my hidden parts, and this is what you get. I’m yours, Krypt. Keegan. I’m fucking yours.”

His eyes pulse and his body stills. The room takes a breath. The purple neon light flickers. My heartbeat drowns my hearing and his thumps hard in his chest.

Please, accept me.

Please, want me.

Please, show me I’m important to you.

His nostrils flare and he reaches up, taking one of my hands from his hair. A fragment of fear splinters through me, but when he puts my palm over the word burned into his chest, it leaves me. His hand lands on my chest. Our sicknesses joined.

“Would you still be mine if I freed you?” he asks.

I don’t think he wants the answer. He slams his mouth to mine, gyrates his hips, and turns off my brain by coating it in pleasure. Sick pleasure. Exhausting, draining, extended pleasure that turns into too much but is never enough.

I bleed through my bandages and sweat out my family curse. I hold on to him hard enough that he won’t forget to drag meinto his future, and I cry out in bliss with every orgasm he forces on me throughout the night.

I sob because I’m happy and scared about it.

I laugh because I’m crazy and pleased about it.

I love because I’m sick and twisted about it.

Broken yet whole, I settle under the blankets of his bed with him at my back. He hasn’t cuddled me before, but for some reason, this time is different. His predatory grip on me is physically softer than usual, but more emotionally desperate. I can tell he’s thinking hard about something, but the pull of sleep is too great for me to resist.

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