Page 63 of Hollowed

But as confession.

And I kept it.

The ache didn’t leave me after he fucked me. It changed.

It settled into something deeper. Not the sharp burn of being taken or the bruised throb of obedience. This was something else. Something quieter. Wider. It spread through my chest like breath I didn’t remember learning to take.

He hadn’t left. But he hadn’t stayed curled around me either. He sat a few feet away, back pressed to the altar, robe loose at the shoulders, eyes closed like prayer but breathing like war.

I watched him through the dark, my hand resting on the place where he had just lived. My thighs still sticky with him. My body still open. Still his.

But he was further away now than he’d ever been.

And I couldn’t bear it.

I crawled to him.

Not because I was afraid.

Because I needed to feel the shape of his body under my palms. I needed to remember that he wasn’t myth. That he wasn’t memory. That he was made of skin and blood and hunger like mine.

I reached for his hand.

He opened his eyes.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked.

His voice was low.

“Because I don’t know what to do with softness.”

“You already did it.”

He shook his head.

“That wasn’t softness. That was need.”

“What’s the difference?”

He looked at me like I’d asked the only question that had ever mattered.

“Softness stays,” he whispered. “Need eats.”

I crawled into his lap. Straddled him. Took his face between my hands.

“Then stay.”

His breath caught.

“I might not be able to want you gently.”

“Then want me the way you need to.”

He didn’t move for a long time.

And then he kissed me.

And it wasn’t gentle.

---