Page 65 of My Lovely Tragedy
I inhale deeply, breathing him in. Exhale. Shuddering as his arms tighten, another form of shackles.
Can’t care.
* * *
TOBIAS
Brooklyn’s fightleaves him in an instant. All it took was my touch and he fell, weak and useless, into me.
He is already so attuned to the feeling of my flesh against his, and he does not even realize it. The inclination to give in came naturally and without thought—and not too soon, I believe.
The fight he has been putting up, to resist me and what his body—and his mind—has grown to crave, must have been exhausting. The poor boy.
I can see it in the dark shadows beneath his vacant azure eyes, the plum purple adding a brilliance to the hue on his periorbital skin. His body has merely been a vessel, physiology taking over functions without thought, merely because ithad to.
His mind has been in another place entirely. And I have not feared what he might do. I know he will not hurt me, but after this display of violence toward himself, I now worry about what he might do tohimself.
Brooklyn’s admission of his past self-harm was vague at best, but implications can be made from the multitude of thin, silvery scars enhancing his beautiful skin. How most of them line the soft inner flesh, but then a few wrap around to the thick meat on the other side.
He said he didn’t want to die, and due to the thin, well-healed scar tissue, I assume he didn’t cut too deep. Which leaves one assumption…
He did it to feel.
The perception clogs my throat, and I nuzzle deeper into his neck, inhaling every trace of cinnamon I can get before he inevitably pushes me away. I burn with the desire to not let him. To never let him.
The pieces snap together to form a segment of what makes Brooklyn, shattered and jagged and irreplaceable.
All mine to put where I please. To form him around me until I become his core. Until he breathes and bleeds with my breath and blood.
His sobs slow to hiccups, each jolt vibrating into my lips and down my throat. The room smells salty from his tears and sweat. Smokey from his anguish of effort and desperation. There is the bitter tang of resentment. Even now, as the rest begins to fade,thatremains on my tongue and in the back of my throat.
A reminder that even as he needs me, he still abhors me. But I take every part of him with greedy, nimble fingers.
Fingers I trace along his roughened forearms, down and around each deep indentation, scratching along scrapes and cuts just to hear Brooklyn hiss—a hiss that morphs into a silent groan, escaping from somewhere deep when I dig a little deeper.
With regret, I pull myself from the solace of his throat to watch his eyelids flutter, lashes grazing his bruised under eyes. His Adam’s apple, sharp and jutting from beneath his skin, rakes down with a slow swallow.
My molars slam together with jarring pressure, the crack loud as it reverberates in my skull. My eyes follow the line of his throat, the elegant arch. The coarse, wild hairs lining his skin. Hairs I wish to trace with my tongue just so I know how they feel, how they taste. If his skin is salty with sweat or sweet and spicy like cinnamon.
Perhaps both.
I dig the arch of my thumb into the sensitive skin of his cubital fossa, rotating in circles just to feel the tendons shift beneath my touch. Brooklyn groans. I push a little deeper.
“Life is such a fragile thing. Always hanging in the balance, uncertain and undefined.” I whisper the words against his skin. Follow the path of air with the tip of my tongue along my bottom lip. Salivating to touch, needing to know.
“And yours,corvus,is even more so. That place inside your mind calls toward a darkness you cannot give it. A darkness unseen by most but coveted by all.” He shudders against me, falling heavy against my chest, resting in the V of my legs. My knees graze his legs as he pulls them toward his chest, an unconscious gesture of protection.
I scrape my teeth across his throat, following the sharp line of his jaw until my lips press to the shell of his ear. “And it’s that desire to sink so deep into it you drown that keeps you fighting for so long. But there is a truth you have not come to accept yet. And it’s that you can have it all, darling.
“Everything you want is at your disposal. You need only ask. Because, Brooklyn…” I hesitate. Inhale cinnamon and the rush of adrenaline that is sickly sweet on my tongue. “I would give you the world. I’d burn it all to the ground without a moment’s hesitation if the desire for you to see the flames slipped from between your lips.” I drag my fingers up his bicep to trace them, reveling in the cracks and fissures within.
“I would slit my own throat if you wanted to watch the blood pour from between my split skin. I would carve you into me, scarring my flesh with the very trace of you.” I murmur my truths into him, feeling as his body reacts to my verities and what lies within each one.
“Ask me, darling. Ask me for it all so I can give it to you,” I beg him, feeling the sting behind my own closed lids as I breath against his flesh, lips brushing overheated skin. My fingers clasp around his chin, down to his throat to feel his pulse throb, erratic and sensational.
I band my left arm across his chest, feeling the rise and fall of his heavy breathing, proof of life and the thin veil lining between that and death.
A veil I teeter between with every breath.
