Page 64 of A Heart Of Bitter Poison
And just as he promises, he takes his time. He starts a rhythmic pace that builds and builds and before long he’s pumping into me, his balls slapping my pussy as his fingers circle my clit. “You are so tight, my goddess. So fucking tight,” he whispers, over and over next to my ear as my back arches and I come, moaning his name. He spills into me, and we rest for a while only to start again, and again, until dawn lightens the sky.
Everyone is still asleep when we head down the hall to the bathroom to shower together. My legs are sticky, my body boneless and sore in the best ways, my flesh tingling beneath my skin from the blood I’ve taken from Ashen. And still when we’re in the shower we fuck once more, my legs wrapped around Ashen as he pushes my back against the cool and soothing tile and I suck the gel of blood from his fingers that softens in the warm water. One last, blinding orgasm in a night that I wish would never end.
We bandage his torn fingers then go back to the room, stepping around the cold corpse on the floor, and climb onto the sheets that smell like sex and promises. I lie on Ashen’s chest, my head tucked beneath his chin. He draws the blankets up and wraps his arm across my back, slowly running his fingers through my hair, the sound and feel of his touch as melodious as a lullaby.
“I love you, Lu. My beautiful, otherworldly, magical goddess Lu,” he whispers.
Love. He says it so easily, like it’s both a privilege and a relief. Like tossing an injured bird to the sky and watching it disappear into the distance, healed and wild and free. And though I can’t say it back, he doesn’t seem to mind. Even just knowing he’s content with waiting draws a little more of the venom from my heart. Like I once said, our blood is liquid patience. And while he waits, I can still say the things that mean as much as love to me.
“Don’t go, if you can’t sleep. I don’t want to wake up alone,” I confess, my voice tired and sluggish. Everything I don’t want to give a voice to, about nightmares and fear, about trust and comfort, hangs in the air.
Ashen’s arm tightens across my back. He breathes a kiss into my hair. “I will be right here when you wake,” he whispers.
And then I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.
I wake up to the sound of a whisper in my ear and the tickle of my hair moving across my neck with Ashen’s breath.
“Vampire. Time to get up.”
Ashen’s quiet request makes me want to do exactly the opposite. I wriggle in closer, sucking up his warmth as it radiates through my back.
“…No.”
“It’s almost noon.”
“Don’t care.”
“The others are making lunch.”
“I’m on a douchebag-only diet and they don’t cater to my tastes.”
“They will be wondering where we are.”
I scoff at that one and pull Ashen’s arm tighter across my stomach, still refusing to open my eyes. “They knowexactly wherewe are.”
I burrow myself further under the covers and Ashen tries to give them a gentle tug, but my death grip on the edge of the blanket is unrelenting. I keep it pulled to my neck as I roll over and face him.
Ashen is the first thing I see when I open my eyes, and I realize in that moment that I could wake up next to him every day for a thousand years and it would still feel like an electric shock just to look at him. Those dark lashes and the unguarded warmth in his cognac eyes. The radiance of his skin and the luster of his short, dark hair in the morning light. Those lines and lines of black tattoos that flow down his neck and shoulders and disappear beneath the blanket.
Wrapped in his scent and his touch and his attentive gaze, I feel like some of the hurt and worry and anger I’ve been carrying like a noose around my neck has been set aside, at least for a little while. Like I stumbled into some healing waters and emerged a little more at peace on the opposite shore.
That’s what being in love can do, stupid, a little whisper chirps inside my head.
No, that’s what a good dicking can do, moron,I say back.
It wasn’t just sex and you know it. You wouldn’t have let him close if you didn’t feel something for him.
Shut the fuck up.You don’t even have a proper voice anymore, I snap to that persistent little whisper, and that thought jabs at my heart like a hot needle.
So why take one more thing away from yourself when so much was taken already?
….
….
Touché, you bitch.
Ashen’s gaze follows the angles of my face before coming back to my eyes. He smiles and it looks way too intuitive for my liking. “Do you ever just wake up peacefully, or do you always start your day with some kind of battle? I do wonder if the war ever subsides in your thoughts.”
