Page 81 of Dark Ink

Without a word, I guided Rian’s hand to the hem of my panties. I helped him slip them down my thighs, wriggling against the cool sheets till they were off. Rian was already hard when I tugged his pants off. His breathing grew rough as I pushed him back and wrapped my mouth around him.

Did he know that we were making a pact? Deciding on our future? Did he realise what I was offering as I guided his cock to my pussy?

He could have me. He could have all of me. To have. To hold. To claw himself up from the depth with. To cling to. To use. To abuse, if necessary. To rest upon. To rail against. To scream into. To fuck over, to fuck with, to fuck. To love, if he could. One day.

I would be enough. My body, my heart, my love. It would be enough.

It had to be enough.

Rian

I plunged my cock into Eithne till there was none of me left outside of her and I told myself it was enough.

I felt myself swallowed by her, by her pulsing heat, by her throbbing pressure, by her wetness that quivered around me like ripples from a now sinking stone. I couldn’t have been more complete, me fully seated in her. I couldn’t have been more drowned in physical pleasure, that brilliant white light that flashes behind closed eyelids. I couldn’t have had more of what I wanted, what I’d told myself, assured myself again and again that I wanted.

It had to be enough.

But I buried my nose in the soft fragrance of Eithne’s dark locks and wanted, needed to bury myself deeper. I pressed in closer till I inhaled the scent of her neck and I still felt like I was exposed. I wanted to be hidden by her, concealed by her. I needed more. More of those dark tangles, her thornless rose stems.

Her little moans reached my ears and I strained to hear more of them. And louder. And more often. I thought maybe if I couldn’t hear anything else, I would be alright, I could be alright. I thought if all I heard was Eithne, I wouldn’t hear me. She could drown me out: the growing need, the building desire, the more and more horrifying conviction that I would give in. If I could just get more of those sweet noises from her even sweeter lips, it would be enough.

The pleasure grew in my lower stomach. A sweat broke out across my brow. It was bliss, her against me, my cock driving into her at a steady pace. What more could a man want? This was it, I told myself. This was all.

But that didn’t stop my fingers from clutching at her anywhere I could. I grabbed at her hip. I filled my palm with her velvety flesh. I was a thirsty man who held out cupped hands and had them filled with pure, cool water. And it wasn’t enough. I drank her thighs, digging my fingers into her pale skin till she whined, not quite in pleasure.

This was a knife to my heart and I squeezed my eyes shut against the hollow of Eithne’s throat. My fingers opened and closed, opened and closed at my side. I tried to focus on the sensation of my cock against her buttery soft heat. I tried to focus on her moans, those perfect, fucking perfect little moans. I tried to feel her heart against my chest and tell myself it was enough. I didn’t need more. I didn’t need anything else.

I bit back a groan of misery as the itch refused to go away. That goddamn need for it. My curse. Like a man reaching out for a rope to save him from his fall, I grabbed at Eithne’s hair. My fingers wound round it, like I needed not some of it, but all of it. Eithne’s head came back, her throat exposed. She clenched around my cock when I sucked at her exposed throat, milky white in the moonlight through the clouds. I saw the pleasure turn to pain as I again tried for more: more of her hair, more of her warm flesh, more of her body around me.

I saw what I did to her. I saw what I would always do to her. The eyebrows, dark and soft, drawn together, knitted in discomfort. I saw her teeth sink into her lower lip, stifling a cry I knew was there in the back of her tensed throat. I saw her eyes close, the lids squeezed a little too tightly. This was me. This was what I did to her. I wanted too much, I needed too much.

I released Eithne’s hair, pulled my mouth from her throat, when I drove back inside of her, I didn’t claim all of her, but stopped short. Fighting back tears of panic, I wrapped my arms around her. I held her against me, but was careful not to hurt her.

It felt like a goodbye, fucking Eithne softly, gently there in my childhood bed. I feared I knew the future, feared I could read it as if in a glass ball. This would be my last chance to leave her with something good, something worth remembering, something she didn’t pray to forget.

It felt like a goodbye, because I was going to give in to my addiction. I knew I would. I knew everything I needed was in the bag Eithne had inadvertently delivered right into my hands. I knew I had a store of bad memories and hateful thoughts and self-destructive tendencies dammed up inside my heart, just ready to burst free with the tiniest prick of a needle. I knew I’d barely made it through those handshakes with my brothers in the rain, barely survived that nerve-grating small talk, that oppressive kitchen with all those ghosts, that dinner where every bite of food I had to force down was like a mouthful of nails. And I knew I could no longer take from Eithne. Suck her dry. Tear her apart. Wrench her in two so that I didn’t fall to pieces. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it.There just wasn’t enough of her to hold onto, not enough for both of us.

I fell away from her after I felt her shudder, heard her muffle her screams in her pillow. I tugged my cock till I came, spasming alone with a hauntingly familiar ceiling collapsing on me. Eithne was reaching for me, drawing me back toward her. But she didn’t know I was already gone. It was an emptied husk wrapping his arms back around her, shrivelled lips softly kissing her shoulder, a stranger’s voice whispering into her ear, “Go to sleep, my little Raglan Road girl.”

My cum was sticky between our sweat-glistened skin. Eithne thought it was glue, something to hold us together, our secret love affair on my childhood bed. But I knew it for what it was: a division between us. And hadn’t it always been. Our bodies acting as a barrier for our souls. We’d fucked because we’d needed to fuck. We’d licked and sucked and caressed each other because it felt good and it was enough, for then. We’d lavished physical pleasure upon physical pleasure, stacking them up like a house of cards. But here it was, the end of the line. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t give Eithne more than a fuck in the night. I’d failed. I would fail. I would always fail.

I waited till she fell asleep. Self-loathing and excitement pulsed inside of me on the same frequency. I was going to hate what I was about to do; I was going to fucking love it. I was going to feel worse; I was going to feel so much better. I was going down; I was going up.

I waited till Eithne fell asleep and then slipped out of the bed. My father’s ghost followed me. I saw him in the shadows. Heard his voice in the creak of the bathroom door as I sat on the edge of the cracked bathtub and pulled out my secret stash from my toiletries bag. He knew where the vein was.

He’d taught me where to find it.

And how to pierce it.

Eithne

Would it have been better if I’d stayed asleep?

Would things have been alright if something, something I couldn’t even pinpoint or describe, hadn’t woken me from what was, I thought, a perfectly contented, peaceful, comfortable sleep? Could I have remained blissfully unaware had I just stayed blissfully unconscious? Would I have even known, had I not seen it…watched it…felt it stab through my skin just as it did his?

The yellow light wasn’t right. Had the door been closed a little tighter, or had its hinges been located on the other side, I might not have even noticed. The beam of light could have fallen across the thin and worn-down carpet, as harmless as a garment tossed off after a long day onto the floor. But that yellow glare stabbed at my eyes like a knife. I felt it crawl over me like the slick underbelly of a snake. I blinked against its harshness and sat up in bed. I might have yanked the covers over my head, fallen back asleep, if I hadn’t heard his groan; something half-like pain, half-like pleasure.

I crept out of bed and tiptoed toward the gap in the bathroom door, pushing away the guilt that I was sneaking up on Rian. Hating that I felt like I had a reason to. Blaming both of us for my lack of trust in this place, in this, in him.

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