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“What is it?”
What am I supposed to say? My mom died and I’m sad and lonely and the only fucking person on the planet I’m reaching out to, the only one I want right now, is the monster who locked me up and walked the fuck away.
Absolutely not. Instead, I retreat into anger.
“Where the hell have you been?” I practically spit.
I expect him to make some joke, to say Miss me? in that cruel and knowing tone like he did last time. But maybe it’s the tears he hears in my voice. Or maybe things have started to change between us since then. Because he seems serious and sincere when he replies.
“I had to straighten something out up north. Weather’s been too bad to fly or drive back the past couple days.”
“You… you could have told me that,” I whisper, feeling like a fucking idiot. Why did I call him? What did I hope to gain from this?
“Are you telling me you wanted to hear from me while I was gone?”
I want more than to hear from him, and that’s what pisses me off the most.
“No,” I snap. “Take as long as you need up north. In fact, don’t even come back at all if you don’t need to.”
“But I do need to,” he counters instantly, and it sounds weird. Too loud. Like it’s coming from behind me, all around me, rather than from my phone. “Because this is where my Songbird is.”
I gasp, and my phone falls from my hand as I turn and find him there. My emotions form a cacophony inside me, a chaotic, jumbled song of fear and sorrow and anger and relief.
“You’re here,” I whisper, taking in the sight of him, wondering if my grief has conjured some kind of hallucination.
“You’re crying,” he replies softly. He steps into the room, further and further into the darkness with me, like some onyx angel, no, some demon who’s not afraid of the shadows. Who’s not afraid to go as far or as deep as it takes to reach me. His leather gloves are cold when they graze my neck. He must have just come in from outside and sprinted up the stairs.
His mouth is warm though, warm when it finds the tracks of my tears, kissing the salted liquid from my skin. That warmth seeps into me, turning molten, turning to something that burns all the way down my spine. Scorching need obliterates everything else inside me. Bludgeons the sadness, a cauterizing plug to a bleeding fucking wound. My mouth opens and searches for Elio’s blindly as my hands grip the front of his shirt and pull him harder to me.
He claims my mouth and walks, backing me up until the backs of my legs collide with the bed. My stomach flip-flops, because even after everything we’ve done in these rooms, we’ve never been in a bed together and I know what it means. I know what it will lead to, and I don’t care and can’t stop it. Not now, not tonight. Not when this need has eclipsed everything I thought I ever knew.
Elio’s hands find the hem of my sweater, tugging it upwards. I stop kissing him (if you can even call it that, because my movements are desperate and messy) and let him pull it off. I didn’t bother with a bra beneath the sweater today, and every muscle and nerve jumps to attention when Elio’s gloves skim over my nipples.
“You’re still crying,” Elio murmurs before lowering his head and sucking my right nipple into the demanding heat of his mouth. I cry out, my back arching, and bury my fingers in his hair. He’s right. I can feel the warm liquid coursing down my cheeks.
“That’s because… tonight…” I breathe, my words halting as pleasurable pangs echo outward from my breast. Elio gives one last, long suck before letting go and pinning me with a dark gaze.
“I know what tonight is.” And just like that, he has me. He’s got me in his grip, because he knows what tonight is and he knows what I’m feeling and I don’t need to say a single word. I don’t need to speak or explain because he already knows.
“It’s why I drove like a bat out of fucking hell all day to get here when we couldn’t fly back,” he continues softly, undoing the button and zipper of my pants and sliding them downwards.
He came for me. He came for me because he knew I would be hurting.
He knows what I need, just like he told me. He knows what I need and what I fucking need right now is him.
His jacket comes off, then his shirt, then his pants, and then I’m flat on my back beneath him, marvelling at the brutal planes of his body, the heaving of his chest, the frenetic, consuming gleam of his eyes. Some of his hair falls forward into his eyes, and for the first time I don’t stop myself from brushing the unruly strands back from his forehead. It’s an undeniably tender motion, and I stroke down to his jaw.
“You came for me.”
A flicker of agony passes over Elio’s face, and he presses his face against my hands. His voice splits the darkness.
“I will always fucking come back for you. Even when you don’t want me to. Even when you scream and beg and cry for me to leave, even when you push me away, I won’t go. I will come back every single time, do you hear me? I will fucking be here. Always.”
The always part should alarm me, because always was never part of the plan. I’m not staying here, not with him, not forever.
But right now, I don’t want to think about that. I just want to lose myself in the drugging reality that there’s somebody who would never abandon me, never lose me, never let me go. He’s solid and so fucking warm and God, he’s taken his gloves off, his scarred hands running up and down my body, taking possession. One hand settles between my legs, sliding through wetness until I pant and tremble.
The other settles around my throat.
