Page 266 of These Tears

He feeds on my hunger with dark reverence and watches as I explore him slowly, worshipping him with each pass.

But unlike his touch, mine drifts lower, slipping through the sparse trail of hair. His breath skips when I coil my hands around the base of him. I hold him there, pulsing in my palm. It’s the way I give him time to work through the arousal and the ghosts beneath it, until all he feels is my touch.

His jaw clenches as soon as I begin slow, measured strokes, each breath leaving him less evenly than the last. The blue of his gaze turns a darker shade until only a narrow ring of ice remains, and I feel the precise moment need begins pressing against the edges of his control.

He doesn’t close his eyes any more. He doesn’t turn his face away or swallow the sound that threatens to rise.

His hand slides over my hip, down the trembling line of my thigh, then drifts inwards until his fingers dip into the soft flesh between my legs.

My breath breaks against his.

I arch into his palm and let him feel how much I want him there.

We sink sideways onto the bed, the sheets catching at our oiled skin as if the linen itself can’t let go. Every slow drag of his fingers between my thighs pulls another sound from my throat, while every stroke of my hand around him chips away at the last brittle sense of civility.

He parts me for the cameras with firm hands, holds me open beneath the warm, low lights.

I should feel exposed. But with the moans coming from the speakers, with the sounds of our bodies meeting, I feel chosen instead.

I guide his length, watching the sheen cling to the black waves of his hair spilling over his forehead. My eyes lower to his arms, muscles shifting with every movement as he pushes in.

The stretch steals all thought from me.

He fills me slowly, heavily, and my body struggles to make room not just for the size of him, but for everything he has been holding back that he is now ready to give me. My spine arches from the sheets, mouth open around a sound that barely survives, and Elias bows over me with a broken groan.

From the speakers, our replayed breaths spill into the room: his roughened growls, my fractured cries, the rhythmic creak of the furniture beneath. The echoes fold over the sounds we make now.

Time becomes the small red pulse of the recording lights, the rasp of linen beneath my shoulder blades, the low murmur of our voices as he turns me, lifts me, bends me into another shape for the cameras to remember, and the mirrors to emphasise.

The pace splinters when his hand snakes into my hair and closes hard, hauling my head back until my throat lies bare beneath him. My need bursts as heat follows the pain from my roots down my spine and crashes in my core, where his hips start driving forward harder. His tongue drags slowly over my neck, tasting me with a sound so dark it nearly pushes me over the edge.

The recording eventually reaches its end. Our last encounter flickers once across the wall, then disappears into a blank square of light.

By the time the oil has soaked into our skin, and the air has grown too scarce to breathe without tasting him in it, I no longer know which version of us the cameras have captured this time and which new version emerged from it. His hands keep finding me in the dimness. My name keeps breaking apart in his mouth.

His fingers shift between us, slide between my lips, push back into my hair, then coil around my throat. His grip turns rougher as the movements begin to lose their pace.

My heel slips against the sheets, my nails drag over his strong shoulders while the bed complains beneath it all. Breath comes in torn gasps, skin striking slick skin, neither of us holding anything back.

Somewhere amidst the heat, the shadows, and the silent witnesses pointed towards the bed, I realise the most dangerous thing about this room is not that Elias built it for our demons.

It’s that mine know exactly how to behave here.

A bead forms at his temple and slides down as his eyes hold mine, zeroing in on my mouth each time a cry tears through, feeding that ravenous demon in him.

His thrusts drive me towards the edge until my vision starts disintegrating.

‘I need to fill you, Leah,’ he rasps.

The meaning doesn’t click right away.

‘I’m going to make you take it all…’

‘No… Too dangerous…’

‘Yes,’ he growls. ‘Please… tell me you want to. You took it once before.’ He moans with the next thrust. ‘You wanted it back in that visitor room too, didn’t you? You wanted me to mark you.’

I open my mouth to deny it, but he shifts the angle of his hips, and light fractures across my vision, scattering every remaining coherent thought.