Page 270 of These Tears

My amusement fades almost instantly. A wicked something slips through the ache before I realise with a startling clarity that he has not just wounded me. Between the blizzard, the chains and the hunger, amidst all the terrible lessons he forced into my bones – he split something open too. All those wants I’d buried beneath shame, manners and the colourless version of love someone else instilled in me have crawled out snarling.

And now I don’t just want Elias with all his seams torn. I want to know every ragged edge and still put my mouth there. Teeth, if necessary.

‘“To live – that is to burn oneself and yet not get warm,”’ he says.

Even the dogs have grown weary of the damn philosopher and get up to relocate to the back of the house.

I narrow my eyes. ‘Isn’t that the bit Nietzsche immediately calls ancient babbling?’

He tilts his head with slight amusement. ‘You have been reading too much of my bookshelf.’

‘Occupational hazard.’

His mouth slackens by degrees. ‘The words still fit.’

The moment breathes between us as I roll them in my head and keep my attention on his mouth inching closer.

‘Warm?’ I echo his words quietly.

My hand drifts towards the camera on the coffee table.

He halts his movements and his eyes follow my reach, pupils dilating as my fingers curl around it.

His breathing changes as I lift the lens between us, and my pulse turns bright and vicious in my chest.

‘What are you willing to do to be warm again?’ I ask.

The words change him. The blizzard flashes before us; my knees sinking into the white, his shadow over me while he forced the world to narrow down to breath, pride and survival.

He peers at me through the lens as I press the shutter.

‘Will you beg, Elias?’ I whisper. ‘Will you show me how badly you want to be forgiven?’

A shudder moves through him. Worse than fear, more decadent than shame.

‘Forgive me,’ he says, tilting over his knees, invading my space until his hands hook over the edge of the sofa that supports my back. He looms, broad and glorious as he peers down at me with a punishing gaze despite the words that come out of his mouth. ‘Forgive me for taking you. Frightening you.’

Click. Click.

‘For every time I made you small because I didn’t know what to make of you being brave.’

The shutter clicks again. Barely. My jaw tightens. He doesn’t look away.

I trace the ice in his eyes and the fire they keep. I let the lens travel down his strong chest. Then it stops where his length strains against his trousers.

‘Show me what you’re willing to do for forgiveness,’ I murmur.

A twitch of his mouth. I notice it and stop, waiting to see if it will slip into the dark or continue burning.

But then he shifts the weight to one arm and reaches slowly for the zipper.

‘Are you watching?’ he whispers.

All day I’ve been indulging in him, but it’s not enough. I don’t think it ever will be.

‘I’m watching.’

The zip sounds indecently loud. Through the camera, I follow the flex of tendon in his wrist, the motion of his shoulder and the tension of his abdomen as the fabric loosens. Cruelty and elegance in one. Desolation given symmetry.