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He felt like his guts had been torn out. Like his heart had been grabbed and squeezed. Crushed. In the delicate palm of her hand. And only she had the power to do this. Only she could destroy him like that. And it was utter destruction.
He could not look at her. He couldn’t.
He lifted her up off of his lap and pushed her up against the bar. Pressing her hands flat to the marble top. He swept her hair to the side and kissed the back of her neck and she shivered.
And he waited. To see if she would tell him to leave her. To see if she would push him away. But she didn’t.
He pushed her dress up past her hips, pulling aside the silk of her underwear and pushing his fingers through her slick folds.
She was wet for him. Even now.
Just as he was hard for her. No matter that the world was burning around them.
No. There were no flames. They were all inside of him. He was a light. Tortured by this devastation raging inside of him. Tormented by her. All that she was.
He had seen her as a gift that day. Waiting at the ruins for him. Waiting to satisfy his urges, something that he could bury his grief in.
And yet, she had not helped him bury his feelings at all. Ever since he had first met Riot all she had done was call deeper feelings up to the surface. She had not been a gift. She had been a curse. This long road of attempting to recover from the death of his mother...
These things could not just go on hurting.
The world could not keep delivering endless pain. What was the purpose of it? What was the purpose of any of it? He growled, pushing two fingers inside of her and wrapping his fist around her hair, pulling it back. She arched her spine, pressing her bottom more firmly into him. Letting his fingers go deeper.
“You want me even now,” he said. “I cannot give you what you want, and yet you desire this.”
“You won’t give me what I want,” she said, looking over her shoulder, her eyes glinting.
“You don’t understand,” he said, working his fingers in and out of her. “I can’t.”
“You’re a coward,” she said.
He growled, freeing himself from his pants and thrusting into her in one smooth stroke.
He gripped her hips hard with one hand, held her hair with the other, and he punished them both. For needing each other like they did. For all the feelings that this created inside of them. If he could open his chest and pull his heart out, take out everything that offended him, he would.
But he could not. So here they were. Lost in this maelstrom of need.
And when his desire overtook him completely, he roared out his release, as he felt her break apart, tremble and cry out as her internal muscles pulsed around him.
“You may not love me anymore,” he growled, “but you need me.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t love you,” she said.
He moved away from her.
“But you don’t.”
“I do. I really, really wanted to make you say it, Krav. I did. Because I have torn myself open for you time and time again. Only to have you tell me no. Only to have you look at me and tell me you don’t feel things the way that I do. But I can see now that... I have to. I have to, don’t I? Nobody loved me either. You don’t have a monopoly on pain. On parents who are distant. Who don’t care. The difference between you and me is that I want to love. I want to. I want to be loved. When I woke up from that coma, and I thought that we were in love, it was like every dream I had never even known I had had come true. And maybe that’s it. I had that moment. That clarity. It was all that mattered. I couldn’t remember the steps that we took to get there. I didn’t care. All I cared about was that we loved each other. And everything else, all of the past pain can go to hell. I will forgive you for all of it. I will forgive my mother. I will forgive my absentee father. Whatever pain I need to let go of I will do it, so long as it doesn’t stand in the way of me loving you.”
“And Soriya.”
“Yes,” she said. “And Soriya. But to be honest it’s much easier to love a baby than a full-grown man with issues and scars that run deeper than my own. But if I have to do it... If I have to cut myself open again and bleed for you then I will. I love you, Krav. I want you to love me.”
“I can’t,” he said.
“Why not?”
“It’s dangerous,” he said. “Do you know... Do you know what it’s like to desperately want the approval and love of the person who beats you? And to not be able to make that go away? Do you know what that’s like? I wish my feelings had died the day they had taken me from my mother’s arms. It would’ve been better. What a sick and twisted thing to pray that you can make the person whose fists leave you battered and bruised love you the way that you love them. He was all that I had. He was all that I had, and I loved him. I wanted to be like him. Until he finally beat it out of me. Only then did I stop loving him. But along with that... It’s not easy. To wake up a heart that you have taught to be quiet.”
