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A woman falls down towards me, billowing silk waving out behind her over all these people, as she spills to a few feet over my head. I giggle and watch, suddenly feeling part of these people. I’m not lost here now, I’m found and willing, laughing with them and enjoying all this place has to give.
Gray.
My own hands move around my skin, gliding over it in a movement I’ve not felt before. It’s almost toxic on me, burning and lethal for some reason. My stomach tingles from the welts still there, but now they hum and sing at the same time, making me smile and glide around. Around and around. Over and over as the woman climbs back up the silk. I want to climb. I want to climb to the top and fall back down with her, knowing I’ll catch myself and hang on to me alone.
Alone. But I’m not alone here. I’m part of two.
Connected and necessary.
A sharp grab to my waist pulls me tight against solidity. My eyes close, heart understanding who it is before my face needs to recognise him. He’s so familiar now, part of me. Equal and opposing in the threat he brings to my feelings here. My fingers are grasped, the chain on my wrist moved and linked to him, and his large hand settles possessively on my lower back. Elegant. Tight. Firm and unyielding.
“You look like sin,” he murmurs, pulling me closer.
My head rolls back at the thought, exposing my neck to him so he can bite it some more if he feels like it. Suckle it and render me desperate as his teeth latch on. “I feel like sin.”
He starts moving, guiding me wherever he wants as if there’s no one else but us. There isn’t really. Never has been. Even when that man was inside me, and even when Malachi played and moved me, it was always Gray inside my mind. He was there even if he wasn’t. Making me think and feel, touch and linger without thought.
I laugh as the spin increases and pull my head up to look at him, relaxed and safe in his arms. I don’t want to look anywhere else but at him. I want those cruel eyes and that haunting glare to contain me, use me, lift me wherever he needs me.
Dark, stormy eyes look over my shoulder, as he pushes us through the rest and into the amused spin we’re all in. And then the music changes, a waltz I’ve heard before sweeping us all further into frivolity. He mutters something to himself, angry words about torment, as he stiffens slightly. I don’t care for anger. Nor do I care for him feeling he needs to be. We are together and twirling, laughing and enjoying.
My fingers move from his shoulder to his neck, body getting as close as I possibly can.
“How much more dancing before we fuck?” I whisper through the noise. His lips twitch, the frown lifting because of it. “Because I want that.”
The grip tightens, hand moving lower.
“How? Tell me your stories,” he says smoothly, changing direction and slowing us.
“Stop dancing and I’ll tell you.”
Another move, his feet forging us somewhere, and we come to an abrupt halt with no one in our way. I stare at his features as they come back to look at me, and freeze in dance hold still. So handsome. Angry and volatile, regardless of the tux he’s wearing.
My hand softly grazes the back of his neck, nails trailing skin and winding into his hair. So familiar now. Tense muscles. Tense sinew and bone holding him upright. I squirm at the thought of all that aggression and smile, wondering what the Gray who isn’t aggressive might be like.
“Talk, Hannah.”
“Why are you so angry with me all the time now?” He stares back at me, his fingers gently releasing my hand to travel to my face. His own slackens, all that hostility and cruelty replaced by softer, more relaxed features I’ve barely seen before. Fingers travel over my skin softly, cheek, lips. I lean into them, letting my own linger on the sharpness of his stubble, the severe line of his jaw.
“Because you’re a torment I should deny, Hannah.”
“Why?”
The world around us seems to go quiet at that question. There’s nothing but the two of us in the middle of this space, a sea of bodies blurring around us, as I tilt my head for an answer. No answer as he gazes, though, and lightly traces the side of my face. Seems silly to deny anything here to me. Here isn’t for denying or rejecting. It’s for acceptance and tolerance, for feeling and living.
“Why would you-” His lips are on mine before I finish, his tongue sweeping through me like a storm I’ve fallen into. I groan and go weak in his hold, letting him sweep me up in any storm he chooses.
The fingers tighten on me, brutal and unforgiving as he picks me up from the ground and keeps kissing me, and then we’re moving again. I don’t care where. Anywhere. Everywhere. I’ll go anywhere with him now, fall anywhere because he brought me to this place. Led me here.
I tighten my own arms around his neck, clinging on to deepen the feel of his mouth on mine. Carried, pitched, and turned. The music isn’t even here now, only him and his mouth, his body moving firmly, until the air goes black and there truly is nothing but us.
Quiet. I still as he pulls back from me and slowly drops me down his body. My heels touch the ground, his hands balancing me until I regain my own balance.
“Did you like what Malachi did to you?” he asks, removing the chain from his wrist and backing away into a dark corner.
“Yes.” I think I did anyway. Some of it. Not all. But that seems to be a thing here, a par for the course in this destructive yet whimsical world I’m in.
He growls and steps out into a small slither of light again, tugging at his bow tie and releasing the button beneath. “Why?”
