Artem
Her mouth is still against mine when the world stops making sense. Every thought I’ve ever had about vengeance, about control, disintegrates under the soft press of her lips. I taste salt and something sweet, and I realise it’s her tears.
For a heartbeat I don’t move. I’m terrified that if I breathe she’ll vanish, and I’ll be left again with nothing but ghosts.
But she doesn’t. She’s right here, warm, trembling, alive.
My hands find her waist without permission.
The soft satin of her dress a thin barrier between us that sends fire up my spine.
The heat between us changes everything. It burns through months of anger and replaces it with something quieter, something that feels like peace, and that scares me more than the hatred ever did.
I haven’t known silence inside my head since Lev died.
Yet now, with her body pressed against mine, the noise fades.
I pull back just enough to look at her. The masks are gone, the lies I told myself with them.
She’s all flushed skin and glass-bright eyes, breathing hard.
I should push her away, remind myself who she is and what she represents.
Instead I trace the edge of her jaw with my thumb, the simple human contact undoing me in ways violence never could.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I whisper. “I can’t—” The words die. There’s nothing I can’t do; there’s only what I shouldn’t do.
She tilts her face into my hand, eyes closing like she’s already chosen her side.
That small act of trust snaps what’s left of my control.
I drag her against me and kiss her again, deeper this time, desperate, the kind of kiss that feels like breaking open a wound to let the poison out.
She gasps into my mouth, her hands clutching my shoulders, and I know I’m lost.
I tear my lips from hers long enough to breathe against her skin. “This doesn’t change anything…” My voice is rough, almost unrecognisable. “I’ll ruin you. You won’t survive the night.”
She doesn’t flinch. Her lips tremble into something like a smile. She looks at me like the threat is a promise she’s been waiting her whole life to hear. “I never expected to,” she whispers.
That’s the moment the restraint snaps. The need to destroy the world for what it took from me dissolves into the need to devastate her.
The ache in my chest shifts into something alive and terrifyingly human.
My hand slides up the curve of her spine, anchoring her to me as I exhale against her ear, “You have no idea what you’re doing. ”
“I do,” she says, voice trembling but certain. “I don’t care if it destroys me. If this is the last thing I feel so be it.”
Everything inside me twists. Months of rage and hollow nights collapse into something reckless and alive. The air between us hums. I can taste the change, metal, champagne, her breath. My self-control is a fraying wire; one more touch and it will snap.
I reach for her throat, not to hurt her but to feel her pulse hammer against my palm. It’s the first real thing I’ve felt since Lev died. Her skin warms under my hand, and the anger that’s driven me for so long quiets into a single, terrifying truth: right now I want her more than I want vengeance.
The next heartbeat breaks me. I crush my mouth to hers, and she answers like she’s been waiting for this insane madness all her life.
Her fingers twist in my shirt, dragging me closer until there’s no space left.
The kiss is rough, desperate, an exorcism of everything we’ve both buried.
When I pull her into me, she comes willingly, her body arching into mine, soft where I am nothing but hard lines of ruin.
Somewhere between breaths I murmur against her mouth, “This is your warning. If we do this, you belong to me.”
“I already do,” she answers.
That’s it. The last thread snaps. I lift her and her legs automatically wrap around my waist. Her hands cup my face as she continues to kiss me, her tongue finding mine and twisting in a dance so primal it wakes up part of me that I didn’t know existed.
When I lay her on the bed she already looks ruined beneath me, her lips swollen, her eyes still wet, her hair falling from the the pins that hold it up in wavy tendrils.
I find the top of the zip under her arm and pull downwards, peeling the dress away from her and slowly revealing her bare curves beneath. When I’ve pulled the dress from her completely, she lies there in just a plain pink thong and I’m struck by her beauty.
Pulling my own clothes off quickly, I climb over her and begin kissing her again.
Taking in the way she feels and tastes with my tongue.
Dropping kisses over her jaw and neck, working my way down to her glorious tits.
I take one nipple in my mouth and suck hard, before swapping to the other side.
She arches, mewling at the contact, the flick of my tongue over her nipple.
My hand slides down her side, finding the elastic of her thong and sliding beneath it.
“You’re already wet for me,” I say, pressing my fingers against her entrance, but not inside.
Her response is a moan as she grinds her core against the palm of my hand.
“You’re so responsive,” I say, watching her face as her eyelids flutter shut. “Has anyone ever touched you like this before?”
“No,” she replies on a gasp. “I told you. There’s never been anyone, ever.” Her voice has taken on a whiny quality that would usually turn me off, but now it’s driving me insane in a completely different way. My cock throbs and pre-cum leaks from the tip.
She is a virgin. Never been touched. Walked into this room ready to die that way. Quietly asked for it not to be.
Now I’m going to ruin her for death himself. Break her into a shape that will only ever fit me in every lifetime. The thought makes me harder still and I have to close my eyes for a second to keep control.
“Fuck, Elena, I’m not going to be gentle.” I squeeze her breast hard, as if to punctuate my point.
She winces. “I didn’t ask you to be gentle, Artem. I need it to hurt.”
Her words stop the air in my lungs. I need it to hurt.
For a heartbeat, I almost tell her no, not because I’m gentle, but because I understand too well what she means.
She isn’t asking for pain. She’s asking to feel something that isn’t the constant, grinding ache of loss.
And God help me, I understand that better than anyone.
The grief has hollowed us both out; now we’re just trying to fill the empty space with heat, breath, touch, anything that proves we’re still alive.
For months I’ve wanted to burn the world down just to see if the flames could reach me. Now she’s here, shaking, looking at me like maybe I could be the fire instead.
Something inside me gives way. Not the part that wants control, that’s still there, coiled tight, but the part that’s been locked behind grief.
She’s asking me to be the flame, to burn through the cold that’s been choking her. I recognise it because it’s the same cold that’s lived in me since the night Lev died. Maybe that’s why I can’t walk away.
I lift her chin so she has to look at me. Her eyes are bright, fierce through the tears. There’s no fear in them, only need.
“You think pain will fix this?” I ask.
Her breath catches. “No. But none of it will matter when I’m dead.”
That’s when I understand. She’s not chasing punishment. She’s trying to remember what it feels like to exist. Even if it’s only for the last moments of her life.
The distance between us disappears. Everything that’s been suffocating me, rage, guilt, loneliness, condenses into one unbearable moment of wanting. For the first time in months, the emptiness inside me isn’t winning.
I lower myself down her body, pulling off her thong and parting her knees. Her centre is perfect, glistening with her juices and ripe for attention.
The first swipe of my tongue is just to map her anatomy, when she bucks I move my hands to her hips and pin her down.
Then I eat her pussy like a man starved.
I don’t stop, not when she is moaning, begging or pleading.
I keep licking at her lips and clit like my life depends on it.
She tastes divine, and every time she makes another sound I double down and work her harder.
I slide a finger in and hook it to reach that place that should undo her.
When her back arches from the bed, I suck her clit hard and watch as the orgasm consumes her.
When it subsides, her body is flushed pink and trembling. Her eyes are hooded when she lifts her head and looks down at me as I kiss the insides of her thighs.
When her breathing returns to normal, I slowly make my way back up her body, trailing pre-cum where the tip of my cock touches her, and take a nipple into my mouth. She shudders.
“That’s never happened to me before,” she says, and it’s enough to undo me completely.
I line myself up with her slick entrance and push. Her eyes shoot to mine and widen in a moment of panic.
“Relax, let me take you like you asked.”
Her hands come to my shoulders and I push into her warm heat.
Her face folds into a frown as she takes every inch of me, then she lets out a strangled gasp as I bottom out.
I hold there for a moment to let her get used to the stretch as I clench my teeth and focus on not blowing my load like I’ve never done this before.
But I haven’t. I’ve never fucked someone who was fine with dying, but begged not to die untouched.
The rest blurs, the world narrowing to breath and heat and the sound of her saying my name like it’s a secret she’s been keeping too long. I take her in the only way I know how: fiercely, reverently, as if claiming her might finally let me rest.
When the noise in my head finally stops, it’s because of her.