Monomaniac

Chapter 10

Dante

SHE REMEMBERS. My ethereal shadow has preserved me in her memory. There is both fear and something akin to fascination in those dilated grey eyes, palpable want in her thighs parting almost imperceptibly for me. In this moment I want nothing more than to crush her to me with touch starved hands that know nothing but hunger for everything she represents.

Her hand brushes between our bodies suspended in whatever spell her sacred essence has conjured; trembling fingers grasping the vial pendant filled with my blood I've attached a few nights ago to her neck. My holy terrain.

It was a visceral need to have her wear the literal extract of my life close to the safe haven of her chest. Bearing in mind that hers had been flowing through me since that day that haunted my bones like a phantasm.

Blood for blood. As within, so outward.

In the stillness of this moment, I’m dying to bite into her lunar skin until I draw blood and coat my jaw with it, to let it flow until the scars marring my neck will be no more.

I close my eyes, breathing her in as I cover the entirety of her body with my own. The feel of her, molding so naturally under my limbs, supple and soft against my hard muscles, silences the incessant scream in my bones in an instant. Ecstasy.

The need to possess every inch of her leaves me blind; deaf to anything but her. Being eleven stories high seems laughable in its apparent deadliness, because with her beneath me, I feel untouchable. Immortal.

I brush my nose to hers, my heart squeezing with overflowing adoration for this woman as I nuzzle into her neck; the sounds of honking cars and people shouting for whatever reason below us, barely existing to my ears. All that I can see, hear and smell is Ophelia Grimes.

My long-awaited shadow, with her dark hair splayed around her pale face like a halo of sleeping serpents. Her quiet breathing that I’ll make my life mission to fall asleep next to for the rest of my days. Her smell that reminds of the desolate gardens of Eden long after the snake has come. Her very existence – an alchemy of sensations hard to contain within the senses; impossible to resist.

"Did I make myself understood?" I ask tilting my head to one side and taunting her as she so temptingly did to me in the graveyard.

"Mhm," she whimpers in response as I run my nose along her jawline, the breath that escapes from beneath my mask – a warning on her skin.

"Be my good ombra and open slowly," I whisper as I carefully nudge her legs wider apart, desperately needing her closer.

She stifles a moan by sinking her teeth in that plump bottom lip I’ve been dying to taste since the first time I saw her.

"What happened to your throat?" she asks as she laces her fingers tentatively in my hair, the feel of her pointed nails, a heaven of its own on my scalp.

"A knife," I answer simply, angling my neck towards the bleeding sky so she'll have full view of the scarred wound concealed by the collar of my hoodie.

This time, she is the silent one.

I lower my head and search her eyes that are now immersed in unspoken emotion over what has so cruelly cut into my history, further than skin can show. And for the first time since that day, a lifetime ago, I don't reject the forbidden taste of compassion coming from someone else. Because the source of it is her, the one from whom I may need it most.

I align our chests that seem as open as canyons between us, our faces being a flicker of fire away.

How can you touch my soul when nothing ever even touches my skin? I ask internally; trying to convey without the need of empty words the untranslatable and hoping that what cannot be contained within me will reach her doors.

"Can I feel it?" she asks through cloudy eyes, her hand already traveling on my jaw while her thumb draws distracted lines over my covered lips; leaving them burning and wanting.

I nod in response without giving it a second thought as I extend my neck in the warmth of her palm.

"God," she quivers, a bleeding tear falling along her temple, while she caresses the clean cut that should’ve erased me from this world.

In all those years, no one other than my doctor has been allowed to touch it, but Ophelia shows me tenfold with each breath she takes that she’s my sole exception. That her hands heal, when others make me want to abolish them only.

"Does it hurt?" she asks, brushing her delicate fingers over the raised skin of the slash.

I shake my head once, envisioning the daily reminder of the horrors I had survived through. There are times where I wish I could lobotomize that damned day from my memory even for a couple of seconds. The shock of an ice peak gradually sinking in my socket would be nothing but an itch in comparison.

"What about when you speak?" she asks, keeping her fingers still over it and giving me the impression that she wishes her touch alone could make it disappear.

It feels surreal – us talking so openly, to be finally free to share this side of myself with her.

"No, my voice is healed by now."

At the time when it all happened, I was lucky enough the blade only reached my larynx and vocal cords. The recovery process was slow and excruciatingly painful, but it was a welcomed distraction from my inner hell as my voice slowly recovered. Now it sounds deeper, rougher, the low timbre adding another layer to what I was forced to become.

"When did it happen?" Ophelia asks quietly, brushing her finger over my eyebrow.

"A long time ago," I say tiredly as I lower my head on her chest, needing to hear the constant rhythm of her heartbeat as it slowly aligns with mine.

Minutes pass with us remaining enveloped in each other, with both of our minds trapped in personal hells and handpicked purgatories that life has thrust upon us – now tangled and bound.

Hiding and hidden in plain sight.

She , along with the sound of raindrops sparsely hitting the concrete roof instills a certain kind of peace deep inside my barren being, allowing me to feel something I haven't felt in what seems like eons ago – c ontentment to simply exist.

"Ill-starred angel," she whispers into the nothingness up and below us, her fingers tracing an imaginary web down my spine.

"I’m no angel, tesoro mio," I return, brushing my nose to hers and letting our breaths merge, hot and heavy against the cotton of my mask.

"To me you are. The dark kind," she says quietly as if in secret, stealing every remnant of a rational thought lingering in my mind when she pushes her hips into me with painful fervor.

"My kind," she continues and I lose it.

Oh mia ombra, you have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.

"No," I rasp, my jaw caressing hers like a feline would before sinking its teeth. "You are the only angelic presence here. The kind that could save me, but I’d rather have you under me as we burn together."

A constricted moan escapes her lips as I catch them through my covered mouth, stealing her desire. Even with my face concealed I feel her in the morrow of my bones, her flesh morphing into ripe fruit before I sink my teeth into it. I do it, because I want to keep her in my body as my own.

Animalistic groans and whimpers coat the concrete walls of the building, our bodies tangling and untangling like ravenous snakes inches away from their demise.

My fate opens her legs further, so trusting with my demons that my hollow heart almost bursts as she welcomes me into the home of her.

This, this is pure freedom. This is what life feels like at its highest cry.

"You're mine," I pant fanatically as I grip the outer side of her thigh, raising the leg she extended earlier into the void, against my hip.

"Why?" she chokes out, as I thrust myself into her with an unyielding force that moves us dangerously close to the edge.

My eyes sink into the back of my skull when I feel Ombra’s maddening heat, her questioning driving me mad with the thirst to make her see, understand without the need of words.

"Tell me you're mine," I demand into the crook of her neck as I wrap my hand around it; aching as I push against her wet lips covered by a silk thong, the sinful sight being now on full display under her open robe. "You’ve known it for a while," I continue, sucking the curve of her collarbone.

Fuck, how I want you. I'd die to spare you in a second, can't you see?

"Why me?" she pries further, even though I can feel her words dying on her waiting tongue, as my eyes consume her, all damned and sinful.

"It’s a fact of life," I say heatedly, the words ringing in my ears with their raw truth.

"How…what makes you say that?" she moans before licking my ear, her hands roaming over my back like ghosts with sharpened knives instead of fingers.

There is a Heaven. Have I actually died after all?

"You lived inside of me like a malady for so long, but I also knew that you would be the only cure my dying tongue will seek in its last moments," I confess as I sink my teeth into the milky skin of her shoulder, savoring the way she arches her spine under the delicious current of pain. All the while I lick the fresh mark that looks like my sealed signature onto the masterpiece of her and all is quiet and ours.

I grasp her other thigh, aligning them both with my hips so she could wrap them tight around my waist, and I...I finally find my resting place.

Ravenous, fucking starved; I place my forearms on both sides of her head, so everything she’ll be able to feel and see is my body consuming hers with every groan, with every delicious thrust.

My stomach tightens as my composure loosens – all the muscles in my body contracting when my hand cups the crown of her head in an effort to protect her from the inevitable contact with the pillar; the maddening friction being all it takes to drive me over the edge.

"So beautiful with my hand wrapped around your neck," I tremble over her mouth, the other one going up the outside of her thigh and taking possession of her hip, tight enough to leave a bruise.

My hips collide with hers with raving urgency, savoring every graze and touch. The way a man going through withdrawals would when faced with the last bottle of the finest wines existing in a dying world.

Letting the pure and primal instinct takeover is nothing but a given when I am with her; my hunger for this mystical woman who was born for me and me only, stealing away any rational thought I might conjure in this life altering moment.

Her moans – both sensual and wild, fill the night sky that shrouds us in darkness as she tugs harder on my hair as if to tell me something that simply can't be uttered in the open.

My tongue can no longer resist the call of her skin as I give it full reign to explore, her eyes rolling back when I finally remove my gloves with my teeth. They are now unnecessary since she has partially uncovered my identity.

Both of us groan in relief at the blissful agony of my bare hand traveling on a straight path from the delicate bones of her clavicle to the bare space between her breasts exposed by her partially open robe.

I raise my eyes to her spell binding ones and without having to ask, I find in them the permission to bring forth her vulnerability, to make the hidden thing between us that more raw.

With my ring finger I caress the softest of skins, slowly letting it seek her nipple under the cold fabric. I don’t remove it yet, because when it comes to her, the focal urgency is to feel rather than just see what lays on the surface.

It’s all about savoring, going limp with pleasure from our eyes meeting in a sea of nothing. Dying a little.

Her nails sink further into my scalp and down my jaw, creeping into the inside of my mask as I find and palm heaven in the form of her heavy breast in my large hand.

I hiss at the feeling of her hardened nipples grazing my palms as I cup them both, ravenous with the need to mold them until my palms will learn every curve, until my eyes will memorize their decadent beauty.

Never in my life had I been so painfully hard, so starved to lose myself completely, so found and yet lost. With the sky above as my witness, I swear I’ll dedicate the rest of my days to worship the ground her feet will kiss, wherever they may take her.

On that sobering thought I get that much drunker as I remove the front of her robe, needing her more than air. She’s that essential.

Nothing in this world could’ve prepared me for the sight of her bare before my eyes, exposed to me only by the bleeding moon. At the sight, I grow impossibly harder, all that I am begging for a taste...

They are voluptuous and heavy, with a lighter shade than the rest of her, made for my teeth to leave their mark on; calling to me with every strained breath she takes, with each soft quiver as she twines her legs between mine with lascivious caresses.

At the mesmerizing sight of her hand grazing the side of her ribs and raking those vampiric nails down her hollowed in stomach with a need that cannot be hidden, something inside me breaks.

I have to taste her for myself, caution be damned.

I lean my head into her collarbone and raise my mask just enough for my lips to lick their way to her nipple, leaving a trail of molten lava and unspeakable sins; the melody of her siren moans sounding more like a song of coming home rather than a murderous ode for the touch starved left at sea.

She’s a ruin of unfulfilled need and unveiled passion beneath me as I thrust harder into her. Dazed, I force my eyes to look at our surroundings and mentally prepare myself for the very plausible scenario of me having to end some peeping fucker that might watch her from the building facing us on our right.

Insatiable, I return to my sinful ghost, giving her left nipple a long teasing lick before I sink my teeth into the succulent flesh, loving the way she sounds, she smells, she moves. Her cries mixed with undiluted pleasure as she cups my jaw and pushes my face deeper into the swell of her breast – the sweetest ache to my starved heart and throbbing desire for her only.

"What are you doing to me?" I ask on the edge of delirium as I swirl my tongue around the hardened nub, alternating between sucking and biting hard enough to mark her with the language of my desire.

"Please, I need…more," she pleads on a moan, sinking her teeth into her lip while pressing her hips into mine in a way only a woman that has abstained for possibly lifetimes of boundless pleasure would.

"What do you need, mia ombra?" I ask as I caress the side of her pale face while my other hand grasps both of her wrists tightly against the pillar, pinning her down beneath me. So beautiful, so trusting.

"You, inside me," she says evenly, leveling her glazed eyes with mine, as if possessed by an eerie calm demanding a hurricane to enter and devastate her from the inside out.

"Sono pazzo di te," I confess in her hair coating my wet lips as I pant heavily in her ear, stripped of the little sanity I had remaining.

She squirms in my tight grip, her hips meeting mine with rapture like a restless wave looking to carve a home into the rock of her choosing. At this point we are so tangled into each other there is no way to know who the sculptor is.

"What does it mean?" her passionfruit breath rasps against my temple as her lips trace my hairline.

Needing to consume and be consumed myself, I run my tongue over my teeth before lapping at a small cut I just created on her inner breast, alleviating the wound and coating my tongue with the taste of her silver blood.

"You are a danger to my sanity," I still my hips, palming myself over the denim and squeezing once, twice; since, if I allow myself to continue, I’ll fucking come and I’d rather see the world burn than let this happen before she does.

Fervid, she writhes beneath me, ignoring the eleven stories below us. Trembling fingers tangle in my hair; pulling and twisting it hard as she chases a deeper taste of ecstasy while her other hand curls around the nape of my neck and beckons me closer. Temptress.

"Ah, does she want me back?" I ask darkly as I grind against her inner thigh painfully slow, taunting her with the taste of her own desire.

"Please, don’t be cruel," she whimpers, arresting my gaze with those bewitching grey eyes, her long eyelashes fanning across wet cheeks coated with fresh tears of what I presume is frustration. No sight has ever been this touching, this mouthwatering.

Dio, this woman is going to end me and I’ll gladly die with an understanding heart and a bloodied smile as she twists the knife deeper.

But how could I not be a little cruel, when she had detained me in a purgatory where only her perfume remained stuck on my being? Years, long years where only her memory kept me waiting, longing.

Ophelia turns her head away from me, her pained profile creating a plaguing image that I will have etched in my memory for the rest of my days. Along with the one of her past self, only about thirteen or so years younger, with a different kind of pain now cloaked in the garb of maturity.

"Tesorina, look at me," I withdraw my hand that had found its way under her back and cup her face as the other makes a searing path towards her core. I still my breath and swallow a tortured moan at the feel of her soaked lingerie.

"I’ll never deny you," I whisper the promise in the stillness of the night for her ears only as I palm her, rubbing her heat with short, circular strokes. Paradise.

It is both glorious and torturous to resist the incessant scream rooting in the deepest chambers inside of me when it comes to this ethereal woman. It begs me to follow the call, to enter her and deal with the consequences later.

Instead, I move aside the scrap of silk between us, her quiet gasps faltering for the next few seconds as the cold breeze touches her wet lips; pink, swollen and all mine to devour.

She’s beyond an absolute ideal, my own unparalleled Eden smelling of ripe pomegranate and looking like the unfolding of genesis; crumbling any notion of a life without her now that our eyes have met in secret and shared stolen emotions.

However, even as I now lift her foot to my mouth and kiss her ankle, I will never put her on a pedestal. I wouldn’t be that selfish, not even at my ugliest because I need her to be human, vulnerable, her true self – all wounds and concealed bruises, able to reach me as an equal in all aspects whether the daylight breaks or the night comes.

We share a look that speaks a thousand words as I rest the inside of her knee on top of my shoulder, the intoxicating smell of her arousal hitting my senses with a force that weakens my knees and solidifies the need to have her until there’s no way to tell where I begin and she ends.

Keeping her still with one hand splayed on her flat stomach, I nuzzle my face against her core before the tip of my tongue tastes her for the first time. Both of us groan through greeted teeth at the sinful sensation.

Mad, her venereous aroma drives me mad.

With hands tangled in my hair, tugging at the roots as if to guide me closer once more, she looks at me with charged anticipation for what is to come; disarming me and putting me back together as I part her lips.

"Such a good girl," I whisper as her hips instinctively move closer to my face before I devote an open mouthed kiss on my newfound place of worship. There, I both drown and resurface while I graze my teeth along the seam before biting into her folds. "So impatient and wet for me."

"Oh my…please…God!" she writhes against my shoulder, a sight so sensual that my eyes mist as they roam over her seductive form. So unrestrained, so unwavering in the faith that I won’t let her fall.

"Darkly divine, that’s what you are," I whisper, the stark sound of a speeding ambulance below us breaking the quiet intensity of the moment.

I carefully lower us both; the ringing in my ears gradually mixing with the city sounds while the sharp sting of the wind reminds me where we are.

With unfocused eyes I look below – the people roaming about the crowded boulevards, faintly illuminated by the orange glow of the street lights, appearing like a mere mirage against the surreal sight of the woman of my most hidden dreams and imaginations.

My left hand palms her breast one last time before I cover her, leaving only her spread lips bare to my eyes. Softly, I massage the outside of her thigh in an effort to instill some heat back while our eyes burn entire worlds in the utter dusk surrounding us.

"I don't even know your name," she breathes, running her nails along my chin.

"I am right here," I say as I touch my own blood resting in her pendant. "You wear my life around your neck, a name is nothing," I say as I ghost my fingers over the silver chain.

"I need to know it," she says while taking my hand in hers and placing my index finger over her open mouth.

"Why?" I ask tracing her teeth.

"So I could mention it when the darkness haunts," she swallows. "So I could call out for you when I'm losing my mind, when everything gets heavy," she whispers ardently, sucking on my thumb.

"So you could scream it after a long day. When the light is dim and the covers suffocate, with your hands between your legs and my scent on your pillows. Burning too fiercely to know if you're coming or dying," I say before I let instinct take the lead.

I remove the fingers she so greedily wet for me and plunge two into her pleading core. The feel of her…

Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, all wrapped in one.

"God," she breathes, squeezing her eyes tightly shut and blindly hooking her finger on the hem of my jeans. It feels so natural.

I pump into her with pure abandon as our whimpers morph into decadent sobs, making the moon and the entire city a powerless testimony to the animal this woman reduces me to.

My hips grind erratically into her quivering thighs, all lost and drunk. The clandestine sounds coming from her silky inner walls, the wetness coating my palm and flowing on the concrete ledge under us – all of it, drives me with the maniacal need to take everything she’s not even aware is hiding deep within.

I feel her inner walls contract against my fingers as her velvety voice quivers with ecstasy, letting me know she’s close. Hypnotized by her essence filling me to the brim, I lower my mouth to her ear and whisper "Dante."

"What?" she asks out of breath, looking at me through hazy eyes.

"My name is Dante, mia cara," I swallow just as breathless, our eyes meeting and standing still in a place known only by our souls; the world around us disappearing in its entirety.

"Inferno," she whispers darkly as if struck by an epiphany, something foreign and grave coating her features swallowed partly by the night.

"Inferno?" I ask, my fingers curling and finding that sweet spot, eliciting a soaring whimper reaching the blazing fire in her eyes.

"Yes, Dante’s Inferno. I look at you...every night. My healing venom, my very opium," she says breathlessly, her head tilting towards the starless sky witnessing our undoing.

A few seconds pass before the realization dawns on me that she's referring to the painting above her headboard, both losing and finding myself with the realization that fate has somehow kept us connected through it all.

My teeth seek the sacred ground of her shoulder as I bite into it, her nails digging into my back and puncturing the skin until I feel blood pooling under them.

"I've prayed for you to whoever would listen. And you…you are the answer," she whispers with tears now coating her pale cheeks as her tongue laps at the crimson coating her pinky.

My martyr, my carnivorous seductress.

"You are my reason…" for still being here .

Just as the words leave my mouth I hit that holy spot buried deep inside her, making her cry out as she finally finds her searing release.

Without warning, I come violently at the sight, choking on a groan as a sudden shiver runs down my spine at the feel of her hand gripping me so deliciously hard over my jeans. The feel of her having me, extends those brief seconds to what seems like an infinity – leaving my world tattering on its axes and placing me in a blank state of existence.

There is no sound, no dimension, no sight to see but the sheer ferocity hiding behind our shared climax, leavings us burning in each other’s depths.

The aftermath is both cathartic and purging, our bodies intertwining in the rhythm of crashing waves, meeting and shattering on agonizingly high cliffs; merging in the rhythm of unspoken emotions as we draw our breath with lingering hands and lips brushing over naked skin.

"How did you find me?" she whispers as she twirls a strand of my hair around her finger.

"There’s no hiding place secluded enough for me not to unearth you and make you mine in every lifetime," I declare, rubbing my cheek on her breast bone.

The air grows colder, the wind harsher, smelling of approaching rain, now that our heated bodies are returning to the reality of an early November evening.

"That night, you were there," she says with an eerie conviction, her whole body shivering beneath mine.

"Let's get you back inside, you’re freezing," I let my silent non response speak for itself at this moment in time. Partly because total honesty will rip open wounds for both of us, and considering that my priority is her safety, now that the veil of madness she somehow always lays over my eyes is beginning to somewhat clear.

I carefully stand up, resting my weight on the concrete wall and extending my hand towards her after finding my balance. The way she looks at me feels different than an hour ago, trust and warmth seeping from her eyes as I grip her fingers in mine and help her up before leading the way towards the open window.

A taciturn Coblina waits for us by the pane, as I smoothly glide inside with Ophelia following close behind.

The second I hear her soles hit the oak floors I turn around and grip her tightly by the nape of her neck, bringing us mouth to eye, her breasts pressing temptingly to the hard planes of my chest.

"Don’t you ever do that again! No unanswered question or anything else for that matter is worth risking your life over," I say with severity as I penetrate her dazed gaze with my burning one.

"That ledge knows the imprint of my feet better than my balcony. I just wanted to see how far you’d follow," she says while cupping my face, her thumbs caressing the raised skin of my cheekbones underneath the mask. "I crave clarity, transparency in everything I do. With you, I need it above all else if you want my complete trust," she continues vehemently, her expression so somber that I want to tear that piece of silk between us and ruin her again.

Thoughtfully, I run my tongue over the seam of my lips, bargaining with myself like I always do when it comes to her. I focus on what she revealed, a new layer of admiration for the woman before me settling in my mind.

"Fair enough. You’ll have your answers soon, but now is not the time. Trust me on that, Ombra," I say, taking hold over the brewing storms in her eyes and calming them some as my forehead falls over hers.

"Cross your soul?" she asks quietly, our noses aligning as we breathe each other in.

"It’s a vow and I rarely promise anything," I say over her open mouth – my sweetest narcotic.

"Your voice, I adore it," she murmurs and even though her fingers are tracing my jaw and her body is swallowed by mine, I feel her beyond what hands could ever reach.

Her acceptance feels cleansing in ways difficult to even envision.

Speechless, I ghost covered lips over my personal heaven and close my eyes. The thought of voicing how she makes me feel tastes like dust on my tongue so I bring her face a hair away from mine, lifting her in my arms and leaving her feet rest on top of my own.

We stand like that, suspended in a world of our making, where silence reigns and not a thing can scar us further than this damned world so mercilessly already did.

I feel my soul bursting at the seams with the need for her to make a home out of the shell it has become over time as I press my concealed lips to her bare ones.

She draws a surprised breath at the unexpected contact, before effortlessly molding them to mine, the feel of them making me want to kneel at her feet and worship her as if another day will come no more.

It’s insignificant that we’re not skin on skin, the act in itself feeling just as though our souls are kissing rather than our hungry mouths.

Heated breaths merge into one, creating a circuit with a life of its own as she catches my lower lip between hers. I feel the wetness seeping through the fabric, and I grow hard again – she shivers.

How I wish I’d get rid once and for all of this damned mask and claim her mouth with everything I have until she’ll become a part of me beyond blood, but I need more time and so does she.

As ancient as we are to each other on a soul level, we are still reading one another with newly uncovered hands; searching as if through braille in every goose bump, in every tremor of our fingers exploring valleys and curves in blood-written cursive.

With a stinging heart for what I am about to say, I cradle her porcelain face in my hands, "I'll be gone for a few days. If anything at all happens, my number is written on the notes in your phone, okay?"

She pauses then nods, her eyes falling despondently at our feet, appearing tired and detached all of a sudden.

"Look at me," I demand, before I crush my lips to hers, my hands tangling in her long raven tresses. "Never hide from me. In my arms you are the safest you will ever be," I say firmly before I plant another kiss on her waiting mouth. "Tell me what weights you down," I demand as I brush the hair out of her eyes and caress her precious skin until she leans her head in the palm of my hand with a vulnerability so raw it leaves me weak.

"Will it always be like this? With you stripping my soul of any decency to the point of begging, only for you to leave me stranded until you’ll return again?" she asks, unlocking the door of her soul wide open and leaving mine rattling under the power of her carefully hidden storms.

"No, of course not. I’ll never abandon you, come hell or high water," I whisper heatedly, trying to alleviate her soul consuming worries, which I understand so well. "My life is full of thorns and dense with tribulations. But know you are an integral part of it all, that I promise you. Strange as it may sound considering…I just need your patience and trust at this time until the waters will settle," I cup the back of her head, giving her full access to my eyes, so she'll see and trust the truth dripping from each word.

"Before you leave, what is the significance behind this?" she asks, holding the pendant between her fingers.

"That’s my blood, tesoro. Yours flows through my veins, so I had to have my own with you at all times," I confess, those grey eyes of mine, widening and begging for more details, disarming me further. "That night, when you were attacked, I had been stabbed and by some miracle it happens that we share the same rare blood type. You saved my life." Again.

Drowned in gratitude, I take her wrist where that lifesaving drop of blood is inked, brushing my lips along its contours and hoping she can feel all the ways she resurrected me. Mind, body and soul.

"The dead roses were from you – for the one who gave me life , " she whispers with shimmering eyes and how I'd like to tell her that I myself planted them every year on the same date I first saw her. About how I let them wither away so that she would always remain present; not just in my mind, but in my house, in my sight. Patience.

"Thank you," for existing , I say cupping her cheek and kissing her forehead, at a loss of words in front of the remarkable woman she has become.

"Come back and haunt me in one piece," she says with yearning in her eyes before planting her hand over my erratically beating heart and squeezing the fabric of my hoodie.

"Stay safe and be good for me," I whisper into the crook of her neck. There, I plant my lips over her pulse, intentionally avoiding the invitation of her gaze. I know with intimate certainty that if I were to meet it, I won’t be able to leave and unfortunately, responsibility continually calls and I must answer.

Such is life.

tesoro mio, it. (endearment) my treasure.

"Sono pazzo di te," it. I’m crazy for you.

Tesorina, it. dim. (endearment) little treasure.

mia cara, it. (endearment) my dear.