Chapter 15
Wraith
I can’t sleep.
Again.
After Leena’s questions and the shit going down with Gage, I keep getting flashbacks from my past and no matter how I try, I can’t block them out. They’re waiting for me the second I close my eyes, since it’s safer to keep them open, I look at the ceiling until my eyes burn.
Beside me, Leena sleeps soundly. She has her back to me. Abby is tucked between us, snoring her little doggy snores. God, she snores a lot. I find it oddly comforting, but tonight not even that steady breathing can lull me into a sense of calm.
Finally, around four, I throw back the covers and creep out of the bedroom, leaving Abby and Leena undisturbed.
I head to the kitchen and make myself a cup of coffee, not because I need it, but because I’ve pretty much given up on substances when I’m feeling like this.
It doesn’t bring me any kind of peace anymore.
It usually makes me feel worse, because it reminds me of all the years I spent poisoning myself trying to purge the past from my mind and soul.
I down the coffee so hot that it nearly scalds my throat, standing in the kitchen looking out the window at the small backyard. I have plans to landscape back there. It’s something else to do with my hands. Yet another outlet.
Afterwards, I creep silently to the living room.
The house is a stupid construction, a one-and-a half-story, but the half story is more like an attic.
There’s a trap door in the living room. I take the stick with the hook on the end out from behind the couch and unlatch the cord so that it’s hanging down.
I give it a quick, hard tug, and open damn sesame, a set of little stairs magically appears from the ceiling.
Hardly practical.
Whoever built this house probably liked blow as much as I used to, because no sober person would ever design something like this.
Still. My fingers itch to paint and it’s nearly light enough that I won’t have to keep all my battery-operated camping lanterns running up there. I need to do something, anything, or I’ll be consumed by memories and all the demons that live in them.
I won’t let them claw their way inside of me any longer.
It’s either paint or lose my fucking mind.
The confined space with just the one tiny window, a space barely tall enough to stand up in, but spanning the length and width of the house, hardly has adequate venting for working with oils, but the smell stopped bothering me a hell of a long time ago.
I lose myself in the paints, the mixing of colors, the swirling and blending, the broad strokes on the blank canvas that I set up. I’m so lost that time and space cease to have any meaning and it’s just me, just me and my demons, battling it out like always.
I’m so deeply entrenched in my own world, that I fail to realize the sun is streaming through the window or feel the vibrations of the ladder shaking. Nothing breaks my concentration until the sharp inhale echoes behind me.
I whirl, my brush dripping paint, to face my intruder.
I take her in, looking like a wide eyed, startled angel.
She looks like a ghost in her plain white nightgown, nearly rendered translucent, her long limbs and bold curves highlighted by the sun streaming through the small window.
Her mahogany hair is tousled and trails loose around her shoulders, flowing like a dark, silken waterfall down her back.
The sun illuminates the strands of gold in her hair and the flecks in her eyes.
Her face is flushed with sleep, her lashes starred, her lips full and pouty.
“Wraith,” she breathes, as those maddeningly mysterious eyes sweep over the finished canvases propped and stacked in just about every space in the loft. “You- you’re an artist.” That word, artist, is said with such reverence it guts me.
I slowly set the brush down onto the board I use for mixing paint. “Only from necessity,” I nearly growl.
She stares at me, her eyes growing wider. I stare back, boldly, appraising her lush body below that fucking nightgown. It’s just a long t-shirt type thing really, modest, if she hadn’t been standing in front of the sunlight and it wasn’t white.
The air crackles, charged with static electricity and a desire so thick and potent that it’s tangible. I can taste the metallic bite of it.
Leena’s eyes widen and I watch a visible tremor race through her body. She lets out a shaky gasp and takes a step back as I take one forward.
“You look like you’ve seen the devil,” she breathes.
Her nostrils flare and I know it’s not just terror she’s feeling. She breathes in, scenting the air like an animal, scenting me.
“No.” I shake my head. “No, darlin’, I am the devil.”
I’m on her in an instant, before she can back up and scramble down that ladder.
I bury my hand in her hair, brutally tugging her face back, baring her neck to me.
I crush my mouth to hers, plundering her lips so brutally that she cries out and moans at the same time.
I eat her cries and swallow her moans. I suck at her lips so hard that I bruise them, nip her so that I draw blood.
I trail my tongue over the salty, coppery wound, growling low in my throat.
She whimpers again and her head falls back into my hand, the delicious pale column of her neck exposed fully.
Before I even realize what I’m doing, I bite her there, sink my teeth in deep below her earlobe until she mewls out her pleasure.
I suckle at the sting, bruising her delicate skin, leaving the marks of my passion on her in a muted red.
I drop my head, gripping her hard around the hips and she responds eagerly, slamming them into my hands.
I claim her breast right through the cotton of her t-shirt, suckle her until the fabric is truly translucent and the tight hard bud below is straining for me.
Her animal groans fill up the attic. They tear through me, filling up my empty soul.
This is what I needed. All these years… she’s what I needed.
She’s more powerful and heady than any drug.
I tried so hard to fucking save myself and now she’s here, and with a single touch, those jagged holes inside me start to knit themselves up.
I felt it that night in the hall. I felt it yesterday. I feel it fucking now.
“Want you so fucking bad,” I groan as I take her other breast into my mouth and suckle her nipple.
Her hips buck into mine and I drag her closer, carting her against me so that she can feel the entire length of my erection pressed into her belly. My cock strains and throbs through my jeans and I have no doubt, as her breathing shallows, that she can feel every single vibration.
“Yes,” she pants.
“How much? How much do you need? My hand? Or all of me?” I spread her legs apart and trail my fingers up the shapely length of her leg, up until I find her panties. I brush them aside and sweep a finger over her folds, finding her absolutely drenched.
“Yes,” she sobs. “Fucking, yes. Everything.”
I rip my fingers away from her moist heat and bring them to my mouth. I pop one between my lips and savor the sweetest ambrosia I’ve ever known in my life.
“Wraith,” she breathes, watching me. My name drips off her tongue, and it’s game fucking over to any control I might have held onto.
I wrap her up in my arms, taking her down to the floor with me.
I land on top, barely managing to keep myself from crushing her with my weight.
I eat at her mouth while my hands tear her panties away.
She pulls at my t-shirt, ripping at my back with her nails when she carts it up around my shoulders.
Her hips slam up into mine and while I strip my t-shirt over my head, her hands fly to my jeans.
The denim is worn and soft and the button gives way easily.
The rasp of the zipper is the only sound in the attic besides our desperate panting.
She claws at my jeans and I help her, shoving them down my ass along with my boxers, freeing my cock.
Her moans are low in her throat and her hand curls around the length of my shaft.
She rubs her tiny palm down my length, from my swollen, angry red tip, already leaking beads of shiny pre-cum all over her hand.
She explores me slowly on the upstroke, running her hand over the veiny ridges.
I watch her face while she explores me with her hand, her eyes eating up every movement in fascination, like she’s never seen a cock so big in her life. Those pursed lips and flushed cheeks, the excitement glowing in her eyes, her body tense and straining under mine—it’s the perfect flattery.
“You want my cock?” I ask her again, barely hanging onto any sort of civility I have left. “You want my cock in that beautiful cunt?”
“Y-yes,” she stammers, still running her hand down my length, pumping me so that my balls ache with every single movement of her hand.
I sweep my fingers between us, groaning when I find her so wet she’s leaking on the floorboards below.
“I want to eat you first. Get you ready.”
“I- I’m ready,” she pants. “I can’t- please- Wraith…”
She squirms below me, her hips bucking up, seeking relief. The relief that only I can give her. I want her so fucking badly that I see black. That tenuous hold I have on reality shreds away, torn away by her desperation.
I replace her hand with my own, pumping my fist over my hard length.
With the other hand I spread her legs, splitting them so I can watch her swollen cunt sparkle with her juices.
I spread the length of my body over her, propping myself up with one elbow while I attack her mouth, her throat, her chin.