33. Crooked Kind of Comfort
33
CROOKED KIND OF COMFORT
DOM
I f loving this woman is going to bring us both to ruin, then fucking her will be our absolution. The way her orgasm collided with mine, shattering us both from the inside out, brought her powers to the surface in a way I’ve never seen before.
Sharing bits of my darkness in such an animalistic way tortured her slowly, loosening something within her and I watched it unfold, spilling out into the space around us.
The dark halves of us like fucking each other, and whichever half ends up winning, I’m afraid the other half won’t survive it.
As she sleeps in the bedroom behind me, I look down at my arms resting on the railing. The mark taunts me like a nasty wound festering in my skin, rotting me from the inside out. I pray to fucking Lilith that firstly, my family doesn’t kill my girlfriend before we can get her powers to ignite and second, that my mom can figure out how to get me unmarked.
I think when I do tell them I’ve been marked, it will cause such turmoil that they’ll forget about killing Sayah for a little while. I know my mom will want to do anything to keep this mark from killing me, and therefore, her mind will be preoccupied with that.
A star falls across the sky, catching my attention, and I watch it, consumed with the beauty of the night after being a slave to it for so long. It’s one of those crooked kind of comforts; like a trauma bond, finding solace in the very thing that kept me broken for so long.
Being here with Sayah, having her meet my family, and knowing my darkness on a personal level should feel relieving, but it’s not. I can’t help but think of all the lies I’ve told or the truths I’ve withheld to keep her safe.
I have to think of a way to tell her the truth without her hating me.
Thinking of what she may do when she learns the truth—that I do not live in Colorado and only came there to hunt her—I feel that will cause the kind of shatter that is beyond repairable.
She has known so much sadness.
So many things have come for her, have broken her down, and ripped her to shreds. The person she is today—this gorgeous, scintillating witch who wears her sorrow like war paint—was built from the moments that brought her to her knees.
Being a vampire, I have known darkness. I’ve seen evil and stared true fucking terror in the eyes, and yet I cannot fathom what she’s gone through.
I’d do anything to keep pain from making a home in her. I’ll seek out her demons and give them their names; I’ll learn the shape of her grief to cut out of her soul and add it to mine so she may live lighter for even a day.
To taste my deceit and learn what it costs is a wreckage I cannot afford. Even the ghost of the thought of losing her catches my soul in a vice, a spikey and unyielding kind of torture I wouldn’t wish on anyone. The weight of that agony is enough to ruin me, to break me beyond all recognition.
Fuck becoming a grim—if I lose her, that is something I’ll never recover from.
If anything comes for Sayah—my family, the warlocks, the fae, the Nyktorim—they may as well take me too. I am nothing without her.
I’ve found the thing my damned soul has longed for, the very thing that beckons me out of the shadows that lost me. The kiss of darkness has been on my breath longer than she’s been alive. Yet the second she entered my life, the wind shattered at my feet, fracturing the evil seeping out of my bones.
She is soothing, like silk and honey and rain and the hurricanes of summer will bow to her. Finding her fire means bending the breeze, tilting the rain, and folding the Earth to her command. Broken flames will climb the pyre on which all the things that came for her lay down to die upon.
As my spiraling thoughts touch the moonlight, the Earth begins to tilt toward my resolve. Until I met Sayah, I’d been parched; the drought from an existence so long and lonely even time became raw and tender.
The way she says my name is like a promise. How she looks at her son like he’s her salvation. The way she bleeds words that slide into my center and drop an anchor within me. Her tangled magick searches for softness within me to be soothed. I love her for everything and nothing more than the mere fact that she exists.
To keep the darkness from taking us both, I’d gladly give myself over to this warlock; I’ll become a mindless grim to let her live.
If that was the bargain, I’d gladly take it.
I’d take a life of darkness to let her live in the light.