Chapter 5 Total Eclipse of the Heart #4
Each word grabbed by the throat and yanked out of him
as he leans over me, wrecked.
My head shakes.
His nods, and he swallows. “If you do—swear to God—I’ll fuckin’ blow again.”
My smile rises.
His comes next, a crease deepening between his brows. “I'm losin' my fuckin' mind over you, and you're smilin' about it.”
“Mmhm,” I hum, grabbing his jaw,
my mouth crashing into his grinning lips.
I don’t stop.
I want him to blow again
and again
and again.
The buckle clinks.
The button pops.
The zipper slides.
And then…
I slow down.
I take my time…
my hands slipping under the hem of his shirt… fingertips grazing the hot, bare skin of his abdomen.
His breath catches for half a second,
then escapes in pieces.
His stomach jumps under my touch,
muscles tightening, flexing.
Like hands on his skin feels foreign to him.
He grabs my cheek,
pushes his fingers through my hair.
His eyes anchor to mine, needing to hold on.
Then he leans in,
tilts his head,
and kisses me slow—
tongue dragging,
lips parting wide to take me deeper.
He groans, grinding his cock against me,
grinding his finger inside me.
An aching press of mouth to mouth—
a kiss that shakes, a kiss that never ends.
One that feels like it means something.
Like he means it.
I know in the way my chest tightens.
In the way this feeling settles behind my eyes
and burns.
Then the room slows down.
He grazes my nose with his.
“Gesù…
“You—you always kiss like this?”
“Like what?” I ask.
His wet lips slip over mine.
“I dunno—like—”
He kisses me again.
Gets lost in it.
Then breaks away.
“Like that feeling right before you come.
“That five second stretch
“where it’s too fuckin' good,”
he says it, like he can’t find his next breath.
Then kisses me again, slower this time,
as if he found all his air in my lungs.
“It’s… warm rain.
“A whole body high. A hunger that hurts…
“Like I’m freezin’ in front of a slow burnin’ fire I can’t feed fast enough.”
I shake my head. “I don’t kiss anyone.”
It slips out like it means nothing.
His mouth goes still but doesn’t pull away.
He stays—breathing, holding.
His other hand curls into my hair.
“Don’t kiss anyone else like this.”
His voice drags through gravel when he says,
“Let me be the only one.”
I nod.
I fucking nod.
Like—sure, here’s my head to go with that mouth.
Might as well throw in my heart and lungs too.
Then his finger’s a slow grind inside me again.
As if he can’t focus on one sensation
without drowning in another.
My fingers trail down his sides,
nails grazing his skin.
His stomach clenches harder,
and a low, lazy hum floats up from his chest and spills into my mouth.
A small, helpless smile follows,
not knowing what to do with himself.
“What’re you smiling about?” I whisper.
He doesn't answer.
He can't.
He just shakes his head.
I press my palm flat and slide it higher,
over his ribcage,
lifting his shirt, pulling him closer,
feeling the way his breath hitches,
stumbles,
betrays him.
Then I see ink. Black and bold.
At the bottom of his ribcage.
Above a scar—curved, pale, faded.
Raised enough to catch against my thumb as I lift his shirt higher.
But it’s the tattoo pulling me under...
Eleven words. Two lines. One lyric.
i do not long to be loved
but to be known
Behind Closed Ribs.
My song. On his fucking body.
I stop breathing. Every inch of me goes still.
A war unleashes inside me.
My heart’s attacking my lungs,
using my bones as weapons.
Because of black ink
stamped into his torso.
Courier. Monospaced. All caps.
He felt my song enough to carve it into him.
He knew me before ever touching me.
He’s been holding my scream under his skin
without knowing who it belonged to.
And now it’s there.
On his ribcage,
the same place mine cracked to write it.
Where something in him must have once broken too.
I want to tear the ink off him.
Kiss it.
Cover it.
Keep him safe.
Run.
Usually, once I finish a song,
it’s not mine anymore.
It’s ripped out of me,
becomes someone else’s.
Looped on radios,
played in the middle of the night,
cut into trailers for movies about characters
who aren’t even real.
They don’t belong to me after they’re gone.
They never have.
But this?
It’s the first time one of my songs found its way back to me.
It tucked itself safe under his skin, the two keeping each other warm, and waited, believing I’d show up one day.
We’re two people sharing a secret,
but only one of us knows.
I reach for it, my hand fucking trembling.
I brush my thumb over the ink.
“What’s your tattoo mean?”
I feel his breath get stuck in his lungs,
right under my hand.
I feel his gaze on me, staring.
I feel him fucking thinking.
I feel everything in this second.
“Uh…” The nerves take over his voice.
“It’s from that Jonah Wren song—
“Behind Closed Ribs?”
The question hangs there.
I avoid his gaze.
I need more time to hide my emotions.
“Yeah.” I swallow. “But what does it mean?”
To you, I want to say.
“This lyric?” he repeats,
buying time, deciding how to answer it.
How simple or deep he wants to go.
“It’s like—
“love’s about how good you make someone else feel.
“It’s not you they love, it’s what you give ‘em.
“What they get outta you.
“What you got to offer.
“If you fill what they’re missin’.
“And once you stop or fuck up?
“Poof. They’re gone.
“But bein’ known?”
He glances down at the tattoo,
where my thumb’s brushing.
“That’s somethin’ else. That's not bein' someone's other half or fillin' their void. It's not bein' turned into a mirror for someone else’s needs. It’s them seein’ you. Not what you do, not what you give, but who you are when you ain’t givin’ shit.”
He drags a thumb across the edge of the ink,
then my hand.
“Just you—wholly you and everything you are. And that be enough.”
He’s looking down at the tattoo,
like it’s not words he’s seeing but faces.
“That song... it hit too close.
“So I made sure it couldn’t leave me.”
My heart’s either racing so fast it stalled
or it’s abandoned me completely.
I can’t feel anything except this ache.
It’s all haunting. It’s all fucking me up.
I lean closer and kiss the tattoo.
One press of my mouth over ink.
Over the part of him that understood me.
Though he’ll never know it.
He sucks in a breath.
I keep my lips there,
breathing in his skin,
and slowly—so fucking slowly—
my hands slip lower,
and lower,
sliding down his body.
His head drops, his temple to mine,
his breath shaky.
My hands dip lower,
into the valleys of his hipbones,
following the trail of soft hair dusted across his pelvis.
Andrew reaches for me fast,
fingers sliding under my jaw,
tilting my face back to his.
Then he kisses me,
needing something to hold on to,
and my mouth is the only thing that’ll keep him from falling apart.
And then…
When I sink lower under the waistband…
When I finally take him in my hand…
Fuck.
He’s—
Thick.
Heavy. Hot.
Soft silk stretched over a vein running up the length.
A hard, pulsing ache in my palm.
Six and a half inches.
Over my hard limit.
Deep breath.
This isn’t sex.
He’s not mine.
He’s not a problem, only a moment.
A night I’ll forget—another New York minute.
Neon, noise, gone by morning.
(Lies. All lies.)
The second my fingers close around him,
Andrew stops breathing.
Everything tenses.
His jaw.
His abs.
His shoulders.
His hand at the back of my neck.
His pulse frantic, racing under my touch.
His hips jolt forward into my hand.
His mouth parts, breaking away from me.
His forehead slips off mine,
falling onto my shoulder.
And then—
A moan.
Broken. Low.
Beyond his control.
I should hate that I like it.
How it leaves him like he wasn’t ready for it.
Like the touch took him by surprise,
even though he knew it was coming.
His breath follows fast—
a fractured, shattered, shredded mess.
And then he laughs,
the sound muffled against my neck.
Disbelieving. Ruined.
My hand slides up the length of him,
my thumb dragging over the thick ridge of his head,
soft, flushed,
leaking and soaked in his own cum.
His cock twitches in my palm.
His mouth lands warm against my skin.
Another groan breaks loose and hits my throat.
After a few beats, he finds his footing,
lifts his head, looks into my eyes again.
His damp lips hover close to mine.
“Pact,” I breathe. “Right here, right now.
“Anyone gets in the way of us,
“we add murder to the list.”
A slow smile breaks across his mouth.
“Deadass—
“if someone gets in the way of us…”
His forehead touches mine,
voice dropping to almost nothing—
“Kill me first.”
My heart?
She drops her cigarette,
and it burns a hole straight through the floor of my chest.
Words like that are against the rules.
He’s not allowed to say that shit.
Because if he meant it, he’d just offered me the one thing I’ve never had.
Someone who’d die before they’d leave me.
I don’t stop the lazy strokes. Neither does he.
His grip digs at the nape of my neck,
and he parts my pussy with two fingers,
sliding back up to my clit,
circling, stroking…
dragging me under
and ripping a shudder right out of me.
We are tangled limbs and burning skin.
Our lungs can’t catch up.
Our bodies can’t slow down.
I lost control. He did too. We lost it all.
And in the losing, we found each other.
All what’s left is us, adrift.
Instead of fearing it,
for the first time in my life… It’s freeing.
I’m thawing against him.
I’m softening in his arms.
And when he sinks inside me again,
all strength slides off me.
Heat licks my veins and wraps my bones.
I squeeze my eyes shut. Tight. Tighter.
But I feel it anyway.
The pleasure. The pressure. The climb uphill.
And the too many emotions ripping each other apart inside me.
It doesn’t matter how hard I breathe.
They won’t leave.
The emotions, they’re all drawing blood.
I rake my fingers in his hair, pull him closer.
If it all comes out messy, I don’t care.