44. Leandra #2
His hands find my shoulders. He kneads the tension from them with slow, deliberate pressure. His thumbs work circles into the knotted muscle, and I moan into the pillow, not caring how wanton I must sound, not caring about anything except the way his touch completely unravels me.
“You’ve been carrying so much,” he says. “So much fear, so much pain. Let me take it from you. Let me carry it for a while.”
His lips press to the nape of my neck.
I shudder.
He works his way down my spine. Kiss by kiss. Vertebra by vertebra. His tongue traces the curve of each bone, and I feel like I’m being opened up, like he’s reading the story of my body and memorizing every word. His hands follow his mouth, stroking my sides, my hips, the swell of my ass.
When he reaches the small of my back he pauses, and I know he must see it; the scars, the marks Ezekiel literally carved into me.
“You’re so beautiful.” The words are muffled against my skin. “Do you know that? Do you understand what you are?”
“A whore,” I whisper. “That’s what the world made me. A thing to be used.”
“No.” His teeth graze my hip. “You’re a miracle. Proof that God exists, and that he wanted me to have something worth fighting for.”
He spreads my legs.
His mouth finds the back of my knee, the sensitive skin there. I gasp and try to close my legs, but his shoulders are already between them, and he laughs. Low, dark, and full of promise.
“I told you. Every inch.”
He works his way up my inner thigh with agonizing slowness.
Tongue. Teeth. The soft brush of his lips.
He leaves marks on my skin, little bruises that will bloom purple by morning, and I want them.
I want the evidence of this. I want to look in the mirror tomorrow and see proof that I am wanted, that I am devoured, that I am more than just a mere copy of a dead woman.
“Lazarus, please.”
“Please what?”
“Please...”
I can’t say it. The words stick in my throat.
He turns me over and positions me how he wants me; legs spread, knees bent, completely exposed. The lamp light catches the angles of his face, the sharp cut of his cheekbones, the dark hunger in his eyes.
“Tell me what you want.”
His colours are wild now. I can feel them pulsing around me, can see them reflecting in his eyes. Pink, red, and deep, molten gold. Desire so pure it’s almost pain.
“You,” I manage. “I want you. All of you. I want to stop thinking, I want to stop being afraid. I want...”
He lowers himself between my thighs.
“Then stop thinking,” he says. “And let me fuck you.”
His mouth finds my centre, and the entire world falls away with it.
There is no Esau. No Brethren. No dead mother or mad prophet. There is only the stroke of his tongue, the pressure of his lips, the way he spreads me open with his fingers and tastes me like I’m the first meal he’s had in years.
I grab his hair, and I hold him there. My hips move without permission, grinding against his face, and he groans against my flesh like this is what he’s been waiting for. Like my pleasure is his pleasure, like he’d be content to stay here forever with his mouth sealed to my pussy.
He licks into me with long, slow strokes. He circles my clit with the tip of his tongue, he sucks the swollen bud between his lips until I’m crying out, until my thighs are shaking, until the colours behind my eyes explode into something I’ve never seen before.
“That’s it,” he murmurs against me. “Come for me. Let me feel it.”
And I do.
The orgasm rolls through me like a wave, like a baptism, like something holy and profane all at once. I arch off the bed and he holds me down and keeps licking me through it, drawing it out until I’m trembling, until I’m begging, until I don’t know where I end and he begins.
When I finally open my eyes, he’s looking up at me from between my thighs. His lips are wet. His eyes are burning.
“I’m not done with you.” He growls as he crawls up my body.
His trousers are gone, I don’t remember him taking them off, and I can feel him, hard and hot against my thigh. His hand cups my jaw and tilts my face toward his.
“Taste yourself on my lips.” He demands as he kisses me, deep and slow and utterly filthy. I can taste what he’s done to me, the salt-sweet evidence of my own desire, and it should be strange but it’s not. It’s perfect, it’s exactly right.
I wrap my legs around his waist.
“I need you inside me,” I say against his mouth. “Right fucking now.”
“So demanding.”
But he’s already positioning himself, already pressing against my entrance, already pushing inside with a groan that vibrates through his entire body.
He fills me completely. Stretches me. Owns me.
“Look at me,” he commands.
I look and see his colours blazing; gold so bright it hurts to see, amber like liquid fire, and threaded through it all, that blue. I understand it now, that blue. It’s the colour of absolution. The colour of a man who has done unforgivable things and found someone who will forgive him anyway.
He moves, slowly at first. Deep, grinding strokes that hit something inside me that makes my vision blur as his forehead presses to mine. Our breath mingles. He watches my face like he’s memorizing every flicker of pleasure, every gasp, every time my lashes flutter.
“You feel that?” His voice is strained. “You feel how perfect we fit? Like God made you for me, like every terrible thing that brought us here was worth it.”
“Yes.” I don’t know what I’m agreeing to. I don’t care.
He moves faster. Harder. The bed creaks beneath us, the headboard slams against the wall. I dig my nails into his back and he hisses with pleasure, driving into me like he’s trying to crawl inside my skin.
“I love you.” The words fall from his lips like a confession. “I love you, and it terrifies me. I love you, and I would burn the world for you. I love you, and I don’t know how to stop.”
I pull him deeper. Closer. My ankles lock behind his back and I say words I know are reckless, but I don’t care.
“Then don’t stop.”
Something breaks open in him at that.
He fucks me with abandon now, all rhythm lost, all control shattered. His hand slides between our bodies to circle my clit as his mouth finds my throat. He bites down just hard enough to make me gasp, just hard enough to leave a mark.
“Come with me,” he pants. “I want to feel you come when I do. I want to feel you milk every drop from me.”
The words push me over the edge.
I shatter around him. My body clenches and releases and clenches again, and I feel him follow.
I feel the pulse of his release, the way he buries himself to the hilt and groans my name like a prayer.
His colours explode into something I can’t describe, something that fills the room, my chest, and fills the empty spaces I’ve carried inside me for so long I’d forgotten they were there.
For a moment, I see it.
The shape of him. The truth of him. A man who has done monstrous things for monstrous reasons, but who loves with the same intensity he kills. A man who looked at me and saw not a thing to use, but a sanctuary to fall into. A man who will never, ever let me go.
We lie there in the aftermath, tangled together, sweat cooling on our skin. He doesn’t pull out, doesn’t move except to stroke my hair, my cheek, the curve of my shoulder.
“I meant what I said.” His voice is hoarse. “I love you. I know what that makes me, I know what it means. I don’t care.”
I turn my head and look at him. His colours are settling now, softening to something quiet and steady. The gold is still there, the amber, the absolution-blue.
“I know,” I say.
And in the dark of the room, in the warmth of his arms, I realize something terrifying and wonderful; I might just be beginning to love him too.