14. Forever For Her （Is Over For Me） #2
Camila would beg for the heat of hell while crying in heaven for an extra blanket at her feet.
This cruel death was beneath her.
Alone.
Scared.
Cold.
Unable to fight for herself.
I hold her tight, as if it will bring oxygen back into her chest.
I hold her tight, as if I can somehow transfer my own heat into her and make her heart pump again.
Grazing my fingers over her skin, I lament every missed touch, every opportunity to love her as fiercely as she deserved.
Pressing my forehead to hers, I wish for a miracle, for a fairytale ending I know won’t come, and all I feel in return is cold, unmoving rigidity.
I shiver, holding her to me, her naked body still so flawless, so perfect, even in this shade of grayish-blue, even dead.
My baby lays on an autopsy table and all I can wish for now is a casket for two.
Doctor Valerian’s cackle builds from a low cough into a maniacal sound, a mixture of victory and a hacking of pained coughs that remind him he’s still tied up and at the edge of my mercy—which just so happens to be a non-existent cliff.
I stand, reaching into the medical supply cabinet and furnishing a sharp scalpel. With a shaky hand, I slowly push it into the doctor’s left eyeball. I make it slow, no resistance from anything but my own desire to make it a lasting pain he dreams of until his final day.
“I was going to kill you and make it fast, but now, I think I might keep you alive to remember the pain.” My voice stays low and hushed so he’s forced to quiet his screaming to hear me.
I leave the knife in, his sobbing intensifying into incoherent blubbering that turns into background music for my heartache.
I turn back to my Darkling; all I can see is her on the steel table, lifeless.
I wrap myself around her and caress her cheek, brushing the cold, wet hair from her face. She’s too cold.
She can’t stay cold.
I abandon any rationale, following only the senseless thoughts in my own head that tell me she can’t die cold, even though she’s long gone.
I press my face against hers, unable to kiss her again and again the way I need, not with this stupid mask still on.
I imagine my hot lips on her chapped mouth, my warm skin transferring some sign of life onto hers.
It’s futile, but I don’t stop.
I don’t stop because I love her, because I don’t know how to let her go and I never have. I don’t stop because I’ve never been able to stop, not when it comes to her.
She’s cold, but she’s softer than ever before, her breasts still supple and nipples still hardened from the water temperature, but I pretend like it’s from my touch. I pretend it’s from what I do to her, not what’s been done to her.
The thought this might be the last time is a shrill siren hammering through my brain, the last time I see her, so I paint her as she is in my memory.
This may be the last time I kiss her perfect lips, so I fight the mask to press mine harder into hers, letting my tongue slip between the infuriating bars restricting my access.
The last time I’ll hold her in my hands, so I don’t stop touching.
There’s too much noise in my brain, too much chaos to define what’s my own internal monologue and what’s fear, what’s primal, what’s necessary to get me through this.
I press my hips into hers, but she doesn’t respond, doesn’t move against me or beg me to fuck her.
She’ll never do that again.
Yet, I can’t stop, can’t find the reason to make sense of this feeling, this pain, this shadow of agony that haunts us wherever we go.
So, I let it consume me instead in hopes that once it devours me there won’t be anything left.
I drown all else out: the doctor, the pandemonium beyond these doors, and even my own suffering. Pulling my pants below my hips, I do the only thing that makes sense anymore, and I slide inside her one last time.
She’s still so wet from earlier tonight, still drenched in my cum but so cold, I can’t push myself all the way in. It’s the kind of chill that sinks into the flesh, soaking into my cock and fighting to conquer what I know I cannot.
“Don’t leave me like this,” I whisper, my tears falling over her breasts, her face expressionless, and yet, somehow, it’s like she’s free.
Free of everything I’ve forced her into.
I thrust myself deeper into her, uncaring that my body doesn’t fully cooperate or that her lifeless one is nothing like the real thing. I thrust because I have to feel something other than this. I keep going because I’ve convinced myself once I’m done, the only way out is through the morgue.
All I can do is grunt past the awkward, boyish humping until I’m completely hard again, until it’s easy to appreciate every curve of her figure and every softness about her. She feels wetter than before, a ruse of my own imagination as I beg the universe and the stars to bring her back to me.
Anger, pain, and grief blind me until I’m lost in a vast darkness, fucking my way into feeling something other than this miserable dread and this dulling loneliness.
I’ve endured a lifetime of it before her, and I’ve felt it twice over in this week without her. Holding her faded body in my grasp only further convinces me I’m not worthy of keeping anything good to myself.
I thrust harder, achieving neither pleasure nor fulfillment but seeking it out like I’m running toward a finish line or climbing the peak of a summit. I pound at her chest again from my own rage and sorrow.
Camila moans, a sound made only in my head, as if to draw out my longing and extend my despair. I hold her head with one arm, lifting her face to mine as I near the undoing that will finish me. “Don’t leave me,” I beg in a quiet whisper, knowing there’s no saving her here.
With my sutured arm, I pound my fist into her chest, anger and madness fueling me in one last moment of desperation as I implore her to return.
Camila’s head whips to the side, her mouth opening to relieve her lungs of water. She coughs, vomits, choking for oxygen with eyes wide open.
“Mila?” I struggle to believe my own eyes, too aware of the things this place can do to one’s mind.
Her teeth chatter viciously, deterring her words from coming out clearly. “D-D-D-tri?” she calls for me. “I-I’m s-s-so c-cold.”
I check her pulse to make sure she’s not a figment of my own insanity, stopping only when I’ve had enough of her heart’s drumming to soothe my nerves. Pink and brown break through the purple hue of her cold lips, her body still shaking and quivering, naked underneath me.
“I’ve got you now. Nothing’s going to hurt you ever again,” I promise her, knowing well it’ll be the last promise I ever fail to keep.
I pull back, but she squeezes me tighter, wrapping her legs around my hips. “D-don’t stop. Y-you’re s-s-o w-warm.”
With her command, I move slower now, no longer a man forced to take something that’s already been stripped from his hold but one who needs to bring what he loves back to life.
Slow but not soft, because nothing about Camila demands anything but all my effort and all my heart. I slam into her, my hips meeting hers and a cry falling from her lips that only serves as a reminder of what I briefly lost.
The thrill of the kill is no longer something I desire if it risks her existence.
I don’t need to murder a man to soothe the devil inside me. Feeding off her darkness has always been enough, has always been the only meal that could truly satiate. Camila’s hunger is a black hole, a bottomless void that urges her to devour this planet whole.
And I’d let her, because I realize now I am the weapon she wields and the armor she wears. Anything that stands between that is fodder. I don’t need to kill, but when I do it for her, it feels as easy as breathing, as if it’s a part of who I am.
Because she is the best parts of me.
So, I fuck her with the same intention, attempting to bring warmth and life back into her, as if nothing else could matter. My dick feels harder than ever before, the cold waning off and a welcome heat replacing it.
“Harder,” she begs, her fingers pulling at my hair and urging me closer, as if she too was marred by this loss between us and is now aching to remedy it.
I thrust deeper, severing any space, physical or imaginative, between us.
I bottle Camila’s sounds, collecting them into my memory so I might never fear their absence again.
Thrusting with a steady tempo, it’s when her heels dig into my sides that I feel the unbearable need to let go. “I’m close,” I whisper.
“Wait for me,” she demands, my body listening to her and only her.
We move in sync, until there’s only the sound of our bodies meeting and her soft grunts in the air. The surrounding world disappears, and it’s just us, the way it was intended.
Her climax is a loud, tremor-filled earthquake that removes the floor beneath us, breaking us free from all the pain and suffering this place has caused. She gasps for air, hips meeting mine and grinding against me even when she’s clearly done.
She could start me again, and I’d always finish it, but this time, the clock runs against us.
“More,” she whimpers, melting onto my hold as I lift her into my arms.
“We have to be quick,” I warn her. “With all the bullshit out there, they’re bound to alert the second and third floor security and when they get down here it’ll be minutes before the cops show up.”
Camila whines, sounding a little like her playful self again. “Boo. I wanted to strap you in that chair and have my way with you in that mask.”
I chuckle. “Once we’re out of here, you can have your way with me however you want, whatever you want me strapped to.”
Her eyes go wide. “Promise?”
“For you, the world,” I answer. “Are you warm yet?”
She hums. “Scorching hot.”
“Let me get you clothes.” I hop off the table, lifting my pants back over my hips, my eyes catching sight of the doctor passed out in the chair. “Wake him up.”
CHAPTER 15 - MILA
SUGAR NEVER TASTED SO GOOD