34. Haunting & Lovely
34
HAUNTING & LOVELY
KRYPT
“I chose to die from my life to willingly live in a nightmare,” Remiel mutters. “Ironic.”
He’s right, in a sense. He is going to die from his life, but I’ll be the nightmare he lives in. Not this mountain or these tunnels. Remiel is fucking mine, and our nightmare starts now.
Because he chose to find his way out of the tunnels. He picked himself. He picked me and a life we’ll live together. He discovered his way to this open cavern on his own, stumbled in with a crazed smile on his handsome face, and I didn’t hate the way it looked. It’s gone now, but I can tell it isn’t far away. He’s half gone, slipping into insanity because he’s learning to be comfortable there.
“Sit.”
“Aren’t I free?” he challenges me, taking wobbly steps because The Mad House is getting to him.
“Define freedom.” I tug on his shirt and push him to sit on the edge of a rock.
“Hell,” he says, staring at the cave instead of me.
It’s open and wide, has a high ceiling despite how deep within the mountain it is, and a fissure in the roof lets a little moonlight in. Ah, me and Remiel, reflecting under the moonlight yet again.
“Whose hell? Yours or mine?”
“Mine,” he answers, watching me now that I’m taking his cello out of the case. “Your hell locked me out when you set me free with a fucking calling card. Coward.”
It was cowardly, but I growl at him anyway. “You think you deserve more than a calling card? You’re the only person I’ve ever sent one to.”
He looks at my eyes, but his are mostly blank. “Liar. You gave one to Gregory Malone.”
I grin, remembering that. “On your behalf.”
“You never told me what it said.” I did. I told him that it said Malone’s suffering would be everlasting if he so much as looked at Remiel again, and I’ll deliver upon that. “And yeah, I do think I deserve more than a calling card if you’re going to break up with me.”
“Break up?” I lift his cello out of the case. “You think this is a relationship?”
“Not a romantic one,” he scoffs.
“Then don’t expect romantic things from me. I claimed you with a calling card, so what’s more poetic than a calling card declaring your freedom?” I put the cello between his legs, and Remiel holds it on instinct.
“This,” Remiel says, motioning at the cavern. “This feels like true freedom.”
“How so?”
“Freedom from living,” he says. “Because it’s come to that, hasn’t it? You’re too much of a coward to admit how you feel, so you’ll end my life to avoid it. At least I’ll die playing nice music.”
I’m so fucking tired, but to see him spark up some sass just because he wants me to admit I’m not going to kill him has my cock hard. “Better get playing that nice music then, hero.” I hand him the bow.
He doesn’t ask questions or put up a fight, he simply starts playing quietly, letting the harmony find itself. I step back to watch him. Whatever he wants to tell me, it’ll come out in his music, and I know how to hear it now. But while he plays, he’s going to listen to me.
“You’re a hypocrite. You know that?” I ask.
He looks up, fingers and bow still moving. “I know. But how?”
“You claim I’m too cowardly to tell you how I feel, but it was you who said you don’t need me.”
“But that I want you,” he corrects.
“Mm.” I hum, undoing my jacket. “Yet I told you I shattered. I told you that my love is an obsession, and I’m obsessed with you. I told you that you are important to me, and I marked the proof of that into your skin.”
His music deepens, and his eyes shine wet and blue.
“I asked if you would be mine even if you were free, and then I freed you.”
“With a calling card.”
I smirk and shrug out of my jacket. “If anyone is a coward, Remiel, it’s you.”
“Why?”
“Because you still choose death over me.” I pull my t-shirt off, and Remiel’s eyes drop to the burn on my chest. “You almost embraced it. The night you took that pill. Last night, when you confronted me under Axel’s control. And today, just now, when you lay down inside a mountain to give up.”
“Not give up,” he states, transforming his music into something new and dismal. “Accept. It’s fate.”
“Is it?” I undo my pants.
“My fate. A fate I am trusting you to overpower.” Remiel smiles at my hands and keeps playing. “Only you would be powerful enough to challenge fate, Krypt. Are you going to?”
It’s his way of admitting he wants to live and that he wants me to control him. It’s perfect. “I am fate. Your fate.”
“Yet you freed me.”
I kick my boots off. “And you choose me anyway.”
“I did,” he agrees.
“But when I almost killed you, that’s what really sealed our fate.” I push my pants over my ass and hips. “Because you stopped me.”
He looks away from the bulge in my boxer-briefs to study my eyes. It clicks with him, and he plays a little softer when he figures it out. “Ah, so now you trust me? Now that you know I’m not tricking you into killing me.”
I step out of my pants, barely feeling the chilled air against my heated skin. “Two weeks ago, Axel Graves hypnotized me. Honestly, I think I let him because I wanted to know what was hiding in my mind.”
Remiel stiffens, not liking that someone took control of me. We still haven’t talked about my time away, and if I get my way, we won’t until I’ve slept. “What was hiding?”
“You, I think. He videotaped the session, and your name was the only one that ever came out. What do you live for, Krypt? Remiel . What do you dream of, Krypt? Remiel . What do you fear most, Krypt? Remiel. What would you die for, Krypt? Remiel. ”
Remiel’s fingers slip on the fingerboard, but he corrects them as his eyes soften. “What do you want, Krypt?” he carries on the line of questioning.
Him. Not much else.
“He dug deeper, trying to get me to admit any other desire. He found all sorts of personality traits and learned a lot about how I’d react to a situation, but he never got another name.” I run my fingers through my hair and look into his eyes. “Just you, Remiel. Because it hasn’t been long, but obsession works fast. Love is obsession, and obsession is the point of my life. To own and possess my obsession, to do what you said that night on my bed. Love is caring enough about someone to know what they need and wanting to give it to them .” I wet my lips. “I know what you need, and I want to give it to you. Even if you hate me for it.”
“Krypt.”
“Yes,” I agree. “Krypt and Remiel. That’s our fate.” I turn my back to him and let him look. Because not all my time at Axel’s bunker was horrible. I found out what means the most to me, and it’s not Remiel. It’s me and Remiel . Krypt and Remiel. And I marked my body for him.
My Vile House tattoo has always been a source of pride, but my gifted name under the skeleton’s jaw was the source of my true accomplishment. I became Krypt and finally felt like myself. Now, Remiel’s name sits with mine because he is not only my source of pride, but my source of liberation. He is love. He is obsession. He is mine, and I am his, and not even death, fate, or a fucking suicide curse will tear us apart.
Remiel is life. Krypt and Remiel is the only future I want.
His cello clatters to the stone floor, and his bow follows. I don’t look, but I sense his approach. Hesitantly, his fingertips touch my skin. The tattoo is still healing, but I come to life under his touch. It spurs a buried need and morphs into something dangerous, but the rightness of it is so apparent that I close my eyes to appreciate the choice. Remiel Sauder walked into Vile House and became the driving force of me .
“I’m… you… this is… Krypt?” Tears choke his voice and turn it squeaky.
I turn, grabbing his outstretched hand. “My love is dangerous, Remiel.” I tilt his chin and watch him cry. “I warned you.”
“I want it anyway,” he says, crying harder. “I want it and I need it. I need you.”
No, he doesn’t, but I’m selfish enough to appreciate that he thinks he does. I sure as shit need him, but I’ll never tell him that. There is so much yet to come. A dangerous life with Reaper Corp trying to take over, truths to tell him about his mom and his brain, and lessons to teach him about life and what it means to live it with me. They’ll all come in time.
Tonight, I want to fucking possess him.
Remiel notices the shift in my eyes, and his head shakes. “No,” he says, begging. “Don’t tell me to run. I don’t want to be chased. I’m done running from you through dark tunnels.”
I’ve learned that Remiel loves fear. At first, I thought it was that stalking feeling that came with the way I hunted him. It’s not that. Remiel’s fears are mostly of himself, the unknown, and loss. Remiel fears being invisible. But he also fears unpredictability, and tonight, I’m going to be unpredictable.
“No more running,” I tell him. I grab both of his hands and bring them to cradle my head. He spreads his fingers through my hair and looks me straight in the eyes.
“I missed you.”
I needed the time away from him to learn how much I wanted him. “You aren’t free anymore, hero.”
His hands shake in my hair.
“I will never free you again. Are you sure you want to make this decision?”
He wets his lips. “Do I have a choice?”
“The illusion of one.”
He smiles. “I don’t want to be free from you. But… would you have…”
“Yes.” I drop my hands to his pants and start undoing them. “Even as Keegan, you intrigued me. That’s your question, right? Would I want you even if you hadn’t made a bargain with me?”
He nods, not paying attention to his pants. I let them drop to pool around his ankles, and he kicks them off without noticing.
“You interested me growing up, but I never learned to obsess over you until you looked straight into my eyes and didn’t back away.” I let him look now, loving that he wants to. “But I never would have gotten the chance to own you if you hadn’t made a bargain.”
“Well, at least Gregory Malone did one thing right. He chased me to Vile House that night.”
I pinch his hip and glare at him. “What’d?—”
“Yeah, yeah. No speaking other names while I’m half naked.”
My puppy is already so well-trained. I’ve used a punishment method so far, but right now, I’m going to try the reward system. I sink to my knees in front of him, eyes on his. I don’t know how to feel about it yet. His lips part in awe or shock, and his fingers tighten in my hair. I’ve never serviced him before. Briefly that night he was chained to the gate, but nothing more than that. I want to. I’m nervous to.
Remiel’s cock thickens in front of my face, and my mouth waters for the taste of it. The hitch of his breath makes everything sexier, but the blue of his eyes captures me. He’s not a man who is familiar with being pleased. He’s the one who works on demand, fixes their instruments and orders them parts. He’s the body I’ve used and abused and the mouth I’ve raped. My fingers have touched him only while drugged or scared, and the look of gratitude that mingles with nervousness is everything to me. Because he deserves it.
He chose me. And that warrants a reward.
I grab his hip with one hand and his cock with the other. Sliding it down the length of him, his foreskin pulls back to reveal a shiny tip, flushed red and weeping for me. I lean in to lick it, drawing a gasp from him. The touch of his hot flesh against my tongue ignites my blood and deepens my darkness, but nerves are still more powerful.
I’ve never done this before.
He’s going to know.
I should have fucking drugged him again.
“Krypt,” he says, fingers softening in my hair. “Look at me.”
I can’t. My face burns, and embarrassment turns me sour. I hate being mocked. I hate feeling embarrassed.
“Look at me.”
I look up, unfamiliar with being beneath someone. Not since my parents were alive. But Remiel isn’t looking down on me as if I’m nothing more than an unwanted soul. He wants every part of me, my damage, my control, my sickness, and my inexperience.
“Open.”
“Don’t fucking make demands of me, Remiel.”
“Open,” he whispers.
My lips open, and I fucking hate it. His hips shift forward, and my hand digs in to hold him back, but not before the head of his cock presses against my parted lips. He gyrates, sliding the slick tip around the outside of my mouth, coating my lips in precum until my tongue naturally wants to lick it away. I lick my lips and his dick in the process, and then I do it again because he tastes like cravings. Hot embarrassment turns to heated need.
“Open,” he whispers.
I watch him and open. Remiel slides his cock along my tongue, but not too far. He pulls out and then does it again until I’m leaning forward on my own, taking him a little further each time. When his cock hits the back of my tongue, I gag, and a moment of bemused regret consumes me.
I never gave him the grace he’s giving me the night I abused his throat over a dead girl’s body. I should be sorry about it.
I’m not.
When I’m taking most of his cock and his shaft is slick with spit, he holds my hair tighter and uses it to rock into my mouth at a faster pace.
“You were practicing, weren’t you?” he asks, voice raspier. “That night you drugged me.”
Fuck him. I bite down and he yelps. A laugh follows.
“Jesus. Why are you so sensitive about it? Who cares if you’d never been with a guy before and needed to practice?”
Fuck him again. I spit his dick out and turn him around. Forcefully, I bend him over until his hands brace on the rock. I can’t fucking bear for him to look at me right now. “Can’t keep your fucking mouth shut while I’m trying to be good to you, Remiel?” I spread his ass cheeks and shove my face between them.
“Ah, fuck,” he groans.
I lick at his rim and shove my tongue into his hole, desperate to open him up and claim him. His ass rocks back in time with my tongue, and his balls hang heavy between his legs. My tongue roams, feeling every part of him, the way his ass flutters, twitching to be filled. Sliding my tongue inside him, I feel my own cock pulse, loving the way it feels to consume him in a new way. Remiel moans like the men in the videos I studied, so I do it again. And again. But I need to see his flesh and all my marks on it. Standing, I rip his sweater and t-shirt over his head and toss it to the ground, admiring the way his spine straightens when I grab hold of him again.
“I care,” I answer his question, shoving my fingers into his mouth so he can’t speak. “Because it wasn’t just sex with a guy. It was sex in general.”
He mumbles around my fingers, but I shove them in hard enough to make him gag and splutter so he can’t talk back. When they’re nice and slick, I pull them free and bend him forward again. I press them to his hole, easing one inside.
“You were a virgin?”
I slam my hand over his mouth. “Stop asking questions, Remiel.” I spit on his ass and watch it roll down to my fingers. Pushing it inside of him, I ease him open and debate how many honest answers I want to give him. “No. I wasn’t a virgin. But you were the first?—”
“First what?” he asks, pulling my hand away from his mouth. “Don’t hide from me, Krypt. You’ve literally seen me piss myself and cry with your cock down my throat.”
I spit on his hole again, adding a third finger. Is three too many? The videos showed three, but my cock is thicker than three. “You were the third time I’d had sex. Ever. I didn’t enjoy the first two times. No more questions.”
Remiel, brave tonight, forces me back so he can turn around. My hand slips free, and his eyes meet mine. So do all his scars and tattoos.
Sick. Shatter. Krypt.
Fuck, he’s stunning.
“The third time?”
Don’t fucking look at me! “What’d I just say about questions?” I snarl at him, wrapping my fingers around his throat and pushing him down onto his back. He cries at the impact and winces at the rough stone digging into his back, but he never looks away from me. “I hated sex. Never wanted to have it. Until you. Fucking happy?”
“Yes,” he rasps. “Only me. Never anyone else!” he shouts.
“Possessive?”
“Yes,” he seethes. “I don’t care if you fucking finger me while I’m drugged or rape me because you can’t help yourself, so long as it’s me.”
Pathetic. I love it. I spread his knees with my hips, and Remiel pulls them back on his own. “So desperate, Remiel.”
“So what? You made me this way!” he screams, his voice echoing through the cavernous space. “You turned me into this vile, pathetic man who craves deprivation and wants to be abused. What the fuck is wrong with me? What did you do to me?”
“Exactly what I wanted.” I spit on my hand and rub it into my cock. His glistening hole isn’t wet enough, so I spit there, too, wishing there was lube. Craving his blood even more. “Remember how you loved to point fingers at me, Remiel? You blamed me for everything, and sure, I’ll take it, but look at you now. Who’s the sick one?”
“I am.”
“That’s right, hero. You’re fucking sinister.”
“Yes.” He sucks on his fingers and slides them into his ass. “I’m so sinister that I want you to fuck me so hard I can’t breathe. I want to hurt. I want to shatter like I made you shatter.”
“Thought you didn’t like pain?”
“Maybe I crave the pain you cause me,” he snips at me.
I rip his hand away. “This is my ass. You don’t get to finger fuck it.”
“Then hurry up and fuck it.”
“Put your hands behind your head.” I nudge my cock to his hole. “Now.”
He links his fingers and puts them behind his head, his dirty-blond hair getting messy from them. His cheeks redden and his eyes blaze, but his cock has never been harder.
“You’ve already ruined me,” he says.
“Finger-pointing again?” I push in a few inches, and tingles of pleasure tickle my balls.
“At myself. I wanted to be ruined. I let you.”
“Let me?” I laugh, and fucking hell, it’s a crazed sound. “You fucking let me ruin you? You think you had that much control?”
“I did.”
I slam into him, and he loses his breath. The dryness stings a bit, so I pull out and spit again. I fuck into him hard a few times, still laughing. Unsure why. It’s a combination of exhaustion and suffering from the past two weeks, relief that Remiel is here with me again, and goddamn joy that he’s admitting how dark and dirty he’s become. I did that. We did that. We fucked the concept of right and wrong and turned it into something immoral that works for us. I’m narcissistic enough to take all the credit, because if it weren’t for me being an irrational heathen, Remiel would have shied away and withered under the impending doom of his suicide.
“Where’s your control now, hero?” I squeeze his thighs. “You just lay there like a helpless little doll.”
“Yeah, and get exactly what I want while doing it.” His smile is devious and cruel. It makes me feel comfortable. I understand deviance and cruelty, and Remiel is finally speaking my language. “Did you listen to my music?” he asks. “The music I just played for you.” His arms flex with restraint, my name on his wrists on full display.
I dip my eyes and follow the track that the suicide pill took from his mouth, down his throat, and into his stomach. Shatter. X marks the path. A slice to free it from his body. “It was a horror lullaby.” I tug him closer, the rock scraping against his back. “You wanted me to know that you’re soft and scared.”
“It was romance,” he corrects. “My interpretation of it. Haunting and lovely.”
I look at his face, his lips wet and his eyes glossy. “Lovely?”
Remiel nods. He removes one of his hands from behind his head and touches mine. I startle, going still inside him, but he takes my fingers from his bruised hips and wraps them around his cock. Slowly, he moves my hand up and down his length. “It’s lovely the way you haunt me. Every part of my life is dictated by you now. When you’re gone, I feel you stalking me. When you’re near, I’m attracted to your monsters. When I sleep, you haunt my dreams. And when you’re inside me like this, vulnerable but dangerous about it, it shows me exactly who you are. Because I demanded rough enough to hurt, yet you’re being gentle with me while adding roughness to your words. You’re a fucking riddle, Krypt. I love trying to figure you out.”
“Stop trying.” Because I don’t know why I’m being gentle. I crave it, something different. Something that separates him from the violent way I interact with everyone else. I want to war with him over everything, but I want him to fight me back hard enough to challenge me. I want him to submit by choice rather than demand, and I want him to fear and love me simultaneously. What does love feel like?
“Never,” Remiel says.
I bend over him, slamming my mouth to his just to shut him up and taste all the words I don’t want him to speak aloud. I rock into him and fumble my coordination with my hand on his dick, but I don’t stop, and Remiel doesn’t care that I’m clumsy.
Pressure builds and turns into pleasure. It’s been a long time since I came, and I refuse to be embarrassed about my reaction to him. It should be a compliment, so I press my forehead to his, thrust into him slow and deep, and listen to the way he gasps every time my thumb swipes his slit.
“I love you,” he whispers.
“Stop.”
“I love you.”
I groan, barely holding it together. “Shut up.”
“Ahhhh, Krypt,” he moans, breath fanning my mouth. “I fucking love you.”
“Remiel,” I snarl.
The confession hits a crescendo, and heat radiates from the centre of my chest. I stop breathing, consumed by bliss and scared of his love, filling his ass with the proof of my pleasure. Remiel’s hands come back to where they started, weaving through my hair to tug my face to his. He whispers his love against my lips and then kisses me as his cock throbs in my hand and coats me in his mess. My ass muscles clench and a breath whooshes out of me, and on that breath, I say, “I’m obsessed with you.”