Natalya
Present
I rest my head against his shoulder and open my eyes, forcing my mind to drink in the building instead of everything else, as if beauty itself could anchor me long enough to stop the panic attack.
The ceiling rises impossibly high above us, a vast canopy arching into pointed ribs that meet like folded hands in prayer.
They seem to sway, as though they are bending toward me, stretching down to reach me. I silently beg them to do so. To touch me. To tell me what to do and what to feel, because I can’t do that anymore today.
And for a fleeting, delirious instant, they obey. The vaults tilt, the ribs lean inward, and it feels as though the entire ceiling is collapsing straight toward my skull. I don’t flinch. I welcome it. I would let it crush me if it meant relief.
I blink for what feels like eternity, half-expecting those immense stone hands to be there when my eyes open again, carrying me somewhere weightless. But the ceiling is still and back in place.
My eyes wander, scanning the architecture for something else to fasten onto before my thoughts begin unraveling.
The stone is aged to an uneven ivory, darker where centuries of candle smoke kissed it, lighter where time has peeled it clean. Faint fragments of saints linger there with constellations painted to mimic heaven itself.
This place is devastatingly beautiful.
I study the half-faded faces of painted angels and wonder if they remember us or if we’ve changed so much that they no longer recognize the two reckless teenagers they once watched bind themselves to eternity under this very roof.
They witnessed our innocence being surrendered, our vows spoken as if ambition alone could fortify love against reality.
Do they approve of what we’ve become?
I can’t read their expressions. Time has carved them down too much. Loneliness has eaten at them. Just as it has eaten at us. Maybe that’s why they can’t recognize us anymore, because we are just as weathered and fractured.
“Give me your hand,” he mutters right next to my ear and lifts my wrist.
His finger begins tapping against the inside of my wrist, right over the thin blue veins. I lower my gaze, watching the steady rhythm. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Listen to my heartbeat,” he says quietly. “Count the taps.”
I do as I’m told.
One. Two. Three. Four…
Somewhere between the fourth and the seventh tap, I realize the panic slowed, almost stopped. My body is starting to work on its own and I spiral back into reality.
It took hold of me again. The chaos. I know now. I can tell afterwards. I only ever recognize it once it has already passed.
But I don’t want to leave his arms. I want to stay here, surrendered to his mercy, focused on nothing but the steady rhythm of his heart, as if that pulse alone could guide me back to something resembling sanity.
He stops tapping my wrist, yet he doesn’t let go. He just holds me.
Ours.
It’s ours.
The place where we gave promises we couldn’t keep moments later, naive enough to believe love was armor and that it would keep us safe.
I inhale his mesmerizing and addicting scent mixing with the smell of burnt candles, driving myself into a spiral of old memories.
I gave a vow here.
I can still hear it in my head, clear as if I had spoken it seconds ago instead of years. A reminder of how foolish I once was.
I choose you, in every universe. Even if it’s wrong. I don’t want a way out.
It’s holding onto me. My own words. I can’t get out.
There is no way out of him.
He says I cast some spell on him, that I bewitched him into this obsession, but it’s him who possesses me. He carries something my soul cannot function without. If I was the one who cast the spell, then I bound us both into it. The damage wasn’t one-sided, it claimed us equally.
My mind understands how difficult forgiveness should be. My mind catalogs the reasons, the injuries, the betrayal. But my body forgave him long ago. It clings to him instinctively, like it never learned how to survive any other way.
I suppose he is both my madness and my clarity. And I truly don’t want a way out.
I’m still as foolish as I used to be.
“Why do you make it so hard,” I croak softly.
He lets the question settle between us before responding. “What do you mean?”
“To hate you,” I whisper. “Why do you make it so hard to hate you.”
He presses his face deeper into the hollow of my neck, as though he’s trying to hide from the weight of the question. His lips touch my skin there, not with a kiss, just a slow, lingering press as he inhales me in. And that simple contact is enough to send my temperature soaring.
I’m not sure if I’m fully present. But the only proof I need right now is him.
That’s all. I’ve never needed anything the way I need this weight, this pressure, this undeniable gravity of his body to show me how real he is.
I need to feel the imprint of him to know that time hasn’t split open again. I need something solid.
“You said,” I begin, the panic long gone now, my breath fractured for entirely different reasons.
“Mhm?” he hums into my neck, voice low.
“That the only time I…” I falter, searching for the words, though I know he already understands. “That the only time I’ll fight for air…”
He doesn’t need me to finish it, he knows what I’m asking from him. He knows the tells I give him.
“Nat,” he breathes out as his body melts behind me, as if I just granted him access to something he waited eternity for.
The urgency with which his hand dives straight under the hem of my jeans just proves it. He presses me more into him with such a ferocity that I find myself questioning what I just signed myself up for.
But I can’t wait for it.
His fingers dive inside my pussy instantly with voracious need. The sound that escapes me is something bordering on a grunt and relief, while his mouth is still sunk deep into my neck and his muffled whimpers resonate against my skin.
I shrug off my jacket, needing less distance, less fabric and less air between us.
I’m practically sitting in his lap, my ass grinding on his groin while he drives me to even deeper chaos with his hand. I can’t help but move my hips to meet the force of his fingers more and more, unable to stop, addicted to it.
But it’s not enough.
I press my ass into his lap the right way to feel how much he wants me too, and the second I feel how hard he is for me, nothing is sufficient anymore. I need him here and now, not a split second later.
I reach behind me, fumbling for his belt, hands clumsy with urgency. My head is still tipped toward his shoulder, ears catching the restrained sounds he tries to swallow against my skin.
But he loses patience before I do. His hand tenderly leaves my pussy, that alone makes me whimper pathetically, but only so he can rip open my jeans and slide them down just enough.
Meanwhile, I finally take him out, feeling the weight of his cock in my hands behind me just for a heartbeat before he takes over and grabs my hips, placing me just right. The second I feel his tip on my entrance, I shiver, the aching for him getting physically and mentally unbearable.
He grabs my jaw and tilts my face to the side, more to him.
“I can’t do this unless I’m sure you believe this is real,” he croaks out. “I need you to tell me you’re here with me.”
I exhale a tormented breath, too eager.
“I am,” I admit, and it’s true.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Good. Stay with me.”
He plants a gentle, sweet kiss on my nose, which stutters me out of nowhere, since the innocence of that kiss absolutely doesn’t match the intensity of the rest of this moment.
His lips stay pressed to my cheek while his grip on my jaw tightens, then he finally drives into me, brutally, stretching me up without mercy, kicking the air out of my lungs, just as he promised.
One thrust, deep and relentless and undeniably but pleasurably painful.
“Fuck, baby,” he exhales, desperation threaded through every syllable. “I missed you like this—” His hold tightens at my hips, holding me down on his groin. His mouth finds my skin in between broken phrases, each word unraveling him further.
“Wet for me—” He lands one rough kiss on my lips. “Taking me so deep—” Another kiss, even though I can’t breathe at all. “Stretching that tight pussy for me.”
If he’s going to talk me through it like that I’ll break sooner than I’d like to.
The aching pressure coils inside me, ignites all the butterflies, and travels all the way to my fingertips like the right frequency my body never forgot, and now it just welcomes it back. His hands lock around my waist, holding me with so much pressure he might squeeze the life out of me soon.
“You’re making me mad,” he grits out, biting the sensitive skin under my ears. “There’s nothing normal about the way I love you, Nat.”
The way he says my name is not romantic. It’s ruined and starved.
God, I love it.
I answer with another grunt when he drives into me more. My fingers trace his silhouette behind me, all the way up, then dive into his hair, as if I could keep him from ever leaving my orbit again.
He stays deep, letting another thrust feed the hunger that consumed us both. His forehead falls on my nape, his breathing sharp and peckish, threaded with grunts held down in his throat.
“Make me forget how much I hate you for leaving me,” I grit out, trying to force the anger out of me.
His lips find my throat before breaking the suspension with consuming drags, making my body tremble with every hit.
“Hate me however you want—” he grits out.
Every thrust is harder than the previous and kicks the little air I had time to take in between, making me see more stars on the ceiling above me.
“Just stay with me, don’t drift away,” he adds.
The brutality of how much I missed him is consuming me. Like missing him hollowed me out from the inside and now it’s finally filled again, and it feels seraphic.