“Declan, please,” I cry, balling my hand into a fist.
Another twitch, then I feel it. The sting of penetration.
A relieved cry tears out of my throat, and my blood drips into his mouth. He’s not sucking, but I know it’s coming, and I cry against his chest until his instincts take over. His tongue darts out, licking against the holes his teeth have left, then his lips seal around my wrist and he suckles, drawing strength out of me with every swallow.
After an agonizing time, Declan curls his fingers around my arm and starts to actively drink from me. The suction makes my cock hard and I can’t stop myself from rutting against him as he takes from me. He bites me again, two more sharp punctures into my wrist, then his eyes slowly open and I’m scared for what I see.
Declan doesn’t look like himself. His eyes are the same, but they’re duller, less alive, less…mine. He tightens his fingers around my arm and moves his mouth, biting down and making even more holes in my flesh. Blood is pouring from me faster than he can drink, and it smears over his chin and down his neck and chest. I blink at him, and it takes me longer than I’d like to open my eyes.
“You did good, Declan,” I praise him. “So good.”
I try to pull my wrist away, but he grips me tighter and bites me again. He sucks at me with a loud and sloppy mouth, and I struggle against him, but he surges up and off the stairs. There’s blood everywhere and we both slip, falling down and landing in a heap in the foyer of the house. Declan leverages himself over me and slams me against the floor. He pins my wrists, much like I’d done to him, and he forces his body between my legs.
I worry he’s going to fuck me, but what he does is so much worse. He sinks his teeth into the base of my throat and sucks me there until, for the second time since I’ve loved him, everything goes black.
Is this what dying feels like?
Everything fucking hurts. My bones and joints feel brittle and moving even an inch takes every ounce of willpower I have. I don’t know how long I’ve been out for. I don’t know if I died, or if I just passed out, I don’t know anything except that I’m sad. It’s like creeping ivy that’s overgrown my whole body and pinned me to the ground. This sadness is a glaring ache radiating out of my chest, and it hurts so much I have half a mind to tear my skin apart and remove my heart myself.
If only I could move. I roll my head to the side, to the place I remember last seeing Declan, but he’s not there. There’s nothing there except a pool of blood. I think hard on it and manage to stretch my arm. My hand makes a current through the puddle, parting it like a literal red sea.
I’m so fucking sad, but sad isn’t even the word for it. Maybe melancholy? Misery? There has to be something beyond my comprehension to explain how empty I feel. I squeeze my eyes closed and wonder if it all went wrong. if this is the emptiness my parents warned me about. The idea claws at my insides. I want to call for Declan, but my voice isn’t working.
I flop onto my back and stretch out, arms and legs wide like a starfish. In my younger days, I would have made a snow angel in the puddle of blood because it would have been funny. Would have been something to do. But I can barely manage a breath right now, so I just think about it instead.
And I think about Declan.
My finger burns, like I picked up something hot and my body takes over. My arms curl into my body and a gasp tumbles out of my throat. I open my eyes and that’s when I see it.
The sunlight.
It’s creeping into the foyer, cast along the porch at a sharp angle. That means the front door is open. That means…I force myself to focus and there’s a body shaped drag line from the blood I’m lying in out to the porch and I scream, but the sound that comes out is little more than strangled silence.
That’s when I see Declan.
Sitting on the front steps with his legs pulled up to his chest and his arms wrapped around his shins. His head is turned to the side and he’s staring at the sun creeping closer to the dwindling shady area he’s sitting in. The entire doorway is bright with the light, and it’s rising to meet me, rising to meet Declan, and the idea of being this close to watching my soul mate die for a second time is more than I can take.
Declan!
His head snaps to up and his eyes land on me in a millisecond. He’s been crying. I can see it, but more importantly, I canfeelit. His mouth is caked with dried blood and his fingers look like he’s been clawing at the walls. I flip onto all fours and begin to crawl to him, stopping only when I reach the sun.
Declan.
He scrambles toward me, stalling when his hand lands in the patch of sun that lights the entire back half of the porch and the doorway. He pulls his hand back and cradles it against his chest, then looks at me helplessly.
“Ezra,” he whispers. “You’re alive.”
I answer with a strained smile.
“Hurts,” I croak. “Need you.”
“I thought I killed you.” He wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “It’s been hours. You just…Oh, God.”
“Here,” I tell him.
I’m here. You did it.
He whimpers and clutches his head in his hands, and all the while, the sun creeps closer to us both.
