The truth burns all the way down.My voice comes out rough, strained, shaking not with fear but with the force of what I’m holding back.
Her lips part.
My forehead drops to hers.
I can feel her heartbeat through my ribs.
I can feel mine slamming against hers like it wants out.
“Royal,” she breathes.
And I lose the last thread of restraint I had left.
I kiss her.
It is not gentle.
It is a collision.
A threat wrapped in heat.
Our mouths meet with enough force to bruise, to punish, to confess.Her hands fist in my shirt.Her mouth opens to mine like she forgot how to fight, like she has been waiting for this, like she would bleed for another second of it.
My hands slide up her ribs, not soft, not cruel, just claiming.Her breath stutters.She arches.Her nails dig through my clothes.Missing is the chain rattling with every movement, as her wrist jerks lightly as she pulls me closer.
I break the kiss first, dragging air into my lungs like I have been drowning for years.
“This is wrong,” she whispers, talking to herself like she’s conflicted.
“This is dangerous,” I say, confessing my own fears.
“I know that too.So why?”
“Because I can’t stop.”
I say it into the hollow of her throat as I bury my face there.Her pulse flutters under my lips, wild, frantic, alive.She shivers like she wants to push me away, but her body melts against mine, boneless and needy.
She is a contradiction.
A weapon.
A poem written in bruises.
I press my forehead to her collarbone.She puts a shaking hand in my hair.Her touch is like absolution and damnation at the same moment.
And something in me breaks open.
“I saw the basement,” I say, voice raw.“I saw the blood.I saw what your daddy let happen.”
She stiffens.Pain flickers through her eyes.Guilt or grief, I can’t tell which.Her throat works as she tries to swallow it down.
“Royal… He made me help him hurt Sophie.”
“I believe you.”
Truth.Pure and sharp.
Her eyes fill, just barely, and she looks away like she is ashamed to be seen with her armor cracked.
