Ripping the fabric, I let the white dress fall to her hips, let my hands find skin. She’s warm there, soft and so fucking alive.
I want to tear her open and crawl inside.
I want to keep her forever.
Instead, I let her slide down until our faces are level.
I kiss her. Hard. Her lips split on my teeth, but she kisses back, biting, sucking, fighting for every inch of control.
She tastes like blood and salt and memory.
I can’t get enough.
I press her closer, let her feel the shape of me, the need. She arches into it, grinding against my thigh, nails digging into my back. She scratches so hard she leaves marks. I want more.
She breaks the kiss first.
“Don’t stop,” she says, and this time it’s not a dare.
It’s a plea.
She looks like a work of art abandoned by its maker.
I want to fuck her or fix her or destroy her, but I don’t know which.
She stands so still her chest barely moves. Only her eyes track me.
“Eve.” Her name burns my throat. “Do you know what happens now?”
She tilts her chin. “You win. I lose.”
“That’s not how it works.” My hand finds her wrist, the skin still hot from the run. I turn it, palm up, and run my thumb along the line the knife left. “You never lose. Not really.”
She shudders. I feel the pulse under her skin, quick and shallow, but she doesn’t pull away. The blood from the ritual cut is dry, but the edges are angry. I want to put my mouth on it, see if that will soothe or make it worse.
I let her wrist go and move to her throat. There’s a welt just under her jaw, a ribbon of red where something caught her in flight. I touch it, gentle, and her mouth opens on a soft inhale.
She looks up at me through lashes clumped with dirt and sweat, and for a moment, neither of us moves.
“Are you going to hurt me?”
I shake my head. “Not like they want.”
“Then how?” Her lips are parted, her breath catching on every word.
I want to say I’ll make her mine, that I’ll break her down to atoms and build her up again in my shape. But the words stick. I’ve never been good at words.
So I kiss her again to silence the questions.
It’s not gentle. It’s not even human. I take her mouth with all the need I’ve buried since I was old enough to know what it meant. Her lips are chapped, and the taste of her is salt and iron and something that makes my knees want to give out.
She doesn’t fight me anymore. She opens to it, lets me have all of her, lets me take until my lungs burn. Her arms are still at her sides, fists balled, but she’s not holding back.
I press her harder into the wall, not hard enough to bruise, but hard enough that she knows the only way out is through me. She gasps, the sound muffled by my mouth, and I take it as permission.
I slide my hand into her hair, fingers twisting at the roots. She hisses, then sighs, melting a little. Her jaw relaxes, her lips soften. She lets the violence dissolve into something else.
When I pull back, her face is flushed, the dirt on her cheek smeared. Her eyes are wet, but it’s not fear now.
