“And I will take it and run. I want you, 81, and don’t be gentle. Take from me what you need to heal, for I will take from you just what I need.”
His arms wrap around my back and in one gentle pull our skin touches. I feel his hand in my hair, how he loves the softness, watching it tumble as he releases it. Then his hand moves down my cheekbone to my lips. That's when more kissing starts, a different type of kiss and we start to move like partners in a dance that is written in our DNA. Our bodies fit together as if we were made just for this, to fall into one another, to feel this natural rhythm. With a laugh he lifts me right off my feet, carrying me inside off the deck, away from the brilliant sun and bird song. He stalks toward the bed, letting me fall with a soft bounce on the mattress.
We lock eyes for just a moment, just enough for us to feel safe with one another. His shaking fingers run up my legs to my thighs to the hem of his shirt. “My clothing looks fucking mint on you, little bird.” His eyes heavy with seduction. The soft cotton of his shirt glides over my heighten skin as he slowly, oh so slowly, pulls it from my body lifting my head slightly off the pillows to free the cotton from my body. My hair falls in a wave of curls around me, setting the white of his bedding ablaze with black. His hands shake as he looks at me naked, the same way he did last night, but this time something different is stirring in his eyes as he moves his fingers over each scar, each mark, each brand on my skin. The scars are deep red and still raised and angry. Two years may seem a long time to some, but for trauma and physical healing it’s not long at all.
“It’s okay,” I say to him breathless. “I want to forget with you. Can we just do that?” I mouth out toward him as he lowers his head, kissing from the first scar on my collarbone down over the swell of my breasts meeting the next scar. I take a deep breath, taking the moment to gather my thoughts, before I decide to tell him how each scar came to be as he kisses each one.
“That one there is where Carl tried to cut my heart from my body.” He tenses at my words; my hands find his hair brushing it from his face. “Please, don’t stop. It’s a story that needs to be told.”
He nods as his lips flutter over my skin. Taking each scar and mark in a delicate kiss so small and soft but so heavy with a need to heal.
“All of these ones are from different fights, episodes, moments when he had envisioned some absurd notion that I was doing something that I shouldn’t be - talking to someone, seeing someone, not pretty enough, didn’t dress right, didn’t wear my hair the way he liked it, or I wore it that way for a guy from the work dinner we had to attend. This deep one here.” I place my fingers just below his chin and he drew a line along the outline of my ribcage. “This was with a hot knife heated up over a flame and scored into my skin because I made eye contact with another partner from my father’s firm at dinner. It was inflicted on me at the dinner party my parents had for him making partner at the family’s law firm. It happened on their guest bathroom floor. He followed me to the bathroom, pulled his knife and lighter out and cut so deep that I had to get eight internal stitches and fourteen external.” 81’s jaw clenches. I can feel it under my hand while hot tears fall from his eyes, landing on the marks over my body. He moves his lips down further to the others.
Finally, his kisses stop on the massive one that looks like a jagged smile over the base of my abdomen. “This is by far the worst one I had to endure. This one just about killed me physically and emotionally. This is where he tried to cut the baby from my body that he was certain was another mans and not his. I endured a beating that lasted what felt like hours before he began to hack at my stomach. I had cooked his favorite dinner, had his favorite music playing for when he walked in from work. I had candles lit and the test waiting on the kitchen counter. I thought that this baby would be what could make him really love me again, like he did at the start. The way he used to kiss me, hold me, look at me. This baby… this new phase in our lives could be what was needed to fix it all. I was so wrong.
“He was livid. Thought I’d done this for someone else and he had caught me out. He beat me and threw me around the room smashing the candles to the floor. The smoke swirled around me as his fists met my skin - rage hot in his eyes and lethal in his touch. He crouched down beside my barely conscious body and hacked at my stomach trying to cut the baby from me. I was screaming in pain… screaming for the baby I wanted to have so I could have something to love and to love me in a way I knew would heal me. I must have passed out from the pain because I woke later to see him sitting with his head resting on his knees, slumped against the base of the sofa watching me. I tried to speak, to call out and move but the pain was too much. That’s when he leaped up and dragged me by my bloodied matted hair to the bathroom floor where he began to kick the open wound until I bleed the baby out on the bathroom floor. I held the tiny 18-week-old fetus in my hands, crying for us both. I don’t know where he went after he left me there. All I know is I woke up in my bed with a clean stitch wound, fresh clothes and showered body. My nana sat in the chair next to me with tears staining her cheeks. It was a mess. He told her I was a drug addict who had gotten pregnant by her dealer who had done that to me and Carl had found me.” Tears fall like a waterfall from my eyes as 81’s head rested on my abdomen. His hands were flat at my sides. His fingers digging into my flesh. His body so tense that it hurt.
“My nan, she knew deep down it was a lie. She knew, but she couldn’t save me. Not yet, anyway.” 81 moves upward, slowly. His hands move over my body as his lips follow, back up the path they had just taken.
“I will kill him, little bird,” was all he says before trailing more kisses.Every kiss he lays on my skin has a raw intensity– making our breathing fast, but our heart rates faster.Then before I know how it happens, he's naked and our skin is moving softly together, like the finest of silk. I feel his hand enter from below, moving fast. Our tongues entwined in a kiss, and then he's inside, changing my breathing with every thrust, my moans coming in time to his movements.
Then all at once he stops and kisses me from my breasts to my stomach, his hands light; then he's licking and using his fingers all at once, watching my reaction, feeling how my legs move, watching my body writhe. “I will make you whole again little bird. I will worship each scar on your beautiful body and with each kiss they will slowly fade.” I let out a moan, unable to articulate a response. In seconds he's on me again, thrusting into me harder, just long enough to intoxicate my mind before stopping again. If it's begging he wants from me by inflicting this torture that is descending on my body and inside me, then he's gonna have to stop long enough for my brain to first start working again.
“You’re mine, little bird, and I will make sure the world knows it.” His lips find mine instantly, his tongue slipping into my mouth and owning mine, dominating my whole body with one flick of his tongue against mine. My hands wrap around the back of his neck as his hands grip around my thighs, lifting me off the bed slightly with another deep thrust. I grind my hips slowly over him, my clit rubbing against his torso as his warm breath cloaks my nipple. I throw my head back deeper into the too soft pillows that feel likethey are going to engulf me with each thrust of pleasure his fingers give me. My eyes close as a light moan escapes my lips.
“81,” I gasp desperately. He draws his mouth away from my nipples, his teeth catching at the end, and the painful pleasure fills me up inside. He pulls back from me and steps back from the bed and stares at me, his heavy cock resting in his hand as he strokes himself. Arousal coats his cock from his hands as the sun envelopes around him like a halo.
I bring my eyes up, seeing his rippled thighs covered in ink, then past his cock. I see the ink covered scars that tell their own story and up to his eyes where they roll back before a growl escapes him. He drops his dick, his hands finding my thighs, and he presses me against the bed. My walls contract around him as he fills me slowly. My eyes close and a moan escapes me, just before I feel something cold push lightly against the side of my breast. His thrusting slows down to a torturous pace. My eyes fly open to find his dark eyes, and his mouth sets into a grin.
“What’re you doing?” I ask breathlessly as fear ripples over my body, the pull of his cock extracting from me and putting pressure on my G-spot. The knife glides over my nipple and my hands tighten around the back of his neck. “Now, 81. I am about to fucking head into a full-blown panic if you don’t remove the knife.” He brings his mouth to my ear as the cold blade continues its travel down my rib cage.
“This body is mine, and only mine, little bird. I will never hurt you, nor would I ever cut out pieces of you. I will love you and I will fuck up. I know I will, but this, right here, needs to happen to change your mind from pain to pleasure. Little bird, I’m a dark twisted mother fucker and I don’t know any other way.” He whispers. “I’ll kill him, for you, little bird. I will take him from this earth, but right now we both need this.” He brings his head back, his face turning serious. I swallow as he pushes into me, deepening his thrust. “We both are stuck in some fucked up place, in pieces, baby, and this is the only way I know how to pull us back to mend the pieces.” He presses his forehead against mine. The sharp side of the knife continues down my thigh as his pounding pushes my body further up the bed until my head is hitting the headboard. Thank fuck it’s a padded blue type, because he relentless with his thrusts. His desire to heal and forget is soul consuming and I’m struggling to stay conscious for the experience as my anxiety, lulled with fear, pulls me to the place inside where it’s safe.
“Who do you belong to, little bird?” His voice soft but heavy, pulling me from inside back to him. “Little bird, answer me. Who do you belong to?” He thrusts deeper as he looks into my eyes, his burning with flames. I can feel the heat like it’s burning my skin. Like the tip of the blade is scorching along the taunt skin of my thigh that is wrapped around him as he pulls back watching the trail of blood as it beads to the surface. He moves to my next thigh; the pain isn’t like before. It’s different, calmer with a sense of sexy lust wrapped in pleasure. My body moves into the blade as he draws another long line down my thigh scratching the surface blood beading to the top. “You like this, little bird?” he questions me. “Look me in the eye, my little bird, and tell me,” he bites out through clenched teeth slamming in and out of me.
“I’m yours, 81, and it feels like fire meeting ice. Pain mixing with pleasure to remind me that this is different. This is a different type of pain - this pain is for lovers to heal, not for a lover to kill and hurt a soul,” I cry out, my core contracting, preparing for release. He drops the knife onto the floor, his mouth crashing down onto mine. He moans against my mouth while he continues to slam into me relentlessly. My legs quiver from his determined rocking and I scream out at the brutal and raw pleasure that’s soaring through me. His mouth finds my nipple and the minute his teeth glide over it, his cock pushes on my G-spot and his pelvic bone rubs over my clit—and I lose it. The sweat drips off my body as my walls contract around his thickness and the aftershocks from my orgasm wrack through me as he releases not two seconds later, coming undone inside me. His body falls beside me, his breathing rough and fast like my own. My body is humming from his touch, the way he caused me to explode. I have never felt that intense of a release before. My fingers run down my thighs to the cuts. The blood is smeared, yet still warm and sticky, over my skin.
“I’m sorry, little bird. I’m fucked up.” His voice is sedated in lust. Turning my body into his I rest my head on his chest, listening to the broken beat of his heart. “Don’t be sorry for who you are, 81. Not to me, ever,” I whisper out. As I close my eyes, his hands find my skin running the tip of his finger along my spine. He kisses me softly on the top of my head.
“I run on nothingness, little bird, and I feast on void.” He searches my face briefly as I twist to look at him.
“Long ago, 81, I learned how to be made of nothing.” I press myself up and look deep in his eyes, wanting to kiss his lips. To tell him somehow that this is okay. That I’m okay. That we will be okay. He smiles at me, takes my bottom lip between his teeth and bites down on the plump flesh. Blood trickles through the small slit that he caused, tasting hauntingly beautiful on the tip of my tongue. I close my eyes as he pulls me into him. We lay there, together, with nothing but the sun around us and the broken sound of heartbeats shared with the heavenly sound of bird song.
Chapter Twenty-Five
81
The sharp sound of vibrations on wood wakes me. My body is heavy with the body of my very own perfectly fucked-up little bird. Cursing whoever that is calling me, I answer the damn phone before it wakes her.
“This better be fucking worth it,” I seethe into the phone. My love stirs slightly under me.
“Brother where the fuck are you?” Cage whispers into the phone.
“What?” I bit back at the punk.
“You dick head, where are you?” Again whispering.
“Why the fuck does it matter where I am, and why the fuck are you whispering?” Taking in a deep breath, the weight of my sleeping beauty feels like a sin on my twisted fucked-up skin.
