I yelled so loud the guy next to me turned his head and grinned. Luckily, Corbin got the message this time. He grabbed my wrist and yanked me back, shoving his way through the surging bodies. We passed the sound desk and merch stand and ducked into a black hallway leading to the bathrooms. The music still pounded around us, filling my heart, bleeding my emotions all over my skin.
Corbin wasted no time. He pinned me to a wall, his mouth finding mine. I devoured him, tangling my fingers in his hair and jamming his head against mine. We kissed with desperate need, like the last two people alive on a defunct space shuttle hurtling toward Earth. His teeth grazed my lip and the sharp pain only sparked me harder.
The music shook the wall so it rumbled against my back in time with the pounding of the bass and drums in my ear. I wrapped my legs around Corbin, grinding my hips against his already rigid cock.
Corbin pawed at my jeans, but he couldn’t tug them down while my legs were around him. He leaned back and I slid my legs back to the ground. He unzipped his fly and rooted around in his pocket for a condom.My Boy Scout, always prepared.
I whipped my head around to check that no one was coming to the bathroom as I pulled one leg out of my jeans. Someone could come down the hallway at any moment, but I didn’t care. I needed Corbin,now.I needed to feel him inside me the way the music was inside me. As soon as I freed my leg, I tried to pull it out of my panties, but Corbin grabbed my legs and threw me up against the wall again.
I dug my fingers into Corbin’s back as his hands roamed all over me, his kisses consuming me, lighting a fire straight to my core. He reached down behind me, pushing the thin fabric of my panties aside. His hand supported my ass while he guided himself inside me.
I threw my head back as Corbin entered me in one hard stroke. Our eyes met as he thrust his hips up into me, his mouth open, his lips moving but the words soundless against the onslaught of heavy fucking metal.
His thrusts lit me up like a comet. We burned together, inside and out. Corbin’s blue eyes blazed with a dark storm, violent and primordial. His mouth crushed mine, raw with frenzied need and a glowing determination – as if he somehow planned to drive out the demons that haunted me with his touch, with his cock.
And Iknewwith a sinking, sickening crush in my chest, that this boy who held us all together would one day undo me. That the strength Corbin carried in his heart would tear me to pieces, and I might never be whole again.
But in that moment, I couldn’t care less. I didn’t want tothink. I needed to forget the crushing weight of responsibility and the ritual that would transform me into a monster. My body shattered, the aching heat inside me burning up until I became a raw, bare mess of atoms, dancing to the sound of thundering drums.
Every thrust rocked through my body along with the music. Corbin’s nails dug into my ass as he rose to meet me, shoving me hard against the wall with every stroke. I knotted my ankles together behind his back, dragging him deeper into me. His teeth slid down my neck, the pain only fueling the fire inside me as it burned hot.
Hard. Fast. Heavy.Exactly what we both needed to drive out the demons.
“I love you!” I cried out, the words flying off my tongue before I’d even thought of them. My heart constricted. Corbin’s eyes blazed across mine.
“I love you!” Corbin screamed back, and with a hard shove and a shudder, he came, his face contorting as he lost control. I clenched around him as my body disintegrated into atoms and stardust, and I hovered on the edge of space, weightless and lost.
I came back to earth, my heart racing. Corbin collapsed against me, panting hard. I slid down the wall, anchoring myself against Corbin as I forced my legs to take my weight again. With shaking hands I shoved my foot back into my jeans, zipping up the fly just as two girls came running down the hall.
My head swam with the force of the words I’d just spoken and the strange knowing sense that the closer I got to Corbin, the harder he would break me. But I had no idea what that meant, and I still didn’t care.
Corbin ducked into the men’s toilet and disposed of the condom while I straightened my clothes and raked a hand through my short hair. He came out and we rejoined the crowd, hanging a little further back by the sound desk to watch the finale. The set finished with the lead singer throwing down his mic stand and flailing his body like he was fed up with the world. Only, when he came out to the front of the stage to take a bow, he smiled from ear to ear. His long hair was plastered to his porcelain skin and his classical cravat and frock coat were drenched with sweat. Looking at him now, I could see why there were rumours that he was a vampire.
I cheered and jumped and whistled along with the rest of the crowd as the band took their final bow. My thighs ached and my ears rang and my whole body buzzed with incredible energy. I didn’t want it to be over.
The drummer tossed his sticks out into the audience, and a scuffle broke out at the front as the crowd surged to reach for them. Worry panged in my chest as I thought of Arthur up there, but of course, he was probably the biggest person in the pit. I didn’t have to worry about Arthur.
For the ninety minutes Blood Lust played, I didn’t have to worry about anything at all.
The band disappeared and the house lights went up. My body buzzed from the thrill of the music and the taste of Corbin on my lips. I said that I loved him.
I’d never said those words before to anyone except my parents and Kelly. I thought them about Arthur, but I hadn’t been able to say them, not yet. I should be afraid of the weight of them on my lips. The danger of loving someone when I’d seen how quickly they could be torn from you, when I knew that being what I am might force me to do to them. I didn’t care. I was done.
I love Corbin. I love Arthur. I love Flynn and Rowan and Blake.I loved all of them with the wide-eyed wonder of a scientist – the same way I felt when I learned something new about the majestic complexity of the universe, the way I felt when I stood in the dark Arizona desert and gazed up at the stars. Far away and impossibly close, tantalizing mysteries begging to be unravelled, so much infinitely larger than my own feeble body and yet made of the same stuff, so vast and complex that I would spend my whole life falling into them and never reach the other side.
Corbin nuzzled my cheek with his. “You okay?” he asked.
“I’ve never been better.”
It was the truth. I loved and I was loved. Even after everything I’d already lost, and everything I might lose in the future, I didn’t have to be afraid of it now. I had everything.
I watched the dwindling crowd for Arthur, a need to tell him those same words welling up inside me. But I couldn’t see him anywhere. Corbin pulled me close to him and pressed his lips to mine. The room and the noise melted away.
“You enjoyed the concert?” he asked as he pulled back. “All of it?”
“I really did. I can’t say I get all of this heavy metal stuff, but yeah – it was amazing.” I grinned up at him. “Does this mean I get to drag you to a country music festival next time we’re in Arizona?”
“Not on your life. Oi, there’s Arthur.”
