Page 32 of Hollowed

His hands came to my waist.

Tight. Shaking.

“If I love you,” he said, the words like gravel, like ash, “I can’t keep you.”

“Then don’t love me,” I said. “Keep me anyway.”

He exhaled hard, like the words punched something out of him.

I kissed him.

Not softly.

Not sweetly.

But true.

And he broke.

His arms wrapped around me. He crushed me to him. His mouth devoured mine. His teeth scraped my lip. His breath came ragged.

Not from arousal.

From surrender.

He laid me down again.

Not to take.

To hold.

And in that silence, I heard it for the first time.

He needed me, too.

Not because I was soft.

Not because I obeyed.

But because I let him fall without catching him.

And still came back to be broken again.

I thought I had already been taken completely.

That what he carved from me with his cock and his silence and his control was everything I had left. But as I lay there, trembling in the echo of what we’d done, I realized there was still something untouched.

Not my body.

My willingness.

And he saw it.

I don’t know how, but he did.

He rose over me again like smoke given form. Not frantic. Not ravenous. Just certain. Like he had decided that if I stayed, if I really stayed, then I had to be taken again. Not just by his hands. Not just by his member. But by his hunger.

And God, I wanted it.

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