Page 57 of Hollowed

His body above me.

The altar wasn’t behind us.

I was the altar now.

He didn’t fuck me with urgency.

He moved with reverence. Every thrust slow, deep, exact. Like he was carving something into me with the length of his cock, like he was sealing a spell that had waited too long.

My legs wrapped around him before I realized they had moved. My hands found his back, traced the scars I couldn’t name, the ones that didn’t belong to me but somehow had always meant to find me.

He whispered into my neck.

Not words.

Sounds.

Broken fragments of something that might have once been holy.

My hips tilted up, met him. Matched him. Became him.

And I said it again.

“My name is Aven.”

His hand gripped my jaw.

“Say it louder.”

I screamed it.“MY NAME IS AVEN!”

He came undone.

And when he finished inside me, shaking, swearing, whispering things I’ll never repeat, he looked down at me and said:

“Now it’s written.”

I touched his face.

And answered:

“Then never erase me.”

His eyes closed.

“I couldn’t.”

I lay there, wrapped in him, pressed into the shape of the name he had given back to me.

And knew:

He had never claimed me.

He had only remembered where I belonged.

ChapterNine

I woketo warmth and absence.

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