Page 11 of Ruin

I smoke too much.

When I don’t answer, he snorts a half-laugh. My hands slide into my hair, fingers combing through the chestnut strands. I breathe in deep, the cold wind whipping around us. He still doesn’t look at me, and it takes everything in me to keep my own eyes on the view.

Charlie Swallow is a compulsion though.

It doesn’t matter how much self-control you think you have. If he wants you tangled up in his web, woven with blood and sinew, you won’t need to worry about being tempted in, you’ll throw yourself willingly. I am the viper. He the spider. I am harsh violence. A savage, sudden strike. He is the silent reaper. A deadly bite laced with slow acting poison.

Finally, I allow my gaze to fall onto him. Shaggy white hair, jagged ends just grazing his tattooed nape. I step closer. Not stopping until the front of my thighs are flush with the back of his.

I breathe him in, clean, smoky copper. He smells like clean laundry with wet pennies inside the pocket, drying over a bonfire.

Blood and cigarettes and him.

“I always know why you’re here,” I breathe the words into his ear, my teeth grazing cartilage, lips tasting the salt of his skin. “You only come to me when you want to hurt.”

I turn my face into his, the tip of my nose pressing into the high arch of his cheekbone, lips in the hollow of his cheek. My hands go to the rail, either side of his hips, fingers curling around the icy metal. I stare at him, the side of his eye, his gaze still locked forward. That deep emerald, almost black in the lack of light. Everything about Charlie is light. His skin, hair, lashes. Everything physical beneath his swirling black ink is light. Everything except his soul.

“Did you miss me, Charl?” I speak the question into his skin, lips moving over his smooth cheek, taking small sips of his scent.

He breathes out a thick coil of smoke, the wind tearing it away as it escapes his nostrils. Grip tightening around the railing, I keep my blurred vision on the side of his eye, watching as it slowly rolls to the corner, locking onto mine. He blinks slowly, thick fan of pale lashes tinged pink, stained with the remnants of his evening activities.

“You sent men into my territory.”

Cool simmering violence is forcibly pronounced in every husky word, and as always, the corner of my lip curls into a smirk.

There’s a slow silent pause, smoke billowing from between his lips, the joint hanging from his plump bottom one. I pull back, just enough to see his face clearly.

“Oh, did I?” I taunt, licking over my bottom lip, keeping my eyes on his, he doesn’t blink, just stares back and then his eyes narrow.

“You’re walking a fine fucking line, Ivanov.”

I bark a laugh, step back, drop my arms from the cold railing, palms slick with icy condensation, it is early February and we’re expecting snow any day now.

“What you going to do to me,Charlie-boy?”I mock, cocking my head to one side, momentarily dropping my vision to his lips.

He pinches the butt of his joint between his finger and thumb, both digits tattooed, carvings of white scars cutting harshly through the black ink. Lazily, he flicks it over the rail, forearms still resting on the metal bar. He cracks his neck, rolling it on his shoulders before standing fully. Hands in my pockets, stopped a couple feet behind him, he turns, leisurely, controlled, silently. I press up onto my toes, drop back down onto my heels, shrug my shoulders. We stare at each other, his throat bobs as he swallows, and I watch it, entranced.

As I always do.

“Don’t fuck with my business,” he rasps, eerie, haunting, the words dragging in the wind like a serrated blade across my neck.

He is carefully controlled chaos.

But I know how to tap into him.

That dark crevice of hollow space inside his head. Thick shadows and icy ghouls. Deep dark horror.

I put some of it there.

I didn’t want to back then.

But now, I am oh so glad, that I did.

I am etched inside of this man’s brain. A branding on his depraved soul. A stain he can’t burn out. I am as much a part of him as he, unknowingly, is me.

I think of blood, violence,chaos.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I smirk, running my tongue across my front teeth, slowly climbing my gaze up his body, stopping on his face, holding his eye,“Lover.”

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