Page 138 of Drown Like Heaven
“I should’ve let him kill you,” Mason growled. “I should’ve let him hunt you down, torture you, suffocate you.”
“Why didn’t you, then?” I pushed, pressing against his hold, feeling his unyielding strength. He wasn’t holding back either. “Huh? You just can’t help yourself. Heaven didn’t want you, and neither do I, and youhateit. Youneedto feel needed or else—what, you’ll kill yourself?”
Mason’s eyes darkened, a smirk tilting the corner of his mouth. “Yeah.” He nodded, leaning into his arm on my throat.“Yeah. Keep talking. Whatever it takes to forget that you can’t actually kill me—and that Icankill you.”
I could kill him, though. I’d just have to use his own aspect as the weapon.
“What does strength mean if you can’t control it?”
There was a flicker of pain in his expression then; it felt like victory.
“What does power mean if it tearsyouapart?” I added.
“It means I’m not a target,” he bit out, low and cold. “And you are. Go ahead and take my sight if you want, take my hearing, make yourself invisible, makemeinvisible. Do whatever you want, and I’ll be able to hurt you through any of it.” He jammed his elbow into my windpipe, spearing his white electricity through me, jolting my veins, setting every nerve alight. What he was saying was true. Even using all abilities I had, he could still fracture and overcome every boundary. “All you know how to be is manipulative.”
“Yeah? Is that what I am?” I questioned. We both knew the answer to that, though.
I grunted when Mason let more white electricity ripple through my veins. It fuckinghurt.
He leaned closer, close enough that I could feel his breath on my lips.
“I don’t care if the fractures kill me,” he started, voice hoarse. “As long as theykill you too.”
Mason shoved off me, then stalked out of my house without another word. I raised a hand to my throat, pressing my palm against the hot skin, feeling the zaps of his electricity still lingering under my skin like needles.
As long as they kill you too.
I paced over to the bookcase, my heart pumping, my shoes crunching over broken glass, then grabbed the bottle of aitherand poured myself a heavy glass of it, though I’d need a lot more than a blend of extracted trace elements to survive Mason.
The liquid was thin and airy in my mouth, sliding down my throat, my skin faintly glowing with the rapid increase of neon in my system.
We’d fought so many times over our many years together. Physically tearing into each other, but neither of us using anything other than our muscular strength because, on some level, we didn’t want to actually kill each other. I knew he could rip me to shreds with electricity; he knew I could fuck him up in other ways. We didn’t need to prove that to each other.
It was just aggression. Just violence.
Our shared language.
But now, those instincts of restraint were slipping away. I’d given myself another taste of intentionally provoking him so I could knot more threads of his mind around my control, and he’d shot pure electricity into my muscles. We’d never done that before. It was unwinding something awful, deep inside of me. Something monstrous, something I’d always kept on a tight leash until now.
I thought of my own words, my own promise to him.
Kill Aamon or I’ll push you over that edge so fucking fast you won’t be able to ever claw your way back up.
Another mouthful of aither poured down my esophagus, searing my flesh, burning in my stomach.
Until that moment, I’d never turned his own mind on him.
Not even once.
Not when I ended things with him, and not in any of the years before then.
When he needed my control to keep himself from fracturing, from falling into the darkness, I let him pull on me. I dampened his power, molded it into something he could handle, so hewouldn’t end up dead at the bottom of some ocean, chasing a high he’d been born addicted to.
But now…
The imprint of his lightning was clinging to my skin, and I wanted to be furious about it—Iwasfurious about it—but beneath that, heat twisted low in my chest, shamefully familiar. No one else could make me feel that level of raw, visceral,wickedpain. No one else could touch me like that.
No one except him.
