Page 213 of Drown Like Heaven
We were standing close enough to touch. All I had to do was reach my arm out. Lightning sparked on my knuckles, my fists aching to connect with Micah’s chest. I could hurt him so badly if I did that, if I punched right over his heart and fucked up his heartbeat with my electricity.
“Does she know all the ways you can break, Thrausian? Or are you hiding—”
I lunged forward and grabbed his throat, crushing his windpipe with my hand, cutting off his sentence. Micah was quick to retaliate, though, shoving me backward hard enough to make me stumble a few steps. The air was instantly charged with hatred so strong Ifeltit, like static on my skin.
“Yeah. Go ahead and choke me out. You’ve done worse,” he said.
The scars on my back burned, searing with white heat as my wings tore out of my back, ripping through my t-shirt. Micah yanked his own shirt off, wings rising behind him like a void.
The room felt cramped, too small with our wings taking up so much space.
I didn’t take a second to plan my actions.
“Fuck you,” I spit out as I slung my fist across his jaw. His following shove sent me crashing backwards into the wall, my wings knocking a lamp off the table and shattering the base.
“You’re pathetic,” he snarled. “You used to be able to control this shit.”
Because of you.
Micah was advancing on me fast, his fist raising to punch my fucking cheekbone. I threw my hands up just in time to block it, then dove forward and threw my shoulder into his stomach, sending us both tumbling to the ground.
“You’re going to use that against me?” I was breathing hard, fighting to get my words out while Micah struggled against me on the hardwood. I rolled us onto the carpet, slamming my fist into his cheek. Electricity flashed off my wings, scorching jagged black marks into the rug.
“Yeah. You motherfucker—”
“You used to like it, Micah.”
“I know that.” He was on top of me now, his hands wrapped around my throat, not tight enough to restrict my airflow,though. He knew me too well for that. I leaned into his hold and he loosened it. “Perverted piece of shit.”
I reached over and grabbed a piece of broken glass from the base of the lamp and slashed it across his stomach, blood and ichor flowing down his abs, soaking the waistband of his pants. He grabbed my wrist and forced it down, the corner of the shard nicking the soft underside of my jaw, slicing my skin.
“That all you got? Huh?” he growled. “Finish it.”
Lightning bolted out of my fist as it met his ribs, just as his own fist cracked down on my nose. I instantly felt the heat of my blood trickling down my face. My wings flared out, sending a side table toppling over, everything that’d been on it scattering on the floor. Micah’s wings were huge and dark over me as he straddled my stomach, hands circling my throat again.
“Finish it,” he said again.
I grabbed his wrists, but didn’t take his hands off my neck.
His eyelids went heavy, his fingers digging into my jaw. His chest was heaving wildly, muscles straining against mine as he kept me pinned to the ground. So quickly I might’ve missed it, his eyes flicked down at the bruises he’d given me, his hands collaring my throat, the blood and ichor pouring from my nose. I didn’t move.
The way he looked above me was yanking viciously on every memory I’d ever made with him. Us in Heaven, us deciding to fall. How I used to idolize him.
I could almosthearhis voice sounding all raspy in the darkness in the middle of the night, my memories still too clear after so many years.
Micah abruptly pushed off me and got to his feet, leaving me panting on the floor in the center of the wreckage as his wings shuddered and disappeared, then he left the house in a rush. The door slammed and I rolled my skull back on the carpet, trying to catch my breath.
My palm coasted down my stomach to push against my hardening cock through my pants, the heel of my hand rubbing over the tip.
My abdomen was marred with bruises and blood, ichor smudged on my skin and running from my nose onto my lip. All of it would heal over the next day, but the wounds were turning me the fuck on right now. I wanted Micah to come back. Wanted to hurt him worse. Wanted to fuck him. I’d pulled my punches a bit, and now I was wishing I hadn’t. I was stronger than him. I’d broken a bone of his more times than I could count on two hands.
He was so easy to hate, such a strong wall to throw myself against, to grind down the roughness on my soul.
His cutting remarks echoed in my head, but I’d gotten under his skin too. I knew I had, or else he wouldn’t have left so abruptly.
Wait.
My mind was clear. I should’ve been inches from fracturing, but I wasn’t.
