I didn’t know when I was shifted from the hardness of the wall to the silky sheets.
It was a dilemma of desires. Of bodies.
His mouth was on mine again and hurried hands pulled at the strings of my dress. I barely had time to react before I was flipped on my stomach with a gasp. “Judas…”
“Don’t stop me, ptichka… I will not be able to.”
I didn’t know where his body ended and mine began anymore. He moved above me, against me, within me. Frantically, almost desperate, and for a moment, I swear he forgot I was a human, flesh and bone in his cruel hands.
I wanted to remind him that if he wouldn’t stop even if I begged.
“Wait…” The word tumbles from my lips when his hands cupped my core. I was overwhelmed. My hand presses to his chest-futile attempts to tame him. “Slow down,” I panted before turning my head to look at him over my shoulder.
He froze and so did I, his breath hitched like I’d stolen it straight from his lungs. His eyes snapped to mine, and there was a wildness in them that made my heart stutter-like a leaf caught in a hurricane.
To my surprise, he listened.
A low, guttural groan spilt from his throat, vibrating against my palm. It was not just frustration; it was surrender. That I never expected from him. His forehead fell to mine, burning me as I tried to calm my raging heart, laying partially naked underneath him, his hand still supping my core, and for a second, everything was still-just the sound of our breathing tangling and him grumbling like a child. I would’ve found it… adorable.
But the man above me was anything but that.
“I don’t want to hurt you, little bird,” he murmured, the words barely audible, more felt than heard. His voice was raw, broken open by something neither of us could name. And would never be able to.
How did I tell him…? I was already hurt, and it was not his hands that did it.
“Then don’t…”
I felt my eyes moistening and it bothered me. Why? Why was I feeling like his words were pressing hard on my heart?
I wanted to hold his face in my hands, run my fingers along his cheeks, kiss his nose and look into his eyes all while he would see himself in mine. I wanted him to see himself as I see him.
And then he moved again, slower this time. Like a confession, a prayer, a promise. The storm didn’t leave him, not entirely-it lingered in the way his fingers clutched my waist, the way his teeth grazed my shoulder like he was trying not to break me.
But I knew he wouldn’t.
Because even when he was the chaos, he listened. Even when he was wild, he was mine.
He was never like this. Not with me.
His lips brushed against mine softly as if he was afraid of breaking me, ironic for a man who promised me to ruin a thousand times like he was trying to memorize the shape of me, the taste of me. It was disarming-this gentleness from someone who was anything but gentle. I didn’t know how to process it, didn’t know how to respond, so I just lay there, trembling, waiting for the unavoidable-the moment he’d lose patience, and devour me whole like he always did.
But he didn’t.
His tongue grazed my bottom lip, coaxing me open. I took a sharp, shuddering breath as a wave of heat washed over me, dizzying and sudden, pulling me under until I was deep and beyond reach. His smile-soft and entirely out of place on that face-only confused me more, and before I could question it, his mouth was on mine again, his kiss was impossibly tender, and his hands cradled my face as if I might break. Or it was him breaking.
It was too much.
It was too little.
I didn’t know what he was doing, why he was holding back, why he was touching me like I was something precious when I knew-I knew-he didn’t believe in precious things.
His lips parted against mine, his tongue sliding between them teasing me. My body betrayed me, arching into him, craving the raw, inexorable version of him I’d come to expect. But he didn’t bite, didn’t claw, and didn’t ruin me like he should.
Instead, he pulled me closer, his hands gliding up my sides, tracing my ribs, settling on my face with an almost reverent care. His fingers tilted my chin, holding me there as he deepened the kiss like he was trying to make me feel something I didn’t want to feel.
I didn’t understand this version of him.
It was terrifying in a way his anger never was-this quiet, calculated control, this maddening tenderness. It was like he was trying to prove something like he was unravelling me thread by thread instead of tearing me apart in one brutal motion.
And maybe that was the point.
Maybe breaking me gently was the cruellest thing he had ever done.
He kissed me like he was searching for something-something I wasn’t sure he even believed existed. His lips pressed into mine with a kind of urgency that wasn’t hunger, but something deeper, sharper, and infinitely more terrifying. His hands roamed over me.
And for a man who had always felt larger than life, he suddenly seemed small-fragile in a way I had never thought possible.
“Why are you doing this?” I whispered, my voice trembling against the heat of his breath. My hand rested on his chest, feeling the erratic beat of his heart beneath my fingertips.
He stilled for a moment, his head lowering so that his lips brushed against my jaw. “Because I don’t know how not to.”
I closed my eyes, swallowing the ache rising in my throat. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.” His fingers trailed up my spine, the touch light, almost hesitant. He paused at the nape of my neck, his thumb brushing over the pulse point there. And squeezed my core making me gasp. “You’re like a splinter in my skin, ptichka. I can’t remove you without bleeding, and I can’t leave you without infection.”
“And you think this is the solution?” I asked arching my back as his lips trailed down my neck and my sternum before pecking my navel. “To carve me into pieces until I fit the version of me you can hold? I don’t understand… I don’t know how to.”
He chuckled against my skin, lowering and lowering till I felt his breath between my thighs. “I don’t want to carve you,” My breath hitched as he pecked the flesh above my womanhood. “I want you to stay whole. But you… you make it impossible. I don’t know how to touch you without breaking something in myself.”
“Maybe that’s the… point,” My voice cracked as his tongue danced along my skin before licking my aching core. “Maybe you need to… ah… break.”
He exhaled harshly against and I felt it in my bones. Shit. It was maddening. For a moment, he didn’t move. When he did, his two fingers were inside me and I loudly moaned. “Judas!”
His tongue licked my clitoris in slow tantalising circles and I clenched my thighs unknowingly around his head. “I hate how you make me feel,” Lick. “I hate that I care. I hate that I can’t fucking stop.”
I wanted to say something, to cut through the thick fog of his self-loathing, but I didn’t have the words. How could I, when I barely understood what I was feeling myself?
“You say that like it’s my… ngh… fault,” pleasure knotted in my stomach.
I didn’t want him to stop whatever he was doing.
His fingers increased their pace. “You exist, and that’s enough.”