“I love that you let me,” I tell her, my voice gruff with pleasure. God, she’s wet. “Remember how I pushed you? How tight you got when you told me no, how fucking sweet that was…?”
She gets louder. Begins to yelp. It feels like every muscle in her body pulls rigid beneath me; sweat glues us together at the hips and then each thrust rips us apart. We’re inflamed there, blood exploding beneath the surface of our skins in scarlet clouds, and each tiny apocalypse heats and throbs and aches. There’s no coming down from this mountain…not without a motherfucker of a fall. And Leo is not the only one teetering on the edge of a dark, dark precipice.
I falter.
I burn.
“Leo,” I manage, my voice wrought, “don’t deny yourself the things you want. Not when I…I’m the only one who can give them to you. Why would you waste that?”
Faster, now. She writhes and wriggles until I catch the right spots.
“Baby, slow down before I—”
In a second, she grabs my hand, drags it down to her damp, swollen breast. Presses. Shoves flesh between my thumb and index finger, wills me to pinch. When I squeeze down, she lets out a hoarse sob that sends blood rushing straight to my already-solid cock. It’s like there’s no room for more, no place to go but further inside her, down and down until she cries out—I know it hurts. Then there’s nothing but the urge to stuff myself into her, to leave something—anything—behind. Fuck. She’s not cut tonight, but we bleed into each other anyway amid the force of our orgasms, each shudder a wound that gushes before it heals. I don’t even notice how much my stitched-up insides smart until we’re coming down together, all sticky and sighing.
Leo reaches up to stroke sodden hair from my brow. Her eyes narrow; she gulps. “I hurt you.”
I hurt her too, but then that’s what she wanted. What she always wants.
I nudge her hand away. “It was worth it.”
“Aeron, I’m sorry.”
“Shh.” I bump my nose to hers, and run my fingers down to trace the smudged shape of her freshly bruised breast. So pretty. “I don’t need to hear it.”
But I do. Those words…they keep her on the right side of the food chain. If I can’t take a knife to her body, I’m damn right taking one to her silent, choking heart. This girl, she came to me longing to be punished for the terrible things she’d done in my name; I’d be cruel and stupid to refuse. When I ran out of sins to purge from her, she picked up a gun and fired off another—she’ll tell you different, that the tables were turned, but she’s lying.
The thing is, grasshoppers, she fucking shot me. I’m the sociopath, and I wouldn’t have shot her.
SIX YEARS AGO
Leontine
Aged 18
Hawaiian Airlines Flight 148, JFK to Honolulu
They say you’re ten times more likely to die on the road than in the air, but none of that makes me feel better about being on a plane. You fly out of a car? There’s always something to catch you, even if it’s a black tarmac road that mashes you to pulp on impact. The paramedics will find you; you’ll be put to rest in peace. Up in the air? You fly out of a plane and all you hit is water: endless ocean, kneaded by the tide’s hands, washed out to dark places unseen by human eyes.
Between my American mother and British father, I’ve spent my life on planes. You’d think I’d be used to them. You’d think that reading up on how planes work would help. You’d think that after enduring my forty-eighth take-off (or whatever), I’d have perfected some weird cocktail of happy clappy breathing techniques and panpipe MP3s to get me through the initial ascent.
Nope.
Pop go my ears, and Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, goes my brain. We’re flying. Suspended in mid-air.
“Language,” mutters Mum, because I’m saying the Oh fuck part out loud.