— E L L A —
The room was quiet in a way that pressed against the walls and the soft vanilla musk that felt like mine, even if nothing here really belonged to me yet. Maybe that was the issue. Maybe that was everything. I walked in casually into his room. "Should I order the food?" My voice surprised me it sounded small and careful, as if I was offering him an escape he hadn't asked for.
He turned his head, just slightly. "No." With that one word, the room shifted around us. I watched his back as his hands moved to his shirt. He was unhurried and relaxed, with a calmness that quietly unraveled me. The fabric peeled away from his skin like secrets. Slowly and deliberately, it felt like he knew what his slowness was doing to the air between us.
Before I knew it, my phone slipped from my grip I didn't hear it hit the floor. I followed my instinct to bend, retrieve, breathe, so I crouched and reached for it. When I looked up, His height loomed above me as I stayed low, my phone forgotten in my hand. The room shifted into something I couldn't name. I gazed up at him...his body looked like someone had taken their time, as if the universe had been intentionally crafting it. The physique of someone who hits the gym regularly.
He stopped just close enough.
Close enough for his warmth to reach me before he did.
I should have stood. I realize that now. Standing would have been the sensible thing, the smart thing, but my legs had made a pact with the floor, and I stayed crouched, still looking up at him like something that had forgotten how to hold itself together.
He reached down. Not for my hand. Not to help me up like a gentleman might, as a man would have. His fingers found my jaw instead with barely a touch, just the suggestion of a hold, and tilted my face toward his gently. That gentleness was somehow more devastating than anything rough could have been.
Now we were close in a way that had no innocent explanation. The vanilla musk of the room changed into something warmer, half the apartment and half him, and I breathed it in like I didn't plan to stop. His chest was bare, and it was just a breath away from mine.
"You're not saying anything," I managed. A faint expression crossed his face, not quite a smile. It was quieter than a smile. "Neither are you." He wasn't wrong. Every word I knew had retreated somewhere unreachable, leaving me only with the awareness of his thumb tracing once, just once, along my cheekbone,
My breath came out shaky, and I felt him notice. "You dropped your phone," he said, his voice low and unhurried. I tore my gaze away, battling with the thoughts he should definitely not know. I whispered, "I know."
"You're still holding it." I looked down. My knuckles had turned pale around the screen. When I looked back up, his gaze was locked onto mine. I stepped back quietly, trying to create some distance between us. "What did you actually mean?" My voice came out smaller than I intended. It threaded through the quiet as if it wasn't sure it deserved to be heard.
"By feast. Earlier. In the car." The word landed between us, I watched his expression stay still. That was the thing about him, he had mastered composure while everything around him fell apart.
"You didn't mean that," I said. A breath. "Right?" Embarrassment washed over me, blooming in my throat, my jaw, the tips of my ears. It was that heat that comes not from doing something wrong but from wanting something and being caught in that desire. I looked at him because I had to. Looking away would have confessed too much.
"Ella."Hearing my name from him felt different. It wasn't casual, clipped, or forgettable. He said it like it was the only word in a sentence he had been chanting for who knows how long, like a prayer, and I felt it.
Golden light caught the planes of his chest, the slope of his shoulders, and the quiet structure of a body that seemed to exist to completely undid me. The warmth radiating off his skin carried everything with it, the soft musk, the woody depth of him, something that was simply and devastatingly his and it reached me before he moved, before he spoke, filling the small distance between us like a tide coming in.
"I am a very hungry man, Ella." The husk in his voice dropped to something that lived below language, below reason. It moved like a chill down my spine, and settled there like an ember.
"And I want to feast." A pause weighted. Deliberate. The pause of a man who understood what silence could do.
"So bad," His gaze dropped, just briefly, just enough, before returning to mine,
"That it hurts." His breath hit the nape of my neck and traveled down, unhurried and thorough, as if his words had hands. I stood there, completely exposed in a way that had nothing to do with clothing. I was stripped down to something honest and trembling, and terribly, inconveniently alive.
I had forgotten how to swallow. "That's-" my voice came out cracked. I tried again. "That's not fair." "No," he agreed softly.
"You can't just-" I gestured vaguely at him, at all of this, at the golden light, the woody musk, and the shirt that had never made it back onto his body. "You can't just say that."
"I just did." his lips curled up into that smirk that took my breath away.
My back met the wall, and I didn't remember stepping backward. I only knew the wall felt cool against my shoulders while he radiated warmth everywhere else. The distance between us seemed measurable in heartbeats. The word appeared uninvited, like true things often do. It struck suddenly, like stepping off a ledge without realizing the ground was gone.
"I found myself falling all over again."
Then he knelt. He went down. Both knees touched the floor with a quiet certainty, as if he knelt only after deciding to do so. It wasn't surrender, but something deeper than that, something without a clear name in any language I spoke. His arms wrapped around my waist, pulling me in carefully, as if I were something fragile. His face rested against my stomach.
Still.
Simply still.
My eyes widened, I felt air leave my body, and didn't get it back right away. I stood there, caught between the cool wall and the warm reality of him....this man, this infuriating, hungry man was down on his knees, holding me as if I were what he had sought at the end of a very long journey. Not demanding. Not taking. Just holding. His arms formed a loose circle around me, his face softly nuzzling into the fabric of my stomach. His breath felt warm and slow against me.
'Like he just needed to be close. '
'Like I was the feast.'
I didn't know what to do with my hands. They hovered, useless things, until one found its way to his hair. Just the tips of my fingers touched him, hardly making contact.
He exhaled again, longer this time. Something in the room shifted. The silence changed and softened. I felt tears begin behind my eyes, which was absurd, which was the last thing I wanted, which I couldn't control. "What are you doing?" I whispered.
Not an accusation. Barely a question. More like something I said into the dark because it felt safe enough. His arms tightened, just a little, hardly noticeable, then he tilted his head so that I could feel the line of his jaw against me.
"Being honest," he replied. His voice was rough around the edges. It sounded like the admission had cost him, like he had carried this honesty for a long time in a chest not made for it.
"WithYou." He paused. "Finally."
————————————————————————
— S Y L U S —
I nuzzled into her stomach
'She was soft.'
'God, she was soft.'
Every place my face touched her through the fabric, the warmth beneath it, the gentle rise and fall of her breathing was something I wanted to explore with my mouth and remember with what remained of my damaged conscience. I nuzzled closer, taking my time, my arms tightening around her waist with a possessiveness I stopped hiding.
From this angle, I could look up at her. 'I did.'
That expression of hers, flustered, unraveling, and solely caused by me, the realization settled over something inside me like a balm pressed to a wound that had been open all evening. All evening, I had watched. All evening, I cataloged what I had no right to the way her eyes softened with worry for him, the way Asher's hand found the small of her back with a familiarity that made something inside me go very quiet.
The quiet that precedes damage. I buried my face against her again, inhaling slow, deliberate, greedy, drinking in her scent like a man starved for clean air. Roses&Vanilla. . That particular sweetness that was undeniably and painfully hers.
I closed my eyes, and the image remained, burned into the backs of my eyelids like a bitter aftertaste. My grip tightened. I unconsciously bit her teeth, sinking in her soft flesh, or maybe perhaps something primal, ungovernable part of me intended it. I felt my teeth graze the soft skin at her waist before I fully registered the choice, sinking in just barely, just enough.
"Ah-"
The sound she made. Small. Startled. Swallowed almost before it happened. Her fingers tangled in my hair and at the nape of my neck, the pressure sending something through my spine.
I looked up.
"Her face was a masterpiece of ruin."
Flushed from her throat to her temples, lips parted around that soft, interrupted sound, her expression caught beautifully between reproach and something she fought hard not to name. Her fingers remained in my hair, yet she didn't pull away, didn't loosen her hold and she looked at me like I was something she couldn't let go of, even if it would cost her dearly.
I grinned. Slow. Unholy.
'The grin of a man who just found the presence of the god whom he worshiped dearly."
I bit again, precisely slower this time. Deliberate this time. The soft skin of her waist between my teeth with a gentleness I measured, watching her face with the focused attention of a man interested in nothing else on this earth. Every micro-expression. Every swallowed breath. The way her throat moved when she tried to compose herself but failed quietly and beautifully.
Her teeth caught her lower lip, slowly biting away. She looked somewhere above her head at the ceiling, biting the edge of those lovely lips with a restraint that was transparently futile.
All those unspoken unholy thoughts running behind her eyes.
I could read every single one.
"Mmm," my voice deep, laced with satisfaction and content. "Mi Amor" Low. Roughly. Her title carried the weight of everything I wasn't saying. My chin rested against her now, gazing up her full length from the floor, down from my knees, from this position that should have felt like surrender, yet felt like my most powerful moment of the evening, and I held her gaze with the steady determination of a man who had made a decision.
Who had been deciding, perhaps, longer than he admitted to himself. "Stop thinking about him." The words came out quiet and firm, carrying the weight of everything I was, everything I ran, everything I buried, every line I crossed and paved over without losing sleep, condensed into six soft words against her skin.
Her breath caught. My thumb traced a slow circle against her hip. "I'm right here."
"I was not thinking about anyone except you, Sylus." Her voice sounded quiet. It was like when you are too tired to pretend. You say what you mean.
It felt like someone threw cold water on me as I processed her words. She kept talking.
"How could I think about anyone?" I heard something strange in her voice. It was like she was saying more than she wanted to.
"When you are right in front of me, making my mind all dazed with thoughts I should not have." That was her word. It felt like she was pressing it into my soul. Her hands touched my face, and both were gentle. They were like they were holding something worth caring for. Her thumbs touched my face softly.
I did not deserve it. Still, I could not push her away. I was on my knees. I felt like I was falling apart. It felt like my soul was getting embraced by an Angel
Her fingers went into my hair, and the breathing got caught up in my throat. Her voice was soft now.
"You just made me realize," In a quiet, low tone, "that I was falling for you over again."
They made me feel things I had not felt in a long time. She leaned forward, her lips touched my forehead, placing a soft, lingering kiss. I felt it in places I thought were closed off.
My eyes closed, trying to cling onto this moment with all might I had, yet it was like I never wanted it to end.
"I wanted her to choose Me. Over and Over Again and Again."
I stood up, tried to calm down the crazy thoughts in my mind, but her eyes stayed on mine. She took a step closer to me, moving slowly and surely until we were in front of each other. Her fingers grabbed the pendant that was hanging from my neck. Suddenly, with a sharp tug, she pulled me forward before I could even react. Making me lean forward slightly, tip-toed.
Her Lips crashed against mine. The kiss was long and deep, it took my breath away. Made me forget everything else. It felt like the whole world had come down to that one moment.
"I did not expect her to be so bold. I was not going to complain about it."
When her lips grazed mine, I felt a spark of electricity. At first, the kiss was slow and careful, like we were both trying to figure out how far we could go.. Then she leaned in closer and pressed herself against me, making me lose all control.
I kissed her back fully. My hand went from her neck to her hair. I held her there, letting out all the feelings I had been holding back. She tasted warm and familiar, like something I had known before. Could not explain.. It was scary how much I wanted more. I pulled her closer to me, my arms wrapped tightly around her waist until there was no space between us. Her back hit the wall with a thud, and I followed, trapping her without hesitation. My eyes locked onto hers. I could feel the intensity burning inside me.
"Not so fast, Mi Cariño" I said, my voice rougher than I meant it to be. "You started this, remember?"I leaned in close to her ear, my lips brushing against her skin. "I have been wanting to do that for a while." My hand moved slowly along her side, testing the waters, not taking anything. My thumb touched her skin lightly. I stopped for a moment, giving her time to decide.
I pulled back a little to see her face to make sure she was okay. "If you want me to stop," I said quietly, my voice softer now but still intense. "Just say it." My eyes looked at her lips for a second, then back to her eyes. "Because I do not think I can hold back longer."