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When you first saw the house, you thought it ugly. The brick exterior was filthy, exposed through rich green-black gable top roofs and chipped running trim. Dusty streaks that spoke of neglect. You remember Mom’s muttered distaste at the place, rubbing gloved fingers over the dusty handrails and her squawking disgust at the birds nesting in the beaded brackets at every corner of the porch.
You thought it ugly, yet here you stand, keys in hand. A homeowner of a dilapidated estate that hadn’t seen an occupant in decades. You hadn’t thought it’d be this one, touring homes in your endless efforts to escape. Had lied to Mom about it, in those distant phone calls that made the hollow white walls of your apartment ooze with a chattering malice that demanded you leave, that everything was temporary if she wasn’t appeased.
Didn’t matter now.
Even if the house seemed to … breathe. Every door you opened, nose scrunched against the dust, a sigh of relief. Every window you cleaned, rags filthy with truly ancient yellowing glue and inches of dust, made it seem like the walls expanded, contracting like lungs. The way the floorboards thumped beneath you, not a creak to be found, in tandem with your own heartbeat.
Were you anybody else, someone less desperate for isolation, for tedium, the house would kill you. Boil you like a frog in a pot, ignorant of the hand that slowly cranked the heat. Everything was shattered here, windows jammed, land-lord specials from teenagers fucking around with spraypaint in strange spaces, the way the garden strangled itself with weeds. Plucking them was meditative, kneeling in the dirt until your knees were raw and chafed, bare hands pulling stubborn thistle and dandelion from once-manicured beds.
You weren’t sure how to feel about the vivacity of the blooms that persisted, despite the choking death of vines. The jasmine that crawled on the walls of the back porch, woven into the black trellis, stooping over corners, and buzzing with the low hum of bees who you’ve caught trying to find their way into the house.
It made the monotony of work seem distant, worth the long commute through shimmering pine and lowland fog that creeped over the empty roads, the persistent fright of luminescent eyes reflecting off your headlights in the dark. The isolation was rewarding. You made sure to keep the landlines disconnected, blissful in your silence shared with the house that knocked and groaned with passing storms. You haven’t heard your Mom’s voice in weeks. It's the happiest you’ve been. The loneliest, too, but that's okay.
You’re settling into it, the quiet. Humming with the bees in the garden as you pour water over marbles in tiny clay dishes, laughing with the jasmine as you shove its unruly curtains into something manageable, only to be rewarded with a shower of white petals and a sleepy sort of contentment at the smell. Chattering like the birds on the porch as you flit from room to room, too many for one person, and yet you find yourself occupying it with a growth you thought yourself incapable of.
The only problem? It seems the house isn’t quite settling into you. Stubborn, in the way old things can only be. A pervasive cold that settles in at night, when the moon is high and shining through the bay windows, frost covering the glass. It breathes during the day, a quiet refrain, but at night? It screams without a voice.
You never had problems with the dark, and yet the house likes to awaken things in you, exposing you to facets of yourself you never bothered to think about. Like a sudden burgeoning awareness of the fact that the shadows in the house don’t move like they’re supposed to.
They writhe over your head tonight, abstract shapes you try your best to avoid ascribing meaning to – the way one blooms like a flower over the window, unfurling like the morning glory you found hiding amongst the treeline on your morning walk, or the spindly little fingers of pitch stretching across the bedspread in a open palmed caress – burrowing further into the blanket you’ve thrown over your shoulders.
Ever since you chose this room, it’s like you forgot how to sleep. It had been perfect in the moment, an open room that covered half of the second floor. The rounded archway that stood sentinel in the middle of the space, dividing the ancient bedframe you’ve repurposed for your mattress, carved into perfect nouveau shapes, and the office space facing double glass doors that opened onto a suspended porch. The room watched the woods, the distant mountains permanently capped with snow, blowing frost and spring water rivers into the low valley where the house sat.
At the moment, you press against the wall aligned with your mattress, pretending there isn’t a shadow of something unfurling alongside you in bed. The shadow that crowds you further into your cocoon of blankets, into the green-washed walls of the bedroom. The shadow that, you think, has been leaving you flowers on the bedside table every morning since the incident.
It starts like this: you, frustrated with work, with the house, with yourself. Body itching with it, exhausted down to the marrow of your bones, shifting restlessly beneath the covers, seething with the irritation of being unable to sleep. The cold was creeping in from the windows, fall having just started to seep through the town like ink in water, sending frost sprawling higher than you'd ever seen over the glass. Spiraling fractals spun like spiderwebs, unfurling like ferns, indifferent to the warmth of your sweating body when you pressed your back against it, hoping to stem the furious ache in you.
It had taken the fabric of your shorts catching on the mattress, seizing up around your thighs hard enough to make you gasp against the friction, for you to realize why. You were frustrated alright, you’d just been focused on the wrong kind.
The zinging sensation of the seam grinding against your clit had you flinching further into the window, gasping against the cold and the rush of so good-notenough-more coiling tight in your stomach. It’d been a while you thought, lip caught between your teeth. The last time had been what? Six months ago? Before the move, you were certain, but beyond that? You weren’t sure. It’d been move-move-move this whole time, fixing the house, the garden, curling your lip up at the local men who’d flit into work eager to see the ‘new girl in town’. The paranoia hadn’t helped.
The feeling of being watched on the drive home, something lurking just out of sight in the trees, a loping, silent thing keeping pace with your car. Hiding out of sight as you knelt in the garden, rustling the long grass you never got around to mowing like a snake. Whatever it was, it never followed you into the house. It was almost like the pervasive chill that leaked from the open doors, no matter how high you tried to crank the thermostat, frightened it. As if the frost on the windows that arrived without fail every night was keeping you safe.
Safe. Yeah, you thought, hand sliding beneath the hem of your shorts, fingertips petting over the slick seat of your underwear. You were safe, it was just you at home, wasn’t it? Perfectly alone.
You feel so warm, wet, your skin boiling despite the frigid kiss of the room. The sweat building at your temples, the soft little pants as you press your thumb against your clit and grind your hips, feeling the glide of the sheet on your legs and the rough bite of cotton building that soft delicious friction. Part of you wants to speed up, for your nails to drag over the fabric until the pain sends bolts down your spine, to slip the seat of your panties to the side and shove your fingers up. To curl your fingers hard and fast, rushing over the edge. Instead, you glide, slow, smooth, featherlight touches that make you murmur your pleasure to the open air.
The smell of jasmine leaks into the room, damp and sweet, lush like the garden after the storm. Something tart, too. Bitter like citrus bursting under your tongue, creeping through the window you had to have left open. You're panting after that high, swallowing the smell, feeling the strange film of it cover your tongue. You must’ve kicked the covers off at some point, because the chill has spread over your legs, hair raising at the contrasting sensations. It almost feels like hands, human warmth dampened by cold, gliding up-up-up your legs. Teasing that strange space where your shorts hem, heat from the friction meeting the open air.
You arch into it, fingers working quicker, the inevitable orgasm coiling like a spring, and yet you still aren’t quite there. There’s something missing, enough to make you whine, thighs trying to clamp together only to seize, stall. The cold on your thighs feels concentrated now, too much, and too little. You squirm, buck, and then freeze. Fingers stalling, stuttering, trapping you somewhere between ecstasy and fear.
Because you could’ve sworn you heard somebody laugh. A tiger's chuff, low, guttural, purring amusement. Felt something flex against your thighs, the cold moving, settling over your hand. Your eyes, closed to the dark of the room, suspending you in the pit of pleasure, fly open.
You cum with a yowl, a phantom hand grinding onto your clit, luminescent eyes carved like hazel-green gemstones staring up at you from the cradle of your thighs.
After that night, it was like the house had opened up to you in a way it hadn’t before. Doorways manifesting in the hallway you hadn’t seen before, an extension of the space that didn’t feel right. Those same rooms seemed to collect fog in the mornings, a shifting white sea that swirled beneath your feet, little phantom tendrils curling up your legs like hands.
There was a smell that hadn’t been there even after you moved in, pervasive, persistent. At first, you thought it was the jasmine, the sweet green undertones of it blowing in on the breeze when you opened the windows, clinging to the curtains like mischievous children. But the smell had something … wrong with it. If you stood still, breathing it in when you caught a whiff chasing you from room to room, there was a bright muskiness that made your face twist. Something old, almost animal, that lingered like smoke in your nostrils when the sweetness was gone. The closest thing you could compare it to was when you hiked up Mt. Eternal, not thirty miles from the property line, where the ancient glaciers sang fractured hymns with voices like thunder. The ice there was near metallic, frozen blood suspended in time, and it had found its way into your home.
It made it harder to convince yourself that what you saw, what you thought you saw, wasn’t real. That it wasn’t all just a figment of your imagination, something to tip you over the edge.
But you had to have seen something, there had to have been something, because you didn’t have an explanation for the flowers. Fresh blooms, still wet with dew, plucked from the garden and left on the side table, the windows, the end of the bed. Sometimes you woke to them tucked behind your ear, white jasmine and yellow osmanthus blooms carrying that strange musky-citrus tinge.
No explanation for the body that curled up behind you on the bed, like it does now, inching closer every night. It had frightened you at first, of course it did, but whatever was outside the house? The thing that lurked and crawled and yowled on the moonless nights, scraping at the edges of the porch, baying for you? Who left behind scraps of dark brown fur and the scent of rotten fruit decaying in abandoned orchards? That scared you more.
Plus, you’ve been sleeping better with the strange company, so it couldn’t be too awful, right? Gone were the restless nights, flinching at every shadow that swept across the ceiling, branches tapping against the windows like uninvited guests. The mutters of discontent and comfort, trying to soothe yourself against the fear, the mantras. It was your house, your safe, nothing's wrong, your safe. Whatever, whoever, it was, with its tidal chill and ancient smell – like a sea that remembers a time without heat, a plunge into the dark where everything gazed milky and blind, grasping without hands for something to satiate an appetite unceasing – brought peace with it. Safety. Left you buoyant when you hadn’t even realized you were drowning.
That’s why you’ve made a choice, fist clenched over the comforter, feeling the cold body behind your stirring, like it knows what you want to do before you do. It might, the way it clings to you despite the distance you somehow manage to maintain, when the dark and the cold recede at the touch of the sun.
A bird is beating away against your ribcage, a panicked flight as you let the blankets fall from your face. You can do this. You can, and yet you keep forgetting to breathe. You press your hand against your chest as you huff gently, trying to slowly shift onto your back without disturbing the shadow.
It doesn’t work.
Something cold slides beneath the sheets, reaching for you, setting itself over the curve of your waist and tugging you flat against a broad frozen expanse. Ice flows over the back of your neck, leaves you shuddering even as the shadow grows closer. Denying you sight, even as it steals your warmth.
“Don’t.” A man's voice, smooth and rich, tucked against your ear. You flinch at the sound of it, a half-gasp trapped in your throat. Don’t, he says, but you want to. Oh, do you want to.
Your hand reaches for what curls over and around your waist, fingers tracing over something sinuous, plated like some bony fish you remember seeing in high school. The serrated scales leave spiderwebs of frost that melt into droplets gliding down your stomach, driving you closer to your shadow.
“Why not?” You murmur. “You’ve seen me.”
He’s done more than see you, done more than watch you. He’s touched you, you’re sure of it, hands on your thighs, head in your lap. Crawled into your bed like the serpent with Eve, whispering secrets without words into your ear, messages written in frost that you haven’t been allowed to read.
His tail tightens around your waist, the frost creeping further until you feel the chilled tongues of it curl around your breasts, needle-sharp mouths leaving you breathless as they ghost over the soft buds. You squirm under the touch, insistent as you try to turn again, met with only the barest of resistance.
You don’t know what you expected when you turned around, but it wasn’t this. A fine boned face, skin pale with death, hair like a river under the moon stirred to movement by a force unseen. The strange, cat-like moue highlighting his eyes, gods his eyes. The memory of them hovering between your thighs doesn’t do them justice. It’s not the brown, tilled earth wet with rain. Not the green, like spring is trying to bloom from the sharp planes of his face and chase away the cold that clings, not even the black that seeps around the shining irises. It's the gold. Like a ring on a woman's finger, shining with a strange inner light, predatory in the dark of the bedroom.
You feel trapped in his gaze, submerged in the scent of jasmine that leaks from his mouth in a gentle fog that collects between your bodies, honey-sweet in the way the corners of his eyes crinkle. Your hand reaches for his face without your input, fingertips brushing over the blackened ice laid like butterfly wings on his cheeks.
“You’re beautiful.” You whisper into the quiet, like it's a secret, something sacred. His lips twitch, head tilted into the touch, a hand travelling up to your face. It's black, dipped and stained with ink, the skin cracked like an empty river bed, blue witchlight emanating from within. He has claws, you think, heart stuttering at how close they are to your eye. Almost surgical in their design, flat talons that emerge from the nailbed into wicked points.
“What changed?” He interrupts my inspection, claws flexing against my cheek. It's still a shock to hear him speak so clearly. For some reason, you keep expecting something to muffle it, for him to have a voice like drowning, a watery tenor keen to submerge you.
“Huh?”
“You’ve been ignoring me,” It's stated like a fact, cold bemusement and something else hiding beneath, something so quiet it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. “What changed?”
You open your mouth to correct him, to say otherwise, and then think better of it. Let your jaw click shut, swallowing an accidental mouthful of the mist that seems to seep from him, coughing slightly as it slips down your throat like a physical thing. You feel more than hear him rumble, an alien noise, vibrating across the bedspread. It makes you feel fuzzy, a clinging static at the corners of your eyes, tension blooming across your temples.
You whine against the sensation, hand clutching tighter around his tail, the barbed spines biting into your palm. You don’t expect the sudden warmth in your hand, a vicious bite that spilled over the strange white scales with smears of bright red. You don’t expect the guttural snarling coming from his mouth, either, the way the world spins as his tail seizes like a vice around your waist.
His hand is wrapped around your wrist – gods he’s large, so very large, you hadn’t noticed it, half tucked into the shadows as he was – eyes blown wide, the slitted pupil round like the new moon, devouring what little color remained on his face. Hunched over you like a vulture with a corpse, you feel almost sacred, infinitesimally small in the hand of something suited for devouring.
The fading light illuminates him in a crown of silver through the window, exposing him to you, as he exposes you to him.
The black of his hands extends up his arms, up his shoulders, mottled and purple like bruises. A crushing infection, broken only by the sharp cuts of bone. It covers his shoulders, stark white, sloping scales stretching from his clavicles like pauldrons. Another set of ribs overlays the barrel of his chest, cradling him, the skin around it stretched and fraying. Leaking soft, near colorless smoke, rife with the smell of flowers on the verge of decay.
It's not the unnatural pallor, the skeleton that crawls and grows like vines over his own in a mockery of creation, or the animal curve of his legs as they trap your own against the mattress that sends your heart galloping in your chest.
It’s his mouth.
Poised over your bleeding palm, lips pulled back in a snarling grimace, all you can see are his teeth. Unbroken rows of them, curved like a snake and thick like as a hounds, barbed points glistening with drool that seems to almost glitter. His tongue glides past its ivory prison, long and tapered, the blue-black of it sliding over the expanse of your palm. Collecting your blood with panting eagerness, a clawed hand planted on your chest to prevent your squirming. Soft, confused whimpers escape you at the texture of it. It was abrasive in one moment, velvet smooth the next, the flexing barbs lining the sides curling as he chased the drip of line down your palm. Caressed over your wrist and then back again, lips sealing over the wound and sucking.
The smell of him, the feel of lukewarm breath heating your chilled skin, the weight of his body against yours ignites something in you. Soft, breathy pants escaping your lips, hips twitching, uncertain of the pleasure-pain-stop-MORE that strikes you under his ministrations.
“Please,” You beg, uncertain what for, only that you need it. Certain that he could give it to you. The wet pulling suction of his mouth, spit spilling from the corners of his lips in thick off-grey trails, the tense strands of your blood clinging to his teeth.
The clawed hand centered on your chest flexes, sharp claws catching on the ribbed fabric of your sleep shirt, eyes wide and rolling like a shark in the face of a meal. Soft lips curling into a smile, a whisper of a thing, fresh snowfall in the night. A mimicry of docility, pretending your blood wasn’t still slick across his chin and cheeks, warming him from the inside out.
“May I see you?” His voice is like silk, so very firm in his silence. It's voiced like a request, and yet his fingers curl, a new wave of frost coating your exposed skin and leaving you gasping as the shards of cold air pierce your lungs at the touch.
He must feel it, the panic, the thrashing serpent of confusion roiling in your chest with every suspended moment, because he curls over you. Brushes his lips, petal soft and slick, over the pulse in your neck. Nuzzles his nose up behind your ear, tongue slipping over skin like a hand stroking over the heaving flank of a horse, staying its panic. Providing borrowed strength.
“Please?” His lips hover above your own, that strange mist seeping, swirling in the space where you shared breaths. You shudder, bucking again, feet uselessly scrabbling against the sheets as he roiled and spooled above you like a spider in its web.
Give in, go on, give in give in give in a little voice murmurs, existing in the space between you. He’s seen you before, you reaffirm, hands slowly, shakily, coming to cup his cheeks. You watch his eyelids flutter, a slow, easy sigh escaping him. The loss of his gaze makes you bold, if only for a moment.
You lean up to kiss him, a featherlight touch. You breathe him in. The meadowsweet, honey-slick pairing of jasmine and osmanthus, that deep ocean brine of cracking ice floes, and something powdered. You don’t get much chance to parse the last note, because as soon as you pull away from him, that broad palm seizes you by the back of your neck and hauls you back.
His kiss is fervent, devouring. Tongue slipping past your gasping lips, so much larger than you thought, barbs scraping against your cheeks. It coils, filling every open space it can until you choke on it, keening as it slips down your throat. Part of you, the one going quieter and quieter by the minute, thrashes in the dark. Begging for breath, demanding you see-run-away-away-GET AWAY. But the larger part of you, the one focused on the slide of him inside you, stroking your throat, stealing your breath, marvels at how sweet he tastes.
You swallow around his tongue, your own making feeble attempts to brush against it, sucking at the drool that pools past the seam of your joined lips. Your hands clutching at his shoulders, nails curved into the grooves of jagged bone, before sliding into his hair. Grasping at the soft strands that slip through your fingers like water, encouraging soft guttural grunts from him as you tug, his tongue slipping from your throat with a wet shlick.
“More,” He mutters, slurring around the broad swipes of his tongue, cleaning the spit slicking your throat. “You’ll give me more, won’t you?”
In the face of the soft pink blush riding high over his cheeks, extending over his pointed ears, the watery quality of his eyes shining beneath the moon, the only thing you can do is nod.
“What a good girl.” Is all you hear as his claws finally hook into your shirt and rip, splitting the fabric in half and exposing your chest for him to see, nipples pebbled with the cold air, decorated with the lattices of pearly white frost.
That rumble, the one that filled your head with static and the distinct feeling of your bones trying to flee, starts up again at the sight. You coo at his touch, claws flicking over one perky bud, head descending once more to roll his tongue over the other. It's softer treatment than your throat received, but it sets you ablaze. Hips rocking down, trying to chase the heat building itself from embers at every caress between your thighs, hiccuping pants of ‘please-’ escaping you.
He didn’t stay long, scraping his teeth over your sternum, cracking the layers of ice building with every broad swipe of his palm. Nuzzled at your navel, nose pressed against the soft swell of your stomach, pausing there with something unspoken. A wanting that echoed with the sound of keening that escaped you as his broad palm cupped your dripping sex.
You can feel the smile against your skin, a wicked twist, teeth nipping at your waistband until it unravels. Pulled down your legs along with your underwear, his long body sliding down your legs as he chucks the damp fabric aside. You try to clamp your legs together, too exposed under his hawkish gaze, shy in the face of the exaggerated breaths he takes, his nose buried in soft downy curls.
He doesn’t give you much of a choice, shoving his shoulders under your knees, large hands folding over your thighs to keep them spread. A cold, intentional breath blown over your labia, his tongue darting to lightly flick over your clit before withdrawing just as quick. “You aren’t hiding from me, are you?”
“No, no m’sorry,” Your hips twitch, trying to chase his mouth, feeling him huff something like a laugh as he pulls away from you. “Please-”
“Zayne.” His voice cuts through the hazy need settling over you like fog on a lake, claws flexing against your thighs, grazing the sensitive skin. You make a soft noise of confusion, lost in the tension, the smell of him pooling on the bed. Thicker than it’s ever been, collecting against your skin like oil. “My name, you’ll use it, won’t you? Can’t give you what you need if you don’t tell me.”
“Zayne, please, touch me.” It's cruel the way he hovers just out of your reach, denying you movement, the only touch the iron bar of his arms.
“I am touching you.” He mimics your tone, drawing it out like the whine of a radio. You can feel his muscles bunching beneath your thighs, a cat on the verge of pouncing. Can hear the uptick in his breathing, a low, long rattling that reminds you of a snake's tail.
You thump your head against the pillow, chest hiccupping with your frustration, a hand reaching down for him. Fingers grasping around his wrist as you try to calm down, to settle, but he won’t let you. The fog rolls in again, spring blooming on the breath of winter, filling your senses with him.
Just him.
Why were you fighting it? There was a reason, lost somewhere in the fluttering of your stomach, but it doesn’t matter. He just wanted to make you feel good, you're sure of it, can still feel the remnants of him gliding down your throat with each clicking swallow.
“You’ve been so lonely, haven’t you?” He murmurs into the stretch of your thigh, a gentle and sympathetic thing. His teeth graze at the veins hidden within, the threat of it making you yip, thighs flexing wider in his hold, putting on display the slick dripping down your folds and over the swell of your ass. You look down, gaze half obscured by your heaving chest, and catch the way his lids flutter at the sight. The way his nostrils flare in a heaving breath. “So frustrated...”
He’s right, you don’t want him to be, but he is. You hadn’t felt it, at first, so elated to have something that was yours. Truly yours, not the apartment that had your Mom’s choices printed all over it in the furniture and the paintings, not your family home where the silence was as loud as a raised fist. Had buried it beneath renovation and thrifting, ripping weeds up from the garden because if you didn’t, it would’ve been your hair. Had known that if you stopped moving, if you just gave yourself a second, you’d break.
Knew you couldn’t afford to break, because there was nobody to put you back together.
“Oh.” You thought aloud, hand squeezing around his wrist again, nails catching at the grooves of open skin.
That wasn’t true, was it?
Your mind reaches for it, greedy even in this space between spaces, trembling in Zayne’s hands while he teases your skin like a secret to be kept between forefinger and thumb.
That first night you felt something following you home. Back pressed against the front door, keys clenched in your hand as you curled up on the floor, trying to count your way out of hazy vision and a constricting fist crawling down your throat to seize your lungs in a stranglehold. The stained glass window with a little hummingbird at the back door, the vase of powder-green pockmarked vase full of wheat and lavender, the brown leather of your boots as they flexed, the mail scattered across the floor where you’d flung it in your haste to close the door, and the frost on the back window.
The fog that started pooling in the yard, the flowers arriving in the corners of your home – you remember now, why they started showing up. Some throwaway comment cast at the TV about how it was nice that the main lead brought his wife flowers every day, unprompted. Had Zayne been listening? Must’ve – and the body in the bed with you to occupy the space.
You haven’t been alone. He’s been here, with you, this whole time. Keeping you safe, just like you wanted. Like you needed.
“Zayne…” You moan, arching into him, a hand reaching for his hair. Petting through the silk of it, a luxury you’ve never had before, thighs clenching again when he immediately looks at you.
“Mm?”
“Your tongue,” You put a little pressure on the back of his head, ignoring the way the room plunges so deep into the cold that you can hear the glass of the window crack with the sudden ice cutting seething paths up their panes. “Can I have your tongue, please?”
His head disappears from your thigh, and before you can process the loss, beg for him to come back, his tongue scatters your thoughts. Long and dexterous, it glides across your cunt, the tip swirling at the opening of your entrance. You moan into the touch, the soft barbs lining the sides of his tongue, and the strangely textured papillae catching ruthlessly against you clit. Your back arched off the bed, knees working hard in their attempts to close against the steel trap of his hands.
He laps at you, spittle and slick creating a wet sucking against the tension of his open mouth, like its all he’s ever wanted to do. That cold, aristocratic nose bumping against your mons, nuzzling against the hair as his tongue stretches deeper. You can feel it curling, brushing against those gentle spaces you’ve never quite been able to reach with your fingers, lighting you up from the inside out. The scrape of his teeth against your outer labia, jaw unhinged as if to swallow you.
He shifts, rising up on his haunches and taking your legs with him, leaving you yowling as his tongue plunges deeper and the blood rushes to your head, dizzy with the weight of your combined desire. Trapped between need and the distinct sensation of the bed vanishing from beneath you back, legs clamping around his head as his hands shift to cradle your back, his other palm spread wide over your stomach.
You brace your elbows against the mattress, arching your back, trying to push your hips further against him. To grind your clit against the soft bump in his nose, chasing the precise flicks of his tongue that brush the soft pad of you cervix, the flat planes of it drawing out to sweep over you again and again and again-
“Come on sweet girl, give it to me, give it to me!” He slurs, tongue still lost inside you, the thick strands of your slick and his spit snapping in a flurry of delicate droplets freezing to ice. A deep reverberating purr echoing in his throat, rattling his teeth, and buzzing against your clit.
That's all it takes for the band of pressure that’s been building in you to snap. You cum screaming his name, both hands flinging themselves off the mattress to cling to his hair, left dangling in his hold as he works you through it. Letting your walls clench along his tongue, his throat working in long pulls to swallow every drop.
Your body slides out of his hold, limp, the only surrender you can offer after having the orgasm ripped out of you with a mouth like sin. Can only watch as his tongue slips out of you, soft barbs stubbornly clinging to your inner walls, the gush of slick and drool that spills down in rivulets now that it has somewhere to escape. Sigh into his touch as he eases your legs back down onto the mattress, broad palms kneading at your thighs, soothing the overstimulated twitches.
He crawls up your body slowly, savoring each inch of his skin against yours, licking back into your mouth like a kitten. The taste of you together was bittersweet. You wanted more.
More of him, of this.
Legs shaking, you tried to hem him in closer, limply throwing your calves over his hips – the texture was strange, like frozen fur, the coarse grit of it almost too much. You persisted, arms thrown around his shoulders, sinking deeper into every kiss. Cooing with every soft swipe of his tongue over your throat, content to ignore the frozen slurry slowly forming against your chest from his affections.
“Good girl,” He was muttering between each kiss, mist seeping from the corners of his mouth, the weeping edges of his ribs. It clogged the room, climbing the walls like ghastly imprints, obscuring the view of the windows from the outside. Little flakes of snow seemed to drift from within it, catching on the edges of your hair, speckling your skin in starlight. “Such a good girl for me.”
There was a heat, though, settled just along the inside of your thighs where your hips touched his. Between his soft kisses and gentle crooning, you couldn’t help but reach down to feel.
And what you feel is as wet as you are, made slicker still by the mess cooling on your thighs. The texture was fascinating, curling and curious as his tongue, and when you rubbed your thumb on the underside, you felt ridges. Delicate, fragile plates that reminded you of fish scales in their flexibility, and yet not nearly as sharp. Pliable enough for you to push and twist, curling back to the thin flared head, feeling the velvet glide of it pop gently over your fingertips.
Zayne moaned above you, the sound almost a growl, and most certainly a laugh. A breathy delight that made your cheeks flush.
“Dirty girl,” He mumbled into your hairline, cheek butting against you like a cat, broad palm extended in the space between you to curl over your hand. He worked up and down, slow, firming up the pressure until you could feel his thighs quivering against yours.
The pre-cum wept out the tip and puddled at your lower stomach, a sopping mess you couldn’t help but dip the fingers of your free hand into. You slid them up, over your breasts, along the tacky trails long since dried on your throat, and up into your mouth.
Bitter, you thought, but not unpleasant. Like a herb sachet used to keep the air pleasant, something tangy like mint, and biting like rosemary. You moaned around your fingers at the taste of it.
He grabbed your hand in response, yanking your hand from your lips with a pop, before shoving them into his own. Tongue swirling, wrapping first around your fingers still wet with the taste of him, before letting go with a hair-raising growl of your name.
“Sweet girl,” He was rising, tail thrashing against the sheets, palms kneading at your breasts, then your stomach, your thighs. A mindless pattern, eyes too eager to meet yours, cocked with avian fascination. The cats-eye marble of his own was so much brighter in the mist and shadow of the room. “Let me have you, let me please you.”
Somewhere beyond the room, beyond the looming cast of his beautiful, horrible body, something screamed. A wailing damnation, as if the very stars were falling, piercing the silence of this strange covenant on the verge of completion. It made the loose-limbed contentment of you orgasm flee, flinching up into Zayne’s chest, head trying to turn towards the sound that haunted you.
“No ” He snarled, hand yanking your chin away from the window, back to him. “Look at me, just me.”
“But-”
“You’re safe with me, aren’t you?” There was that whisper again, subtle, a sinister purring that had you quaking. From desire or fear, you weren’t sure. But you found yourself nodding despite it. Reaching for him again, eager to feel his touch, for the distraction from the rabbit-beat of fleeing feet echoing in your chest, jumping up your throat, eager to flee in the form of a scream.
He obliged you. Hips driving forwards against yours, tapered head gliding through your folds, the soft-plates nipping at your clit until you keened into his waiting mouth. It was warm, so much warmer than the rest of him, pulsing slowly in tandem with your heartbeat.
“You’ll stay with me, won’t you?” His nose brushed against your own, breathing the words into you as if they’d take. “Be mine?”
You don’t give yourself time to think, scrambling, trying to climb closer. “Yes, yes, please. I’ll be yours, if–”
You stumble, catching your bottom lip between your teeth. He’s staring at you again, that strange, pleased grin starting to grow on his face.
“Go on,” He rests his forehead against yours, hips swiveling, grinding against your cunt until it punches a ragged moan of you. “If?”
You flounder beneath his touch, huffing against his lips, tugging at his hair in reprimand. It’s embarrassing how much you want him. How easily he’s slipped into your head, cracked you open with just a few simple words. It feels like somewhere between him slipping his head between your legs and now, he’s stolen something vital from you and left a gaping pit for him to fill.
And all you can do is crave it, the falling, the merging with your monster.
“I’ll be yours,” You gasp out, “If you’ll be mine.”
For a moment, you watch his eyes shutter, something strange falling over his face like a curtain. Unreadable, unreachable, the kind of look that makes you panic. Grasping for the right words to take it back, to apologize, something, anything–
And then the room is full of laughter, like spring bursting through the snow at last. He seems to grow, stooped further into the hold of your arms, head cradled against the stuttering beat of your heart.
“Oh, you're perfect,” He preens, hips shifting to line up just right, his tip prodding at your entrance with a single-minded focus. “I’ll be yours, darling. Of course, you’ll be mine. You’ll never be lonely again.”
In time with his words, his cock drives home, sliding inch by glorious writhing inch inside you. Somewhere between the howl of surprise-pain, his teeth sink into your shoulder, the serrated barbs hooking so deep inside you it feels as if he has your very soul clamped between his jaws. You thrash against it, nails scoring against his back, ripping tears into the already weeping gaps of his skin.
It’s overwhelming, the drive of his hips against yours, the way his cock flexes and curls inside you with a mind of it’s own. The stubborn refusal to leave the warm, wet heat of you, the soft ridges hooked against your inner walls, drawing out the pleasure inch by inch. You can feel his tongue through the blinding blissful agony, sucking at the blood weeping from your neck, bitter-brilliant-beautiful life dripping down your chest to mix with the frothing pleasure of your union.
You think he’s purring praise for you, hips pistoning against yours, and yet all you can focus on is how big he is. How easily he glides in and out of you, the languid, filthy grinds that have the strange fur covering his hips biting into your clit. It won't be long now, not with how his tongue chases trails over your chest, rolling your nipples between his teeth, claws scratching at your back as he hauls your hips closer.
You won’t be able to walk tomorrow, you think deliriously, head lulling backwards into the pillow. Your breath, hot, panting, steams against the air. God, it’s so much, so good . He’s ruined you for everything else, carved himself so deep inside you that all you can do is think about next time. Focus on how he looms above you, the light of the room traded for the sun shining in his eyes, coaxing you deeper. You feel like you're drowning, the pleasure swimming up from your stomach, twining around your lungs like vine and elm, the water of it leaking from your eyes if half-crystalized tears.
He must be able to tell that your drifting, because his fingers pinch at you clit the same time his hips slam home. The bed disappears out from beneath you, the fog swirling around your bodies surging from within, grasping at your thoughts and scattering them. You can only hear the way you moan, high and loud, clenching around him as he fucks you through the peak of one orgasm straight into the next.
Can only hear the shrieking-howl that leaves his throat as he hilts fully inside you, the barbs lush with blood and hooking into you with no sign of retreat, fucking his cum back into you with slow hitching thrusts as it tries to escape the seal of you against his pelvis.
Slowly the rush of pleasure eases, brought to heel by his chest pressed flush to yours, his cock slipping from you and leaving you shuddering at the lost. He’s muttering something, body curling around yours, tail twining with your legs. You can hear the frozen sheets crack beneath the weight of him, would laugh if you had the energy.
Instead you let the exhaustion seep in, sated, curled in the arms of someone beyond comprehension. The rest you’ve been denied these long months is finally catching up to you, carried through the air with the scent of jasmine, osmanthus, and the covetous caress of winter.
“Precious thing,” You just barely manage to catch his voice, whispered into your hair, hidden beneath the rattling purr that drowns out all other noise. “I’m never going to let you go.”
As the dredges of sleep claim you with soft kisses to your brow, you can’t help but think how perfect that sounds. An eternity, together.