10. Shipwrecks and Stupid Questions, Part V | The End

Happy Valentine’s Day! Here’s the final instalment of this tale of horny vampiric heartbreak.

I’M ON MY HONEYMOON! IT’S VALENTINE’S DAY! NO MORE PREAMBLE here’s the FINAL PART of this saga that I wrote on the plane to the USA and have just finished editing in a fucking lovely hotel in the middle of nowhere, Florida, with a beautiful view and a magical husband on the couch next to me.

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV

Content notes for Part V: NSFW. You probably expected that.

Hope you like it :)

---

I’d fucked exes before. And if those times had been the equivalent of getting high off petrol fumes, this was pure celestial-grade heroin. 

It was theoretically possible that some of those times, with other people, had felt just as poisonously good — but if such times existed, they were bleached from my memory, scorched to archival dust by this.

By Killian’s long-fingered, gauntly beautiful hands, digging into my thighs as his mouth took me as close to religion as I’d ever come. 

By the sound of him sighing, moaning into me as I short-circuited.

By the forest-fire look in his eyes when he raised his head, panting a smile as he reached between my legs and turned the gasp on my lips into a growling whimper — as I writhed beneath him, and he continued, steady and relentless and agonisingly well — until my breathing turned shallow and the tension in me built and built — until, with a devilish grin and a kiss that I all but screamed into, he broke it — broke me — 

‘Fuck, you sound so good,’ he said, with a breathless, crooked half-smile that combined with a rasp in his voice to pose an existential threat to my sanity. 

I pulled him on top of me, kissing him until I recovered. ‘Not what you were saying earlier, about putting my mouth to better use.’

He laughed and kissed me just a little too hard, which was of course just hard enough. ‘Earlier,’ he said, running a hand up the inside of my leg, ‘you weren’t doing this.’

I tried not to react when he started touching me again — tried and failed instantly, miserably, letting out a cry that was pleasure mixed with pain in the wake of my climax.

‘Fuck you,’ I gasped.

He pulled away, fingertips tracing a final feather-light torment. ‘Fuck me yourself,’ he said, his smirk cracking into laughter on the last syllable.

It wasn’t that he felt light on top of me, exactly. But since shedding my simple human mortality, I could move him with ease, and I did it then, pushing one shoulder while hooking his leg, throwing him onto his back, straddling his hips as I pinned his wrists to the bed.

His pulse beat against my hands, strong and fast and intoxicating.

I met his eyes, saw them widen fractionally as he inhaled, a breathy gasp.

‘I intend to,’ I grinned.

And then I let go, shifting as I kissed his neck, licked along his collarbone, down his sternum and his waist, and by the time my head was in his lap, my ears were ringing with his fractured breaths, my brain searing the sound onto permanent record.

I ran my tongue along his length and he shuddered, hips jerking involuntarily as he let out a moan that almost undid me. I smiled, half at him and half to myself. 

‘But first, let me do this.’

---

I told myself it was just the vampire senses, that a predator designed by the best forces of magic and evolution would naturally be dizzyingly attuned to every single moment of existence, that taking life in at supernatural resolution would heighten anything, everything.

But of course, that was horseshit. I’d been a vampire long enough, had been alive as a regular bog-standard fully human fuckwit long enough, to know there was only so much of this I could pin on physiology, enchantments, all the crazy shit, and I knew that the rest was all on me.

Him.

Us —

Us, a tangle of limbs and bad decisions, sharing ragged breaths and matching smiles from the gallows of cloud nine, as our bodies found their all-too-familiar rhythm — an airless delirium flooding me as Killian gasped come here, his voice so pure with want that I shook as I lifted my head, let him reach for me and pull me on top of him in an urgent, almost desperate embrace — a pleasure so strong it felt practically punitive, as he thrust into me and I let out a cry that was almost a sob — his mouth finding mine, curving into a wicked smile, and then his fingers were slipping between my legs again and I gasped, screamed as I lit up once more, grinding against his hand as he fucked me — his eyes like black holes, half-lidded and hazed with lust — mouth a breathless half-grin —  

Us, a fiction made reality made fiction once more — but not for now, not completely, not yet —

---

We fell apart. One after the other, him following me off the edge with a growling moan that rattled my very bones.

For a moment we just lay there, the two of us panting and breathing hard, and then — limbs aching and unsteady — I climbed off and collapsed onto the bed beside him.

He didn’t say anything, and neither did I, and when I turned toward him, he was staring at the ceiling and — whether incidentally or resolutely — not meeting my eyes. 

I took a long, deep breath through gritted teeth, looking away.

Already, the high was fading, calcifying into something sharp and brittle and too bitter for the bubble of denial around my bed to withstand. I watched the rise and fall of his chest out of the corner of my eye, could practically see the tension return, the walls coming back up, bolts slamming home. 

And then there was movement in my periphery, Killian shifting onto his side to face me, the fingertips of one hand brushing against my hair. 

It was such a small, simple gesture for the magnitude of the ache it sent through my chest.

For several seconds, he didn’t speak, and then I broke the silence at the same time he did.

‘What are —’

‘I love you.’

---

I turned toward him and he pulled away, snatching his hand back as if burnt, eyes dodging mine. For a second, I entertained the idea that perhaps I’d misheard — but of course I hadn’t. The expression on his face confirmed it; he looked like how I felt, momentarily frozen, now cracking with something that resembled regret but hurt even more.

Somewhere in my brain, an autopilot kicked into gear. ‘Excuse me?’

He swallowed, still looking away, and sat up, reaching for his clothes.

I pushed myself upright, a sluggish, sickly feeling coating my insides. It was only pride that stopped me from saying anything further as he got dressed, plucking his garments off my bedroom floor, avoiding my gaze the whole time. 

‘Did you mean that?’ I said finally, hating myself for asking but hating the silence even more.

He looked up then, hands doing up the last few shirt buttons, standing at the foot of my bed like a sleep paralysis hallucination but somehow worse. His entire form was etched with something I couldn’t name, something that filled me with dread when his eyes found mine and I noted — immediately, unthinkingly, unwillingly — the undisguised sadness in them.

Sadness, and pity.

He opened his mouth to answer and I clawed my hands into fists, braced for whatever fresh hell was going to descend now.

‘I did,’ he said.

It took a moment for the words to make sense, and when they did — 

‘What the fuck?’

I didn’t expect to laugh, didn’t expect it to sound so ugly when I did. Didn’t expect that hearing yes would hurt like this, would feel like acrid smoke plumes behind my eyes.

He half-shook his head, scrubbed a hand over his face. 

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and to his credit, he sounded it. Unfortunately, that only amplified the hornet’s buzz that filled my head. 

‘Sorry for what?’ I said, an edge to my voice that I knew was the only thing stopping it from trembling, from breaking.

‘For saying — for saying that.’ He took a breath. ‘I shouldn’t have come over.’

I let out a single bitter peal of laughter. ‘Bit fucking late for that, Kills.’

‘I know.’ There was nothing to his voice when he said it. No resentment, no sadness, nothing. With a gesture that was somewhere between a wave goodbye and a dismissal, his eyes flickered over me one last time. ‘See you at rehearsal.’

And then he was gone, and I heard him putting on his boots and taking his coat, heard the front door of my flat open and close. Heard him make his way down the stairs and out of the building, and — with all the willpower that I’d lacked earlier that day — resisted the urge to watch from my window as he left, down the street and out of sight for good.

Until rehearsal, that is. 

Tomorrow.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so instead I threw the covers aside and got up, pulling on clothes and taking my guitar from its stand. I’d just settled on my seat, fingers shifting into place on the frets, when my phone buzzed and I jolted as if electrocuted.

Fucking pathetic, I thought, as I picked it up and woke the screen, unable to stop the flood of wishes and fears that instantly bloomed in my imagination.

And sure enough, it wasn’t even him. It wasn’t a message from anyone, in fact, but a notification: 

Your video has been published
Terminal Velocity | The Vampire Shift

With a gut-churning hollowness, I watched as the first comments started rolling in.

this song cured my mental illness

they’re sUCH a perfect couple omg <3

1:05 the WAY he LOOKS at her with that smile ughhhh

i don’t even care if they’re faking it or not, i ship it and this is a banger

the lyrics did Not have to go this hard but they did fuck me im dead

2:23 wtf ok i’m convinced, it’s def real now, no-one’s this good at acting

sasha x killian ENDGAME <33

And on and on it went, a barrage of strangers who’d taken the bait hook, line, and sinker. 

I closed my eyes until the smoke subsided.

At least everything was going according to plan.

At least we were doing numbers.

At least I still had the band.

I turned my phone to silent, reached for my guitar like it was a weapon, and played until my fingers bled.