8: Shipwrecks and Stupid Questions, Part III

MORE! HORNY! WRITING! ft. sadness <3

Hello! Hi. WELCOME, dear readers, it’s a fucking delight having you here.

Today I have some writing for you. It’s 1000+ words of horny vampiric heartbreak, continuing on from the retrospectively named Part I and Part II which featured in this newsletter’s first and fifth issue. Today’s update continues directly after Part II.

And yes, this little series (I’VE DECIDED IT’S A SERIES/SHORT STORY) has a name now, and — get this — I ALSO have clear plans for how it’ll continue and end. Holy shit!! (Don’t ask me about Access All Areas. That doesn’t exist now. She’s taking a sabbatical in the south of France, okay? Okay.)

Content guidance: this is NSFW ft. consensual sexual contact between two adults. also breathplay (i.e. choking), dom/sub dynamics, and a smattering of sadomasochism. it’d be about M-rated on AO3, if that means anything to you.

Additional notes: this is the origin of the ‘stupid questions’ line in my last update. yes, sasha and killian have their own relationship meme. i’m very happy for them.

ENJOY!

The shine in his eyes wavered. Something passed over his face, so subtle that I’d have missed it if my vision hadn’t been cranked up to inhuman levels of acuity. 

He pulled me to him by the hips, sudden, and I thought for a second that he was going to kiss me, but instead he just put his lips to my ear. I’d instinctively raised my arms when he’d grabbed me, now found myself wrapping them around him, holding him as if I hadn’t lost him — or maybe as if I had. He might not be able to hear my pulse, but now, pressed together as we were, I was sure he could feel it — just as I could feel him through his jeans, stiffening against me.

A thin flicker of pride licked at my insides, as undeniable as it was pathetic.

His whisper was the rasp of a match flaring to life. ‘Ever considered putting that mouth of yours to better use?’

‘I’ve no idea what you mean,’ I breathed, while all the gears in my brain screeched and screamed to a halt, jammed by the cognitive dissonance of hating his words, for so many reasons of pride and dignity and self-preservation — and yet, at the same time, wanting all of a sudden to prove that I knew exactly what he meant, and could more than deliver.

‘Pity,’ he said with a smile, leaning back and taking hold of me by the shoulders. ‘I’ll just have to shut you up myself.’

I’d barely processed the words when he twisted me around, turning me so I was facing away, my back to his chest. The movement was jarringly abrupt, enough to make me stumble into him, and I was mid-gasp when one of his hands closed around my neck in a grip that straddled the line between holding and choking, while the other tangled in my hair, yanking my head back, exposing my throat.

The inhalation died on my lips as I took in the situation, and I had to consciously remind myself to breathe again.

He was taller than me, used to be stronger — but wasn’t anymore, obviously, not these days. These days I was stronger and faster and, while not quite invincible, a lot closer to it than he was — and yet, despite knowing I could break free with relative ease, his hands had me frozen, almost shaking, as I tried not to think about how the pulse in my neck felt against his hand — like the bastard offspring of a kickdrum and a Geiger counter, conceived in nuclear winter.

‘Well, that sure did the trick,’ he murmured, and the grin in his voice was like sunlight reflecting off broken glass. 

I didn’t react, didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, but then his grip on my neck tightened and his hand in my hair closed into a fist, sending a bright, vicious pain shooting through my nerves. Entirely against my will, my breathing hitched and I shuddered against him, just barely managing to bite back a moan.

He let go of my hair, loosened his hold on my neck so it didn’t quite hurt anymore. ‘You like being treated like this?’

Drawing in my best attempt at a measured breath, I opened my mouth to answer and let out a strangled gasp instead when I felt his hand ghosting up my thigh. His fingers dragged across my belt buckle and I lost another slice of my sanity.

Dear god.

I had to at least pretend to claw back some semblance of pride, before that evaporated as well.

‘Do you like asking stupid questions?’ I breathed.

He laughed in my ear, a soft and unsettlingly sincere sound that lit me on fire. ‘Don’t know why I bother,’ he sighed.

And then he was undoing my belt with a casual dexterity that turned me on almost as much as it drove a stake through my heart, a stake that was misery wrapped in mortifyingly intense relief.

Sure, we weren’t anything anymore — not anything other than bandmates and members of a symbiotic — parasitic — vampire relationship, not to mention amateur actors trapped in a stupid fucking script of their own devising — 

— but at least I hadn’t lost this, not in this moment, not yet. Hadn’t lost the way his hands felt on me, around my neck and between my legs as his heartbeat — his breath — his life thrummed through my body, neon and electric.

Fuck, I couldn’t believe it felt this good. If anything — awfully, predictably, inevitably — it felt better, the acid wash of heartbreak temporarily cranking everything up one notch too many, which was exactly the right amount.

‘Jesus fucking Christ.’ His voice was a too-close too-hot whisper in my ear. The hand around my neck tightened, and this time I did nothing to stop a ragged moan from escaping my lips. ‘You’re soaked.’

‘Your fault,’ I gasped.

To my surprise, he huffed a laugh, and I couldn’t help the smile that tugged on my lips in response — and then he did something with his fingers that made me cry out, made me grab his arm instinctively and unthinkingly, my hand closing around his wrist so hard that he hissed in pain, and I realised I was going to break a bone if I didn’t get a grip, let go — 

‘Sorry,’ I said as I forced my fingers to straighten, and it came out as a tattered whisper just as his gasp twisted into something that did not sound entirely like an objection. 

He didn’t say anything, but instead released me, and for a brief and dizzyingly unpleasant second, I thought he was going to stop — leave — again — no —

— and then he was standing in front of me, hands cupping my face, and I couldn’t read his expression, not because there wasn’t any emotion on it, but because there were too many of them. 

Motionless and dishevelled and disoriented, I held his gaze with a goner’s stubborn resolve until he finally spoke. 

‘Can I kiss you?’

Whatever I’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. 

‘What?’ The non-laugh out of my mouth was shaky and humourless, which was pretty much how I felt.

‘Serious question,’ he said. A quick search of his features seemed to confirm it, at least as far as I could tell. 

Why was he — why did it feel like — what —

‘Yes,’ I said, surprising myself when I didn’t add a question mark on the end. ‘What kind of a question is that?’

He smiled, crooked and gorgeous, leaning down toward me.

‘A stupid one, you might say.’

I laughed, flinching invisibly at the sheer surge of affection that went through me when he said it, that was still going now with the way he was looking at me, a horrible yearning like lightning.

And then he kissed me and saved me from it, interrupting the current with something else, with the heat of his mouth on mine, his arms drawing me close, pulling me into the shipwreck.

It used to feel like home.

Now it felt like homesickness.

And if this was the best I could get —

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WELL I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THAT THANKS FOR READING SEE YOU SOON BYE X