He looks down at me as I count the buttons on his shirt. His hand comes up under my chin, fingers wrapped around my head, tangled in my hair, firm grip against my mild protest. He pulls me up to his face for a kiss. My toes almost leave the ground. The kiss is harsh and bruising, it trails off my lips and across my cheek, landing against my ear. His breath is so warm, rapid draws against my skin.
He lets go of my head, taking my hand instead, pushing me down onto the sheets gently, climbing over me, holding himself up with one hand while he pulls off my dress with the other, fumbling for the hook, catching on the zipper, sitting up briefly to upwrap his find, every last muscle tense, senses heightened in the darkness. My skin is on fire, the hair on my arms standing up, shivers running down my spine, the scales on my wings tenuous and fragile. I don't know how he manages to evoke such an obvious visceral response from me but it's there and he sees it and he is overwhelmed, humbled by my reaction to his touch.
He is kissing me again, pushing me down underneath him, holding himself up, one hand ripping off the last of the satin and lace and I am naked and exposed. He pushes his boxers down and pulls me up into his arm, turning me onto my stomach, pushing my head down into the sheets so that I am blind, deaf and pinned. Like a moth to a spreading board, I am his specimen and he is careful and thorough, delicate and deliberate.
I am lifted once more and held against him, as pain mixed with something better winds through me in a rush. I fight for comfort and pacing but he won't relent. I am reduced to clutching at the sheets for security and relief against the torment but I won't surrender to him. Not yet. He is driving against me, breath on my neck, arms slick with sweat now, dropping down across my ribs to seize my hips and I begin to see flashes of light in the dark. This is the dangerous part and I start to fight him, twisting away, turning, using him as leverage to crawl out and turn over so that I can face him.
He smiles and kisses me again and pushes me flat onto my back, pinned this time with the brutal clamp of his forearm across my shoulders, his other hand near my head, holding himself up, slower now, harder until we are working so slowly I am crying out for more. He moves his arm and covers my mouth instead. He puts his head down against mine, whispering things, awful things, filthy, beautiful things in my ear. I can't breathe or move. He gathers me into his arms and pulls me up to sit in his lap, facing him, my lips aimed near his philtrum, his breath warming the lids of my eyes, still closed, still awake in a dream that turned out to be so real.
Within hours he winds down, having wound me out and explored every last inch of my form, pulled my hair, bruised my wrists and thighs, loosened my teeth, dulled my fingernails and turned my throat and my joints raw. I think we will sleep when abruptly he renews his efforts. I am screaming into his shoulder, teeth gnashed against hot skin, my hair so tangled in his fingers we're going to need help to remove it intact. He kisses my final scream away and tightens his arms around me as I tremble into the sunrise, pressed into a circadian groove, screwed right into the frame of Ben's life, enduringly, preserved as his possession.
