1. – Miya
In a weird way, things made sense down there.
Maybe it was because things started there. In the dark. The blackness pulsed along the edge of my vision. All I wanted to do was to slip into the enveloping force and forget everything.
Like what my heart needed.
Or worse, what Jaxon’s heart needed.
They’d never align in that perfect way. Beating in synch. His would always pound. My heart would always stutter. How could his steady life rhythm ever make room for the intermittent beat of my lonely, twisted heart?
I’d fooled myself into thinking we could work. Created this grand illusion I clung to. I wanted something that made perfect sense in my heart; love. Jaxon craved something his soul needed; control.
Controlling love would only turn it into its own special kind of monster.
I blinked in the dark room, sitting up in bed. I held my hand out in front of me but seeing anything these days was impossible. Ever since Jaxon’s revelations, he’d been the epitome of distant. In the room only for aesthetic. My soul had begun to wilt.
Some master he was being. Doling out empty orders that didn’t feed the submissive he’d dug out of my soul.
I was so angry, but defiance wouldn’t give me what I wanted. Patience would.
The only thing was, what would happen if at the end of my patience, there was no solution?
To love was to break, and Jaxon had found a way to exist in that painful blur between emotion and subservience. To want was to be disappointed; I’d found an uncomfortable position where I sat and sighed heavily into the darkness.
The darkness swallowed my sounds. Stuffed its pockets full. Grinned with no teeth. Laughed with no depth.
The darkness was hungry, hungry, hungry.
Just when I had gotten so used to it that I could hear it—the roar of nothing, the pull of uneasiness—the door swung open, and light spilled in.
I didn’t look over as Master came into the room, dressed head to toe in a fitted black suit. The scent of cigar smoke trailed after him and he took the same seat as he had when he’d taken me into his sultry and painful world.
“What are you doing sitting in the dark, my sweet Miya?”
The sound of his voice moved through the darkness and wrapped itself around me. Its own source of heat. Its own source of life.
“It’s easier to think down here,” I answered quietly.
There was a flick, the sound of his lighter, and then the burn of cigar paper blistering behind me, before the pungent odor of his smoke filled the room. That’s what Jaxon did. Filled my mind and body until it was full of him in every conceivable way. I knew emptiness, knew it in my heart, and thus, he always had power over me. Holding my fullness hostage in his powerful fist.
Why wasn’t that enough for him?
When he answered, there was a sardonic smile in his voice. “What are you thinking so hard about?”
“You,” I breathed, baring my soul in a moment he would never understand. “Let’s try it your way, Master. Give the emotions a break. Reboot the system. I am your submissive. And you are my Master. And everything else we can’t, or won’t do, doesn’t matter.”
He inhaled sharply on the end of his cigar. I was grateful when he didn’t answer immediately. He pulled on the cigar and the smoke moved in the dark. It wrapped around me; I breathed in his fire, aching to feel the burn.
I’d been going over this in my mind for a week. A week of torture. Of Jaxon pushing me out of the light.
“My job as your Master is to tend to your needs. Emotional. Physical. What kind of monster would I be pretending I don’t have your heart? Some things cannot be rewound. They can only be forged through. Or,” he exhaled, “destroyed.”
“I’ve thought a lot about this, and I think it’ll—” I began to say.
“Enough!” he lashed out, making me still. “When are you going to stop letting your fears overwhelm your true desires? We are not going backward. Do not bring it up again.”
The order in his tone sent shivers down my spine. My panties dampened. I missed that. My beast created this version of beauty in me that loved the gnashed teeth and claw marks in his soul. “Yes, Master.”
“Hmm,” he grunted, pleased. “Take your clothes off.”
My breath left my lungs. I didn’t think. Didn’t question. All I knew was I had his order in my otherwise chaotic soul. I rose on weak legs and pulled at my jeans, the sound of my zipper sliding down the loudest thing in the room. I kicked off my shoes, giving him a shot of my ass as I bent over in front of him. My bra and shirt joined the pile on the floor. My toes bit into the cold cement floor.
I was bare.
Emotionally.
Physically.
His to destroy.
There was such need in feeling that way. To toss and turn in the burning throes of desire and not care about being covered in ash.
“Get onto the bed. On all fours. Aim that ass at me.”
I did as I was told, panting under my breath. I wondered if he could see me. Most predators were equipped to see in the dark. I was in love with the apex predator of them all.
“Arch your back.”
I pressed my cheek into the bare mattress. I wanted to stay that way. So extremely exposed in the dark where hearts and feeling didn’t get in the way. It was a catch 22 to want what ultimately made you choose.
“You want it this way?” His voice sounded sad. And hungry. “Detached orders? Filthy commands? I can do that, Miya. I was made of the filthy and the wrong. But you showed me light, and love, and my dark fucking soul can’t go back in time. We’ll find a way to be, my sweet girl. Master promises.”
My tears soaked into the mattress.
“Come,” he ordered hoarsely.
I crawled to him, naked on my knees, and he put his cigar between his teeth to lift me onto his lap. He wrapped his arms around me in the dark. By the glow of his cigar, my eyes devoured his face. The amber shadow did little to give me all of him, but it did bring out his shadows. His straight nose; I kissed it. His full sculpted lips. He hadn’t shaved in days, and his stubble was thick and course. I kissed over his chin. When my lips made it to his, he blew a thick stream of smoke into my mouth.
“Don’t inhale. Keep it in your mouth for as long as you can.” His lips took over, kissing my nose, my closed lips.
The smoke began to burn. The need to breathe increased. His dark brown eyes gleamed that close. Shimmering with all the bad and all the pain in the world.
“Part your legs.”
My knees slid across his thighs. The hand grazing my lower back slipped between my legs and immediately found my heat. He stroked his fingers up and down my slit as it became harder not to exhale the smoke and breathe. One of his fingers found my opening and stroked me there, coating his finger in my slick excitement.
My eyes watered from the lack of air.
“Breathe, and we will do it my way until we get it right. Hold your breath. Hold me inside.” He entered me without warning, impaling me with two of his large, thick fingers.
I didn’t realize how truly tortuous this was, until I ached to breathe. To moan. To scream. My eyes widened and caught his in the dark. My monster was in his favorite place. Right in the middle of torture and lust. My hand shot out to hold on to his bicep.
He worked his fingers into me the way he’d taken my virginity. Rough and deep. My thighs quivered, and my lungs screamed. I started to lose a shred of coherency. But I didn’t dare breathe. My fight or flight response wasn’t like everyone else’s. I unfurled in Danger’s lap. Running from him didn’t make sense.
Not when he could take me as high as he could send me down low.
“Such a tight wet pussy,” he groaned, pumping his fingers into me. The sound of my wet flesh against his fingers filled my ears.
I moaned with my mouth full and then he reached up and pinched my nose closed when a tiny stream of smoke escaped. He inserted a third finger into my tight hole and like a true magician, he catapulted me into a dark, dark, place.
Before I blacked out, he released his hold on my nose, and pulled his fingers free of my body.
I gasped raucously, coughing up smoke and snot as my clit pulsed from my orgasm. Jaxon slid down to his knees and pried my thighs apart. His tongue, hot and wet, parted me from bottom to the top in a slow go while I coughed and spluttered.
He reached over and plucked the cigar from where it had burned on the arm of the chair. He put it between my lips. “Again.”
I took a drag and kept it in my mouth as his sweet tongue spun me in sticky burnt sugar. “Again!” he roared, and I inhaled deeply, high on the lack of oxygen. His tongue circled my clitoris for what seemed like forever that time. I was barely able to see when my body came back down to earth.
I pushed his hand away, the cigar’s burning tip ominously glowing. “I… can’t,” I gasped, my thighs splayed in front of his face. I loved the sight of him on his knees, lips shimmering with my body’s response to him. We must be a sight. Smoke curled around us. Lust so thick in the air it was more choking than the smoke itself. Unable to help myself, I knocked the cigar from his hand and pushed at his shoulders. He groaned, but quickly recovered, his mind where mine was. He grabbed me around my waist and threw me onto the mattress onto my back. I heard his zipper tear open, and his large body settled between my thighs. The tip of his thick cock sought my entrance, and before I could prepare myself, he impaled me with one deep, soul moving thrust.
I cried out into the darkness, a monster myself now. My new monster was his doing. She clawed at my chest, wanted free of her cage. I growled into his neck and wrapped my legs around his waist as our hips met, again and again, the pleasure radiating from so deep inside of me I felt like he was rearranging the pieces of my soul yet again.
He often put me together and also ripped me apart. Each time he did, he created the puzzle he wanted to solve.
“I need to be inside of you,” he rasped. He rose onto his knees, and pressed his palm to my chest, over my heart, as he moved his hips relentlessly into me. “I need to be in here. I need to live in there.” His hands moved to cradle my face between them.
It was such a gentle gesture, my eyes burned. “You’re in both, Jaxon. My heart. And my mind.” I arched in his hold, heat pooling from deep in my belly.
“I need to love in here.” His hands slid over every inch of my body. He fondled my breasts, my stomach, moved over my hips, leaned back to graze my thighs. He pressed his delicious cock into me so deep, I shuddered at the intense fullness. He dropped his full weight onto me and then reached beneath my body to grasp both of my ass cheeks in his hands. He held me in place, lifted his head to meet my eyes in the searing darkness, and then drove his cock into me with backbreaking roughness.
By the time we shook the fog free, the cigar had burned out, and my body was weak and exhausted.
My lungs ached.
But my heart felt … hope.
Hope that we may never be on the same page, but at least we could have this.