That Sik Luv
: Chapter 43

Aero

I’ve never been addicted to drugs, but I’ve seen the harsh side of addiction destroy perfectly sound men. It caused them to lose focus, to fall into traps, to negotiate not only their livelihoods but also their entire 401K for one more hit. I’ve even seen them die for it.

But I understand it now.

I’d let her destroy me just to smell her scent on my lips. I’d allow her to take the entirety of my focus just to have those blue eyes beneath me. I’d fall to despair for another taste of that sweet, delectable skin. And I’d fucking die just for the promise of sliding my cock inside of her walls in another life.

She was always my addiction. My breath. My existence. And unfortunately now, my greatest weakness.

I lived, breathed, and bathed in her. She was mine, and I was hers, and anyone who even thought about coming between that would earn a bullet lodged in their brain.

After our wild fuck at the club, I took her back to the cabin. She’d asked to shower alone, but I denied her that. I wanted to wash her. I needed to clean her with my own hands, caring for the sexy little body that brought me so much pleasure. Providing her the comfort she deserved after allowing me to violate her in the ways I craved.

She was a goddess in that room before us. Nox has seen and fucked plenty of women in his life, but Briony held our attention like no one else could. She had a power over her sexuality she’d only just begun to harness.

Reluctantly, she allowed me to clean her, staring at me like a pissed-off little puppy dog beneath the warm water as I lathered her in her cherry-scented soap and cleansed every inch of her sweet, curvy body.

I could sense some agitation from the action as her glare toward me deepened, and it started to piss me off.

“You’d be best to realize I’ll always be doing this after we fuck.”

“What’s that exactly?” she starts with an edge, tipping her head, causing her long wet hair to drape across her shoulder. “Taking away my liberties?”

I squeeze the hand I’m holding tighter in my fist as my gaze hardens.

“I can’t go from one prison to the next, Aero,” she says in a softer tone. “I know you have this possessive claim over me, but I’m not an object. And as much as you probably wish you did, you don’t own me. Nobody does. Not the church. Not Aero.”

She angers me as much as she turns me on when she showcases her strength like this. Clearly she was testing me in that private club room, pushing the boundaries to see where I fell when it came to sharing her.

Aero will own you, baby.

I palm the front of her neck, slowly wrapping each finger around the pulsing flesh that comes alive under my touch, sliding my hand in place before I push her roughly against the shower wall. Her back hits, making her beautiful swollen breasts bounce before me as the air leaves her lungs.

“I am yours as much as you are mine. It’s different. It’s primal. It’s a display of adoration and insurmountable trust. I strengthen you, rather than just claim you. Not simply ownership. We are beyond that. Their definitions, beneath us.”

How do I make her understand the depth of my emotions without using the tainted words they have trained her to understand? Is murdering two men and gouging out the eye of another not enough?

“Beneath us,” she repeats softly, understanding our own, personal language as her shoulders lose their tension and her face relaxes. “So you trust me, then?”

I hold my breath for a moment, realizing she’s caught me in a trap. She’s way smarter than I ever give her credit for.

“The question is,” she continues, releasing my hold on her by taking a step back. “Do you trust me enough to let me use my body as a weapon? The weapon it was designed to become to break down the holiest of deceptive institutions?”

Mine.

Mine.

All mine.

The word won’t leave me at the thought. The only way I could replace the idea acceptable is if I was somehow there, seeing it. Knowing what was happening. And, of course, ensuring she got absolutely no satisfaction from the act. If I want ownership over anything, it’s that her pleasure is mine and mine alone.

Her hands raise to cup the sides of my neck, perhaps meant to be comforting, as I still, tension tightening my back almost immediately in some sort of self-defense mechanism that’s unfortunately become ingrained in me.

Her thumbs gently trail my jaw, fingers replaceing the scar there, then the one by my lip again. I wince, wanting to push her off me and into the shower wall, pinning her by her neck until she’s crying, begging to be released. Before I even realize what’s happening, she pulls a hand back and slaps me across the face. Hard.

I sigh, closing my eyes tightly in pleasure at the welcomed pain, the muscles of my back relaxing as her hands settle near my neck again. Blood rushes to my groin, and my cock nestles against her navel. She freezes in place beneath the water and I blink my eyes open to study her studying me. Neurons are firing left and right, attempting to psychoanalyze the psycho.

Even beneath the warm rain of the shower head pouring down upon us, I can see the tears filling the brims of her eyelids.

With the softest, saddest tone, she whispers, “What did they do to you?”

My hands grip her wrists, pulling her touch from me before I distance us to finish washing my body. What I don’t need are these tears. Her fucking pity for a past I’ve already lived.

“Aero.” She grabs for my wrist, but I brush her off.

“Stop. Do not fucking push me, Briony. You know better than to do something that will get you hurt. Maybe even killed.” I scold her like a child, not even caring if it’s degrading.

I don’t want this. I don’t need to relive every part of what I know to be wrong. I’ve worked through my trauma by not working through it at all. I’ve put my energy and focus on her and her freedom from the men who work tirelessly to end her after ending her mother before me. The truth of her unfortunate past she’s yet to unravel.

My focus has been on helping to ensure her growth; her beautiful bloom. But she’s turning it on me, replaceing a mission to heal me in ways I didn’t intend.

“Why can’t I touch you?” she cries out. “Why can’t I just hold you again? Like you allowed in the woods? Like you do when you’re asleep?”

I allowed her to hold me in the forest because she proved something to me that day. She broke by finally letting go and fighting for herself. I’ve never seen her so beautiful, throwing that knife at my head. Magnificent and fearless. She was sensational once she left everything to pure hatred and determination.

But holding me while I’m asleep? She must be pushing her luck because I remember a few early mornings I woke with my cock deeply planted inside her, my hands around her neck, and a hint of fear in her blue eyes, not even remembering how we got there.

“It’s not who I am anymore,” I reply with indifference. “Maybe never who I was.”

“But you’ve never been given the chance to see. You’ve never seen what love is supposed to be—”

I push past her, exiting the shower with water still dripping from my hair and body as she tries to reach for me again. I grab a towel from the hanger, wrapping it around my hips, and leave the room that was closing in on me. She turns off the shower, grabs herself a towel, and follows me on my ass to the bedroom.

“I just want to touch you without having to hit you,” she cries out behind me. “I want to feel your skin and memorize every inch of you. I want to get you hard without needing to hurt you to do it. I want to feel your lo—”

I turn to face her and she gasps in surprise. I grip her wet hanging hair in my fist behind her neck, pulling her head back as my towel-covered hips press hers into the wall behind us.

“Don’t,” I say sternly. “If you need me to prove my devotion to you with a soft and gentle touch, then you’re going to have a lot of sad, sleepless nights ahead of you.” I scoff, releasing her hair. “Wasted tears for a man who doesn’t exist.”

“Tell me what they took from you,” she says in a cracked tone, trying her best not to cry. But the disgusting wetness is already covering her face, and not in the fearful way that I love. “Explain to me why it hurts.”

I think about her use of words. She’s right in that he has conditioned me to deny a certain type of touch. It physically pains me to feel those caresses against my skin. The softness makes my skin crawl with an itch that demands a deep and brutal scratch to ensure it never returns. I only ever see one face when it happens.

But if there’s one thing I’ve realized about Briony, it’s that she’s entirely too perceptive. Her need for details is maddening, especially when she’s seen firsthand how the bishop treats his favorites.

“You want details? You need me to pull the veil off your delusional world, where these things don’t happen the way they truthfully do?”

The corners of her eyes wrinkle as she stares back at me, worried she’s pushed too far. She has.

“Do you want to know how he forced me on my knees for him in that church basement, a place where the cries of a young boy were suppressed, as he forced himself into my mouth?” My voice raises as I continue. “Do you want to know how he bent me over the deacon’s desk in the altar room, fucking me while reciting scripture, as if raping a young boy in the church was the holiest of traditions?”

Her hands come up to her face, and she sobs.

“Is that what you need to hear?” I release her hair and grip her upper arms, forcing her back against the wall, making the painting nearby bounce against it.

I’ve replaced sadness with fear, and it only drives me to bring out more. To erase the pity with terror.

My fingers press deeply into her shoulders, indenting her skin as I shake her little body against the wall while I talk.

“Do you want to know how he told me how much he loved me each and every time after he came?” I punch the wall above her head, making her flinch. “How the Holy Spirit was a gift from God himself that I needed to accept in order to avoid the eternal damnation I was destined for?” My voice lowers to a steady tone. “How his soft, caressing palm would rub my cock until it hardened, before scolding me for selflessly enjoying what was supposed to be a sacrament to the Lord Himself? That because of that, I’d fall into the never-ending cycle of needing more private, one-on-one purification classes?”

She grips at the towel covering her chest, as if the pain of the details she incessantly begged me for were cracking it in half.

“Do you feel better now? Huh?” I slam her back against the wall and another fearful sob leaves her. “Feel better you got it out of me? All the gory details you desire to make sense of me?”

She shakes her head no.

“Maybe now you can put your little fucking pieces together as to why I can recite the Holy Scripture and the pathetic blasphemy that fills it. That I searched that entire book tirelessly for an understanding of why my life became what it was when others didn’t have my fate. That every passage in that book of lies can be misinterpreted by whoever seeks to use its power. Especially against the weak and weary.”

She tries to wipe her eyes, but I swat her arms away.

“I’m not just a non-believer for no reason. I believed once. I feared my predetermined damnation and let it drive the abuse. I had hope that my God would save me from all of my despair as promised. That there was a legitimate answer as to why my life wasn’t like Saint’s.”

Her eyes stay sealed to mine, holding on to every word that pours from my heartless soul.

“But one day, I prayed to my God and Savior, asking him to take away the pain I’d been born into. I’d realized in the silence that followed that there wasn’t a reason for it at all. That my life came about by random circumstance, and I’d fallen into the cracks of an institution that capitalized on it. I’d realized I couldn’t wait for Him or anyone else to come and save me. I had to save myself. So I fucking did!”

The visions of the past are returning, clouding my vision. My heart rate spikes and the red encapsulates me.

“They ruined you,” she sobs. “They ruined you and then blamed you for it.”

Her cries anger me further. The silent sobs that leave her chest infuriate me.

“And here you are, selfishly needing to touch me, just to prove love!” I yell, my face inches from hers. “You need me to prove my fucking love, Briony?!”

I push off her and run my hands through my wet hair, searching the room for something, anything, to prove my point. Seeing a pair of scissors nearby on the dresser, I grab for them as she tries to steady her breath behind me, still sealed against the wall.

I open the scissors, approaching her. Terror fills her face, and it’s a far more attractive look than the pity swimming in her eyes a moment ago. I hold them open near my mouth.

“Push me, Briony!” I warn through gritted teeth. “I’ll cut off my fucking tongue before I ever utter the wasted words to you or anyone else!”

I stick my tongue through the opening, the sharp edges of the scissors threatening to pierce through the sides of it.

“No!” she screams, her hands cupping her mouth. “No Aero, please!”

The sharp edges tear into the sides of my tongue and the taste of iron fills my mouth, but I don’t feel anything. Nothing but rage pumping like fire through my veins. I pull the scissors from my mouth as her shoulders begin trembling, her eyes wide with terror.

“You need me to prove my love?” I say the word like it disgusts me because it does. “Let me show you what love is.”

Taking the blade of the open scissors, I slide it down the inside of my forearm, tearing through the skin. The sharp pain causes the soft caress that used to live there to vanish. I sigh in contentment, watching as blood drips from the open wound.

“I’ll drain myself of everything that pumps through these veins just to prove it,” I grit through my teeth before cupping the back of her head with the injured arm, the blood dripping down onto her neck, trailing her chest.

I seal our foreheads together, our eyes aligned so she can physically feel my truth pouring out of my soul.

“I’d bleed out for you, Briony. I’d fucking kill anyone so you could live. I’d kill you if I needed to, just to follow you to your grave so you can know the depths to which I’d fall to show I couldn’t fucking survive without you. I’d sabotage every aspect of your privileged, fake little life until you realized you’re only your best self with me by your side. I’d never stop.”

It’s toxic. It’s sick. It’s the only version of love I have to offer her as the monster I’ve become.

“I’m sorry.” She sucks in a breath as her panicked eyes study the wound. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. So sorry, Aero. P-please. I don’t need it. I don’t need the word,” she utters quickly, attempting to calm herself while calming me. “Whatever you’ll give me, I’ll take. They aren’t like us,” she mutters softly, gazing up into my eyes. “They aren’t like us.”

I stand there, panting as the rage from the past settles, until finally, the red lining my vision dissipates, and I see nothing else but her before me.

My Briony.

My rose.

Her understanding of love is entirely different from mine. Her lens, through which she sees the world around her is warped, in my opinion. But to her, my lens is a direct reflection of the pain I’ve yet to surrender.

“Some would call me broken,” I say again in indifference. “But I’ve never known anything other than the comfort of my pieces.”

She swallows, and I study the way her throat bobs before my gaze falls upon those luscious, pink lips. Her breath falls from them, slow and steady, her heart practically palpable beneath her chest. A strong, resounding rhythm, soothing in its own powerful right.

“I just know…” she says calmly, chin raised to meet my stare, confidence dancing behind her eyes at the words she’s about to express. “I just know that I’m the only one who can take it away.”

Take it away.

Briony pushes and she pushes. It’s what she’s always done. It’s what got her onto the radar of men who couldn’t tame her. Boundaries are not something this once sheltered woman understands or even wants to. That’s the one thing they couldn’t take from her. Her ability to fight and claw her way to the top of any mountain or obstacle placed before her. Even if that obstacle is my reflection. My demons. This is what initially attracted me to her. Who knew it’d be the source of my own reckoning?

Her hand carefully replaces its placement over the upside down crucifix covering my ribs. She pierces her nails through my flesh after realizing the touch was soft. The veins near my groin flood as I breathe in her delicious scent, our foreheads still sealed together in a near-painful embrace.

She flexes her jaw as her mind fixates on something. Maybe the words of a little boy’s unfortunate past. The maddening anger is palpable through the tension in the thick air as her nails scratch the surface of the tattoo and her hand travels further south.

“You, Aero, are the throat from which I’ve been allowed to scream,” she whispers, the power of centuries of goddesses in her unwavering tone as her hand grips the edge of my towel, pulling it beneath the cuts of my tatted abdomen. “But I’m the eyes through which you’ll finally realize your worth.”