wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me; offspring

[Offspring]

something has been taken from deep inside of me;
the secret I've kept locked away no one can ever see.

 Her lips are warm, soft – pliable against the hardness of his taut muscle, which flexes slightly beneath the feather weight of her touch. A shudder courses the length of his spine, unwinding the tightly bound nerves that lay just beneath the dark, pitch black of his skin, coated in a thin veil of dried sweat and shame. She can taste him, every piece and part of him, under the hot warmth of her ravenous mouth, as her lips and teeth graze across his anxious, trembling flesh – there is something simmering inside of him, becoming as fervent and scalding as bristling iron. Beneath her careful, wandering touch, he is unbound, breathless and vulnerable – a stifled pain so suffocating, he can hardly swallow.

  Offspring, she murmurs again, pulling him back from the insufferable weight of his own mind, drawing him back into the present moment and soon his searing gaze is searching for hers in the darkness. Again, her lips press against the tender crease of sinewy muscle and skin, and the stagnant, deafening silence that follows is nearly enough to drown him in the tousling movement of the sea churning inside of his head. His eyes search hers, the narrowed pupils and bright, seeing eyes – a glimmering sheen of emerald against the shadow of evenfall, and hidden within the rivulets of her irises, a sorrow – thinly veiled, alongside a weary, tired tension, not unlike his own.

  Her mouth touches the old, worn scarring that lay across his flesh – where wounds many years old have faded into thin lines, a vague reminder of the obscure, malevolent emotion that so often filled their crevices so evenly. Not lost, she utters against his skin, and he can feel her voice reverberating through him, vibrating ardently against the tendons beneath her mouth. Stolen, maybe, she decides, and the word settles within the flayed, gaping wound, burning and seething - yet still, it settles, filling it with implicit belonging. Stolen, the word echoes. Stolen, as he had been, as his body and mind had been, left powerless in the wake of falling under the wanton, greedy control of another.

  His breath is soft, and subtle against the deep indigo of her curves, drawing her nearer, pleading with her silently to stay - to stay, to be the anchor he so craves in the tumultuous, violent seascape of his furious memory. When her teeth begin to work along his knotted tresses, the girth of his neck lowers to her mouth, pressing against her cheek – seeking her comfort, and the soothing consolation of her knowing. It was real, she affirms, tugging at the feeble thread holding him together, toying with it in her clutching grasp. there was a man, and the immense effort it requires for him to maintain control of himself is immeasurable.

  He made you someone you are not, remade you for himself, and he is suddenly unlike himself, lost in the deeply buried memory of a winged beast that had slain so many, spilled the blood of so many, and suddenly the bitter, metallic taste of their blood is on his tongue again. He was powerless, yet a force to be reckoned with, riddled with a lust and longing for approval from the man – the bane to his existence, this irrefutable need to be wanted, needed - etched into his tired, angry soul, always.

 And still, she kisses him, voracious, heartening, bolstered with a delicate tendril of hunger that he can feel enveloping him – swallowing him, as he was so certain the sea would one day do to him. When his lips meet hers, and their breath mingles, he is so lost – the ridge of his brow line wrought with confusion, the tension of his jaw tight with an unbound desire, and her whisper draws him closer, as his own mouth presses to hers, eagerly. Offspring, and then, Isle, and the very same pang of guilt bursts forth from his chest, causing his pounding, needing heart to ache so deeply, he is certain it will disintegrate, and fall away into dust at his feet.

  ”She has my heart – she has always, she will always have my heart,” he utters, uncertainty written across the usually stoic features of his strong face. ”I love her, but I do not deserve her,” and the words are breathless,  bent and broken and festering with a once unspoken truth. ”I have never deserved her, and she does not deserve this, me, whatever shell of a man I am now.”

  Still, his lips brush across hers as he speaks, and as his gaze bores into her own, his own anguish mixes with her own, and the faint ember flickering inside of him threatens to boil over into a hungry flame, scalding and zealous in is heat. Softly, quietly, ”You are the only one that knows,” his voice, it trembles, as the longing grows hot and impatient. ”you are the only one that can see what has broken me, as I can see what has broken you,” open, exposed, unguarded, as he had never been with her.

  ”I haven’t felt this alive in so long, Malis. Stay,” he urges, pressing his coveting mouth to the corner of her own. ”stay with me, I don’t – I can’t –“ I need this.

wounds so deep they never show; they never go away.
like moving pictures in my head, for years and years they've played.

Offspring