i don't have a choice, but i'd still choose you. || magnus

[Ellyse]

your mouth is poison, your mouth is wine. i don't love you, but i always will.

   The surging current winds its way around her long, lissome legs, drawing her to and fro with a gentle urging that she cannot ignore. Her mind is drawn to the oceanic depths, dwelling on its inky shadows and the pale moonlight that undulates across its broken surface, as a tepid breeze caresses the length of her spine, sending a shiver coursing along the ridges. The silence has already begun to seep into her pores, filling her to the brim with its burdening emptiness, enveloping her in a fleeting moment of solace. The hardened line of her mouth presses against his shoulder again, wanting to feel him move and shift beneath her lips; to taste the musk and brine lingering there.

  Wordlessly, her kisses ghost his skin as her pale lashes shield her hazel eyes from the prying night, absorbing the forsaken moment shared between them as if it might be their last. He is unequivocally torn between the sea and the soil, and she is desperate to anchor him, to will him to stay with her for however long she can. Come here, he murmurs, but she is already pressing the length of her body against him, the pristine perfection of her own gilded skin to his, which lay blemished and scarred across robust muscle and bone.

  Soon, his mouth is touching the flattened line of her temple, traveling the slender length of her neck, exploring the bends and curves of an already familiar path. She cannot quell the sound that rouses from her throat – she does not bother to try; surely the thunderous waves crashing with vigor against the shore will drown it out. Selfish; the word returns – acrid and bitter.

  She, too, is selfish.
  More than he would ever know.

  His confession is heavy, swathing her in the warmth of a thousand suns, urging her settled, rhythmic heartbeat into a pounding frenzy all over again. Her hazel eyes search the once rigid lines of his face, which have since settled into a stark bareness, the darkest yet sweetest layer of him exposed for the taking. Her whiskered lips press there, where the curve of his jaw meets the ridge of his cheekbone, a soft whisper shared.

 ”And you ground me, and make me feel whole.“ Her heart is heavy with the revelation; beneath the façade of indifference, there had been nothing whole about her. There had always been something missing. You deserve better than me, she wants to say, but the words selfishly die on her tongue as her hazel eyes devour the softened features of his face.

   ”Stay with me,” she whispers, with so much more meaning hidden within her words. Her mind envisions the current washing him out to sea, of the salty brine piecing away his flesh and leaving nothing but bone in its wake. ”stay with me.”  

Ellyse

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