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February 16 - February 16, 2022
The real tragedy of your life, Maxen, is that you will never stop having faith in the people around you, even when they hurt you over and over again.”
She’s always been like this. Responsive. Open. Frost on a window that you can melt and mar with a single fingertip.
Ash has a child. Embry will have a child. I am not the mother of either of those children.
this was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once. Fingers in my hair, a firm stomach against my cheek. He still loves Ophelia. How do you know? Because he’s cruel to her. The fingers had tightened in my hair to prove his point. The strongest love comes with pain.
His power is his love, his command is his affection.
My sister and ex-lover and current political enemy…and our son.
Oh my God. I’m fucked. I’m done. I had prepared to debate in the face of his hatred, but I am nothing in the face of his love.
It’s his own kind of love, I think bitterly. His love is so like his cruel Catholic god’s—the god who punishes you for your sins at the same time he bleeds to forgive them. Eternally tender and coldly just.
“You don’t have a safe word.” “I remember.” His hand slams hard at the wall next to my head; I can’t help but flinch. “Give me a fucking safe word, Embry,” he growls. “Right the fuck now.” “We’ve never needed one before.” “I,” he says, finally taking that last step forward, and oh fuck, he’s hard, and his whole body is hot and so deliciously firm, and then his nose runs along my jaw and his lips are at my ear, “have never needed a safe word with you before.” “And why is that?” I feel him inhale, smelling my skin; his cock swells even harder against my hip. My own cock is a fucking lost cause,
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“I love you and I’m going to make you cry tonight if you don’t say no to me.”
he was right earlier, I do belong to him and I want to belong to him, and I love him just as much as I hate him, and I only hate him because he’s better than me, because he’s the third side of our triangular heart, because I can’t live without him.
These two people I love so much that I’m dead with it, and a disconsolate voice inside my head wonders if it would have been better if we’d never met at all. If I’d never had to feel surrender and union and real marriage of souls—because then I wouldn’t have to feel its absence or live inside the hollow of what might have been.
To climax in joy is such a common, ordinary thing—but to come in anguish, in torment and in sorrow, what a rare jewel indeed. Faceted and flashing. Unforgettable.
how could I be one person and still feel so much, want so much, and was this how love was for everyone? Was it being queer? Kinky?
I only wanted to love him as my own soul for as long as I lived, and for him to let me.
You think what we have is about titles or words? About sex positions? You think I can’t dominate you while you’re fucking me? Then you don’t know the first thing about it. I’m telling you I could have your cock in my ass and a gag in my mouth and I could still own you.”
Because for the two of them I felt an almost God-like love: just that they were alive, just that they existed, was enough to thrill me with measureless joy.
Maybe that’s why so many people don’t understand kink, because we’re both right. It’s real and it’s make believe, it’s deadly serious and sinfully playful, the truest expression of ourselves and also an elaborate game of pretend. Both, both, both, and to forget either is to forget the reason behind the kink, which is to be intentionally and vulnerably and happily…human. That’s it, that’s the heart of it. To be human.
You are more dangerous wielding love than you are wielding pain.”
And when he removes his fingers and slicks up his erection with a trembling hand and I say, “Such a good, eager boy,” what I mean is I love seeing you shake with love for me because I am always shaking with love for you.
And when, for the first time in both my lives, he presses his tip against a place I’ve never shared with anyone and I say, “Make me feel good,” we both know I mean I want to make you feel good, I want us to feel good together, I want to see your face as you feel it and as you come for me.
I think I’ve finally found my right sacrifice, I want to tell her. I think I’ve learned the day I’ll be asked to set down my sword and my crown. It wasn’t enough for me to live, and now I have to die.
And maybe, if I’ve gotten to find her and Embry in a second life, I’ll get to find them in a third. Maybe tomorrow I’ll close my eyes and when I wake, we’ll all be together again, starting all over, heartbreaks and wars and all. Because one thing’s for fucking certain—while my heart beats, it will beat for them, no matter which life we’re in. I will find them again and I will love them again. And if I have to, I will die for them again.
“I love you more than life itself,” I say quietly, seriously. “And I always want you to be happy. Watching you and Embry love each other has been the greatest joy of my life. My love for the two of you exists inside your love for each other—when you love each other, you are loving me. Promise me you’ll remember that.”
It’s not fear I feel in this final second, but love. All along it was me who had the whole world in his eyes.
