Black Sheep

by Alexa Harlowe

A heated, dark energy seemed to roll from his wide shoulders in waves, pulling me in.

I glance at Bria and our gazes collide. She assesses me with the calculating eye of a falcon, as though she’s determining how quickly she could rip my throat out. I’m sure my own expression is nearly as dark and heated, though for an entirely different reason. It physically pains me to break the connection and tear my gaze away.

That darkness I saw skimming his surface and peeking through his eyes is just very appealing to me, like catnip.

There’s a long moment of utter silence. My heart claws up my throat and drums in my ears. My breath grows shallow as Kaplan’s smile dissolves and his rich brown eyes fuse to my lips. A coldness creeps up my arms, crawling, scratching, gooseflesh leaving a trail behind a phantom touch as though my skin is begging for his hands.

“I feel compelled to tell you that I hate you,” I breathe as he bites and sucks on my skin. I start tugging the collar of his jacket off. “Just like I hate your leather satchel and your hideous tweed jacket that looks like it came from the hipster reject pile. If I could feel secondhand embarrassment for anyone, I would feel it for you.” Kaplan’s dark laugh heats my skin as he nips my earlobe and a moan escapes my lips. “Good. I’ll wear it every fucking day. I’ll even sew suede patches on the elbows.”

“Then fuck me, Dr. Kaplan. Fuck me like you despise me as much as I hate you.”

His body burns with mine, the scent of mint and rum and bergamot warming with his heat, invading my senses. He kisses and bites and thrusts and this need, this magnetic need, it consumes, turning thought to ash. Turning me to flame.

“Like you mean it,” I whisper, squeezing his hand. “Fill me with darkness. With you.”

He whispers into my ear like a wraith, following me into darkness, bewitching me, imploring that I say his name until there’s no air left, and still his voice is in my mind, demanding again, say it again.

He places a kiss on my hip. His shoulders rise as he inhales and pulls away to continue his reverential strokes. It feels…sacred…in this place, in the quiet and the dark, surrounded by the scent of paper and ink.

“I won’t hide you away because you’re my dirty secret. I’ll hide you away because I’m the only one who gets to see you on your knees, Bria.”

But I’m burning for more than an arm around my shoulders or a stolen kiss in a quiet corridor. I hunger for something…cataclysmic.

“As long as you know that when I win, I’m going to tear you apart. I will not be gentle, Bria. I will not be kind. Unless you tap out, I am going to make you suffer in every moment of your pleasure. You’ll beg, Bria. I promise you.”

“You’re like a drug that never fades,” Kaplan hisses, his eyes gripping mine with desperation so consuming it looks painful. “Your flavor. Your scent. The sound of your cries. The way you beg. The way you take everything and ask for more… You invade my thoughts and you don’t let go.”

“If only you knew how badly I want to ruin you like you’ve ruined me.”

“Suffer with me,” he whispers, and with a kiss of fire and promises, Eli Kaplan drags me deeper into hell.

“You’re mine,” I whisper. “And I’m yours.” When the surprise and relief dissolve from Eli’s face, there’s only the deepest longing left behind. No more words. No more admissions. Just his kiss, like a promise of dawn after night.

“Haven’t you figured it out yet, Dr. Kaplan? You may think you have a demon in you…” I say as I step toward him. I place my hands on his chest and rise up on my tiptoes to whisper in his ear. “But I’m the devil he worships in the night.”

You abandoned her, I berate myself. You promised you’d love her. You promised she could trust you. And the first chance she did you fucking left her. You’re no better than the people who raised her.

“I thought that I would teach you. It was me who learned from you. Things I’d never known. Things I thought untrue.” I pause as she turns so slowly, tears gathering in her eyes. It’s the hope in them that breaks my heart. “Yet I find that when I watch you, swimming for the shore, these things I thought untrue, I can deny no more. Flower in the dust. In my darkest night you bloom.”