When Stars Become Shadows

by Emmie Hamilton

There’s freedom in falling. Freedom within the act itself, in the dance with the wind as it tosses your body in a skilled pirouette, in the way inhibitions are torn just as a scream threatens to escape your lips. Freedom in caring about little else other than what comes next. The unexpected.

She said I was born of the sea, how I needed to hear its waves crashing against the shore to know I was alive, and it called to me more than any other.

There is beauty in forgotten things. A baby’s favorite toy, left in the narrow space between the bed frame and the wall. A photograph of a holiday long past, its familiar scents drifting away with time and memory. The whispered words of a former lover in the intimate hours before dawn.

There is power in seduction. It starts off simple. A heated look. A slow lick of your lip. The caress of your tongue against the nape of their neck. A gentle stroke along the curve of their hip. Then when the gaze turns hungry and the lust nestles into the empty spaces between you, comes the shift. The one where you’ve ensnared them and with a knowing smile you can begin. Sometimes it’s in the erotic elegance of an arched back, your head thrown back as you chase the need to shatter. Or maybe it’s in the weapon you wield as you scratch your nails against their spine, capturing their eyes while they’re wrapped in your slick embrace. You’re in control now. It’s in the bite of your lip as you moan, it’s in the exaltation of a harsh curse as they follow you in the high of the ecstatic moment of pure bliss. And when your sweat-glazed bodies are pressed against each other, there’s that feeling that consumes you. When you know it was your words, your hips, your moans that made them surrender.

No woman should have to depend on a man for survival.

I was degrading myself because of the amount of respect I had.

I’m going to make you feel as good as I can so you can see there is pleasure in wanting and desire in waiting.”

What did he mean by, Does it speak to you, now? Did he mean in the metaphorical way that some people understood their possessions so thoroughly that it felt like a kindred counterpart to themselves? That’s how I used to feel with the ocean when I was younger. I knew that I belonged to it, and it to me.

The inhale and the exhale, tucking all the feelings inside and away, deep down where no one, not even I, could touch them.

I thought I understood men, but Killian was a delicious, infuriating mystery that I wanted to unfold.

“Will we always be together?” “For as long as the moon pulls the tide to shore.”

It was enticing, seductive, it was sadness compounded through the assurance that desire would alleviate the pain for just a moment, if given the chance. I knew that feeling well.

Good, I thought. I loved my curves.

Amen.

There is pleasure in permitting.

“To a night that ends in sin.” Killian said each word slowly and distinctly, letting them nestle into forbidden parts of me. Desire coiled through me, stretching awake, yearning to play out the promise in his words.

Maybe I wanted his good heart, but I also craved the way the darkness in his eyes had fucked me before he ever laid a hand on me. And I needed more.

I felt like he was my prey and I had to learn everything about him before I devoured him.

His pupils shifted to full black and before I had a moment to be frightened—or more accurately, excited—he crossed the room in two swift steps and slammed me down on his desk, the platter of food scattering, chocolate and whipped cream splattered along my breasts and thighs.

HOT

I would never let myself get lost in him.

Hmm, foreshadowing?

“If I want to make you scream for mercy, I assure you, I won’t be doing anything you aren’t already begging me for.”

*Pikachu meme face*

“The longer you hesitate, the more inclined I am to give you that punishment you’re so desperate to see from me.”

*Pikachu meme face continues*

“Do you really expect me to accept anything you give me? How do I know it’s not drugged?” His laughter was cut with a tinge of something darker, like a warning. “I don’t need drugs to get you to do what you want. You are curious.” He said the word on a whispered breath and I let his honeyed words lazily flow over me. “The danger I present is exhilarating to you, isn’t it?”

I might not have been signing my soul to the devil himself, but what I agreed to give him was worth so much more. Access to all of me.

How easy it was to make something as though it never were. If only darker memories didn’t leave an unrepentable stain to the soul.

“If you don’t start eating, I’m going to force it down your pretty little mouth and will relish the sounds of you gagging on it.”

The gull of this sounding as hot as it does.

“Oh, Emersyn, no one is saying you’re broken, but we could all use some healing.”

But there was one thought that kept circulating through my mind, one thing playing on repeat. I let it strengthen my nerves until I felt it within every part of me. Until I knew it to be true. “I don’t need a man to save me.”