Then, Earth Swallowed Ocean

by Shiloh Sloane

For the people who are afraid of the dark, but still close their eyes and wait for dreams.

“Raymond shot you,” he interrupts. “And he hung himself from the guilt. That black-hearted man you call your father. He’s gone to my world but you… You’re here. For now.”

Her scent is honeysuckle, brown butter, salt air. Morning dew and favored sweat. She is an entire world, stepping out of the cab and into the night with confusion lining her sweet young face. He smiles when he sees her. The second he sees her. Feels his lips spread over his sharp teeth and swallows another lungful of her scent.

She blushes like a schoolgirl. Pretty, young, vibrant. He’d like to feel her fight with her hummingbird pulse under his broad palms. He’d like to lick the tears from her cheeks.

He’s free. He’s powerful. Her bright dress rushing ahead is like a comet but he is the darkness it falls into. This gas station is floating in the middle of the humid Appalachian universe and they are the only living things left.

“Don’t. Fucking. Run,” he growls in her ear before nipping it. His teeth are sharp. They pierce through her skin like it’s butter and he sucks at the blood that trickles from her lobe, groaning. His hips press into hers. His erection so hard it could burst through his jeans. She’s parting her legs for him. Denim and cotton stand between them and nothing else. He’ll fuck her before he eats her.

He can taste her on the edge of her pleasure and he rarely cares but he wants to devour it from her. He wants her last dying breath to be a moan. Under the hazy, moth-flitted light of this gas station, he wants to feel her pulse stop while he pumps into her.

There wasn’t a worse thing for a man to be than weightless. Not free, but unanchored.

“Sadie,” he whispers. “Gonna swallow you whole.” Then, the chase begins.

“I’m going to eat you bite by bite, little fawn,” he breathes. His inhales are jagged. “I’m going to get to your bones while I fuck you, and I’m going to feel your last heartbeat around my cock…”

“You’ll still be warm when I come inside of you,” he says, scooping his pleasure from his skin into his cupped palm. “And then I’ll eat what’s left.”

“Look at me when you swallow.”

“Kiss it clean, little fawn,” he tells her. “Lick the rope of your noose.”

“Are you scared, my little fawn?” he purrs.

“God’s not watching.” He turns his focus to Sadie. “But if He was, He wouldn’t strike you down, Sadie,” he says. “You’re such a good girl.”

Ridge ignores him. “Little fawn,” he insists. “Spread your legs when I speak to you.”

“I’ll only swallow some of the flesh at your thighs,” Ridge growls. “But I’ll nip and suck at your folds and that sweet bud in between until the only taste left is my spit and your pleasure like salted fucking caramel on my tongue.” Her toes curl under the table. He hears them. Her breath is ragged and she is drenched for him. “Every time you come for me, Sadie,” he adds. “I’ll let you live another day.”

That delicious perfection, better than heaven, darker than hell. She’s his fate. Everything is nothing compared to her. In this moment, she’s more powerful and important than any god he can imagine; her moans, the fluttering of her eyelids as her eyes roll back, the feeling of her soft, warm body wrapped around his, are his entire world. She’ll always be his world now. He can’t kill her. He wants her forever. He wants this and only this until the day he dies.

How cruel is the Devil, that he’d send evil after her and she’d fall in love with him? How cruel is that evil to leave her now?

“Sure it ain’t crazier than loving my brother,” he says. She pauses. “I don’t even know if it’s true what I experienced.” “It’s true enough to bring you here.”

“My fawn doesn’t run from fear,” he says. “She runs towards it, doesn’t she?”

“You are mine,” he growls, stroking himself over the denim. “Aren’t you?” “Yes,” Sadie whispers. He groans. “Fucking right. If you risk what’s mine, I will punish you.”

If you think even your Devil can cut through me, I’ll show you how wrong you are. Because he could open the earth underneath our feet and I would fuck you in our fall. I would devour him and free every damned soul just to see you in the sun again.”

“Then hide well,” he growls. “Because when I find you, you’ll have no other god but me.”

The fawn in the grass and the wolf who guards her, linked forever with scent and spit and blood and cum.

Nearly panting, he takes her hand under the table and presses it to the bulge in his pants. She inhales sharply. He feels the sound at the base of his spine. Fuck, he might come from just her touching him. From the way her hand makes fractional strokes underneath the table.

His fingers pick up speed. Sadie leans forward on the table, clasping her hands in front of her mouth. He feels a tremor ride through her, feels more wetness leak from her entrance. She’s such a good girl, taking pleasure still and silent like this. Even though her legs are shaking.

“Gonna get you pregnant, little fawn,” he groans. “God, I’m gonna fucking breed you. Fill you with my cum every day, put a fucking baby inside you…”

“But my little fawn, you’re prettier than the ocean. More beautiful than the blue mountains back home and more than a cloudless night with a full moon and the galaxy behind it. Never met a person who could put those sights to shame until I met you.”

“What does it mean that I love you still?” she asks. He springs up to grab her, then rolls her underneath him. Never once slipping from her, but thrusting harder when he settles above. Crying out, she drags her nails over his back. “Everything,” he growls, nipping at her neck only to kiss the blood off. “Means fuckin’ everything.”

I love you, the beast says. Infinitely. From your skin To the pockets of your lungs, I will flood you, And you will never be the same.

“Sadie doesn’t smoke,” he says. “Such a good girl.” “That she is.” “Prefer her lips elsewhere.”

“Fuck, little fawn,” he breathes, unsheathing his cock and pulling her onto him. Impaling her only to slam her back against the crate. He starts slow. One hand on her shoulder and the other on the small of her back. Pinning her to the wood. “You’re fucking filthy with my cum. My god, it’s dripping out of you. Why didn’t you tell me when you were walking through those aisles that your sweet fucking thighs were drenched with my seed?”

“You should have told me. You should have said, ‘Ridge, your seed is dripping from my perfect cunt and I need you to fuck more into me. Need you to flood me with it so I can have your fucking babies.’” He spanks her again with his free hand before grabbing her by the hair. Fucking her savagely.

“The only sacred thing,” he breathes. “Is us and the dirt of this.”

It’s something that Ridge asks him questions he once didn’t feel ready for, of what love was like for him. The boy is a poet, despite or because of his roughness. When he speaks there’s gravel and blood lining the back of his throat.

“You caught me,” she whispers. “Always,” he growls.

“Heaven is here. In the space between the two of us.”

“You are my gravity,” he says, his voice a near-growl. “You are my sky, my fucking ocean, my moon, my air. You’re my religion. You’re what I reach for, don’t…” He punches the wood of the dresser and it collapses inward. “Don’t leave me,” he breathes. “Don’t take yourself away from me.”

He’s grabbing her. Not her neck, not her waist, not her ass. Her back. Her legs. Like every time air slips between them is a surrender and this is a war on home turf.

“I love you,” Sadie whispers against his lips. “You’re the easiest person I’ve ever loved, Ridge.”

“Tell him, some day, how it feels to love someone who wasn’t built for you,” she whispers. She’s got tears spilling from her eyes again. “Because I need him to be okay, Wright. I need him to live after me.” Wright nods. “I’ll tell him,” he lies. “Tell him it feels like summer.” It feels like a lavender field hot with gunpowder. “I’ll tell him it smells like sunshine,” he breathes, kissing the tears from her cheeks. It smells like warm yarn drenched in gasoline. “That it tastes like salted caramel.”

“Christ, Sadie,” he growls. “Gonna come inside you, darlin’. Desperate fuckin’ need.” “Please, daddy,” she moans.

“So I’m gonna do it anyway, darlin’,” he says. “I’m gonna go to hell for you.”

“She says she loves me,” Wright teases. Testing the waters fucking early. “Better fuckin’ say it back then,” Ridge says, slapping Wright upside the head. “Rude not to.”

“She’s my woman,” he says, lifting her gown to slide his hand between her thighs. Wright looks away but hears Sadie moan. “My wife,” Ridge says. “By law and ceremony. Bearer of my children. She wants you too, that ain’t even close to losing her. And I get to keep your sorry ass alive… At least fate found a sense of humor.”

“It’ll be a shotgun wedding for us, little fawn!” he exclaims, lifting her from the hospital bed. “So fuckin’ much to celebrate!” She squeals as he hoists her over his shoulder, not caring that she’s only wearing the flimsy hospital gown. “Be gentle with her!” the doctor exclaims. “She’s just healed!” Ridge claps his hand over her rear, digging into the meat of it. “She’s the mother of my child, doc!” he calls out, already down the hall. “She’s strong enough for a little roughness!”

There’s beauty here. And the thing about beauty is it always comes back to you.

“You,” he says, spreading his fingers and resting his hand on her belly. “Are creation itself.”

She draws it back in front of his eyes. Ridge watches intently as it pearls and drips down her finger. She brushes it over her own lips, and then over his. There’s still an animal in him. He is not yet, and will never be, fully domesticated. So he grabs her by the hair and kisses her. On their land, in the rain, with her blood between them. “Amen,” Sadie whispers.