Page 267 of These Tears

He has never been able to speak of things like this before. Never allowed himself to want aloud. I need to hear it again.

I hold what little breath I have left as a ragged sound tears from him.

His hands abandon my hips to clasp mine, fingers threading tightly around each other as he lowers himself fully over me.

With every inch of space gone between us, I feel… everything.

The weight of him becomes mine; the shaking of his body transfers to me; the need he can no longer hide seeps into my skin between the stolen breaths.

‘I want the wild in me—’ he moans against my lips, ‘—to live in you.’

It locks around my soul as my legs lock around his waist and our pulses merge.

‘Yes!’ I yelp, grasping for air my body bowing beneath him, the cry leaving my mouth caught between his name and a rawness too pure to survive a language as the climax takes me.

He watches every crack in it, eyes black with need and bright with something worse.

Then his body seizes over me, his growl smashing over the frantic beats at my neck.

And for one suspended moment there is no now. No world beyond the weight of him in my arms.

Only the wild he imprinted into me.

For several moments, we don’t move. Elias remains braced over me until I touch his cheek and find him still open. He doesn’t withdraw into the past. He remains with me.

Kisses me.

Slowly and carefully.

In the next breath, he rises, eyes roaming over me as he turns at the waist and switches off the first camera.

He moves to the next, red lights dying one by one. Finally, he reaches the recorder and removes the memory card, scribbles something on it, and places it into one of the small compartments beneath the desk.

For later.

I watch this ritual with interest.

My eyes flick to the projector sheet overhead, now devoid of image or light, waiting for our demons to possess it again.

Then, gloriously bare, he stops at the door and holds out his hand to me. I wish he’d let me photograph him like this.

We leave the equipment dark and move to the shower room upstairs, where warm water carries the remaining oil away from our skin. He owns my mouth there again, and I own every tremble he no longer tries to hide.

By the time the dogs begin to howl outside, the day has slipped from our grasp.

Separating from him feels almost unnatural.

My neck already misses the rasp of his beard, my thighs miss the rough surface of his hands.

We busy ourselves with dinner, care for the hens and let the dogs claim their usual spots on the floor. Later, Mary Shelley keeps us pinned to the bearskin until the last page closes between us.

When the moon climbs, Elias is lying beneath me, the dense fur below us warmed by our bodies, and the candlelight throws shifting shadows across the stone hearth.

Like always.

Our wine glass reflects it from the coffee table, the kaleidoscope of colours washing his eyes in shades too soft to drown the azure.

‘I still can’t wrap my head around this,’ I rumble, moving to the side as I give his chest a few light taps. ‘They steal me, you come get me, and then what? Prove you’re worthy of me like I’m some… Sámi reindeer bride token?’