Page 52 of Palingenesis

And I want it.

But I hate it.

“Tsk tsk tsk,” Ilios’s voice clicks next to my ear where my hearing aids can pick it up clear as day. Maybe he’s doing it louder than normal to make sure I do, and the thought of that… It makes my stomach flip. “It’s not what I’m doing, beloved, but what I’ve already done.”

A whimper presses from my lips, one I can’t contain, like my body is no longer my own.

His hands are all over me next, a flurry of movement—some scathing, some gentle—that tears at my clothes and exposes my pebbled skin to the smoky air. To him.

To the firelight that roars to life in the fireplaces surrounding us, the candles that burn with wicks larger than their waxy bodies and leave trails of soot and singe up the walls.

A part of me registers how dangerous the flames must be, but a larger part can’t possibly tear myself away from him.

“You came to me because you need me.” His voice grates over me as we tumble to the floor, its frigid surface nothing against the heat rising between us. “Because you’ve always needed me.”

His lips on my throat are like a brand, the weight of him settling over top of me.

I give little resistance to the hands that burn me and the talons that score me.

“I don’t need anyone,” I bite back, finding that little bit of fire in my belly, and grab a fistful of his flowing hair. I yank him back enough to look in his wicked eyes. “Especially not you.”

Whisps of smoke curl around my wrist, increasing the pressure until it feels like a whole ass hand ripping my fingers from his hair and pinning my hands above my head.

“Ilios,” I growl, jerking against his hold.

He grins, another set of grey tethers sprouting from his hips and wrapping around my knees.

I’m spread open and held down, bare knees pressed to my ribs as Ilios settles between my thighs.

Fighting seems futile when I’m trembling for it.

“I know what you need,” he purrs, another feather light touch caressing my crack and pressing against my hole. “I’ve always known what you need.”

“I don’t—ugh!—” I yank against his hold, pulling through the smoke that tethers me to him only for it to reform and band thicker around my limbs. “I don’t need you!”

He leans in close enough for our noses to brush and when he speaks, his mouth doesn’t move a muscle.

“Don’t you, beloved?”

The sound of his voice penetrates my mind, clear as my own thoughts, and an all too familiar pain shoots across my forehead. I strain against it, unable to stop the cry that rips from my throat.

“This could be easier,” Ilios coos aloud, his words accompanied by a clicking hum in the back of my mind. “All you have to do…” Talons scrape down my neck, breaking skin enough to sting but not enough to put me out of my misery and I thrash against him. “Is just let me in.”

Pressure at my hole increases as he speaks, emphasizing his words, and my dick swells involuntarily.

Maybe he can sense it, or maybe I let out a sound I didn’t hear at the way he circles me, but his actual hand slips up my chest and wraps around my throat.

Gripping me roughly, his smoke holding me down, his body poised at my entrance, I can resist as much as I want to. But deep down…

I feel every bit of him as if he’s an extension of myself.

So close and yet not close enough.

It’s dark and dirty and fucked up.

But he makes me feel things. Shit I’ve never understood about myself rushing to the surface.

I tremble in his hold, a potent mix of adrenaline and attraction swirling in my gut.