Adoration. Obsession. Beautiful self-destruction

Trapdoor

Trapdoor: a novel by Vixen Phillips

13.RAVEN:

Little Deaths/Garden Of Eden

Silver eyes gaze down upon me. Into my soul. Beyond my soul.

Both of us, so naked in our truth that not even the moonlight can come between us now. It’s time.

The breath escapes my lips with a shiver. Finally.

Finally, you…want me. Before this, I always doubted, always found a reason, but now— Now I don’t even need to ask. This thing you speak of, faith? Is that what this is? Or is it this love?

Now it’s here, whatever it is, I know I’ve felt it, always. The most exquisite pain, from the moment we met, intensifying above and beyond, to this present, this conclusion.

No. This beginning.

Understanding... And yet, I don’t understand anything. But that’s okay. I know how it ends, you said to me.

That’s okay, too. I know how it begins…

He whispers my name, kisses my lips. Nothing else exists. It’s time.

His hands pin my wrists to the floor, over my head. Were you scared I’d leave you again, angel? Where would I go? This is all I’ve got. This is home.

“Raven?”

I smile; just hearing my name lends a sense of completion, justification.

I am afraid. Very afraid. “Tell me you want me,” I beg.

He blinks, startled, but it’s clear in the way he looks at me that he knows it, too. And what if this knowing terrifies him as much as me? I hope not. Everything rests upon this moment. With no beginning, how could there ever be an ending?

I don’t recognise what I see in him now; something new, and unfamiliar. No, not fear then. I’ve been both the cause and witness to that emotion. He hides it from me with another kiss before I’ve got it figured, then presses his weight against my wrists, sitting up to let me look at him. No more to hide. “I want you, Raven,” he tells me, and a shiver travels down my spine.

“Then show me.”

He opens his mouth, closes it again, cocking his head to one side. He starts to smile, but seeing how serious I am he lets it fade. “I—I don’t understand,” he whispers.

I close my eyes. If he rejects me now, I don’t want to see it.

“Yes, you do,” I answer, opening them again. If he accedes to my wishes, I don’t want not to see. “Make love to me.”

He lowers his head, but his hands still trap my wrists. Powerless…is this what I want?

“It will hurt you,” he warns me.

Not powerless at all…this is what I want.

I can’t say anything with him sitting above me like this, glowing silver without and within. So I close my eyes again, and lure the words to me. Words I’ve spoken to no one else, since never before was there this truth. This beginning. “Every time I look at you,” I say, my throat constricting, “it hurts me. This is love. This is truth. You’ve never seen this? Tell me you see it now.”

He sets my wrists free. Nothing left but silence, and the cold night’s touch to remind me who I am, and why I stay. Pegasus, please.

His hair shimmers across my chest as he plants a slow and tender kiss on my lips.

It’s time.

In the beginning, there was…

Hope.

“Don’t be afraid,” he tells me. “There’s no meaning in fear, not here, not tonight. I won’t hurt you. I can’t hurt you.” He’s shaking as he kisses my face, my shoulders, and my neck, his tongue painting spirals over my chest. I can’t help the moan that escapes my lips. I know where he’s headed.

I smile. “Not like that.”

He glances up and puts a finger to my lips. Then, with a “Shh,” he returns his attention to my body, teeth grazing my nipples, taking each one in turn into his mouth, sucking hard, devouring me. And so, I want to be devoured. Anything you want to give me. This isn’t my beginning—it’s yours.

No. Ours.

He nibbles a path down my stomach, lingering a moment before licking at the foreskin of my cock, scattering little shivers of pain and pleasure all around me. “Pegasus,” I whisper hoarsely, stroking his hair.

I’m inside his mouth, these sensations growing stronger, teeth and tongue driving me deeper into desperation, need, desire…love. It’s all I can do to stop myself jerking up into his throat as he starts to suck me, one hand round the base of my dick, his fingers warm, his mouth so inviting.

I look down, the sweat already breaking across my body as he gazes up at me, that look on his face—I recognise it now. I want you, Raven. He pauses, letting me fall from his lips, his hand moving up to the head of my dick, then driving down. Pre-cum covers his fingers. He licks it off, washing his fingertips like a cat—oh, God.

“Do you want me?” He’s searching my face for the slightest hesitation.

There is none. “Yes,” I hiss urgently. Could he ever guess how much? I start to grind against his palm. All I need to see is his face. All I need to do is look. It’s enough. It’s more than enough.

He grins, leaning down to kiss my lips, then lowers himself once again, sucking me deep into his throat, taking me all the way in…

I moan, quivering, letting go to grab at my face instead. Pleasure spirals in, taking control, taking over…

You, when did you do this to me, possess my soul?

You know when. The moment you first looked, it was all over.

This is the beginning. This is all I can see.

I cry out against the silence of the night as his suckling grows more intense. Inside his mouth, I can feel his tongue working against me, teeth digging into my flesh. I don’t care. I don’t care.

I do care. I feel everything.

A hot flush blossoms outwards, lighting up my cheeks, as I climax inside his mouth, more than mere bodily fluids, more than a gift from something I’ve never been able to love. I bite down hard on my lip to trap the scream, tasting blood, my mind pulsing with white fire, his heart beating fast against my leg. I don’t care if I die now. I don’t care if you tell me this is all there is.

I lie panting on the floor, arms outstretched in a crucifixion pose. How apt.

He lets me fall from his mouth, not waiting for my hard-on to catch up and disappear, not like last time. Moving over me, encircling me with his warmth, he lowers himself to kiss me, and I taste myself spilling over our lips, smell myself on his breath. I let his tongue penetrate deeper, unable to move except to raise my arms and fold them around him. I understand your faith, your love…

He pulls away from the kiss, stroking the hair off my forehead. All of a sudden, I feel so exhausted and alone. This day—too much. Too much has happened.

But that’s not what I feel at all. Disappointment. Not enough.

“You didn’t enjoy that?” But his voice isn’t so soft as to conceal the sweet mocking tone.

I smile, defeated. “What do you—?” I start to say, then let out a hiss of surprise as his finger presses against the entrance of my arse. As it forces its way inside, my whole body squeezes itself shut, my muscles clenching instinctively against the strange discomfort and unexpected intrusion. With more of him inside me, the pain grows stronger: those beautiful spidery fingers, his nails scratching hidden flesh. And this from someone who cuts himself open with a razor blade when he’s bored…

I open my mouth to attempt a laugh, and find myself crying out instead. He silences me with a kiss, his eyes distant and sad. I blink the tears from my blurring vision, still squeezing softly against him as his fingers lie motionless inside me. He waits for my breathing to calm, wiping the sweat from my brow with his free hand before speaking softly in my ear. “You have to relax, or I have to stop. I told you, I won’t hurt you. I can’t.”

I gaze into his face, helpless, trapped. Wanting to believe, only to find my body urgent to deny him. I’ve been holding my breath; now it escapes all at once in a horribly broken sob.

“Shh,” he whispers gently, kissing me again. “This is your beginning. Our beginning. I’ve never done this before either. Please…”

Did he read my mind? More kisses, scattered across my face. “Relax,” he murmurs, stroking my forehead, nuzzling my cheeks. “This is the dream…while softly you sleep…describing who I am, how I touch your soul.” I breathe in deep, slowly letting my body unfold and unwind beneath him. “Until such time as we wake, this is all there is, all I want…I can’t hurt you, I won’t…just relax, fall and I’ll catch you…we are one, and the same. This is the circle. This is forever.”

I can feel him drifting away. I moan, not in pain, but loneliness.

It’s time.

“I want you, Raven,” is the last thing he whispers in my ear. Smiling, heavy lidded, I part my legs, letting him raise my knees, pull me forward, such strength in his gentleness, his hands warm on my stomach, lowering himself, continuing to whisper his words of love and reassurance in my ear, now in French—such a romantic language. This is the dream. But I can’t fall here.

I take a breath, and a red-hot pain shoots straight into my brain from the base of my spine, searing my vision, blinding me. From somewhere distant, a hoarse scream, and I can’t get enough air, gasping for breath as I tremble beneath him, clawing his shoulders and fighting against my body’s need to escape…he won’t let me go, I won’t let me go. I want to tell him, how much it hurts, but I can’t find the words, can’t find anything beneath this—

My mind’s turning me loose, like the first time I cut myself, when Noriko found me on the bathroom floor, thought I’d tried to kill myself… Maybe that first time, yeah, but afterwards, I grew to need it too much. Now and then, just the same.

Pegasus, please, you promised you wouldn’t hurt me, you couldn’t—

But he’s not. That’s all you.

I am…what?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

I open my eyes, with the distinct impression I’ve been somewhere else, somewhere far from here. Pain, a distant memory. No longer reality.

I focus on his sadness, till I know where I am, and can remember where I’ve been. “Am I hurting you?” I ask him.

He blinks in surprise at my question, and then in a shaky voice, he tells me slowly, “It’s like pain, but much deeper.”

I put my hands up to his face. He’s inside me still, not daring to move. But I’ve absorbed all the hurt, and I’m no longer afraid. What was it he said? This is the dream…This is the circle…This is forever. “Love?” I suggest, in answer to his last statement.

He pulls away before I can kiss him, then nods. I take a breath and wrap my legs around his body, granting him deeper entry. My gift. To you. Anything you want. I belong to you. I always did.

He keeps a close watch on me as he begins to move, inside me. I wrap my arms around him too, letting my hands trail down to the soft flesh of his butt, pushing him in deeper, encouraging him, wanting him. This pain, it’s different. Much deeper, just like love. Giving meaning to everything. Consent.

Possession.

“Yes...” As his thrusting grows more urgent, my mind again threatens to let go of me. But this time for a different reason. To feel such desire. To let him take control, so that I might forget.

My dick’s already stiffening between us again. In an instant, the warmth evaporates my cold sweat. He drives himself harder, testing me, the limits of my need.

There are no limits. I spread my arms across the carpet once more, breathing hard and moaning soft words of want and love as the urgency fires between us. He’s looking at me, heavy-lidded, the lust clear on his face. “Your eyes…,” he whispers in wonder. “How truly they express your soul.”

“You are my soul.” I raise my hips off the floor, to let him have me completely. A growl of ecstasy sounds in my ear—at last, he’s given in to this desire as well. He grabs hold of my waist, and I rescind my control, letting him push me down against him, impaling me, long hair falling across his face and chest, panting, skin slick with sweat and tears. Pegasus, my Pegasus. My love.

We’re so close, so near to finality, the end of the beginning. I start to laugh, even as he shudders and falls against my chest, driving me hard to the floor. Wrapping his fingers around my cock, he squeezes and strokes and tugs, and I thrust against both his hand and his dick, our breath quickening, our hearts racing—I can feel it—I can feel everything…

As we start to climax, I’m swept off to a place of no remorse—somewhere between living and dying. Here, no beginnings nor endings, just meaning and sensation and pleasure beyond the flesh. I’m looking out through the bars of an icy cage, to see him kneeling before me, a smile on his face, one hand on a bar, melting the ice, the other reaching out to me. Does he know how it feels for me to be set free after so long? I’ve never done this before, either.

My lust, longing, and love echoes in his eyes as the ice cracks and the rest of the cage splinters around us. In a burst of flesh and blood, the wings erupt through the scars on my back and unfurl across the sky, white feathers on black. His wings. Purity. Freedom. Love.

He cries out, but not with pain. I’ve heard his pain; I’ve never heard this. Not with both of us here together, crying out with one mind, one voice.

See what you’ve done…you made me your angel.

He’s sobbing into my neck. I wrap my arms around him, clutch him tight, whisper reassurances in his ear. My heart’s racing, my stomach wet. He’s still inside me. I don’t want him to be anywhere else. Not just yet. “Don’t ever leave me,” I tell him.

Straight away, there comes a muffled giggle. “I think it’s too late to be worrying about such things.”

“Then save me,” I murmur. In my dream, both sets of wings are already disintegrating, dissolving back into clouds and sky, and everything’s gone grey again.

“It’s already begun,” his voice reassures me. He’s kissing my chest, our heartbeats slowing. I never want this moment to end.

Tonight was the beginning.

Tonight I saw your soul, Pegasus.

It’s beautiful.

I open my eyes to the light of morning. Can’t see anything beyond the white and the grey. Am I still in the dream? I don’t remember going to bed, or sleeping, or waking. But here I am, lying on my stomach, with an angel leaning behind me and planting kisses on my neck. The world shifts into slow focus as I turn my head. Pegasus.

I push down on my elbows, forcing us both up. He’s pressing against my thigh, already hard. Last night it hurt. And yet—Maybe now, I‘ll be able to take the pain into me, become one with it, same as the razor’s kiss.

“Will I make you breakfast?” he whispers in my ear, faking casual, till I reach down between our legs and take hold of his dick.

“Not yet.” I wriggle against him, helping to guide him, even as he laughs at me.

“Hungry for something else?”

“You…” Mind, be still. Remember. Breathing in, and breathing out. Forget. Even as I let him go, his palms are on my butt cheeks, spreading me open, letting a finger trail in. I remind myself to inhale.

This time, no torment; he’s inside me, a silver spark of electricity crackling through my veins. I cling to the metal bed head, watching my knuckles turn white. Together, we blur in and out of conscious thought, moaning with desire, these sobs of need the only anchor to keep me from drifting away altogether. He grips my dick in one hand, the other on my hip, squeezing both in the perfect rhythm—breathe in, breathe out—before we climax. Together, and yet not, too soon for my wishes.

This is how I know for sure I’m no longer in the dream.

He whispers my name and returns to kissing me. My forearms and thighs are trembling, but the sheets beneath me are soaked in my own cum. Laughing sheepishly, I start to apologise.

He leans over me, gazing down to inspect the mess. “Well, there goes breakfast.” One languid sigh, and then we both burst out giggling. With the sudden movement, he falls out of me. A strange little shiver crosses my skin like the touch of barbed wire. I struggle to sit up.

“You’re bleeding again,” he says from behind me.

Wings erupting through the scars on my back… Perhaps that part was real. “Where from?” I ask, nonchalant.

The answer takes me by surprise. “From me.”

I roll over and sit up. Blood stains the tip of his dick. My blood. Just like the razor’s kiss, all right.

He pulls me into a strong embrace, pressing his hands to either side of my face. “It’s okay,” he tells me. “I promise. We bleed for each other. This is my rose…for you, Raven.”

I break his hold. Those words get into me, deeper than any wound that draws blood. Straight away, he jumps out of bed, dragging me with him, standing close. “Are you afraid?” he asks.

I can feel something trickling slowly down my leg, but I shake my head, defiant. I already made my wish.

“I’m not afraid either,” he says, before his gaze drifts down to my feet. I think I might be leaving little spots on the carpet. “Strange,” he murmurs, “I always thought I would be—or should be.”

Turning aside, he gathers up a sweater and a pair of corduroy overalls, and shimmies into them. Then, with a grunt of effort, he rips the sheets off the bed and bundles them in his arms. He even winks at me before bouncing out the door.

I sneak a glimpse at the alarm clock. It’s barely seven. How the hell can he be so awake, first thing in the morning? Especially after—

“I’m just going down to the laundry,” he tells me. “You might run us a nice hot bath?” He and his smile and my mess vanish as the door slams behind him. All right, then. I stare at the mattress sulkily. It’s not like I can just go back to bed anyhow.

Cursing softly, I totter into the bathroom and twist the hot water tap, swiping a hand towel to wipe off the worst of the mess. Traces of you and I, emotions, thoughts, and actions I once thought impossible. I think I’m starting to learn, with you, that nothing’s impossible. What are you doing to me? Who told you you could love me, leave me feeling these things? I should be broken, dust and ashes at best. But I’m not.

I find myself a pair of black track pants in the other room, and flick on the heater as I go past. I’m just crawling under the curtains to shut the window when I hear voices in the distance, someone calling, “Daddy!”, followed up with a cry of, “Mama!” Straight away, my thoughts are full of Damien; his face in my mind no more than a jigsaw-puzzle, a collage made up of my eyes and everything else blurs of Pegasus—or Juliette, that fey creature from the photo, mama I will never meet. I cover my face. Damien…my son. My son, goddammit.

Your son, too, Peg. You want him here with us, don’t you? Just as badly as I do.

Yeah, that’s what he said. Trust. You know that word now as well as any razor—you gave it to him freely last night and this morning. He’s taken nothing from you, and given you everything.

I need to trust. There’s nothing else.

The circle is almost complete.

Remembering the bath, I close the window, and return to check on the water.

I’ve just started the cold tap running when Pegasus gets in, lingering at the front door, a frown twitching at his eyebrows, playful no longer. So what did I do wrong, this time?

“What’s the matter?” I ask instead, only daring to move nearer once he shuts the door behind him.

As if in answer, he takes a few steps forward and holds out an envelope. No stamp. Unmarked, except for my first name. In a cold voice, he says, “It’s yours.”

I take it from him reluctantly and examine the handwriting. My turn to frown. I recognise this illegible scrawl. No doubt we both do.

Wendy.

He pushes me aside and vanishes into the bathroom. Does he expect me to open it? If I don’t, will it only make things worse? My fingers itch to tear the whole thing to shreds, set fire to the scraps. No stamp, and only a name. That means she delivered it all by herself, which means she was here, near our home—when? Last night? Last night, while he and I were—?

No. I don’t want those thoughts or feelings. Let him be mad, if that’s what he wants. I’m done with anger, and I’ve got bugger all to say to her. I’m not opening this letter. If he wants to read it, fine, he can be my guest. He’s all I ever wanted, anyway. Him, and Damien.

My sigh gets unexpectedly louder as the water stops running. He appears in the doorway, arms folded across his chest. I hate her even more for how she’s made him feel. He fears it—that I’m going back there, either one day in the distant future, or maybe soon. Doesn’t he know? Even when I die, the hell I end up in will be nothing close to what I went through with her.

“What did it say?” he asks in a subdued tone, looking past me.

“Nothing.” With a grimace, I place the obviously unopened envelope on top of the TV set. But when I turn around, he’s standing right behind me. I pull him close, tenderly stroking his cheek.

Slowly, he returns the hug, nuzzling against my neck. “Are you sure?”

I nod, my expression darkening.

“Nothing at all…”

Next Chapter: 14.PEGASUS: Red Letter, White Rose

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