Once We Were Starlight

“No!” I said, even while I pulled my dress up with a single yank, wrapping my legs around his body, pulling him flush against me. My head went woozy as my body caught fire. We both moaned at the contact and Zakai used one thrust of his still-clothed groin to push me backward, my head connecting harshly with the mirror behind us.

Stars burst before my eyes and between my legs. I reached out and pulled his zipper down, freeing his erection, his flesh hot and throbbing in my fist.

He grabbed a handful of hair at the back of my head, holding my face away from his for a moment. Our gazes held, quickened breath mingling. He looked half-crazed and, for a moment, I feared him. But obviously not enough because I slammed my mouth to his, tasting his blood, injuring him for my own pleasure, rather than the satisfaction of his pain.

He grew harder in my hand—hot silken stone—our mouths mating hungrily, tongues dueling as we grabbed at one another, pulling and pushing and fighting and celebrating this unbearable magnetism that seemed born of starlight and flame.

I heard my dress rip but I didn’t care. His shaft stretched my entrance and I cried out with the delicious burn, his hips jolting powerfully as he filled me with one fluid thrust. He moaned deeply, his fingers grasping my hair more tightly. “Oh God, your cunt feels like home,” he whispered. His lewd statement shocked me momentarily, sending a jolt of lust to the spot where we were joined, a rush of hot wetness causing me to meet his moan with one of my own.

He returned his lips to mine and began to move. I came on his second thrust, crying out and grasping at him, my heels digging harshly into the smooth, firm flesh of his ass. It rolled through me, a delicious bliss I hadn’t experienced in so long.

His strokes shook the counter I sat upon, the wood creaking, the entire structure bouncing as he moved. He called my name as he came, his fingers gripping my hair so tightly, some of it ripped from my scalp. I cried out again, this time in pain. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry,” he chanted, slowing. Time returned, slapping into me in a sudden burst of color and solidity. The stars dimmed, the light brightened, and the counter beneath me gave way, both of us crashing to the carpeted floor.

I lay there stunned, Zakai’s seed flowing from my body in a hot gush of warmth. I scrabbled away from him, his wide eyes startled and shiny with tears as he too, struggled to rise from amidst the wreckage.

I came unsteadily to my feet, catching sight of myself in the cracked mirror behind the broken counter where Zakai—the boy who had left me, and the man who had ruined me—had just fucked me senseless a few rooms down from where my fiancé waited to celebrate our impending nuptials. My face crumbled. My dress was ripped and stained with the evidence of our sex. My hair had been pulled from its up-do and spilled crazily around my wide-eyed face, still flushed with pleasure, lips bruised from Zakai’s kisses.

I finally looked the way I felt, and it punctured some flimsy protective barrier inside of me that I sensed had been hanging on by a thread.

We were everything they’d said we were.

Sick.

Unnatural.

Zakai stepped toward me, his expression a mixture of stunned confusion as though neither of us could make sense of what had just occurred. “Karys—”

His phone rang.

His life, his real life, not me, not the terrible mistake we’d just made, bringing the moment into razor-sharp clarity.

As he struggled to pull his phone from his pocket, I turned and fled, my hand shaking as I flipped the lock on the door, racing out into the—thank the heavens—empty hallway, turning not toward the ballroom, but toward the back door where an exit sign glowed red.

He didn’t follow me. I’d have felt it if he had.

Outside, rain came down in sheets, drenching me instantly. I slipped going down the metal steps, holding the ripped bodice of my dress closed with one hand, gripping the handrail with the other.

I ran and ran, down one street and onto another, turning into an alleyway as the rain beat harder, the salt of my everlasting pain mixing with the water as I screamed into the sky, slipping and hurtling forward, falling into a puddle on the ground. There was no one around, the rain having driven everyone inside, if anyone even frequented the seemingly-deserted place where I now lay. My tears turned to crazed laughter and then back to tears. I wailed louder but the sky didn’t care, answering my calls for help only with another torrent of its own.

The sky had a million eyes. It saw everyone’s pain. And it had much more reason to cry.