Needful Surrender
His shaft now poised at my entrance, his arm a tight vise around my chest, he tells me once again, his tone guttural and pained, “Stop me.”
But I can’t, and in one powerful thrust, he enters me. His possession of me is swift and merciless. This pounding into me has nothing to do with love. It’s a fuck meant to remind me of who and what I am in his world. That if he wanted to, he could end me as he’s done to countless others.
I let him do this to me. Take me as if he owns me. As if he wants to consume me, destroy everything that I am. I do this because I want him to make me surrender to this desperate need I have for him. Because then it will be his fault, and the guilt of choosing him won’t be so great that the weight of it might crush me. Because if I choose him, that makes me as monstrous as he is.
Only… I am choosing him. I am just as terrible and even more so because I’m the one clinging to him as if he’s life, and I must breathe him in. As if I must allow him to fill my lungs, my veins, my body. My soul.
My core tightens in anticipation of that release it’s been waiting for, and when it finally hits and I scream his name, I feel as if I’ve damned my own. Then he’s there with me, slamming his fury into me too.
Tired and drenched in sweat, we both fall onto the bed, our pants still halfway down our legs and his arms around me. And as I lie there in the silence that ensues, I wonder why God would make the man I love and the man I hate one and the same. Is it a test?
If it is, I have failed.
* * *
“Hola, bonita.” The disembodied voice startles me, and I twist and turn, searching for the source.
But in the denseness of the mist that covers the ground, it’s hard to make out more than shadows.
“I knew I’d see you again.”
“Who’s there?” The mist shifts slightly, and a short distance away, I spot a shadowed figure. “Who are you?” Slowly, I move toward it, narrowing my eyes in an attempt to discern his shape. But as I get closer, I realize it’s not a man at all, but a tall tombstone.
The scent of wet dirt fills the air as my feet stir the ground near the grave. I stop in front of it, trying to read the name of who lies there, but the letters don’t make sense.
“Aurora.”
I spin on my heel at the sound in my ear. A man is standing beside me, tall and beautiful, with soft hazel eyes that watch me with pain and regret.
“Raul?” I reach out to him, but the moment my palm makes contact with his cheek, his face becomes clear to me. His arms come around me and pull me to him, and I come willingly. I nuzzle my face into his chest, finding relief in his warmth and strength. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I love you.”
“Do you?”
My face snaps up at the sound of a much deeper and more sensual voice. It’s not Raul’s gentle gaze that meets mine, but the hard, dark eyes of a falcon. I release the bird as it swipes at me with its talons and step back with my hands in front of me protectively. But when my foot gets caught on a root, I trip and fall hard.
The falcon swoops down on me, his large wings spread wide as he attacks me with his sharp claws and strong beak.
“No!” I scream, and to my surprise, he stops. Slowly, I move my hands from my face and look upon a completely different scene. The hazy landscape is now covered in what seems at first glance to be snow. But when a flake lands on my hand, it dissolves into soot, and I realize the white that surrounds me isn’t cold ice, but hot ash.
Then, in the distance, I see the source. Esteban standing in front of it with a torch in his hand and a vehicle set ablaze with Raul inside.
“No!”