Why am I here?
The question rattles around my skull, useless. The engine’s low hum is the only answer. My car smells like cigar smoke from a habit I don’t have and the cologne I put on three hours ago, hoping tonight would be different. It isn’t. It’s the same.
She’s on my lap again.
Maya Sterling, in a pale blue dress that’s too thin for the chill, is curled against my chest, sobbing. Her long, curly red hair is a mess against my black shirt. Each shuddering breath she takes presses her body tighter into mine. I can feel the heat of her through the leather of my seat, through my jeans. I can feel every curve of her, the athletic leanness of her gone soft and pliant in this devastation.
I don’t know what she’s crying over this time. A guy. A fight. The hollow echo of her own head. It doesn’t matter. The reason is never the point. The point is this: she’s here, and I’m here, and my hands are hovering over her back like I’m afraid to touch a fire I’ve already been burned by a dozen times.
She trusts me.
The thought is a knife twist. This girl, who spray-paints curses on brick walls and picks fights with men twice her size, who is mean just to see if you’ll flinch, is broken open in my passenger seat. And she came to me. She called, her voice slurred and thick, and I came. I always come.
Her face is buried against my neck now. Her tears are hot and wet on my skin. She smells like cheap vodka and the vanilla perfume she douses herself in, and underneath it, something just her. Something that makes my chest go tight.
“Leo,” she mumbles, the word a damp, broken thing against my collarbone.
I don’t answer. My jaw is clenched so tight it aches. I stare out the windshield at the empty parking lot of the overlook, the city lights a distant, indifferent glitter. I should take her home. Her home, not mine. I should put her in a cab. I should walk away. I know the list. I’ve memorized it.
But she shifts, her hand fisting in the fabric of my shirt, and a fresh sob racks her. It’s a pathetic, puppy-like sound. Vulnerable. And fuck, she’s so pretty. Even like this. Especially like this. The streetlight catches the tear tracks on her pale cheeks, the constellation of freckles across her nose. Her blue eyes are glassy and lost. Her lips, usually twisted in a sneer, are swollen and trembling.
It makes me want to lock her away. The urge is a physical pulse in my hands. To put her somewhere safe, somewhere no one else can see her like this, where she can’t get into trouble, where she can’t leave. To make her mine in a way that all our breakups and makeups have never managed. It’s a stupid, dangerous thought. It’s the thought that always wins.
My resolve cracks. It always does. A slow sigh leaves me, and I let my hands finally settle on her back. One between her shoulder blades, the other low on her spine. She’s so small like this. Fragile. A lie, but one I keep falling for.
She melts into the touch, a full-body shudder of relief. Her crying softens to hiccupping breaths. “You came,” she whispers.
“Yeah.” My voice is low, rough. “I came.”
“I didn’t think you would.” Her fingers uncurl from my shirt, flatten against my chest. I can feel her palm through the cotton. “After last time.”
Last time. She’d thrown a bottle at my head. I still have a faint scar near my temple. I don’t remind her. My thumb moves, a slow circle on her back. The silky material of her dress is cool, but the skin beneath is warm. “Where else would I go?”
It’s the wrong thing to say. It’s the truth. It gives her all the power, and she knows it. She always knows it.
She lifts her head. Her face is inches from mine. Tears cling to her red lashes. Her breath hitches. “I’m a mess.”
“You are.”
“A red flag.”
“The biggest.”
A ghost of a smile touches her mouth. It wrecks me. It always does. “And you’re still here.”
I don’t have an answer for that. Not one that doesn’t sound like a surrender. So I look at her. I take in the devastating beauty of her, the crazy, mean, broken heart of her. My eyes trace the line of her jaw, the curve of her throat. My gaze drops to where the neckline of her dress has slipped, revealing the sharp cut of her collarbone, the top swell of her breast. My mouth goes dry.
Her own eyes are on my face, reading me like she always can. She sees the conflict, the want, the stupid, pleading softness I can never hide from her. Her smile fades, replaced by something darker, hungrier. More aware.
The air in the car changes. The charge that’s always between us, even in the misery, sharpens. It becomes a live wire. Her crying has stopped. Now there’s just the sound of our breathing, out of sync. The hum of the engine. The faint, wet sound as she runs her tongue over her bottom lip.
Her hand on my chest slides up. Her fingers brush the side of my neck. Her touch is electric. A jolt goes straight down my spine, pooling low in my gut. My cock, which had been a distant, ignored ache, stirs insistently against the zipper of my jeans. She has to feel it. She’s sitting right on my lap.
Her eyes lock with mine. Blue on crystal white. She doesn’t look away. “Leo.”
It’s not a sob this time. It’s a command. A question. A promise.
I don't. The word is a cold stone in my throat. My hands, which had been holding her hips with a desperation that felt like prayer, move. I grip her waist and lift. She’s light, all lean muscle and hollow bones, but the act of peeling her off me feels like tearing skin. Her heat leaves my cock, a sudden, shocking cold. A wet sound of separation.
“Leo—?” Her voice is a confused gasp, still thick with tears and want.
I don’t answer. I twist in the driver’s seat, my movements stiff, and I lay her down on the back seat. The leather is cool and slick. She blinks up at me, her blue eyes wide, shocked, the predatory hunger wiped clean. She looks young. She looks lost.
I shrug out of my jacket. The motion is rough. I drape it over her, tucking the edges around her shoulders. The pale blue dress is rucked up around her thighs. I don’t fix it. “You’ll catch a cold,” I say, my voice flat. A statement of fact. Not care.
I turn back to the wheel. I don’t look at her again. My hands are shaking. I grip the steering wheel until my knuckles bleach white. The engine is already running. I put the car in drive. The headlights cut through the dark of the overlook, and I pull onto the road that winds back toward the city.
My heart is pounding in my chest like a fucking trapped bird. A frantic, stupid beat against my ribs. I can smell her on me. Vanilla and vodka and the salt of her tears and the musk of her arousal. It’s on my hands. On my shirt. On my cock, which is still hard and aching, trapped in my jeans, wet at the tip. I feel every pulse of it, a cruel, insistent reminder.
In the rearview mirror, I see her. She’s curled on her side, my jacket pulled up to her chin. She’s staring at the back of my head. Her eyes are huge in the dim light from passing streetlamps.
“You’re taking me home,” she says. It’s not a question.
I don’t respond. I focus on the yellow lines dividing the road.
“My home,” she clarifies, as if I might have forgotten. As if I’ve ever taken her to mine since the second time she left a stranger’s number scribbled on a napkin on my nightstand.
Silence. The hum of tires on asphalt. The soft click of the turn signal.
“You’re pissed.”
I tighten my grip on the wheel. How many times has she cheated on me? Three. Three that I know about. The bartender with the snake tattoos. The guy from her poetry class. The one she met at a club who gave her the cocaine that kept her up for two days straight. Three times I took her back. Three times I let her cry on my lap and tell me she was sorry, she was broken, she didn’t know why she did it.
“Leo.”
How many times has she drunk-called me? Five this month alone. Slurred words, sobbing, cryptic threats about bridges and pills. Five times I found her. In alleys. In strangers’ cars. Once in the fountain downtown, her dress floating around her like a pale lily.
“Talk to me.” Her voice is smaller now. The command is gone.
How many times has she thrown something at me? A phone. A plate. That bottle. How many times have I cleaned up her vomit? Held her hair back? How many times have I lied to my friends, to my family, saying she was better, we were better, it was a rough patch?
The number doesn’t exist. It’s just a blur of damage. A tally of scars.
I don’t answer. I keep driving. The neighborhoods shift from quiet outskirts to the familiar, slightly shabby streets near her apartment. The buildings are close together, painted in faded colors. Graffiti on the dumpsters. Her spray paint, probably. Curses in looping silver letters.
I pull up to the curb. Her building is a narrow three-story walk-up with a broken security door. A single streetlight flickers overhead.
I put the car in park. The engine idles. I stare straight ahead. “Get out.”
No movement from the back seat.
I wait. Ten seconds. Twenty. My jaw aches from clenching.
“Maya. Out.”
“I can’t,” she whispers.
“Why not.”
“I feel sick.”
A fresh wave of anger, hot and sour, rises in my throat. It’s always this. Some new reason. Some new helplessness. I unbuckle my seatbelt with a sharp click and get out. The night air is cool. It does nothing to calm the heat under my skin. I yank open the back passenger door.
She’s lying there, my jacket still wrapped around her, looking up at me with those wrecked, pretty eyes. Her legs are curled. She makes no move to get up.
“Now,” I say.
“I’m serious, Leo. I’m dizzy.”
I lean in. I smell the alcohol on her breath. I see the sluggish dilation of her pupils. She’s not lying. She’s also not trying. A groan of pure frustration tears out of me. I reach in, hook my arms under her shoulders and knees, and lift her out of the car. She’s a dead weight. Her head lolls against my chest. Her arms snake around my neck.
“Knew you’d carry me,” she mumbles into my shirt.
It pisses me off. The calculation in it. The surety. I kick the car door shut and carry her to the building entrance. I have to shift her to dig her keys from the tiny purse still hooked on her wrist. She nuzzles into my neck. Her lips brush my skin. I freeze. Every muscle in my body goes rigid.
“Stop,” I grit out.
She goes still. I get the door open and take the stairs. Her apartment is on the second floor. The hallway smells like weed and old carpet. I balance her against me, get her door open, and carry her inside.
I don’t turn on the main light. The glow from the street filters through the dirty blinds, painting the small living room in stripes of dull orange. It’s a mess. Clothes everywhere. Takeout containers on the coffee table. Empty bottles. The air is stale, tinged with weed and perfume.
I head for the couch, intending to dump her there and leave. But as I bend to lay her down, her arms tighten around my neck. She uses the momentum to roll, pulling me off balance. I stumble, my knee hitting the edge of the couch, and I half-fall on top of her, catching my weight on my arms just in time. We’re a tangle of limbs on the cushions.
Before I can push up, I hear a click. A soft, definitive sound.
My head whips toward the door. The deadbolt is turned. The chain is latched.
She locked it while I was carrying her. The key was in her hand.
I look down at her. She’s beneath me, her red hair fanned out on a cushion, her chest rising and falling quickly. There’s no triumph in her eyes. Just a desperate, determined gleam. “Stay,” she says.
“Unlock the door, Maya.”
“No.”
I push myself up, off her, off the couch. I stand. My body is trembling with adrenaline and unmet need. I go to the door. I rattle the handle. The chain holds firm. The deadbolt is solid. I could break it. I’m strong enough. The wood around the latch is cheap. One good kick.
I don’t.
I turn around. She’s sitting up now, cross-legged on the couch, watching me. My jacket is puddled around her waist. The streetlight catches the side of her face, the track of dried tears, the tremble of her lower lip.
“I’m sorry,” she starts, her voice rushing out in a torrent. “I’m so sorry, Leo. About tonight. About the car. I was stupid. I was scared. I didn’t mean to… I just get so in my head and everything goes dark and you’re the only one who makes it quiet. You’re the only one who sees me and doesn’t run. I know I’m a mess. I know I’m a red flag. I know I hurt you. I don’t know why I do it. I think I’m broken. I think something’s wrong with me. Please. Just talk to me. Just look at me.”
I don’t listen. Not to the words. I’ve heard this script before. The apologies are a record on repeat, the grooves worn deep. Instead, my eyes fix on her mouth. Her pretty, swollen lips forming the practiced pleas. They’re still slightly parted from crying, from wanting me in the car.
Then my gaze drags lower, down the line of her throat.
There, in the dim orange light, just above the collar of her dress, I see them. Two bruises. Small, deliberate. Purple and brown against her pale skin. Hickeys.
They’re not mine.
The anger crystallizes. It goes from a hot rush to a cold, sharp blade in my gut. It wasn’t just a guy. It wasn’t just a fight. Someone had their mouth on her throat. Someone else made her gasp. Someone else left a mark while I was probably at home, staring at my phone, wondering if she was alive.
My vision tunnels. The messy room fades. The sound of her babbling apologies becomes a distant buzz. All I see are those marks. A brand. A claim that isn’t mine.
My hands curl into fists at my sides. The protective instinct, the one that made me carry her upstairs, that made me drape my jacket over her, curdles into something darker. Something possessive and mean.
She sees where I’m looking. Her hand flies to her neck, fingers covering the bruises. Her apology stutters and dies. Her eyes go wide with a different kind of fear. Not fear of being alone. Fear of me.
I look away. I can’t stand the sight of it. I can’t stand the sight of her. I walk to the far side of the small room, my back to her, and stare at a blank wall. My breathing is ragged. My cock is still hard, a painful, humiliating throb against my zipper. The ache is fused with the rage now, inseparable. I want to put my own mark over those bruises. I want to erase them. I want to make her forget anyone else’s name.
And I want to walk out that door and never come back.
The war inside me is silent, total, and devastating. I stand there, in the darkness of her disaster of an apartment, and I let it tear me apart.
The silence in the room is a physical thing. It presses against my eardrums. I stare at the blank wall, the cheap paint cracked and yellowing, and I can feel her eyes on my back. I can smell her perfume over the stale air. I can hear the soft, shaky rhythm of her breathing. It hurts. It hurts a lot. The image of those bruises is burned onto the back of my eyelids. Purple on pale skin. Not mine.
She doesn’t have a thing to say. No more practiced apologies. She knows they don’t work on me anymore. History just repeats itself. Over and over. The first time was fine. Smelling men’s cologne on her collar and never questioning it. Noticing her always on her phone, smiling at a screen that wasn’t me. Letting it slide. Everything. It all piles up behind my ribs until I can’t breathe.
I take a ragged breath. She can probably hear it. The sound of me coming apart.
“Leo…” she says softly. Needily. A broken sound.
I turn around. I don’t mean to. My body does it against my will. She’s still on the couch, my jacket pooled around her hips. Her hand is still clamped over her neck. Her blue eyes are huge in the half-light, swimming with tears she’s too scared to shed now. She looks so young. So fucking lost. The red flag and the wounded bird, all in one devastating package.
“Why do you do this?” I ask. My voice is empty. Exhausted. It’s not even anger anymore. It’s just the hollowed-out shell where my anger used to live.
She doesn’t answer. She just unfolds her legs and stands. She takes a step toward me. Then another. Her movements are slow, deliberate, like she’s approaching a spooked animal. I don’t move. I’m rooted to the spot by my own pathetic hope, the part of me that still wants her to have an answer.
Her hand comes up. It touches my chest, right over my sternum. I almost flinch. Her fingers are so fucking soft. A painter’s fingers, a liar’s fingers. They press against the cotton of my shirt, feeling the frantic beat of my heart underneath.
“I can make the pain go away,” she whispers.
The words don’t make sense. They’re a nonsense phrase, a spell from a broken witch. I stare down at her, confused. Make what pain go away? The pain of her? The only cure for that is leaving, and she’s locked the door.
Before I can question it, before I can even process the dark promise in her eyes, she rises onto her toes and kisses me.
I don’t want to kiss her back. My mind is screaming at me to shove her away, to break the door down, to run. But my body betrays me. It always does. My mouth opens under hers. A groan vibrates in my throat. Her lips are soft and wet and familiar, and they taste like salt and cheap wine and her. My hands come up, gripping her hips through the thin fabric of her dress, pulling her against me. I’m punishing us both.
Then her tongue pushes into my mouth. Not just seeking, but delivering. Something small and hard lands on my tongue. A pill. Bitter and chalky.
I freeze. My eyes fly open.
She pulls back just an inch, her lips still brushing mine. Her gaze holds mine, desperate and pleading. *Swallow*, it says.
Revulsion floods me, cold and sharp. I shove her back, hard. She stumbles, her legs hitting the coffee table, and she lands on it with a crash, scattering empty bottles and takeout containers. She coughs, a hand flying to her throat.
I spit onto her floor. The white, half-dissolved pill lands in the dust. A drug. Of course. She has them lying around everywhere. In drawers. In purses. In pretty little pillboxes like candy. My head already feels strange. Light. Detached. A buzzing starts at the base of my skull.
“What the fuck did you give me?” My words are slurred. The room tilts slightly.
She pushes herself up on the table, rubbing her elbow. She doesn’t look sorry. She looks resigned. “Something to help,” she says, her voice thin. “You’re so tense. You’re in so much pain. I just wanted it to stop.”
Fuck. My head hurts. A pressure builds behind my eyes. The anger, the betrayal, the want—it all starts to blur at the edges, smeared into a warm, confusing haze. The sharp lines of the room soften. The orange streetlight seems to pulse. I rub my eyes, feeling weak. My knees buckle, and I have to brace a hand against the wall.
She giggles. It’s a soft, airy sound. Something cute, if it wasn’t so fucking horrifying. “See?” she whispers. “Better already.”
The world is becoming colourful. The grime on the walls has texture. The sound of a distant siren outside is a ribbon of blue noise. The throb in my cock isn’t a painful humiliation anymore; it’s a warm, insistent pulse, a curiosity. I look at her, really look. Her red hair is a fire in the dim room. Her freckles are constellations. The purple bruises on her neck are just shapes. Interesting shapes.
“Maya,” I say, but my voice is far away.
She slides off the table and comes to me again. This time, I don’t push her away. I can’t remember why I would. Her hands come up to my face. They’re so soft. Cool. She frames my jaw, her thumbs stroking my cheekbones. “There you are,” she murmurs. “My Leo. Always so heavy. Let me carry it for a while.”
She kisses me again. This time, there’s no pill. Just her mouth, open and warm and insistent. And I kiss her back. I sink into it. The drug is a warm river under my skin, washing away the reasons, the history, the other man’s marks. All that’s left is sensation. The silk of her dress under my palms. The heat of her body through it. The sweet, drugged slide of her tongue.
My hands move of their own accord. They slide down her back, over the curve of her ass, and I lift her. She wraps her legs around my waist, her arms locking around my neck. I carry her the few steps to the couch and fall onto it with her in my lap, just like in the car. The position sends a jolt through me—her weight settling right over my aching hardness. A thick, syrupy moan escapes her.
“You feel that?” she breathes against my lips. “You feel how much I want you? It’s only ever been you, Leo. Even when it wasn’t.”
The words are a lie. I know they’re a lie. But in this colourful, weightless world, lies are just different-coloured truths. My mouth leaves hers and travels down her jaw, to her throat. To the bruises. I see them up close. The purple is almost beautiful. I press my lips to one. She gasps, her fingers tangling in my curly hair.
“Yours,” she whimpers. “Make it yours.”
A possessive growl rumbles in my chest. The drug doesn’t erase the dark thing inside me; it sets it free. I open my mouth wider. I suck on the delicate skin, hard. I bite down, just enough to make her cry out. I want to overwrite the other mark. I want to brand her so deep she can never forget whose she is. When I pull back, a new, darker red is blooming over the old purple. Mine.
“Look at me,” I say, my voice rough and unfamiliar.
Her blue eyes flutter open. They’re hazy, dilated, full of worship and fear. I am her addiction, and she is mine, and this is how we ruin each other. My hand fists in the front of her pretty dress. With one sharp tug, I hear fabric tear. The sound is obscenely loud. The dress gives way, baring her chest, her simple lace bra. She isn’t wearing anything underneath it. The sight of her plump, perfect breasts, the peaks hard and pressing against the lace, makes my mouth water.
I lower my head and take one into my mouth through the fabric. The lace is abrasive against my tongue, the heat of her underneath incredible. She arches, a sharp cry tearing from her throat. Her hips grind down against me in a slow, desperate circle. The friction against my trapped cock is agony and ecstasy. I can feel the wet spot growing on my jeans, her heat seeping through the layers.
“Please,” she begs, her voice shattered. “Leo, please. I need you.”
I release her breast, my own breathing ragged. The world is a pleasant, swirling fog, but the need in my gut is a crystal-clear anchor. I stand, lifting her with me, and turn us around. I lay her down on the couch, her torn dress open, her hair a riot of red against the dark cushion. I stand over her, looking down. My heart tattoo pulses on my wrist. I am not gentle. I am not a people pleaser right now. I am hunger.
I unbuckle my belt. The click of the leather is definitive. I unbutton my jeans. I push them and my boxers down just enough to free myself. My cock springs out, thick and flushed and dripping. The air feels cool on the heated skin. Her eyes lock onto it, her lips parting. A string of saliva connects her top and bottom lip.
I kneel on the couch between her legs. I push the torn dress and her underwear up her thighs, baring her completely to the orange light. She’s already soaked. Glossy, pink, open for me. The scent of her arousal, musky and sweet, cuts through the drug haze. It’s the most real thing in the room.
I don’t tease. I don’t prepare her. The animal in me won’t allow it. I grip the base of my cock, guiding the swollen head through her slick folds. She’s so wet it’s a smooth, hot glide. I find her entrance. I press against it. The resistance is a taut, perfect circle.
Her hands fly to my forearms, her nails digging in. “Look at me,” she gasps, echoing my own command. “Look at me when you do it.”
My crystal-white eyes find her blue ones. I see the red flag. I see the broken girl. I see my addiction staring back. I thrust forward, burying myself inside her in one brutal, claiming stroke.
She screams. The sound is pure, unfiltered sensation. Her body convulses around me, a tight, wet fist clamping down. The stretch is immense, the fullness absolute. I bottom out, my hips flush against hers, and I freeze. We are fused. The other man is gone. The world is gone. There is only this heat, this connection, this devastating truth: I am inside her, and I am home, and I am damned.
I stay there, buried to the hilt, letting us both feel it. Letting the drug and the reality and the wrongness of it all swirl together. Her chest heaves. Tears leak from the corners of her eyes, tracking through her freckles. A soft, broken sob escapes her.
“Move,” she pleads, her voice raw. “Please, Leo. Fuck me. Make it real.”
I pull back, almost all the way out, watching her face as she feels the loss. Then I drive back in. Harder. Deeper. A wet, slapping sound fills the small room, punctuated by her sharp cries. I set a punishing rhythm, each thrust a punctuation mark in a sentence of ruin. My hands grip her hips, holding her in place, my fingers surely leaving their own bruises.
The couch creaks in protest. A bottle rolls off the table and shatters on the floor. We don’t care. The colourful world narrows to the point where our bodies meet. To the sweat-slick slide of skin on skin. To the sound of our breathing, ragged and synced. To the building pressure in my balls, the coil tightening in my gut. Her legs lock around my back, her heels digging into my ass, pulling me deeper with every drive.
“I’m gonna…” she gasps, her eyes rolling back. “Leo, I’m gonna…”
Her inner muscles begin to flutter around me, a frantic, rhythmic pulse. It tips me over the edge. The orgasm rips through me, violent and blinding. I shout, a raw, guttural sound, as I empty myself into her, thrusting through the pulses, claiming her in the most primitive way possible. Her own climax follows, milking me, her body bowing off the couch as a silent scream tears from her throat.
I collapse on top of her, spent, the drug and the exertion pulling me toward a black, welcoming void. My face is buried in her neck, against the new mark I made. Our hearts hammer against each other, a frantic, fading drumbeat.
In the silence that follows, the high begins to recede, leaving a cold, hollow clarity in its wake. I am still inside her. I am still in her locked apartment. The other man’s bruises are still there, underneath mine. The pain hasn’t gone away. She just made me too numb to feel it.
“You make me feel like a jerk,” she whispers into the silence. Her voice is a soft, ruined thing, muffled against my shoulder.
I’m still inside her. The world is slowly reassembling itself from shattered, colourful pieces. The orange light from the streetlamp outside isn’t just light; it’s a liquid, honey-thick substance pooling on the floor. The sound of our breathing isn’t just sound; it’s a tangible rope, frayed and heavy, tethering me to this couch, to this girl. “That’s because you are one,” I mumble, the words thick and slurred. My tongue feels like a foreign object in my mouth.
She giggles again, that airy, horrifying sound, and nuzzles into my neck. Her hand comes up, her fingers weaving into my curly blonde hair. She plays with it, gently tugging the damp strands. “Maybe,” she breathes. Her other hand traces idle patterns on my sweat-slick back. “But you’re my favourite.”
All I can feel is the devastating, soft heat of her pussy still wrapped around my spent cock. It’s a faint, persistent pulse, a low-grade hum of connection that the drug amplifies into a symphony. I am hyper-aware of the slight, involuntary clench of her inner muscles every few seconds, a ghost of the climax that wrecked us both. My face is buried between her breasts, the torn lace of her bra scratchy against my cheek. The scent of her skin—sweat, perfume, and the musky, intimate smell of sex—is a fog I’m drowning in.
She likes the gibberish. She likes me like this—pliant, wordless, utterly hers. She tilts my head up and kisses me, so gently it makes my chest ache. Her lips are soft and searching. There’s no hunger in it now, just a slow, drugged exploration. When she pulls back, her blue eyes are half-lidded, the pupils swallowing the irises into black pools. “It’s so hard to leave you,” she murmurs, her thumb stroking my bottom lip. “You’re worse than a cigarette.”
I want to say something. Something sharp. Something true. That she’s a forest fire and I’m the idiot with a gasoline can. But my mouth won’t form the words. All that comes out is a soft, incoherent sound. The cocaine she slipped me is a current under my skin, electric and relentless. I hate being high. I hate the loss of control, the way the edges of the world bleed and warp. But right now, hating it is a distant, intellectual concept. The feeling is everything.
The room breathes. The walls pulse with a slow, rhythmic throb that matches my heartbeat. The shattered glass bottle on the floor isn’t a mess; it’s a constellation of a thousand tiny stars, each shard reflecting the orange light in a dizzying prism. The texture of the couch fabric under my knees is a universe of rough threads, each one a mountain range I can feel with microscopic clarity. My own skin is hypersensitive—the cool air raising goosebumps, the weight of her leg over my hip a profound, comforting pressure. Time isn’t linear. It’s a pool we’re floating in. The past ten minutes and the next ten hours feel equally distant, equally possible.
She moves under me, a slight shift of her hips, and the sensation rockets through my nervous system, bright and shocking. A soft gasp escapes her. “Still so hard,” she whispers, wonder in her voice. She’s right. Even spent, my body hasn’t fully let go. The drug won’t let it. Every sensation is feedback, looping, amplifying.
With a tenderness that fractures me, she reaches for the small, ornate tin on the cluttered coffee table. I watch her hands move. They are graceful, deliberate. She flips it open with a thumbnail. Inside, on a small mirror, are a few neat lines of white powder. The sight is both repulsive and mesmerizing. The powder looks like crushed marble, like something sacred and profane.
She leans over, her red hair curtaining our faces, and snorts a line with a quick, efficient sniff. She sits back up, blinking rapidly, a shiver running through her. A dusting of powder clings to her upper lip. She smiles, a slow, dreamy thing. “My turn,” she slurs, and her meaning is clear. She doesn’t need many external drugs. I’m her drug. But this… this is the ritual. This is how we sync our poison.
She dips her finger, gathers a tiny mound of the powder, and brings it to my nose. Her eyes lock on mine. “Come on, Leo. Stay with me.” It’s an invitation and a command. The part of me that is a people pleaser, the softie that can’t say no to someone he’s close to, is screaming from a locked room far away. The animal, the addict, leans forward. I inhale sharply.
The hit is instantaneous and brutal. It’s not a warm river this time; it’s a lightning strike to the base of my skull. A cold, clarifying shock that sharpens every colour into a razor’s edge. The world doesn’t just become colourful; it becomes *alive*. The grime on the wall has intention. The distant siren is a screaming, red tendril trying to claw its way in. The throb in my cock reignites, not as curiosity, but as a demanding, central fact of the universe.
My head falls back against the couch cushion. I stare at the water-stained ceiling. The stains are maps of forgotten continents. I can see the history of the leak in the intricate, brown patterns. I am everywhere at once. I am the sweat cooling on my skin. I am the ache in my hips from fucking her. I am the chemical burn in my sinuses. I am the devastating, beautiful girl beneath me, whose heart I can feel beating against mine, a frantic bird in a cage of bone.
“There,” Maya sighs, content. She wipes her finger on my chest, leaving a faint, white streak. She then licks her own finger clean, her tongue slow and deliberate. Her eyes never leave mine. In this trippy, hyper-real clarity, I see her completely. The mean girl who spray-paints alleys. The athletic body coiled with restless energy. The freckles like scattered ashes. The blue eyes, now impossibly vivid, holding a depth of loneliness so vast it feels like looking into a cold ocean. She is a red flag stitched together from broken things and bad decisions, and I am the moth perpetually circling her flame.
She shifts again, and this time, she guides me out of her with a soft, wet sound. The loss of connection is a physical pain, a sudden, hollow coldness. But before the emptiness can register, she’s moving, turning us. With a strength that belies her slender frame, she pushes until I’m on my back on the couch and she’s straddling my hips. The torn dress hangs off one shoulder. Her hair is a wild, fiery cascade around her shoulders. She looks like a fallen angel sitting in the wreckage of us.
She looks down at my cock, lying spent and wet against my stomach. A slow smile touches her lips. She reaches for the tin again. My breath hitches. She doesn’t do another line. Instead, she dips two fingers, gathering a small, careful amount of the powder. Her eyes lift to mine, holding my gaze with a terrifying intimacy as she brings her fingers down. Gently, almost reverently, she dusts the cocaine along the length of my shaft.
The sensation is unreal. A thousand pinpricks of cold fire erupt on the hypersensitive skin. I jerk, a strangled sound caught in my throat. It’s agony and ecstasy, a chemical kiss that makes every nerve ending scream. “Shhh,” she soothes, her voice a hypnotic melody. “Feel it.”
Then she lowers her head. Her tongue, warm and wet, follows the path her fingers took. She licks a slow, torturous stripe from base to tip, cleaning the powder away. The contrast is blinding—the icy burn followed by the searing heat of her mouth. The drug amplifies it all, turning a simple act into a sensory avalanche. I can taste it on her tongue when she kisses me again, a bitter, electric tang mixed with her own sweetness.
“I’m her drug,” the thought echoes, clear and cold in the chemical clarity. She gets high on the chaos. On the possession. On the way I come apart for her and put her back together, even when the pieces are all wrong. She inhales the drama, the tears, the rough sex, the broken glass. She breathes me in, and I am the purest, most destructive substance she’s ever found.
Her hands are on my chest, sliding up to frame my face again. Her thumbs stroke the hollows under my eyes. “Your eyes,” she whispers. “They look like ice. Like you can see right through me.”
I can. Right now, I can see every crack, every lie, every desperate need. I see the girl who just wants to be held and taken care of, screaming from inside the mean, aggressive shell. The knowledge is a weight that cracks my soul open. I will be back. Not because I want to be. Because this—this beautiful, terrible, colourful ruin—is where I exist. The high will fade. The clarity will harden into regret. But the addiction is deeper than the drug. It’s in the way her body fits mine. It’s in the trust she only shows when she’s breaking me. It’s in the certain, soul-cracking truth that for her, I am the only fix that ever works, and for me, she is the only sickness I don’t want to cure.
She settles her weight fully onto me, her heat a brand even through the numbness. Outside, the world is moving on in shades of grey. In here, we are a supernova of feeling, burning too bright to last, destined to collapse back into the dark. And I hold her, my hands finding the bruises on her hips—the ones I made—and I know, with a certainty that feels like dying, that I will choose this collapse every single time.
My head hurts.
It’s a deep, drilling pain behind my eyes, a rhythmic throb that matches the pulse of the cold morning light bleeding through the blinds. My mouth is a desert, my tongue a piece of dried leather stuck to the roof. Every muscle in my body feels like it’s been beaten with a sack of doorknobs. I groan, the sound scraping raw in my throat.
God. GOD.
What am I doing?
I try to move, and a sharp, protesting ache shoots through my lower back, my hips. Memory returns in jagged, technicolor shards. The car. The apartment. The lock clicking. Her dress tearing. The chemical burn in my sinuses. The wet, slapping sound of our bodies. Her tongue, cold and then hot, tracing a line of fire up my cock.
Wait. Am I on the floor?
I blink, forcing my eyes to focus. I’m not on the couch. I’m on a rough, scratchy area rug, the fibers digging into my bare shoulder. The fuck—FUCK SHE DRUGGED ME LAST NIGHT!! The realization is a bucket of ice water dumped directly into my brain. I gasp, trying to sit up, but the world tilts violently. Nausea roils in my gut.
Oh, fuck. She’s pretty.
Maya is right beside me, curled on her side facing me, one arm thrown possessively across my chest. She’s asleep. Her long, curly red hair is a tangled mess fanned out over the rug and my arm. Her eyelashes are dark fans against her pale, freckled cheeks. Her lips are slightly parted, soft and pink. In sleep, all the mean, aggressive edges are gone. She looks young. She looks innocent. She looks like a girl who needs to be held.
I want to argue. I want to shove her off me, stand up on shaky legs, and scream. I feel… violated. It’s a hollow, sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. She used me. She slipped a pill into my mouth, she dusted cocaine on my skin, she orchestrated every second of that chaotic, colourful ruin. She used my body like a toy, obsessed with it, and I just… let her. I lie back down, the fight draining out of me as quickly as it came. The anger curdles into a thick, familiar shame.
I want to punch myself. Why do I make these stupid mistakes? Why, why, why??? The questions loop in my aching head, a useless, frantic mantra. I groan against the musty pillow she must have dragged down here, the sound muffled and pathetic. I bring my hands up, my fingers tangling in my own messy, curly blonde hair. I pull, the sharp sting on my scalp a punishment I deserve.
Then, without thinking, I pull the girl I want to push away closer.
My arm slides under her, and I drag her into my chest. She makes a soft, sleepy sound—a whimper—and nuzzles automatically into the hollow of my throat. Her body is warm and pliant, fitting against mine with a terrifying perfection. The violation is still there, a cold stone in my gut. But underneath it, thrumming like a live wire, is the other truth: I liked it. I liked being of use to her. I liked the way she looked at me, like I was the only thing in her world that mattered, even if it was just to get her next fix. The confusion is a black hole, swallowing every coherent thought.
She stirs against me. Her blue eyes flutter open, unfocused and hazy with sleep. They find mine. A slow, drowsy smile touches her lips. “Leo,” she breathes, my name a sigh of pure contentment. Her hand comes up, her fingers tracing the line of my jaw. Her touch is feather-light, but it sends a shockwave through my battered system.
“You drugged me,” I say, my voice a low, gravelly ruin. It’s not an accusation. It’s just a fact. A fact spoken into the space between our mouths.
“I shared with you,” she corrects softly, her thumb stroking my bottom lip. Her eyes are clear now, watching me with that unnerving, total focus. “You were so sad in the car. So cold. I wanted you here with me.”
“I am here,” I whisper. And I am. Trapped on her floor, hungover and coming down, her scent all over my skin, her taste still a ghost in my mouth. More here than I’ve ever been anywhere.
“I know,” she says. And then she kisses me.
It’s nothing like the hungry, desperate kisses from last night. This is slow. Sweet. A gentle press of her soft lips against mine. A question. An apology. A claim. A whimper escapes her, a tiny, needy sound that goes straight to my groin. I like it. A lot. My hand comes up to cup the back of her head, my fingers sinking into the riot of her red curls. I kiss her back, opening my mouth to her, and she melts into me with a shudder.
She’s such a little girl when I touch her like this. When I take the lead. Her aggression dissolves into pliant surrender. Her fingers clutch at my shoulder, holding on like I’m the only solid thing in a spinning world. But I know the truth. Let her take control, let her have her way, and she’s a total freak. A beautiful, chaotic force of nature who’ll use my body until we’re both wrecked. The duality of her cracks me open.
We break the kiss, both of us breathing a little harder. She searches my face, her gaze tracing over my features. “Your head hurts,” she states. It’s not a question.
“Yeah.”
“Mine too.” She smiles, a little rueful. “Worth it.”
She shifts then, moving her body over mine. She straddles my hips, the thin fabric of her panties the only barrier between her heat and my bare skin. My cock, half-hard and sensitive, twitches against her. Her eyes darken. The little girl is fading, the freak peeking through. She sits up, looking down at me, her hair creating a fiery curtain around us. The morning light catches the dust motes floating between us, and for a second, she looks like something holy and damned all at once.
Her hands settle on my chest. She explores the planes of muscle, her touch proprietary. She leans down, her lips brushing the shell of my ear. “You’re so good for me,” she whispers, her voice a low, hypnotic thrum. “You take everything I give you.”
I don’t answer. I can’t. She’s right. I am good for her. I’m her favourite toy. Her most effective drug. The one person who can’t say no when she looks at me with those lonely blue eyes.
She kisses my chest, my collarbone, the pulse point at the base of my throat. Each kiss is a brand. Her hands slide down, over my stomach, and her fingers hook into the waistband of my boxers. She looks up at me, a question in her eyes. A challenge. Last night’s permission doesn’t cover this morning. This is new. This is sober, in the harsh light of day, with the headache and the shame and the knowledge of what we are.
I give a single, almost imperceptible nod.
She pulls my boxers down, freeing my cock. It’s fully hard now, aching and eager despite everything. The cool air makes me hiss. She wraps her hand around me, her grip firm and knowing. She strokes me, once, twice, her eyes locked on mine, watching every flicker of reaction on my face.
“See?” she murmurs, a triumphant, soft smile on her lips. “You like it. You like being mine.”
I do. God help me, I do. The violation is still there, but it’s getting tangled up with the pleasure, twisted into something I can’t separate. The black confusion inside me is fading, not into clarity, but into a different kind of haze. The haze of her attention. The haze of her touch.
She positions herself over me, guiding me to her entrance. She’s still wearing her panties, just a scrap of lace. She shifts, moving the fabric aside. I feel the hot, slick proof of her arousal against the head of my cock. She’s already wet. Ready. She sinks down, taking me inside her with a slow, deliberate roll of her hips.
The feeling is devastating. A tight, velvet heat sheathing me, inch by inch. My breath leaves me in a ragged gasp. Her head falls back, a soft moan escaping her lips. She takes me all, until she’s seated fully in my lap, her body flush against mine. We stay like that, joined, breathing each other’s air. The world outside—the grey morning, the consequences, the other man’s bruises now hidden under my own—ceases to exist.
“You feel that?” she whispers, her forehead resting against mine. “That’s real. That’s the only thing that’s real.”
She begins to move. A slow, grinding rhythm that isn’t about frantic pleasure, but about possession. She’s reclaiming me. Marking me all over again, in the sober light. I can only watch her, my hands finding the bruises on her hips—my bruises—and holding on. Her eyes are open, staring into mine, and in their blue depths, I don’t see the mean girl or the freak. I see the addict. And I see her only source of relief.
I am her addiction. And as she rides me, slow and deep, her whimpers music in the quiet room, I know with a soul-deep certainty that she is mine.