Callum steps into my personal space again stealing the air from my lungs and the thoughts from my mind, he stills my chaos. His touch ignites me, he is going to burn me to ashes and I want him to. I don’t deserve love, not his love, but I want it so badly it hurts me. I only have such a little love to give back.
His hands don’t carry the threat of pain they brought before as he touches his palm over my shoulders and down my arms, causing me to shiver. Broken things can never be whole, but broken people can find another who completes them. In those moments, as he pulls me to his body and I feel his heart beat to the rhythm of mine I know I have at last found mine. His hands explore me, softly with intent but not the intent to hurt me like before. He breathes me in and slowly the princess, the ghost and all the sins of our fathers leave the room, it is only us, all of us the real us are in this moment. I want it to last forever. The little bit of forever that Callum has left. You don’t get forever Shannon, you stole your own happy ever after.
“Shannon, I love you enough to forgive you, I may never forget but I forgive you. I did terrible things to you. I need to admit that I hurt you, I am almost certain at times I raped you and I need you to know I am sorry. I wanted to die. I think that’s why I couldn’t wake up. I didn’t have a reason to, other than you I have nothing to live for. Just please don’t try kill me again, I want to be alive to enjoy every part of you. To feel your love.” He pushes my tears away with his strong thumbs. “I want to take you home with me away from this place and the ghosts.” His lips claim mine and with them my heart, without a doubt in my mind I never hated him, I loved him. I fought so hard against it that I missed it. We are meant to be the monster we have become together; I will never be able to live alone again. “Don’t walk away Shannon, please,” a desperate plea between kisses and hands and touch and fire.
“Never.” Is all I manage to coax from my mouth as Callum moves me to his too small hospital bed. I feel as though I am watching from outside my body as he doesn’t hurt me but worships me. My clothes fall to the floor with his sweat pants and his hands touch every inch of me and mine him. His body isn’t the machine it was before but he is still a big man and his body envelops mine as he hovers above me. There are a million reasons I should stop him and walk away, but I cannot go. I have a new high and it is him. We cannot deny or ignore the absolute raw sexual attraction that was there right from the start, but this is more. As Callum slowly makes love to me in that small bed. I watch the killer in me walk away with his monster and I feel it all I feel every stroke of him inside me. I feel his emotion as he tries to stop himself from being rough and hurting me. I feel my tears welling over my eyelids, I see his green eyes staring into mine as he claims me and my heart. I dig my heels into his thighs trying to pull him closer to make this feeling a part of me forever. I want this. I want this, I want him to consume me. A small part of me warns that no one could ever love me. I am poison. I am unlovable I kill everything that gets close.
I have killed him already so I am free to love him.
Before, all I felt, was the agony and the pain, I only saw this softer Callum once and I missed it in my anger and confusion. I feel every inch of him as he takes me slowly and the torture is so different than before. I don’t black out and miss it all, I feel the way his hands are twisting in my hair his muscles tensing as he thrusts slowly with restraint. I feel his breaths on my neck where he kisses my sensitive skin and I just want more. Something takes us over and we move as one frantic body that cannot give or take enough and just when I feel that I cannot go any longer my body shatters into the orgasm that has been building for so long. I go over the cliff and a million pieces of me are left as Callum goes with me.
He shifts us so that we are spooning, naked on the small bed and I allow myself to drift away back into the moment we just shared, to the possibilities of what may come next. I want to relive it over and over. I want this, I want it forever.
His arms pull close to him, I have never had a place that was truly home, but his arms around me make feel like I have found one at last. “I love you Callum, I am sorry, so so sorry,” I whisper as he holds me close.
I KNOW SHE HAS TRIED to kill me and yet I still love her. I knew it the minute I looked in her eyes when I woke up. She has guilt written on her soul. But we all do. I have killed my whole family and I didn’t feel a thing, but for her, for her I feel it all. It burns like the fires of hell in me. I feel the horrors of what I did to her. I try to ignore it all, her guilt and Art’s words. The saying, that love hurts is a half-truth, love kills.
Images of her broken bruised body are a constant curse in my mind with the madness that I know will always live in me. The cold empty gaze that filled her eyes when she looked at me for months that I kept her trapped is missing now. She could have left me while I was asleep, but she is here by my side and has been every single day. Her eyes are filled with remorse and pity. There is something different about them that I have never seen before I feel her change as if she is becoming someone else right in front of me. I have a little taste of hope that we can just be together and not hurt each other.
I need to let her leave if she wants to, I know it will kill me if she does, but I have to let her choose her path. She needs that control. I want this damn body to heal so I can salvage my business and go home. I long for the laughter of Amya and Lauri and the certainty of my best friend who would listen and tell me what not to do. I miss the sight of Table Mountain looming over the city that I love so dearly and I even miss the surfer locals and the gangsters that I had to work with. I miss home, yet home doesn’t have her. I don’t know if I could go back without her. She is home now.
The truth of it is now that I have what is mine all, I want, is her. I don’t know who I will be without her and it scares me to think I could lose her without ever truly having her.
Even now that she has told me the truth. The words “I tried to kill you,” spilled from her mouth and didn’t touch my heart. All, I heard, was her apology and love, she said love. It is the first time I have heard her say the word and mean it. I saw it glint in her eyes, I saw her heart as she said she tried to kill me, I know she isn’t sorry, just like me she can’t be. She is melting and changing just like I have, our bodies have both been broken, our minds were never whole and we are the monsters that live in nightmares, but together we are becoming something special. I still have a feeling that nothing good can come from our love. It is the wrong kind of love. A little whisper that says “It’s all a lie Callum, love doesn’t exist for people like you.”
As I feel her below me now on this ridiculous small bed, her body moves with grace and I know I have missed out on this feeling. Her mouth opens in gasps and moans only making it harder for me to restrain myself from hurting her. I robbed myself of feeling anything for so long that now that I do it is consuming me, it runs through my veins and sweats through my skin. Passion is something I have never had, passion for her, the cream of her skin is flush with heat from the way we move in a frantic urgency claiming each other. Every thrust marking our souls instead of our bodies with the love that I have only now truly felt. Loving someone who doesn’t return it cannot ever come close to this. To feeling loved. Her body shows me just how deep it runs in her. The love I felt before this world and murder maimed my soul, her returning that love has liberated me from the prison of my madness.
My hands find her perfect breasts as they rise and fall with each thrust she claws to meet pulling me deeper into her perfect body. Her legs are firm around me and her heels dig into my thighs holding me in a death grip as I thrust harder and harder into her pussy that was made just for me. I know her body was made for me the way I fit perfectly in her tight pussy the way her hands claw at my skin and drag along it making it feel as if I am being ripped apart. I can see in her eyes that she is teetering on the edge of her orgasm, she is going to come from the intensity of this insanity that we have allowed ourselves to fall into. I am not far behind and I want to claim her, mak
e her mine, own her, possess her and fucking love her to death. I want this every damn day it will never be enough, she will always be my weakness, what I need. I can feel the tune of Hallelujah playing in my head as my soul is set free from my past and I have the future to look forward to. She broke my throne, I longer want to be the King I want to be her King.
She digs her nails in and screams my name with no regard for the fact we are in a very public hospital room as she falls over the edge with me and I come deep inside the woman who just stole my soul. She is stunning as the sweat beads on her skin and I feel her tighten around my cock taking me with her. Her body flush against mine pulling me closer, that we can become one entity. This was lovemaking, this was soul shattering and I know we are both in pieces that will have to be rebuilt slowly.
She loves me and she will stay. But nothing lasts forever. We all have an expiry date. I know it better than most. I will take all I can get for now. The dread of losing this makes me treasure it more.
I pull her close to me on this little bed and allow myself these moments of pure, untainted happiness before we go face the world that I have created for our monsters to dwell in.
Shannon whispers against my skin in her sugar sweet voice. “I love you Callum, I am sorry, so so sorry.” And I know she means it. We had to break to be whole.
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE, someone was sorry for hurting me. I don’t think I ever had a real apology in my entire life and it feels good. I pull her even closer as she sleeps next to me. Not tied to the bed, not plotting to kill me. Her breath ghosts across my skin, her sweet smell engulfs me and her hair tickles my skin when she moves. My body is connected to her and responds to her closeness with desire and heat that I want to last a lifetime. In her sleep, she is just a scared little girl who was broken by the same fucked up world that broke me. We are monsters of circumstance and I wonder what it was that gave birth to the monster that she carries. I know where mine was born down to the second, I know every action that made it grow into a beast that I could never control.
Her monster is still a mystery to me.
I want to know. I need to know.
I have woken up feeling rested for the first time in many years. Not even after a twenty-month coma did I feel like I had slept. My heart has found its rhythm in her and I could rest even if it were only for one night.
I spin the diamond ring I placed on her finger around as it catches the light filtering into the room shining a kaleidoscope of colours on the ceiling above us. I wonder if I can have it all. A wife, a family and this business. I don’t want her walking around with a bullet waiting for her every single day I don’t want my life to make her a target. I need to make sure she is safe. I cannot let her suffer like Amya and Robin because of who I am. I would do anything for her.
She stirs in my arms and my cock stirs with her, I can’t try and deny the fact that I want her. I need to feel her; I want to be inside her body and mind.
“Good morning Callum,” she speaks without even opening her eyes and her hands slowly start their exploration of my body making me crazy with want. I stay still and let her take what she needs from me this morning. I close my eyes and just feel her touch. There is no chance she hasn’t felt what it is doing to me as my cock grows harder between us and is pressed firmly against her stomach. Her legs are entwined in mine as she ghosts kisses across my chest I have never felt the tenderness of a lover before. Sex was something I only wanted and I took it was never given to me freely. I never allowed anyone to want me before this. I didn’t want to be wanted. I shudder at the abuse I have dished out over the years.
Shannon has changed while I slept, she is still dangerous, she is still a killer, but losing me changed her. It made her feel and let go of some of the hate and she can love me. She won’t love me as I love her that is too much, but she loves me enough to be honest with me. Even about trying to kill me. I will not lie and say that fact does not hurt me because it does. Oh, good God, her hands stop me from thinking at all. She touches me; her body wants mine this morning, and I hold on tight to what I need and let her take this from me. I give her something she needs so badly, control. I roll onto my back allowing her to move over me, to claim me as hers. She kisses me and I want to grab her and throttle the life out of her, but I don’t. I just kiss her back. Her body has healed from my torture and her skin is pale and soft and flawless as she moves slowly down my body. Her sweet lips claiming every inch of my sanity as she kisses and licks a path of torture to my cock that is so hard it hurts. I no longer have the physical strength of an untamed beast I am weaker now. What she is doing to me has me holding back every urge that I have to hurt her. Her mouth slides slowly and torturously over my cock, how she has turned the tables on me, and I want to scream from the feeling of being kept hanging on the knife edge of pleasure and pain. I give my body to her as I battle my mind. Every stroke of her tongue is an assault on my senses. I have never felt the high of a woman wanting to pleasure me. I am fighting to hold back my orgasm with every little moan that escapes her I am closer to letting it all go. At the moment when I cannot hang on anymore, and I see that my hands are squeezing her arms so hard they must hurt. She stops and her eyes look into mine, her smile is playful and filled with lust. She knows exactly what she is doing to me, so do I. I have done it to her over and over without the control that we both show right now. She lifts herself over me, her breasts covered by her wild red hair that is cascading over her shoulders. The way she moves with such controlled grace her sharp red nails dig into my chest as she shoves me down further into the mattress of this stupid little bed. I talk myself into the restraint I need not to just let it all go and take this from her. Her face is close to mine as she leansover my whole body her soft skin just skimming over mine as she kisses me harder than she did before. My hands tangled in her hair as I fight not to pull it. In one fluid movement, she bites my lip and impales herself on my cock causing me to arch my back and moan out loud. “FUCK” There is no way I can hold on any longer, and I pull her hair as I thrust hard into her, and she lights up. Her body responds to the idea that I am losing control; she likes the monster even if it is just a little. She moves slowly only making my body want her more, her hips move up and down in slow tortured circles she is using me for her pleasure. Not me using her for mine, only my pleasure is in hers. A soft glow of pink flushes her skin and my hands find her breast too much of a temptation as a roll her nipple between my fingers causing her to move a little faster. bringing her closer to the release she needs. If the bed were not so small I would flip us over and fuck her senseless but I cannot move or we will fall on the floor, I am at her mercy. It feels fucking fantastic. The way her pussy is tightening around my cock, the glazed lust in her eyes and the way she cannot stop herself from moving faster and harder against me. I know she will come any second, I want her to show me the delight she has taken from me, I want to see her body writhe with passion as she gets what she needs from me. I want to give her this.
Her nails rip into the skin on my chest drawing blood as she arches her spine back showing me a full view of her pleasure contorted face. Her perfect breasts bounce as her pussy strangles my cock with her orgasm. She rides the high as long as she can and as she is about to come down from her ecstatic high when I lose my composure. I cannot stop it, I tried, fuck me I tried, and I grip her throat as I empty myself in her. It does not upset her or ruin it. It makes her fall again. We are a dangerous combination of evil; we speak straight to the desires of our souls. I fucking love her, and she loves me.
The most disastrous thing, either of us could be in, is love.
She collapsed on top of my chest and we just lie there and take the time to accept that we just made love. For the first time in my life, last night and now, the act of sex was attached to an emotion and not just seeking a temperary thrill. I feel like I have been beaten half to death. Love fucking hurts, love will crush you and loving Shannon will kill me.
WE NEVER RETURNED TO the ghos
t house, we just left it. We moved nothing out of it. The doors were locked and we just didn’t return to it. Callum rented an upmarket apartment in the city for us, modern and clean and ghost-free. He still has business in the city, but he couldn’t face the house again. I don’t think I could either.
After he had given himself to me in the hospital, heart and soul gave it to me I haven’t once given him more Phenacetin. I no longer need or want to kill him, I still want to kill - just not him. I know that the damage is already done, I am aware that I have murdered the person I love and the guilt of that overwhelms the love some days. Days like today.
Today we are going to city hall and we are going to get married. No stuffy wedding, no family; we have none. Just us and our personal demons. I fought love for so long and now that I have it I hang on for dear life because I know it has an expiry date. I know Callum will die. I know I will watch him die and that it will be my fault when he does. That is my burden; the price, I pay to love him, is the soul-destroying knowledge that I signed his death certificate myself.
Monochrome My Madness Page 22