"Then do it!" I screamed, twisting in his grasp. "Do something! But don't just stand there pretending you're suffering more than me!"
Something in his expression cracked, a fissure of rage and anguish splitting through the walls he'd so carefully built. Before I could react, he hoisted me over his shoulder like I weighed nothing, and world became upside down.
"What are you doing?" I yelled, pounding against his back.
"Shutting you up," he barked.
I screamed every insult I could think of as he carried me through the hallway, my fists useless against his strength. He kicked open the door to our room and threw me onto the bed, the impact stealing the breath from my lungs.
"You don't get it, do you?" His voice was a snarl, his chest heaving as he crawled over me and I paned backing away. "Think you can provoke me and walk away? No one gets to crawl under my skin like you do, Fenochka."
I sat up, grabbing his collar and shaking him with everything I had left. "Then let me!" I screamed, tears burning hot trails down my cheeks. "Let me go! If I'm a curse, break me!"
His hands shot to my wrists, yanking them free, and he pinned me down, his weight pinning me in place. His breath was a storm, hot and heavy, his voice a dangerous whisper. "You want me to break you? Haven't I done enough?"
I trembled beneath him. "You can't break what's already shattered," I spat, as more tears run down.
He stilled but his hold only became more punishing.
"You'll never understand," he growled. "What it's like to crave something that's killing you. To want what you can't have, because it'll destroy you. And still-still-you can't stop."
I clawed at his back, my nails biting into his skin as I matched his fury with my own. "Then stop lying to yourself!" I cried. "Admit it-you hate yourself."
His body tensed, his grip tightening almost painfully. For a moment, I thought he might break. But instead, he buried his face in the crook of my neck.
"I wish I could hate you," he admitted. "It would be easier than this."
I couldn't stop the tears from falling, couldn't silence the scream building in my chest. My mind was a whirlwind, each thought crashing into the next like relentless waves. Why was I not enough? Why did he pull me close only to push me away?
"You don't see me!" I sobbed, clutching at the fragments of my self-respect. My voice broke like a fragile melody. "You don't… touch me the way I need to be touched."
His jaw tightened, and he looked at me then-not just a glance, but the kind of look that pierced straight through to my soul. His eyes, dark and fathomless, burned with a fire that could ignite worlds, and yet they carried the weight of a man drowning.
He leaned closer, his broad frame completely towering over me. "You are all I see, ptichka. All I breathe and all I bleed for. Tell me how to touch you, and I'll do that. But don't…" His eyes moved to my lips and he took a sharp breath. And when his eyes lifted, I saw my reflections in them. "Don't tell me to let you go. I don't… I don't know how I'll survive, ptichka."
I shook my head, fresh tears spilling down my cheeks, my voice trembling with the pain of a thousand unsaid words. "Then why does it feel like I'm invisible to you? Why do I feel like I'm screaming into the void?"
His hands found my face, rough palms cradling me with a tenderness that contradicted the storm in his eyes. "Because I'm terrified of what I'll do to you," he whispered. His forehead pressed against mine, and I could feel his ragged breaths, heavier than the last. "I have ruined you, and that have ruined me."
"You don't get to decide that!" I cried, slamming my fists weakly against his chest. "You don't get to break me and then act like you're saving me. You don't get to ruin me and call it salvation!"
His eyes flickered with something dark. "I don't just ruin," he said softly, silk wrapped around a blade. "I obliterate."
I hated him in that moment. Hated the way he could shatter me with a single word, a single touch. Hated the way his beauty was a curse-a face sculpted with sharp lines and sinful perfection, a body that moved with lethal grace. He was a devil masquerading as a man, and I was the fool who kept dancing with fire.
He's going to destroy you, my conscience whispered, but I ignored it. I always ignored it.
"Then destroy me," I whispered, my voice trembling, barely audible. "Because living this way is worse than death."
He groaned and for the first time, I saw the cracks in his armour. His fingers tightened on my skin, and his lips hovered over mine, a whisper away from sin.
"Don't say that," he rasped. "Don't give me permission to take what's already mine."
"You already have," I break. "You've had me from the moment you looked at me, and you know it. You've owned every piece of me-even the pieces you broke."
His eyes softened for a fleeting second, vulnerability flickering in the darkness like a candle in the wind. But it was gone just as quickly, replaced by the unyielding steel of a man who had forgotten how to feel.
"You're the light I can never touch, the salvation I don't deserve. And I hate you for it. I hate how much I need you."
I sobbed harder, my knees threatening to give out. He caught me, his arms like chains, both protective and possessive. His lips brushed against my ear, his voice a dark promise. "Then take me," I whispered, broken and raw. "Take everything, because I don't know if I'd survive this pain."
Lips crashed against mine. It wasn't gentle or sweet-it was a war, a declaration, a prayer everything moulded in between. And as the world around us burned, I realized something devastating.
This wasn't love. It was madness. A kind that now flowed in my veins too. My poison and my cure.
More tears streamed down my face even as I kissed him back. And I didn't care if I die from the taste of him.