cyanideparty3:

Wedding Gifts

It suddenly hurt, very much, to gaze upon her. Any and every part of
her. Especially her left hand, which he’d just adorned with a simple,
shiny gold band that now wreathed her middle finger because it was
simply too big to comfortably and reliably sit upon her ring finger.
Where it traditionally belonged.

And that almost gave him the impulse to laugh.

Tradition.

They’d
never come close to touching the word, much less embodying it. It
hadn’t bothered him much in the beginning because he was committed to
her, and a simple, little piece of paper wasn’t required to prove that.
It wasn’t required to prove anything. But over the last couple of years,
he’d started to wish for and dream of acquiring some of that tradition
almost as much as she had.

He added it to the list. To that ever
growing list of things he’d never been able to give her, of things she’d
had to sacrifice for him time and again. He was still the leader of
this country and he hadn’t even been able to secure a ring that wasn’t
going to ceaselessly threaten to slip from her finger if she wasn’t
careful enough.

They would simply never stop piling on, would they?

Nevertheless,
she seemed more than happy with the offered embellishment. He saw the
way she continued to glance at it, and the way the fingers of her
opposite hand were obsessed with the smooth texture of the hard metal.
Like she was afraid she would forget it was there and feared a moment
might escape where she wasn’t intensely and acutely aware of it. He’d
finally given her what she’d always wanted and she wasn’t about to take
it for granted. Not in the slightest. Not when the end was so close.

But
her happiness even when presented with an ill-fitting ring had only
barbed his pain even further. She was used to him coming up short.

But
regardless of this searing ache that the sight of that ring now
inspired, he couldn’t restrain himself from frequently glancing at it;
and then focusing on it. Obsessively. Something else was being provoked.
The burn within his chest was spreading, moving into other areas of his
body. And it didn’t take long for him to realize that it carried inside
of it the insatiable, uncontrollable, unstoppable hunger of a deranged
forest fire.

For once, he looked to the clock. Hardly twenty minutes had expired since they’d all sat down to dine in celebration.
An absurdly dark joke on all fronts. But there was no point in waiting.
All the games, the pretending, the masquerading, they had all already
evaporated long ago. Time wasn’t a luxury they possessed anymore. Time
promised them nothing. Not even itself.

She suddenly shifted her
weight then, while he was distracted, and he felt her knee rest up
against his beneath the table. And he started, his back straightening,
eyes widening and his teeth snapping together as his thoughts were
shocked into paralysis. As he forgot everything outside of this small
point of contact.

Spontaneous combustion. One second he was
fighting an unsettling heat building in his heart; then the next beat
came and the fire stole its way into his veins, riding on his pulse, and
everything was abruptly being consumed by a fierce need that hadn’t
visited him in quite some time.

It was a move motivated solely by
habit. She’d done it subconsciously. It was second-nature for the two of
them to physically seek one another out when they were seated at the
table, the touches often innocent enough, only very occasionally
flirting with stepping over the line of decency. They no longer thought
about it, it simply happened. Most of the time he couldn’t even recall
the point at which he’d taken a hold of her hand, or when she’d crossed
her ankle over the top of his or pressed the side of her calf up against
him.

But the reaction sparked within his body now was alarming.
It was inexplicably violent. His body had interpreted this touch as
everything beyond innocent. She might as well have slipped her hand
between his thighs, unbuttoned his trousers and slowly run her nails up
the length of his cock. He was so stunned that he momentarily wasn’t
sure she hadn’t done exactly that. The feeling had been far too intense
to have only been internal. Surely.

That blistering ache was
now rapidly concentrating itself just below his waist, pouring in with
abandon. A fierce need that hadn’t visited him in quite some time,
yes–but that certainly hadn’t degraded them to strangers. He still knew
it as well as he’d ever known it. And his body more than welcomed the
unexpected reunion.

He abruptly stood, and all eyes were on him
then–including hers. Especially hers. Her eyes were always on him,
they’d always been on him and only him. She’d only ever had eyes for him
and while that often made more than enough sense, sometimes it felt so
strange and inexplicable because in what way had he given to her more than he’d taken from her? The most he’d been able to give was his word.

And
she’d somehow found enough value in that word to stay. An impressive
act. He had chosen well when he had chosen her. She was the only person
whose loyalty and love he had never, ever doubted. The only person who
had ever made him feel safe. The only person who treasured his name and
never his title.

For a moment, he didn’t know what to say. All
his words were gone. He only stared down at the white table cloth in
silence, noticing for the first time a thin scar in the fabric where
someone had sewn up a small hole

He had to get her away. He had
to get her alone. But the plan hadn’t drawn itself up before his body
had acted on impulse. He couldn’t literally drag her away from the
table, as much as he suddenly wished he could. Old habits died so hard.

But
then the resounding tick of the second hand on the clock creeping its
way forward cut through the dense, expanding haze in his mind. Echoing
in his ears louder than almost anything he’d ever heard before, even as a
soldier sprinting through No Man’s Land. And he was forced back into
that cage he was trapped in, waiting to be discovered and devoured alive
by a pack of barbaric, bloodthirsty beasts.

He found her gaze,
aberrantly gay but bewildered, and he could see that his expression was
only perplexing her further. He gave no thought as to how he looked. He
was focused only on the fact that that menacing, backstabbing hand on
the clock was pushing them into the future and it would continue pushing
them into the future no matter what actions he took.

Time promised them nothing. And he would thieve from it whatever he could without reluctance or regret.

“I
appreciate all your company at such a late hour,” he said, speaking to
the table while his eyes remained fixed on hers. “But my wife and I are
going to retire now.”

He offered her his left hand, preserving
their eye contact because he didn’t want to see the twin band that now
adorned his own ring finger, and she took it without hesitation. He
helped her rise from her chair, then intertwined his fingers with hers
and impatiently dragged her along behind him to her bedroom.

Let them all assume what they would. He was going to steal this last, small piece of tradition while it was still within reach.

As
soon as he pulled her across the threshold, he threw her back up
against the door and slammed it shut with the same motion. A safe,
isolating blanket of darkness was thrown over them as every curve and
every line of his body forced itself flush against hers. His mouth took
hers as she tried to catch her breath, and as she swept her hand out to
find the light switch he caught her wrist and kept it pinned to the
door.

He didn’t want to look at her. He couldn’t. The thought of
never again taking in each dazzling perfection and every charming flaw
her body had to offer him was heartbreaking. But even worse was the icy,
hollowing realization that he was about to utterly destroy every single
one of them. Willingly. As a final directive.

And he knew he
couldn’t have both. There was hardly any beauty left in this world.
Everything of value was dying, if it wasn’t already rotting deep in the
ground. But she was alive and her beauty was alive and he was too
bitterly aware that he was now at the ready to turn it to ashes. He
would set aflame his most precious and treasured piece of art to ensure no one else could ever enjoy it.

His
ownership over her body would outlive him. He would leave nothing to
this world for anyone to find. Nothing but that simple, little piece of
paper. A pair of unmistakable, unassailable, utterly unimpeachable
signatures. Her name would be etched into history under his own and his
alone. That’s what she wanted and so that’s what he would give to her.
His perfectly macabre wedding gift.

He would give to her one
last time before he turned back to only taking and taking and taking
from her. Taking what he wanted so tremendously that he felt all those
strangling threads keeping him terminally bound to this bleak reality
start to loosen and unwind and then fall away.

The only ones
that survived were the ones tying him to her. Tightening. Wrenching him
closer. Still not close enough. He wanted more. More of her, more of her
threads. He wanted to be cocooned in them. Consumed by her predatory
love for him.

He felt her mouth on his neck. Her tongue across his
skin. Her teeth cutting his flesh. He felt her fingernails rake hard
down his chest and he heard his own voice sharpened with hysteria pierce
the darkness. He laid there compliant and submissive as she ripped him
apart. As she made him bleed.

He was going to make her kill him first. Her perfectly macabre wedding gift.