Page 77 of Creatures Like Us

He glances away, but I seize his jaw and make him look at me.

“Bad,” he says, voice curt. “Yes.”

“Why?”

His mouth tightens. “I just don’t want to, Ash, okay? We can order tools online, and you can pierce me anywhere you want, but we’ll do it here. At home.”

“You can’t stay in here your whole life, you know.”

“Until a few weeks ago, there was no ‘whole life’ to be had.”

I scoff and let go of him. I can’t stay hard in the face of his words. They piss me off and make me anxious. I don’t like it when he says things like that, especially not in that casual tone.I’m brought back to that day he let me go and I sat in the kitchen, thinking he’d left me. That he’d left the world.

It doesn’t seem like he understands how much that day affected me. How much it hurt me. But I don’t know how to make him understand.

My mouth tightens, eyes burning with unshed tears.

“Please.” He takes my arm and fits my hand back to his throat. “Didn’t you want to make me bleed? Please make me bleed, Asher.”

I take a deep breath, pushing back the wave of unbidden grief for what almost happened, what I almost lost, and I try to focus on the here and now. What I have, what I’m given. Noah’s body and his unending trust.

I have to savor it. I can’t let this moment go to waste.

“Well, only if you beg.” I take the knife from where I left it at our side. Noah’s knife. The knife he used to intimidate me with whenever he let me take a bath. “We should clean it.” Disinfect it, more like. My mind is hazy, barely there, but at the same time, it’s just as aware as the edge of the knife, sharp and dangerous. It’s a strange feeling, but a fucking exhilarating one.

“It’s fine,” Noah says.

Fuck, okay?…?I can’t wait to see his insides. I can’t wait to see his eyes widen and his breath hiss out of his mouth as I cut into his flesh?…

“Where do you want it?” I ask.

“Anywhere.”

I trail my fingertips down his torso once more, stopping under his belly button, placing two fingers there.

“How about here?”

“Yes. Please cut me, Ash.”

My mouth drops open. I can barely speak for the thrumming of my heart.

“You want me to mark you?”

Noah nods, eyes closed.

“Want me to make you mine?” I reach over and grab his throat, digging my thumb into his clenched jaw. He relaxes immediately, and he looks straight into my eyes, unflinching.

“Yes. Make me yours, Ash.”

I force myself to take a deep breath. My cock is throbbing between my legs as I trail the knife down his body where my hand was, placing the flat side of the knife on his left nipple, making him gasp from the biting cold. Further and further, I trace the tip of the knife, and finally—with barely enough pressure to scrape the skin—I bring the knife toward the place I indicated, right at the sensitive white flesh below his belly button.

There. There, I want to cut him. There, I want to mark him.

The rush of adrenaline lends itself to a high I haven’t felt in a long time. Finally, I’m not focused on anything else other than this exact moment, so hell-bent on giving Noah and myself the pleasure we crave—the control and the lack of it—and at the same time, I have to make sure I’m not hurting him in a way that can’t be undone, in a way that would truly be dangerous.

It’s my responsibility not to cut him deep enough that he’ll need medical attention. It’s my responsibility, and he trusts me with it. He trusts me, utterly and completely, not to hurt him more than he can endure.

I’ve never felt this high on the rush of power. I don’t think my cock has been harder than this either.