Page 17 of Monster’s Obsessive Hunger
THORRIN
“ T hen make me leave.”
The challenge, whispered from her lips, is a spark thrown into the volatile atmosphere of my soul.
It hangs in the frigid air between us, impossibly brave and catastrophically foolish.
The air here, in my domain, has a taste.
It is the taste of ancient stone, of pine resin, and the faint, metallic tang of blood spilled long ago.
But now, it is overwhelmed by the scent of her.
Not just the clean wool of her clothes, but the living, breathing reality of her—and the sharp, coppery note of blood from her torn feet.
The scent is a physical thing, a hook that lodges deep in my gut, and it is pulling the beast to the surface.
The chaotic storm of red and purple churns, a violent vortex of hunger and a new, possessive desire that is rapidly eclipsing it.
The light radiates a feverish, palpable heat, turning the snow at my feet to slush.
Every instinct honed over a thousand years of solitude screams at me to act.
The predator, a coiled thing of violence in my core, wants to lunge.
It wants to close the distance, to throw her to the snow and stand over her, to show her the foolishness of challenging a creature whose rage can splinter mountains.
It is the instinct of a beast asserting its dominance.
But another part of me, the new, fragile thing that has begun to grow in her presence, wants to flee.
It wants to turn and crash through the forest, to put miles of silent, lonely wilderness between us.
It wants to protect her from the very beast she is so determined to confront.
This new part of me understands that her bravery is a precious, fragile thing, and that the monster in me is the one thing most likely to shatter it.
So I am trapped. Torn between the urge to claim her and the terror of destroying her.
I begin to pace the clearing, a caged thing wearing a trench in the snow.
My claws are fully extended, scraping against the frozen earth with each agitated step.
A growl builds in my chest, a low, continuous rumble of frustration aimed not at myself, but at the impossible, agonizing conflict she has awakened in me.
I am a storm contained in a vessel of bone, and she is standing in the eye of it, daring the winds to tear her apart.
She does not retreat. While I am trapped in the violent currents of my own indecision, she makes a choice.
She begins to walk toward me. My pacing ceases.
I freeze, a statue of bone and disbelief, and watch her approach.
Each step she takes is slow, deliberate.
Her gaze is not fixed on my skull-face, not on the claws that could rip her to shreds, but on the chaotic, swirling light in my chest. She is not walking toward a monster to be slain or survived. She is walking toward a wound.
Her audacity is breathtaking. She closes the distance between us, her small, fragile form moving with a certainty that defies every law of nature.
The predator does not allow the prey to approach.
It is a violation of the ancient dance. Yet I cannot move.
I am transfixed by her courage, by the sheer, suicidal bravery of her advance.
She stops directly in front of me. She is so close now that the air around her hums with the energy of her life, a stark contrast to the dead stillness that is my own.
The storm intensifies, the light churning violently as her proximity overloads my senses.
Then, she raises her hand. It trembles, but her purpose is clear.
She is not reaching for the knife in her pocket.
She is not raising a hand in defense. She is reaching for me .
Her palm comes to rest flat against my ribs, directly over the turbulent, glowing core of my being.
The contact is an explosion. Not of pain, but of pure, unadulterated sensation.
The chaotic, screaming static that is the constant background noise of my curse is suddenly, violently silenced.
For a single, shocking instant, there is only peace.
A profound, absolute quiet inside my own soul.
My body convulses at the shock of it, a violent, involuntary shudder that rattles my very bones.
A snarl rips from my throat torn from the depths of my being.
“Lyssa.”
I am on a razor’s edge. The touch is both a searing agony and a divine balm.
Every instinct I possess is screaming. The predator screams to kill, to tear, to consume the source of this overwhelming feeling.
The new, fragile thing she has awakened in me screams to cherish, to protect, to pull her close and never let her go.
I am being ripped in two, and I can feel my control, my centuries of cold, hard restraint, splintering under the strain.
I have to get away from her. I have to flee before one of the beasts inside me wins.
I am about to pull back, to stumble away into the darkness, when she speaks. Her voice is a soft whisper, but in the charged silence, it is as loud as a thunderclap.
“I trust you,” she says.
The words strike the final, fatal blow to my control.
“Even if I shouldn’t.”
Trust. She offers me trust. Now. When I am at my most monstrous, my most unstable, my most dangerous.
When I am a hair's breadth away from tearing her apart.
It is a gift so reckless, so profound, so utterly undeserved, that it breaks me.
The war inside me ends. The predator and the protector, the hunger and the heart, they do not find balance.
They merge into a single, overwhelming, all-consuming need.
I do not flee. I lunge.
My mouth crashes down on hers, but it is not a kiss.
It is a claiming. A desperate, savage fusion of bone and soft flesh, of death and life.
It is all pressure and the scrape of my fangs against her lips, a desperate attempt to absorb her, to pull her into the hollowness inside me and make her a permanent part of my being.
Her gasp is swallowed by my mouth, and her scent fills my senses, a heady perfume of terror and a desire that rises to meet my own.
My arms come around her, pulling her flush against my skeletal frame, and the feeling of her soft, warm body against mine is the final undoing.
My restraint, the dam I have maintained for centuries, does not just crack. It shatters into dust.