Page 17 of The Bleeding Woods

I yearn to bask in her sweet oblivion. She is the epitome of all things beautiful and corroded.

Our veins belong entangled, hearts beating against the tides of this world.

We are damned, accursed malignancies on the face of a species too pristine for such darkness.

We are monsters, and monsters are feared by all but their own.

She may not know it yet, but our destinies have converged into one.

I cannot allow her to leave. I will not.

She’s been in flesh for far too long, though. I’ll have to convince it as thoroughly as I’ve convinced her mind.

As I take her lithe body into my hands, I feel as though I am touching something sacred.

She stares at me, her eyes like moons eclipsed by the earth.

They are rose red and hazy at the hands of my influence.

Drowning this deeply beneath the waves of my sway, she can only give me an expression as dazed as it is darling.

Her mind is vulnerable, and it has fallen into the best possible hands.

“I will not hurt you,” I purr into her ear, and I mean it. I will not hurt her. I will never hurt her.

She shivers. The tiny hairs lining her human encasing stand at attention, exhilarated by the nerves beneath.

I trace a hand down the length of her spine, such a powerful column of bone suppressed into fragility.

A fluttering overtakes my chest, reminding me of one of the many things solitude has stolen from me.

I have caressed too many corpses. I’ve felt cold, smooth, lifeless flesh alongside the weight of true power.

I’ve also run my fingers over living, trembling bodies while they still had enough sense to feel fear.

All of them carried the same flavor of human frailty, the same pathetic stench of normalcy.

I’ve touched cool magazine pages and textured paintings beneath Dr. Hemlock’s watchful gaze.

“Which do you prefer?” she’d ask. “Men, women, or both?” My take on intimacy was of particular interest to my creators.

It’s so instinctual to the human species; they’re practically designed for desire.

I never found myself taken with the shimmering models shown to me.

I’d sit beneath EHKI cameras and self-pleasure at their command.

They got their readings, but I got . . .

nothing. I felt nothing, but in truth I wanted to.

Yet again, Clara is the answer to desires I hardly bothered to dwell on. She’s neither a corpse nor a magazine model. Clara is a beautiful monster who mirrors me. Touching her feels like communing with the same wretched stardust.

“Be still for me,” I command.

She freezes, compelled by every silvery lilt in my voice. I let my face descend toward her delicate neck, then pepper it with featherlight kisses. The plushness of my lips meets the soft surface of her skin. It is warm. I am cold. When we collide, we create nimbostratus clouds of chaos.

I have known hunger, sadness, longing, and the zest of sadism acted upon.

I’ve known bloody joy, hollow numbness, and unbridled rage.

But this . . . this is new. This burns through my body like moths ignited.

I am the inferno that illuminates the brimstone gates of the underworld.

She is the dark goddess hidden behind them.

I let my kisses descend as my hands take to further exploration.

They roam her curves. She stays perfectly pliant.

Perfectly still. The laugh that erupts from my mouth is like bubbling effervescence, dancing with the sound of skin on skin.

Her silhouette is calligraphy, her body a succession of sweeping curls spelling out my deepest desires.

The more I touch her, the more of her I want to touch.

“Jasper.”

When she whispers my name, I am soaring. I am making love with light.

My lips cross the bridge of her collarbone and climb the slope connecting it to her earlobe.

This close to her ear, I am able to send a note of pure aural intoxication into her mind.

It gets caught between her brain waves, between the peaks and valleys of her alphas and thetas.

My will becomes an idea that originated within her own imagination, a desire as authentic and unwavering as mine.

Her knees buckle, and when she falls, I catch her in my arms and in a kiss. A kiss. My very first.

Her lips are as soft as silk and as sweet as peonies at the start of summertime.

This connection is collaborative. It is play.

I set the pace, gentle and fluid as a ballad.

She moves her mouth to the rhythm of mine, singing with shortened breaths.

She is the moon above. She is starlight dancing on a rippling sea.

She is every fallen flower petal spread on every ancient grave.

This kiss, this evanescent moment that makes eternity worthwhile, awakens me to the only reason anyone fights to see another day.

Love.

My love. Our love.

I used to abhor the nerve endings and receptors exclusive to human flesh. I never wanted them activated for Hemlock’s camcorders and statistical charts. I’m not with Hemlock, though. I’m with Clara; I’m safe with Clara. I’m safe to desire, desire, desire.

She releases a moan, a plea for oxygen, and I untangle my tongue from hers.

Hers. Her. The great and glorious her. She gives me her gaze, those butterfly-wing lashes lifting to reveal two balls of crystal infused with red.

I ease her back to standing, my hands unexpectedly shy.

One hovers by her waist, the other at her shoulder blades.

Suddenly, she’s too delicate for this world, too precious for my starved, savage fingertips.

“Are you all right?” I murmur.

She nods as though she has a choice in the matter.

I have made sure to keep her more than all right.

Under my influence, her mind is a lukewarm quarry pond of fish swimming drunkenly through streams of seaweed.

Here, she is safe from all the heartache, protected from the hauntings and hardships of the world. With me, she has found a home.

Grayson could never compare, what with his childish flirtations and stolen swipes of the skin.

You are much more to me, he’d said. The nerve.

It’s pitiful how such a creature, such a human, could assume himself capable of the depth to which I care for my Clara.

We are on an entirely different frequency, and I will ensure she knows it.

The inferno in me has grown. It is no longer a match lit by our friction.

It is a blaze doused in the acrid acidity of Grayson’s face.

My hands fall away from Clara’s frame, stiffening to support my telepathic summon to the forest. Vines of emerald green tangle around tendrils of roots risen from the earth.

They coil around Clara’s legs, locking them together.

She gasps, so I touch my pointer finger to her parted lips.

“Still. Be still.”

Her smile is a sleepy sunrise as she acquiesces without further protest. The roots round the swell of her hips, then rise to the narrow center of her waist. Through our psychometric link, my nerves have become one with the nerves of the forest. Now I have many ways to touch, every root a receptor, every leaf a taste bud.

“J-Jasper,” she practically whimpers. Once again, I am entwined with her essence, aglow from within, and airborne all the same.

The spirals of wood have reached the plush, tender flesh of her breasts, gently twined around each.

In her human form, she has many sensitivities to be investigated.

Many vulnerabilities. I allow the roots to stretch higher, skimming lightly over her collarbone before arriving at her neck.

The final ringlet finds a home there, and with a flex of my fist, it tightens enough to silence her pleas with pleasure.

I move in close enough to inhale her exhales. My pupils become a lunar eclipse framed by a whirlpool of shooting stars. Our connection is stronger than it’s ever been, our thoughts like tulips sprung from the same bulb. My order is indistinguishable from her organic thought.

“You are mine now, Clara. Not his. Mine.”

She nods to the best of her ability, but her eyelids droop.

This must be . . . a lot for her. She’s lived her life conditioned as a human, and with so much of that mysterious medication dulling her senses, she is completely and utterly defenseless.

Neurally unfortified. Helplessly hypnotized.

The poor, wonderful thing. I cannot help but let my lips twist into a crooked curve of fondness.

“Good girl. Now, sleep, little love. Tomorrow, I’ll get to dealing with the others, and you . . . you will come to me again. Understood?”

Another nod, this one more relaxed and bleary-eyed than the last. Given silent permission, she dips her toes into the black waters of sleep, slipping away with the current to float in an ocean of sweet dreams. I release her slackened body from its cage and return her to where she belongs, dangling from the inverted arches of my arms.

It takes every ounce of strength in me to bring her back to the hideous vehicle.

However, arrangements must be made, and in the interim, I need her safe.

I place her in the seat from which she came, beside the man of unparalleled inadequacy and offensive blondness.

As the door closes, becoming a barrier between us, a scythe passes down the center of my heart, to which she now holds a half.

When I gaze through the thick sheet of glass, however, I see more than just my Clara’s beautiful face.

I see two bright-blue orbs gazing back at me.

They are saucers embedded in a body shaking hard enough to make its eyelashes quiver.

The youngest of the group, Joey, watches me from beneath a mop of hair identical to his brother’s.

I’ve done my best to stay out of sight with the others, but this little thorn just won’t keep away from my side.

We are at an impasse, he and I. Opponents in anticipation of the other’s surrender.

Unfortunately for him, his pathetic excuse for a challenge only makes me hungry for more.

I flash a smile that bounces the dawn’s first beam of light.

Then I let my human form loosen, stretching my neck, only my neck, to around the same length of his height.

Skin and muscle tear like split seams, the bone beneath becoming boiled cartilage.

His expression caves, eyes narrowed by the tears welling within them.

I trust my message has been received.

Just try, little nuisance. Just try to take her from me.