18. Peris

I’m caught in a mangling dream, each strand wrapped like a web around my consciousness. I’m hyperaware of the heavy weight of my body sunk into the mattress, of the droplet of perspiration trickling down my temple—my ear—where it falls to the pillow below. Of rigid muscles and pulsing veins.

I’m paralyzed.

Memories of Luke still linger, a snake slithering in and around my mind, but the core of sensation has shifted. It’s no longer him on top of me, but…

Abel. His name is one of sick reverence. Heat burns across my palms, fingers sunk deep into the hollows of his bony hips, pinning him in place. I can’t stop blinking, a rapid flutter of lashes in an attempt to morph the little body above me back into what was. To go back to sickening smells. Crushing weight. Searing pain.

Anything but this.

Heat envelops my cock for the first time in years, and I lose everything around me. My ears ring on a silent scream as my vision bleeds black. Heavy pulses ripple inward, constricting my heart as flames engulf.

Muscles contract, my thighs bulging under the strain, but I’m suspended in a place too far to grasp. Damp cotton clings to the skin of my back as I sink in, my blunt nails embedded into my neck. I gasp, unable to breathe as I choke on nothing. Everything. The heat. An inferno.

Asphyxiating me.

It tastes so real, more vivid than any terror I’ve felt before, and I’m clawing at the wall of oblivion, nail beds shredded and dripping crimson. Flesh on flesh, smooth and coarse. Slapping and shifting. Scorching friction.

My hair scrapes against the pillowcase, a resounding echo in my ear. The sharp whistle of breath between my teeth. Toes scraping against the sheets as they curl.

Perfunctory breaths punch out of me in quick succession, bringing awareness to the curve of my fingertips, nearly numb from how deeply they’re buried in satin. More muscles twitch as they rouse from tenebrous depths, tingling against cotton. My ear drums pierce with every pant, breath like hot steam.

I rebel against the sensations, screaming as the hellfire licks outward and down, tingling in my toes before diving in and wrapping around my veins. They pulse with newfound warmth. My limbs lock, tensing in preparation for the onslaught... one that never comes. Only endless ecstasy. Better than anything.

The sting in my eyes accompanies a damp heat on my cheeks as the sound barrier shatters, and I’m flooded with reality.

I don’t want to wake up. I can’t?—

“Peris.”

I gasp.