I call him the devil because he makes me want to sin
(and every time he knocks, I can't help but let him in)
He is a predator, but he doesn’t think of himself that way. He prefers to think of himself as an artist; to think of the beauty he creates, crafts, from Fear. It isn't carnage—it is life. He takes the threads of their Fear and weaves a tapestry of majestic proportions, untangling the life that they thought they had to make something new. It is glorious, it is monumental. Pride swells in his chest just thinking of it.
At her question, he smiles, smoothing dangerous angles from his face so it is nothing but handsome, the darkness that surges beneath the surface trapped in the black bruises of his eyes. “Yes. My forest.” Well, technically his father’s as he was the first Krampus, but Bruise didn’t say that yet. For tonight, and with her, the forest was his, and he would treat it as such. It was what he made of it that mattered, after all.
She surprises him by opening the distance and then closing it again, her mouth hovering over the hard muscle beneath his sooty gold skin. She is making this easy; easier than he anticipated. He makes a soft noise in the back of his throat. “You have found someone,” he whispers low, leaning down to whisper into her ear, lips brushing the edge of her. She is beautiful, thankfully. It makes all of this so much easier.
When he moves his gaze to catch her own, he locks on the pale green of them. Instantly, he is transported back to the Mountain, when life had been so new within him; he is back with that mare, the green of her eyes startling before they had rolled into the back of her head, the Fear claiming her as she hit her knees.
His pulse rises in his chest, excitement brewing.
Mine, he thinks. She is mine. Finally.
It takes all of his willpower to not just claim her outright. To remember that art is a process, that it takes time and effort. Instead, he steps closer to her, wraps around her, nose pressing into the almost-gold of her coat. Deliberately, he reaches up to the find the strands of the Fear that he feels so tangibly and plucks his fingers over them, strumming them once. His gaze sharpens on her, wondering how she will react to the slight tug of the Fear. Not enough to feel terror; not enough to warp her reality, to change her perception.
Just the faintest of stirring in her heart.
Would she balk? Ignore it? Lean into it?
He moves from her then, unnatural grace and speed as he walks along one side, curving behind her and then coming up the other; the motions deliberate for him, but, in reality, fast. Appraising her, like an artist who finds himself inheriting a block of marble—something valuable, too valuable to treat crudely. He reaches over, pressing the soot of his lips against her jaw and tasting her. “My name is Bruise.”
