[mature] things we never thought we could be, adna

[bethlehem]

sometimes i wonder, will god ever forgive us for what we've done to each other? B E T H L E H E M then i look around and realize, god left this place a long time ago Finally, that great, dark thing stirs in his chest. The rise she has been trying to bait out of him swells like bile in the column of his throat. His anger is barbed as it wraps its white-knuckled fist his lungs. He struggles to breathe around it as it grows roots around his ribcage. He is not angry at her. No, he is angry at the vibrant marble of a thing that glows at the center of him, radiates heat he can feel in the marrow of his bones. He has known the company of so many women that the memories of each of them have become a blur – one singular memory of violent frenzy – so he knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that the thing sunk like a stone in the pit of his gut is not lust. It is something else entirely. And this is what stokes the smoldering flames of his anger. His muscles quiver with it as she lays her head heavy along the ridge of his spine. If he is still enough, he thinks that he can feel the beat of her heart through her chest with how fiercely it is pressed against his. Or perhaps it is the pulse of his anger as he rails against this marble that festers and sets him ablaze. Because there is such an enormous comfort in the heat and weight of her that everything in him fights it, tooth and nail, spitting mad. The expression does not change. The only indication of the rogue wave that lays him to waste is the way the muscles tremble, the way he grits his teeth so fiercely that the muscle in his jaw pulses, the way he sinks his teeth into the soft flesh of her hip. How long will he let her stay? How long will he keep her?