Chapter 81: Chapter 81

HE'D WANTED it. He'd wanted it, so he'd taken it. Life. A moment of stillness. Forgetfulness. Pleasure, where there was so little. An empty mind--all heat and motion. Oblivion, however temporary. Uncomplicated animal desire.

Except he hadn't expected the animal to... *purr*. A low, rumbling growl somewhere inside him he'd never known existed, and now that he knew, he wanted to shove the thing back into its shadowed den, send it back to its winter sleep. And maybe cut its throat while it slumbered.

He hadn't expected the sweetness. The intimacy. His own failure to back away from either. The refusal to blush at the sounds that had been wrung from him, the eager asking that wound from his throat, raspy and demanding. The willingness to allow those wide hands to guide him into an arrangement of bodies and limbs that wouldn't tear at sutures, and then rock into it all with as close to abandon as he'd ever been.