Before a Storm

Corbett's stillness breaks. He pulls back just an inch, the darkness of the closet making his pale face a ghostly moon. A pained, almost imperceptible sound catches in his throat. My fingers, resting lightly on his chest, drift lower, tracing the line of buttons on his worn waistcoat, down to the flat plane of his stomach.

I feel the faint, tense heat there, the disciplined architecture of his body holding something at bay. My hand continues its descent, a slow, deliberate path through the wool of his trousers, until my palm finds the hard, distinct ridge of his aroused cock. He lets out a sharp, ragged breath at my touch, but there is no surrender in it, only a kind of brittle tension.

The energy beneath my palm is strange, a coiled potential that feels less like human desire and more like a breath held before a storm. It thrums with a wild, dark frequency that vibrates against my own unnatural senses. This is not just arousal; it is something else entirely, something caged and waiting.

My thumb traces the straining shape of him through the fabric, a slow, deliberate stroke. His entire body goes taut as a bowstring, a tremor running through him that has nothing to do with pleasure and everything to do with a profound, internal struggle.

"You should not," he whispers, the words strained and thin. But he does not move my hand..Ignoring his brittle warning, I ease my hand beneath the waistband of his trousers, my fingers seeking the heated, silken skin beneath. A choked gasp escapes him, but his own hand flies down, not to stop me, but to clamp over my wrist with a strength that is startling.

His grip on my wrist is iron, but the heat beneath my fingers blooms undeniable, a startling vitality that feels out of place in this husk of a man. My thumb finds the slick head of him, and a shudder wracks his frame, a convulsion that feels less like ecstasy and more like a beast fighting its chains.

My fingers move with a slow, deliberate rhythm, and the rigid heat I find there is startling, a fierce vitality that feels out of place in his otherwise sepulchral frame. It pulses against my palm with a vigor that speaks of a hidden, potent energy, something far beyond the years etched into his weary face.

His energy is a deep well, cold and clear and bottomless, and as I draw a subtle thread of it into myself, I feel a potent, ancient vitality surge in response. He does not weaken or falter under the gentle siphon. Instead, his body presses closer against the shelf, a low, resonant sound humming in his chest that belongs to no human throat.

His virility is a roaring river where I expected a parched creek, a potency that calls to the deeper part of me, a siren song that makes my own breath catch. "Corbett," I breathe, "what are you?" I whisper against his mouth, the question a shared secret in the dark. His answer is to crush his lips against mine in a sudden, **** kiss.

It tastes of wild air and sharp iron, a kiss that feels less like an embrace and more like a drowning man reaching for a spar. "Your secret is safe with me," I murmur, my hand moving with a practiced, relentless rhythm, each stroke a claim staked on the strange energy that pulses against my palm.

The sound dies in his throat as my fist closes around the shocking heat and hardness of him, a rough, possessive grip that draws a strangled groan from the depths of his chest. His skin there is fever-warm and impossibly smooth, the heavy, thick length of him pulsing with a rhythm that feels predatory and ancient.

His hands drop from my wrist to fist in the fabric of my borrowed dress, not pulling me closer but anchoring himself as if against a gale. His other hand moves then, a clumsy, frantic search under the hem of my black dress, his knuckles brushing my thigh before his palm finds the damp heat of me. His touch is shockingly cold.

It is a stark contrast to the furnace burning in my hand, and it makes me gasp into his mouth. He rubs the heel of his hand against me, a rough, unsteady motion that is more desperation than skill, yet it sends a jolt of raw, electric need straight through my core. The shared rhythm of our frantic touch shatters.

My lips break from his with a wet smack. "Fuck me," I growl, the command a low and guttural thing dredged from a part of me I rarely let speak. My words, a low command more demon than detective, hang in the camphor-scented dark. The friction between his cold palm and my fevered skin is maddening, a brutal counterpoint to the primal heat I'm coaxing from him.

His hand goes still between my thighs. In the heavy silence, the house seems to lean closer, the air thickening with a watchful pressure. "Stop this," I growl, my voice rough with a hunger that feels sharper than my own. I tighten my grip on him, a deliberate, punishing squeeze. "Enough playing. Fuck me."