The Quiet Demolition

He was above me. Close enough that the dream blurred at the edges and he stayed sharp. The jaw. The dark hair. Eyes some shade of grey the room made darker. The line of his mouth, a little cruel even at rest. Most beautiful man I had ever seen. And I was dreaming, because men like this didn't exist in my life. My life was grey water and severance envelopes and eviction notices. Cardboard boxes. Apologies to closed doors. A chipped table and wilted salad and a landlord who never once asked if I was okay, only if I had the money. But this was a dream. So I touched his face. Warm. Clean shaven. He smelled like sandalwood and something darker underneath it, and I breathed him in because dreams don't ask permission. My fingers traced along his jaw, slow, testing whether dream-skin felt different from real skin. It didn't. It felt like the only real thing in the room. I pulled him closer. Pressed my lips to his jaw. "So handsome," I said. He had stopped breathing. I felt it. "Did you save me from the wolf?" I asked. He said nothing. Just looked at me like he was deciding something, weighing it like something he already knew he was going to keep. "He smelled terrible," I said. "Old beer. Bad decisions. You smell so much better." I pulled him slightly closer, my arms still locked around his neck like I was afraid the dream would end if I let go. "Go to sleep," he said. Low. Certain. A voice that had never needed to repeat itself. "I don't want to sleep. I want to stay in this." A beat. "I want to play with you." Silence. "You're drunk," he said. "I know exactly what I'm saying." I didn't. Not really. But it was a dream, and in a dream you were allowed to be reckless and unafraid and not the version of yourself who apologized for wanting things. "Trust me. I know." "Trust me," he said back, and something shifted in his voice, low and final, a man laying a claim down quietly, in advance. "I want you sober when we play." Not a no. A debt, collected later. I felt the smile come onto my face before I decided to let it. Slow. Crooked. Entirely outside anything I controlled in real life. I sat up. The room tilted with me. I laughed quietly at myself and steadied with one hand flat on something cool and smooth beneath me, sheets that didn't feel like any sheets I owned. I could feel him watching every inch of the movement and I didn't care, which was new, and a little frightening, even here. I reached for my jacket. I peeled it off slowly, testing how far I could push this, how much of myself I could hand over before the dream corrected me. It didn't correct me. I dropped the jacket somewhere behind me, not bothering to see where it landed. "What have I got to lose," I said. "You'll be gone in the morning." He didn't answer that. He went very still instead, looking at me like something he'd already decided belonged to him and was simply waiting for the paperwork to catch up. I leaned toward him. He met me halfway, and there was nothing tentative in it, nothing that asked first. His mouth on mine wasn't a dream's mouth. Too real. Too warm. Too precise. He tasted like mint laid over something darker, and his hand came up to my jaw, fingers spreading along the line of it like he was mapping something he intended to memorize. He kissed like a man closing a contract. Completely. No clause left unread. I stopped thinking about whether this was real. There was no room left for thinking at all, not with his mouth doing what it was doing and his hand sliding from my jaw down the side of my throat, slow, deliberate, like he had all the time in the world and a very specific use for every second of it. A sound came out of him. Not a growl. Something underneath one, low in his chest, something that didn't belong to anything civilized. His mouth left mine. I made a sound of protest, immediate, embarrassing even in a dream. He didn't stop. He only redirected. His lips found my throat instead, and the first kiss there was almost gentle, which made the second one, lower, harder, feel like a correction. A kiss just below my ear. Then another, lower again, at the place where my pulse was already too loud for him not to feel it against his mouth. I tipped my head back to give him more of me. He took it. His mouth moved along my collarbone with no urgency at all, like urgency was beneath him, like he had already decided the night was his and there was no reason to rush something he owned. Each press of his lips landed and lingered a half second longer than the last, and by the third one I had stopped breathing in any pattern that made sense. My fingers found his shoulder. I held on like it was the only solid thing left. "You're shaking," he said against my skin. Not a question. An observation, filed away like everything else he catalogued. "I'm not," I said. "You are." He didn't ask. He simply leaned over me. With a firm tug, he finished what I had started, easing my jeans down just far enough. I felt the denim slide and catch, then give. It was enough to make the message clear. His palm settled against my waist, warm and steady, holding me against the sheets. "Don't move." I felt the rough graze of his stubble against the sensitive skin of my inner thigh. He inhaled deeply and pressed a wet, open-mouthed kiss high enough to make me gasp. His breath was hot and damp through the thin fabric of my underwear. He took his time marking me and owning me while his hands held my hips steady to stop me from moving away from the intensity. Then, with a rough sound of need, he hooked his fingers into the lace and pulled the final barrier down my legs. He did not wait. He leaned in, and his shoulders forced my thighs wider to make room for himself as he settled between them. The first touch of his tongue was shocking and tore a cry from my lips. He set a ruthless pace, and his mouth moved with expert precision. My hands tangled in his hair, pulling hard but he did not stop. If anything, the pain spurred him on. He gripped the back of my thighs, lifting me slightly to change the angle to give himself deeper access to devour me. The sounds of his pleasure mixed with mine in wet, desperate noises that filled the room as he drove me closer to the edge, completely in control of every gasp and shudder that wracked my body. The room felt impossibly quiet and every heartbeat stretched the silence tighter. The air between us was charged and every small movement carried more weight than words could. He shifted over me and his weight settled carefully and deliberately like he had already measured exactly how much of it to give me. His thumb brushed lightly along my hip before he leaned down again to take my mouth in a kiss that was slow demanding and impossible to mistake for anything gentler than it was. Everything else faded until there was nothing left but his breathing against mine and the certainty that he had no intention of stopping. The darkness came up slowly and gently like water rising. And I was gone.