Tethered Romance Part 17

The love I gave was always violent. The love I learned was always full of hatred, jealousy, shame, and so I gave it all right back. I didn't know how to be gentle, how to care, even with Sugai who I loved, I did so in desperation and fits of rage. So I asked her questions.

"Are you immortal?"

Yes.

"Do you feel pain?"

The only thing I feel is fear.

"Do you not even feel happiness?"

I have never experienced happiness to know.

"You have felt fear before, and you can recognize it?"

Yes.

"How perfect."

I had come alive with the intake of the tea, just a taste woke the demons within me and they ran rampant in my mind, begging me to act. One comfort, one luxury was all it took, and I became a slave to the ideas those demons gave me. The fire burned, the tatami was heaven sent, and I wrapped the large fur over my shoulders, letting each piece of clothing fall to the stone floor, stripped away until only my white kimono remained. It hid nothing. The stain of my soul was visible always.

I laid her down on the tatami, as the skin of my knees sunk in, it left patterns against me. The winter cold was rough on the delicate fibres of the rush, but I could be worse, and she could be forgiving. My fingers were steadfast in the closure of her kimono, my muscles aching holding her shoulders off the floor. Her hands searched me, trembling, the way mine searched her. I offered enough that she should expect my intentions in one direction, but I steered them differently. I took only for my greed, watched as she took in return from me to please herself. She was bold, unafraid of the ways I explored to make her bleed, and she matched me, enjoyed me.

I paused only for a breath. She has always spoken too many words. "Seishin." How she loved to say my name. "I have never been loved so thoroughly."

But how dare she. I lifted her shoulder blades from the tatami by the front of her kimono, just enough to force her back into it. I pressed my fist firmly into her chest. The emotion drained from her face, and I could see the fear she recognized crawl upon her, settling over her entire body as she tensed beneath me. I traced the edges of the silk over her eyes, my fingernail grazing her skin softly, tantalizing. Her hands grasped my wrist. I pushed the silk away from her eyes. Her gaze darted to me, looking swiftly back and forth between my eyes, reading me, and I told her with the pictures in my mind what I intended to do. A smile pulled at the corners of my mouth, the demon in me hooking its fingers there.

Tears slipped from her eyes as her hands covered them. She understood what she had seen inside of me, the way I had manipulated the inside of her. "Seishin, no."

"Could you imagine if you had have seen my intentions with you the moment I laid you down?" I had made a God fear me. "Would you have let me do such things to you knowing what I intended to do after?" She sobbed. She had given up. But she dared not look at me. "Could you imagine laying with me each night knowing I was only dreaming up ways to make you hurt?" I wrapped my fingers around the tips of hers, and drew them away from her eyes, forced her to face her only demon. "So this is the only way."

"Blindfold me!" She reached to ball her fingers in the closure of my kimono, lifting her head to press her face into my chest. Her skin warm against mine, I felt the dampness of her face caused by the tears I had forced her to shed. "Seishin." My name came from her voice in a drawn out cry into my body. She was hopeless, but still she begged, as if I somehow had more otherworldly power over her than she did over me. "Don't do this."

I let out my breath from the depths of me, defeated. Smoothing my hand over her hair, I held her against my body as I allowed myself to sink into the tatami in rest. My muscles ached, my body burned, my mind tired. Her body trembled against me, the fear leaking out of every pore, so thickly I could see it running in rivers over the floor. "Do you have no power to stop me? Are you so a victim to my every desire?"

"I accepted you into this shrine. And so now you own me." Tenderness. A softness I had not experienced. An offering. "I can only request, but I can not fight against your desires. If you wish to take my eyes, then you will. I can only beg for you not to."

With both of my hands on her face, I lifted her gaze. My eyes drowned in hers, filled to the brim with a fear like I had never been able to induce in any other creature. I had created so much chaos, shed so much blood, and yet I had never seen such authentic fear.

"Read me well, child. This is the last time you will ever see my face."