power could be addictive.
it was like a cigarette between your teeth, noose wrapped about neck tightening, all those breaths that you were never sure if they would be your last — that’s what having him against her mouth felt like. the both of them atomic bombs waiting to capsize, billy with that cancerous grin, an airborne infection with its poison; then morris with those hands capable much more of tearing things apart than piecing them back together again. he tears her apart every night, sinks his teeth into the tender flesh of thigh, neck, wrist anywhere that might bring blooms of bruises across her skin. violent proof of purchase in the crescent purples and reds. some part of her knows that they are horrible for another, slow builds of disaster and burn. it was like looking out over the edge of the titanic knowing that it would sink, knowing that icebergs danger lay more so on what was under the water’s surface than on top.
and billy likes to play her damn games.
she likes to watch him squirm, test that patience – knows the punishments and yet does it every damn time. all bits of defiant in the quiet statements of you can’t break me  — you cant keep me down. morris tries, tries desperately in both fist, money, and seedy affection but she has always been able to see through the cracks. always know when something is just a little bit more about control than it is love and really what could she have expected? from the first moment she’d seen him they’d both felt the settling pull of their beast magnetized. it was more about that then it was them,
yet she loves him anyway. in different ways like skipping stones in glass houses, watching that monster under his skin pace and lick its teeth, feeling the press of him hot and heavy between her legs. ownership claimed only in the ring of handprint she will hide under a jacket with collar the next day. morrison snares her by the ankle, draws her beneath then parts her like the sea, sets it rough and heavy and every bit of way she pretends she doesn’t like but loves. he drowns her under riptides each time.
“mine,” he'd go,
his warm breath climbs up her skin. hands circling her little wrist and keeping them pinned above until she is nothing but splayed out beneath him for the taking. of which, oh lord  — his eyes certainly take and take and take. this is not right, but it doesn’t feel wrong, it doesn’t feel wrong to be loved so deeply that someone might kill a man for you or die for you. she’d died a million times beneath him and then came back to life under his gentle palms. convinced he was some sort of demon at the crossroad every time, beckoning some deal that she’d barter but always end up taking.
"prove it."
