We enter the darkness of his bedroom, the only light streaming in from the door which we came.  He releases one hand from my ass to plant it on the bed, and using his momentum, he hoists both of us toward the middle with a soft thump.  My body bounces a little, and Jacoby gives me a breathtaking grin before he follows me down to continue our kiss.

Every inch of me tingles like little electric pulses are being shocked into my skin.  Reaching for the hem of his shirt, I pull and guide it over his head, dropping it somewhere beside me.  The need to touch, to see his beautiful skin, is too much to bear.  He doesn’t wait long before doing the same with my shirt, tossing it to join his, before leaning back to take me in.

I’m wearing a fuchsia colored bra with a trim of black lace around the edges.  He hasn’t discovered it yet, but I’m wearing the matching thong.  If he looks at me like this in just my bra, I’m going crazy with need to see how he reacts to the entire package.

God, his eyes.  So soft and warm, looking over my face and torso with a deep reverence reserved for worshiping an altar.  Jacoby places his warm, slightly calloused palm against the fragile skin of my throat, his eyes following the movement and heating at whatever he sees there.  There’s no reflection of disgust in his eyes as he peruses the horribly bruised skin beneath his hand.  If I could guess, I’d say he likes what he sees when his hand is on me, his honey colored skin contrasting erotically with my creamy, pale flesh.

Slowly, ever so slowly, his palm begins to move like a soothing balm down my sternum, between my breasts, sweeping and caressing to my naval, across to one side, then the other.  From there, his palm ghosts up my ribcage, across my chest and he repeats the movement again on the other side.

We don’t need words to tell each other how good we feel, our hands speak for us in the language of need, and lust, and sex.  I’m trembling from head to toe from his soft caress, and I lift my hands to his chest; the need to touch him nearly overwhelming me.  His skin is deliciously smooth. The warmth heats my palms as I trace the chiseled valleys and hills of his pectorals, following the crisp sprinkling of hair along his sternum, and down, down to his abs and his little trail of happiness leading below the waistband of his jeans.

“Christ, you’re going to ruin me,” he breathes as I slip a finger into the edge of his jeans in a slow back-and-forth caress.

“Then let me,” I reply as I start to make work of the button.  I get it undone, but before I can unzip the fly, Jacoby captures my hands in his and brings them over my head.

“Hey, I was enjoying that,” I whine, seriously a little miffed at being stopped but curious as to the delay.  I’m more than ready to get this show on the road, if the steady pulse between my thighs is anything to go by.

Jacoby leans down, pressing a deep, wet kiss to my lips, and my thoughts fly out the window when his hands skate down the sides of my torso, where he begins to remove my jeans. He pulls the fabric down my hips before wrenching his mouth away from mine, and a soft whimper rides out my exhale.

“Shh.  I know.  Hang tight, Sweetheart.  I want to see you first.”

Lifting my hips, I help Jacoby shimmy my pants down my legs where he stops to remove my socks before pulling them the rest of the way off.  I can’t help staring at his position beside the bed, shirtless with his jeans halfway undone, looming over me with that sexy sweet look in his eyes.  He could be the Angel of Death here to take me away to the burning lakes of hell, and I’d willingly accept my fate and scramble after him as fast as I possibly could.

His eyes feel like a soft touch as he makes his perusal of my near naked flesh.  The bed dips as he climbs back on, straddling my hips.  He buries his head in my neck just beneath my ear as his hands slowly stroke my skin upward from hip, ribs, shoulders.  Closing my eyes, I sigh.

“Fucking beautiful,” he says softly into my ear before delivering short, sweet kisses to my neck.

I’m lost to sensation, the feel of his hands, of his skin on my skin.  The world has evaporated away.  We are nothing, and we are everything.  This bed and the two of us are all that remain to exist in my world.  Nothing has every felt more right or perfect than the feel of his body cocooning mine.

Which would explain why I didn’t realize what he was doing until it was much too late.

“I want you completely naked for me,” he whispers in my ear, his hands gliding from my shoulders to my wrists.  I feel a sensation of coolness near my pulse point, but before I register what it is, Jacoby is running his lips and tongue up my arm, tracing my bicep, dipping into the sensitive skin of my elbow, slowly nipping and sucking his way up my forearm.

“I’m going to taste every in—,” his sentence ends in a clip of harshly inhaled breathe before his body goes completely tense.  So tense I feel like rock has settled on my body.

“What the fuck is that?” he growls so quietly I almost don’t hear him.  I’m trying to break through the lust induced fog, but Jacoby grabs my hands, sits back on his heels and pulls me up sitting before him.  I’m met with the view of his soft brown hair when he dips his head to inspect my…

Oh, fuck.  Oh, God.  No, no, no.  He’s not supposed to see my wrists.  He’s never supposed to see that.

Panic slithers through my body like the vilest of drug.  It’s a head to toe sensation.  Tremors grab hold of my limbs making my body shake.  My head suddenly feels stuffed with cotton; the room spins.  I can feel the blood draining out of my face the same time my eyes well with tears.

“What is this?” he asks again.

“Jacoby, stop—“

“I asked, what is this?”  He maneuvers my wrists so they’re facing me, but I shut my eyes tightly and shake my head side to side.  I don’t need to see it.  I know what it is, what it looks like, what it feels like.  I don’t need to explain this to anybody, especially not him.

How could I have let this happen?  How could I be so damn stupid?

“Let me go,” I say in a soft, defeated whisper.

“Tatum, answer me.”

“Let me go.  Please, Jacoby, let go,” I beg.

“I need you to look at me, Sweetheart.”

God, his voice is so soft, so soothing, but it’s an illusion.  He’ll never understand the desperate need I feel to release my emotions with the help of the blade.  Why I’m not normal and can’t just vent or cry or scream to make myself feel better when feeling becomes too much to bear.  Why it feels so good to have control over one thing in my life, even if that control is as twisted as mutilating my own flesh and spilling my own blood.

“Let me go.” I try to pull free, but he’s stronger than I am.

“Talk to me.”

“No, let me go!” My voice rises as the panic crests higher within my chest.  It’s consuming me.  I’m treading water, barely keeping my head above the surface, and the more he fights me, the more rapidly I’m beginning to drown from my own fear.

Jacoby leans forward, knocking me back to the bed and pinning my arms on either side of my head.  He puts just enough pressure on my arms to hold me still but not enough to hurt.  Not that his thoughtfulness matters.  I can’t feel anything besides the devouring panic gnawing a hole through my insides.

“Sweetheart—“

“Let go!  Let go!  Please, LET ME GO!” I scream, thrashing my head, twisting my torso, bucking my hips.  Anything to throw him off.  I need to get out of here.  The room is spinning.  His voice is coming at me as if he’s standing at the other end of a tunnel, but I can’t make out the words from the blood roaring in my ears.  My chest heaves as it searches for the oxygen my lungs desperately need, but there isn’t any.  My body is malfunctioning.  Drowning in the panic of my own pain and self-loathing.  A balloon is swelling in my chest.  So tight, so big and heavy, and there’s no more room.