“Fuck. You feel so goddamn perfect.” The ungodly obscenities and coarse grunts she works from me rise above the rain. The explicit rock of her hips is maddening, my legs strained to keep us held against the tree, the bark tearing at my back.

I trail my lips across her heated skin, scrape my teeth over the bites I’ve branded there, the heady, consuming taste of her blood still lingering on my tongue. A torn sound catches in her throat as she works her pelvis in desperate undulations to speed my thrusts, her core pulsing tighter around my cock as she grinds lewdly against me in demand for more friction.

Every gritty, abrasive rub of dirt between our bodies demands more—our flesh striking together over and over to set us aflame.

As she arches her back to ride my cock, I groan long and hard at the salacious sight as feral lust threatens to unhinge me. I circle her wrist and drag her palm to my mouth to taste the purest hit of her, becoming deliriously ruined, before I push her hair back to capture her face, driving my cock deeper, harder, just to feast on her throaty cries.

“Goddamn, you’re a vision. My vision,” I say, my tone guttural, my words punctuated by each unrestrained thrust.

The debased way in which we fuck is divine only to us, and I revel in her sin and sanctity. Reaching a higher plane within her. Covered in mud and blood, sweat and rain, a debauchery that would invoke the god himself.

She bites into her lip to draw a bead of red as her inner walls clench around me, daring to hurl us both over the edge.

“Hold on to me.” I push off the tree, my entire body rebelling against the desire to take her back down to the mud and fuck her like the depraved demon within craves.

“Kallum…ah…I’m close—” Halen breaks off, her climax denied.

“Not yet.”

She glances over her shoulder to see the reserve of fresh water. “Why⁠—?”

“Because I want to drown in you.”

As we reach the edge, I fight free of my boots and soaked pants, keeping Halen held to me with one arm. I wade in, and the cool temperature elicits a delicious shiver from her.

Still deep inside her, I submerge us beneath the surface. Her legs tangle around my waist as her fingers lightly trace the scratches along my back, her touch more soothing than the balm of chilly water.

Hands fastened to her hips, I dip her backward, rewarded with the alluring sight of her arched body, her breasts peaked above the glassy surface. Temptation thunders through me, and I caress her chest, hand dipping between the valley of her breasts as I clear the mud away.

As I bring her forward, her hair wet and smoothed back, so fucking sexy, I’m lost to her.

“I could…” she whispers over my lips. Just a hint, a glimpse of a future where she could let herself fall.

And it’s enough to destroy me.

“I’ll wait.” I cage my arms around her and sink inside her so deeply, it tears the sweetest cry from her in response. I’m there to capture that sound, kissing her with the fiery yearning blistering my soul.

As I pull back, I say, “I’ll wait, but I need you to fight, to want to live, Halen. I have to serve the rest of my time, and I can’t do that unless I know you’re going to be there when I get out.”

I watch the hard swallow drag down her slender throat as the fall of rain ripples the water around us. “I’ll be there,” she says.

Her movements slow and tender, the gentle rise and fall of her body guides us into a slow-burn pace that tears at the last remaining shreds of my sanity. I use the momentum to thrust deeper as I bring her hips down, driving inside her as the waves lap over our bodies, washing away the dirt.

I find her eyes. “Hold your breath, sweetness.”

Then I take her under.

Completely immersed in the tranquil water, I wrap my arms across her back and cup her shoulders, bringing her down against me as I seal my mouth to hers.

I hold her below, drinking the last dregs of air right from her lips. My chest burns from the pressure. The lack of air and build of the climax is an erotic combination. I glide my palm down the backside of her thigh and pull her harder against me, the water slowing every movement, setting an excruciating but arousing pace.

I’ve never made love before—not like this. With Halen, every touch is addictive, every kiss electrifying. I hold us underwater until we’re both deprived of oxygen. Her eyes flash open as the impulse to fight for air grips her.

I kiss her with the desperation searing my lungs.

It’s not that I don’t want to breathe without her—it’s that I can’t. The crushing pain in my chest is how I’ve felt every day waiting for her, and I aim to make Halen need me with the same desperation that she needs air, the way I need her.

And as I feel her contract around me, her sweet moan breathed into my mouth, breathed through me, I grind against her clit and thrust deep, denying her that vital oxygen her organs crave. I’m fucking ruined as she begins to shatter.

It’s pure catharsis while feeding our monsters, sating our darkest cravings, reaching for that elusive taste of ecstasy while the water cleanses the filth.

We burst above the water, gasping to fill our aching lungs, and her shattering orgasm grips me so fucking hard, I release deep inside her, clinging to her the way she clings to me, obscenities falling fierce between us.

She buries her face in the crevice of my neck as she pulls in air, her body still locked around mine. Her hand cups the back of my neck. “You’re the only one,” she whispers.

In the aftermath of our lovemaking, I’m the one shaking.

The architect of chaos magick wrote: The discovery of one’s true will or real nature may be difficult and fraught with danger, since a false identification leads to obsession and madness.

When the chaos magician attempts an extreme metamorphosis, he cannot deceive himself, no matter how dark the soul he encounters.

For her, my muse, my sweetest epiphany, I strove to alter my nature, to be what she needed.

But she’s the seer. I only exist when observed by her. My nature was never mine to determine.

Man. God. Devil.

The choice has always belonged to her.

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14

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DARKER SIDE

Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. Let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster.

CARL JUNG

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HALEN

If you fall far enough into the void, there is no longer an up or down. It’s the loss of equilibrium that impairs us. We become trapped in the darkness, suspended in the shadow.

It’s not the falling part that scares me.

It’s the never coming up.

This dark silhouette of our psyche has different names, such as the repressed self, the alter ego, the id. As we delve below, we tend to describe our confrontation with our darker side metaphorically: Journey to the underworld. Overcoming our demons. Dark night of the soul. Or my personal favorite: Wrestling with our devil.

Which explains how these dark aspects of ourselves can morph into complexes.

Essentially, complexes are splinter psyches often caused by trauma or emotional shock. Complexes can inhibit our purpose and even our memory. When one is overpowered by a complex, it’s referred to as archetypal possession.

Before Jungian psychology achieved recognition, Robert Louis Stevenson penned a story about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, carving a figurative scalpel through the psyche as the author wrote: man is not one but truly two.