[the reznor's edge]

“How does it make you feel?” he asked. His tone was just shy of demanding, quiet but firm, his voice nearly a whisper. It was a voice that brought gooseflesh and shivers. It was a voice that made her body tighten in all the right places, a voice that made her knees weak, a voice that made her breathless with anticipation, aching for more.

She closed her eyes and let the sounds flow across and through her very being. The melodies crawled under her skin, the sensation like velvet and barbed wire. The harmonies were a silken shriek caressing her ears, vibrating through her skull, destroying her senses and recreating them in his image. If she allowed it, the music could forcibly wreck and rebuild her. She didn’t mind that. It made her feel closer to him.

That was really all she wanted – to be close to him, to share in his genius, to be part of the creative process, perhaps even his muse. Wishful thinking, all of it, but she clung to the hope that she meant something to him.

She was wreathed in sensual counterpoints, drowning in a symphony of desire, floundering on the harmonic waves. The combination made her feel unfettered, yet shackled by her own worship of the creator of this acoustic blanket of shadows, restrained by her longing to be baptized in his fire.

Through it all, she could feel his presence, like a thunderhead of wrath wrapped in pathos and covered with lies. The fact that he was moving closer to her made her breath catch. When his fingertips grazed her shoulders, her reaction was spasmodic. Her skin erupted in chills and a roaring filled her ears, stabbing at the symphony of iniquity already there, warring with it and making love to it all at once. The cacophonous conflict was nothing short of exhilarating.

With eyes still closed, she swallowed her doubts and turned to face him. Raw emotion was carved in her features as the music hit its crescendo. Something inside of her was clawing its way forth, demanding an audience, straining to be noticed. Control was all but lost.

A hiss escaped his lips as her inhibitions were defeated. He gripped her shoulders and pulled her to him, grinding his body into hers. When their lips met, the taste of his mouth was just as she’d always imagined – like warm dark chocolate, smoky, sweet, and sinful. He was a craving that could never be satisfied, no matter how many times she tasted of him.

Skin on skin, they merged and melted together, their bodies a violent, moving sculpture of never-ending ardor and fury. As passion crested the summit and sent them tumbling to the depths, she could feel the world fading away. His presence was dimming, becoming hazy and confused. Desperately, she reached for him, but the vision vanished in a flurry of awakening as another voice assaulted her ears.

“I’m home!” the voice called out.

She frowned, but forced a pleasant expression for the interloper. “In the den!” she answered.

As she embraced her lover in this facade of reality, she smiled slyly to herself, and silently whispered a vow to her imaginary lover, the man whose music had both demolished and reawakened her soul, the man who was the only real love she had ever known.

Our little secret, she promised.