ততততত

𝐈 𝐌 𝐎 𝐆 𝐄 𝐍

Goodbye should've meant goodbye.

He should be over the hills, and I should be ridding the thief from my bloodstream as if he were poison. He infects me, weakens every defense that protects me from fracturing into glass shards. Now, all I am is a vessel he can pour his heart into. With every kiss he lays against my skin—my lips, my cheeks, my throat, my shoulders and collar—he builds a monument for himself. I am the altar, and he is here to worship.

We find ourselves tangled on the quilts of my bed: our safe haven. I lay beneath him as he rests on his knees, sitting up and stripping from his shirt before I can request. He's a tease, playing every card in his goddamn book to make sure I never forget who Tobin Parias is. He's a thief. A heartbreaker. A man fighting to save his bloodline.

Tonight, Tobin is a lover.

I gulp, eyes dancing over those muscles and scars etched into his physique. He's a sculpture of everything masculine, a god to be bowed before in full reverence. Every dip and ridge found on those tanned planes speak of his creator's mastery. He's chiseled in all the right places, a diamond cut from the rough. My wandering gaze falls lower to beneath the horizon of his pants. I long to be the one to remove those trousers, to feast my eyes upon his erected length that throbs in need of a release.

Gods, what is wrong with me? My mind rarely trails into the territory of broken chastity, and yet I wait at its door.

No man will ever compare to the view he gives me now.

He begins to descend for another kiss when I stop him. "Wait."

Tobin sits back up, his face twisting into this cute scowl. "Princess?"

Instead of answering, I observe my thief until this image of him becomes embedded in the depths of my memory. When I sleep, I want to see this: an image of a vulnerable Tobin. I want to remember that once upon a time, I fell in love with a boy who stole my heart. A petty predictable thief dressed in beautiful scars.

I reach up and clutch the pendant strung around his neck: a crescent moon, a symbol of the night that brought us together. With one tug, Tobin falls against me, and I drown in his kiss. Soft cautious kisses share between us, testing the waters of what boundaries we wish to cross.

This is the last night. Our final nightfall.

I want everything from him, and yet I'm terrified to serve my heart to him on a silver platter. It's a prize he's earned and neglected in a matter of days.

Yet, here we are.

I only let the thief indulge in our kiss for a moment longer until I wriggle my way from beneath him. With a giggle, I leap from the bed and dash across my bedroom.

"I must say, you're terrible at goodbyes," I grin. "You were only gone a matter of seconds before you waited at my heels."

He rises from the bed, stalking in my direction with slow steps. His once kind brown eyes have completely gone black from his dilated pupils, and his lips curve in this delicious smirk.

"If you want to call me terrible, then do it," he steps closer to me, heat blazing like fire between us. "I'm. Fucking. Terrible."

"The worst."

"A motherfucking fool."

He corners me into the vanity, and I brace my hands against the surface's edge. With a lick of his lips, he lifts me up on top, scattering my hairbrush and other cosmetics and creams across the wooden floor. I attempt to calm him, but the creature lurking beneath his skin is a greedy beast, demanding to be in close proximity until my heart synchronizes with his own.

He pries my legs wide open and stands between them, pulling me closer against him.

Tobin leans in, allowing the exhale of his breath to fan against my throat. "Taking you for myself tonight is the easy part," he mutters against me. "It's letting you go that's going to kill me whole."

His lips caress a strained chord, distracting me as he gathers my long moonlit hair into his fist. He tugs my head over, allowing more access towards the tendons in my throat. My thief attacks me with his kisses of pure weaponry. These are no gentle smooches, but ones that will surely leave marks when morning light brushes upon him. All of this—and I submit to him for a moment, finding solace in such stolen kisses.

He's a devilishly beautiful wretched creature, isn't he?

"Tobin..." I run a palm down his bare back, scathing scars, and attempting to scourge up the right words to say. A confession so foolish leaves my lips. "I don't want you to let me go."

My fingertips glide from his skin to his bare chest, charting each scar to read as a map to his soft heart. Tobin releases my hair from his hold, only to snatch up my thigh and haul me against him. There, I feel everything, and yet all I see are those kind brown irises. We begin to move in a unified tandem, our hips oscillating against one another as he grinds his erection against my arousal dampened panties. Such needy acts for the thief who covets more than I could ever give.

Ragged breaths pass between us as our bodies yearn to unify. His nails dig deep into my skin, aching to remove the silk dress that inhibits his calloused touch.

"Don't you dare fucking start with that," he rasps. "I am an asshole."

"You're so far from that."

"I ruined you."

"At the expense of ruining yourself," I dip my head back, the mirror reflecting moonlight over us. Tobin leans over the vanity's surface, his fingertips now brushing the hem of my thin night dress. His lips dance up my throat once more.

"I am not ruined."

"You fell to your knees before me," I breathe, "and gods, I want you to do it again."

I tilt my head, catching sight of my wild blonde hair, flushed cheeks, and swollen kissed shoulders. Tobin tracks my gaze to our reflection in the mirror. Grey moons meet kind warm brown irises. He lays above me, his body instinctively draped over mine. We've started a battle between us, to win in love rather than in ruin, but the results will never change no matter how desperate we cling to each other with white knuckles. He can kneel before me, but he will never truly be crowned king. He's a petty thief, and I'm the one woman who a thief can never steal.

"Tobin..." his name slips from me in a deflating whisper. In those kind eyes, he understands the consequences of crossing our limits, that once we commence we'll never be able to end it.

In his moment of clarity, he pries himself from me, taking steps back from the wreckage of our desire.

No matter how desperate we become to connect, it won't last when dawn comes. All of this between us will be nothing but a fleeting memory.

I sit up, fixing my dress so the bottom hem falls below my knees. Heat rises to my cheeks. "What are we doing?"

Tobin runs a hand through his hair. "I don't fucking know..."

"This will only make it harder to leave."

"What if I don't?" Tobin takes a prowling step back towards me. "Tell me to stay. Order me. Command me. I'll obey anything that you fucking ask of me."

I shake my head. "You have to go back to Aspen."

"What if she doesn't remember me?" his voice trembles with every word. "It's been ten fucking years. Ten. She was six years old when I left her behind, and for fuck's sakes, I don't even remember half of my life at that age."

"But you love her," I breathe. "You wouldn't have gone through all of this if you didn't believe that you were meant to reunite with her."

"She's not the only one I love."

Gods, another confession of love, and it cripples me inside whenever he speaks the word. He let the word 'love' slip in his agonized drunkenness, but Tobin is sober. His mind is clear. We've been dancing on tiptoes around the word because I am terrified to fall in love.

How can I love Tobin when I'm betrothed to Leighton? How can I let another human into my heart with full boundless trust? How can one person decay everything within me until I am reborn for them? Breathing for them? Coexisting with them?

I shake my head. "Don't..."

But he continues, and with every word he speaks, the space between us diminishes to ash. "How the fuck did you expect me to come here night after night without becoming addicted to you? You're a fucking moonbeam—always glowing even when the world has gone to shit."

"Don't say it again, Tobin..." Not now. Not when he's hours away from leaving forever.

By now, we stand chest to chest, and he settles his calloused hands on my cheeks, tilting my head up to meet his gaze. "So yes, princess, Aspen isn't the only woman I love. Aspen is family, and you?" His lips brush mine. "You're the entire world."

The entire world.

Gods, I want him to stay. For eternity. I want him to be the one who I see whenever chaos consumes this earth, to hold my hand when the ground sways beneath me. I want him to kiss away the nightmare before it unfolds before me. From sunrise to sunset, from nightfall to dawn, I want it to be with him.

This is goodbye.

This is it.

These nights alongside Tobin will be no more.

There will be no more selfish indulgence. This is a romance. A fairytale. A story my mother might've told Ruslan and I when we were children. I love Tobin—but I am also the princess of Lagulon, stricken with the duty to save her kingdom at the cost of her soul. I can't let Tobin watch Leighton strip life from me piece by piece. He needs to go before I am forever corrupted, before the light inside of me dims.

"Go to Aspen," I mutter, pushing him away. A chasm forms deep inside of me, and I watch Tobin's entire heart cave in on itself. "Go to your sister. I am nothing compared to her."

"Imogen..."

"That's an order, Tobin," a tear runs down my cheek. "Aspen needs you more than I do."

This stupidly beautiful smirk begins to edge his lips. He said he'll obey every command that comes from my lips—to stay to go—I'm not even sure what I want now. Why isn't he leaving? Why is he smiling?

"I love you, Imogen," he whispers.

Those three words alter every thought in my mind. My resistance to him begins to collapse, and I find myself almost uttering the order for him to come back. Why should he return to the kingdom that destroyed him? The kingdom that enslaves me? The kingdom that tore his sister away from him?

Yet, I hold my tongue. "Go," I breathe, "because if you truly love me, you know it has to be like this."

He hesitates. Of course he wouldn't want to obey right away. He came crashing back into my bedroom with a helpless 'fuck it', which led to us tangled on my bed, stripping to scars, then pleasing another through chafing clothes and rocking hips. This isn't just love on the line. It's an intangible future, a fantasy that we long to live in until time ends.

I wait for him on the balcony as he redresses himself into his shirt and sword. He calls me his world, but he is everything in mine. When he approaches where I stand, I find myself scooping his cheeks and kissing him hard, just one last taste of those precious lips, before backing away from my thief.

"I love you," I breathe.

Tobin Parias...

...if only you knew how much you've stained my blood. It's tainted with remnants of you, stolen in such petty and predictable ways. In the dead of nightfall, it's you that will come to life. I'll await your embrace, your smile, your kisses. It's your face that I'll see when I close my eyes, when I fall into the sweet slumber of my dreams. You'll always carry me around your neck in that crescent pendant, a promise of all the nights we found ourselves helpless and twisted in this sick world.

Tobin, it frightens me to confess that I've fallen in love with you. You're meant to do so much, but fate is a cruel bastard. We were written for only a moment, but the chapter has now closed.

Go, my thief.

Aspen is waiting for you.

── •✧• ──

Tobigen will return soon.

This is not my favourite chapter ever. I wrote it because I wanted some Tobigen content, but it's not sitting well with me, and I know exactly why. If this is the end, there should be some big intimate moments for them, right? But this is not the time for those milestones to be achieved, at least not in my mind. Tobin won't dare cross any more lines than he already has, and Imogen knows that she can't put Tobin at risk by continuing the relationship.

But that's only because I just told you that they will return. How? You'll have to keep reading and await a Tobigen reunion.

Anyways, remember to vote, comment, and share!