Hellbound With You (WN)

Time seemed to have moved into the slow motion kind of pace. Alicia felt her heartbeat missed a beat and slowly, her eyes widened.

Ezekiel too nearly had reacted the same way. His eyes stretched noticeably wide as if he had surprised himself at the words that his own mouth had just uttered.

For what felt like a long while – but might actually just be a few seconds – the both of them just sat there and stared at each other. Unmoving. Wrapped together by a thick shocked silence. And it looked as though neither of them were breathing with how still they were.

Until Alicia began to hear the loud pounding of her heart. His words… they finally registered fully into her mind that had short-circuited and had now rendered her entire being paralyzed under him. What… did he just… say? Did he just…

Alicia searched his face in utter disbelief. And what she found on it only surprised her even more. She could now see real emotions flickering in his eyes and they were not actually subtle ones. In fact, they were so vivid and so intense that it was nearly hard for her to believe that this was really the very same Ezekiel that she had known all this time. It was hard to believe that this was the very same man who had been so eternally emotionless.

And the look in his eyes, that human-like expression, seemed to be able to just take her breath away. Ezekiel looked like a totally different person right now in her eyes. And this version of him, she was hard pressed to admit it even to herself, but she did find it… simply mesmerizing.

That new and unfamiliar kind of gleam in his eyes was just something she could not explain with just mere words – as words somehow were just too plain to be able to describe how he was right now.

She had no idea he was capable of showing such emotions. She did not even think he ever would show such a face as what she was seeing on him now. And… she was nowhere near prepared for it. His words and emotions took her so much by surprise that now she could not stop her hand that was already reaching out to touch his face and...

Kiss him. Hard. The overwhelming yearning to kiss that mouth just exploded without warning within her. It was so primal and so strong that she felt the joints in her whole body almost gave way at the intensity of it.

"Ez… Ezekiel…" She did not know why she had uttered his name. It had just automatically fell from her lips in a breathless sound, as if someone was torturing her. Then her fingers somehow gained independence and moved on their own accord and started caressing his jaw ever so gently and fluttery light.

But just as she cupped his face to kiss him, he drew in a sharp deep breath followed by an inaudible curse.

He grabbed onto her wrists, pulling her hands away from his face. His jaws were clenching hard that she saw his jaw muscles working. His breathing came in sharp and rapid pants. And the expression he had on his face changed once again. Only this time, it was into an emotion that she could not quite fathom.

Then before she could even take the time to ponder more about that new expression he was showing, he pulled away. His movement so swift from on top of her to the floor that it made it seem that her vision had an afterimage. The next thing she knew, he had already slid down and leaned against the couch, turning his back to her as he sat there.

Alicia felt like the cold north wind was blowing all over her. The cold was quickly replacing the warmth of the fire that had been left in his wake and jolted her senses that had all fallen crazy hard under the spell of his words and that momentarily show of emotions awake. The warmth was now totally gone – as though it had never been there – except for the one single warm touch of his hand around her wrist. That one connection that they had which cannot be broken – at least for now.

"Forget what I just said," his usual calm voice echoed in the silence around them, breaking it like a hammer to a mirror. Just like that, he was once again back to the usual cold and emotionless Ezekiel. "Just like you, I'm… I'm not myself right now." Was the only excuse he gave for all that upheaval of emotions earlier.

She stared at the ceiling, pressing her own flattened lips into a tight line before letting out a shaky breath when she was sure her emotions that were running amok were sufficiently under control. Her body did not move an inch, but she turned her head to look at him. "W-what?"

It took him a long while to respond to her simple one-word question. As if he had struggled silently in secret for quite a while on whether to open his mouth and answer her or not.

Then he started doing something so unlike the Ezekiel she knew, rattling off the very same explanations he had told her before. He was repeating himself. "This demonic power running through you… is not only messing with your emotions and everything else. It also messes up mine just the same because you are…" he paused for a moment, as though not sure how to word the next part, "…you are a part of me right now. An extension of my own body. My power flows into you, circulates and then returns to me, bringing everything… all of your confusion and every intense emotion. They all come at me endlessly, persistently, without any filters or exceptions. They mess with my composure and thoughts and…"

"Emotions?" she picked out the word she thought he was meaning to say. Her voice was quiet, coated with some kind of serene mask.

"Everything." he uttered in a way that Alicia could not tell if it the word he used was a correction or not.

She swallowed the stupid lump in her throat and forced out another word. "And…?"

"So for your sake, do not believe in what I say and do while I'm in this messed up state."

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Thank you so much for waiting hellbounders! And thank you for all the love and understanding. I saw the flood of gifts you've given to this books despite me not updating it and i feel really touched! The love and support you guys are giving to this book are my greatest motivation.

I'm really thankful that many of you are still giving this book so much love. I hope you guys will keep supporting until the end.

Again, thank you much. You guys are the best!

P.s. Will probably start releasing the bunos chapters the supergift gifters earned starting tomorrow.