There's something dark about him that twists my lips into a smile.

Sure, I've screwed up my own life and everybody else's, but none of that compares to the day I let myself fall for a creature like him. It's not what you'd call a conventional relationship, if you'd consider it one at all, but give somebody like me your hand and I'll take off your whole damn arm. To me, it's a relationship of the most intense and intimate kind, even if he doesn't know it.

He goes about his life, seldom even glancing my way. But that's fine. I swear. It's fine. He's expressionless and cold; hateful of the world he lives in and everybody he lives in with it. Barely a loving word passes those smooth, narrow lips these days.

Oh, those lips. I shiver when he licks them as he's concentrating on his books, or doing up the cuffs on his suit. Even folding his laundry taunts that slick, pink tongue out and I want to know what it feels like.

Because I don't have a tongue.

I sit in dark corners and watch him go about his days. To anybody else he's a boring assistant treasurer for some company in the city. I don't know what, exactly, because he's never told me. He gets in from work between 6.20 and 6.30 in an evening, throws his coat over the banister and kicks off his shoes by the telephone. He passes through to the kitchen, flicking the switch on the radio as he walks, and waits for something. He's waiting for me to make a sound, but I never do, and the tension in his shoulders loosens after a moment or two. Most days I wait for him between the radiator and the fridge. Sometimes I lurk behind the kitchen door and follow him until he feels me come close, but then he turns on the radio and I lose my nerve. I don't like getting too close to him. Sometimes that makes him angry.

He pours a can of soup into a saucepan and lingers a while longer for a machine to finish spitting out his coffee. I stay silent, leaning in on my hands and knees, hoping he burns himself on the nozzle so I can hear him gasp. I like his pain. I thrive on hearing that husky tenor of his; it sends chills over my disgusting skin.

His phone rings but he ignores it. He takes it out of his pocket and slams it onto the table. I don't look at anything else but him. I can't. How could I ever gaze away from a creature so beautiful, so elegant, and so, so wicked. His hair shimmers brown and red in the spotlights overhead. The ends dance as he moves. His warm brown eyes hide the man inside who nobody else must ever know about. That much he's told me.

Thick soup gargles in the saucepan and he glides to a cupboard nearby, raising his long arms up into it. His suit shirt lifts up at the waist and I spot a slither of pale flesh that makes me want to scream. He retrieves a bowl and crosses back over to the hob.

For the next ten minutes I watch from my corner as he tears up brown bread with his wiry fingers, drops it into his soup and spoons it into his mouth. His lips part and I see that tongue again, wet and shiny. He flinches as the liquid scalds his mouth, though the gustatory pleasure of it is plain on his face. That's good, his eyes say. Damn, I've waited all day to see him smile.

He finishes, pushes the bowl away and lowers his head a while, as though in prayer. He isn't a religious man - he simply likes to process his own thoughts as though it's some kind of ritual. He bites his lower lip and I see a glisten of white I find hard to resist. Should I go over? No. He might get angry. But it's been so long since I've seen him up close, or felt his touch, or smelt the alcohol on his breath. No. Screw it. Screw waiting.

I lurch forwards from my corner on all fours. He pretends he didn't hear me and scrunches his eyes closed, but he knows I'm always in the house. It's whether or not he'll admit to himself that I'm still around. Truly, my cold creature loves me back. We both hold onto that ancient longing. Sometimes he even lets me come near when he has quiet moments like this, or at least he used to. I move another metre and notice the minute twitch behind his ear - he's listening for me. How long is he going to kid himself? Another metre. He doesn't look up.

I reach the corner of the dinner table and peer lovingly over the edge at him. He doesn't like it if I'm too intrusive; I try not to breathe too loudly. I just want to touch his clasped hands, those icy digits, just once in a long while. I grab the edge of the table a finger at a time.

"Fuck off!"

He slams the table into my face and storms out of the kitchen.