[mature] could i use you as a makeshift gauge - wishbone

[Ivar]

I V A R promising everything i do not mean

The sound of his name is unanticipated, most especially on the lips of this stranger. Though Ivar has spent the better part of the last two years at the edges of the map forgetting Beqanna, he is not oblivious to the consequences of his actions before that time. He’d taken a queen and then her crown, and further solidified his reputation with the abduction of a princess. But he’d brought her back, he thinks as Wishbone closes the space between them; he hadn’t kept her. He should have, he thinks as Wishbone’s warm breath ghosts across his throat. He should have kept her. Maybe he’ll keep this one instead. She is brave - almost foolishly so - but Ivar has had his fill of mild mares and their sweet compliance. They are easy prey; they are not a challenge. This one, with her curious mouth and her talk of danger, she might be a challenge. Though the worn ache of his body remains, the last remnants of drowsiness leave the scaled creature as Wishbone’s lips drag along the crest of his neck. Her mahogany shoulder is almost black in the moonlight, and Ivar finds it tastes as much of salt as of skin. His touch is fleeting but not entirely tender, more tooth than lip. Someone warned her about him, she had said, and he wonders what that warning had entailed. “Do you feel like you’re in danger?” He replies to her question, taking a step forward to mouth the flesh just below her withers, painless pressure even as his teeth hold her fragile skin. It is autumn and she is unmarked, he finds, piecing together her age and boldness with an unexpected smile. Perhaps it truly is Fate, placing these too-bold Nerinians in his path when he least expects them and when they are the least prepared for what he means to take. “I’m perfectly harmless,” Ivar tells her as he tastes the dip of her spine and then the start of her curved hindquarters with another step forward. The kelpie is not immune to her warmth or the autumn chill in the air, and there is enough of a pinch in his last touch to contradict what he has only just said.

I know my lies could not make you believe in my dark times, baby this is all I could be . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

@[Wishbone]