"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
lend me your hand and we'll conquer them all. but lend me your heart and i'll just let you fall.
And then, she was gone as suddenly as she had appeared.
He was left breathless, his mind a haze of confusion and frustration and angst that had begun to sink in to the deepest parts of him - the pit of his heart; the marrow of his bones. He was left bathing in the sunlight, the warmth radiating from the sun and leaving his dark, marred flesh with beads of sweat, and yet he felt as if he'd been shrouded in darkness. He was abruptly left without her gentle touch, her soft breath and unfinished caresses, and it left behind a shadow in its wake. He followed her as she moved slowly to the beckoning solace of the quiet thicket, disappearing from his sight. She was only a faint memory now, though her scent still permeated the air, cloaking his senses as he struggled to withhold it and savor it for as long as he could.
He knew of the pain in her eyes this time; he had seen it clear as day. She was fearful, as was he. She had stripped away small pieces of him within the hours of their first spoken words, and he had taken a piece of her in return. He knew of her deepest, darkest secret, though she knew not of his own. He would keep that very secret under lock and key if he were to ever see her again - she had left him after the briefest kiss; and he did not dare bring up his lonely, terribly existence for fear she would flee again. It was not so simple, though. He ached for her company in the days and even weeks following - every slight movement stirred him from the depths of his uneasiness, causing his heart to throb in anticipation.
Each time, he was doused in the same overwhelming pool of disappointment, and it began to sour his mood. He searched for her, but to no avail. Her scent had long since faded, and he angrily chastised himself often for it. Why had he not followed her when he had the chance? What use would it have been if he had? She had made it clear that goodbye was all that she could offer him; why did he allow himself to linger on it so long? He would cycle through the individual stages of grief. Regretful one moment, furious the next. He lumbered around the icy confines of the flatland and sulked through the open, fresh fields of the meadow, lost in his own wretchedness as he battled his mind and heart.
You know how it ends; how it always ends, He would think to himself, you do not deserve it. You cannot do this again. And so what if he had? She wanted nothing to do with him, that much had been obvious. He would come to accept this, and soon the longing would fade away.
Soon, he had buried the thought of her away with the rest, relinquishing his mind to the comforting embrace of nothingness that he was now lost in. His eyes of crimson now seemed a shade darker as he peered out onto the land that lay before him, though he was staring at nothing in particular and did not allow his mind to linger on any one single thing for long. He lets himself fade away into the abyss of his own mind, trapping his innermost thoughts of pining woe away (for he did not love her, no, but he could, and he hadn't in so long, it felt so devastating to have even the most remote possibility of it taken away from him).
Just then, the rolling clouds overhead begin to rumble and roar with the threatening onslaught of rain, rousing him from the depths of his blurry thoughts. He gazes towards the sky and its shapeless, eerie shade of gray, peering from between the woven tendrils of coal-painted hair, deciding at once to move into the thicket of pines mere feet behind him. He buries himself into the brush, his massive stature moving slowly in between the aging bark, scratching his scar-inflicted flesh against the trees. His steps are heavy as his limbs carrying his monolithic frame, pounding onto the dried leaves and twigs, crushing them beneath his monstrous weight. He focuses on the soft cracks of their splitting atoms, savors the rustling of the gusts that whistle between the leaves, that ways the pines overhead.
And then it comes.
The rain, with its shattering, shimmering splendor, washes over the forest, drenching it in its dampness. It is not long before the weight of the droplets weigh heavily on the spindly branches, soaking him through as well. He hardly notices; the thunder grumbles above and rattles the earth below, but he remains, rooted in a single spot. His nostrils fill with the overwhelming scent of flora and fauna, overwhelming him in its heady aroma. He knows it so well, he has milled over it for weeks on end after she had parted from him and here it was.
There it was, for now it is gone, washed away by the rainfall, replaced instead with the soft sullenness of spring. You're imagining things, he tells himself, though deep down he knows that can't be. She's gone.
But as his unusually dark pelt stains an even darker, inky black from the moisture that permeates his skin, as he loses himself again to the rhythmic pounding of pain on the canopy overhead, he cannot help but to hope that he will find her again.
hold my hand, it's a long way down to the bottom of the river
Her loneliness was exquisite. She felt it in the blister of pain beneath skin stretched too thin, too tight, of broken bones and spilled marrow. When her heart beat in her chest it was echoed by hurt, etched in a beautiful desolation she refused to let end. So many times she had gone back to the place in the meadow, their place, so many times both relieved and undone to find that he was not there waiting. There was a part of her, a broken, wretched sliver of a selfish heart that had wanted him to know the same ache she had come to know, like a second heart beating in her chest. But mostly, mostly she was glad. Leaving had been impossible, like carving joints out of stone and steel and even after she had gone there had been a strange urgency pushing her back. She did her best to ignore it. She had known that if he had been there waiting, if she had seen those same red eyes on the dark of his quiet face she would not have been able to leave again.
With time she began to avoid the meadow altogether, as if somehow this would start to erase the memory of him. It would be easier to forget, to steel her heart against the thoughts that began to trickle in, dangerous, ruinous thoughts of a home and a family, of someone who might worry when the sun came up and Isle was not sleeping beneath it. But it was hard to go back to before, hard to forget a thought that had worn a path in her mind for all the times she had drawn it forward. The only progress she made was in the lies she told herself, in the time spent convincing herself that this solitude was everything. That it was the only thing for such a brittle, wretched creature like herself.
She stood deep in the forest, the sharp bone of her hip pressed into the bark of the tree against which she leaned. She did not need to see the clouds in the sky, the heaviness of swollen steel bellies, to know that it would be raining soon. Nor was she surprised when the first rumbles of thunder cracked the sky open and left the ground purring beneath her heels. She was already buried beneath the trees, tucked away from the sky and the storm, but not from the fat drops of rain that dripped down her sides to follow the valleys between ribs that stood out more than they had a few weeks ago.
As the storm raged on she could feel something building in her belly, an anguish pent up and ignored for too long and it thrashed wild inside her. Like a star in its death throes, she imploded. Everything she felt, even what she had chosen to deny, it poured out of her all at once and her mind touched everything that had decided to shelter beneath the trees of the forest. Her stomach clenched and she curled in on herself, bracing for the torrent of thoughts that raced back to her on fading pathways. She closed her eyes and her mouth tightened and all of that frustration still ached in her chest like broken glass beneath her skin.
And then one word, one silly, stupid word caught like a stone in her throat and she could not swallow it away.
Isle.
The devastation she felt was immediate, that urgency she had known so long ago instantly returned and she could not have stopped herself if she tried as she turned and disappeared into a different part of the forest. Her heart clenched, it ached and throbbed and battered a hole in her chest and she willed it to stop just long enough for her to think. But thought was unwelcome here. Thought, reasoning, had ruled her in the months recently passed. She slipped easily through the trees, the storm all but forgotten when at last a flash of gold and fuchsia revealed a very familiar silhouette buried beneath a thicket. She froze immediately, those dark eyes wide and wild as they sought out his face from the rest of the shadow that shrouded him. “Offspring.” She breathed, inching no closer despite that the distance between them felt as though it was measured in miles by the pounding of her heart. “I heard you.” Her voice was little more than a shattered whisper as she stood before him, soaked and thin, with rain trailing like tears between the shallow of her ribs.
lend me your hand and we'll conquer them all. but lend me your heart and i'll just let you fall.
The thunder rumbles closer now, echoing against the hollowed out trees and their thin, fragile foliage - it echoes in his ears, overwhelming him and bathing him in a cloak of disorienting noise. He closed his eyes at once, ignoring the thick droplets of water that glide along his forehead and tangled themselves in between his long lashes. He breathes slowly, listening to the sky overhead reflect the way his own mind had felt in the weeks preceding. His every thought had been a tumultuous, dangerous wreck, bringing him closer and closer to the brink of the insanity he had once suffered years ago. Loneliness could be buried, but it was only a matter of time until it would resurface.
He had withdrawn from all, keeping only to himself during the warm months of new beginnings. While new life was being born into the open, broad meadows and fields around him, he felt suffocated; strangled by the punishing, constant reminder of his own solitary existence. It was most difficult during this time of year. It stirred up anger, desperation and desolation, causing his usual stoic existence to become overwrought with emotion he simply was not able to control.
Every gentle bleat of new life reminded him of the many children he had lost and outlived; of the many grandchildren he had failed and left behind. He wondered where many of them were now, but deep down, there was a certain finality to his age that plagued him. Deep down, he knew they were all dead. They had to be. Nothing he had ever loved survived to even a fraction of what he had - and of those who may have, he abandoned them, leaving a rotting, decaying part of his heart alone until the end of his days. Whenever that may be. If they ever will be.
The loneliness had been buried so long that it had pent up the force of a thousand hurricanes in a single blow, drenching him in misery and woe as he rested his hipbone against an old pine, resting for a moment as his heart ached and he surrendered to the storm. His coal-stained pelt was now soaked through and through, and tears could not be easily seen amidst the streaks of rain that mar his coat, but they felt hot and searing against his flesh. He lowered his head, his chest heaving slowly as he allows himself to melt in with his surroundings.
He is alone now, and after holding back for so long, he begins to unravel. Though he had experienced only a brief brush with her in the landscape of his endless lifetime, she had carried such weight on him that he was certain he might buckle beneath the burden of her affection. Her soft lips and gentle kisses still burned in his mind, and her swift exit reminded him of all of the things he had once had, eventually lost and could not find again.
Suddenly, a sharp crack awakens him from his emotional nightmare, his dark red eyes staring into the shadows with a scorching ferocity. He seeks the source of the sound, only to find his breath drawn sharply from his lungs - the abrupt rush of cold air burns, but he holds his composure. He studies her hard. Her beautiful, burnt sienna pelt was as drenched as his own, but her eyes glimmered with the same alluring glow that had drawn him to her in the very beginning, as it does now. The gentle curve of her hip and the slope of her spine remind him of her beauty, but something is taken away by the stark appearance of her skin so tightly pulled against the soft lines of her ribcage.
He moves closer, slow at first as if he is uncertain of her (another dream? A figment of his imagination, illustrated by sharp strokes of lightning and diluted vision?), but at once, her scent envelopes him once more. It presses past the thick scent of pine and precipitation, reminding him of the same flora and fauna aroma that had remained on his skin for days after her presence had gone. It reminds him of something bigger and deeper than himself, and he closes the space in between them.
"Isle," his usually bold baritone rumbles and cracks beneath the pressure - his eyes still burn with his sorrow. "I thought I might never see you again.
Then, he draws her closer to him, moving close and pressing his broad chestplate to her own as he drapes his neck along the nape of her own, pressing his nose against the soft shape of her spine as he inhales her scent deeply and ignores the soft tingle of its dampness.
hold my hand, it's a long way down to the bottom of the river
Time turns to stone, hard and immobile, and it closes so tightly around her that for several long moments she cannot breathe. She feels paralyzed by the impossibility before her, by the treacherous heat of hope that flares beneath her skin and fills her stomach with a strange, foreign warmth. There is something else there, too, she realizes belatedly as she traces the hard lines of his quiet face. Affection. It softens the strange stoniness of her face, softens the muscles drawn and clenched along her jaw and beneath her dark eyes. It was that pull in her stomach, the one that coaxed her toward him even as she stood frozen, resisting. But it was also the worry that spilled like cold ocean water over her bones, concern for a new tension she thought she saw simmering somewhere deep in those crimson-bright eyes. She had known him only briefly – and then again in the dreams she woke from only to feel deadened inside at losing him again – but she remembered him softer, with less (or maybe different) pain reflecting back from his eyes.
Her chest tightened immediately and she ached to go to him. But something held her back still, and it was the same something that had pushed her away from him before. She watched with a broken expression, a mouth so heavy with sorrow it tipped at the corners and eyes so dark they could swallow entire star systems. Her head sank a little, defeated, and she tried desperately to find that resolve to leave him again, but her legs still refused to move. Thunder boomed around them like an echo of her pounding heart. “Offspring, I-” She tried, shaking her head at him, but the raging of the storm around them drowned out the sound of her small, tremulous voice.
He closed the distance between them effortlessly, half and then half again, and suddenly he was pulling her to the curve of his warm chest and there was nothing she could do but hold him. Her mouth found the arch of his dark shoulder, tasted rain and sweat and dirt, and she traced the slope of his thick muscle with trembling lips until she thought her heart might explode in her chest for the way it pounded against him. Isle. He says, and she can feel herself crumble even further, tipping over the edge of the chasm he had cracked in the ice of her heart. She is suddenly still against him, impossibly still, and only the unevenness of her breathing splinters the sound of the rain.
She tenses suddenly and pulls away from him but she is certain she has left her heart behind because all she can feel in her chest is a cold, empty ache. “No.” She tells him in a voice cut through with pain. She fumbles for more words but her tongue feels thick and swollen, unwilling, and the words come too slowly. “Don’t you see I’m trying to spare you this burden.” Her face flushes with the shame that tends to shadow vulnerability and for a moment she has to look away from him. Lightning flashes gold and fuchsia, illuminating them both, and she lifts those sad eyes back to his face. “Tell me,” she says so softly, barely louder than the rain on the leaves, “how would you feel if someday I slipped.” Her mouth tightens and her brow furrows deeply above her bruised eyes. “How would you feel if one day I knew all of your secrets.”
lend me your hand and we'll conquer them all. but lend me your heart and i'll just let you fall.
The rain does not stop - it seems to grow heavier in weight, louder in its entrenching echo and colder in its glacial texture - pounding unforgivably onto their bare selves, though he can feel nothing but her warmth and hear nothing but her beating heart intertwined with hers. He closed his thick lashes over his darkening eyes as he embraces her, savoring the feel of her against him, languishing in the scent that lingers entangled in her soft, dark tresses. He inhales deeply, his breath hot against her neck as the sound of the pouring rain begins to fade away. There is nothing but her, but the taste of her skin and the soft sound of her breathing and her words fall weak and prey to the impeding storm.
When she finally withdraws from him, a harsh reality strikes him like the unwavering crackle of a single lightning bolt, causing his crimson gaze to bore into her imploring, pleadingly. The sorrow that had lingered in his eyes mere moments before seeing her had returned, with a depth that knew no end. No, she said. No? The pain that laces through the single syllable wraps itself around his heart, constricting it tightly within the taut confines of his rib cage, strangling it, suffocating it. His breath his caught in his throat, and for a moment, he begins to feel himself unraveling once more. She hesitates, and then, Don't you see I'm trying to spare you this burden?
"Burden?" His voice is a deep but dull roar against the deafening prowess of the storm. "Is that was this is; what you see me as - what you see yourself as? You heard me," A crack interrupts his thought, his throat drying in spite of the trickling dampness that trails down along his chest, drenching his forelock and dribbling off of his limbs onto the moist soil. "you heard me, and you came - why did you come, Isle? You cannot deny that a part of you, however small, wanted this - you cannot leave so easily this time. I will not let you. I cannot let you."
He breathes heavily; his chest is swelling with a stinging, stabbing sensation of anguish that he cannot stop. He cannot explain the draw he has to her, and he refuses to try. He only knows that he has searched for her, for days, for weeks and months on end, and here she was, so fragile and delicate and beautiful that he cannot possibly fathom a way to express himself in a way that will make her understand. She cannot go; he cannot bear for her to disappear into the thicket. Not like this. A brief touch, and gone again.
She speaks again, her own voice drenched in frustration as she desperately wills him to understand, but he does not, he will not. Tell me, she whispers so softly, he very nearly cannot hear her. how would you feel if someday I slipped. How would you feel if one day I knew all of your secrets. He had so many, he was certain that she could reach and search for years upon end and never find what is most deeply stowed away - but if she were to see his past, the various memories that had been locked away, or the distraught, pained emotional torment he endured for so long, it would destroy her. He had willed such terrible things to seclusion for reason, and it would break her, as it had once broken him, but she is so fragile, like glass, and he cradles her gently at the surface of his mind. He cannot let her in, but refuses to let her go.
His eyes meet hers, the fire fading to a slow simmer as he searches her own stunning, seeing eyes with renewed desire. His lips tracing along the bridge of her muzzle as he tastes the faint sweetness of fresh rain and pine, his cheek sliding to rest against hers, and he pulls her close again. If he is to live an eternity without her, he will bask in her sensuality, fear and uncertainty, and hold her near until the end of his days - if they ever were to pass.
After a while, the most violent, tumultuous wave of the storm begins to ebb away, leaving a gentle mist of droplets in its midst. In the distance, the thunder rumbles still, though the only thing he can will himself to hear is her.
"It is a risk I am willing to take; stay. Stay with me, even for only tonight," His usual abyssal tone fades into something of a sweet whisper pressed against her ear as he longs to hold her close. "It is all I ask. Let us have this night. Don't go - not yet."
hold my hand, it's a long way down to the bottom of the river
She hardly notices the storm either, not even when the rain deepens and the beads of water should feel like bullets bouncing off the bruises on her dappled brown skin. It is only when she pulls away from him that the rain and the cold have a chance to sink like winter beneath her skin, like ice floating through her veins. She regards him with dark eyes full of bruises and a shiver ripples through her once, twice, and then it settles inside her unending. But the cold she feels in her chest has little to do with the weather and everything to do with the distance that stretches like a vast chasm between them. It is this distance that has carved her bleeding heart out and lain it to rest in the dirt at their feet.
“Offspring.” She breathes, and suddenly the space carved out between them feels impossible and impassable, and she can see something changing in the bottoms of those bright red eyes. Pain, she realizes, she wonders, she cannot believe. But there is something unraveling quietly in his face that she thinks she might possibly recognize, something kindred in the worst of ways. The muscles tighten in his face, in the curve of his neck and the slope of strong shoulders. She eases forward reflexively and all she wants to do is trace the quiver of his skin with the soft of her dark, whiskered mouth until the tension bleeds away in the rain.
But he stops her with his voice, with words he flings at her like stones even though she thinks he didn’t mean too, thinks he couldn’t possibly understand why they hurt so much. Of course she felt like a burden, of course she cared too much to put that on him, but it would kill her to put it into words again, to let the shame bleed bright and red over her skin like the wound it truly was. But the next bit is worse, she thinks, as she flinches at his words and closes her eyes to see if maybe this might steady the way she swayed on her feet. “A small part of me.” She repeats in a whisper voice, in a voice cut through with pain and bitterness and laughter that mixed in an ugly way. Her eyes open again and she tips her small face up to him imploringly, blinking to keep the rain from dripping like tears in the hollowed lines between bone and muscle. “You don’t see it, do you?” Her heart stutters in her small chest but she only shakes her head and laughs, a laugh laced heavily with pain and incredulity. “Every part. Every part of me wants to be here. This is all I want, Offspring, but I am scared to death of dragging you to my dark places.”
She does step forward now, silent for a heartbeat while her lips find the curve of his heavy jaw, and then, “But you can do better than me. You deserve better than me.” There is so much sadness in the furrowing of her brow, in the tension that touches her mouth and traces up to her jaw.
But then his lips are against her cheek, his face pressed to hers, and suddenly she is crushed back to the curve of his chest and it is this moment that she wishes to live in forever. I cannot let you. He says and she hopes it is a promise because the knot twisting in her stomach is almost unbearable. They stand that way for so long, and it doesn’t matter because time has lost all meaning anyway. She loses herself in the way their hearts beat together, in the heat of his skin against hers and the way her lips taste like rain from his skin where she leaves a trail of faint kisses along the ridge of his dark shoulder. He speaks and she finds she even loves the way his voice rumbles in his chest, like a hum of sound against his rain-slick skin.
“Offspring,” she says and her voice is pitched so low with uncertainty, “if you take one night from me, all the rest will be yours too. I can’t do halfways. Not with you.” The warning in her broken voice is evident as she shifts against him. But this time she doesn’t pull away, this time she closes her eyes and presses her face against the warmth of his thick, dark neck. And then, “Are you sure? Are you sure you want this night.”
Are you sure you want my forever, she doesn’t say.
lend me your hand and we'll conquer them all. but lend me your heart and i'll just let you fall.
He can see the way her face falls, her eyes soften with unshed tears and her expression as it contorts into one of anguish and he immediately repents. He draws her forward with a gentle kiss from his whiskered mouth, his lashes then pressing softly against her cheek. He did not mean to strike out in verbal anger; he has no one to be angry at but himself - but he could not, would not let her go again. Her words echo quietly in his mind, which is heavy with guilt-drenched thoughts and unspoken words that ached to be released from their imprisonment. He mulls to himself for a long moment, savoring the salty sweet taste of her skin as she whispers feebly against his own.
Her laughter is wry and without humor, and his dark eyes bore into hers once more as she seeks his, silently pleading. He holds her tightly then, wrapping himself around her easily as his massive stature drapes carefully over the shadow of her petite, feminine body. He cradles her near, relishing the way her breath catches in her throat with emotion and the sound of her heart pounding in perfect rhythm with his own. Tracing soft kisses along the length of her neck and the peak of her spine, he lavishes her in affection, which he has so craved to give her since the very moment he had met her. She shivers beneath his touch, eliciting an emotion from the pit of his darkened soul that he had not felt in so very long.
It washed over him as the rain had done to the land, overwhelming, incensing and inviting. He can feel her arch to his touch, and he knows then that he is coming undone at the very seams. Her own voice drops down to a level so low, he has to lean in closer to hear her, and soon he has circled her and come around to her side. Side by side, they are a sight - his stature dwarfs her sweet frame, but somehow she fits perfectly into his side, her neck nestling against the bottom of his shoulder and her forelock tickles along his jawline. He drops his eyes down to her for a moment as he tenderly leans down and tucks the bridge of his nose beneath her jaw. His kisses trail along her sensitive skin as her shivering voice evokes a burning fire deep within.
He wants tonight, he wants forever.
"There is nothing better than you, Isle - there is only you," He said softly, deliberately, his teeth gently grazing her neck as he leans back to taste her copper skin once more, nostrils buried into her withers as he inhales her essence deeply. "I have a darkness too; yours cannot ward me off. I want you, and every secret you keep, however insidious .. if you will take mine." His voice drops low for a moment - he knows what such an idea will mean for him; what it will mean for her. If she knew even a fragment of his life, it would splinter her heart into many pieces, all of which he would lovingly mend with intimate touches and soft caresses. He can withhold from her, or so he hopes.
His lips begin to trail down, and delicately he presses his lips to her withers, feeling her shake beneath him. The rain has since gone away, shrouding them in a warm fog of late summer, enveloping them in its uncomfortable warmth as sweat draws to the surface. His muscles ripple slightly beneath his damp, taut coat as he shifts back, holding her close to him once again. He watches her and waits until her stunning eyes meet his own, and then, "I have never been more sure of anything, Isle. Stay with me, for a night or a thousand nights. I am undeserving of you - but I want you, if you will have me."
hold my hand, it's a long way down to the bottom of the river
There is only you. He tells her between kisses, and she might not have believed him if it weren’t for the way he held her so close, so tight like he was afraid she might fall away into the sky if he ever let go. He kisses her dapples again and again, traces patterns along the curve of flesh and bone and she knows that not even the stars burn as hot as she does where his lips have been. She shifts in his embrace and he shifts too, to pull her close, touching a kiss to each vertebrae and she never realized she had so many. “Offspring.” She says, she whispers, she begs with her mouth against his damp black skin.
She is suddenly terrified by the weight of her feelings for him, by the intensity of the fear she feels at the thought that she might ever lose him as she has lost everyone else. In this moment, with the heat of his mouth pressed to the shivering of her dark, dappled skin, it is impossible to think that she could ever live a life that did not include him. Disappearing with her fear into the deepest parts of this forsaken forest no longer felt like even the remotest possibility for the way she suspected she would shatter into dust without him. This was the love she had always resented her mother for, this wild, thinkless love that you would do anything for. It was a destructive kind of love, so selfish, so greedy, burning too hot to hold on to for long. But it was also a love, or at least it would be soon, that once you’ve known it you cannot live without. Everything feels empty in comparison.
“I will have all of you,” she vows when he asks, her dark eyes bright and hungry where they alight on his face, “I want every part of you.”
He shifts and pulls away and for a moment the space between them feels as jarring as ice pressed against her skin. But instead he circles her and there is something in her belly that responds to the possessiveness of his gesture. When he pauses again and pulls her even closer than before, she complies, fitting perfectly within the curve of his massive body. His teeth touch her neck and she can feel her belly tighten in response, a shiver of surprise, of carnal delight washing through her body. “Offspring.” She whispers again, says his name like a prayer even as curls against his side.
But then her teeth flash to the line of his jaw, quick and gentle, forcing him to look at her. “Don’t do that,” she tells him with a soft frown, the uncertainty in her voice replaced with new fire burning in her dark eyes, “don’t put me up on a pedestal. You’re undeserving of nothing, least of all me.” Her teeth find his skin again but it is even gentler this time, and before she pulls away she marks the place with a kiss. “My night, my days, all of them are yours.”
She settles beside him again, quieter now but for the heat growing in her belly with each touch of his lips to the tremble of her dappled skin. When she speaks again her voice is little more than a quiet hum of sound against his skin. “Before, when I left you, did you look for me?” Her face lifts, another stolen kiss pressed to the soft skin at the side of his mouth. “I went back. I looked for you, but you weren’t there.”
lend me your hand and we'll conquer them all. but lend me your heart and i'll just let you fall.
He can feel her trembling against him, and for a moment he worries, concerned he has pressed his fragile dove too far with his tender caresses and pressing kisses. He has grown a need for her that stirs deeply within the pit of his being, evoking a lust that speaks of more than simple carnal desires but at the core, they are just that. He admires her shapely curves, her glimmering eyes - which upon a second glance speak of the same deep seated desires that he too feels bubbling at the surface, simmering and rising to a heated boil. She whispers for him, begs for him, but he resists. There is still too much to say and the evening is theirs.
He traces her jawline with his lips, tasting her again and he is certain he has never tasted something so sweet before. Her eyes bore into his once more as she promises herself to him in ways he knew would eventually lead to a crumbling heart, a broken soul, a shattered being - but she is worth the risk, she is worth any risk, and he swallows the anxiety that dwells within his mind. He pushes the thought away, willing it to be buried with the darkest of his secrets, not wanting her to see the way his mind trembles as her body does. In his solace, he might linger on the thought, but within her presence it is imperative to protect her from such ill worries.
I want every part of you, she urges, and he believes her. He wants every part of her too, though he does not say it aloud - he doesn't have to. His lips and teeth say it for him as he trails a hot, blazing string of kisses along her damp skin. He can feel her heart pound and her blood pulse beneath her pelt, which is painted a brilliant burnt sienna that reminds him of desert clay after a long, thunderous storm. His gaze trails off as she pressed her teeth against him, eliciting an unrestrained groan from the depths of his throat. She has found his weakness, and his flesh tingles and burns where she had just released him. His darkened red eyes meet with hers as she forcefully insists that he see as an equal, or worse yet, beneath him, but he cannot - not as her pearly incisors tease and bite into his sinewy flesh again, his body aflame with desire he was beginning to have some difficulty controlling.
It had been a long while, so long, since he had been with anyone so intimately, and he would not allow himself to fall prey to it so soon. She promised him tonight, and many more nights, but life was nothing if not unfair. He would bathe with her beneath the thick canopy and shadows of dusk and dawn, paint her a thousand times with his eyes as he engraves the starkly stunning image of her in his mind to keep for all of eternity. He had known love before, but this was something else together entirely and he had never feel so enraptured with another as he did her. From the moment of their first touch, he had been wound up around her, desperate for her, craving her voice and her touch and her heart.
He exposed his jawline to her, allowing her to press her soft whiskered kisses to it, before glancing down again to meet his gaze with her own. She asks him a question, one that reminds him of the turmoil he had felt since she had gone away. The unknown was something he had been long acquainted with, but there had been something definitively torturous and destructive in losing her. She had stirred a part of him that had been dormant for so long, and another part of him that had never seen the light of day. He studied her for a long moment, his eyes lustful and tender and pained, and then, "I waited for you, for days."
He pauses, forcing himself to draw away from the shadowing memories that followed, hiding away from them as he nibbled gently at her withers. He knew if she could see his eyes again, she would see into them and see the anguish that had lingered there until the moment he had set eyes on her again. He could not explain it, but there was an inexplicable pull to her. Fate, one might say, for he had not ever come across anyone like her and he was certain he never would again. He draw her close then, a possessively movement, the edge of his broad chest plate pressed against her shoulder as he curved his thick neck to drape and nuzzle the crest of her own.
"I searched for so long, but you were gone. I began to wonder if you had ever been there at all, if maybe I had lost myself in a dream .. and now you're here, and if you were to leave again, I would never stop searching for you." His voice drops to a murmur, his lips touching her ear gently. "I would search until the end of my days."An end that would never come.
hold my hand, it's a long way down to the bottom of the river
For days. He says, and for a moment she can only look on at him uncertainly. It seemed wholly impossible, completely unbelievable, that he had felt her in his veins the way she had felt him. Like a poison, a parasite, a fever burning away all coherent thought and reason until there was only heart left. Only instinct. But her dark eyes lift to his face and she can feel the sincerity burning there, bright and honest. Her mouth sinks at the corners, pulled down by the weight of the frown flattening itself across her whiskered lips. “I didn’t go back right away.” She tells him quietly, understanding, and her lips return to a spot above the corner of his mouth, a hollow carved perfectly for her. “I waited. I thought maybe I could forget about you.” She tips her head imploringly, the expression softening with the way her brow furrowed beneath the dark tangles of her forelock. Even now her chest tightens and her heart thrashes within at the very notion of forgetting him. “It turns out that’s a lot harder to do than you would expect.” Her voice is lighter now, soft to match the smile sitting in her wild brown eyes, a smile that traced down along her jaw and etched itself across her dark mouth. ”It was impossible.” She isn’t sure how he is doing it, but she can feel herself thawing to the sound of his humming voice and the heat of his mouth coaxing shivers from her skin.
He shifts and she cannot see his face anymore, but his mouth against her spine keeps her from protesting. It is both foreign and frightening how whole she feels in this moment, so unlike the broken creature she had always known herself to be. In this moment she can forget the way her mind wanders, the way it swallows darkness and sorrow and breeds grief beneath her skin, a grief that is not hers but that she can feel as keenly as any wound. But with him the world feels smaller, quieter, she does not worry about falling away into the sky to be consumed by the cold fire of stars. He shifts again, this time to pull her close against his chest and she can feel the flutter of wings in her heart, her veins, and every part of her belongs to him. Never has she felt so wanted, never so needed as she feels with his neck draped across her withers and his lips teasing the strands of dark mane along the crest of her neck. “If this is a dream, I want to live in it forever.” She shifts in his embrace, turning to trace the thin white scars on his shoulder with the soft of her dark velvet mouth.
And then-
“Never?” She whispers softly in a voice that almost teases, and if only she knew, if only she knew, it is in the way a blade teases the skin before it buries itself there, “never is an awfully long time, Offspring.” She shrugs a little deeper into his chest, into this embrace that made her skin feel electric and her heart so wonderfully alive in her chest. “Offspring, I have no desire to leave you.” She promises, but there is a frown of concern bleeding through the quiet of her delicate face. She can feel the first fissures of doubt racing across her heart like lightning shattering a night sky, each crack full of ice and stone and a fear that bleeds cold in her veins. “I want things with you that I have no right wanting.” Her chest must have caved in a little because she exhales sharply with the weight of the confession on her lips. “If this is a dream, I hope I never wake up.”
