"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
It was doubt that had forced her away from him, a sudden and painful worry that she had pushed too hard, too far, and now he craved that isolation he was so used to. She could feel the fear like a burr in her chest, tight and sharp and digging into the soft of her wretched heart. But when she did pull away, when she tried to put some distance between them for him, for the sake of his sanity, he was quick to pull her back again.
She gasps against his chest, quiet and tremulous, breathless from the heavy way his jaw presses into the soft of her blue roan shoulder, from the way it makes her pulse hum and her chest ache. It is easy to imagine that this gesture is selfish, possessive, that he is holding her tight to him because he wants to and not because it is a reflex to do so, and so she does imagine it. She is selfish, too.
It feels like home here, tucked gently to the curve of his neck and the wide of a waiting embrace. It feels like home with her chest pressed to his and their hearts beating a strange and tangled kind of rhythm. Luster, he whispers again into the blue of her skin, and she is unraveling beneath him, a million stars shattered across the furthest corners of the darkest galaxy. Her nose pushes hard against the point of his shoulder, the flat of her teeth just barely sheathed beneath the pale of those delicate pink lips. “Stillwater.” She says back, her voice soft and tight and colored with the palest shades of accusation. He must know what he is doing to her, must be able to feel the tremble of her skin where it presses flush to his, must be able to count the beats of her heart and realize it hums faster than her stars, now. “You have to stop saying my name like that.”
Never, never stop.
But then he does pull away, forced back by the weight of her confession, by the blade of reality that hangs over both of them. Nothing has ever felt quite as cold as the air that rushes in between them, touching and cooling the places he had set fire to with the velvet of his dark lips. Her eyes are luminous in the night, worried as she pulls her light to him so that she can more easily see his face again, can pick apart the sad and the tension to find the man that stays hidden underneath. But there is so much weight in his expression now - maybe even pain, she thinks, tracing the lines of taut muscle below his cheek. Did she do that to him?
His lips find the curve of her cheek again, and she leans into it readily, closing those dark eyes because that is what you do when you’re dreaming. But he is still there when she opens them again, still there when they fall pleading against the dark of his solemn face. Come home with me, he says, we will stay awake, he promises. He asks, because he doesn’t realize that she is already home at his side – that her heart already sits beside his in the dark and quiet of his chest. “With you.” She agrees quietly, touching her lips to his cheek, carving promises into the smooth glossiness of his black skin. Always with you.
He shifts to guide her up the slope behind them, his lips warmer than sunshine in the crook of her blue shoulder. As they pull away from the water, away from the open air and a black sky shrouded by the lace of trees and leaves, she calls the light back to her. There are only a few dozen stars left, those strange flickering lights, and they fall against her skin and her back, slip across his spine and the gleaming dark of his flesh, and then wink out of existence, one by one. In the new dark, she is unsteady, hesitant when her hooves hit damp earth and smooth stone. But with Stillwater back at her hip, with his mouth by her skin, she eases forward past the boulders, fitting easily in the gap of such a small and narrow entryway.
“Stillwater?” She asks the dark, reaching for his warmth though she can find nothing nearby. Her hoof hits a bit of damp stone, wet with earth and moss and she can feel when her body twists to catch her. But it is just a moment too late and her shoulder is thrust against jagged rock, the soft skin splitting easily beneath those sharp grey points. She gasps and flushes, biting down hard on her lip to keep the sound hidden from Stillwater. She is embarrassed by her misstep, embarrassed that she had been looking for him instead of looking down, embarrassed by the wet pain that now dampens her shoulder. In the dark her eyes are like bright bruises, quiet and aching and pushing away the pain that spiderwebs around the cut in her skin. “Stillwater?” She says again, and her voice is tight and quiet, betraying the pain that is etched in red like a constellation against her shoulder. “Are you still there?”
She knows she shouldn’t, can tell by the way her legs are unsteady beneath her, by the way her muscles tremble beneath the blue like plucked string. She can tell by the heaviness in her bones and the ragged way her chest fills with air. There is nothing left to give to the magic in her skin, nothing left to feed the soft lights that suddenly illuminate the cave, the same stars from outside – though these seem tired and sad and dying. But it is dark in here – she doesn’t mind the dark, it is so much like home – and the floor is slick and the footing is uneven and she is wary, wary of the jagged stones in the walls around them. She eases forward again, swaying gently, tiredly, and then biting back the grimace that wants to warp the beauty of that delicate blue mouth, “I bet morning doesn’t reach in here.” There is a smile, almost a smile, soft and strange and teasing as she searches the half-dark for him again, “I could stay forever.” It is just a whisper of sound, like snowflakes when they land, spoken so low, so quiet, that she does not think he will have heard her past the echo of their hooves.
He whispered her name. She returned with his, a little more strained than it had been before. A little more knowing. A sly smile crept to his lips, amusement sparking in his dark eyes. You have to stop saying my name like that. He chuckled softly, rubbed his nose sweetly against hers. But I think you like it, he whispered teasingly.
And soon she was agreeing to come home with him, placing her own lips to his cheek before he turned to guide her up the short slope. He stopped at the entrance, allowed her to pass him and enter first as her last lights blinked out and threw them in darkness. Her steps hesitated, but she pressed forward, blackness draping over her like a sheen of silk. He glanced back the way they came, back to the water where she'd gifted him a night sky. Had he anything at all he could give her? No..
Stillwater? Her voice was an echoing tremor through the entrance as he slipped in silently. A quiet gasp escaped her and the line of her shadowed figure faltered abruptly. He smelled it instantly, the wound, the blood, flesh torn on jagged rocks. His nostrils flared, unseen in the solid darkness like the rest of his jet-black body. Made for this. Even his eyes were dark, only a shade lighter and bluer than the surroundings, unnoticed until they came into focus so near another face. Stillwater? Are you still there?" Pain.
Here, Luster, he said quietly, stepping before her. His voice had turned dull and bland, his eyes glossing over like murky waters. calculating. He blinked slowly, watching her with such intensity. She smelled good, sweet. And she was attractive. Young. Her faded lights flickered to existence, lighting his face, and his gaze shifted to her shoulder to mask them beneath thick lashes, knowing somehow these eyes were wrong now. You're hurt, he forced out, finding speech odd.
She swayed forward, fatigued and drained. He stepped in to catch her against his chest, stared down at her. Soft blue and lacy white. Luster. He breathed, he blinked; his eyes darkened and cleared when they opened again. With a glance around them, he pulled back to give her space after making certain she was steady again. I bet morning doesn't reach in here, she said. He smiled weakly, but looked again to her shoulder.
You're hurt, Luster, he repeated, his voice tight with concern, brows pinched. He should tend to her, he knew he should, but he knew he couldn't. Thanks to Karaugh enlightening him on that terrible side effect of letting one live, he knew he could never tend to her wounds without putting her in danger from him. Without craving her. He slid to her other shoulder instead, swinging around to align himself at her side, and brushed his mouth across her jaw.
Lie down and rest, he suggested gently, we will still stay awake. If you want. Though you should sleep if you must leave in the morning.
Of course she must.
come down to the black sea swimming with me go down with me, fall with me, lets make it worth it
01-30-2017, 09:02 PM (This post was last modified: 01-30-2017, 09:06 PM by luster.)
What he doesn’t realize, as turns back to look out across the rippling quiet of a lonely lake, is that he has already given her everything. More than she could have been bold enough to hope for. For every one of her twinkling stars, gifted to him and to the night to form a spinning galaxy above their heads, he pushed a different kind of light inside of her. In those bright and solemn eyes, in the tension along his jaw, in the guilt on his shoulders she could nearly reach out and touch. It was in his closeness too, in the way his lips coaxed such easy, instant heat to the surface of her skin, the way his smile sent her heart humming wild in the prison of her chest.
He changed her, he filled her, he made her light even in the dark.
Here, Luster, the dark says in his voice, and at once the knot in her chest eases so that she can breathe again. She reaches out to touch him, surprised and maybe even a little disappointed that the distance between them is so strangely deep again. When her nose finds his neck, uncertain and unassuming, she is surprised to feel so much tension there, to trace the thick cords of muscle that ripple beneath her worried lips like slithering snakes. “Stillwater?” She asks, concerned, her voice just a broken sound shattered through with uncertainty.
He is illuminated at once by her light. It is not the brightness of day or even dawn, not the watery glow of the stars, it is the light of when moonlight finds a world draped in snow, a world made to catch and reflect and fill with silver. You’re hurt, he says in a voice that sounds stiff, with a face tight and stoic and carved from marble. She watches his eyes drift to her shoulder, to that gash that is only a few inches long and not terribly deep but still spills blood like rubies across the blue of her skin and the slate of his cave. “I’m okay,” she tries to tell him quickly, tremblingly, turning it from him so that those midnight eyes will look anywhere, anywhere else, “I’m fine, just clumsy.” But it isn’t clumsiness, she has always been a creature of ease and grace, delicate and soft – it is the exhaustion burying sharp, broken fingers in the pit of her belly and pulling her down, down and away from him.
But she isn’t tired, she can’t be, morning will come too, too soon.
He catches her anyway, hugging her tight against his chest and she cannot help the soft whimper, like a hum of sad and solemn and sorrow, that echoes in her chest. She can feel his eyes on her but she can’t look up yet, refuses to look up, dreads the judgment she expects to find waiting for her, carved perfectly into the dark marble of his face. He says it again, you’re hurt, luster, and finally she does look up, startled by the unfamiliar dark swimming in the backs of his eyes. But he blinks and it’s gone again, and it is easy enough to think that she had only imagined it. “It’s nothing,” she whispers, inhaling sharply, and then turns away from him again, from those prying eyes, “I’m fine.”
He steps away and her legs feel broken beneath her – too small, too brittle, too tired to hold her up. Don’t go, she wants to say, wants to pull him back to her side, to her skin so that he can trace quiet kisses along her neck until she forgets her shame, forgets her shoulder, forgets the red pearls spilling across the murky blue of her skin. But she is too tired, too small, and instead when she lifts that delicate face to him it is a mask of pain and uncertainty, etching deep furrows across the black and blue and white.
Lie down and rest, he says and she can see the way concern knots beneath the black of his face, the way it ripples beneath his skin when he finally, finally returns to her side. She is supple against him, made molten to fit against the plains and ridges of a body carved from dark and marble – shy, when his mouth traces the line of her jaw and something inside her chest explodes. But the suggestion of sleep (though she fights the way it makes her eyes so heavy) is enough to buckle her knees and in an instant she is curled and sleepy against the cool, smooth stone. Stillwater settles like a shadow beside her, dark and soft and it is reflexive when she reaches over to touch him again, when she lips at the line of his jaw in a way that is unabashedly affectionate. “Stillwater,” she hums, her breath warm and sweet where it tickles his skin – soft, where her lips travel to the curve of a small, dark ear, “don’t let me fall asleep.”
She shifts slightly, barely, enough to take the pressure away from the wound in her shoulder that she cannot reach to clean – a wound that, despite Stillwater’s best efforts to distract her, still stings and throbs with a heartbeat all its own. Laying her cheek against his neck, the lights flicker out until there is only one left, and the absence of the nights reflection in the dark void of his silhouette. Her eyes feel heavy with sleep, heavy with the pleasure that burns in her chest at the way they are curled together like puzzle pieces in the dark, but she forces them open, choosing instead to busy herself with tracing shapes and constellations in the dark of his perfect neck. Then, quietly, with a heart that trips and skitters and shatters in her chest, “I feel like I’ve know you forever,” a pause and she remembers to be bashful again, to turn her heated flush away from him in the dark, “and I feel like forever isn’t nearly long enough.”
“Give me a reason to come back, Stillwater.” Her eyes are against his face again, soft and sad and invisible in the dark, and she aches to reach out and touch him but something, something holds her back.
The smell was thick in the air mingling with her delicate fragrance, the tang of it making his mouth water and his eyes slip into the hunger. Back and forth, he would roll into predator and rein it back in, lust for her and smother it down. It was beginning to agitate him, reminding him of Nayl and her stupid games. Except this time it was within him. He knew what he wanted, knew just how to take it. How to make it feel so, so good, then so very bad.
Knew, too, that he didn't want to. Not with this one. Not Luster.
But a young virgin was always the sweetest. Their blood so strong and screams so real. So loud.
Back and forth.
He'd managed to lower himself down with her without tensing up. His warmth cradled her smaller figure protectively, so petite and lovely, as though he could save her from himself. He wondered how soft that dark hair might be, how susceptible she might be to his lover's touch, how much she'd melt, how much she'd like to have his lips against her and teeth sink in. But he wanted to keep her safe, remember? Yes, safe. She was only here for the night, and then gone again by morning. Just keep her safe until she left to never return.
He was already beginning to struggle with his nature when she touched his jaw, so gentle with lips so supple. He felt the eagerness spread in him like a lit fuse, the glee at such easy prey. Stillwater, she hummed against him, and he heard himself mirror it with a pleased mmmm, don't let me fall asleep. He didn't even consider his words before he whispered into her ear, Say it again, Luster. Say my name. He kissed her temple, drawing a slow and heated path to her jaw. So near her throat. The next time, you will scream it, he nearly promised aloud. But he didn't want to frighten her off so soon, did he?
It can be quick and sudden. Or it can be a wonderful art, sculpted and shaped just as he wanted.
He retreated a little, forcing the thoughts from his mind. Burying the image of her filled with need and then terror, driving out the imagined screams of pleasure then fear. No, not this one. Luster was the exception. It was only the blood changing him, that was all. Just a little blood. Could be a lot of it...could keep her alive, an endless source. No, not Luster. Not this one.
She made it worse. Her beautiful dark face leaned into his neck, bringing her shoulder that much closer. Even in the darkness, he could see it; the fine drip to her tap of ruby tonic. His eyes immediately sharpened with intensity, staring hard and unintentionally drifting closer. It was so close, and it was only just a little after all. And being wasted. He should at least tend her wound. He was just above it, his breath gently warming it. Something in the line of his body, the predatory slowness to his movements, or even simple trust, kept her so still for him. His lips parted and he breathed, nearly able to taste it in the air, her swift heartbeat in his ears.
I feel like I've known you forever, a pause, and I feel like forever isn't nearly long enough.
He carefully pulled his eyes from the temptation with a low rumble in his chest, something between a groan and a growl. Instead, he focused on the softness against his cheek as he turned his face and pressed lovingly into her neck. Perhaps she would reconsider the part where she thought she knew him. But he could handle this. He could control it for her.
Give me a reason to come back, Stillwater, she said quietly. No, don't stay. It was best that she didn't, safest that she never came back. And yet there was a part of him that already craved her, not for her blood, but for her. It was strange, and new, and he wanted to learn more about it. He wanted to know why he felt the desire to have her so near. Perhaps it was only attraction in some way. He couldn't have weaknesses. He should learn what it was and how to solve it. Why did he want her so badly and so differently.
Luster, he murmured softly, pausing to drink in the smell of her sweet skin, concentrating on the sensations it sent coursing through him. The tingling, the warmth. What are you, how do you do this to me?Go home to your family. Put their minds at rest that you are safe and whole. They are most certainly worried to have lost you.I would be too. He drew parted lips softly along her jaw, his breath slow and hot. Damn, she felt so good. He wished she'd stay and never leave.
Maybe you'll come back to me one day.
Maybe I'll be waiting for you.
come down to the black sea swimming with me go down with me, fall with me, lets make it worth it
She is at home in the curve of his dark body, content against the heat of his skin and beside the ripple of hard muscle. In the dark, with her face tucked against the warmth of his arching neck, she cannot see the way his eyes darken and gleam, the way his face becomes harsh and predatorial with a beautiful kind of hunger. She does not understand the war that rages inside him, the resentment that burns at her, and at himself. It is too easy to instead be wrapped up in the way that he holds her, in the way that his scent covers her like starlight – like warm sand and lake-water, cleaner than cold air.
But she does notice the change in him when she touches her lips to his jaw, pale pink against smooth black, and both of them tremble just a little. “Stillwater,” she hums against him, presses quiet longing in the shape of kisses along the hard line of his jaw, smiling softly when he asks her to say his name again. But his lips find her temple before she can, that soft hollow beside her eye, and trail slow kisses along her jaw until she is delirious with the closeness. He is like the sun, bright and hot and consuming, and she is deep oceans, and she cannot understand why she hasn’t evaporated yet.
“See,” she says when his lips disappear from her face, when her skin cools and flushes and she can remember herself again, “see how that isn’t fair?” But she is glad that his name on her lips affects him at least a fraction of the way it had affected her, that she had managed to steal kisses from this stranger with the dark, quiet face. She is still breathless when she pushes her nose against his neck, lingering so close to the soft curve of his throat, still tremulous with the kisses he had left like brands again the oceanic blue of her skin. “Stillwater.” She says again, she hums again, but it is different this time. There is still that urgency, that poorly concealed longing that flashes in echoes at the back of her eyes every time she looks at him, but there is something more, too. More than the unabashed affection she had traced in kisses against his neck, more than the stars she had thrown into a dark sky for him. “Stillwater." She whispers again, pulling back slightly, and it is a promise, possessive and trusting, her heart dropped into his chest.
His nose, his mouth, his lips drop slowly to the place where her skin aches, to the gash in supple flesh that had surrendered too easily, too willingly to the sharp edge of a stone. She is immobile, trusting and too tired to move away from breath that clouds like heat over skin that already burns fever-bright. He is still for so long, waiting through so many beats of her racing heart, and she can feel him stiffening beside her. She shifts and traces her lips uncertainly across the gleaming black, confused to find that every muscle and inch of flesh is as hard and unyielding as the stone beneath them. She is about to ask why when he pulls away, when he answers an earlier question that she had posed in bashful glances and tentative touches to the curve of his neck.
Luster, he says and she lifts her face to him, those dark eyes quiet and solemn and soft for him, go home to your family. It doesn’t matter that this was always the plan, that this was what she had told him, it still hurts to hear it aloud, to hear it from his lips and dark voice. Not even his lips parted against her jaw, the sweetness of breath like sunshine, warm and hungry pressed to her skin is enough to ease the ache, the weight, this awful, crushing pressure in her chest. She laughs – it is almost a laugh if it were not so sad and sweet and carved through with loneliness. “How,” she says, and her voice is softer than a breath, softer than rain when it falls to the earth, “how do I leave this.” A pause and she drops her head across his legs, solemn and soft and refusing to look at him, refusing to let him see the regret etched so deeply into the curves and hollows of such a beautiful blue face, “How do I leave you.”
She sighs and it is the sound of autumn, of leaves crumpled and dry and bent beneath the wind, of things beautiful and desolate, lonely. “That is a lot of maybes.” She says at last, lifting her head back up to where she can find his eyes in the dark. “But one of those maybes is wrong.” Her lips are gentle and imploring, less urgent and more reserved when they move to trace the lines of his face, when they bury kisses in the deepest hollows and a soft smile against his cheek. He is like a shooting star, brief and temporary, and she is desperate to memorize him. “I’m greedy,” she tells him quietly, paints the promise against his skin with that fragile, uncertain smile, “I will come back to you.”
For you. Always.
There is an ache in her chest putting words in her mouth that feel sharp and unfamiliar, like broken glass from the windows of her eyes. Wait for me. It wants her to say, wants her to etch into his gleaming skin with the soft of her pale, whiskered lips. But it is too greedy even for her, even for the blue girl curled within the curve of his body, the blue girl who stole kisses from dark lips and perhaps, just perhaps, a sliver of the heart beating inside his chest if only until morning. Then, quietly, with her small face upturned to catch his bright and his heat, she says instead, “Will you worry?” A beat and she clarifies, nosing at his mane unhappily. “Will you worry about me when I’m gone?”
She sighs again, the sound of broken glass, and presses so close, so urgently to his side, her face to his neck, and it is impossible to tell where blue ends and black begins. They are like deepwater, like his lake, or an ocean. Unending. She closes her eyes to the dark, buries her sadness in his neck, and promises, “I will worry about you, Stillwater.”
Each time she said his name, it changed; her voice, her tone. Her meaning. And each time hit him harder. Buried deeper into his soul. Wedged itself in his mind. Stillwater. She made his breath shallow, his pulse quicken. He knew these responses, knew them from prey. But not from himself. Never from him. She was causing something new -flipping a switch, shining a light in to darkness- showing him another side he didn't know he truly had. He was always cool, so cool and still and calm. Calculating. As was his nature.
She was stirring him, setting a burner beneath and watching him rise to a simmer. Making the dark pools of his eyes heat with a different hunger. One like his victims had. It was uncontrollable. It was maddening.
It was amazing.
"How do I leave this. How do I leave you," she said, and fell quiet. You don't, he almost said. Never leave, stay forever. But she had to. Had family that missed her. Worried for her. And he wasn't really someone to keep, was he? Wasn't the type to have one stick around. Or live. Relationships were foreign concepts for him; he heats them, riles them, makes them mad with passion. Then devours them. They tasted the best that way. She couldn't stop it, no one could. How long would she stay when he always smelled like other women? She wouldn't. She would stiffen up and run just as Nayl had. She could never understand, and he'd never expect her to.
Her head sank into his lap, across his legs, and his nose immediately buried into her soft hair. His mouth teased the dark currents, allowing her the silence she took, her mind swimming with thoughts that consumed her as he enjoyed every electrifying sensation, every intoxicating smell. He could drown in this moment. Fill his lungs with this foreignness and cease to exist. If he could only stop time and hold her captive in this moment, permanently pleased with him. Not fearing him. Not hating what he was.
"That is a lot of maybes," she finally said, sitting up to meet his gaze. Awe, wonder, confusion, desire; which one would she see there? "But one of those maybes is wrong." Her lips met him again, and his eyes closed as she gently explored the lines of his face, savoring this with her. "I'm greedy. I will come back to you." He was foolish to flare with hope at the promise in her voice. The underlying need.
Maybe he needed her too.
Another maybe. She didn't like those.
There was an intensity in her eyes that drew him in, staring deep and waiting for more of her voice. Like a snake hypnotized, waiting to follow her movements without hesitation. "Will you worry about me when I'm gone?" She touched his hair, he touched her cheek. She buried deeper into his side, pressing closer and surely feeling his heart pound against her, which only made it kick faster. "I will worry about you, Stillwater."
He pulled back enough to tilt her chin up to look at him. I already do. I am already worried for you. I am already worried you won't return again. I am already missing you. I worry that- He tensed suddenly, pupils shrinking in distress before he could close them. He realized what he said. He was solitary, made that way, would always be; he couldn't miss anyone. Why would he? But he was aware of the truth, and he swallowed the implications. He said he already missed her. Already worried for her. Worried she wouldn't come back to him. And he remembered..
He could not lie.
His face turned away from her. Gathered his breath, tried to steady his pulse. Suddenly, he couldn't touch her. Suddenly, they were too close, too suffocating. He stood and paced away, straight for the exit. To the water, he needed the water. He jerked to a halt, afraid she might think she'd done something wrong. Afraid she wouldn't realize he was coming undone on his own somehow. Everything was new, confusing. It wasn't supposed to be this way. All wrong.
I need- I'll be right back.
But he only made it as far as the door before he was turning back again. Before he was making a mistake. Before he was choosing fire over water. He sank down again in one fluid movement, eyes bright with need and dark with heat. His black rolled over her blue like the night tide, dragged her down into this wild current with him. Kisses flowed across her neck, and her throat, and her cheek, her face, her throat again. He moaned softly against her tender flesh.
Luster.. He nipped at her, tugged at her skin but kept the surface in tact. Could she see how bad he wanted this? Wanted her? Craved her -and her blood. This was dangerous. He should stop, he could hurt her. But his lips continued to find more of her until he was coming up for air, his breathing heavy. He closed his eyes over the heat in them, that new heat. The fire. Her fire. He swallowed again, wishing for the water to cool him, calm him. He meant to say he was sorry, meant to apologize for doing this.
But he could not lie.
Come back to me, Luster, he whispered instead.
come down to the black sea swimming with me go down with me, fall with me, lets make it worth it
She is delirious with the closeness, drunk with his nose against her neck, his lips teasing the corn-silk wisps of an impossibly soft mane. There is a sound on her lips, a hum, a whimper, not quite his name – though she had intended it to be, and it seems effortless the way he coaxes it from the pit of her belly. His eyes close when her lips settle against his cheek, and she is struck at once by the way it changes him, the way it softens his face from marble to pine. “Stillwater.” She whispers again, breathes his name, reaches up to push his forelock aside and leave a quiet kiss on the smooth of his forehead.
She is not unraveling like he is, not coming undone seam by seam. Not struggling to pull herself together, to resist the desires that press her so close against him. She has already given in. Already undone. Already unraveled, for him. Maybe it is her youth that makes it so easy to do, her innocence, and the way her heart thrums like bird-wings in her chest when he smiles with her name on his lips. But she is his, her heart halved and buried inside his chest. She won’t tell him though, will not place that burden on his shoulders, that weight on his bones. She is his, and it is enough that she knows it.
She is not above secrets.
He touches her cheek and lifts her chin with his nose so that she is forced to look at him, forced to fall back into those eyes – though she jumps willingly. I already do. He says in a voice like velvet, and she can feel her chest implode, feel her lungs in her mouth. I am already missing you. Her only answer is in the silk kisses she presses against the side of his mouth, the kisses that drift up along his jaw to his cheek and land in the soft hollow beneath his ear. In that instant she could tell him, could whisper a promise into the curve of his ear with as little effort as breathing, don’t worry, I’m yours, but she cannot and she must not, so instead with gentle teeth she tugs at the supple skin near the base of his ear. “I’ll be back, Stillwater,” and those gentle teeth drift up along the thin leather of his dark ear. “You can miss me,” she says, she smiles, she drops her lips to his throat again, “but never worry that I won’t return.”
He stiffens though, from pine back to marble, a body like as sleek as stone, as smooth and dark as gleaming obsidian. When he turns from her she is confused, and those solemn eyes disappear beneath the furrow of a brow and the dark fringe of tangle forelock. When he rises, she is crushed. The sudden cold is so jarring, his absence as sharp as glass, and for a moment she struggles to rise, too, eager to bury herself deeper in the shadow of the cave where he cannot see her and she cannot see the distaste that must but etched into his face. But she is so tired, all used up, and those legs crumple beneath her before she is even off the ground. She whimpers, just once, so soft, so quiet, and turns the flushing heat of her face away from him.
But then there is a moment of silence, a moment where she does not hear the tap of his hooves, and it is wholly reflexive when she turns to find him in the dark with bruises for eyes and a chest filled with glass. Before she can even remember how to breathe, he is back and sinking to her side, crushing her against him and she is like water flowing in and against every hollow she can find. His lips find her skin, her neck, her throat, her face, and they are so much hungrier than before, so desperate and in a way she thinks she can understand.
It aches to be so close to him.
It aches worse when he is gone.
He moans then, a quiet sound, a new sound, and it turns her blood to starlight in her veins, cool and silver and spilling over. Luster, and she is all of the stars in the lonely distance, aching and bright and burning silver just for him. His teeth find her skin, tug careful and urgent against the blue until she is cradled into his neck and breathless, wide-eyed and undone. “Stillwater-” she says and her small voice is a whimper of desire, of longing tethered somewhere deep in her belly. But his sides heave and his heart thunders and it is enough to shatter her, turn her to dust and loose her to the wind, but instead she pushes hard against him, forcing his nose from her skin so that he can see her face again. “Don’t do that,” she says, she gasps, she fingers the edges of a heart ready to break, “don’t leave me like that.” But it sounds different aloud, so ugly, so demanding, and she is filled instantly with a regret that burns holes in her belly.
She tries to breathe again but her lungs feel ragged and her breath finds her in uneven spurts. “I-“ but there are no words left, nothing that will mean anything, and so for a moment she just buries her face against his neck, willing more kisses and more nips from that dark, dangerous mouth. When he speaks, she can feel the rumble of his voice through the muscle and sinew of his neck, come back to me, Luster, and she inhales raggedly against his skin.
But she remembers the sudden rush for the mouth of the cave, the tension in his body when he curled around her, the unfinished sentences left hanging and lost. And this time when she lifts her face from his neck, her eyes to his, she is confused and solemn and so resolute that it crushes her. “You don’t really have to stay here with me tonight, Stillwater.” Her chest aches and her eyes flash with those bruises again, but she is struggling to put the pieces together, remembering how he had first offered to stay outside and conceded only after she had willed him to her side. Remembering the kisses, too, and she cannot understand. But she thinks she might be starting to. Then, whispering, “you don’t owe me this.” It is made obvious in the way she strokes her nose across his neck, in the last few selfish kisses she presses to his face, his cheek, his jaw, his mouth, that she is not forcing him away. She is struggling to understand how the tension fits beside the kisses, how his leaving fits with the urgent way he had curled around her. Coming to the conclusion that she is why, though she has completely misjudged the reason. With an ache in that small blue chest, she closes her eyes and presses her forehead to his dark neck, “I didn’t mean to trap you here with me,” a sad smile, a tremulous sigh, “go, if you need to.”
The way she said his name again was kerosene to a flame. This time so breathless with longing, a keening whimper of desire as he heated her with urgent attentions. It fueled the man to fever pitch, but it rattled the beast too. Prey did this, prey sounded this way, so eager for him. Her blood was nearly ready, nearly at that perfect temperature, that perfect rhythm and consistency. The perfect taste. He could feel his pulse pound in his aching teeth, and he groaned against her.
"Don't do that," she gasped, pushing his hungry lips away from her skin, "don't leave me like that." He dropped his gaze and shook his head silently, remorseful that it had upset her, that it might have hurt her when he began to walk away. But unable to promise not to do it again. Unable to explain why.
So he held the quiet carefully between them, the air still so electric with their need. Neither one of them could barely breathe, but he was calming it, coiling back around to control it better. Her eager response to his touch should not affect him so much, they should all be so eager and willing. Somehow it meant something different with her.
Somehow she meant something different.
She tried to speak again but only buried her face into his neck, her breath still shallow and shaking. Come back to me, Luster, he told her, pleaded. Because suddenly he craved more than just a feast of blood and flesh. Would she really come back though? When she was gone from here and woken from this enthralling moment? Would she already fear him before she truly knew the danger?
His uncertainty and confusion reflected back at him in her eyes as she pulled away to look at him. A flicker of hurt passed over her, and he knew what she was questioning. His hot then cold, his soft then hard. He had thrown vastly different reactions at her, and now she was thinking on them, trying to puzzle them out for herself. "You don't owe me this," she whispered, lighting more gentle kisses along the planes of his dark face. "I didn't mean to trap you here with me. Go, if you need to."
He tensed at that word, Trapped, he repeated darkly, harder than he'd meant to. His chain felt heavier, glinted brighter, and his tongue soured in his mouth. He was meant to be wild, to be free and untethered, not bound to anyone but himself. But he brushed the thoughts aside and everything in him softened again, melted away for her. Not by you, he clarified quietly, and returned her affection with the tenderness of his own. He settled sweet kisses to the corner of her eye, to her temple.
I stay with you because I want to, he said in soft honesty, lips brushing her skin. I try to run because it frightens me, he whispered. I'm not one to get attached, and here I am wishing you wouldn't have to leave. He felt like he'd said a lot, felt vulnerable. He was always so private, too. So guarded behind a charming smile. It didn't explain everything, didn't give voice to the hunger that pushed him into predator and back again, but perhaps it would be enough to reassure her. Perhaps it was enough to distract her from that part of him.
How long will it take you, he wanted to ask. When will you be back again where you belong. But instead he sighed quietly and pulled her in closer, held her solidly in the darkness of his home and his embrace. He closed his eyes, memorized the feel of her against him. Just in case she chose not to return again after all. Just in case she sensed the danger when she was away from here and clear-minded.
We should rest now, he suggested almost inaudibly, a hum in his throat against her neck. We instead of you because that would make the difference to her, if she thought he was tired. If she thought he wasn't feigning weariness just for her. Because she was drained and needed her energy if she were to- when she was to leave him in the morning.
come down to the black sea swimming with me go down with me, fall with me, lets make it worth it
Trapped. He says, he repeats darkly, and she realizes too late how lightly she had used the word. Her dark eyes fall briefly to the chain around his ankle, the magical tether that bound him here, that kept him in this place she would to leave once morning found them. She looks away from it, stung, resenting what the silver meant, the way it glinted like a promise, a curse, against his leg. Her lips find his neck, tracing the hard lines of muscle underneath that tell her just how much the word, the reminder, had affected him. She wants to apologize, but the word tastes like pity on her tongue and he deserves so much better than that. “Stillwater.” She whispers instead, shifting in his embrace to trace those wandering lips further than they had before – across his withers and down his back, dropping to leave kisses against the tender skin behind his foreleg. But then his voice pulls her back, and she turns in time to feel his lips brush her face, bury kisses beside her eye. Not by you.
Her heart is soaring in her chest, flying on wings carved from the tenderness of his kisses and the affection painted into his words. I stay with you because I want to, he says, I try to run because it frightens me, he whispers. I'm not one to get attached, and here I am wishing you wouldn't have to leave. She pushes her nose beneath his chin, drawing his head closer so that she can trace every bone and muscle and gleaming dark hair with lips that are soft and heated and so delicate against his face. His own mouth brushes her skin again and this gentleness is almost more overwhelming than the fervent kisses and heated glances, the hunger he had kept barely buried and the fire that roared in her veins for him. Somehow this, these whispered words and careful touches, his lips softer than sunshine on her face, was almost too much. Her heart felt heavy in her chest, swollen and aching and he was the only thing that made it easier to breathe.
“I wish it, too.” She assures him softly, sinking deeper against him because nothing will ever, ever be close enough. Not with morning looming beneath the edges of the sky outside. “I wish I didn’t have to leave.” Her skin remembers his kisses and his teeth, the way electricity had snapped between them, and she blushes. I wish you could come with me, she wants to tell him, to whisper in kisses across his skin, stay with me always. But she remembers the way he had tensed earlier at her reminder of being trapped, she knows, this time, how cruel those whispered words would be.
He sighs and pulls her closer, wrapping his body around her smaller blue one until they are a bruise in the dark. She is soft in this embrace, soft for him, slowing her breathing until it matches his. When she chances a glance up at his face, always curious to see what those dark eyes are doing, she is surprised to find them soft and closed, his face focused. She can guess why, if only because she had done the same thing herself. She reaches up, touching her lips to the corner of his mouth, dropping them lower to trace along his jaw and all the way to his throat. “Remember this, too.” She is soft and breathless when she drops her lips from his face, quiet when she drops her head across his forelegs and beside his chest to listen to the thrumming of his heart in his chest. Then, so quietly, so tremulous, “I promise I’ll be back.” Her smile is soft in the dark, and her voice, although sleepy, is light and bright with gentle teasing, “I’ll be leaving my heart behind, I’ll have to come back for it eventually.” This is not a confession (it is, but not now, not in these words or in this newness), and such is clear even in the dark with that gentle, easy smile and the gleaming of soft brown eyes.
We should rest now. He says, and she wishes he hadn’t. But he is right. She sighs, still curled against his side and with her head across his legs, and murmurs her reluctant agreement anyway. Despite what it means, despite knowing what will happen once her eyes close and open next, there is something so right about falling asleep to the sound of his heart and his breath warming her neck. Her breathing slows and steadies, and it takes all of about one single minute for her to find herself at the edge of sleep and consciousness, staring uncertainly down at the dream waiting for her below. But before she is gone, before sleep can claim her fully, she shifts slightly against him, settling closer to his warmth and his safety and mumble-murmurs something that sounds suspiciously like, “goodnight, my Stillwater.”
