09-11-2021, 05:58 PM
ILLUM
There is something dangerous about the way her softness makes something inside his chest clench tight like a fist. She is everything delicate and fragile, everything he can only ruin with the stain of his creeping dark. Yet when he touches his lips to her skin and she trembles beneath him with all the sweet uncertainty of a timid doe, he is slaved to her. His mouth does not leave her skin, not even when he can feel the heat of a blush creep beneath the rose gold dapples that taste of wretched salvation. “Este.” He breathes, and his mouth wanders further, a kiss of midnight and silver stars, of a creeping cold he can already imagine dragging more shivers from the curve of such a slender spine.
He is quite certain he would have taken more, but she is nothing if not obedient and suddenly his night is being pushed back by a dawn of light she pulls forth from someplace deep inside her. From the gentle way she had watched him, those earnest smiles and too-innocent eyes, he would have expected her light to be something shy and lacking, something more like a hazy glow. But the light the burns from her strikes him with such an intensity that it is impossible not to stagger back from it with a startled swear, to stagger back from her as she burns away at the dark of him.
He knows he should hate it, should be disgusted by the way this girl makes him so effortlessly weak. But when the light fades again and leaves an angel in its wake, there is no room for anything but this gaping wound inside his chest, this ache that reminds him he hasn’t been alive in a long, long while. That he doesn’t deserve to be alive, not when someone like this is looking up into his face with eyes so wide and worried and full of gentle trust. Not when he knows he is only capable of taking things she should not give to him.
His eyes are something dark and furious as he steps to her again, shifting from blank and empty to a gold as volatile as the flash of lightning between storm clouds. He hates her for coming here, for finding him. Hates Ryatah for letting her believe there was some kind of worthiness in him, something worth coming here to know. Because now time cannot be undone. He cannot unremember these wide brown eyes, cannot unremember the way she trembles when his midnight lips taste the color of her earnestness.
“Goddamnit Este.” He is no longer the beautiful night, no longer something of summer twilight and stretching constellations, no longer the illusion of sparkling enchantment. He is the cold dark that stretches between stars. He is the lonely midnight that finds you awake and restless and lost. But his voice lacks the fury of his eyes, and when he reaches her it is as an erosion of man and pain and darkness, of loathing and secrets and this burning desire to keep her when he has been able to keep nothing else. He is whispering, he is trying to be still and stoic, to be empty even while she is so much.
“Haven’t you ever noticed the way dark retreats from the light?” He asks, taking that final step so that his mouth is at the curve of her jaw and then beside the pulse at the soft place just above her throat. “Haven’t you noticed that no matter where you stand, your shadow is always hiding behind you from the sun?” He kisses the flutter of her pulse, keeps his eyes off that halo where it sits like a crown above her delicate ears. “If you are the sun, Este, then where do I go to hide.”
His mouth is cool against her skin, tracing a stardust path over the rose gold dapples all the way to the muscle at the base of her wings which he greets with the press of his teeth. He is no stranger to the unique pleasure of having one's wings touched, to the sensation of feathers ruffled and caressed, but he thinks she might be and so he would like to show her. “How unafraid?” He wonders, and his touch turns to shadow he threads gently through the roots of her feathers against the heat of her tender skin. “What if there were no stars to see by? No light.” Except, even as a torrent of pure shadow spills from him and fills the space of the clearing completely, he can feel it revolt against that sweet, hazy light of her aura.
He is quite certain he would have taken more, but she is nothing if not obedient and suddenly his night is being pushed back by a dawn of light she pulls forth from someplace deep inside her. From the gentle way she had watched him, those earnest smiles and too-innocent eyes, he would have expected her light to be something shy and lacking, something more like a hazy glow. But the light the burns from her strikes him with such an intensity that it is impossible not to stagger back from it with a startled swear, to stagger back from her as she burns away at the dark of him.
He knows he should hate it, should be disgusted by the way this girl makes him so effortlessly weak. But when the light fades again and leaves an angel in its wake, there is no room for anything but this gaping wound inside his chest, this ache that reminds him he hasn’t been alive in a long, long while. That he doesn’t deserve to be alive, not when someone like this is looking up into his face with eyes so wide and worried and full of gentle trust. Not when he knows he is only capable of taking things she should not give to him.
His eyes are something dark and furious as he steps to her again, shifting from blank and empty to a gold as volatile as the flash of lightning between storm clouds. He hates her for coming here, for finding him. Hates Ryatah for letting her believe there was some kind of worthiness in him, something worth coming here to know. Because now time cannot be undone. He cannot unremember these wide brown eyes, cannot unremember the way she trembles when his midnight lips taste the color of her earnestness.
“Goddamnit Este.” He is no longer the beautiful night, no longer something of summer twilight and stretching constellations, no longer the illusion of sparkling enchantment. He is the cold dark that stretches between stars. He is the lonely midnight that finds you awake and restless and lost. But his voice lacks the fury of his eyes, and when he reaches her it is as an erosion of man and pain and darkness, of loathing and secrets and this burning desire to keep her when he has been able to keep nothing else. He is whispering, he is trying to be still and stoic, to be empty even while she is so much.
“Haven’t you ever noticed the way dark retreats from the light?” He asks, taking that final step so that his mouth is at the curve of her jaw and then beside the pulse at the soft place just above her throat. “Haven’t you noticed that no matter where you stand, your shadow is always hiding behind you from the sun?” He kisses the flutter of her pulse, keeps his eyes off that halo where it sits like a crown above her delicate ears. “If you are the sun, Este, then where do I go to hide.”
His mouth is cool against her skin, tracing a stardust path over the rose gold dapples all the way to the muscle at the base of her wings which he greets with the press of his teeth. He is no stranger to the unique pleasure of having one's wings touched, to the sensation of feathers ruffled and caressed, but he thinks she might be and so he would like to show her. “How unafraid?” He wonders, and his touch turns to shadow he threads gently through the roots of her feathers against the heat of her tender skin. “What if there were no stars to see by? No light.” Except, even as a torrent of pure shadow spills from him and fills the space of the clearing completely, he can feel it revolt against that sweet, hazy light of her aura.
