and all of us, we’re meant for the fire, but we keep rising up and walking the wires

She hates the fact that of everyone she has ever met, he (he) is the one to scare her.

Him with the bright eyes and wide smile and floppy ears, using his ability to manipulate ice and snow and control winter itself so that he can grow absurd ice eyebrows just to make her laugh. Running his lips down her ribs to get her to giggle. Teasing and poking at her and looking so damn smug the whole time.

He is ridiculous, and he is absolutely terrifying because of it.

“I see the tree,” she snaps, growing increasingly icy with the fear. He is too close. Physically. Emotionally. He is too close to seeing everything about her. The fact that she is lonely. The face that beneath everything, she has always been just a scared little girl who wants to believe the best in the world. The fact that she loves her family and hates them for not chasing after her more. The fact that she had loved her father and can’t stand the thought of him anymore, of how he has destroyed their family.

He is too close and she desperately wants to keep all of it from him.

When he gets serious, she grows increasingly skittish, not liking that somber look in his eye. She freezes at the feel of his nose against hers like prey, drawing in the scent of him, before shifting her head to the side. She scoffs, shaking her head. “Everyone tries to keep secrets.” Her control slips once more, but this time she looks terribly sad instead of girlish and joyful, shadows striking her eyes. “I should know.”

She ignores the fluttering in her belly as his face shifts from mischievous to playful. She can’t stop feeling the way that she straddles a need to get rid of him for good or satiate that hunger gnawing at her—the one that mirrors what she sees reflected back in his eyes. Suddenly, irritation flares in her belly.

She shouldn’t be afraid of him.

She shouldn’t feel trapped by his warm brown eyes or goofy smile.

She takes an emboldened step forward, trying to grab for some semblance of control in the conversation that has increasingly felt like it is heading down a dangerous road. “How about you do that, Fox,” her voice drops an octave as she takes another step toward him, closing the distance—hoping to throw him off balance as much as he has been throwing hers off. “You certainly talk a big game.”

lynx

and all of us, we’re meant for the fire, but we keep rising up and walking the wires

He doesn’t feel ridiculous now.

She feels the blood freeze in her veins and then turn to liquid heat, racing through her, lighting her very extremities on fire. She stands still as he closes the gap between them, and she wonders at why she has never noticed all of the flecks of different colors in his eyes, the way that the light turns them molten. How they can shift from green to hazel to honey, taking on such a vast and dizzying array of color.

Her belly tightens, desire pooling in there.

She has never really felt this before. Never let herself want it. She was content to live apart, set aside and watching from a distance. She was content to travel alone, to keep an eye on her dangerous brother and to keep Fox squarely filed away as the old, slightly obnoxious, slightly funny friend.

But he doesn’t feel funny now.

And she doesn’t feel like laughing.

He traces patterns into her flesh and goosebumps follow, her nerves lighting up at every place that he has been. Her icy blue eyes heat and she turns to him, determined to not lose her edge in this game, determined to keep at least one hand next to his on the steering wheel. She was not raised to be a coward and she would not let the likes of him drive her away. She would not flee from this.

“Fox,” her voice is smoke and she reaches out, almost shy at first as her lips find the heavy angles of his jaw. He had just been a child the last time they had been together. He had been gangly and fluffy and cute, no edges, nothing to cause her heart to flip. But he isn’t just a boy anymore. He has grown into himself, his body filling out, his face taking shape with masculine weight and angles.

All she wants to do is explore them.

Perhaps later she will know that her determination to wrench control is what caused her to lose it entirely. Perhaps she will figure out that by fighting desperately for control, she relinquished it all, but she doesn’t recognize it now. All the same, she’s lost in the moment, lost in him. She nearly hums in her throat as she nips slightly at him, catching hide between her teeth and holding it, pinching down and then releasing it.

She sighs, her breath rolling lazily over him.

“Shut up, Fox,” she murmurs, mouth moving over the slopes of his forehead, lipping at the soft velvet near the corner of his mouth. “Don’t say something stupid and make me regret this.” 

lynx

and all of us, we’re meant for the fire, but we keep rising up and walking the wires

She wants to believe him.

She wants to believe that she will never regret this. That she will wake up in his arms and that they will go on to live a happy life together. She wants to believe that she will always lower her defenses around him, that she would always be willing to let him close to her—but she knows better. She’s seen the way that love can twist unto itself, the very sharpness that brought it beauty being the same edge that slices through the chest. She’s watched her father turn from her family. Her mother deal with the aftermath.

She knows love isn’t forever.

She doesn’t even know if love is real.

(Is this love?)

Her heart pounds wickedly against her chest and she wants to pull away, wants to extract herself from his thoughts that have turned increasingly smoky and enticing, but she can’t. What had started as a dare has turned muddy around her ankles, and she can feel herself sinking into it. Leaning into it. His mouth brushes her flesh and she shivers. His teeth rake against her and she nearly moans, the sound building in her throat and getting stuck on her tongue. It’s foggy. Everything is foggy, and she comes undone.

“I already regret it,” she whispers, but she doesn’t break from him. Her lips trace his neck, find the dip of his spine. She trails down his belly, alternating between small bites and the gentlest of kisses. “I can’t be what you deserve,” she pulls back but only so that she can find his neck and then his jaw. She traces her way down his face, stopping by the corner of his mouth. “But I don’t want to think about that right now.”

Her blue eyes are clear, her face stripped clean of pretense when she finds his gaze.

“I want to stop thinking for once in my life, Fox.”

lynx

and all of us, we’re meant for the fire, but we keep rising up and walking the wires

He stokes a fire in her belly until it blossoms into an inferno.

She can feel it spreading through her limbs, the edges of her mind turning hazy, her extremities going numb. The rest of the world seems to fade away into a dull, soothing static, and she feels drunk in the moment, lost in the agonizing slow build of his touch. She can’t find the words in her throat, can’t feel anything except for the soft purr in her throat as he kisses his way down her sides, as she feels lips and teeth and the impossibly warm roll of breath as it hovers over her skin, pooling like fog in the morning.

There is a part of her, a weak part of her, the blooms beneath his attention. She unfurls beneath his touch, wanting to believe in the purity of it—wanting to believe in hime. Her heart is vulnerable, having been shielded and kept away for so long, and he undoes the defenses so perfectly that she has to wonder if she had any to begin with. Was there a moment where she was not his? Was there a time?

She can’t remember.

She can’t remember anything but this: the hitch in her breath, the spike in her pulse.

He comes back up the other side and her eyes open, her face naked with emotion, the muss of her hair so different from the usually elegant, sleek appearance of her. “I don’t,” she breathes, trembling slightly. She can still feel the whispers of his mind and, for perhaps the first time, she withdraws completely. She pulls it into herself, remembering the lessons of her mother and the ways to shut it off when needed.

Would he feel the absence of her from his mind? Would he feel the weight of her being lifted?

She didn’t know. All she knew was that she did not want to hear his thoughts now.

Not when she had this to ask.

“Fox,” his name is heated on her tongue as she reaches out, tracing his face, tasting whatever she can reach. “Tell me you’ll be mine.” The request is almost so quiet that he may not hear her. Almost so quiet that she could ignore the stab of shame in her belly at her weakness, but she doesn’t apologize for it. She just leans into him, curling her neck to find the warmth of his chest, to feel the thud of his heartbeat.

For tonight, she thought. She just needed something to call her own. At least for tonight.

lynx

and all of us, we’re meant for the fire, but we keep rising up and walking the wires

There is part of her that wants to return the words. That wants to whisper the truth of it back into him, giving him the most precious of gifts—be damned whether it ruins her. She wants to unravel before him, losing all sense of control, following him down the path of the unknown. She wants to light on fire for him, show him the weakest parts of her, the parts that she doesn't even visit often—the parts she doesn’t dare trail her fingers down, where she doesn’t dare put pressure against the joints most prone to buckling.

So, even though the words are there, tripping over her tongue, just begging to be said,

(I’m yours too.)

they remain clogged in her throat.

It instead becomes a soft hum, a murmur, a light groan against the back of her teeth.

It becomes something she shows instead of says because the words have too much power and she’s not willing to fall beneath its weight just yet. It becomes the way she curves to him, heavy-lidded and soft where she is usually all angles, all anger, all furious cold. It becomes the way she presses her lips to to chest, trailing up the masculine curve of his neck, lingering on his jaw, teeth testing the flesh there.

She no longer has words to show him the passionate shattering in her breast, the fears lost in the fog.

All she has is this—here and now—this impossible moment where he has finally made his way behind her defenses. She almost chokes when she finds his gaze, almost remembers the danger there, but she doesn’t back away, doesn’t try to leave. She just nods slowly, pressing her cheek to his and then moving closer into him until they stand chest to chest and she can lose herself in trailing patterns down his broad back.

lynx