+- Beqanna (https://beqanna.com/forum)
+-- Forum: OOC (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=24)
+--- Forum: Archive (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=81)
+---- Forum: Lands (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=98)
+----- Forum: Tephra (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=85)
+------ Forum: Ischia (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=87)
+------ Thread: this brilliant light is brighter than we've known; dovev [m] (/showthread.php?tid=14614)
this brilliant light is brighter than we've known; dovev [m] - luster - 04-30-2017
mature content, please feel free to not read if it might make you uncomfortable. <3
so we let our shadows fall away like dust
She holds onto her silence as she walks beside him, lost to the pressure in her chest that, even now, pulls her in the opposite direction. It feels like she is abandoning Stillwater somehow, giving up on him and turning her back. But giving up on what? He had Djinni who loved him probably more than Luster could ever understand, loved him in that wild, violent way that worried her so. They even had a child on the way, a family binding them together whether they had meant for it to happen or not.
Maybe the only thing she turns from now is a closed door.
Still, when they reach the water together and she feels it splashed cold against her ankles, she is reminded of him again, reminded of what it is she is leaving behind. I'm yours. She hesitates, stops, can't help when her eyes flash dark and round and broken to the bone-white of Dovev's steady face. One, two, three steps closer to bury her face and his dark mane, to find strength in his quiet, in the strange way she sometimes catches him watching her. What would she have done without him in this moment?
When he steps forward and into the water, she follows, placing an uncertain kiss to his hip before surrendering to the pull of the waves and the tide below. She is surprisingly nervous at crossing the ocean, worried at the depth and the distance and the water in her nose. The only time she's ever been in the water before was when Stillwater pulled her below, when he let her trace all her love in the hollows of his smooth, dark skin. For a second she is broken again, uncertain and undecided, and she falls back behind the bone and dark stallion as the waves yawn between them. There is a moment of panic, just a flash where she grunts and kicks hard - but then he turns back to see her falling behind, abandons his place ahead to return to her side and she reaches for him, whispers an apology that tastes like the sea.
He stays by her in this way until their feet touch the sand of the Ischian shores and she falls quietly against him, laying her cheek behind the bone of his shoulder in silent, open gratitude. It is like this that she takes in the sight of the island around them, wordless and tired and pressed to him, stinking of salt and brine and blinking the sea from her eyes. There is so much water here, so much more than Sylva (an irony she does not miss) and the trees are brighter, wetter, tropical - though she doesn't know the name for it. In the deepening dusk the shore is awash in shades of teal and blue, glowing and bright beneath the surface in a way that makes her smile softly against him. It is reflexive when she reaches out with her magic, spilling fish made of white light to swim and splash among the blue.
She feels lips on her cheek, warm and soft and drawing her back again, and when he turns to move further up along the shore, she follows without question. Beside them, swimming quietly through the luminous blue, her fish join them. It is dark by the time he stops again, but somehow this island still seems bright, brighter than it had been with all its shores lit like wet blue fire. She steps closer to him and follows his gaze from the spring outside to the shape of grey stone hidden behind a tangle of woven ivy. "A cave." She observes in a quiet way, an amused way, leaning over to touch her lips to the soft of his whiskered chin. Of course she would find herself at the mouth of yet another cave, find herself in the echo of a memory she would rather not dwell on. Yet it follows her anyway. "I grew up in a cave." She tells him softly as she had told someone else, laying her cheek against his neck in a quiet way.
Then she pulls away to feel warm dampness against her skin - blood, she realizes belatedly, his where it seeps from wounds reopened and angry from their journey here. "Oh." She says softly, worried, forgetting all else as she pressed the heat of her mouth to nurse at the raw skin again, moving on only when the flesh felt clean and soothed and quieted in her wake. Her sad, dark eyes drift across his body and she frowns at the magnitude, frowns at this strange kind of living, perpetual torture. "Tell me what to do," she says, shifting to press another kiss to the celestial blue of his mouth, "tell me how to help." She ducks beneath him again, pressed to his chest and with those soft lips pulling insistently at the hollows of his skeletal face. Then, so quiet, so uncertain, she pours her magic into him with no way to know if it will only hurt him more. She wraps it gently over every ridge of bone and yawning hollow, makes it soft like silk when she weaves it between flesh and bone like a glowing shield and pulls him tighter to her. "Better or worse?" Her voice is soft and silver, full of ancient stars and quiet nights.
RE: this brilliant light is brighter than we've known; dovev - Dovev - 05-01-2017
They walked in a comfortable but weighted silence, each lost in their own thoughts as he lead them from the meadow. Cerva had come to hate the meadow. But that was a useless thought. He wasn't sure what consumed Luster's quiet attention in that beautiful mind of hers, but he couldn't help but replay what had just passed between them. When she told him she'd come with him.
"Don't be sorry," she had whispered to him, soft kisses staking their tender claim across his face, his cheeks. "I'm not." And when she'd nursed at his wounds again, when he'd moaned into her neck and pinched her skin, she arched firmly against him. God, he'd nearly lost it. To see how reflexive her body reacted to him, imagining all the things he could do to coax more of her instinct to want him back. To beg for more of him.
He shouldn't want her this way. It was cruel of him. He should be capable of being a friend without being a lover. But that was all he'd ever known. He only ever knew how to be absolutely everything for one person. For Cerva. A son, a friend, a guardian, a lover. Anything at all she needed, or wanted, was him. All of it. All of him. Maybe that was what he craved again, the dark obsession that kept him firmly at Cerva's side through everything, every moment, sharing every breath together. Not just sharing a bed together. Every moment. He wanted that again.
"Your name, please." She had tried again for it. He could only shake his head silently with a faint smile, knowing with more certainty now how quickly it would undo him to hear it on her lips in that silky-silver voice. Especially when he made her breathless, as she was now, with the things he could do, would do, wanted to do. No, he should definitely not give her his name. Maybe when they got home, if he could calm down. Stay calm.
"Don't do that. Don't hide from me." She had slowly unraveled him further with everything she said. "I think it would hurt so much worse to be without you, right now." As though she could know the language of his dark heart, that its response was: then never be without me. Breaking him down, bit by bit, making him want her more. In every way that he shouldn't.
And through it all, she had been as physical and needing as he was, kissing him everywhere she could reach with the gentle pass of her lips. It made it so much harder for him not to press for more, give her more, hope for more in return. He was determined to try and be a friend for her. She didn't need a lover, not now. Just be a friend, he could do that, couldn't he? Fuck, probably not. But he'd try. He could at least try.
"Give me something to hold on to."
And so he would take her home, and she could hold onto him.
His thoughts turned to a more distant past as they continued, nearly to the sea now. To a night, the only other time, that he'd shared his home with a woman. He'd done as he always does, he'd given his homeland in place of his name and she'd come to seek him out. He hadn't brought her with him, as he did with Luster just then. But he'd never shared that place with anyone before her, or anyone after, besides his daughter. Until now.
It felt like a big step somehow, but he didn't let it show in his face as he turned back to her. She'd hesitated at the edge of the water, her eyes wide, dark, fragile. He held her gaze in his, steady and calm, patient, until she stepped forward. And then stepped again, until she could bury her face into his hair. He touched her in reflex, gentle and wanting, a warm breath to her neck while water licked at their knees. God, he couldn't help but want more of her. But, no. He would be a friend. He could do that. So he tried to bottle it in and ignore it, that growing desire to have her pressed close to him. Here and now. At all times.
He walked forward, guiding them deeper as the sun was slowly sinking beyond the horizon. She followed with a tentative kiss at his hip, and he was reminded again of Cerva, of how they could never get enough of each other. Always touching. Always reaching. Always pressing into warmth. For a moment, he thought Luster might be slowly killing him with this, with how she was. With how close she was to maybe what he needed, wanted. But she loved already, some idiot that let her away from his side. And he had... to figure shit out. Leliana still haunted him despite that he could never find her anymore. And Dizzy. He'd thrown himself at Dizzy in his pain, and came out of it with far more than a distraction. He wasn't sure what, but it hadn't been just sex. Maybe. Damn, he didn't want to think about any of that.
He was instantly aware that she'd fallen behind, a sharp blade of fear gutting into him as he turned to see the quiet panic in her eyes. Then he was at her side, lifting her chin more for reassurance rather than necessity. A silent way of promising, I'm here. I won't let you go. And they stayed side-by-side until they reached the shore, and after when they took a moment to rest and she leaned into him. He couldn't help but curl his head to kiss at her face, tenderly licking the salt from her skin and only stopping when little creatures of light came alive in the water beside them.
It was in painful awe that he watched them, glowing fish of her creation swimming so naturally next to the luminescent shore. Her magic was nothing like his physical traits. There was nothing good about him save for the base fact that the armor protected him. But maybe he shouldn't be protected in the first place. Her magic though, was beautiful, graceful, powerful. She could be destructive, protective, creative. It didn't always have to be a weapon, like him. Something beautiful, instead.
With a light kiss to her cheek, he turned away from those thoughts and guided them further along the shore, her light-fish following at their side. He preferred this route rather than trekking through the island, preferred to avoid the residents when he could. Even still, it wasn't much longer when he cut into the jungled forest a ways and led them home. To a rockface covered in vines, a doorway of sorts hidden beneath, and a running spring not far from it. Creations of his master, for a student that bled so very often.
"A cave," she noted quietly, almost amused. She touched her lips to his chin and his eyes slipped closed, hoping, but not asking, for more. "I grew up in a cave."
I grew up in the meadow, he offered back in a murmur.
She pulled away then with a quiet Oh, but he was too distracted with the worry and care in her eyes to realize what had caused it. She was this way with everyone, he told himself. It isn't him. It wasn't because she cared so deeply for him. He was slowly fooling himself into thinking otherwise, maybe. That.. this could ever be something more. But he was a friend, of course. He would be a friend. Something entirely new to him, but he'd learn.
When he did realize why she pulled away, he grimaced. He'd soiled her with his blood, hadn't even noticed that it had started up again. Somehow, he was both dismayed and pleased to see himself painted into her skin. His thoughts died completely, though, as her mouth found his wounds once again. Lips parting in a silent gasp, he ducked his head and froze in place, body stiffening. Dammit, he should have told her not to do that by now. He really needed to. He would. When he could breathe again.
But she continued. She coaxed another soft moan from him, aimed at the ground and hoping she wouldn't catch it. Damn, he wanted her. With each little press, it ignited further, brighter, hotter. His legs started trembling and his breath came short and quick, but thankfully, she did stop then. She looked him over as he lifted his head again, pressed a kiss to that spot of blue and only stoking the fire in him even higher. "Tell me what to do. Tell me how to help."
Fuck, he cursed under his breath, ragged and shaky as it was. Dammit, she felt good. God, he wanted her. All of her. Wanted to hear her finding it hard to breathe too, like he was. Wanted to entice moans from her lips, hear his name like a whispered promise. Or like a plea for more. Fuck, yes, have her to the point of begging him, warm and hot beneath him. Solid and soft and so ready, so eager. So wanting, needing.
FUCK.
A friend, a friend. No sex.
God dammit.
He thought a quiet, hysterical sort of whimper may have come from him before she ducked and pressed herself to his chest again. Naturally, the first thought that came to mind was how easy it would be to shift her, rise above her and hold her under him. So easy to take her. Dammit, he couldn't think.
He kept his eyes closed over his torment as a new sensation spilled over him, a feeling like cool silk being draped and tucked around him. It didn't cool the fire in him, though, as it pressed around the edges of his armor, sank into the angry, raw flesh and set his heart racing even swifter. It soothed it, in a way. Soothed the physical heat with its magic coolness, but damn, silk against sensitive skin was definitely not helping the rest of him.
It wrapped around every edge of him, pulled the two of them tighter together, even closer. Shock followed by more desire, more heat, more want. Fuck, that was hot. "Better or worse?" she asked, her voice so soft and smooth and perfect.
He finally opened his eyes to her, slowly, afraid to show her the frantic, eager, need sitting so quietly there. So loudly there. His chest pulsed with his shallow breathing, and he knew there was no denying, no hiding how badly he wanted her. But he wasn't supposed to. He had to calm down. Somehow. He should walk away, come back after he cools down. Her magic held him in that way that felt surprisingly erotic, or maybe that was just because she'd touched him before and it only built more and more with each thing she did.
He didn't know how to answer her. It was definitely better being pressed so firmly against her. But it could get even better. So much better. Or would that be worse? That would be worse for her, wouldn't it? Fuck. Thinking sucked. He'd never been one to think things through, to control himself, and this was so hard. He was so hard. So many conflicting thoughts running through him. Get away from me. Get under me. Don't touch me. Fuck, just come here.
He knew he should leave. Just for a few minutes. Get this under control. He wanted to. Wouldn't be gone long. But his impossible desire kept him rooted in place. Selfish and wanting. Fuck. Make me go away. Tell me to come closer. Make me leave. Tell me what to do. God, but his mouth wouldn't work for even so few words.
Command me, he breathed instead, a plea, black eyes burning for her.
Its alright, you'll be fine baby, I'm in control
Take the pain, Take the pleasure. I'm the master of both
RE: this brilliant light is brighter than we've known; dovev - luster - 05-02-2017
so we let our shadows fall away like dust
I grew up in the meadow, he murmurs and she glances sideways at him thoughtfully, tracing the lines of his thin, elegant face, the ridges of bone with edges stained a frothy pink from him blood. “We were neighbors then.” She tells him with that soft, quiet smile, eyes still dark and warm in the maze of his sharp features. “The cave was in the forest near where we first met.” The words are out before she hears them, before she realizes, and when she does it is already too late to take them back. Those black eyes will drift to her neck again, to the old scar carved by his teeth. She’ll watch his face warp with emotions she will be unable to name, things he will try to conceal from her – or maybe he will reach past that for stoicism, turn off and away from her. So reaches for him and bends to him, soft and sweet and supple against him when she extends her nose to trail kisses from the corner of his lip, along his jaw and to his cheek.
She pulls away at the damp warmth of his blood against her skin, but it isn’t disgust, not repulsion forcing her back. She doesn’t mind the copper taste of it across her lips and on her tongue anymore – it had been strange at first, unpleasant in its sharpness, but she had adjusted quickly. Neither does it bother her that she can see smears of his foamy pink against the satin white of her delicate nose, disappearing where it overlapped into the deeper blue-black of her cheeks. When she notices his grimace she scolds him with a kiss, tugging lightly at his lower lip with the flat of her teeth in a way that is meant to distract him as he now distracts her from the ache in her chest. She is glad to have something to give herself to, something besides the pain of the memory of that last kiss and Stillwater's retreating back disappearing into the trees. Even now she can feel its weight in the back of her thoughts, sharp and patient and eager to revisit her just as soon as she surrenders to sleep.
She returns to his wounds again, an endless chore she did not mind at all, touching him and tasting him and filling him with pleasure instead of pain. He stiffens and she feels that too, frowns first and then smiles quietly despite herself at the moan that follows so softly like the fog of winter on someone’s breath. But then she notices the tremble in his legs, the raggedness of his breath beneath her lips and she wilts just a little, worried, remembering how she had undone Stillwater in this way. Remembering how he had tried to stop her, settle her and she had pushed anyway.
Now he was gone, lost to her.
Her lips are gone from his skin sharply, uncertainly, though her eyes stay on the wet wounds in a worried way that even now begs her closer. It was agony to watch him hurt in this way, to let him suffer when she could soothe him at least momentarily with the gentle of her eager lips. But was she soothing him? Or would she just bring more pain to him, to both of them. Pain, probably. But he lifts his head to peer at her even as she watches him and it is enough to coax her back and beneath his neck, enough to pull her lips to his mouth where she leaves another kiss in that deep and gleaming blue.
He swears under his breath and she flinches, misunderstanding his pleasure and resulting distress for some strand of resentment at the easy way she touched him – too easy, maybe, but something had softened in her after their swim, when he held her nose aloft so it wouldn’t fill with water, when they reached the shore and he cleaned the salt and sea from her face with such gentle concern. It was dangerous to be cared for, made it easy to mistake that kindness for something more than it truly was, it planted the seeds for something dark and invasive to grow where it should not.
“I’m sorry.” She whispers beneath him, still misunderstanding, bent and soft and hesitant. “I think I might be a ruiner.” But this confession comes so much more softly, dressed and pressed in a kiss against his chest so that maybe he won’t hear the broken voice of her keening heart. She wasn’t his burden to bear.
So she reaches around him instead with her magic, using it to draw him closer, to soothe his skin and his worry and the way she made him so ragged. But then he opens his eyes to her again, allows her back in more warily this time, and she is startled to see that it isn’t guardedness that greets her but something quite its opposite. Need, want, a strange kind of longing, but no resentment. She knows she shouldn’t, knows it’s cruel to both of them, but she touches her lips to his chest as if to quiet the way it heaved shallowly at her, drifted up and along his throat to his jaw and then kissed the corner of his mouth again in a quiet, fragile way.
When she slips out from beneath his neck it is slowly and with so much reluctance, but she wants to see his face now, all of it, dark and beautiful and etched with bone and bright shadow. Command me. He says, a plea, but she only shakes that small, dark head at him gently. “Never.” She is quiet in her refusal, steady, watching him with eyes that are soft and brown and luminous against his face. “Let these be the only things that command you.” She tells him softly, stepping close again to touch her lips first to the heart thrumming beneath his chest, then to the silk of his forelock and the mind beneath.
For a long moment she watches him, warring with the knot of feeling unraveling in the pit of her belly. She loved Stillwater, her deepwater stallion from the watery belly of Sylva. She loved him. But then what was this tether she felt tugging at her belly when she tried to look away from this man, bone-white and dark, broken and beautiful. Just pain, perhaps. A shared brokenness. Her brow wrinkled in a quiet way, drawing gentle furrows of thought across her cheeks until finally she touched his neck and turned from him to head in the direction of the nearby spring. “Come here –“ she falters, sad again to have no name with which to call him by, but the frown fades to be replaced by something lighter, “come here and let me clean your wounds.” She wades in up to her chest and pauses, turning her head back over her shoulder to watch him, will him closer. “I’ll be gentle.”
RE: this brilliant light is brighter than we've known; dovev - Dovev - 05-03-2017
Every touch was another spark, another flare building on the growing fire within him. Damn, he wished he could just move. He should just move, walk away. Calm down. Get some space. He should have told her not to touch him. He was such an idiot, such a selfish bastard. It sucked that he cared, sucked that he wouldn't just taunt and tease at her until she wanted him too. Sucked that he wouldn't take her.
But he did care.
He cursed under his breath and she flinched, settled closer into his chest and whispered an apology. He shook his head mutely with eyes pinched shut, still trying to untangle the heated thoughts cycling through his mind, tugging at his body to act. He shouldn't want her this way, the cruel bastard. Just a friend, he could do that. But it got harder to believe it as her magic slid around him, wrapped his body and pulled him closer into her. Damn, that felt so fucking good. Could she not see how she was undoing him?
She stepped back and he finally, so slowly, opened his eyes and let her see it. How hot she was turning him. Barely heard, barely spoken, he begged her to command him, tell him what to do. Tell him to go away like he knew he should.
"Never. Let these be the only things that command you." She kissed his chest, just there, at his wild heartbeat, and his eyes closed with a strangled moan, frustrated with the affection and overall inaction. Then her lips touched his face, his mind, and he couldn't help but tilt his head to kiss her throat, firm but gentle despite the hungry need pushing at him to take more. His teeth pinched softly again, wishing he could stir her senses, but he swept it into a suckling kiss before letting her go.
God, she tasted good, the sweet of her skin and the salt of the sea. If only she could taste like his kisses.
For a moment, she was quiet, thinking something through maybe. In that space of time, he reminded himself to shut it off, to focus on calming this maelstrom that wanted to burn hotter not cooler. She made it easier as she finally moved away, to the spring of water. Thankfully, he stayed rooted in place, working through this mess he'd made of himself. He was definitely going to tell her not to touch him. Otherwise, she'd find out just how terrible he was and wish he'd given her another scar instead.
"Come here-" She reached for his name again, before retrying. "Come here and let me clean your wounds. I'll be gentle." He barked a quiet laugh, bitterly amused, as she waded into the water. With a shake of his head, he moved off a little ways, kept a distance between them as he waded into the water too.
Stay there, he told her firmly, adding more gently, solemnly: It doesn't hurt. A lie, maybe. The bleeding always stung him, but he was so used to ignoring it now that he hardly noticed when it was fresh and seeping again. It was nothing compared to when the plates would grow, anyway.
He ducked his head under while the natural current brushed across and cleaning the reopened wounds, coming back up again with a slap of hair against his neck. This would help cool him down, right? As long as she stayed over there. It was already a good deal calmer, he thought. Getting there. Yeah, ok. He could do this. As long as he told her, finally. He sighed, reluctant. What if she actually listened? That would suck. But was clearly for the best. For her.
You should probably not touch me anymore, he pointed out, pinning her with a direct stare. God, please take him seriously. He definitely wasn't going to fight it if she ignored him. And that probably wouldn't be good. For her. I mean, clearly I like it. FAR too much, he didn't add as he stepped back out of the water.
He shook off the excess, careful not to irritate it into bleeding again, before turning back to her. Normal places are fine. But.. Around the bone is extra sensitive, and.. I kinda can't really help it, he said with an apologetic grimace and shrug. Not that he'd really want to help it anyway, it felt damn good. Just, definitely wasn't what she needed, or wanted, and should be avoided.
His face softened as he looked at her, gesturing with a jerk of his head to come and join him again. Now that it was safer. C'mon. Let's get you inside. Tell me what happened? If you want.
From the second that I was born, it seems I had a loaded gun
And then I shot, shot, shot a hole through everything I love
RE: this brilliant light is brighter than we've known; dovev - luster - 05-04-2017
so we let our shadows fall away like dust
He laughs and wades in behind her, the mass of his armored body throwing ripples of displaced water in her direction, splashing up to dampen her hips and shoulders. She turns to move to his side, soft and content and quiet in those dark eyes until he shakes his head and moves away from her. Stay there. He says so firmly it feels like a hand against her chest forcing her away. The sudden change in him is so confusing, so disorienting that for a moment she can only watch him wide-eyed and wounded in her hesitance. At one time she might have followed him anyway, soft and submissive, pressed stubbornly to his side with her lips tracing silvered kisses against his neck. But she is reminded once more of what came from pushing Stillwater, of how he had looked at her with something that darkened his features. Disgust, maybe, or regret? In her haze she had not been certain, but it was different from the way he had smiled at her before, from the way he had memorized her face with the warmth of his lips.
It doesn’t hurt. He says this more gently, with a subtle kind of darkness etched into the shape of his voice. But even this makes her hesitant, wary when her eyes drift back to the smears of dark red gleaming iridescent against the black. How could that not hurt? The wounds seemed ragged to her, ruined at the edges where they wore endlessly against the plates of bone that spread them into open, gaping mouths. They bled when he moved, wept for their own misery when he would not. And it was hard to say for sure, time and the dark had warped her memory of that night, focusing on the longing buried in those kisses instead of the teeth he carved into her neck, but when she looks at the bones along his thin body, she is certain there are more. Yet she says nothing to him, nothing of this assurance that feels like a lie pressed carefully into her hands.
He disappears beneath the surface and, without his eyes pinning her in place, dark and firm and willing her back, she drifts toward him again. The space between them only shrinks by a foot or so, but it is enough that she can see the trails of red spilling off of him and drifting along in a lazy way to mark the pull of the invisible current. She watched until it disappeared, until the water ran clear, wondering how often he had bathed like this. Washing himself away. He breaches the surface and his mane falls wetly against his neck, clinging to bone and skin alike, filling the hollow trenches in his neck that make her chest hurt. You should probably not touch me anymore. He says and her eyes snap sharply back to his face, instantly blank behind a mask she pulls up hastily so that he will not see how deeply that request wounds her.
I mean, clearly I like it. He adds as she watches him step back out of the spring, shaking off the excess water carefully, Normal places are fine. But.. Around the bone is extra sensitive, and.. I kinda can't really help it. She is quiet for a moment watching him, though her brow is furrowed and her face is dark with something unnamable. C’mon. Let’s get you inside. Tension uncoils in her belly, touching her shoulders and tightening in her hips until at last the mask slips and there is only uncertainty left in its place. “I don’t understand.” She says finally in that soft, hesitant voice, abandoning her place in the water to come stand near him again – though she ached to be so much closer. She has already forgotten the water trailing down her damp sides in soft rivulets, distracted by their distance and closeness all at once. Then, stretching her nose to him in a delicate way, “I like it, too.”
It felt safe curled against him, tucked beneath him, pressed to the humming, beating warmth of his dark chest. She felt anchored with his lips against her neck and her face, tethered when she pressed the same unnamable kind of affection to his dark, beautiful skin. But he had severed that with this distance, cut off his gravity and left her floating lost and uncertain, unsure how to make her way back to him. “I came here with you.” She whispers, takes a step closer, cursing the way that she is pushing again, cursing her wretched stubbornness. “I didn’t come here to be away from you.” She holds her breath and ducks beneath his neck, pressed to his chest and with her curve of her cheek flat to the ridges of bone on his shoulder. The coppery smell of a wound sits just below her nose, but she resists the urge to clean it, to coax another moan from the cavern of his chest. It’s so close though, close enough that her whiskers must tickle it, close enough for him to feel the warmth of her breath on his skin.
“I’m not deaf, you know.” She says then of his moans, the quiet ones he tries to hide in those moments her lips find the pink, ragged skin. Her eyes soften and she shifts to look up at him in a wondering way, soft, when she kisses him once at the side of his mouth and turns to look elsewhere again. “And I’m not entirely stupid.” She laughs quietly, an almost bitter sound on those soft, pale lips, and for a moment her gaze drifts upward, lost in a dark sky filled with stars that remind her of the deep blue on his legs and mouth. But then she returns to him, confused and full of half-way thoughts that kept slipping through her fingers, pieces of truths too jagged to hold on to. She doesn’t love him, she barely knows him. This feeling in her belly isn’t that – neither is it the lust that landed her on the shore beneath Stillwater. It is something entirely different, something that makes her feel bound to him in whatever way he would allow, inexplicably soft, if only he would stop pushing. She couldn't name it if he asked her, couldn't understand the tangle in her chest if she tried - and honestly, she didn't want to try, not now. "I don't know what I want," a pause and her brow furrows again, deep and uncertain and beautiful, eyes half-hidden behind the tangles of a dark forelock, "but I know don't want the distance. Not from you."
Then, so quietly, so dark-eyed and vulnerable, she lifts her lips to his mouth again to leave one last tremulous kiss against the deep blue of that soft hollow.
RE: this brilliant light is brighter than we've known; dovev - Dovev - 05-04-2017
He could practically feel her hesitate and stiffen at the distance he forced between them. Dammit, that made his heart hurt, that it would have such a harmful affect on her. But, wasn't he supposed to calm down, relax for her? Not crave her touch. Fuck, don't think about it. Calming, calming. He'd be a friend for her. That was what she needed. He could do that.
His head ducked beneath the water, trying to chill his thoughts, cool his body that ran so hot for her. God, he was such an ass. This wasn't what she needed, wasn't what she wanted. He just wanted to give her whatever was right for her, whatever he could do. Even if he had to fight his nature the whole way. The current gradually washed away the blood from his wounds as he raised his head again. For a brief moment, his heart nearly stopped. She'd moved nearer. Just a little.
If he did it again, would she come closer?
No, he shouldn't want that.
He glanced away instead, releasing her from the sudden weight of his stare and making his way out of the water. After motioning for her to join him, that carefully blank expression taking over her beautiful face finally trickled away to uncertainty. "I don't understand," she said, hesitant and almost cautious as she came to his side, water caressing her skin as it licked down her. But she kept a distance there between them, didn't sink into his chest as she had before. It was because of him, he knew. It was what she needed, wasn't it? What was best for her. What was right for her.
"I like it, too," she added with a tentative stretch towards him. In the most natural way, he softened and reached to her too, as though she held a hand open for him to take. And of course he did, without hesitation. It was instinct to meet her with his own touch, a soft caress of their velvety dark noses and the barest breath against her skin.
"I came here with you," she whispered with a small step closer. That, too, he met with his own, thoughtless and sure. Just a step. "I didn't come here to be away from you." But didn't she see his touch was more than what she wanted? He was too much, had to rein it back for her. And damn if his heart didn't crack further with each thing she did, each thing she said, every breath she took. So slowly, so swiftly, she was breaking him apart. She was perfection. She was everything. And it was killing him.
Finally, she slid beneath his neck and into his chest again. He released a slow breath he hadn't realized he was holding as she set her cheek to his shoulder plate. So close. Her nose was so close, and he felt the flutter of warmth against him as she breathed, as he pressed lips so gently to the top of her shoulder in a return embrace. Careful, cautious, even as his heartbeat quickened just a little. Just a friend, that was what she needed. That was what he'd be for her.
"I'm not deaf, you know." She softened and pulled back to look at him. The look in her eyes held him quietly captive as she pressed a light kiss to the corner of his mouth before those starlight eyes were wandering up towards the sky. Naturally, his gaze slid to her lips, her jaw, her neck, tracing the contours in her temporary distraction. He could count every little hair, if he wanted. Could kiss every last one of them. What was this feeling coming over him? So smooth, so tranquil. Submissive. Yes, maybe that was it. He'd submit to anything she wanted. Whatever would make her happy again. The obsessed and possessive became the possessed.
"And I'm not entirely stupid."
Not at all stupid, he injected so quietly, automatic and confident in the truth of it, his eyes still so busy following the marble of her mixed tones. The light, the dark. The blue, the white. He should stop studying her so closely. Friends definitely don't do that. Damn, he really sucked at this.
"I don't know what I want," she admitted, her eyes coming back to him and pulling his lazily back up to her face. Why did those words sting? Didn't make much sense, there was no reason for them to. Except that he was so damn possessive, and maybe he wanted her to want him. His own problem, then. Entirely unfair to want such a thing, to even think it. "But I know I don't want the distance. Not from you."
His heart swelled unbidden as he stared down at her behind half-lidded eyes, sliding another step closer. Always saying what he longed to hear as though she knew every shadow of his darkness. She knew darkness, she controlled it. An errant thought, but one that made so much sense. She controlled him too, and only didn't yet realize it.
Every touch, too, was what he craved, just how he craved it. She was Cerva and more, that other part of him forever out of reach, eternally lost to him. She was killing him so gently, and he died willingly. Cut him, tear him apart. Bleed him out. Make him hurt with everything she was. He wanted to die at her hands.
She lifted her lips so gently to the mark of the night at his mouth, that little piece of darkness that shined with unreal stars. Ever since she'd found him in the meadow earlier that day, they had both flirted at the edge of kissing and never quite following through. A feather-light touch on faces, hungry and sweet claims on necks and shoulders, along their jaws, or a kiss there in the corner of their mouths. Neither one taking it too far. Neither one willing to push this into more.
But he really fucking sucked at control, never had a care for learning it.
And his eyes slid closed as his mouth sank to hers, tender, almost hesitant.
He shouldn't be doing this.
Fuck it.
This was who he was. He pushed boundaries, tested limits. And she'd push him away if he did too much, snap or bite a correction at him maybe. Whatever it was, he'd take it. Whatever it was, this was worth it. So he kept kissing her, slow and attentive, dimly aware of his pulse building stronger in his quiet pleasure. His mouth formed with hers in the most painful way, as though meant to be there, a careful rhythm of desire held in check for her benefit. Guarded and leashed for her.
He didn't open his eyes right away when the pressure of his lips finally faded from hers, afraid to see what was there in her face staring back at him, but when he did, they were smoldering dark in silent power and holding hers. He placed a kiss to the side of her mouth, leaving a slow trail to her cheek, her jaw, her throat. A quiet exhale into her neck near her jaw swept her scent around him, into him, and he breathed his name into her skin like a promise. One he shouldn't make, but intended to keep.
Dovev.
He whispered it. Of course, he did. That was what it meant: whisper. A secret between two thrumming hearts, a breathy sigh of unrevealed insight meant for only one other. A promise, a secret. Hers to keep, to do with as she wished.
Couldn't stop if I tried, hard to fight my design
This body was built to love you
RE: this brilliant light is brighter than we've known; dovev - luster - 05-06-2017
so we let our shadows fall away like dust
He is like an echo, reaching out to touch his nose to hers, closing the distance between them with one single mirrored step. But it is only when she is back against his chest and beneath the warm crook of his neck that she remembers to breathe again – when his lips touch her shoulder in that quiet way and the ache in her chest loosens a little. Not at all stupid. He corrects her instantly, quietly, and she turns to him to laugh in her soft way. She would’ve spoken, was already shaping words with the curve of those pale lips, but the gentle intensity of his gaze startles her. When she finds them, his eyes are not on hers but rather buried somewhere in the ripples of blue and white, in the contrasting shades of her smooth skin. She is hesitant now, distracted, but she speaks anyway and the sound of her voice draws his eyes slowly against hers.
She tells him that she does not know what she wants, but that she knows she does not want this distance he tries to put between them. Then she is quiet again, wordless, wondering at the way he watches her from behind such a heavily lidded gaze. They are closer, suddenly, and she isn’t sure whose choice that had been, which of them had shifted to draw them together, but it feels good and it feels right so she presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth, soft and tremulous and etched in her quiet need – a need that, even now, builds like a pressure in her chest.
Except –
The kiss does not end then, quick and brief and shallow like all the others had been. Instead he turns so her lips find his, find more than that spot of twinkling blue, find something that makes her soft and breathless and push against him in a needing way. He captures her, kisses her slow and honest so that her skin feels molten and electric all at once – aching, until he released her and pulled back to watch her in his dark way. She is ready for his eyes when they find her this time, ready for the quiet smolder, the ancient power that burns there at her. Her own face is his opposite, an open window to her heart, to the welcomed turmoil in her chest. Dark and wild and beautiful, burning bright for him, only him in this moment frozen in time.
What is this? Her eyes ask, dark and earnest and fathomless.
What is this? Why does her chest ache and her skin vibrate, why does it feel like gravity is stronger between them, like she couldn’t leave him if she tried. Why does the very idea of leaving him, of returning to a life where they are just happy strangers who cross paths from time to time feel like an ache that thrums marrow-deep in her bones. Her pulse hums now, the breath in her lungs fast and shallow, crushed by the tightness in her chest. She remembers again the worry in his face when he swam back to her side, lifted her nose from the water when fear and exhaustion would have sunk her. She remembers his gentleness and the care she felt in his tongue when it swept across her face to clean the salt, and worry, from the damp of her skin.
Her heart stutters, skips and trips and now, now if he asked why she had not pushed him away that first night, she would have an answer.
He leans close to kiss the side of her mouth, working his way along to her cheek and her jaw and the soft of her throat, and she can only close her eyes and lift her face to him. He breathes against her and suddenly the world smells only of him and of her, of her damp earth and deep forest, of his copper and ocean brine. A shiver starts slow between her shoulders, just a subtle prickling but it gains momentum as it unfurls and rolls down the length of her spine.
Dovev.
He says, and for half a second she does not understand, untangles from him so that she can turn and look across his dark eyes and quiet face, trace the furrows where skin is stretched so tightly over bones that seem sharper than they should be. She finds her answer there, though, in the head that had been bowed against her neck, in the nose that had exhaled sparks against her skin. “Dovev.” She repeats in hum of silvered sound, a name that feels elegant enough to belong to someone like him, strong and whispery and beautiful. Her brow furrows and her eyes grow dark watching him, soft when they trace him. And then she reaches out to brush his forelock aside, to press another kiss at the center of his forehead in a way that is so quietly needing it hurts to breath. “Dovev.” She says again, softer, almost a sigh when she closes her eyes and folds against him, pressed to his chest so she can memorize the thrum of his beating heart. Will he feel the wild in the way hers beats against her breast?
“I’m tired, Dovev.” She says finally, softly, and it isn’t a lie – she can feel a weariness in her bones, a weight behind her eyes making them heavy – but it is maybe a wall, some distance she weaves between them to dull the ache that still, even now, urges her against him. She steps back and reaches up to stroke his neck, follow the arch of his crest to the plate at his shoulder where her tongue slips out to taste the swollen edge of the nearest wound. “I can’t help it either,” tells him quietly, eventually, tracing the edges of so many wounds, pushing pleasure instead of pain into him in the only way she thinks she can, or should, “it’s hard to see you suffer, harder when I can help.” She moves to the bone plates over his ribs, back further to the piece over his haunches and down his leg, gentle and concerned even though the wounds were clean now from the spring.
When she moves behind him and up along his opposite side from hip to shoulder, it is to press her cheek to his neck, to close her eyes and wonder at this weight in her chest, this warm ache that is somehow better and worse when he presses such gentle kisses to her skin, when he cleans the memory of the ocean from the hollows of her delicate face. “Dovev,” a voice that is pale and tremulous like fragile blue petals, a face that lifts from his neck so she can trace her lips along the underneath of his jaw and back to the waiting warmth of his dark mouth, “come lay with me.” Her mouth lingers a moment at the corner of his, breathless and hesitant, and then her lips sink to his, asking and needing and soft where they fit so perfectly, where her tongue slips past to taste him. She turns from him, one dark, indefinable glance back over her shoulder, and disappears beneath the ivy and into a shallow world of stone that smelled only of him.
RE: this brilliant light is brighter than we've known; dovev - Dovev - 05-07-2017
God, he couldn't help it.
He'd tried. He swore he tried to keep a distance between them. But, damn, that flicker of hurt and confusion in her eyes when he told her to stay where she was nearly speared straight through his chest. Not to mention the stupid, constant pull he felt caged around him trying to tug him closer and closer to her. And then that look in her eyes just before he kissed her. He was helpless but to fall into her, sink his lips into her world of quiet, silver twilight. Bathe himself in this impossible feeling he didn't deserve, this place he didn't belong but dearly wished to. Stealing. He was stealing again, taking what he shouldn't.
When he finally released her perfect lips, -gently, reluctantly- and stared into her eyes, his heart burned fierce and wild. Painful, so painful. An entire forest of unimaginable dreams were set ablaze inside him. All the wonderful things she represented, could offer. Things he would never have. The flames of his deepest desires reflected as though a real fire danced before her in the wild uncertainty in her eyes, flickering and wavering like a thing brought to life by the breath of their kiss.
Only to feel it all scorch and die a slow death within him.
He swallowed, knowing he shouldn't have done that, but unable to stop pushing more, giving more, trailing a slow line of kisses across her face. Just a name. Just his name, he breathed into her neck.
But he shouldn't have done that either.
His eyes slowly closed over the immediate certainty of it as she pulled carefully back to peer at him. He could feel her eyes tracing him, studying a face he kept precisely blank and unreadable. The truth was there as she spoke his name. He shouldn't have given his name, not to this one, and the proof was in how it sang to his soul to hear it on her lips. The impossible satisfaction was a double-edged blade as it cut into him. So perfect that it hurt.
He could never have this.
She was too good, too right, too much. She was everything.
He could never have this.
Her scent grew stronger, surrounded him in its temptation as she brushed the hair from his face. Still, he did not move, did not open his eyes to show her the pain of her perfection, see more of it in her face. She repeated his name, and he could swear he heard a deep want hidden in the gentle chime of her voice.
Waiting. He was waiting. With a silent question seared in his mind, he was waiting. What do you want repeated over and over and over again on an endless cycle. What do you want. She'd kissed him back, leaned into him as he'd matched his lips with hers. She'd been breathless as they parted, and now, as she folded into his chest again, her heart raced against him. Where did they stand? Did she want this? Did she want more? Was it a one-time kiss never to be had again?
Her next words answered those questions.
"I'm tired, Dovev." He couldn't move, or he would have nodded mutely, his eyes still closed or possibly on the ground -it didn't matter which, he saw nothing regardless. Everything in him snuffed out. She drew the line and stayed on her side of it. He understood. She loved her man. And he? ...He was just him. Murderer, thief, vicious weapon with an expert master he heeded without hesitation. He was nothing. She was everything.
He could practically feel the careful wall she wanted erected in the quiet of her voice, and with his soul bleeding over bare hands he helped her build it, helped her lock him out while his heart remained naked and raw and burning, spilling helplessly at his feet. He kept his silence, kept his distance. Didn't move. Even if he'd wanted to, he was instantly locked in place as she stepped back and brushed across his neck, down to his shoulder to the skin she knew was so, so very sensitive.
A dark storm of confusion came to life in him, swirling and lost in its impossible blackness. She wanted space, didn't she? Didn't want more, didn't want what he'd started by kissing her like that. But she knew what this did to him. She knew how it felt. Had he read her wrong? Did she want this?
He didn't have time to contemplate it as the heat of her tongue met his flesh, and with a single stroke she pulled the breath from his lungs. Black eyes focused blindly on the ground at his feet, his mouth suddenly dry and panting quietly. Fuck, that felt so good. She knew how this affected him. A shiver of pleasure vibrated down his spine, through his legs, his every bone. He would swear his hair stood on end, grasping in its own sensitivity for more of her touch.
"I can't help it either," he barely heard her breathy voice. When it finally registered, he moaned in urgent, growing need. Fuck, why was she doing this. A tease, a taunt. She wanted to kill him with everything he could never have. His heart bled and a silent tear slid down his face as she fed more pleasure into him, turned his body into a furnace that ached to consume her. With every touch, every pass of that delightful tongue, she coaxed quiet gasps, keening moans, needing whimpers from him. Damn, that felt so fucking amazing. Killing him so gently, so sweetly. He wanted to die at her hands.
"It's hard to see you suffer, harder when I can help." Fuck, hard was right. And his wordless praise for the maddening sensations continued, encouraging her as her attention slid further down his body, pushed his pulse to roar in his ears and rush through him, tears of his loss occasionally trickling down his face. All of this that he could never have. Or was this what she wanted after all? Had he misunderstood the distance before? Did she want him? Damn, please want him.
There was a brief silence as she rounded him and pressed her cheek to his neck. God, when had he broken into a sweat? "Dovev," she spoke so softly, lining her lips along his jaw and to his mouth. His breath was stolen away again, wild hope flaring to roaring life within him. This was it. She was going to say she wanted him too. They were going to pass the line he thought she'd drawn between them. "Come lay with me." Fuck, what did she mean? What did she mean - what did she mean. Did she want him to lay her? She'd done so much to turn him on for her.
But she'd said she was tired. She was tired.
Fuck..
FUCK.
God, he was an idiot. Of course she wanted rest. But then why had she-? Dammit, he was so confused. What did she want from him? He didn't understand what was going on, what she was doing, what she wanted. Why would she do that to him, then? No, she was tired. God, what the hell. Fuck.
Her mouth lingered in the corner of his and he watched her without comment, his expression deliberately unreadable and breath still coming quick and uneven. Whatever this was, she was in control and he felt helpless. Powerless. Whatever it was, he was just her pawn to move as she pleased. He was always the pawn, the tool. He was her faithful servant, submitting to her every wish. Whatever she wanted was his to give.
Then those perfect lips melded with his -god, as though they were made for them, made for him- and his eyes fell shut again. He pressed back gently, kissed her back as tempered as he could despite the instant heat lighting up his veins. He was yanked back and forth, his mind spinning with his confusion. She wanted him - no, she didn't want him - she wanted him. Back and forth, around and around. He was so lost, drowning. But still he submitted to her will, whatever it was.
Her kiss stoked his desire. He let her lead, let her guide them as she gently coaxed his lips apart and invaded his mouth with her sweetness to meet his tongue with hers. He moaned again, strained and helpless, and broke away with a gasp. His heart hammered in his chest and he avoided her eyes. Her faithful servant, whatever she wanted. His goddess.
He lifted his gaze only when she turned away, watching her back in silence. His face was impassive, stoic and still, as she glanced over her shoulder at him then disappeared into the darkness of home. He'd meant to remain where he was, to not immediately follow her inside to the unknown and wild confusion, but he stumbled forward a step as though physically tied to her. Then followed obediently, slipping into the dark as quiet and constant as her shadow.
He halted inside and watched her patiently without a word, his body relaxed, his eyes soft and waiting, still warm with the heat of his desire. Every line told of his absolute compliance. Whatever she wanted was his to give. He would die at her hands, and he would love it.
Couldn't stop if I tried, hard to fight my design
This body was built to love you
RE: this brilliant light is brighter than we've known; dovev - luster - 05-09-2017
so we let our shadows fall away like dust
As soon as the wall is built, she wants it gone.
It hurts and chafes and feels soul-deep wrong, like a world upended with blue sky below and green grass above. But she needs this wall, doesn’t she? Needs some kind of distance between them to – to what? Keep them safe maybe, protect him from her? She groans with her uncertainty, with a confusion that furrows so deeply in her brow it looks as though it may stay that way forever. She ducks her head and blinks, frowns in that tight-lipped way as though something has hurt her. A burr of uncertainty in her chest.
Stillwater. Her thoughts jump to him like a reminder, just as quiet and uncertain as she was, or maybe a question now. Of course she loved Stillwater, even now she felt his absence like an ache in her chest, missed the softness of his lips at her throat and those quiet deepwater eyes. Her affection for him had been months in the making, bone-deep and beautiful, it would not be undone so easily. Even then, if it could be undone, she would always care for him, always worry at the chain bound around his ankle and the steely woman who claimed to love him and was still willing to hurt him in the same breath.
But –
Her eyes find Dovev’s again, so deep and black and yet still bright in some strange way she cannot explain, in a way that softens the furrows in her forehead and the lines of worry in her cheeks. They are like beacons to hers, calling her, coaxing her, loud in their silence. She surrenders to them willingly, perched precarious at their dark edges before tipping forward and falling. Falling. Falling. Was she? Is that was this knot in her chest was, why she cannot stop worrying and fretting over the wounds in his skin and the tension in his shoulders. Why she cannot stop reaching out to touch him, feel a warmth and a heartbeat and know that he is real even in his impossibility.
She groans so quietly, so woundedly – though her expression does not reflect it – and disappears to his body, to his wounds, to taste his copper and his sweat. She cannot look at his face right now, not his eyes, cannot be trusted to make sense of the tumultuous emotion roiling in her breast. So she gives herself to his wounds, to his pleasure, soft suckles that pulled his skin between her teeth so she could pinch and release him, kiss him again.
What was she doing?
He moans at her touch, at the way her tongue sweeps over raw wounds and between the crevice of bone plate and flesh, gasps when she reaches further than she had before. But where he is a symphony of sound for her, vulnerable and beautiful and aching in a way her soul wants to undress further, she is only silent. Her eyes are dark and quiet, not uncertain anymore but maybe disbelieving, confused. Able, but unwilling, to name this feeling in her chest for him.
He trembles, or shivers, whimpers, and she is pulled from her quiet kisses and back to his neck, his face, finally noticing the damp track of tears beneath his eyes. She inhaled sharply, worriedly, and then kissed him. She knew she shouldn’t have, guessed that the tears on his face and sitting like clear gems along his eyelids were a result of her, of her touch and her closeness and her greed. But he hadn’t pulled away from her, hadn’t asked her to stay away again. Did he feel this too, this unraveling at his core? She gives everything to him in this kiss, all of her pain and all of her uncertainty, all of the ache she feels for him burning like coals in her chest. Could this be love? Was it more than that, less, something else entirely? Or was she a broken thing now, undone and unraveling and reaching for something to anchor herself to. In the end it didn’t matter; there is nothing she keeps for herself, nothing that isn’t his to have.
He moans and breaks away from her lips and she lets him, will never force him into something he doesn’t want. But it hurts when he won’t look at her, when she reaches for those eyes that make her soft and gentle and they are gone. She says nothing though, gives none of the hurt up for him to see, to be swayed by. Instead she turns and disappears into his home, beckoning to him with an ache of need in her chest and deeper, with a soft furrowing of her brow beneath the dark of her forelock.
A second later he joins her, soft and relaxed and it feels like a moment her soul must know, must remember, because at she is at his side at once and pressing sweet kisses to his face and his neck and the hum of his chest. She shifts so he can see her face, gentle and affectionate, etched in a pale silver light that seems to drench her like sweat. It has always been hard to control this magic when her emotions are running deep. For a long moment she watches him, traces every hollow in his dark face, every elegant ridge of bone beneath the black and above it, the curve of his ears and the whorl of dark forelock that fell between them. When she kisses him again it is different this time, no urgency, no fire. Instead it is soft and molten and sure, apologetic, maybe, because she doesn’t ask when she presses it to him like a promise.
A sigh, a confession she doesn’t expect him to believe, not yet, maybe not ever. “I think my heart knew you even if I didn’t.” She says, still soft, almost whispering in her fading certainty as she reaches up to brush his forelock smooth again, feeling suddenly painfully vulnerable. “That first night, I mean, when I asked you to stay. Why didn’t you?” Her eyes go sad, round and dark, and the light fades on her skin just a little, paler like reflected moonlight in this skyless cave. Maybe there was no room for her in his world, maybe he didn’t feel this same beautiful pain in his chest that she did. So quiet she almost hopes he won’t hear it – she won’t look at him now. “What if I was meant to be yours?” She laughs, a quiet sound, as though this will soften the weight of her wondering. It isn’t I love you, it isn’t a vow or a promise because it isn’t that, not yet, perhaps not ever, not now in this lifetime – knows too that this pull in her soul is inexplicable and nonsensical and he will probably shy away from her. It is just the keening in her chest, the song this pain sings to the beating of her heart and she cannot hold it in anymore, not now. There are too many cracks in her, too many holes.
So she softens and steps close again, tastes the salt on his skin where it is damp with sweat, runs quiet lips across the lines and ridges of a body that her soul seems to claim as hers. He isn’t though, she mustn’t forget that. So she closes her eyes, hides her heart from him behind a smile that is soft and sweet and, despite her best efforts, etched through with a quiet kind of sadness she will never show him, never force on him. She shifts again until she is pressed to him, curved and small against his chest, beneath his neck. Her lips lift to his, beside his, to that spot of deep blue where galaxies hide in the deep-dark of his skin. “How long can I stay here with you, Dovev?” A whisper, an exhale, and their small stone world smells of her again.
RE: this brilliant light is brighter than we've known; dovev - Dovev - 05-16-2017
As soon as he stepped into the darkness, she was there. She showered him with feather-light kisses, grazing his face and his neck, his chest, with a mouth so impossibly soft. He closed his eyes and caught his breath with a hitch, standing still under her sweet attention, soaking in every last sensation like little splashes of cool water each time her lips met his blistering-hot skin. It was his choice to stand there and accept whatever she did to him, and yet he felt helpless. Immobile.
He sensed her shift a little and opened his eyes to see her studying him. He stared back. The deep affection in her gaze pinched his heart painfully, wishing he could always see her care for him that way. Or more. Wishing for the impossible.
She slowly turned metallic before his eyes as he studied her, a coating of pale light glimmering across her skin like reflections on a gilded statue. It mirrored in the deep, black of his eyes, danced across the infinite adoration staring back at her as he drank in every detail. He barely breathed, afraid to break this spell that made her glow this way. Like an angel, or a star. All that soft light forming to every inch and curve of her body held him captivated, and he couldn't help but wonder if it had a taste. If he kissed her light, would it tingle across his lips and tongue? Would it be warm and smooth? Or was it only an illusion, completely intangible? But he didn’t try, remained still. He didn’t know what she wanted, so he let her control it all.
You're so beautiful, Luster, he breathed in quiet disbelief, the subtle awe in his eyes eventually -finally- returning to her deep gaze. He could fall into those eyes and lose himself completely, be stripped of everything that he was and not give a damn. Drown me. Redefine me, recreate me.
Take me.
She kissed him then, soft and gentle. He leaned carefully into it, restraining himself as a flow of warmth spread from his heart and through his chest. It continued, a slow flood of magma through his shoulders and up his neck, so gradually burning hotter that he didn't notice until it was searing him from the inside. His heart raced, but he forced his breath to come evenly, counting through each inhale and exhale like a vampire trying to fake his breathing.
Their lips lingered, parted and ready for more. He shouldn't have kissed her that first time. They couldn't seem to stop now.
He felt her sigh flutter across his mouth before they slowly pulled back from each other. "I think my heart knew you even if I didn't," she whispered. Molten, black eyes searched her face, burning for her. He felt those words sink into him, thrumming through his bones with a vibration of truth. He thought he might have understood what she meant. This... tie, this bond, this emotion. It didn't seem to have a name, but maybe those words were close enough.
"That first night, I mean, when I asked you to stay. Why didn't you?" He inhaled sharply and glanced away, feeling it like a spear of ice to his chest. His head shook just slightly with a painful swallow. He hated thinking of that day, hated how it tore through him like shards of glass, reopening wounds he might never heal from. Wounds he'd put there, on them both.
He'd hurt her that day, bit into her neck and ripped her flesh away for no more reason than he was riding his rage and felt like it. Without remorse, he'd stayed to taunt her, mock her with his lover's affection and tried to coax her to feel something for his touch.
His gaze slid to his claim on her neck, keeping his face carefully blank as he let the painful memory pass through him. Then his eyes lifted to hers, steely regret glinting in the blackness. He could never make it right. He could never fix it. He could never make up for what he did.
And he couldn't answer her question.
Why had he left her when his intention had been to make her suffer so sweetly? To stir her senses and take her beneath him. She'd woken him up somehow, snapped him out of his rage and reminded him of all the pain and destruction he brings. All the people he hurt and how he had been hurting her too. She'd made him feel again.
Would she always be able to wake him from his darkness?
That was the worst part. Knowing it could happen again. He would do it again when the rage roared to life inside him. So quickly, it could ignite and take over. He'd never been that way with Cerva around. The rage, yes, but not the way it had manifested towards Luster. Towards others, too.
She glanced away from his lengthy silence, lost in his thoughts. He almost didn't hear her next words, but he did. They burned through him and made his heart beat faster, his gaze sharpened. "What if I was meant to be yours?" Did she know what she was saying? Did she mean it? Could she have any idea how that would affect him? His blood crashed and thundered through him and he couldn't take his eyes from her. He didn't know how to answer her, couldn't seem to hold a thought long enough before it morphed into another, and another.
So he stepped closer instead, brushed his lips across her cheek then stared deep into her eyes. I'd do anything for you, Luster, he vowed in a whisper, lighting a kiss to her brow before pressing his forehead to hers and closing his eyes over the swell of emotion expanding his chest. Anything.
She softened and slid to his chest again. His head bent over her in a gentle embrace, as though she were fragile and precious. He held her as she tasted more of him, spiking his pulse again and making it hard to breathe. But he remained controlled, let her lead them wherever she wished even as the back-and-forth confused the hell out of him. It didn't matter. Whatever she wanted was his to give. Space, walls, kisses. It was all hers, no matter what it did to him. All that mattered was her and she would guide them.
She was everything.
Her lips lifted to his mouth again, to the spot of night-blue in the corner. "How long can I stay here with you, Dovev?" she asked, quiet and still. His head bent, a slow sweep of kisses along her neck. But she was supposed to lead this, and he reined back, reluctant but calm.
For as long as you like, love.
Stay forever.
Couldn't stop if I tried, hard to fight my design
This body was built to love you