"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
For one moment (just one eternal second of time,) Crevan feared she would reject him again.
Merida - this beautiful, hauntingly untamed creature - was free to love or hate him as she pleased, and she was adamantly aware of it. Just as no one had the pleasure of loving her before now, so had no one ever been as important to Crevan up until this instant. He was doing everything within his power to push the boundaries of her acceptance because he knew, unquestionably, that his devotion to her was worthy; perhaps even deserving.
They were true equals, but only if she wanted it that way.
In the subtle hush between them, he catches the sound of her swallowing - a thing that makes him feel invincible - and it’s then that he’s able to meet her eyes with a truth she’s always known. A truth that he’s always known, but never understood.
The shifter hardly curbs his enthusiasm at the dark mare’s response, contemptuous as it is. Coming from sultry, raven-black lips and paired with a look straight from hell, the vixen could say much worse and still glean the same rich chuckle from him. To his pleasant surprise, though, Merida is receptive now to the idea of traveling these new paths with him. She says as much without saying anything at all, which is best because Crevan doesn’t exactly possess the type of vocabulary it would take to describe the feeling of her mouth suddenly pressed to his jaw.
Something in the way her once proud lips now shivered … stirred the beast. Like she truly wanted this, and him. It clarified matters instantaneously, stirring up a possessive side that he’d never really been aware of. “That won’t be very long, you know.” Crevan grumbles, leaning into the sensation of her touch. Without warning he pushes closer, drawing the curve of his mouth over to meet her neck and then, he’s unapologetically rubbing the flat line of his face against the lovely, jet-colored arc.
“You love me, don’t you?” He asks again, unwilling to let her or the matter go entirely. He doesn’t mind at all that his nose is buried into the soft dip of her withers, or that the stone-like bust of his chest is brushing against her shoulder; he only wonders if she’ll allow him to do this again, some other time.
05-31-2018, 09:00 AM (This post was last modified: 05-31-2018, 09:01 AM by Merida.)
Merida
from the ashes, a fire shall be awoken
He leans into her touch and almost (almost) she is shocked by it. For a fleeting second, she assumed she would have met resistance, whether physically or verbally. But no, the beast (the man, hers) turns his jaw towards her touch and whatever hesitancy that lingered in the trembling of her ebony lips now subsides, the warmth of her mouth firm and decisively so against the muted gold of his skin. “I know; I could never force anything you didn’t want to do,” her voice comes quietly in response, shallow and pressing as it falls against his jaw. There is no cheeky remark, or sarcastic droll that accompanies her thought. It is the truth, and she knows it. Anything he has done has been his own free will, because he has chosen to do so.
Embered eyes, alight and dancing, flicker to the cobalt of his, suddenly brave instead of the simpering fool, realizing that she too has made her own choice each and every day.
She hadn’t known that she had been choosing him until today.
This is not forced by either of them, but a discovery that had laid dormant for far too long.
His face presses in to the supple arc of her red-flecked neck, and she feels her chest tightening as her breath holds itself carefully in her throat. A gesture that, in their other skins, she would not have even thought much of now seems more raw and intimate than she could have ever imagined. He asks her again, and this time the question is much less intimidating and the answer all the more clear. There is a hum in her throat as his touch turns familiar against her raven skin, a soft sigh erupting from her mouth that falls lush against the slope of his sturdy shoulder. His need to hear her say it, the unabashed way he draws closer and has not backed down from her prideful actions, gives her all the realization she needs to know that admitting such a thing would not be seen as a weakness.
Perhaps, the onyx vixen thinks idly, she would be stronger.
“Crevan,” she murmurs, dark lids falling across burning eyes, the soft plane of her cheek tenderly pressing against the bulk of him. “I do.” Her voice is final and without waver as she submits the confession to him, the tiniest inkling of a smile tugging at the charcoaled black of her mouth. She does not move from him, does not turn away, but merely remains where she is, content and happy beneath the curve of his neck and against the fullness of his chest. It didn’t even matter if he said anything back, or if he thought her a fool (he would never), or told her he loved another.
She has made her choice and he will have to live with it.
She gives him the greatest of all gifts, something Paris thrust the world into a Trojan war for: her heart. It’s not cheaply bought, nor does she give it freely and so, when Merida’s sigh rolls over his tainted skin Crevan waits patiently for her answer while knowing its outcome all along. Still, when her mouth forms the words and his ears tilt back to hear them, the severity and force of their nature isn’t diminished in the least. Instead the brute smiles, pressing his giddy lips into her flesh until the black-speckled-red skin gives in to their pressure.
“There are so many things I want to do about it.” The shifter chuckles, biting her without much effort in the action before replacing such a harsh gesture with tender, shameless kisses. He’s torn between wanting to ravage her and wanting to worship her, it drives him mad while his breath comes in quick, heavy gusts. “But only if you’ll let me.”
Now? Later? He doesn’t care. If those onyx lips even began to say yes he’d take her, here and now and perhaps then again afterwards but, he finds instead that he’s saying, “Merida I’ve always loved you, probably will forever. I can’t live without you … the thought of us apart …”
Words are hard, suddenly.
“Stay with me, always. I’ll hunt you down to the ends of this earth and the next, no matter where you roam.” Crevan murmurs, draping his nose across the small of her back in order to pull her closer, “You have everything I have left to give, now.” He tells her, a silence filtering in behind the statement. Together alone, he’ll explore this new side of his she-fox as long as she’ll let him - as long as she can stand this soft side to him - and then together they’ll go home.
Back to the burning treetops and the duty he once left behind.
