He chooses not to answer her question, chooses the quiet instead and something inside her wilts in uncertainty, something pewter and fragile. She doesn’t think of them willingly, but the words of the black and bone-armored stallion find her anyway, a warning from lips smeared iridescent red with her blood. She shivers, flinches, and then is steadied when he does finally speak. Good. He says, and his certainty is enough to steal the breath from her lungs, enough to make her inhale sharply, uncertainly when she lifts that beautiful face to him. His mouth is gentle against her nose, affectionate in a way that fills her chest, and she wants to say something, say anything, but all she can manage is that unsteady silence. When his eyes find hers she flushes warm and uncertain, slipping out of his gaze as easily as a leaf plucked through the wind. But she remembers that good again, the sturdiness of it on his lips and tangled in her ears, and it is enough to pull her back to him. “Good.” She repeats, she echoes, a promise of her own though it is so much less steady, so much less certain.
He steps closer anyway, brushes a kiss against her cheek and she leans into it with luminous eyes that fall shut and hide away behind the tangles of a dark silk forelock. His mouth drops lower, pressed tight to the pulse at her throat – a pulse he coaxes into eager chaos with the pressure of his tongue and she is undone. Her breathing skitters, uneven and suddenly hard to hold onto, like catching air between impossible fingers even as he pulls her under. She shifts beneath him, settling closer, pushing deeper, and he is rewarded with the flexing of sinuous muscle beneath his tongue, live and lithe and tremulous.
At first she does not notice the change in his eyes, does not notice that subtle darkness, or the way his focus sharpens against her. But the intensity prickles her skin, hums and buzzes at the back of her mind until she has the sense to lift her eyes and find him, see him, for the first time. It is the way of prey to know when they are being watched. She inhales sharply, startled, and for a moment she is still beneath him as she traces those beautiful eyes against this strange new face. He watches her as the falcon watches the field mouse, as the coyote watches the rabbit – with eyes that see more than they should, eyes that are eager and hungry and buried in the pulse of the neck that flutters beneath his parted lips. “Stillwater.” She whispers without meaning to, a quiet invitation on pale lips, the vocalization of her trust for the dark that watches her from deep inside those bottomless eyes. There is some instinctive part of her that urges her away from his kisses, away from his mouth against her throat, away to the cold air or the cold water until her mind is clear.
But he is molten against her skin and she burns eagerly beneath him, lost in the sensation of his mouth against her neck. She must whimper, how could she not, but she cannot hear it past the roar of her pulse thrumming in her ears, past the hum of her yearning when she closes her eyes and submits.
She is pure light and pale fire, electric and thrumming like a wire beneath the wandering of that dark, ruinous mouth. “Stillwater,” she says again, yearning and wild, filling that single word with the same soft ache that glows in the back of those dark, luminous eyes, “Stillwater.” She says it hundred times, names every star in their sky after him, a series of low, uncertain sounds and quiet keening. “Stillwater.” She says once more, singular, and it is a request when she pushes against him, when she pools against his chest so that he can feel the way her heart races when he touches her like this. Her mouth is against his shoulder and the nearest ribs, a tangle of tongue and teeth and stolen kisses that she does not deserve but will borrow anyways. She quiets as she always does, softens when she is pressed so deeply against him, but the ache is still there, still unraveling her and it climbs to the surface of her skin in a spiderwebbing of shivers that ripple like water across the uneven blue of her smooth, roan flesh. There is a confession in her chest, brutal and vulnerable, in her throat and then in her mouth, and it tastes like glass when she finally spits it out and against his neck where she buries that delicate blue and white face, “I’m yours.”
He steps closer anyway, brushes a kiss against her cheek and she leans into it with luminous eyes that fall shut and hide away behind the tangles of a dark silk forelock. His mouth drops lower, pressed tight to the pulse at her throat – a pulse he coaxes into eager chaos with the pressure of his tongue and she is undone. Her breathing skitters, uneven and suddenly hard to hold onto, like catching air between impossible fingers even as he pulls her under. She shifts beneath him, settling closer, pushing deeper, and he is rewarded with the flexing of sinuous muscle beneath his tongue, live and lithe and tremulous.
At first she does not notice the change in his eyes, does not notice that subtle darkness, or the way his focus sharpens against her. But the intensity prickles her skin, hums and buzzes at the back of her mind until she has the sense to lift her eyes and find him, see him, for the first time. It is the way of prey to know when they are being watched. She inhales sharply, startled, and for a moment she is still beneath him as she traces those beautiful eyes against this strange new face. He watches her as the falcon watches the field mouse, as the coyote watches the rabbit – with eyes that see more than they should, eyes that are eager and hungry and buried in the pulse of the neck that flutters beneath his parted lips. “Stillwater.” She whispers without meaning to, a quiet invitation on pale lips, the vocalization of her trust for the dark that watches her from deep inside those bottomless eyes. There is some instinctive part of her that urges her away from his kisses, away from his mouth against her throat, away to the cold air or the cold water until her mind is clear.
But he is molten against her skin and she burns eagerly beneath him, lost in the sensation of his mouth against her neck. She must whimper, how could she not, but she cannot hear it past the roar of her pulse thrumming in her ears, past the hum of her yearning when she closes her eyes and submits.
She is pure light and pale fire, electric and thrumming like a wire beneath the wandering of that dark, ruinous mouth. “Stillwater,” she says again, yearning and wild, filling that single word with the same soft ache that glows in the back of those dark, luminous eyes, “Stillwater.” She says it hundred times, names every star in their sky after him, a series of low, uncertain sounds and quiet keening. “Stillwater.” She says once more, singular, and it is a request when she pushes against him, when she pools against his chest so that he can feel the way her heart races when he touches her like this. Her mouth is against his shoulder and the nearest ribs, a tangle of tongue and teeth and stolen kisses that she does not deserve but will borrow anyways. She quiets as she always does, softens when she is pressed so deeply against him, but the ache is still there, still unraveling her and it climbs to the surface of her skin in a spiderwebbing of shivers that ripple like water across the uneven blue of her smooth, roan flesh. There is a confession in her chest, brutal and vulnerable, in her throat and then in her mouth, and it tastes like glass when she finally spits it out and against his neck where she buries that delicate blue and white face, “I’m yours.”