so we let our shadows fall away like dust
He makes her brave with his steadiness, makes her all the more willing when he watches with steel eyes as she brings the blade to her throat. It soothes something in her that he does not flinch away from the magic now, that he can watch and be unworried, unchanged by this part of her when only moments ago she had nearly used it against him. She didn’t deserve this, his unwavering gaze, the quiet, patient way he held her attention captive. But it makes it easier when her flesh splits and the blood is warm and damp where it beads in ruby rivulets across the blue of her oceanic skin.
Easier to forget the sting when she is already drowning in such deep silver eyes, molten steel and beautiful.
She presses closer as though to hide from the small pain, to hide from the uncertainty swelling like an unwelcome pressure in the pit of her chest, and he greets her with a rainstorm of kisses – soft and teasing and damp across her lips. “Stillwater.” She says again, has named him a hundred times, softens to the depth of the kisses he lays across her smiling mouth. I love you. She thinks but will not say, damns it for the way it feels like another fetter she would be tying around him again. Her love is not meant to capture him, not meant to bind him. Her love is the stars in the sky, quiet and beautiful, always there if only he would look for it – even if he couldn’t always see it.
She looses another moan, plaintive and inviting, undone by the gentleness of his kisses, of what felt like affection, of the way he pressed so close against her. The kisses wander until he is at her throat again, hovering eagerly over the heat that spills out from the slice in such soft, fragile skin. She doesn’t flinch away from him when he flicks his tongue out to taste her, when he traces the lines of blood all the way back to the wound that now wept freely again. Suddenly, or at least it feels sudden as lulled and lurid as she had been made by his gentleness, by the sweetness he pressed in kisses against her mouth and skin, he closes his mouth around her and she protests only for a heartbeat, only with the widening of dark eyes until she felt his want in the foreleg he threw across her withers.
They are unsteady in the water like this, tangled and urgent and distracted by their own needs, and when the water fills her nose and her mouth she struggles, relieved when he pulls her up again. It is strange maybe, that she doesn’t fight the pressure of his mouth clamped over her throat, that she doesn’t struggle to be free of he who might kill her, might drag her below and sate himself in the deepest way. But he keeps her afloat, draws her closer to him still, vibrates with aching urgency in time with the quiver of her fluttering pulse.
She trusts him, even now.
But then the edges of the world soften, darkening with each new pull, and she goes slack beneath him. There is no pain in this moment, no worry when he turns and drags her floating body back to the shore. Her mind is only numb now, soft and hazy and so strangely content to have been able to give him this, satisfied the craving he tugged from her with kneading, suckling lips. She is at the edge of consciousness when he brings her to the shallows, treading the grey world between life and dream when she feels the weight of him fall across her. She stirs for him then, searches for his mouth but it is still pinned to her throat, still taking, still wanting.
Too much? She wonders silently, incapable of forming words. But then he frees her with a groan, pushing her chin from the water and against the sand, away from that which threatened to fill her nose and her mouth to drown her. “Stillwater?” She tries, soft and hazy, stirring lethargically and slurring the word to an unrecognizable tangle of sound and syllable. She doesn’t like the absence of his mouth now, misses the pull of his suckling tongue and the softness of lips around teeth that had held her so steady. He must know, must guess, because suddenly his lips are against hers and she is responding in that sweet, sluggish way, lifting her face to him as he kissed her so sweetly.
“You taste like me.” She says with a quiet kind of smile, still sluggish though her luminous eyes seem slightly sharper now, soft and affectionate when he lays his head across her damp back. When he shifts again to place that final kiss against her shoulder, she must sense the goodbye in it because she lifts that delicate head tremblingly from the sand to peer back at him in a sad way. She didn’t want him to go anymore – didn’t want him to feed more just yet, but it hurt her in some way to watch one concede to the other, one always forced back. She wants to give him one more kiss, one more something, but weariness drops her head to the sand again where she slumps sleepily, sides fluttering so faintly.
She isn’t sure how much time passes with her eyes closed and her face pressed to the damp shore – seconds, minutes, hours. But it is the urgency of a nose pressed against her dark cheek and the sound of her name that pulls her back again. Luster. She stirs and lifts her face to him, looking up with soft, easy affection glowing in the backs of those luminous eyes. “Stillwater.” She answers, slow and sleepy, a soft smile carving new light into the delicate lines of her blue and white face. Reaching up, she grabs a mouthful of his mane to pull him back to her again, releases it to press slow, tired kisses to whatever part of his face she can still reach.
The worry in his face must register then, belatedly, because she pauses her kisses to brush a shaky nose across his forehead, pushing aside his forelock to sink more easily into those perfect deepwater eyes. “I’m okay.” She tells him, touches him when she can and where she can, sleepy but stubborn in her desire to see the worry erased from his face. “I’m not hurt.” She blinks slowly at him, leans back so that she is nestled in the curve of his belly and lays her cheek against his shoulder. “Will you stay with me awhile?”
