so we let our shadows fall away like dust
You’re so beautiful, Luster.
The words incinerate her, speaking to that place in her soul that was only his, always his. She cannot stop it when it comes, that low whimper of longing like a song on her lips, so she presses it into him instead, buries it against his mouth in a kiss that starts so softly. But it isn’t enough, not when he looks at her like that, dark eyes soft and searching, awed. The silver deepens like a blush across her skin, spun starlight like silk in every curve of blue and white, an echo of the pleasure thrumming for him in her chest. “Dovev.” She manages in a breathless whisper, presses this, too, into the heat of his mouth. She whimpers again, such a small, inconspicuous sound – and the kiss changes, suddenly deep and searching, claiming him.
Mine. Her eyes say when she pulls back breathless, her chest heaving and aching and burning for him.
She is surprised when he doesn’t recoil from her confession, my heart knew you, surprised when he doesn’t scowl or laugh or frown. Instead those eyes watch her searchingly, deep and black and beautiful like the space between stars. It is enough to make her wonder if he feels it too, this impossible, undeniable tie that binds them so closely together. But then she wounds him with her next question and he sucks a breath in and turns from her, shaking his head.
She doesn’t give him the chance to dwell on it, though.
“Dovev.” She says in a voice that is soft and firm and filled with so much want, so much unconditional affection that she can hardly find room to breathe around the weight of it. His eyes slid to her neck and she ducks beneath his, presses kisses down the front of his neck from throat to chest, finds the edges of a wound on his shoulder and kisses that too, suckles softly in the way she knows will make him tremble and moan. She doesn’t want him to torture himself with the memory of that night, regrets having mentioned it, having asked. It means something different to her. She doesn’t remember his fury and his teeth as he does, so intimate and ruinous. To her it feels like a distant memory, something she watched instead of experienced.
It wasn’t his teeth that had hurt the most, it was the cold on her skin when he released her to the dark and turned to leave.
It is only when the silence extends and she returns to a gaze that still refuses to settle on her, that she speaks again. A treacherous, beautiful secret from the dark of her heart. What if I was meant to be yours? At first he doesn’t react, doesn’t say anything even though she can see the thoughts swimming like fish between dark eyes that watch her again, his silence tying a knot in her belly that she cannot undo with such trembling hands. Those brown eyes darken to a strange shade of bruised quiet, half-hidden beneath the furrow of a suddenly uncertain brow as she opens her mouth to say something. But what? She wouldn’t take it back, even if he didn’t feel the same, even if he looked back at her and laughed. “I –” she started to speak anyway, maybe a soft, blushing apology, but he moves, finally, closes the distance between them with his lips against her cheek.
She lifts her face to him in relief, meets his eyes as they find hers and sink deep, deep until she is cradling him inside. I’d do anything for you, Luster. He says in a whisper, pressing a kiss to her forehead and then his brow to hers. Her only response is a soft whimper of surprise, pleasure maybe, a breathlessness that erupts from the pounding in her chest. Anything. She pulls away to collide against his chest, curls there in a quiet way until she can make sense of the kiss, of the confession, of the way even now he bends his head over her to hold her close.
It – it reminds her of her parents. Of the way they always stood tangled together as one, of the way they watched each other when they thought no one else was looking. Soft, so soft, like they shared secrets in the way they touched one another, in the way their eyes found home together. As though there was no world outside the one they had carved for their small family, nothing else that could ever matter so much as this.
She understood that now, felt it flood her burning body like cool, healing water.
He is her balance in this world.
“Me too.” She answers finally, shifts so she can touch her lips to his jaw, pull his face down to where he can see her again. “Anything, everything. Always.” It is an inevitable thing for her thoughts to wander to darker places, for her imagination to breathe life into sudden nightmares of a world turning against him, of scenarios where he was in danger and did need help. Her help. It wasn’t such a far stretch after the way Heartfire and Wyrm had threatened him that afternoon. “Promise me,” she says quickly, pressing worried kisses to the curve of his jaw and the corner of his mouth, laying her worry out for him to see, to feel the depth of its pain, “promise me you will always come to me, promise, if you need anything.” Her voice is a note higher than it usually, tight and worried and aching when she touches him with a possessive kind of concern, a hint of that wild she had shown earlier.
But then he bends over her again, traces a row of kisses to the curve of her neck and she is quieted, if only a little. A breathless kind of whimper slips past her lips and she pushes her face against his shoulder, arching into his touch, practically levitating to be closer to him. He stops though and when she turns her face to him it is to a fading look of reluctance that spills like cool water over his face. For as long as you like, love.
Love.
It is not a strange word or a new word, in fact it is one he had used on her before and so freely. But in the dark of this cave and beneath his neck, with skin that is still damp and glowing with his kisses, there is a new weight to it. An important weight to it. “Love. ” She says in her soft way, whispered like chime, pressed in a kiss to the galaxies at the corner of his mouth. For a moment her eyes linger there, quiet and curious even after she’s pulled away from the kiss, watching the gleam of stars embedded in the deep blue. With a quiet kind of smile she pushes her light into him, into the stars at his mouth and the ones on his legs so that they twinkle even brighter than she does drenched as she is in silver. Then, whispered, another kiss pressed to constellations at the corner of his mouth, “My whole universe.”
She turns then, slips past his chest and to his shoulder, finding the dampness of raw skin around his bone plates with the soft of her exploring tongue. Despite the heat that flares deep in her belly, beautiful and unnamable, she is gentle when she pushes deep, suckling kisses against such tender skin, careful and coaxing when she claims so much of him with her lips. She makes her way to his hip, runs a trail of nips down the front of his hind leg – skin, not bone, soft and smooth and rippling beneath her mouth – and then turns back to fit herself beneath his neck again.
When she pushes her hip against his chest and lifts her face to his, it is bright with longing, with the depth of her affection for him. Her mouth finds his again, urgent and needing, and she reaches out with tendrils of mixed shadow and light like spun silk to pull him closer to her, to coax the reluctance from his eyes with the desire in hers. Her lips claim his, teasing them with her teeth and then pushing them apart so her tongue can slip between to taste him. “Dovev,” she begs softly into his mouth, giving him room to deepen the kiss and press her further beneath him, to claim her as she has claimed him, “don’t stop.” She pulls away from his mouth but it is only to kiss the corner of it, to follow the line of his jaw to the curve of his throat, to alternate kiss with nip until she is certain his pulse must match the pounding of hers. Breathless, wide-eyed, she draws the silken magic tighter, tangling in his mane and pulling him down against her waiting mouth again. “Dovev,” she whispers between kisses, looking up at him with aching, earnest eyes, “I want you.” A pause, eyes closing uncertainly, “I need you.”
