:WYRM:
He hates that the sudden clenching of his teeth give him away. No one had ever had the right to push his buttons and here she was, smashing them with an upturned fist and smirking all the while. He’d never been the one to imagine that simply being near her again would drive him into this foul, black mood - but time has a way of changing things. “My company is no longer yours to keep.” He answers dully, one ear falling to the side in apparent boredom.
He could tell her, of course. It would be easier (or maybe harder?) to simply open up his mouth and reveal himself to the bright-eyed stranger, rip away the layers until he faced the very thing he was struggling so hard to bury just now. She might even like it, seeing him bent so low as to admit that every time he laid his eyes upon her now his flesh burned with a desire that even he had no control over. This incessant gnawing at his gut had begun to drive him mad, so much so that the thought of relief had the words pressing against his lips for freedom.
But he refused. To give her that part of himself would be to allow her a power he could never relinquish - not without comparable return. She would possess something of him that could destroy the very thing he’d worked so hard to become. No … not good enough. He knew that even beneath the cursory lust was something his speckled companion might never be able to give him, and it trumped all other hungers. He wanted those eyes to yearn for him as her equal, nothing more and nothing less. This Heartfire could only gaze downward.
“Be quick about it.” He pushes, moving away from her to rub the length of his supple body against the rough trunk of a nearby tree, dislodging the final tufts of a winter’s coat. “I’m making tracks to the mountain. Was going to find you afterwards, but now we can kill two birds with one stone. Convenient.” Wyrm barks, the sound something akin to mingled laughter and urgency. Without her so close and constantly in his vision, it was almost as if he could be the horse that she remembered … just enough to allow the air to fill his lungs again.