"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
She notices when he pulls back. When he tries to scramble for control or distance or both, and she finds that she doesn’t like it. It’s a slippery slope and the star thing has found she has a taste for being worshipped. Has a taste for his particular brand of darkness—that needy, controlling way that he touched her. The cruel and devout way his mouth softens for kisses upon her hip and along her jaw.
It soothes some vital piece of her.
Some hungry, aching piece.
And she does not like when there is only cool air where he should be.
So she hunts for him this night. The starlight trails before and after her, opening up the path before her so that she can easily see and be seen. She has no fear for what stalks in the shadows. No fear for what may come upon her, not ever and certainly not on a night like tonight when the sky is clear and the starlights so bountiful. They are beautiful, she knows, but even more beautiful when sharpened to a dagger’s edge.
You can slice a throat open on a night like tonight and it would be poetry.
The thought brings a smile to her lips and she hums in the back of her throat as she continues to move through the common lands, finding her way along the river. It is loud but there are not too many trees to choke out the starlight, and this pleases her. Pleases her as she manipulates the thread of it so that it becomes less of a path and more of a molten silver that pours over her night sky coat.
The light drips off of her like jewels, like ore, and she feels its weight.
Feels it grow heavier when she finally sees him before her and her smile grows both coy and sharp.
“There you are,” her voice cutting through the distance. “Where have you been?”
I said I never knew the moral but I guess that's how the story goes my lovers never been a mirror in the hour that I needed it most
09-09-2021, 06:34 PM (This post was last modified: 09-09-2021, 06:52 PM by Dacian.)
you have forsaken all the love you've taken sleeping on a razor there's nowhere left to fall
He had released his hold on her, which was entirely unlike him.
He was a possessive creature, one that did not like to share or let his obsessions out of his sight. Aurorae had always been different, though. She was never something that he could keep, and he found that there was a certain pleasure in knowing he did not have to force her to come back—she always did on her own. Even though his veins heated with jealousy each time she wandered off, especially if she returned smelling of someone else, he did not keep her caged. He has never had anything before in his life that he did not have to chase, and if letting her roam is what it took to keep her content, then so be it.
It’s why when he first left, he does not know what took him so long to go back, or why one day stretched into two, then three, until he lost count.
He has thought of her every day, but especially every night. Ever since the stars returned and shone so sharp and brilliant in the night sky, it was impossible to not think of her. And yet no matter how many times he imagined himself pressing his lips to the familiar curves, no matter how many times he imagined the way she felt beneath his touch, he delayed going back.
He is surprised when she comes to him that night, saturated in starlight, stunning as always. He is covered in the obsidian armor that he has been favoring lately, and the moonlight glints off the glossy surface where it plaits over his neck and back. He looks at her, eyes dark and unreadable, but a slow, roguish smile forms on his face. “Away,” he says nonchalantly, before turning to walk up to her, though he does not reach for her. “Why, did you miss me?”
Dacian
your body's aching, every bone is breaking nothing seems to shake it, it just keeps holding on
If she thought that she was being pinned beneath his attention, perhaps her reaction to it would be different. Perhaps she would fight against the obsession and cut him open for the thrill of it. Perhaps she would simply slip away one night and never return. But he doesn’t pin her down with such thoughts. He doesn’t overpower her, and she doesn’t feel the worry that he was going to grow tired of her.
She is too arrogant to even entertain that as an option.
So she just smiles slowly when he looks at her, when she takes note of the armor that is covered him, hiding the brutish strength that lies beneath. She understands the challenge in him coming near but not touching her and she refuses to rise to it. Refuses to give into the annoying temptation to close the distance herself. When had she started to want that on her own? When had the hunger for him started?
Aurorae is unusually adept at squashing her own feelings though and she does so with cruel precision. She holds herself apart with a sly smile, the sides of it just barely flirting with the edges of her mouth.
“In a manner of speaking,” her gaze grows heavy-lidded and she sweeps it over him blatantly before glancing down, looking up from underneath her lashes. “I would have had to seek out someone else had I not been able to find you,” this she says with a slight pout, her beautifully carved face adjusting just so. “I can only wait so long,” a soft breath as she shrugs a shoulder with one elegant motion. “You know that.”
The starlight pools over her back further, dripping down her slender sides and splashing against the ground. With a thought, she lifts the ichor from the ground until it forms tiny constellations floating in the space between them, as if highlighting the distance that she refuses to close herself.
I said I never knew the moral but I guess that's how the story goes my lovers never been a mirror in the hour that I needed it most
you have forsaken all the love you've taken sleeping on a razor there's nowhere left to fall
“Then it’s a good thing you found me,” he says, his tone calm to the point it was nearly flat. He does not allow himself to react to the idea of her being with someone else. The spark of jealousy that alights in his gut is not given his attention, knowing that doing so would be a detriment to them both. He would not hesitate to set fire to anyone that he caught her with, and he thinks that she knows this—he is surprised she has not pushed him to that point already simply to watch his reaction, to be honest.
He wouldn’t hurt her, he thinks, though he does not trust himself.
There had been a time when he thought he wouldn’t hurt Devonae, but that had changed eventually, too.
The flare of anger that accompanies the jealousy is directed only at himself, though, since it would have been entirely his fault should she have found someone else. This is not something that he admits out loud, of course, but it is a near-mistake that he does not intend to make again.
“It would have been a shame for you to lower your standards and accept the company of another,” he continues, his lips now twisted into that familiar crooked grin. He relents, allowing her to have the upper hand this time around without resistance, following the constellation she left between them until the space has disappeared. He watches the waterfall of starlight that cascades across the slope of her back and pools at the ground below, and he reaches to drag his lips up the curve of her throat. “You’re too beautiful for your own good, Aurorae,” his voice is a low growl in his chest, but that dangerous smile remains on his face.
Dacian
your body's aching, every bone is breaking nothing seems to shake it, it just keeps holding on
She nearly shivers with pleasure at the flatness of his tone, the anger that she is certain it masks. There is no small part of her—cruel, as she is—that wants to provoke him further. That wants to see just how angry he truly can get. How much his possessive need for her could flare out of control. It is flattering, she thinks, and her stomach curls with pleasure at the jealous rage that must simmer in his veins.
But he doesn’t hold out further and she purrs softly as he comes to her.
She lifts her head slightly, giving him easy access to her throat, and she melts against him, her body going liquid as he traces that curvature up to her jaw. “Probably,” she murmurs, not denying her own beauty. She never has. She knows the night sky painted along her slender body. The molten starlight that drips off of her. She knows the things that make her beautiful to look at—easy to study, easy to keep.
But she also knows that’s not the only thing that he sees.
He sees the darkness that twists inside of her. The casual cruelty and insatiable hunger for what lies in the shadows. The hunger that only he comes close to touching. She closes her eyes and focuses on the feel of him next to her, that unnatural heat that radiates off of him. “Would you kill for me, Dacian?” she asks suddenly, her lips tipping upward in the corner. “I wonder just how far you would go.”
But it is not fear that warms her words.
I said I never knew the moral but I guess that's how the story goes my lovers never been a mirror in the hour that I needed it most
you have forsaken all the love you've taken sleeping on a razor there's nowhere left to fall
She is so different from any that has ever captured his attention that she makes him forget the rest.
He has always been a collector of pretty things, but she is so much more than that. He would not deny that he had initially been drawn to her because she is stunning, but it was her intelligence that had fully ensnared him. It was the way she asked to see all the dark parts of him and decided to keep them as her own rather than cast him aside, or try to turn him into something he was not. She had never tried to claim there was any good in him, or anything about him that could be saved—because while he was not entirely bad, it would be foolish to think there was any light left in him, either.
He was darkness and bits of gray, everything that was once moral and good having been tarnished over the years.
The only light that remained came in the form of destructive flames, and he knows that she can feel the promise of them when he breathes against her skin. The way each touch he places along her throat is hot, and instead of shrinking away she only offers him more.
He cannot stop the throaty laugh at her question, withdrawing from his exploration to lock her teal eyes with his. “Would I kill for you?” He repeats it as if he actually needs to contemplate it, as if he did not practically fantasize about killing anyone that might look at her. Reaching once more to thoughtfully run his mouth along the top of her neck, he takes in the aurora that rises up her legs and dances along her sides. He imagines what that would look like in the embrace of anyone that is not him—imagines another’s name on her perfect lips, and he feels the flames building in his chest, searching for a way up his throat.
Of course he would kill for her. And she knows this, too, but instead of being irritated at her bringing this weakness (because it is a weaknes—she is his weakness) to light, he chooses to fan that ember of jealousy into a flame, because it is what she wants.
With his lips caressing the soft skin at the base of her ear he finally utters a dark, “Yes,” the word itself smelling of smoke and releasing with it a curl of heat. “I’d burn everything to the ground for you,” he says with a low growl and a definitive pinch of her delicate skin between his teeth, not enough to break or even bruise, but only to drive the point home. He softens just as quickly though, following it with a caress of his lips in the same place, quieting his voice when he asks her, “Is that what you want me to do?”
Dacian
your body's aching, every bone is breaking nothing seems to shake it, it just keeps holding on
There is something wrong with her that his words affect her the way that they do. That her body shivers with pleasure at the heat on his tongue and the promise of violence in the way his teeth pinch. She knows that he’s not lying. She knows that it is a barely restrained control that keeps him from committing the things that he dreams about, and she knows that if he did ever snap that tether, she would bask in it.
Would she go to him when he was the afterglow of the violence?
Would she take him when his throat was barely cooled?
She knows the answer and it sparks to life in her teal eyes, the cruel intentions in the shadows that barely darken her expression, that play around the corners of her teasing mouth. “Perhaps,” she smiles into him, her very flesh buzzing with desire from what he has promised, from the pandora’s box he has opened in her. “Is it so wrong to know that you would bring someone to their knees for me?” A pout on her soft lips.
But the pout does not last long.
It turns into a breathy chuckle as she twists under him, as she brings the starlight back down, letting it pour in between them and uses it as a wedge to push him away. The silvery light glows around her as a small barrier, and she feels that ache in her belly as she denies herself the warmth of him. The only comfort is knowing that she denies him too and she smiles as she steps away, slender legs crossing.
“Sometimes I wonder if you haven’t killed because you do not love me enough,” she lifts her head just a fraction. “Does the thought of me with others not drive you to distraction? Does it not bother you?”
I said I never knew the moral but I guess that's how the story goes my lovers never been a mirror in the hour that I needed it most
