The Ark
The Ark stills as he reaches for the fabric, the way she always has when he knows better than to fight the line himself. She lets him draw the shirt back over her head, lets him turn it true, and as the linen snags on her thick hair, the maroon waves caught and mussed, a soft disapleased sound escapes her as she tosses her head sharply, like sails hauled in when there's wind still worth catching, before lifting her hands to free and fluff it back into place. "You’ve always had your hands all over me," she points out, chin lifting with faint defiance, as if daring him to argue with decades of proof.
But then he moves away, and it isn’t the words that hold her attention so much as the way he does it; the softened stride, the care with which he sets himself against the desk instead of dropping there. No irritation. No edge. Measured. Considered, and that matters to her. It lands deeper than the promise itself, even as that registers too. She remembers storms he took her into that she shouldn’t have weathered, gambits that scraped her raw, but never once did he set her on a course she couldn’t survive. That he thinks this might be different makes something in her resist instinctively, her mind pressing against the notion like a wheel refusing a new bearing, and then, just as instinctively, she respects it.
Not easily, though. She steps closer and stops in front of him, the shirt—his shirt—the only thing between her skin and the room, blue eyes lifting to meet his. "You’ve always been a man willing to take some risks," she says, unable to leave it untouched, the challenge there but softened by a crooked hint of a smile.
Then she turns away from him and crosses to the bed. She’s felt this enough times to know the shape of it, the way bodies fold themselves down at the end of the night, and she lowers herself with a loose, unpracticed sprawl. Pillows mean nothing to her so she lands wrong, head where feet should be, the mattress giving beneath her weight in a way that makes her blink. She peers back up at him from the wrong end of the bed, hair spilling, shirt riding up her thighs, eyes bright and catlike with curiosity.
But then he moves away, and it isn’t the words that hold her attention so much as the way he does it; the softened stride, the care with which he sets himself against the desk instead of dropping there. No irritation. No edge. Measured. Considered, and that matters to her. It lands deeper than the promise itself, even as that registers too. She remembers storms he took her into that she shouldn’t have weathered, gambits that scraped her raw, but never once did he set her on a course she couldn’t survive. That he thinks this might be different makes something in her resist instinctively, her mind pressing against the notion like a wheel refusing a new bearing, and then, just as instinctively, she respects it.
Not easily, though. She steps closer and stops in front of him, the shirt—his shirt—the only thing between her skin and the room, blue eyes lifting to meet his. "You’ve always been a man willing to take some risks," she says, unable to leave it untouched, the challenge there but softened by a crooked hint of a smile.
Then she turns away from him and crosses to the bed. She’s felt this enough times to know the shape of it, the way bodies fold themselves down at the end of the night, and she lowers herself with a loose, unpracticed sprawl. Pillows mean nothing to her so she lands wrong, head where feet should be, the mattress giving beneath her weight in a way that makes her blink. She peers back up at him from the wrong end of the bed, hair spilling, shirt riding up her thighs, eyes bright and catlike with curiosity.
Her touch is like a tempest, her whisper is a breeze,
but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees
but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees
Code stolen from Queen Sky
Siren's Wake | After she leaves a space, traces of her presence linger briefly: a faint scent of salt, the sound of distant water, a restless feeling in the chest. People rarely notice it consciously.
