[SE] Sew me what you know

// If the world was ending, I'd wanna be next to you //

He expected no other answer, and his smirk only deepens in its nefarious cut, each of them lost of the madness of competition that has landed them in trouble more than a time or two over the years. "Your funeral," he continues to taunt, just before he takes action, but as ever, she is quicker. As nimble as candleflame in a breeze, she darts without growing extinguished, flickering around him as if his movements were a well practiced dance. And as habits go, perhaps they were after so many similar attempts, just none as recently as this.

Her own pillow serves as a robust block, keeping his tackle unsuccessfully and instead sending him sprawled onto the floor, face first. Her own assault rains in from above, not painful, but disorienting and unstoppable in this position. He grouses through it with a myriad of grunts and groans, one hand trying to raise up over his head and grab at her pillow, but each time it falls through his grasp before he can manage a secure hold, brought back down with renewed fervor. In the distance, Goose is barking, the way school children might gather round a playground fight and chant for the violence on display.

What Iskra does have nearby thought, is her feet, and he reaches out to grab and twine around her legs, yanking towards him while he pivots his lower half, trying to push off with his feet against the couch to give him more force to pull her down with.

ISKRA

// I'd wanna hold you just for a while and die with a smile //

Melita

I never had a chance to be soft
I was always bloody knuckles

She had half a mind to fire something else back, but then his hands were yanking at her lower limbs and she couldn’t quite pivot out of the way fast enough. Even with half an intention to kick him square in the face, her speed and deftness were lose in the incoming shuffle, and down she went, sprawled across his lap in a fit of spitting rage.

She must’ve looked like some kind of hissing cat, the way she reared up automatically. Even in this compromising position though, all that bellowed against her ears were the knots and notes of frustration – the entanglements over the past few meetings, the complete and utter silence around each move and maneuver. This was a game she didn’t quite understand – murky and understated and then nothing at all. So she simply blurted it out on a huff, fingers already reaching for her pillow. “What’re we doing?”

and shards of glass
I wanted people to be afraid of hurting me

// If the world was ending, I'd wanna be next to you //

The victory of toppling her is short lived when she writhes and bucks like her life depends upon it. It's everything in his to dodge every flailing limb, ones he knows are holding little back, a wonder at all that she hasn't conjured up some magic or dagger just to secure her triumph. That she hasn't, that they're still on relatively even footing, only feeds into his contuined attemps. He has no real plan. It's entirely devolved, all he knows is he means to conquer her stubbornness with his own, that sewing is boring, that wrestling against her is an excuse to hold her, even if it's lacking all the tenderness he might otherwise wish to provide in the quiet moments where he contemplates it.

The question she tosses out strikes him with the same force as her pillow, and he stills a bit, giving her some headway. "Fighting over stupid shit?" he asks, a bit breathless with the effort of hauling her down and trying to contain her, the true point of her words completely slipping past him. "Tackle pillow fight," he clarifies after a moment of thought, naming the game like it's always been intentional. Goose's barks die down a bit, but he stands int he hallway, staring with a half-wagging tail, just as unsure as either of them what the hell is going on.

ISKRA

// I'd wanna hold you just for a while and die with a smile //

Melita

I never had a chance to be soft
I was always bloody knuckles

Melita half-hoped he’d understand instantly, and she wouldn’t have to pursue down this rumbling road of unknowns and vague notions – fragments that might only exist in her own mind. Instead, it was the simplicity of the intertwining; not the inward tracings, not the lines moderately drawn, then zigzagged, not the instants she thought obvious. She could feel the mulish tendencies and twitches already beginning to work their way through her jaw and fingers, tightly clenching that pillow and deeply wishing she could just beat the shit out of something and have it solve every dilemma. Those were her safety measures, her hidden daggers, her resolute beacons of walls. If she could barrage and sear, then that would be enough.

Except not everyone was going to keep putting their hands in her fire, waiting for the next time she burned them. Maybe that was her fear, somewhere along the way, if she dared to examine any closer, that eventually all she was going to have were ashes. It’d be her own fault. Wasted. Deluded. Confined to all her anger and nothing else. Friends and moments more stabbed and lacerated and sent to their pyres because she would’ve preferred the sanctity of her rage.

She stilled; a dangerous aspect all on its own. Her lips twitched, then she looked at his mouth – and his stupid handsome face and his patience and his forbearance, wondering how much she’d already picked apart too. Perhaps it was no wonder why he hadn’t said anything – just went for it and then hastened back. Who wouldn’t.

The treacherous thoughts threatened to be wallowing, and Melita didn’t do that. She didn’t sit there, scared in the midst. Swallowing down those insecurities and suppressing them until the boldness engulfed again, renewed, she shook her head, cleared her throat. “No, I know that, I meant-,” her gaze drifted elsewhere, then back to him, trying to regain that fortitude and figure out where she was going while her mind sprinted down the lane. “Like we’ve kissed twice and you never said anything so I-,” she shrugged haplessly, hands loosening away from the pillow and swung around in the air. “Figured you didn’t like it or something, so do you want to pretend it didn’t happen or -,” which was probably what he’d been doing before now – so she shut her mouth and sighed.

and shards of glass
I wanted people to be afraid of hurting me

// If the world was ending, I'd wanna be next to you //

She's normally a potent, unstoppable force that doesn't know what it means to rest. Even breaking through her whirlwind and into the eye, the calm is one surrounded with the echo and chaos of her might and it's endless reach. It's always been a breathtaking, enviable thing. So her stillness is unusual, and it serves as an indicator that something is shifting. To what, he's uncertain, but it makes him strain towards her further, like he means to catch hold of it before it totally turns. He wants to stretch out this moment, because even if this play fight is absurd, it's an excuse to hold her, a reason to draw her close and hopefully set a grin back on her face, the one that'd been steadily turning down since the market. Even if it means she's smiling over the triumph of beating him, he'd fall on his sword to manage it.

He meets her gaze, rough grin threading in on his face like it can't be helped when he beholds her. Except, her look isn't one that flashes with the heat of competition, nor does it roil with the same airy joy that's lifting his smile up now. Instead, something heavy gathers, a different sort of storm than her usual.

Every part of him turns rigid when she mentions the kisses. A roar rises up to his ears, threatening to drown out the sounds of the world. His heart rises up in his throat, choking out breath and word alike, while every hair on his body prickles, a shiver running from his toes to his scalp. He had not expected that. He isn't sure what to do, what comes next, what he should say. All of it feels wrong, it has every time he's let it circle inside his mind, the curling bite of doubt picking apart every foolish angle he hadn't seen before, making the quiet seem like the smartest choice in the end.

What she ends with though, that's like a cold snap on bare skin. His eyes widen, and his voice rises up around the lump of his anxiety. "No." His stare on her is sharp, utterly terrified. He has to take away all the accursed doubt he'd let bleed off him and pool against her. He can hear it, that all too familiar pitch of uncertainty lilting through her words, the whine of metal dragging against stone. It's unbearable, that he's done this. "No, Mel. That’s not—gods, that’s not it at all." It comes out fierce, almost desperate, as if he could drag the truth out of his chest and press it into her hands.

He's not thinking now, and perhaps that's when he's at his best, acting instead of pacing in the dark corridors of thought and analysis. He reaches up to hold her, bracketing her hips, fingers curling around her side like he means to sear the understanding through the heat of his palms. "I want to do it every time I see you Mel. I always have. I just..."

ISKRA

// I'd wanna hold you just for a while and die with a smile //

Melita

I never had a chance to be soft
I was always bloody knuckles

She’d tossed the synapses and ichor out there while ignoring the heart of the matter; tiptoeing around the anchor as if she were in a set of waves and currents, barely dabbling her toes in the surface of the swell. Perhaps because some part of her feared the answer being exactly as she’d presumed, and then she’d simply thrown them into the undertow for nothing more than comprehension and a newfound insecurity. It was a precarious situation, dangling lines and wires and jumbled multitudes together without naming them at all, picking over bits and pieces until she thought she’d found a particular stone to uncover. Wouldn’t have been the first time she fumbled and fell, led someone into disaster.

So she watched without admitting anything initially – save for perhaps in her face, gilded gaze going back and forth over his own stare, his brows, his mouth, waiting for something to pierce. No grin lingered, her features becoming a manifestation of confusion and inner turmoil that wouldn’t have appeared anywhere else. One hand still clenched the couch cushion like a lifeline, the other settled somewhere near the edges of his shirt, head tilting to study and peruse and try to figure things out before he actually voiced them.

And then he seemed scared too – and she didn’t quite know what to do with that. Ordinarily, someone’s fear, especially prompted by her, would rouse all semblances of satisfaction – a greedy little torrent of gloating properties – a bloom in her chest, a catlike grin. None of that shifted in her now, body rigid again as if she was prepared to launch off something, fumbling around in the dark.

The admittance caused her eyes to widen, bewildered, cheeks flashing an instant’s worth of rosiness before his final statement hit her – sounding like an excuse with nothing else attached to it. “Okay, so,” her words roamed before her mind had any control over what to do or say, feeling like she was flailing despite her form remaining held in his. “I guess…I don’t understand or like -,” she breathed, trying to settle that wild, chaotic drumming in her head, echoing down through her chest, rabbit-like, knife held at its ribs. “What’s stopping you or-,” maybe it was her. Maybe he thought she hadn’t enjoyed it. She thought she’d been fairly receptive to the whole idea. Her gaze went downward, along sweaters and chests, feeding a sigh smoldering in her chest and thousand other emotions rambling through. Her brain was a series of thoughts rotating through and hardly coordinated, trying to simplify things much too large all at once. “I mean, I liked it.”

and shards of glass
I wanted people to be afraid of hurting me

// If the world was ending, I'd wanna be next to you //

His assurances to her don't seem to land with the same weight he intended, and the pillow hangs between them like a buffer, a means to smother him if need be. Every ounce of meaning and fiber of feeling that he gathered up into the phrases, feeling like the weight of an entire world when he let it slip free his chest, seems like little more than a bubble popping against her understanding instead of a planet's gravity tugging her along.

It has some effect, if the color on her face is any indicator—such a rare, lovely thing to see bloom over her cheeks. The confusion quickly returns though, that uncertainty still ringing in her voice, the heat of his hands paling to the hearth and the sweater. Shit. His hands curl tighter, thumbs absently stroking back and forth as she stumbles through her thoughts aloud, or so it seems with their broken cadence and wavering ends.

Now it's his turn to shift to a shade of red as her last admission lands. It settles like salvation, easing every knot he's tied around himself, just enough that he can move beneath the cage of his own making. "You did?" he asks with a touch of awe, like a child seeing magic for the first time in a world that's mundane. A fragile smile creeps in against the burn of his cheeks. "I never—I mean, I thought that I was always the one with a crush on you. So when the first kiss we were drunk...and the other one we had just survived the attack, I didn't think they'd been real to you." He'd cherished them all the same, but each one had this cloud hanging over it that made them feel like mishaps, rather than moments that spilled with all their unspoken affection.

He'd not have that again.

He twists to roll her under him, much like the night on the boat, but now there's only apple cider at fault and nothing unclear between them, not in this moment. She's beautiful in her halo of red, adorned in his sweater, vulnerable in a way he can scarcely recall her permitting. He'd not let it sink back into doubt. "Mel," he breathes, caught between her legs still, gaze trailing the line of her lips with shameless appreciation. He leans over her, one arm sinking into the space near her head, the other slipping up to her cheek. "You are everything I've ever wanted," he murmurs, soft with reverence but not lacking in strength of conviction, one which he presses against her mouth with his own, trying to seal it there, for both of their sakes.

ISKRA

// I'd wanna hold you just for a while and die with a smile //

Melita

I never had a chance to be soft
I was always bloody knuckles

Melita wasn’t one to wait – the impatience always buzzed under the surface of her skin, preparing for flight, for movement, for vehemence and violence, so to settle there, mind contorting into molten ends, took a perilous strength lodged in her bones. She couldn’t even be certain how long it took for him to unfurl the next set of words, watching closely as his own cheeks turned red, as truth spilled out grain by grain, and she realized just how dim and daft she’d been – hoping, in some way, that things she left unsaid were simply going to materialize into the ether. Be understood. Take nothing but fumbling steps and drunken thoughts. Expect that was enough.

She hadn’t been fair to him either, so her nose wrinkled in one of those rare bouts of shame or confusion. It hadn’t been his fault that she had difficulty laying down any of those infernal armors and walls – she’d put up so many it’d likely been impossible to tell from either side. Her plans were usually associated with anger, revenge, some innate boldness, ignoring the  lacquer built underneath. That ire was a cover for so many toils, troubles, and feelings; the fear of loss, the compounding nature of things drawn out and away and how many times she’d survived when others hadn’t. Relationships had been built out of protection and even then it scarcely mattered because they all fucking died or left or lingered out of reach. Gods, the last time anyone had confessed anything romantic towards her, she’d pulled her knife on them.

Her features turned red again, and she looked down at him, releasing a very, long breath, steadying whatever tightened over her fingers. “Yeah, well-,” she started, and it felt like a quarrel building behind her teeth because that was far more comfortable than giving pieces of herself over to someone. Vulnerability wasn’t her strong suit – not when she could have wrath and abhorrence and be hidden behind her daggers going for the throat – but maybe Iskra was far safer than anything or anyone she’d known. Her gaze met his, and she swallowed down the pride and defiance blistering against her spine. “They were. I meant them.”

But then they were flipping, and her fingers lost their grip on the cushion. Suddenly she was on the floor, hair flung in every direction, eyes widening in the tiniest bout of bewilderment – before they were merely drinking him in. Her chin raised in habitual defiance, but the golden stare roamed; over his features, the billowing muscles beneath his shirt, to the burning gaze settling on hers – chest tightening, forgetting about air. How the confession slid so easily from his mouth she’d never quite know or understand, not when it was so difficult to pry anything soft or loving from hers, but it prospered something like a muted gasp. “Really?” grated a stunned whisper; because not many had ever wanted her in their lives, much less like this. Before she could offer anything more though, his mouth was on hers, and she responded with equal ardor, strength, and conviction, lips pressed feverishly into his, one hand maneuvering to his shoulder, the other carding through the short lengths of his hair – thinking she could start there in expressing the sentiments.

and shards of glass
I wanted people to be afraid of hurting me

// If the world was ending, I'd wanna be next to you //

He has never been as loud and as certain as her, or his parents, or even some of the others they grew up with or know now. Maybe in some ways, like racing headlong into adventure and fun in their youth, less brave than just ignorant, laughter easier to come by when there'd been less to weigh him down and more reason to lift others up. He'd always had big shoes to fill, had always stood in the long shadows cast by others he knew. He never minded letting them unfurl further, just as content to see how far they could extend as they were to reach. His vibrancy found other ways to escape, and sometimes snuffed out entirely.

While she learned to erect walls and scale obstacles, soaring over problems like a blazing phoenix, he found ways to dig down into the shale of his wants, erecting bunkers to weather out storms until his spark could catch again into something noticeable. She'd always taken notice, had always lent her natural flame to his gathered scraps, until something close enough to a fire could be proclaimed. Where others had lent their elements to the bad weather, Mel had always dared to burn it away, like she means to prove enough fire can defeat the rain.

That's why admitting to her, at long last, just what she means comes easily enough. It's always been there, tucked behind his teeth like a whisper, unheard over the roar of greater things. With the threat of her flame billowing in the gale of uncertainty though, one that's chilled him too often, he finds the volume above something unspoken. Maybe that's what it's always been about, each of them igniting when the other needs to watch something burn.

The last bit of worry curls up into ash between them as she presses back with all the assurance he's always wanted. He's never considered another, has no practice to speak of, but instinct alone bids him to remove the space that remains between them. If she's offering, he means to claim all of it. His lean over her already has him fitted between her legs, but he sinks his weight onto her further, erasing more of the distance. One arm still braces around her head, but the other falls from her cheek to her hip, running up the length of her side. Even with a sweater between them, finally being able to accomplish such a touch causes something like a sigh of relief to slip free. "You've had my heart since the moment I met you, Mel" he murmurs against the corner of her mouth, stubble drawn against her skin with the reluctance to part from her. He pulls back just enough to catch the burn of her eyes though, to trace the shapes of his affection against her like it's something new he gets to watch.

"You're incredible," he can't help but say, admiration on full display as his fingers roam to the hem of the fabric that keeps him from her skin.

ISKRA

// I'd wanna hold you just for a while and die with a smile //

Melita

I never had a chance to be soft
I was always bloody knuckles

The number of times Melita had looked inward, at feelings, at things beyond the semantics of abhorrence and wrath, could probably be counted on one hand. She swallowed down the world and got on with it, stubbornly refusing to retreat to portions of shame or love – easier to bear when everything churned over and disappeared. She eschewed propriety and carried on the age-old tradition of boldness and audacity, clambered over the respective decorum and set things ablaze; turned back to ensure the rest followed. Iskra had been there, through thick and thin, and then suddenly, like many others, he’d vanished –

And thereafter, like little figments of dreams and yesteryears, re-emerged. Caido had often been about second or third chances, repetitive natures converged around one another, pulled by strings or bonds, confluence of stubborn individuals, or just the wake of the earth. But Melita had seen how the world worked one too many times; succumbed herself, and figured there’d be harsher lines for those fixtures too. Snarled. Glared. Bared her fangs. And could admit, wound tightly in her chest, that she’d been very, very wrong. Or caught staring – wanting, without understanding the complexities, the reasonings behind it; hadn’t even deigned to look at the layers building.

Her predictions had been about similar patterns – they’d fall into old routines, parallel routes, lines in the sand. Except nowadays they kept re-sketching them or drawing new ones entirely, and she found herself exposed on the banks; uncertain, exposed, and muddled. But it’d become very clear that he hadn’t been. Just patiently waiting for her to pick and choose the way.

She didn’t have the words yet, not like him, molded to her features like she meant something other than ruin or chaos. Her eyes widened again, awestruck, bewildered, before she shook her head, felt his lips at the corner of her mouth, gasped at the stubble, the materials between. “I’m sorry – I didn’t know,” she started, and then snorted, laughed, felt something gathering in the corner of her eyes and dashed it away with the back of her hand. Little bouts of bedlam never had anyone’s heart – not in her experience – but the words made her want to curl and bask, something worthy of all these fragments and adorations. Of tenacious woodcutters with too much sorrow and anguish, pulling others out and leaving himself behind. Not on her watch. “You can have mine too,” she offered in an emboldened whisper, quiet but assured, a piece, without guards or walls or veils of fire he had to run through, freely granted and given.

Then her fingers drew to the bottom hem of his shirt, barriers begging to be removed, covetous, greedy, mercenary fixtures buzzing, tugging, pulling in her pulse. Her own figure shuddered under his simple ministrations along her hip, body immediately wanting to shimmy out of the fleece-lined leggings, but prolonging the action so he could pry them away. She met him halfway regardless, closed the distance, eyes hooded, mind warped and wanton, the grin and command against his lips as her hands began to roam upward, over muscles, unknown ink. “Take it off.”

and shards of glass
I wanted people to be afraid of hurting me

// If the world was ending, I'd wanna be next to you //

Her apology draws a too-wide grin in response, a laugh trying to break free, but he holds it back with a shake of his head. How could she have known? She'd only ever seen him in awe of her, she had no other comparison to draw, as one might when the love builds slow and steady with time. His had strengthened, surely, but it'd always been there. More fool him for letting it take so long to bloom out in the open, fear his most crippling trait.

Being able to track the rise of her watery joy, so at odds with all her flame, is a moment that will linger with him in all the best ways. It doesn't douse a thing, and she's quick to streak it away, but the marks remain dark and glittering against her lashes. He leans in to kiss each outer corner, reverent with the subtle press and the happiness that gets sealed with it. The whisper of her next words, you can have mine too, widen his eyes and he pulls back again to fully behold her. It shouldn't matter when he already knows she's offering it up, but it's something else entirely to hear it spoken, to know without doubt that she's just curled it into her hands and set it into his like she trusts him to keep something so precious safe.

It ignites his desire further, the sudden pace of her own fingers driving him further along. Hooking his hand under the sweater and whatever other layers she's got on, he pushes the cloth up until her bra and breasts peak out beneath its bunched line. His gaze heats at the sight, eyes molten over her form, exposed in a way he's never known. Her command slips free, her own hands working at his woven walls. In an easy sweep he tugs them up and over his head, tossing his shirts to the side like he's grown a great distaste for them now.

Unable to leave it just to his eyes any longer, he cups a hand under each of her tits, his thumb running beneath the edge of her bra to coast over the firming response of her nipples. It sends a jolt of desire so raw through him his hips tilt against her like they've a mind of their own. "Gods, Mel—I want you." His head bows to the power of it, sinking between the swell of her chest, his lips charting a path of worship against them as one hand beckons for the clasp to be undone where it's pinned and mysterious beneath her.

ISKRA

// I'd wanna hold you just for a while and die with a smile //

Melita

I never had a chance to be soft
I was always bloody knuckles

His gaze on her made her want to simultaneously curl inward or preen and savor; difficult assertions when lightning scars across her chest were on full display, and when she wanted to simply be admired. But then there didn’t seem to be any withdrawal, any anger on his part for the last time they’d spoken about her death and subsequent resurrection – focused more on one another and the attention, the study, the perusal. Then it was the heat of his hand pressing against her skin, making her stutter, stop, shiver, trying to remember where she’d been going on her own wayward explorations, until he acquiesced to her command, and she could have the wandering eyes.

Not that she hadn’t seen him beforehand – but it’d been very passing glances and making sure she hadn’t been caught while doing it. Now her grasp could slide over his chest and snag at the muscles there, more than ample, open admiration; had she had more opportunity she might’ve strived to trace over the ink and tattoos she’d yet to wholly decipher. Her fingers had scarcely deigned to skim and hover, touch, snag, before his were back on her, and she was gasping, back arching under the undulations. Her sweater had been tossed somewhere (she’d be stealing it again), bra gone, left behind with clasps snagged, and she raised her chin at the exposure, daring him to say anything else. And maybe a challenge; to see which would take the other first.

What he murmured hadn’t been the words expected – gaze widening as her brain short-circuited again – but she could feel her body revel at the sound of it. Confidence she shouldn’t have had bid her onwards, maneuvering underneath so he might find his mouth to roam over her nipples instead of eventually winding their way there. She couldn’t help the breathless moans, the gasps, that followed, each touch a distinction and a pathway no one else had taken. Somewhere along the course of her primordial commands and wanton guidance, her hands traced away from his chest, his back, and down the length of his spine towards his hips, snagging at pants, finding buckles, the clang of metal gone and loosening as his hips tilted towards her.

and shards of glass
I wanted people to be afraid of hurting me

// If the world was ending, I'd wanna be next to you //

Her scars only stuttered a thought, something tucked away to mourn later, when the encompassing heat generating between them would permit anything else to pass into existence without scorching it into dust and debris. It's not that he found her ruined, but that it stood out as a reminder of how he hadn't been there, how he's not strong enough even now to matter or shield. She hasn't asked him to, but having this makes him want to guard all the future possibilities of it. Not to tuck her away and keep her from the world, but to shove it back and make room for her to move freely, as she deserves.

Another time, for now he'd settle on peeling away the restraints to her he could manage, like bras and sweaters, the worst opposition he's ever faced in this moment.

The feel of her writhing beneath him summons a guttural groan of want. That he can give her this, that he can take it in turn, sparks something into a blaze that had long been banking in the dark and the quiet. No voices hum inside his mind now, sowing doubt or vicious frenzy, there is only her, guiding this moment into ecstasy with each arch and moan. His mouth finds the firm rise of her nipple, lavishing it as his gaze rises over the rise of her, snagging on the edge of his vision so he can watch each tremble wrack across her, strumming from his touch like she is an instrument he's just begun to learn how to build music on.

The work of her hands sends a thrill of anticipation so wild through him he's forced to tilt his head to the side, breath ragged against her skin for a moment before he withdraws, leaving her licked tits to prickle of air as he finishes what she started. His pants are kicked off without grace, the urgency to give her what she wants, what is pressing against the confines of a zipper, rousing a careless stumble and argument with cloth. When they are well and fully discarded, his ready cock is on full display, sinking back into the fit of their hips and her hands with a hiss of desire the moment the head brushes any part of her. "Fuck—Mel" His ache borders on hurt, the want so intense, nothing at all like the countless imaginary moments he's shared with her in his mind.

His hands slide up the outsides of her thighs, reaching up to her waistband to strip her of this final barrier between them. As eager as he is, so too does he savor this moment, the last time that it'll be the first time he gets to undress her, and he means to burn it into memory for the each of them. His fingers are greedy, tugging and yanking, but pause to press and hold the freshly revealed layer of her, stopping entirely when her ass pops free in full. With a wolfish grin he molds one hand to the curve of it, the other sinking against the border of her pants to the space between her thighs.

ISKRA

// I'd wanna hold you just for a while and die with a smile //

Melita

I never had a chance to be soft
I was always bloody knuckles

Melita was a covetous, greedy creature by design – had been since she was little, desperately scraping the world for any modicum of survival. Through grit and dirt and persistence, she’d harbored all amounts of mercenary tactics, but these grasping, rapacious, insatiable means seemed to be an unending sort. Boundless and reckless in her mind, buzzing and imploring, yearning and acquisitive, setting forth a whole delving of desires she hadn’t traversed with any keen eye. Suddenly she needed his mouth anywhere and everywhere, driving at her senses, sliding at her skin, or his fingers, desperately aching to have them on her hips or in her hair; as if there wasn’t enough to go around. Wild and adventurous but only knowing the new paths before her, there were ghostly wiles of exposure teeming along her gasps and moans, eyes widening in shock and awe and then hooding again, as if learning a new skill and line and sinker to hook and reel, or plunge, delve, dive into once more.

Because she wanted to take and have and hold and somewhere along those lines she received exactly that, gaze sliding down to his utter lack of anything, mouth turning upwards into a Cheshire grin, intentionally hooking a leg around his hips to see what else made him hiss.

Then came her leggings though, which likely bordered on amusing as she tried to peel and strip them away. What had seemed very necessary and practical in the earlier hours of the morning, and hunting, now seemed laborious and ridiculous – the fleece lining taking far longer than she wanted to divest of, and then she was removing the knives she’d strapped to her thighs, her shins, underneath – the clacking of their metallic edges sent boundless across the wooden floor and away from vulnerable skin. The sudden draft on her ass was enough to get her to snort, to laugh, but then a feral, untamed push of breath between her teeth followed, as his fingers made their way to her core. “Yes, just like that,” came the insistence, the shock, the awe, the want, the need, her hips rocking, riding, writhing, at the very touch, at the finesse of pleasure contorting through her mind. A growl thereafter, as she leaned her mouth to his ear, teeth brushing over the shell of it; heedless and audacious, shuddering seamlessly in his hand. “More,” she claimed and uttered, demanded, hardly more than a sibilance across his flesh; one arm dangled along his back, the other beginning to wind its way down his muscled abdomen.

and shards of glass
I wanted people to be afraid of hurting me