“Your...ropes.” He repeats, a lack of comprehension clear as daylight (of which, in the dying evening hours, there is none), a picture cut from the shadow running heavy along his own pinched brow. It has the unintended effect of making those unsettling hazel eyes all the more striking.
And unlike hers in this moment, his do not linger on her hand, or the sliver of fruit pinched between notched fingertips— nor her shoulder, nor the bed.
It is her face he watches. His stare unmistakably settled on her as she snares that meager offering between her teeth. Piercing and sharp, Noah fon Ronsenburg, a hawk even in quiet spaces.
The hand nearest to her is leaned upon more generously. It draws him closer.
She can feel him closing in, but what's he on about? She has a few guesses, but refuses to commit to any. Instead, the fig is balanced on the meeting of collarbones, and she moves her hands behind her back in a familiar fashion.\
He feels the fool for not grasping it sooner. Even so, clarification gives no rise to embarrassment. No bitter flicker of shame or indignation. His strengths have always lied in action— in putting momentum to whatever expectations have been laid before him.
And there is, in that respect, little difference between a blade drawn, and a mouth pressed hot against her skin.
Remembering there the passage circled before the rest of it, first and foremost.
“It is your fascination.” He determines, voice lower than a hum. And there is movement when he rises, using that hand as a midpoint— leveraging himself by it to rise, and subsequently sink, over her. A shadow in the dark.
His mouth finds its way to the fig she’s abandoned. His hands nesting on either side of her hips.
Jone sees-- feels-- what he's doing, and at any other time in her existence, she'd feel a furious storm rising up in her.The tide would pull her under immediately. She still feels terribly warm under his touch, seeing his teeth.
There is nothing else to call it by his own estimation. And if he feels the prickle of tension— or irritation— or perhaps something else entirely from where she rests beneath him, it does not show.
He is no doting lover. He cannot be. There still sits a stiffness in his shoulders, a sternness in his stare; ever the hound at attention, even as he makes her the entire span of an otherwise broad world.
“It was mine,” he confesses, profile near to Jone’s own. Hers jagged, his straight. “What else does a man name what would bring him to his knees? Or a woman, if that is the one thing she craves above all else?”
Her bound wrists. His mouth upon her. They are the same, to his mind.
Edited (ok ok no more jokes) 2021-08-31 21:09 (UTC)
"It's not a weakness," she repeats. "Sex is power."
Otherwise, everything she's ever felt isn't hers. This is a truth she has to cling to, because the alternative would leave her broken. Luckily, it takes more than Gabranth's confusion to shake her belief in her own way of life.
"It's a fetish. It's how you like it especially. Adore you, love, but it wouldn't bring me to my knees, unless you felt like standing up."
Is there anything sexier than a blowjob joke? Clearly not.
He snorts at that correction, clearly unable to grasp the concept in its totality from Jone's argued perspective. It has him sinking to her, settling heavy over her in resignation (she can bear his weight, he does not fear forcing her to endure it for a time), clear enough that there is a burr lying in wait within this subject. Or perhaps his misunderstanding of it.
Or perhaps instead the prior misunderstanding.
Gods be merciful, he is unsuited to this world.
“Sex is power for the one who wields it. For those who fall prey to it, empires have fallen for their lack of vigilance.” He murmurs evenly, his chin to her chest— the only place for him to rest it there along her breastbone.
She likes this, the weight of him. He'll never be entirely relaxed, but he seems almost close, just now. The urge to touch is always there, and so she curves a rough finger from his earlobe to his chin.
"No empires here," she says, "just us. Prey to each other. I've never wanted someone as bad as you. Getting you makes me feel powerful. Don't you like being wanted?"
Dark lashes fit themselves over his eyes under her roaming touch. The breath that escapes him is slow. Quiet. A sign of peace brought on in a stillness that might otherwise leave him restless.
His schedule was strict, once.
Now, made mortal by the need to see her, and speak to her, and hold her tight within his arms, he presses the limits of his time-forgotten body. All that he can do to steal her away in the hours before dawn claims them both, he does. Willingly.
“You are powerful with or without me,” he exhales, the gesture twisting his mouth in an upwards twitch at one corner. The closest he comes to a smile. His roughened palms are at her hips, and he does nothing to inspire her beyond simply wanting the benefit of contact. To feel her framed there by his absent touch. “But you are the only person who has ever sought my companionship. My company.”
He defines it fully, that distinction, because it ought to be known: she is the only one to want him near, and not just for the matter of love. Or heat. Or satisfaction.
Jone wonders, idly, if this means she took his virginity, before dismissing the idea. For one thing, he's too beautiful never to have been sought out, even if the seeking was criminally infrequent. Second, she's not sure men can be virgins. They don't bleed, after all.
"But with you," she drawls, fingers repeating that pattern, ear to chin, chin to ear, "with you, I'm starkers, no weapon, no training, no thought at all, and I'm powerful."
If she can't explain that simple fact, that feeling, she's no hope at all of getting the sense across.
"But I'm dead sorry you haven't had a good handjob in centuries, love, I try to make it up every day." There, she stops soothing, and flicks his ear.
And he, summarily assaulted by both her cavalier attitude and the way she reaches up to flick sharply at his ear, butts his temple against her hand with all the intensity of a hound offered nothing more than desired attention. A puff of air that isn’t quite a laugh.
She might recognize it for what it is, anyway.
“Some days you succeed.” Levity lives in that remark, his body still heavy across her own. It does not, however, dwell in what subsequently chases it.
“What is ‘starkers’?”
Context alone carried the rest. Or the whole of her sentiment, perhaps, but rarer curiosity wins out in quiet spaces. And the urge to understand her always present. Ever potent.
“Then the feeling is mutual.” He concludes, even-keeled. And though it may seem too level to be sincere, the simple truth is that Noah does not lie. He has no use for pretty falsehoods. For the ease of feigned simplicity.
What he says, he only ever means.
At night the room smells of crisp air, even in humid summer months. The difference between night and day relatively stark within high tower walls, compared to muggy earth. There is a pleasantness about it, after longer days spent patrolling and training and fighting— the way it dries salt on skin, rather than leave them wallowing in their own sweat.
It was a good decision, he thinks, to come here. An absent notion, snaking its way through his subconscious as his hold on her slides higher, only by the barest of inches, until the pads of his fingers rest beneath her ribs.
“No other is permitted to speak the name of a man long dead. Even longer forgotten.”
But that is a weighted subject. Heavier than his body, or his muscle, or the mood itself— and he lets it fall away as soon as it is spoken.
He slips lower. Sinks farther down her body, so that his mouth is at the dip between the cage of her ribs and her stomach, and as his head tilts slow to one side, he plants a kiss there. Rough as the rest of him.
It is not a correction, but an addition. If she is to know him, then she must know this, too.
“My twin brother, I was lost to him when death first claimed me for my cruelties, he lost to me in turn when briefly we reunited in the abyss. It is his face I wear even now.”
The rougher pad of one thumb rolls along one particularly knotted scar across her skin. Worrying at it as though it were a stone in his hand. The thoughtless shape of drowned memory.
She wants badly to kiss him, then. This man who has chosen to hold every memory so dear, to carry so much on broad shoulders. Instead, he inspects an old wound, and she squirms under his touch. Not at all unwilling- her movements mark impatience.
"Never forget you," she murmurs, eyes closed, trying to calm herself. "Terrible with names, I am, and faces. Remembered yours even after you took the helm off. Every detail."
Is this true, or what her memory has corrected through pure hope and desire? It doesn't matter; the outcome is the same.
He has no doubt she speaks the truth. Romanticized truth, perhaps, but a picture painted entirely from what she sees in him rather than its absolute reality is not so terrible a fate to submit to. Better than what he deserves. Better still than to be dust and ash, relegated to nothingness alongside Landis.
Of course, should all things go as they likely must, he will outlive her. And so those memories too will be forgotten.
But he’ll not forget her.
His mouth again sinks to press itself to her belly. He is done with this conversation, and desires no more. A truth unmistakable when he sinks yet lower, fitting himself between her thighs— mouthing at one with steadier attention where it settles high across his shoulder.
He has not finished reading, but it is possible he’s read enough.
It's been some time since she's had this, in any form. She can't, actually, remember when the last time was. Before joining Riftwatch, so over a year at least. She tenses, slightly, before letting herself relax into it. Her eyes slip closed. Her fingers find his hair.
"Love you," she murmurs, "wish I could say it cleverer."
It’s the last, lone bastion of sterner insistence offered up before his mouth is upon her, truly. Before silence prevails, his tongue to slickened heat and soft warmth, working at her with diligent focus in the dark.
Rough hands cling to the high point of her hips, a heavy brace against the way he moves himself against her— to draw her nearer against the steady press of his mouth, and the pressure it inspires with every kiss. Every touch. Every buried flick of his tongue.
As for the rest, he holds no objection to the feel of her fingers locked tight across his scalp. Arguably (a thought he’ll no doubt return to later, once this has all passed), he appreciates it somehow. Some absent part of him, arching into contact of its own accord.
The faintest dawning appreciation for something yet undiscovered. Like ribbon. Like rope. Like the feel of her throat between his fingertips.
And she hasn't the will to respond. A hiccuping gasp, and she's lost to it. His eagerness, his willingness, makes this all the sweeter. She never had to cajole him into it. The thought heightens her appreciation.
It isn't long before her knuckles press to his hair, fingers pulling, and his name is high and keen on her lips.
He does not stop. Does not think of himself, though the pit of his stomach is weighted with the yawning pull of desire.
The attention he pays her is demonstrative, devoted. There was a time when he would reel from being called by name, and yet here, when it’s called out with the most intimate of fervor, warmth blooms like spreading fire beneath the cage of his ribs.
He welcomes it. He wants it.
From her, only her.
And with an intensity spurred on by encouragement, he moves quicker, sinks deeper— does all that he can think to have her shivering in his grasp. Inexpert, perhaps, yet not insufficient by any measure.
Some efforts are more instinctive than others, and in this, he feels uniquely confident.
Hands in his hair, gasping his name, it's all too much, and it spills over. She no longer restrains herself, and so she grasps at him, tugging, legs wrapped around him. All through it, she has his name to give back.
And yet he offers more at the altar of her passion. Until she falls silent in his hold, hands fitted tightly across her waist— and then, with easing resignation, his cheek tips back to fall against her thigh. As relaxed as if it had been his own satisfaction found. He does not ask after his own performance. Her contentment is enough.
His thumbs press, breath slipping out across her skin. He lingers for a time before rising, slow to lay himself across her once more like an ill-suited blanket.
But attention is what she wants to give him. Her breathing is still heavy, so she presses her face, newly hot, into the crook of his neck. "Oh, Noah," she murmurs, like some silly princess in a play. Yet it's the only thing in the world to say that makes any sense, in this moment.
"Fuck me," there, that's more like her. "You'll like it better." And so will she.
spends 800 years writing u a literal novel I'm sorry
He is so uniquely accustomed to it now, every last one of her foreign patterns of speech, differing even from most of Riftwatch. Habits he knows how to effortlessly recognize— with or without context.
If something falls, fuck me is a curse. Should some hissing, untamed spirit assail her from the trees, fuck me is shock. Horror. When her eyes fill with thirst yet unslaked, and her arms wind themselves about his neck, fuck me is a request.
And when she is tired, and her breathing gone shallow with pleasure, fuck me is contentment, expressed without shame.
So it’s only with the latent addition of you’ll like it better— her face burrowed sweet against the slope of his throat— that he understands it is neither a curse nor appeasement, nor fear, nor fury itself.
It is a command.
One that manages to draw a puff of exhaled air from him as surely as the near-carnal compliments she once paid him, before he was truly capable of weathering the merciless storm of her (often deliberately) vexatious companionship.
But to be asked twice would be inexcusable. Whatever delay is brought about by confusion, Noah is more than swift to correct: hands shifting to frame her ribs, fitted to corded muscle flush with smoldering heat. His hips roll, levering against her where she remains suffused with slickness from his efforts, finding it all too undemanding a task to press himself to her— to slide himself, slow and twitchingly impatient— inside of her, even without the aid of his own fingertips. Or hers.
And from there he moves to bear his balance against the edge of the bed, almost tucking her legs higher against him with it. Beginning the drawn-out process of rocking his hips against her own.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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And unlike hers in this moment, his do not linger on her hand, or the sliver of fruit pinched between notched fingertips— nor her shoulder, nor the bed.
It is her face he watches. His stare unmistakably settled on her as she snares that meager offering between her teeth. Piercing and sharp, Noah fon Ronsenburg, a hawk even in quiet spaces.
The hand nearest to her is leaned upon more generously. It draws him closer.
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"Ropes. Ribbons. You know."
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And there is, in that respect, little difference between a blade drawn, and a mouth pressed hot against her skin.
Remembering there the passage circled before the rest of it, first and foremost.
“It is your fascination.” He determines, voice lower than a hum. And there is movement when he rises, using that hand as a midpoint— leveraging himself by it to rise, and subsequently sink, over her. A shadow in the dark.
His mouth finds its way to the fig she’s abandoned. His hands nesting on either side of her hips.
“Your weakness.”
no subject
But-
"You thought that was weakness?"
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He is no doting lover. He cannot be. There still sits a stiffness in his shoulders, a sternness in his stare; ever the hound at attention, even as he makes her the entire span of an otherwise broad world.
“It was mine,” he confesses, profile near to Jone’s own. Hers jagged, his straight. “What else does a man name what would bring him to his knees? Or a woman, if that is the one thing she craves above all else?”
Her bound wrists. His mouth upon her. They are the same, to his mind.
no subject
Otherwise, everything she's ever felt isn't hers. This is a truth she has to cling to, because the alternative would leave her broken. Luckily, it takes more than Gabranth's confusion to shake her belief in her own way of life.
"It's a fetish. It's how you like it especially. Adore you, love, but it wouldn't bring me to my knees, unless you felt like standing up."
Is there anything sexier than a blowjob joke? Clearly not.
no subject
Or perhaps instead the prior misunderstanding.
Gods be merciful, he is unsuited to this world.
“Sex is power for the one who wields it. For those who fall prey to it, empires have fallen for their lack of vigilance.” He murmurs evenly, his chin to her chest— the only place for him to rest it there along her breastbone.
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"No empires here," she says, "just us. Prey to each other. I've never wanted someone as bad as you. Getting you makes me feel powerful. Don't you like being wanted?"
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His schedule was strict, once.
Now, made mortal by the need to see her, and speak to her, and hold her tight within his arms, he presses the limits of his time-forgotten body. All that he can do to steal her away in the hours before dawn claims them both, he does. Willingly.
“You are powerful with or without me,” he exhales, the gesture twisting his mouth in an upwards twitch at one corner. The closest he comes to a smile. His roughened palms are at her hips, and he does nothing to inspire her beyond simply wanting the benefit of contact. To feel her framed there by his absent touch. “But you are the only person who has ever sought my companionship. My company.”
He defines it fully, that distinction, because it ought to be known: she is the only one to want him near, and not just for the matter of love. Or heat. Or satisfaction.
A difficult man makes few friends.
A suit of armor even less.
no subject
"But with you," she drawls, fingers repeating that pattern, ear to chin, chin to ear, "with you, I'm starkers, no weapon, no training, no thought at all, and I'm powerful."
If she can't explain that simple fact, that feeling, she's no hope at all of getting the sense across.
"But I'm dead sorry you haven't had a good handjob in centuries, love, I try to make it up every day." There, she stops soothing, and flicks his ear.
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She might recognize it for what it is, anyway.
“Some days you succeed.” Levity lives in that remark, his body still heavy across her own. It does not, however, dwell in what subsequently chases it.
“What is ‘starkers’?”
Context alone carried the rest. Or the whole of her sentiment, perhaps, but rarer curiosity wins out in quiet spaces. And the urge to understand her always present. Ever potent.
no subject
"Stark naked," she says with a smile. "Some is better than expected, considering I'm working against bloody eons."
She tales a moment just to stare at him, fingers running through his hair, down the slope of his jaw. "What d'you want more of?"
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What he says, he only ever means.
At night the room smells of crisp air, even in humid summer months. The difference between night and day relatively stark within high tower walls, compared to muggy earth. There is a pleasantness about it, after longer days spent patrolling and training and fighting— the way it dries salt on skin, rather than leave them wallowing in their own sweat.
It was a good decision, he thinks, to come here. An absent notion, snaking its way through his subconscious as his hold on her slides higher, only by the barest of inches, until the pads of his fingers rest beneath her ribs.
“No other is permitted to speak the name of a man long dead. Even longer forgotten.”
But that is a weighted subject. Heavier than his body, or his muscle, or the mood itself— and he lets it fall away as soon as it is spoken.
He slips lower. Sinks farther down her body, so that his mouth is at the dip between the cage of her ribs and her stomach, and as his head tilts slow to one side, he plants a kiss there. Rough as the rest of him.
“Only you, Jone.”
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"You want to be known," she guesses, finally, after a held breath is released. "I'd know every part of you. Every piece."
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It is not a correction, but an addition. If she is to know him, then she must know this, too.
“My twin brother, I was lost to him when death first claimed me for my cruelties, he lost to me in turn when briefly we reunited in the abyss. It is his face I wear even now.”
The rougher pad of one thumb rolls along one particularly knotted scar across her skin. Worrying at it as though it were a stone in his hand. The thoughtless shape of drowned memory.
“So that I cannot forget.”
no subject
"Never forget you," she murmurs, eyes closed, trying to calm herself. "Terrible with names, I am, and faces. Remembered yours even after you took the helm off. Every detail."
Is this true, or what her memory has corrected through pure hope and desire? It doesn't matter; the outcome is the same.
no subject
Of course, should all things go as they likely must, he will outlive her. And so those memories too will be forgotten.
But he’ll not forget her.
His mouth again sinks to press itself to her belly. He is done with this conversation, and desires no more. A truth unmistakable when he sinks yet lower, fitting himself between her thighs— mouthing at one with steadier attention where it settles high across his shoulder.
He has not finished reading, but it is possible he’s read enough.
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"Love you," she murmurs, "wish I could say it cleverer."
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It’s the last, lone bastion of sterner insistence offered up before his mouth is upon her, truly. Before silence prevails, his tongue to slickened heat and soft warmth, working at her with diligent focus in the dark.
Rough hands cling to the high point of her hips, a heavy brace against the way he moves himself against her— to draw her nearer against the steady press of his mouth, and the pressure it inspires with every kiss. Every touch. Every buried flick of his tongue.
As for the rest, he holds no objection to the feel of her fingers locked tight across his scalp. Arguably (a thought he’ll no doubt return to later, once this has all passed), he appreciates it somehow. Some absent part of him, arching into contact of its own accord.
The faintest dawning appreciation for something yet undiscovered. Like ribbon. Like rope. Like the feel of her throat between his fingertips.
no subject
It isn't long before her knuckles press to his hair, fingers pulling, and his name is high and keen on her lips.
no subject
The attention he pays her is demonstrative, devoted. There was a time when he would reel from being called by name, and yet here, when it’s called out with the most intimate of fervor, warmth blooms like spreading fire beneath the cage of his ribs.
He welcomes it. He wants it.
From her, only her.
And with an intensity spurred on by encouragement, he moves quicker, sinks deeper— does all that he can think to have her shivering in his grasp. Inexpert, perhaps, yet not insufficient by any measure.
Some efforts are more instinctive than others, and in this, he feels uniquely confident.
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His thumbs press, breath slipping out across her skin. He lingers for a time before rising, slow to lay himself across her once more like an ill-suited blanket.
Not for her attention, only to remain close.
no subject
"Fuck me," there, that's more like her. "You'll like it better." And so will she.
spends 800 years writing u a literal novel I'm sorry
If something falls, fuck me is a curse. Should some hissing, untamed spirit assail her from the trees, fuck me is shock. Horror. When her eyes fill with thirst yet unslaked, and her arms wind themselves about his neck, fuck me is a request.
And when she is tired, and her breathing gone shallow with pleasure, fuck me is contentment, expressed without shame.
So it’s only with the latent addition of you’ll like it better— her face burrowed sweet against the slope of his throat— that he understands it is neither a curse nor appeasement, nor fear, nor fury itself.
It is a command.
One that manages to draw a puff of exhaled air from him as surely as the near-carnal compliments she once paid him, before he was truly capable of weathering the merciless storm of her (often deliberately) vexatious companionship.
But to be asked twice would be inexcusable. Whatever delay is brought about by confusion, Noah is more than swift to correct: hands shifting to frame her ribs, fitted to corded muscle flush with smoldering heat. His hips roll, levering against her where she remains suffused with slickness from his efforts, finding it all too undemanding a task to press himself to her— to slide himself, slow and twitchingly impatient— inside of her, even without the aid of his own fingertips. Or hers.
And from there he moves to bear his balance against the edge of the bed, almost tucking her legs higher against him with it. Beginning the drawn-out process of rocking his hips against her own.
but love it tho.
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do you like how I took my time doing this so you'd be too sleepy to rush to give me tagbacks >]
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