albinomilksnake | RP: OPEN POST

Drace is nobility. She is pride in perfection, and the very pinnacle of the Magistrate itself, and even Gabranth struggles to keep pace with the mark she sets.

He...does not blame Jone for this, he realizes. In her place, he would feel no different. No less weak while wounded in such a shadow, when already they are made to feel lesser to begin with. So she asks, and so he relents, dipping his own head in show of absolute deference to it.

Instead at last he sinks at her bedside, settling once more across the edge of the mattress as he favors as of late. One hand resting near her shoulder.

“Then I shall remain until you sleep.”

"No. I let my guard down around you; do not confuse it for carelessness. Trust this little, at least, that I can manage for myself."

There, her words are even-keeled, her expression placidly concentrated. She looks as she did when they were preparing for Videreyn, except perhaps more wan and clammy. This is business, her sworn task, and she will not forget again.

It makes him the weaker tether, then, for nearly breaking the very same demands he made of her (yet is that not his right? He has lived in Archades for longer, learned much of the intricacies of etiquette and nuance, even if he cannot always apply that knowledge cleanly— is he not allowed to then be more lax at times, trusting that he can counterbalance if necessary).

“It is not trust.” It is, she has the right of it, but he refuses that logic in much the same way that he refuses to move. To withdraw from her side like the intrusion he is.

“I wish to remain, for myself. For mine own comfort.”

It is not trust. It is not love. (She knew that one, but it still stings to hear aloud.) It is disappointing; she is accustomed to capriciousness, but she had hoped...

No, people are not logical, and do not follow their own commands. Yet it stirs curiosity; Gabranth will not admit why he needs her, beyond comfort. Normally, it would be enough for her. Today, it is not. What a capricious thing she is.

"You are so discomfited by life that you need the company of one you do not trust?"

Again, his words have failed him, or he in executing them, or...caving to the brittleness they house. Perhaps all of it is true, for he remains ever the inverse reflection of the brother that abandoned him: more sharp edges than softness. More wanting than capable of care.

Even so, his expression sinks when he sighs. It is difficult not to be terse in his own correction.

“I do trust you, Jone.” That fact was never in question, he thinks, knowing full well what slights against his own duties he's committed already in her presence. What more he would do if given the chance. “But it is not for trust— or lack thereof— that I refuse to leave your side.”

She should stop here. She should be kind and accommodating, allow him to set his own pace, find comfort in his own limitations. She should be anyone but who she is. She should be someone worthy of his friendship.

But she isn't.

"Then what is it?"

Thinking has never been his strongest asset. He makes overtures, spends effort, but at best he is taxed by it, and at worst...

He leans forward without it present at all this time, still carrying the faint scent of metal polish and sweat, catching her mouth with his own without the decency of propriety or concern; always he has been a creature of impulse more than foresight, always does he make himself the enemy of decorum. Dignity.

She hasn't been kissed in years, now. At Gabranth's touch, she is hungry and grasping, pulling him closer, adding tongue and teeth. She'd pull him on top of her if not for the-

"Off- off with the armor. Now."

He has never been a creature of thought, perhaps, but she has never been one of half measures. Presented with a promise, she must have it in its entirety.

“You are injured still— ”

He protests, though it does nothing to draw him any further from her side, or her hold on him, his fingers wrapped around her wrist in turn. Holding fast. He loses so much. He has always lost so much.

Instead he kisses her again, sharp edged and demanding, sunset catching through glass in her hair before he shuts his eyes to it, wholly focused in this.

As he focuses on everything that matters to him.

There are a lot of things she could say to that, all crude, all requiring a tongue. She'd rather kiss him, fast and hungry and deep. If she can't convince him with words, she'll convince him with sounds, hungry pants and the occasional keen. This is good. This is amazing. She wants more.

"Let me- touch you." She kisses him. "Just let me touch you." She kisses him again, her teeth finding his lip, turning begging into demands.

That— the sound of her breathing, the rush of it running hot across his tongue, the heave of her chest beneath the edges of his gauntleted fingers— is a language he comprehends well where so many others fail. It is persuasive, it speaks to the simplicity of his hunger.

Or, were he so willing to examine it, his desire.

Her teeth snare his lip, scuff and scrape and bite, and somewhere without intending to he finds himself already working at the clasps of his gauntlets, the ties securing his cloak, his breastplate. Impatient, irritated, even.

But earnest, also.

Had she doubts about his investment, perhaps this will put them to bed.

What she finds is a man with hunger that may just match hers. It's a heady thing, to be wanted. For once, there is no question of first choice, last choice. This is potentially dangerous, and he doesn't care, all for her.

If she isn't allowed to touch him soon, she's sure she'll die.

Accordingly, she's just as greedily stripping him of armor, the clothing under it. Her hands run over his chest, somewhere between pawing and clawing. She's embarrassed to find herself keening, when her hand brushes, of all things, his knee.

She's pulling at him again, tugging him toward the bed. "Come here. I need- come to me. Come with me."

This is foolish. Not wrong in truth (for Judges are free to manage their own business, provided it holds no interference over matters of duty or dignity), but reckless enough to be damning when he realizes he’d not locked the door to these quarters, planning only on the comfort of his presence.

Though it is possible that is the very definition of what she asks for now, and what he cannot seem to draw himself away from in order to ensure absolute discretion.

Come here, she urges, and so he does: rough hands harsh across her shoulders, one knee resting just against the edge of the mattress, all keen intent rather than anything polished. Practiced. He kisses her as a man deprived, touch-starved to the bone, and seeking it out by way of heat without foresight. Unfocused, glancing contact. Anything at all provides.

A lifetime of cold metal, and all he wants is to forget it. Bury it beneath her touch. Her skin.

For she is beautiful in that promise.

Jone is still dressed in the silken scrubs she's been relegated to for her recovery. She's forgotten them entirely, in favor of exploring every inch of Gabranth. The curve of his spine is wonderful and warm, and her fingers travel over it to find his arse (fantastic), the inside of his knee, his inner thigh. She needs to touch everything, and then taste it, if she'll ever tire of this kiss. Not that it seems remotely likely, moaning around his tongue as she is.

"Give me all of you," she says, panting, trying to regain her breath before she goes again. Her lips swipe and smear against his, nuzzling. "I want every inch."

He doesn’t know where to begin, other than his own needs— perhaps it is a mercy that she herself seems committed to the same, grasping at him as though he were something needing to be scaled for all the footholds her fingers find. It deepens that kiss, of course. The one that does not end for how each time it breaks one or the other between them moves to make it whole once more.

Yet here at least, something in him seems to give. A simple understanding that if he does not free her from her own clothing, they will pit themselves in grasping at one another without aim, delayed a thought as it is. His fingertips hook around the hem of her shirt, pulling rough— careful only not to scrape at her skin on her worser side. A process repeated as necessary, even should fabric tangle in his grasp.

They’ll find their way, even if it is ignoble in execution.

What surprises her is how gentle he is with her clothes, even as they are both scrabbling, hungry and full of want. Jone remembers herself, moving out of the flimsy pyjamas, revealing-- well, not very much of interest. On instinct, she presses her chest into his, hiding and giving both at once.

And then, finally, they are lying together on her bed. She throws the covers over them, less out of modesty than greed. One hand cards through his hair, reveling in it. Her skin feels electric, flush to his, finally allowed to touch however she pleases.

Her fingers draw nonsense patterns down his side, settling at his hip. She moves to kiss him again, this time lavishing attention over his pulse point, trying to leave a welt. Some sign she was here, that this happened, so it cannot be denied when he leaves, embarrassed or regretful.

(Some part of her hopes he won't regret it, but his resolute silence makes her doubt. Ultimately, it doesn't matter; in the moment, she has what she wants most in the world.)

She is left to her work, her attentions, however it pleases— his only responses painted in tense exhales or rough-hewn noises against her mouth, her jaw, her shoulder— erratic in pattern yet far from uninspired: at the heat of her hips he rests heavy across her, rutting for the friction of it, the same way he chases everything else. Coarse, insatiable, sharp even to the edges of his teeth, as though starved for everything she now offers.

And in truth, he has been.

Whatever she thinks of herself, or this, or the circumstance that holds him here, he does not know or consider in the slightest. She is wanted, there is nothing more to it that need be addressed in the eyes of a lonely, embittered man.

Jone has always been fascinated by bodies. As a fighter, she considers this important. Knowing how they break is, of course, a vocation. But to her own privately wandering mind, she likes to measure the reverse against it. How they hold pleasure, the shape of them, the feel. Just as causing pain is a powerful thing, giving ecstasy is just as strengthening.

She feels Gabranth writhing against her, and that is certainly a boost to her ego, but she wants more than scrabbling, now that she's had it. Jone moves, pushing him away, smiling through a messy nest of hair. She pulls it back as she kisses his chest, down to his hip, smearing bites and kisses along the way.

She's felt him, now she wants to hear him. Aside from moans, he's been so silent.

One bite to the inside of his thigh, and then all softness, taking the head of his cock in her mouth. If this doesn't get a yelp out of him, nothing will.

It does. Easily. Not so much a yelp as a vivid, hoarser intake of breath spit back out against the back of his teeth where they’re set, jaw worked tight. He doesn’t take to attention without fighting, apparently: nothing about him goes slack or arching beneath her the way someone else might— though the heat of her mouth and the press of her tongue remains damning— he makes himself sharper for it. Leans forward, catches— tangles tight— his fingers in his hair, scuffs blunted nails across her shoulders.

It’s a primal sort of patterning. Not dislike, nor the absence of want. The shape of need in a combative heart.

If he’d intended to ruin her efforts, he would do so without bucking keenly into it. Without panting, feeling out all he can get.

She's always liked this part. The power of it-- some people find the act effacing, which she'd never understood; she has teeth-- and the closeness. It's the quickest, easiest way to be wanted and needed, and Gabranth proves that handily. She tries to catch his eyes as she takes him in more fully, dragging her tongue along, teasing. How much can she get out of this? How much noise can she leverage, how much touch and need and want can she find in him?

She enjoys this with every partner she actually, well, enjoys, but it's been so long, and Gabranth is so incredibly tight knit. The excitement is heightened in her, she feels like her blood is singing, her skin alive after a long dormancy.

It knits a deep, tight longing within her, but she'll attend to that later. She wants to watch his movements, greedy creature that she is, as he responds to her. Her free hand rushes up to claw at his chest, trailing downward before settling to pet at his thigh as she lowers her head once more.

Too much is not enough, and his grip runs painfully tight for it.

Her hair is snared like taut-pulled reins, thumb twisting against the edge of his own knuckles. He winces for the feeling of sensation that is so much more merciful— and infinitely more overwhelming to his senses— than pain. Pain is simpler, after all. He knows its cruelty, its measure. This is tighter, hotter, perhaps even alluring in the way it stutters him down to the marrow of himself: the snarl he wears only broken when he heaves out long-held breaths, panting as he thrusts into her movements, no self-restraint present. He moves as though he rushes towards that finish line, even as he cannot seem to bear the weight of every taken step.

His noises are ragged, withheld. He won’t dare to be overheard in this, not even with his control so thoroughly drowned.

It hurts, but that's not new, or particularly surprising. Judge Magister Gabranth likes to pull hair? Fucking shocking.

She likes the closeness, anyway. It's not an intimate closeness, but it's another sign of need, and Jone longs to be needed. He wants to keep her there, and she laps it up.

Trying to keep with his irregular rhythm, she snakes her hand down further between his legs. He won't moan for her mouth, maybe he will for her hand, playing gently with his ballbag. Occasionally, a finger slips back to pet his taint.

Pleasure is like pain, terribly intimate and entirely about power. What else can she wrest from him, now that she has his vaunted control?

“Stop—“ his grip cinches like a clamp well before he speaks. Not at first brush, not as some curling, instinctive aversion to it, but his heart hammers high in his throat already after (not) so long under siege, his intake of breath painfully quick; he can feel himself stumbling along the precipice of something formless and nameless, and if she goes on like this—

With his hold on her scalp he asserts that line. He permits nothing else by way of her own movements, grants no concessions, panting audibly, the outline of his silhouette comprised entirely of stubborn willpower. “Stop.”

An order, chased by something thready, and much more quiet.

“...not yet.”

She's about to counter with some line, are you the only man in the world who doesn't like-

But then he speaks, and she laughs, a rough sound in her throat. It's mostly joy, but even joy is harsh with her. She swats his hand away from her scalp, kisses his hip, and settles her head there, expression lazy and content. The buzz of appreciation has settled her mood-- she wants more, she always wants more, but she can slow the pace, if that's what he wants.

But she does want him to look down and see her face, mouth wet and smiling, resting near his cock. "He speaks," she says. One hand reaches up, once more, to trace patterns over his chest. "Tell me what you want."

He scowls for that laughter, expression twisting with fainter resentment; he thinks she is mocking him—

But then she eases herself into pressing against him, into kissing and touching and relaxing, and he recognizes with slow-building trust that she is simply pleased enough to match pace with all that he requires. Demands.

His sigh is easier, his expression falling back into place, gaze infinitely less peregrine in its set. His hand, made rough only by years of scars and calluses, falls easily over her own.

“Lie back.”

A simple man he, beneath all that cutting armor.

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