“That word is not one traditionally used to describe me.” Pale eyes narrowing, exhale slow through his nose as he focuses more on the sight of her than the sound of her words— or the flex of them. The meaning that they hold.
Incapable of self-reflection, he can only measure her impression of him against the rough shapes of his past. Always, something feels misaligned.
Tonight, he lets that lie.
“But if it means yet more time in your presence, unguarded and unrestrained, then I believe you know already what I ask of you in this moment.” He raises the hem of her shirt, slides his harsh-edged palm beneath it, a difference of inches without crudeness or cruelty. His exploration uniquely patient, now that he knows she will not vanish from his grasp.
“Temptation, you have named yourself in my sight.”
She means to clarify, teasing gently, calling him handsome and seeing what he'll do. Instead, he finds the prettiest words in his arsenal-- it seems-- and holds them out to her like jewelry. She hasn't a clue how to express how much that means to her, the implication she's beautiful, or at least tempting.
It means so much from Gabranth especially, a man seemingly incapable of even accidental falsehood.
Her legs intertwine with his, passionately hungry for his touch. It happens so quickly she can barely stand it. "Yes," she says, meaninglessly. Her hands bunch at the fabric of his shirt. "I think... I need you very badly."
To someone else, it might read as insult. Uncouthness, or a sign of poorer politesse. Gabranth favors it. Turns his head towards the press of her lips, catches the underside of her jaw with his opposite hand as its twin roams ever higher: mapping muscle, warm contours, scarred skin— every fraction of it a piece of her being, and no less worthy of his attention than the kiss that consumes him for one potent, hungry moment.
She kisses him, heady with need of it. Her hips grind into his, her hands drift to his back, all moving with the rising heat of her desire for him. In a strange twist, she doesn't have the words to explain how much this means.
"Now you know just what to say," between breaths, between kisses. She can't think of how to finish that. Let the statement stand.
“I am learning.” He breathes, a single note of pride catching in time with her own exhale. Equally as fleeting.
The rest of his contact, less so.
He grounds himself in his hold on her. In the feel of her warmth held against him. Takes her shift as opportunity, rising to meet the scuff and scrape of her hands as he pulls at her shirt— far from remorseful over needing to distance it from her for the second time in a single night. Like the ritual of cleaning armor, polishing a blade, he’s come to enjoy the practice for its own sake. The promise of what gives chase when it is done.
His mouth to the center of her chest. The dull drag of teeth against her skin when he kisses— bites— as he cares to, unhindered.
"You're succeedi- ah-" And then he's kissing her chest, biting at her, and she finds herself quivering under his touch. It's pathetic, isn't it? Probably. He doesn't mind, though, and she can't find it within herself to be embarrassed.
Her hands find his back, shirt hiked up, just so she can drag her fingers down, nails scraping.
This is different. He's gotten... better? He's taking an interest beyond just rushing to have her knickers off. She tries not to get her hopes too high up, but it's hard when, well, he is. Such a gorgeous man, and all she wants, at times, is to be under his hands. It feels, for a moment, like what she imagines love might.
Prone to judgment, those edicts live outside the drag of his hands across her skin, the way she claws at him— speaks to him in caught praise. She could say almost anything to him, do almost anything to him here, and he would still think her the sun in all her ember-lit radiance. The constellations of his world mapped across her skin.
He also, in truth, would think very little at all beyond the press of his own hunger in the back of his mind. That he now has a touch more endurance for the ordeal to spare does not negate his focus or his wants: this is a prolonged exchange, not a shifted one.
So Gabranth topples her at first opportunity, pressing her to the mattress and using one hand to claw his shirt free, rather than leaving it tangled up across her knuckles. He kisses at her still as his weight bears across her, a new trail of attention. Another set of reddened marks she’ll keep masked within dark armor.
She likes the weight of him, is the thing. Jone is a creature of contradictory wants. At times, she wishes to push, for control and power. At other times, like now, there is the heady need to be subsumed.
She stares up at him as though he stitched the stars into the sky. Her hands find his back again, tearing at the skin, as her chest heaves under his touch. Her back arches.
Yet for all the willingness to be crushed underneath him, a part of her will never retreat. She grabs at his wrist and pulls his hand to the junction of her thighs. "Please," she says underneath a groan, "please, Gabranth."
Fortunate for Gabranth and his accumulated difficulties in navigating the unwonted, physical behavior is, in truth, his strongest suit. Words, ever deceitful or difficult, give pause, but here—
It is in many aspects, no different from combat. If he presses and she does the same, then her intent is made clear. If he bears down and she does not, he understands her desire to yield. To cede advantage.
And, when she draws his hand low, low between her thighs, there is no room for mistaken assumption. There also remains scant room for his own confidence in what proves instead faintly unfamiliar territory, though he— carved from the backbone of determination— neither flinches nor shies away from the opportunity: it is all her, he desires this no less. His mouth fits against the underside of her jaw, his hands work in diligent measures to free her from the constraints of her trousers before easing against her once more. One palm at her hip as brace, the other settled deeper against febrile softness, knuckles brushing, fingertips impatient when he feels out slick heat. Sinking in without a breath or word of warning.
He only speaks afterwards, the edges of his teeth clipping skin as he corrects:
"Noah?" Is that some foreign word for desire? The thought-- logic with it-- flees from her mind. He is not the most skilled in this art, but the simple act of applying himself to something she hungers so much for- she bucks into him, making her pleasure obvious with sound and movement, anything to catch the heat and shape of him. Her mouth finds the skin of his shoulder, the old wound. His skin still smells of stale sweat. She revels in it.
It's something she's wanted since their first kiss. The fact that this has been a persistent personal fantasy only makes his fumbling more profound, his task easier.
If his touch failed to please, he imagines he would know of it soon enough. In frustration she would fit either herself or him wherever needed. The thought does not distress him when it rises to the surface beneath her scrabbling movements; it is a comfort, as it remains tirelessly true that his ego is swept up in many things, yet not this.
A sign of trust between them. Fresh-bloomed, but no less potent in its make.
That she cants herself into his touch is further fulfillment of such feedback. That she whispers his name—
He leans into the workings of her mouth, her tongue, her teeth. His weight thrown behind the press of his fingertips, dragging them— and himself— away from her with every thrust. It is a fire in his blood. A heat between his teeth and in his gut, wanting. Craving.
Temptation indeed, as he works at her, and still yearns ever for more.
A great deal of heady sensations, all at once. Jone returns what she can, scratching and biting-- he must love that, or he'd have complained by now-- and saying that name, over and over in his ear, his shoulder, his throat. Every bit of skin she can touch with her mouth. As sexual proclivities go, pretending to be someone else in bed is tame. Whoever Noah is, he must be... very fit.
If she flits a hand down to occasionally adjust his form, there are surely worse things. He must be used to her wanton demands by now. The old staple fits into this new frame. "Harder, Noah, please-"
It does not occur to him that she lacks context for his request. It also does not matter, as the means is drowned beneath the surface of sensation it weaves when combined with touch and tension and roaming, pinpoint demand: her fingers direct him, her requests inspire fervor— he snaps his teeth at her shoulder, before the impatient, near painful buildup of frictionless yearning is unbearable.
He cannot endure more without shared sensation, and so his fingertips withdraw in a hurried rush of movement, fleeing instead towards the waistband of his trousers, tugging harshly at them to free himself.
Ungraceful compared to his usual deft precision, borne of impossible avidity, it does not matter. Nothing matters, save for the hold he fixes on her hips when he levels himself against her— when he trades the rough set of scarred fingertips for the span of his own arousal, breath snared in the base of his throat.
She still feels lit up like a firework, waiting to go off, and there he is, bearing down. Watching him fumble with his drawers is a treat. Watching him undress, she could do that for hours. She's about to whistle, just to see if he reacts at all, when he's pinned her down again, and she falls back onto the bed laughing.
She rubs a wrist against a sharp cheekbone, fingers tracing his ear, and has a moment to murmur something sweet and stupid before he's on her again. "I could look at you for an age, Noah."
He is too lost to pressure and relief, both indescribably intertwined, to speak as normally he would. Be dignified, be courteous, be respectful, be aware— consider purpose and person: a tireless list of procedures to be kept to at all times, and in that moment all those failsafes fail him, prompting an unsteady, gritted sound as he eases into place. As he finds the meager start of a canting rhythm.
His face falls across her forearm, eyes shut. Inhale slow, words unsteady.
If she were in a more analytical mode-- in any mode but the one she's in, mind stretched taunt with overwhelming sensation-- she would wonder at this. How does it factor into the name? Would he say this normally? How do these elements aligh?
As it is, she only has him to contend with. She can remember what name to use, and not much else. One hand draws up, petting at the nape of his neck. "Not for you. Never for you."
It is a terrible burden, to be loved. To love. He has lost the shape of it to bitterness, to time— but the sound of her voice and the promises she holds are like the first gracing breaths of life in dulled ash, and were he not so uninhibited in this moment, he might shy from them like something wounded.
Like a man who has fit himself into the hollows of cold armor, holding fast to it for frigid relief.
Instead, she has it all. All. Every fragment of him that there is to offer in this moment, every roll and rise of his hips, as he sinks his teeth into the map of her already marked skin, as he lifts her higher to drag that much harder against her with each friction-laced thrust— there is no point where his loyalty ends, and his unconditional endearment begins.
In truth, Jone's pillow talk follows a rather predictable route. Gasping, begging, and reassuring. She is a creature of need, and finds great attraction in the needs of others. Gabranth has never truly expressed any, but the way he responds to her unbidden reassurances isn't a detriment. He barely responds to her at all, and when he does-- in moments like this-- she feels just that much more whole.
"I have you," she croons, more quiet this time than last. What has made this moment more intimate? She doesn't want it found by ease-dropping servants, for reasons that have nothing to do with the strategy of privacy. She is selfish and hungry for this closeness, and wants none of it shared with anyone, ever. Let this one little corner of their broken world be just this, folded away and hidden. "Oh, Noah, love, I'll never let you go."
Somewhere else he would hush this talk. It is too open, too constant— too easily overheard where walls run thin as paper. But if there is any benefit to the relief found in his own quarters, it is the promise that what occurs here remains isolated, cut off from the palace and all hungry whispers.
Gabranth is a paranoid man, at times, though not without learned reason.
Yet here he leaves all semblance of those instincts behind, rutting harsh and heavy, panting as though she drives him to this with her touch alone, fingertips curled tight against the muscle of her back, bruising. Needing. Anchored as the beating of her heart. He stops none of it.
And his breath hitches high. Sharp. He is nearing the pitching drop of something intangible and potent, his voice whining through his teeth as he rushes after it in starved chase.
She can just hear it in time to predict it. Jone has learned his breaths speak more than his words, and listens keenly. Where others would give her a warning, he starts breathing through his teeth.
Her legs unlock from the vice around his middle, ankle over ankle. Now she can draw one hand, fingers spread like claws, up his spine. Speaking directly into his ear, she says what she wants him to think about when he hits the top. "I have you, Noah; I always will."
Those words, wanted as they are, fail to register in full weight where white-hot bliss invades his senses, consuming everything but the barest notion of her presence— but perhaps it is unnecessary, for she has already made her promise iron-bound, long before this moment.
He would not be here otherwise, wound into her hold, embedded so deeply within her that she is— for all the reach of his unmoored senses— the very air he draws upon with every panting breath.
Time and time again she has strained to do as he has bid, and it was Jone who would have keenly let her heart beat its last so that his might yet continue onward. She grants him truth in darker places. She does more for him than his own blood has ever managed.
There is nothing of regret to be found within him when at last he sinks into her arms, his head across her breast, cheek pressed just above her heart— unmade. Unguarded.
It's becoming a bit routine, sliding her hand down afterward, but she isn't bored of it yet. Wound up as she is, pressed underneath him, there's a certain heady joy in it. The shamelessness, she supposes, and the intensity make it very appealing.
So she writhes under him a while, murmuring Gabranth and Noah in equal measure. Pressed into his body as she is, even when he's not moving it, the heat is overwhelming. She moans into his ear yet again, and this time, it's entirely inarticulate.
Again, not the best she's ever had. But the best she's ever had with someone she loves.
Indolent with listlessness, he does what he can to assist. It lacks potency, considering he’s little more than weight against her, a voice murmured steadily against her jawline, humming and soft with contentment. Higher in pitch than perhaps what she is accustomed to by now, without the matter of forced effort in the way; so much of what he upholds is as carefully crafted as that armor, no more than a facade, yet dutifully clung to all the same.
When she unwinds, it is into his arms, when she moans, it is into memory. He keeps her held fast, admiring the look of her lost to it— made shameless by stolen sight. His eyes are hooded, he blinks little.
And then kisses, once, the hollow base of her throat.
She clings to him, not because she needs to, but because he is warm and she is greedy. She wants him close, folded up with her, their breaths intermingled. She wants all of him, however she can get it. This is a better way than most. For once, he doesn't seem to mind.
Her lips find his hairline, and what she says there lacks voice, only the shapes of words pressed like kisses into his forehead. She pets at his hair, cradling his head, completing the circle.
She doesn't know what to say, so for once, she says nothing. She'd rather lie here until thought is lost to her.
For once, silence becomes them both, though Gabranth— diligent to the last— takes time after a few low-spun minutes to untangle himself from both her and her grasp, instead rising to snare her within the span of his arms, carrying her as though she were the queen of some southern state, resting her across the side of the mattress she’d taken up before, rather than leaving the both of them sprawled across it at some half hazard angle.
He isn’t more courteous than that, however, knowing the differences between care and condescension. The way it might irritate her to be treated as something overly precious. She’ll fit herself as she cares to, and he’ll not say a word about it, crossing again to sink into his own side of the bed, head resting easily against that lone, practical pillow.
“Leave when you so wish it. I shall claim justly that I offered you my bed as courtesy, should anyone inquire.”
Will they inquire? He cannot be certain. He cannot know how any of this will unfold, but unfold it must, for in the aftermath of all his warnings he is certain now that he is the one who has drunken too deeply of this comfort.
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no subject
Incapable of self-reflection, he can only measure her impression of him against the rough shapes of his past. Always, something feels misaligned.
Tonight, he lets that lie.
“But if it means yet more time in your presence, unguarded and unrestrained, then I believe you know already what I ask of you in this moment.” He raises the hem of her shirt, slides his harsh-edged palm beneath it, a difference of inches without crudeness or cruelty. His exploration uniquely patient, now that he knows she will not vanish from his grasp.
“Temptation, you have named yourself in my sight.”
no subject
It means so much from Gabranth especially, a man seemingly incapable of even accidental falsehood.
Her legs intertwine with his, passionately hungry for his touch. It happens so quickly she can barely stand it. "Yes," she says, meaninglessly. Her hands bunch at the fabric of his shirt. "I think... I need you very badly."
Another kiss, this one to the side of his mouth.
no subject
To someone else, it might read as insult. Uncouthness, or a sign of poorer politesse. Gabranth favors it. Turns his head towards the press of her lips, catches the underside of her jaw with his opposite hand as its twin roams ever higher: mapping muscle, warm contours, scarred skin— every fraction of it a piece of her being, and no less worthy of his attention than the kiss that consumes him for one potent, hungry moment.
He lifts his leg, bears it between hers.
“Consider such truths mutual, Judge Magister.”
no subject
"Now you know just what to say," between breaths, between kisses. She can't think of how to finish that. Let the statement stand.
no subject
The rest of his contact, less so.
He grounds himself in his hold on her. In the feel of her warmth held against him. Takes her shift as opportunity, rising to meet the scuff and scrape of her hands as he pulls at her shirt— far from remorseful over needing to distance it from her for the second time in a single night. Like the ritual of cleaning armor, polishing a blade, he’s come to enjoy the practice for its own sake. The promise of what gives chase when it is done.
His mouth to the center of her chest. The dull drag of teeth against her skin when he kisses— bites— as he cares to, unhindered.
no subject
Her hands find his back, shirt hiked up, just so she can drag her fingers down, nails scraping.
This is different. He's gotten... better? He's taking an interest beyond just rushing to have her knickers off. She tries not to get her hopes too high up, but it's hard when, well, he is. Such a gorgeous man, and all she wants, at times, is to be under his hands. It feels, for a moment, like what she imagines love might.
no subject
He also, in truth, would think very little at all beyond the press of his own hunger in the back of his mind. That he now has a touch more endurance for the ordeal to spare does not negate his focus or his wants: this is a prolonged exchange, not a shifted one.
So Gabranth topples her at first opportunity, pressing her to the mattress and using one hand to claw his shirt free, rather than leaving it tangled up across her knuckles. He kisses at her still as his weight bears across her, a new trail of attention. Another set of reddened marks she’ll keep masked within dark armor.
Subterfuge in a palace already full of it.
no subject
She stares up at him as though he stitched the stars into the sky. Her hands find his back again, tearing at the skin, as her chest heaves under his touch. Her back arches.
Yet for all the willingness to be crushed underneath him, a part of her will never retreat. She grabs at his wrist and pulls his hand to the junction of her thighs. "Please," she says underneath a groan, "please, Gabranth."
no subject
It is in many aspects, no different from combat. If he presses and she does the same, then her intent is made clear. If he bears down and she does not, he understands her desire to yield. To cede advantage.
And, when she draws his hand low, low between her thighs, there is no room for mistaken assumption. There also remains scant room for his own confidence in what proves instead faintly unfamiliar territory, though he— carved from the backbone of determination— neither flinches nor shies away from the opportunity: it is all her, he desires this no less. His mouth fits against the underside of her jaw, his hands work in diligent measures to free her from the constraints of her trousers before easing against her once more. One palm at her hip as brace, the other settled deeper against febrile softness, knuckles brushing, fingertips impatient when he feels out slick heat. Sinking in without a breath or word of warning.
He only speaks afterwards, the edges of his teeth clipping skin as he corrects:
“Noah.”
no subject
It's something she's wanted since their first kiss. The fact that this has been a persistent personal fantasy only makes his fumbling more profound, his task easier.
Noah is a name, isn't it? "Noah."
no subject
A sign of trust between them. Fresh-bloomed, but no less potent in its make.
That she cants herself into his touch is further fulfillment of such feedback. That she whispers his name—
He leans into the workings of her mouth, her tongue, her teeth. His weight thrown behind the press of his fingertips, dragging them— and himself— away from her with every thrust. It is a fire in his blood. A heat between his teeth and in his gut, wanting. Craving.
Temptation indeed, as he works at her, and still yearns ever for more.
no subject
If she flits a hand down to occasionally adjust his form, there are surely worse things. He must be used to her wanton demands by now. The old staple fits into this new frame. "Harder, Noah, please-"
no subject
He cannot endure more without shared sensation, and so his fingertips withdraw in a hurried rush of movement, fleeing instead towards the waistband of his trousers, tugging harshly at them to free himself.
Ungraceful compared to his usual deft precision, borne of impossible avidity, it does not matter. Nothing matters, save for the hold he fixes on her hips when he levels himself against her— when he trades the rough set of scarred fingertips for the span of his own arousal, breath snared in the base of his throat.
no subject
She rubs a wrist against a sharp cheekbone, fingers tracing his ear, and has a moment to murmur something sweet and stupid before he's on her again. "I could look at you for an age, Noah."
no subject
His face falls across her forearm, eyes shut. Inhale slow, words unsteady.
“—you would waste an age to do so.”
no subject
As it is, she only has him to contend with. She can remember what name to use, and not much else. One hand draws up, petting at the nape of his neck. "Not for you. Never for you."
no subject
Like a man who has fit himself into the hollows of cold armor, holding fast to it for frigid relief.
Instead, she has it all. All. Every fragment of him that there is to offer in this moment, every roll and rise of his hips, as he sinks his teeth into the map of her already marked skin, as he lifts her higher to drag that much harder against her with each friction-laced thrust— there is no point where his loyalty ends, and his unconditional endearment begins.
no subject
"I have you," she croons, more quiet this time than last. What has made this moment more intimate? She doesn't want it found by ease-dropping servants, for reasons that have nothing to do with the strategy of privacy. She is selfish and hungry for this closeness, and wants none of it shared with anyone, ever. Let this one little corner of their broken world be just this, folded away and hidden. "Oh, Noah, love, I'll never let you go."
no subject
Gabranth is a paranoid man, at times, though not without learned reason.
Yet here he leaves all semblance of those instincts behind, rutting harsh and heavy, panting as though she drives him to this with her touch alone, fingertips curled tight against the muscle of her back, bruising. Needing. Anchored as the beating of her heart. He stops none of it.
And his breath hitches high. Sharp. He is nearing the pitching drop of something intangible and potent, his voice whining through his teeth as he rushes after it in starved chase.
no subject
Her legs unlock from the vice around his middle, ankle over ankle. Now she can draw one hand, fingers spread like claws, up his spine. Speaking directly into his ear, she says what she wants him to think about when he hits the top. "I have you, Noah; I always will."
no subject
He would not be here otherwise, wound into her hold, embedded so deeply within her that she is— for all the reach of his unmoored senses— the very air he draws upon with every panting breath.
Time and time again she has strained to do as he has bid, and it was Jone who would have keenly let her heart beat its last so that his might yet continue onward. She grants him truth in darker places. She does more for him than his own blood has ever managed.
There is nothing of regret to be found within him when at last he sinks into her arms, his head across her breast, cheek pressed just above her heart— unmade. Unguarded.
And glad of it.
no subject
So she writhes under him a while, murmuring Gabranth and Noah in equal measure. Pressed into his body as she is, even when he's not moving it, the heat is overwhelming. She moans into his ear yet again, and this time, it's entirely inarticulate.
Again, not the best she's ever had. But the best she's ever had with someone she loves.
no subject
When she unwinds, it is into his arms, when she moans, it is into memory. He keeps her held fast, admiring the look of her lost to it— made shameless by stolen sight. His eyes are hooded, he blinks little.
And then kisses, once, the hollow base of her throat.
no subject
Her lips find his hairline, and what she says there lacks voice, only the shapes of words pressed like kisses into his forehead. She pets at his hair, cradling his head, completing the circle.
She doesn't know what to say, so for once, she says nothing. She'd rather lie here until thought is lost to her.
no subject
He isn’t more courteous than that, however, knowing the differences between care and condescension. The way it might irritate her to be treated as something overly precious. She’ll fit herself as she cares to, and he’ll not say a word about it, crossing again to sink into his own side of the bed, head resting easily against that lone, practical pillow.
“Leave when you so wish it. I shall claim justly that I offered you my bed as courtesy, should anyone inquire.”
Will they inquire? He cannot be certain. He cannot know how any of this will unfold, but unfold it must, for in the aftermath of all his warnings he is certain now that he is the one who has drunken too deeply of this comfort.
Unwilling to let go.
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