He had to strain, to hear the whisper through those rosebud lips. It was just as well that he was forced to pay closer attention to her – because Acton had made a mistake.
He loved the prickle at the nape of his neck that said he was being watched. Always he made a game of it – how long could he drag it out, how could he turn it around – but this time he had guessed wrong. This stranger was as pale as a ghost, like the spirit of some winter-white tree. Pure white, snowy white.
It wasn’t who he’d expected, but his interest was still piqued. He can’t tell what’s behind those black eyes (eyes that shifted – one minute guileless and still as a doe's, the next a crow’s) but the softness of her words had him drifting closer. Each step is punctuated by dead leaves, and he stops at five.
“I know nothing,” he admitted, and rolled a burnished shoulder in a shrug. “I thought you were someone else. A friend. But I should like to hear of it, anyway.” The wind rattled and moaned through the bare limbs and the snow had begun to thicken. Each flake vanished from view as soon as it broke his line of sight with her; she was whiter, even, than new snow.
He watched her like a dog watched a deer; head cocked, curious, unthreatened. She was lovely and he could never have guessed at what black-ice thoughts coursed through her dainty head.
She must be from Dawn; she looked that fragile, that new.
That is what he thought as she drew nearer, and only a momentarily line creased his forehead as she whuffed a breath against his knee. He did not withdraw, but that was the first moment he thought strange.
Acton was often the one to make advances.
Her scent came to him, feral and strange, mostly washed clean by the lover’s stream. It told him nothing he really wanted to know, and when he opened his mouth to speak again she beat him to it.
“What?” he said, sure he’d misheard, and shook his wild tangle of mane. But they were too close to one another (he could feel the warmth of her, though she should be warmer still) for him not to understand the next.
He could feel his blood quicken, his interest sharpen. Acton did not laugh but he matched her smile with a grin of his own; his gaze was hungry-wary as it drank her in.
“I’ve been told I look guilty more than once, but that’s the strangest way yet,” he said, dropping his head so his gaze was on a level with hers. His expression suggested he was not taking this seriously. Not yet. “Today I’m only guilty of killing time.” His muzzle brushed against hers as he lifted his head again.
It had become nearly full dark in the time since she’d seen him; the girl was the brightest thing in view. “And is it a murderer you seek?” There was a laugh in the words; he kept missing the madness in her eyes.
His second mistake of the evening.
@Faida yassss faidaaaaa
these violent delights have violent ends
