beauty can bite
“Look at me like I’m a painting, a sculpture. Drink your fill, eat me up. Savor every moment like it’s the last-- because you know it is.
You know it is,
don’t you?”
The way they say each other’s name--
The way they say each other’s name, like tasting caviar. The little spoons, the delectable slurps. Indulgent and indulging; succulent; luscious. Ludicrous and mouthwatering. Syllables on syllables, absurd in the way it escalates, and escalates, and every time you think a plateau is reached-- you ascend once again, dragged upward in a way that feels… part divine, part not. The thrill of the chase, the high of desire- Anandi spirals up, and up, and up. (And down, and down, and down.)
"Would you believe me, Anandi, if I told you it was from a shark? I was a fisherman before."
Her name on his lips almost makes her shiver. “I believe you,” she exhales. She knows she’s drank a lot (how much, exactly, she couldn’t say) but it’s not the drink which makes her believe him. It’s this place, Novus, and all the magic here. Why wouldn’t a man be struck by a shark and live to tell the tale? The funny thing is that he smiles like a shark, like he once had too many teeth to fill his mouth... and he moves like one, like a king among peasants. Like the shark left behind more than it meant to.
Oh oh oh, she’s a sucker for confidence.
“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?” She croons with a bleary, drunken smile. She thinks he’s on her level, if only because she’s so far gone she thinks everyone is on her level. This is normal.
Then they make their way to the hall of statues. And- we know she pledged reckless, but, if we’re being honest (someone here has to be, right? And it isn’t Anandi) she’s already planning her escape route and her excuses. (“oh he made me do it, the vile criminal!”) She physically cannot do recklessness. There must always be a next step, a way out. A way to shift the frame of view to benefit herself. It’s terrible, but it’s true: Anandi is never reckless. Not even when she seems to be.
Eventually- too long, and not long enough- they find themselves before a fine work of art. Pink marble is exquisitely carved in the shape of a unicorn leaping into the air. Sculpture is an art form Anandi will never quite understand- how do you take solid rock and transform it into something that looks soft and delicate as the mane of a unicorn, blowing in the wind?
It’s practically magic.
But here’s what’s (... in this world) not magic: Anandi’s telekinetic grip, wrapped around the unicorn’s stupidly delicate horn. She looks at Vercingtorix as she tightens her grasp and pulls down sharply- snap!- on the masterpiece.
Delight floods in; wicked, delicious. It occurs to her how drunk she is; thrills don’t usually thrill quite like this. Temptations like this stallion don’t usually tempt like this. Most would have the self-preservation to want to stop here, but she wants more. She is hungry, and she hates it, and she loves it. (much like how she hates herself, and loves herself, in such equal and opposite ways it feels like she will burst and collapse in on her emotion, not so different from a black hole.)
Anandi lifts the sharpened little piece of marble and gently drags it along Torix’s sharply (beautifully) defined jawline. The things she could do to that jaw. “Your turn,” she purrs.
And although she does not turn her eyes from him, her ears search the room cautiously. You never know who might be watching, listening. You never know when fate will turn, or how good fortune can bleed from you before you even realize you’ve been cut, quick as a sliced artery.
@
some say the loving and the devouring are all the same thing
☾
