“both beauty and terror, without beginning, without end.”
If there are not scars hidden in the sweat-kissed glimmer of his dapples there will be. And if there are not kisses etched into his skin, like the marks of tooth and claw, there will be those too. Because with each inch of her that dissolves into dance, and opiate-like liquor, and lust blazing across her bones like molten gold instead of blood--
Because with each inch of her dissolves fire starts to shine through, like light through the blackness of a dead tree struck by a storm.
Al'Zahra is burning, burning, burning. Her words are embers cast into the new-scar-kisses she's carving into his flesh like hooks into scale. “To tonight then.” She says the words like his skin is a god, and she's the altar fat with fruit and gold. She says the words like they are more claws than kisses, more rage than lust, and want, and possession.
There is nothing in her that cares about tomorrow, or his name, or wherever it is he is sailing too. Wolves do no care for the den in the summer; they care only for the tall grass full of sleeping fawn. It's a wolf that lays her teeth against his throat when he begs her too like a fool. It's a wolf that bites down and calls it a kiss.
And it's a predator that drags him into the crowd, and the dance, and the place where the fire is close enough to singe. Like a wolf, like a lion, like a god, she keeps her teeth at his throat and does not wait for privacy before she drags him closer, and closer, and closer to oblivion.
@August
