She laughs again and it is stringing starlight in her teeth – menace a glimmer in her eyes, glistening frost netted over her flesh. He listens to the way it leaves her throat, listens to the song, watches the way her breaths rise and fall and the hitch of her pulse narrows in the veins drawn taut, smooth, ocean water slipping down her neck in rivulets. Erasmus swallows, teeth sharp against his lips when they gather the warmth from her closeness and he breathes deep her scent of ancient woodlands, oceanic coves, fragrant spices of incense and succulent pyre flowers. It is not enough but to taste and feel, as what silk or velvet must feel, against the harshness of a desolate touch – but sacrilege, as to taint, to blemish, as one's touch may. If not to bruise – as desire is to gather her deep into an oceanic embrace, suffocating and full and wrathful, tenderness only in violence.
When she moves, he too moves, a dance he learns as she persuades; tempo for tempo, step for step, close enough for torment to allow. The ocean crashes against his legs then, all salt and sand and seashell that threatens to batter him down, and he lets it roar and hiss for all that it is, an envious lover left to the wane of moonlight. He watches only her, her every movement, her every word, each rise and fall of her chest. Hunger wakes in him like spite unfolding in his belly, all ire and need and lust as one can have ever known. Heat unlike any but hell, a furious and contemptible thing of which passion has no comfort – but in desire, in volatile ways. He dreams of their vehemence like a budding nightmare shuddering in the wake of dawn; of folding into her, of carving into her, and allowing the ocean to drag them both into the dark, icy tomb that they deserve. Is it love then, the word that moves death to crush and possess?
He does not dream of hazy, plush bedrooms in the allure of warm spice notes and lavender silk unraveling tie by tie. It is of the disheveled ground and hickory smoke, sweat beaded in the reflection of a raging fire – a bed of nails, the embrace of sharpened teeth, gasping secrets kept beneath a waning moon. There is roughness, coldness, a wildness that moves his intrigue from the softness of lovers into the war of intimacy. His passion is raw, visceral, madness, the steely vice of obsession and the feverish throes of upended salvation – a fervent, zealous devotion not without its price and thirst. worship me, love me, and I will rip every star from the heavens if it is what you desire.
He grins at the wit of her retort, though there is some truth to it. He would sooner let her kiss him with a blade than not at all, but he is a cultured devil, though devil nonetheless. He relents his pursuit as she returns to her abandoned kill, hovering madly over its crushed ribs, white eyes beholden of her reflection. red, red, wine. When she snarls, his own lip curls over a fanged sneer, but he does not engage more than with a small chuckle. “I'll be happy to share only if you teach me how to skin this stag–” the unkempt waves of his mane fall across the curve of neck as he raises his skull, firelight flickering over the sharpness of his angles. For a moment, he feigns arrogance – as if he would deny her, and return to the night that has bore him. At last he nods softly, his grin returning. “I can. You must cut it open, first.” He states patiently, awaiting the blade.
“I can mount the antlers over your bed frame too, if you'd like.”
fade.
@Euryale
