I'm the hero of this story
I don't need to be saved
I don't need to be saved
August knew how the night was going to go. He’d stay at the bar, drink wine until he let himself make bad decisions, tease and laugh with the other patrons, try to avoid the tables. Stumble ‘home’ hours later and wake too early all muzzy-headed, having accomplished none of the things he’d needed to do.
But when she raised her glass in return, when she dipped her head and her hair slipped like smoke along the curve of her neck - then the night opened up. Then there were as many possibilities as there were stars, and all of them were shining.
He wound his way to her, ignoring the bodies that slipped past like fish, ignoring the clatter of bone dice and the thought of fortunes won or lost. There was a better diversion here, one who didn’t make him feel like a fool - one who didn’t make him feel like anything at all, except fire and nerve-endings and hunger well-sated. It was a rare thing, getting August out of his own head, but she had done it with a look. The palomino wanted badly for it to happen again.
And maybe he was in luck (luck, that fickle mistress, for the first time since he’d left Denocte) because her eyes were already devouring. When he slid alongside her it was a struggle not to go ahead and touch first his lips and then his teeth to the place just behind her ear; he took another long swallow as a diversion.
When he set the glass down wine wet the side of it, a trickle of gold cast in firelight. “Come here often?” he asked her, his voice as smooth and warm, playing like they are strangers, like she is anything comparable to the others in this smoke-filled room. And August found that he was curious, even if he could not picture her having something so mundane as a routine.
@'Al'Zahra'
