adsom: reunions

[queensland]

Too much. It was too much.

Neria had slipped into the dark with incredible ease, buried herself in it so she could escape from her trial and from everything else. She jumped through the layers of the world - the dark, the fissures of other realms, a deeper dark she had no name for - and as she went, the world seemed to simply shimmer away. Neria fell through the layers of the realms and Cassian screamed for her. Rather than fight, she simply allowed herself to fall away from the world.

And as she came back out, she stepped from the shadows of an alley, breathless, leaning against the stone. Her eyes adjusted to the gloom as if she'd gone from dusk to twilight and she waited there a moment, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes until she saw dancing spots. Her chest felt like it was collapsing in on itself.

Cassian whispered to her, cajoling, and she finally came back to herself.

And she was not in Emorr.

The street was unfamiliar. As she stretched her senses through the shadows, she realized that...nothing was familiar here. She'd come out elsewhere in her fit and Neria moved from the alley to quickly begin exploring, keeping to the shadows cautiously.

Comments

[londonbridged]

What she liked.

Kell drank it with slightly wide eyes, overlaying the words and shatter-edged images in his mind, over what he knew of her. I want to feel alive again.

His heart gave a leap inside his ribcage, knocking against things inside, a buzz of power that lit up his nerves like turning up the gas on a flame.

Instinctively he reached up and took her wrist, curling his fingers around it and bringing it to his mouth, where he could kiss that delicate skin, graze it with his teeth as if he wanted to bite down and taste her.

"I like," he began, "that you are so forthright with what you want." He pressed with his teeth, heavier down, blunt and claiming pressure as he sucked a soft, deep mark into her skin.

It was cold enough that it would be covered with clothes easily enough, but it was so near to showing.

It was there in the back of his mind -- she'd been hurt, but Kell knew from experience that being treated as something fragile rarely helped as much as anyone thought it would.

"I've seen how you come alive in battle," he murmured, his lips warm against her palm.

[unabatedly]

"I wasn't always. I still..." With so many things, she was quieter. But her feelings always felt tangled and in the open for people to stare at, especially after the Black Wolf. But Kell knew more about her than almost everyone else - and in some ways, he knew her better than all of the others, Archer included.

He drew hardened pressure against her wrist and her eyes widened, watching, entranced for the moment by the flash of white teeth, as if she anticipated he'd tear into her flesh and she'd see pearl blood. The mark only briefly stung...but she liked it that way. "I think-- I think I'm broken, sometimes. That I've been broken for so long that I don't know how else to be." That she'd died once before on a broken tower, covered in blood, in the shadow of a dragon and no longer knew how to be a person any longer. Neria's countenance was thoughtful, strangely, and not dismayed. Her other hand slid through his hair, marveling at its softness. She turned her gaze towards his.

"My heart runs away with me on the battlefield. Anything could happen. The world narrows. I stop thinking about...about tomorrow, about the next conversation. I'm right there in the battle, all of me - my soul, my heart, my thoughts - and nothing is more important than survival. Than taking care of what's mine." She smiled lopsidedly. "All of me feels awake. The rest of the time, I feel as if some part of me is cold and heavy and...dead."

She shifts just a little bit, enough so she can gently rub the pads of her fingers over his scalp - not scratching so much as offering slow friction, as she might towards a cat. "What about you, Kell? What do you like?"

[londonbridged]

What she said made sense in the way that the first conjured flame had, when he'd rolled it over his fingers. Like something had been yearning to be given shape, and finally he could see it for what it was, touch it, feel the heat against his skin instead of only in his heart.

He leaned into her touches, hungry for them, starving for them, soaking them up like rain on dry ground.

"I like roughness," he confessed. "The feeling of holding and holding down, both teasing and ruthless, long and slow and intense, or abrupt and desperate." He ran his tongue over his lower lip, wetting it- "but I also like being made use of. I like using my mouth, my fingers, being pushed down and ridden. I like the play of power, and-"

Kell shut his mouth, slowly opened again. "-the trust, that comes with it."

He sighed deeply.

"... tell me what you don't like."

[unabatedly]

"You like opposing extremes," she murmured with a slight shiver at the mental image his words conjured, fondness in her tone. Her fingers found the nape of his neck, stroking over warm skin. Her legs circled a little tighter around him, keeping Kell close, basking in the press of his body.

What he said about power play, about making use of someone, trusting someone with all of yourself... She understood that too. Neria turned her head, brushing her nose against the sensitive skin of his throat, kissing at his shoulder.

"I don't...want to be humiliated. Or used without my permission." It wasn't about the dungeons. It wasn't about the things she suffered through. "If it is me and another person and I trust them...I'll let them do almost anything. But I won't be made a mockery of. I won't be a toy to be chewed up and spit out. I won't be degraded again." Her fingers fell over his shoulder, down the beginnings of his back, just to touch. "I don't want to hurt others, either. And it's...difficult for me to take true, full control unless that is what someone wants." To be someone's master again brought nothing but sharp memories, too many regrets. But if someone told her they wanted to secede control... She didn't know. This part was difficult, too.

Neria looked up into Kell's face.

"What are the things you don't like?"

[londonbridged]

Kell breathed slowly out as she pressed against him. He was still hard, aching, but not to the point he couldn't pay attention. Still, her lips on his skin made it more difficult. He braced with one elbow, gently tangling his fingers into her hair, drinking in her shivers.

As he listened, he relaxed into her touch, brought his other hand up to brush his fingertips against her cheek.

"Similar to yours. No degrading, no humiliation- control, though. That I can do, with trust." he trailed off. "But only for someone who would want that. I don't-" his brow twitched, slightly. "I am not attracted to innocence or naivete. I do not like feeling as though I am taking advantage."

Too many people had seen him as a monster, and he'd never liked it.

"Desperation, yes," he added. "Teasing, yes, but not outright denial."

Kell closed his eyes, drinking in the feeling of her hands.

[unabatedly]

She turned her face into his fingers, leaning into them for but a few brief moments. And then she brushed her lips against them, tender despite what they'd done. Neria's gaze never left Kell's, unabashed and fond all at once on him. Slowly, her hands roamed upwards. She took his face gently between them, cradling.

"You aren't going to take advantage of me." Her thumbs brushed over his cheeks. Softly, she told him, "I used to think...it's just a body. It means so little if someone hurts me. They can't touch my heart." Which was what she told herself over and over again in the dungeons. They could burn her or hurt her, but it was only a body. It was when they could have killed Cassian that she gave in.

Her hand drifted lower, cupping his neck, fingers stroking over the column of pale skin in admiration. "Even so, I know you won't hurt me unless I ask you to." She leaned in to kiss him, the first press soft, almost chaste. "And I won't deny you anything." Not his pleasure, not her body. Not her heart. He could have all of it.

[londonbridged]

"You could ask me to," Kell murmured against her lips, surprised again at how soft they were, how warm and pliant and real against his own. The feeling of her fingers, addicting on his skin.

He leaned into those touches, wound one of her dark curls round his fingers, soft gentle tugs as he brought them back to the present.

"And I would, and in the same breath I would stop. At your word."

So many orders, over the years, leaving it ingrained in him -- but the ones he wanted nothing more than to follow were the ones who would never seek power over him.

[unabatedly]

"I know," she told him, leaning into him. Briefly, she smiled, the expression warm. "I know you would. No one else has my trust like you do." Neria tangled their legs together a little more deliberately, that Kell might be pressed directly against the flat of her abdomen. "And I would do the same for you."

And for a moment, she was silent, though that latch of her leg alone said she was ready for more - and she almost seemed like she wished to. But there was one more thing.

Neria turned her head, brushed their lips together a bit more heatedly this time, and then murmured against his mouth: "What do you want me to do to you, Kell." Her hands fell, found his hips, squeezing. "Right now."

[londonbridged]

Though Kell hadn't precisely lost any of his enthusiasm, the way she pressed against him, trapped the length of him between their bodies, made him take a quick breath between his teeth. It sounded like a low hiss, lost between the hangings of the bed.

As Neria hitched her leg more securely around him, Kell fell deeper into her kiss, taking his hand from her hair to run it down the curve of her spine, fingertips tracing the dip in the small of her back, urging her closer. He was damp, just barely, against her skin.

Do to you.

"Torn," Kell answered, like a growl in the back of his throat, working to get his breath back. "Between two things. One- your mouth on me-" and he chased that remark with his lips, a soft, sure flick of his tongue as he kissed her, "or two, to rub-" breathless, he reached down between them to wrap his fingers around his cock, dragging the tip down along her skin until the head of him slid between her legs, rubbed over her clit.

"Right here, until you can't help but need me inside."