@hxllblazer {{xx}}
She hears him and she doesn't, the curse she bears far better than Cassandra did her own. Like an animal gone to ground, if he was truly injured he'd snap clipped and cruel words, made sure she heard each and every one as a warning, and he'd deliberately push her prying hands away.
Instead he encircles her, and she cannot help the brief iconography that flashes through her head about trees and snakes and apples. Then she doesn't think about anything at all but the feel of his lips on the bare skin where her shoulder becomes her neck, the warmth of his breath as it whispers its way down into her. She leaves him half bound in that coat as she abandons it in favour of sliding one palm up to cup the back of his neck, the other loses itself in his hair, where the tips of her nails threaten to leave pink furrows behind.
The ache in his voice weakens her knees, steals the breath right out of her lungs. Or maybe the way he's reading her back like braille, navigating the satin ribbons that keep her idea of a shirt in place as if they didn't exist.
Beth has made a number of oaths in her life, and has been unwavering in the keeping of them. The first that comes to mind is the one she knows forwards and back, even in her dreams. The self-same ones that have featured John in them, in a variety of ways.
First, do no harm.
So that would mean breaking it if she did as he asked. Not that she's arrogant enough to think a refusal would hurt him, but it would kill her. To be so close, enough that she can taste the faint trace of Silk Cuts on his lips, to have to unmould herself from him ~chest pressed into his, the pulse of her heart tapping out its own Morse code, thighs slightly parted to allow him that much closer to her~ and tell him a lie.
"I can't," she whispers and pulls his head up from her throat.
It feels like betrayal, sharp and bright.
She is quick to mollify the feeling. "Don't wanna."
Her lips are soft on his. Gentle enough to belie the hunger he's sparked. Ever so carefully she begins to trace the shape of his mouth with the tip of her tongue. It's an invitation as much as it's a wordless plea.
