The kiss
The thought sprung inside him unbidden. It was not even a thought really, just a pervasive feeling. Robin Longstride was in that moment the man in which all the men he had been before met. The man he was, the men he had been and would forever be were meting at this point, forever intersecting and colliding, melting edges into one single person like a thousand birds falling from a thousand oaks over and over.
At this point, he was the better man.
She was full of contradictions. Or maybe they were her many faces, her many shades. Her words were harsh and curt. Life had taught her to be strong and to survive. She was as brave as any man with a sword and twice as valiant, for she was not a man. She was a woman that had the strength of ten men. She was herself.
And in her eyes he could see who she had once been as a girl. When her smile had been soft and her eyes clear of the aching that a hard life had etched into them. Just like he could feel those bits and pieces of her when his lips touched the skin of her forehead and he felt the smoothness of her cheek. The softness. Her hand were rough, her eyes were direct and unforgiving, their blue ice cold… but her skin was soft.
Her lips were soft too, the smoothest thing he'd ever left, the warmest, the most bewitching. He had not known what it was to kiss and mean it, until he kissed the one he loved.
Loved, truly as a man loves. Not the flickers of the feeling in his youth or the whims and desires of a lonely soldier of the Lionheart.
He was a free man now, he knew himself and his history. And he knew love. Now that he knew his heart fully, he could give it fully, and his heart had chose without his consent, thought he would not withdraw it even if he could. It had chosen her.
'ask me nicely' he had told her and in the sparkle of indignation in her eye he had read a fierily spirit that would never be tamed.
'ask me nicely' for the second time and that time, her eyes had seemed bluer than the sky, so much deeper as they sparkled with mischief, the corner of her mouth going up before she neared him fluidly and took his lips.
He had read her intention, understood. And though he was a little surprised, he was not entirely so. He had been wanting her lips for a long time. What caught him unprepared was the extent and depth of his own reaction.
Oh, yes, he had given many kisses before. Given them freely and taken them just as heartedly. They had been good kisses, some of them. Some he had remembered… until she chose to brand him with herself.
Never had he before known that so deep a feeling, so strong a storm could have been awoken within him by such light a touch. He knew himself a strong man, a resilient man. Yet the way his body and soul betrayed him when her lips came on his was… he had no words. He had been prepared… but not for something so overpowering. It left him with the same surprise that being kicked behind the head did.
She tasted like something he once knew but then had forgotten... and it took his breath away.
In that moment he felt his heart literally bang against the strong ribs that caged it, and his hands wished for something to hold, so one of them found her waist. He was consumed by the desire to take, finally to know her mouth, her taste and all its secret; to feel her strongly against his lips and kiss her as he wished: firmly, to make her feel the extent of the fever he felt boiling in his bones. His blood was going to melt his skin away at any moment, even as his fingers tingled and he felt the heady, soft burn of her lips on his. The warmth and wetness of her mouth, the sweet taste of her in his as she kissed gently his lips… an explosion of nerves he had never felt before - it carried through all of him, like a fire through his blood and the need to sink into her was overpowering since the very first brush of her lips on his.
But he stayed still. He didn't overcome her, didn't throw himself into her kiss like he'd wanted. He let himself be kissed instead, the way she wanted to kiss him. He let himself be taken… because she was asking nicely, because more than he wanted to consume and be consumed, he wanted to feel whatever she may have in her heart for him… and he believed that the heart and the soul breathe through the lips, so he wanted her to kiss him in her own way, even as he wished he could breathe in her soul and be her captive and captor at the same time.
Her kiss and its gentleness were heady, inebriating as the feeling of deep warmth and heaviness settled on his brain and limbs, burning thought his veins and demanding his every nerve awake. And when he felt her mouth part he did the same without a heartbeat of hesitation, relishing the taste, the warms, boldness of her in his mouth. He allowed her whatever she wanted, everything could be hers if she just as much as wished for it.
There was amusement in her eyes as she pulled away, along with a deep sensation that made her lids heavier. Perhaps her amusement was directed at the way his lips followed hers just for a millimeter before letting her pull away, or perhaps at the stunned look on his face, as if something had just pierced his chest too forcefully and he ad no idea what had happened to him…
Indeed he was lost for a moment without her. For one single moment, after feeling what it was like to have her so close, so intimately, he felt that nowhere could be the same if he was not sharing that kiss over and over again. After feeling he way he felt, nowhere was as home but where she was, and he couldn't help chase after the feeling... chase after her lips...
The thought sprung inside him unbidden. It was not even a thought really, just a pervasive feeling. Robin Longstride, he as he stood there, then, was in that moment the man in which all the men he had been before met. He was the homeless orphan and the fearless soldier, the believer in honor and justice, the knight of his kingdom and the man who would never be other than a deserter of a broken army. The man he was, the men he had been and would forever be were meting at this point, forever intersecting and colliding, melting edges into one single person like a thousand birds falling from a thousand oaks over and over.
At this point, he was the better man.
He could feel the forces that shaped him changing. Whatever had held a grip on him before was now loosening and he wanted to tie all those lose ties around her, bind her to him and hope she wanted the same because there was something peculiar about this feeling: he wanted to possess as much as he wanted to be possessed. He wanted her to have the same need in her veins, the same desire. He wanted from her, the same strength of… of love…
There was something there, in her eyes, he knew it then. Te had recognized it in the way she looked at him. Her eyes spoke of more than she would have liked perhaps, and he knew how to read them. He could feel her changed in the way she looked at him, in the way her smile grew and she kissed him again, playfully, and he was reminded that 'girl' was not so far off for her. He imagined she would love like a girl, because her time to be one and love like one had been too short. He imagined she did not know any other way of loving.
How would she love? The thought had plagued him for quite some time. In his dreams he had a tendency to see it often now. She would love strongly, and with passion. She would love with all of herself, as she did everything else. She would love perhaps the way she kissed: with security and intent, with softness and strength...
He would know her love. He promised himself that. He needed to, his heart demand it. And if before he had been deaf to those desires, now he could be so no longer. He didn't want to. He didn't feel he could. He would win her love and he would show her his.
He had never been a man to hold back. Even if he'd wanted, he couldn't have held back - the feelings within him were such as he was not used to. They were too adamant and too violent to be contained. He felt too small for them, his skin a constraint. He felt invincible, immortal... and weaker at the same time, as if he would truly fall on his knees on her feet if she'd wished him to. He who had not bowed his spirit not even for his king.
Such a strange feeling had wormed its way into his heart...
'I love you Marion'
The strangest he'd ever felt… perhaps aside from the pricing terror of having it taken from him. of having her swallowed by the sea and by death now that he had finally found something real for the first time in his life.
AN: Dont as where this came from, because i have no idea. I've been watching gladiator and Robing Hood and reading (obsessing over o_O) fics...and i just wronte this one at 2 in the morning all at once. Tell me what you think, you know i apriciate it always!