Author: I imagine there was one girl who didn't call Lucien a 'psycho' like the other kids, and they stayed in touch throughout the years...
The assassin looked over at the woman dozing beside him. The wedding band on her finger glimmered in the candle light. To love and be loved, the aim of so many in life. It seemed to have bypassed him, the gods granting him his nature instead, destined to serve Sithis for all his days. And yet he yearned sometimes. He felt something real with this woman, and this woman only, and perhaps that was what brought on these more pensive moments.
"How do you do that?" he asked, eyeing the ring.
"Hm?" The woman's green eyes flickered open, face obscured in long, rich brown hair, messy and knotted from their reunion.
"Love someone. And they you. Truly." He could make people feel for him, if necessary. He could read them and act exactly as he might need to, or as they might want him to, to achieve his desired results. But for someone to capture his attentions, well, he'd never met anyone with enough skill.
"You don't do anything," she breathed sleepily, brushing the hair from her face. "It just is with some people."
"And these people just meet do they? It seems unlikely, in my experience."
She looked into his handsome features, always serious and a little more melancholic this visit. "We met didn't we?" She shuffled closer.
"Hm. You have someone else, as well."
She caressed his arm with her delicate fingers, trying to offer comfort to her elusive friend. "Don't tell me you're wishing you had the model wife and children. You've got your family. What about that love you tell me about?"
The assassin wrapped his fingers in her hair. "It's not this," he answered, lifting her hand by the ring finger.
The woman smiled, raising herself up on one elbow. "Well in case you haven't noticed, this-" she indicated her ring, "isn't the perfect answer." She gestured over their current surroundings, clothes strewn about the room, bed sheets rumpled and showing evidence of relations, a typical scene of a clandestine rendezvous at an inn. She kissed her solemn assassin, unable to suppress a moan as his grip tightened in her hair. He had expressed this kind of lament once or twice before, but normally another tumble with her and he snapped out of it. They had what they had when they had it, and in the meantime each returned to their business.
He warmed to the kiss and released her hand, moving his instead up to her face. She was enveloped in his warmth as her head was cradled in this way and she brought her body closer to his, a knee slipping over his thigh and sliding her free hand over his chest. The hand by her cheek began moving down, and she felt the excitement in her heartbeat and loins as she realised where it was heading. A more urgent moan escaped her lips as his hand rested around her throat. She strained to kiss him as much as she could before he took control of her as he often did with this grip.
Instead he held her close, merely breaking contact. "What am I to you?"
She only frowned, the sudden change of subject amidst her arousal somewhat difficult to process.
"You have your life, your family. Why keep seeing me like this? Am I a game, some sordid secret?"
Other folk may have found his look intimidating, indeed he could have throttled her in an instant had he taken great enough offence, but she wasn't afraid of him. "What, do you want to come to my house for tea? Should I leave my husband for you? You're my secret as I am yours. I have no wish to become an assassin as I'm sure you have no wish to become a farmer, or a blacksmith or what have you."
She returned his scowl with steadfast eyes, recognising the feeling in his that betrayed he would not, would never, go through with his unspoken threat. "We meet like this because that's how we are."
His expression didn't soften but he released her, she resting her head on his shoulder allowing him to brood. "I can't feel this way around anyone else," he finally commented, resting his hand once more on the woman's waist. "We were friends as children... you knew me before I... truly committed to the way I am."
The woman tilted her head to look at him again, gently toying with his hair. "You can, you just need to open up, like you did with me. Let people in," she answered softly.
Her breath tickled his neck and the feel of her soft curves ensconced around his form finally began to rouse another part of him unconcerned with such worries. But in this woman, whose words he trusted as truths, who had never offered him anything other than friendship, understanding and affection, he found more than just physical comfort. Though the way he gripped her wrists and pushed her into the bedding appeared rough, he kissed her deeply and lost himself in the feelings that lay dormant the rest of the year.