Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to the characters or world, nor do I profit off them; all belong to Anne Bishop.
Author's Note: this is wholly and totally AU. Daemon isn't a pleasure slave yet and therefore hasn't become the cold sadist he's destined to become. In my world, he's not so young before he's separated from Saetan (and the story takes place before this). This is also assuming Ravenar didn't immediately disappear into the darkness upon death, either. This is quite an unusual pairing but it struck me and I couldn't stop writing. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Two Souls
It was his touch. It was the softness of the touch, the whispering pads of his fingers as they ghosted across my face, tracing my jawline, stroking my cheek. "We can never be wrong together." His soft, gentle voice washed over me in resounding waves, his cool breath as he breathed into my ear rousing a long forgotten tug in my groin. "This can never be wrong." He said this with his mouth just above my ear, but his eyes were looking upward, blind to the wall behind me. He saw, as he always saw, something behind the physical, he saw deeper into the soul. He drew his gaze upward, and what he saw was our souls dancing. Not just dancing—touching, together, as one.
"We're one. We're whole." He sighed into my ear, eliciting a shudder from me. My entire body jolted as if an electrical current surged through my body. My hand shook as I raised it and brought my thumb to his pale, soft cheek. "Do you feel it?" His hand dismissed mine with a brush of his own hand. He pulled away from my ear enough to cover my face with petal-soft kisses. He started with my temple, and then each of my eyelids. A moan escaped. Was it mine? His? It shot to that inescapable organ between my legs, the one I never used anymore, the one I thought long out of order. It painfully hardened against his leg as he shifted in my lap. It drew notice. He blinked, still in a haze of sinful pleasure but he noticed the change. A smile, so faint, so shy, tugged at the corner of his lips.
His silky lips riddled my chin, nudged down to my neck. His tongue. His warm, wet tongue emerged, lapped at the artery along my throat. I shuddered, my hands shook, but I held myself perfectly still, like a marble statue. I felt like I would shatter the spell above us, that any movement would jar our souls apart and clarity would return to his soft golden-yellow eyes. But my restraint wouldn't last. I could feel the pieces of my will snapping with each feathery light kiss, each caress of his tongue. I didn't just want our souls touching, dancing. I didn't just want the love burgeoning between us. I wanted him. I wanted to propel him down on his back, tear from him his shirt and his trousers, the buttons flying in a hail around us. I wanted to ravish his throat, his nipples, his tender and sweet neck. I wanted thrust into him, feel him clench around me as I fucked him, over and over again. I wanted him to scream out my name, his heart to pound wildly in his chest, him to come without so much as a stroke of his own phallus, just my pounding against the sweet, sweet spot deep inside of him. And I wanted reach ecstasy surrounded by all things Daemon. His breath, his screams, his hot flesh, his sweat, his semen, his scent. But not yet, I told myself. And so I remained motionless, spellbound under his shy touch.
His mind was elsewhere but on me, too. His eyes were hazy, distant, glazed over by passion only someone who felt as deeply as he did could harness. "This is perfection." His words were restrained, breathy, like he forced them out between his teeth, and then he released an unsteady sigh. He raised his lips to mine and offered me a small peck. Anyone else, and it would have been chaste. But not with him. Never with him. Everything he did was seductive. Every breath he drew, every word he spoke, every time he touched someone it was laced with sensuality. He was petite for his age, small and sinewy, slim with shapely hips, long, thin fingers. I loved his fingers. They drew out the loveliest sounds when they touched the keys of a piano. They were magic when he worked to translate the emotions and thoughts in his head into strings of coherent and beautiful melodies.
I captured one of those slim fingers with my mouth, nipped it. He was smiling as he brought his face back down, kissed my lips over his captured finger. "Is this wrong?" he asked, pulling away. He straddled my thigh, sat back on his ankles. He withdrew his finger, halted all touch save for our legs.
My soul flinched and my brain immediately answered with the affirmative, but I didn't want this moment to end. Let it last forever. Let this feeling of wholeness and perfection exist forever. This is wrong, every fiber in my head screamed. Even my heart, deep down, knew this was wrong. That it couldn't persist. If we continued down this road, there could be no going back. If I gave him what he wanted—what I wanted—there would only be pain and misery waiting for us at the gates of tomorrow. I was not meant for him. I had already lived the life I had meant to live, and even though true love had eluded me during my long years of life, I had died satisfied. He, though, he was so young, so full of life. His future shone brightly from his innocent eyes, those trusting eyes.
If I do this to you, my heart said to him, if I take you right now, you will be in pain tomorrow or the next day or even next year. The pain will be terrible, because the day when you realize you are growing by yourself, away from me, is the day that I will be ripped from you. I couldn't stop myself; I pressed my thumb to his cheek.
"Baby," I said to him, "you are so young." My grip fastened to his chin, turned it as I leaned into him and nuzzled his cheek. I rained kisses, rougher than his, along his neck. "Your youth breaks my heart. You are so innocent. In your childishness, you think you are impervious to pain. I will hurt you. I will shatter your illusions of love and romance." My sex pleaded with me to stop and cover my mouth with his, plunder the wet cavern of his mouth and to completely and utterly end any talk of the future. I want you, my soul cried to him. I want everything you can give me and more. I want to taste you and to hold you, to make you absolutely and irrevocably mine. I would do anything for you. Except one thing. I couldn't hurt him. I couldn't. I kissed his jaw, then the soft tissue between his face and his earlobe. "I will destroy you," I whispered in his ear. "In me lies your ruin. In my kiss lies your pain. In my love lies your drowning."
He was always the poet, so careful with his words that he always said two things with only one word. His passion was a vortex, and whenever I was near him, it swallowed me up and I would drown and drown in it. Save me, save me, I would beg. Let me breathe for a minute. Allow me to catch my breath! His eyes would gleam with love; it would hold his every thought, his every action. His soul was a slave to his passion. He could no more swim in it than I could. He was so young. He wouldn't always be this way. Could I love him when he became a man? When life chiseled away at the magnitude of his intensity and he found peace in his diversions? Would he be the same when experience taught him peace in love, not desperation? Would desire set fire to my soul whenever his silky skin brushed up against mine, when those eyes, those dazzling, beguiling eyes were serene and focused?
I tried summoning all the reasons to say yes. All the reasons to stop this madness before it began. I knew I had to say yes, that that which would be us could never make sense in reality. That our kisses were so wrong, that our making love crossed into a territory that led only to torture.
I looked into his eyes. They were waiting for my judgment, my wisdom. Years of living, years of death should have taught me to be strong for those I loved, to make the sacrifices they themselves cannot make. I should have known by then what was best for him. He thought I knew what was best, he was waiting so innocently, his long, thick eyelashes fluttering as he struggled to keep his eyes open. He wanted me to say no, no, this isn't wrong, but he knew I should say yes. If I told him that the two of us together was perfection, that perfection could never be wrong, I would chase away any misgivings he had and he'd melt in my arms like a puddle. He wasn't strong enough to carry the mantle of decision-making yet.
I closed my eyes to his sweet, angelic face. I kissed his forehead, like I'd done his whole life, chastely. I loved him. I loved his smile. I loved his voice when he sang, loved the sounds he produced when I touched him. I loved the way he sighed in my arms, the way his hot breath felt on my neck. I loved the way his whole face lit up when something struck his fancy, when his whole body eradiated joy and heat as he talked about his soul.
He told me yesterday something I could never forget. I wish he'd never said anything at all. He did, though. He folded himself into the corner of the sofa, timid. He wrapped his arms around his knees and tucked his mouth and nose into the gap between them and gazed up at me with his glistening eyes, questioning me silently if he should share with me his secret world. He turned his gaze down, however, and buried his face entirely in his knees until he found the courage. When he did, he said, "Do you believe we have souls?"
I had never thought of it. Of course, people talked about souls, spirits, beings beyond the physical. Had I ever cared? Not for a second. I had always been what I had always been, whether a soul was involved or not. "Maybe."
He paused, bit his lower lip.
"Do you?" I prompted.
His head shot up as if I'd challenged him. "Why, yes, yes I do. I can feel it. But my soul is damaged. It is broken or torn. There is a hole, a hole that is half of me, and it's been gone for some time now. Maybe I was born without it. I can do nothing to fill it. I can write music, I can surround myself with people I love, I can read. I can do all the things I love, and still there persists a profound emptiness within." He paused, debating whether he should continue. His gaze pierced me, and suddenly it was as if he was sorting through my mind, searching for something. He then continued, "There are times, however, when I'm with you, when you laugh a certain way or you touch me with a certain emotion or we speak and understand each other on a whole different level of existence, when our souls touch. And when they touch, my soul feels whole again. It feels like I could die in that moment, and nothing would be regretted or lost or painful. Because I was finally whole again. I want to be with you. I want to be whole with you."
I was flabbergasted. I knew that emptiness of which he spoke. I knew that pain. I learned to live with that emptiness, push it aside and continue on. I had never known true love. My loves in life had never filled me with satisfaction, had never made me feel the way I felt in this moment. I understood him so deeply—our souls must have been touching in that moment. I felt violent with emotion, overcome and helpless. It must have been what he went through every day, with all those pent up fireworks waiting to explode within his blood stream. "You are so young, and I so old. We cannot be together. I have nothing to give you."
"What if we were two halves to the same whole?" he said. "What if there is only your soul for me, only yours. What if mine is the only soul for you, and you lived and died loveless because mine hadn't been born yet? And now you're denying me my other half because of some societal convention which builds a wall between us?"
Yes, what if? I asked myself. As I opened my eyes again to look on him once more, flushed and anxious for my blessing, I could only think, what if? I had to decide, was this love or lust? I had loved him his whole life. I had known him as a baby, as an unruly and difficult toddler. I had known him as an incorruptible child. I had loved him then, and never once had I yearned for his body as my own body did now. But that was what happened, wasn't it? I saw him corrupted by my own seed, and for the very first time, I saw in him that unbridled flame.
It was my son, Ravenar. My foolish, fool-hardy son. I could never tame him. He was wild and crazy and didn't live by the rules of others. He saw Daemon grow, but didn't take interest in him until he was a little old—still young, though, younger than he was now. Something drew him to Daemon, something I didn't see then. And suddenly Ravenar was orbiting Daemon, and the child was delighted by all the attention. He was smiling and giggling, and the psychic tendrils he didn't even know he had sizzled in the air. He flirted with an air of maturity that surpassed his age, but he was still young. And Ravenar set out to take him. He whispered words of love into Daemon's ear—and maybe Daemon didn't care so much about the love but he basked in all the touches, the attentive detail Ravenar took to all things Daemon. I don't know how far the flirting went, but I saw one day, at the mouth of the woods behind the old SaDiablo hall, the child lying on his back, staring up at the cobalt blue sky, his shirt up while Ravenar fondled him and kissed him. I was so foolish back then. I was horrified and disgusted by my son. Daemon was so young, I told myself. So innocent and pure, and my son sought to corrupt him.
I flew at him in a rage. What did he think he was doing? This was a child. He was corrupting that which could not be corrupted. He was disgusting! The very child himself sat up and watched with innocent golden eyes, still glazed over with passion, his face expressionless as he looked on.
But he wasn't all that sexless anymore. Not to me. I watched. I resisted. I held him at bay. But he came to me, talking of his passions—his books and his music. When I heard the first press of a piano key, I couldn't help but draw closer. I'd stand in the doorway or I'd come in and take a seat on the settee. After a few passionate sonatas, he would turn to me and work out his incoherent thoughts to me and beat them into whole, fervent ideas. He was so intelligent, so mesmerizing. And we were of the same soul. He was civilized and cultured, and I the very antithesis, and together we became rounded and perfect. His half was gentle to my coarse half. I didn't know how much I wanted this until now. Until now when I had him in my arms, awaiting my approval.
"Say we can never be wrong together."
You have it all wrong, I wanted to say. We were everything that was wrong. In holding him this moment, I held his entire future. His beautiful, shining future. There was no telling what Saetan would do if he found out—and he absolutely would. He would say that I robbed Daemon of something, of his innocence. That the pain Daemon would bear when the time came for him to go out and live his life outside of mine would be terrible, all because I couldn't do the right thing right now.
I pressed my lips to his temple in a half-kiss and just held myself there. His heart ravaged against his chest, his rib cage pulsing like the beating of wings. He was growing more and more desperate for affirmation. I stroked his soft, dark hair.
Just two halves to one whole. The one answer to my many questions. Why hadn't I felt this way until this very moment? Why hadn't love touched me until now? After so many long years of life and death?
I will destroy you.
I could see myself doing it. I could see myself breaking from all reason and glutting myself on the carnal flesh of Daemon. I wanted to show him how much I loved him, show him with kisses and caresses. I wanted to take his words, the sheer volume and intensity of his intellectual passion and transform it into the physical, show him what my half had to offer. Oh, how much I desired to taste his innocence, to take it from him. He was the fresh air I needed to take in.
"Just two halves to one whole," I murmured. It was what he wanted to hear. The tension building in his arms gave out. I kissed his lips. "I love you. I love you more than I have loved anyone. I want this so much." I squeezed my eyes shut and held my forehead to his. I could feel a stillness overtake him. "I want this so much," I said again. "But I love you, and this is what my love yields." Daemon jerked away. I opened my eyes to his face. It wasn't astonishment. It wasn't anger. It wasn't clarity. His face was passive, but his eyes…his eyes were full of fear. He cast his gaze down.
"Say we can never be wrong together," he repeated himself, his voice rising as his fear rose in his throat.
"I will destroy you." I reached out with both hands and held his face, held it so he could only look at me. He closed his eyes instead. "I love you, I love you, I love you. And it's because of this love that I'm ending this." Maybe he was the only true love I was to possess, and maybe our two damaged souls were whole when they touched, but I never believed much in that which I couldn't see. I never thought about souls until he told me about his theory, and I never thought much of them after. He was young. He would find another damaged soul to touch his own, or he'd learn to live as I lived without it. Either way, he was young. He would endure. I would endure. That is what my love yielded.