Disclaimer: Warehouse 13, the world and the characters that inhabit it do not belong to me in any way, though sometimes I lie awake at night wishing that they did and what I'd do with them if they did. And then I write those thoughts down.
A/N: This was started for AU Week, but you know my history with deadlines. Thankfully though, it'll slot quite nicely into the Pornathon. Side note; basically Buffy's law of "sucking" applies here, in that a vampire has to exchange blood with their victim in order to sire them, in case anyone is left wondering. Trigger warnings for some mild dub-con, but it's really more of a 'suggestion'. Big thanks to Webgeekist for the, um, encouragement.
"You've not come to arrest me have you, Agent Bering?" Myka spun, the cool metal of her gun turned warm in her grip. A grip that never wavered, even as her eyes fell upon the exposed brick of a supporting wall of the building and the shadow within the shadows. The shadow that seemed darker than those at its back. Myka swallowed, reflexively tightening her fingers around the gun; a motion that did not go unnoticed. "Come now." The voice was rich and thickly accented, full of amusement and playful chiding, and it pulled at Myka like a memory. "You know better than to think bullets capable of stopping me." Myka could see the elegantly arched eyebrow accompanying the words clear as day in her mind. The corners of slightly parted lips quirking upwards in a wry smile, dark eyes glittering. She hated that. Hated that this woman had had such an affect on her subconscious. That visions of her came unbidden and that she dreamt of inky black tresses at night. "Can't we talk as civilized human beings?"
"You're not even human." Anger and frustration fuelled her words, sinking into her tone and permeating the air. She was enraged and impassioned and everything she'd been taught never to be during a case. Not that this was a case, not officially.
"Am I not?" She could see the inclination of her head, curious brown eyes peering into her soul. "After all I've seen of the noble human race over the years," her voice was thick with sarcasm, her words dripping it alongside a convoluted danger that Myka couldn't quite make sense of in the moment. "I'd wager we aren't so dissimilar. I dare say I'm an improvement." There came a short, dangerous pause in which Myka found herself holding her breath. "I'm better."
"You're a murderer." There was a blur of motion that Myka did not see, did not detect until it was over and done and she was face to face with fury itself.
"I am not a murderer." Black eyes burned with unholy fire inches from her own and it was only when Myka remembered to breathe that she noticed the hands holding her gun had been gripped by a single one at the wrists and levered up over her head, allowing the shadow that now so effortlessly pinned her in place to slide easily into her space. No warmth came off of her body, no matter how close she pressed to Myka, yet Myka's flesh burned. "The people whose lives I have taken were undeserving of them." The woman's grip on her was strong, but not painful, and Myka felt herself failing to struggle against it with a kind of dis-attachment. As though there were no other option.
"They deserved fair trial-" She spoke instinctively, as though the words were pulled from somewhere else and merely filtered through her.
"Fair trial?" Mockery and scorn interrupted her, exploding from the other woman as if they were demons being expelled. Myka winced, though not from pain, as she was forced backwards a few paces by the grip on her wrists until her back hit a wooden support pillar placed towards the centre of the room. "The system is as corrupt as its lowliest prisoners. Too many of those taken by me cheated it with ease, were let out to once more walk the same streets that those they'd hurt would never walk again." Myka did not blink as the woman before her furrowed her brow, gazing at her imploringly. "Tell me, how is that 'fair'?" There wasn't anything she could say, at least nothing that could appease the woman who seemed to loom over Myka despite her shorter stature. The world was full of people who deserved to be brought to justice, black-souled creatures who weren't worth the stuff Myka stepped in on the sidewalk. They were the reason she'd become a cop, an agent of the law. She'd wanted to do her part to make the world good again, though whether it had ever truly been as such was a mystery lost to the ages.
"It's not." She said at length, blinking wide green eyes. She took a tremulous breath, clenching the fingers of her still captured hands. "But neither is life." Something in her statement seemed to sober the woman before her. An eerie calm fell over her features to wipe them almost clean and her glittering black eyes bore into Myka for a few endless heartbeats. And then her grip was gone and Myka's arms were free and the woman was turning away from her wearing a small, private smile.
"I'm afraid I no longer abide by the rules of life." She chuckled, dark and rich and full of that which she had just renounced. "Haven't in quite some time, actually." Dumbly, Myka dropped her arms to her sides, her firearm swaying gently opposite her thigh. She couldn't holster it, but somewhere not as deeply as she'd like lay the knowledge that she would not need it. It was a knowledge that only served to agitate her irritation. She used her shoulders to push off from the pillar and took a few careful steps towards the volatile woman.
"Are there any rules you do abide by, Miss Wells?" Laughter sounded once more, distracting Myka for the briefest moment, and then dark hair was tossed over a shoulder, a coy smiling following closely in its wake.
"Darling, are we not long past such dreadful informalities?" Her voice was almost a purr as she turned to face Myka once more, form encased in silks and leathers the colour of night. "Helena, I insist." And there was no reason to argue, or at least none Myka could find. She shifted, either in discomfort or self-consciousness as Helena's eyes swept the length of her body, seeming to drink her in as she evaluated every inch of that which lay before her. "Ever the inquisitive agent." She mused, so quietly Myka wasn't sure at first if she was still being spoken to. "Always asking questions. I once knew a man very similar to you in that respect. He was a dear friend." Myka's blood ran cold at the tone in Helena's voice.
"Did you kill him?" Helena's face, a mask of beauty that hid what most would call a monster, became shadowed at the question. She appeared to lose herself for a moment, to a thought or memory, Myka could not say which. But she watched as Helena was pulled back, away from her, across time and space and dropped at the foot of something that wiped the smile from her features.
"Quite the contrary." She whispered, eyes that had drifted on her journey now returning to pin Myka in place once more. "He died saving my life." Another chill ran through Myka. So they'd both lost people close to them, too. Under similar-seeming circumstances. The knowledge only furthered Myka's already firmly setting opinion. She'd been led to Helena for a reason. It was no coincidence that she'd been the one to arrive on the scene of that first murder instead of her partner, Pete. That she'd caught a flash of black hair vanishing into the shadows of an alleyway. The universe worked in strange and often maddening ways, and Myka wholeheartedly believed that there was a reason for their meeting. She was just no longer sure if that reason was what she'd originally thought it to be. "Always believed in me, dear old Wooly."
"Did he know what you were?" She heard herself asking, before she'd given her mouth permission to open. There was a need, inappropriate and morbid as it was, to know more about this woman. About what drove her to do what she did, what drove Myka to tail her off the clock, with only her handgun as backup. A weapon that would do nothing against what was standing before her, behind the façade of a woman. "What you are?" Helena smiled and this time, Myka noted with surprise, it was sad. So different from those born of hunger and blood-lust, and indeed plain old lust itself.
"One of the very many few." And Myka didn't know how to respond to that one either. "I'm afraid it was his downfall in the end."
Helena Wells was an enigma. One dark and mysterious, and far too dangerous for anyone to even attempt to figure out. And yet here Myka was, exactly where she shouldn't be, once again engaging with the individual responsible for a string of deaths that had plagued the city as of late. Each victim had been a convicted criminal, with a rap sheet as long as Myka's arm and intentions as black and vile as river slime. They were despicable human beings, that was not something that Myka would argue, but she was a woman of the law. And they might have deserved what they'd gotten, but it wasn't how things should have ended for them. Then again, things rarely went to plan. Myka was not supposed to be here after all, deep within the beast's lair.
"You're intrigued by me." Helena spoke with an amused lilt weighting the timbre of her voice. "Most are," Myka's vision cleared and she watched the woman tilt her head thoughtfully in her direction. "But yours is different." Her tone became careful as she spoke the words, as though she were still calculating Myka's every infinitesimal gesture and the rise and fall of her chest. "You are different."
It wasn't so much that they were words Myka had longed to hear. From her friends, her father, her lovers. It was that she'd never had them directed at her and so she was entirely unprepared for the affect they would have. She'd never imagined them being delivered at all, hadn't dared, least of all from the mouth of a vampire.
"For most it is a passing interest." Helena continued, beginning to pace a slow circle around Myka, her eyes never drifting. "One that wanes as fear sets in and before I'd have time to draw breath, should I still need to, I'm being branded a monster and, inevitably, a hunt begins."
"Aren't you? Myka breathed, low and quiet, "A monster?" And Helena paused in her pacing for half a heartbeat. A suggestion of a smile hanging about her mouth as she spoke.
"We're not so dissimilar, you and I." Anger flared and Myka bristled at the implication, instinct kicking at her autopilot until it snapped into place.
"I'm nothing like you." Helena let out another laugh and Myka's eyes slipped closed as she found herself swallowing hard to suppress a shudder.
"Because I am a cold, unfeeling monster?" She asked, mockery lacing her voice. Helena clicked her tongue reprovingly and Myka felt the shame of another's disappointment flood her body, making her cheeks burn. How was this woman so easily capable of reducing her to a child? Something her father had seemed to luxuriate in, something she'd spent the last ten years of her life trying desperately to no longer allow him to do. And yet this virtual stranger was able to slip beneath her skin as easily one might slide a knife into butter. "You think we do not feel emotion?" And suddenly that stranger was behind her, close enough for Myka to feel cool lips brushing the nape of her neck. "Are not able to become angry?" Strong hands gripped her shoulders too hard and Myka let out a gasp of breath, but could not struggle against the hold as Helena's words came more harshly. "That we cannot mourn?"
She had been told, though she had not known how much stock to put behind the words, of how Helena had become what she was. The woman had painted a picture, grey and dreary but streaked with spots of sunlight, of Victorian England where she had lived over a century ago, with a brother and daughter. A brother that had claimed success from her ideas and a daughter that had been murdered by the man who had sired her. She had been bitten, then forced to watch as the man drained her child, made helpless by the venom that had been poured in to course through her veins. The venom that would ultimately change her. Helena had spoken of how that image, a despicable shell of a human being feasting on her daughter, had stayed with her. Had been burned into her memory with all the force and lasting effects of a branding iron. Had driven her to hunt the man responsible for half a century and ensure his demise be as slow and painful as possible. For there were many ways to torture a vampire.
And yes, they had talked. More than anyone in their positions should have talked. More than Myka should have allowed them to talk. Intrigue was a dangerous thing, especially in her line of work, and there was no doubt that she had been trained to know better. That her instincts should have told her better. She should have ended things before now, one way or another. But all her instincts did whenever she was in the vicinity of the other woman was argue loud enough that Myka could hardly think.
And now Helena was close enough to make thinking even more difficult, and it was so very hard to apprehend a shadow.
"Do you think us incapable of love?" Icy fingers brushed the exposed skin of Myka's shoulder before catching a curtain of curly hair and easing it back. Myka felt every muscle in her body contract, the contact dashing goosebumps over her flesh and raising the fine hairs on her arms and the back of her neck. Helena's body, though cold as snow and rigid as steel, seemed to melt against Myka, moulding to the contours of her back as she pressed close and sent a wave of heat through her. Green eyes slipped closed and a gasp escaped her as cool lips found the sensitive skin at the hollow of Myka's neck and deposited a gentle, near pressure-less kiss there. "That we cannot long for," with a breath of cool air, Helena flicked her tongue across the same spot, and it was only her half-hold on Myka's shoulders that stopped the woman's buckling knees from sending her to the floor. "And lust after?" A strangled groan was ripped from Myka's throat as the sharp points of Helena's fang scraped across the arch where her shoulder met her neck. It wasn't enough to break the skin, but angry red lines formed and raised in their wake.
"Please..." The word slipped out, as if tied to a line that was jerked without her consent. She didn't know what she was pleading for, nor did the woman who carefully extracted the gun from her grin before she wound an arm around Myka's waist to pull her closer. Her breath hitched, caught painfully in her throat, and then she found herself unable to release it as Helena's nose brushed the back of her ear.
"I can smell your fear." She whispered, voice low and sure, almost a purr. Helena's hand slid over the flat of Myka's stomach, smoothing her shirt in its descent, and did not stop even as Myka's body flinched and tensed. "Your arousal." Heat blossomed within Myka's chest, fanning outwards to all corners of her body as her eyes snapped open and she swallowed hard. She parted her lips, an argument along with a demand formed and ready to pass her lips. "You want this," Helena continued, her hand disappearing beneath the button-up to touch cold fingers to flushed skin as the one that had previously been holding her hair back now trailed the length of the taller woman's back. Myka gasped again. "But you're terrified of wanting it." Helena seemed to sway behind her, frigid hand splayed across warm skin. "Tell me, why is that?" Myka's head lolled back to rest against the shorter woman's shoulder as Helena's lips found her neck once more, and her confession came as a tremulous whimper.
"I'm afraid of you." And she was aware, as her stomach muscles twitched and jumped under Helena's resumed attention and her heart pounded in her chest – no doubt loud enough for the vampire to hear – that her words belied her reactions. Helena's nails raked across her trembling skin, sweeping low to skirt the hem of her jeans as her cool tongue licked a path of fire along the side of Myka's neck. Lips were once more at her ear and Helena panted as though she possessed the need to draw breath.
"I would never hurt you, Myka." The rise and fall of Myka's chest was deep and rapid alongside her breathing and she couldn't seem to lift her head. "Never you." Quite without her knowledge or permission, Myka's hands had come to rest on Helena's forearm, grip white-knuckled and unyielding, though whether or not it was a vein attempt to halt Helena's ministrations or simply an act she hoped would anchor herself would remain forever unclear.
"But those men..." she trailed off, the heavy breaths that punctuated each word eventually swallowing the remainder of the sentence as Helena's tongue flicked the lobe of her ear and then mapped its shell.
"Left a legacy of victims who demanded justice." Helena's hand slid upwards over toned muscles, traversing the plains of Myka's stomach with a burning ease. As slender fingers brushed the edge of her bra, Myka flinched.
"Stop." She whispered, breathless. "Please. I don't-" A growl at her back silenced her. Left her trembling and glassy-eyed.
"You do." Because somehow, Helena knew. Had gazed at her with burning black eyes and seen through everything that Myka tried to hide behind. Had seen her, a feat Myka herself had not accomplished in years.
And all at once, they were moving.
With blinding speed Helena danced them across the room, pressing Myka against the exposed brick wall and pinning her in place with firm hands against her shoulders, though she'd have needed little more than her gaze. The impact stole the air from Myka's lungs and, wide-eyed, she found herself unable to draw any back into her. A low and seemingly unending growl emanated from the shadow before her as Helena's hands drifted away from her shoulders and idly swept along Myka's neck until her cold hands were holding her face. Her touch was tender, inspiring a feeling of reverence, but her expression remained dark, wondering. Myka opened her mouth, perhaps to protest once more or simply to draw breath. She would be denied both.
Helena's mouth was cold, though her intensity was hot like embers that refused to die, and her kiss was harsh and demanding. Myka's lips parted instinctively, despite the unrelenting voice inside of her that desperately begged her to refuse, to find a way to stop this, but Helena's tongue pulled desire through her. Left it to pool between her legs. And Myka was helpless.
Helena slipped her fingers into Myka's curls, holding her head in place as she explored her mouth. Mapped its contours and swallowed the whimpers that attempted to escape. There would be no escaping.
Arms hanging limply at her side, Myka stood frozen as Helena's bruising kisses reddened her lips and stole her breath, mind blank save for how perfectly wrong it all felt. It stirred some absent part of her, garnering its attention long enough to coerce her hands up in an attempt to push the woman away, and then in all the time it took to blink Helena had Myka's arms stretched above her head, pinned at the wrists with a single hand.
And even with the knowledge of its wrongness repeating itself over and over in her mind, she couldn't stop herself from returning the kiss with a fervour that seemed as though it might consume her.
Helena let out a low purring growl from the back of her throat as she felt Myka begin to reciprocate and the frantic edge to her kisses ebbed slightly, though the forcefulness remained. A violent shudder tore its way along Myka's spine as Helena dragged the hand pinning hers along her arm and then took both of them over the plains of her neck and down across her torso, over her breasts and stomach, finally halting at the curve of her hips. She gripped them too tightly, tugging Myka forward until their hipbones touched, and then slowly she slipped her hands beneath the hem of the shirt Myka was wearing. Something in the touch forced Myka to wrench her mouth away, perhaps the chill of Helena's skin or the fire that seemed to pour from the contact, and she inhaled deeply. Her arms finally came down, resting atop the woman's shoulders.
The air about them felt thick and hazy, as though an invisible fog surrounded them. She took breath after breath in an attempt to calm the rapid beating of her heart, to regain some amount of composure, but Helena's lips were at her neck and rivers of desire had replaced the blood in her veins and there was no composure nor focus to be found.
"What are you doing to me?" She whispered, feeling drunk though she wasn't slurring her words. The kisses Helena was peppering along her neck were gentle, a far cry from the ones that had ravaged Myka's mouth. The fingers at her flesh traced lazy circles across her abdomen, jumping nerves pulling thread after thread of arousal through her.
"Nothing you don't want me to." And Helena's voice was so different. Reassuring, in a way. Soothing. And suddenly Myka had forgotten all about needing to be calm and composed and she was ducking her head to capture Helena's lips with her own for the first time.
The vampire surged, pressing Myka into the wall. She released a breath noisily through her nose, fighting for control of the kiss as Helena attempted to claim it as her own. But it was a fight that was not destined for any great length and her standing lost its footing as Helena's hands reached for the buckle of her belt and began to tug. Her tongue slid against a pointed tooth and she groaned as Helena became frustrated with the belt and simply ripped the leather in two, before yanking it out of the loops and tossing it blindly behind her. Myka broke the kiss, lips swollen and burning, and stared down the length of their bodies to watch deft fingers manoeuvre the silver button through its opening. She panted, transfixed and unable to catch her breath, and as she tilted her head back to rest it against the wall behind her, Myka was caught by eyes that reminded her of hot coals.
Helena was watching her. Gazing at her with an intensity that made Myka shiver. Her eyes were black, piercing, seeing right through Myka, sweeping over every inch of her. Soaking in even the things that Myka didn't want her to see. And Helena's stare never wavered as the sound of a zipper being inched down filled the air beneath their breathing. Or, Myka's breathing, to be exact. Heavy pants that could not be controlled.
"Tell me," Helena began, her words a low murmur as she leaned in to brush her nose across the pulse point at Myka's neck, "that you want this." Myka felt a chilled hand slip between the opening of her jeans and let her head fall back against the wall behind her.
"I do." She whispered, eyes searching the vaulted ceiling unseeing. Slim fingers grazed damp fabric and Myka's eyes clamped shut, fingertips digging, clawing at flimsy material. She was too hot, even with Helena's cold form bearing down on her, and she gasped for breath as the fingers touching her applied a slight pressure and trailed upwards.
"Tell me." It was a demand, one birthed from an unrelenting need to hear Myka speak the words. To force her to give in, admit that this was the real reason she'd been tailing Helena for weeks now, admit that she wanted it and much as Helena wanted to give it to her.
"I-" Her sentence was cut off by the feel of the other woman's fingers dipping below the waist band of her underwear, a movement that halted a half-second after Myka's words. Helena let out a growl and pressed her forehead against Myka's shoulder; she'd been too eager. Had barely managed to stop herself. Gently, she danced their tips across sensitive flesh and pressed cool lips to an exposed collarbone. Myka whimpered, and it was the sound of desperate resignation. Because she couldn't deny it any longer. The admission left her as a gasped whine. "I need this." And it sang in Helena's ears. "Please." And reminded her of just how hard her heart had been able to beat, once upon a time.
Then there was nothing in the entire world except sharp teeth scraping Myka's collarbone and cold fingers against searing heat.
In one seamless motion, Myka was simultaneously clutching the other woman's upper arm with one hand and gathering a fistful of hair black as sin in the other, attempting to hold Helena in place as her entire body went rigid. Her hips jerked forward, coming away from the brick wall at her back, and she mewled a moan as Helena chuckled darkly.
"Aren't we eager?" The question was whispered into her ear. Myka didn't answer, wouldn't take the bait, and although she valiantly attempted to remain silent, the feel of icy fingers sliding through her wetness was too much and the groan that left her was guttural at best. A growl, one that was matched. Her hips jerked again as Helena pulled her hand back, pressure firm as she dragged the length of her fingers over the tight bundle of nerves that sent pleasure through Myka that was so forceful it almost sent her to her knees. She tugged involuntarily at the hair in her hand, warring with the part of herself that wanted to yank the other woman away, but the grip she had on Helena's arm remained tight as quiet sounds of encouragement worked their way past the hold her teeth had on her lower lip. Helena clucked her tongue, disapprovingly. "You'll not be so silent long." She said, words dripping with promise and desire. And then Helena pressed her hand close again, the heel of it making brief but pointed contact with Myka's clit as she eased two fingers inside her. The pace of the motion was tortuously slow, the moan it pulled from Myka likewise, and Helena was like ice even after she'd held perfectly still for a few endless moments. Gasping at the feel of the woman's fingers, the want for more would not abate, and pressing a firm hand to an equally solid shoulder in order to steady herself, she rocked her hips forward against the hand buried inside her jeans. Helena's teeth grazed the lobe of her ear before her mouth surrounded it, tongue sweeping over the flesh to make Myka jerk and shiver. Her fingernails dug into the skin beneath the silk fabric at the vampire's shoulder, likely hard enough to draw blood from another, and Myka released her lip before she did herself a similar injury as the tip of a tongue traced the shape of her ear. She murmured something unintelligible that might have been a curse.
And then Helena began to move.
The shirt Myka was gripping tore as her hand slipped over and around the shoulder it had been braced against, the sudden and unexpected movement setting a fire low at the pit of her stomach that grew to an almost painful burn in half a heartbeat, but neither woman paid attention to the tear as Myka's arm slipped around a slender neck and pulled the woman already pressed against her closer still, eyes slamming shut.
"You feel incredible." Helena said, voice like velvet against Myka's ear, but she couldn't respond. Couldn't do anything but feel as cool air whispered against her cheek and cold fingers curled inside her in a way that made her see sounds and taste colours as they moved together. She panted, heaving breaths leaving her so rapidly she thought she might pass out, but there was no hope for controlling them. She could barely shift her hips, the hand in her jeans creating a too-tight pull, and eventually she stopped trying and gave herself over to the other woman. Helena seemed to sense the change, felt Myka's body still and the fingers in her hair grip harder, and another low rumbling growl sifted from her to stoke the already roaring inferno between them.
She uttered a moan, wanton and rolling and entirely befitting of a filthy late-night movie, as she felt lips at her neck once more and then Helena was sucking at the skin beneath her jaw line. And when she felt pointed teeth graze sensitive flesh, Myka tensed, an impossibly strong bolt of desire flashing like lightning behind her eyelids. Her mouth fell open and she drew in deep, shuddering lungfuls of air.
"I..." The rest of the sentence was ripped from her by a gasp as the tip of a tongue slid over the mark Helena had undoubtedly left. "I want..." She tried again, loosening the fingers she'd tangled in dark tresses only to fist them tighter and mutter, "I want it." The meaning behind the words wasn't clear at first, to either of them. Myka was barely aware she was speaking at all, let alone what her thought process was, and maybe some part of that was a defence mechanism, a way of dealing with desperately wanting something she knew she shouldn't. But when Helena's teeth had raked across her skin, the desire had overpowered her denial so completely, her mind was no longer willing to ignore. And she knew Helena could feel the persistence of her hand at the back of her head, holding the vampire close. Knew Helena had heard her spill her dark secret and like oil poured into water, it sat there, at the surface, refusing to dissipate.
Then with the phantom beating of a heart at her breast and a single kiss to the pale flesh at the junction of Myka's neck and shoulder, Helena's fangs pierced the skin like twin needles. The helpless woman pressed into the wall before her let out a cry of pain and dark eyes rolled and closed, as Helena's teeth sank deeper and disappeared behind her lips.
Fire raced through Myka's veins, lighting up her insides like a drug, making every inch of her ache with pain and ecstasy. Her brow furrowed and she fleetingly wondered whether the pain would ease, but no sooner had she thought it was it over and nothing but a dizzying, numbing pleasure remained. Heat seemed to pour out of the other woman's mouth, but Myka could still feel the cool touch of her lips and tongue, could feel the icy fingers between her legs drawing the fire down to curl in the pit of her belly. She shuddered until she thought she'd collapse, but Helena held fast, using her body and the wall to hold her up as she drank. Myka's head lolled until her temple rested against the side of the vampire face, fangs pulling at her skin in a way that made her gut clench, and she slid one hand along the length of Helena's arm until her fingers brushed a slim wrist and tight denim. And with a single-minded awkwardness, she squeezed her hand into the material and cupped her palm around Helena's as best she could, pressing the woman impossibly closer, deeper. Myka cried out again, feeling the warmth of her own blood trickling over her collarbone, and she angled her face towards the hollow of Helena's neck, wanting to bury herself in thick dark hair.
Myka's hips gave a few short thrusts, grinding down hard against the heel of Helena's hand as she felt the fingers inside her curl once more and then she was falling. Over an edge and into bliss, black as night and as breathtaking as a free-fall. She felt her entire body come alive as she crashed towards some assured demise, every nerve alighting at once as the indescribable waves of climax soared and washed over every inch of her skin. Sounds were wrenched from her, sounds that could have been words or perhaps a name, being repeated over and over without any sense of real clarity, she didn't know. Was conscious only of the woman who had taken such complete command of her body and the blackness that was rushing up to meet her.
Her skin buzzed like it was alive, the low hum of a million insects scurrying across her form. A few hundred felt as though they were pinching the muscles at her neck, but it only lasted a second, then the sensation was replaced by the cold press of ice against flame. Myka blinked against the lethargy pulling at her eyelids, dry mouth sucking in huge heaving lungfuls, and she opened her eyes onto a black silk curtain that brushed her lashes. She was trembling, could feel the utter lack of strength making her body heavy and limp, but a strong arm was around her, holding her steady. She shivered against the frigid shape pressed against her, feeling icy tendrils slither down through her body, easing the burn at the neck. The flat of a tongue pressed against the heated patch of skin and it took a moment for Myka's brain, fuzzed and lazy, to remember what had happened. She tried to lift her head but the muscles at her neck wouldn't work right and she shuddered again, clenching her hands – one gripping the wrist of a hand still buried between her legs, the other clinging to a shoulder – as the tongue darted out again. She could feel Helena licking every last drop of blood from her skin, easing one burn only to stoke another, and this time Myka did manage to raise her head as she felt an unbearable pang of desire get yanked through her again. Her gasp turned into a grunt half way through and, weakly, she tugged at the wrist her hand was clamped around. Helena pulled back from her neck only far enough to glance down between them and Myka could feel the heat of the other woman's smirk before she spied it in her periphery.
"But you're so warm." She protested, a teasing lilt to her thick accent. "I could stay inside you forever." But Myka tugged again, idly thinking that she'd die if Helena tried to make good on the threat, and eventually the woman yielded to her will and withdrew her hand. Myka whimpered, biting back the moans attempting to escape, and she released the wrist in favour of clinging to both shoulders as Helena eased her fingers out. Then Helena lifted her hand to her lips and Myka watched, transfixed, as she slipped those fingers into her mouth and closed her lips around them. Another pang of desire pulled at her, low in her gut, and she let out a shuddering breath as she tried to ignore it. "There's not an inch of you that isn't delectable." Helena announced, once she'd licked her fingers clean and rested her hand parallel to the other on Myka's opposite hip. The reminder made the wound at Myka's neck pulse and she was suddenly aware of the blood that had trickled down along the side of her throat and over her collarbone, making her skin feel tight as it began to dry. Absently, as though she was in a dream, she lifted a hand and traced a fingertip around the wound at her neck, wincing as a brief flash of pain stabbed at her and rocketed along her spine. Helena hummed aloud as she watched Myka's fingers move over her marks. "The pain will ease." She promised, tone surprisingly light and airy when compared with what it had been earlier.
"But the marks," two small holes, round and perfect, "they'll stay." It wasn't quite a question, though it lingered close. Helena tilted her head, regarding Myka with her piercing black gaze.
"They will." She confirmed after a moment, eyes narrowing at the corners, and Myka could feel the woman searching her face for a reaction.
"People will see." And she spoke, voice hoarse, as though she were talking herself through the clue of a case, through some puzzle that she knew her brain would better comprehend if she gave voice to the things piling up inside her head. "They'll see and someday they'll put it all together and they'll know. What you... what I let you do." Slowly, Helena nodded. Myka swallowed, then extended the fingers of a hand to brush against the pale expanse of a cool neck. And the motion, tiny and lacking any kind of significance at the surface, seemed threaded with an unspoken meaning that neither woman completely understood, but that both of them heard. And Myka might have come there looking for something entirely different to what she'd found, but now she had it she wasn't about to let go.
Helena wasn't a monster, of that Myka was certain.
She was something else entirely.