Author's note: I may have gotten inspired listening to a certain song. ^^

The mornings were always… Surreal, I suppose. I'd wake up to a bed so soft I always thought I must still be asleep or dead, because such a thing surely couldn't exist in the real world.

The scents always came next. Vanilla and sandalwood from the candles that so often burned in the room. Mint-smelling shampoo and something sickeningly sweet and flowery sold at extravagant rates and supposedly called perfume.

And sex. The scent of it lingered on the sheets, in the air, and on my own skin.

I grunted and, with no other recourse available to me, blinked my eyes open.

Weiss Schnee lay on her stomach next to me, face turned towards me. Her eyes were still closed, her breathing slow and steady. Asleep, she did not look like much. The haughty lines of her face were muted, softened, when her expression was slack.

My gaze travelled down the slender line of her back, the muscle beneath her ivory skin just barely visible where she lay relaxed.

I loved the mornings and like all things I loved, I knew they wouldn't - couldn't - last. So there I lay, desperately clawing at the fabric of a dream that poured through my fingers like water.

"Blake?" Her voice was soft, tentative and the word, my name, the one piece of candor she'd ever offer me. Whether she said it in that stern tone of voice whenever I annoyed her or cried it out in pleasure, it always rang true. Every other word was full of subtext, double-speak and half-truths.

"Yes?"

"You're still here." The words were slurred with sleep, but still carried both an accusation and a question in their intonation.

"I am," I confirmed, moving in closer and draping myself across her naked back. "Do you wish I weren't?"

"Frequently," Weiss murmured.

I kissed her between the shoulder blades and she shivered. The corner of her mouth turned up in a smirk and her crystalline blue eyes sparkled.

That was what vexed me most about Weiss. It didn't matter how much I told myself I was in control. It didn't matter if I had Weiss pressed up against a wall, or down onto silken sheets, or if the heiress lay trussed up with lengths of my ribbons about her wrists.

Weiss never officially made the first move but she knew how to play me like a violin, plucking at the strings until I made precisely the move she wished for me to make.

It had been true that first time, years ago, when lingering looks and slow suggestive smiles had been enough for me to follow Weiss to her hotel room and it was enough for me to crawl up to Weiss and give her precisely what she wanted. Just like a good, obedient dog.

It made my stomach twist with revulsion and yet I could not move away.

I hated Weiss Schnee. I hated everything she was and everything she stood for in this world and yet, despite all that… I loved her.