Chapter 2

His listening devices had yielded small bits of information and one gratifying conversation. After Shepard had taken Thane and Garrus out to help Garrus commit a gutting of the underworld community in the Citadel and a public headshot taken in a crowd, crude and bloody, Shepard had returned to speak to Garrus and receive his effusive thanks for committing a personal murder.

Thane had not commented, listening to the callous team bicker and bite and intimidate, things they did every day.

It had affected Garrus, but not Shepard. She was supportive, but dismissive. It was done, she didn't care as long as he had his head on straight, eyes forward to look through crosshairs and not back at a past that had sunk its teeth into him.

From what he had gathered, they had done this once before, a doctor named Saleon. Perhaps Garrus got a murder with each campaign. Odd, this escalation away from Garrus's natural state of mind. He wondered if Shepard was purposely turning him, corrupting him away from his personal ideals, adopting hers while she fanned the sycophantic flames. Garrus was good at murder and if she gained that level of loyalty from two specific bodies hitting the floor under her guidance and approval, it benefited her, not him.

It was a brutal mirror of Thane's own training, the Hanar having enticed him with duty, discipline and the Gods. Garrus was enticed by duty, vengeance and righteousness.

Garrus told a roundabout, somewhat stammering story, ending with "We, ah, ended up holding a tiebreaker in her quarters. I had reach, but she had flexibility. I guess there's more then one way to blow off steam."

There it was, Garrus's awkward and obfuscated advance toward his Siha. Had Thane compared his pace to glacial before? Perhaps backward. A receding glacier. He felt acutely sorry for Garrus, a deep unbidden thrum of pity for the hulking and lethal Turian dropping gentle, almost courtly hints to the woman who had stood aside so he could make a headshot hours earlier.

Had she accepted Garrus it would be merely information. She could sleep her way down and back up the manifest of the Normandy and half of Ilium's dancers and Thane would not care. She could do as she pleased. He predicted she might attempt to do so to escape the unwanted call of tiremit in her blood. It would be the most obvious course of action for her to take, reclaiming her own power, proving she did not need him. When the dramatic impulse had no effect on him she would sigh, shrug at her lost campaign and lean to his skin again with that need clear in her eyes.

She could even find other Drell, she would not be drawn, seen or served so well. This he knew as Rightness. When she realized her pride, possession and power would evoke no surge of jealousy or anger in him, the waste of time would become clear to her and the action itself would lose its novelty. Even if it did not and she persisted it did not matter what she asked of other people. It only mattered that she could draw any number of people to her, but she would measure them all against his hands, his mouth, and the potential of what his body could give her, and find them wanting. It would only add shade, context and texture to the emerging picture.

He had expected his Siha to perhaps take Garrus up on his offer, twist him about a new finger, but she had only sounded distracted as he finished his story and said "Huh. Hey, I've been wondering. You ever fuck a Drell?"

To Garrus's credit, he only hesitated briefly and then began his careful shoring up of his position after his exposure. "What? No. Turian females only." Whether true or not it had sealed up the rift of his clumsy approach, she having not noticed at all and the exclusion of human females from his menu distinct if forlorn.

Garrus, she would shred your plates into mulch and leave you bleeding. More than she already has.

Garrus had continued "Why, have you?"

Shepard had answered "Nah. But I'm thinking about it."

She's thinking about it a great deal.

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His concern had ratcheted into alarm as he realized that Samara was truly sending his Siha to seduce an Ardat Yakshi. It was an unbearable risk, exposing her not only to physical danger, but overwhelming biotic power, psychic devastation and potential agonizing death that would seem like eternity of torture, against which she had no defense.

His Siha had left Garrus on the Normandy the first time they'd gone back out after killing Sidonis. This time it was to help Samara. It was perhaps to protect Garrus from exposure being risked on Omega. It was perhaps that his Siha was slowly shifting to favoring Thane in missions, having gone from Garrus as escort of another team member to Garrus and Thane together, to Thane and another member now.

Samara and Shepard had practically forgotten his existence and he encouraged that impression by remaining out of sight.

Upon meeting his Siha he had believed that he would not have to fear for her and that had been a rash conclusion. She had appeared more vulnerable to him with each replaying of her face when she watched him, her voice as she pulled away and tried to leave with balance intact. Her original harsh nature that was his first impression was not gone, but her humor, her dedication and her courage made him more aware of her as a person and not a legend. Her pride drove her to believe that she could do anything, and the unfortunate reality was that if she did not do it, nobody else would try. Samara, a Justicar and Matriarch in full power and full understanding, had sought her daughter for 400 years and had failed and had asked a human of no biotic talent to counter centuries of hunting instinct.

It was not to be tolerated, but his hands were absolutely tied, unable to interfere, unable to pull her aside and tell her to let this go. Samara was bound to her will and bound to follow. Order her to follow, Siha. Or convince her that when the Reapers wiped out all life, Morinth would be included.

His Siha was not ruthless enough, he had come to discover. Not enough for his taste, not enough to protect her from this new insanity.

He had never commanded loyalty such as she did, and this was her courage in action, taken on behalf of others, those who had asked personally for solutions they could get nowhere else.

Perhaps this was the day of his testing, the day he gave his life for hers. There had been no clearer signpost of danger that was stacked in the dark to swallow her.

He hovered around her with the allied silence and dark as she drew Morinth in with hints of danger, as though her face did not telegraph it enough to have Morinth be drawn, just as he had been, to each curving line carved down to glowing essence.

There were three women to contend with here if he interfered, Samara's sharp eyes, Morinth's unknown wrath and his Siha's anger. He promised himself that he would risk all of those things given an opportunity, and he would watch the signs. He would not allow her death. He would substitute himself, provide a distraction.

It was a blessedly short encounter and he was grateful to hear his Siha's gritted tones stating "I'm not the victim you were hoping for."

Blessings of Arashu for the gift of his Siha's fortitude.

He'd been able to remain behind but not far from whatever choices he might be forced to make. Samara took her daughter's life and his heart resumed its normal, slow beat with only a fine wash and pressure of anger at Samara and at his Siha in particular, rash, reckless…Shepard thing to do.

It had cost her and he knew it upon seeing her. She was pale and drawn, but defiant before Samara and as unyielding as she had been before the Ardat Yakshi's compulsion. Her skin showed lines of colorless translucent flesh at the edges of her scars. She was standing but barely and he must think quickly.

He moved to lift Morinth's body and then transferred her weight to Samara and said softly "Justicar, your code must be followed." He left it to Samara to formulate what that meant and for his Siha to infer some greater knowledge regarding Asari culture that he did not possess. Samara was silent and grieving, and left with Morinth's body to finish her journey of centuries, the poison of her hopes in the form of this broken monster that whispered death to those she willed to hear her. He and Morinth were perhaps not all that different.

With the correct women alive at the end of this ill-advised debacle he counted on both of them being too exhausted and preoccupied to notice that his words and actions, though not phrased that way, were commands.

When the door had closed he locked it and returned to his swaying Siha, who watched simply because her eyes were pointed that way, not comprehending why Samara left. He gave her no words, but he gave her his arms, lifted her and sat on the couch with her on his lap until she realized she was safe, until the shaking of what she had just experienced was able to travel through her limbs without danger of being seen by any but him. Her head was against his chest, his arm protectively around her back. He held her hand through it, her fingers clasping his again as though he were her salvation.

His breath was calm, hoping to influence the course of her own over time, his pace measured as was his habit, but pressured by the knowledge that this was not the greatest of her testings and if he had hoped to fulfill his duty to trade a life for hers, the unknown impulses of this reckless Siha would be strewn out in his path like caltrops.

Her breath returned to her, paced to his, and they sat in silence. In all the paths and possibilities open to them, this was a quiet, shaded spot, nothing required but to breathe. It required no allure, no venom, no expectation of outcome.

He was acutely sympathetic to difficulties breathing.

Her silence in the still places in herself was a comfort, as though they watched a sunset and relied upon each other to see it for themselves for what it was.

When she'd recovered she looked at him speculatively, the hard and cold returning to her eyes. She could have done anything in that moment. She gave no indication of her mood or her intentions. She appeared to come to some decision, stood, and returned to the Normandy, leaving him to follow or not, she did not look back.

He followed.

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He saw his plans shatter, fall and fail with the arrival of a notification.

Kolyat was on the Citadel and attempting to follow in the footsteps he had deemed invisible.

His stealth had failed him. It had before, of course it had, most often early in his career before his experience and timing had improved and his learned patterns had made it easier. It was that feeling, of failure, of exposure, of revealed lethal plans and intent, of being a sudden target of opportunity. Blood rushed to his face and the cold shock of things not being as they should be to a deadly degree washed over his skin and echoed down his spine.

Several disorienting facts made their presence known distinctly like aimed lightning on the horizon, distant but nearing and unavoidable.

He had thought his son free from his influence, he had thought Kolyat the son of his mother, a child of her temperament and ambition. He had been blind to the son Irikah had brought into the world. Thane had assumed Kolyat would grow up as Irikah intended, a harmless life, a useful life of small things and great kindnesses.

Fate or circumstance, genetics or choice or all four in any combination had brought Kolyat to this brink because of Thane's failings as a father, as a person, even as an absent hole in Kolyat's life. This hole had been the last legacy he had left to his son and Kolyat was about to dive through.

To find his father. To lose himself. To chase the meaning that Thane had chased.

Thane closed his eyes. He had thought that his son would live buoyantly unattended…

A delicacy merchant in the mountains…

That thing that Thane had avoided. Thane would have been able to learn new skills, could have begun over with his family as his main goal, with continued life the intent. The pain, the pride, the anger that Kolyat must feel to be doing this. No longer a boy. A man. Kolyat was a man, making a choice of a man, without a man's training or even a boy's training. Kolyat would die or live convinced this work was for him, that he was a legacy, until the work ended him.

Thane had no choice, this divergent path not merely a distraction but a glowing sign post of imminent catastrophe. Thane had had nobody in his life to tell him that the training, the orders and the discipline were a slow-trap poison, not glory. It was an addiction, judgment failing and courage bolstered. Thane imagined Kolyat with his breath stolen suddenly, through injury, through death, through Kepral's Syndrome being genetic, all the sins of the father passed to the son through neglect and ignorance.

In the end, Thane knew only death, borrowing from Irikah's life spark to create a son. Thane had been a sinking weight on his son's spirit, dragging him down to battle sleep in the only act of sympathy he had remaining to him.

It was unforgivable, inexcusable that Thane had brought this to pass with his choices. He had been the death of his wife. He would not be the death of his son.

Thought like a prayer rose not to Gods but to Irikah. Her death had been too great of a burden and he had turned his face from where her light once had been.

Forgive me, Irikah.

He dearly needed her forgiveness, her guidance, to save a life that concerned her. Not for his own sake, but for Kolyat's.

Forgive me, Irikah.

Show me the path to the mountains where people live without such burdens as I have forced upon our son in negligence. Show me the way your feet moved on that path. Show me the path to our son. I thought him your son, but he is our son and I need your assistance.

He needs us.

Forgive me Irikah.

He felt torn open, that hard internal shell cracked and begging that some of her light could penetrate and give him the inspiration he would need.

He finally understood what Irikah had wanted for Thane, what she had wanted for their son, what she had wanted of their life together. Peace. An unburdened soul. He had not understood it as it applied to him, it had been too late for him by the time he had met Irikah. Redemption was not so easily bought, inactivity not enough to light his soul. Despite being surrounded by peace none of it had penetrated or become his nature. His nature had been persistent enough to block out the light, to squander the opportunity to begin again on a new path. Instead he had clung to pride. Pride he had been taught by Hanar masters to whom his race owed their lives, to whom his parents had given him. He had been a child of tribute, asked to shoulder the debt of a people that could never be repaid.

Thane was not certain how many choices he'd ever had after taking his first life. It would be comforting to feel that he had been an innocent tool, but that would not account for how good he was at it. That would not account for him embracing that he was gifted and courting the attendant silent power with the devotion of a lover.

No life together with others in the light could ever compete with who he was alone in the dark.

Years of believing he was only a body and only a tool had repelled remorse, guilt and responsibility. To follow the light would be to feel all of those horrors whole and dripping with personal meaning. He had marveled at Irikah's light, unable to duplicate it in the same way that a man without hands could not make fire. He had known it was not her fault, that the respite she offered him was borrowed and not inherent.

Now he clung to the undistorted, clear vision of her. Thane need not be part of what created the light himself. He would remind Kolyat of his mother. He would set his feet on the path of light to reach him. To hope.

He would take halting and graceless steps in the light rather than allow his son to set foot deeper into the darkness where he would discover his father to be powerful, graceful, and an unrepentant monster who squandered all gifts granted him if they led away from his own selfish will.

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His Siha had come to find him. He was sitting as he had for countless hours over days, hands steepled, attempting mediation. He wanted to calm his mind, but ordered thought had eluded him. At the next destination he would have decisions to make and he was contemplating his options.

His Siha pulled the chair out across from him, reversing it and sat in it backward and steepled her own hands, reflecting his position.

She looked at him for long appraising moments, her eyes unreadable and then said evenly "Krios, you have a problem."

She sounded definite, not guessing. Alarm pricked the back of his neck.

She said flatly "Nothing goes unencrypted on or off of this ship."

His face gave her no failing, it was possible she was testing him.

Her face was unreadable for a steep moment of suspense. She said conversationally "You like information, I like information. I know you have a few bugs up. They're just like the bugs I found, you didn't bring them with you. Seems you just took an opportunity to use them. You've done nothing about it and have sent no information to anybody, on or off this ship. Your son is about to die and you are meditating, or trying to. Since you haven't told me, you may be considering taking the shuttle and leaving, ditching at the next port or allowing your son to die. Asking for help…is not our strong suit."

He continued to look at her, not a ripple on his face. He had not decided yet, but he also had not discounted those options. The word "our" disentangled itself from the rest of her words, the vertiginous conversation adding a jangling buzzing to his internal considerations, the sure knowledge of having underestimated her brightly backlit, transforming the landscape.

She clasped her hands together and leaned her chin on them, looking at him with intent eyes. Not hostile. Intent.

The sense of being filleted and laid open to the bone and the unbearable vulnerability of it triggered stillness out of necessity and the urge to kill her at the same time. She was so close and it would be so easy…and that was of course the point. The chore of accurately estimating her seemed beyond his current ability, but the arrogance of thinking killing her was 'easy' would be in error. She appeared relaxed, but if biotics, weapons or violence erupted from his body he would reap point blank merciless death from her scything wrath.

He thought for a moment, wondering if he should simply seek that wrath and let that cut the knot he faced cleanly.

It could be over in moments.

Nihilistic thoughts were not new to him, had increased in intensity since Irikah, since his diagnosis, and he had gotten accustomed to brushing them aside, knowing that each day brought opportunities for death. He need not heed them. He need not seek death at her hands. He still…understood her. She still had not killed him, understanding his methods if not his motivations clearly. She had given him enough rope to hang himself and he had not fashioned a noose from it.

Not yet.

She had him, and she was curious. He'd attracted her attention far too well. Had she wished him dead it would be the same as when he wanted others dead. No warning. No chance to resist. So she didn't demand his death, though he could still provoke it. A more honest person would have assumed him a traitor at the discovery of his bugs, but she understood and was testing her theory.

The first spread of warmth he'd experienced since he'd last touched her or seen her face in an unguarded moment began to slide into his veins. She was magnificent. Her eyes grew warm as he said "What do you suggest, Commander?"

A quirk of a smile lit her lips and the potential death was dismissed from her face and the lines of her body. She said "I like your style, Krios. I really do. Now ask me for help."

He said calmly "It appears my son is in need of rescue and subsequent guidance. Would you help me, Commander?"

Her smile grew warmer and wider and she said "I like the sound of you owing me a favor."

He said with more truth than had been there before "You can command whatever favors you choose."

She said "Oh, I know."

She was not angry, she was amused. He perversely wanted that kiss with her head bent back.

Now.

He'd damn this woman to the depths for toying with him if she didn't already rule there.

Something must have shifted in his face, something he did not know gave him away, but she unerringly noticed…something…or decided she'd insert her own something. Making this woman want him was not something he should have undertaken. Regret unspooled quickly, the spinning sensation intensifying when she raised herself up to stand, then leaned forward on her hands, then lifted one knee to the table, then the other, and she crawled toward him.

The cacophony in his head died down and the needs of the moment clarified. She wanted him. He wanted her. Yes, he wanted to break her neck, but at least first, at least once, he wanted to make it bend to him again. Bend forward, bend back, have his hand there as she drew her breath in against a moan.

He watched her eyes and then the curve of her body back to her hip, down her thigh. He felt the habitual urge to want to warn her against him, as he might any other woman, as he felt he needed to warn every living creature that might stray this close. He was freed by the knowledge that he needn't warn her, that she would laugh. Her lips were curved into a smile and he relaxed his shoulders. He reached out a hand and caressed her throat, finding the carotid with his thumb, feeling the blood rush, her heart beat, his fingers curl around the back of her neck. She closed her eyes and leaned into his touch and her heartbeat intensified against the pad of his thumb. He lifted another hand to the other side of her throat, his thumbs finding and caressing the channels that bore her life. Her breasts were pressed together between her supporting arms on the edge of the table.

She leaned forward into his hands with a deliberate, slow shift in her balance. He was moments from the bursting shock of wanting to kill her. Perhaps she didn't truly care and she was never out of danger for long enough in her life to heed it when carefully courted opportunity presented itself. Perhaps the danger was why she courted the opportunity at all.

Darkness fell as he closed his eyes. Her lips touched his, her quickening heart measured through his fingertips. Her kiss was reserved, restrained from her prior kiss, tempting and light. She was rubbing her lips on his, not tasting. Rubbing her nose against his skin, around his mouth, back again to her lips on his again, slowly, until the pace of his breathing caught and rose faster at the sensation of her mouth, just her warm soft skin on his. His fingers slid to support the line of her jaw with his thumbs as she leaned in closer, dependent on his hands to keep her in place with her lips on his. His other fingers moved through her hair. Her head tilted and her tongue probed at his lips, but not to taste, to open, to touch his tongue with her own. She made a sound of encouragement and pleasure, a long 'mmmm' that vibrated against his lips as her tongue reached for his, a human kiss, bypassing venom, seeking human pleasure.

Finding it. He found pleasure in the beat of her heart, the weight of her trust and the bond of being seen, being known and being wanted by this woman for all the revealed things he had been trained to hide.

She must have venom in her system from her skin, from her tongue, but she didn't seek that. She took care to show she did not want him merely for that. That gesture was unexpected and piercing in its clarity. How much he wanted her burst through him like water tumbling over a cliff, free to fall with gravity, not knowing what would be at the bottom and not caring.

His fingers tightened in her hair and he tilted her face further, the kiss deepening and a purely feminine moan vibrated on his lips and he was lost to the touch of her mouth and feel of her tongue on his, timeless, anticipated as a transcendent memory. She had freed him from prediction, from control, from being the only person in a room aware of the room in the way he was.

His knowledge of being hard and shattered, broken and failing, scheming and ineffective, she cut through it all, brushed it aside to show him that he could have value. To her, and nobody else mattered. She kissed him and he learned ardently how to kiss a human, long strokes of her tongue, gentle brushes of her lips, the edges of her teeth, twists of her head, pressure and slide of skin on skin, unhurried, all with his hands on her head, her hair tangled in his fingers.

She pulled her head back with a smile creating the shape of her red eyes, incongruous and fleeting, to be savored.

She said lightly "I changed course to the Citadel days ago. We will go get Kolyat tomorrow."

His thumbs whispered along the line of her jaw, his fingers stroked her throat, entranced. He nodded, once, as slow and gentle as her mouth had been on his, his own lips in a reflection of her smile.

She turned her head, nudged at his hand until he moved it and she pressed her lips to the center of his palm.

She slid herself off the table with a shift of her body and a shove of a hand, no backward glance as she said "I should go."

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She brought Garrus with them to the Citadel to Thane's relief. Garrus was ex C-Sec and the situation had been resolved with C-Sec's help. More clearly, by pressuring and lying to C-Sec while obtaining their information and assets. Thane could not have managed such a discussion, such a rearrangement of authority, facts and favors on his own.

At the word of Commander Shepard, no longer even a Spectre, she created her own options and authority.

He experienced being helped when he needed it most, when prayers to Amonkira and his own stealth alone would have resulted in Kolyat's death.

He experienced true and not forced or false humility and gratitude for the first time, and her bluff and brutality had brought it to him.

Simply given.

Kolyat, defiant and vulnerable, would be safe under the watchful eye and brusque but honest support of Bailey.

A weight had been lifted from the unmeasured darkness that swathed him and it was significant enough to feel. It was significant enough to allow light, purpose and even hope. Not perhaps for himself, but enough to hope for his son, a hope he hadn't felt connected to before, a hope he hadn't felt responsible for sustaining.

She hadn't come to see Thane since returning to the Normandy and his itching impatience to see her drove him to the focused point of remembering who he was considering, and then he knew.

He had been distracted, he had been foolish. He must correct that immediately.

He said "EDI, where is Commander Shepard?"

EDI stated "Commander Shepard is in her cabin."

He replied "Thank you, EDI."

EDI responded "You are welcome. Is there anything else you require?"

He stated "No."

There was nothing else he required but synthesizing from what he already knew.

He had considered breaking into her cabin because that was who he was, but it was not who she was. He would be caught in any attempt to infiltrate or gain access through subterfuge and she would know it.

He would fail. She would make sure of it.

Therefore…

He was on his feet and in the elevator before the thought had crystallized, but once it had he became more certain of the Rightness.

She had caught him with the bugs, had informed him but not penalized him. The bugs had been gone after the disclosure. She did not want that avenue open to him. She had established that she had full and absolute authority over the ship and that meant…

He had thought that his Siha would not grant permission, and that was true, but she would grant opportunity for him to use what he knew of her. She would give him something that would be so far beyond his expectation that it likely would not have occurred to him unless he thought about her methods and not his own.

When he arrived he reached out his hand to the biometric indicator that guarded access to her door…and it opened. He wondered how long it had been this way, with her waiting for him to discover it, or not discover it, according to his own guile, possibly exhausting all other means of access and not considering this one…having failed her test. Only she could allow him access, only she could tell EDI to allow him entry. It was the only way.

He took in the floor plan, the space automatically, finding her at her desk. She looked at him and threw aside her Datapad, and said "I was wondering if you were ever going to figure that out, I've been waiting for a week and –"

He crossed to her and pulled her into his arms, distilled need, gratitude and lust in his eyes, admiration for this woman invested in his mouth, in his hands. He kissed her as he had imagined, one hand gripped in her hair, his mouth on hers and an arm tight around her waist until her feet were off the floor and she was bent back. A harsh sound of approval growled in his throat at the feel of her breasts against his chest.

He held her as he had wished, and he shifted her head to press her mouth to the side of his throat. Her lips glided against his skin, skimming the metal torque that rested there, warming it with her breath. She traced the curve of it with her tongue. He drew in and released several unsteady breaths, coping with the changes in his mind and heart, in his blood, the overwhelming urges to crush her, devour her, please her, this easy and thorough acceptance of him by her pressed in tight against her antithetical nature.

He realized it was her nature. If she was going to do something, she would do it fully, entirely and damn the consequences. If her chosen lover was intending to kill her, she'd simply deal with it when and if that happened, otherwise abandoned to the sensation each moment provided.

The freedom and power that flooded him drove his hand to press her mouth tighter to his throat as he tilted his head back. A God could have compelled her, but never this fully. He could and had manipulated her, but she owned the result, turning it back on him with seemingly little effort.

An understanding of folded and flashing love, lust and need spiraled in him, and he chose which ones to express in blended colors and intensities.

Her hands were gripped on the edges of his jacket, her mouth slow and savoring on his skin. He imagined briefly she had done some research, taking it slower. He tilted his head down to kiss the top of her head, the still new and stranding-silk texture of her hair in his hands and on his lips. An impossibly delicate thing to be a part of her, like her eyes, bright with the ornamentation of her life. His arm around her waist shifted to lower her to the ground, pull her shirt from the band of her pants and slide his hand along her back. He explored the line of her spine, the shifting and splitting rays of her scars under his fingertips. The lines had visibly deepened since he'd first seen her, stitching her choices to her skin. She had texture, life and experience shot through her skin.

He was painfully and sharply aroused, the lack of venom in his system a revelation and not a loss. He knew what that would give him and that was his past. His present gave him new gifts, things he needed, things he hadn't known to want. He was under no spell for the first time during sex, and she was under it for the first time. He could pour whatever he needed to give her into her, pull whatever he wanted from her.

He pulled her head back by her hair, a soft protest from her mouth. Tiremit still pulled at her, and he wanted her that way, hungry and seeking, helpless and blurred. He knew what she must see, his head framed in halos of pulsing light of shifting colors. He covered her hands with his own and pulled them from his jacket with another frustrated whimper from her, and he discovered he adored that sound from her throat, from her lips. Sliding heat and the need to torture and taunt her grew, setting a slow pace he would never manage under tiremit. Gathering her wrists behind her in one hand, a blade bloomed in his other hand, or so it would appear to her. He backed her up until she was sitting on the edge of the desk, his hand holding her wrists flat to the desk. He pressed the flat of the blade, tip pointing up at the hollow of her throat and then turned it and pulled it down, the edge grazing but not cutting into skin, aware of her shallow breathing and compensating for potential movement. He cut a slit down her shirt until he could spread the edges back over her shoulders.

He lowered his head to the hollow of her throat and kissed there, his tongue tasting the indentation and the surrounding swells of her collarbones. He pressed in and up with his head until her head had fallen back under the suggestion of force from him. His hand tightened on her wrists and then loosened, approval implied. He straightened to see what he and her body had wrought. She was scarred everywhere, her nipples spared but her breasts with the circling and branching rays of color, her breasts rising and falling with her strained breathing. He lifted a breast with his hand and lowered his mouth, digging his fingers into the indents of her scars, knowing venom would penetrate faster through the rifts. He discovered new sounds from her, new movements and shifts of her body, things he wanted from her. He used his teeth on her nipple, velvet under his tongue. Her body was soft, giving, the texture of flower petals scarred with lightning strikes under his mouth and fingertips. He bit gently and then not so gently, little sheeting points of pain that made her moan and wrap her legs around his hips, dragging his body in closer to rub the searing heat between her legs against his cock.

He pulled her to her feet and let go of her wrists, her body tense, her voice wound up to strangled incoherencies, wondering what she would do with that coiled spring. He dropped his own hands to his sides and watched her as she wriggled frantically out of the rest of her confining clothes, discarding them, and attacked his clothing, without his help. He watched her avid inaccuracies as she fought through blurring senses to reveal his skin. Not knowing how to remove his torque she had tugged and frustrated, left it, focusing on the stiff and uncooperative foreign-textured leather that covered his skin. She removed his clothing with the minimum of assistance from him, a shift or a lean as she struggled using hands and even teeth. Finally when she was finished with even the shoes, she was panting, triumphant, on her knees and his view was of that impossibly fine hair and her shoulders, hips, the curve of her ass. His hands moved to stroke through her hair and she leaned in with her lips against his cock, a hungry moan from her mouth felt through him in vibration and heat. An answering groan from his mouth caused her breath to hitch in soft sound of almost laughter, shot through with blurry lust. His hand tightened in her hair, moving along with the rhythm she set, her hands on the insides of his thighs, tracing skin texture overlaps and gliding in exploration and embrace.

She licked at him with the intensity of seeking and giving pleasure, able to control the tiremit rushing through her again, her frantic energy slowing to savoring. He watched, breathing hard and sinking through howling lust and power over her. He loosed a velvet-steel growl from his throat and used his hands and hips to thrust harder, deeper into her throat, the sheen of sweat growing on her ecstatic face. His cock was a deep blue-green against the swollen red of her lips, the involuntary gag and swallow when he thrust too deep and didn't stop, but sped up, pulling at her hair and demanding the tight, convulsive embrace of her throat until the effort showed on her face, sweat and tears, a constant moaning interrupted by the blocking of her air. He shifted his hands to mimic where his hands had been when she'd kissed him in Life Support, thumbs at her carotids, hands curled around the back of her throat, pressing to make her lightheaded, angling her head down until her teeth were scraping his cock. He came down her convulsing and welcoming throat, straining against her moans as she swallowed.

He bent his head to watch his bleary-eyed and tear-swimming Siha. He withdrew from her sheltering mouth and pulled her to her feet, lifting her easily in still-strong arms, her head back against his shoulder. She was dizzy, replete with tiremit and ravishing in flushed skin, mussed hair and reddened lips.

He lowered her carefully to the bed and stood, surveying her full body as she reclined with her eyes closed, venom and sex softening her features and delivering her cooperation into his tingling palms.

The control was not an illusion, but it would be fleeting, and he would press his advantage, have her every way he wished, discover the things that would please her, learn her gasps and moans, learn the arch of her body under him, the rise of her body above him.

He lowered his body on top of hers, matching his lips to hers and entwining his fingers with hers, the hands she so favored in her grasp. He kissed her until the pace of her breathing escaped her again, and then he kissed down along her body, gliding his tongue along the line of each scar he encountered. Battle scars and character scars, the story of her skin, her secrets.

His right hand let go of hers and then glided along the curve of her waist, her hip, skimming along her skin until he reached between her thighs, eyes on her face. Gentle, sweet grazing along the lines that parted for him, her knee pulled to the side languidly with a sigh, allowing his fingers wider entry. Her hand twisted and gripped his, so he kept his fingers twined with hers, nudged his shoulder under her cast-aside knee and brushed his tongue over her clit as she gripped harder and she whispered his name in entreaty.

He could not take her burdens, but he could loosen and then release her from her mind, and he could do the same for himself. He was blessed in his memory, he would have each sigh, each twist of her for as long as he was himself. She would be drawn back and back again to him, and that knowledge was as exquisitely powerful as the taste of her under his tongue.

There was no tiremit for him, but touching her brought on a sense of dream, of wanting, needing to know everything about her, create and chase her pleasures, find his own. Her skin held more heat than his. She was wet, open and straining her calf on his back, her knee flexing and pressing him closer. He curved his fused finger and slid it inside her, her hips coming off the bed until he pressed her back down with his mouth. Her thigh began to tremble, but that would not be enough, he needed her to come entirely apart, racked with shuddering. He licked at her, stroking her with his fingers until the sounds she made were rhythmic, building, begging. He stopped, kissed the inside of her thigh, stilled his fingers and her grip tightened on his hand until he felt his fingers would break.

You may break that hand, Siha, I do not need it for this.

He did the same a second time, her frustrated sounds turning into the relaxed, trembling cadence of her body, a second build, and he stopped again.

She was silent for the third time, but he knew she couldn't control what he was really after. She kept herself from begging and gripped his hand, but as his mouth worked at unpredictable pace small moans and harder trembles broke through as she got closer, her trying to suppress what she felt made it break free harder. When he felt the soft trembles strengthen into shaking in her limbs, even in the hand clutched in his, he pulled back for the space of a breath, only long enough to hear her keen, and then he lowered his mouth again, his pace faster, more demanding than it had been, his fingers beckoning and stroking at her until she came, tight, wet and pulsing around his finger.

He was painfully hard again, still, and he kissed a path up her body, squeezed her fingers between his, released her grip and flipped her over to her stomach. He moved her like a doll, lifting up her hips and spreading apart her legs wide with his own, on his knees behind her. He wrapped a hand around her waist and pulled her upright, kissing the back of her neck. He used a hand to guide himself inside her. He was hard, punishing, a brutal pace at a sharp, deep angle that he could see lit her features with transcendent pain-pleasure. He heard welcoming, encouraging sounds that drove him harder into her. He wrenched her hips back against his more solidly and felt the gasp and groan through her back. He found her hands, lifted them to her breasts, nipples trapped between fingers, cupping and moving her hands for her until she mimicked the motion. He watched over her shoulder, the slapping, jarring thrusts making her breasts bounce in her hands, forced the air from her. His hands roamed over her body, the stretch in her wide opened thighs, the curve of her hip, his nails scratching along taut surfaces with him dragging his hands along scar lines.

He needed to force her to come again so he could feel her clench and strain around his cock. With one hand he twisted her head to kiss him, the other hand moved down between her thighs to pinch and stroke at her clit, pressing her back tighter to him at each thrust. His hand splayed against the side of her face, cupped her jaw, her throat under his fingers. Lust and license crowded in on him and he was ready, waiting for her. He demanded more from her with his cock and his mouth and his fingers, hammering at her while he felt the trembles, the shaking, the moans, the clenching build.

You are mine, Siha.

He thought what he would never say, but he knew in his bones and in his breath. No qualifiers, no saying 'for now' or 'and I am yours.'

Mine.

It was true and they both knew it. She knew it, her body pulsing with it, moaning against his mouth and pressing back against his body, with him driven to brutality, possession and demand. When the tightening vise of her body came around him he pressed his fingers between them, feeling the slick glide of his cock in and out of her before he emptied, spasming and shaking himself to match her, his mouth on hers for aftershocks and shivers and shared moans, his arms keeping her from falling.

She was his pulse, she was his breath.

He loved her.

He was shattered to discover that this was not a gift of the Gods, this was a woman he had wanted upon seeing her and he had cloaked himself in myth to justify what he wanted. As he always had.

His piety and motivation were sundered and seen for what they truly were, attraction, lust and kindred. Instead of diminished, his ambition seemed more than it had before, more daring than he would have allowed, more selfish and more giving.

He kissed her throat, her skin, her shoulders tenderly, his hands gentled and stroking, withdrew from her exhausted body, slick with sweat. He lay her down unresisting on her side with him wrapped around her from behind, blankets pulled over her to warm her as the sweat evaporated and her skin chilled.

No Gods crowding in to watch. There were no Gods. There was a man, and a woman, and the distance he would travel to find her, the distance she would cover on her own to meet him.

The wide, brightly lit, planned universe shrank down from stories and rules of the overarching Gods and settled on the two of them, on a dark chess board, with just enough light from her eyes and his fading delusions and growing faith to see each other.

He had been wrong, he had had illusions to lose, and with her, the courage to dispel them. He slid his arm under her neck to have her hair spread over him, to feel her breath on his upper arm. His other arm rested at her waist, his fingers trembling, stroking at her marred and wet skin.

The name Siha still suited her. Still a warrior angel, only one who ascended through merit, not one blessed by Arashu.

Irikah was gone and she had always been not God blessed, but a loving and gentle Drell. The illusion of being bound to her through eternity, never worthy, dispelled and the weight fell away. His wife was gone and he would not see her again.

He was free and small and in the dark, violently in love-lust with a woman bound for death. He had the gift of every memory she had granted him and that was his greatest treasure. He had his breath. He had his son's potential future, and if he could he would teach Kolyat of the Gods and the traditions of his people because one cannot always have a Siha to provide needed truths. Of course a people accustomed to tiremit would see Gods and forces everywhere, it was imprinted in their skin and their seeking tongues. He did not know all the truths, only these small, sure ones. Perhaps the Gods were for other Drell, and they were welcome to them. He had walked his own path for many years, and this woman had walked hers knowing that only she guided her own steps.

He would live as long as he could, he would trade his life for his Siha's still, always, but it was his choice and not an imperative from a distant voice.

I am yours, Siha. Yours only. Yours in truth.

He held her, his internal landscape decimated and dark, only the patch of ground where she stood clear to him. She turned her head and kissed the inside of his arm. Then she shifted her body to better press against him, her hair sliding over his arm as her breathing slowly turned even and deep, until she was asleep.

In the greatest exaltation and the greatest humility he had experienced in a lifetime, pressed in on each other, he wondered if he should leave. He did not know the customs of humans, sleeping in the same bed, if they parted. Full contact with his skin all night might…

Perhaps he should leave.

If he thought much longer of his skin on hers he was going to wake her.

If he visited memories of their encounter he would definitely wake her.

Considering this, and hoping to allow her space and sleep, he lifted her head gently and slid his arm out, reluctantly pulling from her body after kissing the top of her head. He went to gather his clothes.

As he reached for them, the only sound the slide of fabric on fabric, without opening her eyes she said with a casual yawn "Krios, if you leave, I'll kill you."

He moved to lie down beside her, his mouth at the back of her neck, pulling her body back against him "As you say, Siha."

She said with exasperation "Oh come on, what the fuck does Siha mean?"

He kissed along her shoulder's shadowed line and said "Perhaps I will tell you some day when you are not threatening my life."

She sighed and said "I'm going to be waiting a while, aren't I?"

He said "It appears that is so."

She said "Fucking Drell asshole." Unwilling to give up death threats for definitions, she twisted to kiss him for long lingering moments, then shifted back to her previous position, pulled his hand over her waist and covered his arm with her own, linking her fingers to his.

He settled her body next to his, pulling her hips back against him. She said in contented exhaustion "I don't need this, Krios" as she had after she had lost her balance kissing him.

He said against her hair with a smile "Of course, Siha. I understand."

He did not let her sleep.