Chapter Three: The Devil

Her breath. It was driving him absolutely goddamn crazy.

She was right about him. Not only was he a complete sonofabitch, but a liar as well. Not a big deal? Sometimes the things that randomly came out of his mouth even surprised him. Of course what had happened had been a big deal. It had been a very big fucking deal. A big enough fucking deal to make him want to hide from her for the last month or whatever, if only he could have. Instead, he'd taken the next best option: he'd ignored it. As much as anyone could ignore something like that.

Even now, he couldn't say why he'd done it. He'd been so tired. Exhausted. As usual, he'd narrowly escaped getting himself cleanly gutted during the day, which had been stressful enough, but then she'd showed up in his bed, barely dressed, in the middle of the night. To begin with, he'd suspected initially he'd been having some sort of twisted dream his brain had conjured up to torture him. But then he'd felt her touch him, just lightly. And he didn't know quite what had happened. Predictably, he'd reacted in anger, which was followed by what felt like a heartbeat of missing time. One second he was grabbing her wrist furiously, the next her mouth was opening under his, responding to an inexplicable, openmouthed kiss he hadn't intended at all and yet he'd continued with it; something for which he had no excuse but a perfectly acceptable explanation in his own mind. He'd continued not only because she had responded, but because of how she'd responded—with an unexpected enthusiasm in the press and slide of her lips, her legs wrapping around his, her hips pushing up slowly against him with an insinuative invitation. Like she wanted him to fuck her.

And, oh God, how he'd wanted to. Excruciatingly. Even as his brain throbbed with warnings and protest; red flags that had been drowned out in the roaring rush of incensed blood tearing through him as she allowed the slow crawl of his hands all over her body, up her legs and beyond the hem of her tiny little damn slip as she would never have before. Any sense of reason he'd been trying to cling to had gone up in smoke at that, and he'd been tempted to the edge of his sanity, which wasn't too difficult when one considered how close to that edge he routinely teetered. This was just one of the reasons why he avoided touching her, whenever he could help it. Because…when he did, well. Nothing good came of it. He thought he did a commendable job of it most of the time, he wasn't exactly touchy to begin with, and he'd been pretty clear with himself from the beginning about keeping his goddamn dirty hands off of her.

Which hadn't been a problem. You know, at first.

Usually a good fight could wipe his mind clean of any sort of weird thoughts that might crop up about her, and likewise, she had a dictionary of fairly accurate insults on his character that was good for just those occasions. He'd been gearing up for a good row with her, just to finally set things right, when he'd stormed out to find her sitting in the rain. But for once, tonight, she'd caught him off guard. He'd never seen her so…well, whatever she'd been. For some reason, the word "buckled" came to mind. Like a bridge under too much weight. She'd barely had it in her to argue with him. She'd just been sitting there, sobbing in the freezing goddamn rain because he was a thoughtless sleaze who'd done nothing but belittle and fight with her and had then turned around and tried to take advantage of her when she'd actually shown some trust in him and had come innocently for help. And, in keeping with that sangfroid tradition, as he was now carrying her back to the Inn after she'd actually struck him and she'd shrieked the foulest thing he'd ever heard come out of her little rosebud mouth…and all he could think about was her hot breath and lips panting against his neck and how it made him burn.

Oh yes, he was definitely a bastard, that much was certain. And as much as he hated knowing that about himself, it did nothing to assuage the familiar, infuriating and downright hypocritical smolder rising in his body.

He thought he'd done well to just let the whole thing slide. Predictably, the most contrary part of him had absolutely itched to approach the subject with her, maybe only because he had firmly told himself to let it all be, and never had he been any good at doing what he'd been told…or maybe because he felt the strangest urge to ask her to forgive him; to let her know he really didn't normally do that sort of thing out of nowhere, not like she'd probably want to know. Of course, he couldn't do either of those things. So, under the circumstances, he thought he'd done the best thing he could. He certainly couldn't explain. God knew why he'd done it. He guessed it just had crossed his mind, and his brain having been lacking in oxygen or clarity or whatever the fuck it needed to be sensible, and he'd just dumbly followed through with it. Unthinkingly.

He shouldn't have felt quite as thunderstruck as he did that she was this upset. He'd just expected her to be this upset immediately after he'd done it, instead of quietly seething about it for weeks, which wasn't like her at all. Regardless, he'd been able to easily catch on that…what happened…had bothered her. Which bothered him, annoyingly fucking enough. Made him defensive. Made him want to grab her and shake her and remind her that she was lucky he'd been brought to his senses in time or he would have really given her something to be bothered about, and demand she tell him why he was pretty sure she would have let him.

He swallowed thickly and pushed in the heavy door of the Lin family's lodge and tavern with his foot and let it swing shut behind him. It was late, perhaps already past one, and all the gaslights on the first floor were long snuffed. He slunk carefully past dark masses of tables and stools, up a narrow set of stairs, then down the door crowded corridor to his old room. He shifted the sniffing wet jumble in his arms to free up a hand and open the door to his room. His lamp was still lit, casting an amber glow across the rough wooden floor and furnishings. He stooped to lay his shivering bundle on the unmade bed before turning away.

In a few fluid motions, he had removed his vest and left it draped across the back of a wooden chair to dry. His wet bandana and gloves joined it, dripping onto the unvarnished floor, while he removed his shirt, wrung it out into the sink, snapped it dry, and draped it with the rest of his wet garments. He set about drying his dripping hair, leaving his damp towel draped around his neck while he brought another to Cleo, who still lay curled in his cloak, eyes closed to the world, though the deep furrow in her brow gave her consciousness away. He nudged her with his knee, dropping the towel beside her when her eyes flickered up.

"You should get out of those wet clothes."

At this, her gaze turned into a glare, but he had already turned back to the window, rubbing a towel against his hair. "I won't look," he assured her.

Cleo's sense had mostly returned, a caustic remark finding its way to her lips with no effort at all as she sat up and began unbuttoning her soaked blouse. "Of course you won't, you've already seen quite enough of me to last you the rest of your life when you peeped through my window, creep."

She was only half serious; she'd known for a long time that the entire incident had been a misunderstanding, and he'd been watching for a signal. It had all been part of his scheme to lay his hands on the Baltander's Sword…the sword her father had obtained for his fencing-aficionado daughter only months before his death, which just so happened to have been the same sword that upheaved Orphen's entire life; the sword whose twisted enchantment had changed the beautiful, brilliant and ambitious Azalea Kettoshi into a mindless creature bent on destruction. Still, she continued on, as it was something of a joke between them…much as he probably didn't know that. "I should tell everyone that you're just a depraved, two-bit sorcerer who saw me nude." She slid off her boots and stood, unzipping her skirt.

She heard him sigh hard, exasperated with her as usual. The sound of her zipper coming down certainly didn't help his frustration level any. Maybe it wouldn't have if he actually had seen anything. He supposed it was his own fault for joking with her about it, telling her that whatever he'd seen hadn't been very impressive. And what he'd seen amounted to absolutely nothing. He hadn't even been looking in that damn direction. Hell, he'd been staking out the Everlasting Estate with his cohorts on the inside signaling to him for nearly a year by the time she bloody showed up, home from boarding school and coming at him with a goddamn sword in hand, ready to take off whatever piece of him she could. He might not have been quite as interested if it hadn't been the same sword he'd been seeking for five years. And funny how Azalea had chosen that moment to finally materialize from nothing, black lightning cracking the sky all around her grotesque form like a demon birthing from the blistered womb of Hell.

Well, that was all over now. Except that Cleo was still tagging along. Somehow. And though he would liked to have said he'd given her no encouragement to do so, but it unfortunately wasn't true. In a moment of insanity, once he'd been able to walk out of the sanatorium after using the Baltander's Sword to restore Azalea to her original state; a sorcerous event that had very nearly killed him, he'd come back to Totokanta with Majic in tow, seeking her out. He'd grown used to having her around. And honestly, if there was anything Orphen hated, it was change.

"Listen," he said. "I've told you…"

She finished for him, "Yes, yes, you felt nothing seeing me." There was a thread of sadness sewn into her tone that she hadn't intended. But it had been his usual reply to her accusations. She let her skirt drop to the floor.

"No—goddamn it, that I didn't…" he insisted, so intent on setting her straight that he swung around, unthinking. Cleo yelped reflexively, crossing her arms over her brassiere as though it really mattered by now what he'd seen, and scowled. Immediately he'd recognized the mistake, his hand flying up to obscure her from his vision. He started over to the worn armchair by the window, his hand still in place between his eyes and her body.

"Ah, fuck, I'm sorry."

Cleo positively growled, her hands balling convulsively into fists. "Oh yes, nothing you'd want to see, better avert your eyes if you don't want to lose your dinner, Orphen."

Sometimes he just didn't know why he did the things he did. Or said. Sometimes the allure of getting her riled up outshined his sense of self-preservation and reason. "Well, good thing I haven't eaten…"

Several things happened in quick succession. No sooner had he said it than she'd marched right up to him, her mouth set in a hard line, reached behind her back, unclasped her brassiere in front of him, placed a palm on his bare chest and shoved him back hard into the armchair he'd been leaning on. He fell into it with a genuine gasp just as she climbed into the chair, planted a knee on each side of his hips and glared down at him in the lamplight.

That was it. She'd had it, absolutely had it. Maybe it was just her emotions running high as they were, but she'd reached a boiling point she hadn't even known existed. She knew she wasn't that bad to look at; she was petite and blonde and she'd been eyed before by boys, yet Orphen had merely insisted since the moment he met her that she was borderline repulsive and he couldn't be less interested in her romantically, sexually…or any other way in general. Well, and then he'd gone and put his hands all over her, kissed her into a brainless madness and jacked her hopes up so high only to have them crash back into the ground, the hypocrite. It wasn't the first time Cleo's temper had trumped her modesty, and she had the element of surprise on her side, at least. She didn't really give it all much thought; it was just an impulse. She threw her dignity to the wind and in the time it took to blink, she resolved that she'd gauge his reaction herself and decide once and for all how much water all his insults held. Even if he showed nothing but complete apathy, at least it was an answer that meant an end to all the maddening guessing.

"Cleo!" he choked, trying to keep his eyes to himself and failing miserably.

"That bad, huh? Do you feel sick? So you really feel nothing? Nothing at all?" she inquired acidly, planting a hand on each of his shoulders and pushing him back against the spine of the chair, taking a seat right on his lap so he could properly see her. All of her. Her skin painted the color of clover honey in the lamplight, wet, wheat colored hair clinging across her bare shoulders, blue eyes burning down at him from behind a long fringe of dark, wet eyelashes that he determinedly avoided looking at more than anything else.

"That's what I said, isn't it?" he snapped defensively. God, he had to get her off of him.

He grabbed her hips to shove her off and immediately cursed himself for touching her, restraining the primitive impulse to arch up against her instead. His hands snapped away from her like she'd burned him and gripped the arms of the chair as he tried to look away.

She regarded him as calmly as she could, her head tilted to the side as she watched him struggle to breathe evenly. His normally olive complexion seemed distinctly pale. "Maybe I should stop believing the crap that comes out of your mouth…" she steeled herself and boldly dropped a hand between his legs to palm the predictably rigid flesh there, "and see what you feel for myself."

He inhaled sharply at the intimate contact, jerking back in astonishment at her behavior, immediately opening his mouth to snap back…but nothing came out except a weak grunt, somewhere between helplessness and protest. Finally his eyes shot up to her face, which was conveniently and intentionally averted from his scrutiny.

"You are out of your mind," he hissed at her.

She slid her unoccupied hand around his shoulders, steadfastly ignoring that comment and pressing herself against him, flesh to flesh, resting her head beside his, listening to him breathing shakily while his hands remained determinedly fastened on the arms of the chair. She stroked him lightly through the material of his pants, and demanded hotly in his ear. "So, nothing at all?"

He almost moaned aloud and bit it back, like a starving dog being tested for obedience. She'd lost it. Cleo, who would just as soon sock him in the face if she thought he'd gotten too nice a glimpse of her thigh, climbing all over him half naked and demanding he admit he liked what he saw. What the fuck. She could tell very well he felt just about anything but nothing, even if it was just a kneejerk reaction he couldn't control, and it wasn't his fault. Hell, she had her little hand all over the best evidence of that. He'd never been any good at admitting defeat, and he didn't certainly know what to say for himself now.

Was this just some kind of sick torture? Payback?

In a pathetic whisper that stuck in his throat like a bramble, he did the only thing that ever worked for him in uncomfortable situations: he lied.

"….nothing…" Even his voice trembled. Very persuasive. "…now let me up."

She didn't. Instead, her hand shifted a fraction on what was a now painful, throbbing problem. "You're not very convincing, Orphen."

"Well, what the fuck else is gonna happen with you crawling all over me like that?" he wheezed petulantly. He'd certainly considered just shoving her to the ground and storming out, but it wasn't much of a solution. It was clear that this all had progressed much further past just running from it, much as he would love to. He tried, for once, to use his reasonable voice, which wavered miserably. "Why are you doing this?"

"To prove that you're a liar," she countered; her voice that same hot, seductive breeze on his neck from before. "Say it."

"Say what?" The press of her naked flesh on his was so distracting.

"That you're a liar."

He swallowed thickly, trying to pull himself together. "Fine. I'm a liar." Boy, she didn't know the half of that statement.

She smiled at that, he could tell. "And to prove that you actually don't think I'm disgusting."

He would have laughed at that if he'd had a drop of wit in his skull. Disgusting? He couldn't think of a word that fit Cleo less. Yes, she was an annoying, infuriating, spoiled, volatile, whining, persistent, selfish little fucking princess. But no, disgusting was the wrong word. But had he implied that?

Well. Yeah.

Because when he started thinking things that sounded like he didn't really hate her as much as he always insisted, he started feeling guilty. Strangely torn, like those men he'd seen executed by being pulled apart by two horses running opposite directions. There was this particular feeling he got sometimes when he'd watch her, and they weren't arguing, an uneasy anxious squeezing in his chest that came with an inexplicable panic. Everything was just easier…safer…when she was pissed off at him. It usually worked. He half wondered where that strategy had gone wrong.

"Oh for…fuck's sake, don't you have a mirror in your castle? Have you looked at yourself? Is there something there you'd call disgusting?" He did his best to keep his voice level. She wriggled in his lap, pushing back off his shoulders to look down at him, her eyes looking the same blue the sky looks on a cold spring morning, bright with her quick temper. She gave him that look all the time. Except this time she was topless and straddling him in her underwear. It had a different effect. His hands were practically cramping with the need to reach out and touch her. His mouth was a desert.

"Because you tell me that all the time! That I have all the curves of a twig! I have absolutely nothing that would appeal to the likes of you, you sonofabitch!"

"Yeah…well…now you know, alright? I don't think that, I'm just—"

"And you just pretended it never happened! You wouldn't even look at me! You just ignored me when I snuck into your room those times! You were fucking with me then too? Poor stupid Cleo, too thick to know any better! Just go ahead and use her when you feel like it and then tell her she's an undeveloped, ugly dipshit the rest of the time?"

A gust of wind-driven rain clattered against the windowpane. He just stared up at her, dumbstruck. "You were awake…" he started, only to be met with her burning glare to point him back down the road of the explanation of his actions that he didn't have. "Well, no…it's just...that night, you said you heard something…outside. I thought you made it up... Then there really was something going on out there. You'd come for help and ah…I don't know, okay? I…wasn't thinking. I just did whatever I wanted. I thought you…" he was starting to realize that his bumbling reasoning sounded ridiculous, when he tried to say it all out loud. It had all made perfect sense in his head, which wasn't saying too much. It was funny, after two months thinking about it, he didn't have much of an answer cobbled together.

The truth was he really didn't know why he'd done what he had to begin with: why he'd suddenly acted on the impulse he'd been fighting with every breath in his body on a regular basis, like keeping a raging devil chained up inside him. His abrupt departure that night had been an escape from the upsetting ferocity of that unleashed demon, and afterward, he'd felt almost desperate to forget all about it. Which, of course, he hadn't been able to do. For the last several weeks, he hadn't been able to even talk to her, fight with her, look at her without that memory creeping up on him, sending that long denied fiend inside straining against its chains violently.

Luckily, she interrupted his sentence again. "You dumbass! And why wouldn't I have broken your fingers for touching me if I didn't want you to?" she snapped.

"But…" As he protested, he could feel rationale leaving him, could feel the metaphorical chains snapping. Of course, she was right. She would have. But he'd known that all along. He'd been more afraid of what he would do if she didn't, and he'd found the first excuse not to find out.

"But fuckin' what? Didn't you know what to do with me?" Her crystalline eyes were blazing with insolence, her bare body flushed with anger, her hands splayed on his chest. And to make it worse, she was beautiful as goddamn hell like that. Not to mention that she was starting to sound like him, which was sort of interesting in itself. He kind of liked that for some reason.

Despite that, or maybe because of that, his aching body acted of its own volition at that colorful challenge, his hands jerking away from the arms of the chair to slide up the curve of her back and yank her down against him, crushing his mouth against hers. She protested the end of her diatribe for only a moment before coiling her arms around his neck, returning the affection feverishly, raking her fingers back through his damp hair. The wind barraged rain against the windowpanes, the squares of thin glass lit up in momentary electric brilliance and faded. Ordinarily, the thunder that followed would have startled Cleo, but in that moment she could barely hear it, all it was to her was a rumble in a distant dimension that mimicked the sound of her hammering heartbeat.

Suddenly his previously restrained hands were everywhere at once: in her hair, down her back, cupping her half clad rear to pull her tighter against him. Her mouth tasted sweet, and she squirmed in his lap to get closer, each movement of her body invoking a sort of narcotic madness through his nerves. Suddenly the armchair felt like a prison, and he pressed a nervous, scorching trail of kisses from her collarbone to just below her ear, sweeping her hair away from her neck and murmuring beside her ear just loud enough for her to hear him as he wrapped his arms tightly around her.

"I dance in thee, mansion of heaven."

Of course, she'd heard that spell from his lips many times before, but it had definitely never sounded like that to her until now. She would almost say it sounded romantic. Already they'd vanished from the chair, rematerializing together on the unmade bed as they rolled, exchanging places, mouths locked in a frenetic kiss. He balanced his weight above her, looking down briefly at her flushed, mostly bare body, her glazed eyes reflecting the haze of the honey colored lamplight as she blinked up at him, her chest rising and falling quickly. Orphen couldn't fight the smirk sneaking up on him, or the fear, so he ignored both and leaned down, his mouth on her neck and trailing downward with each kiss toward her clavicle, then lower, inch by inch—Cleo's pulse racing faster and faster—until he tasted the rosy pink tip of her right breast. Her breath caught on a jerking gasp, her spine arching her upward against him, allowing his hands to explore the warm continent of her skin as he kneed apart her legs. He switched sides suddenly, tasting her, and she whimpered, then all at once he'd found her mouth again, his tongue slowly sliding against hers in an erotic simulation of what was really on his mind. Cleo responded by tilting her pelvis upward against his, dragging a groan from deep in his throat at that primal invitation.

He ground against her impulsively, responding to her movement with a primitive instinct that was quickly surfacing. She wound her legs around his and arched against him again, trembling with nerves and adrenaline. He moved against her, freeing her mouth and scorching the other side of her neck with searing kisses that melted down over her bare shoulder with each of his ragged, hot breaths. Cleo slid a hand between them and tugged at the buttons on his trousers.

Her feathery touch slid over him, luring another low groan muffled at the back of his throat. Having the patience to allow her to undo the clasps was agony, the slowness of a single second a descending madness that now he could only drive ever onward to escape. Her fingers slid past the buckles and fabric for a moment to touch him. Just that felt like enough to drive him over the brink, make him go off like a roman candle. He tore his mouth from hers and pulled in a deep, shuddering breath.

"Take them off…?" her whisper teased his earlobe, and he rolled to the side and was kicking the pants off in another second before sliding back over her. Her eyes were washing over him curiously, lustfully, while a hundred awkward insecurities crashed through him. That in itself was confusing; since this wasn't exactly the first time he'd been through all this. Well, the first time with Cleo…and Cleo was always a little bit of a sensitive subject in his mind. There were…well, reasons. They gave him a headache…she gave him a headache. He was fond of her in his own way, though more often than not he wanted to drown her…and he certainly wouldn't go as far as to say he was in love with her.

But then, there couldn't be anyone…there wasn't allowed to be anyone in his heart, one way or the other. There was no room there for anyone but Azalea. It didn't matter that his love for her wasn't exactly of the romantic type, it was more than that. He couldn't imagine feeling that way about Azalea. His feelings for her…they were, well. Complicated. She was all he'd ever had for so long, for as long as he could really remember. As a child, in the orphanage, she'd valued him when no one else would, they'd been recruited to the Tower together when she was nine and he was four. She was his sister in every way but by blood, his role model, his goddess, his everything…and he owed his entire heart to her, regardless of who else might try to inch into it. And even if someone could, Azalea would always have to come first. So he really couldn't feel any particular way about her…even if he wanted to. And he didn't want to anyway. Right. Nevertheless, that anxious twinge of numbing fear wasn't fading. And he didn't want to think about it all now.

After all. This didn't have anything to do with love.

She tangled her bare legs around his, lamplight painting their movement with shadows and gold, their enthusiasm almost akin to desperation. The heat ripping through her made her dizzy, giving her a bravado she would never have had before. This time, she didn't have to think about how quickly it was all happening, and how far she'd let it go before she'd have to stop him. She'd already decided long ago.

"You're going to do it, aren't you?"

His eyes opened suddenly, a little vacant with hysteria, though his voice was soft. "…do what?"

"You're going to make love to me, aren't you?" Typical Cleo, she almost sounded annoyed, seemingly unaware that he'd never be able to stop now even if she changed her mind. The chained demon was loose. He could barely speak, for god's sake, he was panting like a dog. Maybe she just wanted to see his incredulous expression and probably got it, but he couldn't tell. If she'd really wanted an answer, a verbal one, he didn't deliver.

It was already happening almost before she knew it, a stinging pain appearing and vanishing, washed away in a tide of adrenaline and the rush of blood shaking through her heart like a flash flood. In the dwindling light, he slid over her like the ocean's rising and falling. Slide and crash. She clung to him, moving with him. Vaguely she could hear the roar of the rain, the rhythm of his breathing. Their skin adhered, limbs tangled together, sweat mingling, their breath racing, mouths coming together in intermittent, heart-pounding kisses.

And with the tension stretching and releasing fiercely like a snapping bowstring; with clenching hands and outcries muffled against skin and bedclothes or ringing into the humid air, it was over as suddenly as it had started.

The following stillness was filled with the running of fingers along bare, hot skin and furtive glances. Cleo reached up to brush some damp hair from his forehead, watching him close his eyes in response to her touch and drop his head to rest it on her chest, breathless, gathering his wits.

Even as they uncoupled, the way he held her against him, the way he was slightly shaking, the hitch in his breath: she had never been more in love with him. Or more afraid to speak and break their momentary truce. He silently pulled the rumpled sheet over them, one arm still around her like he may be afraid to let go. As if letting go, or speaking, might propel them back into reality where they would have to face what they had just done, and how it would irrevocably change everything between them whether they acknowledged it or not.

He didn't seem to have anything to say just now, and for once, Cleo wasn't going to squeeze a comment out of him. She held onto him in the silence, delirious and exhausted with her head on his chest, listening as his heartbeat slowed and began to even out. Soon the emotional fatigue barreled its full weight into her, and she went careening into exhaustion, then tumbling off the steep cliff of sleep.