Chapter 36: take me down into your paradise

Her apartment is something else she only saw a couple days ago. Less, maybe; she's still not completely sure how that all works out and she's just about ready to give up trying to get it straight. But regardless, when they pull up to the curb and she turns and looks at the thrift store's cluttered front window, at the scratched, flaking door, up at her own narrow, barred window, it feels like a place she's returning to after years away.

She can't decide whether or not she's actually happy to be back.

She's climbing off the bike before he cuts the engine, stretching and glancing around. They're here in significant part to redo whatever magical protection he provided her, which means she might need it, but nothing seems out of the ordinary. The same packs of kids periodically slouching down the street - school apparently being optional - and the same idle passers-by, shoppers and wanderers of all ages, an elderly woman she recognizes coming out of the store and giving her exactly the kind of look she's sure her appearance and her company deserve.

And Daryl behind her - how his presence always has weight now even when he isn't touching her.

Sometimes especially when he's not.

She steps toward her door, glances back at him with a faint smile. "Sigils?"

"Yeah." He moves past her, trail of his fingertips across her forearm as he does - might be accidental, and she knows it's not, and a sweet little shiver runs through her. She watches - and then follows - as he reaches the pavement in front of the door, and crouches over the gum-spotted pavement, heedless of how he looks.

He could be searching for something he dropped. It's not that weird.

So what the hell. She crouches beside him.

It would have been easy for her to miss; that's almost certainly intentional. It's very much like what she saw at the gas station, but not exactly identical: a series of intersecting lines and curves and squiggles roughly the size of her palm, done in what looks like gray chalk - though it can't be, because if it was it would surely be gone by now. Nevertheless it's faded. She didn't see it when it was fresh but she can tell; it's fuzzy around the edges, some of the squiggles and a couple of the lines mostly gone.

Daryl is gazing down at it with deep concentration, brow furrowed as if he's trying to puzzle something out. Beth tilts her head.

"Somethin' wrong?"

"Nah." He extends a hand, presses a fingertip to the center of the thing. "Just gotta make it stronger this time. If I can." He closes his eyes and takes a breath. Immediately a very slight hum buzzes across her skin, like a wave of electricity, and she remembers the farm and how he opened the Night Gate with her knife. Similar to what he's now doing with his fingertip, complicated swoops and swirls and hard slashes. His hand is almost dancing, and it makes her dizzy to follow it. It leaves faintly glowing lines in its wake, somewhere between white and gold, and she sees that he's subtly altering the design, extending a line here, sharpening a curve there, adding a dash at a couple of points.

Stronger.

She drags her gaze away from his finger and up to his face; his eyes are still shut tight and his lips are moving silently, forming words she's certain aren't English. Reord a Bealu. There's something hypnotic about that too, and she pulls in a slow breath as that buzz flows down through her and settles between her thighs, transfigured to warmth.

She's not even sure it's about sex. Or not just. Because her clit isn't the only thing warm and tingling. Her own fingertips are, too.

With potential. With what she might do.

It's over so suddenly it makes her gasp, makes her wobble on her heels, and he catches her with a steadying hand on her shoulder, peering into her face.

"Y'alright?"

"Yeah." Another breath, a little shaky. "Yeah. It's just… I felt it."

He looks at her for a moment, clearly thoughtful, then nods and touches her shoulder again. "C'mon. Gotta do the one inside."

She's returning the nod, preparing to push to her feet, when there's a jingle a few feet away and the store's door swings open, revealing a familiar pair of battered brown loafers. Those rise into worn grandma jeans and a loose purple t-shirt, all of which clothe an elderly woman with close-cropped gray hair and light brown skin. She arches a brow at them and crosses her arms.

"Beth? What're you doin' down there, honey?"

"Mrs. Lorris." Beth shoots Daryl a look as she rises; his expression is questioning, and a bit apprehensive. Not without reason. She's thought with a degree of amusement how he might look to her landlady, this considerably older man going into or coming out of the apartment, but in fact she should probably have been feeling her own apprehension. Mrs. Lorris is nice enough, but Beth has also always gotten the sense that she's fairly traditional.

She doubts she's going to get evicted over screwing a man twice her age. Nevertheless.

"Lookin' for a ring." She can lie very well. Always could. Prior to her world ending, you never would have looked at Beth Greene's sweet, innocent, unmarked face and thought she could lie her ass off, but she could, and she's only gotten better at it since the innocence in her burned to death. "Nothin' important. Not valuable or anythin'. Just slipped off my finger." She shrugs, affecting unconcern. "Can't find it."

"Mm." The woman looks doubtful, which Beth ignores. Trying too hard to convince is a dead giveaway. Anyway, she has another thing to worry about. She inclines her head at Daryl. "This is Daryl. He's helpin' me out with some stuff about my family."

Vague. Just vague enough to be flexible. The suspicion is beginning to fade out of Mrs. Lorris's face. Though Beth would be surprised if she ended up even close to fully convinced. "Everything okay?"

"Fine. Just workin' on trackin' a few things down." She gives the woman a small smile. "He's real good at trackin'."

Daryl clears his throat, says nothing. Smart man.

"Alright." Mrs. Lorris hesitates, studies her more closely. "You're a mess, honey."

Beth doesn't have to fake being awkward. She shrugs again. "Yeah. Was gonna go take care of that now. Got work later."

"Alright," Mrs. Lorris repeats, starts to turn to the door, looks back. "You be careful, hear? I never think that job's safe for you. Wish you had somethin' else, if I'm bein' honest."

Beth smiles again. Polite. It's not as if the woman is even wrong; her job has never been safe and at this point it's likely even less so. "I will. Promise."

Mrs. Lorris gives her a final farewell nod and vanishes into the dimness of the shop, leaving a mothball-scented puff of air behind as the door swings closed.

"Landlady," Beth says, turning back to Daryl in time to see comprehension cross his features. Comprehension… and something else. Something uncomfortable. Something like the edge of a frown.

"You lied about me," he says quietly. Not angry. Not surprised. He doesn't even sound overtly upset.

But he doesn't exactly sound happy.

Shit.

"She's… older. Y'know. She has this way of lookin' at things." Very awkward. To herself, she sounds far too much like she's making an excuse, and not a terribly good one. "And you're…"

He cocks his head. A wolf, questioning. She knows he won't get mad at her. That's not what she's worried about. What he might think she's about to say: that he looks like he hangs out in a lot of biker bars, and not nice ones. That he doesn't look like someone a nice girl - even only kind of - should be spending her time with. And that's true. But.

"You're older too," she says, just as quiet, and swallows.

He simply stares at her, face unreadable.

It's the first time this has come up in this way, she realizes. First time it's been a thing. She hasn't been consistently aware of it; if anything she's been forgetting it constantly. He doesn't feel any older than her at all. In fact, since she met him she hasn't really thought of him as any particular age. But now there's what someone else would see. The conclusions they might draw.

It's not that she gives a fuck. Unless she has to.

"I don't care," she adds. "I never have. But she would."

He ducks his head, eyes lowered. She now recognizes this for what it is: submission, to her decision and to the way she's approaching what she obviously perceives as a problem. But that doesn't make it any more comfortable, and she sighs, reaches down and takes his hand.

It is what it is, and right now there's only so much she can do about anything.

"C'mon. Let's go upstairs."

The stairwell is thick with shadows, and it seems to her that in fact it's more so than usual, though the place has never exactly been well-lit. It's unsettling, but far less than it would be if she was alone. Instead she merely feels her senses flipping into high alert, and when she glances back and down at Daryl she can't detect any overt concern in his darkened eyes.

All the same, his nostrils flare.

She pauses, still looking at him. "Anythin'?"

He shakes his head, lifts a shoulder. "Sigil expired. Other'n that? Nah. Think somethin' might've been here, but if it was, 's long gone now."

She blinks at him. "Somethin' might've been here? You don't seem too worried."

"No point. I'm not sure, and even if I was, can't do nothin' about it now." He moves up beside her, then past. "Somethin' don't have to mean Ytend. I don't think it was. Don't have the stink. And it don't have to mean they were lookin' for you, anyhow. Plenty of things just wander."

"That doesn't make me feel a whole lot better." But it does. A bit.

"New ward'll keep most of em' away."

She follows him up the stairs to the landing. Again he crouches, swift, and this time he doesn't hesitate. His fingertip follows the same gliding, swooping lines and curves from before, and it seems to go quicker. She half watches him and half scans the shadows, and while the same warm buzz fills her, it's not as intense. She suspects that it's not so much a drop in the intensity of the magic itself as it is her simply getting used to it.

One thing she can say for herself in all of this: she's consistently adjusted quickly.

"Alright." He straightens up, shaking his hand as if something pinched it. "Should do you for now. I oughta redo it in a couple days, though. Stronger ones run out faster."

"Fine." She's not exactly impatient, but she's not far from it. All at once she feels the full weight of her dirty clothes, the sweat and smoke lingering on her skin and in her hair, and all she wants to do in this world or any other is shower and change and then maybe collapse into bed for an hour or so. She doesn't have to be at work until three. Her phone is fucked, but by her internal clock she reckons it's a little after noon.

She fumbles out her key, pushes the door open, steps inside with a deep sigh.

The stairwell was shadowy, but her room looks totally unchanged, precisely how she left it - down to the towel tossed over the back of the sofa. The towel he wrapped around her when he scooped her up and carried her to the bed. After he went down on his knees in the shower, gave her his lips and his tongue.

Drank her like the water.

A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth, and she half turns as he pulls the door shut behind them, shrugging off her jacket. "I'm gonna take a shower."

He nods, scanning the room, but his focus snaps onto her when she touches the back of his hand. "You wanna come?"

Phrasing.

The smile that breaks across his face mirrors hers, immediate and uncontrolled, and his jacket joins hers on the back of the couch as she leads him to the bathroom.

He was hesitant to be touched by her, as least as a human. He seemed nervous. Even embarrassed. She thinks she might understand that a little better now that she understands some of the source of his shame, but it also doesn't matter; he yanks himself out of his clothes just as fast and just as clumsily as she does, trying to kiss her at the same time. Trying so hard not to stop. There's nothing slow about this, but it also doesn't have the thick desperation of last night. It's lighter somehow, and as she stumbles into him and their teeth collide, he laughs and so does she, warm and full.

This is what it could be like. If they could. If they did. She's certain. It could be like this all the time.

"Shit, Beth." Panting bleeding into a groan as she reaches between his legs and takes hold of him, strokes him, presses him against her lower belly and smears precome across her skin. She loves how he feels when he's in fierd, how thick and heavy and big he is, but this is so wonderful too, because he fits in her hand, nestled into her palm and twitching when she squeezes him around the base. He fumbles at her, her upper arm and her hip, and as she stretches her arm around him to cut the water on, he lowers his head and closes his teeth on the juncture of her throat and shoulder, bites gently and holds on.

She never thought she would want to be claimed.

She never imagined it could be so much fun.

She draws him in under the water and backs herself against the cold tile, hisses, laughs, kisses him again. Kisses him deep, sucks at his tongue and his lips - that talented fucking tongue and those lips - moans into his mouth when he pins her harder with his body and his hand wriggles between them and between her legs, finds her clit and presses it into an unhurried circle.

Again, the image of wrapping her legs around his waist as he cups his hands under her ass and plunges into her, so raw and so vivid it shoves the breath out of her. She's still trying to handle him but it's increasingly difficult, increasingly just about impossible, and she's relegated to simply gripping him as he slides his fingers from her clit down to her lips and nudges them apart, slips inside her in a single easy slide.

It's not getting fucked up against the wall, it's not his cock pounding into her, but it's so fucking good how he's in her like this. She holds onto him by his cock and by her arm hooked around his neck as he fucks her with one finger and then two, stretching her open with the kind of ease she never would have associated with the word virgin, and she groans and curses his name and whispers fuck, I love you, Daryl.

I love you.

He grins against her jaw - toothy and lupine, incisors so delightfully sharp when he nips her - and fucks her harder.

There's nothing desperate about this but there is, because she wants to come. She wants to come so fucking much. Wants that, spreads her legs as wide as she can without falling, drops her head back against the tile with an impact she barely feels and sobs as he hooks his fingers against her upper wall and rubs at her clit with the edge of his thumb. She doesn't have to tell him how to do it - she never really did after that first night - and it hits her all over again that he can do what feels best for her because he can feel it too. Which is why his heavy panting is tightening as the muscles of her pussy tighten, why he's trembling as hard as she is and half fucking into her fist-

And she knows what she wants to do for him.

"Don't come," she breathes. "Don't come yet, don't- Oh my God, oh God oh Daryl-" Breaking his name off into ragged sobs as she bucks against him, waves of it crashing through her and washed away by the water streaming over her like hundreds of tiny fingertips. And his whisper hot in her ear, a blur of languages.

Lufiend. Christ, magden… So fuckin' sweet.

He catches her when she slumps against him, arm around her, and she drops her head against his slick chest and shudders until it's over. Until it's gone.

It nearly flies right past her attention when he starts to wash her, because he does it so softly, so slowly, and at first she thinks he's just combing his fingers through her hair until she smells the shampoo. Then she smiles giddily, melts even further into him and allows him to shift her how he wants her, rinsing her hair with slow passes of his hands and bending to fumble for the soap - and he chuckles when her weight almost makes him slip.

"Gonna get me killed, girl."

Wouldn't that be blackly hilarious. Everything they've come through - a fuck of a lot in a couple of weeks - and it all ending with a fall in the shower. She smiles again, grazes her teeth across his collarbone and soaks the satisfaction in like the water when his breath hitches into a shiver.

He's still so hard against her. Nudging her hip, her belly. He obeyed her and didn't take his release when she took hers. She's not surprised by it anymore. But she hasn't been surprised by it for a while now. And being afraid of it - this power over him - is only a memory.

He seems to take so much joy in it. That's enough for her.

But that doesn't mean she's only going to take.

"Let me," she says softly, placing her hands flat on his chest as the last of the soap streams down her skin. Like she might be about to push him - but she raises her head and looks at him, and he stares back at her, his eyes deep, and as clear as the water running off the ends of his hair.

He's not afraid either. A little flicker of nervousness, maybe. But only that much.

"You want to," he whispers, and it's not a question. His strong hands frame her hips and she rolls herself forward, rubbing slowly against him until his eyes flutter closed and a low groan vibrates under her spread palms.

"I want to."

He nods, and she does.

It's more difficult with their difference in heights but she manages it, reaching up to work the shampoo through his tangled strands, massaging his scalp until his head is drooping and a growl is emanating from deep in his throat, a sound far more like a purr. It flows into her through the ears and vibrates under her skin as she begins to move her hands over him, mapping his many scars with her slippery fingertips.

Remembering how he was, when she first wanted to do this. The intensity with which he hadn't wanted it.

But now he's merely standing there, relaxed and open, letting her do whatever she wants with him.

She could ask him, she thinks as she glides her hands down his sides to his hips, swiping her thumbs in a long curve just above his pubic hair and sending another shiver through him. She has an idea now, but she could ask straight out, and she knows he would answer. But his face is so peaceful - except for the tight edges where his climax has been denied, or at least delayed - and she can't bear to.

Not now. Later.

They're doing that with a lot of things. Sooner or later there won't be a later anymore.

Whatever. She keeps moving, closing a soapy hand around his shaft and drawing a helpless moan from what seems like the absolute core of him as he rocks into her fist. He's so hot, so smooth, the exposed head such a wonderful glistening pink. Almost feminine somehow.

Her mouth waters. But no. This isn't the right place. Among other things she might fucking drown. Maybe he could manage it, but he can manage things that would make her curl up in a ball and cry.

That have done, actually.

"Turn," she says quietly, and here he does hesitate. Only for a second, but to her it seems to stretch out and out. And while she saw some of how bad it was, felt it, part of her is very gently out of patience with him.

She loves him. This isn't something he should fear to show her, wherever that fear is coming from.

"C'mon." And she pulls her hand back slightly, swings it forward and lands a slap on his ass that sounds harder than it is, ricocheting off the tile.

He jerks his head around at her, eyes wide. For the briefest of moments she hesitates, wonders if this might be finally too much… But when he ducks his head and turns his back to her, she catches a strange, wondering little smile curling the corner of his mouth.

This also comes out before she really knows it will, and it's bizarre in every way she can imagine - which means it fits perfectly - but it still knocks the breath out of her. It's very low, coming out on that exhale of impact, and when she says it and runs her hands up to his shoulders, he whimpers.

"Good boy."

Oh.

Maybe it shouldn't feel as natural as it does. That said, if he had a tail right now she's utterly fucking certain that he would be wagging it.

He braces his hands flat on the tile and she begins to work on his back.

She's not going to rush. She can tell immediately that this is difficult for him, being touched this way - or at least that it's not exactly comfortable. He tenses and releases in shallow waves, bearing up under her but having to make himself do it. She knows she's not hurting him as she traces the cruel slashes crisscrossing over his skin, but someone else - someone who should have loved him and protected him - hurt him here, hurt him so bad, and she doubts that kind of pain ever fully disappears with time. She traces those lines and she's tracing the lines of a memory literally beaten into his flesh.

She kisses the knobs of his spine between his shoulderblades and he reaches back, lays a hand over her hip, sighs.

She understands a little. She doesn't understand enough.

The final streaks of soap are circling the drain. She slides her arms around his waist and kisses his spine again, just beneath the nape of his neck, and thinks about how he bit her there and held her in place, and how inexplicably safe it made her feel.

"Let's get out."

He nods, reaches forward to cut off the water. As he turns halfway back to her, pushing the curtain aside and retrieving a towel, she sees he's still hard - swollen and shining, dark, has to be aching with it - and wants to take his cock in her hand and say it again.

Good boy.

She's not quite there. Yet.

He hands her the towel and stands there, dripping, as she regards him with an arched brow. "What about you?"

He shrugs. "Can only see the one."

There are others in one of the dresser drawers, but she's not inclined to worry to that point. She quickly dries - inadequately - and hands the towel to him. By now he's gotten it and he does the same, tosses the towel back onto the hook on the back of the door, and looks questioningly at her.

She takes his damp hand with her own and steps out of the tub. "C'mon."

She knows it must be obvious that she's Planning Something as she leads him back into the main room and toward the bed, and she feels a not-insignificant amount of glee about it. There's no big secret here. She has plans for him and she wants him to know it. He'll find out what they are soon enough.

He stops beside the bed when she does, and when she turns to face him he's gazing at her with the barred early afternoon light pouring all over him, warming him and making his damp skin shine and his eyes glow a wolflike blue, and even without his size and his strength and his fur and claws and teeth he's still the most beautiful thing she's ever seen.

And he has no idea.

He was told that he was worthless for so long. Like the wounds the scars became, that doesn't ever vanish. And she can't heal them for him, just like she can't heal herself.

But she can do other things.

She takes both his hands and maneuvers him against the bed and then onto it, pushing him back against the pillows as she follows on her hands and knees. He props himself up on his elbows, bemused, then his eyes widen in realization as she lifts his legs apart and settles herself between them.

"Beth…"

She looks up at him, swallows, curls her hand around his base. She needs to be very, very clear about this.

"I want to."

He merely stares at her for another moment, mouth slightly open. But he's not confounded. He's not stunned. There's no surprise, and not only because technically she's already done this.

It goes deeper than that.

He's jutting up from her fist, twitching now and then, muscles flexing. His foreskin has pulled far back and far down and she can see the head with perfect clarity, how smooth and wet it looks, the tiny slit at the tip, the vein snaking up the underside of his shaft. She saw him this close on the beach, she supposed, but that wasn't the same. That felt and still does feel like a dream. This is piercingly real, and when she leans in and licks delicately at the head - precome salty-sweet on her tongue - it crackles into her belly like a ball of lightning.

She looks back up at him. His hands are both fisted into the sheet, his face pulled into something like a grimace. He shouldn't be, for just about every conceivable reason, but he looks scared.

His eyes are screwed shut but he must be able to feel her gaze on him, because he opens them and gulps air. "Beth, you don't have t-"

"Jesus, of course I don't." Idiot. She gives his legs a rough shove. "Sit up more. I want you to see."

Another whimper and he's finally moving, groping clumsily for the pillows and setting them against the wall that serves as her headboard. Even then he doesn't seem to know what to do with his hands, and they clench the sheet, clutch at each other, make abortive little grabs for hers. Again what fills her is something the smallest bit like impatience, and she reaches up with one hand and threads her fingers with his.

She kisses his cock, flutters her tongue against the underside right beneath the head, and he curses and drops his head back with a thunk.

She's not a pro. She knows that. One session of licking a werewolf's dick like an ice cream cone until he came all over her hands and face doesn't count as extensive experience. Some people might not even call it experience. At least not that kind of experience.

Well, fuck them.

She's getting it now, anyway.

More exploration with her tongue, running it all over the length of him. Licking him everywhere. Carefully tonguing his balls into her mouth and swirling across them. Stroking everything with her fingers, her hands. Flicking her tongue against his slit and pressing with the tip. Opening to him and sliding her lips down, stretching them tight around him and hollowing her cheeks as she sucks gently, taking him so deep she feels him barely graze the back of her throat. Feeling him flex inside and under her as she does these things. It's extraordinary. It feels like nothing else she's ever done - the weight of him, the density, the smoothness and the smell. The salty-bitter taste with those edges of mild sweetness. The way he seems to fit her mouth, as if somehow it was made - in part - to do this very thing.

She keeps waiting to dislike something and it's not happening.

She's so wrapped up in him that other sensory input has completely faded into the background but now it comes roaring back in - his fingers combed into her hair as he cups the back of her head with both hands, not pushing but just feeling her, and his thick, ragged moans interspersed with fragments of words the language of which she can't determine. She raises her eyes, not missing a beat in the bobbing rhythm of her sucking, once more holding him by the base, and what she sees on his face is something completely new. Or maybe not completely; he looked a little like this on the beach. But that was with the face of a wolf, and now he's staring at her with his lips parted and wet and an expression almost like pain twisting his features. Pain and disbelief. And awe. It's plain how much of an effort keeping his eyes open is taking, but of course he's refusing to close them; she said she wanted him to see so he'll see.

And it occurs to her all over again that she's not the only one here who has never done this. Never had it done to them.

"Beth," he gasps as his eyes lock onto hers, and suddenly he bares his teeth, every muscle in his neck and chest and arms tensing up at once. "I'm gonna… Oh, fuck, please, please, I-"

Takes her a second to get it, what he's asking. Why he needs to ask. She told him not to; he needs to know that the command is no longer in effect. Heat floods her but she doesn't stop. She nods, gives him a rough mmhmm sound, and he whines and clenches his hands in her hair, hips jerking upward in a hard spasm. "Shit, Beth, fuckin' hell, you're gonna make me come, you're gonnaaa-"

The last vowel stretches and warps into a broken shout as he bucks into her mouth, makes her gag on him until her eyes water, and she doesn't give a fuck; she keeps sucking, brings him through, swallows the thick salty fluid when it bursts onto her tongue. It's the same, the exact same taste, and it's like a dawn sky breaks open behind her eyelids, his hands and the heat of his skin and how strong she feels like this, and how it's nothing like those fucking porn mags she ruined so many hours staring at behind that fucking counter on that fucking stool.

He's flowing into her. She's taking him, flowing back into him. Not coming, not like he does, but it swells in her belly and surges so bright up through her, and she's certain that if she opens her eyes the light will be beaming out through her skin.

Through theirs.

His fingers slip free from her hair and fumble weakly at her, and she reaches up and once more weaves hers with his as she lowers her head to rest on his thigh, wet swollen lips against his softening cock and the thunder of his pulse filling her.

"I love you," he whispers, and she knows he doesn't think the words are enough. But they're good.

I belong to you.