An unfamiliar landscape. A woman seated, opposite her, wearing her face. The woman's armor threw the light and glare of a campfire into her eyes, making it difficult to focus.
"Can I get him back," she asked, tears nearly cracking her voice. And though the answer was important--desperately so, she could not hear it when it was given, could not even see the woman's lips as they moved to speak it. Within a heartbeat she was returned to herself.
"Is this about last night?" he asked, believing her hesitation signified reluctance. "Because I know that what happened--"
"No," she reassured him, stepping into his embrace. "It's not about last night," she took his hand in hers, caressing his thumb and palm as she might the piano's keys. "It's about right now."
He took off at a waltz's pace and step. He had not been lying--he was a good dancer--and together, to the beat of a melody he hummed deep within his throat, they cut sweeping arcs across the foyer and the sitting room, swirling and looping until the circles they traced grew smaller, as did the distance between them in the already close embrace of the dance.
"I don't much like that shirt on you," she said when he had stopped humming. She did not add that she could still smell something of Rolf about it.
"Well, that's easily fixed," he said, his hands joining with hers to unfasten the buttons down its front.
They still swayed somewhat, the rhythm of the waltz not yet gone from the room. He began to hum again in the back of his throat, deep and rumbling, like a far off thunder. She placed her cheek to his bare chest (willfully ignoring the divot scar), the sound of his voice carrying the tone through his lungs and into her head like an earthquake in an underground cavern.
"When I was a child," she told him, "I used to be afraid of thunder." They leaned slowly from side to side, as a single leaf waving in a gentle breeze.
He began, almost drowsily, to waltz again, and her feet followed, though she kept her eyes closed, the pulse of his heart and the bass in his voice all the compass she needed.
She was not surprised to find they had made their way to the bedroom, not surprised to see him again on Rolf's bed, and even less surprised to feel the tensing urgency in the pit of her own stomach as she unhooked her garters and tossed them to join Rolf's now cast-off shirt in the corner of the room.
Connor's hands ran down, along her spine, his mouth on its way to the nape of her neck.
The Witchblade let go of its usual, tailored clamp on her wrist, sliding heavily up her arm, colliding with her elbow, as if clearing its throat to remind her of time, slipping past her in a way she was not attempting to control.
"Yes," Elizabeth told it harshly, her voice catching in her throat. "Yes," she said aloud a second time, cursing it for not allowing her even this single act to stand, uninvaded, in privacy. Not yet, she begged it in her mind, but soon.
Seemingly chastened, the talisman fell silent.
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...to be continued...
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Disclaimer: I do not own Witchblade, nor the rights to its characters. Seek out Warner Bros. and/or Top Cow if you want to talk to people that matter. I'm not in their employ, and I'm not making any money off of their creation. But I am having a good time with it. ;)
by: Neftzer (c)2003
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