A/N: I appreciate each and every review folks have left me on this story. Your feedback gives me the inspiration to keep writing.
Catherine splayed herself out on the mattress fully, giving him unfettered access to her entire body, like a sacrifice on an altar. But Vincent paused in retrospection before accepting all that she offered to him, so fully and completely.
Noting his hesitance, she mused quietly into the beckoning quiet, "I wish I could make you see how much I love you."
Her words sounded like either a benediction or a prayer, and Vincent sighed.
"You reassure me of your love each time we find a moment to be together."
The acknowledgment spurred him to action, but rather than claim her as his body might have wanted, to put his full weight over top of her and ravage her with kisses, he restrained himself. Instead, Vincent stretched out beside her on the bed, molding his imperfect form to her alluring curves. Catherine arched into him, eliminating every inch of space between them. He reveled in the feel of her and the emotions she sent to him through the bond. The relative privacy of their location also allowed him to relax as he had no fear of someone walking in on them and seeing him… touching her.
For a long moment, neither of them said anything and the only sound which interrupted the silence was Vincent's hitched breaths. But even as he gathered the courage to continue on, Catherine shifted against him.
"Vincent…" she began to say, her voice dropping to a whisper. Then she paused, as if weighing what she was about to ask. Finally, intensively unsure of herself, she completed the question. "Do you ever… touch yourself?"
The query hit him out of the blue, but Vincent could appreciate what prompted her to ask him. Just that morning, he had reacted - strongly - to only the feel of her hand on him. While she knew of his lack of experience with others, it made sense for her to ask about his own experiences with himself.
"When I was younger…" he began, his tone a dull rumble as emotions threatened to cut off his voice altogether. "I explored that side of things. For a time, it was all I could focus on, all I wanted to do."
Beside him, Catherine smiled openly. The response surprised him but as he looked at her with questioning eyes, she explained, "That's very common - for teenage boys, especially."
Thinking back, he nodded slowly. "I suppose that was when I was a young teenager. Thirteen or fourteen…"
He remembered those lonely and desperate years, the blood in his veins so hot it felt like it might burn through his skin. He had been prone to rages back then, quick to anger and not so easily soothed. His brother Devin had already left the tunnels, and Vincent had no one else besides Father to turn to with his adolescent questions. Of course, Father's counsel had focused on self restraint, as fearful as he was about Vincent's inherently violent nature. And then, not long after, he had developed a closer friendship with Lisa…
Banishing that painful memory, he returned Catherine's question.
"As a young man," he said slowly, "I realized that allowing myself to focus… or, to indulge in such physical desires, led me to fixate on them. To obsess. And I hated how I felt afterwards. There was always such guilt and self recrimination at my lack of control…" Shaking his head, he said more directly, "I don't think I've touched myself in years, Catherine. Whenever I begin to feel such an urge, I try to sublimate it. Heavy physical exertion. Swims in the colder springs and rivers. Walks through the city…"
Even as the last of his thoughts passed his lips, Vincent realized suddenly something he had not thought to focus on before. Looking into Catherine's eyes, he searched his memory, alarmed that even as he intended to ask her the same question, he already knew the answer.
Catherine did not touch herself. Or at least, he could not remember a time when he had felt such sensations through the bond. Having now witnessed her experience orgasms first-hand, he had a reference for comparison. But those physical reactions were unique in his memory. Surely, if she had brought herself to such radiant completion, he would have felt something similar through the bond?
He sat up, pulling away from her as the truth of what he suspected overtook him with an almost overwhelming dread.
"You haven't…" he began, but then the words died as he remembered his accusations against her following Paracelsus' lies. Perhaps, just as then, this was but one more misunderstanding...?
"Do you?" Vincent asked finally. Taking in her expression of confusion, he clarified, "Do you ever… touch yourself?"
A strange sort of half-smile appeared on her face, and Catherine looked away from him.
"I have," she admitted. "I used to, quite often. Before we met."
A flash of feeling and memory swept through her, and Vincent glimpsed a smattering of images from her past. Most featured old boyfriends, more interested in their own pleasure than hers, and a fierce determination that she not go without just because of their limitations.
Vincent felt light headed as he realized that he was not among those images.
"But you haven't… since we met," he stated, knowing it to be true.
With a shallow sigh, Catherine admitted quietly, "No. I haven't."
"Why not?"
He knew what she would say even before the words left her lips. But they still seared him to his very core.
"I didn't want you to feel it. Once I understood about the bond between us…"
She stopped, and he stared at her with rapt attention, his heart racing.
"I didn't want to make you uncomfortable," she said finally.
Uncomfortable.
Vincent could barely breathe as he let her statement sink in fully. In the two and a half years they had known each other, Catherine had denied herself physical fulfillment, something she could easily achieve by her own hands, because she worried about him? About his feelings?
Rage welled up within him - not at her. Never at her. But at himself.
How had he never realized this before? How had she been able to restrain herself? Never mind that he did so himself. Vincent felt his own condition to be unique and necessary. Unlike him, Catherine did not risk releasing a violent side of herself through passion.
Vincent took a ragged breath, the truth alighting him with guilt as he understood the reasons for her self denial. He had felt her physical desire, of course. Some nights, it had been her feelings through the bond which led him to take long dips in the coldest of waters below, numbing his body's response to the call of hers. But in the world above him, Catherine had lain awake in her bed, unwilling to find an easy release lest it make him uncomfortable.
"Vincent?"
She sounded scared, and as he looked at her, he realized he had pushed himself off the bed and stalked to the other side of the chamber, his muscles tense with anger. Catherine still sat on the bed, but now she watched him warily, and a new thread of emotion came to him through the bond: self recrimination. Guilt. Dread.
She regretted answering his question so truthfully, he realized, and she hated herself for hurting him. As he focused on that last, Vincent could feel from her a swell of similar feelings, all forming around her behavior towards him. Rarely did Catherine show more than love and devotion through the bond. Certainly, he felt her frustrations with the world above, with the justice she tried so hard to find for victims left to her care. But as far as him, she always seemed to keep her emotions loving and thoughtful. Even now, he realized how much physical desire she had sublimated in order to accommodate him. But now…
She despised herself.
He felt it in a flash, a moment of aching clarity as she moved slowly off the bed to approach him.
Part of her would now be forever tied to that moment in her apartment when they had first attempted to make love - that horrible moment when he had pulled away from her, afraid of his own desperate, raging need. He had feared a fate worse than death, one in which he harmed her, succumbing to a blinding lust which reminded him of the rages he flew into to protect her. If asked to kill himself or face hurting Catherine, the decision had been easy. But now…
She had stopped him, of course. Vincent could still remember the look of determination on her face. But that night had burned a gaping wound across her heart, leaving her forever marked with responsibility for an act he alone had tried to commit. And in the weeks since their fateful encounter in her bedroom, Catherine had allowed that wound to fester. She picked at the metaphorical flesh, refusing to let it scab over and scar as such wounds needed to do to heal. Instead, she kept it alive within her, a reminder of what she almost wrought with her selfishness.
Her feelings tore at him from the inside out, precisely because they were so at odds with his own perceptions. Catherine was not selfish. She gave of herself far more than she ever asked. And that night, she had done nothing wrong, nothing worthy of the guilt he now experienced from her through the bond. She had only tried to offer him pleasure.
A pleasure she had apparently denied herself all this time...
Closing his eyes tightly, Vincent struggled with the reality he knew and the one he felt through Catherine.
And then suddenly, he felt her hands on his back. She touched him so hesitantly, so gently, he could have wept.
"Vincent, please…" she begged, and he was undone.
Dropping to his knees in the middle of the chamber, he struggled not to curl into a fetal ball. The will to live had suddenly abandoned him, now that he understood how much Catherine had given up since the date of their meeting. And the thought of her blaming herself, as though she might have any culpability for the fractured world in which he existed…
He shuddered so violently that it led to a tremble throughout his body. His restraint could barely hold, and Vincent's anger focused so solely on himself that he wished he could inhabit some other body just to attack himself. The thought of drawing his own blood and inflicting injuries upon himself held great appeal.
But Catherine had placed both her hands on his back, and before he knew it, she had snaked her arms around him completely, hugging him to her.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered softly.
"No…" he began, but he could not find the words. She beat him to them.
"I keep hurting you, and I don't mean to," Catherine told him. "I'm sorry, Vincent. Please, forgive me."
He trembled at her words, at the gentleness of her touch, and he could not fight back the tears which escaped from his eyes to soak his cheeks.
"You have never once hurt me," he told her solemnly, unable to turn and look at her. "You have stripped yourself bare, so bare you cannot even defend yourself from your own recriminations. All for my sake."
Pushing his eyelids closed, a fresh spring of tears escaped out, and Vincent sobbed in pain. But Catherine only tightened her hold on him, bringing him amazingly closer to her, enveloping him in her arms like a mother duck sheltering her young from the harshness of the outside world.
Refocusing on the beginning of their conversation, Vincent thought about her admission, that she had not permitted herself to feel sexual completion since before the night they had met. That fact, if nothing else, needed to be addressed.
"Why would you think that touching yourself would make me feel… uncomfortable?" he questioned.
Catherine clung to him desperately, as if both their lives depended upon it. The question did not seem to alarm her as she answered, "I didn't want to drive you away. I worried if I was too needy, too desperate, you would might feel it and-"
She did not complete the thought, but he could feel her sense of abandonment through the bond. But more than that, he could sense all that she left unsaid. Catherine had already admitted worrying about sullying his sense of platonic love with her physical desires, and he could feel the echo of that concern within her. But even more than that, he could feel an even deeper concern.
More than the worry of seeming too desperate or even uncouth with her wants, he knew that deep within her was another fear.
"I don't want to hurt you. I don't ever want to disappoint you."
The memory of her words from not very long ago came to him, and Vincent reacted as though he had been physically struck. Her sacrifices had been compounding so steadily, he could hardly imagine now how much she had given up - for him. And his own sense of unworthiness pulled the bottom out from under him, leaving him free-falling into darkness at the thought of Catherine tearing herself apart for his sake.
"You must never again deny yourself, Catherine," he said aloud, his distress audible even to his own ears. "Never!"
She stilled against him, and he could feel her hesitation through the bond.
"I want you to experience every joy, every happiness that life has to offer," he continued, desperate to make her understand.
Before he could go on, he heard her whisper, "And that's what I want for you."
He hung his head, feeling the echo of that certainty emanating from her, a whisper of her true feelings as she struggled to keep them from leaking out through the bond. Truly, she did want for him all that he wished for her, and it hurt just to think of what she would give of herself to satisfy his unending desires.
Because he wanted her.
Even now, even in the midst of his realization of all she had given up for him, he wanted her. His body demanded that he claim her, that he push into her, again and again, until she was his completely: his love and his mate forevermore.
The force of his desire, the desperation verging on violence, scared him. For perhaps the thousandth time, an imagine of Catherine entered into his mind. But unlike a pleasant daydream in which she responded to his touch, he saw her face twisted into pain as he invaded her body, as he tore at her insides like a brute, like a beast. He could feel her fingers clutching at his arms, too weak to push him away. But more than anything, he could see her eyes - her beautiful green eyes utterly replete with pain but unwilling to admit to him the truth of its origin.
Even beyond his fear that Catherine might scream out in agony - Vincent feared that she might not. He imagined her closing her eyes tightly, accepting the pain as the price of his love, and enduring it all in order to complete his satisfaction. The very thought froze him cold, and Vincent could barely move as he found himself trapped in that vision of her. As her body clenched in agonizing acceptance of the violence he was about to visit unto her, she braced herself to accept it. Distantly, Vincent experienced that moment of horror from some of his most impassioned nightmares. She withstood every thrust, every moment of so painful an invasion, with stoic courage. But nothing she might do would ever keep the scent of blood from his nostrils, nor the sight of it from his eyes as he finally discovered what he had wrought on her willing but fragile body...
Vincent collapsed onto his knees on the floor, and Catherine wound her arms around him, hugging him as tightly as she dared. Their conversation had not gone well, not after she had admitted to avoiding masturbation ever since realizing the extent of their connection, the bond which allowed him to feel her every emotion and sometimes even her thoughts.
In some ways, Catherine barely even considered it a sacrifice. She was no longer a slave to her hormones as she had been as a teenager. Even in her twenties, the physical need which accompanied sexual desire had been an irresistible temptation. But having escaped several bad relationships, Catherine understood what real love entailed. And it did not require an orgasm for her to feel completely fulfilled.
But the blow she had dealt to Vincent through her revelation reminded her of the need to be careful with such information. Unlike her, he had never experienced the horrible lows and amazing heights of a sexual relationship with another person. To him, everything she gave up in furtherance of their love, every sacrifice, was a confirmation that he was unworthy of her devotion. And even Catherine had to admit, having lived a life of relative celibacy for over two years, the sacrifice was not inconsiderable.
How many nights had she lain awake, her body strumming with a desire her mind was unwilling to fulfill? Because she could not face him if he felt those moments of selfish fulfillment. And even if she had deigned to take matters into her own hands, something she had never felt shy about attempting before - Catherine knew it would not be enough. Not enough by far.
Because she wanted him.
She craved the closeness of his body pressed up against hers. She yearned for the scent of him, for the warmth of his breath against her skin. If all she could ever hope for was the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand, she could subsist on those meager rations so long as she had Vincent in her life.
She refused to drive him away with her sexual frustration.
Sighing aloud, she told him frankly, "Vincent, I don't need sex. I enjoy it. I enjoy the feel of you touching me, of your mouth on me. But I can live without it. What I can't live without is you in my life. I know that now. I would rather feel the ache of physical longing than endure life bereft of your presence."
Very deliberately, she let go of him, loosening her grip slowly and then backing away. She remained on her knees on the floor, only a few feet from him, but she knew how important it was to break that connection. Sometimes, he seemed intoxicated by her touch, by the press of her body against his. While part of her knew it had something to do with their special connection, another part reminded Catherine of how little love Vincent had absorbed in his early life. With no mother, he relied entirely upon Father and the others below for the adoration every child needed. But Father, as much as he had always doted on Vincent, was a paternal figure to the entire community. While he singled his son out for particular affection, it could not have been the same as having a devoted mother and father, the sort of childhood Catherine remembered.
No, she could not capitalize on how much he wanted, how much he needed, someone to love him. She would not manipulate him into something that made him uncomfortable, something which caused him so much distress and fear that he had almost ended his own life.
She could live without anything, Catherine affirmed to herself, so long as he still drew breath. She could even live alone in darkness, in an endless morass of pain and guilt, so long as she did not cause his death with her selfishness.
"Please…" she whispered, wanting so much to reach for him. "Vincent, please…" she begged.
"Vincent, please…"
Her desperation burned through them both, and Vincent knew that she had surpassed the point of need, of dignity. Anything he asked of her now, she would give. Any request, no matter how small or how grandiose, she would grant without a second thought. She would forsake her future, her body, her life, and even her soul in exchange for what she wanted, what she needed from him.
His love.
The request was so simple, and yet so entirely complicated, Vincent recognized. All she asked for, all she wanted, was him, a future with a man so marginally acquainted with the word that he could not even say for certain if he was a man. But his status mattered little compared to his presence in her life, and that was what counted more than anything else.
"I love you."
She said the words so freely, so adoringly, that he could not help but believe her. How many times had she laid herself bare? How many moments had he searched out her emotions through the bond and found nothing but her longing and devotion?
She loved him.
Trust Catherine.
She loved him more than anything, more than anyone she had ever known.
He recognized the feelings in her because they mirrored his own. And just as suddenly did that realization take hold of him that Vincent felt another: she would never find happiness with someone else. Her love pushed out all other possibilities, all prior connections and those which might have been had he not entered her life. The die was cast. Continuing to deny and struggle against the truth of her love would result in nothing other than more unnecessary pain and longing...
With a tremendous sigh, Vincent pushed himself up off the ground. The movement caught Catherine by surprise, but he did not let the flash of concern he felt from her deter him. Instead, he turned and grasped her hands in his own, pulling her up off the dirt floor as well. The moment she met his gaze, she seemed transfixed, mesmerized.
A half a dozen steps brought them back to the bed, and he guided her to it with gentle, firm hands. Catherine melted into him as he began removing her clothes. He did so perfunctorily, with very little reservation or hesitation. They were but garments between him and what he sought.
Within moments, she lay beneath him, completely nude. Suddenly aware of his own condition, being overburdened with garments, he stripped it all away in a few quick movements. And before he could second guess himself, Vincent pressed his own naked body against hers, need combining with desperation as his hands and lips met the fevered heat of her bare flesh.
"Catherine," he whispered, frantic in his intentions, but also careful with his touch. "Oh, Catherine."
He kissed and touched her body, his movements a frenzy of sensation. His mouth found one taut nipple and then the other, heightening her desire to almost unbearable levels before moving down to her navel. Catherine arched up against him, craving any part of his body she might be allowed to touch.
"I love you." She whispered the words in desperation and he unraveled.
Vincent knew what she needed, which caresses she longed for to ensure completion. He could easily have put his mouth upon her and had her soaring to those tremendous heights in a matter of seconds. But he also acknowledged something deeper within her, a desire for unity which he could not ignore. The call of it threaded through them both, like the sound of a siren luring sailors to their doom. He knew that call well, having resisted it fiercely lest they meet such a doomed fate.
"Vincent," Catherine begged him, pulling him as close as she dared, before assuring him, "you won't hurt me."
His own desire, waiting rigid and insistently between them, caused him to doubt her. He still remembered her only hesitation about their joining, that he might cause her some discomfort from his size. But that concern seemed infinitesimal to her now, a mere afterthought. The fact that she showed so little fear compared to him made him wonder whether he could actually trust her feelings through the bond.
Vincent drew in deep, frantic gasps as he considered whether what he wanted to do was truly right. If he took her, if he pressed his own flesh inside her body, that might be the end of everything. If Catherine looked back on the experience and for even a moment thought it a violation, he would gladly end his life as quickly and painfully as she deemed acceptable. But then, he knew her. Even if he harmed her... If he ever harmed her, certainly... But no, even if he caused her pain in this most frightening and intimate of moments, she would not condemn him.
Below him, Catherine moved slightly, although she seemed content to wait as he sorted through his raging emotions. His breath caught in his throat as his body reminded him of how thoroughly blissful it felt to be pressed against her nakedness. She hummed with enjoyment at their contact, at the feel of him fully against her. Vincent waited for a moment of revulsion or distaste. But none flowed through the bond to him. Instead, she emanated only joy and elation, like a long-held wish was finally about to be granted.
Guided by her assurance, Vincent let the rest of his doubts go. He simply set them adrift behind him in the raging river of his mind, and with more courage than he had ever before possessed, he took that last step onto the distant shore she inhabited. Imagining her reaching out a welcoming hand, Vincent moved to press his sex against hers.
He gave her a moment to reject him. Somehow, even after everything between them, he almost expected her to push him away. His mind flashed to that night in the Great Hall with Lisa, to the fear he remembered seeing in her eyes. Up until that moment, the girl had seemed to love him as well, or so his teenage self had hoped. But when faced with being touched by the likes of him, Lisa's lovely expression had morphed swiftly into terror.
But rather than push him away, Catherine wrapped her arms around him, gentle but firm. Looking up at him, her eyes showed no fear. No doubt. Not even a flicker of hesitation.
"Please," she begged, writhing beneath him. "Vincent, I want you so much…"
At her behest, intoxicated by the heady scent of her, he finally found the courage to complete their most intimate contact. Her damp folds put up only a moment of resistance before yielding to the insistence of his own body.
Pressing further into her, Vincent quickly realized that although she welcomed the intrusion of his body whole-heartedly, her inner passage was not so eager to accommodate. Each inch of his length required a corresponding moment for her body to adjust, and the resulting wait almost drove him mad. Not that he had any problem with taking time to let her muscles naturally relax to the invasion, but Vincent hated the notion of forcing her to give in to an intruder within her own body.
"Say the word, and I will stop," he whispered desperately, both hoping and fearing that she might take him up on the offer.
But Catherine shook her head firmly and clung to him even tighter. "Please don't stop."
Looking down at her face, at her skin glowing under a thin sheen of sweat, he marveled at her. Whatever he asked of her, she gave. And she gave - and gave and gave...
The tension between them had built to such a height that Vincent worried about losing the last of his control. The tightness of her around him, the long moments of letting her gradually accommodate him, had nearly unraveled him to the point of desperation. But still, he held fast, waiting for the time when she be ready-
"Vincent," she breathed his name out softly, and he knew as she spoke that she wanted him to continue. Her body had finally accepted his full length, leaving him sheathed entirely in her warm wetness.
She felt exquisite. And yet, he yearned for more.
Very carefully, mindful of his lack of experience in this regard, Vincent did what came naturally. He pulled back very slightly and then thrust back into her. Her hips absorbed the force, and the resulting sensation of pleasure for both of them overwhelmed him.
With Catherine's arms wrapped around his body, she silently urged him to move again. He did so, this time removing more of himself before pushing back into her. And then he did it again. Again and again, he began to thrust, build up a rhythm between them. Moaning despite herself, Catherine wrapped her legs around his waist, opening herself even wider while also reminding him of her enjoyment of his movements.
Deep inside of him, Vincent felt something building. Not just the approaching culmination of their physical pleasure, but he sensed the approach of something else. The last vestiges of his tightly maintained control seemed to be slipping away from him. The loss of that self mastery terrified him, and for a moment, he might have actually stopped and pulled away. But Catherine held him against her, her arms both soothing and accepting. Her touch was more than a reassurance. It bound them together, body and soul, and in giving in to her, Vincent was able to resist the otherness of his nature which might have taken over in that moment of vulnerability.
As the end approached, that most sought-after climax, Vincent felt his body automatically move faster, thrusting more frantically into Catherine's softness. Beneath him, she relaxed even further, focusing herself entirely on him rather than the pleasure mounting within herself. She seemed to understand what was about to happen even better than he did.
It hit Vincent almost unexpectedly, like stumbling to the top of a mountain only to recognize at the last step he was about to fall down the other side. With one last thrust into her, Vincent clung to Catherine tightly as the orgasm swept through him. He had not even realized he had made a sound until the reverberations of his roar swept back to him from the stone walls of the chamber.
The pleasure of completion swept through him, transforming him utterly, like a moment frozen out of time. His aged memories of experimenting with his own body were no rival to this feeling, this sensation of physical completion. Catherine's body clenched around him, drawing out every second of his pleasure.
Rather than pull away from him at the sound of his roar, the reminder of his in-humanness, Catherine only held him to her all the more tightly. Her legs stayed wrapped around his waist, cementing him in place within her as she rocked him gently from side to side. In the warmth and softness of her embrace, Vincent came down from the heights of his climax, the nerve endings of his body slowly returning to normal just as his breathing and heart rate began to slow to a more reasonable pace.
A wave of fatigue suddenly overtook him, and Vincent finally let both his body and mind relax. As he lay cushioned safely in Catherine's arms, oblivion claimed him.
TBC