A/N: Yay! Thank you for reviewing! You know who you are!! :: points::
Thanks again! That chapter was fun and this one is just plain SEXY. Its
like SIZZLE hot. We kinda skipped the workday with Clarice, cause I mean
come on.it'd be boring. So hope you like! This is has a lot more Hannibal
and Clarice contact!
Disclaimers: Nope, we own nothing except the sexiness! Wow, we love sexy things!
Clarice Starling stood, her fingers draped over the silk that now concealed her eyes. In an instant, her whole world shifted to deep red. Her heart was threatening to burst through her rib cage, hot confusion and exhilaration, which one might mistake with fright coursed through her veins as the force that had taken her vision now pushed her onto the sofa. She felt a somehow only too familiar hand run softly down her back. An immediate instinct, she crawled her fingers to her hip where she held a Colt .45. Not quick enough, the hand came to rest on hers and held it steady while the other slid the gun out of its holster. That was her only weapon on her, now in the possession of the enemy. Now unarmed, Clarice's confidence shattered and she could only obey.
---- Ten minutes earlier, Clarice Starling slammed the door to her Mustang shut and quickly locked it. Rain poured from overhead, cold and piercing to fit her mood.
"Fuck!" she had yelled and she threw a fist into the hard steel. She had wondered furiously why she put up with the torture everyday. Tomorrow would be the same, and the day after that, and the day after that. Every one of these days she lived with the fear that she might crack and free the fury that kept threatening to burst, as if it was air filling a balloon. It was too much, too much.
Clarice Starling choked back a sob and instead let out a frustrated scream, thrusting her fist into the car door again.
Dark crimson eyes, always concentrated, watched Clarice through the window of her living room window. Outside, he watched her run a hand through her rain-soaked hair and then run it across her right cheek, across her small black dot of gunpowder in the location called "courage".
He saw her climbing the steps to the front door and he slipped behind it in an instant.
The door burst open and Clarice stood for a moment, then chucked her purse onto the table, slamming the door shut with her foot.
Hannibal Lecter watched Clarice shrug off her wet jacket and at this moment, he crept behind her with a scarlet silk scarf. ----
Clarice Starling now sat breathing hard on her living room sofa. Lecter left her there for a moment to lock the front door and close the curtains, leaving only a slit to look through. He was quickly back in his place, sitting in an armchair some four feet away from the sofa.
After a few moments of silence, he quietly spoke.
"Clarice."
Clarice had been waiting for this voice to sound. She knew who this man was.
"What are you doing here?"
"Is that the way you greet an old friend?"
"What are you doing here?" she repeated, the words came out hard and cold.
"You look well, Clarice."
"Looks can be deceiving, doctor."
"I know." he spoke softly.
There were more moments of silence.
"I heard your back on a case." Lecter finally said.
"Yeah, they let me off easy when I-" she stopped abruptly then began again. "I should have been fired. They've been more than generous."
"When you what, Clarice?"
"When...I didn't catch you back at the lake house."
"Well now, Clarice...that was hardly your fault." Clarice couldn't see the sparks of amusement and fire deep in his eyes, but could most certainly hear it in his voice. "You did your best."
Starling sighed.
"How is your hand, doctor?" she mused.
"Ah, since when do you care about me, Special Agent Starling?"
Clarice opened her mouth to say something, but stopped as she heard Lecter rise from the armchair and walk closer to her. She turned her head awkwardly closer to the sound and shifted slightly, as a blind person would.
She heard Lecter fumbling with some things on the coffee table. A pop, a fizzing, a rushing sound and a clinking of glass on glass.
"You know I care about you," she said finally. "I have no choice."
"Ah, but you do have a choice, Clarice. There's always a choice. Would you like a drink?"
"What is it?"
"Champagne, I've picked up quite a few bottles in my travels."
"Romantic."
Lecter chuckled. He poured a glass and reached out and took Clarice's hand in his. Clarice took a surprised sharp intake of breath, then slowly let it back out. Her before normal heart rate was now dangerously high.
Lecter took the glass of champagne from the table and placed it in Starling's hand, enclosing her fingers around it.
"Do you have it? I'm going to let go now."
Starling nodded as his warm fingers withdrew, leaving hers tingling.
She touched a hand to the crimson cloth that covered her eyes.
"Why am I wearing this?"
When Lecter next spoke, his voice was back in the armchair.
"I can't let you see me."
"But you can see me? That hardly seems fair. Quid pro quo, doctor."
Lecter laughed, not surprised that Starling would use his own words against him.
"True. What would you like, Clarice?"
"My gun."
"You think I'm going to hurt you, Clarice?"
"No."
"Very well. I put the gun on the coffee table. It's right there in front of you. Just reach out."
Starling walked her hands blindly around for a few moments before she found it and set it beside her.
"Tell my why I can't see you, doctor."
"I've had a few of my physical features altered, Clarice. I don't want you running to Jack Crawford, telling him of my new face."
"I see."
Dr. Lecter now sipped his champagne and Clarice reached out and upon finding the coffee table with her hands, set the glass on top of it.
"Please tell me why you're here."
Thunder cracked outside as the rain shattered on the windows. Lecter looked out at the storm.
"Are you happy, Clarice?" he asked.
"What?"
"Are you happy. It's a simple question."
"I heard."
Silence.
"Are you going to answer me, Clarice?"
"Where did you go after you left the lake house?"
"A week after, I was in London. Last week I was just outside Wales."
"Why did you come back? You know it's not safe."
"Answer my question, Clarice."
She paused and tilted her head down. She stayed like this for a minute or so. Finally she brought her head up.
"No, no I'm not happy."
Lecter nodded thought she couldn't see it.
"I know." he said.
They sat for an eternity, listening to the rain crash on the windows. Clarice's mind drifted and thought about her life. No, she wasn't happy. She knew this, but had never been able to admit it to anyone until now. She thought about when she had first realized this. Back, back, back, her mind rewound the years of her life.
---- "Dr. Lecter? My name is Clarice Starling, may I speak with you?"
"Good morning." he had said. ----
He had been the one that had made her talk about her life, had made her accept it in full truth. He had been blunt and fierce. She had been challenged. Never in her life had she had such an exhilarating and whole experience. He made her want to scream at the top of her lungs.
Lecter sat across the room, outlining the curves of Clarice Starling's body with his eyes. Not only was she the most interesting woman he had ever met, she was also one of the most beautiful. He didn't think that she realized that she was beautiful. He didn't think she realized any of her beauty, not just physical. The moment he had laid eyes on her almost eleven years ago, she had intrigued him immensely. Of all of the women he had seen and spoken to in his lifetime she stood out. Clarice Starling was different...she was strong, intelligent and bold...and the thing that was so strange was that she had not been afraid of him.
Over the course of these eleven years, obsession, dark and passionate, had settled like a roaring ocean between them.
Clarice's mind flooded. She realized how she had ached for this man, how she had ached every single day of those eleven years. She wanted to say something.
Shouldn't do this...fuck it.
She gathered her courage and spoke quietly, breaking the thick silence.
"Please," she said. "Let me look at you."
Lecter gazed at Clarice. He needed her to see him as much as he himself needed to see her face as a whole. They had cut things so short back at the lake house; they needed to make it up to each other.
He said nothing, but rose quietly and drifted over to Clarice. He kneeled to be eye level with her and reached behind her neck to untie the blindfold. Clarice began to breathe hard and fast. The silk dropped from her eyes and fell to the floor.
Clarice blinked a few times to adjust her eyes to the dark light. She looked at Lecter calmly.
"Thank you.," she said.
"My pleasure."
They stayed like this for a few intense moments.
Lecter's shadowy eyes burned into Clarice's. Clarice's wide, fierce eyes bore back into his. There were so many things he wanted to do to her at that moment, but he knew he shouldn't touch. He wanted Clarice to give in and ensnare him inside a deep kiss, but he knew she was just as stubborn as he himself. He couldn't take charge. Rudeness was completely intolerable by his standards, and he was very disciplined
Clarice had become tangled in the spinning webs of Dr. Lecter's eyes. She tried to look away, but something held her. A strong impulse told her to reach out and touch his face. She knew she wanted to.
This is ridiculous.
She tore her eyes away from Lecter's and picked up her champagne glass.
"Well," Lecter said quietly.
"Well." said Clarice, holding her glass up against her chest.
Lecter stood smoothly and Clarice gazed after him as he sat back down in his chair.
"The FBI have been treating you poorly," Lecter said once he had resumed his comfortable position.
"I said they've been as good as they could have been to me," Clarice replied.
"Ah, yes...I tend to stick my best, most intelligent, successful and daring young agents on endless, stifling, paperwork office cases as well."
"Dr. Lecter-" Clarice began impatiently, but Lecter interrupted.
"You said yourself that you're not happy, Clarice."
"Who said that that was the area of my life that I had in mind when I admitted to that?"
"...How many other areas of your life are there, Clarice?"
Clarice fell into a defeated silence, allowing Dr. Lecter another strike.
"The FBI has been your whole world, Clarice. It has become your very soul. And yet, they've slapped you in the face after every worthwhile accomplishment you've made. They've offered no support, no sympathy...they've not even spoken a kind word to you, have they? All you wanted was to make your daddy proud. You were so ambitious, Clarice, with so much to offer. They've turned you sour, and you've dealt with it. It hardly seems a fair game, Agent Starling."
Dr. Lecter's words stung Clarice with the numb sensation of a need riddled with black poison. She managed to find the ghosts of words in her mind, sort them out of their puzzle and form a sentence. After a long silence, the sentence finally tumbled from her mouth.
"Life is never fair, Dr. Lecter." she said quietly.
"Life has been particularly unjust to you, Clarice."
"I guess I'm just cursed."
Lecter wanted so wildly for Clarice to taste even the slightest drop of happiness. He wanted to knock the sense into her. He wanted to tell her that the FBI was suffocating her, more and more pressure, less and less oxygen. If Clarice wasn't careful, before long her blood would turn to pure ice and she would loose grip of every sense of the miraculous she had ever had. He wanted and knew he could show her things she had never seen before, could make her feel things she had never felt before...if she would just say the word. Lecter knew she craved for something apart from this life, but not in a thousand years would she admit it.
He knew all these things, and so desired to put them into words and drench Clarice with all the possibilities. Though to bring him to do this was very difficult. Clarice Starling was utterly unpredictable. She might shoot him then and there she might fling herself into his arms...and any wide range of actions in-between. He had been waiting years for this, and something told him if he didn't act now, it would all be lost. Clarice didn't have much left to live for.
"Curses only have power if you believe in them, and I don't, Clarice. Do you?"
"I believe in consequences, Dr. Lecter. I believe that everything happens for a reason."
"And what do you believe the reason for your despair and discrimination is? Now think carefully before answering, Clarice."
Clarice obeyed Lecter's command and thought with a deeply immersed look on her face. She was looking out the window and clutching the scarlet blindfold in her left fist. Finally, she spoke without taking her eyes from the hypnotizing fall of the rain outside.
"I don't think I'll ever know, Dr. Lecter. I just feel it. Every instance, every action I make results in a greater purpose. I'm not sure if I'll ever know what that purpose is, but I do like to think I have an idea."
Lecter, who could so easily have made a crude comment to this statement, fell silent. So simple a declaration should have made him attack her with his logic...something along the lines of there is no greater purpose than that which we find buried within ourselves. But he found Clarice's statement to be so oddly true and pure. Another thing that struck him, Clarice had permitted herself to tell him this. She was not one to tell people of her belief system. It filled him with superiority that even though she didn't necessarily trust him; he was the only one she had confided these things in. There was an unspeakable level of loyalty and trust between them.
It did, however, provoke a burning inquiry on his part. He slowly stood up, a dark gleam in his eyes as he once again held the curves of Clarice's body deep in the pupils of his eyes. He began to make his way slowly over to her.
"If you believe there is a greater purpose for every incident in your life," he said in a low growl, "Then let me ask you this: what was the greater intention for meeting and becoming so painfully close to me...Clarice?"
Clarice's eyes were drawn to his with a powerful magnetic force, and she took a deep breath and steadied herself as she always did when Hannibal Lecter looked at her the way he was looking at her now. Lecter stopped when he got to the edge of the couch where Clarice sat, and stood awaiting an answer.
"I don't know, Dr. Lecter," she said steadily, tearing her eyes sharply away from his.
Lecter took his left index finger and placed it underneath Clarice's chin and forced it upwards so that she was looking at him once again. Suddenly his lips were dangerously close to hers, and she did not look away this time but rather focused with a sort of steady anger. Lecter smiled and turned her head slightly to the side.
"Take a wild guess, Clarice...," he hissed into her ear.
The warm breath on her neck sent Clarice soaring into complete darkness just as it faintly did back at the lake house. She closed her eyes and had to struggle to speak, as he was still close enough for her to be scorched by his flaming body heat.
"I...I-" she breathed.
"You what, Clarice?" Lecter said, and she fell silent, breathing hard. He placed four fingers underneath her chin once more, and ran his thumb over her lips. Once he stopped, Clarice involuntarily flicked her tongue out along her bottom lip, trying to taste where his fingers had been. She couldn't bring herself to open her eyes.
Lecter couldn't take his eyes off Clarice. For everything he did to her, she had a counteraction that sent his heart racing. There were thousands more things he could do to her, and he was immensely curious to find out what her reaction to them would be.
Lecter brought his head to the crook of her neck, and Clarice couldn't help but tilt her head to the side to allow him full access to whichever part of her neck he wanted. She wasn't exactly sure why she was letting him do this to her, to manipulate her like this, but it felt too good to stop. For the first time in a decade, she felt her pain begin to melt away.
Clarice also couldn't help but think that she was no better, no matter how much she'd like to think she was, than any of Lecter's old victims. She was giving into him like all the rest...and though she knew this man was arguably the most dangerous man she had ever met, she also knew that he would never hurt her. What were his exact words? "The world is more interesting with you in it..."
She knew one thing for sure, he was too afraid of what she would do to him if he even tried to hurt her.
Clarice was so consumed in her thoughts that as soon as she felt Lecter's tongue slide across her throat, her muscles tensed furiously and she bit down hard on her bottom lip. Lecter brought his head back up to look at Clarice, with her eyes still shut tight, and saw her run her tongue across her lip again. A deep slit appeared after Clarice ran her tongue over the spot, over where she had bit down, and Lecter's eyes danced excitedly as he watched a thick, red drop of blood form on the edge of Clarice's lip.
"I'd really like you to finish what you were trying to tell me before, Clarice," Lecter said softly.
Clarice opened her mouth to speak and once again Lecter's lips were alarmingly close to Clarice's. She could feel his breath seep into her mouth and skin.
"Dr. Lecter," she said breathlessly. "I..."
"Yes, Clarice, that's as far as we got last time. Keep going, I'm waiting..."
"I..."
Lecter's lips were practically touching Clarice's now as they spoke in short breaths.
"Jesus, Doctor..." Clarice panted with weary impatience. "Just kiss me, already."
Lecter leaned in and firmly pressed his lips hungrily against Clarice's, as he had back at the lake house.
Clarice's lips were burning like black fire and her mind was being slowly drenched with the familiar feeling of spinning helplessly around while at the same time being keenly aware of reality.
Lecter wrenched Clarice's mouth open and slid his tongue along hers before pulling away.
By instinct, Clarice resisted Lecter's lips leaving hers and leaned back into him, as if wanting more.
"Clarice...do you understand what I'm trying to tell you?" Lecter hissed once again into her ear.
Clarice finally opened her eyes, slowly. She paused for a moment looking at him, and then said, "You've been trying to tell me something, Doctor? It may help if you use your lips for talking."
Lecter smiled. His wicked eyes bore more harshly into Clarice's, and he was about to open his mouth to reply when there was a sharp rapping on the front door, breaking the steady beat of the rainfall outside.
Clarice's head whipped around to look at the front door, her heart burning and beating wildly with adrenaline.
"Clarice!" came Ardelia's voice from the porch. "Hey girl, open up!"
"Fuck," Clarice cursed frantically.
Lecter looked calmly to the front door. It was locked of course, but the curtains hanging above the living room window were slightly open and Ardelia Mapp was sure to move onto them when no one answered the door.
"Clarice," he held her face steady with his hand. "I'll be seeing you again. Soon." He leaned in, and still holding her face in his hand, ran his tongue across her lips. She moaned and closed her eyes. When she opened them, he was gone.
Disclaimers: Nope, we own nothing except the sexiness! Wow, we love sexy things!
Clarice Starling stood, her fingers draped over the silk that now concealed her eyes. In an instant, her whole world shifted to deep red. Her heart was threatening to burst through her rib cage, hot confusion and exhilaration, which one might mistake with fright coursed through her veins as the force that had taken her vision now pushed her onto the sofa. She felt a somehow only too familiar hand run softly down her back. An immediate instinct, she crawled her fingers to her hip where she held a Colt .45. Not quick enough, the hand came to rest on hers and held it steady while the other slid the gun out of its holster. That was her only weapon on her, now in the possession of the enemy. Now unarmed, Clarice's confidence shattered and she could only obey.
---- Ten minutes earlier, Clarice Starling slammed the door to her Mustang shut and quickly locked it. Rain poured from overhead, cold and piercing to fit her mood.
"Fuck!" she had yelled and she threw a fist into the hard steel. She had wondered furiously why she put up with the torture everyday. Tomorrow would be the same, and the day after that, and the day after that. Every one of these days she lived with the fear that she might crack and free the fury that kept threatening to burst, as if it was air filling a balloon. It was too much, too much.
Clarice Starling choked back a sob and instead let out a frustrated scream, thrusting her fist into the car door again.
Dark crimson eyes, always concentrated, watched Clarice through the window of her living room window. Outside, he watched her run a hand through her rain-soaked hair and then run it across her right cheek, across her small black dot of gunpowder in the location called "courage".
He saw her climbing the steps to the front door and he slipped behind it in an instant.
The door burst open and Clarice stood for a moment, then chucked her purse onto the table, slamming the door shut with her foot.
Hannibal Lecter watched Clarice shrug off her wet jacket and at this moment, he crept behind her with a scarlet silk scarf. ----
Clarice Starling now sat breathing hard on her living room sofa. Lecter left her there for a moment to lock the front door and close the curtains, leaving only a slit to look through. He was quickly back in his place, sitting in an armchair some four feet away from the sofa.
After a few moments of silence, he quietly spoke.
"Clarice."
Clarice had been waiting for this voice to sound. She knew who this man was.
"What are you doing here?"
"Is that the way you greet an old friend?"
"What are you doing here?" she repeated, the words came out hard and cold.
"You look well, Clarice."
"Looks can be deceiving, doctor."
"I know." he spoke softly.
There were more moments of silence.
"I heard your back on a case." Lecter finally said.
"Yeah, they let me off easy when I-" she stopped abruptly then began again. "I should have been fired. They've been more than generous."
"When you what, Clarice?"
"When...I didn't catch you back at the lake house."
"Well now, Clarice...that was hardly your fault." Clarice couldn't see the sparks of amusement and fire deep in his eyes, but could most certainly hear it in his voice. "You did your best."
Starling sighed.
"How is your hand, doctor?" she mused.
"Ah, since when do you care about me, Special Agent Starling?"
Clarice opened her mouth to say something, but stopped as she heard Lecter rise from the armchair and walk closer to her. She turned her head awkwardly closer to the sound and shifted slightly, as a blind person would.
She heard Lecter fumbling with some things on the coffee table. A pop, a fizzing, a rushing sound and a clinking of glass on glass.
"You know I care about you," she said finally. "I have no choice."
"Ah, but you do have a choice, Clarice. There's always a choice. Would you like a drink?"
"What is it?"
"Champagne, I've picked up quite a few bottles in my travels."
"Romantic."
Lecter chuckled. He poured a glass and reached out and took Clarice's hand in his. Clarice took a surprised sharp intake of breath, then slowly let it back out. Her before normal heart rate was now dangerously high.
Lecter took the glass of champagne from the table and placed it in Starling's hand, enclosing her fingers around it.
"Do you have it? I'm going to let go now."
Starling nodded as his warm fingers withdrew, leaving hers tingling.
She touched a hand to the crimson cloth that covered her eyes.
"Why am I wearing this?"
When Lecter next spoke, his voice was back in the armchair.
"I can't let you see me."
"But you can see me? That hardly seems fair. Quid pro quo, doctor."
Lecter laughed, not surprised that Starling would use his own words against him.
"True. What would you like, Clarice?"
"My gun."
"You think I'm going to hurt you, Clarice?"
"No."
"Very well. I put the gun on the coffee table. It's right there in front of you. Just reach out."
Starling walked her hands blindly around for a few moments before she found it and set it beside her.
"Tell my why I can't see you, doctor."
"I've had a few of my physical features altered, Clarice. I don't want you running to Jack Crawford, telling him of my new face."
"I see."
Dr. Lecter now sipped his champagne and Clarice reached out and upon finding the coffee table with her hands, set the glass on top of it.
"Please tell me why you're here."
Thunder cracked outside as the rain shattered on the windows. Lecter looked out at the storm.
"Are you happy, Clarice?" he asked.
"What?"
"Are you happy. It's a simple question."
"I heard."
Silence.
"Are you going to answer me, Clarice?"
"Where did you go after you left the lake house?"
"A week after, I was in London. Last week I was just outside Wales."
"Why did you come back? You know it's not safe."
"Answer my question, Clarice."
She paused and tilted her head down. She stayed like this for a minute or so. Finally she brought her head up.
"No, no I'm not happy."
Lecter nodded thought she couldn't see it.
"I know." he said.
They sat for an eternity, listening to the rain crash on the windows. Clarice's mind drifted and thought about her life. No, she wasn't happy. She knew this, but had never been able to admit it to anyone until now. She thought about when she had first realized this. Back, back, back, her mind rewound the years of her life.
---- "Dr. Lecter? My name is Clarice Starling, may I speak with you?"
"Good morning." he had said. ----
He had been the one that had made her talk about her life, had made her accept it in full truth. He had been blunt and fierce. She had been challenged. Never in her life had she had such an exhilarating and whole experience. He made her want to scream at the top of her lungs.
Lecter sat across the room, outlining the curves of Clarice Starling's body with his eyes. Not only was she the most interesting woman he had ever met, she was also one of the most beautiful. He didn't think that she realized that she was beautiful. He didn't think she realized any of her beauty, not just physical. The moment he had laid eyes on her almost eleven years ago, she had intrigued him immensely. Of all of the women he had seen and spoken to in his lifetime she stood out. Clarice Starling was different...she was strong, intelligent and bold...and the thing that was so strange was that she had not been afraid of him.
Over the course of these eleven years, obsession, dark and passionate, had settled like a roaring ocean between them.
Clarice's mind flooded. She realized how she had ached for this man, how she had ached every single day of those eleven years. She wanted to say something.
Shouldn't do this...fuck it.
She gathered her courage and spoke quietly, breaking the thick silence.
"Please," she said. "Let me look at you."
Lecter gazed at Clarice. He needed her to see him as much as he himself needed to see her face as a whole. They had cut things so short back at the lake house; they needed to make it up to each other.
He said nothing, but rose quietly and drifted over to Clarice. He kneeled to be eye level with her and reached behind her neck to untie the blindfold. Clarice began to breathe hard and fast. The silk dropped from her eyes and fell to the floor.
Clarice blinked a few times to adjust her eyes to the dark light. She looked at Lecter calmly.
"Thank you.," she said.
"My pleasure."
They stayed like this for a few intense moments.
Lecter's shadowy eyes burned into Clarice's. Clarice's wide, fierce eyes bore back into his. There were so many things he wanted to do to her at that moment, but he knew he shouldn't touch. He wanted Clarice to give in and ensnare him inside a deep kiss, but he knew she was just as stubborn as he himself. He couldn't take charge. Rudeness was completely intolerable by his standards, and he was very disciplined
Clarice had become tangled in the spinning webs of Dr. Lecter's eyes. She tried to look away, but something held her. A strong impulse told her to reach out and touch his face. She knew she wanted to.
This is ridiculous.
She tore her eyes away from Lecter's and picked up her champagne glass.
"Well," Lecter said quietly.
"Well." said Clarice, holding her glass up against her chest.
Lecter stood smoothly and Clarice gazed after him as he sat back down in his chair.
"The FBI have been treating you poorly," Lecter said once he had resumed his comfortable position.
"I said they've been as good as they could have been to me," Clarice replied.
"Ah, yes...I tend to stick my best, most intelligent, successful and daring young agents on endless, stifling, paperwork office cases as well."
"Dr. Lecter-" Clarice began impatiently, but Lecter interrupted.
"You said yourself that you're not happy, Clarice."
"Who said that that was the area of my life that I had in mind when I admitted to that?"
"...How many other areas of your life are there, Clarice?"
Clarice fell into a defeated silence, allowing Dr. Lecter another strike.
"The FBI has been your whole world, Clarice. It has become your very soul. And yet, they've slapped you in the face after every worthwhile accomplishment you've made. They've offered no support, no sympathy...they've not even spoken a kind word to you, have they? All you wanted was to make your daddy proud. You were so ambitious, Clarice, with so much to offer. They've turned you sour, and you've dealt with it. It hardly seems a fair game, Agent Starling."
Dr. Lecter's words stung Clarice with the numb sensation of a need riddled with black poison. She managed to find the ghosts of words in her mind, sort them out of their puzzle and form a sentence. After a long silence, the sentence finally tumbled from her mouth.
"Life is never fair, Dr. Lecter." she said quietly.
"Life has been particularly unjust to you, Clarice."
"I guess I'm just cursed."
Lecter wanted so wildly for Clarice to taste even the slightest drop of happiness. He wanted to knock the sense into her. He wanted to tell her that the FBI was suffocating her, more and more pressure, less and less oxygen. If Clarice wasn't careful, before long her blood would turn to pure ice and she would loose grip of every sense of the miraculous she had ever had. He wanted and knew he could show her things she had never seen before, could make her feel things she had never felt before...if she would just say the word. Lecter knew she craved for something apart from this life, but not in a thousand years would she admit it.
He knew all these things, and so desired to put them into words and drench Clarice with all the possibilities. Though to bring him to do this was very difficult. Clarice Starling was utterly unpredictable. She might shoot him then and there she might fling herself into his arms...and any wide range of actions in-between. He had been waiting years for this, and something told him if he didn't act now, it would all be lost. Clarice didn't have much left to live for.
"Curses only have power if you believe in them, and I don't, Clarice. Do you?"
"I believe in consequences, Dr. Lecter. I believe that everything happens for a reason."
"And what do you believe the reason for your despair and discrimination is? Now think carefully before answering, Clarice."
Clarice obeyed Lecter's command and thought with a deeply immersed look on her face. She was looking out the window and clutching the scarlet blindfold in her left fist. Finally, she spoke without taking her eyes from the hypnotizing fall of the rain outside.
"I don't think I'll ever know, Dr. Lecter. I just feel it. Every instance, every action I make results in a greater purpose. I'm not sure if I'll ever know what that purpose is, but I do like to think I have an idea."
Lecter, who could so easily have made a crude comment to this statement, fell silent. So simple a declaration should have made him attack her with his logic...something along the lines of there is no greater purpose than that which we find buried within ourselves. But he found Clarice's statement to be so oddly true and pure. Another thing that struck him, Clarice had permitted herself to tell him this. She was not one to tell people of her belief system. It filled him with superiority that even though she didn't necessarily trust him; he was the only one she had confided these things in. There was an unspeakable level of loyalty and trust between them.
It did, however, provoke a burning inquiry on his part. He slowly stood up, a dark gleam in his eyes as he once again held the curves of Clarice's body deep in the pupils of his eyes. He began to make his way slowly over to her.
"If you believe there is a greater purpose for every incident in your life," he said in a low growl, "Then let me ask you this: what was the greater intention for meeting and becoming so painfully close to me...Clarice?"
Clarice's eyes were drawn to his with a powerful magnetic force, and she took a deep breath and steadied herself as she always did when Hannibal Lecter looked at her the way he was looking at her now. Lecter stopped when he got to the edge of the couch where Clarice sat, and stood awaiting an answer.
"I don't know, Dr. Lecter," she said steadily, tearing her eyes sharply away from his.
Lecter took his left index finger and placed it underneath Clarice's chin and forced it upwards so that she was looking at him once again. Suddenly his lips were dangerously close to hers, and she did not look away this time but rather focused with a sort of steady anger. Lecter smiled and turned her head slightly to the side.
"Take a wild guess, Clarice...," he hissed into her ear.
The warm breath on her neck sent Clarice soaring into complete darkness just as it faintly did back at the lake house. She closed her eyes and had to struggle to speak, as he was still close enough for her to be scorched by his flaming body heat.
"I...I-" she breathed.
"You what, Clarice?" Lecter said, and she fell silent, breathing hard. He placed four fingers underneath her chin once more, and ran his thumb over her lips. Once he stopped, Clarice involuntarily flicked her tongue out along her bottom lip, trying to taste where his fingers had been. She couldn't bring herself to open her eyes.
Lecter couldn't take his eyes off Clarice. For everything he did to her, she had a counteraction that sent his heart racing. There were thousands more things he could do to her, and he was immensely curious to find out what her reaction to them would be.
Lecter brought his head to the crook of her neck, and Clarice couldn't help but tilt her head to the side to allow him full access to whichever part of her neck he wanted. She wasn't exactly sure why she was letting him do this to her, to manipulate her like this, but it felt too good to stop. For the first time in a decade, she felt her pain begin to melt away.
Clarice also couldn't help but think that she was no better, no matter how much she'd like to think she was, than any of Lecter's old victims. She was giving into him like all the rest...and though she knew this man was arguably the most dangerous man she had ever met, she also knew that he would never hurt her. What were his exact words? "The world is more interesting with you in it..."
She knew one thing for sure, he was too afraid of what she would do to him if he even tried to hurt her.
Clarice was so consumed in her thoughts that as soon as she felt Lecter's tongue slide across her throat, her muscles tensed furiously and she bit down hard on her bottom lip. Lecter brought his head back up to look at Clarice, with her eyes still shut tight, and saw her run her tongue across her lip again. A deep slit appeared after Clarice ran her tongue over the spot, over where she had bit down, and Lecter's eyes danced excitedly as he watched a thick, red drop of blood form on the edge of Clarice's lip.
"I'd really like you to finish what you were trying to tell me before, Clarice," Lecter said softly.
Clarice opened her mouth to speak and once again Lecter's lips were alarmingly close to Clarice's. She could feel his breath seep into her mouth and skin.
"Dr. Lecter," she said breathlessly. "I..."
"Yes, Clarice, that's as far as we got last time. Keep going, I'm waiting..."
"I..."
Lecter's lips were practically touching Clarice's now as they spoke in short breaths.
"Jesus, Doctor..." Clarice panted with weary impatience. "Just kiss me, already."
Lecter leaned in and firmly pressed his lips hungrily against Clarice's, as he had back at the lake house.
Clarice's lips were burning like black fire and her mind was being slowly drenched with the familiar feeling of spinning helplessly around while at the same time being keenly aware of reality.
Lecter wrenched Clarice's mouth open and slid his tongue along hers before pulling away.
By instinct, Clarice resisted Lecter's lips leaving hers and leaned back into him, as if wanting more.
"Clarice...do you understand what I'm trying to tell you?" Lecter hissed once again into her ear.
Clarice finally opened her eyes, slowly. She paused for a moment looking at him, and then said, "You've been trying to tell me something, Doctor? It may help if you use your lips for talking."
Lecter smiled. His wicked eyes bore more harshly into Clarice's, and he was about to open his mouth to reply when there was a sharp rapping on the front door, breaking the steady beat of the rainfall outside.
Clarice's head whipped around to look at the front door, her heart burning and beating wildly with adrenaline.
"Clarice!" came Ardelia's voice from the porch. "Hey girl, open up!"
"Fuck," Clarice cursed frantically.
Lecter looked calmly to the front door. It was locked of course, but the curtains hanging above the living room window were slightly open and Ardelia Mapp was sure to move onto them when no one answered the door.
"Clarice," he held her face steady with his hand. "I'll be seeing you again. Soon." He leaned in, and still holding her face in his hand, ran his tongue across her lips. She moaned and closed her eyes. When she opened them, he was gone.