-1'Twixt

Between one world and the next, the living and the dead, winter and summer, the difference between noonday and the moon riding high, between the hallway and the forbidden bedroom, was Evey Hammond. V watched her as she approached, tightened his gloved hands into the fabric of his trousers to keep from reaching out to her. Tightened just a little bit harder at the sigh of disheveled hair, an unevenly buttoned nightshirt, the rise and fall of her breasts as she tried to heartily breath away the nightmare that had woken her.

"Are you scared, Evey?"

She shook her head, curls bouncing against her flushed cheeks. Her bare feet padded across the threshold, hesitating before actually crossing; Evey had never been in his room before. Somehow, she knew, a part of her would never come out. She wasn't quite brave enough to venture to the bed where he sat; the mask lay in shadows, and it was even harder to read him than usual. Her mind was still foggy from sleep, from the nightmare, from the thoughts of Lilliman and his death the next day. She was torn; she did not know if she would betray this masked vagabond she had come to view as doing the same thing to her as she was to do to Lilliman: enthrall, captivate, seduce, consume. Of course, Lilliman's encounter would end in death; Evey was afraid of a different kind of death if she gave in to the lithe muscles of V's thighs, the strength of his forearm, the endless depth of eyes she could see in her mind. Evey feared the part of her that belonged to the world she grew up in would perish; boon or bane? Evey knew that with a single taste, she would be unable to leave him, a captive of far more than the Shadow Gallery.

She paused in front of his vanity, staring at the wooden stands for wigs and masks. A comb, an extra pair of gloves. Glue for various masks. She decided the seat in front of the only clean mirror in the gallery was safer than the bed; as far as she could see, the sheets were made of fire. V was an uncontrollable blaze, and she had yet to decide if she wanted to brave the heat. Part of her wished he would make the decision for her.

"Evey," his voice purred, silken from the darkness, rolling up her spine. She couldn't suppress the shiver that rocked her. Swearing inwardly, she knew he'd seen. She did not have the benefit of Guy Fawkes to cover her emotions, and in a way, she had always been naked in front of him. That thought alone had V gripping the black of his pants with his other gloved hand, as well.

"Eve," he said, voice even softer. "My dear, the night is older than I; if not fear, what keeps you awake?"

Dreams. Him. The stale, underground air. A mouse between a stack of Shakespeare and a stack of Dickenson. Desire. The promise of being burned at getting too close. The inability to resist. The thought of breakfast in the morning. The flush she couldn't keep from her cheeks. The way the sheets clung like she wanted his hands to.

"I... I couldn't sleep."

Too late; Evey had hesitated too long in her answer. She knew V could practically smell a lie anyway; perhaps it was a skittish edge inspired by her dream, but V was more a wolf tonight than he ever had been. Evey had simply replaced her red hood with a nightshirt that rode a little too high for V's comfort level.

"Too much tension at what is to come, perhaps?"

"Tension..." Evey laughed, a soft, ironic sound. "Exhilaration - is within - There can no Outer Wine So royally intoxicate as that diviner Brand."

"Ah," V said, standing. Like a panther, a wolf, a stalker of her dreams, he glided from the bed to the vanity chair, leaning over Evey's back and wrapping a hand delicately around her throat. Her breath hitched; how could a threatening gesture be so sensual? Her mind was at a loss for words to describe this haunting man, an almost erotic vision that blended in and out of the darkness.

Predatory. That was it.

"To stimulate a Man Who hath the Ample Rhine Within his Closet..." V's voice trailed off, leaving only the last line of Emily Dickenson's #645 left unheard. His grip tightened slightly, but not menacing; more like a leash, a clamp to hold the prey in place, lest the gazelle try to escape. Her eyes were wide in the mirror, her cheeks flushed; she was sure he could see the heat on her skin. His other hand he placed on her knee, letting it trace its own path along the top of her thigh, cup her hip, slide up her stomach and over her breasts to rest below its companion at her collar. "Exhale in offering, Evey."

Dangerous. He could feel her heart beating even through the leather, an uncontrollably fluttering promise he had not only elicited but was trying to capture. "An offering like this could kill us both, V."

He lowered the cool, alabaster surface of the mask level with her face and stared at her eyes in the mirror, the darkness of the room doing nothing to cover the drop in his voice, the sandy nature it took on, the heady knowledge that something completely masculine had just risen from him, at her unwitting hand. Perhaps, she reflected, not quite as unwilling as she wished to claim.

"Soul, take thy risk,
With death to be
Were better than not be with thee."

V's voice rolled over the jump in her pulse and, helpless, she turned in his arms and met the mask, met the man, with a fire of her own, deciding firmly that he could hunt her endlessly, and still he would not be the only predator in their underground world.