Author's note: Please note that the rating for this chapter has changed, so If you aren't old enough or that isn't to your taste, don't read on. For everyone else, enjoy the smutty bits.
Then the warm line of his body was pressing down on her, and all those thoughts went right out of her head at the sheer physical joy of it.
He made a soft sound in the back of his throat as he gathered himself up against her, as gravity made an embrace out of them. She knew that happiness was fleeting. Evey knew better than most that happiness came in moments that didn't last. A piece here, a piece there. Shiny little fragments of perfection that needed to be cherished and encouraged like a hot coal placed in a pile of newspaper.
The sound he made brought the truth of it home to her. That little exclamation of joy. Here was a piece. One for him, one for her, and her heart leaped in thrilled recognition.
Her father had said, once, that if you could draw every happy moment of your life together like a string of pearls, you could find your way to heaven like god had thrown you a rope.
Holding a pearl in her hands, unlooked for, she had the good grace to give it the full attention it deserved.
She slid her hands up his ribcage, over warm silk, turning her chin to the side to give him better access to her neck. The cloth of his pants was rougher, but not unpleasant against the calves of her legs where her pajamas had pulled up. Leather fingers began a tentative path underneath her shirt, and she suddenly squirmed, fighting her arms out of the sweater she was wearing for warmth.
He hesitated briefly, then started to explore the new expanse of skin, down along her collarbone, lips trailing delicately over her shoulder. His mouth moved lower and Evey found herself tensing a little. His mouth hovered over her right breast, his breath spreading warmth over the cloth, tickling the skin beneath. Anticipation made her tense, but he might have thought it something else. His mouth was tentative, plucking lightly, teasing with teeth at a thin layer of cloth covering her skin. A bit of dampness leaching through made her hiss in her breath, and almost without thought she found herself angling her hips, pressing up against him.
A small betrayal. If they'd never spoken a single word to each other in their whole lives, if they were total strangers twisted together in the dark, he still should have had no illusions as to what this particular young lady desired of him.
"Ah," He sighed, a little tremor running through him out into the world. There was a moment of shifting thought, shifting weight, where everything was in silent motion and anything might happen.
She found herself holding her breath, reached up and laid the flat of her palm against the side of his face. He leaned into the touch for a moment, then lifted himself up a little. She felt him making short, sharp little tugging movements above her in the dark. Confused, she reached up, looking with her hands and found him tearing at his gloves.
"Oh," She said with a nervous breath of laughter. She thought to help, but before she could his hands were free. She heard the faint slap of the leather, tossed to the floor. His hand caught hers, lifting her arm, and he brought his mouth to the inside of her wrist in a gesture that shot sparks of sensation up to her shoulder.
His skin was rough, on her arm. Rough as his hands traced a path from her waist that pulled her shirt right up under her chin. Rough thumbs on her nipples. She gasped, and he replaced his thumb with his mouth, soothing her. It was better, and it was much worse. She slid her hand up his shoulder, one palm sliding around the unguarded skin at the back of his neck. His mouth faltered against her at the touch.
He brought his head up to kiss her, insinuating his thighs between hers so that at the first brush of his lips he came up firmly against her. She suddenly had a very clear idea of exactly what he was feeling at the moment.
He rocked against her with a little grunt at the friction and she called to him, softly.
"V..." There was enough real longing in her voice to nearly embarrass her just at the sound of it to her own ears.
A sharp exhalation of breath, and his hands trailed down to catch possessively at her waist, thumbs riding her hipbones. Sliding the loose drawstring pants down her thighs. She wiggled underneath him, kicking her legs to shed the cloth. With an awkward, breathless twist her shirt joined her pants, and she was faced with the undeniable reality of a fully clothed man resting against her extremely naked body.
For a moment she arched up, pressed herself against all that soft cloth, rubbing herself against him. Her hands slid up under his arms, across his back. She hitched her legs up over his thighs, drawing him in closer. He made a pleased sound at the attention. She nuzzled her face against his shirt like a cat, breathing him, tasting him. A shift of his weight brought the bulge in his pants firmly against her and she flexed her thighs, rubbing herself, teasing.
He choked, faintly, at the sensation, and she felt him fumbling with his pants in the dark. His undergarments were softer than his pants, and warm, god, he was warm...
His shirt billowed loosely against her as it came free of his unfastened pants and she moved like lightning, slipping her hands up underneath it.
So warm...
She slid searching fingers up under his silk shirt, the roughness of his skin on her palms facing the softness of the silk on the back of her hands. He jumped at the touch, and she felt his heart racing under the pads of her fingers. She smoothed her hands over his chest as if she could calm his heart from the outside in.
"That feels..." V murmured brokenly "Like...heaven..."
The utter sincerity of the wonder in his voice curled like a fist around her heart.
The small separation between them was abruptly, violently unbearable. She was going to die in that bed, if she didn't fill up that space between them. If she didn't stop herself from thinking about why it took so little to leave him completely undone. If she started to put herself in his place, to imagine how he felt... if he got any more hooks into her heart... He was a man of many words. He'd kill her yet, with those words.
"You are," He said with a quiet helplessness that was tearing strips off her, "so beautiful." He rested his forehead lightly against hers, so she felt it when he shook his head. "I wanted to save you. I wanted for you to be free, as you wished to be."
His voice dropped.
"So
beautiful. I couldn't imagine what you would look like if you were
free." His words had taken on a hushed-in-church quality, and he
pulled back a little. She thought he was looking down at her.
Searching the darkness for her face.
"Now you know."She said simply, bluntly. A sigh from above, a softening of the muscles in the body pressed close to her.
"Mmm." The sound breathed past his lips like a sonnet, like music floating up under a window late at night.
The back of his hand was surprisingly soft against her cheek.
"I have fought men more dangerous than I am. I have in the past, and I will in the future." Evey spied something coming towards her in his tone of voice, like an oncoming train. His hand stroked down her cheek.
"'There lies more peril in thine eye than twenty of their swords-'" He might have finished, but she'd clapped a hand up over his mouth, her fingers doing the pleading for her. Not that one. Anything else. Not-
She let lips do what hands do, and pressed her mouth against his. She fancied he understood her, and for a moment he was soft, gentle with her. Spreading his mangled hands over the smooth stretch of her skin. Letting her feel...letting her...
She did not think, 'This man is in love with me'. It was not something that came in a bolt of lightning. He tilted his hips a little, his erection brushing right over her, and something changed. It was rather like she'd picked something up off a table, it was so effortless. Of course. Of course. He was breathing and his heart was beating and he was loving her.
Gently, rocking himself against her, pressing himself in a warm, firm line. He was pushing himself out of his undergarments with the motion, the texture of his skin shockingly different than the cloth. A soft puff of air against her ear, a little exhalation with each thrust. The softest exclamation of need and want. The sound of it shot a flush of blood to all the right areas of her body, just as he slipped free of fabric. His next nudge was lower, the angle of his hips changing, one of his hands catching under her thigh.
She felt him, and then he was pushing, he...
Oh.
Above her he hissed in a breath. Her body accepted him in, and he froze above her, suddenly tense. His hand on her leg was shaking, and he was almost pinching her with the strength of his fingers. For a moment, when he didn't go on, she thought that he'd come immediately. That suspicion brought a surprising mix of disappointment and smug confidence. She was mistaken, however, and after a hesitation he pulled back and pushed again, more firmly.
Yes...like that...
Then he shifted his body above her, bringing them close together, and there was nothing rough about it. He fitted himself against her as though having sex with her was incidental in the face of being able to be near her. He kissed his way up her neck, captured her lips as though it was all just one more way to get closer to her, to get more of her.
God damn him.
He breathed her name against her lips and something fundamental crumbled away from her. It might have been her sanity, if she'd had any left. It might have been...
She was going to die there. Lying under this scarred man in the dark basement of London. He was gentle and soft and desperately sincere. He was loving her. With a soft sound that might have been a sob, Evey pulled her arms tight around him and helped it happen.
When Evey woke the next morning the world felt very different, and V was gone.
She didn't cry. It wasn't, exactly, a rejection. It was an answer, of sorts. She packed her things up and said her goodbyes.
She didn't look back. It wasn't necessary. It would have been...wrong. Something was telling her that there would be no half-steps to this dance. A sharp pull on her spine, a swing of momentum that said if she stayed it would be for good, so if she would go, then GO.
As she walked towards the lift she spoke softly, absently.
" 'I have an ill divining soul'." At least...she thought she said it. She wasn't sure. She might have just thought it. It seemed to come at her out of the ether. She supposed, in the end, it didn't matter.
Romeo and Juliet (two quotes and a reference)