Despite the chill of the incoming Elysian Winter the training grounds were alive with the grunts and frustrated cries of Senshi and Shitennou alike, sounds made all the more desperate with their paper thin negotiations to integrate Earth into the alliance looming over their heads, a tightrope walk upon a red string of fate strung tight between their Prince and Princess as well as their very personal, very rapidly growing relations.
Sweat frosted her feverish skin, breath panting clouds into the darkening afternoon air as she completed the day's sparring session. No magic allowed, only the fluid and brutal motions of his practice sword against her more graceful, dance-like fighting style of the Venusians. A wager between their ranks that her Senshi would learn the ways of hand to hand combat, if they would teach them the ways of the ancient magic running through the Heavenly blood in their veins.
The way her lungs and muscles burned, she could have sworn they were on fire, and might as well have been the way Kunzite's gaze burned into hers in heavy but cautious flickers and flashes of grey. He was good that way, subtle, unassuming, even when their bodies clashed and wove around each other in a spectacle of silver and gold. A vicious dance unlike one danced amongst a crowd of dignitaries but more likened to one done in private, intimate and savage. But he was good, unaffected outside of those glances, those mere seconds of unabridged desire.
"You are improving." He said breathlessly, raking a hand through his mussed silver hair, prolonging one of those clandestine looks. "A few more sessions and perhaps your Queen will be satisfied with your abilities hand to hand."
"Yes," She agreed, half frozen but burning up, "not that we needed much improvement anyways, but are you satisfied, General?"
"That has yet to be determined." He said, eyes icing over in warning as he turned to return his training weapon to the rack. "I fear we are only further dwarfing ourselves by teaching you the more physical dances of war. Once you add your magic back into the fight, we'd still be at a disadvantage."
Her face grew as solemn as her voice, part of this balancing act required her to earn and maintain their trust. Endymion's guard had been friendly at best, but in these small moments she dropped her own cheerful charade, and spoke very, very carefully. "You'll do well to remember that these arrangements are being made with an even playing ground in mind, an alliance. You teach us to be stronger hand to hand, and we help you to tap into the ancient magic that has forged you."
Kunzite chuckled deep within his throat, not quite a laugh fitting for amusement. "I assure you that I was forged by anything but magic. Blood and sand, iron perhaps, but certainly not magic."
She gazed at him a moment, a pale wrathful angel with sunlight soaked into his skin. Beautiful and brutal, a good man despite his abrasive temperament. "I will respectfully disagree with you."
This was a diplomatic move, Venus told herself again, catching his storm grey eyes for the flicker of a moment as the drills came to a close. The others began to wrap up, putting away their training weapons and standing in idle conversation, each exhilarated by the physical exertion. Perhaps each of them were looking forward to the next part of their training as much as she was.
"Will we be switching partners today?" Mercury asked, pulling Venus from her daze when she hadn't realized she was staring. The musical lilting voice of the Mercurian no longer fooled her, so Venus smiled and dared to glance towards Zoisite who bantered carelessly with Jadeite and pretended that he wasn't listening with the keenest ear imaginable.
"No, I think that it's best that we remain consistent, aligned. It's important that we gravitate towards energy that… compliments each other." She said carefully. "And we are wanting to awaken their magic, not confuse it."
A flush rose to Mercury's cheeks that had little to do with the biting cold, and she nodded, moving to follow the younger General back towards the saunas for their training in magic. Jupiter and Nephrite had already gone, Venus had observed that of all of them they seemed to be the most compatible, and the most focused on their training.
Mars had been the one to suggest the saunas, and Elysium had a whole slew of small personal outdoor huts just outside of a very luxurious bath house. She claimed that after rigorous training of the body, the steam and heat of the saunas would help to relax the muscles and open up the mind enough that helping to awaken their magic should be easy. It was indeed, but Venus found that it wasn't without its very intimate side effects.
The first training had been a test in temptation. The second one, a test of wills. The third…
Venus knew both Jadeite and Mars sometimes used certain mind opening substances in the steam when they meditated together, and of all of the Shitennou Jadeite was the most in tune with his abilities, and the most skilled at using them. Mars indeed was the prime candidate to train him, but Venus was the Goddess of Love incarnate after all, so she wasn't blind to the fact that meditating wasn't the only activity they were likely participating in regardless of the fact these sessions were sometimes monitored by the Queen herself. Perhaps the illusions that Jadeite had begun to master, was a test of their discretion.
She lingered while the others wandered off towards their huts while Kunzite dutily ensured the training grounds were left pristine. He was the epitome of stoicism, not really acknowledging her in more than brief glances of indifference with only flickers of admiration that were so subtle that she wasn't sure she could trust them. She pocketed each of these glances to savor and unwrap later like sweet delicacies she was ready to devour all at once.
They'd already failed the test of restraint once, so miserably that it was a miracle their professional facades held any weight at all now, but they'd been careful not to crumble and cave to the heavy words left unspoken between them. Venus tried not to acknowledge that the Queen was currently away on Io, tending to the business of a foe she had captured in Jupiter's jurisdiction. That her attentions that night were certainly not fixated on a mere training session.
"Let's get you warm." A deep voice answered her thoughts from behind her the moment they were alone, and Venus barely felt the cold but shivered anyway.
Void of that disinterest and feigned professionalism, his voice was heat itself, his palms that ran down the length of her freezing arms like fire against her skin. Venus was unsure how long she could hold up the flimsy charade, the test that came from becoming one with this man on a magical level, even for an instant, when she wanted to also become one in soul and body as they had in those insatiable stolen moments. Forbidden, and all the sweeter because of it.
"We don't want to fall too far behind the others. Your magic is stubborn." She claimed, stepping out of his reach toward the huts now beginning to fill with steam. Kunzite could be so powerful, if he didn't harbor so much doubt, so much mistrust of his abilities, perhaps then his life would be as fortified as her own. Perhaps just as endless.
"Is your Queen so studious in her audience?" He asked, stepping to hold open the door to one of the vacant huts. He seemed to have a favorite one, or perhaps an assigned sauna, but the information was too trivial in the moment for her to care.
Venus paused in the door frame just under the arm he extended to keep the paneled door open, intimately close enough that they looked like the lovers that they were. If her Queen had seen any of their indiscretions so far, she hadn't said or done anything about it. "Doubtful. She's been away, but it's for the best that they think her sight is omnipresent. It might be."
"Then we would be fools to be careless as well." Kunzite remarked dryly, but she'd learned to see the tension in his jaw when he spoke, a very specific motion of his eyes as they met hers without the mercy of turning his face to address her.
"We should begin." She agreed, because he wasn't wrong, and Venus stepped past him into the mildly warm wooden enclosure.
Cedar enveloped her senses, fragrant and polished, the space was intimate but spacious enough not to be claustrophobic, scarcely lit by more than the coals already burning beneath the stones placed in the well at the center of the room. She turned to face him when she heard the door latch behind him, shutting out the night's chill and ushering in the silence. Kunzite was already working on the buttons of his uniform, and it took all of her strength not to reach and help him.
Venus resigned to watch him pull the sweat dampened garments from his shoulders, cape, tunic, and then belt, which he neatly left on one of the benches lining the perimeter of the hut. She circled to the other side of the well of stones, following the bared map of scars on his chest, the way his muscles shifted in his powerful shoulders while he removed his slacks and boots.
Kunzite lifted his eyes to meet hers then, down to nothing more than very fitted black training shorts, silver hair left careless over tawny skin. He eyed her expectantly, reaching to ladle some water onto the stones sending clouds of steam between them. She released her magic, and allowed her transformation to melt away in a cascade of gold and shimmer down her body. A normal event to her, but it never failed to hold him fascinated.
For the sake of Terran modesty, and her Queen's insistence, they all wore the same set of thin, white cotton undergarments that failed to conceal much at all once sweat had soaked them through but modesty was never a concern for her. Not now that she'd given all of herself to him, a dangerous dance, a greedy give and take that they'd been doing in secret when the draw towards each other became too painful to bear. She felt it then, something between them ease and slacken as they moved closer to each other, sweat already sheened on his tawny skin and something lit from within in his pale grey eyes.
"I'm ready." He said, not daring to touch her with more than his hungered gaze, ladling more water onto the stones.
They got into position, both sitting across from each other on woven mat sprawled across a wooden platform in front of the bench-lined wall. Venus could already feel the tension melting from her muscles as the heat soaked into her chilled skin.
"Close your eyes." She whispered, biting her lip as he complied. It was the same routine every time, Venus placed her hand against the center of his chest, fingers brushing a vicious scar in his skin as she did so, still cool to the touch. He inhaled sharply, but exhaled slowly. "Focus on finding that light, I'm going to pull it forth."
Kunzite nodded, face relaxed and so beautiful that she didn't want to close her eyes. She did so purely out of care for the task at hand. Mostly for Serenity, but not entirely selfless. Venus poured herself into him, it was easy to connect with his mind which she always found carefully guarded and his magic somehow stronger but harder to touch, hidden deep within himself. She heard herself telling him to relax, felt him breathe a little deeper.
Like making love, this was a give and take. Her magic would reach out to his, mingling in and out of him so he could feel the power, learn how it worked, and make it his own. Like called to like, and the way Venus converted Love into raw energy made her wonder what Kunzite would use to fuel his own budding powers. She gave him more of her, like an offering of wine when it took a vineyard to get him drunk, and like an addict she felt him pull her in like a glutton. Insatiable. Fascinated.
Venus felt her breathing labor, sweat as it trickled down her spine, brows furrowed at the tension aching from her heart all the way down between her legs. This was an intimacy that most souls would never share, a fetish where she was from, and impossible to deny the desire in the aftermath. When everything would smell like him, sweet with sweat, and spicy like clove and black pepper imported and smoothed by the fresh scent of the sea.
The aftermath would be like remaining in the heat of the saunas where she held his pale pink magic in the palm of her hand and coaxed it as one might breathe life into an ember. One that could burn down a country with its ferocity, or burn a Goddess's heart to cinder. Consuming and possessing, and a wicked part of herself wanted nothing more than this Heavenly King's inferno.
All at once even Kunzite had had enough. She felt his hand firmly grip her wrist and her eyes sprung open to find him breathless, skin shining with sweat, and the pale grey of his eyes burning at her with desire that no Goddess could overcome, much less an amorous entity such as herself. Even that mere touch to her wrist was far too much, and Venus collided into Kunzite with such abandon that even for the smallest flicker of a moment in time's expanse she didn't care what her Queen saw.
Perhaps he pulled her onto his lap, or she threw herself there, she no longer cared about anything but the mould of his mouth on hers, the taste of the fire behind his lips, the tingles of lingering magic at his fingertips roving over her skin. There was no order or propriety to any of it, a clashing of lips and teeth and tongues until their mouths were red and swollen and she couldn't breathe because each breath was reduced to him. His magic, his scent, had all become the lingering steam in the very air that she inhaled.
"More.." She breathed quietly, fingers clenching into his sweat dampened hair as he ran his tongue up the column of her throat.
Kunzite yanked her free of the fabric restraining her breasts, palming and pinching at the tips until not even the heat could keep them from pebbling until the buds were ripe for the tasting. She bit her teeth into her bottom lip hard when his mouth closed over one, stifling a whimper at the movements of his mouth which trailed back upward toward her neck with an impassioned frenzy. He pulled her racing pulse into his mouth to taste her heart and Venus moaned, wondering if he tasted the truth that they refused to speak.
"I feel like I'm bursting out of my skin." He half groaned, digging fingers into her backside to press her into his groin, the tight training shorts doing little to restrain the fullness of his desire. Venus reached between them to caress him through the damp fabric, arching her back into his chest, kissing him to stifle a moan that he didn't have the resolve to keep quiet when her fingers latched around the length of him and gently squeezed.
Venus merely whispered his name, and all at once Kunzite pushed her on her back, mouths entangled, her hands desperately pushing his shorts down from his hips until she felt the heaviness of his arousal, full and hard against her stomach, his gasp against her lips when she arched herself into it. He moaned her real name in punctuation of her earlobe nipped between his teeth, and it was nearly her undoing.
He reared up only long enough to yank her own flimsy white undergarments down her legs, freeing her to wrap around him, not hesitating to guide his cock inside her with one easy fluid motion on sweat and slick desire. Filled to the brim with Kunzite, body and soul, the sensation was maddening. She writhed and moved with him, barely keeping her ardent cries and screams contained to sinful gasps and breathless sighs.
It was no longer a matter of wanting, but needing. They didn't have the restraint to wait, and they didn't have the time.
She had missed the washboard feel of his body against her, the ripples of muscle both firm and soft as they glided against her with each long, deep thrust of his hips. Each point of contact burst and combusted with lingering sparks of magic that electrified their sweat soaked skin. It took all she had not to cry out, the feeling akin to blissful release with each of his purposeful movements made with raw, savage desire as he drove himself inside of her over, and over again.
Normally Venus might have found a way to roll him on his back, to press her palm where that magic of his flowed and amplify their training with her Venusian divinity, but this was too exquisite. She was too lost in the feeling of his weight on top of her, the curtains of damp silver hair, and flashes of observant grey eyes. When his lips weren't too busy devouring her own, they were spouting whispered curses and breathy groans against her neck, in her ear, the depth of his voice and his cock making her toes curl as the pleasure began to spill over.
She came violently with a silent scream choked and lodged in her throat as she shook and grew rigid beneath him, curling her nails into his back as the pleasure pulsed from her core and spread into her limbs until she couldn't breathe through the euphoria. She was mindless, and in love, and for the briefest of moments didn't care if she admitted it to herself or even said the words aloud for him to hear. But all that followed were gasps and gulps of humid air and lightheadedness, the motions of his body growing more desperate and dire, more stuttered.
Kunzite shook and shattered in her arms when he came a moment after her, the muscles of his stomach clenching with each wave of his release as it spread its warmth inside of her. She always marveled at how beautiful it made him, to feel such a large, powerful man come apart in love and pleasure instead of blood and battle. Venus wanted to marvel at it more, but the heat alone had him reeling and falling on the mat beside her with a whispered curse in a language surely unique to his homeland.
She stood on wobbly legs, to grab the silver ladle and took a long drink of cool water for herself, before filling it again and bringing it back to him, sitting on the mat where he lay sprawled and breathless watching her. She'd never seen his silver hair in a state of such disarray, his eyes alive and almost as luminous as his tan skin shining with sweat, but his face was stern and Kunzite accepted her offering. And drank more than her lips or magic this time.
They dressed in silence, likely due to the fatigue which had fallen on her like a lead weight the moment she transformed into her uniform and stumbled out of the hut into the frigid winter air. Her body was so lax and boneless, but that first breath of fresh air was enough to lift the thick fog in her mind. The others were waiting, all in the same state of liveliness mixed with excitement and relief.
"I don't want to love what you do to me." Kunzite said from behind her, he'd only half managed to rake his fingers through his hair enough for it to be passable.
"And yet you do." She smirked, her heart doing that thing again, that thing she swallowed down and buried every time it happened.
That smile on her face was merely a mask, as always. Venus restrained herself from touching him at all, knowing how likely it was that she'd end up back in his bed before dawn if she did, the effects of their training still working its way out of their systems. The effects of her heart, however, were too long lasting for her to rightfully acknowledge. Every touch was a chance, a choice, and a challenge to test her resolve. And sometimes she wanted nothing more than to fail.
"I'm not a man who enjoys addiction, Cytherea." He said, "Especially to those I was never meant to have."
She smiled, a bit more genuinely. He noticed.
"I'd say let the Spinners of our Fates decide that for us, General."
He grimaced at the formality, especially out of earshot from the others who waited for them in the cold as it began to snow. She heard him when she turned to walk away, speak softly to himself as he watched her leave for her home among the stars.
"I believe they already have."