Dear patient friends, here is the next chapter. It is not to be read while hungry, trust me. CreepingMuse encouraged me to go in the right direction with an insightful edit and much-needed discussion. Her new fic, Collision, is fantastic and required reading for all who might have found the sire bond story a bit wonky or were unsatisfied with how it was addressed.
There's no bomb this time, no vengeful ghosts or who knows what else lurking around the corner. Matt's fingers slide along Rebekah's jaw and she opens her lips against his. Her fingers find the bottom of his shirt and sneak inside, up the planes of his back, along his spine, over his shoulders. As her hands slide upward, his slide lower, over her waist, her hips. They sway into each other.
Rebekah scratches gentle lines down his sides as she presses her chest against him, then steps even closer. The bag at her feet shifts and something hard falls on the top of Matt's foot.
"Ow," he grunts, stopping to look. "What's in that bag?"
"Break up snacks," she pouts.
He rears back. "Break up snacks?"
Her eyes are brighter now, but her eyelids are still red and puffy. "I mean, I'm glad they're not."
There are layers here Matt shouldn't bring up: how he would have assumed "break up snacks" for a vampire would come at 98.6 degrees; how they didn't break up because they weren't together in the first place; how he hadn't realized how much he meant to her. Instead, he sits on the edge of his bed and takes off his shoe, rubbing the throb out, and asks, "what'd you get?"
She pulls one handle of the tote back to peer inside. "Bordeaux, necessary. A baguette, some brie. The clerk insisted I get this, too." She reaches down into the bag and fishes out a round, plastic container.
"Nutella?"
"She said it was the perfect break up food."
It seems so unlike her to talk about something like this with a stranger.
"I guess she could tell," she explains, producing a small paper crate of luscious, red strawberries. "Got these, too."
"Nice," he hums, reaching out for them. And he has to remember to show his gratitude, so he adds, "thank you."
She pulls them out of arm's reach, scowling. "These are spite berries. I planned to fling them against the wall to see how they splatter. Or squeeze them between pages of your passport. Hadn't quite decided."
Matt tries to swipe them again, but he's too slow. "I'm pretty sure it's a crime to waste French strawberries," he warns her.
Rebekah lifts the crate to her nose, taking a long, indulgent sniff. "Then I'll have to eat them, I suppose."
Their hotel gets four channels, all of them fuzzy, all of them French, but as luck would have it, The Shining is playing on one of them, grainy and overdubbed. It's both weird and comforting after such an exhausting, emotional day. Matt grabs the brie and leans back against the headboard, patting the space beside him.
"You don't mind if we eat on your bed? What about all the crumbs?" Rebekah asks, already twisting the baguette in half.
"I like to live dangerously," he assures her. The resonance of the ever-present danger of simply being near Rebekah vibrates under his words, but it doesn't worry him right now. He smiles, an invitation.
She slides in beside him with a nod, flipping her sandals off the far edge of the bed.
"We don't have plates," Matt realizes out loud.
"Or cups, or utensils."
He shrugs, unwrapping the triangle of brie and breaking it in two uneven pieces. "I won't tell if you won't," he says, handing her an oozing, mangled chunk.
She stuffs it into her hunk of baguette and takes a large, crumb-shedding bite. "Mmm. I feel better already," she attempts around the mouthful.
"Do you even know what Nutella is?" Matt asks as Jack Nicholson tries to hack down a door with an axe.
Rebekah picks up the plastic tub. "Looks like… hazelnuts. Have you had it before?"
"Naw, but Caroline swears by it."
Rebekah rolls her eyes. Terrible, Matt chastises himself. Never talk about your ex on a date. And maybe that's all that bothers her, or maybe it's because Caroline is a particularly sore spot for her. Funny, considering how many ways Rebekah and Caroline are similar – or used to be.
Shaking her head at him, she unscrews the top and then, faced with a gold paper seal over the inside, pokes through it with her fingernail. Right into the brown, gooey stuff inside.
"Shit," she mutters, sticking her finger in her mouth to clean it off. Her eyes close. "Oh my God."
"Is it good?"
She dips her finger into the jar again, pulling out a tablespoon-sized glob. "Open up."
He hesitates, his mouth a thin line.
"Trust me. It's delicious." She holds her finger up in front of his face.
"I'm not really a peanut butter person."
"It's nothing like peanut butter. Honestly, you won't be sorry."
She is unwavering. Her eyes bore into him with such intensity that, despite how weird it is to eat anything this way, he opens his mouth so she can smear this brown glob on his tongue. She tries, but it stays stuck, so he closes his lips around her finger and sucks.
Wow. His eyes sort of roll back and close and he groans a little. It's delicious. But it's also her finger, in his mouth, and both of them in a chocolaty haze. She pulls, easing her finger out so she can paint his lower lip with slick chocolate. And he waits there, inches from her face, until she seizes his lips with hers.
He presses her back against the pillows, sucking at her bottom lip. She is deliciously receptive, wrapping her leg around his thigh when he leans into her. Her urgency – their urgency – has been brewing for days, probably weeks, and her hand at the nape of his neck, pulling him into her kiss, fuels it further. He finds himself moving, thrusting gently against her, and realizes she's moving against him, too.
She tugs his shirt off. Somewhere in his mind there's a red light, a hesitation, but it is faint and she is feverishly warm. Her skin under his fingers pushes him further: he drags the hem of her dress up over her thigh, then her hip. She arches her back as they reach the lace of her bra, pressing her breast against his palm, and then, so quickly he misses it, her dress is on the floor.
When she stretches herself against his chest, his head swims with the feeling of her skin against his. But soon she's working on the fly of his jeans, and it jolts his alarm. "Wait," he says.
She pops the top button and he feels the smile on her lips. "You don't mean that. Not right now."
But he does mean it, through and through. He can't lose control that way, not with her. Not yet anyway. He can't let himself be distracted with her. His reaction is visceral, beyond his conscious choice. He wants her but there's so much more to this. He rolls to her side, taking her hands in his. "I do mean it."
Rebekah pushes herself up, avoiding his eyes. "But I thought… I don't understand. When you kissed me, and we were… what's wrong?"
Can he explain it without hurting her feelings? It's not her fault. She's trying to be a good person, and she's succeeding. But she's new to not killing people and sex is so intimate and exposed and he's afraid of what she's capable of. None of which will make her feel anything but rejected. "We're just not there yet," he says. It's true.
"I am," she says in a small voice. "I thought you were." She still won't look him in the eye, letting her gaze fall instead on his chest. "It's just sex," she carps with a hint of impatience.
"Is it?" he asks, more of an answer than a question.
She traces circles on the pillow case. "If you don't want to," she begins.
He lays his hand over hers, interrupting her. "I do." Has he ever been the eager teenager? He can't remember a time he let himself get carried away. Still, on some level it is hard to refuse her, or even delay her. "Soon, I swear."
Cautiously, she meets his eyes. She's not convinced.
He threads his fingers through her hair, his touch feather-light. "I want to. I want you, I just…" He runs out of words that won't hurt her.
"Okay," she says, putting on a fake grin. He's sorry, he is, so he leans nearer, drawing her face toward his, and kisses her for reassurance. She whimpers, opens their kiss, and he lets her. He does want her. He wishes things were simpler. He wishes he could drown in his desire for her, and that wish slowly blots out some of his fear. His hips move rhythmically, unintentionally, into her. He can feel her warmth through her thin panties, through his jeans. She hooks one leg around his thigh and pulls him tighter against her.
His lips move over her chin, into the hollow of her neck. There is a flash of memory, of Elena feeding from him, at this same angle but reversed. He can still feel the painful pleasure of that desperate bite and the sticky, slick rush of his blood as she sucked it down. A wisp of an idea flickers, something about action and being the one in control, being the one who bites.
He slips the strap of Rebekah's bra over her shoulder. Two quick moves and her bra joins his shirt and her dress on the floor. He kisses toward the swell of her breast, then licks circles around one hard nipple, and after the initial shock she lets her hand skate over his back in lazy eights. He returns to her mouth to kiss her once, sucking at her lips like a ripe cherry, before adoring her other breast with the same devotion.
Her sighs grow louder with his ministrations, and her hips press more and more urgently against him. Hovering over her this way, his fear is starting to dissipate. He traces his tongue across her ribs, over the plain of her belly, and she hums her pleasure. A few more inches and... he thinks there might be a way. He tucks a finger inside the leg of her panties.
She hisses in a fast, surprised breath. "I thought you said -"
His eyelids are heavy as he drags her panties down and off.
He slides his hand back up Rebekah's leg, registering how unnervingly bold it feels to kneel between her open thighs, to bend toward her, his hands full of the swell of her hips. To hear her gasp as he opens her with his tongue. He is careful with her, insecure, worried that he'll hurt her or do something she hates. He has attempted this exactly once before, with Elena. Neither of them knew what they were doing. Maybe this isn't such a great idea.
Rebekah holds her breath, still as a taut wire while Matt finds his bearings. He licks along a ridge and waits for a reaction. Nothing. He pushes his tongue just inside her, waits, then winds it in a circle. Nothing.
He looks up at her. "I don't know -"
"Up," she rasps.
Right. His tongue explores upward in a long, luxurious line, and then, when she angles her hips, he finds the perfect place to suck and swirl. Soon there is a murmur, now a few more, and her hips curl toward him, encouraging him to deepen his kiss.
He begins for the first time to lose himself in the moment, making love to her with his mouth. He starts to follow her reactions, to discern the differences in sensation he can elicit. She relaxes into him with a purr.
His inflamed mouth, his heady hunger for more of her, the strange and wonderful act of devouring her overtakes him, and a thought invades: perhaps this is what Elena felt when she fed from him. She would wipe her mouth, lids heavy, eyes downcast and dark. Guilty. Was it because her pleasure was somehow also sexual, sucking at skin just like this, the pure need for more of him inside her? He thinks, as Rebekah curls her hips in a gathering rhythm, as he presses and sucks in rhythmic answer, that it must have been like this. That he might understand her more now.
Control is ceded wordlessly and almost fearlessly to Rebekah as her purrs grow deeper and her hips more insistent. His entire self is his mouth, all desire, all response, so that he's pretty sure he can tell when that hoped-for wave begins. She slows, tightens, his hands gripping her hips as he rides over the crest with her, sucking harder until her hips snap against him. Even when she melts back into the mattress with relief, he doesn't want to leave her, but she finds his chin with a trembling hand and leads him up to her face for another kiss.
Matt's rented bike is ludicrously nice. It weighs about as much as a blade of grass, with a hollow, dolphin-shaped seat and a set of corkscrew handlebars he has yet to fully figure out as they head into their second hour cycling along the Seine. Rebekah glides ahead of him, her hair whipping behind her. She doesn't need the bike to get around quickly, they both know it, but she clearly relishes the feeling of the wind, of earning her speed with exertion, of soaring ahead of Matt with a triumphant giggle. He keeps up, maybe because she's letting him, but she doesn't make it easy and that's the way he likes it.
They are bound for Fontainebleau, Rebekah's suggestion. It's a large chateau, or maybe a palace. It's also a school. And there's a forest. He doesn't care. Today, it's not the destination that matters. Maybe it's never the destination, not on this whole trip. He pedals faster, surging ahead of her.
She was gone this morning when he came back from running. It took longer than it should have to discard the fear that she was on some vengeful rampage, or that he had said or done something to send her away, and to realize instead that she had gone on a blood run. She was being kind by taking care of it when he wouldn't have to know, hiding this part of her that he hasn't quite openly accepted. When he got out of the shower her door was cracked open an inch; he wrapped a towel around his waist and walked right in, kissing her without a word.
More memories surge through him, setting off waves of renewed want. The pressure of her body straining against him last night. Her strength and softness under his mouth. Being drunk on the scent of her skin and the way she tastes, musky and almost sweet – the memory sends a shudder through his core.
They finally reach Fontainebleau, and though he expects Rebekah to drag him to the palace first, she takes his arm and leads him into the forest. They meander silently along a web of walkways, and when her wrist slides along his forearm like she's going to let go of him, he finds her hand and weaves their fingers together.
He hears her exhale quietly as they walk. Sounds like she's smiling. Good.
Back in Paris after their round trip, they trade their bikes back in for their passports and turn to walk the three blocks to their hotel. They've managed several comfortable silences today. Knowing the palace was younger than Rebekah isn't so much upsetting as sort of intriguing now. But he'll leave questions about her past for another day. This one has been too good to mess up.
Suddenly Rebekah slumps against him. He whips around as something is pulled over his face. There's a crack and a flash of pain. Then everything goes black.
(A/N: Apologies in advance for slow updates in the next few weeks. I promise I am not being coy, just travelly.)