Well our journey here has come to an end, maybe :) We start just where we left off in the last chapter. This one went off in a random tangent since my muse decided to delve a little more into why Raven has behaved the way she has, why she is so reticent about having a relationship. I hope you enjoy it :)
Read and Review pls :)
Disclaimer: I do not own them at all.
Some faint, accepting murmur purred out of her throat. Raven's mind simply wouldn't compute what was happening, so her body took over. Nothing she did could stop it; she couldn't stop the trembling, the heat or the baffling need that caused her to melt into him. One stab of pleasure set off another, then another, until she could do nothing but feel.
Speedy's first reaction was one of arrogant pleasure. Detached from him? Like hell she was. She was inflamed for him. She trembled in his arms. She was whimpering. The woman he had been talking to only a moment before had been cold, indifferent, almost mocking. The one currently straining against him was not, she was…deliciously hot. He could taste her and he didn't think he had ever tasted anything so soft, silky, and smooth.
He eased in deeper, aroused by each movement and sound she made. His mind was full of nothing but the pleasure she incited, he didn't think he could ever abate the hunger she stirred in him.
Raven shuddered, her breath hitching in her throat as he began to move his hands over her breasts through her uniform. He swallowed her gasps, absorbed the shudders she gave. The arms she had lifted to his shoulders went limp, falling to her sides in helpless surrender, one that excited him even as it gave warning.
He moved back, his hands now clamped on the counter behind her. Her pale cheeks were now flushed, her large eyes had fluttered shut, her breathing was harsh and fast as it came through swollen lips. When she opened her eyes they were blind, drugged and he saw a flash of fear deep within their depths.
"Well," He said in a mocking tone that was more defense than triumph and his stomach lurched with desire. "Did that satisfy your curiosity?"
She drew in a deep breath, but she couldn't seem to stop panting. She shook her head to clear it, to shake the sparks that were still exploded within her body.
"Nothing to say?" His anger was building and he didn't know why. Building and cresting as she stood staring at him so helpless, so stunned and beginning to look more and more afraid. "Maybe we should do it again?"
"No," She spoke the word as if her life depended upon it. "No, I think you have proven your point."
He didn't know what his point had been; he didn't know why he had kissed her again in the first place. Yet now he wanted her even more than before, with a stunning ferocity that he had never felt before, and he ached, deeply, painfully ached.
"Now," Raven was proud of herself, she had managed to make the word come out evenly, even coolly. "Let me by."
Although this confrontation had taken a different route than Speedy had expected, there was no way he was going to let her walk off now and dismiss this. Not again. He did back off some, but he didn't give her enough room to move past him without knocking him over; he wouldn't put it past her, but he hoped she would stay long enough for him to figure out what was between them.
"Raven," He carefully moderated his tone. "Don't you think we should talk?"
She eyed him with practiced distaste. "That wasn't talking." She stated no inflection in her voice.
He couldn't help the smirk that crossed his features. "It wasn't arguing either."
"Speedy," She sighed and shook her head once again, aftershocks still running through her blood. "This isn't going to happen."
"It seems to me that it already has." He replied seriously, all teasing gone. "You can't run forever Raven, you have to create attachments eventually." He stared her down. "Not everyone is going to be satisfied with being held at arms length."
Raven managed to move around him and she sat once again at the table, her gaze on him as he did the same. "You don't understand."
"Then why don't you enlighten me?"
"I can't do this; therefore it isn't going to happen." She stated firmly, her voice cool to the point of ice and her eyes dark and unreadable.
"Have you ever tried to have a relationship before Raven?" Somewhere in the back of his mind he mentally thanked Robin for the advice he had given before leaving for Gotham.
"I have relationships," She insisted calmly. "I have friends, I don't need and I can't chance these emotions that you insist on bringing to the surface."
"At least you aren't denying that there is something between us beyond friendship," He huffed out a breath and leaned forward, his arms out and palms up almost as if he was reaching for her across the table. "Look around us, nothing blew up. The world didn't end, nothing happened." Another smirk as he corrected himself. "Well nothing bad happened."
"How many girlfriends have you had?" Raven asked suddenly. "How many woman have you kissed…bedded?"
He nearly swallowed his tongue as his eyes goggled behind his mask. "What kind of question is that?"
"One that needs an honest answer."
"Well, I don't really know. It's not like I kept a book or cut notches in my bedpost." He tilted his head at her and tried not to squirm under her gaze.
"But a fair number right?" Her eyes were saying something he couldn't understand, but he knew that this was the most important conversation he had ever had.
"Sure, I guess." He shrugged. "I haven't been a saint or a monk."
"How many boyfriends have I had? How many men have I loved, kissed or gone to bed with?" She had to make him understand that this was impossible for her; she shoved her disappointment down into the pit of her stomach and silently wished she hadn't eaten that toast.
"God Raven, I don't know." He felt his face grow hot, "I never really paid attention before."
"I fell in love once and had my heart shattered before I did anything else." She paused shaking her head at him when he opened his mouth to speak. "I nearly destroyed the tower, my friends and this city."
"The guy in the book?" He asked and at her questioning look he continued. "Beastboy isn't the best person to keep secrets Rae, and that was an entirely different matter."
"I have no experience in this Roy." She stood and moved to leave the room; once again he placed himself between her and the exit. "Let me go," She begged him with her eyes, while her voice was as monotonous as always. "Please Roy, I can't do this."
"Rae, you're different." He ran a frustrated hand through his hair, knowing instinctively that if she left; if he didn't succeed, the pain would be a million times worse than withdrawal from the drugs had been.
"I have always been different." She responded dully, wondering where he was going with this line of thought.
"No, I mean yes…I mean, damnit Rae," He laid his hands on her shoulders. "You are different to me, different than any other girl I have ever looked at. I don't mean your powers, I mean you."
"I can't," Her voice shook as she whispered and she hated that sign of weakness. "I can't."
"Yes you can." He insisted.
She sighed and spoke from a part of her heart that she kept shielded and hidden always. "Do you know what it is like to know what I have known since I was born?"
"No," He said quietly. "Why don't you tell me what it's like?"
"It's horrible. Terrifying and horrible. To have everyone around you, even your own mother, regard you as a thing, a mistake that shouldn't have happened. I hated it, but as a child what choice did I have? You do what is expected of you, you do what you are taught. Then you get in the habit of keeping your emotions behind a wall and you keep right on doing it even when you are no longer a child. Until one day you look in the mirror and you see something so pathetic, yet so dangerous it hurts to look at. And you think to yourself, why not end it? Why continue in this?"
He felt the anger he had shelved earlier come back in full force, only this time it wasn't directed at her, but at those who were supposed to care for her and nurture her. "Raven."
She shook her head and looked away from him. "Maybe you fantasize about it, obsess even. And you're smart, so clever that you can find the most effective, painless way to accomplish the task." She paused and then added as an afterthought. "And the most tidy, wouldn't want to leave a mess for those who find you to clean up."
He didn't say a word, he didn't know if he could. He felt a chill so deep in his heart he didn't know if he would ever be warm again. Raven, this beautiful, precious woman had seriously contemplated ending her life. His mouth and throat were bone dry with shock.
She looked back at him and absently tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "But you are too smart, intelligent and too well programmed by a pacifist world to tolerate that kind of waste."
"When did you…?" He barely managed to croak the words out and he had to take a breath before he could finish. "How old where you when…?"
"When I first thought of it, researched it?" Her voice was quiet and calm, her eyes steady on his. "Seven, I was a precocious child. Yet even after all that you have to remind yourself that your life, however miserable, has to mean something and it is all you've got really in the end and you go on. You use the skills that the priests, monks and people around you drilled into your head and close off everything that can hurt you, because it's easier than otherwise. You hide in books, in meditation and even after you realize that what you are doing is just another kind of suicide; it's the only way you know how to survive."
What the hell had they done to her? He wanted to find each and every one of them and then tear them apart piece by piece with his bare hands.
"I'm tired Roy, so very tired." She rubbed at the headache she felt taking root behind her eyes. "I think it's time for me to go, leave the Titans. You'll find someone else who can feel the way you want her too."
Desperately his wanted to go back in time and find the little girl that had been destroyed bit by bit and give her everything that she deserved; that she needed, but he could do nothing more than reach out and draw the woman she had become into his arms and hold her. He wasn't sure if he could ever let go of her now.
Don't go," He said it simply and loudly.
"You don't want me to stay Roy," She pulled away from him, "If you would just think about it, you would know that I can't, that I am not built for this."
"Do you not understand English? How many languages do you speak?" Sheer frustration caused him to pull at his own hair. "I said don't go, I can't believe I am saying it, but I am." He paused and glared at her. "I am not losing you. I told you that I have never felt this way about anyone and I meant it. You're in my head, I dream about you. I didn't think that any woman could make me feel like this, I thought that it was all movies and book plot, but it isn't, it's real. The thought of not being with you, of not touching you ever again; the thought of never seeing you…it rips my heart out." His glare intensified and he reached for her again, gently shaking her. "You've got no right to twist someone up in knots like this and then just leave; no right to just ignore it."
She opened her mouth to speak and shut it when he shook her again.
"I love you Raven. Damnit all to hell and back, I love you." He felt the room spin and his knees buckled, if Raven hadn't been fast enough moving the chair over to him he would have hit the floor.
He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and tried to control his shaking, he was pretty sure that if she asked him to crawl he would. He shook his head in an attempt to clear it and get some sliver of control back. Then he looked at her and his heart stopped; his soul felt like it had been shredded. A single tear ran down her face, she was crying. Raven didn't cry.
"I'm sorry," He was on his feet in an instant, hands cupping her face, "I shouldn't have yelled, I have no right to talk to you like this. Please, please don't cry." Then with a little more force. "You aren't supposed to cry."
In a voice that was all the more powerful in its softness she spoke. "No one, not in my entire life has ever said those words to me and meant them. You can't possibly know what it feels like to hear them as you have just said them."
"I meant them," He said just as quietly, his thumb running over her cheek to wipe the tear away.
"I didn't think you wanted love," She paused. "I didn't realize how much I needed to hear those words."
"I love you. I need you." He smiled at her, but his voice was firm. "You aren't going."
"No," She leaned her face into his palm. "I still don't know if I can do this, make this work."
"We," He stressed the word. "We will make this work, both of us together. Raven, I have my own battles. I can't do this alone, I need you."
"I know," She smiled briefly, she wasn't sure which words were sweeter, that he needed her as much as she needed him or that he loved her as much as she loved him.
He drew her closer still and leaned down. "Say it Raven, I want to hear the words." He paused. "If you feel them."
"I love you Roy Harper." Her words were a soft whisper across his lips and he kissed her.