Disclaimer: Still don't own them.
Summary: if you read the other second chapter I posted, you know what's going on for sure. It felt a bit premature to post that part, so I took it down and decided to continue here.
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She looks to admire today's offering.
Almond blossoms for hope and vigilance, Azaleas for fragile and ephemeral passion, white heather for protection.
She pulls a rose from the bouquet and twirls it between her fingers, its red petals sweetly radiant.
Love, desire, courage.
But, she is her mother's girl and knows her roses.
"Crimson Conquest?" she names the bloom in question, dragging the petals across his fine, smooth cheek.
He is still ever the delicate, aristocratic looking boy he was at school. His demeanor hasn't changed much, either. He reflects quietly on the name of the flower and the woman he has plucked it for.
"Yes," he answers with placid confidence.
Her eyes flash at him. He can really only mean one thing. She is the crimson lion, and there is really little doubt as to who the conqueror here is. She returns the bloom to its place in the collective and takes what could appear to others as a bored looking turn about the room.
He knows better.
She is agitated, feeling the pressure of the bending of wills, though long cut, still supple and green with unremitting strength.
She crosses in front of the window, the sunlight infusing her chestnut curls with a golden glow. Memories of sun speckled shoulders with the soft sheen of muggy days and her laughter ringing out across the grounds constrict his chest until he worries something inside might break. Perhaps it already has. He lowers himself to the settee and beckons her with a voice that betrays nothing of his distraction.
"Do not stir so. Sit with me."
She eyes him hard, her look is ravenous as though she could and would eviscerate him with glee and devour him whole.
"Do not stir?" she repeats questioningly, her voice lilting with dangerous amusement. He always chooses his words so carefully. "But you have stirred me."
She mocks him, he is sure.
He elegantly acquiesces.
"Then I have done my duty. Please," he entreats, "sit with me."
His plea is empowering, soothing. The part of her that would deny him appeased, she slowly moves toward him. His dark eyes follow her progress and his pulse quickens as she gathers the folds of her robes and lifts them as she lowers herself onto his lap. Never the one to be told what to do, she settles herself against him instead of beside him.
He dares not smile nor breathe his excitement. It would not do to show his pleasure, lest she pull away just as quickly as she has come to him. She thrills in teasing and spurning him. He sits still beneath her, his discreetly desperate eyes casting for hope in the tempestuous sea of her gaze.
Finally, her eyes soften and her hands move from his shoulders to twine in his hair, her lips parting in a longing sigh.
Glory!
She relents. She has missed him.
He is to be punished for it, he knows, but it is a welcome sentence.
Her kiss is soft and inviting. He remains submissive.
"Your kiss is hesitant," she accuses. "Have your lips found better fare elsewhere?"
"My lips have sought no other," he breathes shallowly as his chest constricts reflexively around his heart.
"Though others they have found," she accuses again. "Like mine …"
Expectant preparation never softens her blows.
He offers himself freely for the gutting. "Better lips than mine?"
She smiles. Heartless witch!
"Different," she answers lightly.
"Different," he repeats in a voice of quiet contemplation.
She takes him by surprise, always by surprise. Her mouth is eager and he is all hunger and exposed nerves. His body reacts even as his heart is breaking and his mind races. Whose lips have taken hers? Whose mouth has tasted and hands touched?
"Who?" he asks, unable to restrain himself any longer, pulling away from her.
She smiles again. The same smile. That calm, beautiful smile that belies the rows of jagged little teeth within. "You first," she offers.
"I told you," he insists in earnest, "there has been no other. I have wanted no other."
"Nor have I," she returns, leaning in to take his lips once more. His lips are firm, and rounded in shock. She has been taken unwillingly?
"Who," he demands, his insides awash with the electric pain of the thought of her subjugated and abused.
She sighs resignedly, and presses her nose into the crook of his neck. His heart hammers painfully and he stifles the urge to grasp her shoulders and shake the name out of her. With restrained agony and impatience, he waits on her reply.
"I was comforting Luna," she says softly. "She took it the wrong way."
The air becomes breathable and his lungs welcomed it, but he refuses to risk her mocking or rebellion by allowing his arms to tighten around her in his relief. She is toying with him. Always, she is toying with him. He chooses to take her trick as a confession and withholds absolution as she attempts to take his lips once more.
"I'm not supposed to be angry because it was another girl?" he asks darkly.
She pulls back and eyes him mutinously. "I didn't want her to kiss me!"
"But you kissed her back," he accuses evenly.
"I didn't want to be rude or hurtful," she blushes.
"Not to her," he rejoins sullenly. Before she can rebut with some new hurtful jibe he asks, "Did you like it?"
She gapes at him incredulously, her high color deepening further still.
"You said it was different. Different good or different bad? Did she touch you? Did she make you wet?" he prods mercilessly.
She huffs a scandalized breath.
He suppresses his grin and eyes her suspiciously. "Show me what she did."
She is forced to suppress her own shy grin as she complies and leans in slowly to take his lips. Her lips are soft, pliant, and parted just slightly as they connect with his. He holds still, playing the part of the unwilling yet curious recipient, though she knows she was not so unwilling and far more curious.
With firm but gentle hands, she tips his head back and threads her fingers through his hair, cradling his head just so. He opens his mouth to her possession and as her tongue slides along his, she runs her nails gently across his scalp and down the back of his neck. She is rewarded with a low moan, and withholds her wry grin as she recalls making a very similar noise herself.
His kiss is wet and eager as her hands tug and massage, smoothing along his neck, dragging her nails from his nape to just under his ears, hitting that sensitive spot with the gentlest touch. He moans again as he raises his hips to press more firmly against her. He is very aroused and it takes much of her will not to grind back against him. His hands travel up her back, finding and caressing the same places she had so expertly manipulated on him. She sighs into his mouth and drags her nails down his chest, parting his robe and finding and massaging his nipples through his shirt. He likes this very much and she can feel him pulse against her as she slips her fingers along his buttons, popping them open one by one. When she gets as far as his navel she stops and parts the material to reveal his smooth, fair chest and already puckered nipples to her touch. She runs the backs of her fingers from his collar bone to his waist and drags her nails back up. His kiss becomes erratic and he groans into her mouth as her fingers find his nipples and tease them. Just a few short plucks and rolls and she removes herself from his lap. His mouth is agape in bewilderment and the throes of an unfinished kiss.
"What next?" he asks huskily.
"Nothing," she sighs pleasantly. "That was when I remembered."
"Remembered what?" he asks a bit too hopefully.
"I'm not into girls," she replies nonchalantly and turns away with a saucy flip of her hair.
It is difficult to portray his own insouciance when inside he is so needy and possessive. It is difficult not to draw her in and take her here and now, but she is not to be possessed in that way. Not now. Not ever.
She is indomitable. He will continue to wait, to effect and entice, to conspire and entreat, for her to come to him once more. Hopefully he will not have to wait long.
His body aches. His will is forfeit, his heart her possession, her victory.
Her crimson conquest.
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A/N: Yes? No?