Stories from RhyDin & The Rings

Dún Scáith was a crossroads of the truest sense. Lay lines bisected here, their exact coordinates were skeleton-echos in the brick and mortar, the wood and its grain. In the early evening, for a few hours, the thirsty, and the curious, and the profane could find more than a few stools open, even a table or one of the limited number of booths. But the crowd eventually, faithfully, trickled in, and by 10pm there was only standing room. It wasn't quite that late yet. The bruise-purple of dusk had recently faded into ancillary black. It was a new moon tonight, and the streets were extra dark. Shadows lengthened, and a prominent inkling crawling up the back of the neck was that some things crept closer than customary tonight. The impression was presentiment -- nearly visceral.

In the back of the bar there was a change. The sitting area was made up of a group of wall-attached booth-chairs that faced in towards haphazardly collected tables. It was like something had thrown a blanket of gloaming over the space-- as though a different, conflicting environment had invaded. There was a gutter of electric-buzz as a light broke with a satisfying >pop<. There was an alarming call for the observation of surroundings and it demanded immediate assessment. Something was off, like it was the first time you smelled jasmine on a hot summer night and it required attention-- for you to be present and to experience the moment. To be aware (what was that?)-- and maybe to run. The electricity sputtered as the transformation became both encompassing and thorough. The dim light of the bar penetrated from the ceiling lights still, but the low-lights were sickly, throwing shadows that were thick but charged-- the air felt like too-tightly wound springs. But none of this anxious milieu resided in the figure that now lounged in the left corner of the bar. That was the role of everything else in the presence of an apex predator.

She was a predacious drape of limbs-- liquid, effortless comfort, and self-possession. Her distinctly feline composure was both vicious and utterly casual. Her repose was complete, however there was a sense of restrained power and violence perfectly contained. Her body like a threat exhaled at the nape of your neck- conditional and exciting. She'd been there all along, hadn't she? On the table in front of her were several sheafs of paper, documents, and a barely-sipped coup glass already surrounded by a ring of sweat. Each of these belied some sense of occupation. But the woman was motionless, pried out of time. Midnight, kid-leather pants hummed with soft, expensive glow as they licked up her long legs from stiletto heeled boots to the angles of hips cut to covet and destroy. The rest of her was a game of light, a cropped shirt of poured-silver hid nothing of the marmoreal figure beneath. It didn't even try, it was a suggestion-- which for her was as good as a directive, an injunction.

The woman lifts her chin, letting her fine, aristocratic features come into view from the recesses within panels of her pitch-black, plaited hair. There is a hypnotic rhythm to the exotic caste of her features which suggests sand and sun, but she's pale as the moon and as smooth as alabaster. Sightlessly she reaches for her drink and touches the glass to her dark-stained, petal-shaped lips. And once, just once, she flicks an unnecessary, chastising glance over the rim at a single point of focus --already assessed by predatory and martial devices but garnering a brief excess of attention. But those eyes... Those smoked out, khol-rimed eyes. She has eyes the viole(n)t color of the evening heaven, lined with silver specks as intricate and depthless with promise as the stars. Translating their timeless designs and meanings was a dangerous preoccupation that had many ends-- but always an end. It was more likely to simply be in their thrall, catching glimpses of one's own past and present refined and reflected there. They have revealed elegant, final glimpses of personal meaning, searched for for life times; simple, sonorous quips from an immortal sense of disinterest and derision as judgement culminates into inertia and jack-knife decision; as well as a perfect, instantaneous, and cherished resolution with an inevitable, and beloved death. She enjoyed invoking some of these more than others. But what Shade enjoyed was another colloquy all together.


The low-throated growl of the engine and its exhaust were liable to be as familiar as the intangible tingle of premonition about its driver, to the fine-tuned senses of one particular guest tonight. The car looped once around the block, closing in on her like a hunter or offering the polite display of anticipated arrival, and parked on a side street.

Six foot four, the frame of his tall body in the suit was athletic without exaggeration, a martial tone of musculature that emphasized function over vanity but exuded the same raw suggestion of power. He had an economic grace in motion that was uncanny, an aloof confidence that seemed to clear the path just ahead of him. When he took a step off the sidewalk going into the bar, the door almost opened itself to get out of his way.

Myles wasn't dangerous because he looked dangerous--but he was, and he did, and damn if he didn't dress sharp enough to draw blood. This devil knew the details; the muted gloss polish on his square-toed leather dress boots, the cuff links, minimalist belt buckle and pointed tie pin in a silver metallic array, the slim-fit three-piece suit was triple black with a white shirt and the knot of an ash-gray tie noosed just-so around his neck diving into the already-buttoned vest. His monochrome was severe and almost as searing as an after-image: pale, pale skin, eyes as deeply black-irised and destructive as the void of space, and a neatly chaotic fringe of shock-white hair.

He passed by a clump of warm, soft bodies with only the slightest detectible interest. One of those things was not like the others and the faintest recline of his head as he considered what that difference might be was the rearing of a carnivorous curiosity. Fortunately, he had more important concerns this evening. Paused at the bar, he gave a small fold of bills to the bar tender in trade for a pair of empty snifter glasses, offering gratuity for that simple service and occupation of space undisturbed in the establishment.

It was only when he broke away from the bar again that he finally looked at Shade--his eyes locked onto hers without a flinch of hesitation. His expression was mild, at least for anyone else looking on. There was an absolute dilation of his pupils as he got closer to her that was almost imperceptible--the creeping angle of a smile in the corners of his thin mouth an understatement of his instinctive reaction.

At the side of the table where she sat, he exercised an insolent privilege to make a decision for her by stacking her paper-works all together into one pile aside while he set the snifters down, as well as picking up her sweating glass to set on the next table over. When that tedium was through, he focused on the woman again with a minute arch of his brow, extending her an up-turned palm invitation to greet him--properly. His smile had deepened, showed a sliver of teeth even, as genuinely pleased with the sight of her as he'd ever been.

"Good evening, Shade. I was just thinking about you..." The emphasis and what it suggested were both cheeky, and so was the hook of a daring grin.

When had she started to watch him... with her eyes? For her blood felt him circling ages ago. Eras ago. Or just an instant. It was hard to pinpoint the time, and as far as Shade was concerned, it mattered as much as a dagger flicked from a wrist. And though the duration meant nothing to her, the intent did. Both hers, and his. S&M.

So she watched him. A keen interest glittering in those violent, violet eyes. It was a sharp and precise sort of attention that was efficient and yet languid. Shade was a crucible for both brutality and femininity. In the ancient core of her being these qualities and trajectories burned down to their most base elements and nearly sublimated in their execution. Somehow they skipped a state and existed in her in carnal harmony-- diffused thoroughly and perfect. She was an affront to the senses, but not unlike most that encountered her, they also subjugated themselves and found her too profoundly essential to deny. In any way. This was an experience.

Yet, when she watched Myles she always wondered when he would. It was half a promise, half a threat, (somewhere a concern), to contemplate such a thing. A lazy curiosity considered what her course of action would be after that. There was a strange pride and perverse amusement in knowing that he may be the only being who could, truly, do such a thing. Other thoughts swam amidst these sharks, but she didn't have the constitution to examine unlikely algorithms.

So, the silver flecks in her eyes coruscated dimly as she held him with her gaze. Beheld him, really, as he moved her accouterments. She bestowed him with a very slow, and nearly imperceptible, rise of her raven-black brow. A rhetorical question and commentary in full investiture- silent and mythological. Then she smiled, slow and sly-- which was an intimacy she reserved only for him among all of this visceral regalia. In a way, it set a tone-- a scene. She slipped her hand into his, her long white fingers pointed down expectantly.

"Were you now, Myles" her silken voice purred. Even in so few syllables there was an extra hint and flavor of sun and spices. She'd been home. The way she said his name was just so she could taste it on her tongue, and she enjoyed it. Yet, dissected, the way she formed the sounds of it was as terrifying and yet soul-inviting (soul-quieting) as dark water.

There was an irrefutable nihilism about him which was some times conflated with arrogance, but Myles knew his capacity and his station in any given moment or situation. Whimsical was not a word that fit into descriptions of his demeanor. Impulsive perhaps, and that made him unpredictable.

This was an observation of ritual, both optional and obligatory, and its levels ranged from antiquated etiquette to the instantaneously intimate, civilized with an actively sublimated savagery patiently twitching underneath the kinder affectations of sophistication.

The other half of his smirk appeared when he bowed his shoulders to reach the hand he took by bridge of her knuckles, laying her expectant fingers in the breadth of his palm. The cool press of his mouth across the seam of her fingers was an unsurprising custom, a signal of recognition that was insignificant in comparison with grip he coiled around her arm between the wrist and elbow. He peeled her palm into an exposed position, and he bit the mound of her thumb under the guise of another kiss. What it lacked leaving impressions, it certainly offered in sensation.

The corner of his mouth dragged onto her wrist, and the third kiss wasn't at all an afterthought, only a spark of sentimentality that he wouldn't openly indulge to any further extent. He watched her all the while with his blank and bottomless eyes, acutely aware of her attention.

And then he was standing upright, unraveling all the gravity that he'd built up, letting her arm go and her hand slip away. He pulled the chair out from the table across from her and had a seat in it without bothering to ask. "Indeed. All work and no play makes Shade a very... negligent girl." His pause was for consideration of the right adjective rather than a specific drama. He used the time otherwise to extract a small but stout thermal flask from a liner pocket in the suit jacket that he'd unbuttoned as he sat. Nimbly spinning the cap open, the drink he poured into the snifter closer to her was thickly red, warm and sweet to the right nose. Napoleonic, even.

As he leaned, there was the slightest shadow of a crease at the corner of her eye. Just the barest implication that they narrowed, the smoked curl of dramatic eyelashes shivering briefly. The rest of her expression was as serene as cave pools-- still as glass for ages. Thus, it was not her features that gave away some of the thoughts she had as he explored her skin with his fingers, and his mouth. It was her breath. It slowed and even stopped, like she could allot the continuation of particular vital functions, denying others, to heighten only chosen senses to their utmost. She was of the mind to allocate her experience willfully and in full. And in this moment she chose to completely experience him. Under his touch her skin was cool, even cold. But that gaze was warm, even hot, as it rested on him. A deepening of black irises telegraphed a core pleasure at his gestures, and the complexity of this dance of control, etiquette, decorum, and intimacy ignited that gratification with a willful amusement that Shade, for the most part, only enjoyed in his company. He could spend a century vigilant for an example of that look cast at another man, and he would come up empty handed - his frustration met with the resplendence of his quarry and its silent, satirical perspicacity.

When she retrieved her arm from him, the cold muscle flexing, she pulled it in like a wing, bent elbow, as to press the corner of her mouth to her wrist where his lips had lain. Without ceremony, just a peculiar feral nonchalance, she licked her skin with a flicker of her tongue before lowering her arm like it had never occurred. It was a decadent indulgence completely lost in her unaltered demeanor.

"Negligent of you, Myles? Never. And... Mm. 'Girl. '" She tastes the word in the back of her throat as though a shift in palette fell under her scrutiny. She ran the syllables on her breath like a hunter, in a way to taste them and track him better. "I haven't been called that for centuries." And perhaps only he could pick up the flare of timbre she had at that word. It betrayed both time, and some insight into the peculiarities behind the escapade. A bloody tale. But it seemed like that was all she had to say about that particular faux pas. It was an anomalous and adroit acceptance of time and change and correlation.

She watched as he pulled out the flask and poured ruby-red into the glass. Shade's eyes instantly danced with fire and her pale cheeks darkened, certainly the light had changed. Like some predators, even her lips parted (canines glittering in the low-light) and her breath resumed as if she needed the scent on her tongue to appreciate the aroma fully. The craving to experience it so forceful she must have appeared uncharacteristically wild before she flawlessly returned to her more equable state of self-possession. Had he not shared in preternatural senses, he likely would have missed every detail of this small drama. Her attention snapped back to his features, and she was steel-composure again. The electric charge of her serenity dared him to make note of a clear moment of desire-- but somehow not denying that it existed, and still did. "It's still warm," she said, and she let the velvet croon of her words contain a sense of gratitude, pleasure, pride, and most notably, admiration. She had always appreciated his skills and attention to detail.

Myles divided his focus between the little responsive fissures playing out across the table from him, watching the exquisite mask of her patience disintegrate by degrees, and the careful decanting of the rarefied libation. His smirk had slithered away even before he'd flattered her by referring to her as a youth, and for more than a moment, he shared an unusually pleasant smile with the woman across from him. A uniquely simple expression devoid of any smugness, sarcasm, or schemes. It only ended when it occurred to him that it had happened, and the aftertaste of that on his features was a renewed concentration as he poured the second snifter sitting closer to himself.

The flask re-capped disappeared again back into the liner pocket of his jacket. The incline of his head toward her wasn't argumentative, but made a point silently regarding many thoughts that were all but lost in the vigilant vacancy of his gaze, so much sordid humor slaughtered on the Proper altar. "Time is a relative experience."

He shifted in the chair and let the angle of a knee loll open comfortably with a couple of idle twitches before resting still, a casual posture that contradicted some of the pomposity of the formal attire and calculated courting as well as something of a tell. "If you can't bring proper service, there's no point offering a delicacy, is there?" Rhetoric likewise, as well as a gently passing question about the nature of her surprise.

"Should we drink to paying attention?" Myles picked up the glass with two fingers and a thumb, absently swirling the red around as he proposed a toast. The grin had wound its way back into his eyes and over his clever mouth, not having missed a beat of her appetite checking the short leash she kept it on. The secondary revelation of that situation set some of the hairs on the back of his neck standing up, and he rolled his shoulders as if the collar of the shirt was suddenly stifling. The hook of his finger loosening the tie was much less discreet but only showed as much of his throat as had been hiding behind a single uncaught button. He let the tingle of tepid fear ride down his spine, enjoying every second of it including the warming after-rush more than was likely sane.


She watched his mouth. The different shades of smirk and smile he phased through held her interest. The last of them, as he poured, was of the most tantalizing sort. It inspired a slow inhale through her teeth, pulling a breath deep into her lungs as if she had places in her that had need of vitality and resuscitation. Things that had been asleep for years and needed to be awoken to enjoy that pang of something genuine in his smile. It was a peculiar transition from something so virulent to something, honestly, sentimental. In a way, he placated her. And if she were less than herself, if all of her affectations were merely show or if they were created to hide something else in her, this would have caused a cognitive dissonance that would have required action. But Shade was her self, and she made note of her reaction to him just as much as she noted his reaction to her. Thus, a ghost of the expression flitted across her dark painted mouth and she let him see it. Perhaps especially because he had executed, at mental knife-point, her affecting muse.

"It is, ...indeed. And how have you been these... two decades, is it?" Something like that. She was fully aware of all the ways he could receive this inquiry. A flick of a whip, implying she knew it must not be all that easy. A commentary on how that stretch of time meant nearly nothing to her. A chastising of his age, tit-for-tat.... reading some of his urges behind his dark eyes and daring him to share. There is a willful chiding as well, which truly just gave more insight into how he influenced her and put her at a modicum of unease-- kindling that burning gaze that could not be snuffed out while that scent lingered in the air, mingled with his own. But most importantly, because he knew her best, he also knew it was a genuine inquiry into how he fared all this time. If it wasn't she would have said it another way.

"I can tell that it is," a delicacy. That you have hunted and lay a proper pray on this altar. Even if it wasn't meant for her. Not when it happened or had been chosen. But he brought her precious things and she was aware and she appreciated him for it. "And I have always been so enthralled by your manners, ... and attention to details, Myles. Truly." She verbally pet him with her rich, warm tones. The words coiled out between them like a salacious tongue that also carried her final comment about the blood. "I have also always, always, enjoyed how you can play my expectations like piano keys." In a way, yes, it was always surprise. If she was capable of such a thing. Perhaps the flagrant flirtation was meant to place him at ease. (Something...tense in him. She tried not to make a sound in her throat as she could feel the hair on his skin raise. His thoughts thrumming electric between them.) Though, if he decided to take it exactly the opposite way, he would still be a very wise man.

With one hand, she wrapped her fingers around the glass he poured. She raised it slowly in the air between them. "Yes, to attention. I like that very much." And in the few spaces between seconds, between his return of the toast, she let him watch. She let him watch as she succumbed to expectation. Let him watch her transform slowly from restraint to the fiendish thing that wanted both this offering and him in her mouth. Her pale nostrils flared and a deepening of breath spread her ribs and rose her breasts in a sheen of silver reflection on her chest. There was a quiver to the way her lips withdrew, just a touch, as they also parted and her ivory fangs slid into extended view. A lascivious tension hung like storm and lightening in the air, and her violent stare illustrated exactly the nature of the leash she had on both herself... and possibly him.

Shade held the world at bay so it could witness her shivering anticipation...and then she drank. She closed her eyes as she did-- finally offering solace from that smoldering, smoke-lined gaze. She poured half the contents of her libation back into her mouth as she raised her chin and revealed the long loon-slopes of her perfect white throat that usually hid behind her plaited hair. She swallowed luxuriously, the gesture sharing qualities of both high art and pornography. And as she straightened the glass, wiping the rim of it on her lower lip just so she could not miss a drop-- not on glass, nor skin-- she licked her mouth slowly, deliberately, and with malice aforethought. And since the blood was only half gone, she had all the intention in the world to do it again. Just for him.

[Written with Myles]

He contemplated the chunk of time with a forced detachment, an objective exercise. He considered what he would and would not say and how much wisdom and caution there was to both admissions and omissions, whether due to setting or simple pride and insignificance. The slope of his brow slanted higher on the left side, a remark all of its own which delivered the understanding that he was not going to summarize his diary. It developed into a more serious stare the longer that he maintained it. Recognizing that it was a sincere interest, he made an effort to give her more than just polite or dismissive small talk. "Confused. Dreadfully dull and bored. Clarified. Keeping my hands busy. I took a class to pass some of it. I made a German friend. We watch movies. I think he's a bit repressed but maybe that's just symptomatic of the culture." Only by the end of what he said did his timbre pick back up a wry humor that didn't offer any particularly keen glean on his reflective eyes.

Myles was too animate to be confused with a statue, and in stillness there could almost be caught a glimpse of a person rather than just a persona. This was the explicit reason for the next smile that he wore, sharp as her little quipped tongue-lashes and almost as fun to watch appear as an actual laceration.

Even for a fellow as quick as a switch blade, the shifting dynamics of their interactions were some times too heady. The compliments that she paid him caught him and if he'd been less aware of that, he might have preened. He did make a gesture about scraping some invisible lint or debris from his knee before shifting in the chair again with his elbow bent and cocked over the back brace of it. "It's a mutual and reciprocal appreciation, of course."

Myles was contrarily less patient about savoring the quality of what he'd brought to fill the snifter glasses, tossing the dose back like it was just a regular call brand all in one coltish recline of his head. He did let it sit in his closed mouth afterward, enjoying the short-lived saturation of flavor before he swallowed. When he set the glass back down, he gave it a small nudge toward the center of the table. But his attention was fixed on Shade, shamelessly voyeuristic and as cautious as a potential victim. He watched her drink with a fatalistic fascination, too alert to be hypnotized by the display even while the lids of his eyes lowered. She was wrapping him around her, sense by sense with all that intention, and he was coiled with so much pressure that he had to actively manage it to keep from springing. His smile was almost gone again, its presence simply darkened like the new moon outside.

The only point at which he broke from the regard was to flick a glance at the documents he'd stacked on the table, even going as far as to gather them in hand to trifold into a tidy packet which fit into the other pocket in the lining of his jacket, more bluntly concluding her distractions with minutiae than even a crooked come-hither finger curl. "Are you transferring these properties or...?" He'd looked long enough at the nature of the pages to have gathered at least those details, and he left it up to her discretion whether an answer should be given here, or shortly after their imminent departure.

Shade had an idiosyncratic way of looking like a cat that ate a canary. The personal flare was casual, but also righteous, self-content, and daring. What, was that your canary? The upturn of the corner of her mouth also said that leaving things unattended was a mistake maybe you should learn to stop making. If only because things like her lurked around every corner. Well, not every. Not like her. Also, the judgement was there-- owning caged things was fucking asinine. This was the way she regarded the world as Myles began speaking. And her demeanor clearly held a note of camaraderie rather than commentary. Like she shared this notion with him rather than cast it upon him.

Her lean remained languid, but her smile transformed slowly. That subjective severity dulled to the steely shine of armor. And the armor began to melt to quicksilver. Never a fan of appearing mercurial, she finished the rest of her glass as a means to put something else on her mouth. She played it like punctuation that matched his newly wry-ed smile. Were it within her power to quell ancient hungers, she would have checked the flare of her violet eyes, or her white nostrils, but it wasn't, and in truth, she didn't much mind him seeing how desire yanked on the single shackle she had to the demonstrative. These were things that thrived in dark bar corners and between lovers. If they belonged anywhere, they belonged here.

She remained silent for more than a beat. Letting his recitation and his question seep into the atmosphere, wrapping around them like ghost-fog. Perhaps she considered a reaction to his etiquette, or lack thereof. But Shade appreciated their familiarity, how it blossomed in their body language and implied blush-coloured palm prints on the pale veil of their language. The silence edged and grew precipitous- the most languorous seam of a razor there ever was. If she were a weapon, she would be a katana - a mixture of art, history, perfection in craft, elegant and pleasing form, and beautiful danger. All of these things slunk from her chair, and still with the taste of blood in her mouth she pressed her lips against his. "C'mere," she purred with some gravel to her voice that belied both control and its absence. Her cold fingers curled in the hair at the base of his neck and her tongue licked red into his mouth.

In a moment, she was there. In the same instant, she was here and "C'mere". And in the preternatural shadow between, every intelligent and intrinsic instinct was telegraphing an urgent ultimatum. He felt the free-falling weightlessness spiraling out from another adrenaline boost as she crept too-quick around the table at him, and he used the nervous energy to levitate a deferential defiance. Myles had made his choice years ago, and flight was not an option.

The weight of her resting on the long perch of his thigh was enough excuse to remain fixed in the chair. His mouth opened just before the invitation, as if he might have had any other response than the slick slide and twist of his tongue along and over hers before their lips met and temporarily secreted away the details of a kiss that had waited... and waited... and wanted.

She was the only reason that his eyes closed in the bar, and it was not the petting fingers in his hair or along the back of his neck lulling him. He was too eager for that. It was an unguarded trust, and a transient dismissal of their surroundings. The rest was muscle memory: the way one arm curled a brace around the bare skin on the back of her rib cage with a palm splayed wide to pull her against his chest, the other hand digging a grip into the supple leather around her thigh just above the knee. His shoulders turned and bowed for her again leaning forward, almost curling over her. If he'd had any less sense of decorum or respect, she was just one more step from being put down on the floor beneath him with a leg around his side. She was cold as ice, but in the right hands, she melted.

It was nothing but a slight tilt of his head and a nudge of his chin that changed the angle of how their mouths met, that set a new fire on the kiss. The tip of his tongue shifted from an instigating trace on the inside of her upper lip onto an extended fang, pressed hard enough to puncture and opened a slice that would bleed freely.

This was not a spectacle of exhibitionism. It was an instance in unfettered romance, the sort of which was almost too poignant to observe when placed in all its context. The undertow dragged beyond the simple strata of lust into darker and deeper depths of desire, where craving deteriorated into hunger and longing devolved into needing, where the compulsive beating of hearts stop and the ethereal dance of souls begin.

The taught frailty of tension in the air was so severe that she imagined she could pluck it like harp strings. Her slender fingers would curl and catch on the metallic threads and she would transmogrify a moment into resonance. And the fact that these strings bridged the gaps between their bodies and sent their long-dead cells to singing only made it more exciting. She could not read his thoughts but she had an idea of the pallets which he painted them with. The thrill of fight and flight was intoxicating to her. But not because it carried with it that primal anxiety and anticipation, and not because her dangerous grace belied a deep, almost desperate hunger, but because it was a state that coalesced all natures of her being. She was made to hunt, and here, in this dark corner, all of her preternatural finesse, all of her gifts, could be set to 11 and funneled into an eternal elegance focused on one delicious goal. Him. And what she would do with him.

For a moment, she showed him. Her recently warmed breath exhaled slow and precipitous on his tongue and in his mouth. This was the first place they met and every sumptuous detail was deliberate- both pleasing and cruel. The fingers in his hair became shadow details, as attentive to him as her mouth, and set upon an exploration that labored over every single facet in reverence, extravagance and provocation. His subtle ministrations set reactions in her like pebbles dropped in a pool. The closing of his eyes lured her closer by her center of gravity - her long form sinking in against him at the hips. Her feline prowl of him here exposed angles and ink scrawled there like landing lights in the snow. Dangerous safe harbor. The palming of her bare skin put a soft arch in her back that brought her both flush against him and in his orbit as well as allowing her to lean back farther with her shoulders. The curl of his fingers near her knee urged it upwards, her body moving like a stalking cat in the underbrush, each inch closer carefully thought out and tense with intent and vicious exultation. The charming nature of her form was meant to seduce without losing any of its threat to strike. And this poised, predatory dance displayed her graceful, reactive agility in each nuanced acceptance of his decisions-- how she shifted and lengthened and displayed herself in his lap as he leaned to hover and envelope.

But then it seemed to shift, the comfortable tidal exchange of their interactions, and it appeared that this would be about what he would do with her. Her features nuzzled his as he changed the angles of the kiss. A brief challenge met his, his lift of chin, as she smeared her open mouth against him and left an exhale in the wake of her lips. She took a lead as she took the angle farther than he intended, deepening her symbolic hungry acceptance by licking the soft divot beneath his lower lip just to sweep her tongue inside his mouth. She showed him how part of her wanted to be enthralled by this, wanted to waylay the message she intended to share - I missed you, too. And just you, just this, this thing that can yield and be pliant and silently say that his words moved her and meant something. And then he punctured his skin inside the tabernacle of their entangled mouths. There was a sharp inhale and all of this stopped. Like she could freeze it in amber.

The growl that reverberated in the skin under his hands and at the back of her throat, around his tongue, was feral. It was threatening. But the way she stayed her hardening grip of him communicated an intense understanding of what this was. How he had underscored each dance step with an amaranthine romance. How the waltz of them was more than body and blood. Her entire body rolled against him, pushed at him in a ripple of cold, alabaster menace as her arms pulled him close and her fingers curled. This was Shade's embrace-- licentious memento mori. As the gleaming violet of her brilliant gaze fluttered away behind her pitch-black lashes --as relief was granted-- she chose to show him, in a way that he could feel, how she acquiesced to this. To him. To what he had to say to her in his blood. And the pull on the first drought of him came with nothing less than her eternal command. Mine. She pulled so hard it must have felt like reaching inside him and setting fire to his veins, making his blood scream from within like the ropes of his arteries were being plumbed with metal hooks scrambling to keep purchase and feed the right body. She would have none of that. She would have all of him.

Myles shifted again when Shade made a particular sound into and against his mouth, pulling his spine upright and squaring his broad shoulders with the horizon. The curl of his arm brought her with him, as if she needed any direction on how best to make him exactly aware of how close she could be. He already knew what was coming, what he was giving, what she would take and what it would do to him. He spared her the chore of having to push him back into the chair forcibly. He did not save her from the way that the re-position helped his hand skim farther up the back of her thigh. The sudden grab at cheek of her ass, or the demanding flex of his fingers, was as possessive as it was playful -- a liberty that he took with his back to the doors and to the chatty group of drinkers mingling by the bar proper.

The world peeled off his consciousness like so much paint curling and melting away from a heat gun. The chair beneath him, the room around him, the street and its noise beyond... All gone in the span of a breath. What replaced it all, for an instant, was a razor-thin slice of tranquility. And as soon as he could recognize that, it was deliquescing, too. The pain bloomed vividly and velvety, racing through the track of his circulatory system like a gasoline trail catching fire. It was hot from the ends of his toes all the way up behind his eyes and neck, and after the first grip gave him a full-body shock of reflexive tension, he went almost entirely slack in the chair.

That placated pacifism wouldn't last, though. Even as he'd relaxed in a lull, he was anything but limp beneath her. The loosened grasp of his hand behind her was then kneading and palming her hip like a patient vital sign. He was only gone in that initial rush, and once the first flame of pain had licked through him, he was there again. The sensation didn't dull -- if anything, as it went on it got sharper, more severe. Each swallow was a fresh swing of a pendulum already in motion and a strap winding tighter. And the more of that there was, the more there was of him defying it: his body knew better enough that it ought to struggle but Myles refused to allow it.

Instead, he wore the woman drinking him with all the lucid and languorous repose and composure of a prince or a king or a deity -- and perhaps more than just a hint of the same alluring, assured arrogance that went with those stations. He was hers by the mouthful, and more. But it was a subversive loop that with every draught, the more she was his, and all the power that he needed to play was that she knew it, drop by drop. The pride of the privilege was authentic and not a gaudy display of sparkling, distracting pretension as much as a godly show of coruscating, demonstrative will.

The truth nested beneath that was that it wasn't a play at all -- it had no audience, not even the patrons of the moment at the bar paid them any heed, and although it might have an intermission, its only conclusion was ad infinitum. Nimble fingers fanned and splayed and stroked, affectionate and possessive in a slow sweep that covered quite a bit of her back's bare skin. The scathe of short nails was a gentle reminder -- or perhaps a subtle tell of restlessness that lingered on with a new intensity.

As Myles adjusted and straightened the angles and lines of his form, she moved with him like he was wound in a cloying manifestation of smoke that was deceptively haunted by the figure of a pale, monochromatic woman. Her fingers reached up his chest, up his throat, into the stark white of his hair. She hunted the boundaries of his very existence with her palms. Had her hands not just been there in his hair? She was so fast-- time flickered in his swoon but reality also trembled in the shadows of the room. The desire to run her hands over him was one she would acquiesce to and covet and steal because it was everything in excess (and everything in perspicacity- ownership, delight). Yet, she derived a singular pleasure from petting him, kneading her fingers through the immaculate suit he wore. Her approval was complete, it crooned in the way the fabric purred under the drag of her nails. Shade's indulgence and favor was so aggregate and so lethal. Those long, terrible fingers (masters of genocide and annihilation) curled their hold of him again, straining his white hair, fastening their mouths together as he sat up, his arms keeping them flush like they were one piece, one body and one blood. How she could move with him-- a sway in their forms as the macabre thrall united them, rendering them distinguishable only by differentiation itself. Their cells and their blood f**ked in perfect rhythm--not even the beat of their hearts knew contradiction.

It was here that she manifested the singular truth of her surrender to him. The existence of their consummate event horizon was love. That was his.

She took hold of him, and in the supplicated position in his lap, she honoured him like the deity he was. The center of all of her fiendish attention was the crush of their mouths-- the taking and swallowing of his blood. Her body came close, came with him, as though she could wrap him in the raven and alabaster velvet of her and create a reliquary, a sanctuary, right here in this bar. Her flesh reacted to the ways his hands caught her up, but there was just sonorous constriction of form set to vanquish him in her silent, implacable Revelation. She overcame him slowly, taking some height. A precious blasphemy that elucidated more of those feral sounds he enjoyed so much. She would not let him slip into passivity, even for her-- especially for her. She would not let him surrender to the slack, sucking-descent she lulled him into with her proximity and her power. She woke him like she would ride him in waves. She slipped her tongue into his mouth, looking for that tranquility he had found, she consecrated it with sacred attentions-- and then she shattered it. Destroying it with ancient weapons and leaving it in pieces she promised to gather later and anoint him with, over his skin, in his bones, and with blood. In perfect sacrilege, Shade pierced the center of her tongue on one of his canines.

She was ordained in the art of blood, perhaps even the creator of it. And in her station, her ascendancy, she let just one bead of her archaic vitae ravage him-- spreading a bloom of carnal, apoplectic, urbane and ferocious fire through his anatomy. A form that she knew must be so, so hungry after she had swallowed so much of him. She was irreverent of her simple, perfect understanding of how maddening, chaotic and coruscating the desire for her ancient elixir must be for anything living. Never mind for a man who had waited 20 years. A man who still knew what 20 years meant to humanity and a sentient soul. Shade was cruel when she played games. But only Myles comprehended that she knew how to play them still. And it was his luxury to understand that they were all for him-- all the labyrinthine, methodical, harrowing intricacies of ancient mysteries and amusements meant to render every deficient player desolate and void.

The instantly healed tongue retracted from him, licking the front of his teeth and his lips-- making kindling of the moment and his mouth as she wove words from the root of venereal menace: "Fast, Myles, or I'll have to kill them all--" because this is only yours. And she was aware at how close threats and promises dwelt, "--and I just want you." For now. I have so much to give you.