[ does she? she wonders if he is as greedy as she is, if the answer is everything, desperate to get her hands all over him, to discover and satisfy new wants in this bed with him before she allows him to climb out of it. it's hard to imagine him feeling the same at all.
the thought is short circuited when his fingers dust over the bones of her amplifiers, by the sudden surge of crackling heat that stirs blue-white sparks to the surface of her skin. she gasps, eyelids fluttering, hips jerking to grind herself against him in a needy search for friction. that shiver resonates as he continues to search the sensitive skin beside the bones, as he familiarizes himself with the newness, a prickling that persists and makes her toes curl even as she catches her breath.
it's not just the amplifier. it's not just the dizzying, half-drunk sensation that comes when aleksander touches her bare skin. she knows that feeling well by now. it's the tingling assurance of his interest, of his willingness to touch even the ugliest parts of her, to indulge himself in every inch of her. it is the novelty of being wholly desired. it is a sense of a dam breaking, of boundaries crumbling and giving way because nothing is off limits anymore.
she bends to kiss him—hungrier this time, lips parting that she might devour him, one hand curling at the side of his neck, her thumb stroking up behind his ear as she braces herself and him. again, she rocks her hips, more deliberately this time, more searching, and the new angle has goosebumps rolling over her upper arms. ]
When Alina is kissing him, arguments for restraint are harder to recollect. They'd held this in check, hadn't they? And now he is kissing her, open-mouthed, as he braces a hand and heel against the mattress to lever them both backwards, up against the pillows and headboard. A minor quest for leverage as Alina's hips roll down against him and Nikolai's body flushes hot at the sensation. At the possibility.
She could have him. She could. ]
I want to put my mouth here, [ Nikolai tells her, common sense wrenched out of him as they kiss, unwilling to break from her to do more than draw brief, ragged breaths. His fingers move along the seam, where warm skin gives way to the unyielding stretch of bone. ] I want to see how long you could stand my mouth on your body. If you could go off without my fingers.
[ Or anything else.
His fingers are there, at Alina's amplifiers, but what flashes into her mind is that sense memory of his bed the morning after the dinner party: his mouth at her breasts, the application of teeth. A snapshot collection of where else he would apply his mouth if given due time. ]
[ she breaks the kiss to nod urgently, lifting her chin, guiding him first to her jaw. it's an almost seamless thing, the gap between her consideration of his suggestion and deploying her whole-hearted agreement in the form of putting that plan into action. but it's all she's wanted since he set foot in here, and it feels good to be honest about it. ]
Is this what you dream about? Teasing me? [ she returns between labored breaths, one of them a huff that's almost like a laugh. she props herself over him on one hand, giving him room to kiss her jaw and neck and down, down, down, as far as he'd like.
still, the little wriggle of her hips. still, she resists simply reaching between them to take him inside. because as much as she aches with the want of him, even greater is the want to be everything he needs. to make this perfect, unforgettable. the kind of thing that justifies his willingness to overlook her glaring flaws and see something worth wanting underneath it.
and, perhaps, the want to let him. the want to be able to trust him enough for that. ] You're going to ruin me. [ she sounds awed, whispering it. ] And I'm going to let you.
[ Alina's hand feels good in his hair. His teeth nip down her neck, his breath hot at the hollow of her throat as her words settle.
Ruin. Let.
What would it be to ruin her?
When he puts his mouth to these amplifiers, he is careful to attend to her skin, not the bone. (Every piece of attention paid to it tugs on that line, pulls at the hook set behind the wound in his chest. Notches the heat in his skin higher.) ]
I will, [ He tells her, head tipping back to look up into her face. ] And I'll put you back together after we've finished.
[ His palm flattens across her stomach, fingers slipping lower down her belly as his other arm catches her round the waist. Steadying her. Suspending her in a faint pantomime of the party, that couch. ]
[ it feels like she's unraveling when he kisses her collarbone, the seam of flesh and bone, something cursed and sinful that he nonetheless leans into rather than running from. and then he lets his head fall back to the pillow. her eyes open.
she's trembling as she meets his gaze. a seriousness about the moment that unbalances her. the fear starts to bubble up again in her chest. she is handing him a knife, as he'd done to her in the duchess' castle. she had turned it on him, as aleksander taught her: better to draw your blade first.
yet here he lay, all the same. she is left breathless by her own yearning as much as by the way his mouth and hands stir her blood.
slowly, she sinks down onto the mattress beside him instead of atop him. she tugs at his shoulder, urges him to roll with her onto his side. she nods her head, swallowing thick before she answers. ]
I want you. [ she turns onto her back, still holding his arm, inviting him atop her. shifting on the mattress. feeling as small as she ever has. ] All of you. Everything you'll give me. Everything you'll take. I want to be yours.
[ These small tugs are enough; Nikolai covers her body with his own, without a full plan on where this motion is taking them. It only begins to come into clear focus when she continues, when their bodies align, when she asks.
She asks and she doesn't flinch from it. From him. ]
Moya zhena.
[ More intimate than tsaritsa: wife. ]
You've had me since I arrived. Longer than that.
[ Which is not the same, really, as what she is saying now. As wanting to be his, possessed and claimed in kind.
He reaches a hand down between them, parting her thighs so he might settle between them as he kisses her. Kisses her and kisses her, coaxing her mouth open for him, setting his elbow on the pillow beside her so he might draw his fingers through her hair. Kisses her until the tension melts away from her body, before he touches her there, drawing circles through the slick folds of her cunt. ]
Do you want me here, Alina?
[ A question, drawing her focus back to him. Steady in spite of how painfully hard he is, how badly he wants this. Her. The way her voice sounded saying I want you is caught in his head; it had been like a match set to dry kindling. ]
[ this kiss is deeper, slower. not urgent heat, but the slow, steady burn of sustained passion. he kisses her like his wife, and alina luxuriates in it, slowly uncoiling, melting into the mattress and his arms.
she is wet and hot under his touch, wet enough that there is no drag when his fingers trace little patterns, getting familiar with the shape of her. the expertise with which he teases out her wanting makes her wonder, as she always does, how often he had her like this before he'd come here. ]
(Yes. Saints, yes. Please.)
[ her mental voice is eager in a way that her throat couldn't muster, with how breathless she is. flush with wanting, sure and steady, even as she squirms with the need to say things like please and trust him to follow through instead of being able to steer it for herself. ]
(Your mouth.)
[ she bites his lower lip, equal parts affectionate and hungry, dismissing him from her lips to the rest of her body. ]
[ Does it help that they have a whole dream of their marriage between them now?
Nikolai has yet to decide. It was not real, but pieces of it linger even with that knowledge. ]
And that I'd make you come until you couldn't, [ he reminds, though they might well save that for some other day, as they circle round and round the possibility of some other activity. Of how he might have her without reservation, simply nudge her thighs apart and sink into her here and now.
Nikolai doesn't do that. His mouth tracks downwards, sucking kisses along her throat, pausing to account for the new-melded bones just below. Again, the electric hum of sensation, a feedback loop of some unknown, prickling energy sparking the moment his lips brush even the edges of bone.
And then lower. Applying teeth to the swell of her breasts, the peak of her nipples. ]
I want to mark you, [ he tells her. It is maybe a request for her permission. ] Did you have marks after the party?
[ His fingers had been dug into her thigh so hard, he remembers. Alina had been boneless then, pliable under his hands, but Nikolai had been holding her thigh so tightly, for the whole of their entanglement— ]
[ her back arches, pushing her chest up against his mouth, while her fingers tangle in his hair to hold onto him. a steadying force, a welcome stability. the sting of his teeth is too sharp to fully sink into–it keeps her alert, sensitive to each little shift of his body. ]
Yes. [ she reluctantly loosens her grip with one hand, moves it between them instead. her fingers trace along the path of old, vanished bruises, as she had done a dozen times, a hundred times, after that night. showing him the old paths, and more importantly, revealing to him her familiarity with them. ]
Give me more. [ ones that aren't stained by their association with that night, that are not just more sweet than they are bitter, but are entirely hers. she thinks of his promise to be hers, wholly, and of the marks she'd left on his skin with the candle wax. wonders how many others had seen it, and if he had thought of her when they did. the hand that remains in his hair moves now down to his shoulders, nails digging long red lines. ] I'll repay you in kind.
[ There's some humor in that, the concept of trading marks, of what's owed and yet to be repaid that Nikolai strings along between them like a tether. Something to keep Alina returning to him, a ward against the possibility that she wouldn't return to him on her own.
He leaves a bright red mark on her breast, ringed by the soft indent of his teeth, before he finds his way lower. Laves hot kisses down her ribs, splays a palm across her belly so he can apply teeth to the jut of her hipbones.
In the dream, she was his wife and they'd shared a bed that he'd gifted her. Newly-made, soft mattress, silk pillows. A frame carved of dark wood and polished until it gleamed. There had been other gifts, but the bed had been theirs. No one else had ever laid in it but them. A far cry from two narrow beds lashed together in a boarding house.
It hadn't been real. But it felt real then.
Nikolai's palm flattens across her stomach. He looks up at her, the scratches from her nails burning across his shoulders. He can see the bitten path his mouth took down her torso, sucked-red marks rising on her skin. ]
Remember, I want to hear you.
[ This reminder as his hand encourages her thigh up over his shoulder, as he resettles himself there between her legs. Recollects kneeling for her, lets the memory pass from his mind, focuses himself here in the moment. ]
I don't think — [ her breath hitches as he gets her thigh over his shoulder, as she lifts her hips slightly to get situated, slings one leg over his back, her heel pressed to his spine. ] — that will be hard to remember.
[ she has a messy, incomplete memory of the party. every time she has tried to recall it, draw back on how his mouth had felt on her, it is tainted by the memory of aleksander's breath on her neck, his fingers pressing inside of her. the way it makes her shiver always frightens her away.
but what she does remember is the bliss. the whole-body molten feeling, and the realization that the noises that she heard were coming from her, that the light was hers, and it was because of him. her skin prickles now with much the same sense, her skin sensitive where his teeth sank in.
one of her hands reaches down to comb back through his hair, a gentle tousle. the other traces the outline of his marks, the little divots from his teeth, the mottled red-purple bruising that starts under her pale skin. his. in all of the places that are for her alone to see, under her clothes.
when her eyes catch his again, she is struck again by his beauty, by the softness of his eyes—not hunger, but a deeper kind of wanting. it makes her shiver. she can't look away. ]
[ Soon enough, he'll have to get up out of Alina's bed. There is the All-Sight to consider. Quentin had asked him to be there, to convince their people of the wisdom of negotiation. And this, what Alina gives to him, will be a protection against the possibility that the All-Sight might spin him out of control again, wrench a monster from beneath his flesh.
His fingers press firmly down, palm flattening as if to pin her to the bed. She could buck free if she liked, Nikolai knows. This is only suggestion, really.
Alina's fingers in his hair encourage. Nikolai shifts that minor stretch of space downwards. Uses his opposite hand to splay her thigh out against the bed before he puts his mouth to her, just as he had done at the party. Purposeful, this time. Certain of what he is doing, because he had learned well what she preferred then. ]
[ a little ripple rolls through her, a brief flutter of muscle tension that eventually becomes the sharp inhale and the closing of her fist, the digging of her heel. instead of being caught in the surreal slipping of her drunkenness, she can focus on the feeling, on the wetness of his tongue, the way it is softer than his fingers, gliding smoothly over her sensitive skin. its firmness is more welcome than that of his fingers, less inherently abrasive because it is less rough.
and more, she can sprawl out like this. let her head drop back, her spine uncurling as she presses her hips up into the feeling, trying to search out more than he's willing to give her as he takes his time, deliberate with her, like he relishes the chance to have her tangled up like this, her pleasure at his mercy.
at first she catches her soft little breaths of satisfaction, biting down on her lip, but it is not long before she realizes that she's denying him the sounds she'd promised. that she is trying to hold herself back, lest he learn something about her that he could use. her teeth drag at her lower lip as it tugs out of her mouth, and the next noise spills out openly, a lilting cry that relishes the feel of him.
it sounds more lewd than anything else she's done has felt. ]
Yes, [ whispers directly into her mind, encouraging. ] Let me hear you.
[ How long could he keep her here?
Nikolai had asked her the very first time they had gone to bed together to stay. He has wanted her here and closer, wanted her in his bed in a way that is only tangentially linked to the potential for sex. But it occurs to him now: how many times could he make her come? How long could he balance her on the very edge of an orgasm?
That's not the point of what they're doing now, but he considers it. Alina's thigh flexes at his temple and her heel digs into the center of his back and his fingers dig so hard into the soft skin at the inside of her opposite thigh that five perfect bruises are unavoidable. ]
I want to hear you when you come apart for me.
[ There is no qualifier. Nikolai doesn't want to make a game of this, not this time. Not when the first time they attempted this was tarnished, hazed by drink. When Nikolai had come to her with with his hair and linens rumpled from tangling with Quentin had knelt to her with Kirigan caging her into his lap.
This is different. It is theirs. And he wants to hear her, when he nudges her over the edge. ]
(cw: refs to misogynistic military culture, some internalized male gaze)
[ it takes her longer, this time. she overthinks it — of course she does. preoccupies herself not with how she sounds, but with if he actually enjoys doing this. he'd offered, more than once, and yet she wonders if it's obligation or just a way to get himself into her good graces, as she's sure it had been for aleksander. (she feels immediately guilty for this comparison, too.)
but she has heard stories, in the first army. about the way girls smell and the shape of their cunts and how laborious it is to give them pleasure instead of just taking it.
she wants to croon pretty, feminine noises for him, like gilia or zoya would make. she wants him to think that she tastes good, wants him to only be down there as long as he would like instead of feeling like he needs to finish his chore, wants to come quickly enough to excite him. she wants to be easy to please.
these thoughts only make it more difficult, and the thoughts feed on themselves like a snake that eats its own tail. more than once she is left on the tittering flutter of something — almost there, breath caught in her chest, her whole body arching off the bed. ]
Ah. Saints. Yes, that's — Keep going. [ little whimpers, hungry and aching noises that are soft and small and almost sheepish as her heel digs deeper into his back. only then she huffs and sags again as she loses the thread. she slings her free hand over her eyes, humiliation starting to set in as she says, wobbly, ] I didn't mean that. You don't have to keep — [ how to say it? putting it words makes it worse.
[ Even so occupied, Nikolai is aware of some dissonant note here. Aware that Alina is close but frustrated, that he isn't giving her quite what she needs.
And he would have kept going, yes, but for the miserable backtracking, and whisper of thought that Nikolai knows immediately wasn't meant for him. It brings his eyes up, lifts his head from its work, the wet slick of her across his mouth and chin obvious even when he turns his face to kiss the inside of her thigh. ]
I am.
[ But what is the likelihood Alina believes him? ]
Look at me, [ he coaxes. ] Do you think I don't want to kiss you here? Make you come apart this way?
[ she drops her arm slowly. peers down at him like she's being made to do it. begrudging, yet aching. she wants to believe him, hear him, but it feels like placating. ]
I'm trying. [ to come apart. to finish for him, so that they can move onto other things. things that he will enjoy more than this. ] Not that I have to try. You're good at this. Terribly good at this. I'm the one who's making it difficult.
[ her tongue feels thick in her mouth. like she's bitten it to numbness and now none of her words are right. she takes a breath. tries to start again. ]
I want to come apart for you. I don't know why I'm taking so long. That's my fault. So you don't have to keep trying.
[ These are all the wrong questions. Alina answers them as if she has been cornered, all the ease and joy stripped out of her voice.
Nikolai levers himself upwards, stretching out alongside her. It is only a pause in the proceedings, a breath of space in which they might reorient themselves. When he puts his hands on her, it is a gentler thing. Fingers at the bend of her waist, arm stretched across her stomach, his ankle hitched around hers. ]
I want to keep trying, [ Nikolai tells her. ] I think my investment speaks for itself.
[ A joke, humor to diminish the way his body has reacted to her. To gentle how obvious his affection must be, written across his face, by making the focus something more physical. The flush spread across his skin. How hard he is already, as gentlemanly as he is attempting to be about it. ]
We can take our time. We can try something else, for a little while, before we do that again.
[ it slips out compulsively. she raises her hand to his chest, plants it there, stabilizes herself on him.
the dim light glints off the wetness of his chin, and she thinks she likes it, this flush-faced look that is stained by her. she tries to focus on that. kisses him, and tastes herself, and likes that too. the hand at his chest moves to cradle his face.
she channels all her frustration into that kiss, lazily possessive in how her tongue pushes into his mouth. she avails herself of him in a way that anchors her, makes more evident how it is the surrendering of control that leaves room for her to over-think.
a brief flash of her loathing for aleksander for doing this to her stirs. she pushes it down, smothers it.
her other hand reaches down between them, takes him in hand. her grip is loose and light, but it makes her feel better to stroke him—idle, purposeless. both a reminder of what she does to him and a reassurance that she can please him, too. it is more concrete this way, than when his head is between her thighs.
she breaks the kiss, her forehead pressed to his. ] Can I try? [ a reversal. ]
[ Alina had offered, Nikolai recalls. Balanced on Aleksander's lap, eyes glassy, fabric of her toga coming apart, as she reached for him. Nikolai remembers weighing the offer, considering the possibilities afforded to him, choosing what felt like a lesser transgression.
Here, in this bed, she is clear-eyed. Steadier for their slow kissing and the idle wanderings of their hands. Nikolai lays a hand flat over her chest, fingers resting at the hollow of her throat, over the ragged skin and jutting bone rising from her collar ]
If you'd like to, [ is something near to a yes. ] But not because you think I wasn't enjoying myself.
[ she frowns—pouts, really. doesn't like the insinuation that it's to distract him from her insecurities and not herself, especially when she remembers trying before. when she has too often imagined the power that lies in unraveling him.
but she'd promised to give him a different gift, here. the chance to unravel her, instead. it's just proven hard to give. much harder than she'd expected, for all her good intentions.
the pout fades as his fingers continue to stroke at her collarbone, however. her breaths grow uneven. the little hum of light under her skin blooming again as the eldritch connection between them blossoms again. like calls to like. she should ask. he should tell her. what is he hiding? what in him is calling to her amplifiers? she doesn't.
instead, ] It would be a nice distraction. We could do it together.
[ Touching her here, at the ragged join of skin and bone, sparks up a tugging hook of pain in his shoulder. Discomfort instead of agony, though part of him wonders if it would build in time. If it reacting to Alina or—
It's set aside. Nikolai doesn't want to follow that train of thought. ]
I don't want you distracted.
[ Is the first thing he tells her, before amending— ]
Well, not by anything that isn't how handsome I am.
[ Some levity, as Nikolai's fingers resume their idle exploration of this new-found addition. Watches the way light moves under and across her skin. Considers the shallow hitch of her breath. ]
[ she hisses the word out like a confession, like she's reluctant to make the admission, to give it a voice. her head tips back, lips parted as she sinks into the feeling, even as it scares her. ]
It's ... intense. [ she adds, soft. ] Overwhelming. [ she opens her eyes again, searches his face while she wets her lips. feels out the moment. she shifts onto him, pins his thighs between hers, then starts to scale down his body. she presses her mouth to his chest, charting a course with her lips. she won't let him distract her from her intention, either, no matter how handsome he is. ]
I want to overwhelm you, [ can't come as a surprise. Nikolai tells her this even as they move, as she puts him onto his back.
She is already in motion, quick enough that he can't catch hold of her to kiss. The graze of her mouth makes something in his chest twist. (Affection, yes, but the wound leaps at the proximity too.) ]
Alina, [ is near to caution, even though it comes with a kind of strain. A ragged edge becoming obvious as her trajectory makes itself known. ]
Has anyone done this for you before? [ she asks, his cock in her hand and her lips against the divot of muscle that slopes down the inner side of his hip, towards the soft down of blonde hair along his abdomen.
it is perhaps selfish and a little unfair to hope that she's the first, when he hasn't had the same luxury. but she knows that she will be clumsy, will fumble. she also knows that she feels the same as he does — the urge to overwhelm, to ruin. she wants to know he'll think of her any time his cock is in someone else's mouth. in someone else's anything. ]
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the thought is short circuited when his fingers dust over the bones of her amplifiers, by the sudden surge of crackling heat that stirs blue-white sparks to the surface of her skin. she gasps, eyelids fluttering, hips jerking to grind herself against him in a needy search for friction. that shiver resonates as he continues to search the sensitive skin beside the bones, as he familiarizes himself with the newness, a prickling that persists and makes her toes curl even as she catches her breath.
it's not just the amplifier. it's not just the dizzying, half-drunk sensation that comes when aleksander touches her bare skin. she knows that feeling well by now. it's the tingling assurance of his interest, of his willingness to touch even the ugliest parts of her, to indulge himself in every inch of her. it is the novelty of being wholly desired. it is a sense of a dam breaking, of boundaries crumbling and giving way because nothing is off limits anymore.
she bends to kiss him—hungrier this time, lips parting that she might devour him, one hand curling at the side of his neck, her thumb stroking up behind his ear as she braces herself and him. again, she rocks her hips, more deliberately this time, more searching, and the new angle has goosebumps rolling over her upper arms. ]
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When Alina is kissing him, arguments for restraint are harder to recollect. They'd held this in check, hadn't they? And now he is kissing her, open-mouthed, as he braces a hand and heel against the mattress to lever them both backwards, up against the pillows and headboard. A minor quest for leverage as Alina's hips roll down against him and Nikolai's body flushes hot at the sensation. At the possibility.
She could have him. She could. ]
I want to put my mouth here, [ Nikolai tells her, common sense wrenched out of him as they kiss, unwilling to break from her to do more than draw brief, ragged breaths. His fingers move along the seam, where warm skin gives way to the unyielding stretch of bone. ] I want to see how long you could stand my mouth on your body. If you could go off without my fingers.
[ Or anything else.
His fingers are there, at Alina's amplifiers, but what flashes into her mind is that sense memory of his bed the morning after the dinner party: his mouth at her breasts, the application of teeth. A snapshot collection of where else he would apply his mouth if given due time. ]
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Is this what you dream about? Teasing me? [ she returns between labored breaths, one of them a huff that's almost like a laugh. she props herself over him on one hand, giving him room to kiss her jaw and neck and down, down, down, as far as he'd like.
still, the little wriggle of her hips. still, she resists simply reaching between them to take him inside. because as much as she aches with the want of him, even greater is the want to be everything he needs. to make this perfect, unforgettable. the kind of thing that justifies his willingness to overlook her glaring flaws and see something worth wanting underneath it.
and, perhaps, the want to let him. the want to be able to trust him enough for that. ] You're going to ruin me. [ she sounds awed, whispering it. ] And I'm going to let you.
no subject
Ruin. Let.
What would it be to ruin her?
When he puts his mouth to these amplifiers, he is careful to attend to her skin, not the bone. (Every piece of attention paid to it tugs on that line, pulls at the hook set behind the wound in his chest. Notches the heat in his skin higher.) ]
I will, [ He tells her, head tipping back to look up into her face. ] And I'll put you back together after we've finished.
[ His palm flattens across her stomach, fingers slipping lower down her belly as his other arm catches her round the waist. Steadying her. Suspending her in a faint pantomime of the party, that couch. ]
Is that what you want?
no subject
she's trembling as she meets his gaze. a seriousness about the moment that unbalances her. the fear starts to bubble up again in her chest. she is handing him a knife, as he'd done to her in the duchess' castle. she had turned it on him, as aleksander taught her: better to draw your blade first.
yet here he lay, all the same. she is left breathless by her own yearning as much as by the way his mouth and hands stir her blood.
slowly, she sinks down onto the mattress beside him instead of atop him. she tugs at his shoulder, urges him to roll with her onto his side. she nods her head, swallowing thick before she answers. ]
I want you. [ she turns onto her back, still holding his arm, inviting him atop her. shifting on the mattress. feeling as small as she ever has. ] All of you. Everything you'll give me. Everything you'll take. I want to be yours.
no subject
She asks and she doesn't flinch from it. From him. ]
Moya zhena.
[ More intimate than tsaritsa: wife. ]
You've had me since I arrived. Longer than that.
[ Which is not the same, really, as what she is saying now. As wanting to be his, possessed and claimed in kind.
He reaches a hand down between them, parting her thighs so he might settle between them as he kisses her. Kisses her and kisses her, coaxing her mouth open for him, setting his elbow on the pillow beside her so he might draw his fingers through her hair. Kisses her until the tension melts away from her body, before he touches her there, drawing circles through the slick folds of her cunt. ]
Do you want me here, Alina?
[ A question, drawing her focus back to him. Steady in spite of how painfully hard he is, how badly he wants this. Her. The way her voice sounded saying I want you is caught in his head; it had been like a match set to dry kindling. ]
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she is wet and hot under his touch, wet enough that there is no drag when his fingers trace little patterns, getting familiar with the shape of her. the expertise with which he teases out her wanting makes her wonder, as she always does, how often he had her like this before he'd come here. ]
( Yes. Saints, yes. Please. )
[ her mental voice is eager in a way that her throat couldn't muster, with how breathless she is. flush with wanting, sure and steady, even as she squirms with the need to say things like please and trust him to follow through instead of being able to steer it for herself. ]
( Your mouth. )
[ she bites his lower lip, equal parts affectionate and hungry, dismissing him from her lips to the rest of her body. ]
You promised me I'd have your mouth everywhere.
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Nikolai has yet to decide. It was not real, but pieces of it linger even with that knowledge. ]
And that I'd make you come until you couldn't, [ he reminds, though they might well save that for some other day, as they circle round and round the possibility of some other activity. Of how he might have her without reservation, simply nudge her thighs apart and sink into her here and now.
Nikolai doesn't do that. His mouth tracks downwards, sucking kisses along her throat, pausing to account for the new-melded bones just below. Again, the electric hum of sensation, a feedback loop of some unknown, prickling energy sparking the moment his lips brush even the edges of bone.
And then lower. Applying teeth to the swell of her breasts, the peak of her nipples. ]
I want to mark you, [ he tells her. It is maybe a request for her permission. ] Did you have marks after the party?
[ His fingers had been dug into her thigh so hard, he remembers. Alina had been boneless then, pliable under his hands, but Nikolai had been holding her thigh so tightly, for the whole of their entanglement— ]
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Yes. [ she reluctantly loosens her grip with one hand, moves it between them instead. her fingers trace along the path of old, vanished bruises, as she had done a dozen times, a hundred times, after that night. showing him the old paths, and more importantly, revealing to him her familiarity with them. ]
Give me more. [ ones that aren't stained by their association with that night, that are not just more sweet than they are bitter, but are entirely hers. she thinks of his promise to be hers, wholly, and of the marks she'd left on his skin with the candle wax. wonders how many others had seen it, and if he had thought of her when they did. the hand that remains in his hair moves now down to his shoulders, nails digging long red lines. ] I'll repay you in kind.
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He leaves a bright red mark on her breast, ringed by the soft indent of his teeth, before he finds his way lower. Laves hot kisses down her ribs, splays a palm across her belly so he can apply teeth to the jut of her hipbones.
In the dream, she was his wife and they'd shared a bed that he'd gifted her. Newly-made, soft mattress, silk pillows. A frame carved of dark wood and polished until it gleamed. There had been other gifts, but the bed had been theirs. No one else had ever laid in it but them. A far cry from two narrow beds lashed together in a boarding house.
It hadn't been real. But it felt real then.
Nikolai's palm flattens across her stomach. He looks up at her, the scratches from her nails burning across his shoulders. He can see the bitten path his mouth took down her torso, sucked-red marks rising on her skin. ]
Remember, I want to hear you.
[ This reminder as his hand encourages her thigh up over his shoulder, as he resettles himself there between her legs. Recollects kneeling for her, lets the memory pass from his mind, focuses himself here in the moment. ]
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[ she has a messy, incomplete memory of the party. every time she has tried to recall it, draw back on how his mouth had felt on her, it is tainted by the memory of aleksander's breath on her neck, his fingers pressing inside of her. the way it makes her shiver always frightens her away.
but what she does remember is the bliss. the whole-body molten feeling, and the realization that the noises that she heard were coming from her, that the light was hers, and it was because of him. her skin prickles now with much the same sense, her skin sensitive where his teeth sank in.
one of her hands reaches down to comb back through his hair, a gentle tousle. the other traces the outline of his marks, the little divots from his teeth, the mottled red-purple bruising that starts under her pale skin. his. in all of the places that are for her alone to see, under her clothes.
when her eyes catch his again, she is struck again by his beauty, by the softness of his eyes—not hunger, but a deeper kind of wanting. it makes her shiver. she can't look away. ]
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His fingers press firmly down, palm flattening as if to pin her to the bed. She could buck free if she liked, Nikolai knows. This is only suggestion, really.
Alina's fingers in his hair encourage. Nikolai shifts that minor stretch of space downwards. Uses his opposite hand to splay her thigh out against the bed before he puts his mouth to her, just as he had done at the party. Purposeful, this time. Certain of what he is doing, because he had learned well what she preferred then. ]
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and more, she can sprawl out like this. let her head drop back, her spine uncurling as she presses her hips up into the feeling, trying to search out more than he's willing to give her as he takes his time, deliberate with her, like he relishes the chance to have her tangled up like this, her pleasure at his mercy.
at first she catches her soft little breaths of satisfaction, biting down on her lip, but it is not long before she realizes that she's denying him the sounds she'd promised. that she is trying to hold herself back, lest he learn something about her that he could use. her teeth drag at her lower lip as it tugs out of her mouth, and the next noise spills out openly, a lilting cry that relishes the feel of him.
it sounds more lewd than anything else she's done has felt. ]
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[ How long could he keep her here?
Nikolai had asked her the very first time they had gone to bed together to stay. He has wanted her here and closer, wanted her in his bed in a way that is only tangentially linked to the potential for sex. But it occurs to him now: how many times could he make her come? How long could he balance her on the very edge of an orgasm?
That's not the point of what they're doing now, but he considers it. Alina's thigh flexes at his temple and her heel digs into the center of his back and his fingers dig so hard into the soft skin at the inside of her opposite thigh that five perfect bruises are unavoidable. ]
I want to hear you when you come apart for me.
[ There is no qualifier. Nikolai doesn't want to make a game of this, not this time. Not when the first time they attempted this was tarnished, hazed by drink. When Nikolai had come to her with with his hair and linens rumpled from tangling with Quentin had knelt to her with Kirigan caging her into his lap.
This is different. It is theirs. And he wants to hear her, when he nudges her over the edge. ]
(cw: refs to misogynistic military culture, some internalized male gaze)
but she has heard stories, in the first army. about the way girls smell and the shape of their cunts and how laborious it is to give them pleasure instead of just taking it.
she wants to croon pretty, feminine noises for him, like gilia or zoya would make. she wants him to think that she tastes good, wants him to only be down there as long as he would like instead of feeling like he needs to finish his chore, wants to come quickly enough to excite him. she wants to be easy to please.
these thoughts only make it more difficult, and the thoughts feed on themselves like a snake that eats its own tail. more than once she is left on the tittering flutter of something — almost there, breath caught in her chest, her whole body arching off the bed. ]
Ah. Saints. Yes, that's — Keep going. [ little whimpers, hungry and aching noises that are soft and small and almost sheepish as her heel digs deeper into his back. only then she huffs and sags again as she loses the thread. she slings her free hand over her eyes, humiliation starting to set in as she says, wobbly, ] I didn't mean that. You don't have to keep — [ how to say it? putting it words makes it worse.
a thought slips across. ]
( He can't be enjoying this. )
i'm back
And he would have kept going, yes, but for the miserable backtracking, and whisper of thought that Nikolai knows immediately wasn't meant for him. It brings his eyes up, lifts his head from its work, the wet slick of her across his mouth and chin obvious even when he turns his face to kiss the inside of her thigh. ]
I am.
[ But what is the likelihood Alina believes him? ]
Look at me, [ he coaxes. ] Do you think I don't want to kiss you here? Make you come apart this way?
yes good
I'm trying. [ to come apart. to finish for him, so that they can move onto other things. things that he will enjoy more than this. ] Not that I have to try. You're good at this. Terribly good at this. I'm the one who's making it difficult.
[ her tongue feels thick in her mouth. like she's bitten it to numbness and now none of her words are right. she takes a breath. tries to start again. ]
I want to come apart for you. I don't know why I'm taking so long. That's my fault. So you don't have to keep trying.
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[ These are all the wrong questions. Alina answers them as if she has been cornered, all the ease and joy stripped out of her voice.
Nikolai levers himself upwards, stretching out alongside her. It is only a pause in the proceedings, a breath of space in which they might reorient themselves. When he puts his hands on her, it is a gentler thing. Fingers at the bend of her waist, arm stretched across her stomach, his ankle hitched around hers. ]
I want to keep trying, [ Nikolai tells her. ] I think my investment speaks for itself.
[ A joke, humor to diminish the way his body has reacted to her. To gentle how obvious his affection must be, written across his face, by making the focus something more physical. The flush spread across his skin. How hard he is already, as gentlemanly as he is attempting to be about it. ]
We can take our time. We can try something else, for a little while, before we do that again.
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[ it slips out compulsively. she raises her hand to his chest, plants it there, stabilizes herself on him.
the dim light glints off the wetness of his chin, and she thinks she likes it, this flush-faced look that is stained by her. she tries to focus on that. kisses him, and tastes herself, and likes that too. the hand at his chest moves to cradle his face.
she channels all her frustration into that kiss, lazily possessive in how her tongue pushes into his mouth. she avails herself of him in a way that anchors her, makes more evident how it is the surrendering of control that leaves room for her to over-think.
a brief flash of her loathing for aleksander for doing this to her stirs. she pushes it down, smothers it.
her other hand reaches down between them, takes him in hand. her grip is loose and light, but it makes her feel better to stroke him—idle, purposeless. both a reminder of what she does to him and a reassurance that she can please him, too. it is more concrete this way, than when his head is between her thighs.
she breaks the kiss, her forehead pressed to his. ] Can I try? [ a reversal. ]
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Here, in this bed, she is clear-eyed. Steadier for their slow kissing and the idle wanderings of their hands. Nikolai lays a hand flat over her chest, fingers resting at the hollow of her throat, over the ragged skin and jutting bone rising from her collar ]
If you'd like to, [ is something near to a yes. ] But not because you think I wasn't enjoying myself.
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[ she frowns—pouts, really. doesn't like the insinuation that it's to distract him from her insecurities and not herself, especially when she remembers trying before. when she has too often imagined the power that lies in unraveling him.
but she'd promised to give him a different gift, here. the chance to unravel her, instead. it's just proven hard to give. much harder than she'd expected, for all her good intentions.
the pout fades as his fingers continue to stroke at her collarbone, however. her breaths grow uneven. the little hum of light under her skin blooming again as the eldritch connection between them blossoms again. like calls to like. she should ask. he should tell her. what is he hiding? what in him is calling to her amplifiers? she doesn't.
instead, ] It would be a nice distraction. We could do it together.
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It's set aside. Nikolai doesn't want to follow that train of thought. ]
I don't want you distracted.
[ Is the first thing he tells her, before amending— ]
Well, not by anything that isn't how handsome I am.
[ Some levity, as Nikolai's fingers resume their idle exploration of this new-found addition. Watches the way light moves under and across her skin. Considers the shallow hitch of her breath. ]
Does this feel good, when I touch you here?
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[ she hisses the word out like a confession, like she's reluctant to make the admission, to give it a voice. her head tips back, lips parted as she sinks into the feeling, even as it scares her. ]
It's ... intense. [ she adds, soft. ] Overwhelming. [ she opens her eyes again, searches his face while she wets her lips. feels out the moment. she shifts onto him, pins his thighs between hers, then starts to scale down his body. she presses her mouth to his chest, charting a course with her lips. she won't let him distract her from her intention, either, no matter how handsome he is. ]
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She is already in motion, quick enough that he can't catch hold of her to kiss. The graze of her mouth makes something in his chest twist. (Affection, yes, but the wound leaps at the proximity too.) ]
Alina, [ is near to caution, even though it comes with a kind of strain. A ragged edge becoming obvious as her trajectory makes itself known. ]
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it is perhaps selfish and a little unfair to hope that she's the first, when he hasn't had the same luxury. but she knows that she will be clumsy, will fumble. she also knows that she feels the same as he does — the urge to overwhelm, to ruin. she wants to know he'll think of her any time his cock is in someone else's mouth. in someone else's anything. ]
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(cw: emeto jokes)
guffaw
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(cw: dubcon re: unsafe sex)
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