katabasis | [the au where they kiss]

[Ah.]

The place you came from sounds-- [her hand is very warm] unreasonably dreary.

[This before he sheds his shirt, dumping it unceremoniously anywhere else.]

( the faint exhalation of air—against his skin, her free hand sliding lazily up his abdomen, exploratory—might have been a laugh, if it had been allowed. she says, )

I don't miss it. ( and then, tilting her head, ) Shall I? ( which is very polite and has the sense of being a continuation of a most satisfying thought she does not mean to immediately share. )

[Yes, says the faint press of his hip into her. But the real reply is his hand all bangled from where the sun has beaten the shadow of his jewelry into it setting at briefly at her cheek, then sliding up into the pin-irregular twists of her pale, fine hair.]

All right.

( james flint is not a boy of eighteen to swing due north at a sly glance from beneath lashes or even, necessarily, the testing press of teeth around the stud in his ear. there are any number of purely practical reasons why she might have posed to him a question that has, in truth, no wrong answers—

but from the particular way that she smiles up at him in the gold light of just enough candles, he has given a good answer for more reasons than the obvious. permission secured, she does not rush herself; rather she takes a moment, hitching herself further up onto the bed and then rising onto her knees, taking a moment to appreciate the picture of him before her. the better part of his clothes and his boots littering the room with her own, the marks of his adornments, the casual debauchery of his open trousers. she looks a little as if she is committing it to memory, before she tucks her hair behind her ear and drags her teeth down his side,

her husband had not cared for this, much. had not cared for anything, in fact, in which petrana might have held the upper hand in a way he could see; increasingly, as they grew alongside and apart from one another, preferred not to be at his too-analytical wife's mercy. there is pleasure in giving—generously—but so too is there pleasure in the sense that pleasure is hers to give.

that they are, in a sense, still negotiating. that they do so as equals. she had once thought it—gentlemanly, his restraint. treating her as his wife and not a whore. and then avys had said, what's demeaning about having your teeth to his cock? and she had rather rethought the whole of it.

mostly, when she slides tongue along the underside of flint's, she is thinking that this is a promising development in their partnership. )

[There is certainly a suggestion of give in the lines of how he responds to the scrape of her teeth, and the sudden wet heat of her tongue; his fingers not fully easy in her hair and the twitch of muscle under her hand at his middle are like the sound supple wood makes as it's eagerly bent to form. No, he isn't a boy, but he has been considering how warm her is and the shape of her under (and tight around) his hands for the better part of the evening now, nipping interlude on the dance floor included, and he isn't a stone either.

It's a promising development for the rest of the night, in any case. There is something candid in this - which one might be willing to mistake for standard when it comes to a woman's mouth at a man's cock, but isn't -, how she is as intent on this as after any other thing while they'd sat across one another at his desk.

(It's going to be difficult to sit there again without thinking of Madame de Cedoux on her knees in her chemise and silk stockings, but he's never known that to be a barrier to good work.)]

( with one hand splayed at his hip and the other beneath her mouth, there is a confidence to her approach that presumably speaks to enchanter julius's present quality of life; if she was once out of practise, she is not any longer and she watches him not from beneath her lashes but almost uncomfortably frankly for someone presently hollowing out her cheeks and relaxing the back of her throat to swallow around him.

observing and responding to the minutest shift of him. paying heed to the way that he breathes and moves his weight and his fingers in her loose, soft hair; the muscles in his abdomen where her fingertips splay out from his hip. there is nothing that she does that she doesn't approach so methodically, and so determined to excel—

it is one thing to merely get one's end away. it is another entirely to ensure that it is difficult to look at her mouth and not remember. )

[Captain Flint is a sharp man; this is probably the kinder thing said in Forces, and in his ship, and by any person who has been beaten down by the effort of conversing. He is difficult to manage. He is difficult to not be trampled by. He is difficult to negotiate any point with. He is, simply, difficult.

But he is evidently not difficult to parse like this. If she is looking for something to observe, there is plenty to examine. The unrepentant shift of his fingers, how he presses up under her hand at his hip are matters of course, but there is something in the shape of him that goes lower and more heated under the point of her study - not just willing to be looked at, but aroused by the fixture of her attention. Twitching in anticipation of being done with this, following her into the bed and pressing his mouth between her thighs to watch in what direction she moves from it.]

( the thought of simply continuing is a tempting one. more than that: of bringing him off and eluding his grasp, leaving her teethmarks behind in his hip for him to think about—that is very, very tempting. there is a part of her that likes the idea almost enough, and it is that part that files it away for later. another time, since for now they're both letting presumption stand that there will be other times.

the part of her that has pressed her thighs tighter and tighter together as she swirls her tongue around the tip of his cock isn't prepared to be that patient, tonight. there's a wet pop when she drags her mouth off of him, rising up on her knees with one hand still lazily working him, lips reddened before she draws him down to her mouth.

there is a different tenor to this kiss than the laughing newness of them pressed together in the carriage. )

[It is the hungry precursor to gathering up the thin fabric of her chemise, drawing it up in folds, his fingertips callous rough at her bared sides. When he pulls back from her mouth, it's for the sole purpose of stripping it from her.

It's treated with all the care his shirt didn't warrant - folded with a patience belied by every other part of him including how he sounds when he says,]

Lie back.

[He'd like to see what she looks like there while he removes her garters and stockings.]

( the process of undressing her necessitates letting go of him, which she does only reluctantly and with a head-tilted pause following his instruction that she obeys a beat later, her fingertips sliding down his skin and lifting away as she eases back onto his bed, sweeping her hair out from beneath her shoulders and drawing her knees up, together, a lazy sway. in the glow of candlelight, thin silver lines score into her hips, her abdomen, her breasts; smaller than they look as if they'll be, the way corsetry hoists them beneath her chin, but softer than the smoothness of her elsewhere would have suggested, too. a petite hour-glass, whippet-thin shadowed to suggest she might not always have been.

her toes curl in her stockings against the bedding beneath her, and she watches him less inscrutably than she has over his desk. curiosity, affection, and frank want mingled with the same coolly, calmly analytical air she seems unable to not apply to everything.

he is her sole focus. the halo of her pale hair around her is angelic; the teeth in her lip and the look in her eye, less so. )

[It's the look that's of the most immediate interest to him. The rest is-- a novelty. She is so pale and thin, delicate in a way that is unfamiliar (that should be incongruous to her flush mouth, but isn't). He could put her where he liked if he wanted to, and the impulse is unfamiliar enough that he doesn't know what to do with it but study the lines of her.

(And if there is a spot of his examination which briefly takes the shape of what she must look like with her Enchanter, then it's a blank space he purposefully doesn't consider long enough to bring the details into focus.)

Instead the chemise, folded and neat, is set aside. He sets a knee on the edge of the bed and works free her last ribbons. Slides his fingers under one stocking and peels it from her.]

I might scratch you, [his whiskered cheek rough against some bared strip of skin before he moves to her second stocking.]

( her foot lifts, obliging, as he rolls the stocking off the end of it; she exhales toward the ceiling at the scrape of beard on her skin, and it is different than it had felt against her mouth and her cheeks. intriguing, more than it's anything. she presents him with her other foot, the slight gap between her knees enough to catch the gleam of dampness in darker blonde curls.

beneath her thigh when she lifts her knee just so, there is an untidy row of four fading bruises where flint's own fingers might fit, were he to try. )

I suppose, ( with some arch, understated humor, ) there is only one way of knowing of a certainty.

( and she has frankly been thinking of it since she kissed him in the carriage. )

[The specificity of those bruises is-- a fact tucked elsewhere, like finding a note written in the margins of a book he's enjoying. He doesn't linger over them - he has his own study to do -, but there is something informative in them anyway. Right now it suggests some future angle to press her to. Later, he might find himself considering the hand that made her do it before him.

He pushes her knees open. There is something workmanlike in his hands and impatient about the press of his mouth when it reaches the soft inside of her thigh. His teeth find her there, a hard nip at sensitive skin to feel if she jumps, but there's no low huff of breath or teasing kiss to follow and no forgive me press of tongue to ease the sting. Instead, Flint simply settles there between her legs and devotes himself to her directly.]

( she could have and might have opened them for him—much as she had, or had suggested in milder form, upon his lap on the road down from hightown—but she enjoys the wait, and the briskness of his hands setting to it, and the sharp bite of his teeth that has the foot she was adjusting beside him suddenly a heel dug into his back and her hips rising, which is like making her jump. the angle of it opens her to him, her knee over his shoulder, and feels more like meeting him in kind than simply spreading her thighs and casting a wrist up to her forehead.

her hand finds the headboard behind her, instead, pulling the line of her taut and giving her something against which to brace. the contrast of his beard scraping against soft, wet flesh and the soft, wet heat out of his mouth is something she would find difficult to describe later—her vocabulary feels clumsy for it, and in bed she has a habit of directness.

directly, then, a hint of impatience that she has tamped down since that carriage ride: )

Put your fingers inside me.

( his wandering hands had been of great interest to her, at her garter and nestled at the top of her thigh. )

[Maybe next time, he will refuse her the first time she tells him - until she either asks or demands while he grins somewhere high against her thigh. But he can think of no reason not to follow an order tonight. The taste of her is so full on his tongue, and they are meant to be playing a game where he is hers.

So he sets one hand to feel the rise of her hip and applies himself at her direction, two fingers through all her wet heat before pushing relentlessly into her. His growl of satisfaction against her open cunt is a low, thick sound.]

( the push of his fingers is the curve of her back, the rise of her ribs as she breathes in deeply, blinking away momentary impulse to give that growl surrender. her toes curl, knees rising high either side of him and then falling open and not crowding his shoulders any longer, one foot churning bedding and the other still pressed against his skin, feeling muscle shift beneath her.

his beard prickles where the silk skin of her inner thighs meets the high curve of her backside and the obscene wetness of her renders his rough fingers a heady friction, different to the callused drag on her skin elsewhere. she is cataloging sensations, and straining in the midst of them, exhaling that deep breath she hadn't noticed holding explosively.

she feels delicate—fine-boned, breakable, malleable under stronger hands—but she does not move as if she is, no tremor of awareness, only her fine, ink-stained fingers curling around the back of his neck and pressing her nails in as if aggravated to find no hair she can pull. )

[He doesn't treat her like she is delicate, like she is her small waist and slim thighs and her golden hair in its lovely twisting curtain spread across the bed. Because if she had looked at him, his examination is felt - the sharp sound of her breath hanging in the air like something he could touch were his hands not occupied, the curving line of her body, and the set of her heel as encouraging as the dig of her fingernails -, and all of it seems sweet in his ready mouth as he sinks his fingers fully into her.

Slowly at first. Just to feel how her body opens to him while he hums against her. But then, with a last lathe of his tongue, he draws back to set his rough cheek (her slick in his beard) against her thigh and to shift his weight so he can begin to drive into her properly - so he can see how she takes his fingers, and raise his eyes to watch when he grows more rough with her.

If she wants his hands, she can have them. He can think of less pleasant ways to occupy them.]

( when he looks up to her, she does not look fragile. a sheen of sweat focuses her sharply in the light, an only slightly duller gleam than the shine of her wet on his beard; her fingers busy, too, the hand that is not cupped around the nape of his neck cupped instead sliding up and down the the side of her abdomen, beneath her breast and higher to roll between thumb and forefinger the nipple pebbled in the cooler air away from the heat of him between her thighs. restless, insistent touches in pursuit of the same thing he is driving her towards, tense either side of and all around him.

and she is watching him, too, eyes lidded but not given to forgetting where she is or with whom. that it is him, particularly, sprawled in his own bed between her legs and who will remember when he is holding a pen above some requisition of hers to be signed or not the way her cunt felt tightening around the same fingers. it seems fair when she has imagined them there, watching him sign his name and considering what it might be, to have the whole of his attention for a time.

she holds his eyes until she can't, her head tipping backwards suddenly and her breath coming in pants that heave with all the promise of the tightly laced bodices she taps her quill pen against, some afternoons, deep in thought. )

[He pushes her through it, the persistent work of his hand not quite it time to the jerk of her breathing and how she tightens around him, but leading it as his teeth briefly find her skin again to feel how she shudders under his mouth, and between his hands, and everywhere. It's only after the sharpest edge of that has been knocked free that he slows - pressing all the way into her and grinding absently (pointedly) with the heel of his hand where she is so wet. Next time, they keep saying as if it's some foregone conclusion and not just a phrase for preliminary negotiation, and all of this the pieces to bargain with.

(Will she have won something if next time is during what are ostensibly his office hours? Likely.)

Sliding his fingers free of her, Flint presses a warm kiss over the tender place he'd applied his teeth before working upright to kneel between the appealing splay of her legs. His hand occupied previously by the small of her back rises to scrub down over the bristle of beard, the other leaving damp finger prints at the outside of her thigh.

His breathing is thick. He can hear it.]

It occurs to me, [running his tongue behind his lip and against the roof of his mouth; setting his hand low on her abdomen, and regarding first the width of his hand there and then her habit of attention,] that you might have notes.

( by next time, very likely literal ones—albeit more obliquely written than those julius had stumbled across. the warm, languid look she regards him with now is a different thing entirely to the prim, pleasant and precise smiles she employs readily most days; a glimpse behind the curtain, at the sort of mind that takes notes, even now, even here. some self-satisfaction, and some straight-forward affection, buoyed by the fuzzy-around-the-edges feeling post-climax and enjoying the rebuilding anticipation of him knelt there.

the weight of his hands, the line of his shoulders. the shadow he casts, and how warm he feels between her legs. )

Are you in want, ( a lower, lazier voice than she has ever elsewhere used in his hearing, ) of a performance review, Commander Flint?

( if she uses his title like that anywhere else, they're in real trouble. she considers and discards several things that she might say, visibly, and instead: ) Tell me what you want.

( not that it isn't, in broad strokes, fucking obvious. )

[For what should be such an obvious answer, his subsequent study of her is blatant and fixed, thumb scuffing a slow methodical circle beneath her navel. It's genuine consideration in the face of impatience and the droning want humming under skin, the apparent picking up and putting down of compulsive responses even as a muscle in his thigh twitches against her in reply to the low sway of her voice.

(He's been told to say what he wants before, and has formed the habit of treating it as a real question, like a real thing.)]

I want you over me. [His hand sliding the length of her thigh, honing in compulsively on that arrangement of fingerprint bruises. The grin blooming crookedly at the corner of his mouth is as heated and firm as his fingers, not impulsive but hungry. He tugs her closer by his grip on her.] I want to see how you like to move, Madame.

( as much as she might have enjoyed the obvious answers—impatience given voice—she enjoys, too, this momentary slowing, drawn out like candle-wax sliding down over itself. (she might see that, were she to turn her head. she does not.) she means the question to have an answer, and the warm look becomes a smile as if he has—not cleverly passed some test, but perhaps demonstrated something she might have looked for without necessarily expecting.

muscle memory runs a shiver through her where his fingers slide and press, and she lets her knee rise a little in his hand before she pushes up onto her elbows, and then onto her knees, swinging her feet beneath her and rising sinuous into his space in a way that she would struggle to do anywhere else. )

Then,

( with a push—a firm one, not a tease, and she presumes under the circumstances he isn't going to thwart her even if he could—to his shoulder, her knee swinging over his thigh and the movement graceful the way something practised is, )

let me show you.

( sweat curls her hair around her face, and the rest of it tumbles down her back above him, a mess; her knees find the bedding either side of him and she flattens her hand on his stomach, considering her new vantage point with her head tilted, a mirror of the way he had studied her moments before. that hand slides lower, wrapping around his cock—the lazy stroke of her fingers in the process less purposeful than it is hello, again, I was beginning to miss you friendly—and holding him in place to guide herself down, her feet hooked backwards over his calves both to brace herself and to hold him beneath her where she likes him.

it is a slow, wet slide and then a more experimental series of incremental shifts as she finds the angle that she wants, just so. there is a moment with her hand in her hair and his cock in her cunt and some muffled sound hissing out through her teeth that it doesn't seem so terribly outlandish someone might have looked at her and thought she might look well upon a throne. )

[The draw of his breathing comes thick beneath her, his hands having immediately found their way to settle at her hip and thigh. Not that he needs the additional points of contact to feel the way she settles around him - the clutching little cant of her frame as she rearranges by degrees. She is low, liquid heat, the glow of the rift shard casting a strange shifting light in the wild patterns of her golden hair.

And if he was sturdy before, Flint is heavy now under her: a shifting plane of weight in the slow irregular adjustment of his hip and how it travels the length of him, the twist of his heel in the bed's linens bucking his calf against her foot. Not the kind of man to be swayed by the tip of a head, no. But maybe the kind who can't help himself when it comes to the studied way she takes him. There is something in all her sure intention that draws eye even when it's the heat and press of her body that should be the thing winding him into her by degrees. It's her all sharp and aware that has him twitching into her stark heat and prompts the slide of his hand - touching first where they meet, then the rough pad of his thumb to her clit.

She has his attention, drawn in slow circles.]

( her inhale when his thumb presses is loud in a quiet room, the lazy sway of her above him accommodating first for the shift of his hip and then the press of his thumb and her toes hooked beneath his legs brace her to what seems at first no particular end. she takes her time to acquaint herself with the way that he feels inside and beneath her—catalogs every incremental shift of his body like tectonic plates. she knows to be messy, risky want what feels in the moment so deliberate as to be the only logical outcome.

she decides not to regret it, later, in the same moment that she rises up and rocks back down, rough and without warning and with her hand splayed over his to keep his thumb where she wants it in the process. )

[He doesn't have any clear expectation; he hasn't for hours, but certainly not for this - how she rises and falls, the set of her hand, the particular rhythm she sets. So it's not surprising how she takes him - the forceful, specific line of her body -, but it does light some satisfied spark, striking against that low impulse he'd felt at the first sight of her on her back: the urge to drag her to him by a hand at her slim waist, to fuck roughly into her and feel how she gives. Maybe the low sound he makes says something close to that effect, or maybe his thumb stroking under the brace of her hand or the dig of his fingers at her thigh do. With the first driving stroke of her, he goes all narrow and dark. Focus keen like a sharp point.

Pressing up to meet her is a question of degrees. But his hands on her are very sure, encouraging the pace.]

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