you're too young & eager to love

My wifey-pants wanted this scene. Her wish is my command!

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On hot nights, Augusta thinks he has worn off on her in ways she cannot fully express.

She tends to dream in languages that she can articulate and concepts that she can explain: envy, jealousy, loathing, desire.

Radomir, she knows, is always hungry, though not always for the flesh implied by his voracity. Sometimes he is pacified if she allows him to run, endless, through the hottest slopes of sand. Sometimes what he really wants is a fight, terrible and deafening, until his muscles scream with overexertion and his head is light. Sometimes his hunger is for the prey, the hot coppery stink of blood, and warm, wet meat, slippery and almost obscene in its lushness. It seems to Augusta that when he wants so fiercely, her dreams become shades of hunger and appetite, all primal and beyond verbalization.

On these nights, she’ll wake, tangled in her sheets, heat burning through her as if she’s running a fever, skin on silk, heartbeat an urgent thrum, and so wet between her thighs that it hurts. This doesn’t happen often – she has built herself so high, beyond such base urges – but the nights it does remind her of her own humanity.

Radomir is always awake before her. It is the twist of her legs beneath the sheets or whatever half-sounds she makes that alert him, first, to consciousness. Then it is the smell. The sweat and slick of her that makes his pupils dilate and his nostrils flare like a shark catching the scent of blood. Sometimes, if she allows it, he falls asleep beside her, his large body crowding the bed, blood naturally burning ten degrees higher, his breath hot and humid against her collarbone. Most times, he sleeps as a soldier would, prone against the cool floor, or forces himself into a chair, tree-trunk legs stretched wide, calloused hands loose against the upholstery. In areas he trusts the least, he paces the perimeter of the room while she sleeps, a hulking feline whose yellow eyes flare in the darkness, bright with equal parts ferocity and madness.

This night, Augusta can feel his gaze, and she pushes the sheets away from her legs slowly as she sits up. Her eyes adjust, thick with fever-lust, until she can see the outline of his face – the full mouth, the muscled slope of his shoulders, the hard line of his neck. “Come here,” she says, and she isn’t smiling, but she holds out her hand like someone gentling a spooked animal. Though their hands do not touch, he follows. The bed dips beneath his weight, and he is distracted by the close, unguarded proximity of her, so when she touches his face, he flinches back, eyes wide.

She strokes under his jaw with one fingertip. She traces down his neck, and he bares his throat, indulgent, trusting. But he cannot meet her gaze fully.

Now that he has it, her undivided attention is a heavy weight to bear.

Augusta catches her nightshirt by the collar at the back of her neck and tugs it up, over her head. Underneath, her skin is bare and sleep-warm, sheened faintly with sweat. Naked, she is no less authoritative, but he traces across her jaw with his rough fingers as if she is softer than water and infinitely more precious. Her mouth is a solid line, but she does not rebuke him for unwarranted touch – not this time. Instead, she crawls into the great sphere that is his body, the mountain of his chest and torso until her legs have slipped on either side of one of his powerful thighs and her hands are holding his arms.

Rad traces the curve of her breasts then, cupping their weight in his hands; she arches her back, pushing forward, and he can feel his calluses catching on her skin, jagged and dirty. She pushes her hips down, against his leg, rocking herself slowly against him until he can feel her wetness there and he nearly chokes, because he’s — hard, unexpectedly, though it shouldn’t be, though it’s the most natural thing in the world, right now, for him to jerk up to meet her — sensitive, and overwhelmed by the smell of her, filling the room like the roar of the desert, and he can’t — he can’t think—

Those are her nails scraping across his short-shorn hair, and he loses himself in her, in the storm of her pulse and her scent, and shakes apart, holding her, knowing he could somehow get closer if she would but allow it.

This is how he comes, with her body only pressed close, the feel of her laughter washing across his neck, her blunt teeth sharp against his ear.

Augusta feels the shudder rock his body, like thunder, and she is oddly satiated by it.

Unduly spent, he finds her gaze with all the vulnerability he used to possess, years ago, when he was muzzled and chained. His deference weakens her resolve. “Breathe,” she says, not unkindly, and catches his bottom lip between her teeth.