you're too young & eager to love

More writing/fiddling with the newbies!

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He was only one of hundreds in the security files. Harrow saw him as another study experiment, though he had taken the precaution to mark his file with the yellow alert symbol signifying the possibility of a threat. A name (Chason Waters), age (27), and breed (Crocuta crocuta) with an impressive amount of statistics already listed. Most new captives take weeks to be tested so thoroughly, but the nature of his arrest and the volatile class of his species made it necessary to analyze his data fully upon arrival.
Ita felt a pang of sympathy. The tests are grueling, humiliating, and painful. She looked at the file on the computer, pausing occasionally to listen for the sounds of approaching footsteps or the rustle of keys unlocking a door, and tried to calm the hurried excitement of panic low in her stomach. But she continued, scrolling with forced patience through the record. Dark-haired, six foot two, and smiling in his picture. Captives don’t often smile in the pictures. They stare straight forward, and sometimes all the vulnerability is revealed there, the fear. But he was smiling, or at least there was some amusement, some cleverness there.
Thick black hair, falling down on the forehead, and his eyes bright with threats. He wore a shirt that had been ripped during processing, and there were angry marks on his neck as though something had nearly clawed open his throat. His arms were folded rather than by his sides. In the three other pictures, he stood with his arms lowered but there was the same faint amusement, though he’d tried to conceal it a little. Maybe somebody had told him not to smile.
Maybe he had laughed afterward.

-

His hands were rough, calloused, and he hurt her when he held her by the inside of her arm. He moved quickly, so quick that even Ita’s long legs had trouble keeping up. She felt awkward, somehow, even though she knew the corridors and the hallways better than he did. “Come on.” He growled, eager and low, and she tripped over the heavy layers of her clothing.
He did not leave her. He put his arm around her and lifted her easily to her feet. He thought she was coming apart, breaking down, unsure of whether or not leaving was the best option. She was pampered and pleasured and too much of what Chason considered a traitor. (Rich little thing, wasn’t she? Fed proper and exempt from tests and loved for her beauty.) But he needed her secrets and her knowledge, so when she turned towards him in the dark he felt himself kiss her hair.

-

He built fires for warmth in the desert. It was for her comfort rather than his. He was unusually warm, and she remembered how her arms had felt almost burnt after he had held her in the facility, pulling and urging her forward.
Ita wrapped herself in protective scarves, and Chason listened to the night intently. He spent so much time watching the horizon that she was, suddenly, surprised to see him looking at her from across the fire. Like he never saw a female creature before in his life. He didn’t look dangerous or unmanageable, but he looked unpredictable – as he had all along.
She could feel the way he removed his clothes, the hurried, close to ripping movements. She thought she could sense his change, the shift in the air when he relented to the beast, and Ita heard his breath in the darkness. She saw the reflection of the fire from his canine eyes before he slipped into the barren terrain.
That was for her comfort too.

-


They travelled mostly at night. Chason was searching for a town safe enough to deposit her at so he can continue alone. He could travel quicker without her, but he promised to return. He did not promise much, so she took his words with a heavy seriousness.
He was not as quiet as she would have thought him to be. He was quick to anger and impatient, but he spoke freely in a voice permanently coated in dust – the type of growling tones that sent shivers up her elegant spine.
He told her of his childhood and so he told her of Austin.
“You love her.”
Chason laughed, a snickering, goading type of noise. “No.”
“But you … you have mated with her, haven’t you? You speak as though you are devoted to her.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, digging his fingers into the tight skin. All he could taste was sand and ruin. He was not sure if the desert or the cages made him more animalistic. “There are many types of devotion.”

She slept huddled close to the dying embers of the fire. Even bundled in her layers she felt the cold fiercely. Chason heard her noises in the dark, the soft, throaty gasps as she shivered. He let her feel the loneliness of the cold for three nights before he started to sleep beside her.
His arms were heavy and felt like binds, and he pulled Ita to him easily. It was a demanding gesture; he was used to taking. His hands did not wander, but he kept his mouth to the back of her neck as though he would pin her to the sand and keep her from straying.
Chason was surprised by her stillness and the way her mouth softened.