Private Tales Many Forms of Thirst

[Kailyn]

And her heart fluttered in her chest.

She felt that swell of magic as he drew close, the kind she felt whenever she was near another with the kiss of the god's power. A spark that could burn the entire world as their lips met.

Free hand came up, palm spreading along the ashen skin of his cheek.

There was no hurry to her kiss. It was gentle and quiet, like her spirit. A soft breeze in the night that lingered in its pleasantness.

 

[Gerra]

He closed his eyes, shutting out all else but the taste of her lips and the smell of her hair as he ran his fingers through her long, caramel locks. The warmth of her delicate fingers on his cheek. The soft inhalation as she dared to breathe when their lips broke apart.

Gently, he trailed kisses across her cheek and down her neck, reveling in the scent of her skin and the way she shivered beneath his touch.

"What can I say to make you stay?" his hot breath whispered into her ear.

 

[Kailyn]

She caught wisps of smokiness in his kiss. Skin warming wherever he touched. The advantage of being part fire-giant. Eyes she hadn't realized she closed opened like a honeyed sunrise.

Fingertips lifted to brush into his hair, teasing along the fiery orange and red edges. She cradled his massive face between her palms. His skin obsidian and rock.

"I think I want what you can't give," voice was sad. "I'd want all of you, Gerra. I'd want you to myself to see what happens. But I realize that isn't the atmosphere of the Empire. And I realize that isn't who you are." She leaned in, letting her lips press gently along his temple. Then his cheek and then softly against his lips.

 

[Gerra]

The half-giant sat up and took her hands in each of his. He could not understand how she had survived years of captivity and retained so much innocence. So much hope. He shook his head as he looked at her, just the barest of nos.

"It could be," he said, voice a fathomless whisper. "If I found someone worthy. If I found someone who complimented my soul. Someone who knew me."

His hands ran up her arms, over her shoulders, to trail down the hollow of her spine as he pulled her into his lap.

"Could you be her?"

Bending down, he kissed the side of her neck again, tongue tracing the line of her tendon. Gerra struggled to contain his desire for her, but he was so very poor at such self-control. His chest rose and fell as he pulled her against him, wanting more. The smell of her hair. The taste of her skin. It left him ravenous.

 

[Kailyn]

Sun-dappled ribbons of caramel fluttered across her skin as his lips carved a path along her neck. She seemed to move like clay in his hands. A surprised, short laugh left her lips as she rested against the half fire-giant. Palms moved slowly across his chest and circled around his sides. Fingers tracing tattoos and finding the beat of his heart.

"Gerra, I would not prove my worthiness to any man because I already know it," a gentle but firm chide against him. He would feel the pulse of her own heart along her neck. The vibration of her vocal chords.

"Would you wait for me? If I did business across the Empire, would you promise to wait for me?"

 

[Gerra]

He stopped to look deeply into her eyes, his gaze intense and smoldering like the glowing embers of a wood fire.

"Yes," he rasped.

A single word that meant everything.

Then his lips crashed against hers once again and he drew her close, fingers curling into the fabric of her dress along her back. Wishing for more. Wishing she wanted more. The scent of her skin was intoxicating - her lips a poison that left him dizzy.

A hand quested down her side to lay on a bare thigh, fingers dancing at the hem of her dress before sliding slowly under and upward with a firm grip that lightly massaged the muscles beneath their grasp.

 

[Kailyn]

This kiss was far different than their first in the garden. Different than their first that night. It was like being pulled into the warm, bubbling waters of a hot spring - on fire. A gasp against his lips as his hand slipped beneath her dress.

But her eyes, half-hooded found his own again. A much lighter reflection of his own fire in them, a setting sun. Kailyn was used to dealing with men. Escaping situations that she didn't want to be in. She knew with one word, she could still Gerra.

An Emperor of an Empire.

But she always saw the good in people. And perhaps that would be a fatal character flaw because when he said he would, she believed him. Despite the rumors around court.

She broke the kiss.

"Okay," she whispered against the corner of his mouth, a timid smile.

That didn't mean she wasn't nervous.

Hands along his side gathered the fabric of his shirt in her painter's fingers as she began to raise it above his head. A small shift on his lap.

 

[Gerra]

"Okay."

Admission...

The shirt slid over his head, exposing a broad expanse of rippling muscle, dark and smooth as volcanic ash. Tattoos in an ancient and forgotten runic script wound their way up his neck in a black ink darker even than his skin.

That she wanted more...

His own calloused fingers whispered across her hips and then along her naked sides, drawing the hem of her dress up with them and pulling it off her gently, slowly. Because no matter how much she refused to admit it, he still saw her as being just as delicate as that glass rose.

Permission...

But that knowledge warred against his desire for her, to taste every inch of her flesh beneath his lips. To feel those legs coiled around him. To interlace her paint-stained fingers with his own. To feel her warmth against him, with nothing in between them. This unsated desire bubbled up within him, a caldera too long kept beneath the surface, pressure rising to a fevered pitch.

To devour her....

His lips crushed against hers in a mad, breathless exchange before trailing down to the soft lines of her neck. Teeth scraped against her skin.

 

[Kailyn]

Despite the cold air flowing freely from the open windows, Gerra provided more than enough warmth. She was enveloped within his fire, her pale skin warming at his touch, responding wherever his lips and fingers traveled. Her skin was smooth and soft, and nearly without blemish - surprisingly so for an ex-slave. She had a scar running down the front of her right knee from a fall on the rocks at Cerak At'Thul. And a small star-shaped mark along the outside curve of the left side of her chest.

And she devoured him with her eyes.

Gentle touches of her fingers along his skin. Tracing the language she didn't know. The canvas of his body.

Head lowered and her lips kissed along his shoulders. He tasted like his tongue. A hint of smokiness and spice. He'd find touches of vanilla, strawberry, and honey on her own flesh.

Fingers of one hand fell to the waste line of his pants as if she could continue to trace those markings on his skin.

"Can we move to the bed?" A whisper against his ear.

 

[Gerra]

For answer, Gerra seized her by the thigh and back and stood up easily, her weight merely a feather to him. His lips brushed the hollow of her throat and lower as he carried her over to the bed and with a deep-throated chuckle tossed her onto its pillowy surface.

Large fingers whispered across her skin, pausing to outline the mark beside her breast, then moving to explore the contours of her breasts, the taut, soft skin of her belly, and then skimming those long, lithe legs, kissed by the desert sun.

The bed groaned as he lay his immense frame alongside her, tracing aimless shapes in the skin of her thighs and all the way down to the tattoo on her ankle.

"You're so beautiful," he murmured. He hovered over the sparrow marked in black ink onto her skin, curious, then pressed his lips against it. Slowly, he trailed kisses up along her calf, then the inside of her warm thigh, raising her leg over one of his shoulders to gain better access. His kisses trailed deeper, and slower, lingering as they finally reached the crux of her legs.

 

[Kailyn]

"He-ey," she laughed, an airy sound like a feather floating through the wind as she hung onto his shoulder and was easily carried - and thrown - onto the massive bed. A tumble of pillows and silken sheets and bare skin with feathered caramel hair. Before she even had a chance to bounce he was there.

His touch was warm but still made her shiver.

What was he...

Oh. OH. Head tipped back as she looked at the ceiling above the bed. Hanging fabric. Fingers curled tightly into sheets. A gasp left her throat and then another. Sounds that only Gerra would be able to draw from Kailyn's lips.

Heartbeat quickened, her foot traced a bath along his sides and massaged against his rear.

Head lifted as the rhythm of his kisses slowed.

"Are you going to leave me the only one...," she had to catch her breath. "naked here all night?" Honeyed ambers drove into his own.

 

[Gerra]

The way her heel carved a path down the muscles of his back made Gerra shudder with anticipation. Her moans of pleasure only worsened his hungering need for the touch of her skin, the feel of their bodies intertwined. At her words, he sat up and quickly doffed his pants with slow, lazy, taunting motions until nothing remained.

Seizing her around the waist, he rolled suddenly so that he lay on his back and she atop him. The bed groaned with protest, he with want.

He had eyes only for the shape of her figure, lithe, but not with the whipcord frame of a fighter. Her stomach was soft and toned from travel, not taut. Her legs slender and long, but supple to the touch. The movements of her face held only expressions of kindness, joy, and horror. They did not know the rage that lurked within his own heart. He reached up a hand, tracing fingers down her cheek, gliding down her neck and then across her body as she sat astride him.

"Well..." he retorted, "Is this what Gaheris has been teaching you?"

 

[Kailyn]

Amber eyes narrowed down on the half-fire giant. Her gaze finally lifting to his eyes after studying the contours of his body. The patterns of his markings. The muscles beneath his ashen skin. He was warm beneath her and made her skin flush.

"I don't know if you want my truthful response to that question." A coy smile from the artist and ex-slave. Hands spread along his torso and traced along his skin. Fingers digging slightly in for purchase. Taking his hands in hers, she drew them around her back as she went to capture his mouth with her own lips and kissed him deeply. Legs wrapped around him.

Eventually, her tried body rested alongside the giant, sprawled half across his chest. Her heart began to still to something more akin to normal. Quietly, she slipped free from his grasp and the bed and went to the washroom.

 

[Gerra]

Gerra lay on the bed, eyes fluttering closed after a moment, until he caught his breath and could lay in languorous repose, his body feeling like liquid, like the way molten lava flowed.

He did not get dressed. The air of the stone keep felt cool on his skin, swiftly drying sweat. No doubt the night outside was cold indeed. Hot days and frigid nights on the savanna.

Eventually, he quirked an eye open when Kailyn had not returned from the washroom. She was such a fragile creature. Not physically - though all humans were compared to him. But her mind carried fault lines that he felt he had to tread with care. There was much light and joy and goodness in her heart. But also a darkness born of suffering.

"Kailyn?" He rumbled

 

[Kailyn]

She splashed jasmine scented water on her face. It was cool and refreshing. It felt like her heart still beat wildly in her chest. Perhaps only now beginning to slow. Deep down, a part of her felt as if Gerra would be her undoing.

And that scared her.

Perhaps it was already too late.

Amber eyes that seemed alight with a glow stared back at her from the mirror in the washroom. Fingers ran through tangled hair, trying to smooth out what had been snarled, held and bunched. Gerra's rumble of her name upon his tongue sent a tickling through her core. And as much as she'd felt overheated within his grasp, she suddenly felt too cold being away from it.

Bare feet padded across the different rugs strewn over the floor of the room as she re-emerged. Pale skin nude and slightly flushed. "Gerra," she breathed, hips swaying with her steps as she slipped into the bed next to the giant. Propping herself up on one elbow, one of her hands reached out, fingertips lightly tracing his marks.

"Do you ever wish you could just run away? Where no one knew who you were? Or expected or demanded anything from you?"