[The first time he'd locked eyes with Matthew de Clermont, he'd seen his own demise in towering muscle and ethereal paleness capped in dark hair, blue eyes as intense as ice filming over winter seas, freezing the very blood in his veins with their glacial lack of humanity. A prince among predators, barely contained in his human skin.
It had taken the span of one slow smile to understand on a primal level his life was a gift Matthew would be giving him every second of every day after.
And how he had loved him for it. Sensual fatality in someone so beautiful and terrible had claimed his heart and his breath, and hadn't given either back.
She brings him back to that moment in an instant. The memory douses him. He relives it all down to every goosebump in the span of a second, enough time to stand struck and think god, she reminds him a bit where that line between beastliness and grace divides and where it overlaps. Enough time for his heart to flutter with a nostalgic kind of reverence before it remembers the break, and better times before the well of Matthew's mercy ran dry. Before she speaks and he catches his breath behind his teeth.]
True enough, lady. [And he's the most remarkable person I'll ever know.] Far be it for me to think I can avoid the bite, whatever the case.
[His mouth is dry from the sea voyage and the walk, and now the unparalleled sight of a lifetime; it adds a sandpapery rasp to a rough and breathy response.
She's cold, too, this one--but more in the way of fire and marble than ice and rage. A living creature, her crimson lips and sharp femininity so like Louisa's, but flushed from within by power that nudges against him, wanting to be known and witnessed. His rapt gaze traverses from point to point, tracing the massive wings that occupy the corridor. Drinking her in.]
๐๐๐
It had taken the span of one slow smile to understand on a primal level his life was a gift Matthew would be giving him every second of every day after.
And how he had loved him for it. Sensual fatality in someone so beautiful and terrible had claimed his heart and his breath, and hadn't given either back.
She brings him back to that moment in an instant. The memory douses him. He relives it all down to every goosebump in the span of a second, enough time to stand struck and think god, she reminds him a bit where that line between beastliness and grace divides and where it overlaps. Enough time for his heart to flutter with a nostalgic kind of reverence before it remembers the break, and better times before the well of Matthew's mercy ran dry. Before she speaks and he catches his breath behind his teeth.]
True enough, lady. [And he's the most remarkable person I'll ever know.] Far be it for me to think I can avoid the bite, whatever the case.
[His mouth is dry from the sea voyage and the walk, and now the unparalleled sight of a lifetime; it adds a sandpapery rasp to a rough and breathy response.
She's cold, too, this one--but more in the way of fire and marble than ice and rage. A living creature, her crimson lips and sharp femininity so like Louisa's, but flushed from within by power that nudges against him, wanting to be known and witnessed. His rapt gaze traverses from point to point, tracing the massive wings that occupy the corridor. Drinking her in.]
Marvellous.