another night (cyrah and clem)

[Clement Reijnder]

What he got in response to all of that was a careful amount of backing up and blank stare. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t snort or roll his eyes. There was no scoffing, nor was there seeming to be any shock in his expression. He peered at her calmly, having lived through much stronger tempests coming from her in former years. He actually bent down so they could be nose-to-nose. His eyes searched her face. His mouth was nearly on hers. “Thank you for bringing that home,” he said quietly, staring at her still. Without the alcohol dulling it, his gaze was sharp as a blade and equally as dangerous. “You did a very good job. But you’re right. We’re business partners. So you shouldn’t care about why I’m sulking as you put it. You don’t give a damn that I’m brooding. Go ahead, Cyrah. Be predictable. Be yourself. Keep yourself safe. That's what I expect from you.”

[Cyrah]

She went still went he stooped, leaning down to her. Shoulders hiked defensively high, but she didn't move while he spoke, and her eyes stayed on his. Just like the night that he'd bitten her, surprise replaced the anger and the confusion. Then, perhaps surprising them both, she backed up and smacked him hard across the face. This reaction was purely feminine, her human side, not the vicious scavenger that ruled her most of the time. The jackal would've torn his throat out, would have gnawed his bones to satisfy the helpless feeling in her heart. But the girl just slapped him, because she wasn't sure what else to do, and he was too close; he was getting too close, and learning how to prod her feelings in certain directions. She knew that's what he was doing -- learning her, and sober that meant that he would start manipulating her with purpose, instead of just the mean-spirited way he attacked her when he was drunk. "I want you leave," she said firmly, glaring at him. On any other night he would've left, anyway, so she was only hastening the process, as far as she was concerned.

[Clement Reijnder]

His head jerked so quickly and violently to the side that there very well have been a popping sound underneath the smack of skin against skin. He didn’t move to rub his face, though it burnt worse than putting his hand into a fire. He moved his jaw to make sure it was still there. His eyes narrowed slightly as he pushed off from the wall he’d been backed again. They locked on her all too clearly, used to cut her down without a word. Instead of going towards the door, though, he moved in to grab her wrists. Then he leaned in to kiss her. It wasn’t the rough bite he’d given her before. This was something different. He kissed her like he had a death wish.

[Cyrah]

A sound escaped her throat as his mouth crashed into hers, some half-sigh, half-inhale caught between surprise and anger, but the breath it died on found her eyes slamming shut. She twisted her wrists, trying to wrench them out of his hands, even as her lips parted against his, and her tongue darted out to taste him, deepening the kiss instead of ripping apart from him. When she managed to jerk one hand free of his grasp, she reached up and fisted a handful of his hair, rocking up onto her tiptoes to simultaneously push and pull him towards the bed without breaking the kiss. Cyrah was a fighter, and she would not be dominated by this. If he wanted to fight her this way, instead, then she wouldn't back down. She'd simply rip him to pieces a different way; there was no gentleness in this, only an animalistic passion formed from fury and fear, where there should have been some kind of release, some moment of acknowledged desire. But she wouldn't acknowledge it. She'd hide behind the animal inside her instead. She'd use him, and let him use her, and they would be as they always were, only he'd finally realize for sure that she wasn't a little girl anymore.

[Clement Reijnder]

A bumbling, drunk Clement would have stopped all too quickly when she kissed him back. He would have been confused. He would have probably lost his way completely. But this Clement, the monster that seemed hell-bent on causing her to lose her balance, didn’t drop a beat, despite his mind all but screaming at him to stop. To wait. To not do what he was about to do, because surely it was going to muck up business more than anything else could. After all, he was rather sure she hated him. Not the immature type of emotion that came through when a person actually cared so much about you that they pushed you away. No, she hated him - Everything about him. And he… Well, he’d never done a good job at convincing anyone that the feeling was mutual. Fortunately no one paid much attention. The growl he gave when his hair was pulled was perhaps one thing that gave away that this was still Clement she was dealing with. The sound was pure frustration and aggression, the smallest dash of anguish mixed into it. He dipped at the knees, letting go of her wrist so he could grab at the back of her knee, attempting to pull her off of balance. He shifted on the balls of his feet until he could drag her towards the bed. It was done with a grace rather unimaginable in the man, learned more on the ballroom floors of manor homes than in the dregs of society he made his sanctuary. At any moment she was going to pull away and run. At any given second she was going to stab him in the gut or rip his neck out. Until she did so, however, he was going to do as he pleased.

[Cyrah]

She breathed almost a yelp against his lips when his hand caught her at the back of the knee, and she stumbled; her fingers loosed his hair but only so that she could fumble, grabbing blindly, and catch his shoulder as he shuffled her backwards. It was happening very fast; she was just a whirl of senses and instincts, the thrum of want like the pluck of a sitar string, reverberating through her. When she spilled backwards across the mattress, her first instinct was to draw her knees up, to catch him by the hips between her legs, but even as she yielded to him, an even deeper desire rolled in. To make him happy. She wanted to please him. She wanted to-- With a kick at the air and a silent flail, she slammed her hand into his chest and pushed him backward. Not hard enough to hurt him, only barely strong enough to give him pause, just enough to be able to pull her mouth from his and turn her face away from him. With her elbows, she pushed herself from backwards-sprawl to upright seat, her face still close to his. Her breath came in harsh, unfulfilling gulps. She clenched her eyes tightly shut for a second, and then opened them again and looked up at him. Something desperate shimmered through her eyes; a heartbroken plea for him to hurt her. She needed to be hurt in order to be safe from him. “If we do this, I will leave you for a year,” she murmured, her voice broken by desire, though the silvery shine of her eyes begged him to smack her, to beat her, to make her run away. Better for them both. Either way she would leave him, but one avenue lay to a longer separation than the other.

[Clement Reijnder]

He sucked in his breath so harshly that it sounded like a startled viper hissing. Unlike the animal, though, Clement did not strike out. He froze. Something in him had changed. He wasn’t an animal anymore. Instead he slumped forward until his forehead was against hers and his eyes were closed, safe from her. He lingered for a moment near her, taking in her scent. Trying to memorize the feeling of exactly what her skin felt like against his – Yielding for once instead of pushing him away. He would take this information and tuck it away. Like some seemingly harmless plant, he would extract poison from it. He would keep it close to him so he’d not allow himself to be put into this position again. He wouldn’t allow himself to lose control ever, ever again. Not like this. “I can’t,” he whispered to her silent plea. He couldn’t hurt her. What was wrong with him? “I can’t.” His hand caught her leg. As he pulled away from her, his fingers barely whispered up the inside of her thigh slowly. He shocked himself that he was even capable of such a gentle touch. He kept that calm exterior, though, as he stepped back, turning away from her. He’d rather she’d just stabbed him. It would have been less pained. While it was assumed he wanted it, the last thing he wanted was to share that sort of bond to the woman – Most likely for the very same reasons she didn’t want it. Yet there was that bitter taste in the back of his throat as the cold realization hit him that he was, in fact, bonded to her in a way that perhaps she couldn’t even understand. He hated himself for it. “I’ll leave,” he said coolly, clearing his throat. He moved across the room to pull his shirt from the back of the chair. It was jerked over his head, his arms shoved through it as he rushed to get out of there as quickly as possible. “It’s my turn.” He didn’t think he could stand being there. He couldn’t handle smelling her hair in the bed they shared by didn’t really. He couldn’t pass by the ledgers of her practiced scrawl that was finally looking like an adult’s instead of a child’s. He couldn’t. He just couldn’t. There was that self-hatred there again. Bending down, he pulled his boots on roughly. He wished he was able to shift like she was. The ritual of putting clothes on seemed painfully slow compared to simply growing fur and running away. He finally gave up on getting the left shoe on. He picked it up and started towards the door with it in hand. Anything to get out of there.

[Cyrah]

She wanted to pin his hand to her thigh before he could walk away, but didn't, though a tremor tore through her body even as his fingertips skated her skin. Her fingers had curled into the blanket tossed across the bed, and she stiffened and watched him when he walked away from her. Part of her wanted to scramble after him, to wrap her arms about his legs and beg him to stay, to have her, to be her master. The other part wanted to smash his head into their little table until the surface of the wood cracked, and his face became unrecognizable. She pushed the hem of her dress as far down over her thighs as she could, pale eyes locked on him almost hungrily, as she tried to decide what to do. If she could even do anything. As he stumbled about getting dressed. It's my turn. She'd been so careful to push him to that point just often enough to keep from truly forming a bond with him. She'd driven him to hurt her so that she had anger and fear to hold onto; she'd run away from him to put time and distance between them. Any time she felt that all-too-familiar ache, the need to be loved and to love and to serve, to protect him, she hurt him just to remind herself that he was weak, and that he'd just hurt her back, and then she'd flee. Sure it was his turn. She'd spun the wheel herself. “Don't come back,” she ground out. “I swear if you come back here this season, I'll kill you myself.” He could afford to find somewhere else for that long. He didn't have to come here, to come back to her, he could stay away that long. Slip her contracts under the door or something. Keep to business like they agreed.

[Clement Reijnder]

The rest of the season? Try the rest of the year. The gutters were a thousand times more inviting than the place he was currently in. He turned, though, to look at her like she couldn’t be serious. Like she’d lost her petching mind. “Why would I even bother to come back at all?” He didn’t take his eyes off of her as he paused long enough to put his other boot on. Anything to make him look more in control of the situation than he really was. Which he wasn’t at all. “You could easily find someone else, couldn’t you? Someone to do a better job than me?” The question hung there… It begged her to admit that she needed him in some manner. Any manner at all.

[Cyrah]

Her expression went blank. Eyes empty, soulless windows. Maybe she should have told him that she just...wanted...him to come back. That he did for her what some other person could do, sure, but that she wanted him to be the one to do it. They just needed enough time and space to keep themselves from killing each other, or loving each other. But she couldn't even give him that. “I could find someone else,” she agreed, tipping her chin low in what should have been a nod, but looked instead like acquiescence. She couldn't give him a reason to come back. So maybe he'd just stay gone, and the ache that twisted her gut at that idea would fade, simply fade away, given enough time. Just when it seemed as though that would be all she said before he left, when the silence stretched between them in a fair approximation of the distance they pushed between each other, she shifted again. Straightening a little, and rising completely from the bed. “But everyone knows that you're my proxy.” Everyone knew to go to him to find Anubis, and she couldn't undo that, not quickly anyway. It would take time. Unless he just disappeared from Ahnatep entirely.