Fic: Right of Claim 15/19

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My apologies if I'm mucking anything up, but by my calender, the 31st it is.

Wordcount: 6,431
Warnings, etc: See part 1.

Chapter 14 – Dominance (Communication and Understanding)

“Don’t stare at the setting sun
I say youth is wasted on the young”
-Pet Shop Boys – Gin and Jag

London. He quite liked London. And he sodding loved the freedom of the weekend that stretched before him, and the cash that it had given him. He wasn’t sure what it was that he’d done to change its mind, but he wasn’t going to look the gift horse that he’d been given in the mouth.

It had said that it had a couple of things to see to. He’d been expecting it to take him with it, keep an eye on him as it usually did. After all, it hadn’t trusted him to his own devices ever since those four days where he’d gone behind its back and proved that it couldn’t.

But instead it had left him in the middle of London, with cash in his hand and strict instructions for where to meet it in two days’ time, saying that it would travel faster on its own, and to enjoy his break, because it would be the only one that he would be having for a while.

He knew that there would have been more to it than merely travel speed, but he wasn’t about to question it, for fear of it changing its mind.

He was seeing the city through a different set of eyes than he’d had when he last came here. He was jaded, rougher around the edges, and he knew that he could take more or less anything that it may have cared to throw in his direction.

The first order of business had been to find a place to stay, and then he headed out into a city that never seemed to rest, watching with a half-amused manner as people crossed the street to avoid him, or stepped deftly out of his way. He never had to dodge collusion or company, something that he supposed he had Ethan to thank for.

He was beginning to wonder what he should do with his freedom, when he heard the pulsing beat of music coming from inside the club. He’d heard scratchy blues voices, and country style guitar outside a few of the bars, but this was the first of that drew him in. Thinking about the cash he had in hand, he wondered if there might be enough to buy a guitar.

He’d taken lessons from when he was twelve, through to the week before he’d run, his father’s way of trying to reconcile him with his destiny, and it had been something that he’d really enjoyed. He wondered how rusty he would be these days.

The club was dark, lights were pulsing, and the cover charge had been fifteen quid. But the band up on the stage seemed determined to make it worth every cent.

Smiling to himself he sipped at the drink he’d brought, and settled in to watch the rest of the show.

These places were all the same really. Smoke and sweat and music that you couldn’t hear your own thoughts through, a hive of heat and humans and shadows that would attract almost anything that was looking for an easy target.

He quietly earmarked four vampires, spread out through the crowd, set aside from the humans that they dwelt amongst by the way that they held themselves, like they were condescending, and showing deference towards humanity simply by considering them as prey. He knew that look well enough, had seen it on Ethan a lot more than once or twice.

The other thing that gave them away was the lack of life-light in their auras, something that he’d suspected for a while now had something to do with the dead’s inability to cross the thresholds of the living. After all, it was old folklore that a ghost couldn’t enter without being asked, any more than it could leave of its own free will.

And he could feel her, apart from the crowd, too.

As he climbed the stairs to where she was, looking down on the people like a watchdog staking out its territory he could feel gazes following him, another thing that he’d grown used to. While most people tended to avoid his direct presence, it seemed that he still presented an interesting enough object for younger girls to watch from afar.

He made sure that she saw him coming, and while she scowled at him in much the same way as she had this morning, and he knew that if looks could kill he’d have been dead on the spot, she didn’t make any effort to pull away.

“You try to deny your own nature, but you’ll never be able to stop watching out for them you know. Otherwise why else would you distance yourself from them? You can walk amongst them much like the predators do, but just like them, you’ll never truly belong. We can pretend for a while, but that’s all that fate affords her chosen, I’m afraid.”

He rested his arms on the railing, and leaned forward observing the tangle of humanity and other.

“What do you see when you look at them?”

She forced herself to look away from him, giving him the cold shoulder once again, just as he’d thought he may have made some form of impact.

“I’ll tell you what I see; fools and idiots, which the world needs in order to keep spinning and keep the balance. People who will never know you, but will none the less owe you the very product of their lives, some who probably already do. Nothing can live in pure water, just as nothing would be able to thrive if the old ones purified the Earth of the human plague to serve their vision. You are the sun amongst the stars, dear girl, and to try to lay your destiny aside is as pointless as trying to stop yourself from breathing.”

“You… you sound like you’ve tried.”

He hadn’t been expecting the reply, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t welcome it.

“To a certain extent, yes, I have. Which is why I know that no matter how well it seems to be going it’s still going to up and bite you in the arse.”

“Didn’t work well for you, huh?”

He chuckled, and she caught the touch of bitter about it, “I’m afraid I’m forced to say that that is a rather impressive understatement.”

“That says volumes for the whole bad boy attitude, though,” she let out a slow breath, and shared a reluctant glance with him, gave him a tiny half-smile, “you’re still trying to keep a part of yourself in this, too, huh?”

“Something rather like that, yes.”

“You know I saw my last Watcher die?”

There was something of a test about the question.

‘Yes?”

“That… that’s not meant to be the way it works, is it?”

She sounded so young, with that statement. And that gave him all the insight that he needed. He saw through the bluster, and the reluctance, and the anger, to a frightened child, much the way he himself had once been. He could still remember his denial then his father had explained the family business to him when he’d been ten. And he saw the trust that she was showing him, in spite of the fact that she obviously wished that there was no call for it.

“It’s a Watcher’s job to keep his Slayer alive. As far as that goes, Merrik outdid himself. And I promise you that I will do everything within my power to keep you safe.”

Yours isn’t the only time that’s limited, dear. I’ll keep myself alive for as long as possible, too.

“I… I look at all this shit that I’m apparently meant to know, all of these things that I’m meant to be able to face, and it scares me. And out there your friend, tall, dark, British and handsome told me that I was standing on the mouth of Hell, and that the Harvest was coming. Didn’t do all that much in the way of assurance, you know?”

“My friend?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. Something told him that she didn’t mean Ethan. And from somewhere the Harvest rang a bell. Actually, for that matter, it was striking quite a loud alarm bell; he just couldn’t place it for the moment.

“He was about yay tall; all muscle and mystery? Good taste in clothing, gave me a necklace?”

“Not mine, I’m afraid,” he shook his head, and tried to place that damned reference again, grateful that Ethan wasn’t here to witness his spectacular failure at recall.

“Oh.”

For a few minutes longer he let the music wash over him again, almost but not quite sealing the rest of the world out again.

“Most Slayers don’t know anything of a normal life. They’re raised by their Watcher, moulded into the weapon that they’re supposed to be from birth. Consider yourself lucky that I didn’t raise you; I wouldn’t have made a good parental figure. And destiny, fate, the plan of the Powers That Be, the puzzle of magic, whatever you want to call it, it can be terrifying. And none of us get to choose the part that we play in the scheme of life. The only choice you get is how you’re going to deal with it. Or, if you wanted it in plainer terms, life sucks, then you roll over and die.”

Again he laughed that bitter sound which made her wince.

“Pretty bleak way of looking at things, don’t you think?”

He shrugged, “I am the product of my life, as you are of yours.”

He blinked down at the crowd below them, seeing for a few moments nothing more than flashing patterns in a partial light, with tiny spots of darkness and power standing out amongst the rest. At times like this, he had never felt more alone.

She leaned over the barrier, staring at something that she’d spotted, frowning. Blinking, to look at things normally he peered towards where she was staring, towards where the potential powerhouse of a witch was engaged in conversation with a vampire. Fleetingly he wondered how old it was, even as the Slayer gave into the call of her duty and headed down the stairs.

He made to follow, but she was gone before he was a quarter of the way down the stairs himself. Frowning to himself he wondered how much of a fuss the Council would raise if he got her electronically tagged, what with the habit that she already seemed to have of disappearing on him.

Sighing, he shook his head, and did his jacket back up, before slipping out the door and leaning back against the closest wall, not giving a toss about the grime on it, as he closed his eyes and tried to extend his senses to pick her up. He’d did his best to memorize the way that she felt in that short period of time beside her, but it took a long time to be able to identify the finer points.

Then he heard sounds. A male talking, the seductive whisper of a female, that sound which was more a change in air pressure than it was an actual sound, the sound of a hybrid shifting for the feed.

Keeping his tread quiet, and his power masked, he positioned himself so that he could see, watched as the blond female drew back from him after a few seconds. He knew that most others probably would have rushed in to save an innocent, but he wasn’t most others. If he let the female lead him, then he would know where he was headed.

He gave her a few minutes head start, and by the time he came to the crypt, the Slayer was already emerging again, with a pair of shaken-looking teenagers with her; Willow, and the boy. She shot him a grateful look, as she watched him arriving.

“Look, can you please make sure that they get home safely? I… I’ve got to go back in.”

She didn’t give him a chance to answer, turning back towards the door of the crypt before she’d finished speaking. And he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder, before she could disappear into the darkness again. Glad for the reflexes that Ethan had installed in him, he stepped back from the instinctual fist that she swung towards whatever was stopping her from moving forward.

“What the hell is your problem? The more time that I waste here with you,”

“At the moment you’re my problem,” he cut across her sentence, “or at least, your blatant disregard for you own safety is. You were planning on going back into there, maybe going underground? Are you honestly going to walk into a nest that you don’t know the layout of, not knowing the numbers that you’re up against, or the strength or age of those that you’re going to challenge?”

“But, Jessie…”

“But, Jessie nothing; I’m sorry to put it like this, but if they’re going to use him for food, then they’ve probably already done so. And there’s nothing to be gained by chasing a corpse. If they aren’t going to, then you’d be better served by hitting them during the day, when you’ve the sun on your side if you need it. A few hours won’t make a difference, since it’s already after midnight.,”

A flash of anger and something else that he couldn’t quite identify darted across her expression, “You know what? I was beginning to think that you might actually be worth the time of day. But you’re just a … a selfish jerk.”

She looked at him coldly, and turned her back, leaving him with Xander and Willow to focus on as she vanished into the darkness with a rather irritating skill.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered under his breath, wrestling with the desire to rub at his temples with his thumbs for the next five minutes. The sound of shifting reminded him, even more frustratingly that he wasn’t alone, as much as he wished that the rest of the world would simply crawl under a rock. Finally, he managed to, if not snap himself out of his annoyance, then at least shove it somewhere into the ball of feeling that was building in his chest as he realised exactly how worn and worried the pair were.

“Right, home for the pair of you, as well. My car is a couple of blocks away, so if you wanted to give me directions…”

Neither of them made a move. And then Willow spoke up, in a hesitant voice, while Xander simply looked as though he were fighting to stop himself from being sick. They both looked so young. They were young.

“Those things; they weren’t human were they?”

“I’m afraid not,” he placed a hand on each of their shoulders, and finally got them moving, walking towards the boundary of the cemetery, “they were vampires.”

Xander shook his head, “Nah, had to be a trick of the light or something. You didn’t see it, but it had to be.”

“And you can keep telling yourself that, right up until the moment when they come out of the shadows and go to tear your throat out if you want.”

He unlocked the car, and gestured for the pair to take the backseat. And at that moment they looked even more reluctant, and he did not have a single fucking idea of how to go about the whole assurance thing that he was obviously meant to have some skill in. He bit back his impatience.

“Look, the sooner it is that you get home, the sooner it is that you can both get some sleep and start to recover. I know that it’s a shock, but things will look better in the morning.”

“Sure, sleep,” Xander asked, as he finally lowered himself into the car, and Willow followed suit, “Got a good sense of humour there. I… I’m not entirely sure that I’ll ever sleep again, not after that.”

“If it’s reassurance that you’re after, then the best that I can offer it that some of the legends are true,” he started up the car, and sat as it idled for a few minutes, “and you’ll be perfectly safe at home. A vampire can’t enter a place of residence unless you invite it in directly.”

He pulled onto the road, and stole a glance in the rare view mirror.

“So, if you’d care to tell me where home is.”

It was Willow that gave him an address, and Xander shook his head when Giles waited on him.

“I’m thinking I’ll crash at hers tonight. Again, that’s if I possibly can, at all. And if I can’t, then I’d still rather spend the rest of my life in a frightened huddle with someone that I want to spend the rest of my life huddling with, you know?”

“I do. Know, that is,” he drove along the darkened roads in silence, flicking his gaze back automatically on every corner, where he could do it unnoticed. Willow looked worried, and Xander looked genuinely concerned as well as scared, but looking past the surface of that, she looked thoughtful, and he looked determined, a forceful reminder that the modern-day term submissive only referred to a common sexual conception, and was nothing to do with attitude or strength or determination, “and the pair of you are welcome to join me in the library tomorrow, if you want the full story, complete with footnotes.”

“We’ll be there.”

It was Xander, who answered, and even though his voice was low, it was also a sentence that he wouldn’t consider doubting.

He pulled up to the address that he’d been given, and watched as the pair got out of the car, not quite hanging onto one another, but not quite apart, either. He didn’t say another word, knowing as he did so, that to do so would only have been adding to injury.

He pulled back onto the road, and as much as he simply wanted to put his foot down and keep on driving, until he was out of fuel, and away from this tangled mess of pathetic people, and stubborn Slayer, and a destiny that felt more like a disaster, he knew that it wasn’t a practical option.

No, the best thing that he could do was go back to the house and try to get some rest himself, and hope to hell that the Slayer took heed of what he had said. It would be some dark joke if she was killed his first night on the job.

Taking a hand off the wheel, he turned the radio on and cranked up the volume, taking a roundabout route back to the house, covering several unnecessary blocks as he did so, trying to find that space in himself that he could hit while running, or thrashing a punching bag where nothing else mattered, and no other thought passed through his head aside from taking another breath. It didn’t work; not while sitting on his ass in the drives seat of a car.

That sense of centre had never seemed further away, if he discounted that God-awful time just after falling in with Ethan. And there was another thought to make him bitter, wasn’t there? Even these days if he let himself dwell on the fact the he was trapped in this fucking situation he found his well-crafted façade of control slipping.

Finally he turned onto a street that would take him back to the house, and eyed a truck that was coming from the opposite direction, imagining the rush of adrenalin that it would afford him, were he to swerve onto the other side of the road at a point where it would have no option but to hit him.

It would be a way out, at least.

But it drew closer, and while he could think about the action rationally he couldn’t quite bring himself to flick the wheel. He stared into the oncoming headlights, let them blind him, and watched as it took the next corner in the rear vision mirror, trailer swinging out wide like a porcupine’s tail.

Slowing a little, he turned the next corner himself, and pulled up in front of the house, turning the radio up a little louder, and only shutting it off when Alice Cooper’s lyrics seemed to be mocking him personally.

A Quiet Room, dressed in white, would be a fucking blessing right about now.

He seemed to waiver between lust, an overwhelming hatred, and a numb acceptance that occasionally seemed to wrest with a completely pathetic affection which was something that he would never admit to.

Ripping the keys out of the ignition he slammed the car door and shoved them into the lock, trying to take out his anger on everything that couldn’t fight back. He twisted them in the lock and wrenched them out of the door, before taking a deep, controlling breath and closing it softly behind him, knowing that if Ethan were here then it wouldn’t appreciate the door being slammed.

And as odd, as human, as petty even, some of its likes and dislikes seemed he knew enough by now to know not to challenge it on its own turf.

He heard a sound from deep in the house and by the time that he’d flicked the latch down, the safety chain across and turned around it was there, again testing the air around him, the way that a dog would have.

“Anger, and fear,” it pushed him back against the door and its cool tongue drew along the underside of his chin over stubble that could be felt but not actually seen, “it smells good on you.”

Its tongue drew up the side of his neck from the collar, a track of coolness in this infernal fucking heat, and he tugged its shirt free and slipped his arms under the material, savouring the way that the chill of its back felt against the heat of his skin. Closing his eyes he dropped his head back against the solid door as tooth brushed up his neck extending to fang as it went, and a forefinger drew down under his chin and along the centre of his throat, tucking between flesh and his collar.

Cool breath ghosted across the suddenly dry skin of his lips and over the flesh of his cheeks which were still far too warm, and it tugged him into a kiss which was really no more than a brush of lip on lip. He deepened the kiss as his body’s natural response took over even more so than it usually would; after the time apart, as he stiffened with a rush of blood to his cock, pushing his tongue against its lips and past them into the cool depth of its mouth, finding the hard sharp point of a tooth, as it pressed against him.

The last time they’d had this sort of physical contact had been over a month before he’d got on that bloody plane, and sweated his way from the skies of London, to those of Sunnydale, and he knew from past experience that it was part and parcel of more than a little of the restlessness that had been permeating his days and nights.

Hands grasped at his wrists and brought them up above his head and there it changed its grasp so that the two wrists were grasped in one hand, and pinned against the wood. Growling, it broke the kiss, and pressed into that hollow between shoulder and neck, breathing in the smell of the man under him. He tugged against the hold that it had on him, testing against that pre-human strength and again it growled, although this time there was more of a note of warning in it.

“Should have done this, reminded you of your place the minute I got here.”

He ignored the way that his heart kicked up a few notches at the words, and at that note of possession and control that was in them. Bloody predictable; that the reaction was.

And then it let go of him.

“Upstairs. Now.”

He moved one foot in front of the other with some effort, and then repeated the process, paying attention to the motion until he was reasonably sure that he could walk again without the active supervision. He made it up the stairs, took three steps into the room, and then felt a hand shoving between his shoulder blades in the middle of his back, and he half-stumbled, caught his balance again, and spun to face it.

Automatically he spread his weight evenly over his stance, hands half raised, fists loose but still ready. In that moment, facing it down, locking gaze with its yellowed eyes he genuinely wanted to challenge it, get some of his own back. He wanted some of that dominance that it had curtailed for itself, the change of place and the control of a Slayer, a power in her own right, waking something in him that he’d thought long-dead.

And sensing the change in him, probably breathing it in his scent or reading it in his posture, it stopped its advance, and took a stance of its own across from him, drawn up to its full height, muscles tensed and ready as it met  his glare unblinkingly, returning the challenge that it read in him.

He held himself, not even moving with the tiny breaths that were drawn in silently through his nose. Lips drew back from its teeth, but rather than the snarl of accepted challenge it kept its own silence, and it faced the man down, like a pair of dogs posturing before the first snap and first blood of a battle. Where his hands were fisted, its hands were spread wide, fingers hooked like claws, and both lifted almost to its shoulders.

The moments drew out, stretching and spiralling, and still neither of them moved or broke that deadly silence. And Rupert could feel his eyes watering.

That first twitch would signal the end of it, he knew that through some deep instinct that he rarely listened to.

After what seemed like a brief eternity he finally lowered his gaze, first concession, and it was on him in less than a heartbeat, shoving him backwards and tearing through the silence with a rolling growl as it sunk its teeth deep into his right shoulder, instinct making him mark the man’s loss on his flesh, the bite brief as what would be another scar was added to the collection. It went from his shoulder to his throat, where it could feel the pulse racing under a layer of skin that had never seemed more delicate. This time it didn’t bite, thought, simply mouthing that point, until Rupert tilted his head back, in what was a proper surrender.

Ethan grabbed his shirt, and with a violent motion, digging nails into his chest as it did so tore upwards, rather than doing things the conventional way, scoring four stinging tracks, white which quickly ran over with red on pale flesh, in an action that he knew was on purpose, another mark that he’d lost his challenge against it. Lowering its head, it drew its tongue along one of those strokes of warmth, and then drew away to sink its teeth into his shoulder again, a tiny distance from the first.

He forced himself to keep his hands flat against the mattress as it pulled away without supping, and a small wash of warmth inched down over muscle, a warmth that cooled quickly as it ran its tongue along another one of those fresh scratches, and then sunk its teeth into the slight rise of muscle over his nipple, flicking its cool tongue out over the sensitive rise of flesh, flinching at how odd it felt.

Usually, when it came to matters like this, things were straightforward, the act in itself being the end-all of it, and yet still something that he did enjoy physically, unless he had done something to stir things up. Much like he had just done tonight.

It drew its teeth free, and he closed his eyes as warmth ran to one side, changing path slightly to run between a pair of ribs on one side, and down the other until it was tracing along the closest of the scratches that it had left. Pursing its lips, it pressed it again to the bottom of the scratch, and Rupert couldn’t stop the flinch as that cold tongue lifted skin, and again drew up his chest, marking the path with tiny little flicks of cold against heat.

A cool hand touched against his cock, a few brief strokes, before it slipped lower and a finger found that area of sensitive skin at that gap between his cheeks, and lightly played up and down over it, held tight against him by his jeans

Still he forced himself to hold still, he stared at it, at the way that the cruelly bright electric light glinted off of the dark curl of hair that was spread over its lower chest, hair that darkened as it disappeared into the dark shadow that was under its trousers.

As it undid the button of his jeans and pulled the zip down, removing them the more conventional way, his cock sprung into the newly loose space in the front of his boxers, the tip just peaking through the gap in the front, as it tented the clothing.

Its tongue played over the thin coating of curl that the blood had already dried to near the nipple that it had bitten over, moistening it, and freeing it with a sharp, almost painful tugging sensation, like if had twined it fingers through his hair and pulled at it, an action that it kept up until he gasped, and the next spot that it sink its teeth into was the muscle of his arm, just above the mark that it had carved there when he’d been fifteen.

He gritted his teeth, and tried not to flinch against the blunt sensation of teeth tearing down into him, and the dull ache that quickly became a sharp pain, as this time it began to suck at the spot that it had torn.

A pair of fingers; one on either side, tucked under the elastic on his boxers, and drew them down and off, ignoring them after it had slid them down off his ankles.

He felt naked, almost vulnerable next to it, but the sensation wasn’t an entirely bad one. Drawing a shaky breath, he raised his free hand, and twined fingers through its hair as it nursed, one thumb gently running over the tip of his cock, and circling over it, a stark contrast to the way that it had torn into him.

It kept its head down, and he watched as it closed its eyes, losing itself to the moment, as a finger traced down the vein on the underside of his cock, and its touch drifted over his balls, a small hint of nail over sensitive skin, just enough to send a shiver through him, rather than the tearing scratch that he was used to.

He’d often wondered what it; what feeding was like from the other side of things. He thought that it would probably be one of those moments of intense intimacy, like a human loosing themselves in the sensation of a kiss born of true passion, because after all, when was more intimate or personal than sharing life’s blood, and potential death with something or someone? He never saw it more at ease during its waking hours, than when it had its teeth buried in someone, after all. And even for those that did kill, where the union was temporary, it didn’t make the heat of the moments any less real did it?

And through it all, that confusing undercurrent; Ethan had forced him against his will, had pressed him into a life that he wanted nothing to do with. It had given him some illusion of freedom, hadn’t forced him into subservience, as some form of comfort and yet it would still strike him when he pissed it off, like he was some disobedient child that had to see the back of its hand to be shown the error of his ways. There were times when it even acted like it cared about the feeling and emotions of someone that couldn’t be any more significant to the scheme of its existence than an ant was to a man’s, and yet there was no way that something which didn’t have a soul could ever understand a concept that was as human as something like love.

And that, of course, was why it was easier to take this as nothing more than physical gratification, and leave it at that.

It lifted its head from his arm and shifted up onto its knees, tugging its shirt off over its head and undoing the button on its trousers, and pushing them down to its knees, rising slightly to draw them all the way off. It twisted slightly and cast them to the side, and Rupert caught himself staring at the pale chest that it revealed; tracing over those old, human scars and that thin, sinuous muscle, dark hair down its chest and surrounding its cock, which was already hard, and probably had been ever since it had pushed him back against the door.

Lifting the arm that was marked with the same brand that it had burned into him, it pressed the fingers to one side of his throat, and the thumb to the other, pushing upwards until it hit that point where he could feel every swallow at the back of his throat. It pushed his head to the side with its thumb, and then traced down the path that he knew was his jugular, in much the same way that it had traced the path of his blood flow a little earlier.

Speaking under its breath, it said a word that he heard as beautiful, before it let go of his chin and leaned forward, burying one hand into the pillow beside his head, and lowering those cool lips to press against his. Raising a hand, he tangled fingers through its hair, and closed his own eyes as it deepened the kiss, tongue pressing in between his lips in tiny little dips and darts, only just far enough to stroke against his own, slipping the other arm around its back to hold it against him.

It lost itself in feeding the same was that he allowed himself to be lost in a kiss, tongue pushing back against its own, enjoying the contrast of heat on chill, and that feeling of strength above him. A few years ago he had gone from telling himself that he hated it, to telling himself that he was making the best of a bad situation. Now, though, it was all about simply taking it as a sybarite pleasure, and not thinking about it at all.

It drew back and delivered a light, almost playful bite to the side of his throat, as the hand that wasn’t being used for support played down over his body and then lifted free, to trace a pair of cool fingers up the inside of his thigh. He raised his legs and placed them on either side of its, head dropping back as it slowly took its cue and lowered its body, pushing into his with a practised ease.

Muscles that were used to the action gave easily under the contact and intrusion, and moments later it was buried fully in him, a chill length as contrast against the heat that was flooding his body. He had been expecting it to mark its claim on his flesh again, but instead it moved, a slow, steady roll of its hips as it pushed him down and took him.

As it pushed him back down onto the mattress it lost all pretence of ease, as lust darkened its yellowed gaze, and its movements changed, becoming hard and fast and very much to the point. Rupert’s word dissolved to those few burning points, the pressure against his prostate that returned with each burning thrust, that cool hand curled around his cock, and moving it, thumb gliding over the dripping head, and that dull burn followed by an even more familiar sharp sting, as Ethan bit him properly again, this time just below that old scar that the Feralus had left him with.

He couldn’t think, his breath was becoming harsh and ragged, and he couldn’t, didn’t want to think beyond the moment. Another sharp tug, brief roll of pain, and he felt that shivery feeling, that moment when the world dropped away, where everything that he was, was his cock, all rolled into that moment of impending orgasm. He cried out as he felt his cock twitch and pushed himself upwards as he came over its hand and his chest.

As he came it buried itself in him deeply, and held its place for a few moments, hit him with another hard thrust that drove him up the bed, another which had him forgetting his own name, and then with a snarl it was coming, that burst of chill inside him telling him all that he needed to know.

It pulled out of him, and through the post-sex haze that was quick in settling over him he felt an almost-lazy tongue circling and running over the last bite that it had given him, and he opened his eyes to see it raising the hand that it had jacked him off with and slipping a pair of finger into its mouth, sucking on them lightly. Then, in a movement that was just as familiar as the rest of that, it tilted its head and bit itself, hard.

The feeling of its tongue working over him, washing its blood into the bites was lulling, although he knew that once upon a time that wouldn’t have been his first choice of words. By the time that it had finished he had drifted into a doze, and that only deepened as it settled beside him, and on instinct he rested an arm over its chest and rested his head on it shoulder, before sliding back into the waiting arms of sleep. The world could keep its fucking problems for the rest of the night.

It would keep.