Fire Ch. 11

"Jairus?" She asked, testing the name.

"Yes?"

She smiled and pressed tighter against him. She felt less dizzy here.

"Thea, drink."

She opened her eyes with a frown. "Drink what?" There was another long pause, and she felt a silent chuckle rumble through the chest she leaned against.

"The hair of the dog, I suppose."

She felt something wet against her mouth, wet and hot. She moved her tongue and groaned again, only this time in pleasure. It was like having liquid fire wash over her tongue, only without the burn, just the warm, wonderful, soothing heat. She latched onto the source and drank with long heavy pulls.

He moaned softly as well, his grip tightening around her. As she drank she felt the strange sick feeling leave her. Her body tingled with energy instead, filling with light, and making her feel suddenly powerful and alive. She reveled in the feeling and tried to drink more deeply.

"Easy." He whispered against her ear, pulling away the source of the exquisite heat. She moaned at the loss, blinking as her vision suddenly cleared. She instinctively searched for what she had lost and inhaled in surprise when she realized she had a death grip on his bloodied arm.

Thea gasped and released him quickly, jerking her head up to meet his eyes. They were dark and unreadable, a blend of too many things, conflicting thoughts and emotions, though his expression seemed expectant. His fingers were at her cheek, tracing the line of her jaw with the lightest of touches.

She pulled away, as if it were burning her. Her confusion cleared as quickly as her vision had and she remembered with vivid clarity all that had passed in the glade. She had been dying, stabbed through the back with one of the Huroth's blades. He'd caught her and she'd begged him to be the one to finish it...and then it all went hazy from there. Just a blur of heady sensations, too visceral to be the cold creep of death, yet so unlike anything she'd ever experienced.

Thea looked quickly around herself, taking in her surroundings. They were in a large, well appointed room, her room at the keep she realized, the one that Othwyn had placed her in when he'd captured her. The one in which he'd explained his proposal to her: his offer of marriage and protection in exchange for her support and whatever legitimate ties she had to the former ruling house. But it was not him here with her now...it was Jairus. Jairus who had come for her, who had held her as she died, whispering soothing things into her ear...and who now sat gazing at her with dark swirling eyes...with a blood smeared wrist.

He reached for her again, slowly, and she pulled farther away, scrambling backward onto the bed. A strange panic gripped her and as hard as she tried, she couldn't seem to tear her eyes from his arm. His eyes followed hers to his wrist then looked away towards the far wall. He rose then, and she watched him breathlessly as he moved, his usually powerful, fluid movements seeming somehow less easy, less graceful than she remembered. He was not quite that frustrated, human version of himself she sometimes encountered, but he was something very like it.

Her panic eased a little as he continued to ignore her and cleaned the remainder of his blood with a cloth before tossing it on the edge of the heavy wash basin. He didn't turn around, only laid his hands flat on the table on either side of the basin so that he leaned over it with a bent head as if contemplating its contents. He stood there, still as stone, for a long time. His back was to her, but she didn't dare take her eyes off of him. After a time...she no longer tried...or wanted to.

The firelight, no longer irritating to her eyes, glowed warmly and snaked over his skin in undulating pulses, highlighting the ripple of muscle and tendon which ran along his shoulders and down his back. His skin seemed different, seemed to...be alive in some way. She tilted her head in curiosity, squinting and wondering if it was the firelight playing tricks on her eyes. But no...he seemed to...glow...like a warm ember. She brought her own hand up to compare and to her surprise found she could see the same thing in her own flesh. As if she could see the life pulsing beneath her skin...as if she could sense it...taste it...smell it....she blinked.

She felt her nostrils flare and bit back a whimper as her senses were inundated with information. The scent of the lye still lingering on the sheets which twined around her naked hips, the roughness of the fabric, the taste of fragrant ash and woodsmoke from the fire, it was all sharp and immediate...impossible to ignore.

And then came the gentle cacophony from beyond. A swelling of soft voices like whispers from across the room, and the pulsing throb of...hearts...she could hear heartbeats. One in the hall in front of the door...another through a wall...

The sound awoke something else in her, a warm, not quite erotic stirring. A hunger that wasn't hunger. Her eyes flicked back to the smooth corded muscles of Jairus' back. He turned and pinned her with his eyes. She could see the deep brown of them now, even from across the room, even in the darkness. She could also see the smooth hard lines of his body, the hard angle of his jaw, the dark red curve of his lips as they parted to speak her name.

"Thea."

That softly spoken word...at once a plea and a warning...a fervent promise. Every part of her responded to it. Including those parts she was not aware she had.

Tentatively she brought her hand to her mouth. "Oh God...." she moaned softly, the panic rising up in her once again crushing back the seductive warmth that had begun to course through her flesh. She gasped and felt her chest tighten, making it suddenly hard to breathe.

He stepped toward her and she cringed automatically away. "What..what have you done to me?" she gasped out between pants. "I...I never...I asked..." She wasn't sure how to continue, or what to say. What could she say? What had he done? What was to happen now? What about...they hadn't spoken since...did he even know about...No, he... no....

She gripped her stomach as that sick feeling came over her again, though this time it had more to do with her thoughts than actual illness. Now with him there, with this...with what he'd done...like this...now all the things she'd been ignoring, everything she'd pushed into the dark corners of her mind came screaming back out at her. She couldn't think straight, couldn't breathe.

Jairus had frozen when that look of horror, the very same that he had feared he'd see, shone from her eyes. When she spoke and those words, the same words he himself had once said, spilled from her mouth, his guts twisted into a tight icy knot. The ice spread rapidly through the rest of his body turning to claws which buried themselves deep into the heart of him.

This was it, what he'd feared her reaction would be. He closed he eyes to take a deep and settling breath, sorting his thoughts as best he could and willing his emotions into submission before he spoke. The last thing he needed...the last thing she needed, was for him to over react and frighten her even more.

His relative calm vanished when he opened his eyes to find her hunched over on the bed, clutching her middle and clenching the sheets in a white fist, her breath coming in short violent gasps. Instead of approaching her slowly and gently as he intended, he rushed to her side and gathered her quivering naked body back up into his arm, gripping her tightly as she tried to pull away from him. Her new found strength was not enough to keep him from overpowering her, but it didn't help him keep her still as she fought his grip.

When he finally did manage to force her to meet his eyes he could see the wild, almost animal terror in hers. "Thea please, listen to me. It will be alright. I'm sorry, but I had to do what I did." the tightness in his throat caused his words to come out in a harsh whisper.

She shook her head, still looking dazed and terrified. "No...no it won't be...you...you don't understand..." She turned her face away and tried to twist from his grasp, but he only strengthened his hold, wrapping an arm around her waist and pressing her against him as his other hand came up to grip her neck and jaw firmly, forcing her to look at him once more.

"What? What don't I understand?" His voice continued to sound rough and raw to his ears, but was even enough. Her fear only seemed to mount however, and she pressed her hands between them, pushing at his chest and shaking her head violently.

Her voice was equally raw, stripped bare by her emotions, as she denied him again. "No, please, you don't know...you can't..."

"Know what?" he asked, almost impatiently. When she looked back into his eyes he suddenly felt he might know at least part of the answer to that question. It was a look not unlike what he had seen in Tim's eyes when he'd told him about May and Berin.

He moved his hand from her neck to her cheek, gripping her more gently and tilting her face up to his.

His mouth came down over hers a heartbeat later. The kiss was instinctive and unplanned, born of a sudden desire to both claim and comfort. She didn't fight him, and only whimpered softly against him mouth. When he released her lips he saw the tears beginning to collect in her eyes.

"I know." He whispered against her mouth. "I know."

She said nothing and they knelt facing one another in tremulous silence. She seemed frozen to the spot and he feared to say or do anything, sensing that they stood on a very narrow precipice, and that the wrong step might throw them both over at any moment. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

His own hand flinched against her cheek, and that seemed enough to send her spiraling back into her previous fear. She pulled from him, and this time he let her, watching as she scrambled off the bed, pulling the sheet with her, clutching it to her breast as she stood. He followed, but paused when she bowed her head and held up a warding hand to keep him at bay.

"I-"

"-No...please" her voice was soft, and shook with restraint, but it at least sounded less frightened, "stay back."

"I won't hurt you, you know I wouldn-"

"Please, just stop...stop. I just..."

"Thea..."

"Jairus..." her voice broke slightly and he moved closer, only to have her move that much farther away, "Please I just need you to stop."

He remained where he was, watching her closely. Again she was still, frighteningly so. So very still, and not looking at him.

"You...changed me." It was a statement.

"Yes." He whispered softly. "You would have died." She didn't look at him but her head twitched sharply to the side as if she'd been slapped.

"I...I think you should go."

He frowned at her. "Thea, I understand if you're an-"

"Stop...just...just-"

"This is not a time when you should be left alone." He interrupted, taking another step forward, his voice low and insistent. "You're not stable yet, you could-"

She cut him off with a shake of her head, looking up into his face and showing him her cheeks, already stained with watery streaks of red. "I won't go anywhere...I just want to be alone. Please." Her eyes pleaded with him as much as her voice did.

He could only nod numbly in concession. The knots inside of him became like led as he bowed his own head and turned away. She needed time, he told himself. She would perhaps forgive him yet...she just needed time to understand that he did what he did out of necessity. Surely she would see that eventually.

He stopped at the foot of the bed to retrieve his discarded shirt and paused to look back at her, but she had sat on the edge of the bed with her back to him, shutting him out.

He left, left the keep, and took to prowling the nearby villages, knowing he'd need to feed. It had been an exhausting few days, in so many ways, and it was an exhaustion that had yet to lash back at him with its full force...but he knew it would be soon. So he made sure to feed a great deal more than he normally would, knowing too that Thea would be even more weary and hungry than he.

He remembered the first days of his own change. The constant pull of hunger, the foreignness of his own body and its strange new urges. It was frightening, and draining...

Jairus stayed away just long enough to work himself into a fit of worry before he was forced to head back toward the keep, unable to will himself away. Not much had changed there at least, he thought with a quiet, bitter laugh. He never could...that's what had started this mess. Then again, if he had, then he'd never have found her at all, and they still would have.

There were no easy answers to what could or should have happened. But she was here now, and alive, and he had a chance to keep her that way. The past could not be changed. If it could he'd have gone back and wiped out Darius the moment the bastard had stepped through that door in the inn. But he couldn't, so all he could do was look ahead to the future.

He wouldn't force her to stay with him, he couldn't, but he would do everything in his power to make that possible. If she needed time then he would give it to her, but right now there were other things she needed, whether she knew it or not, and he would see to it she had that as well.

When he returned she was asleep again, propped up in a chair by the fire with the sheet still wrapped tightly around her body. He couldn't help but smile at the sight, or the little tremulous gasp that escaped her lips when he ran a hand along an exposed, dangling calf. She murmured something, but remained asleep.

Nor did she wake as he lifted her and took her back to the bed before stripping and joining her, forming his body to hers and pulling her cocooned form against his chest. She wriggled in response and an arm slid out of the wrapping to drape across his own. He felt her stiffen slightly, but he remained as he was.

"Jairus?" Her voice was barely a whisper.

He only shushed her and caressed her stomach through the sheet that separated her flesh from his searching fingers.

"I-"

"We'll talk later." He whispered against her ear. "Sleep."

She tensed in his arms. "But, I-"

"Later. We'll talk later."

He waited a tense moment then felt her ease back into him, her body relaxing.

"Always putting things off." She muttered almost inaudibly into her pillow. He smiled against her hair then pulled her tightly to him, pressing his mouth to the back of her shoulder, growling softly into it.

"Stubborn Huroth." He purred affectionately, his lips grazing her skin. "Go to sleep."

She yawned. "You...can't..tell me w...." The rest was lost in an low mumble as she shifted once more in his arms and did just that.

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Thanks for your patience everyone. If you're wondering this is not quite the end. There's at least another portion to come, which I'm actually a ways into, but I wanted to give you something, and to end this chapter at a place which didn't resemble an awful gut twisting cliff hanger...'cause I really do that too much to you and you deserve better. That said I will be getting the next portion to you, hopefully fairly soon, so that we can all revel in the exciting...or perhaps not so exciting, conclusion. You can be the judge. If you have any thoughts, suggestions, complaints, or observations, please drop me a line. I love to hear what you think. Warm fuzzies are always nice too.

Yours very sincerely,

enithermon