Season of Ashes Ch. 03-05

Blonde tresses fell about their faces, caressing his cheeks as he made his hunger known to her properly. Ever since he'd set foot in the Grisaille, this woman had been alluring and infuriating in equal measure. She was a creature of violence and sensuality, of calm composure and latent desires. They'd known each other for barely half a day; now they were forging something much more profound than their tentative partnership.

Was he making a mistake?

He didn't care. His free hand came to rest on her hip, gripping the curve of her waist through the towel, coaxing her further into the enveloping heat of his body.

Milicent

He denied her. Milicent was grateful that her face was tucked against him, concealed from his scrutiny; her porcelain visage shattered, and it took more than a second for her to recover her nerve. Had she miscalculated? Perhaps he was more willful than she'd initially estimated. That scalpel of hers had failed to penetrate the plate of his armor. Disappointment polluted her insides like a bloom of bitter darkness -- an ink-cloud of black belched by a teabag dipped briefly in boiling water. She took an awkward breath, her broken sigh cooling off the wetness of the saliva patch next to his ear, and hardened her jaw fast enough to feign icy indifference when he pulled back so they could finally look at each other.

His next words, however, offered a glimmer of hope, and the emotional whiplash was abrupt enough to manifest in her features. Her eyebrows flinched; she cocked her head; her lips parted enough for her to begin forming a question: "Wha--?"

And then he was there, anchoring her chin in place and swooping in to wrest control of her lips. Her sentence perished, diminishing in a purr that droned against his mouth. The shock forced her to yield. Her surprised mouth offered no resistance: the sumptuous tiers hung open, tasting his breath as he crushed his lips against hers. Her eyes widened at first, only to flutter shut a second later, announcing her surrender to the throes of want.

Triumph coursed through her veins. The corners of her mouth curved against the kiss. She was, perhaps, in more danger now than she had been at any other point in the previous hours, more susceptible to the volatility and variability inherent to sex, greed, desire -- all of which could, in little more than a heartbeat, spell her violent downfall.

But, in a testament to the incongruities of seduction, Milicent felt unquestionably like a victor. How could she not? He was a titan: a formidable, mesmerizing, moreish black hole that caught her in the snare of his infinite gravity. For this fleeting instant, she had managed to monopolise the entirety of his attention. She was the centre of his world. And the way her clawed fingers swept up his body to encircle his neck, the way her legs straddled around him as he grasped her hip and pulled her forward -- it all betrayed the depths of her need, proving just how unconditionally he had become the centre of her world.

Their precarious game of brinkmanship had ended. There was no direction to go but forward. And forward Milicent went.

The hunger in her chest roiled with need, urging her to press her body against him with more ferocity than before, sculpting her supple frame to suit the rigid mass of his marbled physique. The pressure in their embrace swelled the curves of her breasts, making them surge and strain against the bind of her towel, which started to loosen in the friction of their nearness. Her fingers crawled up his nape and burrowed through his hair, nails scratching his scalp as she massaged his skull and gripped tufts of his locks to keep his head secured against hers.

Recovering from her surprise, she uttered a delicate moan -- her voice several octaves higher than the rumble of his growl -- and smashed her mouth against his. Her lips grew adventurous, undulating and parting to repay the motions he offered. She tugged his mouth open with a prying yawn, giving herself the space necessary to snake her tongue forward and launch it past his lips; the tip gently explored the ambit of his mouth, slipping past dangerous rows of teeth to massage the ridge of his hard palate before settling into a waltz with his tongue.

The taste of him overwhelmed the finespun receptors of her tongue, encouraging her to pursue more, more, always more. She could sense her appetite growing with each passing second. Their union had done little to quench the flames blazing inside of her. Instead, her craving seemed to be governed by the intensifying laws of a positive feedback loop -- a perverse condition in which the very instrument for satiating her fire managed only to fan the flames further. The more of him she tasted, the more of him she wanted. That's not going to be enough for me, he had told her. Maybe he was onto something.

Luckily for Milicent, there was plenty of Dominik left to explore, and she had never more keenly felt the call of adventure. Having settled on his lap, with her knees firmly moored on either side of him, her body rippled in smooth, lazy, luxurious waves, grinding her figure against him with an urgency that provoked a groan from her throat straight into his lips. She could stay like this forever, bruising her lips against his mouth until the end of the world. But her compass was spinning in other directions, drawn by the sense of a powerful, pulsating mass that nuzzled her loins and pulled her focus.

She sank her teeth into his lower lip, worrying on the soft terrace of flesh. Her head pulled back, releasing his lip with a soft snap when she finally wrested away from the inebriating lure of that fevered liplock. A thin, silky throughline of spit connected their mouths before fading. She panted, the swell of her bust rumbling against his chest.

"Fuck." What else was there to say?

A faint smile lingered on her mouth, but it was quickly obscured when her head lunged forward to plant her lips along the edge of his jaw. The kisses were brief and sputtering, tracing a line of warmth from his jaw to his chin to his neck. She inhaled, drunk on his scent, her smooth skin soft against his stubble. She opened her mouth to take in the protrusion of his Adam's apple, suckling on it with a quick swirl of her tongue before relenting and continuing her path downward.

Her body glided over his, her hips guiding her away as she slowly withdrew from his lap. Her feet made contact with the floor. Her hands released his hair, but continued their tactile appreciation of his form: they roamed down the column of his neck, brushed along the line of his shoulders, and outlined the sides of his body, even as her mouth continued painting kisses along his chest and stomach, tongue whipping out on occasion to taste the grooves between his muscles.

He really was a work of art. Milicent needed to treasure every inch of him.

She landed on her knees, her body trapped in the tight gap between the coffee table and the couch. From her new perch, she glanced up at him, showing off the hunger that glinted in her eyes from beneath the thick fan of lashes guarding her lids. She maintained eye contact, lowering her chin until it rubbed softly against his slacks.

A brilliant smile overtook her lips. She was giddy with excitement, tipsy with anticipation. With an indolent slowness, she angled her head forward until her mouth pressed against his crotch. Her eyes closed; a low hum of contentment vibrated through her lips. She opened her mouth, exhaled over his slacks, and proceeded to rub her cheeks against him. She kissed the outline of his hidden member, gliding her lips along its phantom shape while her eyes opened up to stare at him again.

"Could you tell?" She narrowed her eyes. Her voice was hushed -- a conspiratorial whisper that quivered palpably against his trousers. "Could you tell I wanted to taste you as soon as I saw you?" She cocked a brow.

Without waiting for his answer, she bit down on the blade of his zipper, the corners of her occupied lips twitching with mirth, and began guiding the slider down its track with a metallic growl.

Dominik

A part of him savoured the surprise in her eyes. He had a feeling that Milicent wasn't often a woman caught off guard so fully, and there was a delightful power in being the one to elicit such a reaction. Fujiwara chuckled into her lips, crushing her body against his. So taken was she by surprise that she didn't react at first, her attempt at a question cut off by the kiss. It morphed into a purr, and then he felt her melt into the kiss, drinking in the moment as fully as he was.

It was everything he'd hoped for. Her breath was hot against his, the scent of her hair tickling at his nose, his senses were filled with this intoxicating, beautiful creature. He wouldn't have it any other way. Even after the hellish day they'd both endured, his exhaustion was completely forgotten at her touch. They'd started the day as rivals, and there was no way for them to tell what the coming days would bring. For now, they could find common ground in their shared desires.

For the first time, Dominik felt as though he was in control of the situation, that he had the upper hand with Milicent. She'd held her own in the heat of battle, had proven herself to be a wily foe in beating him to Newland's suite and nearly escaping with her prize. Now, she was clutching at him with desperate fingers, whimpering her need into his lips with girlish moans, pressing her hips to his as if willing him into her body. His own desires were no less obvious, but the fact remained that she was yielding to him, clinging to him as if worried that the flood of desire would sweep her away without an anchor.

The towel was still separating them, frustratingly so. His palms itched to slide over her curves, to confirm that the rest of her was as soft and welcoming as her lips. His teeth sank into her lower lip before she did the same to him, pulling away from their kiss to breathe an exclamation of her desire. She voiced what he was thinking -- namely, not much at all. What was there to think about? They'd been through hell together, had to use every bit of their training to escape from their predicament. Now was not the time to think or to worry. In the quiet solitude of the safehouse, they were able to cling to each other and satisfy the tension that had been building since they first met.

Her lips traced a line of warmth over the sharp cut of his jaw. Her breath was hot on his skin as Milicent slid down his body, her tongue and lips saying everything that needed to be said without words. A few errant beads of water still cooled on his skin; her lips brushed them away as her tongue followed, tracing the ridges of hard muscle that she'd spent so long lavishing with her gaze. It only heightened his need, leaving him straining at the fabric of his slack even before her knees touched the ground before him.

Milicent's eyes were lidded as she looked up at him. She was teasing, but he could tell she needed him as much as he needed her, that the desire was becoming almost unbearable for both of them. The heat of her breath caressed him. The velvet of her cheek brushing against him was enough to make him stir, twitching with his arousal. Her lips were plush through the fabric, leaving phantom kisses along his length, making the ache in his core even more infuriating.

The words were little more than a whisper, but there was no way for him to miss them. In the silence, every one of his senses was focussed on this fascinating creature between his legs. She might as well have been an incarnation of Aphrodite herself, so intense was the need they shared.

Fujiwara's lip curled in a smirk at her question, and he nodded. His voice was thick with lust, a soft growl as he watched her unzip his slacks. "And I wanted to take you from the second we met."

One large hand slid down to curl in her hair, twisting the golden waves about his fingers. The other tugged at his belt, sliding the leather free of the buckle with a soft snick, and undoing the button. Only the fabric of his briefs was in their way now, and Milicent's breath was hotter on his flesh. Each beat of his heart made him pulse visibly, throbbing with his need before her eyes. Dominik was as hard as he'd ever been, but at the same time he didn't want the moment to end.

He wanted to cement this image in his mind, to drink in every detail so that he might be able to freeze the moment in time. Right here, right now, nothing else mattered. The universe had shrunk to encompass the two of them alone, with no distractions from the exploration of two newfound lovers.

He sagged back into the couch, the tension in his posture draining away. The stress and fear of the day was utterly forgotten in this moment, and for the first time in months, he was thinking about more than the job. Their profession was steeped in blood, violence, and intrigue -- but for now, they could think about carnality and desire. Dominik's fingers tightened in Milicent's hair, pressing her more firmly between his legs to savour the touch of her lips along his shaft. Veins throbbed with his desire; it felt like electricity was coursing through his veins as every nerve stood on end.

"And," he continued his thought, coming back to his senses, "Now that I have you, I'm not sure I want to let you go."

He used his grip on her to tug her head back, forcing her into the vulnerability of exposing her throat, and meeting his gaze fully. He leaned down to capture her in another harsh kiss, his teeth sinking into her lower lip as soon as their mouths met, biting down until the tang of iron graced her tongue. It was possessive and hungry; she might not be his after tonight, but at least he could pretend. He could claim Milicent as his own -- and show her just what that implied.

Milicent

Was there anything more euphonious than the sibilant fizz of Dominik's unwinding belt? The sound seemed to reverberate in Milicent's ears long after the belt had slipped free of its loops. Was there anything more rousing than the grip of his fingers through her blonde chevelure? Her scalp prickled, anticipating the sting of a harsh tug. Was there anything more tantalizing than the veiled silhouette of his dick throbbing beneath the thin fabric that separated them? No: not for Milicent; like lodestones reorienting themselves to align with a new focus, her eyes dropped from his face to his loins, widening almost imperceptibly at the promising bulge that dominated her field of view.

He seemed to punish her for the indulgence: fingers tightened in her hair; she grunted, eyes locking on his face as he slanted her head back. There it was: animal magnetism, pure and unadulterated; for no other force could feasibly explain the otherworldly impulse that urged Milicent to retract her claws, lower her walls, and instead pore unabashedly over the features of her captor with a voracious tremble in her chin. Taking advantage of her unguarded state, he usurped her mouth in another kiss -- and left her with a harsh memorial that made her recoil.

"Ow." It sounded childish; a playground protest. Her eyes brimmed with a novel shine, an instinctive watering in response to pain. She brought a finger to the plump pout of her lower lip, gingerly tapping the ruby droplet affixed to her mouth like a pomegranate aril. The pad of her finger disturbed the integrity of the drop, smearing red along the contour of her lip to enhance the natural rosy colour that flourished beneath the skin. She looked at him with her wounded expression: a vertical crease between her eyebrows intensified the severity of her glance, and there was an abrupt downturn to her stained mouth. But her watery eyes glowed more with mischief than malice -- not that Milicent made a habit of distinguishing between the two.

Her revenge was a slow one. She didn't contest his persistent hold on her hair, didn't rebuke him with a harsh retort or a sudden swipe of her talons. In place of these overt procedures, Milicent simply willed herself to produce a wicked smirk, tongue slipping forward to steal a taste of the iron damp clinging to her lips. Her hands withdrew from him and roamed up her own sides, underscoring the gentle slopes of her hourglass figure before clutching the edges of that damnable towel. Like a shifty huckster spreading open her trenchcoat to offer a peek at counterfeit wares, Milicent pulled apart the makeshift garment to expose her own treasures -- not at all counterfeit, but certainly illicit. No longer bound by a bandeau, her teardrop breasts jostled in their freedom, each one shimmering with the soft, velvety hue of her honey-toned skin. Her pink nipples, firm like pearls, evidenced the depths of her arousal. Milicent was all too aware of a different, wetter source of evidence farther below, but the settlement of the towel around her waist prevented Dominik from fully enjoying the proof.

Her fingers hooked over the elastic of his waistband, lifting it and pulling it down with a sense of regal ceremony to finally uncage his girth. And though she did her best to keep her defiant eyes locked on Dominik's face, Milicent -- being, after all, only human -- couldn't resist the mesmeric aura that demanded her gaze to drop and stare at--

--Good fucking God.

Milicent finally entertained the possibility that she had bitten off more than she could chew. She blanched, cheeks instantaneously growing pale, heightening by contrast the fiery red of her spoiled mouth. Her fingers trembled, leaving his underwear secure just beneath his balls. She couldn't possibly look away. There was a sense of chemical inevitability in all of this -- a bone-deep, primal crosscurrent of urges that demanded her attention, her adoration, her respect. Despite her misgivings, she smiled at her own prescience: this was going to be the most lethal part of her night. That vascular slab of masculinity was by far the most dangerous weapon she'd ever encountered.

And she'd encountered so many weapons in her years.

Her spine straightened out, and her knees pressed into the ground to lift up her torso, giving her some added height so she could stare down at the thick spire beckoning her from between his legs. Her cheeks hollowed out somewhat as she pursed her lips, forming a tiny aperture through which a single thickening strand of gossamer spit drizzled, coalescing until it formed a heavy bead that snapped and fell with a soft splat along his shaft.

She lowered her head, eyes narrowing in slight pain as she fought the grip of his hair with her fast swoop. She laid her cheek on his thigh, golden tresses tickling his skin, and sighed, smiling at the massive member that throbbed centimetres away, its radiating heat palpable against her skin. From this angle, he looked even more monstrous. Even more irresistible.

Why resist?

Her mouth inched closer, closer, closer, until the soft surface of her lips collided with the pendulous flesh of his balls. There she planted a soft kiss, widening her mouth so her tongue could flog him with repeated strokes. Her nose brushed against the base of his shaft, which jostled over one cheek while she tasted him. She moaned into his sack and slowly closed her eyes to relish in his flavour.

"Fuck," she muttered. Again. Her lips buzzed against his balls. Her eyes flashed open, wider than ever before, unmasking the extent of her ravenous appetite. "I need to taste you."

Her mouth slipped upward to the trunk of his cock; she kissed him there, too, lingering for a moment before tilting her head to the side and sliding her lips all the way up, harmonica-style, then all the way back down. From base to crown, from crown to base, again and again she traced the ventral side of his prodigious length and left the faintest trail of red from her mouth. After a few strokes, she paused at the head, her lips parting to exhale a warm breeze. She adjusted herself, moving forward so her breasts could almost touch his balls. Her tongue snaked forward, its tip diving experimentally along his foreskin, teasing the slight hollow it formed with his glans. Her eyes flicked up to look at him, squinting dangerously in concentration.