i am the vanguard of your destruction

Girl you're out of your mind, you're my partner in crime.
And I'm sure you had your reasons, you change 'em every season.

It was there, between them; fire-lines of tension and electrical wiring, coiling and writhing, twisting tighter and tighter, until there was no escape. Not from his pulse, or from her, or from this—he'd played himself too well, broken down, all the way down. His mind was full of her, his blood was full of her, and the sunlight striking her sweat-slick skin bit his eyes harder than anything else had ever done.

Struck him harder than the dazzling light on the waves.

Each of her breaths vibrated through him, flanks touching, merging, blurring; burning. Each moment, with her tail flashing against his chest and his teeth rubbing at her dock, was torture; each moment with his eyes glued on hers, each moment of holding back the fire roaring inside of him. Because he could not deny that he was a beast, that there was something in him tearing its way out, swept up in flames and passion.. something that tugged at its tether, somehow still waiting in its impatience.

And then, those dark blue eyes locked on his, on him, scoured his soul clean until nothing but the fire remained—nothing but the way her gaze made him feel, and the thrumming of his heart.

The rush of blood through tense veins.

A deep, guttural sigh escaped him—a single moment of.. relief? The calm before the storm, the moment in which fate turned upon itself and something, somewhere, was irrevocably altered in the spun webs of the world.

But all of that was as distant and cold as the stars.

She was much closer, Alleshia of no face and no name, her smell and taste overpowering, overwhelming, drowning his mind: and for a split moment, the sheer magnitude of what he could do—would do—nearly frightened him into flight. That small part that was still Mauja.

She anchored him with her nearness, with her perfection, with the hot sun and the sand and her body, tail swaying to the side—and that stallion Liam was in him, moving him, chest pressing against the bunched mass of her haunches, savoring the strength of her body. Appreciating it. Wanting it. She could not reach him with her maw, could not set his skin aflame with her touch—

—but there was something else she could do for him.

He suddenly knew that he needed her, right now, and whatever thin compulsion that made him drag it out snapped; he let his mind burn up in the flames, sharing the heat of his body with another flame-wreathed creature of the night.

[ @[Sialia] -- finally, sorry for the wait. ]