No longer. No fucking longer.

When she sneers, his eyes flash. The ground next to him involuntarily begins to bubble, as his livid temper breaks the iron wall that he holds his magic behind. The behemoth is unused to being on the receiving end of her contempt, and he hates it - but still he refuses to waver, simply arching his ears backwards and swishing his tail as the only signs of his emotions. The ground settles back to where it belongs as he manages to smother the volcano inside, with herculean effort.

God damn emotions. Being numb, it transpires, had actually been a hell of a lot easier than this.

Her gaze darts away, and the roaring beast inside him purrs at this perceived submission. Her face twists into apology, and the sight of it, the sight of her, bending to him, sends an involuntary twitch towards his loins. It disgusts him, but it's there. The little voice in his mind points out that it's probably a lie, that Nymeria is a master of creating mockeries of true emotions and wearing them like masks to deceive dumb beasts like him. It warns him not to believe her, not to fall for it - it tries to persuade his stupid, stupid brain to haul his colossal body away from this situation before he does or says something he regrets.

It fails. Because she's coming closer, closer, so close he can smell the womanly reek of her skin, can see each delectable contour of her body. Her haunches are suddenly there, her tail and her odour and her everything, and the involuntary spike of passion to his loins turns suddenly into a full-blown spasm. What is she doing? She begins to groom him, and his jaws reach out without his bidding to return the favour, darting expert teeth across the dock of her tail and her flanks. The rational parts of him - of which there are not many - scream at him to back away, to take his desire and his rage and his hunger elsewhere, but they are ignored by the rest of him. By the parts of him that command his tongue to form a guttural, monstrous growl; the parts that persuade him to shift to the side to press his goliath size and weight against her; the parts that bid sweat to bead across his body and lather across the hard muscles of his neck and flanks.

"What...are you doing?" he manages to gasp, trying to force anger and carelessness into his voice but failing miserably; he continues to groom her, groin burning, heart thudding, whilst those rational bits of his mind desperately hammer against the bars of the cage he keeps them in.