hellorhighwater | [GENESSIA] Inbox

The way she melted under his touch heated his blood, but the sounds she made, and those drowsy words of praise--they burned beautifully, had him pulling her closer, nuzzling the juncture between her neck and shoulder and itching to hear it again. That sleepy, hungry tone made him want and melt at the same time, to find every little kiss and caress that would make her sigh and sink further into him.

When she drew back enough to watch herself touch him, fingers playing idly over the lines between pectoral and deltoid, drawing lines over each swell of muscle, that burned at the front of his mind, along with a dozen other things--the possessive little way she nipped at his skin, the safe-exciting weight of her fingers around his wrists, the way she sprawled across his lap after announcing her presence when she walked in.

"...I don't know." he admitted, eyes black with passion as he looked up at her, smile soft and relaxed and, as it was so often, just a little awestruck at the sight of her. The hand at her nape slid away, settling on her trapezius so his fingertips could play against that delicate rise of skin, thumb brushing up over the softness just behind her ear. "Just...you. Wanna hold you, wanna touch you...I want--too much to pick just one thing. Is that weird?"

"That's why I asked." Her laughter-bright eyes flickered from her hand on his chest to the blurred outline of his kiss-reddened mouth, and then down to his waist where she could grip his shirt to pull it off, and back up again to the fading bite-marks she'd left on his neck and shoulders. And even while her gaze roved, she leaned in to seek and offer another kiss, and her body yearned for his arms to close around her and pull her in against him.

"I feel the same. I want everything we can have." That they would be living together now and they could have everything, anything, they wanted--for as long as they were together should've helped, but somehow it only made the passion-black in his eyes more compelling and their gentle touches more soothing, their kisses more arousing...everything felt more, bigger, stronger, enhanced by knowing they would be sharing a space and a life now.

She smoothed her hand down his arm to find his hand again, this time only to slip hers into it and thread their fingers together. "Maybe it would be easier to pick one thing you'd like later. I'll choose something too."

Neil sat up a little and lifted his arms as she tugged off his t-shirt, mouth going dry as her fingers drifted on the bite marks he still wore. Her eyes were a warm, delicious weight against his bare skin, and when she sank against him for another kiss he welcomed it greedily, hands sliding up to bury fingers in her hair. He loved the way she tumbled so easily into him, loved that lazy luxury of letting her strip him just so she could touch, so he could be touched. She was perfect, curled against his chest like this...and it never had to end.

That sense of comfort and safety and belonging hit him so hard as she slid her fingers into his that he couldn't breathe for a second, could only nod in agreement and look into her face with that beautiful, alien sense of home...

Just as there was a knock on the door.

"Room service!"

Neil's expression almost immediately turned murderous as he leaned a little to one side to glare past Regina and at the door, pupils glowing red-orange with dragon fire and a subsonic, bloodthirsty growl rolling deep in his chest.

"Neil." Although she laughed, the swat Regina delivered to his arm was sharp enough to get his attention.

"I'll be a minute!" she called out, leaned in to kiss him once more, a soft and shushing press of her lips, and then carefully unseated herself.

Ankle still sore from yesterday and body still a bit sore as well both from yesterday and the shower, she moved less gracefully and more purposefully as she went to the door. And once there, she leaned in the doorway to take the weight off her foot while she signed for the food.

The delivery faun's ears and nose twitched slightly as she looked past Regina, an amusement Regina assumed was directed at pancakes and ice cream for dinner for two adults until she caught the faun's gaze and saw it had dilated with arousal at the sight of Neil. Then Regina raised a single eyebrow at her with her tongue rolling behind her teeth as though forming threats or spells, and the faun squeaked an apology, left the cart, and literally scampered off.

Regina shut the door and leaned into the wheeled cart as she steered it back to the couch. And once there, she bent the weakened leg onto the couch, leaned in, and kissed Neil hard and possessive enough that she might as well just have said, MINE.

The little sting of the smack broke through his ire, drawing burning coal eyes back to hers...and the fire died almost immediately as he grinned at her, accepting the kiss meant to silence him.

Giving her his hand to steady herself as she got up, Neil watched her walk to the door, flopping back against the couch with a sigh as he lifted his arms to scrub them over his face and back through his hair, unwittingly putting himself on display in his barechested state.

He sat there a moment, until he felt an uncomfortable itch of awareness. Arms dropping and head lifting, he found himself briefly locking gazes with the faun looking past Regina and at him. Along with Regina's warning look, the faun got a puzzled, unhappy frown from Neil before she was frightened off by...

Well.

Regina's mouth clashed with his, hard and hungry and claiming--and despite the fact that he was actually getting kind of hungry, the cart of food was briefly forgotten as Neil kissed her back, a hand curling around her nape with every intention of dragging her back down and peeling off that pretty, sensible work dress with his damn teeth if he had to.

"Will you smack me if I tell you it's kinda hot when you're jealous?" he breathed with a grin between kisses.

Regina kissed his mouth open and fucked it thoroughly with her tongue, until the hand at the nape of her neck put enough pressure on her that she had to shift to avoid hurting her ankle worse. When she did, she gave him her (mostly) faux haughtiest look.

"I wasn't jealous. That faun had about as much charisma in her entire body as I do in my pinky for one thing, and for another, I trust you." She began uncovering plates to see what the twitch-nose little one had brought them. "I was possessive. And appreciative. They're different."

Whatever she wanted to call it, Neil loved it and wanted to see more of it--possessive, he damn sure felt possessed as fuck when she kissed him like that, and found himself wondering how to maybe make that a thing he could pick for later, like they'd talked about.

"Call it what you want, it's hot and I love it." he grinned, shifting to get to his feet. "And sit down, huh? I'll pick through the mess to feed us, get off that ankle. I'm askin', please--but seriously, park it and I'll ice it down after we eat. Maybe try to heal it a little more, too."

"Even at my worst, I never asked my servitors to serve half-naked," she observed, while giving him a long and very appreciative, eyes like glowing coals appreciative, once over. "But none of them looked like you."

None of them were as kind, as devoted, as powerful as he was either. None of them had loved her, either.

"As long as it's because you want to and not because you feel you have to, I won't complain."

“Still think it’s fuckin’ adorable that you really believe I would remotely feel put upon by lookin’ after the woman I love—or that you could make me do a damn thing I didn’t want to.” He chuckled as he started uncovering plates to see what was what. “You’re about six stories too short to scare me, and you can’t control a man with no heart. So, uh—“

He glanced up and over at her with a grin, enjoying the way she looked him over with that wicked heat in her eyes, making him feel weirdly claimed again by the intensity of her gaze.

“—shut up and enjoy the view.”

"It's adorable that you think I don't know you'd shove bamboo slivers under your fingernails if I asked you to, because I asked you to," she countered tartly as she settled back down onto the couch--to very much enjoy the view.

Because she did know, at least in this moment, that he'd do anything she asked of him. Which was exactly why she said the things she did, because heart or no heart, she didn't trust herself not to overstep and demand things from him that would compromise him somehow. So she deliberately shifted her thoughts a different, less 'service-oriented' direction.

"But I'd rather ask you to unbutton your jeans--" She sought his gaze and held it, letting him see the pure, sexual desire there. "And maybe unzip them just a little."

Neil’s gaze lifted from the dishes on the cart to meet her gaze, and lost his breath again at the look in her eyes. It didn’t help, either, that there was something else exciting about Regina when she got bossy—she was hot as hell when she got bossy...

He thought for a moment about pushing it, making her tell him to do it flat out. He knew she had issues with being sure of what he wanted, so he thought better of it and just reached down to slide open the button on his fly, tugging at it just a little so the zipper slid open about a quarter of the way. All the while, he held that unabashedly hungry gaze she leveled at him, his own darkening with need at the same time as he smirked, then without comment continued picking through the contents of the room service cart.

With someone else, that moment while he considered her request might have turned into a contest of wills: her gaze hardening into a demand, his flattening in stubbornness. For whatever reason, between them, the moment remained quiet and open. He could have denied her without raising her ire, and she simply waited willing to let it be entirely his choice.

So when he made the decision, did as she'd asked without comment, fuss, or unnecessary seduction, it sent a frisson of pleasure up her spine. It meant, too, that she could appreciate the view unabashedly, and she made no bones about doing so.

While her gaze slid down his chest and his abdomen, her tongue touched her top lip. She wet her bottom lip and caught it between her teeth while her lust-darkened gaze dipped into the opened V of his jeans to caress that soft, intimate skin. Her coal-black eyes smoldered when she lingered on the shadow of his pubic hair curling at the top of the zipper.

So intent on that small patch of skin, she was completely unaware of the way her hands rubbed against the outside of her thighs, palms against them on the way down, and fingers pressed in on the long, slow drag back up.

As Neil sorted out which plates were which, he could feel her gaze even before he let his eyes flick up now and again to watch her as she lost herself in staring. Those eyes sliding over his body, settling on that bare spot where his zipper hung open--it wasn't that different from the familiar feel of her fingers or knuckles rubbing along his stomach or splaying low against his belly, save that he felt like he was being consumed by that look rather than just touched.

And she was so lost in staring that she didn't even realize what she looked like, sitting there, hands running along her legs, coiling slowly like a storm lion about to pounce on the rabbit or blackjack it was about to have for its supper...

Neil had to swallow three times around a mouth and throat gone suddenly too dry to speak before he could get words out.

"I, uh--I got some real food to go with the pancakes and sweets." he rasped, voice gone husky with desire as he lifted his eyes to watch her face again. "What're you hungry for first? Real food, or dessert?"

"Food," she answered, lashes lifting and eyes widening just so over a wicked crescent of a smile. She might not know what she looked like to him in that moment, but she saw--oh yes, she saw--the effect she'd had on him.

There was a danger point, hovering out there, where she tipped from playfully predatory to cruelly so, and this was new for them, so she'd have to trust him to let her know if he felt objectified in an uncomfortable manner. Right now, it seemed held at bay by her own awareness that she adored him. That she loved him beyond breathing. That whenever he lifted his gaze to hers, it filled her with such thronging flutters that she felt overfull to bursting, like a perfectly ripened juicy plum.

"We can work up an appetite for dessert."

Ember's Balls, he loved that smile, that little edge between dark and light--that fucking hunger that made her look even more like a hungry storm lion about to strike.

For one split second, he just wanted her to: wanted her to strike him down, take what she wanted, be it his body, his soul, or just his throat when he offered it to her.

Swallowing around that powerful, fleeting urge, he just nodded--then hesitated, remembering for some reason a stupid movie he'd seen in his own world, something with a big wrestler and the guy who said the thing, the one in the mask...

It took him a second to remember the line, and when he did he smirked at her, then nodded again.

"As you wish." he replied, far too pleased with himself as he gave his attention to the cart again, putting a plate of food together for each of them.

Those three little words, she knew from having seen the film roughly a dozen times, meant three other little words, and even knowing how he felt, the allusion dropped her figurative knees out from under her.

I love you, too.

"Fetch me that glass of water, farm boy," she murmured, not entirely sure he'd recognize the allusion. But she needed him to stop playing with their food for a minute and come where she could feel his skin under her hands. The lust hadn't bled out her eyes or the pit of her stomach. It had just taken a momentary backseat to the flutters of love that kept her inner Bitch in check.

He did recognize it, and for a brief moment the smirk broadened to a bright, boyish grin of delight because she'd recognized it. The sweetness of its light quickly turned to something that burned hotter, with that look still in her eyes and the double meaning of the command making his chest tight with emotion--and the fact that he was still letting her boss him around making his own belly clutch with slow burning lust.

Without breaking her gaze, Neil moved around the side of the cart, reaching out to pick up one of the glasses of water sitting on it, then came to stand in front of her, looking down with a smile as he extended it out to her.

"As you wish."

Her gaze devoured him, every shift of muscle beneath his skin, every line of his body as his arm bent and then flexed in extension, the far-too-bright curve of his smile that had irritated her in New Dodge and now made her hunger for the plush warmth of his lips against hers. And that look in his eyes, like he couldn't decide whether to drop to his knees or shove the cart aside and ravish her--it set off sparklers of desire at the base of her spine.

Gaze still locked to his, she reached out for the glass, but bypassed it to trail her fingers over the inside of his wrist first to see if it occasioned a similar reaction to before. "Someone promised me pancakes and ice cream for dinner," she murmured, still stroking his skin.

Much like before, his breathing grew notably erratic, catching and stuttering as her fingers ran along the inside of his wrist, electric and strangely comforting at the same time. For a second, it brought all his thoughts to a screeching halt, narrowed the world to that single point of contact that pressed the air out of his lungs and rained sparks over every nerve in his body.

Then the world broadened again, and he managed to pull her voice out of the air, out of his memory of the last couple of seconds--and was weirdly proud of himself for not dropping the glass of water still in his hand.

"Ordered both." he confirmed, voice rough with need despite clearing his throat. "Hope you like vanilla."

Although he'd said as much already and she'd been encouraging him to finish plating the food and give it to her, Regina didn't tease or suggest his stupid was showing. No, the raw, naked need in his face had nothing in common with his tendency to babble, and it intrigued her.

It wasn't as though there'd been any shortage of sex for either of them the past month, and he'd been restrained and gentle before the food arrived. The only thing that had changed was him taking orders. He had told her repeatedly that he needed a leash; possibly he wanted one sometimes, as well.

"Vanilla's a mainstay. It complements both sweet and spicy." Pleased with both the text and the subtext there, she stroked his wrist again and then took the water glass without dropping his gaze. "But if you want something else, you can order it."

"I, uh--I did." he replied, distracted again by her hand on his wrist, fingers going boneless just as she took the glass from him. He caught, for a second, that she'd been prodding him to get the food--but he was severely distracted by the fact that one tiny touch from her was doing nearly as much for him as taking her to bed. And he'd been flirting, mostly, letting her order him around, but...part of it felt kind of good, at least in the moment.

It probably meant something, but she was still stroking his wrist, and he couldn't put a name to the little twist of longing that came with the touch.

Taking a deep breath, he blinked hard to try and clear the haze of lust clouding his head--with just enough success to nod towards the cart.

"Something from the world I was born in--it's called a reuben. Type of sandwich." he added as he licked lips gone suddenly dry, fully prepared to turn and grab the plates he'd been loading up...except that would mean pulling his wrist out of her grip, and he...really didn't want to.

The way he reacted, and his complete inability to hear the innuendo in her comment, it set her pulse to racing, and made it difficult for her to breathe steadily. And if she knew anything, it was that if he was losing his head, she needed to keep hers; they'd more or less agreed to the other evening.

So while she nodded, said "Granny made a good one," she tightened her grip on his wrist just slightly, and drank several long swallows of the icy water and focused on the chill of it going down--even though she couldn't quite avoid the dip of her gaze to where the swollen head of his cock just barely protruded from his open jeans.

"Kneel for a me a minute, love?" she asked softly, gesturing with the water glass to the space just in front of her on the couch. It wasn't a command, like before. He was coming unraveled, which made at her feet a safe place for him to be.

When her grip on his wrist tightened, Neil's breath rushed out of his lungs in a long, ragged sigh--and weirdly, he felt some tension go out of him, felt strangely grounded despite the way his body burned for her hands, her mouth, for every part of her he could get his hands on...

He wasn't even thinking as he sank to one knee in front of her--then brought his other leg down, kneeling at her feet rather than simply genuflecting, as he might before the throne of the Night Dragon back home.

Down on his knees like this, in front of Regina...it took him worlds away from thoughts of home when he brought himself back to the moment. No, this was nothing like kneeling before his king: this felt beautifully, impossibly good, it felt safe.

It felt...right.

As he knelt, she drank another long swallow of ice water and then set the glass aside to move to the edge of the couch. She hardly waited for the second knee to touch the ground before she reached out to cradle his jaw in her hand, tilt his head up enough so she could look into his eyes.

A significant part of her wanted to take the space he was in and use it. Kiss him once softly, and leave him to kneel there while she ate. Feed him a bite of food from her plate, press a foot to his crotch and let him rock against it, stroke his hair and then stand and walk away, so that he couldn't see but only hear her. That part wanted to see just how far she could put him into this raw, exposed, vulnerable space and how long he'd stay there.

But they hadn't intended anything like this, and she was still raw from the week and last night especially. While she would happily explore what got him hot, she couldn't let herself do it while teetering at the edge of an emotional precipice. So she didn't do any of those things, only murmured his name and then drew him towards her to rest his head on her knees.

He nuzzled into her hand the moment she cradled his jaw, eyes shutting with another heavy sigh. He wasn’t sure when he stopped thinking, but he had: his head felt beautifully empty, safe and so light he would have floated away if not for the hand on his face, the soft sound of his name on her lips, tethering him to the spot.

She drew his head to rest on her knees, and the lightness felt heavy again, like her fingers wrapped around his wrist. He felt steady, a stone in a swift moving river sinking deeper and deeper beneath the surface. He just had to sit there and breathe, let her touch him...

Bit by bit, that steady feeling crept into Neil’s thoughts, making him feel...more normal. Breath came freer, his head felt less fuzzy and foggy—and as he knelt there with his head on her knees, he felt good, but kind of embarrassed.

He wasn’t totally sure what the hell had happened to his damn brain—but he wanted to figure it out so he could do it again.

Drawing a deep breath, Neil twisted his head to press a kiss to her knee, one hand fumbling to find hers.

“M’ okay.” He sighed, trying to lift his head. “Hey—I’m okay, Regina.”

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six

Re: 9/24 - around quarter to six