08-12-2023, 12:59 AM
Jai looked like a man stricken. The tight emotion locked behind his tired eyes marked the path between duty and desire like he couldn’t fathom their coexistence, yet when he spoke through the crack of emotion it sounded more like disbelief than denial. She’d spied it in him before, that boyish insecurity. Nythadri considered how deeply it might have burrowed in him, then; her silence, and his discovery of her absence from the Tower when he came to find her. She’d never asked him why he was there, probably because she knew, and light but she’d never intended to hurt him that way. It should have been a reunion unfraught by the sorts of perils that waited outside the door now. She wished she’d given him that.
“You’ll feel me too,” she said simply. Not in an effort to convince, but because for a man who saw patterns in everything she sometimes wondered at his blinding propensity for self-delusion. Their fingers entwined as soft and sure as their threads, bound unconsciously in one another. An answer she already understood.
She had been prepared for the vestiges of his defences. For honesty. It was a promise and not a solution after all. But she had not been prepared for him to sweep her to him, or for his kiss. After the careful dance of self-denial, the surprise of it flushed her entirely into its captivation, and she held nothing back. Emotion shivered her through unchecked, every truth suppressed given outlet, and she found the way he left her breathless afterwards entirely unfair. It ruffled every sensible thought in her head. He still pressed close, his arms around her warm through the thin robe. Desire burned a very distracting ache, but it was the connection she lingered in. Though the words prompted an irreverent and unguarded smirk as he sank to his knees.
“It's the right thing,” she told him. A scathing sort of certainty, softened by the smile. She traced her hands through his hair, soothing the path of self-inflicted torment as she sank down too. A mystery he had any left, the way he scrubbed at it sometimes. His eyes never left hers, though for a moment she leaned close enough to press an intimate whisper into the shell of his ear. “I would have followed you north anyway, Jai Asad Kojima.” It wasn’t an incidental invocation of his name; a legacy shared and remembered. Nythadri was rarely sentimental, or not openly at least, but she tucked those things safe.
Saidar fluttered on soft wings by then. Her hand cradled the curve of his jaw as she made the weave, then let it sink in; searching for signs of recognition that he realised when it was done.
“You’ll feel me too,” she said simply. Not in an effort to convince, but because for a man who saw patterns in everything she sometimes wondered at his blinding propensity for self-delusion. Their fingers entwined as soft and sure as their threads, bound unconsciously in one another. An answer she already understood.
She had been prepared for the vestiges of his defences. For honesty. It was a promise and not a solution after all. But she had not been prepared for him to sweep her to him, or for his kiss. After the careful dance of self-denial, the surprise of it flushed her entirely into its captivation, and she held nothing back. Emotion shivered her through unchecked, every truth suppressed given outlet, and she found the way he left her breathless afterwards entirely unfair. It ruffled every sensible thought in her head. He still pressed close, his arms around her warm through the thin robe. Desire burned a very distracting ache, but it was the connection she lingered in. Though the words prompted an irreverent and unguarded smirk as he sank to his knees.
“It's the right thing,” she told him. A scathing sort of certainty, softened by the smile. She traced her hands through his hair, soothing the path of self-inflicted torment as she sank down too. A mystery he had any left, the way he scrubbed at it sometimes. His eyes never left hers, though for a moment she leaned close enough to press an intimate whisper into the shell of his ear. “I would have followed you north anyway, Jai Asad Kojima.” It wasn’t an incidental invocation of his name; a legacy shared and remembered. Nythadri was rarely sentimental, or not openly at least, but she tucked those things safe.
Saidar fluttered on soft wings by then. Her hand cradled the curve of his jaw as she made the weave, then let it sink in; searching for signs of recognition that he realised when it was done.