Motel Nowhere

[Oriena]

Her eyes were storming so dark they were almost black. Ori didn’t shrug off the anger, and she was angry. Not at him really, though it wouldn’t protect him from bearing the brunt if she snapped before she got out the door. Her life had been spiralling since the Kremlin ball, but tonight was the first time she’d realised how truly fucked she was. Alone at the bar she’d spent a long time thinking about the insidious drip of blood from her nose. The chokehold of mortality was arresting, but mostly she’d thought about how her oath to the queen wasn’t one she couldn’t keep. It was one she wouldn’t keep. There was a reckless liberation in that understanding. She wasn’t lying about having nothing to lose. The Ascendancy had made a mistake letting her loose.

At that moment she wanted to hurt Nox; twist the knife he kept lodged in own his chest with malicious words, not give him the catharsis of remedial bruises. Tension swelled as the venom on her tongue died. The worst thing she could do to him was leave, but she wanted to see him realise it. Ori wasn’t primed to protect herself should the darkness in him surge towards a bloody and violent reaction; if she was goading it wasn’t because she was gunning for a fight, it was because she wanted a reaction that wasn’t wrapped up tight in control – or to crush him under the weight of his own miserable rules. So there was an actual second of surprise when he grabbed the back of her head and kissed her instead.

It was hungry and visceral, and an immediate match to gasoline.

Ori didn’t hold back. The desperation was aphrodisia, and she claimed it without a second thought. Not as breath or salvation offered to a dying man; Ori pulled him right down into the hellish depths with her, a furious frenzy of desire. She rammed him backwards into the table he’d vacated, well aware he was fresh from the ring but unmindful of any lingering injury. The hand in her hair could snap her neck with a flex, but it only fuelled her aggression. The chainlinks of his shirt were cold in her grasp as her touch travelled up his stomach, twisted it in her fist until it bit his skin. A thread of power warmed the metal, a tease of heat, and a demand.