gyges, transfixed
Click.
Click.
Click.
SCRR-SNIKT. A muttered sound of distracted pain.
Click.
Click.
Krelian had long since ceased to hear it: the soft, steady pulse of teeth tapping on the pen's ceramic barrel, leaving tiny dents in the smooth surface, counting out the seconds like the hand on a clock of glass. Counting like his heartbeats, and just as easily ignored, his eyes declaring sovereignty over the remainder of his senses, leaving hearing drowned in a sea of muffled black. Still as ice, lined in a wash of cold blue light that made his features seem fragile and pale.
Watching.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Darkness is smooth on the curves of her neck, gathering in the hollows and sheer across the planes. The light is out, but the camera is well-equipped; even the patterns of the shadows on her skin are painstakingly, painfully clear on the monitor. Smooth lips touch the dark edges and corners, light through the dimness, pale hair on pale skin, white on black on white, domino feathers on soft flesh. She cranes back, indigo hair darker in the dark, her eyes closed; soft lashes graze the delicate skin beneath. Her back braces against the desk, metal warming to the pulse of her body in flames. The strong unfamiliar hands on her hips, holding her down and near, her thighs curved around his and detailing new patterns in the fabric of his pants where they clasp and hold and it falls crookedly beneath them. The dark halo of her nipple rubbed to waking against his bare chest, her nails dimpling his shoulder, slim fingers trailing pools of shadow through his hair. Her lips, sweet, apart, crying for the air. Beaded sweat, a second's pearl then brushed aside with by a searching tongue, is for a second a prism of reflected unlight.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Of course there was a camera set up in Ramsus's office. Such an unstable force couldn't go unchecked; and he was Krelian's in a way few others were.
Of course Ramsus's lover, in habit established long before he could imagine, would have initiated a liason in that same office, with little regard to propriety or potential surveillance. It was, after all, her style.
And now, alone in the guardpost with its bank of security monitors, every one of dozens tuned to that single camera view, a thin line of sweat tickling his circlet, muscles all tensed solid, with one hand locked on the arm of his chair and the other tapping the pen against his teeth, Krelian watched.
There was no of course in that.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Lips closing on an aching bud of nipple, soft white marble enfolding dark silk in liquid curves of contrast. Her back arches, bathed in rippling spears of cold gray light reflected off the desk's metal from between the windowshades, an uncharted slope of honeyed ivory. Her mouth is wet around a wordless cry, tinny and hollow through the poor speakers. The hands, the stranger's hands, press her tighter on his lap. Hips writhe, shifting fluidly as she, clutching, seeks more of touch, the damp curls between her thighs gliding as if to tease in and out of light and view. Her partner, the third and interloper, stiffens and rocks with her tidal caress, letting his head fall back. She seizes his jaw and claims an ungentle kiss, hunger in her searching tongue. He can hear the wet sounds of that most basic union.
Click.
He was not thinking, as he watched, about the psychological implications of his behavior. He was not thinking about the moral judgements that could be placed upon this act; not of the names of voyeurism or perversity or even simple fascination. He was not thinking about what it would be like if his own were the hands running over her flesh, cupping her hips and helping her rise and turn to rest with her back on his chest, not about the taste of her skin or the sound of his name in her mouth and not Ramsus's (Kahr, she purred in tin echo, the consummate actress).
In point of fact, he was not thinking about anything at all.
Except, perhaps, a soft-skinned hand cupping his, the warmth that ran through the flesh as its injuries were healed. Perhaps eyes that had never quite stopped being cold. A romantic might have said he was thinking of missed opportunities.
Krelian was not a romantic. And anyway, he missed nothing.
Click.
Click.
Hands searching over soft skin, dimpling the graceful curve that outlines the sides of her hips; shadows glove the hands, dress her breasts and belly in dark gauze, pool in her lap. Light is haloed in his pale hair, is swallowed in her dark. A morality play made immoral, immortal in heated flesh, drowning in the tall cool afternoon. She nips his fingers, and he gasps; her teeth are pearls, his face is hidden. Light and shadow. The hand not captured, sorry to be free, skates her belly and settles between her thighs. Her legs part to the music of a metallic gasp, stretching like an abandoned marionette's with her toes straining to the cool tile floor. White light graces the twitching muscles of her inner thigh. Spread, her body begs; the hand delivers. Her writhing, pinioned in his lap, sends his moans doubling hers, drives them to crescendo.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Click.
His interest, was, of course, academic. What else would it be?
He was keeping an eye on her.
He was keeping an eye on both of them.
Well, both eyes.
His eyes were open. His eyes were open to her games. His eyes were open to his own motivations. His eyes were open to what was going on here. His eyes were... were...
Starting to hurt.
He made himself blink.
Click.
Click-click.
A gathering of energy. An escalation of tension. Every trembling muscle on her body outlined now in a fine fringe of sweat, light dazzling in the beads, the afternoon lit up along the curves of her wriggling form. Her body in fragments: a hand, light, in a curve around his wrist, her dry quivering mouth shaping protest that never comes, her legs drawing up as though she would tuck herself into the balled-up form that she, unlike most, never took in the womb, the infrequent glimpses of her sex, wet, wide, teased beyond endurance, a budding leaf cupped in a statue's hand. A gathering. An escalation.
A release.
An explosion; a waterfall; a shouting chord of triumph. She ripples like a wave, cries out like a keening dove, shudders and folds and arches like nothing in the world but a woman at the peak of a climax. Her fingers dig furrows in that marble forearm, her pleasure granting her the strength to dimple stone. Her hips grind into his, her legs pulling and stretching, and his cry intertwines with hers, his head dropping to her shoulder as he thrusts and joins her in that place not of this earth.
Then motion stops. Arms encircle her waist. Lips brush his ear with whispered words, too low to be shared by an outsider. They lean on each other. They are silent, united, alone.
Click.
Click.
*click*
The monitors fell obediently dark. He stared into them, one after another, searching their black depths, searching as deeply as if he thought he would find some answer there. Drained of sight and sound, the room was flat, hollow, an empty space waiting to be filled. This dark world in which he sat was now what seemed like the dream. A dream that he would perhaps wake from someday; wake and find himself... where?
After a moment, Krelian realized that the pen was clenched between his teeth, and removed it. Fortunately, it had not begun to leak.