Page 61 of Night in a Waste Land

She couldn’t deny that.

Beck sighed and turned his head, presenting his beautiful, now-horned profile. His black hair set off his sharp features in even greater relief. Harsh and lovely, that was Beck. “Of course he is,” he murmured, tone lower, rawer – more honest. “I’m sure he’s wonderful, and you of course care for him in return. I’m not – listen, when I say I’m not angry, I’m not trying to be dictatorial. I’m truly not angry. But I’m it saying wrong, like always.” He turned back to her, gaze open, now; broken-open, tinged with deep sadness. “I’m sorry that I left you before, sweetheart. But I can’t say I would go back and do it differently.”

She swallowed, a lump forming in her throat.

“And I’m not sorry that you were spared – that he saved you. There is no way possible to thank him for that. But I can stay a step back. I won’t ask you to choose. I forfeited any claim on your heart the night I chose revenge for the past over a life with you in the future.” He attempted a smile, a wobbly, pathetic thing.

Her eyes stung. She blinked, and stepped toward him – heart breaking when she saw the surprise flicker through his gaze, the doubt. His hands tightened on the arms of the chair, claws squealing faintly against the wood.

“You’re an idiot,” she told him, voice choked. “You’re the most brilliant man I’ve ever met, but you’re also an absolute idiot.” She leaned forward and put her hands on his shoulders, having to clutch to him for balance thanks to the awkwardness of the angle.

He blinked up at her in a moment of blank incomprehension. Then he let out a breath, and she saw his throat move, saw the flex of tendons there. He uncrossed his legs, carefully, made a space for her between them; gripped her waist and reeled her in, until she lost her balance totally and was forced to straddle his lap.

A very rewarding development, actually.

“I am an idiot.” He sounded pained. He reached to cup her cheek with one hand, so carefully; she felt the scrape of his claws down the side of her neck, and leaned into the heat of his palm. Trusting. It was important to her that he know she wasn’t frightened or disgusted by the changes in him.

“I won’t apologize,” she said again, voice unsteady now. She smoothed her hands across his chest, its muscled planes achingly familiar beneath the soft cotton of his shirt. He was warmer, though, nearly hot, as if feverish. “But I am sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Hush, sweetheart,” he whispered, and pulled her mouth down to meet his.

It wasn’t their first kiss since his resurrection, but it was the most private, and the most honest, too. His tongue teased at the seam of her lips and she opened for him right away, welcoming the hot slide of his tongue against hers. She could feel the points of his fangs, against her lips, and her tongue, an electric scrape amid the lush softness of the act.

It was as consuming and dizzying as kissing him had always been. It wasn’t just about the care and talent, the gentle rasp of his thumb over her cheek, coaxing her jaw wider, the sly flex of his tongue; there was something deeper to it, something soul-shattering that had rocked her foundations from the outset – that had given her the nudge to reach out of the pie safe and take his hand that very first night.

She became gradually aware that she was kneading at his chest like a cat – and that she was sitting on his crotch, and that he was growing steadily harder beneath her. She gave an experimental circle with her hips, and he groaned into her mouth.

Andpurred. The sound rippled out from inside him, vibrating through his chest, and through her hands.

She pulled back with a shocked gasp, and felt wetness flood her sex.

He was panting, his pupils expanded into tall, vertical slits that threatened to swallow all the golden glow. “I always was an animal dressed up like a man,” he said, ruefully. “This makes sense, I guess.”

“I like it.”

He groaned again, his purr swelling into a growl in the air between them, and he dragged her back for another kiss. Wet and messy, fangs scraping hard across her lip. When she circled her hips again, he lifted up to meet her, the ridge of his hard cock grinding along the center seam of her tac pants. Then it was her turn to groan, breaths harsh and quick against his lips.

“Rose.Rosie.” He raked his claws back through her hair, and down her throat, petting at her almost frantically. His chest and his belly heaved as he fought for breath. He was straining against her, wings rustling. Something coiled around her ankle – his tail, she realized, pulsing in time to his ragged breaths. “Please don’t tease me, sweetheart. Not if–”

She kissed him hard. “Not teasing.” And started fumbling at the zipper of her jacket with clumsy fingers.

He helped her push it off her shoulders – nothing mask-like about his face, now, its lines taut with anticipation and want, his eyes blazing, his mouth soft and wet and gleaming from kissing. The sight of it had her stomach tightening almost painfully – and that was before he took the hem of her shirt in both hands – claws scraping teasingly against her skin – and pushed it up.

When she’d pulled it off over her head, and dropped it behind her on the dirty floor, uncaring, she glanced down to find Beck staring at her chest. At the two pendants hanging there from the chain around her neck: the rose and the crown.

He reached out slowly, his hand trembling at the last, and pressed one clawed finger to the pendants, one and then the other. “You kept them,” he breathed.

“I wanted to keep more, but there was too much…so I took what was most important.” She covered his hand with hers, pressed it more firmly to her chest. “These are the most valuable things I’ve ever owned.”

“No, the dagger–”

“The dagger was a useful tool. And an even more useful offering to help me bring you back. But it wasn’t valuable. It wasn’t a token of love, like these.”

He stared another moment – and then lifted his hand away, drawing hers with it. She saw his long lashes flutter down on his cheeks as he closed his eyes and tipped forward to rest his forehead at the base of her throat. He nosed faintly at the pendants, his breath rushing warm down her breastbone, tightening her nipples inside her bra.

She touched his shoulders, his neck – and then, drawn by its silky softness against the backs of her hands, his hair. It was a different color, but it felt the same sliding through her fingers, heavy and slippery and addictive.

He opened his mouth against her sternum, tasted her skin with his tongue. Shifted downward, his hands tightening on her waist until she felt the prick of his claws.

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