Re: [Carnival - Adult]
His pulse rose with the moon, and Rory was sweating under the ridge of his collar as he followed her deeper into the trees. Following her, the pale bird at the end of his dreams, it was too much like a hunt, the stalking habits of the bad dog he became in the dreams that were not any dream at all, just another extension of the curse that had become his afterlife. He hunted the flutter of her robe through the shadowed lake of spindled tree branches above and fallen leaves below. Not that she ever got very far out of his reach, but even if she had, even if she was halfway across the world, Rory thought that it wouldn't matter. He could always taste her in his mouth.
She pulled ribbons, exposed herself to the night like that night in his motel room, and she wore the shadows just as shamelessly on this night as the one that came before. He followed with his eyes, saliva pooling on the savage blade of his tongue, tracking the movement of her hands as her fingers dragged up and then down. She asked that question, if she made him want to sin, and Rory glanced up from the place where her hands rested on her thighs, up to her face. He seemed a little surprised, and he wasn't exactly somebody who seemed like they got surprised by much. Maybe it was the truth of it, a truth he hadn't considered until she'd said it. There was a part of him, some deep part that cut down past something as basic as attraction. She was connected to him, like the moon, like demons and crossroads and promises. "You make me want to live."
He crossed grass and twigs, there was a dull snap of dead leaves under his shoe, and he came closer. The steps were slow, edging him closer in a practiced and nonthreatening demonstration. He didn't want to have to chase her further, not when she was here, close. He reached the tree, the temple of her pale eyes wide and watching when he touched her, just on the outside of her arm there. His fingers lingered at her elbow, then brushed upward along the soft skin of her bare arm. "Are you cold? You'll catch your death out here."
He leaned in to kiss her, to kiss the cold away, to kiss her so that the weight of her presence was on his lips instead of knifing into his heart.