stay.

Erich

Eighteen minutes later, the Mustang skids into the Hay Adams' parking lot -- again -- so fast that it rides up over the corner of a curb, parks crookedly between a Mercedes and a Porsche SUV, and shuts down.

People stare at Erich as he stands in the lobby, mashing his button into the elevator button. Upstairs he practically -- no, he flat-out runs down the hall, arrives at her door breathing hard for more than one reason. He knocks.

Celia

Melantha says she's not in heat. She can wait. Erich can't seem to. He rushes, he speeds, he runs and he knocks louder and faster than he really needs to.

She smiles when she opens the door, his fist still raised. Someone seeing them -- though right now no one sees them, no one but the people downstairs who noticed that guy rushing around like he's in a panic -- might think

god, they're just kids.

In a way, they are. Her best friend had never seen Mulan, so they ate cheesecake and watched Mulan and talked about boys and about mean people and cuddled and fell asleep in colorful pajamas. She likes this boy and he likes her and she can't even think about him without thinking about sex and she's never really felt that way about anyone.

Melantha is wearing lingerie.

Her feet and her legs are bare and he can just barely see her panties -- partly because they're nearly nonexistent to begin with and partly because on top of them she's wearing a babydoll negligee. It's black. It opens down the front, splitting to either side, hardly mattering because the fabric of it is sheer anyway. There's a purple satin ribbon tied just below her breasts, the cups covering them trimmed with lace.

That smile isn't shy. Not really. Well maybe a little. Mostly she just looks pleased.

Erich

Erich is speechless for a second. His eyes drop from Melantha's and she can all but feel his gaze, hot, molten, pouring down her breasts and her abdomen, lingering at the juncture of her thighs, dropping all the way to her bare feet. The truth is there is a moment, a brief and painful one where he wonders if this is what she wore for Jack, if she just hasn't changed yet, but then

his eyes come back to hers and he decides so what, it doesn't matter if she did and it doesn't matter if she didn't. She didn't pick Jack, she picked him. Erich. He's the one she texted and then almost-sexted and then invited over.

So he steps into the room and lets the door shut behind him and catches her around her waist, smiling lopsidedly, pulling her against his body. He feels hard and solid under his clean clothes; he smells like cheap soap and hard water and like himself. His hands are big and they cover immense stretches of her sides, her back, as he kisses her standing in the entryway of her hotel suite.

Celia

She's smiling against his mouth. There's gotta be something wrong with this, she thinks. Dressing up for this just like the way she dresses up when it's not this, when it's one of them. There's gotta be something meta-wrong with being turned inside out by a very male gaze and enjoying the way it makes her feel, and yet

she feels like sex incarnate. She feels like a goddess who is worshipped for her sighs, who can cause madness and devotion. She feels like Melantha, too, putting herself on even footing with a boy she's been thinking of for twenty minutes, shirtless and in low-slung jeans, sweating and flexing without seeming to notice, with those soft lips of his and the way they wrap around her nipple. If anyone was objectified and sexualized without their permission tonight, she was doing it to him first.

And then he gave her permission, in a roundabout way. And she put this on, and gave him permission, too.

Besides, she thinks, rucking up his shirt and holding him by the belt-loop at his hip with one hand and sliding her other hand down the front of his jeans,

but by that point she can't remember what came after besides.

Erich

The funny thing is, in a way they're both thinking of all the reasons everything they've ever known or learned up until now is telling them this is wrong, or bad, or at the very least taboo in some way. They're thinking of it right up until they're not thinking about it anymore, and then --

then they're kissing each other the way they do, eagerly, hotly, smiling and then not smiling anymore but panting; he's gasping as she reaches down his pants. He helps her with his shirt, tugs it over his head and lets it drop, a scrap of cotton fabric on the carpet.

She's moving out tomorrow. Maybe the place is actually neat. Maybe it's actually packed, or maybe he'll come help her -- no, wait, he'll just be here to help her tomorrow. Maybe. Or maybe she'll ride him like a pony and then dropkick him out the window, laughing, and he'd be okay with that too even if it means he spends the night in his car in her parking lot and then comes back up in the morning. It doesn't matter; he's just happy right now, and he's smiling again as his hands roam all over her, ruck up her negligee, slide down to slide under the flimsy waistband of her nearly-nonexistent panties.

He touches her like that, shamelessly, moaning into her mouth at whatever she's doing with him beneath the waistline. He massages his palms on her ass, squeezes her cheeks, reaches all the way down between her legs to rub his fingertips over her cunt. He gasps at that, the feel of her, what wetness he finds there; gasps not for the first time since he's stepped in here, withdraws his hand and picks her up altogether, carries her

bedward.

Celia

At least he's not arguing with her anymore that he shouldn't do anything with her because she's a different tribe and she's so pure and he knows where this goes and he's going to get in trouble and this is dishonorable. At least he's not saying all these things when she's not even one hundred percent sure she wants to do anything with him at all. At least he didn't say any of that when she kissed him out in the woods, pulling him into her sleeping bag and rolling him under her.

Maybe she'll ride him like a pony. If she could read that thought flying through his mind she might growl, might pin him down and do exactly that, might rest her hands on his chest and go at him with her lower lip between her teeth and her lingerie on, eager and mindless.

Her hand down his jeans knows what it's doing even if every time she tries to think clearly she finds every thread of thought flying out of her

Both of them can't keep their hands off of each other. Her palm sliding over his cock through his boxers, tearing open the button of his fly with her other hand while she walks backward, trying to lead him further into the room. And he's kissing her, palming her ass, stretching out her panties with his wrists, stroking his fingers over her pussy. Melantha leans her head back, biting her lip as though there's some reason to restrain the little moan that leaves her throat.

They reach the edge of her bed. Melantha, panting now as well, holds him by the hips and turns him around, pushing him to sit on the bed where, for a moment,

she just leans back and looks at him. The fly of his jeans half-open, his chest bared, his lips red from kissing her. She stares at him, her eyes glazed and heavy lidded, before she slips her panties the rest of the way off, dropping them down her legs and climbing onto his lap. Her hands are on his face, lifting his chin, devouring his mouth with a groan.

Erich

They haven't said a goddamn word to each other. Like literally: they have not spoken to each other since she walked out of this hotel room nearly a week ago. What words they have exchanged were done over the airwaves, and they unraveled into typos and noises and little ASCII hearts.

He doesn't speak now either. He doesn't really have time to. He can't stop kissing her, and when she leans her head back he just kisses her throat instead. She rubs her palm over him, that ridiculously sensitive patch of flesh just under the head, and his legs almost go out from under him. They're at the bed suddenly. She turns him around with more strength and initiative and dominance than any of her marks would have ever thought her capable of, turns him around and gives him a push that lands his ass on the bed.

Now he's looking up at her. And she's looking down at him: him with his shirt off and his jeans undone, his boxers doing a not-too-great job of hiding the raging hard-on she felt moments ago. His chest moves with his breathing. He has his hands on the mattress behind him, propping himself up, and he leaves them there as she puts her hands on his face,

lifts his chin,

oh, they kiss again, he moans into this one low and rough, it's really more like a growl. She climbs into his lap and he wraps one arm around her waist. She still has her negligee on but the panties are gone, that's what matters. He flops down on the bed, his arms around her pulling her with him. They bounce a little on the mattress. He kicks his way up the bed, his undone jeans rumpling down with the slide until they're around his knees, around his ankles, off. Then he's fighting with his shorts, she's helping him get them down, he's putting his hands on her body instead and pushing that negligee up and up until he can fill his hands with her breasts.

"I kinda want you to ride one out on me." Oh look, words after all: panting and unsteady, but words. "I just want you to ride me until you come, 'kay?"

Celia

Melantha huffs a laugh at that. She's straddling him now, and he's naked now, and her hands are roaming over his chest and his hands are up her negligee and holding her breasts. It feels like it's been longer than a week since she saw him last, heard his voice, smelled him. And yet even while he's panting, talking to her, Melantha just keeps kissing him. She's touching him hungrily, as though seeking out some part of him she hasn't run her hands over yet. But he tells her what he wants, what he kinda wants, 'kay? and she laughs, soft and humid, across his jaw.

"What else did you think I was gonna do?" she asks him, amused and -- let's face it -- horny, nipping his lower lip with her teeth before she kisses him again.

But she doesn't. Not yet, anyway. She rubs herself against him, rolling her hips and stroking him with her cunt instead of her hand, all but purring into his mouth as she kisses him.

Erich

"Oh, my god," Erich says, only it's more like a muffled moan because she's kissing him; kissing him and rubbing herself on him in that way that makes him simultaneously want to tear his boxers off and lose track of what he was thinking at all.

What he's thinking, though, or trying to think, so that this reminds him of the camping trip. This reminds him a little of the way they first made love, and how she stroked herself over him then, too, but god she wasn't such a tease then, she ground against him twice or three times at most and then she reached to fit him inside her like he was born to be there. His head falls back. From a rumpled mess of her pillows and sheets he looks up at her, half-dazed and half-smiling, feeling her breasts against his palms, her nipples tight on themselves. He pulls her up along his body, pushes her negligee up, puts his mouth on her breasts and sucks at her with this low sound of satisfaction that seems to come from somewhere deep inside him, seems to vibrate right across his tongue, her skin, to house itself somewhere behind the bars of her ribs.

Erich is pushing his shorts down as he licks at her, sucks at her; it's a slow warm rhythm and as much as he wants her, as much as he sped and screeched around corners and yanked into parking spaces and ran up the stairs, all that hurry seems to concentrate and shift into something else. Intensity. Enjoyment. And god, there is a lot to enjoy: the softness of her skin and the smell of her; the texture of her nipple against his lapping, swirling tongue; her stomach brushing the head of his cock where their bodies rub together, making him lift his hips half-involuntarily against that friction.

And now he's pushing his boxers down and kicking them down and soon enough they fall off the tips of his toes to rumple on the ground. Now they're both naked, or near enough, though she still has a negligee rucked up and he still has his socks on. He'd laugh at himself if he still cared. Now he's letting her breast go, covering it with his hand as though to imprint the sensation or soothe it, pulling her down and shifting himself up and

now there's nothing between their bodies, not where it matters; he's hard and she's wet and when they come into contact he drops his head to the covers, transported, moaning to god again, only this time there's a different name attached:

"Oh, my god, Melantha."

Celia

She's not a tease. He came over here hard, his mind nearly lost, and now she's wet but she's not ready for this part to end yet so she's doing as she damn well pleases and if Erich doesn't like it well,

well,

Erich can have feminist arguments with his hand instead.

Melantha and he are, for lack of a better word, rubbing all over each other. They fight his boxers down and out of the way until she can start stroking herself off on his cock, kissing mouths and lapping at breasts. She tastes like she smells, like being in her presence feels. It's like touching time itself. Like being buried and coming back to life. Like... her. Like the one he knows.

Erich is making oaths to god or to her or one and the same, but Melantha is just making sounds. Wriggling and moaning and kissing him, kissing his neck, running her hands over his chest and his sides, kissing his arm just to feel the muscle there jump under her tongue. She crawls all over him, shameless and eager, but her cunt never loses contact with his cock for more than a second. Every time it does she grinds back against him, gasping, losing his mouth for a moment, her eyes closing and her mouth opening with soundless exhales of pleasure.

Erich

He over here with his mind nearly lost. Now there's no qualifier on that statement. Erich is going out of his head here: his hands going to his brow, riffling back through his short hair as his eyes rolls shut, as his hips buck, as he groans.

"Fuck," he exhales, "fuuuck, Melantha, please, I'm losing it over here."

Her hands are on his chest or splayed over his sides; her breasts are pressing to his chest, which is a sensation that they can both agree they love; she's panting as she grinds herself on his cock and he's just thinking in flashes and adjectives and expletives now: hot, wet, fuck, god.

And his hands are back on her. He pushes them up under the back of her negligee. He pulls her down on him, kissing her neck, holding her as he lifts his hips and grinds hard against her, strokes fiercely and energetically against her cunt like he's fucking her even if he's not. Close enough. Close enough to make him groan against her ear, anyway; suck at her neck.

Celia

She laughs again. Dark and warm and vicious and tender. She kisses his chest over his heart, thinking of the bead that Charlotte made for her, the one she made for Erich, as though all that mattered was that they find each other. Oh, she does like him.

With her negligee pushed up like that, he can only see -- only feel -- her breasts through the sheer chiffon that hangs down from the cups of the bralette. It's nice. She revels in it while he grabs at her, moans, fucks himself against her pussy and swears nonsense at the ceiling.

"You just want me to ride one out on you, remember?" she says, and, okay,

now she's teasing him a little, giving him a hard round grind of her hips when she says:

"You just want me to come on you, remember?"

Erich

YDI.

That is the sign that flashes bright red and neon behind Erich's eyelids as his eyes fall shut because, god, she's doing it again. "Oh my fucking god," he moans, and it really is a moan: the sort of sound you make when you realize you, for example, drove all the way to the campsite but forgot your tent. And then he opens his eyes. He's determined: "Okay. All right. I can do this."

Erich reaches back and grabs the edge of the mattress. Bites his lip, breathing in harsh, caught little blasts, nostrils flaring every time she rides down on him or he -- moving like he has no control over this, moving like he can't help it at all -- thrusts up.

Celia

Now that makes her laugh for real. Bright and happy and joyous, sunlight on dew instead of fire contained by the rich earth. She laughs at his determination and she kisses him longingly, lovingly, while he lifts his arms over his head and grabs the mattress.

Sweetly, or at least smiling that way, Melantha lifts her body from his. They both lose the sensation of her breasts on his chest, and he can hear the rustle of her hair, smell it as it hangs down and swings away when she rises up.

Her hands smooth over his chest. She looks at him, and she runs her hands up her own legs and her stomach and unties that purple ribbon and opens her negligee and just lets it fall off, slip down her arms. It drops onto his feet and then falls between them, slippery as water itself. She touches herself, palms on her breasts and her torso again, touching herself like he touches her but slower, til she's touching herself like she thinks of him touching her when he's not there.

His cock is rubbing against her and she pins him with her hips, whispering shh for a half second, holding him against her opening while she rubs her own clit.

Erich

Erich doesn't know where she learned such things, such decadence, such evil. She unties that purple ribbon and his eyes seem glued to her fingers, that bit of satin coming undone. She lets the negligee fall. He makes a sound like this causes him physical torment, and he grinds against her with such force that he lifts her from the bed as effortlessly as if she weighed nothing.

And she pushes him down. Touching him; then touching herself. His lips part. He pants, watching her like she's revealing god. He can't look away. He watches the lift and fall of her breasts as she breathes; the play of her fingers; her thighs open over his body, her cunt pressed against his cock, pinning it against his lower abdomen. Which quivers, flexes; his feet move restlessly behind her. He paws a hand over his face when he can't watch anymore but then he finds he can't bear not watching, either.

So that hand goes back where it was. The sheets are wrinkling in his fingers. He keeps watching her, breathing hard, trying his best not to urge her on or tell her yeah, like that or any of that because --

because this is for her. Not for him.

Celia

And just like that,

something changes. It's nothing he did, really. It isn't. Not that he can tell, not that he can draw a line from. She's touching herself and her brow is furrowed with pleasure and then with something else, something she doesn't enjoy. Her shoulders tuck inward, the first sign and the most physical, like her body is trying to protect itself even when she hasn't gotten there yet.

Melantha breathes in, uneasily, and she's still aroused and wanting and

conflicted and uncertain and weirded out. She stops touching herself. She leans forward and leans against him again, and it's so strange and it's worrisome and it's mindbending because that, of all times, is when she chooses to reach down and touch his cock again. That's when she lifts her hips and guides him into her, impossibly expert and frighteningly virginal, somehow, though the only resistance he meets as she's taking him inside of her is the tightness he knows, the tightness that makes them so incredibly close that it's hard to tell where one body ends and the other begins.

Melantha sighs, a long exhale, when she feels him. She doesn't start bouncing on him, gleeful and teasing and darkly mocking him. She doesn't ride him like a pony or start working one out on him. She moves slowly, very slowly, and though her face was against his chest when he first pushed into her, she lifts it now, looking into his eyes, her brow still furrowed with that wrinkle that always seems to unravel something inside of him.

She doesn't say a word. She looks in his eyes, though, and she makes love to him slowly, like she's trying to remember how.

Or learn.

Erich

Something changes. Something makes her stop touching herself. Something makes him open his eyes. She leans down to him and he lowers a hand to curve around the back of her head, cradle her like that.

They are so close suddenly. And neither of them speak, but something changes again. He lifts his head and he kisses her, very gently and tenderly and slowly and drenchingly, as though to show her

it's okay. It's nothing he didn't want. Nothing he has to suffer. It's okay, a game that made her laugh, a game that made him a little out of his mind, but a game. It's okay.

She can see every instant of their lovemaking reflected in his eyes. Surely blue-eyed liars have existed before -- she's a blue-eyed liar every time she's with Jack -- but on Erich, that color, that clarity seems incapable of deceit. She can see the furrow of his brow, the tight pleasure coiling in him when she reaches down to guide him inside her. She misses the moment that tension releases, or transmutes to a different sort, ecstatic.

She sees that ecstasy, though, when she lifts her face from his chest. He's sweating already, and his sweat is on her when he leans up to kiss him again. And though neither of them have said a word about it, his hands cup her head, hold her hip. His hand guides her without quite commanding her, reminding her:

this is how.

Erich

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (2, 9) ( success x 1 )

Celia

[Something is wrong!]

Celia

[LOL ok so he can pick up that her :[ is not concern for him! It's about something else going on in her and all she wants is to do what she did and get closer and be with him and that's what they're doing so she feels better. :] ]

Celia

Something changes, but silently. Swiftly. Melantha descends to him and takes him and she kisses him as he's sliding into her. He wants to show her that it's okay, that she didn't take the game too far, that getting what he asked for was not ruining something for him,

and all she wants is to be with him. Close to him. She kisses him softly, though, searchingly, while he runs his fingers into her hair to hold her head and while she runs her hands up his sides now that she is holding him, holding him, deeply and tightly. She shivers slightly when their mouths part and her head goes to his chest. She doesn't shiver at all when she lifts her eyes and meets his again.

In his blue eyes, which are as pure as her blood, she just sees something transcending honesty. He couldn't lie to her now if he tried. That's why she does this. That's why it's been this way for generation upon generation of women like her within her tribe. It isn't just the sex. She makes them love her, even if that love is like squeezing blood from a turnip, even when that blood and that love is corrupt. It's the love that undoes them,

at least when they're fucking her.

Melantha is glad he doesn't freak out. He doesn't ask her instantly what's wrong, he doesn't stop moving, he doesn't insist that they can't make love until he knows every last thought in her head when she hasn't even sorted them out completely yet. She was never worried that he'd get angry at her, but she ...

really didn't know how he might react. She's never done this before.

She feels him guiding her, or at least reminding her, that this is okay, and this is how they can make love, and it's sweet and dumb and she knows how to have sex, Erich, god, but it's him and he's just trying to make her feel better. He's trying to understand her. He's trying to reach out to her, and be there with her, even when she isn't entirely sure where 'there' is. In essence, he does everything right just then, and she likes him so much.

She rolls them gently onto their sides. It slows them but she likes it. Her leg lifts over his hip. She keeps her eyes open, her hand on his side where his ribs wrap protectively around his chest cavity, using his heaviness for leverage as she keeps moving herself on him.

"I love you," she whispers, not the first words she's said to him all night or for the last week but the first time she's said this since she left him

to go fuck another man, who she doesn't love at all.

Melantha leans to him and kisses him again. Her hand slides down his side to his hip, and her eyes follow. She holds him there, encouraging him to move, watching him where he fits inside of her. "There," she whispers, finding some tight, perfect rhythm with him. Her head tips back; she gasps. "Fuck, yes."

Erich

He smiles as they roll onto their sides. She slides her leg over his hip. His hand at her back pulls her a little closer. He glances down to where their legs overlap, to where he's inside her, and then he looks at her again as she says

she loves him

and he never would have thought this was okay before, sharing her with another man, but somehow it is. Somehow she makes it all right. He kisses her, fervently and delightedly, but she's kissing him in the same instant so they meet in the middle. Her hand trails down his side. They both look down again, and now it's her hand on his hip guiding him, her words showing him:

yes, right there. perfect.

He levers himself closer. He kisses her with his hand on her cheek, sliding down to her breast. He moves just like that, just like she shows him, tight and eager, breathing hard, kissing her over and over the way he always seems to, can't seem to stop.

Celia

He smiles, and he kisses her, and their hands on each other's bodies are urging, encouraging, more, yes, more. They were both worked up before they even saw each other, flirting with the idea over texts. They were worked up when he came up to the door, and he was pulling off his shirt -- as promised -- and she was dressed in lingerie and he's never, ever seen her in lingerie even when that's all she's been wearing. They were so worked up, in fact, that they were pushing and pulling each other to the bed, not even pausing to think that they've never had sex in a bed before. A tent? Sure, several times. A wall? Absolutely. But not in this big, soft, expansive bed. Not in any real bed at all. It's not like it matters, when nearly everything between them is a First of some kind, but the point is: they couldn't even think straight. They couldn't think at all.

Erich still has his dumb socks on. Ask her if she cares. Ask him if he can even feel them.

Another point is: they were already have out of their minds before Melantha worked herself onto his cock. And they haven't stopped. Even in that odd, painful moment when she looked upset, when she looked worried and uncomfortable, they didn't stop. It takes them no time at all to find that rhythm again. His hand strays from her breast for a half-second; she reaches for his wrist and puts it right back, shivering and letting out a noise that's as vibratory as a purr, though a bit louder. Even when she's not on top of him anymore she rides him, leveraging her leg over his hip to pull herself closer. Lying on their sides forces them to slow down a bit, which

she thought at first would be a good thing, and at least for a few minutes was a necessary thing, but it doesn't take long before she's touching his shoulder, trying to lay him out on his back again so she can,

as he in fact asked for earlier,

ride him.

Erich

Erich is a pretty easygoing guy, really. He rocked agreeably with her shoves long before they kissed. He grins when she gets prickly, and not because he's patronizing her or patting her on the head because aww how cute kingirl's getting mad. He's just ... affable.

So: she pushes on his shoulder, and he goes easily to his back. A grin flickers over his face. They slip apart, and he looks down their bodies; his cock is wet from her, the air sudden and cool where before she was all heat and tightness and slick. She climbs on top. He looks up at her, running his hands up her sides, to her breasts, down the front of her torso to hold her by the hip while the other hand reaches between her legs

and not to fit himself back into her, but to touch her. He starts touching her like that, starts playing rather delicately with her clit while she's grinding on him and taking him back into her. He's watching her and running his free hand up and down her leg, leaning up to meet her in the middle, kissing her, falling back onto that big bed of hers where he's slept before, but where they've never made love before this.

They're making love now. And fucking. Such things are not mutually exclusive. He's watching her, a hungry gleam in his eye, as she begins to move on him. Ride him in earnest. He lets a sound go, watching her, touching her, moving in counterpoint, thrusting where she bears down. "That's it," muttering: "oh, that's good."

Celia

There isn't much time in between Erich being rolled onto his back and Melantha sliding back onto him. She doesn't let there be much time; she couldn't stand it if there were. Erich, of course, can't stop touching her. And that's nothing truly new between them at all. But by the time his hands stroke down from fondling her breast to reaching between her legs, stroking his fingers over her, she is reaching for him to take him again. He holds her by the hip: no, for a moment, this, please for a moment.

Melantha shudders apart as though her joints have come loose. She lays her hands on his chest and slides over him, across him, moving herself on his fingers and his cock, gasping with it. It's another second or two -- another grind or two -- before she takes him in hand again. Strokes the head of his cock over herself, panting, looking at him. It takes her a beat before she remembers anything else, then, then she's taking him, easing herself down on him, letting loose a groan as he sits up to kiss her, as her hips are winding down, as he's feeling up her leg.

Erich falls. Melantha shares her weight on her arms, her hands on his chest, his shoulders, using the alignment of their bodies as leverage to start riding him. To start, yes, fucking him, because that doesn't take any of the strange mottled tenderness they have out of it. The bed is too heavy and too thick and too pillowed for anything to thump against the wall or scrape against the floor, but were it smaller and cheaper and less palatial, the way they're going at each other would alert her neighbors to everything happening. Every thrust Erich gives into her, every little moan Melantha lets out when she tilts her hips and rubs herself against him.

She says nothing. Nothing coherent, at least. She doesn't flinch at his words, but she doesn't answer them. She has fucked men who couldn't shut up, who said filthy things to her, who said horrible things to her, who called her slut and whore, men who called her their sweet little girl, called her hot bitch, called her any manner of creative nicknames that all boil down to fuck-toy. But she's also been with men who never say a word, who don't want to make a sound, who grunt when they come and that's it; they can't even seem to look at her.

None of them ever called her Melantha, whispered it with an ache underlining her name, kissing her like they couldn't stop. And none of them were Erich. Truthfully, there is very little Melantha can give to him, or do for him, or with him, that she hasn't done before with someone else. That won't remind her, in some way, of someone else who didn't love her, because they didn't know her, because they didn't want to. And is afraid, so afraid, that even the words out of her mouth will be false,

or sound false,

or feel wrong

to Erich, who she actually likes and who likes her back and who she is allowed to argue with and be herself around even if he doesn't like it because him liking it isn't a part of The Mission. Because he's not a mark or a John or her prey. He's just Erich, who she has missed all week in ways she's not sure she knows how to even talk about. Erich,

who is being ridden now, quick and eager and like a goddamn pony, til she's whimpering on every downstroke, Til her brow is furrowed tight and her mouth is open with those gasping little cries, her arms locked and her torso tightening up, her back arching, all of it becoming unconscious. Instinctive.

Erich

All the ways they are different are so many and myriad that it may be impossible to enumerate them all. It goes beyond tribe and upbringing and how they approach independence and mutual reliance; it goes beyond gender and race and what movies they like.

For all that, they do have areas of unexpected and poignant overlap. They've both lost their families in one way or another. They're both rather alone in this city, and that aloneness has drawn them to others like themselves. Friends who want to stay with them, and want them to stay together. Melantha has a bead now in the shape of a small bright-eyed pigeon. Erich has yet to receive his.

And they're both -- in some sense -- new to this. Erich didn't come a virgin to their bed, but the diary of his exploits probably wouldn't fill the back page of a small-town newspaper. There's still something delighted and eager and surprised and dazed in his eyes when he sees her in lingerie; when she kisses him; when she strokes him off with such confidence; when she takes him inside her and rides him like that. He still flushes red sometimes at the things they do or the things he thinks or the things they say, even though he never looks away. He's a little inexperienced. He's not shy.

And Melantha. Melantha has a world of sexual experience, quite possibly more than Erich ever needs or wants to know about, but none of those men have ever called her by her name. None of them even knew who she was, who she really was, not the girl who wears tight jeans that show off her legs and short coats that show off her ass; not the girl who squeals and giggles and moans in delicious little whimpers under them, not that girl at all but

the one who watches Aliens in the back of her friend's car and knows half the lines by heart. The one who helps a wolf hunt a rabbit, and later tosses him bloody raw bones from the carcass as she skins it. The one who prays to the moon and then cycles through and transcends all the terrible passions.

The one who fucks him now like she's forgotten herself. The one who doesn't bother to control her expression, or read his reaction, or tune her performance, or --

even think very much at all. She gives herself over to the moment. He gives himself over to her, holding her by the hips, holding her by the waist, fucking her back in short fierce upstrokes with his soles flat to the mattress, his toes curling against the sheets as though he might, like some distant primate ancestor, be able to grip with his feet and keep from falling off the face of the earth. His eyes stay on her even when his last shreds of coherence unravel. Even when the planes of his upper chest gleam with sweat; even when their rhythm grows furious, fervent, and he's grasping at her and pushing his palm up the center of her body, cupping her breast, lifting it, letting it slip from his palm as he's following her arm down back to himself. His hand grips hers, brings hers to his mouth, kisses her palm hotly, ardently.

And then bites it. Sets his teeth against the swell below her thumb; the venus mount. He can't keep his eyes open at the last. There's tension in every line of him, a sudden hip-centered arch of his spine that slams him deep into her; makes every muscle in his body stand out in strain. He comes with a groan against her palm, staying deep, barely moving, his sides and his chest heaving, every inhale harsh, every exhale a grunt.

They eventually become words. He eventually relaxes -- collapses -- back to the bed, licking her hand and kissing her where he bit her, muttering half-formed vowels and consonants, something about god and her name and oh, oh fuck.

Celia

Eventually it ceases to matter how different they are or what they have in common. Eventually they cease to care that right now she goes from Being Fucked by Jack to making love with Erich. Eventually it doesn't even seem to matter that what she said by the fire hasn't changed, won't change: she doesn't want to be anyone's anything. That's all she's ever been.

None of it matters. They're here now, and together now. And fucking like mindless, rutting beasts. Fucking like she's in heat.

Melantha descends on him like a bird of prey near the end, kissing the corner of his mouth and his jaw and then -- finally -- his neck, screaming against it when he comes, while he bites her hand and holds her down on him. It's eager. It's energetic. It's furious and sweaty and weirdly sweet and she thinks she might have to kick him out after but

no, she realizes, as the interior of her mind and body go white-hot with orgasm,

she's going to keep him here instead.

They are a collapsed knot, half-loosed but still tangled. He's licking her hand, tasting the salt of her sweat, inhaling her scent from her skin like an animal while he mutters and breathes incoherently. Melantha just lies there, falling off to one side, her head on his arm and her eyes watching him, her spine awkwardly twisted and her legs still wrapped around him and her arm over his chest. She pants for air, and runs her hand down his side to his hip to pull him closer, to let her hip fall to the bed and make him move his body so he can stay inside of her. So she can keep him inside of her a little longer without tying herself into a pretzel to do so.

So brusque, she is. Come over. Kiss me. Lie on the bed. No, get on your side. Now on your back again. Now on your side. Keep your cock in me. And:

"Stay," she whispers, still panting softly, covered in their conjoined sweat.