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Desire coursed through Emmrich's marrow, familiar yet changed, for the woman against sheets dark as blood — his Rook, the diamond thread of life and heat coiling around her. The room sparked with magic around them, blooming like petals of want, as wrapped finger bones pressed hard to soft, pliant flesh.
Body and soul, thought and feeling, bared to him all at once. Rook could not see herself as he saw her now, glow bright aura pulsing in time to her staggering breaths when his fingers skimmed past her waist to the damp heat between her legs. How she flushed, high up the arch of her cheeks, down the column of her throat, and further and further and further. Past what most would call her body and into the air, wisps in the shades of her desire choking him if he still had the lungs for it.
How Emmrich burned for her even now — the flesh may be gone but oh, how the spirit was ever-willing.
His fingers danced across her folds just as Rook hooked her fingers between his open ribs, palm to the back of his sternum, dragging him down to press her lips to his teeth. An approximation of a kiss, but close enough, her warmth seeping into him as he reached back to her, a tongue of his magic slipping between his mouth and into hers.
Taste beyond taste, tantalizing and, there, bursting behind the sockets of his eyes, every sweet memory — hers or his, it was difficult to tell when they were so close like this, chest to chest, rib to rib. Lilacs set on a table. Hot chocolate in the middle of winter. Two cats bathing under a sunbeam. The sounds of a market, her hand in his. The soft petals of Shroud's Kiss between fingers. Memory upon memory entwined in a kiss beyond a kiss.
Rook shuddered under him, a gasp as she broke the connection and pushed him away. Bare chest heaving, lips parted, her hair a halo on the bed below, temptation made flesh as he drank her in with veilfire eyes. There — her veins, her arteries, and the rush of her blood southward to where she was hottest, burning like the Rivaini sun.
Another gasp as Emmrich followed the line of it, extending a tendril of his magic in reverence. Stroking without touching, worship without words. Already slick, she welcomed him, thighs spreading wider, a knee knocking to his side before he gently guided the leg up. Fingers gripped the sensitive flesh behind her knee, pressing it toward her chest, an obscene display that left little uncovered.
Arousal, hot and hungry, slithered down his vertebrae, settling along the girdle of his pelvis. An after affect — almost — of a ghostly desire, which, if he were still a man of flesh and blood, would have risen to meet hers, hard and weeping and wanting and wanting and wanting.
The want had not faded — he doubted it ever would, in the months and decades and centuries that slowly crept toward him. Even if there was nothing to coax to fullness, no flesh to heat nor blood to boil, Emmrich would be destroyed first before his love for her even began to wane.
Her pleasure had long become his — and when she rolled her hips against his magic, he felt it, echoing inside his skull and down his ribs. He knew her desire before she voiced it, the magic pressing insistently against her cunt, morphed to the shape of what he knew would curl her toes and leave her breathless. There was no resistance as she parted for him, the faint green glow disappearing between her legs only to reappear as he slowly rocked it into her again and again.
More, she whispered, more, more, more.
Who was he to deny her?
No, even if he were capable, he would not dare. Her life continued to pass ceaselessly between his hands, tangled threads between his fingers he knew would be cut too soon. He would indulge her for as long as possible. Someday he may never be able to again.
The green glow of Emmrich's magic slithered up her form, stroking and winding along familiar paths on her skin. A second tendril, slim and precise, pressed to her clit, swirling over the sensitive bundle of nerves, Rook's hips jerking in response, head thrown back and exposing her throat. Another pair snaked past her waist, counting her ribs then curling possessively around her breasts. They tweaked her nipples, alternating between soft, deft touches, and hard, greedy twists that left her gasping. Then another and another — one lifting her arms above her head, pinning her against the sheets, the other caressing her cheek before she turned her face, taking it into the wet heat of her mouth, sucking and licking around the ethereal shaft.
Pleasure beyond pleasure.
A shiver ran down his spine, a throbbing low in his coccyx — and the sharp tinge of desperation and heat shared, her fingers turned to grip hard against the tendrils pinning her down. Nails bit into hard air, conjured slick seeping from his magic, warm to the touch and coating her fingers.
Emmrich whispered something, air pushing out between his teeth, but it was lost when she turned to look at him. Eyes hooded, body writhing. She breathed around the tendril in her mouth, tongue on the underside, cheeks hollowed out. How he remembered the feel of her lips around him, the memory alone enough to leave him groaning as she took it deeper, pressed upward by the magic between her legs, renewed from the sight. He curved another tendril around her waist, running along flesh taut over sinew and bone, reveling in the sensation, while dulled in some ways, still sharper in others.
Her skin on his, warm and wet and sticky from affection — an impossibility. But now he heard the song of her blood, like lyrium, like the Fade, potent and tempestuous, erratic in the sea of her arousal. He reached out — caressed the waves with an unseen hand, coaxing her higher and higher, turning her blood hot as it ran feverishly through her veins, thighs clenched tight around the length between her legs.
Chest heaving, mouth hanging open until he slipped from her lips, she murmured his name, the Veil around them shivering from a current beyond mortal perception. There were nights Emmrich watched her dream, captivated by the unseen tide that brought her from the waking world to the Fade — and here it was again, though no sleep that claimed her.
Instead, she crested with a gasp, hips jerking, taking his magic impossibly deep inside her as she clenched hard, the flutter of her walls so obscene around the half-translucent shaft. He stroked her through it — her clit, her cunt, her breasts, her mouth. No place on her body left untouched, and no part of her soul left unbared as he pressed himself to waves of her climax, the Fade shuddering from the force, the wisps of her desire pulsing in time to her heart.
Emmrich had become more when he cast off his flesh, hollowed and hallowed bones guarding the Necropolis for the rest of time. A shroud, once thought impossible to pierce, now laid open before him, secrets waiting for only his touch. But oh, with her, his Rook, he was more than that. He was alive in ways he could never be again, soul on fire.
A flame that burned eternal, an affection that endured — love undying, stretching moments into eternity.
