Author Topic: The Hardest of Hearts  (Read 22476 times)

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Offline The Cedar Witch

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Re: The Hardest of Hearts
« Reply #15 on: June 02, 2012, 02:58:07 PM »
That was close.

"Probably not," she shrugged, desperately trying to pass all of her actions off as nonchalant.  It it wasn't for the pesky tinge of crimson in her cheeks... "I slept a lot today."  She fiddled with the hem of her jeans.  "Maybe I will if I get too bored."  Maybe sleep would be good right now.  Maybe it would keep her from putting her foot in her mouth anymore around him.  Maybe it would distract her from this constant pounding in her throat.

Rachel just wanted to have things go back to normal between them.  This awkward in-between was killing her.  She missed joking and laughing with him.  Now she just felt like she had to walk on eggshells all the time.  Not that it was doing her much good considering what had just happened.
Anna/Odessa/Sonya || Astrid || Chtahzus'aak/Zeus || Extasis || Fler || Jeremiah || Laurent/Va'tamal || Malakai || Rachel || Vai
Old things have strange hungers. - Catherynne M. Valente

Offline Saiketsu

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Re: The Hardest of Hearts
« Reply #16 on: June 02, 2012, 03:10:47 PM »
Damien nodded at her again in understanding, the motion much smoother now that there was some distance between himself and that comment she had let out. He had forgotten that she slept earlier in the day - while she assumed he was sleeping. He had spent the better half of the day listening to her slow breathing and heart beat. Not that that was something he was going to tell her, especially not with that human feeling creeping through his face and skin. Like almost every other night, he was there in the room when she had woken up and their usual routine of panic, calming, blushing, and awkwardness had occurred. They had dressed themselves for the night and acted again as if nothing had ever happened.

Just like they had that night.

He pushed the thought back down where it had come from and addressed the conversation at hand without skipping a beat. "Well," he began in conclusion, expecting that their conversation was finally drawing to a close and that Damien would soon be free to escape into his own room and avoid her all over again. "I'll be here if you need me," he told her honestly, but needlessly as she always had him next to her when she awoke. And then, with a bit of dry humor which he threw back at her for the sting she had given him in the hopes of getting even quietly, he added, "God knows you need your beauty sleep."

Offline The Cedar Witch

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Re: The Hardest of Hearts
« Reply #17 on: June 07, 2012, 09:39:45 AM »
Despite her best efforts, her heart still fluttered anxiously in her throat.  The human was painfully aware of how obvious this must have been to him.  It wasn't fair that he could so easily keep his composure with no visible discrepancies that she could possibly catch on to.  Like blushing.  Like she still probably was doing.  That initial slip of the tongue with words more bitter than she intended set her on edge.  Things that she didn't actually want to say out loud.  The blushing itself made her mind wander.

Stop, stop, stop thinking about it.

Rachel made a large effort to make eye contact with her friend, forcing herself to put on more of an act of normalcy, to hide what she found herself thinking about.  Inconvenient almost random thoughts about cuffed shirt sleeves, loosened collars and tousled hair.  Cold lips.

Stop!

Normal.  Just act normal. 

"What is that supposed to mean?"

At his sarcastic comment she grinned, still internally conscious of how jittery she probably came off.  She could do this, they were just talking.  It wasn't like he was reading her thoughts, she didn't have anything to worry about.  The sooner he was out of her room, the better.  She needed the alone time to purge her brain of everything.

"I should go."  He smirked, half-turning toward the door.  Almost.  Almost alone.

"Yeah, you should go.  You need the beauty sleep more than I do."  She laughed nervously, pushing to make it seem so natural, that usual sarcasm they always tossed back and fourth.  "Maybe you'll grow your heart back."

Fuck. 
Anna/Odessa/Sonya || Astrid || Chtahzus'aak/Zeus || Extasis || Fler || Jeremiah || Laurent/Va'tamal || Malakai || Rachel || Vai
Old things have strange hungers. - Catherynne M. Valente

Offline Saiketsu

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Re: The Hardest of Hearts
« Reply #18 on: June 18, 2012, 10:42:09 AM »
Her arrow anchored deep in his chest and pulled there, though he couldn't figure out why. More than indignant, he was hurt. Her casual - or attempt at casual - comment encouraged the dead blood in his body to fill in his cheeks in a human way, as if he was physically slapped by her. Fortunately, his vampire blood didn't move and he stood gazing at her with wide eyes and an injured look on his face that seemed set in stone. Her silly comments never usually reached him so thoroughly but for some reason she had been hitting all of the right chords this night and it was making Damien feel extremely uncomfortable.

"That was cold," he murmured just loud enough for the human to hear him. That awkward human feeling was hitting him again and for the first time since Lucretia had died, Damien felt like a child who had just been slapped for his stupidity - and very much like that injured child, he stood there, withdrawn and his eyes fighting against the gravity of the floor. He didn't exactly think about the consequences of his actions after more painful moments passed and rossed rather stiffly to the bed and sat down on the corner of it, adjacent to her. He more or less wanted to ease the injury and get an apology. Or something like that.

Offline The Cedar Witch

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Re: The Hardest of Hearts
« Reply #19 on: June 18, 2012, 11:04:22 AM »
No, no, no.  This is all wrong.  He was supposed to be saying goodnight by now.  Fuck.

Rachel watched his reaction and it seemed to happen in slow motion.  Her fingers remained touched to her lips as they had since she last spoke.  They pressed lightly, as if trying to remind herself to think before talking, as if keeping back words that she hadn't yet thought of speaking.  That was the last thing that she wanted to have happen.  Why did she even say that?  What was she even thinking?  That didn't even make sense to say, especially not after just getting over what she had said before that.  What the hell.

His weight felt heavy on the edge of her bed.

"Yeah,"  She spoke up "I'm sorry, I don't know why I said that.  I wasn't trying to make your night worse or anything I just..."  She trailed off, becoming more aware of how quickly she had been talking, how frantically.  Rachel bit her tongue softly and looked down into her lap. 

"You didn't."  His voice was distant, the way it got whenever she said something stupid and he was trying to make it seem like it didn't affect him.  Her face colored and she began to feel hot.  Rachel shook her head.  She wasn't that stupid.

"No, that was really mean."  She sighed, shoulders slumping.  "I shouldn't have said that."  For a moment, she felt a palpable sense of panic, that maybe they would never return to normal. Maybe they were doomed to stepping on eggshells for the remainder of her time here.  Maybe he would shuffle her off to someone else to care for her.  After realizing what an unnecessary distraction she had been for him, he would move her to some remote location, one of those satellite 'headquarters' far away from him.  Far enough away to ensure that she wouldn't get attached.  And maybe if she was lucky, he would visit her every so often in person to see if she was still doing alright.
Anna/Odessa/Sonya || Astrid || Chtahzus'aak/Zeus || Extasis || Fler || Jeremiah || Laurent/Va'tamal || Malakai || Rachel || Vai
Old things have strange hungers. - Catherynne M. Valente

Offline Saiketsu

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Re: The Hardest of Hearts
« Reply #20 on: June 18, 2012, 12:24:17 PM »
The task of dragging his anger to the surface was an exhausting and frivolous one, for as soon as he had made himself angry, his thoughts shifted and Damien found himself frustrated, sad, and injured instead. He should have been angry, he knew. He should have been at the very least indifferent to her comments. After all, what did it matter that she made fun of his heart, his vampire nature and assumed he was heartless. Pointless thing anyway, he thought to himself as he attempted to assemble himself. Rachel's words shouldn't have mattered at all. They didn't matter. What did it matter?

Still the insult lingered and Damien felt the want to look at her and change her mind. Hadn't he loved for hundreds of years? Hadn't he raised a family of sorts and cared for them as his own children? Hadn't he even taken in a human girl off the streets when seemingly nothing but power mattered to him? How dare she think he was heartless. Just because it worked in a different way didn't mean that there was nothing there after all. His indignation inflated and deflated within the walls of his chest as his thoughts peaked and fell. His eyes remained on the floor, not daring to show her how much her words had actually effected him.

The vampire managed to shrug, though he couldn't help but feel as though he appeared to be in sync with his nineteen-year-old body. "It's ok," he said, trying to convince the human that he was over it despite the lack of conviction in his tone. "I just thought it was kind of funny that you told a vampire to get a heart." He even gave a quick, nervous laugh. His eyes lifted briefly and looked at her. He then became suddenly aware of just how warm and red her cheeks had been this entire time. It made him want to touch them and wipe the blush out of her ivory skin so he could feel her warmth. To make matters worse, the thought was far too reluctant to leave for his own liking.

"No," she responded, the red in her face becoming more saturated, "I told a friend."

There was a moment when Damien couldn't really believe what she was saying. It wasn't very often that they referred to each other as friends, though they both understood it to be true. Hearing it out loud, however, made that awkward human feeling - the one that filled Rachel's cheeks at that very moment, though it never filled his - stick around longer.

Damien felt her look at him then and start to talk again. Without meaning to, he looked up as well, directly into her soft, sorry brown eyes. "That's not something you say to a friend." They held onto each others' gaze like story-tale lovers and despite his best attempts, he couldn't look away from her. He felt his lips move into a smirk as the air between them felt suddenly thick, just like it had that night a couple of weeks ago when he had first pressed his lips against hers. And as he sat remembering how her lips had quaked against his, soft and warm but eager… yes, eager in a small way, he noticed her face getting closer and his body doing an almost aggressive lean towards her. The air between them was still with the tension in his chest, the pounding in hers. He hesitated for another moment before touching his lips against hers once again. And that human feeling oozed into his throat and chest, threatening to choke him if he left her. The thought drifted across the raging waters of his mind, but it instead sank to the bottom of the river and Damien remained. Her lips were soft and warm, just as they had been before, her face hot. This time her lips moved with much less hesitation. And so did his, to his utter shock.

Offline The Cedar Witch

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Re: The Hardest of Hearts
« Reply #21 on: June 19, 2012, 11:57:20 AM »
Somewhere in the back of her mind, as soon as her words left her lips, she knew what was going to happen.  Maybe even before that, when he sat on her bed, she had a feeling—a feeling that she was trying to ignore because there was a low possibility (she thought) that she would be right.  Maybe she had been waiting for him to allow himself to do this again.  When she had finished speaking, finished apologizing, Rachel forced herself to keep eye contact with him.  She wanted to see that need for control slip away from his mind for a moment like it had then.  This time when he leaned toward her, she wasn’t caught off guard.  Her eyes shifted down to his lips before fluttering shut.

Why was this happening again?

Her lips sought familiarity against his, with much less hesitation than the first time.  The fact that he hadn’t pulled away yet was encouraging and her face flushed a deeper color.  When his hand moved to cup her cheek, she exhaled through her nose the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.  It was a welcoming gesture that she was terrified would vanish if she stopped kissing him.  She didn’t want a repeat of the conversation that they had before.  She didn’t want to go back to pretending that none of this meant anything to her.  That it didn’t mean anything to him.

Moments passed and their lips pulled back from one another, meeting softly again at intervals as if to verify that this was indeed taking place.  In that space of time that their lips were only brushing together, she rested her forehead against his.

“What are you doing?”  her soft whisper was silenced as their lips met again. 

He pulled back slightly. “I’m sorry.” 

“Why?”  Rachel pressed her lips softly to his, welcomed by his lack of resistance.

“I don’t know.”

They said little to one another for a short while, lips still moving against each other.  It was terrific not to care, and half of her never wanted to stop.  But the more time that passed, the more she was beginning to become suspicious that he would pull away and run off again.  She didn’t want that.  She didn’t want him to deny any of this.

“Why are you doing this?”  she pulled back slightly, just so their noses were touching.  Better to ask him now than later.  Maybe she could actually get an honest answer out of him this time.  Maybe then she would be able to figure out how she was supposed to feel.  She didn’t want to be getting her hopes up for nothing.
Anna/Odessa/Sonya || Astrid || Chtahzus'aak/Zeus || Extasis || Fler || Jeremiah || Laurent/Va'tamal || Malakai || Rachel || Vai
Old things have strange hungers. - Catherynne M. Valente

Offline Saiketsu

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Re: The Hardest of Hearts
« Reply #22 on: June 27, 2012, 01:59:09 PM »
All of the sticky anger, frustration, and indignity melted into a warm feeling in his lungs that he hadn't felt in many, many years. Somewhere he knew he was supposed to be regretting his decision, his lack of control over such a simple compulsion. Somewhere he knew that this wasn’t what he truly wanted and that he should have been feeling guilty for forgetting about his self-promise to the memory of Lucretia. But their kiss was something that had just sort of happened – that place where his logic stood somewhere far from though, lost between the warm encounters with her mouth.

He had never kissed a human before – not like he was now. Even their brief encounter had been something lacking in comparison to how he interpreted this right now. His dead heart – the one that Rachel had said didn’t exist – felt like it was radiating as much warmth as the human’s face beneath his hand and at the skin on his forehead. To his surprise, it felt... good. Really good. It had been centuries since he had last felt that same blossoming feeling in his body as he was now.

But never with a human. A human was something else entirely. When Lucretia had been alive, she had kept her body only lukewarm for him. Her heart never fluttered, her face set frozen in a sort of mischievous enjoyment of her powerful position – even when he made love to her. Her body was still and lacked the life that a human body had. She was never human, in emotion or in body. For a while, Damien actually believed that she had never been human at all, but had always been the way that she had been when Damien was. It made Damien forget himself that he had ever been human sometimes. It made him detest, misunderstand, and nearly hate humans at one time. But Rachel’s blushing, her blood rushing, her heart moving to pump out more blood to fill her beautiful little cheeks. Even while he kissed her she felt fragile, breakable, like some baby bird that needed to be cared for with gentle hands.

But damn it, she was warm. He resisted the urge to tell her several times, trying his hardest not to scratch her and score blood with his canines when her lips moved against his. The urge to bite into her was stronger than he had ever expected it to be and there were several small moments where he stopped to control his urge to sink his fangs into her bottom lip or her tongue – that was too far. There was an intense pleasure to touch her with his semi-warm fingers that brought primal warmth throughout his body that would have made him cringe had he been paying any more attention to it. Her skin, so pink with her blush, nearly burned his fingers, the palms of his hands as he stroked her face.

It was a long moment before he realized that she had even spoken to him and a moment longer before he replied to her, thinking deeply upon the matter as he gathered his logic back, examined it, and continued to ignore it after all. “Because I wanted to,” he said calmly, as if it was the only answer he could have found. It was the truth, honest and pure. It made him feel young, like he was back in Toulouse at the end of the eleventh century and he was only months from aging to twenty years old. “I’ve wanted to for a long time, I suppose.” The words seemed to slip easily out from between his lips, though he strangely didn’t mind this at all. His hand which had come to rest on her cheek to secure her face near hers now pushed a loose wave back behind her ears. She couldn’t blush more, he was sure of it. He looked at her face with what seemed like new eyes (had he ever really looked at her before like he did now? He wasn’t so sure,) and leaned in with refreshed warmth in his chest and a new desire to connect their lips together.

She accepted him without reluctance, and they kissed again. Somehow, his guilt caught him again and he let go of her, pushing himself away from her. He shouldn’t be doing this. He shouldn’t be doing this. “I’m sorry,” he murmured loud enough for the human to hear. He knew that he was  treading forbidden water. She was just a girl, and he was hundreds of years – almost a thousand years – her senior. She was his ward, under his protection. What difference did there exist now between the situation Rachel had been in only a couple years ago to the situation she was in now?

No, there was a difference. There had to be.

Right?

She looked at him like he had just said something insanely confusing. “Don’t be,” the human said to him as her fingers hovered and landed on his cold hand.

Damien hesitated. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said with a touch of desperation. There had to be a difference. Right? “I don’t want anything from you.” The vampire stroked that same falling wave of hair and pushed it back even more gently than before behind her warm ear. “I don’t want to be like him. Ever.” There was such honesty in his voice and on his face that the dread of being like Laurent was almost enough to overwhelm the enjoyment he had just shared with finally being able to show affection to her. He felt young, like some bumbling teen devoting himself to one way of living without all the facts – the vehemence of youth with a body that was nearing a millennia in age.

Offline The Cedar Witch

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Re: The Hardest of Hearts
« Reply #23 on: June 29, 2012, 10:01:15 AM »
The human gazed at him, genuinely, lacking the intimidation that had kept her from keeping eye contact with him for more than a few moments in the past.  Laurent was the very last thing on her mind in this situation.  She didn’t even begin to make the connection between the two men (what connection was there to make?) and did not want to try.  No, Damien was entirely different.  It was almost shocking that he would try to make that connection for her.  This kind of genuine affection was something she hadn’t experienced with Laurent.  Not without it being transparent to manipulative ulterior motives.  No, Damien wasn’t anything like that.

She almost laughed.  “You couldn’t even if you tried.” 

Rachel looked down to where their hands were meeting, her fingers moving slowly across the cool skin of his hand.  It was hard for her to imagine Damien being anything but gentle.  Being distant and emotionally impenetrable (most of the time) was one thing, but vicious and inhumanly evil was another.  No matter how many times she was reminded of Damien’s thirst and whatever else came along with the whole being a vampire thing, she was never terrified of him.  Rachel had always felt safe with him.  This situation wasn’t any different. 

“Do you hate me?”  He paused and she peered up at him.  “For all of this confusion, for kissing you again?”

The girl smiled and leaned forward so that her forehead was touching his again.  “I’ll hate you if you get up and leave and hide for a week again.”  She could feel her face growing hot again.  She never noticed that it had cooled (if it had cooled). 

“I don’t want anything from you.” 

“I know that.”  God, she knew that.  It was amazing not having to worry about that routine that she had been so accustomed to, to not feeling anything and going through the motions.  She knew this was different.  She could feel it in the air between them.
Anna/Odessa/Sonya || Astrid || Chtahzus'aak/Zeus || Extasis || Fler || Jeremiah || Laurent/Va'tamal || Malakai || Rachel || Vai
Old things have strange hungers. - Catherynne M. Valente

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Re: The Hardest of Hearts
« Reply #24 on: June 29, 2012, 11:58:50 AM »
The intimate feeling between them felt more refreshing, more wonderful than he could have ever put into words in any of the numerous languages he knew. His body felt as though it had been set free from some gravitational pull that he hadn’t been aware existed. It wasn’t only because of his expression of his heart’s secret admiration for Rachel. No, he could feel that it was much bigger than that. This feeling was similar to the one he had gotten every time he had escaped from any ancient European outfit of high society lined with whale bone. His body had ached when he had felt the weight of the coat, the tightness of the fabric that refused to bend or flex. It had been something he had slowly gotten used to, standing for night after night in this stiff fabric that men called clothing in Paris. Getting into it was a slow process and he could adjust to each layer of stiffness as it was added to his person, but once it all came back, it was like a gasp of fresh air after being help under water for a minute. It was difficult for Damien to examine why it was all coming back to him now, but all he knew was that the feeling was similar. He could breathe, so to speak, as if he had been holding a breath in for years and only just realized it.

But in a small corner of himself that clung to a different version of familiarity, something that was rotten and guilty festered. Her words, though they swept through his mind and cleaned the cobwebs off of what made him human, couldn’t overcome the vampire part of himself that was so radically different than anything this foolish human girl could ever hope to understand.

He was a monster, one who had loved and lost a monster too fitting. Who was he to try to change what he was?

“I never intended for this to happen,” he pleaded quietly, as if her words had only stuck a band-aid over his open wound. “I didn’t want this to happen,” he said needlessly as her hand remained on his. Damien looked at it as he drifted into verbal thought.

“When Lucretia had,” he swallowed hard, finding the word stuck in his throat, even after all these years, “died, I lost it. With her I had built everything that we had ever wanted: a family, an empire – the beginning of a world where we could live in unity with humans and other immortals in peace, helping each other. When she died, when they all died, everything we had went with them and I was all alone except for Pierre. She was the first person I ever loved, the only woman I had ever kissed, well, before you, that is. She claimed me before I had even had the time to consider taking a wife.

“When she was gone, I don’t know,” he continued quietly, not really sure why his lips kept moving without his permission. “I closed down I suppose. The only time I ever even went near a human, let alone a woman, was to feed. The thought of being…” he paused, trying to find a word to describe what he hadn’t experienced in  a very long time to a girl who had been abused so recently, “…with anyone else was the most frightening thing I could imagine.” He didn’t add that it still was – no need to make her feel more guilty about something neither of them could fully understand.

“I had… denied everything that had made me her lover since she died and I just kept moving, hoping one day something would change. Until it did, I would remain loyal and chaste.” He drifted off into an introspective pause that he couldn’t express verbally. There was no way to admit to Rachel that that change was upon him because he couldn’t see it himself.

By the time he looked back at the human, there was frown on her face that was deep as he had ever seen it. “That’s sad,” she said, wrapping her fingers around his hand in an attempt to connect to him. The sensation was something he was too unfamiliar with. The idea she expressed and the squeeze at his hand puzzled him.

“Why is that sad?” Damien didn’t understand. Had no one else grieved? Didn’t others do things in the memory of the people they had lost? That was all that he was doing. Lucretia had been his world, despite all the horrible fights and nights of hatred they had endured together and apart. She was the one he loved beyond everyone else, his lover, his sire, his empress. Her death had signaled the death of everything in him that was capable of love and compassion. Or so he had thought. “Why does everyone say that?”

Offline The Cedar Witch

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Re: The Hardest of Hearts
« Reply #25 on: June 29, 2012, 12:24:27 PM »
Rachel smiled softly.  It was sad.  Very sad.  It was one thing to grieve, but for an eternity?  No wonder why he was so uptight.  She knew only little bits and pieces before he explained all of this to her, thanks to Pierre.  She knew him long enough to see for herself that he never really did anything for himself.  Somewhere in the back of her mind she still felt that echo of a feeling like it wasn’t her place to say anything about what he had said, that she could never give him any kind of advice because he was so much older than she was, and what did she know anyway? 

She shrugged, looking up into his face.  “You’re denying yourself happiness.  You’re not happy.  You don’t seem to know what you want for you.  I don’t know how you’ve convinced yourself that you do.” 

“I don’t feel sad.” 

“You wouldn’t because you shut everything out.”  She smirked, shaking her head.  Even before all of this, all she ever wanted for him was to relax and let go.  He was so much more fun to be around when he wasn’t internally freaking out about something-or-other.
Anna/Odessa/Sonya || Astrid || Chtahzus'aak/Zeus || Extasis || Fler || Jeremiah || Laurent/Va'tamal || Malakai || Rachel || Vai
Old things have strange hungers. - Catherynne M. Valente

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Re: The Hardest of Hearts
« Reply #26 on: June 29, 2012, 01:03:46 PM »
Damien smiled without humor, his expression almost as drained as when he had first entered her room. She was too good at seeing the things he tried to keep people out of. He didn't shut things out, necessarily. He shut himself out, kept his human compulsions private and existing as the monster he thought himself to be. Nobody, except maybe Pierre, was able to penetrate that. Now Rachel was doing so without really even realizing that that was the case.

"You're just amazing at punching holes through my pride tonight," he responded wryly with that defeated smile on his face that was only the mockery of a smile. Her words were sinking deep in him, making that rotting part of him defensive, like an animal backed into a wall. For some reason, probably due to the kiss and feelings they had just silently expressed, he didn't feel the temptation to strike out at her, but rather to put up that mental wall, puff up his chest and retreat with the little bit of distance he still maintained.

Offline The Cedar Witch

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Re: The Hardest of Hearts
« Reply #27 on: June 29, 2012, 01:08:28 PM »
Please don't.

"What are you taking pride in?"  Rachel scoffed lightly.  She really didn't want him to shut down on her yet.  "Being cold?  You're no better than Sonya if you're taking pride in that."  She pursed her lips together tightly.

It was frustrating, really, to get this close to him if he was going to go back to denying himself what felt good.  After everything that they've gossiped together about Sonya, she would have thought that he knew better.  But who was she to talk?
Anna/Odessa/Sonya || Astrid || Chtahzus'aak/Zeus || Extasis || Fler || Jeremiah || Laurent/Va'tamal || Malakai || Rachel || Vai
Old things have strange hungers. - Catherynne M. Valente

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Re: The Hardest of Hearts
« Reply #28 on: June 29, 2012, 01:31:45 PM »
His eyes widened at her response. She had never spoken so bluntly about any of the topics she was talking about - his pride and coldness, Sonya's arrogance and pride, let alone the direct confrontation of it to him in such a forward manner. It took the smile off his face and a moment from his reaction time to allow him to react to her. The look on his face was one of the most intense looks he had ever given her, a visiable warning that she needed to watch her step before she tred on topics she knew (or was supposed to know) little about.

"You're starting to sound like Pierre with the way you're talking to me." He said in a low voice, looking directly at her. Up until tonight, this was something he rarely ever did. It had been happening increasingly more frequently tonight. "No one alive talks to me like that except for him."

Offline The Cedar Witch

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Re: The Hardest of Hearts
« Reply #29 on: June 29, 2012, 01:38:49 PM »
The color drained slightly from her face and she shifted uncomfortably, but she met his gaze.

"If I didn't know you any better, I'd take that as a threat."  While she knew that she had put her foot in her mouth more times than she could count tonight, she still didn't feel deterred.  Rachel knew that he needed to hear these things, things that she had wanted to tell him for awhile but couldn't find the words for.
Anna/Odessa/Sonya || Astrid || Chtahzus'aak/Zeus || Extasis || Fler || Jeremiah || Laurent/Va'tamal || Malakai || Rachel || Vai
Old things have strange hungers. - Catherynne M. Valente