The pressure on his chest caught him off-guard and there was a split second where he thought he had done something wrong. He stared at her with the surprise of a young child suddenly denied his favorite toy and sent to bed before her words and labored breath caught up to his awareness. Damien smiled sheepishly at Rachel in a mild surprise. For a moment there he forgot that she needed to breathe.
He was caught mid-stride, his top hand still lingering in the back of her jeans where his fingers were a mere breath away from the cleft of her cheeks while his other - partially pinned by their current configuration on the couch - was entangled in her hair, edging towards her neck. Damien pushed himself away hesitantly in order to control himself and to give Rachel's lungs the ability to expand as necessary. His hands loosened their desperate grip on her skin and he made to shift himself away to give her as much space as she needed. He didn't, however, feel the need to leave her completely which was an uncommon thing for him. There was no sickness or painful tension or desire to run; he couldn't quite figure out why that was but he also couldn't bring himself to try. There
was a tender sense of longing for her touch and eagerness, of boyish enchantment at her that kept his fingers itching at her while she gasped for breath. There was even a sense of panic that she would change her mind somehow and they would part for some time. The more he thought about this latter point, the more something inside him tightened.
That was until Rachel returned before he had the capability of worry, setting herself into her former position with ease and a calmed resolve and a small acknowledging "ok", a human signal that she was, after everything, able to breathe again.
"Sorry," Damien apologized almost inaudibly before willing his muscles to relax.
"It's ok," she said in a tone that made him feel rather foolish for apologizing to begin with, accompanying it with a short laugh. "I just couldn't breathe."
She settled in against his chest and played with on of the buttons on his shirt shyly. Damien kissed her forehead and ran his hand up her back in an attempt to provide comfort and reassurance that all was ok - only to have her shiver in a surprising wave of renewed arousal that made Damien react as well. Her back arched and she thrusted herself into him with an spasmic sort of expression of her pleasure. He paused and went to kiss her mouth as the wave of arousal slapped him again. He smiled through the kiss and their game continued very much the same as before.
"Call it luck." And just like that, the line went dead. Pierre looked at his phone just to make sure that the call had indeed ended and found only Nikolai's number, something that he had almost forgotten, flashing on the screen before it went back to a picture of himself and Jenella hugging with their heads together.
The Frenchman looked back up at the road just as he pulled up to a stop light, his gaze empty and his thoughts anxious. He was on his way home from Jenella's apartment on the north side of the city. The two had spent the night before feeding and making love, falling asleep in each other's arms like old time - with the tiniest exception being their altered routine of fucking thanks to Pierre's inability to move half of his body - until they had awoken and realized that it was time to get back to their other lives. There was still a fondness that he had for his fledge despite his lack of want of a partnership with her. They were what they were and they had always existed that way. Now, and for the past few years since he had been attacked, Jenella was the only person he could have sex with, due not only to her intimate knowledge of him but also because she knew about his wound and they had worked patiently around it. It had been a very sore spot for him to admit to her that he couldn't perform and that there was nothing he could do for x amount of years. He remembered that she had smiled at him and said nothing - like she typically did - and kissed him, working with his body to avoid his pain and bringing him closer to pleasure. The thought of that first time swirled longingly around in his consciousness as he felt the anger at Nikolai swiping every pleasantry from his mind.
The bastard had suggested that the Oligarchy was not only on its last legs, but falling apart as the seconds passed. He suggested that the Mimic Demons, for whatever reason, just up and left the damn city. That their idealistic fantasy of a peaceful world of openly protected and acknowledged vampire utopianism could finally exist without the Oligarchy in their way. That all Damien had to do was stand up and make himself known. The idea that such a structured government could fall so quickly - a matter of hours? days? - was simply too much to believe.
Yet Nikolai's words had made sense and had awoken something inside him that hoped for it all to be true. He felt anxious; maybe he should turn around and head towards Damien's house to tell him. Maybe he should just go home and think about just what the fuck Nikolai was saying. Maybe he should just call Nikolai back...
Pierre bit his lip as he sat at the light thinking about what he should do. Go back and tell Jenella? Head towards Damien's? Go down to the Oligarchy building himself to see if it were all true?
Then again Nikolai knew how to get this kind of information. For better or worse, it was his job and he was good at it. Why would he call him up after Pierre beat the shit out of him two years ago for nothing?
Why would he call him at all? Why wouldn't he just let Pierre and Damien and their lineage find out for themselves?
What if this was a just some fucking hoax and Nikolai was just waiting for their downfall as a final act of revenge?
There was a blare from the car behind him that snapped him back into awareness of himself. Panicked, his eyes darted around and in his mirrors to see a line of three or four cars glaring at him and honking their horns to get Pierre to go now that the light had turned green for more than ten seconds. There was only a second more hesitation in Pierre before he stepped on the gas and turned Camille towards Alcott Road.