He was like to explode with the gravity of it all. He tried to pay attention to all of it all at once - the aching throb of need that she sparked as she kissed him, the solid feeling of her hands pulling at his clothes and flesh again, the relief that bloomed in his chest as it finally began to set in that she was back. He he wanted to wrap his arms around her tightly and never release her. In all of his imaginings of seeing her again, Nikolai could never have understood the drowning, burning that filled him to the brim and kept his mouth frantic against hers, his hands pulling her ever closer. He fed upon the feeling of her sorrow, her anguish and terror, comforted and bolstered by its presence leaking off her flesh.
But there was resistance too - a fury so hot he wanted to shove her as far as he could, the tired rearing of a head of his so-called protector, the scent of Mitchelletto on his skin and the stink of drugs in his veins. There was the echo of intrigue in the roiling of the shadows that gathered in his throat, casually threatening to invade her just as Laurent had invaded him.
Everything was different now.
He sought her lips again even after she pulled away from him and he saw that pain - that fear, he realized - in her. The denial of his kiss left him reeling, yearning for her in the vacuum of physical disconnection between them. So much vulnerability so quickly... it frightened him and before he knew what she was doing, Nikolai had picked her up off her feet, carrying her tightly by the waist as she stabilized herself in his arms.
He wasn't brave enough to use the words that begged to be said aloud, the words that sent Judas into a maelstrom of hatred, words that he had never dreamed of telling her before. But like a pulse throbbing within him they pushed now past his broken defenses, a weakened Judas, a curious shadow, meeting their final resistance at the tip of his tongue. His mouth had never moved in that way with any meaning behind it - obligatory offerings when he was feeding egos of human relations or paying customers. As he looked up at her, the flatness of her ribs soaking his dry collar with whatever sea water remained in the fabrics of her clothes, he took her towards the shore, afraid that if he didn't move her now she would be dragged back into the depths from which she came.
-----
Nikolai awoke to the smell of her hair at his lips and her fingertips on his arms that surrounded her shoulders. Sometime during the day he had decided to pull her close into a crushing embrace, his fingernails embedded into her hard skin as if it would prevent her from leaving if she wanted to. His dreams alternated between losing her face in the ocean and blunt objects crashing into his skull, forcing him from his heavy sleep multiple times in order to check that it was, in fact, just a dream. Each time he woke, he searched frantically for any sign that the previous night hadn't been some elaborate schism of his imagination. Each time, he felt the firm, naked flesh of Sonya next to or under him, those oceanic eyes looking at him with wonder and a softness he didn't have to put into words. He would fall back into a restless sleep despite his relief that he was not actually alone in her bed again.
She stayed with him during the day. In his drunken heaviness of the sun overhead pulling him into sleep, he had begged her not to leave, to stay with him, at least for one day. As he inhaled her scent of her hair, he could remember the taste of panic in the back of his throat when she had hushed him without agreeing to comply, the sun climbing into the sky outside the walls of her house.
He had picked her up and carried her all the way back to her house wordlessly, her lips carrying his name into his ear as she bent close to him with her hands on either side of his face, as if she suddenly remembered him. It swept him away into a kiss so fierce that he didn't remember entering the house until his shins were against the footboard of the bed that they shared last and she was pulling him down onto her. The praise that he paid her immortal body was true and deep, but did little to satisfy the well of longing that remained when he softened within her. He ran hands over her naked form and held her close as they both felt the approach of the morning. Fright at the passing of time, that she would return to her watery grave and leave him to the whims of his sire, his captor, and his Protector, made his tone desperate and he begged her not to go. It was only when she assured him that she would stay that he was able to give into the dizzying heaviness of the day and sleep beside her.
Now he felt her muscles move beneath her alabaster skin as she traced his tattoos with her nails. He tried not to move, committing the sensation to memory. With the slightest of adjustments, Nikolai pushed his nose deeper into her hair and inhaled deeply, closing his eyes as his grogginess wore away. He thought passingly about what it would take to remain naked like that with her forever, thinking of her body pressed against his as he bent low to feed from a human. Nikolai kissed the forehead near his mouth.
"I thought for sure you'd be gone." The urge to tell her what was lingering on his mind bubbled up, but he kept his lips shut, knowing that such things woke Judas - who would only ruin the tender peace that existed in the breaths between them.
