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Spear's hair is still dripping wet with seawater, and her skin still tingling with the memory of splitting the surface like an arrow, when the gravity between them sets into motion. She tosses a glance at the bulk of him over her shoulder, the corner of her mouth pulling into a wearily-quick smile.
By the time he feels her gaze on him she is back to looking at the sky. The clouds are nearly too thick to see the stars she needs to navigate, but if she squints she can catch the pinpricks of light just above the horizon. Spear intently watches the muscles in her back ripple as she turns their stolen ship towards home with one decisive pull.
And the wind fills their sails like it’s been waiting for this moment, snapping the flax sailcloth open with such a loud crack it startles one of Fang’s hatchlings from its slumber. She soothes it with a soft rumble deep in her throat, not even bothering to open an eye, too accustomed to the sounds of seafaring than any Tyrannosaur ever should be.
In a moment, it is quiet again. The only thing they can hear is the lapping of the waves and the distant cries of gulls. The sheer fabric of her skirt shimmers in the moonlight. There is no time to waste.
Like every night before, he watches her settle down into a kneel, her mouth a small, reverent smile as she looks up at the moon. He knows this ritual, watches her move her arms with all the grace of a dancer. It is a far cry from his earlier attempt, but part of him itches to be beside her. To show her what he has learned. But by the time he has made up the courage to join her, the rite is coming to an end.
“Mira.” Comes a gruff voice, one so rarely used it commands her attention each and every time she’s lucky enough to hear it. He clears his throat, grinning so wide it reaches his eyes, and repeats it– the only word he’s bothered to learn, the only one he needs to learn – lengthening each syllable until it comes out oddly melodic. “Miiiiraah.”
It’s been so long. It’s been too long. And it seems her infinitely loyal savior has just realized this fact. Just as the dead Queen’s ship dips and disappears into the horizon, the months of tension he’s held in his shoulders and chest and heart release with a great, trembling exhale.
Here.
A spark of recognition jolts through her as she watches him gaze up at her with the same reverence her people look at the moon with, eyelids heavy and drunk with adoration.
She is the first to break and turn away, her lithe fingers covering her mouth, then up to feel the heated skin of her cheeks and the small crystalline beads of salt the ocean has left there. Getting thrown from gore and violence to these little tender moments has never stopped being so dizzying, a whiplash each time. She knows it has to wear on him, too, even if he doesn’t show it.
When she looks back at him again, he has his eyes firmly fixed to the place on her cheeks that dark blush rose and disappeared before he could really savor it. His thick brow furrowed in deep concentration, like he’s trying to will it to return and stick around this time.
He looks very much like he wants to say something, and frustrated that he cannot, his mouth opening then closing when he doesn’t find the words. He debates saying her name again just to see the smile it earns him. Debates saying it a thousand times until she understands.
Thinking becomes markedly more difficult when she begins to stride closer to him, her pale gold earrings as entrancing as they are irritating. Another reminder of her captivity.
She murmurs soft words before moving a hand up to his shoulder, flashing him a warm smile like she’s suddenly made up her mind. And he needs no more invitation - the touch breaking some barrier within him. His strong arms wrap around her torso and pull her forward off her feet with as much gracefulness as he could ever manage. He was never particularly skilled in self-restraint, anyway.
This doesn’t seem like the reaction she was expecting, because she jolts with a laugh as the man effortlessly lifts her up and presses his face flat into her stomach with a wild, triumphant grin she can feel.
“Mrrrrah,” he says, but it is muffled to the point it comes out mostly as a humming vibration against the muscles of her belly. Only the threat of getting tail-whipped by a rightfully annoyed mother keeps her from shrieking at the sensation, so long without touch it sets every one of her nerves alight.
His head spans the entirety of her waist here, something that is as amusing to her as it is intimidating. She distantly wonders if he’d be able to encircle her with one hand here, pinky and thumb touching. The thought is thrilling, in some primal way.
She feels him take a deep inhale and has to repress another amused squirming fit.
The seawater hadn’t washed away all of her scent, to his relief. It just clung close to her skin. He lets it flood him until it makes him dizzy with familiarity. It’s all sun-heat and heavy, ripe fruit threatening to drop, so compelling it makes something within him shudder with longing. This is real. This is real, and this is the last piece he needs to know that. Taunted by visions of her during long, fitful dreams in that cell, only now is something freed in his mind like an opened floodgate. This is the one thing he is not capable of imagining, no matter how delirious.
It is the first time in ages that he surrenders with every fiber of his being, her hand-muffled laughter at his antics on repeat in his head like a ringing birdsong. He’ll do anything to coax that sound from her over and over again, travel to the ends of the earth to keep her with him. Slaughter millions.
Her skin is wet when he finally pulls back and sets her down, unwinding his arms with visible reluctance, as if when he stops holding her she’ll disappear – stolen again. And when he sways, drunk with her, it is not from the rocking of the boat.
He is still not quite all there as Mira’s steadying hand appears, grasping onto his forearm and guiding him into sitting cross-legged beside her beneath the shadow of the sail. It feels right. It feels like they’re settling down by the fire after a long hunt. When he closes his eyes, he can imagine the heat seeping into his cheeks and palms, and the firelight flickering on her skin. He can imagine they’re back where they first met, her abduction just another bad dream among many.
He’s been doing more imagining than a caveman really should be.
When he opens his eyes he finds Mira’s face has gotten very close to his – quietly observing the little changes in the muscles of his face. The twitch of his brow. His expression goes from softly contemplative to something endearingly bashful. A man caught fantasizing.
He darts his eyes and grumbles, and there isn't an ounce of malice behind it.
Mouth quirked with amusement, she puts her hand to his broad chest right above his heart and feels the strong, steady thrumming beneath her fingertips. There is coarse hair here, covering solid muscle and skin marred with an uncountable number of scars. He stays as still as he did the day she dressed those arrow-punctures that made many of them, wrinkling his nose slightly as the memory evokes the stinging, herbal smell of a poultice.
He lets her explore him, watches her think without moving a muscle. Surrendering. She’d allowed him his own little moment of confirmation, of you’re here, you’re okay.
Now it was her turn.
It may have been the exhausted state of both her mind and body, or the heady rush of a well-won victory still humming in her veins, that degraded that barrier of impulsivity just enough, just for a moment.
It was a piece missing. The pull of the moon on the sea. Was that desire, too?
She leans in and presses her lips against his.
And it feels like kissing a statue. Or a tree. She’s scrambling to stand up before he’s even begun to process the action.
He blinks once, twice, inhaling through his mouth.
And then, in an instant, his hands are on her forearms preventing any escape. Stay. He wills her to understand, struggling to understand the reason for the sudden shift.
The tip of his tongue peeks out from between his lips and licks away the salt she left there. Her gaze follows the movement. Embarrassment is shoved down with a thick swallow, it is all the convincing she needs.
There is something here she wants. What exactly that is is not something she has determined yet, but the unbearable pull is there all the same. It is not something she is capable of denying, like the inarguable pull of returning to her homeland. She imagines this must be how birds feel, compelled north by some invisible, unshakable force they can feel in the tip of every feather.
Long legs fold cautiously until she is back to her place in front of him, sitting on her heels. That intriguing, dusky red color on her cheeks is back now too, bright even in the filtered moonlight. Slowly, as if to not startle a skittish animal, Spear brings a hand up to her sternum - a far less graceful mimicry of her actions moments prior.
He does not lay his hand against her skin until he’s given her time to lean away.
Beneath his touch, her chest rises and falls in a deep, heavy sigh. There is a weariness in both of their eyes, one that never quite leaves and never will until the day they die, but right now it is only a drop in an ocean.
Her heart flutters beneath his palm. Alive. Alive. Alive. It beats, again and again. Thrumming like the wings of a hummingbird, a rabbit heart in a snare.
When he moves his hand to the nape of her neck to pull her in closer, she braces and squeezes her eyes shut but she does not pull back. She stays steady until she feels the first brush of his forehead against hers. And then, reverently, his nose follows, pressing into hers with a tenderness that makes her chest ache like a gnawing hunger pang. The convex bridge of hers fits neatly into the flattened shape of his own – the puzzle-piece sensation making her laugh softly into the warm, shared air between their bodies. Bewildered. She’s seen this man slaughter hundreds.
It’s over much too soon, he’s pulling back, his mouth thin and upturned like he’s quite pleased with himself. There. His crinkled eyes seem to say. That’s the right way.
He does not remove his hand from her nape though, unwilling to relinquish all contact just yet. Her eyes are hooded and lips parted softly as she looks out at moonlight dancing on the ocean, and he sees no reason to let go. As the wind pulls them further on their path the sea seems to calm, the waves reflecting more of the stars as the surface goes smooth as glass – the horned reflection of the crescent moon on the water traveling beside them like a steadfast guardian. He continues.
Skimming his fingers gently against the place that wooden yoke once shackled her, he finds the roughened line of skin it created. There are soft hairs here too, fuzzy like a tender new leaf. She bows her head in as his hand slides up, arching into it, exhaling as goosebumps rise. She knows he’s found what he’s looking for before he does, the sensation of his callous-roughened fingers against her scalp disappearing as they meet insensitive scar tissue.
His features tighten, grimacing as he sees and smells the press of a glowing-hot iron and the acrid smell of burning flesh. She reeked of it when she first arrived on the shore.
The memory of sinking teeth through the meat and sinew of an arm ripples through him. It is the only thing that placates him, for now.
Satisfied with his exploration here, he slides his hand back down. She is soft here on her shoulders, and the contrasting drag between rough and smooth is enough to make her shudder visibly. Her next inhale is just strained enough for him to notice, high and breathy as it hitches in her throat.
Her eyes are closed so peacefully - at least until that thick scent of arousal, as sharp and viscous as blood, floods his senses and he leans back with a yelp of surprise. His eyes are as wide as she's ever seen them, startled, like he’s just had the epiphany of a lifetime.
She does not realize the cause of his outburst until he leans in and inhales, right at her pulse-point. Deep and heavy. For good measure.
The realization of what he smells on her sends her scrambling to explain herself. She knows he does not understand her language but she speaks anyway, slower than times before, a very deliberate attempt at explaining herself. But she does not look him in the eyes while she does so. She blushes hotly, strangely ashamed at being caught using a skill she had only ever seen him use for tracking animals.
He tolerates this rambling for exactly a minute more before he’s looking at her through a dubious gaze, his thick brow heavy over his eyes. A distraction. He watches her swallow, and the next word she says trails off into silence.
His hand closes around hers and, through the place where the pads of his fingers connect and press into her skin, he feels her shiver.
That comforting, warm familiarity was gone again just as fast as it had appeared. Frustration wells up in his belly along with the first confused stirrings of arousal. Until now, his frustrations have been solely caused by his captivity in a land so unfamiliar than his home it might as well be a different planet. Now, it is the act and the admittance of being wanted and all the strange little rituals it entails with her is what confounds him more than anything he has ever faced since their meeting.
There is too much thinking. He is sure there should not be this much thinking. Her receptiveness is heavy in the air and sweet and stifling. They're still, for a moment that feels like an eternity, like two animals circling each other waiting for the other to move.
The right thing to do would have been to shove this aside and go to sleep, after just leading a successful rebellion that obliterated an empire. Her muscles ache from pulling back bowstring after bowstring. The body of a queen sits in the hull, half eaten. They both need to rest, to prepare for the journey ahead.
But Spear is a quick learner, something she has been frequently astounded by since they met. So he mimics, his face steely like he is determined to do this right… whatever this is. Whatever she wants from him he would do it.
He puts his palm against the curve of her jaw and leans in, just as she had done. She sucks in a breath but does not move.
His eyes nervously dart from her lips to her eyes and back again several times. And then, with perhaps too much mimicked gentleness, he presses his lips into hers – and it is horrible. The angle is all wrong, and his lips are strangely pursed and he hadn’t closed his eyes. And it takes her breath away. She is not quite sure whether the absurdity makes her want to laugh or to cry. Instead, she guides him, grinning against his mouth as she does so and feeling tears prick at the corners of her eyes. Her hands come up to frame the sides of his face and correct the angle. If she could teach him her name, she could also teach him to kiss her. She could teach him anything he wanted.
Relief replaces embarrassment, and lust washes away the rest as she explores his mouth.
She does not break the kiss until he's softened, his tense shoulders falling as he just might start to recognize the appeal of all this. His eyes are dark and lidded when she does lean back, his eyebrows raised high as he soaks in the new sensation with gentle astonishment.
The expression is so horrifically endearing that something in her chest lurches like the swell of a wave - her insides full to the brim.
The scent of her is overwhelming now, cloying and sticky in the back of his throat in a way that tells him she has wanted this for a while, her body tantalizingly close. This is the moment some deeper, basal part of him takes the helm. Some part of him that’d been waiting to do this ever since he saw her swaying to lyre music on the deck, illuminated by firelight. Maybe even ever since he saw her. A low and reverberating, almost plaintive hum rises from his throat as both his hands find purchase at the swell of her hips.
This is a language he can speak.
He pulls at the gauzy material of her skirt for a moment before lifting her up towards his mouth, his lips pulled back and the whites of his teeth bared. Mira, unsurprisingly, shouts at the sudden attempt at ripping her only pair of clothes off. It trails off into laughter, breathy with a heady mix of lust and adrenaline, as he grunts and instead catches the edge of the fabric on a canine and drags it down her thighs.
She takes to kicking it off the rest of the way, cursing when it gets caught around her ankles.
His legs are still crossed as he sits but, from where she stands above him, she can see him twitch beneath the cloth at his hips as he gazes at her bare sex. Her head spins worse than it ever did when they were miles above the earth on the backs of birds. His hands are the only thing that anchor her, now, and she is grateful.
When her gaze flicks back up to meet his, she finds something mischievous written on his features. It isn’t until he lifts her, tilting her hips towards his face, that it hits her what he is trying to accomplish.
He nudges her thighs apart, just enough for him to lick a stripe from her entrance to her clit, right where the sweet scent of her is at its strongest. Mira keens like a wounded animal, and he nearly pulls away with concern until her fingers suddenly dig into his scalp and hold him steady.
A long string of hissed curses follows, and he does not need to know the words to sense they are encouraging.
The gentle, tentative exploration of his tongue quickly grows maddening. She rocks into it in some attempt to get closer to an edge, to grind his mouth where she wants it, but the intense grip he has on her hips stops her from wiggling. The message is clear – he intends to devour and savor her. This is some kind of animalistic preparation, a means to an end.
She is halfway through a pleading whine before she has half the mind to remember she should at least make an attempt at being quiet. Instead, she untangles a hand from his dark hair and uses it to muffle herself.
When he withdraws, his eyes are heavy and his pupils blown wide, the tip of his tongue still peeks out from his lips like she is the greatest thing he has ever tasted. He wipes at the wetness on his face with the back of a hand, looking entirely too pleased with himself. This smugness all but vanishes when she nudges him with her hands on his chest, pushing him back, her expression set with some kind of steady determination that had settled within her long before this night.
Judging from his suddenly wide eyes, this is not quite what he was envisioning. But he relents, leaning his back against the deck and propping himself up with his elbows to watch her clamor upon him, corners of his mouth pulled faintly with amusement.
She adjusts her hips until she is straddling his waist, then grins triumphantly down at him, her face flushed and sweaty in the moonlight. Having little power in this position, all he can do to voice his approval at the sight above him is smooth his hands across the places he can reach. He hums as he kneads into her thighs, then up to her stomach. Pressing his fingertips in ever so slightly, he imagines her heavy with his child, her stomach curved and growing, waxing like the moon. The thought stokes the fire in his belly so fervently it threatens to consume him. It's a longing that hurts to the marrow of his bones, an ache even the worst wound couldn't inflict.
She must see the change in his face, the subtle flicker from desire to clarity and back again, because she reaches down to intertwine her fingers with his with a knowing smile. The idea is as tempting as it is terrifying. But it is this image of him, her, and their children that sticks behind her eyelids like a vision when she comes. It is a shared dream that was taken from them, that they are remaking anew.
It is slow and reverent when she takes him in her hand, feeling the thrum of his heartbeat beneath velvety skin. Her slender neck bows as she gazes down at him, swiping her left thumb over the head of his cock and smearing the wetness there. The action has Spear making an odd, unbefitting little plaintive sound, twitching in her grasp.
She positions him at her entrance, taking a moment to rock her hips just to feel the impatient dig of his fingers into her flesh before she sinks down upon him.
Spear throws his head back against the deck so hard she swears she hears the wood splinter.
The sensation of filling and being filled is both familiar and entirely new, something instinctual reborn in the first push and pull of him within her.
This is a ritual of their own creation.
He could lift her, move her. He could piston his hips into her with feral abandon until she's been filled more than enough times for it to take. But he doesn't. The much stronger man beneath her, the man with blood beneath his nails and viscera in his heart, lets her take him within her one unhurried thrust after another. There was no rush. Their enemies had all been slaughtered. The ocean was theirs and theirs alone, the stars their witnesses.
Each moment of stillness between engulfing she can feel him, the pulse of his blood within her where the barrier between their bodies is at its thinnest. The fullness is akin to a well-won meal after starvation, belly-deep contentment.
Spear releases his vice grip on the meat of her thigh to drag his fingers where their bodies are joined, grinning in a way that is much more just a baring of teeth as he feels around the base of his cock as she rides him. It is filthy, it is one-part marveling and one-part animal satisfaction. Mira's lithe fingers find his wide, calloused thumb and press it into her clit, moaning as he catches on. He circles the nub, pulling back to lick the wetness from his finger, mingling it with his saliva until it is one gratuitously slick touch after another.
He lets his mouth hang open, breathing in the scent of their coupling until it is all he can taste.
Her brows are tight and focused, the lines on her forehead only softening when she bottoms out and feels the head of his cock nudge at her cervix. She murmurs little sweet-nothings each time, growing in fervor, so rushed and delirious even knowing the words wouldn't have given him a hope of understanding. All he knows is that they are good. Praises, even. He would like to think so.
They become high and stuttering, a crescendo leading to a wailing cry when she comes, her eyes wild and unfocused as her muscles seize around him almost painfully taut. Her abs flex beneath his hand as she bends forward like a pulled bow, as he holds her steady through all the tremors.
Spear follows after her, follows her as he always will, growling as he seizes her hips and holds her tightly against him as he spasms. Her name leaves his mouth in a long, low, drawn-out whine just as she feels the first spill of warmth within her. It is the most erotic way she has heard her own name spoken, and that realization above all leaves her shaken to her core.
The hardwood beneath his feet buckles.
He warbles out sweet, feeble noises when she coaxes the last drops from him with a playful last roll of her hips. Her heaving, freckled chest is flushed red, and beneath the moonlight halo that frames her she looks like an angel. A sacred animal. She grins, victorious, and her teeth glint in the night. Something in her was satiated at last. At last.
She calls him gentle words as she pulls herself off of his body - but all he can focus on is the sight of his cum dripping lazily from between her thighs, stark, pearly under the glow that bathes them. He rubs at his face, feeling spent to the marrow and dazed, like he just lost a battle he did not know he was fighting for. Like a blow to the head. Lover, she says, heart-keeper, and he understands none of it but still feels the significance somewhere in his soul. A half-formed grunt of a reply ripples out of his throat, repeated until it becomes droning and melodic. It is nonsense, it is just as good as any conversation, pleasing to the heart.
A pair of slitted, yellow eyes watches them disentangle but neither of them pay her any mind. They haven't for a long while.
She will offer them the same small reprieve she once had. She knows it will not last.
He doesn't like how the warmth where her body lied on his dissipates quickly in the night air, the loss just as impactful as the first time her presence left the campfire heat. Lying there, the stars a vast chasm above him, he tries to write everything to memory as best as a caveman can. Who knows when he might need it again, need some small comfort in the cell of a ship, in the belly of a beast.
He shuts his eyes tightly and wills himself to remember the softness of her skin, to cling onto it before the dawn breaks and he has to face the immensity of all that has happened and all that will.
Her hand comes to rest softly on his chest, feeling his heartbeat. The tension in his face falls away as soon as he opens his eyes and sees her curling her now-clothed body into his side with a coy smile.
Together, she says, and he pulls her tightly against him until he is sure he will never forget.