dragonlady7 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dragonlady7) wrote2006-11-16 11:37 pm
dragonlady7) wrote2006-11-16 11:37 pm
(no subject)
I wrote all the following at work. I'm not sure that any of it means anything.
When I cough it tastes like blood, which is exceedingly distracting. I checked, it isn't really, but my goodness, nothing turns you off everything like the taste of blood.
My cold is almost better, which is actually pretty funny, because now my mood is terrible and I want to lie in bed and drink cheap instant soup with a hot water bottle on my head and flannel sheets on the bed, while during the actual illness I was chipper and semi-delirious. I'm a spaz.
This scene has proven extremely difficult. The difficulties make me feel uncomfortably pretentious, because I've enjoyed it so much and yet it's been slow going. It seems sort of masturbatory to complain about something so challenging that I enjoy so much, but I don't really know how else to relate my experience without appearing to complain.
And of course I run the risk of trying to make my Artisticke Struggles sound glamorous, which, I mean, really they aren't.
I'm not entirely comfortable with this draft, though. I've always had several levels of writing: the earliest ones were never intended for anyone else to read, and I fall back on that sometimes. The first writing to make the transition from For Me into being For Others To Read (which most people seem to think is the default setting for all writers: but only the advent of the Internet made that my default setting, and by "the advent of the Internet" I mean my maturation into a writer thereon, which is exceedingly recent by any standards) was my academic stuff. Yes, even my early school assignments were largely written for myself, I had that slight an awareness of the world and its relationship to me and vice versa. Gradually I began to accept that others would read my fiction writing, and I learned that certain types of scenes were easier to write for others.
Dialogue is the easiest. I could write you fifty thousand words of dialogue without breaking a sweat, and most of it would be entertaining, although as almost nothing would happen, I couldn't guarantee you'd really want to read all of it. But it would read perfectly well to most observers.
Smut had to progress at a different pace. I actually learned smut writing fairly quickly, not counting the few abortive and ridiculously-euphemistic attempts I made at it while a completely virginal teenager.
But there are still certain things I tend to write only for myself, because they appeal to me and I know they won't appeal to others. I have a few really dark things I've written that I haven't posted because they're so out of line with my other stuff, and I also have various things I've written that, and let me be honest, I know titillate me but seem esoteric enough that they're unlikely to be the same for anyone else. And there is nothing more embarrassing than having your deepest darkest weirdest... lamest fetishes laid bare before others who just don't share them.
But there are other things, that I know as I'm writing make perfect sense to me internally, and yet I know won't to others. Mostly this has nothing to do with smut. They're little shorthands, responses, quirks, that I usually edit out in the composition phase.
All of this is mostly just me dancing around the fact that this scene is rougher than what I'm used to posting. There are a lot of internal contradictions in this whole novel, which I'm less concerned with than usual; or maybe I just don't usually notice them and I'm aware of them and telling myself not to care this time? I don't know.
But this scene has been difficult because I think it's the first time I've tried to write a sex scene that isn't hot. Well, not entirely. Not hot to me, not hot to either character; it's a lot more uncomfortable than I've written before. I've written noncon stuff but even that was meant to titillate the reader. This, not so much. It's a lot more raw but also a lot more genuine, and what I think my subconscious was trying to do by making Nait so difficult was to make the scene a lot more like sex really is. Sex in the real world is not about rainbows and mutual pleasure and unicorns flying out of people's vaginas. It's usually based in some emotional reality more than actual physical need, and it's usually unevenly successful.
I wanted to do that. I don't like manufacturing conflict. I am uncomfortable with how this turned out, yet, and I don't know if I've actually said what i wanted to say, because, you see, I'm not sure what I wanted to say.
I'm unhappy with how fixated I become with the mundane choreography, with the physical mechanics of the sex act. With the hydraulics, if you will.
I should edit that down into a coherent post on writing porn and writing for an audience and what-have-you. There's something coherent lurking in there. I can't find it at the moment: work consisted of nearly eight hours of running around like an asshole while my sinuses twinged in such a way that it felt as though someone were continuously stabbing me in the face with an ice pick. Yes. It was great.
Anyhow. A long-delayed sex scene, for the most part. It does, however, have the best pullout line for the lj-cut text. I'm hugely amused by this line but, free of context, Z doesn't understand why it's funny. I should know better than to try to make him laugh with these nonsequiturs, as he won't read my work, but I always have to say why I'm giggling like a maniac. Oh well.
"Shh," she whispered. "It's looking for us." He looked away from her face and involuntarily shrank back with fear as he realized that the light was coming back toward them. "It's the enemy sorcerer," she said.
"Can it hear--" Betty cut Nait off, covering his mouth. She didn't care to find out. They lay still and silent as the tendril crept back toward them. Betty could feel Nait's heart beating hard in his chest where her arm was pressed against it.
The light reached them and slid over Betty's wards as if they were a bubble of glass. She and Nait stared in frozen horror as the moment stretched into eternity, the tendril sliding slowly across the invisible surface. Nait's breath stopped against Betty's hand, and only the continued pounding of his heart told her that time hadn't stopped.
The light slid off to the right, and Betty closed her eyes for a moment, feeling Nait's breath gust slowly against her hand. She released his mouth, realizing she'd clamped her hand rather more tightly against his face than she should have. Nait twisted his head carefully to watch the light as it continued its groping off to the right.
"How smart is that thing?" he breathed.
"I have no way of knowing," Betty said.
"What about all the people in your head?" he asked.
She shrugged. "They can't get through this bubble either," she answered.
"What is it?" He reached out tentatively as if to touch it, but there was nothing to feel. She noticed his hand was shaking. She reached out and covered his hand with hers, pulling it back in.
"It's my protective spells," she said. "I cast them while I was walking away from you. They're powerful but they're almost my only trick. I don't know what I'd do if he'd found us. I don't know how determined an attack I could resist."
"What-- who is this 'he'? Why did he-- it-- attack me like that?" Nait wriggled out from under her to sit up. She rearranged herself so that she was sitting close to him, her legs over his, so that the wards could still be a fairly tight circle and cover them both completely.
"It's the sorcerer who controls the thing that attacked you when Finn-- you and Finn," Betty said. "As best I understand, the sorcerer was using those things to harvest souls to make him more powerful. In my time, sorcerers like Thomas and Althea know how to defeat those things. He's using them here because your people don't consistently have defenses against them. But he's collecting power to attack our world, we think."
"Hm," Nait said. He craned his neck. The tendril had vanished over to the right, but the circle was still visible in front of them. He regarded it with some alarm. "What about everyone in there?"
"It's more interested in certain people," Betty said, although she wasn't sure. "I think it can't get normal healthy people, but people near death, or when their souls are being released at funerals... Haika said it would be especially interested in you, and sent you away with me because she didn't have time to protect you."
"Finn," Nait said. He looked grim. "Because she's busy using Finn as bait."
"And she has him under her protection," Betty said hastily, resisting the urge to grab Nait's arm. He was stronger than she was and it was moot. She carefully threaded her fingers through his instead, bringing his hand up to hold it between both of hers. He regarded her steadily for a moment, and she knew he could still hear enough of her thoughts that she was glad she hadn't lied. Exactly. She stopped thinking, and thought instead of how impressed she was with Haika's power.
Something clinked against the bubble of Betty's wards, and she jumped in startlement, looking up. Nait didn't react initially, but he glanced up too, following the direction of her look. Something was stuck, sparkling a little, in the invisible sweep of the bubble above them. Betty tilted her head to look at it. It was a tiny shard of something. "What is that?" she asked.
Nait squinted. "A tree branch?" Betty shot him a disbelieving look before she realized he couldn't see it at all, and thought she was looking at the background.
"No," she said, and tentatively reached up, trying to get a feeling from the thing. It was radiating something quietly intense, something that reminded her of-- "Haika." She reached up and pulled the thing out of the bubble. It was a tiny shard of flint, and as she tried to make it lie flat against her finger to get a look, it cut her. "Ow," she said, and then looked again. It was gone, a bright drop of blood standing out against her skin where it had been.
Why aren't you fucking him? Betty jumped again.
"Did you hear that?" she asked. It had been almost Haika's voice.
Nait looked mystified.
I asked you a question, Haika said. She sounded harried and angry. You're good at hiding but not good enough to hide from me and, I suspect, not good enough to hide from him forever. You need a secondary plan.
"What?" Betty stared blankly at Nait, trying to understand.
I found you, Haika said. So will he.
"So then what do I do?" she asked. Nait had his teeth bared in a wary grimace, watching her, and she flapped a hand at him.
His mother was a priest, Haika said. He's got quite a lot of power but he doesn't know how to use any of it. You need to get it out of him so you can use it. Your friends have all kinds of fascinating ways of doing that, but I only know one foolproof one, and that's to fuck him.
"Are you fucking kidding me," Betty said, putting a hand in her hair. Not that she objected to the act on principle, or to the choice of partner at all, but not even she could simply drop her drawers and copulate on command. She couldn't imagine a less ideal setting.
I need you to do it, Haika said, and disappeared, taking with her the drop of blood Betty had shed. Betty stared at her perfectly unmarked finger for a moment in numb shock before Nait grabbed her arm. She had a second to look up and see a flash of yellow light before it enveloped them. She froze, and the light broke over them like a wave. She clutched at Nait's arm, feeling his fingers digging into her arm in return: the light was dragging at her wards like sandpaper, and it hurt. It subsided in a moment and she stared at Nait's white face in terror.
"Tell me," he breathed, "what do we do now?"
"Hold on," Betty answered helplessly, yanking at his arm and pulling him right up close to her body, setting one leg either side of his body and clamping his waist tightly between her thighs, wrapping her arms around his neck and digging her fingers into his back and shoulder, pulling her wards down in a tighter, more compact shape. She was hardly in position before the next wave of light broke over them, and it hurt so badly she was surprised to hear herself whimpering. Nait's arms were tight around her waist.
"It has to know we're here," he gasped as it subsided. Betty shivered.
"Haika said if she could find us he could," she managed to say. The pain had partly paralyzed her, and it was hard to move her jaw. She was shaking and couldn't stop.
"Can you hold him off?" Nait asked, looking up into her face with concern. She saw him flinch and braced herself, and another wave grated over them, clawing. She bowed her head down over Nait's, sobbing tearlessly at the pain.
"Christ almighty," she gasped as it receded again. "It hurts. Oh God."
"Can we run?" Nait raised his head to look over her shoulder. "I don't see it."
"I don't think we can," Betty said. She couldn't stop shaking. She had more power. She could strengthen the wards. She dug deep and found enough to make another layer, and sealed it off with a spell to try to hide them. But she didn't have much left after that. She wasn't practiced at this, and she'd done a lot more magic lately than she was used to. There wasn't much left in reserve. Another few attacks just like the others and she'd have no defenses.
"What the hell can we do?" Nait asked. He could feel her shaking, and he was trying to hold her still. "If you can't hold him off, what can we fight him with?"
She put a hand on each of his cheeks, steadying herself against him, and looked down into his face. "Haika said you have power in you," she said. "I have to get it out of you so I can use it, because you don't really know how."
Nait stared at her blankly. "Get it out of me," he repeated finally. She nodded. "How does that work?"
"Apparently," Betty said, hesitated, and then put her mouth on his. He didn't respond for a moment, but then returned the kiss somewhat bewilderedly. "The only way I have enough skill to attempt," she said, resting her forehead against hers, "is to, er, to mate with you."
"Now I know what you meant by are you fucking kidding me," Nait said. She didn't answer, too busy trying to think of any other way out of this. He pulled his face back to look at her. "I, that is--"
She laughed. "I know, Nait. I know." She laughed again. "At least Thomas isn't watching this time."
"Thomas is in there?" Nait stared in a kind of horrified astonishment into her face.
"Not now," she said.
"It's just you?" Nait brought a hand up to her face, smoothing away a line of tension she hadn't realized was there. "Haika's gone?"
She nodded. "For once, when I could use someone's help, I'm by myself." She was still shaking, she noticed. "But if I let down the wards to let someone in, there'll be nothing to stop him from getting in too."
"Look out," Nait said calmly, wrapping his arms around her and putting his hand over the back of her head to pull her down to him. She put her face in his shoulder and braced herself for the pain.
But there was just a distant tugging sensation washing over the outer part of the wards, and in a moment it was gone.
"He's lost us," Nait whispered.
Betty retrieved her fingers from where they'd twisted themselves into Nait's shirt, and probed cautiously at the spell. The layer of secrecy she'd put over the top was frayed and a bit damaged, but had held. "He'll find us again," she said miserably, and cast another layer of secrecy over the top of it. It was like pulling out a string from between her ribs, and she shuddered at the painful effort.
"What are you doing?" Nait asked worriedly, supporting her.
"I'm putting another layer on so he won't see us on his way back through," she said when she had recovered enough to speak. "But I don't have many left." She was in violent opposition with herself over whether to cry or not: most of her really just wanted to weep, but the rest of her was angrily reminding her that it would do no good, which was only making the first part want to cry harder.
Nait turned his head and kissed her mouth, hard. "We can do this," he said. "As long as that thing doesn't come back."
Betty nearly started to cry, but laughed instead. "Are you serious?"
"I'll pretend I'm fifteen again," he said. "It wasn't that long ago. I spent pretty much the whole year hard. Mucking out the cow pen? Hard. Working on the palisade? Stiff! Trapped in mortal peril with a beautiful woman? Not a problem: I'm ready to go!"
Betty laughed. "If only we'd gone back just a couple more years," she said. He was kissing her neck breathlessly, but she could tell that he was breathing hard from panic rather than arousal.
"I probably didn't have any magic then," he said. "And I probably couldn't have done you much good in bed either. But I would've been ready in no time."
"I see," Betty said. He lipped at the junction of her jaw and her ear, moving his hands up under her shirt.
"Do you mind if I--" he said, a little self-conscious, and Betty broke free of her paralysis and pulled off her shirt.
"Do whatever you need to," she said, unfastening her bra. "Want me to talk dirty?"
"I'm unfamiliar with the concept," he said a little warily, regarding her from the corner of an eye as she unfastened her trousers.
"Uhn, yeah," Betty moaned breathily, "baby, you gonna fuck me? I want you to fuck me hard. Ooh, give it to me."
He paused, pulling his face back to look at her in incomprehension. "What?"
"That's dirty talk," she said, a little apologetically. "Sometimes, um, people like it."
He blinked, then laughed. "If you like," he said. "I see how that could work."
"I don't know what you like," she said, somewhat distressed. "I don't really know you very well at all."
"Now's not a good time to think about that," he said. "Not really a good time at all. Whatever you were thinking a little bit ago when I woke up, that would be a good thing to think again."
Betty put her arms around his neck, pulling him close so that his face was in her breasts again. "I was thinking that you're way more attractive than I'd thought you'd be," she said. "And it felt pretty good when you touched me."
He laughed. "I think I remember that," he said, kissing his way up the cleavage of her breasts to her collarbone and thence to her neck.
"You also smell a lot better than I'd thought you would, you filthy savage," she said.
"Shut up," he said, amused, and kissed her mouth. "I told you I knew what soap was."
"I have no idea how to get your clothes off you," Betty said in a moment, fingering the buttons at his shoulder. They weren't really like normal buttons.
"Ah," Nait said, quirking an eyebrow at her, "you don't have to." He hitched at the hem of his kilt-thing, pulling it up a bit to expose the pale skin of his upper thigh. The blood was drying in smeared streaks around the raw pink scar, a stark contrast to the otherwise-smooth skin. "You're the one with the ridiculous and incomprehensible clothing."
"Jeans seemed like a good idea when I was getting dressed," she said, unfastening them. Getting out of them would be a problem, unless she wanted to breach the boundary of her wards. She didn't think she could stand up anyway.
Nait pushed at the waistband intently. "I don't know what to do with all this," he said.
"We have to reposition," she said. Then she saw the light again. "Shit," she said.
Nait looked up and had just enough time to pull her close to him before it hit them. She shivered, but it slid across the outer edge of her wards without catching. "Why is it still looking?" he asked, frustrated.
"It wants you, I guess," Betty said. "I honestly don't know what Haika is doing. I don't know if Hemeru has even noticed."
"He's pretty worthless," Nait said. He went back to work on her jeans. "What on earth are these made from?"
"A plant that doesn't grow here," Betty said. His clothes seemed like wool, not even dyed. Working carefully, she disentangled herself from Nait's limbs and lay down on her back, legs curled in the air to remain within the boundaries of the wards without stretching them too much. Nait leaned over to pull at the jeans, and she had to kick her shoes off when the ankle hems got caught in the heels of her sneakers.
She freed one leg entirely from the jeans and sat up. "Good enough," she said. She didn't really want to lose track of her clothing, here in the middle of a strange woods. Nait caught at the waistband of her skimpy thong underpants. "Ugh, we can work around them," she said.
"My," he said, in some surprise, "those are flimsy." He stretched the waistband easily and slid his hand inside them. Betty wriggled ticklishly, and he pulled her close and kissed her mouth again. "Oh," he said appreciatively in a moment, "we can do this with absolutely no problem."
"Thank Christ," Betty said. His explorations astonished her by revealing that she was far more aroused than she'd realized. She hadn't brought any lubricant with her, not having foreseen this eventuality, but if he kept this up she wouldn't be likely to need any unless he were hung like a horse. She shoved his kilt up and ran her hand up his thigh, discovering that he was indeed as ready as he claimed to be. She closed her hand around his erection and considered revising her estimate on the lubricant, but the realization seemed to take care of itself.
"See?" he said, pleased. "It's like I'm fifteen."
"Let's do it then," she said, and pushed his kilt up around his hips, climbing to sit astride him. He jerked his head back to look up at her, giving her an intensely vulnerable look that was the more affecting for being from such close range. She kissed him to avoid having to meet his eyes any longer, and held him awkwardly with one hand while she tried to keep her balance by holding his shoulders with the other. He flexed his spine, trying to help line things up. Her panties got in the way for a second until she tugged them aside, and he hooked a finger through them to keep them out of the way.
There was a moment's resistance and then she was sinking along his length, taking in a series of little gasping breaths as she opened to accomodate him. He wasn't huge, but he was more than big enough, and she wasn't quite quite ready.
He sat still, holding her by the waist and kissing her neck. "Do we both need to--" he said in a moment.
"You know exactly as much as I know," she answered. She supposed she'd sat here long enough, and ventured to move her spine a bit. He held still, letting her direct the motion, and she caught her breath at how unexpectedly good it felt. It was a long time since she'd actually had a man. She didn't suppose it would help things to tell him that. But she hadn't dated in years and all of her work for the last few had been either solo or girl-on-girl. She'd forgotten how good it felt to do this.
"Are you ready?" he asked, looking up into her face with an earnest, concerned expression. She smiled and he lifted a hand to brush away a lock of her hair before he caressed her jaw and kissed her.
No, she decided, it didn't usually feel this good. "Yes," she murmured.
He put his hands around her waist, pulling her body tight against his, and began to move gently into her. "Harder," she said in a moment, with a laugh. "We don't have all day."
He obeyed, and she clutched at his shoulders to keep her balance, surprised at how effective the experience was proving. He kissed her collarbone. "How's that?" he asked.
"Good," she said, already out of breath. "I can't believe how good that is."
"I wish we had more time," Nait said a little wistfully. "There are all kinds of things I want to do to you that I'm just not going to have time to get to."
"We have to not die, then," Betty said.
"Mm," Nait said. "We also have to wind up staying in the same place," he pointed out.
"If I stay here," Betty said, "will your father let you keep me?"
"Honestly," Nait said, "I don't give a rat's shit what he says."
"You're showing sense," Betty said, and shivered: the sensations were building rapidly, and she suddenly didn't feel like talking. "Nait," she said.
"Betty," he answered softly, his mouth near her ear.
She wrapped her arms around his neck tightly, holding her breath. She'd been unsteady to start with, but the shivery feeling in her core was far more pleasant than the shakiness of her hands had been. She'd never been this easy, not with a man or with a woman or even with herself. She'd done plenty of pretending, but this was nothing of the sort.
Betty devoutly hoped that she hadn't just discovered that she had a fetish for mortal peril. Oh, but Jesus, it was hot.
"Oh God," she moaned softly through her teeth, letting her breath out and sucking in another. Nait made a noise as if in agreement. "Oh God oh Jesus." All her nerve endings went distant, focused inward on the way he felt as he moved inside her. The rapidly-disappearing part of her brain that was detached enough to remark on the proceedings observed that it made perfect sense for this to be a good way to absorb someone's magical power, as it demanded so much concentration even from someone who hadn't been taught the necessary focus. But then she became incapable of thought at all, and threw her head back and shuddered, gasping breathlessly, as all her focus came to an abrupt peak and release.
Nait's arms around her were the only thing keeping her upright. She let her head loll forward, trying to catch her breath. He raised a hand to her jaw, and pulled her face over to kiss her deeply and tenderly.
"Hey," he said in a moment. "Did it work?"
Betty took a breath and opened her eyes, struggling to find enough presence of mind to check her wards. They were the same. She took another deep breath, feeling the dull ache of having overexerted herself magically, and realized that if anything she was weaker than she had been. She was completely relaxed, euphoric even, and most of the pain was forgotten, but she was still exhausted.
"No," she said, astonished.
"Shit," Nait said. "Then that answers my question from before."
"You didn't finish?" She hadn't been paying any attention. She probably would have noticed if he had. She hadn't thought of it. Of course he needed to. She already knew how to focus. It was his energy they needed to focus, and he was the one who wouldn't know how.
He looked chagrined. "I don't, always," he said. "I mean, it takes me a while... Usually it's a good thing!"
"It's cool," Betty said. "Hey. It's cool. If we get out of this it will be a good thing. Look at me." She put a hand either side of his face. "The point of this is to focus your energy," she said. "It's just a substitute for what trained sorcerers do: they have to learn to focus to use magic. So focus."
"On what?" Nait looked a little desperate. Betty regretted, for the first time ever and for just a moment, that she hadn't ever worked in any of the seedier areas of porn. She'd never had to actually worry about getting anyone off; it had all been done for cameras, and really all that had ever mattered was that she'd looked hot doing whatever it was that was being done. This was a problem she'd never faced. But then, it had never been life or death.
She moved to take his mouth with hers and kiss him, at first as tenderly as he'd kissed her just after she came, but in a moment when he responded she bit his tongue and then pressed her lips harder against his, pushing her tongue deeply into his mouth and then partly closing her mouth to shove him with her jaw. She pulled back, a little breathless, to look at him, and he was endearingly flushed.
"Do you remember," she said softly, "when I first spoke to you, when I found you inside my body?" He nodded slowly. "Do you remember how it upset you that you didn't have your own heartbeat?"
"It was weird," he said, a little uncomfortable.
She smiled slowly, moving slowly so that her mouth came to rest just beside his ear. "I can feel your heartbeat inside me," she said, hissing the last two words between her teeth and clenching her internal muscles tightly around his erection. She felt him catch his breath and knew she could do this. "You have your own but it still makes mine beat faster. Do you like that?"
"Betty," he murmured. She bit his earlobe gently and undulated her spine, moving herself against his body. His hands tightened around her hips and she sat up, taking a deeper breath and arching her back so her breasts were closer to his face.
"Come on," she whispered huskily, "come on and fuck me. Doesn't that feel good?"
"Mm," he said, and bent his head to kiss her breasts. He was intent now, moving slowly but consistently. Betty saw movement from the corner of her eye and wrapped her arms around his head, pulling him close so perhaps he wouldn't notice that the light was coming back, spilling out from the circle in another wave to look for them again. It washed over them in a second, rubbing uncomfortably against her wards, and then scraped back over them, still failing to peel away the layer of secrecy.
Nait paused for a moment, but said nothing, resuming his motion with more determination. "Maybe he won't find us," he said in a moment, slowing a little and looking up.
Betty pulled back to look into his face. "Maybe," she said, too tired to think of anything else to distract him with. She was exhausted. She could feel that the edges were frayed of her secrecy spell, and she tried to find more power to repair them, but there was nothing there. Even the effort of trying to collect herself hurt. She wanted to cry again. And she didn't want to fuck anymore. She was done and it had been nice and she just didn't want any more.
But this was a familiar limit she'd hit in the past, and she knew how to get past it. This, she was a professional at. "No," she said, giving herself a moment to get through the pain of focusing her strength. "He'll find us next time." She shook her head. "I don't have any more and the concealment spell is damaged. I can't fix it." Before Nait could respond, she tossed her hair out of her eyes and looked straight into his face. "I want you on top now. You get on top and take me, and you tell me anything you need."
He nodded. He looked anxious, but he also looked extremely turned-on, and Betty could take the good with the bad. She bit her lip and tossed her head and made as much as she could of the erotic potential of it as she dismounted from his lap, reflecting that she hadn't really had to do much acting. She was extremely sensitive from her orgasm. It seemed effective: as she lay down he watched her hungrily. She ran her hand along the inside of her thigh, touched herself briefly, and ran her fingers along her hip and across her stomach, and he followed the gesture with his eyes.
"You want me," she whispered. She was desperately tired. She lowered her eyelashes and looked under them at him. He lowered himself down on his elbows, and she pulled the wards down behind him, hoping they'd take up a little less space this way and maybe she could tuck the frayed edges of the secrecy spell underneath. But there wasn't much of a savings, space-wise. She rearranged what she could, but there just wasn't any more power to put into a repair. This was it.
She wrapped a leg around his and arched her back, opening herself as wide as she could for him. He made a tight little grunting sound as he slid into her, and she moaned. It hurt a little: she was too sensitive, and needed more time to get ready for more. But there wasn't time. "Come on," she moaned. "Give it to me."
He gripped her shoulders tightly and started moving into her, thrusting with more force than he had been. She put her face against his shoulder and dug her fingers into the rough cloth of the back of his shirt. It hurt. She was starting to be unpleasantly reminded of her first movie, the shooting for which had gone on forever. She'd cried a bit in that one, and it had been terribly effective-- genuine emotion was hard to find in porn, apparently, and she'd learned early on that it would get you a following. She had a strong feeling crying wouldn't work on Nait. He didn't seem the type. It didn't hurt badly, it was just uncomfortable and she knew she'd be sore later.
He slowed, and moved his head, rubbing his jaw along her cheek and taking her mouth with his. He was breathing too hard to kiss her for long. She looked at him under her lashes again, managing what she hoped was a sexy smile.
"Is that all right?" he asked, concerned but distracted. He couldn't be far from finished now.
"It's good," Betty said, unable to come up with anything hotter.
"Don't lie to me," he said, unexpectedly intense, and his eyes came into sharp focus on her face as he stopped moving entirely. "You're thinking of that thing you were trying not to remember when you were talking to Tom. I don't want to make you feel like they did."
Betty was astonished. "You heard that?"
"I heard enough then," he said. "I can recognize it now." His distress was oddly affecting: she wanted to cry more now than she had before. It made her feel closer to him. A wave of some emotion she couldn't at first identify came over her, and she embraced him tightly until she could recognize it: calling it affection or fondness was too mild, but saying Love would break all her own hard-learned rules of living. That word always brought things she didn't mean into a conversation, but she didn't know now what she meant.
"Kiss me," she whispered, not trusting her voice. He hesitated a moment, almost resentful, before putting his lips gently against hers. She bit his lower lip, rubbing her teeth over it, teasing and sucking at it. "Nait," she murmured in a moment, not releasing his lip. "Nait, the main difference between this and what happened then is that we don't have a choice. You're not trying to hurt me for your amusement or pleasure." She kissed him again. "You're a good person and I-- I trust you." The L word wasn't ever coming out of her mouth during sex, but it wasn't easy to avoid. She released his lip and kissed him again, deeper but gentle, and moved her hips. He was still hard: she hadn't lost him. And the pause had given her a little time: she was wetter now, ready to resume. She could take him now and still be able to walk tomorrow. And what's more, she actually wanted to.
She'd distracted him thoroughly: he was so aroused he was having trouble focusing on her face. "Betty," he said, "I don't want--"
"I know you want me," she said, bucking her hips against him. Oh yes she was ready now. "I know you do. I can feel it. Nobody's ever made me come like you just did. I bet you can again. If I come again you'll come with me. That's what we need. I know you can. You're so fucking hard I know we can't stop now."
"You feel different," he whispered. He was moving into her again, distractedly, apparently despite himself.
"I do," she said. "Nait, I'm not lying. I want you."
"How did you do that," he said softly, wondering, his eyes focused distantly somewhere behind her ear.
"I didn't," she answered with a soft laugh. She nibbled at his earlobe, and was rewarded with a shiver down his back. It surprised her that she shivered in response. "You did."
His fingers flexed against her shoulders and he was moving faster now, his breath coming fast and uneven. "I--" he began, and Betty ground her hips against him with an entirely unfeigned low moan. She was hot again, excited, aroused, building up again to another high dizzying rise of sensation. It was downright uncanny, how good Nait was.
She almost didn't notice it when the sorcerer came back. The light came while her eyes were closed, and the little tremors of sensation gathering in her spine masked the dragging pull of the wave across her concealment spell. She panted, dizzy, as sparks began to tingle along the edge of her vision. "Oh God," she moaned softly. "Oh--"
The concealment spell tore, and the light flooded under it, searing across the surface of her wards in a frantic rush to find a gap. She dug her nails into Nait's shoulder, her body convulsing into an arch, and came hard, shuddering violently and letting out a sharp cry.
"It's back," Nait gasped raggedly, and Betty shrieked. It was tearing at her, trying to flood into every tiny fissure or crack or irregularity or gap in her protection spell. But she was pinioned, in spasm, pleasure and pain both so intense she couldn't tell them apart.
"Don't stop," she managed to gasp desperately, "oh Christ, oh--" She was coming apart, shattering, and she threw all her energy at the disintegrating wards. It was too late, she was being destroyed, but Christ what ecstasy.
Nait cried out breathlessly, driving into her with a desperate singleness of purpose. "You're mine," she shrieked. "Mine, not his. He'll never have you!"
He buried himself in her with a strangled, urgent cry, and his power shot through her with the force of an explosion. He was immense, terrifying, and blotted out the yellow light instantly. Betty had less than a split-second to think that this was not a bad way to go before she was obliterated entirely.
words: 6901 (really???!!!)
total: 49,427
Holy CRAP. That's two thousand words longer than I thought it was. I'm going to go double-check. Good Lord. And there's another bit of scene I didn't put in yet...
Holy fuck!!! I'm over 50K!!!!!!!
*dies*
When I cough it tastes like blood, which is exceedingly distracting. I checked, it isn't really, but my goodness, nothing turns you off everything like the taste of blood.
My cold is almost better, which is actually pretty funny, because now my mood is terrible and I want to lie in bed and drink cheap instant soup with a hot water bottle on my head and flannel sheets on the bed, while during the actual illness I was chipper and semi-delirious. I'm a spaz.
This scene has proven extremely difficult. The difficulties make me feel uncomfortably pretentious, because I've enjoyed it so much and yet it's been slow going. It seems sort of masturbatory to complain about something so challenging that I enjoy so much, but I don't really know how else to relate my experience without appearing to complain.
And of course I run the risk of trying to make my Artisticke Struggles sound glamorous, which, I mean, really they aren't.
I'm not entirely comfortable with this draft, though. I've always had several levels of writing: the earliest ones were never intended for anyone else to read, and I fall back on that sometimes. The first writing to make the transition from For Me into being For Others To Read (which most people seem to think is the default setting for all writers: but only the advent of the Internet made that my default setting, and by "the advent of the Internet" I mean my maturation into a writer thereon, which is exceedingly recent by any standards) was my academic stuff. Yes, even my early school assignments were largely written for myself, I had that slight an awareness of the world and its relationship to me and vice versa. Gradually I began to accept that others would read my fiction writing, and I learned that certain types of scenes were easier to write for others.
Dialogue is the easiest. I could write you fifty thousand words of dialogue without breaking a sweat, and most of it would be entertaining, although as almost nothing would happen, I couldn't guarantee you'd really want to read all of it. But it would read perfectly well to most observers.
Smut had to progress at a different pace. I actually learned smut writing fairly quickly, not counting the few abortive and ridiculously-euphemistic attempts I made at it while a completely virginal teenager.
But there are still certain things I tend to write only for myself, because they appeal to me and I know they won't appeal to others. I have a few really dark things I've written that I haven't posted because they're so out of line with my other stuff, and I also have various things I've written that, and let me be honest, I know titillate me but seem esoteric enough that they're unlikely to be the same for anyone else. And there is nothing more embarrassing than having your deepest darkest weirdest... lamest fetishes laid bare before others who just don't share them.
But there are other things, that I know as I'm writing make perfect sense to me internally, and yet I know won't to others. Mostly this has nothing to do with smut. They're little shorthands, responses, quirks, that I usually edit out in the composition phase.
All of this is mostly just me dancing around the fact that this scene is rougher than what I'm used to posting. There are a lot of internal contradictions in this whole novel, which I'm less concerned with than usual; or maybe I just don't usually notice them and I'm aware of them and telling myself not to care this time? I don't know.
But this scene has been difficult because I think it's the first time I've tried to write a sex scene that isn't hot. Well, not entirely. Not hot to me, not hot to either character; it's a lot more uncomfortable than I've written before. I've written noncon stuff but even that was meant to titillate the reader. This, not so much. It's a lot more raw but also a lot more genuine, and what I think my subconscious was trying to do by making Nait so difficult was to make the scene a lot more like sex really is. Sex in the real world is not about rainbows and mutual pleasure and unicorns flying out of people's vaginas. It's usually based in some emotional reality more than actual physical need, and it's usually unevenly successful.
I wanted to do that. I don't like manufacturing conflict. I am uncomfortable with how this turned out, yet, and I don't know if I've actually said what i wanted to say, because, you see, I'm not sure what I wanted to say.
I'm unhappy with how fixated I become with the mundane choreography, with the physical mechanics of the sex act. With the hydraulics, if you will.
I should edit that down into a coherent post on writing porn and writing for an audience and what-have-you. There's something coherent lurking in there. I can't find it at the moment: work consisted of nearly eight hours of running around like an asshole while my sinuses twinged in such a way that it felt as though someone were continuously stabbing me in the face with an ice pick. Yes. It was great.
Anyhow. A long-delayed sex scene, for the most part. It does, however, have the best pullout line for the lj-cut text. I'm hugely amused by this line but, free of context, Z doesn't understand why it's funny. I should know better than to try to make him laugh with these nonsequiturs, as he won't read my work, but I always have to say why I'm giggling like a maniac. Oh well.
"Shh," she whispered. "It's looking for us." He looked away from her face and involuntarily shrank back with fear as he realized that the light was coming back toward them. "It's the enemy sorcerer," she said.
"Can it hear--" Betty cut Nait off, covering his mouth. She didn't care to find out. They lay still and silent as the tendril crept back toward them. Betty could feel Nait's heart beating hard in his chest where her arm was pressed against it.
The light reached them and slid over Betty's wards as if they were a bubble of glass. She and Nait stared in frozen horror as the moment stretched into eternity, the tendril sliding slowly across the invisible surface. Nait's breath stopped against Betty's hand, and only the continued pounding of his heart told her that time hadn't stopped.
The light slid off to the right, and Betty closed her eyes for a moment, feeling Nait's breath gust slowly against her hand. She released his mouth, realizing she'd clamped her hand rather more tightly against his face than she should have. Nait twisted his head carefully to watch the light as it continued its groping off to the right.
"How smart is that thing?" he breathed.
"I have no way of knowing," Betty said.
"What about all the people in your head?" he asked.
She shrugged. "They can't get through this bubble either," she answered.
"What is it?" He reached out tentatively as if to touch it, but there was nothing to feel. She noticed his hand was shaking. She reached out and covered his hand with hers, pulling it back in.
"It's my protective spells," she said. "I cast them while I was walking away from you. They're powerful but they're almost my only trick. I don't know what I'd do if he'd found us. I don't know how determined an attack I could resist."
"What-- who is this 'he'? Why did he-- it-- attack me like that?" Nait wriggled out from under her to sit up. She rearranged herself so that she was sitting close to him, her legs over his, so that the wards could still be a fairly tight circle and cover them both completely.
"It's the sorcerer who controls the thing that attacked you when Finn-- you and Finn," Betty said. "As best I understand, the sorcerer was using those things to harvest souls to make him more powerful. In my time, sorcerers like Thomas and Althea know how to defeat those things. He's using them here because your people don't consistently have defenses against them. But he's collecting power to attack our world, we think."
"Hm," Nait said. He craned his neck. The tendril had vanished over to the right, but the circle was still visible in front of them. He regarded it with some alarm. "What about everyone in there?"
"It's more interested in certain people," Betty said, although she wasn't sure. "I think it can't get normal healthy people, but people near death, or when their souls are being released at funerals... Haika said it would be especially interested in you, and sent you away with me because she didn't have time to protect you."
"Finn," Nait said. He looked grim. "Because she's busy using Finn as bait."
"And she has him under her protection," Betty said hastily, resisting the urge to grab Nait's arm. He was stronger than she was and it was moot. She carefully threaded her fingers through his instead, bringing his hand up to hold it between both of hers. He regarded her steadily for a moment, and she knew he could still hear enough of her thoughts that she was glad she hadn't lied. Exactly. She stopped thinking, and thought instead of how impressed she was with Haika's power.
Something clinked against the bubble of Betty's wards, and she jumped in startlement, looking up. Nait didn't react initially, but he glanced up too, following the direction of her look. Something was stuck, sparkling a little, in the invisible sweep of the bubble above them. Betty tilted her head to look at it. It was a tiny shard of something. "What is that?" she asked.
Nait squinted. "A tree branch?" Betty shot him a disbelieving look before she realized he couldn't see it at all, and thought she was looking at the background.
"No," she said, and tentatively reached up, trying to get a feeling from the thing. It was radiating something quietly intense, something that reminded her of-- "Haika." She reached up and pulled the thing out of the bubble. It was a tiny shard of flint, and as she tried to make it lie flat against her finger to get a look, it cut her. "Ow," she said, and then looked again. It was gone, a bright drop of blood standing out against her skin where it had been.
Why aren't you fucking him? Betty jumped again.
"Did you hear that?" she asked. It had been almost Haika's voice.
Nait looked mystified.
I asked you a question, Haika said. She sounded harried and angry. You're good at hiding but not good enough to hide from me and, I suspect, not good enough to hide from him forever. You need a secondary plan.
"What?" Betty stared blankly at Nait, trying to understand.
I found you, Haika said. So will he.
"So then what do I do?" she asked. Nait had his teeth bared in a wary grimace, watching her, and she flapped a hand at him.
His mother was a priest, Haika said. He's got quite a lot of power but he doesn't know how to use any of it. You need to get it out of him so you can use it. Your friends have all kinds of fascinating ways of doing that, but I only know one foolproof one, and that's to fuck him.
"Are you fucking kidding me," Betty said, putting a hand in her hair. Not that she objected to the act on principle, or to the choice of partner at all, but not even she could simply drop her drawers and copulate on command. She couldn't imagine a less ideal setting.
I need you to do it, Haika said, and disappeared, taking with her the drop of blood Betty had shed. Betty stared at her perfectly unmarked finger for a moment in numb shock before Nait grabbed her arm. She had a second to look up and see a flash of yellow light before it enveloped them. She froze, and the light broke over them like a wave. She clutched at Nait's arm, feeling his fingers digging into her arm in return: the light was dragging at her wards like sandpaper, and it hurt. It subsided in a moment and she stared at Nait's white face in terror.
"Tell me," he breathed, "what do we do now?"
"Hold on," Betty answered helplessly, yanking at his arm and pulling him right up close to her body, setting one leg either side of his body and clamping his waist tightly between her thighs, wrapping her arms around his neck and digging her fingers into his back and shoulder, pulling her wards down in a tighter, more compact shape. She was hardly in position before the next wave of light broke over them, and it hurt so badly she was surprised to hear herself whimpering. Nait's arms were tight around her waist.
"It has to know we're here," he gasped as it subsided. Betty shivered.
"Haika said if she could find us he could," she managed to say. The pain had partly paralyzed her, and it was hard to move her jaw. She was shaking and couldn't stop.
"Can you hold him off?" Nait asked, looking up into her face with concern. She saw him flinch and braced herself, and another wave grated over them, clawing. She bowed her head down over Nait's, sobbing tearlessly at the pain.
"Christ almighty," she gasped as it receded again. "It hurts. Oh God."
"Can we run?" Nait raised his head to look over her shoulder. "I don't see it."
"I don't think we can," Betty said. She couldn't stop shaking. She had more power. She could strengthen the wards. She dug deep and found enough to make another layer, and sealed it off with a spell to try to hide them. But she didn't have much left after that. She wasn't practiced at this, and she'd done a lot more magic lately than she was used to. There wasn't much left in reserve. Another few attacks just like the others and she'd have no defenses.
"What the hell can we do?" Nait asked. He could feel her shaking, and he was trying to hold her still. "If you can't hold him off, what can we fight him with?"
She put a hand on each of his cheeks, steadying herself against him, and looked down into his face. "Haika said you have power in you," she said. "I have to get it out of you so I can use it, because you don't really know how."
Nait stared at her blankly. "Get it out of me," he repeated finally. She nodded. "How does that work?"
"Apparently," Betty said, hesitated, and then put her mouth on his. He didn't respond for a moment, but then returned the kiss somewhat bewilderedly. "The only way I have enough skill to attempt," she said, resting her forehead against hers, "is to, er, to mate with you."
"Now I know what you meant by are you fucking kidding me," Nait said. She didn't answer, too busy trying to think of any other way out of this. He pulled his face back to look at her. "I, that is--"
She laughed. "I know, Nait. I know." She laughed again. "At least Thomas isn't watching this time."
"Thomas is in there?" Nait stared in a kind of horrified astonishment into her face.
"Not now," she said.
"It's just you?" Nait brought a hand up to her face, smoothing away a line of tension she hadn't realized was there. "Haika's gone?"
She nodded. "For once, when I could use someone's help, I'm by myself." She was still shaking, she noticed. "But if I let down the wards to let someone in, there'll be nothing to stop him from getting in too."
"Look out," Nait said calmly, wrapping his arms around her and putting his hand over the back of her head to pull her down to him. She put her face in his shoulder and braced herself for the pain.
But there was just a distant tugging sensation washing over the outer part of the wards, and in a moment it was gone.
"He's lost us," Nait whispered.
Betty retrieved her fingers from where they'd twisted themselves into Nait's shirt, and probed cautiously at the spell. The layer of secrecy she'd put over the top was frayed and a bit damaged, but had held. "He'll find us again," she said miserably, and cast another layer of secrecy over the top of it. It was like pulling out a string from between her ribs, and she shuddered at the painful effort.
"What are you doing?" Nait asked worriedly, supporting her.
"I'm putting another layer on so he won't see us on his way back through," she said when she had recovered enough to speak. "But I don't have many left." She was in violent opposition with herself over whether to cry or not: most of her really just wanted to weep, but the rest of her was angrily reminding her that it would do no good, which was only making the first part want to cry harder.
Nait turned his head and kissed her mouth, hard. "We can do this," he said. "As long as that thing doesn't come back."
Betty nearly started to cry, but laughed instead. "Are you serious?"
"I'll pretend I'm fifteen again," he said. "It wasn't that long ago. I spent pretty much the whole year hard. Mucking out the cow pen? Hard. Working on the palisade? Stiff! Trapped in mortal peril with a beautiful woman? Not a problem: I'm ready to go!"
Betty laughed. "If only we'd gone back just a couple more years," she said. He was kissing her neck breathlessly, but she could tell that he was breathing hard from panic rather than arousal.
"I probably didn't have any magic then," he said. "And I probably couldn't have done you much good in bed either. But I would've been ready in no time."
"I see," Betty said. He lipped at the junction of her jaw and her ear, moving his hands up under her shirt.
"Do you mind if I--" he said, a little self-conscious, and Betty broke free of her paralysis and pulled off her shirt.
"Do whatever you need to," she said, unfastening her bra. "Want me to talk dirty?"
"I'm unfamiliar with the concept," he said a little warily, regarding her from the corner of an eye as she unfastened her trousers.
"Uhn, yeah," Betty moaned breathily, "baby, you gonna fuck me? I want you to fuck me hard. Ooh, give it to me."
He paused, pulling his face back to look at her in incomprehension. "What?"
"That's dirty talk," she said, a little apologetically. "Sometimes, um, people like it."
He blinked, then laughed. "If you like," he said. "I see how that could work."
"I don't know what you like," she said, somewhat distressed. "I don't really know you very well at all."
"Now's not a good time to think about that," he said. "Not really a good time at all. Whatever you were thinking a little bit ago when I woke up, that would be a good thing to think again."
Betty put her arms around his neck, pulling him close so that his face was in her breasts again. "I was thinking that you're way more attractive than I'd thought you'd be," she said. "And it felt pretty good when you touched me."
He laughed. "I think I remember that," he said, kissing his way up the cleavage of her breasts to her collarbone and thence to her neck.
"You also smell a lot better than I'd thought you would, you filthy savage," she said.
"Shut up," he said, amused, and kissed her mouth. "I told you I knew what soap was."
"I have no idea how to get your clothes off you," Betty said in a moment, fingering the buttons at his shoulder. They weren't really like normal buttons.
"Ah," Nait said, quirking an eyebrow at her, "you don't have to." He hitched at the hem of his kilt-thing, pulling it up a bit to expose the pale skin of his upper thigh. The blood was drying in smeared streaks around the raw pink scar, a stark contrast to the otherwise-smooth skin. "You're the one with the ridiculous and incomprehensible clothing."
"Jeans seemed like a good idea when I was getting dressed," she said, unfastening them. Getting out of them would be a problem, unless she wanted to breach the boundary of her wards. She didn't think she could stand up anyway.
Nait pushed at the waistband intently. "I don't know what to do with all this," he said.
"We have to reposition," she said. Then she saw the light again. "Shit," she said.
Nait looked up and had just enough time to pull her close to him before it hit them. She shivered, but it slid across the outer edge of her wards without catching. "Why is it still looking?" he asked, frustrated.
"It wants you, I guess," Betty said. "I honestly don't know what Haika is doing. I don't know if Hemeru has even noticed."
"He's pretty worthless," Nait said. He went back to work on her jeans. "What on earth are these made from?"
"A plant that doesn't grow here," Betty said. His clothes seemed like wool, not even dyed. Working carefully, she disentangled herself from Nait's limbs and lay down on her back, legs curled in the air to remain within the boundaries of the wards without stretching them too much. Nait leaned over to pull at the jeans, and she had to kick her shoes off when the ankle hems got caught in the heels of her sneakers.
She freed one leg entirely from the jeans and sat up. "Good enough," she said. She didn't really want to lose track of her clothing, here in the middle of a strange woods. Nait caught at the waistband of her skimpy thong underpants. "Ugh, we can work around them," she said.
"My," he said, in some surprise, "those are flimsy." He stretched the waistband easily and slid his hand inside them. Betty wriggled ticklishly, and he pulled her close and kissed her mouth again. "Oh," he said appreciatively in a moment, "we can do this with absolutely no problem."
"Thank Christ," Betty said. His explorations astonished her by revealing that she was far more aroused than she'd realized. She hadn't brought any lubricant with her, not having foreseen this eventuality, but if he kept this up she wouldn't be likely to need any unless he were hung like a horse. She shoved his kilt up and ran her hand up his thigh, discovering that he was indeed as ready as he claimed to be. She closed her hand around his erection and considered revising her estimate on the lubricant, but the realization seemed to take care of itself.
"See?" he said, pleased. "It's like I'm fifteen."
"Let's do it then," she said, and pushed his kilt up around his hips, climbing to sit astride him. He jerked his head back to look up at her, giving her an intensely vulnerable look that was the more affecting for being from such close range. She kissed him to avoid having to meet his eyes any longer, and held him awkwardly with one hand while she tried to keep her balance by holding his shoulders with the other. He flexed his spine, trying to help line things up. Her panties got in the way for a second until she tugged them aside, and he hooked a finger through them to keep them out of the way.
There was a moment's resistance and then she was sinking along his length, taking in a series of little gasping breaths as she opened to accomodate him. He wasn't huge, but he was more than big enough, and she wasn't quite quite ready.
He sat still, holding her by the waist and kissing her neck. "Do we both need to--" he said in a moment.
"You know exactly as much as I know," she answered. She supposed she'd sat here long enough, and ventured to move her spine a bit. He held still, letting her direct the motion, and she caught her breath at how unexpectedly good it felt. It was a long time since she'd actually had a man. She didn't suppose it would help things to tell him that. But she hadn't dated in years and all of her work for the last few had been either solo or girl-on-girl. She'd forgotten how good it felt to do this.
"Are you ready?" he asked, looking up into her face with an earnest, concerned expression. She smiled and he lifted a hand to brush away a lock of her hair before he caressed her jaw and kissed her.
No, she decided, it didn't usually feel this good. "Yes," she murmured.
He put his hands around her waist, pulling her body tight against his, and began to move gently into her. "Harder," she said in a moment, with a laugh. "We don't have all day."
He obeyed, and she clutched at his shoulders to keep her balance, surprised at how effective the experience was proving. He kissed her collarbone. "How's that?" he asked.
"Good," she said, already out of breath. "I can't believe how good that is."
"I wish we had more time," Nait said a little wistfully. "There are all kinds of things I want to do to you that I'm just not going to have time to get to."
"We have to not die, then," Betty said.
"Mm," Nait said. "We also have to wind up staying in the same place," he pointed out.
"If I stay here," Betty said, "will your father let you keep me?"
"Honestly," Nait said, "I don't give a rat's shit what he says."
"You're showing sense," Betty said, and shivered: the sensations were building rapidly, and she suddenly didn't feel like talking. "Nait," she said.
"Betty," he answered softly, his mouth near her ear.
She wrapped her arms around his neck tightly, holding her breath. She'd been unsteady to start with, but the shivery feeling in her core was far more pleasant than the shakiness of her hands had been. She'd never been this easy, not with a man or with a woman or even with herself. She'd done plenty of pretending, but this was nothing of the sort.
Betty devoutly hoped that she hadn't just discovered that she had a fetish for mortal peril. Oh, but Jesus, it was hot.
"Oh God," she moaned softly through her teeth, letting her breath out and sucking in another. Nait made a noise as if in agreement. "Oh God oh Jesus." All her nerve endings went distant, focused inward on the way he felt as he moved inside her. The rapidly-disappearing part of her brain that was detached enough to remark on the proceedings observed that it made perfect sense for this to be a good way to absorb someone's magical power, as it demanded so much concentration even from someone who hadn't been taught the necessary focus. But then she became incapable of thought at all, and threw her head back and shuddered, gasping breathlessly, as all her focus came to an abrupt peak and release.
Nait's arms around her were the only thing keeping her upright. She let her head loll forward, trying to catch her breath. He raised a hand to her jaw, and pulled her face over to kiss her deeply and tenderly.
"Hey," he said in a moment. "Did it work?"
Betty took a breath and opened her eyes, struggling to find enough presence of mind to check her wards. They were the same. She took another deep breath, feeling the dull ache of having overexerted herself magically, and realized that if anything she was weaker than she had been. She was completely relaxed, euphoric even, and most of the pain was forgotten, but she was still exhausted.
"No," she said, astonished.
"Shit," Nait said. "Then that answers my question from before."
"You didn't finish?" She hadn't been paying any attention. She probably would have noticed if he had. She hadn't thought of it. Of course he needed to. She already knew how to focus. It was his energy they needed to focus, and he was the one who wouldn't know how.
He looked chagrined. "I don't, always," he said. "I mean, it takes me a while... Usually it's a good thing!"
"It's cool," Betty said. "Hey. It's cool. If we get out of this it will be a good thing. Look at me." She put a hand either side of his face. "The point of this is to focus your energy," she said. "It's just a substitute for what trained sorcerers do: they have to learn to focus to use magic. So focus."
"On what?" Nait looked a little desperate. Betty regretted, for the first time ever and for just a moment, that she hadn't ever worked in any of the seedier areas of porn. She'd never had to actually worry about getting anyone off; it had all been done for cameras, and really all that had ever mattered was that she'd looked hot doing whatever it was that was being done. This was a problem she'd never faced. But then, it had never been life or death.
She moved to take his mouth with hers and kiss him, at first as tenderly as he'd kissed her just after she came, but in a moment when he responded she bit his tongue and then pressed her lips harder against his, pushing her tongue deeply into his mouth and then partly closing her mouth to shove him with her jaw. She pulled back, a little breathless, to look at him, and he was endearingly flushed.
"Do you remember," she said softly, "when I first spoke to you, when I found you inside my body?" He nodded slowly. "Do you remember how it upset you that you didn't have your own heartbeat?"
"It was weird," he said, a little uncomfortable.
She smiled slowly, moving slowly so that her mouth came to rest just beside his ear. "I can feel your heartbeat inside me," she said, hissing the last two words between her teeth and clenching her internal muscles tightly around his erection. She felt him catch his breath and knew she could do this. "You have your own but it still makes mine beat faster. Do you like that?"
"Betty," he murmured. She bit his earlobe gently and undulated her spine, moving herself against his body. His hands tightened around her hips and she sat up, taking a deeper breath and arching her back so her breasts were closer to his face.
"Come on," she whispered huskily, "come on and fuck me. Doesn't that feel good?"
"Mm," he said, and bent his head to kiss her breasts. He was intent now, moving slowly but consistently. Betty saw movement from the corner of her eye and wrapped her arms around his head, pulling him close so perhaps he wouldn't notice that the light was coming back, spilling out from the circle in another wave to look for them again. It washed over them in a second, rubbing uncomfortably against her wards, and then scraped back over them, still failing to peel away the layer of secrecy.
Nait paused for a moment, but said nothing, resuming his motion with more determination. "Maybe he won't find us," he said in a moment, slowing a little and looking up.
Betty pulled back to look into his face. "Maybe," she said, too tired to think of anything else to distract him with. She was exhausted. She could feel that the edges were frayed of her secrecy spell, and she tried to find more power to repair them, but there was nothing there. Even the effort of trying to collect herself hurt. She wanted to cry again. And she didn't want to fuck anymore. She was done and it had been nice and she just didn't want any more.
But this was a familiar limit she'd hit in the past, and she knew how to get past it. This, she was a professional at. "No," she said, giving herself a moment to get through the pain of focusing her strength. "He'll find us next time." She shook her head. "I don't have any more and the concealment spell is damaged. I can't fix it." Before Nait could respond, she tossed her hair out of her eyes and looked straight into his face. "I want you on top now. You get on top and take me, and you tell me anything you need."
He nodded. He looked anxious, but he also looked extremely turned-on, and Betty could take the good with the bad. She bit her lip and tossed her head and made as much as she could of the erotic potential of it as she dismounted from his lap, reflecting that she hadn't really had to do much acting. She was extremely sensitive from her orgasm. It seemed effective: as she lay down he watched her hungrily. She ran her hand along the inside of her thigh, touched herself briefly, and ran her fingers along her hip and across her stomach, and he followed the gesture with his eyes.
"You want me," she whispered. She was desperately tired. She lowered her eyelashes and looked under them at him. He lowered himself down on his elbows, and she pulled the wards down behind him, hoping they'd take up a little less space this way and maybe she could tuck the frayed edges of the secrecy spell underneath. But there wasn't much of a savings, space-wise. She rearranged what she could, but there just wasn't any more power to put into a repair. This was it.
She wrapped a leg around his and arched her back, opening herself as wide as she could for him. He made a tight little grunting sound as he slid into her, and she moaned. It hurt a little: she was too sensitive, and needed more time to get ready for more. But there wasn't time. "Come on," she moaned. "Give it to me."
He gripped her shoulders tightly and started moving into her, thrusting with more force than he had been. She put her face against his shoulder and dug her fingers into the rough cloth of the back of his shirt. It hurt. She was starting to be unpleasantly reminded of her first movie, the shooting for which had gone on forever. She'd cried a bit in that one, and it had been terribly effective-- genuine emotion was hard to find in porn, apparently, and she'd learned early on that it would get you a following. She had a strong feeling crying wouldn't work on Nait. He didn't seem the type. It didn't hurt badly, it was just uncomfortable and she knew she'd be sore later.
He slowed, and moved his head, rubbing his jaw along her cheek and taking her mouth with his. He was breathing too hard to kiss her for long. She looked at him under her lashes again, managing what she hoped was a sexy smile.
"Is that all right?" he asked, concerned but distracted. He couldn't be far from finished now.
"It's good," Betty said, unable to come up with anything hotter.
"Don't lie to me," he said, unexpectedly intense, and his eyes came into sharp focus on her face as he stopped moving entirely. "You're thinking of that thing you were trying not to remember when you were talking to Tom. I don't want to make you feel like they did."
Betty was astonished. "You heard that?"
"I heard enough then," he said. "I can recognize it now." His distress was oddly affecting: she wanted to cry more now than she had before. It made her feel closer to him. A wave of some emotion she couldn't at first identify came over her, and she embraced him tightly until she could recognize it: calling it affection or fondness was too mild, but saying Love would break all her own hard-learned rules of living. That word always brought things she didn't mean into a conversation, but she didn't know now what she meant.
"Kiss me," she whispered, not trusting her voice. He hesitated a moment, almost resentful, before putting his lips gently against hers. She bit his lower lip, rubbing her teeth over it, teasing and sucking at it. "Nait," she murmured in a moment, not releasing his lip. "Nait, the main difference between this and what happened then is that we don't have a choice. You're not trying to hurt me for your amusement or pleasure." She kissed him again. "You're a good person and I-- I trust you." The L word wasn't ever coming out of her mouth during sex, but it wasn't easy to avoid. She released his lip and kissed him again, deeper but gentle, and moved her hips. He was still hard: she hadn't lost him. And the pause had given her a little time: she was wetter now, ready to resume. She could take him now and still be able to walk tomorrow. And what's more, she actually wanted to.
She'd distracted him thoroughly: he was so aroused he was having trouble focusing on her face. "Betty," he said, "I don't want--"
"I know you want me," she said, bucking her hips against him. Oh yes she was ready now. "I know you do. I can feel it. Nobody's ever made me come like you just did. I bet you can again. If I come again you'll come with me. That's what we need. I know you can. You're so fucking hard I know we can't stop now."
"You feel different," he whispered. He was moving into her again, distractedly, apparently despite himself.
"I do," she said. "Nait, I'm not lying. I want you."
"How did you do that," he said softly, wondering, his eyes focused distantly somewhere behind her ear.
"I didn't," she answered with a soft laugh. She nibbled at his earlobe, and was rewarded with a shiver down his back. It surprised her that she shivered in response. "You did."
His fingers flexed against her shoulders and he was moving faster now, his breath coming fast and uneven. "I--" he began, and Betty ground her hips against him with an entirely unfeigned low moan. She was hot again, excited, aroused, building up again to another high dizzying rise of sensation. It was downright uncanny, how good Nait was.
She almost didn't notice it when the sorcerer came back. The light came while her eyes were closed, and the little tremors of sensation gathering in her spine masked the dragging pull of the wave across her concealment spell. She panted, dizzy, as sparks began to tingle along the edge of her vision. "Oh God," she moaned softly. "Oh--"
The concealment spell tore, and the light flooded under it, searing across the surface of her wards in a frantic rush to find a gap. She dug her nails into Nait's shoulder, her body convulsing into an arch, and came hard, shuddering violently and letting out a sharp cry.
"It's back," Nait gasped raggedly, and Betty shrieked. It was tearing at her, trying to flood into every tiny fissure or crack or irregularity or gap in her protection spell. But she was pinioned, in spasm, pleasure and pain both so intense she couldn't tell them apart.
"Don't stop," she managed to gasp desperately, "oh Christ, oh--" She was coming apart, shattering, and she threw all her energy at the disintegrating wards. It was too late, she was being destroyed, but Christ what ecstasy.
Nait cried out breathlessly, driving into her with a desperate singleness of purpose. "You're mine," she shrieked. "Mine, not his. He'll never have you!"
He buried himself in her with a strangled, urgent cry, and his power shot through her with the force of an explosion. He was immense, terrifying, and blotted out the yellow light instantly. Betty had less than a split-second to think that this was not a bad way to go before she was obliterated entirely.
words: 6901 (really???!!!)
total: 49,427
Holy CRAP. That's two thousand words longer than I thought it was. I'm going to go double-check. Good Lord. And there's another bit of scene I didn't put in yet...
Holy fuck!!! I'm over 50K!!!!!!!
*dies*