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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2020 19:16:39 GMT -5
Every word he spoke about Jarrin blistered his throat choking him with a loss that he had still yet to fully accept, drawing forth memories that cut through him like a blade. Flashing amber eyes blazed at her like unearthly fires, daring her to smite him, to give him a reason to use this seething anger that burned inside him at the loss of Jarrin. Yet seeing that same agony he felt every day flicker across her face both satisfied and shamed him. It was not something he had expected to see when he had set out on this job, this quest to end the life of the woman he thought had taken his best friend, his brother, away from him nor when he had taken hold of her in the hall of the home she shared with her husband. How swiftly everything could change. Now, that small piece of revenge held little more than a bitter victory on a battlefield where there was only one survivor from each side left only to realize you were on the same side all along. There just was no point to it anymore.
But if she was going to keep acting like a silly woman poking at an angry bear, she just might drive him to do kill her out of sheer irritation, 'act of goodness' be damned.
Still, Cullen did not stop her when she reached for his throat, wrapping her fingers around it as much as her small hands were able. He even tilted his chin up a little to make it easier for her, his dark eyes fixing on hers intently in the dead stare of a man who had nothing left to lose, mutely daring her to keep pushing, to drive this on further, to give him a reason to take them both out of their collective misery, to give him something to do with the rage, hate, and pain. But then she spoke and his eyebrows twitch in the barest expression of puzzlement almost as though she were speaking a foreign tongue at those two questions she asked him.
He had spent so long thinking only of the act itself, the goal- her dead. Cullen had never given thought to what came after.
That's when he saw it, something other than the pain that he recognized inside her. The rage. She felt it too and it had poisoned her life since Jarrin's death as it had poisoned his. Perhaps she needed something to do with hers as well. "I don't know." he admitted in something barely above a whisper, his voice rough from years of living on the fringes of what one would call 'polite society'. His head shifts to the side and he examines her with an expression of calm regard. "You tell me."
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2020 13:02:00 GMT -5
She kept her hand against his neck, wanting to keep him at that small distance away, to keep him from cornering her against the wall once more. It wasn't something Sylena was willing to admit or physically allow to show, but she didn't like the tension and fright that froze her body when he was near. She was fully aware that he could end her life with a snap of his fingers, with a flick of his wrist...and it was still a wonder as to how quickly he had changed his mind about it.
Perhaps, even in death, her love was still watching over her.
With his question, she regarded him with her own expressed confusion. Never in a million years would she have pictured them together in that moment. She had moved on, forced herself to go on with her damned life of gossip, thievery, and secrets...and he, saturated in his hatred, his rage, the dissipating desire to end her life having no end. And yet, perhaps, Sylena had the perfect way to allow this lion to unleash his fury...
Slowly, the press against his neck lessened; fingers idly brushing against his skin as they traveled downward to his chest in her suddenly excited thoughts. Hand was drawn back soon after and fingertips caressing the bareness of her own throat in silent question before that smirk curled up a corner of her mouth. "Kill him for me..." she finally spoke, her voice but a whisper as she appeared rather pleased with the idea. "He already trusts you...just turn the tables on him." Something gave her pause, and she was hesitant to anymore. "But I need something from him first..."
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2020 18:31:03 GMT -5
To have spent so long dreaming only of murdering this woman before him to now asking her what comes next between them, Cullen wondered if he had, at long last, gone mad. It was a perplexity that she herself seemed to be experiencing by the strange expression in the eyes that regarded him, her hand still around his throat. Should she wish it, she could show him horrors that would surely drive him to true madness, one that was real instead of imagined or supposed. Never would he have expected what had driven them apart to be what now brought them together. Jarrin's death, it seems, was not through working it's terrible affect on their lives.
As her hand began to move, smoothing slowly down to his chest, Cullen's eyes flickered darkly. This woman - who was still the very thing he could not bring himself to not hate - was looking at him like she had found an unexpected prize in his sudden presence in her life, like he was the answer she didn't know she was searching for. Those eyes dart down to her hand as it drew away to caress down her own throat before she spoke at which a single brow arched not in suspicion, but in intrigue.
As she spoke, that dangerous smile, the one he had bared so threateningly to her not so very long ago, came across his mouth again, his black eyes heating up "What a clever game...with such...interesting possibilities." His crooked smirk pulled wider into a devious half grin of temptation. Then, dipping his head, he angles her a sardonically chastising look, "Nice try, little witch but you're forgetting one thing… " His smirk was amused again; he wasn't out-rightly opposed to the idea but he wasn't seeing the benefit in it either. Bracing a hand against the wall at her side, he leaned close not in threat but to whisper in her ear in a dangerous, conspiratorial confidence, his rough brogue laced with tempting challenge that was almost, dare it be said, seductive. "What's in it for me?"
True, he no longer wished to kill her but there must be something for him other than the satisfaction of ending the life a man whom, in their brief encounter, had not endeared himself in Cullen's view in the slightest, despite the fact that he was the source of Cullen's supposed revenge and subsequent payment. It should at least be worth his while.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2020 10:30:29 GMT -5
Cullen would not be alone in his thoughts. She couldn't fully comprehend how it had come to this, how they were on the same level...even despite all the rage and spite that lingered between them. Things that probably wouldn't ever go away. The best thing she could hope for was that this- whatever it was- wouldn't last for much longer. Sylena wasn't sure how much longer she could be civil. If this could even be considered civil.
Lost in her thoughts, fear did not claim her this time when he leaned in, forcing her back against the wall. She simply let it happen, resting her head back as vivid eyes were focused on nothing in particular. That is, until she heard his gruff voice against her ear. Despite herself, her body shuddered and she blinked; his looming presence finally drawing her back to the present as her breath left parted lips in the faintest of gasps.
'What's in it for me?' Slowly, her head turned so that she could regard him. It was a shame he wore such a scowl all the time. He could be handsome, otherwise. Once Sylena gathered herself together, clearing her head of everything else, a corner of her mouth curled up into a wry smirk. Now it was she who leaned in close to whisper against the curve of his ear, "I'll help you find her..."
Alysia.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 12, 2020 16:18:42 GMT -5
Oh, Cullen had once been handsome. That she had recognized him at all was a miracle. Once he had been lean and wiry with a tangled mane of brown hair that women had loved to twine their fingers into. His eyes had been blue. He'd had a boyish quality to him, mischievous. Now, he was a solid wall of a man, hair white as bleached bone and eyes the color of fire-lit amber. There was barely anything left of that boyish rogue he'd once been.
This close, Cullen could watch as the thoughts played themselves over her features in a subtle riot of expressions. The fear she kept checked, the fury she used as a shield, and now the calculation she would wield as a weapon. This close, he could smell an aroma about her he'd never noticed before this night- burnt sugar, both sweet and dangerous; wine, deceiving in it's sultry allure; candle smoke... and something else... something he couldn't trace or name. Was it her fear? Was it her fury? Did it waft from her in waves that he could scent in the scant air betwixt them? It was a scent that promised something though what that was, he couldn't have said. Then, she spoke, and his thoughts turned back to the proposition at hand.
He had not underestimated her capacity for calculation, it seemed, because she knew just what to offer him to slip a hand into his vest pocket and come out with that delicate comb cradled in his massive, rough hand which held it up, just within the periphery of her sight. "I believe, Madam... that you have yourself a deal."
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