Glamorous Business

[Spectra Lin]

Spectra fell in step alongside her escort. He was an arrow in the dark, but she was a silken scarf on the breeze. Adrenaline and power continued to sizzle just beneath the surface of her golden skin, but she huddled next to the powerful creature at her side as though in need of his warmth.

The brightness of a sleek building lobby returned Spectra's senses to the present. At the beckoning of glass, sheen, and strength what primal beast lured to the surface returned to its distant slumber. The modern world was not a place for creatures of myth, and the gnashing devil clung to her soul was of legendary might.

She was a goddess of the screen in this world. Those whom they passed turned and watched as she walked by. Slender Wallets came from purses and pockets, snapping her picture. To be in the same building as Spectra Lin! The wings of her ego rode on their adoration, and she cherished them for it.

Damien's interest was also welcomed. Within his apartment, she turned in a slow circle. What thoughts, if any, she had on the décor, she did not voice them. The warmth of both Light and air drew her coat from her arms, and she cast it carelessly atop the rim of a chair. In the staged lighting of the club, her dress sparkled and captivated, like jeweled rivulets of water cascaded down her body with every move. In the normalcy of lighting, it hugged Spectra's curves with a perfect composition of sheer and shadow. She was the jewel and it the accent to pose against her body.

She was compliant in his request, and so seated herself across from him. It was a long, uncurling posture as though the plush cushions of the chair spread its arms and welcomed her home. Her eyes flashed, green with danger, for his question, to which she quirked a dark smile. "Where have you been to have not seen my many movies and need to ask such a thing?"
Then a testing jab slithered its way across her expression. They both knew where he was. "Sí. You may say I am ... vigorous... More so in these past few years. What of you? What have you experienced exactly that you are unaccustomed? Hm?"

[Damien]

As Spectra made herself at home, Damien watched with a stoic silence. He saw the flash of malevolence cross her face when she heard his question, prompting the whip-crack response. From Spectra, the insinuation no longer stung him.

Rhetoric as the question was, Damien answered nonetheless. “I prefer something real, not an idle fantasy.”


He was not sure if the second question was innocuous or deliberate. With this woman, surprises were as common as snow in Moscow. He watched her for a long moment searching her face for anything that would shed light on her mystery before answering, finding no answers forthcoming. “Many have attempted to rip my heart out; none have succeeded”
his words carried the weight of a headsman’s axe. “Usually, however, they use their hands or sometimes a knife. How you did it is inconsequential to me,“
he waved a hand in casual dismissal though his posture remained steel. “I wonder, why? A convict some called me, others a monster, but what of a woman who attempts to murder a man because he does not beg like a dog at her feet?”


Damien allowed the question to sink in. His tone was neither hostile nor taunting, merely curious. The Light filled him with a surge of power to light the night sky. He would not be caught unaware a second time. “What happened to you, what turned your heart to ice?”


Damien was not sure why he tried. He was not unmoved but he would be gone soon enough, likely to never see the woman again. Yet...she was the first person he had met with similar abilities to his own; and knowledge was power.

[Spectra Lin]

"I never claimed to be an angel. Nor do I desire to be a demon. I am what the world made me to become..."
She glinted a diamond-sharp smile. "...a survivor."


If Damien was as he said, and out of touch of the gossips and celebrities of the world, Spectra could enlighten him with a tale that no longer panged her heart. The poison of her childhood shrivelled the organ long ago. Perhaps, if she did, he would spare her the forgiveness of her sinister reflexes.

"My mother was Egyptian. I went there once, to Egypt, so small I barely remember it."
Her eyes drifted aside, pulled along by the currents of distant memory. Yet her voice recalled what her mind saw with disinterest, as though the memories belonged to a creature of fiction rather than herself. "I do not remember the pyramids nor the Nile, yet I know I was there. I remember walking until my legs ached. I remember the sand stinging my cheeks..."
Whatever else swirled in the grains of time, Spectra did not describe.

"Yet my father was Cubano, and when the cartels overthrew him as a traitor, they nailed his body to a palm tree and lit him on fire. My mother they raped and executed, and I, the precious child, I was sold into my father's own sex trade."
As she admitted the callousness of her history, there was nothing in Spectra's gaze that hinted at despair or remorse for it.

"I am the product of a world's market, Damien. It is not I who condemns a man that fails to recognize what I am, it is the world that demands such justice."


She rose and went to kneel on the floor directly in front of his chair. Her knees dug into the softness of the carpet, prickling her skin with tiny dents. Her hands slid up the tops of his thighs, moving them apart so she could come close. The green of her eyes sharpened as they lay upon his. Her face tilted with all the humility of a house cat curling its tail around his leg. "Forgive me the sensitivity of my reactions?"

[Damien]

Spectra’s reaction was once again a surprise. Her demeanour shifted as easily as one of the more unstable inmates he had been forced to endure.

Her tale, although recited with clinical detachment, moved him to pity. He had no room in his heart for her parents, they were no better than those that had murdered them, but to make a child pay for their crimes?

A product of the world, moulded into the ice sculpture she was today. That Damien was something Damien knew all too well. He watched, not without pleasure, as Spectra made her way towards him on her knees. To beg forgiveness, it would seem, and offer more.

He stared into her beautiful green eyes for an age, bathing in the Light of power so he could enjoy every sense buzz like static at the intimacy of the moment. Damien threaded a rope of Light around the woman and gently raised her to his lap, their eyes now level. “They condemned me to death for a power,”
the lights crackled and dimmed as he wove threads through the circuits without thought, “they did not understand, a power I could not control.”
The memory no longer pained him. He had been awakened that day. He had repaid his debt of ignorance in full. “But no longer,”
his words lingered as he released the threads of Light and planted a gentle, tantalising kiss on Spectra’s lips, alive with a different kind of power.

[Spectra Lin]

The room flickered and sparkled as sure as the stars in her eyes gleamed victory. Damien's lips pressed upon hers and satisfaction rippled across the smile behind her kiss. She tangled her fingers in his hair, and stroked the back of his neck with all the expertise of one fully aware of every morsel by which she could elicit pleasure.

She was right where Spectra demanded in the park that they be. Not wrapped in an embrace she did not force, but rather, chased by a man that earlier dismissed her on a whim. He showed off for her like a peacock prancing his feathers in front of a potential mate. He grazed his lips upon hers gently, carefully as a timid explorer far from home. And all it took was one little extension of false humility and Damien was the begging dog he'd earlier forsook.

She lifted her lips from his slowly. Her eyes, exotic and fixative, fluttered upon his as she turned the heat of her breath upon his ear. "You control it now?"
She asked. "And what will you do with this power?"
Her expression glinted careful defiance. All men liked to think they were king, but it simply took Spectra longer than usual to learn what his kingly virtues demanded. She had been wrong to discount his worth, but convincing a man of Damien's senses of her benign intention was a daunting task. Thankfully, Spectra was a dazzling actress.

She twined his hair about her fingers innocently, sweet as a servant knelt before her lord, eyes of jade peering into his ethereal orbs of a far distant sky.

[Damien]

(OCC: Sorry, I don't know how to do the pink writing )

"And what will you do with this power?"
Spectra’s eyes were steady. Was she truly curious? Who could tell? Either way, it made no difference.

In reply Damien gave her a white smile and brushed a strand of hair from her face. “Yesterday I was doomed to die, today I am free, what will I do?”
He pondered the question once again, if only to rid himself of any lingering doubt. “A great many things, I would say. Did you know, I have never seen the sunrise in Mexico, even though I spent weeks there? Nor have I seen the stars reflected on the sea, though I have crossed the ocean.”


He wondered as he watched for a reaction what this woman felt. Such a past, and what had she become? He had seen almost every reaction to fate’s cruel touch in San Quentin. Despair, anger, oblivion, nonchalance. Why did this bother him so? What should he care how Spectra chose to live her life? Damien could not be sure he really did, but it provoked something within him to solidify his resolve. “What of you? Are you content to live in the lap of luxury, knowing what a gift you hold? I do not believe it is a gift given or taken lightly. Is there nothing you would see done?”


As the words left his mouth thoughts coalesced into possibilities; possibilities into ideas that spanned the width of the sky.

[Spectra Lin]

She was sweet, and Damien softened. She twined his hair in her fingers, and he brushed hers from her face. She asked of grand plans and he reciprocated. Finally, the puppet dancing on her strings.

She sat back on her knees, kneeling comfortably on silken webs of the rug. Her look was coy. His evasion of the question did not go unnoticed. "The powerless and weak may see the stars and sunrise. Your ambitions should be far higher, Damien."
Her accent rolled the syllables of his name in warmth. "You should reside among the heavens, not wallow in the valleys of mere mortals."


She was gaining an ever clearer picture of his vulnerabilities. With the way his touch sauntered over her skin, she surmised that doting women were among them.

"For me? I have what all I ever wanted."


The lie was smooth was velvet. Gentle as her touch.

[Damien]

Had he not seen the ice in her heart turn to fire as she attempted to kill him, Damien would have believed every word she said. He was frighteningly close to believing her anyway. What more could she want? She was a star loved throughout the world. In the end whether her interest was genuine or not made no difference to him. It was a pleasant prospect though.

"I have returned from the dead, is that not a worthy feat?"
he spoke in silver tones as he watched Spectra's face. She was not entirely wrong in her assessment. The Light that was his illuminated more than any average person would ever know, yet it did not make him immortal. He had failed and fallen before, patience was now imbued in his nature. "What would you have me do?"
his voice became firmer as he spoke further. "Become a celebrity and bathe in riches? Perhaps become a true convict and kill for money? Or maybe you would have me challenge the Ascendancy himself?"


The heat in his voice faded like the sunset and he smiled once again. "If you have a suggestion, speak plainly."


I have had my fill of deception.

The thought was tempered by his resolve. San Quentin had taught him well.

[Spectra Lin]

Returning from the dead did not impress a woman broke free of hell. His prison could not compare to hers in the slightest. The poor white boy dallied with the wrong people and spent a few years pampered in a fortress by the sea. Despite the truth of their matters, the sour taste of embitterment did not curl her tongue with anger. Such was simply the way things were, as obvious that Spectra was a diamond among pebbles of women.

His voice firmed, although the touch of his hand did not echo the harshness in the way his question was delivered. Spectra approved of the change in demeanor. It was more befitting to his soul. However there existed a fine balance between an authoritative man vying for ambition and one who fancied himself capable of manipulating the diamond she was as though she were yet another twinkle in a meaningless constellation that Damien could tweak according to his whims. So far, he was edging that fine line, but what glinted in Spectra's consideration was not a warning, but rather, a contemplation of the many possibilities he posed.

Her gaze was direct, as was the aim of her hands along the inner most line of his thighs. "Challenge him, Damien. I've seen him, you know, the Ascendancy. I've been in the same room as him, and he is impressive, but you could tear him apart."
Her hands cupped and caressed, her mouth parted ever so slightly, the tone of her suggestions tantalizing. The Light was an absent thing, as Spectra did not need its forces to imbue such proposals. The tentacles of her urges could curl around men's hearts with the heat of her gaze alone. "And if I were at your side..,"
she smiled and drew the tab of his zipper low.


Edited by Spectra Lin, May 17 2014, 08:31 AM.

[Damien]

"Challenge him, Damien. I've seen him, you know, the Ascendancy. I've been in the same room as him, and he is impressive, but you could tear him apart."


Spectra's seduction was perfectly languid. Damien could not resist the allure of her charms. He leaned forward in anticipation as she used her body like an artist used a paintbrush, and Spectra was no less than Da Vinci.

"And if I were at your side..,"


Damien smiled as she moved downwards. Infused with the power of Light both heightened his senses and allowed his mind freedom. He revelled in both with equal pleasure, mind and body.

He did not move to stop her, nor did he disabuse her of any conception she held of his reaction to what she had said. She must have thought his ego reached the stars. Destroying the most powerful man in the world, proving himself greater than the greatest. It was enough to snag any man's heart.

However, Damien was not any man. What need did he have of a false pride in ego? He was not so foolish as to believe that crushing the Ascendancy - even if he could - would gain him anything more than a notorious death. Even had he managed to survive, such power was nothing but a stolen mantle. Damien had no use for such things. Power was not stolen, it was earned. He had earned his own self-assurance in his survival and mastery of the Light and no more.

But Spectra has given me something, he thought inside the shell that protected his clarity. I shall not forget.

Without a word, he allowed himself to be consumed in the moment, giving himself to Spectra to do as she would.