09-10-2024, 05:29 PM
The kiss left her breathless, and utterly fallen at the altar of divine worship. It tasted of so much want and need and conflict. If Esper was an empty vessel, it filled her right up until she thought she would burst with it. Her eyes were blown wide as the promise rooted down in her soul, and she would have slipped closer into the embrace, drowned in it, if Roza had not shifted to meet her gaze instead.
The words were slow to permeate, more inclined as she was to mesmerise on the peaks and falls of cadence. Such desperation and devotion and defiance. Her hazel eyes were large and solemn, and even though she could peripherally feel all the other Vas’s in their various states of slumber, it registered as something distant. Enthralled so, it was like her body forgot the mechanisms of being human: she barely blinked.
“I would kill him,” she breathed. Esper never lied. It was not uttered with conviction but quiet certainty, more like an afterthought. The priests of the Santissima Annunziata Maggiore had underestimated her, once, and she’d had nothing to fight for then but her own whims. No one was taking Roza away. And Esper would make no differentiation between the people Roza actually loved should they try the same thing, unless Roza specified directly. Not now the promise placed Esper above them. Promises were dangerous like that. They were permission.
“Sámiel might help us leave. Ezekiel would. Or I could make them,” she said. Her fingers roamed softly. It wasn't meant to be a distraction; it wasn't manipulation or seduction or any of the games they played with others to get what they wanted. Her leg tangled closer. She felt the heat of every moment where skin touched skin.
Esper was not afraid of another life. But Roza had never known anything else, and the fabric of her world was built around the values of family. In truth, Esper thought Roza’s distress would be as sweet to her as the way she felt right now, bright with tingling warmth and desire, but Esper possessed a formality when it came to exchanges. It was all give and take, until an agreement was found. “But I want what you want, vita mia. Choose our path and I will follow.”
The words were slow to permeate, more inclined as she was to mesmerise on the peaks and falls of cadence. Such desperation and devotion and defiance. Her hazel eyes were large and solemn, and even though she could peripherally feel all the other Vas’s in their various states of slumber, it registered as something distant. Enthralled so, it was like her body forgot the mechanisms of being human: she barely blinked.
“I would kill him,” she breathed. Esper never lied. It was not uttered with conviction but quiet certainty, more like an afterthought. The priests of the Santissima Annunziata Maggiore had underestimated her, once, and she’d had nothing to fight for then but her own whims. No one was taking Roza away. And Esper would make no differentiation between the people Roza actually loved should they try the same thing, unless Roza specified directly. Not now the promise placed Esper above them. Promises were dangerous like that. They were permission.
“Sámiel might help us leave. Ezekiel would. Or I could make them,” she said. Her fingers roamed softly. It wasn't meant to be a distraction; it wasn't manipulation or seduction or any of the games they played with others to get what they wanted. Her leg tangled closer. She felt the heat of every moment where skin touched skin.
Esper was not afraid of another life. But Roza had never known anything else, and the fabric of her world was built around the values of family. In truth, Esper thought Roza’s distress would be as sweet to her as the way she felt right now, bright with tingling warmth and desire, but Esper possessed a formality when it came to exchanges. It was all give and take, until an agreement was found. “But I want what you want, vita mia. Choose our path and I will follow.”