A Blind Eye

[Oriena]

She turned her back to the room, leaning leisurely on the bar.

Patience was not a natural virtue, but a learned one. Agitation simmered beneath her skin; an aimless restlessness, and a potent frustration. As a kid she’d gotten in countless fights and scrapes indulging the chaotic need to break from monotony, to sabotage the ordinary and expected. Her mother had despaired the bloodied noses and black bruises – not the injuries of harmless, girlish spats. These days discipline was a familiar armour and she found other ways to acquiesce to her nature, but it didn’t always make her pleasant company. Given the circumstances it hardly mattered. She nursed a glass but didn’t drink, thinking.

She was oblivious to Jaxen’s return, until the press of his fingers and the touch of his mouth. If she’d had pockets she might have suspected foul play by the time his malicious whisper brushed her ear, but even then it was a welcome distraction. Chills trailed the kiss of his breath, but it was the wicked nature of his tone more than his devilish proximity that ushered in grim delight. Then he made to physically direct her, and the pleasure flushed out beneath a ripple of power not entirely within her control. There were subtle distinctions between the things Ori would tolerate, and the things she wouldn’t. Jaxen’s manoeuvrings irritated her for no good reason, rubbing abrasively against the capriciousness of her mood.

She was busting for a fight. Or a fuck. The lines blurred desire and volatility, and she was probably more drunk than she felt. Jaxen could fulfil either function, and both for the same reason: the unnatural power that made him fundamentally different, and maintained her interest when – for someone like him – it would usually have faded by now. She denied the pressure on her shoulders and slipped around instead, half confrontational, half suggestive. He was wrong to think he’d lulled her with charm. Wrong to treat her like conquered prey. The sharp cut of her gaze did not melt under the heat of his lust, nor the insinuated reap of hungry promises.

“And I intend to see that you deliver.”
A smile finally curled the edges of her lips, and if her tone was touched by scorn it was also visceral. She meant to exercise her agitation one way or another, and he offered himself up as a willing victim. It soothed a little playfulness from the disquiet of her mood, refrained her from the half-formed notion that testing her abilities against his for the sheer hell of it was a good idea here and now. The power that had coursed her veins, uninvited and unstable, died to a murmur, trickling sweet and seductive.

Whatever self-control had stayed her hand back in his apartment evaporated by the time they left the party. She didn’t wait for him to catch her by surprise again; less a measure of control and power, and more of indulgence. Her mind unravelled of thought, basking in the light that made every taste of his skin electric. She teased the carnal from him, beckoning to the line of propriety without ever quite crossing it – at least until they were alone. Her attitudes were libertine, not prudish, but she did enjoy the torment.