New Xena Fic: "Night Whispers"
Is it hopelessly sad that I've been posting fanfic for over 13 years now, and I'm still nervous everytime I hit "post"? *g*
Disclaimer: This all belongs to Renaissance Pictures and Universal. I wish I could say it was all mine. Truly I do. But I'm just borrowing this wonderful world with all due respect.
Title: NIGHT WHISPERS
Rating: Mature
Spoilers: Through "Who's Gurkhan?"
Categories: Angst, Xena/Ares semi-established relationship, hurt/comfort
Huge thanks to my long-suffering beta Teddy E, and to my newly drafted beta, the wondrous ladykate63.:) (this story was really largely her fault, anyway :))
NIGHT WHISPERS
by
LadyRowan
Copyright (c) 2008
It was all about Eve.
He understood this in pieces and fragments. Perhaps his body -- bones, ligaments, nerves, and tendons -- absorbed such knowledge before his thoughts, subconscious enlightenment prompting his actions.
In the beginning he understood that Xena cared for Eve, that through his own kind actions toward the child, the woman, the girl, he might neatly manipulate Xena's passions. He felt no guilt for these thoughts. They were as organic to his being as water and air to hers. He was born to such a path, the aptitude coursed through his blood as a god and lingered in his mortal flesh. No good war flared without fueled passions. Logic and political strategies were pretense. Blood came of the viral. Hate. Greed. Fury.
Love.
He came to feel the significance, the fundamental shift in the elements, as he saw not all of his actions to protect Eve fit into the logic of his plan. And in fact, the goal behind his choices was not just power, not just blades and armor and battle cries. Not even the preservation of Xena's life, because he had discovered this weakness within himself long ago. Rather his goal had come down to a much simpler, darker, and more frightening center as foreign to his nature as immortality was to hers. He never wanted to see Xena cry.
Ares blamed this perceived weakness on his newfound mortality, allowing self-delusion to blur the pesky details in the order of events.
So it was all about Eve. Because if Xena loved her, then maybe he...had to empathize...
*****
Empathy. Sympathy. These concepts he had understood on an intellectual level, understood how to generate, work, exploit in those who served his purposes. But to feel these things... Sitting on a rock above a land he had once ruled, Ares the man found himself caught in the echoes of a memory. Xena naked and pure before him, an ache and need in her eyes that had little to do with passion and everything to do with losing the core of herself; telling him with a depth of sincerity he had never expected to pass her lips, that she understood the meaning of his words in her mind, but couldn't feel them in her soul. At the time he had shied away from this depth of connection, focused only on the clearest path to his goal, the benefits to his scheme of having his greatest warrior nullified and turned to easily molded clay in his hands.
But the annoying blond had looked at him with a hatred to perhaps outshine any she had thrown his way to date (no small feat). And the notion settled upon him much later that Gabrielle's passion and hatred might have been born of her own empathy with Xena, feeling the fear and need in her friend and an accompanying fierce drive to protect her. She might have ached for Xena in a way he himself had begun to taste. He had never before felt anything like guilt or shame beneath Gabrielle's anger.
The urge in the moment to close his arm around Xena's shoulders, cross a hand to shelter her naked breasts from the world -- had disturbed him more than the guilt alone.
*****
She was the first to kiss him.
It was all about Eve. The seeds were planted when she held his gaze for too long, time and time again, when he did something to protect her beloved child.
He hadn't understood at first what she had found when she searched his eyes. But he came to realize she must have found empathy. Understanding. The genuine emotion that had crept beneath his leathers unbidden and remained outside his conscious awareness. Xena had sensed compassion in his soul before he knew of it himself. She had seen and understood the fear of loss, the passionate and blind need he had come to know too late in life.
Even the hatred in Gabrielle's eyes had softened with time, receded to near nothing as she had watched him carry Xena's body from the icy waters.
He had lived 25 years without Xena. He had kissed lips devoid of breath. He had listened for the ringing of a war cry through the trees and the swish of a chakram over empty ground. He had closed his eyes and felt the hollow silence of the world. He understood loss.
*****
She kissed him first, but not enough words were spoken.
Her kisses were far softer than he had expected. Sometimes.
They communicated in touches. They protected. Desired. Claimed.
She appeared like a ghost, touched, licked, clawed, gasped, soothed, and then slipped away like a goddess.
There was more than lust, more than passion.
But there weren't enough words.
*****
Last he knew, she had been journeying back to Amphipolis, making the trek to home ground to see if anything like home still existed. She sent word to him that Cyrene was gone, in the simple and straight forward words and phrases he had come to expect in Xena's communications.
He almost set out for Amphipolis. But she hadn't asked him to come.
He almost set out for Amphipolis. But he heard word from a travelling local that she and Gabrielle had sailed off on a ship toward distant shores.
She hadn't told him why. He had let her go.
*****
"Ares?"
Her husky voice startled him. And softened him.
She was standing in the doorway of the wooden house he was currently calling home, the evening's fading light at her back. Her silhouette was unmistakable.
"Well. Look who's back in the neighborhood," he said, hands on his hips and the hint of a smile pulling at his mouth. He'd been pouring himself a drink from the last bottle he had in the house. But with Xena before him the drink no longer appealed.
He'd heard whispers of what had gone on. Something about Gabrielle's niece. A rescue and a big shot called Gurkhan. He didn't know where Xena and Gabrielle had been since. Asking wouldn't help.
Xena took a step forward, moving with less purpose than was her custom, and something felt uncomfortably warm along his spine.
Her gaze made a cursory sweep of the room, the doorway to the bedroom at his back. "What is this place?" she asked, little revelation in her cadence.
"Keeper's quarters. Used to belong to the Inn next door, but the proprietor got himself a nicer place up the valley. Rents this to special customers passing through."
Her chin wrinkled, lower lip pressing up into a frown. "Passing through to where?"
He shrugged, let his gaze skid away from hers. Truth was he didn't have a clue. He was following the edges of one battle to another, bouncing from the familiar footsteps of the God of War into anonymity among the men that had somehow become his peers. Passing through to where? "East, at the moment," he said, hoping she wouldn't see through him like water. Knowing she would.
She gave a soft sniff, wrinkled her nose a bit. Her gaze wouldn't settle. She had registered the lie, but seemed to accept the situation. He harbored no doubts she would come back to it later.
"You didn't tell me you were coming," he offered, taking a tentative step toward her, "I would have straightened up the place." They'd been together this long, but the rules were still unwritten, disjointed. He was never certain where he stood and casual teasing was familiar ground.
"Yeah, it was sort of...unplanned."
Ares nodded, though he couldn't say he understood. He gave a cursory glance past Xena's shoulder, out the open door. "Where's your gal pal?"
The teasing, the verbal sparring was a well rehearsed dance. But he needed her to match his steps.
"Gabrielle's in Potidaea with her sister. Her parents...they were both killed by Gurkhan, trying to rescue their granddaughter. Sarah was a slave in his palace, one of his 'wives'," the ill-used term fell from her tongue with disgust. "Gabrielle and I made our way into the palace, posing as slaves. We dealt with Gurkhan, brought Sarah back. Gabrielle's helping her readjust...to her life here. To work things out with her Mom... Eve stayed to help as well. She has...a bit of a perspective on these things."
Ares nodded. "Well that's all...," he scrambled for a word, "...that's good, right?"
Xena finally met his gaze with her usual impact. Her hands rested on her hips. "Yeah. It's very good."
"But you didn't want to stick around for the festive family reunion?"
"I stayed for a night. I just...Gurkhan's palace, it was...rough going."
Rough going. What in Hades did that mean?
He waited, lifted an eyebrow. "So you wanted..."
"I just wasn't in the mood to be social. I'd rather be on my own for a while."
He nodded, folding his hands, resting his wrists on his thighs as he sat back against the rickety table. "And yet..you're here..."
As always, she surprised him. She stared him down without hesitation, set of her mouth stern and direct without a hint of play. "Maybe I wanted to be on my own with you."
He took only a beat to keep up the game. He held his hands wide, gave her a dazzling smile. "And I'm okay with that!"
To his great relief her eyes brightened, and a familiar grin played at the corner of her lips. "I'll just bet you are," she said, and there was desire in her tone that made his thighs ache. She was always as alluring up close as she had become in memory. Her flesh never disappointed.
"Listen, have you got somewhere I can stable my horse? She needs a proper night's rest and some feed. Looks like it may rain tonight, clouds moving in from the North. I want her sheltered."
Ares cleared his throat, broke away from his train of thought. "Uhh...yeah. Yeah, the stables are out behind the inn, there's always a free stall. I'll walk you out."
She nodded and turned to lead the way.
She was always leading the way.
*****
When he thought of Xena, he did not picture her naked or strapped into some delicious leather and lace ensemble. Not that he hadn't spent many hours enjoying such notions. But this was not the Xena that hovered in the back of his thoughts, prickled beneath his skin.
When he thought of her, she was striding through an open field, the shadows of battles long fought rustling in the tall grasses at her boots. Her sword was hilted at her back and her hair hung free, wild on the wind like the grasses that held the scent of memory. Her eyes haunted him. Wisdom, pain. Want.
He watched her wiping down Argo. The care and precision in a woman with the blood lust he knew she possessed (however hard fought) was an endless curiosity. He helped pour out the horse's feed. He got corrected twice for calling the animal "he". The second time he tried it just to see if she was paying attention. Xena was always paying attention.
Her chakram was still at her hip. Her sword, she took out and swiped methodically with a cloth. There was much wear on the blade. The battles she faced never seemed to cease, and he had once applauded such prospects. Now...there was a reluctance, a weariness in him he did not understand.
Xena unhooked her breastplate and wriggled free of its confines, wincing a bit as the metal moved against her midriff. He started to ask if she was all right, but let the words die on his tongue. He watched the way her dark hair fell across deeply tanned shoulders, and he burned the images onto his mind. She carried her armor over her arm as they walked back toward the house. She let him place a hand on the small of her back as they walked, even as they passed a group of road-worn travelers.
He was grateful once again, that she had always let him touch her.
*****
"You hungry? I've got... some...cheese...I think..."
"Oh, I'm hungry."
He turned and met her gaze. The day's light was near gone and the room lit only by fire. The flickering illumination reflected in her pale eyes as though upon glass, danced across sharp lines and smooth skin. She was an animal sizing up its prey, seated on one of the only two chairs in his makeshift room, knee pulled up to rest her heel on the edge of the cushion. He had watched this woman for an eternity. The foretold destroyer of nations. The conqueror. The mother. The lover. The force to be reckoned with. The adversary to be loved.
From his first vision of the conqueror riding a massive and dark horse across rugged ground, unfathomably long hair flying behind with her layered robes, blade swiping through flesh with an almost careless abandon, all other partners had paled in comparison. He had spent 25 years trying to taste Xena in every warrior he touched. Even Eve had been nothing to him in the face of memory.
And Xena was his now. Except no one ever owned Xena. Even Gabrielle had caught the wrong end of her warrior's blade.
Ares cracked a wry smile at Xena's seductive word play and shook his head, refusing to be lured so easily. "You've been on the road a long time, your horse was worn out. You should eat something."
She nodded. "Later." She reached up and pulled the leather tie from her hair, tossed it on a nearby table and let her soft locks hang loose around her face. He loved her hair free. He loved that she never cut it, never made the practical choice. She was too wild for such tailored neatness. It would never suit her. She fought battles on instinct and animal senses, hair in her teeth and blurs of motion robbing her clarity of vision. He had seen her stab enemies approaching from her back a hundred times, never turning her head, never glancing over her shoulder. Never missing her target.
He sat back on the edge of the sideboard and watched her in silent appreciation for a moment. Xena took her time holding his gaze before standing up and closing the distance between them. She quirked a gentle smile as she entered his space, a moment of something akin to shyness passing between them in the first inklings of nearness. "Hey," she said softly, and he smiled.
"Hey," was all he could muster in reply. And then she was kissing him, and in no time at all, all shyness had melted into an electrical urgency born of too many moons apart. He felt as though his mortal skin built up a need for the oils and salves in her touch each moment they were kept apart, deprivation intensifying the fire of connection.
She responded with equal vigor. Her teeth nipped at his lips, tongue probed beneath the edges of his vest. She straddled his lap, one knee resting on the sideboard, and the close proximity of her heat to his groin seemed to burn through the layers of leather.
She had pulled free the clasps of his vest, pushed the thick leather off his shoulders. Her mouth tugged hungrily at his skin, licked, pinched, and he nearly cried out. She coaxed him backward until his head met the wall with a soft thud and her teeth caught his nipple, long hair teasing his ribs. His hand moved greedily through her hair, down the skin of her back, her leather corset seeming a cruel intruder. He wanted to trace the familiar lines of her spine, feel the curve and swell from the small of her back to her ass, sense the ripple of tense muscles beneath toned skin. His mortal body was more drawn to the base tactile sensations of skin on skin and the scents of perspiration and arousal than his godly self could ever have understood. His first days in a human body had brought him nothing but revulsion and disgust. But time had found him sinking into his new skin, understanding a world he had once skated by the surface. The transformation repelled and intrigued him, and when he was with Xena everything seemed worth the while to witness the understanding and kindred sentiment in her eyes.
"Fuck me, Ares. Just fuck me," she breathed into his throat, and all his blood rushed southward.
"I can do that," he managed, voice less commanding than he had wished. "I take it you missed me?" He kissed her hard one more time, seizing control, waiting her out until she pulled away for a gasp of breath. The struggle for superiority remained alive. He couldn't imagine them any other way.
He twined his fingers through hers and led the way to the small, darkened bedroom. He hadn't adjusted to mortality enough to want to make love to her anywhere but on a cushioned surface, and she didn't seem to object to the pause in contact, as long as he didn't stop sucking on her fingers as they walked.
On the edge of the straw mattress, they made quick work of discarding one another's clothes, kissing each patch of skin newly revealed, calloused palms smoothing more tender, protected flesh.
He paused for breath only when his half closed eyes caught the darker shadow on pale skin. "Wait..."
Xena had let her corset fall to the floor and was licking and sucking her way down his neck, bare breasts crushed to his chest. She didn't even murmur a reply.
Ares exhaled heavily, drowning in the sensation of Xena's warm mouth on his skin and the heat of her inner thighs against his bare hips. "Wait...Xena, what is that?"
She moaned something like a reply with no discernable meaning, and he shifted away a bit, ran a hand down the curve of her hunched shoulder. "Are those bruises?" The skin wasn't dark, but there were shadows of something once heavier, not yet healed.
Xena lifted her head for a moment, tossed back her hair and all but met his gaze in the threads of moonlight. "It's nothing," she said, and she kissed his lips.
He let her lead, savoring the attentions, breathing carefully to pace his flaring desire. But then he was angling again as she arched her back into his touches, working to catch a clearer view of her skin in the unstable moonlight. A gust of wind pushed shadowing tree limbs from his view, and for a heartbeat he was afforded an expansive view of Xena's back, shoulder, the side of her ribs. He pulled up with a weighted breath. Shit. His words were raw. "Xena, that's a whole lot of nothing."
She didn't look up. "It's over." Her tone killed the subject as sure as her sword.
"Xena, what...," but a few more kisses and he was lost to her taste and fire.
Xena.
*****
She was on her back beneath him, fingers twined round the smoothly sculpted dowels of his headboard. "Gods, yes. Ares..."
She was settling for no less than flaming lust tonight. Nothing gentle or careful, nothing paced or languid. She wanted him inside her, seemed to want to lose herself to sensation. Her nails clawed brutally at his skin.
But he was making her wait, teasing and drawing her out. "You like that?" he queried, his smile that of the playful sprite. He had ever so slowly slipped two fingers inside her, all the while keeping up the smooth circles on her clit that had brought about the quivering in her thighs. Her back arched and he slid deeper, her sound of reply absent of words. The moonlight streaked across her bare throat and full breasts and he couldn't believe she was here, with him.
"Please. Now," was all she said.
He had never been able to deny her.
*****
She was on his lap, the headboard digging into his back and shoulders, her grip on the dowels giving her leverage to work her hips against his, and he was the one who had lost all verbal acuity.
Her skin radiated heat in the cooling evening and her heartbeat echoed from her breasts through his chest.
"Oh, Gods, Xena. You're so damn beautiful....so gods damned beautiful..." He couldn't touch enough of her at once, he longed for the power to move within her at the slightest touch, warm her guts with the whim of a thought.
Her hand slapped from the headboard to the back of his neck, fingertips digging into taut tendons, and the hoarse cry from her throat was all the warning he had of her impending climax.
Every muscle in her body tightened around him, and the intensity was more than he could handle. The power of his climax shook them both and pushed her through what he could only guess was a second or third orgasm.
He didn't know how much time passed in the quiet darkness of his makeshift home as their breathing slowed and his sense of time and place realigned.
From inside her, all he knew was Xena.
They breathed. Time passed. Wind drifted through the half open window.
The heat that had felt like heaven moments ago, grew less desirable in the aftermath, and Ares' thoughts slipped from carnal pleasures to cool water and fresh air and some kind of dinner.
Xena's breath was slowing with his own, her heartbeat finding its rhythm against his skin.
She felt like home in his arms. Every curve new with the familiarity of a lifetime.
Her muscles tensed on an aftershock and sent electric shivers down his spine.
Ares buried his face in her shoulder a moment longer. Then the nubs and edges of the headboard that had mattered not in the heat of passion began to grate. He drew a deep breath, moved to pull away.
Xena's limbs tightened around him, thighs clamping in hard, core muscles clenching to hold him inside. "No, please. Stay."
He had never felt so human in his life.
Her voice fell broken against the skin of his throat, tones stripped of armor as her body had been, and his guts ached at the sound.
If empathy meant feeling someone else's pain as sharply as his own, he had found his way to such an undesirable place.
Ares' fingers moved into Xena's tousled hair to cradle the back of her head, his free arm solid across her powerful back. The headboard and discomfort were forgotten. "Okay. Okay, hey. I gotcha. I gotcha."
She was shaking.
He hadn't known such a thing was possible.
She didn't speak.
"Gods, Xena, what happened in that palace? Talk to me." The raw scratch in his voice frightened him. He had never been this close to anyone. He wondered if she had ever let someone be this close to her.
She didn't speak, but she turned her face closer into his neck and let the softest edge of a moan resonate low in her throat.
"Xena, what did they do to you?" His voice was barely a whisper.
He just held on.
*****
They were half asleep in the darkness before she talked, her warm back pressed against his chest, long limbs tangled in his blankets as the stifling day melted to chill night. "I stopped Gabrielle from knifing Gurkhan. And they threw me in the dungeons. To teach me a lesson." Her voice was thready, moonlight through coarse trees.
He was learning about pain. What it was to be human. What it was to be vulnerable, no matter how trained and strong and powerful a warrior.
Xena was tortured. His Xena.
"Why did you let them?"
"I had to. They couldn't know I wasn't who I said I was. I couldn't...leave Gabrielle alone."
"Why? Wasn't it what she wanted?"
"It wasn't what I wanted." Things were always about what Xena wanted.
She shifted in his bed, her long hair cascading over his ribs. The night was deep in its clouded darkness, his eyes useless and more comfortable closed. Xena was a warm body in the abyss, a memory of pale skin and raven mane. Her exposed skin was cooler now. His hand smoothed over the line of her hip, his fingers traced the bone and he imagined the slightest shiver beneath battle-scarred skin. It occurred to him that every blow and blade to touch her skin had hurt her a thousand times more than it had ever hurt him. Even when she emerged victorious and seemingly unscathed. Pain. "I've been tortured before," she said matter-of-factly. "This was just..."
He pushed her hair from her ear, pressed his mouth to the warm base of her neck. "Just...?" he breathed.
"This one was hard to take. Bad timing, I guess."
He moved up closer against her, let the nature of his touch melt from seduction to shelter. He smoothed a gentle hand down the curve of her cheek, thought he felt a trace of dampness brush his fingertips. "Okay," was all he said.
She curled in a bit on herself. Ares tightened his hold, and ever so gradually Xena relaxed into his touch. He didn't sleep until she slept. Part of him guessed she would be gone from this place before he woke in the morning. Part of him was okay with that. Another part wanted to watch her pale freckles in the first light of Grecian sun, lean his forehead against hers and listen to her breathe.
Maybe it wasn't all about Eve.
Maybe it was all about...this....
*****
#
Disclaimer: This all belongs to Renaissance Pictures and Universal. I wish I could say it was all mine. Truly I do. But I'm just borrowing this wonderful world with all due respect.
Title: NIGHT WHISPERS
Rating: Mature
Spoilers: Through "Who's Gurkhan?"
Categories: Angst, Xena/Ares semi-established relationship, hurt/comfort
Huge thanks to my long-suffering beta Teddy E, and to my newly drafted beta, the wondrous ladykate63.:) (this story was really largely her fault, anyway :))
NIGHT WHISPERS
by
LadyRowan
Copyright (c) 2008
It was all about Eve.
He understood this in pieces and fragments. Perhaps his body -- bones, ligaments, nerves, and tendons -- absorbed such knowledge before his thoughts, subconscious enlightenment prompting his actions.
In the beginning he understood that Xena cared for Eve, that through his own kind actions toward the child, the woman, the girl, he might neatly manipulate Xena's passions. He felt no guilt for these thoughts. They were as organic to his being as water and air to hers. He was born to such a path, the aptitude coursed through his blood as a god and lingered in his mortal flesh. No good war flared without fueled passions. Logic and political strategies were pretense. Blood came of the viral. Hate. Greed. Fury.
Love.
He came to feel the significance, the fundamental shift in the elements, as he saw not all of his actions to protect Eve fit into the logic of his plan. And in fact, the goal behind his choices was not just power, not just blades and armor and battle cries. Not even the preservation of Xena's life, because he had discovered this weakness within himself long ago. Rather his goal had come down to a much simpler, darker, and more frightening center as foreign to his nature as immortality was to hers. He never wanted to see Xena cry.
Ares blamed this perceived weakness on his newfound mortality, allowing self-delusion to blur the pesky details in the order of events.
So it was all about Eve. Because if Xena loved her, then maybe he...had to empathize...
*****
Empathy. Sympathy. These concepts he had understood on an intellectual level, understood how to generate, work, exploit in those who served his purposes. But to feel these things... Sitting on a rock above a land he had once ruled, Ares the man found himself caught in the echoes of a memory. Xena naked and pure before him, an ache and need in her eyes that had little to do with passion and everything to do with losing the core of herself; telling him with a depth of sincerity he had never expected to pass her lips, that she understood the meaning of his words in her mind, but couldn't feel them in her soul. At the time he had shied away from this depth of connection, focused only on the clearest path to his goal, the benefits to his scheme of having his greatest warrior nullified and turned to easily molded clay in his hands.
But the annoying blond had looked at him with a hatred to perhaps outshine any she had thrown his way to date (no small feat). And the notion settled upon him much later that Gabrielle's passion and hatred might have been born of her own empathy with Xena, feeling the fear and need in her friend and an accompanying fierce drive to protect her. She might have ached for Xena in a way he himself had begun to taste. He had never before felt anything like guilt or shame beneath Gabrielle's anger.
The urge in the moment to close his arm around Xena's shoulders, cross a hand to shelter her naked breasts from the world -- had disturbed him more than the guilt alone.
*****
She was the first to kiss him.
It was all about Eve. The seeds were planted when she held his gaze for too long, time and time again, when he did something to protect her beloved child.
He hadn't understood at first what she had found when she searched his eyes. But he came to realize she must have found empathy. Understanding. The genuine emotion that had crept beneath his leathers unbidden and remained outside his conscious awareness. Xena had sensed compassion in his soul before he knew of it himself. She had seen and understood the fear of loss, the passionate and blind need he had come to know too late in life.
Even the hatred in Gabrielle's eyes had softened with time, receded to near nothing as she had watched him carry Xena's body from the icy waters.
He had lived 25 years without Xena. He had kissed lips devoid of breath. He had listened for the ringing of a war cry through the trees and the swish of a chakram over empty ground. He had closed his eyes and felt the hollow silence of the world. He understood loss.
*****
She kissed him first, but not enough words were spoken.
Her kisses were far softer than he had expected. Sometimes.
They communicated in touches. They protected. Desired. Claimed.
She appeared like a ghost, touched, licked, clawed, gasped, soothed, and then slipped away like a goddess.
There was more than lust, more than passion.
But there weren't enough words.
*****
Last he knew, she had been journeying back to Amphipolis, making the trek to home ground to see if anything like home still existed. She sent word to him that Cyrene was gone, in the simple and straight forward words and phrases he had come to expect in Xena's communications.
He almost set out for Amphipolis. But she hadn't asked him to come.
He almost set out for Amphipolis. But he heard word from a travelling local that she and Gabrielle had sailed off on a ship toward distant shores.
She hadn't told him why. He had let her go.
*****
"Ares?"
Her husky voice startled him. And softened him.
She was standing in the doorway of the wooden house he was currently calling home, the evening's fading light at her back. Her silhouette was unmistakable.
"Well. Look who's back in the neighborhood," he said, hands on his hips and the hint of a smile pulling at his mouth. He'd been pouring himself a drink from the last bottle he had in the house. But with Xena before him the drink no longer appealed.
He'd heard whispers of what had gone on. Something about Gabrielle's niece. A rescue and a big shot called Gurkhan. He didn't know where Xena and Gabrielle had been since. Asking wouldn't help.
Xena took a step forward, moving with less purpose than was her custom, and something felt uncomfortably warm along his spine.
Her gaze made a cursory sweep of the room, the doorway to the bedroom at his back. "What is this place?" she asked, little revelation in her cadence.
"Keeper's quarters. Used to belong to the Inn next door, but the proprietor got himself a nicer place up the valley. Rents this to special customers passing through."
Her chin wrinkled, lower lip pressing up into a frown. "Passing through to where?"
He shrugged, let his gaze skid away from hers. Truth was he didn't have a clue. He was following the edges of one battle to another, bouncing from the familiar footsteps of the God of War into anonymity among the men that had somehow become his peers. Passing through to where? "East, at the moment," he said, hoping she wouldn't see through him like water. Knowing she would.
She gave a soft sniff, wrinkled her nose a bit. Her gaze wouldn't settle. She had registered the lie, but seemed to accept the situation. He harbored no doubts she would come back to it later.
"You didn't tell me you were coming," he offered, taking a tentative step toward her, "I would have straightened up the place." They'd been together this long, but the rules were still unwritten, disjointed. He was never certain where he stood and casual teasing was familiar ground.
"Yeah, it was sort of...unplanned."
Ares nodded, though he couldn't say he understood. He gave a cursory glance past Xena's shoulder, out the open door. "Where's your gal pal?"
The teasing, the verbal sparring was a well rehearsed dance. But he needed her to match his steps.
"Gabrielle's in Potidaea with her sister. Her parents...they were both killed by Gurkhan, trying to rescue their granddaughter. Sarah was a slave in his palace, one of his 'wives'," the ill-used term fell from her tongue with disgust. "Gabrielle and I made our way into the palace, posing as slaves. We dealt with Gurkhan, brought Sarah back. Gabrielle's helping her readjust...to her life here. To work things out with her Mom... Eve stayed to help as well. She has...a bit of a perspective on these things."
Ares nodded. "Well that's all...," he scrambled for a word, "...that's good, right?"
Xena finally met his gaze with her usual impact. Her hands rested on her hips. "Yeah. It's very good."
"But you didn't want to stick around for the festive family reunion?"
"I stayed for a night. I just...Gurkhan's palace, it was...rough going."
Rough going. What in Hades did that mean?
He waited, lifted an eyebrow. "So you wanted..."
"I just wasn't in the mood to be social. I'd rather be on my own for a while."
He nodded, folding his hands, resting his wrists on his thighs as he sat back against the rickety table. "And yet..you're here..."
As always, she surprised him. She stared him down without hesitation, set of her mouth stern and direct without a hint of play. "Maybe I wanted to be on my own with you."
He took only a beat to keep up the game. He held his hands wide, gave her a dazzling smile. "And I'm okay with that!"
To his great relief her eyes brightened, and a familiar grin played at the corner of her lips. "I'll just bet you are," she said, and there was desire in her tone that made his thighs ache. She was always as alluring up close as she had become in memory. Her flesh never disappointed.
"Listen, have you got somewhere I can stable my horse? She needs a proper night's rest and some feed. Looks like it may rain tonight, clouds moving in from the North. I want her sheltered."
Ares cleared his throat, broke away from his train of thought. "Uhh...yeah. Yeah, the stables are out behind the inn, there's always a free stall. I'll walk you out."
She nodded and turned to lead the way.
She was always leading the way.
*****
When he thought of Xena, he did not picture her naked or strapped into some delicious leather and lace ensemble. Not that he hadn't spent many hours enjoying such notions. But this was not the Xena that hovered in the back of his thoughts, prickled beneath his skin.
When he thought of her, she was striding through an open field, the shadows of battles long fought rustling in the tall grasses at her boots. Her sword was hilted at her back and her hair hung free, wild on the wind like the grasses that held the scent of memory. Her eyes haunted him. Wisdom, pain. Want.
He watched her wiping down Argo. The care and precision in a woman with the blood lust he knew she possessed (however hard fought) was an endless curiosity. He helped pour out the horse's feed. He got corrected twice for calling the animal "he". The second time he tried it just to see if she was paying attention. Xena was always paying attention.
Her chakram was still at her hip. Her sword, she took out and swiped methodically with a cloth. There was much wear on the blade. The battles she faced never seemed to cease, and he had once applauded such prospects. Now...there was a reluctance, a weariness in him he did not understand.
Xena unhooked her breastplate and wriggled free of its confines, wincing a bit as the metal moved against her midriff. He started to ask if she was all right, but let the words die on his tongue. He watched the way her dark hair fell across deeply tanned shoulders, and he burned the images onto his mind. She carried her armor over her arm as they walked back toward the house. She let him place a hand on the small of her back as they walked, even as they passed a group of road-worn travelers.
He was grateful once again, that she had always let him touch her.
*****
"You hungry? I've got... some...cheese...I think..."
"Oh, I'm hungry."
He turned and met her gaze. The day's light was near gone and the room lit only by fire. The flickering illumination reflected in her pale eyes as though upon glass, danced across sharp lines and smooth skin. She was an animal sizing up its prey, seated on one of the only two chairs in his makeshift room, knee pulled up to rest her heel on the edge of the cushion. He had watched this woman for an eternity. The foretold destroyer of nations. The conqueror. The mother. The lover. The force to be reckoned with. The adversary to be loved.
From his first vision of the conqueror riding a massive and dark horse across rugged ground, unfathomably long hair flying behind with her layered robes, blade swiping through flesh with an almost careless abandon, all other partners had paled in comparison. He had spent 25 years trying to taste Xena in every warrior he touched. Even Eve had been nothing to him in the face of memory.
And Xena was his now. Except no one ever owned Xena. Even Gabrielle had caught the wrong end of her warrior's blade.
Ares cracked a wry smile at Xena's seductive word play and shook his head, refusing to be lured so easily. "You've been on the road a long time, your horse was worn out. You should eat something."
She nodded. "Later." She reached up and pulled the leather tie from her hair, tossed it on a nearby table and let her soft locks hang loose around her face. He loved her hair free. He loved that she never cut it, never made the practical choice. She was too wild for such tailored neatness. It would never suit her. She fought battles on instinct and animal senses, hair in her teeth and blurs of motion robbing her clarity of vision. He had seen her stab enemies approaching from her back a hundred times, never turning her head, never glancing over her shoulder. Never missing her target.
He sat back on the edge of the sideboard and watched her in silent appreciation for a moment. Xena took her time holding his gaze before standing up and closing the distance between them. She quirked a gentle smile as she entered his space, a moment of something akin to shyness passing between them in the first inklings of nearness. "Hey," she said softly, and he smiled.
"Hey," was all he could muster in reply. And then she was kissing him, and in no time at all, all shyness had melted into an electrical urgency born of too many moons apart. He felt as though his mortal skin built up a need for the oils and salves in her touch each moment they were kept apart, deprivation intensifying the fire of connection.
She responded with equal vigor. Her teeth nipped at his lips, tongue probed beneath the edges of his vest. She straddled his lap, one knee resting on the sideboard, and the close proximity of her heat to his groin seemed to burn through the layers of leather.
She had pulled free the clasps of his vest, pushed the thick leather off his shoulders. Her mouth tugged hungrily at his skin, licked, pinched, and he nearly cried out. She coaxed him backward until his head met the wall with a soft thud and her teeth caught his nipple, long hair teasing his ribs. His hand moved greedily through her hair, down the skin of her back, her leather corset seeming a cruel intruder. He wanted to trace the familiar lines of her spine, feel the curve and swell from the small of her back to her ass, sense the ripple of tense muscles beneath toned skin. His mortal body was more drawn to the base tactile sensations of skin on skin and the scents of perspiration and arousal than his godly self could ever have understood. His first days in a human body had brought him nothing but revulsion and disgust. But time had found him sinking into his new skin, understanding a world he had once skated by the surface. The transformation repelled and intrigued him, and when he was with Xena everything seemed worth the while to witness the understanding and kindred sentiment in her eyes.
"Fuck me, Ares. Just fuck me," she breathed into his throat, and all his blood rushed southward.
"I can do that," he managed, voice less commanding than he had wished. "I take it you missed me?" He kissed her hard one more time, seizing control, waiting her out until she pulled away for a gasp of breath. The struggle for superiority remained alive. He couldn't imagine them any other way.
He twined his fingers through hers and led the way to the small, darkened bedroom. He hadn't adjusted to mortality enough to want to make love to her anywhere but on a cushioned surface, and she didn't seem to object to the pause in contact, as long as he didn't stop sucking on her fingers as they walked.
On the edge of the straw mattress, they made quick work of discarding one another's clothes, kissing each patch of skin newly revealed, calloused palms smoothing more tender, protected flesh.
He paused for breath only when his half closed eyes caught the darker shadow on pale skin. "Wait..."
Xena had let her corset fall to the floor and was licking and sucking her way down his neck, bare breasts crushed to his chest. She didn't even murmur a reply.
Ares exhaled heavily, drowning in the sensation of Xena's warm mouth on his skin and the heat of her inner thighs against his bare hips. "Wait...Xena, what is that?"
She moaned something like a reply with no discernable meaning, and he shifted away a bit, ran a hand down the curve of her hunched shoulder. "Are those bruises?" The skin wasn't dark, but there were shadows of something once heavier, not yet healed.
Xena lifted her head for a moment, tossed back her hair and all but met his gaze in the threads of moonlight. "It's nothing," she said, and she kissed his lips.
He let her lead, savoring the attentions, breathing carefully to pace his flaring desire. But then he was angling again as she arched her back into his touches, working to catch a clearer view of her skin in the unstable moonlight. A gust of wind pushed shadowing tree limbs from his view, and for a heartbeat he was afforded an expansive view of Xena's back, shoulder, the side of her ribs. He pulled up with a weighted breath. Shit. His words were raw. "Xena, that's a whole lot of nothing."
She didn't look up. "It's over." Her tone killed the subject as sure as her sword.
"Xena, what...," but a few more kisses and he was lost to her taste and fire.
Xena.
*****
She was on her back beneath him, fingers twined round the smoothly sculpted dowels of his headboard. "Gods, yes. Ares..."
She was settling for no less than flaming lust tonight. Nothing gentle or careful, nothing paced or languid. She wanted him inside her, seemed to want to lose herself to sensation. Her nails clawed brutally at his skin.
But he was making her wait, teasing and drawing her out. "You like that?" he queried, his smile that of the playful sprite. He had ever so slowly slipped two fingers inside her, all the while keeping up the smooth circles on her clit that had brought about the quivering in her thighs. Her back arched and he slid deeper, her sound of reply absent of words. The moonlight streaked across her bare throat and full breasts and he couldn't believe she was here, with him.
"Please. Now," was all she said.
He had never been able to deny her.
*****
She was on his lap, the headboard digging into his back and shoulders, her grip on the dowels giving her leverage to work her hips against his, and he was the one who had lost all verbal acuity.
Her skin radiated heat in the cooling evening and her heartbeat echoed from her breasts through his chest.
"Oh, Gods, Xena. You're so damn beautiful....so gods damned beautiful..." He couldn't touch enough of her at once, he longed for the power to move within her at the slightest touch, warm her guts with the whim of a thought.
Her hand slapped from the headboard to the back of his neck, fingertips digging into taut tendons, and the hoarse cry from her throat was all the warning he had of her impending climax.
Every muscle in her body tightened around him, and the intensity was more than he could handle. The power of his climax shook them both and pushed her through what he could only guess was a second or third orgasm.
He didn't know how much time passed in the quiet darkness of his makeshift home as their breathing slowed and his sense of time and place realigned.
From inside her, all he knew was Xena.
They breathed. Time passed. Wind drifted through the half open window.
The heat that had felt like heaven moments ago, grew less desirable in the aftermath, and Ares' thoughts slipped from carnal pleasures to cool water and fresh air and some kind of dinner.
Xena's breath was slowing with his own, her heartbeat finding its rhythm against his skin.
She felt like home in his arms. Every curve new with the familiarity of a lifetime.
Her muscles tensed on an aftershock and sent electric shivers down his spine.
Ares buried his face in her shoulder a moment longer. Then the nubs and edges of the headboard that had mattered not in the heat of passion began to grate. He drew a deep breath, moved to pull away.
Xena's limbs tightened around him, thighs clamping in hard, core muscles clenching to hold him inside. "No, please. Stay."
He had never felt so human in his life.
Her voice fell broken against the skin of his throat, tones stripped of armor as her body had been, and his guts ached at the sound.
If empathy meant feeling someone else's pain as sharply as his own, he had found his way to such an undesirable place.
Ares' fingers moved into Xena's tousled hair to cradle the back of her head, his free arm solid across her powerful back. The headboard and discomfort were forgotten. "Okay. Okay, hey. I gotcha. I gotcha."
She was shaking.
He hadn't known such a thing was possible.
She didn't speak.
"Gods, Xena, what happened in that palace? Talk to me." The raw scratch in his voice frightened him. He had never been this close to anyone. He wondered if she had ever let someone be this close to her.
She didn't speak, but she turned her face closer into his neck and let the softest edge of a moan resonate low in her throat.
"Xena, what did they do to you?" His voice was barely a whisper.
He just held on.
*****
They were half asleep in the darkness before she talked, her warm back pressed against his chest, long limbs tangled in his blankets as the stifling day melted to chill night. "I stopped Gabrielle from knifing Gurkhan. And they threw me in the dungeons. To teach me a lesson." Her voice was thready, moonlight through coarse trees.
He was learning about pain. What it was to be human. What it was to be vulnerable, no matter how trained and strong and powerful a warrior.
Xena was tortured. His Xena.
"Why did you let them?"
"I had to. They couldn't know I wasn't who I said I was. I couldn't...leave Gabrielle alone."
"Why? Wasn't it what she wanted?"
"It wasn't what I wanted." Things were always about what Xena wanted.
She shifted in his bed, her long hair cascading over his ribs. The night was deep in its clouded darkness, his eyes useless and more comfortable closed. Xena was a warm body in the abyss, a memory of pale skin and raven mane. Her exposed skin was cooler now. His hand smoothed over the line of her hip, his fingers traced the bone and he imagined the slightest shiver beneath battle-scarred skin. It occurred to him that every blow and blade to touch her skin had hurt her a thousand times more than it had ever hurt him. Even when she emerged victorious and seemingly unscathed. Pain. "I've been tortured before," she said matter-of-factly. "This was just..."
He pushed her hair from her ear, pressed his mouth to the warm base of her neck. "Just...?" he breathed.
"This one was hard to take. Bad timing, I guess."
He moved up closer against her, let the nature of his touch melt from seduction to shelter. He smoothed a gentle hand down the curve of her cheek, thought he felt a trace of dampness brush his fingertips. "Okay," was all he said.
She curled in a bit on herself. Ares tightened his hold, and ever so gradually Xena relaxed into his touch. He didn't sleep until she slept. Part of him guessed she would be gone from this place before he woke in the morning. Part of him was okay with that. Another part wanted to watch her pale freckles in the first light of Grecian sun, lean his forehead against hers and listen to her breathe.
Maybe it wasn't all about Eve.
Maybe it was all about...this....
*****
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