The flow of his hips finally slowed to a stop when stiffness was completely gone, though he kept the grip into his hair. His thoughts were still stirring from the spectrum he’d witnessed in the other tonight: deadly force, his usual calm, curiosity, timidity, all coming to completion at animalistic lust. If it could be assured that this wasn’t completely due to his previous virginity being stricken, then it would be an experience he’d seek out again. Even so, this had been what appeared to be a coincidence…and he preferred not to keep connections to anyone, no matter how delicious they may be.

Already he was imagining this closer to home, and the realization was enough for him to pull his lips away. He swallowed down the lasting taste of his blood smeared lips and breathed out slowly through his nose. It was a shame there was no way he could conceive of this being a possibility in his natural form. Ah well, thus was life. His eyes opened and he traced them along his face, ending at the crimson of his lips where his blood was starting to dry. Seeing that part of lips and evidence of himself there sent knots into his stomach so much so that he had to look away from him.

It was in no way a bad thing, he was simply unable to go again so soon and was a little irritated at that fact. He wordlessly moved his fingers from his hair and rested them against the floor so that he could push up. As if on cue, Kuval moved his own to grip his arms and pin them to the boards. It wasn’t an attack, in fact it wasn’t even painful, but he still looked at him quickly as if slapped in the face. On instinct his energy flared, but of course nothing happened, reminding him that the dead zone was still in effect…There was no longer a sexual distraction from that and his eyes halved against the fear that was trying to form. He wouldn’t allow it.

“What…?” No longer was there a tremor in his voice, though the timbre was still just as soft despite himself. The act was over, what reason was there to stay like this now? He searched his eyes, but found no answer in their fathomless darkness.

It felt too soon to move, too soon to let go. The moment Dorian tried, Kuval felt himself acting without thought to keep him there. His hands held onto his forearms gently, fingers pressed against the veins. He could feel the beating heart there.

Slowly he tilted his head, looking at the witch curiously. His eyes searched along his face, at the blood smears and sweat. He looked at the way the dark locks of his hair clung to his face, at the way they flowed across the floor beneath them.

Further down he saw the bites, both his own and the vampires. The bleeding was slowing already, trying against the marks along his skin. Kuval tilted his head the other way, looking at the way they traced down his skin. What were these magical marks…? Clearly they were still in the dead zone, no light shone from them, and he found himself both disappointed and grateful. After all, as logic crept back into his mind he knew that the witch wouldn’t let him do this again any time soon. He would have been cast off, wouldn’t he?

Still, he wondered what it would feel like to press his lips to one. To bite one. He wanted to know more about them, but no words were forming right now. Instead his eyes traced further down, looking at the rise and fall of his chest. He looked at the smear of pleasure left on his own skin, at the softening length of him, and the way his body still curled up to allow their hips to meet like this.

Then slowly he looked back up him again until he found his eyes. His own were full of unspoken questions and desires. Finally he lowered his head down and pressed his ear to the witch’s chest, sure he would never get a chance to do so again, and listened to the pounding of his heart. It was so… warm here. Skin on skin felt so different on land, so much hotter, so much more… separated. He struggled to find the right words for it.

Under water, in the depths where he’d grown, they were so accustomed to the cold that touch itself wasn’t so extreme. Numbed, almost. Muted. This… This was completely different. Every touch felt like it didn’t belong. No, like touching in itself was a privilege.

It wasn’t exactly intimacy that he was looking for. He had no real emotional attachment to the witch, and yet he found drawn. Maybe it was because this was the first time he’d be so very close to a human, or maybe it was simply a desire to hold onto this act a moment longer, but he didn’t move yet. Briefly he closed his eyes and listened to the drum, more music against his ear…

It was beautiful…

He wasn’t letting him go, why wasn’t he letting him go? They’d both felt pleasure, why was he still touching him and trying to keep him here? Did he simply not realize that there was going to be some time before there could be a repetition? That had to be it. The way he was looking at him was the only thing that made him think otherwise. Suddenly he felt like one of the many creatures he kept for specific use: a thing, not a person. He didn’t like it, as hypocritical as it was to admit it, but he’d never claimed to be a particularly fair individual.

As he was inspected, he tried to follow his gaze whenever he looked at something new on him. There was a linger on his markings and his jaw locked as he attempted to turn his arms to remove them from his gaze. Where was the harsh touch? This was much too gentle, suspiciously so, and worse yet he couldn’t make him burst into flame or knock him unconscious with a whisper.

His jaw locked when he was no longer able to follow his gaze, and his head turned away sharply. He contemplated bringing his knee up to kick him, but refrained from doing so. If Kuval had it in him to be so vicious in throws of lust then he shuddered to think of that ruthlessness being directed towards him out of anger. With no magick to back himself up during a fight…? No, he wouldn’t kick him. Yet.

The soft brush of his hair played along his chest just before his head rested down there. At that feeling his eyes grew as wide as they could. This wasn’t what he wanted, and the silence was deafening now. His chest rose and fell heavily as he tightly closed his eyes, trying once more to force some kind of reaction but none came. Damn this continent! He would not show fear, and it was already transmuting to anger anyhow, as it usually did, “Get off of me.” He tried again to move his arms, to get them free of his grasp so that he could get away from him.

The drum seemed to grow stronger, louder, against his ear. Kuval’s brow furrowed as he tried to piece together why such a thing would happen, after the act was finished. He could tell he was making the witch uncomfortable, his shifting alone said that, but this felt like more than just that. There was anger, for sure, but he thought…

No matter, he told himself, lifting his head up again, If he’s done with me, I should get off him.

With a resigned sigh, he shifted up more and removed his hands from their shackling position. As he pulled his hips back, he couldn’t help the part of his lips. The sensation was something he felt he’d never grow accustomed too.

Finally he pushed back completely and left the witch to move any way he pleased, taking up his own place with legs crossed on the floor and body slumped in near exhaustion. It had taken a lot out of him, truth be told. He knew physical exertion easily, but a new exercise still brought out new levels of ache.

He looked over at Dorian then, smiling just a little as he took hold of his own ankles, and spoke up, “Sorry. I’ve never been close enough to hear one before. Not like that anyways.”

Kuval thought about the times he’d felt it before, but they were never in close to this context. It was never gentle or without fear. Nearly every human he’d ever touched, he realized, had been afraid of him… Which only made logical sense, he knew, but he still found it oddly frustrating.

“Is it always like that?” He finally asked, allowing the first of many questions to come to his head, “I didn’t think humans liked to bleed.”

It felt like an eternity between telling him to move and him actually doing so. He was careful not to look at him until he’d shifted. His lips pressed into a tight line to hold back a sound when he moved his hips back, but then he was immediately up on his feet. That vulnerability was so aggravating it almost cancelled out the pleasure of the previous actions. Almost. His hands scratched quickly through his hair, pulling at some of the tangle as he all but glared down at this grinning man. “Hear a heartbeat? Well I’m glad you’ve now satisfied the curiosity.” There was a cut to his words, but he moved from the bedroom back to the sink in the bathroom. The candle there had burned down half way, and he quickly turned on the water.

His eyes lifted to his reflection and again he looked away from himself. The marks were still dormant and even if it was unable to be noticed by others, he could see the fear in his eyes. He hated it, hated that he’d made him feel like that in the first place. “No.” he answered him, turning off the spigot and walking to the shower to start water there instead, “It’s hardly ever like that, in the broad sense of the action at least.” He touched under the stream of water, easing as it gradually got hotter,

“Most prefer it gentle. Well, gentle in comparison. It’s irritating in my personal opinion…to be so gentle and soft with hardly so much as a grip.” Not that the people he engaged with had much choice in the matter when it came to a soft touch: he took it however way he wanted it given his mood at the moment. “So I wouldn’t go around biting into people like that or you’ll be met with violence rather than moans.” He breathed out harshly, trying to expel the last of his irritation. Water was helping, and he moved over the small lip of the standing shower’s edge and stepped under the heat. A quick wince sounded against the tiles from such warmth going over fresh marks. Angela’s tonic could only heal so far now that it had moved through his system.

“I’m not sure how you perform such acts where you come from, but here you would do well to clean yourself afterwards.” Far be it from him to know how his body would react since he wasn’t really human, just appeared to be one. His eyes slowly closed, calming more as warmth overtook him, and his hands slid up along his stomach. One paused there to get away his own remnants of pleasure, while the other trailed up to one of the still fresh bites. It was tender and he was tempted to press his fingers in.

“Oh…” Kuval replied, trying to take in his words about the act being gentle. That was the word he used, gentle. He couldn’t imagine something so primal being done in a soft manner and the disappointment was there in his tone as he repeated the word, “Gentle…”

Turning onto his hands and knees, he moved over to the edge of the washroom and rested his back against the door frame, looking out at the now empty seeming room. So much pleasure had just taken place here, the marks of it were still around the space. Blood, mostly. Nail marks in the floor, in the baseboards. His own skin was tough, but he remembered what Dorian had said about humans’ and he’d practically tried to make the man one with the floor boards.

I’ll break them in two, he thought to himself, Especially little ladies.

But even as he thought it, he realized he didn’t have much interest in them to begin with. It really hadn’t been much different for him before, when he’d been looking at romance with the rest of his kind. He’d always been drawn to the other males, so he felt he shouldn’t be surprised that the same was true on land as well.

Leaning more against the wall, he began to notice all wounds on his own skin. He definitely needed to clean. The salt of the ocean wasn’t there to help do it for him. He’d used showers in other inns before and as he listened to the sounds of Dorian washing himself, he knew that he’d want to be next. It sounded heavenly, despite the heat that was starting to wash out of the room.

At the last statement though, he couldn’t help but laugh. The sound of it was hearty and honest in its amusement, rolling into his surprised words, “I-It’s nothing like that. Nothing at all, sadly. I mean, it’s fun and all. And it feels good, but it’s nothing like that. That was… that was something.

“If you liked that, you wouldn’t like what we do. It’d be way too gentle for you and that’s an understatement.”

There was an obviously used bar of soap in a dish at the corner of the shower and he bent, picking it up. It was slick and he wrinkled his nose at the idea of getting his hair too clean. His eyebrows furrowed as he listened to the other speak. “Such a pity…” To think that their kind weren’t as primal with lust as he had just been now, it was disappointing to say the least. As lovely to look at as Kuval was in both forms, he shuddered to imagine another sexual experience with him were it to be more akin to his nature after the acts.

He worked the soap into a lather between his palms and quickly ran the suds over his body in all spaces he could reach. His fingers gently pushed into himself, jaw locking as he cleaned that area. With the dead zone still in effect he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to remain here the entirety of the night. It might be best to continue on to his next destination, especially since he had just enough of Angela’s tonic left to stay safe. His fingers worked through his hair, breathing in sharply from the knots there,

“W-What are you even doing here in Kurayo? Not that I claim to know you, but yours is not the first face that comes to mind when I think of this city.” Clumps of tangles pulled free and he watched as they along with dirty and blood circled down the drain. It was odd, sickening, to be so close to water but feel no pull towards it. The longer he stewed here, the more his answer became apparent that he had to leave as soon as possible. At least he’d been able to get what he’d come for, and then some. He smirked briefly and rested the bar of soap back into the dish when he was sufficiently cleaned.

His hands moved to the handles and twisted the water off. A scratchy towel was half hanging out of a small shelf at the wall and he took it, rubbing it through his too clean hair and over his body. When he looked at himself in the mirror he could no longer see the vampiric bites from earlier in the evening. Kuval’s, however, were still prominent against his tanned skin. They were closed enough to be safe, but he knew well that they’d leave scars. Oddly enough he wasn’t upset about it and ran the tips of his fingers over the now clean skin before dropping the towel over the length of the sink.

His skin, while still damp, was still more dry than he would want to force with a towel, and his hair was disturbingly clean and soft against his shoulders and back as he walked back into the bedroom. His muscles were spent and he sat on the edge of the bed, leaning forward against his knees as he moved a hand up to gently scratch along his scalp. He looked over at Kuval, still outlined in blood and sweat and felt a familiar dip in his stomach.

“Honestly, I just wanted to see it,” Kuval answered truthfully. His sense of adventure never seemed to dwindle away, no matter how many places he saw or people he met. If there had been uncharted parts of the map in his possession, he knew he’d have wanted to go to those first. Some days he simple flicked his fingers at the map and went where the water droplets told him to.

With a shrug, he continued, “It’s just in my nature. I’m not usually still for long. I’d like to see it all before I die or, baring the possibility of that, everything I possibly can.”

He stretched his legs out in front of him, leaning back more against the wall. With one hand, he pushed the hair back from his face and tucked it behind his ear. A red tint lingered there and he wondered if it would stain his hair this time. It’d happened once before, leaving him with copper strands. He’d be washing sooner this time, at least.

As the sounds of water faded away, he just barely tilted his head to be heard easier still without speaking as loudly, “What about you? Why are you out here? You have to hate having your magick pulled away.”

You didn’t have to be a genius to know how much he hated it, so why the risk? There must have been something here that he wanted, something important enough to almost die for. As the witch moved into the room again, Kuval tried to figure out what it might be. He’d never guess, of course. He had no idea what lingered in the man’s mind, but to try was simply second nature.

As Dorian took up his place on the edge of the bed, Kuval couldn’t help but look at him again. Whatever happened from here, he was glad for what happened… It was a gift. A very strange, very primal, somewhat gorey gift that he was grateful for. He smiled a bit at the witch, one of happiness and satisfaction.

Catching the glint in the man’s eye didn’t help with that smile. Truth be told, he would have gone again now if he could have. Curiosity led him to wonder about other was, other feelings that he didn’t get this time around. Simply, he spoke, “You know, if we did meet again… I don’t mind not being gentle.”

Just wanted to see it. He couldn’t recall a time he’d ever had such an innocent motivation. Now that he thought about it, had he ever? Life for him was usually one of survival and an impossible goal of satisfaction. If there weren’t so many other people crawling on the continents then he might have been more willing to go out into the world for the sake of doing so. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. “Then let’s hope you never come to realize how dreadfully dull the surface world is.” Foreign or not, he doubted he’d ever understand the appeal of this place.

He searched his eyes, mulling over his question. While he was delightful in bed, so to speak, and came from the ocean, magick wasn’t something he normally discussed with others. Not when it was pertaining to things of this magnitude, “Nothing you need to worry about. This place offers things that no other can…” His eyes narrowed in thought before casting them forward to look on at nothing in particular. “Having my magick gone is likened to that of losing a limb. To be honest I don’t normally fall prey to them, fate had other plans I guess.” He sighed, pushing his hair back. It was too soft, too light from having been cleaned, and he swiftly tied it up in a messy bun in hopes of not noticing it so much.

“They travel, dead zones, drifting like deadly invisible clouds.” The words were nearly spat. Had the tree not been ripped down centuries prior then this plague would never have come into existence. He shook his head, not wanting to dwell on things he knew he couldn’t fix. Even with two deities in Parvpora it seemed as if things would remain the same. Useless beings that they were.

He smirked, a low chuckle forming in his throat as he looked back over at him. It was torturous to look at him, covered in his blood, hair still messed from the grip of his fingers-some strands tinted red- and not be able to take him. “Which is good to know because I’m sure should that meeting come, my magick will be there and I don’t often give a choice when it comes to roughness.” That card flashed in his thoughts once more and his smirk faltered. “Should it happen…” He repeated quietly to himself before hunching forward and lifting up his flask from the floor.

Wincing at the analogy, Kuval tried to imagine what it felt like to lose a limb… and the thought almost made him laugh because the realization washed over him quickly. He did lose a limb. Despite being given new ones, no matter where he went he wasn’t on firm footing. He’d never be as strong on legs as he was in the water and he knew that, knew what it felt like.

And though he coped fine with it, he knew how stressful it could be. Dorian, like he, was left without his most useful appendage. He could understand that, almost completely. Almost. He doubted the witch would see it the same way, so he didn’t say it out loud.

For a moment, he wondered if the dead zone did anything to him. Were any of his talents reliant on magick? Some of his people would say so, but others claimed it to be in their blood. He could tell, right now, something that had merely been pondered for years back home… but he didn’t have access to half of the things he would need to test it. What a waste.

His attention was brought back to the smirk and he found himself enticed by it again. Though they were at a distance, Kuval had to admit he liked it when Dorian was above him. He couldn’t say why, especially since he’d definitely liked being over him, but he was incredibly curious to know what it would feel like to be taken by the witch on his terms.

“Yes,” he managed, keeping his tone calm despite the stirring that formed at the idea, “Should it happen…”

With that, he pushed up onto his feet and stood there almost awkwardly before speaking again, “You’re very interesting, Dorian. I hope we do meet again after tonight. You’re definitely worth exploring.

“Thanks again for letting me stay here tonight,” he continued, turning away from him and moving into the bathroom. He began the similar process of turning on the water, not bothering with the heat. He still didn’t quite understand the appeal of hot water. “If it’s alright with you, I’ll probably sleep in here. Do you care?”

Carefully, Kuval stepped into the tub and sat down there. He crossed his legs as much as he could in the tub and let his head hang as the water rushed over his body. Slowly the muscles in his body began to completely relax… The travels would have been enough to make him tired, even without the fight and the sex.

Yes, sleep needed to come soon too.