like a viper through these suburban streets

"Perhaps it's just the thrill of our near-undead experience talking," he continues, "but standing at your side through such darkness and disrepair, it only makes me want you more." She knows he's sweet on her, but up to this tenday, he's only entertained flirting in the barest manner, clearly anxious to breach whatever he considered propriety. The wisdom in her informs her that it's simply the adrenaline talking, something to which she can relate-- something that she's poured all of herself into keeping at bay. But here, impulse twists and yanks at her, thrums through her nerves, until the spite for his circumstances finally turns her upon him. She inches her fire towards him until his back meets the stone lining the path. "How brave you've become, since that old man slithered his way through camp," she teases. "All grand stories from your youth, but since we met, you could scarcely ask for naught but the weave all this time. And suddenly here spills want from your lips." She leans into him closer than comfort-- she knows she shouldn't want to see terror in his eyes, chasing away a sting of disappointment when she doesn't find it there all the same. She wants him to rescind his hollow resignation to fate, she wants him to fear embarrassment and living with it. She wants him to fear death. He only quirks a sweet smile at her, unfazed. "Ah, never you mind my boldness." He looks past her, gesturing a nod towards the distance slowly expanding between the two of them and the rest of the party. "I realize that this is neither the time nor the place to--" "Oh, don't fall shy on me now, archmage," she purrs, polishing the gravel-edge of her voice. "Tell me. What is it that you want?" Not the orb. Not Mystra. You. She closes the gap between them, robes grazing robes, no more space to hide in the dark between. His face betrays him in one sharp moment when his gaze snaps back to her. There's that indulgence she was aching for, the little spark of fear, exposed by the bright flame in her hand. Sick satisfaction crawls its way into her belly and coils tight. It does not expect him to recover, to kindle the fire in his eyes. To burn from the inside out. "What I want, Tav," he rasps, heavy and dry, "is the same thing that I have wanted and have been smothering back into the depths of me for far longer than my dignity would permit I confess. What I want is to steal the salt off the hollow of your neck-- taste you, indulge you and in you until you shake-- what I want is to make you forget all but my name. Is that what you want to hear?" The world around them blurs; the rustle in the darkness could be miles away. All that exist to them now are the stutter in his breath and the wide of her eyes in the firelight. His voice softens to a whisper. "Does that please you?" She shifts her weight between her feet to steady herself, but with no distance between as they are, the slightest stumble off kilter closes them flush together and presses his unmistakable craving against her, thick and needy and irrevocably clear. The reality of what she wants rips through her, instantaneous and unforgiving, obliterating what little left of her tattered brain as her head and mouth and insides rapidly fill with cotton. In this dark, cold place, Tav is suddenly thrust into a furnace; the warmth from the torch is nothing next to the heat radiating in between them, their ragged breathing ghosting each other's lips. His jaw twitched open when they'd made contact; he must have noticed her breath hitch and shallow all the same. Something in her tugs uneasy, how eagerly she'd buckled at the slightest breeze, but it is quickly engulfed and devoured by an instinct much deeper. One that is ancient, sharper, and ravenously hungry, and if she does not say something, it will.