#vereena

Her skin excited under his fingers, how gentle he could be when he wanted to. Her sighs, delicate provocations, seduction spun. Alight by his burn, her face smoked in the appearance of pain, yet her body smouldered in delight. He watched her pleasure soar, arise, higher and higher to the ascent of heat. She didn’t need persuading, one kiss from him, and it led to this. It was the sweat and dirt, she liked it when he smelled of battle. Helping herself to his padded greaves, she removed the cumbersome standing in her way. He touched her as she touched him, pink to pink, bold fawning in the thickness of his groin, his trembling rushed upright. Closing his eyes, he put a good weighted hand atop her lekkus. 

He said softly that he missed her. He had not lied. Not to her. “I am here,” she said. She encouraged the noises he kept quiet when she wasn’t around. Pillowed pout, an incantation enlivening skin and muscle, she spoke the words of taste; he called back to her in prayed moans…

In the bathroom mirror, they saw each other. One missing to another, she leaned back to his chest, her head at the built of his shoulder, she asked for more. An onrush, he surged into her deep waters. On tip-toes, she lifted herself off the floor, pushed the flat countertop away from her, to gain one more skin-inch of him. 

Cheeks warned with shy urge, she asked his reflection, “How do you want me?” 

He answered, “I want you just like this.”

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The Code said: through passion I gain strength.

He was on her in three strides and lifted her as if she weighed nothing, pressing his whole body against hers without breaking step. Her back met the wall, her face came level with his. Before she could even say anything, their lips joined without a moment's delay in a starved kiss.

"I thought about you."

He didn’t elaborate because he never had to - the grip of his hands said everything the words left out.

“You’re alive,” she gasped between kisses. Her voice cracked, as if she might break down at any moment and burst into tears. Happiness, relief, a little anger, all at once. Her emotions were so clear; he felt them all, vibrating in the air around her. He resonated with something similar, something thirsty and longing, charged with weeks spent in the frenzy of battle after battle, something she could neither feel nor see, as he could.

“Obviously,” he said, a little smile on his face.

“Obviously,” she repeated with a light laugh, this time avoiding further kisses. “Six weeks, Veradun. Your name was on the casualty reports twice. I went down to the medical bay afterwards, even to the halls where they keep the bodies, and you were never there... They wouldn't tell me anything. They chased me off, brushed me aside, said terrible things, that I should assume you were lying somewhere, dying, if you hadn't burned to nothing already—” 

He silenced her with another kiss - a long one this time, unbroken.

“Fools and their wishful, treacherous thinking,” he said. “I burn planets. I do not burn. The galaxy is not finished with me. Nor I with it.”

Golden eyes met her lavender ones. Only now Eleena could look at him more closely and see that he had changed slightly again. The shadows around his eyes had deepened, a network of blue veins had spread across his forehead, and his eyes burning, against the blood-red background.

A black-gloved hand stroked her cheek. He had thought of her often these past weeks - more than he cared to admit. Everything in him thrummed. With the need to feel her next to him again, and with the Dark Side, swollen from every life that had ended by his hand.