Work Text:
“Again, Violence.”
“Don’t call me that,” she snaps, the wind whipping at her braid while she shoots me a glare over her shoulder.
“I’ll call you something else when you can aim,” I reply smoothly.
Violet doesn’t answer, which is unsurprising. She hasn’t acknowledged any of my mental communications since the battle. Maybe she thinks if she ignores my voice in her mind, she won’t think about me. Maybe it’s working. Gods, I hope not.
Another crack of lightning in the distance, and some poor tree splinters down the middle, woefully far from the target.
“You managed to snipe Barlowe so easy, maybe I need to start threatening your life so you can actually hit something.”
Tairn whips his head in my direction, smoke trickling up from his nostrils, but Violet refuses to look at me. “Maybe if I were allowed to return to Basgiath,” she retorts, and it sounds like she’s saying it through her teeth, “I could be learning under an actual instructor, and I would be improving.”
“Well lucky for you, you can’t go back. You know as well as I do that your mother would end your life just to keep up the deception, and your precious Dain would probably hold you down while she does it.”
Still she doesn’t look at me.
“Careful, Xaden,” Sgaeyl chides. Tairn must be upset if she’s inserting herself.
“But instead you’re here, alive.” I continue mercilessly. “You don’t have Carr, you don’t have Mira, hell, you don’t even have Liam. Everyone is gone, and all you have is—”
Lightning strikes without warning, so close by that Sgaeyl rolls to the side and banks away to avoid the blast of heat.
An insane laugh punches out of me, lost to the wind ripping by my face. “Is that what you needed, Violence? Does that hit the spot? A little anger, a little rage?”
“Again,” I demand verbally, pointing towards the boulder we’ve been using as a target.
Violet’s beautiful eyes stab me with a thousand daggers, so intently that a little shiver of dread trickles down my spine. But she turns her attention to the boulder once again, and once again she misses quite dramatically.
“Seems like you can’t hit anything unless you’re a hair away from a mental breakdown.”
“Shut up,” she finally answers.
“...So maybe if we just keep pushing you to a breakdown, you’ll eventually get a feel for it.”
“Maybe if you keep pushing me, I’ll eventually fry you,” Violet spits out.
Oh.
Oh, yes.
“So hit me.”
Both Tairn and Sgaeyl have visible reactions to my taunt, but Violet just rolls her eyes. Her gaze is cold steel when she finally replies, “You know I can’t do that.”
A slow smile stretches over my face, and I whisper into her mind, “Oh, I know.”
I watch as the realization hits her, not that I know she won’t, but that I think she can’t.
An enraged shriek hits the air, the sky suddenly alive with static and energy, and I have barely enough time to tilt my head down towards the boulder before there’s the crack and it explodes, slinging thousands of blackened shards into the air.
My heart is pounding in my ears, excitement and a smidgen of fear rushing through me. “Good,” I say, forcing my voice to be steady when I look back at her seething in the saddle. “Again.”
And I add into her mind, because I am a pathetic bastard, “...and try not to be so angry this time, it turns me on.”
To my utter delight there’s a response at last, just as breathless and sexy as her real voice would be. “The only thing I need you to be is alive. I’m pretty sure Sgaeyl wouldn’t mind if I carve a few pieces off in the meantime.”
“Nothing important, I hope.”
“Nothing you’ll need to use with me ever again,” she assures.
“Such a dirty little mind. Is my company really so bothersome, Violence?”
“What I wouldn’t give for a fucking day away from you, Riorson.”
Hmmm.
“What a good idea. How about this? I bet you can’t hit—” I turn my head, scanning the area, and then I raise my hand and point— “that tree, in three tries. If you do, I don’t exist for an entire day. You don’t see me, you don’t hear me, it’ll just be a full, Riorson-free day for my sweet Violence.”
She’s biting her lip, eyes flicking towards the tree and actually considering it. Come on, angry little thing. Play with me.
“And if I don’t hit it?” she asks. “What do you get?”
“Maybe just something… small. Easy, really.” I shrug. “A kiss.”
“A kiss?” she stares at me like I just admitted I eat shit for breakfast.
“You’ve done it before, I’m fairly sure it’s within your skill set.”
“No. We are never kissing again. I don’t care if you tell me I’m the lamest lightning wielder to ever exist, I am never fucking kissing you.”
“You don’t have to,” I assure her with a smile, “if you can hit that tree in three tries.”
The tree she’s now scowling at as if its name were Xaden Riorson. She’s picturing it in her mind, I know she is. Me, up in the top of that tree, smirking at her and daring her to hit me like she means it.
Take it, Violet. Take the bet. I don’t even care if I win, I don’t want to win, I just want you to think about kissing me.
Lightning strikes a good distance away from the tree, and Tairn growls in displeasure. Apparently he’s just as eager to be rid of me.
I, on the other hand, smile delightedly because this means she’s taking the bet, and because I know the grin will make her angry.
Another crash of electricity, and a different tree goes down. We’ll need to fly out farther the next time, so we don’t leave an obvious trail of destruction.
All four of us have our attention locked onto that fateful tree for her last try. She’s gathering herself, pulling the power she needs and pooling it all together, every muscle tight with concentration as she lifts her hand, and—
Lightning strikes.
And misses.
I eat my dinner of stew and bread next to Brennan, barely tasting it because my focus is narrowed on the beautiful girl on Brennan’s other side, currently fuming like she’s trying to incinerate me with her mind. And considering that she’s Violet Sorrengail, that’s actually a fair possibility.
Gods, the day drags. And I’ve done so well the last two weeks, stomping down most of those wild, romantic thoughts of Violet for my own sanity. Staying in the moment, concentrating on what needs to be done and which communications need to be made. My duties are endless, and yet after our training session today, all those heated thoughts and imaginings have burst through the cellar of my mind. All the things I want to do, but can’t. All the ways I want to collect on my wager, but won’t. Not when she still hates me.
I hadn’t been prepared for her to corner me as soon as we landed, hands on her hips, demanding that I kiss her and get it over with. Hadn’t considered that she’d want anything but to pretend it never happened, which I was quite ready to accept. And I definitely hadn’t known that my refusal to collect would only infuriate her more.
Violet has already finished eating, but still she sits, not talking to anyone, just watching my food diminish with a predator’s focus. Truthfully I’ve been forcing down the last few bites, so with a sigh I finally give up, disentangling my legs from the bench and taking my tray with me. I don’t have to use shadows to know that Violet is right behind me, following me out of the dining hall and towards the sleeping quarters with a step as silent as a cat’s.
I’m going to have to turn her down again. Maybe this time she’ll realize I’m not just playing with her, that I honestly won’t force her to kiss me. That’s Dain shit, a breach of consent that even an evil bastard like me wouldn’t put on anyone.
My bedroom door is just a few yards away when I hear footsteps quickening behind me, and I turn just in time for her palms to slam square into my chest, shoving me back into the wall so hard that I let out a surprised huff.
“Kiss me,” she demands.
I blink down at her, too shocked to summon the amused expression I should be plastering on. “No.”
Her fingers dig into my shirt, fisting it tight and yanking me down a few inches so that our mouths are close enough to make contact if we both lean in.
“Kiss. Me.”
“As the winner,” I say, forcing my eyes to hold hers and not to wander down to her pretty lips, “I choose the time and place.”
The time will be when she stops hating me, and the place will be wherever the hell we are when she stops hating me.
She sees my determination, the resolve in my eyes not to do the one thing she’s asking. And then one of her hands unfastens itself from my tunic, and she slides it around the back of my neck, forcing me down. Bringing herself up on her tiptoes, Violet presses her mouth to mine.
Gods, her lips are soft. Soft and warm, and I never want to surface from them. I melt, my eyes instinctively sliding closed— Just in time for her to break the contact and take a step back.
The kiss was only a couple of seconds, but it takes me far longer than that to compose myself. She’s just standing there staring at me, so I buy time by smoothing wrinkles out of my shirt, and finally I’m able to look back at her face as impassively as possible.
“That counts,” she tells me confidently. She’s right. I should tell her she’s right.
“Mmm, no.”
Violet’s mouth falls open in disbelief as I roll my neck out, settling my shoulders back against the wall and bracing myself for the ensuing argument.
Instead she approaches me again, pressing herself flush against me and taking the sides of my face in each hand. I know she can feel my jaw clenching under her palms, but she doesn’t stop. She reaches as high as she can, and my Violence kisses me. Rough, heedless and dominating, she pushes my lips apart and slides her tongue against mine until my self control snaps. I lean down just a fraction to kiss her back, and—
She pulls away, breathing hard. “There. Surely that counts.”
“Thank you,” I reply, inclining my head at her and swallowing down my instincts, “but no.”
“What do you want, then? You want your hands on me? You want it in your bed? What? Or do you—” her face shifts in horrified realization. Her voice becomes a quiet, hurt little whisper as her shoulders slump. “Do you not… want to kiss me?”
Oh, fuck.
Goddammit.
One second she’s looking up at me with that absurd doubt in her eyes, and then next my hands are wrapping around her waist, rotating us until it’s her back against the wall, her being lifted and pinned there with my chest pressed into those soft breasts. I don’t urge her to lift her knees but she does it anyway, wrapping her legs around my hips and fitting herself fucking perfectly into my body, like it feels just as convenient to her as it does to me.
And then I’m there, collecting. Sliding the bridge of my nose along her cheekbone, my lips finding the bottom of her little ear, forcing myself to take my time. Her body shudders against me and I feel it all the way to my cock. I tuck that sweet movement into a corner of my mind to think about later, when I’m in bed stroking myself, and my lips continue their slow exploration down the edge of her jaw, and then back up.
“I’m sorry for being such an ass today,” I murmur against her velvet skin, pressing my lips into that spot right below her ear. “You make me…”
“What?” she breathes, arching her body into mine, though we’re already pressed so tightly together that all it does is give a little grind against that hard place between my legs. She tilts her head to give me better access to her throat, and a low noise escapes me as I nuzzle my face under her braid that smells of sky.
You make me sick of myself, Violet. You make me want to be consumed by you, erased, buried alive in the ground you walk on.
“Violent,” I whisper, wrapping my hand around her jaw and turning her face until her mouth meets mine, pressing myself into her lips and drowning in the sensation of warm honey cascading down my spine.
The soft noise she makes then has me hard as can be, my fingers tightening on her face until I can no longer stand to have just her lips against mine. I need her tongue in my mouth, her hands under my shirt. I don’t have the strength to deny myself while she’s got her legs wrapped around me like this and she’s nudging my lips apart with hers.
So I drag my mouth away, breathing hard.
Carefully I lower one of her legs to the floor, and then the other. She blinks up at me, half incredulous, half dazed, and I long to spirit her away to my bed and fully intoxicate her. Make her so wet and wrung out that she can’t even form enough conscious thought to hate me. Those eyes looking up at me, filled with nothing but surrender and the need to cum while I slowly drag her to that edge, over and over.
“Goodnight, Violet.”
She stares at me, taking in a deep breath and settling her shoulders against the wall while I unlock my door. “Goodnight, Xaden.”
We’re even.
I don’t look back before I close the door behind me, because I know my limits, and I can’t allow myself to hurt her again. It would kill me.