Sins On The Skin

XXXII: BONUS.

His Siren knew which song to sing for her words to be absorbed into his skin.

She knew what to say to drag him into her depthless sea.

"Answer me." She carried no remorse for the way she tormented him, no remorse for how she made him suffer for a single touch as she settled on his desk, the bare heels of her feet tucking themselves between his casually spread legs. "It's only fair. After all, you made me lose my sleep, you can spare a few moments to entertain a midnight thought for me."

A sigh left him.

It was deep, born out of the union of sorrow and misery, the long lost brother of nostalgia.

"Gwen-"

"Answer me."

Another sigh left him, this one deeper, heavier as though tired from dragging its immaterial body from his lungs.

Regardless, he obeyed her, of course he obeyed her.

"The ignorance of mankind has long since stopped troubling me. Let them hide in their arrogance, let them boast and hate what they could never begin to comprehend. Let them stand like sheep in line for hours to look at the Mona Lisa and then complain over the size of the painting, never seeing beyond it, never detecting the light, careful strokes," His palms settled on her knees, his fingers travelling across the sea of her moon-bitten thighs while dripping enough yearning to compete with that possessed by that of salt-dressed Odysseus. "The precision and the craftsmanship," The symplegades of her thighs parted for him, subconsciously accepting the torture, if but for a moment. "The desire and the love, the need."

Gwen's coffee coloured eyes remained on his face throughout the criminally brief monologue, observing the way the harsh lines of his physiongomy deepened, the way his eyes--painful to even behold from all the emotions they elicited--lit up with the first signs of thunder. It stole her breath, the sight of seeing him alive after such a long time, so much so that she never gave much thought to his touch, not even when it abandoned her.

"Satisfied, darling?"

"No, but I suppose we all take what we can in this world."

He didn't like the expression she wore-that lingering hope, that regret--it didn't suit her.

Even more, he didn't deserve it.

And yet, there was nothing he could do to cure it, nothing he could do other than pretend and lie to her in the hopes of her blind love shielding her away from the cracks of his ill-crafted mask.

And so, afraid of his failure, he remained silent and still.

"You know you can't avoid this conversation forever." Gwen almost flinched as he drew away from her, as the silver of his eyes hid beneath a dreadful sky of clouds, as the fragments of his soul hid inside his empty shell of a carcass once more. "It's not good for you, this silence, this martyrdom."

"I'm not being a martyr, Guinevere."

But he was.

It was so easy for him.

After all, Nathaniel Russ had never been one to accept triumph.

The perfectionist in him never did permit him such liberties, such petty emotions. It thought them weak. Triumph was for those who basked in their ignorance, those who bended the knee to arrogance and found no fault in their rotten minds.