Dear Tempting

Crowns and Queens

War thrummed in the air like drums.

They stood along the edge of the ocean, closer than she had dared to get since arriving. She needed to get down there, bring them away from her city. Bring the war to the shore.

Reid told him as much, bare feet padding on the boards of the dock as she walked away from the end. Xavier followed after her, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. They hit the sand, watching the darker than normal water turn on the horizon.

"They will come for me. They will feel it when I hit the water and come swarming," she said quietly, red hair blowing over her shoulders and out to the water.

He watched her, knowing he wouldn't be much help.

"They will come for you too," she said turning to him.

He knew that as well. They were tied now, in soul and in the eyes of everyone they met. She was a target; he would be the prize.

Only now they weren't two who moved as one. They were divided. Separate apart from one goal.

He couldn't tell her he was sorry. He wasn't. It wasn't his fault, even if he hadn't dragged them away for his own selfish reasons. He didn't kill what they had made. No. That had been the bitch queen. That snake...

He was only sorry for the grief that would haunt her. Her kind only had one shot, one chance to have a fingerling of their own. One child, just one. And now that was gone.

She would hate him for that alone. Not that she hadn't hated him in some way before all this. They would always hate each other in some way. Hate in the power they held over one another or hate for what they had done. It didn't matter. Hate for what had led them here, hate him for hating her.

What would happen now that she couldn't produce an heir...

Their gazes collided, fierce and firey even with the dark clouds turning in the sky. Her heart pounded in the quiet. He could hear it, beating that chaotic pase so different from his own. It wasn't beating for him though, not that familiar bond causing her heart to hammer in her chest with the desire to claw the orgasm out of him. No.

Her heart was beating with vengeance, loud and clear.

Good thing his was doing the same.

Beating with that engineered predator's quiet rhythm, boom boom. Like a cannon in the distance. Like the one that had blown his house to pieces.

She blinked at him, emerald eyes swirling with her own demons. He had never looked at her with anything but indifference, never just to look at her. To search her face, to see what answers lay there... It was terrifying.

The things she had done, things she had seen, the memories of his past coming back to play on her face. He could read her emotions, clear as if they were written in words.

Anger, malice, vengeance.

No fear, no joy.

And the emotions she felt for him? They were the same as what he felt for her. Indifference. No desire, no kind thoughts of any sort. Love was not in their vocabulary.

But there was a selfish need so primal terror itself might as well created it. She hated herself for that need, hated him for making himself so necessary.

"Go," he said, stoney faced. She saw right through it.

They didn't need to speak, she understood.

Her eyes stayed on his as she turned towards the dock, walking right to the end of it. Reid pulled her t-shirt over her head, dropping it onto the boards along with her shorts. A sea of red fell over her back, kissing her skin like a simple breeze. She looked at him once more before she dove right off the end.