Author:  Stacy Parker
Title:  Touch Me

Touch Me

Sleepy candles blinked at Amelia as she unfastened the catch at her throat, fumbling for the length of cream fabric before it hit the floor to puddle like so much spilled milk. But her fingers were slow in her pleasant lethargy, and she decided to just let her clothes spend the night where they fell.

Felt so good to let her belt fall to the smoothly carpeted floor. A muffled clink and then silence. It was one of those garments you never noticed until you took it off. Her feet were so pale in the melting light, compared with the backs of her hands. The hem of her pants swathed almost to her toes and her tunic, ungathered, swung loose losing her maturing figure again and again.

No talismen. No belts. Soft skin cooled in the stormy night air, and she ran her fingers through spikey black hair, awakening it's violet sheen to the taper glow. Pale feet caught her eyes again, and she decided that her small toenails needed a nice bold coat of red to smile at her when she was alone.

"Candle light suits you." the voice rasped like silk over harp wire in her body, hiccuping a gasp and a jump from the sudden everything exploding in her body. The wash of adrenaline swept her lethargy away and Amelia's blue eyes found others, deep delicacy set in a stone face. "Z-Zelgadis-san!! You startled me!!" One hand rumpled already wild hair further, while the other clenched on her outthrust hip. "Is something wrong? What happened?!" An angry laugh answered her.

"Yes. Something happened. A long time ago. I fear it has only just now caught up with me. Tell me you want me to stay." Confused silence shone blue in the candle light, and she stared at her friend. He was hurting inside. She could see it. And he....There was a hunger in his shadowed form, only just visible, there, next to her door. A hunger with needled teeth that only she could see...

"I'm-I'll just go get Lina-san and Gourry-san and we can all ta-" her opening door was pushed from her grasped fingers to shut with an insistent and final "click". One arm, beige until his blue hand, held the portal shut. He had removed his half-glove, she noted, and candlelight made an ideal garnish for that fine skin. His face emerged from the shadow and stared at her, hard through to his gaze, and anger had a flame war in his eyes. "Tell me you want me to stay." Emphasis on the last word implied.. well.. that he might do it regardless...

This was scary. Zelgadis was frightening her. But all she could think of was.. how nice that terror felt, low in her belly and bleeding lower, and how all the best tasting stories had at least a little fear in them...

Amelia's mouth betrayed her. But it had done so long ago, silently, in her sleep, as a lonely man trapped in an unforgiving body had once watched her in the night.

"..I-I w-w-want you t-to.. stay." A hard, thin hand pulled her to him, pinning her arms at her sides as her mesmerized her with his lost gaze.

"Tell me you want me to kiss you." Her breath became frost in her throat as hot blood boiled over.

"....kiss me.." she whispered, terror still in her words, and the chimera took them and smiled. He needed her tonight, like he'd needed her last night, and too many nights before. He wanted her, something in the bend of her walk made him thirsty, and her small hands held all of him, breeding resentment that she had slipped his restraints and jumped all those walls to become a thief in the night, stealing him away as she slept. So one night too many had become tonight, and he would have her, take her, and keep her, like he wanted, like she wanted, and the world could join him in hell.

He kissed her. His tongue was insistent at her lips until finally parting and allowing him inside. Amelia's lips were soft under his own, and he decided he needed more soft things in his life.

Zelgadis was rock candy in her mouth, and a thousand inconsequentialities distracted her mind's eye while her mouth had an experience that's colors would shatter any dream world. A hand at the back of her skull splaying her hair this way and that, keeping her where he wanted her, and the silky small of her back fascinated the questing fingers of his other hand. Light flicks became wet flirtation hidden in their dark mouths, back and forth, and in between, open and closed and anything else they could think of.

"Take off my shirt." He commanded her, both hands low at her waist to pull the bowl of her hips insistently against his erection. Stone shuddered under her fingertips as she undid his brooch and complied, tugging nervously over his lowered and bowed shoulders, then standing with a warm shirt she wasn't quite sure what to do with hanging from her fingers. Confusion widened her eyes as he spun her abruptly, pulling her back against him, still clutching his shirt. One bold hand slid down her body, stopping to clench and release gently between her legs.

"AH! ZEL - NO - !!" It was too much too fast, and she tried to close her legs to him, get away from the hard arm at her waist. But his fingers persevered and the fine catch of flawless stone lips running over her neck weakened her further, flooding her uncertainty until she lost her grip on it. Zelgadis made sure she was too distracted to find it again, sucking and drawing at her white skin, knowing he was bruising her and damning himself as a selfish bastard for not stopping, for not sparing Amelia the torment this night was sure to become. But her excitement lived just under her skin, and countless pants in that solitary wing of a marble and gilt palace on a stormy night had birthed an atmosphere impossible to deny.

Running your hands over and over and over a satin sheet while you lay alone, always alone, and thinking of someone you shouldn't touch hardly helped to dissuade you.

"Amelia," he whispered against her skin. Harder and harder, the dragging rub of his fingers, her own clamped over his and her rolling hips spread her panic in fiery butterflies...something was almost ready and she craved it, dammit! "C'mon Amelia.. do it.." A shudder answered him and her hips ground against him as something blew apart in a scream.

Zelgadis held the stiffened princess against him, and, unknown, his grandfather's smile expressed his dark delight.

This was a different lethargy, Amelia realized, and the quiver between her thighs was a death-rattle for a part of her since birth, but ready to die...

Zelgadis buried his face in her neck, smelling the clean sweat he had created, reducing her to this gasping form and glad. She needed a moment. So he gave it to her. Then he took her to the bed and lay down with her, needing human comfort to release his rage into. Once on the huge bed he parted her legs and laid between them, the heat almost nuclear, and Zelgadis wondered how long it had been since he had been warm.

"Zelgadis-san.." Amelia wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders and decided that she wanted more. His quiet laugh had a promising, ominous tint, and he began to thrust their hips together, again and again, turning it into a grind, the demon anger needing out dammit, and needing more, and the smell of her was a drugged high on the front of his brain.

"Say my name!" he growled into her throat, the sharp strands of his hair a tickle on her soft cheek and neck.

"Zelgadis-san - "

"Again!"

"Z-Zelgadis-san - "

"AGAIN, dammit!"

"Z-ZELGADIS-SAN - " And he screamed as she broke apart again, up onto his arms and then finally, the fireblind killing all of his control, sending his mouth deeply into hers, taking and entwining and taking more, until too much was too much, and he needed all of her to shape under his skin, finally stopping the dry thrust to sit back on his heels and rip the very clothes from her body with a hissing laugh, kissing and licking at each patch of hidden skin found. Her large breasts fascinated him and he tried to devour each gently, elegant consumption, until the white of her silk panties became too much of a challenge, and one angry fist pulled a single time, shredding the fabric in a sibilant whimper. Reserve had died an early death in her breast, and a thousand fireside fantasies were exhumed, examined, and blown to dust under the grind of his mouth. She was sharp and soft simultaneously, and empty inside her virgin body, so empty, like her heart had been until secretly letting him in. So wrong to want, she'd chanted a thousand times in a mantra to carry her to sleep and finally he came. This was heaven's reward to the faithful. A demanding weight touching everywhere in a stone blanket, and the sheen of candle burn on purple wire. Heaven was soft light and sharp touch, and feeling with someone for the first time in her life. With a growl her pressed his face into her lower stomach, licking the mild curve, nuzzling, wanting her scent everywhere, then parting her legs and driving his tongue up and into her, tasting her, in and out, and over. Then up slightly to that central point of all points hidden and protected until the advent of his ruthless tongue licking, and probing with fingers and lips as well, despite her machine gun fire "no!"s. She told him to stop. Then not to stop. Then she threatened him with death if he dared stop, fisting one hand in his hair, and the other in hers, tugging as pressures built again, and stinging carbonation infected the race of her blood.

An implosion. And everything went white. His breathing, rapid and harsh was the first thing she heard. His eyes, burning blue, the first thing she saw. Amelia's whole body felt worn out, and the intensity in his eyes was suddenly too much for her to see. She looked away. Zelgadis felt angered anew at her visual evasion; he wasn't done. So how dare she be.

Another deep kiss and he pulled her up, into his arms, facing him and cradled in the cross of his legs. His erection was a stiffened reminder keeping time with the run of his heart, and in Amelia he placed everything, his hopes, fears, and love. Limp she lay, hips arched as he wound her legs about his waist. The intimate press was a scorch and suddenly she was afraid where she had not been, shy after the sweep of his fingers and their tiny flaws left licking sensation all over. Breathing stopped as he slid slowly - and a bit painfully - into her, the force of her repeated climaxes aiding the way, until finally the pressure gave to a sting, like a cat scratch far with in, and blind, delicate flash deep inside seemed to whimper at every raised mark in the chimeric, stone skin. But there was more than pain, and it's voice was louder, see me, it screamed, and then rendered her eyes useless to anything but sensation.

Zelgadis thrust. The pain was still there, gagged and muted by the coiled pleasure deep inside, and claws of it raked inside her for release. Harder and harder he thrust, his mind screaming for cessation and his body proving who ruled on this night. Her whimpers had become guttural, needy cries, splayed as she was in a virgin sacrifice. Short and driven movements seemed to rattle both until they were clenched; all musculature suspended and on hold, only essentiality passing through the bodily cordon.

Grasping her wrists, Zelgadis suddenly pulled Amelia upright, seating with in, impaling her, and felt everything in him unravel.

Amelia cried out, again and again, each motion in her lover's hands sending her up to heaven, seeking stars to put in his eyes to help him find his way in the dark.

There. Again. Her nails broke off against his skin, and she pressed her open mouth to his shoulders, finally.. finally... finally...

Colors with no name surrounded her, devouring her earthly body to sail to her loved one, to guide him home to her. Furious ecstasy drove her teeth into and through his stone skin, deep, deep into the muscle below, her own lips bleeding and suddenly he was more than in her, he was clinging inside her as he seized and shuddered, sending her down, down to her body and her bed, laying over her prone and gasping form with his own.

"Zelgadis-san.." she whispered, looking for the meaning of "love", which had grown too large for it's four letters to handle. More love and depth in a title than he had found in his own intimate name in too long now.

In time, the two straightened out, side by side, his possessive arm keeping her near even in sleep, knowing it was selfish and not caring. the next morning, bruised and sore, they healed each other. Except the bite. Zelgadis had wanted it, a reminder in raw pain kept safe under his tunic and whispering to him that someone had found a way past the stone skin, into the flesh and blood beneath. Someone, it told him, had laid with him, and bled with him. Countless times before as well, it reminded him, before he'd become smart enough to realize the bruise on his heart was growth. A reminder that he wasn't dead and that yes, someone would mourn the person he was, if Death was to some so soon in his young life.

Amelia found a place to store her hope, with neglected yet surprisingly fertile soil, and a shoulder to rest on when even she, the hammer of justice, just needed a rest. Touch was a wonderful thing to have, and safety in that bond made it better. Trust me, it said. You've come home.