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Caro de carne mea
Deslea R. Judd
Copyright 2003
DISCLAIMER: Characters not mine. Interpretation mine.
ARCHIVE: Yes, just keep my name on it.
RATING: NC17 for sex.
CATEGORY/KEYWORDS: Angst, kind-of PWP, Knowle/Shannon.
SPOILERS/TIMEFRAME: Pre-XF, spoilers to NIHT II.
SUMMARY: It occurs to you that it was an act of war, an assault
waged on loneliness and need.
BETA THANKS: Special thanks to Spica, who saved this one.
FEEDBACK: Cherished at deslea@deslea.com. I'm behind in my
feedback at the moment - forgive me, please.
MORE FICTION: http://fiction.deslea.com
AWARDS/ELIGIBILITY: Spooky Awards 2003 eligible.
They called us Adam and Eve.
The thought hammers in your mind when you hug him goodbye,
chance meeting in a bar eight years after it happened. You told
yourself when you reached for him that it was just a friendly
hug, but it isn't true, not really. The truth is you touch
whenever you can - men, women, it doesn't matter - you take it
wherever you can get it, craving the touch denied you first by
fear of harm and then by fear itself. He was taken aback when
you did it, stood there stiff and unmoving in your arms before he
held you too.
That's how you knew it was him. His neck under your hands. The
other you knew they made, but never knew by name. And then the
thought, over and over. He's the other, the one you've dreamed
of but never dared to hope you'd find. You've built so many
fantasies around him, and now your body springs to life,
instantly aware, instantly aroused. You want him, God yes, but
why? Because he's as formidable and indestructible as you are?
Because he was named for you and made for you? Because you want
it bad no matter who it is because it's been so fucking long?
His hand stills in your hair.
He knows.
You pull back and stare at each other. Breaths fast and
shallow. Just a moment, the merest instant, but you recognise a
host of things in his eyes and in his touch. The same
loneliness. The same abnegation and denial. The same feral
hunger.
"Let's go," he says. You're already tugging him by the hand,
leading him out of there in a rush. His hand is firm and
unwavering in your own, nothing like the hesitancy when he
thought you were just another face from the life you left behind.
"How long?" you gasp when he slams you against a wall in the
alley.
"I never dared," he manages before he kisses you, hard.
"Thought I'd - hurt her - or - pregnant - couldn't risk - passing
it on-" and that's all he says, but he transmits the rest of it
in his touch, a cascade of years and half-formed fears that have
driven both of you half out of your minds.
"Seven years," you burst out between ferocious kisses. "I did -
at first - but then I fractured a guy's pelvis - Jesus *Christ*,
Knowle, there, touch me there -" and then you cover his hands
with yours and press him harder to your breasts. Your head bangs
hard against the wall, and you blink when plaster shards fall
onto you both. He squeezes, too hard, but need overtakes your
sound of protest before it reaches your lips. His precision is
familiar - memories wash over you, the way he tied his shoes or
held his gun, fragments of a different life - but his grasp on
your flesh is new, urgent and demanding, something you've never
had from him before but you recognise it in yourself just the
same.
You break apart, breathing hard. Just a heartbeat, long enough
for you to see the gleam of hunger in his eyes. You pull him
back, and he seizes on your throat, sucking and biting, too hard,
but the pain is a release, and you buck against him, whimpering
out his name. He bows his head and sucks you hard through your
clothes, and need courses through you, exquisitely sharp, from
your breast to the pulsing ache between your thighs. You push
him off you long enough to tear open your shirt with shaking
hands, baring your breasts to the cold night air, and you're so
sensitive there that they sting in the breeze. He's on his knees
before you, tugging open your jeans and pulling them down off
your hips, trembling violently with arrested need. You can feel
his erection, pressing through his jeans against your leg, and
you want it (take me fuck me hard do it God now now now) but he
holds you, arms around you, kneading your ass with his hands.
Holding you while he takes the flesh over your pubic bone into
his mouth, and you can feel it in your clit and you grind down
against him, moaning and pinching your nipples with your hands.
"I can't - down -" you force out, knees buckling, waving weakly
to the car behind him. Rising, he pulls back, just a little,
enough to let you stumble past him and you fall together onto the
hood. You feel the cold metal against your back, feel it give
way, denting in the shape of your bodies. You spread wide for
him, pushing up towards him as he leans down to devour you with
his mouth. The first time his tongue touches the tip of your
clit, you cry out, arching your back, flailing for something to
hold, smashing the windshield with your hand. He looks up,
concerned, but you reach for him, squeezing his hand to reassure
him, bucking upwards to urge him on. Pain is different now,
still present, but no longer the priority it was, and you need
him so bad. His tongue probing deep inside you pushes you over
the edge, and you come hard, shivering and pleading, begging for
more before the first has even passed.
He takes your hand, bloodied glass and all, and you sit up.
He's still fully dressed, and you drag his shirt open, buttons
falling in all directions. You kiss him, hard, tasting yourself
on him while you open his jeans. He gasps when you ease the
zipper down over his cock, and his hand seizes on your shoulder,
hard enough to break your collarbone in the life you left behind.
You lean down to take him into your mouth, something you
considered a chore in years gone by, but now, you want to devour.
In every possible way.
"Oh, my God," he moans, plunging his hands in your hair.
"Shannon - yes - please -" but then he tugs you to stand up
again, before you've gotten more than a taste, and his cock is
hard against your belly, hips thrusting hard, can't wait baby
need to be inside you please it's been so long, and you make low
sounds of need and beg him oh, God, yes, please, there, fuck me
hard fuck me now please please please, and then he pushes you up
the wall, and the wall scrapes hard on your back, and he shoves
it hard up into you and you cry out, grabbing him by the hair and
urging him on. You need it harder, faster, and blindly, you push
off the wall, propelling you both against the car - another dent
- and you fall in a heap to the ground. He takes the brunt of
the blow - funny how old chivalries die hard - but he keeps hold
of you, as though afraid to let you go (God don't stop don't stop
I need it please) and he's grazed and dirty and he marks you with
his hands.
"Don't stop," you whisper against his neck. You can taste him,
salt and sweat in your mouth. He strokes your face, unexpectedly
tender, his hand gripping yours as your cries grow high and fast,
and he comes too, gasping out your name into your hair. He
thrusts into you, once, twice, three times before he falls back
and comes to rest with you at last.
Slowly, you become aware again. His arms. His warmth. His
hand clasped with yours. Comforting and familiar, but you're not
sure how much of that is the man you knew and how much is this
thing you've both become.
Your perception widens beyond the nexus that is your tangled
bodies. The ground. The fresh holes in the plaster on the wall.
The dents in the car nearby. Street lights further away. The
dirt and the blood on you both. It occurs to you, looking at the
destruction you've wrought, that it was an act of war, an assault
waged on loneliness and need.
He's looking at your hand.
You watch him in bewilderment as he extricates pieces of glass
from your flesh, one shard after another. Infinite patience and
precision. So different to your mutual plundering. Something
about the way he does it - those hands, maybe - something shifts
the balance in your mind. The fantasy figure that came before
him recedes. With the passing of one need, you become aware of
another, a need to know and be known as you have never been known
since it happened.
"Thank you," you whisper.
He smiles a little at the corners of his mouth, but he says
nothing. Just keeps on working.
You try again. "I needed that." It sounds trite. Selfish.
More selfish than using him as the receptacle for your outpouring
of pent-up need. Understandable, maybe. Mutual, undoubtedly.
But selfish just the same.
"So did I," he admits, and there is a flicker of something in
his face - something ravaged. Somehow you can judge him more
kindly than you judge yourself. You don't see the selfishness.
Just the loneliness and the longing to touch and hold.
You don't know what else to say. What openings to give. You
don't want it to end, but you've spent so long shutting people
out you don't remember how to let them in.
"We should get out of here," he says when he's done with your
hand. Oblivious to your inner struggle. "Whoever owns the car
could come back."
You shake your head, sparing him a smile. "It's mine."
He looks sheepish. "Sorry."
"It doesn't matter," you say, and no, it really doesn't.
You pull on your clothes in silence.
"Can I drive you somewhere?" he says when you're standing there
together, awkward, looking bedraggled, but as decent as you're
likely to get.
"How about your place?" you say, hugging yourself in the cold.
Heart pounding. Please, you think. Please.
He looks taken aback, and you wonder if you've made a mistake,
but then he nods. "Okay," he says. Impulsively, diffidently, he
leans in to kiss you - not just kissing, kissing *you* - and
then, more firmly, "Yes."
You take his hand, and you walk out of there, leaving the debris
behind.
END
The title is derived from the creation story in Genesis 2:23:
Hoc, inquit, os ex ossibus meis, et caro de carne mea. In
English, it translates roughly to, "This is," [Adam] said, "the
bone of my bones and the flesh of my flesh." Adam and Eve
recognise themselves in one another and, in the next verse, we
are told that they make love.