Sharp sense of insecurity

[anatural]

[This is a really bad idea. Korra knows this, repeats it over and over to herself as she takes the elevator up to Hei's apartment.

Just a sad little girl willing to spread her legs for anyone who'd pay attention to her. A sad little girl who can only love people who hurt her.

She thought she had worked these issues out years ago. She's no longer ashamed of her sexual history or her turbulent relationship with Hei. She's comfortable with who she is. And yet ... The spirit's words clawed their way under her skin, turning her blood into slime. Making her feel tainted and deformed. She destroyed the spirit, but the wound remains.

She can't bear to go home to Mai and Asami like this. She's in no condition to really accept the comfort that Asami has to offer, without secretly wondering if the other woman was just blinded by affection. Most importantly, she doesn't want this taint to reach her little girl.

This is a bad idea. But she presses on because she suspects it's the irrational, self-loathing part of her talking and not her real self. Yet a sick feeling in her gut leaves her uncertain whether this is something she really needs ... or a terrible mistake.]

Comments

[anatural]

[The complete sincerity of his Whatever you like makes her blush. She forces herself to tip her hips until his dick pops out and is sandwiched between their bellies, then shifts so her breasts are over his face. She takes one of his hands and slips it between her legs.]

I want you to get me as close to the edge as you can without making me come.

[Okay, yeah, that's not usually how the dominance game is played. Typically the dom does the edging on the sub, not vice versa. But while she misses the orgasm denial games they used to play, she doesn't want to hand him the reins. Hence...this.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He slips out of her, and disappointment isn't the right word; he is a little unbalanced, dragging in the faintest wisp of sound. Then the heat and softness of her breasts is across his face, a voluptuous drape of flesh, and she is guiding his left hand between her splayed thighs. Hei can't stifle a hissing little exhale of pleasure, the slight jerk of his hips, or the insistent press of his erection, trapped thick and twitchy between their bellies. ]

[ Turning his head, he nuzzles the ripe heavy breasts, faintly damp from either perspiration or the bath, thubbing with the same tripping pulse he feels as he dips his hand between the sticky seam of her thighs. Inching down across the tuft of wet curls, until he hits paydirt and finds where she is hottest and juiciest. His fingers play in her slickness, from dipping halfway inside her twitchy entrance to strumming across the length of her swollen clitoral shaft and its sensitive little tip. Flickering at her clit, in that way she likes, first softly then with greater intensity, until he can feel the tension in her body start to throb with agitated molecules -- before he slows down, dipping his fingers lower, exploring the gap of her pubic lips instead, wedging two fingers to sink tight and slippery right into her. ]

[ Circling his right arm around her, he mouths at the humid valley of her breasts. Whispers, a playful susurruration against the bars of her ribs, ]

Like that?

[anatural]

[He has such clever fingers fuuuuuuuuuck. Korra moans and buries her face in his hair.]

Just like that. [She's glad she works out so much, because this is an awkward position to maintain, particularly with a lover doing his best to melt your bones, but she's pretty sure she can hold it for hours.

Well, an hour. He is really good with his fingers. She rocks her hips, trying to increase the pressure while simultaneously wanting him to deny her, craving a sweet frustration.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Dragging her clumsily into place atop him, Hei alternates between her overspilling breasts, soft and warm, full of pulse like her sex. Her moan vibrates right through her sternum and into his skull, a hot buzz that snatches his breath away. Nuzzling, panting, the mushy thud of Korra's heart separated by mere layers of skin and muscle and bone, he drags his cheek along one smooth, hot side-swell, the rough prickle of his stubble pressing into her skin. Gulps a dark nipple into his mouth, feeding on it shamelessly, worrying it stiff with scraping teeth and the flat of his tongue. ]

[ Between her thighs, his fingers crook carefully against her sweet-spot. He massages the slick, clutching heat of her, his thumb wedged tight across her clit. Coaxing her into a simmer, then a froth, feeling those familiar molecules dancing invisibly beneath her muscles, a silent gathering flexion -- before he slows, the spike of tension flattening into a sag. Each small movement sends a cloud of her scent up from between her parted thighs, gnawing bright-red holes into his brain. He wants desperately to taste her, to fuck her -- but it's clear she wants to be teased. ]

[ Right hand splayed across her lower-back, he nudges her with a quiet Better this way, until she's crawled up his length. His fingers pop free of her sex: his tongue flickers out, licking them clean -- before he drags her up the rest of the way, until she's kneeling over his head. He's got a good view of her glistening sex in the ambient dimness, can smell the perfume of her arousal -- seasalt-bright and rockpool hot. ]

[ Hooking her thighs in his hands, he drags her the last little way to his mouth. Crouched over his face, she is at the perfect angle for him to lap his tongue down along her plump wet folds -- to sink it into the slippery, heated opening even as he covers the crest of her clitoris with his relentlessly sucking mouth. ]

[anatural]

[She resists at first, not wanting to move and lose the attention being lavished on her breasts, until she realizes what his intention is — and then she scrambles eagerly enough to position herself over his mouth. Nobody is as good at eating her out as he is.

She grips the edge of the futon, gasping a laugh as she remembers the couch that she broke the last time they did it like this. Extra points if you make me rip this, she almost says, but instead she just moans. The pleasure from his mouth runs from her clit to the tips of her breasts and then spreads throughout her body, a tingling, dizzying warmth.]

C-careful. [Don't make me come just yet.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Gazing up at her, past the slope of her belly and uptilted breasts, her hair falling in dark creeping tendrils around her reddened face, it's impossible not to remember that night at the club. Memory and Korra's body quiver in echo of each other. The way her moan makes his brain reel around inside his skull. The way his arms force her thighs helplessly wider, until he can envelop her sex with his mouth. The way she surges and twitches as if balancing on some high edge one moment, and pressing herself against his busy tongue the next. Each stuttered movement carries sparks of recognition, as Hei thinks, Oh. ]

[ I missed this. ]

[ He starts to suck softly, a slow-gathering pressure across her clit -- broken only when he laps soft-tongued across the pink fringe of her inner-lips, curls his tongue into her tightly-fluttering entrance, forcing it open with thick, sloppy stabs. He is immediately entranced -- —this aroma, this taste, this sweet delicate flesh he'd never thought to touch again. Needing to be immersed, he drags her in closer, fingers biting into the wings of her hipbones, a constellation of dark bruises. ]

[ The minutes unspool slowly. He stays with her, patient and greedy in turns, sparking that charge along her nerves. Sometimes furling his tongue inside her as deep as it will go, sucking mercilessly at her sodden folds with a raw appreciative growl. Sometimes exhaling open-mouthed across her twitchy clit, between delicate, barely-there flicks with the tip of his tongue. Other times detaching completely, to lick a wet line up each smooth juncture where her inner thighs meet her pelvis, mouthing at the outline of her pussy, the soft damp hair that frames it. ]

[ At his groin, his erection throbs for attention in its low-key way, a dull ache that skates between pleasure and pain. He ignores it, his tongue probing and teasing her seeping folds -- and fuck she is hot. With anyone else, it would be a trivial adjective, but with her, it is a blossoming confession, an act of contrition. ]

[anatural]

[She cries out as he tortures her with his mouth. He keeps bringing her so close, just to the very edge, until she feels like a single breath is all it will take to make her come — and then he backs off and lets her subside. The frustrated orgasm is becoming an ache in her belly. She almost cusses him out, except this is what she asked him for.

... which means she can call a halt to it whenever she wants. Right.]

Lube. [She twists her hips, trying to get away from his mouth, suddenly afraid he'll push her over the edge before she can wield the control she just remembered she has.] Where do you keep the lube?

[mortemscintilla]

[ She tries to get away in a frantic undulation of hips -- and Hei can't resist wrapping both arms around her waist, enfolding her sex with his mouth and sucking on her mercilessly, an appreciative bone-deep hum that he knows will vibrate all through her. He keeps at it until he knows she's shivering right at the lip of her climax -- before he lets her go, nudging her to flop across the mattress beside him. ]

[ Propping himself on an elbow, he wipes his mouth with the back of his free hand. She asks for lube, and his muscles tighten, but he doesn't know if it's because he is falling back into wonderfully dark memories or ahead into delicious anticipation, but his interest is palpable, a raw chemical signature that cannot be mistaken for anything else. ]

[ In a voice of effortful steadiness, ]

The drawer next to you.

[anatural]

[Bastard. Korra struggles to catch her breath, and just the friction of the futon against her skin is nearly enough to send her into convulsions. But eventually she manages to reach over and rummage in the drawer until she finds the container of lube.

She slams it onto his chest with more force than intended.]

I think you know what to do.

[mortemscintilla]

Ow.

[ It's a deadpan token -- a twitch of a smile lurking around the edges of his mouth. ]

[ Taking the bottle, he delays only to snatch the pack of rubbers out of the drawer. Returns with his dick already sheathed and lubed; his hands, greasy with his preparation, snatch at Korra, hauling her around with an unwieldy care until he's settled her into place below him, head on a pillow, hair tendriling everywhere like dark ivy and thighs spilling open. ]

[ For a moment he simply hovers over her, the condom-shiny crown of his cock dipping against her belly. It is dark enough that he can't make out more than her outline, washed-out hues of color and blurred shapes. Her eyes are a close-range blue glow, her face splotched with red, the kisses making her mouth seem faintly stained and swollen. She's come out in a light bloom of sweat, the salty aroma of her suffusing the air. A strange tropical gift, washed across the shores of his bed: succulent and seafoamy, not exactly beautiful but so stunningly pretty. ]

[ Dipping his head, he kisses her, his mouth full of the taste of Korra's sex. Lush, strangely tender, his teeth teasing her plump lower-lip. At the same time he moves heavily over her, the python length of his body resting between her parted legs. One hand wedges between them: he cups her sex possessively a moment, squeezing, before his lubed fingers wriggle lower to caress slowly that tight pucker that flinches, then flexes to engulf him inch by inch -- a cautious preliminary. ]

[anatural]

[It seems everything tonight is reminding Korra of the early days in their relationship, even the darkness. She can't remember at what point he started turning the lights on when they fucked so that he could really watch her, but it had marked, however little noticed, a change in their relationship.

It seems appropriate that they're doing this in the dark, now that he's once again a man Korra loves but cannot trust and not the man who, over the course of many years, made her feel safe with him.

She finds herself breaking the kiss to burrow her head into the crook of his neck, blocking out every trace of light so she can focus on the sweet sensation as his fingers invade her.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ There should be a familiar anonymity in the darkness. Should turn Korra into a fragrant rumpled shape, barely distinguishable from shadows -- just like in the old days. It shouldn't matter what she does or says; Hei can just get what he needs. Because he needs this fucking, this sweet, sinuous female body in his arms, so much. ]

[ Except it's not that simple. The blackness is too vivid with the past. Korra's every motion sparks nostalgia behind his eyes. A shock to the core. Memory made flesh. ]

[ She folds herself around him, the tangled dark bloom of her hair tickling his jaw, and it feels like she's bursting with some titillating secret -- the way she won't kiss him, look at him. Hei's throat feels tight, and he knows he is scared, on some level. Because this messy interlude won't change anything between them. Won't undo his own selfish betrayal. But it's hard to swallow that reflexive lump of denial -- that irrational hope that maybe... maybe if he tries hard enough... ]

[ Stop it. Squeezing his eyes shut, he rubs the heavy fistful of his cock across her belly. Kisses her ear, her jaw, the damp heap of her hair, while his two fingers determinedly work deeper and deeper into that tight pucker -- sinking in to the knuckle, resting, then probing deeper, until he's got her cored like an apple. He's never considered himself an obsessive-compulsive sex maniac. But with Korra, it's as if he's always driven to discover how close he can get to the threshold of both self-denial and cruelty without triggering a mutual brain-fry. ]

[ Luckily, Korra never seems to mind his frequent and consistent string of failures. ]

[ When he's judged she's ready -- more-than-ready? -- he carefully tips her thighs up and back, letting her legs fall wide open as he kneels up, the better to watch her. Rough fingers part the cheeks of her ass but give no further preliminary as the head of his cock presses in. She is hot and fluttery and perfect and he stirs his hips, drilling into that tightly muscled hole and opening it up with slick, controlled stabs. Deep, deep, deeper -- while his thighs shake and his balls tighten. ]

[ Halfway inside her, he stills. Lets off a small but expressive whoosh of breath, like puffed steam escaping a kettle on the boil. ]

...Okay?

[anatural]

[Except it is changing things between them, though Korra knows it shouldn't, the same way fantastic sex shouldn't have lulled her into forgiving his numerous other transgressions. Her weakness for him goes deeper than a superficial addiction to pleasure; great sex isn't that hard to find. Korra feels like she's spend the past year holding her breath, and it's only now that they're tangled together that she can let it out.

It's love. It's relentless, uncompromising love.]

Yeah. [Her voice shakes from the tension of her frustrated climax and the sudden pressure of unwelcome tears. I want him back. I want him back.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Something about the wavery effort in her voice makes the rims of Hei's eyes sting. Curled up beneath him, doubled like an acrobat, her body feels at once obligingly dewy and bittersweetly distant. Something that's washed into his arms for the space of a few heartbeats -- but may unexpectedly be swept away on a hopeless tide, beyond reach but never beyond recall. ]

[ Carefully, he sinks -- into her arms, and also deeper inside her, his dick a hot ache as it rides in, full and twitching, splitting her up the middle. A chill jolts electric-bright down his body; he lets off a seething hum at how perfect it is, his spine dipping helplessly, the hard bone of his forehead pressing to Korra's as he melts closer. ]

[ Panting, he turns his face to her hair and kisses the messy strands. For a long moment, he simply stays spilled across her, a heavy frieze of muscle and sweat. Waiting for that moment of sweet flexion, where she adjusts to the pressure, her body pulsing around the thick intrusion. Always, it seems as if it will never come -- until it does. ]

Korra...

[ The word tastes like a rivulet of salt in his mouth. Burying his face in her hair, he starts a slow, steady, almost serpentine rhythm. Almost frictionless, his mind thinning into a dreamy darkness as he sinks into the sensations, into Korra, and somehow deep into himself as well, indifferent to whether he comes back, or comes. ]

[anatural]

[He sinks into her and she wraps her arms around him, tight enough to choke a weaker man. She doesn't want him to move too much, afraid climax will bring an end to the spell they're under. She doesn't want sense, responsibility, reality to come back.

I want him back.

She clings to that thought as she cries out with every thrust; petulantly rails against the voices reminding her why this should only be an interlude. She's behaving like a child, refusing to listen to reason (and yet that childish refusal to listen to reason had gained her Naga. Hard to argue with success.)]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Each time she cries out, Hei's heartbeat feels like a stop-motion explosion in his chest. Warmth uncurls up his body, not like a sizzling coil but like the first slice of daylight in darkness, until a strange sense of both nostalgia and passing sadness touches him, stirred by everything Korra embodies. Serenity and brazen, spinning fire. Soft-floating innocence and that pure, bright power that burns within her like a flaming sword. ]

[ Folded up in her arms and legs, Hei feels his world narrow and blur, the elements of the room coming together as if to evoke a different, better self. When he was just a boy, and the stars were still real, and he had a family, a sister who still smiled. When he was old enough to have only a dim understanding of the world's risks, too young to feel any real sense of danger. ]

[ He says nothing about it. Only gasps, a basso profundo thud of sound as Korra engulfs him -- inside, outside -- her hands grabby, wonderfully strong, until he imagines his bones creaking at the pressure. He knows she is struggling with some excess of emotion, too vivid even for what they are doing. His own throat is a knot, and his vision spangles and fades so everything disappears, and the idea that he might never have this again, never be this close to her, chokes him. A snarl tears at his chest, like a beast struggling to escape through the flesh. ]

[ Swallowing it down, he saws his hips faster -- a fine line between force and pain. Korra's ragged breaths feather across the ridge of his collarbone; his own punched-out exhalations stir her hair. Angling his head, he kisses her temples, her eyes. Dips to feed on that succulent pout of a mouth, while his strokes grow at once erratic and hyperfocused, the hard crest of his pelvis grinding across her mons. ]

[anatural]

[Korra's mind goes blank as her climax finally hits her — a punch to the gut that knocks the breath completely out of her, with such intensity that she can't even scream. She claws at him like she's trying to climb her way back from the fall. She doesn't want to come, doesn't want this to end.

I want him back.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Her whole body seems to swallow at his, secret shudders beneath the skin. Hei almost can't stand it: his optic nerves are going to fry in his skull at the sight and feel of Korra falling apart, her entire body gorgeously wet and shaking with want, nails blazing across the sweat-damp expanse of his back. His thoughts jumble incoherently at every new, lapping crest of pleasure -- it is that good, but it can't get better because it will kill him. It is already breaking him, making him ecstatic and vicious. His hands curve tighter into the contours of her hips as his spine coils helplessly -- a jerking breathless spend that ripples all down the long, long line of his body. ]

[ Afterwards, he surfaces only to blink heavy eyes, the hot moist spill of Korra's body still filling his arms. Isn't sure if he was dozing or unconscious for that millisecond, except that his arms are still clasped loosely around her, his cock, not hard anymore, but still long and unbearably sensitive, inside her. They are both drenched, but he hasn't felt this drained and comfortable since ... ]

[ His mind shies. There is a weak tremoring in his chest that makes him cough. ]

[ Raspily, not-quite-joking -- (not-quite meeting her eyes): ]

I think ... you gave me a heart attack.

[anatural]

[Korra melts into the bed, her eyes closed, and laughs weakly.]

That's nothing ... to what you've done to me.

[She pulls him down so he's completely sprawled on top of her, his weight a reassuring press against her body.]

I might not ever walk again.

[mortemscintilla]

Good.

[ A forcible swallow. He feels like he is talking through ground glass. He's aged a decade. God help him. ]

[ It doesn't seem as if Korra is going to slip away. Strange, but miraculous; these days she handles him like a radioactive rash. (And how sad is it that his every thought carries that mental tag: these days?). Feeling bold, he draws up the blankets, shifting only so he can dump the condom in the trash, before splaying across her boneless languid body. It doesn't feel like a cuddle: it's too insatiable, too tightly-woven. He doesn't want to stop touching her. Every bit of friction, the pebbles of her spine where he strokes her back, the warm ticklish drag of her hair across his cheek, is exquisite. ]

[ Outside, it is still raining. The faint scent of downpour fills the room. Everything almost-silent except for the dripping of water from the eaves and windows -- and his and Korra's gently sawing breaths. ]

[ There's a beat, before he asks, his voice edged with quiet, ]

Stay?

[ Stay the night or Stay forever? He isn't sure. ]

[anatural]

[She shouldn't. She should shower, go home to Mai and Asami, let them know she's all right. Except ... it's not like Asami is expecting Korra back tonight. (Times like this, Korra actually did miss those stupid devices in the City, which she could use to send a quick note to Asami without letting reality intrude too much.)]

Okay. [It's not like the world will end if she stays. Besides, she's exhausted. And she wants him so badly...

Sighing, she nuzzles him, burying her face in his neck to block out all light. (Something she's never really done with anyone other than him.) She wishes she could slide him inside her, not to fuck again (yet); just to feel him in there. There's a black hole of need inside her that doesn't care if her body is spent.]

I'm thinking of taking Mai to the Fire Nation for a month. To visit Ambassador Zuko. [The former Fire Lord was getting too old to travel like he used to, and Korra wanted to see him again before he passed.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She says Okay, and there is a quiet wing-beat flicker in Hei's chest. Gratitude and relief. And he once thought she was the only one who was needy. Exhaling, he shifts, settles himself closer against her, kisses the warm patch of skin he finds near his -- her temple. His eyelids are heavy, but he can't turn his gaze from the grainy-gray window, shimmering with rainfall. The seafoamy smell in the room is familiar, almost pleasantly comforting, and suddenly the futon seems so cozy and accommodating. He has nothing like this contentment in his life anymore, can't he just, for a few minutes, enjoy it, before ... before... ]

[ His eyelids flutter and close. ]

[ Taking Mai to the Fire Nation. ]

[ Tension plucks the strings of his nerves. He isn't sure how to take this. A gentle distancing? A reminder that they both lead separate lives -- and should continue to? Or maybe ... an invitation? ]

[ Keeping the strain out of his voice, he says, ]

You could leave Mai here. [ He nearly says Our daughter, but stops that knee-jerk needling in time. He lost the privilege to toss around words like us and ours after what he did. Fingertips stroking lightly down her back, he hastens to add, ] If you want, anyway.

[anatural]

No! [Korra has gradually made her peace with unsupervised overnight visits, but it is a hundred years too soon to leave her daughter alone with Hei for that long. Her voice softens after the knee-jerk response fades.] That's not what I meant.

[She takes a deep breath, gathering her scattered thoughts and tangles of feelings. Her fingers trace nervous, idle patterns on his skin.]

You could come with us, if you want.

[It's a compromise between her good sense and her aching desire to have him back.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Something in his chest flares, as if he's been pierced with a red-hot shiruken. He nearly asks Really, except he is afraid she might backtrack, make a nick-of-time escape once she remembers herself -- either five minutes after the hormone-soaked indolence fades, or tomorrow, in the bright sobriety of daylight. He's afraid too, of being absolutely crushed after his long-dormant hopes are stirring. Of disturbing the comfortable nullity he should not dare breach -- otherwise all the heartache and misery sweeps through him in a dark wave. ]

[ Hard to succumb to the seduction of trust, after everything that's happened. But, he reminds himself, if he's in a precarious spot, then Korra's is ten times riskier. ]

[ Eventually, his voice dropping before it trips into a boyish stammer, ]

I -- all right.

[ Although he knows he should be cooler, nonchalant, because BK201 never used to tolerate being unnecessarily jerked around -- he feels ready to fly to the Fire Nation with Korra and little Mai at once. With his eyes half-closed and Korra's heavy skull nestled against his cheek, he imagines nights of this, days of this: this beautiful girl in his arms, smooching, undressing, her eyes blue and glowy and opaque as he gazes into them. Or baby Mai's warm wriggly weight in the crook of his elbow, her words like a chiming nonsense tinkle from a music-box. ]

[ How could he possibly refuse? (How can he ignore how much it will hurt afterward?) ]

[anatural]

[It's dumb to feel so happy because of his response. Dumb to have invited him in the first place. Dumb to have done so many things, and Korra doesn't care. Her mind flies straight to where Hei's is: happy picnics with Mai running around giggling; steamy nights tangled together as the little girl sleeps.

Almost as though in preparation, she reaches down and slides his cock between her thighs, so its length rests nuzzled up against her curls. She's not addled enough to take it inside without a condom, but she wants it close.]

Good. [They can work out the details later. For now, this is enough.]