Saturday February 28th 2015

Rising from his dreams he felt her eyes on him. The time when he’d nodded off was blurry, but he remembered her hot hand caressing across his face as she soothed him into sleep.

“Did you get any sleep?” Cesare asked into the still dark room. Only a few shafts of weak sunlight burned through the window.

Shifting slightly, Kali tightened her legs around his, pressing her core into his leg in a subtle offer and a constant temptation. “I got a few hours. I wanted to make the most of this,” she said wistfully.

His hand had found its way down to her perky ass, cupping it with the courage of a man who'd just woken up. Giving it a slow squeeze, his words were rough with desire. “I can’t imagine waking up with a man in your bed is a novel experience for you.”

Her laugh was weary bitterness, stripped of humor, it bled into the air with quiet sorrow. Her hands flowed over his face in a delicate caress, equal parts wonder and awe. “I fuck them, Cesare. I bring them to my bed, and once I’m done, I tell them to leave. If they’re good, they get a return visit.” Stretching, she pressed her body against him. Kissing along his collar bone, she locked eyes with him, lips leading teasingly up to his neck. Even as she worked her seduction, Kali's dark eyes never lost their amazed shine.

“They want to fuck Lady Kali; the men pump into me lost in their fantasies. The women are no better; I see the gleeful satisfaction as I kneel between their thighs. It’s not about my body, it’s about me being Lady Kali. It’s not even sex, it’s power, bound up in their wants, money, position, bragging rights, the conquest of fucking a myth. It’s never about me.” Her tongue slithered sensuously over his jugular, hand making its way down his side, tightening on his hip.

“I don’t care about their lives, Cesare.” Kissing along his jaw, she met his lips with hers, the heat was unmistakable, a hot, wet brand pushing into his mouth. His fingers dug into her ass as he pulled her up. Straddling him, she pushed into his chest as he squeezed her ass, fingers sinking into soft flesh. As Cesare's tongue plundered her mouth, she wound her fingers into his hair, rocking against his hardness. Wet heat clung to his cock, the lips of her sex sliding apart, inner flesh touching the bare head peeking out of his sweats.

Her soft-core ground into him as she breathed a low moan of arousal into his mouth. Licking his lips, she drew back enough to meet his eyes with a wicked curve to her lips. “I want you, Cesare. I want to wake up with you in my arms and feel you along my body. To go to sleep with your soft words rolling gently through my mind, warming my soul.”

Cupping his face, she captured him with dark eyes. “You’re magic, Cesare.” Leaning forward, she took his lips in a long, slow kiss. His hands molded her ass as he pulled her softness against his raging need. Her aura bloomed, a deadly weapon focused on his flesh, demanding, wanton, the need to worship, to fuck, to be with her smothering him in a sea of desire born from darkness.

The images flashed through his mind, her essential nature pulling them out of the sewer they lived in. Twisting around until he was above her, spearing into her wet darkness, staring into her eyes as he took her. Drinking in her screams as he ravaged her body, bending her sweet ass over his desk, stripping it until it shone red from his hand, brutalizing her porcelain smooth skin with his mark, spilling his seed into her sacred place, violating her beauty and making it his own. A kaleidoscope of images, each more brutal and violent than the next flashed through his mind. She'd pull the degradation from his soul, push him into ever more depraved acts with a smile and a knowing wink, born of darkness, she would devour his evil and make it her own.

Slipping from the kiss, he looked into her smoldering eyes. “For all your words, you won’t give them up.”

Stilling above him, a sultry smile tugged at her lips, a calculating light flensing her eyes of desire. The unrelenting fury of her aura twisted, taking on a ruthless edge that cut along the bone, his hardness a physical pain of saturated flesh. “Why should I change? Monogamy for an immortal's a long-time Cesare, longer than this continent's been settled. I've tried it, been betrayed and done the betraying. Why can’t you take pleasure where and when you can?”

Relaxing into the mattress, Cesare locked the pain and desire away. Part of him luxuriated in the stripping agony of her aura blasting down on him, the ache and splintering pain of his hardness turning his groin into a mass of meaty agony. “A diamond's special because of its rarity; sex is precious only if you share it with those you love. Sex is being completely vulnerable in body, mind, and soul, knowing without doubt that the person you're with won’t hurt you. It’s the only time when the barriers fall into rubble and reveal you in all your misshapen glory. Instead of running from your grotesque truth, your lover reaches out and caresses your scars and crippling doubts. Anything less than that isn’t worth the time spent to get the condom on.”

Her eyes welled with unshed tears, body locking up in furious frustration. The sexual tension drained from her as she laid across his body, nestling into his chest, painfully small and vulnerable. The temptress of horrific sexual appetite splintering into glass shards, revealing the woman underneath. Cesare enfolded her in his body, a cradle of meat, muscle, and bone.

“I don’t know what I’m doing. I want you to be part of my world, knowing it would kill the thing I treasure. You bring to life dreams I’d long ago given up on. I both love and hate you for that,” Kali whispered, kissing his neck with a tenderness that was the opposite of the torturous need that had pounded into him seconds before.

“The last time I thought I’d found someone worth changing for, she tried to slit my throat after I’d fallen asleep.” Her words dropped to a ghost of a whisper. “That was centuries ago.”

He held her, the sexuality of before a dead and forgotten thing. This wasn’t about the temporary relief of body. The heart was a fragile thing. Easy to break and scar, slow to heal, but the only thing that made living worthwhile. Your heart kept the cold at bay, the one thing that guarded you from poison words and frozen blades.

Cesare understood the bleeding thing under the armor she wore. In some ways they were the same. He’d been there, standing with his chest torn open, ribs white and stark along weeping muscle, heart a mutilated thing. Life was a brutal, unfeeling place, crippling as easily as it killed, it was a maiming truth. Life was only ever going to hurt, loving others was daring the giggling, hateful thing to take another bloody mouthful.

He didn’t know what that day had been like, if it had been the last straw or just another in a long series of loves that had turned on her. It wasn’t the reason she was the way she was; she’d chosen her lifestyle way before then. But maybe, it was part of the reason she was unwilling to change. He still wouldn't be another cock pushed into her sleeve, but a small fragment of why Lady Kali was the way she was slipped into place.

Laying on his chest, her breathing settled. The pain of the old wound fading as poison drained from her infected heart. Running his hands down silky hair, his words were only the barest hint of a whisper. “I need to get up and stretch.”

Her arms tightened, revealing a desperate, almost frantic desire for him to stay with her, for them to stay in this place. But everyone knows anything good and true fades with the sun. Her dark eyes glinted with humor. “You mean to take my bed from me?”

Smiling, he slipped out of bed, and drew the covers over her shoulders. “I’d much rather stay in bed with you. But today will prove my worth or give them another reason to laugh at me,” Cesare said as he set down a blanket for a yoga mat.

“You could come with me,” Kali said from behind him. Laying on her stomach, she was wreathed in silky black hair without a shade of humor creasing her face. “No matter how the fight goes, win or lose, you could come with me. I could give you a home, a place to live, the kind of schooling that would nurture your talents. And yes, a bed to sleep in.”

Smiling, he squatted down, so they were eye to eye. “I’d be nothing more than a pet. It might not start that way, no one can respect someone they’ve given everything to. And I won’t share your bed just to have you leave it to go fuck someone else,” Cesare said as he laid a kiss on her forehead.

Pulling a breath into his body, Cesare centered himself in the Mountain pose. Gracefully, he moved from asana to asana, holding each for a time counted in breaths and stillness. Heat poured into his body, a flood of power and dynamic prana. Nadis filled with life-giving force, muscles warming and stretching into the new day. Thoughts of the fight, school, girls, burned up as the flowing movements of his body stripped them from his mind. This time was his, and his alone. Nothing existed but his body and soul, a timeless moment purified of scars and the past that birthed them. Existing in a moment of grace, owning its world and space, neither looking to the past nor needing a future.

Cesare reached high into the sky as he finished. Sitting cross-legged on the bed, Kali watched, arousal swimming through her eyes. The blanket had fallen off her shoulders, leaving her naked. Cesare's eyes ran from exquisitely wicked eyes to the smooth play of pale skin. Hard nipples crowned pert breasts of barely a handful, begging to be held, caressed, licked, and bitten. A thin, unmarked stomach tapered down to hips that weren't full or small, being perfectly proportioned to her. A naked, hairless sex was bared to his eyes, she was enchanting, as tempting as heroin on a dark night and twice as addictive. “That’s a hell of a floor show.” Laughing, he gathered his clothes and started for the door. He’d already used up the greater part of his restraint.

Boys slid out of his way as he made his way down the hall. An expectant air saturated the stone, today the rumors would be proven false, those things whispered in dark corners would die in the cold light of day. He was a long shot, everyone agreed on that. Those that wanted to see him win clung to the long shot hope with bared teeth and bloody fingernails. While those that wanted him dead watched with unconcealed glee.

Opening the door to the bathroom, he swept the students with a neutral look. Conversations died as they turned away from him. Taking a towel from the stack, he wandered to the end of the single showers. They were always in high demand, no one wanted to use the free-standing showers open to everyone. These small cubicles with their plastic curtains were the closest thing they got to privacy.

Cesare straightened from leaning against the wall as the water turned off, a dripping, half-naked Sampson pulling the curtain aside. The boy stopped with his feet still resting on the wet tiles of the shower, a small towel cinched around his waist.

Sampson's body was dotted with star patterned scars from glass encrusted punches tearing through milky flesh. A trench was bitten out of the meat of his shoulder, marks fitting perfectly to a man’s mouth. Thin silver lines criss crossed his chest and arms, slices from punches that didn’t land but still scrapped across skin. Stripped of fat, long and rangy, he had an unfinished, coarse look. Sampson was built on pain and suffering, either his or his opponents.

“You ready?” Sampson asked, eyes ticking off points along Cesare’s body as if he'd find the answer in the set of his shoulders.

“As ready as I’m going to get.” Cesare said.

Nodding in understanding, Sampson stepped out of the shower, letting Cesare lay his stuff along the curtain. “The first time I went into the ring my father gave me a piece of advice.” He stopped, waiting for Cesare to face him. "Nothing matters but coming out. Not honor, love, sadness, or joy, all that matters is that you walk out on your own two feet. You do whatever you have to do to make that happen.”

The man’s eyes were steady, but Cesare read the resignation. Sampson wasn't telling him how to win, he was trying to help him die well. As tough as Cesare was, Sampson marked him as meat waiting for the hook. They’d locked horns fighting for what they believed in, that kind of fight built a bond, hard to put into words, respect, blood, and anger, but under it all an appreciation of someone’s worth. Sampson respected Cesare as a fighter and as a man, even if he hated the side he’d chosen.

But none of that changed Sampson’s reality, he was born into a system dominated by caste. Cesare had as little chance against an elite as Sampson would, none. No fighter, no matter how good, could face the true masters of the Umbrae Lunae. Even the murmillo, trained for decades into the deadliest of gladiators would be torn to pieces by a werewolf or a vampire. It’s why no one believed Cesare caused the scars that marked Blaez, because there was no way a damnaticould take a werewolf in full form. Sampson had grown up knowing the truth of his world.

Cesare nodded in understanding, a silent message of thanks moving between them before Cesare closed the curtain. If Cesare won the fight, it would blur the lines of their hard edged world. He’d never be seen as an elite. He didn’t have the family, race, or history to claim that. But it would transform him from an amusement, to a threat.