Walking...
     Footstep after footstep, against pavement, against cement, against tiles and cobblestones and through puddles that ring with raindrops, underneath a dark and louring sky that is heavy with clouds and heavy with tumult impending and heavy with Night. Each footstep is the sound of a hammer, a nail, a drum that beats against the insides of Fiona's thoughts, against the inside of her heart with the pounding of her pulse.
     She's gone past the clubs and past Pashmina's, past the Regent and past billboards and neon signs and buses and cars all without seeing them. The colour has been stripped from her sight as much as she stripped it from her clothes, from her hair, and even her eyes have gone to a flat and lonely grey. And she's gone to the lonely tree ringed round in iron, there to gaze upon the beginning of all things...
     "In the beginning, there was the Word, and the word was 'fuck'." She says it aloud, leaning forward to place one hand on the tree's trunk with a hint of hesitation, then the other hand securely on the railing. "Explains a lot, doesn't it? I asked him who the hell he was, and he didn't know what to answer me. I don't think he's figured it out yet." She sighs, stepping back. "And you don't have any answers for me. I've fucked it all up, haven't I?"
     She doesn't wait for answers; answers are unlikely to come, after all. She stares at the tree as if to memorize every twist and turn in the bark, the shape of its grain, its colour, and then her hand goes slowly to her side. From somewhere, she draws a knife; she drags her hair back, sawing through it to an untidy scarecrow's rendition of about chin-length locks the same pale colour as oaken heart, the same pale colour as moonlight. Fiona drags the handfuls of hair forward, dumping them at the foot of the tree to cling sodden and slip down into the grating nearby, then turns and begins walking again.
     The knife is all but forgotten for a long moment as she walks, walks, walks as endlessly (it feels) as if she had become another Wandering Jew, destined to endless ramblings away from the face of the god that laid the curse. And eventually, footsteps lead to more familiar grounds, to an alleyway that at the beginning of the night disbursed a motorcycle with two passengers, beyond which a street might have patrons crowding in and out of a familiar-looking pub. And she pauses, looking down at the knife.
     "Don't need this, I don't think," Fiona mutters. She taps the tip against a finger, watching a pin-prick's worth of blood ooze up. She dismisses the knife, milking the wound and then touching the blood to her lips, reddening them as if with brilliant lipstick, then dragging her finger through her hair. Her hair deepens to the colour of fuchsias in the spring, her clothing changing on her as she wraps her arms about herself. Black jeans, grey t-shirt, black leather jacket, the Rock still weighing down her hand. She looks at it, then shrugs. "I won't say anything if you don't," she tells the ring. And then she heads towards the pub's front door, ducking inside to have a wary look around.

     "Scuse me, darlin'..."
     One of Davy's Girls narrowly misses you at the door, doing a little Irish step jig to get out of the way. It's so crammed in here tonight that folks have stopped converging around tables in orderly fashion but are now sitting everywhere, or standing, elbows rubbing intentionally and unintentionally.
     Trays with bottles and pints of beer lift and lower like flying saucers as the Girls navigate around the pub. It's no wonder they have the figures they have with all the skirting and bobbing, weaving and moving they do from Wednesday to Friday, and Saturdays if it's football season.
     There's music happening on the other side of the pub, a popular folk-rock group making the pub scene rounds, playing here whenever they're in town -- always sure to draw a crowd. The singer is a woman with a pixie haircut and startling red hair, same as the others who play around her. They must be from Wales.
     Behind the bar, there are two doing the pouring tonight. There's the one they call One Eyed Jack, also known as John Rhys, and the fixture of Black Jack Davy's, the Black Jack himself, the one who goes by the name of Kelly Morgan. He's there in his red-gold hair you now know is a magical fake, the rougher looks of an older cheek, his face but not his face. You can see through the lie when he gives a smile and laughs with another customer as they exchange money for a pint.
     Green eyes are softened, too, their color not half so wild emerald here as they are in private, and they scan the bar as if to make a quick and silent tally of all his winnin's for the night. That's when he sees you.
     Kelly smiles from behind the bar. It speaks volumes now, it says a multitude. It registers his pleasure, it gives away his joy, it measures his love. He nods toward the bar, a signal for you to come and join him past the sea of people gathering for music, conversation and grazing.

     Drancy can dodge waitresses well enough and likely a damn sight better than Fiona; Fiona has the need to be more courteous and waste time with the courtesies. There's enough of Fiona present that the other woman gets a brief nod and murmured apology, and then she's in and pushing through with hands in the pockets of her jacket and elbows out just enough to buy her a little bit of space.
     The music is kind, in a way. It means she doesn't have to talk, doesn't have to think about climbing up on that stage herself (or not yet). She's behind her walls for the moment, unassailable not in dignity but in ferality as she sidles her way past a footy bunch and between a couple of the band's followers in her route taking her to the bar.
     Her own gaze has turned to a muted blue-green, the Irish sea in a sunshower, the grey churned downwards by the surf, making her face seem almost human and something only slightly out of place; the hair's there to distract from it in all its punkish glory, but to those who notice such things, there it is. And she moves to lean up against the bar, hands on top of each other as she tilts in forward, voice pitched to carry above the music but only just.
     "You could at least do me the favour of being surprised to see me."

     "Now, I ask you," Kelly rolls out in that way that Kelly does, part droll, part warm and friendly, "...why would you want to be anywhere else than Davy's. Drink?" he wonders. Or would you like to go upstairs and talk? He tosses the towel to the side, giving a quick look around as his other bartender handles the crowd for the moment.
     "I'd rather say I'm encouraged than surprised," he chuckles a little. "It's good to see you. You look like you've had an... exciting evening..." You look completely different at any rate. "Just a sec," he murmurs to you and leans toward another customer's request: "Avalon cider? Do we have it? Darlin', we practically bottle it. Hang on...four-pounds-sixpence," A glass comes down, a bottle soon to follow with a lovely Arthurian label, he hands them both to the young woman beside you, who exchanges six pounds for the pleasure.
     Kelly puts the tip in the shared jar for the employees and turns back to you. "Sorry. Let's head up... you'll not get a word in edge-wise down here." With that, he pats Jack on the arm, leans in and whispers. Jack doesn't give you a second look -- he's too busy. He just nods to Kelly, grins to his next customer, and hits the tap again. "John's got it handled," he says. "He'll ring if they start to riot..."

     "Upstairs is good enough." Fiona doesn't argue; it's got to be Fiona, wouldn't it have to be? Drancy'd argue for the sheer insistence of the job. She steps away from the countertop, glancing at the label for a moment with a skeptical eyebrow uplifted. I somehow doubt that's really from Avalon, and I even more doubt you're as encouraged as all that. I'm still on both feet.
     It's not an invitation, just a tart pair of rejoinders. She runs her hand back through her hair, giving her head a little shake and moves towards the back. Jack gets about as much scrutiny from her as she gets from him; she has too many men in her life right now as it is...

     He says nothing as he comes out from behind the bar. The crowd parts for him easily enough and he heads to the back of the pub, past the hall leading to the restrooms where he takes a left. Through the office and employee lounge area to the hall with the stairway. The whole journey is spent in silence. He doesn't even look back to see if you're following him. He unlocks the red door and holds it open for you, waiting on you to enter first.
     "What? The cider? No, not really. But Somerset is good apple country. Always has been. Trust no other cider but that from Arthur's country. If we could bottle Avalon apples and sell them here?" He ponders that as he closes the door behind him. "Babies would be composing symphonies and pop music would end as we know it...now, this is better..."
     It is certainly much more quiet. The apartment is as tidy as you recall it. He doesn't ask you if you want it. He simply and immediately puts on a kettle for tea. The table is already set for tea for two. "Did the walk help?"

     "It didn't make the entire ball of yarn unravel with no knots and no tangles." She's been following, of course. Did you really doubt it? She steps inside, she moves inside, she goes to the table and she sits herself down, looking at the place settings. "But I'm ... ready to talk about things now. If you're willing."
     Drancy leans forward, putting her elbows on the table and her face between her hands, looking at you. The colour on her lips is as wet as if the blood refused to dry, neither running nor fading to a darker shade. "Did you really know I was coming back here tonight? I need to know."

     "No," he answers, it's a simple, honest reply. "But I was hoping you would." Kelly glances to the kettle, turns the knob to get the heat really going and then he steps into the dining room to take a seat. "At least to get all of your shopping booty," he smiles a little. Yes, all your bags are still here! "I wasn't sure whether you'd want to talk to me while doing it. But... you set a service of tea and odds are someone will show up to drink it. An old wives' tale..."
     He looks across the table to you and nods. "I'm willing, Fiona." His hands open outward a little, a sign for you to go ahead. "You first, I think...I've probably said enough," Rhodri's smile shows through his Kelly mask, lightly sardonic (you know where he gets it) and amused at himself, to say the least.

     She slides down in her seat a few inches, then sighs, letting her head tip back, eyes closed. "You've said a lot," Fiona agrees quietly. "And I'm not sure what I'm going to say. You want me to leave Davydd for you, though you're willing to consider sharing me. And you know I'm tempted; if I weren't tempted, I'd just have been insulted and walked away from you and we both know it." Ah, recap. But it's as good a way of beginning a discussion as any : a flat statement of where things stand, from which the truth might be divined.
     "I was doing a lot of thinking. You're the sun to Davydd's moon in many ways, but more to the point, I don't think he's realized this, but ..." Fiona sits forward again, glancing to you and away. "...while part of him will always be the Black Jack Davy, he's moved past that. It's not really what he is anymore. You're it now - being a tavernkeeper's a good disguise, don't you think? But all this," she sketches a gesture with one hand that includes you, her, the Rock, and through it, Davydd, "fits into that."
     "I'm not," she clarifies, "giving him the ring back yet." Yet. Does your heart leap at that? "It's ... really, it's up to him to take it back. I won't give it back; I can't, not yet. I have to talk to him, and he's ... off doing other things which don't involve me. But," she folds her arms over her chest, fists in her armpits, "I think that he doesn't want me on his path. And if that's so, then there's not much to be done about it, is there."

     "Davydd... was an excellent highwayman," Kelly notes with a nod. "But he'd make a better King. He... likes to take care of things. No, he needs to take care of things. That's why he ends up doing the things he does. But that...does not a marriage make. I can't speak for his current... business, whatever it is it doesn't involve me either." There is respect in what he says and how he says it.
     The light green eyes of his disguise begin to shift, sparkling rich emerald in a matter of moments, and Kelly's face melts into Rhodri's own as he sits there as plain as day, beguiling Gypsy Davy that he is, arms folded against his chest as he listens. He cocks his head to the side slightly, his facial expression giving up the knowledge that he is, in fact, surprised by your own testimony. And that you recognize the link, the same link he has himself seen and felt. He smiles about the disguise, his smile curling smooth.
     "Fair enough," Rhodri murmurs. Behind him, the water begins to boil. "The ring, then, will be in Davydd's court to decide if it should be worn or no. When he gives his answer, I'll abide by your decision as it pertains to my suit. My suit remains the same, no matter what disguise I wear." He rises as the whistling begins. He pauses, standing before you. "The links between us all, we three, are strong. I simply believe that they are misaligned, from being misunderstood perhaps."
     Rhodri takes the cup before you and the other before his place and heads into the nearby kitchen. He takes a box of Welsh tea out of a drawer, two bags per cup and he pours the water over them. There comes the scent of meadowsweet flowers, some quality of sunlight given odor and taste.
     "If he doesn't want you on his path, I'll give you the space for grieving, my lady, but I want you, need you," he counters softly, "...on mine..."

     "I want him," Fiona says simply, "but I want him to be true to himself. It's the only thing I do at all well, even though it means that I'm a creature of chaos and moods and changes. And ... well, I don't think he knows what to be. I don't think he knows how to be. I'm not peaceful - this isn't some sort of zen shit." There's a pause, a deep breath taken, and then she reaches out one hand into the air, and the air takes on a liquid quality, her fingers rippling as if refracted by the surface of water. She draws her hand back, and there's a golden apple in it.
     Rising to her feet, she carries the apple with her and into the kitchen where you are, watching the teabags colour the water they sit in. "I'm only able to say this because I ... changed my mind, I guess you could say. I couldn't have said this before I went on my walk, or even before I got back to the pub, Rhodri," Fiona says quietly. "But I've been thinking." Her eyes are bright with tears unshed, held as a prism before that curious quality of her eyes. "I've had a lot of time to be thinking. Walking doesn't take much thought. I do believe he loves me... but I don't believe he knows who he's in love with. And I think if I asked him, either I'd get a flippant remark, or if I startled the truth from him, he'd either say the wrong name, or he'd say noone at all."
     She rolls the apple between her palms, the gold and pink and otherworldliness of it making it plain that it is what the bottles of cider promise and fail to deliver, looking at you and ignoring the tea which is being prepared. "I can be nowhere at all, but I can't be noone. He doesn't want to know me, you know. I've started to tell him things about me, and he hasn't listened, he's - felt them unimportant, because they're in the past, and because they're in my past. I know he cares about me. But I tried to tell him about the trainyards, he didn't listen. And I did tell him about Paul, and ..."
     She turns away, sharply, but her voice shows no emotion. "I think he took it as proof of my youth, because it was my first love and my first heartbreak and because it was the first, it didn't matter - because you're five hundred and some and he's eight hundred and some and because it doesn't matter if I've been hurt once, it only matters if it's happened for hundreds of years. So I guess I learn from my mistakes faster than he does, too."

     "I can't speak to that," he says, looking at you as he puts a spoon in the cup. He does a double-take to see the apple, then looks back to the two cups, pressing the bags with the spoons. The meadowsweet lifts again, and with it other flowers, springtime meadows, even primrose. Even apple. "But sounds as if you know the score well enough." Rhodri turns to you, teaspoon on the saucer, saucer in his hand, and cup by that saucer offered to you. "There's honey if you'd like some," he offers off topic.
     "I'm centuries old, too, but... as I said, we're different men and have led different lives. I've been married, raised children. Davydd's fought in wars and liberated nations. I'll say in the ...worlds he moves in, it makes it tough for him to give much. Not an excuse, well maybe it is," he exhales, "...his life has just been different from mine. I can look at a young woman, hundreds of years younger than I," he smiles to you, "...and, sure, I can see the roughness. But I can also see the promise. I'm patient, as I've said. Love takes patience. Patience, far more than resolve..."
     He heads back to the table after a momentary stop for a tin of biscuits and he settles in the chair again, reaching into the can for some of the shortbread. "I think... you feeling this way," he begins, "... believing what you believe, right or wrong, I think you already have your answer. You're just waiting on him to confirm it." That's all the bit with the ring is, isn't it? A confirmation.
     "I can't tell you what he does nor doesn't think, how he does or doesn't feel or what he will or won't do. I can only speak for myself. Besides, I love him." A quick smile. "I want to get to know you. I'd like to start tonight. Your youth needs no proof," a short laugh, "...for you are young. But I don't care about that. What I do care about is who you are and what you want to be. Let's leave age out of it, darlin'. I'm always going to be older than you are ..."

     "No - I don't have the answer yet. Because this is what I see, but I could be wrong, and I can admit I could be wrong." Fiona turns, looking back at you now, no sign of tears for the moment. "It's ... much more up to him than that - because I don't know what he's thinking, what he's doing. That's part of what it's about, isn't it - being involved with someone else like this? You might be with someone, but you're still two people, and there's times when the gears don't work in sync. I am here with you right now and not with him, but the reason I'm here is because he sent me to you for safekeeping. And..."
     She frowns; this is difficult for her to work out. "King or whatever he is, if he sent me to you, he had to have expected and assessed on some level the risk that you would - be what you are. The Black Jack Davy. Another man's woman or his own, I can't see him not unconsciously knowing, and I can't help but feel that more than protection, he's trying to prepare for shifting the burden off of himself. Either I'm wrong and I'm doing him an injustice, in which case I owe it to him to prove his virtue so to speak, or I'm right..."
     She moves back to the table, moves around it, sits down. "And if I'm right, Rhodri, then there's no way in hell he's getting off that lightly." Fiona looks to you again from across from you, jaw squaring in determination for a moment, the glint in her eyes like the reflection off of a knife. "If that's what's what, he has to be the one to say so, and not take a coward's way out."
     It's not too many people who'd call Davydd a coward. She's even accused him of fear to his face and not been slung over his lap for a hiding. And that shows in her eyes, too - in a way, not only as a knowledge, but as a form of regret for his fears...
     She holds up the apple, watching the light play off of its skin. "I like older men. Maybe I'm compensating for something I wanted from my father and never got, or - I don't know. But the way I see it, Rhodri, between you and Davydd you've got over twelve hundred years of sexual experience. Your age doesn't bother me. So ... here." Fiona glances up, and her eyes seem to deepen for a moment, darkening slightly with a faint curve at the corners of her mouth. She has separated herself from the depths of her emotion for this conversation, left it behind in a tree behind iron where it can do her less harm, cause her less pain. And now she holds out one small, dainty hand to you, with a glance to see how your hand measures up, perhaps, to Davydd's warrior paw. On her hand there is the ring - but on her palm is the apple.
     "Eat of the fruit of the tree and I will learn something..."

     "The only man who isn't afraid is The Fool," Rhodri says, sipping the tea then setting the cup down. "He doesn't know that he should be. I think my da is all too aware of what is out there in the world, and what it could do to us all if he is not careful." Rhodri knows sommat of that world, he certainly seems to, at least enough to know that it is dangerous. Perhaps that's all he needs to know.
     But he nods simply to the rest. Your hypothesis may be correct. He can't personally imagine it, but that doesn't mean it isn't the case. He simply notes it, watches you as you give it forth. "He knows me," is all Rhodri says. The rest earns a shrug, a slight shake of his head. I don't know girl. I really don't know.
     He sets down the tea as of you offer the apple on your outstretched palm. Scarlet-auburn hair lies to his shoulders, his eyebrows of the same color lifting slightly. "As you wish," he says, taking the apple. His hand, large and fine, a thief's hand covering the fruit, sliding a touch against your palm as his retreats with the fruit. You can imagine many a ring disappeared with the same touch. And with that touch, a drag of something shimmering and bright, the twitch of leaves in summer sunlight, the reflection of light against running water, the sparkle of a poem upon the tip of your tongue. The fruit touches his lips. He takes a moment to smell it and then, closing his eyes, he bites into it.
     The juice of the fruit fills his mouth, but it is more than an apple. It is more than sweetness. It is more than heady. It tastes, he thinks, of you. Of your mouth that he has kissed. Of your skin that he has not yet kissed but may imagine, and has. Emerald green eyes open slowly as he not only bites into the apple but he devours it, rends it until the juice runs down his chin.
     The seeds and the core spill upon the table's surface as he stands. Drops of golden liquid splatter upon the table, reflecting back his image as he moves, mirroring the shimmering air that exists around him as he in this moment glories in the taste of you.
     Sharp the green eyes, eyes not of forests but of soft-grassed meadows and hills, as he bends. Broad, the hand that rests upon the side of your face, moves through your fuschia hair to bend your head back. The kiss that follows is like rolling on that meadow, down those hills, head over heels, wild thing it is, headlong and sweet with the taste of the apple that is You. It is tearing, it is consuming. Your mouth is rended until the juice rolls down your chin.
     "Get in my bed," he speaks at your mouth, the kiss stopping as suddenly as it began. "Dear Fiona... I will show you where the apples grow wild..."

     She watches you, covertly; the frail veiling of eyelashes is lowered in front of those sea-green, sea-blue eyes. And it occurs to her as you touch her hand that perhaps this wasn't such a good idea after all. But that is Fiona, isn't it? She never can cross a bridge without stopping in the middle to leap off over the side...
     You bite into the apple, and it is a knowledge for the both of you - biblical in tone but not in flavour. That ancient book's blood and lust and glory are not well-suited for this tea-table's momentum. She sighs at the sound of the apple being penetrated by your teeth, and then, blinks at your sudden appetite, starting to move back in her seat as you become a wolf in your consumption, uncertainty slowing the air around her, slowing her momentum.
     What must it be like, to have your full and undivided appetite...
     What must it be like, to be the one being consumed...
     You move before she can stand, and you're on her, the eyes regarding you wide and startled and perhaps beginning to be a little wild, but not so wild as yours. A mistake...
     A mistake to think that hills and meadows are safer than forests - they're no less dark by moonlight, but they offer fewer defenses, fewer places to hide...
     She can't speak. She can't even breathe. You kiss her, and it is a kiss that is more than just a kiss. She always has been susceptible to the feel of strength, the slide of a palm against her cheek, and pulled as she is to Davydd she also is pulled to you. Even if she did not admit to that pull until you spoke of your own interests, your own intentions - there it is, almost as old as her being drawn to Davydd.
     And in her eyes, in the rings of her irises, do you see that honesty? That as drawn as she was to Davydd, the pull towards you was perhaps a more honest pull, a cleaner one - of you, after all, she knew nothing. There was nothing there but Kelly and Drancy, with no shadows of Isabel, Llew's believed daughter, no shadows of nine trees and no shadows of Magic. Even if there is Magic in this, there is also magic.
     She reacts. You can feel it; the race of her pulse, the small twitch and jerk of muscles that move involuntarily, the feathery feeling of her hair against your fingers, the little sounds she makes. In that kiss, she is a concatenation of flesh wrapped around air wrapped around need, and the window of it is her eyes. And then you stop. And she stops too - shaken, visibly so, almost shellshocked.
     She draws a breath, lips parted as if to speak, the redness of them not magical nor artifice now; do you note the faint tang of copper mixed in with apple-taste and Fiona, now? You've tasted her blood and touched her tears, now...
     She blinks again, letting the breath out and taking another, not moving to rise. Disorientation wars with panic which skirmishes at the border with a desire that has already armed its forces with desire, but her tongue is thick and uncooperative. "W-wait. What? But, I mean - you know, I..." Tea would be really good right about now. Pity you're between her and it. There will be no armour found in a teacup tonight.

     "There is no stopping now, my apple," he murmurs as he straightens from the kiss, his finger pressing to your lips. Perhaps, in part, a signal of No Argument. But also to make sure that the blood he tasted is not from some greater injury. Satisfied, Rhodri moves the chair that holds you. Easily, so easily.
     You had to know what it might do, that apple of Avalon, that apple that is the symbol of his own essence, his own magic -- a part, too, of his father's. And like his father, his reaction is intense, sexual and unrelenting. If anything, more of all these things.
     The hound has tasted the bloodied air, the bloodied hare is in his grasp. You, lady, you. Bending, Rhodri scoops you up in his arms, not pitching you over his shoulder but carried like a bride over a threshold. Those eyes, emerald expanses like entire fields of Ireland and Wales, open and exposed, wild and free, as untamed as the most tangled of woods. And, yes, no safer.
     But you knew that...
     The arms that hold you, the chest that is your balance wall, the shoulders you may grasp, they all speak of an archer's power, so easily they lift you, as easily as his hand lifted the apple. You are stolen. You are stolen clean away.
     "My appletree," he murmurs in Welsh, his words as much a song, "... my brightness..." As he begins to move away from the table, his mouth pulling at yours again...

     The startled look on her face is almost comical in its completeness. She wants to argue, wants to protest, but really, at the same time...
     If she didn't want to be here, she wouldn't, would she? It would be so easy to be somewhere else - so easy not to have laid the apple out in front of you. So easy to flee, to barricade herself in and shift furniture around as she did at Chinon against William, to say 'placetne' to Huw, to pull away and wait for a new day as with Dei. Only with Davydd has she been able to give a complete 'no'; only with Davydd and now, you.
     Quite the little collection the woman has built up without even realizing it.
     Your finger against her lips stills her words, stills even her conscious thoughts, and before she can begin to again collect her scattered ideas you go and upset the applecart again. She's lifted, you lift her, and she can't stop you, she doesn't even want to. Oh, in some places she does, but those places have been sealed by the pressure of your lips, all avenues of escape cut off so that the fox is in a hole far from its den, not even a hole but against a wall, the hound at its throat.
     Far too late...
     "Rhodri, I didn't mean for you to do this!" And that is true and not-true at once. She should have guessed - should have known that the son's reactions would be at least nearly as intense as the father's. It is not that Fiona had not seen the meadows of Avalon in your eyes. Her hands on your shoulders bespeak of cupidity although not deceit, and she falls quiet, trembling in your grasp, not trusting the situation -
     - and ultimately, not trusting herself. She got herself into this. She can't even blame you...

     There is a secretive smile as his mouth parts from yours, as you in his arms are carried past the dining room, past the foyer of the front door. Your 'No's' are not no's enough, not emphatic, because you do not believe them, you do not mean it. The messages are more than mixed, they are paradoxical.
     But Rhodri says nothing as he takes you from the dining room down the short hall to the bedroom of reds and silvers. As you head out of the main living room, as you pass the foyer in his arms, the front door becomes a wall. No one will bother you now. The door will not open. There is no door to give you away. Nor one to be used for escape.
     But you knew to whom you were coming. The chicken does not walk into the fox's den lathered in butter and not expect to see sight of a plate...
     He closes the door to his chamber with a foot and he sets you on the bed. You are no virgin and are not treated as one. By now, with such an experienced lover, he expects that you know what's coming. Or at least can make a rather powerful educated guess.
     "I want to see you," this is not a hypothetical now, "... take off your clothes... " Nothing he says is a request. Nothing he says leaves room for interpretation. Nothing he says comes across as a suggestion. He looks to you, emerald eyes beaming, not darkening, and he opens the drawer beside his bed, glancing from it to you. Full expecting that clothes will be in the process of being pulled away.

     There is an element of panic back in her eyes as she watches from your arms, sees each opening close, each portal barred. No medieval lady could have more fear at being carried into a bandit's keep than this; no woman hold more trepidation trembling in her lower belly. She pushes at you, a short, sharp push that she knows will be ineffectual, and the knowledge fuels her trembling.
     You lower her, and she scrambles back a little on the bed, fuchsia hair in disarray. Fiona does not know how to deal with this. Drancy does not know how to deal with this. If Isabel knows how to deal with this, she isn't answering the other two's calls...
     "You want me to what?" Fiona doesn't look as if she understands the question, a lock of untidy hair falling over one eye as she stares at you. Her cheeks are distinctly flushed, her breathing already erratic, glance darting around the room as if looking for some hole, any avenue of escape. If this were anyone but you or Davydd, there would be some escape, or so she thinks. But it is you, Rhodri, and her lips soundlessly form the syllables of your name as she edges back until she bumps the headboard and jumps slightly, one hand grabbing a fold of blanket kicked up by her progress. "...Don't you think that - I mean, I think. Dammit, I can't think!"

     A scarlet eyebrow lifts. "I wasn't asking you to think..." He closes the side table drawer with a thigh, turning to look down at you. "You're still clothed," he remarks, with all the nonchalance of 'the sky is blue'. The contents of the drawer are dropped upon surface of the table, a long silk cord in brilliant red.
     He removes the black shirt, a pullover tee with the Black Jack logo and tosses it toward his closet, again nonchalant. Rhodri turns back to you, his expression bland as if to say: It's your turn. In the absence of the shirt, you are greeted with sudden, male physique. Broad chest, broad shoulders, thick arms, the tapering of his waist, all covered with tattoos of mythic proportions, the marks made in red against his white Welsh skin. And the tattoos in his arousal are in motion, the hounds forever hunting... on his chest, the white stag...on the muscles of his stomach, the unicorn...around biceps and down forearms, the faerie hounds of Prince Pwyll...
     "I ..." Rhodri says as he leans in, and leaning in soon joins you on the bed to hover over you. "...want... to ... see...you," he says far more slowly, in close quarters, his mouth playing at yours as he finishes his short speech. "You offered me the apple..." he reminds you. "You offered me ...Yourself...I accepted." He grins, his hand reaching for the chord. "Nevermind," he murmurs, "... I'll do it myself...give me your hands, love..."

     She stares at the long cord with a sort of blank incomprehension, then back up at your face. It's getting hard to breathe in this room; you're too close. Even across the room would be too close, especially with you between her and the door. She isn't used to this. Davydd isn't like this - not with her, at least. With Davydd, ultimately everything turns into a joke at the end, and on the rare occasions when it doesn't, it still hasn't gone into such territory.
     Do you see that in her eyes? She stares at you, watching the shirt come off and then no longer caring about your demands. Her eyes are on your skin, tracing the tattoos, colour moving back into her cheeks, seeming almost to leech the colour from her hair, bit by bit. A pink tongue-tip makes a pass over her lips, lower lip then caught between her teeth. And she goes on looking as if suddenly she's lost her way in the ink.
     You lean in, and she jerks back slightly, like a student caught passing notes in class, a little startled sound escaping her. And then you're over her, her hands slightly lifted as if to ward you off, as if to shove at your shoulders. But she doesn't; the startled countenance is no act. The eyes are saucer-wide, the lips again parted, and as you talk she cautiously touches a fingertip to the mouth of one of the hounds that stalks along your forearms.
     And you're right, again. With Davydd, even if he was right she'd argue, and more often she wouldn't even agree within herself. But you're right, and Fiona can find no words to refute you. It wasn't her intention, she could argue, to offer herself to you. But it's gone past intentions, good and bad alike, and she has learned from your devouring of that apple of Avalon's orchards.
     She's learned what countless women have known before. She's learned she isn't getting out of this room without giving you what you want...
     One tennis shoe scrabbles for a moment at the edge of the bed, then skids off the edge, and Fiona skids down an inch or so, still staring at you. She jerks her hands away as if burned. "You'll do what yourself? I mean... I can't do anything with you on top of me!" It's an observation, not a reprimand, even if voiced as a complaint.

     He chuckles a little and sits up. His eyes cut a look to you as if to say 'duly noted'. The chord gets tossed back on the nightstand. It can wait. Settling back on the foot of the bed, it is a natural position, rolling backwards from where he left you, Rhodri watches the fall of the first shoe, he looks for the fall of something else far more interesting.
     In the meantime, he serves as your masculine mirror. You remove a shoe, and with his foot, toe to heel, so does he...
     He doesn't pepper the moment with idle conversation. Not even to tease you, oh especially not that. He wants what he wants, and he wants more to get it than to tease it out of you. Rhodri...doesn't play. He doesn't coax. He steals. Outright, smooth, sudden. And off comes his other shoe.

     Fiona leans forward. Part of her doesn't want to be doing this; part of her wants to fly at you and scream. You can see it. The urge to cock a fist and let fly is there. But she hasn't lost her temper yet, even if she's feeling a bit overwhelmed; a little more of a press might do it, but no, you back away. She takes a deep breath, shrugging out of her jacket and letting it drop onto the floor next to the bed, staring at you as she lets it fall.
     She wasn't expecting this - wondered if the apple would affect you, yes. But this...
     At least she didn't bake for you...
     The other shoe falls from her foot, leaving her in socks, jeans and t-shirt. Cautiously, she sits up now, her gaze on you at the foot of the bed. "You're too graceful," Fiona mutters as she peels off first one sock, then the other, dropping them on top of the jacket. "How do you stay in this kind of shape? You can't tell me being a bartender is the same as agility training."
     She stands up, edging back against the wall as if she's about to try using it to springboard herself past you; but she doesn't. Instead, she looks at you, waiting for her answer, one hand hovering at her waistband. Not quite ready to take off the next layer...

     His hand hovers at his own waistband, not quite landing, pausing in the visual hesitation you feel, but then that hand unfastens his trousers and simply leaves them that way. Well, you can't say he only takes, takes, takes...
     "It's amazing how agile you can become when someone's shooting arrows at you," Rhodri remarks, his mouth making a wide and slanting smile. "And then bullets. Being a thief does wonders for one's agility. And, of course, strength-building from hauling down massive bags of loot from high towers." Is he kidding? "The rest is due to the bow and the arrow and the horse. The shape is the shape I had when Time started to have no meaning. Five and twenty forever." He pauses, the smile retreating somewhat as he watches your hand hover at your waistband. "You can start higher if you prefer," he notes. "I want to see the breasts I've heard so much about. They're starting to become rather legendary. Soon, your breasts will be said to have launched a thousand of their own ships, for all the conversation and poetry they inspire..."
     What is that adage about playing with fire. Perhaps you should apply that to playing with apples...

     The images you paint with your words have her slightly dazzled. If Davydd hadn't always been her shadow when you saw her, perhaps it would have been you. Perhaps. Probably. Maybe. And Davydd doesn't talk about his past much...
     "I - wait. What?" Fiona sputters, blushing as she slowly tugs at her shirt, hands suddenly stopping with it only pulled out of her jeans and nothing else. "Who the hell has been talking about my breasts!" There's no alarm, just surprise and a hint of aggression. She can't forget what's going on, but she can choose to focus on something else - and this is Fiona, after all. Her hands fall to her sides, forming fists, and she glowers at you, stalking towards where you're perched on the foot of the bed.
     "What do you mean, legendary? Who exactly is having conversations about my breasts apart from me and my doctor? And that's a discussion I only to have once a year, thank you very fucking much!" It's amazing how much belligerence she can fit into that frame. Fiona glares pugnaciously, one hand going up to push her hair out of her face, her other hand going out to shove at your shoulder. Mistake number - well, who's still counting? Your skin is too warm...

     He laughs with pure (and wicked) delight. Glorious Celtic youth, he beams in such. "You forget my father's penchant for being inappropriate." Apparently, that's genetic. "And you forget that I pay attention..." Emerald sparkles in the wink he tosses to you, tosses to you like he tossed his shirt before. It is as palpable a thing has having his hand upon you, having his hand upon the hem of the shirt you just let go.
     His hand comes up and takes your hand now, leads it to his mouth to kiss the center of your palm. It is not a chaste kiss of a chaste mouth that he places there. And again on the belly of your wrist. "Less arguing," he whispers, "...and more disrobing. I swear to God, you'd have gotten me captured by the king's men if you had stripped this slowly back then. Then where would we be, lass? Me at the gallows and you with an empty bed. Now... " he lets go your hand and gestures with his own. Remove it.
     "The taste of you is on my tongue yet," he murmurs sing-song, the meter of a poem. "... sweet and wild, like the best of summer. How can I forget the changing of the seasons, when I may taste them on your skin..."

     Abruptly, she blushes; she'd almost forgotten Davydd in the moment, and for a moment, she falters; you see it in her glance at the door, still closed as it is. Your lips touch to her palm, echoed in a soft sound from her. The colour is already high in her face...
     She is affected by you, it contracts her pupils and makes her suck on her lower lip like a schoolgirl. It's strange that as uncertain as she may have been with Davydd, there was very little of that return to the schoolroom in any emotional sense. And yet here with you, it is as if the years are stripped away from her as the apples from a tree...
     Fiona steps back, not much but enough, hands slowly back to the hem of her shirt. She pulls it up, pulls it off. Beneath is the pale skin you've seen before, hinted at in clothing and captured forever in paint. The pink flush is spread here as well, over her collarbone and extending downwards. Her breasts are encased in silk the colour of the sunset sky, that colour shaded in between purple and midnight with the faintest wash of fading red. It's suspended from her shoulders by the thinnest possible straps. The straps are almost unnecessary - there's lacing up the front in white, holding the bodice snug in so that her breasts are lifted upwards and slightly together, the edge of the cups just keeping her legal for public viewing - barely.
     The shirt drops from fingers that tremble slightly and she watches you with her chin down, head at a slight angle. The colour of her hair's fading slowly, without her seeming to notice; it lengthens slightly, though not to its habitual length. "If you wanted someone who'd argue less, you wouldn't want me." It's a valid point, but even as she speaks, Fiona's hands go to the clasp of her jeans, unbuttoning, unzipping, sliding them cautiously over her hips to fall in a puddle about her ankles. The knickers match the bodice in the glimmer of colour - and in the white knot of lace in front as well. She folds her arms protectively over her chest, kicking the jeans aside and staring at you, chin lifting with a hint of challenge.

     He makes a sound in his throat, as if he's deliberating something and his green eyes narrow. It is an incisive look, an archer's aiming look, moreover...a thief's assessment. "Hmm...that is true, darling," Rhodri breathes out and he is in motion once more. The hounds of Pwyll chase the unicorn from his stomach past where they may be seen dipping into the trousers, the rest hidden for now. His hands come up, one brushing back your brightly colored hair, the other against the side of your face and then he lifts that stubborn chin a little more, bringing your lips to his own.
     The kiss is sudden, just as it was before. A sudden consummation, breath-stealing and wild. And then it stops, wandering over the countryside of your chin, your throat, then your mouth is seized again. Arms lift you, his hands lowering to your hips then sliding downward and around to cup you to him. You do not need to see where the hounds have gone. You can guess, surely, as you feel him against you.
     Like a thief, he is all hands. It suddenly seems that he has five pair rather than the one pair, for as he is widening your mouth with his own, his hands may be felt tugging at the laces of the bodice.
     One...
     Two...
     Three...
     And you feel it go fairly slack...
     "Now," Rhodri says, a final kiss given as he leans back a little. Now, and he follows it with nothing but a grin, his fingers tugging the last of the laces to set those legendary breasts free. Grinning broadly, his bends, his head dipping down and the warmth of his mouth moves over them.
     Freed from the task of bodice ripping (something he's a little too good at, you may have noticed), his hand reaches outward once more, taking the scarlet chord.

     Oh, god...
     If Fiona were in any condition to do talking, she might say that. But she isn't up for talking. The endearment combined with that measurement would still her speaking; the kiss is a thief's kiss for certes, for it robs her of balance, robs her of indignation, robs her of her willpower and her dignity as she whimpers and leans in towards you. You're warm and solid and she is in sudden prolonged need of that solidity.
     She is soft beneath your mouth, her eyes closing as if she needs to be blind to give in to that kiss. As if seeing could only increase her dizziness, the waves of turmoil it sends rippling through her breasts and into her belly and down into her groin...
     Her eyes snap wide again as your hands so easily undo the bodice she's magicked up for herself (and, it seems, for you). But the theme of it being a bit late continues - before she can do more than that, her breasts are bare to the cool air and before she can speak her protest your mouth travels further down. Protest is interrupted; consensus is impossible, and the words are turned loose into a moan, her hands helpless at her sides. She lifts them, sets them down again, then lets them fall onto the crown of your head as if in benediction or feeble protest or perhaps a bit of both.
     Her eyes are closed again, now, and her lips parted seemingly forever on the expiration of that moan...

     He's going to be impossible to shop for, you realize. He'll have already taken anything he needed or wanted...
     Is it something Celtic, something out of the lyrical language he speaks, something of the poetry that he gives rise to so easily... is it something inherited that makes his mouth thus? It is a talent that has not only been passed down, it has been improved upon, or rather his ways are different. They are stealing, versus commanding. They are insistent, versus overpowering. Everything he has, he employs. Lips, tongue, teeth, magic. Both in quick successions and in unison.
     His mouth drags its way down the center of your body, your thief going to his knees, and as his mouth dips, teeth teasing by tugging the gathers of your underwear, his hands and the red chord have surrounded your own wrists, a binding that he tightens just slightly as he stands. That sound returns, that mulling of consideration and appraisal in his throat and chest, and he smiles at you, you as rended in vision as the apple was in taste earlier, the evidence of your own pleasure easy to spot in the blushing, in quick breaths. Rhodri encircles his own wrist with the chord, his grasp fast, and by that he pulls you gently to the surface of the bed.
     It may be that Davydd met his match in you for a time. But it as easily may be said that you have met your own...

     The way she trembles, it looks as if the idea of fleeing has had to be put aside for the moment. The urge is still there in some part; the ability, however, that's gone as surely as if she'd misplaced her feet. She isn't drunk, but she is intoxicated - and she has always gotten tipsy faster on magic and on sex than on any amount of alcohol.
     And if you'd known, wouldn't you have just bespelled her the sooner...
     Fiona's energy is diffuse now; she can't maintain concentration with such a calculated wildness, such a skilled onslaught. You might as well ask her to sing twenty verses of 'Roll Me Over In The Clover Yankee Soldier' right now - she leans in towards you as if astonished that the air still supports her weight, that she hasn't become one with it. There is ample evidence of her pleasure, in the pucker of her lips and in the tips of her 'legendary' breasts, in the scent of her skin. Do you notice all those subtlest changes, Hound of Pwyll? She is beyond noticing much of anything.
     But not so far beyond noticing that when the cord tightens around her wrists as you tug she fails to stumble towards and onto the bed, stuttering. "W-what?" She really isn't at her sharpest when you are pitted against her. She is well and truly caught and only now realizing it, realizing the possibility that the cord as well might be something more than its simple appearance bodes. Matched and, for the moment at least, overmatched.

     One...
     Two...
     Three...
     The hands of the Gypsy Davy make quick and graceful work of the bindings, such artistry, such agility! before you're even to the bed your hands are bound the one to the other, just firmly enough to hold them bound. The cord is silk, there is a softness that it lend, for silk does not need to be tight to bind firmly.
     Yes, he has done this before, hasn't he...
     Emerald eyes lock to your eyes and he smiles, oh that that wayward smile should have been genetic, passed from father to son to such a rascal. Despite the bindings, which are now, as he looks at you and teases your mouth with a kiss unfallen, binding you to the padded leather headboard of his bed, he treats you like the lady you are. You...are a lady, Lady Arundel. And Black Jack Davy has a ... certain regard for well-born ladies...
     "Oes," he grins in Welsh, the word 'Yes' sighed against your mouth, then parting it again. The kiss is a heathen kiss, the tongue capturing your own, stealing both it and your breath, and then he stops it as suddenly, as heathenly, and he sits back on his knees.
     You can almost hear the hounds barking, baying companions to the god of the hunt, the King of the Harvest, whom they serve, as his hands dispense slowly with his trousers. He tosses them aside. Like father, like son. His groin is covered from flat of muscles beneath his torso and completely covering both risen length (his father was generous, as nature had been to him) and the large orbs beneath it. Intricate, the most intricate, in glorious crimson that, when flushed with his own blood, goes another hue of ruddy. The thighs are large, little there that isn't muscle, you're familiar with the general build of a warrior, horseman.
     His hands are at the knickers, pulling gently, then tugging firmly away, and the vision of the hounds of Pwyll disappear as Rhodri bends, his mouth opening, trailing from your navel a burning line back to your mouth. Where his mouth moves, magic moves with it. The flush of inspiration, that lightning bolt of creativity, the flash of... fire in the head, as the druids called it. It moves along the center of your body, ravishes your mouth, travels to your breasts and then hovers in anticipatory pleasure over the juncture of your thighs.
     Rhodri looks up the length of your body, eyebrows lifting slightly to watch your many reactions, to watch you twist against the bonds at your wrist, the silken ties that keep you in his bed and at his mercy. And he smiles. Yes, particularly at that, he smiles.

     She notices the bindings too late, too late, squirming wildly for a moment and then subsiding, shivering, tensed as a bowstring is tensed, waiting to be plucked as a bowstring is plucked. No...
     Not a bowstring...
     Not a bowstring but an apple, that you pluck to consume in your ravenous hunger. She wants to speak - but she has no idea what to say. She starts to, perhaps, begin with your name and before she can do more than purr the first letter of it your mouth is descending and the kiss is the thief of her words and even her ability to form words. Despite herself, she arches into that kiss again, testing her bonds unwittingly, falling back to the bed with a muted little sound of breathlessness and desperation when you sit back.
     Her lips are so swollen and darkened from your kisses now; they are not apple-red but berry-red, a dusk of colour over eyelids, over cheeks, over breasts. She squirms in place, trying to catch up to herself, for you've run away with her so far, so fast she hasn't yet managed even that. And then you undress, and she's lost...
     Admiration is part of it, but there is something more than admiration; no highborn lady was ever piped from her father's lands by elven music but that she was as securely fascinated. She looks at you, watches you move - watches the hounds at their hunt, watches the essential maleness of you, and there is no doubt. She whimpers. Was it not that hunter's attention that drew her to Huw? There is the twisting sensation in her groin, in her breasts, and all she can do is meet it with the helplessness of a bound princess.
     The world outside the walls of castles and palaces and towers are dangerous, my lady, with all manner of creature that will make off with you...
     You make off with her knickers and there is no protest, only a painfully acute consciousness of her nudity, her vulnerability. She is bare to you, and she has only just had enough time to get even moderately comfortable being bare with the man whose ring she wears. Now she is thrust back into the position of virginity, almost as if she were unmarked by prior touch. Your mouth makes it all new again, the inspiration of spring and summer that travels with the motion of your lips, your teeth, your tongue. When you reach the division of her thighs, her hips lift without her consent to make plea on her behalf, then fall to the sheets as if she's suddenly remembered her manners.
     Fiona shivers as if cold, forcing heavy-lidded eyes to look in your direction, to look at you almost as if not seeing you, squirming slightly and then going still. Her breathing is as erratic as if she's tried to run a race against a greyhound - and perhaps, in a sense, she has. Lips move, forming the syllables of your name without being willed into it, the slightest girlish lisp, childish stutter to it. "R-rhodri..."

     Unlike with your virginity's taking, your introduction into such things as male nakedness, foreplay and intercourse, there is no warm up, there is no explanation that precedes it, nor none that shall follow it. It simply is.
     Earlier, you wondered what it would be like to be consumed by him, to have his undivided attention, as the apple in his mouth. You need wonder no more. If this were taking place in the wild fields, with you bound as you are, it could not be more untamed. What Davydd had shown you the possibility of, Rhodri now shows you the fullness of it. How a woman may be devoured whole and yet remain alive. How she may be possessed completely in a mere moment.
     And that same explosion of magic, that inspiration, that muse's lightning bolt rifles through you as his mouth, tongue, teeth and lips, move against you, within you. If you imagine yourself galloping across the open plains of England, cares and inhibitions tossed to the winds as you ride, you wouldn't be mistaken.
     Then it stops, abruptly as his heathen kiss had started, his mouth trailing that shimmering enlightenment to your breasts again, tickling with magic, prickles against the skin. The bed rolls as he shifts down again, burying his face between your thighs once more. And again, he lifts his head, emerald green eyes glinting in the dark to watch you twist beneath him. And again, he devours you. Stopping abruptly, not giving you a predictable rhythm, not like the rhythmic beat of horsehooves, nothing predictable...

     There is a reason why people pray during sex. Fiona might not know who it is she's praying to, but it's probably to you, and you are the cause of her incoherent, wordless prayer. It's just never been like this before; her heart might explode from the pressure. This is what it must be like to be a flower of the fields clad in purple and lace...
     She reacts. How can she not? There are little sounds but they have become larger ones, too large to be contained at all. Her hips, her thighs, her body is beyond her control, bound to the strings of her pleasure bound to your control as easily as she is bound to your bed. Right now, she isn't thinking about such things. She isn't thinking about anything at all.
     She is drowning.
     You start, you stop, she tries to catch her breath, but you give her no rest; as if this were still the hunt and not after, you harry her, and broken syllables and words escape her. Begging is not something she is used to doing much of, but she is begging now, reduced to animal sounds and occasional glimpses of coherence through a cloud of pleasure. Her hands form fists as she pulls at the cord, well and truly caught in your trap, in the snare of your mouth and hands.
     There is nothing peaceful about this...

     A kiss on the hip does as much as the spiraling of his tongue in between them. Not knowing where his mouth will land makes your entire body fair game for explosion. Everything quivers, everything shivers, everything shakes. Including the bed as you have a sudden eyeful of red-painted Welshman.
     He tastes of you as he assaults your mouth with the same tearing, pulling kiss, with a complimentary penetrating fullness to match the sudden thrust of him within you. The hunting race continues with the sudden tossing of the bed, his hands buried on the coverlet. You may now pray to the gods in thankfulness for the padded headboard.
     Rascal. You are thrown in together with a rascal. For you feel him pull out of you, his mouth pulling away from you with a biting tug and re-emerging between your thighs. Just when you get used to one thing, one sensation, one pleasure, he changes it, switches it, steals off with your cries and your moans. His mouth sucks and tugs, his tongue rolls, and his fingers slip inside you. A turn and a flip, and he is on his back, his face your cushion, your hands still stretched out before you.
     His hands are large and command your hips, moving you this way and that way in response to his tongue. There's a chuckle and a pat of his hand against your rump, the chuckle earthy and wicked and wild...

     It is all more than a little bit too much. She has never been had like this; she does not know how to react. If her hands were not bound, she would not know what to do with them. You rise above her, and there's an open-mouthed gasp that is cut off by your mouth coming down to hers. You penetrate her, and she is open for you, more than ready, more than desirous.
     Oh, right now it is need...
     If she could draw breath to plead, she would. If she could gather herself to demand, she would. If she were free to take you into her own hands, undoubtedly she would. But she is helpless - and Fiona is unused to being helpless. But it's also very evident that as unused to it though she might be, she more than merely likes it. Tears trickle from the corners of her eyes, driven by passion's requirements. She is overwhelmed.
     The world is overturned and everything's gone topsy-turvy. Even if Fiona wanted to fight the pleasure you're inflicting on her (and have no doubt, it is inflicted), she couldn't. But she isn't able to fight it; she squirms, there is that effort to gather herself, and every time she gathers more than a handful of threads of Self, you do something new, you change your angle of attack, and it disperses until she can make no further attempt. All she can do is react and be conquered. And perhaps this is why she wanted Davydd. It is almost certainly why she wanted Huw. And now, this is how she is opened to you, reduced to a mewling girl-child in your grasp, woman's curves and critical reason abandoned upon the altar that is you...

Posted by rowan at October 23, 2004 09:04 PM