*****
"so grow libido throw dominoes of indiscretions down falling all around
in cycles circles constantly consuming, conquer and devour
it's time to bring this fire down bridle all this indiscretion long
enough to edify and permanently fill this hollow
feed me fill me up again temporarily pacifying
feed me here fill me up again temporarily pacify this hungering"
-- "the hollow," by A Perfect Circle
*****
Oddly enough, the thought recurred to her on waking the next morning, and then again during the day at unexpected moments. So she was in a decidedly odd mood when she grabbed her pre- calculus textbook and headed for Logan's room after dinner. He glanced up when she entered the room — her presence there at that hour so expected that she no longer bothered knocking — but refrained from asking if she was planning to resume ‘practicing' that night.
She saw the question on his face, though, or picked it up from Subliminal Logan on a non-verbal level, and answered it. "I thought of something." Accepting the raised eyebrow for the question that he wasn't bothering to voice, she answered, "My problem seems to have been that I've been enjoying absorbing you too much. I need a little more... *motivation* not to take from you whenever I touch you."
Having dropped her eyes to the floor when saying that last bit, she didn't catch the way his eyes had widened at that statement — especially when she followed it up by peeling off one glove. To his credit, he had his expression back under control by the time she lifted her gaze to his face again, and didn't flinch when she raised her bared hand — though he held himself very still as she reached for his face.
Marie gently pressed her palm against his cheek, fingers tracing through his sideburns, and thought very, *very* hard about how much she wanted him to be able to touch her anywhere he wanted to for as long as they both wanted to...
For his part, Logan was startled again — twice. First was the feeling when she touched him, still pulling but not painfully. More of an unpleasant tingling, as of feeling returning to numbed flesh, but not even close to the searing drain of lifeforce that it had been the first couple of times. Unthinkingly, he raised his hand and pressed it to hers against his cheek, before they both realized the significance of the action — that her hold on him had been lessened to the point of allowing him to move.
It was as their eyes met each other wonderingly that Logan got his second surprise. With her standing mere inches from him, he couldn't help but detect the clear scent of arousal wafting from her body — which gave him more than an inkling of how she was "motivating" herself not to drain him.
Giving her a half-smile and a quirked eyebrow, he suspected that she was still drawing enough from him to pick up the drift of his thoughts, which had become somewhat graphic as he thought of a few "motivational techniques" that might have a hell of a lot of potential under the circumstances. She blushed a little — which he couldn't help but find adorable — but left her hand where it was, and her scent became if anything even more enticing.
He retained enough self-control to refrain from doing anything like pulling her into his lap or trying to touch *her* in a few interesting places (if necessary through her clothing), but she no doubt continued to pick up little flickers of what he was thinking about doing with and to her, if her continued blush was any indication.
They managed to stay like that for several minutes, before she sighed and pulled her hand from between his own hand and cheek. He reluctantly let her go, then spoke. "That wasn't bad at all."
And it hadn't been. He was a tiny bit drained, but not exactly beyond the point of standing on his own power, and more than ready for a repeat performance whenever she was willing to try again.
"Could have done better," she said. "I was still getting a little from you."
"So we keep practicing..."
*****