[i]You are my beloved,[/i] said the dark knight, the wind carrying his words. There was more there, though. [i]My beloved[/i] rhymed with [i]my conquest[/i] and rhymed with [i]my only[/i] and rhymed with other concepts that could scarce be parsed for the core of the thing’s meaning. A lifetime of perspective was bound up in the naming of her, and there only a gulf between what she could understand and what he meant. But there was no threat in the wind or the words within it, no untoward malice or significant threat. There was impatience, perhaps. Love. Caution. The need to possess and consume. But her life and her health was her own, as it ever was within the cage of his control. She was beloved, after all. Beloved first, and beloved foremost. 

Exhaling breath through thinly parting lips, Roen let the mercurial wind go its own way with its gulfs and half-heard meanings. He was ever fond of his theater and cantrips, but it grew difficult indeed when beloved stood before him with her upturned chin and pretty albeit reddening eyes. She was on the verge of tears, and while he might never admit it to her and least of all to himself, this was a particular weakness when it came to the weeping of his woman. He simply could not abide by it. He softened in mien and aspect both, the grimness of his expression melted away before her sadness and beauty. 

“Tsk-tsk-tsk.” 

Clicking his tongue with fatherly disapproval, the Outsider unlocks the gauntlets off his hands with quiet snaps and hisses of releasing air pressure, and hangs them off his harness before moving to draw the vampyre into his embrace. His limbs and his chestplate whirr and hum with the motive force active warplate, but he hopes they are tiny inconveniences to Gabriela when compared to the warmth and comfort he sought to provide. He wasn’t soft, no, never that, not even out of his battleplate, but the black and gold alloy of his carapace is sympathetic with the heat of him, and his hands, his hard, heavy hands, they are gentle when he runs his fingers through her hair. 

“Do not cry, lovely one.” 

His fingers thread through inky-black hair so vibrant and crisp, each strand clings to a digit with lives of their own. But she is a cold thing, as cold as he remembered and always loved, and he warms her with pads and palms as he cradles the back of her head and draws her up and in. She is a small thing, lithe and possessed of a delicateness so sweet she demanded deference when touched, but she is made to lift up onto the tips of her toes to meet his descent. He seeks to suffuse her senses; to be all that she feels and sees and smells and tastes. But most of all, he seeks to quiet her. And to that effect, he claims her whispering mouth the way all lovers do: with a kiss. Was there artistry in it? Romance? The deft press and subtle tilt? Oh, he could be a master of kisses, this thing of Perdition; he could send the lover to her knees with a draw of his mouth and the capture of her breath. 

But he feels little and less the artist tonight, and more the lord he was affected to be. So where there’s supposed to be art, there is savagery; where she might have wished for romance, only need. There was no deftness in the press of his mouth, except in the absolute pressure of it, and there was no subtlety in how he tilted his head - he was wickedly forward in his attempt to part her lips and seek out the coolness of her mouth. There was an audience, he knew. There always was and would be. But he is sidling close and clutching her head in his hands, and he coaxes Gabriela to turn so that it is his back that is facing all who would watch and appreciate a [i]Don Juan Triumphant[/i]. He gives all his rear aspect, all broad shoulders and flowing mantle, all but subsuming his prize within the shadow of his shape. And he devours her. Ill-suited for the bite and draw of a vampyre, his only means of taking Gabriela into himself is to part her hesitant lips and pull the cold air from her lungs, which he does. 

It doesn’t matter if she disobeys and cries anyway, so long as she has sense enough to not struggle with her captor. And he is not wholly cruel, at least not where eyes can see. He takes the breath from her lungs and breathes smoke and spice back into her, warming the cold woman from without and within. Yet for it all he is a clumsy lover in his warplate and need, and an errant swipe of tongue finds a sharpened fang with carmine results. He winces, and it isn’t just sweet cold that he tastes, but ichor, too. He has cut himself on her, his own prickly flower, and it makes his brows contract and his aspect returns to grimness when pain is spliced into his pleasure. She is no longer kissed, and Roen withdraws to briefly inspect his handiwork, and how he marvels at it! She is flushed, her lips are plumper and redder, and she is beautiful. Just beautiful. More beautiful, perhaps, than memory could say.. 

“What have I done?” He asks, swiping a bloody tongue across his mouth and wrinkling his nose at the taste of his own vitae. “[i]You’re[/i] the one that cut me.” Soft, accusatory, even almost amused, he flashes her for one brief and startling a boyish twist to his sensual mouth. “How dare you?” Taking his hands from their cradling of her head, he lets her down with becoming gentility, now that he has taken the least of his desires from her. He had to, or there would be no end to the kissing. There were too many ways to kiss, too many deviations and variations, they could spend an eternity standing in the cold, willing to find them all. But they were being watched, and there were other things to do and places to be with her. Setting his hands on Gabriela’s shoulders and lowering his gaze, Roen smoothes out the fabric of her clothes, primping and preening her with his customary fastidiousness. She was absolutely filthy. 

“Mmm, you’ve led me on a bit of a chase. Even [i]I[/i] don’t know where we are, or how to get home. You must have been very afraid indeed if the Threshold City sent you here.” A furrow of brows; a wrinkling at the edges of his mouth and eyes. “I take a very dim view of mothers abandoning their family, Gabriela.” He says, serious. Menace crept into his low tone. He did not want to keep this beloved soul under lock and key, but by his power, she was forever testing the limits of his forbearance. And those two that were outside, watching them. He turns his head, throwing a cruel look over his shoulder at the giant and the woman. “Another tavern, another pair of friends..,” he trails off, looking back at Gabriela. 

And in looking, his rising outrage peeters off grudgingly. She was afraid. She was [i]still[/i] afraid. Willfully, unhappily, he softens himself to her. 

“Are you okay?” He moves to place a comforting hand on her throat, hesitates, then brushes her cheek with his knuckles. “Don’t be scared.” 

[i]He is unfair,[/i] the wind whispers. [i]And unfair. He is a black magician. Black arts he makes in black labs of the heart. The fair are fare and deathly white. The day will not save you. And he owns the night.[/i]