"No." said Sera, sniffling and not-quite-crying for reasons both abundant and not-quite-clear as his mouth finds her temple and her pulse beneath, fierce and firm. And also: smiling, thoroughly enough that he can feel the tension of it beneath her skin, which is beneath his mouth. An edge to that smile and a flash of brilliant light across the surface of her gaze. "It was the fucking airplane outside the window."
--
Her make-up is a little smeared but sometimes that is how she wears it anyway. So today and now, well that is how she wears it anyway, grabbing her hat and holding on to it because there's no natural wind but jet engines create their own and she doesn't know what he's thinking as he looks at her with her hair swirling out behind her and her skirt - fuller than many she wears - also dancing around her thighs but she leans into the wind and catches that glance and gives him a smile that is a little bit distant and warmer than you might ever begin to believe, unless you saw it. And if you saw it, the underlying heat might just make you
melt.
--
"Jesus fucking Christ - " Sera is marveling in her way which is not a [i]Pretty Woman[/i] way and is not a [i]Disney Princess[/i] way and is not even a return to cookie mountain sort of way but has an edge; a clear edge that is not quite a blade but is still gleaming because the marvel in her tone supercedes the irony in the curve of her mouth. Maybe it's just admiration: the way he makes her feel, like all of his wealth is natural, essential, necessary, his fucking due. Like silver spoons were made just to fit into his goddamned mouth, and for no other reason. Her hand in his as they wander through the front cabin to the back cabin with its armchairs and its couches and its wet bar and its windows and its view of the tarmac and - and - and
"You do this all the time, don't you? All the fucking time."
He does. She just knows it. Of course he does. And oh, how it makes her smile.
--
In the cabin Sera wants a drink wants two drinks thinks that they should open a bottle of champagne. Doesn't Hawksley think that they should have champagne? This is way fucking better than coach, Sera remarks, probably more than once and with a quiet snort of amusement. It is also way fucking better than first class and that has a glint of awareness, too. It is, she tells him, nearly as good as a band-van and a fortnight and truck-stop showers and coconut cream pie and a waitress named - actually named Flo - but she's teasing him and he's fairly certain that she didn't eat much of the pie since she's put on a bit of the weight she lost while fasting but: not that much. Not enough really.
She doesn't care what the champagne is. Does not fucking care if it is Cristal or Korbel she just wants bubbles and she might not even demand it until after he has poured them each a Scotch, which she will also drink. Because Sera will drink two of anything you put in front of her and then slash you a grin and ask for more.Sera has tossed her fedora on one of the fixed tables and kicked off her goddamned heels (which gave her a bit of trouble on the metal steps leading up to the jet) and set aside her champagne and is kissing him with a sudden and drowning thoroughness that feels like being pulled underwater and then emerging, gasping for air before punging deeper and deeper and deeper and welcoming the burning hunger for air in your lungs when someone nips back to politely interrupt and suggest that they take their seats and fasten their seatbelts they are cleared for take-off there's a window of opportunity is there anything else they need?
--
Which, no. Not Sera. Nothing else she needs other than privacy. Which makes her feel a strange and sudden twinge for the so-proper Mr. Collins as she surrenders to procedure and surrenders Hawksley for the moment and takes her seat. While they are buckling in Sera is telling Hawksley about the champagne glasses that Dee's aunt owned which now Dee owns which are not flutes at all but old-fashioned wide-mouthed shallow-bowled glasses which make it feel like you should be attending a garden party, the sort where you might wear white lace gloves and a crown of flowers in your hair.
She tells him this story in such a bright patter that he might well miss at first the fact that as the plane begins to taxi she's also taking off her clothes. Specifically: her underthings. Leaning forward and reaching back beneath her t-shirt to unhook her bra, then shimmying out of it, sliding first her left arm and then her right back beneath the tee to slip out of the straps. When she's free of it she hands it off to Hawksley with the prim, poised note of a society wife asking her husband to hold her purse while she tries on this mink and Sera does, in fact, ask him to
hold this for me.
The plane is wheeling around. The crackle of static as the captain comes on the intercom to tell them their order for the runway, their ETA, their path over the mountains. In case of a water landing - oh that's rich. Sera's stomach lurches a bit as the jet engines gun and the plane swings to a brief, moving stop. That's when she unlatches her seatbelt and arches up in her seat, just enough to shimmy her bikini briefs over her hips and down her thighs.
She retakes her seat and re-latches her seatbelt and again, there is something deliberate and prim about the way she does this. Some contained pleasure in the curve of her mouth as she flips up the hem of her skirt and stretches out first her left leg and then her right, carefully and precisely unbuttoning her garters, front and back, sliding her briefs down past then, then tugging her stockings back up her thighs and refastening the garters with the same precision. Until she can kick off her panties, too. Reach down and scoop them up and toss them to him, see? All
hold this for me,
as they lurch back into motion and the engines start to rev and the plane starts to rise.
Sera is watching him then, while the plane starts to climb. His profile, against the windows and so intently see. Not because she wants to see his reaction to her little show, but because she wants to see the way he looks against the sky as
they
take
flight.
HawksleyJesus Christ.
Hawksley's mouth curls at the corner, a dry smirk as Sera is surveying the cabin: the couch, the big screen, the wet bar, the armchairs, all the leather and polished chrome. There is a bowl of fruit on a small table, strawberries like Dee's lipstick and round green grapes, small as marbles. Hawksley lets her hand slip from his and walks to it, plucking a berry from the bowl as she's asking him if he does this all the time. He does, doesn't he?
He turns to look at her over his shoulder, lips around the strawberry, teeth sinking in. He smiles as his lips close together after the bite, but again: it's more of a smirk. He doesn't answer.
--
Of course champagne. Of course champagne and calling someone back to open it for them, pour it for them, in flutes not plastic cups. Hawksley sprawls on the couch while the plane is being prepped, arm slung over the back, knees apart, back slouched like a bastard. He watches her toss her fedora and her heels aside, they'll knock about during takeoff. The champagne is set down and there is then a Sera on his lap.
And Sera's lower back under his hand. And her mouth on his mouth, tasting strawberries and champagne on his tongue and there's an elegance and luxury to not just these flavors or this environment but him, but she has seen him most clearly and she knows there are reasons.
Hawksley is a sky god, and all sky gods are kings.
--
There are traceries of her lipstick on his mouth, reddening it slightly when Collins comes to the door. Collins who knocks, and Collins who sees Hawksley holding champagne with one hand and pressing Sera closer to him with the other, and Collins who takes and secures their glasses, corks the champagne, takes care of the fruit only so it can come back out again when they are floating in the air.
Hawksley has no grin for him, just a Jesus Christ! when they're interrupted, an annoyed snap at the consor, who takes it in stride. Who always takes it in stride. He lets her go while she's telling him about champagne glasses, old-timey ones.
"You would look lovely with a flower crown, if a bit on-the-nose for the hipster set," he says, hiding no admiration and pulling no punches, because he so rarely does either of those things.
He does not miss her undressing while she tells her story. He listens but he watches, their armchairs facing each other, which will make Hawksley feel a bit as though he is being grabbed by the shoulderblades and lifted into the sky, an uncomfortable, surrendering feeilng that he is nonetheless choosing to throw himself into. He leans on the arm of his chair and stares at her while she folds her arms back like wings themselves, the tiny sounds of the bra being unhooked hidden by the engines. He reaches out one arm slowly, takes the bra she hands off between two fingers, rubs those fingers idly on the fabric and the lace, a mindless stroke of his fingers, though his eyes never leave her.
The panties next. The delicate way she smooths her skirt over her legs and sits primly upon its hem on the leather, and the thoughtless way she undoes her garters just to get those panties off and then keeps them on, which stays the words that were about to leave Hawksley's open lips. Instead he takes a deep drink of air, as they are being pulled forward, faster and faster.
It's in his thoughts but not on his lips: Jesus Christ, Sera.
Hawksley does not try to catch her underwear. They land on his lap, draped over his knee, and he glances down at them with a soft huff of laughter before looking back over to her, pressing the tip of his tongue to one of his incisors. His breathing has elevated. There has been no suggestion that it is safe to remove their seatbelts. And he very much wants to, for a moment, open his belt and grab the ceiling and let himself topple to her, grab the back of her chair and the back of her head and kiss her til it bites, but
in that moment he wants a thousand things, and he -- being born to such privilege -- just chooses one.
--
The plane lifts. He is not looking at the sky, she might notice, but he would make a different argument. Hawksley never says a word until they're held cradled in midair, suspended by their own rapid propulsion and miracles that somehow the masses allow themselves to believe in. There is a soft chime, not the familiar ding of any less wonderous aircraft, and he unclasps his seatbelt.
He stands, letting her bra dangle and then drop from his hand, letting her underwear fall from where it hung on his jeans. He looks at her for a long moment, then
walks away.
To the wetbar, where he grabs the champagne, uncorks it again with his teeth, and pours their emptied glasses anew. Downs his in two swallows, refills it, and then carries it back
to the couch, where he sets the champagne flutes on the little table,
sits down,
sprawls,
and finds her with his eyes again, wherever she may be. He doesn't tell her come here. Surely he doesn't need to.
SerafíneSera has never been on a private jet. Or, if she has, it was too long ago in wholly different circumstances, filtered through the vague drift of a half-remembered, half-known childhood and whatever lies between then-and-now. Doesn't know what the discrete little noise signifies until Hawksley unlatches his belt and - hey, they're flying. She has been watching him watching her and as he rises she remains seated moment or two or three, watching him still, and watching her panties slip from his thigh to his knee to the floor.
A small, rather private little smirk curves her mouth. She laughs, unlatches her own belt, and rises to drift in an eccentric orbit around the cabin, bending over by the porthole windows to watch the city of Denver curve away far below. The Rockies look like a map in relief shot through with glittering reflections of water, the winding blacktop roads, curving sinuously through the mountains, cutting straight through the valleys. Her toes curl in the carpet. The interior thrums with the muted noise from the engines and they are still rising.
Hearing that pop, Sera glances back over her shoulder and finds Hawksley standing at the bar, the cork between his teeth, champagne flutes unearthed from where Collins - Collins at whom Hawksley cursed and snapped when the consor interrupted the pair of them to ready the cabin for takeoff; Collins at whom Sera flashed a mild, apologetic smile for his reception, that was nevertheless nothing close to self conscious - hid them away, cradled in some clever cabinet and closure.Her eyes are dark. The little window behind her is so bright with the smear of the sun against the insulating layers of glass that it casts her features even more in shadow. And that posture, bent over to peer out of the window - the white t-shirt and the arch of her lower back, the curve of her ass draped by the loose lines of the black cotton skirt, the dark line of the garters peeking down the backs of her thighs, the neat little buttons holding up her fishnets - christ, she makes the most inviting sort of picture. Fuck it, so does he.See the way she watches him over her shoulder, her eyes dark, her mouth ever-so-slightly parted. Catching her lower lip with her incisors, her eyes on his mouth, the cork between his teeth, the easy elegance and unstinting arrogance of his posture as he drops the cork, pours them both a flute of champagne, tosses his own back and pours himself another, which makes her so damnedhungryfor him. For his mouth and his arrogance and his hands, the beating of his heart, in time with and against her own. Her eyes drop from his to his shadow on the carpet and she's smiling then, a delicious coil of anticipation all whirl-i-gig up her spine. These are the moments when everything feels new, all over again, and old as time or sin or any other lie humans tell themselves: the creeping flush of her arousal beneath her skin, and the punctuate feel of it deep in the core of her body.
Sera's private little smile just widens he finds the couch and his eyes find hers, tug them up from her quiet little focus on the floor somehow, call it fucking magic, and there he is, all elegant bastard sprawl, just waiting for her.
She comes to him. Of course she comes to him - where the fuck else would she go? - pushes herself away from curving wall of the fuselage and saunters across the intervening distance. Stops at the table and picks up her champagne flute and tosses it back as easily as he. Drinks it the fuck down - such a gluttonous girl, see? Her champagne goes all-at-once and she wants another but she wants him more.
Her mouth and her spine and her head are full of bright, dry bubbles and the plane is moving now in a long, elegant, arcing sort of bank, which they can both feel as a rising curve invested in the angle and motion of the plane, but which does nothing to displace them. Sera sets her now-empty flute aside and holds his gaze as she just climbs over him, straddling his lap, her fishnet-clad knees knees flanking his thighs, her posture all upright so that she can look down on him.
She reaches to cup the back of his head with her right hand and maybe he's reaching to pull her closer with both arms or maybe he's just sprawling still, arms wide open, letting her take whatever she wants from him. Well: this is what she wants, right now. She reaches for his right hand with her left, settles his palm over her t-shirt, over her left breast. Her own hand is cool over his - the dry, pressurized air of the plane - and she pushes until the soft curve of her small breast is distorted by the pressure of his hand. He can feel her heartbeat through her skin, strong and sure and rapid. He can feel every breath she takes, and they are coming faster and faster still. He can feel her nipple tighten from a neat little bud to a hard little button, beneath the cotton, beneath the rough pressure of his palm.
Oh,she is smiling. Tipping her head lower and lower, forehead against the crown of his skull, her hair a loose blondish curtain around them. Dropping her mouth not to his mouth but to his ear, scraping and then closing her teeth over the cartilage, then kissing him, pressing her tongue to his skin, all yielding-soft, to sooth away any sting of injury."Believe it or not," she tells him, "I've never done this before." Her nose in his hair, the playful curve of her cheek against his temple. "But I can't wait."Of course not.
She never can.
HawksleyLet's make no mistake about it: Hawksley Rothschild -- whether you call him by his name or by that appellation of his birth, David Davie Livingston -- is a man born to such wealth, such privilege, that his approach to life is not one of sheer gratitude at all the glorious sensations the human body is capable of experiencing or the sincerity of passions that the mind and soul can be uplifted and destroyed by or even the awe-inspiring regularity and occasional madness of nature. These things, both pleasure and pain, chaos and clarity, awe and derision, are. His. Due. He sees no reason that he does not deserve these things, that he should not walk among these wonders as their equal or even their superior. What else, he might say, was he or anyone else born for if not to receive these gifts?
Perhaps he is right. He certainly seems to be doing just fine psychologically as a result of this outlook. He does not question when good things happen to him because of course good things happen to him, and he does not despair when bad things happen to him because really, bad things rather rarely happen to him.
So there you have him, in his chartered private jet, feeling like chartering a jet and not owning one is actually a bit sub-par and even slightly embarrassing and maybe he should be a bit nicer to his father so his father will buy one and then he can just take that out occasionally. This is what he's thinking, abstractly, as he pours and downs champagne, dropping the cork from his mouth into the little steel sink in the wet bar.
Much more immediately, he is thinking that they have been in the air all of thirty seconds and Sera is wearing nothing at all under her t-shirt and skirt and he is thinking of her skin and her body and the last time he felt her breast in his mouth and he is thinking about fucking her. These thoughts naturally outclass and outpace any others. But we mention them all because this applies to Sera, too: a good thing that is happening to him. He does not question it, or doubt it. He does not tread warily. He is reckless and arrogant not because he sees Sera and sex with Sera as something he is owed or something he is due, but because it is something that is happening. The way he feels about her is something that is happening to him.
And he is not being careful.
He does not think he has to be.
He is immortal.
He is a god.
--
What is she?
--
Hawksley watches her drink and tips his head back, the alcohol comforting and soothing his mind, deadening parts of him so other pieces can awake. His hands are at her knees when she presses them into the cushion; they run up her thighs to her hips as she straddles him, his eyes flicking down at the rucked-up fabric as he lets out a sigh. "I want you," he mutters, quietly and unnecessarily, while her fingers search into his hair.
Sera puts his hand on her breast. Hawksley huffs a laugh and takes his hand back, sliding it under her shirt. She can guide him from there if she likes; she doesn't need to. He touches her anyway like that, feels her, unhesitating and eager, like he's been waiting for this all day,
or perhaps the last few weeks. His thumb passes over her nipple when she kisses his ear like that, bites and licks him, making him shudder. Without even meaning to he pulls her against him more firmly, lifting his hips from the couch to grind into her while she's talking.
And he laughs. Like a bastard or just a rich boy he laughs, his hands hidden under all that clothing she's wearing, which is obviously far too much. "Done what?" he mutters, which is exactly the same as We'll see. He never assumes. Or maybe he just likes pretending not to know.
SerafíneI want you he tells her and this makes her laugh; her laughter is low and it is rich and it is dark and it is sweet. Warm against his ear.
"I know," she says back to him, her voice caught in the curve of her throat, thown back into the curve of his ear, vibrant and immediate and intimate. She bites him again, then lifts her mouth from his skin, tossing back her head as he grinds his hips until into her and she catches her breath and she makes this noise and she tells him, "I know."
He takes his hand back: wants her skin not the impression of her skin beneath cotton. Well, he knows where he's going and she doesn't guide him again, just reaches back for him with her left hand too, bracing her weight against his shoulder as she responds to the movement of his body against hers.
Done what?
"Had sex while flying," and the silly is subsumed as she tucks her head down to him, forehead to forehead. "in anything, let alone a private fucking jet, Christ. With a sky god in the sky."
HawksleyHawksley grins at her, at the implied silly. He's a little drunk. He grins, he mutters
"I'm always flying when I have sex,"
which is truer than he even means it to be. The words stumble over her own, though, and he closes his eyes a moment, reels, opens them again, still cupping her breast and squeezing her skin in his palm as though to reassure himself she's real.
"I'm not a god," he whispers, like this -- being called one, not admitting it's false -- hurts him somehow. But he doesn't want to hurt. He pulls her down to kiss her mouth --
Jesus, he loves her mouth, every smile and laugh like a knife opening up the sky.
"Take off your shirt," he says, his lips barely parting from hers.
Serafíne"You're always Hawksley," see, she remembers that. When did he say that to her? It doesn't matter, the worlds crawled under the sky like the words and here she is, bending over him, close close close close, breathing and warm and flushed and half-laughing but also muttering that kind of agreement.
Then he's pulling her down and she is kissing him again, eyes closed, hungry for him, her mouth driving, seeking, her hands splayed in his hair and lifting his face back up to hers.
"I like it on," she mutters back, pulling away from his mouth just enough that he can feel the flash of her teeth over his lips, her breath like a tattoo. "Take it off me yourself."
Then she's pulling his head back, right? Following his mouth with her own but not quick, keeping him just out of reach before she laughs and moves, all spine-curling, releases him and reaches for the hem of the t-shirt, arms criss-crossed, peeling it off her body and throwing it -
- throwing it fucking somewhere. With all the many other pieces of her garments littering the cabin. Shoes and hat, panties and bra. T-shirt.
She's leaning back, watching him as she undresses, and reaches behind her waist next. Reaching for the zipper of her skirt.
HawksleySomething makes it hard for him to stop smiling, even after that bump, that strange little hurdle that had some hidden scar tissue tightening up, tensing for a moment before he could relax again. Before she kissed him again, or moved just so on him again.
"Well, if you like it on --" he is saying, and then forgetting to say, because he fully intends to at least shove it up so he can get his mouth on her, but Sera must have been kidding or Sera is being kind because she folds and unfurls her arms, drops the fabric somewhere else, and she's all bare skin and tattoos.
Hungrily then, with a groan, Hawksley spreads his hands on her back and puts his mouth on her breast, engulfing her without teasing, without flirtation of his tongue to her breast or her nipple, just... devouring her. Someone up front, Collins perhaps, hears a gasp over the sound of the engines, and he simply keeps working on the tablet he brought with him to catch up on some financials.
In the back, his employer is grabbing Sera's skirt, grabbing the zipper she's pulling down, growing impatient and all but yanking it down her hips like that's going to help them at all. To slide it off she'll have to leave his lap and he doesn't want that. So he gives up. He yanks his head back, eyes fevered, lips parted. He removes his shirt far more quickly and with fewer complaints than Miss Sera, pulling her towards his chest. He wants to feel her skin on his skin.
SerafíneThe gasp that poor Mr. Collins hears is undoubtedly Sera's own: the moment that Hawksley's mouth engulfs her breast. Her spine arches in offering or invitation or it is perhaps a sheer autonomic response. His mouth on her breast and some electrical charge up the column of her spine that pulls her shoulders back and has her crying out and gasping for another breath, and then another,
and it is no wonder that Hawksley gets impatient with Sera's undressing because as soon as he takes her in his mouth her fingers go a little bit nerveless and the tab of the zipper just sits there and then his hands are there and - fuck it - the skirt's wedged further down on her hips now.
It's staying the fuck on.
Her breath is reddened from his mouth and her eyes are bright and her mouth is not bruised, not yet, but her lipstick is smeared over her mouth and his own. Christ the way he looks, all those fucking muscles she cannot begin to name.
He pulls her down onto his chest and she goes except her hands are between them so it is skin to skin interrupted by skin, because she's laughing, eager, unbuckling his belt as she smiles down at him, meets his fevered eyes with her own, soaks him in, all breathless.
HawksleyAt this point, Hawksley can't remember the last time he was with her. It was weeks. And one could say they made up for waiting then or had enough of each other to last but it never lasts. It doesn't really last forever, and he forgets how she tastes even though sometimes a memory from years ago will stir unbidden and sudden to the surface, erupting and overpowering all his other thoughts with things he thought he had lost.
Not the way Sera has lost them, though.
Hawksley just turns her over. Her hands are on his belt and he knows that if he just gets out of her way she'll pull his jeans down or off and pull him inside of her but all the same: he rolls her to the side, her back hitting the leather of the couch, his arms under her, holding her to him. The ends of his hair brush over her clavicles when he kisses her other breast -- mustn't neglect either of them, that would be ungentlemanly -- a groan rising, vibrating up from his throat.
"Tell me you have a condom this time," he says, the first words like a curse and a prayer, even though -- to be perfectly fair -- she did have condoms that time they were just in that clutch and that clutch was on the bar and they weren't in the bar anymore. And to be even more fair, there were condoms in his nightstand drawer in that palatial bed of his back at his wizarding castle of a house but he wasn't thinking about that or anything at all and she wasn't asking for anything but for him to fuck her again.
His mouth is on hers. And her breast and her neck, kissing behind her jaw, kissing her pulse, panting against her skin. "Tell me you don't care again," he says, quieter, rougher, before his teeth set in her neck.
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