[for zahra] a girl walks in and carves her name on my heart

[st_ingofthehundred]

The remaining fruit had been gathered and put in a basket. The room service cart had been put outside. Socks had been sent off with Lillith and Zvezda....

The door shut behind the last of their friends, leaving Kash alone with Zahra.

In the hours that had passed since her arrival, it had finally begun to sink in that his beloved Zahra had come for him. That she was pregnant with his child (children?) had a ways to go yet.

She had her back to him at the moment. Kash took the opportunity to let himself breathe. And also to appreciate the way the soft grey dress Lillith had brought clung to her curves, caressing them. Holy gods, the woman was beautiful. Perfect.

Before she could turn around, he slipped up behind her and wound his arms around her. One hand rested protectively over her abdomen, but his face was buried in soft, floral-scented spill of her hair. "You're really here," he whispered, like if he spoke too loud, he'd break this dream into a million cutting shards.

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[st_affofthemoon]

She tried to reassure him through her steady touch. Her tail caressed his leg, though was hindered by the dress. She made a note to make room for her tail later.

"I swear on my life and by the moon that I am real. I am standing right here and I am yours."

[st_ingofthehundred]

And I am yours. When he'd arrived, they had been together as lovers a month. Now she was pregnant and his. He'd known she was it for him since the first time they kissed, but this was... new for him, this confidence of them together that she had.

He turned her in his arms so he could see her eyes. "Mine." His chest ached as he said it and his hands still shook when he lifted them to cradle her face in them. "I don't think I've breathed since the last time I saw you."

[st_affofthemoon]

She turned her head just a little to press into one of his hands a bit more. She always felt as if the touch of his hands produced more heat than anyone else who touched her. It was a very calming feeling, even if his hands were shaking. "And now that I am?" Not for the first or last time, Zahra felt a pang of guilt run through her even though she had little control over what happened.

[st_ingofthehundred]

"Now that you're here?" Kash gave her a crooked little smile. "I keep forgetting to breathe because you look so damned good." She did. Not just because she was finally here. She looked beautiful in the dress, full of life... He smoothed his fingers through her hair. "You know you're ridiculously fucking hot."

[st_affofthemoon]

Zahra had confidence in herself and the way she looked. It was other races than often had their hang ups on how she looked and to those people she didn't often pay mind. For Kash, the way he looked at her often made her skin hum in delight. A smile played on her lips. "Just because I know it, doesn't mean I don't like hearing it." Zahra reached up to touch the side of his face. To think just hours earlier she had been worried if she'd ever get to touch him again. A worry she would carry with her for a while until Kash was more centered and they could talk about what happened back home in detail.

[st_ingofthehundred]

"If I said it half as often as I think it, you'd be bored of me already."

The desire he had almost forgotten came roaring back to him in that instant. He took her hand and pressed a kiss to center of her palm. "Seeing you isn't the only thing I haven't done in eight and a half months."

[st_affofthemoon]

The smile on her lips remained as she pressed a bit closer to him. Her tail smoothed over his caf to rest at the back of his knee. "You haven't forgotten anything, have you?" She teased in a low, sultry voice.

[st_ingofthehundred]

Her tail at the back of his leg sent a shiver of recognition up his spine. This wasn't just a beautiful woman he wanted. This was Z.

He slipped a hand under her hair and drew her closer. This time when he kissed her, there fire and magic in it. Heedless of her fangs, his tongue lashed through her mouth desperate for the taste of her.

[st_affofthemoon]

A muffled contented sound pressed into his mouth while her own tongue joined him in a gentle dance. Her hands roamed his body, getting a feel for the man she loved and who she had seen hours ago back home, but had spent months away from her hear. She wanted to feel any changes and drink them in, making sure she knew his body like a roadmap even now.

[st_ingofthehundred]

Under Z's hands, the desperation did not so much fade away as slow and ebb into the familiar, never forgotten, taste of her kisses. In place of the panic came the ache, the endless longing for her that even having her hadn't begun to touch.

"Z." Like before, the pet name sounded like a prayer, a wish on something ineffable and untouchable and somehow anyway his. "Baby. I--" He what? He didn't know the words for what he needed from her, except to take her to bed and kiss every inch of her skin.

Done for words, he simply bent and hooked his arm beneath her knees, lifted her, and carried her to bed.

[st_affofthemoon]

Being carried to the bed, she wrapped her arms around him and smiled. She knew he had a lot going on in his being right now and she hoped to quell some of it. She nuzzled into his neck for a moment before she ran her tongue along his neck and then they were at the bed.

She lay down, looking up at him and drawing him over her gently.

[st_ingofthehundred]

They had had so little time together before he came here, he almost didn't remember how to do this. She'd teased, but he could hardly breathe when he looked at her.

He couldn't just take her, not without at least trying to tell her...

Propped on his elbows, fingertips caressing her cheekbones, jaw, and throat, Kash said, "For the first two months, I got blind drunk every time someone said your name. I couldn't say it without wanting to die."

Because he knew her, he pressed his fingers against her lips. "Don't. Don't feel guilty. It's not your fault. It never could be."

[st_affofthemoon]

She wanted to reply, but Kash's finger on her lips stopped her and she listened instead. She knew she didn't exactly have a choice and, from her perspective, Kash hadn't even disappeared, but she still felt bad about the whole situation. Coming to terms with it fully would take some time. In response, she said nothing, but Zahra's tail moved to caress the side of his thigh then up to his hip. She wanted him to know she'd make up for lost time.

[st_ingofthehundred]

"What I'm trying to say, baby--" and he leaned in to kiss her neck and then her mouth where his fingers had rested. "Is that--" He had said it so many times to so many people. Why was it so hard to say it to her? She deserved to know. She was carrying his child.

"You're my everything."

There. He'd managed it. Did she understand?

[st_affofthemoon]

Looking up at him with white eyes that seemed to somehow softened, she spoke in a quiet tone. "I know, my love. You are my heart and I yours. And from now on, where you go, I will follow." She'd be damned if he disappeared without her again.

[st_ingofthehundred]

"I love you," Kash breathed, and then having said it, couldn't stop himself from saying it again. "I love you, Z."

And not just as the love of his life, he realized, and that was one of the other things he wanted to tell her. But now, at least, the paralysis was broken, and he could speak between kisses and sitting up to unbutton his shirt.

"I didn't know until you stopped answering that I talk to you about everything. I didn't know how much I don't have to say because you already know, until I didn't make sense to anyone." He was, for him, babbling, but that, too, was okay. Because it was Z.

As he pushed off his shirt, it occurred to him to wonder what she saw. If he looked different, but the thought drowned under the flood of words.

"I need you to know that I'm not just glad you're here to fill the huge hole in my chest, but because I've missed every fucking wonderful thing about you."

[st_affofthemoon]

She knew that he wasn't necessarily the same man that she ran into battle with just hours ago, but on the other hand, he was. For him, some of this was still really new and he was taking some of it in good stride. She listened, letting him bare what he needed to bare to her while he took off his shirt. When it was off, she did noticed a difference. He looked a little stronger and definitely cleaner, though with baths in this world as they were that would always be a given.

Her hand reached out to touch his chest, palm light on his body as she watched him, studied his expression, and listened. To know he felt this way, even so early on in their relationship made her heart swell. Her hand rested on where his heart was.

"I can't imagine being away from you for so long." Not anymore. Not since they had become what they had become back home. "I know how you feel, my love. You don't ever have to worry about how I think of you." Her hand trailed down to his abdomen and across, enjoying the feeling of his skin against hers.

[st_ingofthehundred]

"Is it weird for you that you saw me a few hours ago and I'm acting like it's been a lifetime since I saw you last?" he asked as he leaned down to capture her mouth in a deeper kiss than those that had come before. Deeper and more sensual.

He didn't want to ask, except that he couldn't bear not to know if she felt any dissonance over him not being the Kash who'd gotten her pregnant. Been with her as she crashed out of the sky. She didn't seem to, and he knew she'd never treat him differently because if anyone knew how much he needed her, it was she. But her feelings mattered even if they wouldn't change anything.

Everything mattered with Z.

[st_affofthemoon]

She kissed him back, chest rising as if to try to press herself against him entirely. Her kisses lingered, tongue dancing along his teeth before she finally pulled back just enough to talk, but she like their closeness.

"It's a little different." She would never lie to him. "It's strange to think we've had so many experiences and yet, for you, we haven't. We both fell in a battle you have no knowledge of." Zahra paused, bringing her lips to kiss him again, eyes closed, breathing him in.

"A part of me is perhaps worried I am not the woman you remember."

[st_ingofthehundred]

Her hands on his bare skin were intoxicating. For most of his life before her, he had avoided being touched. He still did, with few exceptions, but her touch, holy gods, he'd craved it. The nights when the nightmares were bad, he'd brought himself out of them by forcing himself to try to remember what couldn't be remembered--the feel of a caress. To have it now was almost overwhelming.

But not so much that he missed the hitch of something like an admission of worry in her voice.

He lay himself down beside her and drew her over to her side and in against his chest. "All the things I've missed, all of what you have, they're a thorn in my paw, but you?" His hand smoothed up her back, subtly (for him, okay?) sliding her dress up part of the way with it. "You are everything I remember and everything I want."

[st_affofthemoon]

She fit against him like a puzzle piece, molding to him instinctively. Her eyes closed as her head rested on his chest. She could hear his heartbeat and it calmed her, as it always did. She hoped he was right. There was a small part of her, a part bred and brewed by her father's cruelty, that held onto the 'what if there are regrets' but Zahra was good at pushing those thoughts deep down inside where no one had to deal with them, not even her on most days.

"You are all I want too, my love. What I want and more."

[st_ingofthehundred]

If anything she'd done or said since she got here told him she was still his Z, it was the way she'd fit herself to him like she was made for him and rested her head on his chest without worrying where her horns ended up. It wasn't the comfort of her body against his, but the fact that he knew in that instant that she needed him to love her enough to soothe away what her father had done.

It didn't happen often but when Z showed even a hint of weakness, everything he was leaped in to protect her. So he held her, lips pressed to the crown of her head, and let all the love that had had no outlet for months flow into his fingertips against her skin.

with two fingers he tugged lightly at the shoulder of her dress. "You've got to be about dying for that after-battle sex by now, and I need you like you wouldn't believe." Which was not very subtle code for I need to be yours and know you're mine.

[st_affofthemoon]

Her eyes opened and she moved her head upwards to look at him from where she was on his body. A slow-forming smile spread across her red lips as her tail found its way to Kash's inner thigh, lightly moving upwards. He had given her tail freedom when he not-so-subtly hiked up the dress. She'd have to make a hole for her tail, but right now she knew she wasn't going to need to worry about that for much longer.

"I do have several months to make up with you, now don't I." He would discover she had opted not to put on the underwear despite Lillith taking the time to explain it to her.

[st_ingofthehundred]

"Eight and a half," Kash tried just to say but it came out a deep-seated groan. Her tail was as unsubtle as his hitching up her dress had been and instantly the pent-up frustration of needing her so much for so long had him standing at attention.

He sat up again, all but tore off his blue jeans, shoes and socks with them. Thank fuck he'd never taken to the small clothes they wore around here. He'd be choking to death.

This time when he joined her on the bed, it was at her knees, to raise her dress and lift it off her. He meant to raise it an inch at a time, trail kisses up her gorgeous thighs to her hips. But even thinking about it left him so overstimulated his vision blurred.

So off the dress went, leaving Z bare before him in all her glory. She hadn't taken to the small clothes either, and he immediately bent to worship. Lips pressed to the curve of her belly, he looked up her body at her both gold and blue eyes shining with adoration. "Want you, baby. Can I?"

[st_affofthemoon]

Every time she got to see Kash naked, she drank him in like it was the first time. He was very easy on the eyes and impressive in several ways. And it was clear as he pulled off his clothes that he really had missed her.

As lay down against the sheets that we're softer than most of the linen she was used to sleeping in except, perhaps, Whitestone's. She was already wet, her body having wanted him since the shower and increased in its want when everyone had left and the promise was made.

She nodded to him, to his question, her tail lightly running down his back affectionately. "Always, my love."