xp_logs | Hotel California: Pride, Gluttony & Lust

Scott, Marie-Ange, and Nico.

WARNING: Violence, mild sexual content.

Scott looked around in confusion, one minute he was outside the hotel with the others planning on splitting up and searching the place and the next he was inside. At least he thought he was inside the hotel, he just didn't remember coming inside. "Amanda, Wanda, you guys in here?" he shouted hearing his voice echo around the empty hotel lobby.

There was no sign of the others, nor signs of life in general. This detail was not necessarily alarming in a hotel this small, but there was a sense of emptiness deeper than anything that might be created by an absent desk clerk. The lights were functioning, and the air lacked the stale, static feel of an unused space. The building was simply empty.

Almost.

"There's something in here with us." Remy appeared in the doorway behind the front desk, oddly coloured eyes tracking the foyer ceiling. "Can you feel it, Summers?"

"Remy?" Scott said relief clearly showing at the other man's presence, "Have you seen Jean, or any of the others?" He asked turning to look around the hallway, "I didn't think that there was anyone else in here but me."

"That would be a disaster. Not much chance of finding Jean on your own."

Scott frowned at the other man, "I'll find her, he assured him, "One way or the other, if I have to rip this hotel apart brick by brick."

"Sure, just like all those other times. Let's be honest, Scott. You sat in prison when Jean was wandering around Genosha because I told you to. When she had her mind taken over, you were too busy in California to be there. So spare me the brick by brick bullshit. You'll find her if it's convenient and not too difficult." Remy rolled his eyes as he walked through the lobby. "Really, it will be up to the adults to fix things. Again."

Scott turned to face Remy and stormy expression clouding his face, "You know what I know you're just worried about your team so I'm gonna ignore that." he said in a frigid voice trying his utmost to remain calm despite the other man's provocations. "Besides you don't know jack about us, I'd walk through hell itself for Jean and she knows it, I don't need your approval."

Remy made a flapping motion with his hand. "Yeah, yeah, sure. Look, Summers, the other X-Men might believe the bullshit, but that's because they're kids. They don't know any better." He turned and transfixed him with a stare. "Your leadership is based on the fact that Xavier needed something for you to do. The first time you fucked it up to the point that Ororo had to step in and save your ass. And then they 'removed' the team leader title from you in a face saving way to not point out your various disasters and breakdowns. Then they buried you in California in order to stop you from causing any more damage out here without hurting your feelings. So, sure, I believe you think you'd walk through fire for Jean, but we know that you'd trip and fall on your face two steps in without the rest of us holding your hand the whole time. So, do you want to zip it while I figure out how to solve this, or throw another tantrum and further endanger your wife."

Remy paused, and then made a shooting gesture with his fingers at him. "Or you could try traumatic amnesia again. Always my favourite. I think that's the one that first got Logan into her panties."

Scott just blinked at Remy, "What the hell man?" he ground out, he didn't expect the other man to get on with him but that last speech just floored Scott.

"It's time to grow up, Scott." Remy paused, staring at the ceiling. "This is a psychic trap that has been specifically tailored to your wife. The FSB used to call it the Hall of Mirrors when I ran across it in Istanbul. Which means it mimics her mind in order to trap her, constructing a structure that mirrors her thoughts and experiences so she can't tell where her mind starts and stops. Which means the only way to break the trap is to make her confront the truths that she's spent years hiding. Like her affair with Logan and what she's been hiding from that mindlink for all these years about how she really sees you. You are not going to like this."

Hesitantly Scott shook his head, "We don't hide anything from one another. Not anymore." he said softly. He and Jean had already learned the hard way what keeping secrets could do to a relationship, it wasn't pretty and he didn't want to go there again. "I don't believe you," he told Remy, desperately wanting to believe his denial, "Jean would never sleep with Logan behind my back..." The X-man's voice trailed off as he thought back to all the signs of attraction between the two of them. "She wouldn't do that to me." he denied weakly turning away from Remy.

"Yeah? If that's the case, then breaking this trap will be simple. You can walk through that door and end it pretty much immediately. But-" Remy paused, looking Scott in the eye. "if she is hiding things from you, you'll get to see every detail, trapped in there with every real thought of hers. You said you'd walk through hell for her?"

He waved at the doorway. "You just might have to."

Scott stepped towards the doorway Remy had gestured at, his footsteps slowing the closer he got to the door as doubt started to creep into his mind. Was Remy right about the hotel? Did he really want to open the door and see what was on the other side? Scott glanced back at Remy before he nervously put his hand on the handle and pushed the door open, It was better to know the truth than live in doubt.

"Scott." Remy said, just as his hand closed on the door handle. "There's advantages to not knowing the truth. I can walk in there and fix it, while you wait. Think about it. Not knowing means it doesn't hurt."

Scott took a moment to consider Remy's offer before shaking his head, "You should know that if you turn away the question is always going to be there Remy, either I run away and spend my life tormented by what might have been behind the door instead of knowing the truth or I face what's in there. From where I'm standing that's no choice at all."

Scott never saw Remy's expression change as he turned back to the door. "That's what I expected." He said, with an unseen leer. "Exactly what I expected."

_____

She had almost certainly come through a door.

Marie-Ange was standing at the end of a corridor, so it was a logical assumption she had found some means through which to enter it. Yet there was no door behind her and none ahead: only decorative burgundy curtains draped across blank wall.

The light cast by the sconces, too, was odd. After a moment she realized they were not electric, but gas.

A swath of plush red carpet stretched to the only visible exit. A single archway gaped at the end of the hall. It had no door, but the light from the sconces did not extend to whatever lay beyond. Above the archway someone had carved a lengthy inscription into the lintel, the final part of which could just barely be made out.

Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create se non etterne, e io etterno duro. Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.

"ALL HOPE ABANDON, YE WHO ENTER..." The growling translated pronouncement broke off into a coughing fit before resolving more clearly into the voice of Doug Ramsey. "Y'know, Dante Alighieri? Symbol Girl doesn't remember the inscription on the gate of Hell from Inferno?"

Marie-Ange stopped still, and then slowly turned in a circle, looking for the source of the voice. She took her phone out of her pocket, tapped the screen until it was clear the device was dead, and then turned again. Doug had not been with them. He was in his office in New York. He couldn't sound like he was just behind her. "Where are you? Do you need help?"

"I'm trying to help -you-," Doug murmured a touch irritably. "Translating and all. It's the final inscription in the vestibule of Hell. 'Before me nothing but eternal things/Were made, and I endure eternally./Abandon every hope, ye who enter here.'"

"Well who puts that in a hotel!?" Marie-Ange asked, dryly. "I know Dante's Inferno, but I read it in French, and English, not Italian, and certainly not 14th century Italian." She shifted an arm to rub at her eyes. "If this turns out to be where someone tried to start a Hellfire Club, and this is some sort of ... kinky...magic sex hotel, I am going to be extremely cross with you. You could have told me directly, and not decided to sneak around like Batman and hack my phone."

#Your phone isn't working,# remarked another voice, this one neutral: Haller. #I have Cypher online. And I'm not picking up any sex.#

"No matter what a White Knight of the Hellfire Club tells you, there is NO SEX in the hotel."

"Cypher is always online." Marie-Ange replied. "That is the point." She rubbed her eyes again, they were dry and itchy. "I know I came through a door. Where did the door go?" Perhaps it was a rhetorical question, because she did not receive an answer, and followed the carpet to the archway, pausing to inspect it, and finding that what she had thought was painted wood to actually be stone, hard and rough, but strangely warm to the touch.

Knowledge rippled into her mind. Geographical formation, excavation by human hands. Darkness as the stone was loaded for some interminable journey, then light as it was unpacked. Warm hands taking measurements, chips falling away under the tools of masons. And, finally, installation in the hotel.

The stone's entire history, unspooling before her.

#Cover Girl's report,# Haller supplied. #Unfortunately the archway doesn't know what's past it.#

"Well do I know what is past it?" Her voice was sharp, more so than usual, and Marie-Ange would've apologized, but she wasn't about to give an inch when everyone giving her information had decided to wake up on the grouchy side of the brain that morning. "Rhetorical question. The only way through is forward." She pushed aside a flimsy black curtain that she hadn't noticed before and passed under the archway.

Scalding wind struck her face like a slap. The air was so hot simply inhaling felt like trying to breathe water, and yielded just as much oxygen. Ash and grit lashed at her eyes. The landscape was barren and volcanic.

And it wasn't only the wind that howled.

Figures twisted in the cyclones, naked and vulnerable to the elements. Screaming, moaning, they grasped for stones or one another, trying to find any anchor. Some of them cried out in other languages, and what faces could be seen were unfamiliar.

Save for one.

A sour desire for revenge twisted at her gut, even as Marie-Ange struggled against the sandpaper wind to try to reach the figure. He passed inches from her fingers once, and she couldn't bring herself to grab at him. The wind bore the blond man away before she could bring herself to touch him.

The rocks made poor shelters, but Marie-Ange had resources that the rest did not, and braced herself between a rock and its imaged clone. The stone dug into her calves as she fought against winds that threatened to drag her into the knot of tormented bodies until she placed a third stone, and then all it could do was drive her into her own images. She reached out again, and her fingers slipped through stringy hair - she couldn't get ahold of him.

So instead he grabbed her, fingers intertwining hers, and a slow smile spread across Quentin Quire's face.

She'd come for him. She'd finally realized what a loser Ramsey was and kicked him to the curb. All right, maybe it'd taken...well, there wasn't much in the way of time references when your entire existence was getting flayed by gale-force winds. But certainly he hadn't expected to end up here for her to play smokin'-hot-redhead lady Orpheus to his rugged manly Eurydice. But she was here.

Quentin had forgotten just how soft her skin was, and he clutched at her hand, not intending to let go. "Thank you," he said, trying for semi-casual and grateful and nice, but in his head, all he could think about was soft skin, and losing himself in it after an eternity of windburn. Softness, and wetness, and heat, and those ridiculous dancer's legs wrapping around him and pulling him in...

Thoughts, in a chorus of voices, the two youngest of whom were thinking "Ew ew ew ew ew!" loudly enough for Marie-Ange's ears to ring flooded her mind, and "Ew!" was exactly how she reacted, pulling back and wiping her hand on her skirt. "Do not touch me! Do not ever touch me again!" She pushed away and formed a wall with her mind, a fence made of gold chain-links that matched a necklace she'd put on that morning. "Quentin, how did you even get here? What are you doing in this hotel?" Marie-Ange said, from behind the safety of her image.

#This is the punishment of the lustful,# Haller reminded her -- and it was a reminder. The Inferno's fifth canto unfolded in her memory, as clearly as if she were viewing it on the page once more. #Be careful about physical contact. It can cause telepathic bleed.#

"How did you... " Marie-Ange cut herself off. She knew how. Telepathy. Perfect visual recall. Psychometry.

Now that she had made contact - or he had - Quentin clung to the imaged fence, fingers still trying to grasp for her as he was blown to and fro, but always in contact with the gold links that kept her from his (icky! A voice she didn't recognize-said in her head) touch. "Let go, or I will make you let go..." She said, and tugged down her jacket to show the tattoo encircling her arm. "I will cut off that hand if you do not stop trying to grope me through the fence."

"Hotel? I don't..." Quentin blinked in genuine confusion before a look of desperation came over his face. "No, you don't understand, I just want..." Her. He'd always wanted her. He clutched futilely through the grating she had created. He just wanted...a respite. A moment to rest, away from the howling cutting wind.

"I know exactly what you want, and you are never going to have it." The words came out sharp, ringing like metal.

_____

Between the Victorian decor and the enforced absence of handheld devices the affair looked like a step out of time. The reception hall was awash with the insubstantial smalltalk of insubstantial people: a smattering of young men and women of Quality discreetly orbited by parents seeking to raise their own. With the lights dimmed and curtains drawn the ivory walls looked gold. Interspersed with the colors of the girls' dresses, this created the illusion the event was taking place in a jewelry box.

Something was wrong. Way too wrong, but Nico's head was too light and the whole thing too shiny for her brain to work properly, somehow. That and the ridiculously frilly white dress she was wearing. Who the hell had stuck her in such a getup? No, she had to figure this out before they make her walk down some stupid stairs with some stupid boy that would probably try to make out with her the moment the adults stopped looking.

"I forgot whose party this is, but her parents rented an entire hotel. I'm putting 50/50 odds on her name being either Haley or Madison. You?"

Blinking, Nico turned towards the voice that was apparently speaking to her. "I'll stick with Madison, or Maddie. Never fails." God she hated that dress.

A young man her own age smiled back at her. As with every other male here, he was wearing a tuxedo -- tailored, of course. This party knew no rentals.

"We could be jumping to conclusions. It could always be normal name with a stupid spelling. You know, Amy but with two Is and two Es. Money doesn't buy you literacy." He smiled again and offered a hand.

"Or one of the three hundred variations of Stephanie, yeah," Nico conceded, smiling without knowing why. She looked around, but it was either the light or something she had drank that made everything fade in and out of focus. Like a dream, she thought, but this wasn't a dream. There was something important she was missing, something that made the hairs at the back of her neck stand out. "God, can this go any slower or what?"

"What, and risk making it bearable? God no. That's simply Not How Things Are Done."

Someone nearby tittered with the high pitch of forced laughter. The stranger's eye twitched like he was listening to nails across a chalkboard. He cast around for some sign they were being watched, then leaned towards her with a conspiratorial air. "All right," he said, "I'll give it to you straight. If I have to listen to one more second of what ribbon Sophie or Bailey or whoever won at a horse show I'm going to break this glass just so I have something to slit my wrists with. I'm making a break for it. You in?"

She needed out of this place, out to find whatever she had been looking for. Preferably in a darker set of clothes. The cute guy tagging along? A plus she wasn't going to shrug off. At least not just yet, she thought. "You guide the way; I've got better things to do here than tripping in these heels and breaking my neck." She even offered her hand and everything.

The glass was handed off to a nearby waiter and Nico's hand gallantly accepted. The stranger straightened up, put on the air of "Bother me not, peons, I've business to attend to" that was cultivated in a certain class of people, and escorted Nico from the room. The crowd spun on, indistinct as a Monet painting.

"Upstairs," Nico's escort murmured. "I've got a room. I think there's a mini-bar. Or mouthwash. At this point I'll take anything with alcohol."

_____

The kitchen was quiet. It was dark, well past midnight. Jean paced back and forth. If she walked any more she was certain to put a rut in the floor. Glancing at the clock, she suppressed a sigh. She didn't want to go back up there.

Logan never needed much sleep and it was hard to get any with everything going on, but what caught his attention tonight was Jeannie pacing in the kitchen. Alone. He made his way to the kitchen and leaned against the wall next to the doorway. "Somethin' wrong, Jeannie?"

Glancing over her shoulder, Jean shook her head.

"Everything," she said. She stared at the clock again, watching the seconds painfully tick by.

"I don't know him anymore," she added faintly after a moment, hugging her shoulders.

He wasn't much a fan of the boyscout but that didn't mean he wanted Jeannie to suffer for it. Logan grudgingly managed to get out. "You two've worked through worse. You'll get through this." He moved to the island and pulled out a chair, motioning for Jean to sit. "C'mon, take a seat. Wearin' yourself out ain't gonna do you any good."

Slipping in into the seat, Jean didn't say anything for awhile. She rubbed her arms.

"He just...." She waved her hand toward the ceiling. "Sits up there, staring into space. And that's on a good day. On the bad ones he wants drugs. He yells when he doesn't get them. Like I'm the bad guy."

Her arms folded, and she clutched her stomach.

"He doesn't want to touch me anymore."

"You're far from one of the bad guys." Logan paused. "He's just...not himself right now."

Understatement of the year if he ever heard one. How the hell did he wind up trying to gloss over the less than perfect aspects of Mr. Perfect? Playing relationship counselor for the two of them was the last thing he ever wanted to do.

He laid a hand on her shoulder and squeezed lightly. "He's definitely not in his right mind because no sane person wouldn't want to touch you."

Jean glanced down, smiling. "Thanks," she said. The feeling of his hand gave her pause but she said nothing at first as her gaze lingered. She realized how much she ignored her feelings for Logan but in that moment, at one of her lowest points, part of her didn't want to.

"It's the truth." He reached out to tuck a strand of Jean's hair carefully back behind her ear. "Don't let how things are now get you down. At some point they'll be over." And he'll probably be kicking himself for playing this evening like he did but he wasn't that much of an asshole.

Another touch, and Jean slowly looked up at him. She studied his face and the lines of muscle underneath his tanktop. He had always wanted her. Scott didn't see her, not the way Logan did...with fire, with passion. And now Scott didn't see her at all. She wasn't sure if he'd ever see her again.

Why wasn't she allowed some happiness?

Leaning in, Jean got closer, and closer, until the right catch of wind could bring her lips to his. Finally, she gave in and took the plunge. She kissed him.

His eyes wide, Scott shook his head as if he could deny what he was seeing through his sheer force of will. This couldn't be real, Jean would never do that to him, it had to be a trick or some kind of illusion. His mind flashed back to Gambit's words, that the entire hotel was a reflection of Jean's mind, but as he watched his wife kissing Logan Scott couldn't find a way to relate those words to the scene in front of him. Was it a memory? A reflection of desire, or something else entirely?

Unable to answer the voices in his head Scott lunged for the first door he saw; he had to get out of here. Out of that room and the scene straight out of his worst nightmares.

She felt like a teenager. The leather seat was slick against her bare back as she wrapped her legs around Logan's hips in a tangle of arms, legs and red curls and not much else. The car was parked on a hill overlooking the mansion but they were taking in an entirely different view.

"Logan....oh god...."

"I knew you'd be wild," Logan murmured against her neck. He brushed his lips along her heated skin while his hands slid all over her. He growled low and started to kiss his way lower. In some ways he couldn't believe this was happening.

Jean laughed, biting back a moan as she arched her back, running her fingers through his hair as he worked. "Mmmm...I can't believe I didn't do this sooner."

He lifted his head to look up at her. "What? Me or the backseat of a car?" Logan nipped lightly at the swell of a breast then rested his cheek against her stomach. He continued to brush light kisses against her skin as he slid his hand along the length of her legs, lingering over the soft skin of her inner thighs.

"Both," Jean grinned. Scott's car was the only one that was roomy enough for their...excursion. She felt a bit guilty but not by much, not anymore.

Her gaze roved hungrily over Logan as she ran her hands down his back.

"Now...Show me why they call you the Wolverine."

Jean closed her eyes and the world fell black in line with her memory, and she let out another moan.

Perhaps it was a yell.

"Scott?"

_____

The wasteland of lust gave way to a murky swamp. Torrents of vile rain and slush hit Marie-Ange, while around her sightless, senseless figures wandered. She could make out distant figures on higher ground, slamming into one another like jousters. Great weights had been tied to their chests in lieu of weapons. Through the obscuring rain it bore the most resemblance to a grotesque sumo match.

Dante had encountered sinners in his swamp, but the ones in Marie-Ange's never even approached her. They parted like tadpoles in a broken puddle as she forced through the icy storm. The slush filled her shoes, and soaked the legs of her pants, and the icy rain ran down her back until the two met, chilling her entirely.

The waters and muck threatened to pull her in, and the half-frozen mud sucked at her feet with each step, and grew deeper, until it was past her ankles. She stumbled on the next step, and tensed as if to fall into the vile slush - and instead hit a hard wooden plank with her knees. It duplicated itself, again and again in front of her, stretching out like a beachfront boardwalk in winter -hard and slippery, but above the cold water.

"Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii'm saaaaaaaaaailing awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay..." At Marie-Ange's practically audible rolling of her eyes in their sockets, Doug trailed off into a raspberry. "What? It's totally apropos! The River Styx, ferryman sails across it...come on!" When she still didn't say anything, there was a distinctly pouty huffing noise over the link.

"Cypher if you are not going to be useful, I will have someone shut off this mindlink." Marie-Ange snapped out. "And you know I will grab you by the ear and shake you if you do not behave." Her voice was so much more steady than her stride. She slipped in the slush piling on the imaged boardwalk several times, until she started taking tiny baby steps so as not to slide off the edge into the cold - or then into the rushing waters below. Even peering over the edge had her spinning with vertigo, before she could clearly see any of the battling figures except for fleeting glimpses of metal on metal.

#The link's all or nothing, I'm afraid,# Haller sent, unhelpfully.

She snapped out something crude in French, and peeled herself off the bridge's planks. "What sort of radio are you if I cannot shut off channels who think they are funny?" Marie-Ange stood, shakily and continued on, not noticing that the boardwalk had grown creaky wooden railings and rope tying the planks together. "At least Artie does not sass me in my own head."

#You chose the stations. I'm just the transmitter.#

Finally she had crossed the river. Though dry, however, the opposite shore was not inviting. Before her stretched a field of sepulchers, all arranged above-ground in a configuration strikingly reminiscent of the cemeteries of New Orleans.

Unlike those found in New Orleans, these tombs burned. The stone slabs crawled with fire as screams issued from within. No occupant in this cemetery had achieved a peaceful rest.

"Marie-Ange," called a voice. Castilian-accented, male, familiar. From within one of the lidless stone tombs a hand groped. Manuel de la Rocha levered himself into a sitting position, flame casting gaunt shadows across his face.

"Marie-Ange," the empath repeated, "Have you come to free me?"

Marie-Ange stared back at Manuel, saying nothing. ~Is he real? This is a bit coincidental, no? First Quentin, now Manuel? What next, Daniel Boudreaux?~ She asked - hoping Haller was still listening, and knowing he was, at the same time.

#Maybe. Or maybe they will be.# A photographic image from the tenth Canto rose to her forebrain.

"It seems, if I hear right, that you can see beforehand that which time is carrying, but you're denied the sight of present things."

"We see, even as men who are farsighted, those things," he said, "that are remote from us; the Highest Lord allots us that much light."

#You can see the future,# continued the telepath, #but I can't see any further than you can. If this really is some version of Hell, who's to say time flows the same?#

"But when events draw near or are, our minds are useless; were we not informed by others, we should know nothing of your human state."

#They could be real. Maybe the real question is, do you care?#

Manuel spat a curse. "Help me!" he howled, his arm reaching over the fiery edge of the slab. "You cannot leave me here!" Desperation threaded his voice and as he rasped, "You do not want to leave me here. .."

The sword grew out of her hand like it was an extension of her. The metal uncurled out slowly and then snapped straight, reflecting the flickering fires like faceted glass. The blade was steel, and the hilt was bone, and so was the armor that grew in overlapping scales up Marie-Ange's arm and shoulder.

Empath's arm came off at the shoulder, but the fingers kept grasping until the sword came down through its hand, pinning it in place.

"You do not want me to leave you here. You do not care what I might want." There was no affect in her voice, no tone to indicate fury or fear. It was flat - and exactly as bland as the sword was sharp. "Bargain with me, Manuel. What do you want?"

The empath screamed high and thin as his dismembered fingers convulsed beneath the blade. Marie-Ange could feel his mind batter against hers, trying to impose his own will upon her own. Shielded by Haller as she was it had no more effect than a fly against a window.

"Free me!" Manuel sobbed. "I will give you anything. I will use my power for whatever you desire, whomever you desire. Power, ecstasy, pain, anything -- just release me!"

"Pain? Your pain shall be legendary," Doug whispered at the back of Marie-Ange's consciousness, unusually menacing for him. He paused, then made a somewhat amused sound. "Frostmourne hungers."

Haller, with the same relentless neutrality, asked, #Is that a deal really worth making?#

"Who are you asking, David? Me, or Manuel?"

_____

It was a bad idea.

It was a really, really bad idea, but Nico was unsure of why. She felt lightheaded. She was missing something huge, something evil. Evil? Where had that word come from? She didn't even notice that she was following the guy all the same, and the giggle at his mention of refreshments. It was almost like watching a movie, starring herself, but realizing halfway it that the script was all wrong.

A sense of dread started to crept up in her, but she smiled nonetheless. The show must go on, right? "I'll have whatever you're having."

"What he was having" turned out to be something amber and mellow. He handed her a glass and then paused to free himself from his jacket. His bow-tie took several moments to unwrap, and the moment he did it was promptly tossed behind the radiator.

"Oops," he said remorselessly, "I guess I lost it somewhere. No offense, but you don't seem like a frills kind of girl yourself. Who did they threaten to get you into that dress?"

Nico drank quickly, and threw her little frilly vest to the far end of the room. "Oops indeed," she answered with a giggle, then finished her drink.

"Honestly? Probably the President of the United States, and then again, I don't even know why I said yes. It's not even black! I need out of this shit." She looked over her shoulder, but she wasn't getting out of the dress on her own. Hmm.

"Need some help?" the boy offered, a flirty warmth in his voice.

Nico turned around, ballerina like, and shot him a smile from over her shoulder. "Unzip me if you dare."

He laughed. "Just sheath your cutting wit for a minute, I don't want to lose a finger."

The zipper parted slowly, exposing her bare skin to the air conditioned room. The movement was just slightly too slow for simple caution, and before he withdrew his hands his thumb grazed the base of her spine.

"Hmm." It was just a little hum, but it carried a lot of meaning. The slight press of his thumb made her hips sway, and the dress started to lose structure on her, and it slid slowly towards the floor. Nico then found out she was wearing a little, thin white dress underneath. It was disgustingly frilly as well. "I think," she said as she made her way towards him. "You are a tad too overdressed."

The boy hesitated, as if confirming the signals he'd received, then grinned. "It's definitely time to switch to casual," he agreed, and plucked free his cuff links. He tossed them on the bedstand and seated himself on the mattress.

"A little help with the shirt buttons?" he asked, his grin playful. "I did help you with that dress."

"Least I could do." Nico got closer, fingers playfully tugging his shirt as she undid it. Then she brought herself up on the bed, straddling him, her dress creeping up her tights. The shirt done, she started to work on his pants.

The boy gave out a moan and moved his hips against her. He set his hands on her shoulders and brought her closer to begin laying kisses at the line of her jaw, working his way to her lips. He slipped the thin strap of her underdress from her shoulders.

Nico moaned in return, fire erupting from his kisses on her skin and his fingers. A hand crept up behind his head and pushed his face on hers, her neck, her chest. Thoughts started to dissolve as she gave herself in to the lust.

His hips began to roll under her, working up and down like a wave as she pulled him in. His breath came hot and quick against her skin. He pulled her dress up around her waist, and the space between their bodies disappeared.