Luck be a lady (ReD)

Yoka practically purred with the movement, wriggling to find the perfect spot when he drew her closer. She closed her eyes and breathed in his scent right below the crook of his neck and she would have been content to stay there, but he tilted her face back up to his own.

He called her his love and Yoka kissed that spot on his neck in return, but she didn't understand it like Murphy did. To her, the word was simply a pet name. Yoka already underestimated what this meant to him. She didn't know how it would hit her like a bullet when she understood.

"Okay," she said, and she gave him another gentle squeeze. It was in her nature to be rough and it surprised her that, even though he was solid, that he was tangible, that he was here, she was still surprised she could touch him without him disappearing. It was such a stupid thing to be surprised about, but she was. She pursed her lips and considered this, but it wasn't an emotion she could deal with at this moment.

She thought again about the moment in the car.

"Murphy," she said. "I want to try to make you feel good. Would you let me do that?"

She thought about every touch he'd had that must have hurt, and Yoka knew she couldn't erase them. She wouldn't even think to try.

But she wanted to at least amend the damage she had done.

She leaned forward as though she was going to kiss him again, but she nipped at his bottom lip, holding it between her teeth for just a second before breathing the words into this mouth.

"I want you to take your shirt off."

Yoka was in the latter category with his scars.

She was the sort of person to idolize scars. If she really examined her reasoning for this, it had to do with change. Yoka had lived through five centuries. She had seen so much change it was difficult to keep up with, difficult to even conceptualize that only a few hundred years ago she was excited by the luxury of a straw bed and now that bed she had was so soft and so plush she was sleeping on a cloud. And forget cell phones.That was a whole other story.

Everything changed. People changed. But scars remained. They were one constant that humans, at least, couldn't disguise.

"Roll over and close your eyes," she said, and then, after another moment, "and let me know if I hurt you, or if you want me to stop."

It wasn't just for his benefit that she said that--she'd say it to most before doing something like this. Communication was important. She reached beneath the pillow on the other side and produced a bottle of something that smelled of cinnamon and rubbed it on her palms.

She climbed over him, resting herself ontop of his butt, and Yoka ran her fingers over his back for a moment, touching the scars. It was an unfamiliar texture, not the same as a person who is covered by burn scars. The variety fascinated her.

She wondered, then, if maybe Murphy's power was like an illness in that It needed him alive in order to function.

She wanted to ask him how he was still alive.

Instead, she continued her feather light touches, just drawing patterns as though she was casting spellwork over him. She watched the way he responded, trying to take notes of any sensitive ares and assess if it was a good sensitive or a bad sensitive, though honestly without asking it would be hard to tell.

She leaned forward and started to work, massaging her fingers into his shoulders, then down each arm and back up. She worked his back slow and hard, putting her whole body into the movement. Her hips pressed him down, keeping him in place, while she rubbed.

She forgot how much she liked doing this.

It was a skill she'd added to her repertoire and expanded over the years, but it wasn't one she got to use often, and not in a situation like this.

She rarely did this without the expectation of something to follow, though, and she tried to ignore the way her body responded out of habit. She resisted the temptation to lick down his spine. It was a great way to give goosebumps.

Instead, she dragged her hair down his back and continued her assault on him with her hands.

"Murphy," she said after a moment.

She was done focusing on the worst.

"What is the best thing that could happen from this?"

Murphy was fucking tense.

He was so tense Yoka had to wonder if he was even enjoying this.

It's not that she blamed him for being tense. Not at all. It's just that he was basically one big knot and Yoka was doing her best to unravel it with the steady press of her fingers. She had to admit, though: she liked the challenge.

Murphy was giving her something she hadn't experienced in a long time. It was a puzzle she couldn't piece together immediately, one where Yoka couldn't even visualize what it was supposed to look like when it was completed.


She didn't pause when he made his request, nor did she point out that wasn't exactly the question she had asked.

But she did it anyway, hesitating only for a moment and then having a false start or two while she tried to find the right note.

Yoka sang, of course, because she was an entertainer. Why wouldn't that have been added to her repertoire? But it was hard to do drunk, and even harder when she hadn't sang anything other than karaoke in a few years.

She was a crooner. It was easy to picture her lounging across the top of a grand piano while a pianist pounded on the keys, which, of course, had been exactly what she had been.

"I love the free, fresh wind in my hair
Life without care, oh I'm so broke, it's old
I hate California, it's crowded and damp
That's why the lady is a tramp...I am a tramp," she sang.

The request wasn't unusual.

But it wasn't something she expected from Murphy.

It made her realize there were a lot of pieces holding this knot together.

She wondered if he had nightmares.

As the end of the song approached, Yoka arched her back and then leaned over him, kissing the top of his head and draping herself over his back, still careful to avoid his legs. Her hands worked at his arms again, unrelenting with the desire to relax him.

"That wasn't the question," she whispered to him.

To her credit, Yoka didn't hesitate when Murphy said the best case scenario would be getting married. She was still rubbing him, enticed by the progress, and it wasn't until she'd moved back down his back that her eyebrows shot up on her face and she was glad that she was on his back so he wouldn't see the expression.

It wasn't what Yoka expected him to say.

She wasn't sure what she was expecting. That wasn't it.

But there was a certain logic to it. So weddings were a sign of commitment, a visible representation of not only love, but of the reliance that came with it. It was one person saying to another, you are not alone because I am with you.

It made Yoka feel something unexpected that he wanted that he wanted that with her.

It actually made her sad.

Not pity.

Just sadness.

"Do you know how sweet you are?" Yoka asked. It wasn't mocking. Her tone was generally curious, but she began to slow the pace of her hands now that she was feeling progress beneath her knuckles.

She could hear his heart beating and Yoka took a moment to tease him, but just gently. It was partially serious as well. "Does that mean sex before marriage is out for you?" she asked.

"Thank you for being honest with me," she told him. And she kissed the top of his head again, and then the back of his neck, right where his spine met, the spot she'd bite if she was an animal in for the kill.

She sat up slowly, still straddling him, and unsnapped her bra from beneath her kimono.

Yoka was still thinking about getting married.

It's not like she hadn't been married. It's just that...well, Murphy hit the head on that one. She'd outlive him. She'd accepted that part already, but it didn't mean she was happy about accepting it. It put her in the difficult situation of giving herself fully to Murphy. In a way, in a terrible, inappropriate way, it would have been easier to look at Murphy as her pet. He would know her entire life and she could lavish him in love and affection, but he would be gone one day, and she would be devastated, and she’d swear of having another one forever…and then eventually it would happen again.

She was trying very, very hard not to do that.

She laughed at his response.

“I agree with you on that one. It’s one of the things that I’m happy has changed about the world we live in,” she said. “It’s not that people weren’t doing that before, but then there was always the shame and the awkwardness after a good hot fuck, and honestly playing along get old. And then got forbid they were worried about pregnancy or me having their bastard child and figured it’d be easier to kill me than take the risk.”

Yoka shrugged, gave a short laugh, and continued the slowing of her fingers, but she was reluctant to stop touching him.

“So Murphy,” she said, transitioning to a more mischievous tone. She dancer her fingers across his back like she was playing piano. “Have you thought about sleeping with me before?”

She wouldn’t let him off that easily.

“What’s the wildest thing you’ve dreamed about me doing to you?” she asked, leaning forward to nip the very tip of his ear, letting her hot breath warm his skin. It was easy for Yoka to talk about sex but she suspected it might not be that easy for Murphy, and just because she wanted him to be relaxed and comfortable didn’t mean she couldn’t torture him, too.

She’d tell him after she found out that he wouldn’t be getting any until after the third date. Yoka was a lady, after all.