By rights it should be easy to force him aside. He's smaller and weaker than she is to begin with, and badly injured on top of that. But every time she strains against his arms, she's pushed back and pinned against the wall. Every time she pushes him away, he rushes back into the space between them with a desperation that disarms her before she can escape. 

And every time, his hand. Reaching up. Touching behind her ear. Soft, soothing brushes with his fingers. As if she mattered. As if she wasn't a monster that just tried to burn the world. As if, even now, her comfort was more important to him than the universe. 

Bella relents. Or maybe it's more accurate to say she loses. Her battle heat disperses unevenly though her body, and where everything had been thunder and crackling power just a moment ago, it fizzles into a drunken tingling of misfiring bursts. Her body drains of the power robbed by those delicate fingers, and with a sigh that's half a moan she leans back into the wall. She pulls an arm free and uses it to hold the dark stranger against her body in the night. 

"All right," she sighs, "You win. I'll stay. I said, all right! Fuck!"

Her head is spinning. Her heart is fluttering unsteadily, and her skin is flushed and buzzing. Every breath makes even the pitch darkness blur as though she'd suddenly drunk several bottles of wine in the span of a second, but she can't stop herself from taking sniff after deep, greedy sniff of her pet's hair. And the perfumed sweat drenched into his skin, and, and, and!

And his blood. Slick, oozing, disgusting blood; she has to drag her tongue across roof of her mouth to keep from vomiting. And still she stands there holding Skotia tight in her embrace. And still she lets him hold her, and even lets him keep massaging her ear until he finally draws out the deep, slow purr from her chest until it's broken up again by how heavy she's breathing. This is what his courage has won him today. She listens to the brave, wet burble of his gasps. She feels his body cut like steel against her softness, and she feels him grow cooler tucked amidst her warmth. She feels the hot splash of his blood seeping into her dress beyond the capabilities of even Beautiful's planning to absorb, and she squeezes her hand tighter around his waist.

There is nothing of Mynx in Skotia. She's not sure if that's a bigger relief or a disappointment. If only there was time to figure it out. 

Bella's pinky claw slides his undershirt with a whispered protest of fabric. She feels it brush the skin, but she is gentle so that he barely feels it enough to shiver. She slides the ruined garment off of his shoulders and, ah! Ah~

Even in the impenetrable depths of this dark night, he's pretty enough to take her breath away. She cranes her neck to be closer, to breath more of him in. His breasts are small, stiff, and supple under her palm. Her mouth waters at the smell of them, sweeter than ambrosia. Aphrodite flicks her ear, and Bella's head swims in sudden, dizzying desires to taste them. Suck them. Brush her teeth against them until the whole planet could track them in the dark just from the sounds of his moaning. It... if she's going to die tonight, then, then!

It [i]would[/i] be a shame to die without ever fucking him. But so it goes. With some effort, she pulls away her hand to wipe the drool from her lips. And when she lowers it again, all her focus is on his torn undershirt, and tying it tight enough around the wound until she finally feels the flow of blood and then stop at long last under the knot she leaves. She stands there waiting patiently for him to slump into her arms, lifting him by the knee and the armpit to keep from hurting him any more.

"That was incredibly stupid," she says through an invisible smile in the black, "You moron. How bad does it make me look if I need my pet to save me?"

Her feet carry her all of a single step before his groan of protest reaches her ears. The kindest thing that you can say about Bella right now is that she lets that stop her, even with the weight of the ampule pressing uncomfortably against her thigh. She sighs loudly. 

"What, modest all of a sudden? Nobody's going to touch you, I promise. Besides, I... it turns out, we're a lot alike. I don't know who I remind you of, but I've got a friend here too that makes me feel the same way. I've barely, mmmh why am I even telling you this? I've known her all of a week, ok? But there's something, something that makes that feel not quite right. Something's telling me I know her much better than that. But she's an Ikarani, if you know what that means, and I've got an hour, three tops, before her brain turns to divine dust and I've got no friends again.

She had a plan, but fuck that. It's dead now, any idiot could figure that out even without her sticking her neck out to warn me all of a sudden. I don't give a shit about that anymore, I just need to find her and... make sure she doesn't forget me forever. So that's what we're doing now. And if you try to stop me, I'll kill you right here. Got it? Good boy."