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"Milo? Milo, have you fallen down a tunnel again?"
It would not be the first time. Not even the first time today. Kida followed the path that Milo had been following around the walls. He had said that some of the patterns in the walls, which Kida had thought were nothing more than idle scratchings, were a particularly old form of Atlantean, and had been trying to read them by the light of his pendant.
Then he vanished into the wall.
This was not unusual in the cave-riddled areas around Atlantis, however, and Kida merely pushed aside the vines that Milo had disappeared through and stuck her head through the gap. There was a short tunnel, little more than a doorway, leading into a wider space filled with a soft blue-purple light.
"Milo?"
"Kida, you have to see this!" Excitement poured off his words, and she saw a flicker of light which must have meant movement. With a fond smile, she followed him through the short tunnel, ducking at the end, and into the cavern.
She had never seen it before, and its beauty took her by surprise. High but small, it was filled with fine stalactites covered with some sort of glowing purple lichen, glimmering with pulses of light. The floor was made up of several platforms, rising away from the tunnel that led in, each one two or three foot higher than the last. Milo had scrambled up them, and was standing on the highest one, amid thick blue-green moss and clumps of shining blue flowers.
As she entered, he looked down, and gave her a beaming smile. "Look at this place! It's stunning!"
Kida could not help but smile in return, walking across the first plateau. The moss was soft under her feet, slightly damp with the water that trickled down the walls and dripped from the stalactites. Arms outstretched, Milo was still turning on the spot, looking in marvel at the world. Over the years, Kida had found herself looking less and less at what surrounded her, but Milo served to act as a reminder that there were still wonders to be had.
He bounded down a couple of the large steps as she rose up them, and grabbed her hands to squeeze them tightly. It was always like this when he found something which interested him, which happened on a wonderfully regular basis even now. He was babbling on about bioluminescence and isolated ecosystems and other long words which tripped delightfully from his tongue, but somehow Kida found herself more interested in watching the tongue itself, and the movement of his lips, and after a moment she realised that he wasn't actually saying anything at all, but his lips were still parted and she could see his breathing.
Then he kissed her. Or perhaps she had kissed him. She wasn't too sure which one of them it was, and then it didn't matter because there was just his mouth, hot and wet and lips and tongue and hands ran up her side and it was nothing like enough.
Their courtship had been backwards. First they had fought for her civilisation together, and he had been at her side as she took her place as Queen. Then he had started courting her -- and she had allowed him to, not sure what he could be used to, coming from the surface world. The one time that she had asked, he had grown uncomfortable and blushed, and she had dropped the subject quickly to kiss him on the cheek.
This was no kiss on the cheek. Milo sucked at her lips and tongue, and she answered him fiercely, teeth scraping against his lips. She could hear him, feel him, gasping for breath, his hands tightening around her waist. In return she wrapped her hands around the back of his neck to haul him close, breaking away from his lips to bite at his jaw and suck at the skin hard enough to leave a red mark there.
"Kida..." He breathed against her ear, hot and wet, voice sliding lower in his throat. "Kidagakash..."
He had rarely managed to say her full name. It only made the heat that was burning through her worse, or better, she wasn't quite sure which. She could not get close enough to get him, could not get enough of him, all of those thoughts and wants she had held back for fear of scaring him away rushing to the forefront. Her mouth dipped beneath his chin, down his throat, all the way to his collarbone, and she could feel his pulse beneath his skin. She could feel that hers was pounding just as hard, just as fast.
She wanted to tell him to hush, that he had better uses for his mouth, his beautiful mouth and clever tongue and there were so many things that she could show him how to do with it. All that came from her mouth, though, was a sort of growling sound that probably unwrote thousands of years of Atlantean 'civilisation' and which doubtless Milo would tease her for later. She dropped to her knees, dragging him with her, and pushed him onto his rear.
The last thing that she could see in his eyes was fear. His pupils were dilated, eyes dark and glasses askew, but his hands were on her shoulders to pull her down with him, mouth reaching for hers. She wanted the touch of his body, the heat, the smell; she could even smell the desire on them both, beneath the sweet scent of flowers on the air. Kida tightened her thighs around his hips where she straddled him, grinding her body down against him.
Milo's lips moved to kiss the tattoos on one cheek. His hands were sliding down her back, pressing into her skin, and it was not enough, nothing like enough, not even as she pushed the sash off his shoulder and wrapped herself around him, pressing skin to skin. Sweat was beading on her skin; she couldn't remember the cavern being this warm, but perhaps it was just Milo and her, radiating from their skin, bouncing off each other and sinking back in. Kida nuzzled into his hair, running her hands hard down his back, feeling the lines of his muscles and bones, his breathing.
She gasped as Milo licked her neck, slow and pressing hard, as if he could draw the breath right out of her. From the tightness in her chest, he might just have been succeeding. But it still wasn't right, still did nothing to stop the burning and scratching under her skin, a burning that cooled just for an instant when Milo's hands touched her skin, an instant that was still not enough.
She drew back just far enough to unwrap her top and drop it aside, exposing her breasts to the air. Milo's hands ran up her back as he paused, still breathless, eyes lingering at her chest for a moment before he turned his gaze upwards to hold her eyes again.
Something panged in her chest. She ran her hands through his hair, using all of her concentration not to kiss him again. "Are you sure that you want this?" she asked breathlessly.
"I've always wanted this." He replied without a pause, without a breath, and then it was him that initiated another kiss, hands on her breasts now, setting off starbursts beneath her skin with each touch but she still wanted more, tightened her thighs around him, started struggling with her skirt. "Always," he repeated, the word almost lost in her mouth.
It wasn't just his mouth that was betraying him by then, not just the way he seemed to be struggling to breathe, the way his hands seemed glued to her skin. His hips were rolling up against her, more controlled than erratic grinding of her body, and he groaned as she finally managed to undo his wrap, letting it fall to the ground beneath them, and almost ripping her skirt in her haste to have it follow.
Kida gasped, out of pure relief, as their bodies settled back together without the barriers of cloth between them. She could feel her heart pounding, blood pulsing in her head, between her thighs. It was her hand, though, that slid greedily downwards, until she could cup the hardness brushing against her thigh.
He whimpered something that was in no language in existence, and she laughed breathlessly as she stroked him. Wetness was seeping down her thighs, making her shake in a way she would never admit to, but it was Milo's speechless babbling against the crook of her neck that was making the waves build ever-higher within her, his short nails digging into the small of her back that held her anchored in place.
"Please," he finally managed to whisper coherently, slipping back into his English rather than the Atlantean they usually used. "I need..."
"I know, Milo," she said back, because she could feel the ache that ran straight through her, the heat, the yearning that was making her tremble and unravelling every thread of sanity that she could gather. When he finally slid into her, it was like cracks ran out across the whole world, and at the first thrust of her hips it was like they began to fall apart.
Everything shimmered and blurred. There was nothing more than them, lips on lips, hands on burning skin, Milo buried deep within her. The thoughts and worries which had ruled her, ruled her life more than she had ruled it, fell away like melting ice from the fire inside her, stoked by each touch.
"I need you," she said, or perhaps tried to say, because she wasn't so sure which of her thoughts stayed in her head and which ones were spilling from her lips as she rode him, slow at first then with increasing fervour, knocking his glasses from his face with her movements, hands desperate on his body, every inch of her screaming that this, just this, was all and everything and endlessness.
Somehow one of his hands became trapped between their bodies, or perhaps it was deliberate, to judge by the gasping sounds that left both of their throats when his fingers found her groin, searched her skin, sought out how to make her whisper his name so fast it became a meaningless blur of sound. She kissed him again, hard, teeth clashing, but he was against her and inside her and around her and they clutched at each other like one being that had been split into two.
She could feel the building devestation of the waves within her, terrible and wonderful, terrifying in their strength. Her breath caught in her throat as her body tightened, curving into him, needing, as if skin and flesh and separate bodies was still too much distance, until everything shattered and fell around her, stars flashing in her vision, pleasure crashing through her body, the world falling away and leaving her whole, and what started as a cry of Milo's name might just have turned into a sob as she seemed to fall, shaking, back into his arms as she felt him thrust hard and climax within her, still holding her tightly and upright.
Everything was still in flux around her as Milo drew them down to the ground, lying face-to-face and still as close as they could entwine themselves. He didn't say anything as she pressed her face into his hair and breathed him in, the grip of her hands so tight that it was hurting her, finally able to feel the air against her skin without it being a violation of the way that the world should be.
When she finally looked up, his eyes were brown again, no longer blown dark and glossy. They fixed on her, or at least tried to as Milo squinted, then he twisted to flail around behind him with one hand until he found his glasses. Even on his face, with all of the smears on them they could have been of little use.
Kida's heart was still racing in her chest, sweat damp on her skin. She ran her thumb across Milo's lower lip, all swollen and glossy, and felt a faint stirring within her, but nothing so ferocious as the lust that had assailed her.
Lust. The word felt foreign. Of course she knew it, of course she had considered trysts over her long (long, her mind whispered, long) years alone, but there had been other worries. There had been no time for selfishness. With Milo another piece of the world had seemed to fall back into place, almost tangible in the way it reorientated her, but this...
The memories were written clear in her mind, clear on her body and on his. Only now did her mind start to process it all, and she sat up sharply, half turning away from Milo as if to cover herself.
"Kida?" She heard Milo sit up behind her, but did not look round. Sweat and sex cut through the sweet scent of the cavern, washing over her afresh with each movement that either one of them made. Already she could feel her mind starting to reel again, to gain that feeling that something was out of place in the world, that the only way she could recover it was with her body and Milo's twined together. A hand slid over her shoulder, but there was no fire beneath it this time, and she closed her eyes for a moment to hold in the safety that it promised her. "Kida, this..." Confusion rang in his voice, and she could hear him pulling his clothes back on.
Above them, the purple lichen glimmered, answered by the blue flowers below. Kida's eyes fell onto a clump of them, not two feet away from where she and Milo were now.
"I think perhaps we should get out of this cavern," she said. Her voice was hoarse, but knowing what had caused that made it not unpleasant. That made Milo pause, and she looked over her shoulder to see him now mostly decent, rubbing his glasses with a corner of his sash. She wasn't sure whether the colour in his cheeks was heat or embarassment.
"Kida..." She could definitely hear the embarrassment now, as she grabbed at her own clothes. The fabric felt rough against her skin, unpleasant, and she ached to have it replaced with Milo's touch again. "I didn't, I mean, I, well..."
Something inside her curled into humiliation. Like the rest of her people, she had long since learnt that honesty was needed in their underground world, and that honesty made things far easier when it came to matters of the heart -- or of the body. She had been approached before with offers for sex, relationships, casual affairs. Some of them even more blatant than Mole's, although his presumptuousness had earnt him a punch anyway. But Milo had always been nervous, shy about anything more than taking her hand or kissing her cheek in public, sleeping in a separate bed. It wasn't as if she could ask him about how things worked on the surface world, in the land where he came from, either.
And now the fire that had burnt through her, and her desperate need to quench it, had swept aside the barriers that Milo had set around himself. In the rules of his world, she had done something wrong.
"Then we should go," she said, getting to her feet and moving back towards the tunnel entrance. She could still feel the sweat on her skin, the mingling wetness between her thighs. Kida tried to take a deep breath, but it only served to make things feel worse, to make her lips throb and her breasts ache and every step that she took get harder.
Fresh sweat started beading on her forehead, and she felt her legs shake. When Milo's fingers brushed at her wrist, she had to suppress a whimper, and then his hands were sliding up her arms, a slow caress that ran all the way up to her shoulders and then slowly, light as a feather, down the centre of her spine again. He trailed wet kisses over her shoulders.
"Milo," she said softly, feeling confusion and hurt still knotting in her stomach but, stronger, the warmth and security that flowered under her skin at his touch. He stepped close behind her, arms sliding round her waist, and she turned in his arms just far enough to find his mouth with hers again.
It didn't stop the burn. It just made it good.
His hands tightened at her breasts, rough, but it helped hold back the ache, and seemingly of its own accord one of her hands slid down his front and beneath his wrap. Before he could gasp, she kissed him harder, hand tightening on the back of his neck to stop him from escaping, pressing back into him as if she could slide under his skin.
Her throat was aching, truly painful in a way the rest of her body was not, and as she scrambled for her thoughts she managed to tear her lips away from Milo's for at least a moment.
"Milo, what were you talking about?"
It would have been hard enough to talk, she was sure, just with the crushing tightness around her lungs and the lances of heat that were shooting through her body, leaving her feeling almost dangerously helpless in Milo's arms. (Before anyone else, she would have hated the sensation.) He mumbled something against the corner of her mouth.
"I want to know, Milo," she said breathlessly. It wasn't an affectation, even as his hands slid lower on her body, massaging as much as caressing, pressing heat into her muscles all down her abdomen. She struggled to hold on to the words, knowing that there was something, something that her body did not want her to remember but which was tugging at the corners of her mind. "Tell me."
"The carvings... just the carvings..."
"Tell me." Her voice came out husky and deep, mostly because she was trying not to moan as he rubbed circles just over the line of her skirt.
"Old Atlantean. Really old." Having no luck with her mouth, Milo was kissing her jaw, messily, and she could feel the scrape of teeth over her skin, the roughness of his stubble. "Something about the cavern."
His tongue traced her ear and she had to restrain a moan in her throat. It was a strange feeling, disconnected, most of her mind gone and blood rushing through her, as one of Milo's hands strayed between her thighs and she ground back against him. Mindlessness threatened to consume her, and it was glorious, warm and red and welcoming, but foreign at the same time, and a small part of her -- small and ever-shrinking -- clung to that strangeness and held tight around it, using it to form thoughts.
"What about it?"
"Sacred place," he breathed into her ear. "Fertility something. Virility something."
The old legends, her mind prompted her, because even Atlantis had legends, though they were ancient indeed. Everything has something that goes before it.
The thoughts made her able to turn in Milo's arms, clasping him close to her even as she stumbled backwards. He felt right beneath her hands -- felt like Milo, the lines of his body, the way he tripped over every small stone that her feet negotiated with ease. But his lips were glued to hers, his body overruling his mind to judge by the way that he held close to her, rather than talking about the inscriptions which normally would have fascinated him. It was not as if she was complaining, not as if she had not longed to be able to captivate him so, but it had not happened yet.
They almost fell down the last plateau-step, Milo crashing into her. Fire stabbed through her body, and for a moment Kida lost herself again, a sound deep in her throat as her mind exploded in bright lights and stars. She pushed her hips back in to Milo's body, digging her hands into his shoulders to pin him there and hearing him grunt in surprise. She wanted, wanted, could not hold enough of him in her hands and her mouth, felt him fill her mind as her body ached to open up to him again.
She pulled him back against the wall. The rock was rough, damp, and scratched lines on her back as she hauled Milo against it. His chest heaved against her, crystals rolling cool between them, and she bit down on his lip. Hard. Milo started and drew back slightly, eyes snapping open in surprise, and she could see brown around the black and could see herself reflected, dishevelled, in his pupils.
"Come on." She tugged on his hand, feeling behind her for the tunnel to drag him back through, fronds and vines sliding over their skin as cool air surrounded them again. Had it been warm? She did not remember it being warm inside the cavern. The air felt thin and flat in her lungs, but pulled the sweet smell out of her, letting it be replaced with the skin and sweat and sex that clung between them.
Relief; her mind washed clean and cold, but she cupped Milo's jaw to keep kissing him, her tongue in his mouth, capturing his breath. He breathed her name, or at least she thought that he did, but it could have been her imagination or just the movement of his lips against hers. The heat began to seep from beneath her skin, desperation fading, and slowly she drew away her kisses from his lips to release him from her tight hold.
Kida drew back, fixing her gaze tightly on Milo, waiting for the stunned look on his face to fade and his line of sight to hold fast on her again.
"Milo?" she said quietly. He blinked at her a few times. "Milo, are you with me?"
"I, yes, um," he made a vague gesture with his hands towards the tunnel and the cavern beyond, despite her hands still holding his face still. "That was..." His lips pursed slightly, and she could almost see the working in his mind as he searched for a word. "I didn't see that coming."
Again, a flutter of fear ran through her. There was an animal in each and every person, but whatever that cave had done to release the one in her, she was not proud of it. "Milo, if you are displeased by what happened..."
"No!" His protest came quickly. "No, I mean I, well..." A momentary pause. "I'm not sure if I can finish that sentence."
"Try, for me," she said. She released her tight hold on him, letting one hand trace his chin instead. There were red marks on his skin where she had bitten him, and they showed up starkly against his pale flesh.
"I wouldn't have done that of my own accord. No, wait, that's not right. I mean," he quickly corrected himself, perhaps before he could have even seen the stab of pain that flickered across her features. "I wouldn't have, er, started it, of my own accord. I mean. I don't know what..." he gave a shrug, head tilted to the side as he glanced away sheepishly for a moment, before looking up and taking a deep breath, steeling himself. "I love you, Kida."
(A very small part of her, very distant, had wondered occasionally whether it was the city that he was in love with. She had not dared ask, in case his background meant that he could not speak of things.)
Slowly, he reached out and took her hand, fingers twining into hers. Each one slotted into place, one at a time. "And I wasn't even sure if it would be right to tell you, let alone--"
"Let alone show me," she whispered, seeing colour in his cheeks before he could try and search for words.
"Yes, because you're the Queen of Atlantis and I'm just some strange surface-dweller who pretty much fell down here and--"
She stopped him with a kiss. This one was gentle, pressing her lips to his to stop the flow of his words, holding his hand tightly and waiting for the moment that he relaxed. The tip of her tongue traced lightly over the centre of his upper lip.
"Sometimes you talk too much."
He looked appropriately abashed.
"But Milo, really, next time you see a cavern carved around with ancient runes calling it a place of virility? Don't go in."
"That- that- OH. Oh yes. I remember those now."
"At least not without telling me." She watched the look of realisation dawn on his face, slid her free hand round to his back, and pinned herself back against him. "Oh, and Milo?"
"Yarahyes?"
It probably was hard to make proper words when she was licking his earlobe, no matter how many languages he had to choose from.
"Don't think that I'm finished with you yet."