Filia sighed and leaned into Xellos' kiss, and he embraced her, but didn't deepen the kiss, keeping it as tender as the new feelings toward her that he had suddenly discovered. When their kiss finally broke off, Filia traced a slightly shaking hand down Xell's face.
"It's real..." she whispered, "it's not a dream..."
He smiled and chuckled. "Have you been dreaming about me, Fi-chan?" Filia blushed and looked away.
"I think you have been!" Xell chuckled again, and there was a faintly triumphant note in his voice. He shifted one arm around her, bringing it up around her neck and turning her head so she was looking at him. "Tell me about your dreams."
She gazed into his eyes, caught in their amethyst pools.
"My dream?" she repeated, "In my dream, nameless things threaten me, but somehow you can see them even though no one else can. You hold me and protect me from them, and I don't have to be scared of you anymore so..." she leaned forward and kissed him without letting her eyes leave his, "I kiss you and let you hold me the way I've always secretly wanted."
Xellos blinked and her gaze dropped from his, her cheeks stained with blush. "Nothing will EVER harm you, Fi-chan, I can promise you that." he said, holding her tightly, "If they try, I'll rip them into tiny bits for you." Filia giggled and Xell mock-scowled at her.
"I'm serious!" he insisted, "No one will hurt you ever again! I love you too much to let them."
Filia gasped in shock, and this time it was Xell's turn to look away. He'd said too much...he hadn't meant to, it had just slipped out...of all the secrets to let slip... He focused on the floor and let his arms drop from around her, feeling a strange pain in his chest and something stinging in his eyes.
"Go...gomen nasai," he whispered brokenly, "I shouldn't have said that..."
Filia felt something wet drop onto her arm and was wakened out of her shock. "Oh Xell..." she said softly, stroking her hand down his cheek and wiping away gently the tears which should never have existed, "You didn't say anything wrong..." She snuggled against him, laying her head on his chest, "I just never expected to hear those words from you...it was more than I thought I could ever hope for! Oh Xell, fear not, I love you too." She hugged him tight and he laid his head down on top of hers and slowly put his arms around her again.
"You do?"
"I do." she confirmed, and kissed his chest.
They stayed like that for awhile, just holding each other and letting these new feelings sink in. Something occurred to Filia .
"This is going to get you in trouble, isn't it?" she said.
"Probably." Xell admitted. He gently kissed the top of her head, "I suspect the Gold Elders will be less-than-pleased with your actions as well." Filia snorted, and Xell looked at her in surprise.
"I am beginning to doubt many of the things they've told me." she said, "They are not so great, nor so stainless as they would like to believe."
Xellos cupped hr chin in his hand and tilted her face up to look at him. "You're serious!" he muttered in surprise.
"You couldn't tell?"
"In this strange place I am no more adept at sensing emotions than a human." he admitted. He chortled. "I'm not able to sense the emotions of others, but I've managed to finally see my own. Rather ironic, isn't it?"
Filia smiled. "In a strange way, I'm almost grateful to Valgaav. If it hadn't been for his interference, we never would have found our true feelings." She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a second to collect her courage, then looked at him very seriously. "Xellos," she whispered, "I...I want to be yours...would you...?"
Xell, in answer to her unspoken question, kissed her deeply. "I would do anything." he asserted, "Even marry you." He looked seriously at her. "I don't want to just possess you, I want to have more than that between us." Filia smiled and held her palm to his cheek. "Love is not about possession," she told him, "love is about sharing and giving freely between two people. I want to give you the greatest gift I have, and that is myself."
Xellos smiled gently, the expression looking oddly right on his face. "Then, in return, will you accept me?" he asked, a little hesitantly. When she nodded, he kissed her hungrily.
"I swear to you, by any and all gods, that I am yours for the rest of eternity." he whispered to her.
"And I..." Filia gasped as he kissed her neck, then continued, "I swear to you, by any and all gods, that I am yours for all eternity from this moment onwards."
"Oh my wonderful Filia..." Xellos sighed as he kissed a line of burning nips down her neck, "For so long you have been my desire..."
Filia moaned softly at his attentions and leaned her head back for easier access. "I...I don't...fully understand myself but...the one thing I know is...I need you, Xellos Metallium...need you as I've never needed another."
"You don't understand? Then let me be your teacher." Xellos said seductively. He slowly leaned forward, lowering Filia to the floor as he kissed her deeply.
She let herself be led by him at first, simply accepting his caresses and responding to his kisses with her own, but soon the fire he was building within her demanded more response from her and she reached out to tentatively touch him, running her fingers through his hair and down the nape of his neck. He moaned softly and shivered in delight, and the realization that she could provoke such a reaction in him was a heady sensation. Growing bolder, she moved her hand lower, slipping it down his shirt to rub at his back and bringing the other around his neck to pull him into a deep kiss.
Xellos groaned. "Damnit, you have no idea how much I want to just tear that dress off you, but you'll need it for protection from the cold later." he said. Deliberately he unclasped his cloak and let it slide down until it was covering only his legs, then undid her mantle and parted it, revealing her short-sleeved pink dress.
Filia slid her slightly trembling hands down the front of Xell's shirt, and he grinned at her and shook his head.
"No, no, let me finish with you first." he said. He took her two hands in his and held them down as he kissed along her collarbones. "Are you going to be good now?" he asked her.
She moaned and nodded, so he released her arms.
He leaned over her, supporting himself with one arm and ran the other hand slowly down her chest, caressing her breast briefly in his search for buttons. "Button, button, who's got the button?" he muttered under his breath as he slid his hand lightly down her side.
Filia couldn't help it, she had to giggle.
"Oho! Ticklish, are you?" Xellos grinned wickedly as he flicked his fingers over her waist. His lightly dancing fingers slipped into the side seam as he tickled her and there he discovered the elusive buttons.
"Ah, there they are!" he said and looked seriously at her. He caught her eyes and removed first one glove, then the other, by the simple, yet unbearably seductive method of biting the tips of the fingers and slowly drawing each glove off his hand, then flicking his head to throw it to the side. With nimble fingers thus uncovered he slowly and deliberately undid each button in turn, stroking caressingly along the silky expanse of bare skin he was revealing as he did so.
Filia groaned low in her throat and he kissed her deeply, sliding his tongue into her slightly parted mouth to taste her, caching a sweet flavor tinged with saltiness and the faintest whiff of ozone as he deftly finished with her buttons and pushed the top of her dress slowly aside, drawing it over her breasts.
Filia moaned loudly in protest as Xell broke the kiss to gaze down at her. He felt himself becoming more and more aroused as he took in her beauty. The naked lust and desire blatant in her glazed eyes, and the pristine alabaster of her skin with its thin tracery of bluish veins pulsing with life right below. His eyes trailed lower, over the perfect mounds of her breasts which heaved with her panting breath, their areolae taught and puckered and rosy nipples erect from the cold or arousal or both and just begging to be warmed by his mouth. Moving lower and lower, his roving eyes devoured the soft expanses of her flat belly and slender waist.
He groaned with desire. "You're so perfect." he said, "Almost too beautiful to touch..."
He leaned down over her and began kissing his way down her chest, feeling the fluttering of her heart beneath his lips as he kissed her in between the orbs of her breasts. Mesmerized, he laid his ear against her chest and listened to the strong beat of her life.
At this pause in his attentions, Filia whimpered with longing and brought one hand up to stroke Xell's hair.
"Please..." she moaned, not knowing what she needed exactly, but knowing without doubt that she needed something desperately.
Xellos took this opportunity to remove the glove on the hand she had placed in his range, and he kissed her palm, letting his tongue flick out to taste her skin before placing her hand back down and moving to kiss around underneath her left breast.
Filia's mind was beset by sensation. Her entire being was focused on each light kiss Xell placed, feeling an unbearable heat from them which sank into her skin and deep into her bones and radiated out again, warming her entire body and setting an odd, needy, tingling sensation between her legs and in her breasts. Seemingly with every breath, every sparking kiss, she let out moans she couldn't suppress, and the sense of aching need increased until she was fairly whimpering with it. Even though she'd been aware of every kiss Xell placed, she still gasped in surprise when he flicked his tongue over her nipple and then took it into his mouth and began to suckle like a baby. She found herself arching toward Xellos' hungry mouth, the needy feeling being replaced by a fire which began to pulse in her belly, almost as though those old human myths about Dragons storing their fire there were true.
"Xell...Oh Xell..." she moaned, begging, pleading, commanding, imploring him to slake this fire which he had built within her.
Without leaving off the attentions he was paying her breast, Xell slid his hand down her belly to push her dress off her hips, and almost instinctively she lifted her hips to let it slip off. He pushed it down as low as he could, then trailed his hand slowly back up her inner thigh, marveling at the silky warmth of her skin. He groaned when his roving hand encountered the dewy wetness of her flower, its petals sticky with the evidence of her arousal. He stroked along it, drawing an answering moan from her, and he could feel within himself a desperate need to bury himself inside that honeyed warmth and just stay there for eternity.
Filia felt as thought she was going to explode! She ha thought the fire couldn't burn any hotter...thought the need couldn't get any greater...but when Xellos had touched her /there/... She felt herself teetering on the edge of something beyond anything she had ever dared to imagine. She began to pant, normal breathing seemed beyond her, and she felt a sheen of sweat break out on her skin despite the cold.
Xellos was surprised at how well he could read Filia even without his Mazoku emotional sense. In a way it was even more stimulating to him like this; no tricks, no deceptions, just raw feelings and the five basic senses. Like a man who has been blinded, his other senses were compensating for the loss of one with an increase in sensitivity. Hew couldn't sense her emotions, couldn't use his astral sight to view her aura, but just hearing her panting breath, tasting the tang of her sweat, smelling the salty yet creamy scent of her arousal, seeing the flush of her skin, feeling the slick wetness between her legs, he knew she was ready for him; and knowing that, he also knew he was more than ready to take her.
He sat up, breaking his attentions to her long enough to shuck off his shirt, and she moaned longingly. "Please...Please..." It seemed to be the only word she could say.
"I know love." he said soothingly as he unwrapped the sash he used for a belt and pushed his pants down, "I know."
He took her still-gloved hand in his an removed the glove, then brought it down to feel him.
"This is what you need so badly," he told her, wrapping her hand around his shaft, "and this is what I'm going to give you."
She was panting and whimpering, and he leaned down to kiss her, sliding her hand off him and linking his fingers with her as he shifted into position. She moaned as she felt him at her entrance, and he flicked his tongue lightly over the roof of her mouth before thrusting quickly up into her, and with that, finally, Marking her...in the most primitive way...a way older than Mazoku, older than Ryuuzoku, perhaps older than L-sama herself, and she shed one delicate tear which he kissed away, the salty taste in his mouth indelibly Marking him as well.
Xellos groaned with the effort of trying to hold himself back and give her time to accustom herself to having him within her, but the velvety warmth ensheathing him was simply too much, and he began to establish a slow rhythm, pulling back until he almost popped out of her tight passage before sliding himself back in.
He could see the slight pain on Filia's face, and he could faintly smell the coppery scent of blood, so he leaned his head down to take the nipple he had previously ignored into his mouth and began to speed up, knowing that the friction of their joining would soon cause pleasure to override the discomfort she was feeling.
As Xellos suckled at her, Filia felt the fire in her belly, which had dampened down at the sharp pain of his entry, begin to swiftly build again, the lingering twinges of that pain being subsumed by the pleasure he was giving her. On instinct she shifted her hips to welcome and follow his thrusts, and her pleasure increased as he generously ground his hips into hers and thrust both faster and harder.
The pleasure swiftly threatened to overwhelm her, and she heard, as though from a distance, herself letting out little panting grunts. Her heartbeat, her breath, her body, all moved to the same rhythm, then, for one eternal second, everything held still... She felt herself pause on the very tip of the crest of the wave of pleasure which had been building within her. She paused for no time, and yet for eternity, before the wave threw her down and overwhelmed her with its chaos of sensation.
"X...XELLOS!!" she cried, mentally reaching out for him as an anchor in the swirling chaos of her first orgasm.
Xellos watched Filia arch beneath him, and heard not only her cry, but the meaning behind it.
"I'm here." he said, squeezing her hands as he continued to thrust into her. He was close...so very close...and the rippling contractions caused by her pleasure sent him over the edge as well.
"You are MINE Filia." he growled possessively as he thrust deeply into her and exploded, "Mine, mine, mine!" He thrust jerkily a couple of more times, until he had emptied himself within her, then collapsed on top of her, panting hard and completely spent.
Mindful of the cold, Filia reached down to pull Xell's cloak up over him, then reached out to lay the altar cloth over him as well, tucking it down beneath her.
Xellos kissed her neck softly. "So considerate of you." he murmured. He rolled carefully off her, turning carefully as he did so that no air slipped into their warm cocoon. Filia sighed softly and snuggled against him.
"It's kinda cold out." she said.
"I had noticed that." Xell agreed.
"Well, you know, the best way to keep warm if you can't build a fire is my sharing body heat." She grinned. "We seem to have created quite a bit of that." she pointed out.
"Indeed." Xell smiled. Filia tried to suppress a yawn, and he kissed her forehead. "We've both had a busy day, we should probably get some sleep."
"Mmmhmm..."Filia mumbled sleepily into his chest as her eyes drifted shut. Xellos watched her for a minute or two, simply absorbing the moment, then he too fell asleep.
They slept the whole night through, comfortable in each other's embrace, and when dawn began to peek in through the snow-shrouded windows, Filia woke. She was still a little cold, so she snuggled closer to Xellos, waking him as she did so.
"Mmmm..." he mumbled, "Must have warmed up."
He pulled the blanket back a little and Filia started shivering violently. "What do you think you're DOING you crazy Mazoku, it's FREEZING!"
Xell's eyes widened as he realized he could sense Filia's annoyance. "It's back!" he said, hugging her tight, "My astral sense is back! That means I can get us out of here!"
With a big grin on his face, Xell teleported the two of them back to her bedroom at the inn where they had stayed the day before...a day which seemed impossibly long ago now, a part of a whole other life!
Filia laughed as she saw that he'd teleported their clothes directly from their previous positions, so that they were strewn all over the room. "You know, I could get very used to waking up to this sight." she said, stroking his face.
"Well, that's a good thing, because I plan on spending every night going to sleep to this sight." he said. He kissed her deeply and grinned. "I have something for you." he said, pulling a small box out of thin air, "Marry me?"
He flicked open the box and Filia's jaw dropped. She looked searchingly at him and smiled at what she saw.
"Yes."
He kissed her deeply as he slipped the ring onto her finger, and they proceeded to celebrate in the manner of engaged couples everywhere.
Hopelessly Addicted by The Corrs
Opened my eyes today
And I knew there's something different
Saw you in a brand new way
Like the clouds had somehow lifted
And if yesterday I heard
Myself saying these words
I would swear it was a lie
I don't know why but suddenly I'm falling
Was I so blind
I was loving you all the time
Now I'm hopelessly addicted
Helplessly attracted
I'll make a wish this day
And I'll send it to the heavens
That we will always stay
Entwined like this forever
And though the world may change
Coz nothing stays the same
I know we will survive
I don't know why but suddenly I'm falling
Was I so blind
I was loving you all the time
Now I'm hopelessly addicted
Naturally we acted.
I don't know why but suddenly I'm falling
I was so blind
I was loving you all the time
Now I'm hopelessly addicted
Helplessly attracted
Chemically reacted
I was loving you all the time
Hopelssly addicted
Helplessly attracted
Chemically reacted
Naturally we acted