Ellie's gaze swept imperiously over the three males, and the ruddy glow that flared up in her eyes was not entirely reflected firelight. "Would you. Well, never let it be said I backed down from a challenge."
Rising to her feet in one fluid motion, she stepped out away from the others a bit and nodded to Hermes that she was ready. She hadn't danced to a drumbeat alone in quite some time, but it was among the oldest and most viscerally compelling of instruments, and she remembered. Oh yes.
Hermes struck his drum once sharply, and then again, setting a complicated and insistent rhythm. Ellie tossed her hair back from her face and swayed to it, her pulse accelerating as she called forth memories of older, wilder times. Of living mortals it had been her duty and pleasure to entice, and the lustful damned who'd paid their penance in the Fire Gardens, cursed to watch the lush extravagances of the Succubae but never to touch.
Legends spoke of elusive dances known only to ancient tribes, and never in their entirety; dances that, if one could master even a fragment, might drive men mad with desire. The legends were true, but they failed to tell that mortal women had first learned such arts from the daughters of Queen Triskelle.
"Faster," Ellie commanded, in the same throaty tone she might have said such a thing to a lover, and danced.
It was like and unlike the dance she had shared with Belial. (http://community.livejournal.com/neutral_omens/39256.html#cutid1) That had been a thing of the moment, spun for her own pleasure, and the Crown's participation had been no plan of hers.
This was a dance of seduction, deliberate and pure, devoid of any pretense of decorum. Every sweep of a limb drew the eye inward, toward her center, where even in the dim and flickering firelight the undulating motion of hips or belly or shoulders or the heavy-lidded intensity of her gaze caught and held it, whispering promises in a language well understood by anything that wore a male body.
Her clothes, scant as they were, stayed in place for the moment; but the ripple and shift of her body beneath made the constraining fabric seem an unnecessary adornment at best, an impediment at worst. Ellie's sultry smile turned the dare back on her strange little audience, silently asking who would be the first to join her, and perhaps correct that small oversight.
no subject
Rising to her feet in one fluid motion, she stepped out away from the others a bit and nodded to Hermes that she was ready. She hadn't danced to a drumbeat alone in quite some time, but it was among the oldest and most viscerally compelling of instruments, and she remembered. Oh yes.
Hermes struck his drum once sharply, and then again, setting a complicated and insistent rhythm. Ellie tossed her hair back from her face and swayed to it, her pulse accelerating as she called forth memories of older, wilder times. Of living mortals it had been her duty and pleasure to entice, and the lustful damned who'd paid their penance in the Fire Gardens, cursed to watch the lush extravagances of the Succubae but never to touch.
Legends spoke of elusive dances known only to ancient tribes, and never in their entirety; dances that, if one could master even a fragment, might drive men mad with desire. The legends were true, but they failed to tell that mortal women had first learned such arts from the daughters of Queen Triskelle.
"Faster," Ellie commanded, in the same throaty tone she might have said such a thing to a lover, and danced.
It was like and unlike the dance she had shared with Belial. (http://community.livejournal.com/neutral_omens/39256.html#cutid1) That had been a thing of the moment, spun for her own pleasure, and the Crown's participation had been no plan of hers.
This was a dance of seduction, deliberate and pure, devoid of any pretense of decorum. Every sweep of a limb drew the eye inward, toward her center, where even in the dim and flickering firelight the undulating motion of hips or belly or shoulders or the heavy-lidded intensity of her gaze caught and held it, whispering promises in a language well understood by anything that wore a male body.
Her clothes, scant as they were, stayed in place for the moment; but the ripple and shift of her body beneath made the constraining fabric seem an unnecessary adornment at best, an impediment at worst. Ellie's sultry smile turned the dare back on her strange little audience, silently asking who would be the first to join her, and perhaps correct that small oversight.