Hold Onto Nothing as Fast as You Can Pt.2

The gunfight got blood and adrenaline racing. Always did. There was never a time he felt more alive than when he came out of one still in one piece. Everybody handled it differently, with celebration or tears or quiet reflection. Isabella's reaction?

With his hands rested gently upon her hips where she placed them, he looks in to her eyes, searching for doubt. Searching for a red flag that would make whatever this was the worst idea possible, that would prompt him to slamming on the breaks of this runaway train.

She was a whirlwind of action and reaction and left him dizzy. A storm in a tiny, perfect form. He was as red blooded as any male, the effect she was having on him undeniable as she straddled his lap and let the flimsy blouse she was wearing fall from her shoulders. The wet material turning transparent thanks to the rain, clinging to her in her places.

She all but pleads him with those eyes and runs her hands over his vest clad chest.

Stop talking.

He obeys.

The kiss is searing hot and threatens to burn them both alive. His clothing comes away with a pop of buttons and pull of zips, hitting the wooden floor with a sodden splat behind them as vest and shirt are discarded.

Their lips never part as her fingers drop to his belt, deftly slipping leather from metal. It hits the floor with a heavy thud of leather and guns and hers lands beside it.

Parting only to breathe and discard the last of the denim keeping them from one another, they're drawn together again like moths to flame. There's a catharsis to it that's palpable, an electricity between them undeniable as they blend together as though they'd known one another for years and knew each other like well studied maps.

They just.. fit.

Captivated by her, he watches her through heavy lids as she rides him to her liking. His hands glide over skin, appreciating and enjoying, until she calls out something to the heavens raining down upon the roof over their heads. She shivers and claws her fingers against his muscled chest. When she drops her eyes back to his he finds her sated. Less ferocious than before.

But he wasn't.

Taking her hips he moves them deftly, flipping her to her back and settling between her thighs. He finds her hands with his and links their fingers, gently pinning them above her head. He breathes hotly against her neck, grazing sensitive skin with his lips and taking her smoothly.

As their hips meet and he's buried inside of her again, Isabella gasps and hitches her knees up higher along his sides. Her reaction prompts him to lift his head from the crook of her neck and ask if she's okay, and she answers him with a kiss.

"Don't stop," she whispers.

Those moments after the fight ended and the gun smoke dissipated, after blood was shed in Sara's honor, Isabella searched for an escape like a woman dying of thirst craved a drink of water. An escape to somewhere a better, to a life where everything didn't hurt so bad; something to guide her away from the bad memories, the guilt, and this time she finds it in Leon.

She loses herself in him as he picks up speed, chasing after that release that will make her forget the mess she's entangled in, if only for a few fleeting moments of bliss. He groans against her throat and grazes the skin below her ear with his teeth, making every inch of her body erupt in goosebumps. She whimpers the word please again and again like she's reciting a prayer, but she doesn't know what she's asking him for.

Salvation, a second chance to do things right, or simply to be told that she's worthy of both.

To be told that she's wanted, that she belongs exactly where she is.

To be gifted with the hope that if he could want her like this, then maybe one day he could want her in every other capacity that mattered.

She moans his name as a peal of thunder rumbles across the valley, and he's done for. Releasing her hands from where they're pinned above her head, he puts his own to better use, cradling the side of her face in his palm and letting it skim along her jaw, the side of her neck, over her collarbone to her breast.

He looks at her with something akin to reverence in his eyes, and it's the first time she's felt seen for as long as she can remember.

Tangling her fingers in his hair at the nape of his neck, she pulls him down and kisses him like it's the last chance she'll ever get.

t wouldn't be. At least, he hoped it wouldn't. As he rested there in the cradle of her hips, enjoying the warmth of her body, he felt peaceful for the first time in a long time. Despite his thundering heart and the rush that came with all of this, it had been a while since he had allowed himself such vulnerability.

His world had been a turbulent storm since he signed his life away seven years ago. He'd seen enough to know he had seen too much. Unspeakable cruelty against people that didn't deserve it. He'd thought, when he jotted his name on that dotted line, that he would finally be doing some good. That he could counter whatever evils his father was perpetrating by balancing the scales.

Couldn't have been more wrong.

For the past year of his life he'd been on the run. Hunted, for doing what he felt right. He knew it would catch up to him eventually, he just hoped he had enough time to get Valerie somewhere safe and stable.

But now there was Isabella.

The thunder crackles overhead, breaking the silence between them as they lie there entwined, basking in the afterglow. Hanging on to a moment for as long as they could it seemed, before reality began to creep back like water seeping under a door. you could only ignore it for so long.

Lifting his head, Leon finally looks at her and is met with eyes he couldn't quite read. "You okay?" he asks quietly.

She dips her chin in a tiny nod, then laughs a little. "You're heavy."

His brows jump. "Oh!" he chuckles sheepishly, "sorry."

Easing himself from her, he shifts to sit on the edge of the bed, scratching his neck and staring down at the pile of wet clothes on the floor.

Silence.

He feels the bed move and hears it creak as she situates herself. Somehow, despite what they had just done, he felt a bit... awkward. "Clothes might take a little while to dry. I could hang them.. or.."

"We should probably get back." She mutters behind him.

Something didn't feel right, and it twisted his stomach in a knot. Chancing a glance over his shoulder at her, he tries. "I uh.. I really.." he gestures at her.

Words?

It's the aftermath of her desperate bids to escape that Isabella always fails to take into consideration. In the heat of the moment, she isn't thinking about the hangover that will plague her the next day, or how falling into bed with someone she knows might alter the relationship forever, for better or worse.

It's a road she's already been down with Jake. The night of her first kill she sought comfort in him just like she had in Leon, and things had never quite been the same since. She draws her knees up and hugs them to her chest at the memory, and all the ways she might have jeopardized the only friendship she had by letting herself fall prey to emotion.

She worries she's done the same thing tonight, and when Leon tries to break the silence and bridge the gap that's slowly widening between them, she shakes her head and cuts short whatever pleasantries he's floundering for.

"You don't... you don't have to say anything," she murmurs.

The storm passes in the time it takes them to redress themselves, wet material clinging uncomfortably to their skin. Every now and then Isabella steals a glance at Leon, who seems to be doing everything in his power not to meet her gaze, like his right to simply look at her had been revoked.

Her heart sinks like a stone, and her stomach isn't far behind. There's no comfort in telling herself that things will be better this way, but she still tries.

- - x - -


It's not easy to avoid someone on a plot of land as small as the ranch, a lesson that Isabella learns the hard way over the next couple of days. Every glimpse of Leon takes her back to that cabin as rain pelted the roof, how safe she'd felt wrapped in his arms, and how stupid she had been for compromising something so innocent and pure by indulging a selfish, animalistic urge.

He doesn't make it easy to avoid him, and she quickly runs out of tasks and excuses that would otherwise keep her occupied. He finally corners her one night while the others are gathered around the fire, asking permission to enter her tent, and with nowhere to run, she reluctantly invites him inside.

"Did I do somethin' wrong?" he asks, and there's strain in the question, like he's at his wits' end, like he's been going over every second of that night with a fine-toothed comb.

He hadn't. Not a single damned thing, and that was the problem.

"No," she murmurs, fingers fidgeting with a loose thread in her blouse.

"Then why...?" He loses momentum, his arms flopping laxly against his sides. "Help me understand what's goin' on. Why won't you talk to me?"

She can't bring herself to look him in the eye, her gaze trained on the patterned rug beneath her boots. "Because I like you."

Her answer doesn't clarify a thing, and he scratches awkwardly at the back of his neck. "I'm afraid I still don't get it. I like you, too, Isabella. I really like you, and so I don't--"

"You like me because I laid down for you," she interrupts, and summons the nerve to steal a glance at his expression.

He looks hurt, and it's like being sucker-punched in the gut.

"That ain't fair," he argues. "It's not like that, not at all. Why're you pushin' me away?"

He tentatively extends a hand to her, and she recoils like he'd threatened to hit her. "Because you'll only leave when something better comes along, just like everyone else." Her throat constricts, threatening to cut off her voice. "I've learned not to fool myself anymore."

Leon puzzles at that, a frown fleeting across his brow as he settles his hand back down by his side. It takes him a moment, but eventually he finds the words.

"So you're not even going to give me a chance?" he asks, quietly, "cause I'd really like one. I don't know who these people are that have let you down so bad but.. hell with them."

Hitching his shoulder, he steps a little closer to her. "I ain't them."

"It's always the way." She laughs miserably, still on the defensive. "I'm the girl they go to when the one they want isn't available. Always the second choice. Second best."

Leon's frown deepens. "Not to me."

Her eyes widen as she looks back at him, in disbelief almost.

"I'd like to prove it, if you'll let me."

She wants to believe in him so badly that she physically aches, her stomach in knots while desire and self-preservation go to war in her mind.

She had made a lot of mistakes in her life, hurt people who didn't deserve it simply because she was afraid that they would hurt her first. The easiest solution had been to keep everyone at arm's length, but in those moments of weakness when she let her guard down, when she went searching for the affection and intimacy she so desperately craved, it only served to remind her about what she was missing out on.

Licking her lips, she casts her eyes down to the floor again. Her mouth feels drier than the deserts of Rio Bravo, and her eyes sting like they're filled with sand.

Second best. It's all she's ever known.

"I'm afraid..." she whispers, so quietly that she's not even sure he can hear her.

"It's okay to be afraid," he assures her, "and I ain't tellin' you not to be. Just... shuttin' people out all the time, that ain't no way to live."

His experimental step towards her isn't reciprocated, but she doesn't counter it, either. Sighing, he rakes his hand through his hair and resigns himself to the most likely outcome of the situation: she was wrestling with a giant, and he might not be strong enough to fight it for her.

"Think about it," he offers, though it's without expectation. "Choice is yours, Isabella, and I'll respect it, whatever it turns out to be."

- - x - -


In the dead of night, long after everyone else has gone to sleep and the last embers of the camp fire have died, the canvas flaps of Leon's tent rustle and then part.

He sits up with a start, delirious and half asleep, supporting himself on his elbows. Squinting into the darkness, his eyes adjust to the low light and his brows hike towards his hairline.

"Isabella...?"

Reaching across to the oil lamp on the table next to his cot, he lights it and takes in the look on her face, her dark eyes wide and searching his for something.

"What's wrong?" he asks.

She kneels down on the end of his cot. "I thought about it..."

Leon is suddenly much more alert, and he sits up a little straighter. "Yeah?"

Isabella nods.

He swallows. "And...?"

A smile flickers across her face, and grows wider as she crawls closer to him on hands and knees.

"Did you mean it?" she asks, her hopeful expression illuminated by the flickering orange glow of the lamp. "What you said earlier?"

There's no hesitation in his answer, and he supplies it readily. "Every word."

Whatever traces of doubt are still weighing on Isabella's mind are pushed aside, and she tilts her head just so as she leans in to kiss him.