It was a slow, swelling sort of awed shock when Cullen continued to let the moments tick by without striking again. His first bite had hurt- and hurt still- but the throb of it was oddly lonely, the rest of Varanduil's quivering flesh waiting for the same as he watched Cullen twitching with what had to be the desire to mete out further punishment. -Yet, even as Varanduil watched the fury spark up behind those silver-blue eyes as he explained himself, Cullen was a restrained storm, churning just at the border of Varanduil's waiting body, not quite touching. It was beginning to make him mad with anticipation, his own muscles beginning to shudder with sympathy (-was it sympathy..?).

Cullen's hard, golden voice was a flaming whip, biting where his teeth didn't, and the bronze dog accepted it eagerly, only whimpering when his magnificent leader pulled away from him and left the heated condensation of his steaming breath across Varanduil's flesh to turn cold. "He's a child," he pleaded back, not sure whether he was begging for his own sake or his traitor brother's. "A frightened, foolhardy child who picked a fight he could never have won, and panicked when he realized it." He wasn't sure why he was attempting to defend him even now, when the coward had abandoned them before even accepting his loss- it was just as Cullen said. -But he was young, and something in Varanduil had been so stubbornly sure that something under his lies about their leader had been an honest form of concern, even if it was misguided.

-But he was tripped abruptly from these thoughts when Cullen continued, and he found himself staring at him dumbly, stunned and mute with it. It was terrible- it was selfish- but he could only feel a dazed sort of disbelieving glee, and try as he might, he couldn't make himself focus on what his beloved master was trying to impress upon him, instead enraptured by his final words.

"You- Did you really..? -Love me?" he asked in hushed awe. He swallowed thickly, his dark eyes sweeping the length of Cullen's furious body once, then again, more slowly, as if he'd never seen him before. He swallowed again, heavily, and his black stare shifted restlessly; hungrily between Cullen's bared teeth and the crisscrossing of all of his beautiful scars at his collar, knowing the newest- the pinkest and tenderest- were all for him.

Unable to stop himself, he stepped closer.

"You... Don't have to trust me," he whispered, almost shyly, though the arch of his bronze body was suddenly tall with prideful delight. "I've never trusted you, but I still..." He sucked in a low, hissing breath, and then gave in to the urge to reach out and softly mouth the tender heart of Cullen's pink nose, still wrinkled in a toothy snarl. Even if those teeth sank into him again, he couldn't be deterred from drawing closer still; intimately close, until his dark mouth could trace a feather-light touch along the perfect curve of Cullen's gleaming throat.

"I wouldn't mind," he whispered, his voice dropping into a quivering husk as the first of Cullen's- no, Varanduil's scars grazed his hungry lips, "if I made you shiver the way you make me." And he gently fitted his teeth over it- the scar; Cullen's muscled, powerful, vulnerable throat- scraping lightly, before dragging his hot tongue across it as if he'd drawn invisible blood.