pomegranates and fangs.

[Fabienne Bartelle] *Finally. Finally. Her practice space was complete. The floor was in! Her treadmill delivered! Blades in their rack. Everything as it should be. In its place. Perfect. Were it not uncouth to do so she would skip with glee. Instead she's treating herself to something terribly sweet and positively sinful. Chrysanthemum juice, straight from a pretentious organic juice shop. So it only came in little juice boxes. So drinking them made one look ridiculous and childish. She'd take them home. - to her own home. Her private residence, and drink them however she so chose. It would be glorious. The recycled paper bag crinkles in her gloved hand as she strides towards home with a faint smile on her lips. This Chicago held promise. *

[Lukas] Well, clearly Lukas has no problem looking ridiculous and childish: he's drinking some lychee-pomegranate concoction out of a juicebox. It looks patently absurd in the Shadow Lord's large, blackgloved hand, set against his swarthy conqueror's face. He's standing in front of

of all things

what might be best termed an erotic boutique, a classy expensive thing flocks of twenty- and thirty-something women with letters after their name visit on girls' night out. The sort of thing with demure window decor and explore-your-sexuality classes on the weekends and racier toys and goodies hidden well away from street view. Maybe he doesn't know what he's looking at, peering in the window at six hundred dollar lingerie on plastic mannequins.

[Fabienne Bartelle] *A tall powerful figure looms apparent ahead of her. Tailored clothing flattered, and Fabienne considered the broad lines of the man's back. Tasteful but subtle style. She did so enjoy it when a gentleman understood how to dress himself. The slender blonde blinks upon realizing she's admiring Katherine's packmate. Lukas. The shadowlord. Graceful strides slow, eyes slipping away quickly to - A SEX SHOP!? - cue Fabienne speeding up. Perhaps she could slip by, this was clearly no time for idle salutations.*

[Lukas] The problem with these little juice boxes is that they really don't contain a lot of juice. When Lukas was a boy, he would blow air in to overinflate them and then squeeze the sides to squirt apple juice into his mouth. It was a way to make them seem fuller, and to make enough of a game and a production of the thing to make it last longer.

Now that Lukas is grown, he doesn't bother. Two or three gulps, really, drains the juicebox. There's a trashcan behind him; he saw it earlier. He doesn't need to look again to toss the empty box in, except, of course, that's exactly when Fabienne brisks by behind him.

Lukas doesn't hear the expected swish-thunk of a juicebox hitting the inside of the Magnificent Mile's attractive refuse bins. He hears the light thump of thin cardboard against someone else, and turns, apologetic, only to discover he's looking at Katherine's latest kinswoman. Or migraine-to-be, depending.

Give him credit for this much; he doesn't stammer, turn his collar up and run. "Oh, I'm sorry," he says, stepping forward to pick the juicebox off the ground and replace it in its intended target. "Didn't know you were behind me." His hand dips into his coat pocket; he offers her a travel-pack of kleenex. There's a distinct flush creeping up his cheeks.

[Katherine] Katherine Bellamonte has not been visiting the lingerie store, let's make that much absolutely clear. She, rather, exits from a shoe store several stores up with two white bags tucked under her arm, black strings connecting them. Both bore the emblems of well-known designers [she had a fondness for Jimmy Choo in particular] and shoe-boxes rattle inside them as she walks, slotting away a credit card into a purse.

There is absolutely no need for Truth's Meridian to purchase any more shoes -- truth be told, her closets were bursting at the seams with them and she'd not so idly speculated to her maid, Lucille, about turning one entire closet into a shoe depository. Still, she's bought another two pairs at least, and, catching sight of Lukas speaking to her Kinswoman, smiles somewhat wryly and begins toward him, noting as she glimpses the store-front they are before:

My, my, what have you been caught admiring?

[Fabienne Bartelle] *Fabienne comes up short. Too intent on fleeing a possibly embarrassing scene she doesn't think to dodge. Juice box hitting her just below the midsection. Yeah. Right about there. Pomegranate. It had to be Pomegranate. A mere half teaspoon of spurted fuschia juice all it takes to ruin a very expensive cream colored knee length coat. Her cheeks pinking, delicate brow furrowing as she takes the kleenex with a frown. Speechless in the face of Katherine's arrival. A deep breath, before the kin straightens her shoulders, gives a polite smile touched rueful, and speaks.*

Of course not, had you been aiming for me I expect you would have managed with a good deal more force. Good Evening Lukas.

*A quirk of her lips. Some small consideration for Lukas, Fabienne is patently ignoring the shopfront he's chosen to linger in front of as she acknowledges Katherine with a tilt of her head.*

Mlle. Bellamonte, a pleasure.

[Lukas] There are some vague mumblings and stammerings over the totemlink, and then a very firm, What does it look like, Katherine?

And, yes. It had to be pomegranate. It had to be a white coat. And now there was an unmistakable and rather indelible splotch just to the right of the third button, and Lukas is grimacing as he looks at it.

"Oh, that's a shame. Here," he's taking out his wallet, and for a moment Fabienne might think he's going to commit the epic faux-pas of paying for her coat -- but no, it's a business card he produces, "that's a very decent dry cleaner's up in Lakeview. They'll pickup and deliver; turnaround time's about two days unless you want it rushed.

"Listen, let me buy you dinner to make up for it. Katherine? Want to join us?"

[Katherine] There's nothing more over the totemlink but a vague sense of smirking amusement from the Philodox. She smiles in greeting at Fabienne, and inclines her head, her golden waves falling over her cheek. "Bonsoir, mon cher," she murmurs and then turns to observe the flush-cheeks of her Alpha.

Did she wish to join them for dinner?

Her pale eyes skirt back to Fabienne, and she allows a corner of her lip to curl. "But of course, I can discover how Ms Bartelle is settling into the city."

[Fabienne Bartelle] *Fabienne is dabbing her splotchy coat idly, taking the card with a slight nod of her head, relieved the Lord was offering dry cleaning information, rather than money. She certainly didn't need money. Kleenex pocketted.*

That would be delightful.

*Her hands fold carefully in front of her to stop them from flailing about unladylike as she spoke. Spot forgotten, as to fuss unduly was neurotic and unbecoming. Such behavior simply wouldn't do. The lean limbed kin falls into step beside Katherine and Lukas.*

I had the pleasure of dining with Msgr. Bellamonte earlier last week. He was a good deal more appropriate than I recall from New York.

*Haughty perhaps, to weigh in on appropriate behavior for a trueborn, but without codes of conduct, even great leaders could become tyrants, afterall. Grey eyes cast to Katherine.*

[Lukas] So they leave the shop behind, and not a single one of them has commented on it. Aloud, anyway. It can't be denied that some tension leaves the set of Lukas's shoulders as the distance grows. Still, there's a directness to Lukas's eyes and a level confidence to his tone, flushed cheeks aside, that suggests if asked he would explain his interest quite readily and shamelessly. But of course, neither Katherine nor Fabienne were so ungracious as to ask.

"Another New Yorker?" Lukas comments, amused. "I'm starting to think the entire kin and Garou population of New York City is relocating here. How are you settling in, Fabienne?" He gestures at her paper bag, an aside, a polite offer, "Would you like me to carry that?"

[Katherine] Katherine's smile widens a little without ever truly baring her teeth, she laughs, but the sound is nothing more than a throaty purr of understanding, of agreement at what the Kinswoman says. After a few more minutes she says, airily enough, as if it meant little to her one way or another. "My brother is the happy man who can turn his charm on and off at a whim, Fabienne. But he is always a gentleman, regardless of what he would sometimes occasion you to believe."

She glances at Lukas, then adjusts her own purchases, dropping them to be gripped by gloved fingers.

"Tell me, how did you enjoy Edward?" There's something a touch risqué about Katherine's words, her eyes gleaming in a way that denotes she's teasing, but also that she's daring the young woman to say something inappropriate about her brother, or that she knows without doubt that there is nothing to be concerned over.

[Fabienne Bartelle] Very well thank you Lukas. Construction has finally finished on the penthouse and I'm free to enjoy my own training facilities once more, which is quite a relief. I simply abhor public facilities. I find them somewhat unsanitary.

*No verbal response to the gentlemanly offer to carry her bag, only the shade of a smile and a shake of her head. Thank you, but no. She was no gilded lily incapable of carrying her own things. Katherine speaks, Fabienne listens, and soon she's being baited. This she recognizes, understands. The games begin. They had to eventually of course.*

Dinner with Edward was quite enjoyable. He's very engaging.

*Is her tactful reply. Grey eyes meeting Katherines half an instant before the kin drops her gaze from Katherine's too sharp smile, and looks to Lukas.*

You're from New York as well?

[Lukas] Unsanitary, Fabienne calls public facilities. Lukas is privately amused; he can't count the number of times that exact word was employed by Katherine to describe any number of things.

"Are you in competition again, or just keeping fit?"

They don't go very far. There's a teppanyaki steakhouse a block down, a thin sliver of a restaurant with a single row of tables down one side and a teppan bar down the other. Decor is entirely black and red: red walls, black tables, black floor, personnel dressed smartly in black accented in red. Lukas pulls open the door; a chorus of irasshaimase!s greet them as they enter.

"I grew up in the City, yeah," he replies. "That's how I met the Bellamontes. But I was born just outside Prague, where my family is rooted."

Old world Shadow Lords. Dark of hair and pale of eye; warlords, nobles, tyrants, monsterslayers and monsters.

[Katherine] Lukas is privately amused, but Katherine's nod is entirely somber, and sympathetic. "Oh, oui, they are at that, you are quite right, my dear. I very rarely make use of them." They step into the tiny restaurant, and Katherine brings up the rear of their small expedition, housing Fabienne between two Rage-fueled creatures.

When they settle at a table, the Silver Fang calls for bottled water and carefully sets her bags to one side; her gloves only coming off once she has removed a small container of cleansing wipes from her purse and wiped over her fingers, and her stretch of bench, leaving a lingering antiseptic scent. Lukas is accustomed to this eccentricity of his pack-mates, more than once they have exchanged words about her phobia of unclean things.

"My family is based out of New York, and in part, also in France. My mother lives there still to be closer to her family, but my father is buried at his Sept with his pack-mates."

[Fabienne Bartelle] *Katherine's ritual is observed, stirring a memory of the philodox doing something similarly strange at a banquet some time ago. No comment made however, as Fabienne folds fluidly into a bench seat across from her, coat set carefully aside. It was a full moon, and the rage in the confined space was enough to raise the hair on the back of her neck. Her gloves plucked off and set by her coat and paper bag as she steels herself for polite - if harrowing - conversation.*

My competition schedule is not so grueling as I prefer it, allowances made to allow for time instructing. I will be mainly keeping fit.

*She orders tea, taking a moment to glance at the menu before tucking a renegade curl behind her ear and adding.*

My own family is somewhat split between Vienna and New York. I typically spend winters in Vienna with my dear Uncle Anton.

[Lukas] Lukas doesn't so much as bat an eyelash at Katherine's antics. He doesn't wipe anything down, either. This isn't a hole in the wall, though the size might suggest it. This is the sort of postmodern restaurant where serving sizes are inversely proportional to price.

The Shadow Lord sheds his coat and leaves it folded on the seat beside him. His gloves and scarf go atop it. A waitress comes by, sharply pretty, to offer them menus and drink lists. Fabienne wants tea; Lukas wants unfiltered sake, and while the Fangs discuss their roots, the Shadow Lord skims his eye down the menu. He seems to decide in a matter of seconds what to order, and sets the menu aside.

"Would you mind if I asked what brought you to Chicago, Fabienne? From what I know of your family, women of your breeding are usually kept rather close. Chicago seems somewhat provincial."

[Katherine] Katherine sweeps the Kinswoman a brief look as her Alpha queries her over her reasons for attending the city at large; she knows, of course, Ms Bellamonte, has known since their first meeting precisely why Fabienne had come. She knew enough detail about the young woman's life to answer the question promptly if so she wished.

Apparently, she does not.

She instead plucks up the menu and deigns to order a salad as if she were some young thing worrying about her diet. Her bottled water comes, and Katherine twists off the cap, pouring it into a glass silently, waiting, it would appear, to see how well Fabienne fielded the question.

[Fabienne Bartelle] *The subtle tightening of a fine boned jaw. The blink of pale eyelashes thats half an instant too long in consideration of her answer. Fabienne a creature accustomed to deception, but unskilled in outright lies. Half truths and omission were the name of the game here. A polite smile to Lukas.*

Hardly provincial. Independence makes anywhere seem entirely metropolitan. Also, My father has contacts in the city who can see me set up. I am no gilded lily, I assure you.

[Katherine] Katherine smiles behind her glass at Fabienne's response and then sips from it, turning slightly, she gifts the young woman with her full focus, her coil of pearls in pride of place twisted around her throat and neck. "I would not wish you so," she says first, to the gilded lily part of her response and then with a polite little pause: "Tell me, have you encountered any other of our tribe so far in the city beyond myself and my brother?"

[Fabienne Bartelle] I have had the good fortune to encounter Mr. Sommers and Mr. Delacourt-Alden both. Both exceedingly pleasant gentlemen. Mr. Delacourt fancies a fencing match sometime in the future, and Mr. Sommers instructed me on the finer points of constructing grilled cheese sandwiches, as I'm without servants at present.

*Fabienne doesn't fidget. Its difficult not to of course, surrounded by the anger of a furious mother goddess. However, her athleticism serves her well, the discipline to remain poised, the grace to make it seem effortless.*

[Katherine] [ack, so sorry, phonecall!]

[Lukas] As Fabienne assures Lukas that she's no gilded lily, the Shadow Lord smiles faintly, one corner of his mouth tilting up. "I never thought you were."

His eyes are direct and cool, though, pale as ice as they flick between Fabienne's. And there's absolutely no doubt that he knows as well as she does that his question was never answered.

Still; Lukas is nothing if not a superficially polite creature. He lets it go; the topic moves on. He turns his head to thank the waitress as she serves his sake to the table, then orders for the table while the females converse: a wide assortment of meats and seafoods, vegetables on the side, as well as whatever the Fangs might request. This is essentially a steakhouse. Were they at the bar, the chef would grill for them, a dinner that's as much entertainment as sustenance. Where they are, however, they'll be cooking their own food on the iron griddle at the center of table.

When the waitress departs, Lukas sips his sake. He's quiet for a moment to pick up the thread of conversation again. "Fencing match. Are you going to let him win?" He sets his cup down. "Caleb, I mean."

[Fabienne Bartelle] Of course not.

*Fabienne responds promptly, chin lifting as she levels grey eyes just below Lukas's. Eye contact with an ahroun ill advised for long on a full moon. Rage prickles around her, sets her skin tingling and alert. Flight and fight responses warring privately in the back of her mind.*

I don't doubt that Mr. Delacourt is quite capable with a blade.

[Lukas] Just as promptly -- "You're not worried that he'll grow angry if you defeat him?"

[Katherine] [Sorry guys, I'ma have to bow outta this scene, I'm actually not feeling too hot, but as Kate would stick around, just say she's excused herself to the ladies room or something, and/or is letting Fabienne and Lukas interact. Thanks, and sorry!]
to Fabienne Bartelle, Lukas

[Fabienne Bartelle] *Kate excuses herself to the ladies room, taking a stock of antiseptic wipes with her (bathrooms were especially filthy of course) and Fabienne and Lukas are left alone to converse.*

I don't expect so. It would be insincere to promise an earnest match, then do less than my best in order to spare a person's feelings. Were I to do so Mr. Delacourt would have just cause to be irritated, as in doing so I would be making the assumption that he were not up to defeating me through skill. I would not insult a fellow swordsman in such a manner.

[Lukas] Lukas looks up as Katherine leaves the table, a brief acknowledgment between packmates before his attention returns to Fabienne. The Shadow Lord does a remarkably good job of pretending to be human, considering his rage is enough to silence the guests at the neighboring table. They're eating as fast as possible. They'll leave a shoddy tip, and then tell themselves they didn't like the edamame, or that the kobe beef was overaged, or any number of excuses for why they will never, ever eat here again.

"Interesting," Lukas says, relaxed himself, leaning back in his seat. "Well, you're clearly no coward, Fabienne, so I suspect your avoidance of the question earlier has more to do with privacy than fear. I'll respect that."

Meat arrives, thin slices of beef arranged on wide plates, savagery made beautiful. Shaved radishes and ginger make floral arrangements. Tofu, peppers, several species of mushrooms accompany sea scallops and prawns, calamari, octopi.

"Let's eat," Lukas says.

Conversation over dinner is largely smalltalk, though after a time Katherine returns. If the weather doesn't warm up soon, Lukas jokingly threatens at one point, I'm going back to New York. That leads to a discussion of New York's virtues and vices, which descends into a debate over the nightlife here vs. the City. Alive, Lukas calls Manhattan. Superficial, argues Katherine. Lukas scoffs that the pot is speaking to the kettle. They agree to disagree.

There's a distinct ease and warmth between the packmates, even when they're disagreeing, and even when both are, to some degree, upholding a certain formality for Fabienne's sake. When they're done, Lukas's small flask of nigori-sake is empty, and the Shadow Lord is lounging, chopsticks balanced atop his plate.

Their check comes. Lukas pays with an American Express card, signs for it. There are Garou who are assiduously careful not to leave a paper trail, as though this might somehow keep them safer. Lukas is not one of them.

Then they're getting ready to leave, standing, shrugging into coats. Katherine receives a phone call and begs off. Lukas buttons his coat and looks at Fabienne.

"Let me walk you home," he offers.

[Fabienne Bartelle] *Lukas makes an observation, and its received with a decorous smile. Everything. just. so. Dinner goes off without a hitch. Fabienne is by no means a charming, radiant creature. She's pleasant enough, knowledgeable, very polite and an active participant in dinner conversation. But she's hardly the life of the party. Her stained coat slipped into and buttoned. She moves with Lukas towards the door after goodbyes are exchanged with Katherine, but once outside she raises a hand in protest.*

While I appreciate the offer, I would prefer not. I prefer to keep my residence private, even if such is only an illusion.

[Lukas] It's a curious thing when a Silver Fang kin of astonishing breeding possesses less surface charisma and charm than a Shadow Lord Ahroun. While polite, there's a certain unafraid bluntness about Fabienne: it surfaced during dinner, and it surfaces again now.

The tilt of Lukas's head is quick and not quite human. His eyes are clear and curious; he studies the Fang for a moment on the sidewalk.

Then he laughs under his breath. "Privacy, not fear," he says, as though this meant something. "Fair enough."

He doesn't seem to have taken offense. Lukas's courtesy is as much a construct and a means to certain ends as any; it's not a law he lives by, that he would be insulted to be forced to flout. "Sorry about your coat," he adds, "but for what it's worth I enjoyed dinner. I'll see you around, Fabienne."

[Fabienne Bartelle] *The Shadowlord's head jerks sideways. Twitches in a single instant from one position to another. A movement that gets a subtle flinch despite herself. He mutters under his breath, and Fabienne fails to hear it, though she sees lips move. The tilt of her own head is not curiosity, but necessity. *

Forgiven entirely. Dinner was lovely, thank you Lukas. Please give Katherine my regards.

*Its with the slightest dip of a curl topped head that Fabienne turns to leave, a final comment tossed over the slender line of her shoulder, accompanied by a quirk of lips that borders on playful.*

Should you ever care for that match, I assure you I'll have no mercy.

[Lukas] Behind her, Lukas is surprised for a second; then he laughs aloud. Even her ears would catch that.

The Fang goes one way. The Shadow Lord goes the other, turning his collar up against the wind as he goes.

hide deeper.

[Lukas] In the spring and summer, mornings at 520 Kingsbury are awash in light. It is winter now, though, and the light coming through the vast unblinded windows is grey and heavy. It is not difficult at all to sleep through the dawn, through the morning, until noontide.

It's one of the rare mornings that Lukas is up before Danicka. He showers and dresses in last night's pajama bottoms, leaving his shirt where it is. He doesn't shave, because he never remembers to bring an overnight bag. He makes breakfast, though -- eggs and ham and cheese, running downstairs to buy whatever she lacks -- and he throws out a suspicious tomato that's too squishy by half.

By the time Danicka makes it out of bed, Lukas is sitting at the breakfast bar, his plate empty. He's playing some tower-building game on the iPhone she got him. When he hears her coming, he pauses, sets the phone aside, swivels on the barstool and smiles.

"Eggs on the skillet," he says.

[Danicka] When they first began sleeping to-- no. When they first started fucking each other, Lukas never saw Danicka sleep. The first time he did, he waited a little while before allowing himself to nod off in her arms. She woke before he did, slipped away from him. It was a long time before sleeping together became a regular occurence after even the most intense, soul-shaking sex. It was a long time before Danicka would stay in bed with him even after she woke, which was saying something, because she always woke before dawn. She woke without alarms, without noise or startlement.

Over time, that faded. She no longer carried with her the nine-year-old habit of waking early enough to be cognizant and prepared for the day when Yelizaveta would get up. She no longer had to be up for anyone's sake but her own. She gave herself slack, and became leisurely. She started to feel safe, being asleep in bed with a monster. It worried her, that she could feel safe doing such a thing.

When Lukas wakes this morning, though, Danicka is deep asleep. She's naked on top of the covers, breathing steadily. She stirs slightly when he moves out of the bed, but drifts back again, spent and worn from last night.

A little while later, her hand curls on the bedspread, seeking him. It's cool where he was lying. She forgets, in her sleep, that he was ever there. Another part of her, smelling him, is convinced he's still there. She sinks again, where it's darker, where it's warm.

And later: Danicka turns, and wraps herself up in the filthy comforter. She wraps her arms and legs around a pillow, burying her face in it, unaware of the cooking going on in the kitchen.

It is well into morning before she opens her eyes and knows where she is, who she is, what is going on. She remembers things: fucking, mostly. She remembers because her thighs and her cunt and her back are vaguely sore, a stiffness that will fade as soon as she gets up and moves around a little. She breathes in deeply, looking at the fuzzy rainbows cast on the ground by the prism catching cloud-diffused light. And closes her eyes again, rolling onto her back. She tangles in the covers, smiling lazily, and then sadly, as she realizes her mate is not in her den.

Danicka sits up, her expression troubled.

And her nostrils flare.

She smells eggs and ham. She blinks a few times and pushes and kicks the blankets away, crawls off her bed, and heads to her bathroom. Her robe is hanging on the back of the door. She sees herself in the mirror and blinks in surprise, pushing her hair off her face, twisting it away and laying over one shoulder. It unfurls there, but is less matted-looking when she exits her bedroom, still in the process of tying her robe around her waist.

The light is dim gray and white and yellow, but it still makes her shade her eyes for a moment. She smiles back, still groggy. Quiet. Slow. She walks towards him, coming to his barstool, and opens her arms. "Hold me," she says fuzzily, leaning towards his chest.

[Lukas] So he does.

He holds her, warmth blossoming in his chest, but not the way one might expect. Not by drawing her between his legs, against his body, but by putting his hands on her hips and lifting her, easily and smoothly as a dancer, to straddle his lap and wrap around him.

He winds his arms around her then, holds her. The robe is warming with her body heat; warms further under his palms, which stroke smooth arcs over her back.

"Hi, baby," he says quietly.

[Danicka] So she does.

She is lifted, and she puts her hands on his shoulders lightly as though for balance, opening her legs and the folds of her robe and sinking down onto his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck and letting her legs dangle -- half-bared now -- on either side of him. She lays her head on his shoulder as she settles against him, smiling softly.

"Morning," she murmurs back.

And closes her eyes. Breathes in, and out, slowly. A little while later her eyes open, and she looks at the stove. "What kind of eggs?"

[Lukas] Moments seem to drift by a little slower this morning. The light is grey. His mate is warm and drowsy still. They fit together, and he leans back against the bar, closing his eyes.

A little later, she speaks. He opens his eyes too, his head turning slightly against hers.

"Scrambled," he says. "With diced sausage. There was toast too but I ate it."

[Danicka] "I forgot I had sausage," she says mildly, "but you should make more toast."

Danicka slides off his lap slowly, but only after nuzzling him under his jaw, mumbling wordless, meaningless sounds of contentment. Her bare feet touch the floor and her robe falls back around her waist as she walks around the bar into the kitchen proper to get herself a plate.

Or, rather, stand at the stove plucking food out of the skillet with her fingers and eating it right there. She watches him, following him with her eyes whether he moves to make more toast or not. "Paul moved out," she says. "About two weeks ago."

In case he hadn't noticed.

[Lukas] "You didn't," Lukas replies, rising up off the barstool after she draws away. "I went and bought some."

She drifts to the skillet, eats from the pan. He doesn't tut-tut her. He goes to the breadbox, gets bread, puts it in the toaster, and then joins her to pick a piece of sausage out of the pan, then another.

His arm winds gently around her waist. Lukas nods a little, then pops another piece of sausage in his mouth.

"I know. I could smell the change. Are you advertising again?"

[Danicka] Her eyes flick up at him, their color muted and warm in this light, in this mood. A line appears between her eyebrows, just a flicker of tension, and then smooths. Behind her, Lukas moves in her kitchen while she eats from the skillet, bite by bite. The toaster works quietly and effortlessly to singe her bread, and Danicka eats cooling breakfast without bothering with a plate.

"No," she muses. "That's why I'm working. So I can keep it alone and not destroy the rest of my lifestyle."

[Lukas] A last bite of sausage, this with some egg clinging, and then Lukas steps away to grab the toast a few seconds before it pops by itself. He comes back with it, setting them on the edge of the pan. For his part, Lukas levers himself up on her counter, spine easing into a loose curve.

"What are you going to do with the extra room?"

[Danicka] If he'd let the toaster ding on its own, the bread would have burnt. As it is, it's neatly browned, golden. Danicka smiles at it and eats a few more bites of egg and sausage before picking up the slice in one hand and a knife in the other. She moves the lid of the butter dish on the counter off and scrapes a pat of it over the toast with quick, tidy motions while Lukas hauls himself onto the counter.

"I don't know," she says, putting a bite of of sausage on a corner of the buttered toast -- the butter melting into the pockets created by air, hardened by heat -- and taking a bite. Danicka chews thoughtfully, moving over to stand between his legs with her back to him, leaning against the inside of his calf.

"Maybe turning it into an office. Or a guest room."

[Lukas] Lukas touches her hair with his left hand, which is his clean hand -- the tips of his fingers on the right faintly greasy from picking at eggs and sausage. "I don't care if you turn it into a guest room," he quips, "I'm still hogging your bed."

He leans down, then, wrapping his arm around her shoulders, nuzzling her temple briefly. "I like it when I get to cook breakfast for you," he confesses. "I think it satisfies my urge to provide."

[Danicka] He makes her smile. The touch to her hair, which is far from clean. The mild joke about hogging her bed, refusing to be banished to the smaller northward room if she decides to put a bed in it, decorate it for guests that may never come. Danicka leans her head into his touch for a moment.

"You're not a guest, though, it would be inappropriate if you slept there," she says lightly, and goes back to eating her toast, crushing its crispness with her straight white teeth.

She's held again, and moves into that as well, closing her eyes and swallowing. Danicka licks butter and crumbs off her lips, turning her head to nuzzle his cheek. She has to tip her head back to do so, but she does it easily. And gladly.

Kisses his jaw. Easily. And gladly. And warmly.

"You should wake me a little when you leave," she says softly, still rubbing her face against his, toast half-forgotten, half-eaten. She sounds thoughtful. The words are dappled with a faint and inexplicable sadness. They are also held up by permission, by urging.

[Lukas] "Mmm," Lukas murmurs, eyes closing. He tilts his head to accommodate her; to allow and to accept the nuzzling, the kisses. Her lips leave a faint moisture on his jawline. He's showered already: he smells fresh, clean, and a little like her soap.

His eyes open when she speaks. The bottom drops out of his chest; the space surrounding his heart seems to yawn open with ache and tenderness. "Oh, Danička. I'm sorry I left you to wake alone. I didn't think."

[Danicka] Comparatively, Danicka is filthy: she smells like Lukas, like her sweat, like their sex. She smells like her bed must, only alive and warm rather than inert and cooling. She smells like mate-in-morning, mate-who-will-give-cubs, hungry-female. She smells like whatever detergent and softener was last used on her robe, which she is making filthy by her skin's contact with it.

Her head tips to the side as he speaks, and she smiles gently, nuzzling him again almost insistently. "Don't be sad. I wasn't sad. But you should wake me," she repeats, drawing her head back enough to see him... and to take another bite of toast. Chews, swallows, and: "We have so little time together."

The smile is faint. It doesn't leave. She kisses the corner of his mouth, her own soft and leaving a single crumb on his lips. "But I probably would have done the same. I like knowing you're asleep, and nearby, and warm. So I understand."

[Lukas] "Yeah." He's a little muffled; he returns her kiss, his own lips to the corner of her mouth. "On both counts."

He doesn't mind that Danicka is, simply put, filthy. That she smells like sweat and sex and him and her. Were he nearly so civilized and polite as he pretends, he'd be shocked; possibly disgusted. But he's not, and she knows this. She knows that her mate, her male, is an animal beneath his well-groomed facade, a wolf behind the proverbial lambskin.

On a pure, instinctual level, he likes that she smells like this. That she smells well-fucked, fertile, warm, rested. That she's feeding on the food he provided. That come spring there may be cubs

though he knows there won't be.

He wraps both arms around her, drawing her against his chest, kisses her firmly on the temple. Then Lukas slides down off the counter, though only to draw her back against him again.

To rest, this time. To recline together against the tile like animals in repose.

"There's a new Shadow Lord kin in town," he says; telling her things not because he expects it to matter to her, nor because he wants some response, but because he can. And because she doesn't know. And because this is part of what she misses. "Her name is Rosanna Kardos. Strange woman. Runs a funeral home, amongst other things. Her family's as much Glass Walker mafia as it is Lord. She cleans up 'messes' though, so if you ever find that you need such services..."

and he holds her a little tighter at the thought that she might,

"...she might be someone to contact."

He doesn't stop nuzzling her. He rubs his jaw over her temple, over her hair, as he speaks. He keeps her close in the circle of his arms, against his body, his skin warm through the single layer of fabric that separates them.

"I may call the tribe together soon. It's grown. We should recognize each other. And," a quiet laugh, as his teeth tug gently at the arch of her ear, "I need to lay down the law again. So you can meet her there along with the rest of them.

"You know Theron and I. There's a woman named Park now, a Half Moon, quiet but dedicated from what I've seen. Zeke, who was in Chicago some months before, the most zealous humorless Ragabash I've ever met. Edwin, another No Moon who's a prick and a bastard who'll steal candy from babies and kick puppies, but a good wolf beneath. I think half the things he does, he does as a lesson to those weak enough to allow it. Then there's Ezra, a Theurge whom I've only met once." Lukas frowns. "There's something ...greasy about him, though."

[Danicka] Not quite in a rush, but still suddenly considering she just woke up and is finishing a piece of toast, Lukas tells her the names and identities of others of their Tribe. Most of them sound like horrible people. She stands there in her robe and bare feet --

only she doesn't. Danicka moves around the kitchen as she finishes her buttered, toasted slice of bread. She eats more egg and sausage before it turns ice cold. She reaches to open a cupboard -- Lukas pulls down a mug without pausing in his speech -- and she pours herself coffee, adds table cream from the fridge and a drizzle of hazelnut syrup from the cabinet, stirring it all together with a delicate, brushed-metal spoon from the drawer. They shuffle around together, not quite gracelessly because neither of them are remotely graceless, Lukas keeping his arms around her and nuzzling her, kissing her as they move.

Danicka doesn't try to get away from him, though she doesn't wait for him to finish before she goes about completing her breakfast. It doesn't bear calculating how many calories she burned last night alone, how many were lost just sleeping. She's hungry, and he knows this much: Danicka eats best when she feels safe, when she is happy, when things are calm and she's content. Which casts a new light on the memory of that night where they all but gorged themselves on Chinese food and crispy banana rolls, when he told her to suck his cock and she laid back on the bed and he went to his knees and then

they realized that it all might end soon, and he told her not to worry

and she laid back and accepted him on top of her, in her arms, held close and protected. They should have known then she would not be able to bear it ending, no matter what she said. But oh well.

Danicka eats well over a basic serving of breakfast. She eats while he talks, because she doesn't have to respond til he's done, and so she's quiet. When Lukas is done, however:

"I've met Rosanna," she says. "She's a hit woman." Simply stated, the truth as the other kinswoman put it. "A bit melodramatic about it, though I don't know if that's an act or not."

She's leaning against him now, back to his chest, sipping her coffee. It smells sweet. It is. "Why have Kinfolk at the meeting, other than to shake hands and say hello? Or is that all?"

[Lukas] "Truthfully, Danička, there's almost no reason to have the meeting at all except to let everyone shake hands, exchange a mutual hello, and bring tribe-related business up if necessary. And to reassert dominance. The kin are there so I don't have to repeat myself, primarily in Rosanna's case. And if she's there, then it'd look odd if you weren't as well."

He unloops one arm from around her, reaching for her mug. If she lets him, he steals a sip, then hands it back.

"Why? Are you uneasy about going?"

[Danicka] "Ugh."

It's all she says after that, concerning the meeting. Danicka doesn't sound particularly invested either way, neither shying away and whinnying at the idea of being led towards it, nor planning on baking a cheesecake for the little party. She just accepts it for what it is, for what he says it is, and gently hands her mug over to him. Their fingers brush partly because his hand is so much larger than hers; the ceramic smooth to their fingertips but warm in their palms.

She turns in his arms while he drinks to lay her head on his chest. She takes it back and holds it close. "I've been a couple things like it. Can you imagine me feeling at ease?"

Danicka nuzzles his chest, shrugs. "It's alright. It takes no real effort to sit quietly and look attractive and obedient," she goes on, somewhat wryly. "I'll compose my English paper in my head."

[Lukas] After she turns to face him, and after he hands the mug back, he lifts his hands to stroke his fingers through her hair. A few passes; then he takes her face between his hands and kisses her brow.

"We don't ever talk about that," he muses. "About how we're ... different in front of other people. Especially Garou and kin. Does it bother you?"

[Danicka] Her filthy hair. Danicka is awake enough now, with coffee and food and time and sunlight, to wrinkle her nose and laugh slightly at the contact, at the thought of what a mess she is. The laugh fades, softens to a sigh, as he kisses her brow. She does not want to set down her coffee, so she doesn't wrap her arms around him in the end, but she does tuck herself close to him. Closer. As if it's possible.

"I never really think about it," she confesses after a moment of thought, sounding considering. Then, after another pause to muse over it: "It's easiest. It's familiar. It keeps morons from assuming they know who we are, what we're like. The more you open up to people, the more they seem to think your life is their business."

She sips. "We both know there are certain ways it is okay for me to behave around you when others of the Nation or the tribe can see," she says carefully. "If I'm too at ease with you in public, I may get too comfortable and say or do the wrong thing. It is simpler for everyone, especially me, if I say little and do less."

[Lukas] "I understand," Lukas replies, "and I agree."

They're nestled together in her kitchen, his back to the counter and her body curled into the space between his chest and his arms. He can see her living room over her head, and the magnificent spread of glass that gives her her million-dollar view of the city. The light coming in those windows by night is multicolored and dim, sparkling like stars through raindrops. He recalls making love to her in that light, watching color play over her sheening breasts and belly, over her golden hair. He remembers her saying

I'm falling in love with you

by that lights, and why it hurt him to think of her giving up this den and all its memories, even if so many of them were painful, or hurtful, or terrifying.

Lukas's chest is broad and warm against Danicka's forearms, the backs of her fingers and her knuckles. The arch of his ribcage rises and falls slowly against her, the map of muscle and bone altering subtly, rhythmically, with every breath. He can feel the warmth of her coffee between her hands, near his solar plexus, held between them like some treasure, some flame to be protected.

"It's just," he adds quietly, "it seems that you have to hide yourself deeper than I do."

[Danicka] She's ever so careful. The coffee mug is half full, but she doesn't want to even spill it on his clothes. She's tender towards him this morning, not in the least because she drove him so far over the edge last night. Danicka tormented him until he was all but screaming, was swearing and bucking and snarling at her, biting at her whenever he could. She pushed him until, when finally freed, he literally snapped chain in half and slammed her down, mounted her, made her his with a need that went beyond dominance or claim.

That's not saying she maintained any greater control than he did, in the end. She gave in to herself, gave in to what is really between them without resistance, gave in to how badly she wants him, how ...completely.

"I do," Danicka says quietly, in gentle agreement. "But it's partly by my choice, at least."

In this, I have some control. What to reveal. What to withhold. Whether to let on, to anyone, that there is anything withheld to begin with.

[Lukas] It's a shared and mutual tenderness; one that rises from the same root. She's tender because she drove him so far over the edge. Because she had him literally shouting at her, bucking under her, grinding himself against her however he could, shamelessly, mindlessly. Because she found a way to pit his control against itself: to force him to divert all that ironclad will toward resisting the impulse to tear himself free, and in doing so, freed every other impulse in him.

And he's tender because he lost himself so utterly. Because when she finally freed him, he all but threw her down on her back and fucked her, wildly, without a thought of tenderness. Even the second time, even when it was slower, there was still such unadulterated need there, such ravenous hunger as he drove into her body again and again and again.

And now he's careful with her. And she's careful with him. And they stay close, touching, entwined more often than not, as though they couldn't bear to be too far from one another.

"Chápu," he says again.

His arms are loosely wrapped around her, one hand looped around the other wrist. He unclasps his hands now, lifting one to wrap around her mug, borrowing another sip of her coffee. Then he hands it back. His hand returns to where it was, easily.

"Tolik tě miluji. Víte to, že?"

[Danicka] "Vím," she murmurs, smiling softly.

Danicka takes her mug back and finishes her coffee after Lukas's last sip, twisting about in his arms to set it down on the counter. She breathes in deeply, yawns, and stretches in the circle of Lukas's arms. She puts her arms over her head, the sleeves of her robe falling down around her biceps, and arches her back, and rolls her head on her neck back and forth a couple of times.

Shoulders drop first, then arms lower, and she relaxes her neck with another yawn. "I had a meeting here a few weeks ago," she tells him. "I'm trying to get the Kinfolk organized. There was some... not quite resistance, but resistance to doing it in a way that doesn't involve making every fucking decision by committee. I haven't done anything with it since the meeting to drum up insterest, but I need to start contacting others again and hopefully discourage the let's-all-hold-hands-and-make-everyone-happy way of doing things."

She turns around stepping away because she looks like she's getting ready to leave the kitchen, her hand drifting down his arm to his wrist. Danicka looks at him over her shoulder, the shawl collar of her robe. "It isn't something anyone can be involved in without the knowledge and permission of their guardians. So if you want me to stop, I need you to tell me before I go any further."

[Lukas] Let's be truthful: it turns Lukas on, vaguely and unfocusedly, when Danicka moves in his arms. When she lifts her arms over her head and stretches like that, and he can feel the tension in her slender body arched against his. It brings back muscle-memories, primitive instinct-memories, of the way she arches against him when she

comes.

He has to pull his eyes back to her face when she speaks. It's a second or two before what she says registers. Then he frowns faintly, puzzled.

"I don't want you to stop. Why would I want that?" His arms fall from around her as she steps away. It's another second before he straightens, following. "What sort of organization were you thinking of?"

[Danicka] She wraps her hand around his wrist and heads for her bedroom, the door, the little hallway, the bathroom. "A Coalition consisting of three or more teams, each one focused on a particular category of skillsets. The purpose would be primarily teaching each other how to take care of ourselves, as well as being able to be more than dead weight and liabilities to our guardians and family. Friends. Gaia."

As though she knows her, personally. She may, in fact, in her way.

Danicka glances back at him, slipping her hand from his wrist as she walks into her bathroom, untying her robe so she can shed it to the floor. She doesn't bother to hang it up. She'll need to get it washed. "I didn't imagine you would ask me not to do it, but... I needed to ask."

[Lukas] So he catches up by a half-step or so, letting Danicka lead him by the wrist. In her bathroom, he sits on the edge of the tub while she undresses, and he doesn't bother to pretend he's not watching the fabric skim down her shoulders, fall.

"I think it's a good idea," he says. Lukas reaches out, brushing his fingertips over her stomach, touching her hip. His eyes return to hers. "Thank you for asking," he adds, meaning it, "even though you didn't have to."

[Danicka] There's a difference between I needed to and I had to, a difference Lukas intuits easily and seamlessly. Danicka lifts both eyebrows slightly as his hands trail over her now-naked form, which he hasn't seen since this morning when he woke up and left her in bed. She wasn't bruised or injured by what they'd done to each other, no more than he was, and she was sleeping peacefully.

Though her hair was wild, her body and her bedroom reeking of their lovemaking, her appearance half-savage and entirely untame despite her surroundings of clean lines, lightcolored wood, expensive electronics and tall bookshelves.

She catches his hand. "Would you like to watch a movie with me later?" she asks quietly, holding his hand where it is on her hip, her voice soft so it doesn't echo madly in the mostly-tiled bathroom.

[Lukas] Lukas nods, a few times in quick succession, as unashamedly pleased by the idea as a child. Or an animal. "On your laptop," he suggests. "In bed."

[Danicka] She laughs, a sudden flashing grin across the lower half of her face. She leans over, kissing the bridge of his nose, still holding his hand against her body. "I need to change the bedspread, love. And probably all the sheets," she says, still amused as hell, moving back only to lean over again and turn on the water behind him.

Danicka kicks her robe to wall behind the door. "That's why I should get a second bed. One can be the clean bed for cuddling and one can be the messy bed for fucking and sleeping."

[Lukas] He closes his eyes when she kisses him, a broad smile spreading slow and warm across his mouth. "No," Lukas protests, only half playing, "the same bed. I like holding you where we fuck and sleep."

He gets up, though, pulling her against him, her skin to his, his breath inhaling slow. He nuzzles her face; the curve of her neck. It doesn't matter that she's filthy. It doesn't matter that she's clean.

A moment later, he lets her go. "If you tell me where the linens are," he says, "I'll change them while you shower."

[Danicka] "Then why shower?" she laughs at him, but doesn't argue. Nor, however, does she confirm what she may very well be assuming is obvious: that she agrees. That, as she puts her hands on his jaw and his cheeks and draws him down to kiss her mouth -- to kiss his, deeply -- she is telling him

oh, fuck, yes.

Truth be told, they are neither of them human... but Danicka is, at times, closer to it. Was raised as one, mostly. Can pretend to be one more easily. Had to suffer them not just through grade school but all the way until her high school graduation, even if she mostly spent time with other kin. The taboos and mores of American hygiene are terribly set, for her.

Beyond that: she wants to wash herself. She wants the pleasure of the hot water, the free feeling of cleanliness, the soreness-healing pelt of a shower.

She pulls back, smiles. "There's another comforter in the large closet, in the black trunk. Just change that, okay? Leave the sheets."

Danicka nuzzles him once, twice, and wraps her arms around his waist, giving him a squeeze. "And pick out a movie."

[Lukas] "The same bed," he specifies, "only clean."

Then she's kissing him, and he's not arguing anymore, or even thinking much about comforters and sheets and bedding and cleanliness. Mmmph, he says, his hands on her hips and hers on his cheeks, the hinge of his jaw shifting under her palms as his mouth opens to hers.

They sway together with the force and depth of the kiss. When it ends, and she pulls back smiling, his eyes are closed a little longer as though he were reeling still.

Then they open. And he smiles. Barefoot as they both are, her face is about level with his upper chest; when she nuzzles him, she's nuzzling the flat bone between his pectoral muscles, the dip between his collarbones. His hands smooth down her back, squeeze her ass gently, pull her against him.

It takes some effort to make himself step back.

"Okay," he says. Smiles again. "I'll see you soon."

znovu.

[Danicka] It's the middle of the day, for Lukas, if not mid-morning. For him, it's early. This is one reason they can't find each other so often, can't be together: Danicka is not nocturnal, and her health and ability to hold down her workstudy job and make her grades depends on her getting regular and decent sleep. Sometimes she looks at the clock when she misses him and knows that it's too early, he'll be asleep, or fighting. Sometimes she looks at the clock when she aches for him and knows that he's getting up, he's dealing with whatever he has to deal with, and even if she asked for him

she'd have little energy to give, or share, or spend on him. So she falls back asleep and waits til the next time, til they cannot wait any longer.

Not tonight, though. Danicka calls him, and when he picks up, he can hear her breathing.

"I can't," she says quietly, a brief pause while she swallows, or licks her lips -- there's a faint wet sound -- "stop touching myself."

[Lukas] Lukas has an iPhone now.

He's still not quite used to bringing such a large slab of immobile metal to his ear, though he is getting quite used to everything else about it. The enormous text that announces Danička is particularly nice. When he answers, it's with a simple, immeasurably warm:

"Lásko."

Then she says what she says. She can hear him draw a quick breath, as though his heart had skipped a beat. Or several. Then, in a tone far too light and unaffected to be anything but pretense, and deliberately bad pretense at that:

"Is that so? Well... what do you want me to do about it?"

[Danicka] "I want you to come here," Danicka says slowly, partly because he's playing dumb and partly because she's biting back, stifling a groan in her throat, "and kiss it."

Which makes her whimper, to say aloud. She is not playing along. There's another sound on her end, a half-restrained ah.

[Lukas] Now it's his turn to lick his lips. If that's what she was doing. Another image flashes to mind: her fingers, her mouth. Her tongue. Her slick. He closes his eyes for a second.

"Okay," he says, not playing anymore either. "Ten minutes," he adds, and hangs up.

He's not lying. Ten minutes later, the intercom rings.

[Danicka] Presumably, Danicka was in bed when she called him. Presumably she was lying back, her head on her pillows, her hand between her legs, her back arching every so often with pleasure. Gaia only knows how, if this is the case, she manages to make herself get up and go to the front door, the entryway, to press the button that will let him in without bothering to speak over the intercom. It takes less than five minutes for Lukas to get from the lobby to her front door, but it has to feel like longer.

When she opens the door she's wearing underwear: plain, pale blue. She's wearing an equally light-colored pink t-shirt, some faded design across the chest. Her cheeks are flushed. Her hair is in a ponytail. She bites her lip when she sees him, looking him over.

They've never done this before, or anything like it: called one another just... blatantly, openly seeking sex.

[Lukas] Lukas at the door: overcoat hanging open over pajama bottoms soft and dove-grey; an undershirt, white and plain. The cuffs of his pants are wet from dragging over snow. His chest rises and falls with breath too quick to be explained by a quick dash from the curb to the elevators, from the elevators to her door.

He steps in. His presence rolls against her: the savagery of his rage stirring to the rawness of his emotion, like a beast scenting blood or fire. The door shuts behind him and he puts his hands on her waist, pulls her slowly into his orbit until her belly presses to his hips; her legs against his; her feet between his.

Their upper bodies are still some small distance apart. Slowly, he nuzzles her temple, her ear. The slope of his shoulders is thick and powerful, rounded as he bends to her. Lips part; he exhales over her ear, softly, wantingly.

"Where do you want me?"

[Danicka] They are in bedclothes, in disarray, in... love. In want. In heat, it seems, on her part: Danicka whimpers softly when Lukas walks inside and shuts the door. Maybe later he'll notice that certain dishes are absent from the kitchen, a certain scent is missing from the apartment at large: Paul is gone. Paul has been gone for some time now. Which means they're alone here, alone as they ever were between Martin and Lee, between Lee and Paul. Right now, however, likely all Lukas can smell or sense is Danicka herself, wanting and wanton.

She wraps her arms around his neck, stretching upward to do so, rubbing herself against him through his lounge pants. If she came in the ten minutes since their phone call, it doesn't seem to matter: she's pressed to his body, wriggling between the lapels of his overcoat to be closer to him, her breasts to her shirt to his shirt to his chest.

If he glances past her, he might see a couple of armchairs in her living room that were never there before. Maybe he'll see them later.

"I don't know," she says, almost plaintively, as though this is a terribly hard question. Her eyes are closing as he nuzzles her, her head tipping back to bare her throat. "On the couch? Or maybe...ohgod... maybe my bed, or the coffee table, or... you could fuck me on the floor again."

[Lukas] When she wraps her arms around his neck, he wraps his around her waist. Then he straightens his back. Arches it. Lifts her against his body. His big hands scoop her up; hoist her onto his body in one, two smooth pulls, consummately strong.

He holds her like that, his hands wrapped around her thighs. He rubs her against him, her cunt against her underwear against his lounge pants against his cock. That's all there is between them. Two layers of soft, soft cotton.

Lukas groans softly. He can't help it. He turns his face up to hers and kisses her, slow, deep, pulling. His breath is all but stolen when they part.

"In your bed," he decides for her. And then, "Chci, abys mě svázat dolů a dovolte mi, abych vás jíst ven."

[Danicka] Her mouth melts on his, and he can taste what he imagined over the phone, wondering if that sound of hers was her tongue on her lips or her tongue on her fingers

and now he knows. Danicka wraps herself around him completely now, rubbing back against him with a certain heady insistence. She doesn't mind that he makes the decision, that he tells her they're going to her bed. She couldn't make up her mind where she wanted him, when everything she could imagine made her shudder with desire. She couldn't tell him where, when everything she saw earlier today, walking through the apartment made her think of Lukas fucking her against it.

Even when he pulls away, Danicka's seeking his mouth, trying to kiss him again, choosing his jawline and his neck when he pulls in air to speak. What he says makes her groan, and her legs tighten around his waist, riding her up on his torso. She keeps trying to rub against him, as though frenzied.

"Are you sure?" she asks him, whimperingly, as she has not done for some time now.

[Lukas] It's that lingering taste of her that has him kissing her mouth again. Sucking at her lips and her tongue, exploring her with his own. It's that taste of her that makes him groan again, muffled this time, releasing the sound into her mouth while she rides up on him, rubs on him, moves like she's trying to fuck him through his clothes.

Apart. Her question is a whimper. His answer is a pant. "Jo." He's sure. "Pokud potřebuju, abys mě rozvázat, já vím, co na to říct."

He carries her down the hallway. Not because she can't walk herself but because he can't bring himself to let go of her. They kiss again and again. His shoulder brushes the wall; he's half-blind, stumbling down and around the corner, tripping over his feet, slamming back against the wall just outside her room, lost in her mouth. When that kiss ends he tips his head back and gasps for air.

Lets her down.

Reaches back over his shoulder, pulling his shirt off in one pull. Drops it on the ground as he's walking toward her bed. He drops his pants at the foot of it, then sits down, pushes himself back on his hands until he's in the center of the bed, knees drawn up and arms looped over, waiting for her.

[Danicka] When Lukas gets near the wall, Danicka's arm shoots out, palm smacking it and pushing back as though to keep his weight from falling against it. Or maybe she just wants to alert him to it, not let him slam into it, not let him bump. She doesn't stop kissing him, but she knows this place better than he does, even lifted up in the air and going backwards. Danicka has her hands on his face other than that, stroking back into his hair, moaning into his mouth as she works her body on him, uses whatever part of him she can to grant herself some release of tension that has been rising for the past half hour.

The past several days, maybe.

Her kisses tug away from his when he starts to set her down, and Danicka resists. She holds onto him with her arms and legs, loathe to let go and utterly unselfconscious about her clinging, demanding want. She shudders when Lukas finally does get her to unwind her legs from him. Her toes touch the soft carpet of her bedroom, then the balls of her feet, then her heels. She opens her eyes.

Lukas is undressing himself, walking across her room and revealing more and more flesh with every step. She has to lick her lips again, swallow, and exhale a breath as she watches. Danicka should perhaps go to her closet -- the larger one -- and get one of the silk ties he's seen in there before. She doesn't.

She goes to the small closet he's never seen the interior of and pulls open one of the doors. If Lukas looks he can see a carefully organized closet, filled with racks and drawers and baskets and ...it's almost all lingerie. A wealth of colors, a myriad of fabrics, god only knows just how many fucking pairs of lace thongs she has in that one basket, how many garter belts in that drawer, oh god. He can see one edge of a long and packed-full shoe rack, which tells him where she's been keeping all her pairs all this time. He can see hints of metal, tiny crystals, leather, vinyl, lace, satin, silk --

Danicka opens a drawer and takes out a pair of manacles.

Not fuzzy handcuffs. And not ties. They're made of leather and chain. The chain itself would hold a human being, though could be broken by one with decent upper-body strength. It is nothing. The wristcuffs are leather, lined lightly with fur. She looks them over, and looks over her shoulder at him sitting naked on her bed, his skin dark and his cock hard and the shadows thrown by the light coming through her windows turning the entire room into velvet and silver.

"Would this be alright?" she whispers.

[Lukas] Lukas watches her as she detours, eyes gleaming in the dark, breathing elevated. There's utter hunger in the way his eyes follow her. A touch of uncertainty too. Unsureness. A sharp and stark contrast to the absolute, bonedeep confidence that almost never leaves him. She's seen him uncertain far more than any other person in this entire city.

It's not that he's afraid of being restrained, per se. It's not that he's afraid she'll abuse him. That notion is patently ludicrous. It's Danička, and even if that weren't enough -- frankly, nothing she could produce would possibly hold him if he really wanted to get free.

But therein lies the catch. It's makes this a voluntary act. An open-eyed surrender. A willful decision to abort every instinct that might tell him to tell the bindings loose, to tear himself free, to take her on his terms. An exercise of will. A choice to give in. To some degree, Lukas is afraid that his trust thus tested will prove too weak; is afraid that this will mean his love for her is somehow less than he thought.

And then she's pulling out her toys; pulling out not silk ties or fuzzy handcuffs but manacles, and the fine balance in him tips precipitously toward lust. The coiling sensation in his chest is anticipation now. Is excitement.

A short, abortive huff of a laugh escapes him. He should be shocked to see such things in her fine-fingered hands; he's not. His eyes go from the restraints to hers. She can see him drawing a breath, then leaning back to prop his hands on the bed. And a moment after, sinking down on his elbows, his knees straightening.

"Jo. Pojď sem."

He lays down flat on his bed as she nears it. Unsure of where to put his hands, he waits for her to guide him.

[Danicka] First, the closet door closes. Danicka is oddly tidy in her bedroom, the desk clean and the bookshelves straightened and the closet doors closed even if the bed isn't always made. And yet: nearly every time he comes over here, there's dishes in the sink, at least one item in the fridge that needs to be thrown out, and a weird crusty spot on the counter. But her bedroom, her den, dark and secretive, always seems open and clear -- uncluttered, clean, warm and welcoming because it is quietly beautiful.

Next, she walks towards the bed, but keeps her distance, watching him and his eyes and knowing what she's seeing there. It isn't a lack of trust so much as the fact that she knows him well, and knows that if he were to reach out to her right now and pull her onto the bed with him and pull her panties aside and just fuck her, she'd let him.

Danicka puts the manacles on the nightstand and takes off her little pink t-shirt, drops it on the ground. She peels off and pushes down her little blue panties, stepping out of them as she reaches up to take her hair out of its ponytail. Hairband goes to the nighstand; manacles go back into her hands, and she crawls naked onto the bed after him.

When she moves over him, straddling his waist, his cock brushes against the curve of her ass, against the cleft of it, and she moans softly, rubbing her skin against him. It takes Danicka a moment to remember what she was doing and get a hold of herself, the manacles resting on his chest now where she lets them set down. The chain is cool. She takes one of his hands and draws it close, picking up the first cuff and opening the rather intricate buckles to wrap it around his wrist. Moving to his other wrist, Danicka works efficiently and with a surprising -- or maybe not -- amount of familiarity with the 'toy'. The fur, whatever it came from, is as soft as silk on his skin. He can pull and twist; it doesn't scrape his flesh, dig into him.

Danicka never has been one to buy junk.

Soon enough, her hands run up his chest, up to his shoulders. Her eyes are on his in the dark, his a brilliant and crystal-cut blue, hers even harder to make out with the moonlight at her back. Danicka guides his locked-in hands upward, to the topmost edge of the mattress, and then tugs the chain to some hidden joint betweed headboard and frame. There's a hook on the chain not unlike a carabiner, out of his reach. It latches, snaps, and

very likely Lukas isn't paying attention, because all this time Danicka is on all fours on top of him, her breasts and her stomach just out of the reach of his mouth, her body lifted off his waist now, her hair and her tits swaying as she ties him down. Her breathing is elevated. Her cunt is wet. He can hear and smell her but only barely feel her where her hands or her knees make contact with his arms or the outsides of his hips, and that... can be distracting.

There's some rearranging of the pillows, some murmured requests for him to move his head or tell her what he needs to be comfortable. It isn't much, and it doesn't take much time before she's assured that he's fine, that his neck won't get sore, that he's going to be able to enjoy this. Then Danicka slides back down, sitting up, stroking her palms over his torso again, but she doesn't look him in the eyes to ask him a question, to ask him if he's sure again, if this is okay. She just looks him in the eyes, wordlessly, caressing him with as much tenderness as he's ever felt. And unless there's some flicker and twitch of discomfort and dislike that doesn't die from existence in a second or two, Danicka does not waste any more time.

She climbs over him, turning her body around so that she can place herself over his face, her legs to either side of his stretched-out arms. Reaching between her legs, she spreads her lips and lets him watch -- holding herself up still -- while she strokes her fingertips over her clit and over the opening of her cunt, smearing wetness around for him to lick off. She can't see what she's doing, but she moves her fingers to his mouth then, traces his lip.

"Lízat jim, láska," she whispers, unable to conceal the ache in her voice. "Ukaž mi ho chcete mít."

[Lukas] So -- he doesn't lie flat on his back after all. Not immediately. He watches her as she nears the bed, his eyes glittering, his nerves afire. He's caught perfectly between apprehension and anticipation and sheer, bottomless want.

Piece by piece, her clothes fall to the floor. His breathing ramps up another notch. Now she's climbing onto the bed, the mattress dipping beneath her hands and knees. He leans up, straining up on his elbows, rubbing his face over her, anywhere, everywhere, as she moves over him.

No words escape him. The last time they fucked, it was like this too. Primal. Animal. Almost wordless. He's beyond his masks of human graces. He doesn't even pretend now. She's made an animal of him, so easily, by merely the thought of what she's going to do to him; the thought of what control he'll give up to her.

But not to her. To this, between them.

Danicka settles over his waist. He nuzzles the curve of her neck one more time, his affection heavy as lust. Then Lukas lays back, lays down, lays himself out for her. When she rubs on him and moans like that, his crystalline eyes close; his lips part in a silent exhale. Then open again. The chain touches his skin; the coolness and the absolute knowledge of what comes next makes him shiver faintly.

Lukas touches her while he still can: the last time for god knows how long before she'll unbind him again. His hands move all over her, stroking over her sides, cupping her breasts, squeezing her ass. He takes as much of her as he can in the palms of his hands, and when he's finished, when she reaches for his hand, he gives in.

He lets her bind him. Willingly, but not utterly without resistance. It's there in his eyes, a flare of sheer primal defiance, a wild animal's unwillingness to be anything but free. His breathing has kicked up yet another step, quick and deep and audible. He doesn't even realize it. He licks his lips, watching her, watching only her, as she shackles him one wrist at a time before leaning over to chain him to the bed.

Which makes him strain immediately and instinctively and uselessly to take her into his mouth, his abdominal musculature standing out in sharp relief, his hands pulling immediately at their restraints almost before she can secure him. The chain snaps tight, clanks or thunks against the bed, and quick as an animal, quick as a raptor, Lukas's head snaps up and back in sudden feral outrage, as though he'd forgotten already that he was tied down, and why. He stares at the bindings, and at his wrists caught in the manacles. He tugs experimentally.

And then he lets his head fall back. Nostrils flare when he inhales. Throat moves when he swallows. Stretched out like this, the muscles of his torso and arms are elongated and taut, his skin more sensitive. Her hands roaming his chest and shoulders leave the fine hairs on his body upright; find his nipples already hardened. He sucks a breath between his teeth. Flickers of rebellion glitter now and then in his eyes, which stay on hers. Which lock to hers, open and fierce and unflinching, letting her see everything, letting her see every flash of pleasure and impatience and want that crosses his mind as her hands caress him, tend to him, make him comfortable and secure and safe.

By the time she finally moves over him, he's nuzzling whatever he can reach of her -- her arm as she reaches past his head; her belly if she leans down to check the clasp. If she so much as brushes his cock he arches against her, thrusting, grinding, until she's out of reach again.

"Fuck," he says, the first thing he's said in some time, and twists against the manacles.

The first thing he does when she swings around and straddles his face is strain for her. She can see the sudden, sharp tension in him, like an single involuntary flexion that encompasses every last muscle in his body. His breath is hot against her wet cunt. When he can't reach her, he turns his head to the side, bites for the inside of her thigh instead, misses that too, thumps his head back. "Fuck," he curses again, "you fucking bitch."

And then her hand is reaching down. And then her fingers are spreading herself open. She shows him her pussy. She shows him how glistening wet she is, and how tight that cunt is. Stillness falls over him, absolute. His ribcage rises and falls in quick, short pulls; other than that, he may as well have turned to stone. She has such lovely hands. He's always thought so. Slender and graceful. Long fingers. Oval nails. He watches that lovely hand stroke that lovely pussy. She can't see the way his brow furrows, the way he looks almost in pain, but she can hear the low, caught moan that tears out of him. She can see his cock arching off his belly, so fucking hard it moves with every beat of his pulse.

It jumps of its own volition when she offers her fingers to him. Again, when she talks to him like that. She barely touches his lips before his mouth is all over her. Groaning, muffled, he sucks greedily and furiously at her taste, tongue circling her fingers, licking her clean. When there's nothing more to taste he catches at her with his teeth, nips at her fingertips, lets go.

"Oh my fucking god," she can hear him say.

[Danicka] There's an air of permissiveness about Danicka, unspoken and mild, when she crawls on top of him and he puts his hands all over her. That's not to say she doesn't arch her back as he strokes his palms in circles over her ass or gasp softly when he cups her breasts and lets them bounce gently in his hands. She arches, and she gasps, and yet there's a sense that she's waiting to tie him down, allowing him these last few moments of freedom to run his touch all the fuck over her, letting him have any part of her body he wants.

Danicka does not urge him to lie down or lie back, does not push his hands to the mattress or stretch his arms up over his head. She waits until she senses that Lukas can bear it, and then she puts her hand on his wrist. The touch is light, the pressure almost nonexistent, but Lukas understands it on a level that's animal, nonverbal, intensely reactive. He relaxes enough in her hand that she can begin to bind him, and she does.

The first time that resistance flares, she draws his palm to her mouth and kisses it. The next time she notices it, she flicks her tongue between two of his digits, gently nips his fingertip. Again, when a muscle tightens: Danicka guides his leather-bound wrist to her breast and holds it there a moment, letting him feel how rapid her own heartbeat is, letting him touch her the way he does when he holds her in sleep despite the fact that the manacle is neatly buckled around him already.

When she latches him to the bedframe below the edge of the mattress, Danicka can feel Lukas tense between her thighs. She can hear the shift in his breathing, and then, quite suddenly if she were not quite so attentive, he's all but lunging upward, straining for her. Lukas slams his head back and Danicka reaches for his face and strokes his hair over his ear once, twice, not unlike the way she did the very first time he tried to fuck her. She was soothing then, even as she was telling him no, not like this.

It grieves her somewhat, after their last meeting, to think of that night. She does not regret telling him to stop, does not wish she could go back and tell him something other than what was essentially I will not let you have me like this. Still: there's a pang inside her that was not there before, to think that the first time he was inside her, she pushed him away. It's irrational. It's emotional.

She is gentle with him now nonetheless, just as irrationally. Her hands are so tender on his temple, on his cheek, wordlessly telling him to trust her, or to relax, or to be good, he can handle this, he can take it. Danicka leans over and gives him one last kiss before turning around, reaching down his body to press his hip to the mattress as he's lifting them, trying to thrust against her.

Fuck, he says, and

Shh, baby, soon, she murmurs, and turns around.

To show herself to him. To show him how wet she is, how wet he's made her, how hot she is for it. Danicka strokes herself, teasing and circling her clit with a fingertip, slipping two of them into her pussy with a low moan before offering him her hand. Lukas is straining and swearing and literally snapping his teeth at her, and then he's going quiet, nothing more than heavy breathing washing between her thighs and over her cunt. He's sucking her fingers and she's watching his cock twitch in response to the taste of her, the presence of her body over him, the words she's saying. Danicka purrs as his tongue laps every drop off her fingers, withdrawing them long before he's had his fill.

Which may make him try to bite at her, suck at her, keep her in reach. But she does take her fingers back, one way or another, and returns them to her own flesh, stroking and rubbing and fingering herself in front of him again. He can't see her lean over, but he can feel the translation of the movement in the bend of her hips above him, the shift of muscle in her thighs on either side of him. Danicka nuzzles and kisses his belly. Nuzzles and kisses his hip, her hair brushing all over him. Nuzzles and kisses his thigh, his inner thigh, licks gently at his balls, takes her warm hand from betweem her legs and wraps it around his cock and runs her tongue up the length of it.

Her hips roll again, gently, and her body lowers close enough that her pussy brushes his face, until she rubs her wet over his lips. Once, twice, three times that wet hand of hers strokes his cock, then slow -- four, five, six times now -- til she draws her hand off of him on the seventh. She doesn't have to tell him

Kiss it

for Lukas to know what to do with that pussy of hers once it's against his mouth, for him to know what she wants is the same as she's wanted from the start, the same thing she came right out and asked for over the phone.

But she says it anyway.

"Políbit to, lásko. Lízat to pro mě," which is gasped, and "Do prdele s mě tím horké, špinavé úst," which is almost growled, even as he's doing as she says, even as he's opening his mouth to taste what was only hinted at on her tongue and fingers, only seconds before she starts to rub herself on his mouth.

"Oh," Danicka whimpers, trying not to buck her hips already, not grind, not fuck his face with just as much energy and demand as she would

-- as she plans to --

fuck his cock. "Yeah," and this is more breathy, more begging. "Yeah... fuck, baby, make me come."

[Lukas] It helps.

That she pauses when resistance -- or really, it's not so very far from fear: a sort of primitive, instinctual aversion to being bound, being caged, being subjugated -- flares in his eyes. That she takes his hand and shows him

that he is loved.
that he is precious to her.
that she is as affected by this as he is: as excited, and perhaps as uncertain.

It helps. It staves off the animal aversion, lets him relax into it. Lets him remember who she is, and who he is, and what it is between them. Lets him remember that this is not an act of subjugation after all, but of trust and love.

His hands unclench. Palms up, one nestled inside the other, warm and relaxed.

Even when he strains for her, his hands don't tighten into fists again. Even when he literally curses at her and bites for her thigh, he doesn't clench his fists. Even when she withdraws her fingers

and makes him groan in sheer wordless frustration

his hands are relaxed. It's not until she leans over him, and he can feel her breath on his lower abdomen, that his hands close. The cords in his forearms stand out. It's her hair that touches him first, and he can't see what she's doing; his abdomen shivers in a single spasmodic clench. He pants when she nuzzles his thigh, gasps when she licks his balls, and when her hand closes around his cock and her tongue runs up the sensitive underside

Lukas moans aloud, and wrenches at the manacles hard enough to grate the chain over some wooden angle, some edge down past the end of the bed.

"Oh, god," he tells the ceiling; the open windows and the blank moon. "Oh, my fucking god."

She doesn't have to tell him anything when she finally brushes her pussy over his face. She doesn't have to lower herself very far. He all but lunges up for her, pushing his face against her cunt, burying it there as she rocks back on him, solidifies the contact. His cock jumps in her hand. He goes at her inexpertly, unused to this position and this restraint, but with an utter eagerness that eclipses everything else.

By the time the words lick it strain from her lips he's literally shoving his face against her, nosing aside her lips to get at the hot wet center of her. By the time the words fuck me breathe from her, he's licking at her; dancing circles around her clit with the tip of his tongue.

"Mmmph!" he growls, or hums, muffled, when her hand leaves his cock. His head falls back; he says something but it's blurry and lost, probably a curse, possibly her name. Then he's on her again.

It doesn't matter that she's not bucking her hips, not grinding, not fucking his face. He's fucking her with his face. He's grinding his face against her, smearing her wetness over his lips and his nose, his chin. He's wrapping his lips around her clit and sucking at her, opening his mouth and licking at her, not with the tip of his tongue but with the flat of it, hungrily, like a lion licking meat from the bone.

[Danicka] This is the first time she's ever used her manacles with this bed. Danicka hopes the wood holds if Lukas loses control, that the chain snaps from where it's affixed to the leather before her bedframe splinters to pieces. She hopes that he doesn't lose control, that he can tolerate this. She hopes that she pays close enough attention, that she senses when he needs to be let go long before he has to say anything, long before he even considers

red

or sees it.

Truth be told, Danicka is paying very, very close attention to Lukas, and not just the reaction of his cock to her hand and mouth, the moans and muffled growls he's loosing against her cunt as he eats at her. She bucks her hips gently, riding his mouth with moans that start to lose coherence very, very quickly, but she is still incredibly alert to the nuances of his sounds, his movements. Soon enough that, too, will be lost. Danicka was aroused to the point of frenzy before Lukas even walked in the door.

She was wet when she opened it and let him in, only grew moreso when he picked her up and let her rub herself all over him, marking him through their clothes. Mine. Mine. Mineminemineminemine.

"Don't stop," Danicka whimpers now, when his head touches the pillows again. She comes down over him as carefully as she can, seeking more, while he's muttering, mumbling unintelligibly before going at her once more. "Don't stop, don't stop, don't --"

She's bucking them now, grinding, fucking his face while he licks her pussy, urging his tongue and his lips to move on her faster, harder, more. Her hands are on the mattress on either side of his legs, holding herself up so she can ride his mouth. His tongue. It's surreally fast considering how long they've been naked, but he can taste the tang of her, the slick flowing out of her, taste her sweat when she starts to come. It's like she's in heat, like she's dying for it, like she needs this orgasm more than she needs air, right now.

"Fuck!" Danicka cries out, the sounds coming from her throat shrieking, gasping exclamations of pleasure. "Fuck, baby, that's it... oh god that's so good..."

And then whimpers, then panting, her pussy squirming down on his face to rub on him more, to brush her clit over his lips and tongue. Every flicking, wet touch of the two together sends something like a tiny electric shock through her, the energy bursting inside of her. "Oh, fuck," she's breathing out now, begging the room for air.

Danicka stays poised over him for a little while, whimpering if he kisses or licks at her further, lifting her hips when she can't bear it, sighing when he nuzzles her thighs or her cunt. She lays on top of him, slowly withdrawing her pussy from his reach and sliding down his body. Her breasts brush his cock, her belly, and then she pushes herself up off of Lukas's mouth, crawls off of him entirely, and turns around.

She kneels on the bedspread next to his hip, smiling at him. Her cheeks are flushed, her skin sheened with sweat. It's been a minute, two minutes, maybe two and a half, since she came on his mouth. Where his tongue can't reach, his face must still be wet. Danicka seems like she wants to say something, but instead she leans over him, framing his head and arms to brace herself, and kisses him softly. It deepens, and she moans, as her tongue searches out her own taste

and when it parts she doesn't speak, but grabs a breath of air and then begins licking his chin, his jawline, his cheeks, lapping herself off of him gently,

but with an insistence that betrays her lingering, if not heightened, desire.

[Lukas] When she comes, her voice isn't the only one wordless in the room. He's groaning beneath her, long rough noises of lust and arousal and -- yes -- frustration as she rides his fucking face.

He doesn't stop now anymore than he ever would. He keeps fucking her with his mouth. He keeps pushing his face against her cunt, eating at her pussy; he laps at her slick and nuzzles her, rubs his face on her, covers himself in her wet.

But he strains, too. He grips the chain in his hands and pulls. The muscles in his arm are rigid as iron. He bucks his hips, thrusts against air, feels nothing, cannot touch her, pours all energy into his mouth instead, and eats her alive. She does have to pull away at the end. If she doesn't, he'll fuck her with his mouth until her synapses melt.

The instant his mouth leaves her, Lukas snarls like a beast. He lifts his head to follows her as far as he can, and then he rubs his face all over her. This is not quite nuzzling. This is something akin to marking: heavy, deliberate friction, interspersed here and there with the sharp pangs of his teeth grazing her soft skin.

She can hear him gasp every time her breasts brush him. He's so hard that his balls have drawn up; palpable heat sheds from his cock.

He makes a short, wanting sound as she climbs off him altogether. He pulls at the restraints again, halfheartedly, and then resigns himself to relaxation. Flickering in the dark, his eyes follow her. Her smile is not returned, but he looks at her, looks at her mouth. It only arouses him more.

Lukas's eyes close when she leans over him. The kiss is soft, and then it's deep. He kisses her slowly, opening his mouth to hers, sighing into her mouth

and then panting into the air as she licks him clean. His eyes don't open. Darkness scored by flickers of sensation: a synaesthesia of pleasure. The chain rattles quietly as he lets it go, opens his hands, lays quietly for her, breathes quietly. Turns his face to hers when her mouth is close to his. Nuzzles her if she'll let him. Kisses her mouth.

When she's finished his eyes open to find hers.

Softly: "Jedete do prdele mě teď?"

[Danicka] Sensing his frustration earlier, or perhaps simply because she wants to, when Danicka pulls back from kissing his mouth and licking his face clean, she reaches over and wraps her hand once more around his cock. She kneels beside him again, stroking slowly, smiling softly. Her eyes fall closed at the feel of him, her lips parted. He's had no answer to his question, no assurance that yes, she's going to fuck him now. Just this now: Danicka looking as though she herself is still being pleasured by the act of touching him. Her brow pulls, furrows. She bites her lip. A barely audible sound moves around inside her mouth, held back.

For a few seconds, which spiral out and explode into eons, til they've been lying in this bed for a few flutters of hummingbird wings or for the length of time it took for the tribes of Gaia to form and propogate and die off again, Danicka strokes her lover. Her eyes open and her brow smooths; she licks her lips and watches him react, watches how he handles her hand finally on him again, granting him some kind of craved contact that was absent while he got her off on his face.

She doesn't murmur, purring the words, asking him if he likes it. She knows he likes it. She doesn't ask him if he wants her pussy, doesn't make him beg. She just touches him, watches him, leaning over only once or twice to play with his nipples with her fingertips. Or rub her lips on them, flick her tongue out, taste his chest and his sweat and his growing ardor.

A few seconds. That's all he has before Danicka smooths his cock gently up his stomach, swinging her leg over him and straddling him once again. Her hand is still on him, maybe to guide him into her, maybe to fuck him, finally, ride him while he lies back with his wrists chained together and to the bed. But Danicka doesn't let his cock up. She lowers herself to the length of it, gasping as the shaft presses to her still-slick cunt, and groans softly as her pussy tries to grip at it, grows wet all over again with anticipation and response.

"Bože, ty jsi tak tvrdě," she mutters, sliding herself back and forth across his cock. Her hands move to his chest, body lifted up over him so she can ride him now, fuck his cock

without taking him inside.

[Lukas] There's a certain counterintuitive freedom in this, Lukas discovers. When his hands are bound and he's effectively secured to the bed on his back, all that remains to him are the imprecise and primitive movements of his body.

He has his mouth; the degrees of freedom afforded by his spine. He has his hip and knee joints. He has ... very little else with which to express his want, and his need, and the fact that she's

driving him out of his mind.

Her hand on his cock makes his right knee draw up for a second. When she continues to stroke him, he groans; throws back his head. The muscles of chest and shoulder and arm pull tight. His eyes close, and a moment later, mindlessly, he plants the flat of his feet on the mattress and pushes his hips up against her hand. Fucks the soft, supple circle of her fingers and palm with such thoughtless enthusiasm that the unexpected touch of her mouth to his chest makes his eyes fly open.

An exhale bursts from his lips. He sinks back to the bed, lifting his head to watch her now, her hands and her mouth, her eyes if she looks at him.

"Oh, god," he breathes. "Oh my fucking god."

She's letting him go. "No don't--" he begins; shudders as she smooths her palm over his cock, lays it hard and jerking against his abdomen. The muscles of his stomach jerk too, clench and shiver as she moves over him, straddles him, moves as though she might take him the fuck inside her now, only to

lower her cunt over him like that.

"Fuck!" She should be glad her last roommate has moved out. She should be glad there's no one in the other room to hear him shout like that. To hear the way the chain clanks against wood. "Co to kurva, Danička! Co to --

"Bože."

The curse falls apart to tatters. His head falls back. He thrusts against her cunt, a single smooth slide, an upflex of his hips that all but lifts her from the bed. He gasps. He does it again, and again, fucking her now without fucking her, moving to slide his cock over the slick, hot slit of her cunt as best he can.

[Danicka] Perhaps it was his training. Perhaps it was what life became for him after his Rite of Passage, after he met Edward, after he became the Beta of the Unbroken Circle. Perhaps it was just Lukas, from birth, possessed of an innate talent for problem-solving. His hands, those marvelous appendages so special to humans, are bound back over his head, not quite useless even with his dedication to surrending his strength, but... he can't touch her. He can't grab Danicka's hips and grind her down onto him the way he might want to, or flip her over and hold himself up to fuck her.

So Lukas finds other ways of initiating, continuing, and intensifying his contact with her without them. He senses what he can still move, how his body is still free, rather than fixating on what's bound. His legs work on the bed, disturbing and wrinkling the comforter underneath him. Danicka breathes in sharply, suddenly, when he fucks her hand like that, when he groans and loses himself in it so totally that he doesn't even seem aware of what he's doing. She moans around his nipple.

And letting him go, and making him bite back a plea for her not to stop, not when all she's given him is a few strokes, a couple of licks of her tongue, not when he needs her on his cock.

Which is then what he gets, only not around him, not receiving him but riding him nonetheless. Lukas, never noisy, gets loud then. Danicka rolls her hips while he swears at her, fighting the urge to smile decadently and lazily at the way he thrashes then. Because co to kurva is not red, not even yellow, and she knows she does not have to stop. She doesn't even have to slow down. So she doesn't.

Danicka rocks down against him as he tries to rub against her, grinding their bodies together, balancing herself with her hands on his chest. She leans over him as she moves, gasping sharply as his slicked cock slides back and forth across her clit, still hypersensitive from orgasm. "That's it," she says quietly, a tight strain to her voice, urging him on. "Bože, lásko, stejně jako to. Dovolte mi, abych si s tím kohout." Her head tips back, a moan opening her throat as she squirms down on him, turning into a helpless-sounding whimper: "Dřít se to všude moje kočička, ty horké bastarde! Ukaž mi, ty jsi kurva zvíře za to."

It's sudden, when it happens, not so long after that overcome cry has spilled out of her along with those filthy, pleading words. Danicka jacknifes over him, capturing his mouth in a hard, deep kiss. There's nothing gentle about it, nothing gentle about the way she's bucking her hips down on his cock, nothing gentle about the way he's thrusting up against her, trying to get as much of her pussy as he can. Her hands grab at his sides, clinging to him while she kisses him, her palms searingly hot on his ribs, on his chest.

Then she reaches over him, reaches under the mattress, and unhooks the manacles from the bedframe.

[Lukas] There are no words now. No curses, no shouts of fuck and what the fuck. Nothing but his teeth clenched and bared when his head arches back; nothing but the strong columns of tendon and muscle in his throat, and the sheets of flexing muscle on his torso rolling under his skin as he strains, and fights, and does his damnedest to fuck her, somehow.

She's leaning over him, hands on his chest. Her cunt is moving over him over and over, sliding, hot, and the words falling from her lips drip like poison into his ear, like toxins, intoxicants. His teeth part. He pants for breath. His groans underlie her moaning, her whimpering. He writhes against the bindings and rolls against her body, thrusts his hips against her cunt again and again as he lifts his head, and finds her eyes, and arches up to

meet her kiss

hard enough that she can feel the cut of his teeth behind his lips. He groans into her mouth. The sound shudders in his chest, vibrates beneath her hands, against her breasts. They're pressed together. She's crouched over him like a wild thing, and dark as it is he can see the color of her eyes, green as

poison

as toxin; as intoxicating as that. It's not even a groan anymore. He bares his teeth and growls at her as her hands grasp at his obliques, his ribs, his chest.

He stops breathing in the second before she finds the clip behind the mattress.

The second it comes free, the chains, already pulled taut, whip apart. He grabs Danicka in both hands, her shoulders, her biceps; lunges up and kisses her and, kissing her, flips her on her back, slams her down on her back hard enough to rebound on the mattress. There's no space, no time to think. His weight is wholly on her for a moment, his chest to hers, his shoulders pinning hers, as his hands push her thighs up and spread her open and

Lukas's teeth grip her shoulder when he slams into her. He lets out a rough snarl as the sudden hot slickness of her cunt gripping him; the impact of his hips into hers. There's no pause; no delay. He starts to fuck her cunt immediately, fucks her hard and fast and deep as though they've been going at it all night already.

His hands are all over her, indelicate, imprecise, making up for lost time. He's mauling her stomach and thigh, dragging her hip up against his to take him deeper. He finds her hands. His wrists are still manacled, the leather faintly warm now from his body heat even through the inner fur lining, the chains still cool. Their fingers lace. He pins their hands to the bed, over her head. His weight lifts from her slightly; his back bows for strength. He covers her with his body, arced over her, a second sky, all darkness and turmoil and heat.

Strength drawn from every fiber of his body: he pounds his cock into her again. And again. Snarls sharply on every thrust. And again.

Then he's letting her go hands. Putting his weight on his elbows, curling his hands into fists. Still biting her shoulder, still gripping her by his teeth like an animal, Lukas fucks his mate -- short, sharp throws of his hips, no finesse, all energy, a fast, deep, thorough pounding against the mattress; an unequivocal race for the finish.

[Danicka] Shh, baby, soon, Danicka had murmured earlier, when he was swearing and lifting his hips, trying to fuck her even before she offered him her pussy. She promised. She stroked him and she licked him and she promised him that soon he'd get to touch her, soon he'd get to fuck her, soon he'd get to take her. Just like this. Just the way he wants to.

She knows full well that she's driven him out of his mind by now. She knew when he suggested she tie him down and let him eat her out that this would happen. And she locked his wrists together and bound him to the bed, not in any truly restraining way or even to the point of discomfort. But she teased him, gave him only token relief for his want, kept him on a razor's edge of desire and need so that at no point has his lust flagged or abated. It's a fever's pitch, a risk of frenzy, a literally dangerous game she's playing with him, this pretense that he has surrendered.

Or can.

Among all of their games, their pretenses, the most constant and the strongest is the mask that they are human. That she is not an animal, that he is not a beast. It's at the foundation of a dozen other lies, a dozen other games. Tonight the act of binding him was, counterintuitively, one more way to break through those structures of dishonesty and civility and even sanity, dissolving everything into instinct.

Hunger. Fear. Aggression. Lust.

Conversely, the afternoon that Lukas took Danicka from the Lincoln Park Zoo to his room at the Brotherhood, the afternoon that she asked him to tie her to his bed and fuck her like that, it was ...oddly gentle. The sex was lush, was rough at times, but it was an act of extraordinary trust. They made the difference in their comparative strengths more overt. They brought to the fore the fact that he could break her -- and break her so easily -- if he did not restrain himself. They did not pretend, that afternoon, that what's between them does not depend a great deal on how much Lukas can control the sheer brutality that is his nature, the instincts that tell him to hold her so tightly that her spirit struggles in vain until it shakes itself to dust and nothingness.

And because they stripped that lie down, made it blatant, pushed it forward in their minds and their eyes, it became tender. He surrendered to love rather than instinct, adoration instead of nature, and made love to her with everything he had, taking nothing away from her when everything -- everything -- was offered up to him and at his mercy.

This is different.

Neither of them have ever asked the other to submit like this. Danicka suggested it for herself. Lukas suggested it tonight. It's possible they would never have done so otherwise, never dared ask: May I do this to you? They have always offered their own surrender. They have always resisted when it's been asked for. It took Lukas months before he would truly let go, before he'd bite at her, growl, snarl, fuck her the way he always wanted to, holding little to nothing of himself back, letting her see everything

straight through to the bottom.

...Sometimes Danicka could see anyway. But it was different, when she saw because he let her. It was different, when she was powerless because she gave herself up to him. It's different, when he becomes what he really is because there is no longer any more reason to conceal it.

Like now. Let go, his arms still linked together with that cool metal chain, Lukas flips Danicka onto her back, rolling himself on top of her. The chain strikes her inner thighs, her stomach, drags and slings across her skin. It isn't heavy enough to bruise her, not unless forcefully whipped or pressed into her for an extended period of time. It isn't heavy enough that even Lukas's lunge upward and over doesn't make one of the links snap and start to pull apart. It does, but the chain doesn't utterly break yet. It's done for, though.

Her legs tremble under his hands for a moment when he's first on top of her. This is not gentle, and instinct and experience scream at her that this isn't okay, this isn't safe, but

she quiets it, says yes, wraps her arms and legs around him as he bites her and pushes his cock hard and fast into her body. Danicka cries out from the force of it, digging her fingernails into his back. Her head throws back against the bed, back arching to receive thrust after thrust of his hips. Occasionally the dig of the chain into her hip or her rib makes her let out a soft whimper, which ends when he takes her arms and pushes them up and finds her hands, wraps his own around them. The chain settles between their arms. Danicka moans underneath him.

Truth be told, she's hardly fucking him back right now. She's accepting him, her legs relaxed and her hips rolling to take him in, her body stretched out and opened for him, but there's little need for her to be more aggressive

especially after all that she just put him through.

Faster, now, and harder, and the intensity of it is moving her on the bed, fucking her up against the sheets and covers and disheveling them, disheveling her hair, making her sweat even more than before. He fucks cries out of her, little gasping yells of pleasure every time he plunges back into her after pulling back a bit. Lukas lifts himself over her further, bears down into her cunt as he pushes up on his elbows, and she lifts her head to kiss his chest, lick it, moan into his skin. She doesn't bother lowering her arms.

She's clenching at him. Her pussy squeezes him in pulses, spasms around his flesh. He could see it in her eyes when she stroked him after coming on his face, taste it in her kisses. He could feel it when she lowered herself to rub over him, hear it in the way she moaned and gasped as she fucked herself on his cock. Danicka is, not for the first time for for a rare time, getting fucked now, and she's enjoying it, moaning for it, gasping little sharp gasps that are leading towards another, inevitable, overwhelming orgasm.

[Lukas] Lukas was not a particularly empathetic creature when he met Danicka. He struggled to see into her. He had some skill in catching lies; almost none at deciphering the cause, the root, the slippery elusive truths that lay somewhere behind her eyes.

He reads her better now. It's in part his own heightening awareness. It's as much because she lets him see; because she tries so much less to hide

even when the truth is not what he wants to see. Even when it hurts.

So: he notices. He notices the tremble in her legs, and when it subsides. He notices the soft whimpers, which were not of pleasure, when the chain between his wrists digs into her ribs. It's not that he doesn't care: he does. He slows marginally at the first. He moves his hands at the second. But he does not, and cannot, stop.

She's driven him mad. Beyond all control. He's atop her, and their hands and their arms are loosely tangled over their heads, and their bodies are moving together like beasts, like snakes, like the hotblooded mammals they are. He's biting at her and growling and he's fucking her, fucking gasps and cries out of her, fucking her while she leans up to kiss and lick at his salty skin, to release moans against the beat of his heart while he bows his head over hers as though to protect her

or to keep her

and keeps right on pounding her with the same fierce, unfaltering speed. There's nothing imaginative about this. There's nothing tender about it. There's nothing slow or gradual about the build. It's a pure, unadulterated fucking, and his pleasure is already honed to a razor's edge, is slicing through the last of his control, is flaying the shell of civility and thought back from the core, back from the fire and the instinct.

His hands grasp and tear at the bedspread. At the end, he seizes the edge of the bed, his wrists laid over her palms, the tendons there tight and hard as iron. With the whole of the mattress and the whole of his body as leverage, he fucks her hard enough to ride her legs up, hard enough to roll her hips back, hard enough to hammer her firmly to the bed as he presses his mouth to her cheekbone, to her face, while harsh open vowels of exultation and pleasure burst from somewhere in his chest.

It's only been a few moments, in truth. A minute, two, maybe three on the outside. His back is wet with sweat. He's rigid, quivering, hips jerking as he pumps the last of his cum into her,

and then collapsing against her. Heavy as stone. Living stone with a beating heart of flame. His breathing is so ragged, so overcome.

But only a few seconds go by before he's moving again, lifting himself up on one elbow, reaching for her with the other hand -- the chain pulls taut; his flash of annoyance at the hindrance is so brief it's barely more than a half-thought; he jerks the already weakening link asunder with one good wrench -- reaches down.

He pulls out of her, sooner than he ever has before, but he doesn't leave her. He takes her in his hands and turns her over instead, flips her over under the canopy of his body. A pillow is dragged from somewhere up the bed, stuffed under her hips. His cock is wet from her cunt, still jerking now and then, when he presses it against the cleft of her ass.

She can hear him gasping, hissing between his teeth.

Then he's sliding against her again. Rubbing, grinding, and then pressing back into her with a low groan. It's not quite slow. It's not the single sudden stroke of his first entry, but it's not slow. His hand is reaching under her to stroke her belly, to reach between her legs, to lever her to better accept his cock. He kisses her now, fervently, lushly, over and over, her shoulderblades and her shoulder, her neck.

"Znovu," he murmurs, urging; softly demanding. "Can you manage?"

[Danicka] She's close.

Jarred slightly, at first, when Lukas slammed her onto her back and started fucking her in a rage of lust and need, Danicka's arousal was sharpening again in seconds, having her clinging to him, spreading her legs and lifting them up on his sides and taking it, taking him while he pounding into her. She was crying out again in moments, pleadingly, incoherently, the pulsing of her cunt a near-constant quiver that made it impossible -- especially in his state -- for Lukas to tell if she was coming, or about to come, or anything other than that

she was warm

and wet

and his mate, under him, covered by him, holding him deep and hot inside her cunt while he spent himself in her, sweated over her, took everything he needed from what they have.

She's moaning loudly when he comes inside of her, the alto of her voice in erotic dischord with his snarling, grunting, gasping sounds of release. She wraps her hands around his wrists, around the manacles, and holds on for dear life while he plows into her, the sweat on his temple brushing over her cheek. Danicka bites his earlobe when he comes, bites his neck, groans as he finishes himself off, bucking slightly and perhaps involuntarily.

Her legs and arms are not wrapped around him. Her thighs are opened, her arms spread upward, her body slick with sweat and her cunt slick with wetness and cum, her hair dampening starting at the scalp and clinging to her wherever her shining skin catches a tendril of it. She sucks at air as he lays over her, her ribs pressing up into him, begging for room to move, to breathe. Her cunt still clenches, pulls at him, and she whimpers helplessly, opening her mouth to say

"Baby, please,"

but what she wants never gets said, because he's rising up, snapping the manacles apart and withdrawing. Danicka cries out as though pained but doesn't resist him when he turns her over, moves along with his hands and the pillow and

when he presses his cock to her again she lets out a moan so loud that again, they should be glad she lives alone now.

Danicka grabs at another pillow, stifling her moans in it anyway, burying her face into the cushion while she bucks her hips back against Lukas's cock, rubs herself over him as wantonly as she did at the doorway when he first lifted her against him. Her legs part further to take him, her hips roll back to pull him deeper, she groans until he's buried as far as he can go and starts fucking back against him before he has a chance to touch her clit, before he starts kissing her.

All she can do is nod, lifting her face from the pillow where she moaning. Her cheeks are flushed, her hair sticking to her brow, her mouth open with her panting. Danicka nods, and nods again, squirming her pussy in circles around her lover's cock.

[Lukas] Something about the way she sounds, something about the way her moans muffle into the pillow

(or around his cock)

makes him wild. Lukas's mouth is everywhere, opening to suck and kiss and bite gently at her back, her shoulder, her arm, as though he just couldn't get enough of her. As though he wanted to devour her whole.

He's planted firmly inside her again. It's different this time. Oversensitivity or simply the dissipation of the first, so-long-contained wave of his lust has rendered his hunger a slower, gradual, drenching thing. His body moves over hers, flexing and pulling, pushing into her in slow, deep waves.

"Oh, you're so good," he's whispering in her ear. "Oh, fuck, that pussy's so good."

And his knees are pushing hers a little further apart. He isn't up on all fours, nor kneeling behind her. He's all but laying over her, his weight even and heavy across her, only partially braced on one elbow, both knees. Such warmth builds between them, such slick sweat and fluid, such heat. His teeth catch at her ear. He moans as though he were the one stimulated when his hand finds her clit, finds her pussy, feels the slow firm slide of his cock stretching that pliant cunt on every in-stroke.

Lukas is touching her now, fucking her with his hand while he fucks her with his cock. He's murmuring and sighing and muttering in her ear, filthy things, a searing stream of consciousness that vibrates in his chest, breathes across her skin. He tells her

how hot her cunt is. How he loves how it stretches to take him. And grips on that cock. And quivers when he touches her

just like that

and when he tells her what a hot little pussy it is. He tells her how good she feels, how fucking good that cunt in, how he was losing his fucking mind under her waiting for her to just fuck him, just fuck him already. He tells her he's been waiting for this. He tells her how fucking wet she is, and he asks her if she knows. He asks her if she wants to taste it. He lets her suck herself off his fingers before he tells her

how he can feel that slick sliding out around his cock when he fucks her. And what a filthy mess they're making of each other.

And what a good little cunt that is, taking his cock all over again

after he's made her come on his face
and squirm on his cock

and after he's filled her up like that.

Lukas has never done this before. He's never shouted curses at her before; not in the throes of passion. He's never fucked her like this, touching her so surely, fucking her so deliberately, and all the while talking to her, murmuring to her, saying things, filthy things, that he wouldn't have dreamt of saying a year ago, and all in that tone that says what he's really saying is

that he wants her.

that he loves her.

that she's his mate, and this is where they belong.

[Danicka] Again, he'd said, half-breathing, half-growling it in her ear while he rubbed his cock on her ass, slid it wet and slippery between her legs. It had not been a question. What followed was: could she handle it. Could she survive him fucking her again, so soon. Mostly, all she'd done was moan, begging to be fucked, rubbing herself all over him like a goddam animal, squirming and smearing the slick between them all over their skins, pleading for the orgasm she'd been building to when he slid inside her for the first time tonight.

And now he's fucking her -- again -- giving it to her just as hard as he was before but slower, firmer, the muttering of luxurious filth in her ear a constant stream of arousal. Danicka reaches over her shoulder to grab at his, to cling to him while he's bending her over and covering her in his sweat even after filling her with his cum. She has little answer for him, little to add but

"Ah... ah... aah, Lukáš, fuck!" that last curse a squealed invective as he grinds his cock into her again. Again. As their hips make a long, hard circle against the pillow he put under her belly to lift her up for him.

Her hair falls over one shoulder as she lets go of him and props herself up on her elbows, back arched so her body will tilt, so he can go deeper, fuck her

"Harder!" Danicka moans, bucking once, twice under him and trying to urge him faster. His hand slides down her belly and she screams when his fingertips touch her clit, screams and folds forward once again, muffling her shrieking in the mattress itself. Through the down cushion on top he can hear her:

"Fuck! Fuck... fuck! Fuck, Lukáš, ah... ah, fuck..."

over and over again, incoherent now, meaningless except for how fast she's fucking him now, riding back on his cock while he tells her how hot it is, how he loves it when she squirms like that, when she bucks her sweet little hips for him,

that's it, baby,

take it.

His fingers rub over her cheek and she moans when she opens her mouth to accept them, sucking on them while her cunt sucks at his cock, lapping her tongue over them to get her taste off before she's pulling away, pleading with him to touch her again,

"Baby, touch me, I'm gonna come...!"

Which he does, snarling in her ear about how fucking good she feels, how fucking tight that pussy is around him, how he couldn't wait any longer to put his cock inside her and fill her up with his cum. Danicka claws at the bedsheets underneath them, getting the shit fucked out of her now

which is what she asked for, even if all she said on the phone was that she wanted him to kiss it,

kiss that hot little pussy she'd been touching, thinking about him, wishing he were there to

do exactly this.

Danicka bucks against him when his fingers return to her clit. She cries out, tipping her head back, holding her chest up slightly so she can use her arms as leverage to fuck him back harder, faster, better. The sound of his gasping in her ear and the feel of his stroking on her clit, the heat of his cock filling her -- these things make up her world, saturate her senses to the exclusion of all other things. Her fingernails rake down the sheets, a sharp-edged moan claws its way up out of her, and she groans aloud:

"Come on. Come on, fuck me, make me c--ah! Aah, fuck!"

The first clench of her pussy around him is so different, so intensely different from the others, that it sends a jolt through her -- and him, most likely. Danicka falls apart underneath him, laying on the pillows and clinging to them for dear life, cry after cry reverbating from her throat while he fucks her to ecstasy. She comes for what feels like minutes on end, what is probably the rise and fall of empires or a heartbeat, little more, what is in actuality something like thirty seconds of her writhing beneath him, able to do nothing more than moan for him while her cunt throbs and pulses around him in her pleasure.

[Lukas] Lukas has lost track of time.

It might have been an hour ago that he came through the door. It might have been a year. It might have been seconds ago that she fastened him to the bed; an eternity ago that she released him again

and he rolled her under him

and pounded out his lust into her body.

And then turned her over. And then moved over her and kissed her slender back and rubbed his face on her shoulderblades and fucked her all over again.

Time has run liquid. All that strings one instant to the next is the ceaseless hard drive of their bodies, the slow heavy pound of his cock into her, the hard winding of her hips back against him. Every thrust met. Every motion carried, and accepted, and given back.

And what they say to each other. What he says to her, a running stream of filth and love, a mingling of languages and non-language, a constant growling undertone to the hard grind of their bodies together; to her moans, and her whimpers, and the sounds she's loosing while her hands clutch at him, or at the sheets, or at the pillows and the mattress.

"Oh, that's it," he murmurs at point, when she arches under him, mammalian, a mating reflex old as time. "To je ono. Zvedněte tvůj boky pro mě. Vzít že kohout."

And at another, when she sucks at his fingers, when she licks her wetness off his fingers:

Lízat. To je ono. Chuť to, zlato.
That's what you taste like. That's what a good, hot little pussy tastes like.

And that she should do that again. Do it again. Move like that again --

oh. Oh, fuck.

And:

that he's going to come in her. Fucking her like that, stroke after heavy stroke: that he's going to libra že kočička a naplňte ty až. That he's going to come in her pussy, come inside her, fill her just like this and come in her and fuck her full of his cum and

that first clench

is so different, so intensely different that it shatters his thoughts, ends all hope of coherence. No sentences now. Nothing but tattered words, curses, fragments -- fuck, so good, yes, that's it, that's good, yeah -- but what he lacks in verbalization he makes up in action. Lukas, raised on his elbow, arched over his mate, fucks her then: hard, harder, furiously now, shedding all patience, all deliberation. She's coming under him and all around him, moaning over and over, shuddering against his stroking hand and clenching around his cock. He's slamming into her again and again, hammering her hot, clenching cunt, mercilessly, until her wild cries are broken and ragged with the force of his thrusts, the impact of their bodies.

She can hear him panting over her shoulder, his groans rising in her ear. She can feel him tensing behind and over her, grasping at her, his mouth sucking and biting at her. He hits his climax while the last of hers is still pulsing wave after wave through her body. He wraps his arm around her. He bears her down to the mattress. His free hand is still cupped over her cunt. There's a sudden, total flexion in his body when he pulls her onto his cock, pulls her up and back to meet the last heavy stroke of his cock, and then he

holds her there. Holds her right there clasped close to him, her cunt open to his cock, receiving him, her body pinned between his torso and the bed; gasps

ach bože, to je ono

an instant before he turns his mouth to her side of her neck and all but bellows his pleasure.

So much for quiet. Lukas groans again and again, hardly recognizes the sound of himself, holds her caught in his arms and under his body and fucks her on and on and on through his orgasm in a series of mindless, reckless thrusts that are half-voluntary at best until he's sure that he'll either have to stop

or die

or fuck her all over again

and die anyway.

So he stops. Slows, stops. His mouth is still open to her neck, the corner of her jaw. He's breathing so hard and fast he rocks her with his inhales. His heart is a palpable hammering against the center of her back. A few seconds go by, and he's heavier and heavier against her until he rolls to the side. Collapses. Brings her with him, both of them on their sides now, tangled together.

He plays with her. He knows he can't, that it's too soon, that she'll shudder and beg him to stop: but he plays with her anyway, lazily, idly, patiently, touching her clit and the delicate inner lips of her pussy, touching her where he still penetrates her until she can't bear it anymore.

Lukas laughs then, quiet. The sound is pure adoration and happiness. He kisses her neck, her cheek; her mouth if she turns to give it to him. "Mm," he hums, and his free hand finds her breast, covers it.

Breath slowing. Heart rate slowing. He lies quietly now. He feels boneless, strengthless, as though his very atoms have shaken apart and are now held together by nothing more than the echos of pleasure still skimming down the corridors of his body. Seconds roll into moments, into minutes.

Eventually he shifts, lifts his arms, presents his wrists to her. Without a word, he asks her to undo the manacles still bound around them, as though this were the conclusion of some ritual.

"Úžasné," he whispers. He kisses her shoulder again, so gently now. So very tenderly, as though the excesses of their lust might have left her more fragile than before.

[Danicka] The bedspread is damp from sweat, tangled from kicking and writhing, certain wrinkles revealing where Danicka grasped the fabric, crushing it in her small fists. There's a wet spot on her pillow where she bit it, screamed against it. Crudely, bluntly stated: there is cum on her comforter, on her sheets, on her inner thighs, and smears of her slick -- dried and drying -- on his abdomen, on his legs, the scent of her all over his hands.

As animalistic as they are together, as beastly, it is still rare that either of them let go this much. It involves a certain amount of unacceptable risk, depending on the phase of the moon, the politics of the sept, the vagaries of pack life, the last time she spoke to a blood relative, the nearness of final exams. Letting go means risking Lukas's vision going red, Danicka's head bowing with tears, fighting, bruising, the potential of unavoidable, inevitable ending.

They will either tear themselves apart or one of them will die. There is only one happier -- no, not even happy, just tolerable -- option, and in order to reach it both of them must maintain a rigid, precarious balance in their own lives and in their dealings with each other. They must both be careful not to get killed -- without being cowards or weaklings. They must both watch their words when they are angry, or even when they are merely frustrated, lest it spiral out of control -- but they cannot bite their tongues and hold back the things they have to say to each other.

They have to accept that he cannot live with her, or belong to her.

They have to accept that having children means both strength to their bloodlines and the Nation but the demolition of what they have.

They have to allow themselves, sometimes, to just. Let. Go. As much of a risk as it is, as dangerous as it could be to body or love.

Danicka is gasping, panting when Lukas collapses on her, making a small keening noise and struggling against his weight for a moment. He is heavy, he is powerful, and she can feel his rage bearing down on her as much as his weight, beating against her back just like his heartbeat does, and she is nothing more than instinct now. Reason has stripped away in the course of their lovemaking -- if you could call it that --

and they can

leaving her wild, feral, and inexplicable. She screamed as he growled moments ago, shrieked and gasped and whimpered her enjoyment even as he was pounding himself into her, opening his mouth to her throat and all but roaring. The walls at Kingsbury Plaza are thick, the building brand new, Danicka's apartment on the very end of the hall, but it's very likely they were heard, and it's entirely certain that neither of them thought of it, or would have cared if they did.

She squirms under him, wriggling in the circle of his arms. It is a lot to take, being fucked like that. Being fucked like that all the way through her orgasm, when the nonstop hammering of his hips could have very well jarred her out of it, being fucked after coming on his face, taking his cock while lying on her back, being bitten and held down and --

Danicka can barely breathe. It's postorgasmic shuddering, it's instinctive refusal of being held so tightly when every inch of her flesh is lit up with sensitivity, it's being so completely open that every memory tells her something bad is going to happen if she doesn't pull back, if she doesn't hide again, if doesn't protect herself.

When he rolls to the side, legs intertwined and arms loosening around her, Danicka is shaking. She's quivering around his cock, trembling against his chest, and her eyes are closed when he looks at her profile, her lips are parted with whimpers, her face flushed and glistening with sweat. He touches her

and she yelps, reaching down and insistently, plaintively smacking at his arm, his hand. "No," she says firmly -- if anything out of her can be firm right now, when she's a tremulous wreck -- and then "No!" more like a squeal, shoving his hand away by the still-manacled wrist. If he relents, she relaxes, and turns her face into the pillow beneath his arm, trying to slow her breathing, her heart rate, trying to regain the capacity for rational thought.

Which means he kisses her neck, yes, her jawline, her earlobe if he turns his head just so. She's moaning softly again into the pillow, curled against his chest and in his arm. When his hand touches her breast, she shudders once and then settles, breathing more deeply, more slowly. If he is tender now, perhaps thinking that what just happened has left her more fragile, his imaginings aren't far from the truth. Danicka is blasted, disintegrated, rebuilding her mind and herself with each deep inhale and shivering exhale of air.

A few minutes ago she was squirming and struggling underneath him as though she wanted him to let her go. Now she's curling further into his embracing arms, making small and wordless -- yet not meaningless -- noises into the swell of his bicep, the rustling of her pillow which is so cool by comparison to his skin. She rubs her face on the inside of his elbow, kisses him there, becomes still again. Danicka is almost turned on her belly once more, shoulders hunched and hair ... askew, everywhere, across her back and his chest and her bed.

Lukas nuzzles, nudges, and she turns her head a bit from the pillow and his arm, drowsily opening her eyes to the presentation of his wrists. She blinks once, slowly, looking at them as though she's not sure what to do with them. Truth be told, it wouldn't take much for Lukas to free himself. Even with the chain intact, there's enough leeway for him to fiddle with the buckles himself, to undo the cuffs and shed them without help. It would take longer, would be hard to do with any finesse, but they aren't true restraints. The chain was thin enough that with enough time and effort even Danicka could break at least one link.

Therein lies part of the underlying truth of all this: Lukas was never trapped more than he could escape, and easily, if he had wanted to. Even had she bound him in iron and locked it with a key, even if he were mortal and could not simply shift and destroy any binding but silver, a single word to Danicka and it would have been over. Which would only make a difference if he trusts her, just as the presence of the manacles to begin with only made a difference if she trusted him to surrender not to her, but to what they were doing.

And what they have.

Danicka smiles when she remembers what the cuffs are, the fur sweat-soaked, his flesh not so much as chafed. She snakes her arms up from where she's had them tucked close between bed and body, and her deft, slender fingers quickly undo the two straps on each wrist that keep them held onto him. She removes one, then the other, and nudges them way to the edge of the mattress, where gravity takes over, tipping them and the weight of the chain to the carpet. They fall with soft thuds beside her bed, Danicka returns her arms to fold them close to her breasts, and she settles once more with a sighing exhale.

"Děkuji ti, ma lásko," she murmurs, though it is not clear at all what exactly she's thanking him for. It may not really matter. She does not sound as though this is a matter of obligation, this gratitude. It sounds more like:

Děkuji, že jste tady.

or even more accurately:

Děkuji vám za stávající.

A few more breaths, and the further slowing of their heart rates, before she whispers into the dark: "Are you staying?"

[Lukas] Lukas does not, after all, touch Danicka beyond what she can take.

He does not because when he rolls to the side she's shaking. She's drawn into herself as though to protect what little of herself she had left. She's trembling through and through, and her eyes are closed, and she's still whimpering like she's overcome, or like maybe he's hurt her, or like what's happened between them has stripped her to particles, to quanta, and she can't put herself together yet.

He's overcome, too. He's deluged by pleasure, by the feel of her, by the way he gave in to her, and what's between them; and by the wild tenderness in him that expands until his ribs creak. Lukas says nothing; he exhales, nearly a pant, and his mouth is on her shoulder, slow and warm. He wraps his arm around her. He leans over her, all but covering her again where she lays,

but protectively, now, rather than in need and claim. Lukas crosses his shin over Danicka's; curves his upper body over hers, his abdomen and hips and thighs a shield wall behind her. He holds her in the warm safe space between his head and his chest and his braced elbows and the bed, as though the sky had fallen and the strength of his back and the curvature of his shoulders were all that gave her room to breathe.

"Ono to je v pořádku," he murmurs, over and over. "Já jsem tady."

You're safe, he wants to say to her.

I have you.

You're protected.

He kisses her after all. Nuzzles her; kisses her. It's not until she begins to stir, begins to curl further into his arms, that he sinks down on his side again, slowly, and draws her into the circle of his embrace.

He cradles her heartbeat. She shudders, then quiets.

Her den smells like them. Had they gone into the wild on the solstice and never returned, made a den in the earth, lined it with fur, closed the entrance with a stone and wintered with only one another's warmth, that scent would linger. They would have no use for detergents and fabric softeners, fresheners, artificial scents. It would flatten with the passing days, lose its immediacy and vibrancy, its depth. It would layer beneath fresher smells, kills, meats, snowmelt, and their own subtle changing scents from day to day; build on itself for days and weeks and months

until anyone passing in the vicinity would smell it and know that that land was claimed. This den was claimed. This is the territory of another, and their presence is an intrusion.

They have not gone into the wild, though they have, in last span of time, lost nearly all control. They are in her apartment, in her den, and when he's gone she'll change the sheets, and gradually the last traceries of him will fade from the air and the den will be wholly hers again until the next rare time he comes here.

His wrists feel abruptly cool when the furlined manacles come off, and then thump to the floor. Unnecessary now. Unneeded. He rotates his hands once, and then slides one under her pillow to draw it beneath their heads; returns the other to her breast, covering her.

Neither of them voice what that was. Neither of them speak of how far into one another they fell; how much they let go, and how rare that is. It is not shame. It is, perhaps, simply an inability to voice something that is, by its very nature, beyond words. Beyond definition.

Close now, he holds her, listening as she thanks him, nuzzling the back of her ear, breathing.

Closing his eyes.

"Samozřejmě já jsem pobyt," he murmurs, and curls her a little closer. His chest rises against her back. He exhales. "Můj lodní důstojník."

[Danicka] Originally she had thought to call him here, to whimper and squirm under the ministrations of his tongue, to push her hands into his hair and grind against his face until she could take no more and he could not stand to keep himself from giving her more. She'd imagined, waiting for him to arrive, kissing her taste out of his mouth even while feeling him push into her, ready for her, eager. When he'd decided for her where to fuck her, because she could not make up her mind where or how she wanted him, everything she'd expected or imagined flew out of her mind. Everything changed.

Everything between them has changed. Continues to change, every time they argue. Every time they catch one another's eye and the smile they give each other is small, and tender, and almost secretive. Every time they make love and go so far beyond what they thought their limits were that they lose track of time and forget the boundaries of their very selves.

Danicka finds his hand with her own, eases it into his grasp and curls it there, tugging his fingers down over her own and thus tangling the two of them together in yet another point of contact. He tells her softly that it's okay, repeats it through her trembling, and she hears

You're safe.

I have you.

You're protected.

And for once she believes it, or seems to, because she is soothed. She settles against him, curls close to his chest and lets him hold her there, her breathing slowing down because she's safe. She's with her mate, who is here, with her, nestled in her den with her. And she trusts him. She welcomes her mate, her male here with her, as though he belongs here.

Danicka was going to move. She was going to abandon this apartment where he first admitted that she was precious to him, where she first told him that she was falling in love with him. Where he first called her láska and she first called him moje láska, and where he ached at the difference between them, and at his own cowardice. She's never really asked anyone into this bed: Martin came in drunk. Gabriella was there because she, too, was drunk and it would be cold to put her on the couch and inappropriate to put her in with Martin. Neither of them were invited, nor truly wanted there.

Lukas, however. Lukas belongs here, and a feral part of him keened softly at the thought of her leaving this place, and now she's staying. Her roommates are all gone, she is not looking for another, and she works more and brings in income she used to not need... so she can keep this apartment. So she can keep and strengthen the memories here that are warm, and close, and not the ones that make her wince from the truth.

It is not really a wild place, this gorgeous apartment of glass and clean lines, with its view and its luxury. But as she said once: it wouldn't make any difference, where they are. They themselves are wild, are savage, and they are not human. What will happen tomorrow may be that she cleans her bed, changes the comforter they've soaked in fluids and rolled around in... though she may not change the sheets that they will eventually sleep against. Either way, eventually the scent of him will fade. Eventually, her den will be hers again, not theirs.

Their place is somewhere else. Their den is cold right now, dark, empty.

This room is dark, warm, full of their scent and their breathing. And moonlight, broad and gleaming in the night sky outside her window. Danicka can hardly believe they survived this, that Lukas could control himself, that there was no point when he screamed for her to let him go so that he would not frenzy and destroy everything in the room, including her: the warm, moving, living thing. She is in awe of what just happened to them, what they did to each other, and not just because the moon is full.

Exhaustion washes through her. It is more than physical. Her eyes fall closed, and she stirs once against his chest only to become still again, doing no more than breathing.

"There was something I wanted to tell you," she murmurs drowsily, as though trying to remember what it was, "but it can wait."

Danicka sighs, and she is too warm to even consider pulling the blankets around them, filthy as they are. She doesn't even care. She knows she'll wake up tacky with dried sweat, dried cum, stiff from positioning and sore from fucking, and she just... doesn't... care. Every limb wants to stay motionless. Her mind wants to stop. She doesn't want to think, doesn't want to talk, doesn't want to do anything but be held here, be with her mate, and let the gravity of unconsciousness drag them both down under its dim surface.

So that is what happens. She is asleep before he is, whispering something --

"Miluji tě. Můj samec."

in those last seconds before she descends into silence, her breathing becoming regular and steady. The words all but purr from her lips, mumbled and indistinct. Someone just learning Czech would have no idea they were even words. Lukas, though, was born in the Czech Republic, grew up speaking this languge at home and at her house, sometimes. A few times. He knows those words, as surely as he knows the thump of her heart hitting the heel of his hand. He knows when she falls asleep, feels it in his own bones, in his own breathing, his own pulse.

Sleep overtakes him a few shadowing, protecting steps behind his lover. His female.

They can talk in the morning.