green.

[Danicka] By the non-schedule Lukas keeps it might be the middle of the night after his meeting with Stefan downstairs, could be early morning, might be afternoon. For Danicka, it's a weeknight, she has class tomorrow, and it's a little past midnight. He goes upstairs first, and Stefan excuses himself around the same time. They all just had coffee, but it isn't enough to make Danicka wired or jittery. Something to be said for her breeding, perhaps: she has a longstanding ability to tolerate grotesque amounts of several substances without falling completely apart. Lukas has seen Danicka twice under such a sway of god-knows-how-much-of-god-knows-what that she could not even remember seeing him. More often, he's seen her match him drink for drink and seem perfectly fine.

But that's alcohol and drugs. This is caffeine. It's in her bloodstream as she cleans up -- she rinses but does not wash the dishes, setting them on the rack of items that need to go through the washer-sanitizer come morning. It's in her bloodstream as she leaves the stools where they are on the ground instead of bothering to lift them up and upend them on the bar like all the others. She isn't downstairs very long, to tell the truth, and she doesn't busy herself tidying up and making nice after having coffee with the Shadow Lords; Danicka is many things, courteous often among them, but she is no one's servant. Not anymore.

She comes upstairs just a few minutes after Lukas ascends, easing her way through the dark of the kitchen and the narrow stairs. Her keys are in her bag inside his room, but she doesn't need them: it isn't locked yet. Danicka is -- perhaps has always been -- the only person who opens the door of Room 2 without knocking. Slips inside, smiling when she sees him.

"We," she informs him, crossing the room to slide her arms up around his neck, "should brush our teeth and get under the covers and watch a movie or something on your laptop."

[Lukas] The first time Danicka opened this door without knocking, she was fleeing from one terror to what anyone else would say was another. She hadn't been thinking then; hadn't been able to tell him why, of all places, she ran here. The proverbial and literal wolf's den, and not any wolf's but the one who tried so hard to convince her, himself, and everyone else that he did not care for her, would not protect her.

This time, it's no panicked flight; it's no accident. She lets herself in, and Lukas is over by his closet digging through his neat, orderly stacks of rubbermaid bins in which he stores the clothes and items that don't fit in his dresser, his desk. She speaks to him, smiling, and though he straightens up and smiles back, he doesn't answer. He points at his ear instead -- at the little bluetooth headset clipped there.

It wasn't a polite lie, after all, his needing to make a phone call. Something rustles in his closet, and then he pulls his arms out of it and goes to the desk, taking his padholder out and scribbling a note while he says into the headset --

"Nemáme ne začali dávat cihly vzhůru. Je to příliš chladno venku. Budeme, to dělat na jaře."

The pen clicks down. He holds the pad up for Danicka to see:

we can go back to your place if you want!

Simultaneously, on the phone, "Hej, Danička tady je. Já promluvíme si později - hm?" The pad lowers. He raises his eyebrows at Danicka in exaggerated surprise. Then, "Ach, oukej."

The earpiece comes off. Lukas has the good grace to wipe it perfunctorily on his shirt before handing it to Danicka.

"My dad," he says. "He wants to say hi to you."

[Danicka] There's no doubt in Danicka's mind, hearing the bit about bricks and springtime, who Lukas is talking to. All the more reason she's smiling when she comes in and walks over to him. As it turns out, she doesn't get to slide her arms around his neck and tell him she wants to curl up and watch a movie. She just walks in, and comes to him, but then he's scrawling a note to her and huffing a small laugh at what it says. Going up on her toes she kisses his cheek lightly as he's trying to get off the phone with his father. She's about to say

Dobrý den, Jaroslav!

aloud, but then the conversation cuts slightly short and she laughs at Lukas's expression. She takes the little headset and slips it on, her fingers still settling it around the curve of her ear as she speaks. "Dobrý den, Jaroslav," she says, a little more subdued and polite than if she'd just chirped it from where she stood next to Lukas.

Speaking of which: when the bluetooth is secure she's leaning against the edge of his desk, picking up the note he just wrote her and the pen and scrawling her own in reply:

let's stay - I have everything I need for tomorrow

And so she does. She brought her laptop bag along with her overnight when she showed up, as though she intended from the start to stay here after coffee.

Into the headset, however, without missing a beat: "Dostal jsem ten balíček vy který poslal na domu. Začala jsem číst to včera. A vy budete muset dát na Marjeta moje poděkování. Jdu pověsit ji v kuchyni okno," which is more than Lukas normally hears Danicka talk freely to people she doesn't know well, instantly, without being asked. Without, even, giving Jaroslav a chance to get a word in edgewise yet. She's smiling, quite happily, discussing... some package... with his father. That apparently they sent to her.

[Lukas] While Danicka is talking to his father, Lukas reads the note, huffs his own little huff of laughter, and goes to put his stuff away again in the closet. When he's done he comes back, levering himself up on his desk beside his mate, close enough that his shoulder rests against hers as she talks.

When she talks about the care package his parents apparently sent her, Lukas's surprise is not feigned. He quirks an eyebrow at her. Over the phone, Jaroslav expresses pleasure that she's received it, welcome at her thanks. Then -- never one to chatter on and on -- he wishes Danicka a good night, adding that Marjeta wants Lukáš to make more videos when he gets a chance.

She's freed, then, and Lukas clicks his phone to sleep while Danicka takes the headset out of her ear. Taking it back, he sets it atop the phone, puts both on the desk.

"What's all this about a package?" he wants to know, smiling.

[Danicka] "Dám mu vědět," she says very seriously to Jaroslav and, for the moment, even Lukas can't tell how much of that seriousness -- the gravity of her promise -- is sincere. There's pleasantries, goodbyes, goodnights, talk-to-you-again-soons, and then the phone's going away and Danicka's setting the headset in Lukas's palm.

She smiles, then grins at him, leaning over to kiss his cheek finally. "Your parents sent me some ...well, wedding gifts, I suppose," she says, amused at the idea more than charmed, though there's elements of that, too. "A book of Czech history from your father -- I think I mentioned over Thanksgiving that I'd never been to the Republic and wished I knew more about where we all come from." In this, it's easy enough to see that her seriousness isn't feigned. Isn't exaggerated. "It's a very old book," she says, slightly hushed, as though she's talking about an extraordinarily expensive piece of jewelry given to her, something a little overwhelming in its value. But then: she wept when Lukas offered her his childhood storybooks. And those were not thick, leatherbound volumes written in his native tongue. They were not some item from a personal library that had been searched for and bought with struggle and high price to replace something lost when he fled his home country.

She smiles though, warmed. "And your mother sent a suncatcher. When you were helping tatínek find a tape to measure the cabinets I think I must have mentioned that I'm not very good at decorating and the windows and walls always seem so bare." 'Think's she must have mentioned. He knows her better than that. "It's very pretty, actually -- all red and orange and yellow. I want to see it when sunset hits it. So I'm going to hang it in the kitchen window."

Danicka pauses a moment, then adds: "Also, your mother --" he can quite clearly hear the fingerquotes here, "wants you to make more videos when you get a chance." Another beat. "We do have relatively recent videos of you, but I don't think we should send them the one I made of you in the shower. On our honeymoon." And one more. No blush, no shame, none of that, just: "It's only rated PG-13, R at worst, and you have a very nice ass, but. Yes. You should make new ones. Clothed."

[Lukas] Lukas turns his head as Danicka's withdrawing -- he kisses her again, a light, sweet touch of mouth to mouth. Then, leaning back, he folds his legs up crosslegged on the tabletop, listening.

"You probably made his day when you asked," he says. "My dad loves history. Just be careful - next time we visit he might decide to tell you all about The Czech People."

While she's telling him about the suncatcher, he's watching her. There's a fond sort of smile on his face. He reaches out to touch her once or twice -- threading her hair back, finding her hand with his. It takes him a beat to hear what she's saying about shower, honeymoon, video.

"Wait, what?" That's when it sinks in. He laughs. "Christ. You filthy pornographer." And he leans over, nipping her shoulder gently with his teeth.

A little more serious: "What did you think of Stefan?"

[Danicka] The desk complains quietly about Lukas's weight atop it fully, a low creak of a whine as though the piece of furniture just wants to say really? seriously, man? But it won't snap. Won't bend and break tonight.

Danicka's eyebrows lift a little. "I wouldn't mind that," she tells him plainly, considering what his father might fill her ears with. "My father taught me traditions and customs, but... he was a tradesman. He wasn't... educated," she finishes, as though apologetic to her own father for saying so. Not embarrassed, but she knows that her father is smart, could have been brilliant with a different life. The life that she, in fact, now has a shot at: one where she's not a governess for Silver Fangs before becoming the mother of Shadow Lords, but someone who may in due time be an engineer, a researcher, someone who -- with her current pasttime of reverse-engineering alien technology -- could easily find herself in an R&D position somewhere making six figures and ordering around interns who are, themselves, graduate students pissing themselves in the face of their severe-chinned, blonde-haired supervisor who has zero tolerance for weakness and a tendency to rip whiners entirely new holes.

Lukas touches her though, unafraid of her, though one could say that at one time he reacted the way he did to her out of a sort of intimidation, a kind of fear. Strokes his fingers on her hair and her face and kisses her when she gets even a little bit close enough. Touches her as though he's making up for the restraint they show in public.

She grins at him. Kisses his temple as he nips her. "Well I have gotten off watching it," she murmurs in his ear, as though she's trying to ignite him. She's still smiling when he draws back, getting Very Serious.

Shrugs once. "He's a Shadow Lord Theurge," she says, but that's coming from one who knows a couple. "Formal. Polite." A pause. "I thought it was interesting that he so freely told you about the healer he mentioned coming across -- it could be that he's honorable. Not everyone would give away the name of a Kinfolk who can do that sort of thing." She doesn't say what might else be done with the information, but Lukas, too, knows Shadow Lords.

Danicka shakes her head. "It was a very brief meeting, but he wasn't posturing or bootlicking, from what I could see. I don't know what that says about his character, but it's a refreshing change of pace."

[Lukas] For a moment they're all but nuzzling each other, heads close, voices low. She murmurs about getting off. She can hear him draw a breath, then laugh.

"You do like to watch," he murmurs back, and then kisses her shoulder.

Then they're Very Serious, and she's giving him her assessment of the new Shadow Lord, which begins with he's a Shadow Lord theurge. They've both known a couple. Of the three Lukas has been anywhere near familiar with -- well. One was Mrena. One was Danicka's brother. One was Ezra. Two of three wasn't a good trend.

Still; Danicka goes on, breaks down what little was said. And Lukas listens, the heat in his blood and in his eyes momentarily set aside, put aside because here, behind closed doors, they don't restrain themselves. Not from what they do to each other. Not, either, from what they mean to each other; how they value one another's opinions.

When she's finished, he nods. He doesn't say he appreciates her offering her opinion -- she knows he does, or he wouldn't ask. He doesn't say he'll keep it in mind either, because she knows that too. Instead, he thinks another moment, and then he smiles.

"Want to brush our teeth and get in bed?"

[Danicka] There is little more to say about the brief half-hour or so -- maybe even less -- that they spent with Stefan downstairs. It was a standard sort of meet-and-greet, and the Theurge in question did not try to, as one might put it, start shit. He wasn't an Ezra. He didn't give Danicka the vibe of another Vladik. She never knew Mrena that well. One notable thing: she doesn't work very hard, anymore, to seem demure and self-effacing and submissive to Lukas when they're in front of members of the tribe. Nor does she push back against some imaginary dominance of his just to prove that she is her own person.

He pulls out a chair for her and she doesn't want to sit, he doesn't feel that it's pointed, defensive, rejecting. She has a half-drunk AMF nudged her way and she doesn't feel condescended to, coddled -- here baby, you just have a little of mine.

But it is worth noting that she didn't try to play the part of the sweet little Shadow Lord kinswoman with Stefan downstairs. She didn't put on a mask to fit the type expected of the mate of an Adren, Alpha of this or that. Even then, Stefan didn't know who was watching him more closely. Whose opinion was going to be asked later, just to have it. Just to know what she picked up on, didn't pick up on.

She smiles as he says to her exactly what she thought about saying when she got in the door. She nods. "You wanna cuddle and watch something on your laptop til we crash out, or would you rather finally get around to using those manacles I bought you and tying me down to fuck me to sleep?"

Matter-of-fact, that.

[Lukas] There it is again -- that quick hot gleam in his eye, that unadulterated readiness he almost always seems to show when Danicka tells him, or shows him, or somehow hints to him that,

why, yes, she would like to fuck.

Those extraordinary eyes of his flick toward the door, that thin thin door with the mirror on its back, and then to Danicka. His mouth quirks, a half-smile, somewhere between intrigued and playful. "If I were to pick option B," he says, "do you think you could stay quiet enough not to wake the rest of the BroHo?"

[Danicka] He offered initially to just crawl into bed with her. Brush their teeth, wash their faces, change out of dayclothes and crawl under the covers. It's an appealing thought. Nevermind that they've been trading a few comments, lightly here and there. The way she videotaped him on their honeymoon. The confession -- though coming from Danicka, it never seems like a 'confession' in the sense that there's any shame, any hesitance, anything but waiting for the right time to say something -- that she's pleasured herself to the mere sight of him naked, the memory of him unaware that she was watching him, wanting him.

But then she mentions, sitting on his desk with him after saying goodbye to his father on the phone, the manacles she bought him months ago, before fall had even gotten rolling, and he still has them. White leather, the fur inside covered by a layer of white satin. The last time he tied her down, it was with a red silk necktie. He's had the manacles in question since September, with their delicate chain and the smaller size that's obviously not meant to encompass wrists like his.

She doesn't know if he's ever taken them out, looked at them. She knew, when she gave them to him, he would never ask to use them on her. Just as she's never, probably would never, ask to lock him down to her bed again. Just as she would be surprised, maybe even dismayed, if Lukas wanted to play like this at their den. Danicka doesn't quite know why or how she knows all these things or why she feels this way. It's just in her, unquestioned, as so many other things she knows about herself.

Danicka lifts one eyebrow at his question, half-smiling herself at how quick, how hot, how ready he is. "You might," she muses, easing off the desk and stepping out of her shoes, heading over to her bag to get out the little toiletry kit she brought, "have to come up with something to deal with that."

[Lukas] For all his courtesy, for all his restraint, Lukas can be so singular in his desire. All it takes, sometimes, is a single offhand comment like that --

finally get around to using those manacles

-- to ignite some flame in him. Set him afire. She slips off the table beside him, stepping out of her shoes. There's distance between them now, and he watches her across it, half-smiling, eyes intense. His eyes drop as she bends to lift her bag.

When she straightens, getting her toiletry kit out, he comes off the table. The room is so small crossing it is a matter of taking a step. He stands close to her, closer than he would in public; closer than he would if he weren't thinking, at the moment, of those white leather manacles; her arms stretched over her head; her breasts bare to his mouth, his tongue. Her pussy, tight and wet around his cock.

He leans into her; nuzzles her wordlessly, suddenly, heavily. His teeth catch gently at her ear. As he draws away Lukas's eyes open; his smile is equal parts adoration and anticipation.

"I'll think about it while we're brushing our teeth," he promises.


The bathroom is empty at this hour. They brush their teeth at adjoining sinks. Lukas keeps looking at Danicka. He grins at her through foamy teeth. He bends down to spit into the sink, his back reflected broad and curving in the mirror. When he's done, he washes his face and his hands quickly, rinses with clear water. Leans over to kiss her cheek.

"See you back at the room," he says.


Lukas has never actually taken the manacles out to look at them. He's never sat fingering them, fantasizing about using them on her; somehow that would seem just as wrong, just as beyond some unspoken line in his mind as asking her to lay herself out like that. To submit like that. It's always been a gift between them, something unexpected and offered. Never asked for. Never demanded.

He knows where he put them, though. He know exactly where the clean, textured white box with the logo -- and nothing else -- etched atop in gold is, even though he hasn't seen it in half a year. He has to dig through books, summer clothes, and summer bedding to find it,

but find it he does.

When she comes back in the room, Lukas is sitting on the edge of the bed. The box is on the nightstand; the clip-on lamp is on, and the other lights are off. She closes the door behind her. He holds his hand out to her.

[Danicka] Of all the times that Danicka has been genuinely -- and often rightly -- afraid of what Lukas might do, of what being with him might mean for her life, she's never been overwhelmed by his want. Put off sometimes, if we're being honest -- and these days, she is -- but even on those occasions it was more a matter of feeling caught up in some unstoppable storm. And not caught up in the thunder of it, rolling across the sky with it, but on the ground, an object upon which he was unleashed. It was never a case when she was upset by how much he wanted her, how instantly, how completely.

They've talked about it. He watches her now when she's less ravenous than he is, he doesn't rush her up stairs and into rooms and against walls with the same feverish, mindless rush towards joining. He remembers: he has her. She isn't going anywhere. She's his. And perhaps he understands, too, that finally it feels like they are not going to lose each other every other day. Finally, every time doesn't make them wonder if it's the last time. And Danicka, playful and wicked, often likes to make it last. Draw it out. Drive him slowly and inexorably out of his mind, which is a very different thing from flicking a switch to incite his madness.

He comes closer, nuzzling her, leaning into her as she rises up. Danicka laughs, reaching up with her free hand as he's nipping at her ear, touching his face. "Eager boy," she murmurs, half-teasing, rubbing her fingertips against his scalp. She turns her head, catching him in a quick kiss.


In the bathroom, Lukas keeps looking at her. Grinning at her. She brushes a little more calmly, letting him carry all the anticipatory silliness he likes. The eagerness. The absolute delight he has, as though the knowledge is thrumming beneath his skin that he's going to fuck his mate tonight. He's going to play with her and fuck her and make her come and yay.

For her part, Danicka seems calm. Quieter. She brushes her teeth and she puts her hair up in a quick loop to keep it from falling over her cheeks as she washes her face. But then she doesn't turn to go with him to the bedroom again. "I'm going to take a quick shower," she tells him, and so he says

See you back at the room,

which would be an odd thing to say if she had just finished washing up and was going back with him that moment. So he goes, and as he's leaving to walk down the hall, he hears the water turn on.


In his room, the box with the manacles comes out, plain and white and unmarked. She gave it to him in front of people, after all, and it's Danicka. Danicka, who wore a trench coat over lingerie and helped him work on making talens without revealing what she was really there for, what she wanted. Danicka, who made his favorite kolaches for 'the pack' as though to ingratiate herself to them, and that is how most of them read it, when the truth was she just wanted to do him a little kindness, for no reason other than that a whim told her to, and she followed it.

Followed it like she followed the desire to buy the manacles in the first place. They didn't use them for a long time. In September, when she handed him that box, she was still trying to make herself believe that she was okay. That the frenzy hadn't changed anything. That she wasn't afraid of him. That she wasn't having nightmares.

The gift given, held all this time in wait, was given in suppressed desperation. It's as dark a beginning as their own -- she gave him kolache to be kind, and the night ended with Sam calling her a pig and striking her across the face. They made love for the first time with an intensity that literally altered the course of their lives, and she walked away thinking he hated her, thinking he didn't want her, and telling herself she wouldn't want him, either. There is little between them that is untouched and perfect, little that's gone according to some tidy script.

That's life.

Danicka showers briefly with her hair up, keeping it from getting wet except at the temples and hairline. She thinks about all this. Perhaps that's why she wasn't grinning back at Lukas at the sinks. It's been a very, very long time since they went to the Lincoln Park Zoo and she dropped the exact same request in his lap. It's been a very, very long time since she called him to her apartment to pleasure her and he asked her to tie him down. It's been a very, very long time since she was lying bloody on the street thinking that what she'd expected in childhood was happening far, far later than she'd feared when she was small. A Shadow Lord Ahroun whom she loved was going to kill her.

She takes a deep breath as the hot water rushes over her, and tips her head back, eyes closed. She thinks about the last time. She thinks it will be different. Her eyes open, and she exhales.


Might break Lukas's heart if he knew she was thinking about it at all. He's always wanted it to be... over. Done. Moved on from, moved past. He hated talking about it to the point that it seemed like he hated even acknowledging it. And she can't blame him -- she hates talking about Martin, hearing about how that hurt him, how he felt betrayed. Just wants him to let it go and have it be done with. Danicka understands. She dries off in the little antechamber to the shower, brisking a towel over her body, and then wraps it around herself, tucking it in at her chest.

She lets her hair down, shaking it over her shoulders, running her fingers through it. She picks up her clothes and her little bag of toiletries and peeks out into the bathroom before she leaves.

Truth be told, Danicka would walk naked from here to his room and not only not care, she would enjoy doing it. Truth be told, the only reason she doesn't is that she knows that gleam in his eye, protective and bordering on possessive. She knows how hard he works to not lock her up, lock her away, keep her secure from any other wolf that might so much as sniff at her. She knows he wants, so badly, not to make her feel like some precious prize, some owned thing to be won or lost by mere challenge.

She doesn't know if he realizes how hard she tries to keep herself more restrained, too. To not toy with him or his heart. To contain the darker aspects of her personality, so much more subversive, so much more deeply damaging, than Rage. To show him, however she can, how much she cares for him. And that she loves him.

And that she trusts him.

Danicka walks into his room and closes the door behind her, locks it. She doesn't look at him yet. She sets down her things and then looks over at Lukas seated on the bed. The towel comes undone with a flex of her hand at her breastbone, and drops damply, quietly, to the carpet. Danicka crosses over to him then, watching his eyes. His hand, reaching out, finds her somewhere, wherever he happens to reach for her. She doesn't take it in her own, that much is certain. She does come closer than his outstretched arm, though.

Puts her knee on the mattress, coming down onto his lap slowly. Her body brushes against his as she lowers herself to straddle his thighs. She settles warmly atop him, her arms at her sides, close enough that he can smell the mint on her breath. Close enough that he can feel her breasts on his chest, dimly feel her heartbeat, as she tips her head and kisses him.

[Lukas] It's possible that even now, Lukas has no idea that the manacles were given to him as a sort of desperate gesture. A gift to him, but a statement to herself: a reminder that I can do this, even if she wasn't sure she could.

It's possible that even now, Lukas does not understand how close they might have come to coming apart entirely last summer. Not in the way he always thought they would at the start, and the way they almost did when they fought about Martin, Martin, goddamn Martin -- heartache and blame and infidelity -- but in a way far subtler, far more insidious. A hardening of the soul. A cooling of the heart's bond. Just him, and her, drifting slowly, inexorably apart, because she could not tell him for the longest time

you frighten me. you give me nightmares.

and that very silence was walling her away from him.

She did tell him, eventually. And it hurt. And he couldn't help. In the end the only one who could help was another kinswoman, someone Danicka barely knew, but understood where she stood. The impossible task she faced. Who understood the dichotomy, the contradiction of it all: how do you love someone you fear? How do you trust someone who, at the very core of it, cannot be trusted not to kill you?

And the answer is: you can't. But you do. And you go from there.


When Danicka comes back into the room, Lukas doesn't know what's gone through her mind. He doesn't know why she was a little more indrawn at the sinks, in the bathroom; he can sense it, though, the profundity and intensity of her mood, her presence, as she comes to him. He holds his hand out for hers, but she simply drops her towel. He draws a breath that expands his chest, lamplight gleaming off his skin, glinting off the soft hairs there.

She steps past his hand, into the circle of his arm. He wraps his arm behind her instead, his bicep against her hip, his forearm against her back. She climbs into his lap and he wraps both arms around her, and it's possible he'll never know

just how much she wanted to do exactly this

the very first time he drove her home.

Lukas's eyes close as he accepts that kiss. Takes it, holds it, gives it back. A low sound in his chest: equal parts growl and moan, vibrating through the walls of bone and muscle there, against her breasts. His hands follow the curve of her spine, open over her bottom. He pulls her against him, opening her thighs, pressing her sex against his, nothing but a single, thin layer of cotton fabric between.

She can feel how hard he is already. He gasps a breath from somewhere in the midst of that kiss and delves back into her, losing himself in her mouth.

[Danicka] On his nightstand the box is still waiting, the lid still on, the manacles still inside. Given all those months ago not to say to herself I can do this, because at that time she wasn't even letting herself acknowledge that there was still something hard about being with him. Perhaps that's even worse: desperation and denial, both. And he has no idea, and he had no idea for a long time that there was something so terribly wrong lurking between them, because Danicka is that good at pretending. It's just rare that she's the one she's lying to.

Terrified him when he found out that he might be losing her. That what he'd never allowed himself to think about or crave: a mate who was more than some silent receptacle, some acceptable female who would have his cubs and stay out of his way, a mate who loves him... might be slipping away for the exact reasons he'd taught himself not to want it in the first place.

But she's here now. Still. Slipping into his arms and keeping her body close to his. Wearing nothing now but the ring he gave her when the new year and their marriage began, the metal warmed by her body and by the hot water in her shower. Smelling of nothing now but traces of soap... and herself.

They kiss, the first time soft and slow, tasting. He makes that sound, low and wanting, moving his hands to hold her close to him. Danicka moans into his mouth when he holds himself against her through what little he wears, and moves herself back on him, one gentle but deep press. Her wetness touches the cotton, warms him where it soaks through to his cock. They're kissing again, and she's lifting her arms finally, wrapping them around his shoulders.

When it finally ends, that second, deeper kiss, Danicka's lips barely part from his. "Green," is all she whispers, and claims his mouth again.

[Lukas] Green is a word that flashes down the smooth dark tunnels of his subconscious, right down to the iron pit in which his most primal desires are kept. Green lances through every net, every barricade, every door in the way, slices them right open, leaves him wanting her so very badly that it takes no effort at all to read it on his face.

To read it from his body, that sucked-in breath, that jump of his cock against her. She doesn't give him much more time than that. She claims his mouth again, as though he's the one who's going to get tied down in a moment, stretched out on his bed with his wrists manacled to the headboard, his body laid out for her enjoyment. And for the moment he gives himself over to that kiss just like that. Opens to it, surrenders to it, lets her eat at his mouth until

he's the one eating at her mouth, and their breathing is growing shallow and rapid, ragged, and his hand is following her body upward -- up the sleek span of her mid-back, past the delicate wing of her shoulderblade; across the svelte belts of muscle anchoring spine to shoulder to arm. There's a subtle strength in her now that wasn't there the first time he felt her naked beneath his hands; a tone to her body that wasn't there the first time he saw her naked on their shared, bared bed.

The silent ferocity of the kiss doesn't affect the gentleness of his hands. He's so gentle as he pulls her arm from over his shoulder -- first the one, drawing it down, down, finding her hand and pressing it for a moment to the center of his chest. To the vulnerable hollow just beneath the thick span of his pectorals, just beneath the hard shield of his breastbone -- to that point where the apex of his heart beats closest to the surface, so she can feel his heart beating against her hand. The kiss pauses just long enough for him to open his eyes. Look at her. Then his mouth is on hers again, softer now, exploring, as he draws her hand down

down his abdomen, past his navel,

and around her own side to the small of her back. Another pause. Alert. Receptive. Waiting to see if it was okay, if she's okay, before he draws her other arm down as well, folds her wrists behind her back, pins them gently but firmly there in his large, warm hand.

Faintly, almost languidly, Lukas's cock stirs again as he draws back to look at her like this. His breathing is deep and swift, each inhale filling his lungs to the bottom. He looks at her because she's beautiful, and his, and because such a simple repositioning sets her body and her nudity into a wholly different connotation. An offering. A gift -- the gift that the manacles, in truth, merely promised.

His eyes come back to hers. He asks her softly, "Zelená?"

[Danicka] When Danicka first asked Lukas to tie her to his bed, it came at him sideways, like so many things did all that time ago. They went back to the Brotherhood, he got them some stew even though it was August. She'd asked him if he owned any ties back at the zoo, and when they arrived he asked her what color she wanted --

What do you want to see around my wrists?

-- and he knew. And, as when they bought E after their tiny, tender wedding, she asked him if he'd ever done it before. She cared for him, wanted to protect him even if back then he hadn't quite wrapped his mind around it. She explained softly, clearly, what she would do and how she would tell him if she wanted him to stop, if she needed him to stop. So gentle. So careful with him, as though she wasn't the one who was about to be exposed and vulnerable. Never told him that green meant yes, meant more, meant perhaps more than anything: this is okay. I am okay. don't be afraid.

But he knew.

And that's what it means now, over a year later. What it means after a night when he was the one shackled down, and what it means after months of trying to pretend that him frenzying in front of her hadn't nearly destroyed them, what it means when she took a shower just now and thought about all the times she's felt stabs of fear while in his presence set up against all the times she's felt, finally, that she doesn't have to pretend anymore at all. Not with him. Green, she says, and it means that she's not afraid. It means that she wants this. It means that she trusts him, and is giving herself to him.

Of course Lukas's mind doesn't go down all those pathways. The word insinuates itself to his mind through the space where it's breathed onto his lips, a tattoo of her breath, and there's no thought, there's just reaction, his brow tight and his cock hard and his breath taut, all with want, with surrender.

Which, if he did not grant, this would never work.


The way he kisses her grows more and more intense, his touch wandering. Danicka's arms tighten around him at first, and she presses her body closer to his, rubbing against him while she can, wanton now as though she's quite aware she doesn't have long before she's at his mercy. While she can, Danicka takes her pleasure from him. She moans again into his mouth, the tenor of it changing as he starts to shift her arms down. There's just that little pause, that intake of breath, when she feels his heartbeat. Touches him momentarily, so softly, before he draws her hand downward.

Danicka bucks softly on his lap, her hand flexing, eager for his cock. There's the slightest resistance when, instead, he puts her arms behind her back, and then it relents.

The spark this lights off in her he can see in her eyes when the kiss stops for a moment. Her breath is shuddering in her chest, her body trembling faintly as he draws her other arm down, crossing her wrists, holding her there. The way he positions her forces a slight arch to her back, presents her breasts differently, and she knows how she looks. She knows how she looks to him. She can feel how the sight of her like this affects him, and she rolls her hips slowly a couple of times, stroking herself off against his cock through his boxer-briefs.

There's no answer. Not verbally, at least. She watches him, her struggle against his hands very faint, and barely meaningful.

[Lukas] They don't even speak now. They just look at each other, breathing altered -- shuddering in her chest, dragging swift and harsh in his. She rolls against him and his eyes close, his teeth part and his mouth opens, he gasps. He leans into her, his hand tightening thoughtlessly on her wrists as he kisses her, tears that kiss into her, almost feral --

draws back. Reins himself in. Gentle, gentle. There's a poignant irony in this: he's never more careful with her than when she gives herself wholly into his care like this. Because that's what it is. Not abuse, not possession: care.

The palm of his free hand rubs over the soft skin of her forearm. His brow leans against hers; he looks down at her body on his, her skin pale with winter. He lowers his head and kisses her collarbone.

Then Lukas reaches out to his nightstand. He picks up the box, which is oblong, narrow enough that his hand fits easily over it. They stay close. Her body against his. His cheekbone against her lips, even as his eyelashes drop with his gaze so he can see what he's doing. Lifting the top of the box, setting it aside. Lifting those fine, white manacles out of their contoured nest, the velvet lining soft and dark against the smooth, supple leather. When he turns back to her he finds her mouth again, and he kisses her slowly, savoringly, as his hands move behind her back.

To find her wrist and wrap the leather around it. To pull it snug, though not quite tight. To guide the prong through the belt, and buckle her in -- these things take time, and deftness, and in truth Lukas isn't so practiced at this he can do it thoughtlessly and without looking. It takes a long time. He doesn't mind. He kisses her on and on, patient, tasting her mouth, tasting her without once losing his patience or his temper.

When Danicka's wrists are bound, the kiss parts. Lukas lets space open between -- enough for lamplight to fall on her body, to define the soft crests of shoulder and breast, and for shadow to pool between her breasts; in her navel. His hands are faintly rough on her arms, her shoulders. There's a second, almost a hesitation, and then he touches her breasts. It's very tender. Almost reverent. The pads of his fingers only first, tracing down her breastbone -- he almost imagines he can see her pulse, or perhaps that's just the faint tremble of her body. His palms then, cupping over her breasts, holding her, cradling her in his hands.

This kiss is briefer than the rest -- a little harder, a little insistent. His hands raise her up, then. Lift her hips away from his. Lift her until she's straddling his lap, standing on her knees. He wraps his arms around her hips, behind her waist; takes her nipple into his mouth,

thinking of the first or second or third time he did this in his bed, the time she told him to slow down, to use his mouth, his tongue, caress her breasts, pleasure her, go slowly.

He goes slowly. His hands slide over and over her ass, squeeze and massage, rub. He sucks at her breasts for a very long time, low sounds sometimes escaping him, vibrating against her skin.

[Danicka] It's so late at night. For the creatures that live here it's night, it's morning, it's midday; they stir and sleep as their own packs and schedules determine. He asked her if she could keep herself quiet; she told him a long time ago that she could tap the bed to indicate red if she was -- for whatever reason -- unable, unallowed, to speak. He hasn't let on yet how he plans to keep Danicka quiet if she starts to moan the way he knows she does sometimes.

She's hardly the loudest woman he's ever had sex with. She's never been silent, though. Never bit back cries or screams when they've come to the surface. What with the creaking of his cheap bed and the way she whimpers when his tongue is on her clit, what with the thin walls in this place, they'll be hard pressed to keep from disturbing the rest of the Brotherhood. Not that either of them really care. Not that a part of him doesn't enjoy, thoroughly, knowing that everyone in earshot can hear his mate's pleasure, hear what he's doing to her, know what he has.

He's an odd Shadow Lord, to see his mate as not a possession, an asset, but something to protect. Someone to care for, as best he can. To feed and keep warm, to always keep safe. That his nature makes this last requirement next to impossible sometimes is a neverending conflict in him. To ask of lesser Garou who seek mateship to prove that they can do what is a struggle even for him is perhaps unfair. But, for Lukas, utterly necessary.

She's stronger than she used to be. She's still so fragile, by comparison. Slender, always, because what is and is not gained in infancy determines a certain path for the rest of her life in both body and mind. Danicka is stronger now than the first time she asked him for this. She stills slowly on his lap, waiting for him as he reaches for the box, sets the lid aside, removes the bright white manacles. She submits. Prettily, always, but there's a depth to it that he knows isn't false, isn't the drop of the eyes and the easy words given to any other werewolf.

Danicka waits for him, and she's patient as he binds her, kissing her. It does take time, and during that time -- once or twice -- she moves herself on his lap again, slower now, savoring the stroke of soft fabric over warm skin, pleased at how wet she is for him. Pleased with herself for how aroused he is, pleased with him for it, too.

Her eyes stay on him as he leans back, her still perched on his lap and his feet still on the floor. Her body stays stretched out for him as he finds her breasts and holds them, warms them in his palms, rubs her hardened nipples. The chain between the manacles is long enough that her wrists are no longer pinned at the small of her back, but not long enough that she can put her arms in front of herself or even over her head. The chain is cool where it drapes against her ass.

She fights him when he lifts her up, takes her cunt from his lap and separates them. She groans, trying to push down against him once more, but -- no. Not because he forces her. Because he applies pressure, a hint of roughness, and she gives in. Because he pulls her til her flat belly is against his hard chest and sucks at her breasts, licks her, plays with her ass while he does so.

Danicka tries to rub against him again, but all it does is make her breasts stroke over his face, pulling out of his mouth, wet and warm from his tongue.

[Lukas] -- which makes him stop. He pauses mid-lick like an animal suddenly possessed of some esoteric, primitive thought, his tongue pressed against her breast, quivering ever-so-slightly with the essential tremor of muscle flexion. He looks up at her. His head turns a deliberate few degrees, and he drags his teeth gently over her nipple.

Leans back.

"Postav se," he says. Soft; level. "Krok zpět trochu."

His hands stay on her. He doesn't help her, but he guides her -- he protects her, ready to catch her if her balance falters. When she's standing, when she's stepped back, his hands fall back to his lap. He touches himself absently, strokes the pads of his fore and middle fingers along his shaft, through his boxer briefs -- half-mindless as his eyes trace down her body. Shadows and lightning flicker there. Black and blue, a dozen shades of pale and ice and crystal and glass.

The mattress creaks softly as he moves. He shifts forward, down, off the bed, kneeling on the ground. As though he were the submitting,

when he tells her what he does, how he does.

"Stát rozkročmo můj obličej."

[Danicka] So obedient. With such subtle flickers of defiance. It was what he saw from the start, from that very first night in that stupid club. She did everything right, played it so perfectly: alluring but restrained, clear that he could have her if he wanted her -- of course he could, she was his kin and if he told her to lay back and spread her legs what else would she do -- without throwing herself at him. There was so fucking little about her that wasn't exactly as it should be.

But for those hints that there was more to her than a blank canvas upon which he could paint whatever image he'd like to have of her. Hints that she was more than she seemed,

which only made him half-obsessed with her.

And she's obedient now, drawing herself off of his lap with less-than-perfect grace but still a slow elegance of movement. She sets her bare feet on the barren floor and takes a couple of steps away, then waits for him, her hands bound tidily behind her back. She watches him, and he plays with himself, as though thoughtful, placing her in different positions so he can just... look at her.

She watches him as he stops. Watches him as he gets onto his knees and tells what to do. With an intake of breath, Danicka steps forward again and pauses. She glances away from him, then back to his eyes. Lifts one leg and lays it carefully across his shoulder, not just straddling him but opening herself up for him, just barely held way from his face.

[Lukas] There's an unspoken undercurrent here. A submission more real than any she shows publically. A resilience and a defiance, flickers of it, playing over its surface like lightning over water.

Lukas holds himself back, contained and controlled, patient, as she draws a breath. He watches her breasts rise with it. He watches her come forward, and his eyes trace down her body as she opens herself for him, does what he asks her to

without quite doing what he asked her to.

He turns his head and kisses the inside of her thigh. Very softly. Then, rather without prelude or lead-in, he puts a hand on her hip, puts a hand on her ass, pulls her forward and holds her right there as he puts his mouth to her cunt.

And eats her out. Ravenously, like he's literally starved for the taste of her: lapping at her pussy, sucking at her clit. There's a low growl in his chest. He goes at her like a wild thing -- the intensity of it stretches the seconds out -- when he turns his mouth away, rubs his face on her shamelessly, utterly shamelessly, it's only been a few seconds.

When he turns back, he goes slower. A lush, luxurious decadence to it now, enjoying her, taking pleasure in giving pleasure.

[Danicka] Green she told him, when she was ready for him, when the feel of his body and the warmth of his skin sank into her and overcame tension, fear, memory, worry, uncertainty. When she decided -- when she knew -- she could do this. Wanted to do it. Not just as a whim but something much deeper.

She's very strong. She's very sharp. She sees things he misses, sees things in a way he could never put his mind to because his mind doesn't work like that. She's smarter than she ever knew, growing up and then raising a Silver Fang, a near-genius with numbers and a natural talent with computers. She's poised and elegant and rich and could easily dominate most people around her if she put all her will and wiles to it, and the reason she doesn't is because she doesn't want to, because she's perfectly happy petting Kandovany and watching the Fifth Element and tinkering in her homemade laboratory.

Danicka smiles at him, just before he puts his mouth to her. Smiles at him, loves him, as he kisses her thigh and holds her steady. The smile dissolves, and she tips her head back, gasping. It never quite reaches to a moan, those pants for air she takes. She buckles a bit, bending forward from the hip to try and keep her balance while he holds her there, palming her ass and licking her pussy. He knows from the way she moves, rubbing herself on his face, that she'd grab his hair if she could. The chain bounces once against her ass, falls heavily on her skin, barely misses his knuckles.

Her knees nearly give out -- do give out, and she's held up by his hands and his body -- when he stops. Takes a break, a breather, spreads her slick on his face like he really is some starved animal going at his first meal in weeks. Danicka whimpers softly, panting for air

and then she shudders as he licks her again, so tender. So slow now, making her pussy quiver.

[Lukas] It's that smile that elevates this past some casual game between consenting adults. It's that smile that marks them for what they are, lovers, mates, mated for life. It's just that brief, sweet little window of emotion -- the smile she gives him and the quick, quirking grin on his face that answers it -- that proves what she feels.

That he wants her, to be sure. That he's starving for her, needing her, wanting to lose himself in her as though it's been days, or weeks, or years --

all that, certainly. But more than that. He wants to take care of her. He wants to drive her to some brink, some mindless precipice of pleasure where she's trying not to fall, trying to rub against his mouth, trying to grasp his hair in her hands, not for his own pleasure but for hers.

This is not about taking control from her. Taking anything from her. It never was.

So he licks her, and he sucks at her, and his hands are firm and protective, supporting her bottom, holding her upright even when her knees want to give way. He loves her the way he did the very first time he loved her like this -- focusedly, intently, almost studiously, with just a touch of uncertainty because they've never done it like this before, never with her bound and standing over him, never.

Once in a while he pauses. Takes a breath, kisses her, nuzzles her. Lifts his chin and goes to her again, sucking and nibbling, tonguing, licking,

on and on, relentlessly, teasingly patient.

[Danicka] It's never been about what he can take from her, which is everything. It's always been about what she will give him, which is -- as is no more evident than it is at times like this, when leather and chains enter their lovemaking as tangible, ritual symbols -- herself.

Danicka doesn't stand there on one leg, rubbing against his face, moaning and grinding herself on his mouth all the way to orgasm. She can't. It's too soon, yet, too distracting to be this off balance, too disconcerting to be bound and yet worshipped. Lukas holds her up but she shivers against him all the same, and she knows what he wants. She almost always knows what he wants.

And what he doesn't want, which is to use her. Hell, he wouldn't fuck her for what felt like forever -- as though a couple of weeks was forever -- because he'd been taught so early and so well not to use his kin, not to dishonor them with his own urges. She knows how much of a struggle there is between his strength and her weakness, that he can never quite let go and she can never forget what it really means to be mated to an Ahroun. She knows the chasm that's there, and how the manacles could widen it. How they can help cross it, too.

She's not shy about having Lukas with his face between her legs. She never has ducked away or put her legs together out of some misplaced embarrassment or discomfort or awkwardness. Truth be told she quite likes it. She likes knowing he's never done this before, never wanted this before, not like he wants it with her, as though he's hungry for her cunt in a way that merely touching her can't satisfy.

So it isn't shyness, or unease, that makes her slide her leg down his shoulder and arm and set her foot on the ground, taking a step back, taking herself away from his mouth. Danicka is bound but she stands over him then, hands behind her back and darkened green eyes looking down at his glittering, crystalline blue ones. She doesn't stare at him long before she lowers herself a little, kissing that teasing, patient mouth of his softly.

"It doesn't always have to be about me," she whispers, staying close to him, her eyes as tender as the words are -- well -- serious. And he might want to argue that it's not, he's not doing this out of obligation, all of that, but he's said it before and she's heard it before and that isn't what she means. She may as well be saying

I don't want it to always be about me.

[Lukas] Lukas can be such a serious, focused creature. If he hadn't Changed, he may have grown up like his father, stern and scholarly, channeled that fire she saw in their childhood into a fiery, focal study of...

...whatever it is that may have caught his attention. History, perhaps. The lessons of the past reflected in the present. Or physics, the very laws of the universe, the innermost workings of things, laid bare. Or art. Or music. What's certain is that he would have been talented; would have gone far, both on pure intelligence and on diligence. Focus.

That focus has no academic outlet now. It has the war. It has the pack. It has her. And right now, he's focused so utterly on her: the world narrowed down to this room, as though outside these four walls, that door and that window, is only an ocean of formless void. He gets so into her. He falls so far into her

that when she slides her leg down and steps back he gasps, his eyes opening, dazed, as though he doesn't remember where he is.

She leans down to him. Their positioning is too contradictory to read -- she's bound, he's kneeling -- and in that there's a sort of freedom. She can't put her hand on his face to kiss him, so he puts his hand on hers. She whispers and his eyes flare and light, soften and darken, all at once.

He plants his hand on the bedframe behind him. When he gets up he reaches for her. He gathers her up, sweeps her up in a single dizzyingly smooth rise, and she knows he's going to fuck her now, can see it in his eyes. He kisses her again, holding her aloft, holding her as though he had to protect her even from the ground beneath her,

though he knows, remembers, the night she ran barefoot through the woods, and then simply bare through the woods,

and then he's shifting her weight on him, pushing his boxerbriefs down, shoving them past midthigh until they drop on their own, stepping out of them.

The bed creaks again as he settles them on it. She's back where she was, straddling his lap. He's bowing to her breasts and his hunger is a keen thing now -- he bites at her skin with his lips, and sometimes his teeth; he strokes his cock in his hand and strokes his cock against her slit, strokes the head of it over and over and over her pussy until he's wet with her slick, and with his own, and lifting his head to kiss her as he pulls her down on his cock.

Oh, god, he gasps, half-formed words against her mouth. It's no gradual, rocking entry. It's slow, but complete; his hands guiding her down, down, down until he's deep inside her. His fingers pull at her skin, grasp at her ass. He bows his mouth to her shoulder, bites her as he lifts and lowers her, urges her to move on him.

[Danicka] [perc + emp]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Danicka] Even when he left Danicka alone in the study with his father, he could probably sense it. Not just an affinity for the paternal more than the maternal, an understanding that she couldn't have for Marjeta, but simply a meeting of minds. Danicka does, and he saw it in New York and he saw it in Chicago a couple of months later and he heard it on the phone not so long ago, get along quite well with Jaroslav, as though it is only accidents of generation and the fact that she's with his son that would keep them from being very good friends. Both intelligent, firm, voracious for knowledge.

Time will show conversations she can have with Jaroslav that Lukas will have to struggle to keep up with, simply because his education was turned towards other things. Then again, time will show if, as his rank and his involvement in the war increases exponentially and as Danicka moves into her own career and into motherhood, if he'll even be around to see how his mate, his wife, can go on for hours with his father about history, art, philosophy, politics. If, perhaps, a man who is so similar to him may simply be a comfort to her when night after night he has to just get away because the baby won't stop crying and Danicka's too tired to be touched and he's too angry to let himself try.

What they have now is this: Lukas, focused so intently that sometimes she's not sure she even enjoys being the center of all things, the white hot point around which the universe spins, as though her pleasure, her orgasm, her incandescence, are everything to him. They have her submitting to him physically and, truth be told, submitting to the way he loses himself in her.

Lukas doesn't answer her. And the truth is, her eyes on his don't see much. She doesn't really know if he understood her. She doesn't really know if she understands how he took it. What she can see is his eyes flickering, pathways lighting up. What she can see is that maybe at this point, all he understands is red and green, no and yes, bad and good. Not having Danicka and having her.

The truth is, the way he reacts -- standing, picking her up, pulling her on his body, that sudden certainty that he's going to fuck her now -- confuses her at first. For half a second. She leans heavily on him, because she has to, even with his arms around her, holding her up. She holds her legs around him, and kisses his neck, her hair falling across his shoulder and his shoulderblade.

They're back where they started, only this time he's not wearing anything between them, and this time he isn't ...waiting for some kind of permission to touch her, he isn't waiting to pleasure her first before he has her, he isn't submitting

-- and as the thought goes through her mind, Danicka kisses him hard enough to push his head back, kisses him like that when he's pulling her onto him, pushing his cock up into her as she's destroying his mouth, her hips rolling downward, quickening the entry he tries to take slow, her cunt clenching hard around him in response.

[Lukas] There's some slow realization quaking through Lukas right now, so gradual and subtle and profound that it takes moments, ages, to come to fruition.

It began when Danicka came back from the bathroom, and he could see some soberness to her, some seriousness he couldn't quite understand. When it became clear that that casual offer, handcuffs, manacles, had a deeper echo in her. It rippled close to the surface again and again, not quite breaching, all the time he was watching her undress, pulling her to him, holding her against him, eating her out.

It breaches his consciousness when she stopped him. Stepped back. Leaned down. Whispered what she did,

a seed of that realization now finally pushing its sprouts to the surface. She doesn't want it to be just about her. She never did. She was afraid of him for a while. And then again, after that terrible night on the Mile. But she never, ever wanted him to cater to her. Coddle her. Do everything just for her, just for her pleasure, in much the same way he never wanted her to be that blank canvas on which his own moods and desires were painted.

It was never about that. What it was about, and is about -- he can't even easily say. Reciprocity, maybe. Compassion. Care. Love. The absolute and deep understanding that the woman joined her life to his is not a goddess or a monster, not a paragon or an idol, not a precious thing or a priceless jewel, but -- just that. A woman. His mate.

His.

And she kisses him so hard, so suddenly. She comes down on him in one roll, making him groan into her mouth, making his hands clench at her body, spank her ass. And just like that some last circuit closes, or some floodgate opens, and he takes her hips and lifts her, lowers her, quick and deep, gasping against her neck. Grasping her hands behind her back, leaning back himself, planting a hand on the mattress for leverage -- fucks up against her, eyes glittering now as he watches her, watches her face and her eyes, her tits bouncing lightly on every impact of their bodies, her hair spilling over her shoulders.

That's it, he murmurs. That's it, that's so sweet. Ride my cock. Take it for me.

The first sheen of sweat is beginning to break out across his chest when he stops her. When he puts his hand under her thighs and stops her, keeps her from riding down on his cock, raises her up until he slides out of her. When his cock snaps against his belly, drawn by the tension of its own erection, he shudders palpably.

"Come here," he says, breathing the words. He pulls her toward him. He kisses her throat, sucks at her nipple, once, hard. Then he lifts her, turns her, pulls his pillow from under his comforter and lays her down -- pushes her down over it, on her belly, hips lifted.

The chain between the manacles is warm against his hand when he unsnaps it. He repositions her hands, stretches them over her head, snaps the chain through the headboard. And it's a little rough, but then his hands are so tender when they run down over her back, down over her ass to spread her open. She can all but feel him looking at her. Feels it, certainly, when he leans down and puts his mouth to her again, voraciously this time, growling as he licks her.

"Mine." That's what she thinks he says, anyway. Then he lifts his head and crawls over her, licks the indent of her spine, kisses her shoulder, bites her ear. This time it's clearly audible, low and rough in her ear as he grinds against the cleft of her ass: "Mine."

[Danicka] For Danicka it was always about Lukas. Not in the sense that she forgot herself, didn't care about herself. She always stood up to him, pushed back, just enough that it drove him a trifle mad whenever she didn't, when she'd go limp as he grabbed her. She told him how she wanted him to fuck her, from the very start. She would show him, planting her foot on his thigh or putting her hands in his hair, how she wanted him to undress her, touch her, lick her fucking pussy. There's no dearth of ability to dominate in her.

But she was all but obsessed with him, from the start. Wanted him outside of reason, could not tell herself or anyone else why she couldn't stop thinking about him, why she felt like she'd lost her mind if she couldn't fuck him, and soon. Wanted to pleasure him, seeing sparks go off in his eyes like fireworks as her tongue would work on him. She wanted him to be happy. To have his favorite treat. She wanted to see him laugh, and though there were so many occasions when what he wanted -- to sleep with her, to hold her, to keep her to himself, to have her loyalty -- went against her impulses, scared the shit out of her

she'd try. She'd make peace with her terror as she has since she was a child and let him in a litttle more. Give herself to him a little more. Change a little bit more, because that's what it took to be near him, and not just near him but close to him. That's what it takes to be close to anyone, and she didn't really know how to do that until her want eclipsed her fear.

Danicka's never wanted him to just protect her, shield her, coddle her, worship her, dote on her. It disgusts her. It frightens her, that kind of treatment, see in Silver Fang households and between her brother and his mate. It hides dark things. It hides something far more insidious: simply not knowing the person you're fussing over. Not understanding them. Not seeing them as a person. And what she has wanted from him, always, is for him to know her.

Love her, like he does. Like this, being with her enough that he can take as well as give, push as much as he is pushed, change her as much as she changes him. Dominate her, which excites her and conflicts inside of her just as it does when the tables are turned and she's standing over him rubbing herself on his face and he's mindblown with lust and yet

some part of him is still rebelling against it. Just as now he grabs her and starts fucking her as soon as she kisses him, and there is a part of her that flickers with unease even as she starts to rock on him, unable to move much more than he lets her with her arms pinned behind her back. She puts her mouth to his neck and moans as he makes her ride him. There isn't much in her for balance, right now -- to stop her he doesn't have to grab her thighs so much as just stop bouncing her on his lap.

She exhales a hard sigh when he does, and lifts her head, looking at him dizzily as he lifts her up, off of himself. Her eyes close again, head rolling back as he draws her close -- come here, he says, as though she'll move under her own power, as though he won't simply pull her -- and sucks on her breast. A soft moan leaves her, and the next thing she knows

she's facedown on his mattress, a pillow under her hips, her ass lifted up for him. The cuff on her left is removed, her arms lifted, the cuff replaced again after the chain is looped around a slat in his headboard. Easier on his heart than the silk necktie -- there's no mark on her, just as the ones she used on him left no mark on his wrists. The truth is that Danicka could probably break the slat in his bed if she tried hard enough, for long enough, and Danicka isn't that strong. The truth is that Danicka could get herself out of these manacles if she really needed to.

The thing is: she'd never need to. Because he'd never leave her like this. Never hurt her, like this. Never hurt her, period, if he could help it.

Sometimes -- they both know -- he can't.

Danicka arches her back for him as he comes over her, touches her, opens her legs and strokes his fingers over her cunt, parting her lips. She gasps, turning her head to the side, and moans when his tongue touches her. Moans when he licks up her wet, moans when he stops, moans when he slides his body up over her back and presses his cock between her cheeks, rubbing against her. That moan -- so much louder than before, pleasured by feeling him against her again. The sound of it is different than before, when he had her riding him. Sounds like yes. this is what I wanted.

[Lukas] This is what she wanted.

Not the tender, overcareful way he treated her, as though now -- bound -- she was doubly vulnerable

(which is true),

doubly fragile

(which is not),

and doubly precious. It's the last that's the most toxic of all assumptions, because -- precious as he's called her, precious as she is to him -- somehow the connotation is different when she's bound. Tied up. So easily seen as a gift, a possession, a thing, when that sort of assumption -- that sort of relationship -- is twisted and rotten at the core.

So she stopped him from worshiping her. She stepped back, she leaned down, she told him: I don't want it to always be about me. She may as well have told him: I don't want it to be about me tonight.

She wants it like this. Unrestrained. Uncareful, though not uncaring. Challenging the lines of what they can both take, pushing, because pushing is changing, and without change they may as well stagnate, and die.

Danicka is a creature of the Wyld. They've always known that.

And right now, it's not all about her. It's about him, what pleasure he can derive from her -- which is its own way, is also still about her. About them. About what she's always wanted from him, genuinely and truly wanted from him, which is nothing. And everything. Not merely his love, but his happiness. His pleasure. Him.

He's hers now, as much as he calls her his. He's over her, his chest hot against her back, his torso heavy atop hers, held off her by the tension in his back and arms. The lean, taut stretch of his lower abdomen, his hips, are hot against her ass. His cock is hot between her cheeks, against her cunt, hot and hard and wet where he strokes against him, moves against her in smooth heavy pistons like he's already inside her.

She knows that rhythm so well. Knows he moves so well when he's inside her because he knows her, too; knows how they're good together. He bites her lips as their mouths part. She moans, and it's loud, and he doesn't bother stifling it

(yet, anyway,)

lets it veer out into the room and die against the walls. Before she's finished drawing an inhale he pushes her legs a little farther open with his knees, reaches down to spread her cunt open with his hand, and --

god, but he doesn't enter her just yet. Presses himself against her. Holds the head of his cock against her, so hard for her he throbs with his own heartbeat. Pants against her shoulder, waiting, waiting, teasing, holding her open and rubbing his fingers against her, rubbing his cock against her, pinning her with his weight, letting her feel what he has for her without giving it to her.

"Such a wet cunt," he mutters in her ear. She can feel it in his chest, against her shoulderblades. "So fucking wet, that's how much you want this cock, isn't it. That's how much this wet, tight little cunt wants to get fucked."

Lukas kisses her again. This woman that is his mate. This woman he's about to -- bluntly put -- fuck senseless. He kisses her, and in that is all the conflict and complexity of their relationship, the adoration and the lust, the love, the inescapable danger. He kisses her neck after that. He bites her shoulder,

and he gives her his cock, slams into her, groans so loudly against her skin that they needn't worry anymore about the neighbors not finding out what they were up to in there.

[Danicka] There's never been any doubt. From the first time he took her in this bed to tonight, he's never really wanted to keep her silent, to keep her from disturbing others. He wants them to hear. He wants the whole goddamn world to know what's going on in here. On some senseless level he wanted even his family to hear. Or maybe he just didn't even care, never cares so long as he can hear her.

Danicka understands that. She always wanted to hear him moan. Hear him talk like this. She hated the way he'd hold back, the way he'd be so goddamn careful and silent and restrained. Such a good little soldier, not distracted by things like kinswomen. Particularly lying, manipulative kinswomen like Danicka. Certainly not sex with kinswomen like Danicka. With Danicka. With getting her on his cock, with feeling her fold over him with orgasm, moaning in his ear in counterpoint to the clench of her cunt around him --

the way it is when she's under him now, not just under his body but subdued by it, facedown and chained up, pressing her ass back and up against him eagerly, like she's begging

him to do it just like this. To rub his cock on her clit, back and forth, stroking her off with his body in heavy, inexpert grinds so much less refined than his hand would, than his tongue is. But so good. So good, which is what she keeps moaning. She squirms on him, panting at what he has for her, what he's going to give her. It hardly even matters what he says to her. It matters what he does. It matters that he kisses her, hard and brutal and loving and sweet, and she gasps at his mouth.

She lets out a cry when he slams like that into her, one unapologetic thrust into her body. She shudders when he's inside of her, biting her, groaning as he starts to pump at her cunt.

[Lukas] He's only atop her like that for a short span of seconds. A minute, two at most. But in that time he's heavy on her, weighing her down, pressing her to the mattress, fucking her hard and heavy and slow, pounding her like he literally wants to nail her to the bed. There's a groan on every stroke. His teeth don't relent on her shoulder -- gripping her like he's lost the use of his hands.

Which he may as well have. One's on her hip, holding her down. One's on the sheets beside her head, and she can watch it clutching at the bedding, twisting it in his hands, crumpling it in his fist as he fucks her.

Then he lifts his weight off her. She can feel the flexion in his body, his arms, the smooth effortless strength in the way he pushes up. He braces himself on his hands, raises himself over her. Pulls out of her again, slick and wet with her, running his hand over himself with a shudder. Oh, fuck, you made my cock so fucking filthy, he mutters, and then his hand is wet and rough on her hip, lifting her up a little, positioning her; then warm and heavy on the center of her back, pushing her down until that supple spine of hers arches.

"That's it. There it is."

It doesn't matter what he's saying to her, growled between his teeth. It matters that he says it. The sound of it is what speaks to her, dominant, adoring. He would never hurt her if he could help it

(and sometimes he can't.)

but all the same his hand cracks off her hand, spanks her sharp and fast to make her lift her ass higher for him. "Look at that wet cunt," he breathes, as though she could see herself through his eyes -- literally chained to his bed, literally laid out and raised up and spread open for him. Presented to be mounted. "Look at you, just waiting to be fucked."

His hand grips her hip as he enters her again. He pulls her back against him. He slides into her and he snarls as he takes her again, snarls in her ear as he bends over her. Take it. Take that cock, you sweet, dirty little slut. Take it like you're my filthy little slut.

He fucked her like this the night of the solstice. This sort of mindless, driven claim. This sort of raw animal lust. He fucks her like this against tonight, pulling her back against every stroke until his speed picks up, until he's slamming her, his body slapping against hers. Not even words now. Just short, low grunts; a snarl or a shout of pleasure when she moves a certain way, or shudders a certain way, or simply clenches around him. His weightbearing arm is stone hard, his free arm wrapping around her middle to hold her right there, right there for this hard, thorough fucking.

[Danicka] There have been points tonight when they've disconnected. It happens sometimes: missteps. Confusion. Wanting to give each other everything, wanting to get what they want, wanting each other, wanting to be happy, but they are imperfect.

There have been points tonight where they've understood each other, suddenly and wholly. Lukas sensing that something was somber about her mood when she walked to him in his bed after her shower. Danicka trying to understand his reactions to her, trying to figure out how she could communicate to him what she wants from him when sometimes even she doesn't know. Lukas figuring out, as he drew her onto his lap, that this didn't have to be like always, like every other time.

But she isn't talking to him very much. Maybe it's the manacles, the illusion of submission, the implication that her job is to keep as quiet as she can, to be silenced if she can't, the binding on her wrists transferring to a binding on her will. As though it would be wrong for her to say like this. and this. baby, like this. As though in some ways this might be penance for the times when she's done that, and the times when he's felt regimented, lockstepped into being with her Just So or else being rejected.

They are imperfect.


It's when he pulls out of her at first that Danicka makes a sound that isn't just tortured but borders on unhappy, on impatient. She just wants him. Just like this, fucking her like this, holding her down and

the words keeping her safe come to mind, and she doesn't know why, exactly. She can't bear the way he stops like that, the stops and starts, the constant shifting from one position to another, as though he can't figure out how he wants her, except that he wants all of her, every which way, as though he's changing things again and again because it will prolong this, make it go on and on, or else

he'll just hammer her until he comes, unable to hold off any longer.

Which, to be honest, turns her on to think about right now. To think of him wild like that, groaning as he rides her body to orgasm. She cries out when he stops, draws out. She doesn't even process the words themselves, just gasps as he pulls her up, bends her. Danicka jerks away from his hand on instinct more than choice when he spanks her -- she doesn't fear the pain, doesn't find it unpleasant, but after he spanks her like that he has to grab her hip to lift her ass up the way he wants her, it isn't the automatic reaction. But it isn't resisted, either.

"Baby," she whimpers, when he's telling her she's just waiting to be fucked. It's a plaintive noise, a shuddering want. "Baby I just want you,"

and he's there again, pushes into her, bends over her as though he could cover her, hold her. It isn't quite like the night they mated, her hands free to rest atop his, but there is something about it when he does this, arching his body over hers like a shield. She tips her head back and rubs her face against his neck, at least as far as she can with her arms stretched out ahead of her, over her head.


He's never talked to her like this. That much is jarring: the way he calls her sweet, dirty little slut, like she's someone else. He can feel her react to it. Good girl, he's called her, and she found it odd. Hot bitch, he's called her, and she's laughed, putting her foot up on the opposite wall of some bathroom stall. It isn't that the words he's snarling upset her, offend her. But he can feel Danicka sort of... startle with him, half-turning her head where she rests it by his. It isn't the spanking or the way he's fucking her or the dominance of it, the obvious adoration in it, it's just --

she would kiss him if she could reach him. Reach back if she could and put her hand in his hair, pull him close and kiss him. Sometimes he seems to feel that he just can't get it right, he can't give her what she wants, what she's expecting from him, and it infuriates him and twists in him. Sometimes, sensing it -- or simply knowing it, and fearing how she makes him feel, how easily she can hurt him when it's the last thing she wants -- Danicka understands how he must feel when all he wants is to protect her, how hard it must be when he's the thing she needs to be protected from.

The last thing she wants to do is hurt him.

The last thing she wants to do is make him doubt.


The truth is, for all that she moaned in protest when he pulled out of her and moved her again, for all that she kneejerk shied away from the first -- if not the subsequent -- strikes of his hand, for all that he felt her react with a ripple of discomfort when he started telling her to take it like a slut,

these are eyeblinks. These are reactions to the unexpected, which is in the end all life is. Her perversions have changed so much, at least as far as he's concerned. She no longer throws her life away, no longer dismisses how she spens her nights. She no longer ignores what's muttered or snarled in her ear, she no longer tells herself not to care, that nothing matters, and it's been a long time since it's that way.

These things do matter. So, too, does this: Danicka presses into him where he holds her, keeps their bodies close even as Lukas fucks her faster, goes at her harder. It matters that she still clenches around him, wants him like this, moans when he hits her just right, when his hand moves up and down her torso, strokes her breasts or just holds her, just keeps her right up against him, fucking him back the way she does. The way she's always done.

[Lukas] It's not perfect between them. It never was; never will be. They're not perfect. Out in public they sometimes have the appearance of it: beautiful people, beautiful young couple, beautiful rich exotic creatures with brilliant eyes and brilliant smiles. But they're not the glitterati, and they've both known and despised creatures that are such empty, glittering shells.

They're raw and wild, primal, primitive. At the core. Here, behind closed doors. In the wild, or in their den -- primitive, imperfect things that falter almost as often as not.

So. It's give, and it's take. It's action, and it's reaction. There's a moment when he comes on a little too roughly, a little too -- impersonally, perhaps, when he pulls out of her and moves her and positions her and calls her a slut, tells her to take it. She has a flicker of reaction. Not quite tension, but a sort of startle, surprise. And he feels it. And he reacts, thoughtlessly and immediately,

not because it's all about her and he has to protect her at all cost, coddle her like porcelain, no, but because

she's his. His mate. And when she startles like that, mid-stroke, he slows just for a beat. His hand runs up her torso and cradles her breast and he's so achingly tender for a few seconds, caressing her, bending over her as though to keep her close, keep her safe, turning his head to her and

kissing her, even though she can't pull him close. Kissing her, whispering against her mouth a moment after he snarled at her to take it like a filthy little slut -- i'm here. i'm here.

oh god,

i'm close.

Then both his arms are wrapping around her, which of course means he can't hold himself up over her anymore. He's bearing her down again, staying inside her this time, holding her to his chest and against his body.

"I'm right here," he tells her one more time, scarcely more than a whisper.

One hand reaches up over her head to follow her arm down to her wrist when he starts to move again. He holds her hand against the sheets, or perhaps only holds her hand, as he brings his rhythm up again. It's a relentless, grinding, hard fuck; he pounds her like he holds nothing back from her. This time she knows he's won't stop again until he's come inside her. No pause. No separation.

Just his cock in her this time; its heavy wet sliding friction. Just his body driving into hers, pumping and flexing over hers. Just his hand on her wrists, and his arm around her middle which becomes his hand sliding down her belly toward the end, when his breathing is ragged with moans. When his fingers find her clit, when he finds her cunt and feels how wet she is, feels that slick sliding out every time he slides in,

he loses his mind.

"Baby -- " he manages, and " -- Danička -- fuck,"

and then Lukas is all but roaring as he spends himself in her: wraps himself around her rigid and absolute, slamming himself deep the way he does, coming inside her the way he does, bellowing his mindaltering pleasure with every involuntary spasm of his cock inside her. So much for being quiet. So much for her needing to be quiet. But then she knows -- he might have told her once, even -- that he doesn't care sometimes. That sometimes, in some deviant little way of his own,

he wants everyone in this building to know he's fucking his mate. That he's filling her up with his cum. That he's pumping it deep into her, fucking it into her like he's somehow marking her as his as indelibly he can, and in doing so,

marking himself as indelibly hers.


He'd gripped her hand hard enough to whiten his knuckles when he came. His hand is relaxed now though, draped lazy and strengthless over hers. The other is between her legs, and sometimes after they've fucked he likes to play with her even though he knows she can't stand it, will do it until she smacks him away.

Not tonight. Tonight his hand is just there, cupping her, protective, pinned between her hips and the pillow. His body is heavy and hot against her back. He's still groaning now and then -- when her cunt clenches around his cock. When his cock stirs inside her.

There's a sort of overcome note in those incoherent noises. Like any more pleasure is going to kill him. He doesn't pull away, though. It's all he can do to shift his weight a little -- not even roll off, but simply shift a little to one side, one shoulder -- so he doesn't crush her beneath him.

And he kisses her shoulder, gently. And his eyes open, and he looks at her across that tiny distance. The blue of his eyes look dark in this distance, with his pupils so dilated. He's dominated her, tied her down, all but used her body, fucked her until he came, came until he saw god.

Strange, then, that he's the one that looks like he's surrendered so utterly. His brow is a little furrowed, like he's gone so far he doesn't know how to come back. After a while he closes his eyes again and touches his lips to her skin. Slides his fingers between hers, and holds on.

[Danicka] The way they make love is -- not to be trite, not to be sentimental, not to be any of the things that feel false to her and weak to him -- unlike anything either of them have ever had before. He's in her like he knows her, feeling every ripple and every flicker of emotion even when he can't interpret it, and she's given over to him utterly, even when sometimes she's afraid.

Never just afraid that he might hurt her. Afraid that he might not know her, that somehow she must be fooling him, that he doesn't really trust her, that he'll never leave her but they'll grow more and more blind to each other until all they have is a shell.

He can't afford this. Mate, family, children, softness, tenderness, forgiveness. He can't afford to live out the memories he found he had when he went to the Underworld, can't survive fighting while his mate is giving birth, can't endure being unable to hold his own child until its old enough to tolerate being touched by him. And she can't bear to be the mate of a Full Moon, who has frenzied and nearly torn her apart, who startles her sometimes when he comes in, who is the physical incarnation of a War she knows there's no end to.

They do it anyway. And go from there.


They hold onto this, the way he holds onto her when she almost looks at him over her shoulder with uncertainty or surprise or something she doesn't voice. They hold onto the fact that he does see her, he does know her, he can feel her. They hold onto the fact that they are learning not how to fall apart at the slightest gust of wind against their walls.

Danicka breathes, her heart pounding against the hell of his hand, her pulse flickering against his mouth when he lowers his lips to her throat. She pulls on the manacles that bind her wrists to the bed, stretching out and pushing her cunt harder onto his cock, when he tells her he's close. When he starts to go at her again, give it to her again,

and again,

and again.


The way she starts to moan then. God, the way she starts to fuck herself on him, writhing and wild underneath him, used by him and bucking as he plays with her pussy. The way she lets out those long, undulating sounds of pleasure, every single one hinting that soon she's going to come on him, come for him, yes

even if not a single word leaves her mouth, not a single coherent set of sounds.

This time they come together, or close to it. He swears and says her name, gasping before he starts groaning the way he does, pumping his cock into her, hammering her into the bed. Their bodies make hot, wet sounds as they meet, and someone bangs their fist on some wall, maybe because of the noises he's making, the noises Danicka is, but it's obvious enough that neither of them care. They wouldn't fuck like this, not here, if they cared.

He fucks her all the way through his orgasm, the way he always does, and it gets her off. She tips her head back and grabs at the chains, wraps her hands around them and holds tight as her face tightens with pleasure. He never covers her mouth. Oh, they talk about it. They imply that he might, but he never does. He never wants her quiet, never wants to stifle the way she sounds when she's coming just like this, every moan trailing off into staccato bursts of gasps, leaving her panting for breath at the ebb of each wave.


When it's over, when Lukas can barely move and Danicka's pussy is pulsing around him with lingering enjoyment, he cups his hand over her as though to protect her from exactly the sort of relentless stimulation he sometimes likes to give her. She nuzzles the pillow, rubs her hair away from her face, and lays her head down as he moves a bit off of her, off to the side so he doesn't suffocate her. Danicka is turned away from him at first, her hair a gold blanket in front of him for a few moments.

After awhile she turns, her eyes dark and drowsy, her breathing still elevated. He makes a noise even as she turns, one of those overcome little groans. She rocks gently on his cock, then stops, just breathing. Just breathing, and coming down, and watching him.

Now might be the time for her to say something. Tell him she loves him, that she's thankful, that she's here and it's okay. But Danicka doesn't. She leans over and nuzzles his face, and curls a bit closer to him, to be held by him.

"Moje," she whispers, and that's all.

[Lukas] Of all the things she could have said, of all the things another woman might have said, Danicka says only one thing:

a deep and profound truth.

He's too overcome to give much reaction. His eyelashes drowsily move apart and he looks at her for a moment. His eyes close again as she nuzzles his face, and his hand over hers comes down to fold over her. Hold her close. Hold her.

Mine, he thinks, his consciousness dissipating.


Lukas sleeps, if she lets him. He doesn't so much as stir. His lower body still weighs hers to the bed. His hasn't unbound her yet, though in truth it's no trouble at all for her to undo the buckles herself. He hasn't shifted away from her, and his abdomen is hot against her lower back, his chest against her side and shoulder. His arm is a heavy weight across her shoulderblades. His cock is still inside her, softening by degree.

Lax with sleep, his hand on the sheets is a surprisingly beautiful thing, strong and wellformed, the knuckles prominent, the veins faintly branching under his skin.


A handful of minutes go by. Five, maybe ten, in that warm humid silence. His breathing is steady and slow, a little rough with sleep. Then it shifts, quiets, and she knows he's awake even before his eyes open.

The first thing he does is stroke her hair back from her face. It's so fine: a crisscrossing silken net over his hand, clinging to his fingertips even when his hand passes on. The second thing he does is unbuckle the manacles, one and then the other, his left hand a little clumsier, a little slower than his right would have been.

When that's done, he covers her back with his hand. As though he could protect her like this, keep her warm. And perhaps he can. The latter, anyway: the span of his hand so large against the center of her back, the grace of her shoulderblades.

It's only a moment later that he remembers his right hand, still caught beneath her body. He wiggles it free, laughing a little, softly, because his fingers have fallen asleep. It flexes once or twice, and then he tucks that arm under his head, a pillow. And he looks at her a long time, slowly blinking, drowsy and fond.

After a while he asks, whispering, "Why?"

[Danicka] Instantly and utterly, Lukas falls asleep. Danicka would laugh if she didn't want to let him. She smiles, though, as he drowses quickly into a brief, warm unconsciousness. And no, another woman might lie there, a woman more concerned with submission than play or with trust, might stay bound. Danicka, not knowing if he'll wake soon or not, undoes the cuffs on her wrists with a little bit of wiggling. The chain goes slack, and stays looped around the headboard.

Danicka's arms draw back down, her shoulders sighing with relief, and she moves her hips, pushing against him gently, getting more comfortable. She carefully, tenderly draws herself off of his cock, but not away. They still press together, wet and sticky and warm. She closes her eyes, too, and tries to get comfortable against him. Breathes with him. His hand is warm between her legs. And that's all right. That feels fine.


No, she doesn't sleep. She's still awake when he opens his eyes again, her breathing regular but not steady and heavy as his. She is curled against him, though, and opens her eyes when he moves her hair off of her cheek. Smiles softly at him as he wiggles his hand free and shifts his arm.

"Because," she answers, whispering too, "I wanted to."

Danicka tucks herself against him again, closer still, turning her body so they're facing each other and nuzzling her face into a spot between his shoulder and neck. She takes a deep breath, inhaling his scent and their scent, and relaxes as she exhales it. There are other reasons: she gave him the manacles months ago, after all. It's been a year almost since she asked him to tie her down the first time. It was about time, she could joke.

"I thought, in the shower," she murmurs, her face hidden but her words stirring breathily across his skin, "about this summer. Everything we've been through." She's quiet a moment. "I still wanted to. But when I first mentioned it, I wasn't thinking much about it. Then I did."

Another pause, softness between them. "I liked the way you looked at me when you held me on your lap and put my wrists behind my back."

[Lukas] So there are no bonds to untie when he wakes. Lukas's hand goes there anyway -- finds only the smoothness of her wrists. He doesn't seem disappointed. He wouldn't; she knew that. If anything, he looks quietly glad. For a moment he palms her wrists, as though to soothe rawness that isn't there.

They stir a little against each other. She turns to face him. He turns on his side, his arm wrapping over her side, his leg crossing hers, tucking hers under. They fit together: so close.

They've said so little to each other tonight. So much has been connotation, subtext, implication, intuition. Her explanation is simple, but there's a world behind it, and he can intuit it. In flickers and flashes, he sees the shape of what happened tonight, what she's told him and given him, how their relationship has subtly and powerfully realigned,

again.

This summer, she says. Everything we've been through. I still wanted to.

He touches her face. He touches her hair, and then he leans forward and kisses her gently, slowly, deeply, as though drinking from a well. When it finishes she tells him what she does. What she liked. His eyes glimmer with it: memory, reawakened want. He looks at her body and touches her breast, cups it in his hand.

"You gave yourself to me," he muses. And then he smiles, slow and joyful and simple and soft: "I gave myself back."

He kisses her again. His hand is a little heavier on her breast; then he slides his arm around her and clasps her closer.

"I want to do it again," he whispers.

[Danicka] "I'm sorry I didn't say something earlier," she whispers, leaning over and nuzzling him. He's ready again, wanting. She wouldn't be surprised, feeling his hand stroke up to her breast, if she felt him begin to harden anew against her thighs. Danicka smiles fondly, but she just curls to him, close as before. Her hand moves to his chest, covers his heartbeat.

She's quiet a moment, after he tells her that he gave himself back. He might not, in actuality, get to the point where he tells her he wants to do it again. "I don't know," she tells him softly, gently, as though she's afraid of hurting him with the words. With the simple difference. "Not...when you say it like that, it sounds like we make some kind of exchange. I give myself up, and you do too. Like we lose ourselves."

Thoughtful, she reaches back and grabs the edge of his blanket, the one she gave him, and pulls it around her, around him, wrapping them both up. Her eyes lift to his once more, paler than they were when he awoke, perhaps even more tender. "I think we've always been afraid of what we'd take from each other if we gave even a little bit. When we never really wanted to take anything."

Danicka's hand moves down his chest, wraps around his waist, lays against his broad, warm back. She lays her head against his chest. There's a faint smile in her voice. "I don't know. I'm just talking. I think I just liked how excited you looked with me all stretched out and sitting on you."

[Lukas] Lukas shakes his head just a little. She moves closer, but he puts his hand on her face before she can lay her head against his chest. He wants to see her eyes; wants to say this while she can see his, and see that he's not hurt, or offended, or scared, or --

any of that.

"No, that's not how I meant it," he murmurs. "Not like bartering or an exchange. Just ... I felt like you were giving yourself to me without losing yourself. Sharing? We were sharing ourselves with each other." A quiet laugh, his fingers combing back through her hair. "My words aren't working very well right now.

"I just meant ... it was like giving everything, and getting it back. Nothing lost; everything gained. Like ... communion. Worship. Baby," softer now, kissing her as though to establish contact like that, "baby, don't read too much into what I'm saying. I don't have words for it. But I know what I felt, and ... I just want you to know I felt it."

They move a little closer then, if she still wants to. Her cheek against his chest; the fine soft hairs on his skin stirring to her breath. She can feel him take a swift breath as she calls up that moment again, and yes -- she can feel him rousing to her again.

"I liked how you trembled," he whispers. His hand strokes down her back, molds over her ass. "And I knew you weren't afraid."

[Danicka] When he stops her from laying her head to his chest, Danicka blinks slightly, looking at him with trouble in her eyes, worry. She listens, and smiles as he laughs at himself. And it's fine, til he tells her not to read too much into what he's saying.

It fades a bit, her eyebrows tugging togething gently. "I'm not," she tells him, in between the kisses he's giving her. "Baby, I'm not," she says. This time she doesn't let him stop her from wrapping herself closer around him, holding him. "I know how you feel. I do understand. I was just talking. Don't read too much into what I'm saying, either."

[Lukas] "Okay," he whispers. The vowel is all but lost; the consonant an edge over which his breath trips. She curls closer, and though he's the larger, it feels like she's holding him.

He doesn't mind. Once, he found this vaguely strange, the idea that a kin could try to protect him laughable. These days he doesn't anymore. There's more to protection than physical safety. There's more to their relationship than garou and kin.

"I'll listen," he adds, no louder than before.

[Danicka] Moments after Lukas awoke from his nap, he wanted her again. Touched her, not to incite her so much as to adore her, to feel her next to him as though it is still a rare, precious thing to be able to hold his mate and touch her so freely, be so close to her. She hasn't responded to him, hasn't opened her legs or rolled onto her back or started to rub against him, moan softly in his ear. And that could be a big deal. It could signal to him some kind of disconnect, that something's wrong, that a few sleepy words and now she's upset, now she doesn't want him anymore, now she's unhappy.

To some degree Danicka almost expects him to feel that way. He can read her worry, soft as it is, that Talking is still not okay, it only causes problems if she doesn't just go along with it. Read what he wants, give it to him. It's as ingrained in her as his desire to protect, such an ancient part of her makeup she doesn't know when it started. It's a kneejerk reaction, this faint recoil of sadness, as hard to overcome as anything in her genes.

The truth is, she just wanted to talk to him. Early on, he couldn't let her protect him and she couldn't let him in and neither of them could talk. They overcame problems with their mouths on each other, with their hands, with taking that tension and fucking their way through it so they could achieve the closeness they craved so badly but did not know how to reach.

But they've grown up a bit since then.

Danicka idly strokes his back a few times, her eyes closing as she rests near him. "I had no reason to be afraid," she murmurs, thinking about the way he talked about her trembling. "I wasn't afraid," she adds, which is saying something quite different.

For awhile she's quiet, then she whispers: "You forgot me a little, for a moment." There's no accusation in that. There's not anger or even hurt. Acknowledgement, though, and the fact that she goes on without that being the main topic of the discussion at hand might be acknowledgement, itself, of how he responded to her when he sensed her unease. "So when you said...I gave myself to you, it felt odd." She licks her lips, and look at him, the faintest traces of a smile in her eyes, even if her lips are soft at the corners. "I know you didn't mean it like an exchange or anything like that, baby. I'm not trying to define anything or... any of that."

Her hand moves slowly, gently coming to his cheek. "I keep so much to myself, even now. So much of what I think or feel, because ...it's not just that I'm afraid of repercussions. I'm just so used to going through everything alone and having no one to share it with. Sometimes I'm afraid you won't understand me."

She leans over, kissing him gently. "But I spent all that time not talking to you about how I was feeling after this summer, and then tonight I thought about it again and it changed everything for me. Not for the worse -- it just made everything... deeper. Matter more." There's a pause. "I should have told you before we made love. But since I didn't, I just wanted to tell you now."

[Lukas] The truth is, if Danicka opened her thighs to him now, drew him over her and into her --

well. The truth is he'd go to her. But the truth also is: he'd raise this topic again. They'd continue this discussion between bouts of earthtilting lovemaking if need be because it's important.

They're quiet, though. Close together. They're not moving together, teasing each other, rousing each other all over again. Quiet now, their voices not penetrating these thin walls. Their neighbors can get some sleep.

And his eyes follow her as he listens. They move between her eyes, and sometimes to her mouth. To her hand, slowly and sleepily and unstartled, when she reaches to put her palm on his cheek. He turns his head a little then. Kisses her palm before she kisses his mouth.

He still tastes of her. The sweetness of her wetness, which he rubbed all over his mouth and lips and jaw and nose like an animal reveling in the scent of his mate. Which ... is essentially the truth. And they're still a mess, sweaty, sticky, manacles hanging off the headboard, sheets rumpled. It's all right. It's their nest, their den tonight, even if their true den is half a city away.

"I could sense that you were ... on a deeper level when you came back," he murmurs. His voice is lower than hers; when he doesn't whisper, it has a bass resonance that is tangible through the walls of his chest, his back. "I didn't know why, not exactly, but -- then you told me you didn't want it to be always about you. And that you just wanted me. And ...

"I think I understood. A little. And even if I don't understand, baby, I want to. So thank you for telling me."

A few more moments of quiet. Then,

"And thank you ... for reminding me. When I forgot you a little. Because then I remembered, and ... "

Lukas laughs a little. A little wondering. Quiet. Very happy.

"It was amazing."

[Danicka] She's wrapped in his arms, and in his blanket, and his leg crosses hers heavily. She holds him around the waist, strokes his back, kisses his chest over his heartbeat... whenever she can, really, and exhales at the simple feel of his body under her lips. She relaxes with him, sleepy and satisfied and warm, smiling as he talks.

There isn't much to say after that. I know comes to mind, but she doesn't choose to say it aloud. She trusts that he knows, that they understand each other, that

it was amazing.

Danicka holds him a little tighter, his half-hardened cock moving against her. She breathes, and opens her eyes halfway, looking up at him. "Do you want to make love again?"

[Lukas] Lukas laughs, a breath of sound. He hugs her closer, almost sudden, almost ferocious in his adoration. He kisses her hair, her brow -- and, as she looks up at him -- her mouth.

"Yes. I do."

No qualifiers. No pretense of coyness, uncertainty, any of that. He's never been like that. A simple, naked truth before he kisses her again, softer and deeper, rolling her onto her back, moving over her.

Slow, this time. Close. Everything around them and between them so warm; so dark, so tender.

[Danicka] This time, Danicka slides her hands up past his shoulders and neck and holds his face, kissing him as she rolls slowly onto her back. She closes her eyes as their mouths meet, her lips melting onto his. As he follows her, she opens her legs for him and they wrap so softly, so warmly around him as the comforter falls to either side of their bodies. The pillow underneath her blonde head pushes against the white leather cuffs, nudging them closer to the headboard, as Lukas holds himself up over her, kisses her, moans

because she reaches down to his hips and moves him against her.

This time, yes. It's slow. They stay close in the dark, his arms braced to either side of her and her legs enfolding him. They aren't as loud, though when she comes letting out gasping little moans of pleasure, Lukas groaning softly atop her as she clenches down on him, quivers around him. Their neighbors don't bang on the walls. Lukas kisses her when he comes, their mouths panting way from each other when they start to come down.


This time, Danicka is the one who falls asleep almost instantly, shifting and wriggling as he slides himself out of her and murmuring something about needing to take a shower, but she doesn't get up from bed and go to the bathrooms again. They strip the bed of the -- let's face it -- rather filthy comforter and toss it aside, crawling under the sheets and a thinner blanket. He wraps her close, holds her as tight as she'll let him, to keep her warm. Winter still clings to the northern midwest, and nevermind that she's sweaty, that her skin is hot to the touch.

She's asleep before he closes his eyes. They forgot, for perhaps ten hours, that they have to eventually part.