again, sleep in, here.

Danicka

Getting Kandovany to do anything is always a trial for Lukas. He's seen Danicka do this a dozen times: the treat goes into the carrier, and then Kando goes in the carrier, and then the zipper goes up and around and that's when Kando usually starts meowing fervently and pawing at the mesh sides, thoroughly disgruntled at having been tricked, only settling down when she's given a gentle stroke, but generally being against the whole premise. After all, her range of motion and vision are both limited suddenly, and they usually end up at the vet.

However, it's entirely a different story when Lukas tries to get Kando to come when called or get into her carrier. The treat goes into the carrier, and Kando bolts under the couch. Lukas, so long as the water is running and Danicka can't see him, decides the most logical approach is to move the couch, but he's scarcely gotten it off the floor before Kandovany turns out to not be under the couch after all. The next time he sees her she's eating the treat and he's wondering how in the name of god she got in and out and co to kurv--.

It isn't until Danicka comes out, bag on her shoulder and flipflops on her feet, that Kandovany makes a run for her mistress and Lukas all but pounces. He scoops her up deftly, draws her in against his chest -- because he knows this trick works, because he is large and warm and Kandovany can at least respect the greater predator once she is captured. She seethes, but tucks her tail against his forearm as though to admit: well played, my old friend. She hates it when he chases her, and is still quite grumpy when they get her in the carrier. Immediately she begins gnawing at the zipper and pawing it downward, til Danicka notices and gives a sharp snap of her fingers near the mesh, saying "Stop that!"

Kandovany retreats, and despite everything, Lukas's heart nearly breaks in half. Danicka kisses his cheek as they head out, and wraps her arm around his waist. "Cats have to have alphas, too, baby," she tells him gently, without pointing out to him that this is why Kando is obedient to Danicka. Danicka is Alpha Cat. And that is why Danicka doesn't instantly coddle or praise Kandovany for stopping her naughtiness, or else she'd never get her in the carrier again.

Down in the car, though, Danicka settles Kandovany's carrier in the back seat and unzips the top a little to reach in and give the cat a stroke. Her voice is very soft, cooing in Russian to the Czech-named kitty, giving her another treat. But no, they aren't going to let her out. "She wouldn't be as safe," Danicka says, a touch of concern in her voice that is one of the things that eliminates any thought that she is strict because she doesn't care, that she is mean to the cat because she has no affection for it. "And she needs to learn not to be scared of her carrier," she adds, a touch more firmly.

They head out of Chicago then, the most spontaneous thing they could have done tonight when he came to her door a little tired and she was already worn out and then, well. Then they fucked, and fucked again, all rather wildly, until she realized she wanted to go Home. They hold hands across the center console and listen to whatever music he has in his car, or NPR, or the silence and the sound of the wind outside the windows. She leans over and lays her head on his arm when they're cruising, when he doesn't have to keep shifting gears, and smiles when he mentions breakfast, letting her sleep, but she can make him kolaches if she watns to.

"Oh, can I?" she says, feigning eagerness and laughing at him. She turns her head and rubs her face on his arm. "Like I would ever feel bad about you feeding me," she says, "when I know there's precious little in the world that makes you happier."

She yawns, as the night sweeps past them outside. "I think we have pancake mix. If you get milk, could you get some nectarines, too? I've been having wild cravings lately."

And so it goes, on the way out to the sleepy little town past the forest preserves, where a tiny house made of twigs sits atop the rocks in a tabletop water fountain, where there's a carved wooden box on a shelf in the bedroom holding ticket stubs from the Shedd, a pen from the W, a little sparkly glove, handfuls of tiny, meaningless things collected without intention or purpose since they met, until she realized what they all meant when put together. Their house with the handprints, and the litter box down where the laundry machines are, and the old saggy couch, and the wonky little television that doesn't get cable and the rocking chair that is really just Danicka's,

their house with its empty rooms downstairs. All the space they don't use and don't yet need. That's the place where she thinks of raising children. And she'd lose the apartment in River North, get on the school board out in Stickney because she'd rather her kids go to school near home than commute to a private school in Chicago proper. That's where she thinks of the future when the office and bookshelves and computer move downstairs to the den and the room connected to theirs becomes a nursery, but how later on they'd convert the den into a bedroom and the nursery back into a study so that the kids -- and it's never been a question to her that there would be multiple children -- could have bedrooms away from their weird mom and dad. Later on they could renovate and add another bathroom, maybe, turn the basement into a real family room. Of course she'd wait til they were all weaned and toddling before she went back to school, then a nanny of course, someone from the Nation so they don't have to make use of daycare --

and somewhere in the drive Danicka finds herself saying all of this. Talking about those rooms and those future renovations she's thought about, switching the 'study' around, but how of course the bedroom right by theirs would be a nursery so they could have the baby nearby when it was still very tiny and needy. It's all quite practical, truth be told, but it's also all ...very detailed.

"I can't believe I'm a junior already," she muses, as they're getting near their own neighborhood.

Lukas

Lukas doesn't know, of course, that some of these thoughts have been Danicka's mind nearly since the day he took her to the den for the first time. That, when she saw how the two bedrooms were adjoined by the bathroom, she thought of how this was one way they could both listen for the baby crying at night without having to have a monitor, or worse, the crib in the bedroom. That she thought of filling the empty rooms downstairs with family, cubs. That later on, while he and her father were discussing the cabinets and the outer walls, Danicka mulled instead about moving the study, furnishing the basement.

When she begins to muse about this -- perhaps because he was musing about trees and walls, and then they were talking about the house, and then she was talking about renovations and families -- Lukas is very quiet, almost uncertain. He'd talked about it himself earlier tonight. Something about wanting children, something about wanting cubs. But when she talks about leaving school, when she talks about putting all that off under the kids were weaned and toddling, Lukas's brow seems to furrow of its own accord.

She's a junior already. He glances at her; it's almost sharp, the quickness of that look, the way his eyes catch the light and toss it back. Then he turns back to the road, his one hand on the steering wheel gripping the leather.

"I can't either," he admits. "I think I thought you were ... a sophomore, maybe. I don't know. It doesn't feel like we've been together so long."

This, from the man who just an hour ago was mulling about having known her forever, through all their lifetimes, all the ages of the world. And this too, with a sort of forced lightness:

"When did we talk about having kids again?"

Danicka

She laughs gently, and she holds his arm. She quiets soon after though -- it isn't a long laugh, or a loud one, or even that mirthful. Mostly, it's just tender, and endeared. She strokes the top of his hand, the bony ridges of his knuckles. "I started my freshman year a couple of months before we went to New York," she says, remembering. She doesn't mean that trip where she ran away after yelling at Sam in the park, but the most important visit to New York. The day he took her away. The day he made her his own. "But I only just started my junior year, baby," she says softly, and lays her hand atop his, still. Warm.

"I don't graduate til twenty-thirteen," she goes on, and her voice is low and slow and gentle, as though reassuring. "I mean, if you really think about it, we've only been together for... less than three years?"

Danicka pauses there, and laughs. "Less than three," she repeats, amused, and hugs his arm. "And it'll be another two or so before I go off of birth control, and then probably a few months at least before it's out of my system enough to have a good chance of getting pregnant, so ...don't be scared," Danicka says. There's no mockery in it. There's no levity assigned to his anxiety. Just the truth, and her gentleness. "The earliest you're going to have cubs is still probably a good three years away."

Lukas

"I wasn't scared," he says. It's almost automatic, and then he thinks about it; says, "Well, I was scared. But excited, too."

His arm gets hugged; his mouth smiles almost as though there's a reflex arc between one and the other. Without taking his eyes from the road, Lukas tips his head sideways and nuzzles his cheek against the top of Danicka's head, a sort of rough, impromptu affection. "It's scary and exciting all at once, the thought of having children."

They're turning into their garage, then. Lukas is parking the car, trying his best to put the car in first and pull up the parking brake without dislodging Danicka. Then he reaches up, pushes the button to make the garage door rattle closed again.

"I'm not ready," he adds when they've exited the car, when he's taken Kando for a moment so she can get out of the passenger's seat, "but I can't wait. Does that make sense at all?" - and he laughs a little, putting his arm around Danicka again, thinking that soon it will be winter and cold outside and snow and he'll hug her just like this on their way to the front door so she doesn't get cold. Silly.

Danicka

As they come to their street, Danicka slips away from his arm so he's free to shift, free to drive them safely home. Kandovany mrows at the turn of the car and Danicka shhs her gently. The garage door rattles upward, and Lukas doesn't want Danicka to move but she does. She's near, though. Still close. Laughs softly. "Oh, you're scared," she teases. "Try being pregnant and giving birth, buddy."

Leans over the center console after the parking break is up, and she kisses him as he's closing the garage door. It feels so normal now, so right, coming home like this. She wishes it weren't so far, but she's glad it's far enough that they don't live In Chicago, that they have a nice and quiet and safe neighborhood, that they live near a Czech place and the forest preserves and a dentist and a Jewel-Osco. It's a good den, everything about it. It will be better when she doesn't have to commute for school, too. She can be here more. She can be home.

They get out, getting her bag and Lukas grabbing Kando's carrier. Kandovany is pawing at the mesh, meowing, knowing she gets to be out soon, have the run of the place -- particularly the basement, which is slightly more Her Territory. This place is alive with spirits, though only Lukas -- and perhaps, to a far lesser extent if at all, Danicka -- can feel it. The glass shimmers a little brighter. They'll clean all the windows in the morning, shine them and free them from all dust and grime. The oak in the back yard groans softly, almost inaudibly, as it grows, faster than any sleeping tree. They'll refill the water in the fountain and turn it on again, and the fresh water will gurgle and churn and welcome them back. Kandovany will hunt mice for sport as much as anything else, honing her skills even without claws.

Danicka holds his hand as they walk towards the door. She smiles. "Yes," she tells him, simply, when he asks if fear and excitement, anxiety and anticipation, make sense together. Given their earlier conversation, it amuses her, and her smile is warm and secretive and knowing as they approach the door. She tucks herself under his arm. "I know exactly what you mean."

Lukas

Warm. Secretive. Knowing. These traits - as divergent and nearly contradictory as they are - define Danicka in so many ways. At times, Lukas looks at her and she seems ageless, timeless, connected to the earth and the world beneath the surface. Sometimes he remembers, unprovoked and out of the blue, the solstices and the equinoxes, the priestess of the season his mate would become.

"Good," he says quietly, smiling. "Because I barely know what I mean."

At the door, Lukas unlocks the lock and Danicka starts unzipping the carrier. Kando streaks out nearly the second she's allowed. They see her bounding up the half-flight of stairs, tail straight up, and then she cuts a quick turn and vanishes. The two-legged ones are a little slower to follow, pawing on the lights, the male yawning as he follows the female up those stairs.

"You should go warm up the bed," he echoes. He really hasn't stopped smiling since they got home. "I'm going to make sure Kando has food and water, and then I'm going to shower and come to bed."

Danicka

When they met, the last thing Danicka was thinking of were the children she'd one day have. They were a distant thing, even -- especially -- after two fruitless pregnancies. They were something she detached herself from, hoping that maybe during pregnancy she could both protect herself and the unborn from whatever mate she was given to and come to some kind of warmth towards the child before it took its first breath. That was how she felt. She never thought she would fall in love. She didn't really think she was capable of it, having never felt that way before.

Not three years later, and she's holding her husband's hand as they carry her cat into the home he bought to share with her, and they're talking about how the best time to have children would be after she graduates, but that's still two years away, and it'll take some time after that to get pregnant, and then to carry the child to term, and so on. They're talking about how, by the time they have their first baby, they will have been together for about five years. To most people that would be very fast -- insanely fast.

They live in a different kind of world. They are not most people. They are not, either of them, people.

The door gets unlocked and opened, Kandovany is set free to go tearing around and inspecting the home, and they leave the carrier down by the door along with their shoes. Danicka reaches up and lets her hair out of her ponytail, giving a little yawn. Yes, it's nervewracking and anxiety-inducing conversation, and yet: so very exciting. So cheering to think about. Danicka even realizes it's a bit misguided to get excited about decorating bedrooms for children, but she doesn't deny herself any of it. She doesn't want to have children so she can dress little girls in tiny dresses. She wants to have children because she wants to have children with Lukas. There is no real explanation other than that -- it isn't wanting to see what they'd look like or how they'd behave, though she is curious. It isn't because she wants to cement their relationship somehow, because if they needed children to do that they would have already broken up. It isn't to prove their virility to the world or to add to the Nation, though perhaps the latter is vaguely important. She just wants to have children. She wants to be a mother. She would not want either of these things without the proper ends to those sentences: children...with Lukas. and be a mother...and Lukas a father.

Lukas lets her walk ahead up the stairs, protecting her from all the imaginary and real and unlikely and well-known dangers of the universe. She ascends, because this is their home, and they are safe here, always, and because she is fearless, and because she has him at her back.

"Mmkay," she says, and stops to give him a kiss on the cheek before going up another flight of stairs, up to their bedroom. She isn't lazy up there, though. While he's putting food in Kando's bowl and filling the other one with water, Danicka is refreshing the water in the fountain upstairs and plugging it in. She plugs in the lamps on each nightstand and opens the blinds to let the moonlight in. When Lukas comes upstairs, Danicka makes no overtures of joining him in the shower but kisses him again, nuzzling his jaw and telling him to wake her up when he comes to bed if she zonks out before he gets there. She knows him well -- he wouldn't, unless she asked.

Later on, though, she isn't curled up in a lump under the covers when he gets out of the shower. The house is dark and quiet, and so is the street it's on. A single lamp is on in their bedroom, as though left on to light his way when she knows very well he wouldn't need it. She hears him turn off the water, the rustle of his towel, and she perks up, setting the book she picked up back down and rolling over, looking towards the door he's going to come through and smiling. Smiling because he's coming.

And she isn't wearing some gifted lingerie he bought for her, or something from that endless closet of hers. She's just wearing a camisole, a little peach-colored thing with pale blue lace along the edges and straps, the fabric thin enough that he can see the faint darkness of her nipples through it, the outline of her breasts and her waist. Her panties are mostly lace, low-waisted, the sort of thing called a boyshort that doesn't bring to mind anything even remotely masculine. She's smiling at him, kneeling on top of their comforter, waiting for him to walk over to her.

It's just a couple of feet of distance to cross before he gets to her, before she puts her hands on the edge of his towel and unwraps it from his hips, dropping it to the floor as she looks up at him.

Lukas

Given she told him to wake her when he comes to bed, Lukas is fully expecting Danicka to be curled up asleep. A great part of him looks forward to it, even: the thought of his mate warm and safe in their bed; the thought of her curled under the comforters, waiting for him to come and crawl in beside her and fit himself to her the way he does.

They're like animals in that regard. A human couple might stop spooning so closely after a year. Two years. Nearly three. They are not human, though, and they sleep the way their primitive instincts tell them to: close together, relaxed and warm and close for the unconscious, subconscious comfort of it.

Except she's not sleeping when he comes to her. She's awake, and she's kneeling on the bed, and he stops in surprise and looks at her. She's smiling. And waiting. He comes to her in his towel, beginning to ask her what she's doing up, baby, don't you have school tomorrow? and she puts her hands on the edge of his towel and the tuck comes free with a gentle tug. It drops to the floor and his head bows as he watches it go. When he looks up, his eyebrow is a little quirked; he's beginning to smile.

"Znovu?"

Danicka

Perhaps they still sleep so close because for the longest time, they might go a week or two -- or more -- without so much as seeing one another, much less spending the night in the same bed. For the longest time, they didn't even share her bed, or his; they went to hotels, spaces that didn't belong to either of them, as though they could leave what they had in some anonymous room and walk away from it. After just a couple of years though, even though they've married and he comes to her as often as he can and she comes to him when she can, they get into bed and sleep curled up together, his arms around her to keep her warm even in the middle of summer.

They didn't have that at the beginning. They didn't have that knowledge, that certainty, of being accepted by the other. What passes for butterflies and titillation at the beginning of an affair becomes anxiety and pain if it goes on too long, unbearable and harmful. What some consider boredom and the death of love is, truthfully, something far more intoxicating and lasting. He thinks of her in bed, already sleeping, thinks of wrapping her up in his arms and kissing her shoulder and waking her, if only for a moment, to let her know he's there, and it makes him happy. She thought of letting herself drift off, knowing he'd come to her, knowing he'd hold her, knowing he'd stay until she woke up, and it made her happy.

Of course, then there's also this: their hunger for each other, unabated in all this time. Danicka is happy, and she's home with her mate, and she loves his body. She loves the way he fucked her tonight in her bed, pulling her atop him and thrusting up into her, the way he groaned aloud at the feel of her, the way he kissed her. She looks down at his body as she bares it, because he isn't stopping her. Saw her kneeling on the bed in simple, comfortable, but alluring underclothes and walked over to her, knowing full well what she was telling him without words. She thinks of lingerie as sexual warpaint, always has. It makes her intentions so very clear.

It makes him so fucking hard, too. It makes him let out this ragged gasp of want when she tells him to just tear her panties or pull them aside and fuck her like that. It makes him horny -- because it conveys to him so quickly, so instantly, that she is.

Danicka doesn't answer him. Her hands are on his waist, watching the taper of his abdomen into his hips, the tuck of his obliques. The way the flesh goes from darkly tanned to lightly tanned to pale, the thin line of hair from his navel to his pubic line. Her eyes move more than her hands, running slowly over him as though this is the first time she's seen him naked in days. In weeks. Danicka sighs, and leans forward, taking his left nipple in her mouth and licking it softly, suckling gently on him until it hardens against her tongue.

There's a moment where it seems she might just leave it there. Move her mouth to the other side of his chest and give his other nipple the same attention. Slide her hand down his belly and touch his cock, trace the edges of it with her fingertips. But that isn't what happens. What happens is this:

Danicka's hands on Lukas's waist urge him back a step or two from the bed. She slips off of the edge and onto the floor, kneeling on the carpet. Her breathing is coming faster when she lays that first warm kiss on his hip, close enough to his cock to make it twitch. She doesn't look up into his eyes and tell him she loves him but it's there, somehow, in how tender her hands are on him, how simultaneously gentle and hungry her mouth is. Her palms run over his thighs before she takes his cock in her hand, holding him while she strokes her tongue across the head, licking the tiny, dark slit, pressing the tip of her tongue against it gently before

her mouth opens and takes him in, sliding quickly but unhurriedly down his cock with a low moan.

Sometimes it's mind-blowing how near-impossible it is to think of Danicka as feeling degraded by this, or coerced into doing it, or anything less but turned on and eager for it, anything less than wanting to make him feel good and, quite simply, enjoying it. And sometimes it's just mind-blowing, period, what she does to him. How she does it: getting on her knees and sucking his cock, while the strap of her camisole falls off her shoulder, while her free hand moves between her legs to rub herself through her panties.

In their warm little bedroom, in their sturdy little house, on their quiet little street.

Lukas

This is when he's most animal. Closest to his primitive self. It's in the way his eyes watch her as she moves to the edge of the bed, as he's moving to her. It's how his eyes follow every little movement - the drop of his own towel, the way her hands lay against his waist. His arms open a little, unconsciously, to give her room. His chest expands when she touches her mouth to his nipple, and this, too, is unconscious.

She can hear him laughing softly as she licks him. It turns into a sip of an inhale near the end. His hand cradles her cheek; cradles her head close to him. When she stops his eyes are open again, looking at her inquisitively, curiously, waiting to see what comes next.

He knows what's coming next when she shifts him back from the bed a little. He's half-hard already, hardening as she slides down from the mattress. His help is not necessary, but his hands are at her waist anyway, supporting her as her feet touch the ground. When she starts to go to her knees, a flare of arousal goes through Lukas's brilliant eyes. His hands follow her body all the way up. That loose strap of her camisole catches on his pinky and he thinks of drawing it back up, but lets it lie where it is, looped against the summer-gold skin of her arm.

Some deep muscle of Lukas's abdomen pulls and quivers for a second beneath her lips when she kisses him. That's when his hand slips into her hair, strokes it back in all its tumbling golden thickness. When she takes him in her mouth, though, his hand finds hers instead - folds over her hand where it presses to his lower abdomen. He holds her hand as though it's a means of connecting to her even deeper, more potent than what she's doing to him now, while what she's doing to him makes his head fall back, makes his stance shift a little wider as though to maintain balance even as the world realigns around this moment.

"Oh..." he whispers, barely voiced. When he looks at her again, his brow is gently furrowed, his lips parted, and his breathing is already beginning to rise.

Danicka

There was a time when Lukas would never show Danicka that he was an animal. It was something he locked his teeth down on, subdued like everything else, dominated like prey. Among his pack he would sometimes be more animal, more primitive, but even then, he was Lukas. Shadow Lord. Unbroken Circle, then Unbroken. Raised by well-heeled Kin and fostered by a Philodox, taught to honor his lineage and his tribe but to fight the war, above all. And he could not fight that war if he was just a beast.

Then, Danicka. And her delight in his moments of exuberant joy. And her acceptance of his bursts of temper, anger, even rage, because she was neither aroused by it or willing to let her fear of it destroy her. There was Danicka, and the way she responded to him when he showed her how badly he wanted her, how easily she let herself show him she wanted him, how bold that was, how strange, and how affecting. There was Danicka, who did not want him in spite of the fact that he was an animal and did not want him because he was an animal but wanted him, period, and it simply didn't matter what he was, other than himself.

She kisses him and licks him and he starts to harden for her, to her, drawn into the heat of her mouth and the anticipation of what she's doing to him. Again? he asked, amused and affectionate, because they keep coming back together tonight. Tonight they're touching and stroking and nuzzling, caressing, insatiable. Again, she seems to say, when she slides down to the floor and strokes him, and takes him in her mouth, and touches herself. Lukas, looking down past where his fingers cut through her hair, can see the top curve of her breast as that camisole of hers slips further down, as her... well, enthusiasm for him shakes the loose scrap of fabric from any place it might rest on her soft, soft skin.

Her mouth slides off of him, slowly, in one long stroke. Danicka's breath washes humidly over his flesh as she murmurs, laying kisses along his shaft: "Bůh, miluji svého ptáka," just before she opens her lips and takes him inside again, deeply this time, moaning around him as her hand moves a little faster between her legs. Over and over again, blowing him the way she hasn't in -- let's face it -- months if not longer, like she's never gotten to before, like she's been thinking about this for weeks.

Lukas

"Oh, my god," Lukas sighs as her mouth takes him inside again. There's never really a pattern for when she'll do this for him. Or to him. It's not some prerequisite of sex; they don't follow a manual where first she sucks him and then he licks her and then they fuck.

It's not something he asks for, either. He asked once, and she walked away from him. Walked away so alluringly that he followed her, famished for the taste of her -- but walked away nonetheless. The lesson, whether it was meant as such or not, whether he recognizes it consciously or not, stuck. And anyway, he likes it like this better.

Unexpected. Unheralded. He thought he'd bring her here and they'd go to sleep together; he would have been more than happy with that. But then she went to bed, only not really to bed, and when he smiled and asked her, Again? she answered

like this.

And he's breathing raggedly now, the slide and suction of her mouth pulling low moans out of him. The sight of her hand between her thighs makes him moan, too; makes him reach down and flick the other strap of her camisole off, makes him work that little scrap of fabric down her body until he can reach in and palm her breasts.

"I love what you do to me," he mutters. His hands knead, rub, slide down as far as he can reach and up again. He runs his hands all over her, her breasts and her shoulders and her neck, her face; he kisses her mouth if she lets him, her brow if she doesn't. "Ach, Bože, ty pÅ™ivád t k šílenství."

Danicka

Sometimes they can't get enough of each other, it seems. They run their hands everywhere as they roll in bed, or grind against each other on the couch gasping into each other's mouths. Sometimes they do it just like that: she sucks his cock, and he licks her pussy and then, then they fuck, wet from each other, their mouths tasting of each other, and it's this messy, slick, grunting, primitive thing. Sometimes, too, they're up in some tower of glitz in Chicago or New York City and she's wearing some scraps of three hundred dollar fabric and he's watching her reflection in glass, or fucking her in the bathroom of some swank restaurant while her jewelry dangles from her earlobes, swinging and glittering.

Sometimes they get into bed to cuddle each other to sleep and make love like some kind of 'boring' married couple, close and slow and under the sheets, hands in each other's hair, Danicka whispering that she loves him, Lukas groaning that he needs her,

even if it isn't in words, even if those words never, ever pass his lips. She knows. The way he holds her then, the way he wraps himself around her afterward, the way he is never the same as when he's just been with her, the way it seems the world can't touch him. It took her so long to realize just how he felt in those moments, how he was vulnerable in a way, how she needed to protect him. And that was when she began to understand him. That was when she knew she was falling in love with him, though she's quite sure she was falling in love with him long before she ever let herself recognize it.

All that time ago, she wasn't trying to teach him a lesson. She wasn't trying to put him off of asking her to go down on him forever and ever, though she wouldn't be who she is if she hadn't noticed by now that Lukas never asks her for this, never suggests it, never tells her he wants it even though she doesn't hesitate whatsoever to tell him when she wants him to come over and kiss it for me, baby, please. She's thought about that night in the W, the Chinese food, the banana rolls, the way they made out on the floor until she told him to take off his shirt and he told her she should suck his cock and she... got up and walked away. Danicka didn't mean it to teach him not to ask. It was just something about the way he said it. Maybe something about the you should that she rebelled against, that she would always rebel against, that she would still rebel against, most likely.

The truth is that he likes this better, unexpected and unheralded and sometimes even shocking him, how fucking eager she is, how she moans around him like she's the one being pleasured, how she nuzzles and rubs his cock against herself. And the truth is what she just said: she loves it. Loves his body. Loves his cock, and loves the way he can make her feel when he lays her down and gives it to her. This is the woman who wanted him to rub her entire body over his cock on their wedding night, who moaned as it stroked over her belly, who flickers with arousal when she tastes his precum. So fucking demure in public, and that first night when she pushed him away, and he thought

he thought she wouldn't want it rough, didn't want it -- well, dirty. Wanted to make sweet tender love and would never just fuck, wanted things from him he didn't think he could give her then, couldn't ever give her, couldn't ever give anyone, because that wasn't what he was. That wasn't what he thought he was. And he didn't know what she was then, either. That she was shameless, that she was insatiable, that she never berated herself for wanting what she wants, for indulging, for telling him in no uncertain terms to give it to her. That she doesn't balk at even begging for it.

Danicka moans again as he pushes her camisole down and touches her breasts. Strokes her body, all over her skin, til the other strap has been pushed down and the whole thing is falling around her ribcage, the straps hanging on her elbows, the lamplight hitting her skin and illuminating the contrast between the skin she bares to the sun and the skin she bares to his mouth and his fingers. But then Lukas is pulling his hips back, bending to her to kiss her mouth and she's whimpering at the loss of his cock but opening her mouth to him all the same, shameless, heedless. Her hands come up to cup his jaw, to wrap around him, and she wants his cock but she wants his body, too, she wants

what he wanted when he covered her hand with his own.

She wants him.

Danicka wraps her arms around his neck as he straightens, drawing herself up by his strength. She pushes off of the floor and lifts herself onto him, not to wrap her legs around him but to get her lace-covered cunt against his cock, rubbing herself on him with those whimpers, those gasps. That deep, aching sound of need.

Lukas

Even as Danicka is pushing off the floor, Lukas is catching her, hoisting her up. Their bodies meet solidly; they both burn so bright, burn so hot. When she puts her cunt against him he throws his head back and groans like she's taken him inside already, like what she began with her mouth is finished. And she's whimpering, too, she's making those little sounds like they're fucking, like what she needs is this fuck, what she needs is this cock she's rubbing herself against.

He kisses her. Of course he does: they've always kissed like this, like they can't resist, like if they don't have this kiss they'll simply fall apart. He kisses her, and kissing her, feels himself falling into her -- feels his gravity tilt as his eyes close, but

the bed is right behind them. It catches them when the backs of his knees and thighs hit the thick mattress, when he drops down on it heavily enough to jostle her against him, make them both groan. She's atop him now, the way she was the second time in her bed, no more than an hour ago -- was it so recently? -- and his hands are on her thighs, gripping, squeezing as they slide up to cover her ass.

"Rub that sweet cunt on me," he mutters. His mouth doesn't leave hers. He kisses her again a second later, fiercely. "Go on, rub it on my cock, get me wet." He laughs, low, a little breathless, and it's another kiss as hard as the last, "Mark your territory, láska."

Danicka

If Lukas hadn't bent down to kiss her then, gasping for her mouth, Danicka very well might have stayed on her knees until she made him come, until she worked her clit with her fingers to her own orgasm, until he grabbed at the wall for balance and pushed his hand into her hair for connection. Nothing about the way she was sucking on him indicated she was bored, wanted to stop, didn't want to give him this. Do this for him -- or to him, yes.

But he did kiss her, and she climbed up his body like he was a tree, lifting herself up and trying to get his body between her legs, against her pussy, please. Her top dangles from her crooked arms and her breasts point towards him, bare and pale, the nipples a fair pink and hardened into tiny nubs. And instead of anything else, instead of all the things he could do with her or for her or to her, Lukas simply falls. Into her, or while holding her, taking her with him.

For all that this seems inevitable between them, like they've always loved each other -- and yet simultaneously feels like they haven't been together even the few years they have -- it used to be so hard. They used to be afraid they were going to lose each other if she got pregnant, or if Vladik found out, or if they couldn't get past a certain argument, or if they simply couldn't trust each other. And it did take so, so long for them to trust each other, even when he'd saved her life, even when she'd given him her heart. Trust was never built into them. Trust was the enemy. Sometimes, together like this, it's easy to forget the way things used to be between them.

And that's as it should be.

The bed rebounds as Lukas's weight -- and Danicka's -- hits it, roughly. The springs jostle even as the soft top of the mattress and all its covering absorb them, let them sink down. Danicka is straddling him now, bent over him to groan in his mouth, rubbing herself on his body through her panties, gasping for that cock she was so very, very eager for. Her hands are on his chest, holding her balance, holding him, moving and pressing on him at turns as she all but rides him.

Lukas grabs her ass and she lets out a loud moan, working her hips faster, shuddering at the touch. That's as it always is: he knows where to touch her, he knows how. There's so much they never said aloud, almost everything learned from inference and trial-and-error and sheer dumb luck. That her ass is more sensitive than her breasts. That he likes feeling her arms and legs wrapped around him when he comes. That when they crave closeness, she wants to be able to not just see him but have him near her, sitting up and facing her or holding her to the wall or atop her, and that sometimes when he craves closeness he wants to be behind her and over her, covering her, their bodies aligned completely. Truthfully, it took them awhile to be able to talk about sex more openly, to say this and not that, and if Danicka were to look back, she might say that it only really began when Lukas -- though he was uneasy and uncomfortable doing it -- talked to her about those moments when something she did, something she liked or didn't like or pulled away from or refused, made him feel rejected in a fundamental and heartwrenching way.

Of course, all that is so far from her mind as to make it true enough to say that right now, Danicka has lost her mind.

Lukas laughs, tells her to mark her territory, and he never would have said this when they started. Never the first time she rubbed herself on his cock and moaned for him, clinging to him while she wordlessly begged for it, fucked him without fucking him. But he's been hers for so very long. She's vicious with people who so much as sniff in his direction, vengeful in a nasty -- and even petty -- fashion. But he's not just telling her to mark him. He's telling him to mark his cock as hers, her territory, her male, hers. And it is. He is. Danicka leans over him, her hand on the back of his neck, and kisses him so hard it's nearly a bite, her hand pushing down on his shoulder as she grinds herself on top of him.

"Rip my panties off," she mutters against his lips, through a gasp, and by god she's got to stop saying this, she buys underwear that costs thirty to fifty dollars a pair and then tells him to just tear it off of her as though she can't even be bothered to lift her hips and move her legs and wiggle out of them. As though those two seconds of Lukas grabbing the fine, thin fabric and shredding it between his hands is even too much, and she doesn't want to have to stop rubbing against him in order to be able to fuck him. If these panties were thongs, if it were an easy cut to just pull aside, she might just do that, but truth be told,

Danicka likes it better when he just takes them off of her. Opens her legs. And fucks her.

She swivels her hips on him, changing the pattern of her grinding for a moment and moaning as his cock slides over her clit in a new way, a new stroke. "Slzný je pry
a kurva m na zdi," she moans again, the tail end of it a whimper, a plea.

Lukas

Tear them off, she says, and he laughs low and rough even as arousal slams through him like a thunderbolt. Every time she winds her hips on him his breath catches, his eyes flare. Every time she moans he kisses her again, a claim in that kiss the same way there's a claim in the way she moves.

Mark your territory, he tells her.
Mine, mine, my, mine, he tells her.

And - tear them off, she tells him again, in the language they were born to. And he kisses her again, fiercely, rising off the bed to do so. His hands are big, so strong. He grips the fragile fabric of those expensive panties of hers and his knuckles press against her lower abdomen; the cords in his forearms stand out and his shoulders harden as he shreds the last of her clothes off her body. Then he's sitting up, catching her up with his hands under her thighs, getting up off that soft comfortable bed of theirs, that bed that Danicka bought carefully because even though the couch downstairs and the tv are off craigslist, this is theirs and theirs only, and it's important.

She's balanced on his body, then, his hands supporting her, her thighs wrapped around his waist. Lukas can't stop kissing her, so they go kissing blind across the room, but not very far. Just far enough that her back hits the wall and then he's got her caught against it, caught between his hot torso and the cool wall, his hands coming up to cover her breasts, rub her tits while he moans into her mouth. Moans into her mouth while he grinds against her, fucks his slick hard cock against her with the same hard, liquid thrusts of his hips that he'll fuck her with later.

Now:

catching her under the thighs again. Hoisting her up a little, far enough to let her re-wind her legs around him. "Open," he mutters against her mouth, the way he did the very first time, only not. "Open for me, baby. That's it, take that cock and guide me in. That's it,"

and he's lowering her now, his head bowed, looking down to watch her body, his brow pulling and his teeth parting, his lips drawing gently back in a silent snarl of pleasure. That's it, he whispers, oh, that's it, before his mouth is on hers again; he's pressing her to the wall like he's out of patience suddenly, pressing into her and pushing himself into her, every inch, nailing her to the wall.

Lukas

[oops! lukas bought bed. danicka bought bedding!]

Danicka

When Danicka tells him to tear her panties off and fuck her against the wall, she knows that Lukas would have been happy standing beside their bed, trying hard not to fuck her mouth as she sucked on him. She knows he would have been happy lying back and watching her ride him, would have loved to see her lifting that camisole up, up, off her body, looking down at him as she worked herself on his cock. She knows he would have been happy if she'd moaned and wriggled and turned over and arched her back, lifting her hips to telling him in this primitive, nonverbal way what to do, how to mount his mate. She knows he would have been happy to roll her under him and love her, love her again and again tonight. And truth be told, there's not a single way he could fuck her tonight that wouldn't make Danicka very, very happy, too.

What happens is that she realizes, while grinding down on him, that it's been a long time since he held her up against the wall. She remembers the second night they fucked, meeting at the Shedd and going to the W for the first time, and how he stopped just before he entered her, told her -- like it surprised him -- that he wanted to see her face. She remembers, kissing Lukas, how it was that afternoon, and how strikingly it confirmed what they'd both tried to ignore or dismiss since the first time they made love: that they were, in fact, making love. And for no real reason at all, she realizes she wants him to lift her up in those arms of his, that body that keeps evolving into something more and more dangerous, more and more powerful, and hold her up like that while they fuck.

It's a whim. Like so much of her life, even the decisions that turn out to be life-altering, are whims. Whims that turn into needs. Needs that are closely intertwined with who she is, at her heart.

Danicka gives a laugh, low and warm, as he rips her panties off. She squirms to make it more difficult. To tease him. To make him have to wait a few more fractions of a second to be inside of her, even though she's the one that can't be bothered to take off her underwear properly. She rubs her tits against his chest while she holds his face and kisses him, slowly now, deep, and one, two shrieks of tearing lace later, the pale blue scraps of fabric slide down his legs to the floor. She moans, even at something as simple as the feel of her camisole's hem brushing against her newly bared hips. He can feel for the first time since he came into the bedroom how wet she really is, because

her legs are opening around him as he rises off the bed, and he doesn't have to ask her moments later to open for him, doesn't have to ask her to wrap around him because she's gasping even as he's taking those steps to the wall. She's reaching between their bodies, her knuckles brushing his abdomen, and taking his cock in her hand. Maybe it'll make him stumble; she doesn't know any more than she cares, but she takes him and starts to work herself down onto his cock, moaning as she does so. At first his head just slips and slides against her lips, making her catch groans in her throat, and then her back is to the wall and he's palming her breasts, his hips moving, her pussy sliding down onto him.

Lukas

Of course she doesn't cooperate. Danicka is one of the most uncooperative people Lukas knows. Ask him if he minds. There's no malice in it, anyway. She doesn't do it to hold it over him, to show him who really holds power here ... any of that. She does it because it's who she is.

The fox to the prince. The clawless, fiercely independent cat. Or just: herself. Danicka. His mate.

His.

His, so he snarls at her - playfully, it must be said - when she squirms to make it harder for him to tear her panties off. That only makes her squirm harder, so he grabs her hips and spanks her ass. Then the panties are scraps, and they're moving across the floor, and he's trying to walk her to the wall she asked for when she sabotages that, too, starts working herself onto him.

It makes his head drop to her shoulder. It makes his teeth grip her shoulder, makes his hands tighten on her ass. "Netrp liví hol
i
ka," he calls her, and then her back is to the wall; he's touching her and she's taking him inside and he's raising his head again to catch her mouth, doesn't stop kissing her even to say, muffled now,

"To m poser. Vezm te si, že kohout pro m , lásko."

Lukas

[fucking jove. he said:

"Fuck me. Take that cock for me, baby."]

Lukas

[oh and first thing was: "Impatient girl."]

Danicka

[DIRTY!]

Danicka

There's truth in that. She doesn't cooperate, and she refuses to simply to buck expectation, to turn up her nose at convention, to protect the one thing that's kept her mind intact and her psyche unbroken despite everything she's been through. She belongs to herself. As much as Lukas claims her, as much as losing him would affect her, the underlying truth of the matter is that Danicka belongs so solely and entirely to herself that even he recognized it at the start, and was drawn to her for that reason. She remembers that day at the Shedd, those ten minutes before they left to go fuck again, and how he didn't want her to be like those schools of fish upon whom he projected whatever he was feeling at the time. He didn't want her to simply be whatever he wanted her to be at the time.

Lukas signed up for every single argument they've ever had in that moment, in a way. Every time she's done something he didn't like, every time she's been rude to Katherine or Genevre, every time she's refused to agree with him about Martin or about Sam or anything else, every time they have run up against the threat of losing each other because neither would back down, give in, change their minds, submit -- he probably agreed to endure that when he told her, not in so many words, that all he wanted was for her to be herself. But the other side of that is that he gained his first real foothold in her trust right then. Accepted that she was not like other Shadow Lord Kin, but could play the part, and liked both of those things about her, and didn't want her to stop.

Early on, they fell in love quickly, into need, into adoration. They didn't always like each other. But there were moments, like that one, when they sort of did.

She likes him now. She likes his snarling and she growls right back at him, kisses him like they're already fucking. She likes it when he spanks her, and moans aloud, arching her back and rubbing her pussy on him. She is, in her way, quite primal as well -- stroke her the right way, give it to her when she's like she is tonight, when she's in fucking heat, when no matter how many times he makes her come she wants more, and she just dissolves for him.

Then turns around and makes some new demand. Turns around starts fucking his cock before he can even get her to the wall, makes him grab her and grab the wall and bite down on her shoulder, muttering in her ear. She just takes him deeper in answer, her cunt tight despite how many times he's been inside of her tonight. She obeys his words, at least, but pushes herself against him, lifts herself up -- which drives her harder onto his cock -- and reaches down to lift her camisole

up, up, off,

dropping it past his back and wrapping her arms around him in the process. "Ne," she says, the word like a pout on her lips, "jste kurva m ." Not that she's stopping. Not that she isn't riding him between the wall and his body, looking down between them to see where their two bodies join.

Danicka

[stupid tags!]

Lukas

In those early days when they didn't really like each other, certainly didn't trust each other, were falling in love with each other anyway --

in those early days, he could've never snarled at her like this, in play or otherwise, without seeing her immediately flash into exactly the sort of submission kin he knew she wasn't. He couldn't have done that because it wouldn't have even been fully conscious, her dissolution. It would have been something akin to survival instinct. She's known nothing all her life but Shadow Lords who would break a kin for daring, and so all her independence, all her rebellion, was secret and subtle.

These days, she leads him down her hallway by the cock. She tells him to rip her panties off and then moves until he can barely comply. She asks to be fucked against the wall and takes him inside while he's still getting there. He asks her to fuck him

and she tells him, pouting, pouting with a flash of teeth behind her lovely lips, to fuck her.

His laugh is a snarl. Or the other way around. He's on her then, he's grabbing her hips and holding her steady and all but lunging for her, all but biting that kiss onto her mouth. She was looking down to see him sliding into her, but he'd rather kiss her, rather taste and feel her right now. He's not slow, the way he enters her. He's not slow, but neither is he brutal; he's on the edge of rough, and perhaps the word for it is eager. Aggressive. Robust.

"Mmmph," is the noise he lets go into her mouth as he's filling her. When he's inside her he breaks the kiss to gasp, gasps and bends to her and kisses her neck, lifts her breast in his hand and kisses that, too, sucks her nipples for an intense, sharp second before he lets go. And then he's fucking her, holding her by the hips and looking her in the eye and fucking her, deep and solid enough that the wall behind her bears the impact of their bodies.

Danicka

Now when Lukas snarls at her, playfully and yet with some layer of truth to the arousal and the answer contained in that sound, Danicka doesn't fold her petals and bend to him, bare her throat in hopes that he'll spare her, beg him with her fingers touching his hair to not do this to her, not like that. Now, when Lukas growls and laughs and spreads her legs further to fuck his cock harder into her, Danicka arches her back and puts her hands on the wall behind her, moaning for it. Her throat is bared, but there's no calculated submission in that: only trust, trust that is so complete it doesn't require thought.

All night, now. A little studying, and the suggestion that they were just going to bed and warm each other up and sleep, but now they've fucked over and over, pleasured each other, stroked each other, and chances are even this won't satisfy her, won't get Danicka to be a good girl and just close her eyes and sleep. Every time it's gotten more intense. Every time, he's fucked her harder, and she's cried out louder for him. Danicka's head is forced up by his kiss, her eyes closed by it, and she grabs his hand where it holds her leg and pulls it up to her breast even as he's quickening the pace of his thrusts, even as her back is bumping over and over against the wall.

Her eyes open when he lets go of her mouth, when he's gasping and kissing her neck which tilts for him. Danicka all but purrs, squirming as she can. It seems like every time they do this, every time he lifts her up and shoves himself into her and fucks her just like this, there's nothing gentle about it. Even the way he cups the breast in his hand to his mouth, like lifting a handful of water to sip at, turns into something fierce. She lets out a whining sort of noise, bucking on his cock, and whimpers when he lets go, whimpers, "Baby, lick it better," the words fuzzy and slurred, mindless. Her hands are in his hair now, stroking those shorn hairs that grow into curls as they lengthen, looking at the sweat bead on his brow, looking at his face. "Lick it all better," she whispers again, lower and softer this time, as the fresh heat of her wetness makes his cock slip that much more easily into her.

Lukas

Halfway between a gasp and a laugh, the breath that escapes Lukas then. He leans into her and his forehead bumps hers, then lays against hers; he kisses her softly in the midst of all that roughness and wildness and energy.

Then he takes her hands in his. Her wrists. He pushes her arms up against the wall, looking down at the shift in her body as more of her weight centers on her thighs. There's room now only to grind against her, to catch her between the wall and his body and grind into her, his hands rough and warm on her forearms. He's sucking and kissing the inside of her bicep, lips brushing over the quick-beating pulse through that artery; teeth making her triceps quiver for a second when he bites her.

And then he's at her breast again. He holds her against that wall, fucks her slow and deep like that while he opens his mouth and licks her nipple, circles it with his tongue, presses it to his tongue, wraps his mouth around her and sucks at her slower this time, slow and gentle and hot and wet, mmming against her flesh like the very taste of her is something fine and rare.

Danicka

A smile flashes across Danicka's face at that laugh, at the way he comes so close, tucks his head so near to her. She holds him there, her mouth trying to kiss his brow but open, laying moans past his skin, til he kisses her. They're still kissing when he strokes her arms up over her head, which makes her let loose a soft groan into his mouth. It takes trust for this, too -- not just the way he holds her hands down but the way she has to trust herself to him, trust her weight to his body holding her up. Which she does, as thoughtlessly as he laughs, as she trembles.

Words are starting to tumble out of her now, aching utterances of want, telling him to fuck her, please, just like that, yes,

saying his name like a prayer or a plea,

the words broken with a shudder and a moan when his moan lowers to her breast and licks at her there, sucks on her just where she wanted him to. Licks it all better. She's so very warm against him, her pussy so very wet, her skin pink and gold in the lamplight. Even if the way she was crying out to him over and over like this weren't sending signals up and down his spine of what's coming, he'd feel it inside of her. He'd see it in the way her torso tightens up, the way her back arches to take him, the way she seems to lift up to some new height, almost there, before quivering away, clenching down on him to hold on, hold on.

When some switch gets flicked inside of her, when the way he's fucking her against that wall seems to drive her up to that height and then over the precipice, Lukas hears it in the sudden break in her voice, feels it in the sudden, involuntary spasms around his cock, sees her clutching at his hands and at the wall. But Danicka feels it. Feels her entire body go rigid but somehow she's still riding him, pulling at his body, even though she's glowing, she's sure she's shining somehow, worries that she'll blind him as she comes, again, for the fourth or fifth time tonight, her body collapsing all around her.

Lukas

So often when Danicka comes like this, Lukas is fucking her hard and fast, almost mercilessly pounding that orgasm out of her. Not this time. This time he's so close to her, he's aligned to her from hip to the tips of their fingers, and while the position he has her in is overtly dominant, is him holding her to the wall, the truth is he's just as much holding himself to the wall. To her. His hands around her wrists are big and warm and -- there's something almost reassuring about the way he holds her, holds on to her while he feels her arching, going rigid, turning to one tensile band.

His mouth never leaves her breast. He never fucks her any faster, or harder; but he doesn't relent, either, he fucks her slow and deep and firm, feeling the shudder of impact up through her spine, feeling the shuddering in her body. Eyes closed, Lukas thinks of tensile bands - he thinks of the wedding rings on their fingers, those flawless metal arcs; he thinks of an invisible arc running through her body, breast to cunt, thinks of that same arc running through him where he joins to her, cock to mouth; thinks of the way she shudders, like a gold ring struck and vibrating; thinks of

well. Her, really. No more, no less.

When she goes suddenly pliant, suddenly limp, sagging against the wall, his hands release her arms. He gathers her in his arms and holds her close, plants himself deep and stays still, gives that to her, gives her this moment while she's putting herself back together. He's whispering as he gathers her to himself like that, murmuring i'm here, i'm here, kissing her shoulder and the soft indent under her ear.

And then - some time later, whispering, "Připraveni?"

Lukas

[He sez: "Ready?"]

Danicka

Danicka's orgasm lasts for what feels like forever when she's in it, and no time at all when she starts to come back down, wrapping her arms around him and laying on his shoulder, holding onto him and gasping, panting, giving the softest whimpers when his cock twitches in her or when her cunt clenches on him, releasing echoes of pleasure through her body all over again. She's shaking, shaking the way that used to worry him, that used to simultaneously endear him, captivate him, and stoke the fires of his protective nature until he almost couldn't bear it. Shaking simply because she's overwhelmed. Shaking because her mind feels like it has burst into fragments, into dust, an aura of consciousness that may never entirely recoalesce.

And he holds her up there, lets her arms go so that they can wrap and drape around him like they do. She's stronger than she used to be, but compared to him she's still so slender, so light even if she's much less fragile than she once was. No longer made of glass, made of china, but something far more flexible and far warmer. Her heart is pounding so hard she imagines he must be able to feel it echoing in his chest, but she doesn't ask him. She can't talk. Her hips move gently on him, shifting for comfort or pleasure or both, for reassurance of that closeness. Lukas murmurs to her that he's with her, and his lips nudge aside strands of her hair from her ears, whisper past them like a veil, or the lattice within a confessional.

It takes a little while for her to be able to breathe a little more normally, a few attempts at deep breaths, and she knows he's waiting for her, feels him rigid inside of her, feels him controlling his breathing and the firm way he holds her. Danicka doesn't start working herself on him again any time; Lukas eventually murmurs, asking her if she's ready, asking her -- though not in so many words -- if it's okay if he fucks her now, if she's okay, if she's ready for him.

Slowly she lifts her head and kisses him, her eyes never opening, her lips parting to give him that deep, slow kiss. And draws back from it far before he's ready, lifting her hips and stroking herself on him once, twice, as she murmurs back: "Chcete se ohyb m nad postelí?"

Danicka

[Czech: Want to bend me over the bed?]

Lukas

Those words send a streak of fire through his eyes. She can feel his hands tightening on her back. She can feel his cock twitching inside her from nothing more than the words, the thought, the subtle shifting of her body on his. He kisses her again because he hasn't had enough, because she drew back so quickly, and because of what she drew back to say.

But then - he shakes his head. There's almost a little uncertainty there. All this time, and the truth is Lukas rarely says no to anything in the bedroom. He's so eager with her, so wanting, so hungry all the time. It's not that he thinks he'll displease her. It's just that he's not used to it. Not used to saying no, because --

"Chci být blízko vás."

Danicka

The first time Danicka turned over for him, or bent over for him, he was surprised and he wanted to get atop her and have her like that, fuck her like that -- and didn't. He wanted to see her face. He wanted, though he couldn't say it at the time, to be close to her. And there have been times -- there were times enough that he finally had to tell her, had to talk to her -- when he felt like he couldn't say no to her, not about anything, but she could always say no to him, always tell him not like that, always reject him.

There was some truth in that, if she's honest. The need to be able to exert more power, more independence, more control between them was one she felt keenly. It wasn't that she was ever testing him, at least not consciously, seeing how far she could push before he'd lash out or walk away. But there was an exploration to all of that. There were tests of each other, each one trying to figure out what it means to be in a relationship that matters, to be in any kind of relationship at all. With all of his strength, with all of his dominance, with the fact that he all but owned her -- body, property, will -- in this city and could do what he liked to her, with all her broken experience with how little I love you actually means,

there was a time when she needed to know that she could say no and he wouldn't hurt her for it, that she could tell him this way and not that way and he would comply, that it mattered more to him to keep her feeling safe and secure and respected than it did to keep himself feeling satisfied and pleased. There was a time, and if they spoke of it now she could probably be able to express it finally, when that was how it was, he wasn't imagining it, even if she wasn't consciously intending it. But that he always let her go if she drew away, fucked her how she liked even if he wanted it differently...well. That is why, now, Danicka does not find it strange or even notable that Lukas tells her no with that uncertain shake of his head.

Danicka puts her hands in his hair and kisses him, full and deep this time, for a long time, moving herself on him as she does so, as though she's trying to work a groan out of his mouth as much as an orgasm from his body. She knows he's turned on by the idea of turning her over and fucking her like that, hard and fast and bent over her, shielding her and feeling her beneath him. She knows, too, why he looks hesitant to tell her no, not quite afraid of upsetting her as much as uneasy, as though some part of him might even worry that if he doesn't want her, any way at any time and doesn't care how, doesn't care as long as he's fucking her, then she might think his lust for her is flagging over time.

Which is very silly.

She kisses him hard like that, and when their mouths part she meets his eyes, grinding herself down on him. "Pak pÅ™ijít sem."

Danicka

[Czech: "Then come here."]

Lukas

It was necessary.

Every time she drew away at the beginning. Every time she said no, not like that. No, not this way. Every time she denied him, every time she changed her mind - every time he began to act in the way he had been taught, the way that had been all but imprinted into him - every time she resisted, it was necessary. Not because she was playing with him, not because she was establishing her dominance, not any of that. Because, quite simply, he holds all the power in their world. Between them, the only control he has is what he can exert over himself. And he was, in the end, so very inexperienced.

She's the first girlfriend he's ever had. She's the first real relationship of his adult life, besides his family and his pack. If she didn't help him, no one would.

He doesn't hate it anymore. He never really did; he used to be afraid, was all. Afraid she was toying with him. Afraid this meant so little to her when it meant so much to him. Afraid she was saying no to show him she could. Afraid, period. He can't remember when he stopped being afraid. He can't imagine ever feeling that sort of fear again, it seems so far from him now.

So when she kisses him, he doesn't think to hold back that low sound from the bottom of his chest. He doesn't think to hold back the urge to grind against her, to push into her, to groan again into her mouth as their bodies slide together. Her slick is all over him. Her sweat is all over him. He smells like her; he smells like he's hers, and he loves that.

When she draws back his eyes open, glazed and dazed. When she moves they all but roll back, shutting again. He gasps a sound out; kisses her again. Wraps his arms around her and holds her clasped to his chest, cushioned from the wall; wraps her close to him as he starts fucking her again,

and there's something almost desperate about it this time, mindless and instinctual. He moves in her like he's losing himself in her, like he's already lost his mind to her - his mouth pressed to her mouth, or her face, or her neck, panting hot humid breaths over her skin, groaning on every stroke before long, moaning, not giving a damn if their neighbors are asleep, if their street is quiet and docile, if they're in a nice suburb full of slightly shabby little diners and modest little dentists, not caring about anything except that

she's close to him, she's got him held so close to her, and he's so close he can't think straight.

Danicka

They likely never would have been together, stayed together, if it hadn't been a prerequisite for Lukas. If his mind hadn't been so locked down on what was worth it and what wasn't, if they could have just fucked each other with no talk of loyalty or monogamy, there's no telling if they'd have come as far as they have now. But then: they did break up. He did leave her when she pushed him away. And when he came back, when Mrena died and the Unbroken Circle avenged her and when he found Danicka in the aftermath, he would have given anything just to have her again. He gave in to her completely, and Danicka couldn't understand it, couldn't understand why he thought that sort of capitulation was necessary.

She loved him. She had begged him not to leave her. And he came back, came back like it was a submission.

They were a jumble of chaos in the beginning. Lukas coming on too strong some nights, acting like she didn't matter to him at all a moment later, hating her in turns, aching to protect her and longing to have her there in his bed, not just to fuck her but to have her, to be near her, to keep her. For her to be his. And Danicka, refusing to give herself over even to herself, despising what he was and everything he represented to her, wanting him vividly, madly, constantly. It was only when he was inside of her, when he'd open his eyes and look at her, or when he laughed, or when that facade of the brutal, cold Shadow Lord would drop that she saw there was a man there. A Lukas. Who was, she felt deep in her bones as though she'd known it since before they met,

hers.

Hers, now, when he's trying to follow her to the shower like a friendly canine. And hers when he rips in half something that threatens her. And hers when he rolls her body under his and kisses her, moves himself between her legs and mutters for her to take it, that's it, take it. Hers especially in these moments when she's come and he's holding onto her, waiting for her, when she can watch him as he starts to fuck her again, needful and lost. Her mouth seeks out his. She wraps her legs and her arms around him, puts her fingers in his hair, and murmurs his name over and over as he begins to thrust again, hard and firm, faster, groaning aloud for her.

And they don't give a fuck about the neighbors. And the windows are closed, the night deep. It's unlikely even their closest neighbors can hear anything. Which is as it should be: this is their den. Though it wouldn't matter if anyone did listen in, could hear them as Danicka gasps for him, as Lukas's cries get louder and harsher, it is comforting to her, arousing to her, right to her that no one can. That this place is just theirs, always theirs.

"Come in me, baby," she whispers, stroking his back, arching her own to take him deeper. "I want to feel you come. God, you beautiful -- ah!" she hitches as he thrusts harder, as he starts hitting her hard and fast, mindless, and her legs wrap tighter around his body, hold him closer in her, "-- beautiful boy."

Lukas

It's almost natural that Danicka would only see the brutal, cold Shadow Lord. That, and the ghosts of all the other brutal, monstrous Shadow Lords that have come before, and the wreckage they've strewn across her life. Stranger, though, that to some extent all Lukas saw at first, too, was Shadow Lord Kin. Deceitful. Dishonest. Untrustworthy and untrustable. Dangerous, if he let her get too close.

And yet they couldn't help themselves. They fell into each other; it didn't seem to matter that they didn't even like each other, that every time they met they scraped sparks off each other. It seemed inevitable, when they finally got each other alone and naked, that it would always end up like this. And it seemed impossible, when they were finally inside each other and stripped down to elemental truths, that they could ever be anything else to one another but a man, a woman, a Lukas, a Danicka, one another's.

Oh, but they do forget. They did forget, and sometimes they do still forget. Which is why sometimes they argue, and sometimes she puts her hand on his face to remind him, and sometimes he stays close to her to feel her. What they're doing now is, in a way, essential. As essential as prayer to religion. Adoration to love.

When she pulls him closer, when her legs wrap tighter, he lowers his mouth to her shoulder. So often he comes like this, seizing her in his teeth like some primitive instinct tells him to love her just like this - to hold her with every grip he has. This is the third time they've made love tonight, and the first was sweet and playful and the second was urgent and needful and this --

this is something else entirely. He's beyond words when she tells him what she wants. She's arching her back and he's responding to this invitation, this signal she sends: he's planting his feet apart and fucking her, pounding her against the wall. When she calls him beautiful boy, her breath hitches, his breath shudders, he makes some muffled noise - perhaps in another life those words were oh god! - his voice is strained, rough, he takes one hand off her back and grasps at the unyielding wall, clenches it to a fist, tries to tell her --

but then he's just grabbing her hip after all, taking that hand off the wall and grabbing her hip and pulling her in counterpoint against the motion of his hips, pulling her to him and holding her right there, locked to him, as he comes inside her.

She can feel him shuddering on every pulse of his cock. Hear the sounds he makes, raw and rough. Feel the way he holds her, feel the way he fills her, feel the way he bears her to the wall when the first blinding crest of his pleasure is past and grinds against her, fucks her without ever quite withdrawing from her, not even an inch; moves against her like somehow, somehow, he can make their joining more complete, shatter his mind into smaller pieces.

"Keep going," he mutters, ragged, muffled against her shoulder. And it's so rare -- might be the first time -- that he asks for this; so often that she keeps going anyway and he's bucking and groaning and telling her to stop, stop, for the love of god, stop, "udržet na koni m , láska, chci, abys pÅ™išel znovu."

Lukas

[DAMMIT. "...keep riding me, baby, I want you to come again."]

Lukas

[FIRST TIME WAS SLOWTENDER.]

Danicka

[DAMN STRAIGHT]

Danicka

Lukas comes, and Danicka holds him through it, gasps during those last forceful, grinding thrusts of his, as he holds her in his teeth, emptying himself into her, all but roaring as his orgasm tears through him, makes him press her hard against the wall. She squirms on him gently near the end, working bursts of pleasure out of him, taking him deeply, rubbing herself against him as he holds her tight, close, right there. He doesn't even wait after that, doesn't let himself start breathing normally, he's still moving his hips and pressing his cock into her when he starts telling her to keep going, to fuck him, ride him,

and this time it's Danicka's turn to laugh, softly and gaspingly. She rolls her hips and moans at the sensation of it, her eyes closing as they roll back. She doesn't open them, tips her head up and seeks his mouth blindly to kiss him. This time it's Danicka's turn to tell him no, but she's less hesitant, less unused to it, because so much of her will and her safety and her strength has depended on being able to say no. So much of her sense of self depended, from early in her life, on being able to say 'yes' aloud even if the answer was truly 'no', if that was what she held onto inside.

She laughs softly, kisses him in a warm rush, and shakes her head, lips brushing over him because they're still so close, so very close. "Ne, láska. Nemůžu." She smiles at him, drowsily moving with him now, like waves slowing from high tide. "I can't even feel my legs," she adds in whisper, stroking her nose gently over his cheek, his nose, his chin.

Danicka

[Czech: "No, baby. I can't."]

Lukas

Laughter shivers unevenly out of Lukas. He's so far from anything close to baseline right now - so far from calming, so far from being calm and quiet again. Exhausted, worn out, run ragged in arguably the best way possible, he nuzzles her back blindly, thoughtlessly, heavy as the large and affectionate mammal he is when she kisses him. Touches him. Strokes him with her nose, her lips, her face.

"Okay," he breathes. His teeth close on her shoulder again, very gently now. He kisses her skin afterward, thinking: lick it better. "I'll take us to bed. I'm going to take us to bed now, okay?"

Only, he doesn't. He just leans against her, leans against the wall, thoroughly spent. His body feels warm and heavy against hers, as though he's already asleep on his feet. His thumbs are still stroking gentle arcs on her back, though. And his breathing is still settling, settling.

"Any minute now," he whispers, some moments later.

Danicka

Truth be told, Danicka's surprised Lukas is still standing. She knows he has literally inhuman levels of strength and stamina, but she also knows that those levels only truly exist when he is in an inhuman body. There are mortal men who are as strong as Lukas, though they are few. The fact that he is still standing comes, she thinks, from two things: from the reality that he knows how much farther he can push himself, that his life and the lives of his packmates and the life of his mate often depend on being able to push himself harder than anyone no matter what form he takes

and the fact that right now moving to bed means moving, period. Means lifting her from the wall and turning, taking two or three steps past the nightstand to lay her down on the bed, and it's entirely possible that without the wall to hold them up, he'd collapse in those two steps.

Danicka nuzzles him, mmms thoughtlessly to him, and lays her head on his shoulder while he licks hers, kisses the spot where his teeth left a shallow but dark imprint. He strokes her lower back with his thumbs, which makes her sleepy,

as though fucking repeatedly here and in her apartment wouldn't. As though a day of classes wouldn't. Nevermind all that. In between words she yawns, feeling his chest expand and contract against hers, and it makes her smile drowsily for a moment before her lips can't keep it up any longer.

Any minute now, says Lukas, and she suddenly flashes a grin against his shoulder. Turns her head and kisses him there, nuzzles his skin and smells his sweat. She doesn't even care about taking another shower, about going to bed sticky with sweat and cum, about having to wash the sheets tomorrow. Doesn't care at all. This is their den. If not here, where?

"Let me down, baby," whispers Danicka, nuzzling his neck. "I'll help you."

Lukas

"Nnf," he complains; he doesn't want to let her down. Rather, he doesn't want to let her go, which is a different thing altogether. A moment where he nuzzles her shoulder extra-affectionately, and then - reluctantly - he lets her down. Withdraws from her with a sigh, sets her very carefully and gently down, holds her by the waist until he's sure she can stand,

as though he were so much steadier himself.

He smiles at her then. They apart again, and his eyes are open again. There's a little distance between them, less than usual because he's slouching a little, he's tired and happy and he doesn't care, either, that they're about to crawl into bed drenched in each other. Warmly, his lips press to her brow.

"Okay," he says, and gives her his hand. "Let's go."

And halfway on that long, arduous journey all the way to bed five feet away, "Can you sleep in tomorrow? Or maybe I can pick you up after class. So you don't have to drive sleepy."

Danicka

That complaint softens her lips into another smile, and her arms close around him again for a moment, holding him near. She knows he doesn't need some kind of reassurance, but she wants to hold him. Wants to hug him. Does so, smiling, as he rubs his face on her skin as though if they do this enough they can forego any kind of separation all together. She understands that. She doesn't want to move, either. Her eyes close and sparks go off behind them as he draws his cock out of her, and she looks down to see him wet and still half-hard, smiling tenderly.

It's strange, and perhaps silly, but she's so very fond of him. All of him. And yes, he may as well be her own personal form of porn at times, the way she looks at him. But other times, when she's so innately satisfied she can't imagine ever fucking again just yet, she is simply and utterly endeared by his body. She's infatuated with his skin and with the way the muscles in his thighs are, at the moment, trembling slightly, almost imperceptibly. She nuzzles him as he lets her down, gentle and careful, and she wraps her arms around his waist, holding him there.

They aren't steady. His back isn't straight. Her cheek rests against his solar plexus, their bodies close and warm and sweaty against each other. Lukas kisses her brow as they draw back, just enough for Danicka to prove that she can walk, even if her legs are coltish and wobbly. She strokes her hand down his arm and takes his hand, breathing in and drawing him with her towards the bed. "Mm," she answers in the affirmative, crawling first onto the bed and tugging back the covers as she goes, flopping them out of the way as she crosses to 'her side'. "I am so sleeping in tomorrow."

Lukas

Ridiculous little things make them happy. It makes her happy that he's warm and close to her. That they hug like that, leaning into each other like they just might fall asleep like this, too. It makes him happy that she takes his hand and they walk those five or six feet back to bed. It makes him very happy indeed when she agrees to sleeping in, makes silly thoughts like mate be rest good! flit through his mind again, and he can't even voice them right now so he just tugs her a little closer and kisses her temple.

When he follows her into bed, the mattress sinks beneath him. Barely jostles her side. This makes him happy too: he found a good den, and she made it warm. He found a good bed, and she made it soft. He flops down with a mighty groan, like the overblown sequel to that first oof! so much effort! noise he made earlier tonight when he moved closer to her. Then he's tugging the covers up, sorting them out, tucking his mate in and turning on his side to face her.

"You make me so happy," he murmurs. His foot finds hers under the covers. His shin crosses hers, and his smile grows a little, slowly. "Miluju te tak moc."

Danicka

Warm and still sweaty, they crawl into bed and flop down on the thick, soft pillows she bought for them. She stretches her arm out as Lukas is climbing in with her and flicks off the lamp she bought, the one that matches the one on his side, the lamps she bought for their nightstands. In the other room, the little tabletop fountain quietly gurgles and babbles away, barely heard. In the darkness leftover by the lamp being extinguished, Danicka curls up and gets comfortable and then stretches her legs out again, and she yawns. It's a very nice bed, and it doesn't shake all over when Lukas gets in with her, making her roll around. She does bounce slightly, though, when he flops. And chuckles to herself.

She waits for him to come near, and he draws the sheets and blankets up. Right now it's too warm under there for the comforter, but she knows as soon as her skin cools off and she falls asleep she'll want it, so she doesn't complain. She smiles at Lukas trying to tuck it around her, though, shushing him like his fussing is a noise he's making. Her back is to him, ready for him to wrap around her and go right to sleep, so when he lays down she scoots backward, tucking herself into the curve of his body in the center of their bed. Yawns again, and hasn't bothered to set an alarm on her phone -- unless she already did that while he was showering and she was putting on that near-transparent camisole and those lacy panties that are now a scrap of torn fabric on the floor -- so she must really intend to sleep in through at least one or two classes.

p>"Mmm," she says, for what feels like the dozenth time now. She is drowsy, her body absolutely worn out now, limp from satiation. She rubs her foot back against his gently, too, then settles, snuggling closer to him. "I'm glad you're here," she murmurs, and she means this on every level.

Here in bed with her.

Here in their den.

Here with her, tonight, because some nights he can't be.

Here in her life. Here, on this earth.

past lives, complexity, going home.

Danicka

Danicka is still panting softly when Lukas convinces himself to unwind his arms from where they locked around her when he came and shift his body off of hers. Her spine twists to allow him to stay inside of her, her legs sliding up one side of him and down the other, his chest still half-covering hers. Lukas mindlessly, comfortingly, cups his right hand over her left breast as though to keep her warm in the absence of his body. Her heart pounds against the heel of his hand still, only gradually slowing.

There's no need for either of them to summarize sex in the aftermath, to assure the other that was awesome or thanks, baby, though sometimes they do this anyway. Sometimes they just want to say that was good or I love you. Most of the time, though, there's simply no drive, no need to underline what's between them with verbal reassurance or reminders. What they have instead is Lukas's hand covering her like that, protective even when his mind feels scattered across space and time, and Danicka's utter, entire relaxation, the openness that at first tortured and intoxicated him, felt like the one time in the world when they were completely together.

She turns her head towards his and nuzzles across his brow, kissing the sweat from above his eyebrows. Her head comes to rest, and she breathes more calmly now. Her exhales tickle the hair at his temple. He threw the sheets on her bed off of them when her legs first opened and the simple movement of her knees parting made his attention sharpen, made him look from the book he'd been reading while he waited for her to her knees under the sheet, up to her eyes. There was no real communication about it beyond that.

Danicka had decided that Lukas showing up to spend the night with her was good reason to toss aside her reading for her class -- Introduction to Psychology, in fact -- and shower, and dry her hair, and come to bed. Lukas, though he sniffed around coming with her, was laughed at, and nuzzled, and told to go make the bed warm. Which, on some level, had delighted him, though not as much as bathing with his mate would. So he picked up a book from her nightstand and flipped through it while the water in the bathroom ran. He made the bed warm for her, drenched in the scent of her that pervaded the sheets and blankets and pillows.

Then she came to bed, her gold hair smelling of conditioner and dry, faintly warm from the dryer but cooling. He watched her as she crossed the room, bareskinned and lazy from a day of classes and study, her breasts high, and her book was still in his hands. Danicka watched him as she slipped under the covers he pulled back for her and laid herself down, looking up at him, her knees falling gently apart. Then:

his eyes flicking across her, blue and sharp and not so much questioning as assessing, deciding. Then:

her book setting down on the nightstand, the sheets rustling as he turned himself over her, wrapped his arm around her waist, bent down to her to kiss her, moved his lower body between her thighs, warmed her cunt against his abdomen, kissed her until he was hard, until she was making little noises of more insistent welcome, til he felt her growing wet against his skin, until the sensation of her arousal made him groan and rub harder against her, until she was squirming to try and get his cock against her, until they were panting for it, until he worked himself into her slowly because

he was patient tonight. Because he wanted to draw this out, tonight. Because she was gasping on every thrust, moaning when he'd give her more, because he wanted to watch her come under him long before he tipped over that edge himself, because he wanted her to come again as he started to lose his mind, biting into her shoulder and fucking her into her bed, growling with those deep, firm throws of his hips.

Sometime in there he'd thrown the sheets back, exposed his back to the world and kept his mate warm with his own body, lifted himself up to watch her, found himself pulled back down by her hands, so surprisingly strong and so demanding, found himself laughing softly and then groaning as she grabbed his ass to make him fuck her a little faster, fuck her a little faster, like that, now, please. So now, as the air conditioning swirls the sweat off of their skin, he lifts his head and grabs the sheet, dragging it up over them, covering them, tucking it absently around her before lying his head down again.

Danicka laughs, and touches his hair. She can move her arms again, so she does, turning on her side and wrapping him up in her limbs, playing idly with the hair at the nape of his neck. She smiles, and her face is so close he can see every individual fleck of amber in those shifting green eyes of hers.

"Is it bad," she says, which is not serious at all, "that I'm suddenly not ready to sleep anymore?"

Lukas

Lukas's eyes are already closed when Danicka speaks. It's not that he's particularly exhausted. It's simply the comfort and closeness he feels right now - a bonedeep sense of primordial security.

He is in his mate's den. He is in her bed. He is still wrapped up in her limbs, and he can smell her all around him, and she is warm, and clean, and fed, and fucked. She will not be hungry even if she were to wake in the middle of the night. She will not need to wander off in search of food, be snatched up by some dark predator in the night. She will not itch because there are no fleas here; she will not shiver because it is warm. He will keep her warm. Perhaps in the spring there will even be cubs.

On some utterly mindless, reptile-brain level, Lukas feels fulfilled. He feels certain, in a way that has nothing at all to do with higher brain functions and prefrontal cortices and the last hundred million years or so of evolution, that all is now very, very well.

Yet his eyes -- those same keen, intelligent eyes that scanned her book with curiosity and rudimentary understanding, which is more than what most would be able to claim given the rigor and intensity of Danicka's courses -- reopen when his mate smiles, and speaks. He can hear that smile before he sees it, and when his eyes open he is already smiling, sleepily and warmly.

"Of course not," he murmurs. And his hand on her breast shifts, becomes a heavy arm across her ribs. He moves a little closer to her, bestirring himself with lazy difficulty, exhaling ponderously as he settles again an inch closer, as though he's performed some monumental task. Now they're so close that his nose rubs against hers, and a kiss would be barely a lift of the chin.

"Sometimes," he whispers, smiling still, "just before we sleep, or just after we make love, I think the silliest things. I don't mean to, but I can't help it. They just come to me."

Danicka

The book that Lukas found on Danicka's nightstand tonight was, in fact, a textbook, though not the one she was studying in the living room when he first came over. She normally doesn't keep her schoolbooks in her bedroom but this isn't a textbook for any of her courses. This is a textbook she bought over the summer for her own reading, for her own understanding, and it has to do with both the history and theory of the microprocessor. To anyone not interested in computers it is extraordinarily dry reading. To anyone not interested in perhaps making a life out of studying this sort of thing, it is utterly useless for any class. To anyone interested solely in the workings of Danicka's mind and the exploration of her interests whether or not they are shared, it can only be taken in the way Lukas takes it in: with curiosity, and most basic level of understanding.

That small smile of hers becomes a grin, and then a soft laugh as he moves himself over -- oof! so much work! -- and nuzzles against her. She isn't sleepy at all now. Her eyes are bright with energy and attention, even if her body is pure warmth, every muscle relaxed, her legs soft where they enfold him. Her smile gentles, and her fingertips stroke his hair, massage gently into his neck.

"What sort of things?" she asks, curious now, and close to him, even if a part of her is still considering asking him if he wants to run out with her and get ice cream or go to the park or anything, anything at all.

Lukas

Danicka knows by now that Lukas seems to have behavioral triggers built into his scalp. Sometimes she'll touch his hair a certain way and his eyes will all but glint with arousal. Other times -- times like this -- she'll stroke his hair, massage his neck, and his eyes will fall closed, his face relaxing as though he might sleep any second.

"I'll tell you," Lukas replies, "but you have to promise not to kick me out of bed for thinking like a Neanderthal."

Danicka

"I solemnly swear," Danicka informs him, her tone both gentle and patient and completely mocking, "that I will not kick you out of bed for thinking like a Neanderthal. I may, however," she goes on, her eyebrows arching, "tease you for it."

Lukas

Lukas laughs softly. When he quiets, though, he's speaks a little hesitantly - almost shyly. "I think things like ... now you're warm. And safe. And your belly is full. And you're mine." His mouth flickers into a brief, self-deprecating grin. "Grunt, snort. Chest-beat.

"And I think how good that is. Everything, I mean. That you're here, and warm, and safe, and your belly is full. And you're mine. And I'm just ... happy. Stupidly, quietly happy."

His arm stirs a little over her. Relaxed, it's a firm, heavy weight over her, riding the tide of her inhales and exhales. He kisses her softly, his lips against the corner of hers. Then, softer still, "And sometimes I think of cubs in the spring."

Danicka

Her smile is so achingly gentle, a gentleness he didn't know for the longest time existed in her, because her timidity was so much a part of that grand act she kept up for the sake of survival for so much of her life. She can be cold and strong and dislike people who irritate her but oh, she has so much warmth in her. So much tenderness that she gives him that he wonders what she'd be like with their children, that he knows they'd be so very loved and so very disciplined at the same time. That, in her love, she'd push them to be better than laziness or fear makes them, the way she pushed him not to be so lazy with his humanity, not to be so afraid of loss or failure.

She strokes his hair back now from his temple and his hairline, leaning across the pillow and kissing him softly. "That's not stupid," she says, when he talks about how her warmth and safety and fed-ness and closeness make him happy. How everything is good. Danicka nuzzles him, sinking down under the covers close to his chest again, with no plans to leave at all now. "I think the same thing," she murmurs. "Not quite like that, but... you look so content when we're like this." She's whispering now. "Like everything is okay. Everything is... good. It makes me feel satisfied. Almost accomplished, somehow. When I see you happy like that. At peace."

Her eyes are closing now, her words touching his jawline and his neck. "You feel loved and you feel happy and so everything is okay. The whole world is okay because I've made you feel good." She flutters her eyes open and cocks a wry little smile. "That sounds a lot more codependent than it is. I'm just... happy because you're happy. Happy because I get to be a part of it. Happy because you came home, and home is with me."

Danicka is quiet then, and a moment later he stirs a bit, holding her and kissing her softly like he does. Murmuring, after a time, what he says about cubs. Springtime. Danicka, who has let her eyes close again, opens them a little at the words. She remembers one time, a long time ago, when she laid on this very bed and he was making love to her, gasping for her, and she begged him to take the condom off, let her feel him. She could see the resistance flashing through his eyes, the fear, even as he was sliding out of her and ripping it off, pushing himself back inside of her with a groan. She remembers asking him once if he wanted her to get pregnant, and how he didn't, he really wasn't ready for that and he wasn't ready for her to want that and yet: yes. Some part of him. Some deep, wild part of him was addicted to the sensation of her with no barrier, was intoxicated and driven by the thought of making cubs with her, wanted them to be born and grow big and be fed and protected by their strong, gentle mother.

"One day," she murmurs, and that is all. One day.

Lukas

What he said carried no hidden agenda. It was not some attempt to loophole her into agreeing to mother children. Bear cubs. If it had been, he might be upset now, when all he hears back is one day. He's not upset.

He's just ... happy. At peace. Content.

They don't talk about cubs very often, truth be told. There was once, in the bowels of some fell laboratory, when she said for the first time that she would be happy, proud, to bear his children. There was another time, not so very long ago, that they laid the most rudimentary of plans: not some amorphous someday but a far more exciting, terrifying someday soon. Because time doesn't wait. Because neither of them want to pass their entire lifetimes together all too soon, and realize they never had time to raise the children they wanted...

one day.

"One day," he echoes back to her, softly. A moment later he answers the rest, "That's exactly what it is. Everything is good. And I'm just ... happy."

A beat goes by. Then he shifts again, moves, gathers her up all loose and warm and turns on his back; sprawls her over his body. "Come here," he says after the fact, when all is already said and done. His smile is a little crooked. He raises his head to kiss her again, a little longer this time, soft and slow. Lukas's fingers are laced loosely together over the small of Danicka's back. His palms are warm, and he discovers that the heels of his hands fit the indents of her lower back like their bodies were shaped for this purpose.

"Sometimes," he murmurs, half-musing, half-thoughtful, but mostly just silly, as he puts it, "I wonder if Gaia has a ... system. For us to find each other, I mean. All the times we must have found each other through all the ages and all our past lives."

Danicka

One day is, in that loose little plan they made, sometime after she graduates from college. Perhaps during that last year of school, when for the first few months of pregnancy she can continue going to classes with some sort of ease. Or perhaps they'll wait til after convocation for her to go off of birth control, just to be on the safe side, but then Danicka might bring up that it could take ages for the hormones to return to normal; she's been on the pill for something like ten years now, or close to it, and she doesn't want to wait very long only to find out that they have to wait, and wait, and wait some more. But in that vague discussion of when and why that time and not another, she said she would rather take a few years off between college and graduate studies than wait all that time for her Master's, or worse, take a break in the middle of college itself.

And he's torn on that. Torn between not wanting to wait forever and not wanting her to give up her life. Torn because in the underworld he wanted to make his decision, his sacrifice, based on whether or not Danicka was happy. He still doesn't quite grasp just how wealthy she is. Look at her -- she buys things she likes but she doesn't really flaunt it. She doesn't take day trips to Paris, but she could. She doesn't buy up loads of property, though her financial guy is howling at her to stop renting, dear god, what are you doing. Lukas doesn't entirely understand, just because he has never seen her financial portfolio or the ledgers of her bank accounts, that Danicka could afford to make any decision she wants go that much more smoothly, paving the way with dollar bills to make things workable, to lift the pressure off of the struggle to raise children and work and study all at once.

One day, yes. One day, in fact one day not that long off, those thoughts in his mind of cubs in the spring won't be blocked by a tiny, hormone-altering pill. One day there may, in fact, be cubs. In spring, or winter. Maybe fall. Maybe a summer baby. But not today. Not this spring.

Just: one day.

Danicka smiles a crooked smile as he wraps her up and rolls her onto him, his voice fuzzily telling her to come when he's already taken her, and she wants to tease him for being so snuggly, for being the cuddliest full moon that ever was or something like that. The sheets go askew, and he warms her back, kissing her. She moves on top of him, her hands on his chest, thinking he means to love her again. Her legs open a little more over him, her hair falling in waves around his cheeks, but he exhales, and his lips leave hers because something about her lower back, and the way his hands fit her body, makes another thought he might think is silly enter his mind.

Her head tips. She watches him in the dark, lit only by their adjustment to the dimness. Her eyes close slowly, open again. "Maybe," she says. "I don't think about it. I love you in this one. If I lose you in this one, it won't comfort me to think that I'll find you again, after dying and coming back." Her hand moves to his face, touches his cheek and his brow, touches his hair. "I want you now. Forever," she says, though this too is a silly word, a promise they can't keep, a wish that doesn't exist.

Lukas

Lukas closes his eyes as Danicka's hands touch his face, his hair. She speaks, really, of a sort of heartbreak -- losing him in this life, wanting him forever, knowing she can't have him forever. No one can. They are mortal, and even were they not also warriors and soldiers in a fatal war, forever is not a possibility for them.

He understands, though. Sometimes it feels like whatever time they have, no matter how much, could never be enough.

"It doesn't comfort me to think of the future. But it makes me happy to think of the past. I like thinking that maybe I've met you before. It feels ... right."

Danicka

Heartbreak comes to Danicka's mind so easily. At times she's seen puzzlement on his face, and sometimes something that looks like frustration or sorrow she'd never wish on him, at how easily her thoughts express loneliness, sadness, darkness. It was as though she was born a little more shadowed than others, grows tired more easily than others, mourns more easily than others. She's noticed it herself the more she's around him, because for all his Lordly blood and all his rage, Lukas has a spark of brightness in him instead. Perhaps it's simply that he is one of those that finds it easier to forget the sorrow that's in the world and live only in the joy. And Danicka is one of those who never quite forgets.

She doesn't want to think about whether or not they've known each other before, or if they will know each other again. It makes her uncomfortable, and she can't quite name why. Perhaps because her thoughts, instead of lingering on the comfort she feels right this moment, thinks of what if. What if they've never known each other before? What if they will never know each other again? What if this lifetime, this period of their life, is sole and unique in the existence of both their souls?

It makes it all the more precious and lucky and dear. It makes it all that more painful to think of losing, and she cannot bear to think of that for long.

Danicka doesn't answer, and lays her head on top of his chest in lieu of words, closing her eyes against his skin.

Lukas

So recently did they make love, so recently was he joined with her in the most primal possible that Lukas still feels exquisitely attuned to his mate. Small wonder, then, that he senses the turn of her mood. She lays herself against his chest and he wraps his arms around her - as though this is instinct; as though this is the only thing he could possibly do right now.

"Baby," he murmurs, "are you okay?"

Danicka

She doesn't stir on his chest. Her eyes are closed, her hair spread over his arm, locks of it draped down his ribcage like curtains across the frame of a window. After their tumbling about the sheets have gotten a little tangled, cover half of her ass, but she isn't complaining about the cold. She isn't shivering. The air conditioning is on but her skin is still cooling from sex, from being so close to him. She breathes in his scent, drowsy with it, like it's a drug. His hands slide up from her lower back and his arms wrap around her, much as they were at the end, right at the end when he couldn't bear any separation, when she was arching and the sound of her voice was so wild, so lost, that his arms held her in the world.

Like he could stop anything, and everything, from threatening to part them.

Her mood has faltered, and she draws away from talk of lives they no longer live and may not live. He notices. He couldn't help but notice it, close as they are. And he knows her, knows her better than anyone ever has. Knows her, she thinks, better than anyone ever will again.

"Sometimes," Danicka says quietly, "I feel like there was a door in me that's always been locked. Even I didn't know what was inside of it, and most of the time forgot it was even there. Then I met you, and the next time I looked, it was unlocked. Not like you had the 'key' or something sappy like that, just... I wasn't able to open it until after I'd known you. Inside was this whole new aspect to my life, all these things I didn't know before or couldn't do before or wouldn't have even thought of before. All of it so good, too.

"Whenever I think of what's going to happen to me if I lose you, it feels like -- well, not like I won't be able to go through that door anymore. I just don't think I'll want to. I'll want to close it most of the time, because all of it is so much a part of my life with you, and I won't be able to bear it. All this goodness turned painful because you aren't there anymore." It'll kill me, she wants to say, but she knows how his arms will tighten, how his heart will break, and she doesn't say it. She closes her eyes and listens to his heartbeat, to his breathing.

"I don't know if we've ever met before in a past life. Or if we'll ever meet again. I don't know if you'll be able to wait in the Homelands before your spirit is needed back on earth again, or if I'll be able to find you there. They're lovely thoughts, but I don't know. I can't put faith in the thought that maybe we knew each other before, and... it makes me think of losing you over and over, every time one of us dies. Life is full of so much pain, and what if in those past lives we couldn't ease it for each other?"

Danicka opens her eyes again, but doesn't lift her head. He's so very warm. "I don't mean that it doesn't feel right. And sometimes it does make me very happy to think about it all. But... what if this is the only time we've ever had, or will ever have? If this is the one time in all history that the universe let us find each other, at the right time so that we went through everything we did the way we did, distrusting and disliking each other and then reaching each other, loving each other, learning to trust each other, changing each other how we have. What if this was our only chance, and we had to hold close to each other and not let go because we might not ever get another shot?"

Her hand moves, and strokes his arm lightly. "I'm okay," she answers finally, a direct correlation to his question. "It means we were very lucky, and that we've done very well. But it's a bit sad, too."

Lukas

Even without her saying what she thought - that losing him would make all that goodness unbearable, that losing him would kill her - his arms tighten around him. The rise of his chest against hers is sharp, pained. He kisses her where her hair begins to sweep back from her temple, but her hair is askew right now, a torrent of gold - his lips catch on it, his breath warms it.

"If there's a Gaia at all," he murmurs, rough with emotion, "then this can't be our only chance. That would be too unfair. Too much to ask.

"I love you." That's so plain, so simple, so naked. And this could be maudlin, this could be trite, but there's such force behind his voice, quiet as it is: "I love you more than one short life can hold."

Danicka

Danicka's eyes are closed, or closing, aching because Lukas can't help but notice when there's sadness in her, and he can't help but ask, and she can't help now but tell him the truth. For the longest time now all she's wanted is to be able to see him happy, to be a part of that happiness, but she can't deny that sometimes the world is simply very sad. Sometimes the truth of the matter is: you have to hold on so tight, because things do fall apart. And losing the ones you love is inevitable, in the end. One just hopes not to lose them, before that end.

"Baby, don't," she whispers, her hand closing on his arm, her palm warm on his bicep. Her brow is furrowed, eyes opening once more, dark green with ache. "Don't be sad. I'm okay. I just don't want to think about this right now. I love what we have. It's enough."

Lukas

In the darkness, their eyes find one another. Lukas wishes he didn't see such ache in hers. He wishes he saw what he saw in those precious moments after: pleasure, and contentment, and happiness, and the inexplicable and delightful energy that all but zinged through her as she declared she was no longer tired.

She's no longer happy. He puts his hands on her face, big and warm and a little rough. He cradles her face in those hands, his thumbs along her jawline, his fingers wrapping around the back of her head. Gentle, very gentle. When he kisses her, though, it's a deep, passionate thing, emotion brimming to the surface.

"Miluj m znovu," he says. There's something oceanic, tidal, in the way he turns her under; the sheets tangling and unwinding around them, the bed soft under her shoulderblades. He's large and warm over her, his shoulders as broad as the sky, his hand warm as it finds her breast. "Miluj m , láska."

Lukas

[oh jove, how i hate thee. let me count the ways.]

Danicka

His heart aches, and she can feel it as keenly as he senses shadows to her own happiness. Don't, she says, and he holds her so tightly all the same, wishing them back to that moment right after, wondering what he did wrong, how he ruined it, what happened. Danicka kisses him, suddenly, half a moment before his hands on her face begin to pull her closer. It's firm, and filled with something life-giving, something invigorating.

She isn't unhappy now. She hasn't lost her happiness from before. There is simply more, as there always is to her. And it's hard for him not to see these thing as sunsets when they are merely shadows, darkness coexisting with the sunshine. Just as, sometimes, Danicka is that single point of brightness when everything else around him is velvet and black.

Danicka wears her ring always. She takes it off when they shower and she puts it back on when she steps out, before she dries her hair, before she pats the droplets of water completely off of her skin. And he thought -- and she thought, too -- it would never really matter to her. If they married or not, if they had rings or not. If it was legal or simply spiritual, if one of them changed their name or not. She hasn't quite come out and said that it matters to her, but he sees her and she doesn't treat that ring as another piece of jewelry. She wears it when she sleeps, and she wears it on ribbon around her neck when she's in the lab, and this summer he's seen that when she does take it off, there is a faint pale line across her third finger even though her hands are slightly tanned. Already.

Danicka kisses him quickly, suddenly, firmly. And he deepens it as he turns her under him, wanting her, and wanting her to be happy again just like she was before, and wanting, simply, for what he asks for:

love me.

Her legs are folding around him, soft and welcoming, her hands on his face, her fingertips in his hair. She looks up at him as he comes down over her, seeing an ache in him because she ached. But the strange thing is, the hard thing, is how much of their joint sadness comes solely from thinking they have caused it in the other. Danicka is all right. Danicka wishes she could tell him she's all right so that he could believe it -- that her thoughts may be sad, that they may be dark, but that is not all she is. That is not all she has.

Her hand slides around his jaw to the back of his neck, rubbing there once, before she draws him down to her, lifting her head from the pillows to meet him in the air.

Lukas

Moments before, when Lukas first turned his lover over him, she thought he meant to love her again. Her legs parted around his body; she was so warm in her welcome, and the thought flashed through his mind like a fish in dark water. But they didn't make love then. They talked, and talking, grew sad. Ached at the possibilities and the unknowns. Held on to each other, tried to find each other again. Find each other now, their hands pulling one another close, mouths meeting. He sighs into her kiss, a soft, low sound of want and pleasure and relief as her legs fold around him.

They make love like that, half-tangled in her sheets. She pushes them down off his back as he raises himself on his elbows over her. His mouth finds hers again; they're kissing when he enters her, kissing so he can catch that first sound she makes on his tongue, give it back to her. His hand moves down her body, deliberate, not lightly. He finds her clit with his thumb and strokes her, fondles her as he fucks her, moves into her with those long, solid strokes of his body that she can feel under her palms when she puts her hands on his chest, on his abdomen, down his sides to pull him into her.

When she comes, he's bringing her off with his hands and his cock, giving it to her while she arches under him, giving it to her while she's grasping at his body, the sheets, whimpering and crying out because she can't, she can't take it sometimes, and he's kissing her open mouth and kissing her trembling lip and his hand is over her head, protecting her; he's whispering she can, she can, she can take it, that's it,

oh god come here,

and then he's scooping her off the bed and sitting up on his heels, and she's wrapped all around him and her breath washes over his shoulder; her arms are wrapped around his shoulders, her hand in his hair, and he's kissing the side of her neck furiously and fiercely as she starts to move again.

And later she's riding him and he's leaning back on his hands and he's moving up into her and her hands are on his shoulders, her breasts are small and soft against his chest, she's the one biting his shoulder this time as his hands clench in the sheets; he throws his head back and shouts, rough open vowels of exultation, when he comes.

A second after that his arms are around her. He's holding on to her so tightly and he's biting at her shoulder, at her neck, until they find one another again and kiss raggedly, gasping; she makes him gasp as she winds her hips on him, squeezes him inside her, draws out the last mindblowing sparks of pleasure until he's leaning heavy and warm against her, eyes closed, holding her.

Lukas is quiet, then. Shuddering now and then; gentled, and quiet.

Danicka

Lukas makes love to her again like he needs it, suddenly and fiercely. Before they were almost playful. Patient, even a little slow at first. They tangled in the sheets and laughed until they were gasping and he was urging her gently to come for him, telling her he loved her, over and over. This time, though, there's something hungry in him when he puts her body under his and fits himself into her legs, into her arms, into her body. And Danicka, because she is his mate and because she is Danicka, understands. Danicka, because she made him sad, needs badly now to be close to him, to see him lifted up again, to make him happy. To heal him, the only way she knows how.

The room grows as hot as their skins this time, Lukas holding himself up so he can pleasure her, kissing her so he can swallow every sound she makes, and Danicka shuddering under him, quivering around him, whimpering, moving that body of hers into his hands as they run over her.

There's hardly a breath to be taken between her orgasm and Lukas drawing her up, holding her onto him, and she cries out at the suddenness of it and then moans as she sinks back down onto him. She holds onto him, all but clinging to his shoulders, holding him close while he puts his hands on her hips and groans, wordlessly begs her to fuck him, fuck him. Which she does, achingly slow at first, barely able to move after what he put her through, whimpering as her overstimulated skin sends shocks through her entire body. Then faster, regaining her breath and her arousal and pulling back to look at him as she rides him, watching him rather than biting him, telling him

that's it
that's my good boy
give it to me
fuck that cum in me

til he can't hold on any longer, til he grabs the sheets like she was clinging to him moments ago, filling her room with the sort of sounds he never considered letting himself make before he trusted her. Before he knew her. Before he could see, and feel, how much pleasure she gets out of hearing him. Before he knew that Danicka, deviant little thing that she is, might very well work herself on his cock faster even as he was coming, tormenting him,

to get herself off on him again, til he's ragged and pleading with her to stop, oh god, stop, even though she's trembling and moaning again, coming again, collapsing across his shoulder. Her hair spills over his arm, and she pants helplessly after that, holding onto him. It's only fair: she's worn out now from riding him, from coming four goddamn times tonight, from fucking like this. She's limp afterward, and so is he, and yet their arms hold onto each other tight. So tight.

What seems like a very long time later, Danicka nuzzles the side of his neck, closing her eyes.

Lukas

As though that's some sort of signal he's been waiting for, Lukas leans back, bringing Danicka with him. The world topples, or they do - they end up on their backs, heads at the foot of the bed, bodies slick and warm as they sprawl.

He's always liked that she's never bothered to get curtains. That every sunlit morning he wakes here, he can see tiny rainbows cast all over the room from the little ornament in the window. That every night he can look out and see the moon, see the stars, feel safe in his mate's den but not quite shut off from the broader world. This is what he thinks of now, tilting his head back to look out that bedroom window of hers.

Somewhere in this lovely, soaring den of hers - perhaps right here in her bedroom - is a bookshelf full of Lukas's childhood books. That warms him too, that that little piece of his past is here. His hand passes lazily up and down Danicka's back, and his breathing is slow and steady.

"I'm sorry if I made you sad," he whispers eventually. "It's just that I'm not afraid of anything when you're with me."

Danicka

She yelps again, and perhaps she knows that it amuses him and endears him all at once when she does this, like no matter how long she knows him, she's so surprised at the way he tumbles them around the bed all the time. Maybe she yelps the way children yelp when they roughhouse and play, because it's fun, because noises go with action and movement and it is nice to be able to make noise, to be loud, to romp and play and topple. But Lukas sprawls, as though to increase the amount of skin exposed to air to release the heat he's built up, twice as much as how warm he usually is. Danicka, conversely, wraps herself around him to increase the amount of surface area connected to him. He sprawls on her bed; she sprawls on him.

The bookshelf she bought when Lukas sent her his childhood library is now in her study, along with another one that is mostly full of textbooks and manuals. She quietly and steadily adds to her own collection because now she can. But here in her bedroom, which no longer has a desk nor bookshelves, there are her nightstands, and she always has one or two of his books on them, as though to keep him near when he isn't in her bed. And no, there are no curtains, never have been. The sun shines so infrequently in Chicago, she thinks, for just a few months at a time, she can't imagine locking it out. Or locking out the moon. Or the stars. Or the lights of the city itself.

She rests her head on the triangular pillow made of his bicep, shoulder, and pectoral, closing her eyes and settling down now that he's stopped flopping them around the bed. She's sweaty and sticky and wants to shower again, but no matter. Not yet. Not quite yet. And if he were to tell her to stay, if he wanted to drag the blankets around them and sleep all filthy like that, chances are she would. Chances are she'd smile, and move closer, and let him stroke her back just like this til she fell asleep.

When he speaks, her eyebrows furrow together. "You didn't make me sad," she tells him, as though surprised he thinks so. She lays her arm across him, protective. "Don't think it means I love you less," she murmurs softly, "that even when you're with me, I can still feel afraid, or sad. It doesn't even mean I'm unhappy, láska."

Lukas

It makes him smile that she lays her arm across him like that. Protective. It makes him smile, what she says, because --

"I know you love me. That's one thing I never doubt."

The smile goes away slowly. It doesn't die; it doesn't fade. It simply runs its course. Her air conditioning is humming, but Lukas has the sudden urge to throw open the windows - as much as skyscraper windows will open, anyhow. He wants to breathe fresh air, taste the night.

He settles for tasting her skin - kissing her brow, pressing his lips so gently to her face. "And I don't mind that you can be afraid or sad even when we're together. I want you to be happy, but ... you don't have to be happy for me."

Danicka

There are still droplets of sweat wet on her brow when he kisses her there, and his lips come away salty. Danicka smiles at the press of his mouth to her skin, closing her eyes, her brow smoothing. Her arm flexes over him for a moment, then relaxes again.

"I am happy," she says. "That's what I mean. I can think things that are sad or frightening and still be happy." She lifts her head from him a moment, her hair whispering as she moves, and looks at him, her lips caught in that strange, off-kilter smile of hers that tugs at one corner of her mouth. "And if you don't mind, then don't you get so sad just because I think of something that makes me ache."

Her hand moves up to his cheek, cups his jaw, and she bends down to his mouth. Danicka closes her eyes again as she kisses him, slow and soft, deep and warm. She breathes in deeply as she draws back, looking down at him. And her thoughts turn to the way the seasons are changing, the way the air outside is growing cooler and the days noticably shorter now. He thinks of throwing open the windows, and Danicka thinks, finally, of what she really wanted to do when she got that strange burst of energy out of nowhere:

"Let's go to the den," she says suddenly, whispering it. And she doesn't even wait, then, for an answer. She starts to lift herself up, scooting to the edge of the thoroughly disheveled bed, knowing full well how much earlier she'll have to get up in order to get to tomorrow's classes, and not caring. "Come on."

Lukas

In some ways, Danicka is so much more complex than Lukas. For all that Lukas is the one with two bodies - or five, depending on how you look at it - for all that he's the one with the titles and the responsibilities and the burden of war on his shoulders, he's a simple creature. He tried to make himself cold and cerebral and analytical; tried to adopt some harebrained philosophy that duty to the war should preside above all else, including everything he's fighting to preserve. Even now, when he's not with her, when he's out there and on duty and responsible, when he's got his game face on -- even now, he can make himself analytical, and ruthless, and even brutal.

But he's not. When he's with Danicka, she sees him as he is: a simple creature, warm, very affectionate. Happiness does not coexist with fear or sadness in him. That doesn't make sense to him, really, but then -- he doesn't understand a lot of things about his mate. And that's okay. One of the most important things she's ever said to him was, plainly and simply:

consistency is for children and pets. and i'm neither.

He puts his hand on her face as she smiles the way she does. He doesn't know how to smile like that either, odd and quirky, not the flashing practice glamourous smile she uses for the world but the smaller one, the hidden one that only he sees with any regularity. Lukas suspects strangers would find her public smile more beautiful. He wouldn't agree.

Even before her mouth touches his, he's lifting his head from the bed, meeting her in the middle. His eyes close, and they both sink down, and they share this kiss: slow and soft and warm and deep. When she draws back he looks content, warm, satisfied in a way that only has a little to do with the love they made.

Then, a glimmer of alertness in his eyes, instinctive and animal, when she draws away. "But -- " he begins, but he's not even protesting her idea; he's simply protesting that she's moved away. Her words click a moment later, and he sits up. Laughs, suddenly but softly. "Okay. I'll go grab Kando."

Danicka

"Hee. Kitty," Danicka says, her voice low and fuzzy over the word. The truth is, she was thinking that, too: to get Kandovany and put her in her little travel kennel, since the den has food and treats and food bowls and litter box and a bed already, for whenever Danicka goes out there alone or they go out there together. She grins at the mention of her cat, her poor little clawless feline who needs so much protection, who needs to be kept indoors or watched carefully outside so that she doesn't run off and get hurt, unable to hunt for herself, defend herself. The little cat who, for all that, is quite fierce and bites very hard as compensation.

The cat who, in many ways, is much like Danicka herself.

Danicka is complicated. She can think of such sad things without ever feeling as though her happiness has truly abated. For Danicka, happiness is less the exuberant and intoxicating emotion it is for so many people and more a state of being. She was not happy for much of her life. She is happy now. Even when she is sad. And Lukas doesn't quite grasp that, but that's okay. It can be maddening to be with Danicka at times, because there are nights when she bends over for him and he's grunting, swearing, calling her dirty names, calling her naughty or bad and she laps it up, but then there are nights when he does the exact same thing and she's stung, she wants him to be tender, she doesn't like that, not tonight. She doesn't like to talk about the children she's never had, might not have, but she keeps the little glove he brought back from the Underworld, the one he found in his pocket, the one Klarinka couldn't find, the one with the sparklies to keep her fingers extra warm. Danicka does not always make sense. He has to trust her. He has to trust that she is not lying when she says she can be happy and sad at once, has to trust that when she voices a preference in how he makes love to her it is not a rejection of him making love to her. He has to accept how different from himself she is,

and truthfully, he has. And he loves her for it. As she loves him, because he is so very simple sometimes. Because he is simple without being foolish or unintelligent. Because when he is happy he is wholly and completely so, even if that makes her feel a bit bad that she isn't always the same. Because he stopped trying to wear that game face in her presence a very long time ago, and yet she has never tried to expose him to the other Garou and Kin who don't know him as well. Because he makes her feel like nothing in the world exists but her when he loves her. Because he lets her be this wild, inconsistent, maddening thing and loves her still, loves her always, never harms her, never demands that she behave a certain way to keep his love. She doesn't worry much about being understood; a rather strong part of her likes being incomprehensible just fine. Lukas knows her better than anyone. Lukas loves her even when he can't make sense of her. It makes her happy.

Even when she's sad.

Danicka hops off the bed and sweeps her hair back of her shoulders. "I'm going to take a quick shower and then we can go," she says. Looks over her shoulder: "Do you want to drive, or are you too sleepy?"

Lukas

"I'll shower when I get there," he says, and he's sitting on the edge of her bed and pulling on his pants, the same ones he wore yesterday. "I'm just going to wear my dirty clothes anyway. And I can drive."

He stands, pulling his pants up and buttoning them. Catches her by the hand as she's passing him to go shower, tugs her back with a deft, playful little spin like they're dancing, kisses her again. His free hand finds its way from her cheek to her breast, and then all the way down to her ass -- how scandalous. When he draws back he's grinning, his eyes clear and bright.

"I'm going to go find kitty now," he says, mimicking her tone with a great deal of amusement and no malevolence at all. "Be right back."

Danicka

Her smile turns to a grin at him. It isn't that smile he thinks of as the world's smile, which is glamorous and gleaming but hiding something, a little bit coy, the very smile that infuriated him while simultaneously hinting that there was more under the surface, because it was just too perfect, too good to be true, too much what he knew Shadow Lords wanted from their Kin. No, the grin she flashes at him now is ...well, kind of stupid. She's so happy she figured out what she wanted. Not ice cream, not a walk in the park, but to go home to their den, open the windows and smell the garden and the oak outside, and sleep out there instead. She's quite pleased with herself. And pleased, bizarrely, with Lukas staying filthy.

Danicka goes easily when he grabs her hand, spinning a bit on the ball of her foot and then standing on her toes to reach his mouth. She slides her arms around his neck as he kisses her, breathing in when his hand finds her breast. Even though he just got dressed again, she exhales a sigh when he reaches down to her ass, their mouths parting. Danicka's eyes are slightly hooded, her body close to his. The truth is, if her body weren't all but aching from sex at the moment, she would touch him through his slacks. Stroke him until he hardened to her, ask him if he was sure, didn't he want to get clean, maybe she could --

but she doesn't play with his body the way he plays with hers just now. She's aroused, the reality of it flickering in her eyes as he touches her, but it's a fire she banks, smiling. "Oh, you know Kando. It'll take you a good twenty minutes to herd her anywhere."

Danicka stands on her toes and gives him a kiss on his cheek, smiling. She turns again, and walks a few steps down her hall to the master bath. She leaves the door open behind her as the water starts to run, and somewhere in the apartment, a collar-less and bell-free cat the color of marmalade hides under some surface where Lukas's arm can't reach. Her tail twitches as she readies herself, watching for his ankles.

About five minutes later -- it was, in fact, a quick shower -- Danicka's water turns off again. She lets her hair down, only the edges wet, since there was no need to soak her head. She is moving quickly, strange after a full day, slipping her finger back into its ring and throwing a few things she knows she doesn't have at the den into a large lavender purse. The clothes she wears are simple and just yanked from the closet, a pair of jeans with a tear at the knee and a long-sleeved black and white top she's had since Forever Ago. She doesn't even bother with a bra, and Lukas discovers she does own flipflops. Her bag doesn't match her outfit at all, and her hair is in a ponytail, and she looks flushed and excited when she comes out into the apartment proper, looking for him and for her cat. "Did you get her?"

Lukas

While Danicka showers and gets dressed again, Lukas is, in fact, herding the cat. It's a long process; it involves a lot of coaxing, a lot of cajoling, a bit of bribery and more than a bit of chasing. Kandovany doesn't like her carrier. It's small, even though it's the largest one recommended for her size, and more importantly it closes her up where she can't see anything very well. Recently, she's learned how to undo the zipper from the inside. It's a feat, considering she has no claws, but then - Kando is resourceful, and clever, and more than makes do with what she does have.

"Almost!" Lukas calls when Danicka comes looking for him, the tips of her hair wet, her cheeks flushed. Kando makes a dash for Danicka, and Lukas swoops in from above - catches the little feline under the ribcage swiftly and gently, scoops her up and puts her, finally, into her carrier. "Got her," he announces, grabbing his keys from the counter. "Come on."

His arm is waiting for her when she nears. He lays it over her shoulders, hugs her against his side. They leave her apartment with its huge glass windows and its granite countertops, stainless steel appliances; they ride down twenty-three floors and go over to the garage and find his car. Lukas is driving, so Danicka gets to hold Kando, and Lukas suggests that maybe they can let Kando out, she'd be so much more comfortable like that. Whether Danicka agrees or tells Lukas to stop spoiling the cat, Lukas circles down out of the parking garage and out.

The streets are quiet. It's too late for tourists, too late for traffic. Truth be told, Lukas likes Chicago in the wintertime better. The weather sucks, but the city seems vast and silent, primordial with its glittering lights and monolithic buildings. But then, he always was a creature of the cold.

It's a bit of a drive out to Stickney. Taking the Eisenhower out, he lets the car cruise at seventy-five, reaching across the center divide to hold Danicka's hand. They talk a little about trivialities. Do they still have eggs? He'll go get milk from the Jewel-Osco in the morning. He'll make breakfast so she can sleep a little longer, because she has class all day and he's just going to loaf around and zonk. But if she feels bad she can make him kolaches on the weekend.

He loves that their den is just past Home Ave. He loves their little den, period, and he muses that he better get started redoing the outer walls because it's almost autumn, and then it'll be winter. He worries a little about the magnolia they planted; it's so cold here, and that's a southern tree; he wonders if he should Awaken it, too, and

this is what they're talking about as he pulls into their little detached garage, the door rattling down behind them.