love you.

Danicka
It is February 26th, and the moon is high enough, swollen enough in the sky, to make every streetlight pound in Lukas's eyes.

The twins are nine weeks old. For Danicka, it has been nine solid weeks of waking in the middle of the night to feed, to comfort, to stave off exhaustion to take care of the newborns. Her half-sister went home at the end of January, and she has been struggling a bit. Taking care of one infant is tiring enough; taking care of two at the same time drains her to the dregs. She tries to be there for Lukas, after battles or moots or just when he comes home and wants to see the children or her, but every time his hand has run up her arm a certain way or he's looked at her a certain way she's all but started crying and it's not because she finds him repulsive or she finds herself repulsive but she's just. So. Tired.

Dr. Katz was stunned at how rapidly Danicka recovered from her C-section. As in: they had to work very carefully to avoid check-ups with Dr. Katz because they had no reasonable way to explain the total lack of an incision or a scar. But Dr. Katz has informed her that if she bounces back like this from twins, she could have as many children as she likes. Right now, Danicka is not interested in any more children and has silently considered informing Lukas that four was a joke, never again. But it's only been nine weeks.

Nine weeks where she has not had it in her to make love to him, or do much more than let him hold her, sometimes kiss or nuzzle her a bit just to feel something like close to her. Nine weeks and, let's be honest, much longer than that because the end of her pregnancy was so trying that Lukas couldn't even be with her during most of it. Even now he has to wait for thin moons and burnt-out husks of his own rage in order to come home at night and sleep on the same floor as his daughters. They moved into the nursery a couple of weeks ago, and last week

for the first time ever,

they slept for a solid nine hours. Through the night. Danicka cried. She cooed over them while she nursed and told them both how gorgeous and wonderful and beautiful and perfect they both were, yes. Kando meowed and got up on the couch to peer at the suckling infants, then grew bored and pranced away.

--

So now they've had a week of nights that weren't entirely sleepless, or: Danicka has. Finally. She recovers quickly, eating as healthfully as she can not just for her own sake but because everything she eats and drinks is, in a way, passed on. She pumps and she takes naps and she gets back into housework and she does yoga videos since she can't get to classes and the other day she got filled with energy and shoveled the walk from door to driveway just because. Every morning she puts her button-down nightgown back on and goes into the nursery next to their bedroom and sits in the double-wide armchair-like glider rocker that just magically appeared one day (one of two, actually, with a second downstairs). She takes her twins and nurses them with morning sunlight filtering dimly through the edges of the blackout curtains, in a dark room with a quiet beginning to the day.

Sometimes, on a new moon or a crescent when his rage is down to the dregs as well, Danicka warms up a bottle of breastmilk and sits beside Lukas in that rocker while he feeds Eliska or Tatiana. She leans on the back and watches the bliss on his face as he observes proudly how hungry they both are, how good their appetites are, because on some level they both know,

that means they are not, right then, terrified of their father.

--

Tonight, though, he knows: he will not be feeding his children. He will not be cradling them and he probably shouldn't even check on them because his mere presence in the nursery might wake them. He knows that the blood is rushing in his ears from fury unspent because there's no battle tonight, no hunt. Even the Wyrm goes a bit sleepy in winter, or so it seems on nights like tonight. Sinclair is in San Diego and doesn't wear a coat anywhere. Katherine is visiting family. Maybe he's heading home from the moot or from talking with Maddox or something, but he knows where his pack and his family are. Or thinks he does.

He gets a text. At a stoplight or the gas station he sees the message from his

mate, wife, dam of his cubs, soulmate, everything she is.

Don't come home tonight.

There's a second one after that:

Lucille is with the girls. I'm at the W.

Lukas
Those first nine weeks: they're trying. Neither of them can pretend for a second they weren't. In some ways they're even worse than those last few weeks of the pregnancy, when Danicka was so heavy with child that everything ached, everything hurt, every little thing set off any number of emotional detonations, but at least then it was just her who was so physiologically, emotionally unstable.

Those first nine weeks: it's her, it's Eliska, it's Tatiana, it's Lukas. It's all of them, because the girls are so tiny and vulnerable, and they can't sleep through the night without needing to feed, and all the sleep deprivation has Danicka worn thin, thin, thin as a rag. It's not that Lukas doesn't want to help. That's the heartbreaking thing: he wants to, and he tries to, but when the girls are so tiny and his rage is so great, some nights -- most nights -- he can't sleep near them, or in the same room as them, or under the same roof as them without causing them distress. And that makes some part of him want to howl, and that's on top of Danicka's sleep deprivation and exhaustion, and that's on top of the girls just...

...being infants. Which is very, very hard indeed, all that growing and developing, all the hard work of slowly becoming a person.

--

It was a goddamn miracle, a gift of gaia and Thunder and god almighty and whatever the hell else might be out there, when the twins sleep through the night. It was a cause for celebration. Lukas goes down to the Jewel-Osco and he buys one of those bakery cakes and he buys candles and the lady behind the counter wants to know whose birthday it is but then he tells her what he wants on the cake and she looks at him funny.

That night they have steak and wine and a cake that reads,

[i]CONGRATULATIONS!
58 NIGHTS OF SLEEPLESSNESS![/i]

--

The moon is full.

The moon is full and it pounds behind his breastbone; it burns in his palms. He spent time in the sparring ring throwing younger wolves to the ground, teaching them, coaching them, guiding them, but also,

if we're honest,

exerting dominance. Flexing his might. Nights like this he has to, he feels that urge in himself: to win, to seize, to hold down, to roar over. He's like an animal, and if it's not this it's something else, it's a hunt or a slaughter, and if it's not that then it'd be senseless violence. This is a better way. It doesn't quite sate the beast, though, and by the time he's in the car, in traffic, his rage is back; he wants to pound the steering wheel and shout at that idiot in front of him, the goddamn light is green, GO.

A text:

making his heart drop, making his tail droop and his ears flatten, but he knows she's right. He can't come home like this. He draws a breath and he starts to text back one-handed, but then the light goes green.

At the next stoplight he has a second text. He reads it:

and his heart rises, the hairs on his forearms rise with anticipation. His pulse rushes hot in his veins. He deletes the half-a-text he had written and replies, quite simply:

Room?

--

Twenty minutes later he's there. He's riding up the elevator. He can't remember the last time he was here, but he remembers what happened. He remembers the first time he was here, too. It seems almost a lifetime ago, but it wasn't. He knows what lifetimes feel like. He knows which memories come from the lifetimes before. Some of them, anyway.


Danicka
Room, he says, and she gives him a number. That is the last he hears from her until he knocks on that door, until some part of him tries to beat it down to get at her. She's there. He can smell the traces of her down the hall and from under the crack beneath the door in a way he never does on a crescent-night or a half-night.

The first time they made love it was a full moon. And they did not destroy each other.

--

It's strange to think what they have become, compared to what they once were: that he was once Beta to a Silver Fang who did not deserve much respect nor loyalty, that she thought she was incapable of love. That he has ended up the alpha of a powerful pack who does not even need to be in the same state most of the time to be a threat. That she has ended up a student, and not just a student but a wife and mother who, frankly, likes curling up in her extra-large glider rocker with a baby to her breast and a book in her hand.

--

The door of her -- their -- hotel room opens when he knocks on it. It's nothing insane, not the grandest suite, nothing like that. It's just a room. It has a bed. She's wearing lingerie and it's a babydoll over a pair of satin-and-lace panties and he can see the outline of her torso through the sheer fabric of the slip that slits up the middle of her body and her breasts have been torturing him for months now and they're held behind satin cups with lace overlaying and everything is pale pink edged in glossy black and the scent of her hits him all at once like walking out of a cold house into summer's wet heat.

Danicka had it in mind to talk to him, to say something about how long it's been, to assure him that she's ready, that she's wanted him for weeks and it's just been that she's been so tired, she could barely lift her limbs to do anything but what was explicitly necessary for the survival of herself and her cubs, but in the end

she just takes him by the back of the neck and kisses him, hard, devouring, hungrier than she's been in all the time she's known him.

For she's never waited this long, in all the time she's known him.

Lukas
When they met, they waited three whole weeks. He fought against himself for three whole weeks before he let himself give in to her, only to discover he wasn't giving in to her at all but to himself and -- at the risk of sounding trite -- to love. Three whole weeks! is how he thought about it for years, amazed at his restraint, his strength-of-will, his foolishness and foolhardiness.

Three whole weeks? he thinks now, scornful, because what a boy he was, what did he know about dry spells then. Three whole weeks? -- when it's been something like two, three months. Three full moons of spending the whole night awake, prowling, patrolling, sparring, fighting, running, hunting, doing anything he could think of to burn the energy off, burn the awareness and the hunger and the savagery off. Three new moons of lying awake beside his mate and wife and dam of his cubs, love of his life; three new moons lying there beside his lover who has not actually technically physically been his lover for one,

two,

three. whole. months. It's the longest they've waited for each other. It's been so long that he's not so much resorting to his hands as he's resigned to them. Showers have grown long indeed, and sometimes when he climbs out flush-cheeked and breathing hard he's found, to his vast chagrin, a bland-eyed Kandovany watching him with her tail twitching. He can't help it, he'd tell her if he thought she could understand or sympathize. It's been three whole months.

Maybe he'll buy another cake in the morning, he thinks, knocking on the door. And then the door opens

and every thought flees the wildfire in his mind

and her hand is on the back of his neck, pulling him down, but she hardly has to because he steps into her and he's a wall of muscle, a wall of lust, he wraps his arms around her and lifts her up and kicks the door shut and: her back hits the door a second later. He pins her there, suspended between his body and the door, and their kisses are wild, ravenous things. Wires tangling in a rainstorm. That image has occurred to him before, early early on; it comes to mind again, the crackling wet electricity of it, as he runs his palms up her body through the slip. He can't remember the last time he felt her like this; it makes his mind melt. Still, he hesitates when his hands reach her breasts. A breath, a beat, and then

reverently, his hands cup her tits, lift them, hold them warm and cradled in his palms. He draws back then. Looks at her face, her eyes. He breathes the word: " -- okay?"

Danicka
The sounds she makes.

--

Truth be told, Danicka has thought about getting herself off in the last few months. She's thought about it, and thought about Lukas lying with her, and sometimes she hasn't tried to make herself come because it might make him feel bad if she just wanted an orgasm and not to make love, and she's even touched herself when she got to the point of remembering that if he's that insecure then she doesn't know who he is at all, but

then she has fallen asleep.

Carrying two children is exhausting. Suckling and raising and waking up with two children makes her feel like the last nine weeks she wasn't even alive. She wasn't a person. She's just been a shadow, drifting between moments of sleep where her brain could begin to recover from sleep deprivation only to be stirred again too soon. Danicka know she has felt moments of lust or want or loneliness or guilt but she can't place them. She knows there have been times when she just wanted Lukas to hold her and then, while he kept his hands sternly in place and did not try to touch her, his cock would grow riotously, fervently hard for her and she would be overwhelmed by how tired she felt and how wearying it all was to want him to just hold her for god's sake and then

she didn't even have the energy to fight. She'd fall asleep.

--

But it has been months. Months without Lukas's mouth or hands on her breasts, months without his cock in her mouth or her cunt, months without lingerie or wrestling or the way he bites down on her when he comes, months without her working her orgasm off of him. It's been months.

He lifts her, turns her, puts her back to the wall and she remembers not the full-moon night when in this exact same position he managed to actually hurt her, actually make her feel not lust but panic and pain;

she remembers the second time they had sex. How akward it seems now. Two whole weeks after the first time. She turned herself over on the bed and he was about to nail her just like that but no: he wanted to see her face. He wanted to watch her. And they both knew she didn't want to go onto her back for him and they both knew that they both wanted that connection of their eyes and bodies meeting at once, so Danicka said:

the wall

and there he took her, lifting her thighs around his waist and losing himself in her. She took him and felt their sweat mingling until he made her come and told him:

not another two weeks.

God. What children they were, all of 4 years ago, thinking two weeks was too long to bear, to stand, to survive.

--

Danicka bites his lower lip when she kisses him, snarling. She has her legs locked at the ankles behind his lower back, urging him on. She clutches at him, nails raking his back through his shirt. He cups her breast through the lace and satin and feels her shudder; they are terribly sensitive right now, and she whimpers from even his palm cupping her there, tightening her legs' grip around him.

"Fuck, baby," she whispers, as he draws back. Her hands go to his neck, his shoulders, up into his hair to draw him near again. "What do you think you're here for?"

Lukas
That draws a flicker of laughter out of him, a huff of it, and this is different too: that they can laugh now. Even now, a moment like this, alive with intensity -- they can laugh, and not worry that the other will misunderstand, or flinch, or grow angry, or be hurt.

They can laugh.

They can kiss, too: like this, collapsing into each other, one of his hands leaving her body ever so briefly to steady them both against the door. Which nudges in the frame. Which thuds softly against its frame as their weight leans into it. He kisses her slowly, and thoroughly, and then gradually little by little it snowballs on itself until he's eating at her mouth, he's mauling her neck, he's grasping handfuls of that slip of hers and pushing it up, getting it up, sliding her up along that door until he can get

his mouth

on her breasts. God, the sound he makes them, this low needful muffled-moan somewhere between satisfaction and hunger. He knows she's sensitive. He knows her: that's the truth too, which was not the truth three, four years ago. He knows her and he knows this body of hers; he knows what it means when her thighs tighten like that, and her hands, and what it means when her back arches like that.

"Love you," he mutters, muffled. Where are his manners? His mouth is full. It doesn't matter, he rubs his face all over her, he kisses her over her heart and then he backs off just long enough to grab her slip and tug it up, up, all the way up, off. Onto the floor. He discovers he has never seen this set of lingerie before, and it delights him. It sets him on fire. His hands reach behind her, fingers searching, finding, he unclips her bra and then his hands trail down her back. He wants to watch her take it off.

Danicka
"Here," she whispers for him, pulling his hand between their bodies to a ribbon, a tie, something so human and so far beyond him right now that it hardly seems real. He pulls. The slip falls open, those slightly shaped cups falling away from her breasts. It just... parts like a sea at that point, baring her to his clothed chest, then his mouth when he bends his head to suck at her.

Like he hasn't in a very, very long time. Danicka does arch, elongating her spine against the door until only her hipbones and her shoulderbones touch it, letting out a hard gasp of want and need that verges on pain but:

he knows her, and knows that sound is not pained or hurting or angry but wanton, wanting, eager for him in a way he hasn't felt indulged in a very long time. He mutters something to her that she can barely process right now: he loves her. She laughs softly, but it doesn't last long; he's just rubbing his face on her tits and that makes the laugh tatter apart into a gasp. Her fingers tangle in his hair, which she has always loved. Thick and dark and silky and curling when it grows a bit too much, getting in his eyes sometimes, making her want him all the more even though she thinks he looks dashing with it shortened and trimmed.

She shrugs. He pulls at straps. The slip falls to the floor and she has just

forgotten

to feel uneasy about her body, about her form, about whether she's slender enough or pretty enough or wanted enough.

Danicka wraps her arms around him, wearing so much less than he is, kissing him slower now, closing her eyes as she leans into that kiss. "Baby," she whispers, her lips moving on his lips. "Baby, take me to bed."

Lukas
The truth is Lukas has only peripherally intuited that Danicka is just a little uneasy about her body. About the way she looks post-nine months of gestation with twins, post-birth, post-nine weeks of sleepless nights. He is not wholly unaware -- he remembers certain things she's said, and how for a very, very long time he hasn't even seen her naked except perhaps in glimpses and moments as she's stepping out of the shower or into it, changing out of her clothes or into them. But really: he can hardly fathom that she might be uneasy about how she looks. He can hardly conceive of it. She's so beautiful. She's so beautiful to him, specifically, and would be even if she were eighty years old. Even if she were a half-blind metis cripple. Even if she were

nothing but a spirit in the Homelands,

intangibly and inexorably linked to him across all the ages of the world.

--

He's hardly thinking metaphysics right now, though. He's thinking of how long it's been, of how smooth her skin is, of -- yes -- how beautiful she is, how absolutely fucking miraculous. She has to pull him up to kiss him again. He wants to just rub his face all over her, everywhere, roll in her scent like a dog. Like the wolf he is. She does, though: she pulls him up and he goes with a groan, he kisses her and it's slow, she slows him down, he fills his hands with her breasts again and now, this time, he's rubbing against her; he's grinding between her legs mindlessly and shamelessly, so rampantly hard inside those nice carbon-colored jeans of his that it's something of a wonder he hasn't just burst the damn zipper.

Take her to bed, she whispers. And oh, he meant to, he's meant to since the beginning. He wants to treat her like a lady, because she is his lady, his wife, all those things that sometimes he likes to just lie in bed and tick off in his mind. Girlfriend. Wife. Mother-of-cubs. Mate. One after another, like counting sheep, until he drifts into a contented sleep. He wants to treat her well, always wants to treat her well and protect her and give her everything he thinks she deserves, which is everything good ever. But sometimes,

like right now,

he just forgets, he can't keep his hands off her. He makes this sound, this groan like she's asking so much, he can't bear it, but then: yes, he lifts her off that door. He kisses her madly as they stand in the hall, kisses her while he makes his blind way down that short hall into the hotel room with its window overlooking the lake, with its sumptuous colors and rich textures. The bed is supportive and soft, and it gives so wonderfully as he bumps into it with his knees; tumbles her down on it. The bedspread is the richest shade of purple he could imagine right now, and she looks absolutely divine on it, her skin golden and aglow, her hair a halo. He stands to undo his shirt, his eyes on her, moving all over her. Love you, he thinks again, but this time he manages not to say it because he doesn't want to sound like a broken record. He doesn't want to sound like his brain has completely liquefied, even if that's the truth.

That makes him grin. That grin quirks his mouth, flashes his teeth. His rage is in the room with them too, a living, prowling, beating thing that lights every emotion he has. Even his joy, even his happiness: it is intensified, made tangible and oh-so-present. His fingers fly through his buttons. He's not wearing an undershirt. He pulls his shirt off, that crisp, light, summery, silvery-grey short-sleeved thing that he almost rips at the seams getting it off his shoulders. Then he's pulling at his belt, his buttons, climbing onto the bed with her because he can't. fucking. wait. He sort of faceplants on her, still working his pants open: faceplants her chest, sucks at her tits, doesn't even have the presence of mind for finesse right now. A scrape of teeth, and then he's kissing his way down her abdomen, and the frank truth is he doesn't intend to eat her out to orgasm, but -- he would like to have a taste. He'd like that quite very much.

Danicka
She must have planned this. Oh, that mind of hers, thinking leaps and bounds ahead of where her peers and even her professors are, her intelligence a wild, wyld, intuitive thing roiling in her skull as potently and as furiously as his rage boils inside of his heart. She must have planned this night, this room, this lingerie, even knowing he woud be coming from a moot or sparring or training or hunting or something to give himself a way to dull the edge of fury and longing in him. And then she gave herself over to that uncertainty and that insanity as willingly as she has ever given herself over to him, specifically.

Danicka kisses his mouth like she's drinking in the taste of him. She is not thinking of previous lifes or half-lived lives or even her body, her body that only a couple of weeks ago felt like her own again, the body she sometimes worries about because she's been told so long she is not strong or that her worth lies in her beauty that she almost disconnected entirely. Strangely, it helps to have done something so unimaginably powerful with that body: Lukas could not do what she has done. She formed life. She took matter and energy and created something new and uncontrollable, then doubled it, and now she feeds and nurtures it without even having to think about it. It awes her, how vast her own instinct is, how potent.

She is not thinking, all that said, of extra weight or unexpectedly full breasts or odd little marks on her skin. She is thinking of how unfair it is that he's clothed. All she wants is to see him naked. Can't he see that?

--

They go to the bed. He takes off his shirt and shrugs out of it and she hooks her fingers under the edges of her panties to start tugging them down. They only get so far as mid-thigh before she can't reach any farther, and by then Lukas is half-naked, pressing warm and solid against her, and she shivers at the thrill of their skins in contact.

"God, baby," she breathes, all a-whisper, as poignant and aching and needful as his repeated and sometimes silent thoughts of love you, love you: "I've missed you so much."

Missed him. Missed this. She arches her back, lifting her arms over her head, as he lowers his mouth to her nipple and sucks until she thinks she can't stand it, then moves on, his hands at his groin, ripping open his belt buckle, the button and zipper of his jeans. With her panties down the scent of her arousal fills his mouth and his nostrils; with her body laid out the scent of her sweat assaults him. She shivers as he descends, drawing one leg up, working her ankle free of satin and lace, hooking her leg over his shoulder.

She knows what he wants.

Lukas
She knows what he wants.

How can she not know? He's a man driven: beelining down her body. She lowers her panties. His eyes gleam, that perfect incandescent blue. She lifts a leg over his shoulder and that dark head of his turns; he kisses her inner thigh, his eyes closing, kisses her as fervently as he's ever kissed anything in all his life. Tongues her, then, follows the line of her thigh back to its base, and --

oh, there: tastes her, muffling a low growling moan against her flesh. The first time in months, months, longer than he can easily remember. Her hands go to his hair, perhaps; plunge in. It was a very long time before she let herself touch his hair, stroke it back, comb it over his ear the way she does. Grip it, the way she does. It was a very long time because they both fought so fiercely back then not to care, not to grow attached, not to leave themselves open or weak. That was before they realized just how much stronger they were like this, together. He has a hand under her thigh, pressing her legs gently and so firmly open -- holds her open like that, licking at her, quite literally lapping at her, tasting her, rubbing his face against her the way he rubbed his face against her breasts.

Rolling, one might say, in her scent. Which is intoxicating to him, as rare and unmistakable as...

... as anything else about her. His mind has quite melted. Metaphors are beyond him. He has a hand on the bed, gripping the covers, he's a second away from growling and snarling out of sheer want. He can't wait anymore, just like that. He grasps her hip and he pulls her hard against his mouth, he fucks her with his tongue for one ferocious, molten moment.

Then he's pushing up over her, the musculature of his torso flexing in one concerted motion as he comes up to cover her. He's gotten his pants open, at least. He kicks them down his legs, kicks free of them, moves up over her as he's working his boxer-briefs down with one hand. The other supports his weight. His mouth is wet, his chin is wet, he has her slick all over his face and he kisses her tits like that, sucks her nipples like that, kisses her mouth like that, inhaling sharply as their bodies touch. His skin is hot, and his chest presses to hers; his underwear is somewhere around his thighs, his knees, when he settles between her thighs. It's the first time in an unimaginable stretch of time. He slides against her cunt and the feel of it nearly blows every synapse in his head.

"Missed you too," he manages, a harsh low mutter, as though even grammar were beyond his reach now. "Fuck, I missed this."

Danicka
When, for weeks and even months, Danicka would not allow herself to dig her nails into him or set her teeth in him or bury her fingers in his hair, she was not avoiding or shying from her own want for him. Maybe Lukas was; maybe he resisted how drawn to her he was, and maybe he hated her for being so inexplicably, utterly precious to him. Danicka never questioned it. She denied it entirely at times, but that is not the same as fighting it, and would not have stopped her from showing him in the middle of sex how well he aroused her.

She was afraid he would hurt her. She was frightened that his dominance or his pride would not tolerate her nails on his flesh or her bite or the pull on his scalp as she grabbed hold of him. Even the first time he put his mouth on her like this, Danicka clutched blankets rather than his body or his hair, because the truth is:

the man he was then would have resisted it to the point of violence. He might have grabbed her and pinned her, snarled at her, warned her not to take him for granted, warned her not to relax too much, warned her that he was not to be tamed or kept or manipulated, whatever it was she had in mind. The man he was then might actually have hurt her for daring to enjoy him too much, too viscerally, too powerfully.

The man he was trying to be, perhaps, is a better way of putting it. He was alway struggling against his own nature with her.

His nature. Think of it: the nature that finds some measure of joy and hope that springs eternal now because he has lived, and found her, and freed their friends from an endless prison, and brought children into the word with her, his love, in this life and others. The nature that learns to cook a little because his father taught him that, who understands a bit of stiffness and austerity because his mother is like that, who is a bit silly and wild because he is like that and his sister is like that times ten. This is who he is. This is who he has finally allowed himself to be: the sort of man who rents a twelve-seater van so that he can drive almost his entire family all at once.

The man Lukas is now, perhaps always was once he stopped fighting it, is not a man that Danicka fears will hurt her for wanting him, for opening herself to him, for arching her back as he licks at her, fucks her with his mouth, groans into her pussy like he's dying for it.

One of their hands grabs those slightly-dampened panties and drags them off her legs. Danicka helps him push off his jeans, the underwear beneath them. And it's Danicka, when Lukas is finally naked wiht her and rubbing his cock over her, who reaches down

and takes hold of him

and guides him into her. Now. Right there, pushing into a shockingly, mind-alteringly tight cunt. She clenches around him instantly, wrapping her legs around him, tilting her hips to take him as deep as she can bear right now, after so long. Her pussy... ripples. That's the only way to put it. She shivers under him, fucking him without a word in answer not because she doesn't care but because she couldn't wait any more.

Lukas knows her.

He knows that sound she makes when he fills her like this, and the stroke of her calf across his ass.

He knows it won't be long before she comes.

Lukas
Lukas would be lying if he said he didn't, during the course of that pregnancy and afterward, consider the future of his sex life. He wondered if it'd always be quiet and quick and secret henceforth, sneaking a tumble in the precious hour or two they had to themselves every night after the girls were asleep; stealing a fuck at midday after they dropped the girls off at taekwondo class. He wondered

if once in a while

they might just hire an overnight babysitter. Make reservations at Spring, or Szalas, or any number of restaurants scattered around the city. Take the night off and go to the W. Or Affinia. Or Trump International. Check into a room, hang out the DND sign, lock the doors, and just

eat each other up. Just like this.

--

He's hardly prepared for it when she reaches down to wraps her fingers around him. It's been so long that even that makes his cock jump, makes him gasp, makes him drop his brow to hers and let out this long, low moan that roughens into what is quite unmistakably a growl as she guides him

(home)

into her. He has both hands fisted on the comforters, grasping the sheets instead of her infinitely more precious skin. She can feel him -- resisting, almost, holding back, but she wraps her legs around him, her cunt pulls at him, she pulls him in and he can't resist that, he just can't. He slides into her and his hand slides under her, supports her lower back, brings her body tight against his. He makes that sound again, lost and found at once, wordless past her ear. His mouth is on her shoulder. He kisses her, he bites her so very gently, so very lovingly, and she makes that sound that makes him almost lose his mind.

She is unbelievably tight, unbelievably hot and wet, the cradle of creation, the holiest of holies -- his mind is full of superlatives, and then it's just full of lust. He fixes his teeth in her more firmly. He gasps against her skin, sliding a few slow, mindbending inches out; and then in again, there's flexion behind that, power behind that, the first real thrust he's given her in -- god, how long? Now both his hands are on her, wrapped around her, holding her close. Precious thing. Precious girl.

"Love you," again, muttered-muffled against her shoulder. He knows it won't be long before she climaxes. He knows it won't be long before he comes. Neither of them can hold back, it's been so long, and some part of him wants, savagely, to take advantage of what time they have, just fuck her, pound her, go at her like the animal that moon in the sky makes him and marks him for. He wants that, but:

the night is young, there's time for that later,

and right now -- he wants to feel her, fuck her slow, he wants them both to feel this and own it, live in it, live in each other. Just for a while. Her hands pull at his back, her ankles bring him in. He moves into her again, and now it's rhythmic, a pattern as old as the stars. He has his teeth in her, he has his eyes closed; he fucks his mate just like this, slow and firm and close; just the way he should after a goddamn eternity without this.

Danicka
There was a time, and it seems like ages ago now, when Lukas returned from the underworld to find that spring would in fact come again, that winter would fade, that the cycle would continue. He came back to the woman who is, to his mind, spring herself even in the depths of winter, and told her for the first -- though not the last -- time that one of his greatest fears in that realm was that she didn't want that. That was a home, and children with him. That was the suggestion that she would give her life over to that home and those children. Her love of science, her love of autonomy and independence, her freedom, her education -- there was no hint in that ritual about whether or not Danicka still had a life of her own or not.

There was another time, now over a year ago, which seems even further in the past, when Lukas sat with her in a cloud of comforters and told her that fear again. Maybe he never put it in these exact words, and maybe he did, but he didn't know if they could just run off together and fuck on someone else's hundred-dollar sheets anymore. They made the decision that day, and Danicka made an appointment with her OB/GYN, but she also made an appointment with her financial advisor. After that appointment,

Danicka sat down in the study that is now a nursery and pulled up her portfolio, her statements, her accounts to show to her boyfriend-mate-husband. And Lukas did not get to finish high school or go to college but he fucking knows math and he manages a rather robust portfolio of his own so there wasn't much explaining that needed to be done once he got a look at things. Danicka is wealthy. Danicka is beyond 'well off'. Danicka could live like Katherine, could live like many Silver Fangs, could own multiple properties and take on sevant-staff and drive a Tesla and a Veyron and whatever the fuck else she wanted and still have enough to ensure both college payments and trust funds for one child. Or four.

She lives in her little wonky house and plans on shopping at IKEA and Dominick's and making kolache at home and thinks that if they should buy something big later on it should be, perhaps, an upright piano to teach their kids on. Probably a used one. And maybe later she'll trade in her Infiniti and get some sleek, sporty SUV-type thing that disguises the fact that it seats 7 and is technically a family vehicle. Or she'll keep the Infiniti and get the SUV anyway and they can expand the garage or something.

Still: the concern wasn't ever just money. It was time. It was energy. It was about balancing the war and school/career and children and each other and a million things that matter to them. And Lukas wasn't the only one who wondered, sometimes, what would become of the two of them, and their desire for each other, and their time together.

--

This.

Lucille is the one person Danicka could think of outside of their own blood relatives who she could leave the twins with in utter confidence this early, and she spoke to Kate and spoke to Lucille and she cradled and hugged and kissed the babies and in the car with her overnight bag she cried a little, it's true, because a small part of her was howling and scratching to get back to them and hug and cradle and kiss them and tell them she'd never ever ever ever leave, but really

another part of her was howling in jubilation, in freedom, stretching out and shaking her fur and snarling with the urge to run, to leap, to hunt, to grab her mate by the hair and fuck him on someone else's hundred-dollar sheets.

--

Lukas's cock jumps in her hand and she pants raggedly, shiveringly; she strokes him off a bit, reveling in the feel of him in her palm, but neither of them can wait much longer, if at all. She takes him into herself, wrapping her long legs around him and pulling him closer. She feels him resist. She urges him on until he relents, pushing into her with that hard groan, holding her, burying himself again, setting his teeth into her in a way that makes her shudder all over. Danicka lays her hands over his back, her eyes falling closed in glory at the way he feels like this. She thinks for a mad moment that she could come just from this right now, just from smoothing her hands over his back, just from touching him.

"Oh, fuck," she breathes, sliding her hands down to his ass and pulling at him, raking her nails up his flesh to feel him shiver, to make his cock jump inside of her. He thrusts and sparks go off behind her eyes; she nearly faints, and sweat is breaking out over her skin, slicking her, making her heart pound with painful intensity. He mutters again that he loves her, he loves her, and she snarls in answer, wordless now, lifting her legs higher to take him deeper.

Danicka is trembling by Lukas's third thrust, which he is taking with agonizing slowness, steadiness, self-control that blows her mind and makes her whimper. She is arching her back, taking that fourth thrust, that fifth, making these soft-and-loud, rhythmic-chaotic shuddering little noises. She's lightheaded when she comes, comet-fast, burning up through the air itself, her cunt clenching at him so hard she thinks briefly that oh no, she's going to hurt him, but then she's not thinking at all, she's just holding onto him, trying to stay conscious through it, trying to survive when she can barely stand what this is doing to her.

--

It is, she thinks, some of the most dangerous sex she's ever had. She's dizzy in the aftermath, her head spinning and her eyes staying closed, her lips trembling as much as her limbs are, her heart thudding frighteningly against her breastbone. Her breath is shallow and wild and she can't stop working her hips on him, circling them and clutching at him with her pussy, running her hands up and down his back and sides like, yes,

she's going to come again just from touching him.

Lukas
He's never told her, but it worries him a little when she gets like this, so far gone, her heartbeat sickeningly fast, her body trembling like a leaf. He's never told her, but it stirs that part of him that is dark and warm and protective and brave, but oh, that worries all the time. He's never told her, but the very first time they made love, had sex, whatever they called it then -- the very first time he made her tremble like this -- it made him afraid for her, and so very tender toward her; it made him want to wrap himself around her, even then, and protect her from

anything.
everything.

He's never had to tell her, though. She must have known, sensed it on some subconscious level, even that very first time. Because he put his hand on her shoulder. Because he asked her, because she had been shaking a moment ago, because they were so far gone in each other:

Je vám zima?

--

He doesn't ask her that now. He doesn't, but he does -- ache for her, ache to guard her, protect her. God, she feels incredible, mindblowing, and the way she moves under him and against him and on him opens a black hole at the center of his brain, threatens to suck every thought, every shred of consciousness he has in. He could come just like this. He could close his eyes and bite her shoulder and just -- give in, let it take him over.

He could, but: she's breathing so fast. Her heart is beating so fast. And he's folding over her, he's wrapping his arms around her, he's holding her like he wants to hold her together; he's pushing into her and pushing against her and holding her there, leveraging her against the bed, stilling her the only way he can,

stop,

stop.

Not because he can't take it -- though he can't -- but because he's afraid for her. Because he's crushed with tenderness right now. Because he wants to wrap himself around her and protect her from anything. Everything.

He kisses her neck. He kisses the lobe of her ear, and the arch of her cheekbone. He kisses her mouth, too, this endless drenching kiss that draws from the deepest reserves they have, and all the while he's inside her, quite literally throbbing with want; he's holding still and holding her still and waiting, waiting, waiting for her vitals to right themselves again.

Love you, he thinks; it's the only thought in his head. Love you, love you, love you.

And: when her lips have stopped trembling,

when her thighs have stopped shaking,

when she's not clutching at him with her hands and her legs and her cunt and everything else, every inch of her, his kiss gentles. He nibbles at her lips with his own. He backs off a little, looks at her; her eyes green as anything he's ever seen, and the pupils wide and dark and wild. He kisses her again, then, his eyes closing, his body moving again, so slowly and so firmly.


Danicka
Oh, he's never had to tell her. She's seen the look in his eyes and felt the way his arms tense around her, simultaneously wanting to crush her closer to keep her safe and stop himself because he can't crush her, no, that is the opposite of protecting. She feels him now, but only at the end, when her mind is coming back together again.

Danicka feels that black hole in herself, too. That core of lust, dark and consuming, that makes her nearly faint against those deep purple covers. She pants and she breathes and when her breathing starts to steady out, he moves in her again. Then: Danicka whimpers, tight and small in her throat, her cunt clenching instantly on him, responding even now, even when she can't stand it.

It strikes her, when he gives in to letting himself thrust again, move in her again, how he nuzzled and nibbled and kissed and even licked at her while he was waiting. She doesn't think that she could bear it, tonight, to kiss him without moving on him. She wonders how he bore it.

Then again: it's been months. And he's never pawed at her while she turned away. He's never snapped the sheets back in frustration and left her there in bed so he could just go jerk off, god dammit. He has never, in four years, made her feel for a moment like what he wanted from her was sex, that what she was good for was sex, that he would not love her if he could not come in her. He might have tried, that first night, to pretend. He failed miserably, perhaps because it was a lie and his own body knew it, and perhaps also because Danicka refused to let him. But for the past three months he didn't unleash his own longing and frustration on her, or blame her for it, or resent her for it.

And: it's been months. Yet he doesn't slam her to the floor or the wall or the bed and yank aside her panties and just nail her, savagely, ruthlessly, heartlessly. He must want, on some level, to just mount her and fuck her and come in her, but he hasn't. He loves her softly, slowly, though his tenderness does not make him any less firm or any less wanting. Danicka's chest aches for him, her heart opening so much with love that it's painful.

She holds him more closely, and moves her lips to his ear and lets the words curve into the curl of it, whispering to him:

"Come in me, baby. I want to feel you come inside me. Come for me."

Lukas
Danicka's mate is so very strong. A beast of war, a creature carved for and carved by the brutality of their lives, their reality. She's known that since very close to the beginning, and she can feel it so starkly now: the power in that body against hers, the strength leashed into the way he moves in her. He is so very strong, but

when she whispers to him like that, she can feel him trembling. She can feel him shuddering all down his spine, gasping against her skin. When she wraps her arms around him like that, there's the strange and poignant sense that -- though he covers her, though he's so much larger and so much more powerful -- she is the one protecting him. She is the one shielding him, warding him,

protecting his heart.

He kisses her neck. He wraps his arms around her, tighter. His brow touches hers; his eyes are closed but his face is close to hers when he starts to move in her, love her, fuck her. There's a momentum in him, as steady as a drumbeat, a heartbeat, as waves coming in to shore. She can hear him breathing, and so soon thereafter she can those breaths become pants, hear those pants become groans. His hand leaves her back, paws inexactly over her hair, grips the sheets beneath her. He doesn't want to leave her, so -- when he can't help but bow his head past hers and to the bed, he finds her shoulder with his mouth. He sets his teeth in her, primordial, primitive, takes her firmly and adoringly in his mouth as he

strains over her, flexes into her, the moment crystallizes, he thrusts hard, he goes quiveringly still,

his orgasm hits him like a hammer. Like a bomb. It is intractable, it is unbearable, there's an instant when he can't even breathe, and then: he's groaning, he's letting out these short, ragged noises, he has the sheets gripped so hard in his hand they'll wrinkle, they'll bear a tracery of what they did to each other as indelibly as their bodies will. He moves into her with such smooth force, catches her up on the tide of his pleasure, bears her with him, takes her under and past and beyond some amorphous edge,

past which he can only hold on to her, shudder and jolt inside her, gasp for breath that always eludes him.

--

It was brief, all told. Brief and incandescent and overwhelming. Leaves him washed up on some shore, god knows how long later. He rolls to the side; he holds on to her. He holds her achingly close, eyes closed, thinking,

still,

of how she shook in his arms. She is mine, mine, my, mine, he thinks, and he will protect her. That is his job, as it is hers to protect him. He's missed her so. Or; no. He's missed this. He hasn't missed her, couldn't have, because she was never gone from him. Not really.

Danicka
Every moment of that was brief. It's been -- what? Fifteen minutes? -- since Lukas knocked on the hotel room door. That's all it could have taken them. That's all it took for them to rip each other's clothing or lingerie off. That's all it took for Danicka to come, trembling and shaken, and all it took for her to pull him after her.

They have all night. She wants to remember that. It isn't very late, even, and they have all night to be together, as slow or rough or playfully as they would like. She melts around him as he comes, and as he comes down from his orgasm, her legs still wrapped around him and her arms around him and her lips tracing over his face, kissing him again and again wherever her mouth happens to fall.

"Oh, baby," she mutters, whispers, here and there. "Oh, my mate."

--

A little time goes by. He's there holding her, covering her with his arm and perhaps with his leg, holding her against his body with his face turned to her, eyes closed against her. Danicka nuzzles him loosely and inexpertly, smiling to herself. She kisses him and smiles and keeps her eyes closed while she smells him, sliding her leg against him so her calf strokes his flank, his thigh.

"Missed you," she whispers, and she means this, and she means the way he is now, buried inside of her. Outside, the moon only rises higher in the sky, urging him on. Danicka slides her hand down his arm from his shoulder, drawing his hand up to her breast, those breasts he hasn't been able or allowed to cup in his hands, stroke and kiss and lick and suckle and rub his face against for so long, and then she lowers her mouth to his mouth to kiss him again.

"Missed fucking you," Danicka whispers, giving a faint shiver as her nipple hardens again to his palm.

Lukas
Mmm, he murmurs to that first whisper - a low rumble of sound, a vibratory not-word deep in his chest.

And then: that second whisper. And all at once his eyes spring open. Bright as fire. Focused as flame. He looks at her across a landscape of rumpled bedspread, askew pillow, looks at her with those fierce, adoring eyes of his.

That warm hand she drew to her breast molds over her flesh. He kisses her back, as fervent as if he'd never faltered for a moment at all, his mouth opening to hers, his body turning under hers to lift her atop.

Both his hands on her breasts, then. Touching her, playing with her, caressing her. He looks at her breasts in his hands. He looks at her body over his. He looks at her eyes, her mouth - lifts his head, catches her lips. His hands follow her spine down; smooth over her ass. He shifts her closer.

"Again," he whispers: one part question, one part offering, one part demand.

Danicka
That's all it takes. And she knows it. She knew it when she decided to start nuzzling and kissing him, and long before she reached for his hand. She knows she could have stroked his hair back and looked at him a certain way and had him on her again, hard for her again, leaving another red mark in her winter-fair shoulder with his teeth. Danicka knows him very, very well, and where the buttons are, and where the lines of gunpowder are. She thinks that tonight, if he can bear it, she's going to devour him every which way she can. She's going to have him over and over and over until he can't move anymore. It's been nearly a year since her body has been her own, nearly three months since her mate's body was her own as well, and she has him all night. He is hers: all night. And forever.

Danicka goes smoothly over him, while he caresses her tits and stares at her like that. Her thighs open over his lap, her eyes watching his burning ones. She reaches up and runs her fingers broadly through her hair, half-smiling as he holds her hips and her ass and urges her eagerly down closer to his cock, and then she rubs herself against him, feeling him stiffening automatically to her heat and her slick. That smirking, lopsided smile only grows.

"Again," she whispers back, part confirmation and part blessing and part,

yes,

demand.

Danicka leans over him, resting her hands on the pillow beneath his head, kissing his mouth lingeringly. "I want you to put it in me this time, baby. I want you to move me on you."

Lukas
She makes him moan again, letting that sound slip low into her mouth. She makes his hands slide slow and heavy down her back, and grip at her hips, and grind her along the shaft of his cock.

That makes them both gasp. That makes their mouths lose hold, makes him draw a quick sip of breath from the air between. He glances down. She's straddling him, half-crouched over him, and with her hands on the bed beside his head he's reminded of some wild animal, some predatory thing. He's reminded

that she is half-wolf herself, with eyes as wild as his.

He levers her up with his hands. He grips himself, holds himself for her, and with his other hand he urges her down, down; he finds her again and he --

doesn't thrust, no. He fits himself to her. The veins in his arms stand out, the ones branching over his hand, the one riding the crest of his bicep. He pulls her down, his breath held, his abdominals clenched, jumping; his head falling back as he slips past that first, mindblowing tightness.

"God," he whispers. And then his hands on her hips, both of them, gripping at the crest; drawing her down until he's inside her, until she's sinking down on his lap, until they're joined as utterly as they can be.

A few beats. A few breaths. He lifts her. He slides her, groaning, watching her now. He moves her, his hands firm and strong on her body, her body unbelievably tight, hot, so fucking good that he almost -- almost loses sight of what

an act of trust this is.

Danicka
She intends to make him make that sound again.

And again and again.

And again.

Danicka does work herself on him, stroking herself against his length, panting softly, looking down at him as though perhaps he can read her mind this time, as though maybe he can see reflected in those mottled, shifting green irises how very much she wants him, how much she has always wanted him, how fully and how instantly he pleases her just by showing up, just by looking at her like he's about to blow a fuse, just by stripping off his clothes and showing her his body and letting her touch it and letting her do this to him and move his hands here and getting hard for her because her voice hits a certain tone or because she touches his hair a certain way. She looks at him as though maybe tonight, he can finally see every thought in her mind,

and maybe he can. She has, over time, hid less and less of those thoughts from him. Especially now. Especially times like this, when he lifts her and slides her down on him gently, gently though still he has to want to be quite un-gentle indeed. She lets out a soft cry, wavering and gasping at the air like it's trying to stay aloft instead of falling to shatter against his torso.

Danicka circles her hips on him when he slides into her. She watches him clench up, his torso tight and firm and sweat-riddled, his head falling back like he can't stand it.

So tenderness, right then, destroys her, and she leans over him, breasts to his chest and body in his hands, seeking his mouth to reassure him that everything is okay, that they were made for this, that she likes it too much for him to stop, please don't stop, please, please,

which she is then whispering as she kisses him, whimpering as he throbs inside of her,

please. please, baby, don't stop.

Lukas
Stopping is the last thing on his mind. He can hardly stand it, but stopping is not on the menu, not in the options, not even remotely on his horizon. She kisses him and her words blur across his mouth. He takes her hips in his hands, he holds her in his grasp; he's careful with her, of course he's careful with her she's his mate, but every time she kisses him,

and every time she gasps into his mouth,

and every time she whimpers for him to please don't stop he loses another piece of his mind. Until he is, in fact, moving her faster. Until he's rocking her on his lap, drawing her down, grinding her on his cock; until he's watching her eyes and seeing those sensations skittering across her irises like shooting stars,

like stars exploding,

like maybe he really can, finally, see every thought in her mind.

--

He kisses her, ferociously, when she comes. He devours her cries, he breathes her ecstasy, and when it's over he rolls her on her back while she's still liquid, still molten, still mindless with it. He moves over her and he wraps his arms around her and he comes in her in three short, hard strokes; almost skirting the edge of roughness. No shouting, that time. No roaring. Just low, bitten-back grunts, and then the shudders that wrack through him as he falls apart.

They come up for air after that. They roll apart a little, though his leg still crosses hers, and his arm drapes her shoulders. He pants for breath. His chest is shining with sweat; his temples, the dip of his neck. The ceiling is beautifully lit, all soft indirect lights. He closes his eyes for a moment, and then

he turns toward her, rolling slowly onto his side like some great and lazy underwater beast.

Lukas doesn't say anything. Neither of them have said anything about what they intend with each other tonight, but oh; it's quite obvious what the plan is. What was it she said, so long ago? Fuck until neither of them can walk. Fuck until they see eternity. Fuck until...

...well. Until they have to go take the girls off Lucille's capable hands, anyway. Morning, at least.

So: he rolls toward her. And then he rolls over her. And there's a glint in his eye, there's a gleam of teeth in his smile, as he leans over her and

quite deliberately

takes one of those lovely pink nipples of hers in his mouth. And just ... tongues it, licks it, sucks at it like it's his newest and favoritest toy.

Murmurs through a full mouth: "...again?"

Danicka
Again, they each said, and again they love each other, Danicka slowly losing the ability to let him move her or grind her, and he doesn't mind, not at all, when she starts to just outright ride him against the bed. Let's be blunt, though a bit crude: her breasts are bigger than they once were, and that's because she squirmed naked on top of him and told him she wanted him to give her a baby, and he was so eager to please her that he went a bit far and gave her two.

Danicka loves his hands on her breasts. She always has. He knows she loves it when he palms her ass and squeezes her there, rakes his nails over her, and he knows she likes it when he nuzzles her tits and laps at her nipples, just like he knows she loves it when he can't bear it anymore and rolls her over onto her back.

She squirms when she comes, grinding hard on him, squeezing him as though trying to elicit some secret out of him. Her lipstick -- yes, she wore some -- is smeared a little when that kiss ends and she's on her back, legs around him, back arched as he finishes in her, snarling in his throat.

They breathe.

--

"No," she whispers, when he rolls away, sliding her arms around his torso and holding him in place. She can't stand the heat but she survives it all the same, her cheek to his chest, sweat or no sweat. It's only when he tells her he can't fucking hold himself up anymore that she lets him slide away, and rolls after him, lying against his side, refusing to let him slip out of her, angling her body awkwardly in order to keep him right where he is. Right where he's supposed to be.

They breathe for a little longer. The air conditioning is permitted to steal some of their heat away.

--

When Lukas comes nearer again, cuddling up to her, lowering his mouth to her breast with an animal glint to his gaze, Danicka's eyes droop closed. She exhales, shuddering when his lips and teeth close on her nipple. She pants as he tongues her, teasing her nipple, and to be fair, she's a little worried about the stimulation but not overly so, especially as he takes her nipple and part of her breast in his mouth and suckles at her. Danicka groans, her head tilted back and her throat open to release the sound.

She can't speak. So all she does is nod.

Lukas
All right: so he doesn't roll away. He stops when she holds him there. He stays there, muscles quivering for a moment, until he simply gives in and more or less collapses atop Danicka.

They survive the heat. They survive closeness. They survive each other, survive those intermittent signals their bodies pass to each other, clenches and squeezes, jolts, twitches. He doesn't even quite pull away. He sort of ... slumps to the side, and she has room to breathe, but they stay together.

The air conditioning wicks heat from their bodies. He kisses her mouth very, very slowly. Very, very gently.

--

Later on:

oh, she doesn't even say a word. She can't speak. She nods, and he scrapes her nipple ever so delicately with his teeth. When she shivers he rubs his face across her tits, his beard-stubble scratchy on her skin, and she'll just have to forgive him because

frankly

he was not expecting this. Any of this. It's been months, and he would have borne it for months more, years, the rest of his life. It would have been okay. She is not Just Good For Sex. He never, not once, made her feel that way -- because it's not true. Because she is his mate, and even now, even when he's moving over her and bracing himself over her on his hands, on his bent elbows; even as he's lowering his ravenous mouth to her flesh like he might just eat her up, lick her up, taste every last inch of her -- he adores her. She is precious to him.

"Come here," he murmurs. It doesn't really make sense. She's close as can be. But then -- they're somewhere beyond reason right now, and what he means it: come here. Let him wrap his arms around her, bend her back, lift her breasts to his mouth. Let him cover her like this; let him lift her off the bed and push himself up over her; let him turn her slow and gentle and liquid-jointed

onto her stomach

while he pulls a pillow down to support her hips. His mouth on her back, then. His lips at her shoulderblade, and the slope of her shoulder, and the lovely line of her neck up to her ear. He nuzzles her behind her ear, against her temple, while his arms bracket hers. She feels him behind her; feels him rubbing himself hard against the cleft of her ass, and the truth is they're both something of a mess now, sweating, hair mussed, his cum in her cunt, her slick on his cock. He slides his hands under her palms, opens his fingers for hers to slip between.

When he enters her this time, it's a long, firm slide. He bites her as he fills her, holds her in his teeth.

Danicka
Come here.

Danicka comes to him. She lifts herself to his mouth and wraps herself around him but he wants her

on her stomach this time. Danicka exhales, shuddering, and at that point she almost can't stop shivering. She should be worn out by the last two rounds, both within such a short span. She's barely rested; Lukas is unflagging, relentless, but instead of finding herself wanting to curl up, cuddle, and sleep, Danicka finds herself growing hotter,

wetter,

all over again. She lifts her ass to stroke against his still-slick cock, panting an exhale, hands on the bedspread, looking at him over her shoulder while he's kissing her back and hardening against her. Danicka doesn't try to speak at all, now. She lets him know when she's ready. She groans when he slides into her, rocking back against him.

--

The way they've been going at each other makes it easier to go slow, at least at first. But the way he's taking her now, the way she's taking him, makes it hard to stay slow. Danicka rocks back against him, then just starts fucking him, til she's on her elbows for leverage and he's bent over her, curved over her, biting her shoulder and growling on each thrust. She remembers how to speak later on, tells him

touch my breasts while she

reaches beneath herself and plays with her clit, biting her lip and tilting her head, baring her neck to him while he moves in her, til they're coming, tight and hot and ferocious, his hand on the bed and on her breast and her hand on his hand and on her pussy and she's screaming, shrieking soft cries into the room as yet another orgasm crests over her, grabs him, pulls him down under with her.

Danicka bows her head and bites the pillow, groaning into the fabric, squirming on his cock for a long, unbearable time until he's holding her hip and gasping, begging her stop, stop, baby please, stop.

--

This time, Danicka collapses. She just faceplants into the bed and goes limp, closing her eyes because the room is spinning. She wants him again. God, he hasn't even softened in her and she wants him again, but the mere thought of it makes her dizzy, makes her ache. Danicka reaches over to him and pats his arm blindly, inexpertly.

"Jus... just let me sleep for a few minutes. Just for like five minutes."

As though to punctuate it, she yawns, but it's unintentional. She murmurs, lying there flopped for all intents and purposes, drowsing. And then falling steeply, suddenly into sleep.

--

For three hours.

It may be said: Danicka has never slept more deeply in her life than she sleeps in that three hours. It takes no time at all, either, for her to go from yawning to dead-to-the-world. There's no dim noises from the other room to make her get up and go check on the twins, no one fussing who needs to be soothed by nursing and set back in bed. There's no cat.

There's just her mate, who is one of the most dangerous creatures she's ever known, who is left to nap with her or watch over her while she crashes, who just fucked her senseless three times in just shy of a full hour.

The night grows darker, the moon higher, and after several hours, after turning over once -- rolling off the pillow beneath her hips, giving her neck a better angle --because Lukas urges her to or because she senses her own discomfort in sleep, Danicka wakes up again. She does so slowly, her eyelashes struggling to lift, her lipstick still smeared a bit, her eyes bleary and her throat sore.

She closes her eyes again, breathing in and out slowly, sensing Lukas nearby even when she doesn't fully open her eyes.

"Check on the babies," she murmurs, and it is entirely possible she thinks they're at home, because then she just... goes back to sleep, or half-sleep, for another fifteen minutes.

--

It takes some time for Danicka to fully wake again, and perhaps Lukas would be happy as can be if she just slept and slept and then she could wake up and he could feed her and maybe after a few more full moons and maybe if he mounts her very very good like that lots and lots she will say it is time for more pups but noooo they do not have enough food the other pups aren't ready to hunt yet noooo that is a bad idea, they should wait.

Who knows. Danicka swallows and yawns and pulls herself up, knowing she slept for more than five minutes but not caring how long, rolling to look at Lukas or cuddle against him.

She nuzzles his chest when he's there. When. Even if she has to call him to come back to bed with her from somewhere else, or when: she finds him still laid out beside her. She nuzzles his chest, and kisses him over his heart, and

slides her hand down his torso to his cock, stroking him softly under her fingers, tracing him out until she feels him first beginning to stir. Until she hears his breathing change. Her palm wraps around him then, jerking slowly and smoothly, lazily while she drowses.

"Again," Danicka whispers, though her voice is raspy from disuse, though what she really needs is to use the bathroom and drink some water and order some late-night room service.

Apparently she disagrees about what she needs.

Lukas
This time, he comes with her.

This time she's not even trying to talk. This time she's grinding back on him, she's rocking back against him, she's fucking him right back while he leans over her, covers her on all fours, fucks her quite literally like the animal he is. She puts his hand on her breast. He bears her to the bed, her hips lifted, her chest against his hand against the mattress. She holds onto his hand, she touches herself with her fingers, and when she comes

it's like there's a line of gunpowder between him and her. It's like she touches a match to it, and it goes off, and it sears right through him and sends him careening over the edge. He wraps his arm around her, then. He holds her so tight, in his arms and in his teeth, and while she's groaning into the pillow he's roaring against her shoulder; he's losing every last scrap of sanity in his mind.

--

stop, he has to beg her, later. stop, stop, baby, stop. i can't take it. stop.

--

And so she stops. And she faceplants, and he sprawls out over her, against her, near her, inside her. They're an exhausted tangle on the bed. His arm crosses her back; his thigh her legs. She says she just wants to rest five minutes, and he makes some incoherent grunt of assent, and -- then she's out.

So is he. Ten minutes go by. Twenty. An hour. He wakes, he disentangles himself carefully, he goes to the bathroom to take a piss and splash water on his face. He comes back filthy, unwashed, he doesn't give a damn. He sprawls back into bed again and glomps his mate up. This doesn't wake her. Not for long, anyway. He hits the lights and now,

now it is dark, the lights of the city glittering below, the lake so deep and black beyond. He remembers that time -- was it his birthday? hers? -- they went out on the lake in a little sailing yacht. Made love on the waves.

--

Check on the babies, she whispers. It is three hours later, past midnight. He wakes, startles a little because he can't smell the babies onoz but then he remembers they're at home. And he's not. And his mate is here, and it's just him and her, and

it has been months. Months.

He doesn't care, though, that she's just slept three hours. He loves that she slept so deeply, so uninterruptedly. He would gladly let her sleep til morning, and he would keep her warm, he would keep her safe, when she wakes up he would find food for them both and make sure she had her fill, she had her pick, she had the choicest bits of the kill. That would make him happier than anything.

She doesn't sleep til morning, though. She sleeps another fifteen, thirty minutes. And then she's turning in his arms, waking him from his light doze. He lifts his arm and gives her room to come around. Face him. Her fingers skimming down his torso make him shiver. Her lips over his heart make that heart of his beat hard and fast; he loves her so very much.

She can hear that breath he draws, short and swift, as she touches him. She can hear him let it out as she tells him what she tells him.

And then he's winding her closer in his arms. He's drawing her thigh over his hip, and angling her body just so, and

his hand is joining hers; they're stroking his cock hard together. He's catching her mouth in a loose, sleepy kiss as he slides the head of it against her slit; rubs it slow and firm against her until he's wet, slick, hard, sinking ever so slowly into her.

Danicka
Danicka smiles at him. That loose, lazy, lopsided grin of hers that she has only recently begun giving in public, and even then it's only to him. Only to the girls in their stroller, wrapped up in hats and covered in blankets to keep them warm on a short, brisk walk to the store or down to get kolache to serve after dinner because she doesn't yet have the time or energy to make them by hand. And let's be honest: that smile is softer, is shiny and bright and she is lit up from inside and it becomes quite clear to everyone, from Lukas to strangers, how happy she is to have them, how much it seems that she was meant to do this, like it's something she always wanted and just thought, for a while, that she would never have or couldn't possibly be good at.

That smile is a little different from this one. This one is happy but it is also sly and warm and pink-cheeked and he can feel it on her mouth when she kisses him, just as he can feel her gasp when he starts to rub the head of his cock against her teasingly, slowly like that, urging her to be wet for him, be hot for him, open for him. He knows when that gasp turns half-whimper that it's time to push her thigh up and give himself to her just like that. Just the way she wants him to.

They make love quite slowly this time. They take their time with it, though it's nearly unbearable to do so even now. She wraps her leg around him and rides up on him, looking at her breasts to his chest with panting delight. It's Danicka who rolls them, later, moving onto her back and drawing her other leg up gracefully and tightly around him, her hands going into his hair, her mouth open and languid under his. She whispers to him sometimes:

that's it. oh fuck, that's it, baby.

And filthier things, telling him to fuck that pussy and the groaning, head-tipping-back oh, fuck yes, that's what I need when he quickens his pace and looks down at their bodies and watches himself fucking that pussy. She almost thinks she can't stand it, when her orgasm begins to creep up on her. She shivers and gasps and clutches at his back, but they keep going slow, firm, until the sound of her pleading hits a begging note, aching for him to fuck her a little harder, a little faster, let her come, let her fucking come, which

she does, moaning aloud into the cooled-off room, over and over as waves crest and fall upon her, covering her entirely.

Lukas
He loves those new-and-improved, now-with-33%-more-functionality! tits of hers. He fucking loves them, and when she rolls on top of him she's not the only one looking down to see how they press to his chest, how they move, how they quite frankly bounce when she she starts making those sounds, starts wanting to come; when he lifts her a little and braces his feet and starts fucking her.

A little harder. A little faster. A little more intensely, until her breath is hitching, until she's clutching at him, until she lets out that long shuddering moan that sets him

right off.

He flexes up into her. His hands are holding her by the hips, like he's afraid she might just fly away. She's riding down and he's pulling her down and his thrust is a counterpoint, is a complement; they come together and they come together and his head falls back as she's letting herself go limp against him; he's letting out this loud, clench-toothed grunt that dissolves into unabashed panting.

Total collapse, then. His hand softening on her hips; his palms going to rub over her ass. Slowly, slowly, rubbing and kneading and stroking. His eyes are closed. His hairline is damp again with sweat. They should really shower. They should get some water. They should eat. He wants to fall asleep again,

opens his eyes with an inhale as he starts to feel himself slipping under.

"Are you thirsty?" he whispers. And he wraps his arms around her.

Lukas
He loves those new-and-improved, now-with-33%-more-functionality! tits of hers. He fucking loves them, and when she rolls him on top of her she's not the only one looking down to see how they press to his chest, how they move, how they quite frankly bounce when she she starts making those sounds, starts wanting to come; when he lifts up a little on his elbows and braces his feet and starts fucking her.

A little harder. A little faster. A little more intensely, until her breath is hitching, until she's clutching at him, until she lets out that long shuddering moan that sets him

right off.

He flexes into her. His arms are wrapped around her, his hands curled over her sides -- like he's afraid she might just melt away otherwise. She's wrapping her legs around him and he's pushing into her in counterpoint, in complement; they come together and they come together and his brow drops to hers as she's letting herself go limp; he's letting out this loud, clench-toothed grunt that dissolves into unabashed panting.

Total collapse, then. His weight heavy on her for a moment before he stirs to one side; his arms still wrapped around her as best he can. His eyes are closed. His hairline is damp again with sweat. They should really shower. They should get some water. They should eat. He wants to fall asleep again,

opens his eyes with an inhale as he starts to feel himself slipping under.

"Are you thirsty?" he whispers. And he nuzzles her, searching for her mouth; kissing it softly, softly; a sweet little exchange.

Danicka
"Mm," she says, nodding assent, panting still. She can't even spare real breaths; mostly they come through her nostrils, heavy and firm exhalations while she tries to put her brain back together. She needs to pee. She needs to drink about a gallon of water. She -- let's be honest -- needs to pump. She wants to shower and then soak in a tub for as long as she wants and she wants to show Lukas that she got more than just one new set of lingerie and maybe he can just leave this one half-on her when he nails her again, growling and snarling as his cock drives into her again, and again, and again. Danicka can't tell him how long her thoughts have been turning more and more erotic, how long she's waited to feel enough energy and enough inner stability to take a night off and let someone else take care of her babies so she could, well,

take care of herself. And her mate.

But right now she just nods assent and nuzzles him, purring a little and hugging him and frankly, squishing her breasts to his body and snuggling him. "Yeah," she whispers, raspy still, as he nuzzles her again, kisses her lips soft like he does. "Maybe some food."

Lukas
"Mmf," he murmurs, " 'kay."

And then he moves. And then he kind of ... just ... rolls her on top. And sits up. And picks her up in a reverse-piggyback, her arms around his shoulders, her legs around his waist. He carries her over to the minibar where he picks up two bottles of water, handing one to her. And unless she asks to be set down, he proceeds to carry her from the minibar to the bathroom; proceeds to set his bottle of water down on the counter and lean over and turn on the water, turn on the shower.

While it warms, he holds her. He yawns, less out of sleepiness than out of sheer, mindless relaxation. As much as he loves the girls -- and he loves them very, very, very much -- it's a relief not to have them around just for a little while. It's a relief to let someone else take care of them for just a night so he can

take care of himself. And his mate.

The water is warm now. Steam rising and curling. He steps into the tub with his mate, and there, finally, he sets her carefully down.

Danicka
Mmf-kay, grunts her mate, which is only half language, but half is twice as much as they usually need. She can feel it when he is about to move, and feel it when he is about to sit up, and wraps her arms and legs around him easily as he rises to his feet. He gets $6 bottles of water and instead of taking the one he hands her, Danicka just lets it sit on top of her breasts, rolling to the crevice between their two chests, which is ridiculous, but she's hugging him and that is more important to her.

She nuzzles him and does, in fact, ask him to set her down when he goes into the bathroom, and then she's splashing some water on her face and kissing him as she shoos him out. Perhaps his proverbial tail droops, perhaps his crest falls, but she just, well

needs to pee. And needs to pump. And perhaps he is embarrassed and she grins at him and hugs him and nuzzles him and tells him he's silly, or perhaps he is just as relaxed and okay with this as he is with most things when they have fucked each other boneless, senseless, mindless.

--

Danicka seems a little more awake after, when they are sliding into the shower together. She wraps her arms around his waist and holds him while the water falls over them. She is holding him very tightly, in fact, as though he might slip away, and though he cannot see the pensive little twist of her brow and lips, he can surely feel the anxiety in her shoulders and her back, the tightness with which she holds him, the unspeakable Something that is, of course, not being spoken.

Lukas
Lukas feels it. How tightly Danicka is holding him; the tightness in her shoulders and the slender musculature of her back. He feels that unspeakable Something in the air, feels that twist of her brow and lips like it's a twist in his own viscerae, in the cords of his heart.

He says nothing of it, though. Not for a while, anyway. For a while, he just holds her. Exists near her and with her and for her. His heart beats for her; his breath draws for her. His body is warm for her, and strong and solid and close. He smells -- they both smell -- quite potently of what they have been doing to each other for the past few hours. They're in here to get clean, but right now, just for the moment,

there's something comforting about that. The scent of their closeness, the scent of their togetherness, the scent of them in this place that is, in the end, not really their den.

--

After some time, he wraps his arms a little closer around her. And he nuzzles her temple, kisses the trailing edge of her eyebrow.

"What is it?" he whispers.

Danicka
Oh, she used to hide it so well. A placid veil over whatever freezing, spiking storms were raging underneath. She used to want to hide it. She still could, perhaps even from him, but he might sense the hiding if not the current, and that would hurt him as deeply, more deeply, than any truth she could lay out in front of him. And that was the crux of it, wasn't it? Learning to understand that none of her pain, none of her fear, none of her trauma or messed-up-ed-ness was what she had to be afraid of telling him. The hiding is what wounded. The concealing was what stung, separated, and angered.

Danicka sniffs, but she is not weeping. She nuzzles him, picking up on that scent of their sweat and sex and sleep and embraces. The bottle of water he got for her was empty when he came back into the bathroom, so at least there's that. Now they can get clean. So there's that, too.

After a time, he nuzzles her face. He kisses her beside her temple. He asks her, and she tells him:

"...the babies," in this small and sad and aching, heartbreaking voice, as though those two words explained everything.

Perhaps it does. This is her first time away from them that lasted longer than, at most, an hour or so. This is certainly her first night away from them, and they are impossibly far away and if they cry, if they wail, if they howl she won't hear them and now it's too late to call Lucille and see how they are and it hit her when she was pumping that this is the first night in their entire lives when they will not be going directly from her breast, her shoulder, her arms into sleep with her kiss on their ridiculously tiny, ridiculously fragile heads and it's killing her a little bit.

Danicka sniffs again, and this time she is crying a little, but the tears are just surrounding her eyes, lingering behind her lashes, while she holds onto Lukas's torso for dear, dear, precious, delicate life.

Lukas
"Oh, baby," Lukas sighs,

not an exasperated sigh or an impatient one or a morose one or any of that, but a gentle one. A tender one. And that powerful torso of his, that she wraps her arms around so tightly, shifts against her body as he wraps his arms, in turn, around her. His back curves; he bends to her, kisses her again. On the cheek this time, fiercely, all but crushing her against him.

"We can go back," he says. "We can get cleaned up and get dressed and go home if you need to. I can burn my rage off and ... maybe we can lay a blanket out downstairs and sleep there, so I don't keep the pups up. It's all right. I wouldn't mind."

A small pause, then. And -- without letting go, without drawing away an inch or an iota:

"But if you can stand it," he adds, softer, "maybe we should stay. I know you want to take care of them and be close to them. I do too. But we need to take care of ourselves, too. And we need to learn that going away for a night or a day or even a weekend isn't bad. It isn't wrong. It's good. Maybe even necessary."

Danicka
Danicka is already shaking her head when Lukas says We can go back, sniffing through those scant tears and telling him no with her body language long before he gets to the rest of his explanation of how they might possibly make it okay for him to go home tonight when even now his rage is hot, is violent, is frightening. She doesn't want him to go home, they will scream all night and it won't be something she can soothe with cradling, rocking, walking, nursing, shushing. And that's not the only thing making her shake her head no, making her murmur no, we don't need to --

It's because of what he says next, which is a truth she already knows that does not make it any easier. "I know, baby," she murmurs, wrapping her arms around him, too, as though he were the one needing comfort. "I know all that. I'm not sad because I think it's wrong."

Which is to say: three or four years ago she might have gotten quite annoyed with him indeed for telling her we need to learn, but that was three or four years ago. This is now.

Her face rubs against his chest, turning to rest her brow on his sternum. "It is necessary," she says, almost hard to hear through the falling water. "I just miss them. And I don't want you to think I don't want to be here with you or I want to be home more than I want to be with you or... anything like that." She exhales, her arms tightening even further around him, her hand curling against his back, fingertips pressed to skin. "I have missed you so much."

Lukas
"I don't think that," Lukas whispers. They are holding each other almost as tightly as they can. Almost like they'd been apart for months, years, lifetimes; were just now rediscovering each other. "I know you've missed me. I've missed you too."

The water beats off his back. Trickles over her fingers, the backs of her hands. Drips off her elbows; skims his sides. Streams down his legs and washes down the drain. It doesn't discriminate between them. Even in this, they seem joined.

After quite some time, after quite a length of silence and closeness, Lukas's arms at last begin to loosen. They slide down Danicka's back; they loop loosely around her waist. And he nuzzles her again, nudges her until she tips her head back. Until he can lean down and kiss her mouth, soft and slow; a sort of gentle greeting between their bodies.

"Let's get clean," he whispers. "Then let's order room service and laze about. Eat and drink and fuck and sleep until we've had our fill of all of that."

Danicka
Danicka gives a tight, half-sad little smile into his skin. She snuggles closer to him, soaking up his heat. Showering with another person and not being the one in the flow of the water usually leads to freezing half to death. Not with Lukas. Not with the way he radiates heat, and not with the way he holds her up so closely. Even when he runs his hands over her arms and back, it seems like he's seeking out any spot that might have grown chilled so he can warm her up again. She would not be surprised; for as animal as he is, he is also calculating, cunning, methodical. He is a hunter. Even if what he is hunting are places on his mate that might be cold, cracks in the window sealant of their den that might be sapping their heat in the dead of winter, or if he is hunting

ways to make her happy. Even if those ways and those things make her weep, like his books, like the sapling of a magnolia that survives against all odds in a part of the country not made to nourish it.

--

Time goes by and he nuzzles her. She lolls her head back, lazy and slow, eyes closed until her face is lifted to his, her throat bared and so delicate, the thin skin stretched across her neck, so fragile, so

fucking dangerous a thing to do with him, on a night like tonight.

Her eyes open and she is fearless. He kisses her, perhaps to stop himself from biting her throat, with lust or hunger or mere instinct. Or maybe just to kiss her: from lust, hunger, mere instinct. Danicka pauses a moment, allowing it, and then she is lifting herself into it, kissing him back, her hands rising up his back slowly, tangling in his wet hair.

Lukas never gets to suggest that they get clean. Then eat. Then drink and fuck and sleep. He never gets that far. He does get Danicka stepping off the tub's floor, pulling herself onto him like she has so many times, like she continues to do, like she hasn't in

god,

months.

Lukas
He doesn't get that far. He stops wanting to say those things, any of those things, around when her hands flow up his back. Around when she buries her fingers in his wet hair, and grip.

She steps off, heel to ball to toe. He lifts her in the same seamless motion. They haven't done this for so long, but they haven't forgotten. It's smooth as smooth can be; graceful as a dance. Her legs fold around him and he kisses her, he turns, the water runs down her left leg, his right flank, and he sets her against the wall.

His hands wrap around her waist for a moment. Then they cover her breasts. He lifts them in his palms, as though growing reacquainted with them; learning their new dimensions. His thumbs stroke the nipples, and she was worried earlier about overstimulation but he

really

couldn't care less if they make a mess. They make a mess anyway; it's what they do. It's life, it's love, it's the natural order of things and on a night like tonight,

yes, he's driven by instinct and hunger and lust. He lowers his mouth to her breasts; he licks her, he sucks her, he bites very carefully at the side; at her shoulder; at her lips, when he returns to them. His mouth is open to hers, and his breathing is harsh. He finds her, fits to her -- again -- his head drops to her shoulder as hers falls back; he enters her and begins to fuck her almost immediately, a short, tight, urgent mating this time.

Danicka
They have done this a hundred times, or at least it feels like that; this joining, rising to meet each other in the air. The first time they kissed it was like this. Tonight it feels like a first again, somehow, and it is: every time he makes love to her tonight it is sealing again in her heart how much he loves her, sealing in her body how much he wants her, and

waiting does not change that. Their pups do not change that. Nothing could change that.

Danicka gasps as he enters her, her back arching as she takes him. "Baby-- !" she begins, perhaps to say more, but she loses the thread between thought and word and groans softly instead, the sound fading into a whimper. Her hand smooths in his hair, runs down his neck, massages there.

"Slow down, baby," she pants, riding up on him, winding her body to his. "I want to feel you. I want to --" and the words tatter apart into a new, bright gasp of air. Water strikes against her throat, rolling down between her breasts, trickling between their bodies. Her pussy clenches around him, warmer than the water, hot and demanding. "Fuck," she breathes, lowering her head, brow to his temple, the word both an end to that sentence as well as a mere exclamation, a summation of everything in her mind and body right now.

Lukas
He slows down. Though he can hardly bear it, he slows down: his arms wrapped around her, his body pressed so tightly against hers that she can feel the counterpoint flexion in his abdominals, in his back, in his arms and his chest. She bends her head to him, and he turns his head to her: his eyes closed, his mouth against the pulse in her neck, his breath hot and fast over her skin.

"Love you," he mutters,

yet again,

like he can't hold the words back any more than he can hold himself back from her. Any more than he can help wanting her like this, again and again; loving her like this, over and over and over

and over

and over

as though he were a parched man wandering from a desert; as though she were clearest water. He holds her so close this time, his arms cushioning her against the tile. He keeps her so close, moving into her in slow, hard, grinding strokes, and now he's groaning against her throat; now he's clutching at her back, his flanks tightening against her calves.

Danicka
Love you.

He doesn't even say 'I' in these utterances. He doesn't indicate himself. Maybe he is merely describing what he is doing, what he is going to do, what he has always done: love you. love you. love you. What he has done in this world and those parallel to it. What he has done in this life and those before it, what he will do in those after it. Even when they are rivals, even enemies, some part of him will always love her. Be loved by her. Be bound by that, age upon age, tied together by a thin red cord from heart to heart, invisible to the eye.

Or maybe he is describing what he is doing, physically. Sex is not love. Love is not sex. The two can be separated; other times it is like this, bound just as inextricably as their hearts, where the act of lovemaking is also the act of loving, itself. They have missed this. They have missed each other, and this part of each other, and being this close, as close as two bodies can become.

Danicka comes gaspingly, her voice soft and higher, higher, with each little outcry against his skin, his hair, the curve of his ear. She clenches around him, cunt and thighs and arms, biting her lower lip not to keep herself silent but because it only adds to her pleasure, the pleasure that has her grinding down on him, winding her hips to elicit every last spasm of desire she can from his body. Like he was made for this. Like he lives to please her like this. Like she knows, finally and without doubt, that he would give her just about anything she asked of him, even if it was everything. Even if she thought, and still thinks sometimes, that she doesn't deserve it.

That feeling is fading, though. It is replaced by trust, and trust of a kind she did not ever know she was capable of.

She is panting when she starts to come down, as always, catching her breath and feeling her heart pound and whimpering when he drives himself into her, faster, firmer now, urged on by her nails on his back, her voice in his ear, fuck me, fuck me, come in me, fuck me til he tips over an unseen edge and plummets into her, perhaps bracing himself on the tile, perhaps simply bracing himself with his teeth in her skin. She already has red marks where he's bitten her again and again tonight, and those will soothe by morning, but she likes them where they are for now. She loves the sound his voice makes hitting her skin when he is holding his teeth in her like this.

--

Later, perhaps, they will get clean. And order food. And drink about seven gallons of water. And snuggle, and talk about things that are not their children, and play footsie during fifteen minutes of a movie, before she slips her hand under his bathrobe, running her hand along his torso, down his thigh, wrapping her hand around his cock. Before she slides down the bed and he pushes her robe from her shoulders so he can look at her, so he can feel her breasts on his lap while she puts her mouth on him. Before he grabs her waist and swings her atop him so he can taste her, too.

Before they love,

and love,

and love each other. More.

Lukas
Later they'll get clean like they meant to in the first place. Later they'll run the hotel's shampoo through their hair, the hotel's soap over their skin. Later he'll help her wash her back and she'll do the same for him, and he'll glomp her when she's clean and they'll fill up the tub and lounge,

lay about,

soak with her back to his chest, her fingertips playing idly between his, talking about anything and everything not-their-children. They'll order late night chinese food and eat sitting crosslegged on the bed, hair wet, feet bare. She'll nab shreds of beef from his styrofoam tray, and he'll share her walnut shrimp. They'll eat the deep fried bananas while they're picking out a movie,

before they start playing footsie,

before she reaches into his robe and makes his eyes shut, makes his head fall back, makes him forget all about that delicious deepfried fruit treat on his lap.

--

Later. Now, right now: he's holding her up only because he doesn't know how, couldn't fathom how he could possibly drop his mate. Not because there's any real strength left in him, or any real ability to do anything but lean into her,

lean her against the wall,

lean there with his eyes closed, his chest pulling breath after breath out of the air, shudders flickering down his back as the last flares of pleasure throb through him. He groans softly. She kneads the back of his neck. He kisses her beneath her ear, lust slamming through him yet again like a bullet, but he lets it go. He lets it pass through him, and when it fades it leaves him quiet. Content. Quite happy, really, to stay just like this, reunited with his mate after so, so long.

Danicka
Reunited is a strange word. They have been united since before they could recognize it, and they were united when they were afraid of it, and they have been united every day since the last time they did this. To reunite, though: as though underlining, as though emphasizing. Renewing. Drinking water to quench thirst, eating food to sate hunger, sleeping to dream to restore everything from memory to muscle. This is like that.

Danicka cannot get enough of him, and yet she does not stop trying to satisfy herself. She moves gently on him in the shower, and hell: it's possible that though neither of them can bear it, they have each other yet again in that warm, humid, tiled, sound-muffled space, with her hands on the wall and his hands on her hips to hold her right there while he thrusts into her again, and again, and again. She can't help but clench around him when he kisses her below her ear, in a spot that just happens to make her feel very, very hot indeed. So maybe they fuck again. Regardless: by the time they're done the water is cooling and Lukas has to turn to adjust it a bit, warm it up again, increase the flow of the hot water while they finally get clean.

She braids her hair. He's seen her like this so much, from the early days when she didn't want to bother drying her hair but didn't want to leave it down while wet, to the peak of summer which was also nearing the peak of her pregnancy and she would get her hair off her shoulders and neck any way she could because though she once cut it sleek and short in rebellion, she actually prefers it long and doesn't want to cut it just because it was hot and she was miserable. She lets her hair down when she nurses, though. Danicka has not offered a reason for this, though as the twins start moving their arms and legs around, they have started touching her hair, mostly on accident. It always makes her smile.

When Lukas feeds them, on those rare, dark-mooned occasions, they keep their eyes closed, and they suck at the bottle of warmed breastmilk eagerly, settled into his warm and stillness as though they have agreed with him that everyone will just pretend he is not scary if he is very quiet and very still and they will be gracious and allow him to hold them without wailing. If this is the case, they are not just very bright, but very generous little girls.

Danicka is thinking of them as she braids her hair after their shower, wrapped in her bathrobe and catching Lukas looking at her in the bathroom mirror. She smiles at him. This, too: a flashback to every time he has watched her like this, seated or standing before a mirror, braiding her hair over one shoulder, smiling at him in reflection. Danicka brought a little bit of shampoo and conditioner from home, oddly enough, and her soap from home: I don't want to smell different when we go home, she explained in the shower, wanting him to use it, too.

Because they still don't see very well, the twins. They rely so much on scent. Like all pups do.

So she smells like herself, like she does at home, like her own sweat and her own warmth and her own everything, even when she wears the hotel's bathrobe to bed to pick out a movie. It's recent and they both want to see it and they haven't gone to a movie together... possibly ever, maybe once or twice, but they don't finish it.

Danicka decides she hasn't blown him in so long she thinks she's forgotten how, and she wants to make sure she remembers how he likes it. She teases that, just before she descends over his lap, smiling, her breath curling against that ever-so-sensitive skin. She licks him and moans softly, opening her mouth and then her throat and taking him as deeply as she ever has, as deeply as she can, one long slow suck before she starts bobbing her head over him hungrily, wetly, eagerly. Even when he pulls her robe off and pulls her pussy to his face and rubs his hands over her tits, she doesn't slow down or back off of him, not until he comes, not until she makes him come in her mouth, not until he forgets how to fucking eat her out, how to please her, how to talk, how to think, his own name.

After that, it is no surprise that he turns her onto her back, her hair falling off the edge of the bed, and licks her pussy until she grabs at his hair and her cries are echoing off the ceiling.

And after that, it is no surprise that she wants him inside of her again.

And after that, it is no surprise that they pass the fuck out.

--

The next day, Danicka calls the front desk and requests a late checkout, which they grant because she's been a steady customer since 2009. She rolls back over and buries her face in her mate's chest and sleeps.

...for another hour or so before they begin to stir, before Lukas is rocking slightly, his cock hardening against her inner thigh, before Danicka is panting softly, opening her legs and rolling onto her back without even opening her eyes, whimpering when he pushes inside of her for the last time of countless times, whispering something to him about how fucking wet he makes her, she can't believe it,

I fucking love that cock so much,
don't ever want to stop fucking you,
god, you're so good

and whatever other adoring filth enters her mind.

They sleep a few more hours after that, after her slow, wet orgasm and Lukas's firm, hot one that follows it. They are worn out, and Danicka admits laughingly, happily, that she's fucking sore when they decide to wash up again. She calls Lucille while Lukas is brushing his teeth, and then she orders breakfast -- coffee and egg-sausage-cheese-on-biscuit sandwiches that are both artisanal and handmade and loaded with meat -- from a little bakery nearby that they'll pick up on their way home, which he runs in and picks up. And it's well past noon when they get home to their little wonky den with its oak and its magnolia and its stepping-stone path from garage to front door and every spirit that lingers around the place.

Danicka is quick out of the car, and quick inside and up the steps, and the twins are lying close together on an enormous soft blanket on the living room floor, being... infants. Danicka all but squeals at the sight of them and drops her bag and goes over to the blanket, kneeling by their tiny feet and bending over to wrap her arms around both of them at once, cuddling them close and beaming. Tatiana kicks both legs at the same time, wildly, and Eliska sucks on her fist. Danicka is talking to them in Czech and telling them how beautiful they are and she missed them so much and they're such wonderful babies, they're the best little girls in the world

leaving Lukas to whatever polite-awkward-warm-thankful moment he might have with Lucille. Poor Lucille gets a very big hug from Danicka to go with the very large transfer to her bank account that Danicka confirmed in the car on the way home, and Danicka gets an orderly little report about the girls, and then Lucille heads home.

--

Danicka lies back down on that big blanket with the twins, not between them but to one side, curved around Tatiana. She urges Lukas over, and maybe because the moon is set and the sun is up, it's a little easier to bear him, but she wants him to lie down on Eliska's side. She holds his hand across the blanket over the girls' heads. She smiles at him like she has a secret, which she does, which is that she is going to fuck him again tonight in their own bed, maybe on their sides or maybe riding him, she hasn't decided yet. Her feet rest against his shins beneath the feet of their daughters.

This, too, is reunion.