milovat mě.

[Lukas] It's been four days, and that because as long as you can turned out to be 2pm Saturday afternoon, which is when Liadan texted to say she was coming back from her studio and Lukas, eating an egg sandwich and coffee in the kitchen, polished off his late (late, late) breakfast, wiped his mouth, and put his shoes on.

"I'll call you in a few days," he said at the door, checking to make sure his wallet and his keys are in his pockets. And then, with the door open but Liadan still somewhere in transit, he takes the time to kiss Danicka, slowly, softly, hugging her against him and lifting her off the floor for a moment afterward.

He's smiling when he sets her down. "Say hi to Lee for me," he adds; a few minutes later, walking out of the lobby, he thinks he sees the redhead coming in from the garage.

Now it's Wednesday night. Danicka's phone chimes. It's a text message:

Dinner?
5214 S Archer Ave

5214 South Archer Avenue turns out to be a good twenty, thirty minutes away from the Loop. When Danicka gets there, she finds Lukas standing in front of what appears to be a rustic alpine lodge, flanked by pines, complete with brick-and-log walls and steeply sloping rooftops that slant right down to the ground. The sign reads -- well, actually, there's no sign, only an OPEN sign over the door, above which are crossed two flags. One is the fifty stars and thirteen stripes familiar to any schoolchild in this continent, or possibly the world. The other is a simple barred white-and-red: the flag of the Republic of Poland.

Lukas's shirt is a rich brown, untucked, cut close, the sleeves rolled up; he wears it with linen pants, and standing in front of the pseudo-mountain-lodge, he looks like he should be freezing to death. It's merely a cool day, though, not cold, and the rain slanting out of the leaden sky doesn't do more than speckle his clothes. He steps out from under the overhang to greet Danicka when she appears, smiling, his hands in his pockets.

Occasionally there's a distant rumble of thunder. Another summer storm in the windy city.

"Hey," he greets her, half-playfully offering her the crook of his elbow as she comes up alongside him. "I wanted something a little familiar, but not quite the same."

[Danicka] It turns out that Danicka almost always has eggs in the morning. She's a creature of simple breakfasts, scrambled eggs and toast or a cup of yogurt or a bowl of cereal. That she can cook is fine and good, but that doesn't mean she does so every morning or afternoon or whenever it is that she drags herself out of bed. She's walking around most of Saturday wearing a short silk robe he's seen before, loosely tied because what is underneath he's seen before. She doesn't change before he heads out, and she kisses him like she wants him to stay. Like she's trying to convince him to.

But she's the one who pulls away first, even before he sets her down. She's smiling, too, nodding once to him before she says goodbye at the door. And it's been four days since then. Not the longest they've been away from each other. Not by far. In fact, seeing each other twice in a week is almost luxurious, for them.

Danicka's response to Lukas's phone is just as simple:

Dinner.
45 minutes.

And forty minutes later, her car pulls up to the little restaurant on Archer. He can see her laugh as she gets out of her car, the skirt of her peach-colored dress swirling around her knees as she walks towards him. The ends of her hair are curled, bouncing slightly with each step. Her right hand is holding a small purse, her sleeves ending just past her elbows and a simple round pendant resting in the middle of the slice of flesh created by her V neck.

She hurries up to him, heels tapping the parking lot and porch surface in turn, and -- instead of taking his proffered arm -- throwing her own around his neck. She all but jumps up on him to kiss him firmly, if not deeply. When she slides back down and loosens her arms, her smile is still close-lipped and careful, as though she's fighting not to simply break into a broad grin. Her eyes are lit up. She's lit up.

"Did you know," she says, knowing the answer, "that my mother was half-Polish?"

[Lukas] Lukas reads her intent in the way she doesn't slow as she nears him, doesn't turn to slip her arm through his. It takes him a beat to draw his hands from his pockets, but by the time she all but leaps at him his arms are there to catch her. He catches her up, his forearms firmly barring the dip of her spine; they kiss each other like exactly what they are.

Lovers, happy to see one another.

For a moment after her arms have loosened he holds her still, turning her around. When he sets her down his back is to the road now, hers to the restaurant. Unwinding, he finds her hand and takes it, his grip firm and warm, fingers wrapped around the edge of her hand.

"I always thought she was Russian," he says. "Or Czech. Wasn't her last name Dvořák?"

[Danicka] They should be wary of meetings like this, where they collide in open, unadulterated delight. So many times, when they've greeted each other with joy and warmth, the night has taken a turn for the worst possible directions. That night in his room when he picked her up and spun her, they nearly broke up the next day, and she ended up throwing his mug across the room. That night at the W when he all but lunged into the room, pulling at his clothes and telling her to please not expect him to go slowly not when it had been so long not when she was greeting him in the lingerie he gave her... they did break up.

But they keep on going anyway, even when -- even after -- things fall apart. They are from a tribe that has been so repeatedly, so frequently downtrodden throughout history that all they can do is learn how to rebuild.

Without fanfare or even conscious intent, it seems, Lukas turns them so that he stands between Danicka and the world, puts her between himself and the wall. He does this often, lying on her bed between her door and her body or lying on his bed to hold her between his chest and the wall. Unthinkingly but consistently, he does what in another spirit or situation would be pinning her, trapping her. With the notable and single exception of slamming a door she was trying to escape through, she knows every time without asking that the last thing on his mind is trapping her. He's protecting her. He's keeping her close. Safe. His.

"Half Polish, quarter Russian, quarter Czech," she says, looking at their hands as they intertwine. "She was raised by her father's mother, who was Russian. That," Danicka explains, lifting her eyes, "is why she didn't speak Polish and only knew a little Czech."

[Lukas] "Chápu," Lukas replies quietly.

It's not a long walk to the door, which is as rustic as everything else in this little Polish restaurant. Lukas pulls it open and hands Danicka in first, following in her wake. After the brightness of the evening's last sunlight outside, the interior, lamplit, is briefly too dark to see in. As their eyes adjust it becomes quite obvious the proprietors want their patrons to step across an ocean and back a century or two, or at least have the illusion that they might be doing so. Lukas knows little about Polish high country. He can't say for certain how authentic the place is.

"Two," he tells the greeter. As they follow her to their table, Lukas keeps a slightly larger distance than would be typically considered polite. It's for the human's sake. For the sake of their own privacy, he has other means.

"Tvoje matka byla velmi mladá když ona potkal tvůj otce, jo?"

[Danicka] That gets a small tilt of her head and an odd little laugh. "There's really nothing to understand," she says mildly, squeezing his hand but giving him a strange look.

There is something to understand, but it hardly matters if the Dvoraks were disappointed in their son for severely diluting their bloodline by breeding with a woman they called a polak whore. It hardly makes a difference if Laura's entire existence was spent fighting to regain some of that lost honor. In the end, the effect on Danicka was tertiary and inevitable. Her mother wanted her to learn Polish. Danicka never did, because it was not spoken at home and not taught at school.

She walks inside with him, pausing in the entry and reaching back for his hand when the door swings closed behind him. She laces their fingers again, which results in her steps falling far back from the hostess's as well. They're seated, and informed that someone will be around soon, and Danicka sets her purse aside on an unused chair. As he asks about her mother, she tilts her head to the side, thinking a moment, then shaking her head.

"Ne tak docela. Byly zavedeny když ona byl... dvacetdva, myslím?"

[Lukas] What Lukas asks next is so simple that it's almost naive. Almost a child's question. It would be, if it weren't so honest; so utterly free of expectation:

"Myslíš, že se miloval navzájem?"

[Danicka] Naive or not, that actually makes Danicka pause. She is quiet for a moment, unrolling her silverware and folding her napkin across her thighs as she thinks the question over. After awhile, she shrugs and says: "Použil jsem se zeptat, mému otci když ji miloval. On říkal, že ano, ale bylo to ... jakési prázdné."

A waiter walks over and takes their drink orders. Danicka asks for a beer, producing an ID briefly from her purse, and when they're left alone again she looks at the buttons on Lukas's shirt thoughtfully as she adds: "Já nevím, jestli ona ho milovala."

Her eyes lift up to his near the end there. They're clear. If she has any particularly strong feelings on this subject in either direction, they don't appear to be surfacing tonight.

[Lukas] Lukas takes this at face value. When they're interrupted, he glances at the drinks list and selects a polish beer, Okocim, largely at random. Then there's a pause, his eyes sharpening on the dense black text. "Wait," he calls the waiter back, "and a bottle of Wyborowa. Two glasses."

The waiter departs. He sets the wine list aside and listens. When she finishes his eyes flicker between hers, pale and clear, perceptive. A second later he smiles; there's something of a wince at the edges.

"Nejsem si jistý že je možné milovat někoho takového," he says. He could mean anything: a Shadow Lord. An Ahroun. Someone with the drive and the ambition to climb that bloody ladder right to the top.

Or, perhaps: a woman like Laura Dvorak, who would teach her children: you are better than them.

A moment later Lukas's eyes slice aside. He reaches for the dinner menu and flicks it open, scanning the appetizers, the entrees. "What looks promising?"

[Danicka] Beer and vodka. Heavy foods from an old world. They've shared Wyborowa before. Danicka half-smirks when Lukas calls the waiter back to order it. The waiter, however, just barely suppresses a hard chill up his back when that Wait leaves the Ahroun's lips. Danicka doesn't notice, or does a fine job of pretending not to. More likely, she just doesn't too much about the poor waiter. He's not Kin. He's not one of them. This is the price of choosing who she has. One of them, at least.

At his words, her eyes flicker slightly. They are a mellow mix of colros in this light, the room catching the warm amber and brown striated through the green.

"Někdo jako jaký?" she asks quietly, her voice pitched lower than before, her intonation gentle.

[Lukas] Danicka doesn't discuss the menu. Lukas didn't really expect her to be fooled, to be lured away by frivolities like that if she didn't want to be. There's a pause, and then he sets his menu down, raising his eyes to level them across the table at her.

"Someone like your mother," he says. It's rather flat; it's most certainly avoidance.

A beat later he grimaces faintly. "Úplňku. Stín Milostpán. Dominantní. Násilné. Ambiciózní." He raises his hand to his face, rubs at the bridge of his nose -- she's starting to recognize this gesture. It indicates unease, muted frustration. When he recognizes what he's doing, he lowers his hand, looks at her evenly.

"Měl jsi pravdu, víš. Uvidíme jen zhorší."

[Danicka] "You didn't know her."

Danicka listens to everything he has to say, dropped words and level tone of voice all the same. She sets aside the language they can use for privacy, for intimacy, for keeping themselves in touch as much as they can keep everyone else out. Here of all places there's actually more of a chance of someone having a clue what they're saying, but it's still such a thin chance and the restaurant isn't very busy and nobody wants to be seated near them, so they could speak English and do just as well. They don't. They have other reasons for speaking to each other in the language that acknowledges their mutual origins.

When he's done, she's silent for a moment, and then those four words leave her mouth quietly. She's still speaking softly to him, the edges unclipped and too much warmth in her voice to be levelled out, flattened. It could be genuine. It's always hard to tell with her, when she appears to be all right with things, whether she actually is or not.

"And you don't know what she was like when she was your rank."

That could be an excuse, an escape; Lukas shares both tribe and auspice with her mother, but he shares a moon with the likes of Sam Modine and shared tribe with Mrena Armstrong, and is unlike both of them to a striking degree.

"A ani jeden z nás neví, zda můj otec někdy opravdu miloval mou matku," she adds, her voice falling again. The waiter brings the bottle of Wyborowa, sets down the glasses, quietly informing them as Danicka pauses that their beers will come with their dinner. He is about to ask if they've decided when she rather impatiently says: "A minute, please," which sends him turning on his heel and quick-stepping away as surely as her boyfriend's Rage. She doesn't take her eyes off of Lukas. Not for a moment.

That sharpness given to the waiter fades. She sighs.

"A vůbec nezáleží."

[Lukas] "Do you?"

He returns English for English. What could easily be a challenge, a question snapped back to dismiss a dismissal, is not quite that. Too gentle; too quiet, it's simply what it is: a question.

Then she slips back into their shared language, his face changes subtly. There's an easing at his brow that echoes only in retrospect the tension that had pulled at his face. His startling eyes fall toward the table. He toys with his silverware, then pushes it aside, looks at her again.

"Co mě děsí nejvíce -- "

This is when the waiter arrives. Lukas doesn't cut off; he simply stops speaking, his eyes flickering up to the man's face as he thanks him for the vodka, for the shotglasses. He speaks of beer; he's about to go on when Danicka cuts him off. Lukas's attention reorients across the table as the waiter departs; he considers her a moment before opening his menu again.

"Ne, já předpokládám nikoliv."

[Danicka] Either because she does not want to answer, or cannot answer, or because the conversation moves on with increasing tension on at least one side of the table, Danicka does not tell Lukas whether or not she knows what her mother was like as a Cliath. It's likely that she doesn't; her mother was no cub when she mated, and the two Musil children are half a decade apart in age. Her hands rest on her menu, unopened, watching the man across the table.

"Dokončit vaší větou," she says mildly, reaching for the bottle and twisting it open, pouring them each a glassful. Her features are soft. Her voice is quiet. It's only her eyes that are at all hardened.

[Lukas] Lukas's eyes flick across the table. Responding to the look in her eyes as much as anything, he sits back, raises his chin, levels a look at her.

"Co mě děsí nejvíce je to, že váš otec může mít miloval svou matku jednou, a zastavil." A pause. "Myšlenka ty ne milující mě děsí mě."

[Danicka] Vodka spills into the two shotglasses. The heavy glass bottom of the Wyborowa bottle barely makes a sound when Danicka sets it down. Even these little things: pouring alcohol for his glass, then hers, setting the bottle down without noise or fanfare. She knows how to exist without calling attention to herself, how to make others comfortable and happy without ever making a show of it. She knows how to draw attention to herself when necessary to cover over the sins or awkwardness of a fellow guest, someone less skilled than she. She does not reach for her shotglass.

"Jejich páření byla uspořádána," Danicka says quietly, dropping her eyes from his finally and opening her menu. "To není totéž."

[Lukas] For a moment after Lukas continues to watch Danicka. He watches her eyes scan her menu and, after some time, his foot slides forward under the table until his shin crosses hers, and the inside of his calf rests against the outside of hers.

It's a slight, subtle contact. For a second his eyes are downcast as though he might be able to see through the tabletop. They return to her face.

"No," he says quietly. "It's not."

[Danicka] They are not like other couples. For one thing, most Garou do not feel it particularly necessary to woo or court their Kinfolk, unless they are unusually human in habit and thought process. The Kin already belong to them, the Kin are there to mate with. Dinners and hotel rooms and dancing really don't need to factor into it. Especially now that it's explicitly clear who Danicka wants to belong to, there's absolutely no need for Lukas to invite her out to dinner, or go get drinks and dance for awhile with her.

From the beginning, she's known why they bother going out at all, why they do anything but stay in his room or hers and fuck with the hopes that she'll get pregnant and bear a Trueborn. This has never been about that. It still isn't. It likely never will be. She knows that when he asks to see her, he wants to see her. If he wants to fuck her, he tells her with a touch or a glance or his very words that he wants to fuck her. If he wants to talk, he talks. Lukas is not simple in the sense that being with him is uncomplicated. But Lukas is honest. About his failures, and his fears, and his frustrations, he tells her the truth even when she might not ask for it, and she has come to believe in him. She trusts him.

She tries to trust him.

Her leg touches his, but neither of them reach over and lay their hands together on the tabletop. Their contact is spare but not nervous or hesitant. Danicka scans her eyes down the menu thoughtfully, as though looking for something in particular. The quiet lasts between them only a few seconds, but it feels longer. His leg is warm against hers. She looks up as he speaks, moving back into English, and tilts her head slightly to the side.

She could ask him to try and not become more and more of a monster, but she knows better. He would be weaker. He would be less useful in the war, if he does not let himself get more stronger, more full of Gaia's wrath. That's what he's meant to be. That's what they're all meant for, in the end. She is not going to ask him to try and stay a little bit gentle, for her sake. For the sake of keeping her. And she is not going to promise to never leave him, to always love him, because 'never' and 'always' and 'forever' simply do not exist, and promises that take a lifetime to keep are essentially forbidden between them because for some reason, they don't want to lie to each other.

Danicka knows, but doesn't tell him aloud, that she may very well be one of many things he has to eventually sacrifice. It doesn't bear talking about. So she simply watches him quietly for a moment, thinking of what she remembers of his face in childhood, thinking of how it will change, scars that may appear, wrinkles, hair, darkness. She loves him, suddenly and from nowhere and with a full-bodied intensity that almost startles her. Her breathing hitches slightly; she lets it out slowly.

"Lee moved out," she says, as though this just happened and surprised her. "She paid rent through part of August, which was more than I asked for, and I thought she was going to stick around, but the other day she just... got all of her stuff and left."

There's a beat. She tries to joke. Smiles. Anyone else would be fooled. She just doesn't try hard enough, with him, to be convincing about this particular lie: that she's only kidding.

"I'm starting to think I smell, and no one's telling me."

I'm starting to wonder if there's something wrong with me.

[Lukas] While Danicka studies him, Lukas studies the menu. He's not terribly familiar with Polish cooking; it takes him a while to decide. He's still in the process when she says, conversationally, as though she were a bit surprised herself:

Lee moved out.

It says something that he reads, immediately, the tone beneath her tone. There's no noncommittal mmhm? from him; no space-filling noise while he finishes thinking about what he's going to eat tonight. Nearly as soon as she speaks, he looks up from his menu. She relates the rest of the story; tries to smile and turn it into a joke. He frowns faintly in response.

A beat.

"Ilari Martin," he says quietly, "moved out because he had a heart attack and realized that he had nearly succeeded in killing himself. He moved out because he realized his daughter was more important to him than his semi-abusive relationship with my packmate, or his job, or this city." Pause; he doesn't pull punches. They don't lie for the sake of one another's feelings. "Or you. It's never pleasant to realize you come in second, even to a friend. But I don't think you really blame him for it.

"As for Liadan, even I could see the woman had some seriously complex issues that had nothing to do with you, Danička. There isn't ... " He thinks a moment, tries to find words. Then, "I couldn't see much light in her. For some, that's a sign of inner strength, or fierce control. I don't think it's that for Liadan. I used to think it was because I frightened her, but now I don't think it was that, either.

"You only have to look at how much she hated being the center of attention the other night to know she doesn't think much of herself. Or at how she behaved with her three 'dates'. I couldn't see any real interest on her part, but she accepted whatever attention they gave her. I don't think she brought the three of them because she wanted to, but because they did.

"What I'm getting at," he says, "is that someone like that, someone who doubts her self-worth like that, might be grateful for your consistently drawing attention from her. But some part of her might also find it difficult to share the proverbial stage with you. To constantly be compared, if only in her own mind, to you. There isn't a lot of light in Liadan. Whereas you..."

Lukas trails off for a moment. His eyes travel the surface of the table, downcast, black lashes darkening the blue. When he finds the words, he almost sighs, and when he finds her eyes again his smile carries something of ache.

"Ty světla až všechno kolem vás."

[Danicka] Danicka despises it when Lukas speaks in absolutes on subjects he does not fully grasp, as though what little he's seen and interpreted through a very narrow lense somehow gives him complete understanding. When she speaks in absolutes it's changeable as often as it is careful; what is true now may change tomorrow, what might be true in ten years becomes an impossibility because of something that happens in the next ten minutes. He did not know her mother, does not know her father, and in her mind has no room to speak of even her brother.

In a way, it's jealousy. They are hers. The pain they caused, the things they endured, belong to her. Not him. She would not try to hijack his grief over Mrena, and she bristles when he gets too close to what her childhood was like as though he has any possible means to wrap his head around what it was like to be five years old and already know that the families of trueborns were certainly not lucky, no matter what benefit the tribe could gift them with, no matter what protection they received or honor due their name. He's a goddamn Ahroun. He has no concept of what her life has been.

Sometimes she rages at him silently, snaps her jaws, tries to control herself before she snaps at him outright. She is a secretive thing, holding close even the things that could explain her to him. Could reconcile them. She is afraid to share even pain, just as much as anger, just as much as joy. She doesn't like to share.

When Lukas says the name of the Silver Fang kinsman that, for all he knows, Danicka was fucking on a regular basis rather than once in Tribeca and a few times in Chicago out of boredom or because she wanted Lukas or because she wanted to not want Lukas, her eyes flick up to meet his. She doesn't bristle, but then, nor does he say Martin's name with rancor or venom. Not even, really, judgement.

Though she did think it was appropriate that he was mentored by a Philodox.

She also despises it when he tells her things she already knows. Like she's a stupid child. Like she hasn't lived in this world for her entire life, seen and been told things no mortal should have to process, like she can't read people twice as well as he can, like she doesn't know, goddammit. But when Lukas speaks on Martin's reasons for leaving her apartment and Chicago, Danicka has no surface-level response except a quiet, unvoiced snort of air from her nostrils when he calls the man's relationship with Katherine 'semi' abusive. She lowers her menu though, and looks thoughtfully at him. But she doesn't interrupt.

As for Liadan. He talks about light. There's irony, there. Her nickname -- though not her given name -- has allusions to light in the darkness. His name finds its roots in the very essence of light, bright or dim, created or found. She glances away from him, and from the table, when he talks of the stage, of the comparison made in Liadan's mind. She still looks only thoughtful. Her eyes do drop, though, away from the window she's found to look at, when he slips back into his native language and tells her something no one else in earshot understands

He sees her in profile when he tells her that she lights up everything around her, and she only very slowly brings her face around to look at him again. If she's charmed, it doesn't show. Whatever has kept her quietly thoughtful all this time still lingers in her eyes.

"Believe me, I never got it into my head that I was any more important to Ilari Martin or Liadan Whelan than I actually was," is all she says, withholding comment on what matters to Martin, or how Lee might feel about herself. "But having to look for my third roommate in seven months... pretty much sucks, especially if this tendency they have to run off is the universe laughing at me."

[Lukas] "I didn't think you thought yourself more important to either of your roommates than you were," Lukas replies. "I just thought -- well; you sounded a little uncertain. So I told you how I saw it."

Their glasses of vodka have sat untouched since Danicka poured them. Lukas picks up the one nearer to himself now, shooting it in a quick, economical gesture. He sets the emptied shotglass down and continues without missing a beat.

"I know you don't need me to reassure you of anything, Danička. I just wanted to say what I said."

A short pause. Then, "Are you ready to order?"

[Danicka] She breathes in, exhales slowly, and lets her foot slide forward, furthering their contact under the table. "Já jsem jen zdůraznil. Je to... nepříjemnost," she explains, leaning a bit onto the table, resting her weight on her forearms.

She almost never does things like this. Leans on tables. He's seen her cross her legs at the knee once since meeting her, and it was only so she could more easily reach her shoes to remove them. It's slightly incongruous, her careful manners and easy regard of the rules of etiquette paired so closely with the way she fucks him up against a bathroom wall or tells him just to pull her thong aside and rub his cock against her.

He drinks. She reaches for her own glass after he speaks again and downs it, then reaches for the bottle. "I have a desire," she says mildly as she pours both shotglasses full again, "to drink myself giddy tonight. We'll have to figure out what to do about transportation."

"I think we should share grilled lamb chops, osso bucco, and get a Polish plate. I haven't had pierogis since New York."

Danicka tosses back her second shot.

[Lukas] She wants to drink herself giddy. Lukas's mouth tilts faintly; the expression fades. He's serious when he asks her:

"Are you going to be all right?"

When she answers his face eases. He smiles suddenly; then he laughs under his breath, picks up his shotglass, and holds it out to clink against hers. "I can drive your car back," he says by way of a toast, pauses to toss the shot down as effortlessly as the last, "and come back for mine tomorrow."

He waves his hand, a whatever you like sort of gesture, as she suggests lamb chops, osso bucco and a polish plate. "Budu věřit vašeho uvážení." He's pouring a third shot for each of them, and when he finishes he draws his foot back under the table, but not to reestablish borders.

To get up, and to slide his place setting across the table to her side of the booth. He slides in beside her a moment later, his arm wrapping briefly around her waist as he sits down. Lukas leans into Danicka, his chest pressing into her arm through his shirt front as he kisses her high on her cheek. Then he settles, reaching across the table to close his table and set it aside.

"Jsem šťastný jste tady," he says.

[Danicka] Her answer is a light laugh, genuine but quiet, more endeared than amused. "Jo," she tells him, and flexes her calf against his as though in reassurance. It isn't much, but it's intentional, and it is the language they speak most clearly to one another.

She tips her glass against his even though her own is empty, then sets it down so can pour their third round. Her stomach is empty and it will be some time before they eat; likely she'll be more than a little 'giddy' if she keeps going at this rate. The saving grace is that there's no self-loathing or darkness in the way she drinks herself further along the spectrum of inebriation. This is more like the carefree abandon of the young, the immortal, the hedonistic.

"I like this plan," she says agreeably, since he is the only one here who can burn of the effects of alcohol with a moment of concentration, a flicker of control, a burst of Rage. What could leave her hungover is nothing to him. Then there is the simple fact that he's stronger than her. He always has been, even when he was five and she was seven.

She is starting to reach for her third shot as well as wave down a waiter when Lukas moves. Danicka pauses both of these actions to look up at him, blinking in curiosity. When he comes to sit beside her in their booth she breathes in, and laughs softly -- barely more than a shuddering breath -- as his body closes around her. She leans into his chest, laying her head down on his shoulder for a moment. It's a brief few seconds of closeness even in public, somehow more intimate than a kiss or the touch of a hand.

Then he settles. She, too. They occupy their own spaces once again, even if they are still incredibly near.

"Jsem rád, že jste mě požádal, abych přišel."

[Lukas] Lukas's response to that is another laugh, just as quiet. He reaches across the table, then, picks up his shotglass. Drains it -- not shooting it nor sipping it, but merely tipping it back until it's gone. When he sets the shotglass down he holds the vodka in his mouth a moment, then swallows.

"I think I've had enough for now," he announces, and then finishes what she began earlier, flags down their waiter. When the man arrives Lukas lets Danicka order even though he's the one sitting on the outside of the booth, and the man besides. He trusts her discretion, after all.

Their menus are gathered. Their beers are delivered. Under the table, Lukas's knee leans lightly against Danicka's as he stretches out, as at ease in these rustic surroundings as he was at Spring, at Brasserie Jo. Where they are doesn't matter, she said long ago. It's never ceased to be true.

Conversation is light; not quite small talk, but casual, not deep. He asks her how her day went; tells her about the trip he took over the weekend into northern suburbs for some lead or other, some minor hunt or other. They discuss the economy briefly, if only because Lukas is interested and optimistic, and hopeful that his plummeting stocks will take a turn upward soon. He wants to know if she still plays world of warcraft. He tells her his sister was terribly addicted her first year of law school, and then quit because she was on the verge of flunking out. He isn't sure what Anezka played, but he knows it had something to do with backstabbing, and it was some sort of elf.

Their food arrives, dish by dish. For a while Lukas keeps to knife and fork, to his own plate. After two grilled lamb chops and a fourth or a fifth shot of vodka, he decides to eat off the main platter. After the third lamb chop's bone gets set aside he abandons the silverware, eating his fourth lamb chop with his fingers.

The osso bucco is to tender and hot to eat with his hands. He retrieves his fork for that. For what it's worth, he avoids pawing his fork all over the food, spearing or scooping only what he's about to eat. He lets Danicka have the marrow, of course.

When the shank is down to the bone, he's setting his beer aside, the bottle empty. The polish plate arrives last. He has more interest in the sausage than the pierogi; likes the potato pancakes, too. By then he's rather full, and rather buzzed, and he's stretching out until he can set his feet up on the opposite bench and pouring more vodka for the both of them, and now the bottle's down to a third and he's clinking his glass against hers again.

"Nevím, proč jsem čekal tak dlouho aby miluju ty," is his idea of a toast this time. Down the hatch it goes.

Their waiter wants to know if they were interested in dessert. This time Lukas orders; he gets ice cream drenched in liqueur, because clearly they weren't drunk enough. Off the waiter goes, and Lukas downs another shot, and then slouches down until he can rest his head on the back of the seat, staring up at the sharply vaulted ceiling like he could see the stars through the planks.

This is the logical sequel to what he said before:

"Někdy máte pocit tak seznámí do já."

He turns; he leans over to kiss her shoulder, gently, as though in benediction; or worship.

And then he laughs. "Myslím já může být opilý."

[Danicka] Enough for now doesn't last. Danicka just smiles as she sips her vodka, slower than Lukas. She leans around him slightly to order. If it's a special thing, an unusual thing, for 'the woman' to do the ordering, she doesn't appear to notice. The waiter does, having to flick his expectant eyes from Lukas to the blonde just past him. She thanks him, smiling, and suddenly whatever ill will she earned earlier by dismissing him so flatly is gone. He is in her graces again, and he is too happy about that fact -- too relieved by dealing with her and not her companion -- that he reacts to her as though grateful for her order. She plays him like she would run her fingers idly over an instrument, the lightest touch descending into a quiet cascade of notes.

Unlike Lukas, she doesn't sprawl out further and further as she drinks. She just relaxes, bit by bit, joint by joint. As the bottle of Wyborowa loses volume, she puts less effort into holding her head up, holding her shoulders straight. She tells him tidbits about errands she ran, something ridiculous the boy at the dry cleaners said to her. She seems curious when he discusses the hunt with her, brows drawn together as though she's uncertain why he's telling her this, talking to her about this sort of thing at all.

She wrinkles her nose at Anezka's choice of toon for World of Warcraft, long enough ago that she's guessing it was before Burning Crusade. "Alliance," she mutters, and takes what must be her fifth or sixth shot at that point. "Rogues are lame. Nothing against your sister, but..." and she makes a noise of dismissal, superior and unimpressed.

Danicka licks juice off her thumb. She does not, from the start, stay on her own plate or use knife and fork on the lamb chops. She eats off Lukas's plate with impunity, uses her napkin, eats carefully if not with true delicacy. She sucks the marrow from the bone. She does not eat a half of what he does, and eats slower. It's a small thing, the way she adjusts how she eats not to match his manners but to ensure that neither of them is sitting and waiting on the other at some point or another. It's a small, subtle thing. People think it doesn't matter. It doesn't need to be noticed.

Lukas is buzzed as they finish beers and set aside vodka, as Danicka bites into the last pierogi. She has just swallowed and is reaching for her now full-again glass when he toasts her. When he says what he does. She looks at him in mild startlement, blinking openly. Then her expression softens. Her eyes are colored like the thick, heavy leaves of a magnolia tree.

"Nevím, jak jsem stále věřil bych neměla," she says, almost a sigh, as the soft clink of the shotglasses resonates for a spare second. They drink.

She laughs when he orders more alcohol-saturated victuals, louder than she would have at the start of the meal, and for longer. She leans against his shoulder until he slouches down, and then she just twists on the booth's bench, turning so that her breasts are roughly level with his head. As they wait for their ice cream she reaches out and pushes his hair back, runs her fingers through it the way she might if they were alone and post-coital, and then does it again. It is not a teasing, glancing touch but heavy. Intimate. Possessive. Oddly nurturing, in her way.

Danicka is quiet when he tells her that she feels familiar, simply stroking his hair like that. He turns his head and leans over to kiss her but his mouth will fall on her arm, or her chest, because of how they are slumped together in the booth and because of how she has turned towards him. He confesses his sin of overindulgence and she laughs softly, leans over, and presses a kiss to his forehead.

"Moje láska, jsme..." she blinks slowly, then laughs. "Shitfaced."

The waiter brings their ice cream, and this makes her laugh again. For no reason.

[Lukas] It's not her shoulder he kisses after all. She's turned toward him, her torso twisted, one knee on the seat. It would be the polite thing to do to sit up and kiss her on the cheek, or lightly on the mouth, or ...

Lukas does not do this. He leans toward her, and because he cannot reach her shoulder easily, he kisses her upper chest instead -- the slice of skin revealed by her v-neck, at the inside of her collarbone.

It's the same, though; the very same: soft, like a blessing or a prayer. He confesses overindulgence; she laughs, and then she kisses him in turn. This makes him close his eyes. Her fingers stroking through his hair made him close his eyes, too, and there was something unashamed and animal about it, unself-conscious enjoyment of the senses.

His eyes flicker open again when she calls them shitfaced. He laughs aloud, a brief sound but not a short one, and now they're both turned toward the other, though he slouches lower, though his shoulders are still squared to the seats.

"To je není špatné věc."

His laugh tapers off; not because his humor is gone but because it's lived itself out. That's the truth, Lukas realizes. Once he would've been appalled to be this drunk in the presence of another. He would've felt out of control, indiscreet, exposed. But now --

He doesn't mind. She feels familiar. She's his; this street runs both ways. He feels ... safe.

Lukas closes his eyes again. He absorbs her fingers moving through his hair, her nearness, the buzzing in his blood. His hand finds her knee pressed against his thigh; his fingers wrap loosely around the curve of her leg; this too is wordlessly familiar, intimate, possessive without threat.

He's slow to turn when the waiter brings their ice cream, and he doesn't bother to sit up; he doesn't care if the waiter looks at them and wonders what the hell a lovely, lovely woman like that is doing with a drunken boor; doesn't care if he's too shitfaced to modulate his smile of polite gratitude, doesn't care if he bares too many teeth and makes the man not want to look his way.

Then the waiter departs, and Lukas moves the gently fluted, stemmed bowl between himself and Danicka. The ice cream is vanilla; the liqueur is hazelnut, generously drizzled on. Lukas hands Danicka a spoon and then picks up the bottle of Wyborowa, tilting it to look up through the bottom. Then he removes the cap, pours himself a final shot, tops hers off if she wants, and then leans across her to set it decisively at the inside edge of the table, next to the salt and pepper shakers.

"I've had enough," he says again, wry, and then he drains his glass. It joins the bottle.

[Danicka] Honest as he is, and honest as she loves him for being, Danicka is not blind to the fact that Lukas's behavior changes just as drastically according to where he is and who he is with as hers does. At Brasserie Jo, at Spring, they behaved themselves rather well. They did not touch. They used knife, fork, napkin. They did not drink heavily. When he left one restaurant to kill infectious fomori with his then-packmate, he did so discreetly. When he fucked her in the bathroom at Spring he was the picture of stoicism until the door was latched, and then he was teasing her, telling her if she screamed and got them in trouble he was blaming it all on her, throwing her under the bus, nevermind the wetness on his face.

Here, thirty minutes or so in frustrating traffic from where they both live, where it is slightly less likely that they're going to run into anyone they know -- or anyone who matters -- he lets himself slouch and drink and kiss her exposed skin. It's not lost on her, that he appears mammalian in his comfort, that he lets her touch him in ways that make his eyes fall closed and kisses her intimately when there are eyes to see them.

"Ne," she agrees with quiet amusement, "není to špatné."

She goes on stroking his hair, body turned towards him, attention turned towards him. She doesn't think about how this exposes her, how clear it is to anyone who might look their way that he matters to her. She does not worry about seeming attached, or think that he will be taken away from her simply because she dares to want him near. It's the vodka, and the beer, and the full belly and the reassurance of seeing him so soon after the last time. She eventually leans her head close to him and rests her brow against his temple as he puts his hand on her leg. She doesn't even notice, at first, when the waiter comes by with dessert.

Which they share, a spoon to each. They don't feed each other. She takes the first bite as he pours out vodka; she chuckles with her lips closed around that first bite of ice cream. It does not matter if the waiter thinks she's a drunk slut or... anything, really. It does not matter what he thinks, at all. He cannot touch her. He can't hurt her. He can't take anything from her.

She swallows, dips her spoon into the bowl again, does that last shot of vodka before she takes a second bite. This one sweetens her mouth again, and she sighs softly, soundlessly through her nostrils as she leans back in the booth. Her body, turning back around a bit so her shoulerblades touch the bench's cushion again, reads contentment. "Jdeš se mnou domů?" she asks him, reaching for a third bite.

Danicka has never told him how much she loves ice cream.

[Lukas] Something about this reminds him of being on a train. A long train ride, transcontinental. In the dining car, or perhaps merely at their seats, eating what they brought back from the on-board diner. It's that they sit side by side; it's the booth; it's the palpable aura of relaxation, companionship, and the distance from the city.

They share the ice cream. When she turns back toward the table, he lets himself lean into her a little. Not enough that he's slumping against her or letting her bear his inebriated weight, but enough that contact is there: desired, wanted, not necessary. She asks him a question and he finishes his bite of ice cream before lowering his hand to the table, the teaspoon glinting between his fingers.

"Jo, myslím, že ano." He carves another spoonful of ice cream off, eats it meditatively. "Chtěla bych do."

Their check arrives. Lukas doesn't sit up; he rolls his hips to the side and reaches for his wallet, slow, viscous, lazy. There's a small assortment of plastic in his wallet, but he goes with the american express again, slipping it into the credit card pocket on the small leather binder. He leaves it at the edge of the table for their waiter to pick up, helping himself to another spoonful of ice cream. It's starting to melt, pooling at the bottom of the bowl.

"Did I ever have ice cream at your house when we were young?"

[Danicka] That is all that is said on the subject of where they are going after this, when he drives and leaves his car here for the night. She asks if he's coming. He says he'd like to. It is all that needs to be said. Danicka takes another bite of steadily melting ice cream. They continue to lean into one another, her eyes half-lidded. It gives her a drowsy look, like her rounded shoulders give her body a certain liquid relaxation that is so complete it almost seems deliberate.

Lazy. Gorgeous.

She wipes a bit of liqeur off the edge of her bottom lip with her thumb, licks it off, and nods absently to his question. "Ano. My father made it all the time." A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. "The first gift I gave him after I started working for the Sokolovs was a new ice cream maker for his... fifty-eighth birthday? I think it was his fifty-eighth. Or ninth."

[Lukas] Lukas watches as her thumb swipes deftly across her lip; as her tongue touches, in turn, her thumb. Any other time and he would've felt a single, singular pulse of lust, a stab of desire. He's too relaxed now, though, and too damn drunk. Want rolls through him sinusoidally instead, a wave.

When she lowers her hand he takes it. He slides his fingers carefully through hers, his thumb sweeping the side of hers.

And then, suddenly, he grins. "Did I ever eat so much I threw up?"

[Danicka] Her spoon is languishing in the bowl, the tip half-submerged in melted cream with swirls of buttery brown marbelizing it. Danicka leans back, her mouth curving into that lopsided, almost awkward smile he only sees when he's the only one looking. He takes her hand, thumb still moist, and breathes out silently as the insides of their fingers slide against one another. She has done something like this after making love to him, lying in bed as they talk in the dark and stroking between his digits with a tenderness that, very likely, his hands have rarely known.

The question makes her chuckle. "No. Not with the ice cream. But you'd eat it pretty fast." She smiles to herself, looking at the bowl of ice cream before them. "You got brain freeze every time. Every summer."

[Lukas] "All ... what, two or three summers we knew each other?"

And he laughs to himself. He still hasn't sat up. He's still sprawled out, his right foot up on the opposite bench, left knee leaning against hers. His head is still back against the cushions. He still feels like he might be on a train, going somewhere, though he knows damn well the swaying is only in his head, only his brain reacting poorly to an overload of ethanol.

"I miss you," he says. "Retroactively. I miss you for all those years I didn't know you." Pause. "Does that make any sense at all?" And then he laughs again, because of course it doesn't make sense, and then he turns his head without lifting it, rolls it toward her until his ear almost touches the faux leather of the booth.

"Polib mě," he says. "A pak mě vzít domů."

[Danicka] When she is unhappy, Danicka can be a rather vicious drunk. Most of the time, however, she's simply so relaxed that she's quiet, still, and mellow. She's drunk now on food and alcohol and contentment, and has no wish but to remain full and intoxicated and content. She would be equally pleased to stay here a little longer or leave. Her immediate physical needs are all met, Lukas is happy beside her, and she has no pressing need to find a roommate immediately because Liadan paid through half of August and it's not even the middle of July yet.

She sighs again, her reaction to his reminder that they only knew each other two or three summers less laughter and more an obvious, unconcealed pang of exactly what he voices a moment later: I miss you. Retroactively. Danicka turns her head to look at him, her eyes slow to catch up with the movement, smiling fondly -- if a little sadly -- when he laughs. Of course it makes sense. To her, at least.

She leans over and kisses his mouth before the first half of his request has completely left it. It's harder than she means it to be, more forceful in its passion than tender. Her hand tightens in his, fingers still laced, and it seems for a moment she's going to pull that hand towards her body. She almost checks the impulse to do so, a hitch and flicker of hesitation, but then he finds his hand drawn to her breast, her body turning beside his again. Danicka goes on kissing him, less skillfully than she would if she weren't drunk but it's still better than some girls kiss sober, her tongue flicking against his.

[Lukas] Kiss me, he said. He didn't care where, how; how long, how deep. It's possible he never meant anything like this. It's more than likely. It's also likely that right now, he really

doesn't
give
a fuck

that they're in a restaurant -- a rustic, family-friendly restaurant full of bare wood and vaulted ceilings and the smell of heavy, meaty food; that they're in public; that she's drunk and so is he and their waiter will be coming back for their check any second. He opens his mouth. Lifts his head. His tongue meets hers unhesitatingly, twines; she draws his hand to her body and his hand cups her breast gently, caressingly, through her dress.

A second later he lifts her onto his lap. A second after that he comes to his senses, or at least finds some shred of sanity. His head drops back against the seat. He closes his eyes and exhales, and then an instant after that -- loathe to leave her feeling abandoned, or exposed -- he opens his eyes again, sits up, and wraps his arms around her. He holds her like that for a second; he doesn't care that their nearest neighbors, three tables down, are staring.

And then he does care. If not for his own sake, then for hers. An unpleasant and unbidden memory flashes to his mind: the coffee house in January, the way his then-packmate had drawn Danicka to him in front of everyone, everyone, and the way she'd looked afterward, bewildered and uncertain.

It's not the same.

Still.

He shifts her, raises her to her feet beside the table, follows her. Reaches back for her purse, when he hands to her and, since their waiter has yet to return, picks up their check himself. He takes the Wyborowa too, which is down to a fourth now.

And he holds his hand out to her. "Let's go," he says. "Where are your keys?"

[Danicka] A woman who seems as composed and polite in public as Danicka should not be inviting her boyfriend to fondle her in the middle of a Polish restaurant during the dinner hour. She should resist when he pulls her onto his lap, should part their kiss and pull away, tell him no, tell him wait, tell him he's drunk and they should get out of here. Danicka does not resist. She kisses Lukas harder when he touches her, their hands parting so she can caress his face. Her fingers slide past his ear and into his hair. When he moves her to his lap she breathes in and then eats hungrily at his mouth, tangling her grip in his hair.

Months ago she might have cared, even though he's not Sam and this is her choice. Months ago, even with him, she likely wouldn't have done this. Danicka is not the same woman who moved here in mid-January, and she is not the woman he met. He has thought, if not said, that she is the first extraordinary thing to happen to him. She cannot say the same about Lukas. What she thinks, instead, is that meeting him set off a series of changes so unexpected that she is still not quite sure where she's going, but now she feels less adrift.

It's not something she can explain to him. She does not know who she is yet. He is not telling her, or showing her, or guiding her. But she knows that somehow, he is vital to how she is getting to wherever it is she's going.

He is necessary.

Just when it seems she is going to arch her back, tilt her head back, and start to peel out of that dress, they finally stop kissing. She looks at him for a moment just before his head drops back, her breathing labored, her tongue slipping out briefly to moisten her lips. His head drops then, their eyes close at once, and she curls into him as he holds her. He doesn't care, and then he does. She doesn't care, and it doesn't change. But they slide apart, stand up, and she moves her hand into his. She digs into her purse before they start walking, since right now she doesn't trust herself to walk and get her keys out at the same time. She is breathing carefully now, deeply.

Her cheeks are pink. She hands him her keys and zips her purse again, laughs softly. "I saw a construction site about halfway back," she says. "Existuje obrovské, prázdné hodně. Chci, abys mě tam kurva."

[Lukas] Lukas doesn't bother straightening his hair. He doesn't bother wiping his mouth, or trying to disguise the flush in his cheeks, the glint in his eyes that's as much alcohol as arousal. He doesn't try to hide that he was just kissing his

(mate)

girlfriend in their booth like they were in a private hotel room; like any moment she might strip out of that dress and he might wrest open his jeans and they might fuck, like animals, on the remains of their dinner.

He does, however, take her hand. And her keys, but primarily, her hand. He closes his hand over hers firmly, and when they start walking, and she starts speaking, and switches languages midsentence, and says what she says -- when this happens, his head turns; he looks at her, and the glint in his eyes is suddenly a gleam, and he stops where he is, halfway between their table and the cash stand near the door. He stops and he turns toward her in the same gesture. He steps against her. He brings his body so solidly against hers that there's no doubt of his intention even before he loops his arm around her wait, lifts her against his body, and kisses her mouth.

A short kiss; but hard. When it parts he nuzzles her cheek briefly, the soft spot under her ear. Then he lets her down, finds her hand again.

Outside the night air feels pleasant and cool. He finds her car by clicking the remote entry and making its lights flash. The step down from the curb takes him into a loose trot that he maintains halfway across the street, pulling Danicka along with him, until he slows to a walk. At her slate-blue G37x he lets her go, opening the driver's side door and leaning down to slide the chair back to accommodate his longer reach.

Before he sinks in, he speaks to her over the roof, briefly serious.

"You might want to wait outside for a moment," he says. "Chci změnu formy. It won't take long."

[Danicka] So many things between them are unfair. That he is strong in an obvious, glorified way. That she is so beautiful, even when she cries, even when she rages. That they were parted when they were children and did not grow up together. That they missed so much because his family pulled away from hers and her family pulled away from everyone. That she could die so easily. That he could die so soon.

Right now, Danicka is thinking it's unfair that Lukas has to burn off his buzz so that he can drive. He may or may not agree. Later it will be unfair that he can burn it off in an instant and she may very well be hungover tomorrow morning. Danicka, however, knows more hangover cures than the devil himself and more about hangover prevention than God.

Still in the restaurant, she presses her body flush to his when he turns into her and pulls her close. She kisses him like they're alone, her hands flat on his chest because she doesn't have time to run them up the back of his neck and into his hair again. There are a few people looking away in distaste. There are staff members just hoping they keep walking and leave soon.

For her part, Danicka is breathing that much more heavily when he lets her go, brief as the kiss was. Her eyes are bright green, her lips still parted and red just as much from kissing as whatever lipstick she applied before coming out here. His lips are tinted slightly with it, from the booth and from just now. His hair is askew. But this is okay. They're safe. The moon's still full but somehow, they're safe like this. And they can stay safe, if they get out of here soon.

She shivers outside, not from feeling cold but from the change in temperature all the same, the pleasure of the air on her neck, the prospect of leaving with him... everything. He knows she is sensual, and physical in a way that borders on sheer hedonism, on mindlessness. She doesn't disguise, tonight, how much she likes the night air or how much she wants to be with him. She is murmuring as they walk to the car with its carefully tinted windows:

"Nemohu se dočkat, až se vám mezi můj nohama. Chci si ruce na mých stehnech, chci se dívat na svou hlavu opřít se, jak jste mi zadat." She shivers again, this time with lust, and murmurs in a near sigh: "Miluji způsob, jakým jste sténání."

At the car she lets him go but reluctantly, watching him as he rounds the car. When he manages to make a serious face and utter serious words, she wants to laugh but stops when her mind flashes to something else, some memory that tainted her, that made this necessary. She nods slowly to him in agreement -- perhaps in gratitude.

And turns her back to the passenger side door.

[Lukas] Because of what she says, because of the way she moves close to him, and the way she shivers from the delight of a cool night after a warm meal and entirely too much vodka; because of these things, the glance Lukas flashes her way before he sinks into her car is

hungry. There's a hot gleam in his eyes. He doesn't say anything else; neither does she. He shuts the door behind him.

There's a silence. Then he's leaning across to open the passenger side door, pushing it out so she can get in. When she does his serious face is gone, as are his serious words, and he reaches out before she's even properly in her seat to wrap his hand behind her neck and pull her to him.

Surety. That's what she feels in his grasp now. The alcohol haze is gone. The want is not. He draws her to him surely, absolutely, and he kisses her again, of course. Heavily, shamelessly, his free hand pushes over her body. He maps her torso with his palm like he has a right to her, and to this, and when he finds her breast this time he cradles her in his hand, squeezes her gently with his fingers. After, he's panting into the humid space between.

"Miluji způsob, jakým se cítíte." A confession for a confession. "Miluju, jak budete reagovat na mě.

Another brief, clinging kiss. Then he lets her go. His left foot searches for a clutch pedal that isn't there. Automatic, he reminds himself, laughs under his breath, and pushes in the brake pedal before he twists the key in the ignition. The Infiniti purrs to life and Lukas drops it into gear, backs out of the space.

"Where's your empty lot?"

[Danicka] Her back to the car, Danicka doesn't know when he's finished. She guesses. She knows it's minutes, it's going to be moments. And it's barely even fifteen, thirty seconds before she hears or senses movement behind her, steps away from the car so the door can open. Turning, she wraps her purse-holding hand around the edge and opens it further. Danicka climbs in slowly and carefully so she doesn't crack her skull, closes the door after her with a quick check to make sure her skirt isn't caught, but it isn't. It's hiked up slightly, twisted around her thighs because she did not have a hand free to smooth it under her legs as she sat.

His hand on the back of her neck makes her breathe in sharply, a flash of startlement borne out of delayed reactions, old memories, lust, liquor, adoration all in a mix, all in confusion. She squirms at first when he kisses her, resistant to being pulled and tugged forward by the neck. Maybe it's too fast. Maybe it's the moon. Maybe it's some long-buried defiance coming to the fore finally now, after all these years.

The back of her neck is hot, and his hand is hot, and it makes her skin crawl to be touched there so forcefully. "Ne," she says, wriggling away from his hand even as she's moving towards his mouth, wrapping her hands around his shoulders and kissing him like they're already at her apartment. Or an empty lot.

She whimpers as he touches her, pulling one hand back to hold his against her breast, opening her mouth and still tasting hazelnut and vanilla and Wyborowa all tinged and sharpened by Rage. Her hips move across her seat, further tangling her skirt, body urged towards his by instinct and desire. She flicks the tip of tongue across his lips, all but panting, kissing him again to cut off the tail end of his words. Her hand runs down his chest and abdomen too quickly to be called a caress, slides too purposefully between his legs to be rushed.

Danicka goes on touching him until he makes her stop, even after the kiss has ended, stroking him through the linen even as she's answering, murmuring in his ear that it's off of 51st and South Lawndale, go this way and then that way,

"Vezmi mě tam. To mě poser," she purrs. She almost snarls.

[Lukas] It barely bears mention that Lukas's hand leaves the back of Danicka's neck the moment she twists away from it. It barely bears mention, not because it's insignificant but because it should be expected, would've been expected by now, if not for the fact that

she is who she is
and he trapped her in a hotel room not so very long ago.

But: his hand leaves her neck. And it goes to her face instead, her hair; it moves down her back and he has the zipper of her dress half-undone before he comes to his senses; or no, he doesn't come to his senses at all; he gives her a confession and she strokes him through his pants, which are summery and thin, and there's no disguising his arousal, his erection, his hard fucking cock from kissing her at the table, in the middle of the aisle, and here.

Lukas makes a muffled noise against her mouth when she touches him, pulls his mouth free, groans, turns back, kisses her hard.

And then that kiss is falling apart; he makes her stop, makes himself stop, pulls his hands to himself and pulls her hands from him, or that's what he wants to do except he only gets as far as putting his left hand on the wheel and his right on the gearshift, and her hand is still on him, working his cock through his clothes as expertly as she ever did, and Lukas surrenders for a moment and puts his head back against the headrest and closes his eyes.

"Danička..."

Her name is a sigh. She tells him where to go, and how to get there, and then she tells him what to do to her when he gets her there. His eyes fly open. He takes her face between his hands and he kisses her, open-eyed, and then he does remove her hand from him, and the sound he makes then is half a snarl, half a groan; half frustration, half impatience.

He drives. Needless to say, he drives fast, but carefully, because this is her car and not his. He drives fast, but it's still twenty minutes from 520 Kingsbury to Szalas in the best traffic; it's at least ten minutes to Danicka's empty lot. Silence fills those ten minutes, a seething, scalding sort of silence, broken only when he waits impatiently at a red light -- both hands on the wheel because he doesn't have to worry about shifting -- and, feeling her eyes on his face or simply because he wants to, turns to look at her suddenly.

"Jak chcete kurva?" he asks her then. "Protože chci položit vám dolů na kapotu."

The light is green before she answers. He drives. Between Szalas and Chicago there's a stretch of suburbs, a stretch of empty lots where houses will be built, cookie-cutter tracts of condos and apartments and single-family-detacheds. When Lukas finds Danicka's empty lot, he takes a side road, a dirt road, finds a secluded area and slashes the G37x off onto the shoulder. He doesn't care that he parks at an angle with one rear wheel still on the asphalt. He pulls up the handbrake, shifts into park, kills the engine, undoes his seatbelt.

And then, pushing his door open, he starts to undo his shirt as he's getting out.

[Danicka] If they don't stop -- if he doesn't stop undressing her, if she doesn't stop stroking his cock, if they don't stop kissing -- then they aren't going to make it to the empty lot. They're going to end up fucking in the parking lot of the Polish restaurant and the staff will be too scared of Lukas causing a 'scene', and a violent one, to do anything but call the police before they try any other avenues of dealing with the drunk, horny couple in the Infiniti. It seems to take everything they have to stop, because when Lukas starts unzipping her dress she starts to reach up to push the sleeves down, her thumbnail catching on the thin, dark strap of her bra. When he groans, she echoes him in a surreally soft whimper, her mouth going to his earlobe to nip once, quickly, before he turns to kiss her again.

"Mám rád vaše kohout," she half-snarls in his ear just before his mouth crushes to hers again, unravels her again. She doesn't stop touching him, is leaning over and licking his neck, biting at his jawline and his ear as his head falls back and he lets himself indulge in this, too, as much as he indulged in food and vodka and liqeur-laced ice cream inside the restaurant that they still have yet to leave.

It takes the sheer force of Lukas's will -- Danicka is not exerting effort in this direction, really, unless 'effort' can be defined as resisting the temptation to simply unfasten his pants and jerk him off right there in the parking lot -- to get their hands back to themselves, to get the kissing to stop and to get the car started. Driving like this is almost as bad as driving drunk. Impatient and aroused and Danicka sitting there in the passenger seat, her dress half unzipped and her thighs half bared and her hands --

She doesn't sit quietly, hands in her lap, as he drives. Ten minutes? It must feel like that. It's barely five. At first she just pulls her skirt up, inching the loose but draping fabric up her thighs higher and higher to the point of utter indecency, as though what they were up to before was 'decent'. It isn't total silence, not with her sliding her fingers up her inner thighs, stroking the soft skin uncovered, in summertime, by stockings or garters. She whimpers quietly, back arching against the seat. She isn't belted in. Either she trusts him or she believes that there's no chance anyone else on the road could happen to slam into them from behind or she just isn't thinking, at all, anymore.

Danicka's completely fucking drunk, and she was willing to get in his lap and ride him before they left the restaurant. She isn't thinking much at all.

She, is however, moaning as her dress slips farther off her shoulders and her fingers slide higher up between her thighs. She touches herself in the dark interior of the G37x, fingertips unseen past the now-retracted border of her dress's hem. Lukas can't see how Danicka rubs her clit through her panties, can't see her panties, can't see how she strokes lightly on either side and then returns to that nervous center to send electric jolts of pleasure up her body. But he can hear her. He can see how she writhes next to him, can see how she just gasps and nods absently in agreement when he stops at the red light and speaks to her.

The car jolts to a stop and she yelps, then laughs, nearly thrown out of her seat. A flurry of cursing leaves her, not in English nor Czech but in the rounder, harsher language she learned from her mother. She is calling him god knows what, reaching for her door's handle and fumbling with it, swearing again -- this time in Czech, and the invective would be enough to make a solid half the people who know her get whiplash in shock at what she says about the door's mother. The woman could make a sailor blush... if he spoke the right language.

Finally the door opens and she all but tumbles out of it, triumphant and pleased with herself. She stands with the door open for a moment, then reaches back and unzips her dress all the way. It drops, she steps out of it, and tosses it into the car before slamming the door.

Underneath the peach dress is a similarly-hued bra with black lace at the cups and black straps over her shoulders. Her thong matches. She shivers as a breeze hits her, very nearly bare now, the moonlight bright enough that they should be more wary, but she walks -- in her heels, with her purse -- to the front of her car and, turning her back to it, quite deftly hops onto the hood, a lazy smile on her lips as she lays back.

"Už jste někdy byli zatčeni? she asks him, reclining until her hair spreads across the blue paint job. She looks like she's about to sun herself, not fuck her...

...boyfriend. Mate. Her Lukáš.

[Lukas] All the way there, Lukas has no illusions whatsoever about what Danicka was doing to herself. He grits his teeth and keeps his eyes on the road, except at the stoplight, except when he tells her how he wants to fuck her, and then he can't help but look, his eyes can't help but stray over her loosened, collapsing dress, her rucked-up hem, her hands between her writhing thighs and, and

"Oh, God." It's a quiet sliver of a moan as the light turns green. "Baby, you can't... fuck, vy budete řídit mi šílené."

And she likely doesn't care if she can or she can't. Once upon a time Danicka would've never dreamed of doing anything like this. She would've never disobeyed so blatantly, so dangerously, so tauntingly. Or rather; she would've never served her own needs recklessly, regardless of what the werewolf, the full-moon next to her was groaning.

Or maybe she would have. From the start, she climbed his body and kissed his mouth. He would've made a whore of her if he could've. She never let him.

Then the tires are scratching to a stop in the dirt; he's getting out of the car and tearing at his shirt buttons; she's fumbling her way out, very drunk, very fucking drunk, and when she spills out she strips almost naked and her dress goes back into the car and he leaves the last few buttons of his shirt where they are, tears it over his head like a pullover, leaves it in the dirt. He doesn't care. He's wresting with his pants and she's walking toward him, and god, she's in her lingerie and her heels and she's smiling like that, lazy, gorgeous, and his eyes gleam even in the dark. She hops up on the hood and he drops his pants, steps out of them, his erection unmistakable through his boxer briefs. He touches himself through the soft cotton blend, stroking the tips of his fingers along the shaft as he looks at her, as he watches her, as he watches himself reaching out to touch her face, her mouth, her shoulder.

Then, gently, but firmly, he pushes her down. She lays back and he lays her out. He opens her legs wider, tucks his fingers beneath and knee and lifts her feet until her heels catch on the G37x's underchin spoiler, a makeshift footrest.

"Oh, fuck, yeah," he breathes. He steps between her knees, which are spread too far for their skin to brush, but she can feel his heat radiating off of him. She can most certainly feel when he reaches his hand between her legs and rubs her gently, gently through her panties, forking his fingers down the sides, then dragging his middle finger relentlessly up the center. "Jsi úžasná. Víte, kolik chci kurva ty?"

He's found her clitoris. He touches her very gently, but unyieldingly, and his eyes drink in every last flicker of reaction; his pupils huge as a hunting animal's. The moon's just past full, brilliant; lights her up. Agnessa Malikoff's been moonbathing atop the Brotherhood for weeks on end; sometimes Lukas comes in from the roof at night and gives her funny looks, uncertain of what she thinks she's doing, but now; now he thinks to himself that if he came in by night and found Danicka Musil in the other Shadow Lord kin's place, he might just ...

... fuck her right there. Lose his goddamn mind. Who the fuck knows, or cares. She's not Agnessa Malikoff, wouldn't do anything so fucking stupid; and besides, Agnessa could never in a million years even approach the same league.

She wants to know if he's ever been arrested. Lukas pants a laugh out, incredulous. "Co?" And then he shakes his head. "Ne. Proč?"

[Danicka] He never finishes telling her what she can't. She doesn't stop touching herself as he drives, her ass rubbing against the chair through her dress and her legs spread wantonly, head thrown back. Maybe this makes him lose his mind. Maybe she's disobeying, but Danicka has nearly always been able to see through Lukas's most profound efforts to conceal what he really wants.

Drunk and aroused, she pleasures herself without thought of punishment or retribution. Drunk and aroused. she strips down to nearly nothing in a construction lot that is well-lit enough that they'll be in hot water if anyone happens by. It's not like it's three in the morning or some other godforsaken hour. It's somewhere around ten, or eleven, when even on a Wednesday there are still liable to be people passing by. She doesn't care.

She's laying back on the hood of the Infiniti, spread out like a gift as he walks to her and touches himself, her back touching the metal without resistance. Danicka smiles up at him as he pulls her legs up, reaching between her legs to hook her fingers in the waistband of his boxers. She pulls and tugs at them, working them off his hips and exposing him, letting out a soft, satisfied gasp.

"Tady jsi, lásko," she sighs, inane and unconcerned, stroking the tip of his cock with her fingers.

Her lips part to pant almost silently as he touches her then, asking her a thoroughly stupid question that she nonetheless answers honestly, whimpering a "Jo," and bucking her hips slightly towards him.

Danicka's hands caress him as well as she can from this reach, in this position, until it's too much. She is letting go of him with her left and and opening her purse, reaching inside. It takes time, when she's this drunk and because she's right-handed, time enough for her to explain:

"Žádný důvod," with a warm chuckle. It is both deflection and answer, giving him as much as he really needs to know... at least right now, with her hand on his cock and his fingers stroking her pussy, the blonde on the car hood pulling a condom from her bag and pushing it into his hand.

"To mě poser. Polib mě znovu," Danicka is saying then, pushing herself up into a sitting position while he takes the condom and unwraps it, unrolls it, tosses it over his shoulder, she doesn't even care anymore. She runs her hands up his bared chest and onto his shoulders, leaning forward to flick her tongue over one nipple. "Chci, abys kurva mě hned. Pěkné a perný."

[Lukas] Reaction: a clench of tension through his whole body the instant she touches him, finally touches him at last, her skin to his. They're almost gentle; almost patient. They touch each other lightly, and all the while what she's doing to him is searing in his eyes, shivering up his spine.

His eyes flickers closed for a second, open again: brilliant blue. He moves a step closer, and another, and now his cock brushes against her through her panties. His fingers stroke her, steadily, and all the while words are melting away in his mind, running away like shadows before the sun.

She sits up. His eyes follow her. She's reaching for a condom and she's still stroking him and he leans forward the instant she turns back to catch her mouth, kiss her mouth, eat at her mouth while he strokes her through panties, and then brushes the slip of fabric away to

touch her, find her wet beneath her lingerie. A sighing groan in her mouth, and there's a condom in his hand and he's drawing away a small short distance to look down. Lukas can barely remember his own name, much less what the fuck to do with this.

Impatience makes him hasty. He rips the packet open, rolls it on, and when her hands slip up his chest onto his shoulders he turns his head to kiss her right hand; when she closes her mouth over his nipple his head falls back and his chest rises against her mouth as he sucks a breath in, lets it out in a soundless gasp a second later.

"Baby..." he sighs, and he's got the condom on now; reaches up, slips his fingers into her hair. Strokes her hair like that a moment, her mouth on his chest -- lifts her face a second later, kisses her, kisses her, pushes her back.

And down.

"Dejte si nohy kolem mě." His voice is low, a mutter, barely controlled. He presses his palms to the hood, and the metal is still warm, and she's warmer still, and he bends to her and sucks her nipple into his mouth, devouringly. She can feel his hands pressing her thighs apart, his cock nudging against her clit; his hips flexing, adjusting, and when he finds her cunt --

when he pushes into her, he turns his mouth from her breast, exhales in a shuddering rush.

"Podržte mě," he says. Elbows bending, he curls his forearms under her shoulders, finds her eyes with his. Watches her, unceasingly, as he begins to move inside her.

Hard. From the very start, hard, pistoning strokes of his hips, a swift plunge, a slow withdrawal. By the second slide his brow drops against hers. By the fourth he's panting, and then he's finding her mouth, kissing her again, kissing her like he can't stop; groaning into her mouth as he builds the rhythms, faster.

[Danicka] Like they played at being hunter and prey in the woods, they play now at gentleness. Their hands stroke lightly over skin, and over silk, over skin that feels like silk, and when Lukas moves towards her he does so slowly. They pretend well that they are human, or that they are not bristling with desire for each other. They can tell themselves Oh, I can wait, I can wait when it's nothing close to the truth, but they can tell themselves this and pretend to believe it because it's only been four days this time. They can pretend that makes a difference.

When he twists his fingers past her panties to touch her, she is rolling her hips into the touch, trying to rub herself against his cock which was there, right there, just a second ago. When he groans into her mouth she swallows it, sucks on his tongue, teases the inside of his mouth with her own as though to silently summon forth more sounds ilke that. They can go a little slower now, which is counter-intuitive. Their want is a raging, fierce thing, intensified by the moon, by liquor, by kissing in the restaurant and in the car and the way he moaned Baby, you can't and the way she was going to let him undress her in the parking lot and fuck her right there, pull her onto his cock as though it didn't matter who might see.

They're far more exposed now, out here. Someone could drive by. A cop, perhaps. They should be going at this mostly-clothed and with feverish speed, not with his shirt on the ground and his pants off and her in nothing but lingerie when they could have very well just pushed her skirt up. They should be doing this inside the car, steaming the windows with their gasping and bodies noisy against the leather. It's arrogant and luxurious, the way that they fuck as though the world can go to hell, but that is sort of the way they always fuck.

Instead of slamming her down and pushing into her cunt, Lukas lets her lick his nipple, teasing and dangerously light. He strokes her hair; she runs her hands over his body as though she cannot get over the feel of him on her palms. And she can't. She can't get past how strong he is, how unafraid of him she is right now, how much Rage she feels in him that, all the same, doesn't have him locking her into the same quiet behavior that she always had to manifest in order to survive her childhood. She cannot get over how much she loves his skin. She cannot get enough of touching his body, and that is new to her, and so when he eases her back down to the hood of the car, he starts to say

Put your--

but she already is. And he starts to say

Hold --

but she already is.

Danicka's legs wind up and hook around his waist as he holds himself up over her, her eyes open and on his until he ducks his head and nudges her bra's cup out of his way so he can suck on her breast. She breathes in sharply, as though she has to stay quiet, and pushes her fingers into his hair, holding his head in place for a moment longer than he might have on his own. She writhes against the metal, working herself against the cock that keeps rubbing against her, teasing her, seeking her,

and then it does, and she moans, fingers tightening against his scalp. Danicka rolls her hips once more, bearing down on him as he goes deeper, taking him further, moaning a second time. Already she's panting, eyes closing at the intensity of her pleasure only to open again. She lets go of his hair and wraps her arms around him before he's even finished telling her to hold him, and she is lifting her mouth to his to kiss him when he folds over her, loosing a soft whimper into his mouth.

"Kurva mě," she sighs, a tight intensity underlying the words as they uncurl against his lips, her breath tainted by vodka and hints of hazelnut. "Kurva mě," she says again, her legs pulling him harder into her. The night is warm enough and his body and the car are warm enough and she's sweating, her inner thighs slick with it, her chest covered in a dim sheen, a few hairs already sticking to her cheeks and scalp. He drives his cock into her and she cries out, more savage than before, almost sounding pained, but her fingernails dig into his back to keep him going.

She moves against him, under him, the muscles in her back squirming under his hands where he's wrapped around her. One strap of her bra has completely fallen down, one cup pulled away to bare one breast. She does not wait for him to slam into her each time but lifts her hips to meet him, fucks him back, gasping against his face when she is not kissing him. But as they go on, as he fucks her harder... as he moves faster... as her cries turn to near-screams, Danicka moves her mouth to his shoulder and bites down, her loud groan muffled by his flesh. Her arms tighten around him. She doesn't release him to warn him that if he keeps this up, at this pace, that she's going to come. She just clenches around him, squeezes him tightly inside her, and bites down harder.

[Lukas] Kurva mě, she says, and it's a sigh underlain with tension, with a snarl. It lays him open, sinks into his mind and slices lust through him. His response is immediate, a sharp panting exhale, a buck of his hips against hers. "Ano," he says, and it's the same, quiet but tight, harsh with want.

Kurva mě, again. He presses his brow against hers for a second, and then he's unwrapping his arms, pushing his hands against the hood, raising himself over her. Light from the construction lights slants across his shoulders, catches in his hair -- black, curled with sweat, by her fingers raking through. He lowers his head. She knows what he's doing: he's watching her, watching himself, watching their bodies joining over and over and her thighs opened and her belly sheened with sweat and --

"Fuck, yes," and this time it's almost a hiss, a raw whisper through his teeth. His fingers curl against the hood, find nothing to grasp, pull into fists. It's a little bit rough, the way he's moving into her, the way he's bracing his weight on his fists, on his feet, and moving into her with all the force of his momentum.

She cries out -- he sinks back to his elbows, pushes his fingers into her hair, pulls her mouth to kiss and devours that sound like it's red meat, like it's wine, like it's air. Apart, then, and his eyes refracting the light, faceted, jewel-brilliant, blue as gas flames, as diamonds, as themselves.

A pause; a quivering, shuddering stillness. "Oukej?" he pants.

Her nails scoring his flesh is answer enough for him, drives him to groan, drives him to drive into her, drives him to fuck her harder and faster until -- abruptly -- he grasps her by the hips and slides her up the hood of the G37x until her head rests against the windshield and her golden hair fans over the glass. He follows, the car sinking lower on its springs, pushes her thighs open and plunges into her all at once, makes a torn, ragged noise, slides his hands under her shoulderblades again and holds her to him as he moves within her.

"Nepřestávejte," is what he snarls when her teeth bite into his shoulder -- as though she were the one riding him and not the other way around, "který kundo je tak dobrý, kotě. Nepřestávejte kurva mě ... jen takhle. Jen takhle, Danička."

She doesn't warn him. She doesn't need to. He knows; it's the fucking point of the exercise. He shifts over her, shifts his weight to one forearm, one elbow, grasps her leg with the other hand and hoists it over his shoulder, presses her open, fucks her recklessly, indefatigably, and when she bites down harder, when her nails dig into his skin, he turns his face to her body and sinks his teeth into her shoulder in turn; short, sharp.

"Chystáš přijde, lásko?"

There was a time when he hardly spoke two words while they fucked; a time when he didn't trust himself, or her, enough to make a single sound. Tonight he can't seem to stop; can't stop fucking her, can't stop whispering in her ear, can't stop groaning when she squeezes him just like that, when she rolls her hips up against his just like that.

"Chystáš se přijít pro mnou?"

[Danicka] And what the do say is unnecessary. She tells him to fuck her as though he would, now, have any intention of stopping. She has started responding to every thrust of his hips, crying out with the disinhibition that she has even when she's not drunk. Danicka is doing her very best right now not to bite him too hard or scratch him too deep with her nails or slice a line down his flank with her heels, and she has no concentration left to put towards keeping herself quiet. They do not need to speak --

(they speak from brow to brow, and
hear with their eyes)

-- but they do anyway, whether snarling or moaning or biting gasps out of one another's mouths. Moments of gentleness, mere eyeblinks of tenderness, pass between them in the midst of it all: times when their foreheads touch and she looks at his eyes in their startling blueness as though inviting him to get lost in hers, which are not quite so burdened by clarity. Nothing is either/or with Danicka. Everything is both/and, from the color of her eyes to the love she has for him.

They can see each other out here, feel breeze occasionally on bared, sweating skin. The hood of the car has a warmth wholly different than that of her sheets when they're filled with body heat. There's a resistance to the metal not found in a mattress or bedspread. She groans when he looks down, opening her legs wider, taking him deeper with a loud groan.

It's a little bit rough, what they're doing to each other. It always was. They are never together that there is not that sense that savagery and wildness are not far off or far away. They are never together that they are not animals, even if they pretend quite prettily to be human. To be civilized. To be tamed by anything by one another.

She lets out a yelp when he moves her farther up on the car, her hair damp now and the summer's heat surrounding them, crawling up their spines and down their thighs. Danicka's eyes find his, and she laughs as her head tips back against the windshield. She holds onto him more than before, as though she's not quite sure of the surface of the car beneath her or the ground beneath that. Her hips buck hard up against his, more insistent, a silent

Rychleji, lásko. Rychlejší!

And she bites into him, but her teeth lose his flesh when he pushes her leg up and it hooks over his shoulder. She tosses her head back, smacking lightly but audibly against the glass, fighting to squirm against him, to fuck him back. Since she cries out so much more than him, or used to, it's hard to tell how strong her reaction is to the things he says to her, whether he's gasping against her lips or growling in her ear, but he can feel the reaction deep inside her body, the way her cunt clenches around his cock as though her body knows his voice just as well as her mind.

"Jo," she gasps, her voice pitched as though breathing, speaking, is staving off a whimper. As he bites her she holds him there, the fingers of her right hand curled tight in his hair while her left clutches at his shoulder. "Jo, Lukáš...lásko..."

She throws her head back again, this time harder, this time hard enough that it should hurt her, but she doesn't seem to notice. Her body goes taut, arching as though struck by lightning even though there's not a cloud in the sky, not a cloud in his eyes, no distant or near rolls of thunder. "Nekončí!" she cries, needless and gasping, helpless against the literal onslaught of her orgasm. "Nepřestávejte, miláčku, potřebuji tě!"

Danicka groans deep in her throat, a harsh and almost agonized sound that tapers off into a trembling whimper, both of her hands holding his shoulders now, his arms, while her hips buck against his once, twice, like she has no control over what her body is doing. Even before it's over her limbs have started to go limp, her body has started to quiver. She closes her eyes tightly like that's going to help her survive, somehow, biting her lower lip as soon as she can do so without biting through it. Her nostrils flare and her chest moves roughly with ragged breaths not given any voice, and then her teeth part and her eyes open again, her gaze swimming from ethanol and endorphins.

"Lukáš..." she murmurs, loose but still partially strained. As though she's questioning. As though she's calling to him.

[Lukas] This time he's with her. There's no respite; no safe harbor from the storm that wracks both of them. She comes and her orgasm sparks his off like electricity jumping wires, like a chain reaction in a stockpile of explosives.

The first time she threw her head back, he moved his hand behind it, cupped the back of her head; the second time, her skull cracks not against the windshield but against his hand, hard enough that it should have hurt, except --

except that he's not human, and these things don't matter to him. He can drink half a goddamn bottle of vodka and slip his skin, be all right in a matter of seconds. The worst of wounds heal in a week; faster, if he uses his tricks, his talens, the resources of his pack and compatriots. And that's not fair, no more fair than it is that -- well. No more fair than life and love and war is.

-- except that he's far, far beyond caring about minor discomforts like that. Nekončí! she gasps, and it doesn't matter that the first time he heard her moan that she was with another man; it doesn't matter that the construction site is barren and empty but well-lit, and if a patrol car happened along he might not be able to answer ne the next time someone asks if he's ever been arrested.

Nothing matters except that she's turning to liquid electricity beneath his hands, beneath his body. She's molten and then she's crystallizing, drawing taut as a bowstring, taut as a conducting wire. Her spine arches and it only seems natural that his free arm should wrap around her. She strains against him and it seems only natural that he should bend to her, and over her, and flex against and into her as she rolls against him.

He holds her where she is, with his arms and his hands, with his teeth in her shoulder; he holds her at the cusp of her orgasm and the feel of her, the sound and the smell of her drives him over. There's a complete, absolute flexion in his body, every muscle clenching down to hammer him into her as though he might go deeper, stay longer, become inseparable from her, and then his pleasure tears apart, splits asunder to some white-hot core that incinerates every last thought in his mind. He doesn't have time to warn her, or say anything; to salvage some scrap of sanity and tell her

that it's only ever like this with her.
that it's like nothing else he's ever known, with her.

They're not human; they're barely even sentient. They groan and cry out; buck and writhe and strain against one another, toward one another. They hold one another as though they're the only stability left in a spinning world. There's no control left, nothing but chaos, nothing but their bodies moving to their own incomprehensible rhythms, their breath sliding through their lungs, their hearts hammering against the cages of their bones.

Even after she begins to relax, begins to come down, he's still holding her like that. He's still pressed so deep inside her that he can't remember what it's like not to be inside her. His breathing is harsh and audible, but at least it keeps a regular rhythm now; and it's not his teeth in her shoulder now but his tongue against her skin, his lips, his mouth kissing her flesh as though to take back the bite, the hurt.

She says his name. It sounds like a question, or a call; as though as close as he is she needs to call him back to her.

"Danička," he says, as though in answer. The word is unsteady, ragged as the last tattered flag of a fallen empire. "Moje kurva boha, Danička."

Lukas's fingers slide deeper into her hair. He draws her closer to him, gathering Danicka's thin body and slender bones to his far more robust frame, holding her as though he might ... he never knows what he's trying to do, when he holds her like this. He doesn't think about it. Protect her, perhaps; shield her, or keep her, or --

It doesn't matter. He holds her because it's a necessity. It's as much for himself as it is for her. And his mouth finds the fluttering pulse in her throat; his mouth finds her chin, the corner of her lips. He finds her and he kisses her, his tongue slipping past her lips, touching delicately against hers in the breathing darkness of their open mouths.

Gently, his lips close over her lower; the kiss, parting. His face moves against hers, nuzzling, sliding. His spine relaxes; his hips press steadily, slowly against hers, shifting him inside her; changing the angle, sliding deeper again. He sighs against her skin, and he thinks to himself:

Obeznámen.

Moje.

[Danicka] Sometimes even during sex he remembers to protect her, or else does so by stark, stripped-down instinct. He does not so much place his hand between her head and the windshield as finds it there, may have always been there. If some part of him tells him to do this, tells him that this is what he must do, tells him that this is what he is here for, then Danicka is as unaware of it as she is of the glass. She's more fragile than he is and so much less cautious. He doesn't even know how uncareful she has been, how uncareful she continues to be at times.

Which is not fair, that his heart should go running around outside his body like that, doing such things, putting itself at such risk. It is not any more fair to her that he tries to argue with her about asking after his welfare, no more fair than the days they spend apart where she has to trust that he's not lying eviscerated in a pool of his own blood and some monster's ichor, his eyes glassy and unblinking, his skin going cold, his body forgetting its ability to change once it finds itself, again, as vulnerable as it was when he was born.

There's nothing gentle about this, or fair, or sane. That would be her argument. There is nothing more insane or dangerous or risky than simply being alive, and so what does it matter if they fuck on the hood of her car or in a parking lot and what does it matter if they get arrested, what does it matter if people find ways to hate them, reasons to love them? Existence is its own unraveling of all careful plans. So she'd say.

If she could speak.

She rests her skull in the palm of his hand, which is large enough that it eclipses her hand when they hold each other, covers her breast when he touches her, pillows her head now. She turns her face to one side, eyes falling closed softly as though she would fall asleep right here on the car cooling beneath her, in the middle of a site that will be crawling with mortals come morning, with Lukas so deep inside of her that they may as well have melted together and been poured into the same mold. Her breathing begins to steady with shocking quickness.

Danicka is not the frail girl she was when she was a child, is not the sheltered Manhattanite she was before she moved out of New York. She has the time now to take care of her own body before anyone and anything else. She has the energy and drive to learn new things. She has the time and freedom to indulge herself in ways she never could handle, before. She is not really as tired as she seems, but she is a picture of spent, wasted weariness for a few moments, skin aglow and breasts still rising and falling underneath him as she breathes.

Times like this, he can see her as she is, and see how incredibly simple she is beneath it all. The complexities of her history, the tangled skeins of her words against her actions, the difference between who she is when they're in public and when they're alone, when she's with Kin versus when she's with Garou, the shift in how she treats mortals... it all falls away and he sees that all of it, good and bad, savvy and foolish, warm and cold, are all just affectations. This is Danicka, broken down to hunger and base drives, as sated as a lioness after a hunt.

She turns her head again, opens her eyes, and looks with dangerous drowsiness up at her mate. There's no nurturing stroke of his hair or idle tracing of designs against his flesh. Danicka looks up at him as though she is going to give him a few minutes to compose himself before devouring him again, before taking him again. Her body is limp and warm, her eyes are lazy and dark, but there's a definite sense that her satisfaction is temporary.

It always is.

Her shoulder does not ache, nor her head. Any other discomforts will fade, and she does not recognize any sensation as discomfort right now. She slowly lifts her arms, takes her hands from him, and stretches them over her head lazily, lets the backs of her hands touch the windshield. Her car gleams; she rarely drives it and has not had it long. It's sparklingly clean. She sighs soundlessly as he blasphemes, moves unresisting into his embrace, against his chest.

Kisses fall across her like the nuzzling, grooming, thoughtless affection of an animal. She purrs, and stretches, and accepts his body between her legs. She murmurs in some other language, or no language at all. It could simply be noises, at this point, of warmth and understanding.

Gradually her arms lower again, fold back around him. She presses a kiss to his temple. "Vezmi mě domů," she whisperse. "Předstírat, že nemáte na dovolenou."

[Lukas] Pretend you don't have to leave.

Which is really something he's doing right now. His brow rests against hers; his eyes are shut. He rests against her, atop her pristine new car, like he might be able to stay just like this indefinitely.

Forever.

Didn't they talk about that once? What do you want, she asked him once, this, forever? And he'd denied it, because he knows, better than most, the futility of such a want. It's as futile as a lifelong promise, as futile as promising not to die. Forever is not a possibility; and yet --

he pretends. He waits for his body to cool, to calm, and he holds her, and when he trusts himself to speak again, to whisper without groaning, without snarling, without moaning, he draws a slow breath.

And says, "I don't want to leave. I never want to leave."

Shifting over her now, lifting himself on his elbows. Opens his eyes, looks at her. Gently now, he strokes her hair back; smiles.

"I only pretend I don't mind."

[Danicka] The most foolish thing she could want is, of course, what she asks for. She asks essentially for permission to lie, and asks him to lie to her, and she asks that what they lie together on is the idea of him being with her. Living with her. As though this is safe. As though this is sane. As though this is something anyone mortal or even half-mortal should ever crave: to live with a werewolf. To keep one. To tame one, like a fox or a prince, and become forever responsible for it.

For him.

They can't stay here, and they can't stay in her bed forever, either, and they both know it. But it's all right, for the time being, to stave that knowledge off a little longer. At least until the sweat starts drying on their skin, or the sun comes up. Something. There's no one in her apartment right now. It's hers, and hers alone, and she does not seem as unstabilized by loneliness as she was when Martin had his heart attack and skedaddled off to Florida.

Danicka is not the same woman she was in March, and she is not like most women, in general. She is never going to ask him to promise not to die. She is never going to make excuses for his failures. She seems to find it neither necessary nor appealing to be carved from stone nor constantly yielding; nothing, nothing about her is either/or. She is warm, and she is welcoming, and she is a goddamned Shadow Lord, unsympathetic towards weakness. Then again, what Danicka defines as 'weak' may or may not fit anyone else's perspective.

Their bodies cool. Their bodies calm. Her heartbeat slows and her legs loosen around him. Her hips roll a few times slowly, almost experimentally, against him as they lie atop the car. She shifts occasionally to feel him inside her and shivers once or twice, but these movements diminish until they fade completely, leaving only stillness. They look at each other, eyes opening like envelopes containing long-awaited answers.

"Shh," she sighs back, lifting her head to kiss his mouth. It's tender, so soft it's almost chaste. When they part again she smiling faintly, whispering to him like a co-conspirator. Or a child. "You're not pretending right."

[Lukas] A shutting of his eyes. Her kiss is received as softly as it's given, slow and intimate -- recognized.

After, he opens his eyes. He smiles again, a slower one than the last, fond. "Omlouváme se, Danička," he murmurs. His lips touch her brow, gently, and then he raises himself higher on his elbows; on his palms. Space opens between their torsos. The night is warm, but it feels abruptly chill where she once warmed him. There's a track of sweat down the midline of his body, the muscles to either side flexing under his own weight.

For a moment Lukas holds himself like this, braced over his lover, looking down at her body. His left shoulder rises, his right hand lifting from the hood to smooth over her body. Her panties are still twisted aside; her bra drawn down from one breast. Their mingled sweat is slick under his palm. He finds the crumpled cup of her bra. There's a pause, a moment of thought, his fingertips light on the edge of the fabric and lace, brushing her skin.

Instead of drawing it up over her flesh, he traces the edge to the other cup, tugs that down too. Then, lazily as a teenager sinking back into sleep on a Tuesday morning, late for school and careless of it, he sinks back down over her and draws her nipple into his mouth. Licking and sucking at her now, he has less in common with the teenager he never really was and more with something far more primal, far more animal. He cups her breast to his mouth and feasts on her luxuriously, patiently, as though he had all the time in the world; as though they were already at her home, in her bed; as though he were staying all night, all day, and didn't have to leave.

When his mouth leaves her, he slides up over her to find her mouth. His eyes are half-closed, and then closing. He kisses her like he kissed her breast, slow and lazy, and only thereafter, sighing, raises himself again, draws himself out of her, sits back on his heels.

The hood dips under his concentrated weight with a hollow thump. He looks down with a half-rueful smile, and then gets off the car; rids himself of the used condom with one hand, then reaches out with the other to hand her down.

"Takže co budeme dělat zítra, láska?" he asks her; pretending.

[Danicka] As a teenager, Danicka never rolled back over in bed and tried to get five more minutes of sleep before school. She chose a couple of extracurriculars solely because they met before the start of the regular school day, chose others because they kept her there late. She took AP courses not because college was looming on the horizon but because it gave her more work to do at home, less time to be suspected of laziness or weakness or uselessness. She wanted to be at school, not at home. At school she had friends, even if almost all of them were connected to the Nation in some way. At school, her teachers liked her. So every morning, she hauled herself up, made the bed, and got out of the house that she knew even then would only ever be hers upon her brother's death.

Which doesn't matter, right now. Not to her. She wants her own house. She wants her own life. She wants college, and she wants her future, and she wants Lukas. Just like this, bent and curled over her, lazily taking her breast into his mouth in a molten, post-orgasmic dream. As his lips close on her and her nipple hardens again in the vacuum created by his suckling, Danicka sighs in what sounds very much like contentment and pushes his hair back from his forehead. All the time in the world, which is empty of any population beyond the two of them. They are alone. Alone enough, at least.

Whatever brief cooling the separation of their bodies gave her is gone. Her lips part and she arches her back slightly, pushing her breast against his mouth. More is the silent command, no more a request than he is a human being. She forgoes pleading for him to be merciful and let her rest with an abandon borne of her decision -- made instantaneously -- that the pleasure of this outweighs any passing hypersensitivity.

She rolls her hips against him, harder this time, as though she would just as soon fuck him again. But they don't. Lukas kisses her instead, and her fingers get wet from running through his hair. She is saturated with his scent, as he is covered in hers. This is how she likes it. He draws away from her instead of rolling her on top of him; the dip of the hood under his weight makes her laugh suddenly, her face lighting up with amusement unfettered by sobriety.

Sitting up after he leaves, Danicka adjusts her bra and thong over herself before taking his hand and sliding off the car. She keeps her fingers wrapped around his hand even after her heels find solid earth beneath them, even after she stands straight. In fact, she only releases him when she laces her own hands together, lifts both arms over her head, and gives a full, satisfying stretch that turns her body briefly into a bow. Arms dropping, she slings her arms around his waist and tilts her head back, smiling lazily up at him.

"Víte, jak se dělá koláče?"

[Lukas] They should be straightening their clothes. Putting back on what they've flung off in the heat of the moment, she drunk on vodka, he on desire. They should be getting into her car and driving back to the city, to her river north apartment with its million dollar view, just as she asked.

This is not what he does. Not yet. He's got time; all the time in the world. When Danicka comes against him, loops her arms around his waist, his settle just as easily, just as naturally around hers. He reaches behind her shoulderblades, finds the clasp of her bra, undoes it. Then he leans back enough to draw her bra off her arms, down, tosses it carelessly atop the hood of her car. His hands push downward over her hips; he pushes her panties down, down past her thighs until they drop of their own gravity.

Now they're naked as adam, naked as eve, naked as the first proto-humans to ever walk the earth; naked as the night they fled from the fire and the light of civilization, into the wild, fucked each other like animals in the dirt, in the grass, dreamt of a lifetime living off the land.

His hands close over her hips, so large that his fingers cover half her ass. He draws her against him, her breasts pressed to his ribcage, her belly to his groin, and he could so easily go either way; could push her down over the G37x's hood and fuck her all over again; could hold her against him for minutes, hours, ever.

"Ne." Gently, steadily, his hands tighten on her hips; he draws her up along his body, lifts her up onto him. Loops his arms under her thighs; supports her weight easily. He holds her like he can't bear distance between them right now, which may be the truth -- but he smiles like she'll never leave him at all. Rare, that open, trusting clarity in his eyes, without the guardedness, the calculation and the coolness that so often chills the blue.

Lukas never would've thought he'd learn to trust like this. To trust someone like Danicka; to trust someone outside his immediate family, those who raised him and nurtured him; to trust anyone at all quite like this.

He kisses her again, briefly and softly; he can't seem to stop.

"Chystáš se mě učit?"

[Danicka] Danicka tried straightening her clothes. Her bra, at least, winding one strap back up over her shoulder and replacing the pulled-aside cups. It's no good; a moment later Lukas's arms are wrapping around her and he's not only unclasping her bra, he's pulling it off of her. She takes her arms from his waist a moment and lets him, either unconcerned about being nude in the middle of a construction site in general or too drunk to care at the moment.

She does lift an eyebrow at him, however, as he decides to continue this trend and peel her thong off. "Now, really," she murmurs, but lays her hands gently on his chest as she steps out of the scrap of fabric fallen around her ankles. She gives a faint, blithe roll of her eyes and tips her head to one side, standing there not entirely pre-historical. Her heels are still on. There are hoops in her ears, slightly smeared lipstick on her mouth, signifiers of the modern age all around them... beginning with the brand-new car behind her.

"Baby..." she sighs, with patience, when he picks her up and wraps her legs around him. This isn't like the woods, not when she is starting to remember where they are and what it feels like to be arrested, which he can't imagine since it's never happened. She slings her arms loosely over his shoulders and around his neck, her eyebrows still up.

"I would love to teach you," she says softly, with more tenderness now. It flickers deep in her eyes like --

-- well, like the flash of golden hair and tanned skin vanishing into the woods ahead of him, running without terror, luring without malice. One moment she is affecting an expression of tried patience, and the next she is looking in his eyes and everything about her softens. Every pretense, gently mocking or otherwise, leaves her. She kisses his forehead, after he kisses her mouth. "But can we get back in the car? I'm starting to worry."

Danicka, who almost never really worries. She stresses. She fears. She does not wring her hands over things she cannot control, but he knows this much: she despises exposure, fears being seen as she is, however she is at the moment. There is no man-at-arms in this city with contacts in the local police department who can call in a favor and make it so something never officially happened. There is no stupidity of youth to buoy her, only the idiocy of inebriation, and that is starting to fade enough for her to think of how she would feel if some other car pulled into the site.

Somehow it feels as though they would be taking something away from her. She wants to go, before whatever it is gets ruined by being seen, or being touched, by anyone else. She kisses his lips once, after she confesses concern, and sighs quietly against his ear. "Please?"

[Lukas] By all rights, she should be the one still intoxicated; he should be levelheaded by now, clearsighted.

She kisses him, though, and Lukas's eyes close. He turns his face toward her neck; inhales as she whispers in his ear. A moment later he draws back, and now there's a ghost of a frown across his brow, the faintest tugging of concern.

"Jo," he agrees, quietly. This time their lips touch and his eyes don't shut. He lets her down, his hands leaving her skin reluctantly. He looks about; leans down to pick her panties off the ground, dusting them against his thigh before handing them to her. Her bra is atop the car hood. Her dress is inside. His clothes are all over the ground, and he goes about retrieving them, shaking them out and dusting them off as he finds them, putting each article on where he finds it.

The keys of her car are still in his pocket. In the lights of the construction site, they flicker and flash. He opens the passenger's door for Danicka, not out of chivalry but because he wants to stay close.

He watches her as she gets in. Circles around the rear bumper, gets in the driver's side. When he shuts the door the sounds of the night fade away. He starts the engine wordlessly, buckles in, and then -- before putting the car into drive -- looks her way.

"Why were you worried?"

[Danicka] She's not sure she'll ever see anything clearly again. She's not sure she ever wants to. Clarity is overrated, is a lie, is a pretense built up by those who can't cope with the painfully plentiful ways there are to see reality. There is never just one side to any story, even if one is all you have a chance of hearing. Danicka can't remember the last time she was this open. She can't remember because, right now, there's absolutely nothing before this moment. The restaurant they just came from is so far away and so long ago it may as well not even exist anymore.

He sets her down and she keeps her hands lightly on either side of his waist, laughing softly. Lingerie and clothes are gathered. She shoves panties and bra in her purse and wiggles into her dress before getting into the car, the back unzipped still, for now. She looks at him just before she ducks her head and sits down in the passenger seat, meeting his eyes for a moment and then letting him go again. There's no message there, no subtext. She just wanted to look at him.

So when he gets into the car, staining his clothes with his scent, with the smell of their mingled sweat, she turns again to look at him, watching his hand twist the keys in the ignition, thinking about his hands on her body, on the hood of her car. He speaks, and she watches his lips, reddened by kissing as well as traces of her lipstick rubbed off onto him. It makes her think about his head bowed, his tongue lapping at her flesh sucked into that mouth, between those livid lips. Her body remembers the feel of him, misses him. She didn't ache while he fucked her, hard and deep and rough against the Infiniti's hood, but now she does, to be without him.

Her body reflects her thoughts, and her heart, like it is on those mornings and afternoons after he leaves her.

But she's supposed to be pretending. Shh...

This time, she buckles herself in, trying to think of how to answer. "I can't... I didn't want to have to put on a face for anyone that might come by." The latch clicks sharply, cleanly, and quietly. "I like how I can be with you. I don't like... letting that go."

[Lukas] There's a look in Lukas's eyes when she says this, a sort of dawning comprehension that lights up the blue like a torch thrown into a well. He doesn't pretend not to understand, whether out of coyness or some sense of courtesy. He's not the type to pretend to have failed to see a lie; has said once, unequivocally, that he likes the masks she wears. He likes that she wears them so well.

He likes that they're only masks, and that here, now, with him, she wears nothing but her own thoughts.

Danicka has already buckled herself in. Lukas leans across the center console, not quickly so as not to startle her, but not slowly either because he doesn't want to wait. He wraps one hand behind her head, his fingers plunging into her hair straight to the still-damp roots; the other braces against the door.

As unheralded as their proximity is, his mouth on hers is gentle; the kiss is sweet. Afterward, he draws her into him as far as her seatbelt and his twisted position allows. His hand finds the zipper of her dress and draws it up in a smooth, long pull.

"Pojďme domů."

-- and this, too, is a piece of their shared, harmless pretense.

Except this pretense isn't harmless at all. Like their rough, elemental mating on the hood of her car, the ache isn't immediate. It will come later, inexorably: the ache of parting; the ache of longing; the ache when the morning comes and the fantasy fades like a dream, and he leaves after all because he can't stay. Not unless she wants to risk becoming something like her father, bound and trapped by the love of a monster. Not unless he wants to risk becoming something like her mother. Not unless something gives, and something changes, alters -- twists, potentially, and becomes unrecognizable.

Still; he understands why she wants to pretend. He understands, putting the car into gear and pulling into a wide circle to go back the way they came, back toward the main thoroughfares, why he wants to go along with it.

[Danicka] Of course he understands. The way Lukas is with Danicka is not the way he is with others, as honest as he is. It's not the same as what she means, though. He has seen her remove and don the masks he loves, painted and smooth and lovely faces that the are. He's watched the changes in her demeanor both subtle and extreme from their private conversations and their secret moments together to the smiles or the pretty frowns or the quiet acceptance that she gives to the world at large. He has heard the faint shift in her tone of voice from talking to her sister-in-law on the telephone to talking to him in his car outside the Shedd, and how both of those are different from the way she talks when she's drunk. The difference between 'a little drunk' and 'very fucking drunk'.

He has come to know all these facets of her so well, and in a comparatively short amount of time. They haven't had years together to come to understand one another's motivations or personalities. They've had a few months, broken up and scattered as they've been, and weeks upon weeks in that time they haven't seen each other, spoken, or even sent a text or two back and forth.

So she tells him the truth, which is revelatory: she does not enjoy lying. She never really has. It's not a natural talent for her, nor a gift that she uses with utter delight. She doesn't enjoy the fact that she can name three people in her life with whom she could be herself. She hates that she cannot say she never lied to any of them, or hurt them.

When Lukas shifts in the driver's seat, Danicka turns her head towards him, looking up from the seatbelt curiously, and then his fingers are in her hair his body is blocking the light his smell is filling her nostrils and he's kissing her, enveloping her. The kiss is such that a small, plaintive noise leaves her mouth, vibrating against his lips. She wants something, but there are no words for it, so she just... makes that sound. Her hand comes up and touches his face, smooths along his cheek, and holds him there even as their mouths start to pull apart.

Her eyes open, while they're still close enough that they can smell each other's breath. Deep green. Clear blue. Sunlight. Shadow. She thinks something poetic -- meaning 'drunk' -- about the whole of the earth in microcosm, or physical form, but the thought passes. They are so quiet now that the zipper sliding closed over her back is audible.

If he comes, and stays, then there's no real telling what they would become, just as there's no telling what will become of them because they decide to part ways every time. It was easier to not despise it when they were relegated solely to hotels; they had to leave because they did not live there. They had other beds to go to. After fucking in his room became a possibility, after Martin left and Danicka took Lukas to her bed for the first time, things changed, and she's just now realizing it.

It was easier, before she realized that she was in pain, to ignore the hurt.

Lukas draws back into his own space, and Danicka watches him as he drives her car out of the lot, leaving behind a used condom, footprints, and tire tracks. She leans her head back and looks out the window, watching the lit-up city pass her by. When she speaks -- and it is in a whisper, barely above the purr of the engine -- it at first seems like she must be talking to the window, but after a couple of words she turns to look at his profile again.

"Do you want to make love to me again?"

[Lukas] Lukas glances at her once when she begins to speak; a second time, longer, when the direction of her question becomes clear.

"Ano."

No hesitation there; but so quiet that it seems more a confession than an answer.

A pause. Then he looks at Danicka, a longer glance. "Where? Your place?"

[Danicka] Her answer is as simple as his question, but it takes her a moment to understand why he's asking. They have at least ten, fifteen minutes of driving, maybe twenty even at this time of night. She imagines pulling over somewhere, anywhere, behind a building or in the lot of some abandoned place, and climbing onto Lukas's lap, his hands pushing up her skirt and his mouth tearing at her neck. Lust unfurls inside of her and then seems to wrap around her heart and her joints, squeezing tightly, drawing her into herself in a hard clench of desire.

The whole time, she's watching him, thinking also of having him in her bed, the heat of him making it too warm for more than a single sheet over their bodies, the way his smell will linger in her pillowcases and memory long after he's gone, the idea of one or both of them grabbing onto the headboard as though for dear life. And she thinks about bathing with him. And she thinks about waking up in the morning and loving him again, one or the other rolling over and legs parting and hands searching.

She sighs. It's almost a laugh. "Všude."

[Lukas] Lukas is driving. He can't watch Danicka for long, not if he wants to stay on the road. And he does want to stay on the road. He wants to get her home in one piece. He wants her to be safe, to be hale and whole, to be protected, to not hurt or be hurt, to not be touched by this war, and ...

... and he wants to look at her. He wants to stop in the middle of the goddamn street and look at her; and touch her, and pull her over, awkward because of the steering wheel, to fit her between the console and his body and ruck up her skirt and be inside her again.

But he's driving. So he keeps his eyes on the road, his hands on the wheel, but when she says všude. he thinks všechno. and he closes his eyes for a second, just a second, before they're open again.

The first time he knew, incontrovertibly, that he wanted her was in his car, driving her home just like this.

(Not just like this.)

"How do you make me want you so much?" he asks her. His voice is low; a little strained.

[Danicka] This time of night, this time of the week, the roads aren't terribly packed. They aren't in the suburbs and they aren't in some small city in the breadbasket of the country, so they pass plenty of headlights, but rush hour has been over for a long time now. Danicka's car is generally safe, as long as Lukas watches the road and not her legs, as long as he pays attention to his driving and not the way her breasts press differently against the fabric of her dress now that her bra is in a crumpled heap in her purse.

On the way from the restaurant to the construction site she had not buckled herself in. She's safe in the belt now, she'll be safe when he gets her home, even if it's not 'home' so much as 'Danicka's place', to him. Her place. Her home. Her... den. The first few times he dropped her off there, he wasn't even allowed into the building. The first time he came to her actual door was to rail at her for not telling him that she'd been attacked by fucking Spirals, goddammit.

The first time she knew she wanted him, she was listening to the door click closed behind her as roused lust turned to a sinking feeling in her stomach. She was about to have sex. She was about to have sex with a man she knew she didn't want, when a man she was incomprehensibly drawn to was merely a few yards away, warm and sober and, as far as she knew, utterly disinterested in her and quite possibly disgusted by how quickly she was falling into bed with some boyish, intoxicated Fenrir.

When he drove her home she had fleeting thoughts of crossing the center console of the MKZ and climbing atop him, kissing him, feeling his hands on her, fucking him until not just he but both of them were completely senseless. She hadn't acted on it. Hadn't entertained the thoughts. Hadn't even, really, wanted such a thing at the time, after the night she'd had. But she kept feeling sharp pangs of lust for him, then desire, then real passion, day after day, week after week, and that became this.

This is everything.

Danicka looks at him and a smile plays across her brightened lips, toys with the corners of her mouth. Her eyes are soft on him, turning back to their murky, pale color after the intense green they achieved while fucking.

"Oh, take a little responsibility," she teases, knowing full well he takes on a great deal more than is really his due. "It could just be that you're a sex maniac who finally met his match." Her tone is almost droll.

[Lukas] The sound Lukas makes is half laugh, half exhale. His eyes flick her way. Then his grip on the wheel shifts, the left hand taking the twelve o'clock position; the right reaching across the console to find her hand. His fingers wrap around into her palm; he pulls her hand to his mouth. Now's the time for him to kiss her knuckles chivalrously. Or press his lips to her palm, intimately. Or hold her hand, here until her home, her apartment, her den.

What he does instead: a shift in the jaw hinge, an opening of the mouth; his teeth nipping at the heel of her hand, and then the line of her thumb. He sucks at her thumbtip for a moment, eyes on the road still, saying nothing. When he draws her hand down from his mouth he guides her to the buttons on his shirt, and then between them.

Her fingertips against the warm muscle of his pectorals, now; he holds her hand against the flat of his breastbone, and his steady heartbeat beneath. Lukas draws a short, sudden breath -- she can feel the shift in his deep musculature, the rise of his chest. Another glance her way, slicing and blue.

"Miluji tě," he says. And then he returns both hands to the wheel. And drives faster.

[Danicka] Sometimes he kisses her like an animal. Not her mouth, or even her neck, but the insides of her knees, the sides of her breasts, the palm of her hand. It makes sense to her, the way that the inner workings of a computer make sense to her. Of course he should be like this. Of course it should be like this between them. This is what they are, and it has nothing to do with the fact that he is Garou and she is Kin or he is male and she is female or even the fact that they are Shadow Lords. They were all those things before they met each other again in a nightclub on the Mile in January. They are something else entirely now, however subtle or overt the change has been.

If Danicka had to look back and say where something in her shifted irrevocably, it would not be when he reached past Gabriella and took her hand, nor when he asked her if it was Danička and not Danicka, nor even when she wrapped her legs around his body and moved to kiss him only to find that he was wrapping his arms around her body and meeting her in the air like that kiss was some kind of resurrection.

Which it was. He never kissed like that. She never wanted to. Every time she was with someone and she kissed them it was because, for some reason or another, she had to. To get them to shut up. To get them to get in the car. To get them to believe whatever it was she wanted them to think of her. Danicka never kissed the way she kissed him that night: without fear, without agenda, without obligation.

It means everything that she can turn away from his kiss, or tell him to stop when his hands are on her. It means everything to her that she does not have to bend to his will just to stay alive. She cannot even quite wrap her mind around the fact that she does not have to bury herself somewhere in order to keep him happy. It overwhelms her, when she stops to think about it, that she wants him to be happy, for the pure and simple sake of that happiness.

She didn't know what to name that overpowering surge of feeling, but it was something like hope, and it was something like awe, and it was yet so inexplicably, deeply tender that she figured out in due time:

Zamilovávám se do tebe.

But that wasn't really it, either. It was a change. It was unexpected. She had never seen herself being able to feel what other people claimed to. Didn't think she would fall in love, or choose to love, and certainly not someone who by virtue of tribe and moon seems fated to be Just Like her mother. When everything changed was when she spent a week away from him, not thinking of the next time she'd see him but thinking that she never would again, not without some tribal business at hand, not without some trauma demanding his protection of his Kin.

The art of pretending everything was all right seemed, for the first time, utterly pointless. She went through the motions and she picked up her dry cleaning and ran her errands and spent time with friends who didn't ever know who the fuck she is, and everything was ash in her mouth, a bitter sting in her eyes. She despised the sunlight even as she laid out in it, all music sounded like meaningless throbbing, and she understood that this was what it felt to have her heart break. Yet she still didn't hate him. And she loved that piercing ache as much as she loved him, because agonizing as it was, it reminded her that he'd been there, that the empty space inside of her that he'd come to inhabit was still somehow filled with him, even if it was only now the memory of a future she hadn't realized she wanted.

He is not her mother. He is an Ahroun. He is a Shadow Lord. He will probably get worse, and he may even hit her, and if he fights to control his Rage he will likely get colder and more distant, but he is not her mother. Which means that sooner or later, she will have to stop running from the fact that her mother did not hit her father, or hit her, because she was an Ahroun. She didn't raise Vladislav the way she did because she was a Shadow Lord. She did not become what she was because of some accident of birth. Nor can Vladislav be excused on the basis of Rage or spiritual inclination or breeding.

Danicka turns away, inwardly, from seeing it. Accepting that Lukas is different means, inevitably, accepting that the fault was not in the blood, not in the moon, but in her mother and her brother themselves. It makes a difference. It changes the world. And she is scared of the world changing any more than it already has in just the past six months.

He kisses her like a beast, savage and comforting and heedless. She watches his mouth on her hand as though it is all separate from herself, despite the shockwave of sensation up her wrist and arm, straight to her heart, in response. Danicka's breath gets faster when he sucks on her thumb like that. Her lips part when he moves her hand to his chest. She needs very little guidance from there to flick open his buttons, her left hand moving to the console and her body turning towards his so she can better see what she's doing.

Lukas is watching the road while Danicka slips her much smaller hand past the sides of his shirt and reaches in to touch his chest. She marvels at it, as though she did not just have all his flesh naked and against her. She traces a line around his nipple, presses her palm flat, splays her fingers. Her hand finds his heartbeat with instinctive ease, the way blind newborns find their mothers, the way plants find sunlight, the way beasts find water or humans fight for air no matter how far gone by sickness or madness or pain or fear they are.

He looks at her; she is looking at her exposed wrist curiously, feeling his chest and his heartbeat but not seeing his chest or even her hand upon it.

"Vím," she murmurs in response, as though this knowledge is a quiet, stricken revelation. She may as well say: Věřím vám. And it's possible that she will never take this belief, or this knowledge, or this trust for granted. It is, after all, something of a first for her. As is Lukas himself, in innumerable ways.

It takes another ten, fifteen minutes to get to Kingsbury Plaza. Danicka does not bother doing more than finger-combing her hair slightly when they get out of the car in the parking garage beneath the building. Her shoes are covered in dust, as are her legs. She can still smell him on her skin. The garage is dim and cool when they exit, and the lobby is lush and insulated and quiet, and the elevator is empty. She lets her small purse dangle from her wrist and stands in front of him on the way up, leaning back against his chest.

Somewhere around the fourteenth floor she arches her back slightly, shoulders rolling, and sighs: "We should shower." Beat. "Or take a bath." Again. "Or fuck on the balcony."

[Lukas] The way she stands against him, her back to his chest, reminds him of the subway. He'd seen them in reflection and thought they looked like the happiest people there, which wasn't true. They are not people, for one. For another, she was not happy; not entirely. She was worried, and a little frightened at what she had done; all she had said. She was feeling exposed.

But he was happy. And he's happy with her, more so than he could have imagined possible. Before Danicka, Lukas did not define happiness as an important goal, something to strive for. He did not consider it. He did not prepare himself for happiness, or love, or someone like her.

He could not have.

And now here he is, standing with his back to the elevator wall, rising through two hundred some-odd feet of space while she leans against him and his arms encircle her. They lean against the side wall; he watches the numbers move and she watches whatever she watches, until after a while he looks away from the display and drops his head to press his mouth to her hair.

She smells like him. And she smells like herself. And she smells familiar, like home, like a den, like fertility and warmth, the fecund sensuality of summer.

He wraps her tighter in his arms. This is when she speaks, and she can feel the jolt of reaction when she says, or fuck on the balcony: a brief tension in his arms, and his hips flexing subtly against her. A moment later he bends to her, curls around her, kisses her behind her ear, and then the side of her neck.

"Let's fuck on the balcony," he murmurs. "And then take a bath while I drink the rest of the vodka." She can feel his mouth curving against her skin; a smile. "It's not fair that I'm sober again."

[Danicka] To some, it would seem strange that while encircled by the arms of a protective, loving mate with the unquestionable ability to tear apart almost anything that might try to harm her, Danicka could feel exposed, unsafe, and vulnerable. Even accepting that, some might think he was the one she was scared of, the cause of her worry or her threatened feeling. Truth be told, Danicka had not feared Lukas spreading rumors or truths about her past or her family. She had not feared his displeasure or disapproval meeting her in the form of a hand across her face once they reached the hotel.

Not quite since the very beginning, but certainly since she realized she cared about him and did not want bad things to happen to him, Danicka's fear concerning Lukas has been that exposure to what her life was might 'ruin' him. She's even said it aloud. Just look at the evidence: it ruined her brother. Look at what happened to the boys who harassed her, look at what happened to Stephen. Look at what she did to Christian. Look at what Yelizaveta has become after a near-decade of Danicka's tutelage, almost as cunning as Danicka herself and twice as mad as any of her Rage-filled brethren. Look at the geeks from the LAN party, look at that man with the ring on his finger who met her in the middle of May, look at everyone, anyone, who has been touched by her.

Of course she fears, sometimes, that bad things will happen to Lukas, bad things will become of him, if he is with her too long. She worries, whenever they talk about what she's been through or what she's done, about how it will affect him. With him alone, she's more concerned about than than about how what he hears is going to come back to bite her.

Now, though, riding up in the elevator, she is naked under her dress like she was on the full moon when she told him she wasn't ready for this to be over. She smells like sweat, dust, sex, and vodka. She should feel exposed, unnerved, too open. Instead, she is languid against him, and thinking about making love to him again, and letting her thoughts marinate in the idea of keeping him in her bed all night and for as much of the morning as they can extract from Fate. She would not call herself 'happy' so much as... content. Satisfied. She has him. She has him and she's taking him home and they are going to fuck again and this, she knows in an old and reptilian part of her mind, is very good.

That pleases her. She dwells in it and does not need, or ask for, anything else. Her eyes drift closed as his hips push slightly against her ass. She breathes out slowly, an exhale that would be a purr if there were even a flicker of voice to it, even the slightest rattle in her throat.

Danicka lifts her left arm and reaches back, laying her hand on the back of his neck. She presses back against him, a simple and spare roll of her own hips as though in answer to the shift of his. "I agree entirely," she says, as they hit the twenty-third floor and the doors part with a whisper. Danicka pushes against his arms, even if they tighten, to step away from him and out onto the hallway's lush carpeting. She starts reaching into her purse for her keys. "I bet you five dollars we don't make it to the balcony," she says idly, fitting her key into the lock of 23-C.

[Lukas] Tightening his arms when Danicka tries to step away never occurs to Lukas. It's too soon, still, after the time in his room when he fucked her until he came, and then collapsed, and then held her back when she tried to rise. It's too soon after that time in SmartBar's handicapped stall when he picked her up and put his mouth on her neck, bitingly.

She moves forward and he lets go. She leaves the elevator and he stays where he is for a second, watching her move. The dress lays against her differently now that she's stripped out of bra and panties; there's a difference at the hip, at the breast.

Lukas rouses himself to follow. The elevator doors are swishing closed, but pull open again when the motion sensors pick him up. He follows her to 23-C and as she fits her key into the lock he slips his arm around her waist and pulls her back against him. At her back, he's a solid wall of heat and strength, and he bends to catch her ear between his front teeth, delicately.

"Já nepřijímáme."

It's more felt than heard, a vibration in his chest. Her hall is empty, but even so, five months ago, two months ago he would not have done this. Would not have pulled her back against him in the hall like this. Would not have slid his arm around her. Would not have slipped his hand across her stomach, up over her ribcage.

Would certainly not have cupped her breast like this, gently but firmly, as though he had a right to her.

He kisses her neck, and then her shoulder where her collar falls a little loose.

"Já bych být bláhový, aby podnikli který sázka."

[Danicka] The most likely scenario is that they barely get the door closed. Being with Danicka has to be somewhat like being with a minefield. Not knowing so much of what she cannot or will not tell him, he could inadvertently step on a trigger and find her bolting, or withdrawing into herself, or lashing out in unexpected fury. Slowly, she's starting to warn him when he gets close. She's starting to tell him leave it be, if she has to. She's starting to defuse things, but it's a struggle, and sometimes the smallest things will still startle her, make her retreat

like prey

like a fox.

The only consolation is that she will come back. It does not end the world, for humanity or for the two of them together, when Lukas's arms tighten or teeth close at the wrong time and Danicka trembles.

The hallway is quiet; her entire building is a haven against noise and chaos. Did she tell him she hid under the bed when Katherine invaded, tears in her eyes and a hand over her mouth? Did she tell him that her first place that is her own is tainted somehow by the reminder that she cannot ever escape the Garou, should they want to come in? Did she tell him that she was afraid that Sam would come up? Did she tell Lukas that she was scared of what he might do to Liadan? It doesn't seem to matter right now.

Eventually she's just going to move, or something. She doesn't believe in perfection, so there is no place where she will be perfectly safe, or perfectly happy. It is enough that right now she has the place to herself, and that she is pushing open the door, Lukas at her back and his hands all over her. She breathes in and arches her spine against him, her head tipped back. She responds to him like this, almost always, so intensely that any lessening is a signal to him that she is distracted, or that something is wrong.

Danicka shivers, though. She isn't distracted. She wriggles against him as though there is nothing wrong with letting him see how much she wants him -- but then, she never really held back on that, or tried to conceal it.

"Ain't that the truth," she says lazily, and pulls him into her apartment. It's the second time she's stepped away from him mere seconds after moving against him, the second time in just a couple of minutes. Danicka lets her purse fall from her wrist and steps out of her heels in the entryway.

Her place isn't too much of a mess. There's some dirty dishes on the counter but not in the sink. There's shoes and another bag littering the entry. If he glances inward he can see an empty container on the coffee table from a middle eastern restaurant, bits of yellow rice stuck to the sides along with remainders of parsley and sumac. There's a stack of library books on the bar.

There's Danicka, walking away from him, reaching behind herself to unzip her dress again. This time when the back of the garment parts there's no interruption to the line of flesh, no underclothes crossing her skin. She may very well still be heading for the balcony.

[Lukas] Self-consciousness is not for someone like him, or her. She reaches behind herself to draw down the zipper. Her feet are nearly silent on the floorboards, the carpet. Lukas, following, steps out of his shoes just before the hallway to the south bedroom. He unbuttons his shirt on his way across the living room, leaves it draped over her couch. Undoes his pants on his way to the balcony and, dropping them at the door, reaches out to take the doorhandle from Danicka as she steps out onto the balcony.

Up on the twenty-third floor, the air is clearer and cooler; windy in gusts. It's not cold enough for him to shiver, but the hairs on his body are standing on end -- or perhaps that's only her proximity; the thought of the imminent.

He takes a moment, though, to wrap his fingers around the balcony railing. Naked, utterly unashamed, he looks out into the distance, narrowing his eyes, raising his chin: like a wolf scenting the wind.

Then his eyes turn back to Danicka. The lights of the city gleam faintly off her skin, her hair; in her eyes. He looks at her a moment, wordlessly now, and then he reaches out. His fingers trail through her hair -- the right hand, the fingertips. And then the left, in tandem, one after another, stroking her hair back until he takes her face between his hands.

It's not a kiss. This is not a kiss. He nuzzles her face, rubs his nose alongside hers, across her cheek; his cheek to hers, then, and turning, presses his mouth to her jawline, her neck. What began as a gentle, soft thing quickly escalates now, his hands firm on her face and her neck, on her shoulders. Lukas turns her back to the balcony wall, his back to the city -- presses her to the wall, his body to hers.

"God, the way you smell." The words are a growl, rough. "Otočte se a štíhlá dolů. Chci se vás chuť."

[Danicka] It's cooler now but summer, even at this height, is a thick and humid presence that clings to their skin, pushes through their hair, drags them down into dark furrows of sex, of hunger, growing like a crop the illusion that this part of the year is going to last forever.

Danicka has left her purse at the doorway, and her shoes. Her dress falls rippling and collapsing to the floor in a pale cascade of fabric, a puddle in the middle of the living room for him to step over. She walks naked out onto her balcony without hesitation or nervousness, and when the breeze runs over her skin, her nipples harden. She shivers, though not from the cold, and lays her hands on the railing to look out over the city. If she's scared of heights it doesn't seem to cause her to dance back from the spiraling edge. The wind lashes her hair across her face and shoulders.

He looks to the distance. She looks down to the ribbon of reflective black that is the river, her head tilted slightly as though she can see something down there that should be invisible from this height. When he touches her she seems to ignore him at first, her eyes still cast down. In this position, her arms braced against the railing, there's a surprising but undeniable strength to her. She struggles to hold up her own weight, he's seen it, but her body is made to be athletic and he knows that she can endure more than she looks like she could bear without breaking.

The line of her back, the curve of her shoulders, the subtle swell of her ass, all seem drawn against the night sky like chalk against black paper, smooth and organic. Closer still there's warmth to her coloration, heat in her skin, muscles working slowly whenever she shfits her weight from one foot to the other or stretches slightly. However long he looks at her, it may as well be an eyeblink, but he knows her. Every line. Every inch of that perfect, unscarred, untouched skin, every muscle underneath.

Lukas should know that after a moment or two, her eyes will indeed close in response to his fingers in her hair. She never just stands there while he runs his hands over her, moves her around like a doll. He can be pushy, and insistent, and demanding, and he knows she'll push back, resist, make demands of her own. He knows, every time he pulls her hand towards him and she goes, that she is not merely 'letting' him, as though her body and her affection are some prize he has to earn. He knows she wants these things, whatever they are, even when she's not the one initiating the contact.

So when he nuzzles her, she kisses him, even though he doesn't move for her mouth. She caresses his lips with her own, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, lifting her body up on her toes to reach him properly. Danicka's kisses are soft, intermittent as their cheeks and noses rub together, drifting away when he ducks his head to her throat. She does not tip her head back and bare her neck to him but tilts her head forward instead, one hand moving with certainty to the back of his head, fingers tangling in sweat-dampened hair, holding him where he is.

"I love you," she whispers, because it sounds different in English. "Я тебя люблю," she murmurs, for the same reason. The second has a lilting, surprisingly tender sound for a language that Hollywood in the 1950s tried to make sound harsh and guttural. It's almost sing-song, almost a lullaby, though there are times when everything Danicka says to him sounds like she's speaking to him out of some dream.

His hands move on her, turn her, and she pushes off from the concrete floor with the ball of one bare foot, arms tensing around his shoulders as she draws herself up onto his body. "Ne," she says, softly disobedient, gently defiant, and rests her weight between wall and male, kissing him again as her legs wrap around his waist.

[Lukas] Perhaps it says something, or means something, that he reacts so easily, so naturally to her supposed defiance and disobedience. She wraps her arms around his shoulders and she pushes off the balcony, and in this, at least, Danicka has never betrayed an inability to support her own weight. She could probably climb him like the tree she could not, when they were children together; she could, but he has never once let her.

Because every time, every single time she starts to draw herself up like this, his arms come around her. His hands splay firmly over her ass, beneath her thighs; he lifts her even as she lifts herself. They come together like that and he doesn't have to ask her what Я тебя люблю means, or what language that is, because he knows.

He knows.

He knows, too, the way she smells. And the way she feels. And the way she tastes, and the warmth of her inner thighs wrapping around his waist. He knows how hot her cunt is, how wet she gets, how fucking good she is when there's nothing between them, no fabric, latex, no air, no space, nothing. He knows this; and he knows, starkly and inescapably, how much she wants to avoid pregnancy. He knows now what happened the first time she was pregnant; when that was, who, why, and how it ended.

But she kisses him and he sighs into her mouth; it's nearly a moan. His hands shift her against him, open her thighs further. He rubs her against the ridged musculature of his belly, thoughtless as an animal; then he shifts her weight and reaches between them and takes his hardening cock in hand, lays it flat against his stomach, lays it between them and rubs her cunt against himself like that, rubs himself against her like that, until he has to break his mouth away, gasping.

"Nemáme kondom," he tells her, because the living room is yards away and that's too fucking far when even a few inches, now, is unthinkable. "Dovolte, abych jedl váš hajzl."

[Danicka] Because he wants her on him like this. Because the first time she wrapped naked and warm and wanting around his body he could not fucking stand it, threw her from him and fought not to lose himself in a frenzy brought on by too much frustration, too full a moon, too long a wait. Because it is, in the end, where they belong: bared completely, wrapped in each other, seemingly if only momentarily inextricable from one another. Because it doesn't matter if she's strong enough to do it on her own or not, because he wants to, Lukas pulls her up and against him and holds her there.

She presses her breasts to him, rubs herself against him even as he's pulling her to do the same. She laughs throatily, breathlessly, and the stone of the wall behind her scrapes at her flank and her back and her shoulders. If it hurts, or if she minds the pain, she doesn't reflect it in her eyes or in a hitch of her voice. Danicka just pulls back from kissing him, shuddering as he takes hold of his cock and strokes it across her cunt. She is almost smiling, lazy and horny and on the verge of gasping every single breath.

Her head tips back, her smile widening, a low laugh descending into a moan. She's still drunk. He's sober. He's healed, body and mind. She's floating in a haze still, from vodka and liqeur and fucking him on top of her car not thirty minutes ago. Danicka moans, and holds onto his shoulders, moving her hips against him as though to somehow pull him inside of her, grinding against his cock and his abdomen even as he's gasping the words he does.

She groans, or whimpers. Something. It's a noise of protest, whatever it can be called, at least to the first part. Her head lifts up and she kisses him, hard and forceful kisses that are almost biting in their hunger. She snarls against his lips in between kisses: "You weren't supposed to leave your pants inside," because now she expects one in his pocket, his wallet, something, "šílený samec."

Danicka nips his lower lip and smiles at him, starting to lower her legs from around his waist. "Takže jíst moje kundo, lásko."

[Lukas] "You expected me to think straight?" he retorts, half a laugh in his chest. And she's drunk on entirely too much vodka and liqueur, and he's not drunk but he is intoxicated, and she is intoxicating, except that implies that somehow he's out of his right mind when he's with her when nothing can be farther from the truth because

when he's with her, he doesn't have to wear a mask, either.

Which is why they can do this. Which is why he gives her všechno, or at least as much as he possibly can, and believes she'll give it back. Which is why he gets utterly smashed over dinner, sits next to her, shares their dishes and their desserts.

Which is why he isn't afraid that she might hurt herself on the wall, not because she's particularly tough or thickskinned or even because she won't hurt herself. Because he knows she might end up with welts on her back, but she can handle it. He knows if she can't, she would say something. Do something. Show him somehow, even if somehow is so simple and subtle as the slightest repression of that wildfire desire of hers.

That's a sort of trust, too.

This is a sort of trust: this lazy, half-playful arousal; these shudders and half-gasps that rake through him when she moves like this or grinds like that; this kiss, always this kiss, before she begins to lower herself.

And he lets her slide down.

And he doesn't turn her around again, because she'd said ne once. He lets her slide down and then he moves down himself, doesn't so much kiss a trail down her body as he simply descends along her axis, goes down on her in the most literal sense; sinks to his knees, presses himself to her all the way down. Where he remembers, he presses his mouth to her, sucks at her skin, nips at her flesh; where he forgets, it's simply his face rubbing against her breast, her abdomen, his beard-bristle scraping her skin, his hands rubbing down her thighs, grasping behind her knees.

Humid, a wind rises off the river and the lake beyond it. The skyscrapers of the Loop are before her now, past the riffling of Lukas's black hair, wide shoulders, past the brushed-steel railing of her balcony: a city rising coruscant out of a gridwork of scintillating streets that disappear into the darkened distance.

Her lover's hands are on the backs of her thighs. He lifts her leg over his shoulder, opening her to him; after a first, brief, searching nuzzle, he opens her leg wider still, his hands on her ass now, cupping her cunt toward his face as though she were a meal, a feast, ambrosia of the fucking gods. There's no hesitation, no coyness; he nudges apart the lips and presses his mouth to her pussy, and the first few seconds are almost shocking in their starved ferocity.

He wants to feel her back arch. He wants to feel that lightning through her.

Then -- Lukas slows. He finds some inner reserve of patience, and he closes his eyes, and he licks, laps, tastes her with an aching, escalating slowness, holding her hips in his hands, holding her still for him while he, quite simply, fucks her with his mouth.

[Danicka] Knowing that Danicka will speak up if something is too much for her has not stopped him the past from worrying over her, at least in the aftermath. Lukas doesn't usually bruise Danicka during sex; she doesn't bruise easily, for whatever reason. The night of the solstice she walked away covered in scratches not because he claws her but because the trees tried to hold onto her as tightly as he might have. Stone is harsher than even an Ahroun, and longer-lasting. Danicka's flesh is soft, and every time Lukas shifts his weight or she rubs against his body she feels a burning rake across the flesh covering her back.

She doesn't care. She's kissing a laugh out of his mouth, leaving traces of wetness against his torso and the shaft of his cock. She's glad of him, all of him, the part that can't think straight even though he's technically sober and the part of him that doesn't care that they're fucking on the balcony well into the night. The air is cool, the wind is strong, and they can see into her living room where it curves outward. Danicka's right foot touches the concrete balcony floor, but she lifts her left leg as he lowers himself, too, and lays it over his shoulder even as he's moving his hands to draw it there.

Were he mortal, his knees would have some serious complaints to lodge with him come morning. There's no bamboo mat or welcoming rug laid out on her porch, just cold, hard stone against him when he sinks down in front of her. They've done this before, only she had a railing in a handicapped stall to hold onto then. She only has the wall and her lover this time, and so Danicka holds onto both. Her right hand is flat against the wall behind her, her left burying fingers in his thick hair. Wanton and impatient, she grinds her cunt to his face, gasping sharply at the first touch of his tongue.

This time when she tips her head back there's no protective hand cradling her skull. She lets out half a yelp, but it's impossible to tell if it's from the pain of a near-crack against the wall or if it's because he's sucking on her clit like that, and she's melting against his mouth, body and whimper sweeter than sugar.

"To je vše," she gasps, rolling her hips, tightening her hand in his hair. "Bože, lásko, je to tak dobře."

Her head turns to the side, chest heaving as she pulls for air. The moonlight and the synthetic lights of the city hit her, cast shadows around her hardened nipples, linger affectionately on her cheek as the muscles in her face twist into a look of either slight pain or extreme pleasure. "Oh, že horká ústa ...Lízat jej, lásko."

[Lukas] "Láska..."

This, when she throws her head back against the wall; when she lets out that sound that he can't quite read. This, which draws his mouth from her, which makes him turn his face to the side, makes him kiss the soft skin at the juncture of her thigh so gently, as though he might soothe her somehow, calm her somehow, define his love for her like this, somehow.

Then her hand is tightening in his hair and words are spilling from her lips and when he closes his eyes he can almost imagine the sounds on the air unraveling into color, the heliotropic sighs, the carmine and pomegranate moans, the sharp blazing cobalt of a whimper. Flamehues, all -- it's a synesthesia of lust; intoxicated, out of his mind, šílený. He doesn't open his eyes again. He can feel the tension pulling taut inside her, invisible stress-lines down the length of her body, that body which he explores now with his hands, his palms pushing from her flank to the inflection of her hips; past that to the curvature of her waist, and then the inclines and planes of her ribcage, the softness of her breasts.

"Oh," he sighs against her flesh, against her cunt, when his hands find her breasts. The sound is recognition, and want, and something like relief -- but not the relief of some longheld pain lifted but the relief of finding something thought lost. There you are, she said earlier, unzipping him, drawing him out of his clothes. He thinks of that now and it doesn't seem inane at all; it never did.

When he opens his hands he covers her utterly; she fits him perfectly. His palms cradle the undersides of her breasts, then, and his fingers find her nipples. It's the same slow patience: his fingers forking past the aureolae before closing, before rubbing, before tugging delicately at the tightened center; his tongue slipping past, his mouth nuzzling open the folds of her flesh before closing, licking, sucking at her clit.

When reaction flickers through her, electric and sudden or rolling and oceanic, his hands open over her body, grasp at her flesh and her bones as though to hold her, claim her, read her pleasure like braille. Pressing her to the wall, opening her over his shoulder, pinning her to her pleasure, he eats at her like that for a minute, an hour or an eternity: he devours her consummately, consumes her with his mouth, yes, but also with his hands; with his body, his shoulders pressing against her thighs, his chest to her weightbearing leg, his neck craning against her hand, his face to her cunt, to the hot wet center of her, which he can't seem to help wanting, and seeking, and finding every damn time he sees her, over and over.

Sometimes, and more often now than before, he speaks to her. He murmurs to her while he fucks her, asks her what she wants, how she likes it; asks her if she's going to come, asks her to come for him. He tells her how she feels, and what he's feeling. He gasps prayers and curses, growls and snarls at her, spills obscenities into the air as though the raw hunger in him is too much for him to hold. Not this time, though. No words this time; only the occasional sound low in his throat, muffled against her body -- wordless, not-quite-voiced sounds of enjoyment and indulgence and, when she whimpers aloud or shudders or twists beneath his hands, some answering noise, some sound of seeking, or finding, or encouragement, all of which, every last one of which really only says one thing:

Ano. Otevřeno pro mě. Dej mi všechno.

which is the one and only thing they have ever really said to each other, at the very core of it all.

[Danicka] Once upon a time, she told him she wanted his mouth. She wanted the taste of him, the taste of koláče on his tongue, and may as well have said

I want to kiss you. I am dying to kiss you.

She may as well have said

I can't stop thinking about you.

When she tried. And by god, she tried not to. She fucked others, she danced, she stood on her balcony in the middle of winter and smoked a cigarette and tried not to think about him behind her, hips flush against her own, the heat of him surrounding her, his breath against the lobe of her ear. She came in her bed, alone, grasping the sheets and thinking about his mouth on her just like this, too lost in all her wanting to ask herself how she could bear the thought of a werewolf between her legs, eating at her cunt, lapping her up when he could just as easily lose control and kill her.

Again and again, Danicka's hips roll against his face. If he were standing with her, buried inside of her, this would be shockingly gentle lovemaking. With him on his knees, it's her fucking his mouth, grinding down on him because she has lost the ability to ask for more vocally. She covers one of his hands on her breast with her own, moaning wordlessly in response to that low Oh.

She used to try and imagine what he'd sound like, fucking her. She remembers wondering what he would look like when he came, how the muscles in his shoulders would bunch and how his hips would flex. She used to wonder what he looked like underneath those stylishly rumpled shirts, soft pullovers, dark jeans. And Danicka remembers, still, the first time she saw him undressed, in that dingy and dimly lit motel room. The lights had been on, and had stayed on, well into the night. He'd wanted it stark, the bed stripped, no illusions of romance or affection or anything but having her, getting her out of his head, succumbing for at least one goddamn night to a desire he thought then was a profound mistake. Or weakness.

Or something.

Danicka loves his body. And she touches him like she can't stop, everything from the hard curves of his knuckles to the oddly delicate, deft articulation of his wrists. She memorizes his scalp, the feel of his hair, the line of his jaw as her hand falls and her fingertips graze his cheek. She closes her eyes, head tipped back, and tightens her leg over his shoulder, thinking of the way he'll feel when he's enfolded in her thighs and fucking her, thinking of how he felt on the hood of the car when he was groaning in her ear and thrusting into her pussy, thinking fleetingly of the flicker of tension that ripples through his biceps when he holds himself up over her and looks down, watches her body merging with his, watches himself as his cock pushes deeper into her.

She trembles as his tongue finds her clit again, circling and then softly sucking. She folds forward, trusting him as much as her own leg to bear her weight, and lets out soft, sharp whimpers of words as her breasts fill his palms, press into his hands. Yeah, she says, and that's it and don't stop, and fuck me, baby, give it to me, and whatever other inane plea enters her mind as she rides his mouth, as she gets closer to that searing moment of pre-orgasmic tension.

Once upon a time, she wondered what he would sound like during sex. Now she knows. And she knows what she sounds like when he makes her come, when she loses even her ever-present awareness of how she's being seen, when she loses everything but what he's done to her. Danicka cries out, louder than he is, senseless as he is, getting louder all the while. She grasps his hair and bucks her hips, writhing between his hands and his mouth and the wall, spine arching in that last, weightless moment. When that moment shatters, it's like a wave breaking, crashing down on her so hard that for a moment she has lost all sense of up and down. There's no such thing as time, or place. Every one of her senses flares, nerve endings flashing with overwhelming input.

They can't see whether there's anyone out on their own balconies a story above, or a floor below. They can't see if there's anyone in a neighboring building looking out their window, and Danicka doesn't care. She holds onto Lukas's hair, holds onto the flat wall as best as her flat palm can, screams as though they're in her sound-insulated bedroom and not out in the middle of the summer night, harsh and yet melting.

She's lit up like a star for a fraction of a minute, quivering against his face until her screaming descends back into lower moans, falling apart further into whimpers, into gasps. Danicka's hand loosen in his hair finally and pushes it back, strokes him with insistent, almost desperate gentleness. "Oh god, baby... god, you're so good." She laughs after those last words, breathless and boneless, rubbing herself against him again despite the electric sensitivity between her legs. It makes her gasp again. She likes it.

She does it again.

[Lukas] There isn't much on that wall for Danicka to hold onto. Only the smoothness of concrete and cement poured in the shape of stone blocks awaits her there; no handholds except the shallow furrows between one faux block and the next. Her fingers can find no purchase there, but that's all right.

That's all right because he has no purchase either. His eyes are closed and the ground may as well have tilted and tipped and fallen away beneath him; he may as well be aloft, soaring on a high thermal the way the great flock of Horus does. He may as well be falling, terminal velocity, weightless.

It's all right because she trusts him to bear her weight, and he trusts her to ...

... to not place her trust foolishly, perhaps.
To lay her belief and her trust with the same canny caution Danicka has always navigated the treacherous waters of her life with.

Except that's not who she is; no more than Lukas is, at his roots, careful and deliberate, cautious almost unto paranoia. She remembers, dimly, the child he was, rather reckless and wild, prone to shouting and running and shrieking and climbing and tumbling and picking up again. She remembers, clearly, the creature he becomes when all the doors between them and the world shut and lock, and he's alone with her, in her bed, in her, losing himself.

Losing his careful balance.

Losing his purchase on logic, and strategy, and carefulness, and planning.

Giving over to her, trusting her to not let him fall.

Something of that here, even now; even like this, where she's arguably the passive recipient of pleasure, and he's arguably not in any danger of losing control, or falling, or coming undone in any way. She's not fucking him. He's not inside her; not her cunt, and not her mouth. Her hands are not on his cock, or even much of his body beyond what she can reach of his head, his face. He's not touching himself, not so much as a stroke.

Yet even so -- something of falling for him as well as her, the possibility of fall or flight. Something about the way his hands grasp at her, stroke her breasts and the stretch of her torso, the muscles that twist and roil under her skin when she writhes, when she folds over him as though what he's doing to her as ruptured something, or tripped some wire, or broken some tenuous thread that keeps her upright only to arch again seconds later, electrified. Something about the low, half-muffled sounds he releases against her flesh, as though to transduce her pleasure from her bones by resonance.

It's the way he pushes his mouth against her as she grinds on him, too. The mutual give and take: the overt giving, the generosity of his mouth pleasuring her; the overt taking, the receiving of her, holding onto the wall and holding onto him, legs open over him, fucking his face as though they were the only creatures in the world, as though they weren't out on a balcony in the middle of a city, as though he were bought and paid for or, very simply, made to please her.

Then; the subtler giving, too; that willingness to open herself like this; the heedless cries and moans she lets loose. The trembling, the trust; the way her hands follow his, and hold his to her as though to encourage, as though to affirm. The subtler taking, in the blind nuzzling of his face between her legs; in the craning and straining for the heat and wetness of her; in his eating at her cunt and sucking at her clit like he has a right to her, as though she were his to devour, to keep, to take, to have.

And -- to drive. To push, harder and higher, farther, while her cries grow ever louder and wilder. He takes her higher unrelentingly, not caring if her hands twist into his hair and skim off his shoulders; bat at the bare wall; clutch at his wrists, herself. He doesn't care if she writhes and bucks, if she can't hold still anymore, if she can't even force rhythm and reason into what her body is doing. Lukas keeps going, fucks her with his mouth, shifts to stand on his knees when she starts losing hold of herself, shifts to crowd her against the wall with his shoulders, to hold her hips still with his hands, shifts to follow her cunt with his mouth, mercilessly, so he can fuck her like this, eat her like this, take her over the edge just like this.

When Danicka comes, he keeps at her. Of course he does. He always does, taking her through and past her orgasm, sometimes because his own is imminent; other times, like this, because he wants to. Simple as that, and complex as that:

Because he wants to.

And, feeling her coming, feeling her body writhing, snapping, lashing with tension before the sudden and perfect arching, he thinks of bows pulled taut; he thinks of cascades, not of water but of stars, the perseids, the leonids, the meteor showers of august, and he thinks of the vertigo of lying out in an open field, somewhere so wide open and flat that staring straight into the sky gives no hint of land; he thinks of how the slow march of the constellations and the brilliant slice of a shooting star can pull the eye and tip the balance, and if he looks long enough, and hard enough, he can't be sure that the earth itself doesn't tip and tilt underfoot, and spill him over the edge.

And then she's coming down; coming apart. Her orgasm is letting her go, and she's falling asunder into whimpers and sighs, into loosened muscles and limp bones, into the occasional, fading clenches of her body. Lukas is aware of the gentleness of her hands in his hair, pushing it back, stroking through the thickness and the blackness of it, faintly sweat-damp, and faintly curling because it's damp. His hands loosen on her hips. He wraps his arms around her, embracing her; holding her the best he can.

It's not until she laughs, breathlessly, that he finally draws his mouth from her a small ways, panting himself. She tells him he's so good. He's moving forward again even as she's grinding herself back against his face. She gasps; he muffles something like a moan against her, and then he licks her again, slowly now, thoroughly, until his tongue presses and holds against her clit, and his lips close around it.

He kisses her like that, and it's gentle. He kisses her again, right there, and it's gentler. Then, low on her belly. Then, just beneath her navel. He opens his eyes and looks up at her.

"Pojď sem," Lukas murmurs. "Dovolte mi kurva ty."

[Danicka] [Willpower -1 (sooo fucking wasted)]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 7, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Danicka] Months ago, meeting Danicka outside of a restaurant near her apartment while he was on his way out of a nightclub, Lukas had resisted fucking her in his car. She'd been drunk, even moreso than now. Danicka isn't so drunk tonight that she'll forget this ever happened; she didn't remember in the morning that Lukas had not seemed remotely interested in hiking up her skirt in the front seat of the MKZ and letting her ride him.

She can't ask him now what changed, or why it was okay to fuck her not in the passenger seat but on the hood, out in the open, his clothes off and her lingerie yanked askew, his naked hips thrusting between her thighs over and over until they were kissing moans out of each other's mouths, biting groans into each other's shoulders. She can't ask him why it's okay, tonight, to be on his knees on the balcony, his face buried in her pussy.

Something has most certainly changed in her, over the last several weeks. She's stronger, and it shows. The lines of tension that always pulled her shoulderblades taut when he would come up behind her don't reveal themselves unless she's already tired or upset. She is more relaxed with him, seems more centered in herself, more comfortable in her own (perfektni) skin. When he trusts her now, not to let him fall or unravel, trusts her to give him back all the things he gives up when he comes to her, that trust has a more solid place to rest.

Because of that, perhaps, they do not so much as set aside thoughts of give and take, active and passive, as merge them, move fluidly between them. Neither of them are just, neither of them are only. For a few moments even her orgasm seems something shared between them, despite the fact that Lukas hasn't been touched since he held her up against the wall and she rubbed herself against his abdomen, his cock, gasping for him. It was only his sobriety and will that kept them from coming together like that, only his adoration of her that had him on his knees instead, asking for her cunt the way he asks Let me now.

She looks down at him, her chest still heaving as she catches her breath, her fingers still tangled in his hair. She doesn't tell him how much she loves this, loves touching his hair and seeing him fight to keep his eyes open, loves wrapping her legs around him and feeling his entire body move towards hers as though it knows, even better than he does, where he belongs. He looks, though untouched and unfulfilled, as though he's still found some measure of satisfaction. She remembers the first time she saw that look in his eyes.

It was that first time in his bed at the Brotherhood when he wrapped his arm around her, slid his hand into her underwear, and made her come without so much as rubbing himself against her thigh. When she'd turned towards him, just before she'd told him how badly she wanted him inside of her, she'd seen that low-banked flame of enjoyment in his vivid blue eyes, just like this.

No longer pinned between his lust and the wall, Danicka lets relaxation flood her limbs even more. She groans quietly as he licks her, sucks on her. Even gentle, it sends a bolt of lightning through her; her fingers curl against his scalp, fingernails barely scraping his skin. She writhes, biting back a low scream, as the softest attention on hypersensitive flesh makes her wonder if he's trying to kill her. She can't ask; she gasps instead, and sighs when he relents, kissing her belly and navel instead. Danicka's eyes are half-lidded and half-unseeing; she looks drowsy when she looks down at him.

All she has to do is sink down and take him inside her. She's wet, so much so that she knows he would slide into her smoothly, full and deep in a single stroke. She thinks about how it would feel, resting her weight on his lap and trusting his hands to hold her up. She thinks about his knees on the barren concrete, thinks about the way the moonlight hits his shoulders and the small of his back and even his hair. She thinks of the way it would feel to fuck him again with the wind surrounding them. She thinks of how much she likes riding him, watching him from a perfect vantage point as he loses all sense of himself, all sense of the world.

Her leg unfolds from his shoulder, slowly so she doesn't inadvertently hurt herself, and lowers the sole of her foot to the balcony's floor. She takes a deep breath, watching him, and slides her hand out from his hair, arms falling to her sides. They're both sweaty, slick with it, almost glistening with it. Danicka looks at him the way she looked at him in the woods on the solstice, somewhere between predator and priestess. It seems like she might say something; her lips are parted and her breathing is starting to steady

but in the end she just slips from him, walks to the balcony door, and goes inside.

[Lukas] Lukas hasn't left her a lot of space. Between his body and the wall is a mere few inches; half a foot, eight inches at most. When she lowers her leg, when she turns and steps past him, she literally must slip by. Her bare legs brush against his bare chest, his shoulder. He turns his face to follow the flash of her thighs past, instinctively, rubbing his cheek over her smooth skin as thoughtlessly as the animal he is.

Then she's past, and gone, and he sinks back on his heels, lets his head fall back and his eyes fall shut. Relaxed, and yet humming with arousal, he's in that grey space, that nomansland between satiation and hunger: his hands lax on his thighs, his spine gently, loosely curved; his cock erect, curving back against his stomach, so fucking hard and full that he can feel his heartbeat there, and behind his sternum, and between his ears.

The night air is cool without her. It slides easily into his lungs, cools his mind some miniscule degree. He opens his eyes again, lowers and turns his head to see where she's gone. Inside. Where there are walls, and windows, and furniture ... and contraceptives. Of course. Had he forgotten again? Did he even remember how to think?

Lukas gets up. His knees are sore; so is his neck. He hadn't noticed, before. The door is ajar, and glass anyway. He follows her inside and shuts it behind him, and now they're safe behind the glass, safe inside her walls, her windows, her glistening aquarium of an apartment. His mind flashes back to the woods. He thinks to himself, illogically, knowing it's illogical and not quite caring, that if there was another place they belonged, another definition for belonging other than with her, with him, the perfect intersection of the woods, and the solstice, and the dark of moon, and the grey dawn would be it.

She went inside first. She's had a moment to decide where, and how. He gives her another moment anyway -- lingers by the door, one hand on the handle, his eyes clear and alert as he watches her. What vicarious satiation he derived from the encounter on the balcony has all but seared away now. He's all lean hunger, watchful, waiting.

The couch doesn't creak as Danicka reaches it, and slides one knee and then the other onto it. She faces the back, the windows, the open sky. Even across the room she can hear him draw a breath; he's looking at her, the bend of her knees, the curvature of her rear, the arch of her spine. Softly his hand slips from the doorhandle. He pauses by his jeans, picks them up and finds his wallet, drops the jeans, retrieves a condom while he's closing in on the couch, and her. The wallet is dropped as haphazardly as the article of clothing, thumping to the floor. The wrapper, too.

He's behind her, then, first swiping the precum from his cock, then smoothing the condom on. Smearing himself slick, he's so close that she can feel the heat of him, can hear the ragged edging to his breath. He reaches out, but stops himself an instant before his fingers make contact. His hand hovers a fraction of an inch from her shoulder; her back; comes to a rest, finally, at her hip.

Lukas leans into her then. He bends over her and presses against her, pulls her back against him, leans his chest against her shoulderblades and presses his hips to her ass. Heavily, uncompromisingly, he rubs himself against her ass, against her wet cunt, and she's right; she's so fucking wet he's slippery by the first stroke, almost frictionless on the second. The cushions compress under his palm when he presses his hand down, braces himself over her. He bites at her shoulder, kisses the nape of her neck, the knobs of her vertebrae.

A breath of a sentence, his lips moving against her back: "Oh bože ... moje."

His balance shifts as his hand leaves the back of the couch, the weightbearing muscles deep in his back pulling taut; he doesn't lean on her, quite, but nor does he rise up, pull away. Blindly, his hand finds its way down her torso, explores her breasts and the breath-borne movement of her ribcage, presses down her abdomen to shift her thighs apart, and apart a little more. When his hand slips between her legs he doesn't touch her clit immediately; eschews it for a slow, languid stroking along the sides, between the folds. Unbidden, irrepressible, he bites a groan into her shoulder when he finds the opening of her cunt, feels just how fucking wet she is.

"Moje," again. His hips thrust. He pushes his cock sliding along the cleft of her ass, a slow hard grind of his hips that rocks her forward an inch. "Oh, lásko, chci kurva ty."

His fingers retreat; he touches her clit, finally -- softly, almost testingly, and then insistently. Her hair falls past her shoulders as he nuzzles the strands aside, kisses the back of her neck. His left hand now, moving; leaving her hip to reach between them. He guides his cock to her, presses into her, slides inside her with a sort of deliberate slowness, steady and gentle but utterly unfaltering. Only when he's buried in her, pushed as deeply into her as he can reach, does he stop.

His chest is straining against her back; it's an effort to hold still. She can hear that effort in his voice; it slices off the extraneous, strips down his sentence, his thoughts, tears the edges to raggedness.

It's a single word, and it sounds like a promise:

"Moje."

[Danicka] She leaves the door open behind her, the door the rests in the narrow corner of the curved living room that looks out expansively on the city. It's interesting that a kinfolk as ostensibly submissive as Danicka would choose -- and it really was her choice, it wasn't as though Martin cared much -- an apartment with a view like this. It's the sort of place a ruler would like to look out on a kingdom. Sunrise breaks to this view, bathing the entire living room in light. Lukas knows. He slept on this couch once and the only thing protecting him from the dawn's rays were the back cushions, shielding him in shadow but not disguising how the light filled the room like water filling up a bowl.

Danicka owns this place. Not literally, not in the sense that she could sell it. It's a lease, nothing more. But when she walks through the room she inhabits the space as though it is and will always be hers, and hers alone. It's almost a swagger, the way she moves. The couch is a mere few steps from the balcony door and she gets up onto it, kneeling so that she looks through the glass at the dark world outside. If they'd turned on any lights at all the glass would be mirrored, doing nothing but reflecting them back to themselves, but it's dark inside, too. The moonlight comes through, the brightest starts that burn defiantly through the light pollution that Chicago offers up, the light pollution itself.

So they can see pale wraiths of themselves hovering in the dark, as Lukas closes the balcony door and walks to her. She watches that ghost of him, instead of the man, watching as he pauses at his pants, listening as fabric and foil rustle. Her heartbeat, newly slowed, picks up again. She watches him as his face appears over her shoulder, hard to see in that dim reflection because he does not have her bright hair, her paler skin. He's the sort of wolf people imagine when they think of Shadow Lords. The shadows -- as much as with her or under a dark moon on the longest day of the year out in the wilderness -- is where he belongs.

As does she. It's just that she shines brighter within them, tenaciously burning.

She has decided where, and how, but she doesn't tell him. Danicka turns her head over her shoulder as he stands behind her, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips as he breathes quietly but harsly behind her. She does not quite look at him out of the corner of her eye; she looks at the impression of him, the edge of his arm and shadowed line of his body, and thinks of him fucking her like that, bent over the couch and hammering, pounding against her in a furious bid for completion. Danicka shivers at the first touch, her body bending slightly when he leans into her. She arches her back partly out of necessity, rubs herself back against him even as he's doing so himself.

It takes effort to brace her arms like this against his weight leaning into her, his chest on her back, his hips on her ass, and so on, and so on, as though she has ever told him that she cannot bear to have him behind her. The very first night, he had her on their sides, her body stretched out in front of him, her breasts fitting neatly into his hands. The next time, two weeks later, she turned around and bent over in front of him, and he was the one who told her to let him see her. When he leans into her, Danicka opens her mouth, her arms tense, but if she was about to say something it's torn from her as soon as he slides against her that first time. And the second.

"Oh," she murmurs, as he did earlier, only her pitch is higher. Her voice is softer. Her vocalization is a morning star, against the brighter, burning sun of his voice. His name leaves her mouth in a whisper, one of recognition, or permission, rather than a call that needs answering. "Lukáš."

The first time she cries out, it seems to shatter the stillness inside the apartment, as though somehow they'd left all their noise and savagery outside and its rebirth in here is startling. Lukas's palms on her breasts make her sigh, and his touch on her belly makes the muscles therein flex in response, but it's when his fingertips slide so very close to her clit yet do not caress it that her breathing goes ragged, goes tight. And it's not until those same fingertips circle their way to her center that she cries out, eclipsing the first word out of his mouth.

The cry and the word are the same, ultimately. Recognition again. Plea. Demand. Possession. Mine, he says, in a breath that's a snarl. Moje, she cries out, without her lips forming M or o or anything but Aah!

But she squirms when he touches her, the cry spiraling, tightening into a near-squeal. She's still sensitive, still quivering, and she's trying not to scream as he's busying himself nuzzling her hair, her shoulder, feasting on her with fingers and mouth and body. All Danicka has for him when he enters her is a groan, low and helpless and nothing remotely like predator, or priestess, or ruler of this place or any other. Her hands curl on the back of the couch, her fingernails rake the upholstery, her arms tremble with tension as he slowly, so fucking slowly, fills her body with his.

"Chci jezdit vás," she moans, even as her hips rock back against his, even as she squeezes him inside her. Danicka turns her head again, this time seeks him with her eyes, murmurs so softly that the sweetness of it is murderous: "Lásko, nech mě starat se o vás. Dovolte, abych vás jízda."

[Lukas] "God...!"

-- a word, or a prayer, or a curse, caught right on the edge between an exhalation and an exclamation. His eyes fall shut when she bears down on him like that, tightens around him and rides back against him. His lips are parted when she turns to look at him over her shoulders, drawing briefly back from his teeth when the twist of her body squirms her cunt on his cock.

A second later his eyes fly open as she says


Chci jezdit vás.

and he stares at her a second. He looks dazed, amazed, his fingers stilling on her body, between her legs. There's enough light to pick out the blue in his eyes, not because the city coming through the windows is bright but because his eyes are that pale, that clear. A breathing silence -- his breath coming shallow and swift, quiet but rough. A second later his hands move again. His left hand returns to her hip and his right rubs her clit slowly, and his fingers are confident, his touch sure, and for a moment it seems he doesn't mean to stop at all because he leans forward to catch her mouth where she turns over her shoulder.

Lukas groans into her mouth, into this slow, fierce, wet kiss -- he's flexing his hips against hers and pressing deeper, pulling her back against him, touching her the way he knows, or rather has learned over the weeks, the months, to make her pussy clench around him; to make her gasp. He's loathe to let go; absolutely unwilling to leave her. That much is written in every line of his body, every nuance of his touch. It may as well be an unspoken supplication:

Dovolte, abych zůstal.

Dovolte mi kurva ty.

except then, all at once, the kiss draws apart and he turns his face aside, exhales a short sharp breath that ends in a curse, "Fuck," and straightens. Withdrawal is swift enough to make him gasp. Not even a second later his hands are turning her, quick and certain, impatient, turning her to face him. Krásný, he thinks, a singular, searing notion. The great muscles of his back flex; he stands upright, gathers her onto him in a tangle of golden hair, golden skin, long limbs, warm body, and almost without meaning to he turns his face up and kisses her again, takes her by the hips and plants her back on his cock.

This time it's fast, as sudden as his withdrawal had been; every last inch slid smoothly and unapologetically into her cunt. "Mmph!" he says, muffled on her tongue; it might've been another curse; his hands clutch at her hips to hold her where she is, keep her where she is, while he turns his back to the couch, sits. Her knees touch the seat on either side of his hips. He leans back.

"Čekat," he murmurs, a touch unsteadily, when she starts to move. He licks his lips; tips his head back against the cushions. "Čekat. Dovolte, abych vám cítí."

And a quiet -- his face taut with pleasure and anticipation, his eyes shut, pulse beating quick in his throat, chest rising and falling with every quick breath. A moment goes by. Then his hands gentle and open, slide up to encircle her waist.

"Dobře, lásko."

His eyes, too: opening, finding hers in the dimness. Fierce, the light in his eyes, but diffused, nearly lost in sensation.

"To mě poser."

[Danicka] Drunk as she is, drowsy from vodka and orgasm and summer heat, Danicka cannot fathom why he looks at her the way he does then, why he looks so lost for a moment. She squirms again because his hands are still, encourages them to move on her again -- and they do. He touches her, and if he decided then to just keep her bent like this and fuck her, she wouldn't tell him to stop. She kisses him hungrily, lifting her left hand from the couch and reaching back to grasp his hair. Danicka holds him there as he groans, as she devours him through that kiss, and fucks back against him again just as he is pushing himself deeper.

The noise she makes there is a groan, or grunt, a ragged and low moan of reception. It seems for a second or two that they could stay like this all night, suspended on a knife's edge of lust, caught between Dovolte and Prosím, their two pleas only seeming to conflict. In the end it comes down to Chci tě. It always comes down to that.

It's cruel, almost, that she releases a subdued giggle when he stops kissing her and swears. She stops abruptly when he pulls out of her, breathing in sharply in surprise. But she's laughing again, satiated and yet aroused again, when he grabs her and turns her, lifts her. Danicka's white teeth flash in the dark as she parts her legs to either side of him, a sharp and feral smile that very nearly speaks of triumph, but she's too far gone to think in terms as clear-cut as Win or Lose. He pulls her down onto his cock again and, again, her delight shifts suddenly to longing.

Her outcry at how quickly and fully he's in her again is startled, almost pained, and her fingernails dig hard into his shoulders in answer. Danicka doesn't try to move at first, not while his palms are opening over her ass to hold onto her as he sits. They descend in a controlled fall to the cushions and she remains still, adjusting again to the feel of him so deep, so familiar, always so new because no matter how much they melt together she remembers that his body is separate, his body is his, his body is how he becomes a part of her.

His whisper for her to wait is pre-emptive; Danicka unfurls slightly on his lap, the city behind him lighting her up. Her colors are dim, and her eyes are dark, and she smells like him. She smells like his mate, her scent overlaid thinly by his, her breeding sinking into his awareness like her fingers slide into his scalp, bury themselves in his hair. She watches him as he leans back, looking all but overcome, and dips her head. She runs her tongue up his exposed throat, gently over his Adam's apple, slowly around the side to his left earlobe. Danicka sucks softly there while he gets used to her on him again, unsatisfied by simply sitting still and waiting for him to be able to stand it.

As he lifts his head again, murmuring in Czech, Danicka leans back and meets his eyes. She waits a moment, then plants her palms on his chest and slowly slides upward, until he almost slips out of her cunt. "Jste si jisti, lásko?" she purrs, even as inch after inch of him is leaving her warmth.

"Chystáš se nech mě kurva ty?" she asks then, this time more of a snarl, as she moves back down onto him, faster than she left him. She circles her hips on him when he's all the way inside her again, grinding as hard as she dares. "Chystáš se nech mě dát to k vám?"

[Lukas] His eyes fall shut again when her palms press against his chest; when she starts to leverage herself up, off, away. He doesn't fight it, any of it. Doesn't even try. He just lets his head fall back, his jaw tensing briefly as he swallows.

"Ano."

It's a breath, a sigh, open vowels barely flicked by a consonant. It's an answer, only it's not; it's just a sound, just a concept, a notion, something like a plea for her to

do exactly what she does, and bring herself back down on him. Lukas's head flexes back against the cushion, and his hands tighten on her waist. "Ach, ano," again, a harsher sound this time, edging into a groan. When his eyes open he looks down; he watches her sinking onto his cock, the length and breadth of him pushing into her. "Chci, abys do --

" -- oh -- "

It's that swing of her hips, that vicious, sure grind of her on his lap. It hits him like a bullet in the brain, snaps his head back hard enough to thump the cushions. His hips buck beneath her, wholly without his consent or even much of his knowledge, as reflexive as a kneejerk. Bared, his teeth are dimly white by the light of the city. When the initial lash of pleasure passes he exhales, slowly, rubs his hands over her body, cups her breasts. He touches her gently, as gently as he can, his breath short and shallow, quick.

" ... udělej to znovu."

A glow on the ceiling when he opens his eyes; the diffuse light of a thousand streetlights, the multihued refractions and reflections of chicago. His eyes track back to hers. Hold. He tugs gently at her nipples with his fingers, and then his hands wrap behind her ribcage, urge her forward.

"Dovolte mi sát na své kozy, Danička," he says. "A kurva mě. Jízda mi těžko, lásko."

[Danicka] Let me take care of you, she'd said, murmuring over her shoulder to him. Danicka does not think he needs her tender care, or her protection, any more than she thinks that she needs his. She does, however, think he needs this. It's become necessary. It's become something that he cannot lose without spiraling out of control. Which she understands. Which she knows, very well, has become true of her as well.

Her hands slide up his chest to his shoulders and back down, caressing his body with more slowness and gentleness than she fucks him with. "Znovu?" she whispers, as though there's any doubt as to the answer, as though she somehow doubts he means it. Her breathing is faster, heavier, than it was just a few moments ago, ratcheting back up towards the ragged panting he heard from her just before she came.

Danicka levers her hips upward again, circling them slowly as she lifts herself up. She may as well be dancing, and he's seen her dance, seen how freely yet fluidly she moves. Everything between them is hot, dark, and moist, as though the boundaries between their bodies are dissolving like sugar on the tongue. She smiles at him as his hands run upward, caress her breasts, then slams herself back down on him suddenly, gasping as he drives into her.

She leans forward, moves her hands to the back of the couch behind his shoulders. "Suck on them, baby," she all but whimpers, brushing her hardened nipples across his lips, across his cheek. She bounces on him, once, then again, a little faster this time. Every time her hips lift she squeezes him, every time she descends she grinds like that, swivels on his lap, squirms on his cock like even as deep as he is it's not enough for her. "Is that it, baby?"

Danicka moves faster, riding him in earnest now, as much as his arms and his mouth will let her. "You like that cunt?"

[Lukas] Znovu?

He nods. It's almost imperceptible. His head is still back against the cushions; he can't find the strength, or the presence of mind, to lift his head. He doesn't even remember which muscle to use.

"Znovu."

And she moves, she moves, she rolls her hips on her way up and she may as well be dancing and his eyes flicker shut for a second and he groans; he opens his eyes; she smiles and almost in spite of himself, almost involuntarily, he smiles back --

-- or starts to, when she slams herself down again.

She gasps. His head whips back; this groan is all but forced out of him, torn raw and violent from his throat. "Fuck," he swears. He almost sounds angry. "Baby, what the fuck--" and then he shuts up, she's leaning into him and he opens his mouth unhesitatingly, catches her breast in his mouth and sucks at her, and maybe he'd meant to be gentle but then she had to go and fuck him like that, and now his mouth is rough on her flesh, his tongue agile and vicious against her nipple, his hands firm on her back, holding her against him. She can hear his breath rushing from him in short bursts every time she comes down on him, can see the flare of his nostrils on every inhale.

Is that it, she wants to know. He pulls away from her breast just long enough to mutter, "Ano. Fuck, yes," and then his mouth is back on her, and then she's winding it up, going faster now, settling into a rhythm and he loosens his grasp on her, leans back, leans his head back and takes his hands from her entirely to spread his arms along the back of the couch.

"Yeah." It's somewhere between a pant and a groan and a murmur; somewhere between an answer and an encouragement. "Yeah, that's it. Oh ... god."

He's watching her again, watching the strain and flex of her thighs, the bounce of her tits, the venom-green of her eyes and the black of her pupils. His eyes trail down her body, his eyelids falling lower, lazily, even as sweat starts to slicken his skin again; even while his hips start rolling up against hers, bucking against her to match her rhythm. When his gaze finds the joining of her thighs, the joining of their bodies, he sucks a short breath in through his teeth.

"Don't stop," watching, watching her riding him, watching himself penetrate her, fuck her, flash into her cunt again and again. "Don't stop, baby." Flicker: his eyes back on hers, and they're not even human anymore, the blue a thin rim of color, the pupils enormous. A night predator's eyes -- a wild creature's eyes. He locks eyes with her and he doesn't look away; he watches her eyes as she rides, as she bounces, and even with his arms along the back of the couch, his back to the cushions, his body laid out for her to use and ride and fuck

there's something almost aggressive, something dominant and fierce about the angle of his head. The jut of his jaw. The light behind his eyes, like heat-lightning in a hot, rainless night.

"Dovolte mi mít že napjaté kundo, miláčku. Dej mi to."

His hands curl into fists, grasping at the fabric or the leather of the couch. Strain in his jaw now; strain in his arms, across his chest, down the axis of his body. Harsh and ragged, his breathing. He holds her eyes.

"Don't you fucking stop."

[Danicka] There was a time when almost angry would have startled her, frightened her, especially when she's so drunk that every instinct is that much closer to the surface. Now, though, Danicka just pushes her breast into his mouth as he muffles himself, letting out a whimpering gasp at the roughness of the way he eats at her body. So she fucks him harder, clenching around his cock and bouncing on his lap as though in retaliation. The noises she makes are meaningless, ragged cries of pleasure, unmistakable. If her walls weren't so thick, if they were at the Brotherhood or a motel, anyone nearby could hear what he's doing to her. What he does to her, every single fucking time.

When his hands start sliding up and down her back because she's moving so much faster on him, and Lukas finally leans back, sprawls out, and lets her go, Danicka flashes another smile at him and puts her hands back on his chest. She arches her spine, head tipping backwards as she writhes atop him. He dominates the space he's in, then, spread out so that he can watch her, so that he can enjoy her. Supposedly she's taking care of him, fucking him both obediently and sweetly, but if that was even the original intent it's so far gone as to be an impossibility now.

Danicka is using him now, as much as she did when she ground against his mouth on the balcony just minutes ago, taking pleasure in his body like it was made for her, like he was made to please her. She is not fucking him sweetly, or gently, or even just bouncing delightfully on his cock. She fucks him the way he fucks her when he has on her on all fours and his teeth are locked in her shoulder. She fucks him the way they fucked in his bed for the first time, unaccountably rough and hungry, as though they haven't been together in days, or weeks, rather than less than an hour ago.

"That's good," she sighs, her body elongated. Her hands leave his chest and her arms fold back, as though she's merely stretching, her breasts thrust forward and her hips rolling against his, fluid and hot. "Oh, baby," she moans, winding towards him again, leaning forward and clinging to his shoulders, her moan touching his ear, "you're so fucking good."

Over and over, he tells her not to stop, and every single time she deliberately tightens around him, squeezes him in her cunt. Their faces are close now, close enough to share each other's air, each other's breath. She lets her body rub against his own, ferocious and mammalian, holding his gaze as tightly and demandingly as he holds hers. "Oh, god..." she groans, pressing her mouth to his and kissing him for several heated, suspended seconds. When she gasps away from the kiss her lips are still close enough to his that she can feel them moving, moist and lazy, with the groaned words: "Já jsem tak kurva vlhký. Co to sakra děláš se mnou?"

[Lukas] Their lovemaking, or perhaps this is merely their fucking, raw and elemental --

Their fucking is at once languid and ferocious, intense and lazy. She rides him. He lets her. She uses his body. He holds still for her the best he can, though he can't keep his hips from thrusting sharply against hers; he can't help the tension in his shoulders, the way he grasps at the back of her sofa, fingers digging in. It's rough, and his eyes are hungry. They watch each other. They hold one another in their eyes, green and blue, sharp, animal.

And -- he sprawls out. He lets her go. He soaks it the fuck in, like she were a star, the sun, and he some stretch of sea-washed land. She straightens. She rolls her body; she arches her back. They're briefly suspended, intersecting at a single hot point, a mutual crucifixation on a singular nexus of lust.

It's a goddamn struggle not to reach out and touch her when she does that. It's a struggle not to put his hands all over her, pick her up, roll her under him, pull her hips to the edge of the couch and kneel between her legs and fuck her until he comes inside her. But then she's coming back, and he thinks of predators settling in their fur-strewn dens; he thinks of reptiles, vipers, coiling in their cool lairs. She clings to him and he leans into her, rubs his cheek against hers, nips at her jawline, her ear.

"Fuck me." He's whittled down to a bare modicum of words, phrases, sentences, thoughts that he spills directly into her ear. "Keep on fucking me. Don't stop, baby. Chci, abyste mi použití."

And now they're together, they're brushing, rubbing against one another; their eyes are locked and his eyelids flicker, he wants to shut his eyes every time she comes down on him but he doesn't, and when she kisses him he lets loose a long, low groan, and when she breaks away they're so close that she has only an impression of his eyes, still open, still blue, still watching her.

He doesn't have an answer for her. He watches her, his breath slipping shallow and quick between his parted teeth, his hands gripping the back of the couch so tight the cords in his forearms stand out; the veins riding the crest of his biceps bulge.

"Jízda mě. Těžší, Danička."

That's what she gets in place of an answer. It's low; something between commanding and begging. They're so close their mouths brush when she moves; her breasts rub his chest; her cunt is hot and wet and she's making him a mess, they're both a mess, they're covered in each other's scent.

"Pojď." The emphasis is in his eyes -- a flare of want. The emphasis is in his body, in the sharp, merciless throw of his hips, the sudden pound of his cock into her, out of rhythm. "Můžete to udělat lépe než je. Vyrobit to dobré pro mě."

A kiss -- rough, sudden, tearing, done. And then he grins at her suddenly, sheer, sharp enjoyment that unravels a second later when she moves like that and sends his head falling back again, rising up, locking eyes again.

"To mě poser. Použijte že kohout. Dotkni se mě, lásko, dát si ruce všude mě. Použijte mě, Danička. Přál bych si, aby si sami přijdou."

Another closing of his eyes, longer than the last, his face pulling with pleasure. His breathing is harsh. He can't stop fucking her right back, rolling his hips against hers again and again and again.

"Chci, abys přišel."

Aflame, his eyes, when they open again.

"A pak jsem chci ty do zachovat zasraný mě dokud nepřijdu."

[Danicka] There's no delineation between lovemaking and fucking for them, most of the time. It's never been just fucking, and if he could have easily dismissed the very words making love he would not have looked at her so suddenly, so sharply, the first time she used them. One term no more indicates something hard and ferocious any more than the other term indicates something slow and tender. What they have between them defies and denies categorization to one or the other. This, for example, is hard and fast and rough, but there's nothing about it that isn't loving. There's nothing about the way they come together again and again that isn't intimate.

She wants him to touch her. She wants his hands on her breasts, on her ass, running from her shoulderblades down to the small of her back. She wants him to slide his palm over her navel, wants his hands gripping her hips and moving her on him that much harder. She stretches out lazily, exhibiting herself like a female in heat arching her back for a male, grinding her cunt down on his cock the way she knows will make him throw his head back and gasp, or -- just as likely -- flip her onto her back on the couch and pound at her until he comes.

At this point she doesn't care. If she keeps riding him she's going to come. If she keeps fucking him he's going to come, he's going to growl or groan or hold onto her the way he does, and knowing this, Danicka fucks him with her teeth bared for a flashing second, releasing a moan that borders closely to a shriek. Leaning close to him, she preys on him, drinks him in, fucks his body, uses him the way he tells her to. "I'm not going to stop," she groans, the last word unraveling in a desperate gasp. "I'm not going to fucking stop."

Danicka throws her head back as his cock slides into her again, fills her again, makes her nearly scream. "Oh my fucking god!" she yells, only to plant her hands on his shoulders, digging her fingernails in and fucking him harder even as the word's leaving his lips.

When he snarls at her to come on, when he unleashes orders in Czech, she doesn't let him finish. Danicka grabs at the hair on the back of his head savagely, as though she's going to tear a handful out, not kiss him. But kiss him is what she does, as wet and hot as their bodies molding together, cutting him off before he gets past Můžete to udělat lépe, because if he goes any farther than that she's going to bite his goddamn tongue. She very nearly does, kissing him so ferociously it's as though he's made her angry, but she hasn't stopped. She hasn't stopped riding him, or whimpering every time his cock slams up into her.

She doesn't let him go for that hard smile. She only stops kissing him when his head falls back, gasps as their mouths part, watches him react as she rolls her hips in a hard, slow circle. "Drž hubu, ty debile," she snarls at him, rubbing her breasts on his chest, her hands running down his shoulders over his arms. "Já seru na tebe, jak bych chtěl."

Her tongue runs up his throat again as he leans his head back, closes his eyes, fucks her with his hips flexing and lifting off the couch cushions, and she already knows she's going to want more. They're going to bathe and drink vodka and she's going to end up bending over in bed for him, telling him she wants to feel him inside her again. She knows she's going to moan for his cock, beg him to give it to her. She's going to bury her screams in her pillow and plead with him not to stop fucking her cunt, but that's later, that's drunk again and clean and yet the mere thought of it now makes her shudder on his lap, makes her fold over him and bite his shoulder, her hands holding onto his biceps. When her teeth part again, she groans, low and growling, winding her hips in a circle.

"Pokud chcete, aby se mi přijde znovu," she murmurs in his ear, half-snarling each word, "musíte kurva mě těžší, než to."

As though she cannot wait for him to do so, though, Danicka swings her hips again. She rises and falls on his cock, faster than before, even her small breasts bouncing as she rides him. "Fuck, yes," she gasps, arching her back. "Fuck me. C'mon. Fuck me, baby..."

[Lukas] There's almost no doubt that when all this began, Danicka would've never dared to do this. Lukas would have never allowed it. He would've seen it as a challenge; a fucking outrage. He would've reacted very poorly indeed, not by frenzying but by dishing out a lesson. Discipline. A beating.

And that would've been that. He would've still protected her afterward, as his kin and no more. She may even have continued to interact with him as necessary. When Milo came and then left, he would've still turned her over to the Fostern and then taken her back. But it would not have been anything like this.

This is not then. It's different now. She cuts him off ... and he kisses her back, furiously, as though the contact of her lips to his completes the circuit, closes the loop. The covering of the couch crumples beneath his fingers. He moans into her mouth, and this has become a burning, tempestuous thing, unstable as a thermonuclear meltdown. She snarls at him, tells him she'll fuck him the way she wants to fuck him, lays down the goddamn law, and he leans back his head --

-- laughs. Wild, reckless, savage, Lukas laughs, takes his hands off the back of the couch, takes her by the hips and, just like that, grinds her sharply down on his cock. The laugh falls apart, spins out into a short, sharp, breathless groan.

But then she's leaning forward to lick his bared throat. She's leaning over him like a dominant animal, murmuring in his ear about coming again and harder and fuck me, and what she says makes his hands tighten on her body, makes him snarl low and inhuman, makes him turn his head, sharply, to sink his teeth into the juncture of her shoulder and her neck.

Without warning, Lukas surges to his feet. He catches her up in his arms, on his body; rises up and for a second it seems inevitable that he'll turn her under him, lay her on her back and push her legs over his shoulders and fuck the daylights out of Danicka. It's not that, though. He picks her up and his teeth are still fixed on her flesh and he plants his feet, brings her down on his cock once, twice, thrice; sharply, groaning just as short and sharp against her skin as he fucks her.

Then he's moving again. He wraps his arms around her and carries her whatever distance there is to the wall, leans her back against it, pushes her to the wall and pushes her legs up, pushes her legs apart, bows his head and looks down the space between his body and hers.

"Oh, God," he sighs, raises his head, catches her mouth, kisses her hard. "Podívejte se dolů, láska. Dívat se mi kurva ty. Dívat se, že horká málo kočička dostat prdeli."

Another kiss, tearing at her mouth. When he lets her go he slams his hips against hers, hard. Withdraws -- slow, draggingly, groans to feel it -- slams his cock home again. And again; faster now; and faster, building steeply back to the rhythm she'd set on the couch, bouncing on his lap. His arms tensed to hold her against the wall. Sweat slickens the contact points of their bodies, slips down the furrow of his spine. Sweat dampens his hair, beads down his brow, stings his eyes when it catches in his eyelashes, so he closes them. Closes his eyes and leans into her and fucks her, unflaggingly, crowds her to the wall and

hammers at her. Bites into her shoulder and fucks her, holds nothing back. It's a reckless pace, unsustainable, and he's panting on every hard thrust, a groan at the edge of every breath. He hikes her legs higher around him. Wraps her legs up around his ribcage, reaches up then, puts his hand on her face, puts his hand on her cheek and raises his head and kisses her mouth again, over and over, pushes her head back against the wall and eats at her face while he pounds at her cunt.

[Danicka] It's true. In winter, when they met, she would not dig her fingernails into his shoulder blades or let herself bite his shoulder. It was daring of her to slam her hips back down on him after he'd come inside her, fucking him to her own orgasm just seconds after his. During spring, like a thaw, she became bolder with him, but there was a warmth to it, a gentleness in how she'd move his hands as he touched her, or how she'd stroke his hair as he licked at her flesh. There was more tenderness at times, but a growing revelation of her oft-hidden ferocity, coming out in furtive flashes.

Summer is the season of war. Of hunting. And all pretenses have been dropped. Danicka will claw at him now, sink her teeth into him, snarl at him, growl at him, make demands. She doesn't fear a beating, or discipline, knowing now that for some reason or another, it's more likely to inflame Lukas's lust more than his Rage. The shift was gradual, but it was drastic, and now they tear at each other in a frenzy, long past coherent thought, long past restraint.

Lukas makes her scream, when he grabs her hips and pulls her down, makes her scream and rake at his skin with her neatly manicured nails, her head falling back. She screams like she wants to swear at him, curse him, call him god knows what names, but nothing so cognizant comes out, in any of the languages she speaks. Danicka doesn't yelp when he bites her; she shudders, pressing herself harder against his mouth as though urging him to bite her harder, fuck her harder, dej jí to.

"Yeah," she whimpers as he stands, wrapping her arms and legs around him and rolling her hips hard against his body, "jo, lásko, kurva mi líbí. Kurva mě jen takhle, ty zkurvysyne...!"

Her near-snarling curse at him, finally voiced, is knocked out of her when he stops pounding her down on his cock and puts her against the wall. To her right is the edge of the television, mere inches away, the large coffee table between couch and wall barely skirted when he decided how and where he wanted her. Her head is tipped back against the wall as he looks down, as he kisses her mouth, her throat, wherever his mouth lands. She doesn't understand him at first, or at least doesn't obey him, writhing between his body and the wall, fucking him nearly as hard now as she was when she was on top of him.

Then her eyes open and she lifts her head, meets his eyes with her own. Her left hand moves to the back of his neck, as though to hold his head in place. For a moment they're suspended like that, while their bodies rock and collide together in ever-intensifying thrusts and counterthrusts. And whether she would have looked down to watch him fucking that hot little pussy -- and he knows she likes to watch, he knows just from earlier tonight how much she loves even so much as the feel of his cock in her hand, knows that she'll watch him sometimes from bed when he's getting up to shower or dress and do nothing more than let her eyes wandering across his body -- remains a mystery.

Lukas closes the distance between them, folding over and into her, pressing into her harder now, fucking her faster now. She wraps around him, legs higher and flesh denting and reddening under his teeth, cunt clenching on his cock as he does what she was always begging and demanding he do and holding nothing back, giving it to her, giving her všechno, giving her what she wants. Him. It's always been him.

When she kisses him, it's surreally, absurdly gentle, considering what their bodies are doing to each other. Her hand rubs the back of his neck, fingertips spiraling into locks of his hair, softening the kiss degree by degree even as he bites at her, as his hips drive him further into her. She gasps for him, bears down on him, her kiss deepening even as soft as it is, as slow. When she lets her lips slide off of his finally, it's because she's moaning, clinging to him now, trembling against his body.

"Chci, abys přijít pro mě," she whispers in his ear, gasping then as his cock slides out of her again, back in. Her voice takes on an edge, nearly a scream, almost a whimper. "Lásko, potřebuji cítit ty přijít. Jsem tak blízko, Lukáš, dej mi to."

Danicka pushes herself against him, trusting her weight on his body even more than the wall now, opening her eyes and holding his face in her hands. Sparks are going off in the dark of her eyes, flashes like movement in the shadows of the woods, matching the rhythm of his thrusts and the heat of their bodies, matching the hard grind of her hips. "Prosím, lásko, pojď se mnou," she says, her tone one of open begging, razored lust, her body slick on his cock and under his hands. When she cries out again, it's not in demand, but something like desperation: "Kurva mi, Lukáš, please... please...!"

With a ragged, hard shriek she throws her head back, one arm reaching over her head flatten a palm on the wall the way she's grabbed a headboard so many times before. He knows it from within her, knows it from the way her spine arches like that and the way she stretches herself out like that, the way she clenches and pulls his cock deeper into her like that oh god like that, knows her orgasm while it's still a molten thing inside her, even before it ignites the rest of her, even before it makes her limbs tense and her mouth open with imploring, overcome moans that are very, very close to screams themselves. He knows she's coming as though she can't help it, the way she can't help but kiss him sometimes, the way she can't help but want him even when exhausted.

[Lukas] As much as anything, it's the kiss that drives him over the top. It's the way she kisses him, tenderly, so tenderly, as though they weren't fucking each other like animals, like rutting beasts, like insane creatures fucking for survival.

Sometimes it's like this. Sometimes it's harsh and gentle at once; furious and sweet. Rarely do they fall into a single category. This entire relationship; their lives -- none of it can be easily categorized. They knew each other as children. They met each other the second time in SmartBar, and they were merely tribemates then, or rather Garou and kin to Garou; they were of Czech descent; they were beautiful and young and a little bit savage, but they knew how to dress and how to act and how to wear the goddamn mask.

They don't wear the goddamn mask now. They tear at each other. She wraps him in her limbs like a constrictor snake, like something predatory and possessive. He drives into her like he means to disappear into her, or meld with her, or seed her and impregnate her and make her swell with his child, their children, the strong fit offspring he knows they would create.

But that would tear her away from him. That would be necessary. Both of them understand why; Danicka better than anyone. Neither of them can bear that.

So he wears condoms; she swallows hormone pills; they fuck for the sake of closeness, to close all distance, to clasp and grasp and claim one another, to be together. They fuck like this, wildly, and he's slamming her against her wall nearly hard enough to rattle her expensive, vast TV on its wall mount; hard enough to drive ragged shrieks out of her; and she's clenching him with her thighs and her cunt and

and kissing him like that.

It undoes him, unfurls something inside him, makes him grasp at her face, at the back of her neck, at her back. He wraps his arms around her and he doesn't stop kissing her, even when she speaks to him, even when she tells him to come with her, to fuck her, fuck her, please.

And the kiss slows as their bodies quicken. The kiss stretches, like dilating time; it deepens and dilates and spools out as the inevitable rises up like a cataclysm, sends her grasping at the bare wall, sends him grasping at her flesh, and she arches and stretches as he curls and compresses and brings the whole of his strength to bear as he buries himself inside her, pulls her down on his cock, slams her down and pounds into her and

she comes like she can't help it. He comes like he can't stop himself, which is true. She moans, nearly screaming; he barely has the breath for that. An electric stllness -- then he lets go a short groan into her mouth, forceful, rough, as though he were giving up the last of his air along with everything else; everything.

He's moving again, mindlessly, autonomically, short sharp throws of his hips against hers that tear ragged pants from his lungs. Lukas holds her the way he always does, afterward, like he physically cannot bear to let go. He bends to her shoulder. He doesn't bite her now, but licks and sucks at her flesh, gently, gentling, settling, until he presses into the cradle of her hips, the tightness of her cunt, and holds himself there, still.

Close-eyed, Lukas says nothing now. Danicka can hear him breathing, short and fast, harshly. His skin is wet with sweat, slippery, and he leans against her heavily, setting his weight on her for a minute, a moment, another few seconds.

[Danicka] There are plenty of Garou and Kin in the Nation who could not understand why -- why they fuck so desperately and yet with no forseeable product, why they avoid pregnancy. Or who might ask them what gives them the right to put their own desires above the needs of the Nation, how they justify Danicka's empty uterus and Lukas's wasted semen. There are, thankfully, none who dare ask, and none to whom they could give their equally fatalistic answers. What use would a child be, one who likely will not Change no matter the breeding of its parents, one who will be dead along with everyone else at the Apocalypse, more and more likely to happen during their lifetime? Why give up this -- why give up each other -- for that?

But there's also selfishness. For Danicka's part, her life is finally her own and she is loathe to give it up to anyone, least of all an unknown child, even Lukas's child, even her own. For Lukas's part, he has had her and he has lost her and he has her again, and getting her pregnant would only mean losing her. It doesn't matter if they told themselves this is temporary or not; five months together is not nearly long enough for them not to despise the thought of an ending, especially not when they see each other so infrequently.

Selfish, fatalistic, and savage, they wrap around each other now, curl into each other now, burrow against shoulders and throats and bury themselves in darkness, sweat, and one another's heavy panting. Danicka goes from screaming for him as he spends himself in her, arching her back and clinging to both his body and the wall, groaning into his kisses, to an incremental collapse. She falls apart bit by bit, limbs and joints quaking, body shuddering, shoulders dipping towards Lukas as her arms slide around his neck.

So they hold each other. Cling to one another, as they could not out in the middle of the city and could not out on her balcony. Even this is nothing compared to the way they hold each other in bed, when they need not hold themselves up as well. Danicka gasps for air against his chest, her hair darkened by sweat and clinging to her cheeks, her neck, her shoulders. She moans more softly, almost plaintive, as he's licking and kissing at her like one animal healing and comforting another.

In the light of the city coming through the windows they both glisten from perspiration. Despite their current, boneless lack of energy -- and they both know this part, at least, is temporary, that given a few minutes' recovery, given a shower or a bath and the looseness of greater intoxication from the remainder of the Wyborowa they are going to want more, they will not be satisfied until they've literally exhausted each other -- there's a strange solidity and strength to their intwined bodies, greater even than the strength of the wall he holds her against.

After awhile, after numberless seconds, she has enough breath and stillness in her that she can kiss his neck, and his jawline, nuzzling the side of his face and bathing herself further in his sweat, his scent. "Chci, abyste mi umýt. Chci se umýt ty, zatímco vy se opít... znovu," she murmurs, purring the last word in amusement.

Her hands rub at the back of his neck, the muscles between his shoulderblades, the caresses purposeful and tension-seeking. Danicka pulls back gradually, carefully, as though she does not want to move away from him too quickly, not when they are this close. She looks him in the eye when she can, her shoulders still rising and falling gently as she catches her breath. "Chci, abyste v mé posteli. Chci se ohnout přes pro vás... a vezměte si kohout znovu."

Danicka's voice lowers, her hands sliding up the back of his neck now and into his hair, bringing his face closer so she can kiss him -- or so she can murmur against his mouth without kissing him, because that is what she does: "Chci, abys kurva mě, dokud jsem se nemůže pohybovat."

She does not kiss him. She flicks her tongue across his lips, slow but light, curling her tongue back into her own mouth as though inviting him. "Oukej, lásko?"

[Lukas] In the aftermath of the sort of destruction, the sort of cleansing mutual annihilation they always manage to reduce one another to, is a sort of inexplicable tenderness; a sort of comfort. He holds her as though he might hold her together, hold himself together. She strokes his hair and rubs at his neck, the complex sling of musculature between his shoulderblades and his spine, as though to welcome him somehow. Her fingers seek tension, and then all at once, as though she had found some knot that held him together or held him back, he relaxes into her. He leans into her and exhales -- it's nearly a sigh -- wraps his arms fully around her and crushes her against his chest.

"Baby," he murmurs; turns his head and kisses her neck even as she's kissing and nuzzling him, rubbing herself against him like she might pick up his scent, make it hers.

She tells him what she wants. He starts to laugh, raggedly, and then she tells him what else she wants and his laughter falls apart. He follows her blindly, instinctively, when she draws away. Then his eyes open. They look at each other. She bends to kiss his mouth, cups his face to hers, and he lets her do this, lets her put her hands on his face, his cheeks and his jaw, except she doesn't kiss him after all. She murmurs against his mouth, feeds him her words, and he kisses her: softly, gently, his eyes half-closed, dimly blue beneath his black lashes.

They fall altogether shut when she licks his lips. This makes him sigh again, a faint hint of a moan; makes him press his hips into hers into the wall, flex into her.

Then his eyes flicker open. He quirks a small smile. "Ne," he says, "dokud ani jeden z nás se může pohybovat."

Lukas holds her eyes as he shifts, as he draws himself out of her. She can see the sensation of it reverberating in his eyes, flickering across his brow. He makes some soft sound, some vocalized exhale behind his teeth, leans across, kisses her again. Then he gathers her in his arms, lifts her from the wall. It's like he can't bear to set her down, even for a second, or simply doesn't see a reason to. He carries her from living room to the entryway, pausing to lean sideways so she can

"Grab the vodka, baby."

before he rights her again, a playful light suddenly in his eyes, leans forward and nibbles at her throat. "Mmmf." He kisses her neck, inhales against her skin, laughs. "Jsem šťastná."

It's so dark in the hall that he nearly shipwrecks against the doorframe on the way into her suite, which makes him laugh again, half-apologetically. He leaves the lights off nonetheless, the bathroom door open; their eyes will adjust. Lukas sits on the edge of the tub and leans back to fumble the water on, the drain closed. While the tub fills, he sits up to loop his arms loosely over Danicka's hips, his wrist clasped in his hand just behind the small of her back.

"Miluji tě," he says. "Nauč mě, jak se říká, že v ruském jazyce."

[Danicka] He makes her laugh.

Not at first, not when she's rubbing deft fingertips over his musculature and not when she's enticing him again, not when he's kissing her. Not at first, when all she can do -- all she wants to do -- is hold onto him and murmur a wishlist of desires. She makes him laugh, and that's enough. She has never been in love before, and cannot quite describe the fluttering delight that lands on her heart when it is not just Lukas smiling, or laughing, but smiling and laughing because of something she's said or done. Because she has made him happy. And there's nothing better than that, nothing she can name, nothing she knows, than for her own joy to come from inspiring it in him, who creates it in her by something as simple and unintended as his own existence.

Danicka doesn't laugh, at him or with him, while they rub their faces together and kiss. She smiles softly when he leans into her, when he pulls her closer, when he finds her again as though somewhere in the course of their coupling they'd lost hold of one another. She hooks her ankles together behind his back and holds her arms firmly around his shoulders, with greater strength than it seems someone like her should have. It isn't even physical, this determination. It's incomparable to iron or stone, something so cold and static as that. Danicka's will is something more dynamic, as alive as the woods, as interconnected to every other part of her.

There is no way she could have survived her life with her mind and her heart so intact if she were truly weak. There is no way she could hold onto him with such ferocity if it was merely desperation, dependency, or defect. There are times, and this is one of them, when he is holding her up and sober while she is clinging to him and drunk, and yet Danicka is equally if not more protective of him, to the point that one might be wary for any imagined threat or interruption. He was not there the day she wheeled on a Modi and all but roared at him, but he would not have been surprised.

Frustrated, maybe. Scared for her. Impressed. But not surprised.

When he tells her no, when he follows this up with an explanation of his refusal, Danicka's chest moves and her throat flickers with soft, restrained amusement. She kisses him again, makes some lost noise into his mouth when he shifts his weight and withdraws. Her body tenses for a moment afterward, then relaxes again, as their mouths part. She looks at him for a mere second or two before they're kissing again, and yet she chuckles again when he steps away from the wall. Clothes litter the entryway and the living room, while the wind around Kingsbury Plaza tugs away the scent of them from the open balcony.

Still in his arms, Danicka chortles softly -- and happily -- as he walks, very nearly a giggle, but it erupts into a full and unfettered laugh when he leans over as he does. He trusts her to hold on. She trusts him not to drop her anyway, but keeps her legs and one arm slung around his body as she dips, wrapping her hand around the neck of the Wyborowa. It's all instinct at this point, the tension in her thighs telling him when she has a grip on the bottle, the surety of his hands telling her a split-second before he straightens again what he's going to do.

It's like the warning, a breath or less in advance, before she pushed off from the floor and met him for that first, crushing, devouring kiss. As though they each thought: This will kill me and so poured everything into it, everything their lives might mean, in case it was the last thing they would ever know or do. Now that they know they can come back from it, survive it, they kiss more softly sometimes. They kiss more often. They let themselves hold something back, they send specific soft messages to one another with their mouths rather than trying to tell their whole lives with one touch.

And this: they laugh together, the way Danicka laughs as she picks up the vodka and laughs even more when he nearly collides with a wall. "Hodláš kapka mě. A pokud mé hlavě se nerozloží, budu se smát se na sebe," she warns, teasing him as he enters her hallway.

But he's not going to drop her. And he doesn't.

The bathroom is the darkest room in the apartment, or may as well be. There are no windows here, and the light coming from the windows in her bedroom just barely gives them enough distant illumination to keep from killing themselves in here. Danicka has surprisingly good nightvision, or else knows her surroundings perfectly, or else she trusts him without reservation, because she neither tenses nor tightens around him when he moves to sit. She shifts her weight as he does, drawing the bottle of vodka between them and opening it. She turns to the side and takes a drink as he's filling up the tub, swallows as he straightens up and faces her.

She can't quite see his face. His dark lashes, the lines of his lips. She doesn't answer at first, but leans in and kisses him. She tastes like vodka. He --

"Miluju můj vkus na váš jazyk," Danicka murmurs, no longer laughing, as she leans forward a second time, a hundredth time, to part his lips with her tongue and kiss him again, this time more deeply. She unabashedly explores his mouth, but there's little renewed, reignited passion in this kiss. It's slow, almost thoughtful, as though his Russian lesson can wait.

Which it can.

When Danicka draws back, finally, she sighs in something like satisfaction. Her left hand comes up, the right still gripping the bottle. She touches his cheek as though she suddenly thought I have never done this before, I must do this. She rubs her thumb across his cheekbone, traces the curve of his ear, lets her fingertips drawn back down and pass over his lips as though sealing in some spirit. "Ya," she says clearly, though this word and those that follow are light on her lips, "tebya," the emphasis on the second syllable, "lyublyu," she finishes, her lips pursing with the roundness of the last word.

"Я тебя люблю," she repeats, achingly now. "Я тебя очень люблю."

[Lukas] Steam is rising at his back, condensation beading on the down-fine hairs on his body; the coarser hairs that dust his arms and his chest, trail down his abdomen.

They explore each other like they had all the time in the world. Like they don't always part in the morning; like they won't have to this time. She kisses him and he kisses her, and between them is her taste on his tongue passed back to her, is vodka, is the salt of their sweat.

When they draw apart Lukas can see her a little better. She's a faintly golden shadow, lovely and not wholly tame, though sometimes he thinks of her as the fox, thinks of her as the wild thing that must be approached sideways, must be waited for, must be courted most subtly and gently lest she lash out, run away, hide.

She's like that less and less. She's coming out of that inviolate stone egg he spoke of, early on; more and more his, but also more and more wild, predatory in her own right.

Ya tebya yublyu, she teaches him, slowly, showing him the emphasis, the syllables, where the vowels sit on the tongue, where the consonants ride.

Against her fingertips, his lips move in silent mimicry. And when she repeats herself; when she says it not to show him but to say it, his mouth opens; he sucks at her fingers, draws them slowly, warmly into his mouth.

Then an imitation, the velvety rounded sounds of one of her three mother tongues imperfectly echoed:

"Я тебя люблю." He kisses her fingertips again, as though in consecration, and then his arms shift her gently closer. He turns his face up and finds her mouth, kisses her again, slowly, slowly, some form of wordless invocation.

"Tolik tě miluji."

[Danicka] If they are honest with themselves, moreso even than they are honest with each other, then they both know that it isn't just morning that they're wary of. At any time one of his packmates could chime into his thoughts and tell him he's needed. Maybe one of them has gotten into trouble. Maybe there's a matter that can't be put off. At any time, his eyes could go faraway as they did that time she visited him in his bedroom and Sam intruded on his mind. At any time, he could have to tell her to get away, and quickly, because there is a monster in the alleyway.

They don't even necessarily have til morning. They might have the rest of the week; they might not get through this kiss.

She is not scared of the dark. Feeling him, tall and broad-shouldered and hot-skinned and seething with Rage, does not make her start quaking simply because she cannot see him. He is young, yet; she is no longer a child. It has been a very, very long time since she's thought that there was any use to being frightened of something simply because it wasn't visible. Seeing it, in her experience, has often just made things worse.

Danicka shudders slightly when he sucks on her fingers, her hips giving a slow, involuntary roll.

"Let's get in the bath," she whispers, after he repeats back to her the Russian she just showed him, after he repeats back to her in Czech what else she said. It takes no translation, really. What they say to each other is unchanged regardless of language; only privacy makes a difference.

She draws off his lap, even though he just pulled her closer, sighing away from his kiss and stepping into the tub. She hands off the bottle of vodka, then sinks into the water, leaving room behind her for him to join her.

"I really liked it," she says, as he either comes in after her or drinks vodka or whatever it is he does, "when you told me that story about when you were thirteen."

[Lukas] Lukas could easily swing his legs over the edge of the tub and slide in, but when Danicka hands off the bottle of vodka he rises to his feet instead.

In the darkness he's a shadow, his movements half-intuited, half-sensed. He drinks Wyborowa, and this is better heard than it's seen: the bubbles breaking through the alcohol, the swish of liquid, the faint clicks of his throat as he upends the bottle once, twice. Then he climbs into the tub, one foot at a time, lowering himself with one hand on the side of the tub, the vodka in his other hand.

She's left room behind herself. He fits into that space easily, naturally. When he's settled, he extends his legs on either side of hers, slips his arm around her and draws her back against his chest.

And he takes another pull straight from the bottle. Hands it to her. It feels lighter now, just a few swallows left between them.

When she tells him she really liked it when he told her that story, he huffs a faint laugh and presses a kiss against her neck, high up, close behind her ear. "Because it's something you missed?"

He doesn't know her bathroom well enough to predict the location of sponges, soaps, gels. Memory tells him vaguely that she has hair products in the corner, liquid soap somewhere nearby. He reaches behind and feels around until he finds something that might be bodywash. It's not the shape of the bottle he recognizes but the smell, the scent of it that he sometimes catches, faintly, on her body. He uncaps the bottle and squirts an amount into his palm, reaching around her to rub it into a lather between his hands.

[Danicka] It's not a bottle of bodywash that Lukas finds but the silky-soft curved surface of a simple white bar. The scent he finds familiar is a mixture of cocoa butter, shea butter, hints of honey or vanilla or some other sweetness difficult to place because it is, like so much else in the world, manufactured. Considering the way Danicka puts herself together for the world, her bathroom is surprisingly... clean.

Makeup is not littered across the counter, hair products are not stacked in a corner, and in her shower there's just this bar of soap, a tube of facial scrub, and bottles of shampoo and conditioner. There is a wooden brush with rather stiff bristles hung up, but nothing else, not even a razor. On the counter around the double sinks there's a cup with toothpaste and a toothbrush. There's a pump of hand soap. There's a shallow dish filled with river stones and a trio of candles. Whatever else Danicka uses to adorn herself, it's all put away somewhere.

Hidden.

She leans back against him easily when he settles behind her, resting against his chest. Their skin sticks together, not yet clean, the ends of her hair just barely touched by the still-rising water in the tub. She watches it pour in, the noise in the bathroom thunderous and full, and tilts her head to the side as he kisses her neck. "Mmm," she says, either in appreciation of the kiss or in answer to the question. Doesn't really matter.

The bar of soap in Lukas's palm lathers quickly and richly, smooth between his hands and soft as Danicka's skin. She holds the vodka, but does not take a drink. "Tell me something else. About... after our families stopped seeing each other, but before you Changed."

[Lukas] Tell her something else, she asks. Tell her something about the time between their childhood separation and his Change. Tell her another piece of his autobiography, and not just any piece, but the piece that matters little if at all in his current life.

Tell her about his childhood, before he was Wyrmbreaker, in that period of his life that he has -- perhaps not consciously, but surely all the same -- filed away in the dusty annals of his memory, left for dead, left to be forgotten.

So it takes him a moment to bring something to mind. In that moment, he's quiet, thoughtful, thinking, and the only sound is the steady hush of his breathing, the lathering of his hands.

It occurs to Lukas that this is the first time they've done this. Not bathed together or showered together, to be sure -- but this. Washed one another. Stood in a shower or sat in a tub together, soaped their hands for one another, touched each other like this, affectionately, but without overt intent. It's the first time he's touched her body, her bare skin, not for the sheer and unadulterated purpose of touching her.

When his hands are slick and lathered Lukas sets the soap aside, blindly. He finds her body with much more ease, his hands coming back to her as though they belong there, and always have.

"When I was nine years old or so," he begins, "Interview with the Vampire came out and vampires were suddenly the coolest thing to be. I never even watched the movie, but posters were everywhere, the book was everywhere."

His palms are warm, and wet, and slick with soap. His hands slide over her abdomen, cradle up the curvature of her ribcage.

"I wanted to trick or treat as a vampire for Halloween that year. It was silly, but I was excited about it; I saved up my allowance and bought plastic fangs and everything. Halloween came and I was all dressed up and ready to go, and then my dad saw me."

His hands move over her breasts, careful, but his touch heavy and sure, rubbing over her as though he had every right to do this. He doesn't linger, moves past to her collarbones, and up to the crest of her shoulder.

"My father flatly forbade me to step outside wearing that costume. In retrospect, I understand exactly why, but I didn't know about vampires then, nor the numerous ancestors of mine who had fought their whole lives and then died horribly and gloriously against the bloodsuckers. At the time, it seemed wholly arbitrary to me."

Down again, his hands rubbing down her sides, soaping past her hips, slipping between her thighs. There's a pause, a beat of hesitation. Then he touches her there as well, gently at first, then with an increasing confidence. There's no pretending that he's not touching her to touch her here, and now. Lukas's words lapse into silence. Silent, intensely attentive, he caresses her as the moments spin into minutes, while he turns his face to the stretch of tendon in her neck, kisses and sucks at her skin, the delicate articulation of her jaw.

Water rises. The bathroom fills with steam. At last he draws his hands from her body, leans around her to wrench the tap off. Water laps at the tub and at their bodies as he sinks back behind her. Lukas finds the bar of soap again and lathers his hands again.

"Anyway," he resumes, "we got into quite an argument. It's such a small thing now, so stupid and unimportant, but at the time it took on an entirely disproportionate importance. I was just ... livid.

"Here, baby," he breaks off to wrap an arm around her waist, "lean back."

He hoists her against his body, arching her back, placing her weight on his chest as he reaches under her to wash the curve of her ass, her flank. Then he follows the line of her legs, one at a time, lifting them above the waterline the rub down to her feet, or as far as he can reach.

"It may have been the first time I ever felt that sort of anger," he muses quietly, "so deep and intense that it seemed to exist as an entity apart from myself. It was definitely the first time I shouted at my father like that."

Now his hands bend her forward, lift her away from his body. His hands smooth over her back. His fingertips knead down the length of her spine, rub and massage the lean columns of muscle in her back.

"Needless to say, my father won the argument in the end. I didn't go trick or treating that night. I got grounded for some obscene length of time instead. I'm fairly certain I got thrashed too. My dad was a firm believer in corporal punishment when merited."

It says something, that Lukas can laugh about this now. That he speaks of it so lightly, so unflinchingly. It says something about the severity and the cruelty, or lack thereof, of what punishment he may have received as a child.

"Later that night, Anežka came and shared her loot with me. I think my dad bought me a big Crunch bar the next time we were at the grocery store, too. I didn't really hold a grudge. That's the interesting thing about fury as a child, isn't it? It passes, and then it doesn't matter anymore."

He washes her arms last, his hands following the length past the slender bicep, past the elbow, down the forearms. At her hands, his fingers thread through hers, leave soap smeared on the vodka bottle before withdrawing. His hands loosely ring her wrists at the end, gentle now. Lukas's chest rises and falls against her back with a deep breath.

"No consequences, not really."

[Danicka] There is a connotation of servitude to this, what Danicka's asked him for. There is a connotation of possession, of tending to something like a pet. She's never asked him to wash her, even to scrub her back in the shower, nor has she taken soap in hand and offered to wash him. When they have bathed or showered together, the actual washing has been rather practically done. When they touch each other, it is certainly and undeniably out of desire, and comfort, and affection.

When Lukas starts washing the front of Danicka's torso, the most accessible part of her body at the moment, there is no sense that he is submitting himself to her, or that he is mechanically washing something that is his, or incapable of washing itself. There's comfort, and affection, and her quiet breathing in the dark, barely audible under the crash of water though he can feel it as she moves against his chest.

She listens, and laughs silently when he talks about buying plastic fangs and trying to trick-or-treat as a vampire. She shifts between his legs and against him as he washes her, moving to make her skin easier to reach, moving into his hands. And then he slides his hand between her legs, dipping under the surface of the water, and Danicka exhales a sudden, carefully quieted sigh. Her legs part further, her head tipping back against his shoulder. There's no pretending that he's just washing her now, there, and she doesn't try. She doesn't tease.

Instead, Danicka presses against his body, her spine elongating and bowing back, her neck bared even if he can't see it, even if he can only feel it under his lips when he kisses her.

"Baby..." she is murmuring, barely above a whisper, just as he's taking his hand from her and twisting the faucet's knob to shut off the water. She sighs again, her body relaxing where it had tensed in response to his touch.

Lukas tells her the story of the first time his Rage fueled a fight at his father... or the first time that his own internal fury was pushed to that point. Danicka is utterly silent now, those lingering flickers of lust fading as he goes on washing her. She leans when told. She lifts her legs in turn, stretching them straight up, bending them back. She doesn't laugh when he says he got thrashed. Nor does she tell him that every time she hears the word, she thinks of something entirely different than what he likely means by it. It says something, that Danicka cannot laugh about it. Or speak lightly, or unflinchingly, of corporal punishment.

When merited. Whatever that means, to whoever is assigning the merits or demerits to behaviors.

He goes on washing her, and she's quiet for a little while. She moves, setting the bottle of Wyborowa on the side of the tub carefully, back where he has a better chance of reaching it. She twists back around, leaning against him and returning her hands to his, wrists wrapped in his hands. "I suppose it depends on the child."

[Lukas] There's a silence. Perhaps he's trying to read between her words. When her wrists move his hands open, allowing her to turn her hands to his. His fingers close again, through or over hers now, his palms to hers.

"I suppose so," he replies quietly. A moment longer; then, "Were you different?"

[Danicka] Her answer is simple. It just takes her a few moments to get to it. She clasps his hands, loosely, but the way they're sitting makes it moderately uncomfortable for her, at least as far as her elbows are concerned. She turns again, after awhile, taking his wrists and drawing his arms around her from behind, wrapping herself in him.

"Yes," she says, and it's not nearly so soft as the way she has him embrace her.

[Lukas] She only has to initiate the wrapping of his arms around her. Soon enough he takes over, his arms folding around her, pulling her into his body.

Yes, she says; there's a certain hardness to the word. At least, a finality. Lukas is quiet a little while longer, holding her. Then he unwraps his arms again, scooping hot water up in his cupped hands, washing soap from Danicka's skin the same way he applied it.

Patiently. Thoroughly. Lovingly, but without overtones of servitude; undertones of ownership or necessity.

When he's finished he leans back in the tub, reaching for the bottle of Wyborowa again. He uncaps it, drinks from it. Caps it, sets it outside the tub, on the floor, where it won't be knocked over accidentally.

"Do you want to elaborate," this is a genuine question, "or do you want to talk about something else?"

[Danicka] Hardness to the word. Finality. But more than that, a sort of fury that is far from the kind that Lukas attributes to childhood: transient, fleeting. This is old, and has had so much time to cool that it is icy. Few of her words are; she's not a cold woman, not in self-defense or as her only means of aggression. She reserves her warmth, her truth warmth, but it isn't the same thing.

She's too good at faking it, on top of that. She's too good at making people think they're her friends when they aren't. It's only been recently, after trying again and again to let Sam down gently and finding him only more convinced of their inevitable closeness, that she's starting to think that Rage must, in some, equal madness.

Except, not in Lukas, not that she can see. She wonders about her mother. Her brother.

She sighs softly, contentedly, as he begins rinsing her off. She sinks down into the water further as he's drinking the Wyborowa, burying herself in it up to the neck. Almost all of her hair gets soaked, except for her actual scalp. Danicka lifts back up, and sits up, and starts to twist around to face him. She moves to her knees first, then sits back, hooking her legs over his hips, feet against the back of the tub. She reaches for the bar of soap now, but does not lather it in her hands first. She scoops water up and pours it over his chest, twice, then begins to wash him directly, the cool smoothness of the bar contrasted by the much warmer softness of her hands.

"I just... I don't think that you can apply how you handled your feelings as a child, and how those feelings came and went, as a survey of childhood in general. Or say that because your fury was juvenile, and passed, that there were no consequences." She washes his chest, smoothing the lather up to his throat and washing his shoulders carefully, over bite marks she knows are there but cannot see.

[Lukas] Water sluices off Danicka's skin as she sits up, kneels. It pours out of her golden hair, darkened now with moisture. Or it would be, if he could see it; if there were enough light.

There isn't. She's a grey shadow, a warmth in the darkness. She turns and he closes his eyes because he knows what she'll do; he doesn't need to see.

Water runs off his arms in rivulets when he lifts them to the sides of the tub, opens his torso to her. They face each other, their legs to either side of one another's hips. His chest rises against her hands when she begins to wash him, a soft, slow, silent inhale of enjoyment.

When she speaks, his eyes open again. It's instinct rather than any real intent to see. He looks where he knows her face to be, sees nothing there. Her hands on his throat do not make him tense. Beneath the soap-lather, his beard bristle is beginning to make itself known, scratchy on skin that's otherwise startlingly smooth.

Lukas catches her hand against his breastbone as she finishes. He holds her still a moment, his heartbeat a steady thump-thump under her palm.

"I suppose I was fortunate," he says quietly, "to have felt that way."

[Danicka] "Yes," she says quietly.

Her hands slide over his arms, spreading lather, running the soap over him. She lifts his arms, leaning forward. Even under the water there's very little space between their bodies. She washes him almost thoughtlessly, as though she does not have to think about the way her fingers spread and run through the bubbles, run through the smattering of hair across his chest. She moves by sensation, by instinct, sensual without the taint of intentional, over seduction.

Danicka is good at that, too. But this is different. There's also practicality in the way she washes him, all the way down to his forearms and his hands, cleaning gently under his fingernails, setting the bar of soap aside so that she can use both of her hands to wash one of his, then the other. Her fingers stroke between his for awhile before letting them slip back into the water or to her skin. Plucking up the bar again, she leans forward and washes his abdomen, harder than her own, ridged with muscle, barely touched by the thin line of hair below his navel, below the water.

"Sit up," she murmurs incidentally, moving her own weight back and reaching for the scrub-brush where it hangs.

As she scrubs the soap onto the bristles, building up a lather so thick it's almost pure foam, she goes on: "It also explains a lot."

[Lukas] The body Danicka washes is starkly different from her own. In the darkness, their differences seem curiously magnified. He lets her lift his arms, and she can feel their weight and heft, the sheer mass given by bone and muscle, by blood and skin.

His pectoral muscles are slablike, hard and wide. His scars interrupt his body, cutting across even the coarse hair scattered on his chest. His hand fits both of hers easily, and the knuckles are pronounced, ridgelike, rocklike.

Lukas has a ticklish spot low on his abdomen. When her hand passes there, his stomach sucks in on a sharp inhale; he laughs under his breath, reflexively. Then the muscles under his skin tighten and he sits up, holding the side of the tub with one hand.

"What does it explain?"

[Danicka] He is larger than her, his hair coarser and his skin not quite so smooth, not nearly so soft. Though Danicka is thin for her height, in New York she's perfectly average. Her clavicles and elbows and vertebrae don't protrude repulsively, her skin does not seem stretched over a skeleton barely able to support her. She is just... lean. She could be stronger, she could be more athletic. She could be called fragile, though not because of her physicality. She could not be called brittle. Ultimately, anything alive is, in its way, fragile.

She looks at him in the dark when he breathes in like that, but he is no more visible than she is. Danicka is more perceptive than Lukas. His senses outclass hers only because he can change them, only because he is trained to follow scents more than visual cues, only because he is not always wearing the skin of a thoughtful, plan-making human man. She can make out his outline in the dark, find that his shadow has taken over his entire being, and yet she cannot see more than pale glints where what little light reaches them reflects off his eyes, how it flashes off his teeth.

He laughs under her hands. She grins slowly, lazily, and tenderly washes his navel. He sits up and his belly submerges halfway; Danicka wraps her arms around him and begins carefully washing his back. The stiff bristles drag over his skin, softened by water and lather, but were she to really scrub at his flesh it would redden him, sting. She uses this on her own body. She washes him, though he can't know this, even more gently than she washes herself.

They are incredibly close, her legs wrapped around him, their genitals barely touching under the water, her arms enfolding him. She nuzzles his now-scruffy jaw, kisses him just under his right earlobe. "I think..." she says slowly, drawing her lips away and washing his back in slow circles, "that it explains why it's easy for you to say things in anger that you don't mean later." They have talked about this before, argued about this before, but there's no rancor now in how she speaks of it. Wariness, maybe, as though she expects him to get angry at her for bringing it up, but for the most part, she just sounds thoughtful about it.

"I think," she goes on, dipping the scrub-brush under the water and then dragging it up, letting hot water run down in a waterfall from bristles over his shoulders, down his back, "that it also explains why it... appalls you so much to hear about what home was like for me. Why you sometimes have trouble understanding why I am the way I am... especially with Garou. Why I behave the way I do."

She rinses his back again, her words underlined softly, as though in chalk, with a hint at sadness. Or weariness. Or regret.

"I remember your parents," Danicka says gently, as though in reminder. And then, in confirmation, perhaps even in praise that does not need comparison to be valid: "You were fortunate."

[Lukas] Lukas is silent for a while. When she leans into him to wash his back, his arms slide around her and his neck bends over her shoulder. This is easy, thoughtless. There's nowhere else he could possibly belong right now. She is thin, though not the way she becomes when she's stressed, not the way she was that night in the 550; the weekend after, when Mrena was dead and his pack was in turmoil and he told her I need and everything and please.

Still, he enfolds her carefully, with the sort of tenderness he did not, perhaps could not fuck her with on her couch, atop her car. There's a stirring inside him, a sort of glow and an ache all at once. She is fragile; so is he, in a way; so is what there is between them. He is starkly aware of it right now, their fragility, her, them, as though the darkness sharpened whatever sixth sense was necessary to intuit it.

When she dips the brush under the surface, sluices water down his back, the hairs on his arms rise; his nipples harden and his skin tightens. He moves against her slightly, kisses her neck. Stills again. Listens.

"I understand why," he says, quietly. "Or I'm beginning to. But sometimes it's ... hard for me."

He draws her minutely closer. There's something almost ritualistic about this washing, this darkness, this closeness, these confessions -- as though they were preparing one another for each other. As though they were preparing themselves for sacrifice, themselves to themselves, knowing already that when they're done here and the vodka bottle is empty they'll go to her bed -- or perhaps simply to the closet door, or the hallway wall, or the bathroom counter -- and lose themselves in one another's skin and scent again.

"And sometimes it does appall me." Water stirs; his hands move. Wet and warm, his palm covers her back, high up where her skin has begun to dry, cool from evaporation. He warms her again; gives her the warmth from his palm, from his hand, carried there from the core of his body by his ever-rushing blood. "Both what you sometimes do, and what was done to you."

He kisses her again: the softness of her shoulder. Softly.

"Odpusť mi."

[Danicka] "Není nic odpouštět," she murmurs in response, neither meaninglessly nor portentously. His back is cleaned; she sets the scrub-brush aside. His legs haven't been carefully washed, though they have been submerged in hot, soapy water most of this time. She drags water up with her palms and rinses away the last of the lather clinging to him.

It's very quiet. The water laps at the sides of the tub, runs down their skins. Their pulses seem to resound against tile and drywall and ceramic, against bones, against the edges of their spirits. His hand makes the softest of noises when it covers her back; the faucet drips every so often, not because the knob wasn't turned tight enough but because moisture collects on the stainless steel and runs off.

He knows that when she's stressed she loses her appetite, when she grieves she is too nauseous for full meals, but that when she is happy she will quite deftly put away a fair share of pizza or quite a bit of Chinese food or share a rack of lamb with him without shying from using her fingers. He knows that she can hold her liquor almost as well as he can, though she can't burn it off as quickly.

He knows that what inspires her anger, what causes her grief, what destroys her happiness most easily is the loss of someone she cares for, or to see them in pain. It does not come out as nurturing. It comes off as though she is beyond the need of food or sleep, as though she is raging at the things that give life because life, itself, seems to be raging back at those that matter to her.

Lukas has come to know her very well. That there is nothing wrong with fucking her savagely and hungrily on the hood of the car, against the wall of her apartment, grabbing her hips and slamming her down on his cock on the couch. There is nothing wrong with making love to her slowly, touching her as often and as much as he can, their mouths inseparable. He knows not to grasp her neck, or tighten something around it, even momentarily. He knows not to make her feel pushed away, and he knows how to pin her to the bed and bite into her shoulder without there being an iota of distance between them, without there being so much as a trace of true dominance. He knows that she can meet him, strong as he is. He knows that he cannot ever really dominate her, or oppress her.

A lifetime with Garou more twisted than he could not do that.

She's quiet for awhile, water and her palms running over his arms, his chest, and his back. She kisses him twice, softly, not so much experimental as explorative, and decides on a confession. If they are going to go from the darkness into the moonlight filling her bedroom and die there, sacrifice themselves, lose themselves the way they always, always do, then this is the time to speak. The dark isn't frightening. Being alone with him isn't frightening. She speaks to him quietly, as though they are children hiding under a bed or blanket, telling secrets.

She speaks as though they are prisoners buried in the earth, readying their minds and preparing their souls to be executed for some cause believed in so strongly that it surpasses the value of their own lives.

"I've been thinking," Danicka whispers, though he knows her name is Daniela, though he knows that what he calls her is a child's nickname, an endearment that, from his mouth, makes her feel home... but not a home she ever knew as a child. She ducks her head, clears her throat softly, and lays her head on his shoulder. "When all this started, I was convinced that eventually you were going to lose your temper one day and start hitting me."

Start. Not hit her once, not give her a beating. Start hitting her as a pattern, as a new addition to her life.

"But you haven't." Danicka bites back yet; it would hurt him. Still, she can't keep mild surprise out of her tone. "My brother's Rage is... bad, for a Theurge," she goes on, after a moment. "But it's still not like yours. It's never going to be like hers was." Her. Her mother. Laura, Night Warder, whatever other names she had. "He could..."

Danicka takes a breath. Something about this is making her pulse pound. Making her damn near quiver. "He could never keep himself from hurting me. She didn't hit me as often as he did, not as often as she struck my father, but... they couldn't help it."

[Lukas] Sometime between those two soft, exploring kisses, Lukas tightens his arms around Danicka; shifts her altogether onto his lap. There's almost no distance between now. They intersect, her thighs alongside his hips, his thighs under her. She lays her head against his shoulder. He leans back, resting against the sloped side of the tub. They rest together a while; then she speaks, and though Lukas says nothing, that he is listening is written in every fiber of his body, every muscle, every bone.

When she's finished he's quiet a while. She can't see, but he's frowning over her shoulder. He can't see either. It's all dark, and warm; they're half-submerged, semiaquatic, amphibious as the first terrestrial creatures on earth.

And his hands move on her back, slowly and subtly, incessantly. His thumb describes a small arc at the small of her back. He breathes. Now and again, he turns his head some small distance, rubs his skin over hers for the sake of contact alone.

"I cannot promise that I won't," and he wants to leave it there. He wants, very badly, to leave it there, amorphous, unstated, vague.

He goes on, "start hitting you one day, and be unable to stop. I can't promise that that possibility is not within me." A pause. He draws her infinitesimally closer. "I nearly killed you the first time we were together."

Warm and fierce, the kiss he presses to her shoulder. Here she is, he reminds himself. Here she is; hale, whole, mine.

"And as much as I'd like to believe that your mother and your brother were simply flawed in some way ... broken in a way that I am not, I don't know that for a fact."

[Danicka] In the dark, it is almost impossible for one of the senses they both rely heavily upon to tell Lukas any more than Danicka says openly. And he knows, even on her best days, 'open' is something she fights with. Sometimes it's like an internal tug-of-war, one side of her trying to keep shut a door that the other half of her is trying to yank open. What she tells him is that her brother's abuse always outclassed her mother's. Laura turned most of her wrath on Miloslav; Vladislav watched her and sought the one smaller and weaker than himself on who to enact his power and dominance: his sister.

What she tells him is that her mother could not help but throw her father through a wall. It doesn't come up whether Laura was frenzied or not. It doesn't make sense to think that Vladik might have been frenzied every time he hit her. Every time he cracked her skull against the doorframe or made her put her fingers in a drawer. Lukas once said that whoever did it to her must have really known what he was doing, to leave her so unmarked. It took courage for her to tell him that 'he', still unknown at the time, had not needed to be careful because he could just heal her.

Which, in all honesty, had opened up entire worlds of possibility when it came time to punish Danicka for whatever transgression she'd performed.

But what Danicka doesn't tell him is between the lines, under the surface, like their entwined bodies in the water. She moves easily into his lap, bending her legs to either side of his. She allows almost all of her weight to rest against him, taking the majority of it off her knees. She is not miniscule or slight; he knows that he bones aren't brittle, and she's hardly a short woman. The size differential is, still, enough that for awhile they can lie like this in comfort. He can't see her, can only hear her voice as the words marinate in his thoughts minutes after the fact.

The truth is, she's barely even listening to him at this point. He can't breathe in her attention as she could feel his, though he can assume. She does hear him, though as soon as he says I cannot promise she starts to drift away from his actual words. That is not what she wants. That is not where she was going, or where her words came from. They both know the folly of making promises it might take a lifetime to keep.

I nearly killed you

She tenses slightly, minutely, even as his mouth is touching her shoulder. It only translates the tension through his lips, immediate and unavoidable, however faint or brief. A few months ago, he never would have noticed. Or he would think: she's afraid of me or she doesn't trust me. If he sensed it at all, he would have likely mistaken it for something else, something more familiar to his own experience, and not hers.

He knows better now. And he knows her better now, too.

When he finishes speaking, Danicka nods, nuzzling his neck and then slowly withdrawing, pulling back from his shoulder. "I guess you're right," she says, and shifts against him, feeling her inner thighs against his hips, a brief and fleeting reminder of the many other times he finds himself right there. Leaning forward again, Danicka rests her brow to his, making a soft noise of contentment behind her closed lips. "Let's stop talking about this."

[Lukas] "No, wait." When she starts to lean her brow against his, Lukas finds her face with his hands, holds her a breath away.

It's too dark to see her eyes, but he looks where he knows them to be anyway.

"Danička, I'm not right; you're not wrong. I'm not sure there's a right or a wrong. I'm not even sure we're at odds. Rage isn't ... it doesn't force a Garou to do anything. It doesn't necessarily make a Garou cruel, or violent, or ferocious. I've known Garou of great rage who would never hurt their blood-kin if they could help it.

"But I've also known them to lose control. What Rage does is make it harder to stomach a perceived affront. It makes it harder to keep in control under duress. It makes it easier to just ...snap."

There's a pause. He can't see her. His hands move on her face, stroking back over her cheeks as though he might try to reach her face like this; as though somehow the subtleties of her expression, which his eyes can barely perceive, might somehow be better read by his fingertips.

"I don't ever want to lie to you if I can help it. So when you said I haven't started hitting you, I felt I had to make sure I wasn't lying by omission. I felt I had to tell you that the potential to just snap is in me, and it's strong.

"But you already knew that.

"And," he adds, "I want to make unfounded assumptions about the nature of your mother, your brother. The last time I did that, you told me I didn't know them, and you were right. I don't know why they hit you. Or your father. I don't know why your mother was so hard, and your brother so vicious. I don't know that it wasn't uncontrollable Rage. But I also don't know that it wasn't Rage they didn't bother to, or want to control. I don't know that it wasn't something more intrinsic than that; a basic predilection toward cruelty that was there long before the Rage ever kindled.

"I just don't know."

[Danicka] She nearly pulls away, when he tells her that Rage makes it easier to snap. Her head jerks away from his hands, then moves back into them as she settles herself, not unlike an animal. Her jaw tenses under his trailing fingertips. It relaxes again. She already knew that. She already knew all of this, and he knows it even as the words come tumbling out of her mouth. He knows: she has lived with Rage longer than he has. She has never felt it. She sees it from the outside, sees it from external angles, but she knows what it is. And what it isn't.

"I wasn't asking you to know," she says, and draws back more forcefully now, the water rushing through the bath as her body moves more quickly than it has this entire time. She seems about to grab the edge and haul herself up, but stops. She just pulls away, until her back almost touches the end of the faucet. Her legs remain over his hips, loosely. "I wasn't asking you for anything."

[Lukas] Lukas draws a slow, silent breath, lets it out. And then he tries again, "I didn't think you were asking me for anything. I just ...

"I felt you drawing back from me. I was trying to bridge the gap or close the divide by explaining what I meant; why I said what I said."

Pause. His hands curl behind her calves, gently, as though to hold her. Keep her.

"Danička," softer, "come back."

[Danicka] "It's okay," she says, quickly enough that he might doubt it, yet with that ache that sometimes enters her voice. It means she knows others doubt her. It means she knows that, with most people, she doesn't deserve to have them believe her. It means that she means it, and if she sounds like she's willing to fight in those few simple syllables, it's because she thinks she'll have to, just to get him to trust that

it's okay.

"You didn't say anything wrong." This, too, with almost tired sincerity, almost despairing honesty. "And I'm not leaving, I just... want to stop talking about this."

Which is unfair, since she brought it up.

Which is not, in either language, let it be.

[Lukas] Under the best of circumstances it can be hard for Lukas to read Danicka accurately. If she were to try to disguise her motives and reactions, chances are he wouldn't have a chance.

She isn't trying right now. But it's dark, and try as he might, the tone of her voice -- the tenuous contact of her legs alongside his waist -- are not enough.

So there's a silence. Then, quietly, "Myslíte si chceš mě opustit to bylo?"

[Danicka] "Chci věřit..." she sighs, leaning forward, elbows against her thighs, the heels of her hands rubbing her forehead. She does not seem to know yet, exactly, what she wants to believe. The words trail away. And then she sighs again, flowing towards him again, wrapping her arms around his waist and her legs on either side of him.

"...že ty nejste jako oni."

Her eyes close. He can barely feel her lashes touch a drop of water on his jawline, where she lets her face rest. "Because if you are..."

That sentence, too, gets abandoned. She goes silent, and runs her fingernails in loose trails across his back, aimless patterns she rarely indulges in. She traces his musculature, memorizes him in the dark. "Lukáš?"

[Lukas] Like the sea to shore, she flows toward him; pours into his lap, surrounds him. He wraps his arms around her and draws her close. They fit: like lock and key, like two halves of a sundered stone, but most of all like sea and shore, each molding to the other.

Danicka barely finishes a single sentence in all this time. She starts them. Her words spin out into the darkness, the soft sounds of water against ceramic, their skin sliding wet and clean over one another. She picks up the thread again moments later; changes languages; trails off. Because if he is, she begins, and doesn't finish, but she can feel his arms tensing around her, pulling her closer, as though into that silence he fills his own words:

If he is like them, she would leave.

Or worse:

If he is like them, she would still stay.

The last is not a sentence. It's not one language or the other. It's his name, the name she knew long before he even had any other; the name by which he was introduced to her when he was a five year old child, his hair curly and black, his eyes crystalline blue; quiet at first, but only because he didn't understand when she said hello or how do you do or whatever it was she said before she realized -- delightedly -- that the only language he had then was the one her father spoke.

She calls his name as though he were lost in the dark, and not directly against her, nearly as close as he could be. And he turns to kiss her skin, the joining of her shoulder and her neck, softly.

"Já jsem tady," he murmurs. "Jsem tady, láska."

[Danicka] It's an apt comparison, Danicka to the sea and Lukas to land, at least in this case. She changes. Warms slowly, cools slowly. She storms. She erodes. She holds a million unfathomable secrets, secrets that would crush whoever might try to search too deep. And Lukas remains where he is. She surrounds him. She pulls at him, breaks down stone walls he thought might last forever simply by staying with him, finds that he goes much, much farther down than what little can be see above the surface, to the very same core and root as she does.

She's so soft, against him. She's warm, heated by summer and sex and hot water, and though her shoulders are tense her spine is relaxed. He tightens around her, knowing what she might say, perhaps even understanding why she couldn't finish the sentence. She calls his name not as though she's lost him, but in question. And not the question of whether he's there or not.

Danicka knows he's with her. Even when he's not, really, but right now he is so close against her that the only way they could close the distance further would be to make love, here and now.

He assures her that he's here. She lays against him, her mind spiraling into thoughts darker than the bathroom, so deep that she can't pull herself out of them. She grasps at his name, she grasps at words, finds only the one they both had to learn primarily outside the home: "I am scared of you being different, too."

The confession nearly chokes her.

[Lukas] Recently, Lukas has begun to feel that he is starting to understand Danicka. He feels that he's starting to see into those depths, those million unfathomable secrets. He feels that he is even beginning to be able to navigate the sometimes treacherous interactions with her: what he can do, and what he can't; what he should do, and what he must, and what he must never do.

Tonight it's different. Ever since this begin, these confessions, these fragmentary sentences, secrets began to bleed out of her, he's been lost; wholly adrift. He can't read her at all. He cannot see where she is going, where she's coming from; he doesn't know how things connect, quite, nor what exactly she wants.

If she wants anything at all from him beyond -- this. A listening silence, no more or less.

It frustrates him, to be ricocheted right back into uncertainty like this. He has to try hard to be patient; he has to remind himself that if he waits, if he's quiet, she'll come to him and open to him. He has to trust that his silence will not alienate her.

At last:

"What do you mean, Danička?"

[Danicka] Cast a stone, and ripples follow, whether the stone hits water or flesh or glass. Each shows the shockwave differently, that's all. Sometimes by breaking. Sometimes by bruising. Sometimes by simply absorbing what's dealt, and letting it sink to the dark. Rarely, Lukas feels as though he can see through Danicka, that for brief moments she's transparent to him, that he can see all of her -- right through to the bottom, says the echo.

And for brief moments, sometimes rare ones, he can. A few words and he knows, instinctively, to wrap her in his arms and say not a word, or cover her hand because she's going to start trembling, or reassure her, or laugh with her. When she comes, when she comes and she lets him look into her eyes as he's falling with her over the edge, Lukas seems to know everything about her that is actually necessary, when all the rest is stripped away, leaving nothing but the motions of survival, the microcosm of life's tension, the body's death, the soul's revival.

Maybe they should have turned on a light, given him something to see her by. Moonlight, even. That is often all they need.

Or the stars.

All he has to do is wait, though, for the tide to come in, lunging and then lapping at him, surging almost painfully before something has to break. And Danicka, roughly as bold and courageous as a fox, as affected by the phase of the moon as the sea -- or a werewolf -- breaks. In the dark, in the hot water and the warm skin finally cleansed of sweat, the only reason he can tell that the pair of droplets that fall onto his shoulder and begin rolling down are tears and not drippings from her hair is because of the way she breathes before she speaks, the way she fights down a shudder.

"Because if you are, and you love me, then... there was something wrong with them."

He's never heard her try to speak while crying, not like this. Not in apology for her weakness, not in anger at whoever or whatever is causing the pain, but like this: like a little girl, almost, barely able to control her trembling or regulate her breathing, because she's confronting something much, much scarier than the dark, or the monster waiting within it.

This hurts more than anything some nightmare would be capable of dishing out.

"I don't think they loved me."

A fresh sob, this one finally voiced, gets torn from her. Quietly, quietly. She hides it in his shoulder, quakes slightly against him. These are not things disturbed easily, or lightly. Her voice is small. She, somehow, is smaller, too.

"Or maybe they just... wanted to hurt me, or something?"

[Lukas] Before this, he can only remember her trying to speak through her sobs once, and then it was because he was leaving, he was leaving her, and she was begging him to stay. Lukas isn't sure what hurts more: that memory or her fresh tears, the way her body, naked and unshielded by even the thinnest, most ceremonial of garments, shakes with every sob.

The cruel, or the cynical, or perhaps merely the average Shadow Lord would suspect her of weakness. She cries so easily. They might suspect her of crying crocodile tears, weeping prettily on Lukas's broad shoulder to break him down, affect him, turn him to her wiles. The cruel, or the cynical, or perhaps merely the average Shadow Lord kin might do just that. Thunder's tribe is unforgiving and hard; their kin are often little better than chattel. Those who survive find their own ways to pull the strings.

But she's not like that. She is not cold, though she thinks she is -- and may well be -- capable of cruelty. And he's not like that; not so cynical as that, not so cold, not so doubting anymore.

He has never once seen her cry willingly, without trying to hold back, or stop, or ...

He has never once seen her cry like this, not because he's hurt her or even made her glad; not because he's leaving but because of a long-remembered, never-questioned hurt.

Lukas holds her firmly against him. He bends her to the lee of his shoulder, holds her, wraps her in his arms and doesn't let go. There was something wrong with them, she says, which is not something he has the right to either confirm nor deny. I don't think they loved me, she says, and it's the same, and he can only squeeze her body against his, briefly, and listen.

Or maybe they just wanted to hurt me, she says, questioningly, as though somehow in her mind that can be reconciled with loving her. As though loving her and wanting to hurt her were not, in some basic way, diametrically opposed.

And there's a sudden, sparking anger in Lukas. He takes his hand from her because he has to, grips the edge of the tub instead, hard. He can't keep his mouth shut; not on this. "Nevěřím," he says, low, "že je to možné chtít ublížit někomu, koho máte milovat."

His fingers squeeze against unyielding ceramic and tile. Then, abruptly, the tension slips from his arm. He wraps his arm around her again, tightly, but this is a different sort of strength, a gentler sort of tension.

"Je mi to líto, Danička." Soft, that; not lip service but a genuine sort of apology, a genuine sorriness. "Maybe they loved you and could not help themselves. Or maybe they did not love you and wanted to hurt you. But I don't believe it's possible to be both."

[Danicka] She may never beg him again, at least not to stay. Danicka is more sensitive to aversive conditioning than most, has to work consciously and constantly to trust not only Lukas but the impulse that tells her to trust him in the first place. Danicka follows her impulses to a degree that has been utterly reckless in the past; trusting an impulse, though, is something else entirely.

But she broke down, shattered, pleaded for him not to leave her, please, she loved him... he left. She never wanted to beg him like that. She can't bear the thought of doing it again. Or of having to. Or of him, leaving... or wanting to leave.

The fact that now, trembling and afraid of unearthing these thoughts that have rattled around in her mind for days if not weeks, she does not yelp when she senses his anger or feels him take his hand off of her -- well, that says something. She only holds herself to him closer, as though seeking some of the warmth and comfort lost as he grips the tub so he will not bruise her, break bone, hurt her.

Danicka does weep prettily, and pitifully, but the first hardly matters in the dark and the second hardly matters when he knows how proud she is, how steely her backbone can be even while pretending lovely submission or even while crying. This is different than worry or stress or anger or passing hurt. This is true grief, and the way she cried at the W when he left her is nothing compared to the way she sobbed when he could no longer see her.

When she believed, right or wrong: he doesn't love me.

She questions whether they just wanted to hurt her, because despite all the evidence pointing in that direction -- at least as far as her brother is concerned -- Lukas is right. They, or Vladik, could not have loved her and enjoyed hurting her the way he did, as often as he did, for as little reason as he could find. But believing that cracks the foundation of everything else: how could her father have loved her, and let all of that happen? How could her father be as strong as she wishes he were, and endured that? How could her mother love her, and allow and even condone Vladislav, much less Rage and terrorize her mate, the neighborhood, her daughter, even when her daughter was too young to know anything more advanced or civilized than fear, hunger, pain?

It is as they have said to each other before: that wasn't loving. But then that might mean she was not loved, at least not by people she needed or wanted to love her. And that changes everything. So she cries. She cries harder when he speaks, because it's true, and because the truth hurts her more than it hurts most people. The truth, after all, was always the scary thing, the dark thing, the painful thing. The only thing making this bearable is the surrounding darkness.

And him.

"Don't be sorry," she says, almost whimpering, her arms wrapping around his shoulders as though she would comfort him, instead. "Don't be sorry."

[Lukas] One of these days, Lukas will tell Danicka all the ways he loves her, and all the things he loves about her. But what he may never tell her is how it hurts him when she cries like this.

It wouldn't be fair to tell her that. It takes trust for her to cry like this and not draw away. Not shut herself up, shut herself off, close herself to him. It's a trust he's asked for, expressed doubt in, and finally trusted himself. It's a trust he wouldn't give up, and a trust he fears would be revoked if he were to tell her:

When you cry like that, it tears the heart out of me.
When you cry like that, you tear me apart.

So Lukas remains mute, and listening. He holds her. He doesn't let go. He lets her sob and he lets whatever thoughts, doubts, and realizations there may be slice through her, and it's not until she wraps her arms around him and tells him what she does that he draws a sudden, abortive breath, turns his face fiercely to her neck, and kisses her.

She shouldn't have to comfort him, he thinks. She shouldn't have to reassure him, as though she knew --

As though she knew, without his ever telling her, what this does to him.

"Nemůžu pomoct to." He's muffled against her skin. He pulls her closer, crushes her almost as close as he can without suffocating her. He could mean anything by now; that he can't help but be sorry. That he can't help hurting when she weeps. That he can't help -- "Miluji tě."

[Danicka] Somewhere along the line Danicka learned it was dangerous to be happy -- or, at least, to reveal that happiness openly. Never more than content, quiet about it, neither unhappy nor displeased but not joyful, not delighted, not the way Lukas makes her feel sometimes. How much more dangerous should it have been to cry, to be angry, to feel the things it seems comes so much more easily to her? She hates to cry, does not like it and tries to stop, but she doesn't attempt to hide it.

Crying was a safe weakness to have. Crying sometimes satisfied whatever was really wanted from her. If she cried, it meant she was hurt, or scared, and that is sometimes what saved her. Worse, sometimes what saved her was feigning love, pretending affection, which, if Lukas could understand that, would illuminate for him why Danicka occasionally sounds almost wary when she tells him how much she cares. It is not really fear of rejection, or fear that she is not worth loving in return. It's thinking that maybe she really isn't capable. It's thinking that even if she means it, he might not believe her.

But besides that, it is the things he doesn't know about her childhood and adolescence that have her crying now, saying she thinks maybe they liked to hurt her. Because when she cries, Lukas's answering ache is written across every line of his brow and glint in his eyes, in the tension of his lips, in the cadence of his breathing. He does not tell her that it hurts him when she cries, and he does not need to. Even in the dark, Danicka can see him more clearly than most people can claim to see anyone in the light.

Which makse him different.

Vladik never ached, when she cried.

So now, years after the fact, Danicka clings to Lukas in simultaneous fear and relief, each overwhelming in its own right. It is like the world dropping out from under her. It is like being saved from a castaway's isolation. She trembles, and she holds him close as though he is the one that's falling, even as her arms tighten because he is solid and she does not feel nearly that steady, herself. It is one of the only times she has truly leaned on his strength, not only in physical parody of the spirit but entirely.

"Je mi líto, Lukáš," she murmurs, as he burrows into her, as she sinks into him. Danicka bows her head to rest alongside his, still weeping but quieter now, slower. Still trembling but softer now, more intermittent. "Nechci se ptát... ale řekněte mi, prosím, znovu."

[Lukas] She's not even finished -- she only gets as far as I don't want to ask, but -- when his arms suddenly shift, suddenly tighten around her shoulders, suddenly cup her head against him. He holds her with the sort of desperate strength of the drowning; the sort of strength and ferocity one holds to the last shred of sanity in a maddening world, the last spark of light in the dark, the last shelter in the storm.

"Miluji tě," he says again, quiet but very fierce. This is one of the most basic truths he can give her. This is one of the only promises he can make her.

It's somehow the same spirit, the same tangled skein of emotion, that drove him to all but snarl Mine! at Katherine the night of the bonfire. Mine! says his tone, now, and it's not really possessiveness at all. It's the same ferocity, the same protectiveness, the same amorphous anger at any and all who might want to harm Danicka, take Danicka away; the same thin thread of fear, even, that she might be somehow taken away or harmed.

Mine! says his tone, and what he means is: mine to love; mine to protect.

Again he turns his face, kisses her like a brand.

"Miluji tě, Danička."

[Danicka] This is what she needs. She does not want to ask, but she does, so it must be something more than want, more than a whim. Danicka breathes in with a shudder as he tightens his hold on her, holds her head to his shoulder as though to confer something like a blessing, or as to to guard her against a blow.

And he says it. Again. And again. Not the I love you of teenagers or transient, passing affections. The I love you of spouses, of rare occasions, of a depth of feeling and commitment that by its very nature imposes some sort of strict universal penalty, should the utterance be merely for show. He says it with possession, and promise, guardianship that goes beyond tribal laws and goes back to literally standing between something naturally or maliciously violent and something so precious it's become vital.

Between the storm and the home. Between the beast and the den. Between the monster and the heart bound inextricably to yours.

Danicka breathes in again, more deeply this time, as he says it again. As he says her name. She stays where she is, wrapped around him and wrapped in him and letting the last few tears come so that they can pass, for quite some time. Seconds. Minutes. It doesn't bear counting.

"The water's getting cold."

Which really means: "I'm getting cold."

[Lukas] Lukas's response is not immediate, but only because there's an...

...elemental comfort in this. In the quiet that comes after the harsh truths, the doubts, the tears; the quiet that comes after their rough, animalistic lovemaking on the sofa, on the balcony, on the hood of her car.

He's vaguely sore with exertion, vaguely tired but alert. His mind is clear and open, like a midnight sky in a northern winter. Her words make him close his eyes. His arms tighten around her again; he inhales.

Then he gets up, lifting her on his body, planting one hand against the edge of the tub to keep his balance. He opens the drain; then the faucet, then the showerhead. Water blasts them clean, washes the sweat from his hair, the lingering soap from his skin.

After, drying himself and her on her towels, Lukas stays close to Danicka. It's a wordless, unremarked sort of nearness -- a proximity as natural and necessary as breathing. He touches her often, his hands on her face or on her shoulders through the towel, at her waist, in her hair. His body is close to hers even when they do not touch. He stands near, remains near, remains so that she can intuit his position from the heat of his body, the sound of his quiet breathing.

When they're dried, he lifts her again. His hair is damp; the hairs on his forearms and his chest standing upright, softened from the bath. There's something faintly bridal about the way he carries her out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, only that's not it at all. There's far more of possession; promise; protection.

He carried her like this, too, that morning in the woods, after the sun rose and the pebbles and gravel and rocks and twigs on the ground became clear to see.

Her bed is soft and luxurious, her sheets cool. The Brotherhood is twenty minute away. It's a world away. He slides in beside her and almost immediately enfolds her in his arms, draws her close. They face each other. He doesn't speak now, but there's light enough for him to see her, and for her to see how his eyes, so clear and calm, so intense with that everpresent rage, move over her face as he look and looks.

Eventually, he puts his hand to her face. And he closes his eyes. And he kisses her, softly, as though this were the very first time he's ever lain beside her in her bed.

[Danicka] By simple virtue of what she is, Danicka is more worn out than Lukas. Though her tolerance is high, the alcohol still hits her harder, stays in her system longer. Though she's surprisingly fit for someone who doesn't seem to many to have ever had to lift a finger to get what she wants, she does not have his endurance for physical activity, for sudden and drastic temperature shifts, for going hours upon hours without sleep. She has come three times tonight, fucked on her car and her balcony and her couch and against the wall.

In the end, though, it's not the sex or the vodka or anything else that has worn her out. It's this, these last few minutes in the bathtub, aching over something it's taken weeks to try and face and mere seconds to confirm simply by saying it aloud to anothe person. She knows the truth. No one would expect her, of all people, to be able to tell the difference, as though lying as a survival mechanism implies a separation from reality or an inability to see where the line between fiction and nonfiction is drawn.

She slides her legs down and stands as they wash off, all of her hair wet when they finally turn off the water and step out onto the thick, soft rug in front of the tub, their toes sinking into the pile. She dries him. He dries her. They wrap each other in towels and near-constant touch.

They stay close, while she combs her hair and twists it into a braid with such speed and dexterity that it smacks of thoughtless practice, something she's done a thousand times. They stay close, while she brushes her teeth -- there's a fresh one in a drawer, right beside the floss, a couple of hair ties tossed in there as well, all these things felt by touch rather than seen. There's shadows upon shadows rather than total pitch blackness in the bathroom, but it's still incredibly dark as they wash up.

Usually when Lukas chooses to pick her up, Danicka does not ever let him carry her for long. She does not need to insist on walking under her own power, or argue with him. Even in the woods, she wanted to use her own feet, even in the morning, even when she could see that he worried over her feet and her bare arms and legs in a way he hadn't in the dark the night before, during the hunt, the chase. Even though she could see how something protective and instinctive flickered in his eyes at the sight of weals and scratches, she preferred the earth under her tender feet and his hand in hers than being cradled.

Now, though, she lets him carry her. Towels are draped here and there, hung on hooks, or just left on the floor where they're dropped, and she loops her arms loosely around his neck, resting against him. It's not something that can or will last, not with them. It goes back to another exchange, where he asked her if she expected him to protect her. Of course not. But he does, and that lack of expectation makes a great deal of difference. The usual lack of need for this, for him to carry or cradle her, makes all the difference now, when for once she does need it.

Tonight she'd say Yes. I need you to protect me to. You love me. I expect you to take care of me. Please.

And the 'please' would come from fear. Fear that she's wrong to trust him. Trust this. Trust herself. Fear that she was right all along, before she met him, that she's never going to understand love or feel it for someone else, that this overwhelming passion for and adoration of him is something else entirely, that she really is broken. Damaged and twisted just like her brother was.

Is.

The bed is made. His books are straight on the shelves, her computers all quiet on her desk. Danicka gets under the covers when they get into the bedroom, naked body sliding between the sheets. They have more light in here, from the moon coming in through the windows, but the light is dim and shadowy. Everything is pale silver and concrete gray, velvet black, except for the intense blue of his eyes, except for hints of gold in her hair. She looks back at him as they lie together, facing each other as their legs loosely tangle under the covers, and then she reaches over and runs her fingertips over his cheek.

He needs a shave. She thinks of him standing in her bathroom tomorrow morning and using a disposable razor from under the counter, unopened because though she keeps them on hand for some reason she doesn't usually use them. She also thinks of drinking coffee with him. What it would be like, actually, to teach him how to make a pastry he adores and that she has been making since she was six. She thinks about what it would be like to --

-- and cuts the thought off there, immediately, before it has the chance to hurt her. After all. They're supposed to be pretending.

Her hand smoothes back across his face as he leans in and kisses her like that, her fingers going into his hair. Gently, gently. Danicka sighs and moves closer to him, her right leg hooking over his left hip, the sheets rustling in answer to that sigh.

"Milovat mě," she whispers against his lips, after the third kiss, after the dozenth, her leg folding him in closer to her. Her hand has left his hair and has abandoned the back of his neck; she is touching his bicep, his chest, palm stroking around his ribs to his back, drawing herself forward to him until her breasts press against him. Danicka moves her kiss to his earlobe, to his neck, murmuring again: "Milovat mě, Lukáš."

They make love again under the covers, which they almost never do, at least until his hand throws them back or her legs push them down. The heat is too intense for confinement, even when they move slowly, even with the ceiling fan turning lazily overhead, even with the air conditioning turning on for awhile part of the way through. Danicka lays on her back, holding onto his arms and shoulders when she's not touching his chest, running her hands over his back, urging his hips forward, pulling him deeper.

She looks at him while he moves into her, her lips parted with quieter cries than she loosed on the balcony, nowhere near the way she screamed as he fucked her against the wall next to the plasma screen television. Danicka turns her head to the side when he strokes into her harder, nearly burying her moan in her pillow before some low, aching murmur from his throat has her looking back up at him again, has her letting herself cry out more freely as his thrusts come harder, if no faster.

When she's close to coming she tells him so, a plea in the words as she pulls him yet closer, urging him to rest his weight on his elbows so their bodies grind and writhe together. Her legs wrap more tightly around him, encircle him, keep him. She gasps some of the things she often does: Don't stop! and Ach Bože, cítíte tak dobře! Prosím nekončí. and Ano ... Ach, kurva já, Lukáš, ano ...

and so.

Danicka comes with a hard clench through her body, starting in her cunt holding him deep, possessive, needful, desperate. She grips his biceps as her body tenses like a drawn bow, as a strangled moan tries to escape her throat. She groans and bites his shoulder instead, the moan growing more sharp and her breathing coming in hard gasps as the orgasm wracks through her, overrules her, obviates awareness of anything but the feeling of itself, the feeling of Lukas, the feeling of near-death.

She is still riding that orgasm when Lukas follows her, his hips swinging forcefully into her, hardest of all now, three times until he goes completely rigid, just barely on the edge of trembling, his mouth on her throat, her shoulder, her jaw, her lips, wherever.

When it's over, dawn is still hours and hours away. When Danicka remembers the limits of her own body she realizes that she's sore. When Lukas slides out of her she gasps. When he moves to the edge of the bed to get rid of the condom she trails a hand across his back in wordless longing: Come back. Which he does. Which he always does.

When it's over, they sleep as though he belongs there, as though he will never have to leave, as though they have all the time in the world.

When it's over, they wrap their arms around each other and pretend that they can protect each other.