may i.

[Lukas] They don't shower after all. Sleep overtakes them almost immediately, yawning open like a soft grey rose, enveloping, consuming.

It's the first time Lukas was unconscious since he woke up underground in a pristine white cell. It's the first time he's truly slept since -- he doesn't even remember. The hours roll by dreamlessly, lightlessly, until the slowly dropping temperature wakes him.

Grey light fills Danicka's room when he opens his eyes again. It's nearly dawn: a red glow to the east, a faint red tinge to the light. He doesn't wonder where he is; not for a second. Her scent is all around him. He knows where he is, and who he's with.

He finds that he hasn't moved at all, so deep was his sleep. Perhaps she has, or perhaps Danicka is still curled against his chest, her feet tangled with his, his arm wrapped around her shoulders. He wonders if she's cold. His hand covers her shoulder.

She wakes as he's pulling the blankets up over them. He kisses her on the mouth, gently, telling her to sleep; and then again, deeper. And then again, slower.

They don't sleep after all. He pulls her leg over his waist. They move together, slowly, as though they were making love underwater, or in a dream. The room breathes with sighs. He closes his eyes near the end, kissing her blindly, letting a low, long moan into her mouth as he comes inside her.

--

Exhaustion returns, afterward, absolute and demanding. He drops into sleep again. He dreams vaguely and indistinctly. Hours go by, and the sun lifts over the city, washes it in reds that turn orange that turn brilliant white: a clear autumn day, the leaves falling from the trees.

--

Sometime past noon, he wakes again. They do shower. If they shower together, they spend longer there than they intended to, get messier before they get clean again.

Lukas is hungry when they get out. He wonders if Paul is home, and if he's not, he wanders around in his towel, peering into her fridge, asking if he can make toasted ham'n'cheese sandwiches. She's seen him make these once, soon after Martin's heart attack. She might be wondering if that's all he knows how to make. He claims he knows how to make all sorts of things. If pressed, it turns out most of these things are variations on the sandwich theme; a few tricks on the grill, too.

He says he wants to learn to make kolaches, though. He reminds her that she offered to teach him once, in those endless days before he met her at the zoo. The truth is he wants an excuse to stay longer, to be around her, to linger close to her and kiss her temple now and then, to brush his arm against hers, to be close enough to feel warmth building in the space between their bodies. No matter; he's a quick study when she does teach him, learning to mix the dough and knead it, make the stuffings.

She doesn't have oranges. He gets dressed and goes down to the corner store, comes up with a bag of navel oranges and rock sugar besides. Danicka heats ingredients up to make candied oranges. Lukas watches curiously, interestedly, delightedly, his head turning to follow her hands, eyes bright as an animal's.

They fold the dough, roll it out, make pastries. His start out lopsided and lumpy. They get better. Hers are perfect. She's been doing this since she was a child.

While the kolaches bake, he helps her wash the dishes out. It's mid-afternoon by then. The days are short enough that the sun is nearing the horizon, and he looks out over the lake, watches the shadows change as the sun throws them into the water.

He doesn't say again that he'll miss this place. But if she comes to stand beside him, he hugs her against his left side, where the beat of his heart thunders through his ribcage.

--

Lukas stays long enough to eat four kolaches, warm from the oven. He can't stay for dinner, though, and perhaps neither can she. Anyway, he's full, a little overloaded on sugar; not quite at the point of sickness.

He tastes like oranges when he kisses her goodbye. He lingers a little longer than he needs to. Not as long as he'd like to.

In the elevator on the way down, the smell of kolaches rises out of the pastry box he carries. It reminds him of Danicka. It reminds him of being a child, visiting that house with the oak tree in the backyard -- memories he'd thought he'd forgotten.

--

It's four or five days before they hear from each other again. He calls her on Thursday morning. He sounds like he's at a cafe. Milk steamers and blenders are making a racket in the background.

"What are you doing Saturday night?" he asks. He sounds like he's asking her out on a date. He also sounds like he's smiling. "Rosalie Bellamonte is visiting Kate and Gabbie. She's invited us to dinner at Bellamonte Manor. It seems she remembers you from New York City. I suspect it's going to be a seven-course, dinner jacketed affair."

[Danicka] It wasn't very late at night on Friday when Danicka and Lukas finally let go of their strangleholds on consciousness and release themselves to sleep. Not late, that is, by their standards. It's not long after midnight when Danicka tucks her body close to Lukas and warms herself there without reaching for the comforter. Time unfurls, their sweat dries on their skins, and perhaps six hours later, a little longer, Lukas stirs. Danicka does not. She is still as the stone egg he once compared her to, but so much warmer, so much closer, and somewhere along the line she became vulnerable to him, especially like this. If she is a stone egg, he is somewhere inside her.

Sometimes. Now.

Her skin is warm when he touches her shoulder, her breathing steady. And she does not move, and her eyelids don't flicker, until he moves so much as an inch away to draw the comforter and sheets over the two of them. Then she twists her head, eyes half-opening, seeking him. She starts to make a sound; stops when he comes back and kisses her. In between whispers of sleep, baby, sleep her leg wraps around him, just as it did the night before. Her hand touches his rough, unshaven cheek as they kiss, a silent negation of the suggestion he himself seems to be uttering by habit and not intent.

Sleep, baby, is the last thing either of them say for a long time. He murmurs it against the corner of her lips as she's rolling onto her back, as he's coming over her and moving between her legs, his cock sliding against her and finding her wet. Danicka doesn't swear at him or scream in Czech. She gasps his name. She sighs as she tips her head back, as her spine arches, as she wraps her arms around him and splays her hands over his back. The day is starting. Other people are getting up for work, for class, for anything.

It's Saturday. Danicka makes love to her mate, running her hands over him. In the half-light she looks up at him while he moves into her, while she crosses her ankles over his lower back. She pulls him to her breast with her hand buried in his hair when she comes, gasping so quietly that small cries leave her throat, almost like a song. She swallows his moans when he follows her, holding him in her arms and her legs and her mouth and her cunt, her bed, her den, her home.

For now.

--

They don't get up together after they sleep again. Danicka murmurs something indistinct when Lukas slips out of bed. He is usually the one who stays, the one who would sleep later, who would stay in the hotel til after she left, who would refuse to sleep for fear of waking to find her gone. This time he leaves her in bed because she does not want to move, does not want to open her eyes to the midday sunlight, and goes to take a shower in the bathroom where she keeps her simple bar soap, her expensive shampoo, the scrub-brush she has washed his back with in the past.

He isn't in there long before the door opens. Long enough for steam to fill the room. Danicka is naked and smells like him when she steps through the shower curtain and moves behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist and laying her head on his back. She stays like that for awhile, the water hitting her arms but the rest of her protected from the spray, until he turns around.

It starts when they begin washing themselves, each other. Skin slides against skin, covered in suds, slippery with lather. It ends with Danicka's forearms pressed against the tile wall, leaning against it, bent forward, pressed back against him. It ends with Lukas's hands on her hips, his mouth on her shoulder, the water pelting his flank as he pulls her onto his cock again

and again.

They can't get clean until after Danicka's whimpers have stopped echoing against the tile, until after they can breathe again, until after she stops shuddering from aftershocks of pleasure. Until he's stopped pressing kisses against her shoulderblades, her neck, until he can bear to let her move away. Until she can bear to let him go.

Never. Never.

--

The time they spend baking is time that he spends seeing Danicka laugh. And sing. She has him knead the dough, over and over again, his hands covered in flour while she makes the candied orange filling that is his favorite, prepares the strawberry filling that is hers. She sings in three languages, everything from lullabyes to pop songs to concert pieces she taught to or learned with Yelizaveta. And as he's folding and punching and stretching the dough out, it may occur to him that this is why Danicka does not make these more frequently than she does. If she did, her upper body strength would be twice what it is. And it still wouldn't be close to what he can do.

Her father taught her how to make these, and many other things, besides. She gets quieter when she talks about her father. Her home. She changes the subject and drifts closer to him here and there as they do dishes. Paul gets up around two o'clock and attempts to hang out with them for about five minutes before deciding to go out to get coffee with some friends.

She sets aside some kolace for him. One of each, under a tea towel on the counter, right beside the newspaper and apartment guide. Lukas can see in daylight what he missed last night: a calculator.

Danicka has unbleached pastry boxes in a cupboard. She laughs and explains she bought several. She gives Lukas all the orange kolace, all but the one for herself, the one for Paul. They spent the afternoon baking. They did several batches. The kitchen is sweltering from the heat of the oven, thick with the smell of dough and fruit.

She is smiling when she says goodbye to him, her hair smelling like her shampoo, her skin smelling like her soap, her breath a mixture of citrus. She does not hold onto him, or try to keep him.

She sleeps that night, even alone, better than she has in weeks.

--

"Fucking Fangs," is Danicka's muttered response, the day he calls her and tells her about the invitation. And through his pleasure or amusement he may remember her feelings about his packmate. The one who is a primary reason why Danicka no longer feels safe in the den he loves being in with her. She sounds distracted, far less smiling and happy than she was when he last saw her, heard from her.

"What time?"

[Lukas] Lukas is quietly affectionate the afternoon they make kolaches, smiling often, attentive while he learns by rote, gently playful while they share out the tasks of kneading and filling-making. When she goes quiet, thinking of her father, and though he doesn't stop scrubbing the mixing bowl he's scrubbing Lukas leans into her as she drifts near. He kisses the top of her head, water running over his hands, water flecking his forearms. It's a sort of comforting, unspoken, all in the language of the body.

Later, Lukas doesn't snap at Paul this time. He asks him if Oprah's really as nice as she seems, and what sound-editing for Oprah involved, and -- rather offhandedly -- if it was really true that he put soundproofing up in his room.

After Paul leaves, while they wait for the kolaches to bake, and before Lukas goes to look over the city, he plays with her calculator a little.

And later, leaving himself, he takes two orange kolache out of his box and leaves them for her. He steals one of her strawberry ones, too, not because he loves them terribly, but because they remind him, now, of her.

--

"Dinner's at eight," he replies, days later, when the last of the kolaches are gone. "I'm probably going around seven. Want me to pick you up?"

Some of the humor has bled out of his voice. Her voice reminded him of the state of affairs between herself and Katherine. Her comment, fucking Fangs, reminds him of her past with that particular tribe, and what her role was. The dominant part of him, the part of him that was alpha long before he was an Alpha in truth, rankles somehow under the thought now.

[Danicka] She was a servant to Silver Fangs once, a family not as old as the Bellamontes or even from the same stock but ridiculously well-bred and even more obscenely wealthy. They had enough clout in a mixed-tribe sept to keep a young woman of good blood and name from being bred out from under them, along with the fact that as soon as people realized what was wrong with her they didn't want her anyway.

Lukas does not know the half of her relationship with the Sokolovs, or what it was like spending so many years working for them. Moving because of them. Skipping college to stay with them. In her mind, it's probably best if he doesn't know. They were the ones who connected her with the sept in Rochester to serve as chaperone to a much older man going to premieres and festivals. They are the reason she knew Katherine and Gabriella when they were younger.

That has nothing to do with why she flatly despises Katherine Bellamonte, does not trust her, does not believe a word out of her mouth, fears her, hates her, wants to move out of her fucking apartment because that female violated it in a way that sent Danicka's mind reeling back to her childhood and adolescence.

She sighs. A page turns. "If you're asking an honest question about what I want, then no, I don't." A beat. "If you're asking if I'd rather go with you than take my own car, I think that's for the best. It will just look strange to them if I don't arrive with you."

Which will draw their attention. And maybe their questions.

[Lukas] A beat of pause. Then, "No, you don't want to go to dinner at all, or no, you'd rather take your own car?"

[Danicka] "On a scale of one to ten, one being I'd rather eat my own eyeballs with a broken spork and ten being ecstasy the likes of which no mortal has ever known, how much do you imagine I want to spend the evening with Katherine and her Kin?"

[Lukas] If she can hear him smile through the phone, then maybe she can hear him frown as well. "Danička, was that necessary?" Another brief pause. "I'd love to have you there, but I won't drag you if you don't want to go."

[Danicka] "Was what necessary, lásko?" she sighs in response. "You seem to want to pretend that nothing untoward has ever taken place between Katherine and I. Are you asking me to do the same?"

[Lukas] "No." There's a rising frustration in Lukas's voice that he has to curb, and hard. He lowers his voice. "No. I don't want to pretend that. I don't want you to pretend that. I was asking you, was it necessary to talk down to me to make your point?"

[Danicka] Danicka has less of a leash on her temper. She's no longer sleep deprived, but she is in the middle of homework. And it's history. And it's a lot of reading. He doesn't know that, and she doesn't tell him, so there's nothing he can do about it. She hasn't even recognized how short it's making her, in part because the difference is so negligible. She would be angry anyway.

"If you don't want to pretend that, then stop ignoring how I feel about the way she's behaved. Don't be so taken aback when the very idea of seeing her makes me angry, Lukáš." She exhales. It's not a sigh. It's an effort at her own self-control. "I wasn't talking down to you. It was fucking sarcasm."

[Lukas] "I wasn't ignoring it, Danička." Lukas keeps his voice low and level for the sake of the cafe patrons, for all the good it does. The baristas are still looking at him askance. No one comes near his lowslung armchair and his little table at all, not even to squeeze past on their way to the bathrooms. "I forgot for a moment. Which isn't any better, I know. But I wouldn't ignore it."

He draws a breath through his nostrils, lets it out.

"If you'd rather not go, I'll make up an excuse for you."

[Danicka] It isn't any better, and she nearly snaps at him to stop forgetting, then because of that. There's a faint tapping in the background on her end, likely drowned by the sounds of the cafe he's in. Her apartment is otherwise quiet.

"Stop forgetting," she says, but it's not a lash of her voice through the phone. It's more like a sigh, a request rather than a demand.

Or maybe a plea.

"I'll go."

[Lukas] A faint exhale, like a sigh. Then a rustling as he shifts the phone to his other ear. "Do you want to drive yourself so you can leave early? Who gives a fuck what they think."

[Danicka] "I'm the wrong person to ask," Danicka says, a bit tightly.

[Lukas] She can't see him. She can't see the way his eyes close, and his jaw tenses; the way he raises his hand to his temple and shades the ridge of his brow with his fingers.

"What does that mean?"

[Danicka] "What it always means, love."

She draws her legs up, wraps her free arm around her knees, perches like that in her desk chair while glancing at the window. "You have nothing to fear from Katherine, just as you had nothing to fear from Sam. I do. So I can't pretend they are better than they are, or that what they think of me doesn't matter."

Danicka rests her forehead against her knees, but the mic on her iPhone still picks her voice up clearly. "We've had this argument before, and I don't want to have it again because I made a crack you didn't like. I said I'll go. I'll even pretend I'm over it all if that will make it easier."

[Lukas] "No." She hates it when he interrupts her, but he can't help it; he starts negating it almost as soon as it's out of her mouth. "No. Danička, no, I don't want you to pretend.

"I didn't understand what you meant. I thought you meant you were the wrong person to ask when I asked whether you wanted to drive yourself or not, which made no sense, and so I was angry. I get it now."

His hand drops back to the arm of his chair. He lets his eyes rest aimlessly, thoughtlessly across the little cafe, unaware that he's inadvertently staring at someone until they abruptly stand up to go, unable to stand his regard. After that, Lukas drops his eyes to the table in front of him and his half-drunk cup of antoccino atop it.

"Look: I'll pick you up at 7:30. Okay?"

[Danicka] At least she waits until he's done.

A flash back to the waterfront, the day he walked by a cafe and saw her through the window as though he was meant to run into her. Talking to her across the table, ignoring the book of poetry now in his possession, fighting to ignore the lovebite left below her clavicle, put there by someone else, someone else's mouth on her when he hadn't had her, wouldn't let himself have her, didn't trust her. Crossing streets, standing at the railing, looking at her in the frigid February cold and forcing her to confess what he had not said:

I want you.

Everything he had to say, she listened to. Her hands in her gloves, her hat on her head, her hair spread over her shoulders, she held her tongue and did not interrupt, or sigh, or roll her eyes. She looked at the water in between glances at him, never quite meeting his eyes, and told him that yes. She was capable of more than one night stands and casual sex, that she was capable of loyalty. She did not tell him she was touching herself on some nights thinking about fucking him, but her desire lingered in every curve of the words

Chci tě.

And she was patient, even when she was afraid.

She doesn't ask him if he's still angry with her, though she isn't sure and wants to know, is worried that he is. She doesn't argue with him that whatever he wants, pretending with other people isn't really an option, it's a necessity. She closes her eyes, wincing because he's across town, and answers:

"I'll see you then."

[Lukas] Lukas opens his mouth to say, See you then. What comes out is, "Moci můžu tě vidím zítra v noci?"

[Danicka] "Lukášek," she begins, in half a sigh. "Jsi můj lodní důstojník. Ty nemusíte se ptát 'smím?'." There's a brief quiet. A heartbeat-long pause. A hesitation that gentles her next words immeasurably: "Nikdy pro že."

[Lukas] Without his quite registering it, Lukas's hand holds his phone a little tighter as though by doing so he might hold her closer; maintain contact. "Uvidíme se zítra, pak," he says.