[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] It's past 5pm when Lukas wakes again. The ceiling is unfamiliar. He isn't sure where he is. He draws a breath: he thinks, Danička.
Closed eyes, again.
A few minutes later, dream-amnesia lifts like fog; his memory unfurls backwards. When he remembers her telling him Then let me go in front of his hotel in Queens, Lukas opens his eyes and sits up. Draws his knees up under the covers, props his elbows on them, rubs his face with both his hands.
Then he looks around to see where she is, if she's still there.
[Danicka Musil] He knows she is not in bed with him before his eyes open. He knows what it is to lie awake and stave off sleep so that he will not be quite so vulnerable when she leaves. He knows what it is to wake and feel her breathing against him, the movement of her ribs and the warm softness of her between arm and bed and chest. He knows what it is to wake in her arms, his heart beating against her hand. He knows what it is to wake and be able to smell her in the cooling sheets because it's her bed, her den, hers, her, even before he becomes aware of the sound of her cooking or singing or simply moving around in the kitchen. He does not know what it is to wake, utterly alone, and find that she is not within arm's reach, not in another room, nowhere his senses can find her.
In the middle of the day he looked for her, unaware of his body's seeking, and found a warm hand with his fingertips, found a slim ankle with his foot. Unconscious and likely glad of it, neither of them can append any meaning to the fact that she pulled away in sleep, drawing hand and foot back to herself, turning over. She's never slept with her back to him and that much empty space between them. When he wakes she is not there for him to see the gap and wonder if she was lying when she said he was not losing her.
Because of what he is, waking quickly is often a necessity, moving from deep sleep to strategic battle in a matter of seconds if he has to. Because of who she is, Danicka is capable of the same; she cannot enumerate the times she has been woken suddenly by mortal or monster, each with their own expectations of how cognizant she should be in the middle of dreaming. Lukas does not wake and snap into alertness, however. He drifts in and out, rolls her name around his mind like a mouthful of wine on his tongue, sits up slowly after awhile, curls, rubs awareness back into his nerve endings.
He knows she's not there. Not in bed with him. Not sitting in the armchair by the window putting a fresh set of clothes on. Not showering in the bathroom. Not a ghost of sound left behind when the door closes behind her, telling him he just missed her. The hotel room is dead silent, neither heater nor air conditioner currently running, his own body motionless, and the walls thick enough to block out whatever the rest of the hotel is doing.
Twenty-odd floors below, Chicago may as well be a world away, for all it impinges on him right now.
In the silence, and with the sheets cool to the touch where she was, it may take him a little while to see her suitcase on the rack where she left it, to notice the Do Not Disturb placard is missing from the shelf where it was placed when they got in, to realize that the pad of paper on the nightstand has writing on it.
Šla jsem pro něco k jídlu. Vrátím se brzy.
There is no hint of when brzy is, or will be. But for what it's worth, only five minutes or so pass before there is a telltale click at the door and the whisper of its brush against the carpet.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (note the little things?)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 5, 9, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] What Lukas has never told Danicka, but what Danicka may be able to guess from his tenacious wakefulness that very first night, is that he hated the idea of waking to find her gone. Despised it with an almost phobic intensity. Time passed; they grew closer; the fear and the loathing subsided, subsumed, became almost negligible.
It's different, right now. She doesn't know if she can trust him. He hasn't said the same to her, but he might if she asked. Or he might say: he doesn't know if he can trust this anymore. What they have between them. That they still have anything at all.
Lukas opens his eyes. He sits up. He can't see her, he can't hear her, and her scent, which is what made him think her name, is cold and dying on the air.
Lukas thinks to himself: this hurts.
A second later, he's so angry that he can feel his pulse beating behind his eyes. He's angry because she left him; he's angry because somehow this is a betrayal; he's angry because she's gone and he thought she would be here and -- the fury burns the hurt away, sears it to nothing. He throws back the covers and his hand reaches for something to grab, something to hurl, something to break -- finds the pad of paper, too flimsy, drops it, sees the writing.
His eyes scan the words. He closes them. A deep breath before he opens them again. He gets ahold of himself, presses the fury down to a dull nagging anger, stands, goes to the bathroom.
When the lock clicks undone and the door sweeps open, he's out of the shower again. There's steam on the mirror, the smell of the hotel's shampoo and bodywash in the air. He's shaving in front of the bathroom mirror, not with the W's disposable razor but with his own shaving set, brush and cream and straight razor and all. Where he stands, he can see the door in reflection. His eyes are on Danicka when she enters.
"Jsi odešel chvíle jsem spal," he says. It's rather toneless.
[Danicka Musil] [Perception + Empathy]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 4, 7, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Danicka Musil] [Like HELL. THIS IS DANICKA.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 6, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 7) Re-rolls: 3
[Danicka Musil] Anger, she heard once, is always a result of unmet expectations. It is a secondary emotion, spurred to life by the primary emotions of fear, hurt, or frustration. Danicka's temper can be a sharp, sudden thing, but it burns itself out quickly, leaving her looking and sounding like she's exhausted and wants nothing more than to run away. Her grudges, however, seem like they can go on for a lifetime. She is not a forgiving woman.
Though that is not to say she is an unforgiving woman, either. Merciless. He knows that.
Still, when he first wakes, her suitcase is all the way over there and the door is hard to see and the notepad was there before so there's no real change for him to notice. And she's gone. Long enough that the sheets are cool. Long enough that her scent is barely present. Long enough for him to think, for him to wonder, for him to... get angry. Get hurt.
When she comes in, however, he says what he says -- the way he says it -- and yet he can smell the food when she enters. It isn't lamb. It's steak. God only knows what else. Containers are set down on the table and she walks to the bathroom, looking at him briefly. His eyes are on her; her eyes look at his reflection. And when he speaks, her hand tightens around the doorframe.
She walks away.
The next time he sees her, she is holding a to-go container from a high-end steakhouse in one hand. She throws it, hurls it, not at him but at the wall beside the mirror. It flies open, steak and potatoes and green beans and sauce going everywhere.
"Fuck you, Kvasnička."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Steak and potatoes and green beans and sauce vomit over the mirror, streak over the counter, splatter back on the freshly showered Shadow Lord standing in front of it. Danicka is throwing food at an Ahroun. She's throwing food at an angry Ahroun, an Ahroun who's rested, whose moon is in or very nearly in the sky; an Ahroun holding a straight razor in his hand.
He turns on her, outraged now, anger spiking right back to the surface. The straight razor clatters into the sink.
"What is your problem?" he shouts at her. "What right do you have to be angry? You couldn't wake me up and tell me you were going for food? You haven't touched me all night; you've barely let me touch you. You're withdrawn. You're a million miles away from me.
"You just left me here."
A beat. A glob of sauce slides down his chest, joins another on his stomach. Slides down. A moment of realization; he's too angry to be abashed.
Snaps, "Was that for me?"
[Danicka Musil] "You," she says -- no, begins, her voice seething, her jaw working to try and keep from baring her teeth, "would have tucked me into bed like a goddamn child and left me alone, after I was kicked out of the house I was born in, to go after my brother."
There is nothing in her, nothing in her words, nothing in the air between them, but anger.
And pain.
"And you have the gall to be pissed off at me for not waking you up? I thought you might need to sleep, you selfish, self-centered son of a bitch!"
She's never raised her voice like this at him. She's never been this angry.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] He swipes sauce off his stomach, flicks it in an angry dash of his hand toward the sink. She gets as far as to go after my brother when he snaps --
"I didn't, did I? I--"
She goes on. He shakes his head before she's even down, a tight, angry, vehement negation of -- her words, her meaning, everything -- and when she shouts at him that he's selfish, self-centered, Lukas snaps. Grabs a glass tumbler off the countertop and throws it.
Not at her. At the shower. It shatters against the tile. Glass shards explode every which way, a clear, cutting echo of Danicka's own work of destruction.
"I stayed!" He's not only shouting now; he's bellowing at her, every ounce of strength behind it, the musculature of his torso compressing on itself to force the volume. "You left!"
[Danicka Musil] She flinches. Of course she flinches. When the glass is grabbed, before it leaves his hand, before it flies, before it shatters. She flinches, and she turns her face to the side and closes her eyes to protect them from the shards that will inevitably try to blind her if --
-- the glass breaks in the shower but it's a moment or two after he roars at her that she opens her eyes, looks back at him. Her shoulders are higher than normal, her arms close to her body, her eyes a venomous green now but tight at the corners, wary at the edges.
"Potřeboval jsem tě," she whispers, several seconds after he shouts that he stayed, she left. The words are not soft, though quietly uttered. "Not just in the room with me. Not begrudgingly. Not as though you were doing me a favor by holding back."
A beat. "Even if you were." She takes a step back, farther away from him, a million miles plus a step, and puts her hands over her face. But only for a moment; she lets them down again, exhales. "I left you at the inn because I figured if I was going to have to deal with everything that happened yesterday by myself, I might as well do so by myself."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] In that second or two, that moment or two between his shout and her whisper, the crest of Lukas's anger breaks and dissipates.
He turns away from her. He's reaching for a towel to mop up the mess on the counter when she speaks, and when she does he clenches the towel in his fist, presses his fists to the counter. His triceps stand out when he leans his weight into his hands; the long muscles in his back elongate as his balance shifts. He lowers his head and closes his eyes, remembers to take a breath.
"Je mi to líto. Já měl jsem zůstat. Uvědomil jsem si, že - později."
Potatoes and steak sauce and green beans streak across the pristine counter as he mops the mess into the sink. It stains the towel, leaves smears behind; in the end he'll have to dump it all in the toilet and flush it. He concentrates on cleanup with a sort of dogged focus, his brow furrowed in reflection.
"I don't expect you to forgive me immediately. Or at all. But tell me what you want me to do, to make it right. Or at least stop torturing me, Danička."
[Danicka Musil] "It wasn't about staying."
She says this with her hands down at her sides, her brow furrowed with -- with anger, with hurt, with the effort it takes her not to start crying, not now. She isn't moving, really. Her voice is still quiet. There is little to distract from the words coming out of her mouth, and for her part she's essentially ignoring the cleanup, the still-warm food being gathered up and wiped up because it gives Lukas something to do.
"I needed you to..." the words hitch. She clenches her jaw against them, or to force them out, breathes: "I needed you to take care of me."
Danicka glances at the ceiling, takes a breath, says so softly and near-thoughtfully it's almost to herself: "I don't... ask you for that very often." She looks back at him, confusion tightening the pull of her eyebrows towards one another. "Do I?"
It's possible he'll tell her, and she'll understand, that he thought he was. Or something. They could argue about that. But Danicka says one last thing: "And I'm not torturing you. I'm just trying to get through this."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas is looking at her again by the time she finishes. He's been looking at her since she told him what she needed from him; first through the mirror and then, dropping the soiled towel in the sink with the rest of the mess, face to face.
He looks at her, frowning, then solemn, then trying not to wince. It's still there, at the corners of his eyes and his mouth, in the way his eyes rest on her.
So much of their focus is going to their breathing. In. Out. As if, if they didn't do this, they may simply forget. Suffocate on what's between them, the anger and the hurt. Drown in it.
He takes a breath in. Lets it out.
"I'm sorry," he says again; english now. "I thought I was[i] taking care of you, but ... [i]byl jsem sobec."
A beat.
"Baby, please don't leave me like that again." It comes out in a rush, no room for hesitations or second thoughts. He does wince afterward; winces to hear himself say it, maybe. Presses on anyway. "Not after -- a night like that. I don't ever want to wake up like that again, not knowing if you'll be back."
[Danicka Musil] The bathroom is no longer pristine as hotel room bathrooms are supposed to be. There is glass in the shower and on the floor. There is the rich smell of meat and sauce and vegetables on top of soap, shaving cream, shampoo. There's food on Lukas, and nothing on Danicka. She was wearing a skirt and sweater last night and this morning; this afternoon she's far more simply dressed, in a pair of dark, skinny jeans and brown patchwork ballet flats. She has on a blouse with a pattern of miniscule florals, all blue with traces of leaf green, the whole thing mostly hidden under a tailored leather coat. Her hair, all that thick hair down before and framing her face, or pulled back from it, is in a simple, loose braid. Individual, lonely strands of yellow frame her cheeks.
"Lukáš..." she sighs, the way he said Baby, though less hurried. She stops there, though, as though unsure of what to say. How to say it. Whether she wants to say it at all. Eventually, however, she takes a deep breath and nods out of the bathroom, towards the bed, the rest of the food. "Come on."
She turns, and walks out of his line of sight.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] It takes Lukas another few moments to follow. He washes his hands first, wipes down his body. And he leaves the rest of the mess where it is.
When he comes out the room is still bright with daylight, though the sun is no longer coming through the windows. He looks at the bed, the food, Danicka. His mouth twists, rueful.
"Thank you for getting dinner," he says, and pulls the armchair's ottoman up to the edge of the bed to sit on.
[Danicka Musil] There's only one to-go container now. They're compostable, from some restaurant that uses paper straws in their drinks and produces as little waste as possible when you're running a dining establishment. It's the little things. Danicka is not a Child of Gaia, was not raised by them, but she understands certain connections. The earth is a spirit. What is done in one realm echoes in the other. A problem ignored here becomes larger there. A problem left to run rampant there ripples outward, gives the wrong side strength, literally threatens the lives of those she loves with more frequency and power.
It seems like a small, odd thing, that Danicka has such a nice car and yet walks most places, or takes public transportation over half the time. It seems like a small, strange thing that she does not litter, that she takes short showers, that she frequents restaurants that try to cut back on their trash. Her environmentalism is hardly pronounced, or perfect, but it's there. Just like her worship, her ritual, her prayer.
Again: steak, potatoes, seasoned and buttered green beans. Danicka doesn't walk over to sit down with him and pick food from the second plate. She sits on the edge of the bed, her jacket and her shoes still on, and watches him enter, watches him sit down to eat. She knows he probably hasn't had anything since dinner last night. It's been nearly twenty-four hours. He doesn't know with any more certainty than she does, though: for all he knows, she ate at La Guardia before he got there. Or she ate when she woke up today. Or something.
She doesn't smile, either ruefully or wryly. "Eat," she says quietly.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] The irony is, Lukas is far less careful about the environment than Danicka is. He thinks very little of balling up used paper and tossing it in the wastebasket. Entire phone books go in there sometimes. He buys premium gasoline, spends it all driving around fast than the speed limit. When he goes to eat at a self-serve establishment, he rarely spends the time sorting his refuse into recycle and wastebins.
Maybe he figures what he's giving is already enough. Maybe he just doesn't think too carefully about something so human as conservatism.
Food, then. A single serving now, steak and potatoes and green beans, the same as the meal that Danicka threw in anger, though not at him. She'd gotten two. One for him, one for herself. That tells him enough. And even were it not for the fact that she was likely as hungry as he is -- the fact that Danicka doesn't eat when she's stressed -- there's still this:
the flash of a memory, of Danicka rising to serve her brother, to refill his vodka.
Lukas looks at the food she lays before him, telling him to eat. And then he nudges it gently back toward her.
"Pojďme se podělit?"
[Danicka Musil] Danicka did not sleep for twelve hours. She woke up quite some time before Lukas did, stirring uneasily in a bed not her own, in a bed that was not the one she had for years in her mother's house. She woke up, and saw him, and felt like crying. Had things gone differently over the past twenty-four hours, Danicka would undoubtedly be leaning towards him, taking bites of food off his plate, sharing with him without asking and without needing to be asked. Had things gone differently, though, she may have spent this morning making love to him, her hand pushing at the headboard or grabbing at the pillow beneath her head, her back arched and her throat bared in something entirely unlike submission.
Had things gone differently, she would not still look so tired, would not look as though the idea of eating makes her nauseated, would not look -- even now -- wary of him. He has all but destroyed the dashboard of a rental car since the last time she ate. Snapped at her, or simply snapped, at least as often as she has. Thrown glass in what was too controlled a gesture to have been accident, to have been anything -- she believes -- but sublimating what he wanted to do to her face into action against an inanimate object.
It's not entirely fair; Danicka has shouted at him. Thrown things. Yet Lukas does not flinch from her, shy away from her, keep his distance as though afraid she is going to claw his eyes out. He knows she's angry, knows she has not said something as gentle as I forgive you or I promise even though he has apologized, he has admitted where and when and how he went wrong. She has not apologized for leaving him at the inn. She has not apologized for leaving him this afternoon. She does not seem like she is going to, or that she thinks she was wrong to do so.
This is the sort of thing that has stuck between them, over and over again, and yet simultaneously seems fairly balanced out. He is with her even though it infuriates him that she does not bend like this often, if at all. She is with him even though he is an Ahroun, even though he scares her, even though he could hurt her badly just by not being careful enough when he tries to love her.
Even though she is not sure she can trust him.
Even though she is not sure they can even talk about it.
Danicka shakes her head. Stops. Her shoulders are rounded. "Okay," she says, and scoots forward, taking a spare fork and spearing a bite of green beans. She puts it in her mouth. Chews slowly. Swallows.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] The last time they ate together alone, they were all but ensconced in their own private reality: turned toward one another while they lounged on a couch under the open sky, their plates on their laps, their bodies touching at a hundred tiny, casual points. The time before that, she picked food off his laden plate, which she'd set upon his stomach, and made him think of some sort of mutual consumption, some sort of private Eucharist.
The contrast hurts to think of. They eat silently now, she on the bed and he on the ottoman, the food between them like a chessboard.
He cuts a piece of steak. She eats a green bean. He takes a forkful of potatoes. She picks something else, and so on, and so forth, until the steak's half gone and the potatoes are diminishing and he looks at the green beans and remembers, suddenly, that she'd teased him about eating his vegetables the night he called her a carnivore.
Lukas sets his knife and fork down. No grand production here; no particular drama or melodrama about it. He simply lays down his utensils and then folds on himself, setting his elbows on his knees, plowing his fingers into his hair.
He stays like that for a while, head in his hands.
Murmurs, "Bojím se."
[Danicka Musil] The last time they ate together. The last time they made love. The last time they both had time, the last time something wasn't coming up that kept them from even seeing one another. The memories rattle around in Danicka's mind, too. She remembers the way their constant and distrustful tension with each other had turned, slowly, into that easy comfort, that implicit trust. She remembers curling up against him on the equinox and thinking about the solstice, looking up at the stars as the night cooled and believing again, in a primitive depth of her heart:
We could stay here. We could live like this.
Each of them cradled to the other. Each of them feeding the other somehow. Him offering her the food off his plate, the protection of his teeth, the warmth of his body. Some instinct neither human nor Garou does draw him to find an alpha female, to build a pack made up of not comrades and friends and useful others but of mate and children and even adoptees. That instinct is soothed by the mere thought of living like that with her, belonging to her as much as keeping her. Belonging with her.
That instinct is currently howling. Keening. Because she eats methodically off his plate, her hands and fork out of the way each time he reaches for more food, her intake of sustenance perfunctory at best, forced at worst. He stops eating and she doesn't set her fork down, but she doesn't take another bite.
There is not much of a pause between his words and her own. She knows what she wants to say. She just has to decide to say it.
"Já taky."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Silence, then.
A moment later Lukas turns away. He rises in the same motion. He goes to the window; puts his hands on the sill and looks out. In a towel, in a suit, in jeans and a woven shirt, in fur and blood, in absolutely nothing but his own skin, Lukas has the same thoughtless ease in his body, the sense that he inhabits his body utterly, knows its dimensions and limits, understands it, wields it like a weapon.
That doesn't detract from the tension between his shoulderblades. The way his fingers curl into his palm. He stares out for a long time, until he realizes he's really looking at the dim reflection of Danicka in the glass.
Then he closes his eyes and lays his forehead against the pane
[Danicka Musil] As Lukas crosses the room, the very way he moves relating like a history how much of his time and energy is spent in motion, in conflict, in ripping things open, in lunging forward, in using his physical size and agility to keep the world alive by destroying that which is destructive, Danicka twists on the bed and follows him with her eyes, if not her body. She sets her fork down finally, pushes the container away a bit, farther up on the rumpled covers, and looks at him. The reflection isn't, in the daytime, strong enough for her to realize he's looking at her, knowing she's looking at him, at his back.
She knows him too well now. The way he sleeps. The way he takes his coffee though she's almost never seen him drink it. The vodka he likes best. The side of his face he always shaves first. The speed with which he cuts his meat. The thoughtless, uncivilized eagerness in the way he touches her sometimes, as though he can't wait, can't hold back, can't stop himself, is driven by sheer delight in her presence.
Even angry, hurt, frightened, she'd heard and seen a thin trace of joy that she was back, she was back, she was there.
Danicka knows he loves her.
"What are you scared of?" she asks, leading.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "Losing you," he replies; it's nearly instantaneous, but it's quiet.
And a few moments go by. And then he tells a deeper truth.
"That I've already lost you."
[Danicka Musil] "You haven't."
This, too, is almost instantaneous, as soon as he is finished speaking, as soon as she believes he's told her the truth. Danicka does not append a 'yet' to the sentence, but it's hard not to hear it anyway. It wasn't there before. It wasn't there at the inn, when she threw her arms around him and believed, briefly, that he was going to not only stay with her but hold her, let her curl up and cry to his chest, give her some solid ground to stand on after what happened at her house.
Then, she'd believed in something. And felt it pulled. And now:
the unspoken yet, the actual words before it sounding heavy with regret.
"I'm afraid," she begins slowly, though he hasn't asked, and isn't pushing, and that itself is a struggle -- is something unusual, if not entirely new, "that this was a mistake."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] He turns -- a fast swivel at the waist, at the neck.
"What?"
[Danicka Musil] [Perception + Empathy: ONOZ ZOMG]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 6, 6, 6 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Danicka Musil] She is sitting on the bed still, one leg bent, one leg dangling, turned towards him now. Danicka's brow, already furrowed, winces slightly when he turns like that, when she sees that look on his face and hears that -- something like anguish -- in his voice.
"Come here," she says quietly instead of answering the question, holding out her hand. "Please come here."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas's brow is furrowed. Shock and something that's almost certainly hurt chase one another across his face; both turn to something painfully close to mistrust as she holds her hand out.
He remembers her holding him, holding him so close with her arms and her legs, holding him inside her while she told him:
I can't do this.
A moment later he takes her hand after all. And there's nothing mistrustful about this. His grip is solid, almost fierce. He goes to her.
[Danicka Musil] He could break her hand with that grip, if he tried. He doesn't need to shift to do it. And Danicka knows it. Even her brother didn't have to shift to beat her the way he did. There are few males in North America who might want to strike a woman -- a woman like Danicka, a woman at all -- who would need anything but persistence to put her in traction. But Lukas has achieved a level of physical power that on some level she hopes he does not move beyond. It's already frightening. It's already very close to Too Much.
She wraps her hand around his larger fingers, knowing full well that the smallness of her hand, the way her grip is turned, is reminiscent of a child grasping at an adult. Or it could be. If she let it. If she needed it to be like that, if she needed to inspire protection, she could twist her hand just so and plead without a word, without a change in expression, could make anyone believe that she was consciously trying to seem strong while being betrayed by her body. She knows the sort of person that attempted but failed restraint would appeal to.
Danicka hesitates, and then covers his palm with her own, her fingertips against his wrist, his fingertips against hers, not quite a warrior's clasp but something altogether unique. There is nothing about her hand in his now that is not intimate, or equal. She looks up at him, though, which is inequal. She does not look upset at the fact that she has to tip her head back slightly. She does not expect him to tear out her throat.
"I know how it works," she says quietly. "Claiming. Guardianship. Family. Mates. I know what it means to belong to one of you, and the difference between being under your protection and being yours. I know that all the time we were together, as far as the rest of them were concerned I didn't really belong to you."
She's said this a few times, reiterated it as though it is worldchanging (and perhaps it is): "I do now, though. I'm yours." Her thumb sweeps along his hand. "And as soon as I was, you... acted like it. Something changed. And I was yours. But you weren't mine."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Though Lukas did not know it before, he knows, as soon as Danicka speaks, that she's right. She told the truth. She put her finger on the very pulse of it.
He doesn't quite flinch, though he wants to. He holds her hand, and her eyes, until his eyes drop to her hand in his. He looks at her hand holding his, the way she holds it, the position of their fingers, their wrists. His pulse beats under her fingertips. After a moment, he covers the back of her hand with the other hand. Rubs his thumb over the knuckles for a moment.
Then he drops his hand away. Now it's just their clasped hands again, stretching between them.
"Máš pravdu," he admits softly. His eyes find hers. "Je mi to líto. Já nevím, co ... nebo jak ..."
Pausing; his hand tightening on hers. He forces himself to relax his grip.
A whisper: "Pomoz mi vzpomenout."
[Danicka Musil] It is not, and has never been, about power. Who had it. What was going to be done to the person who didn't have it. As afraid of that as he was, that Danicka lied to get something rather than avoid something, that if he let her in his bed or on top of him or if he let himself give in to not her pretty lies but her soul-crushing truths, it's never been about power.
Until last night. Who had it. What could be done with it. What would be left behind.
When he tells her she's right, that he's sorry, there is no sense that he should be going down on one knee, holding her hand like that, and begging her forgiveness. She does not regard with him nobility, or regal countenance. Her hand is warm in his, and her eyes are still wary but less detached. Because she knows, better than he can ever guess, when he actually understands and when he only thinks he does. She knows the sound of an apology that is weighed down by its own grasp on the initial crime.
He didn't understand outside of her house. Or in his room at the inn. Or out on the street as she hailed a cab. Or in La Guardia, or in O'Hare, or on the flight in between the two. It's possible he could not reconcile how she sought him the way she did while sleeping on the plane with waking up and finding that she was not -- had never been -- curled against his body, trusting his arms around her not to be crushing.
"...You always held back a little," she says quietly, though she isn't talking about his anger or his demands but how tightly he would let himself hold her, how viciously he would defend her, how far he would let himself believe that he had any real claim on her, any at all, "because you knew the limit to your claim."
Which is the truth, again.
"And there is no limit now. None unless you make it."
Which is the terrifying part of the truth, the world shaky beneath their feet, the irrevocable change. What she said before echoes: that Vladislav had every right to do as he did. That in the eyes of the Nation, even if they had known what he was doing with his Kin, there would be no true cause to stop him so long as his flawed sister continued to be capable of reproducing. As long as his father continued to support him and his mate. As long as they were, ultimately, viable, what did it matter to the War or the Cause if he beat them?
Though, all the same, no one ever knew. She lied about that as effectively as she lied about the patriarch of the Sokolovs sitting in the dark of her room, watching her as she pretended to sleep. As she tried to lie, or hide, the fact that she'd needed to brush her hair and rearrange her barettes before walking out to meet her mate at the car.
"But I can't tell you where it is." Which is, perhaps, her answer to his request, his whisper. "I'll help you remember... what this is. But in the end I can only take what you choose to give me."
The way she says it sounds like she knew this even before she asked him, all that time ago, to tell Vladik that he wanted her. She knew what she was getting into. She always did, even if he was her first, well
boyfriend.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] It doesn't escape Lukas that of all the things Danicka could ask of him now -- of all the favor, protection, boons, or indulgences she might ask for, and so many other kinswomen would ask for, and at least two other kinswomen have asked him for --
what it is she asks him for, or rather reminds him of, is to not hold her too tightly.
And of course, of all the things she could ask for, nothing is harder than this. He said, earlier, he would do everything for her. He said, earlier, he did nothing for her. What he didn't say -- what she must have intuited nonetheless -- was how much greater a price the latter was; how much harder it was to stay his hand, to do nothing, to hold back on that instinct of claim, of possession, of defending what was his.
What belongs to him.
"... Já vím," he says. It's very quiet. He wants, suddenly and fiercely, to kiss her hand, kiss her palm, kiss some part of her.
He lets her go instead.
"Chápu," Lukas adds. And then he draws a breath, looks at the food, the bed they slept in but did not use, the hotel room. "I think maybe I should... leave you be for a while." A flicker of a grimace; he's afraid she'll see this as a rejection. He runs his hand over his face, drops it to his side. His palm thumps lightly against his thigh, cushioned by his bath towel.
"But I'll see you again soon?"
[Danicka Musil] Or he tries to let her go. When his hand moves, Danicka's tightens suddenly, fiercely, and her hand wraps around his wrist with a suddenness that is instinctive and a strength that is literally laughable. She cannot hold him. She is not trying. If he pulls, her hand follows until he shakes it off.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] So he doesn't let go. He starts too. She holds him. Not by her strength, which is negligible compared to his, but by something closer to will.
Lukas looks at her questioningly.
[Danicka Musil] "Don't," she says, and though she holds him she refrains from pulling at him, tugging him one way or the other, towards her or not. "Nenuťte mě být zase sama."
Earlier, she had needed him, and he had wanted to go. Earlier, she had told him: I needed you and what she had not yet found the words for was that she needed him to be hers, not just with her or near her but belonging to her, and yet she hadn't had him. He hadn't been hers. What she says in that moment, pleading in a voice that's quite literally and quite consciously hushed, could very well sound like Don't leave me, to which he could tell her -- again -- that she was the one who left. She was the one gone when he woke up. She was the one who left the inn, left the city, left him behind to go after Vladik or not as he willed, because she had no choice but to give up fighting him on it.
Danicka does not beg him not to leave her. What she says is specific, and careful, and agonized. Three hours in La Guardia waiting to go back to Chicago, three hours alone, three hours talking to herself or a Word file...
She exhales, the words rushing out in a sigh. "Prosím, Lukáš, všechno, co jsem kdy chtěl, bylo, aby byl nablízku ty."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] What she says hurts. She told him that all she ever wanted was him. All of him. Everything. She told him that from the start, she wanted to be near him; to read his book, curl against him, have him near. She never hated cabs; she wanted him to take her home.
He hadn't needed to offer. He could've called her a cab. He wanted to take her home.
Digression. She told him, also: I was yours. But you weren't mine.
They hold hands like it's the last link they have -- to the surface, to the living world, to one another. His hand tightens on hers. She doesn't tug him, but he comes nearer himself, one step, then another.
The mattress dips as he sits beside her. The food is on her other side. It's forgotten for now. His shoulder leans into hers, but the contact is slight. He'd like to nuzzle her, kiss her hair; something. He holds that back, too, uncertain of where the boundaries are now, or how to begin.
It feels like he's back at the beginning, though he doesn't mind. It's better than feeling like he's at the end. It feels like he's uncertain of everything all over again, unsure of what she wanted or what she would tolerate; unsure of everything except that he wants her.
Všechno.
All of her.
Lukas says nothing now. He holds her hand.
[Danicka Musil] In the beginning -- their real beginning -- he never gave her the benefit of the doubt. He distrusted her. He lied to her. He threw her under the trampling feet of packmates, of the war, of whatever he needed to do as though he really needed to do it. And she held back, and she fucked another man to convince herself and the universe that she did not care for him, and if one looks back at their beginning it's more likely to inspire a cringe and a wince, not a sigh, not a swelling of warmth.
This is very different. She doesn't ask him why he wanted to leave, doesn't try to pretend she doesn't care, and when he sits beside her she can feel all but vibrating under his skin the desire to touch her, to get closer, and now he's not holding back because he's afraid of giving her everything and getting nothing back. He's given her everything. And if he loses her, it's all gone.
Danicka does not guide him, or resist him, the way she did that first night in the shithole hotel he took her to. She watches him as he gets nearer, her breath hitching once as their shoulders touch, as their hands turn and then intertwine. She laces her fingers slowly in between his, the travel of her palm across Lukas's perhaps unintentionally, but still undeniably, sensual.
Something in her clenches when she senses him holding back, aware now -- though he had to have always known on some level, even if it wasn't at the forefront of his mind -- that he can do anything to her, with her, and receive no censure but the twisting spectre of her distance. There will be no punishment but knowing that he has her, he is holding her, she belongs to him, but that she is a million miles away, pretending whatever she has to in order to keep herself safe so long as he is alive, before his death transfers the claim on her back to her nearest Garou relative.
Better, maybe, to have had her without having her. To know that she was with him solely because she wanted to be, and not because he could control utterly her comings and goings, her future, her life. To know that if he lost her trust, or her love, or both, she would go away rather than pretending.
It must be terrifying.
She puts her free hand on his cheek, watches him, feeling unease in his pulse, wondering if his soul is swaying as it tries to find its footing. Some part of her, truthfully, has no sympathy. Some part of her looks back on her own life, on her home and the Sokolovs and New Orleans and Martin and everything she's ever known, and she does not feel a shred of concern for Lukas's uncertainty. It is a small part. A steadily, if gradually, diminishing part. The rest of her is this: her hand covering his cheek, cleanshaven now or mostly so.
And her, leaning over and pulling his face around to kiss his mouth, to press her lips softly against his. They part a moment later, the two of them rather than her lips, and her briefly closed eyes open. She's whispering. "Ukaž mi, že to nebyla chyba." And she's kissing him again, longer this time, harder, a small shudder going down her spine, though it isn't quite lust that causes it. "Nemyslete si, že o tom, co se změnilo," she murmurs, her lips moving against his mouth, her hand falling to his shoulder. "Nebuď tak bát."
Which may as well be: listen. listen. just listen.
"Být můj Lukášek," she says, letting go of his hand so she can wrap both of her arms around him, calling him by the name she used so often at the beginning, when he was the Shadow Lord Ahroun glaring at her from a wingbacked armchair in the Brotherhood, when he was the ravenous Full Moon on top of her, his hand going from her throat to the bed, when he was frightening, when he was too much, when before he knew that she had memories of him as a child, she called him by the affectionate nickname he'd gone by then.
She kisses him again, using the name like it's a different person entirely.
Or like the man he is in the Nation is.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Fear should be the very last thing a Shadow Lord admits to, much less to his own kin. Claim should be the very last thing a Shadow Lord kin dares, especially toward the Garou that claims her.
There's so much between them that's different. That's not how it should be in the eyes of the Nation; their Tribe. There's so much between them that's rare, unique, precious.
Of course he's afraid. He feels like it might be slipping away. Of course he's afraid. He feels like he might lose her: this rare thing, this unique woman, this precious mate of his, who claimed him before he ever began to think of her as my mate, mine.
She puts her hand on his cheek. He shaved minutes ago; his skin is smooth and soft. Not because he pampers himself, not because he slathers himself in creams and lotions, but because he changes his very form. Because his imperfections are shed every time he sheds his skin; because when he returns to his human form, he literally reforms his entire body anew.
Beneath the skin, the muscle is lean; the bone is hard. The arch of his cheekbone is prominent beneath her fingers. The angle of his jaw. His lips begin to part when she kisses him the first time, and his eyelids shut, and then she draws back and he looks at her with something like confusion in his eyes.
She tells him: Show me.
The confusion clears. His hand wraps gently over her wrist, her forearm. The hinge of his jaw moves under her hand when she kisses him again, his mouth opening to hers, breathing in the words she whispers into the miniscule space between, inhaling what has changed and do not be afraid, and their hands draw apart, and she wraps her arms around him and his go around her and
Být můj Lukášek, she says.
He pauses; it's not quite a halt. He draws back; not quite away. Enough space between for light to scatter between them, now. Enough light to make his eyes brilliant. He touches her face with his hand, puts his palm to her cheek, pushes his fingers back into her hair carefully, carefully, undoing her braid little by little.
"Miluji tě," he says. The words seem to ache. They make him wince a little, and then, fiercely, suddenly, he kisses her, gasping an exhaling into her mouth. "Miluji tě."
Another echo: he draws her up, swings her onto his lap. The same, and not the same. So much more of him is bare now. And the sun is up. And the light comes from behind her, indirect, refracted across the sky; it casts in over her shoulders all the same, the same shoulders that his palms mold over, that his hands follow to her back, her ribs, to her waist.
He holds her by the waist, and he turns his face up to hers. Eyes closed to the world, he kisses her with a growing hunger. Moments go by, each slipping into the next. His heart beats faster. His breathing quickens. He tries to make himself wait; he tries to be patient, and she can feel that. He doesn't do a very good job of it. The kiss deepens, the bottom dropping away. His want sharpens, intensifies to a bleeding edge, and his hands are under her blouse now, rucking it up her back ahead of his wrists as he pushes his palms up over her ribs, over her shoulderblades, his fingers pulling at her flesh
and then abruptly withdrawing from beneath her shirt. He wraps one arm around her, presses the other palm to the mattress. Pushes himself backward, bringing her with him -- the container of food jostles, does not spill -- he lays himself out crosswise on the large mattress, sinking down while his hands follow her hips to her thighs to her knees, rise to take her face between his hands. He brings her down over him, lifts his head from the mattress to kiss her again. Contact reestablishes itself as fiercely as a lightning strike. His hands leave her face to trail down her body. He pushes her coat off. He finds the buttons on her blouse, maddeningly tiny, and he begins to pull and work at them.
"Řekni mi, pokud mě budeš potřebovat, aby zpomalil." It's a mutter against her mouth. He kisses her again, and then his hand finds its way into her blouse; he groans at the touch of her. "Danička."
[Danicka Musil] Early, early on, Lukas had haltingly, begrudgingly confessed why he had not been sure how he would've survived if she'd met him on that first -- no, second -- full moon and told him that this was the last time she was going to touch him, that this was the last time she was going to let him be inside her, that this was the last time she wanted to see him. Because, he finally managed to whisper, this -- she -- had become necessary. She had become the keystone. Remove what is necessary, remove what is vital, and things fall apart.
That's how he talked about losing her, long before he talked about loving her, before, even, they talked about taming one another. And she knows. God, how well she knows what he meant then, what he's afraid of now: she lost him. Not to death, not to battle, but lost him all the same. He wanted to go, wanted it badly enough to leave even though she begged. For days she could not think of him without feeling overcome, even dizzy, trying to reconcile what she'd felt with him and the trust she'd had in him with the fact that he was gone, and he did not want her anymore, and would not even fuck her because he could not trust her.
Never had.
He was so far away, then, and she could not conjure him without agony. In the rental car, in the hotel, on the plane, he had been right there, and yet it had still been the same: far away. Too far away to feel anything but a loss.
Her kisses are slow and thoughtful, are giving, are inscribing secrets and holy orders onto his lips. His kisses are opening, and wanting, and seeking, his mouth as thirsty as a pilgrim, as filled with longing. Danicka shudders again when he tells her he loves her, gasps when he says it again, when he kisses her like that, when he goes from gently unwinding her braid to pulling her onto his body.
There's a flicker of hesitation, of tension, before she parts her legs and sinks down on his lap, pressing her denim-clad lower half against his thighs, the contrasting fabrics covering her upper half brushing against his chest. She breathes in deeply before kissing him again, her hands on his back, running over his flesh now, clutching at him then. It's afternoon: dinnertime, really, though neither of them has come close to eating enough in the last twenty-four hours. She kisses him harder as he holds her waist, taking her hands off of him and her arms from around him so she can shrug out of her coat before he has a chance to get to it. She wiggles it off her arms, letting it drop to the floor by the side of the bed.
An instant later she's holding him again, her arms bared and his hands are up her shirt, against her skin, feeling flesh and feeling the satin of her bra when his fingertips pass the middle of her back, reach towards her shoulderblades. It is not a loose blouse; even pushing it up and out of his way, the delicate fabric holds his wrists close and threatens to tear against his eagerness. Danicka does not seem to care. Danicka does not seem to notice.
She stops kissing him as he puts his arm around her and tries to pull them both further on the bed. She leans down over him, bracing her hands on either side of his head, her loose hair falling around her face and brushing his, now. Lukas lifts up to kiss her again, find her again. Danicka lets out a soft moan even before they make contact, and sinks towards him, pressing the entire length of her body against him, her thighs tensing on either side of his torso, her hips rolling down, and hard.
The buttons are small, round, pearlescent. They're nearly invisible against the paler parts of the pattern, and there are far too many of them. Danicka doesn't offer to help, doesn't move her hands between their bodies.
"Sundejte to ze mě," she all but pants, in answer to his warning, his request. Enough buttons are undone so that Lukas's broad hand can slip between the front folds and cup one of her small, satin-cupped breasts in his hand, but not enough to see. Not enough to do anything but feel her: feel her warmth transmuted through the fabric, feel her nipple hardening and pressing against his palm, feel her heart beating against the heel of his hand.
Danicka moves her mouth down to his jaw, kisses chastely there, moves to his throat and licks with animalistic abandon, sucks at the thin flesh. She makes herself groan, and shiver, at the feel of him in her mouth. And she rocks against him again, wanton as the cat in heat, the whore, he once wished she really was.
"Nepamatuji si naposledy, co jsem miloval vás," she all but growls against his neck, leaning over him and pressing her weight onto his chest, bending one leg harder at the knee so she can reach back and yank at her shoelaces, dropping her foot again to wiggle it out of the sneaker. It drops to the floor. She doesn't reach for the right shoe yet. She runs her hands up his chest, down his sides, up to his shoulders again, down his arms to his biceps. "Lukáš, if I don't fuck you right now I'm going to lose my mind. Please don't slow down. Please."
She gasps it the last time, closes her eyes, shudders atop him. "Lukáš, baby, please."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] The mattress shudders under them as Lukas throws his head back. It's the way she says his name. It's the ways she says fuck you right now. It's the way she says please, over and over and over, while she writhes on him and tugs at her shoe and runs her palms all. over. his bare torso.
"God," he pants. And then he grabs her around the waist and turns her on her back, rolling atop her in the same motion. That does it for their food; the carton jostles off the side of the bed and thumps to the floor. Steak and potatoes and green beans everywhere. Sauce everywhere. One hell of a cleaning surcharge is going to get appended to his AmEx charge tomorrow. Ask Lukas if he cares.
Ask him if he cares about anything right now other than running his hands over her body, up the front of her blouse and down again. Ask him if he cares about anything other than tearing his towel off his hips and casting it to the floor, taking her hand and guiding it to his cock.
Which makes his head drop forward. And his stomach suck in. And every muscle in his body runs rigid for a second, resisting the urge to fuck her hand like an animal. A low groan escapes him. Then he grabs her blouse and now he's literally tugging and tearing at the buttons, popping one off its threads for every two or three he actually manages to unbutton.
"Získat ty džíny pryč." His voice is low with strain, a monotone of tension. "Dostat je pryč, dítě. Bože, už se nemůžu dočkat být uvnitř vás."
There goes the last button. He pushes the halves of her blouse open and leaves her to wiggle out of it as she will; he's too busy pushing her bra up and out of the way, filling his hands with her breasts. It makes him groan again, and he doesn't even try to muffle it. There's nothing to muffle it on, anyway. Lukas leans down over her like an animal bending to a meal, crouched over her, his larger body folded and bent on itself to accommodate the way he presses his mouth to her neck, draws it to her breasts, sucks her nipples between his teeth and bites at her with his lips.
Her heart beats under his mouth. He opens his mouth wider, as though he wanted to take all of her breast into his mouth, as though he wanted to eat her alive. He does want to eat her alive. Hard and irresistibly strong, his hands come under her back, arch her up for him, bring her into his mouth.
This time when he groans, it is muffled. And then his hands go to fight her jeans off her hips.
[Danicka Musil] When she said that she couldn't remember the last time, she wasn't kidding. She doesn't note it in her planner, doesn't tap it out into her iPhone or circle a number on a calendar. Danicka will have to keep track of days as a student but since January, since leaving the Sokolovs and coming here, she hasn't bothered to even know what day of the week it is, most times. Her habit is the unsettled, the uncertain, the freeform. She can remember every detail of the last time her mate fucked her, remembers the way and the words he growled in her ear, the precise speed and pressure with which he touched her, the heat of his tongue on her clit
but she doesn't remember when it happened. How long ago. All the sunrises and sunsets and changing of the moon's phase since then make it seem like months. The events of the last twenty-four hours make it seem like years.
The first time they were together, they'd known each other about two weeks and had wanted each other so intensely, for so much of that time, that they had not pulled their bodies apart until dawn. He'd assumed she was leaving and he'd asked her how many more times he could have her, and even while the former made her chest cave in a little on itself, the latter made her breath and her heartbeat quicken.
Two weeks later they'd fucked hard enough against a hotel room wall to make Danicka cry out and the picture on that wall bounce, enough to make the wall shudder slightly behind her back.
This may be the longest they've gone without what's been right -- what's been damn near perfect -- from the very start. Danicka has not kept count this time. She doesn't know. She genuinely has no idea how long it's been since his body was naked and pressed against her like it is now, since she felt his hard cock in her hand, since she moved her palm and stroked him and made him make that sound. She doesn't remember when she last had his mouth on her breasts, when he last savaged and adored them at once like this
and the longer it goes on, the more he touches her and the more clothing he gets off of her, it feels like it was just a month ago. Just a few weeks. Just a week. Just a few days. Yesterday. Last night. Now.
Danicka yelps when he flips her onto her back, laughs aloud, pulls him down to her to kiss him again, kisses him while he's tearing off his towel and her buttons and wordlessly telling her touch me, touch it, here, please, now, this, don't stop. And her hands are warm. They're almost always warm. She wraps one around his cock and strokes him as though she's been fucking him for years and not months, as though she knows him, as though she is her and she's been paying closer attention to him than any woman has since the first one.
As though things are as they are. And as they have been from the first time she kissed him, the first time he kissed her, the first time they collided.
"Tah, lásko," she whispers, when he groans, when he goes rigid and tries not to thrust his hips. She lifts her head, nips at his lower lip, licks it, cajoling and coaxing him with her hand, with her voice. "To je v pořádku. Líbí se ho dotýkaly."
She dose not obey him, doesn't reach down to work off her jeans. She strokes him instead as he fights with her buttons, her own breathing turning heavier, more unsteady. Her bra is white satin, unadorned by lace or embellishment, to simplistic to be bridal and too decadent to be virginal. She arches her back once, but as soon as she relaxes again she's fighting her right shoe off with the toes of her left foot. All the movement is a distraction, makes her grip and her rhythm hitch, but Danicka reaches to the back of his head with her left hand and grabs his hair, pulls him to her, shoves her tongue in his mouth the way that teenagers kiss, the way that people attack each other when they are less worried about finesse and mostly just... hungry.
He moves out of her reach when he bends, and she whimpers in harsh frustration, her palm now on his abdomen, now on his stomach, now on his chest. "Prostě trhat všechno vypnout," she gasps, feeling his fingers on the waistline of her jeans. "Fuck, Lukáš, just get it off me."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] In the wake of their passion, Lukas sometimes feels unanchored, adrift, lost in time. It could be anywhen. He could be anywhere. His thoughts might've scattered across the sheets like stars, constellations for her to divine his future from. All his history might be unfurled across the bed, and he sometimes can't rightly say which moment, which hour, which year it is he inhabits.
And then -- sometimes, all his focus sharpens. Whittles. Comes down to now. The here, the now, the present, the immediacy. This instant. This bed. Her.
Tah, lásko, she whispers, and his hands slide off her chest for a moment, leave the buttons alone, curl into the hotel counterpane. His eyes are closed and his face is taut with tension and he does as she says, does as he wants, fucks her fingers and her palm with the sort of singleminded, unified force that she's felt him fuck her with
again and again and again.
It doesn't last. She keeps stroking him, does this until he's tearing at her shirt, does this until he's literally gasping for her to stop, stop baby before he's savaging her breasts, adoring her breasts, the way he does. He draws himself out of her hand, which presses to his hard abdomen, his shuddering stomach, while her other hand twists into his hair.
They kiss like teenagers, like people mad with lust, like animals. He snarls into her mouth. She wants him to tear it all off. He draws back. Blue and black, the former pale, the latter lightless: his eyes, fixed on hers, unflinching. He's panting. He stares for a second, and then comprehension sets in. He pushes himself off the bed, backwards, comes up off of her and stands and grabs the waist of her jeans in his hands, pops the button open, whips the zipper down, draws the whole thing down, down, down.
White cotton or otherwise, her panties come with her jeans. Everything pools to the floor. There's a towel down there. There's a mess down there. Lukas doesn't care about this, either. It doesn't matter now, at least not to him, that she's kin, that he's Garou, that she's his, that he may as well own her so far as the nation is concerned. The nation doesn't even fucking matter.
That she is his mate, however: this matters.
This matters.
Lukas grabs her by the hips. He lifts her up, lifts her hips straight off the bed, shifts his hands and hoists her up and shrugs her legs over his shoulders and drags her body up in a smooth arch, drags her cunt to his face just like that, plants his mouth on her with his eyes blazing like gas flames, like afterburners, like the heart of a star. His arms are knotted with strain. Her body is taut with it. For a few incandescent seconds, he eats at her pussy, sucks at her and works at her, holds her where she is with his hands and moves into her with his head, his neck, his shoulders, as though he might actually fuck her just like this with his face.
Limber as Danicka is, she can't sustain the position for long. Strong as Lukas is, he can't hold her weight cantilevered like that forever. He lowers her; carefully; and then not so carefully, dropping her the last six or seven inches to the bed. His mouth is wet. He wipes it on the back of his hand, and then he licks her slick from the back of his hand in a single, thoughtless swipe of his tongue. Not once do his eyes leave hers. He moves her to the edge of the bed.
"Otoč se, lásko." He's unsteady with want. His voice is low; it has to be, or he's afraid he'll pant for her like a fucking dog. "Otočte se a sklonit dolů. Dovolte mi, abych vidět to."
He can't seem to keep his hands off her. He touches her breasts, runs his hand down her side, up her back. He slips his hand between her legs and caresses her there, rubs his fingers over and over her, follows her with his touch even as she -- if she -- bends over the edge of the bed like he asks.
[Danicka Musil] Her jeans are stiff and tight, the harshness of the fabric the speed with which he draws it off rubbing redness into her thighs, knees, calves. She's wearing little white ankle socks, the cuffs invisible with her sneakers on, which they aren't now. Her panties are satin and cotton, high-cut, low-waisted, the same surprising and incongruent white as her bra. And then they're gone. Danicka is helping Lukas, wriggling her legs out of the jeans, creating a V with her upper body and her thighs so she can sit up and get her shirt down her arms and off, so she can reach back and unclasp her bra to get its pushed-up cups off of her completely.
In moments, vicious with kisses and tearing clothes, all Danicka has left are those little white socks, a far cry from the thigh-high stockings she had on last night, had on when they were on the plane, when she was leaving him, when she was serving dinner at a home that is no longer hers. She starts to pull him towards her, starts to grasp at his shoulders and his arms, giving a low whimper of pleading. But he doesn't come. He throws her legs over her shoulders, makes her yelp again as he grabs her hips and buries his face between her legs, and even in this position her entire body arches at the suddenness and the intensity of his tongue finding her like that.
"Oh, fuck..." she half moans, half gasps, her eyes closing and one hand going to the bedspread, one going into his hair. Her fingers rub at his scalp, incongruously gentle. "Baby," Danicka says, quivering against him, shuddering. "Baby," she repeats, begging but not telling him what she wants, her wet smearing across his lips and chin. Every time he licks her clean there's more in response, and she pants when he sucks at her, squirms, bucks her hips against his face
before he lowers and then drops her back to the bed. Her eyes open again, find him as he's licking her off his hand, staring at her, reaching for her hips and legs and dragging her to the edge of the bed.
Her heart is hammering so hard she hears a rushing noise in her ears. She looks at him, chest moving with every breath, and she can't speak at first -- which is new -- and so she just shakes her head once, twice. She puts her hands on his chest, shudders violently when he reaches between her legs and strokes her, gets his fingers as slippery as his mouth.
"Baby, no," she whispers. "Prosím. Potřebuji vidět váš očí. Prosím, ne." Her hands run down his body, she starts to sit up, and her breath touches his face, her hand touches his cock. She strokes him once, kisses him slowly, her free arm wrapping around his shoulders. Her long legs wrap around his hips, urge him closer, pull at him as her arm does. "Miluj mě. Prosím, Lukáš. Prosím. Pojď ve mně."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas's teeth part when she takes him in hand, strokes him like that. He makes a low sound, ah, an open vowel of sensation and necessity. His eyes close for a second, reopen. They burn. He catches her behind the neck with his free hand, pulls her forward. She wraps around him. They move together, flow together, pour together and they kiss; he kisses her like he can't get enough of her, like she's water, like she's air.
And he touches her, strokes her with something that's far closer to need than finesse, strokes her and touches her and parts her flesh with his fingers, slips his fingers into her.
He moans into her mouth. He bites her lip. Turns his face to the side and gasps for air. Turns back.
Kisses her again, harder and deeper, grasping himself at the base of his cock now, pushing into her in one solid flex of his hips and oh god the feel of her; the pull of her arms, her legs, her body, drawing him into the center of her. His hand, caught between them, pulls loose. Wraps around her. He lifts her off the bed, onto his body, settles her weight upon him and drives his cock deeper, sinks in until their hips connect.
"Bože, dítě, se mi stýskalo ty."
It's all one rush of a sentence, pressed into her mouth. He says it like he hasn't fucked her in longer than he can remember. He says it like he hasn't seen her in longer than he can remember. He says it like they haven't been together all night, all the previous evening.
His hands move over her back. Clutch her close. Shift her. Take her by the hips and rock her gently upward; down again. He never stops kissing her, even when he sets her back on the edge of the bed and presses his hands down on either side of her hips, under her arms, against her sides.
Face to hers, mouth to hers, gasping breath out of what space he could find between, he starts to move into her. He fucks her, chest moving against hers with every breath, bodies pressed close, his hands pulling the sheets beneath her into wrinkles and folds.
[Danicka Musil] She is incredibly, overpoweringly glad that he does not stop himself, or her. She lets out a full, short pant of air when he goes from kissing her, exploring her, to taking hold of himself and entering her. It turns into a stifled groan as he slides home, pulls her hips to his and melds their flesh together. Danicka's hands move to his biceps, curl, fingers digging into him. It's been a very, very long time. She gasps when he fills her, shudders at the words he half-kisses, half-tattoos onto her mouth, closes her eyes with a hard furrow to her brow at the way he holds her to his body, to his chest, to him.
They haven't been together all day. They slept in the same bed but did not sleep together. They took a plane ride together but did not talk, only touched because Danicka, in the thoughtlessness of sleep, lost her rancor and was guided only by instinct. That her instinct now pulls her to him more strongly than it tells her to run the other way is saying something, but in a whisper, where neither of them can hear it right now.
Her ankles hook behind his back. Her hands gentle on his arms when he starts to move, when he stops clutching at her and moving her and rearranging her on top of the bed and starts making love to her, finally, finally, as though she's been waiting
as long as she's been waiting.
Danicka breathes out in a ragged, slow shudder. Her eyes open, find his. Her hands find his face, stroke his cheeks, his jaw, push his hair back. She lifts herself up to kiss him, again and again, pressing her lips to his every time he drives into her.
"My love," she whispers. "Oh, my love."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas's eyes are closed for seconds, strokes, heavy slides of his body into hers. There's such strength in him; the sort of raw, visceral power that marks him indelibly as one of the Full Moon, a creature made to destroy.
Even if he hides that. Even if he pretends otherwise. Even if he pretends control, and civility, and carefulness.
He is nothing like the face he wears in public. She saw through that from the start. He's not much like the face he wears in the Nation, either. His honor is cruder and more savage than the honor he pretends there. He is nowhere near as polite and nice as he pretends to be.
Perhaps she sees through that, too. She calls him Lukáš, which no one else in this city does. She calls him Lukášek, which no one else but his family does.
She calls him mine. My Lukáš. My Lukášek.
Which no one else on this planet does.
And she calls him my love. She told him once, fucked up, angry, standing outside Mr. C's, that two people have loved her; she's only loved one. He's never given her a string of numbers, the women he's loved, the women who've loved him. If he had, it would be simple enough:
one. and one.
They kiss again and again. She kisses him, pressing her mouth to his, sealing his mouth with hers, whispering to him, stroking his face, his hair. His eyes open when she speaks to him. He kisses her in lieu of answer. His eyes flare every time he moves into her. A shiver goes down his back. He moves her hips, tilts them differently, hits her deeper, gasps with it. Does it again, faster. Grasps her hip in his hand and holds her there, right there, braces himself on the other hand, fucks her slim body and her tight cunt, fucks her while her thighs embrace him and her hands move over him as though to trace him from nothingness.
It's been so fucking long.
It's been so fucking long that when he remembers -- as he inevitably does, sooner or later -- when he remembers and looks down and realizes it's this fucking good and she's this fucking close because there's literally nothing between them, nothing, he doesn't want to stop. He shuts his eyes and turns his face suddenly to her neck, her shoulder; bites at her; groans with a sudden and tortured impatience.
And then he does stop. Slows; stops. Pants against her skin. Kisses her flesh.
Truthfully, he means to ask her now where if she has condoms in her bag. Truthfully, he means to tell her he needs to get a goddamn condom; he needs to pull away from her, pull out of her, find a fucking prophylactic and slap it on. He means to tell her this, and he means to draw away, but he kisses her shoulder again, harder, and then suddenly his arm wraps around her and he pulls her to him, closer, onto him, closer.
"Dovol mi zůstat." That's what he says instead. "Láska, nech mě pocit, že jste."
[Danicka Musil] For all the things that Lukas cannot bring himself to tell her, even now -- the little and strange things he loves about her, the thoughts that cross his mind that remain unspoken because they give so much away -- he is and has been from the beginning as clear to her as a shallow bowl of pure water. Sometimes she misunderstands. Sometimes he gives no outward indication, no possible chance for her to see that there's anything more, but he almost never deceives her. He is not a liar.
She is not just one.
Danicka's drive is not to obfuscate for the sake of power or control or amusement but to protect herself. She looks closer than most people. She reads others on reflex, habitually, constantly. It takes effort for her to give them the privacy of their own intended deceptions. It takes effort for her to trust what she is told and not what she thinks she's seeing in the movement of eyes, the tone of voices.
Ultimately it comes down to the fact that Danicka knows who he is. What he is. She was telling him not to hold back before he even acknowledged how much he was holding back, or at least the real reasons he was doing so. She mated with him in the woods, in the sweat and heat of summer, in the dirt, the grass, the branches of trees drawing blood from scratches on her arms and legs. She always knew what he really was, even when she thought he was also something else entirely.
(An Ahroun. History repeating. A mistake.)
She runs her hands up his chest like she has to memorize him, though, or learn him anew, and yet when her fingertips and thumbs traverse certain spots known to make him gasp, known to make him shudder, she lingers. She strokes the pad of her thumb over his nipple. She traces his obliques through his skin, breathes in and then pants out as his hips flex and pull him out, send him in again. She has not had him in so long that he feels new. She remembers him so well that she wonders
"God," she groans -- inane, overcome -- her head tipped back, her arms and legs wrapped around his shoulders and waist, the force of his body on and in hers moving her against the bed every time, "how did I live before fucking you?"
And if he laughs, she laughs with him, until the next slam of his hips to connect with hers, the next time he fills her, the next time his chest brushes her breasts or his shoulders flex under her hands. Then her breath hitches, and her laugh turns sharply and suddenly into a moan, her head turning to one side, one hand moving to the bedspread to grasp a fold of it in her hand, in her fist. When he takes her hips and moves her so he can fuck her deeper, so he can hold himself up just a bit and watch their bodies coming together, her fingernails dig into his shoulder as her arm hooks under his and behind his shoulderblade; she has hair stuck to her cheek, veiling her profile.
I love it when you watch, she said once. She thinks she said. She can't remember. She doesn't care. She sees him look down and she sees remembrance flicker in his eyes a second before he buries his face against her skin. Danicka wraps both arms around him again, grasps his hair, holds him close as though irrationally, madly concerned that he's going to put his hands on the mattress and force himself away. Pull back. Pull out. Disconnect.
Again.
"Don't stop," she gasps, when he starts slowing. Her thighs tighten around him; her cunt clenches at him as though to keep him there, as though to take him deeper again. "Baby, please don't stop," and it's almost a wail, this panting pleading as her hips roll and she fucks up against him, grinds back as hard as she can while held to the bed.
Dovol mi zůstat.
"Tento je to, co chci," she whispers in his ear, kissing his temple as he cradles her to him, as he holds her, as he fights to stay close. Then, closer to a groan: "Prosím, lásko, chci přijít uvnitř aby ses mně."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Tento je to, co chci.
That's all it takes. Lukas reacts like nitroglycerin to a spark. He grabs Danicka by the hips and shifts her up on the bed. When his cock slips out of her he groans, short and sharp, and for a moment she might think he's about to go for a condom after all, dig through her bag, tear through his wallet until he finds one.
But no.
He's moving her up onto the bed, that's all. Shifting her from the edge. Turning her lengthwise along the axis of the bed, laying her down, climbing up. The mattress dents beneath his knees. He comes down over her almost before she's had a chance to settle. His hands are everywhere; her breasts, her hips, touching her between her legs. He nips at her neck, gnaws at her nipples with his lips, shifts and nudges and parts her legs around him, wraps them up around his sides, his ribs.
A second time he enters her, swifter than the first, so sudden and fast and deep that he pants a tattered sound against her chest. His heart is thundering behind his breastbone. His hands grasp at her shoulderblades, then turn over. Press to the mattress. He kisses her blindly: her breasts, her collarbone, her mouth.
Muffled, the sound he releases against her mouth as he moves into her again. They're lengthwise on the bed. The pillows are still beneath the counterpanes, the sheets still tucked. His hand cradles her head. He holds her where she is, right there, right where she is, and his hips rock against hers, piston into hers; he fucks her with a sudden, limitless sort of energy, until the mattress shudders against the headboard, until he's gasping and groaning against her mouth, then her shoulder.
"Oh god." Barely words. Ragged, tatters, a burnt flag of meaning. His hands move through her hair, over and over, spread the blonde over the pillows, the bedspread. Both his hands cradling her head now, as though she were something precious
which she is
and his mouth roaming her face, her mouth, her cheek and her jaw. A rhythm build between them, his cock in her, his breath in his lungs, her breath in hers, their hearts. "Yeah," he pants when she starts to whimper, when she starts to arch, grasp at him with her hands. "That's it. To je ono, bejby, kurva mě zpátky."
And when she cries out -- his mouth over hers, swallowing the sound.
And when she grasps at him -- his hand clenching in her hair, coming within a hairsbreadth of closing down entirely too hard before he remembers himself, forces his hand away, clutches at the bedsheets instead.
"Jsi tak zasraně dobrý," he whispers to her. The next stroke is harder than the last, deep, it makes him bow his head against her for a second, groaning sharply. "Jsi tak zasraně dobrý."
And -- his hand passing down her body now, squeezing between their torsos to caress her breasts, to tug gently at her nipple, to splay over her abdomen as though to hold her down, to keep her where she is, legs parted, back to the mattress, getting fucked --
"Chci vidět ty přijít."
[Danicka Musil] For a moment, she does think he's going to leave her on the bed and go to his wallet, go to her bag, find and rip open a condom anyway. Danicka gasps when he moves her (suddenly), when he slips out of her (suddenly). She reaches for him instantly, pulls at him by the arms and shoulders, whimpers at him. He's coming before she has a chance to settle, but that's because she isn't settling. She's leaning up, she's wrapping her arms around his neck, she's kissing him hard as he puts his hands on her knees and helps her legs move apart, she's tasting herself on his tongue while he's stroking her clit, she's moaning when his mouth trails down and his lips wrap around her nipple. She is anything but settled.
This time her ankles don't cross behind his back. She hooks her right around his torso as he slides back over her, folds her left over his shoulder, reaches her hands up to hold onto the headboard as the head of his cock finds her cunt and pushes inside again. Danicka yells out then, at the speed of it, at the sudden reintroduction of one body to another.
"Jemně!" she cries out, her back arching, her breasts pressed to his cheek, her voice half a whimper. She kisses him back when his mouth finds her, sucks his lower lip into her mouth, shudders at the force of his first thrust. The covers are askew underneath them, still rumpled from their sleep, pillows still dented from their heads. Their smell still lingers. Will even more, after this. Lukas is fucking her hard, fast, panting for it, impressing his moans into her skin. She shivers again, grinds her hips against his. "Prosím, Lukáš. Není tak tvrdý. Je to už příliš dlouho."
Danicka does whimper. She does cry out. Her pussy clenches around him, and she fucks him back, and she wraps her hands around the bars of the headboard while he's grabbing at the sheets, whispering in her ear. She tilts her hips up with her leg over his body like that to take him deeper, to let him in, to make him make that noise and drop his head, cling to her, moan for her, need this.
"Prosím, lásko, je to už tak dávno. Prosím, je jemný."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] What she says to him -- over and over while her body squeezes around him, while her legs pull him deeper -- makes Lukas lose his mind a little. His hands close on the sheets, grasp great handfuls of fabric into his palms. He drops his brow against hers, gasping. She's holding onto the headboard, telling him gently, gently while she moves like that, fucks him like that, makes it nearly impossible to think of anything but
her.
fucking him.
like that.
"Baby," he pants, "baby, stop. Don't -- don't do that. God! Baby, I can't ... I can't think when you do that."
His hand on her hip. His hand on her hip, gripping, holding her still. Holding still. Stilling. Stillness. His chest is rising and falling, rapid, rushing for breath. He gasps atop her, holds onto her, eyes closed, lips parted, holding on to control. His mouth closes for a second, his throat moving as he swallows. Then he's back to pulling for air, desperately, raising his chin and kissing her mouth with the same, starved desperation.
"Je mi to líto," he murmurs, between one inevitable pull of his mouth to hers and the next. "Je mi to líto. Budu něžný."
His eyes opening again, brilliant blue at this distance, in this act. His hand shifts, opens over her waist. He's looking down now, brow furrowed, not a frown but something closer to an expression of pain, or amazement, or --
watching himself, now, watching as he fucks her slower, gentler, steady deep strokes into her body that eventually drive a groan from his throat, unstoppable, that he muffles against her neck.
[Danicka Musil] There are so few times that Lukas has gasped -- begged -- her for mercy. She can count on one hand the number of times he has told her that something she's doing makes it impossible for him to think clearly, or at all.
She can remember him saying it when they were at the Omni one night, when she was talking to him about his confession that he would protect her. That he wished he could. She had pulled a rain-saturated yellow dress up over her head and off her body. Wet blue lace clung to her breasts, slouched leather boots hugged her calves, and the rest of her chilled body remained exposed. Her panties were in his pocket at the time. She could still feel how hard he'd fucked her in the bathroom at the restaurant. If he'd gotten close enough he would've smelled their sex between her legs, on her upper thighs.
I can't think when you do that, he'd said, and looked away when she told him to undress for her, unable to look at her, swallowing and closing his eyes to try and maintain his concentration, finish the conversation even when she was reaching up to push a lock of wet hair off his forehead.
And now:
I can't think when you do that, he gasps, begging her to stop, begging her not to do what it is she's doing, fucking his cock, legs tangled around his body and arms and torso stretched out underneath him. Only he's not looking at her across a hotel room. He's inside her, and there's nothing between them, and he can see her eyes light up and feel her body react and watch her lips part with panting moans every time he shifts his hips, every time he thrusts, every time he grinds back into her cunt and wetness slides out around him.
So he holds her still. He touches their foreheads together, a gesture so intimate she shares it more rarely than a kiss, one she doesn't even think about because no one else has sought it the way he has, one she doesn't hesitate over because she returns it thoughtlessly, instinctively, comforted and comforting. He puts his hand on her body and holds her against the bed. She resists at first, which is rare for her, squirming against his hand and his body to try and be allowed to move again, to roll her hips and fuck him back
but then relents. She takes a deep breath, her hands clenching around the bars and then relaxing, her eyes closing and then opening to his, her mouth pressing fully against his when he kisses her, gasping the breaths out of her mouth as though he's hungry for the very life inside her.
And his hand relents, too, relaxes. She doesn't immediately start fucking him like that again, watches him as he looks down, shuddering as his cock slides out of her, back in. "Oh, god," she breathes, and lets go of the headboard. "Oh god, Lukáš," she gasps again, his name both sharper and more imploring on her tongue than the prayer, her arms wrapping around him, holding him to her chest, to her neck, as though she would nurture him. Nourish him. Her fingers go into his hair. Her head tips back as his mouth touches her throat.
He can feel the words vibrate against his lips. His tongue.
"Řekni mi, jsi můj. Bože, Lukáš, řekni mé jméno. Řekni mi, jsi můj."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Sharply, he bites her. Her words have barely cleared her lips. It's thoughtless, a primal expression of -- need, connection, lust, something. The flesh of her shoulder caught between his teeth, he groans, once, heavily.
Relents. Lets her go. The marks of his teeth are in her skin. He kisses her there, tongues her, as though his adoration could heal her.
"Danička," he breathes.
From the start, from the very beginning, he's said her name just. like. that. As though from the beginning, touching her hand in SmartBar and asking her if it was Danicka or Danička, some part of him had looked into the future, beyond the uncertainty, and saw that he would need her like this. From the very beginning, he's said her name like this, even when he told himself he hated her, even when he told her and everyone else that he couldn't stand her, wanted her away from him, was concerned only for his brother, was not
falling in love
with the woman who he was convinced was a ruiner of lives, a breaker of hearts, a faithless, lying whore.
"Jsem tvoje."
His hand on her face. He raises her mouth back to his. He drinks her moans from her mouth, pushes into her, slow, slow, gentle, heavy, and he shudders her moan back to her, transmuted, rougher and lower now, his.
"Jsem tvoje." Lukas shudders again, hard. His balance over her shifts. He grasps her thigh; his fingers explore her leg where it crosses his shoulder. Down again, shifting her hips; deeper. "Jsem tvoje, Danička."
[Danicka Musil] When he bites her -- and because of the way he bites her, the fact that he bites her so fucking hard when he rarely bites her at all -- Danicka moans, arching her back again, her hands on his back and on his chest and in his hair, roaming, touching his face, touching her own breasts, luxuriating in the feel of him, the feel of everything. She squeezes him inside her in response, rather than biting his ear or pulling his hair or raking her nails down his back.
The first time they met -- as adults, in this part of their lives, when she was no longer a frail girl in her mother's house and he was no longer thought to be just another young kinsman -- they immediately became Danička and Lukáš to each other, whereas to everyone else they were Danicka and Lukas, Dani and Luke, whatever other nicknames the English-speaking world gave to them. It was as though even from the start they could not tolerate knowing each other only by the masks they wore for others, the refusal to correct people calling them by, quite literally, the wrong names on a daily basis.
It is as though every time, they are saying to each other: I know you. I know who you are.
He always said her name like he says it now, buried inside her as though he has already given up his life for the sake of finding this. He says her name now the way he said it over and over and over from the start, like he couldn't help but roll the sound of it around in his mouth, licking the vowels, biting and gnawing the consonants. And she moves her face into his hands, lifts off the pillow, kisses him with animalistic savoring, slow bites to his lower lip, slow flicks of her tongue along his own.
It seems like a goddamned eternity before she says anything else, before she stops kissing him, before there's a hitch in the rhythm their bodies have set. Time has become viscous, liquid and flowing but going as slow as every roll of his hips, every flex of her cunt in answer. She is barely breathing when she whispers:
"Rychleji, lásko. To mě poser rychleji. Dej mi to." Danicka's lips beside his ear part again; her tongue slides up the curve. "Udělej mě přijde."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "Yeah, that's it," he breathes, "that's it, dotkni se mě. Touch sami. Chci vidět vás dotknout sám sebe."
-- when she touches him, touches herself, runs her hands everywhere and luxuriates in everything because she's drunk on this, they're drunk on this, they're intoxicated on each other and he's coming down over her again and her mouth is opening to him and he doesn't watch after all; he doesn't watch because they share a kiss as slow and visceral as their fucking.
Their lovemaking.
This.
Then her mouth is by his ear; she's whispering for him to go faster. She licks his ear. A shiver bolts up his spine. The sound he makes isn't a word at all, but it is acknowledgement, a grunt or a snarl, some low, guttural noise before he nips at her neck, raises himself on his elbows, finds her eyes and meets them.
Faster, now. Danicka is not very obedient as she pretends to be; to call Lukas obedient would be laughable. But he does obey her, thoughtlessly, not because the tables are turned or because she's exerting her will over him or because any of that even matters here and now. It's far simpler than that, here, now. He obeys because she wants it like this. He obeys because he wants to make her
(come.)
feel good, and because he wants to make her his, and of all the ways there are of going about it -- challenges, declarations, claims, bullshit -- this is the one way, the only way that's ever really worked for either of them.
"Miluji tě," he murmurs, again, against her mouth. He means to tell her how good that cunt is. He means to tell her what a hot little fuck she is, how he could search the world and never find another woman quite like her, but that's not really what he's trying to say. What he's trying to say is:
"Miluji tě, Danička."
His head twists to the side. He nips at her knee where it crosses the lee of his shoulder. And then he braces himself on his hands, comes up over her, bows his head and watches himself. He's fucking her now, by god, nothing gentle about it; hard, fast, hammering at that hot wet pussy that he hasn't had for a month, more than a month.
"Miluju, když přijdeš za mě."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (*cough* "...dotkni se mě. Dotkni sami. Chci vidět vás dotknout sám sebe.")
[Danicka Musil] He doesn't watch and she doesn't obey, not this time, not when he's kissing her like that. Danicka wraps him in her arms and legs instead, buries her fingers in his hair and holds his head right where it is, kisses him like that's what he meant, like that's what he really asked for. And he fucks her
faster
like she wants him to, like she tells him to, and it pulls a ragged whimper from her throat, makes her entire body shudder under his. When he raises himself up she reclines back on the ample pillows, her hair askew and spread out, her lips still parted, her cheeks flushed. She looks up at him, runs her hands over his chest, watches his face as the muscles there pull with pleasure, with restraint.
The sex has always worked without a hitch. Even when she's all but made him lose his mind, even when he's started out too rough or too fast or not understood what she meant when she said she needed to hold him, keep him close, even when she's cried out from pain as much as need, even when she's clawed his back or cut open his shoulder with a stiletto. Because, from the start, it hasn't been just the sex.
That was just the first time they allowed themselves to really touch each other.
When he came into her bedroom and just held her there, slept with his brow against the back of her neck and his arm encircling her, his hand on her breast under the t-shirt she wore to bed that night, she felt a bone-deep satisfaction that put her to sleep just as surely as her exhaustion. When they sat on the couch in a suite in this hotel and she curled on his lap, her head on his shoulder as they waited for food, she felt an inexplicable comfort though they still did not know each other well, though they were both still thinking that this might all end as soon as the moon entered his phase again.
When she first saw him in the Brotherhood, what she wanted was not his cock in her pussy or his hands on her breasts or his tongue in her mouth but his arm around her, her legs crossing his lap or tangled together, his heartbeat under her ear or hand and their eyes on the page of whatever book he was reading.
This is the way that has worked, from the beginning, for both of them.
She shivers when he tells her loves her, his lips moving on hers as though to teach her a new language by touch, as though to say everything else: how good, how hot, how rare, just by kissing her and telling her something they never, ever say in public. Never, ever say when it might be construed as habit, as meaningless, as thoughtless, as easy. As though this has ever been easy. As though this has ever been unworthy.
And she smiles that smile at him when he says it again, says her name, kisses her knee, pushes himself up, and --
-- the smile vanishes. Her mouth opens. Her head goes back again, her spine arches hard and she grabs a hold of his arms, moaning loudly when he drives into her then, crying out as he slides away, gasping when he slams home again, and
again
and again.
"Don't stop!" she cries, now raking her fingernails over his biceps, scrabbling at his arms, losing her grip, all but slapping his flesh when she takes hold of him again. "Fuck, Lukáš, don't stop!"
And he doesn't. He pounds her like he hasn't had her in perhaps longer than he's ever waited, longer than she's ever been without him, and she's his now, irrevocable, and she was won, but the challenge was to accept that she was given, and it was over, and the price was not blood or violence or land but giving up, this once, his right to destroy something that had harmed her. It was, maybe, the hardest, most galling, frustrating, even humiliating challenge he could have been faced with.
And she's his, and she's clinging to him, sweating under him, her cries getting louder the harder and faster he goes at her, her hand letting go of his bicep and reaching between their bodies. She strokes her clit once and cries out, then strokes it again and shakes, shudders, finding the same rhythm he's fucking her with, touching his cock as it slides into her, out, in again, and she's starting to swear in a third language, full-throated and violent, becoming
"FUCK!"
She slams her head back into the pillows, squeezes him inside, thrashes her head once to the side, gasps, makes herself look back up at him again, meeting his eyes when that clench becomes an ongoing, throbbing clutch, rippling through her. "Fuck... fuck, Lukáš...!"
Danicka fights to keep her eyes open, and can't in the end. She gives a hard, sudden grind of her hips against him right as her orgasm hits her, as the sharp press of his cock rubbing against her clit sends her over the edge. She goes rigid underneath him for a few seconds, her leg locked on him, her body all but vibrating, her mouth left open to scream
"LUKÁŠ!"
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] At the end, when she can't keep her eyes on him anymore, Lukas's arms wrap around Danicka. So suddenly, he clasps her to him -- not coming down over her as he has but simply lifting her. The muscles of his back flex hard. He raises himself onto his knees, scoops her right off the mattress and onto his body. She tumbles onto his lap. His cock drives deep. His head falls back and he lets out an open-throated groan, nearly a shout; on the downsnap he bites into her shoulder, hard, hard as he had before, grabs her by the hips and pounds her down on him once, twice,
shatters her into the million incandescent fragments of her orgasm.
She gives him that. She gives him the goddamn glory of her orgasm, and the shuddering of her body, the electric awareness, the cataclysmic stillness as she holds him inside her and contracts, implodes, comes.
He takes it, accepts it, devours it, his mouth finding hers, his mouth opening over her open mouth, kissing her even when she's far past any ability to reciprocate.
Mine, he thinks. Because it's true. Because he's won her, not in glory or honor or even wisdom; not because he's even so much won anything, but because he's surrendered in some sense, given up not something of himself, after all, but something for her. There's an irony in that: to give up vengeance in her name, in her name. To be prepared to do everything, anything, and to do absolutely nothing, for the right to think:
Mine.
And,
Yours.
Lukas doesn't stop. Not for long, anyway. He gives her a second, ten seconds, enough time to ride out her orgasm before he's taking her by the hips, urging her to move again, lifting her and lowering her and bouncing her on his lap, on his thighs, on his cock.
His body is rigid with tension. Sweat is sliding down his spine. Heedless of the strain in his arms, the ache in his shoulders, he moves her hard, moves her fast, pounds her onto himself until his orgasm rises up from the base of his spine like a living thing
and consumes him.
When his orgasm hits, it obliterates everything. All sense, all sensation other than what she's doing to him, done to him, brought him to. His arms flex hard around her. He crushes her against him, holds her like he can't afford to let go, can't bear to. She may be sore tomorrow, her leg over his shoulder overextended, pushed beyond even her rather remarkable flexibility by the sheer force of his need. He doesn't think about this now, and can't. He holds her, utterly, completely rigid, his face buried against her neck, his teeth bared.
And then biting at her shoulder, as he comes into her. And then bucking against her hips, driving himself deeper into her, deep, his cock jumping and pulsing inside her, his hands gripping at her narrow back, her slender shoulders. It's a sort of madness. It's a sort of mindlessness. He savages her and worships her at once; uses her body and adores her body all at the same time.
Shuddering, now. His pleasure releases its iron grip little by little. Panting. His hands are no longer clutching at her. He rubs her back. He strokes her skin, pulls one gasp after another out of the air, kisses her skin, kisses her, over and over.
And holds her.
And keeps her close.
[Danicka Musil] "Goddammit, Lukáš!" she snarls at him when he picks her up like that, when she has to let go of her cunt and his cock and when she has to unfold her leg from his shoulder or risk overextending or cramping or god knows what because she can only handle so much. Her orgasm hitches, her teeth clench in frustration, and she smacks him -- hard -- on his shoulder as she falls onto his lap, back onto his cock, harder, so much fucking harder. "You fucking asshole," she growls, without explanation, and half-gasped at the end, because her hips roll by instinct and longing against him, sending another jolt of pleasure up her body.
And she hits him again, grabs a hold of his shoulderblade and then claws down as he holds her hips and pounds her down, all but shrieks at him, though wordlessly, to just stop and let her ride him, let her have him, let her have this. He's never asked her why she didn't want him on top of her the first night, or for so many times afterward. Why she finally welcomed him there when the moon was almost full again, why she continues to acept him now, what difference it makes when it can't be fear, when it can't have ever been about submission or rebellion.
Danicka clings to his shoulders after finding herself upright again, and suddenly, the sex and the rush making her lightheaded, but she doesn't stop, she holds him and cries out stop, stop to his hands on her, pleading, begging, baby just stop as she rocks her hips, lifts them off his body, grinds back down, gasps, goes from starting to come to losing it to building back up again. She touches him again now, his chest, his sides, the taut muscle lurking under smooth and scarred skin alike. She gasps against his mouth when he kisses her, prolongs the inevitable now, because he distracted her and now it's starting all over again and when it comes
when she comes
it's that much more intense for it, for her frustration being relieved, for her smoothing her palms over him where she hit him, even as she's curling forward and moaning into his shoulder, shuddering once and then a second time, harder this time. She bites him, screams into his flesh, squirms on his lap as though simultaneously trying to escape him and trying to get more of him. This time when he grabs her hips and holds her in place she doesn't claw at him, or scream or swear at him, or resist. She comes, and he couldn't wait one second or ten seconds while she was riding him like that so it's damn near the same moment, damn near the same fucking second, when he flexes like he does
when he comes
like he does, their two bodies locked together, arms and legs folded and enfolding, their heads bowed to each other in surrender and comfort both, or something even more savage. She bites his shoulder; he groans against her throat, bites her shoulder, too, comes inside of her as she comes around him, as he uses and reveres her at once, as all people do with all their gods. The sun will be setting before too long and so the eastern sky that their windows face is already starting to get dim, the colors both muted and fiery and utterly, completely forgotten.
Though for a moment, after they come, and she's still digging her teeth into him and her cunt is still squeezing him softly, intermittently, and everything else is still, she thinks they're floating, and she can't feel the bed under her knees, or the sheets wrinkled against her toes, or
anything, then.
Her jaw unlocks from his skin; she sighs against him, and it rattles softly as the tension flows out of her, as consciousness flows out of her. He can feel her shoulders round down under his hands and he can feel her go limp while he's still trembling, while her body -- god -- is still holding him inside, while he's kissing her over and over and over again. If he were not holding her so close, she would have swayed. As it is, she just passes out.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] This is not the first time Danicka has passed out on Lukas, or even the second. This is the third time, but that doesn't mean it doesn't leave him a little adrift, a little startled, when suddenly he's the only consciousness remaining in this room.
The first time she passed out, he made no fuss at all. He held her until she woke again, and didn't panic, and didn't shake her or call her name. He was concerned, though. He didn't show it, and in fact perhaps tried hard to hide it, but he worried over her. Enough to ask her if it's happened before. Enough to ask if she was sick.
He knows now: it's happened before. He knows now: she's not sick. Just stressed. Just pushed beyond the limits of her rather unimpressive constitution. And he stays where he is, and holds her where she is, and wraps her into his body and holds her tight through the sudden, aching flood of love that drenches him from the inside out.
He's still panting for breath when he stirs, finally. When he lists sideways, catches his weight and hers with one hand on the mattress, unfolds his legs from under him and lowers himself down. There's still a quiver at the edges of his body, in his triceps and his fingertips. Carefully he lays back, cradling Danicka on his body. He strokes her hair back from her face and holds her, waiting for her to come back to him.
[Danicka Musil] Truth be told, she would wake if he put his hand on her face and said her name a few times. She would wake if he squeezed her arm tightly, or if he jostled her. She's not unconscious because she is sick or because something is wrong; it is a brief blackout, a swoon, a result of a sudden crash after all that tension, as though her body and mind could not quite hold together once relieved of it.
She breathes steadily, as contentedly as a child or an animal in the farthest depths of sleep, her chest moving against his, her ribs expanding and contracting again within the circle his arms make around her. Her hands have fallen from hs back, and her cheek is pressed to his shoulder, mouth slightly open and every breath a sigh.
When he wraps her up more tightly, squeezes her to him like something precious, like something he could have lost in the very act of claiming her as his own, Danicka draws in a shaky, sudden breath and opens her eyes. She startles in his embrace, struggling momentarily by sheer instinct, by waking bewilderment. It passes, and she relaxes again, sighs again, draws her tired arms up and wraps them around his shoulders.
So when he lays down, moves back, and strokes her hair, she's awake. She's back, drawn awake by the way he held her more than anything else. She's able to shift her legs and lay atop him, and when she closes her eyes this time she does so by choice.
It's at least a minute -- it's at least five -- before she says anything.
"I wish you would let me hold you more often," she whispers, and she sounds vaguely sad.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] In that time, Lukas has closed his eyes as well. Left alone, he might've drifted off. Delved right back into sleep: not the dreamless, sudden crash of the day but a deeper, truer one, comforted by the presence of his mate, content in the aftermath of their lovemaking.
But then she speaks. And his eyes open -- slowly, taking their time. He looks at the ceiling, the light the lamps in the room casts, the light from the sunset outside, indirectly scattered back at them through the atmosphere.
And he draws a breath, a long one that sighs in his nostrils, raises his chest beneath her. He holds her a little tighter.
"I'm sorry, láska," he murmurs. "I just ... needed to hold you. I didn't realize you needed it too."
And his mouth, against her temple. And his hand, smoothing the sweat from her back.
A whisper, "Držet mi nyní."
[Danicka Musil] He has eaten -- not enough -- and he has slept more -- but not deeply. Danicka did not eat at the airport even though she had hours to do so; she did not eat when she woke up and left him here, neither grabbing an apple from a bowl somewhere nor eating on the way back, and she threw her own steak -- which was cooked medium well, instead of rare -- at the mirror when she was angry with Lukas because even angry, she did not want to take away his food. Or was afraid to. Or something.
Danicka has not felt hungry since she landed in New York a few days ago. Every meal at her father's house was on time and eaten well enough, but not enjoyed. And she doesn't say so, and she ate green beans off of Lukas's plate tonight because he worried, and because he wanted her to, and because she did not want to risk displeasing him. Which was like every meal eaten with her mother at the table, or her brother, especially on those days when she had raged, or when he had beaten her. They watched her to make sure she ate. They were worried.
Right now, though, she is suddenly ravenous. She is hungry for food, for water, for salt, for vitamins, for dessert, for wine, for the laziness that comes with a pleasantly but not overly full stomach. She wants tacos. She wants hummus with garlic and about seven kinds of vegetables to dip into it. She wants a steak. She wants a smoothie. She wants cupcakes. She wants a Long Island Iced Tea. She wants tukey, and sweet potatoes, and peppers, and aged Irish cheddar, and a martini, and tuxedo cheesecake and a banana and barbecue chicken pizza and raspberry scones and a cup of coffee and California rolls and angelhair pasta and a scoop of vanilla ice cream with an Oreo crushed over it.
Her stomach growls after he's apologized.
Danicka lays with him, sliding to one side, legs and lower halves still entwined. She has her arm draped over him, keeps it there. She breathes in. "To je to, co chci, když jsem ležel na zádech pro vás. Chci se o tebe postarat," she murmurs, her breath curling across his chest. Her eyes close. She muses then, sounding thoughtful, her hand starting to trace his right pectoral, her lips moving against his left: "Muži vždy chtějí být na vrcholu. Oni nikdy nechci nech mě starat se o ně."
She sighs again, blurs to English to mutter: "So why let them on top of me? It only makes me want what they won't give."
There's a pause there, then her tense changes, shifts without warning. Present and past are mingled enough right now that it makes no difference. Her voice is softer. "Nechtěl jsem se držet je. Obvykle."
And softer still, though somehow heavier, as though the words themselves ache as they leave her, going out into the world where they could be hurt, where they could be rejected, hurt, damaged: "Miluju tě, Lukáš. Chci se držet ty. Chci se o tebe postarat." Her arm over his chest tightens. Her leg draped over him bends, her ankle tucks under his leg. "Ty jsi můj lodní důstojník. Potřebuji tě chránit."
As though he is something precious.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas is silent as he listens. He shifts to accommodate her, thoughtlessly. His arm wraps gently around her shoulders and he traces aimless designs on her soft skin.
The truth is, he hasn't thought much about why she would not allow him atop her in the beginning, and why she did eventually. He thought it had something to do with love; with fear; with dominance. The Shadow Lord kin he fucked the week before he finally gave up pretending he didn't need her -- she hadn't allowed him to put her on her back, either. That was definitely fear. That was definitely a question of dominance.
Love was never in the picture there. That was nothing like this, but Lukas supposes he drew a connection nonetheless. Assumed. Was wrong.
And the truth is, Lukas's first reaction is something like disbelief. How could she, by laying back for him, by allowing him on top of her, between her legs, by allowing him to pin her to the bed and fuck her like that, take care of him? How could she possibly take care of him, or protect him, when her strength isn't a fraction of his?
Then he thinks of the night she said to him, painfully: I'm falling in love with you.
He thinks of the way they made love, and how he held her afterward and kissed her breastbone and told her she was precious, so precious to him. He thinks of the way she held him then, protectively, nurturingly, and he closes his eyes, breathing deep.
"Chápu," he murmurs. The tendon in his neck pulls taut as he turns his head, kisses her brow. "Chápu, Danička."
She draws a little closer to him. She winds her body around his, and his eyes open as his free hand drops to her knee, covers her thigh. Holds. Protects.
"Ty jsi můj lodní důstojník," he says, repeating her slowly, thoughtfully, as though to taste the words or to seal the ritual. "Budeme chránit jeden druhého. Budeme se starat o sebe navzájem nyní."
He closes his eyes again. "Patříme k navzájem," he adds, quieter.
[Danicka Musil] Though she can't imagine he'd want to think about it, though if he did he could imagine it with utter certainty, there are plenty of times in her history when Danicka has laid back when she didn't want to, when there was no desire to or chance of nurturing the person on top of her. There are plenty of times when it wasn't worth the argument, or she was afraid of arguing, or by that point it was already clear that what she wanted had nothing to do with what the other parties involved had in mind.
But he wanted to put Sam's head through a wall for fucking Danicka, before Danicka belonged to him in any sense. And he lost his mind a little when she let slip that she'd fucked her first roommate, and fucked him after that first time she and Lukas spent together. He destroyed the dashboard of a rental car because this time Vladik didn't put his teeth to his sister's throat and because he could not go back and tear him apart, could not kill Ilari Martin, could not let himself eviscerate his packmate for any reason but discipline, not for a woman, never for a woman.
Lukas does not need to ever think about the things Danicka has done because she had to, the literal manifestations in her life of the story behind her family name.
And Danicka does not need, really, to think about them now, either.
She nuzzles his chest as he talks to her, the arm that covers his torso leading to a hand that encircles as much of his bicep as she can, as though her slender palm and her long fingers can guard against harm. Or as though she could hold him there, if she tried, if something were pulling him away. Her eyes are closed and she is already breathing as though in sleep, murmuring as though dreaming. He is still inside of her. She is still hungry.
No matter.
This is how it ends: he whispers vows to her, neither promises to her or extractions of such from her but simple verbal recognition of what is already certain, what has already come to pass, what is sealed to be. And Danicka, who has been practicing a far less bloody and far more ritualized sort of prayer and worship since childhood, sometimes with ribbons in her hair and sometimes with fire and sometimes with nothing more than her bare hands against the earth, knows the resolution of something unseen when she hears it. She sighs as his eyes close, and in seconds she is asleep.
She will stir and flicker her eyes open if he should move her, if he slides out of her and lifts her up in order to draw the covers over her, but she will go back to sleep without struggle, without words, without anything but a demanding reach for him, pulling him close again as though her very skin is aching for the contact of his. In a matter of hours she will wake up, well into the middle of the night, so savagely hungry and yet so unwilling to leave him that she will lie quietly for awhile, trying to decide if she should wake him up or slip away to call room service.
And in the end she will kiss him and squeeze his arm and bring him around to wakefulness to whisper, hands shaking, that she needs to eat. She'll watch with her body half-draped over his and her hand resting atop his heart as the instinct to shift and hunt something to its death flares to life and then dies in the burning clarity of his wide-pupiled eyes.
Later on it will be like this again: the room will be darker, their bodies sated by food and making love with her hands on his chest and her hips slowly rolling and her hair falling around her face as she leans over him crying ah, ah, ah and his name and low moans of miluju tě as she comes, miluju tě tak kurva hodně. Later on it will be like this, just like this, until dawn or after dawn. Their limbs still, their breathing steady, their heartbeats slow, their bodies warm.
--
She dreams of someplace dark, of looking down at him as she stands, of him in blue and black and she in white.
We'll talk again, he's saying, and he's staring at her.
I look forward to it, bratr mé krve, she's saying back, and she does not look away until he does.
celebration.
9 years ago