a den with me.

[Danicka Musil] Tonight Danicka sat down to eat with a near-total stranger and was fine, but that should not be surprising. Most of her impromptu friends are total strangers to her. Some of them walk away feeling like they've met a new soulmate. Some of them walk away crushed. Some of them just feel amused by her, enchanted. It's what she does. It's what she's supposed to do.

But she also sat down, willingly, with Katherine Bellamonte, and spoke to her not only civilly but with at least some attempt to be helpful to the utterly cracked Silver Fang that she flatly despises. When she left it was quietly, and with purpose: to pay the bill she incurred by ordering enough food for twice the people who were sitting at the table. If they were human.

Which only she is really close to being.

She smiles softly when she turns around and sees him there, the same smile he knows outside of all closed doors, the one that says she is still being watched, even if it is only by Danny and Reuben. Danicka nods simply, her jacket over her arm, her purse in one hand. "I should check on the computer and make sure it's not getting abused too badly. Do you want me to stay tonight, or go to a hotel?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas shrugs, one hand lifting to scratch thoughtlessly under the cut of his pectorals. "Whichever." He thinks for a moment. "I want you to stay tonight."

He reaches for her coat, folding it over once more if she hands it over, carrying it in his hand. The other hand he reaches out to her, palm up, turning over to fold her hand in his if she takes it.

[Danicka Musil] "In that tiny bed," she says with a faint but half-amused sigh, shaking her head as she slips her warm -- but cooler, by slight degrees -- hand into his palm. She lets him have his way. And her coat. And her hand. Her heels tap softly on the floorboards as they walk towards the door that will take them to the kitchen and up the stairs, unless he stops, and her skirt swirls, kicked hither and yon by her knees' motion.

"Is everything alright? With Theron, and all that?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] She calls his bed tiny -- which it is -- and the edges of Lukas's mouth lift faintly.

His hand closes around hers. His eyes drop for a moment to watch it happen: his fingers around hers, folding. Then they lift to her face again. The lights are dimmed down for the night. Even his eyes, clear and pale as they are, are full of shadows.

"To je moje území," he says, not defensive, nor even really to explain. "Mám vás rád ty v něm."

They walk through the latchless swinging doors to the kitchen, across the stone floor, to the staircase. He looks at her as she asks about Theron, then nods.

"I'm asking him to join my pack." There's a pause. "As a test, I told him. But I suspect it'll turn into a way to let him down easy. I don't think Anežka wants him the way he wants her. If she did ... I think I would have heard it, even if she didn't say it aloud. I don't want to tell him no outright and then let him go back to my sister. I'd rather let his own interest fade with time and distance."

[Danicka Musil] Something about what he says makes her small smile -- which is warm in the way it would be warm for anyone, everyone -- tighten slightly at one corner, momentarily. She holds his hand though, all the way into the kitchen. Danicka walks on ahead of him up the stairs, their progress hampered by the narrowness of the passage and the fact that they remain linked somehow all the way up.

"...Do you think he'd hurt her, if you told him no and sent him back?" she asks, sounding more curious than anything else.

[Lukas] "I don't know," Lukas replies at the top of the stairs. "I don't want to think so, but I hardly know him anymore. The last time I saw him, I was seventeen years old. I just don't want to take chances."

The common room is empty, though the TV's still on. Perhaps someone's coming back to it soon. He passes out of it, though, and across the short hallway to his own door.

There, unlocking it, he turns to her again. "Už jsem vám připomněl svého bratra?"

[Danicka Musil] In the end, Danicka does not actually go to futz with the Vaio on the desk. She glances at the piano, which was not there when she last came to the Brotherhood, but continues on through the archway to the hall, stepping across it to Lukas's bedroom door. She's tense, whether leftover from the discussion at the dinner table or the conversation they're having now. Maybe she's always tense when she comes to the Brotherhood, and it's just been a long time since he's seen her for more than a few seconds outside of his room, outside of the space he's defined as his own.

What he says makes her flick her eyes from wall to his face, bicep to eyes. Her brows tug together slightly, relax a half-second later. She doesn't answer, but walks past him when the door is open and crosses the room to his desk, putting her purse on top of it. Her back is to him as he closes the door. She reaches back and starts to unclasp her necklace.

"Yes."

[Lukas] There's some irony in this. Danicka is far slighter, far smaller than Lukas, but she inhabits a space tenfold the size. Lukas burns with rage and might, but lives in a tiny room, ten by twelve.

When he enters, the entire room seems smaller for his presence. He seems to fill it utterly with heat, with rage.

The door shuts behind them with a soft click. He watches her unclasp her necklace, then goes to hang her coat in his closet. It's not until he turns back that he speaks again.

"That wasn't how I meant it," quiet. "I meant... this is where I live. This is my home. I like sharing it with you." A short pause. "It makes me happy when you're here."

[Danicka Musil] The necklace pools in one palm, slipped into an inner pocket of her purse instead of laid to rest on the table. He is in loungewear, pajamas; she is dressed as though to go to dinner, which is in fact what she was doing. Tomorrow she has school. Danicka slips her hand under her hair and ruffles it, shakes the strands off the back of her neck, rolls her head a little. She's warm and heavy from whisky and wine, tense from Silver Fangs and memories. And anger, though it's faded and cool.

It's not that she doesn't have a temper. Danicka's anger flares up and dies quickly again, but Lukas knows she can hold a grudge. He knows she can and will lash out even against those stronger than her if she's pushed too far on the wrong issue. He's seen her veritably grit her teeth at so much as a flicker of self-pity, sniveling, or whining. But the fact that she's angry doesn't make her boil right now; she is quiet. Tense, but still.

"I know," she says softly. "That's why I didn't say anything."

[Lukas] Lukas looks at Danicka once. Then he shuts the door of his closet.

When he returns to her, he brushes by her to sit on the bed, looking up to study her a moment. The overhead light is on. None of Lukas's lights are anything close to mood lighting, but this in particular is stark, unromantic, plain. It makes his room seem as bare as it is.

It makes him seem exactly as he is: sharp-cheekboned, dark, eyes as brilliant, as fiery as cut diamond.

"Do you want to go to the W instead?"

[Danicka Musil] She looks over her shoulder at him, hair swinging across her shoulderblades, her eyes -- less clear, less distinct, less certain -- finding his. Her features are soft, except for a certain sharpness around the jaw and mouth, a certain edge that occasionally enters her expression.

Some Shadow Lords, or members of any tribe, you can tell by looking at them. No one would look at Lukas and see anything but a Lord. People mistake Danicka for something other than what she is all the time. Her breeding seems borne primarily of spirit and history, and has not been handed down to her in the features of any hero but the one that birthed her.

"Lásko," she murmurs, the way she sometimes says Baby, the way she sometimes says his name, all but sighing it. She still has her earrings on, her heels, her long-sleeved shirt that clings to her body even as her skirt flounces away from it every time she takes a step. She turns, walks to him, and comes to stand in front of his knees, putting her palms on his face. "I was thinking about him already," Danicka whispers, as though saying It's not your fault. "I like being here with you."

There's a beat. A sigh. "Yes. I'd rather be there than here. But you want to be here with me tonight. And I do not mind."

[Lukas] Not automatically, but naturally, as though there's nowhere else his hands could possibly exist right now, he covers her hands with his. A moment later his hands curl over her forearms, then go to her waist.

Gently he holds her, draws her a little closer. And then closer still, between his knees, against his body, until her thighs press against his chest and his arms wrap behind her knees. He tips his brow against her body, closing his eyes. When his arms rise to tighten around her, holding her against him, he turns his cheek to her stomach, his ear to her diaphragm, as though to listen to the vital rhythms of her body.

"Why were you thinking about him?" He's a little muffled against her shirt, her skin.

[Danicka Musil] The flow is natural, not quite automatic but organic. He slides his hands down her arms and then touches her waist; she slides her fingers over his scalp, steps forward between his legs, holds his head to her stomach, strokes his hair over his temple. Standing like this, him sitting and her in heels, her heartbeat is a distant rhythm against his ear rather than a close, immediate thump the way it is on the heel of his hand when he cups her breast as they sleep.

"Because," she says softly, "you and Kate were talking about Sam the way I've always listened to people talk about Vládík."

There is a distinct difference in the way she says the diminutive of her brother's name and the way she says Lukášek, the way she has always said it. She first used that nickname with him long before he knew that they'd met as children, as though she could somehow secretly say

I know you.

I know who you are.

before she really did. Before she possibly could have. So perhaps it was simply

I know where you come from.

And I remember you.

Her brother's nickname is not as soft as her own, or her lover's. It is even harder-edged than his given name, somehow, though it reveals what she feels for him just as the use of diminutives between the two of them reveals what they feel for each other. He can tell, from the sound of it: she is still afraid of him. She may always be.

[Lukas] The steady, soft rhythm of his breathing halts for a second, then changes. The same shift is present in the way he holds him -- the muscles in his shoulders stiffening a little, even before his arms drop away and he sits back to look at her.

"Danička, you have every right to hate Sam." A faint exhale, a scoff, humorless. "I have every right to hate him. But I would be a liar and a cheat if I denied what quality he once had. He's not my brother anymore. I don't love him as a brother anymore. But I did once, and ... " he reaches out, gingerly, his fingertips touching the outside of her thigh if she'll allow it, "I am sorry if that my remembering that hurts you."

[Danicka Musil] His fingers move out to touch her leg, but Danicka is moving away when he leans back, drawing back as soon as he tells her that she has every right. His scoff, unpleasant in its mirthlessness, finds a slightly more hard-edged echo in her own, a sudden exhale of air, a sigh of frustration. She doesn't speak. She goes to the desk and begins to remove her earrings.

"I hate it," she says quietly, levelly, "when you reassure me as though I need it."

One hoop taps softly against the desk, grinds rhythmically in the air as it spins and settles again. Her voice is no longer edged but almost metallic with sharpness, lacerating the air with its quietude. "I didn't want to hear about how good he used to be at the table, but at least then I could get up and leave."

The second hoop is set down, much the same. "I don't need or want you to be sorry, I do not need or want your acknowledgement that I have reason and right to hate him, and I am sick of debating between us whether that fuckstick had any worth just because what he could get away with with you was so different from what he could get away with with me."

She holds on to the edge of the desk, begins to step out of her heels. "To be blunt, Lukáš, listening to you and Katherine wax nostalgic about Sam made me think of listening to all the wonderful things my brother has done and what good packmate he has been to his brethren. It made me sick to my stomach, and it wasn't just Sam I was disgusted with."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Sick to her stomach, she says, and Lukas glances at her sharply. Disgusted, she says, and he looks away just as sharply, a twist of tension running down his face from temple to jaw. He's still sitting on his bed, but his fists are braced to the mattress now, knuckles against the sheets, elbows locked.

"Danička, I don't berate you for hating Sam relentlessly. I understand it. Don't berate me for remembering him for the packmate he was, and not merely for the thing he became."

[Danicka Musil] "No, you don't berate me," she says, more quietly now, her earrings on his desk but her necklace in her purse, stepping out of her heels and wiggling her toes against the flat, hard carpet. "And I was not berating you for remembering him."

Her back is to him. Not so very long ago, she wouldn't have been able to handle standing like this, a monster like him behind her, out of sight, in the dark. Even now the fear is there, making the muscles in her back tight, tensing her shoulders, making her seem more real, more solid, than she would otherwise. Somehow it does not make her seem stronger. Holding a firearm and killing fomori does not make her seem stronger.

She is not, Danicka would say, very strong at all.

"I have never asked you to give up believing, or remembering, that he was good. I have not expected you to deny what you knew of him, or ignore what used to be." She turns around, leaning back on the edge of his desk, watching him from across the dim room lit only by moonlight reflecting off the side of another building and into the window. "I wasn't the one who brought this up. You thought you reminded me of my brother; all I wanted you to know was why he was already on my mind before you ever mentioned having me in your territory."

Danicka takes a deep breath. Her shirt is close to the skin, and this room is colder than the dining room lit from the fireplace. Her nipples are hardening, though she is not quite awash in goosebumps over her bare calves. "You asked why I was thinking about him. I told you. You got defensive well before I 'berated' you."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas's temper flares at the word defensive, and all its connotations. He controls it. It passes.

Some time later he speaks again, low. "It's hard for me not to get defensive," he says, "when I remember what was best for my pack and my mate were at irreconcilable odds. And when I remember being faced with such incontrovertible evidence that the Garou I thought was a good man turned out to be such a disappointment as well."

The bedsprings creak as he gets to his feet. He follows her across the room, reaching for her carefully, touch the outside of her elbow if she lets him. The window's open a crack. He always leaves his window open, if only a crack.

[Danicka Musil] Facing him now, Danicka can not even pretend not to know how tense he is, how hard his temper, how tightly controlled. She could hear it in his voice before, feel it like a fire at her back, but her eyes give her the glints of color and light in his gaze. Her eyes give her the expression on his face, the frustration or even flat-out anger that lives in him. It's a little while before she speaks, long enough for him to rise and cross over to her -- though that is only a couple of steps -- and long enough for him to touch her arm.

She looks up at him. Has to, because she's shorter. Has to, because she's leaning back and half-sitting and he looms somewhat in the shadows, his eyes a pair of bright points in the darkness, as eyecatching as water glistening on rocks.

"I wasn't your mate, then," she says finally, softly. "And I still do not expect you to place me before your pack." There's a beat. She says this without anger, without aggression, as though it is a sort of preemptive forgiveness. "I know better."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] They've had this argument before. Discussion. What he will or won't do for her. Which would come first for him, pack or mate. He claims he won't throw her under the bus again for the sake of his pack. All she has to go by, all the real evidence she has, is that he already has in the past.

But there's still his hand on her arm. And the softness in her tone, as though forgiving him for sins he hasn't yet committed. It at once infuriates him and makes him ache. His palm curves more fully around her elbow. He draws a breath, and then pulls her gently up from the edge of the table.

"I know you don't expect it," Lukas replies quietly. And, "Come away from the window. It's cold."

[Danicka Musil] He knows that Danicka has a long memory. He knows she remembers the way her brother treated her when she was three and four years old, the way she played with Lukasek and Anezka when she was seven and eight. He can guess easily enough that she will never forget Sam's hand on her face or Lukas's hand on the door, keeping her from leaving a hotel room she was trying to flee from. He can surmise with little difficulty that the reason Danicka builds most of her bridges out of straw is because that way they burn faster.

On the other hand, he thought he would never see her again after he admitted that he would choose his pack over her, and had. He saw her again. He saw her in his bed, lounging with a book as though she belonged there. Lukas thought she might never forgive him after he broke her heart, that he could not expect her to love him, welcome him, let him in again.

And then she did. After fighting it, after trying not to, because it was as though she couldn't help but

otevřeno.

"Is it?" Danicka asks, her voice more murmur than whisper, low and rolling as a heartbeat. She is still watching him. "Ještě jsme se milovali za dva týdny," she mentions, her hands still holding the edge of the desk.

"Někdy jsem počítat," she adds, like an admission.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Is it? -- "Yeah."

It's scarcely more than a breath of a word. She's still watching him, and her voice is low, and his eyes are low, and he's looking at her body, her nipples pressing against her shirt, the rise and fall of her breathing, her soft arm in his hand.

Her hands hold onto the desk when she tells him how long it's been. His eyes flick up to hers when she says she counts, sometimes. There's a twist of emotions in his eyes. It's ache and it's want. It's attraction: I'm drawn to you, he said, so long ago. It's the urge to protect, to keep, to stay near and to stay with.

His free hand rises. He touches her breast without preamble or apology, gently, tenderly. He cradles it through her shirt his thumb strokes across her nipple, once, again, and

he can feel her pulse through her skin, and his, and the fabric in between.

"Come away from the window," he says again, softer.

[Danicka Musil] Her eyes close when he touches her, eyelashes shivering downward as she breathes. She knew. She knew when she came here that she would be doing this --

-- and this is sliding her arm out of his hand, letting his palm travel down her forearm to her wrist. This is taking his hand and pulling it to her skirt, manipulating his fingers to grasp the soft fabric and pull it upward. She leaves his hand there as soon as folds of the cream-colored garment are slipping between his fingers, trusting he will find his way to her thigh, trusting he will find his way to her, regardless.

Danicka reaches for him, then, slender arms reaching up to wrap around his neck as though they are already lying in bed and she is pulling him back down to her. Her palms are warm on the back of his head, the back of his neck, her negligible strength drawing him nearer. She wants to kiss him. She is kissing him, her head tipped up and her weight shifting on the edge of the desk, tilting back to keep her balance.

Her leg wraps around his lower body, calf crossing the backs of his thighs, the curve of his flank. There's no lack of tenderness in her embrace, no lack of gentleness, but there's an eagerness that gives the way she touches him a certain edge. There's a flood of warmth when she nudges his lips apart with her own, opening her mouth to his, opening his mouth with hers, her breath shuddering slightly at the contact.

"Kéž bychom měli místo, které bylo naše," she says, low and longing enough that anyone hearing her might think it an endearment, a seduction. The words caress his lips. Danicka's hand slides down his shoulder, grasps his t-shirt over his chest, pulls at the cotton. Kisses him again.

And again.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] A slow ragged breath escapes him as her eyes close. He's never told her all the things he loves about her; the things she does, the words she says, the way she looks or moves or smells or ...

She guides his hand. Their fingers entwine, slip past. His fingers grasp the hem of her skirt and gather it up, bunch it in his palm, draw it up and up until he can reach under. His hand finds her skin. His fingers push past the edge of her panties, if there's one to be felt; open over the curve of her ass. Her legs are opening around him and he steps into her, pulls her forward until he's pressed firmly between her thighs.

Both his hands at her breasts, now. He touches her, caresses her with a sort of reverent, wondering patience, as though this were the first time he's ever done this. A second before she kisses him, she can hear him draw a breath in, short and soft.

Then his hands are losing their way, stilling against her body, then pressing against her body, her ribs, her shoulderblades, pressing her closer. He makes a low sound into her mouth when her lips open his.

There's a pause, a stillness, when she says what she says. He draws back an inch, looks at her, surprised, a little uncertain.

"Já--" he begins,

and then it's passing, and she's kissing him again or he's kissing her, and her hands are pulling at his shirt and running over his body and she's kissing him, again and again, while his hands fall to her hips and pull her against him, rub her against him, reach for her shirt and begin to undo the buttons, if there are any; begin to pull it off, if not.

[Danicka Musil] "I know," she echoes softly, not in renunciation or confession but a sigh.

She sounds like that when she's on the verge of her silent sleeping, in the last moments before she sinks underneath the veil of unconsciousness. Sometimes she will reach back and touch his cheek as though to make sure he's there, even though he'll be pressed against her back, her ass, his arms over and around her, his heat drenching hers the way that the sun nearest to the earth obliterates the sight of all other stars. Sometimes her fingers trail over his cheekbone or the line of his jaw, touch his hair or stroke his temple before sliding away, and she will sigh that she loves him, the last thought in her mind, the last words on her lip.

But Danicka is not falling asleep right now. She's half-straddling him, her fingers buried in his hair, fingertips rubbing his scalp, holding his head to her breast so he can kiss her hard and deeply enough to feel the rapid thudding of her pulse beneath his mouth, against his cheek. She pants, heavy but quiet, as cold air rushes over wet skin, as what he does with his tongue sends a jolt up her body

and then another.

He sinks back, she sinks down, and both her knees press against the mattress now. Her center of gravity shifts, her balance rolls forward, and she puts her hands on his chest as he's grabbing her hips, moving her against him with something like impatience or insistence or simply open, unabashed want. Danicka slides across his cock, riding it against his stomach, her breath hitching every time her hips pull back, flexing under his hands. Her own press on his pectorals, halfway between caressing and clawing, as a shudder goes through her.

"I knew you wanted me before you did," she adds, leaning over, folding over him, kissing his neck as her hair covers his shoulder, part of his arm. It's cool, a subtle contrast to the rising warmth of her skin, the unbearable heat of her cunt on him but not around him. Her mouth opens over the side of his neck. She sucks his skin into her mouth, softly at first then biting down gently. She licks him when she lets go, breathes out: "Do you want to be inside me?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] A ragged breath, barely voiced, escapes Lukas when she rubs against him like that. His head tips back; his hands tighten on her hips. A pulse is leaping through his throat when she bends to kiss him there, her mouth to his arteries, his airways, the critical paths of his body.

"Ano," he says, before she's even finished her question. "God, yes."

It's an answer; or maybe only a response to her mouth on his neck, her teeth scraping his skin. Her breasts against his chest. Her cunt on his cock, too close, too far.

Sometimes in the night, in the last seconds before sleep, she touches him as though to make sure he's there even though she can feel him all around her. Sometimes before he sleeps, he thinks inane, primitive things -- forgets that they're in air-conditioned, insulated, weatherproofed structures, forgets that they wear hundred- and occasionally thousand-dollar clothing, forgets that they drive and ride subways and eat gourmet meals, that they're supposed to be civilized, that they pretend to be human

and thinks about hunting to feed his mate. Thinks about finding a den, constructing a shelter; thinks about keeping her warm and keeping her safe; thinks about the fundamental, primeval contentment of lying with her in the breathing dark, warm and replete, a male, a female, a mated pair.

His hands tighten on her hips. He slides her over his cock again, more firmly, a solid grind of her cunt against him that makes him pant out a groan; that makes his chest rise and fall sharply.

"Chci být v tobě," he mutters -- teeth hardly parting, his voice a low, rough murmur. "Chci šukat, že kundo. Láska, prosím."

[Danicka Musil] They both know it, but like most of their sex life, they don't talk about how much has changed or what they never imagined: in the beginning, she would never put her teeth to his skin. She avoided his throat, scared that to touch him there or even look too long at the flash of it as he swallowed or breathed would incite his fury, would make him believe that she meant to threaten him somehow, hurt him in some way.

Which was, for the longest time, so much of the reason for his withholding of affection, of trust, of even letting himself indulge in touching her. The belief, however misplaced and however given to him in false and misunderstood prophecy, that Danicka wished him and his packmates -- closer now than his family, closer now than father and mother and sister -- some kind of humiliation or harm.

And now she bites his neck, licks his throat as she climbs atop him. And now he groans yes when she does it, though to be strictly honest he tipped his head back and exposed his throat with eyes closed very early on, knowing without necessarily trusting that she could not

and more importantly, would not

see it as submission, or take it as an opportunity.

Danicka is wet. He can feel it slick and warm against his cock, flowing onto him as he grinds their bodies together and Danicka responds by swiveling her hips once, gasping as her clit rubs over him. "Oh, god," she breathes. "Oh... oh my fucking god..." and this time the last word, the blasphemy, is a moan that verges on a whimper.

Her nipples brush over his chest, hit her hands, her cries turn into a sort of mewling, needful sound that she buries against his shoulder and then fights to control. She begins panting again, bucking her hips faster, riding him without taking him inside for a little longer, for a few more seconds, for just another minute. It takes concerted effort for her to push herself up a little, to create some space between their bodies, to let cold air rush in. She whimpers at the feel of it, her hair over her shoulders and strands of it in her face as she pushes herself up over him, one hand going to the wall behind his head and the other trailing down his chest.

Danicka finds his eyes and exhales as she traces the lines of muscle pressed against his skin, the tight and hard evidence of what makes him so terrifyingly strong. Her next breath is somewhat ragged, when she finds his cock -- wet from her body -- and wraps her hand around it. She does not immediately guide him to her. She strokes him once, twice, watches the flashes and feels the twitches of reaction go through him.

"Líbí se ti to?" she all but purrs, doing it again.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] The touch of her hand changes the rhythm of his breathing. Sensation scorches up his axis; pulls the muscles of his abdomen taut, erects his nipples, drives a gasp out. His hands have lost their coherence and float now, barely touching her hips. His eyes close, and then open again after a moment. Like electricity, their eyes snap and sear to one another's.

"Ano," he breathes again. It's ragged. He can't seem to help the lift of his hips, the way he thrusts against her hand, fucking her palm, the curve of her fingers. His brow furrows, as though in pain or consternation; as though he couldn't understand what she was doing to him, and how. And, though a moment ago he told her to take him inside --

"Oh, don't stop."

Closing again, his eyes. He bites the insides of his lips for a moment, and then a fresh stroke of her hand makes him suck a breath in hard and fast, makes him arch and buck against her hand, against her belly.

"Ach, můj bože..."

[Danicka Musil] If it went without saying that she would not stop, it might not be quite so electric when she runs her hand over him again in answer to that plea. Sometimes she stops. Disobeys. Ignores what he asks for and does something else, instead. The first night they spent together he gave her one-word orders as her hands and mouth caressed him, and she submitted. The first night they spent together he wanted her the way he's now had her so many times, laid back, laid out, with nothing between them, with nothing keeping him from feeling that first hard slide into her. And she refused him.

The first time he told her to get down and suck his cock she simply walked away. And a moment ago he said he wanted to be in her, and he's not yet, and it isn't enraging him. If she stopped touching him in favor of climbing off of his body and rolling onto her back, it's not likely he would be enraged at her. He no longer expects every touch and word to be a manipulation, no longer thinks she is playing some game with him. If she laid on her back now, legs open and hands pulling him closer, he would know it as invitation, and nothing more, and he might remember a time when she did not trust him any more than he did her, and would not hold him atop her like that.

Danicka doesn't stop. She leans over him, his cock pressed against her abdomen, held in her hand, her other hand pressed and splayed against the mattress by his ribs. She rubs him against herself, laughs warm in her throat as he bucks and rolls his hips, fucking as much of her as she gives him. She watches him groan and writhe slightly against the sheets, disrupting them more than they were already. With no more soundtrack than her breathing, she plays with him until they find some rhythm, some pattern of stroke and thrust, her eyes locked on his face, following the pull and strain of his expression every time she makes him gasp.

Lukas may or may not even notice when her inner thighs move against the outsides of his hips, may not realize what's happening until the head of his cock touches her opening and feels wetness, fiercely hot, smearing over his skin.

"That's it," she whispers to him, her hands going from bed to chest, cock to chest, with the first welcoming roll of her hips down onto him. She lets her head fall back, hair washing golden over her shoulders, speaking in soft gasps as she sinks down further, takes him deeper. "That's my boy. That's my good boy. Ach, bože, lásko. Že teplé kohout ..."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas's eyes flash open when she guides him to her cunt; when she starts to sink down onto him. His chest rises sharply beneath Danicka's hands, pressing her palms up in a single, long inhale. Beyond words now, the only sound that escapes him is a single vowel, an open ah--, ragged-edged as she rolls, rocks, slides her way down

and takes him deeper.

His hands find her hips. He wars between the urge to pull her down and to hold her where she is; to slow her descent or gentle their coupling. In the end he doesn't do either; simply runs his hands up her sides, up and around to cup over her breasts, to squeeze them gently in his hands, to play with and tug and roll her nipples between his fingers.

"Oh, that's good." Whisper for whisper, stripped, raw. "That's so fucking good. Dej mi to pomalu, láska."

His hands cup her breasts for another moment, raising them in his palms; then they slip around, warm and rough, to press at her back and urge her down toward him.

"Pojď sem." If she bends to him, her hair falls over her shoulder; it's a wash of gold and blonde across his face, his chest, as he raises himself on his elbows and lifts his mouth to her skin, her body, the sweat just beginning to break on her skin. "Dovolte mi chuť ty," he says, and if she lets him, closes his mouth over her nipple: warm, sucking, drenching.

His eyes close, too. He thinks of the slow rhythm of her body, and the luminous blue of the aquarium where he told her, a long time ago, that he didn't want her to tell him only what he wanted to hear; he thinks of the night he loved her here, in this bed, and the moonlight and the night and the approaching dawn left her painted in shades of pale and blue, and made him think of loving her in some ocean, a hundred feet below the surface.

He thinks of how she told him once that she wanted spring, and he told her that he wanted the ocean.

He thinks of how what they really wanted was one another, completely; všechno.

And he opens his mouth, gasps against her skin, closes it again, works at her nipple, sucks at it and circles it with his tongue, flicks it, bites at it with his lips until he can't stand the slowness anymore, the aching movement of her body, and turns his mouth from her body to whisper for her to

"Jít trochu rychleji. Jezdit na mě."

[Danicka Musil] The moon is behind her through the window, invisible except for the light it gives off. It turns her back paler than oncoming winter makes her already, turns her hair incandescent. Her face and breasts are shadowed, her cunt drenched in darkness where their bodies meet. Yet when he covers her breasts with his hands they seem lighter when contrasted with his own skin, her nipples gray where they should be pink, only hinting at the possibility of actual color. She leans over him, into his hands, catching her weight on his chest with her hands rather than pressing her palms to the mattress again. He rises to meet her, and she catches his mouth with her lips, with her tongue flicking out to open him for her

for a moment, before he's sucking on her breast. Danicka gasps to exhale, her back slowly arching, elongating until her nipple slips from his mouth. She breathes and he covers her again, licks it again, feels her clench around him in reaction.

They have made love in this room without care for the occupants of the rest of the floor. They have cried out without covering one another's mouths, they have fucked without muffling the slam of the headboard against the wall, they have hoped secretly and selfishly that others could hear them, and know how much they're enjoying one another. Frankly, they can hear others in the Brotherhood even now: the television in the common room, the footsteps down the hall, the dim and distant voices speaking unrecognizable words, the rattle of pipes as someone turns on the shower.

Danicka is easily reminded to keep herself quiet than she might in a hotel room. And he's heard the difference, the way she bites back screams in this room, squirming -- like she does now -- on his cock as though she has to do something with that energy if she can't cry out. He's heard the way she whimpers and the way she moans when she knows her roommate is somewhere in the apartment. He's listened to her swear at him in three languages while fucking him, knowing they're alone. He's made her scream before in the W on Lakeshore, the W in Times Square, her head back and her mouth open, her legs wrapped around his waist to hold him hard and deep inside her while she comes. It's always different when they're at the Brotherhood. She does not abandon herself now but writhes atop his hips, bouncing gently as he pleasures her breasts.

"Don't stop," she whimpers, then sharper: "Don't stop. Don't, don't..."

It does not seem to matter that he does, though. Danicka is moving faster on him already, even as her nipple slips wet and hard from his lips, even as he's murmuring for her to ride him, give it to him faster, go. She isn't looking at him now. Her body is angled forward, her hands on his chest and biceps pressed to her tits, her hair a thick curtain on either side of her face. She has her eyes closed, her mouth open as she begs him not to stop, though perhaps what he's doing that she can't bear for him to stop is simply letting her fuck him like this, grinding her pussy on his cock, hips rolling to give friction to her clit.

"Ach, bože..." she says, shuddering. "Ach bože, Lukáš, let me fuck you. Let me keep fucking you."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] For some time he doesn't stop. He keeps at her, sucking and licking her breasts, her nipples hard and tight and sensitive in his mouth, on his tongue, between his lips. When she starts to go a little faster, or perhaps only a little harder, rolling her hips to take him into her, into her, into her again and again, he raises his hands to her sides, to splay over her ribcage and hold her

right there for his mouth.

Her breasts bounce gently with the rhythm of her body on his. When at last her nipple is slipping from his mouth, he kisses her skin instead -- opens his mouth to whatever he can find, the soft skin between her breasts, the delicate hollow of her throat, the rush of her breathing tangible through that corridor. Lukas lays back with a low groan, the bunched muscles of his upper torso relaxing.

"Udržujte kurva mě." He reaches back, grasps at the edge of the mattress, closes his eyes and groans hard, once, at what she does with her pussy

and with his cock. Then his hands stretch to the sides. Crucified on pleasure, he twists handfuls of his sheets in his palms, gives his body with all its strength and heat and hardness and resilience over to her, lets her keep fucking him while he keeps watching her, lifts his head now to watch the slide of their bodies together, the way her cunt keeps on taking him in.

"To je ono. Udržujte kurva mě. Dovolte mi, abych vás vidět jízda, že kohout."

[Danicka Musil] Even when her pace increases, there is an aching slowness to the way they're moving. The bedsprings creak absently, steadily, the muscles in Lukas's feet flexing where they're planted the floor, bracing the rest of him. The bed is barely wide enough for him to lie crossways on top of it, and though Danicka's knees press hard into the mattress her feet are over its edge. Despite going faster, riding him harder, her thighs tense and hold and relax with rhythmic care, with awareness of how they are poised.

Which does not even come close to eclipsing her awareness of what he feels like inside of her. If the room were not so cold she would be sweating already, in gradual drops rolling down her skin, tanging on his tongue where it touches her. As it is she's begun to sheen slightly, her hair not quite sticking to brow or cheeks. She pants every breath, gasps when a downstroke of her hips makes him hit her at just the right angle, makes her buck against him.

Her fingers curl. Her fingernails dig, left hand tightening and right hand still splayed gently over his heart.

"Baby..."

It's a whimper, hard and low. She opens her eyes, finds him watching her fucking him, gasps again. Her hips lift again, come down harder. Faster. She starts to ride him in earnest, squeezing him every time she starts to rise upward as though her body can't bear to risk losing him, starts to bite back a series of breathy, rapid cries that never quite result in a plea of his name, or god, or any real words at all.

Danicka leans over him, tossing her hair off of one shoulder, her breath hitting his clavicles, his throat as she tries not to let the sounds coming out of her mouth turn into outright, full-throated moans of enjoyment. "Jdu přijít," she groans, as though this is something to warn him of, as though this is not one of the goddamn points of the exercise, as though with the way she's riding him this should come as a surprise.

She moves her hand off his chest, quickly, grabbing at the sheets, clawing at them when her cunt starts to clench and quiver on his cock, holding him tighter than before, over and over. Danicka's mouth opens against his chest to try and stifle the noises coming out of her then, all sharp gasps and hitching breaths hitting his skin.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] When she bends over him like that, his arms fold around her as though it were natural; as though anything else would be unthinkable. He clasps her to his chest -- and then tighter -- as she gasps as though to warn him, and he murmurs some wordless, panting encouragement again her temple, some sound that devolves into a stripped-bare

"...fuck."

that escapes him as she grabs at the sheets and they rumple beneath him, as she opens her mouth, as his hands rush downward to grasp her by the hips and drive her down, plant her down on his cock, hard, holding her there for a second as she clenches, and quivers, and

then slamming her onto him, again and again, fucking her through her orgasm while his head hits the mattress and arches back, while his eyes close and his face tenses and his teeth clench because it's

"...tak sakra dobrý."

The mattress shudders on its frame as he does, a hard shiver running down his back when her cunt squeezes down on him like that.

"To je ono. Přijít pro mnou. Přijít pro mnou, Danicka."

[Danicka Musil] When she comes, it feels like it goes on forever. It feels like time stops. She screams into his chest, bites him when he starts fucking her back, whimpers for him to

""Prestan! Prosím, prestan, lásko,"

but she goes on fucking him herself, rocking him inside her, her back tensed and writhing against his folding arms as though she's fighting his embrace -- or simply cannot be constrained by it. She comes hard, tight, bucking her hips and opening her mouth to his body, every shudder of pleasure becoming a rolling flex of her torso.

And when it's over, it feels like it could not have lasted long enough. It feels like it was a split second of white-hot reaction, nothing more than a flash of response inside of her. Except that she's on top of him still, gasping for breath, trembling in the aftermath, sweating underneath his hands and within his arms. She whimpers, moving her hands from the mattress to cling to him, and squirms once more on his cock.

[Danicka Musil] [Don't forgot to correct Danicka's name in log! EEE.]

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Stop, she gasps, stop, baby, but he doesn't. He holds her hips, her winding, writhing hips, and his feet are planted on the floor beside his bed now, and he's fucking her, quick, furious strokes up into her as though he couldn't stop, and all the time he's saying

Promiňte. Promiňte, lásko, nemohu.

until, of course, he can, and does, and she's riding out the last of it atop him, and gasping against his chest, in the tight circle of his arms. They still; they rest a moment, and she's still panting for breath and he's trying not to, trying to hold still for her, trying to to turn her over and pound his want out against her.

When she squirms, his head thumps back against the mattress, hard. "God," he snarls, teeth clenched, and his hands move down her back, touching, stroking, reassuring her or himself that they're still there, still alive, still marginally sane.

He finds her eyes. His hand is intensely warm on her cheek, brushing back her hair. "Okay?" he murmurs to her. His breathing is ragged.

[Danicka Musil] Her response is actually quite simple: Danicka nods quickly a few times, her hair falling past his fingers even as they try to push it back. She breathes Okay across his jawline just before covering his mouth with her own, sealing their lips together and groaning softly into the kiss. Her body rises against his, breasts brushing his chest, cunt sliding up his cock, which makes her gasp, which breaks the lock of their mouths together for a second.

So she kisses him again, harder this time, though she's still trembling, though her pussy is still squeezing him inside of her in deep, rhythmic throbs. "Okay," she whispers again, more firmly, shuddering on top of his chest. She pulls back enough to see his eyes, so he can see her panting, so he can see her over him like this, hair shielding both their faces from almost every trace of light.

Danicka puts her hands on his face, kisses him a third time, eats at his mouth with a fervency broken only by shaky inhales, shivering exhales, gasps for air she still needs. "Fuck me," she says, and tightens around him, bears down on him. "Fuck me, baby. Mi to dej."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] He's arching up to kiss her even as she's nodding. They meet midway, scorchingly, melting into one another's kiss before she's gasping, and they're falling apart, and he's falling back, breathing fuck out in a short fricative hiss.

And then they're kissing again. And she's telling him: okay, again, shuddering even as she says it, shuddering even as she moves over him, and his cock slides in her quivering, sensitive cunt, and he's groaning at the feel of her, groaning when she tells him to

fuck me.

He takes her face between his hands. His grip is firm, nearly rough. There's a blaze in his eyes, brilliant, and he kisses her again, hard, with his eyes open.

"Víte, co to dělá se mi, když to říkáte?" He kisses her again, eyes closing, murmuring the words against her mouth, "To mě žene k šílenství."

Then he's rising up off the bed, flipping over, toppling her down on the mattress beneath him. They land at a haphazard angle, neither horizontal nor lengthwise across the bed, and he takes her by the hips and moves her, rearranges her along the axis of the bed. A second later he's with her, atop her, and his mouth finds her and he kisses her while he finds the opening of her cunt with his hand, guides his cock to it, slides into her in one uninterrupted rush, slick on slick, that drives his breath out of him and makes him groan aloud into her mouth.

Faintly wet, his hand finds hers. His fingers twine with hers and then he pins her right hand to the bed, grips her palm to his and presses her slender knuckles against his sheets, which are cheap and rather threadbare but clean; or were. His free hand grasps her hip. He holds her still beneath him, still for him while he starts fucking her, giving it to her, pounding her hard and fast from the start as though

he's been waiting for this as long as he has.

Not once does his mouth stray far from hers. He kisses her, gasps against her lips, pants against her cheek, groans into her mouth, quiet but rough, again and again, biting kisses into her now, bearing down on her, hammering her to the bed.

[Danicka Musil] "Fuck me, then," she says again, pushing her fingers into his hair, rolling her hips hard and merciless against him as he's kissing her, muttering on her lips, llifting his body up and holding onto her hips and back as he whips both of them up and over and back down. Danicka hits the mattress and it bounces slightly on the slats underneath. One of her legs stretches out, her foot touching his pillow. The other would dangle to the floor if she laid it out, but she doesn't: he moves her, covers her, and she wraps it around his waist, her gasping for air turning to agitated breaths of want all over again.

"Fuck me, Lukáš," again, moaning it softly against his mouth while he runs his hand between her legs, hot fingers stroking over her clit on their way. She arches sharply, letting out a strangled, half-stifled cry. Her head falls back, and she pants for him just like before, jerking slightly as his fingertips stroke the opening of her cunt, as the head of his cock slides wetly, smoothly, against her.

"Oh my god," gasps the woman under him, his kin, his mate, the angle of her head and neck forcing his mouth to her throat, forcing her to tolerate a monster's teeth that close to her carotid artery. She groans when he pushes into her, low and loud, rolling her hips to meet him. "Oh, my god..."

They've talked more than once, in vague and passing terms, of what being apart for as long as they are sometimes does to them. Trembling naked and breathless on his lap one night in the W, she fought the urge to nuzzle him as a mate would and made a request without quite coming out and asking for it. Not another two weeks, they both said, and for a long time, they never went that long again. Still: months into their relationship, even when its stability -- even its existence -- was constantly in question, they could count on both hands the number of nights or afternoons they'd come together to make love.

Every time, it comes after a wait that feels interminable. Every time, it feels like it's been forever. And then it feels like it's been no time at all.

She's tender. She's whimpering as he's fucking her like this, wriggling her wrist and hand under his until she finally begs him to

"Baby, pusť, to bolí,"

and holding his head with her left hand, fingers still tangled in his hair and palm pressed to his scalp, keeping him near so she can kiss him, so she can feel his breath, so she can hear even the subtlest groans as they leave his throat. Every time he slams into her, her breath hitches. She receives him more than she fucks him back, now, shuddering between his once-clean sheets and his sweat-slicked chest.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] There's something utterly ravenous about the way he goes at her now, with more force and hunger than he would've dared to allow himself at the start. And even then, even when he was so damn afraid that she would hurt him, break him, destroy him somehow, some part of him was just as afraid that he would do the same to her. Because he had hurt her, once, at the Affinia, fucking against the door: because he thought she'd called him there to end it, and when he knew she hadn't, it was too much to handle. Too much to control.

And because he knew on some basic, primal level, that if he hurt her, deliberately, she would go away. She would not forgive. She would not come back. Except that wasn't true, either, because then he left her crying in the W, and they thought that was it, and --

once, she told him: consistency is for children and pets. She's neither.

And neither is he, though he's fucking her now with animal lust, with utter consuming hunger, his mouth all over her, his cock driving into her, and

she says what she says

and he lets her go, instantly. His eyes fly open and he stops, breathless, panting, stops dead with his cock still buried inside her and his breath washing over her skin. "Je mi to líto," he's saying, over and over, instantly, softly. "Je mi to líto, láska. Jsi v pořádku?"

[Danicka Musil] Her right hand flexes when he lets it go. She begins to reach for him, to loop both of her arms around his shoulders now to hold him close, to keep him near to her as he fucks her in his bed --

-- and he stops. Not just his hand on her palm, pressing her knuckles down, but he puts his weight on his elbows or his hands and stops moving entirely. Again. Danicka looks at him in mild surprise, her panting a little bit faster, a little bit shallower, than his own. She slides her left hand out of his hair and down to his cheek, cupping his face gently.

As though he were the one hurt. She touches him like he's been wounded somehow, sudden and shock-inducing, careful not to jar him or add to the injury with her caresses. She looks at him with her brow faintly furrowed, and her cunt clenches slowly, steadily around him. She moves under him, shifts her hips against the mattress for comfort or encouragement or both, not thinking of the Affinia or the W or the times his words pained her or his behavior frightened her. She does not realize how intense that fear of his still is, that he worries that she might go away if he hurts her --

-- worries that he might hurt her, period.

"Jsem v pořádku," she whispers. "I'm alright." Her leg tightens around him, pulls him deeper again. "Byla to jen moje ruka, lásko."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] There's ache in his eyes. Worry. She touches him so gently, and his hands are turned palm-down on the mattress on either side of her head, and he's holding himself still, careful, motionless.

Then she's pulling him deeper again, and his eyes flicker closed for a second. His lips part and he sighs, the faintest groan coloring the exhale, the slightest shiver stealing up his spine. He finds her hand again, gentler this time, very gentle. Brings it to his mouth and kisses her palm, slowly, adoringly. When he turns his face back to hers, he lets her hand go. Strokes her hair back. Kisses her mouth

and kissing her, starts to move in her again.

He doesn't open his eyes again for a long time. He rocks into her, and then their pace is picking up again; he's reaching to wrap her legs higher around him, and then bracing himself on his elbows to swing into her, to thrust down and into her harder and faster until he's pounding her against the bed again, and the springs are creaking, and his mouth is grazing and sucking at her, and then simply devouring hers

At the end, at the very last, he pulls back just far enough to find her eyes. To open his eyes to hers: to let her see him, and see what she's done to him, and see his orgasm spear through him, change his face, flay him open and leave him lost for her.

Lukas clasps Danicka to his chest as he comes into her, his cock slamming into her again and again, his breathing harsh and ragged, rhythmless. He bites back groans. He gasps senseless obscenities or prayers into the warm air between as his thrusts slow; as the wave breaks over him and passes him; leaves him tossed up on the shore, shattered and incoherent.

When it's over, he lays his brow to hers, and his eyes close again. He holds her to him, almost unbearably tight, his body covering hers in a single curve of flexion that only slowly begins to relax. Moments later, he tilts his chin up. He kisses her again, softly now.

[Danicka Musil] It's softer now than it was before, at least at first. Slower. He moves back into her like he's coming home and finding it just as he left it, finding it warm and still and waiting for him. Danicka no longer fucks up against him, riding his cock to her own orgasm or making demands or crying out don't stop, stop, don't, faster, harder, right there, don't stop. She holds him, slender arms wrapped around his neck, folding him to her. She kisses him slowly, deeply, the sensation of his lips still burnt onto her palm.

Maybe another woman would feel weak, see herself as weak, or be afraid of seeming weak, lying back and accepting him like this. She does not spur him to fuck her faster or groan for him to move into her harder with each thrust. She does not writhe or gasp like a porn star to try and make him come. She has never given him what she thought he wanted, just because he wanted it. Or even because she was afraid.

Danicka watches him, his long lashes spread out where they fall closed, both of her legs now enfolding him, holding him as surely as her arms. Her thighs are hot under his hands when he pushes them higher. Her cunt is hot and slick all around his cock when he starts fucking her in earnest again, in desperation, in hunger. She pants beneath him, sweats her scent onto his sheets, squirms when wetness slides out of her where they meet and smears across her skin. She lets out one groan, not long before he comes, the feel of him reigniting her desire somewhat, making her squeeze and pull at him inside.

Her eyes are vivid and her expression is tight from pleasure when he opens his eyes, pulling back to look at her. She meets his eyes, sighs.

"Lukáš..." is all she says, whispering it, whimpering it, right before he buries himself in her, buries his face against her, gasps unsteady and tremulous in the wake of what being with her does to him tonight.

She holds him. Her arms tighten around his shoulders, hold him where he is as his hips slam one last time into her body, as he pulses them once, twice right afterward, torturing himself with sensation when he can't sanely bear anymore. She holds him when he goes utterly rigid, when he doesn't even seem to breathe for a few seconds, and she holds him when he starts moving again, slow and agonizing. When he shudders. When the tension in him relents. When he clings to her.

When he kisses her. Danicka's eyes are open, and soft, her lips parted and warm against his own. She tastes his mouth gently, tenderly, as though every last nerve ending on him must be raw right now. She cradles him to her afterward, nuzzling his jawline and his cheek, beginning once again to catch her breath.

"Jste šťastný, má lásko?" she murmurs lightly, when she does.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] It's rarely like this. In truth, he can't remember the last time it was like this. The last time so far before him; the last time she did not come again with him; the last time he did not try to bring her there. The last time she simply held him like this, and accepted him, and took what he gave her, and held him when he lost himself in her.

There's something overwhelming about it. To give so much over; to reveal so much; to lose all semblance of control while she retained most of hers. Eight months ago he would've felt selfish. Eight months ago he would've felt vulnerable, exposed, somehow endangered.

He doesn't feel vulnerable. Or exposed. Or endangered. He does feel overwhelmed, though, and he can't seem to loosen his arms; can't seem to let her go. He can't seem to control the faint quivers that run up his arms, which bear his weight, and down his back. It's debatable if he even notices.

She cradles him, and he turns his head faintly when she nuzzles him -- into her touch, into that contact. Then his head bows; his brow touches the sheets beside her ear, and the strands of her hair spread and golden there. His breathing slows, grows steady.

And then it sucks in abruptly as she speaks. He heaves a single deep breath, as though overcome. Exhales it.

"Miluji tě." This is the only answer he has for some time. Hot, firm, his mouth presses to her shoulder, her neck. "Miluji tě, Danička."

And, "Děláš mě šťastným."

[Danicka Musil] Afterwards he seems shipwrecked, lost still even as he comes back to her, speaks to her. She keeps her legs wound around his waist as he comes back down, as she gets closer herself to level earth. Her hand strokes his hair back, fingertips dragging gently over his scalp. So often they come within seconds, moments of one another, a few sharp breaths apart, as though he is so close that all he needs is to wait for her before he lets himself go.

He's confessed, though it was a long time ago, that he would be happy just to hold her, just to feel her breathing in his arms between his chest and the wall. He's pleasured her before, on his knees or with his hand between her legs, watching her lose herself, and seemed to want nothing afterwards but to keep her close, keep her safe as she trembled and breathed and returned to him.

But then there's this: the way she holds him after he comes in her, touching him slowly, kissing him softly. She rubs her face against his, even though his stubble rubs roughly on her skin. She seems happier now than she did even after her own orgasm rocked through her, tore her apart, made her claw at the sheets so she wouldn't scratch at his chest. She smiles tenderly as he lays kisses on her, closing her eyes and tilting her head to give him more of her neck, which she would not have done eight months ago

or six

or four.

Or very long ago, at all.

Her hands run firmly up his back, cover his shoulderblades, and then smooth back down. She rubs the back of his neck with three fingertips, a deep circle, waiting until his breathing has become completely regular again.

"Baby," she whispers, shifting under him, "do you mind if we sleep somewhere else tonight?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Like an animal, he moves under her touch -- his shoulderblades pulling together, his back bowing against her hand. Then he settles against her, enjoying the slow massage of her fingers against his neck, enjoying the feel of her, the smell of her, the slow warmth that's unfurling through the pit of his stomach.

His breathing settles more rapidly than a human's would. It's scarcely a minute before it's so even and steady he could easily fall asleep just like this. Yet when she speaks, his eyes flicker open immediately. Awareness comes to him quickly. He props himself up on his elbows, looks at her.

"I don't mind," he replies: as softly as she, as though the silence around there were something to be cherished or protected. It's no longer about who might hear in the Brotherhood; it's no longer about protecting his pack from her, or her from his pack. The sanctity of the silence lies deeper than that: something sacred about these moments immediately after; something sacred about the quietness, the gentleness, that contrasts so sharply, sometimes, with the savage way they make love. Fuck.

He kisses her again, gently. Then Lukas pushes himself up on his hands, sighing out as he withdraws from her. Then he folds his knees under himself, sits back on his heels. Her legs are parted to either side of him. He touches her knees as though to assure himself of her presence.

"Where do you want to go?"

[Danicka Musil] They could stay like this. Maybe twisting, Lukas slipping out of her body and then wrapping around it, shifting his weight so it rests neither on his arms nor her. Maybe with his back turned to the locked door, his arm over her waist and his leg over her calves and his hand over her heart, protective enough that his primitive mind could be convinced that they are safe. That she is.

Warm. Fed. Kept.

His bed smells like her, now. Like her sweat. Like whatever she uses on her skin and hair in the shower and after it. It smells like her cum. If he were to bury his face in his sheets and inhale he would be able to go back in his mind, remember the way it felt when she arched against him, the way it sounded when she opened her mouth and muffled screams into his chest, the taste of her nipple in his mouth, way she looked into his eyes when he came. The way they are now, nestled and tangled together, before their skin begins to cool, before slick turns tacky.

But she asks if they can sleep somewhere else, as they nuzzle their heads together, slow and warm enough to allow each other to drift off if they will. Danicka has a laziness about her that does not change when his awareness sharpens. She watches him, murmurs shh when he props himself up, runs her hands over his upper arms and his shoulders, leans up to kiss his throat.

And he kisses her mouth. And he moves slowly out of her, and she sighs silently yet heavily with it, unfolding her legs and spreading them to either side of his body. She moves up onto her elbows then, looking at him, drawing her eyes from his tousled hair to his sweat-sheened chest to his cock, messy from lovemaking, then back up over his abdominal muscles to his mouth, to his eyes.

"I want to go somewhere I don't have to be quiet while you're with me."

She pushes herself up onto her arms then, hands on the mattress, torso stretched out in front of him, eyes still looking up to his but head not tipped back.

"Unless you're ready to sleep now. Then we could just stay here."

Danicka leans forward, legs lowering, letting their chests touch slightly.

"And you could just watch me."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] As though drawn -- as though compelled -- Lukas leans forward as Danicka does, his brow resting against hers, his eyes downcast to all the minute, shifting points where they touch.

He draws a slow breath in. His chest rises against hers, seals them together more completely. Warm, his mouth seals over hers. It's not so gentle, not so mild, as the last kiss was. There's want there again, sparking to life.

Then he draws back. And he's smiling, a faint, faintly crooked pull of his mouth.

"Pojďme někam jinam," he says. It's a murmur, barely voiced; a rumble in his chest, a murmur of amusement running through it. "Chci se zúčastnit."

[Danicka Musil] He curves over her like a statue, curls his shoulders and drops his head so he can be closer to her, and it makes her laugh softly. She tips her head back and kisses him before he finishes that deep, slow breath. She lifts one of her hands from the mattress to find his own, tugging on his wrist and pulling his palm to her breast. When she feels him there again, warm and encompassing, she moans quietly into his mouth, her hand still covering his, guiding it to stroke and squeeze with aching slowness.

Her desire for him sparked again as he fucked her against his mattress, pounded her with the sort of relentless, seemingly selfish drive of a man with a whore, with hunger that would seem wholly self-interested had he not stopped just seconds before. For her sake. Because he thought he hurt her. Because she whimpered and in that one moment it wasn't a cry of pleasure but pleading. And when she pulled him in again, encouraged him to keep going, the way he let his cock grind into her made her shudder, made her clench on him again, made her want him all over again.

They are a mess. She's a mess. Her hair is askew, tangled, and her skin is sweaty and she smells like he just finished fucking her like he did: hard, savage, and thoroughly. Danicka reaches between them as he speaks, strokes her hand over him as she did earlier, moves her hand to her own body and gently rubs her still-sensitive clit, licking her lips as she watches him.

"Měli bychom uklidit, pak," she says, barely above a whisper, her breath getting faster as she touches herself. "A dal si náš šaty zpět při."

She pants for a moment, shuddering once. Her head falls back and then turns to one side, eyes closing. Her mouth closes, a low mmm echoing behind her lips. Earlier he told her that two simple words from her drove him crazy. It's possible -- it's likely -- she knows exactly what this is doing to him. He may even remember what she said she considered doing, back when they both knew they wanted each other but he would not let himself have her. She said she thought about coming to his room, sitting on his bed or his desk or his chair, and opening her legs

like this

to play with herself

like this

gasping and whimpering softly

like she does now.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] What humor had flickered warm and intimate between them as they moved together like animals, like lovers, burns away to ash in the next few seconds.

When she draws his hand to her breast. When she shows him how to caress her, how slowly, how warmly. When she reaches between them and touches him -- makes him gasp, makes his eyes fall shut, black lashes kissing swarthy cheek; makes his stomach suck in and his cock harden again.

And when she returns her hand to herself.
And when she touches herself like that, like she'd once promised or threatened to.

Lukas watches, his head bent close to hers, his breath quick and shallow between parted lips, parted teeth. He watches the deft stroke of her fingers, the wet glisten of her pussy, the way she touches herself, and then the way her head falls back and her face turns, how she shudders, how she breathes.

Oh my god, he thinks to himself. He may have said it aloud, muttered. He's not certain. A moment later his hand joins hers -- almost tentatively at first, twining between her fingers if she lets him; then more boldly. He doesn't dislodge her fingers. His slip between, past, beneath, atop; she plays with her clit and he strokes his fingertips down the sides, between her lips. He touches her cunt tenderly, lovingly, rubs the ball of his thumb over the sensitive opening ever so lightly before sliding his fingers in.

One. Then two. Then he's bending to her, catching her mouth, and his hand is coming down on the mattress beside her hip. Sheets rustle as he rises up on his knees over her; the tops of his thighs nudge the underside of hers. When he shifts closer, his cock lays heavy and hot on her lower belly, hard, and she can feel his flanks flexing as he rubs against her, strokes his cock over her body in slow, intoxicated mimicry of sex.

"Dotknout se ho, láska." His mouth wanders her face, slow, kissing here, nipping there. "Dovolte mi vidět ty vyrobit sami přijdou."

[Danicka Musil] Humor links hands with their intent to leave and excuses itself, waiting in the wings until they're done. Until she's come again. Until he's fucked her again. Until they've made an utter mess of each other and his bed, until they've torn the sheets from their corners, until they've forgotten that it's polite to at least try and keep it down in here, whatever the hour. They seem to have already forgotten that they were going to leave, that he was going to take her somewhere so she could moan his name with abandon

which may happen anyway, the way things are going.

Danicka arches suddenly when he touches her. She jerks as though hit with an electric shock, laying back down on the bed with a thump against the mattress. Her fingers and his slip against each other, slide as she finds her new position, and the way he strokes his fingertips across her pussy makes her turn her head and moan into a fold of the bedcovers. Her mouth opens against the stiff quilts; she gasps. And takes him in. And closes her mouth again, fighting a whimper that wants to be another moan, louder than the last.

Her left hand floats upward from the sheets when Lukas bends over her, touches his shoulder. She does not pull him down closer but holds onto him while they both work her cunt like this. She wraps her hand around as much of his bicep as she can and turns her head, looks down between their bodies at him as he rubs himself over her belly.

"Oukej," she exhales, shivering. "Je zima, lásko." But that isn't why she shivers. Her toes are curling. Her hips are writhing, legs sliding on either side of him, cunt clenching down on his fingers. "Oh, god," Danicka breathes, flattening her hand on his arm, arching her body again, head falling back. "Láska, nebudu dlouho nevydrží." She whimpers, lower herself again, looking up at him in open plea as her middle finger circles her clit, strokes it softly, then faster. "Jsem tak nadržený kurva."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "To je v pořádku, lásko."

He comes down over her as she lays back. His body covers hers again, or almost does, but his cock is still laid against her stomach and his fingers are still tangling with hers, smoothing around hers, slipping into her pussy and fucking her slowly, relentlessly, as she plays with herself.

There's something between reassurance and comfort and want and hunger in the way he murmurs to her. She's grasping at his body with her free hand, and he's bending to kiss her neck, kiss her breasts, kiss her mouth before he draws back. His eyes meet hers. He watches her face, watches her eyes, while he touches her; while they work together on her body as though she were some sort of project to complete, some sort of quest to fulfill, some sort of icon to worship.

"To je v pořádku," he repeats. Another kiss -- a brief, searing meeting of their mouths. It pants apart. He nuzzles her face for a moment, draws back, watches her. "Dovolit pustil. Dovolte mi, vidět ty přijít."

[Danicka Musil] The chances of them getting out of here anytime while the sun is still down are becoming steadily more thin. He's seen her touch herself before, running her hands over her body, but only for a few spare seconds before he's on her, before he's inside of her. And he's done this to her before, slid his fingers into her cunt and fucked her with his hand while watching her get closer and closer to an orgasm entirely apart from his pleasure, but they've never both worked their touch on her at once, hands half-tangled between her thighs.

She fucks him back for a moment, rolling her hips as though trying to get more of him, whimpering into midair, into his blankets. Her body all but bounces against the sheets in earnest, unselfconscious eagerness. And then her free hand drifts down between them, finds him against her stomach. She looks up at him, gasping as she runs her palm up his cock in one long first stroke, imperfectly matched to the rhythm of his fingers.

"Dej to ve mně," Danicka breathes out, rubbing his cock faster now. "Chci, abyste se cítili, abych přišel znovu."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas exhales so suddenly it's a gasp, a rush of air across her mouth that seals into a single, singular, savage kiss.

He shifts over her -- the muscles in his back and shoulder tightening, flexing. His fingers slip out of her but it's he that lets out a quiet groan against her mouth, as though he were the one feeling the loss. His fingers are still wet and hot when they meet hers on his cock, then pass hers to grip himself, and guide himself, and press himself into her.

"Oh my god," he breathes -- his face to hers, nuzzling, his mouth brushing incoherently, artlessly against hers; and against her cheek, and against her jaw. Blindly, he finds his way back to her hand, back to her clit; touches her as he pushes into her, caresses her clit, runs his fingers over the inner lips of her cunt as she takes him in.

"V pořádku." It's a tattered flag of a word, meaningless. What higher self, what control, what humanity he pretends to is so much rubble in the dust. His eyelids are lowered, but his eyes are open. There's such hunger in the way he watches her, his clear eyes glittering with it, taking her in as he touches her, feels her touching herself, feels her wet cunt clenching around him as he strokes into her, deeper, and then again, harder.

[Danicka Musil] She never knows, coming here, what is going to happen. If his packmates will be there, either watching her for signs of betrayal or ignoring her or feigning respect because she is now not just another kinswoman under Lukas's protection but his mate, chosen and challenged for, 'won'. Danicka knows, remembers from experience, what being immediately and intimately tied to an Ahroun means when dealing with other Garou who know of the connection. She is never sure, walking into the Brotherhood, if she's going to have a drink and dinner and go home or if she'll end up in this bed, her knees spread to either side of Lukas's hips and her hands on his chest, bracing herself while she bites her lip and tries to keep her orgasm quiet.

Perhaps five minutes ago she thought that he would stop her, get dressed with her, get in her car with her and go to a hotel somewhere only to tear at her clothes and paw at her flesh as soon as the room door closed behind them. She imagined leaving her panties in this room, wet with her scent, a far more delicate marking of -- if not territory -- than her presence here, her belonging. She thought they would go somewhere else.

And now she is not thinking at all, only tipping her head back and groaning as he enters her. Her pussy does indeed tighten around his cock as it moves inside, gripping him with lust and demand that goes beyond her conscious desire for him. Danicka bites her lower lip now to keep quiet, moves her hand from her clit and holds onto his arms, rubs herself up against him, urges him deeper.

"Fuck me," she says, as earlier, which itself is different than what she thought she would do as soon as she had him in her, which itself is not what she expected. Her voice is quiet, all gasps and panting: "Oh god. Fuck me, baby. Come in me again."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] There's nothing overtly seductive about what she's doing. Any of it. Even from the beginning, even when Lukas was trying so hard to ignore what was building between them like a summer storm, like a hurricane, Danicka never invested much -- or anything -- in the art and artifice of seduction. She never touched him unnecessarily; she never played games with words and gestures and glances; she never deliberately tempted him with her body, her scent, her mind.

When she laid down her ultimatum, it was blunt and unflinching.

The first time he reached for her because he wanted her, she nearly flinched away. Or screamed. Or cried. Something.

There's no art or artifice to any of this; it was always more about what she want and what she felt more than what she wanted from him, or what she wanted him to want and feel. It was always more about what was between them than it was about what she wanted or felt. And yet so effortlessly she turns him on, tempts him, seduces him. The way she'd looked, lips parted, head falling to the side as she touched herself. The way she sounds, so quiet, uneven, gasping -- it makes him literally snarl under his breath, makes him turn his mouth to her shoulder and bite down, primal and sudden, as though he couldn't bear not having her with every last one of his five senses.

After her hand moves, his hand lingers. He rubs her clit ruthlessly, toys with it, plays with her. Then his weight is shifting to his forearms. He braces himself over her, gives himself leverage to fuck her good and proper, gives himself room to look down, past his sweat-slick chest and her breasts shuddering with every impact of their bodies together; past the clenching muscles of his abdomen and the taut stretch of hers as her back arches; past the parting of her thighs to where he meets her, joins her, fills her and fucks her.

He groans aloud, sharply. "Miluju, jak říkáš který." It's a low mutter of a sentence. His temple is hot with sweat where it presses to hers, his hair damp and curling over his ears, at the back of his neck. He bites her again, a firm grip of his teeth, scraping as he lets up. "Řekni to znovu."

A sudden roll of his body slams his cock into her, makes him groan again. He doesn't let up; keeps that force, that rhythm, a hard, fast fusillade of thrusts that has him panting sharply on every throw of his hips, a growl riding behind every exhale.

"Řekni mi, chceš abych na tebe seru." He's nearly snarling. He's nearly out of his mind; to hear her, to feel her, to smell her like this, so fucking wet, so thoroughly fucked already, still wet from it, still covered and filled and drenched in his scent; fucking him again. "Řekni mi, chceš abych vás přijde v ty znovu. Řekni to, lásko.

"Oh ... kurva, ty jsi tak dobrý ...

"Řekni to pro mě."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (Let's change that to:

"There's no art of artifice to any of this; always, more than what she wanted from him, or wanted him to want and feel, it was about what she wanted and felt. And always, more than what she wanted and felt, it was about what was between them.")

[Danicka Musil] Sometimes after they make love, he presses kisses all over her, anywhere his mouth can find open flesh bearing her taste, her scent.

Sometimes when it's over, she closes her eyes and trembles, even now, at the overwhelming openness of how they come together, how he makes her feel.

Sometimes while they are still moving together -- rocking, thrusting, holding to one another -- like this, she thinks she's not going to be able to bear it. That it's too much, that knowing he loves her while he is also inside of her is going to break her somehow.

They barely rested, after Lukas came inside of her and clung to her, kissed her shoulder and neck while she held him wrapped in her arms and legs and asked him if he was happy. They barely caught their breath before she was sitting up again, touching herself, telling him by that gesture and by her offering that the feel of him had stirred her all over again. It's been minutes, barely, since the last time, and he's hard and fucking her again, groaning with each stroke, muttering and snarling in her ear. But it's been longer since her last orgasm, long enough that she's imploring him with her hands on his upper arms and her teeth in her lip and her hips rolling to give it to her, to make her come again, to feel it with her.

She moans, her head tipping back hard on the mattress, throat exposed, vulnerable, open. He's toying with her, teasing her, and she's losing comprehension of where they are, of how thin the walls are, of the entire reason she gave for leaving and sleeping -- fucking -- elsewhere. Once upon a time he compared her to a cat in heat, claimed she would be no more loyal than a tabby to any of several toms, but time after time he's seen the way she loses herself, the way she forgets to even try to be quiet, the way she comes with him

because it's him, becuse of the difference that makes.

All the same, she fucks as wantonly as though she is the whore he once thought her to be. Her skin all but gleams with sweat at this point when he looks at her, when he watches her writhing under him, moving with sinuous arches to flow with his thrusts, to push back against him. She yelps when he bites her, shudders as the gasp of sound trickles to nothingness. "Chci, abys mě šukat. Ach, bože, Lukáš, chci přijet!"

She bucks her hips again, jerks against the bed, gasping. "Ah! [i]Ah, Lukas, ne ..." as though he's slowing down, as though he's stopping and she can't let him, she wraps her legs around his waist, bearing down on his cock with a hard clench, fucking him back faster now. "Držet kurva mě!"

[Danicka Musil] Sometimes after they make love, he presses kisses all over her, anywhere his mouth can find open flesh bearing her taste, her scent.

Sometimes when it's over, she closes her eyes and trembles, even now, at the overwhelming openness of how they come together, how he makes her feel.

Sometimes while they are still moving together -- rocking, thrusting, holding to one another -- like this, she thinks she's not going to be able to bear it. That it's too much, that knowing he loves her while he is also inside of her is going to break her somehow.

They barely rested, after Lukas came inside of her and clung to her, kissed her shoulder and neck while she held him wrapped in her arms and legs and asked him if he was happy. They barely caught their breath before she was sitting up again, touching herself, telling him by that gesture and by her offering that the feel of him had stirred her all over again. It's been minutes, barely, since the last time, and he's hard and fucking her again, groaning with each stroke, muttering and snarling in her ear. But it's been longer since her last orgasm, long enough that she's imploring him with her hands on his upper arms and her teeth in her lip and her hips rolling to give it to her, to make her come again, to feel it with her.

She moans, her head tipping back hard on the mattress, throat exposed, vulnerable, open. He's toying with her, teasing her, and she's losing comprehension of where they are, of how thin the walls are, of the entire reason she gave for leaving and sleeping -- fucking -- elsewhere. Once upon a time he compared her to a cat in heat, claimed she would be no more loyal than a tabby to any of several toms, but time after time he's seen the way she loses herself, the way she forgets to even try to be quiet, the way she comes with him

because it's him, becuse of the difference that makes.

All the same, she fucks as wantonly as though she is the whore he once thought her to be. Her skin all but gleams with sweat at this point when he looks at her, when he watches her writhing under him, moving with sinuous arches to flow with his thrusts, to push back against him. She yelps when he bites her, shudders as the gasp of sound trickles to nothingness. "Chci, abys mě šukat. Ach, bože, Lukáš, chci přijet!"

She bucks her hips again, jerks against the bed, gasping. "Ah! Ah, Lukas, ne ..." as though he's slowing down, as though he's stopping and she can't let him, she wraps her legs around his waist, bearing down on his cock with a hard clench, fucking him back faster now. "Držet kurva mě!"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas is not the same man here as he is outside that door, these four walls, their shared and private beds. Lukas as the Brotherhood knows him, Lukas as the Nation knows him, is steadfast and serious. Is strength tempered with control. Is thoughtful, courteous, a civilized beast.

Danicka peels that veneer from him like the skin from the snake, the chrysalis from the moth. Sometimes he remembers the equinox, and the meal she ate off the plate that she laid on his chest, and how the alcohol and the fires and the presence of the woman he loved

who was the warm, primal creature he was mated to
who was the fleeting, agile animal he pursued and was pursued by when summer first broke upon the land

who made him feel as though she were prying back the ribs of his control to eat the secret fires of his heart. That's how it feels now, here, in the dark, with her holding onto him and holding him and fucking him and welcoming him. She strips away the politeness, the deliberation and the thought. She tears down the facade of humanity that he wears so well. She carves him open, flays him down to flesh and bone and lust and instinct

and he responds the way he always does, savagely, mindlessly, as though she isn't breakable at all and he isn't afraid of hurting her: mauling her body with his hands and his mouth, grasping at her flesh and pumping at her cunt, eating at her with his tongue, his teeth, his breath.

His hands eventually following her body to her shoulders, and up. On his elbows now, his hands buried in her hair: his eyes glitter faintly in the dark, like ice catching the moonlight. The air in their vicinity feels warm, feels humid with groans and sighs. The blank walls and pebbled ceiling resound with the creak of the mattress, the impact of their bodies, the sound of her whimpering, her yelping, the cries she's forgotten now to muffle, and the words

Chci, abys mě šukat.

that make him simply snarl in response, short and savage, because words were beyond him.

He fucks her. Harder. He fucks her, his cock hammering her over and over, fast, rather rough, pounding her to the bed again and again while her breasts brush and bounce against his chest. He fucks her, snarling and growling in her ear, her slick slipping from her cunt on every stroke and running wet between their hips; their sweat salty and slick between their bodies. It's a furious bid for completion now, an unrestrained, unadulterated fucking that makes him a single hammering arc of motion and strength that begins with his teeth in her shoulder and ends with his cock in her cunt

until the orgasm building in him is suddenly right there, imminent, sweeping over him like a shockwave, a white-hot flash. He has time for one word, Fuck!, and then his hands tighten on her, his arms around her; he slams into her, deep, hard, and

it's the first time he's groaned like this as he comes, harshly, again and again, with every pulse of pleasure that rips through him like an electric shock. There's nothing conscious about the way his body clenches over hers, or the way he pistons his hips into her again and again as though to push his cock as deep as he possibly could; to fill her utterly and irrevocably.

When it's over his mouth is open to her shoulder, his teeth a dull impression against her skin. He's panting, wet with sweat, shuddering palpably. Pleasure is still slamming through him in fading pulses, making his hips buck and his cock jerk inside her; making him groan helplessly, as though he couldn't stand it anymore, as though he can't stop it any more than he can stop breathing.

Or wanting her.

Or loving her.

[Danicka Musil] She was on the verge of orgasm when she cried out to him, desperate and pleading and urging him faster. They fuck now like animals, like savages, fast and hard and almost brutal in their use of each other. One might have expected that the first time, after the confession that it's been two weeks, that they've had to wait, that they've been together and yet not moved one inside the other for so long. But the first time, they kissed at the desk, ground together at the wall, teased and tormented each other on the bed for aching, interminable minutes before joining. And this time:

Lukas is unbridled strength, thoughtless demand, lust driven past the bounds of restraint. He laughs. He shudders. He falls the fuck apart. Then there's Danicka: aloof and nurturing at turns to everyone she encounters, mercurial and secretive, untrustworthing and untrusting. Who wears heels and walks like she's from the city, who snaps at mortals that stare at them when they go places, who ducks her eyes and lowers her voice when Garou can see her, who drives a shiny car and lives in a shiny apartment and smokes expensive cigarettes when she smokes them at all.

Who becomes this, naked and arched and begging without terror, whimpers without fear, tells him what to do and what she wants as though she expects him to comply, as though somewhere along the line Shadow Lords began bowing to the whims of their kin. She becomes the female that stood over him once in New York City and rubbed her cunt against his face when he kissed her there, held him by the hair and wordlessly all but ordered him to lap up the last traces of wetness left from her orgasm.

Which was all right. Because even then there was no dominance in it, no exchange or argument over power

What she does to him, she doesn't try to do. She does not mean to break him down to instinct and desire. She does not mean for him to lose all control. She knows he does. She does not necessarily know how it happens, what about her does this to him, and at the moment she can not even remember the times when he could not let himself go this much, this far, this easily. The days when he didn't trust her.

Or she didn't trust him.

Or they, simply, did not trust what was between them.

Fucking her against the bed this close to her coming, she may as well not be as breakable as he knows she is when he's sane, when he can think. He bites at her so hard that when he tears his mouth away there's an impression marking her as his with the unique brand of his teeth's pattern. If they had stayed against the wall, if he were fucking her against the door like that full moon night at the Affinia, she might be yelping out of pain and not surprise, displeasure rather than need. As it is, Danicka is so close when she cries out to him that when he snarls at her and pounds at her

harder,

faster,

she groans and holds onto him more tightly, whimpers "Baby..." like she's in pain, like she's lost in the dark, like she's reaching for him.

Her arms wrap around his shoulders now, fingernails digging into his back, pulling him closer to her, harder against her chest. Her legs tighten around him, her cries starting to leave her in wordless, meaningless vowels, round and warm and following the rhythm of his cock slamming into her. Danicka squirms once, wriggling as though to escape but only bearing down more on him. Her cunt suddenly clenches on him, squeezes him in hard, rapid pulses, tries to hold him deep inside even as he's still riding her. She doesn't swear or curse at him now.

She doesn't say anything at all. She screams though, ragged and brutal, her voice hitching as he keeps thrusting away at her cunt. She throws her head back, thrashes it against the covers, starts gasping for air even before her orgasm starts to let her go and let her down, even while it's still throbbing through her, even as she's dropping one arm to grasp at the sheets, claw at them while her other arm stays tight around his shoulders. She breaks into a whimper, starts saying his name

over and over again, the pitch sharpening as he growls, as he throws his hips forward and his cock into her, as he groans

over and over again, as she lifts her legs higher, wraps around him tighter, comes with him, comes around him as he's losing his mind and himself and

všechno.

When it's over her mouth is open and her head is turned to the side, her hand gentling on his shoulderblade but not letting go. She unclenches her hand from the covers and tries to lift it but it falls again, dropping to the bed beside her face. Danicka shudders with him, and she whimpers softly every time his cock jumps in her pussy, every time he rocks into her again as though he can't help himself, his body separated from his mind a long, long time ago. She can't open her eyes yet. She just gasps for air, shivering every few seconds.

"Oh my god," she breathes.

And a few seconds later:

"My toes are so cold."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] In the beginning, Danicka's non sequiturs made Lukas angry, made him suspicious, made him look for a trap or a trick. Later, they made him faintly wary, a little uncertain; they made him seek some subtle sign that she was laughing at him, toying with him.

Now they make him laugh. Or they would, if he had the strength to laugh. But he doesn't. He's molten right now, boneless, heavy atop her, his shoulders quivering where he holds himself up, still, so that he doesn't crush her altogether.

His chest presses against hers with every sharp, gasping inhale. She can feel his heartbeat, racing, hammering down the major arteries of his body the way he'd hammered her

just a moment ago.

They're hot and wet and sticky where they're still joined. He stays inside her, buried deep, as the seizures of sensation slow and fade; as his breathing slows, as his heartbeat slows. He closes his mouth, swallows -- it's too soon, he pants again to catch up. A moment later, when his breathing quiets, it's for good. A moment after that he moves, nuzzling her blindly, rubbing his mouth, his nose, his face against her shoulder, her neck, her cheek. Soft, repetitive, insistent, his hands move through her hair, stroking it back from her brow, stroking back from her temples and over the wash of blonde over his sheets. His damp, wrinkled, rumpled sheets.

Time passes.

"Ach můj kurva bože," he agrees.

Time passes. Every inch of him feels heavy, boneless, liquid. He raises his head a little. It's an effort. He kisses her cheek, her chin, her mouth. Brow to brow, he rests, eyes closed, breathing her in. At one point he laughs -- not because he's amused, not because anything's funny, but warmly and spontaneously, still a little breathlessly, out of pure happiness. When it subsides he kisses her again, deeply.

Time passes.

Eventually he opens his eyes. All his strength ran molten, crystallized, shattered at the moment of orgasm. The pieces are just now melting back together. He flexes against her gently, pressing into her, then settling again. His hands leave her hair and run over her arms, her wrists, her hands, and back.

"Pojďme někam jinam," he says as his hands open over the undersides of her upper arms, covering her skin the best he can. With a touch of humor and an equal measure of regret he adds, "Někam, kde vás nebude zima."

[Danicka Musil] It takes Danicka a little longer to catch her breath, to be able to close her lips and swallow, to be able to do more than gasp out a few words before she goes back to panting. She takes a deep breath, holds it for a moment, shudders when she exhales. Her eyes flicker open, fall closed again, while they lay there the wrong way on his mattress, his feet having brutalized his pillow and her hair spread out across the foot of his bed. Her breasts push against his chest when she takes that deep breath, her ribs without much room to expand under him. He's holding himself up, but just barely.

Still. She trusts that he won't crush her, won't fall on her, won't expect her to bear the burden of him more than being with an Ahroun, already, forces her to. She trusts that he won't let her be hurt, if he can help it

and realizing that, her eyes open. She looks at the ceiling, shadowed white that almost turns blue, and though her arms don't have the strength to move, there's a flicker of the attempt. Her forearm rolls across his shoulderblades as she considers trying to touch his hair, but then relaxes again. She breathes out as his heart rate begins slowing again, as his breath steadies. Deepens.

Danicka's eyelashes fall downward again, gold-dusted black or soot-darkened gold, as he starts touching her hair. She moves her face with his nuzzling, against it, lazily allowing the affection, returning it simply by welcoming it. Her eyes stay closed as he kisses her, though her lips spread in a slow smile when he laughs, part as she chuckles softly and nods in agreement with... nothing. With his happiness. With her own.

She opens her mouth after his lips press against hers. She tastes his mouth with soft, gentle swipes of her tongue, because she can breathe again. And because she loves this sensation of kissing, apart from the growing arousal that so often accompanies it, a fine and separate melding that is, thanks to their satisfaction, all the more intimate. All the more primordial. The kiss garners all her focus for the time that it lasts, all her experience, all her adoration.

Her eyes open when they part. She watches him, finally able to move her arms and touch his hair, stroke it back over his temples, until he opens his eyes again and they look at each other, finally, the sweaty and sticky and boneless versions of themselves they've transformed into. Come back to. His hands on her arms warm her skin, and it makes her smile.

"Můžete se pohybovat?" she asks him, with some amusement, and then lifts her head to kiss his jawline, the corner of his mouth, his lips. She sighs across his cheek. "Můžeme moci zůstat."

She does not add:

Můžete moci mě držet v teple.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] There's a moment -- a flicker of utter clarity in his eyes.

She spoke quietly, lazily. By and large, Lukas is quiet, is lazy, is replete and exhausted and utterly ready to take her somewhere, anywhere, where she could feel safe and just

wrap around her
and sleep.

But for that second, Lukas is wide awake. His mind is clear and sharp, and though neither of them make a production of it, he knows what she said. She knows what she said. She can read the look in his eyes, which is surprise and ache and absolute adoration, all at once.

She lifts her head, then. He tilts his. Her mouth grazes at his jawline, and then they drift together, like planets coming into alignment.

A kiss, soft. They hold to each other. It's rare that they can kiss without escalation; a pleasure to be treasured, enjoyed.

When Danicka lays back, Lukas, sighing in exhale, shifts and rolls to his side. His weight settles from elbow to tricep to shoulder. His free hand opens over her abdomen, and slowly, mindful of the ferocity with which he'd fucked her the second time, careful not to hurt her, he draws out of her. When his cock slides free of her his eyes close for a second, and his breath shudders.

Then he looks at her again. The corners of his mouth move slowly up. He looks tired, and tousled, and happy. He doesn't care that his bed is a rumpled mess, that they're upside down in it, that his pillow is at the other end, that they're sweaty, that the room smells like him and her and sex. He doesn't care about any of it. Wordlessly, his hand on her stomach smooths over her skin, then urges her to turn on her side as well, nestling against his body.

Lukas tugs the blankets up and around the best he can, and though he doesn't care that it's still half-caught under them, he does take the time to tug a wrinkle smooth so she doesn't lie on a fold of fabric all night. His arm secures itself around her. Somewhere at the far end of the bed, his warm, heavy shin covers her feet.

She can hear him pull a deep breath in. When he exhales it, he draws her a little closer.

"Pojďme dostat si místo, to je náš." The words surprise him when he speaks them. She can tell. It's in his tone, and in the way he laughs afterward, quiet, a little self-effacing. "Jen někde můžeme být spolu."

[Danicka Musil] This is Danicka. And because it is her, there's every possibility that if she knew what it would mean to him for her to say that she would not have said it all, would have said it with hedges and disclaimers, would have been more careful with her words.

But this is also Lukas. And because it is him inside of her, holding her, looking at her like that before they kiss, there's also every possibility that she has no reason to be more careful, no reason to fear what her words might do.

He moves, proving what she said -- that he even can -- and she sighs at the loss of him, shivers as remaining moisture on her skin is touched by cold air. She lets her legs unfold from him as he's rolling to one side, gingerly closes her thighs, exhales slowly as he withdraws. Danicka's eyes close for longer than a second. She breathes twice, as deep as though she's already sleeping, before opening them again and turning her head to look at him. They are near one another by want and necessity both, the narrow bed barely big enough for Lukas alone, much less the two of them sharing.

Danicka turns on her side partly because it is the only way to remain on the bed and near him, but she is evidently reluctant. Her brows pull together, the corners of her mouth down for a moment, her movements slow because she does not want to move as well as because she finds it difficult to do so. There's an ache in her even before he speaks, as though turning like this takes something from her, makes her hurt for the loss.

She helps, though. She reaches up and tugs on the blankets, pulls them out from the end of the bed and down so they don't across her shoulders or her neck, pushes herself up to get the quilts out from under them both. For a few seconds they're silent but for the bed's creaking and the rustling of bedclothes while they tug and shift and realign themselves underneath, pushing with their feet til they're covered. Danicka holds her head up until he moves his arm, and when he does, she lays her head down on his bicep and settles into the empty space in front of his chest.

His heartbeat is strong enough that she can feel it against her back.

Danicka closes her eyes, her head and her eyelashes heavy suddenly, as though the sudden warmth -- which is not the same as the heat of sex -- in the face of the chill that touches their faces and exposed hands tells her body it's time, it's time, and she can fall asleep now.

And then he speaks.

She opens her eyes, stares at his desk, at her clothes littered here and there. Her ribs expand under his arm where it's folded around her. Her eyelashes flick against the inside of his arm when she blinks.

"What do you mean?" she whispers.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "I mean," he too speaks softly, as though out of respect for the darkness, for the love they've just made, "maybe I can rent a studio somewhere. Or..."

He's uncharacteristically inarticulate, and wishes, belatedly, that he could still see her face, however dimly. His hand moves unconsciously over her body, the thumb sweeping an arc over her stomach.

"...or maybe I can liquidate some assets and see if I can buy something on the outskirts of town. It won't be anything grand, but it'll be a place that's ours and no one else's. Not the Brotherhood, and not your private home, and not a hotel.

"Jen ... naše."

She can't see him, so she can't see the faint wince at the corners of his eyes, his mouth. She can feel the subtle tension humming through his arm where it encircle her, though. He's suddenly and desperately unsure; he knows it's a wildly impractical suggestion. Worse, he knows -- or thinks he knows -- she's thought immediately of her mother, her insistence to live with her family and sleep beside her mate and nurse her own children when they could not tolerate her.

Lukas says none of this, though. He's silent now, breathing soundlessly, so still that if not for the rise and fall of his chest against her back, he might have turned to stone.

[Danicka Musil] Maybe if he touches her like this, his palm open across her midsection, he'll be able to intuit every emotion through her vital signs. He'll be able to tell, without seeing her face or her eyes, what makes her tense slightly as she lies there catching her breath, what makes her still-hammering heartbeat thud so heavily in her chest, what makes her clench inside with a sudden ache.

As he speaks, images come to mind of what he says: a small studio apartment with the barest of floorplans, holding little more than a bed, a few changes of clothes, some toiletries, a bit of food hidden away in the kitchen. Or a house, needing more work than either of them have the time to give it, a couple of bedrooms sharing a tiny bath, a kitchen with a drippy faucet and peeling wallpaper and a draft in the winter but a ceiling fan in the bedroom and a small tree in the front yard and a porch in the back facing the west, where the sun will set quietly every night after dinner.

Danicka closes her eyes and breathes more slowly, more carefully, but all he feels is that tension, that uncertainty, that thing he reads as wariness that may very well be anything from fear to

sharp, potent longing.

Not the Brotherhood, where his miniscule territory shares walls with that of other wolves, their arguments and bloodstains and foul mouths and fouler scents. Not her apartment, appropriated for its separateness and silence but unquestionably hers, filled not only with memories of times spent with him but events and days that have nothing to do with Lukas, that are hers and hers alone. Not a hotel room, neither in Cabrini-Green or Lakeshore or the Magnificent Mile, each one identical -- or near enough -- to the last but all different, every time, with only the scent of detergent and linen spray on the bedding and travel-size soaps and shampoos in scents that neither one of them would ever buy for themselves, where every night costs one of them a few hundred dollars of what are ultimately finite resources.

It's a little while, filled with these thoughts, before Danicka takes a slightly shaky breath and asks: "You want to make a den with me?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] In that silence, Lukas's hand moves, opening over her stomach and then smoothing upward until the heel of his hand rests over her solar plexus and the curve of thumb and forefinger cradles the underside of her breast. It's not a reawakening of lust that makes him do this, nor any particular intent to caress or fondle. He wants to feel her heartbeat. He wants to feel her breathing, as though he could

intuit her every emotion through her vital signs.

When she speaks, he too draws a short, abortive breath before he answers. He could qualify it again: it's not a den; they won't really live there; they won't spend every day and every night there; she'll still have 520 N. Kingsbury and he'll still have his tiny room in the Brotherhood.

In the end, though, he answers simply.

"Ano."

[Danicka Musil] The touch of his hand beneath her breast neither makes Danicka squirm against his lap nor shift away uncomfortably. She goes on breathing as steadily and deeply as before, still trying to get a hold of herself after what they just did to one another even while what they're doing now makes her inhales ragged, her sighs shuddering.

Her eyes stay closed, tighten in the darkness, an expression of unseen pain crossing her features. Danicka is not scared of the dark. She never has been. The shadows hide her face sometimes. It makes it easier to hide. She is friends with the dark. It protects her.

"Bude to bolet ty jestli mám držet svoje byt, také?" she asks, a verbal wince.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Behind her, Lukas shifts suddenly, propping himself on his elbow, palm to his temple.

"Ne, láska." The answer is immediate, gently, a little incredulous. "Ne. Proč by to bolelo mě?"

His body presses firm and heavy into hers as he leans over her. He kisses her shoulder, the curve of her deltoid where once, a long time ago, he covered her and asked her if she was cold.

"Chci si chcete udržet bytu," he says quietly. "Chci, abychom udrželi naše domovy. Já jen ... chci místo, to je naše, také."

[Danicka Musil] When he lifts himself up, Danicka turns almost immediately, rolling towards him so she can turn her head without straining and look up at him. When he leans over to kiss her shoulder she reaches for his jaw, guiding him to her mouth instead. This kiss is briefer than the others. Her lips are soft, folding around his, pressing to his as she breathes in. The kiss it itself is firm, though. Her mouth doesn't open, but it isn't chaste. She would never kiss him quite like that if they were anywhere but alone together.

Her eyes close for the kiss, open again as it parts. She lays on the bed now instead of his arm, painting his face out of the shadows with her eyes. "Oh," she whispers. There's a long pause, and her hand is still on his face, stroking his jaw, tucking his hair back past his ear. She seems to be considering what to say. Or maybe just how to say it. How to tell him.

When she manages, it's a rush of an exhale, the words barely a sigh, heavy with ache: "I would love that, Lukáš."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] They never really had the rituals and trials a normal couple would. The first time he asked her out. The first date. The first time they kissed. The third date. The one month anniversary, and the six. The proposal on bended knee. So many of these things never happened at all. Others passed unremarked, and still others -- with the unstoppability of cataclysm, as though all fate had conspired to bring some one event to pass.

This is the first time he's really asked something of her; something that was not driven by necessity, or formality, or anything more than simply:

it's what he wants.

In those seconds while her hand is upon her face, Lukas is quiet and tense, quietly tense. She can tell, because it's him, and it's her. She can tell from his shallow, silent breathing, and the way his hand covers her automatically, and the way his eyes had not closed when they kissed, and even now watch her in the dark.

Clear. Pale as ice.

When she answers, his face changes. He exhales -- a short, surprised sound that's nearly a laugh -- and he breaks into a sudden, unpracticed grin. "Yeah?" It's an effort to contain his smile, and his happiness, and his suddenly hammering pulse. He catches her hand firmly in his and kisses the palm -- so hard, so fervently that his eyes close and his brow furrows.

Then he's smiling at her again; laughing quietly. "Okay, then."

[Danicka Musil] The smile, and the questioning affirmation, make Danicka laugh suddenly. Hard enough that her head tips back, loud enough that those on either side of his room can probably hear the satisfied, relaxed ring of it. That does not take much; the walls are so thin that what sounds reasonably pitched to Lukas, who is so very close, is still audible. It's entirely possible that even the cadence of the words, though not the words themselves, are heard past his door. Her laughter, most certainly, is just as evident as the sounds she made when she came.

Both times.

Their rituals are different. And they are often naked in them, sweatdrenched and filthy, smelling of each other, smelling of the dirt or the smoke from a bonfire or the lingering odors of a tiny motel room. Their rituals are almost always wordless, almost always sealed with touch, arms and legs wrapped around one another, mouths pressed hard and open, no sound exchanged by gasps because

words are the sources of misunderstanding.

But this time he says Yeah? as he laughs, out of sheer joy, and Danicka nods, laughing at his grin, at his attempt to control it, at the way he takes her hand and kisses it and tastes their sex on her palm. Her laughter falters when she sees the expression on his face there for a moment, the way his happiness seems to make him ache for a moment. So when he smiles at her again, murmurs what he does, she puts her hands on his neck and his head and begins to pull him down to her, rolling onto her back, seeing his mouth with her own again.

They kiss. And she nuzzles him, rubs her nose and brow against his cheek, his temple, breathing in and smelling nothing but the familiarity of his scent. She exhales softly, whispers across his cheekbone: "You will find the den. A obrátím jej v teple."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] He can't remember the last time he heard her laugh like that here, in the Brotherhood, surrounded by thin walls and Garou of all tribes and moons and ranks. It might have been that night she emerged from talking to Sam to find the Unbroken -- who were also a Circle then -- wrestling and play-fighting on the floor, and even then...

even then, she held it back, clapped her hands over her mouth to hold back the sound, as though it would get her punished.

It makes him ache to think of that, and to know why.

Even if she had not pulled him down, he would have drawn her up to him, or bent to her. His hands slip beneath her neck, cradling the back of her hair as they come together. His lips close over her lower, then drift to the upper; the kiss is a slow, warm thing, familiar and intimate. Because she's his. Because he's hers. Because they're known to one another, recognized in each other's very flesh and bones. After, they remain close, nuzzling together like animals, like the mates they are.

He says nothing back. Eventually he slows, stops, simply rests his temple against hers. Drowses, then snaps awake when his head starts to droop. He laughs at himself again then, softly, and then rolls onto his side. The blankets rucked back when he rose up, so he tucks them in again. His arm returns to its place around her body, holding her slenderness close to his strength, as though he could keep her warm

the way she will make their den, their shared home, if only for part of the time, warm.

They sleep. It's late now, the small hours of the night, and the Brotherhood is by and large quiet around them even with the odd hours the Garou keep. Lukas sleeps deeply, contentedly, Danicka in the curve of his body between the wall and himself, safe from whatever harm his instinct imagines could possibly come to them in a place such as this.

Stars turn; moon sets; dawn comes. Garou and kin rise, shower, eat, talk. The TV turns on. The TV turns off. Someone plays the Xbox. Someone goes upstairs to the roof. The Brotherhood comes alive around them, the sort of noise and activity they would not have in a house on the outskirts of town, a couple bedrooms, a tiny bath, a kitchen with a dripping faucet and peeling wallpaper, a draft in the winter, a ceiling fan in the bedroom, a tree and a west-facing porch.

It doesn't matter. The noise doesn't wake them. They sleep on, warm and comforted -- at least until Danicka's iPhone rings its alarm tone, and they remember it's monday morning, and she has an 11am class to get to, and --

He walks her downstairs in his pajamas and a coat that looks silly on his bare shoulders. He follows her to her car, holding his coat closed with his hand, standing to place his body between her and what eyes might spy from the Brotherhood. For a moment he bends to her, closes his eyes, rests his brow to hers. Then he kisses her mouth.

Then he lets her go, smiling because she tells him she'll be late, stepping back because she needs to get in her car and go, holding her hand because he doesn't want to let her go.

They part a little before eleven o'clock. They don't see each other again for weeks. He smiles every time he thinks of her.