i want you to tell me.

[Danicka] They saw each other only briefly at Transit before Danicka slipped away, presumably to meet back up with her 'friends' from college and presumably to get away from the rather aggravating presence of Katherine Bellamonte. They barely touched. The last thing she gave him was a signal that to her meant something quite clear in American Sign Language and to him meant 3 a.m., which -- while being only an hour or so away at the time -- was still worthy of a quirked eyebrow or few moments of confusion.

It is hardly the first time they have misunderstood one another.

In any case, whether he arrived at Kingsbury Plaza at three in the morning to disturb her roommate on a weeknight with the buzzing of the intercom only to find out that she wasn't there, or whether he figured it out on his own in due time, or whether he ended up calling or texting her to find out where the hell she is --

The W Lakeshore. What did you think I meant?

-- he gets there. The young lady at the front desk looks up instantly as the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She looks him over the way few receptionists here have ever dared to. If he thinks about it, which he likely won't, he'll recognize her from the sheer number of times it's been her, poor her, standing there as he's checked in.

"Mr. Breaker?" she queries lightly, and waits until he's crossed the lobby a bit more before setting an envelope atop the desk. "Your companion asked us to give you the key to your room. She said she might not be available to answer the door herself. Seventeenth floor, left from the elevators."

[Lukas] Mr. Breaker, the receptionist might reflect, seems a particularly apt name for the blue-eyed man who takes the key. He gives off a violent vibe; a vicious aura; a destroyer's presence. If she bothers to think about it, it'll be hard for her to put a finger on why. She's never seen him looking anything but civilized. Groomed. Polite. She's never seen him grab someone in anger, or shake them, or put his fist through their face. She's never seen him break anything, and yet --

There was a time when he and his 'companion' were arguing, but they kept it down, kept it subtle, kept it in some foreign language that wasn't french and wasn't german and wasn't anything the receptionist recognized.

And the time he left alone, looking grim and determined; and his companion hours later.

And the time the woman left first, looking like she'd seen death itself.

-- and yet, if his name were to show up on the evening news the next day, wanted for some atrocious crime or hideous savagery, she wouldn't be the least bit surprised.

The seventeenth floor is like any other in this building: well-appointed, quiet, with a sort of subtle swankiness a little trendier than your average Hilton. Lukas, walking down the hall, matches the number on the keycard envelope to the placards by the doors. He stops when he finds the room Danicka has appropriated for the night.

The lock clicks softly as the card is accepted, an LED above the handle turning green. Lukas turns the lever and walks in.

[Danicka] He doesn't walk into the room and find the lights off, candles lit, soft music playing. There are no rose petals on the bed, though there is a bottle of red wine on the side table, uncorked and waiting beside two empty glasses. The room has warmed slightly; Danicka turned up the heat when she got here, apparently. He can instantly hear the shower running when he steps inside, can see Danicka's clothes from the club draped over the back of a chair near the window. Her bag -- the large leather one he's seen often enough to associate the very shape of it with nights spent with Danicka -- is on the foot of the bed, slouched over.

There's a menu beside the wine, a note scrawled on top of it. If he looks at it, it says simply: I ordered steaks. And a smiley face.

There's a strand of condoms on the nightstand. That, however, has no explanation.

[Lukas] Lukas, unbuttoning his coat, stands over the side table and reads the note on the menu. The smiley face makes him smile; makes him remember with sudden, aching clarity the way she'd drawn a smiley face on his chest one night, in the shower, in the goddamn blood of his enemies, a long time ago.

He doffs his coat over the bed. Steps out of his shoes. He snags the strip of condoms from the sidetable and tears one off, clipping the foil packet gently between his teeth as he goes to work on the buttons of his shirt.

The shower is running in the bathroom, quite possibly loud enough to drown out any other sound. He knocks anyway, a moment before he opens the bathroom door.

"Baby," he says, "to jsem já."

The condom packet is tossed onto the counter. He drops his shirt on the bathroom floor, then unbuttons and unzips his jeans.

[Danicka] He'd stopped her, that night. Pulled her hand from his body, been vaguely horrified at the way she stepped into the shower with him, forever ruining the thin, soft brown dress she'd been wearing as blood splashed off of his body and onto her clothes. He'd wondered why she was even there, after the way their last meeting had gone, how he'd thought he might never see her again.

For the first time, he looked into her eyes and saw a flicker of who she really is. Lukas had stood with her under the hot, pelting water and seen a hint of what seemed so locked away inside her, behind the walls of that stone egg he compared her to. Even now it's hard to understand why she does what she does, difficult to guess how she's going to react to something.

Even this: condoms on the nightstand, when they haven't bothered with them for some time now. When, even after remembering, she's pulled him back into her anyway, refusing to let him go, refusing to let him leave, and arching her back as though glorying in it when he comes without barrier between his body and hers. There's no explanation, no warning, just a change, and a small reminder of the sort of woman he's dealing with,

which is no sort at all, no type, that he has known previously.

He can't see her through the curtain when he steps into the bathroom. She can barely hear him. But she laughs at what he says: "Vím!"

A second later she pulls the shower curtain aside and looks out at him, her body concealed and her hair dark from water, straight and clinging to her neck and shoulders. She smiles, seeing his bared chest and then the rest of him as he lets his pants fall and steps out of them. "You're joining me, then?" She reaches up, wipes water off her brow. "I felt disgusting after that club. Come in," as she steps out of the way, pulls the curtain back a bit more, "I'll wash you."

Which she has never offered before. She either has, or -- more often -- she hasn't.

[Lukas] Lukas is bent at the waist, lowering his jeans and his boxer briefs together to the floor, when Danicka peeks from around the curtain. Water plasters her hair to her head, the sides of her face and neck; it somehow makes her smile more prominent, her eyes more visibly green.

They smile at each other for a moment, she from around the curtain, he from over his shoulder. Then he straightens up, kicking his pants around, unashamed of his nudity. He takes the condom from the countertop as he steps into the tub, closing the curtain behind him.

"Yeah," he says, after he's already in the shower with her. "I'm joining you."

There isn't a lot of room in here. They fill most of it, between steam and water, skin and skin. He leaves the condom on the soapdish, looping his arms around her waist and pulling her against him with a sort of thoughtless, loose-jointed familiarity that speaks of a lifetime's worth of intimacy, though in reality they haven't even been dating a year. They aren't really dating at all.

He kisses her though, leaning into her, swaying her back and through the spray, then around. He puts his back to the water, his skin slicking with water too, warm from himself. When the kiss tapers off he nuzzles her face, her cheek, the lobe of her ear.

"Mmm," Lukas sighs, more felt than heard. "Můj lodní důstojník."

[Danicka] It isn't until he follows her into the shower, wrapped condom in hand, that Danicka notices he brought it in with him. She was, understandably, focused on Lukas rather than whatever was on the countertops. Maybe she saw it and ignored it. Maybe she thought she put it there herself. But when he gets in with her, she sees it in his hand and she sees it when he puts it on the soap dish and she doesn't mention it yet, her eyes flicking to the foil and then back to the man.

Who makes her laugh again, more of a grin that turns into a low chuckle, her chest moving slightly from it. She loops her arms around his neck, smiling broadly, her breasts and stomach pressing to his body as he pulls her to him. She tips her head back to kiss him, closes her eyes as the water hits her scalp. She makes a noise into his mouth when he sways her, mild protest as the water hits her face instead.

Lukas lets her go, sets her down, moves his lips from hers, and Danicka breathes in deeply, reaching one hand up from his shoulders to wipe her face. She holds back, so the water striking off of him doesn't flick into her face, then tucks her body forward. His body becomes a shield now, her face lowered instead of lifted. She lays it against his chest and closes her eyes for a moment, just a moment, before he's nuzzling her

and spray is hitting her face again.

She laughs softly. Reaches for the soap, instead of the condom. "Baby, food'll be here in something like ten minutes. Let me wash you."

[Lukas] Rather reluctantly, Lukas lets Danicka draw away.

Or rather -- he begins to; and then he thinks better of it. His arms wind tighter around her, pressing her body to his, her breasts to his chest, her belly to his hardening cock. He nuzzles her neck as she turns her face away to reach for the soap. Gently insistent, he kisses her jawline, the curve where her neck joins her shoulder.

"Nechte je odejít večeři u dveří," Lukas murmurs. "Víte, jak dlouho to má byl?"

His hands firm on her hips. He pulls her against him, rubs her over him, exhales a short, caught groan over her ear. Then he nips her earlobe, gently, and laughs.

"Počítat dní, lásko."

[Danicka] Does she know.

Sometimes she counts.

Danicka tenses slightly when he starts to let her go and pulls her back. His body is hard against hers. His cock is hot where it rubs slightly on her skin. His mouth is hungry, softly searching, and the words out of his mouth make her eyes close for a moment. She exhales silently, barely even felt, and then he moves her against him. Her face contracts, unseen, as he nips at her.

She puts her hand on his chest, but doesn't exert pressure against it. "I know how long it's been," she says quietly. "I'm also hungry, and stressed out, and I don't want the first time I make love to you in nearly a month to be in the shower. And I really don't want to be pawed at and rubbed against when I've tried to step back."

In another tone of voice, all this would be sharp. Harsh. Almost hateful. Danicka never loses that softness she started with, that resistance that is still not intense enough to cause her to physically push him away.

She looks up at him, her shoulders and head pulled back so she can see him better. Her brows at pulled together, furrowed achingly. "I've missed you. And I'm happy you're here. Just... don't push me tonight, okay?"

[Lukas] When Danicka's hand comes to rest against Lukas's chest, she hasn't even begun to speak yet. Not a single word has left her mouth, but

(words are the source of misunderstandings, and)

he already knows what she's going to say. Not the details, nor the specifics, no; but the meaning of it, the thread that underlies the words. No.

So Lukas is already letting go when she begins to speak. Her words fall quiet in the space between them, which opens up as his hands gentle on her hips, move to hold her lightly by the waist. His cheek is rough, sliding past hers, but his brow against hers as she says when I've tried to step back is smooth.

And then furrowing.

"Promiňte, láska." She draws back; he opens his eyes, clear and brilliant as diamond. His hands fall from her entirely, and he reaches for the soap. He draws a breath as though he might say more -- thinks better of it, picks up the bar of soap instead and holds it out to her, if she still wants it.

[Danicka] [Fuck using our words!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) Re-rolls: 2

[Danicka] Another woman would instantly wrap him up in her arms and soothe him, apologize, cradle his head to her shoulder and tell him not to be sorry, that he did nothing wrong. The fact that Danicka does not do this doesn't mean he did something wrong. The fact that she does not kiss his brow and tell him it's all right does not mean it isn't. She has always been difficult for him to read, even impossible at times.

And the times that it's been impossible for him to understand her, he has almost always doubted that she loves him as much as she does, that she will not stay, that she is tricking him somehow or that this relationship cannot survive. Maybe not tonight, with dawn just a few hours off. Maybe not this time, after everything they've been through together, after all the misunderstandings and miscommunications and times that their sometimes tenuous, sometimes overpowering connection has wavered under the strain they test it with.

Still. It makes her ache when his brow furrows like that. It twists in her chest when he murmurs an apology and lets go of her, reaching for the unwrapped, partially used bar of soap. She tilts her head and takes it from his hand, steps forward to reach around him and get it wet again, then rolls it between her palms until she's built up a thick lather.

Neither of them say anything for a few seconds at least. Danicka begins to wash him, starting -- perhaps a bit oddly -- with his hands, massaging them as she washes between his fingers, over his palms, up his wrists.

"What were you going to say?" she murmurs, after she's reached his elbows and gone back for more soap so she can begin sudsing up his biceps.

[Lukas] It is odd that she begins with his hands. Another woman would likely have lathered his chest first, his shoulders -- the large muscle-masses of his body.

It's odd, and yet it doesn't strike him as odd at all. Their hands have spoken for them when their voices could not, and when they would not allow their bodies to. His hand covered her shoulder, once, on a stripped bed in a cold motel room. Her hand reached for his, once, in a jet plane between New York City and Chicago.

His hands are also a stamp of humanity: the opposable thumbs, the dexterous fingers; the last mark of his homid birth when he shifts, linger long after the face Danicka knows, loves, has morphed into something wholly savage and unrecognizable.

They're relaxed in hers, turning at the wrist if she guides him to, the fingers gently spread, lightly curved. He watches her wash his digits, and then his knuckles, and then his wrists.

"That I missed you," he replies quietly.

[Danicka] Her eyebrows dip together once again, creating a pair of short but deep lines between them. Danicka looks up at his face, both hands on his right arm, washing up from his elbow, lifting hit gently to wash underneath, the scrub away sweat and deoderant and whatever else lingers on him. This is not the first time she's washed him. Once, she sat behind him in a bath tub and used a stiff scrub-brush that softened in the water and stroked lightly over his back, her ministrations as careful as though he were as fragile as a child.

She's not quite so careful, now. Her hands are warm against him, heated by water and body temperature. She lets her palms slide over his skin with intimate familiarity as well as defined purpose: she is cleaning him. She is washing her mate, grooming him with something between practicality and affection.

"Why didn't you say it?" she asks, still frowning, sounding slightly lost.

[Lukas] "Because," he replies, lifting his arm as she scrubs under it, and then down his side, "it sounded like an excuse."

His musculature, like so many Ahrouns', is near-perfect. The twists, the proportions, the overlaps, the way it all fits together. The muscles of his arm and shoulder are supple and heavy when they're relaxed; bunched, hard as wood, when they flex. At the junction of arm and torso they insert beneath the muscle sheets of his chest, which in turn tucks into his shoulder, and his back, which wraps around his side, slablike.

She finds a ticklish spot on his ribs, where too light a touch makes his skin shiver like an animal's. He restrains a reflexive laugh, but by then she's moved on. When her hand comes to the bottom of his obliques, he catches it against his hip-crest, his fingers warm and wet, catching suds from hers.

"I missed you," he says again; really says it this time.

[Danicka] "I wouldn't have thought of it like that," Danicka says, more mildly than he perhaps expects right now, as much as he was kicking himself a moment ago.

She washes his other arm, covers his shoulders with her palms, coats his chest and his ribcage in lather. It takes some time, and that time is spent in quiet: the water falls, and Danicka massages him gently as she works. None of her touches are light, glancing things, at least not tonight: without the soap all over her hands there would be no purpose to these caresses but intimate luxury. As it is, she cleans him with almost ritualistic slowness, reverent attention.

The water runs down and rinses away all the suds it can reach just as soon as she can apply them. Danicka has washed him arms, chest, neck and belly by the time he takes her hand, and though he does not press it to his body, she forms her palm to his abdomen and looks up at him.

Her smile is softer than her hands. And that's saying something.

"I've been dreaming about living with you," she confesses, because they are locked away in a tower, a room, a bathroom, a curtained holy place, and everything she says here is safe.

[Lukas] Soap suds spread over his skin, white against swarthy, with the passage of her hands. They wash away again almost as fast in the sheets of water spilling over his shoulders, down the contours of his body. Wetness makes his skin gleam, makes it shine, highlights the crests of his musculature and his bones, shimmers over his collarbones and down his abdomen.

His head is bent; his eyes follow her hands, and his own hands are relaxed at his sides, sometimes lifting or moving out of the way to give her room. He's still aroused, half-hard: he neither flaunts nor attempts to hide it. It is what it is, and he doesn't expect anything from her, though -- sometimes, when she touches him, he closes his eyes and breathes slowly.

Her palm presses to his stomach. She looks up at him, and he looks back at her. He doesn't even realize he's smiling, but she can see it answering hers, a slow, soft, tender expression that no one outside this room would quite believe him capable of.

Danicka doesn't qualify it, and this time, he doesn't push her to. Not when we can or once in a while or once a week or once a year or every night.

It is what it is. He leaves it there between them, in the steam and the water, in the soap suds running down his thighs, down the porcelain and into the drain.

"Soon," he replies, quietly.

[Danicka] She smelled like soap when he first stepped in with her. When he held her close, pressed his body to her and nuzzled her neck, breathing her in, he could smell the hotel's soap on her skin. He could smell the lingering hints of her shampoo in her hair, and beneath it all, the scent he could track across the city if he had to in order to find her. Danicka.

She's clean, and warm, and slippery wet in front of him, her nipples hard from the occasional strike of water droplets hitting them. She's his, and smiling at him, touching him fondly, and whatever other words have passed between them in here, his primal mind cannot help but react to what his body knows: his mate, his female, near and naked and attentive.

The smiles she gives him are rare; not in frequency, but in the conditions under which they'll appear. Usually they must be alone, or unseen somehow, or ignored. She must feel safe. She must feel loved, and loving. She must know that neither he nor anyone else will use the clarity and obviousness of her attraction and her adoration against her now, or later. She must have him near, and know that in some way, they're happy.

No one who knows her would be surprised to see Danicka smile, or to see her smile with tenderness and warmth. But that does not mean they will ever see her smile quite like this, the way she does when she's alone with him.

Quietly, she puts her hands on his hips and helps him turn around in the shower, so the water will rinse off his chest and arms and so she can wash his back. Which is what she does: Danicka adds more lather, standing close behind him to wrap her arms around his waist and let the water stir the soap on her palms. She steps back to wash his back, massaging more firmly than she did his chest.

There is submission in this, surrender, but not to him. There is vulnerability, hard to come by in the world at large and difficult for her to give freely when it has so often been not demanded or required but simply a matter of fact, a state of being, an inevitable truth. She runs her hand up his spine and cups it gently against the back of his neck for a moment, nudging him forward so the water can run down his back. A veil of soapsuds slides down away from his flesh, over his ass, down the backs of his thighs, and then Danicka steps forward and aligns her body to the back of his, closing her eyes.

There's still soap on her hands. She leans against him, a distant knock on the door echoing through the room and barely touching their ears. Danicka ignores it. She holds him like this, both arms around his waist, until the knocking stops and they're left to their silences again. Her face turns, and she kisses his back through trickles, through thinly-sheeting water. Her hands resting on his abdomen, his hips, travel slowly between his legs. Fingertips pushing carefully through hair, her palms find hardened flesh together and begin stroking lightly, lovingly, up and down, hands sliding over one another, the touch as lazy as her washing of his upper half was purposeful.

[Lukas] Lukas literally cannot remember the last time he was bathed by someone else. It must have been twenty years ago or more, when he was a toddler or a child, and for all the rosetinted ideals of parents bathing their children in gentle sunlight and warm water, the reality of it must've been pandemonium: a family of four in a one-room studio, a tiny cramped bathroom, water splashing everywhere because Lukas was a black-haired, blue-eyed little imp, slapping the water with his hands while his father held him with his large hands and bellowed over his shoulder for Marjeta to

Řekni Anežka zastavit sledování televize, a jít do postele!

while Marjeta called back from the kitchenette that she was busy, she was making lunch for the kids, and the TV was blaring 7:50pm Looney Tunes and Anezka was shrieking laughter on the sofabed and

that was as different from this as the love of a parent is from the love of a mate.

No other woman has ever washed him like this, her hands firm and purposeful and adoring on his chest, his abdomen, his back and his limbs. No other woman has ever offered, or dared to, and no other woman has ever been allowed to. There's as much surrender in him as in her. The surrender is not to one another but to what's between them: this tenderness, this slow lovingness, this emotional adoration drawn in physical terms.

Somehow, Lukas doubts that Danicka has washed anyone else quite like this, either. Two men have loved her in her life. Of those, only one has she loved back.

Him.

Lukas turns willingly when she urges him to, and when she nudges him forward he bows his head to the water, lets it run down his back, sets one hand against the tile so he can close his eyes to her touch without worrying about losing his sense of orientation in the warmth and the water and the massage of her palms. He breathes steadily, contentedly, as her hands scrub over his shoulderblades and the large triangular muscle sheets of his upper back; the broader sweep of his middle; the tight column of his loins. They say nothing to each other now, and nothing is necessary. When she leans against him, her torso sealing to his, water running down over her back down instead of his, Lukas sighs.

His free hand holds hers around him. They could be in bed, sleeping. She could be holding him from behind, her hands over his heart, protective and protected all at once. He could be held by her just like this, safe and warm and asleep; he could be supporting her as she leans against his back, or standing in front of her, between her and the world.

They ignore the delivery boy at the door. Dinner'll be charged to her credit card. Their steaks will get cold outside their door. It doesn't matter.

When she touches him, he breathes in -- a slow, sliding inhale. His hand on the tile wall curls slowly into a fist, and his lips part. He groans, so softly that she cannot hear it over the crash of water. She can feel it though, a vibration in his chest against her encircling arms, against her body and her face.

[Danicka] She remembers the last time she was washed by someone other than Lukas, and it was not in her childhood, and there was no love in it. Bathing with Lukas is different, and has been since the first time she went to shower and invited him to come with her. Even though they had not washed each other then, even though their touches had wandered much like this and even though held held her between his body and the tiled wall as he made her come on his hand, the invitation had not been meant as overtly, immediately sexual.

It was something they'd never done before. Not with anyone, for him. Not with him, for Danicka. Not together.

But she has never washed anyone like this. She has refused to wash others when asked. She has bathed children, lifted them dripping and wiggly out of tubs and into thick towels spread over her arms, but that was a long time ago. Lovers, one-night-stands, fuckbuddies -- she did not reach out to them to get them clean, to serve them in gentle quietude. And she certainly did not let her guard down, no matter how naked, no matter how slender, no matter how weak she may have been.

Lukas is right to doubt that anyone else has ever received this from her. No one else has.

Danicka strokes him almost idly, feeling the groan that she can't quite hear, even this close to his body. She murmurs as her hands tighten, wrap around him, as he gets harder in her palms: "That's it," her words whispering soft over his skin. "That's my boy. Let me touch you."

[Lukas] Lukas's free hand rises to the tile too, now. He braces his palms against the cool wet surface, his eyes closing, his head bowing under the showerhead. His hair is thick and, when drenched through like this, black as pitch. It absorbs the force of the spray; what sluices down his back and over her shoulders, down his chest and over her hairs, is warm and steady, a smooth cascade of water.

His back flexes against her breasts as he braces himself, widens his stance a little. He's breathing a little harder now, steady, long pulls of air. There's tension in his back, in his flanks, in the muscles of his abdomen -- a sort of subtangible quivering, a control, a resistance to thrusting against her hand the way he wants to.

"Oh, god, yeah," he breathes. "Baby..."

[Danicka] There's no mistaking the tension in Lukas's body right now, or what he's struggling to resist. Danicka squeezes him in one slow, long stroke, exhaling heavily as he bends to this, flexes against her. Her touch isn't idle now, or light. She's caressing him, reaching between his legs to fondle him with gentleness that's at odds with the firmness of her hand on his cock. She kisses his back again, presses her body to his ass, holds him tighter.

"Let go, baby," Danicka tells him, her hand quickening now, matching the cadence of his breathing if not his heartbeat. "Let me have it."

She tips her head to the side, kissing his skin, opening her mouth to scrape her teeth lightly over it, gasping. "Jet let go. Seru na mou ruku, láska."

[Lukas] For another moment, another few seconds, Lukas keeps his head bowed, his back an arc of tension that runs through his limbs, to his clenched fists and tightened calves.

Then -- "Fuck," exhaled breathlessly and half-helplessly through his teeth -- he drops his hands from the tile, reaches back to grasp Danicka's hips, to pull her against him as though he might meld her to him like that, seal her to him, keep her with him.

He does what she says. Gives her what she asks for. He's too tall and too large to lean back against her the way she might against him, were roles reversed; he tips his head back anyway, bares his throat thoughtlessly, holds onto her as though she were his lifeline to gravity. When he starts thrusting against her hand, fucking the curl of her fingers and the softness of her palm, it's unhesitating, unshy; bold; mindless.

"Dotkni se mě, lásko," he murmurs, as though she weren't already. He finds her hand, squeezes her fingers for a second, then drags her touch heavily over his abdomen, over his chest, draws her fingers to the beat of his heart, and then leftward to his nipple. "Dejte ruce po mě."

[Danicka] For no discernable reason, she laughs softly when Lukas reaches back to pull her against his body. She melds effortlessly, despite the difference between his height and hers. Danicka licks him, tastes his flesh mingled with water, and adjusts her grip on his cock when he starts thrusting. Murmurs of encouragement come through the air fuzzy and soft, without agenda or thought as to what she's saying.

She twists her other hand around and holds his for a moment, just a moment, before it's guided to his heartbeat. "Oh," Danicka sighs, and strokes three of her fingertips across his hardened nipple without urging. The tip of her middle finger rolls in a soft circle there while she's -- unabashedly, shamelessly -- jerking him off, faster now. "Turn around, Lukášek," she whispers, and starts sliding her hands away, moving her hands to his hips to balance herself as she steps back.

The thought of Lukas refusing to face her now is incomprehensible. When he turns, when he can manage to survive the withdrawal of her hands on his cock and his chest and trusts himself to turn around so he can see her, Danicka is reaching just outside of the shower and, for some reason, grabbing a towel. She doesn't unfurl the folded thing to wrap around herself, doesn't step over the side of the tub to leave, but drops it to the floor, where it quickly absorbs enough water to turn it sopping.

And Danicka gets on her knees on it, holding onto him still to keep herself from slipping. Her mouth is on him before the towel is even completely wet, lips wrapped around him as firmly and unhesitatingly as her hand was just seconds before. Her eyes are closed at first. They open after a moment, look up at him.

Close again, as she takes him deeper.

And moans.

[Lukas] The thought of Lukas refusing to face Danicka now -- well; it never crosses his mind. She whispers for him to turn around, and barefoot as they both are, his head tipped back as it is, she can just reach his ear if she leans into him; if she stands on tiptoe. His answer is not an answer at all, but a gasping exhale, a pant, and the way he finds her hand on his chest and pulls it up, kisses her palm, sucks her fingertips.

Then he turns. And she's getting a towel. And her hands are leaving him, and he's reaching shamelessly to take himself in hand, to stroke his cock while he watches her, his eyes open now, stark and hungry, following the turn of her body and the reach of her hand and

the way she sinks down, down to her knees.

"Oh, baby, no," he murmurs, aching suddenly for no reason he can readily discern himself; but it doesn't last long, because even as he's saying this his free hand is reaching for her hair, slipping into the clean wet strands of it, and she's leaning in and he's guiding his cock to her mouth and she's taking him in and --

"--fuck. My fucking god."

Closing: her eyes, and his. His lips part. He pants quietly, swiftly as she sucks on him, and he's just opening his eyes again as she's reclosing hers. Both his hands on her face now, on her head, cradling her to him gently, gently, as she moans around him.

"Ach, to je dobré." Barely above a whisper, that. "That's so good."

[Danicka] If he had not reached for her then, cupping her head in his broad palm and parting drenched locks with his fingertips, Danicka might have stopped at oh, baby, no. She might have settled on her knees and touched him and looked up at him, wondering and confused. Concerned, too, for the ache in his words and in his eyes, underlining his lust. But

he reaches for her like that, his cock in his hand and her lips on his cock and her tongue, with the way it slides over him, making him groan out blasphemies the way he does.

So Danicka doesn't stop. She doesn't look up at him for more than that spare moment, and she doesn't take her hands or her mouth from his flesh. Her fingers trail upwards, find his nipples before he has a chance to guide them there. Danicka does not flick at him but strokes softly, finding the same rhythm with her touch as with her mouth.

It's been a month, almost, since they were together. Not lying in bed together, Danicka so drunk in the night that she fell asleep in seconds after sliding into bed with him. Not waking up together, Danicka hungover and dehydrated and simply leaning against him quietly in the hour or so they afforded themselves before he had to go. Not eating together, drinking together, seeing each other at a club. They've been together. They haven't loved each other. They haven't gone farther than a kiss, than holding each other in sleep.

Danicka moans in answer to what Lukas can't help but saying, running her hands back down his body to his hips, moving one hand to his cock, too.

[Lukas] And maybe the fact that it's been so fucking long, the fact that it's been a month, almost, since they were together, since they loved each other, since they made love --

maybe that's why, after a moment, after his head falls back and he groans aloud at the steamed ceiling, after she sucks on him and moans around him and runs her hands all over his wet body, his tensing muscles, his hardened nipples and his hard cock, he catches her hands against his hips, takes her hands in his, squeezes for a moment and then

puts his hands on her cheeks and draws her mouth off.

"Přestan," he murmurs. "Baby, stop."

He's pulling her to her feet, then, his hands on hers, and then at her waist. He's still breathing hard. His pulse is pounding, and he leans into her briefly, his brow to hers, his cock hard and hot against her belly. Warm and humid, his breath fans against her skin as he fights to slow it.

And then he kisses her mouth, slowly, lingeringly. And he says, "Chci být v tobě. Pojďme jíst, lásko. A pak ať mi s tebou milovat."

[Danicka] The last time was in his bed, her hair spilling over the covers and their feet kicking the pillows and every attempt to get off the bed and go somewhere else derailed by the fact that they were naked, and warm, and could not stop touching each other. The last time they made love they made confessions about wants they don't dare trust in, wishes they don't dare make. Since that adventure underground and her whispered admission, since the time months and months ago that he answered truthfully when she asked him if he wanted her to get pregnant, they have not talked about the passing and impossible fantasies they each have but do not speak of, do not entertain.

It is frightening enough that now he is looking for or buying or even preparing a house for her, even if it is not one she will live in every day and night, even if it is not a den he'll return to every evening with her. As much as she dreams of living with him, of waking up and finding him there not once every couple of weeks but every morning, Danicka cannot help but remember her mother. There is no telling what she thinks of it all. She smiles when they talk about it -- and they've only talked once about it. She waits to be surprised.

They don't speak about what they can't have, or about what used to be.

Tonight they have this, which is not the shared residences either of them keep otherwise but a room in a hotel they've kept coming back to since the beginning. Danicka has no idea when he'll tell her that it's ready, that she can come to their place and be there with him, and she doesn't ask. She pleasures him as though she didn't say earlier that she doesn't want to be pawed at or pushed, as though she didn't say that she doesn't want the first time she makes love to him after so long to be in the shower, as though her only thought right now -- her only goal -- is to make him moan like that.

Make him tip his head back like that.

Make him gasp.

Make him come.

But: she doesn't push his hands away when he reaches down and takes her face in his fingertips. Danicka slows, and gently withdraws when he starts to guide her away. Ultimately it's unnecessary, his hands on her cheeks like that. Danicka lets go of him, takes his hands in hers, and lowers them from her face. She does not stand up at first, but when he starts to pull her upward she carefully extricates her hands from his and uses the side of the tub and the tiles on the wall to get herself to her feet.

Danicka does, however, let him steady her. Hold her, leaning into her and bowing his head to her as he does. She turns her face down from the spray that makes it over his shoulders as he touches their brows together, and her eyes close for a moment. They stay that way when he kisses her, stay that way when he murmurs against her cheek

Chci být v tobě.

which is as far as he gets.

Danicka wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him again. There's a moment of pressure against his shoulders, a tug he's likely become familiar with, and then the sudden levity of her presence as she pushes her feet against the floor of the tub and all but climbs onto him. There's no question that she trusts him not to fall, not to slip, as her legs wrap around his waist

as she kisses him, cutting off the rest of whatever it was he wanted to say.

[Lukas] [If he falls, this is V's fault. And Danicka's.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 5, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Danicka] [There is no Kahseeno. But she loves me.]

[Lukas] Lukas doesn't expect this, no more than he expected it the first time she did this, the first time he told her to do one thing and she did this instead, climbed him like a tree, climbed onto his body and wrapped hers around him and pressed herself against him and

this is nothing like that, because she's naked and so is he and his cock is hard and they're both wet and

he comes close to falling. That has to be said. He catches her up flawlessly, but the tub is slippery and he has to stagger back half a step before his feet plant firmly again, and all the time, all the while, his arms are around her, holding her. She trusts him not to fall; though perhaps the truer thing to say is:

Danicka can trust that even if he did slip, he would not let her fall.

She kisses him, ferociously. He groans into her mouth. Then he takes a step forward, another, sets her against the shower wall. His mouth is on hers, and then on her neck. He suck and nips at the thin skin of her throat, tips his head up, kisses her again, harder, while he reaches blindly for the condom packet on the soap ledge, finds it after the third grab, tears it in half, drops the wrapper, reaches down past the wind of her legs to sheathe himself.

"Hold on to me," he gasps; grips himself at the base, slides the head against her cunt, where her heat and slickness has nothing to do with the shower. "Fuck," and he bites at her neck, at her shoulder, "you're so fucking wet."

[Danicka] Consistency, she once said, is for pets and children. She is neither. Lukas isn't a child or a domesticated animal, either, but he keeps to at least some kind of routine. He expects people to do what they say they're going to do. He needs to know what to expect in order to maintain his careful balance of power and control. When he loses that foresight, that lay of the land, things get very dangerous very quickly.

Such as the first time she crawled up his body and kissed him like this, hard and deep and searching.

Such as the next full moon after that, when she asked if he might come close to frenzying again if they made love -- though neither of them called it that yet, neither of them would have dared tip their hand so much -- and the answer was yes.

And she went to her knees and made him throw his head back so hard it hit the door behind him.

The very fact that she is unpredictable, whether they are alone or in public, is dangerous for her. She risks life, limb, and the respect due her family name... or she used to. Danicka is Musil still, but as far as the Nation is concerned, she is no longer connected to Heals by Pain. To say that Danicka is constantly aware of this on a life-altering level is hardly exaggeration. To say that she is unsure about how to behave and around whom now that she rightfully belongs to a different Shadow Lord is a distinct understatement.

She does what she always does when she is unsure of what she should do, and does what she wants to. Which is, at the moment, kiss her mate, and wrap her legs around him, and rub her cunt over his flat, hard abdomen, clinging to his shoulders and the back of his neck. Her hands tighten desperately when he staggers, and she breaks the kiss for a moment, gasping and watching him as he steadies himself.

Steadies them. Which could be extrapolated to everything about them, turned back on itself as a paradox and a lie as well, but she is too distracted right now for metaphor.

They kiss again, and he takes her to the shower wall, holding her up and holding her there to adore or worship or simply eat alive. Her head is tipped again against the tile, back arched slightly to keep herself rubbing on his body even while he's fumbling for the condom and tearing it open and rolling it on blindly, hurriedly. "I am," she half-laughs, when he tells her to hold on. A half-second later he's sliding against her and she's closing her eyes with a flutter, head back again, all the laughter and breath catching in her throat, silencing her.

Until she starts to gasp, her breasts lifting with it, her hips rolling. "Baby, don't... don't make me wait,"

which is, if he thinks about it, ridiculously ironic.

[Lukas] Their faces are two inches apart; less. Their bodies have no space in between at all. Her legs around his waist, her arms around his shoulders: she can feel the muscles of his back rolling and flexing as he rubs against her, grinds against her, fucks her without fucking her -- a rhythm as instinctive and engrained as the very marrow of his bones.

Lukas's eyes are half-closed, but they're brilliant as gemstones. He's watching her, hungrily, avariciously, coveting the look on her face, the way her eyes close, the way her head tilts back, and

his mouth is on her like that. His mouth is all over hers, and then trailing down her chin, sucking at her neck. He nips at the thin skin there; kisses the flutter of her pulse. She's gasping now. He grasps her by the hips and moves her up the slick shower wall, holds her up with the iron strength of his arms, holds her there with her cunt to his stomach and her breasts to his mouth, sucks at her, licks at her, tugs at her nipples with his teeth, gently.

"Nechci vás čekat," he mutters. His mouth finds her breast again, sucks for a second, harder. "Nechci čekat."

He lowers her. She comes down into his arms, slippery and warm, her thighs finding the ridge where his obliques tuck into his hipbones, her arms settling around his neck, or his shoulders, or ...

wherever. It doesn't matter. What matters is the shift of his hands on her, the way he moves her weight to one arm, pins her between his body and the wall, grasps himself by the base, guides his cock to her opening and

fills her, one long stroke, deep and sure, all the way.

His mouth to her shoulder, then, teeth to her wet skin. And he's panting, gasping short sharp exhales, biting down. Groaning.

"...god!" The last consonant is lost -- his mouth is open and he's still biting her, seizing the flesh of her shoulder between his teeth. A beat; then his hips buck against hers, fucks into her once, rather hard, a little rough. He lets go her shoulder, then. He finds her mouth. The kiss is savage and unhesitating and, kissing her, he starts to fuck her in earnest.

[Danicka] Count the days, he'd told her earlier, rubbing himself against her with an ache in every movement, every word, in his eyes. And she has. Danicka told him she knows how long it's been, but she didn't mean that she's just aware that it's been a long time. She meant that she's counted. That she's touched herself in the interim, played with herself and toys and bitten into her pillow to keep her roommate from hearing her scream in the middle of the night. That she's thought more times about calling him just to fuck than she wants to admit.

She knows exactly how many days it's been since she felt her mate inside of her. And Danicka whimpers when he breaks that streak, when he sucks on her and murmurs to her, turning her nipples hard and red with his mouth

and when he pushes inside her.

Danicka's face pulls in an expression so conflicted between pleasure and pain that for a moment she simply looks... ecstatic, beyond the limits of human emotion and sensation. His teeth in her shoulder, his cock in her cunt, her wet around him and her body clenching down on him, bearing down against him as his hips and arms hold her up against the wall. "God..." she says, low and hard and strained, her breathing shuddering off into a whimper.

He bucks against her, fucks her, and her gasp is half-cry, aspirated so it isn't quite a scream. She doesn't pull away from his kiss but she can't return it, not yet. Her hands tighten on his shoulders as her legs tighten around his waist, keeping him close.

Regardless.

[Lukas] When Danicka names a god neither of them really believe in, and when that shudders from a murmur to a whimper, Lukas groans again, muffled against her skin, a sort of wordless, thoughtless answer.

It's been a month. More than. It's been a mindblowingly long time, and for creatures such as them, and especially such as him -- more than human, superhuman, burning hotter and brighter than any human, with lifespans measured sometimes in months after the Change -- it's almost unthinkable. It's been too long, and he wants her so much, and the feel of her drives him nearly out of his mind and his hands are grasping at her hips, at her thighs and her ass; he's driving against her, pounding into her deliberate and hard and

it's only when he's kissing her, and realizing she's not kissing him back, that he starts to slow. And gentle. And stop.

His face against hers, then, his chest rising and falling rapidly, harshly, he opens his hands over her skin. His caresses are idle and thoughtless, meandering. He nuzzles her gently, shifts between her thighs. Withdraws a little. Tips his chin up and kisses her again, softer than the last, a little questioning.

"Jsem že je příliš nerovný?" His breath is still coming in short, quick pants. Lukas raises his hand to Danicka's face, though, his eyes opening as he strokes her hair back.

[Danicka] The first time he hurt her -- and the only time she can remember him hurting her -- it was not deliberate, and it was not to discipline her for disobedience or disrespect. She'd told him once that she didn't believe he would never lose his temper or his control, that he wouldn't, eventually, lash out and bruise her face in anger. He's still never done that. He's scared her, he's come very close to raging at her, but he has not let his hand fly to hit her so hard that her face turns colors.

But once, he did hurt her. Because it was a full moon, because he wanted her so much, because he'd thought she was calling him there to end it, or worse -- make love to him and then end it -- only she wasn't, she was telling him she didn't want it to be over yet and there was nothing under her dress and she was so goddamn soft and so fucking wet...

and she'd done what she did tonight, which was drop to her knees and take him in her mouth first. And he'd done what he did tonight, which was pick her up and put her against the nearest flat surface as quickly as possible, getting inside her as quickly as possible, fucking her as hard as he longed to.

The difference is that she tells him, now. She tells him when his hand pinning her hand to the mattress in his room hurts her. She tells him when her feet are cold. She tells him to stop, to slow down, to be gentle. She tells him this even when he's literally pleading for her to let him pound her, when he's on top of her in the backseat of a car yanking her dress out of the way and pushing into her until he's delirious from the feel of it. But she's not telling him this time. She could not kiss him, but did not push at his shoulders or beg him to stop or stall him with a word.

He doesn't hear the change in that whimper, the line between aching want and barely controlled discomfort. He groans, mindlessly fucking her

until he realizes she's not kissing him

and though she's holding him tightly she's as physically relaxed otherwise as she used to be when he'd grab her wrist and feel her arm go limp and unresisting in his hand

telling him more about what Danicka expects, is used to, and resigned to, than words ever could.

She kisses him when he slows down, but there's something distant about it. It's soft, infuriatingly chaste, especially considering that he can feel her cunt tight and hot all around his cock. If he had to name it -- if he can name it, right now -- it would feel like obligation.

When he puts his hand on her face, though, saying what he says, Danicka looks at him and starts to nod. Several times. And her eyes are vivid and wet when she leans forward and wraps her arms around his shoulders completely, burying her face against his neck. She trembles, but with the heat of the water and the steam in the air still rising, it isn't a shiver of cold. Close as he is, he can hear her sniff. Close as she is, even though he can't see her eyes close, he can feel her kiss his throat

gently,

like an apology for the last one.

[Lukas] Almost at once -- as though they could no longer stand the brutal honesty of looking each other in the eye after what they did to each other; after he hurt her and failed to realize, after she kissed him like it was obligation and like he was any other -- they wrap their arms around each other and pull each other close; close as they can possibly be.

Lukas closes his eyes. He hears her sniff. He turns his face to her neck and buries it there, and his chest rises on a single abortive inhale.

"Je mi to líto. Láska, je mi to líto."

The shower is still beating down at his calves, the backs of his thighs. The water is as warm as it ever was. They could run it for hours and it wouldn't run cold. He doesn't want to run it for hours, though. He doesn't want to stay here anymore, suddenly, and he doesn't. The muscles in his back, in his core, shift as he straightens. Her back lifts from the wall. He lifts her in his arms, keeping her close, withdrawing completely from her with barely a shudder down his spine.

Then he's stepping out of the tub, careful to plant his feet, careful not to fall. When he sets Danicka down, it's only to reach back into the shower and turn off the water, and then to whip a towel off the rack and drape it over her shoulders.

A second later he's pulling her into him again, wrapping his arms around her, clasping her to the solid wall of his chest.

[Danicka] "I don't want you to be sorry," she whispers against his skin, barely heard over the crash of water against porcelain and ceramic. She holds onto him without waver, without relenting, because she is convinced that her crime is greater, that it hurts both of them more than a moment of uncontrolled lust could ever do.

And yet she doesn't voice her own apology, her own regret. How could she, without admitting that she let something pass between them that mocked by imitation what is, in a way, sacred?

They fold their heads together like sleeping doves, like lovebirds, and Danicka stays like that even when he lifts his head so that he can get her safely out of the shower. She doesn't ask, and she doesn't argue. She breathes in when he slips out of her, then presses her face harder against his body, aching and unable to explain how much, or exactly why, or what can be done about it.

She opens her eyes when he sets her down, turns to reach for a towel that he takes from her hand and the rack before she's slid it completely off. It unfurls, oversized and stark white and decadently soft, folding around her a moment before he is. Despite the difference between the shower's heat and the relatively cooler air in the bathroom, his skin does not feel cool yet, even remotely. Nor, frankly, does hers. She leans into him, breathing with him.

"I'm sorry," she says. Finally. And sighs: "I don't know what's wrong with me."

[Lukas] That makes Lukas frown. The mirror is fogged, or else he'd be able to see himself in it now. Her as well. He can almost imagine it: her slender body wrapped in the towel, his skin all the darker against the white. His height and her slightness. His black hair, her golden. His strength and her thin limbs, and the way they fit together nonetheless.

It's that thought that makes him turn and press his mouth to her temple, fiercely.

"Nic."

[Danicka] He is naked, unprotected from the air that wants to evaporate the moisture dripping down his body and leave him cold from it. Danicka's legs are bared, her head uncovered, but her face is pressed against his chest and her body is so close to his, wrapped in his, that she doesn't yet feel any change in temperature. She sighs softly as he kisses her, in release rather than aggravation. His cock is still hard, pressed against her, brushed by the towel and her body alike, and she is painfully aware of it even as she nuzzles his left pectoral muscle, arms tucked in between their torsos.

"Bojím se asi příští týden," she confesses, suddenly, as though that kiss and the word unleashed something, opened her. "A je to tak dávno, a Stýskalo se mi po vás tak špatně, a já jsem chtěl... abyste se cítili dobře," she finishes weakly, achingly, after the rest has come out in something of a rush.

[Lukas] The cold doesn't bother him. He was born in a country with bitterly cold winters; he was born to a tribe that inhabits mountaintops too stark and windswept for plant life. Barren, snowcrowned, his ancestors built their holds and dens in land wrested from the leeches, a thousand feet removed from the meadows below, which were scattered with the cottages of their kin, and from which, on a cold night, the scent of woodfires and suppers would rise and remind them of the reasons they fought the war at all.

The cold doesn't bother him, and never did. But to keep Danicka warm: that was always important to him.

"Jsem s tebou." Sometimes when they hold each other, her arms wrap around him as his do around her. And other times, it's like this: his arms folded around her protectively; hers drawn in, folded between their bodies, as though to shield their fragility and breakability against his broad chest, large torso.

He's not surprised that she draws in on herself like that right now. He doesn't mind. It only makes him fold her closer.

"Já cítím dobře," he adds. "Jsem šťastný už proto, že tě vidím."

[Danicka] Most of the time, Danicka needs no aid keeping warm. Even in winter her hands aren't constantly cold. Sometimes her toes are; he knew this the very first night, knew this a few weeks ago, knows they're the first part of her to chill just as she knows they are usually the first part of her he seeks to cover when they sleep together. It isn't as though New York winters were terribly gentle, but her ease during cold weather seems to come not from experience or even bloodline but from that everpresent inner heat that makes her smile the way she does at him, that makes her scent drive both body and heart, instinct and reason, completely mad.

She sighs at what he says, eyes closing as she exhales. "Would you be terribly disappointed if I asked you to bring in the food while I braid my hair?"

[Lukas] Lukas laughs quietly - a huff of breath, a movement in his chest. Then he nuzzles her temple, and the curve of her ear.

"I was going to suggest that you get in bed and let me bring you the food." He kisses her again, quickly but firmly, his lips against her cheekbone. Then Lukas steps back and reaches for another towel. He's still half-hard. She can see his lips tauten for a moment as he's wrapping the towel around his hips, and then he tucks the corner under, fashioning a sort of makeshift sarong. "Be right back."

Cool, dry air floods in when he opens the door. He shuts it again behind him, keeping most of the steam and the heat trapped in the bathroom.

[Danicka] She kisses that laugh, that breath, the way she sometimes kisses his heartbeat, her lips pressing to his chest as though she could somehow answer him with the contact.

Which she is. So many things Danicka still is not able to say, or finds it hard to say, or is afraid to say. She gives him what she can, when she can. Sometimes that's a kiss on bare flesh, or on his mouth. Sometimes it's her hand sliding under his own, or on top of his, each with a different meaning. Sometimes it's her feet tucking underneath his even though she claims she's not cold.

Truth be told, Lukas does -- and has always done -- the same thing. He kissed her shoulder because he could not, or did not want to, say that he was coming right back and that he wanted her to stay where she was. He has embraced her, burying his face against her neck after lovemaking so intense it was a wonder they were not both shaken to pieces, because he could not say that he loved her, that he was falling in love with her, because telling her she was precious to him cost him enough as it was.

They separate. She looks up at him, smiling gently, though there's an ache to it that's completed by the slight furrow in her brow. Her eyes are on his face, seeing the way his lips move at the brush of egyptian cotton over his lingering erection but not looking down at his body as he's covering it. Danicka touches his stomach when he turns to go, her palm lingering over defined abdominal muscles, but sliding away so he can go. She moves to the sink and the large mirror over it, and then gets a wide-toothed comb out of the pink-and-black vinyll bag she brought in here earlier.

She swipes her hand over the condensation-covered metal and looks at herself for a moment before she starts to arrange her hair, braiding rather than drying it tonight. Her face is smooth now, her expression as clear as the mirror is fogged. Her thoughts are her own.

It takes her perhaps two minutes to comb and braid her hair, and she is not rushing. When she comes out of the bathroom, the thick wet braid is lying over one shoulder. Her towel is wrapped around her hips and tucked in on itself much like Lukas's, falling lower on her shorter legs. The room is warm but her nipples are hard nonetheless, her skin paler than in summer. She walks to the bed and takes her bag off of the foot of it, lowering it to the floor.

If he has not already, she then goes to the side table to pour the wine, looking over at him -- wherever he is. And smiles. Softly.

[Lukas] He did pour wine.

He found a lapdesk in the desk, or perhaps on the shelves somewhere, and set it in the middle of the bed. The bottle is on that, along with their glasses, along with their food. The boxes are opened, the plastic cutlery laid out, but he's waiting for her to begin, not because that's the polite thing to do but because she's his mate, and while he waited he sat crosslegged near the head of the mattress and turned on the TV and checked the weather report.

When she comes into view, he looks at her. He flicks the TV off without looking, tosses the remote to the end of the bed. She wears her towel like he does; it's a reminder that here, social norms do not matter. They aren't human. He wouldn't care if she walked around stark naked, wearing nothing but that soft smile she gives him, which reminds him of how soft she is, and how warm, and how sometimes loving her feels like

springtime.

And a home full of warmth and the smell of woodfire; the smell of oranges and baking, the smell of mate and cubs which do not exist, which he does not really want, but sometimes he longs for simply because

it's Danicka, and she's his mate, and that is the natural order of things.

He holds her glass out to her silently, and after she takes it, takes her by her free hand and draws her onto the bed. If she lets him, he urges her close to him, draws her down to sit in front of him, a little to the side. With his free hand he steadies their food and their wine, moves it out of the way so it doesn't spill; touches her hip and her side, wraps his arms around her as she sits. His shin rests against the small of her back, an insinuation of strength and warmth through the towel. His other leg he unfolds, laying the foot flat against the sheets, the knee half-bent up.

And he kisses her shoulder. It's a greeting, as soft and wordless as her smile had been. His hands move upward, cupping over her breasts for a moment, warmly, lovingly, warming her until her nipples begin to soften. Then he leans sideways to pull their food back into reach.

[Danicka] In two minutes, Danicka braided her hair and dried off her body.

In two minutes, Lukas brought food in, poured wine, set up a small table for them on the bed, and checked the news.

Danicka, exiting the bathroom and finding him with her eyes, lifts her eyebrows slightly and smiles at him long before she ever leaves the frame of the door to the steam-filled room. She still moves her bag to the ground, but when she walks around the side of the bed to join him, she does not take the glass of wine. Their cutlery is stainless steel, wrapped in vivid purple napkins closed with black paper bands -- or was, before he laid it out. This is the W, after all, and this room is -- although not a suite -- ridiculously priced. She'd better damn well have stainless steel flatware and real dishes.

The television goes dark and silent, Danicka shakes her head when he offers her the glass, and then crawls onto the bed, putting her hand on the covers and on his thigh rather than being guided to sit in front of him. She leans over his lap and moves the lap desk aside, awkwardly but carefully. She takes the glasses and puts them on the nightstand. She adds the bottle to it.

It takes a few moments.

Danicka climbs onto him then, legs spreading and towel loosening as she sinks down on his lap, knees to either side of his hips, facing him instead, watching his face, steadying herself with her hand on his shoulder.

"Miluji tě."

She says this less often than he does. It isn't because it is hard for her to say, or because she finds the emotion itself challenging. It isn't because she feels less strongly, because she fights harder for composure, or anything like that. She says it less often because when she says it there is an element of ritual to it, a sanctity she cannot break and is afraid of being irreverent towards. She says it less often because he is the only person in her life she has ever said it to, and because the first time she did, he left her.

Danicka says it infrequently, always softly, because she is afraid not for herself or for him but for the inevitable fragility of what they have, the closeness of rage and death, the ache of putting so much life and feeling into what little time they will ultimately have together.

Even if that is twenty, thirty, fifty years, it will be such a little time, in the end.

She leans forward and kisses him, her eyes closing, without lust or agenda, but with incalculable tenderness.

[Lukas] When she doesn't take the glass of wine he offers her, he leans over to set it on the nightstand himself. By then she's moved the lap desk aside -- awkwardly, but carefully. As she moves the bottle away as well he touches her, his hands warm and sure on her waist. He's steadying her. He's caressing her.

She climbs onto him, then. He straightens up, spine extending. She straddles his lap and his arms loop around behind her waist, one hand clasping the other wrist, the insides of his arms to her skin, to her hips, to the small of her back.

When she kisses him he inhales, slowly. When he lets that breath out, there's the faintest sound in the back of his throat, and his mouth opens to hers.

When the kiss parts, he rests his brow to hers.

When he lifts his chin again, his lips brush hers when he says, "Budu tě milovat pro zbytek mého života."

Which is the sort of promise, really, that he once said he would never make because it would mean nothing until the end, when all was said and done and dead. Which doesn't matter, now. He makes it anyway, and then seals it: kisses her again, softly and slowly, his eyes closed.

[Danicka] They meld together softly, and slowly, without the savage rush found in the shower and without the lazy completeness that will come after they feed, after they've fucked, after they realize that they're safe and warm and together and that all these things add up to needing sleep. There's still a tingling of overwhelming sensation when they touch. Danicka almost shivers when his fingers trail over her flesh. She breathes in when she settles against him, and sighs when his arms slide across her body.

"Tolik tě miluji," she breathes, leaning in again to kiss him again, deeper this time, moving closer this time. Her breasts press to his chest and there is, for a moment, the definite danger that they're going to forget everything again.

Because it happens so easily.

The words themselves are like an echo, or an answer, to his promise. She has not been waiting for this, has not been pinning her hopes on ever hearing it. Truthfully, she hasn't ever thought about it, not since trying to explain to him in a Best Western that she was afraid to let him in again, afraid to let him near again, afraid to be close to him

because she could not help but love him

and she cannot avoid losing him. Nor bear it.

Danicka rests her hands on his shoulders and does not wrap her arms around him now. That, perhaps, saves them. Or their dinner. She kisses him lingeringly, savoring the taste of his mouth and the remaining hints of alcohol still on his tongue. There's tension in her lower half, in the way she holds herself back from rolling against him. And just when she thinks she has to, she must, she lets their mouths part and breathes, opening her eyes to find his.

"...Do you want to watch a movie?"

[Lukas] Lukas's eyes -- wildly blue as they are, clear and sharp as an arctic sky -- are a little dazed when she draws back just as they're hitting that verge, that precipice where all else falls away and sex, fucking, making love becomes inevitable.

There's a second when he's just looking at her. And then he laughs under his breath, a huff. It dies nearly as fast as it comes. He puts his hands on her face, serious now.

"I want you to tell me if I hurt you. The next time I hurt you, I don't want you to..."

He thinks for a moment. His eyebrows draw together; something like ache.

"...jdi pryč."

[Danicka] Usually, only three things seem to have any effect on the seagrass color of Danicka's eyes. Anger and fear, each in ample supply, make her an almost venomous green. Sunlight direct on her face turns them a pale blue, strange and sudden. Right now they look as mysterious as ever, nearly hazel in the dim lamplight of the hotel room.

She can feel his breathing starting to change when she pulls away, can feel her own heartrate quickening, can feel warmth flooding downward even before the first sips of wine, a return to touch. So, for some reason -- which may be no more than hunger, at this point, which may also be more complicated -- she drifts from his mouth, opens those strange and changeable eyes to find his.

His hands are searing on her cheeks. She breathes in, but it hitches when he speaks. Her chest caves in a little as he finishes. "Omlouvám se, má lásko," she says, the words slightly pained, themselves. "Jen jsem chtěl, aby ses cítila dobře."

Which is what she could not say that night at the Affinia, to explain why she let him hurt her then. Which is what she cannot excuse, now, what she cannot understand, herself. Danicka is unable, tonight, to tell him in what reality it is all right for her wish for his pleasure to override what is safe, what is good for her, what does not cause her sharp physical pain. There is none. But it is the only explanation she has.

[Lukas] Large, capable, warm, strong, Lukas's hands move on Danicka's face, stroke her hair back, return to her cheeks. His thumbs ride the crests of her cheekbones; his fingers cup her neck, her jaw, the back of her head. He looks her right in the eye

even though it hurts him to do that. Even though it hurts to remember what he did to her, tonight and that night at the Affinia, and to know that for him, she would bear it.

"Nechci ti ublížit." He says this softly, but very firmly. "Co není dobré pro tebe není dobré pro mě. Co vás bolí mě bolí. Tak mi řekni, lásko. Řekni mi, jestli jsem ti ublížil."

His eyes don't close when he kisses her. The lids flicker; they do not close.

Quieter still, "Please."

[Danicka] Slender, breakable...

(warm, strong)

... Danicka closes her eyes as Lukas touches her face, her hair, caresses her in a way that is undeniably intimate. No one could touch her like this without love. She would not allow anyone to touch her like this without loving them back. This is not the way that siblings or friends make physical contact. This is not the sort of thing anyone does but

mates.

Her eyelashes are lighter than his, as so much of her is lighter than he is, resting on her cheeks until his hand stills at the back of her head. She opens her eyes, all but holding her breath -- or simply breathing very quietly, very softly -- as he speaks. Neither of them close their eyes, and Danicka kisses him back only gently, as though afraid he is so fragile she might break him with adoration.

Some might argue she has. But only if they knew what it was like when the two of them are alone, only if they knew that he only held off on being with her as long as he did because some instinct told him that if he let himself, she could shatter him with a word. With a look. With a kiss of obligation rather than affection. Or by leaving him, slipping away while he slept so that he woke alone in a half-cold bed.

Earlier tonight he counseled his newest packmate about kinswomen. About devotion. About the war. One has to wonder how honest he was. One has to wonder if Danicka would ever ask, or if she would want to know the truth if she did.

She nods against his palms, leaning over and resting her brow against his. "Budu."

[Lukas] Now, his eyes do close. The lids slip shut and the lashes interweave. Where hers are golden, his are black as coal. So much of her is lighter; her skin, her hair, her body, her slightness. Her presence, for its lack of rage. Her anger, incapable of the sort of devastation his is.

For all that, from the beginning, he was afraid of this. He wanted this, and was afraid of it, and was afraid of wanting it. He wanted her, and knew, instinctively, in his bones, that if she wanted to, she could

break him

and leave him in pieces.

But she has not. They played their games of love and war, held each other at arm's length and swordspoint, but in the end it was always him more than her. She's stayed with him, though he's tried to push her away. She's taken everything he's given her, which is everything, and given it back.

His eyes close now. He's not afraid of betrayal. His brow rests against hers. He draws a breath, slow and even. His thumbs move on her cheekbones. For a while, he stays like this; just like this.

Then, opening his eyes, he nuzzles her face gently. Draws back a little.

"Pojďme jíst."

[Danicka] Regardless of season or mood, Lukas is tall, swarthy, black-haired and cold-eyed. Regardless of situation, he is an Ahroun, and he looks like heroes that no part of Danicka's soul can remember, and his rage makes him more dangerous than any human or kinfolk she has met or will ever meet. He is as he always is, steadfast as frost-covered rock.

Danicka's hair gets lighter in the summers. Her skin tans when the sun lingers overhead, pales when the weather gets cold. Her eyes change color based on where she is or how she feels or what she's thinking. Her eyelashes seem golden now, burnished bronze another day, soot-darkened brass in the morning. He's never seen her in the same set of lingerie twice. She rails at him one night in her car and appears a few days later in his bed in pajama-like clothes, waiting for him to come back to her after cleaning up after a brutal alleyway fight with Spirals.

The difference between them will always be that Danicka is water to his earth, air to his fire. She was always a risk because of it, because he could not trust her. Perhaps some of that was seeing, even then, that what is true with her one day may not be true the next.

Except this: that she loves him. That she wanted him to take her as his mate. That she wanted him to know her. The parts of her aflame, the parts of her stony, the parts of her unshifting and unchanging and true right down to the marrow of her bones and the history of the blood in her veins

light in her eyes.

He nuzzles her. She nuzzles back. They rub their faces gently together, as unselfconscious and unafraid as animals, not talking about the sheer danger of what Danicka did tonight and has done once before. They don't talk at length about the fact that both times, she's wondered what is wrong with her, to be willing to bear up against pain for the sake of his completion. She knows it isn't all right. He seems to trust, this time, when she promises that she'll tell him.

And opening her eyes and drawing back, she starts to climb off of his lap so they can eat and she asks again: "Do you want to watch a movie?"

[Lukas] And again Lukas laughs -- a low sound under his breath, quiet.

"Yeah," he says as she climbs off of him. He reaches for the nightstand, stretching out, the contours of his body elongating, tautening, as his fingers brush and then snag the remote. The muscles in his abdomen and side bunch; he comes back upright, handing her the remote before reaching for their food, their wine.

The little lap desk is placed in the center of the bed again. There's something decadent about all this, or perhaps merely beyond human morality and mores: his almost-nudity and her nudity, the red meat, the red wine, the warmth of the room, the mattress that is at once their dinner table and their couch and their bed.

Lukas saws his steak rapidly into bitesized chunks. Then he sets his knife down, and his fork. He stretches out on his side, the knot in his towel straining closer to coming undone by the second, his head propped on his fist. He picks up a chunk of meat with his fingers. He uses it to scoop up a dab of mashed potatoes; tips his head back to eat it.

And, chewing, asks -- "What are we watching?"

[Danicka] They separate, which counts for nothing because they end up lounging on top of the bedclothes together, in damp towels that barely cover their lower halves and in preparation for bed, eventually. Their food is cooling but far from room temperature. Danicka reaches past him to get her wine, brushing against his chest, taking the glass he brings closer to her hand so she can reach it. She moves back to her own space, propped up on her elbow beside him.

Danicka watches him cut his meat and begin to eat it, smiles to herself as she sips her wine. When she sets it on the lap desk she does not pick up her own knife and begin cutting into her slightly more done, smaller steak. And picks it up, leaning over the plate, taking a bite that she tears from the rest of it with her teeth. There's something at once untamed and fastidious about this; she does not get a drop of juice on her chin, but does not bother licking her fingers.

"Something old," she says, "so when we don't bother to watch all of it, we won't miss anything."

[Lukas] Somehow, Lukas cannot imagine Danicka doing this with anyone else. Not Liadan; not any of the kin that she knows on a passing basis. Perhaps not even Martin, and certainly not the Sokolovs, who would have been utterly appalled.

Maybe he should be appalled. He loves her masks of social graces, he said once. He loves going out with her, eating at some trendy restaurant full of trendy young professionals; he loves her thoughtless grace at the table, her manners which were not quite impeccable only because they were so impeccable as to account for venue, for atmosphere, for all the other patrons as well.

He loves knowing it's as much an act as his humanity. He loves fucking her in the handicapped stall, making her come on his face, making her squirm and fight not to scream, to hope her knees don't give out and she doesn't crash to the floor in her four-inch heels.

And he loves her like this, half-bare, eating with her hands and her teeth, sprawled on a bed that they'll share later, that they'll make love in later or simply sleep in, entwined, together, content. He loves that she doesn't use the silverware she would've demanded if it had not been offered to her; he loves that she doesn't spill a drop.

Lukas rolls on his back altogether, popping another chunk of meat in his mouth, sucking his fingers slowly, lazily clean. His free hand is tucked behind his head now. He looks up at the ceiling for a moment. Then he picks up the remote, switches the TV on, and flips to the TV Guide channel.

"We should watch Pulp Fiction," he says, a little later. And a bit after that, "Or Nightmare Before Christmas."

There are times when Danicka is more thoughtlessly, easily savage than her lover -- her mate -- though he is the one that changes the shape of bones and muscle to become a creature whose animal nature is obvious to anyone who sees him. There are times when, if they go back to that once-mentioned allusion to [u]The Little Prince[/u], there is no question of who is the fox who must be approached sideways, who must be spoken to quietly and carefully if at all, who will respond better to a gentle hand on her back than even the most tenderly worded poetry. There are times when he knows she is his mate because she is, simply, not entirely human.

This is one of those times, seeing her reclining nearly naked on this decadently appointed bed talking about watching a movie as they eat their room service meal and drink their cabernet sauvignon with her hair neatly plaited and ...her teeth, ripping hungrily into meat in a way he's never seen when she's said that she's stressed or uncomfortable.

She is with her mate. She is all right. It is safe to eat like this, to show her hunger and her lack of decorum, to wear her nudity without a moment's consideration rather than as its own counterintuitive shield.

Danicka remains on her side as Lukas rolls over, eating while he relaxes, eating while he flips through channels til he finds a series of highlightable bars filled with titles and start times. She eats without conversation, her only noise that of quiet chewing and quieter breathing. Her eyes flick up when he suggests movies to watch.

She admits that she thinks Pulp Fiction is good, but has always been overrated. She also confesses that Nightmare Before Christmas scared her the first time she saw it. But she also tells him she doesn't really care, and when they settle on one or the other they keep the volume low, and Danicka commentates quietly here and there after she's finished eating.

And she does finish eating, though she eventually deigns to use silverware to do so. Her plate is empty when she pushes it away. She licks her fingers and wipes them on a napkin. Lukas puts the lap table on the floor by the bed, pouring them both a little more wine to drink while they watch the television screen. Her hair is still wet when she crosses the scant distance between them and lays along his side. The end of her braid touches him, painting him like the brush of an absentminded artist, when Danicka quite matter-of-factly unwinds his towel from his waist and throws it over the edge of the bed. It swings away from his ribcage when she moves back to unwrap her own towel, sending it in the same direction.

She lays back down, and rests her cheek on his chest, looking at a perspective-skewed version of the screen with her right hand laid protectively over his heartbeat, her right thigh crossing his, her foot tucked between his calves, his arm wrapped around her, keeping her there. They could sleep like this, the dark room lit by the city through the window and the television flickering across the way. Danicka could, at least, the implacable strength of his pulse against her palm and the heat of him seeping into her through every close-pressed point of contact.

They do not sleep like that, exposed to the heated air and distantly listening to the movie they chose.

Her rhythms are slowing as the movie is staring to head up towards its climax, and the dissonance makes her say drowsily to turn it off, please. The ensuing quiet is so breathless that she fights to hold onto it, and kisses his chest as though to say [i]I'm coming back[/i] before rising up and crossing his body, twisting above him, sliding past him, til her feet touch lightly but safely on fthe floor.

She goes to the windows and rather than spreading the curtains even further to let the moon and stars and city in, Danicka closes them until barely even a line of blue-tinted white light creeps through. It's nearly pitch dark, but she doesn't trip on the chair or her bag or the towels on the ground. She comes back to him, crawling over him, finding his mouth by the sound and warmth of his breathing and kissing him.

When it ends -- and it takes time to end, deepening as it goes on, becoming drenching, searching, aching -- her exhale shudders slightly against his lips. And [i]Dejte si na mě ruce,[/i] she whispers,

commands,

pleads.

[i]Dejte ruce všude na mě,[/i] she asks again, half-groaning this time, moving into the touches: the palm cupping her breast, the tug of his hand pulling her hips closer, the hardening of his cock between her thighs, the way she rubs against it and moans into his mouth as they kiss again.

He might think she'll ride him now. He might want her to, after what happened in the shower, after however many glasses of wine and after dinner and after everything at the nightclub. He might even think she does not want him on top of her tonight. Danicka doesn't ask him what he wants, though. She kisses him, running her hands over him, stroking her cunt over his cock again and again until they're both nearly frenzied, until he's gasping every time he feels her slick along his erection, until she's starting to squirm on top of him.

Without a word, with just another deep, saturated kiss with her hand on the back of his head and her thighs trembling as she tries not to sink down onto him, Danicka lifts her leg and sweeps off of his body, lying down beside him on her belly, her head turned so she can see him. She's panting softly, and their eyes have adjusted to the darkness by now enough for him to see clearly -- if in shadowed hues of blue and gray -- when she bites her lower lip as tenderly as she might bite his earlobe.

There are ways she could be more vulnerable. Not many.

With her face to the bedspread and neither of them able to see one another's eyes, with the lights off and the room anonymous and empty wine glasses adorning the nighstands they could be anyone to each other, some animally attracted, half-fearful woman from a club or some man drunk enough to not care if she's lying but not so drunk he can't fuck. Except:

Lukas can smell her, knows her by scent and touch alike, knows her by spirit. And she murmur-moans his name, his nickname, when he touches her. She grasps the covers when he moves over her, rubs himself against her with his cock held in his hand and his eyes on her body beneath him. She shudders and lets out a truncated gasp when he slides it across her pussy with more deliberation than before, groans when he starts to push into her, spreading her legs a little wider to take him deeper.

So they make love. Whether he reaches for one of the condoms on the strip on the nighstand is up to him. Whether he can bear to remember one after feeling her shudder and grind against his lap is up to his control, which sometimes outstrips his memory by far. Danicka does not ask him to stop.

Quite the opposite.

When she comes, it's with whimpering gasps and bucking rolls of her hips back up against him, faster and harder during her orgasm than before, than usual, as though she's begging him

and then she is begging him

[i]Don't stop... don't stop... oh, [b]fuck[/b] -- Lukáš, prosím, kurva mě! Pojď ve mně, lásko, dej mi t--[/i]

which is cut off by a groan. His. Or hers. Or theirs, muffled by bedcovers and her shoulder, by flesh and cotton, by efforts to be closer to each other rather than any real concern with being quiet.

It is not the last time. They have to catch their breath, and she trembles briefly under him from the intensity of coming with him after so long, after so much waiting, after nights spent together but not not fucking, after realizing that nearly thirty goddamn days is perhaps the longest it's ever been and yet she can't think of a time when making love to him was not utterly fucking mindblowing. Danicka wants him again, and tells him so, mere moments after she's remembered how to form a coherent sentence.

At one point her head is tipped back, nearly hanging off the side of the bed, her hand grabbing at the edge of the nightstand while he bites into her neck and she tightens her legs around his waist and moans loudly, back arched and fingernails in his shoulderblade. But that's later. That's closer to dawn. That's when lust and affection and missing one another has turned entirely into a delirium of hunger and lovemaking. That is still before either of them lies satiated, her braid askew and her breath finally starting to steady as he folds himself around her from behind.

The curtains block out the dawn. Lukas moves an extra pillow in front of her anyway, because of a furrow in her brow, because of the thin line of light hitting her face.

They never bother to crawl under the covers. Not unless he manages to stay awake after she drifts off -- which happens so quickly, so suddenly that it may very well be midsentence -- and pulls the throw at the bottom of the bed on top of them. Truthfully the room is warm enough without it. Truthfully, Lukas is warm enough for both of them.

Truthfully, so is she.