talens and a trenchcoat.

[Lukas] It's arts and crafts night.

In the common room of the Brotherhood, laid out on the floor, are a pile of small gourds, the sort one might buy at an organic health foods store. They look like they've been set out to dry for some time. Also, ink and brush. Also, exacto knife. Also, butter knife. Also, Lukas, sitting crosslegged in bare feet and lounge pants, a clean cotton undershirt.

He's polishing the gourds one by one, buffing them until their surfaces are smooth and clean. Harvested, dirt-strewn gourds are to his right. Clean ones are to his left.

The Ahroun works patiently, methodically, slowly, automatically. The flatpanel TV is on, the sound down low, its light shifting over his face. He's watching the Road to Perdition, which he's seen before; he still looks engrossed.

[Danicka] Footsteps on the narrow wooden stairs. By reverbation, he can tell the comer is lightweight. By frequency, he can tell the steps are unhurried and careful. By sound, he can tell that the person coming upstairs is wearing heals. By some inexplicable pattern lodged into his memory, he can find the steps familiar. And by scent --

hints of her shampoo (it's the new kind she keeps at the den, rosemary and mint, not like what she has at Kingsbury Plaza) and her soap (the same as she uses at her apartment, shea butter, with the creamy lather and elegant simplicity) and the insinuations of her breeding (his, his, his, his, his, achingly, over and over)

-- he knows it's Danicka long before she ever turns around the corner and enters the common room.

Her body is automatically turning to go the other direction, to step through the common room and into the hallway to go to his bedroom. When she sees him in front of the television, however, her progress arrests slightly and she turns, smiling at him. Her hair is down and straightened, looking longer and longer with each passing week. She has the faint glow of health that was missing -- but coming back -- the last time he saw her. She's wearing her silvery-gray trench coat tightly belted around her waist, which should tell him instantly she drove here rather than taking any kind of transit. It's cold outside, especially with the wind coming off the lake, freezing everything in its path.

Her bag is dark purple leather. Her pumps are glossy black, their undersides electric blue. "Hi," she says softly. Warmly. Because they're alone.

Danicka walks over to him, steps softening on this floor, and leans over to put a kiss to the top of his head. Her hair falls around his face for a moment, before she pulls it back. A month, he told her. So she doesn't ask what he's doing. She just goes to the couch and sits down on the end a bit carefully, crossing her legs at the ankle and leaning on the arm to watch him work.

[Lukas] Even without paying attention, Lukas knows someone's coming up the stairs; even without trying, he knows who it is long before she appears.

When Danicka emerges onto the second story, Lukas is already looking her way. The anticipatory half-smile on his mouth curves into a full one as she sees him. She comes over, and he straightens up, and when she bends to kiss the top of his head he inhales the scent of her hair, falling down in a curtain around him.

Lukas returns the kiss -- with the difference in height, him sitting and her standing, his lips press briefly against her stomach, through her coat. He laughs quietly at himself. She goes to sit behind him, and he doesn't mind. That speaks volumes about trust, about comfort.

She doesn't ask what he's doing, but perhaps she can guess. Danicka is neither vapid nor unobservant. Quite the opposite, in fact. Though he's never given her talens of this variety before, she must know that Lukas isn't particularly enamored of natural crafts. There's a reason behind this; there must be.

After he finishes polishing his latest little gourd, the Ahroun sets it aside and turns at the waist, holding one hand out to her in beckoning.

"Want to help me?" Because they're alone, and because with her his honor doesn't demand that he constantly and stoically face his punishment, he whispers. It helps a little. His voice is badly hoarse like this, but at least he doesn't sound deformed; deranged.

[Danicka] Danicka -- neither vapid nor unobservant -- is the daughter of a cabinetmaker and the sister of a Theurge. Lukas never saw her father's workbench in the basement, did not notice the notches in the kitchen table or stains from projects that he had -- for one reason or another -- to bring upstairs. When he shook her father's hand, maybe he felt the scars here and there from slips, from mistakes, from accidents.

Most of Vladislav's preparation of materials for talens went on in the back yard, under moonlight. Or in the attic, the floorboards swept clean. He allowed her to help him do exactly what Lukas is doing now: cleaning gourds, cleaning feathers, polishing bowls to pour water into, gathering vials or rolling clay beads, etching designs into things.

Not all of her memories of her childhood are horrors. Not even all her memories of her brother, who held her when her mother Raged, who put her face to his chest to muffle her cries of terror so that she would not draw Night Warder's attention. To some degree it uneases her, to watch Lukas doing this. To a greater degree, perhaps so much that it would surprise him, she finds a great deal of comfort and familiarity in it. That, he can sense in her manner, in her quietude.

And when he asks her if she wants to help, the way she smiles a little and nods. She lets her purse slide off her arm and leaves it on the couch. For a moment when she stands she pauses, considering something, and in the end just makes up her mind and walks to the other side, facing Lukas. It means her back is to the television.

It means her back is to the door. The hallway arch is in her peripheral vision; the stairs are completely in her blind spot.

She sits on the ground in front of him, carefully, keeping her trench around her and tucking her legs to the side, resting more on her hip than on her rear or on her knees. It won't be comfortable for very long, but she doesn't look discomfited by the position. She just picks up one of the dirty gourds in her manicured hands, takes an extra towel, and begins buffing away the dirt with gentle, practiced motions.

[Lukas] No, Danicka does not sit on the floor. He watches her get up off the couch, and then Lukas turns and pulls a cushion off the sectional behind him. By the time she circles around in front of him, he's set the cushion down for her.

He hands her a towel. She picks up a gourd. He watches her for a moment, then smiles to himself and picks up another of his own.

They work quietly for a while. Gunshots and dialogue on the television, until Lukas reaches for the remote and thumbs the mute. Then a deep hush settles over the common room, interrupted only by the distant some of the Brotherhood's residents moving about their business. Someone goes to the bathroom. A pipe clanks when the shower comes on. Someone, their room door open, coughs and then quiets.

"These are for Gaia's Breath talens," he whispers after a while, when the pile of clean gourds is significantly larger than the pile of dirty ones. "They're healing talens. They're not as good as the bandages, but much easier to make. All you need are gourds and water spirits, both of which are plentiful and easy to come by.

"I used to have to find the spirits by the lake. These days I just turn on all the faucets in the bathroom." He laughs quietly. "It's like Bloody Mary except it works. I guess there've been so many Garou making healing talens in this place that the spirits have learned to troll around here for Gnosis donations."

[Danicka] A cushion, then. Danicka smiles to herself when he's grabbing it, trying valiantly not to shake her head, trying not to look amused. But she is. And endeared. And a little more comfortable, and entirely unconcerned about bits of dirt that fall onto the cushion as a result. Or the crumbs of soil that fall on her lap, onto her coat.

They work. With a sort of surprising studiousness and familarity that does not fit her apartment, his car, their modes of dress and their masks of social graces. They work like people who are used to menial tasks of one sort or another, though neither one has the hands of a workman. Lukas's regenerate too quickly for constant callouses. Danicka... well. Danicka does not do this every day. She just doesn't look like she would mind, if she did.

Hundreds of years ago, this would be part of her duty, perhaps. Spinning thread, weaving cloth, harvesting crops, planting, bearing and rearing children, cooking, stripping the skin and feathers off a kill and butchering it, salting it for preservation. And this: preparing materials for talens, guarding water as it is blessed by a full cycle of moonlight, making sure the cubs don't disturb it. Lighting the fires. Keeping the home.

After awhile, Lukas speaks, and her springtime eyes flick up from her work even as she's twisting her wrist, polishing the curve of one gourd. She listens. He tells her about water spirits, faucets, the proliferation of Garou here. She grins for a moment, looking back at her polishing, turning the thing over in her hand before setting it aside and picking up another one.

"What sort of spirit goes into a bandage, then?" she asks, because, well, he said that water spirits and gourds are easy. She can't imagine that gauze squares are hard to come by, or blood, really. Her voice is soft, too. Not a whisper, but almost; she matches him. Meets him where he's at. It's possible someone could be in the room with them and not be able to make out their words.

[Lukas] "Leech spirits," Lukas replies; a wry twist of his mouth. "Unpleasant and slimy little fellows. Not very bright, but always hungry. Not to mention we're pretty far from a natural swamp here. They have to be summoned every time, and I don't know how to summon."

He sets another gourd aside, and picks up one of the last few.

"Usually Theron helps me summon. Sometimes Caleb. I've toyed with the idea of learning the Rite myself, but ... it's usually a Theurge's duty to Summon. I've already learned the Rite of Spirit Awakening. I think that's enough for now."

[Danicka] "Isn't that more of a Theurge's job, too?" she queries, grateful to be diverted from talk of leech spirits. Leeches inhabit the bandages he's given her. Leeches. Hungry, stupid, slimy leeches lurking about in the talens in the box under her bed, as well as in her purse. It's not a pleasant thought. "Awakening, I mean."

There's no judgement in this. Curiosity, though: one imagines she hasn't had the opportunity to safely and rather freely ask these questions before.

[Lukas] "Yeah. But I didn't want anyone else in our den."

That might be the first time either of them have come out and said it. It's always been the case, though: there in the subtext, understood between them.

"If you get really traditional," he adds, "even the Rite of Binding is more a Theurge's job. Summoning, Awakening, Binding -- staples of a young Theurge's place in the pack. These days, though, most smart Garou learn Binding for themselves. It comes in handy."

He puts aside the last small gourd, dusts his hands with the towel, and then pours ink into the well: vivid and black, thicker than water. When it's ready he picks up the first clean gourd and the brush, carefully inscribing four glyphs onto the gourd in a loose square.

"Gaia," he points at them in turn, "Glory, Healing, Water."

This is perhaps more than another Shadow Lord would teach his kin. He passes her the brush, though, using the tip of his finger instead to write -- somewhat more sloppily -- on the gourds.

[Danicka] "Me, neither," Danicka says. She confesses this quietly, softer even than she's been speaking so far. So there it is: no one else. Not for anyone else were there candles in the windows on Christmas Eve, not for anyone else is there warmth and shelter and food there. Healing. Protection. The spirits now Awake in the den know her loosely, recognize in her some trace of the one that quietly sang or hummed them to alertness. She is the one who cleans the class to crystalline clarity, the one who lays her head on the desk when she's waiting for a game to load and sings quietly to the water bubbling in its little fountain.

Her spirit cannot touch them. But her childhood's oak remembers Lukas. Her den's spirits know, to some mutable and vague degree, what they are protecting.

She listens. Some of it she knows, but she doesn't come out and say it. Some of it is a new perspective; she doesn't tell him what she heard at home or at the Sokolov's or what Kinfolk from other tribes shared with her. She just listens; no one else is Lukas. No one else has his mind, or his thoughts. And his are the ones she is interested in.

Lukas brushes glyphs onto the gourd, and she looks from it to him. "Gaia I know," she whispers. No word on whether the others are familiar. She takes the brush, watches him paint onto a second gourd, then -- with some hesitance -- just sets the brush down on one of the towels and dips her finger into the ink. As though this is the way it should be done.

She works more slowly than Lukas, yet there's a grace to her fingertips that his larger hands can't match. Her glyphs are smaller, neater, will always look different than the ones he made alone.

[Lukas] She knows Gaia. Lukas's eyebrows go up; he looks surprised, and pleased. "You were taught?" Before that sentence is out of his mouth, his brow is furrowing. There are only so many wolves who might've taught her, and one more likely than the other. He doesn't like to think about it.

[Danicka] She meets his eyes, sees the way he looks at her -- almost delighted, maybe even a little proud -- and starts to smile back, warmed by his pleasure. But then he's frowning, and her smile is fading. Her eyebrows tug together, a crease appearing between them. "A little," she admits, rather gently. "I remember... "

Danicka pauses, taking a breath and holding onto it for a second. She exhales: "My brother wasn't always what he became."

Her finger, blackened now, strokes glyphs onto the surface of another gourd. She looks down, watching her careful inscription of them, glancing at Lukas's glyphs to double-check. Wouldn't do to write it wrong. "I forgot most of it. I was very, very young, and it was long before he'd Changed. He just liked to show me what he was learning, til our mother had him stop."

[Lukas] "I know," Lukas replies: Vladislav wasn't always what he became.

Truth be told, that bothers him too. Once, Vladik showed his sister what he was learning. Glyphs. The making of talens. Their crafting; perhaps their binding. Once, Vladik was kinder, or perhaps at least gentler. Protected his sister. Lukas supposes in his mind, he was always protecting his sister.

We all begin with the best of intentions, he thinks, and finishes the inking on another gourd. When he sets it aside, he does so carefully, the ink facing up and glistening wet, dulling as it dries.

"You can ask me, you know," he says. "Anything. Anything you want to know. I'll tell you if I know."

[Danicka] It warms her, hearing that. Not the fact that he knows: he asked her once, needed to know that there had once been some worth to Vladik, that he wasn't always so... brutal. So cruel. And she was afraid of Lukas for a very long time until that trip to New York City, when he saw how quickly and irreparably protection could be twisted into something else entirely. When he understood

you weren't mine

a shift began. And now she sleeps in their bed when she's sick, even knowing that he's awakening the spirits around her, knowing that her windows and her fountain are, in a way, alive. Knowing that he is capable of so much of the same things her mother and brother were. But knowing that he took something different away from meeting her family than many Garou would.

But: when he offers what he does, she looks at him and smiles. Not fading to a frown, this time. "I know," she says easily, still painting. Though he's never offered before, though he's never indicated that it should please him for his mate to know anything about the spirit world or the intricacies of the Nation. She knew, just as they both knew no one else should go to their den.

"We had another meeting of the coalition," Danicka says, after a little more quiet time spent working. "It's all very slow-going. Half of them act like they were dragged there against their will but insist on antagonizing every suggestion and decision made during the process. We haven't elected a chairperson yet, but we have team leaders now."

[Lukas] There's a moment when Lukas's hands are still, and his eyes are on Danicka, and she's smiling, which ignites his. Slow and warm it spreads. Whatever the Voice of the Jackal did to his tonality, it hasn't affected his smile. Or the warmth of his hands. Or the way he touches her, nuzzles her, held her through the nights she was sick and he was...

taking a break. Vacationing. Cloistering himself in his den with his mate, spending his days waking the spirits of their house.

"That seems to be a common affliction here," Lukas replies wryly. "People will neither stand up to lead nor allow themselves to be easily led. It's too bad you can't just beat them into line."

[Danicka] She's not sick anymore. Her skin is no longer that ghastly, waxy pale, and the color in her cheeks is not confined to two bright red spots high under her cheekbones. For a day or two while he could stay near her, she was mostly sleeping. He awakened spirits. He made soup. He brought her fresh glasses of water and rinsed out her Nyquil cup. He played Rome: Total War. He wrapped himself around her one night and whispered: I have conquered the known world in her ear. She still thinks that part was a fever dream.

He took care of her. And by sheer virtue of being there, holed up in the den with him in late winter while he regained some privacy and internal calm after Fons's death and his punishment, by being his mate and being no one who would judge him, Danicka managed to take care of him a little, too. Even if most of the time she was just buried under their comforter, waking herself with coughing or lying there reading a book or standing under a steaming hot shower for nearly an hour to try and clear her nasal passages.

"I think in general, most people just want to be left alone," Danicka muses, drawing Gaia across a gourd. "Unfortunately, they forget we're at war. Even if the garou leave them to their own devices, the Wyrm won't. And a bunch of sniveling, disorganized, self-centered Kinfolk are nothing more than fodder if they don't grow up."

She says all this calmly, but with the firmity he rarely glimpses in her -- but has known for some time is there, steeling her backbone despite her instinctive terror at the sight of one of his kind in any form but man or wolf. She licks her lips and looks over at him. "I did kick one of them out of my apartment, actually. Not the most effective leadership tactic, but at least I didn't have to listen to him anymore."

[Lukas] There were moments in those two days that must've seemed like waking dreams. Glimpses of memory hazed by fever and sleep.

I have conquered the known world as he slipped into bed and gathered her close. Grey morning light coming in the uncurtained windows as Lukas stroked the glass softly with his fingertips, and hummed. An afternoon when he pored over cookbooks in the kitchen, then turned when the brush of the blanket she'd wrapped around herself made some slight noise; the look on his face when he realized she'd come down for water, ache and regret, though he knew she would have called for him if she needed him.

The brush of her blanket on the stairs as he carried her back up the stairs, later, and held her in their bed until she slept. The burble of the desktop fountain that he moved to her nightstand after he'd awakened it, and the way the dim winter sunlight seemed liquid and alive in the water.

That fountain is back on the desk now, next to the computer. She's well again, and sometimes she lays her head on the desk and murmurs songs to it.

"Sometimes there's just no other way," Lukas replies quietly. "Sometimes one must be sacrificed for the sake of all others."

There's a pause.

"I just wish I'd kicked Sam out earlier."

[Danicka] She woke up when he moved the fountain to her nightstand. Started, drowsily, and stared at it from half-lidded eyes until -- finally -- she simply sighed softly and drifted back to sleep. Whether the spirits of healing even noticed her then or if they actively helped her get well, she doesn't know. She's a healthy young woman, and her fever only spiked a couple of times in the days he was with her. She was even able to come downstairs and curl up on the couch with him to watch television for awhile, head on his lap and artifical colored light flickering over her face.

Danicka glances up and over at him and begins to say: "Well, I didn't --"

He wishes he'd kicked Sam out sooner. Her breath hitches, she inhales, looks down at the gourd she's painting, making sure she doesn't screw up Water. "Co můžeš udělat dnes, neodkládej na zítřek is true," she intones. "But so is 'better late than never'."

Quietly, then, a moment later, a near-whisper: "Don't talk about sacrifice."

[Lukas]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 4, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Lukas] The ink on the first gourds is dry now, vivid matte black against the pale orange. Lukas straightens one that has rolled onto its markings, and that's when she says

don't talk about sacrifice.

Sacrifice is the very purpose of the Caern he serves. Sacrifice raised it; sacrifice is given every time a new Garou pledges himself to its service. Sacrifice is given again, and much more bindingly, when a Garou earns the right to lie in its field of hallowed heroes.

He cannot avoid sacrifice. Not here; not in the Caern of the Maelstrom. Not when the War is all around them.

Still. Lukas looks at Danicka. After a moment, he puts his hand out, and there's ink and his thumb, and usually he's so careful not to stain or taint her, but ... this is not the blood of some fell beast. This is ink, which has adorned the shelter of spirits, which will later be sanctified in their name.

His hand is warm on her cheek. His thumb followed the crest of cheekbone. His forefinger leaves a small streak across her jaw.

"Je mi to líto." Whisper for whisper, soft.

There are only a few gourds left now. While Danicka finishes painting them, Lukas begins to gather up the talen-making paraphernalia. They're quiet again for a while; when she puts the last stroke on the last gourd, he stands and holds his hand out to help her up.

"Come on. We have to finish this where there's water." His hand tightens around hers gently. "Do you want to watch the binding rite?"

[Danicka] She can't help not wanting to think about it, or talk about it, if she doesn't have to. If they talked about it, there'd be an ache in the words: I just found you. There'd be a memory of standing in her front lawn in that loose dress and that baggy cardigan, hair curling around her ribs to her waist, face drawn in something between confusion and pain, watching the Garou who had come with the news walk away.

Gave her the news, because her brother already knew and had sent him. Gave her the news. And then she told her father.

Sacrifice is inevitable. Glorious. Honorable. The absolute, only end result. The number of Garou who grow too old to be of much use and whose rage dims with age, who go to live with their Kinfolk in their twilight years: nearly nil, in these times. She cannot hope that should she have his children and raise them and live without him for most of her life that one day

decades from now,

he'll come back to her and rest quietly with her until they die in some kind of peace.

So it's childish for her to ask him not to talk about sacrifice, just because her mind flashes to the one-for-many wearing a familiar face with vivid blue eyes. But just as he does not have to face his punishment stoically and 'gladly' with her, she now permits herself to reveal those pleas with the universe that reality will change and give her what she wants, and keep him safe, and keep him with her.

He touches her face, smearing ink here, there. She looks down. Looks at him. The ink doesn't make her look wild, or savage, or anything like that: it makes her look like there's ink on her face, marring the otherwise smooth and clear surface of her expression. Her eyes are as young as her request, wide open for a moment. Vulnerable.

They close again as he withdraws his hand, though she turns her head towards his palm as he does. The agony of her fear passes away in silence as she helps him prepare vessels for healing talens that might at least stave off the worst of the unavoidable sacrifices they must make. Her fingertip is black up to the second knuckle now; there's a place where it dripped and rolled down towards her palm, a thin streak of drying fluid. She gives him her other hand to be helped up, and as the panels of her trench part, he sees bare leg from ankle to knee, then uncovered flesh for a few inches above that, as well.

Her coat falls back into place around her knees, heels making a soft tap-scuff as she gains her footing. She doesn't let go. Neither does he. "Don't you have to go sideways for that?"

[Lukas] "No." As they stand, the height difference between them is suddenly apparent. He doesn't let go. Neither does she. He draws her closer to a second; bends to her, his eyes closing, his cheek to her temple. Close. Closeness. Quiet now, taking in her presence and her warmth, her nearness, her hereness.

Mate, his instinct sighs to him. Mate, here. Mate close.

His mouth presses briefly and firmly against her temple as he draws away, leads her by hand to the shared bathroom. In his other hand, the talens-to-be clunk hollowly against one another. There are too many of them to fit in his small leather satchel; these are carried, rather unprofessionally, in a borrowed Brotherhood pillowcase.

"Sometimes it's easier to go across," he adds, explaining. "And Theurges almost always go across because they can talk directly to the spirits there. But I can't speak their language, so I write my requests on my body. For water spirits, I usually just stand in a shower or wade in the lake.

"A lot of rites are very rigid. Garou have done them one exact way for hundreds of thousands of years, and the ritual gives it a certain power because everyone -- spirits and Garou -- will immediately recognize it. The binding rite isn't as strict. There are so many different spirits and so many different purposes for binding. So as long as proper respect is given, the exact form matters less, I think.

"Besides," he adds, "I'd like it if you were there. You've helped me with the preparation. I think you should be there when it's accomplished."

[Danicka] She hesitates. That, he'll pick up on in a second, because he's taking her hand to lead her one way or another. Sometimes she's so passive. She goes wherever he goes, not always because she wants to, sometimes simply because she doesn't not want to. Once upon a time, it was because she did not know he would not crush her for disobedience or resistance. Sometimes, even now, when she resists, she sees a flicker of natural dominance inside of him, snarling well below the calm surface that imitates humanity so well.

They're together for a moment, apart, and then he's starting to walk towards the bathrooms. She leans away to pick up her bag from the couch. But then Danicka pauses before falling into step with him, and after a few steps lets go of his hand. It isn't a withdrawal; at least it isn't meant to be. She just walks alongside him, then, through the narrow hallway, silent.

He tells her about rites. About talking to spirits. And at the door of the bathroom, as he's about to go inside, she hesitates again and looks at him.

"I'd rather not." There's hesitance in this, too, though it's firmly -- if quietly -- spoken.

[Lukas] So Lukas turns, framed by the door to the shared bathroom. Surprise, then quiet puzzlement registers on his face. He takes a step toward her. Something like impulse draws his hand to her face again, touching her as though he might be able to read her better like that, skin to skin.

"Why?" he asks softly: not a demand, but a genuine question.

[Danicka] When he moves his hand to touch her face, she seems like she's about to pull back from it. There's no obvious reason for it, even though she doesn't actually flinch away. There's just the intimation of hesitance, of distance. And it isn't revulsion, or anger. She looks up, meeting his eyes, and catches his hand with hers, wrapping her smaller one around the back of his and holding it in midair, his fingertips to her cheek.

"It's different," she answers gently, "going from helper to observer." Danicka's brow furrows; it looks like concern, a little. "I like helping you do the mundane work. I just... don't have much interest in standing and watching the part I can't fathom or feel with you."

[Lukas] "Chápu," he replies softly, but his brow furrows. His hand turns in hers, fingers lacing, lowering. He holds her hand again, the pillowcase full of gourds in his other. "But how do you know you won't feel anything?"

[Danicka] "Even so," Danicka says, acknowledging the possibility. "It's a division, Lukáš, and not one I need any extra reminders of."

[Lukas] "Okay," this, after a moment's pause. He takes another step; then another. Away from the bathrooms now, he walks toward his rooms instead. Talens could wait. Since the night Mrena died and the pack was caught unprepared, talenless, Lukas has never allowed himself to run out.

"Chtěl jsem se podělit s vámi," he explains. "Nechtěl jsem se vás vyloučit. To je to poslední, co bych si přál."

[Danicka] Her frown doesn't go away when he moves away from the bathroom door. "It's alright," she says. "I can just wait in your room." Danicka squeezes his hand, her frown actually deepening. "Nevěděl jsem myslet, že jsi chtěl vyloučit mě. Já vím aby."

They're standing in the hallway now, caught between him trying to go first to the bathrooms, then to his rooms, halted at both by Danicka's stillness, by her eyes watching him so closely. "Maybe another time, I won't feel the same." Consistency, she once said, was for children and pets. As aggravating as it is, he knows it's the truth. "Tonight, I just don't want to. But that shouldn't stop you from finishing the work."

[Lukas] That's one thing they have in common: their work ethic. Neither of them are the type to truly idle for long. Even when they spend the day together, they build things, create things, do things. They read. They make kolaches. He awakens spirits; she recovers from illness. She cooks. He cleans up.

They watch movies. They talk to each other. They make love. They nurture what they have between them, forge the bond again and again, a rite of binding in and of itself.

"Okay," he says again, and the edges of his mouth move. He kisses her hand, then lets it go. Dips his hand into his pocket and comes up with his keys. "I'll be there in a little while."

--

Twenty minutes to draw the glyphs onto his body, whorls and jags and lines of ink. Ten more to stand in the shower with every last faucet in the bathroom running, and Lukas himself under fresh cold spray, water untouched by fire. All the gourds are clustered on the shower floor around his feet. Ink runs liquid, blurs, trails down his body in dark rivulets and streaks, as though the map of the planet's rivers and tracts were forming on his body, as though all the borders of the nations of the world were running from his skin to swirl around his feet.

He can't be sure that the spirits read what he writes. He can't be sure it does any good at all. But like he said:

it's a ritual. This is how he shows his respect, his intent, his goodwill.

When it's done, Lukas is flushed with cold, shivering. Some of the gourds feel a little heavier, but perhaps that's just his imagination. The way the glyphs on those gourds shimmer and shift -- but only if you aren't looking at them directly -- is not. He picks out the ones that have successfully caught a piece of water-spirit, sorts them into the bottom of the pillowcase. Knots it. The still-empty gourds go in after; then he twists the top closed.

He turns off the faucets then, one by one. He takes a hot shower. He leaves the bathroom as he found it, smelling faintly of the no-scent of water.

--

Lukas comes back to his room in a towel, pillowcase of talens in one hand, discarded clothing in the other. The door, unlocked, swings open quietly. His eyes find her, and he smiles wordlessly.

[Danicka] His bedroom isn't frigid tonight, but it's cold. The window is cracked, letting in the thinnest swirls of freezing air. Danicka hasn't removed her coat, nor her pumps. Her bag is sitting on the floor by the foot of his bed. She's been waiting for over half an hour, now, but she hasn't slipped out of her heels. She hasn't changed into pajamas. She's somehow managed to clean ink off her hand -- maybe she carries wet wipes, how should be know?

And Danicka is sitting at his desk, her ankles crossed, using his laptop... to, it appears, participate in a discussion on Blackboard for one of her classes. The door's opening makes her turn her head, and seeing him, she smiles softly back at him.

Mine.

She hits 'Post'. And closes out the browser window. The chair turns, and Danicka with it, leaning back. "I love looking at you naked."

Her eyes aren't on his body, though. They're on his eyes. "Drop your towel," she says softly.

[Lukas] His smile quirks for a second, surprised. Then it dies a natural death, fading slowly away to ...

just affection. Just love. Just the way he looks at her when they're alone together. When it's late. When the world is behind a closed door. His chest rises visibly as he reaches to his waist and tugs the end of the towel free. A second, almost shyness: then he lets it drop softly to the carpet and stands quietly, looking at her.

When they first met in this city, he was so different from the boy he was that there was no bridge in her mind. Even in the year they've known each other, he's changed. The same strength; the same broad frame. The preternatural deftness the Talons of Horus gave him is gone now. What he has instead is his own body, his own swiftness, which he has worked at, trained, developed. He's somehow more streamlined, the very last remaining juts and angles leftover from adolescence gone, sheathed in sleek muscle, trimmed to perfection.

Tougher, too. He's fought again and again and again this last year. Battled wyrmlings, and sometimes his own. Took hits. Stood as a phalanx wall for his pack, his talens and his gifts making him so surreally tough that he could handle what they could not. There's a solidness to his frame, too; a heavy solidity in the bones, in the vast shoulders and the chest, the broad lines of his back, the muscles of his thighs.

Here and there, ink still stains his skin in faint traceries. Water beads on his shoulders, along his sides; is caught in the hairs on his forearms and chest. Now and then a bead rolls, disturbed from its place by gravity and the slow rhythm of his breathing.

Slow, but gradually ramping up. His hand curls loosely on itself. Thumb rubs along forefinger, then opens. His throat moves: he swallows silently.

[Danicka] If the towel were perfectly dry, its fall would be a whisper. Damp, it thumps quietly to his floor instead. Talens and empty gourds are set aside, and Danicka... watches him. She knows his shyness isn't quite; he just came from communing with spirits of healing and water. And now his room is cool and his door is locked and his mate is staring at him from just a few feet away, quietly but vocally enjoying the mere sight of him

It's a shift.

Physically, Danicka has changed very little in the past year. The date of the first night they spent together, when everything changed irrevocably, passed without comment. Valentine's Day passed without mention. She grew tan in spring and summer; pale again in autumn and winter. Her hair is longer, but she trims it; it isn't that different from how it was when she came to Chicago. She's put on weight, smoothed some of the harder angles of her hips, curves of her ribs, protrusions of her clavicles. She's worked out more, taken better care of herself, eats more and sleeps more and these are things she was lacking for close to a --

-- for all her life.

She's healthier. In subtle, soft ways, he can see it. He can feel it when he puts his hand over her heart, feels its strong and steady beating against the heel of his palm. He's stronger. He's fast growing into the hulking beast of war his frame is meant to be. In a way, she misses that sleekness that his form is rapidly losing, feels uneasy about the bulk, the heaviness, the gravity that his presence will have as he grows

in size, in rage, in renown.

She licks her lips, watching him, and lets her eyes flick down his body, taking him in. He can see her exhale, even if he can't hear it. "C'mere," she whispers, straightening up in the chair, ankles uncrossing.

[Lukas] A breath, visible in the expansion of his ribcage, the lift of his upper chest. Then Lukas steps away from the door. Lights are on in the room: the crane-armed desk lamp, the clipon lamp at the headboard. Shadows and highlights play over his body as he moves. There's such physical surety in him, as though every step were unshakable, as though his feet root in the ground and pull up again in a matter of instants.

The three quarter length mirror hung on the back of the door, dorm-style, reflects his back as he moves away from it: the solid wedges of muscle in his back, the tight loins and flank and the sweep of the obliques, the hamstrings that he would never, ever allow an enemy the opportunity to sever if he could help it.

As savage as he can be, as swiftly devastating, Lukas is a defensive warrior in truth, if such a thing could be said to exist. Unless there is absolutely no helping it, he plans, he strategizes, he protects. Victory and survival are closely linked in his mind. Glory is a very distant tertiary consideration. A pragmatist, after all.

It's cool enough in his room that gooseflesh prickles up his skin. Or perhaps it's just a response to her regard; the lick of her lips. Half an armsreach away now, he literally radiates heat, sheds it the way a supernova sheds stardust, all but vibrates with life and power and vigor.

Lukas doesn't say anything. He doesn't want to; not right now. His voice is ugly and jarring and not his own. He doesn't want her to associate it with this.

[Danicka] When he entered the room, Danicka was at ease: leaning back, wrists light on the rests of his laptop, ankles delicately crossed and tucked back underneath the chair. Turning, watching him, she shifted. She seemed to be readying herself, straightening her back until she was all but leaning forward, uncrossing her ankles but keeping her feet together. She's straining towards him without letting herself leave the desk chair, her hands wrapped around the edge of the seat.

He was never obedient to her, in the beginning. Lukas was so resistant to it, in fact, that for a long time she stopped trying to tell him what to do, even when it meant nothing more than

I want this. I want to see you like this. Do this for me so I can have you.

It's different now, so much so that the past dims in her considerably long and vivid memory. She is breathing a little more rapidly, exerting a little more effort to control its heaviness. She doesn't look at the mirror. She looks at him, at his eyes and his face, at his body as it moves through the mere feet of space between his chair and the door. It's not a large room.

He fills it. With everything he is, with rage and heat and strength, with protection, with steadily rising anticipation.

When he's closer, Danicka reaches out to him, and her trenchcoat rustles with the movement of her arm. She puts her hand on the outside of his upper thigh, urges him with the presss of her palm to get closer still. And leans forward by increments, til her breath washes over his skin, til he knows moments before it happens that she's going to

kiss him, pressing her lips to his cock. As far as kisses go, it's full and warm and tempting, and her hand is still on his hip, as though to hold him in place when she opens her mouth and drags her lips down the shaft. He can watch her eyes close, if his aren't already. He can watch her, in the dim and shadowed light, find his head blindly and wrap her lips around it, sliding her tongue over the sensitive spot underneath, stroking it with the tip four, five, six... maybe seven times

before she slides her hand from hip to cock and wraps her palm around him, sliding him further into her mouth with a soft moan.

[Lukas] Danicka is no innocent. He knew that from the start. He knows she knows how to dress. She knows the incalculable impact of seductive lingerie beneath deceptively conservative clothing. She knows what fleur-de-lis patterns on her stockings do to him, and how much he likes the tiny, frivolous bows on her thongs. She knows how to talk to him, what words to say that let him know that she wants to fuck him whether or not she actually says it. She knows how words like please and baby and give it to me ricochet down the half-forgotten pathways of his primitive brain, where language fades to simple meaning and her words are stripped down to

i want
and
to fuck you.

And she knows how to fuck. It's possible that before Danicka, he's never met anyone with her animal hunger, her sexual confidence, her daring to fuck him and take him and claim him ... and to be fucked, be taken, be claimed, be his.

She knows the value of anticipation.

She knows just how to suck his cock.

He knows that she knows. He's known from the beginning, only back then, he didn't trust it. He looked for a trick, a trap, a vicious and hurtful game. He believed everything she did was a seduction with an ulterior purpose. He believed the worst of her, and never dared to let himself believe that she did it for him. And for herself. And for what was between them: simple as that.

It's different now. Anticipation still prickles awareness over his back and in the pit of his stomach. Her hand on his thigh still makes him suck a quick short breath. He doesn't look for the trick, though; doesn't assume that everything is calculated and cold, doesn't imagine that there's no way, none, that she could simply want him. He doesn't think any of that. He thinks only that

it's been so long

and she's so close

and --

That short, ragged exhale he releases when her mouth first touches him is the same, the very same, with or without his punishment in place. He doesn't dare voice it. It's a breath, soundless, overcome. His hands twitch at his sides but stay where they are. When her mouth wraps around him, Lukas lets go another breath; then another. Brow furrowing, now. Hand rising slowly; his fingers slipping gently into her hair.

She takes the base of his cock in hand. He's hardening in her mouth, and his eyes close now, his head falling back.

[Danicka] Not a month. But closing in on three weeks, now, since that night he went from a sandwich shop to Bellamonte Park to their den and found her waiting for him -- as he knew she would be. They didn't make love as soon as they saw one another. They ate on the kitchen floor, had rice and beef and milk and whatever else that would fill his gnawing stomach, would make his passage into sleep not the hard drop of necessity but the slow outward drift of his consciousness's natural tide.

Waking in the middle of the night, she opened her legs and welcomed him in and make soft little noises in his ear as he panted against her shoulder and rocked himself faster and harder into her cunt, their writhing disrupting the bedcovers and Danicka's wild arching pressing her up to his chest. When it was over he pulled the sheet and the comforter back over her, leaving his own upper half mostly bared just to alleviate the searing heat of his skin, dry and cool the sweat he'd built up while fucking his mate right back into exhausted sleep.

Weeks, since then. Moon phases. Death. Punishment. Illness. And even longer since she put her mouth on him even a little, even just to lick her way up him while keeping him literally chained to her bed. Unthinkable lengths of time since she sucked him like this, stroking his cock in rhythm with the slide of her lips and with the vibration of those soft little moans she keeps giving.

That night she greeted him at the door of a room in the W Lakeshore wearing the purple and black set of lingerie he'd given her, her ankles and lower legs wrapped in the ribbons of a pair of mindnumbingly expensive heels, he'd told her not to ask him to go slowly, and he'd bent her over to eat her pussy and then she'd fucked him with her mouth. Eagerly, hungrily, her lingerie askew where it wasn't all but torn off, her bared skin glistening with sweat, her hands all over him. That was the first time she told him, truly, that she loved him. That was the night he left her. That was the first time she got down and just sucked his fucking cock for as long as he could bear it, and then longer, pushing him over the edge so expertly he was fighting the urge to just thrust into her mouth, fuck her right back as he came.

Every other time, he stopped her. Brought her up to kiss her filthy mouth, laid her back to fuck her wet cunt, let her suck him only as long as it took to get him hard and out of his mind. Lukas doesn't get a chance to stop her this time, though. Danicka jerks him off while she's licking his cock, saliva wetting her lips and smearing over his flesh, slicking her hand. It's not the uncertain, inexpert blowjob given by one's high school girlfriend, and definitely not the sort of thing you expect from a woman who held down her job in New York City, who dresses so demurely at times that his brain lights up like a switchboard when he finds the laced-up ties of her thong or transparent silk of her bra underneath.

She sucks him off like she wants him.

To fuck her.

But she's the one that stops it, but only after he's hard as a rock. Only after he's panting. Only after he's swallowing and fighting words and using all his will not to grab her hair and fuck her mouth. The one that slowly withdraws her attentions, lips stroking him on her way off, letting him go with the softest of wet little pops, which she doesn't try to hide nor accentuate. She looks up at him, eyes opening gain, and keeps moving her hand up and down, faster now.

"I wanna watch you touch it," she whispers, and kisses the head again, licks it fully with a brief but rounded moan of enjoyment. "I want you to show me what you do when you can't have me and you just fucking...need it."

Her hand tightens around him slightly there, moves faster. She's gasping, herself, trying to breathe. "Unless you just want to fuck me."

[Lukas] If Lukas could bring himself to speak to her in his scarred voice when she was doing this to him, he would tell her that she can't do this to him. She can't put her mouth on him like that, suck him like that, stroke him like that, moan like that around his hard cock when it's been so long.

When the last time he saw her, she was still getting over a nasty winter flu. When they were speaking of spirits and talens a moment ago, of sacrifice, and not of sacrifice. When he thought, padding back to his room with talens in one hand and clothes in the other, that perhaps he'll find her asleep already. Perhaps he'll read a little before rolling over and curling around her and sleeping, himself.

He is not prepared for this. He is never prepared for this, and never was. She sucks him like she wants him, and like she wants him to fuck her, and like she's been waiting for this for so long that

she can't keep herself from simply mauling him like this. Devouring him.

Lukas is panting in short, ragged gasps. His hand finds hers, not the one that's jerking him off but the one that's roaming his body; covers it, but doesn't attempt to control where she moves, what she touches. When her tongue flutters like that his stomach clenches. When she sucks him a little harder, just like that, he shudders and bites back a groan.

When she takes her mouth from him he nearly makes a sound, bites it back to an unvoiced catch at the back of his throat at the last second, opens his eyes.

His hand is still in her hair. There were moments when it wanted to tighten, when he wanted to hold her right there and fuck her, fuck that hot filthy mouth of hers until he came; moments when the fingers of his fingers twitched; moments when he literally had to take his hand from her hair and drag it back through his own, tearingly, to keep himself from doing something he'd regret.

It's gentle now, though. And careful. Cradling, and after a moment his other hand joins it; he takes her face between his hands and she's whispering to him and nothing coming out of her mouth even makes sense for seconds on end because

her hands are on him and she's stroking him like that, faster, making his head fall back and his chest rise sharply on a gasp.

A jolt of reaction when her mouth finds him again -- like an electric shock stabbing down his spine. His head snaps down and his eyes snap open and they're so fiercely, brilliantly blue that the black of his opened pupils seems more complete in comparison. He watches her suck him, watches his cock glisten wet in the wake of her mouth, watches her lips mold over the head of his cock as she

lets him slip loose again.

A breath rushes out of him. Lukas didn't even know he was holding it. He reaches down and catches her hand, stills it, pulls her to her feet, pulls her up quick and forceful and scoops her off the ground, kisses her mouth hard. Shows her what he won't tell her tonight: that her mouth was so fucking good, that she nearly drove him out of his mind, that he wants to fuck her

but won't, not yet,

because she wants to watch him.

He sets her down on his desk. Another kiss, briefer, no less searing. He's panting when he draws back; doesn't part from her immediately. Kisses and sucks at her neck; bites her shoulder through her coat.

In the end he has to tear himself away. He drags the desk chair back a foot or so before he sits. Drops down, actually, hard enough to creak some wooden joint somewhere. That's distance enough so that she can see him clearly, can see his body and his hands and the way the shadows change over his forearm as he takes his cock in his hand.

He's never done this before, either: never sat back aroused and utterly bared, stroking himself while his lover watches. There's a moment where she can read something like hesitation or uncertainty in the faint furrow of his brow. His hand slides over his cock once, twice, slowly at first. He can't hold her eyes, not yet.

Quicker, after a few seconds. He settles into a sort of groove. Fluidity in the motion of his hand, his arm -- familiar, instinctive. He's fucking himself with his hand steadily now, swiftly, head bent and lips parted, panting silently as he builds his rhythm, the whole of his attention focused on his cock.

His free hand grips tight at the base of his thigh, a point of leverage to keep himself grounded. After some time he suddenly slows, slows and jerks himself off with practiced twists of his wrist, Lukas's teeth snap shut with an audible click; they're bared in a straining grimace as he tilts his head back, pants against clenched teeth, fights not to groan aloud.

When he lifts his head, he finds her eyes. He looks at her, too fucking pleasured now to care about self-consciousness; too fucking pleasured to care about anything other than

how close she is to him

and how close he is.

The muscles in his arms and torso are bunched, straining. He's jerking himself off hard and fast, working his cock relentlessly in long, swift strokes, his free hand moving to cup his balls. The muscles in his legs tense as his feet plant firmer on the ground.

He has to speak to her after all. It's a question. It's a whisper, harsh and all in a panting rush:

"Do you want me to come for you?"

[Danicka] Even in pumps, her legs strain for the ground when Lukas picks her up and mauls her mouth the way he does. Her toes stretch for the carpet, high heels lifted. Her trenchcoat is rough against his naked body, rustling as he presses himself against her to kiss that mouth that was so recently on him, licking him, sucking him harder and faster with practiced, smooth slides of her lips. She holds onto his arms for balance, moans into his mouth, plays his tongue with her own.

He's gentler with her now than he was the first night, when he wrapped his hand hard around her wrist and yanked her upward, causing her to suppress winces, flinches, small sounds of discomfort. He felt stabs of regret when he saw the way his tie had rubbed the skin on her wrists red, red, red. He still licks and nuzzles the bite marks he leaves on her shoulders as though he could heal them, when they aren't even deep enough to bruise.

It matters, though, that he's more careful with her. That he wraps his arm around her body rather than just pull her by the hand, lifting her against him. That he doesn't throw her on the desk til her shoulders thump the wall but sets her on its edge, maybe next to his laptop, maybe shoving it backwards to give her a place to perch.

While he sits down, leans back, and jerks himself off so she can watch him. For no other reason than that: she wants to watch him.

She likes looking at him naked. She moans sometimes when she's on him that she loves his cock, that it's so fucking good, bucking her hips and grinding herself against it on every downstroke. She watches him from the bed sometimes when he's up again, getting dressed. She watches him tilt his head back and roll his neck when they're in the shower, letting the water hit him and roll down his skin. She catches sight of him in mirrors. She sits and watches him cook in her kitchen, in their kitchen. She enjoys undressing him, though she rarely has.

Danicka does not perch on the desk and grip the edge of it and simply watch him stroke himself, imagining him doing this on long, cold nights wishing she was there so he could fuck her. She unties the belt of her trenchcoat once Lukas has settled into what he's doing for her, does it slowly as though wary of startling him. She unbuttons it, starting at the bottom, so that her delicate hands with their glossy manicure travel inch by inch up to her lapels. And all the while she's watching him

and he's watching his hands on his cock, the slick of precum building and smearing down under his palm, eagerness and lust and instinct guiding him rather than anything remotely resembling sense.

The next time he looks up, flicks his eyes at her, whenever that is, he sees bare thighs being unfolded from silver fabric. And then the coat entire shedding off of her, her hands hooking at the collar to pull it down off her shoulders, down off her arms, the lining inside a dark, dark blue that is very nearly black. She isn't wearing much. What she is wearing is all blue and black Chantilly lace, the bottom a flirty skirt of overlaying the thong it's attached to. One of his Christmas presents.

Birthday. Whatever.

Her breasts are cradled and supple in the bra, nipples hinted at through the illusion of fabric, her legs parting as she carefully places each heeled shoe on the arms of his desk chair, so that her -- only partially concealed -- cunt is just below eye level for him. Sitting on her coat, Danicka braces herself with her left hand on the desktop and begins touching herself with her right, rubbing her pussy through the strip of bright blue lace covering it.

A hard, panting breath that that first stroke. Her head falling to the side, resting on her shoulder, her ass rubbing against the lining of her coat as she rolls her hips. She makes a small noise, and opens her eyes again, watches him again as he cups his balls in his free hand, legs tensing and voice ragged, scraping in the air.

Danicka just nods. "Yeah," she whispers. Is all she can whisper, at this point.

[Lukas] The first time he looks up to see what she was really wearing under that silvergrey trenchcoat, and why really she didn't take it off when she came upstairs, didn't take it off when she went to his room

he lets out a gasp of a breath, shock and surreal arousal lighting off every synapse in his brain.

It's also the last time he even thinks of looking down at what he's doing again. No, he watches her now, hungrily, eyes gleaming in the lamplight, as she unpeels her trenchcoat and unwraps his birthday present and

leans back like that. Opens her legs to either side of him like that.

He takes his free hand from himself. Grasps at her ankle, her shin, as though this were a point of stability, an anchor in a world where all sanity was slipping away from him.

All the time he was painting talens, speaking of ... whatever the fuck it was he was talking about, she was wearing that. She'd come here wearing that. To find him. To see him. To see him stroke himself off, and

to fuck him.

She's touching herself now. He bites back a groan, literally, his head falling back, teeth clenched. Not for long. He raises his head almost immediately, watches her, rapt, staring at her hand pleasuring herself while he jerks himself off. There's a strange exhibitionist high in this, in getting himself off while she watches and touches herself, works her own pussy while he works his cock. He licks his lips and asks her

what he does

to which she answers

what she does.

It's like the word itself, that soft wanting whisper, sets him off. It's the sight of her legs open to him, her cunt beneath that lingerie, her fingers stroking herself the way she must on those nights they're not together and she just wants him, and he can't hold himself together anymore. His breath bursts out of him in a harsh pant. He throws himself back in his chair, so hard that the front legs rise off the floor, arching, arched, every muscle in his body standing out against his skin in the crystalline instant

before he comes.

Panting, hips jerking, thrusting in short, ferocious strokes against his own hand, he finishes across his own stomach, his chest. He makes a filthy fucking mess of himself, biting back groans and snarls; doesn't give a fuck. Keeps stroking. Keeps jerking himself off. When he can't take it anymore, Lukas lets his head fall back. She can see the way he gasps, shuddering, as he slows his hand, gentles his grip, milks the last of his cum out and the last of his pleasure from the moment.

Then he's simply spent, collapsing gradually back into his chair, letting the front legs back down. His hand is still gripping her leg. He lets her go, strokes his palm over her skin, gently, as though in apology for his reckless grip. A small jolt goes through him when he lets his cock fall against his stomach. Imprecisely, idly, he glances down at himself, brushes his thumb across a smear of cum, exhales something like a wry laugh.

His eyes find hers. He looks lazy, relaxed now ... somewhere between sated and hungry for more. There's a glint in his eyes.

"Now you," he whispers. "Show me."

[Danicka] All the while he was sitting with her in the common room -- that wide space, open to any Garou or Kin in the building, the stairs right there, all those doors -- and she was wearing this underneath her coat. He set a cushion down for her and she perched demurely on it, painted sacred glyphs on sacred vessels with him, and she was wearing that. Driving over to the Brotherhood from her place, heels on the pedals, hands on the wheel, and she was fucking wearing that.

Now she's sitting before him, legs spread wide, pushing the expensive lace of her expensive panties aside so she can show him how wet she's getting while he clings to her ankle and fucks his hand. Her fingertip strokes down over the glisten and draws it upward, circles her clit with it. She bucks her hips, biting back a whimper --

maybe because he's quiet, she'll try to be

-- and leaning her head back, the little lace of her lingerie's skirt falling back over her hips. It takes profound effort for Danicka to open her eyes again, to watch him as he struggles not to cry out. That pant makes her watch him, eyes fixed on his body as he comes on his stomach, comes on his chest. She gasps, mouth still open afterward, making an aching little noise in her throat as one of her fingers slides into her pussy. His head falls back. When he lifts it again, she's stroking two fingers into herself, palm rubbing over her clit, legs flexing as she fights to both maintain her balance as well as keep her feet planted on the arms of his chair.

Lukas strokes her leg and she moans softly, shudders at the sight of him

like that.

Her hips are rolling in steady rhythm now, her fingers slowing. She withdraws them then, goes back to just rubbing her clit with needful insistence and sharp, shaky little gasps. Her fingers are wet. So is the lace between her legs. "Touch me," she finally manages to get out, leaning backwards and arching her spine, reaching overhead with her free hand to press it against the wall. "Baby, play with me."

[Lukas] But he doesn't play with her.

He watches her, eyes gleaming. And then he sits forward. Sits up. Gets up off the chair, but only to get down on his knees in front of his desk. She can feel his teeth nip softly at the inside of her thigh; it's the only warning she gets.

A second after that he tugs her thong aside with his thumb. His hands feel different from hers, larger, blunter, stronger. He reaches up her body and puts his hand on her breast, covers it with his palm,

as he pushes his mouth against her cunt.

He doesn't play. He fucks her with his mouth, suddenly and rather savagely, with a hunger that belies what he just did to himself. His tongue laps at her cunt. His mouth searches her, roams and presses, licks. He finds her clit and lays a hard, sucking kiss against it, gentling only if she cries out or arches or otherwise indicates that it's just too much.

He goes at her, though. Her thong pulled aside, her cunt sweet and hot and bared to him, he fucks her with his mouth. Eats at her hungrily, focusedly, his eyes on her body and the way she moves, his hands all over her.

[Danicka] It almost makes her scream. She watches him get out of his chair -- filthy from fucking himself, hair wet from his shower, arms sweaty -- and feels the most abrupt, unexpected surge of affection. It winds around her arousal like a vine, makes everything in her ache even as everything in her is lighting up. The nip of the hypersensitive skin of her inner thigh gets almost no reaction but a small jolt of reflex, but when he pulls aside her panties and cups his hand over the lace that covers her breast, Danicka moans.

And when he starts licking her, she moans so loudly it twists in the air very close to becoming a scream. Lukas eats her like he wants to get his cock inside of her, eats her the way he does when the sight of her has him hungry, and her head tips back against the wall. Her hand comes down and her fingers thread into his hair, holding him there so she can fuck his face

the way that he kept himself from doing with her. So different, this: the way he holds himself back from fucking her mouth, grabbing her by the hair to keep her on him while he uses her versus the way she strokes his hair back and rubs her fingertips on his scalp and winds her hips around and around, smearing wetness across his lips and chin.

That long, loud moan turns into soft little ah, ah, ah, ahs that match the soft bouncing of her body against her coat, on top of his desk. Whoever is on the other sides of Lukas's walls is -- has been -- well aware that the Shadow Lord has a mate, thank you for reminding us, and they know she comes to fuck him like a whore sometimes, and they know that if she's pretending to enjoy it, she's very goddamn convincing.

No words, though. No swearing in English or Czech, no demands, no encouragements. Just gasping, and those little cries of pleasure while he licks and sucks at her cunt. She does jump, whimpering, when he gives her that snarling kiss, but then arches herself into it, tilts her hips to bare her pussy to him even more.

[Lukas] Some part of him is inexplicably touched, much as she had been when she saw him getting out of his chair and knew at once what he meant to do. He's touched because her fingers in his hair are gentle, are tender; she strokes his scalp the way she does after he's fucked her senseless and come inside her and lost his mind and collapsed atop her. He's touched because she doesn't say anything, no words in any of the languages she knows, and he knows it's because he can't say anything.

That's all right. They'll be wordless tonight. They'll communicate in other ways, with the writhe of her hips and the flick of his tongue, with her fingers in his hair and his on her breast, curving over the lace and her skin, and then pulling the cup down to hold her breast naked and entire in his hand.

Stroking her, then, playing gently with her nipple. Fondling her with his hand as he fucks her with his mouth, going down on her with the sort of naked want and enthusiasm that he would've never in a million years expected to feel for anyone.

She's never asked this of him. That matters, somehow. A few times, while he ate her out, she's told him to lick it. She's told him to fuck me. Once, late at night, she called and told him to come over and kiss it, but when he did come over, it wasn't until he suggested the bed, the restraints, her sitting on his face, that she did it.

Every time he's put his mouth on her, it's been by choice. Because he wanted to. Because he thought to. Because he wanted to pleasure her, to make her feel good, to make her feel this.

And because he wanted to see her like this. Wild, tattered, her hips winding against his face, her thighs trembling. He shrugs one leg over his shoulder. Presses it higher, and open. He's nearly leaning over her mouth, nearly mauling her cunt; fucking her with a fierce determination, eyes closed, brow faintly furrowed in the light.

He doesn't care if his neighbors have their heads under their pillows. He doesn't care if Hatchet'll glare at him over the sink tomorrow morning while they brush their teeth. He doesn't care if Sinclair bangs on the wall or Theron bemoans his own lack of a mate; he doesn't care if the entire floor knows

that he has a mate

and that she loves it when he eats her pussy like this.

[Danicka] They'll be partly wordless. Danicka cannot stop herself, hasn't quite Lukas's willpower, and she moans his name when he bares her breast and strokes her nipple. She reaches over with her wet fingers and pulls the strap down her arm to give him more flesh to touch, more access to her body. She knows that right now cum is cooling and drying on his stomach, that they can't just step into the shower together and he can't just fuck her against the tiled wall, panting, her breasts bouncing against his chest while he hammers into her.

Because they are in the Brotherhood: they'll stay in his room, filthy or otherwise. She'll be a littler quieter than she might be otherwise. Because he is being punished by the sept: he won't talk unnecessarily, won't jar her enjoyment of this with what he sounds like. She will bite back words, groans, open-voiced cries of pleasure, so that he does not feel alone.

Like earlier, with him going into the bathroom to call upon spirits of water to fill talens they made together. They stayed apart, so that she would not feel alone.

It's ironic. And it's ironic how long they spent refusing to believe how much the other cared, how long they spent refusing to trust how much they themselves cared. Not even infatuation, or love, or respect. Just this: the way he relents when she whimpers, the way he softens his touch when she needs him to be gentle. The way she holds his head not to abuse or defile him but the way she does when she's wrapped around him after he's spent himself inside her, when he's shuddering from what being with her does to him.

The way they care. The way they're tender.

Even now, when she's biting her lower lip and whimpering, bucking her hips and fucking his face because she wants to come, because he got her hands and her mouth and she's getting his mouth and his hands and she's been wearing this lacy little thong for something like two hours now with the lace stroking her pussy every time she moved a certain way and she wants. To fucking. Come.

Danicka bites her lip. Then she bites her knuckle, groaning into it. The scent of her fills his nostrils, the taste of her like the only thing he's ever tasted, while he listens to the sound of her moans dying in her throat.

Her hand comes down and claws at the top of his desk, fingernails digging into the finish even as her teeth dig into her flesh til that tightness in her jaw and hand become an arching, electric rigidity to her entire body. She sits up, grinding and sliding her pussy on his mouth, whimpering as she looks down at his dark hair between her pale thighs, letting go of her lower lip. Gasps come out in ragged pants as she works herself on his tongue, squirming.

"Yeah," she can't help but gasp, high and ...close. So close. "Yeah... yeah... oh, fuck, baby, that's it --"

Nothing, then, as her mouth opens soundlessly, as her clit jumps and her orgasm starts riding her like Lukas himself does sometimes, pounding through her cunt and turning the rest of her to liquid, to molten, twisting heat. It's very, very different from how it feels to come with his cock inside her, but suddenly her entire body is caught up in it, overheating, overheated, suddenly heavy, suddenly flowing apart in all directions. She bends backward, spine elongating, and bucks once, twice, three times against his mouth, slower each time.

Her cunt pulses as she gentles, then, finally. As her orgasm lets her go, drifting back down to earth in a controlled plummet. She breathes again, panting near-silently, eyes falling closed.

And she lowers her feet, unhooking one leg from his shoulder. And she slides off his desk. Her coat falls to the floor. And Danicka moves onto his lap, kneeling on either side of his thighs. It's a tight fit, in this chair. And his cum is tacky on her belly when she curls onto his lap, straddling him in his chair. She doesn't care. She doesn't mind. It... doesn't matter. Or else, it only matters because in a way she likes it, as though it ass to their unexpected and inexplicable closeness.

She wraps her arms around his neck, eyes closed, being overcome.

[Lukas] They care.

He's tender.

He's tender even when he's not, even when he's flipped her on her back to pound her against the bed. Even when he's flipped her on her stomach to pound her all over again. Even when he's holding her hips

like he is now, holding them right there with his face buried against her cunt, eating her out even though he knows she's coming, she's losing herself, he's blowing her mind with utterly no mercy or restraint --

Even now, he's tender. He does it not to humiliate her or degrade her or lessen her in any way, but because he loves her. To love her. To show her, and to connect with her, and to see her like this, open, clear to the bottom, while she arches back over his desk and grinds against his face once, twice, three times.

He pants for breath when her orgasm lets her go. When she relaxes over his desk. Melts. He kisses her inner thigh, kisses the quivering belt of muscle there, turns his head back.

Kisses her pulsing clit. Kisses her quivering cunt, very softly, very slowly, parting his lips to drag his tongue over her slit

ever

so

slowly.

Then he's sitting back on his heels. Her leg comes off his shoulder, sliding slightly in the faint sweat there. He reaches back, finds the arms of his chair, hoists himself back into it and sprawls: leonine, replete. His hair is tousled. His cock is hard again, aroused from getting her off like that. His eyes are lazy, warm with lust. Strange, or perhaps not so strange: he looks more satisfied now than he did after he came himself.

Her slick is wet on his mouth, on his chin, on the tip of his goddamn nose. He wipes his mouth slowly, unashamedly across his palm, then wipes that on his chest. Her fluids mingling with his: his sweat, his cum. He's a fucking mess. He doesn't care.

She comes to him anyway. Seeing her rise from the desk, he smiles -- slow and lazy, crooked, a grin soon enough. She straddles him over his chair and he wraps his arms around her. There's no reason why he should think of the way she used to tremble every time after they made love -- the way she still trembles, sometimes, when they tear themselves down and build themselves anew -- but he does think of it. And thinking of it, he swells with tenderness, has to draw in a breath to contain it all, turns his head and nuzzles her neck, her cheek.

This time, his kiss is slow and soft. When it's over, he stirs, lifting her on his body as he gets to his feet.

Lukas takes the time to turn off the desk lamp. To push in his chair. He carries her to his bed, where he turns off the overhead lamp, too. Now it's dark in his room, the only light that which falls through the open curtains. He climbs over her in bed and kneels between her legs, finds the waistband of her thong.

Draws it down, and off, his fingers following her skin from thigh to knee to shin. He lifts her ankle over his shoulder and kisses the inside of it, the small hollow beneath the ankle joint.

Then he's leaning forward over her. Her leg slips from his shoulder. He comes down over her, covers her, nestles between her thighs. They're pressed close, her still-wet cunt to his cock.

He takes her bra off now, lowering the straps, pulling down the remaining cup, leaning down to kiss her breastbone, softly, one after another, following that stretch of bone down to her solar plexus. His hand moves under her, between her shoulderblades. He unsnaps the clasp. Then he's pulling her bra altogether off, unwrapping it from her, unwrapping her like a gift.

That article of lingerie is dropped, too. Left somewhere in his blankets, and now she's as naked as he is, and he wraps his arms around and under her, arches her back gently to bring her breasts upward to his mouth.

Lukas adores her breasts, then, as she must have known he would. He licks her nipples and kisses her breasts, takes her in his warm, wet mouth and sucks at her.

Slowly. Lushly. Lingeringly, lazy now that their first hunger has been sharply satisfied: tasting her, enjoying her, letting her enjoy him.

[Danicka] On his desk: Danicka whimpers softly as he kisses her pussy at the very end, licks her as though to clean her, heal her, soothe her. She strokes his hair, scritches his scalp with her fingernails, and trembles as his tongue travels over her slit.

On his lap: she slides onto him, settles against him once he's in his chair again. They're wet together, sticky, skins aligning and sealing. She holds him, and she wouldn't find it strange if she could even comprehend the look on his face right now: Danicka, herself, was always perfectly satisfied by bringing the women she had sex with to orgasm, whether she came or not. It was always different with men.

And it's always been different, with Lukas. He's the first man she's been with who she is satisfied to see pleasured, to see sated, to see overcome with his own pleasure. Time after time, she's laid back and kissed him and held him encircled in her legs while he fucked her with animalistic fervor, biting down on her shoulder while bringing himself off inside of her. And it arouses her. And it makes her happy. And she is satisifed, in a way she would never have expected, to feel him come inside her and go limp atop her, panting for breath, spent.

Her chest, half-covered by lace still, heaves slowly against his as Lukas holds her. Danicka lays her head against his, tucking under his jaw, breathing against his shoulder, her temple matched to his throat, feeling his pulse in her skull for a moment. She stays there when he kisses her cheek, unable to lift her head to give him her mouth. She drowses, feeling his cock hard and hot again between her legs and sighing softly.

The first time he tries to stir, Danicka holds him that much tighter, a wordless Not yet.

So a little more time passes, and she relaxes again, and the next time Lukas moves to stand, his mate simply leans her weight into him, rests against him, so he can carry her to bed. After turning off the lamp. After nudging his chair in towards the desk, though the legs get tangled with her coat on the floor. Then:

then his bed. Where he lays her down and she slides from him, her lingerie askew both top and bottom, her cheeks still flushed, her limbs limp. She watches him from his pillow as he draws her panties downward, watches the black and blue lace as it travels over her thighs. Her cunt pulses slightly, invisibly but wanting nonetheless, as Lukas strokes his hands over her, kisses her ankle, adores her body quietly.

When he comes to her, she welcomes him. She's wrecked, still, by her own orgasm, and moves slowly, moves almost passively according to how his touch travels. Danicka seems to sense what he wants without words, which she may have been able to do a long time ago, but now it's different. It isn't because she's reading him, paying attention, being wary. It's because she knows him, and she knows

he's going to want her naked with him in his bed. He is going to want to kiss and suckle at her breasts, feel her heartbeat on his palm, lay against her and hold her and simply be close to her.

So: Danicka lays back and he pulls the cups of her bra down, kisses between her breasts. She arches her back and he unclasps the lingerie, settles back down and lifts her hands from him so he can draw it off her arms. The bra isn't allowed to fall anywhere; Danicka takes it as it comes off and drops it over the side of the bed, then wraps her arms around her lover. Her mate. Her male counterpart, so many things that she is, so many things she is not. Her love.

She holds him while he kisses and licks at her, sucks on her as she knew -- oh, she knew -- he wanted to, and would. She strokes his hair and watches him, her breathing getting so gradually quicker the change is almost imperceptible. It's a slow climb, a lazy ascent towards arousal again. She is comforted, mostly, by this. Being with him, being in his bed, being against the comforter she got him so that he could make a soft and much warmer den here than he had before. She closes her eyes after awhile, his hands and his mouth warm on her breasts.

There's no sudden spike, not even moaning now. She slowly draws her legs around him once more, wraps them about his waist. And reaches down between their bodies, stroking his chest as she kisses his brow, her free hand touching his jawline to bring his mouth up from her breast to kiss her. She kisses him long and slow, languid, and folds her body slightly to reach his cock, wrapping her hand around him. Lukas finds himself stroked: once, twice, three times, still he realizes she's pulling him closer.

It isn't quite that Danicka draws him in. It isn't quite that Lukas presses against her opening and thrusts into her. They move together, like their first kiss: she guides him to her pussy, and strokes him against her clit, and when her breath shudders against his mouth, he flexes his hips and starts to push into her, inch by inch, slow because she is moving slow, incremental because that is what the small rolls of her hips tell his body to do.

All the while, all the long while, Danicka kisses him, her hand on his flank and her other hand on his face, fingertips soft on his temple and cheekbone and jawline, gasping softly every other moment as he enters her.

[Lukas] It's simply

natural progression. Like the rise and fall of tides and nations. Like the evolution of species, and the unfurling of the universe. A rhythm unstoppable and unchangeable; the simple and infallible outcome of consequence.

She touches him. He moves over her. She pulls him in and he pushes into her and

she kisses him all the while, even when his mouth opens in a soundless gasp, even when his brow presses to hers and his eyes close, overcome. His hands fold her close, hold her near; his weight is held off her chest, but he's so close to her their bodies slide and meet, touch, glide.

It's a slow lovemaking. Rolling, flexing. They stay close, kiss often. Soft sounds pass between them: a gasp here. A moan. A quiet shuddering exhale. A small sound in the back of her throat, whimpering.

And the rustling of the comforter. The down moving and settling around them, holding their heat in despite his cracked-open window, the coolness in the room.

After a time, he shifts over her. Raises himself on his elbows, higher now, with the room and the freedom of motion to bring himself into her a little more firmly. A little deeper. His back bows as he bends to her breasts again. He pours his attention on her, kissing her and sucking at her, moving into her with a sort of deliberate, studied patience.

An awareness of how shattered she was, and they both were, after coming for each other like that. An awareness of their sleepy, comfortable closeness; the familiarity of a warm den in winter.

He doesn't maul her now. He fucks her gently, thoroughly, silently, the flex of his body beneath her hands and the unsteadiness of his breathing now and then his own means of communication.

[Danicka] Sometimes the second time they make love -- or the third, or fourth -- in a night is like this. When they've exhausted each other, when the darkness and stillness around them is so complete that it seems an act of violation to fuck with growls and groans and slamming fervor. This is the first time he's been inside of his mate for a long time now, and she's tight, and she's wet, and she's kissing his mouth and making those soft little noises he imagines when he's doing to himself what he showed her just minutes ago.

Yet: they make love slowly, almost softly, her legs high around his waist and her hands roaming his flesh, caressing his arms and his shoulders, stroking his back and his hair, pressing him deeper into her when she puts her palm against his hip. More, though she doesn't say it aloud, harder though all she does is arch her back and tilt her hips.

And he raises up, sliding out of the tighter circle of her arms. They look at each other now, Danicka's lips parted to breathe, eyes open to watch him. His hips roll, send his cock firmer into her, and she catches a moan in her throat, refusing to let it out. Her hands are loose on his triceps, her body so relaxed beneath and around his that every thrust is a firm, controlled slide met by warm, complementary welcome.

Her eyes close when he bows his back and wraps his lips around her breast again, unable to groan or mutter to her for fear of shattering her lust with the shattered glass that is his voice, sending all that energy into motion, into savoring. Danicka arches up to meet his mouth, her pussy clenching around him now as they start to rock faster, harder, more surely on the bedtop. For awhile. For a long, timeless while, the flow of it interrupted when --

She gasps, sharply, at the apex of their fucking, when he can sense the tremors of tension in her body and feel the inevitable in the shudders of her breathing. "Keep going," she breathes, a tight whisper. "Keep going, baby, I'm gonna come."

Her hips roll up, her cunt sliding onto him then, fucking him back now, urging him faster. Every thrust and counterthrust has her gasping now, panting. She tightens her legs around his waist, biting back a low, plaintive groan. Her hands tighten on his arms and --

she comes, mouth open soundlessly, head thrown back against his pillow, her orgasm coming in waves all around his cock, clutching at him, holding him right there, her hips bucking small and soft, just enough to stroke her clit a few more times across his flesh, grind her on him while she rides out her pleasure.

[Lukas] There's just enough light to see the look on her face. The soundless opening of her mouth; the closing of her eyes. He kisses the arch of her neck as she comes, kisses her while he fucks her just like that, just like that, steady and deep, but slow.

And then holding. Buried in her as she writhes and grinds on him. Holding her still and pinning her like that, as though her orgasm might shake her apart, as though his body, his cock, the searing heat of him might hold her together like gravity.

His eyes as afire, glimmering and hot. He drinks in the sight of her, overcome.

When it's over, he lowers his mouth to hers and kisses her. Softly at first. Gently, while she's still shaken apart, a million glittering pieces that slowly coalesce. Then harder, with greater hunger, as he feels her relaxing enough to take him again, to take it if he starts fucking her again

which he does. Just like this. Harder, very solidly, his hips pounding against hers; but slowly. That same slow rhythm, deliberate, flex after flex of his hard body, his thick cock into her, until at the end his mouth strays from hers, presses to her shoulder, presses to her skin. He gathers her to him, crushingly close. Bites her when he slams his cock into her the last time. Doesn't withdraw. Holds it. Thrusts again, a sudden hard flex that nails her to the bed, that parts her thighs wider and drives himself deep, deep, and

then he's rigid, shuddering silently, panting harsh and raw and ragged against her shoulder as he comes. Short, sharp quivers run through him. Down his spine, into his arms and his flanks, through his cock buried deep in her. The second time Lukas comes tonight, it's inside her, inside his mate, filling her.

When it passes, his breathing is unsteady and sharp for a while. Then he relaxes, iota by iota. His grip on her loosens. The clasp of his arms. He's heavy on her, boneless and liquid, and they don't speak. They don't need to. He kisses her where he bit her. He kisses her, period.

After a while Lukas rolls to the side: his back to the room, Danicka between his body and the wall. Where she would be protected. Where she would be safe. When another Shadow Lord challenged him for a kin, Lukas spoke of the prime duty of a Garou to his mate, but he lied. He would protect Danicka; there is no question of that. But his primary duty to her, that which makes him indubitably her mate, is to love her. Is that he loves her, and is loved by her.

He knows this. He also knows this is vanishingly rare, which makes her utterly precious.

Which makes him protect her, and what they have.

His thoughts turn in circles, lazy. He kisses her again, and then he draws out of her. Their sweat is cooling. Their bodies are cooling. They adjust themselves on his bed, wriggle about, find room. He pulls the comforter up over them, and then he gathers her close again, their bodies aligned and facing, her leg drawn over his thigh, his arm draped over her side.

After a while, they sleep.

--

In the night, when he wakes briefly, she's turned so that her back nestles against his front. He kisses her shoulder, and then he cradles her breast. Her heartbeat reassures him, sings him back to sleep.

--

In the morning, they laze about for a while. She has a change of clothes. They shower and brush their teeth and he strips his bedlinens, leaving his bed rumpled and stripped while the sheets are in the washer.

They have lunch not downstairs in the Brotherhood but at the burger joint not far away, where Lukas wolfs down an enormous steakburger while they share loaded cheese fries and debate the superiority of burgers vs. sandwiches.

Parting in the parking lot, he kisses her slowly, sweetly. As she's getting in the car he says, "I'm going to challenge again for Ahroun Elder soon. I'll tell you what happens."

He stands in the parking lot, hands in his pockets, as she drives away. Before she exits the lot she toots her horn. He waves back, face breaking into a grin. When he gets back to the Brotherhood it's time to put the laundry in the dryer. And his room still smells faintly of Danicka.