[Lukas] It's not that Lukas is chronically sleep depped or narcoleptic, but every time they watch a movie, he drowses. It's an elemental reaction. He's warm. He's comfortable on her couch. She's there. He's content.
All safe. All good. He sleeps.
Last night was no exception. Right as the plot twists, turns, grows dark, grows spooky, the Ahroun at Danicka's back drops off. It takes a crash from her surround sound system to wake him again, his body starting faintly but palpably, the arm around her momentarily tightening in instinctive protection. Then it passes. It's just a movie. He nuzzles her hair, nips her ear softly between his teeth for a moment. Exhales: mmm.
Neither of them say anything of it. They watch the rest of the movie, and then their food is there. They eat on the floor, arms brushing, backs to the couch, he so much larger than she. He saves scallops for her, though, and beef, though they could easily order more. That, too, is instinct.
And later, after the wii, after he pursues her, chases her, catches her, takes her --
moaning in her bed. Gasping, panting, moving into each other. Hands gripping amidst the sheets. Hands all over her body.
-- they sleep. He almost always sleeps wrapped around her like this, as though somehow knowing she's protected makes him sleep sounder. As though the safety and comfort and depth of her rest affected his.
--
Morning, and he's quietly affectionate. He stays in bed a long time, nuzzling her, murmuring to her, kissing her neck and her shoulderblades, the dip of her spine. There's sunlight everywhere, watery and pale, but not so watery and pale as it was in winter. Spring is coming. Her skin is warm and soft; her eyes the murky green of new life. His mouth has found her iliac crest, the shallow dip of her inner hip. He rolls her on her back, and before they get out of bed
before they go to shower, or to breakfast
he kisses her pussy, licks her, eats her out slowly and luxuriously and lazily in bed.
Afterward, for a long time, he rests with his head on her stomach, watching the sun move across her abdomen. Before he rises at last, he turns his head and kisses her again, softly, and then smiles up at her.
"Miluji tě," he says.
--
She cooks breakfast this time. They shower, and then he shaves while the condo fills slowly with the smell of eggs and toast. He pours the coffee as she's taking the eggs off the fire, asking her if she wants sugar, pouring cream in both mugs. He drinks his coffee without sugar, but with obscene amounts of cream. They eat at the breakfast bar, and Lukas scoots his stool close, their elbows touching.
It's only afterward, after the dishes are cleared away, that he slowly remembers what they were going to talk about. While he drinks the last of his coffee, he tells her what he told a gathering of Garou, of Ahrouns, of the war leaders of each pack:
about the Hive. About the north. About how deeply corrupt that land is, and how the Wyrm's fingers have reached every echelon of mortal society. And -- about the plan. The church and their first foothold. The community center and the threat it poses.
"That's really the sort of thing I think the kin can handle better than the Garou," he finishes. "There aren't a lot of Garou with significant human influence, or even the ability to work with humans. But it's not enough just to go in and kill whatever's lurking around the community center. They'll just bring someone else in the next week. Someone has to actually go and ... either buy it out, or get it shut down, or something.
"I was really hoping the coalition could've done that. Brought the kin together and concentrated their efforts on concrete goals like that."
[Lukas] It's not that Lukas is chronically sleep depped or narcoleptic, but every time they watch a movie, he drowses. It's an elemental reaction. He's warm. He's comfortable on her couch. She's there. He's content. Sometimes it takes a crash from her surround sound system to wake him again, his body starting faintly but palpably, the arm around her momentarily tightening in instinctive protection. Inevitably, it passes. It's just a movie. He nuzzles her hair, sometimes, or nips her ear softly between his teeth for a moment. Exhales: mmm.
Drowses again.
Last night, though, they weren't on her couch. They were in a movie theater, in the dark, surrounded by strangers more frightened by his presence than by the movie. Lukas doesn't sleep. He holds her hand loosely, and he watches the movie, and he enjoys it, relaxed and languid --
but once in a while, when someone passing down the aisle comes too close, he looks up. His eyes glimmer in the dark. He watches until the stranger is safely out of range and then returns his attention to the screening.
Neither of them say anything of it; at the movies or on the way back. They call for food while they're en route, and the delivery boy is waiting when they get to her place. They eat on the floor, arms brushing, backs to the couch, he so much larger than she. He saves scallops for her, though, and beef, though they could easily order more. That, too, is instinct.
And later, after the wii, after he pursues her, chases her, catches her, takes her --
moaning in her bed. Gasping, panting, moving into each other. Hands gripping amidst the sheets. Hands all over her body.
-- they sleep. He almost always sleeps wrapped around her like this, as though somehow knowing she's protected makes him sleep sounder. As though the safety and comfort and depth of her rest affected his.
--
Morning, and he's quietly affectionate. He stays in bed a long time, nuzzling her, murmuring to her, kissing her neck and her shoulderblades, the dip of her spine. There's sunlight everywhere, watery and pale, but not so watery and pale as it was in winter. Spring is coming. Her skin is warm and soft; her eyes the murky green of new life. His mouth has found her iliac crest, the shallow dip of her inner hip. He rolls her on her back, and before they get out of bed
before they go to shower, or to breakfast
he kisses her pussy, licks her, eats her out slowly and luxuriously and lazily in bed.
Afterward, for a long time, he rests with his head on her stomach, watching the sun move across her abdomen. Before he rises at last, he turns his head and kisses her again, softly, and then smiles up at her.
"Miluji tě," he says.
--
She cooks breakfast this time. They shower, and then he shaves while the condo fills slowly with the smell of eggs and toast. He pours the coffee as she's taking the eggs off the fire, asking her if she wants sugar, pouring cream in both mugs. He drinks his coffee without sugar, but with obscene amounts of cream. They eat at the breakfast bar, and Lukas scoots his stool close, their elbows touching.
It's only afterward, after the dishes are cleared away, that he slowly remembers what they were going to talk about. While he drinks the last of his coffee, he tells her what he told a gathering of Garou, of Ahrouns, of the war leaders of each pack:
about the Hive. About the north. About how deeply corrupt that land is, and how the Wyrm's fingers have reached every echelon of mortal society. And -- about the plan. The church and their first foothold. The community center and the threat it poses.
"That's really the sort of thing I think the kin can handle better than the Garou," he finishes. "There aren't a lot of Garou with significant human influence, or even the ability to work with humans. But it's not enough just to go in and kill whatever's lurking around the community center. They'll just bring someone else in the next week. Someone has to actually go and ... either buy it out, or get it shut down, or something.
"I was really hoping the coalition could've done that. Brought the kin together and concentrated their efforts on concrete goals like that."
[Danicka] The third time that someone getting up to use the bathroom makes Lukas go alert and watchful, Danicka reaches over and puts her hand on top of his hand. If he meets her eyes, she gives him a small, patient, tender smile. Mouths: relax.
Doesn't say: I'm okay.
Neither of them speak of it on the walk from the theatre back to her place, the high-rise situated so centrally that Danicka didn't even need a car until she decided to go back to school, and even then it wasn't strictly, perfectly necessary. She changes into more comfortable clothes, and as she does so she thinks of how Lukas has never brought anything over, no overnight bag, no toothbrush of his own. She often has an extra one under the sink anyway in its package; he uses it once. It's weeks before he comes back.
But anyway, she changes into pajama pants and a t-shirt, and lounges about with Lukas in the living room to eat. Without invitation, she occasionally takes bites from his carton of food, chopsticks darting. She never did this at the beginning. Now she does it with childlike impunity, eating his scallops, slices of his sauce-saturated beef, leaning into his side for balance as she interrupts his own eating to taste whatever he has. Whatever is his. Whatever she knows, not by word but instinct, he would give her even if it meant starving himself.
Though if that were the case, she would never eat everything he would try to give her, if it meant he would not eat, too.
In the morning when she wakes up, they've pulled only the sheet over themselves, tangled in amongst Lukas's covering, wrapping limbs. There's sweat between his chest and her back. In the spots where there legs meet and cross. There's his mouth, starting to brush across her skin as he stirs. And she feels him harden. Closes her eyes and breathes in as his hands start to move, covering her breasts, stroking her nipples til they stand erect and firm, rubbing his palm over them. She moans for the first time when he slides down the bed, sheets dragging away from her body as he does so, when she realizes what he means to do.
Danicka's hands in his hair, then. Her inner thighs against his ears, his cheeks, his temples. Her cunt rubbing gently against his mouth, her moans filling her bedroom. She arches when she comes, winding and writhing on top of her rumpled bedsheets, eyes mostly lidded and mouth open to let out those breathy, helpless little cries he makes her give.
Afterwards she drowses, her mate lying between her legs, resting on her belly. For awhile her fingers move through his hair, til they go still from sleepiness. Lukas rouses her with kisses to her thighs, her belly, traveling upward, and she smiles at him from her pillow, lazy. She could stay like this forever, if he stayed with her.
She tells him so, in a whisper.
Her hair is in a braid, after their shower. It's Monday morning but she has no classes til later in the afternoon. She says she's looking forward to spring break, while they start in on breakfast, and they talk a bit more about her classes. She hasn't declared a major yet. She's going to think it over on break and decide when they get back.
Her eyes darken a bit when he brings up the Hive, and though Danicka interjects a question here and there when she doesn't quite grasp something he's said or needs thim to slow down and give a bit more backstory, mostly she is quiet. Listening. She's a bright one, his mate, known to the Nation as burgeoning in Wisdom. Cleverness. Cunning, maybe. She takes in quite a lot. She cleans up some while he talks. Makes herself another cup of coffee with cream and a splash of hazelnut syrup from the cupboard.
Coming back around the bar, Danicka sets her mug down and then gets back into her seat, near to him, sitting cross-legged. She's small enough to do this: to perch all of her weight like that, without getting unbalanced. Danicka considers what she wants to say, then:
"I was, too."
Hoping, that is.
Past tense.
[Lukas] There's a selflessness about Lukas when he's around Danicka. It's not at all a character trait, something inborn and innate to him. He is not altruistic. He is honorable, perhaps even noble, but he is a Shadow Lord. He takes what is offered. He takes what wants when he can. He defends what is his.
He would snap at a packmate if they tried to take food from his plate without asking, or without his first having offered.
He has never, before her, wanted simply to give pleasure to someone else without even thinking of taking any for himself.
It's different, now. He's intensely aware of her; attuned, careful of her, loving, giving. He notices if her breath quickens with arousal. He notices when her eyes darken at the mention of the Hive he must face. He notices the past tense, and how quietly she said it.
"But not anymore?" he prompts gently.
[Danicka] On the other hand, Danicka is entirely and unapologetically selfish. Or was. Or is, in other areas of her life. She's never had any qualms with taking pleasure without offering it in return. She's never felt much compulsion to what's charmingly called 'sexual reciprocity'. Show me yours, I'll show you mine. Get me off, I'll treat you right. She feels no guilt for moaning her enjoyment in the late morning as her mate pleasures her, doesn't need to talk herself down from a point of panic that maybe he'll be upset if he doesn't 'get his'. Another charming turn of phrase, that.
She strokes his hair as she comes down from her orgasm, smiling as he kisses her with moist lips, and loves him. And feels nothing else, but that, as they lie together. Adoration. Which is what she felt as she ate from his late, came close to his body and took bites of his food while he held his chopsticks back to allow for hers. Which is what she felt when she jostled him while playing Wii Tennis and then bolted across the room, giggling. Which is what she feels even now, though it's subdued by something else.
At the counter where they were eating, where they've been talking: she shakes her head. "Not really. They're just so... selfish, all of them." A spike of frustration. "They're not opposed to helping the Garou, but half of them will do it only grudgingly, and the other half aren't all that useful to begin with. I don't think they'd say no if they were asked to perform X task for Y goal, but they sure as hell don't want to be led in any of these endeavors."
[Lukas] "Because of course they've been 'helping' so very much without leadership so far," Lukas comments dryly. She's compacted, crosslegged atop her barstool. He's tall enough that even atop a barstool, it's little enough effort to rest one foot flat on the floor. The heel of the other sits atop the bottom rung of the stool, his elbow atop the bar.
Relaxed. Full and rested, even if his mate's palpable frustration puts a crinkle between his eyebrows.
A small pause. Then, "Should I stop ... pushing you to lead the kin, miláčku?"
[Danicka] "Well... that's sort of my point," she says, with a small, tense laugh. It isn't very amused-sounding. "Without leadership, all they do is get into trouble and spread rumors amongst themselves and complain about how they're treated. Yet they will not be led. They seem to think that following leadership means... only doing what you want to. Or that the leader should never have you do anything you wouldn't do yourself anyway. So what's the point of even trying with them?"
[Lukas] "I know," Lukas replies quietly. "I wasn't mocking you. I was just commenting on ... what fucking idiots they are.
"Forget it, baby. A useful, functional coalition would've been helpful, I won't deny that. But if they're just deadweight, they're useless. And there's no reason for you to try to pull that weight for them."
[Danicka] That makes Danicka's brow furrow in a slight frown. "I know you weren't mocking me, baby. I didn't think that."
He goes on, and it makes her frown deepen. She looks at the countertop, though, and picks up her coffee to take another drink.
[Lukas] "Danička," Lukas leans forward, his hand warm on her thigh, "what's the matter?"
[Danicka] Of course he's warm. So much so that in the middle of winter she can sleep with him uncovered, as long as he holds her. So much so that when they fuck, sweat makes them slippery as seals. So much so that she feels him through her pajama pants as though they aren't there. And it makes her exhale, reaching down to cup the sides of his hand in each of hers, framing his touch with her own.
She looks at his knuckles. "It just... pisses me off. The whole thing. It was a good idea, and I just see it being run into the ground."
[Lukas] "Yeah," Lukas replies softly. Agreement: that it was a good idea. Or that it's frustrating, that it pisses him off too. Or -- that it's being run into the ground.
Her hand frames his. His fingers spread, thumb hooking over hers; pinky hooking over the thumb of her other hand.
"I'm sorry it sort of fell apart."
[Danicka] Danicka keeps looking at his hand as they sit there, her shoulders and head bowed, her thumbs stroking idly over his knuckles. She thinks: I love you so much. Every inch of him. The blunt curve of his fingernails. The shocking softness of his skin, so unlike the rough and calloused and scarred flesh of her father's. She used to sit at the kitchen table as a child and play with his hands, because even when she was young he was well beyond his prime, was aging rapidly from a hard life.
Lukas will never be that old. His hands will never be papery, wrinkled, knotted with bone-deep pain. He will never hit forty. Nor fifty. He will never sit at the kitchen table while his daughter sits on her knees in the chair beside his and tells him about her day while she examines and explores his hand with the interest and engagement only the very young can muster, chattering endlessly --
because if they had a daughter, she would be a Moon Dancer, and a talkative one, at least with her family, at least with the knowledge that it would be okay to say what she thought, that her mother would not backhand her for speaking, that her father -- that rare and almost spectral existence in her life -- would only be able to sit in overwhelmed silence, trying not to move much or make much noise lest he frighten her[
-- and this will never happen because he is a warrior of warriors. And a leader, now, among them.
Danicka exhales slowly, smiling softly as he links their hands as best he can without taking his palm off her leg. "I love you so much," she says quietly, and finally lifts her head to meet his eyes again. "I am, too." She pauses. "I feel angry at myself for letting my frustration get the better of me. On the same hand, if I thought there was anything to be gained from trying to herd goats and asses, I... I like to think I'd stick it out." She frowns deeply. "But I don't know that I would."
[Lukas] "If what you had to gain," his voice is just as quiet as hers, intimate in the vast spaces of her condo, "could outweigh the crap you'd have to wade through to get to it, I think you'd stick it out, Danička."
There's a pause. Then one edge of his mouth hooks ruefully up, and he lifts his free hand to her face. Leans forward. Kisses her softly, tasting coffee and cream on her tongue.
"I know you would. Because you did."
[Danicka] Which lays it out on the line, and echoes a conversation they had on the waterfront over a year ago. What is worth it, is worth everything. What isn't worth it, isn't worth any attention at all. The Coalition... worth something. Not everything. And not worth it to Danicka, anymore, which saddens her. He can see it in her eyes: the loss, the frustration, the anger at feeling something taken from her.
But there they are. If it were really worth it, she'd stick it out. She'd pull something good out of the drek.
Lukas touches her face, kisses her, and a fraction of the anxiety in her expression seems soothed away. That doesn't happen often, that his tenderness melts away her angst. He is not a nurturer, a comforter, a gentle soul. He is, however: her mate. And her male. He's the warmth in her bed when he fills it and the steady sound of breathing that puts her back to sleep when she wakes at random in the night.
Her eyes close when they kiss. Her breath smells like hazelnuts mingling with the coffee. She's sweet to the taste. And her eyelashes lift again when they part, the corners of her mouth turning up a little in a small, sad sort of smile.
"I'll still do anything you ask me to," she murmurs. "To help, I mean. And get people connected, pass along information. Anything that will help."
[Lukas] "I know you will." It's almost repetition, but not quite. His hand stays on her face another moment; his thumb traces the corner of her mouth, that small sad smile.
Then, slowly, he smiles back: a closelipped, quiet thing that softens his eyes, gentles the plane and angles of his face. I love you so much, she said to him earlier. I love you so much, says his smile to her now, and the touch of his hand to her face.
Then he's sitting back, straightening. "I might ask you to do more than that, actually," he says. "I might ask you to do some hacking."
[Danicka] She looks vaguely surprised, then blinks, then frowns a bit. "What?"
[Lukas] "Hacking," he repeats. "I'm thinking about the community center. My guess is if anyone tried to buy it out directly, the Wyrmridden city council will find some reason to roadblock the sale.
"But if you could get in there to falsify records, put in evidence of embezzling or tax fraud or ... something of the sort, then I bet some of the other kin can tip off a federal or state investigation. Something from outside Elk Grove, not under the Hive's thumb."
[Danicka] His mate just stares at him for a few moments, a blank look on her face but for the slight furrow to her brow. "Baby, I wouldn't know how to do something like that."
[Lukas] "Maybe not yet," Lukas replies, "but I've seen you with computers. And I saw you take down ... who knows how many years of work on a mainframe that wasn't even communicating in English. Danička, I think you could learn. I think you don't give yourself enough credit for how smart you are."
[Danicka] "Yeah, but I was right there," she argues. "I wasn't hacking into anything like... remotely, or something. I could come up with what sort of mixed-up math would make an investigation get rolling and then take a long time to complete, I'm good at math --
"I like math," she interjects, almost as a confession, "but the ...I don't..."
She stammers, and then just looks at him unhappily. No, not unhappily. Nervously. "I need someone who knows enough about the legal system to tell me just how bad it has to be for the state or the IRS or whatever to get involved. And ...I think it's really unlikely I can get anything done from the comfort of my own apartment without leaving a pretty noticeable trail right back to me.
"So I may have to go up there and actually... deal with their computers face to face." Like they're people.
[Lukas] Lukas shifts a little on his stool. He's uncomfortable with the idea of Danicka being up in Elk Grove, right there at Wyrm central, ground zero, whatever the hell you want to call it. She can see that clearly enough: it's written all over his face.
There's a long pause while he thinks. Then he says, "I'm pretty sure Ostermann or Chadwick could tell you what's bad enough to call down an investigation. If not, then one of the kin in the CPD probably has a buddy they could check with. That shouldn't be a problem.
"If you really can't do it remotely from a public library or something," this part is much more hesitant, "it might be possible to get you and a few others down to the city treasury to mess with their systems. Maybe. I'm not sure yet. I don't know if it'll be feasible."
If it'll be too dangerous, is what he means.
[Danicka] She smiles faintly, and nods. "Let's stop talking about it for now. Check with Ray and Leslie, find out if they're even willing to be useful on command rather than when they good and well feel like it. And if so, get them in touch with me and I ask them what I need."
Her hand reaches over to his thigh, squeezes. "But I've got like two hours before I need to leave for class. If you can stay for awhile longer, we should play Wii again. Only I won't cheat this time. And if I do, you should bend me over the couch and fuck me for being bad."
The smile has to be called up, has to be pushed. But it's there. And it does glint with true humor.
[Lukas] What she says makes him catch his breath -- but if she starts to slide off her stool, he holds her hand to his thigh.
"I like it that you do that," he says quietly, and for a moment she might think he means: talk like that. Speak so frankly of sex, of fucking, of things that make his head spin and his cock hard.
But, no. "That you'll tell me if you want to stop talking about 'business'," he adds. "I like that you keep at least a part of our time just ... us."
[Danicka] "Most," she says quietly, then to clarify: "Most of our time. Because I'm going to lose you to the war, anyway, Lukáš. I don't want it to happen while you're still breathing."
Danicka leans across and kisses him quickly, her feet grabbing the rung of the barstool so she doesn't slide off completely. But she does slide. And towards him. And the kiss doesn't end up being so quick. She puts her hands on his face, wraps her arms around his neck, and lets him support her weight if he will. Because she knows that he can.
And she kisses him harder, pressing herself to his lap, between his legs, against his body, her craving for the contact sudden and voracious. "Do you want me to bad first?" she gasps softly, parting long enough to speak, to nip at his lips with her teeth. "So you can fuck me hard?"
Maybe he likes that she does this, too, rakes her words down his sex drive, his unheeded arousal from this morning. Likes that she wants him so intensely, so needfully, so suddenly. Danicka is kissing him again, straddling his lap now, her legs hanging down. "Or do you just want to have me now?"
[Lukas] There's a flash of pain across Lukas's face, as clear and stark as if he'd been injured. More: because injury doesn't hurt him anymore unless he lets it. Because a blade could go through him, claws could tear him open, he could literally die and not even feel the blow.
But he doesn't want to think about that right now. About dying -- not because he's afraid of death, per se, but because he's afraid of losing her. He's afraid of her, losing him.
"Don't," he says when she says I'm going to lose you to the war, and winces. "Don't talk about that."
And that's when she leans across to kiss him. And his arms come around her, and it's all so easy, so natural, because: yes. He supports her weight because he can. And will. And their mouths are opening to each other's, and the kiss is becoming something wild and craving, needful, and his back straightens and he lifts her against his body and her legs part and she's straddling him,
which makes him gasp for air as their mouths part,
and gasp again when she says what she does.
"I want to fuck you now," he says, muffled against her neck. Her mouth. "I want you to fuck you, right now."
And he stands. His mind flashes: kitchen counter? Breakfast bar? Where? -- the couch, then, carrying her toward it, nearly tripping on a goddamn wiimote where they dropped it last night
when she cheated and ran, and he caught her.
That was playful. The way he kissed her then was no less wanting, but they were playing then, laughing as they went to bed, laughter turning to sighs in the blankets and the sheets. He's not laughing now. He's kissing her until he's lightheated from shared breath, from lust, and his shins hit the couch and he's setting her down to sit on the back of the couch, the plate glass of her windows at her back, the city behind her, sunlight on her skin.
He'd dressed again after his shower. Last night's clothes. He's pulling them off now, undoing his belt and dropping his pants, tugging his shirt off over his head, and every minute his vision isn't somehow obscured or blocked
he's looking at her, watching her hungrily, hungrily, like he couldn't get enough of the sight of her.
[Danicka] So they don't talk about that anymore. They kiss instead, Danicka flowing into his arms like a wave rushing onto the shore, clinging to him like water on sand, drenching him with the way she covers his lap and shields his chest with her own warmth. She presses down onto him as he gasps. Now, he says, and again: right now. His cock is hard inside of his pants, and Danicka rubs herself on him while he goes through flat surfaces he could lie her on and fuck her brains out. She nuzzles and kisses and moans softly against his neck, reaching for one of his hands and pulling it to her breast, cupping his palm around it.
Which he moves, because he decides, crossing a mere few feet of space back to the couch they shared last night while they ate and while Danicka teased him through the motions of making a Mii. No, she said, laughing, your eyebrows are thicker than that. Here. And made them take up half his face, which made him give her a Look full of the pretense of being Not Amused, while she giggled and told him he should give his Mii blue eyeshadow, too. To compensate for the eyebrows.
This is also the couch where she hid under a blanket, drunk and unhappy, because he gave her a firearm and she didn't want to deal with the implications of that. She didn't want to talk about dying, fighting and screaming or whimpering and passive. She didn't want to talk about the War in her living room, didn't want to remember that night what he is, what she is, what their life is really made up of and how it began and how it will inevitably end.
Fighting and screaming. There aren't many peaceful deaths in the Nation anymore. Even for the Kin.
On this couch she laid her head on another man's lap and held frozen peas to her cheek after Sam hit her. Sat and explained to Liadan what the Kinfolk are to the Garou. Arched her back and rode Lukas until he realized she wasn't with him no matter how deep he was inside of her and it's the couch where she's ridden him, faced him, fucked him with her hands on his shoulders and her hips winding and slowly swirling under his guiding palms.
Danicka perches on the back, wet braid over her shoulder, smiling a small, awkward smile as he undresses himself. She doesn't sit there and wait. She slides down onto her knees on the cushions and takes over unfastening his pants after his belt is undone. She pushes them off his hips, tugs down his underwear while he's pulling off his shirt, kisses and strokes his abdomen with her lips and her hands as he's dropping it behind him and stepping out of his pants. She's in simpler clothes than he: dark-washed jeans, plain white tee -- though a plain white tee with such subtle, delicately applied tailoring and detailing as to make it unquestionably fine and feminine -- and a three-quarter sleeved fitted, cropped cardigan the color of chocolate. One button holds it over her breasts. She doesn't touch it.
She touches him. She runs her hands up to his chest. She ducks her head and kisses his cock, a quick soft press of her warm lips. Which she licks, then. And kisses him again. And again, this time slow, opening her mouth enough to let her tongue slide over the traces of wetness she finds on his flesh. And again, even deeper. "How do you want me?" she says, her mouth wet and red now, and this time when she kisses him, she takes his head into her mouth, sucking softly while she waits for his answer.
[Lukas] About a week from now, Lukas will find himself in a subterranean world, a realm beyond this one reached not by stepping sideways but by falling down, down, down. A land of soft earth and bending grass and soft-droning insects, where everything was in pairs and the instinct to mate is exceeded only by the instinct to sleep.
Both of which, really, he understands quite well in her presence: safety. Warmth. Mate. Den.
If she were with him then, asking him this question, he wouldn't have hesitated. He would've said: right now. Right here. On your back, in the grass, with the sky above me and me above you and you beneath me and the earth beneath us. Just like this, face to face, the way it should be.
He's not there right now, though. He doesn't even know he'll be there in a week's time, in a realm beyond human reason or easy logic. He's
right here
in her living room, pulling his shirt off as she undoes his pants, and together the two of them bare his skin to her hands, to her mouth, and when she leans down to put her mouth on him his head tips back, falls back, and he exhales a sighing groan to her high ceilings.
"Baby..." he says, and gets no further than that. She takes him into her mouth. His eyes close and his lips part; he breathes quietly, shallowly, his fingers winding gently into her hair, against her head.
Daylight casts the definition of his body into stark relief. The muscles of his torso shift and pull, tauten here and there as she sucks. He's groaning softly on every slide of her mouth after a while, his hips moving gently to fuck her mouth, gently, so carefully. After some time he gathers the will to lift his head and look down at her.
"Sit forward a little, baby," he urges softly. "Lean back and let me fuck you like that. I want to see you."
[Danicka] In a week's time he'll be thankful Danicka wasn't there, couldn't be in the underworld or the umbra with him. The urge would have been overpowering then, with his mate there. And spring breeding new life all around them. The need for her would have eclipsed sleep, hunger, pain, the capabilities of speech beyond snarling and groaning as he mounted her, fucked her, lost himself inside her. Only then would the drowsiness have come back, and then in full, irresistable force.
That's in the future, though. That's an impossible happening. Any breeding female he might have met in that place would not be the other half of this mated pair. Would not be Danicka. His.
Lukas is naked now, standing in her living room high, high above the surface of the earth, ages away from the underworld. And she's clothed still, her braid disheveled by his searching fingers, her hands soft on his cock. He doesn't answer her immediately, so she strokes him and takes him deeper into her mouth. If there were other buildings this tall around that had a good view of her living room they'd get an eyeful: the thin blonde in the fine clothes sucking her boyfriend's cock with luxurious slowness, her mouth wet and slick and tight around him. They wouldn't be able to hear the little noises he makes, the soft groans as he rocks his hips eversogently in time with the rhythm, the pace she sets herself.
Danicka can, though, and it makes her moan in answer. She wraps her free arm around him, puts her hand on his lower back, fucks him with her mouth until he's panting, until he's telling her to come to the edge of the couch, lean back on the cushions and let him watch her while they make love. She groans softly around him and slowly, slowly lets him slide out. She keeps stroking him, though, a few more times, til she leans back and scoots forward and undoes the single button holding her sweater closed. Shrugging out of it, Danicka takes the hem of her shirt in hand and pulls it up over her head.
Her bra is the color of her skin, or close enough. It's one of the simplest pieces of lingerie he's ever seen on her, bereft of lace or embellishment, just a few shades off from her flesh. She leans back, almost lying down, quickly undoing the fastenings of her jeans.
[Lukas] Now, as before, they both work at fastenings and buttons, zippers, cloth. Now it's her body they're working to bare. She's shedding her cardigan and he's helping her tug her shirt off and when her bra is revealed he goes to his knees in front of her and pushes his hands under the cups, filling his palms with her breasts as a breath hisses between his teeth.
"Ach, ty jsi tak krásná," he whispers.
He pushes her bra up, reaches under her slender back, unhooks the fastening, pulls the bra off. He's a little hasty now. The strap catches on her wrist, her fingers -- pulls free. He bends to her, the denim of her jeans still rough against his sides when he leans over her and plants his hands on either side of her, his shoulders broad and warm, his skin taut, darker, a shade or two or three darker than hers. "Jste tak kurva horko," he says, and closes his mouth over her breast, sucking at her nipple until it stands erect.
His eyes are closed now, as though to fixate more wholly on her body. He drifts from one breast to the other, lingers over her heart, kisses the center of her body, the pulse beneath her breastbone, before he sucks at her other breast. Long, slow, his hands exploring her body, hers undoing her jeans, pushing it down, until at last he comes partly to his senses and rears up, grasps her jeans by the legs, tugs them off in one long pull, down to the floor.
Then he's over her against, hot between her thighs, kissing her mouth this time. He finds her pussy with his hand, touches her until she gasps or arches, plays with her, slips his fingers inside
so slowly
pulling back just enough to see her face as he does this. Just enough that she can see his face, the furrowing of his brow, the look he gets when he feels her tight and hot around his fingers.
He moans into her mouth when he kisses her again. Then his mouth is on her neck, and his cock is in his hand, and her slick is mingling with his and he's stroking it onto his head, onto his shaft, slicking himself up to push into her. "Hold me," he whispers, meaning her arms, meaning her legs, meaning all of it. They're both so hot where they touch; when he slides his cock against her cunt, he can barely tell where one ends and the other begins.
"Ach můj bože." It's a hushed, breathless string of consonants and vowels, his first language, the one he falls into when he's lost nearly all hold on linguistic skill. That's what he says as he's pushing into her, sliding the head of his cock into her, stretching her slowly around him as he lets himself go, moves his hands to her hair, to open over her body, to pull her hip up against his. "To je ono. Vezmi si to pro me, lásko. To je ono."
He quiets when he's inside her. He's just breathing, then, stroking her hair gently, his brow to hers. Eyes closed. Chest moving against her. Then Lukas's eyes open. In the daylight, their clarity is stunning: the color almost an afterthought. He kisses her open-eyed, tenderly, firmly.
"I might fuck you hard," he whispers. "Okay?"
[Danicka] For awhile, she sat on her couch and sucked on his cock. They filled the living room with sounds they wouldn't have dared make while she still had a roommate who might walk in. They fucked in the open without having to care if they had the place to themselves or not. This isn't that unusual: he usually only came over when she was alone here, anyway. They have the den now, too, and can make any sound they like.
For awhile, now, she lays back, her clothes in a heap on the floor with his or wrinkling on the seatcushions behind her, and he fingers her pussy, fucks her with his hand while he leans over her body. For awhile, Danicka holds herself up on her elbows, watching him, watching his hand, gasping as he plays with her.
Last night they made love til sleep overtook them. This morning he loved her with his mouth until she arched and writhed with wakefulness. They rushed to kissing this morning, rushed to the couch, but now that he's got at least a part of himself inside of her again, they seem to slow. Danicka simply opens her legs and pants softly while Lukas strokes his fingers in and out of her, smearing wetness over her lips, onto her clit, leaving traces of it on her inner thighs when he departs.
Danicka lets out a rush of air, a dizzy gasp, and reaches for him before he's saying hold me, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist as he comes down over her, rubs himself against her. "Fuck me," she whimpers in his ear, this woman that was tempting him after breakfast with talk of bad, of hard, of now. "Baby, put it inside me."
And he does, and she grips at him with her cunt, her eyes closing and her head falling back against the couch cushions, shoulders scraping against the upholstery as she arches to meet him. "Oh god," she breathes, in response to his own. "Oh my god," while he's muttering in Czech, pulling her onto him. She puts her hand on her breast, strokes and fondles it herself while he's moving into her, while she's rolling her hips to get him deeper inside.
"To je to, co chci. To je, jak chci, abys mě šukat."
[Lukas] "God, yeah," he's murmuring as she's saying oh my god, as though this were some sort of answer or response.
Lukas pushes himself up on his hands, then, kneeling on the floor beside her couch, body bowed over hers. He watches her play with her own breast, and something about that sight makes him bite his lower lip, makes him pulse inside her as though there ran a direct line between his eyes and his mind and his cock.
He rears up over her, then. He puts his hand on the back of the couch; lifts her leg over his shoulder. Turns sideways without taking his eyes from her, kisses the inside of her knee, recalls, suddenly, her knee-high stockings, so sheer he could see her skintone through the white, with the tiny fleur-de-lises embroidered in. His eyes close and his mouth opens. He bites at the inside of her knee, groaning, as he starts to fuck her.
Hard, to be honest. Hard and fast, his hand clenching on the back of her sofa, his other gripping at her thigh, holding her leg against his chest as he pounds into her. There's something unfettered and harsh about the sounds he's making, as though he'd been waiting longer than he has to fuck her like this, as though what they'd spoken of just before they couldn't speak of it anymore --
losing each other. losing this.
-- has lit a fire in him, put some urgency into all this. His eyes flash open, look down. He's watching himself fucking her now, and the sight sets him aflame, makes him gasp and pant, makes him whisper in a rush that he loves the way she feels, that he loves watching that sweet little cunt take that cock.
His free hand on her body now, opening over her abdomen, sliding up to cup her breast. He holds her like that while he fucks her, feeling the impact in her breast against his hand, feeling her fingers slender and slim beneath his. Wordlessly he pulls her hand from her body to his, presses her hand over his pounding heart, leans over her, pounds her, raises her hand to his mouth and kisses her palm, nips and sucks at her fingertips as he plants both hands on either side of her shoulders again, leaning into the hard, solid fucking he's giving her.
[Danicka] They have a couple of hours til Danicka has to go to class. Factor in time to shower again, time to clean up after getting fucked on her living room couch, and they still have multiples of the time they need to get each other off. More than once, maybe: maybe Danicka will ask him to turn her over and fuck her from behind, bite her shoulder and slap her ass and groan as he pounds her like that, just like that.
She whimpers aloud when he starts to fuck into her, her breasts bouncing against his hand, against his chest when he folds over her. She wanted this. She needed it, when they stopped talking about the war and started talking about loss and realized
they can't handle talking about that. Lukas can't. He shies from it like he fears it, like it's the one pain he can't tolerate no matter what gift he employs. There's no armor against it, no willpower that will stave off the pain that will strike him in his last moments, when he realizes he has left her, and cannot go back. When he remembers that she will be left behind, and when he remembers that he knows what that will do to her. Compassionate, that his last grief will be for his mate, and for the loss of her as though she were the one dying.
That compassion is agony.
They run from it into whatever reaffirms their continuing life: her warm and living and breathing under him. Him active and present and his heart thudding under her palm as she touches him. The fear of death and the fear of loss fade from their minds, overtaken by memories of her legs half-covered by sheer little stockings and by the sensation of her warm, long legs wrapped around him and his hot, hard cock pumping into her. And he fucks her:
hard. Like he'd been wanting to since waking up this morning and finding her naked and wet and receptive. Like she'd been wanting him to for god knows how long. The way she talked about, getting laid out and railed. Danicka's moans are shaky, hitching things, jumping when he thrusts into her, every time.
He can see how wet she is, how wet he makes her, when he looks down to watch his cock and her cunt, together, the slap of their bodies together. Danicka's hands splay over him, his back and his chest, holding onto him while he gives it to her. Which is what she says: give it to me. fuck me. don't stop. baby... baby, oh fuck.
At his lips, her fingertip pushes into his mouth, offering it to him to suck while he balances himself on the couch and goes at her
that much faster, moving her body over the cushions, making the couch tremble slightly with the force of it.
[Danicka] [STOP KICKING ME OUT.]
[Lukas] :[!
[Lukas] There are cliches that the bad is what makes the good seem so good; that the dark foils the light, pain foils joy, and so on and so forth.
There might be some truth in that, but it doesn't change the fact that it hurts, almost physically, to think of leaving her behind. He already knows what he'll want to tell her, if he has the opportunity for last words, a last missive, some last message passed from him to a packmate to a septmate to god knows whom, back to her. He already knows he'll want to make her the one promise he can rightfully make:
that they'll see each other again when their spirits have both found their way home.
But that's a cold comfort at best, because a gulf of years, decades, some innumerable amount of time will inevitably separate his death and hers. Even kin tend to die violent deaths now, but she is not a particularly warlike kin, and he is an Ahroun. To think of all the long years that might spool out after he's gone and she's alone, and everything they have now is a memory that fades year by year, inevitably, worn away by the passage of time -- that's what really makes the idea of death unthinkable for him.
Maybe that's what drives him to fuck her like this, too. Hard, furiously, with a sort of raw desperation: as though he couldn't do anything but this, or the world will fall apart into ashes and ruin, fire and calamity, fall down around his ears. As though if he could fuck her like this, if they could mark each other like this, claim and change and remember each other like this, in their flesh and bones, then it wouldn't matter if the conscious memory grew dim with passing years; if after this there was no other, never again, no true mate but each other.
Her hands splay over him. She gives him her fingers to lick and suck, fearlessly, as though he were not a monster that could snap her hand from her wrist, tear her head off. As though there was no danger whatsoever that this could happen, not because he wants it but because of what he is. As though --
she trusts him,
which is something they fought against from the very beginning, with the same desperate force with which the wolf fights the trap, or the fox the taming. Which is something that happened nonetheless, somehow, just as inevitably as the end will come.
He comes down over her, then. Her leg slides from over his shoulder, around his ribs. He grabs her by the hips and pulls her to the very edge of the sofa, pulls her onto his cock fast and hard enough to make them both gasp, leans over her and braces his elbows on either side of her. Takes her face between his hands. Kisses her hard, holds her right there, fucks her just like that, panting into her mouth and across her neck, across her collarbone as he bends his head to her, groaning as he slams his cock into her.
"Zůstaň se mnou," he says, which is something he's said before, but perhaps never quite like this. Never meaning quite this.
And, "Pojď se mnou."
[Danicka]
If Danicka were one sort of woman, she'd never get on her knees and kiss his cock over and over, purring a question as to how he wants her. If she were another sort of woman, there'd be an emptiness to little submissive seductions like this, a rote pattern of bolstering her sense of self-worth by being assured of his want for her.
But the way she does this -- wraps her arm around him as she takes him in her mouth, wraps her legs around him as she takes him into her body, arches her back for him as he quickens his pace, gasps in his ear and he groans in hers -- is bizarrely pure. There's an uncanny innocence to the way Danicka gives herself over to him, and this is how he knows:
she loves him.
It's how Lukas knows that she means it, how he knows that she's open, that she's letting him in more deeply than either of them can even find words for. This is how he knows she's his mate. This is how he knows that Danicka chose him.
She held back so little, even at the beginning. In speech, at dinner, sitting in his car, arguing at the Brotherhood, she was like a stone egg. A locked garden. A dark window in a quiet house. In bed with him, though -- in a room at the W or the Omni or the Affinia, or in his narrow dorm-style bed at the Brotherhood, or in her soft and expansive bed in this very apartment -- she would come with him, clutch at him and cry out for him, and he would see her as she was nowhere else: unfettered. Unhindered, unbound, and perhaps most startlingly, unafraid.
What they've never talked about is why. Is how she could do that to him, how she could do that to herself. Give so much whenever he was in her, open herself so completely when it's arguable that she was at her most vulnerable. Lukas has never asked. Danicka has never thought to tell him, or maybe just assumes he understands without needing to be told.
Maybe he does.
Hold me, he says.
Stay with me. Come with me.
Not into darkness, not into the earth or the underworld, not even into the bloody thick of the war. But stay. Come. And Danicka knows he doesn't mean simply that he wants to feel her clench and quiver around his cock as her orgasm and his flow into each other. She doesn't know what his last thoughts will be, doesn't know enough about the afterlives of their kind to realize that his last words for her wouldn't really be a comforting lie, which is what she would try to make herself assume
if it weren't for the fact that he's always told her the truth. Sometimes brutal and unflinching. Sometimes hesitating and uneasy. But always, from the beginning, he never promised her things that he couldn't back up. He never told her truths that were really only hopes.
He doesn't want her to talk about the inevitability of his death, the emptiness of being left behind, the agony of loss that would have to fade just in order for her to survive the rest of her years. So she can't tell him --
Well. She can't. She doesn't. She holds him in the circles of her arms and her legs and her cunt, moans as their bodies rock faster and more energetically against the couch cushions, whimper-gasps his name back to him as her hips buck again and again as though she can't stop them. There's sweat where their bodies meet, making holding one another a slippery proposition, but they manage. Danicka lets his mouth have her fingers until she kisses him, wet digits sliding out from between their lips so she can let out a hard, loud groan into his mouth.
Stay with me, that kiss -- that groan -- pleads. Come with me,
Electricity rides her body from single jolt, from a clench of her pussy that's timed to a thrust of his cock that makes her squirm violently in response. "Don't stop. Oh, Lukáš, don't stop," Danicka begs him, reaching down to grab his flank, to hold him in her, to make him grind. She tosses her head backward, her throat tight with moaning, her shoulderblades lifting from the couch. Those coiling, writhing sounds she's making start to turn to fast, tremulous gasps, which turn to louder and louder cries, wordless yet not meaningless, open vowels that simply beg him:
don't stop. come with me. don't stop. hold me. fuck me. fuck me, i'm coming.
And then she is, wild and crying out for him, sweaty and squirming, just like that
just the way it should be.
Afterward she's still riding him, rolling her hips again and again, her pussy still tight and hungry on his cock. Danicka doesn't stop moving. She rubs her legs on his body, runs her hands over his bare back and his lean hips and pants soft in his ear:
"Don't stop. Don't stop, baby, do it again."
[Lukas]
So when she holds him just like that,
holds him with her hands and her arms and her legs, pulls him into her body and holds him right there just like that,
when she stays with him and comes with him, just like that, Lukas wraps his arms around her and closes his eyes. He rocks into her, slams into her, grinds into her in short, ferocious strokes, each one driving a sharp grunt out of him that builds to groans, that builds to thoughtless, fullthroated, rough sounds without word or any meaning more sophisticated than:
i'm going to come. i'm coming.
so fucking good.
Lukas doesn't bite her shoulder this time when he comes. He lifts his head and kisses her mouth, hard, muffling both their cries for a moment on the last slam of his cock into her, the last grind of his body, almost brutally hard, into hers.
Then his mouth pulls from hers, opens against her neck, and he comes into her, moaning, like he can't help it. Like he can't help any of it.
There's something utterly unabashed about the way they fuck each other to mindless orgasm in her living room, with the broad daylight streaming in through the windows. There's something utterly unabashed about the way they fill the room and its vast dimensions, its lofty 9-foot ceilings and huge windows, with their voices.
Something utterly unabashed, too, about the way they keep fucking each other even after their orgasms. She keeps rolling her hips against him; he keeps pumping into her. Even after he's spent himself inside her, filled her with his cum, lost himself in her, fallen apart to uncoordinated thrusts and electric shudders down his spine. Even after the movement of her cunt on him makes him groan helplessly, tatteredly, makes him grasp at the cushions as though they could ground him somehow, make it possible for him to survive this.
He's slowing, finally, and then stopping -- he's coming to a slow stop deep inside her because he can't go on anymore, and he's gasping not oh my god, oh my fucking love, but
"Moje láska. Ach, má láska."
when she runs her hands over him and says
what she does.
Which makes him turn his head suddenly and bite her. Which makes him growl suddenly and ferociously against her shoulder, in her ear, as though she's sent an electric impulse through him, a shock right to the basest parts of his primordial brain. Just like that he's pushing himself up on his elbows over her again, turning his face to her neck and kissing her, sucking at her skin, nipping at her before he pulls back, far enough that he can see her eyes, that she can see his,
while he starts fucking her all over again, hard and fast, pounding into her as though they'd never come at all.
[Danicka]
Which is how they spend the next half hour, the next hour, the next fifteen minutes. Time dissolves further until there's no concern for it left. Danicka cries out when Lukas starts to go at her again, her head thrown back and her legs high around his waist, sweat coming off of them in rivulets. At one point the couch starts to rock, and neither of them notice. At one point Danicka yelps in surprise and discomfort at a grind too deep, a slam too hard, and Lukas is gasping to ask if she's alright though he can't quite stop and she's telling him not to, don't, it's okay.
And at one point they're both on the couch together, laid out over its cushions, and he's winding his hips to move his cock in her and Danicka's clutching at the upholstery, saying oh god oh my god oh fucking god while he holds himself up over her and just
watches.
But then at the end he's coming down over her and her nails are dragging hard and uncompromising down his back, clawing at him while he fucks her, muttering filth into her ear when all she can do is moan half-words, gasp helplessly. And at the end, she's come on his cock again
and again,
so when he fucks himself into her, fills her again, bites her flesh and spends himself inside of her, she's trembling and panting and holding him as though he might fall apart if she didn't take care of him.
For a long time afterward they do nothing but hold one another. Catch their breath. Wait for their heartbeats to slow down to a sane pace. She strokes his hair, eyes closed, temples touching, and cradles him to her body. He shifts so that he can rest on the couch, holding her close to him without putting his weight on her.
In the end they discover that very little time has passed, after all. That they have another hour together or so before Danicka has to go. That they have the time to shower again, and get dressed again. They have the time to sit in her room and talk while she packs her backpack, Lukas lounging on her bed with his hair drying, asking abou the classes she has today.
He walks with her to the station to catch her train. She holds his hand. They kiss when her train gets there, and she smiles at him, squeezing his hand. The next time they talk, it's a phone call. The next time they see each other, it's spring.
celebration.
9 years ago