art.

[Lukas] It's about a quarter to seven, and they've been wandering the Art Institute of Chicago for an hour so.

Lukas called a little before 5pm, when Danicka's last class of the day was getting out. He wanted to visit the museum; he wanted to know if she'd like to join him. There was an exhibition there, paintings by four pupils of Caravaggio, that he's interested in. He thought perhaps they could grab dinner in the museum cafe, and then maybe catch a movie.

What he means is: I want to see you. I want to spend time with you. And I don't want the War to have anything to do with it.

Sunday morning, a few hours after midnight, he texted her phone. It was short, and simple: Back at the Brotherhood now. He hadn't told her before the battle that he would call her afterward, or text. He didn't want to make her wait by the phone; didn't want her hope to start rolling over into dread as the hours turned on. He didn't want to make her think the worst if by some accident of fate he couldn't call her immediately; if he couldn't call her for days.

He wanted her to know, though, as soon as he knew: I'm okay.

Since then, they've been out of contact. He was smiling when she answered her phone. He was smiling when he picked her up at the curb, her messenger bag going into the rear seat, her hair swinging over her shoulder as she tossed it back, sank into his car. He was smiling when he kissed her at the curb, and smiling when they bought tickets into the museum.

They didn't spend much time at the students-of-caravaggio exhibit after all. The pupils rarely exceed the master, except perhaps in the case of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. They're in the modern wing now, browsing past artwork that runs the gamut from stark to shocking to bewildering to -- well. Boring.

He doesn't say a whole lot. He doesn't have pretentious little comments; he doesn't make an attempt to sound any more educated about art than he is. He likes art, though. He looks. He studies, investigates. Sometimes he gets curious and steps close to a painting. Sometimes he lingers behind at a particularly interesting display, catches up later if she's moved on. He showed her a Romantic-era painting of a stormy sky, a vivid ocean. His hand held hers loosely as they drifted past the Impressionists and the Cubists. His arm drapes her shoulder now. They stand in front of a photograph, stark in shades of grey and brown: new york city on a murky day. The twin towers were still standing, visible in the background, like ghosts in the fog.

"I remember going up to the observation deck," he says quietly.

It's not a comment about the quality of the art, the angles and the filters, the composition. It's a comment about the buildings, the cities, their hometown, insofar as anyone would ever call New York City a town.

"I was maybe ... six. We were so high up my father had to hold me around the shoulders when I looked down from the observation deck." He laughs quietly. "We were still inside."

[Danicka] Sunday morning she stayed awake. She prayed, however it is that Danicka prays. She worked on homework and she cleaned and she tried not to think about it. She has had practice. She remembers the motions to go through, the way to go on with her life even when she knows there's a war going on, a battle, this one more dangerous than some. Less dangerous than others. A few hours after midnight, her mate texted her phone, and she closed her eyes and took a breath after reading it, tapped back:

Thank you.

And now it's been days, and she sounded happy, if a bit distracted and winded, when he called. She suggested just heading home after the museum. Watch a movie on the couch, or something. They hung up, and he picked her up at Kingsbury Plaza. It's cold today, and yet she's dressed in a skirt. Her heels are definitely not the sort she would have worn to school. Her hose, black. She's wearing a longsleeved minidress in a black and gold print that calls to mind French palaces. Somehow.

It is, because of the way she carries herself and the accessories and the tousled look of her hair, casual on her. The length of the skirt steps over the border between daring and indecent, slinking with a smirk past them both and heading over into the territory of something like class. Confidence is everything. Danicka doesn't lack it, at least not where this sort of thing is concerned. Her bag -- the one she tosses into the back of his car -- doesn't match. It has a change of clothes in it, or a book, or homework, or something. She carries a black clutch with her into the museum. People look at her.

She looks at the art. Leans back against Lukas in some places, back to his chest, head tilted a bit to look at the pieces. Her earrings are shiny black hoops. Not too big. She's wearing something on her skin that makes her smell vaguely spicy, somewhat herbal. Or maybe it's her shampoo.

He tells her, in front of a photograph, about something that happened when he was a child. Older than when she first met him, younger than the last time his family visited. He laughs. She smiles faintly.

"Why?" she asks, also quiet. "Because you were frightened or because he was your father?"

[Lukas] "Because I was frightened," Lukas confirms. "Or, not frightened, but -- it made my stomach feel funny, looking down so far. I knew I was safe, that there was glass and I couldn't fall. But it was still a long way down to be looking."

She smells vaguely spicy. Herbal. A little bit wild; a little like that faint musk of wildflowers in bloom. He turns his face to her hair without looking away from the painting, and his chest expands against her shoulder as he inhales. He does this quietly, as though trying to hide from the humans all around that he was sniffing his mate, taking in her scent, the changes, the values and moods and colors.

And exhaling, "And because he's my father."

There's a pause, then. Some thought occurs to him that makes him hold her a little closer, makes his thumb sweep a thoughtless arc over her shoulder. She doesn't look like a college girl tonight. She doesn't look like she just got out of class. She looks like she belongs in an art gallery, like she knows something about art, like she's a cut above and a step beyond all the tourists who come to an art museum simply because it's the second largest art museum in the world! She looks like the mate of an Alpha. She looks like

his mate, and what she's wearing never changes that.

A moment later, she knows why he held her a little closer: "Have you spoken to your father at all?"

[Danicka] It's endearing, and grounding at once, to know that once upon a time, Lukas was six years old and he felt funny looking down from the observation deck at the Twin Towers. Danicka went as a young adult, standing back and quiet while Yelizaveta peered through the glass, looking at New York as though she could see everything that had ever happened there, looking at it like it was her domain.

Less than a year later the World Trade Center had become known as Ground Zero.

Danicka feels him smelling her, breathing her in, and she leans back further into his arms, against his chest. She lets his warm suffuse her, though she isn't chilly. The museum is cool, as all museums are, but Danicka hasn't wished to go back to the car for her coat or mentioned getting a nice hot cup of coffee. She's okay.

She looks okay, she smells okay, she sounds and feels okay. This matters: because Lonna died and she lived. Because Kemp died and he lived. Because they're together, looking the way they always do. Danicka, like a woman who belongs so entirely to herself that she's untouchable, like a woman who is permitting the man behind her to hold her, and yet exerts no power over him in doing so, takes no sinister joy in it. He is proof that she is touchable. She is proof, to those that see them, that Lukas must be so unique, that someone like her would lean into his embrace like that.

Danicka's quite still for a moment after the question. Then she stirs, and starts to move on to another piece. Maybe even another wing. "He sent me a letter to tell me that my sister and her children found a place of their own and that she's doing well. He passed on their address. They are under Sabina's protection, and the protection of the Lords at the Sept of the Green. Not Vladislav's."

Meaning: he has no authority, no permission to keep them from Danicka.

"I think I'll go out there this summer sometime to visit them."

[Lukas] Danicka stirs, and Lukas lets her go. He doesn't immediately take her hand, or wind his arm around her waist, or --

there's no part of him that absolutely needs contact, every moment of every day, constantly. He lets her go, and he looks at the twin towers a moment longer, and then he follows her, the hand that had covered her shoulder thumbhooking into his hip pocket instead. He wears a blazer tonight, which is actually a rarity for him; he wears jeans as well, the staple of the semicasual look, and a pale shirt that he wears untucked, unbuttoned at the collar. It offsets the dark wool, and his swarthy skin; looks crispedged and clean.

They pass a squared-off archway between two rooms, and they leave the photography behind. Now it's the cubists, a world of angles and subdued colors, a few curious sculptures.

"I'm glad," he says of her sister, her nieces and nephews, and doesn't need to explain why. A moment later, "Of that, too."

She doesn't mention her father again. He doesn't either; what she didn't say speaks as much as what she did.

[Danicka] Through the archway, Danicka briefly makes a face. The expression is faint and fleeting, but it's one of simultaneous curiosity and distaste. She has not seen much cubism she's liked. She goes inside anyway, and looks. Really looks, rather than simply passing her eyes over the sculptures and the paintings. Her steps are quiet. There is almost no way to keep her heels from tapping slightly on this flooring. She mutes it, though, with the way she walks. Danicka has never been the ice cold Manhattanite bitch that would suit the image of heels clicking sharply.

Very little about Danicka is, most of the time, even remotely sharp. She softens even her footsteps, even in black leather heels with cuffs that turn down around her ankles and zippers up the front, wicked and almost menacing to offset the out of reach sexuality of the rest of her look, not to mention the gentleness of her fair hair,

verdant eyes,

soft lips.

"It's Miloš and Irča, you know," she says. "They're going to change. Irča ran upstairs the night you came to talk to Vladislav." Not Vládík anymore. Not for awhile. "She was a mess."

[Lukas] A quick-flickering stitch in his brow. He catches up to her beside the first of the sculptures, an apple decomposed to tiny grids, cubes, whirling-apart angles and juts. Catches up, that is, if this could even be called pursuit: her soft way of walking, his casual stroll, hands in pockets.

"Because I frightened her?" he asks.

[Danicka] She reaches back for him, one arm coming away from her lean form, held out for his. She glances over her shoulder to see how far he is, how long she'll have to wait for him to take her much-smaller hand in his much-larger one. "I don't think that was all there was to it. She..."

A pause. Maybe in that time he takes her hand. "She's your moon. And I think it wasn't just fear. She was threatened. She was ashamed for being afraid. She was angry and didn't... really have a reason that she could understand."

Because: she's an Ahroun. She's nine years old and she has Rage.

[Lukas] In that time, he does take her hand. It's cool in a museum, but his hand is warm as ever, his fingers folding around hers. The skin on the back of his hand is supple and smooth under its scattering of hair; his palm is not deeply creased, and bears only a few callouses where a thirteen-year-old boy might grip a sword in pretense, in play, and then in practice. Other than that, all the strength and hardness of his hand comes from the bones, the muscles. The heavy knuckles and the rigid struts of bones beneath the skin, all of which he literally spuns anew from nothing every single time he slips his skin and shifts.

There's an understanding dawning in his eyes as she speaks, which she's seen before: a sort of softening and brightening in the eyes at once, and something rather like ache.

He remembers, vaguely, what it was like to be eight years old and feeling the first flickers of rage. He remembers what it was like to have that grow, and grow, until finally one day Istok Promised-Rain came to his parents' door and said, very simply:

He cannot stay here any longer. It's time he goes to his kind. Tell your son to pack his things.

which even then, even as young as he was, made Lukas think it sounded like he was going somewhere to die, to disappear forever and never come back. Which, in a way, is exactly what happened.

He remembers that trip out of the city, too. North from that great city of towers and skyscrapers, lights and noise, north and north until the skyline disappeared, for the last time for years, behind the trees and into the evening haze.

"Tell your sisters," he says, "that when Irča changes, and if I'm able, I would be glad to foster her. Not because I expect a kinswoman who's borne two Garou or an Athro of the tribe to be impressed by the offer, but because -- " he falters for just a beat, "well. I'd be glad to."

[Danicka] It's cold outside, and getting colder. Her coat was tossed into the back of the BMW along with her bag, and she doesn't know where they're going afterward: back to her apartment, maybe, the big soft couch and the big television and the mutlitude of DVDs. Or to the den, the saggy cushions of the couch and the little television that doesn't have a VCR so maybe they'll just watch something on a laptop set up on the coffee table, after she's slipped out of this dress and tucked her feet between his.

Danicka didn't know for a long time that Lukas even had a sword. She knows it must not be a fetish weapon, as Sabina's sickle is. It chills her sometimes to realize that her nephew, most likely, will inherit it from his aunt's hand when the Philodox dies. I chills her because:

"Vladislav will probably foster Miloš," she murmurs, before she has even quite processed what Lukas has just said, what he's offered. Irena is nine years old now. She is maybe five years from her Change, perhaps six. Maybe four. It's hard to tell, impossible to see. The younger Miloslav is much closer; he's right on the brink. "I know Šárka doesn't want him to. But she also knows there is no way around it, really."

Danicka tightens her hand on his, peering at a sculpture that is set on a lower pedestal, so viewers almost look down upon it. "I'll tell them. We aren't close, but we're family."

Co je doma, to se počítá.

She takes her eyes off the works for a moment, looks at him and smiles. "We are lucky," she says quite seriously, "that Emmanuel is not of the blood."

Emmanuel. The one who moo'd at him.

[Lukas] There is no chance that Lukas's sword is a fetish weapon. Not even if he carried it on him at all times; not even if she could not tell the difference between a living spirit and a dead piece of metal. There is no chance because she knows: he is the only Garou in his family for at least a generation or two. And because he told her once: his family was driven out of their homeland, driven out of their home, by politics and intrigue. His family was on the losing end of a power struggle, a feud within the vast and branching boughs of his blood-tree. Shadow Lords are ruthless about such things. To the vanquished do not go the spoils.

No. The sword he bears, which he bore with great awe and pride as a boy, is simply an heirloom. A relic. Something he keeps wrapped in silk and velvet in the back of his closet. When he fights,

he fights like a savage. With claws and killing teeth.

No claws on his hand now, though. No claws to scar her skin and ruin her flesh. He holds her hand firmly, but with a certain carefulness that he almost never lets go of. She smiles at him then, and almost in spite of himself he smiles back -- a small, gentle lift of the corner of his mouth.

"I don't know," he replies. "We could use some mooing during the moots. Might break up the griping and moaning." And, "How's your sister's treatment going?"

[Danicka] "He's being a little pill," she says, taking her hand from his -- though only to wrap her arm around his back, standing with her hip against his leg while they look at a massive painting that takes up most of the wall they're in front of. "He's still refusing to learn English, he provokes Irena and Miloš until they lose their tempers and then he runs to Renáta to hide, and then she gets into a fight with Miloš, and by the time someone finally gets fed up and smacks Eman -- usually Irena -- he falls apart and can't calm down."

A beat. "He misses his father."

It's unclear whether or not Danicka simply knows this, or if she is being told. It sounds like she and her half-sister talk often enough that she's updated on what her nieces and nephews are doing, the troubles they're having and causing.

"Šárka is doing alright. They're going to do a mastectomy." Spoken flat, matter-of-fact, devoid of emotion. "It's another reason I'm going this summer. Emílie is pregnant again; she's on bed rest. She can't help them much."

[Lukas] "Isn't he in school? How can he manage if he doesn't learn English?"

They come back together before a painting that covers the wall in front of them, floor nearly to ceiling. A scatter of jagged greys and blacks and earth-brown. An illusion of dimensionality and depth, false shadows, lit here and there with pulsating reds.

His attention is more wholly focused on his mate, even though his eyes follow the lines and complexities of the painting. They stand together like that, her arm around his waist, perhaps over his blazer; perhaps under. His falls around her again, the hand easy and open, draped off the crest of her shoulder.

It takes an act of will -- a minor one, but an act of will all the same -- not to lean against her. Not to turn his head and rest against her, eyes closed, drenched in the comfort and security of her presence. Their presence, together.

And, "I hope it goes well for Emilie this time."

[Danicka] "He is," she says, to answer the first question. And a wry: "How do you think?" to answer the second. Which is to say: He doesn't

or maybe

He moos.

Her arm is under his blazer, shifting it back and off his hip. They stand quite close together, taking their time. It's arguable that they're hardly even looking at the artwork. They're a couple, obviously so, the way they rest comfortably together.

Danicka exhales. She doesn't comment on her brother's potential offspring. "I think," she says, "we should go get something to eat."

And as they turn to go, if they do: "I'm getting a personal trainer."

[Lukas] Lukas glances at his watch, offhand. Peeking past the cuff of his blazer, it's a Tag Heuer or a Panerai, something understatedly stylish, with a strap of interlocking brushed metal and a smooth, torsional look about it.

"Let's grab some paninis downstairs. We've got about half an hour before they close. Unless you want something else?"

They leave the broad, well-lit spaces of the cubist room then. Out in the hall, museum visitors are beginning to file toward the doors. The sun has set outside, but there's still a glow in the air: past the equinox now, the days longer than the nights. An escalator takes them downstairs, and downstairs again, and one more time: they pass out of the modern art wing and into the classical, across the echoing marble lobby and the doors out to the broad steps and the street.

Also, personal trainer: "Aren't they rather expensive?" Last he heard, she was work-studying to cover her exorbitant rent.

[Danicka] What she could tell him now: I'm being advised to purchase real estate in the future. Not right now. But eventually.

Or perhaps: I could keep you in the finest clothes, the finest cars, the finest of everything, and it would not be a sacrifice.

Danicka slips away, walking alongside him. There's a subtle sway to her hips under that dress she can't bend over in, the dress that tugged up on her thighs when she sat in his car, dangerously close to immodest. Her heels hug her ankles. Bracelets dangle on her left wrist, a ring set with amber adorning a finger of her right hand. She's already wealthier than he is, always has been. It's never mattered.

She has no reason to believe it will matter now.

"Yes," she says easily. "I went to get my taxes done and ...well. I have an accountant now who's handling my investments. It was all very exciting. I actually," Danicka goes on, as they turn a corner, "have quite a lot of money."

A beat. "I'd like some soup. It's cold today. Do they have soup downstairs?"

[Lukas] "Well," his eyes are on her as they turn the corner, and he navigates by taking his cues from her, from his peripheral vision, from instinct. "I'm glad. What are you going to learn? You should consider some sort of self-defense.

"Maybe a .44 yourself, too," he adds. He's only half-kidding. "The 9mm is a good beginner's gun, or so I'm told, but I think you're past that now."

He's speaking from experience. He's seen her shoot.

She wants soup. He's turning sideways to let another young couple past. They're walking up the stairs they're walking down, and though there's plenty of space in between, the girl squeezes against her boyfriend and clutches his hand, white-knuckled. Then they can smell food: cafe fare, soups and salads and gourmet sandwiches, beers and white wines on the shelves. The signs answer Danicka's question for her. They do have soups. There's a vegetarian option and a seafood option. There's a line to order, but food is being bussed out; little numbered placards sit on tables waiting for orders.

Standing beside Danicka in line, Lukas is -- admittedly -- looking primarily for a more secluded table somewhere, or perhaps a high table where she won't have to bend her legs as much. That hemline is dangerous.

[Danicka] "Strength training," she says, because she's thought about this, because she looked at her options and what she could do with the assurance that she would never,

ever,

worry about money again.

She smirks at the mention of a .44, though. "That thing nearly broke my arm." Another time that they speak -- or he tells her something -- and Danicka passes over it. Another mood, she might have been pleased to hear him say he thinks she's past a 'beginner's gun', but another mood, she might have argued, become defensive, or uncomfortable, or both. She doesn't comment on his you should, either.

Tonight she just walks down the stairs, and she doesn't snap at the couple that is so fearful of Lukas. She ignores them. In line, she orders the vegetarian soup, gets an Izze, rather than beer or wine. She walks confidently to a table, sliding into a seat without wriggle or flinch. Her legs cross at the ankle. Her knees stay together. He should have known she'd know how to wear a dress like that in public, how to sit in it, how to move.

She twists the cap off the fruit soda and takes a drink while they wait for their food. "I briefly considered asking you to teach me," she says. "Til I realized that would be a rather futile effort."

[Lukas] Danicka will never have to worry about money again. Danicka is investing, and she'll be able to live comfortably -- live luxuriously -- on the dividends alone, and never have to touch the principal. Danicka has more money than she could reasonably spend in a lifetime, and instead of splurging on a Ferrari, or filling her second bedroom full of shoes and lingerie and clothes, the first thing she appears to have thought of

is strength training.

We're Shadow Lords. Yes, we are.

Lukas, when it's his turn, doesn't order a panini either after all. He skims the menu again, and then he orders beef tenderloin, grilled and sliced, with a side salad that he'll likely pick at and eat the cherry tomatoes and cucumbers off of. And the croutons, if there are any. Then they're going to their table, and she has a soda and he has a beer, and two caps clink to the table, and it's getting dark outside the large windows, darker and cooler, and they're one of the last patrons the museum cafe will serve tonight.

She sits without effort. He should have known. He pushes her chair in for her, and then doffs his coat over the back of his, dropping down. His legs, longer than hers, invade her side of the table; the inside of his shin crossing the outside of hers -- the faintest hint of protection, that.

His throat moves as he drinks his beer. He looks at her with amusement, and with wryness, because what she says then is true beyond mention. "Maybe one of the kin could oblige," he says, and in the same breath, "Ty šaty otočí mě na."

His eyes scan the cafe carelessly, looking to see if their food is coming yet. It's not. They return to her; there's a spark there which is almost a twinkle.

He adds, "Ty vysoké boty taky."

[Danicka] A part of her wondered if he'd be offended. Or surprised that she would have thought to ask him in the first place, even if she decided not to. Danicka knows him well, sees him clearly, but sometimes, she's clearheaded enough to remember I have only known you for a year. Give or take.

And not including the awkwardness of childhood that was so quickly broken when she offered to show him and his sister her backyard, and how they all rushed up to her bedroom to find some string, because they needed string to make the little twig-and-grass project they were putting together outside work, and once they got upstairs and saw her books and toys and the little sewing table and the block set her father made for her, they forgot about the twigs and the grass and string and stayed up there until the grown-ups finished their card game.

She sips her soda and her eyebrows flick slightly at the suggestion of getting one of the other kin to teach her a bit about self defense. "Maybe," she says, both agreeable and noncommittal. And, smiling a bit wryly, herself. "I'll bet."

Agreeable. A little more playful. "How long have you been thinking about that?"

[Lukas]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Lukas] Lukas's eyes flick upward to follow that upward flick: her eyebrow. And then they return to hers, and the way he's looking at her is a little bit apologetic, but then the way she's looking at him is becoming a little more playful, and --

And all at once his smile grows. It spreads over his face, warm and utter, for her. She can count on one hand the times she's seen him smile like that for anyone else. No; strike that. He doesn't smile quite like this for anyone else.

His answer -- for a moment, anyway -- is only to reach across the table and cover hers. Lightly. Just for the contact. Just for her skin under his. He can remember the first time he touched her: his hand taking hers across Gabriella. He can remember the first time he touched her: his hands on her face on the waterfront, bitter january.

He can't remember the first time they touched, to be honest. He was too small. They shook hands and she said hello, how do you do or something of the sort, and he stared blankly while Anezka stumbled through English, and then she said:

Dobrý den, je to těší mě.

and that was the first time she saw him smile. Lukas's smile is fading now, dying a natural death, leaving behind something more intense, laser-focused.

"A while," he answers quietly.

There's their food, then. Their hands separate and he looks up, favors the waitress with a quite different sort of smile, all easy, surface charm. They thank her as she straightens. He unwraps his silverware and lays his napkin on his lap, and then he nudges her plate toward her: slices of medium-rare beef drizzled in reduction sauce, a salad and some boiled squash on the side. Cafe portions, not restaurant, but still a heavier meal than hers.

[Danicka] They don't have to try as hard anymore to read each other. They make fewer mistakes, fewer misreads, have fewer gross misunderstandings. Some of it is trust and choice: Danicka does not need, the way she used to need, to hide herself. From others, sometimes, the compulsion still flares up and she bullshits them expertly like a kneejerk reaction, wondering as soon as the words are out of her mouth why she just said what she did. With Lukas, however, her knee doesn't do more than twitch, and she can tell herself

it's okay.

it's okay if he sees.

Even if what he sees is something she doesn't like, herself. Even if him seeing makes her momentarily nervous. Her palms don't sweat. But sometimes, even with Lukas, her heart shudders in her chest with fear. It is choice, then, to overcome that. To recognize it as unnecessary. To believe in him. And to trust him.

Beyond that, the lack of misunderstandings is simply time. They've learned more about each other. They've learned from past mistakes, missteps. They've seen that going too far down a path caused by a miscommunication can break them apart, and so they know that -- when they can -- they need to step the fuck back and try to see where they went wrong, where the ball got dropped, and if it can be picked back up again.

No such mistakes now: Lukas looks at her and can see her doubtfulness that asking another Kinfolk would be worth the effort of dealing with any of their bullshit. He suspects the pilot-light flickers of irritation, considers a possible reason, and yet he does not lunge into defense. Ask her what her problem is. Tell her that if she has a problem she should just come out and say it. He sees:

Danicka being a little playful.

Which perhaps means: it isn't worth starting an argument over. Or maybe: if she wanted to talk to me about it, she would. Or even: it really isn't that big of a deal. Which is to say:

it's okay.

She smiles back at him, laughing soundlessly when he touches her hand. Her knuckles move against his palm in a gentle rhythm, as though to say hello. It is utterly different from the distant handshake, barely a clasp, at SmartBar. It is utterly different from the way he grabbed her on the waterfront, ferocious with want and resistance, both, and felt her shaking in profound yet -- strangely -- controlled terror. This time they are both smiling, and they are both genuine, and enough has changed between them that him chasing her around her living room because she cheated at Wii Tennis made her shriek with delight and laughter. A year ago she would --

well. She wouldn't have cheated. She wouldn't have invited him to play video games with her. She would not have run.

Their food. Her bowl of soup, oyster crackers, a slice of crusty-on-the-outside, chewy-on-the-inside bread. His beef and squash and they're both politely thanking the waitress and unrolling silverware. Danicka lifts the first spoonful of soup towards her mouth, leaning over the bowl a bit, and says as she blows across the surface:

"It amuses me how excited you get about human trappings and costumes." She takes the small bite, swallows, speaks again: "Vzbuzuje mě."

Another bite of soup. "Předpokládám, že chceš šukat mi později. Možná pohřbít váš tvář v mé píči a jíst to ven." She reaches for her bread, talking casually, tearing off a bite-sized piece and dipping it into her bowl. "Trvalo mi věky najít punčochy, které šly dostatečně vysoké, aby pro tento šaty."

[Lukas] Lukas's mouth quirks. He waits until she samples meat from his plate, and then he draws it back a little closer to himself, within easy reach, and picks up his own fork. Not much for manners and etiquette tonight: the fork goes in his right hand, and it's held like a spoon, and he doesn't even cut his beef into manageable chunks before he's ferrying it toward his mouth

and tilting his head back to get that last bit in with a snap of his teeth.

"Věřte mi," he says, "byl bych větší radost, pokud jste byli nazí. Ale měl bys dostat zatčen."

That's not entirely true. She knows it. She knows he's aroused by the way she wears her lingerie. She knows the power a silver trenchcoat has when it's dropped to reveal nothing but chantilly lace and tiny silk ribbons. She knows how to dress for effect, and she knows, very well, the effect certain articles of clothing has on him. That sometimes clothing acts to accentuate nudity. That sometimes

quite frankly

he likes to fuck her with her thong on.

Still: he lies a little, looking in her eyes so she knows he's lying, or not so much lying as playing, and she can see his pupils have opened up, that they're dark and black as obsidian within a setting of -- not turquoise. Not sapphire. His eyes are a clear, crisp color, like ice. Like diamond seeded with boron. Like nothing but themselves.

"Chci se kurva ty vpravo hned." This is what he says in the same light, casual tone she employs. ""Chci vám ohnout přes tento stůl a lízat vaše vásnivou kundička dokud ty křičet."

They could be discussing the soup. Or the steak. Or the cherry tomatoes, unusually ripe for so early in the year. That's what everyone around them thinks they're discussing, this attractive young couple chatting over a light dinner. That's what anyone would think if they couldn't see the look in his eyes, and the way he looks at her to the exclusion of -- well.

Všechno.

"A chci vás nechat punčochy na," he adds: almost offhand. A gleam of humor in his eyes, hot as lust. It is lust. He's not lying. There's a part of him that wants to sweep their plates to the floor and flip her over the table right now, right here, and --

His eyes flick a blink. He finishes, "Vzhledem k tomu, vložíte tolik úsilí do toho."

[Danicka] The nudge of his plate towards her makes Danicka smile faintly, before everything else, but she just shakes her head a little. He pulls it back. They eat, and they speak conversationally in a language it's very unlikely anyone around them can understand. What he says makes the corner of her mouth quirk wryly as she eats: bread into broth, spoon into soup. Everything neatly into her mouth, past her lips, chewed slowly and with enjoyment even though they have a little less than half an hour before everything closes down, including the cafe.

Her attention drifts between the man she's with and the meal she's eating as he speaks, her expression interested, thoughtful. Maybe he is talking about tomatoes. At one point she utters a soft Hmm, as though considering something he's suggested. Maybe what movie to see after they finish their light dinner. Maybe she's thinking about how to let him down easy that Hot Tub Time Machine isn't really on her top ten list of must-see films this year.

Under the table, her ankles uncross and she shifts one leg to rest against his, a low and lazy X. Her knees are still together, her posture a little more casual due to the new positioning. She can see what's in his eyes, the thought of scattering bowl and plates and silverware and glass bottles everywhere and mounting her here at the second largest art museum in the world!

Danicka props her elbow on the table, puts her chin against the heel of her hand, asks curiously: "To je dezert, potom? Moje mrdka o svůj obličeji?"

[Lukas] Lukas isn't as practiced a liar as Danicka is. He's not as good. A liar knows another liar, though, so she can see when his mask starts to slip. When that burn sears its way out of his eyes and starts to crack the facade of his face, his posture.

She can see the twitch of reaction when her leg touches his. And his eyes darkening when she speaks. And his lips parting, teeth parting, not to take another bite of steak but to breathe. Like an animal. Like he was lazing in the shade, or picking up a scent. Slowly: rolling the air around in his lungs, letting it out again. She can see that too: the rising of his chest, that powerful torso moving beneath his crisp woven shirt, the gentle folds of it changing over his body.

He licks his lips as though to clean them. She leans forward and his eyes flick down. He remembers her wearing a shirt, once, that split open down the middle. He could see another man's bitemark on her skin, and he was consumed by anger and jealousy he didn't show.

No one else marks her now. She wouldn't let them. If they forced the issue, she'd fucking shoot them. Or he'd tear their heads off. She's his, his, and sometimes

he has to remind himself not to hold her too tightly.

Not right now, though. Not with her sidling closer herself, approaching him sideways, obliquely, pretending not to be approaching at all, while they sit relaxed and something-like-calm in the cafe of the chicago art institute, and eat their dinner.

He remembers his dinner. He stabs a slice of beef and it goes in wholesale, too, and while he's chewing he plucks his napkin off his lap and wipes his mouth and sets that aside, rumpled, on the table. Easily, his eyes flick back to hold hers.

"Máte objekt?"

She looks curious, interested. Maybe they're discussing the Matisse exhibit. He sounds cool, professional. Maybe they're discussing work. Maybe they work together too.

"Ty by mohly přijít na můj kohout místo toho, pokud se vám líbí."

[Danicka] The way he was taught, you never learn anything til you admit fault. The way he was taught, a half truth is a whole lie. The way he was taught, liars never prosper. His mate is a liar and she could buy the property he sleeps in and, quite likely, profit quite nicely from it. She could buy their den off of him, enlist contractors to improve the grounds and increase its value. Well. She couldn't exactly do any of those things tonight. It will take time for the dividends to start piling up, for the numbers in her bank accounts to start ticking upwards. But the possibilities are there.

Danicka is one hell of a prosperous liar. How much did that dress cost? Four figures? Six hundred, at least. What about her shoes, her lingerie, the haircut she got earlier this week, the lotion she rubbed into her skin that gave her that herbal, spice-floral scent he inhaled as they looked at a photograph of the teeming city where they both grew up.

And yet not a bit of it measures her worth. Rather she was naked, he half-truthed (whole-lied), is what he said. Stripped of her finery and her human trappings, human costumes, down to flesh and bone and her back arching the way backs have arched in mating since so many eons ago one can imagine humans before they forgot to be animals.

How much did that t-shirt and those sleep shorts she had on when he let himself into her den for the first time, the night before the raid in Elk Grove? Eight bucks at Target, ten bucks at Buffalo Exchange. The keys she gave him: free, handed back to her when Paul moved out. The code: her name day. When they woke he had his arms around her, one of his hands up the back of her shirt, feeling her heartbeat through her skin, fingers spread as though to share with her his own warmth, even buried under the covers as they were.

But, well...

...we digress.

Right now they're sharing a small table at a museum cafe and haven't even made it halfway through their meal. Right now he's remembering seeing a hickey, a bruise, teeth marks on her flesh and wanting to tear something apart because he wanted her so badly, because he wanted her for himself, because he wanted her to be his and no other's.

And Danicka. Danicka is watching the way he looks at her, animal and languid, and thinking about a time when her response to such a look was just as much fear as answering lust. She's not entirely sure it doesn't still frighten her. Her heart triphammers in her chest at the sight of Lukas watching her like this, wanting her like this, talking about eating her and fucking her and knowing there are times when he snarls

don't make me wait.

Which is, ironically, not exactly dominance.

"Well that's an idea," Danicka muses aloud, back in English, moving to sip her soup some more. She is hungry, after all. It's been hours since lunch. "I'm going to have to think about that decision for awhile. Don't want to be too hasty."

It's been three weeks since the last time he was inside of her.

Danicka's leg slides against his calf, gently, as if to reassure.

Or something.

[Lukas] She's always had such ease moving between languages. Amphilingual, as natural in one as the other. She slips back into English and now she's sipping her soup and thinking about her decision and he looks at his plate, his silverware of which he has used precisely one piece, and he shifts in his seat as her leg not only touches his, now, but slides against it.

"Vy jste snad zblázním."

He stays where he is, in the language that is, when you get down to it, his mother tongue, the language he spoke with his family, his mother and father and sister, since before he knew her. Since before he arrived at these shores. Heaven knows who taught him some of the things he's learned to say in it --

i want
need to be
suck it
inside you
again.

-- because it sure as hell wasn't in his five year old vocabulary. Some fellow cub up at Stark Falls, maybe, or some coarse-minded Ragabash; some eastern european Bone Gnawer at the Sept of the Green; someone. He says these things to her now in this language more often than not, growling it in her ear when her clothes, eight dollars or eight hundred, are peeled off her body and shed to the floor and their bedding is askew with the force and fervor of their lovemaking and her hands are in his hair and he's

inside her.
again.

He closes his eyes for a moment. Then he inhales briefly, picks up his knife, shifts his fork to the proper hand, and slices up the remainder of his steak.

Knife down, then. Fork up. He eats with an efficient, crisp swiftness now.

[Danicka] That's always been a bit of an oddity between them: that the language they spoke with their families has become the language they speak in bed, the language they speak when what must be said is so intimate they hide it under layers of heritage and homebound secrecy. They are Shadow Lords, after all, though more traditionally-minded members of the tribe would make a firm distinction: she could be the mother of Shadow Lords. She will never be a Shadow Lord.

Danicka likes it when he talks to her like that -- when he tells her what he wants -- in English. In Czech. In the pants and snarls of wordless desire and enjoyment. She also likes this soup, very much. The nice bread. The clementine-flavored soda. All quite tasty. She goes on eating just the way she has, even as Lukas switches silverware around and begins eating with, ironically, more restraint than before. More speed, though. Danicka goes about her meal the way she has from the start:

small bites. Thoughtful chewing. Occasional use of her napkin.

She finishes her slice of bread, her bowl of soup, her bottle of soda. None of them are completely gone: a bit of crust is left, a mouthful or two of soup, a finger of orange fluid. Lukas finishes his steak, his cherry tomatoes, his beer. Danicka's leg kept sliding carelessly against his as they ate, as though she were merely shifting, forgetting. It would feel better if he were in slacks, the fabric softer, transmuting the feel of hers more easily. Still: not hard to imagine how those stockings will feel under his hands when he pushes them up, up her thighs and finds the tips and finds out if they're lace or just tight and smooth around her upper thighs and if she's wearing garters and whether she has on a thong and whether it's lace or

if she'll take it off herself or if she'll let him just pull it aside.

Hard to remember what time it is til they announce that they're closing, and Danicka leaves a decent but unextravagant tip on the table between their plates, making sure she has her clutch. She glances out the window.

"I think it's going to rain."

[Lukas] There's no beef left on his plate when Lukas rises, coming smoothly and easily to his feet. There a few pieces of squash left. No cherry tomatoes. A lot of the mixed greens that made up the rest of his salad.

He tosses his napkin atop the plate, the knife and fork left thoughtlessly at four-o-clock. While his mate makes sure she has her clutch, he slips back into his blazer, which is still thickish dark wool though it's technically spring. It's also tailored, and sleek, and makes him look less imposing than he actually is.

He buttons the middle button, pushes in his chair. She comments on the weather. His eyes flash toward her, lightning-blue, and then suddenly he laughs.

"I don't care," he says as he rounds the table to her, slides his arm around her waist and starts out of the cafe and the museum with her, "about the rain."

[Danicka] She pushes her own chair back, drawing her legs away from Lukas's and scooting away from the table. She rises easily, in one smooth and confident motion that conceals the care taken to remain at least slightly decent, given the fact that she's wearing... what she's wearing. She picks up her little purse and moves her hair off her shoulder, taking one final drink from her bottle now that she's standing. Danicka licks her lips, while he's flashing a look to her.

Lukas laughs. Danicka looks at him, appearing mildly confused, head tilting a bit to the side. A moment later he's stepping to her, wrapping his arm around her, and she's against him for a brief moment, legs elongated by her heels and her dress, body slender and warm through the intervening layers of fabric that separate them.

She actually steps away from his encircling arm, if only because its presence against her lower back makes it that much more likely that the tug and ruck of fabric will,

well. It's already been made clear how short her dress is.

Danicka shifts clutch from one hand to the other, reaching down to take his hand instead. "Are you in a rush, now?" she asks, faintly amused.

[Lukas] Let's be honest. When she steps away from him, Lukas is briefly uncertain, his head turning to look at her with surprise. Then she takes his hand instead, and his head dips; he looks down at her hand in his.

A sudden memory sparks: one she does not have. She was too drunk that night, too drunk to remember. They were outside ZEALOUS. He took her by the arm and guided her toward his car, or toward where he thought her car might be, and --

she pulled out of his grasp, slipped her hand through the crook of his elbow instead. And called him her boyfriend. Her first werewolf boyfriend.

His eyes return to hers. "Chci se s tebou milovat," he admits softly, if such a thing, such an obvious thing, could be called admission or confession. "But I can wait."

[Danicka] Her hand, slender and small -- at least in comparison to his; Danicka looks less and less frail alongside other Kinfolk these days -- squeezes his when that uncertainty flashes across his expression. It's reassurance. It's also a reminder, and those are not the same things. Not, at least, from her.

"I know," she says to both, smiling gently as they exit the building, out into the not-yet-rain. Breeze shifts her hair off her shoulders. "I was teasing." Her thumb rubs over his hand. "So where are we going, Caesar?"

[Lukas] There's a cool dampness in the air. A wind rising off the lake, gathering moisture up into the storm-cells overhead where they'll condense, and coalesce, and fall back to earth as rain. Hundreds, thousands of years ago, man worshiped gods as rainbringers, stormbearers, the ones that would fertilize the land and allow crops to grow; the ones that could, if angered, withhold the rain or send it down with such ferocity that the rivers swelled with flood and drowned the peoples of the earth. Rain-gods and thunder-gods were always amongst the chiefs of the pantheon.

Now it's the modern age. Only the shadow lords and their kin really worship the storm-gods anymore. Mankind has found science, and science has explained convection and airflow and why rain falls, though to this day, no one really knows how rain is born. How it's seeded in the cloud, and by what. A last shred of mysticism and mystery in the storm.

That's not what Lukas thinks about now, though. He looks down as her hand squeezes his. Sometimes he does this: looks at where their bodies touch, or at the small, subtle things her body says to his -- looks as though this will help him understand better, as though he were reading her body the way the deaf read lips.

He brings her hand to his mouth: a swift gesture, almost sudden. He kisses her knuckles, and then he quickens his stride a little, lengthens it, though not so much that she'll have to run to keep up.

"Let's go to your den," he says. It's closest.

[Danicka] They have their own language, it seems sometimes. Not Czech. Not the stilted Russian phrases that Lukas occasionally attempts from the book that Danicka got him for Christmas. But things like: your den. My den. Our den. Three separate places. Home: one place, only, ever. To tame: a special verb, and secretive one, tainted by both soft sadness and fear as well as gentleness and patience.

Prayer, too. Worship. Danicka has told him what they mean to her, how making kolache can be both, and how kissing him can be one, and how making love to him can be the other. Her spirituality, such as it is, is a hidden thing he has seen only glimpses of in these conversations, or at the solstices and equinoxes. Lukas has never, and may never, see Danicka truly pray. Might never know that when storms come and rain falls, her every step becomes something of an act of piety.

In a way. Her way.

Her hand is graceful, arm loose and yet composed as he lifts her knuckles to his lips. Often enough they could be Brute and Maiden, but only ignoring the panging gentleness he treats her with sometimes, the need for her. And only ignoring the viciousness she has in her, nails raking down his back or teeth digging into his flesh or the way she screams

or the way her eyes flash and she kills, when he is threatened.

Her thumb moves quickly over his lower lip as her hand is lowered from his mouth. "The W is closer." By a minute.

[Lukas] The truth is he thought about the W. That was the first thing on his mind, actually. The W, minutes away even on foot, just up Lake Shore Drive. She'd mentioned going home after the museum, though. Not to a movie, not to a mall or a park or the Mile or anything of the sort, but home to a movie and a couch.

The truth is even when she leaves decisions up to him, he makes them with an eye toward her comfort, her desires. You find the den, she told him once, and I'll make it warm. When he brought her to see it weeks later, everything in it -- small and meager and do-it-yourself as it was -- was crafted, chosen, placed and set for her first, for himself second, for everyone else not at all.

She mentions the W, though. He looks at her; his mouth flickers with a smile. "It is," he agrees.

It starts to rain when they get to his car. He lets her hand go at the passenger side door, then waits for a semi to rumble past on the street before stepping off the curb and around. They can watch raindrops start to speckle the windshield as he ducks into the car, turning the key in the ignition as he reaches over his shoulder for the belt.

It's past rush hour now. The streets are still busy, not not jammed. He makes a u-turn at the light; then a right, then a left. The lake stretches dark to their right, past Grant Park, as they drive north.

[Danicka] His favorite. Even after everything that's happened there.

It's never clear how much Danicka thinks about what is good for Lukas, what will make him happy, what will keep him comfortable. Given her upbringing it's possible she knows only how to create comfort for others as a falsehood, as another way to hide. She's selfish, to a degree. And, to a degree, Lukas seems to want her to be.

He came back from the underworld and as she looked at the tiny glove for a tiny hand that he'd shown her, he said he didn't know if she would -- could -- be happy like that. Raising his children and trying to talk him into calming down or at least going away so he would not traumatize them as she had been. Putting aside school completely, or just taking a class at a time at most, or giving up some portion of her career, or... all the fears he had buried deep in his psyche, that told him

you cannot have this

because you will lose her

even if 'losing her' simply meant such drastic changes in who she is that she would not longer be this woman, twenty-five and only now truly beginning her own life.

To some extent, then, yes: Danicka does not think as much about Lukas's comfort and happiness. She sees the effort he puts forth, and she knows the restraint he practices, and she appreciates the little things in their den. The fountain he bought, the rug he unfurled in the living room, the hooks he put on the wall by the kitchen door out to the back yard where an apron hangs, where a light jacket waits for those mornings when it's too cold to go walk in the grass bare-armed.

She knows, somewhere in her selfishness, that no gift she could place in the den makes him happier than these little things, these touches, these proofs that she is happy there, and at home there, and that she feels safe in that house.

Danicka, inside the BMW, takes her phone from her purse and does two things: checks her messages. Silences it. Puts it away as he gets in after her, buckling herself in and reaching over to see what he has playing on his stereo as Lukas starts to drive them away. "Even if I had your children," she says suddenly, out of nowhere, "I think we could still go to the W or the Omni or the Affinia and fuck on someone else's hundred-dollar sheets."

A beat, as she leans back, and the radio plays, or the CD player: music, or NPR, whatever. Background noise. "Probably a nanny. For times when I can't be there." She quirks a half-smile. "A nanny with a shotgun."

[Lukas] Lukas glances at Danicka as she offers this tidbit, this comment, this opinion on bearing his children -- which makes him ache, quick and passing but utterly instinctive and unstoppable -- and hundred dollar sheets and getting away and leaving a nanny. With a shotgun.

That makes him laugh, a quiet breath of it. "We are not letting Sarah Connor babysit our kids," he says; and then he's serious again. "I'd like that," he says. "If we had kids, I mean. I'd like it if we had a nanny so you weren't shackled to the house. And if we went away sometimes so we don't ... forget each other."

It's not a long drive. Not even long enough for the second track on his CD player to finish. They bypass the valet and Lukas parks himself, and the neighboring cars are speckled with rain, beaded with it, and he reaches into the back to pull her bag out as he gets out of the car.

They meet behind the trunk, her messenger bag slung over his shoulder. Hopefully it's some neutral tone; not pink, not baby-blue. The lights flash on the car as it locks. He can't seem to stop reaching for her hand tonight, and takes it again as they start for the hotel, the W, his favorite, in spite of or because of everything that's happened here.

He remembers a night, looking out the window as she knelt on the huge bed in the bedroom of their suite and undid her bra, and how they both saw the waxing gibbous moon there, and how close it was to full.

And saying, as he came down over her as she lay back for him for the first time,

It's okay.

He remembers crossing this lobby alone one night, her lingerie bunched in his hand, still carrying traces of her scent that stayed with him for days afterward because he just threw it to the floor of his car and left it there. Not too long after that car was totaled, all his new clothes he bought and wore only once that week still in the trunk, those panties and that bra still on the floor. He wasn't sorry to see them burn.

At the counter, he's the one to pay for their room, if only because his wallet is more easily accessible in his back pocket than hers is in that lovely little clutch. And perhaps the receptionist recognizes them, and perhaps not. Their keycards are handed over, and he hands them both to Danicka, shrugs her bag higher on his shoulder, and follows her to the elevators.

[Danicka] "I said a nanny with a shotgun, not a nanny with time-traveling post-traumatic stress disorder," Danicka laughs, leaning against the armrest of the passenger side door, watching him as he drives. The wipers flick back and forth, change the shadows on both their faces. Her expression twists gently, not quite sad but compassionate, at the rest of what he says. She reaches over, touching him. His leg, his arm: something.

"Hey," and this is quiet, "those are two things you don't have to worry about. I wouldn't let myself be shackled. And I wouldn't let us forget each other."

Promises. And she doesn't make promises, really, so maybe they aren't. But this is what she believes for her life and what she knows about herself. Her hand squeezes him wherever it fell, and then draws back. Some of the intensity of her lust has passed, flickering and playful as it was. It has settled down into something oddly comfortable. She is comfortable riding in a car with Lukas, driving towards some hotel or some other shelter, knowing that they'll share a bed, knowing that they'll wake up together, knowing that he's going to make love to her.

The hungry ache inside of her, the near-physical awareness of how long it's been since she had him, is soothed slightly by the knowledge that he's here now, and he's going to take her, and love her. She likes it, knowing this. Being able to trust it, being able to fantasize about his chest brushing over her breast on every thrust and knowing: yes. yes, that's how it will be.

Or some other way. Ultimately it doesn't matter much. His arms will wrap around her and her back will arch for him and

yes.

He gets her bag; Danicka gets her coat and puts it on as she gets out of the car, wrapping the long wool thing around herself as Lukas is walking around the back. She grins when he comes to her, and holds out her hand. Her bag is actually rather heavy, and a sort of brown with the faintest mauve hue. Vines are stitched up along one side of the covering flap, a nod to its femininity, but no: not baby blue, not bubblegum pink. It is obviously enough not his own bag, though.

She walks inside with him, and her heels clip and tap on the flooring to keep pace with his longer steps. She is reaching for her clutch when Lukas takes out his wallet, and thought Danicka glances at him, she doesn't interrupt. She takes the keys when he has them, humming softly as they walk over to the elevators.

The doors close. For a few floors, at least, they're alone. Standing facing them, watching the numbers light up and fade, Danicka leans over -- eyes sitll on the numbers -- and murmurs:

"I'm a little wet."

[Lukas] Compassion is not something one associates with Shadow Lords. Children of Gaia, to be sure. Lukas would not at all be surprised if Lonna

(who's dead now.)

had said a thing like that to him, even if he weren't speaking about her. Lukas was not at all surprised, though he was grateful, when Lila reached to him before the seventh and final gate and said: You're strong. You'll do fine. Compassion is the purview of the weaker tribes, or perhaps merely the more altruistic ones -- and that, perhaps is the line.

It's not altruism, what they have between them. They don't comfort and protect each other for the greater good. There's a certain selfishness wrapped up in their selflessness. They take care of each other because they belong to each other, and because the other belongs to each.

He looks at her, though, when she touches him and makes a promise. Or; not a promise. A statement of fact. The sky is darkening: the blue hour, the shadows almost gone because the light is almost gone, everything touched in ghostly vivid blue. That light reflects in his eyes, makes them more intensely colored than they are, when in midday they're nearly clear. He looks at her and he says nothing, but she knows he heard her because

he looks at her like that.

Lobby, then. Receptionist. Keycards. Elevator. Her bag is heavy, and on the way to the front desk he smiles to himself, thinking she probably has her laptop again. She thinks of how it will be when they get in their room, when they peel out of their clothes and fuck, and it comforts her as much as it arouses her, which is the truth here. They are comfortable with each other now. They fit. A mated pair.

In the elevator she leans over and tells him what she does.

Lukas's eyes flick to the corners first, checking for security cameras, peeps into their privacy. Then, with the number ticking up from 7 to 8, he turns towards, turns all the way toward her until they're face to face, his back to the doors, his body shadowing hers. He touches her face, cups her cheek. He kisses her and, if she lets him, his free hand slips under her skirt.

This isn't a grope. There's nothing uncertain or blind or grasping about this. He finds her panties and shucks them aside and touches her. Gently. Caressingly. He gasps against her mouth when he discovers she's not, in fact, lying about being a little wet. His teeth catch at her lower lip; then his mouth opens to hers, and he leans into her, and his hand on her face jolts as her bag drops from his shoulder to his elbow.

Twentieth floor. The elevator dings and he abruptly draws back, they abruptly draw apart. He helps her smooth her skirt down as the car comes to a gentle stop. Doors open. Almost offhandedly, he sucks her taste off his fingertips as they leave the elevator.

[Danicka] Very, very infrequently does Danicka ever give Lukas such reassurances. She doesn't often tell him not to worry; she teases him for being a worrywart. She doesn't promise him everything will be okay or that he'll do fine; she asks him if he did well at the challenge that he ultimately failed. She can be harsh, even if it doesn't always show. She can be judgemental, critical, and that shows in her choices for what she wears, what she puts in her house, what she spends her money on. That is also a long-standing frugality. Even her luxuries are something she takes care with, is careful of, because after all this time she still cannot think of herself as wealthy.

Even though her new accountant spent something like thirty minutes trying to explain to her just how wealthy she could be, how wealthy she's going to be, especially if she maintains her current living expenses while watching the income flow into her accounts. He's told her how lucky she is. She had to stop herself from laughing aloud when the thought occurred to her that if anything else happens to her car or Lukas's, she can take care of it that much more easily.

In any case: it isn't often that Danicka seeks to reassure or comfort Lukas. Sometimes that is what makes it so special when she's under him, legs and arms wrapped around him, nuzzling his cheek as he pants for air and lays hard, heavy kisses wherever his mouth can touch her. Those times, she holds him and she cradles him. She protects him with her long, lean limbs and her murmurs in his ear in Russian, incomprehensible to him but loving as lullabyes, as though they don't really need words to be understood.


In the elevator, Danicka steps back against the brass bar behind her, the corner of her mouth tugging outward as Lukas turns to her, bends to her, engulfs and shields her. She feels momentarily like she just offered a hungry animal a strip of meat, and it amuses her. The thought is fleeting enough: it flies out of her mind as Lukas puts his hand on her, puts his mouth on her mouth. She tips her head back and opens her lips to him, flicks her tongue against the tip of his in invitation.

Deeper.

"Mm!" is the sound she makes, almost surprised, when his hand goes under her skirt and past the thin strip of lace that makes aimless gestures at being a pair of panties. Her legs part slightly: oh, she lets him. Wetness slicks his fingers and he gasps against her kiss. Danicka makes another sound, lower, not surprised at all, when he presses against her.

"Yeah, baby," she whispers, as though answering a question, her arms winding up and around his neck. They kiss again, his hand moving and caressing slowly between her legs, til she moans again, squirming gently between the wall and his body, her heart thudding demandingly behind her breastbone.

Ding!

Danicka gasps as he pulls away. She licks her lips and truthfully, there isn't much skirt to smooth. It falls back into place as Lukas re-shoulders her bag and licks his fingers. She breathes, takes his hand from his mouth, and draws his fingers to her own lips. They aren't walking, now. They stop in the hallway as Danicka licks his fingers. Draws them into her mouth and sucks, and then takes them deeper, eyes closed and mouth

hot. And wet. And hungry.

[Lukas] He's perhaps seconds away from forgetting that they were in an elevator, forgetting that they're essentially in public, forgetting everything but the way she's moaning into his mouth and clinging to him when the elevator dings. He was perhaps seconds away from hoisting her up against the wall and asking her to wrap her legs around him, asking her to undo his fly and take him out and take him in and --

-- and they're not even walking out in the hall, now. She's taken his hand and he stops and turns to see what she'll do and she licks him, not nearly so absently as he'd licked his own fingertips. She sucks on his fingers like she can't get enough of her own taste, sucks on his fingers like she sucks on his cock sometimes, and a sear of arousal burns down his spine, makes him turn toward her, move toward her.

Never mind that they're in a public space. Never mind that they could be seen, that they generally value their privacy. He scoops her up off the floor, kisses her hard with her body clasped in his arms and her bag falling off his shoulder to his elbow again. The sound he makes against her mouth this time is not a gasp but a growl, low and muffled, and it's not far to their room and they've been here so many times he knows the naming scheme, and as her back hits the door he's looking for the keycards he gave her, slides one in, wrong way, other way, slides again, green light.

Door opens. They swing in and door shuts. His back hits the wall and he's kissing her again, and kissing her again, levers off the wall, turns around, puts her shoulderblades to that same wall instead while he leaves her bag by the door and strips out of his coat, leaves it a puddle on the floor.

"Nemůžu se tě nabažit," he mutters. "You make me so hot."

This kiss, this time, is closer to a bite, snarling and ravenous. He sets her down, her skirt falling back into place, but she hardly has even a moment's respite before he's on her again, turning her around, pressing her into the wall and kissing her neck, her shoulder, grinding shamelessly against her ass while his hands find the zipper on her dress and pull it down with one long hiss.

Then he's stepping back. Tearing at the buttons on his shirt.

"Bend over the bed for me, baby." It's somewhere between breathed and panted, those words. "Let me lick your pussy. I want to eat that wet little pussy out."

[Danicka] It's luck that keeps their obsession with each other semi-private in the elevator for twenty floors. The hour isn't late enough for everyone here to be asleep yet. Somewhere in the building, the surveillance camera does indeed take stock of what they're up to. Nobody cares. Nobody even watches. It's not a unique moment, two young and pretty people making out with each other on their way up to their expensive room in this expensive motel. In the hallway it's even more private, though. Something about the size of the place, the hour: they're alone in the hallway when Lukas steps towards Danicka, watching her suck on his fingers.

That movement has her lifting her eyes to look at him, opening suddenly, watching him as her mouth strokes down his middle digit and back up again. Something flashes in his eyes and she draws back, laps the tip of her tongue quickly over his fingertip, and then breathes in suddenly when he hauls her close and mauls her face. She puts her arms around his neck again, holding him tightly as though

as though

to never let him go again.

Of course the way to their room isn't so smooth as that. She slides against his body, her skirt hiking up under her jacket and Lukas tearing his mouth from hers to actually glance where he's going once or twice, their fucking room's around the fucking corner and she gasps a laugh and mutters to him that they'll get their faster if he'll just put her down,

but he doesn't put her down, and she kisses him again, rubs her breasts against his chest through their clothes, tries to shh him when he growls, purring it out like an encouragement.

It's been three weeks, and it's hard to imagine how she can stay sane, how she can stay sensible, how she can cope while he's got her up against a wall, muttering in two languages at her. Simple enough: he's not stroking her pussy right now, he's not grinding his hips between hers, he's half-mad with hunger, and her heart beats a little out of rhythm for it.

The door, thank god, locks on its own. Danicka shrugs out of her coat when he finally lets her down, nearly slips on it with her heel when he grabs her to turn her around, and then he goes for her zipper and pulls it down and she presses to the wall as he grinds against her and exhales:

"Musíte zpomalit. Jste řítí."

There's no censure in it, only truth. It was rushed: from the moment she took his fingers into his mouth and he pulled her onto him, it's as though Lukas has barely taken a breath, can do nothing but paw at her, press against her, mindless with want, savagely voracious. Her back is bare, a V of flesh hinting at the low-cut lace of her panties, the thin strap of her bra, both a surprisingly hot, flaming orange. She turns her head to look at him over her shoulder, palms against the wall, breathing so quickened it's almost panting.

""Ty mít mě celou noc, láska. Nemusíte spěchat." Gentleness, there, despite the way her heart slams in her ribcage. She reaches back for him, draws his hand to her back, slipping it under the fold of black and fold fabric, guiding his palm to her lace-covered breast. "Zpomalte."

And that, too, a purr of encouragement.

[Lukas] The number of kin in this world, particularly shadow lord kin, who would not jump to do as a Garou bids, is probably exceedingly small. The number of kin as weak and submissive and accommodating as Danicka pretends to be: even smaller. Yet she doesn't push off the wall as soon as he steps back. She doesn't walk to the bed -- steadily or unsteadily, calmly or seductively -- and she doesn't strip out of her dress and bend over for him like he says.

She stays where she is. She tells him:

Zpomalte.

Which makes him close his eyes. He's gotten his shirt cuffs undone. He's on the last button when she takes his hand and guides it under her dress, around to her breast.

Lukas pauses for a moment, pauses because he remembers her teling him that when it's been a long time she needs him to go slow, she needs to be able to see him, she wants to be able to hold him. He doesn't apologize -- because he doesn't need to yet, hasn't done anything that's frightened or angered her, yet -- but he does slow down. He stops. He leans his brow against her temple where her head turns to look at him, and he draws a breath that heaves through his ribcage.

Out again. He steps forward again, flush against her. She can feel him even through his denims, thick and hard, unmistakeably aroused. He rubs against her gently, thoughtlessly, while his hand caresses her breast through her bra, then slips under it to cup her flesh. Her heart is hammering against the heel of his hand. He kisses her over her shoulder, pushing her dress off her shoulders, letting it and its startling hemline slide to the floor, and then she's just wearing her orange lingerie that makes him laugh in some distant corner of his mind, thinking to himself

they didn't have anything in orange

and thinking to himself of flaming june. He's urging her to turn around, now. Turn around and face him. He unclasps her bra and pulls it down, off her arms. His mouth finds her collarbone, uses that as a landmark to her breast. He's bending to her, his hands moving from her skin to the wall, bracing against the wall where it'll be safe, where he won't be tempted to maul her skin and bruise her flesh with his grip. His eyes are closed, brow furrowed with something like intensity or concentration as he licks her breast, kisses her nipple, opens his mouth and plays with it, slowly, lazily, with the tip of his tongue before

his mouth closes over her breast again, and he sucks at her.

His pulse is pounding in his veins. It's hard to slow down and take his time. He does it anyway: because she asks him to.

And he gets his last button undone. Shrugs his shirt off. He finds her hands and guides them under his undershirt, rucking it up off his hot skin, hard body. Curious dichotomy, that: flesh as hard as wood or stone or iron, something inanimate, yet so quintessentially animate, alive, charged. Moving beneath her hands. Flexing and churning, roiling as he pulls his undershirt up over his head and lets it fall.

And now Lukas is sliding slowly to his knees. And now he's nipping and scraping at the skin of Danicka's abdomen with his teeth, kissing the line of her panties when he finds it. He's undoing his jeans and pushing down his boxer-briefs to free his cock. He's hard and hot in his own hand, and he strokes himself slowly, lingeringly, one long slide of his palm over flesh so sensitive he gasps again and utters a low groan

the first time he kisses her clit slowly, lingeringly, through her panties.

[Danicka] Nothing to apologize for. Nothing to get incensed about, to feel pushed away, to feel like she doesn't want him because he's doing something wrong, or not quite right, or imperfect, or... whatever it is he used to think. Danicka closes her eyes again as Lukas rests their heads together, and she breathes steadily once, twice

but then his hand is on her breast. Hers moves away, and she arches her back and angles her body while he caresses her, cupping her in his palm and squeezing her through the soft lace. His chest moves against her back as he breathes. She rubs herself -- her ass, the soft sloping curve of it -- against him slowly, stroking up and down over that lustful pressure in his jeans, and he rubs back, and she makes a low, tender sound behind her lips. It takes some wiggling to get her out of her dress: Lukas tugs on her long sleeves, Danicka scrunches her shoulders up and her scapulae tug together in front of him for a moment as the fabric skitters silently to the carpet.

Orange lace. Black stockings tight around her up, up, upper thighs with with no garters to speak of, and her panties are still a little askew from his manipulations in the elevator. The panties dip in front and back, cut across her buttocks: all in all, like straps of fabric perhaps two inches wide, mostly lace, just a scrap of eroticism that cost god knows how much.

Just for this. Just for this moment when he takes her clothes off and sees what she has for him underneath it all this time, whether seamless and comfortable cotton or silk satin or little bows and laced-up ties on the back of a G-string, or ...this. These signifiers that when she dressed herself she was thinking about fucking him.

Danicka moans softly in protest when he urges her to turn around, rubbing herself still against the front of his pants, her cheek to the wall of the hotel. So he unclasps her bra and it falls off her shoulders and he's kissed her there, her shoulder or clavicle or the back of her neck, and she sighs and turns for him, opening her eyes. Her bra slides off her arms. She tosses it to the side, puts her arm around his waist, pulls him closer. Lukas bends to, well

to suck her breast, tongue it and lick it til her nipple is hard in his mouth, til he can't help it anymore and just starts filling his mouth with her flesh. She groans, watching him, her hand going into his hair, fingernails dragging slowly over his scalp and then massaging, and she's panting underneath his mouth, when sounds aren't catching in her throat.

"That's it, baby," Danicka whispers. "Ohmygod... that's it."

She doesn't help him with his undershirt. That means: his mouth has to leave her. That means: there's a moment when he has to separate from her, and she doesn't want it, so there's resistance in her hands when he tries to guide them anywhere. Danicka is busy making a tiny mewling sound, trying to get him to move his head to her other breast, suck on her other nipple, her hands in his hair and tightening, slightly, when he starts to lower himself to his knees.

"Baby..." she says, wanting, and not quite sure what she's wanting, til he's kissing her across her lingerie, and then through it, which makes her moan aloud, rubbing back against his face once, as gently as she can bear.

"Zdvih je pro mě," she pants. "To je ono, lásko. Cévní mozková příhoda, že tvrdý kohout, zatímco vy líbat mé kundičky."

[Lukas] "Shh," he says to that wanting baby... that falls from her lips. He's not more sure what he's reassuring her of than she is of what she's pleading for. He goes to his knees, and his shirts are off now, his pants are open and starting to sag, starting to peel down with the way he kneels before her and

kisses her like that.

Which makes her moan aloud. Which makes her rub back against him, so gently and just once, so that it's less a rub and more of a brush, a slide, a single friction of her pussy against his mouth, through her panties.

The entryway to their room is filling with the soft aspirated sibilants of their native tongue, or their ancestors'. Family, home, that language says. Blood-ties. Mine. She tells him to stroke it for her, as though even his pleasure was for her, which in a way isn't inaccurate. His response is wordless, a low growl as his eyes flash open to look at her panting, look at her hair falling loose around her flushing face, to look and see what she does, how she reacts, when he opens his mouth the way he did for her breast and licks her through her panties.

Slowly. Broadly, first, the flat of his tongue. And then delicately, lace faintly scratchy and textured to his mouth; carefully, with the very tip of his tongue, tracing out the hot twist of nerve endings in her clit, circling, finding, closing his mouth now, closing his eyes. He hasn't moved on to eat her pussy out yet. He hasn't licked up the slick there, or smeared it all over his face. He's just sucking at her clit, homing in on it, focusing, absolute. Mmmph, he murmurs, muffled, adoring her with his mouth, and all of it, every second of it,

through a barrier of flaming orange lace turning burnt sienna with moisture.

His cock jumps in his hand, a pulse of reflex. He strokes himself steadily now, slicking precum over his hard cock, keeping the slide of his hand slow, firm, steady, matching the rhythm of his mouth, and his lips, and his tongue against her clit.

[Danicka] She's reminded vaguely of that night in New York City when she flew out to get away from Chicago, from Sam, from her own paralyzing fear of his retaliation. Even knowing how weak he was, or perhaps knowing that, she feared what he might do. She always feared what he might do to her. So she ran to her home city, despite the fact that an even more powerful, terrible creature lurked and waited there, one with the authority to harm her, one who she was certain would if he could excuse it.

And Lukas followed her. He took a hotel room and he got on his knees when she came to him, when she snuck out of her father's house to come to him. Her stilletto heel slipped down his back and sliced through his skin. He could see her small breasts through the sheer fabric of her blouse. She stood over him at one point, his hand on his cock and her hand in his hair and she just

rubbed her cunt on his face, gasping at the feel of it, at the sight of him like that, blasted away to nothing but lust and hunger, open and unthinking adoration, as though all of him was more laid bare and laid to waste than she had ever seen him before.

And he:

he thought:

that his mate was such a fucking alpha female, such a fucking animal... as he licked his lips clean and watched her walk to the high windows overlooking Times Square.

So it is now, only he isn't bleeding, and she isn't dominating him in any sense, and he isn't pushing her in any way, and that is how it usually is between them. No matter who is on their knees, no matter who is rubbing, gasping, demanding, saying stroke it for me

touch it for me

and no matter who is coming first, who is coming at all. It doesn't matter.

Lukas licks her through lingerie, tastes her through the thin, whispering fabric, and enough of her slick comes through the lace to leave its hot, tanging taste on his tongue. Danicka groans, rubbing harder against him, reaching down to pull her panties aside the way that he does not, has not. She pants, watching him, her clit already pulsating with arousal, with what is fast become sheer need.

"I am so going to fuck you," she mutters, meaningless, as though that isn't very fucking obvious at this point. She nearly snarls, tipping her head back as he strokes himself and licks her pussy, rubbing herself on his mouth again. "Just kiss that little pussy, baby. Kiss it all wet."

Nonsense, low murmured nonsense. And yet not: wet on his tongue, wet from his tongue. As he kisses her. Licks her. Sucks on her clit and makes her buck against the wall, gasping.

Gasping: "Oh, fuck," when he does that to her, when she feels this. "Fuck, baby."

Danicka has to decide first to move. And then she does, and she slides down the wall, moving to her knees, straddling his lap, taking his face in both hands and kissing his mouth. She leans her weight onto his chest, presses him back, moans as she literally licks her taste off his lips and tongue and chin, moans harder when she kisses him,

deep,

her lithe, hot-to-the-touch body all over his.

And in between kisses, breaths of words: "Chci, abys dal mně na postel. Ohyb mě přes." A harder kiss, a muffled groan, breaking for: "Pohlavek můj prdel. To mě poser pěkné a pevné. Pomalé. Udělej mi plakat ven pro vás."

[Lukas] That night above Times Square lives on as a stark red memory in his mind. He remembers the city lights bouncing off her skin as the pearls she wore rolled and shivered with the shudders in her body while he knelt between her legs and ate at her until she came. He remembers her standing over him like that, too, rubbing her cunt on his face like she was marking him as hers. As though that's what the slice down his back meant. As though that's what her slick on his face meant.

Hers. Mine. Mine.

It doesn't matter that seconds later she was gasping in fear because his teeth pulled her pearls tight against her throat. It doesn't matter that the next day her brother held that sheer blouse to his nose and smelled what she'd been up to; beat her for it; sent her back to Chicago so healed and untouched that Lukas never even knew until Vladislav told him so himself. None of that changes the fact that he was right when he thought

that his mate was such a fucking alpha female. Such a fucking animal.

And so is he. A fucking animal. A fucking alpha male both literally and figuratively. A starved wild thing, whose sucks at her clit with a singular devotion, who makes a noise in his throat when she pulls her panties aside

and gives it up to him

which makes him bury his face between her thighs and angle his neck to eat at her, groaning against her cunt, lapping up her wet. His hands come off his cock, then. He grabs her ass, tilts her against him, holds her up and holds her there, against him, steady, right there, while he eats that sweet little cunt out.

Then she's moving. He's drawing back, panting through his nostrils, quick and steady, eyes glittering. She's sliding down, down, he's reaching for her, his hands on her ass on her hips on her ribcage and on her breasts. Folding around to her shoulderblades, her spine, gathering her up in his hard arms, against his body, and she's kissing him and moaning like that and his mouth tastes like her, and he kisses her until he can taste her on her tongue.

She's managing words between kisses. He's just growling.

He's still capable of understanding, though. And what she says makes him draw back, sit back on his heels, and look at her. His pupils are blown, animal, black. He turns his head sideways without looking away, a quick swipe of his mouth over his shoulder, then back. She tells him what she wants. He catches her by the hips and drags her forward, rubs her cunt over his cock, and it makes him shudder, it makes his head bow against hers as he gasps, as he watches her body slide against his.

"...oh god that's fucking good." All in a rush, that. "That's such a good little cunt. I love it when you ride my cock without riding my cock."

They tear into each other: another kiss, or something like a kiss. When they pull apart he gets up. Pulls her with him, effortlessly strong. He lifts her and lets her climb him like a tree, lets her fold her long legs around him and hold him with the strength of her thighs, and whatever one might say about Danicka's all but laughable strength, there's always been an athleticism to her lovemaking that's almost avaricious.

He's half blind, crossing the room to the bed. Hard to see when you keep kissing your mate like this: over and over, mauling each other, eyes closed, mouths open. His knees bump the mattress. His pants have shuffled down to his thighs by then. He drops her on the bed, pushes them all the way off, kicks jeans and boxerbriefs aside along with his socks and shoes. Maybe she's lying back on the bed, or turning over on her own, or playing with herself as she watches him undress for her. Whatever she's doing, he pauses for a moment, strokes his cock so thoughtlessly and practicedly it's almost absent; stares at her, watches her, watches her until he's tired of watching and reaches for her.

Lukas flips her over. Doesn't bend her over the edge of the bed yet. Flips her on all fours, takes her hips in his hands, urges her to arch her back and raise her ass and all but present herself to be mounted. She can feel his hands on her underwear, stripping that down, pulling that scrap of lace off. She can hear him exhaling a curse, breathing it out:

"Seru na. Že krásné malé kundy."

an instant before his mouth is against her cunt again, his hands are pulling her lips gently apart and he's eating at her like they'd never paused between door and bed, licking and lapping and sucking at her while he holds her against his face like he wants to drive her over the edge

just like this.

Except he doesn't. He draws back when she starts to writhe, when she starts to grasp at the sheets, and he pulls her backward off the edge of the mattress. She's slight-framed. He's strong. He handles her with something perilously close to careless speed, only it can't possibly be that. It can't possibly be that because the way he touches her is too thoughtless, too hungry, too wracked by his own lust for it to be remotely possible that he doesn't care about her, or this, or what's between them.

He bends her over the edge of the bed now, though. He bends her over and rubs his hands over her ass, over her back, reaches around to caress her breasts, leans down to kiss and nip at her back, her shoulders. When he finally steps against her, locks their hips together and rubs against her, he slips his hand down to play with her clit as he takes himself in his other hand

and doesn't slide into her, doesn't push into her in one solid stroke the way he does, sometimes; doesn't do any of that.

He pushes the head of his cock against her cunt instead. Slides it over her slit, over and over, slowly, until he's slick with her wetness, until there's almost no friction, nothing but pressure and heat, the weight of his cock against her cunt, rubbing over and over. He teases her like this, or perhaps he's teasing himself, or perhaps he's just pushing himself, seeing how long he can draw this out, how slow he can go, how long he can fuck against her like this without fucking her, while his breathing grows ragged and his teeth grip at her shoulder; while he growls against her skin

about how fucking wet that pussy is. And how long he's been waiting to feel how tight and wet she is. And how he wants to hear her moan for him when he fills her up with cock.

And:

"Řekni mi jste připraveni pro pomalý pevný kurva."

-- a kiss, hard and plunging, over her shoulder.

"Řekni mi, lásko. Řekni to pro mě."

[Danicka] For awhile, Danicka relaxes. She receives and accepts Lukas's lust, kisses him, moans when he moves her on his cock, laughs into another hard kiss to his mouth when he calls it riding. In answer, she bucks her hips; she rides, rather than simply letting him hold her hips and move her on him. She leans against him, panting against his neck, leaving slick up and down his cock.

A few moments later, again, she yelps slightly when he drops her on the bed, looking up at him. She isn't doing anything, as he's watching her, stroking him. She's leaning back, braced on her arms, one high heel on the edge of the bedspread, one leg dangling, breasts bared and nipples pink and wet from his mouth, panties askew, stockings high. Watching him, watching her.

Danicka gets tired of it first. She lifts her leg and wraps it around his thigh, snarling, pulling him forward with her calf against the back of his leg. When he flips her over, her heel scrapes lightly across his flesh. She goes on all fours easily, looking back at him over her shoulder. Lifts one knee and then the other as he drags her underwear off. Just the silk, then, the lace bands just under her ass. Just the supple black leather of those zippered heels. Just her, and what is left of her sexual warpaint.

As though this is a war.

And later: a hard gasp when he stops licking her, grabs her and yanks her backward. Danicka nearly loses her balance. "Zpoma--" which she doesn't finish. It isn't even what she means. His thoughtless hunger, coming from his care rather than in spite of it, makes him move quickly, makes him move her quickly. Picking her up. Moving her on his body. Turning her around or flipping her over, positioning her where he wants her. It isn't quite that she wants or even needs to tell him to slow down yet again. She doesn't know quite what she wants to tell him.

She knows she wants him close. Wants him to do as he's doing and fold his body over hers, chest to her back, hands on her breasts and her belly and then between her legs. Her eyes close and her head tips back, her temple to his jawline, breathing raggedly while he touches her, while they move together without moving one inside the other. She rubs back against him, as he ducks his head to bite her, holding onto her with his teeth in careful, possessive, animal affection.

Danicka doesn't tell him what he tells her to say. She exhales, hard, after that kiss. Murmurs: "Víš, co chci."

[Lukas] They're close like this. She's bent over the edge of the bed, the huge, high, soft bed, and he's bent over her. Their bodies slip and rub against one another -- his chest to her upper back, his stomach to her lower, his groin to her bottom.

His cheek to hers. Her head tipping back against his shoulder; his bends to hers, and he snarls, baring teeth, as she says what she says.

He kisses her, then. Hard, deep, tearing. Mmgh, he growls into her mouth. "Jo." This could be dominant; superior; chauvinistic. It's not. It's something closer to confession or admission. Something closer to giving in to the truth, and to what's between them. "Já vím, co chceš."

Behind her, he shifts, drawing back, guiding the head of his cock to her opening and their mouths fall apart and his head bows, his temple sliding past her jaw now, as he moves into her. Slow and firm. Unwavering. Stroking into her cunt, a little deeper each time, panting in time, a soft growl at the end of every thrust -- his hand on her clit gone still now, cupping her there as though he'd lost the ability to multitask like this.

[Danicka] And for a long time, he didn't. Didn't know if she wanted Sam, or if she wanted to bounce from lap to lap in the Unbroken Circle, or if she just wanted to hurt people, gain some kind of power in the universe by wrapping them around her fingers like string and then snapping them in half. For a long time Lukas didn't know that she wanted him. Then, he almost didn't believe it: that she would want him, simply and for nothing, without sinister motive, without flights of whim.

Just: him. With his Rage more than she could then bear, with his attitude so stark and almost cruel, with everything he was and in some cases still is that could have turned her away or broken her heart -- and even when he did break her heart -- all she ever wanted was him. They could go the rest of their lives without making love again. Lose money, lose freedoms, lose family and packmates, and Danicka would want him.

He told Theron -- he snapped it at the Theurge, nearly roared it in the Loft one night -- that if anything happened to Danicka, he would never take another mate. Never. Could not. And the converse is true, but there is no one Danicka would tell. No one she needs to hear it. No one who could anger her enough to make her reveal that intimacy:

my beloved is mine, and I am his

and I will never love another.

Her hand moves to cover his hand when he finally moves into her. Slowly, because it's been three weeks, or because she's told him slowly, slowly because he wants to feel every moment, slowly because he wants her to feel it, too. Whispered encouragements, then, murmurs for more, that's it, murmurs of his name, which she didn't say for the longest time.

Not til the moon was waxing and she realized that she could lose him if she didn't find some way to be okay with the idea of belonging to someone by choice, and not by obligation or dominance. She found a way. They did.

It is, this first time in nearly a month, slow. Firm. They don't move apart much; his arm winds around her and holds her close to his chest, his other hand braced on the bed to hold himself up. Outside the light rain has already turned pelting, the rapid fat drops of springtime, pattering against the glass and against the concrete some twenty floors below.

Danicka is surprisingly quiet. She gasps, and she moans softly, rolling her hips, flowing sinuously with Lukas atop her. She calls him baby, she whimpers when he starts to hammer at her faster, when he bites into her shoulder again and grunts, fucking her harder. Don't stop, she says, the English blurring into Czech, her cunt squeezing him as though to never, ever let him go, never let him stop, never let him move away from her. Her hand on his hand holds tighter, digs in, when sweat starts to slick her back and her arms, when their flesh starts to slap together.

They climbed onto the bed sideways. They face the rain, and the still-darkening sky that is not yet pitch black even when Danicka cries out, when she tosses her head and grabs at the bedspread and just yells, bending forward to take him deeper, gripping that thick, expensive comforter as she comes. Her legs are spread now, have been, spread to take him and arms braced to keep herself against him even though she knows

he isn't going to let her go.


When it's over, Danicka is shuddering slightly, her hairline darkened by perspiration, her breasts and her spine and the backs of her knees wet from it. She is still holding tight to the bedspread, her eyes closed, her mouth open to breathe, her body rocking gently, gently, ever so slowly against him as though she's not quite done with the feel of him yet.

Thunder rolls outside, as though to say

Yes. This is how it is.

[Lukas] He doesn't let her go.

There's something primal about this position. About fucking like this; about mounting his mate like this, like an animal, and fucking her with his body covering hers, matched to hers, penetrating hers. There can be something impersonal about this, but this is not. This is nowhere close to impersonal because

he doesn't let her go, and she doesn't let him go.

Her hand covers his in the counterpane. His fingers open for hers, then close again when her fingertips curl between his, into his palm. He holds her like that, and he holds her like this too: his hand covering her cunt, playing with her clit, fondling her as he fucks her, caressing her as slow and firm becomes a little faster, a little wilder, touching her until they're both slick with sweat, flexing against each other, fucking, coming.

There's a moment when he stops, while she's crying out and twisting under him: a moment when he just stays with her, stays deep, and waits for her to come to grips with herself again.

Rain lashes the window. Lightning flashes -- thunder follows.

He fucks her, then. Lets go her hand, lets his hand slip from her clit. Crosses his arms around her, covers her breasts with his hands, clasps her to him, keeps her under him and close to him, right there, right there. He bites into her shoulder carefully as he's pounding her, and then perhaps less carefully, and he chases his own pleasure in the hammer-beat of his heart, hunts it down like prey, takes it down, pulls it to the ground, and finds himself

utterly consumed by it in turn.

When it's over, she's shuddering slightly. He's yet to let her go. His arms still enfold her. He's heavy against her now, though, his head hanging, his breath sucking through his airways, strands of his hair sticking with the dampness of sweat.

And after a while -- moving. Turning, pressing his mouth to her hot cheek, her neck. Kissing her, tasting the salt of her sweat, smelling himself on her.

"Potřeboval jsem který," he murmurs. "Potřeboval jsem tě."

[Danicka] Even for a man from the sort of stock he's from, Lukas is... very tall. Even for one of his own kind, he's... very large. Danicka is average in height, still a on the lighter side of 'healthy' in terms of weight. She is not strong. She is graceful but not quick or agile. She never learned how to take a beating, only to survive it; her endurance is based on lots of walking and running in Manhattan, long nights spent dancing and fucking, sleeping less because she was constantly caring for a growing Fang kinswoman.

When Lukas holds her, he has to be careful. Not just that he doesn't break her, doesn't bruise her. He has to not hold her to tightly because then she might simply be unable to breathe. He has to hold himself up; there is no way in hell, no day of the year, no dream, when Danicka could react to his full weight resting on her with anything short of quickly rising panic.

Still: he doesn't slide or roll off of her immediately after he comes, after he can breathe again. His trembling musculature, shaken by pleasure more than exertion, is held by his own power. Their flesh rests together. Danicka has room to breathe, room for her ribs to expand without the pressure of being between bed and male stifling her. She knows he is strong; it is in these moments, right after, when he keeps himself close without crushing, that it seems to be the most obvious.

Her eyes are closed, and she turns her head, breathing deeply as she comes down. Hair scatters across her cheek and temple, half-covers her face. She stays where she is when he turns, when he shifts and yes, it moves him inside of her but she just makes a low, meaningless murmur in response to that. Her fingertips stroke over the backs of his knuckles.

"Já vím," she says, in understanding. "Bylo to na chvíli."

That too, in understanding.

A few moments pass, to the sound of breathing and rain. When she speaks, she's amused at herself, huffing out a laugh, but it's what she said earlier, isn't it? He's still inside of her, and her tone is anything but bored, anything but distant. Close. Comforted. Happy, for what it's worth.

"Do you want to watch a movie?"

[Lukas] Happy, for what it's worth.

Which is to say: happy, which is worth everything to him.

Strange that it's come to this. Once upon a time Lukas couldn't care less whether Danicka was happy or sad, angry or hurt. Or at least: told him and everyone around him that lie so well that

the only person who was ever really fooled was himself. And that, even, imperfectly.

The first time they met in Chicago, he asked her if she was propositioning him. Her answer was not really an answer at all. Sex was already on his mind; fucking; mating with this woman whose blood called to him in a language older than language. It was on his mind and still: he did not command her to his bed. He did not suggest to her that it would be best for her if she came to his bed. Other Shadow Lords might have. If he weren't concerned about repercussions and loose ends, he might've commanded it of other Shadow Lord kin.

But not her. That was never on the table, not for them, because from the start some part of him knew that if he ever used her or abused her in some way, something between them would change forever and irrevocably.

And: a few days later, he drove her home because he thought she hated cabs. And because he wanted to.

And: a few days after that, he could not bring himself to strike her when he all but promised to.

"Jo," he whispers: it's been a while. And his eyes are still closed, and he's nuzzling her gently, braced over her and rubbing his face, his cheek and nose over her cheek, the hollow of her throat beneath her jaw.

A few moments later: "Jo." And his eyes open, and he smiles. "Pojďme se sprchovým koutem a leží kolem a dívat se jeden film."

He shifts. Pushes his palms to the bed, presses, back bowing away from her, his mouth warm again to her cheekbone, her temple. When he draws out of her, his palm presses gently to her lower back, and he sighs between his teeth.

Then his hand trails down to her stockings. And he laughs, low in his chest.

"Tak kurva horké."

[Danicka] He drove her home that dawn because he thought she hated cabs, and he thought that because she lied, and she lied because he asked her if she needed a ride, and she wanted to be near him. Knew even then he would not want to be near her in return, couldn't, not when she smelled of his packmate's sweat, not when he'd listened to her subdued moaning through the wall -- though at the time he had no comparison, could not tell that she was subduing them, that it would sound different when she was with him -- and not when he already distrusted and potentially despised her.

But they both know this, now. All of it. Sometimes she tries to think of lies she told him, or things she withheld from him, so that now she can go back and tell him the truth. Out of the blue as it might be, unnecessary as it might seem, a part of her wants to undo it belatedly. Rectify it, or simply: let him in a little further. Tell him now, so when he remembers Then, he can do so through the new filter of her truths.

Not right now, though. Right now all she wants is to nuzzle him. To smile as he rubs his face against her own, displacing her hair further, inhaling her smell and his smell all over each other. She can still taste herself on her tongue, and on his when they kiss. She can still feel him, sweat and heat and heaviness, on her back and flank, even after he withdraws and starts to slide away.

Danicka lounges on her stomach, feeling his hand trail down her body to her legs. She drowses, and rolls over to her side, then onto her back, moving her thigh into his palm, watching him.

"We'll order more food, too," she says, a certainty rather than a question. A lazy, halfcocked smile. "Musím jíst více získat silnější," like a child speaking of vegetables.

[Lukas] Lukas straightens as she rolls onto her back. In the lamplight, he's balanced and symmetrical, unashamed of being naked, of gleaming with sweat, of being tousled-haired from her fingers combing, scritching, grasping, of being a fucking mess from fucking and being fucked. His hands rub over her thighs, and then drop to her boots. He unzips one, then the other, letting them drop to the floor with muffled thumps.

And he smiles at her. "More food," he repeats, an affirmation. He lifts her leg over his shoulder, his hands finding the elastic of her stockings.

And then farther -- his thumb brushing gently over her lips, her pussy, her clit. It's almost thoughtful. Certainly affectionate. He draws a short, not quite steady breath. Then his eyes come back to hers, and they smile at her even before he does, and he gets back to what he was doing and starts to roll her stockings down.

He kisses her ankle as he rolls her stockings past her knee. "Takže můj lodní důstojník může sílit silnější," he adds, repeating her as though this will Make It So.

[Danicka] Strength is everything to Shadow Lords. Weakness is the greatest sin, and almost anything can be a weakness. Their minds must be as sharp as any claw; their ruthlessness must not blanch in the face of opportunity. The purity of their bloodlines is worth something, but only for what it can get you; the strength it affords, the respect it demands. It, like everything else, must be useful. They must never let themselves slip into the manic, purity-seeking and madness-breeding habits of tribes such as the Fenrir and the Fangs, or the laziness of those such as the Fianna.

They are children of the second-oldest sort of diety ever worshipped by the star-staring peoples of the world, sons and daughters of the dominating sky as much as the chaotic earth. They are

these two, lying together in an expansive, expensive bed as his large hands take great care unrolling her delicate stockings, those hands that have killed his own and killed the Wyrm and held a child who did not exist, the only of the three phantom cubs who was given a name that their father, not their mother, chose. Gold.

Drahé ke mně.

These hands, this man, this woman, her legs stripped bare of their lingering human trappings. Her hands on his wrists, up his arms, pulling him down over her. Her leg wrapping around him, and her body welcoming him again not in mating but in embrace, caress, and affection. "Miluji tě.

"Miluji tě.

"Miluji tě," she whispers, over and over into his ear, in the way that some lovers are in the habit of doing, imprinting the words again and again as though to make them indelible. She holds him then, both of them naked now, and though, yes, they will get up and order food and shower and settle in to watch a movie, right now they simply lie on the bed and wrap themselves around each other.

She kisses his temple, echoes back to him: "Ty jsou tak drahé pro mě."

Which is another truth she never told him, another truth that cannot quite be called unnecessary.


When they order food, they order hearty plates of it. Potatoes, steamed vegetables, but meat. Danicka tells him he only ate a little; he looks at her in amusement and wonder at once, because he was thinking the same thing, and she tells whoever is listening that they will have this, and this, and this, thank you, alright, leave it outside the door.

They do not clean up their clothes, her lingerie, any of it. They shower long and lazy. The days are getting warmer, but a chill still clings to the city, and they spend enough time in the shower as though to rinse those last vestiges of winter away from their very bones. Lukas touches her. Danicka nuzzles him, holds his hands still on her: belly, breasts, wherever they've fallen, and her own touches are aimless, thoughtless, light strokes of her hands on his cheeks or his chest or his arms.

Their food is there when they get out, Danicka, at least, wrapping herself in a robe and whipping her hair quickly in a braid while Lukas, in a towel like a sarong, grabs their tray from outside the door. It's still hot, and the beers are still cold, and Danicka is curled up cross-legged on the big bed, remote in hand, the storm gentling through the windows.

Things are different now, than they used to be.


The movie is funny. Danicka is picking food off the plate for a long time even after they end up lying on their sides to watch it, nibbling strips of roast beef as the television screen reflects off her eyes. Lukas is warm behind her, propped up on his elbow, his other arm slung around her waist. He holds her breast, hand worked under the robe, idly fondling it now and then, slowly kissing her neck now and then.

Danicka moves closer. Snuggles, if you will. And yet she doesn't turn in his arms. She doesn't press herself to him, invite him, tell him with her body

yes. now. again.

She is drowsy, and she falls asleep in his arm like that, so very near the position they often sleep in. Her hair is still wet. Her breathing steadies before the movie is over. Lukas can imagine a long day: appointments, maybe. Classes. Lugging her bag around campus. To and fro across Chicago. An hour or two in the museum with him, the love they made when they got here, that long, warm shower, that heavy, filling meal. Her mate behind her, holding her, covering her heart. The rain outside, which speaks to her soul.


Though in the morning when she wakes, whether still atop the covers or under them, whether she stirred as Lukas moved her in bed only to sleep again, whether she's still in her robe or if he helped her out of it with care and slowness, whether she slept with her back to him or facing, entangled:

Danicka is climbing on top of him in the morning, laying against his chest, nuzzling low, sleep-satisfied murmurs against his neck. He wakes to her holding him. And when he is awake, when his eyes open into searing blue slits, she begins rubbing against him slowly, kissing his flesh, whispering that she wants him, asking

can I have it, baby?

even as she's reaching down between them, touching his cock.

The sun is shining on the still-wet windowpanes. It shines on her as she rides him.

Pomalu.

It is shining on them when they leave the W, after they shower again, dress again, clean up their things and leave the room. Danicka links their hands as they walk both to the elevator and out of it, but inside her arms are around his waist for a good twenty floors, her head against his chest as she hums some aimless tune she makes up as she goes along, both in contentment and to amuse him. And herself.

The sun is shining when he drops her off at the apartment building where the place he calls her den is located. It glints off of her, and all that glass, when she walks towards the doors. She looks over her shoulder at him before she goes inside.

Smiling.