out of the way, peasant!

Calden White

For a while there, Avery is transcendant: she is at once beyond herself and still so starkly aware of herself. What she's doing. What they're doing to each other.

And then -- she's simply gone. She drops into unconsciousness, and over her Calden, who seems to just like to sprawl heavy and motionless over her like this, finally levers himself to the side, off. She can breathe a little easier then. He wraps his arms around her and rolls her onto her side, her back to his chest, his forearms at her waist.

That's how she wakes. Held in his heavy arms, against his brawny body. The room smells like them, smells like sweat and sex and exertion. They'd talked a little of watching Saturday Night Live, but that idea -- nice as it was, pleasant as it would have been -- seems to have slid by the wayside for now.

Her eyes are open wide; wide as his had been when that unexpected and unprecedented orgasm hit. She murmurs to god, to the son of god, and he

laughs softly, muffled-ly. "Yeah," he agrees, wrapping his arms a little closer around her even as he shifts; carefully slides himself out of her at last. Maybe he was being a gentleman there, too. Not leaving while she slept, and all. And then he nuzzles her. He puts his hand over her breast, gentle, cradling; perhaps a little protective.

Avery Chase

How a Fianna defines being a gentleman is, by nature or nurture or both, very different from how a Silver Fang might define it. Or how a human might. Staying inside of her and holding her close seem to satisfy something in himself, but the truth is, Avery hardly notices. Maybe it never occurred to her that he would leave so soon after, leaving her with his cum dried on her stomach and in her sheets and bolting back out of the Ritz-Carlton. She is coming down from orgasm, and then she is napping, and then she wakes and Calden is cuddling her and holding her and

Avery starts laughing at him when he puts his hand on her breast. Not huffing lightly, not turning her head to nuzzle him. Put simply, she cracks up. She starts laughing so hard that her body moves with it, her face bright with it, the air filling with the sound of it.

She doesn't sound like she's mocking him. She just sounds happy.

And a bit ludicrious.

Calden White

The peals of laughter suddenly ringing through the bedroom startle him. It's sort of a nice surprise, though, and it makes him raise up on one elbow behind her, leaning over her to see her face.

"What?" he asks, laughing too -- the simple social mimicry common to wolf and man both. "What's so funny?"

Avery Chase

"You're ridiculous," she tells him, lifting one hand to drape lazily over her face. She's still laughing. "You're just... ridiculous."

Calden White

"What?" he says again, laughing too, taking her by the wrist to draw her hand down from her face. "I like your tits," and he drops a kiss on her shoulder, leans over her, kisses her mouth. "That's hardly a ridiculous thing. Have you seen them?"

Avery Chase

Promptly -- and there is no small measure of Philodox here -- she uses her other hand to swat at his hand and only just barely tolerates him kissing her. "I've been downgraded from your undying love and adoration of my breasts to like?" She swats him again. "Unhand me, vandal."

Calden White

He does not unhand her. Or well -- he does, but he doesn't exactly put polite distance between. He clambers over her instead, a great heap of filthy male flopping down beside her -- in front, this time, laughing aloud as she protests his choice of words.

"Forgive me, madam," he says, entirely too contrite to be real, "it's just that lavishing love and adoration on your breasts tends to escalate." He grins, a languid thing, laying his arm over her, searching for her mouth again. "And I don't think either of us can bear another escalation right now."

Avery Chase

Avery is not having a bit of it. She smacks and shoves at him, muttering that he's an oaf, he's a brute, he's ridiculous, while he's clambering. He flops down on her other side, for reasons she can't begin to fathom, and she just shakes her head at him.

That imperious look on her face can't possibly be anything but a product of her blood and breeding. No one her age could be trained so well to give that sort of stare. He starts reaching for her -- gets swatted again, hands brushed away -- and leaning over to kiss her, smiling and flirting the way he does.

She sits up, possibly still deflecting his eager hands. No: grabbing them, fingers interlaced, and pushing back against them, grinning at him. "Out of the way, peasant," she tells him, climbing over him -- they are agile tonight, it seems - and off the bed, her long legs stretching one after the other. She does not shake. She almost does, but she certainly is not going to walk around like a newborn colt while Calden congratulates himself on his penis.

"If you intend to join me," Avery tells him presumably meaning the shower, "you should call the concierge first and inform them that I would like the linens changed. I'll leave a tip out, given that I'm requesting they deal with semen-soaked sheets. Really," she says, lifting her purse from the nightstand to dig around and get out a lovely gold wallet, "you seem to make a mess everywhere you go, Mr. White."

Calden White

"Peasant!" he exclaims as she clambers right back over him to get out of bed. "I'm not sure if that's an upgrade or a downgrade from 'brute'. It sounds like a downgrade."

She gets up. He lets her go reluctantly, his fingertips trailing off -- well, whatever he can reach, really. Her hand. Her hip. Something. He rolls back onto his back as they separate entirely, smiling at her from bed, looking exactly as well-fucked and pleasantly exhausted as he feels.

That smile transduces into a half-disbelieving huff as she suggests he call the concierge and request a change of sheets right now. Not being the sort to stay often in five-star hotels, or in penthouse suites, or be waited on so frequently that it becomes more a right than a privilege, Calden still feels a twinge of embarrassment at the thought of some carefully blank-faced maid coming to change their semen-soaked sheets. He pushes up on his elbows, watching her get her wallet -- a large hand draped over his midsection now, fingertips scratching idly at his side.

"We could just leave the sheets and let housekeeping take care of it in the morning," he says. There's a small beat of pause, only noticeable because of what he says next. "You could come back to my place with me tonight."

Avery Chase

Avery only gives him an arch look to that. Yes. It's a downgrade from 'brute'. From filthy, sweaty brute, just the way she says it like that, when she says it at all, that seems to send a shiver down his spine, clenching up his viscera and making him hard for her all over again. Peasant is certainly a downgrade from that.

Her eyebrow lifts at his suggestion. She's removing cash from her wallet to set on the nightstand. It looks like quite a lot. They are, after all, semen-soaked sheets that she'll be asking a maid to deal with.

"Well, I'm going to shower," she informs him, talking slowly so his addled post-coital mind will understand, "and I would prefer to sleep a clean body in clean sheets."

Avery puts her wallet away, puts her purse away, and he suggests that she go back with him. She just scoffs at that. "Are you utterly mad? I have things to do in the city, sir. Good christ, you nearly live in Wyoming."

Calden White

It's not a skip in his chest this time. It's closer to a twinge, and less pleasant than a skip. This is his cue to say something witty and light, but Calden misses it. He sits up instead, slowly, his knees drawing up a bit. There's a trace of a frown there. He watches her put money down. His eyes flick back to her face.

"It's all right if you don't want to, Avery," he says, "but I was serious."

Avery Chase

They have hit this bump before. Where they know their cue is to say something breezy, something snappy, some quick and amusing retort. Where they just... can't rise to that occasion for some strange internal reason that takes too long to make it into their expression or their voice. Avery doesn't notice that Calden is serious, no more than he noticed that last time she was trying to tell him that

she liked that. And she liked him.

It's a moment too late, and Avery looks quickly at him. The truth is, she's a bit impatient to be showered and clean, as impatient as he is comfortable in his own filth. She doesn't deride him in her mind for that. She simply notices it. In its own strange way, it both repulses and arouses her. Right now, it's more the latter than the former, but it's also beside the point.

She closes the drawer where her pretty clutch is going now. "I know you were," she says after a moment, looking at her fingertips resting on the edge of the nightstand for a few seconds. Her head tips as she looks at him once more. "But I had thought you'd be staying here tonight."

Calden White

If someone asked him, right now, why he was twingeing -- why he wasn't utterly and completely happy as can be when he just finished fucking a scintillating, charismatic venus of a woman -- it'd take him a while to even piece it all together. To draw the line, embarrassing and absurd, from how they went from wrecking each other in that bed

to her laughing at him when he put his hand over her breast, and pushing him away, and calling him a peasant, and getting out of bed,

to the money on the dresser,

to her scoff that his home was just too far away for her to bother. None of which, of course, was meant maliciously or cruelly or even all that seriously by her, and he knows that, of course he does; but in some odd way that makes it harder to deal with. Harder to sort out and put aside. Harder to even identify and clarify, even for himself.

There's this much, though. When she tells him she'd assumed he'd stay the night, he smiles. It's a little rueful, and a little wry, but it's there. And he puts a hand on the edge of the mattress and gets up, padding barefoot and -- well, bare -- across the room. He passes close to her, though he doesn't pull her back into his arms. He picks up the phone instead, thumb and ring and pinky around the receiver, fore and middle fingers still holding down the hook.

"I'd like to," he says. "I wasn't sure the invitation was for the whole night."

Avery Chase

Calden doesn't understand himself. Avery doesn't either. She doesn't understand his ease, his laughter and how it can so easily, so quickly swing to that look on his face, that way his hands trail over her like he's loathe to let her go. Nor does she understand her eagerness for him, her fleeting adoration of him, the way she clings to him, the way she thinks it would be very nice to keep him here and sleep in his arms, and yet

how she wants to balk and run, even if it means kicking him out to the street, when he looks at her that way. The way he does then, just before the smile, when he's telling her I was serious.

"Well," she says, a touch too light, "now you are sure, are you not?"

He walks nakedly past her. An invisible shiver goes through her. "You certainly aren't required to," she adds. "I would be a terrible hostess if I turned you out onto the street at this point, wouldn't I?"

Calden White

There's something not very light, not very playful, not very droll and charming and diverting at all just beneath the surface. Perhaps it's an argument. Perhaps -- worse? -- it's genuine attachment. Either way, both of them are making a concerted effort now to leave it there. Her tone's just a touch too light. And he is resolving silently to pick up on his cue this time. Be light, be witty, be playful.

"I am," he replies, that smile relaxing into something a little warmer, a little broader. "And you just might be."

He takes his finger off the cradle, sets the phone to his ear. "Go on," he says, nodding toward the bathroom. "I'll join you when I've made the call."

Avery Chase

[perception + empathy]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )

Calden White

[he likes her and he wants them to have a good time together! but there may be SOMETHING MOAR UNDER THE SURFACE.]

Avery Chase

They have been at least somewhat honest with each other: he likes her. She likes him. They enjoy being around each other. They enjoy being together, or other nice ways of saying they adore fucking the living hell out of each other. And they have met twice, and know next to nothing about one another.

Avery is watching him sidelong as he answers, how he takes a mighty step up from something true to something appropriate, and she just gives a small nod, smiling. She turns away to walk to the bathroom, and all the while she's wishing she hadn't said that, wishing she hadn't said she assumed he was staying here, she's not sure she truly wants that, she's not sure what it is going to wreak in the long-term.

She takes a breath. Behind her she hears him speaking with the concierge, giving her room number and request. The water turns on, instantly hot, and she doesn't hear anything else until Calden is joining her.

This shower, unlike the other one, manages to go on without any funny business. This time it's Avery who is rather businesslike about it all. She washes and conditions her hair. She washes her face gently and then methodically, thoroughly cleanses their conjoined sweat and cum from her entire body. She washes off the smell of Ziggie's as well, and shares the water with an almost uncanny sense of timing: now it is her turn, now it is Calden's, now it is hers again.

This time, Avery does not reach for his cock or lick his nipples or press her bare, slippery breasts against his body. That she is uneasy isn't hard to catch; her silence alone is hint of that. She shares graciously, but there's a distance there. A cordial, affectionate, even playful ...detachment.