It does say something that he doesn't scramble. Now, when he has her, when he has permission, even when he's pawed at her, reached for her, resisted every time she's pushed his hand away -- he doesn't gush with thanks and simply plow into her. Her thighs slide softly apart and around him and he sinks between them, feeling the wet slide of her body against his own until he finds a way into her. The heat between them is unimaginable. It's unimaginable that it could be so hot, and so sustained, and not consume them completely.
Avery is looking at him. She is watching him, staring up at him, and they've been here before at least once -- with Avery pleased, with her wrecked, and Calden on the verge of losing his mind in eagerness to be inside of her, to come inside of her. The last time, he --
--
She gasps when he thrusts into her like that, a sharp intake of breath that is lost underneath his own. Avery isn't holding him, touching him, stroking his arms and shoulders, so he does not feel suddenly her fingernails dig into his flesh, but her hands clutch at the sheets beneath her then. Thoughts flash through her mind, there and gone and forgotten. Her body is a traitor and wants him, clenches around him though it sets her on fire to do so. She turns her face to the side, eyes closing and lips parting, while Calden is holding her, or trying to, and kissing her, or trying to.
And coming into her, with all that considerable -- even overpowering -- strength of his, and making her feel such things, things so strong and at such odds with each other. Her hands uncurl from the sheets. She runs them up his sides, heaving with his breath as they are. Absurdly, she thinks of a horse after a race. She holds her palms against his ribs, feeling the expansion of his lungs, feeling the deep, rapid thudding of his heart.
--
He remembers not to crush her. In the aftermath, at least, when he can feel the limits of his own skull again. He shifts off of her, stays inside of her, and Avery is looking at him, following him with her eyes, letting him slip from her palms. She is a little sweaty and her cheeks are still flushed and her eyes gleam with the intellect that both feeds and supports her wit, that remains even when her wit and humor are set aside. He's very warm, and the cool temperatures of her condo begins instantly to make her crave that warmth even when a moment ago she felt like she couldn't bear the heat any longer.
Avery lies there, supine and supple, catching her own breath, while he moves his hand to cover her breast, touch her nipple. He thrusts and she
draws back a little from it, rather than leaning into it, leaning into him. It's a subtle thing. She does smile at his quip, though it's the merest twitch of her lips, a dry and shadowed thing. He's more serious then, telling her he's never had to ask permission. She almost asks him if he liked it. She does want to know. He seems serious. Instead she says, the words coming out with her breath, on a whisper:
"I don't think I'll have you do that again."
Calden WhiteCalden's mouth moves a little; it's a faint smile, and it's a little wry, but it is warm. His hand slips down a little from her breast. It covers her ribcage instead, curving gently around the slope of her bones, her body.
"I liked it," he says softly, though she hadn't asked. Though he didn't know she thought to ask. His chest expands, a deep breath. "I wouldn't like it every time, though," he adds. A concession. Or maybe a confession.
A few moments go by. Then his brow furrows a little. That hand of his skims down her body to her waist, her hip. They're closer together there. Still tangled and entwined.
"Was I too rough?"
Avery ChaseAvery tells him she isn't going to ask him to request permission to come again, and he tells her he liked it. She's not sure if he's trying to reassure her about this, if he even senses her drawing away from him and thinks perhaps she's worried that he resents her, something like that. She can't tell. Calden admits he wouldn't enjoy that every time, though, and Avery decides he isn't trying to reassure her. He's touching her and she hates that she wants to recoil. He asks her if he was too rough and she says,
"Again,"
and she hates that the word comes so easily, so fiercely to her lips, just as much as she hates how easily her rage is roused by pain, discomfort, fear. Managing her temper did not used to require so very much of her time and energy. Maintaining grace despite heightening emotion did not use to be a matter of life and death. At least: not someone else's life and death.
Avery draws away. She can't think like this, with him inside of her and looking at her like that and her skin aching to shift, to stretch, to grow strong and self-protective and lethal. Something stronger. Something not still so seemingly human, and human in its fragility. Her hips lift and she withdraws from him, minutes -- if that -- since the moment that he drew out of her because he couldn't bear it, he couldn't think, he couldn't control himself if he stayed. She is not sure what to do. What she wants to do is curl up, her back to him, all the soft parts of her blocked. What she wants to do is show him how it feels to be tender, to be trusting, to be sensitive, and to be treated carelessly. What she wants to do is be gracious, and be compassionate and merciful, and be reasonable about all this. Understanding. And none of these, nothing she can think of, seems like a good idea. Or feels right.
She exhales, and they are no longer entangled, entwined, connected, though she hasn't shifted away so much as to pull herself out from under his palm where it rests on her hip. She isn't looking at him. "I won't tease you like that again. I think that's for the best."
Calden WhiteAnd so, gradually and inescapably and completely, Calden grows aware of the new rift between them, and the fact that he's destroyed some measure of her trust, and the fact that he's hurt her.
Again.
That's the word that drives it home. The nail in the coffin, so to speak. It sends a flinch flashing through him, though perhaps that's not fair: what right does he have to flinch? She draws away, then, and he doesn't try to keep her. He does rise up on his elbow though. He's frowning.
"Why didn't you tell me I was hurting you?" he asks. It's not accusatory. It's a question; it's an ache. "Or stop me."
Avery ChaseHis tone isn't accusatory, or at least not intentionally so, but it's hard not to hear it that way. Avery gives him a Look, staring at him a moment as though she's faintly astounded by the questions. There are a number of answers, some explicit and some angry and others unsure. In the end she gives a small shake of her head. "Why weren't you more careful?" she asks, and while on the one hand the question is in earnest, wondering truly why he didn't notice, why he approached her so roughly at all, why he forgot the delicacy of her body and the sheer strength of his own, why he forgot that night on his guest bed,
on the other hand she is merely handing him his question back to him: a similar tone, a similar shift in responsibility and obligation. A picture of: here, see? It can be anyone's fault, depending on how you phrase an inquiry. Why didn't yous and You should haves can go either way, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
And hidden under the third shell, the answer to that second question of this: why didn't she stop him. Lift the shell.
Because grace, and strength, sometimes mean suffering that which you know you can endure so that you do not inflict upon others what you know they cannot.
Calden WhiteShe reflects the question back to him; leaves him a little at a loss. He shakes his head, regretful, answerless. A moment goes by.
"I suppose I thought ... because of how it was before ... I thought it wouldn't be too much."
The answer is fragmentary. Pieces. He struggles for words, reasons, so soon in the aftermath that his own mind is still half-scattered. That his skin is still aching for the touch of her; wants to be near her, close to her, touching her again. He doesn't reach for her, though. After a moment he rolls onto his back, sighing.
"I wasn't thinking very much at all," he adds. Admits. "I should have been more careful with you. I'm sorry."
His head turns, a dim rustle of his hair against her sheets. He looks at her.
"Will you tell me if I'm being too rough, next time?" -- softly, that. A moment later he adds, softer still: "If you still want there to be a next time between us."
Avery ChaseAs soon as it ended, he felt her drawing away from him. When he was only so slightly rolled off of her but still as close as he could be to her, when he was reaching for her to touch her breast, rub her nipple, she shifted away from his hand. He flexed into her, or started, and felt her recoil from him. And that progression of distance between them has been steady. Even when he reached for her again, touching her ribs, her waist, Avery moved away from his touch, drew herself off of his body. It was as though she couldn't bear to be touched -- or maybe she just couldn't bear to be touched by him, right then.
The truth is, she didn't tell him because there was no time. He entered her, it hurt, he was coming, it was over. The truth is, and the core of her frustration with the question, she didn't tell him because she was surprised. Startled. She was shocked that she might have to tell Calden, ever much less again, to not cause her pain. To be careful. By the time the reality settled in her mind, again: it was over. The harsh truth is, she didn't stop him because if she had tried to stop him, if it had been that snap of a decision, that instantaneous, that instinctive, it would not have been a matter of calmly deciding that she is not going to tease him again, she is not going to play like that with him again, because twice now he has leapt on her in a mindless fervor. It isn't the fervor she minds; it's the mindlessness.
Neither of them can lose their minds without risking hurting someone else.
By now, Avery has drawn away from him, is watching him. Her calm is not an effortless thing. In fact it takes a great deal of energy to maintain that soft, gracious facade despite the rather complex turmoil roiling underneath. But she does. It is part of who she is to do so. She can see that he's at a loss. She can see that he regrets, that he feels bad. It does not break her heart, or her calm. And she doesn't let it; she can't. Right now, everything swimming inside of her will become one thing. The one thing that everything, now, descends to when she begins to let her control slip. She seems cool. Distant. She must be.
His question, the first one at least, makes her temper unfurl inside of her, roaring upward, violent and savage. For a heartbeat, she wants to rip him apart. Avery, outwardly, takes a sip of air and slowly exhales. "If you are asking me now... no," she says quietly, giving a small shake of her head. "I do not."
Calden WhiteSomething twists in Calden, hearing that. There's a measure of anger in it, which he knows is unfair, or at least unwise. He pushes it aside
only to discover a sharp twinging ache behind it, dwelling under his breastbone like a nerve caught on a wire. Like a stone in his throat. That's even more unacceptable. He should know better.
Calden turns his face to the ceiling. He frowns at that blankness for a moment. Not very long. "I'm sorry, Avery," he murmurs.
And then he gets up, his weight rolling, setting feet to floor. His back bends as he scrubs his face for a moment. Most of his clothes are here, and he collects them. He doesn't rush, but he doesn't dawdle, either. He steps into his trunks. Then his jeans. Then his shirt, slid on; his socks stuffed into his pocket.
"I can let myself out," he says quietly. They're hardly looking at each other anymore.
Avery Chase[empathy!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Calden White[The anger was just a flash, and tbh - sort of an irrational/immature WELL I DIDN'T KNOW. Then he pretty quickly realized that sort of response belongs in the self-entitled fratdouchebro category and put it aside. It also! -- and I think Avery can probably intuit this because she iz smrt and got 2 succ -- really was a kneejerk >:| that really just overlies a NOOOO BUT I LIKE YOU I NOT WANT THIS BE RUINED FOREBBAR :[[[[[[ response. And right now, he does feel like he's probably Ruined This Forebbar.]
Avery ChaseUnfair or unwise, Calden stomachs his anger. Avery does sense it in him, looking at him askance as he, too, pulls away, but she doesn't address it. He doesn't voice it. They keep their frustrations in check, because at least at the moment they do no good. They can only harm.
It's the rest that she senses that makes her keep looking at him. He likes her, which she knows. He doesn't want to lose this, ruin this, find it so easily lost. And she: does not want to lose this, ruin this, find it so easily lost. At the same time, she recoils as much from the thought of Not Wanting To Lose This as she did from his very touch, a moment ago.
Her throat moves and she swallows, she sighs, and looks away and lifts her eyes but not her chin. To her side, Calden is getting dressed, finding his clothes and tugging them on quickly but not hurriedly. Avery takes a breath, and it's after he's shrugged into his shirt and has moved completely from her bed that she uses that breath to speak.
"Calden," her tone level, calm, still cool but not so distant. "Don't go just yet. I'll --" her eyes glance aside and come to rest on something across the room, then she looks back at him. "Just wait a moment."
Avery slips from the bed and picks up a light robe, slipping her arms through the sleeves and drawing it up. It's peach-colored, with silver and white embroidery at the cuffs and along the hems. It doesn't quite reach her knees. She ties it, shaking her hair back.
Calden WhiteIt's so brutally quiet in the bedroom now that even that inhale is audible. And hearing it gives Calden pause, his fingers hesitating a beat on his buttons. She doesn't say anything. He buttons his shirt.
He's stepped away from her bedside when she does speak. And he turns, looking at her nakedly. From across the room -- across that rumpled bed -- she can see how even now his eyes track to her neck, that toss of her hair. Back to hers.
Wait a moment, she says. And she can see he's not angry; he's not storming out in a huff. His mouth twists a little, wry and self-deprecating, but not smiling. Not this time. He looks away and then he looks back.
"I'm not a brute," he says, quietly and earnestly, as though he wanted very much to explain this to her. And he does -- even though he doesn't quite understand yet what exactly it is he's trying to explain. "I might not have the benefit of an Oxford education or a royal title, and I might be completely out of place if I were ever to sit down to dinner with your family. But I'm not uncivilized and I'm not a barbarian and I don't ... it's not something I ever want to do, pinning a woman down and pursuing my own pleasure over or to the exclusion of hers. I'm not a monster.
"So I'm appalled at myself and ashamed of myself right now." He starts to see, himself, where this was going all along. "Because I seem to have behaved exactly like a monster would. And I'm very, very sorry to have treated you with disrespect, like an object or a thing, like you don't matter to me. You do matter to me. Quite a lot, actually. And that makes me sorry too, because I feel like I might have broken something between us that was ... worthwhile. And nice."
Avery ChaseAvery's brows, so much darker than her hair, tug together when he says he's not a brute, and says it so earnestly. She's called him a brute several times. And a beast, and a barbarian, and a few other choice phrases, and she has said them all with some degree of fondness or appreciation. She has also told him -- ordered him -- to get up on his hands, leverage his strength, and fuck her.
She has told him, though perhaps not in so many words, not to take this too seriously, get too attached to her. Not to fall stupidly, helplessly in love with her, though neither of them have put it quite like that.
Her nimble fingers tie that robe around her waist, the sides of it folded across her front, and she stands at the foot of her own bed, her arm wrapped around and her hand resting on one of the posters with a picturesque, effortless elegance. But as he goes on her arm unwinds, and slips back down to her side, and she walks over toward the chaise where, prior to their truncated dinner, she shoved him down on his ass.
Avery's hand runs across the back, but she doesn't walk around the chaise to sit on it. "I don't think you're a brute or a monster," she tells him. "And I do not think you treated me as an object or a thing. You were just..." she pauses there, frowning at the upholstery, searching for the right word, "reckless."
Another sip of air, and another exhale, and she looks over at him, her hand stilling on the cream-colored fabric that fuzzes softly on her fingertips. Then she does something abhorrent to the upper class and perhaps most people in a country still clinging on so many fronts to puritanism: she simply tells the truth, as bald and basic and messy as it is: "After I come, I do not like to be fucked roughly. And even before that, there is a limit to how forceful it can be before it isn't pleasurable at all. And that is jarring. It's... distracting."
Calden WhiteTruth be told, he's always liked her bald honesty. He's always liked how her graciousness, her gentility, her class doesn't mean she's not direct. And assertive. And certain.
Something flickers in his eyes when she says after I come. And that appalls him a little, too: that even now, words like that can make him want her. That even now, the way she shakes gold from her hair and cinches silk around her waist makes him stare. His jaw tightens a little as he reins his desire in, a repressive gesture out of place on a face so given to those slow smiles, those low laughs, those long leisurely glances.
"I don't know what to say," he admits. "I hear you, but saying 'I understand' right now makes it sound like I expect something to happen again. And I don't."
Avery ChaseThat frown of hers is as elegant as any other expression on her face, and her frowns are usually so thoughtful. "I said that because you seemed to want an answer right then," Avery tells him. "Unless you need some certainty one way or the other, I would prefer not to live under bans and imperatives imposed in conflicted moments."
Calden WhiteCalden can't help this any more than he can help the flickering forks of desire when he looks at her like this, wearing that, in here:
the corners of his mouth twitch; he wants to smile. Not out of relief, or because he suddenly sees hope again. It's not that. It's just that the things she says, and the way she thinks: it's so Avery. He hardly knows her, but already he can see that much. The consistency, the self-certainty.
"I don't need certainty," he says quietly, and with the good grace not to point out they've never had any certainty with each other, anyway. A pause. "I understand," he adds.
Avery ChaseShe's a judge. For her people and the nation, she decides between disputes. She studies the law. She's young still, though old for a Cliath, but this is who she is now. The kinfolk she thought she was died, and then a new philodox was born in her place, with her blood, with her scars, with her thoughtful eyes. And of course she knows herself, and she means what she says: she told him no because he sounded like he wanted an answer to whether or not she was done with him. Forever.
His lips twitch and her eyebrow arches slightly, but not in anger. One corner of her mouth curves slightly, smirks slightly. "Good," she says, and looks down at her hand on the upholstery again. She draws her lips in, licks them, exhales.
Calden WhiteThat small smirk of hers draws his smile out after all. It's faint and it's slight, but it's there. He smiles at her a moment, and then he takes a breath, squaring his shoulder a bit, hiking a thumb in the direction of her bathroom.
"Mind if I borrow your shower?" he says.
Avery ChaseAvery takes a breath, huffs it out in something like a dry laugh. "I don't. Of course not," she tells him, and gives a small shake of her head, smiling that small, gracious smile. She looks at him again. "There are fresh towels laid out. Use anything you need."
Calden White"Bad hostess my ass," he says, and turns to walk toward the ensuite --
-- only to stop a few paces away. He thinks a beat; then he turns. Looks at her, standing by her chaise longue, her fingertips grazing the upholstery. "Avery," he says, serious again: "you gonna be all right?"
[EMPAFEE. just... a general read on how she is, how she's feeling about the situation/him/them, and whether he should stick around or just shower quickly and get out of her hair!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Calden White[it was +1 in dicebag :[ ]
Avery Chase[4 suxx, goddamn. On the surface, Avery is merely gracious, patient, and it's pretty evident that this is how she deals with a lot of internal conflict. Beneath that, however, there's some still slightly evident but murkier territory: she isn't sure whether she can or should trust him, but she does like him. Not even just in a romantic/sexual sense: she just likes him. Deeper still, Calden can read in her some still-flickering desire for him and for closeness, harder to feel because up until now (the smiles, the eyebrow quirking) that element had been pretty well snuffed out, and because she's not sure she can/should trust him, she's uncomfortable with that desire, but simultaneously torn: maybe she's just caught up in the surprise and unpleasantness and overreacting to it. She's not quite sure herself, which makes her internally unsteady about how to behave. Deepest of all, he can sense in her hints of her madness: when in doubt, withdraw. Emotionally, physically, entirely. He can almost see her warring against it inside, and how all those other feelings -- the confusion around trust, the desire, the resistance to herself -- tie into her fear of succumbing to her ever-so-well-hidden derangement.]
Avery ChaseAvery exhales, not quite a laugh. It's the second time in as many moments. She shakes her head and, as he walks away, she moves toward her nightstand. She's going to pick up her jewelry. She's going to lay it aside to be polished before it's put away. She is going to find something to do with her hands.
Calden stops, and says her name. She turns to look at him, hair sliding off her shoulder and swinging down her back. The line of her jaw is a work of art in and of itself, in this light or any other. She regards him for a moment, thoughtful, then smiles gently. "Of course, Calden. I'll be fine."
Calden WhiteOf course she'll be fine. There's truth in that, clear and indisputable. How could a woman like her, a wolf like her, a queen like her, so obviously chosen by all the powers above and below, not be fine? She may as well embody perfection, self-evident and self-renewing.
And yet -- there's a lie in that, too. Because Avery, like every other Silver Fang in the whole wide world, is deeply, irreparably, fatally flawed. Achilles had his heel. The Silver Fangs have their madness. For a moment there Calden sees it, thinks he sees it. It makes something in his face change.
He comes across the room to her, brawny, hotblooded, wellmade creature; not a king, no, but a fit tribute to any queen. His own tribe -- surely one of the more chauvinistic of tribes, one of the ones most obsessed with notions of masculinity and virility, with wine, women, song, sex -- his own tribe has myths and rituals going back thousands of years. It's the god who is offered up to the goddess in the full flush of summer, a ritual sacrifice of fecundity. It's the god who succumbs to the dead of winter only to be reborn in the spring, a ritual sacrifice of death and resurrection.
She is not a goddess. He is not a god. But in some subtle, unconscious sense, something of the same tide seems to move them. It's so often a game between them, the lady and the serf; but not always. Some antiquated instinct of tribute that most the world has long since forgotten seems to live on in him: to offer to her his land, his hearth, the animals he raised, the crop he harvested; and himself. Most of all, himself.
That's not why he comes to her now, though. It's something at once deeper than that and less universal, less timeless. It's not lady and serf; it's not goddess and tribute. It's -- smaller than that, but more treacherous: it's him and her, and it's the same thing that sometimes makes his heart turn over in his chest when he looks at her.
He doesn't take her in his arms, though he'd like to. Maybe she can sense that he'd like to. He does reach out to her though, carefully and gently, as though she were a wild animal, wary, prone to flight or sudden violence. Which, really -- she is. She could be, if she let herself.
His hand cups her cheek, if she lets him. And if she lets him -- it slides behind her head; he steps into her, his body close to hers, close enough that an arm around her would make this an embrace. It's not an embrace. It's just: nearness. And his brow to hers, for a moment. There's an element of apology in it. Perhaps a touch of entreaty. Perhaps a thread of comfort.
Avery ChaseHer back is to him. He is going to shower; she is going to arrange her jewelry on a velvet tray and set it out for a maid to take care of. She doesn't really have to do that: set it out on a tray, that is. She's currently trying to remember if she knows where they're kept or where her maids get them. They usually just pick it up from wherever it's been dropped and Take Care Of It. Avery, who once had a mother and was a curious child, does know what happens to the jewelry when it's taken away. It's cleaned and it's polished and it is put in her jewelry armoire just like her mother's was. They gave her a jewelry armoire of her own when she was thirteen and would not do anything silly, like putting stickers on it. That was also when they allowed her to get her ears pierced. So that was where her charm bracelet and her pearls and her new earrings and her heart pendant -- a gift 'from' her baby brother -- were carefully put away, nestled in the pink velvet within a cherry case.
She still has that smaller armoire somewhere. They used to say that if she had a daughter -- or a granddaughter, one day -- she could give it to them. But now Avery's jewelry rests in her mother's armoire, which was her mother's mother's as well. Mahogany and black velvet. Every piece shines like a small star in the darkness in that thing. She loves the way it unfurls: the sides, the drawers, the slender arms that swing out. It's such a clever piece of furniture, and folds up so neatly when she's done looking through it all. She loves finding the little gold ring of her family crest she was given when she was six, and how it doesn't even fit all the way down on her pinky now. She still has her charm bracelet. Sometimes, on a whim, her father still gives her charms for it. She seldom wears it.
This is what Avery is thinking of now, as she arranges her bracelets and her earrings and so on. She cannot see Calden, but she can hear him, sense him, smell him. He does not go to the bathroom and close the door to have a piss and start the shower. He is walking over to her, and she keeps her back to him as though she is oblivious.
And Calden comes alongside her and touches her. Not her shoulder or anything like that, but her jaw, and almost involuntarily, Avery's eyes slip closed. She sighs, her shoulders rounding down, and without quite thinking of it, she tips her head into that caress, longing for that offer of comfort. Of succor. Of kinship. In the end, the truth of the matter for her is that who he is and who she is is inextricable from the myths and the archetypes they enact, the ancient laws of dynamic gods sacrificing themselves to eternal goddesses, serfs offering tributes to queens, men coming to women because they have no other pathway to touching creation itself, and their souls demand it. In the end, what she feels for him and what he feels for her is no more, but no less, important than the simple reality that she is a wolf, and he is kin to wolves, and she
needs him
more than he
needs her.
--
His fingers touch her cheek, her body begins turning more toward his, and she accepts his embrace when he comes closer, wrapping his free arm around her. She does not just accept it; she seeks it, resting her head on his chest and sighing, letting go of the combat between her madness and her grace, her wariness and her fury, her certainty and her doubt. For a moment or two, at least, she can just let it be this.
Calden rests his brow on Avery's. Avery makes a small sound. In another form it would be a low whuff of comfort, of acceptance, of acknowledgement.
Calden WhiteSo he does embrace her after all. When she turns into his touch, he steps into her. When she leans into his body, his arm comes around her almost of its own accord. He wasn't going to hold her. Not because he didn't want to, but because -- he wasn't sure if she wanted him to. She could hardly stand to be touched by him, moments ago.
She does want to. She sighs, and she seems to let something go. Some weight, some strain, some invisible tension slipping out of her. It's not as though she swoons or melts against his chest, but --
it's not just him, giving himself to her, after all. She gives some part of herself over to him like this. And he accepts it, his arm coming strong around her, one and then the other, holding her there beside her bed; the sapphire and the cream.
Eventually they draw apart. It wasn't so long an embrace after all. A matter of moments. A minute, maybe two on the outside. His hands cup her face as they withdraw. He goes to kiss her brow, but --
she stops him, and he looks at her, and
the truth is he wanted to kiss her. Full stop. He wants to.
Calden doesn't, though. It seems too soon, the moment too raw. Or maybe he's just afraid he won't be able to stop, he still smells like sex and she's still wearing a robe that would come apart with a tug, lay open and flutter down with a brush of his hand, and then he could open her legs and sink to his knees and,
and,
and jesus christ stop thinking about it.
So he doesn't kiss her. Not on the brow, and not on the mouth. Not on the throat. Not on the swell of her breasts, glimpsed in the shadow of her robe. His hands brush rough past her cheeks as they fall, and then he gives her this smile, this lopsided thing somewhere between earnest and wry.
"I'll see you in a bit," he says.
He passes those walk-in closets; two of them, designed for the man and lady of the house. Perhaps she's only using one. Perhaps she's filled them both. Or maybe they're as empty as her cupboards. Calden doesn't look, and he certainly doesn't pry. He passes them, and then there's the door to the bathroom, the vast tiled and mirrored spaces within: a tub not merely large enough for two but practically designed for two; a separate shower as large as a Manhattan tenement room.
It's the shower he goes to, shedding those clothes that were clean when he changed into them at the end of the day, which are now nowhere close to clean. He tosses his jeans on the edge of the tub, and his shirt; his boxers atop. His socks are still tucked in his pants pocket. By then the water is scalding hot, roiling steam. He steps in, bare feet on the almost imperceptibly center-sloping floor of the shower, and he washes from his skin the traceries of all the things they did to and with each other.
A long shower, for him. Some fifteen minutes later, Calden emerges drenched, squeaking clean. Soaked through, there isn't a shred of auburn left in his hair, and not much wave or curl either. Heat has brought the flush to his cheek, though, brought out the underlying ruddiness of his complexion. He borrows a towel from her rack, tucking it around his waist. A quick palm of his jaw tells him the first hints of stubble and roughness were starting to rear their heads again, but it can't be helped; as much as he doesn't mind -- hell, downright revels -- in faceplanting between Avery's legs, borrowing her razor to shave his face is somehow another story altogether.
Steam drifts out the top of the door when he emerges from the bathroom, his discarded clothes limp in one hand. He pads back up that short hall past Avery's closets, looking for the lady herself.
Avery ChaseCalden, in a sense, all but falls over himself to give the comfort that she is seeking, that he now knows he is permitted to give. No one would blame him for feeling relieved, for feeling forgiven, for feeling like he isn't a monster, after all.
Avery, for her part, is relieved as well. Relieved that she can stand to be touched -- in fact, wants to be touched. Relieved that she can relax a little, and maybe not be quite so gracious. Something unspoken passed between them, when he looked at her and saw what she didn't intend to be seen but was also not actively hiding. Something of what has and has not been said was resolved, or at least reconciled, and now he can hold her again, and she can be held.
For perhaps a minute, they just rest together like that. His arms around her. Her arms around his waist. Her head against his chest. He smells like round after round of sex, to tell the truth. He smells like steak and wine and sweat. She feels stirred by the scent of him, the memory of him and those like him that swims in his veins and in her soul. But Avery does not lift herself onto him and kiss him again, unfolding her robe and urging him to carry her to her bed again. again. again.
Calden slips away from her slowly, touching her face, and as he leans forward, she draws back. He is moving to kiss her brow, and her eyebrows tug together slightly as she pulls away from it. "Don't do that," she tells him quietly, but with the diffidence of backbone. There's an underlying sense of why: the sense that she finds it disturbing, that this is the sort of thing a parent does, not a lover, that it is infantalizing, that it repulses and offends her on some level. She does not seem angry, though. And he doesn't move to kiss her mouth instead, or her neck, or work his way down her body, longing to worship, longing for nearness, longing for whatever it is that makes him so agog for her.
His hands drift from her. He smiles, halfway. He leaves her, and she relaxes into the quiet that is left behind.
--
While he is gone, Avery finishes toying with her jewelry. She never finds a velvet tray to set it all on, so she merely arranges it neatly on the coffee table beside the chaise and the armchairs. She does not make her bed but she flips the covers back, smooths them a little til the blue sky of her bedspread is visible again above the cream and gold of her sheets. It makes her smile. She walks to the kitchen and gets the opened bottle of red wine and two glasses, carrying them back to her room. She wonders if she needs coasters, and looks in the drawer of the coffee table and discovers that some have been appointed to that spot. That makes her smile, too.
Avery pours herself a glass, and pours one for Calden, and sips at hers, lounging on the chaise. Her legs are to one side, ankles crossed, while she sips her wine and wonders where her phone is. She momentarily forgets that she isn't completely alone in the condo, and then the water shuts off. Her lashes fall and rise again; she lifts up a bit, aware that her hem is rucked up, that the sides of her robe have slid a little from her breasts, and as she's rearranging herself a bit, Calden comes out of the bathroom
still wet
and wearing a towel around his waist.
The bottom drops out from beneath Avery's isolation for a moment. For a moment, all she wants is to pull him to her, raking her nails down his chest and bumping over the ridges of his abdominals, clawing up his flank. She wants him inside of her, lifted on those arms of his, panting as he fucks her again. But then there's a quick internal flinch, a sudden recoiling: when that line is crossed between what is firm and feels divine and what is sharp and startling and feels jarring, painful, disconnecting and lonesome. She wishes, deeply and sorrowfully, that it hadn't happened twice. Avery draws back in on herself a little, against the side of the chaise, smoothing her robe against her thigh, a slight tuck of her shoulders enough of a signal that she, perhaps, is still to be approached with caution.
All she's done is look at him. And then she nods her head at the coffee table, at the two glasses of wine -- though one is in her hand, of course. It's an unspoken invitation. If he would like to come sit. If he'd like to relax for a while. Drink some of the Syrah he brought for her.
Calden WhiteCalden doesn't even realize how exactly he made her feel. He knows it wasn't good for her; he knows it was physically unpleasant, painful, not something to be enjoyed but something to be borne. It grieves him. It shames him. But he doesn't know that it wasn't just the pain. In some ways, perhaps the pain itself wasn't even the worst of it.
He was careless with her. He was reckless. He broke the connection. He made her feel alone. Perhaps it's a form of mercy, intentional or not, that Avery never told him that. Or perhaps it's just another measure of distance between them.
Nevertheless: she poured two glasses of wine. And when he comes out of the shower, his eyes roving for her, she looks at him
like she might want to eat him alive
and like she might not really even know who he is
before their eyes meet and she nods him at the glass of syrah. It's the one he tried to give her a nearly a month ago, and he was right: it's a good one, especially for the sort of dinner they had. Bold, spicy, dark. He crosses the room to her, murmuring a thank-you as he bends to pick the glass up. Drinks it like it's water, like it quenches thirst, draining most of the glass in a couple pulls.
Then he sits. Beside her, but not on the chaise: on the floor, leaning against her furniture, his legs stretched out across the carpet. He's near enough to her that her knee brushes his shoulderblade, the back of his arm. Her shin brushes his back. He drains the last of the wine and then reaches to pour himself another glass; then switches it to the other hand and tops her glass off -- backwards, over his shoulder.
The bottle goes back on the table. This second glass goes slower for him. Slow, long sips, tasting the wine, letting it slide tart and full over his tongue before each swallow. A few moments go by. Neither of them speak. Then he reaches over. He slides his hand warmly around her ankle, and up; he wraps his arm loosely around her lower leg, his bicep to the inside of her calf, the outside of her leg against the side of his chest. There, his skin is still faintly damp. His hair too, dripping tiny trickles down his neck, beading on his back. Gently, he lays a kiss over her knee.
"Thank you," he murmurs. "For letting me stay." And a moment later: "For staying with me."
Avery ChaseShe looks away from him as he crosses her bedroom, this sanctum of elegance and warmth. And it is warm: not in temperature, which is kept cool against the warmth of the days outside and because that is how Avery prefers it, but in ambience. The colors are crisp blue and cream, yes, but the darkness of the mahogany and the gold light cast by her lamps creates the feeling of something darker, something softer, than those colors would otherwise inspire. There is only a nod to the icy origins of the Fangs in this room, but this is the den of a creature who was born of the earth, lives in the dark, worships the moon, and loves the sun. That creature who, it seems, can't bear to look at him when he walks through that den toward her.
Her eyes do turn to him when he lifts his glass and drinks it, drains it, and she feels -- yet again -- the duality of her nature, felt perhaps more keenly by the Philodoxes than any other auspice. Light and dark. Order and chaos. Leadership and madness. Desire and fear. And everything, everything, her very sanity, balanced on the line between the two. The line curves, and the conflict shudders through her, and she does not know what to do.
Avery's eyes continue to track him as he lowers himself to the ground. Something about that feels so right, so correct, that she hardly even notices that a moment ago she expected he would sit beside her on the chaise. Her leg rests long, warm and motionless against his side, against his back. He sits as though to be there comforts him, and Avery finds that it comforts her, too. Her hand, almost without her willing it, drifts out to begin stroking his hair. It's wet, of course, and not at all as soothing as this gesture would be if it were dry, but she combs it back over his ear with her fingernails all the same.
He pours himself a new glass. He adds a few mouthfuls to hers. Avery smiles, and he can see her in the reflection of a grand mirror hanging on the wall, looking down at them, letting them see each other's faces if they like. But Avery doesn't look at his reflection. She looks at him there, the real and solid version of him, sitting at her feet and pouring her wine, washed clean and next to naked in her boudoir. It stirs something in her, ancient and powerful.
Quietly, almost silently, Calden sips his new glass and Avery strokes his hair, again and again, slow and rhythmic. She does not stop, and she does not startle, when Calden reaches for her. It does not occur to her that he is drunken and wanton suddenly, that he wants her, that his hand is going to reach for the tie of her robe or underneath its hem, please, please, yes, there. He just runs his hand up that smooth leg, wraps his arm around her, hugs her shin and calf, turning his face to kiss her knee. This, too, feels right. And she imagines him comforted yet again, finds herself endeared in a way that, again, feels older than her years, more powerful than either of them alone.
Avery does not speak, at least not immediately, in answer to his words. She has not gotten up to go shower herself for the second time, and still vaguely feels their last bout of sex on her skin. She touches his hair. She lets him hold her leg just like that, embracing her just that way, and sips her wine.
--
Not so long ago, he looked at her, and he saw her deeply. She was putting on her robe, hiding her flesh, binding it in a knot around herself. He saw that sherbert-colored cloth lift up over the scar on her back, cross over the scar on her breast, and it was as though there were still a hole through her, letting him see everything. The warring longings, for closeness and for self-protection, the conflict between grace and strength and utter honesty, utter vulnerability. He saw that she does not want to be so troubled, to be so easily thrown, to be so jarred by a moment of sharp, unwanted roughness that a few moments before had been cried out for, even demanded. He saw
that she likes him. Genuinely and in a friendly, companionable sense. He could even see that for a person like Avery, perhaps a bit old-fashioned and perhaps just a bit genteel, that softer flicker of easy warmth is what is made of gold. That liking him is stronger than wanting him, matters more than desiring him, and yet brings with it a great deal of its own conflict. He's not of her tribe. She told him enough that he knows her heart was perhaps too-recently broken to feel such a thing and simply revel in it.
Most of all, though, he saw her self-doubt, her uncertainty, her fear and hatred of that confusion and unsteadiness. He saw that coiled around her heart, like the hearts of all who are as pure as she is, there is a bone-deep damage, a spiritual and perhaps even genetic curse. She knows it. They all know it, however they deny it. Avery is not the sort to deny any truth so plainly in evidence. Underneath everything else, she knows there's madness. And knowing that, how can she trust her own judgement? How can she trust even her own perception?
She may as well retreat from the world. She may as well wait out her days in what comfort and luxury she can afford, until those days pass into weeks, months, years, until the madness consumes her and she can just
stop
fighting it.
--
So Avery is quiet. She touches him like she cannot quite stop, as though now that he is embracing a part of her she must reach out, and make contact, and maintain that contact. It steadies her, the way that arranging her jewelry on the coffee table before them steadied her. There is disorder in her mind, but she can create order around her, she can find patterns to hold onto, to hang things on. If these things can be settled, if she can understand them, then she can begin to reset her perceptions. Trust them again.
Calden came back to her, and sat at her feet, and embraced her and kissed her knee, thanked her for letting him stay. He wants to be here with her, even if she is silent and withdrawn and lost inside herself. He longs to touch her again, still, as she finds herself flickering on and off with desire for him as well. The wine is good, and she knows that from taste and from his recommendation and because she knows with some certainty that he would never bring her a bottle of wine that he did not think was very fine indeed. She has seen the way he appointed his home and how he moved within it. She has seen his cellar. Calden has good taste. Calden wants to impress her, and please her, or, perhaps more accurately: Calden wants her to be pleased and impressed by what he is, what he has, what he can give to her. Maybe just simply: he likes to see her pleased.
Her hand drifts down and turns, the backs of her fingers stroking his jaw. She, too, feels the shadow of bristle already growing back in though he shaved just a few hours ago. It makes her smile, a quirk of her lips to the side, wry and amused. He prefers the way he wears what he called 'the rugged look' to this, but he shaved his face anyway. Because she requested it. Because he does not just submit to going down on her when she begs prettily but craves it, goes after her like a parched man goes after water, groaning between her legs as though he's the one being pleasured. Because she implied that if he didn't shave his jaw, she wouldn't let him kiss her there.
Drowsily, slowly, Avery's knuckles stroke his jaw from the lobe of his ear to the edge of his chin and back again, gently touching his cheek, brushing under his jaw close to his throat.
"You know of the curse on my tribe?" she murmurs quietly. It is a question. However much it might sound like an assumption.
Calden WhiteIt does feel right that he should sit here like this. At her feet, in her boudoir, sprawled nearly naked and langourous like some great cat in the shade -- a handful of steps from that altar of a bed where he dedicated himself to her. It feels right that he should anchor her leg loosely to his side, and that she should run her fingers through his hair. It feels right that he should kiss her knee like that.
He is not mindless or will-less. He is not her slave. He does like to please her, though, and see her pleased. Some of that comes from that deep, ancient urge to offer tribute to one so flawless; such an icon of nobility. Some of that is -- seems, anyway -- more personal, more unique. Some magic or chemistry particular to her, and him, and what they have between them. It is not simply rituals and games for him. She is not interchangeable with any other Silver Fang or fancy lady or what-have-you to him. For a moment, unbidden, he thinks of how she took him in those last moments before her orgasm --
face turned away, eyes closed, his name nowhere near her lips. He wonders if he might not be interchangeable with any other rough underbred male with nice arms and a nice cock who might have and might yet share her bed. It's dangerous territory for his thoughts to wander, and so
he pulls them back. Enough; hadn't she warned him, if not quite in so many words, not to take this too seriously? Hadn't he promised to be satisfied? But then: that genuine warmth, that friendly affection. The way she allowed herself to be held and comforted by him. Surely, surely that counts for something.
His thumb traces a light arc over her calf. Her fingers move through his hair. It is comforting. It is soothing. He lets her comb those thoughts from his mind, and he sips his wine, and gradually the droplets on his skin dry. His hair grows merely damp instead of wet. She
speaks, and he turns his head, enough that she has his profile. He has her knees, the hem of her robe. He can't help a quiet, wry laugh.
"I think everyone knows, Avery," he says, not unkindly. "I can't even remember where or how I first heard it."
He leans back, then. Tips his head back until he can see her like this. Beauty like hers is self-evident and tautological. It stands alone, without need for justification or quantification. He's known she was lovely since the moment he first saw her in this skin, and he's known she was beautiful since she leapt over the bed of his truck and felled that elk in the same seamless motion.
Still; sometimes -- now -- it strikes him anew. Pierces him through, like a lance through his side. It feels bittersweet: to be so perfect, to be so fatally flawed. His exhale is a sigh, and he hugs her leg against his side a little more firmly, as though perhaps his worship and his adoration could --
It can't cure her. He knows that, too.
"Why?"
Avery ChaseThat stings, a little. He can see it in her eyes when he twists a bit, turning his head. You're mad, and everyone knows. We can all tell. He can see how that goes through her, kindly or unkindly spoken. He can see what it must feel like, on some level. The look in her eyes in response to that is something akin to despair. Her hand pauses where it strokes his face, fingers curling, though as far as flinches go, this one is a slow, small thing: her hand stilling, her shoulders rounding down, her crest falling. A flower tucking in on itself to get through the night.
He thinks it bittersweet. She wonders what good there is in trying, and the exhaustion of that thought bleeds through her very skin, insinuates itself in every exhale from her lungs. But she doesn't blame him. She knows the truth of what he says; she just didn't want to assume anything she didn't know about him.
everyone knows beats like a drum in the back of her mind,
everyone knows, laughing at her,
everyone knows, mocking her with wry twists of some eternal mouth, all-consuming, ever-hungry,
everyone knows,
driving her out of her mind.
--
Avery exhales, curling away a little, as aware of herself slipping into insanity as she is of a much more real, understandable pain that even any sane person would feel. She does not draw her leg up and tuck it away from him, does not so completely recoil. There's no resentment in her for him, no anger; he can't remember when he first knew that all of them are out of their minds, but she can remember quite clearly the first time that she could not get herself out of bed, locked her door, and when no one would stop knocking, she left her family's home and walked away until she could not hear a single voice, until she could not sense anything else living, and thought that it would be quite nice to stay there forever, to be alone forever, to never ever ever have to face anyone again.
She was eleven. Her family was in a panic. When the questing stone found her she hid, and wept, and begged to be left where she was even as she was being carried back. The family doctor came to the house and gave her an IV to rehydrate her. That was the most unpleasant part; she decided to be more mindful next time, so at least she wouldn't have to get an IV again.
Her father gave her The Talk after that. Not the one that all adolescents get. The one that young Silver Fangs get, if they are lucky, and few are as lucky as Avery. This is what we are. This is why. This is what you must do.
She remembers.
--
But Calden hugs her leg, tight and somewhat adoring, and it hurts her a little that he sees her the way he does. It hurts to consider, right now, that there may be worth in going on, in rising above it, as she always has, as she always must. But it is just so tiring, sometimes, to be a part of the world, to keep such a tight hold on your own mind. It is so easy for the sane, she thinks.
Avery leans against the chaise, cupping the bowl of her wineglass in her palm, the stem held between her fingers, warming the red from beneath with her own body heat.
"You have to understand that I am no different," she murmurs, the words coming from far away, as though each one has to be dredged up, examined, and washed clean before she can say it aloud. It sounds like effort just to speak. To connect. That is because so much of her energy is going toward looking at him, making eye contact, and allowing herself to be touched. But she does make eye contact. She does allow herself to be touched.
This is what you must do. You must not let it consume you. When you feel it come over you, all your instincts are wrong. You must stand your ground when you want to hide. You must speak when you want only silence. You must fight when you want to retreat. You must be very bold and courageous. You must be indomitable. It is a sickness. It is not who you are. Everything else, the things you think are mistakes, the things you think are lies: these are all true. You are a daughter of Gaia, and of Luna, and of Falcon. You are the descendant of queens and empresses. You are strong and bright and wise. These are not mistakes. These are not lies.
Do not give in. You are better than that.
Nice words. It takes everything she has, sometimes, to believe them.
"Sometimes I cannot bear to be touched," Avery tells him quietly. "Sometimes I long to live in a world with a population of one. Sometimes any sound but the silence of my own thoughts seems like it is driving me mad. The presence of other faces makes me feel... panicked and askew. Sometimes..." she trails off a moment, wearied by even this much explanation, then sighs: "sometimes I cannot trust my own judgement, or reconcile all the things I feel in my heart, and the conflict and the uncertainty and the chaos drive me utterly bonkers."
She huffs a laugh at her own choice of word. Bonkers.
Avery's laughter fades, and her expression is sad where she looks at him, touching his face with her gaze, a more ethereal thing than the way he touches her with his full body aligned to her leg to embrace her.
"It is not easy for me to be with you right now. But I like you. And I prefer your company to succumbing to insanity." She draws her glass to her lips, inhaling the scent of the syrah, looking at the depth of the dark liquid, the first time she's looked away from him since he came out in a towel and she wanted to devour him and wanted to hide from him and looked away, looked away because she could not choose a path. "You are of course not obliged to remain," she says, still not quite taking a sip. "I will bear you no ill will when you depart. I only want you to know that you are welcome to stay, despite whatever my demeanor may imply."
She sips.
And then gulps, draining her glass just as he did, sinking every last drop down her throat, exhaling past the dry tannins and black sweetness when she is done. There is not an errant drop to be seen on her lips. Not even one to lick clean.
Calden WhiteCalden can see immediately that he shouldn't have said what he did. That what he said was hurtful and unkind after all; that it makes her flinch
the way it would make anyone flinch.
He doesn't say anything, though. He keeps quiet, and he listens, and when she tells him what she needs to tell him -- explains those dark, painful, cracked inners of her mind to him -- he looks at her achingly. He doesn't pity her. He thinks she is braver than he'd thought, to face her madness so unflinchingly, to articulate it to a lover who,
despite how thoroughly and biblically they've known one another,
is still half a stranger to her.
And what she articulates is, in the end, not so very far from what he's already seen. And in the end his hand strokes down her leg, wraps around her ankle. He kisses her again over her knee, softly.
"I think I had some inkling already," he says quietly. Her madness. Its nature. That despite it, she wants him to stay. "But hearing it helps."
He fills her glass again. The bottle of wine is coming to its dregs. He tops his off, and then there's only a half-inch or so remaining. He leaves it in the bottle, pushes the bottle a little farther away on the coffee table. He thinks of the steak and the green beans and the unopened bottle in the kitchen, but he doesn't move to get them. Instead, Calden relaxes a little more, slouching against the chaise until Avery's leg rides his shoulder; tucks against his side.
He's comforted by her nearness, even if her madness falls like shroud between them, trying to hide her away. He drinks his wine slowly, silently, in gradual sips that warm his bones and loosen his muscles.
"I'm not leaving," he adds. A reassurance, maybe. A statement, more likely. Some small humor curls his mouth again: "I'm staying until you kick me out."
Avery ChaseAll this time they remain in contact: Calden at her feet, her leg to his side, and she goes on thinking that he finds this comforting because it is easier to separate herself out from it, to allow something merely because it does good to someone else and does not harm her. Dissecting what she feels, if anything, to have him there and have him close in this way and to have him holding her leg, only leads to more of the internal confusion that leaves her so shipwrecked on the shores of her own lonely madness.
She focuses on what he feels. Imagines she knows. It is easier, though perhaps not better.
--
Her glass is refilled. She feels rather drunk, all told, but in the pleasantly low, fuzzy, relaxed sense. She does not mind. Her eyes follow the wine bottle as it moves, as the liquid sloshes, as it is pushed away. She focuses on these small things, these concrete things, because they have concise beginnings, middles, and endings. She listens to them, and her eyes grow sleepy with order, with security.
Calden snuggles with her leg. She finds this thoroughly amusing.
"Then we shall become mightily drunk together and fall asleep on whatever furniture we collapse to," Avery declares, and drinks her wine.
Calden WhiteThat draws a slow laugh out of him, unfurling into the quiet of her room. His next swallow is deeper, but then he lowers the glass to his thigh, tipping his head back to see her.
"It's a plan, Miss Chase," he says, "though I'm going to have to go get that other bottle if you're set on getting mightily drunk. I think this," he taps a finger against his wineglass, "is only good for passably drunk."
Avery ChaseThey are loose now with wine, with sex and showers and conversation and weariness. She wants to thank him and the energy to make herself sound sincere to her own ears is not there. She wants to lay her palms to either side of his face and her brow to his brow and breathe the same air and at once she recoils from the thought, from that desire, because it isn't for his body, because it isn't for something simple, because it isn't even for something that is purely pleasurable. She wants to laugh but finds herself only smirking tiredly, her eyes drowsy.
He says he'll have to get that other bottle, because half of one is only enough for passably drunk. She remembers that he is a Fianna. And instead of telling him to go, get the wine then, she merely looks at him, then turns her eyes toward the door to her bedroom, flicking back to him as though to say
well? go on, then.
--
Perhaps he does then, but she does not go with him, and perhaps he does not ask if she wants to. Her leg slides off of his chest and the sensation of it alone arouses her. She watches him and the sight of him arouses her. Some part of her remembers anticipating his arrival and growing wet. Some part of her remembers dressing in lingerie to meet him at the door, but it feels right now that whoever did that was another person, living another life. Avery sips her wine, watching him move, and closes her eyes for half a moment when she is alone.
Her room's walls are thick and the air is silent. She wants to lock the door and keep her eyes closed in that silence forever.
So they snap open. She breathes in. Her heart races suddenly, a small dose of adrenaline shooting through her. No. She is mad but she is not lost. Avery sets her now-empty-again wineglass on the table and walks away from the bedroom door, away from the lock. She goes to the bathroom, she turns on the shower, and she strips from her robe and steps into the water in the two seconds before it has warmed up. She takes a breath under the stream, exhaling. Calden is likely back now, or soon will be, but he'll hear the water and he'll know.
Avery stands there for a little while. She stands there til her breathing has returned to normal and her heart rate has slowed again. All the same it takes her a little time to wash, a little time to drag herself out. That small damaged part of herself is resisting, is crying no, no, no, no, please at the thought of walking out there again. Avery tamps it down. No. She is mad but she is not lost. She likes this man. She enjoys his company and he has her eternal gratitude for his patience and his discretion, which
she realizes,
she never doubted.
--
Some time has passed. She comes out of the bathroom and her hair is combed but still quite wet. Her skin is clean and dried to smoothness. She wears a longer robe now, white cotton so soft that it falls almost like satin around her. For a moment she looks like less of a queen and more of a priestess, but
the way she walks is still regal, barefoot and barely clothed and wet-haired and striding toward him, finding him, accepting more wine.
Calden WhiteThe landscape in Calden's mind is simpler, though still not quite simple. The slide of her leg across his chest and off his shoulder send images through his mind, too. Sends memories through his nerves. He can't think of a single time they've fucked with her legs over his shoulders, but he can think of more than once that he's licked to her orgasm just like that.
She'd seemed so open then. So wanton, so fearless, so molten and present and there. He knew she was mad, of course he did, they're all mad, those shining kings and queens -- but he would not have guessed it would manifest like this. A touch of megalomania, maybe; he could see that. A pathological need for order and politesse, even. But not ... withdrawal. Not her; not Avery, so warm and gracious and vibrant.
It puzzles him, a little, the unexpected pattern of her derangement. It puzzles him, too, that he isn't more bothered by it. By the thought of a werewolf who was quite literally out of her mind. But then, he doesn't think of her like that. A werewolf. Out of her mind.
She's Avery. The woman who stalked toward him in his winecellar and made the first frisson of desire drip down his spine. The wolf dancing with herself over her kill. His date at the hole-in-the-wall. His lover answering the door in lingerie,
and telling him, later on,
you hurt me. again.
Calden is still on the floor when Avery emerges. Or rather, he's on the floor again. And not by the chaise, but sitting with his back to the side of her bed: that emptied bottle of wine taken to the kitchen, rinsed out, set out by the sink to dry and be recycled. There's a fresh bottle on the nightstand, her glass filled, his half-full in his hands.
He has the pan of meat, too. Has it on his lap, balanced atop the towel stretched between his thighs. He's eating rather unabashedly; he's still hungry. When she steps into his view he looks up, he looks at her, he watches her as unabashedly as he eats out of her new pan on the floor of her bedroom. She stands over him like this, but he's large enough or confident enough that it doesn't feel as though she overshadows him. As she nears, he wipes his hand on a rumpled paper towel, then reaches up to hand her her wine.
After she takes it, his hand, descending, traces down her leg. Her skin seems impossibly smooth. It takes an effort not to lean into her, nuzzle that robe open, lick and suckle some part of her. Pay penance. Make amends. Worship.
Calden's hand falls away. He eats another bite of steak, cooled now. "Since we're sleeping wherever we fall," he says, half-smiling, "I thought I'd do us a favor and move us over by the bed."
Avery ChaseWalking toward him, Avery considers sinking down beside him, but she doesn't. She passes right by him where he sits with his back to the side of her bed, and though she flinches away when he tries to touch her leg, she seems more startled by it than repulsed. As though she should be at all surprised that he might reach for her. Him. Avery tucks her robe demurely around herself as she climbs onto the mattress, curling near the headboard. She can see him from there, and reach her wineglass when it's on the nightstand, and she likes both of these things.
Avery finds she likes knowing that he's there right now, being able to see him, even if they don't touch. Even if she hardly speaks to him. She sips her wine and looks at the meat he's tearing off by chunks, eating the steaks he only forsook because she was there, right there and gorgeous and edible, herself.
Of course she doesn't ask him to give her some. She doesn't gesture at him to hand her the pan. Under no circumstances would she be found acting like a mouse, shyly asking if she can have a little. Not in her own condo. But she doesn't politely do any of these things, or intimate them. She curls where she is, wordless, sipping, watching him, and then after a little while, she sets her wine down and lays out on her stomach on the edge of the bed, til their heads are close together. And does exactly as she did before, when they were in the kitchen.
She opens her mouth.
Calden WhiteIf Avery hadn't flinched away from his touch, Calden might very well respond now just the way he had in her kitchen -- kissing her mouth, accepting her bite for not feeding her as requested.
She did flinch, though. And though it wasn't revulsion, it's still enough that he knows there are lines, fragile and fraught. He steers clear; he tears beef from bone and, reaching back over his shoulder, he feeds her from his fingertips.
Avery ChaseAnd Avery smiles. She takes the meat from his hand and bites cleanly through it with sharp, fine white teeth. She closes her mouth as she chews and then rests her chin on the backs of her hands. Calden takes a bite, then she takes a bite -- from his fingers again. This time there is less about it that is even slightly sensual; she doesn't move closer to him, though at the moment in her mind, her head being inches from his and allow him to feed her by hand is more than close enough. It is, in fact, surprising to her how bearable it is. So she goes on eating, and sips her wine, and they tear steadily through the steak.
It may be important to say that she does not feel like a child. She does not act like a cub. She feels companionable. Yes: close, companionable, and quiet. Perhaps it's strange, and some part of her is whirring, spinning, frantic that this isn't okay, that this is frightening, but the longer she goes on, the longer she has some quiet with which to shush that beast, the easier it is to feel comfortable in her own skin again.
And of course the wine doesn't hurt.
They are eating the scraps from the pan now, they are on their second glasses of red -- from this second bottle -- and Avery is drowsy and pleased and her stomach is full now. She closes her eyes after taking one of these last bites and, still expecting another once she's done chewing, mindlessly, thoughtlessly nuzzles her brow against Calden's temple. The gesture is deeply animal, deeply warm. And accepting. In one more way he has been found worthy.
No: it isn't like that. It isn't like the way she approves of the meat he brings to her, the wine he gifts her with, the hospitality he extends, the way he snaps to attention and fucks her on command. It's something else, and simultaneously more comforting and more heartbreaking. That this little gesture comes so easily, so heedlessly, means more to Avery when her eyes start to drift open than Calden can perhaps comprehend immediately. She smiles at him sleepily then, opening her mouth for one last bite, but her eyes drowse closed once more, wineglass hanging precariously from her fingertips on the rim, as though she would as soon lay her head in his lap as a wolf and
merely drift off.
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