The food is messy. Some eat with their hands, pulling meat from bone with their teeth. There are foods that need spoons or forks - potato salads, things of that nature. Things are nowhere near winding down, though. There's music; some hand-beaten drums and guitars are kicking up a reel, and people are kicking up dust to dance to it.
Angel gets her food with Avery, but then she's called away by some friends from the city and walks off to go meet them. Avery, for her part, gets a refill on the scotch and sips it as she watches the dancers.
Calden WhiteShe senses Calden before she sees him. What is primal in her, what is supernatural in her, picks up on the subtle prehistory in his blood simply by virtue of his proximity. He comes up beside her. It's been some time since the absurdity of that wrestling match; some time since that serious discussion with the Shadow Lord kinswoman who could only have been Eva.
He watches the dancers with her for a while. Then, without a word, he untucks the rose from behind his ear and holds it out to her. It's relatively unscathed.
Avery ChaseThe gauntlet here is paper-thin. Even humans feel close to something unknowably ancient when they walk along the trails through the park. Tonight, with the moon heavy and close and incredibly bright, they feel it even more; the cliaths go a little wild. Even the athros and elders are letting go. The Warder and her guardians patrol ceaselessly, though. In the city, another Warder and another pack of guardians look for Champion of Honor, because they have not yet felt him die, but they cannot hear his voice, and do not know if he can hear theirs.
But out here, cubs and cliaths and fosterns get drunk and laugh and dance and flirt and tribal alphas relax a little and packs split apart and come together. Avery watches the dancers, and though there's a young man slamming his drink back after staring at her for a little while and making his way over, rehearsing in his head the first thing he's going to say,
Calden gets to her side first. Avery does, indeed, smell him, but she can smell woodsmoke and handfuls of other kin and other garou of equal and greater breeding. The difference with Calden is, none of them have had sex with her. None of them have fallen asleep with their head on her breasts.
She wonders, before she looks at him, if he found his shirt yet. Because she certainly isn't glancing at him, even out of the corner of her eye. He hands her the white rose, carefully tied to its clip. She smiles as it comes into her vision, takes it, and then offers him her drink -- to hold. So she can put the clip back in her hair.
Calden WhiteWell; Calden doesn't know the drink was offered to hold. He takes it, he raises it to his lips, inhales to see what it is and then
tosses it back, draining it down to the last mouthful or so. She lifts her hands to put the flower back in her hair and he says -- low, and without looking directly at her, either, just in case he wasn't supposed to be doing something that could possibly be construed as flirting in public:
"You should leave your hair down. I love it when you shake it back."
Oh, he looks at her after all. There's a spark of warmth and light and amusement in his eye. He smiles at her, from his height to hers, and: no, he has not found his shirt yet. It's probably irretrievable at this point, trampled into the dirt.
And quite belatedly: "Hello, Miss Chase."
Avery ChaseAvery looks at him when he takes her drink, her mouth momentarily agape. "You --" he doesn't even hand it back. She pauses, lifts her brows, says: "You'll be getting me another one of those," she informs him.
Her fingers pause in her hair as he tells her loves seeing her shake her hair back. She gives him an arch little look. "I'll bear that in mind when I decide to wear my hair for you," she tells him, and secures that twisting lock of her hair back over her ear once more with the clip. It doesn't look as perfect as it did when her lady's maid did it earlier, the clip not so concealed, but no matter; she looks lovely either way.
"...Mr. White," she adds, a greeting as much as a finish to her previous sentence.
Calden WhiteCalden's eyes linger a moment. They follow the upsweep of her hair, they follow the precision of her fingers. Then he meets her eyes, and the corner of his mouth turns up again.
"I'll get you something better," he bargains, and hands her his glass instead. It's something paint-strippingly strong from one of those unlabeled casks.
Avery Chase"I want what I want," Avery tells him, "which is what I got. Which is what you just drank!"
She huffs, and rebuffs his offer of his cup, going back to watching the dancers. Cupless, drinkless, she crosses her slim arms over her chest, going back to Not Looking At Him.
Calden WhiteTwo cups in hand -- both of them flimsy biodegradable paper things -- Calden lifts the one he took from her and drinks the last of it. Sips it, actually, keeping it on his tongue, tasting it.
[PERCEPT 3 + INVESTIGATION 1 + PURE BREED 1, WHICH TOTALLY COUNTS BECAUSE FIANNA. WAT I JUS DRINK?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Calden White[*victory lap*]
Avery Chase[IT'S SCOTCH. IT'S NOT PAINT-PEELING.]
Calden WhiteIt only takes a second. Then Calden lowers the emptied cup, smirks sidelong at Avery. "Goodness, Miss Chase," he chides. "Cameron Connolly's special reserve. I didn't know you were so brave."
And then he's gone: threading through the crowd, the firelight red in his hair. There's quite the gathering around the libations. Some of them are waiting for drinks. Some of them are just shooting the breeze, increasingly under the influence, talking too loud, slurring their words:
MONA'S SO BEAUTIFUL. - random woman.
It's five or six minutes before Calden's back. He has two fresh drinks with him. He hands one to Avery.
"As requested."
Avery Chase"Yes, you did," is Avery's retort to that.
He goes to get her another cup of scotch. She is is dancing when he comes back. It's not like the dancing they were doing at Ziggie's the second time they met. This caern is overrun with Uktena and Fianna and Furies and Fenrir, it seems, and tonight is the sort of night that the Fianna were born for. Someone has a fiddle and someone else has a guitar and someone else has a goddamed bodhrán and no one dares make fun of him because 1) he actually is Irish, not some neo-Celtic moron and 2) he is Cameron Connolly's brother and Cameron can cut them off of his reserve and 3) he's also Knife In The Ribs' father, and Knife in the Ribs is still known for breaking some kid's arm behind his back for saying something she didn't like about her family, and that was before she changed.
The song they're playing traditionally has words, and those words are about a man trying to get to Dublin, but no one is singing the words -- though more than a few of them know them by heart. They are vamping the hell out of it and it seems like it might never end. That fiddle and drum are driving the song in 9/8 time. At times the fiddle drops out, leaving the guitar and drum to take the dancers through a quick, harsh onetwothree-fourfive, much of which is stomping, turning.
Avery looks wonderful, dancing. No one is grinding up against her, but she was invited and she is courteous and she loves to dance. Her hair spins out, and the hem of her dress does as well, whenever she turns. Only occasionally does the garou who invited her teach her the steps, though he is stumbling over his own feet as he does so.
Calden WhiteAvery's not there when Calden gets back from the riot around the drinks table, hard-won prizes in hand. The humanity! He looks around for her, and maybe somewhere out there is some young kinsman smirking at Calden because: HAH.
Then he sees her. Out in the mash, dancing with the laughing, stumbling, drunken revelers all around her: their bare feet and their bare legs, bare arms, bare shoulders sheening with sweat. Calden laughs aloud, watching her skip and spin, watching her feet move with the steps that the fellow who invited her are more-or-less teaching her,
watching her until the turn of the crowd takes her past him, which is when he jumps in to join the fray. He doesn't know the steps either. No one knows the steps, there might not even be steps. He has a drink in each fist, and scotch is sloshing out over his hands, the alcohol content so very high that he can feel the chill of its rapid evaporation. He doesn't care. He takes a turn around her, linking arms because he can't take her hand; they skip and hop and he narrowly avoids treading on her toes.
Then they're both passing on to the next partner. His new partner's another man, and he has a drink of his own in hand. Or rather, he has a drink of his own spilled all over his arm, with a mouthful left in the cup that he downs, roaring with laughter.
Avery ChaseSo: dancing. Avery twirls past Calden, Calden goes in bearing both cups of scotch, spilling as much as he manages to keep, prompting cries of either alcohol abuse! or for absent friends! depending on the generation of the person who notices. She actually does not let him link his arm with her, since he's sloshing booze everywhere but moves deftly, lightly out of his grasp, smiling at him, smirking at him over her shoulder. She spins away. He is partnered with a man spilling just as much scotch as he is, and they gleefully prance around each other, stomping to the beat, until
he looks up and she's gone again, out of reach again, but only because she's slipped entirely from the dance 'floor' and is leaning against a crop of sandstone, her cheeks pink, her breathing coming back to her. If he notices -- and he may not -- she is watching him.
Calden WhiteCalden notices. Or well; he sees her, anyway, across the blurry sea of faces, the snap and spark of the well-tended fires. He sees that she has left the chaos behind and she's leaning against stone; he sees the shine of her eyes and the gleam of her hair and then
someone grabs him by the shoulders, move your feet, big boy!, and he's back in the riot, and the dancing is so dense that no one can see whether or not he's moving his feet. From the outside, it's one heaving organic mass, heads and shoulders and hands in the air -- bodies in the air, sometimes; someone climbs up on Calden's shoulders and he swings her around and then quite literally pitches her off, but the crowd catches her, and now someone's crowdsurfing and Calden is throwing back his head, laughing.
At some point
the crowd lets him go. He swims to the edge and he extricates himself from the masses, the mess, washes himself ashore, grabs his knees and pants for breath for a minute like a man after a marathon. Then, sad spilled drinks in hand -- barely two fingers left in each cup -- he straightens up and finds Avery with his eyes.
There's some twenty or thirty feet between them. He doesn't close the distance. He tilts his head toward the edge of the clearing, where dirt hard-packed by dozens of stomping feet gives way to desert scrubland and stone, where the leaping glow of firelight gives way to shadow and moonlight. A quirk of an eyebrow completes the invitation.
Avery ChaseTwenty, thirty feet away, a shirtless, sweating man with two cups of scotch that 'only' have a couple of fingers each, meaning he originally got the amount that would normally be poured if the liquid were beer,
invites Avery to a moonlit stroll with his eyes and a nod. She lifts her brow, just one of them, tiredly but thoughtfully, then gives a slow, single nod. But she doesn't come right away. She catches her breath. She pushes off the stone, and laughs as someone passes by her, says something to her. She takes the cup of water they offer and heads over toward the trail that goes out, through the park, branching off here and there, circling Persse Place. There are places that crest upward, away from the sandstone formations, and there is nothing but sky and the reminder that they techincally live in a desert.
The moon is so bright it almost looks more gold than silver. As she walks, Avery reaches up and takes the clip from her hair. She drops the rose, and the clip with it, to the ground, leaving it in the dust behind her. She doesn't look coyly at Calden and shake out her hair to please him, she just... drops that rose behind her footsteps, walking to meet him, to walk with him, away where it's quieter.
Calden WhiteThey meet somewhere at the edge of the firelight's reach. Avery drops her rose in the dirt, and her hair comes down, and it's too dark to see it but Calden's pupils react. He holds her drink out to her when she joins him -- what's left of it, anyway. His hands smell like scotch, potent, pungent.
He turns, flanking her, then falling in beside her, as they walk from the fire. Others have done this before them. In packs, drifting off to run free under a moon so huge it stirs their blood. Alone, seeking a little peace and quiet after the heat and the noise of the party. Or in pairs. Sometimes loudly, giggling and shrieking, the man carrying the woman in a few cases, letting absolutely everyone know what was happening. Sometimes: quieter, slipping off subtly, linking hands as they leave the others behind.
Calden doesn't take Avery's hand. But he walks close to her. It was hot today, the sun blistering this high up, the air dry as bone. It's still hot now. The heat is in the earth, in the sandstone, in their bodies. Sweat dries easily, but leaves their skin hot to the touch, salty to the taste. He looks back once, just to judge their distance, and it's far enough that
he puts his hands on her waist and draws her behind a stone as tall as three men standing. He leans against it. It feels warm as flesh. He pulls her between his planted boots, between his denimclad legs, against his bare chest.
And he tilts his head back. Bare his throat for the time it takes him to drink those two fingers of paintpeeler scotch all in a single swallow. These cups are biodegradable; made of corn starch or some such thing, melting in the first rain. He drops it on the ground, and now his hands are
-- if she lets him --
gathering her closer still, folding over her shoulderblades to pull her to him. Saying nothing, he seeks her mouth with his.
Avery ChaseHe wants her. He always wants her. Every physical reaction in his body is an answer to her walking over to him, letting even one more lock of her hair down, coming within arm's reach. Avery can almost smell his desire when she approaches him, her sandaled feet dusty but not bare. She certainly smells the alcohol, but then: he smelled like scotch the first time she kissed him, too. Or the first time he kissed her, anyway.
They go for a stroll. Calden doesn't reach for her hand, and Avery doesn't reach for his. Wordlessly, she sips her scotch. They've only traded a few words tonight -- at the 'wrestling' ring, and when he took her scotch as she put her hair back up -- and none of them were consequential. She didn't even quite let him dance with her.
He barely waits for them to get out of line of sight before he touches her. His alcohol-soaked hands on her pretty eyelet dress, on her waist, pulling her to him and to the stone and against him. Avery breathes in, stepping between his feet, watching him as he drinks. His hands are reaching, pulling, and he's seeking her mouth, wanting her, so obviously about to kiss her that she almost feels bad taking a breath and telling him: "Calden, wait... no."
Her hand is on his chest, though. Not pushing. Just touching him.
Calden WhiteSo he pauses. He doesn't let her go, but he stops, and it is a full stop, a freeze-frame. His head is tilted, lowered. His hands all but thrum where they hold her.
"What's wrong?" -- it's a whisper.
Calden White[EMPAFEE]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )
Avery Chase[The most evident thing is that Avery isn't quite as in the mood as he is. It's sort of out of nowhere to her, since they've hardly even spoken. And since the last time they saw each other was after he came over to her place while traumatized. There may also be some other kind of tension there, much deeper, that she's actively trying to repress/not show, because it's over in 'open wounds' territory.]
Calden WhiteA moment later his hands fall from her waist. He presses his palms to the sandstone behind him, as though this might help keep them from her body.
Avery ChaseWait. No.
Those are unequivocal. He knows what they mean. He's not, despite her nicknames for him, a brute. Calden's hands leave her body entirely, pressing to the stone behind him, but Avery still stands between his feet, her body close to his. He asks her what's wrong.
Avery gives a small shake of her head. It's not an answer to anything. "I thought we were going on a walk. Not... whatever this is."
Calden WhiteCalden's brow furrows a little. Whatever this is. It makes it sounds sordid, dirty, low, and it puzzles him because -- well. It would have hardly been the first time they've met and had their hands all over each other as soon as they were alone. It would have been the first time, though, since that night two weeks ago. When he came to her shellshocked, nerves jangling. When she took him into her arms, into her bed, let him stay until morning.
His hand finds hers in the darkness. He raises it to his mouth, kisses her knuckles. He didn't shave. She can feel it. He kisses her anyway, warmly and adoringly, his lips against her hand.
"I thought maybe you just didn't want anyone else to notice us together," he says quietly. "I thought that was why you didn't want to dance together or ... wrestle together." There's a laugh under his breath, there, then fading. "Is it something else?"
Avery ChaseCalden's hand is filthy, but Avery doesn't flinch from it when he finds hers, lifts hers, kisses her with his equally scotch-stained mouth. She has her other hand holding the rim of her cup, still bearing some amount of liquid. Maybe she still intends to drink it. Her heads tips, watching him.
He's not mocking her in that gesture, or mocking himself. He simply adores her. Worships her. Bends his knee to her. They're all rather unbalanced ways of describing what it is he feels for her, but they also all, in some way, describe it perfectly. She can feel surrender in him, to his own desire, to her acceptance or denial of it.
"Let them censure me, if they will," she says quietly. "I will ask them what they think comes of defining their kin as their territory. I will ask them what kind of war they think we're fighting, that we should waste our energy on petty squabbles over who is fucking the kinfolk." Her eyes flash slightly at that. "In this day and age. My god."
Well. Now he knows what she thinks of all that.
Her lips press together after those words. She inhales deeply, and exhales through her nostrils, flaring them slightly. Her lips part. "It was unexpectedly difficult for me to see you talking to your friend. She's closer to your age, she's gorgeous..." Avery's lips come together again, very firm. "I don't want to discuss it," she adds, almost sharply. "I am ashamed to even admit it, and if you so much as say a word of anything that implies a 'baby, no', I will throw Mister Conolly's reserve in your face and leave you here dripping by yourself."
And now he knows what she thinks of that.
"As for the rest," she says, quieting a bit, "I... do not appreciate being approached as though it is a given that I'm going to have sex with you. You've hardly said two words to me since the last time I saw you. I didn't come here tonight to find you and run off into the brush with you."
But ultimately, it comes down to this, a repetition: "I thought we were going for a walk," Avery murmurs.
Calden WhiteWhat he thinks is writ on his face. It's in the way it clears -- the way he almost smiles when she says in this day and age. It's in the way his brow furrows again, and in how his lips do, in fact, part with something that may have approached a baby, no before she warns him against it. He closes his mouth again.
And the knit of his brow tightens again, aching, when she says: a given. He is still holding her hand. He kisses it again. "I never consider it a given," he says quietly. "I wouldn't. I just wanted you. And I'm not -- not thinking very clearly right now. Though I've only got myself to blame."
He straightens. His hand shifts its hold; entwines their fingers, his forearm to hers. They leave the shadow of that sandstone monolith, the fires at their back, the moonlit landscape as bright as day to their dark-adjusted eyes.
"I treated you dishonorably," he says, "dragging you from the party and cornering you here. I'm sorry."
Avery ChaseHe's drunk. Avery is only slightly tipsy at this point. She huffs a small laugh as he admits it. He's just not thinking clearly. He straightens up, lifting their arms as though they're about to perform a very old-fashioned cotillion, and she tips her chin to keep her eyes on his as he rises above her a little bit again. The moon shines behind her. Avery listens to the words, which are chivalrous, and though her lips are together, she sighs softly.
When she inclines her head, it is not an agreement; it is an acknowledgement of his apology, and a mute but sincere acceptance of it.
Calden WhiteSo -- they go for a walk. And Calden is drunk, admitted as much without quite saying the words, and certainly without blaming his behavior on it. His fingers link loosely with hers. He swings their hands gently as they make their way over the terrain.
It's some time before he speaks again, and by then they're well out of reach of the firelight. Nothing but moonlight touches them now: an enormous moon, one of the largest he's ever seen. He comes to a stop with her, turning his face up to that moon. His eyes close and he sways a little, then laughs, opening his eyes. Drunk.
"So," he's smiling, "why didn't you climb up on my shoulders, then, if it wasn't for fear of wagging tongues?"
Avery ChaseAvery huffs a laugh, then sips her scotch. They turn away from the monolith, Avery stepping back and turning with him, their hands still linked. So they walk. He doesn't sway or stumble, but he walks slowly, his steps a little heavier perhaps. There is no reason for them to walk any faster.
She looks up at him when he stops, lifting a brow, wondering if something is wrong or if he has amnesia and would like to try making love to her again. No. He's looking at the moon, mindlessly and happily, swaying on his feet, smiling. He laughs.
"I'm in a dress," she explains, as though this is all that needs to be said. "And it's undignified."
Calden WhiteAnd so Calden casts a glance behind them. The turn of his head, the swing of his shoulder: slow, loose-jointed. And back to her now, an impish edge to his smile.
"Well. No one's around to see the ribbons on your knickers now, Miss Chase. Want a ride?"
Avery Chase"On a drunk Fianna's shoulders?" Avery retorts, then scoffs. "I should think not. You'll topple us both, and the ground here is unforgiving."
Calden White"How about on a drunk Fianna's back, then?" Now he's playing with her. "Or in my arms. Or..." a pause for effect, "over my shoulder, which is how a proper barbarian carries his lady."
Avery ChaseAvery stops this time, laughing at him. "Why are you so determined to carry me?"
Calden WhiteHe goes a step further before the subtle traction on his arm stops him. He swings around; she laughs; he blinks at the question. Then he laughs too.
"I have no idea," he confesses. "It must be some ... neanderthal instinct rising to the surface now that all my better manners have been drowned."
Avery ChaseBoth of her eyebrows go up now. She laughs at him again, drawing him back to her with their linked hands, shaking her head. "You will control that instinct, sir. If you try to throw me over your shoulder and carry me to your cave, it will not end well for you."
Avery has drawn him back until their stomachs touch. "You should take me home tonight," she whispers. "Yours."
Calden WhiteCalden's smile has that quirk to it. Oh, she's charmed him again. She's bedeviled him, she's bewitched him, he thinks she's an enchanting creature. He looks down as her body touches his. He is
half-surprised, really, to discover he has forgotten to retrieve his shirt. It's beyond his reach now, he supposes, and his smile comes back to her as his arms wrap loose behind her waist.
"I was hoping to," he confesses, a whisper for a whisper, "when I saw you with that flower in your hair."
Avery ChaseThat makes her smile, a flash of teeth and spreading of lips. She's young, still. Not a child, not an innocent. She's a wolf who wears that face so well, who can be seen even in those bright eyes at their brightest. "What was it about the flower, in particular, Mr. White?"
Calden White"Oh, no, it had nothing at all to do with the flower," he says, "but I did think it looked pretty in your hair. I bet it was pretty in my hair too." He leans down, his brow to hers, smiling at her in the shadows they've created between them: like a secret. "I just wanted to take you home."
Avery Chase"You looked quite pretty with it in your hair," Avery confirms, ever so serious. He lowers his face to hers. She breathes in as he touches their brows. "I know," she murmurs. Her eyes are closing; her lashes, like her brows, are shockingly dark against her fair skin. "I know you do."
Avery's head tips back gently. He can feel her sigh against his mouth before he can feel her kiss, before he feels her hand on his cheek. The kiss is slow and molten, melting them both. And her eyes have to fight that heat, that melting, when they open again. "How have you been?" she asks him, whisper-soft. Serious as stone.
Calden WhiteSome of the banter falls from him then. He's not so tipsy, so influenced, as to not hear the seriousness in her tone. In the subject. Her hand on his cheek closes his eyes, though. He leans into her touch, kisses her palm long before she kisses him.
And again, after, as his eyes open. This close, this dark, there's no way to see the green in his irises. Just the black of the pupil.
"Some days are worse than others," he admits, "but the good days are prevailing, slowly but surely. I didn't want to come to the city last weekend, so it'll be next weekend before I bring my stock down again. Maybe it was cowardly, but... I needed the time to myself. It helped. Life goes on, and so do I."
His lips touch hers again, softly. "I'm all right, Avery," he whispers. "Don't worry about me. But thank you, for being kind to me. I needed it."
Avery ChaseHe mentions that he didn't come back to the city. He needed some time to himself, at home, on his ranch, with his cattle, his people. He mentions it because surely she noticed. Noticed the lack of a call, the lack of a date set. Her brows tug together when he says it might have been cowardly -- she clearly doesn't agree -- but she doesn't say a word of argument. It is what it is. He feels how he feels. And she sighs softly, and slips her arms around his neck, holding him, laying her head on his chest. Did she finish her scotch? A little while ago. She still carries the empty cup.
"I'll drive myself," she whispers against his bare skin. "And follow you."
Calden White"Just come with me," he murmurs. They come together like that: easily, naturally, her head fitting under his chin, his arms fitting around her. "It's no trouble for me to drive you back tomorrow."
A small pause; and then a small truth.
"I'd like that," Calden says. "Having a few extra hours in the car with you."
Avery ChaseShe laughs softly, and draws him down to her face again, kissing him again. She loves the way he tastes. She loves the feel of his mouth, the taste of his tongue. She loves the way he smells. "No," she whispers, as she's drawing back from that kiss, smiling at him. "I'll drive. I'll stay all night. I'll drive myself home."
Calden WhiteThese kisses, in truth, are getting a little more heated every time. He presses a little closer every time. Kisses her a little longer every time, and a little deeper. Holds her a little closer.
What she says disappoints him a little. Of course it does. He's enchanted by her. But he accepts it the way he accepts such things: with quiet grace, with a smile to return hers. "All right," he says. And his hand comes up; threads through her hair. That smile grows a little.
"I love it," he tells her again, for no other reason than to tell her, "when you toss your hair back. Love it."
And then he lets her go. They draw apart, though not very far. He looks around to get his bearings, and then he reaches for her hand. "I'm parked that way, I think," he says.
Avery ChaseNot for the first time -- not likely for the last -- Avery laughs at him. Her hair is cool in his fingers. She shakes it out, then grins up at him. "You're ridiculous," she says fondly, smiling still. Her lips purse. She thinks of him admitting, last time, that she hasn't just started to mean something to him.
She thinks of the sharp stabs of remembered and renewed pain when he talked about his friend Eva and when she saw them talking tonight, and she thinks of someone who is rather unlike Calden in many ways, rather unsettlingly similar to him in others. She aches a bit, looking up at him, thinking of going back to his place for the second time since she first met him,
and going to his bedroom this time. To his bed. Letting him have her their. It feels like a pact, somehow. That house is older than he is, has been changed and added to by his family for generations. She thinks of the room he must occupy, wonders what it looks like, kisses him softly again, but it hardens as it goes on.
"Follow me home," she murmurs. "My car is at the visitor's center with the others. I'll get a few things and come back with you."
Calden WhiteThat house of his: that house that belonged to his father before him, and his father's father, and all the way back five generations to the long-lost man who bought the land, bred the ancestors of Calden's herd, laid the foundations. There's history there. There's commitment, and a deep tie to who Calden is. Who the Whites are.
Small wonder she didn't want to go to his bed that first night. Small wonder she has, until now, avoided visiting him there. She's made her excuses, and most of them were likely even grounded in truth: he's so far away. She's busy with her own household, her own kin, her own entry to this city and its Sept. But the truth is also:
it feels a little like a pact. An irrevocable step, for her to cross that threshold. Climb those stairs. Lay back in that bed that smells like him, under that roof that housed him and his ancestors. It feels like something more than simply going home with a one night stand; a casual lover; a man who -- most of the time, anyway -- gets her off.
That kiss deepens. It grows a little fierce before she pulls away. He looks a little lost when she pulls away, a little dazed. But he nods, once or twice. "Okay," he says, and
so they walk back to the visitor's center together. They skirt the fire, they skirt the party. No one really notices them. Or cares, in the end. They are far from the only couple going home together tonight.
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