meat from the pan, wine from the bottle.

Calden White

[holy shit i can't believe i TAPPED ALL THAT. that was a huge fucking post. *LOL*]

Well; she starts to get up. But Calden,

mindblown, shattered Calden, who was shuddering at the end, who was grasping at her chaise with its lovely sapphire upholstery and its white-and-gold frame, who was letting loose these low groans like he might die if she keeps on stroking him and might die if she stops:

Calden catches her. Not by the hand, and certainly not by the wrist, but around the waist: his hands, reeling her in, his arms, tumbling her down on his lap. They're both quite messy. It's all right. He lifts his head to kiss her, kisses her long and firm and... hungry, yes. But also grateful. Warm. Adoring.

The first kiss tapers. He kisses her again, softer. And then he lets her go, and she stands, and he leans back, watching her.

What she says quirks his mouth. He's sprawled there, undone in every possible sense; laughing low and loose and lazy.

"I'm starting to suspect you like it when I'm filthy," he says. He shifts his legs experimentally, perhaps wondering if his knees will hold up under him. His belt clinks. He bends, he reaches down, he gets his feet under himself and gets up, pulling his pants up as he does.

She goes to wash. He doesn't bother buttoning his shirt or doing up his belt. He zips himself up, and he goes to the foyer to collect the things he brought for her. Depending on how long her shower is she might find him chopping the short loin into porterhouses, trimming the dried outer crust off the aged beef, seasoning the steaks, or buttering the pan. Or maybe she takes a very long time; and in that case: she finds him searing the steaks, the rich scent of beef filling her kitchen.

"These are nice pans," he comments when he sees her. "Whoever gave you the recommendation did you a favor."

Avery Chase

Avery laughs, clear and bright, when Calden paws at her, grabs her, hauls her into his lap like even when he can't bear her touch anymore he can't stand to be parted from her. She spreads her thighs to either side of his lap, laughing at him, pushing at him as his own filth gets all over both of them, the protest mild and unfelt.

He kisses her, hard and for a very long time, and that brightness soothes in her to something softer. She takes a sip of air when he finally lets her go, and their lips press together again, softer this time. Mr. White... she whispers, but to no end. She's just amused.

There is that glint in her eye, both amused and predatory now, when she rises up and says what she does. He says he's starting to suspect something about her. Avery just smirks. She doesn't answer, and turns, dropping her arms to let the wrap slide off of her to the floor, walking into that room-sized lavatory. In moments, the sound of water steaming through the bathroom can be heard, droplets pattering on cerulean-blue tile

--

Avery does not take very long at all, at least not in the shower. She has tied her hair back briefly and just washes her torso, then gently between her legs. It's five minutes in there, less than that. It takes a little longer for her to decide what to wear now, and to touch up her makeup while seated at a lovely vanity that would have been at home with Marie Antoinette.

When she walks outl to find Calden again, Avery is wearing a pair of heels that tap gently on the hardwood, muffled when she crosses a runner in the hallway. Her dress is both more and less casual than the gold one she wore out with him two weeks previous; it's a thin-strapped wrap dress, the top the color of seafoam and the bottom the color of cream. Her heels are strappy, champagne-colored, simple. She even put on jewelry: a gold bracelet on her left wrist, a gold necklace resting just beneath her clavicles.

Now this is how she should have opened the door. If she wanted to be appropriate.

Something glints hungrily in her eyes when she comes all the way down and around to the kitchen, looking at him with his shirt undone and his belt undone and her cunt clenching at the sight of him. And, she thinks briefly and strangely, at the smell of the meat cooking.

"For all you know I chose them myself," she says, feigning ruffledness. She shifts her hair off her shoulder with a slight toss. "I asked Lekeisha to get them. I'm sure she did her research."

Calden White

Well; a correction. That's what he says as he hears her coming on those heels. That's what he says as he's turning, a spatula in his hand, two enormous steaks on the fire, his belt buckle dangling at his thigh,

the sweat and detritus of their lovemaking still on his body. In his scent.

He sees her, though. And that pulse of lust and appreciate may as well have leapt between them like a spark, from her eyes straight to his. His gaze runs over her; as she comes close -- or even just close enough -- he reaches out to slip his arm around her waist. Kisses her, soft and slow, his eyes warmed and smoky in the aftermath.

"You look ravishing, Miss Chase." He kisses her again, lighter, releasing her as he turns back to the stove.

"I was going to oven-roast the steaks," he says, "but I think we might as well pan-sear them. And I'm steaming those string beans." He nods at the pot in the back. Or the pan, if she only has the two pieces of cookware. "If you'd be so kind as to set the table and open the wine," a sidelong smile, "we'll be eating in a couple minutes."

The wine, it should be mentioned, is none other than that Syrah he kept trying to send her home with the night they met. Because of course it is. That, and a bottle of Californian cabernet.

Avery Chase

There is a long, high kitchen island between them at first when he turns and sees her. She hasn't approached him, but he closes that distance, pulls her around the corner of the island. He kisses her and she laughs at first, the breath of it hitting his lips. Avery makes no bones about whether or not he's permitted to press his half-naked, quite dirty body against her when she's just cleaned and she's so pretty; her hand presses against his upper shoulder, holding him back a bit as she allows him to kiss her. She tastes of mint. He tastes like he whet his appetite on her cunt.

She scoffs lightly at the choice of words, tossing her hair again. She does not go around to seat herself on one of the barstools but leans her back against the island, resting on her elbows, her legs crossed loosely, calf-over-shin. She watches him cook, listens to him talk about cooking, and simply raises an eyebrow when he mentions setting the table and opening the wine.

"I'm going to eat it out of the pan," she informs him, "and drink the wine from the bottle."

Calden White

That makes him smirk. Simultaneously, it gives him an odd little rush: the idea of eating out of the pan with her. Drinking out of the bottle. Primitive, simplistic -- and to think, he'd thought for a moment perhaps she wouldn't be used to a steak prepared without marinate, without reduction, without sauce, without a seventeen syllable French name.

He should have known better. He met her over the fresh carcass of an elk she'd hunted down.

"Admit it," he teases gently, "you just don't have any dinnerware yet, do you?"

And he turns the heat down on the steaks. Seared, after all, doesn't equal charred. While the porterhouses finish cooking, Calden goes to the sink. He turns the tap on, cups his hands, splashes water on his face and behind his neck, uses a handful of wetted paper towel to wipe down his chest. His abdomen. It doesn't make him clean, but at least it takes the edge off the filth.

Drops of water still running down his neck, dampening his collar, he turns the steaks one last time and takes them off the fire. The green beans follow. A pot in each hand, Calden comes over to the island, waiting for Avery to put coaster down if she wants to. Then he sets the food down; takes the lid off the beans.

It's an exceedingly simple meal. Both courses are seasoned with the same basics: salt and pepper, butter. The beans have been washed and snipped, but not cut. The steaks --

The steaks are aged like fine wines, the flavor robust and concentrated; the texture downright divine. Calden pulls up a barstool, sitting around the corner from Avery. And he waits for her to open the wine,

which they're going to drink from the bottle. Like savages.

Avery Chase

To put it very specifically: she tore into the elk in front of him. She ripped its belly with her teeth, and it was still half-alive when she got to its entrails, snarling, digging her muzzle into not just blood but outright gore. She ate, and ate, and even in hispo her stomach bulged after her gorging. When she danced it was less graceful than stumbling, shuffling, swaying. She was drunk on blood. She was about to flop over and sleep the sleep of the well-sated apex predator when she truly took notice of him.

Calden, so far, has not even heard her speak French.

He teases her to admit that she doesn't even have dinnerware, and Avery levels an even stare at him. It is reminiscent of the times he has seen the wolf in her. The way she looked at him when she stood there more naked than he, covered in his cum, and told him what to do and how to do it. The dominance there was gentle, and not -- she thinks -- unappreciated. It was also playful, and erotic, and perhaps not even truly dominant so much as simply so wanting, so direct about her wanting, that she saw no reason to hedge it or play nice about telling him this is what I like.

With that stare, her mouth doesn't even quirk. "I have knives," she says, in a tone that would be ominous, even threatening, if her eyes were not sparkling the way they do, sapphires set in platinum.

--

It turns out... that is entirely true. Avery does not have plates, or napkins, or silverware. She has knives and cast-iron skillets and a corkscrew because, while it is her steward's job to foresee these needs and provide for them, Avery quite consciously stayed her hand. The image of eating steak from the pan, beans with fingers, drinking wine from the bottle -- it came to her in a moment and she loved it. She felt that pulse, that rush, and instead of questioning whether or not that would please Calden, she followed that feeling.

So: she has knives. And Calden has found some of them, at least, digging around to carve the loin into porterhouses. He finds steak knives and there are no coasters but there really should be; they lay out a towel to set their wine on, the bottle, just in case of droplets. Avery watches him wash and feels her nipples harden. She tips her head looking at him, breathing in the steak as he makes the first cut into it, bloody and exciting.

Avery does not sit. She leans on the island where Calden has pulled up a barstool, this time turned so her elbows and forearms are under her breasts, and opens her mouth.

Calden White

So of course,

Calden leans over. He kisses that lovely mouth of hers, which is perhaps just a little too wide, a little too lush, a little too flirtatious, a little too playful to really belong to the sort of gracious lady she pretends to be. He knows what she wants -- a bite of meat -- but he kisses her instead, thoroughly, a little roughly, his own tongue not hesitating a bit to lick her lip, trace the roof of her mouth.

When he sits back, he's smiling. He's casual and undone and half-dressed, his weight on the edge of the barstool, long denimclad legs akimbo on the rungs: one knee higher than the other. And she has knives, which she took gleaming from her otherwise-empty silverware drawer,

which made him smirk at her, all i knew it,

one of which he picks up now. The steaks are still sizzlingly hot. He holds one down gingerly with the tips of his fingers on the bone, and those are such nice pans that it'd be a pity to mark them up with knives, so he cuts but not all the way through. A few haphazard slices into one steak. None at all into the other. There are two steaks there, enormous dinner plate-sized porterhouses, generously thick. He tears a strip off, a little charred on the outside, reddish on the inside --

and if she opens her mouth this time, he feeds her from his fingertips.

Avery Chase

So she asks for meat, and he kisses her, licking her tongue and

Avery bites him. Not nearly hard enough to draw blood, not hard enough to even hurt more than the initial sting. She draws back, her eyes glittering, watching him. Still close enough that he can feel her breath on his wet lip. She waits again, lips parted, and when he saws a bite from the porterhouse, Avery licks the juices from his fingers and closes her eyes as she chews.

"My god," she breathes, but only after she's swallowed, opening her eyes again. "Again," she says, leaning toward him, even as she's straightening up, reaching for the corkscrew and Syrah.

Calden White

That bite

makes him gasp. It's quiet, it's barely audible, but it's there; and in the aftermath he kisses her

that much harder. That much more ardently, the knife clattering down so he can put his hand on her waist, instead.

He feeds her meat. This predator-woman, this wolf-woman in his bed. Or more precisely: the wolf whose bed he's shared at least once now. She licks juice from his fingertips. He has to try not to kiss her again, but that would be rude; she's savoring that first bite. His eyes have a glitter in them too, watching hers close.

Again, she says. And the corner of his mouth quirks, he smirks, he shifts a little in his seat. He's leaning against the counter too, his weight on one elbow -- that shoulder pressing taut and defined against the denim of his shirt.

"The kiss, the bite or the steak?"

Avery Chase

Oh, she swats him again. His hands have bloody juices on them and her dress is silk. She right-out slaps his hand away from her waist and, upon drawing back, gives him such a Look. How dare he.

But he feeds her. He brings her the meat of animals he raised, animals he led to slaughter. The meat he cut and cooked and carves now, feeding it by hand into her sharp, fine white teeth. She looks into his eyes when he does, seeing that kiss in his gaze, seeing his restraint after a blink.

"The steak, of course," she says, smirking. She pauses, though, and digs the corkscrew into the bottle. Twist, twist, twist -- pauses to open her mouth for another bite.

Calden White

He's not even using the knife now. It's been set aside, the gleam of the blade marred by juices. He's just using his hands now, tearing strips of meat loose from the cuts he made. While she twists the corkscrew he pops a piece into his mouth. Watches her: her face and not her hands.

When she opens her mouth his eyes flick down. He tears another piece of meat loose. And all the while he's moving closer, slow but steady: leaning onto the counter, closing the distance. He holds this piece of steak just a little tighter. Makes her tear it a bit from his fingertips. Draws his hand back, his knuckles pressing gently beneath his nose, hiding a smirk. Or maybe a grin.

A moment later he's sucking juices from his fingertips, anyway. And he's tearing meat from bone, and then meat from meat: offering this shred before she requests it, caught between fore and middle fingers. By then she has the wine open. It's a bold, dark, full-bodied red. He watches her throat move as she drinks.

Then: he tips his chin up, parts his lips and his teeth. Waits for her to pour wine into his mouth.

Avery Chase

There is blood, though thin and cooked and hot now, on Calden's fingers. Melted fat, melted butter. Avery catches his wrist in her hand when he makes her tear that bite, setting her teeth primly in it and tugging. She flicks it into her mouth, with nary a drop falling on her chin. She looks at him again, a look that is almost warning, entirely hungry.

The wine is open. Avery tips her head back and sips. She licks her lips and catches him staring at her throat. Another look, taut and sharp. He opens his mouth for wine and she flashes a grin at him. Her hand wrapped around the neck of the bottle, she tips it back

and takes another drink for herself.

Calden White

That makes him laugh, of course. He laughs, and he rips beef from bone; he sucks that morsel gently from his fingertips as he grins at her.

"And here I thought you were a gracious lady," he reproaches, playfully.

Avery Chase

"But I'm a terrible hostess," she says, looking at him with the faintest of pouts. She looks wistful, almost, shaking her head as she sets the wine bottle down and steps closer to him, around the corner. "I don't even have dishes for my guest to eat off of."

She comes around, resting her hands on his knees, gently as she might approach the keys of a piano. The smell of her, lightly fragranced with botanicals, mingles with the scent of red meat, red wine. "And I obviously was hardly attired to greet visitors when you arrived." Those softly curved hands of hers flatten, palms to the tops of his legs, smoothing upward toward his hips with a slow, firm stroke. "I have to beg your pardon," she says, as her fingertips hook into the tops of his jeans, "for I'm afraid I'm hardly behaving like a lady."

Avery opens her mouth, close now to his, waiting for another morsel of the steak.

Calden White

Really now: Calden can hardly be blamed for leaning in. For looking at her like that. For kissing her mouth again,

just the way he did the first time,

never mind if she bites him or not. And it's no quick skirmish of a kiss, this. It's deep and full and his hands, those rough palms and long fingers -- they follow her forearms to her elbows, her elbows up the backs of her arms,

and down again. He smiles as the kiss closes. And yes: he reaches over, onehanded this time, and works a shred of meat loose.

"Well, lucky for you," he says, and if she opens her mouth he sets that morsel right on her tongue; he traces her lips with his thumb as his fingers withdraw, "a filthy barbarian like myself can't tell the difference. I've been pretty satisfied with your behavior. Ladylike or not."

Avery Chase

Avery's hand lifts and touches his face.

Such a small thing. Such a small, gentle, tender thing to do. And the way she does it, turning her fingers inward and brushing her knuckles over his cheek and jaw, seems like it was a sensation created by the gods to make a person shiver. This is after the kiss though, their mouths going from play-wistful pout and smirk to a deep, long embrace. This is after he puts his hands on her, stroking up her biceps, feeling the lean strength there. This is after he draws back, and as he is drawing back,

this is when she touches his face, looking at him, at his smile.

He feeds her again. This is not the first time. It's almost a game itself, playful and yet, like so many games, it's a ritual of something far deeper. The garou are hunters, for certain: look how he met her. But look how it's they who go to their kin for succor, not the other way around. Feed me. Care for me. Touch me. Let me lay my head in your lap.

So: Avery touches his face, and her hand falls softly away, and she opens her mouth, and he lays a bite of meat on her mouth, tracing her lips and flirting with her. She closes her lips on his fingertip and sucks softly, closing her eyes for a moment. There's a low noise, vibrating on his fingerprint. Her eyes open again as she draws away, slowly, chewing, swallowing, licking her lips.

"You're a savage," she tells him, right on the verge of smirking. "As long as you have shelter and meat and a hot cunt to bury your cock in, you'll be satisfied."

Calden White

That touch -- small, gentle, tender -- is something he leans into; turning his face with his eyes on hers, his lips brushing the tips of her fingers as they trail away. And then he feeds her, much as he had sheltered her that first night, if only for a handful of hours, and several of them only in his car. By all rights, what they've done with each other has already trespassed on several age-old laws and boundaries. Not just the sex, and the sex, and the sex, and the sex. The rest of it as well. The full belly, the warm fire, a roof and four walls to keep out the storm.

Not the soft bed, though. Not his, at least. And not really hers yet, either.

Amusement sparks deep in Calden's eyes. It mingles with that slow molten heat; glimmers at her as his eyebrows raise, as he mock-scoffs. "I'd say house is a cut above just shelter. This," he pulls another mouthful of beef off the bone, tender and juicy, "is a cut above just meat. And you, my fair lady, are quite the large cut above just a hot cunt.

"Though you do happen to have a very nice one, I'll give you that." And he smirks.

Avery Chase

His house is better than mere shelter, and this steak is better than mere meat, and her presence and her scent and her breasts and her arms and all the wonderful, wonderful things about fucking her are far better than a mere hot cunt, as she puts it.

Avery leans forward and gives him a kiss that can't help but be soft, because her lips are so soft. She nips his lower lip, while his fingers are still holding another bite of meat for her, for him, for whoever. She thinks briefly of all the kinsmen and kinswomen that the Fianna have lost over the generations to the hungry Silver Fangs. How many red-haired ladies with red-haired husbands gave birth to silver-haired, blue-eyed children that were either given a blind eye or outright called bastards. How few silver-haired ladies ended up having red-haired children, merely because they were so much better... corralled, like the mares they were in past times.

She knows that her tribe has, in long ages past, simply taken whatever it wanted from those that were loyal. Tributes. Taxes. Lovers. Land. She knows why so many of them ended up in the arms of Fianna, too. She perhaps mocked it once or twice, reading her histories. She wouldn't, now, having gone to bed with him so many times already.

It isn't his blood that draws her, though. It isn't the auburn cast of his hair or even the greenish glint in his eyes that she sees sometimes and finds... quite attractive in its own right. She doesn't know what it is. She stops thinking about it.

That kiss ends. She pulls back slowly, watching his smirking and his description of her cunt as very nice, and she smirks right back. "Filthy," she mutters, and reaches for a bite of steak herself. She follows it with a swig of wine.

Calden White

His hand catches the bottle on the downswing: his palm cupping around the base, tugging it gently from her fingers. If she lets it go, that is.

"You like it," he says.

And if she does, he tips it back. Drinks long and hearty, because of course he does, son of Stag that he is. Bubbles well up, splash against the insides of the bottle. He licks a drop from his lower lip as he sets the bottle back down, and then

he holds out that shred of meat. It's held between his fingers this time, the first and the second. His elbow is resting on the countertop.

Avery Chase

She is growing more relaxed with her increasing intoxication. She lets him have the wine and smiles to herself as he takes it. Avery leans over, and instead of answering him when he tells her that she likes it, she waits til he's drunk his fill and then kisses him, fully, pressing her body between his legs and against his chest, her fingers touching his jaw, her own body terribly warm underneath her silk.

"I like it," she mutters, confesses, breathes out, when she pauses that kiss to take a breath. And then kisses him again, her other hand falling to his thigh, moving up to his hip. She doesn't stop to think. Or hesitate. Her hands are so light on him at first, and then so firm, and then leaving him entirely as her arms wrap around his neck, pulling him in and keeping him in that kiss.

Calden White

There's still quite a bit of their dinner left. Between the two of them -- well, between Avery's occasional sips and that one rather enormous gulp Calden took -- they've finished a good amount of the wine. And they're most of the way through that first steak. But the beans are hardly touched. That second steak isn't even cut.

Calden doesn't stop her, though, when Avery slides her arms around his neck. Of course he doesn't. He doesn't stop her, he doesn't resist, he doesn't even want to. He kisses her back, that first one slow and full; the ones after

warmer and then hotter, his mouth opening to hers, his arms wrapping strong and hard around her. Their lips part for a moment; he laughs under his breath, drops that scrap of meat and wipes his fingertips on his shirt because why not, it's filthy anyway.

His hands take her around the waist as he comes off the barstool, standing, lifting her, boosting her onto the countertop. Next to their wine. Next to their steak and their string beans. He smiles at her, warm and playful and a little conspiratorially: and quite matter-of-factly, as though wine and steak and then sex on the counter is a perfectly natural, perfect understandable progression,

he starts to undo her dress.

Avery Chase

Calden doesn't stop her, and doesn't even want to, but Avery stops him. Not when he gives up on the rest of the meal for the time being and puts his arms around her, and not when he laughs or wipes his fingers on his shirt. Not even when he slips off the barstool and steps into her, putting his hands on her waist. It's when he starts to lift her, because at bar-height the counter is too large for him to fuck her standing, and too small for him to climb on top of her and fuck her there, and because the image of him perhaps kneeling on a barstool and trying to nail her like that makes her laugh.

Avery stops him there, laughing, breathy and alive, pushing at his chest, refusing to be lifted. "Don't you dare," she informs him. "We'll knock the wine to the marble and ruin the kitchen.

If he goes ahead and starts to search for the ties or zippers or what-have-you of her dress, she lets him search. She doesn't help. Is it a slip? Do you just lift it off? Is that tie to the side of her waist real or decorative? Is there a zipper hidden mysteriously in a seam? Who knows.

But she doesn't let herself be lifted to the countertop. She stands where she is, The tips of her heeled feet between his shoes, her hips pressed flush against his own, their bellies together, his shirt hanging off of his shoulders. Her eyes -- and her hands -- trail down his chest and abdomen. Avery sighs in appreciation, as though she's just finished watching an art film that touched her in some way.

Her eyes lift slowly back to his. "Let's go to bed."