pure glory.

Avery Chase

The path under the bridges is cleaned, and the bridge is cleaned. Also: Cleansed. And there are body parts in a car that is neither Avery's family's Bentley nor Avery's Juke nor one of her other cars that Calden has not yet seen. Rides are offered; perhaps some are given. Calden sees more of Avery's servants tonight than he ever has: there is Chauncey, whose hands do not shake this evening even with his natural tremor, and there is a slender, tall black woman with her hair pulled back who confers with Avery off to one side as a pair of younger gentlemen are bagging corpses. It is this woman who carries wet wipes and even goes so far as to help Avery clean off her face and throat. It is this woman who is directing the rest of the staff after that brief conference, who is calling the garou of Cold Crescent for more detailed cleanup.

Very little time goes by. The garou and kin depart, in multiple directions, and then it is not Chauncey this time but this lovely, slender woman, Avery's steward, who drives she and Calden back to the condo. Avery still wears the picnic blanket. She still smells faintly of blood. She still looks withdrawn, has barely said a word to Calden. In fact: it's her right-hand woman who offers, on Avery's behalf, to take Calden anywhere else.

So there she is. In the back seat of a rather simple silver sedan, wrapped in blood-flecked plaid, staring out the window. Her expression is numb. The drive is not a long one.

Calden White

Calden helps with the cleanup. He's not queasy about it; not the bagging of the corpses, not the more grisly work of separating large bodies into smaller, disposable chunks. It's just butchery of another sort, and he works in the industry of meat and slaughter. He's accustomed to this: the separation of joint, the cleavage of tendon.Eventually -- and rather quickly, all told -- it's all cleared away. The controlled chaos begins to clear. Garou and kin scatter in all directions, and Calden, having arrived with Avery, looks for her. He finds her in the back of a car he does not recognize. He finds her wrapped in the blanket he'd pulled from his linen closet, stuffed into his bag.He finds hernumb. Withdrawn.Her steward speaks to him. He looks at her, half-startled; he doesn't recognize her either. She asks him where he'd like to go, and after only an instant's hesitation -- mindfulness -- he replies that he'd like to go with Avery.And so he climbs into the back seat with her. The door shuts behind him. He looks at her for a moment. Not half an hour ago she was brilliance itself, she was incandescence, she was fury and she was fire, so fierce in her beauty and so beautiful in her ferocity that it almost hurt to look upon her.She seems a shadow of that now. He wants, suddenly and rather badly, to wrap his arms around her. Wrap himself around her. As though his body, that large and well-made and ultimately frail human body of his, could possibly protect her.He doesn't do that. He doesn't think she can handle it. He isn't sure. He buckles himself in, and as the car begins to movehe reaches one hand across the seats. Palm up, fingers uncurled. It is not a casual gesture, nor a nonchalant one. It is very obviously an invitation. An entreaty. She can accept it, if she likes.

Avery Chase

What does she know, right now, of what she wants? She can barely conceptualize what she might want Calden to do with himself: come with her, leave her alone. Her steward is too elegant herself to give him a side-eye when he decides to go with her mistress; she merely nods, gestures toward the car, and if he lets her, she opens the door for him before getting in, herself.

In that car, Avery is staring through the glass, drowsy from bloodletting. After a fight like that she should have no rage at all but it still lingers, a single flame licking her insides, reminding her of the fury that overtook her when she saw them up on that damnable bridge, firing at her, firing at her comrades, firing at Calden. She still feels it. And then, counter to that anger, dragging her downward again, she feels the shame. God, the shame. She left all of them behind. Better for them to all die together than for her to survive alone, but still: she left them.

Avery lifts her hand to her brow and touches it with her fingers, exhaling on her palm wearily. She doesn't see the way Calden keeps looking at her, seems numb to even his presence, but she catches sight of his hand when her own lowers.

For a long moment, she just stares at it, as though she doesn't recognize it and cannot grasp its intention. Then, visibly gathering her will to do anything at all, she reaches down and touches his hand as lightly as she can, the tension in her arm evident of how badly she wants to simply recoil, and then

turns his hand over, pulling it an inch or so nearer until it rests very, very barely on her leg. She looks back out the window. Her thigh is tense under his hand, but she doesn't smack him away. This is how they drive to the Residences at the Ritz-Carlton.

--

It's late now, edging past midnight. They get out of the car, Avery in her blanket and her steward asking if she'd like her to come up. "No," Avery says flatly, and starts walking, barefoot and blanket-clad, towards the elevator. Her steward does not look perturbed, and her frown is as small and pretty as most of Avery's as she watches the -- slightly younger -- woman walking away. She looks at Calden, as though to see if he's going to go after her.

Calden White

Of course he goes after her. He forgets to say goodnight to Avery's steward; he forgets Avery's steward entirely. He goes after her, and he wants to put his arm around her waist -- starts to, perhaps, before remembering and stopping himself and

following, instead, shadowing her closely, reaching around her to push the button on the elevator until the doors open and they get in.

The doors close. He wishes it were winter. He'd have a coat then; he could've draped it around her. Like a gentleman. He watches the numbers move, and then he looks at her. This is the first time it occurs to him to ask:

"Do you want me to stay?"

Avery Chase

Avery scarcely looks at him, but she doesn't shove him away. She doesn't tell him no, she doesn't press the DOOR CLOSE button furiously when she sees him coming. She tries, valiantly, not to fight him. It is something of a war with herself, a triumph over her madness, that almost has nothing to do with him.

He asks what he does; she breathes in, and exhales, and she wants to close her eyes and pretend he didn't say anything, but instead she tells him:

"I am so sorry, Calden."

Calden White

He's looking at her. She can feel him looking at her, watching her profile, her face, her eyes, her. She can't possibly know how much he wants to fold her in his arms right now. The urge is so potent it startles even Calden. And in the end,

he resists it. He turns, looks at the doors, looks at their dim reflections in the metal. And then at her again.

"Avery," he says softly, "why?"

Avery Chase

The elevator dings, opening on her floor. As the doors slide apart, Calden is fighting the urge to hug her, to hold her, knowing that if he did, she could only bear it for a moment -- and perhaps he simply does not want it to be something she must bear. Avery is numb, is isolated within herself even in his presence, but she is not blank, she is not mute. The doors open and she walks through them, trailing the edge of the filthy blanket.

"I left all of you," she says, bare feet padding on polished hardwood. "Without even thinking. Without waiting for you."

She gets to her door and stares at it, then sighs. "I think my keys are in the duffel bag still." She pauses while he gets them out. "I lost control."

Calden White

Calden says nothing for a while. He reaches into the duffle bag, his fingers brushing past the heavy weight of his handgun, the extra clips. He finds her keys and lifts them out, jingling, and tries two or three before he finds the right one. It slides home, turns. The tumblers roll and the bolt slides back. He opens Avery's door for her, pushing it wide for her.

She walks in. He follows. He closes the door behind her, drops the duffle where he stands. Her keys clatter onto the counter a moment later. He touches her for the first time since the car, since his hand on her tense thigh.

It's his hand again. Her shoulder. He touches her only for a moment, only for as long as she can bear, only long enough to remind her of his presence.

"Maybe you did lose control," he says quietly, "and if you did, then I hope next time you won't. I hope -- I know -- you'll always try to do better. Be better. But the fact remains: when you ran up there, you killed them in an eyeblink. And someone had to, or they'd rain bullets on all of us."

A pause.

"For what it's worth," he adds, lower still, "I understand why you lost control. I do. And I forgive you."

Avery Chase

That's a memory of something like normalcy: Avery not wanting to carry her purse, but needing her keys, debating, Calden rousing himself from staring at her in that sundress to offer to carry them for her. Her arms, slender and warm and smooth, looping around his neck and resting on his shoulders as she kissed him, welcoming his hands on her hips or her back if he wanted to kiss her in return. She murmured something: such a gentleman happily, because it was July 3rd and they were going to see fireworks, which is terribly silly, she said, as they walked through the night air toward the park.

She remembers that, and aches for it, and almost feels it again. The condo is cool inside. It always is. She is naked under that blanket, and his hand touches her bare shoulder, and she shudders, but not in revulsion at the touch. Her head bows, her hair falling across her face. There is blood in it, matting it together at the ends.

you killed them in an eyeblink. and someone had to.

Avery's eyes close. She opens her lips a bit and exhales but she can't stop thinking about how they might have died, and it isn't so much that she thinks she could have saved them better from down there -- it's that she went off on her own. She did, for her, the weakest thing she can possibly indulge in.

She turns to him and leans into him, heavy and sudden, knowing the blood will not disgust him. The first time they met she watched him drain and butcher a half-shredded elk. This is the blood of their enemies; it is purified with the righteousness of victory and the fervor of survival. She holds the blanket around herself but she leans into his chest and, if he will,

lets him hold her.

Calden White

They did watch the fireworks. Those rockets and flares burst overhead as she leaned against him in the grass: showering them in hallucinatory reds and greens and blues and magnesium-whites. He kissed her during a lull; she pulled away, laughing, turning her face up to the sky as the grand finale lit her up, bright as day.

That pretty sundress of hers is gone now. She's wearing a blanket grabbed from somewhere-in-Calden's-house. It's soft from being washed so many times, and it smells the way fabric that has been left clean but untouched for a very long time smells. Calden smells it, too,

smells shed blood and smells her victory,

when she suddenly turns to him, leans into him, lets him hold her like that. Which he does, immediately and without a thought otherwise, his arms wrapping strong and secure around her. When he closes his eyes he can see the beast she was tonight, alight with righteous fury. After a lifetime it's still hard for him to completely reconcile that picture with what he feels when she is smaller than he is, more slender than he is, so easily enclosed in his arms like that.

The Garou need their kin. The kin protect their wolves. It's the oldest and strangest paradox of their shared history.

His palms stroke over the blanket, over her skin. He clasps her close and he embraces her like that for a long, long time, gentling only when he feels her moving away or relaxing into him. One or the other.

"Come on," he whispers then. "Let's get cleaned up."

Avery Chase

He kissed her, and she kissed him right back, longing and lingering and then laughing, laughing as she drew back, bumping their brows together before she looked at the sky, and the artificial stars in every color one can make explode overhead. Avery isn't laughing now, and she isn't kissing him or seeking a kiss from him when she lets him embrace her. She just tucks herself inward, still retreating, even while allowing him to touch her.

Some measure of her shame has abated, though. She killed the ones with guns. In an eyeblink. She slaughtered them.

Calden strokes her through the blanket he brought with him tonight, the one she smiled at because plaid, just before she ran her hand over his chest and leaned in, murmuring in his ear that she likes his tendency to wear red flannel. That he looks good in red. That it makes her want to undress him and fuck him, right there in the hall. They didn't. They might have, but: fireworks. She really wanted to see the fireworks.

Avery nods her head against his chest and exhales, stepping back. She looks at him, and there's ache in the way she smiles at him. "You are such a darling," she murmurs, and from anyone else it might sound condescending, might sound like a low blow, but she doesn't mean it like that. She just: means it.

Calden White

There's a pang in his smile, too, which is crooked and faint. He cups her cheek for a moment; then she steps back, and he reaches for her hand instead -- somewhere there in the folds of that blanket. Plaid. Blue plaid, though, and grey and black. Doesn't show grass-stains.

"Thank you," he whispers.

And his hand closes around hers; he leads her or follows her through her halls to that bathroom of hers with its separate tub, its enormous glassy shower. He lets her go there, opening the door of the shower, reaching in to turn it on. Then he goes to the neighboring tub, seals the drain, and turns that on too. Lets it start to fill.

"I thought we could wash the filth off and soak a while," he explains, wry. "Seems a shame never to use the tub before you move out."

Avery Chase

Something, and she's not sure what, tells her that Calden isn't quite thanking her for calling him a darling.

Avery walks with him, barefoot through her own condo, though it is not her den. The house did not quite seem like her den, either, a private and dark place. One might imagine that for Avery, a den is not a place one brings pack, or family, or lovers. A den is a place to crawl into the cool darkness and lick one's wounds, a place where the only scent is one's own. She nearly starved herself as a child trying to get away to a place like that. Perhaps she knows better than to try and turn any place she lives into that.

Hot water, in this place, can fill both tub and shower at once. Avery smiles at what he says, unwinding the blanket from herself and folding it over her arms. She sets it on the vanity between the two sinks, where nary a drop of water lives in puddle form. She looks at him, standing there naked, herself, but she is unashamed of her body and she is unwary of her nudity.

There is nothing sexual about it right now, after all. She breathes in. "Do you mind, terribly, if... I shower alone, first?"

Calden White

Calden shakes his head. "I sort of assumed you would," he says. "I thought I'd draw the bath while I waited." That faint, small smile again. "Bubbles?"

Avery Chase

Avery glances down, her dark lashes cutting her cheek a moment. She exhales, her eyes closed, and then smiles to herself. Her eyes open, her chin turns, and she looks gratefully at him.

"Thank you," she says, instead of calling him Darling, instead of calling him anything at all. Her smile curves again. "I don't have bubbles. I'm not six."

Calden White

"I have bubbles," Calden retorts. "You're missing out, Miss Chase."

So she showers. So he draws the bath, and so he finds salts on her counter. She can see him through the glass walls of the shower, if she looks: uncapping the little jar, sniffing cautiously, making a face that he thinks she can't see because he's facing the wall. With a mirror on it. It doesn't matter: he pours the salts into the bath anyway, stirs with his fingertips, then straightens up and begins to undress.

His shirt, his jeans, his watch, his socks, his boxers: all of it rumpled up into a pile, the blanket picked up as well. Calden disappears for a while, returning empty-handed, presumably having dumped it all in the washer and started the cycle.

By then she's nearly done with her shower. The blood is gone; she bears no wounds. He's glad to see that, and he does look,

because of course he looks. He sits on the edge of the tub, waiting for her: watching her through the mirror. There's nothing sexual about her nudity. It's still quite the view.

Avery Chase

"You must be six," she says breezily, and opens the door to her shower, stepping inside. The door closes.

They can't see each other with perfect clarity through the frosted glass, and she closes her eyes, exhaling, her body a warm golden shape through the steam. Calden looks around and finds a glass jar on the counter, a large cylinder with a hermetically-sealed lid and a candy-store scoop inside. He sniffs at it, but truth be told, Avery is not paying attention to Calden at all. The thunder of the water and the inability to see him makes it easier to distance herself from awareness of his presence.

She does stop herself, however, from sinking against the wall, huddling in the corner, closing her eyes and holding herself until the water runs cold. She remains standing upright, letting the heat and the steam suffuse her, letting it start to loosen the blood in her hair, the blood on her skin. She lets water in her mouth and spits it out. She notices it when he leaves, but she doesn't say or do anything.

Avery showers conservatively, in the end. She washes her hair and runs conditioner through it. She washes her face and body with different kinds of cleansers, and she has a wee nail brush in there that helps considerably. The water does not turn off. She opens the door, and the shower is large enough that the door is out of the spray for the most part, and she lifts a towel from the nearby bar. Calden is

sitting on the tub, watching her in the mirror, and so he sees quite clearly the moment she notices that and the stillness, the discomfort, that it causes. She turns her face from the mirror and looks at him, directly, and it says something about her grace and her politesse that she does not allow her gaze to drift unnecessarily into outright chastisement.

Calden White

Calden does see it. Quite clearly. And it instantly makes him regretful, abashed; drops his eyes away. "I'm sorry," he murmurs, standing. He moves away a few paces to give her room to go from shower to bath. The water stays on, and when she's clear of the shower he steps into it.

He's not in there very long. He uses her shampoo; he uses a bar of soap if he can find one. He scrubs all over and then he rinses, and then he cranks the water off.

The door opens a moment later. He emerges, dripping, grabbing a towel off the rack himself. Doesn't bother to wrap it around himself, though: uses it instead of wick the majority of the water off his skin, his hair, so he doesn't leave a trail of water on her bathroom floor between shower and tub.

Which is where he goes. Which is where he stands, hesitating a moment.

"Should I leave you alone?" he asks quietly.

Avery Chase

He apologizes, and she smiles a little, realizing she doesn't need a towel since she's going to sink into the bath in a moment. She hangs it up, and walks past him, brushing his bicep with her hand lightly as she does. He can hear her when she sinks into the tub, the water as hot as that in the shower, but after even a few wet moments in the cool air of her bathroom have her welcoming the heat, welcoming the drench of it around her flesh. She relaxes against the end of the tub, breathing in the steam, noting

the use of her bath salts. She smiles.

Only a few minutes pass like this. Calden turns the water off and the bathroom gets very quiet, the mirror now well-clouded. He sees Avery soaking, her hair golden with damp, her eyes closed, her skin luminous. She was not injured tonight. Not even for a moment. She is perfect.

Her eyes skip open when she hears the water shut off, the door open and close, smells the man coming towards her. Her brows tug together. "No, darling," she says. "I'm all right." A pause: "I'll be all right. I'm trying."

Calden White

Her lucidity makes him ache. It must be terrible, he thinks, to know your own madness. To fight it anyway. It must be so much easier to just give in to it. He rumples his towel up and he sets it on the side of the tub; steadies himself with a hand on the side as he climbs in with her.

Water rises against the sides. Sloshes a little as he lowers himself. A little water leaks out the overflow drains as they settle themselves: Calden behind Avery, his back to the sloping side of the tub, his legs outside hers. The bath is hot, right on the edge of too hot, and the heat soaks him through to the core as he leans back, exhales, relaxes.

They're silent for a while. They've finished their washing; they don't need to scrub anything. They just soak. He warms his arms underwater, and then he lifts them to the edge of the tub. Steam rises from between his fingers. From the backs of his forearms. He closes his eyes for a while.

"I think you're brave," he whispers, some time later. "I think you might be the bravest person I've ever met."

Avery Chase

Avery shifts out of the way, the water sluicing across the tub. She reaches forward and lets some of it drain as his weight displaces more of the volume, then settles the stopper back in as Calden is settling in behind her. She leans back into his chest, which is far more comfortable than the side of the tub, and closes her eyes, her head on his left pectoral.

Her hand rests on his knee under the water. He drapes his arms over the sides of the tub, and Avery just cups her palm on that shield of bone, turning her head to one side and resting on the edge of his chest. Even after washing, she can smell him. He smells like her water and her soap and his body and his tribe and it's all, really

quite arousing, in a way.

She breathes in deep, and is exhaling as he speaks.

Her eyes open. She turns her head a bit, so her voice can be heard more clearly. "Why do you say that?" she whispers.

Calden White

He likes the way she rests against him. He likes how she pillows her head against his chest, and he likes her easy familiarity with his body. Her hand on his kneecap. Her back against his torso. The fit of her waist and her sides between his thighs, and her calves against his shins.

She turns her head to speak. Her hair drags cool and wet across his skin. He wraps his arm gently around her shoulders; he kisses the side of her face, her temple. Thinks a moment, then answers.

"Because you don't back down," he whispers. "You don't run away. Not when it's you against an entire banquet hall. Not when it's you against four fomori. Not even when I think the sickness in you wants nothing more than to back down and run away and hide. Not even from that sickness, or the knowledge of it. I think you'd rather die than surrender what you know to be right.

"You have such integrity in you, Avery. Such integrity of word and action and purpose. It's one thing to know right from wrong. It's quite another to try to do right, each and every time you can, no matter how hard it is."

Avery Chase

Oh, she thinks he's quite fine. As a gentleman, as a host, as a guest, as an escort, as a warrior, as her lover. He has performed admirably on all counts. And she is not quite so far gone, quite so mad, as she was the first time. She's trying, she said. It is easier tonight. So they fit together and she doesn't flinch or tense when his arm wraps around her. She smiles, in fact, as he's kissing her face and her head and she laughs softly at him as they ripple the water.

He answers her. And her eyes close; her cheeks are pink from heat but they redden from internal sources, as well. She blushes at the praise, quite literally, and shies from it, laughing at herself this time. "Oh, you have to stop," she says, laughing, burrowing her face against his arm. "I'll get a big head."

Calden White

"I'm being serious here," he says, earnest as can be. "I'm serious. Avery -- I'm serious," and he's laughing too, starting to, that peculiar and human phenomenon of a shared social cue. She tries to hide against his arm. He doesn't let her, moves his arm, puts his hand on her face, her cheek, makes her meet his eyes.

"I'm serious," he whispers. The laughter dies a natural death. His mouth meets hers over her shoulder, his head bending to find her. "I think you're amazing."

Avery Chase

"I know," she almost wails, when he says he's being serious. She squirms, which is both delicious and potentially messy as the water moves around them, but she hides her face in his arm and the words tattoo themselves plaintively in his flesh. But he's laughing, laughing, pulling his arm away from her and turning her to look at him, which means she leans forward, turns her head over her shoulder, fixes him with those bright and gleaming eyes of hers. She's smiling, and

he has his thumb near her face. She kisses his thumb, bites it gently, and he tells her he's serious a fourth time. He sighs the laughter away, and her teeth leave his calloused thumb, her lips softening against it instead.

Calden tells her she's amazing as he's leaning forward to kiss her mouth. Avery breathes in, and breathes him in, welcoming that kiss as she couldn't have ten minutes ago, much less thirty. She turns in the water, slippery and dextrous as though she were born to the element, her arms looping around his neck. She kisses him fully, no soft peck, no quick retreat. His shoulders become leverage; Avery turns utterly, and sweeps herself up his body, parting her thighs and opening them over him, settling to either side. Water spills out of the tub from all this sloshing. She kisses him harder, a second time, and from the way she moves her hips against him, there's the suggestion that she's going to fuck him. Now, perhaps.

Calden White

That kiss. It was meant as a gentle thing, but like so many of their kisses, it quite gets away from him. Delves straight into the deep, and her mouth is opening and so is his, and he's making this low sound in his throat as she turns, as she slides deliciously against him, as her arms circle his neck, rest atop his shoulders. He's so warm from the water. So is she, with her thighs parting around him; clasping against his solid sides.

His eyes are glittering when that first kiss ends. They close when the second begins, and he looses another sound when she starts rubbing against him like that. It's a rough noise, a low groan, and then

there's a tremendous sloshing and sluicing, a great deal of water and movement and motion as Calden stands up, steps over the side of the tub, brings Avery with him out of the bath.

They leave the water in the tub. They can empty it later. He grabs a towel from -- well, anywhere, really -- and he wraps it around her, rumpled under his arms wrapping around her as well; carries her from the bathroom and up the hall, into the bedroom where that lovely archaic bed of hers awaits with all its silver and blue.

She hits it on her back. He doesn't drop her first; he comes down with her, atop her, and towel or not they're still rather wet. Her hair bleeds water across the bedspread. Neither of them seem to care. He kisses her mouth, he kisses her neck, he kisses her perfect, unscratched skin. God, she was glory itself tonight: dazzlingly beautiful, blazing with ferocity, telling her enemies exactly what she was going to do to them

right before she did it.

He fills his hands with her breasts. He fills his mouth with her breasts, sucking at her until she moans, rubbing himself against the bed because he can't bear not having any stimulation at all; rubbing the ridges of his abdomen against her cunt, too, because he can't bear not stimulating her. His mouth finds its way down. It's like he can't even help himself; it's like he's an addict. He spreads her legs open; he plants his face between her thighs and he eats at her hungrily, ravenously, moaning against her cunt.

Not for very long, though. Not tonight. His tongue slides everywhere; his lips suck at her clit -- lets go with a faint pop, like a kiss. He comes up over her, his shoulders spanning her, his chest rough against hers, his cock hot against her legs, sliding against the silken insides of her thighs.

"Do you want to ride me tonight?" he mutters; kisses her with his mouth tasting of her, sweet. Oh, she gets to choose her own adventure: "Or do you want to go on your stomach for me?"

Avery Chase

This was not what she expected to find herself wanting, much less doing, after that fight under the bridge. She wants it, though, and she wants it passionately, fervently. She moves against him with surprising eagerness, gasping at his mouth, as though she quite intends to reach down and take him inside of her right there in the water.

Calden grabs the edge of the tub, instead. Water rushes off of them as he gets to his feet, pouring down their legs. Avery hardly even seems to notice, but that her legs wrap beautifully around his waist. She strokes herself on his abdominal ridges, letting out a soft cry. There's a big, soft towel around her, as though even the short distance between the bathroom and her bed is too far for him to want to risk her getting chilled. It's a holdover from relationships with mortals, it must be, because few women burn as hot as Avery does, white at the edges with it, golden with it, sun-lit and summery.

The next thing she knows her back is on the bed and she's having her nipple sucked. Her hair is soaking through the bedspread and she writhes, moaning at his hands cupping her. His cock strokes silk; his stomach, too, feeling traceries of her wetness on his skin that are intimately but obviously different from remaining droplets of water.

His mouth leaves her nipples when he goes down on her, addicted is a good word for it, the way he goes at her, tasting that decadent wet. She starts fucking his face, right away, arching her back and squirming on him. Avery shrieks when he sucks at her, nearly strikes him upside the head just from the sheer panic of lust, but she grabs his hair instead and tips her head back, groaning. His cock is pressed on her inner thigh, then, his chest on her tits, his tongue in her mouth.

Her hands curl in his hair, manicured nails scraping gently over his scalp, as he kisses her. She doesn't let him go for a while, her legs sliding up again, wrapping around him, holding him right fucking there, urging him to rub his cock on her. Hell: her free hand touches his hip, urging him there, too. Panting, after his question: "I want you like this. I want you now," she says, the words coming in a rush, the last word nearly a growl.

Calden White

Calden nearly bites the last of Avery's words off. Literally: he nearly bites her when he kisses her, the force of it pushing her down on the bed, the strength of his body surging against hers as she pulls him, urges him forward. In. His hands on her thighs, then, sliding up the outside and around to the inside, touching her where his mouth tasted her moments before. He grabs himself at the base, finds her, gasps, his mouth loses hers; he slides into her

and it's swift and sure, but not brutal; just an unflinching consummation ending on a groan. They're grasping at each other, almost grappling: her hands clenched in his hair, pulling at his hip; his hands clutching at her hip, her back. They spill sounds into each other, erotic and rough.

He kisses her throat when he's fitted into her. Her tightness blows his circuits. He finds her mouth again and he kisses that, too, while her arms wrap around him or fall to the bed or remain right where they are, urging. His reorient, palms to the mattress; he pushes up on his elbows. The second thrust is firmer than the first, solid, has the weight of his body behind it. Makes him grunt or growl in his throat. And then the one after, and the one after: rhythmic, coursing, steady, fast.

There's something suddenly and animalistically hungry about their coupling. His brow is furrowed, his mouth searching -- he kisses her again and again, one hand plunging into her hair, stroking back to lift the back of her head, lift her mouth to his. Sometimes his lips move. Words, though she can't quite hear them. So beautiful, maybe; so fucking good.

Avery Chase

Now, she said, and now he gives himself to it, to her, climbing further onto the bed and onto Avery. She takes him with a moan of her own, her back arched, her head tipping back. Those hands on his body turn their nails inward, a sensation he's only growing more used to the more he sleeps with her. Fucks her. Whatever this is. In days to come he will tell a Shadow Lord Ragabash that he's in a relationship. Sort of. He means Avery. He means this, when he escorts her to functions and goes out with her on dates -- though thus far they have only had one that did not end with confrontations with the Wyrm -- and sleeps in her bed and takes her to his home and adores her with his body again,

and again,

and again.

That is sort of a relationship. Further proof: Avery's hands in his hair again, pulling him down to kiss her as she's wrapping her legs tight and close around him, holding him in her as though she thinks he might catch some mad thought and consider leaving. They have not fucked like this, athletic and fervent, in some time. And she is so wet this time, and he's never seen her after a battle, he's never seen her like this at all. She feels quiveringly alive in his arms and under his body.

Calden tells her she's beautiful, she's so good, he's thinking so tight, but Avery is moaning aloud, and he can hear her quite clearly when she tells him to give her that thick fucking cock, the words bitten out of the air, almost violent with lust. He can hear her, just as clearly, when she snarls at him to fuck me. Just as he can feel her, tight around him with her legs and her cunt and then her teeth, sinking into his shoulder with a groan.

Calden White

She bites him:

" -- oh, fuck!"

the response is instantaneous and obliterating. Midway through his outstroke, her teeth grip him, and Calden reacts instantaneously, involuntarily: his muscles lock, his hips buck, he slams back into her. It's a pure reflex arc, a white-hot domino effect of sensation impulses and physiological responses. Her nails score his back. His hands clutch at the sheets, clench tight; his breath is harsh past her ear.

Motionless, then. Tense, taut, panting -- holding himself back; doesn't know if that was too much, if that hurt her. His eyes are shut and he kisses her softly, beseechingly: the side of her neck and the pulse he finds there until she gives him some sign, some indication or signal that she's okay,

that what he does is okay,

that he can go on. Give it to her. Maybe she says it again: fuck me. Maybe she pulls him in with her arms, her legs, the brainmelting squeeze of her cunt. Doesn't matter: the signal comes, the all-clear, and Calden nearly loses his mind with wanting.

Bite me, he mutters, if she's let him go, if her mouth has relinquished its hold. Do it again,

and if she does, when she does,

he groans aloud, he's nearly shouting; he wraps his arms around her and bends over her, covers her utterly, presses his body to hers, fills her as completely as he possibly can. Again, and again, and again.

Sometimes he slips out of her, makes sounds like he'll die if he's not inside her again, enters her again, almost dies of pleasure anyway. Sometimes he's so deep in her, grinding on her, muttering half-mindless words; he's telling her what to do, except what he's really doing is begging her to

wrap your legs around me

tighter

that cunt -- !

put your hands on my back. use your nails,

bite me again,

fuck!

It's a fast fuck. It's hard. Imprecise. Messy. He's up on his hands near the end, he's drenched in sweat and shuddering with pleasure, with exhaustion. He's giving it to her, hard and filthy, and his eyes are on the joining of their bodies, the slickness of her wetness on his cock, the way her tight little cunt quivers and clenches, takes every stroke. He has a hand on her breast. He's pawing at her tit like the brute he claims he isn't. He raises his head and he kisses her, and that's hard and imprecise and messy too, and it'd be so easy to say they're just using each other now, they're just doing it for the sex and the release, it's mindless, it means nothing, except

there's something primitive and sacred about this mating. It's de-civilized, regressed so far into bestial instinct that it approaches ritual. It's the propagation of the species. It's the exhilaration of survival. It's the spoils of triumph, the memory of her vicious and victorious, the blood on her face and the fire in her eyes. It's her strength, it's her brilliance, it's his subconscious recognition and worship of these things. It's his body and his stamina and his sweat devoted to her perfection and her ecstasy: apex predator, savage queen.

He fucks her because he wants her. He fucks her because she demands it. He fucks her because it is her due. He fucks her as though his purpose and his pleasure is to worship her with his hands and his tongue, with his adoration and his hunger, with his hard body under her hands and his thick fucking cock filling her cunt. The world has its laws and the Nation has its Litany, but right here, right now, there is only one absolute truth: he is hers, claimed because she chose him. He is hers, claimed because he devotes himself and everything he has to her

just like this.

Avery Chase

Though Calden has reacted like this -- sudden and animal and needful -- when bitten before, this is the first time that Avery notices. She sinks her teeth into him in longing, in demand, and he responds with an oath, with that forceful thrust, fucking her in that moment until he can get a hold of himself, until he pauses, until he stops himself utterly because he's not sure if he hurt her, if that was okay, if she'll forgive him this time. He kisses her like a supplicant, the tremor of restraint making his muscles quiver, and

her nails rake so harshly down his back that they leave long red trails, the afterburn of her fire.

And though she has not stopped biting him, her teeth sink deeper, bite him harder, and maybe he swears then, too, but he loses his mind at that point. Avery closes her eyes and holds him in her teeth, like a blessing, like an acceptance of what he offers.

By god, what he offers. She lets one hand leave him, grabbing at the sheets at one point, and though she wants to gasp she doesn't let him go from her teeth, panting instead against his flesh. She nearly screams when he slips out of her, slaps at his back, his flank, whatever she hits, or claws at him until he's inside of her again, until he's doing what he's here for, until he's fucking her again. She likes it when he grinds. When he stays. Then she gentles a little, doesn't hit him or score him or scream at him. She groans instead, winding her own hips back on him, and she loves that, she loves the feel of it when he's right there, right there for her to move on, to use.

While he's begging her for this, for that, and some of those things she's already doing and some of them she denies him because she doesn't feel like it right then but at one point, almost madly, she takes her teeth from his shoulder and her hand comes to cover his mouth. She stares at him, pupils blown with lust, and her hips grind back on him, fuck him back, while her eyes hold his. She doesn't say a word. He knows, though, from those eyes, that she doesn't want him to stop. She doesn't want him, either, to close his eyes or look away or do anything but watch her, fuck her, while she

lets him.

Her hand slides off his mouth only moments later. It sinks into his hair in the back, pulls him down to kiss her. She opens her mouth to him and groans over his tongue; there is a wet, red mark with multiple indentations of her teeth on his shoulder, a mark that will bruise, a mark that will show just as surely as the marks on his back from her nails. Avery's thighs slide down his sides, wet with sweat now, stroking him between her legs.

Her mouth leaves his. "Push yourself up on your arms," she murmurs against his mouth. "I want to look at you while I come."

Calden White

At one point,

Avery puts her hand over his mouth. Covers his lips, dams the flow. Her eyes burn into him. Her body never stops moving, grinding, fucking, and

neither does his. God, no, he doesn't stop. He does the opposite of stopping. He levers up on his hands, he fucks her, he throws into her with these long, solid, forceful pushes of his body. Groans against her hand. Holds her eyes. His mouth opens, he bites her palm, licks her fingers; he takes her fingers into his mouth, licks the undersides of her knuckles, sucks her taste from her skin so greedily that

when she tries to pull back he growls at her, he sucks at her fingertips for another ferocious second

before he lets her go. She plunges her fingers into his hair. It's filthy, he doesn't care, they'll both be rather disgusting after this; he doesn't care. She pulls him down. He almost collides with her. Kisses her, those rough sounds he's making muffled against her tongue now instead of her fingers; and all the while: fucking her, giving it to her, meeting her thrust for thrust.

He's starting to wrap his arms around her when she tells him, no. Push yourself up on your hands. He makes this sound, this snarl of protest, but no: her wish, his command. He kisses her again. Their tongues meet and tangle. He pulls back, he pushes up, and she gets what she wants: the sight of him, his chest bunched, his shoulders locked, his elbows braced, the cords in his forearms standing out as his weight moves onto his palms. That heavy, brawny body of his moving into her, offered up for her use, raised up for her perusal.

He says nothing now. No room for words beyond the harsh slide of his breath, the low grunts that punctuate the percussion of his cock into her cunt. Sweat slides down the side of his face, the center of his chest, the small of his back. They're wet with it, slick with it, her legs slide down his sides, her thighs open to receive him. He's looking at her now, too, his eyes on her breasts bouncing with every thrust, on her navel, on the wind of her hips. He tries to swoop down to suck her tits. She holds him back. He kisses her wrist, bites at it, stamps his hands more firmly against the mattress,

bows his head, shifts his weight on his knees, pushes into her; stays deep now; short, swift, grinding thrusts; watches her face as she watches his.

Avery Chase

For a moment, Avery thinks he might not like that. He might rebel against it, might snap his head away and glare at her, annoyed. It's a dim, distant thought that she can barely hold in her mind with what they're doing to each other. It doesn't even matter, in the end; she pulls him down and eats at his mouth instead of covering it, fingers tangling greedily in his hair. She moans softly into that eager, talented mouth of his, a sighing and aching sound, poignant from lust.

And she tells him what she wants, and he gives her that, too. Avery lets him go reluctantly but surely, sliding her hands down his shoulders and his arms, running over his chest. Her legs open to give him room to move, and her arms slide up her body to her own breasts. She isn't shy about this, stroking herself, catching her nipples between thumb and forefinger, whimpering as he strokes into her, whimpering as those tits he's always going on about bounce into her palms.

Calden tries to lean down and suck on them. Of course Calden tries. Avery grabs his shoulder with one hand and pushes him back, her fingernails digging in. She flicks his nipple with her thumb, licks her lip to feel it tightening in on itself from her touch. He bites at her wrist, her hand; she swats him sharply, panting. She's not watching his face at all. She's watching his body, staring at him, staring at the place where they meet, and for all that he's essentially nailing her tonight, she is fucking him right back.

Those hands of hers can't stay off of him. Avery does look at him as she gets closer, running her palms down his sides, grasping at his ass, raking her nails up his flank. Now she's looking at him again, warning him with her eyes not to stop, and he sees the first spark go off like a firework of her own deep in her pupils. He sees another and another and another, before her eyes close and her head lolls backward with a loud groan. That's when it takes her completely, lifts her up and crashes her against the rocks, and there are many rocks: her own fears, her shames, her rage, her misplaced sense of vengeance, her lust, her guardianship, all the trappings and bindings of mortality, of humanity. Every last concern. She is thrown against them and shatters like glass, like porcelain. Her hands are tight on him then, her body pulling at his, her legs and her arms urging him closer, closer, deeper, closer,

without her even saying a word.

--

When she comes down, or starts to, she's kissing him. When did that start? It doesn't matter: she's kissing him, her arms around his neck, her moans hidden in his mouth, her body gone limp and loose and simultaneously worn through and energized. God help him if he hasn't come yet; he can feel the quivering of her cunt, the tremor of her vulnerability, he knows how tender she can be in the aftermath, how fucking delicate, like an orchid. God help him, because Avery is moaning softly, moving gently, writhing on her bedspread and snarling at him if he so much as tries to move her, or move off of her, or roll her over or any of that nonsense. She wants the satin on her back and his body on her breasts and his cock in her pussy to throb, to be clenched down upon.

Until she can catch her breath. Until her muscles and spine relax. Until she is quite,

entirely

sated.

Calden White

Avery, it turns out, need not worry about Calden getting his or not. Not that she was worrying overmuch anyway but -- she needn't. Because the truth is, she gets him off. She sets him off.

It's the way she moves. It's the way she touches herself. It's her hands shameless on her body, spreading up that sleek abdomen, cupping those incredible breasts. That: that almost does it, in and of itself; makes his pupils blow, makes his circuits short, makes him groan aloud not because she's ridden down on him a certain way

(though that certainly makes him groan)

or because she's squeezed down on him on a certain stroke

(though that certainly makes him shudder)

but simply. because. she's touching herself like that.

And: because she's watching him like that. God, but that does turn him on; trips a wire in him he didn't even know existed. He's got a lot of those, it seems. One keyed to her nails down his back. One tuned to her teeth in his shoulder. And one, this one, ever so sensitive to those dazzling blue eyes of hers

burning over his body,

watching his chest and his arms, his flexing abdomen, his hard cock,

watching him like even that is for her. The way he looks. The way he moves. The way he fucks. The way he

bows over her, pressing against the press of her hands, hitting some point of no return, losing it; collapsing in on himself in a chaos of sensation -- the tight slick heat of her, the ache where she bit him, the burning of those welts she left on his back, the exquisite sensitivity of his nipples beneath her fingers, the clutch of her body, the clasp of her thighs, the arch of her back.

The way she closes her eyes. The way she abandons herself. Cries out like that, pulls that groan loud and long from some white-hot core of pure glory within,

which he swears, he swears, he swears he touches when he's with her like this.

He comes with her. An instant after her orgasm hits, his rears up like a sneaker wave, like a motherfucking tsunami, and drags him tumbling and gasping under. And just like that he's drowning: he can't catch his breath, he doesn't know which way is light. He folds over her as she pulls him in; some fleeting thought in his mind, mermaids in the deep, oceanic sirens that entangle and entrap. He's all too glad to give in. All too glad to wrap around her, clasp her tight, fuck into her,

come.

For moments afterward he's motionless, flexed taut, buried deep. For moments afterward he can't move at all. Their bodies talk to each other: a secret code of secret muscles giving secret little tugs, pulls, clenches. It's a language of madness and it drives him quite out of his mind. He moans against her mouth, some wordless plea for mercy that neither her cunt nor his own cock seem wont to grant.

And he does, at one point, start to move off of her. When he's gathered enough of his mind to remember, however dimly, that he could crush her like this. When he's recalled enough of his own history to remember her laughing, pushing him, off, you brute, you'll crack my ribs.

He gets his hands against the bed. He starts to push,

and she snarls. Her arms and her legs tighten. He laughs -- exhausted, delirious, happy -- and he gives up, he spreads his arms like wings over the mattress, grasps distant parts of the sheet. Their chests pressed together, she can feel the thud of his heart, heavy and hard, still fast. But slowing. She can feel him

pushing into her again, softening by gradual degree; pressing deeper anyway, the best he can, as though he's just

as reluctant

to leave her.

"Amazing," he murmurs. It's the only word he can come up with.

Avery Chase

Oh, she doesn't worry. Only: god help him. Sometimes, she cannot. As soft as she seems, as gentle as she may be, there is little room for mercy in her, even bestowing that mercy on someone who -- if not too bold to say it outright -- rather adores her.

Adores her, mutters Amazing like that, even while his body throbs in hers. She has not let him move away, and surprisingly, it turns out she is not wary of being crushed. She is stronger, tougher than she looks, than she acts, than she believes herself to be at times. She is in no danger of having her ribs cracked. It means that sometimes she will roll him off of her with a laugh. Sometimes -- though perhaps more rarely -- she may demand that he stay, a warm body to blanket her, and that is what she does tonight.

Calden pushes into her. Avery gasps, a hiccup of sound, of breath. She clenches around him and that gasp descends into a whimper. "Oh, darling, no," she whispers, shuddering all around him and under him. "Darling, you mustn't."

So perhaps he tries not to. Holds himself over her, holds her, holds himself in her, whatever it is, until she is breathing normally again. Until she settles, and steadies, and relaxes. Her inner thighs stroke his hips when she scissors her legs to either side of him, her feet sliding on his calves. After a time, Avery stretches her arms over her head and lets them fall back to the dampened covers, closing her eyes.

"I'm going to sleep now," she murmurs, like a declaration.

Calden White

He mustn't. And so he doesn't -- laughing softly, softly, nuzzling her where her neck joins her shoulder. His arms slide beneath her, he wraps her close, he relaxes against her by slow degrees even as she does.Her arms fall, eventually, graceful as leaves. She stretches them overhead and her eyes slip shut. She makes a minor but important announcement. Calden laughs again, an audible lazy sound in his chest. He kisses her shoulder. He kisses her neck. His weight shifts to his elbows and he pushes himself up, finds that lovely, shapely mouth of hers.And he kisses that, too. For quite some time, actually: slowly, grazingly, softly, luxuriously."Okay," he whispers. "You do that."

Avery Chase

And so she will. Avery breathes in, nice and slow and deep and clean, then exhales just as slow. She softens in his arms, but he holds her and kisses her close, warm, on her shoulder and neck and mouth. She makes a noise of protest on his lips, like he's disturbing her slumber, and rubs her face on his cheek before turning that lovely face away, as though, indeed: she intends to go to sleep right there.

Only: Calden is still stuck inside of her and on top of her. She drowses, and then she bucks her hips against him, squeezing him with her thighs. "Hush," she says, as though he said anything, or as though his body is something to be shh'd. "I'm sleeping."

Calden White

"Somehow I doubt that," Calden disagrees, smiling. And he kisses her again, long and lingering -- disrupted slumber or not, protesting noise or otherwise.

Then, shifting a little, nuzzling her cheek with the tip of his nose: "Here," he whispers, and reaches down, hand on her hip. Draws himself out of her, just as aching-slow as he kissed her a moment again; kisses her again, for that matter, murmuring against her lips. When he's left her he sighs and stretches out beside her, his body aligned to hers, his chest against her ribs, abdomen against her side, thigh heavy across her knees.

And. And, of course:

his hand, lazy and unbashful, smoothing up her stomach to cup her breast. He smiles when he has her in his hand. Smiles at the feel of her, the smoothness of her skin, the gentle tightening of her nipple against his warm and warming palm.

"Now you can sleep," he whispers.

Avery Chase

This time she doesn't make protesting noises. She wrinkles her face up, pursed lips and scrunched nose and squinting eyes. She makes herself quite difficult to kiss, rubbing her face on his face instead, blowing on his lips like he's a tissue that will flutter upwards if she exhales enough air, and so on. But he touches her face, he nuzzles her, something, and she stills, and she smiles slowly, and finally she lets him kiss her, not again for she is an adamant fighter and quite used to getting her way, but

finally.

He leaves her, though not fully, and she sighs. He's kissing her again, she's laughing softly at him, turning her back to him and snuggling up on her side, body to body, chest to back, her legs still tangled beneath his. Calden covers her and she breathes in slowly and out even slower. Of course he cups her breast. Of course he does, and she shakes her head at him.

"I am asleep," she insists, and says no more.

Calden White

That makes him laugh, too. A soft laugh, secret, kept behind his lips and low in his chest. A vibration, a rumble; as much body language as verbal.

"Okay," he whispers, agreeable. And he kisses her,

not on the mouth but on the breast, his lips pressing soft and warm against her flesh. He can't resist: his mouth opens, he licks the nipple, he sucks on it for just

one

long, slow, honeyed moment. And then he stretches out beside her again. Closes his eyes.

Hours pass like that. The stars course overhead, the moon turns. They see none of it; there's a roof. They don't even see the lights of the city twinkling outside the window, going out one by one as the night deepens. Their eyes are closed. But at some point, somewhere between midnight and dawn, the air conditioner clicking softly on wakes Calden.

He tugs the blankets up from the side of the bed, then. He cocoons them, though their feet stay outside to dissipate heat. It's summer, after all. And she's a wolf. She burns as hot as flame, as bright as sunlight. He wraps his arm around her and

the next time they stir is morning. Is midday, actually. And he is pushing lazily up on his elbow, nuzzling her as she wakes, thinking to himself that the morning light in her hair looks like glory itself. She is glory made flesh and he

just

can't help himself.

Later on,

he looks so damn satisfied again, there in her bed. He looks like an animal, some great beast tamed -- or at least intoxicated on rather memorable sex. He's lazy and sprawled, solid as the earth, and he smiles at her crookedly as she yawns an stretches and sits up, as she draws a robe over her bareness, as she tosses that hair of hers over her shoulders and strolls away to bathe.

He interrupts her shower, halfway through. He joins her in there and he's all handsy in there, an ill-mannered filthy peasant quite incapable of waiting for a proper invitation or, for that matter, a proper venue for such trysting. He touches her while she's washing her hair and he caresses her while she's rinsing her skin and she has to push him off to finish bathing. He leans against the wall, smirking while she finishes, and informs her quite frankly that he wants to eat her out again. Maybe she considers his proposition. Maybe she lets him,

and if she does he drops unceremoniously to his knees. She slides a leg over his shoulder and he. gets. right to it, with the spray bouncing off her skin and coursing down her body, with his hands supporting her, with her slick mingling with the water, running down his chin and chest. He gets her off, patiently, hungrily, this long lazy unfurling orgasm that he's quite gentle about tonguing her through, really. Of course, when she's done he is hard as rock, his cock jerking like it has a life of its own, his eyes gleaming with want. He's brazen about this, and shameless: his hands slide down her thighs and he takes himself in his palms. Stays right there on his knees, rubbing his face against her pulsing cunt, gasping and panting and then outright moaning against her pussy as he summarily, efficiently, jerks himself off.

Or maybe she puts a stop to that nonsense before he gets started. That's a possibility, too. Either way, eventually they end up cleaned up. Eventually they make it out of the shower, regardless, and discover that her servants have prepared breakfast. Calden makes an omelette besides, which he shares with Avery. They eat from the pan. They make loose plans, or at least he tells her: he'll be in the city next weekend. Their feet bump and wind and play under the breakfast counter. She teases him, he banters with her, they have a delightful little spar of the wits that somehow ends with him leaning over, his hands on the edges of her barstool, kissing her as they laugh.

She bids farewell to him at her door, not long after. He doesn't ask to stay. He does embrace her though, hugs her tightly, squeezing, even after they've shared a nice goodbye kiss. He doesn't tell her again that he's grateful she Stayed With Him,

that she means something to him,

but maybe, just maybe, she can tell.