reverence of impatience.

Calden White

It's hard to say how long Calden would have waited for Avery to tell him she was interested, she wanted to be with him, she wanted this to be a relationship, she wanted them to be an item. A very long time, certainly, and maybe even indefinitely; he is nothing if not patient. Nothing if not understanding, and nothing if not -- well. As he said himself: happy with, glad for whatever it is she gave him.

Today, she gave him so much more than he expected. And he looks so happy to see her coming back to him, his smile growing, his eyes softening. He hugs her against his side. She squeezes him with both arms. He wants to know if she's ready, and she is, so he slips off with her, saying a few goodbyes to those they recognize on their way out.

He is still driving that rugged, rather nice truck of his. He hands her up into the passenger's seat and circles around to get in the driver's, and that rifle she growled at that first night is still racked across the roof, and when he starts the car an audiobook is still playing out of the speakers. Calden turns it off with a bump of his knuckles, and they pull out of their host's turnabout, start down that long private drive.

"Did you have a good time?" he asks her -- as though they'd come here together. As though they did this often, driving somewhere together, going to dinners and parties together. He'd like that, he thinks. He'd like that very much.

Avery Chase

Avery's smile at him is sidelong and coy, amused. "Oh, I had a lovely time, Mr. White. Did you?"

She isn't even waiting for an answer when she leans over, resting against his arm, smiling at the long driveway lit by his headlights now. "I really did have a lovely time," she says more quietly, more sincerely. "It got better when I saw you."

Turning her head, Avery kisses his upper arm through his shirt. Lifting her mouth from there, she kisses his neck beneath his ear, breathing in the scent of him. Her hand trails down his arm to his hip, circles around his thigh, reaching between his legs to gently feel him up, exhaling a rush of heated air from her lips to his skin.

"I know you want to take me home," she murmurs, continuing those warm, smooth caresses, "but I'm feeling very impatient right now."

Her lips press to his skin again, tongue slipping out to flick across a rough patch where beard-bristle is growing back in. Another set of headlights passes them by. Avery, who fully intended to merely kiss his cheek and then return to her seat or touch him just one time while saying something flirty, finds it very difficult to stop stroking him through his jeans once she's started. After all:

"It's been such a long time, darling."

Calden White

Calden's eyes are on the road, but she can see how his smile widens and softens. "Same here," he says quietly. "We should do this more often."

She kisses him then. The sleeve of his shirt is rolled up, but her lips still touch his upper arm through a layer of cotton. He reaches over in counterpoint, his hand covering her thigh familiarly, warmly. A moment later her hand begins to wander, and his eyes skim down to follow its path. His mouth hooks. Then,

as she touches him,

his lips part; he draws a silent, quick breath. "Avery," he whispers, while she's explaining that it's just been so long -- a muscle moves in his cheek, and then he turns his head, somewhat recklessly with the car still making its slow way down the drive, and kisses her.

A second after he wrenches his attention back to the road. He pulls over, kills the lights, sets the parking break, reaches for her eagerly and impatiently. "I ought to get a shell for the truck," he says. "Put a mattress back there. God, get this off." -- he means her shirt.

Avery Chase

Oh, she wants to tell him yes when he says that, yes they should do this more often yes he should escort her to parties and galas and dances, yes, yes, again yes. But she is distracted by the richness of his scent where it hides on his neck and behind his ear and close to his hair. She's intoxicated by champagne and starlight and how long it's been between them, intoxicated by the feel of him stirring and hardening to her touch, and by the way he says her name, and then

she is utterly drunk on his mouth, the way he kisses her hungrily and recklessly. She kisses him back, a soft moan on her lips, reaching for his belt before she's even thinking about it. He pulls over and they're barely a minute or two from the house but he's talking about putting a mattress in the truck and Avery is reasonably sure he's just teasing but that isn't why she's laughing. She laughs breathily and readily, leaning over the center console while Calden's hands go rough and insistent to the buttons of her blouse, which is so very fine and so very expensive and surely he's going to tear something, the threads feel like spider-silk.

"Darling," she exhales, the word coiled with laughter, laughter that comes from a low and warm place in her body.

Calden's hand strokes over her breast, and maybe he cups his hand there through the intervening layers of clothing and she shudders as the shock of her own arousal finds a home in her spine, like her very bones are being infused with her want for him. "Darling!" Avery gasps this time, even as her back is arched, arching, pressing her closer to him.

"Every single guest is going to come knocking on your door as they drive past us to see if you're all right," she laughs, squirming in his hands delightfully, her face alight in the dark with pleasure. "You should at least drive a little farther away, you brute."

Calden White

"Let them," Calden answers, heedless, undaunted, and no one could possibly blame her for wriggling in his grasp, pushing those wanting hands of his away. No one could possibly blame him, either, for responding to that arch of her back, that press of her body to his; for wrapping his arms around her and bringing her closer, closer, undoing those fragile buttons and putting his mouth on --

oh, she should slap him again. His mouth has no business there at all, none whatsoever, particularly when he hardly has her blouse open, when he doesn't have her lingerie shifted aside at all, but then as they say - this has less to do with business, more with pleasure, and the sound he makes sucking her through her bra is pure unadulterated enjoyment.

"I'll tell them I'm not all right at all," he continues on a rush of an exhale. "I'll tell them I'm quite out of my mind for my lady friend." And he kisses her again, and now he's tugged her blouse loose from her shorts; now he's working on the fastenings of the latter, and against her mouth his lips quirk into a quick grin; nip again at her.

"Do you really want me to move?" - quieter, that. Serious, if only for a moment.

Avery Chase

That isn't why she's wiggling, squirming in his hands. It's as though she can't get enough. It's as though she wants him touching every part of her, all over, all at once, even though that's impossible for his hands to manage. He doesn't care if everyone at that party knocks on his door. He'll tell them all -- the most ridiculous thing, really, and Avery gasps a new burst of laughter as his hands on her back are pulling her closer, arching her back further. Calden sucks on her not just through the flimsy top layer of her shirt but the thin camisole beneath it and the bra beneath that and he can barely feel a thing through all that fabric but it doesn't seem to sway or dissuade him whatsoever.

Headlights catch on that pale fabric and her fair gold skin as a car passes them, out past the drive and the gates and onto the road.

Avery's hand has left his groin. She touches his hair as she's tugging her shirt up and reaching for her pants and moves her hips backward, drawing away from that eager, impatient grasping for the first time. "Yes, darling," she murmurs, rather seriously, considering all this breathy laughter she's been giving him, all these squirming responses to his touch. "My family is among those guests, and many of our friends." Her fingers tuck behind his ear, securing an imaginary lock, her eyes meeting his in the dark, pure clarity searching the hazel that hides his heritage only just, and only sometimes.

"I do want you, ardently, but that isn't what I want to be known for." She leans over and kisses his brow, and that concern may be real enough, serious enough, to turn her off, because she seems rather at ease with drawing away from him and returning to her own seat more securely, buckling herself back in.

Calden White

Somehow that's something that makes him laugh -- what I want to be known for. And he relents, letting her draw back, closing his eyes to the touch of her lips to his brow.

"All right, Avery," he murmurs. And follows her, just far enough to catch her mouth in a soft, brief kiss.

Then she settles back into her seat, and he into his. He'd be lying if he said that bout hadn't left a mark on him, hadn't made him hard, ardent, wanting. He shifts, he arches his hips and tugs on his pants and tries to get comfortable. He buckles in even as she does, switching the headlights back on, dropping the truck into gear.

"What would you want to be known for?" he asks as they start down that long drive again -- the public roadways just now visible at the end. He seems to be serious, glancing at her in the glow of the dash.

Avery Chase

Avery's shirt is unbuttoned, but she's hardly indecent. There's a faint wet mark on the white fabric where Calden was mouthing her, sucking at her through several damnable layers of clothing, hungry for her. She settles, and they buckle, and a sly curl of her mouth smiles at him sidelong while he's trying to adjust his jeans around an erection she so recently held in the palm of her hand. The lights go back on. He pulls the truck back onto the main drive.

"Well," she counters thoughtfully, "what are the things you like best about me?"

Calden White

"Your magnificent tits," he shoots back instantly. And of course: he's smirking too.

A moment later, though: "That light in you everyone around you can see and feel and be warmed by. Your love of life, and the way you really enjoy the things you enjoy. Your honor and your sense of responsibility to those who rely on you, or look up to you, or love you. Your excellent manners, even when you're eating out of a frying pan. Your wit, which I never get tired of. And I know I've already said this, but: your incorruptibility."

Calden takes a breath, which he lets out like a sigh. He takes a turn onto the public roads, leaving their mutual friend's grand country villa behind.

"I like everything about you, Avery. I think you're remarkable."

Avery Chase

The look that Avery gives him at that line is sidelong, and it is a Look, and few people can communicate with their eyes and body as clearly or as tangibly as Avery. There's no deception in her, not desire to hide or shield her intentions. And Calden is not only intelligent but intuitive and perceptive in a way that belies his Traditionally Masculine in Every Way exterior. He would have to be far more obtuse than he is not to know, instantly and intuitively, that Avery did not find that amusing, that it in fact stung a bit, and that it being meant as a joke makes no difference whatsoever in its effect; no one, when asking why they are liked or loved or admired, really wants to be answered with the naming of a body part. He may, given that he actually is quite empathetic, even realize that given some of the rockier moments they've had together, being thus reduced touches on a soreness, an insecurity that maybe he's just in this for the sex, he likes her because she's beautiful, she matters because she's got nice tits.

That moment is palpable, a heartbeat that doesn't require a hey, ow and a hurt look to be communicated because Avery is so expertly communicating it without a word. And perhaps in that moment between the smirk and something else, Calden sends back a similar vibe to her: remorse, instant and genuine and resisting the urge to demand she explain how she could even think that, or what-have-you. Maybe

he reaches to hold her hand.

And if he does,

she holds his, too.

--

Light and warmth, and how they translate to those near her. Love and delight and sincere, unabashed enthusiasm. Honor. Duty. Leadership. Manners. Wit! Which he's never mentioned before, really, and she looks over at him and smiles, a little surprised and happily so to hear him say it. And that smile growing, warming, as he mentions that trait he tells her he admires over and over. They are driving along one of those outer roads now, passed by one or two other departing guests. Avery laces their fingers, reaching for him if they aren't already holding each other.

She could go on drives like this, she thinks, quite often. Long night drives, holding hands over the center console.

"Those are the things I want to be known for," she murmurs.

Calden White

Calden is, indeed, as intuitive and perceptive as his traditionally-masculine exterior would suggest he is not; could not be; is not allowed to be. And even were he not, he would understand that eloquent, affronted Look; he would understand that even within the definitions and scope of traditional masculinity he has erred, he has sinned, he has Offended A Lady.

It's more than manners that makes him reach across the center console, though. It is genuine remorse, and a pang of vicarious hurt, and a sense of gentle entreaty all rolled into one. All rolled into the equally eloquent, though not elegant hand he extends; the open palm and the open fingers.

She takes his hand. And they heal their rifts the way they do: silently, gently, patiently.

--

He tells her the truth, then. No jokes, no deflections. He tells her all those many things he likes about her -- only some of the many, in truth, because to name them all might take the entirety of the drive and then some. He tells her enough that she knows his regard for her, his affection for her; she knows that like just about anyone else who meets her, he thinks she is simply grand.

More than that, though. They share a smile, and a quiet moment. A moment later he adds:

"And I like your ... your courage. Not just in battle, but in every moment of your life. It's not that you're perfect. You come closer than most, but no one's perfect. It's where you fall short that you show your true mettle. You refuse to be defined by your failings, and that's more than can be said for most."

Calden draws another breath, lets it out. His hand squeezes hers gently, warmly, dwarfing hers in this form.

"Anyone would be lucky to know you, Avery. I suppose I'm luckier than most."

Avery Chase

She thought he was done, but Calden goes on a few moments later. Her courage and the way she faces her life, her imperfections, her shortcomings, her failings. He avoids mentioning the greatest flaw of all, that madness that -- truthfully -- will only grow more insidious and more prevalent as the years take her deeper and deeper into insanity, rage, and withdrawal from whatever there was of her that was human, or understood humanity.

That is some time off. But not very long. Never long enough. She holds his hand and forgives him because while Avery is not the sort to live what she knows might be a shortened lifespan and even shorter period of clarity by throwing caution to the wind, throwing herself into the jaws of life screaming and cackling and caring not at all. No: she holds even tighter to whatever matters to her. People. Preparations for a future that might not include her. Gaia. Avery lives and breathes to do what is right, to do the best she can, to enjoy every moment of it as deeply as she can, honoring the life that has been given to her even as it takes shapes she never

really wanted.

--

Avery smiles gently at him and squeezes his hand back. This time she's teasing, and this is forgiveness in a way, too:

"Because you get to not only know me, but also worship my magnificent tits?"

Calden White

Sometimes there's such seriousness in Calden, such gravity in that furrowed brow, that suntanned, work-roughened skin. And then he laughs, as he does now, and a weight falls from him. He's lighthearted, then, and loving; he raises her hand to his lips and kisses her knuckles, recognizing her subtle forgiveness in his own mute way.

"Amongst other things," he replies, smiling, lowering their hands to the center console. His fingers lace with hers; he wags their hands to and fro gently, thoughtlessly, playfully.

Avery Chase

Worship. She knows exactly what it is when he tells her to get her shirt off, when he puts his mouth on her tits, when he goes to his knees and devours her. Avery smiles, her fingers delicate and soft against his lips, flickering a bit, tracing his mouth with her touch.

Among other things.

"Like my pussy," she murmurs, just then, quite possibly derailing any other thought.

Calden White

It should be mentioned they're on the highway now. Somewhere in the course of their conversation, which has been so pleasant and familiar and warm that it made Avery think she could get used to drives like this more often, they've left the ranch and the foothills behind; they've found their way to the main north-south corridor that runs the length of the state.

It's not so late that the freeway is deserted. There are cars now and then, some faster and some slower. Calden cruises along at seventy, seventy-five miles an hour; not breakneck, but not toddling either. His eyes are on the road, and the hand not holding hers has two fingers hooked over the bottom of the wheel, and

this is when she slips that casual little mention of her unmentionables into conversation.

Calden's breath goes a little out of sync. He flicks a glance at her, sidelong, and then he gives her hand a slow squeeze.

"Shameless thing," he says, low, laughing. "I can't believe you just said that."

Avery Chase

They could talk about their fathers. They could, for the first time, broach the subject of their lost mothers, one of the few visible things they have in common. They could talk about the laughable move to secession by people who are, in fact, Calden's neighbors. They could talk about the party or the war or his business or her real estate or this ...very, very new Relationship as it is defined as such and what that means to both of them on both a practical and emotional level.

Instead, Avery steers the conversation back, teasingly-forgivingly, to Calden's utter infatuation with her breasts. And then her pussy. Which, let's be honest, he is equally if not more adoring of. Every. Chance. He. Gets.

Avery leans over to him, slipping her hand from his, kissing his cheek, letting those tits brush against his arm through her camisole. "Yes you can," she murmurs, smiling.

Calden White

Calden tips his head into that kiss, smiling. She leans over. He opens his arm, draping it across her shoulders, wrapping her against his side. Times like this he misses the old truck, the first of three; the one with the big bench seat that she could have slid right across to snuggle up to him.

"Yes, I can," he amends, agreeing. She can hear the smile in his voice. And he turns his face, eyes still on the road, to kiss her the best he can. Which isn't very well, since he can't quite see her, but -- well. He tries. His lips land on the corner of hers. He laughs into that kiss, and the truth is he wasn't expecting to see her tonight so he's rather stubbly again, which makes all his kisses ticklish at best, prickly at worst. Still: he kisses her, and when he's done kissing her he nuzzles her a moment, finding her ear.

"Unless you're opposed to the notion," he whispers, "I think we need to fuck as soon as we get to my house. Preferably more than once."

Avery Chase

Leaning over the center console is awkward, but Avery does it anyway. She nuzzles him and lets him pull her closer to his side and kisses his neck and lets him kiss her... face, really, because he's trying to drive at the same time. Laughs, nuzzles her, whispers that they should fuck. More than once.

Avery exhales against his skin, moving to get closer, and she's unbuckling herself now, uncaring, reaching for him. Her hand moves across his abdomen, fingers curling, pulling at the fabric. "But your house is so far away," she says, and there's an echo of earlier, when she thought to perhaps suggest to him that they go back to her place first, roll in her bed or on her floor or her couches for awhile before getting stuck in his car for the hour or two drive back to his ranch.

She kisses his neck again, pulling at his shirt, tugging it up from under his jeans. "Get off the highway," Avery mutters. "Find a dark spot or a road motel or something." And then, yes: shamelessly, breathing the words against his earlobe, licking his skin as though to seal the words in his flesh: "I want your cock, Calden."

Calden White

Pull over. Find a dark spot. A motel. Something. Calden laughs, hushed and under his breath; he has a flicker of a memory of that first night, all the filthy little commands she gave him. She wants, she says; he shivers all up his spine as her tongue grazes his earlobe.

"Okay," he says, "hang on."

They're still miles and miles from his place. They've cruised past the outskirts of Denver, the city lights in the distance a central point around which they gyred. They've turned north on the interstate-25, but Fort Collins and Loveland and all that open land that seems more like Wyoming or Kansas than Colorado -- that's still ahead of them, too far away, too long to wait. He takes the next exit; there's a huddle of roadside motels there, and he goes for the first one. It's not a motel six, but it's rather close, and the truck wheels bounce over the curb as he skids into a parking spot near the dim little lobby.

Before he exits the cab he turns to Avery. Puts his hands on the back of her head, kisses her so hungrily that if the night clerk were to look out she'd have no question what these two were up to.

As it is, perhaps it's quite obvious anyway. Calden hops out of his truck and goes to check in, and whether Avery waits in the car or follows he has the keys in a manner of minutes. Up on the second floor, which is also the top floor; all the way at the end. He takes Avery's hand on the way over, and then he puts his arm around her, and then he unlocks the door at the end and pushes it open with his shoulder and

sweeps Avery quite literally off her feet and over the threshold, smiling, kissing her, kicking the door shut behind him and -- somewhat unceremoniously -- dropping her on the bed before he reaches up to undo two buttons of his shirt before trying to just.... tear it off over his head.

Avery Chase

Avery is an animal.

Even her manners are about familial bonds, about respect for territory, about taboos that are not just written into tablets by society but written into bone and blood and spirit. They are far enough now, something inside of her says. It is dark and the male she wants is with her, smelling the way he smells, looking and tasting the way she likes. It is only by force of will that she uses words instead of leaning over him, opening up his clothes, taking him where he is. She smiles when he tells her to hang on, shifts lanes, disembarks from the highway the first chance he gets. Of course there are multitudinous road motels; Calden picks the one that looks closest, not cleanest or nicest or cheapest or finest. Truthfully, they're all pretty much the same.

The skid of the tires makes Avery laugh. She's impatient but his hurry amuses her all the same, the way his first kiss and her slap amused her at the time and bewilders her a bit now. Mid-laughter there's broad hands on her scalp, he's pulling her near and leaning into her and kissing her, making her shiver slightly, the end of that laugh dropping off the precipice.

She reaches for his hands. She wants him to put them on her breasts instead. She seems to have forgotten they're in a motel parking lot but she's urging him to touch her, undress her, and as his hands pass over that thin camisole that seemed so inviolable and impassable when he was trying to suckle her, seems so delicate now that he can feel her nipples hardening in his palms.

Avery moans, softly, into his mouth. And he pulls his mouth away when he can and gets out of the truck and she doesn't stay in the damn truck, not when he's leaving it. Her bag is forgotten on the seat as she goes inside with him, slipping her hand in his, looking red-cheeked and disheveled and smiling about it, so effervescently aroused and happy that it's damn near delightful to see, even for someone as numb and bored and worn out as the clerk. She laughs when they leave and laughs when they go inside, wrapping her arms around him and going backwards into the room, kissing him --

or would, if he weren't scooping her up in his arms, sending out one last peal of laughter into the night before the door shuts, slams, behind him.

--

She kisses him anyway, arms around him and hands in his hair, opening his mouth with her kiss and groaning into his breath.

He forgets that she's far more agile, far more athletic, than he is. He thinks to drop her on the bed and get his clothes off. Avery's hands tighten almost brutally in his hair for a shocked moment, then her arms firm around his shoulders and she pulls herself back up a bit, twisting, wrapping her legs around his waist, moaning aloud when she feels him through her shorts, feels him between her legs, god, and it's just his torso, his clothed stupid torso. She can't stop kissing him. She doesn't.

Doesn't even try.

Calden White

Every mote of light in every single room she steps into seems drawn to her. Every shred of laughter in the world seems to live in her. God, she's intoxicating, inebriating, infectious. Her laughter scatters from the truck as the doors open -- he can imagine it rippling out over the plains, bouncing off the mountains, a shimmering wave of white.

She's getting out with him. She's getting out with him and he's laughing too, laughing because it's ridiculous, she doesn't need to, he's just going to get them checked in. He takes her hand as they cross the parking lot; they tug each other along and then he breaks into a loose trot, takes the curb in a bound, pulls the motel door open and hands her in. Such a gentleman.

The night clerk is bored, the night clerk is weary. She looks up and there they are, the scintillating lady and her rugged cowboy, and they are so

very

potently taken with each other that it's impossible not to smile, just a little. They get checked in. They go up to the second floor and he picks her up and takes her through the doorway and maybe that's supposed to mean something, they can analyze it later in their minds, right now it's just impulse, it's just rushed and breathless and laughing and: oh, she's kissing him again.

He tries to drop her on the bed so he can get his clothes off but Avery is not having it. Avery wraps arms and legs around Calden and she hangs on, she pushes fingers into his hair and he mutters a laughing ow when she pulls just a little too hard. Then she's grinding on his body, using his torso like it'll just have to do until he gets his cock out. His laughter dissolves into something else altogether. The way he kisses her is hungry, is starving, they have literally starved themselves of each other all afternoon.

He leaves his shirt where it is, since it's rather hard to get off with an Avery riding him like that. He gets his belt open in a clink of buckle, and then his jeans drop in a rush of denim. She rubs on him through his shorts. Her camisole, which seemed impenetrable to his tongue but so achingly sheer to his hands: it's warm as skin, warm as blood, it transduces body heat so well that it may as well not be there. He can feel her breasts; he can feel her nipples, and it very nearly makes him salivate.

The motel bed thuds against the wall: he walks them into it, he kneels onto her, he wraps an arm around her to keep her where she is and tumbles them both onto it. They hit the mattress with a rush of an exhale. His mouth breaks from hers and he kisses her neck, kisses her breastbone, goes straight for her breasts and wraps his mouth around her nipple right through that scrap of a top while his hands roam around for a way in, a way to get it off.

They haven't turned down the bed. They haven't closed the curtains. They haven't even turned on a light.

Avery Chase

There's nothing ridiculous about Avery going with him. She can't keep her hands off of him. She can't stop kissing him. There's still a flower in her hair, finally wilting after all these hours, and even at the clerk's desk she's standing so close that their arms are twined. She beams at him.

--

She's not having it. She whispers, mutters a sorry to his laughing ow, smoothing her hands up his scalp, tightening her legs around him, making a low noise of welcome when his hands find their way to her tits again. Hearing the clink of his belt buckle makes her think she should let him get naked, she should get off of him, but she doesn't. He drops them both to the bed instead of her, shirt still on, untucked only because his jeans are gone, his erection pressed to her through the cotton of his shorts, her shorts, her panties, too much air.

Avery doesn't care if it's awkward or rushed or headlong: she pushes him up to sit herself up a bit, shrugging out of her fluttery overshirt, pulling her camisole up and off. It catches on the flower, takes it, sends them both flying to the carpet, and her bra is a simple soft white thing and it's as seamless as a sheet of fresh paper. Her scent rises from her breasts, delicately touched with some feather-light perfume but also summer sweat, grass, the night air.

She's kissing him again, ubuttoning his shirt, moaning in between kisses, telling him to get her shorts off, sucking his lower lip with surprising sweetness. But she still has her shoes on, and there are tiny zippers on the backs that she laughingly tells Calden about before kicking them off, and her shorts are probably halfway down her thighs by then and his shirt is only mostly unbuttoned and she's laughing and she's saying we can't even get our clothes off moments before she's trying to get him closer, pressing herself to him, muttering in his ear that she's wet, he has no idea how wet he makes her.

Calden White

We can't even get our clothes off, she laughs, and he laughs in turn --

while he's nuzzling her breasts, we should mention. While he's smoothing the straps off her shoulders and tugging the cups down and all but burying his face against her magnificent tits, her remarkable bosom, her lovely breasts and any number of other epithets he's applied to them in his mind,

-- laughs, and mutters something about how sure they can, they're just not very good at it; and then, as though to demonstrate his meaning, he unhooks her bra at last.

It goes to the floor too. Tumbles down atop the fower, atop the camisole, the fluttery overshirt that reminds him of that one time that he visited her,

called on her,

and she opened her door in those striped panties, that body-hugging bra, and that sheer shirt that may as well not have been there. God, he didn't think it would be possible to want a woman more than that until, of course, he saw her the next time, and the next, and the next.

And this time. There goes her bra. There go his hands, big and rough and scooping her right up off the bed so he can put his mouth on her tits with that low hungering growl. That brings him some level of satisfaction, takes the edge off at least, gives him the patience to just ... lick her up for a while, feast, worship. She told him earlier he has no idea how wet he makes her. So: he aims to find out, sliding a hand between their bodies, sliding it down between her legs

and inside her shorts, her panties;

finding her there within all her half-shed clothing, panting rough against her breasts as he touches her. She slickens his fingertips in an instant. He finds her clit in two; starts to rub her off just like that, the two of them an incoherent tangle on the bed, his mouth hot on her nipple, his hand coarse and calloused but getting rather shockingly good at doing this for her.

Avery Chase

"Oh, you're prickly," Avery gasps, falling back on the bed while his face is buried against her breasts, her back arching to allow his hand behind her, flicking apart the hooks from their eyes and pulling it down, pulling it off her arms, out of the way, tossing it aside.

And then he's growling, lifting her up and against him, going at her tits with his mouth as hungry as she's ever seen him, sating the keen edge of his hunger enough that he can slow a bit, lick at her, make her sigh. Her shorts are undone, and his damned shirt is still on, the last two buttons still done, and they are both tangled in their lowerwear when he pushes his hand inside of her panties to touch her. When he starts to finger her clit, stroking and circling and gently teasing the sides of it,

gently because when his fingertip rubs right on her she gasps, and whimpers, and both of those are signals that his mind processes instinctively as startlement bright enough in her mind to edge pleasure to the periphery.

Her pleasure has to be coaxed, see. Attended to sidelong, teased and stroked and lured until her skin is on fire and her mind is unraveled. Avery is melting slowly against him as he suckles her, plays with her, makes her whimper in an entirely different way. She is barely able to speak, but she does: "Take them off. Calden, get naked with me. Then keep doing this. Just like this."

Calden White

His fingers do, in fact, draw back at that sharp whimper. His mouth gentles, his hand pauses; he suckles her gently, soothingly, slowly, murmuring wordlessly against her breast.

Until she's melting again. Until he's touching her again, obliquely now, rubbing his fingers between her folds; stroking her clit in gentle, indirect grazes. Even that doesn't go on very long. Avery tells him what she wants, and she's quite specific about such things, please and thank you. Calden laughs again, a low sound in his chest, nuzzling her one more time.

Then he draws his hands out of her pants. He leans up on his elbow. His eyes gleam in the dark. As shameless as she ever was, he licks his fingers clean; he pushes up on his knees and undoes those last few buttons, sheds his shirt, kicks off his jeans, pushes down his shorts.

Naked, then, he reaches for her. He undoes her shorts; he sets her legs over his shoulder and he pulls those shorts off. Her panties follow seconds later, threaded up her legs and off. They're both bare, then, the cool circulated air of the motel raising the hairs on his arms as he sets his hands down on either side of her. Moves over her.

Just like this, she said. But just like this isn't quite what she gets. Not immediately, anyway. He comes down over her with his hands braced, with the muscles knotting across his shoulders. He comes to her mouth-first, lips-first, tongue-first -- his eyes on her face, watching her as he licks a slow inward spiral on her breast. Those eyes of his,

which are indeterminate hazel most times, green in certain lighting, and simply dark, simply animal right now:

they close. They close when he closes his mouth over her, when he sinks down on his elbows, when he wraps his arms around her. He goes at her breast like it gives him some unspeakable satisfaction to do just this: these slow, pulsing sucks at her nipples, one and then the other; these long, lazy licks like she's dessert, like she's ice cream, like she's the nectar of the gods.

His hand does eventually wander. It does eventually follow the valley of her spine to those dimples in her back; it does eventually thread around the arch of her hip to slip between her legs. When he finds her cunt again, it's with absolute tenderness, unerring gentleness. He starts to stroke her again so very slowly, his fingers wet again in seconds, his mouth leaving her breast to seek hers. Whatever sounds she makes: he takes them, hides them in his mouth, swallows them into his lungs.

Avery Chase

Avery's eyes pierce the dark as Calden sucks on his fingers. The only light in the room comes from a dim lamp across the way, the lights of the truck stops and restaurants and other hotels gleaming, glaring through the half-pulled curtains over the completely-pulled sheers, creating a band of brightness flanked by shadows that deepen as they go. Her skin is cloudlike in that lightning, seems as though she will break apart whenever he touches her until he feels her, firm and soft and smooth under his palm.

And her eyes watch him, hungry and restraint, her chest lifting on each breath, as he undresses himself for her. Make no mistake: it is for her though he isn't putting on a performance or slowing himself down to tease her. But his body is for her, his cock, the way he looks at her, the way he pleases her: anything. Whatever she wants. He's offered himself up so freely so many times that it has aroused her as much as it has frightened her. Right now she isn't afraid, though.

She's sitting up as he makes himself naked for her, hands going to his torso, mouth to his chest, caressing him while he lifts her hips up, pulls her shorts and her panties off, leaves her sitting wet and naked on the bed, legs wrapping around his thighs, hands running up his sides. So maybe, yet again, Calden ends up not actually throwing her legs over his shoulders while she lies back, as Avery can't keep herself that far from him. Can't keep her hands off of him. Can't stop kissing him, and though she said she wanted his mouth on her breast and his fingers on her pussy she is reaching for him, palming his cock, panting out a breath and thinking,

maybe not,

maybe this is what she needs.

--

Somehow or other they fall backwards to the bed again, Calden bracing his hands on the mattress to either side of her, Avery's hand losing contact with his erection and stroking up his middle instead. She feels his breath traverse her skin and reach her breast, which lifts towards him on her inhale. The way he looks at her makes her cunt clench. The way he licks her makes her head fall back, her eyes close, her hand go between her legs to start touching herself while he slowly, slowly starts to suckle her.

Their bodies connect, the thing she loves most, even at her most wanton: all of him touching all of her. His body against her legs and between her legs and his chest on her breasts -- or his mouth, in this case -- and the warmth of him mingling with her own, melting them together in the resulting heat.

"Calden," she breathes, a rush of air over the two syllables, working her hand eagerly between her legs, anxious with lust, putting her free hand in his hair, and she wants everything all at once then. She wants everything he can give her, everything he has given her before, and all of it now.

She gasps.

His fingers slide between her fingers, meet them, and transfer her wetness between their skins. Avery's more slender, softer hands slip away, letting him reach for her, pleasure her, all the more intense because she does not know what he will do next, does not know when he will slide his fingertip over her slit or circle her clit, only that he will listen when she whimpers

More

into his mouth, moans

Oh

as that kiss falls away, as it must fall away, because he can't swallow the sounds she makes

when she wants him to hear them.

Calden White

Such focus, when he leans over her like this. Such ardor, such heat, such singleminded lust. He covers her, he wraps his arm around her, he puts his mouth on her and -- god, she doesn't even know, can't even imagine what an effort it is for him to keep his mouth on her tits. To pleasure her, this time, with his hand and only his hand.

Or maybe she can imagine. She was there, after all, all those previous times when he was eating her out, when he was licking that pussy and tonguing that clit, fucking her with his mouth, growling against her cunt like the very taste of her satisfied some hunger in him. Some need in him. He adores her. He worships her.

He's worshiping her: a different ritual, this time. He doesn't have the taste of her, doesn't have her cunt quivering against his tongue, but -- he has her mouth. He has those sighs, those hitches to her breath, those soft little sounds she makes behind closed lips,

which become open-throated sounds, more urgent by the moment. He has her hands falling away from herself because she trusts him to do it for her. Because she wants him to touch her like this, stroke her and rub her and stimulate her, tease her, keep her guessing. He has her thighs squeezing his hand, his wrist; he has her face so close to his, every expression that flickers across it clear even in darkness, clearer than he'd ever see her, understand her, if he was inside her right now. He'd be losing his mind too, then. He'd be too far gone to read the pleasure on her face,

flickering like signals in the night,

tensing, shuddering, relaxing to the motion of his fingers. It's intoxicating. He didn't think he could make her feel this way. Which makes no sense, of course, because he has made her feel this way before; but there you have it. His arm around her is so warm, so strong; securing her to his body. His torso against hers, a monument of rough-hewn strength, his skin coarse with hair, his musculature heavy with work. She's laid out and squirming beneath him; he's half atop her, his thigh anchoring hers even as he plays with her, plays her with his fingers. Now and then he kisses her mouth, but only lightly, grazingly, tastingly -- he wants to hear her, wants to see her. Watches her so intently, every strain and note and chord of sensation as his fingers slide, and stroke, and slip, and dip.

"Darling girl," he whispers -- mutters, as he brings her closer. Close. Close now, and he knows it, can feel it in the thrumming tension of her body, the arch of her back and the lift of her hips. He kisses her neck, sucks at the soft skin, nips at her because he can't fucking help it. "That's it. There you go. Just let me ... "

Avery Chase

Maybe Avery could imagine, tonight, how very hard it is for Calden to keep suckling her breasts, licking her until her skin is wet and her nipples are pink and firm and oh-so-tender and his fingers are oh-so-slick from touching her, sliding between her folds, stroking her until she's whimpering in his ear for him to put one inside to give her something to clench on, something for her to hold onto as she arches higher, goes further. Maybe she could imagine what he longs to do and what he doesn't do and how much he lusts for her and how much he wants to just grind that cock of his into her or rub it against her leg or the sheets or something, god!

But Avery's mind is not full of imagination or fantasy or coherent cognition; she's not thinking about how he worships her anymore or even how he holds her,

and her lips are not closed, were only briefly closed when he kept insisting on kissing her, kissing her like that, but her eyes are closed while her mouth is open, leaving her in the darkness with his head and his presence and his breath against her and his hand working on her, in her, fucking fingering her like they're teenagers. God: they're even outside of town, holed up in some road motel because it was the closest, because Calden wanted her on a bed where he could strip her down completely or just because he didn't want to mess up his truck or who knows what and who cares.

They're here now. And she is squirming, kissing him occasionally, or letting him kiss her or actively seeking it depending on the flickering, mercurial, wayward moods her arousal takes her into from moment to moment. She touches him because the feel of him turns her on, because she wants to hold his chest in her hands or slide her fingernails across his side, his back, his flank. And he knows it arouses her because he can feel her clench on his finger, feel her shudder against his body. And the sound of his voice

sends a rush of warmth through her that she almost can't stand. She clutches at him, holding his arm and whimpering, pleading almost, that --

"No," a tight, plaintive little cry, "no, I want you inside me when I come."

Calden White

That brings a laugh out of him, low and dark and warm, vibrating through his chest where he presses against her. That brings a laugh out of him, but also: it shears into a groan near the end because of the way she clutches at his arm, the way she clenches on his fingers; the way her hips rise to meet him

as he's rolling swiftly and energetically over her. Her thighs part. He pulls his fingers back, takes himself in hand; passes that slick hand of his over his cock to spread her wetness everywhere, everywhere.

His eyes are on hers when he presses to her. And his eyes are closing, overcome, overwhelmed, as he pushes into her in a single sure push, swift -- but alert, so aware -- ready to check himself if she needs him to. If she can't take it. If she can't stand him

fucking into her like this, filling her up, holding. He holds, quivering-still, his mouth at the side of her neck, just beneath her ear -- panting, she can hear him breathing so harshly, his hands clenching into the sheets as he waits, waits, waits for her to accept him.

So he can move into her. So he can grind into her, hardly withdrawing at all; moving against her and inside her in these deep, rough-tender grinds of his body against hers, exhaling a groan on every stroke.

Avery Chase

Almost instantly.

That's when she starts to come, then, when he's rolling himself over her and fitting himself between her legs and sealing himself inside of her. The sound she makes is a caught whimper, a harsh pant, a moan all at once, her hands going from his arms to his hips, fingers pressing into the meat of his flank to pull him there, hold him there. Her hips roll to fuck him, right then, lifting from the mattress to start doing what Avery seems to do always, and best, which is... fucking use him for her pleasure, apparently.

All the same, her legs start wrapping around him and her touch starts sliding around his lower back, guiding his thrusts, her eyes opening again and head turning to find his, watching him as he grinds in her, whispering something that he has to read on her mouth since it makes almost no sound, which is just

fuck me. fuck me.

Calden White

Calden gasps, feeling her like that. Going up like a wildfire, going off like a flare. His mouth opens to her skin, his eyes are closed, his hands are closed tight on the mattress, the sheets, even as she's grasping him in her hands; wrapping him in her legs. Pulling him in, riding him, using him, blowing his circuits, fusing his synapses.

His hand wraps behind her head. He holds her near, he cradles her like that: a single point of tenderness in all this silent ferocity. He shadows her from what light there is, but what light there is still lives in her skin, lights up her eyes. She climaxes almost silently, ferociously, and he meets her stroke for stroke, flex for grind, watching her face, watching her brow, her mouth, the beat of pulse in her neck that he puts his mouth on.

The rush passes, lets her go. Her hands urge him on, and so he moves into her. She finds his eyes. He finds hers. His eyes are dark in this light, lightless, not a hint of green to be seen. She's saying something but the sound doesn't come, it's just movement in the night. They're just movement in the night, reduced to this primality of motion and desire; his eyes flick down to her mouth and it takes him a moment, he reads the way her teeth catch her lip so delicately, the way those lips meet a moment later, and then he gets it, the understanding sears right through him. He kisses her hard enough to push her against the mattress; slides a hand under her, lifts her in the circle of his arm to keep her right. fucking. there while he surges them both up the bed.

Comes back down over her, then. Covers her, moves over her, a synchronicity of muscle and heat and weight and roughness. They're both so quiet, nothing but gasps and pants, breaths caught and released, mouths meeting, moans given to each other low. That arm around her stays there, holds her close enough that he can feel her body, the whole of it, pressed to his. The softness of her skin and the softness of her breasts; the agile, athletic strength in her; the tight wrap of her arms, the welcome of her thighs.

And the feel of her. That cunt of hers, clenching on him in waves; taking everything he gives her until --

until --

If someone were to walk by their room right now, they'd hear him in the hall. They'd hear the sound he makes, rough and ferocious and quite utterly mindless. They might hear the thud of the headboard; the rattlling nightstands.

They wouldn't hear the way he breathes afterwards, though. How he can't seem to get enough air, but can't seem to stop kissing her all the same -- pressing hard, inexact adorations to her mouth, her cheek, her neck. They certainly wouldn't see or hear or feel how he holds her, wraps both his arms around her as far as he can, until his hands wrap around her opposite sides; holds her like she might possibly slip out of his arms if he wasn't careful. Even now he can't seem to stop himself, can't seem to help himself, can't seem to help fucking into her even though the sensation shreds his mind apart. Shudders wrack up his back every time he pushes into her, and yet he does it again, and again, and again,

slowing now, exhausting his lust at last,

coming to a panting standstill. Relaxing. Collapsing half over her, his arms finally loosening, his palm sliding down her back to anchor at her hip.

Avery Chase

It's a very quick, desperate sort of fuck. It's been so long. They've waited so patiently. They nearly got derailed before they even left the party ground completely and barely made it off the highway and if Calden hadn't been quick about his lane-changing he would have found himself getting all too eagerly sucked off, would have been pulling onto the shoulder, pulling Avery onto his lap, fighting with her shorts because -- as evidenced by those shorts and his beard-bristle -- they did not know they would see each other tonight.

If they had, Calden would have shaved. Avery would have worn a skirt. And they wouldn't have even waited this long.

--

They move up the bed, fucking furiously, energetically, sweating against the bedspread. The headboard knocks into the wall. A hotel-room neighbor debates whether to thump their fist on the wall or just wait it out,it's only been a few minutes since that door slammed and that woman started moaning and crying out like that. But they are getting louder. A lot louder. Avery has her head thrown back, her voice open, her cries filling the air like they're lifted up by Calden's groaning, Calden's grunts of pleasure as he fills her.

Someone does walk by and glances at the door and the window and is a bit taken aback at just how pornographic that room obviously has no trouble being.

Avery doesn't stop moaning because Avery doesn't quite stop coming. One orgasm rolls into another, melting her spine, blowing her mind. She was never entirely quite except when she was mouthing those words, mouthing them because she couldn't catch her breath to tell him to fuck her, fuck her just like this. Avery doesn't even have those words left. She sounds so helpless, so caught by her own lust that she can't stand it. She crests again, Calden's pleasure and hers stumbling over each other, tangling, falling together, burning up. Her legs are high and open like she only wants him deeper, and on that second orgasm they fold around him, wrap around him, keep him right there while she gasps dizzingly in the dark.

Calden kisses her even though he can't breathe. Avery just tries to breathe, holding on to him and closing her eyes again while she attempts to come down from that endless-seeming orgasm. Sweat soaks the hair at her brow and temples. Her cunt is so wet now, so slick and mingled with sweat that she feels like they must be fused together, melted together into one, and she never, ever, ever wants him to leave. But he's holding onto her like he is, sliding into her, flexing his hips and making her moan. It shreds his mind apart; she thinks she might die, and the sound she makes verges on pain though that isn't what she's feeling. She just can't stand it, whimpering stop, stop. Calden, stop, I can't --

until he stops, and she all but collapses, waiting for the room to stop spinning, while his hands anchor her to one place.

This place.

With him.

Calden White

Time passes. Seconds roll to minutes. He gentles when she whimpers, when she writhes, when she tells him she can't, she can't, she'll go mad. He gentles, he stops, he slumps to the bed and holds her where she is, close, conjoined. His nose nudges hers; he nuzzles her face. Finds her lips and kisses her between gasps, so gently.

Their breathing steadies. Their hearts slow. Calden's hand grows lax on her hip; his arm relaxes. His body grows heavier. He is

stereotypically, unsurprisingly, laughably

asleep in no time at all.

--

And awake again, less than a quarter-hour later. Stirring from that light slumber, squinting in the bleary light; noting the open windowshades, and the highway in the distance. Lifting his thickhaired, scruff-jawed head to look at the alarm clock on the knocked-ajar nightstand, which reads ten, eleven o'clock.

Calden lays his head down again. His hand passes slowly, savoringly up Avery's side, his fingers following the dip of her waist one by one. He pauses to the side of her breast; he can't resist passing his thumb over her nipple, feeling that incredible velvety texture of the areola in those few seconds before it tenses on itself. His hand slides up her chest, then, to cup her cheek.

"I like you so much," he whispers. "It makes me so happy to see you, whether or not I expected to."

Avery Chase

Calden falls asleep. Avery presses her lips together and she would laugh but all that comes out is an exhale: she is worn out, and drowses with him, her head turned to the side, her limbs opened a bit to allow the air to cool her, her eyes closed. She has one arm wrapped around his shoulders, resting still and warm across the span of his back. He sleeps, and she sort of naps, and after a while she shifts beneath him, working her hips off of him, separating their bodies, waking him from his brief and predictable slumber. When his eyes open she smiles at him, strokes his hair, and perhaps he sleeps a bit more or he wakes entirely.

Either way, when he does wake, looking at the clock and touching her body, Avery shivers. His thumb on her nipple, his palm caressing its way up her form. She smiles, no longer utterly pink from exertion and arousal but still a bit flushed with pleasure, with happiness of her own.

"I like you so much, too," she says softly, adorably, that smile spreading, her cheek curved into his palm. "Kiss me."

Calden White

He lights up a little at that. Without hesitation he leans into her. His brow touches hers first, for a moment. Then he kisses her, lips soft; savoring her. Only at the end does his tongue slip across her lips. It ends with a quiet sigh of an exhale. He sets his head back down on the bed, looking at her.

"Have I told you how much I like it when you tell me how to please you?" he whispers, smiling. "Because I do. I love it."

Avery Chase

Calden obeys, kissing her lips softly like that, tasting her by touch long before he tastes her sweat, her tongue, her gently opening mouth. She is still smiling when he parts from her, watching him with bemused sleepiness and satiation.

"You didn't need to tell me," she informs him. "I could tell."

Avery leans over him, turning to him, kissing his cheek. "Let's wash up," she murmurs. "I want to go home with you."

--

And wash up they will, unless he protests. Avery twisting up her hair and taking a quick shower, washing her face and her body. It takes all of five minutes, really, and then she's slipping back into her clothes, shaking her hair down again and finger-combing it into soft waves around her shoulders.

Calden White

He's so into her. Anyone can tell. Not just her -- though her especially, perhaps -- but anyone. The guests at the party. That grad student that didn't want to turn into the third wheel. Her father, long before she told him. Everyone.

His eyes close as she leans over him. He tilts his head for her, smiles into that little kiss on the cheek. And as she sits up he pushes up on his elbows, looking down the length of the bed at himself, his feet, the rather dingy room.

Her, then. He watches her as she tosses back her hair, steps off the bed. There it is again, that lazy look in his eyes, some mingling of appreciation and want and sheer enchantment. Her paramour, her gentleman caller, her lover on the sheets: he sprawls there a while longer, his head turning to watch her go.

"God above, what a view," he says, playfully -- but honestly -- as she vanishes into the little bathroom.

--

Where he joins her, shortly. The shower is quick, and a little staggered: she gets out while he's still scrubbing down his hair. By the time he gets out she's clothed, she's fingercombing her hair. He's dripping on the towel-mat, rubbing his jaw as he eyes the cheap little disposable razor the motel provided.

In the end he decides he can wait a little longer to shave. Not worth the razorburn and the potential nicks. He pulls his jeans on without the shorts, this time, and slides his shirt on. They have no luggage. He didn't even take his keys or wallet out of his pocket. On the way out he picks up the room keycards, pulls the door shut behind him, and wraps his arm around Avery's shoulders as they walk away from that motel room that they may as well have rented by the hour.

The keycards are dropped into the deposit box outside the lobby. The night clerk is looking at them amusedly, knowingly. She smiles and waves with her fingers, and Calden

does that little tug-of-an-invisible-hat of his, smiling half-sheepishly back. His arm stays around Avery, though. He's not ashamed, not really.

--

Back in the car, settling with a huff. The engine hasn't even cooled down entirely, but Calden for one is more relaxed now. Languid, lazy, as he backs out of the space. When they get back on the freeway he drives a touch slower than before, cruising northbound.

Avery Chase

Avery looks over her shoulder at him, smirking at his comment. She gives herself a neat little slap on the ass for his benefit, slipping into the bathroom. A moment later he can hear the water turn on, clattering against the tub.

She watches him examine the razor as she's getting dressed again, smirking at that, too. After all: she knows why he is thinking about shaving. She knows what he's thinking about when he considers smoothing his face for her. She thinks about his face buried against her cunt, loosing groans as he eats her out, and breathes in as her cheeks turn pink, then reaches down to zip up her little sandals.

Calden will wait to shave. They drop their keys off to 'check out' and the clerk waves at them and Avery covers her mouth with not-entirely-embarrassed laughter as they go back to the truck. Lazily, he starts the car back up, and Avery tips her chair back a bit to relax, putting her feet up on the dash which you really shouldn't do but she does anyway, watching the stars pass by overhead as Calden drives. She doesn't try to start a conversation; she really doesn't need to.

But they hold hands. Over the center console, fingers loosely tangled, they hold hands as they go.

Calden White

It's still a rather long way to Calden's house. Two hours' drive from Denver proper, give or take, plus another thirty to an hour from their mutual friend's house. Their fingers are loosely entwined, their elbows on the armrest.

Calden thinks idly of the distance as they drive. He thinks of her saying she wanted to see more of him. More often than twice a month, maybe thrice if they were lucky. Though she'd all but told him to stop planning ahead so much earlier, he finds himself thinking about it again all the same: maybe he could make more trips to Denver. Maybe she could come up to see him. He can't imagine moving there, no more than he can imagine her moving to his ranch or even Fort Collins. Sometimes he's surprised she's even in Colorado, when her looks and mannerisms and thoughtless noblisse oblige placed her so squarely in the upper east side or similar.

Then he sees her in shorts, in yoga pants; he sees her with her hair up in a ponytail. He sees her easy athleticism, her strength and agility, and he remembers: she belongs to the sun and the sky and the earth. And if there was ever a state or a city that coexisted so well with all three, it was Denver.

--

An hour, an hour and a half later: he pulls to a stop in front of that big stone-and-wood house of his. It's the middle of the night now; quite literally midnight. The sky is clear. There are more stars than a man can count overhead. He comes around to open Avery's door for her, or to hand her down if she's already done so herself.

A motion-activated light blinks on as they approach the front door. It's the third time she's been here. Seems like it ought to be more than that, but: the third. He unlocks the door for her and lets her go ahead of him, following her in. The great room is clothed in shadows; only one or two low lamps still burn. Calden flicks on another, tossing his keys into a basket on the breakfast bar, going to the refrigerator almost out of habit.

"Hungry?" he asks over his shoulder, pulling out bottles of water. He lobs one at her underhand, gently.

Avery Chase

During that drive, Avery does in fact nap a bit, head lolling on the headrest. She does not mind Calden thinking about the logistics of how they can see each other more, because Calden isn't talking about it aloud or asking her to give him answers she really doesn't have about what she can do and when. She doesn't mind him thinking about the fact that they aren't really ever going to live nearer to each other because she's not going to come live with him on the ranch and he's not going to move to Denver, because he's not bringing it up. Also because she's asleep. That helps.

--

She's awake when they get to the house, though. Sometime in the middle of the drive she stretched and moved and breathed in deeply, smiling at him and rubbing her thumb over his fingers. She sits up and takes the chair out of its recline when he comes around for her, sweeping herself into his arms with her arms around his shoulders and her mouth going to his mouth. So when her feet touch the ground it's because he has turned her and set her on the earth again, and this makes her smile, too.

Between their bodies, their clasped hands swing a bit. That's her fault.

They go inside and she knows he wants to take her to his bedroom, the place he wanted to take her that first night here, the place he took her before, and she takes the water he hands her -- since she hasn't let go of his hand just yet, has walked with him around, nuzzling his upper arm through his shirt.

"Sure," she murmurs, peering past him into the fridge. She sees brisket. She points at it, then looks at Calden. "Do you have potato salad?"

Calden White

It charms him, and it makes him laugh, when she simply points. That. I want that. And then -- without letting go her hand -- he reaches into the cool cavernous spaces of that enormous, fancy, modern, brushed-stainless-steel fridge of his and removes the brisket.

"Just store-bought," he says, because: shock! There are stores up here. Rather distant, and tiny, but stores. "It's not bad, though." And he digs out a large jug of it, setting it with a thunk on the kitchen island.

They have to stop holding hands, then, because he's getting plates down from the cupboard. The brisket goes into the microwave unless she wants it cold. He puts some dinner rolls into the toaster oven too, clicking the dial over to three minutes.

"Eva's bringing her mother-in-law and kids up here for labor day weekend," he says. "My cousins will around too. You could come up if you're not doing anything else. Bring your family, if you want."

Avery Chase

He saw Avery at the picnic, eating all her potato salad, eating some of his as well, then a few bites of his coleslaw. All the barbecued chicken she took, she ate. She ate some of his ribs, skinning the bone entirely, cleaning them with her teeth. "Delightful!" she says, and draws her hand back to give a small clap, a gentle bounce in place. He starts loading up plates, and Avery takes note of where he gets things, because she, too, is thinking of more time spent here, of coming up sometimes, of having dinner with him here instead of in the city, of learning where he keeps his corkscrew for the wine they'll drink.

Cold meat is fine, truth be told, but she's not that picky. He heats it up and she laughs softly at the dinner rolls, and then he mentions Eva and he can see a little twinge in her, a hitch, a half-step of uncertainty as she is unscrewing her water and taking a sip. "Oh. I think... we're traveling that weekend. Or my brother and father are. They're going back east to visit some friends. My staff will have the day off."

Calden White

There's this to be said for Avery: she's not one of those women who neurotically starve themselves, who pick at their food for fear of seeming less than ladylike, less than dainty. He saw her eat her potato salad, eat his coleslaw; eat her chicken and his ribs. He saw her eat straight from the searing-pan, too, with a knife and her fingers and little else. Drink from the bottle. Sup until she was sated, and lolling, and lazy,

and so irresistible that he couldn't help climbing over her and eating her up himself. He stops there: the memory threatens to give him an erection, puts a faint flush in his rough cheek.

So they talk about labor day instead, while he heats up dinner rolls and meat, scoops out potato salad. He mentions Eva and there's that little twinge, that hitch that makes him look at her a moment longer. The toaster oven behind him is buzzing quietly as a small silence stretches between them.

Then he moves a little closer to her. He comes beside her, and he wraps his arm around her, pulling her against his side. No explanation given, and perhaps none needed. No reassurance, either. He suspects it would only insult her dignity.

"Lucky staff," he jokes gently. "You should bring your folks over someday, though. I'd love to meet them."

Avery Chase

Let's get this straight: Calden watched her eat from his plate and clean his ribs and devour potato salad and just now point at a platter of brisket like that. now. okay? but all of this is after he saw her kill and devour half of a full-grown elk while its blood was still steaming and its heart was still giving a few last frantic beats, then sit down and eat steaks carved from its side while putting away scotch with him like she had never touched a bite.

Avery's metabolism, like the metabolisms of many of her kind, is a constantly running blast furnace.

He remembers eating with her at her kitchen island in a now-forgotten apartment, dressed in robes until he couldn't stand it anymore and needed to lick her pussy for dessert. He pinks. He changes his mind and his topic of conversation so he won't get a boner there in his kitchen in the middle of the night. He notices her twinge at the mention of the woman she's only seen from afar, been introduced to, seen at a warmoot, but never really talked to.

Calden decides against asking Avery what that's about, and just comes closer to her instead, hugging her to his side. She nuzzles his chest as though by instinct and kisses him through his shirt. She bristles a bit, though not angrily. "I wouldn't make them work on Labor Day," she says, when he calls her staff lucky. "This is not the old world. They are all Americans by citizenship, even those who are not by birth. They do so much for me."

They do almost everything for her.

Folks, he says, and her brows stitch. "Just my father," she mentions. She is not of his culture, not entirely: 'folks' means parents to her.

Calden White

"Well, I'm making my cousins work Labor Day," Calden replies blithely, the corner of his mouth quirking. "Ranching's 24/7. I'll be there with 'em though."

Folks, then. And the stitch in her forehead, which brings a furrow to his as well. "I just meant your father and your brother," he says quietly. "I know it's just the three of you."

Avery Chase

"What about your mother?" she asks softly, looking aside at him, while they're buttering rolls to place with their brisket and potato salad.

Calden White

They came apart when the toaster oven dinged behind them, Calden turning in that easy, robust way of his to grab the buns out with the tips of his fingers and drop them onto the plates. He found silverware for the two of them, and if he notices her noticing where he puts his things, his cups and plates and forks and oven mitts -- well; it pleases him quietly. Since the beginning, he's so loved welcoming her into his home. Sharing what he had, showing her what he had: the warmth of his hearth and the comfort of his bed, the quietness of his den, the deliciousness of his food.

They're cutting open the rolls, now. They're buttering the bread and the brisket is hot and steaming, and Avery

asks, softly, about his mother.

His turn for a small hitch. His turn for a faint stitch to his brow. It turns out they have this in common: "She died," he says, simply. No euphemisms. No 'deceased' or 'passed away' or 'passed on' -- none of that. "About ten years ago," he adds. "Ovarian cancer."

Avery Chase

And when he couldn't bring her into his home to show her his abode, his cellar, the softness of his beds, he would bring it to her: the steak and string beans he would bring to her, the wine, the smell of his hard work. He has been showing her everything he can give her from the very start, as natural as breathing. Perhaps without either of them noticing.

She died.

"My mother died almost ten years ago, too," Avery says, just as quiet. "Ten years in October." There's a pause. "She was a Galliard."

Not cancer, then. Avery looks at her plate, arranging a roll beside the meat. "I'm sorry about your mother, Calden," she says gently. They can both do the math. He was her age when his mother passed on, which is still far, far too young to be losing one's parent. She was all of -- what? Sixteen?

Her brother was six.

Calden White

Ten years in October. She'd kept track, more exactly than Calden had. But then, Calden was in his mid-twenties when he lost his parent. Avery was fifteen. Sixteen. A girl still, and wholly unaware of her own destiny.

She doesn't have to supply the details. She was a Galliard, she says, and it is enough. Not for the first time -- though still rare enough, new enough, that it twists in him every time -- something in Calden pangs hard. He wonders if there'll be a day,

a night,

a glass of scotch and a stranger passing through, sharing his fire. Sharing tales. She was a Philodox: is that how he would say it, too?

Avery is arranging a roll beside her meat. Calden dusts his hands on a kitchen rag, and then he turns to her and wraps her up in his arms, draws her against his chest and squeezes her.

"I'm sorry about yours," he murmurs. That's not why he's holding her so tight, though.

Avery Chase

She is pulled from her plate-arranging, her little interests in tidiness and making things pretty, by Calden's hands on her arms, turning her towards him and wrapping her up against his chest, breathing in her hair and telling her he's sorry about her mother, but that isn't why he's holding her so tight and somehow she has to know that.

Her mother was a Galliard. Avery is a Philodox. One day that will be was.

Avery puts her hand on his lower back, closing her eyes a moment. She breathes in deeply, smelling him, too, then exhales. But she stays where she is. "Let's just... take everything upstairs and eat in bed or in front of your fireplace. No fire, though. It's too warm."

There's a smile there, but it's aching and hidden by the way she rests her head on his chest. "I just want to be close to you right now."

Calden White

The truth is there's been a subtle ache threading through this entire day. Nevermind the brilliance of the sunshine and the loveliness of their unexpected afternoon together. Nevermind that warm, familiar drive north, or her hand in his and her head on his arm and all the many constant ways they've touched each other, stayed close, stayed in contact almost every moment they've been together. Nevermind, even, the way they all but fell on each other at that roadside motel; climbed over each other and tumbled each other to the bed, fucked in desperate, gasping rhythm.

There's an ache there. Because the city is under assault. Because the heart of the Sept has been ripped out, and to some degree they're all running scared. Because she wants to be with him, wants to see where this goes, wants to be an item but she is a Philodox, she is honorable to a fault, she has a war to fight and responsibilities to bear and in the end,

she is still so young. She could die so young.

So maybe that's why they've stayed so close all night. Maybe that's why they fucked like that earlier, like they couldn't wait. No: not like. Because they couldn't wait. Maybe that's why, now, he brings her home and welcomes her into his den and gives her meat and potato salad and bread and clear water. Because: he just wants to be close, right now.

"Let's go," he agrees quietly, and stuffs his water bottle into his pocket; picks up his plate. She picks up hers. He uses the edge of his plate to thunk the light off as they leave the kitchen. As they leave the entry hall. As they ascend the stairs.

His house is all darkness, all blue shadows from the moonlight sifting through those enormous windows that overlook his land. Outside, the mountains on the horizon are a black silhouette. The sky is brilliant with stars. A step creaks, and a board on the second floor; then he closes his bedroom door gently behind the two of them.

They turn the lamps on, but they leave them low. They climb into bed and sit with their backs to the headboard, leaning together. They eat their rolls and their potato salad, their meat carved from the brisket, and when they're done,

when they're full and sated and sleepy from the day, the heat, the drive,

they wash up in his bathroom. He's kept a set of toiletries here for her, too. He takes them out for her, a tumbler and a toothbrush and a set of towels. He mentions, offhand, that maybe the next time she was here she could leave an extra change of clothes here, too. He has space in the closet. He has nothing but space, here.

Back in the bedroom, they undress lazily, climbing into bed before they've quite disrobed. They toss the remnants of their clothes all around, and Calden doesn't have a maid that comes through every day to pick up after him, but that's okay. They can pick up in the morning. He's under the covers before she is, and he throws back the sheets to welcome her. She turns out the light. He finds himself thinking of his forefathers, his ancestors who first settled on this land. He thinks of them blowing out their candles as they laid themselves down to sleep; wonders if they ever saw their wives and lovers like this, golden, limned by the light.

The lamp goes out. A blue-dark sky outside the windows, the curtains open. His arms come around her as she snuggles down beneath the covers. He's forgotten to shave after all, but that's all right. He's a rough creature anyway, and even if his jaw were smooth his chest would still be rough, his stomach would be rough, the callouses on his hands would be rough. His calf crossing over hers, too.

They settle. They grow still. Calden's eyes remain open for a while. A few errant thoughts tumble in his mind, turn somersaults, fade. He closes his eyes.

A little later, his breathing is even.