It's been a rather long time since Calden and Avery have seen each other. Spring is a busy time on the ranch: the peak of the calving season, when even the lengthening days can't quite fit all the work to be done. For several weekends running Avery's cowboy of a boyfriend can't make it down to Denver, sending proxies on the biweekly cattle runs instead. Some weeks, he hardly even has time to call,
though when he does call, he sounds like he misses her terribly. And he does.
--
Then, a weekend in early May. A phonecall early in the morning. Calden's voice warm and familiar on the line, the smile audible.
"Might you be free this evening, Miss Chase?" he inquires, all western chivalry. "If you don't mind making the trek up to the ranch, I've got a few friends here you might like to meet. Just so you know, you might want to use that gift of yours. The animal-charming one?"
Avery ChaseHe's calving and he's sending proxies and he's calling her, talking to her on the phone late at night before he falls asleep -- once or twice he dozes off while still talking to her. She listens to him breathing, smiling to herself.
Every time they talk, she's sorry she hasn't been up. She misses him terribly, too. But she's the new Master of Challenges and there are so many territorial spats and fights over beds and pack conflicts and so,
weeks go by. A very long time goes by, indeed. And they do not see each other. They talk on the phone. They listen to each other breathe. A couple of times -- maybe more than a couple of times -- Avery tells him quietly to lock his door, and at first they are quite shy and uncertain with each other but that doesn't last long. Not when she's moaning in his ear, not when he's telling her how to touch herself and
so on.
--
A weekend in early May comes, and Avery is sleepy and her voice sounds like it does in the mornings when she's barely awake and he knows that her phone woke her up and she's probably snuggled into her bed and the fan overhead is probably on to circulate cool air into the room during these rapidly warming days.
She sounds so happy to hear his voice. Raspy voice and all, she sounds so happy.
She sounds curious, too. "Friends?" she asks, then he mentions the animal-charming, and she grins. "What are you up to?"
Calden WhiteHe grins to hear her like that. He can't help it; it amuses him endlessly when he calls her at nine o' clock in the morning -- nine! -- and she still sounds like she's still tousled and not-awake and abed. His royal. His lazy, wanton, late-sleeping royal.
"Well," Calden says, very mysteriously, "you'll just have to come and find out, won't you?"
And in the background, something that sounds very much like yipping.
Avery ChaseTo be fair, Avery is up much later than he is. Works long into the night, overnight, comes home at dawn, falls asleep as the sun rises. For as brilliantly sun-touched as she is, sometimes she will go several days without seeing daylight -- at least in winter. Summer loves her, and she loves summer. Winter loves her, and quickens her feet and balances her, gives her grace. And she loves winter, with Christmas and Thanksgiving and New Year's and Valentine's Day and a roaring fire in one of her lover's many hearths. Her lover loves her, and she loves her lover.
Avery is dozing off again. She hears yipping and smiles, pretending not to notice, not to guess. She is hardly lazy, however wanton she often is. He knows that. But she is his royal, even if they do not say he is mine, she is mine. They are with each other. Even when they do not see each other for several weeks at a time. Even when she's hiding under the bed.
Or dozing off on the phone, smiling to herself, forgetting to say okay, my sweet darling, forgetting to say anything because all she can really think is how badly she wishes he were right there behind her, wrapping his arms around her, all big and warm and
her breathing is steady again, rhythmic.
Calden WhiteOn the other end, listening to her non-response, listening to the way her breathing evens out and deepens and changes in texture, Calden smiles. He doesn't wake her. He doesn't think her lazy, or indolent, or slothful. Not really. He knows how late she stays up. He knows how hard she works, and fights, and fights for what is right. He knows. Of course he knows. He loves her.
So he stays on the line a little while. Sitting on the ground near Patches and her new pups, the phone to his ear: he just listens to his lover breathing in her sleep for a while. When, eventually, the work of the day calls him away, he hangs up quietly and sends her a text:
Call me when you're heading up. I love you.
Avery ChaseOh, later on she is so pink. She wakes later that morning -- much later -- and blearily searches for her phone in her bedding. She sends off a missive to one of her servants, then reads Calden's text. Despite herself, Avery smiles deeply and warmly, sinking back into the covers and pillows. She hugs one of those pillows close to her body, delighted by him, by his love, by his tenderness. She thinks he is wonderful.
So sorry to fall asleep on you, darling. I'll come up soon. I love you, too.
Which she does. She thinks he's just wonderful.
--
Later on, after she's gone downstairs in her robe to eat her breakfast, after she has bathed and done her hair and a bit of makeup and dressed comfortably enough for a long drive yet attractively enough to see her lover for the first time in over a month, after she has packed a few extra items in her overnight bag, she presses 'Call' next to his name, next to a picture of him with that smirk on his lips.
He is so pretty. She smiles as she puts the phone to her ear, walking out to her cute little white mini-SUV.
Calden WhiteIt is past eleven by then, the sun bright, the day gorgeous. Summer loves her. Winter loves her, and she loves winter, but perhaps she loves the summer more because -- look at her. Daughter of Falcon, daughter of Helios. Golden and gorgeous as the day.
She calls her lover. Her lover picks up two hours north of her, linked instantly by the magic of modern technology. "Good morning, darlin'," he teases. He is outdoors, as she is: she can almost hear the spaciousness, that enormous blue sky, the horse under him. Her cowboy with his working ranch.
Avery ChasePast eleven when she wakes, past luncheon hour when she's strolling out of her front door, beaming extravagantly, hopping into her car.
A little thrill goes up her spine at the way he greets her, the thought of him, the sound of his voice. She sighs softly in his ear as she shuts her car door and turns it on with the push of a button. "Oh," Avery exhales, "I think I'm just going to tear all your clothes off when I get up there," she informs him. She doesn't even care how cliche this might sound, how trite -- the happy couple, long separated, obsessed with sex, et cetera. She doesn't care at all. She really would like to tear all his clothes off as soon as she sees him.
"We don't even have to have sex right away," she goes on, as the A/C starts pouring cool air into the interior of the car, and as she reaches for the cord to plug her phone in, doing so blindly while she talks to him. "You just have to let me look at you naked for a while. And then maybe touch you all over, and -- hold on, the --"
her voice changes a bit, alters, cuts out, then comes back clearly: "-- bluetooth is pairing." The phone is clicked into its little holder and his voice will now come through her speakers. Technology. Miracles of the modern age.
"What was I saying?"
Calden WhiteA hundred miles away -- less as the crow flies, true, but they are not crows and she is not flying -- Calden shifts his seat on that tall chestnut gelding of his. He feels a bit of a flush going up his cheeks, which is absurd really: he's a grown man in a stable relationship, and he's blushing like a boy. Shifting his seat like a teenager. Biting his lip to contain his grin, lowering his head to hide his expression, folding an arm across his chest to prop his elbow up and, perhaps, to keep himself to himself.
Not that he fools anyone. Thirty yards away, Ian casts him a dry look and just happens to find something else to do -- a hundred yards away.
Calden, meanwhile, laughs under his breath as Avery's voice cuts out, comes back. What was she saying? He smirks. "You were offering the most scandalous suggestions, Miss Chase," he says. "I can't even repeat them. I'm in the company of innocent-minded calves."
Avery Chase"Oh, well you mustn't corrupt them, then," Avery says, quite understanding. "I suppose it wouldn't do to give you an erection while you're trying to ride, either, would it?"
Calden White"You are a devil of a woman, Miss Chase," Calden declares, "and I do love you."
Avery ChaseAvery scoffs at him. "I am an angel," she insists. "I'm going to get off the phone and drive, though. I want you to work very hard and get everything done so that when I get up there you're all mine. No work at all. Not even laundry."
She sounds so stern. "You may, if you like, feed me tonight. But only after we've had lots and lots and lots of sex, my dear one. So you can't possibly fit any other work into that schedule. Now skedaddle. Chop chop."
Calden WhiteShe is treated to the sound of Calden laughing. Well and truly laughing: pouring from the speakers in her Juke, flooding the SUV's cabin, stereo, surround-sound.
"As my lady commands," says he. "See you soon, love. Drive safe."
Avery ChaseAnd that is how they part: on the phone, at least. His lady love. Drive safe. She is beaming, turning the call off, turning on music, pulling away from her building to head north. It's a long drive. She's done it many times. It's always been worth it. Running, even, is worth it.
Even before she met him, it was worth it. Because she met him.
--
Some time later, while the sun is still quite high and the day very warm, Avery's car pulls to a stop outside of Calden's house. She turns everything off, unplugging her phone, hopping out. She's wearing a sundress. It's white, with accents of pale pink. It ties behind her neck, a smooth halter that turns her breasts into the top of a Valentine's Day heart. Her hair is bouncy, a little curled. She's wearing flats, though, no driving in ridiculous wedges or heels or -- heaven forbid -- bare feet. She leaves her overnight bag in the car when she shuts the door, looking -- scenting -- for her beloved.
Calden WhiteThe height of the day is still on the land when Avery arrives at the ranch. The distant horizons, the shape of the mountains, are hazy with dust and heat. A faraway cloud of dust marks the location of the bulk of Calden's herd -- miles away on the open scrubland. If Avery shifts shapes, if the wind blows right, she'd smell them: the ripe earthy stink of several hundred head of cattle, the dirt churned by their hooves, the tender scent of the young ones born with the spring and still on the teat.
The house isn't abandoned, though. Closer, pungent enough that even her human nose can smell it, is the scent of hickory smoke and cooking meat. A barbecue again. Of course. It's doubtful whether Avery has ever come to Calden's house and not been greeted by some offering of meat, of drink, of --
well. Him.
There's a note taped to the front door, if she looks. 'ROUND BACK, it says in small, heavy block letters. And if she goes around back -- if she follows the wraparound deck from where it lies flush to the ground to where it stands on pillars as the land falls away and reveals the lower level of the house -- she'll find her lover there, stripped already to the waist in deference to the heat of the day, or perhaps merely for her viewing pleasure, his shirt a limp flag hanging from the back pocket of his jeans. He is turning steaks on the fire, grimacing in the smoke, squinting in the blazing westerly sun. He turns as he hears her -- grins, still squint-eyed but no longer grimacing, holding an arm out to receive her against his side.
He kisses her. On the cheek and then on the mouth, longer, slower. His arm around her waist is solid and secure, holding her close against his warm side, his that heavy-muscled torso. "Hey," he says, quiet and fond. "Been a long time, Miss Chase."
Avery ChaseAvery goes around back. She traipses, light-footed and eager, to find
Calden already half-naked. Avery pulls up short when she sees them, her broad smile and twinkling eyes giving way to a softly opened mouth, a searing heat that burns everything else away, everything that isn't lust. She outlines him with her eyes: the planes of his pectorals, the imperfect circles of his nipples, the shape of his abdominals. She looks at his back when she can see it, following the line of his spine downward. She isn't even walking toward him anymore; she's stopped where she is, her body tightening up inside, aching.
It takes her a bit to get to him, and he may have to step away from the grill at first to get to her, embracing her with sweat and smoke and sunlight all over him, and he's saying H-- just before she's kissing him, her hands on his shoulders, smoothing over his body, his arms. She is kissing him ardently, hungrily, reaching behind her own neck and giving one sharp, decisive tug at the pretty, ruffly tie of her halter.
Calden WhiteWell, those steaks are just going to be ruined.
They're going to be ruined because Calden is turning to greet his lady-love only to discover his lady-love is, in fact, a tigress, is a wolf, is all but falling upon him with hungry hands, hungry mouth. She runs those hungry hands all over him. She kisses him with that hungry mouth. She reaches behind her neck and by then his hands are on her too, are following the slender lines of her body up, are passing over those soft-skinned, toned, athletic arms, are tangling with her fingers as they go to the pretty ruffly tie of her pretty white sundress.
She tugs.
He pants a breath out.
Then he scoops her up, his arms wrapped under her bum; he reaches out almost-as-afterthought to snap the burners off on the grill so at least now they will just have strangely, unevenly cooked steaks instead of charcoal lumps, because
now they are departing the porch, he is fumbling the glass door open, they're going inside and that's as much modesty as he can manage and they're just going to have to hope his father is napping or reading in his room or something and his hearing aids are out because Calden can't make it up the stairs. Not with Avery kissing him like that. Not with Avery touching him like that. Not with Avery so close and getting so naked, and it's been so long, and
the couch is a nice, soft surface. They tumble down on it. He grabs her halter top with both hands and tugs it swiftly, surely down. He fairly faceplants into her: scoops her breasts up in both hands, up to his mouth, puts his mouth on her with such a hungry, satisfied noise.
Avery ChaseThey have to go inside. Avery is showing no sign of slowing down, or stopping, or waiting. She is undressing on the deck, taking off that delicate dress that she wore so she would look pretty when she saw him today. She's moaning, rubbing herself against him as though to get his body's scent on her.
Calden really has little choice to either make her stop, talk to her, or just... lean into it. Pick her up, touch her ass, drag her inside, with half a thought given to not setting the entire house on fire. Avery's skirt is too tight at the hips for her to wrap her legs around him, so she leans against him, feet dangling, one of her ballerina flats falling from her foot.
With the tie undone there's very little tugging to be done. All Calden has to do is lift his chest from hers, flick the fabric away, and lick at her. She's not wearing anything underneath. She's shuddering as he touches her, though, kicking off her other shoe, wiggling a bit, reaching to her side to undo a subtle zipper there.
"Are we alone?" she whispers, arching her back to give him more of her breast, to urge him onward as she's yanking down her zipper in one smooth, whispering motion.
Calden White"I have no idea," is his muttered response. And also: "Mmph. I love the way you taste."
And he does. And he does. He is all over her, he is pawing her with one hand -- and yes, we must call it pawing, for there's no finesse in it; he has his big rough hand on the breast his mouth is not currently feasting on and he is just playing with her, just rubbing those calloused palms all over her soft flesh, just flicking and fondling and flirting with that nipple of hers while he does
much the same thing, really, with his mouth. And his lips. And his tongue.
A pause, and a few more muttered words -- "Pretty sure dad's taking a nap. And the boys should still be out with the herd. How do I get this off?" He means her dress. Oh, she's opened a zipper. He's indecisive for a second: up or down? Then he picks a direction. It's down. He pulls pulls pulls her dress down those endless golden legs of hers, following it all the way, putting his mouth on her all the way -- a haphazard trail of kisses all along her leg.
Avery ChaseHe doesn't know; she doesn't care.
He loves the way she tastes. Avery's eyes fall closed again; her head falls back. She pushes her hand into his hair, as though to make sure his mouth stays right where it's supposed to be. They haven't even gone downstairs. She'd let him take her on the pool table right now if he wanted. Bent over it, or just bent over something. The thought makes her wet.
She thinks she shouldn't have worn panties.
He asks her what he often asks her: how to get her clothes off, as though he's not smart and resourceful and wouldn't figure it out on his own in moments anyway. Avery's lips curl into a lazy smile. She feels him pull the dress downward, which is the wrong way, and laughs at him as her hips refuse. "That's not going to work, darling," she teases him, "they're not pants."
Boys. Boys, she thinks, shaking her head inwardly, fondly, adoringly. She pushes up on her elbows, kissing him, pushing him with her mouth, her love, even though she's a tangle of limbs and half-bared flesh. "You have to pull it up and over my head," she tells him. "And I don't want your father coming out to find us, or the boys coming in." She kisses him, deeply, purring. "You have to take me somewhere private. Maybe your office. Maybe bend me over the desk and fuck me."
Calden WhiteCalden drops his head against her body. Her stomach. That's where he happens to be. Her lower abdomen, the crest of her hip. That's where he rolls his brow, groaning, frustrated by her stubborn clothes, baffled by the incomprehensible distance to his office, the upstairs, somewhere private. He nips at her skin. He kisses her right at her pantyline, right there beneath her navel, inhaling that clean sweet rich scent of her, which is the scent of sunlight and luxury and truthfulness and courage.
"God, I love you, you impossible woman," he mutters.
He rears up over her. He grabs her dress and tries to pull it the other way now, gets it part of the way up. Good enough. He clambers off the couch and holds his hand out to her -- how gracious! -- but the moment she takes it he sweeps it up off her feet again. Carries her bride-like to those grand stairs and up their span, and he would laugh at himself, his gentlemanliness, his chivalry, if he weren't so intent on getting up the stairs.
Resourceful and intelligent or not, Calden is not in the best state of mind to make critical decisions. Her suggestion seems good to him. He nudges his office door open -- kicks it, actually -- and then kicks it again to shut it. It bangs. He should think of Patches next door, but for once Patches is not runningrunningrunning to greet Avery-who-is-best, Avery-who-is-all-that-is-holy-to-a-cowdog; Patches has her own priorities right now.
They have theirs. Patches and her yipping surprises are not amongst the top ones. The privacy of his office, which is a little darkened because the blinds are drawn because he hasn't sat down to do any paperwork yet today, is amongst those top priorities. He sets her down in front of the desk. He hikes her dress up to her hips, she raises her arms, he pulls it up and off and drops it on the floor. He wraps his arms around her, his rough body to her smooth one, kisses her until she bends backwards over his arms, over the desk. He bends too: bends his mouth to her cleavage, to her breasts, he's at it all over again.
"Turn around," he murmurs against her skin, though he's hardly giving her a chance to. "Turn around, love. Just push all that junk off my desk if it gets in your way."
AveryAvery is barely covered at this point. There's a gap in her dress at her side where she pulled down her zipper. Her breasts are uncovered, her nipples pinked and moistened by his eager mouth. Her skirt is altogether askew, shifted and rucked up on one side, tugged down on the other. Calden is over her, nipping her skin, his chin brushing against the tissue-thin cotton-silk of her panties, which are pink. And almost transparent.
God, he loves her. And she is impossible.
Avery laughs. Laughs and then covers her mouth with her hand, eyes twinkling, because she doesn't want to wake his father and be caught canoodling on the living room couch. A moment later he's scooping her up, and she's turning into his embrace, turning into his chest and his arms, kissing his neck. She does not question the absence of the spoiled border collie who usually perks up and runs happily to meet her whenever she's in the house. She just makes this soft sound, mmm-mm as her breasts touch Calden's body, as she closes her lips around his earlobe and sucks.
He should think of poor Patches next door and he should think of his napping dad, but he doesn't. He slams the door shut and takes her into that dim room, sunlight streaming through cracks between the blinds but only half-illuminating his office.
Avery has only occasionally been in this room. Sometimes she's sat over there, reading a book and drinking a tumbler of whiskey or a glass of wine, lounging while Calden fills out paperwork, answers emails, updates spreadsheets, does the business part of running a business. She has never encouraged him to have sex with her here, though. Today she just thought: it's closer than his bedroom.
Calden sets her down and, quickly, strips her down to those little panties. She somewhat gleefully ignores it as it soars to the side, then wraps her long arms around his neck and snuggles her body against his. Oh, she's smiling. Oh, she's warm and soft and kissing him, stepping back into the edge of the desk, her ass pressing to the wood. She isn't smiling anymore, not because she isn't happy but because she's too aroused, too aroused by half, to feel much of anything else.
She shivers when he kisses her again -- lower -- and sucks on her breasts, her nipples in particular, rubs his face against her. Shivers and exhales, sliding her leg up his body to wrap around him. He keeps telling her to turn around. Avery gives a soft groan
and then she does, depriving him of some parts of her body while offering others, putting both feet on the floor and forearms flat to the table, yes, pushing some stacks and folders and such out of the way, accidentally knocking a paperweight to the ground and it rolls a bit to stop underneath his chair. She doesn't wait much longer for him, hooking her thumbs into the waistline of her panties and scooting them down off her hips, over her ass, down her thighs.
CaldenCalden's jeans hit the floor about a second after Avery's panties. She bends over the desk. He bends over her. There isn't a second, not a single instant, where some part of him isn't touching some part of her. His hands on her hips, pulling her back against him. His chest against her back, heavy and hot. His hands coming down beside her forearms, and then his hands covering hers as he too sets his elbows on the table; leans over her entirely and covers her entirely and kisses her cheek, kisses her mouth if she turns her head, kisses the corner of her lips, the line of her neck, the soft slope of her shoulder. He loves her body; loves how soft her skin is, loves how strong her core is, how athletic her limbs. His hands rove all over her before coming back to lace with hers, fingers between fingers, palm to knuckles.
He groans past her ear when he pushes into her. They're both still trying to be quiet here. Maybe she bites her knuckles. Maybe he has his mouth against her hair, her neck, muffling himself. Maybe they're both just trying to survive the conflagration of their own lust. A paperweight tumbles to the floor. The desk lamp trembles against the edge of his flatscreen monitor. His fingers stretch open and then curl closed, he holds her hands, he kisses her wherever he can reach her and licks at her ear and bites at her shoulder and,
yes, we'll just say it,
he bends her over that big heavy desk of his, he covers her with that big heavy body of his, he fucks her with that big heavy cock of his, he releases her hand when she goes to bite at her knuckles and then his hand eases her hand from her mouth, eases it away, no, don't bite yourself darling, he covers her mouth instead. It's so tender. He kisses her so firmly, his lips to the arch of her cheekbone,
fucks her so firmly in those firm, heavy slides that build, and build,
and build.
Pants past her shoulder, hides a shout against the center of her back, comes with his brow bowed to the nape of her neck, his lips pressed to her spine. Flexing into her, shuddering subtly over her; all that churning power, all that weight and mass and heat and earthy, brawny strength.
When he's finished he stays over her, braced on his elbows, his chest pressing to her back. Weighing her against his desk. He kisses her spine and he nuzzles her ear and he traces her lips with his fingers. Trails his hand down to cup her breast, beneath which lives her heart. Her body fits his so well. That lovely handful, that lovely pink nipple and that lovely curvature of her breast, right there in his palm. He caresses her slowly, enjoying her. He doesn't even remember that their steaks are ruined.
AverySomewhere in Chicago, there is a couple -- though they are of the same tribe -- who could tell Calden and Avery a thing or two about waiting. About 'dry spells'. About time apart. But they'd understand, too, what it's like to not be together, to not even touch, to not even see, the one you love for weeks on end. They would know the shiftless, ungrounded way that feels, and how odd its spikes of fear are, and how coming together again truly does feel like being healed of some deep wound.
No matter that it's over a desk, the door shut and locked and no matter that Calden puts his hand over her mouth to quiet her moaning and no matter, even, that his hand is so tender there. None of that matters. What matters is the way they settle into one another in the aftermath, the way Avery uncurls her toes and relaxes against his desk with soft pantings of his name, and the way Calden nuzzles and kisses her and touches her, touches her all over, tender and grateful and happy just to hold her.
They are still holding hands. Avery is smiling. She drowses a bit, eyes closed and lips blissful. "Oh, my darling," she murmurs. "Oh, my sweet darling."
CaldenSweet, she calls him, and darling. Calden, for his part, nuzzles her back a little longer. Kisses her between her shoulderblades, then wraps his arms around her and leans into her.
"I feel so ungentlemanly," he murmurs, and he is only half-joking. "It's been so long. I feel like I should have at least taken you to a couch."
A small pause. And then a soft laugh: "Though, in my defense, I did take you to a couch. It was just an exposed couch."
AveryShe laughs at that, soft and sweet. He can hear her now, for his hand has slipped away from her lips, her cheek. "You did only as I asked," she murmurs, oofing quietly as he leans into her. He's already quite heavy, after all.
She turns her head to try and nuzzle him back, but the positioning is awkward, and she struggles with it. "It would have been more ungentlemanly to ignore me," she tells him, which he knows, "or to take me in such a public way."
Avery stretches, quite thoroughly, and thoroughly disrupts all his snuggling. "You brute, you're heavy as a sack of bricks. Unhand me this instant and hand me my undergarment."
CaldenTake me. The words alone send a frisson of renewed arousal through Calden. He can't help it. It's been so long. That's his excuse, at least, though the truth is he'd feel the same way even if he'd just had her.
Which, one ought to argue: he had.
She is stretching, though, and she is disrupting his snuggling, and then she is demanding to be unhanded and demanding her undergarment and his amusement overpowers his lust. Calden laughs, muffled at first -- and then he plants his hands on the desk, one and then the other, pushes himself up.
"Your undergarment," his mimicry is brimming with barely-held-back laughter, "is on the floor, lover. We should probably toss it in the laundry." He does, however, bend down to pick her dress up. Handing that back to her, "Maybe you could make do with this for now."
AveryAvery, fine thing that she is, just wrinkles her nose at her panties and her dress. If she's not going to put on one, she may as well not put on either. She has pushed up on her hands, and he has slid out of her, and she is a bit of a mess and this is what she did her hair for, but
"Nah," she says, shrugging. Looks at him over her bare shoulder, smiling, eyes a-twinkle.
"You should check on the steaks," she says, "and put them somewhere nice to keep warm while we fuck in the shower."
Calden"The steaks can wait," Calden replies, smirking. "They're thoroughly ruined anyway. Let's go fuck in the shower."
AveryAvery pouts about the ruined steaks. "In point of fact," she says, "I was saying they could wait. I just wasn't being quite such a pessimist about it, Mr. White."
She has risen, and she stretches, arms over her head, fingers linked, arching. Oh, she knows. She knows, but she doesn't care. It isn't why she stretches. She stretches because for the first time in a month, she feels thoroughly, utterly relaxed.
When she is done, she turns to him, looping her arms around his neck, and... hops on. Gives a little push of her feet, jumps, and wraps her legs around his waist, smiling at him.
CaldenHe touches her when she stretches. Can't help that either. Grazes his fingers over her skin, from the nape of her neck all down her spine. His palm warms the small of her back, and then she's turning to him, and his smile is widening as she's wrapping her arms around his neck. His royal. His beloved lady.
She hops on. He wraps his arms around her instinctively, even as his eyebrows hop up with surprise and delight. "Well, aren't you forward today," he says, though one might argue: she's always forward. She's never been, never will be, a shrinking violet.
Calden tips his head up to kiss her. It's a soft kiss, and a slow one, and a sweet one. When it ends he looks at her a moment, their faces close, his eyes fond. "I've missed you so," he whispers. And then -- abandoning their clothes where they lay -- he carries her toward the door. From there, toward his bedroom.
AveryCalden paws all over her, as Avery would put it. Indulgently, she doesn't stop him, but she gives him a wry look once she's done stretching. She smirks at him as his big hands are cupping her lovely tits again, weighing them, feeling her softness. Hell: in her own way, she encourages him, with that little smile, knowing and approving and amused.
And a moment later she's hopping onto him, wiggling closer as he wraps her in his arms and hefts her up a bit. He calls her forward. She just grins, leaning forward til their noses touch, giving him a little kiss on the lips. That is her answer. Of course she's forward; it's been a month, or close enough to a month.
That kiss deepens, slows, becomes something tender and soft. It makes Avery sigh gently into his mouth, wrapping her arms tighter around him. He has missed her so. He carries her from there to the door, peeks outward perhaps, and carries her up to his bedroom, past the room where Patches reclines while a litter of tiny wiggling versions of herself suckle at her belly. Avery doesn't ask about what she came here to see or who she came here to meet, or about her clothes and his left behind, or the 'ruined' steaks. She kisses him again as he takes her up to his bedroom,
and into it,
closing the door behind him.
They do not make it to the shower at first. They make it halfway across the room to his bed, and then he is laying her out, running his palms down her side, fitting himself to her, entering her again. They make love on top of his covers, firm but not rough, slower than before but not leisurely. Her nails dig into his back at one point; she bites her lip at another, and he is so aroused by that image, again that image, that he licks and sucks at her breasts with a groan becoming a growl in his throat.
Avery comes like that, on top of his big heavy bed, under his big heavy body, her thighs hiked up his sides, squirming and riding her orgasm out tight and rough against him until she can let her body go again.
This time it's harder to get up. To drag themselves away from each other. Avery keeps kissing him, stroking her calves against his ass, running her hands over his sides and his back and his chest, his arms, murmuring appreciation into his mouth. This time, he stays in her much longer, because she can't bear to let him go.
CaldenThey do, indeed, pass that small room -- that closet, really -- where Patches and her litter of tiny wiggling versions of herself are ensconced. Perhaps Avery smells them. Perhaps Avery hears them. Perhaps if they were naked on the way to his bedroom Calden would have stopped, would have introduced Avery to her small, furry surprises.
They are naked. They are on the way to his bedroom. So: they don't stop. They cross that open space at the top of the stairs, that light-bathed space where the sun streams in from that enormous window backing the staircase. They go into his bedroom and they don't make it to the shower after all but that's all right: they make it to his bed, which is better, and they make love on his bed, which is better still.
They take their time this time. Firm but not rough. Slower, but not leisurely. He loves it when she digs her nails into him. Loves it the way he loves it when she bites him, and it's not that he's a masochist. It's that he recognizes it in some primal way. Understands that in this way she marks him, claims him, names him as her own. They don't say it -- they never say it aloud -- but again and again and again they prove it to one another,
just
like this.
--
Neither of them want to get up this time. Goosebumps ride his skin in the wake of her roaming hands. He slumps to the side to take his weight off her, and the two of them sprawl atop his covers in the aftermath of their lovemaking. He didn't have time to shave before she showed up, and so he is not fit to eat her to orgasm, but
that doesn't stop him from kissing her. That doesn't stop him from sampling her breasts again and again, enjoying her, loving her taste and the sounds she makes. He refrains at the moment; there's a shower to be had, steaks to be cooked. Puppies to be introduced.
Not just yet, though. For now, for just a little longer, he stays where he is -- covering her breast with his hand, resting close to her. His eyes are closed, but he's not asleep. He's smiling.
"You should just stay here forever," he whispers. Eyes opening, then: traceries of green there amidst hazel and gray. "Or at least a couple days. A week."
AveryIf they were just naked, Avery might have said they should stop, would have gone shamelessly inside, kneeling quietly beside Patches and her pups, touching them with her bare hands, smelling of Calden and of sex and sweat and summer, tousled. She would have gentled her hand on Patches and told her in a soft voice not to lick her, just because Patches would of course be licking her hands, even as weary as she is. She would have assured her that she knows, she knows how much Patches loves her, even if Patches needs to just rest her head. Nudity would mean nothing; Avery is an animal.
But naked and wrapped around her lover, her paramour, her consort, she does not ask to stop. She can smell what has happened here, sense it on some gut level that is not a sense so much as a collection of senses both physiological and spiritual. She feels that there has been a birth, an exertion, a rush of new life into a world that did not really have a vacuum but makes room anyway, always makes room, because what else do you do? She senses it, just as she heard the yipping over the phone when Calden rang her from the very spot where the puppies were nestling to their mother. But she doesn't ask. She delays the news, holds up the pretense of surprise. It will be such a delight to let him surprise her with this.
They take their time making love. On his bed. They mutter to each other, and he feels marked and claimed and named as her own and Avery -- really, well, Avery is just relaying her own tension and longing and ache for him through her body, that's all. She tells him often, rather firmly, that he is not hers. She does not want to mark him, has not claimed him, does not feel too dramatic about calling him my [something] in introductions but tells him that he is with her, with her, as he is with her fiercely and deeply in those moments when she cannot cope with what his happening inside of her body except to tighten her hold on him.
That's their tragedy, small as it may seem from the outside: the part of him that wants to belong to her whispers inside of him, where mostly she cannot hear it, but eventually she will, and the part of her that loves nothing and wants no one will scream inside of her, and he will not be able to help but hear it. Even believe it a little, despite knowing that it is madness. Despite knowing that she can't help it.
Just because you know something isn't true doesn't make it less real. Doesn't make it less frightening. Doesn't make it stop hurting.
--
Afterward, her legs slide down, and her hands run over him, tracing him out from the dusty sunlight coming in through the windows. She closes her eyes, stroking his hair as he kisses her ears and her face and her mouth, kisses her breasts. She drowses, after a long drive and two rounds with her lover. She does not look at him and he does not look at her, because both of them are looking at the dark insides of their eyelids.
He makes the suggestion she's certain -- half certain, at least -- that he's made before. Or maybe she's just known this is the truth of his heart, somehow, the way she can sense changes like the one that happened with Patches. She can't sense everything, though. She's not a mind-reader. But he wants her to stay for longer than a day, a night. Forever would be good.
Avery opens her eyes just a sliver. "I can stay a few days," she says, smiling, like she's just gone over her schedule in her mind and confirmed yeah, she can swing that. Her hand still moves in his hair. Her hand still moves over his body. Her calves still rub against his calves. "When are you going to set up that little bachelor's getaway in the city you kept talking about?"
CaldenThey have talked about this before. And last time, as with this time, it was a kernel of truth wrapped in a generous coating of humor: he'd asked her how long she could stay, and she'd said -- laughing -- forever and ever. Or at least the weekend.
It's like that with them. He wants to ask for forever but knows she can't offer that. She offers the weekend, and knows that even that may be too much. There's a couch in the bedroom of her most private, most personal abode. It's there because as unique as he is, as welcome as he is, there are times when she cannot bear even his presence or nearness. There are times when she just wants to hide under the bed from everyone, everyone, and he cannot be close to her.
But she would still like to be able to see him. To know that he is there.
--
He opens his eyes too. Avery's lover is a handsome man, but it is not the sort of beauty she and hers possess. It is not rarefied; it is not refined. It is not sun-kissed and moon-beloved. Calden is a plainhewn, solid thing, wood and earth, smoke and traildust. He has skin roughened by the elements; musculature shaped by hard work. He has hair that only vaguely remembers the fiery red of his ancestors, and eyes that only vaguely echo the otherworldly green of his fae-touched people. He has big hands and body hair and a beard that would be shaggy and unkempt if he allowed it to be. Naked in bed, they are so different. They are similar only in their mutual adoration and, perhaps, in some intrinsic warmth of spirit, some innate goodness that runs a thread through them both.
He smiles at her. It is a lazy smile, quite satisfied. The way she touches him is familiar and dear. He enjoys it thoroughly -- allows those errant nerve impulses to skitter through his awareness, intertwined with the awareness of her warmth, her scent, the way she looks when the sun strikes her just so.
"I've got it narrowed down to a small handful of options, actually," he murmurs. Rumbles. Leave him alone much longer and he might fall asleep. "My birthday's next weekend. I was going to come down to Denver. Thought maybe you could have a look with me, help me make up my mind. Then we can do that birthday thing we talked about.
"And I was thinking," he adds, "I could maybe spend a couple weeks down in the city in early June. Most of the calving'll be done by then, and we'll have a bit of a breather on the ranch."
AveryIt has passed through Avery's mind once or twice -- not over the past year, but over the past few months -- that if Calden did not make his home and business in life a solid 2+ hour drive from where Avery makes her home and business and life, he would have already proposed. This certainly says something about what she thinks of the passionate, headstrong Fianna and their kin, but it also says something about how freely Calden has shared his feelings for her -- the depth, breadth, ferocity and tenderness he offers. He is not shy or retreating about it, he lacks the stoic insecurity of a younger man or a man from an older generation. She thinks, sometimes, that if she truly did need him to leave it all for her, he just might. She thinks, just as often, that if that were something she needed from him, she would have to be a different woman. And he doesn't love a different woman -- he loves her.
He makes her feel that way, too. And that is a different thing, higher and sweeter than simply loving an ideal version.
Avery strokes his hair and his body, drowsing underneath him, unwilling to quite let him go. For all her madness, for all she knows that it will one day grow stronger and stronger til it consumes her, her moments of profound lucidity find her like this, holding him just as dear and close as he holds her. The only thing that keeps them from perfect equality in strength and love is her rage, his sanity. They each have something the other lacks. Neither of them counts that lack as a flaw in the other. Not one that matters, at least.
--
He opens his eyes. She opens hers and looks at him. Smiles at him, too. He may be rough-hewn, earthy and well-worked, but looking at him sometimes sets her heart fluttering -- how absurd. But she flutters. She shivers. She blushes a little, sometimes, when he gives her a certain smile and she's had a bit of champagne. She adores him, rarefied or not, refined or not. When he looks at her, lazy-smiling,
her body clenches, softly, around his. Avery's breath catches; she sighs. "I would like that," she says, of all of it: helping him decide on a place, spending his birthday together, having him for a couple of weeks. "We can start summer together,"
and even as she says it, she has the oddest thought: that last year it was mid-spring but so very cold still, still snowy. But after she met him, it started to get warmer. It started to get sunnier. As if they started it. As if they awoke spring in truth, as if the sun met the earth that night and --
oh, it's silly. She blushes a little, beneath him, and touches his face, drawing his mouth up to hers again. "We're still so filthy," she murmurs against his mouth, but does not stop kissing him. Does not stop from pulling his hand up her side, molding him to her breast.
Calden"Are we?" Calden murmurs, nonsensically,
because of course they are. But by then his mind has stopped working. By then his hand is massaging her breast, by then his mouth is kissing hers; by then he is wanting again, and she can be so unashamedly wanton, and they
are
whiling away the afternoon in bed.
--
He turns her atop him this time. She rides him with her hair falling loose and thick and golden. He watches the sunlight skim off her skin, gleam off her skin as sweat breaks over her again. He is quite lazy this time, laying back with his hands smoothing over her body, riding the motion and curvature of her torso as she rides him. She comes down over him and he opens his mouth unhesitatingly, hungrily for her breasts, her neck, her mouth. He takes what sounds she makes into his mouth, gives them back lower and rougher, wraps his arms around her as she starts to let go, keeps her right there close to him as she grinds it out on him, works it out on him, pulls it out of him and then he's meeting her mid-orgasm, catching up to her, tumbling over the edge with her,
tumbling her under him as the last of her orgasm quivers through her and the peak of his hits. He is rough and warm and generous with his loving: gives it to her rough and warm and generous, pounds it into her heavy and sure.
When it's over he's -- well: a little worn out. Three go-arounds in the space of an hour or so and he's liquid-languid, sprawled over her until she wiggles a little aside. He rolls onto his side and pulls her leg over his hip to keep her where she is, keep himself where he is. The door to the terrace is open. A warm breeze caresses them. Feels good, lifting sweat from skin.
"We really should shower," he muses. His hand is on her thigh. Rubs slow, lazy arcs up to her hip, down again. "We should eat something. And I still have a surprise for you." He leans in; kisses her soft. "We're being so decadent, you and I."
AveryAre we?
Avery smiles, languid and sly. "We are," she murmurs, drawing him closer, closer, folding him between her legs, wrapping him in her arms, closing her eyes as she looses a sigh into his mouth. She has missed him so much.
--
Riding him, later, she closes the distance between them as he is touching her body and moans softly in his ear, telling him she loves him, oh, she loves him so much. And the fact that they are fucking when it occurs to her to tell him this means nothing; she has told him these exact words, with a slightly less exhilarated sigh, while talking over the phone during the last few weeks. Sometimes she has sounded so longing, so plaintive. She loves him so much.
But mostly, she strokes her hands over his chest and purrs at the feeling of that dusting of rust-and-chestnut hair between her fingers, the pulse of his heartbeat and the flex of his muscles under her palms. Mostly she rides him upright, with his hands touching her breast, straying up her throat and face, fingers brushing her lips before she takes them in, sucks on them, groans as she quickens her pace. Mostly, she fucks him happily and briskly as she might ride a freshly broken horse,
til she comes, aching and perfect atop him, and he rolls her under, fucking his own orgasm into her as though he is responding to an invitation,
the letters gilt, the paper embossed and linen,
that is how fine she is.
--
After, Calden is worn out and Avery is golden, a tangle of limbs with him, her breasts moving up and down and up and down as she breathes. She chuckles lowly as he strokes her, hugs himself with her thigh, nuzzles and loves on her the way he does, the way he always does. She wraps her arms around him and holds him close, encouraging him to -- if he wishes -- rest his poor tired head on her soft, well-formed tits. Hugs him to them, maybe.
"Yes," she agrees, regarding the shower, "but if we do, then you aren't to try and fuck me in there right away. First you'll have to wash me all over and then I might consider another go-round, but not before."
Avery opens her eyes, smiling down at him, playing again with his hair. There's food and a surprise awaiting her, she knows, but she sighs, her brow stitching slightly, suddenly.
"Heavens, I love you so much,
like it hurts to realize it, to feel it, to try and hold it all inside at once.
CaldenThere are terms laid out. Rules and regulations, delineations, thou-shalts and thou-shalt-nots. Through it all Calden is just ... lazily nuzzling at her tits, to be frank. He's rubbing his shamefully unshaven face on her soft soft skin and kissing and nibbling and adoring her, and meanwhile her arms are around him; her hands are in the thick of his hair.
He is smirking, raising his head, about to make some comment about fucking right away or not, showering or not, any number of things, but --
-- oh, but he speaks first of food and surprises, and for some reason not readily apparent but nonetheless intuitively comprehensible, Avery's brow furrows. She sighs her love like it hurts. Like it's too much, too straining, like even the sun-blessed, moon-beloved strength of her bones cannot hold it all together.
And the smirk gentles from Calden's face. He wraps his big arms around her and sort of flops to the bed, sighing too -- sighing in gratification and satisfaction and adoration and all the things that rush through the chambers of his heart. He kisses her temple.
"That's not a bad thing, is it?" he says, tenderly, with a touch of gentle play. "I love you too." Another kiss, softer than the last. "So much."
AveryAvery gasps a little, and swats his shoulder with terrible, terrible tenderness. "Oh, you're scratchy," she whispers, as he's rubbing his unshaven face on that peerlessly soft skin. She says this even though she is simultaneously caught in her own love for him, her ache for him.
Which he wants to smooth away, to heal, to rub until there's no longer that knot under the skin. But he's wrong, see, he's so wrong: it's not a knot. It's the bone, the structure. It's the core that everything else hangs on. It's what makes her able to move, some days, back towards sanity even when it is the most frightening thing she can imagine.
Calden does as he does best with her: wraps her up, holds her, cradles her against his body on thei -- his bed. She closes her eyes and tucks her face to his chest, horribly grateful for the gentleness he gives her, the way he permits her to be a little... well. Not weak. But human, perhaps. Fragile. In need of comfort.
"No," she whispers back to him. It's not a bad thing. Not at all. Her hand curls under his arm, wrapping around his rib, fingers caught between side and bicep.
And for a long time, she has no intention of moving away from him. Not now, not ever. Not even in a few days, a week, ever, ever, she will live up here and forsake her duty, her pack, her moon, her tribe, she will be the wolf-woman in white on his fields and when she needs to retreat from him she will go into the plains by herself, hunting as she must, and when she can bear it she will return here to him, to his arms, his bed, his hearth, and that is how she will live, and one day she will die protecting him and this land, this home, from the minions that encroach, that swallow all,
because she was not on the front lines to turn them back,
because she was selfish.
Avery's eyes open against his chest. She holds him, stroking his back, and says nothing of what her heart longs for, howls for, dreams of. She kisses his chest.
"You are my dear one," she whispers, though she so often avoids the word 'my' followed by anything at all. "Sleep with me, for a bit?"
She thinks: she so wants to hear his heartbeat as he sleeps, his steady breathing,
all of it.
CaldenCalden does not know the contents of his lover's heart. He does not know the thoughts that go through her now -- what she wants, what she desires, what she sees prophesied in the shadow of her own selfishness. For it is that, if she were to want to retreat from the world and the war, if she wanted merely to live her own life and love who she loves. That is a bitter truth for ones like her,
and for ones like him who love ones like her:
that a life lived for herself, a life lived quietly and unassumingly, a life that anyone else in the entire world could not possibly be faulted for wanting -- would be a sin.
They do not speak of such things, though. She holds him as he holds her, because even if he does not know the contents of her heart he can feel her ache, feel that poignancy that has filled her. She kisses his chest. He breathes against that touch, in and then out.
Calden reaches behind him. He doesn't bother to try to get them under the covers. It's a lovely day outside, even with winter's final onslaught waiting in the wings. It is not quite warm, but it is not cold, and when he pulls the comforter up and over them, inside-out, it is more than enough to keep them warm.
They sleep a while like that. The house is quiet, and bright, and restful: his father napping in his room perhaps, or grumpily watching television. Patches and her pups in their cozy little closet. The two of them there on the bed, curled close together, hidden, warm, safe.
AveryLet's be honest for a moment.
Calden thinks sometimes of forever with her. It isn't even a logistical, sense-making fantasy. He just thinks of her, marrying her, being together, god, he loves her so much. And Avery hears Canon in D and absurdly, sweetly, she pictures a processional. What sort of flower she'll wear in her hair, what sort of dress. What time of year it will be and what flower will be in his lapel as he waits for her. She fans the thoughts away as quickly as she can but truthfully, sometimes she gets through an entire rendition of the Canon before she can cast those thoughts away.
Yet neither of them has brought that up. It would be unthinkable, and completely silly. Maybe he thinks they've been together over a year, while Avery thinks we've only been together about a year! but really: she can't think that far in anything but fantasy. She can't tell him, can't make it real, because she's petrified that she will then turn and run from it, from him, and she's not sure how long it will be before she comes back. Cold feet, for Avery, is not a few hours of jitters but could be weeks of retreat, even from her pack, even from her own kind, especially from him. She can't think how she could do that to him.
Not to mention all their guests. The florist. The quartet. The caterers!
--
Avery gives a great sigh against his body when he covers them up. She soaks in his warmth and gives him back her own. She drowses, and then he sleeps, and then she follows him.
They are together, there. If silently.
--
When she wakes, she finds she has not slept that deeply. She squeezes him to her, smiling, and then -- trying not to wake him -- she slips from him, out from the covers, toward the ba--
she stops. There is a yipping, a soft and high-pitched yowling that one day will be a true howl. And everything in her has frozen for a moment, still. She smells a bit like sweat and a great deal like sex and she is naked, tousled, and so on. She looks to the door, her nostrils flaring, and then --
never minding his father, his cousins, her own nakedness,
Avery slips out of Calden's room.
Down the hall. Perhaps down a bit of stairs. She finds a door and feels the heat on the other side, something turning over inside her spirit and her bones. Pressing her hand gently on the door, Avery slowly turns the handle and inhales the smell inside of a pile of canines, a mother, a litter, and softly she says,
"Oh."
The door is left open a crack. Perhaps Calden was even awake when she left his bedroom, striding quickly and long-legged across the floor to his door, leaving it cracked when she left. Perhaps he said her name and found it drowned by instinct,
the same instinct that has him finding her later, still in her human form, kneeling naked beside Patches and her bed. She is touching the collie's head gently, stroking her, whispering to her what a good girl she is, how brilliant she is, how wonderful her pups are. Avery does not take a single one from their mother's breast to hold them in her hands. She doesn't dare. She doesn't, really, want to. They should imprint on their mother, first. They should feel the bodies of their siblings, first. There will be time enough to hold them when they have grown a little bigger, when their eyes are open.
CaldenIn this, too, they differ: Calden rarely hears Canon in D in his head. Actually: almost-never. He does not fantasize for minutes on end about what sort of tuxedo, what color tie, vest or no, which pocket square. He does not consider the guest list, nor the catering, nor the quartet. He doesn't give a moment's thought to the florist.
None of which is to say he doesn't think of it. Marrying her. He does think of that, fleetingly, in lovely warm glimpses a few instants before sleep, or when he first wakes for the day. He thinks of it and he does not dwell on it because in his mind it is all so simple:
he'll buy a new tuxedo. He'll wear a vest that matches the tux; he'll wear a pocket square that matches his vest. He'll invite everyone and there won't be catering because there will be a barbecue, there will be the best steak in the state, there may be a quartet or there might just be a ragtag band of Stag-blooded men and women on fiddles and hand-drums and pipes. The flowers, he'd leave to the bride's fancy.
He'll marry her in sunlight. He'll marry her in spring, or summer. He thinks maybe they'll all change into jeans and boots for the reception. A real, down-home, hackneyed, cliched hoe-down. The party will go on all night. In the morning they'll watch the sun rise over his land, their boots knocking gently together, her head on his shoulder, her hair fragrant with the scent of her wildness and her sovereignty.
He doesn't fantasize for minutes on end. Of course not.
--
The door to Patches's closet is cracked open as well, enough so that the border collie can nose it open and slip out if she needs to. Avery can sense the dog in her little den -- can sense the newness there, the recent exertion, the warmth and wiggling of half a dozen little lives. When she opens the door gently,
breathes oh,
she finds Patches raising her black-and-white head, looking up at her with intelligent eyes, moving her tail in mingled apprehension and joy because in this, in this alone, even her adoration of Avery must give way to her mother's instinct of protection and preservation of her pups. And there are pups there: tiny, tiny pups, very young, born yesterday or perhaps even early this morning. Little more than blunt muzzles and clumsy paws and round, milk-full bellies. Eyes tightly shut, wiggling and crawling rather walking, but already each with its own distinctive pattern of black-and-white, making high-pitched little sounds that will one day be yipping, or yelping, or howling, or barking.
Avery does not pick up the pups, or try to take them from Patches. Avery, Avery who is all-that-is-good and all-that-a-cow-dog-loves-best: Avery is wise, she is lovely, she is wonderful, she kneels beside Patches on her soft bed and she is respectful and she is gentle and she is reverent of the new-life. She strokes Patches's head and is licked, lovingly, at the wrist, at the palm. Patches thumps her tail on her bed, and then Patches lays her head down, tired from the whole business of becoming a mother. She rests there in Avery's presence, comforted, her pups nursing and sleeping and nursing some more.
--
Calden doesn't sleep long. It's the sort of light, soft, pleasant post-coital sleep that comes on quick and departs just as quick. He wakes a little after Avery does. The bed is still warm where she lay. The door is still open where she departed. He sits up, yawning, picks some articles of clothing up off the floor. Hers are all still there, and so he picks a throw up off the foot of the bed, carries it with him as he buttons his jeans and zips them.
That throw settles around her shoulders when he finds her. He drops it over her, light and modesty-rescuing, as he finds her outside that little closet between his bedroom and his study. One hand braces on the floor as he lowers himself to sit cross-legged beside her. He doesn't touch the pups either, though he does reach in to give Patches a fond scritch behind her soft ears.
"Looks like you found your surprise all by yourself," he says, smiling, voice scratchy with sleep.
AveryIt's a good thing he hasn't proposed, and they haven't attempted to try planning a wedding. They have very different ideas of what that wedding would look like. Boots! Barbecue?!?! Is that someone playing a clay jug as an instrument???
NO CATERERS?!
The horror.
--
If Calden thinks they are going to be on his ranch and not in some far-flung exotic locale in a private cabana (possibly on a private island) where their deck actually touches the ocean and they drink nothing but coconut water and rum for a full turn of Luna -- it's called a honeymoon for a reason, Calden -- then he has another thing coming.
But he doesn't know it yet. Because he hasn't told his decade-younger lover that he wants to marry her, much less that he would like it very much if she would agree to be his bride and his wife, and Avery is quite evolved and quite feminist but will never ask, as a werewolf, if a kinsman wishes to be her mate unless he expresses that wish first,
so actually planning a wedding and the following honeymoon is quite far off, all told.
--
A blanket settles around Avery's shoulders. She smiles, warmly, in the dimness. She is stroking Patches on her head, her silken ears, as though to give her permission to sleep again, rest, let the pups wiggle and wriggle and suckle as they will, but she deserves the rest. She holds Patches's water bowl close to her head so she can lap up some water, though of course the collie has no trouble reaching it; they have survived this long without being so coddled, they will survive another millenia, too.
Calden is there, and Avery is snuggling to him in that throw he tossed about her shoulders, telling her that she found her own surprise.
"I often do," she murmurs, still stroking the border collie, observing the tiny babies that cannot see anything but can smell everything. She finds her own surprises, her own wonder. She is lucky, that way. She turns her head to look at him. "Did you know she was pregnant?"
Calden"Not at first," Calden admits, laughing. "I just thought she was getting fat from being such a spoiled thing. A couple weeks ago the penny finally dropped when I caught her trying to make a den in the guest room. So I set up the closet for her and yesterday night she disappeared into it and wouldn't come out."
They are both sitting on the floor. They are leaning against each other, half-dressed at best, watching the pups crawl about and stretch their tiny trembling limbs and root against their mother and yawn miniature, toothless yawns.
"I thought maybe when they're a little older you'd like to adopt one or two. I'm sure Patches wouldn't mind, especially if we let them visit each other."
AveryAvery has to lift her hand and cover her mouth when she laughs; it comes on strong, and would be quite bright and loud and lively for such a small, dark, warm place like this. She doesn't want to disturb the pups, the mother. But oh, Calden's thought that she was getting fat from being so spoiled amuses her terribly. "How on earth do you manage to run a ranch?" she teases him, when she can remove her hand from her mouth. Avery is whispering, though, and leans across the shadow between them to press her lips to his cheek, or his neck, or even his chest if that's all she can reach.
He runs a ranch because he deals with cattle and not dogs. Their breeding is an ordered and quite intentional thing, not an accident like this trollop before them. And he runs a ranch because he is the sort who notices when his dog starts trying to make a den that,
oh,
that's it. He's the sort of man who then makes a better space for her, more private and more protected, where she will feel safe enough to give birth to her litter of -- pups. "They look pure border collie," Avery says, stroking Patches on the head and ears again while the dog closes her eyes and lolls there on her bed. "I wonder who their father is." Probably just one of the other border collies who actually still works for a living, but still: she wonders aloud, tenderly.
Calden was thinking she might like to adopt a couple. And Avery perks suddenly, brightly, turning to look at him with those wide eyes of hers. "Truly?" she asks, as though he might be joking with her. She breaks into a smile, slowly spreading over her face. "Oh, I think we'd love that. My father's family raised greyhounds for the longest time. My brother has always wanted a dog." She pauses, beaming. "Two, really? You'd let me?"
Calden"Clearly, I just muddle through it," Calden laughs, good-natured, unmindful of her gentle ribbing. "One of these days I'll wander out there and suddenly realize half my herd has been replaced by cardboard cutouts on kite-strings, I'm sure."
He watches her stroking Patches. So gentle, so loving. There's something to be said for not giving a pet animal to a werewolf, but Calden can't imagine a day when Avery would take anything out on an innocent. She'd rather run away. She'd rather hide. Sometimes he wonders if that's why her madness is what it is: her kindness and goodness wouldn't allow even madness to stake a more malevolent hold on her.
Then Avery wonders aloud about the father. Calden smirks.
"I'm not sure," he says, "but I've got my suspicions. I've seen her frolicking with one of the handsome young cowdogs out there."
She turns to him, wide-eyed, so happy. He leans over, impromptu; kisses her soft and gentle on the mouth. "Of course," he says quietly. "I can't imagine a better home for them than yours. They can live pampered spoiled lives in the big city while the rest of their brothers and sisters learn to be good proper cowdogs. Just like their mother was before she turned into this pampered, spoiled thing you see before you."
AveryIt's charitable that he thinks so highly of her, that he would even invite her here when his favorite cattledog is suckling newborns under his roof. That he would offer to give two of them to her and her family, where they would be at her mercy as much -- even more -- than her own kinfolk. Who would fault her if, in a frenzy, she turned on the family pets rather than attack her blood, her servants, those souls with clear minds and language? But the truth is, outside of battle, a frenzy would itself launch Avery into a terror, a panicked bolting from anyone and anything she could hurt that didn't deserve it. She should be ashamed, perhaps in the minds of many of her own kind. Avery would not be. Avery would rather suffer the shame, the isolation, even the risk to herself, versus harming someone under her protection.
"Well," Avery says, still scritching Patches, who is exhausted but a bit blissful at the attention, "it is spring."
Calden kisses her, softly this time, and she smiles against his mouth, eyes closed, their faces just held together in that lingering kiss for a few moments. "They will be so pampered," she murmurs happily. "Fed like royalty, washed and brushed til their coats gleam and taught to fetch and heel and roll over. We'll get a trainer to work with my brother, teach him how to be a good caretaker." She shivers, looking down at the tiny little things. "Oh, I want to hold them so much." But she doesn't. She clasps her hands together as though this will stop her, and leans into Calden, afraid that if she doesn't, oh, she'll just lose her head and cuddle them all. She doesn't dare shift to lupus, wary that even her gift might not permit the collie and the pups to withstand her then. Besides: even if they could, she wouldn't want any of them to be confused, to think that a wolf is safe, because this wolf was safe.
Avery leans into his bare chest, wrapped in the throw blanket, kissing his cheek and jaw and neck before she settles down, resting her head on his shoulder. She watches Patches and the puppies drowse, all of them worn out from the effort of giving birth, of being born, of feeding and being fed. She is so happy that it has blossomed into something new, flowered into contentment.
CaldenCalden is unimaginably endeared when she clasps her hands together like that, as though her desire to hold the puppies has grown so strong that she must twine her hands together or else reach for them. He puts his arm around her. She leans against his shoulder. They abide there on the ground, unmindful of the innate absurdity of sitting on the ground mostly-naked and sort of filthy while looking at new puppies.
"Maybe before you leave in a few days you can stroke them," Calden suggests. "And the next time you visit they'll be big enough to hold. Usually by six weeks they're old enough to adopt. That should be around the time I'll be coming down to live in Denver for a while. It works out."
His arm around her is loose but heavy. He kisses her temple, then shifts a little; rests his underjaw gently over her head for a moment. A long moment. It ends only when he draws a deep breath, rouses himself.
"Let's go shower," he says. "And then let's go see what's become of the steaks."
AveryAll of this is amenable to Avery, who smiles and takes his hand as they start to rouse, to shift, to rise. She wraps the blanket around herself and lets him help her up. Patches lifts her head, opening her eyes, but truthfully, she doesn't whine to see them go. She thumps her tail once or twice and rests again, and they leave her with her pups to be alone a little longer.
Going back up to his bedroom, they sneak in, Avery whispering that she thinks she hears his father. She leaves the blanket in a pile in the bathroom corner and joins him in the shower, and surprisingly, she doesn't run her hands longingly, lovingly all over him. She loops her arms loosely and happily around his neck, smiling at him as water saturates their bodies and hair, kissing him once or twice, softly. They wash each other's backs but otherwise take care of themselves, passing soap and so on back and forth, rinsing away suds and sweat and stretching their muscles under the warm water.
And then standing there.
Just standing.
Avery rests her back against his chest, and Calden wraps his arms around her body. Her arms are crossed and his are crossed beneath hers and they have interlaced the tips of their fingers. She is smiling as they stand in the stream of water, sideways, the water pouring over their left shoulders and over the rest of them. She sways a little, smiling that smile, thinking of staying here for a few days, thinking of him visiting her for days and days on end in June, thinking of taking a set of puppies home with her to be raised tumbling and fuzzy on her estate's grounds. She thinks of the way Patches looked, exhausted but so, so still, while her little ones suckled at her side.
On an unrelated note, her stomach growls.
CaldenDespite the labor, the effort, the bone-wearing work that goes into keeping this place alive and well, sometimes this ranch must seem something of a refuge. A place where all still obey, to some degree or in some form, the most basic decrees of nature. A place so far-removed that the Wyrm and the War do not often stray here. An echo of an older time. A modern-day scion of the most ancient work of all, one might argue. Agriculture, mother of civilization.
It is not a forgiving life. It is not an easy one. It is cleaner, though, and simpler in many ways. Closer to the earth. Closer to the rhythms and cycles of Gaia herself.
Small wonder his roots run so deep here. Small wonder that, as modernized and efficient and savvy and lucrative as he has made his ranch, Calden is still, at heart, a cowboy, a rancher, a gentleman.
--
Avery's stomach growls. And Calden laughs, his arms around her squeezing gently for a moment before he unravels them. "All right," he whispers, cranking off that wonderfully hot deluge. "Enough dawdling. Let's get dressed and find something to eat."
--
The mirrors are steamed over when they step out of the pristine glass box of Calden's shower. There's enough ambient warmth in the air that they needn't rush into their robes; can take the time to towel off. Calden hands Avery her robe as he shrugs into his own, and then they step out of the bathroom to dress themselves. Some of Avery's things live here in his closet, among his things. They are hers still, feel and smell like they are hers, but -- they smell faintly of his things, too. His laundry detergent. His closet. His clothes, close neighbors that they are.
By the time they're dressed, Calden's hair is still damp. He links hands with her as they walk down the stairs. Just loosely: just the tips of their fingers hooked together. Time has passed, the sky has turned. The sun lingers close to the horizon now, warm light stretching long across the land.
Out on the deck, Calden lifts the lid on his grill and examines the half-cooked steaks dubiously. Long since cooled and a bit dried-out besides, they're hardly fit for grilling anymore -- and yet it would be an abominable waste just to dispose of them. Prodding at the steaks with a grilling fork, Calden chews his lower lip in thought.
"I think maybe we should just cut this up and toss it in a stew," he says. "It might take a couple hours though. For the sake of your poor vociferous tummy, I can probably grill up something else in the meantime."
AveryPerhaps this is the most forgiving life, in truth: bones break but they mend. Cattle die and become food. Snows come, then melt. Muscles ache, only to grow stronger. The old laws stand, out here, to an extent, but they also protect. Of course it is not easy. Forgiveness is not easy, but it is clean. It is true.
Avery never wants to pull him from this place.
--
The water goes off and they depart the shower. She combs her hair, then dries it, just a quick blow-out without much primping. It hangs mostly straight after that, unfinished but dry. She dresses in jeans -- there is still some daylight -- and a short-sleeved blouse with tiny ruffles down the front and little cap sleeves, loose in the torso rather than skimming her lean sides. She keeps her feet bare as they head down, and she hops onto his back with little warning, insistent that he give her a piggy-back outside to the deck.
There she is, peering over his shoulder as he inspects the steaks. "You know I would eat them as they are," she teases him, because she knows: he so wouldn't let her. She gives him a little squeeze and then hops down, bare feet to the deck, arms slinking around his waist instead. "Let's just. Rifle through the fridge while it's stewing and eat whatever we find."
Avery grins up at him.
CaldenCalden laughs a surprised laugh as his lover just hops on his back as they hit the main floor. "What -- " he begins,
and she insists or merely kisses his scruffy cheek,
and he reaches back over his shoulder and touches her hair for a moment, blindly, before tucking his hands amicably under her thighs. A quick hoist sets her higher on his back, more secure, and he continues his way to the deck.
Where they inspect the steaks. Where he suggests stew, and she suggests eating them as they are. "You'll get Salmonella," he says, while she slides off his back and slides her arms around his waist. He lifts his arm. She comes around under it, facing him now, smiling up at him.
"Sounds like a plan, pardner," he drawls, oh-so-self-referential right now, ducking to drop a kiss on the tip of her nose. "I think I might actually have some cheese, spread and crackers, come to think of it. Come on," with his free hand, he starts to tong the half-cooked steaks back into their pan, "let's go in. You know how to peel potatoes, right?"
Avery"I most certainly would not," she scoffs, a little bit of true edge to it: how dare he suggest that her vibrant, ferocious body would fall prey to some nasty little bacteria? The minions of the Wyrm work day and night to try and make germs that can touch Gaia's chosen and they keep failing yes they do and why? Because she is a hero. Heroes do not get salmonella.
Or allergies.
Or the common cold.
Certainly not the flu.
He kisses her nose and her grin, already so broad and gleaming, only brightens that much more. "We shall graze and snack and it shall be lovely," she declares, following him inside, half-trotting, not quite letting go of his waist. "I love cheese. And wine! We should open wine."
Calden asks about potatoes. Avery hesitates.
Calden"We should definitely open wine. Did we ever drink that bottle I tried to send you home with that first night? We should drink it if we haven't already."
He picks up the steaks. He heads inside. She's still sort of hanging onto his waist, and though she is tall and athletic and golden and, yes, vibrant and ferocious: he is still taller, with a longer stride. So she half-trots a little. He grins, terribly amused, as they navigate their way in, and past that great hearth, and through the great room, and into the great kitchen.
"I'll teach you," he promises, re: potatoes. "It's easy. And I'll even be kind and chop up the carrots and the onions myself."
Avery"I think we had it with steak one night. Or I shared it with one of my ahroun friends," she says, with a little shrug. "I thought you brought it to my place when I was living at the Ritz?"
They have been together for a year. They have had so many bottles of wine. Avery smiles at him, and inside, she hesitates when he asks her about peeling potatoes. She... does not know how to peel potatoes. What a silly question. She is slightly pink in the cheeks though, quite suddenly aware that around him, around here, this is something she will be teased for, something to be embarrassed about, something she is glad his cousins and father cannot hear, something she doesn't want to be teased about. It's just potatoes. Who cares if she knows how to peel potatoes or not?
She is pink. And Calden is...
gentle.
He just promises her: he'll teach her. It's easy. He'll take care of the onions and carrots, and she wonders if those are harder. She smiles, and some of the blush eases away. She hugs him close, burying her face in his chest. "One of these days," she warns, "you're going to just try and turn me into a cowgirl, aren't you?" Says the woman who followed up a rodeo by putting on a hat and boots and, well. Ahem.
CaldenIt's true; around these parts, there are those who might tease her for her inability to peel potatoes. Or chop onions. Or generally do the sort of things that 99.9% of the world's population learns to do by adulthood because very, very few people are born quite as privileged as a young, intelligent, strong, beautiful, white-skinned, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Silver Fang Philodox whose family stretches back dozens of old-monied generations.
There are those who might tease her for that privilege, that wealth, the inabilities such privilege and wealth brings. But not Calden, and -- if they know what's good for them -- not to Calden's face. Not unless they want to get pinned by a direct, level stare; not unless they want to get told, quietly and flatly, that it wasn't like they knew how to tear the spine of a Wyrmling out, either.
Or inspire the way she does.
Or lead the way she does.
Or generally shine in every way possible the way she does.
--
So: he is gentle with her. Of course he is. He'll teach her to peel potatoes today, and perhaps there will be mishaps and half-skinned potatoes spinning across the floor, but she is sharp and she is bright and she is -- despite what one might assume -- diligent and hardworking and eager to better herself. Maybe next time he'll teach her to chop onions. Maybe next time he'll even teach her how to make steak the way he does -- which really, in the end, is so exceedingly simple.
"I hardly even need to," says Calden, grinning. They begin to set up. They take vegetables from the fridge and seasoning from the pantry. Avery finds some blocks of cheese, some pates and spreads; Calden retrieves crackers from someplace-or-other. "I think you're already doing that all by yourself."
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