[Trent Brumby] Kora:
She doesn't fit in such a space. She stands just inside the door, watches him as he slips off his jacket, her dark eyes catching the light, but still bruised with shadow. She is quiet now, her stories finished, her body taut beneath her clothes. His apartment - his territory - is clean and orderly, it smells of green things, and him. There are windows, a rug, a well-made dining room table, more things that she has ever or will ever own.
Everthing is well-kept, considered, fits warmly together, like he does. She's wearing clothing - her old clothes, the dedicated clothes, the black PIXIES t-shirt and the worn old jeans - stiff at the hem and thighs with the blood of a dead man, and perhaps some of her own. It has been two nights since her Alpha died, and she has delivered the same news again and again, to other people who live in places like this, smelling of blood and rain.
He offers to take her jacket and she slips off her hoodie in an easy gesture, sliding her hands back into the front pockets of her jeans, her elbows held tight against her body as she walks into the living room, circles the well-made couch, surveys his territory with the sort of closely observed attention he has come to expect from her. When she has reached the other hend of the couch, though, she unearths her hands from her pockets, sits down on the edge of the couch in a fluid motion, and - quite deliberately - begins unlacing her own black boots.
[Trent Brumby] Hanging up his own coat along with her hoody, he left the door, locked, and walked into his apartment. While she circled around and found somewhere to sit, he set her bottle and paper on the coffee table. "Do you want something to drink? Eat?" he asks her, looking to where she's unlacing her boots. His keys jangle softly as he places them on the coffee table as well, his wallet and phone shortly to follow.
It's easy to pick up that most the furniture here is new. He's been here a couple of months now, and had purchased the lot of it to fill his apartment. Even though he was never sure how long he was staying for, he couldn't live in a cardboard box or out of the back of his car. There's still some boxes in his bedroom that hadn't been unpacked yet, stacked neatly in one corner. It was only down to three, now; three boxes that may never get unpacked.
[Kora] The city is dark and still outside. She has an impression of her ghost reflected in the mirror, imperfectly preserved, superimposed over the shadowy shapes of the building opposite, the street scene below framed against the darkness. The dark wood furniture recedes in the reflection but - moving - they stand out, blurred and inconstantly rendered by the glass, like the warped copy of an old reel of film left in the sun.
She unwraps the laces from the shank of her boots - old and black, battered, all the stiffness worn out of them over the years - loosening the crossed laces until the leather is loose around her calves, first right, then left. He asks if she wants something to eat or drink; and she gives him a glancing look, rising from her feet, her pale face framed by the loose weight of her hair, backlit by the glow of the interior light. It is the simplest question in the world, but in that moment - he has caught her out, unaware.
There's a quiet beat; she looks up at him, her head cant sidelong, her hands busy with the laces, the toe of her left boot on the heel of her right ready to lever her heel free. Then, " - yeah." The shadow, only, of her familiar wry grin, ghosts across her face. Her voice is raw, and the room is still. "I'll have a beer."
Of course she will.
[Trent Brumby] "Beer it is."
Leaving her at the sofa, he walks past the counter and into the kitchen. She can still see him in there for the most part, having a large opened area rather then cornered of living areas. Only when he's in the far corner does he disappear from view, where he's opening the fridge and getting out some bottles, a plate - pauses as he considers some other options hiding in the shelves. The door swings closed with a nudge from his leg, and he leaves the plate on the counter. He uses the edge of it to pop off the caps to both bottles before he walks into the living room again.
Two beers are set on the coffee table, without coasters - there is none. "I'm going to start a bath for you. Won't be a moment." He tells her, not waiting for protests or glimpse of disapproval. Instead he's walking in the opposite direction to the kitchen, into the darker, short hall where the other rooms of the apartment lead off. Two bedrooms, a bathroom and a tiny laundry. The door right at the end is a closet for linens, it also holds his towels. It's there he grabs out a few, then opens the door to his left, flicking on the overhead, heated light. The exhaust fan turns on automatically, leaving a dull hum to echo in the room; a distant sound from where she's sitting.
Soon enough, water is running through pipes, beginning to fill the tub that doubles as a shower. The dark curtain hangs from a rail on large, clear rings. He's pulled it back, removing the ends of it from within the bathtub so it doesn't get wet. Chocolate towels are set on the space next to the wash basin and he stands there, contemplating which salts to use. He doesn't have anything flowery or feminine here. Fingers drum on the sink as he looks around with a slightly pursed mouth.
[Kora] Her boots are off when he returns, set aside - neatly done - beside the arm of the couch, damp white socks - thick, ordinary cotton - stuffed over the top of the shanks, left to hang over the tongues, the loosened tension of the crossed laces. Feet bare on the floorboards, she spreads out her toes and leans forward. Kora does not sit comfortably on his couch; he can still read the tension in her body; the way she feels out of place - outside herself, perhaps - in such a neat and well-ordered domestic space. She is already reaching for the bottle of beer before he sets it down on the glass-topped coffee table. There's a moment then, when she glances down, thumb rubbing idly across the label as she lifts the bottle to her mouth -
- and freezes it, half-way there, her raw dark eyes fixed on his broad back as he announces his intention to start a bath for her, then walks away without listening for objection. She is still sitting forward on the couch, at the edge of the cushion, her weight distributed between the couch and her feet on the floor, the bottle in hand. Alone in the room, her reflection mirrors every action. In the near distance, the pipes groan, water runs, the sound muted by the walls, the half-closed door. Except for the beer, which she drinks as if alcohol were as necessary as oxygen, draining the first third of the bottle in two great draughts, she does not move.
There is no one else in the room; but she feels as if she were being watched.
No: she feels as if she were being seen, which is a different thing, entirely.
Then, two minutes, or five later, he hears the soft slap of her barefeet on the hardwood floor, shadowing his path back to the bathroom. She has her beer in hand, held neatly between her thumb and index finger, a loose circular grip, and leans against the door frame, her eyes still bruised with shadow, her heart charged, beating fast in her chest, in her throat.
She is a still thing, raw. It is hard to imagine her wrapped in anything flowery or feminine. "What are you doing?" Her voice is husked, amber.
[Trent Brumby] He hers her coming and has already come to the conclusion that she can make these decisions herself. From the cabinet under the sink, he had pulled out a few optional products and began setting them in clear view, laid down on the towel which is neatly folded nearby. They are products of well known environmental companies that push natural, organic skin and hair cares on the people of the world. Trent uses these. Some of them are labeled for men, like the gel wash that smells of sandalwood, rosewood and patchouli. But others, like the bar of soap consists of oatmeal, honey, goats milk and olive oil. She'd have options, and although they are limited, it's better then chemicals that even he hates washing down the drain.
Rising up from where he's crouched, he has a clean muslin cloth in one hand, closing the cabinet door with the other. Looking over to where she's leaning in the doorway, he looks down to her beer them back up to her face. "I'm trying to figure out what you'd like to use on your skin," he tells her, as though it's perfectly ordinary. He looks away from her, only to put the cloth down on the corner edge of the bath, which is filling quickly with warm to hot water, leaving steam to rise from its surface. It won't be suffocating though, the exhaust fan is a modern addition and works well on high.
"There's a few things here." Looking back to her now, he motioned to where he's got everything set out. Behind him, there's ferns sitting on a ledge, and another large one in a pot that looks more like a palm plant, all bright green against the tiles of his bathroom. She'd find some shells here, holding small oatmeal and honey hand soaps, and a general beige and warm brown motif around her; including some already burn down candles he keeps for when he soaks himself. He likes these colours, these darker, warm colours. "I'll find you something to wear, so you feel good and clean when you're done. And if you still want me to," he adds, sliding his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, "I'll wash your hair when you're ready."
[Kora] The exhaust fan is a low constant hum in the room; like the background noise of traffic coursing through the living city, arterial, insistant. Once, she looks up, the startling image of her complete reflection in the mirror above the sink sings back at her. She does not meet her own eyes; she looks away. The self she sees is never reflected in such mirrors, and those glimpses are always startling to her. The mirror shows only one of her selves, the softest one, but she feels the rest of them inside her, the beast and the girl, the memory keeper and the soon-to-be memory.
Otherwise, her dark eyes remain fixed on him, downslanting as he crouches, laying out the soaps and oils, on the towel, lifting as he stands, filling the warm dark space. The steam in the air dampens and distorts the light until it is pulled up and away through the fan.
"I have this - " here is the half-hook of her smile, at odds with the still Thereshadows in her dark gaze, the keen thread of tension between the two possibilities, herself, her grief. " - bar of soap. This giant bar of homemade soap one of our kinswomen gave me, where I trained, yeah? It's shampoo, too. I think she was concerned I wasn't blonde enough. That's what I use."
There's a pause. She pushes away from the door frame, standing up, stepping into the bathroom, her elbow crooked, the beer bottle held loosely at the level of her waist.
"On my skin.
"So I think whatever you have - " her eyes are on his face. Beneath the dark cotton, her shoulders curl, narrow, forward, in a neat little shrug. " - well." She watches as his gaze falls, and as it rises again. The room is smaller, and she is brighter still, pale skin, pale hair stark against the warm dark colors his favors, her stiff, stained, dark clothes at absolute odds with the steaming warmth of the room, the rich, clean scents that rise with the billowing steam.
Then, the faint hook at the corner of her mouth drifts lower. Her breathing is slow, deliberate. If she still wants him to - he puts his hands in his back pockets. Her eyes drop, hook there. Remain there. - he'll wash her hair.
Kora does not look up this time. Instead, she reaches into her back pocket, pulls out a handful of things. It's a mirror of the way he emptied his pockets onto the table by the coat rack, though her possessions are fewer: a cheap cell phone. A handful of wadded bills and change. A passport. And a snapshot, folded in half, and half again. "I'd like that. " she tells him, looking back at him only when she's said it, the raw edge of her dark gaze spiked with a hunger he can read, too, in the movement of the pulse at the base of her throat.
[Trent Brumby] He likes the way he talks. Some part of him thinks its wrong, that he likes this while there's raw grief in her eyes, and blood stains on her clothes. But he does. He likes it like the way she wears bloodstains on her clothes, the way her hair tangles, wild and unkempt. There are times when he's looked at her and found one of her other sides looking out of her gaze, daring him to look back at her, and he likes that too. Times, like this; when she's walked closer to him, averted her gaze, looked at the hard line of his body or at the simple way his hands fit, with thumbs out, into pockets along the curve of his tough rump - they make him very aware of the tightness growing in his body and the way his pulse jumps to match the one thudding in the side of her neck.
Slowly, he slips his hands back out, frees them of his pants and lowers them loosely to his sides. She had previously been blocking the only exit to the room, and even now, her body - no, presence, takes up a good portion of the narrow space before him. "All of them are natural," he tells her, speaking back on the soaps as he swallows a little thicker, seeking to calm himself in the wake of knowing he's going to run his hands through her hair, wash and see her sparkle under clean water.
"I'll.. uh.." He clears his throat and manages a smile, more at himself and the way he's heating, which has nothing to do with the steam in the room or the overhead heated light, ".. I'm going to put together some food, give you some time to relax." Moving past her now, side stepping, he's still watching her face. "I'll get some clothes too." Nodding, firmly, as if it sounds like a solid plan, he seeks to give her space. Private time, without him gawking at her like he is, right then, right now, every bit male.
[Kora] The beer bottle is forgotten in her right hand. Her thumb and forefinger linger on the folded up snapshot, the last of the things she pulled - from deep in her left hip pocket. Her gaze is still averted, lingering on the line of his body, the strength she can see outlined by his dark clothes. This is how she listens to his plans: food, relaxation. Clothes. Something clean; something without the blood stiffening the fibers, without the damp stains of the rain in which she sat, at the shoulders, the hips and the thighs.
"No," she says, without looking up. He is at the door now. Her eyes are at the level of his waist. She remembers, then, the beer, looks away long enough to reach across the narrow line of her torso and set the bottle down atop her passport, beside the folded picture, amidst the dull gleam of well-used change and the unkempt handful of bills. "I want you to stay."
Hands free, she grasps crosses her arms, grasps the bottom hem of her blood-stiffened t-shirt and peels it up, pulling it off over her head, tugging it free of the heavy tangle of her haphazardly gathered hair. Underneath, she wears a black sports bra, cotton and lycra. Her jeans are low slung, fitted to the natural curve of her hips. Her torso is lean, narrow - strong, too, the shadow of muscle evident below her skin. This is not the deliberate, defined frame of someone who isolates each muscle group, works it to maximum efficiency in the stark confines of a Gold's Gym, but the long, compact strength of the animal she is underneath - who runs, who fights, who kills.
There is a battlescar, too - stark - which bisects her torso slantwise like the sash of a beauty contestant, from her left hip to her right breast, disappearing beneath both the sports bra and the waistband of her jeans. Miss Get of Fenris, maybe. The deep ridges are still congested, red and raw. In a year or two, the lines will fade, the skin will become silvered, faintly shiny - a memory of death written into her skin. In a year or two. If she lives a year or two.
"I don't need food." She drops the t-shirt on the floor. "I want you to stay."
[Trent Brumby] The slacks he wears are fitted enough that he doesn't wear a belt with them, not even for accessories. These are work pants that fit him comfortably, meeting the hem of his stretched black t.shirt. Its what is in the line of her sight, that trim, flat waist, until she's looking away. He had stopped the moment she said no, caught a little surprised by the directness of it. Having turned back to look at her, he's watching her profile as she explains how she wants him to stay. Demands, really.
Following her hands down to the bottom of the t.shirt, he watches fingers as she peels it from herself, exposes her skin, the muscles underlying, and the raw scar that is clear and bright against her pale complexion. It's even more noticeable than the black bra she wears, not because of the colour, but because how it reminds him of her vulnerability. She may be Garou, able to heal more than he can imagine, Rage back to life, but that scar proves she is far from invincible. Just like that rawness in her eyes, and why it's there in the first place.
His gaze doesn't linger though, it lifts and meets her gaze directly, nodding once, but slight. "Okay. I'll stay." Turning back into the room, he has a shoulder towards the opening of the door. He looks from her to the growing level in the bath and back again. "I'm still going to fetch a bowl to wash your hair." He will do that before he locks himself in the room with her. But he doesn't move to do that quite yet, those pale grays are back to taking in her expression, his own is serious with a little bit of wonder and a growing heat.
[Kora] Her expression is stark and open, her wide mouth still, lips just parted, her breathing slow and deliberate. He catches her gaze again, dark with want beneath the shadows of her grief. Between the steam, the direct slant of the light cast by the overhead fixture, her eyes are cast in shadow. It would be impossible to guess the color, if he did not already know them well.
He knows them well.
There is something thorough about the attention she gives him, even now. He looks at her and finds her looking back at him, direct and clear, without artiface. The space between them, in the confines of the small room, is minute and charged, electric. Still holding his gaze now, she reaches down, not-quite-blindly, and unbuttons her jeans. There are bloodstains at the waist and on the thighs; some are her own. Others are not. If he asked her, she would not be able to tell him which was which. The zipper opens with an errant flick of her fine thumb, and then she eases the waistband over her hips, shimmies then down her thighs, her calves, her long legs, stepping neatly out of them when they begin to bunch at her ankles, first the right foot, then the left.
Here are the rest of her unmentionables, white bikini briefs, cotton, as quotidian as her sports bra. He has little time to register the shape of her body beneath her clothes - in his peripheral vision, if he holds her level gaze as she undresses, or directly, if he drops her eyes to watch the movement of her hands at the level of her hips, her thighs, the movement of muscle under the pale skin of her bare thighs, her calves - because as soon as she steps out of the jeans she steps into his space, reaches up to push her fingers through the back of his hair, to cup his skull with her deft hands and pull his mouth down to hers.
The kiss is raw; brief. It leaves her holding him still close, breathing hot against his mouth. Her eyes are open, after, an unfocused downslant over the planes of his gruff features, so close that her lashes nearly brush his cheeks as she looks down, eyes open, the vague focus on their mouths, just parted. "You were going to get a bowl," she reminds him, her voice hitched in the middle, burred. She releases his head, then, touches his shoulder, slides her hand down his chest to rest against his abdomen, where his rib cage falls away like an inverted parabola. " - remember?"
- she reminds him, but doesn't move away.
[Trent Brumby] He really is not moving anywhere, not with how her hands travel downward to her jeans. He doesn't need to watch them to know what she's doing, the sound of fabric following the unzipping of metal. Even if he wanted to look down, to glimpse a naked thigh, he is disciplined in keeping his eyes above the shoulders. Her eyes are mesmerizing in their own way, the look in them.
Better yet is the way she grabs him, running fingers through his thicker, shorter hair, just enough to fill the spaces between the fingers and grab a good hold of, has his head tilting to her whim. He makes a sound in the back of his throat, a groan that vibrates deeply in his chest. Light touch of fingertips trail up her sides and around to her back, where his palm spreads and holds her lightly. There is plenty of strength to be found in him, across his chest, shoulders and in his arms. His thighs, even, are thick and solid, made lean by the length of his height.
There is no better way to kiss a man, a man like Trent, then to take charge of it. She already knew that from the first time on the bench, and again now, she's left him with deeper breathing, hotter skin and with eyes that are sharp and senses heightened. But he laughs then, a low, deeper sound, and his hands trail back around her waist, gently. "I'm not remembering much at the moment, Kora."
His eyes smile as much as his mouth does; honest.
"But if you say so, I'm not going anywhere. I am, however, going to check this water before turning it off." Moving carefully, mindful of his boots against her naked feet, he grasps her gently and steps as though in a dance, to get closer to the bath and reach across for it. His hand slips to her hip, his body stretches across steam and fingers trail into the deep tub, checking its not scalding before lifting a wet hand to turn off the faucets.
He rises then, wiping his hand on the back of his trousers and looks back to her. "Bath is ready, madame." There's humour in the way he says it, but not in the way he sneaks a longing glance to her mouth.
[Kora] The dance is a strange one; his hand on her hip, her torso curving as he reaches across her body, her feet bare on the tiled floor, his own still clad in heavy black boots. He is still fully clothed, and she is still curved, close against his body, rising to the balls of her feet to close the distance between her mouth and kissing him again, not deeply, but briefly - rough and hungry, then, the shadow of the wolf inside her imprinted on the kiss.
He isn't remembering much at the moment. Her mouth twists briefly wide; the suggestion of her white teeth clear behind the heartbreaking, half-broken smile, little more than an impression against his mouth, his jaw. "That's okay," if her reply, more than a little breathless, the twist of humor underneath a neat double helix of clear and dark. "I remember everything." It's her mind. It's her moon.
Her skin is warmer than his. It's just a degree, perhaps two, enough to make her skin feel feverish beneath the light touch of his hands. His hand is on her hip as he declares her bath ready, and she reaches back, curves her own hand over his, hooks her thumb through the elastic waistband of the inexpensive white cotton and pulls them down, his hand beneath her, gliding over the curve of her hip, halfway down the length of her thighs until she lets them fall onto the tile and steps neatly out of them, flicking them away, off into the corner, with a twist of her toes.
The sports bra is removed in much the same way: her hand over his, against her skin, guiding him to undress her, holding his hand close to her body the whole time. The raw battlescar begins at the undercurve of her right breast - and she holds his hand there when the constricting garment has been removed, cupped against the raw scar, against the soft flesh.
The bath declared ready, she steps into the hot water: right foot, then the left. There is nothing tentative; she doesn't test the temperature with her toes or ease her foot into the steaming water first. She turns back casts him a level look over her now bare shoulder, finds his eyes if he is looking at her levelly, and holds the look as she pivots, turning around, before sinking into the water.
"I like to look at you." Indeed, her eyes drop from his eyes, to his waist, to his thighs. " - and I like it when you look at me." A beat, before she sinks into the water. "Okay?"
[Trent Brumby] Fingers spread, allowing his palm to brush along her skin as she guides his hands across her hips and part way down her thighs. They flow up her torso, across her ribs and up to take the bra from her frame, leaving it in a pile of clothes like the others. His hands come back, urged by her own, to cup her skin, to brush thumb across scar and softer flesh. For most of the time his gaze watches her face, shifting when her hair threatened to get tangled in black garment, or when she found him looking at the curve of her throat and angles of her mouth.
His heart is beating so hard that he wonders if she can hear it. She certainly could see the blood pumping through his body, with the way it makes his skin glow and hardens muscles all through his core. When she steps away from him, his hands drop down to his sides, the memory of her skin on his fingertips. He's watching her getting into that tub, stepping, carelessly, into the water. He made it cooler then he would have himself, cool enough not to leave the skin bright red upon exiting, and still hot enough to steam and ease muscles under the skin.
She catches him with the look over her shoulder, his eyes having traveled down the back of her length and up again. But he doesn't look sharply back to her face, like he was caught doing something he shouldn't be, his gaze is steady and holds weight to it where it hadn't before. His quiet demeanor is shifting with what is held beneath, the compassion shifting into something far more bright, burning, smoldering the gray of his eyes.
"Yes ma'am," he finds himself saying. Not in the chided way either, but with a deep breath and a look that can be very flattering. He mirrors her hunger, as he assures her, "I like looking at you too." And for a moment he just stands there, watching her sink into the water in his bathtub.
Then, he begins moving, dropping down to tug at laces on his boots, making them loose enough to slide off his foot, along with dark coloured cotton socks. They're deposited outside the door, thumping carelessly beyond the room. He doesn't do more then that though, returning his attention to her, coming to kneel down by the other side of the bath. "You sure I can't get that bowl, Kora?" His eyes drift from her face over her hair. He's aching to get his hands on her, with the way he's eyes are lit up, it's like it's Christmas.
[Kora] She does not fit here either; not in the warm bath, fragrant, not in the warm bathroom, with steam in the air and the ferns on the shelves, the warm dark colors, the soft light slanting from the fixtures, the constant hum of the exhaust fan. There is still the suggestion of tension in the straight line of her shoulder girdle, in the way she holds her spine, keeps herself from sinking all the way back into the water, as if she had forgotten how to take a bath. Once she is in the water, she leans back in his bathtub, her pale hair still tangled behind her head like a cloud, damp from the steam now, and darker for it, wet where it has come loose from the mass, curled over the sharp cut of her collar bone beneath her skin, or clinging to the black choker she has not removed.
The light casts distorted reflections along the rippling surface of the bathwater. The impression of her body beneath is hazy, changing - more precise than an impressionist's rendering would be, closer to a watercolor, where shadow bleeds into light, tone into tone. Except when her limbs breach the surface: a knee here, a toe at the far end, resting on the metal faucet, peeling black paint on her toenails, too. Her arms rest along the length of the tub, the line cut neatly at the wrist by the bracelets she always wears, leather, suede, knotted shreds of rope, some of them, none wider than her pinky, black and brown against her pale skin.
She breathes slowly, carefully, her chest and shoulders rising and falling with each breath, so regular that she must be counting the rhythm somewhere inside her. He disappears to remove his boots, she looks away, dark eyes skimming to some thread of light reflected in the tile on the wall, lifting her chin and cutting him a slantwise look, hot, from beneath lowered lashes when he returns to knee at the edge of the tub.
"If you really want to wash my hair - " she pulls her feet in, closer to her body, both knees breaching the surface of the water, and leans forward, curving her shoulders downward in an echo of her posture when he first saw her tonight, in the park, on a bench, in the darkness between one spring downpour and another. The movement exposes her back, the long line of her spine, and the tangled mass of her pale hair, like an offering. Her eyes drop from his, to his mouth, to his hands. " - you can. Get the bowl."
[Trent Brumby] Gripping the sides of the bath, his fingers squeaked dully, as he watched her sit upright and draw herself into that ball again. When he releases the tub, its to reach out and brush water along her spine, lifting water from the surface to trickle it along her skin. "Do you want anything else while I'm gone? Another beer?" He keeps his voice low, light under the hum of the fan whirring overhead. Even out of the water she would not find it cold, the heating radiating from above keeps the room at a comfortable temperature.
Rising up from where he had knelt, smooth and easily, he glanced down her, waiting for her answer, and once he had it he had acknowledged with a nod before turning and leaving the room. For the brief instance the door is opened and then closed, it allows a breeze of cooler air from the hall into the room before it's shut out again.
He's not gone long, returning with a large bowl and whatever she had requested - if she had. Back in the bathroom, the door was closed over but not clicked shut all the way. He'd return to kneel by the bath, the mat beneath him designed to soak water from the dripping feet when done. It was warmer than the floor and cleaned, too. It cushioned his knees against the tiles. "Alright," he's smiling now, much easier then he was before. The brief time apart has allowed him to compose himself, and while he's still hungry for her, it's no longer worn on his sleeve. "No more stepping out." Leaving her alone, that is. He's confined himself to the bathroom at her wishes; his, too.
From there, he proceeds to wash her hair, taking it out from its tangled mess first, before water is poured down the length of it. His free hand brushes along her brow, pushing water through the strands. Trent takes his time, enjoying doing this for her, something she's never had done before. She'll find that his fingers work soaps into her hair and massages from her scalp right to the tips of her pale strands. He does this with with particular attention to detail. "You're very attractive," he tells her, quietly, under the pouring of water.
[Kora] The water runs in errant ribbons down her back, echoing but not mimicking the line of her spine tucked neatly between the symmetric architecture of bone and muscle, the neat cut of her shoulder blades pulling her pale skin taut as her shoulders curve forward, the long muscles below flanking her spine, her body tapering just at the waist, the supple flair of her hips distorted by the waterline. Her chin rests on her shoulder as he pours water down her back; she's watching him, close and direct, eyes dark in her face, her fine mouth still. Is there anything she wants? he asks, and she shakes her head, the mass of her tangled hair swinging with the gesture. No.
When he stands, her eyes remain upon him until he disappears out through the door he has left half-opened, the cool ribbon of ambient air from the apartment drifting in, he can hear the rest of her response following him, low and raw but pitched to carry, above the drone of the fan, below the quiet sounds of the moving water. "Just you."
Then he returns, reaches out to untangle her hair, pulls the old ballpoint pen around which she had knotted it sometime in the last day or two out, which unfurls the weight down her back. The last handful of inches - 3 or 4, more or less, usually tucked up inside the twist she usually sports - are not blonde but faded black, the remnants of an old dye job that must be years old, given the length, which she has never bothered to cut.
Kora sits up straight as Trent washes her hair - straighter than straight - lifting her body at the shoulders and through the spine, tipping her chin upward, her head back so that her face is lifted to the ceiling. Her eyes are closed, but somewhere, far above, she can feel the pull of the sky through her body, the lure of the moon that rules her.
Her eyes are closed except when he speaks to her, quietly, while pouring water over her forehead, the crown of her head, down the length of her wet hair. She opens both eyes, but only fractionally, the dark weight of her gaze shadowed by the sweep of her blonde lashes. "Likewise," she tells him, low in response, her face tipped toward him, but only just, her hands loose at her side, fingers spread in the drifting water. "Come here."
[Trent Brumby] "If I come any closer, I'll be in the bath," he says it with a quiet laugh under his breath. The bowl is set aside, into the basin just behind him. Her hair is cleaned, washed out and conditioned. Later, he'd even dry it with a towel and comb it. But he's not thinking about that now, and more on the way she's looking at him from behind her lashes, with the long length of her throat bared and chin tilted up. A hand smooths down her hair, pushing excess water from the roots and down the length, leaving fingers to trail along her back in a light but purposeful caress.
His forearms are bare, the dark hair there wet, and the portion closest to his elbows now rests on the edge of the bath. Fingers are relaxed, hanging limp, but the rest of him is straight and tall on his knees, not protesting about the time he's spent on them. He is all eyes for her, watching her face openly now, with an air of contentment about him. Trent could walk away now and be happy for doing just this, to spend this time with her, intimate in his own bathroom. He need nothing else to be satisfied.
But that was not to mean that he didn't desire much more. An arm slides off the bath ledge and he reaches out across, leaning his body over the edge so that he's almost face to face with her. He could feel the heat come up through his shirt, making his skin beneath moist and the material damp. It was as close as he could get, leaning far across from his knees, without climbing in. "There," he says softer, looking from her eyes down her nose to her mouth. This time he doesn't wait or ask, his chin tilts and brushes his mouth across her lower lip - nothing more, but he lingers close. "Better?"
[Kora] There is a moment where she remains still, the cut of her smile like a razor below his lingering mouth, breathing, enjoying the heat of his body, which is different than the heat of the bath, the fading heat of his mouth on her lower lip. Then she lifts her chin, craning her neck to follow in his wake, kissing him with that same hungry confidence - not deeply this time, but thoroughly, hungrily. Her arms are wet, dripping she pulls her hands up from the bathwater, circles her arms around his neck as he leans in close to her, resting her elbows on his shoulders, turning to follow the angle of his body back to the edge of the bathtub.
The water sloshes as twists her body at the hips and rises to her knees, tucking first the right leg, then the left beneath her. The pressure of her elbows loose on his shoulders increases as she uses him for leverage against the slippery porcelain underneath. Then she's matched to him, leaning forward, still blistering his mouth with brief, hungry kisses that go astray, now and again, at the corners of his mouth, across his rough cheeks, underneath the line of his jaw.
Then, slowly, her arms untangle from around his shoulders. She reaches down - blindly, still following his mouth with her own, kissing him rough and sure - and twists the hem of his black t-shirt in one first, then the other, pulling it roughly upward, parting from him only long enough to yank it - laughing, for the first time all night at this, when it becomes caught, tangled between her arms and his - before she tugs it up, works it over his arms, neartly tearing it before she pulls it free.
This time, she leans her head forward until their brows touch. She does not kiss him again; her eyes are slanted downward, her cheek against his nose, the bridge of her own nose against his cheek, watching her hands as drift down from his shoulders over the solid planes of his chest, down toward his abdomen, his trim waist.
"You can join me," she murmurs, her voice still raw beneath the hunger, the memory of the death she wants to chase away. " - or, take me to bed." She turns her mouth back his, but does not kiss him this time. Instead, she speaks into his mouth, so deliberately that the motion should be a kiss. "I want you. I want to - "
She does not say the words, but he can feel them on her mouth against his, beneath the curve of a bruised sort of smile.
[Trent Brumby] Water seeps through his t.shirt, which is warm and damp already, but it's not this that has his attention, but the weight of her arms on his shoulders and the way they cradle the back of his neck. His attention is swept up by her mouth, the taste and feel of her upon his lips, and the way she rises and turns herself into him.
Hands slip from the bathtub completely and curl around the back of her. His arms don't so much embrace as his hands, a little cool from the porcelain, run down the length of her back and rise again, just before it goes beyond the small of it where flesh begins to curve back out. He slides them up between her shoulder blades, across her hair, clinging to her skin, and out towards the sides, pulling her into his broad chest.
The more she kisses him, the quicker his breath comes, and the more he wants her. He pulls back only when she reaches for his t.shirt, letting her pull it from him, even though he's sure he could do it quicker. She's laughing and it makes him smile instantly. With fabric free, his torso is bare. Unlike she, who is part animal and killer, his muscles are defined. He does attend a gym, almost daily, and works on groups of muscles at a time, to give him that definition of pectorals and abdominal. There's a trail of dark hair along his chest, thicker down by his navel, but softer there too. It disappears into the waistband of his pants, and if she were to guess, at another time, he does trim it. He's exceptionally vain in some cases. His back, though, is hairless and the muscles worked just as much as his front. Arms have enough solid mass to sport veins on the surface, and on the left is a clear patch of plastic stuck fast.
"I am taking you to the bedroom." She gave him a choice and he was going to run away with it, before she can change her mind. He kisses her, once, but almost swallowing her lip in the process. Pulling away then, slowly, his hands drift over her hips and grip the edge of the bath again, helping him push up from the floor to grab her a large towel.
[Kora] The bath is cooling now; the air in the small bathroom is still humid, warm. She has her own heat, too, her own blood, her own heart, beating fast and sure beneath her breastbone, safe within the cage of her ribs. He kisses her before he stands, and she lifts her face to follow the movement of his mouth until it is gone; just the taste of his mouth on her bruised lips, her tongue.
When he pushes himself to stand, though, her dark eyes cut sidelong again, studying the movement of his muscles beneath his skin, the pattern of dark hair on his chest, following the trail as it disappears beneath the waistband of his slacks before rising again to follow the cut lines of his obliques beneath his skin.
He turns back to her with a large towel held open. Steadying herself on the edge of the tub, she stands, water sluicing in gleaming rivulets down to the bathwater as each plane of her body break through the surface. The battlescar, red and raw cutting across her chest and stomach - the predator's musculature - lean and long, made for running, made for killing, made - sometimes - for dying - all dance with reflected light as the water runs down her body.
And she watches him, watching her, as she stands, as she steps neatly out of the tub onto the absorbant matt on which he had been kneeling. Then, in a neat twist, turns her back to him so that he can envelop her in the towel he holds at the ready.
[Trent Brumby] Opening the towel, which is still new enough to remain fluffy and soft, he watched her rise out of the water. He makes no apology for the way he looks at her now, glancing down the length of her body and watching the way water catches on curves and flows down lengths. He meets her gaze as she steps out of the bath, resisting the urge to reach out and help her, and remained standing in wait.
Smiling at her has a warmth to it, even though his blood is hot, and his skin is flushed, and he's aching for the Garou that's before him, he still has that; warmth, kindness. With her back turning, the towel is wrapped around her, as well as the weight of his arms. He holds onto her, hugging from behind, with the solid, hard length of him pressed into her back. Lips kiss at her skin, first her jaw and then her neck, down to her shoulder. His grip loosens enough to rub hands down her arms, beginning to dry her limbs and take some of the water from her skin.
Then he's walking her towards the door, reaching out around her to open it up and let out some of the humidity of the bathroom. He guides her, rather than marches her, out towards the hall. "Bedroom's just on the left here. Second door," he's telling her ear, reluctant to let her go completely.
[Kora] There's something terrible about his tenderness; the open way he meets her eyes, the way he smiles at her, both warm and hungry. The way he folds the towel around her narrow frame and buffs the water from her arms, her torso, her legs, holding her body back against his. She can feel the shape of his body, his broad chest and muscled arms, through the nap of the towel he has wrapped around her, between them.
When he leans forward, over her shoulder, to kiss her jaw, down the supple curve of her neck, over the sharp planes and valleys of her collar bone to the joint of her shoulder, she holds her breath - or nearly does, breathing sharply in through the nose, shallowly out through the mouth, as his scratchy jaw brushes her skin - soft, damp and warm and fragrant now, from the bath.
The last pair of days, the last pair of nights are washed away. Her skin is clean, luminous, her hair damp and soft and fragrant, blonder at the crown, but dark from the wash, pulled back from her brow, tucked behind her ears, falling down her back.
She stops him twice during the short walk down the hallway to kiss him; turning in the circle of his arms to push him up against the wall, her palms flat on his shoulders, the contraction of muscles in her core clear beneath his hands. If the towel stays up, it is only because he holds it there around her body, between them, as she kisses him raw and urgent now that the strange, imperfect, heated near-ritual of the bath is over. The air is sharper here, cool against her heated skin.
When they reach the bedroom door, she pushes him against it again, turning her body sidelong against his to wedge him there, checking him - just - her hip against his, her left arm around his shoulder as she reaches to turn the knob. The door swings open behind him; her stumble forward has to be deliberate as she pushes him inside, lifting her free hand to graze her thumb along the line of his jaw as her hot mouth follows.
[Trent Brumby] What he meant to be a slow walk, where he could dry her along the way, is nothing of what's on her mind. She pushes him into a wall, catches him by surprise, and finds him delighted. He responds with a new wash of urgency, meeting her mouth with his own. His hands keep the towel up, covering her body, but not all of it. It stays only because his hands are on her back, caressing along it with the soft cotton between them.
At the second stop, where he's pushed into the wall, his height drops a fraction, bending at the knees, and fingers curl around the back of a thigh, just shy of lifting a leg from the ground, to pull her up into him. But she's already moving them again, towards the bedroom door.
He doesn't get to open it. She's pushed him against it, checked him, as it were, which has only served to get him further riled. It becomes harder to reign that in, to discipline himself, and maybe that's what she wants. But as they stumble into the room, he's hands are sure on her waist, his bare feet catching the floor more steadily. He won't let her fall, even if it's subconsciously, the way he handles her in that moment.
It's dark in the bedroom and cooler than both the bathroom and the hallway. His scent is heavier in here than anywhere else in the house. It's where he spends nearly half of his time sleeping. Though linen is clean, his smell still lingered there, and in the clothes hanging in the closet, folded neatly in draws - like the hint of cologne that clings to clothes already put through the wash. He doesn't put it on here, but in the bathroom, that now smells like her skin, her hair, and products used to clean them.
The towel is discarded, he no longer wants it between his hands and her skin. Caressing her warmth, his fingers and palms are firmer now, no longer light and soft, but sure and certain. One, slipped across her hip to her back, pressing her in, and the other reached up to tangle against the wet strands of her scalp, turning his head to kiss her again, and again, until she's making his head tilt back, leaving trails of her lips across his stubble jaw. His neck is offered out to her, his eyes are closed, and his heart races, pounding in his chest.
[Kora] There are her hands at his waist, working roughly at the buttons of his slacks, the zipper. The latter catches with a sharp sound, metal against metal, and she inhales sharply, pulling her body back at the hips just long enouth to ruck his slacks down over his hips and his boxers, his briefs, thereafter. The whole time, her mouth remains on his bared throat, her teeth scrapping his Adam's apple, her nose pressed against the rough stubble under his jaw, her mouth, wide and sure and hot against his skin.
The cooler air in the bedroom sends a glancing shiver up and down her spine; he can feel the way her muscles contract, constrict beneath his hand. Or perhaps that isn't the cooler air in the bedroom; maybe that's the way she reacts to the heavier layer of his scent in the room, to the bed somewhere close, in the cool dark. She touches him; finds his mouth with her own as she does so and smiles into his mouth as she kisses him again and again and again, pushing him inexorably back to the bed, where she presses him down beneath her.
The sex is not tender; it isn't sweet. Underneath her skin, she's a beast sometimes, her grief raw, her failing moon bright in the night sky, turning somewhere above them, in the dark over the earth. She is hungry, her heart is beating a tidal rhythm, her blood is piqued for him. She fucks him, the first time, with a raw, spiraling urgency, pulling him up after her sometimes, or pushing him down, back onto the bed.
For all that she is a creature who loves words - does not speak except, sometimes, to murmur urgently into his mouth, onto his skin - there or more. Otherwise, she holds her breath in, swallows her cries, speaks to him with urgent rhythm her body, or the staccato pattern of her breath of her breath, an interrupted gasp; a sudden inhalation, a long deep breath expelled warm onto his skin.
Later, under the covers, she pulls him over her, wraps her thighs around his hips, closes her eyes and kisses him then, as if she were dying, as if his lungs held her last breath.
Later still, she falls asleep in his bed - an animal sleep, this - exhausted, spent, her long hair tangled around their bodies, the scent of sex in the air.
[Trent Brumby] He wears boxers, the sort worn close to the skin, snug and fitted. But that doesn't matter, they're discarded like his slacks, and he's back onto the bed. There's no protest from him. He likes it like this. Her forceful nature, her demanding mouth, or hands, sometimes even the words that encourages him the way she likes it, the way she wants it. They are alike, in a way, that they both are keen and attentive to details, and he is here, too, all for her.
There is only one question he asks, in all of this, it had been a quiet murmur, making her pause enough to give him a clear answer before he'd continue. He'd take her at her word though, making it her decision, on whether or not he was getting condoms from the top draw by his bed, or leaving them lay, locked away where they were. Either way, he knows the responsibility and the consequences.
They are matched again, with their quietness. The difference being that his seems so much louder when he does make sound, a harder, harsher breath, or a low groan that seems to echo under and around the bed. He doesn't ask her questions, does not give demands or guidance. There's no need, he enjoys what he feels, sees and hears all around him. Her, a Get of Fenris, seeking to bury him in his bed with the soft of her flesh, grind of her hips and the biting of her teeth.
He is not spent easy. Endurance in and out of the bedroom is something he has, like the carefully cultivated skills he has learned in his many years, studying, serving, and worshiping women - for that is what he does; worships them as supreme over his own gender. They are creatures of marvel and mystery, and the one that sleeps in his bed, deep and exhausted, is one that he has the pleasure to know, to curl his arm around and spend a night with, knowing, if only for a moment, a little while, he's made her feel something other then grief or pain.
[Kora] Later, much later, mid-morning, she's gone. He finds an empty glass of milk on his kitchen counter. And a post-it note, written in the neat, blocky script of an inveterate journal keeper.
Remember him.
She doesn't fit in such a space. She stands just inside the door, watches him as he slips off his jacket, her dark eyes catching the light, but still bruised with shadow. She is quiet now, her stories finished, her body taut beneath her clothes. His apartment - his territory - is clean and orderly, it smells of green things, and him. There are windows, a rug, a well-made dining room table, more things that she has ever or will ever own.
Everthing is well-kept, considered, fits warmly together, like he does. She's wearing clothing - her old clothes, the dedicated clothes, the black PIXIES t-shirt and the worn old jeans - stiff at the hem and thighs with the blood of a dead man, and perhaps some of her own. It has been two nights since her Alpha died, and she has delivered the same news again and again, to other people who live in places like this, smelling of blood and rain.
He offers to take her jacket and she slips off her hoodie in an easy gesture, sliding her hands back into the front pockets of her jeans, her elbows held tight against her body as she walks into the living room, circles the well-made couch, surveys his territory with the sort of closely observed attention he has come to expect from her. When she has reached the other hend of the couch, though, she unearths her hands from her pockets, sits down on the edge of the couch in a fluid motion, and - quite deliberately - begins unlacing her own black boots.
[Trent Brumby] Hanging up his own coat along with her hoody, he left the door, locked, and walked into his apartment. While she circled around and found somewhere to sit, he set her bottle and paper on the coffee table. "Do you want something to drink? Eat?" he asks her, looking to where she's unlacing her boots. His keys jangle softly as he places them on the coffee table as well, his wallet and phone shortly to follow.
It's easy to pick up that most the furniture here is new. He's been here a couple of months now, and had purchased the lot of it to fill his apartment. Even though he was never sure how long he was staying for, he couldn't live in a cardboard box or out of the back of his car. There's still some boxes in his bedroom that hadn't been unpacked yet, stacked neatly in one corner. It was only down to three, now; three boxes that may never get unpacked.
[Kora] The city is dark and still outside. She has an impression of her ghost reflected in the mirror, imperfectly preserved, superimposed over the shadowy shapes of the building opposite, the street scene below framed against the darkness. The dark wood furniture recedes in the reflection but - moving - they stand out, blurred and inconstantly rendered by the glass, like the warped copy of an old reel of film left in the sun.
She unwraps the laces from the shank of her boots - old and black, battered, all the stiffness worn out of them over the years - loosening the crossed laces until the leather is loose around her calves, first right, then left. He asks if she wants something to eat or drink; and she gives him a glancing look, rising from her feet, her pale face framed by the loose weight of her hair, backlit by the glow of the interior light. It is the simplest question in the world, but in that moment - he has caught her out, unaware.
There's a quiet beat; she looks up at him, her head cant sidelong, her hands busy with the laces, the toe of her left boot on the heel of her right ready to lever her heel free. Then, " - yeah." The shadow, only, of her familiar wry grin, ghosts across her face. Her voice is raw, and the room is still. "I'll have a beer."
Of course she will.
[Trent Brumby] "Beer it is."
Leaving her at the sofa, he walks past the counter and into the kitchen. She can still see him in there for the most part, having a large opened area rather then cornered of living areas. Only when he's in the far corner does he disappear from view, where he's opening the fridge and getting out some bottles, a plate - pauses as he considers some other options hiding in the shelves. The door swings closed with a nudge from his leg, and he leaves the plate on the counter. He uses the edge of it to pop off the caps to both bottles before he walks into the living room again.
Two beers are set on the coffee table, without coasters - there is none. "I'm going to start a bath for you. Won't be a moment." He tells her, not waiting for protests or glimpse of disapproval. Instead he's walking in the opposite direction to the kitchen, into the darker, short hall where the other rooms of the apartment lead off. Two bedrooms, a bathroom and a tiny laundry. The door right at the end is a closet for linens, it also holds his towels. It's there he grabs out a few, then opens the door to his left, flicking on the overhead, heated light. The exhaust fan turns on automatically, leaving a dull hum to echo in the room; a distant sound from where she's sitting.
Soon enough, water is running through pipes, beginning to fill the tub that doubles as a shower. The dark curtain hangs from a rail on large, clear rings. He's pulled it back, removing the ends of it from within the bathtub so it doesn't get wet. Chocolate towels are set on the space next to the wash basin and he stands there, contemplating which salts to use. He doesn't have anything flowery or feminine here. Fingers drum on the sink as he looks around with a slightly pursed mouth.
[Kora] Her boots are off when he returns, set aside - neatly done - beside the arm of the couch, damp white socks - thick, ordinary cotton - stuffed over the top of the shanks, left to hang over the tongues, the loosened tension of the crossed laces. Feet bare on the floorboards, she spreads out her toes and leans forward. Kora does not sit comfortably on his couch; he can still read the tension in her body; the way she feels out of place - outside herself, perhaps - in such a neat and well-ordered domestic space. She is already reaching for the bottle of beer before he sets it down on the glass-topped coffee table. There's a moment then, when she glances down, thumb rubbing idly across the label as she lifts the bottle to her mouth -
- and freezes it, half-way there, her raw dark eyes fixed on his broad back as he announces his intention to start a bath for her, then walks away without listening for objection. She is still sitting forward on the couch, at the edge of the cushion, her weight distributed between the couch and her feet on the floor, the bottle in hand. Alone in the room, her reflection mirrors every action. In the near distance, the pipes groan, water runs, the sound muted by the walls, the half-closed door. Except for the beer, which she drinks as if alcohol were as necessary as oxygen, draining the first third of the bottle in two great draughts, she does not move.
There is no one else in the room; but she feels as if she were being watched.
No: she feels as if she were being seen, which is a different thing, entirely.
Then, two minutes, or five later, he hears the soft slap of her barefeet on the hardwood floor, shadowing his path back to the bathroom. She has her beer in hand, held neatly between her thumb and index finger, a loose circular grip, and leans against the door frame, her eyes still bruised with shadow, her heart charged, beating fast in her chest, in her throat.
She is a still thing, raw. It is hard to imagine her wrapped in anything flowery or feminine. "What are you doing?" Her voice is husked, amber.
[Trent Brumby] He hers her coming and has already come to the conclusion that she can make these decisions herself. From the cabinet under the sink, he had pulled out a few optional products and began setting them in clear view, laid down on the towel which is neatly folded nearby. They are products of well known environmental companies that push natural, organic skin and hair cares on the people of the world. Trent uses these. Some of them are labeled for men, like the gel wash that smells of sandalwood, rosewood and patchouli. But others, like the bar of soap consists of oatmeal, honey, goats milk and olive oil. She'd have options, and although they are limited, it's better then chemicals that even he hates washing down the drain.
Rising up from where he's crouched, he has a clean muslin cloth in one hand, closing the cabinet door with the other. Looking over to where she's leaning in the doorway, he looks down to her beer them back up to her face. "I'm trying to figure out what you'd like to use on your skin," he tells her, as though it's perfectly ordinary. He looks away from her, only to put the cloth down on the corner edge of the bath, which is filling quickly with warm to hot water, leaving steam to rise from its surface. It won't be suffocating though, the exhaust fan is a modern addition and works well on high.
"There's a few things here." Looking back to her now, he motioned to where he's got everything set out. Behind him, there's ferns sitting on a ledge, and another large one in a pot that looks more like a palm plant, all bright green against the tiles of his bathroom. She'd find some shells here, holding small oatmeal and honey hand soaps, and a general beige and warm brown motif around her; including some already burn down candles he keeps for when he soaks himself. He likes these colours, these darker, warm colours. "I'll find you something to wear, so you feel good and clean when you're done. And if you still want me to," he adds, sliding his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, "I'll wash your hair when you're ready."
[Kora] The exhaust fan is a low constant hum in the room; like the background noise of traffic coursing through the living city, arterial, insistant. Once, she looks up, the startling image of her complete reflection in the mirror above the sink sings back at her. She does not meet her own eyes; she looks away. The self she sees is never reflected in such mirrors, and those glimpses are always startling to her. The mirror shows only one of her selves, the softest one, but she feels the rest of them inside her, the beast and the girl, the memory keeper and the soon-to-be memory.
Otherwise, her dark eyes remain fixed on him, downslanting as he crouches, laying out the soaps and oils, on the towel, lifting as he stands, filling the warm dark space. The steam in the air dampens and distorts the light until it is pulled up and away through the fan.
"I have this - " here is the half-hook of her smile, at odds with the still Thereshadows in her dark gaze, the keen thread of tension between the two possibilities, herself, her grief. " - bar of soap. This giant bar of homemade soap one of our kinswomen gave me, where I trained, yeah? It's shampoo, too. I think she was concerned I wasn't blonde enough. That's what I use."
There's a pause. She pushes away from the door frame, standing up, stepping into the bathroom, her elbow crooked, the beer bottle held loosely at the level of her waist.
"On my skin.
"So I think whatever you have - " her eyes are on his face. Beneath the dark cotton, her shoulders curl, narrow, forward, in a neat little shrug. " - well." She watches as his gaze falls, and as it rises again. The room is smaller, and she is brighter still, pale skin, pale hair stark against the warm dark colors his favors, her stiff, stained, dark clothes at absolute odds with the steaming warmth of the room, the rich, clean scents that rise with the billowing steam.
Then, the faint hook at the corner of her mouth drifts lower. Her breathing is slow, deliberate. If she still wants him to - he puts his hands in his back pockets. Her eyes drop, hook there. Remain there. - he'll wash her hair.
Kora does not look up this time. Instead, she reaches into her back pocket, pulls out a handful of things. It's a mirror of the way he emptied his pockets onto the table by the coat rack, though her possessions are fewer: a cheap cell phone. A handful of wadded bills and change. A passport. And a snapshot, folded in half, and half again. "I'd like that. " she tells him, looking back at him only when she's said it, the raw edge of her dark gaze spiked with a hunger he can read, too, in the movement of the pulse at the base of her throat.
[Trent Brumby] He likes the way he talks. Some part of him thinks its wrong, that he likes this while there's raw grief in her eyes, and blood stains on her clothes. But he does. He likes it like the way she wears bloodstains on her clothes, the way her hair tangles, wild and unkempt. There are times when he's looked at her and found one of her other sides looking out of her gaze, daring him to look back at her, and he likes that too. Times, like this; when she's walked closer to him, averted her gaze, looked at the hard line of his body or at the simple way his hands fit, with thumbs out, into pockets along the curve of his tough rump - they make him very aware of the tightness growing in his body and the way his pulse jumps to match the one thudding in the side of her neck.
Slowly, he slips his hands back out, frees them of his pants and lowers them loosely to his sides. She had previously been blocking the only exit to the room, and even now, her body - no, presence, takes up a good portion of the narrow space before him. "All of them are natural," he tells her, speaking back on the soaps as he swallows a little thicker, seeking to calm himself in the wake of knowing he's going to run his hands through her hair, wash and see her sparkle under clean water.
"I'll.. uh.." He clears his throat and manages a smile, more at himself and the way he's heating, which has nothing to do with the steam in the room or the overhead heated light, ".. I'm going to put together some food, give you some time to relax." Moving past her now, side stepping, he's still watching her face. "I'll get some clothes too." Nodding, firmly, as if it sounds like a solid plan, he seeks to give her space. Private time, without him gawking at her like he is, right then, right now, every bit male.
[Kora] The beer bottle is forgotten in her right hand. Her thumb and forefinger linger on the folded up snapshot, the last of the things she pulled - from deep in her left hip pocket. Her gaze is still averted, lingering on the line of his body, the strength she can see outlined by his dark clothes. This is how she listens to his plans: food, relaxation. Clothes. Something clean; something without the blood stiffening the fibers, without the damp stains of the rain in which she sat, at the shoulders, the hips and the thighs.
"No," she says, without looking up. He is at the door now. Her eyes are at the level of his waist. She remembers, then, the beer, looks away long enough to reach across the narrow line of her torso and set the bottle down atop her passport, beside the folded picture, amidst the dull gleam of well-used change and the unkempt handful of bills. "I want you to stay."
Hands free, she grasps crosses her arms, grasps the bottom hem of her blood-stiffened t-shirt and peels it up, pulling it off over her head, tugging it free of the heavy tangle of her haphazardly gathered hair. Underneath, she wears a black sports bra, cotton and lycra. Her jeans are low slung, fitted to the natural curve of her hips. Her torso is lean, narrow - strong, too, the shadow of muscle evident below her skin. This is not the deliberate, defined frame of someone who isolates each muscle group, works it to maximum efficiency in the stark confines of a Gold's Gym, but the long, compact strength of the animal she is underneath - who runs, who fights, who kills.
There is a battlescar, too - stark - which bisects her torso slantwise like the sash of a beauty contestant, from her left hip to her right breast, disappearing beneath both the sports bra and the waistband of her jeans. Miss Get of Fenris, maybe. The deep ridges are still congested, red and raw. In a year or two, the lines will fade, the skin will become silvered, faintly shiny - a memory of death written into her skin. In a year or two. If she lives a year or two.
"I don't need food." She drops the t-shirt on the floor. "I want you to stay."
[Trent Brumby] The slacks he wears are fitted enough that he doesn't wear a belt with them, not even for accessories. These are work pants that fit him comfortably, meeting the hem of his stretched black t.shirt. Its what is in the line of her sight, that trim, flat waist, until she's looking away. He had stopped the moment she said no, caught a little surprised by the directness of it. Having turned back to look at her, he's watching her profile as she explains how she wants him to stay. Demands, really.
Following her hands down to the bottom of the t.shirt, he watches fingers as she peels it from herself, exposes her skin, the muscles underlying, and the raw scar that is clear and bright against her pale complexion. It's even more noticeable than the black bra she wears, not because of the colour, but because how it reminds him of her vulnerability. She may be Garou, able to heal more than he can imagine, Rage back to life, but that scar proves she is far from invincible. Just like that rawness in her eyes, and why it's there in the first place.
His gaze doesn't linger though, it lifts and meets her gaze directly, nodding once, but slight. "Okay. I'll stay." Turning back into the room, he has a shoulder towards the opening of the door. He looks from her to the growing level in the bath and back again. "I'm still going to fetch a bowl to wash your hair." He will do that before he locks himself in the room with her. But he doesn't move to do that quite yet, those pale grays are back to taking in her expression, his own is serious with a little bit of wonder and a growing heat.
[Kora] Her expression is stark and open, her wide mouth still, lips just parted, her breathing slow and deliberate. He catches her gaze again, dark with want beneath the shadows of her grief. Between the steam, the direct slant of the light cast by the overhead fixture, her eyes are cast in shadow. It would be impossible to guess the color, if he did not already know them well.
He knows them well.
There is something thorough about the attention she gives him, even now. He looks at her and finds her looking back at him, direct and clear, without artiface. The space between them, in the confines of the small room, is minute and charged, electric. Still holding his gaze now, she reaches down, not-quite-blindly, and unbuttons her jeans. There are bloodstains at the waist and on the thighs; some are her own. Others are not. If he asked her, she would not be able to tell him which was which. The zipper opens with an errant flick of her fine thumb, and then she eases the waistband over her hips, shimmies then down her thighs, her calves, her long legs, stepping neatly out of them when they begin to bunch at her ankles, first the right foot, then the left.
Here are the rest of her unmentionables, white bikini briefs, cotton, as quotidian as her sports bra. He has little time to register the shape of her body beneath her clothes - in his peripheral vision, if he holds her level gaze as she undresses, or directly, if he drops her eyes to watch the movement of her hands at the level of her hips, her thighs, the movement of muscle under the pale skin of her bare thighs, her calves - because as soon as she steps out of the jeans she steps into his space, reaches up to push her fingers through the back of his hair, to cup his skull with her deft hands and pull his mouth down to hers.
The kiss is raw; brief. It leaves her holding him still close, breathing hot against his mouth. Her eyes are open, after, an unfocused downslant over the planes of his gruff features, so close that her lashes nearly brush his cheeks as she looks down, eyes open, the vague focus on their mouths, just parted. "You were going to get a bowl," she reminds him, her voice hitched in the middle, burred. She releases his head, then, touches his shoulder, slides her hand down his chest to rest against his abdomen, where his rib cage falls away like an inverted parabola. " - remember?"
- she reminds him, but doesn't move away.
[Trent Brumby] He really is not moving anywhere, not with how her hands travel downward to her jeans. He doesn't need to watch them to know what she's doing, the sound of fabric following the unzipping of metal. Even if he wanted to look down, to glimpse a naked thigh, he is disciplined in keeping his eyes above the shoulders. Her eyes are mesmerizing in their own way, the look in them.
Better yet is the way she grabs him, running fingers through his thicker, shorter hair, just enough to fill the spaces between the fingers and grab a good hold of, has his head tilting to her whim. He makes a sound in the back of his throat, a groan that vibrates deeply in his chest. Light touch of fingertips trail up her sides and around to her back, where his palm spreads and holds her lightly. There is plenty of strength to be found in him, across his chest, shoulders and in his arms. His thighs, even, are thick and solid, made lean by the length of his height.
There is no better way to kiss a man, a man like Trent, then to take charge of it. She already knew that from the first time on the bench, and again now, she's left him with deeper breathing, hotter skin and with eyes that are sharp and senses heightened. But he laughs then, a low, deeper sound, and his hands trail back around her waist, gently. "I'm not remembering much at the moment, Kora."
His eyes smile as much as his mouth does; honest.
"But if you say so, I'm not going anywhere. I am, however, going to check this water before turning it off." Moving carefully, mindful of his boots against her naked feet, he grasps her gently and steps as though in a dance, to get closer to the bath and reach across for it. His hand slips to her hip, his body stretches across steam and fingers trail into the deep tub, checking its not scalding before lifting a wet hand to turn off the faucets.
He rises then, wiping his hand on the back of his trousers and looks back to her. "Bath is ready, madame." There's humour in the way he says it, but not in the way he sneaks a longing glance to her mouth.
[Kora] The dance is a strange one; his hand on her hip, her torso curving as he reaches across her body, her feet bare on the tiled floor, his own still clad in heavy black boots. He is still fully clothed, and she is still curved, close against his body, rising to the balls of her feet to close the distance between her mouth and kissing him again, not deeply, but briefly - rough and hungry, then, the shadow of the wolf inside her imprinted on the kiss.
He isn't remembering much at the moment. Her mouth twists briefly wide; the suggestion of her white teeth clear behind the heartbreaking, half-broken smile, little more than an impression against his mouth, his jaw. "That's okay," if her reply, more than a little breathless, the twist of humor underneath a neat double helix of clear and dark. "I remember everything." It's her mind. It's her moon.
Her skin is warmer than his. It's just a degree, perhaps two, enough to make her skin feel feverish beneath the light touch of his hands. His hand is on her hip as he declares her bath ready, and she reaches back, curves her own hand over his, hooks her thumb through the elastic waistband of the inexpensive white cotton and pulls them down, his hand beneath her, gliding over the curve of her hip, halfway down the length of her thighs until she lets them fall onto the tile and steps neatly out of them, flicking them away, off into the corner, with a twist of her toes.
The sports bra is removed in much the same way: her hand over his, against her skin, guiding him to undress her, holding his hand close to her body the whole time. The raw battlescar begins at the undercurve of her right breast - and she holds his hand there when the constricting garment has been removed, cupped against the raw scar, against the soft flesh.
The bath declared ready, she steps into the hot water: right foot, then the left. There is nothing tentative; she doesn't test the temperature with her toes or ease her foot into the steaming water first. She turns back casts him a level look over her now bare shoulder, finds his eyes if he is looking at her levelly, and holds the look as she pivots, turning around, before sinking into the water.
"I like to look at you." Indeed, her eyes drop from his eyes, to his waist, to his thighs. " - and I like it when you look at me." A beat, before she sinks into the water. "Okay?"
[Trent Brumby] Fingers spread, allowing his palm to brush along her skin as she guides his hands across her hips and part way down her thighs. They flow up her torso, across her ribs and up to take the bra from her frame, leaving it in a pile of clothes like the others. His hands come back, urged by her own, to cup her skin, to brush thumb across scar and softer flesh. For most of the time his gaze watches her face, shifting when her hair threatened to get tangled in black garment, or when she found him looking at the curve of her throat and angles of her mouth.
His heart is beating so hard that he wonders if she can hear it. She certainly could see the blood pumping through his body, with the way it makes his skin glow and hardens muscles all through his core. When she steps away from him, his hands drop down to his sides, the memory of her skin on his fingertips. He's watching her getting into that tub, stepping, carelessly, into the water. He made it cooler then he would have himself, cool enough not to leave the skin bright red upon exiting, and still hot enough to steam and ease muscles under the skin.
She catches him with the look over her shoulder, his eyes having traveled down the back of her length and up again. But he doesn't look sharply back to her face, like he was caught doing something he shouldn't be, his gaze is steady and holds weight to it where it hadn't before. His quiet demeanor is shifting with what is held beneath, the compassion shifting into something far more bright, burning, smoldering the gray of his eyes.
"Yes ma'am," he finds himself saying. Not in the chided way either, but with a deep breath and a look that can be very flattering. He mirrors her hunger, as he assures her, "I like looking at you too." And for a moment he just stands there, watching her sink into the water in his bathtub.
Then, he begins moving, dropping down to tug at laces on his boots, making them loose enough to slide off his foot, along with dark coloured cotton socks. They're deposited outside the door, thumping carelessly beyond the room. He doesn't do more then that though, returning his attention to her, coming to kneel down by the other side of the bath. "You sure I can't get that bowl, Kora?" His eyes drift from her face over her hair. He's aching to get his hands on her, with the way he's eyes are lit up, it's like it's Christmas.
[Kora] She does not fit here either; not in the warm bath, fragrant, not in the warm bathroom, with steam in the air and the ferns on the shelves, the warm dark colors, the soft light slanting from the fixtures, the constant hum of the exhaust fan. There is still the suggestion of tension in the straight line of her shoulder girdle, in the way she holds her spine, keeps herself from sinking all the way back into the water, as if she had forgotten how to take a bath. Once she is in the water, she leans back in his bathtub, her pale hair still tangled behind her head like a cloud, damp from the steam now, and darker for it, wet where it has come loose from the mass, curled over the sharp cut of her collar bone beneath her skin, or clinging to the black choker she has not removed.
The light casts distorted reflections along the rippling surface of the bathwater. The impression of her body beneath is hazy, changing - more precise than an impressionist's rendering would be, closer to a watercolor, where shadow bleeds into light, tone into tone. Except when her limbs breach the surface: a knee here, a toe at the far end, resting on the metal faucet, peeling black paint on her toenails, too. Her arms rest along the length of the tub, the line cut neatly at the wrist by the bracelets she always wears, leather, suede, knotted shreds of rope, some of them, none wider than her pinky, black and brown against her pale skin.
She breathes slowly, carefully, her chest and shoulders rising and falling with each breath, so regular that she must be counting the rhythm somewhere inside her. He disappears to remove his boots, she looks away, dark eyes skimming to some thread of light reflected in the tile on the wall, lifting her chin and cutting him a slantwise look, hot, from beneath lowered lashes when he returns to knee at the edge of the tub.
"If you really want to wash my hair - " she pulls her feet in, closer to her body, both knees breaching the surface of the water, and leans forward, curving her shoulders downward in an echo of her posture when he first saw her tonight, in the park, on a bench, in the darkness between one spring downpour and another. The movement exposes her back, the long line of her spine, and the tangled mass of her pale hair, like an offering. Her eyes drop from his, to his mouth, to his hands. " - you can. Get the bowl."
[Trent Brumby] Gripping the sides of the bath, his fingers squeaked dully, as he watched her sit upright and draw herself into that ball again. When he releases the tub, its to reach out and brush water along her spine, lifting water from the surface to trickle it along her skin. "Do you want anything else while I'm gone? Another beer?" He keeps his voice low, light under the hum of the fan whirring overhead. Even out of the water she would not find it cold, the heating radiating from above keeps the room at a comfortable temperature.
Rising up from where he had knelt, smooth and easily, he glanced down her, waiting for her answer, and once he had it he had acknowledged with a nod before turning and leaving the room. For the brief instance the door is opened and then closed, it allows a breeze of cooler air from the hall into the room before it's shut out again.
He's not gone long, returning with a large bowl and whatever she had requested - if she had. Back in the bathroom, the door was closed over but not clicked shut all the way. He'd return to kneel by the bath, the mat beneath him designed to soak water from the dripping feet when done. It was warmer than the floor and cleaned, too. It cushioned his knees against the tiles. "Alright," he's smiling now, much easier then he was before. The brief time apart has allowed him to compose himself, and while he's still hungry for her, it's no longer worn on his sleeve. "No more stepping out." Leaving her alone, that is. He's confined himself to the bathroom at her wishes; his, too.
From there, he proceeds to wash her hair, taking it out from its tangled mess first, before water is poured down the length of it. His free hand brushes along her brow, pushing water through the strands. Trent takes his time, enjoying doing this for her, something she's never had done before. She'll find that his fingers work soaps into her hair and massages from her scalp right to the tips of her pale strands. He does this with with particular attention to detail. "You're very attractive," he tells her, quietly, under the pouring of water.
[Kora] The water runs in errant ribbons down her back, echoing but not mimicking the line of her spine tucked neatly between the symmetric architecture of bone and muscle, the neat cut of her shoulder blades pulling her pale skin taut as her shoulders curve forward, the long muscles below flanking her spine, her body tapering just at the waist, the supple flair of her hips distorted by the waterline. Her chin rests on her shoulder as he pours water down her back; she's watching him, close and direct, eyes dark in her face, her fine mouth still. Is there anything she wants? he asks, and she shakes her head, the mass of her tangled hair swinging with the gesture. No.
When he stands, her eyes remain upon him until he disappears out through the door he has left half-opened, the cool ribbon of ambient air from the apartment drifting in, he can hear the rest of her response following him, low and raw but pitched to carry, above the drone of the fan, below the quiet sounds of the moving water. "Just you."
Then he returns, reaches out to untangle her hair, pulls the old ballpoint pen around which she had knotted it sometime in the last day or two out, which unfurls the weight down her back. The last handful of inches - 3 or 4, more or less, usually tucked up inside the twist she usually sports - are not blonde but faded black, the remnants of an old dye job that must be years old, given the length, which she has never bothered to cut.
Kora sits up straight as Trent washes her hair - straighter than straight - lifting her body at the shoulders and through the spine, tipping her chin upward, her head back so that her face is lifted to the ceiling. Her eyes are closed, but somewhere, far above, she can feel the pull of the sky through her body, the lure of the moon that rules her.
Her eyes are closed except when he speaks to her, quietly, while pouring water over her forehead, the crown of her head, down the length of her wet hair. She opens both eyes, but only fractionally, the dark weight of her gaze shadowed by the sweep of her blonde lashes. "Likewise," she tells him, low in response, her face tipped toward him, but only just, her hands loose at her side, fingers spread in the drifting water. "Come here."
[Trent Brumby] "If I come any closer, I'll be in the bath," he says it with a quiet laugh under his breath. The bowl is set aside, into the basin just behind him. Her hair is cleaned, washed out and conditioned. Later, he'd even dry it with a towel and comb it. But he's not thinking about that now, and more on the way she's looking at him from behind her lashes, with the long length of her throat bared and chin tilted up. A hand smooths down her hair, pushing excess water from the roots and down the length, leaving fingers to trail along her back in a light but purposeful caress.
His forearms are bare, the dark hair there wet, and the portion closest to his elbows now rests on the edge of the bath. Fingers are relaxed, hanging limp, but the rest of him is straight and tall on his knees, not protesting about the time he's spent on them. He is all eyes for her, watching her face openly now, with an air of contentment about him. Trent could walk away now and be happy for doing just this, to spend this time with her, intimate in his own bathroom. He need nothing else to be satisfied.
But that was not to mean that he didn't desire much more. An arm slides off the bath ledge and he reaches out across, leaning his body over the edge so that he's almost face to face with her. He could feel the heat come up through his shirt, making his skin beneath moist and the material damp. It was as close as he could get, leaning far across from his knees, without climbing in. "There," he says softer, looking from her eyes down her nose to her mouth. This time he doesn't wait or ask, his chin tilts and brushes his mouth across her lower lip - nothing more, but he lingers close. "Better?"
[Kora] There is a moment where she remains still, the cut of her smile like a razor below his lingering mouth, breathing, enjoying the heat of his body, which is different than the heat of the bath, the fading heat of his mouth on her lower lip. Then she lifts her chin, craning her neck to follow in his wake, kissing him with that same hungry confidence - not deeply this time, but thoroughly, hungrily. Her arms are wet, dripping she pulls her hands up from the bathwater, circles her arms around his neck as he leans in close to her, resting her elbows on his shoulders, turning to follow the angle of his body back to the edge of the bathtub.
The water sloshes as twists her body at the hips and rises to her knees, tucking first the right leg, then the left beneath her. The pressure of her elbows loose on his shoulders increases as she uses him for leverage against the slippery porcelain underneath. Then she's matched to him, leaning forward, still blistering his mouth with brief, hungry kisses that go astray, now and again, at the corners of his mouth, across his rough cheeks, underneath the line of his jaw.
Then, slowly, her arms untangle from around his shoulders. She reaches down - blindly, still following his mouth with her own, kissing him rough and sure - and twists the hem of his black t-shirt in one first, then the other, pulling it roughly upward, parting from him only long enough to yank it - laughing, for the first time all night at this, when it becomes caught, tangled between her arms and his - before she tugs it up, works it over his arms, neartly tearing it before she pulls it free.
This time, she leans her head forward until their brows touch. She does not kiss him again; her eyes are slanted downward, her cheek against his nose, the bridge of her own nose against his cheek, watching her hands as drift down from his shoulders over the solid planes of his chest, down toward his abdomen, his trim waist.
"You can join me," she murmurs, her voice still raw beneath the hunger, the memory of the death she wants to chase away. " - or, take me to bed." She turns her mouth back his, but does not kiss him this time. Instead, she speaks into his mouth, so deliberately that the motion should be a kiss. "I want you. I want to - "
She does not say the words, but he can feel them on her mouth against his, beneath the curve of a bruised sort of smile.
[Trent Brumby] Water seeps through his t.shirt, which is warm and damp already, but it's not this that has his attention, but the weight of her arms on his shoulders and the way they cradle the back of his neck. His attention is swept up by her mouth, the taste and feel of her upon his lips, and the way she rises and turns herself into him.
Hands slip from the bathtub completely and curl around the back of her. His arms don't so much embrace as his hands, a little cool from the porcelain, run down the length of her back and rise again, just before it goes beyond the small of it where flesh begins to curve back out. He slides them up between her shoulder blades, across her hair, clinging to her skin, and out towards the sides, pulling her into his broad chest.
The more she kisses him, the quicker his breath comes, and the more he wants her. He pulls back only when she reaches for his t.shirt, letting her pull it from him, even though he's sure he could do it quicker. She's laughing and it makes him smile instantly. With fabric free, his torso is bare. Unlike she, who is part animal and killer, his muscles are defined. He does attend a gym, almost daily, and works on groups of muscles at a time, to give him that definition of pectorals and abdominal. There's a trail of dark hair along his chest, thicker down by his navel, but softer there too. It disappears into the waistband of his pants, and if she were to guess, at another time, he does trim it. He's exceptionally vain in some cases. His back, though, is hairless and the muscles worked just as much as his front. Arms have enough solid mass to sport veins on the surface, and on the left is a clear patch of plastic stuck fast.
"I am taking you to the bedroom." She gave him a choice and he was going to run away with it, before she can change her mind. He kisses her, once, but almost swallowing her lip in the process. Pulling away then, slowly, his hands drift over her hips and grip the edge of the bath again, helping him push up from the floor to grab her a large towel.
[Kora] The bath is cooling now; the air in the small bathroom is still humid, warm. She has her own heat, too, her own blood, her own heart, beating fast and sure beneath her breastbone, safe within the cage of her ribs. He kisses her before he stands, and she lifts her face to follow the movement of his mouth until it is gone; just the taste of his mouth on her bruised lips, her tongue.
When he pushes himself to stand, though, her dark eyes cut sidelong again, studying the movement of his muscles beneath his skin, the pattern of dark hair on his chest, following the trail as it disappears beneath the waistband of his slacks before rising again to follow the cut lines of his obliques beneath his skin.
He turns back to her with a large towel held open. Steadying herself on the edge of the tub, she stands, water sluicing in gleaming rivulets down to the bathwater as each plane of her body break through the surface. The battlescar, red and raw cutting across her chest and stomach - the predator's musculature - lean and long, made for running, made for killing, made - sometimes - for dying - all dance with reflected light as the water runs down her body.
And she watches him, watching her, as she stands, as she steps neatly out of the tub onto the absorbant matt on which he had been kneeling. Then, in a neat twist, turns her back to him so that he can envelop her in the towel he holds at the ready.
[Trent Brumby] Opening the towel, which is still new enough to remain fluffy and soft, he watched her rise out of the water. He makes no apology for the way he looks at her now, glancing down the length of her body and watching the way water catches on curves and flows down lengths. He meets her gaze as she steps out of the bath, resisting the urge to reach out and help her, and remained standing in wait.
Smiling at her has a warmth to it, even though his blood is hot, and his skin is flushed, and he's aching for the Garou that's before him, he still has that; warmth, kindness. With her back turning, the towel is wrapped around her, as well as the weight of his arms. He holds onto her, hugging from behind, with the solid, hard length of him pressed into her back. Lips kiss at her skin, first her jaw and then her neck, down to her shoulder. His grip loosens enough to rub hands down her arms, beginning to dry her limbs and take some of the water from her skin.
Then he's walking her towards the door, reaching out around her to open it up and let out some of the humidity of the bathroom. He guides her, rather than marches her, out towards the hall. "Bedroom's just on the left here. Second door," he's telling her ear, reluctant to let her go completely.
[Kora] There's something terrible about his tenderness; the open way he meets her eyes, the way he smiles at her, both warm and hungry. The way he folds the towel around her narrow frame and buffs the water from her arms, her torso, her legs, holding her body back against his. She can feel the shape of his body, his broad chest and muscled arms, through the nap of the towel he has wrapped around her, between them.
When he leans forward, over her shoulder, to kiss her jaw, down the supple curve of her neck, over the sharp planes and valleys of her collar bone to the joint of her shoulder, she holds her breath - or nearly does, breathing sharply in through the nose, shallowly out through the mouth, as his scratchy jaw brushes her skin - soft, damp and warm and fragrant now, from the bath.
The last pair of days, the last pair of nights are washed away. Her skin is clean, luminous, her hair damp and soft and fragrant, blonder at the crown, but dark from the wash, pulled back from her brow, tucked behind her ears, falling down her back.
She stops him twice during the short walk down the hallway to kiss him; turning in the circle of his arms to push him up against the wall, her palms flat on his shoulders, the contraction of muscles in her core clear beneath his hands. If the towel stays up, it is only because he holds it there around her body, between them, as she kisses him raw and urgent now that the strange, imperfect, heated near-ritual of the bath is over. The air is sharper here, cool against her heated skin.
When they reach the bedroom door, she pushes him against it again, turning her body sidelong against his to wedge him there, checking him - just - her hip against his, her left arm around his shoulder as she reaches to turn the knob. The door swings open behind him; her stumble forward has to be deliberate as she pushes him inside, lifting her free hand to graze her thumb along the line of his jaw as her hot mouth follows.
[Trent Brumby] What he meant to be a slow walk, where he could dry her along the way, is nothing of what's on her mind. She pushes him into a wall, catches him by surprise, and finds him delighted. He responds with a new wash of urgency, meeting her mouth with his own. His hands keep the towel up, covering her body, but not all of it. It stays only because his hands are on her back, caressing along it with the soft cotton between them.
At the second stop, where he's pushed into the wall, his height drops a fraction, bending at the knees, and fingers curl around the back of a thigh, just shy of lifting a leg from the ground, to pull her up into him. But she's already moving them again, towards the bedroom door.
He doesn't get to open it. She's pushed him against it, checked him, as it were, which has only served to get him further riled. It becomes harder to reign that in, to discipline himself, and maybe that's what she wants. But as they stumble into the room, he's hands are sure on her waist, his bare feet catching the floor more steadily. He won't let her fall, even if it's subconsciously, the way he handles her in that moment.
It's dark in the bedroom and cooler than both the bathroom and the hallway. His scent is heavier in here than anywhere else in the house. It's where he spends nearly half of his time sleeping. Though linen is clean, his smell still lingered there, and in the clothes hanging in the closet, folded neatly in draws - like the hint of cologne that clings to clothes already put through the wash. He doesn't put it on here, but in the bathroom, that now smells like her skin, her hair, and products used to clean them.
The towel is discarded, he no longer wants it between his hands and her skin. Caressing her warmth, his fingers and palms are firmer now, no longer light and soft, but sure and certain. One, slipped across her hip to her back, pressing her in, and the other reached up to tangle against the wet strands of her scalp, turning his head to kiss her again, and again, until she's making his head tilt back, leaving trails of her lips across his stubble jaw. His neck is offered out to her, his eyes are closed, and his heart races, pounding in his chest.
[Kora] There are her hands at his waist, working roughly at the buttons of his slacks, the zipper. The latter catches with a sharp sound, metal against metal, and she inhales sharply, pulling her body back at the hips just long enouth to ruck his slacks down over his hips and his boxers, his briefs, thereafter. The whole time, her mouth remains on his bared throat, her teeth scrapping his Adam's apple, her nose pressed against the rough stubble under his jaw, her mouth, wide and sure and hot against his skin.
The cooler air in the bedroom sends a glancing shiver up and down her spine; he can feel the way her muscles contract, constrict beneath his hand. Or perhaps that isn't the cooler air in the bedroom; maybe that's the way she reacts to the heavier layer of his scent in the room, to the bed somewhere close, in the cool dark. She touches him; finds his mouth with her own as she does so and smiles into his mouth as she kisses him again and again and again, pushing him inexorably back to the bed, where she presses him down beneath her.
The sex is not tender; it isn't sweet. Underneath her skin, she's a beast sometimes, her grief raw, her failing moon bright in the night sky, turning somewhere above them, in the dark over the earth. She is hungry, her heart is beating a tidal rhythm, her blood is piqued for him. She fucks him, the first time, with a raw, spiraling urgency, pulling him up after her sometimes, or pushing him down, back onto the bed.
For all that she is a creature who loves words - does not speak except, sometimes, to murmur urgently into his mouth, onto his skin - there or more. Otherwise, she holds her breath in, swallows her cries, speaks to him with urgent rhythm her body, or the staccato pattern of her breath of her breath, an interrupted gasp; a sudden inhalation, a long deep breath expelled warm onto his skin.
Later, under the covers, she pulls him over her, wraps her thighs around his hips, closes her eyes and kisses him then, as if she were dying, as if his lungs held her last breath.
Later still, she falls asleep in his bed - an animal sleep, this - exhausted, spent, her long hair tangled around their bodies, the scent of sex in the air.
[Trent Brumby] He wears boxers, the sort worn close to the skin, snug and fitted. But that doesn't matter, they're discarded like his slacks, and he's back onto the bed. There's no protest from him. He likes it like this. Her forceful nature, her demanding mouth, or hands, sometimes even the words that encourages him the way she likes it, the way she wants it. They are alike, in a way, that they both are keen and attentive to details, and he is here, too, all for her.
There is only one question he asks, in all of this, it had been a quiet murmur, making her pause enough to give him a clear answer before he'd continue. He'd take her at her word though, making it her decision, on whether or not he was getting condoms from the top draw by his bed, or leaving them lay, locked away where they were. Either way, he knows the responsibility and the consequences.
They are matched again, with their quietness. The difference being that his seems so much louder when he does make sound, a harder, harsher breath, or a low groan that seems to echo under and around the bed. He doesn't ask her questions, does not give demands or guidance. There's no need, he enjoys what he feels, sees and hears all around him. Her, a Get of Fenris, seeking to bury him in his bed with the soft of her flesh, grind of her hips and the biting of her teeth.
He is not spent easy. Endurance in and out of the bedroom is something he has, like the carefully cultivated skills he has learned in his many years, studying, serving, and worshiping women - for that is what he does; worships them as supreme over his own gender. They are creatures of marvel and mystery, and the one that sleeps in his bed, deep and exhausted, is one that he has the pleasure to know, to curl his arm around and spend a night with, knowing, if only for a moment, a little while, he's made her feel something other then grief or pain.
[Kora] Later, much later, mid-morning, she's gone. He finds an empty glass of milk on his kitchen counter. And a post-it note, written in the neat, blocky script of an inveterate journal keeper.
Remember him.
Post a Comment