[Trent Brumby] It had come time to face the music. He'd been called by family that wanted to see him, demanding it be in person, and so he'd taken a flight out to Seattle. Trent would rather drive, but since he didn't want to spend too much time on the road, he went by air to cut down the time he was away. Whether he said it aloud or not, he'd worried about Chicago's state of War and the Garou he'd spent increasing time with, the one and the same that was now seeking to become his mate, which was why he was flying out in the first place.
The trip had been more or less as he was expecting for the most part. It hadn't been ideal, that's for sure, but it wasn't the worst it could get. There was only so much of an issue because of his pure breed, because of the family line he had, and because he was one of few Kinfolk males that didn't create too much trouble for the female Tribe. It was a loss for them, but he'd made many points, through discussions to outright arguments, about why he should be allowed to do as he wanted.
When he got back into Chicago he took a cab from the airport towards home, and had called Kora to leave her a message: Hey, Kora. I'm just letting you know I'm back in town, heading home from the airport now. There was a pause that had the distant sound of the traffic beyond the closed cab doors and windows, before he added: I'd really like to see you. Another pause, an unspoken declaration of how much he'd missed being around her. Then; I'll be at home. You're welcome to come by. .. okay, uh, bye.
Now he was unpacking his suitcase, throwing dirty laundry into the hamper by his bed, and shaking out the folded up clothes to go and hang them in the closet. He'd opened a window or two to help air out the apartment that had been locked up for almost a week, had flicked on the television for some faint background noise, and thrown some food in the oven that made the kitchen smell like chicken and garlic. He'd have to pick up some more groceries, but that would wait until later in the day. He was reluctant to head out - just in case he was out and she came around.
[Kora] A handful of hours after Trent left his message on Kora's cheap little TracPhone, there's a knock at the door. Chicago has been baking in heat for the past week, and his apartment felt like an oven until he threw opens the windows to the late afternoon sun. It's raining now, though - a stormfront rolling through from the west, those huge thunderheads that charge across the great plains like schooners in reverse - like phantom riders, churning up black dust on the prairie - and the front has cooled the air by twenty degrees in less than an hour.
The wind is sharp with the scent of rain, a cool, balmy counterpoint to the retained heat of the city. After the first wild rage of the edge of the front - wind and rain, all from the west and north - the rain has settled down to a pleasant, steady patter, the sort of soaking rain that farmers dream about. That's when she knocks - at the edge of twilight, the still falling rain a pleasant counterpoint to the television's background noise through the open windows.
[Trent Brumby] He throws the shirt in his hand back over the suitcase, laying it out and promptly leaves his bedroom. Moving down the hall, his bare feet are quiet enough on the floor, but he's no hunter and maybe Kora can hear the way floorboards shift with his bulk of weight. Then he's there, on the other side of the door, and while he can't feel her, or instinctively know who it is, he doesn't get enough visitors to be worried it might be someone else, and there's a small bubble of anticipation in him that makes him eagerly throw open the door, despite his trying-to-be-cool demeanor.
A simple white t.shirt is the sort men wear under opened shirts, snug across the shoulders, chest and arms to see some definition and a pair of jeans go with it. His hair has been recently cut again, leaving the sides shorter than the top where half curls are short enough to prevent developing into proper rings. His face, too, has been groomed, the stubble short and shaped to appear neat earlier that morning. He smells like cologne that he'd put on, again, before his flight - no one likes sitting next to a person with body odor.
He smiles, instantly, when he sees her. Pale grays shining with an inner delight. Holding the door open, his other hand sweeps across the tight curve of his ass, sliding fingers into the pocket there momentarily. He's trying not to grab for her. "Hey, Kora," he greets her, intense gaze not drifting anywhere from her face,"come in?"
[Kora] She's intact. She's whole. She's clean, and she smells of the rain that patters down outside his windows. She smells of the rain and the lake and the exhaust-clogged streets, the scent of asphalt baking beneath the sun and dust underneath it all, some imperfect admixture.
Her own hands are in the front pockets of her jeans - not the worn old things she wears so often, too often when he sees her, with hidden blood, old and new, stiffening the double-stitched seams - but the newer ones he purchase for her months ago, and handed to her over the table at the Brotherhood without warning. They are low-slung, and cling to the curve of her hips the way the soft t-shirt, a batik print in shades of indigo, clings to her lean torso.
The door opens, and she's staring back at him, her dark eyes luminous with twilight reflected from his open windows, her mouth a quiet, familiar curve, underwritten with something else, some awareness, some change.
Come in. He says. And she does. She steps over the thresholds, her hands still in her pockets, her arms shifting with the movement of her hips before she is close enough to feel his body heat. That's when she unearths them, reaching up to brush the edge of her thumb along the line of his jaw, no more contact than that, despite her electric awareness of his presence, of his body a scant inch away from her.
Her shoulders and hair are damp from them rain. Her thumb is warm enough that he might think she had a fever. She tips her head up to look at his bright, intense gaze with utter directness. And tells, quietly. "I won."
[Trent Brumby] When she moves in through the doorway he leans out his arm to close the door, turning his face to follow her and keep still under the touch of her thumb across the stubble on his jaw, made softer by perfecting that just-right length that's beyond scratchy.
The door clicks a second after she declares that she's won. Won the challenges, won him. She came out on top, and although he had faith that she would, there was that sliver of doubt that something could go wrong and that he'd have to fight his right against the rulings and ways of Garou. It's relief that floods him, in a way that he wasn't aware of it until then. His hand slips out of his back pocket and falls to his side, and for the smallest moment his eyes had closed and air had breathed from lungs in a sigh.
His hand drifts from the door as he opens his eyes again, looking to her. "You won," he repeats after her, a smile beginning to appear at the edges and slowly warming his features, "and now?" Searching her gaze and face, he waits with a patience that is learned and disciplined. He wants to know her plans. He wants to pick her up, feel her legs around his waist, and to crush her mouth against his.
But he waits.
[Kora] The light slants into the foyer from the living room, gray and blue, a watery sort of summer twilight. It has passed the dinner hour, and the streets are quieter now than they were when he took the cab home from the airport, when he called her backgrounded by traffic and the chatter of the cabbie with the dispatcher over the CB radio. What traffic there is swishes by in the distance, the constant sound of the living city clear through the open windows.
The door closes and she's still, running her thumb back and forth across the soft stubble lining his jaw. The motion is nearly meditative, except that she watches him with a directness that cannot be denied, so immediate that the quiet attention she pays to the shape of his jaw must be more than some reflex.
When his eyes open again, her gaze is on his mouth, on the slow coil of his answering smile as it warms his features. What now? he asks, and she looks up, quick and quiet, finding his eyes easily, naturally once more. Then she leans in, lifting her body up - through the shoulders and the spine, opening herself all the way down to the balls of her feet - turning her mouth toward his the way she does when she wants to kiss the breath out of his lungs -
- and just half-smiles, her dark eyes shining with reflected light, her mouth moving a scant half-inch from his.
"I don't know." - she replies, perfectly confident, perfectly quiet, holding herself perfectly still, so close to his mouth. "I've never done this before."
Claimed a man. Taken a mate.
"I have no idea what I'm doing." Her voice is a low, velvet thread of a thing, quiet joy tattoed between the words. Somewhere between the words, she inhales him. Her fingers slide behind his neck, and the lean tension is her narrow shoulders is suddenly so clear. Closer, but not close enough. " - but I like it, whatever it is."
[Trent Brumby] Although she's telling him she has no idea what she's doing, Trent is smiling more and his eyes are quietly humoured by this. He didn't mind that she was clueless, despite being the dominant one, the Garou that is meant to know everything. They both know reality well enough, and by the time she's reaching around his neck, inches from his mouth, his hands lay on her sides and sweep down them, reacquainting with the subtle curve there.
He does what he wants to do, no longer hesitating or waiting for a sign of permission, he slips his hands down her legs, bending his and ready to brace his back, and lifts her up off the ground to curl her legs around his waist. His hands adjust to hold one thigh firmly and the other the curve of her backside. It puts her higher then him, but he likes that, to look up at her rather then down.
"We can start with dinner," he's tells her quietly, meaning the food that she can smell being cooked in the next room. Apparently Trent was not in a rush. They didn't have to have quick snippets of time together, a brief night here or there, Kora now had full right to him and his home, whenever she pleased, and Trent belonged somewhere. Not just somewhere but to someone, and that too, was relieving him in ways most would not understand.
[Kora] She reaches up for him as he bends down to lift her, her arms settle around his shoulders and neck, draping in a way that is both natural and familiar, remembered. She leans into his body, her fingers curling reflexively tight in the black hair closely cropped on the back of his head, some laughting light entering her fine dark eyes as he finds them both a starting line. Dinner. Go.
"We've never started like that before," he can feel her laughter, the tension of it in her body, the way her muscles bunch beneath his grip on her thigh, on her backside. She's holding it back, and it escapes as a subtle huff, and a certain lopsided curve of her mouth as she leans down over him - close, closer - to kiss him at last, the corner of his mouth first - three times, four, her nose against his cheek, her breath warm against his mouth and jaw - before she leans again, kissing him fully but not deeply, not yet.
"It smells good, though," she is inhaling him again, her laughter still a liminal thing that he can feel in the way her thighs grip his waist, her body moves against his as he holds her off the ground. His scent is close, the cologne that lingers on his skin, the ineffeable scent of his breeding underneath it, which calls to the wolf in her. The scent of dinner, chicken and garlic, lingers in the air, too - on his skin, in his hair. " - dinner's a good place to start."
Her kisses have drifted from his mouth to his jaw. "I missed you," she says, in the warm, narrow space between one faint, welcoming kiss and another.
[Trent Brumby] He laughs quietly as he realizes that s he's right and that she finds it amusing. He's lucky, in that. There's been plenty of women, human mostly, that would be offended by the idea that sex always came before anything else, but not Kora. She's already changed him in ways that he hasn't yet realized, subtle differences that would come to light over time rather then immediately.
Her kisses are welcomed, had his grip tighten a little more and shift from only a grip to a hold and, sometimes, a slight caress all while keeping her firmly in place about him. Trent loved the way she felt, the warmth and heat, hotter then his body would ever burn unless sick. He liked her strength in the narrow confines of her body, and how she can still hold that with an unmistakable female angle. Kora couldn't be mistaken for a man.
Almost all kisses were returned, but he was content to have her shower him in these nuzzling affections as he stood there in the space between foyer and living room, which are only clearly defined by the alcove that is the small foyer space, filled with a coat rack, a floor mat and a pair shoes. "I should go away more often," he murmured, low and teasing, "if this is the welcome home I'll get."
He's walking then, moving them around the coffee table towards the kitchen, slow but steady. Footsteps are broken up by the few, brief kisses he's leaving on her cheek or neck, whatever is easiest to reach without stopping her from her own affections. "Chicken and steamed rice is all I've got until I go shopping later." It's almost an apology.
[Kora] When he starts walking with her, she crosses her legs behind him, locks one ankle against the opposite calf. Her boots are a heavy, solid presence behind him as he carries her, a sharp constrast to the soft heat of her thighs wrapped around his waist, her arms around his shoulders, her fingers twining through his hair. She ducks her head, too, the nuzzling little kisses trail down past his ear and linger on his neck, trusting in his strength to hold her and carry her, but giving him this - an easy line of sight to navigate the familar obstacle course of his apartment.
She's smiling against his skin, feeling the thrum of his answering laughter through his chest cavity, vibrating its way through the solid muscles of his shoulder. His mouth is near her ear when he murmurs his low, teasing promise to go away more often, to come home to this. Something subtle changes in her body, a momentary tension in her spine, and the kisses become a subtle, sure nip, her teeth at the base of his neck, where it curves into the great muscles of his shoulder.
They are headed toward the kitchen; he is almost apologizing for the menu and planting a kiss on the curve of her cheek as she nuzzles his neck, soothing the faint bite she inflicted with a touch of her tongue to his warm skin. Her eyes are closed. He can feel her smile against his skin, the way her cheek curves against his jaw.
"Hey," straightening, lifting her chin so that she can catch his gaze with her own. "I won't tell you what I had for breakfast, and in return, you won't apologize for what you've made me for dinner. Deal?" She pauses, smiling, and kisses his cheek again, holding him briefly, fiercely tighter if only because she knows she will have to uncoil from his body momentarily, let him go, before they are starting with dinner, tonight.
Because they have all the time in the world.
Or at least a few extra days, stolen from the promise of death that hangs over her.
" - and when you go to the store, buy me some bacon, yeah?"
[Trent Brumby] The nip has him making a quiet sound, definitely pleased at the feel of her teeth pinching the skin taut over well trained muscle. His hands grip her tighter then, pressing her to his body before relaxing after a brief squeeze. He liked that, and the way her tongue feels after, or the smile she's giving against his neck. Small things make him happy, content. He's relaxed, more now then he had been before. While her death is a certainty and there is no way to avoid that it will be bloody and brutal, likely to happen before his, now that he was her mate he had more time with her. Not more time, but more time with her, and without distraction of his own Tribe or the possibility of loosing her or himself to another. And so, Trent is much more relaxed and confident.
"Bacon it is, Ma'am." He added that last bit with a hint of a smirk in his smile.
Into the kitchen, he sets her on a cleared counter but lingers in close, sliding hands up her back instead. Now he can meet her eyes easily and he searches through them, his own are quiet and reflect that content state he's currently buzzing through. The knowledge he belongs, officially, still fresh. "Anything else you want?" Groceries or otherwise. Whether she knew it or not yet, she was going to be pampered to near every whim. It's his way.
[Kora] Her heels thud quietly against the cabinet doors after he sets her down on the countertop. She extricates her arms from their resting place on his shoulder as if she were unknotting a fisherman's knot - which is to say, slowly, carefully, savoring the closeness between them as he lingers, slidng his hands up her back.
"I don't need much," Kora says, her voice quiet, the right corner of her mouth twisting upward in a faint, familiar half-smile. I don't need much, she says, with that intrinsic confidence that allows her to live as she does without envying the lives of others - without resenting the ease of human ignorance or the trappings of human wealth. "I like Scotch, sometimes. Those single malts from the islands, you know? Sometimes, hardly ever. Good beer. Steak. Oh - and those waxy little chocolate donuts, you know the ones?"
The whole little speech - grocery list? - is offered musingly close. Her dark eyes are on his own through the whole of it, fixed and steady and clear as she looks down at him, no matter if the overhead light is on in the kitchen. The something subtle changes in her expression. Her still-curved mouth stills, and the light in her eyes grows more intent.
She draws away, just. Lifts her wrist - the right one, covered in a half-dozen little bracelets, mostly knotted fibers from hempen rope, fishing twine, mixed with a few pieces of thin, braided leather or suede, dark - to her mouth and holds out her left hand.
"Give me your hand, yeah?" she says, though it doesn't sound like a question.
[Trent Brumby] He's nodding slightly to acknowledge that yes, he does know what ones she's talking about, though he had to think about the chocolate donuts. He's not too familiar with sweet things, but he'd become familiar with them in very short time. If his apartment is anything to go by, Trent is very orderly and organized, not quite obsessive compulsive but if he didn't keep it in check, he could quite possibly become that way. He likes orders, rules and boundaries in his life. Strangely, it makes him a very flexible person outside of it, and usually very calm. She knows that much.
His hands slide across her thighs as he leans away from the cabinet and therefore her thighs. There's only a small hesitation as he figures out which hand he's going to give her, but a glance to her bracelets gives him a good indication and he offers his left hand out, his non-dominant hand. Palm up and fingers loose, he leaves it in her grip as he looks back up at her, curious and without question.
[Kora] Kora lifts her right wrist to her mouth and finds the knot of one of the bracelets - thin, braided strips of black leather, a match for the choker wrapped around her neck and another bracelet, nearly identical, tucked among the others on her left wrist - finds the knot, nearly fused together from years of constant wear, with her teeth and patiently pulls it apart. Unknotted, the bracelet falls open and begins to slither down from her wrist until she catches it, quickly, with a neat twist of her right hand.
Three thin strips of black leather, worn soft as velvet over the years, twisted into a flat braid together.
With both hands, now, she curves the bracelet around his offer wrist and begins tying it together, leaving it loose enough that it will move around the joint, but tight enough that it will not fall off.
"I've never told you," she begins, her eyes on the knot she's making in the leather, " - that the Nation calls me she who offers sorrow. Or that I'm a cliath, a Skald, which means, Galliard, which means, moon-dancer.
"This," she looks up at him, then, her dark eyes gleaming as she finishes the knot, chinching the fine strands of black leather around his wrist before she turns her hand to his palm, twining her fingers with his. " - it's made of the cleansed, tanned skin of the first cursed one I ever killed and I've worn it ever since. It has my spirit in it, just a hint of it. So - "
Kora doesn't finish the thought. She just smiles at him, calm and still and sure as she looks down at him, twisting her fingers through his, then letting his hand go again.
[Trent Brumby] While she ties, he watches her face and gives only a single glance down to the bracelet when she tells him that it's made from a cursed something that she had killed. It doesn't revolt him, but does make him look at it differently then he would had if it was a normal tanned hide. When he looks back up, its to watch her face as she tells him that it has some of her spirit in it, that it's been on her wrist up until now. She smiles and he smiles in return, eyes more serious now, which almost always makes them a hint darker. His smile is quieter then before, but no less meaningful or honest.
He leans in and kisses her smiling mouth, soft, slow and chaste, lingering in a moment where he can breathe her in and enjoy her warmth before leaning back again. "Thank you," he tells her this as he squeezes her hand and his other rubs a caress up her thigh and back down again, "if I had anything remotely similar, I'd give it to you. But I don't." And so he can't. But he will find something of value and it will be hers. For a moment he thinks about belongings in a bag in his closet. Maybe that. It would be him giving up something, a big change, and an acceptance. It's the deep change and what those things symbolize that makes him anxious and even a little apprehensive.
He'd have to think about it.
Another kiss to her cheek has the hair on his face brush hers lightly. "Chicken kievs coming up." Its murmured with a smile into the corner of her mouth before he's parting from her, reluctantly, to fetch some food from the oven and rice cooker and get dinner on plates. He'd approach the other subject after, if she doesn't distract him as she normally does.
The trip had been more or less as he was expecting for the most part. It hadn't been ideal, that's for sure, but it wasn't the worst it could get. There was only so much of an issue because of his pure breed, because of the family line he had, and because he was one of few Kinfolk males that didn't create too much trouble for the female Tribe. It was a loss for them, but he'd made many points, through discussions to outright arguments, about why he should be allowed to do as he wanted.
When he got back into Chicago he took a cab from the airport towards home, and had called Kora to leave her a message: Hey, Kora. I'm just letting you know I'm back in town, heading home from the airport now. There was a pause that had the distant sound of the traffic beyond the closed cab doors and windows, before he added: I'd really like to see you. Another pause, an unspoken declaration of how much he'd missed being around her. Then; I'll be at home. You're welcome to come by. .. okay, uh, bye.
Now he was unpacking his suitcase, throwing dirty laundry into the hamper by his bed, and shaking out the folded up clothes to go and hang them in the closet. He'd opened a window or two to help air out the apartment that had been locked up for almost a week, had flicked on the television for some faint background noise, and thrown some food in the oven that made the kitchen smell like chicken and garlic. He'd have to pick up some more groceries, but that would wait until later in the day. He was reluctant to head out - just in case he was out and she came around.
[Kora] A handful of hours after Trent left his message on Kora's cheap little TracPhone, there's a knock at the door. Chicago has been baking in heat for the past week, and his apartment felt like an oven until he threw opens the windows to the late afternoon sun. It's raining now, though - a stormfront rolling through from the west, those huge thunderheads that charge across the great plains like schooners in reverse - like phantom riders, churning up black dust on the prairie - and the front has cooled the air by twenty degrees in less than an hour.
The wind is sharp with the scent of rain, a cool, balmy counterpoint to the retained heat of the city. After the first wild rage of the edge of the front - wind and rain, all from the west and north - the rain has settled down to a pleasant, steady patter, the sort of soaking rain that farmers dream about. That's when she knocks - at the edge of twilight, the still falling rain a pleasant counterpoint to the television's background noise through the open windows.
[Trent Brumby] He throws the shirt in his hand back over the suitcase, laying it out and promptly leaves his bedroom. Moving down the hall, his bare feet are quiet enough on the floor, but he's no hunter and maybe Kora can hear the way floorboards shift with his bulk of weight. Then he's there, on the other side of the door, and while he can't feel her, or instinctively know who it is, he doesn't get enough visitors to be worried it might be someone else, and there's a small bubble of anticipation in him that makes him eagerly throw open the door, despite his trying-to-be-cool demeanor.
A simple white t.shirt is the sort men wear under opened shirts, snug across the shoulders, chest and arms to see some definition and a pair of jeans go with it. His hair has been recently cut again, leaving the sides shorter than the top where half curls are short enough to prevent developing into proper rings. His face, too, has been groomed, the stubble short and shaped to appear neat earlier that morning. He smells like cologne that he'd put on, again, before his flight - no one likes sitting next to a person with body odor.
He smiles, instantly, when he sees her. Pale grays shining with an inner delight. Holding the door open, his other hand sweeps across the tight curve of his ass, sliding fingers into the pocket there momentarily. He's trying not to grab for her. "Hey, Kora," he greets her, intense gaze not drifting anywhere from her face,"come in?"
[Kora] She's intact. She's whole. She's clean, and she smells of the rain that patters down outside his windows. She smells of the rain and the lake and the exhaust-clogged streets, the scent of asphalt baking beneath the sun and dust underneath it all, some imperfect admixture.
Her own hands are in the front pockets of her jeans - not the worn old things she wears so often, too often when he sees her, with hidden blood, old and new, stiffening the double-stitched seams - but the newer ones he purchase for her months ago, and handed to her over the table at the Brotherhood without warning. They are low-slung, and cling to the curve of her hips the way the soft t-shirt, a batik print in shades of indigo, clings to her lean torso.
The door opens, and she's staring back at him, her dark eyes luminous with twilight reflected from his open windows, her mouth a quiet, familiar curve, underwritten with something else, some awareness, some change.
Come in. He says. And she does. She steps over the thresholds, her hands still in her pockets, her arms shifting with the movement of her hips before she is close enough to feel his body heat. That's when she unearths them, reaching up to brush the edge of her thumb along the line of his jaw, no more contact than that, despite her electric awareness of his presence, of his body a scant inch away from her.
Her shoulders and hair are damp from them rain. Her thumb is warm enough that he might think she had a fever. She tips her head up to look at his bright, intense gaze with utter directness. And tells, quietly. "I won."
[Trent Brumby] When she moves in through the doorway he leans out his arm to close the door, turning his face to follow her and keep still under the touch of her thumb across the stubble on his jaw, made softer by perfecting that just-right length that's beyond scratchy.
The door clicks a second after she declares that she's won. Won the challenges, won him. She came out on top, and although he had faith that she would, there was that sliver of doubt that something could go wrong and that he'd have to fight his right against the rulings and ways of Garou. It's relief that floods him, in a way that he wasn't aware of it until then. His hand slips out of his back pocket and falls to his side, and for the smallest moment his eyes had closed and air had breathed from lungs in a sigh.
His hand drifts from the door as he opens his eyes again, looking to her. "You won," he repeats after her, a smile beginning to appear at the edges and slowly warming his features, "and now?" Searching her gaze and face, he waits with a patience that is learned and disciplined. He wants to know her plans. He wants to pick her up, feel her legs around his waist, and to crush her mouth against his.
But he waits.
[Kora] The light slants into the foyer from the living room, gray and blue, a watery sort of summer twilight. It has passed the dinner hour, and the streets are quieter now than they were when he took the cab home from the airport, when he called her backgrounded by traffic and the chatter of the cabbie with the dispatcher over the CB radio. What traffic there is swishes by in the distance, the constant sound of the living city clear through the open windows.
The door closes and she's still, running her thumb back and forth across the soft stubble lining his jaw. The motion is nearly meditative, except that she watches him with a directness that cannot be denied, so immediate that the quiet attention she pays to the shape of his jaw must be more than some reflex.
When his eyes open again, her gaze is on his mouth, on the slow coil of his answering smile as it warms his features. What now? he asks, and she looks up, quick and quiet, finding his eyes easily, naturally once more. Then she leans in, lifting her body up - through the shoulders and the spine, opening herself all the way down to the balls of her feet - turning her mouth toward his the way she does when she wants to kiss the breath out of his lungs -
- and just half-smiles, her dark eyes shining with reflected light, her mouth moving a scant half-inch from his.
"I don't know." - she replies, perfectly confident, perfectly quiet, holding herself perfectly still, so close to his mouth. "I've never done this before."
Claimed a man. Taken a mate.
"I have no idea what I'm doing." Her voice is a low, velvet thread of a thing, quiet joy tattoed between the words. Somewhere between the words, she inhales him. Her fingers slide behind his neck, and the lean tension is her narrow shoulders is suddenly so clear. Closer, but not close enough. " - but I like it, whatever it is."
[Trent Brumby] Although she's telling him she has no idea what she's doing, Trent is smiling more and his eyes are quietly humoured by this. He didn't mind that she was clueless, despite being the dominant one, the Garou that is meant to know everything. They both know reality well enough, and by the time she's reaching around his neck, inches from his mouth, his hands lay on her sides and sweep down them, reacquainting with the subtle curve there.
He does what he wants to do, no longer hesitating or waiting for a sign of permission, he slips his hands down her legs, bending his and ready to brace his back, and lifts her up off the ground to curl her legs around his waist. His hands adjust to hold one thigh firmly and the other the curve of her backside. It puts her higher then him, but he likes that, to look up at her rather then down.
"We can start with dinner," he's tells her quietly, meaning the food that she can smell being cooked in the next room. Apparently Trent was not in a rush. They didn't have to have quick snippets of time together, a brief night here or there, Kora now had full right to him and his home, whenever she pleased, and Trent belonged somewhere. Not just somewhere but to someone, and that too, was relieving him in ways most would not understand.
[Kora] She reaches up for him as he bends down to lift her, her arms settle around his shoulders and neck, draping in a way that is both natural and familiar, remembered. She leans into his body, her fingers curling reflexively tight in the black hair closely cropped on the back of his head, some laughting light entering her fine dark eyes as he finds them both a starting line. Dinner. Go.
"We've never started like that before," he can feel her laughter, the tension of it in her body, the way her muscles bunch beneath his grip on her thigh, on her backside. She's holding it back, and it escapes as a subtle huff, and a certain lopsided curve of her mouth as she leans down over him - close, closer - to kiss him at last, the corner of his mouth first - three times, four, her nose against his cheek, her breath warm against his mouth and jaw - before she leans again, kissing him fully but not deeply, not yet.
"It smells good, though," she is inhaling him again, her laughter still a liminal thing that he can feel in the way her thighs grip his waist, her body moves against his as he holds her off the ground. His scent is close, the cologne that lingers on his skin, the ineffeable scent of his breeding underneath it, which calls to the wolf in her. The scent of dinner, chicken and garlic, lingers in the air, too - on his skin, in his hair. " - dinner's a good place to start."
Her kisses have drifted from his mouth to his jaw. "I missed you," she says, in the warm, narrow space between one faint, welcoming kiss and another.
[Trent Brumby] He laughs quietly as he realizes that s he's right and that she finds it amusing. He's lucky, in that. There's been plenty of women, human mostly, that would be offended by the idea that sex always came before anything else, but not Kora. She's already changed him in ways that he hasn't yet realized, subtle differences that would come to light over time rather then immediately.
Her kisses are welcomed, had his grip tighten a little more and shift from only a grip to a hold and, sometimes, a slight caress all while keeping her firmly in place about him. Trent loved the way she felt, the warmth and heat, hotter then his body would ever burn unless sick. He liked her strength in the narrow confines of her body, and how she can still hold that with an unmistakable female angle. Kora couldn't be mistaken for a man.
Almost all kisses were returned, but he was content to have her shower him in these nuzzling affections as he stood there in the space between foyer and living room, which are only clearly defined by the alcove that is the small foyer space, filled with a coat rack, a floor mat and a pair shoes. "I should go away more often," he murmured, low and teasing, "if this is the welcome home I'll get."
He's walking then, moving them around the coffee table towards the kitchen, slow but steady. Footsteps are broken up by the few, brief kisses he's leaving on her cheek or neck, whatever is easiest to reach without stopping her from her own affections. "Chicken and steamed rice is all I've got until I go shopping later." It's almost an apology.
[Kora] When he starts walking with her, she crosses her legs behind him, locks one ankle against the opposite calf. Her boots are a heavy, solid presence behind him as he carries her, a sharp constrast to the soft heat of her thighs wrapped around his waist, her arms around his shoulders, her fingers twining through his hair. She ducks her head, too, the nuzzling little kisses trail down past his ear and linger on his neck, trusting in his strength to hold her and carry her, but giving him this - an easy line of sight to navigate the familar obstacle course of his apartment.
She's smiling against his skin, feeling the thrum of his answering laughter through his chest cavity, vibrating its way through the solid muscles of his shoulder. His mouth is near her ear when he murmurs his low, teasing promise to go away more often, to come home to this. Something subtle changes in her body, a momentary tension in her spine, and the kisses become a subtle, sure nip, her teeth at the base of his neck, where it curves into the great muscles of his shoulder.
They are headed toward the kitchen; he is almost apologizing for the menu and planting a kiss on the curve of her cheek as she nuzzles his neck, soothing the faint bite she inflicted with a touch of her tongue to his warm skin. Her eyes are closed. He can feel her smile against his skin, the way her cheek curves against his jaw.
"Hey," straightening, lifting her chin so that she can catch his gaze with her own. "I won't tell you what I had for breakfast, and in return, you won't apologize for what you've made me for dinner. Deal?" She pauses, smiling, and kisses his cheek again, holding him briefly, fiercely tighter if only because she knows she will have to uncoil from his body momentarily, let him go, before they are starting with dinner, tonight.
Because they have all the time in the world.
Or at least a few extra days, stolen from the promise of death that hangs over her.
" - and when you go to the store, buy me some bacon, yeah?"
[Trent Brumby] The nip has him making a quiet sound, definitely pleased at the feel of her teeth pinching the skin taut over well trained muscle. His hands grip her tighter then, pressing her to his body before relaxing after a brief squeeze. He liked that, and the way her tongue feels after, or the smile she's giving against his neck. Small things make him happy, content. He's relaxed, more now then he had been before. While her death is a certainty and there is no way to avoid that it will be bloody and brutal, likely to happen before his, now that he was her mate he had more time with her. Not more time, but more time with her, and without distraction of his own Tribe or the possibility of loosing her or himself to another. And so, Trent is much more relaxed and confident.
"Bacon it is, Ma'am." He added that last bit with a hint of a smirk in his smile.
Into the kitchen, he sets her on a cleared counter but lingers in close, sliding hands up her back instead. Now he can meet her eyes easily and he searches through them, his own are quiet and reflect that content state he's currently buzzing through. The knowledge he belongs, officially, still fresh. "Anything else you want?" Groceries or otherwise. Whether she knew it or not yet, she was going to be pampered to near every whim. It's his way.
[Kora] Her heels thud quietly against the cabinet doors after he sets her down on the countertop. She extricates her arms from their resting place on his shoulder as if she were unknotting a fisherman's knot - which is to say, slowly, carefully, savoring the closeness between them as he lingers, slidng his hands up her back.
"I don't need much," Kora says, her voice quiet, the right corner of her mouth twisting upward in a faint, familiar half-smile. I don't need much, she says, with that intrinsic confidence that allows her to live as she does without envying the lives of others - without resenting the ease of human ignorance or the trappings of human wealth. "I like Scotch, sometimes. Those single malts from the islands, you know? Sometimes, hardly ever. Good beer. Steak. Oh - and those waxy little chocolate donuts, you know the ones?"
The whole little speech - grocery list? - is offered musingly close. Her dark eyes are on his own through the whole of it, fixed and steady and clear as she looks down at him, no matter if the overhead light is on in the kitchen. The something subtle changes in her expression. Her still-curved mouth stills, and the light in her eyes grows more intent.
She draws away, just. Lifts her wrist - the right one, covered in a half-dozen little bracelets, mostly knotted fibers from hempen rope, fishing twine, mixed with a few pieces of thin, braided leather or suede, dark - to her mouth and holds out her left hand.
"Give me your hand, yeah?" she says, though it doesn't sound like a question.
[Trent Brumby] He's nodding slightly to acknowledge that yes, he does know what ones she's talking about, though he had to think about the chocolate donuts. He's not too familiar with sweet things, but he'd become familiar with them in very short time. If his apartment is anything to go by, Trent is very orderly and organized, not quite obsessive compulsive but if he didn't keep it in check, he could quite possibly become that way. He likes orders, rules and boundaries in his life. Strangely, it makes him a very flexible person outside of it, and usually very calm. She knows that much.
His hands slide across her thighs as he leans away from the cabinet and therefore her thighs. There's only a small hesitation as he figures out which hand he's going to give her, but a glance to her bracelets gives him a good indication and he offers his left hand out, his non-dominant hand. Palm up and fingers loose, he leaves it in her grip as he looks back up at her, curious and without question.
[Kora] Kora lifts her right wrist to her mouth and finds the knot of one of the bracelets - thin, braided strips of black leather, a match for the choker wrapped around her neck and another bracelet, nearly identical, tucked among the others on her left wrist - finds the knot, nearly fused together from years of constant wear, with her teeth and patiently pulls it apart. Unknotted, the bracelet falls open and begins to slither down from her wrist until she catches it, quickly, with a neat twist of her right hand.
Three thin strips of black leather, worn soft as velvet over the years, twisted into a flat braid together.
With both hands, now, she curves the bracelet around his offer wrist and begins tying it together, leaving it loose enough that it will move around the joint, but tight enough that it will not fall off.
"I've never told you," she begins, her eyes on the knot she's making in the leather, " - that the Nation calls me she who offers sorrow. Or that I'm a cliath, a Skald, which means, Galliard, which means, moon-dancer.
"This," she looks up at him, then, her dark eyes gleaming as she finishes the knot, chinching the fine strands of black leather around his wrist before she turns her hand to his palm, twining her fingers with his. " - it's made of the cleansed, tanned skin of the first cursed one I ever killed and I've worn it ever since. It has my spirit in it, just a hint of it. So - "
Kora doesn't finish the thought. She just smiles at him, calm and still and sure as she looks down at him, twisting her fingers through his, then letting his hand go again.
[Trent Brumby] While she ties, he watches her face and gives only a single glance down to the bracelet when she tells him that it's made from a cursed something that she had killed. It doesn't revolt him, but does make him look at it differently then he would had if it was a normal tanned hide. When he looks back up, its to watch her face as she tells him that it has some of her spirit in it, that it's been on her wrist up until now. She smiles and he smiles in return, eyes more serious now, which almost always makes them a hint darker. His smile is quieter then before, but no less meaningful or honest.
He leans in and kisses her smiling mouth, soft, slow and chaste, lingering in a moment where he can breathe her in and enjoy her warmth before leaning back again. "Thank you," he tells her this as he squeezes her hand and his other rubs a caress up her thigh and back down again, "if I had anything remotely similar, I'd give it to you. But I don't." And so he can't. But he will find something of value and it will be hers. For a moment he thinks about belongings in a bag in his closet. Maybe that. It would be him giving up something, a big change, and an acceptance. It's the deep change and what those things symbolize that makes him anxious and even a little apprehensive.
He'd have to think about it.
Another kiss to her cheek has the hair on his face brush hers lightly. "Chicken kievs coming up." Its murmured with a smile into the corner of her mouth before he's parting from her, reluctantly, to fetch some food from the oven and rice cooker and get dinner on plates. He'd approach the other subject after, if she doesn't distract him as she normally does.
Post a Comment