Ornature

[Kora] Outside, they have a short drive to the lakefront - and their pick of public beaches, which hug the curve of the lake below the public, green levels of Grant and Lincoln park, continuing north, past the river, dotting the old industrial docks, fitted in between marinas and piers - mile after mile of white sand beaches.

Sure, the sand has been trucked in, mined from elsewhere, and the surf kicks up only when a ferry or some other ship churns by, and one day out of three the city's lifeguards post warnings about water quality on sternly worded little white signs near the parking lots and public walkways leading down to the beaches - on any given summer day, the city's beaches are thronged with Chicagoans hoping for a breath of breeze, a kiss of sun on their skin. If they squint, they can pretend it's Miami Beach, or Newport, or Hilton Head, or at least the Jersey shore.

They stop at an all-night take-out place - a WaWa sandwiched between a record store GOING OUT OF BUSINESS and 24-hour Kinko's, deserted but for the clerks standing amidst a small army of copiers in the center of the store, visible through the windows, illuminated. - for drinks. A six pack of beer, or maybe a bottle of wine. Water pulled from a cooler full brimming with a cold, icy slurry. Kora leaves the shopping to Trent, and instead watches the street, and the Kinko's employees who do not know they are on such display.

Parking's easy. The lot is empty. Kora holds their take-out meals in her lap as Trent drives, the soup warm against her thighs. Popular as the beaches are in daylight, they're closed at night. The gate is drawn across the access-path, and there are no streetlights here to mark their way. Just a full moon hanging in the sky, bright enough that the pair of them cast moon-shadows here, when cross the parking lot toward the path in this dark ribbon of shoreline that hugs the curves of the city.

She hands him the bag of take-out before she climbs the gate, then - after an abortive attempt to shove the toe of her steel-toed boots into the small diamond texture of the gate - bends over to unlace her boots, peeling them off, and her socks after, setting them aside, hidden by the waving grasses meant to anchor the make-shift dunes.

Barefooted, she clambers over the gate easily, swings herself over the top, and lowers herself overhand until she just - lets go, and jumps the last few meters, landing in an easy, half-feral crouch. The moon catches out the sharp lines of her features, sheens across her eyes as she turns back to him, reaching through the small gap in the gate for their food and drink before it is his turn to climb after her. While they are maneuvering the soup container through the narrow gap, she looks up at him, briefly stark, briefly still, reaches out and snags the tail of his t-shirt with her free hand and pulls him close, leaning her head toward him as if she might kiss him through the metal barrier of the gate.

But no, she pulls back at the last minute, the soup in hand, their makeshift picnic on her side rather than his, and watches him, appreciatively, as he makes the climb in her wake.

[Trent Brumby] Trent makes a quick stop at the store to get the beverages of Kora's choice. If she didn't have one, he got her regular favourites and had them packed up in a bag to carry with them out to the car again. The drive hadn't been too long and the conversation rather idle and short. Once he found a park he offered to carry the picnic things, had a blanket in his trunk that he offered to bring along too, and whether he was carrying them or not, they made their way over to the gate.

He's about to suggest something else, somewhere else, as he watches her unlace her shoes but holds his tongue at the last minute. This is what she wanted to do and he reminds himself not to question it. Climbing a fence is no problem for a Garou, but he still didn't want to see her fall or break a bone. She could feel his gaze, intense and watchful as she climbs, and the way he almost holds his breath as she begins down then jumps.

She lands and he exhaled a relieved sigh, covering it with a quick look away. But when he looks back she's already looking at him, eyes glinting and hand ready to take the bag from him, which he passes through. After, she's grabbing his t.shirt and pulling him towards the mesh of the gate. It makes him inhale sharply through his nose, his gaze locking on to her and his fingers curl through the links as he grabs it and keeps himself close to her.

Even after she lets him go he stays there a heart beat longer, longing, pulse in his throat and a stirring heat in his eyes.

Reluctantly stepping back, he glanced up to the top of the gate, sliding his steel capped boots from his feet and reaches down to pull off his socks, tucking them into the shoes. He sets them aside with hers and flexes bare toes on the ground before he starts climbing up the fence. He doesn't do it as quickly as she had, it's been awhile since he's climbed fences, and his bulk is bigger and heavier. There's concentration as he swings his leg over, being careful about assets, as he slides over and climbs a small way before dropping down.

He lands less gracefully on his feet, but on his feet no less, and wipes his hands on the back of his work pants before offering to take the things from her again.

[Kora] The metal gate groans and sways more deeply under his greater weight, the links pulling away from the frame as he climbs. It all holds, of course, snaps back into place when his path takes him closer to the frame. Below, she has her arms full of blankets and take-out and beer, the former thrown across her shoulder like a sash. Her dark eyes gleam pale when she looks up at him, reflecting the near-perfect disc of the moon back at him as climbs carefully over, and makes his way down to jump, at the end. His landing kicks up a little cloud of sand, the scintillating mica catching the light like confetti as it sifts back to the earth.

She was quiet throughout most of the drive, dark eyes drifting over their reflections in the car windows, keenly conscious of the presence of the full moon in the sky above them ever since they left the restaurant. She's quiet now, handing back over the blanket and take-out, the six pack when he offers, leaving him with no hands free, and her with two -

- one of which she slides into his back pocket as they start to walk down the slanting path that leads to the beach, just to feel the bunch and flex of his glutes as he walks, beside her. Because his ass is hers, and she wants to feel it move. There's that sure, quiet darkness in her eyes if he glances at her, then, the animal in her sharp under the moon. She walks quickly, and he has to hurry to keep up with her, though she seems perfectly prepared to drag him after if he begins to fall behind.

When they reach the beach proper, her pace slows. The water moves here, the light of the moon a rippling ribbon of color across the dark water, not like the ocean moves, not that heart-beat rhythm of some coastal shore, but it still laps at the constructed beach quietly, darkly. The sand is still warm, the heat of the day lingers, and their feet sink into it, toes flexing around the sand.

Kora picks a place as likely as any other, though a fair pace away from the lifeguard's tower, sheltered by a spit of land thrusting outward into the ocean, a good ten feet higher than the beach itself.

"Here - " she leans close to tell him, while his hands are full, his arms occupied, stepping neatly between his burdens and lifting her curling mouth to his. Some part of her wants to tell him that she appreciates the work he is doing for her; the kin he cares for, the hospitality he extended to night. And so on - but that part is remote on a night like this, under the full moon. "I want it here."

[Trent Brumby] The work pants he wears are the strong, thick sort, worn well enough to fit his backside and his thighs in the way that maintains that rough shape before they're washed. They're a bit dirty too, along the legs mostly, at the knees, but it blends in with the dark navy. Her hand fits into the short pocket easy, and he throws her a glance of raised brows, before looking ahead again, not quite able to keep that quirk from his mouth. She finds her ass there, indeed, firm and well worked as they walk - he picks up his stride to keep up, towards the location where she wants to settle.

But before she does, she steps in and he splays his arms out a little to give her more room, offering more of his chest, to meet the kiss. "Here it is," he confirms after, letting his pale grays drift over her features, down to her mouth and back up along her nose to her gaze.

Stepping back, he sets down the bags first, neatly out of the way before grabbing the blanket and spreading it out. He makes sure all the corners are laying out flat, and that its smooth enough over the sand. Of course he gestures her on there first while he's grabbing food to give to her and beer as well. Only after does he settle down, leaving her plenty of room, and reclining on his side, weight distributed from leaning on his elbow down his ribs, hip and leg.

He waits for her to settle and begin eating before he opens up his lamb souvlaki, his gaze flicking up now and again to watch her as he peels back the paper to expose the food. "So I've been meaning to ask you," he says in a low voice, "and there's no real way to ask it other then to say it out right. I'm just hoping you won't bite my head off tonight." Full Moon, aware.

[Kora] The kiss lingers, barely open-mouthed as he opens his arms to her. He can feel the heat of her skin, sense the tension underneath, this fine, threaded sort of tension that lives in her spine and her narrow shoulders, in the curving flexion of her quadriceps and calf muscles as she rises to the balls of her feet to meet his mouth, and then again, as she lingers, as she breaks away.

There's a breeze here. That much makes the lakeshore like the ocean - it sweeps from the vast, flat openness of the lake's dark waters, the scent of water in the air, faint and sure and humid. The elevation change from beach to park is enough that all but the tallest of the city's buildings are hidden by the slope and the retaining walls, by the trees the city has planted above, lining the jogging paths that wind through the parks.

Her eyes are on his as she breaks again, dark against pale. Then he's spreading the blanket for their take-out picnic, and she settles down, cross-legged while he reclines at her side, peeling back the lid of her avgodolemono soup. There's still steam, this bright, lemon scent against the savory undergirding of homemade-chicken stock. Never mind that it is in the mid-80s, she drinks it savoringly as he opens his souvlaki. Her bare feet and tucked underneath her knees, and she's sitting forward, just curving, the articulations of her spine visible against her t-shirt.

When he says so, she turns to look down at him. Her eyes are hooded in that moment, a trick of elevation, and dark, and the chopsticks she's using tonight in lieu of hair bands are slowly losing their grip on her hair. She was about to offer him a sip of her soup. "Yeah?" The combination of so I've been meaning to - and bite my head off spark a certain animal wariness so briefly in her gaze, reflected in her shoulders and frame as she stills.

Then moves again, reaching out across the space between them to push her long fingers through his dark curls, rub the edge of her thumb against his temple with this sort of aching delicacy, defined by restraint. "I'm not going to bite your head off," she tells him, confident.

She hopes.

[Trent Brumby] Not yet eating any of the food, but creating a pile of ripped paper and foil from the roll, into one of the carry bags, he watches her as she stills and reaches towards him. He doesn't flinch, doesn't even tense up, but his head tilts when her fingers slide into his black curls, making his eyes drift part way closed and momentarily distracts him from his conversation. His blink is slow as he enjoys the feel of her fingers in his hair, thumb rubbing his temple.

Refocusing he draws in a slow breath, blinking his eyes wider open to look at her. "I've noticed over the last few days, since you've returned, your want for certain foods." It's subtle this little remark, and there's some hesitation as he navigates this territory - women and food are rarely a good combination to speak about in the same sentence. "I might be jumping the gun," or hoping too much, "but, is it possible that you're pregnant?"

There's a slight swallow in his throat as he asks this, gaze locked onto her features to catch any change in them, even as he picks some salad from the top of the souvlaki where it's threatening to fall out, and bring it to his mouth to chew slowly.

[Kora] There is a moment after his first remark, the shading subtlety of it, where she goes starkly, utterly still. There are animal analogies for it; that stillness - body, mind, breath - is far from human. He's navigating unfamiliar territory, and she's still tense, her short, blunt nails cutting half-moons into the styrofoam container of avgodolemono soup. Kora has enough presence of mind to turn and set the soup container down beside her, nestle it into the still warm sand, and press the lid back into the contain so it doesn't accumulate grit.

He finds his path into the question. Kora's soup-less now, her souvlaki still unopened, her hands on her knees, her features in profile to him, the curve of her mouth still, the line of her jaw dominant, the hollow between her ear and her jaw a dark pool of shadow.

"I don't - " Her brow creases; the tension is visible in her trapezius muscles, the way they pull her scapulae against the thin fabric of her old t-shirt. She looks like she's thinking, like she's concentrating on thinking, and her brow creases, her pale eyebrows drawing down over her dark eyes. "I don't -

"I don't - " except the equation isn't one she can complete, not while she's looking away from him, looking out over the dark junction of water and land. And so she looks back at him, this sort of darting alarm lilting over her features before they settle back into that sure, puzzled look, as if she were searching for the last two words in the Sunday crossword. Except that her eyes are stark and direct when they find his.

"I don't know."

[Trent Brumby] There's things in her that make him wary in turn, and he can't quite figure out what it is about her in these moments that have him alarmed. But it's enough to finish the lettuce in his mouth and set his souvlaki by the bag so if anything spills out of the rolled bread its caught by the bag rather then spread over the blanket. His lip is licked and cleaned off, and he waits until she's looking back at him before he reaches out towards her.

His hand slides across her thigh, down to where her hand is curled around her knee and seeks to find her fingers to link with his. He draws it over, leaning up to kiss the back of her hand. "It's okay Kora." His voice is steady and quiet. "I didn't mean to alarm you, I just..." This wasn't what he was expecting, this look on her face, like she's ready to run a mile away, and he might not say it, but his heart is thudding and his throat feels uncomfortable with the idea that she just might. That she doesn't want to have a child despite them having saying at some point they would.

In short, he doesn't know what to think. But he does know he doesn't want her to flip out. His thumb brushes the back of her hand as he wills his own heart rate to calm the hell down and his face to smooth out and keep neutral. "It's fine, Kora. You can eat whatever you want, you know that, right?" Bringing it back to something it's not. He scrambles to grab some control of the situation before the hole digs deeper.

[Kora] He swallows his bite hastily and puts his meal just out of reach; then he reaches for her, sliding his hand along her thigh. If he were an animal, she would be able to smell the change in his body chemistry, the sharp tinge of alarm brighter than the rest of the tangle underneath. He's not an animal, though. He's a man, his scent so familiar she could drink it in her sleep a thousand miles and more away, across land and sea and the great fastness of the spiritual world. There's the cologne in the fibers of his t-shirt, recently re-applied to drive away some of the scent of his long day, his sweat dried on his skin, mingled with hints of grease, of oil.

There are other scents around her, the hint of bleach in her hair from her long day's work, the memory of sun on her skin, chicken and lemon from the soup, car exhaust and the promise of rain on the horizon.

He kisses the back of her hand, and she turns her hand over, the gesture on auto-pilot, cupping her palm to watch the weight of his mouth against her skin.
This confused riot of emotion churns in her body, in her stomach, in the pit of her esophagus, just where the sternum ends. The admixture of startlement, fear, this sort of - underlying something else that is both fierce of indefineable is adulterated by her rage, and made all the more volatile for it. Her rage is a bright, sure thing - like polished brass - underneath her skin, and Trent can feel the heat of it in her thigh, in her hands as strokes her skin, striving to soothe her.

Abruptly, she uncurls her legs, plants her bare feet on the blanket, her knees crooked, and throws herself backward, landing on the blanket, in the cushioning sand except for a few strands of her loosened hair. Flat on her back, looking up at the moon and stars, she barks out a sharp laugh as assures her that she can eat whatever she wants.

Her feet find his, at the other end of the blanket, and her hands find her shoulders, then her breasts. Her eyes are closed now, so he cannot see the start, fleeting look, but he can feel her tension in the aggressive way her toes dig at his, of all things.

"Why do you think I'm pregnant?"

[Trent Brumby] He swallows his bite hastily and puts his meal just out of reach; then he reaches for her, sliding his hand along her thigh. If he were an animal, she would be able to smell the change in his body chemistry, the sharp tinge of alarm brighter than the rest of the tangle underneath. He's not an animal, though. He's a man, his scent so familiar she could drink it in her sleep a thousand miles and more away, across land and sea and the great fastness of the spiritual world. There's the cologne in the fibers of his t-shirt, recently re-applied to drive away some of the scent of his long day, his sweat dried on his skin, mingled with hints of grease, of oil.

There are other scents around her, the hint of bleach in her hair from her long day's work, the memory of sun on her skin, chicken and lemon from the soup, car exhaust and the promise of rain on the horizon.

He kisses the back of her hand, and she turns her hand over, the gesture on auto-pilot, cupping her palm to watch the weight of his mouth against her skin.
This confused riot of emotion churns in her body, in her stomach, in the pit of her esophagus, just where the sternum ends. The admixture of startlement, fear, this sort of - underlying something else that is both fierce of indefineable is adulterated by her rage, and made all the more volatile for it. Her rage is a bright, sure thing - like polished brass - underneath her skin, and Trent can feel the heat of it in her thigh, in her hands as strokes her skin, striving to soothe her.

Abruptly, she uncurls her legs, plants her bare feet on the blanket, her knees crooked, and throws herself backward, landing on the blanket, in the cushioning sand except for a few strands of her loosened hair. Flat on her back, looking up at the moon and stars, she barks out a sharp laugh as assures her that she can eat whatever she wants.

Her feet find his, at the other end of the blanket, and her hands find her shoulders, then her breasts. Her eyes are closed now, so he cannot see the start, fleeting look, but he can feel her tension in the aggressive way her toes dig at his, of all things.

"Why do you think I'm pregnant?"

[Trent Brumby] Drawing his hand back from her when she moves up to her feet, he lets it lay on the blanket between them. Despite working all day and not yet having eaten since lunch, and his stomach is growling at him for the food that he had began to nibble, he leaves his souvlaki to the side and watches his mate with a worried frown instead.

His feet are there for her to abuse, and he flexes his toes a little, giving her something to work against, to scratch at him with her toenails or trap his feet as she would. Watching her close her eyes and close off to herself, withdraw from him, he decides he'd much prefer her biting at him instead of this. With that in mind he shifts from where he is, coming closer to her and trapping a leg over both of hers, tucking her in against the hard line of his thigh, the other leg presses in a long line along side hers and he fits against her hip.

She can feel him hovering there, at her side and slightly over her, looking down into her face. "It was the milk the other morning, you drank it all instead of beer. And you're asking for particular flavours." Reaching up, he grips one of her wrists gently and uncurls them from where she's holding them, lifting her hand so that he can brush her jaw along it. The steadiness of pale grays stay on her face.

"It could be nothing. Either way, I'm sorry to worry you." Realizing that, perhaps, this isn't what she wanted after all. At least not so quickly. "If it's not something you want, Kora. I'll pick up some condoms before we head home."

[Kora] He's closer now. Though her eyes are closed, she can feel his body heat, the solid muscle of his thigh over her own, the hard line of his body fitted against the curves of her own, her hip, her thigh. Some deep, primal part responds to his forwardness. Her quadriceps bunch and flex underneath his trapped thigh. She wants to push him off. She wants him to push back, and so on, until she wins - by sheer dint of her strength, her perserverance. Then he'll show her his throat, and she'll -

- eyes still closed, Kora takes in a deep breath through her nostrils. He is close enough to her now that his scent predominates, his sweat, his long day's work, sharpened by his concern. He grips her wrist gently, finds the taut line of her flexor tendons standing out against the delicate jointure of her wrist, peels her hands away from her body to brush them alongside her jaw. There's some band of muscle standing out here, flexing underneath her skin.

He explains himself, his suspicions, and then he apologizes. I'm sorry to worry you. Her nostrils flare, and she twists her wrists, easily breaking the gentle circle of his grip, dark eyes opening at last, the reflected moonlight arcing across the discs like some electric charge.

"No." She tells him, sharply, firmly. Reaching for and grasping his face, her thumb and index fingers splayed across scruff on his cheeks, the rest of her hand a firm line underneath his jaw, close to the beat of his pulse. God only knows what she means. I'm sorry to worry you. and Maybe it's nothing he tells her. I'll pick up condoms - "I told you. It would be honorless to - to - claim you from your tribe, to hold you as my own and to - fuck.." The curse is a sharpened exclamation; there's this spark inside her that he even suggested condoms, no matter how well-intentioned his suggestion. "Baby don't even say that. You're my mate. We're not using fucking condoms. Gods. I just didn't think - I hadn't - "

Her grip on him changes; she pushes her fingers across his mouth, then. That frisson of anger is still a hot point of light inside her. "I'm just counting. And I don't know. Do they even have organic - " note that she does not say the word, " - tests? Can we even still have sex?"

[Trent Brumby] She grabs his face, firm enough to dent his cheeks in and to feel the hardness of bone in his jaw. Before she even barks her single first word, she's already got his attention. There's this sharpness in his gaze, that locks onto hers. While he doesn't mean for it to be dominant, and it's really not, with the way he has let go of her and stays utterly still, there's a sure build of fire in those grays. It doesn't help that she says fuck and he's thinking of the physical kind, and goes on to adamantly declare that they're not using condoms - which, by the feel of it against her thigh and hip, he's approving of.

When her fingers brush across his mouth he parts them in a soft breath, and she's seen that look before. It has to be frustrating on some level, that she's worried and getting angry, and he's laying there in the beginnings of arousal, quite thoroughly turned on by the way she manhandles him. He really can't help it, though he's trying to. She can see that, too, the way her latter words bring him out of the moment and has his tongue wetting his dry mouth, and he swallows to try and find appropriate words.

"There's tests. Really simple ones," he tells her, maintaining some calm. "I can pick them up from the store. Nothing invasive, you would just need to urinate on a stick and it picks up the hormone levels which changes when a woman is pregnant." Trent is thankful for his background, in both education, profession and Tribe. It really helps him here.

But the last really has him pause and he swallows again, nostrils flaring as he glances quickly over her face. He manages to swallow a smile, even blink it out of his eyes before it gets there, but they're shining anyway, because he's thinking about fucking again. "Yes, we can still have sex, all the way up until the birth."

"Then you get a break for six weeks. Well, maybe less. I'm not sure how long it takes a Garou to recover." Which is blunt and honest as he gets.

[Kora] "Oh gods," she tells him, "I knew that. Not about the sex, I mean. I can heal a gunshot in ten minutes, but - I don't know what - I mean. I knew about the other things. The - " pause, and if he's looking at her, even in the silvered light of the full moon he can see the flush beneath her skin, the opened blood vessels, want or embarrassment or the two twinned together, that sure, sudden flush of blood under her skin, " - tests, you know? I knew that, I mean, I remember that. The fucking ads on television. Like a pen that turns pink or fucking blue, and there's gauze or something. Maybe a beach? Or that's - " something else. Feminine hygiene products, though thankfully she swallows that thought before she blurts it out. He is so utterly calm in the face of her sputtering, stream-of-consciousness, so precise, so blunt and honest.

" - we can have sex that long?" That part surprises her, stills her maybe. She never imagines that she'll live another six months, let alone nine. It's strange, to write yourself into the future, the way she writes the dead back into their shared past.

And she's got this strange, hot feeling inside her, the anger she struggles with under the moon, that he'd even suggest something she feels to be dishonorable in an absolutely visceral way, that some part of her is afraid of this - her knowledge of her own fear worse, somehow, than the fear itself. She's a daughter of Fenris after all. It's her job to be fearless.

He's aroused. She can feel it against her hip and thigh, can smell his arousal on his skin, the way it deepens his scent and sharpens the light in his eyes. The moon is full and there's this animal part of her that wants precisely two things underneath a great fat moon like that, lush, bright and pregnant in the sky, no shadows left, heavy with reflected like - a good fight, or a good fuck. The signs of her responsiveness are rather more subtle. Her pulse is visible in her throat, and her knees part, just, her toes curl over his bare feet, sand between them still warm from the day.

She's startled out of that ramble when her want sparks against his. Where she feels it: flint and steel. Then her grip tightens on his jaw again and she reaches up to curl her fingers through his short dark hair and pull him down to her mouth. "Pick one up tomorrow, yeah?"

[Trent Brumby] He listens through her ramble and doesn't interrupt. There's plenty of things he could tell her and advice to give, or try and soothe this uncertainty or fear, or whatever it is she's going through - these things he can't really tell, only that something is bothering her enough to make her flustered and unhappy. But he listens and watches her, his body still around her, and some of his weight seems to have folded back in on himself, as if to give her more room to breathe and to feel less trapped even though he hadn't actually left her side or removed his leg.

"Yes we can," he confirms, always answering a question. This time he doesn't offer anymore information on it, letting her come around to questions on her own accord. He doesn't want to push her any further or make her more upset.

But he needn't worry about that. She grips him again, and pulls his head forward with hand on his jaw and another in his hair. He makes a sound in his throat, surprised mixed with plenty of Oh god, yes. He could say a lot with those groans, or gasps, and grunts. In some ways he can speak her language like that, and that's the only time, some primal sounds that need no words. "Yes ma'am," he manages to breathe out, mouth open and eyes half hooded, watching her, and waiting until she kisses him and not demanding the other way around.

[Kora] There is one very specific question she wants to ask him; one very specific question she's afraid to ask him. It remains subconscious, just now, buried by the wordless, nameless fears he sees but cannot interpret, nearly deliberately. She swallows the thought whenever it rises in the back of her mind and the back of her throat, finds her way through it to concrete things - like organic pregnancy tests, or whether her gods damned sex life is going to be interrupted by the inconvenient center of being the female half of a mated pair.

The moon's full, he's lingering over her, his weight shifted, those sounds in the back of his throat. Her hands are in his hair, splayed across his cheek and jaw. She can feel the vibrations of his voice box as he groans for her, under his breath. She can feel the deeper vibrations, rumbling basso through his chest, those deeper tones that she - even with her deep, rich alto - could never hope to reproduce in this human skin she wears.

No matter the hopes and fears of her human mind, the animal underneath always wants him. Because he is strong, and because he is fertile, because she can smell his virility in the richness of his blood underneath his skin. Feel it against her body, now - edged by his arousal. Sex and all its pleasures are inextricably knotted together with that animal drive, which sparks and deepens somehow, the surface turmoil, all that frustration and confusion of her human mind.

He's waiting for her, and she pulls him down and kisses him so gently that at first it seems a farce. The moon's full and he can feel her rage, which is a bright, hot answer to the light in the sky, to luna's impressive gravity, heavy enough that she pulls the tides in her wake. The moon's full and she's kissing him as if he were made of some fragile porcelain, delicately formed and fired and glazed. It is so chaste, so fucking gentle it practically hurts -

- underneath she's still, her muscles bunched, haloing movement, promising some vibrant arc of sudden motion. Her fingers are warm against his jaw, tight in his hair, but she's not moving except to tilt back her chin as she reaches for his mouth.

Just one more sound. One more sound from his fucking mouth and she'll move like the predator she is.

"One more sound," she tells him; her voice so quiet he has to strain to hear it. He has to feel it against his mouth. "C'mon, baby. One more."

[Trent Brumby] She's toying with him, and he likes it. It's not that he asks for her to do so, or even maneuvers himself so that he will be in a position like this. He wants nothing more then to kiss her and crawl between her legs, tear off her top and mark her with his teeth. He has all that, always had, it's right there under the surface and she's seen it a few times before. But he has some serious discipline in him, some sort of switch that needs permission before he can go that route, and without her giving that, he'll contain it and do nothing but thrum with tension and ache until she gives it - even if he has to wait until he's cooked dinner, cleaned up, showered her, before that comes.

Now, it's just a promise, right there. She asks for a noise, but he's already given one, a small pant of breath. His weight shifts just enough to press more into his leaning arm, leveraging himself up a little more, pulling on the roots of his hair, slowly, but enough to feel it, and almost steal his kiss himself. His work pants are uncomfortable now. Blood infuses his body, heating up his skin and making his heart thud quicker, harder.

Breath inhales through his teeth, as he opens his eyes, straining in her grip, just enough to make her dig fingers in harder. He looks down at her, eyes are steel, glinting now. She's been gone for awhile and he's got plenty to make up. It makes that look a little harder, demanding, utterly masculine. She can almost see the things he wants to do reflected there, and none of them really has anything to do with asking her permission for anything.

One more tilt of his head has another sound rise up his throat, this one laced with more. More want, more need, more now. "Please."

[Kora] He says please, and her mouth parts underneath his. There's a flash of white beneath her generous mouth - her teeth, her human teeth dull compared to all of her animal selves, but sharp enough to draw blood. - and it's one of those expressions that is either a smile of anticipation or a grin of feral warning.

Or both, braided together until the thread of one is indisguishable from that of the other.

The steel in his eyes sends this electric charge up and down his spine. These flashes of underlying masculine strength in him coil through her body, and the smile/threat/warning deepens as he shifts close enough that he might steal the kiss he wants rather than have her bestow it on him. There's some perverse little kernal inside her that wants to say: no, just now, not to see how prettily he'll plead, but to see how hard he will strain against the invisible leash of his impressive discipline. To see if it will just snap, once and for all.

Except - he says, please and his weeks have been her months, timelessly lost in the umbra admist the raucous hoardes of Fenris' great brood in the far trackless wastes of some imagined north, and now they're alone and under the sky and the moon is full and she's deeply, abidingly hungry for him, for his mouth and his body, for way she can lose herself in the physical, bury all her hopes and her fears underneath his skin and just fuck him already. - and so, there's that, that glint of would-be denial in her eyes, that animal spark in her rising to the challenge of the steel in his.

She lifts her chin, her head to meet his mouth, her hair uncoiling from the sand, she tugs back once, sharply on his hair, reminding him of her strength, and chases his mouth, after. "C'mon baby - " she says, a split second before she kisses him, one of those deep, seeking kisses. Her voice is burred with want, and pointed, goading. "I want you in me so fucking bad it hurts."

[Trent Brumby] Another groan when she pulls his hair, made worse by the way he can read that denial in her eyes, and he's not sure which way that it's going to fold, or how much she's going to make him work for it. He can feel her as surely as she can he, strained and hot, ready and waiting. But he doesn't have to wait long, she's not a cruel mistress at all.

Surprisingly, he does work against her hold on him. He creates that pain that shoots through his scalp, aches in his neck, as he shifts to grab her, rolling back and pulls her with him. They can struggle, his grip isn't perfect and he's not wrestling her. But he seeks to get her on top of him, with the back of his hair narrowly missing his souvlaki resting on the blanket. All the while she has control of his head, limiting his movement, watching the flash of his teeth as he bares them with a hiss of self inflicted motions.

He's reaching then, to do exactly what he wanted to do, and peel her shirt off, pulling the back up over her spine to yank it free. All the while he balances with taut muscles under his t.shirt coiled and straining to hold them both into place.