Ornature

[Kora] [Last post!]

She tells him a story. There's a point to it, but not until the end, and when she began he filled his lungs and stomach with a slow drawn air, as if he had to bear a story when he really didn't want to hear it. He's like this, angry. Completely unreasonable. Its no wonder, then, that she first saw him bloodied. She liked it then, maybe not now though, not when part of it seems directed at her.

But this leaks out of him, not the anger, the air, sliding through his nose in a hot breath when she mentions son and daughter. Makes her point, drives it home in the way Galliards do. It deflates some of that stiffness in him. Not all.

Raising his arm he took a swig of his beer, right before she's tugging on his shoulder. That core strength of him has filled out, expanded into his physical form. What was hidden, something under the surface that showed in the discipline and the strength of simply standing still, is now this raw shine of solid stubbornness. He's stronger now then when he's ever been with her, sitting rigid as she pulls.

... then gives.

He flops back, expelling another one of those hot growling sighs. But she grips his hair, sharpens that look in his eye as she forces him to look at her. Tells him that she's happy. It makes him frown, cutting these lines in his dark brows, making his eyes lighter against them, but no less glittering unhappy. "You have a funny way of showing it."

Off to the side, his beer is held, rested on the couch, hand around it loosely. His other by his thigh, on the couch, not touching her. His body is not relaxing but he's becoming placid with her. Letting her show her dominance by riding higher over him, covering his body with hers, holding his head in place. The extend of his anger about this becomes clear, when there remains no stirrings in his jeans. Not yet, anyway.

[Kora] "I know." Her admission is a simple thing, offered quietly as he sits back, submitting to her dominance without relaxing into her touch. There's a soft undertone to the pair of words, a little raw, a little steely. She looks down at him, her eyes dark as they touch his, her familiar features still and solemn, her wide mouth set and still. Parting her mouth, she moistens her dry lips with a dart of her tongue. It is a thoughtful movement, but she's looking away from him, over the crown of his head which is damp, which glistens blue-black now where the light hits the forming corkscrews that would turn into curls he he ever let it grow long.

She is holding him in place with her body, her spine straight, fully extended, and her narrow shoulders turned forward and down. The grip in his hair slackens, turns into a gentle, thoughtless sort of caress before she shifts, balancing herself with a hand on his right shoulder, bending down to brush her mouth across his left temple.

Her breath is hot but her lips are cool compared to the flush of his anger. She can taste his pulse underneath his skin. "I know," she tells him, mouth moving against his skin, the curve of her cheek firm against his brow brone, the bridge of her nose a fulcrum of sorts, as she breathes in his scent, spiked with stress hormones, hotter and familiar and maybe just changed enough to -

"I'm not just happy. I'm other things, too," quiet again, her tone touched with reflection, perhaps a thread of regret, the sort of looking-back that comes after an act of god, a force of nature. The shadow of her teeth behind the soft flesh of her mouth. Her throat closes, and she stills, and when she continues, the whisper is quiet, raw. " - but when I peel those things back. When I pull them away, I'm happy. That's not even the right word, though it will have to do."

[Trent Brumby] Small things. The brush of her cheek, the murmur close to his ear, into his skin, and the way her strong grip holds his shoulder when the other had caressed through his hair. These begin to relax him. This seething anger won't disappear. It will ease into the background where all of these things reside in this strong, older man. Maybe again to burst forth when he is too upset to care for protocols.

He lifts his spare hand to touch her hip, leaves it there. Just a touch, letting her know he's there, he's now listening to her and the things under her voice that she won't say nor admit. His awareness grows beyond his anger, levels it out, and stops it from brimming over again.

"I understand that there's plenty of worries and sadness," he tells her, "and that this isn't an ideal life or situation. But it's our child. It's a child of Gaia, of Gods, either way we look at it." Breathing in, he swallows, shaking his head. His voice takes on a different tone, something that sounds disappointed, confused and even a little hurt. "We haven't even celebrated it."

"So what of it's premature. It may not happen to full term, we both know that Kora. But its here right now, growing inside of you, a life. She or he deserves something for the time that they're here." So much death, and the threat of it still to come, he's still very much his Tribal blood and in tune with the cycle. Appreciative of it all. It's a side of him that is deeply spiritual that doesn't come out in the daily routines of life. It's a personal thing, which is why it has him so riled.

[Kora] The television is not on. The windows are open, though. The city beyond them has a sort of live - traffic hums constantly in the background. Somewhere near, a truck backs up, beeping incessantly to warn anyone behind it exactly where it's going. Somewhere close, maybe another apartment in the building, someplace else with two bedrooms and a kitchen like his, music's playing, just close enough that - focusing - she can hear the rhythm of it. Just far enough away that she cannot hear the tune.

She listens, still, not moving except when she turns her head just aslant, so that her cheek is against his temple, and her mouth is free. He can hear her slow, steady breathing in his ear. Her nose is in his still-damp hair, just at the hairline.

"I've been completely unfair to you," she tells him. Tells his ear, really, just moving her cheek against his temple. Her eyes are closed, and when they are open, they are unfocused. He has seen the changes in her body, so subtle that he might think he imagines them. Her small breasts are heavier, somehow, just fuller. When he touches her hip, looks down the line of her body when she's naked in his bed, - just this week he could have sworn that her waist was thickening. But her jeans still fit. Maybe it's just hope; that anticipation.

The moon's waning. That tension that sharpens when it gathers eases. She spent her rage this night last, nearly all of it, and it leaves her - not softer, so much as open. " - and I'm sorry for that."

Quiet, this. Her grip eases, and she brushes the edge of her thumb in a slow, sweeping caress through his hair, against his skull. "Let's celebrate. Tonight."

[Trent Brumby] He wants to say: No kidding! But he doesn't. That isn't fair to her either. She has a lot on her plate, more then he can possibly imagine. Now she has an extra stress on top of that, added to the duties that she wonders and worries if she can perform. She is still young, even if she has ancients whispering in her ear.

She finds the same tension over his scalp as the rest of him, but his eyes close now as he breathes heavy through his nose, this deep sigh that is almost soundless. Fingers at her hip slide across it, up along her waist and back down, moving partially to her back. He likes this curve, the dip the rise, the stronger curve at the back. It's lovely on her, especially when she's above him, like this.

"I just ... wouldn't mind if .. . others weren't puking on my shoes, you know?" He doesn't want to bring it up, but it's really a reaction that kicked him in the guts. Kora's pregnant should not have someone being physically ill. Some very distant part of him, and only brief in his anger, wondered if there was some sort of sick jealousy there. He'd chastised himself when his mind began to wonder down that path, the nights and the church instead of in his apartment, and the way there's increasing Metis and --- No. This is Kora.

It just leaves him upset. There had not been a single smile, a congratulations, anything remotely normal in response to this. Even Imogen had been brisk and bitter about it. Only he had dropped to his knees and kissed her belly, glowing from inside, and had fussed and walked on a high for an entire week. Hell, he was already planning out a nursery.

But now? He lays his head right back so that he can try and see her, search her face out. "How would you like to celebrate?"

[Kora] "I know," she says again, as if the words were a litany. One she is repeating tonight, again and again, and not without cause. She could say, too: I know, now. It takes a certain level of imaginative sympathy to recognize the hurt one has caused - not to apologize as a rote thing, but to take the knowledge of it back into your body, to digest it, make it your own. And it is not always useful characteristic in a werewolf, that.

She doesn't know, of course. NOt entirely, not even when she assures him, so quiet, so certain, that she does. That she knows, suddenly, in this way that is physical, that is back-of-the-throat alive, glottal, some strange swallowed consonant in the way - the hurt she caused him, without ever imagining every primitive line of passing male instinct that circulates through the half-conscious folds of his mind. "He'll make it right with you."

There is that familiar tension in her hips, in her spine, that awareness of her body, like a line pulled tight, holding her upright, curving her shoulders down toward him, her mouth to his temple.

Then he pulls his head back, and her hand opens like a bloom against the back of his skull, cushioning, holding, shaping the gesture. Briefly, her mouth follows, she turns, brushing a still kiss across his forehead, before straightening, settling, and looking back down at him.

Her eyes are clear in the darkness, her features still. He knows that look, the way her mouth curves at the right corner, the sense of presence about her. She lifts her hand from his shoulder and reaches over to touch him, to trace the line of his jaw and feel her fingers push at the bristling growth on his cheek, this way, then that.

"I think we should do something else, soon. Yeah? Get out of the city, go camping, out in the woods. Before it gets too cold, maybe when the leaves are changing - just look at the sky. Watch the stars, you know? Count them. Remember what this is all about."

"Tonight, though," she continues, "I want to go out, someplace lovely, and have some indulgent dessert." Her hand stills on his cheek, she presses the pads of her finger against his skin, tips his face just higher. "I'll have mineral water, Pellegrino, yeah? And you, you'll drink champagne and when I kiss you, I'll taste it on your tongue."

[Trent Brumby] His eyes widen a little, and she finds surprise there, something pleasant though as she suggests going out for camping to look at the stars. He's considering this, and his anger is sweeping away in great gusts, leaving him breathing easier as the rate of his beating heart slows further. "I haven't been camping since I was a kid," he admits. Then, with a sudden curl of his mouth and a tightening of his hand on her side, attempting to draw her in against him, he adds: "I'm horrible at it." Bad form for a Black Fury kinfolk. Maybe this surprises her in turn.

Although he wants to kiss her, she's tilting his head back more, and he goes with it, muscles relaxed and totally compliant. The pale of his gaze looks at her down the line of his face, though, brightening from their dark brooding colour, making it leak away and be replaced by better cheer. "They say you can have one glass a day, every now and then. If you want one, that is." But the idea of her kissing it out of his mouth is far better. While she meant it differently to what he's suddenly imagining, his fantasy is much hotter. Wisely, he doesn't admit this.

[Kora] "I'll teach you." Her surprise is clear, this twist of brief amusement in her dark eyes, this steadiness as she stares down at him and watches the anger sweeping its way from his face. That he is horrible at camping, Black Fury that he is. That's he's admitted it to her. It ebbs as quickly as it arose, though, replaced by this intimate, teasing light. " - you know, I can set up a tent and start a fire, scare off the predators, find a good, clear stream for water. I'd offer to hunt down a deer,"

- "but if you can't dress it, we might have to carry our food with us. Maybe fried chicken and potato salad, and hot dogs, and - " bending down, she touches her forehead to his. Her eyes are dark, she sees his features now in these patchy representations, scrimmed by the sweep of her pale lashes, defined by how close she is to his face, to his skin.

Still now, closer to him, feeling the heat of his skin close to hers, watching the color of his pale gaze changed through her unfocused eyes. Something shifts, sharpens in her body language. She kisses the bridge of his nose, the flat line of his cheek. She kisses him on the mouth, nearly chaste except when her mouth opens, still and lingering and twisted with this fine-banded control, over his own.

"Yeah?" - she echoes, when he tells her she can have an occasional glass of alcohol. Then, " - tell me you have champagne here. Cooling in the fridge." Mouth lingering over his, she inhales him again. "Then we needn't go out. I don't have anything to wear, anyway." Impossible to imagine her in a dress, her hair anything but a slow-falling mass or a strictly practical French braid.

[Trent Brumby] "I'd like that." He is nothing but honest. The idea of camping, of being shown the ropes by his mate, out in the middle of nowhere is very appealing to him. He follows instructions well, to the T, and enjoys his time out away from the city as much as anyone else. Except he has to work. Life for Kinfolk has to be practical. They still money to live in the world and rare is the job found away from the city. He'd like to combine the two worlds as much as he possibly can. Not just in camping.

Trent likes to feel a part of something. It makes him feel whole. He is not an independent being, as much as he can function as one. Maybe that blood in him is stronger in his instinct then others, and attributes to his need to be in a pack like role. It certainly fits his personality if one gets to know him as Kora has.

He's cursing this beer he has in his hand, and stretches it to find the cushion in the couch, wedging it in so that it doesn't spill over, careful when he reluctantly lets it go, praying he doesn't get beer everywhere. But its more important that he lays both hands on his mate right now. She's kissing him like that and breathing into him, pushing away any more of his tension, replacing it with a new sort that is found mostly in the towel around his waist, felt much more easily between them for the lack of boxers and denim.

Thumbs find her ribs, his hands around her sides, riding up the top she's wearing. "I can go and get some champagne. But no hot dogs on our camping trip." This is said as he's leaning his head up, wanting more from her, just these opened mouth kisses. He's talking between them.

"I should buy you some things," murmured, getting carried away, "I'd love to see you in a dress. In a corset. In a military uniform." Each one punctuated by a kiss against her mouth or chin, or jaw. "In absolutely nothing at all."

[Kora] Trent has a long enough reach that he wedges that open beer - the one he had tossed back without tasting anything except the underlying bitterness of the hops, the underlying bitterness of the moment - right where she had tucked her copy of Rilke earlier, between the botton cushion and the upholstered back.

"Soon, then," she's telling him, when he says he'd enjoy camping with her. "It'll be better before it gets colder." She'll give him a list of the things he needs to buy, some inexpesive two-person tent, a handful of other things, a good sharp knife. Maybe she'll buy him a good sharp knife, something he can carry more easily than the gun she gave him months ago, presented to him in a gift bag recovered from god knows where, repurposed for her use. She already has the rest. That's later, though.

There's a flush under her skin, this subtle spreading of blood through her cheeks when he murmurs his list, punctuates it with his mouth, when he says the word corset and she sort of inhales, not getting it, not precisely, but seeing him, seeing her.

But then: "A military uniform?" she laughs back into his mouth as his hands span her flanks, as his thumbs find her ribs. Imagining it some flight of strange fancy, maybe Half her hair is loose, curtaining down around them. The rest is pulled back messily, twisted against its own weight. That laughter lingers in her mouth, thrumming as she kisses him again, just deepening it, this little nip of a kiss, like she's going to take him degree by slow degree. "I'd make a terrible marine, baby. But you can buy me anything you want - "

That's not exactly what she means, she's still laughing when she says it. Then she goes still, really, kissing him again, deepening it fractionally, not lingering but hungry for him now, and rather more serious for it. "You can buy me a dress."

"Mmmph." - she says then, into his mouth, against his skin. " - champagne can wait. Take off my shirt. Okay? I want to feel your mouth on my skin."

[Trent Brumby] Camping? Whatever. That talk flies over his head, all momentarily forgotten. He has a Garou on his lap, heating up for him and starting to make demands from him. Not only with her mouth but her hands and her words. He also gets to buy her a dress, and will take her literally on being able to buy anything he wants for her - oh he knows it wasn't meant that way, but he can claim ignorance after the fact.

"You'd make a great drill sergeant." Trent really likes this, she can tell, it's heating him up as quick as her well placed mouth could. These things he secretly thinks about her, coming out much more politer then the imagery, but the result is still the same. "When you get that look in your eye... " He can't even finish it, already short of making a quiet low sound from his throat into her mouth.

She need not ask him twice. Sliding his hands down to her hips, he finds his way under the fabric and slides it up with his wrists, trailing his warm hands over her soft flesh up along her back and ribs, higher until reaching her armpits. Changing his grip, he takes the material and stretches out his torso in order to lift it off her head and her arms, once she's co operating.

The moment it's thrown to the side, he's braced her at mid back, pulled her in closer, and dropped his mouth down to the growing curves of her breast. He doesn't even ask, doesn't wait. He's already been told what she wants, and he is more then ready to get himself lost in the touch, smell and sight of her. Her loyal mate simply worships her, a strange thing in a modern age.

[Kora] "A drill sergeant?" she repeats him, twisting her body, lifting her arms to that he can take off her t-shirt. The open window sends these tendrils of cool air through the otherwise warm room. She can feel one wrap around her ribs, but mostly she's too warm to notice, her blood vessels dilating as want spikes under her skin. Her face disappears behind the expanse of black cotton jersey fabric, and she is still alive with that laughter, her eyes gleaming bright, reaching for him as she untangles her arms from the fabric of her t-shirt, shakes out the remaining strands of her loosened hair.

Still, there's something about the way he looks at her when he says it that she can read, the solar flare of heat in his pale eyes, the way his body responds to hers, the serious, almost even way he tells her that she would make a brilliant drill sergeant.

Then he drops his mouth to her skin, just as she asks. It is her turn to breathe out sharply, a breath she had withheld, to twist her hands in his hair as if she might crush him into her skin, absorb him by some celluar process, osmosis, diffusion.

"A drill sergeant." - she repeats, moistening her dry mouth, bending - briefly awkward - half-way to the crown of his head because she wants to mark him with her teeth, because she's not laughing now. Not entirely.

Her chin dips toward his right ear. She snags the top of the cartilaginous curve between her teeth and bites. The marks of her teeth will linger there, little divots, all night long. Her cheek is against the side of his head, the crown. She half-closes her eyes and murmurs into his ear. "Before you fuck me tonight, baby." she tells him, evenly, sinking closely from her upright position to her haunches over his lap, so she can feel his arousal through the layers of the towel. " - you're going to have to drop and give me twenty."

[Trent Brumby] He breathes out hotly, jumps under the towel. "Yes ma'am."