[Trent Brumby] Kora:
"Those were his." She says, watching him just up and aslant, the subtle engagement of a smile just evident in the tension of the fine muscles and fine skin around her eyes. "I have my own. Anyway, I don't need keys," her, the faint smile is realized, curves sure and bittersweet across her elegant mouth. " - if I really want to get in."
He has all day. "Alright then," reaching out across her body to clink her bottle of coke to his own. " - in that case, I'm putting you to work."
[Trent Brumby] Bottles clink and he smiled at her nodding once. "Just point me the right way." Turning his gaze from her, he looked back over the storage unit, wondering where they were going to start and what she wanted done with it all. If she wanted things moved his sedan could only pack so much into the trunk or into the back seat. He can go and hire a larger vehicle, though, so that wouldn't be an issue. Today was sorting, which she would have to do, and he would organize some of the chaos.
Drinking from the bottle, he swallowed down coke that bubbled in his stomach and had him patting his stomach lightly. He'd be doing a food run later, to fill that empty stomach. For, now though, he focuses back on her, glancing over what she's wearing then taking in her facial features again. He remembers something she said to him, and, for once, voices his thoughts openly: "You're looking good today, Kora. I like those jeans on you."
[Kora] Their eyes meet when he looks up again. Her own are half-lashed against the glare of the spring sun, which beats warmly down here, offering them the illusion of summer. She drops his gaze after a moment - enough heartbeats to make a measure, enough measures to make a phrase, just long enough to make it a look rather than a glance - drops his gaze and looks down at the new jeans, the faint sheen of the new tee, the soft washed cotton, the gleam of sateen at lining the wide collar. Aware, not so much of the clothes, as she is of her body beneath them.
"Someone I know got them for me," her mouth is wry. The soda hisses softly in the bottle as she holds it against her stomach, her right arm bent in a neat ninety degree angle at the elbow, left thumb hooking casually at the belt loops. "Did a pretty good job with the fit."
Though her feet remain planted where they are, she lifts her eyes, leans her body just towards him, turns her head and stretches her chin in his direction, inhaling, deliberate but subtle, the slow smile deepening at the corners of her mouth. "I like the way you smell. Quitting's going well, yeah?"
[Trent Brumby] When she looks back up at him, with her wry mouth and steady gaze, she finds him smiling broadly and unashamedly. "I took good notice," he says of the fit. Apparently he has taken her at her word, that she liked to be looked at. Since he's not there showing her with his hands or mouth, how he appreciated what he saw, he had been assured enough to be able to voice it aloud.
His brows raise, arching curiously as she leans her head towards him and sniffs. It has him laughing quietly as she announces she likes the way he smells. He lifts his arm, sniffing at the short sleeve of his polo shirt. "I smell, awful." While he smells like cologne under it, his clothes did have a hint more than detergent and deodorants, but also of sweat, grease and hard work. Dropping his arm after, he pulls back the sleeve with the other hand, showing the glint of clear plastic stuck to his skin. "It is going well." He finds it amazing that this patch can help him quit an addictive habit, a toxin that ruins his lungs the more he continues to inhale them. Smoothing his sleeve back down, he looks over at her, holding his bottle down by his side. "Down to only a few a day, now, and getting easier each day. But I'm eating up a storm."
[Kora] Kora nods wordlessly to his comment about the fit of the clothes he purchased for her. Her left hand, the free one, unhooks from the belt loop of the jeans, though, and smooths absently back over the curve of her hip before falling down to his side.
"I'm not really a clothes horse," she flashes back then, her white teeth behind the shape of her grin. " - but it's good not to always look like a derelict, I think."
Her line of sight drops from his eyes to his arm, the glint of the plastic patch clear in the sun against his skin, then lingers on his hand, pulling back the sleeve. Before he drops his arm to his side, she reaches up and takes his hand - the tips of his fingers, really - in her own, balancing them across the long line of her index finger, her left thumb on his nails. Her own nails are almost wholly devoid of polish today. There are just a few patches left of it on the pinky and the forefinger.
With a brief look - his nails to his eyes and back again - she says, "You were working today. I don't even know what you do - but you can say no to me about things like this, you know. Or tell me, later. Tell me, I'll come later."
Then, leaning close again, with a subtle shift of her body weight, her booted feet on the concrete, she takes another deliberate breath. "No." Her voice is firm. Her eyes are on his hands, not his eyes. Her jaw, the line of her throat are clear in profile, the hollow behind her ear, too, where her hair is pulled back, away from the shape of her face. "I like the way you smell. It turns me on."
[Trent Brumby] I think you look best in my sheets. He thinks it, but doesn't say it. Or in his bath. He had particularly liked that, the way the water ran on her, the way her hair had shone - like it did now, while in the rays of the sun. Instead, he tells her: "It's good to have some clothes that keep you warm." Which is why he got them, and because then she'd have some variety and wouldn't have to sit hours in a laundromat waiting for others to dry. He had thought about getting her underwear, but, well. He'd rather give her some money for that.
Looking down at his hand when she takes it, he compares their fingers and the colour of their skin. His hand looks dirty compared to hers, because it is. His nails are cut short with just a hint of white around its edge so that it's just short of being flush with his fingertips. Although he had tried scrubbing off some grease with soap and cold water, he hadn't time to go home and use the degrease agent. There's no scabs, anymore, from fist fights and no hints of anything new in that arena either.
Lifting his gaze to look up at her, challenging. "If I hadn't wanted to come I wouldn't. But I wanted to see you and help you out." She asked, he came. It was as simple as that.
Since she's not looking at him, and his gaze roams over the profile of her face, she misses the way her words hit him right in that spot that makes the colour in his eyes blaze with instant heat. But she doesn't miss the way his voice, quiet, like it is in the bedroom, murmur: "Goddess, you're so sexy." It wasn't the most suave moment of his life, but to hear a woman say she was turned on by the way he smelled, and that he smelt good, right then. Well. . . it had his heart pumping blood harder.
[Kora] When he responds to her with that clear challenge, she shoots him a look slantwise and up, just a sweep of her dark gaze cut to the corners of her eyes, this. Her head remains still, the sunlight warm on her fair skin. This is how she meets his challenging look: briefly and wholly, the flash of sun across the surface of her eyes, an impressionistic twist of her mouth below, evident only in his peripheral vision. "Alright," she replies, her voice always low. "I take you at your word. And I'm glad you came."
His voice takes on its bedroom husk. She stills; she goes still in a way that is both subtle and preternatural in its deliberation. Two heartbeats pass, three - four - five - six - as she is still, holding her breath, holding her body in a neat line, just curved toward him, her head aslant, her hand beneath his, the pad of her thumb a warm pressure across his middle and ring fingers.
They are, absurdly, in an alley, in the spring sun, at the mouth of an open storage locker in the city's industrial ghetto, the shouts of people in the distance - kids walking home from school, dealers on the corner calling out their wares - echoing oddly through the close space of the alley, ricocheting off metal and brick and concrete, with open bottles of coke hissing in their hands.
Then she moves, pulls the hand she has captured back in a line toward her body, steps toward him, too, carefully over an open box. Rests his hand, the grease still under his fingernails, in the ridges and whorls of his fingerprints, on her hip, so that the fingers of his hand curve over denim, and his thumb touches her skin, just above the waistband of her jeans. Shaking her own empty hand free of his - now otherwise occupied - she steps in close, places her palm on his shoulder, leads her head toward his until their foreheads are close enough to touch, her mouth hovers just under his, until her nose is against his and - inhales again.
"Invite me over," she says, quiet and clear, her eyes still open, though half-lashed. " - after."
[Trent Brumby] Everything else is forgotten about. Not forgotten about, just became distant, unfocused things in the background, unimportant right at the moment where she's stepping into his space, up close and personal with her nose is against his and their eyes are level. His thumb brushes over the bare of her skin, slowly and gently, compared to the way the rest of his hand grips her hip. He doesn't jerk her closer, but he does nudge her, wanting to feel her against him again.
He wants to kiss her. Its in the way his mouth had parted and his eyes burn, and skin heats with the coursing of boiling blood. She can probably feel it in the air, the thickening of it, the way it almost crackles. Perhaps she could smell it too, the growing, raging hormones that runs through the man whose scent she breaths in, uttering words that makes him want to do very uncivilized things - in an alley, of all places.
"Come to my place, tonight." He asks her, instantly. Tells her, almost. He clarifies, not because he thinks of the mistake of telling a Garou to do something, but because he wants her to know. "I want you to come to mine. Stay the night." Breathing her in, his head tilted, sliding his nose across hers, touches her mouth so lightly its a tickle before he reminds himself and draws it back enough to inhale only her breath. "I'll cook you dinner."
[Kora] "Alright," she says, her mouth open, following his as he pulls it away. " - alright."
Her eyes are open, focused downward, on the cut of his nose, the shape of his mouth against her own. The way the warm sun washes over his cheeks, casts a sheen over the stubble he keeps so carefully groomed. He says - come to my place tonight - and she steps not just into his personal space, into the radiant heat that surrounds him, but into the hard line of his body, her right foot worming its way between his, her legs, hips, torso pressing forward, into him.
He says - stay the night - and her eyes cut just upwards to meet his. The look is wholly unfocused. They are too close to each other for the mind to resolve the disparate views fed to it by the right eye, the left eye, to meld them into a seamless whole, but she has the impression of the heat in his pale eyes, and he has the suggestion - in that moment - of the wolf in hers. "I'll eat your dinner," she says, smiling against his mouth, not kissing him, not yet. "I'll stay the night." Then she curves her free hand behind his neck, cups the base of his skull firmly, pulls him into her mouth and kisses him, deep and hungry, in an alley, in the ghetto, in the warm wash of the brilliant spring sun.
[Trent Brumby] It doesn't matter what he had to say back. She kisses him and he returns it. His thumb slides under her shirt, opening the way for the rest of his hand, which slides beyond her hip, along her waist to find her back. Fingers spread and his wide palm presses her into him. He's got a bottle in his other hand, but that doesn't stop him using his wrist and forearm to brace around her other hip, looser then the other.
He kisses her, breathing deeply through his nose and letting out a short groan, dislodged from somewhere deep in his chest and throat. She tastes of coke, like he does, and more. Unlike the first time, and even the second, he doesn't take a back seat. He chases her mouth like she had his, meeting it with the same sort of hunger and enthusiasm. There's no question who is dominant, but that's not an issue between them - he hopes.
She will, however, be the first to break it off. Since his hand is roaming up her back, towards her shoulder blades, lifting the fabric of her t.shirt to bare her skin to the sunshine and shadows around them. He's enjoying the feel of her heat, the skin under his hand, and the way she's soft beneath his touch. A direct contrast to the way she's trying to eat and claim him.
[Kora] Her left hand splays strong at the back of his neck, long fingers curving through his short dark hair, holding him close. The right comes to rest against his back, at the waist, her thumb hooking through the belt loop of his jeans, the bottle held loosely in her fingers a counterpoint to the heat of their embrace. His hand is warm against her skin; and the sun is warmer still.
She is smiling into his mouth as they kiss, breathing in deeply when she breaks away, when she pulls him away from her mouth, if need be, tightening her grip on the base of his neck, pressing the meat of her thumb between the two tendons there as she tilts his head up and away from her breathless mouth - once, twice - so that she can breathe the sort of heedless, shallow breaths that lift her shoulders and expand her lungs - moving her spine beneath his hands, lifting the shoulder blades, just, like a winged thing readying itself for flight.
The third time she breaks off, she breaks the kiss for good, opening her eyes, laughing low as she ducks her head against neck, presses her forehead against his collarbone and her mouth against his pulse before releasing him, stepping out of his embrace with a subtle smack of the coke bottle against his backside.
"Hey," there's laughter still, intimate laughter, evident in the set of her mouth, in the hush of her voice. She backpeddles from him, though, with an animal confidence, opening her arms wide in an eloquent gesture around her. " - hey, babe. Work first, play later, yeah?"
[Trent Brumby] Each time she had gripped his neck tighter he had made a sound which clearly stated he liked the way she manhandled him. Each time had left him a little breathless, eyes staring into her face as she takes in air, then kisses him again. There's plenty of things he wants to do, pull her leg up over his hip and drag her from the ground. But his other hand is full of cold bottle, and that's taking it a step further than might be appreciated. At least here and now. He can work up to that, later.
In her fingers his hair had been thick and full on the top, cut with clippers shorter on the sides to blend in neatly, nicely to the almost-curls on top his scalp. The hair is dark, black, glossy sometimes. He has better genetics then humans and a healthier diet. It does great things for his body, as well as his hair. His neck is strong, warm, well worked along the sides where it meets his shoulders, which are built by lifting weights and swimming. He has not yet developed that mountain on his shoulder, he doesn't like that look, keeping natural, not like a steroid junkie.
Then she's pulling away and his resisting hand slips down her back and over her hip, where it had all began. His longing, but he laughs, low and breathless. "I can work and play. I'm multi-talented," he promises, pleads. Still smiling, broadly, his eyes glinting. "You're killing me." But he's going to work. He accept this, with ease. He may burn up, be walking stiffly for a few moments, and be aching in places that yearn for sex against the wall - but he accepts without resentment.
[Kora] This has her laughing, open mouthed, her eyes gleaming in the raw light of the spring sun. The knot of her hair has been dislodged somewhere in the middle of all this, and is beginning to collapse like a slow avalanche, the chopsticks swept up in the movement, no longer securing anything. She tips her head back, bringing the coke bottle up to her bruised mouth, taking a long, deep drink from the contents, holding it between her thumb and forefinger the way one holds a beer at a house party, drinking from the bottle like that too, smiling around the mouth of the bottle the whole time.
"Sometimes it's better if you wait for it," she assures him, though her tone is not as arch as the words themselves seem to demand. Instead, there's a quiet thread of promise shot through them. " - you just have to trust me."
Then she's turning away from him again, bending over to tuck her coke bottle up against the interior wall, just inside the door. There's a flush to her skin, there's a certain awareness of her body in the way she walks now - or, perhaps, of his eyes on her body, the way she feels his eyes on her body, his hands on her hips when she wears the clothes he bought for her - because she needed more than half-a-load. - that suggests that he will not be the only one aching at they work.
There is work to be done, though. Straightening, she gives him a brief look, challenging, pale brows lifted over her dark eyes, then plunges back into the darkness to begin sorting.
[Trent Brumby] "Oh, I trust you." There isn't any doubt of the reality of that, either. But he's still using it to joke, to jest. "I trust you to make me really aching by the end of the day." He's not talking about moving boxes, but of the way he's watching her bend appreciatively. When she looks at him again, briefly, his brows are arched and his head is tilted, gesturing with his bottle as if to say 'see?'. As though she had done that on purpose, acutely aware of her body and his eyes on it.
But then she is walking into the storage unit and he is sighing slowly, dramatically, and casting an eye roll to the heavens. He drinks from his bottle after, shaking his head and moving in after her. The more comfortable he becomes around her, the more he is himself around her. It's refreshing. He'll never be with her like the way he is with male friends - she is definitely not one of the guys. But she is softer then some of the Garou women he has met - no, just kinder. He never expected that from a Get of Fenris. Though he doesn't think of her by her Tribe anymore. She's simply - Kora.
And now when he thinks of her by name, he remembers snippets of her; on a park bench, in the bath, across the table at a bar, above him and, later, sleeping deeply.
[Kora] "I can do." That's what she stops and says, looking back at him from the shadows of the storage locker to the sunlit alley with a chased smile, make darker by the shifted light in the interior. " - every hour on the hour, if you'd like. Though I don't own a watch, so it'll probably be more often than that, yeah?"
The banter makes light work of heavy business. In the end, there's not that much here. There is little enough to show of a life lived and a lift lost. The bikes and the tools she leaves to Trent's hands and his discretion, carting anything that looks like it should go with them to the back of the place. The small appliances - the heaters, the hot plate, the coffee pot - she packs into the milk crates and piles them on the far wall, with the mini-fridge and the mattresses, upright now, flat against the wall.
There are boxes of clothes from Garou who have come and gone - who have moved on, or died here. One has cowboy boots, and the world's largest collection of midriff baring tops with words like PRINCESS written out in pink glitter. Kora kicks that box over to the donate pile, but not before fishing out box after box after box of shotgun shells from the bottom.
"Christ," she says, quiet at the amount of ammunition. She offers it to him, wordless, and packs it away if he refuses it. This is the afternoon's work; slow sometimes, bleak sometimes. When it is bleakest, she tells him stories. Tells him about the last battle she fought with Kemp - how the Alpha stomped through the floorboards while she charged down the stairs. How they won, sparing him the goriest of the details. How they weren't even hurt. Tells him about Connor and Moira again, less obliquely than she did before. How the Fianna challenged for Moira; how the Jarl made Conner fight her. And, grinning, tells him how she kicked Connor's ass, and they gave him Moira anyway, because she wanted him. Because Kemp wanted to see her smile again.
And sometimes, she stands too close to him in the space, shoulder to shoulder, maybe, lifts her chin back at him in a smiling challenge, arch and wordless.
The sun runs through the sky. There's not as much here as might have been guessed at, from the disarray when he arrived. By evening, the sun settling, the shadows cooling precipitously, the air inside the storage unit colder, the boxes sorted, now, into three piles - she steps out into the dusk strewn alley, jingling the keys to the place in her left hand, looking back at him over her shoulder as he emerges. "Appreciate it."
[Trent Brumby] It makes him grin, in that quiet way he does, but he doesn't take up that challenge. He'd enjoy it, if it was somewhere other then a storage shed, sorting through a deceased Garou's evidence of life. Maybe another time, not today, he had let her win that one without a fuss.
Throughout the day he listens to her talk, asks a few questions here and there, wanting to know more about her and everyone she's talking about. He likes to listen to her. She had a way with words and draws him in, making him feel like he knew these Garou too and were a part of their lives. Sometimes it makes him acutely aware of how he lives on the very fringe of society, of everything. Sometimes he thinks that maybe that is lonely. He'll reflect on that later, when, ironically, he is alone.
That Princess top, had him pause, brows arched as he had handed the ammunition back. He didn't want it and didn't really know what to do with it. The Garou would find better use of it. "Hey, is that yours?" He asks on the top, reaching to pick it up and hold it across his chest with a smirk. Looking up to her, he had a gleam in his eye. Clearly he was joking, taking a moment out to tease. He doesn't continue with it and say how she'd look cute in it. Because the idea is absurd and its a little sexist. It had been returned to its box for goodwill, after.
Challenging times had a hand stroke along her back, a lean in and a look to her mouth, before he pulled back and continued on. He could tease, too. She'd find that out through the process.
But at the end of it, he's walking out, feeling satisfied that she had an extra pair of hands and some moral support throughout the day. It had to be hard on her, moving on from this, but he'd done what he could to lighten the load, and as he walked out of the storage unit, he runs his hands through his hair and glances over to her. "Don't mention it. If you want, tomorrow, I can pack the car up and get those boxes off to charities."
[Kora] "Brilliant," Kora says, her voice quiet, as they exit, as she turns and rises up to arch on the balls of her feet, grabbing the handle of the rolltop door and pulling it down closed behind them, a great metal clatter. "Seriously, I appreciate it. You've got the key. You know what goes. We'll keep the lease on this place for the rest of the stuff 'til we find a packhouse. So," she's more somber, after all this, but stands close to him, closer than she did when the day started, enjoying his presence.
The alley different now than it was at mid-day, sunk into shadows that take on gradations of blue and charcoal, that go black at the seams of things, where the warehouse bleeds into the asphalt, where the dumpsters are set back, dark, against the crumbling brick and morter stores that front the street opposite. The buildings are old, nearly a century, poorly maintained for at least half that time, covered in strange additions - wood and vinyl, brick and glass - with boarded over windows like staring eyes and burned out lintels, or newer security doors as ward against whatever luked here. Whatever will lurk here, again, when they are gone.
Then, rising to the balls of her feet in the blue shadows, she leans up and forward, gives him a quick kiss, fierce enough to scrape her teeth on his lower lip before she releases him, and, stepping back, hooks a finger through the waistband of his jeans. Tugs him after her.
"C'mon," she says, smelling of sweat and dust and shadows now, at the day's end. "I'm hungry."
There's a husk to her voice. She doesn't mean for food.
[Trent Brumby] "Do you need somewhere to stay? I've got a spare room." He doesn't know how many people are in the pack, but if they needed somewhere, other than the Brotherhood he was offering up his apartment. He wouldn't be offended if they refused either. It was an option, though. One that he hadn't thought about given before.
Watching her pull down the roller door, he had smiled at the way she moved. He swore that Garou had bones and muscles in places that Kinfolk and humans didn't, they had a peculiar way about them. Or perhaps he could just sense the animal beneath, the instinct of hunts and knowledge that this is what Garou, Kora, can do. Not so much of a visual way, but the way the mind has a power over everything else and tricks him into thinking she was more graceful then a dancer.
Tugged by his jeans has him chuckling low, and boots shuffling across the concrete as he leans gently back to ensure she made a show of pulling him along. "Are you starving?" His voice, maybe, hopeful - it's certainly taunting. While she drags him towards the car, he's fishing out his keys from his pocket. The doors are already unlocked.
[Kora] "We've got a place," she assured him, turning back to look at him over her shoulder, her eyes flashing in the light of the gloaming. " - not really a place, but a place to stay. It works for now. We just need something bigger; something that'll be solid enough to - " she pauses, considering him, her eyes fast on his face. " - solid enough that the spirits can see it, too. Really, that's what we're looking for; and I'm not sure that you'd want us there anyway.
"Though," the flash of light in her eyes settles to a supple gleam of appreciation as she continues, her mouth twisting at the corners, "- it's pretty damn cool of you to offer."
The car tweets its response when he fishes out his keys, unlocks the doors. The sound seems shrill after the muted silence of the storage locker, just their breathing once she turned off the speakers. Just her voice sometimes. Just his.
Then he taunts her, hangs back enough to make a show of resistance. She turns around, the trunk of the car behind her, the headlights and interior dome light on, glowly soft yellow in the blue shadows. She turns around, pivots, and, tucking all four fingers into the waistband of his jeans, pulls him forward, pulls him forward and steps into him without touching him, so close except where her knuckles are tucked against the hard muscle of his abdomen, except where their hips almost meet, except where her open mouth hovers close to his.
"Yeah - " she breathes the word with an open mouth, her own a scant sixteenth of an inch from his, lifted at the corners so that he cannot be quite sure whether she means to kiss him drowning or bite him. "I fucking starving."
[Trent Brumby] He offered and she had other plans, which was fine with him. He had nodded, only, in a simple acceptance.
Her fingers worm into his pants, which are snug against his waist, without need of belt. His skin is warm and the muscles hard under the soft flesh and the finer, also groomed, hair. Jerked forward he let out a surprised laugh, cut short by the way she's breathing into his mouth again, swearing this time and emphasizing with it. She really is sexy. She really does know how to use words and tone to get the best reaction. Now that he has both hands free, unlike before, she finds her waist behind grabbed. He steps forward, into her, guiding her with his grip to put her closer to the opened car, putting her backside into it. Hands slip around to her back and explore it openly.
"You gonna make it home?" His place, he means. But that's too many words for him to say right then. He ducks his head suddenly, dips it under her jaw to lay the beginning of slow kisses along the line of her jaw. He doesn't go for her neck right away, startling a Garou with that sort of movement is likely to get him some claws in his guts before he can even think. Instincts and training; Garou are bred for War, not making out in alleyways.
[Kora] It is her turn to let out a throat-caught groan of want, or frustration, some frission of the two, worked back together into something hungry and immediate. "I want you." He drops his mouth to her jaw, and she closes her half-opened eyes, tipping her pale head back. She'd adjusted the knot three times, four as they worked through the afternoon, and now it sways, still holding, against her shoulders and upper spine as she offers him the under side of her jaw, and lifts her face to the evening sky, such a present, pregnant hue - a strip of blue, cool and dark, though lighter than the native color of her eyes - evident between the buildings of the alley.
She sits back against the car, opens her thighs to his hips, breathing with a deliberation he can feel as his broad hands roam her back, the flanking muscles, the subtle surrow of her long spine between between. Three harsh breaths, four, as her fingers, tucked between them, the knuckles hard, the fingers warm, worm their way over to open the button on his pants. The fabric gives, just, as the button slides through the buttonhole, and she follows the movement of his head with her right cheek, finds the vicinity of his ears with his mouth. "That depends," she equivocates, as if her hands were not at work between them. " - are you gonna let me?"
[Trent Brumby] She doesn't offer any growls, but encourages him by tilting her head back. He takes the offer and drops his mouth lower, feeling the line of her throat with his mouth. There's even a hint of tongue along the side, tasting the salt of sweat and dirt from the day. Back up again, to her jaw, closer to her ear now that she's talking into his.
Her fingers had undone the button of his pants, opening it up enough to loosen the waist of it around his hips, making it less snug and fitting, more prone to fall down solid thighs. Drawing in a sharp breath, his lungs fill with air and his heart thuds stronger, harder. "Shit," he says, with feeling. Pulling back, he looks at her, eyes wider, brighter, barely believing he's getting his pants unbuttoned in an alleyway by a Garou that wants him in bed NOW. "You win." He couldn't do it here. It wouldn't be right. He had more respect for her then that.
Grabbing her waist, he pulls her from the car and in against her, stepping back in the process. "Come on. Into the car with you, Trouble." It's affectionate, amused, barely containing the way he looks at her with such desire.
[Kora] "I'm giving you trouble, am I?" she demands, as her feet hit the asphalt again, each a faint thud she cannot hear about the charged beating of her heart. He can taste the heat of her pulse at the base of her throat; the memory of the sun on her skin, her sweat, the grit of dust from the space, and her skin underneath it, warm as if she has been laying out in the sun, hotter where her blood runs through it, close to the surface.
"That's not even fair." She doesn't sound aggrieved. Her voice is raw and low, it burns more in her throat, in the vault at the back of her soft palate, that low resonance of husky laughter tinging the words with sunset colors - crimson and amber, all want. "You - " she follows in his wake, untangles her right arm from his body, presses her left palm against his lower stomach, where the groomed hair trails down - and reaches forward, catching his pants tugging the waistband closed, buttoning them with the same rather deliberate desire she displayed when she unbuttoned them, taking her time to savor the gleam in his eyes, the way he watches her, watching him. " - you were definitely goading me."
Then: "Listen, buddy." She steps forward again, her gait swaying, predatory, into him. " - you've got ten minutes to get me home. And maybe another minute after that to start - " brushing past him, but no. She leans in for another kiss in passing, breathes her demand for sex, into his mouth, then continues on, circling round the car without a look back now, headed for the passenger's side.
If he wants to meet his deadline, he won't be opening the door for her, tonight.
[Trent Brumby] His glad for the sort of underwear he wears, those snug boxer sorts that keep everything neatly arranged and stops assets from being caught in zippers and buttons. He had dropped his gaze to look at her hands working at his pants, which, well, to be honest, had him thinking other things - clear as day on his face and in his expression, before he's looking back at her with it written across his face.
There's no denying it. His grin is broad and sudden, saying everything. He was. He would do it again, maybe even in a few moments, maybe later or another day. He really enjoyed goading her and the way she reacted. He watched her walk away from him, after leaving him wanting for more kisses and breath on his mouth, so much that he had actually leaned after her for it, then caught himself short.
"Or?" He wanted to hear the punishment, sure that she'd be creative, sure that it would spur him on more and make him tempt between the two. But he's walking around to her side. She'd get there to open the door first, but he'd close it once she's in before moving over to the drivers to start up the car and pull on seat belts.
[Kora] "Or I'll make you wait," her voice is almost companionable, then. Except for the way she holds her body, her the way she settles her hips into the bucket seat of his sedan, the way her eyes spark when she looks up, reaching out to close the door and finds him standing there, already shutting it for her. The way her eyes drop from his gaze to his mouth to his waist, and lower, all with the same intent gaze. The way her mouth curls around that knowledge.
When he circles the car, climbs back into the driver's side, disappointed perhaps in her challenge, she is looking out the windshield at the gloaming, the way the buildings are cast in shadow while the sky is illumined, brilliant.
"I'll make you wait so long," absently, looking at the faint sketch of her reflection in the windshield. " - you'll be begging for it."
There is a simple shrug, neat, elegant beneath the bisecting seatbelt. She can still taste him in her mouth. She can still feel his hands on her body. When he looks at her, she remembers how he touches her. And when he touches her, she remembers how he looks. She moistens her lips, pale wide mouth, swollen, pink tongue. "Then I'll make you wait some more."
[Trent Brumby] The seats belt clips home and the engine starts up. He's looking at her, considering what she's saying, taking in the way she's burning in the passenger seat, knowing she would do what she said. Or at least having faith that she had the discipline to go through with her word.
He looks away, flicks on headlights and pushes the car into gear. "You would, too, and the thought really makes me hard." This comes from him quietly, honest enough to hear the light strangle of groan in his throat, similar to sounds she's already heard, muffled in bedsheets and her pale hair. The words could be misunderstood, but he doesn't think of it then and there, too wrapped up in what he was feeling, and then, in the way he's navigating the darkness of an alleyway to head through ghetto streets. Trying to make it home in ten minutes.
"Those were his." She says, watching him just up and aslant, the subtle engagement of a smile just evident in the tension of the fine muscles and fine skin around her eyes. "I have my own. Anyway, I don't need keys," her, the faint smile is realized, curves sure and bittersweet across her elegant mouth. " - if I really want to get in."
He has all day. "Alright then," reaching out across her body to clink her bottle of coke to his own. " - in that case, I'm putting you to work."
[Trent Brumby] Bottles clink and he smiled at her nodding once. "Just point me the right way." Turning his gaze from her, he looked back over the storage unit, wondering where they were going to start and what she wanted done with it all. If she wanted things moved his sedan could only pack so much into the trunk or into the back seat. He can go and hire a larger vehicle, though, so that wouldn't be an issue. Today was sorting, which she would have to do, and he would organize some of the chaos.
Drinking from the bottle, he swallowed down coke that bubbled in his stomach and had him patting his stomach lightly. He'd be doing a food run later, to fill that empty stomach. For, now though, he focuses back on her, glancing over what she's wearing then taking in her facial features again. He remembers something she said to him, and, for once, voices his thoughts openly: "You're looking good today, Kora. I like those jeans on you."
[Kora] Their eyes meet when he looks up again. Her own are half-lashed against the glare of the spring sun, which beats warmly down here, offering them the illusion of summer. She drops his gaze after a moment - enough heartbeats to make a measure, enough measures to make a phrase, just long enough to make it a look rather than a glance - drops his gaze and looks down at the new jeans, the faint sheen of the new tee, the soft washed cotton, the gleam of sateen at lining the wide collar. Aware, not so much of the clothes, as she is of her body beneath them.
"Someone I know got them for me," her mouth is wry. The soda hisses softly in the bottle as she holds it against her stomach, her right arm bent in a neat ninety degree angle at the elbow, left thumb hooking casually at the belt loops. "Did a pretty good job with the fit."
Though her feet remain planted where they are, she lifts her eyes, leans her body just towards him, turns her head and stretches her chin in his direction, inhaling, deliberate but subtle, the slow smile deepening at the corners of her mouth. "I like the way you smell. Quitting's going well, yeah?"
[Trent Brumby] When she looks back up at him, with her wry mouth and steady gaze, she finds him smiling broadly and unashamedly. "I took good notice," he says of the fit. Apparently he has taken her at her word, that she liked to be looked at. Since he's not there showing her with his hands or mouth, how he appreciated what he saw, he had been assured enough to be able to voice it aloud.
His brows raise, arching curiously as she leans her head towards him and sniffs. It has him laughing quietly as she announces she likes the way he smells. He lifts his arm, sniffing at the short sleeve of his polo shirt. "I smell, awful." While he smells like cologne under it, his clothes did have a hint more than detergent and deodorants, but also of sweat, grease and hard work. Dropping his arm after, he pulls back the sleeve with the other hand, showing the glint of clear plastic stuck to his skin. "It is going well." He finds it amazing that this patch can help him quit an addictive habit, a toxin that ruins his lungs the more he continues to inhale them. Smoothing his sleeve back down, he looks over at her, holding his bottle down by his side. "Down to only a few a day, now, and getting easier each day. But I'm eating up a storm."
[Kora] Kora nods wordlessly to his comment about the fit of the clothes he purchased for her. Her left hand, the free one, unhooks from the belt loop of the jeans, though, and smooths absently back over the curve of her hip before falling down to his side.
"I'm not really a clothes horse," she flashes back then, her white teeth behind the shape of her grin. " - but it's good not to always look like a derelict, I think."
Her line of sight drops from his eyes to his arm, the glint of the plastic patch clear in the sun against his skin, then lingers on his hand, pulling back the sleeve. Before he drops his arm to his side, she reaches up and takes his hand - the tips of his fingers, really - in her own, balancing them across the long line of her index finger, her left thumb on his nails. Her own nails are almost wholly devoid of polish today. There are just a few patches left of it on the pinky and the forefinger.
With a brief look - his nails to his eyes and back again - she says, "You were working today. I don't even know what you do - but you can say no to me about things like this, you know. Or tell me, later. Tell me, I'll come later."
Then, leaning close again, with a subtle shift of her body weight, her booted feet on the concrete, she takes another deliberate breath. "No." Her voice is firm. Her eyes are on his hands, not his eyes. Her jaw, the line of her throat are clear in profile, the hollow behind her ear, too, where her hair is pulled back, away from the shape of her face. "I like the way you smell. It turns me on."
[Trent Brumby] I think you look best in my sheets. He thinks it, but doesn't say it. Or in his bath. He had particularly liked that, the way the water ran on her, the way her hair had shone - like it did now, while in the rays of the sun. Instead, he tells her: "It's good to have some clothes that keep you warm." Which is why he got them, and because then she'd have some variety and wouldn't have to sit hours in a laundromat waiting for others to dry. He had thought about getting her underwear, but, well. He'd rather give her some money for that.
Looking down at his hand when she takes it, he compares their fingers and the colour of their skin. His hand looks dirty compared to hers, because it is. His nails are cut short with just a hint of white around its edge so that it's just short of being flush with his fingertips. Although he had tried scrubbing off some grease with soap and cold water, he hadn't time to go home and use the degrease agent. There's no scabs, anymore, from fist fights and no hints of anything new in that arena either.
Lifting his gaze to look up at her, challenging. "If I hadn't wanted to come I wouldn't. But I wanted to see you and help you out." She asked, he came. It was as simple as that.
Since she's not looking at him, and his gaze roams over the profile of her face, she misses the way her words hit him right in that spot that makes the colour in his eyes blaze with instant heat. But she doesn't miss the way his voice, quiet, like it is in the bedroom, murmur: "Goddess, you're so sexy." It wasn't the most suave moment of his life, but to hear a woman say she was turned on by the way he smelled, and that he smelt good, right then. Well. . . it had his heart pumping blood harder.
[Kora] When he responds to her with that clear challenge, she shoots him a look slantwise and up, just a sweep of her dark gaze cut to the corners of her eyes, this. Her head remains still, the sunlight warm on her fair skin. This is how she meets his challenging look: briefly and wholly, the flash of sun across the surface of her eyes, an impressionistic twist of her mouth below, evident only in his peripheral vision. "Alright," she replies, her voice always low. "I take you at your word. And I'm glad you came."
His voice takes on its bedroom husk. She stills; she goes still in a way that is both subtle and preternatural in its deliberation. Two heartbeats pass, three - four - five - six - as she is still, holding her breath, holding her body in a neat line, just curved toward him, her head aslant, her hand beneath his, the pad of her thumb a warm pressure across his middle and ring fingers.
They are, absurdly, in an alley, in the spring sun, at the mouth of an open storage locker in the city's industrial ghetto, the shouts of people in the distance - kids walking home from school, dealers on the corner calling out their wares - echoing oddly through the close space of the alley, ricocheting off metal and brick and concrete, with open bottles of coke hissing in their hands.
Then she moves, pulls the hand she has captured back in a line toward her body, steps toward him, too, carefully over an open box. Rests his hand, the grease still under his fingernails, in the ridges and whorls of his fingerprints, on her hip, so that the fingers of his hand curve over denim, and his thumb touches her skin, just above the waistband of her jeans. Shaking her own empty hand free of his - now otherwise occupied - she steps in close, places her palm on his shoulder, leads her head toward his until their foreheads are close enough to touch, her mouth hovers just under his, until her nose is against his and - inhales again.
"Invite me over," she says, quiet and clear, her eyes still open, though half-lashed. " - after."
[Trent Brumby] Everything else is forgotten about. Not forgotten about, just became distant, unfocused things in the background, unimportant right at the moment where she's stepping into his space, up close and personal with her nose is against his and their eyes are level. His thumb brushes over the bare of her skin, slowly and gently, compared to the way the rest of his hand grips her hip. He doesn't jerk her closer, but he does nudge her, wanting to feel her against him again.
He wants to kiss her. Its in the way his mouth had parted and his eyes burn, and skin heats with the coursing of boiling blood. She can probably feel it in the air, the thickening of it, the way it almost crackles. Perhaps she could smell it too, the growing, raging hormones that runs through the man whose scent she breaths in, uttering words that makes him want to do very uncivilized things - in an alley, of all places.
"Come to my place, tonight." He asks her, instantly. Tells her, almost. He clarifies, not because he thinks of the mistake of telling a Garou to do something, but because he wants her to know. "I want you to come to mine. Stay the night." Breathing her in, his head tilted, sliding his nose across hers, touches her mouth so lightly its a tickle before he reminds himself and draws it back enough to inhale only her breath. "I'll cook you dinner."
[Kora] "Alright," she says, her mouth open, following his as he pulls it away. " - alright."
Her eyes are open, focused downward, on the cut of his nose, the shape of his mouth against her own. The way the warm sun washes over his cheeks, casts a sheen over the stubble he keeps so carefully groomed. He says - come to my place tonight - and she steps not just into his personal space, into the radiant heat that surrounds him, but into the hard line of his body, her right foot worming its way between his, her legs, hips, torso pressing forward, into him.
He says - stay the night - and her eyes cut just upwards to meet his. The look is wholly unfocused. They are too close to each other for the mind to resolve the disparate views fed to it by the right eye, the left eye, to meld them into a seamless whole, but she has the impression of the heat in his pale eyes, and he has the suggestion - in that moment - of the wolf in hers. "I'll eat your dinner," she says, smiling against his mouth, not kissing him, not yet. "I'll stay the night." Then she curves her free hand behind his neck, cups the base of his skull firmly, pulls him into her mouth and kisses him, deep and hungry, in an alley, in the ghetto, in the warm wash of the brilliant spring sun.
[Trent Brumby] It doesn't matter what he had to say back. She kisses him and he returns it. His thumb slides under her shirt, opening the way for the rest of his hand, which slides beyond her hip, along her waist to find her back. Fingers spread and his wide palm presses her into him. He's got a bottle in his other hand, but that doesn't stop him using his wrist and forearm to brace around her other hip, looser then the other.
He kisses her, breathing deeply through his nose and letting out a short groan, dislodged from somewhere deep in his chest and throat. She tastes of coke, like he does, and more. Unlike the first time, and even the second, he doesn't take a back seat. He chases her mouth like she had his, meeting it with the same sort of hunger and enthusiasm. There's no question who is dominant, but that's not an issue between them - he hopes.
She will, however, be the first to break it off. Since his hand is roaming up her back, towards her shoulder blades, lifting the fabric of her t.shirt to bare her skin to the sunshine and shadows around them. He's enjoying the feel of her heat, the skin under his hand, and the way she's soft beneath his touch. A direct contrast to the way she's trying to eat and claim him.
[Kora] Her left hand splays strong at the back of his neck, long fingers curving through his short dark hair, holding him close. The right comes to rest against his back, at the waist, her thumb hooking through the belt loop of his jeans, the bottle held loosely in her fingers a counterpoint to the heat of their embrace. His hand is warm against her skin; and the sun is warmer still.
She is smiling into his mouth as they kiss, breathing in deeply when she breaks away, when she pulls him away from her mouth, if need be, tightening her grip on the base of his neck, pressing the meat of her thumb between the two tendons there as she tilts his head up and away from her breathless mouth - once, twice - so that she can breathe the sort of heedless, shallow breaths that lift her shoulders and expand her lungs - moving her spine beneath his hands, lifting the shoulder blades, just, like a winged thing readying itself for flight.
The third time she breaks off, she breaks the kiss for good, opening her eyes, laughing low as she ducks her head against neck, presses her forehead against his collarbone and her mouth against his pulse before releasing him, stepping out of his embrace with a subtle smack of the coke bottle against his backside.
"Hey," there's laughter still, intimate laughter, evident in the set of her mouth, in the hush of her voice. She backpeddles from him, though, with an animal confidence, opening her arms wide in an eloquent gesture around her. " - hey, babe. Work first, play later, yeah?"
[Trent Brumby] Each time she had gripped his neck tighter he had made a sound which clearly stated he liked the way she manhandled him. Each time had left him a little breathless, eyes staring into her face as she takes in air, then kisses him again. There's plenty of things he wants to do, pull her leg up over his hip and drag her from the ground. But his other hand is full of cold bottle, and that's taking it a step further than might be appreciated. At least here and now. He can work up to that, later.
In her fingers his hair had been thick and full on the top, cut with clippers shorter on the sides to blend in neatly, nicely to the almost-curls on top his scalp. The hair is dark, black, glossy sometimes. He has better genetics then humans and a healthier diet. It does great things for his body, as well as his hair. His neck is strong, warm, well worked along the sides where it meets his shoulders, which are built by lifting weights and swimming. He has not yet developed that mountain on his shoulder, he doesn't like that look, keeping natural, not like a steroid junkie.
Then she's pulling away and his resisting hand slips down her back and over her hip, where it had all began. His longing, but he laughs, low and breathless. "I can work and play. I'm multi-talented," he promises, pleads. Still smiling, broadly, his eyes glinting. "You're killing me." But he's going to work. He accept this, with ease. He may burn up, be walking stiffly for a few moments, and be aching in places that yearn for sex against the wall - but he accepts without resentment.
[Kora] This has her laughing, open mouthed, her eyes gleaming in the raw light of the spring sun. The knot of her hair has been dislodged somewhere in the middle of all this, and is beginning to collapse like a slow avalanche, the chopsticks swept up in the movement, no longer securing anything. She tips her head back, bringing the coke bottle up to her bruised mouth, taking a long, deep drink from the contents, holding it between her thumb and forefinger the way one holds a beer at a house party, drinking from the bottle like that too, smiling around the mouth of the bottle the whole time.
"Sometimes it's better if you wait for it," she assures him, though her tone is not as arch as the words themselves seem to demand. Instead, there's a quiet thread of promise shot through them. " - you just have to trust me."
Then she's turning away from him again, bending over to tuck her coke bottle up against the interior wall, just inside the door. There's a flush to her skin, there's a certain awareness of her body in the way she walks now - or, perhaps, of his eyes on her body, the way she feels his eyes on her body, his hands on her hips when she wears the clothes he bought for her - because she needed more than half-a-load. - that suggests that he will not be the only one aching at they work.
There is work to be done, though. Straightening, she gives him a brief look, challenging, pale brows lifted over her dark eyes, then plunges back into the darkness to begin sorting.
[Trent Brumby] "Oh, I trust you." There isn't any doubt of the reality of that, either. But he's still using it to joke, to jest. "I trust you to make me really aching by the end of the day." He's not talking about moving boxes, but of the way he's watching her bend appreciatively. When she looks at him again, briefly, his brows are arched and his head is tilted, gesturing with his bottle as if to say 'see?'. As though she had done that on purpose, acutely aware of her body and his eyes on it.
But then she is walking into the storage unit and he is sighing slowly, dramatically, and casting an eye roll to the heavens. He drinks from his bottle after, shaking his head and moving in after her. The more comfortable he becomes around her, the more he is himself around her. It's refreshing. He'll never be with her like the way he is with male friends - she is definitely not one of the guys. But she is softer then some of the Garou women he has met - no, just kinder. He never expected that from a Get of Fenris. Though he doesn't think of her by her Tribe anymore. She's simply - Kora.
And now when he thinks of her by name, he remembers snippets of her; on a park bench, in the bath, across the table at a bar, above him and, later, sleeping deeply.
[Kora] "I can do." That's what she stops and says, looking back at him from the shadows of the storage locker to the sunlit alley with a chased smile, make darker by the shifted light in the interior. " - every hour on the hour, if you'd like. Though I don't own a watch, so it'll probably be more often than that, yeah?"
The banter makes light work of heavy business. In the end, there's not that much here. There is little enough to show of a life lived and a lift lost. The bikes and the tools she leaves to Trent's hands and his discretion, carting anything that looks like it should go with them to the back of the place. The small appliances - the heaters, the hot plate, the coffee pot - she packs into the milk crates and piles them on the far wall, with the mini-fridge and the mattresses, upright now, flat against the wall.
There are boxes of clothes from Garou who have come and gone - who have moved on, or died here. One has cowboy boots, and the world's largest collection of midriff baring tops with words like PRINCESS written out in pink glitter. Kora kicks that box over to the donate pile, but not before fishing out box after box after box of shotgun shells from the bottom.
"Christ," she says, quiet at the amount of ammunition. She offers it to him, wordless, and packs it away if he refuses it. This is the afternoon's work; slow sometimes, bleak sometimes. When it is bleakest, she tells him stories. Tells him about the last battle she fought with Kemp - how the Alpha stomped through the floorboards while she charged down the stairs. How they won, sparing him the goriest of the details. How they weren't even hurt. Tells him about Connor and Moira again, less obliquely than she did before. How the Fianna challenged for Moira; how the Jarl made Conner fight her. And, grinning, tells him how she kicked Connor's ass, and they gave him Moira anyway, because she wanted him. Because Kemp wanted to see her smile again.
And sometimes, she stands too close to him in the space, shoulder to shoulder, maybe, lifts her chin back at him in a smiling challenge, arch and wordless.
The sun runs through the sky. There's not as much here as might have been guessed at, from the disarray when he arrived. By evening, the sun settling, the shadows cooling precipitously, the air inside the storage unit colder, the boxes sorted, now, into three piles - she steps out into the dusk strewn alley, jingling the keys to the place in her left hand, looking back at him over her shoulder as he emerges. "Appreciate it."
[Trent Brumby] It makes him grin, in that quiet way he does, but he doesn't take up that challenge. He'd enjoy it, if it was somewhere other then a storage shed, sorting through a deceased Garou's evidence of life. Maybe another time, not today, he had let her win that one without a fuss.
Throughout the day he listens to her talk, asks a few questions here and there, wanting to know more about her and everyone she's talking about. He likes to listen to her. She had a way with words and draws him in, making him feel like he knew these Garou too and were a part of their lives. Sometimes it makes him acutely aware of how he lives on the very fringe of society, of everything. Sometimes he thinks that maybe that is lonely. He'll reflect on that later, when, ironically, he is alone.
That Princess top, had him pause, brows arched as he had handed the ammunition back. He didn't want it and didn't really know what to do with it. The Garou would find better use of it. "Hey, is that yours?" He asks on the top, reaching to pick it up and hold it across his chest with a smirk. Looking up to her, he had a gleam in his eye. Clearly he was joking, taking a moment out to tease. He doesn't continue with it and say how she'd look cute in it. Because the idea is absurd and its a little sexist. It had been returned to its box for goodwill, after.
Challenging times had a hand stroke along her back, a lean in and a look to her mouth, before he pulled back and continued on. He could tease, too. She'd find that out through the process.
But at the end of it, he's walking out, feeling satisfied that she had an extra pair of hands and some moral support throughout the day. It had to be hard on her, moving on from this, but he'd done what he could to lighten the load, and as he walked out of the storage unit, he runs his hands through his hair and glances over to her. "Don't mention it. If you want, tomorrow, I can pack the car up and get those boxes off to charities."
[Kora] "Brilliant," Kora says, her voice quiet, as they exit, as she turns and rises up to arch on the balls of her feet, grabbing the handle of the rolltop door and pulling it down closed behind them, a great metal clatter. "Seriously, I appreciate it. You've got the key. You know what goes. We'll keep the lease on this place for the rest of the stuff 'til we find a packhouse. So," she's more somber, after all this, but stands close to him, closer than she did when the day started, enjoying his presence.
The alley different now than it was at mid-day, sunk into shadows that take on gradations of blue and charcoal, that go black at the seams of things, where the warehouse bleeds into the asphalt, where the dumpsters are set back, dark, against the crumbling brick and morter stores that front the street opposite. The buildings are old, nearly a century, poorly maintained for at least half that time, covered in strange additions - wood and vinyl, brick and glass - with boarded over windows like staring eyes and burned out lintels, or newer security doors as ward against whatever luked here. Whatever will lurk here, again, when they are gone.
Then, rising to the balls of her feet in the blue shadows, she leans up and forward, gives him a quick kiss, fierce enough to scrape her teeth on his lower lip before she releases him, and, stepping back, hooks a finger through the waistband of his jeans. Tugs him after her.
"C'mon," she says, smelling of sweat and dust and shadows now, at the day's end. "I'm hungry."
There's a husk to her voice. She doesn't mean for food.
[Trent Brumby] "Do you need somewhere to stay? I've got a spare room." He doesn't know how many people are in the pack, but if they needed somewhere, other than the Brotherhood he was offering up his apartment. He wouldn't be offended if they refused either. It was an option, though. One that he hadn't thought about given before.
Watching her pull down the roller door, he had smiled at the way she moved. He swore that Garou had bones and muscles in places that Kinfolk and humans didn't, they had a peculiar way about them. Or perhaps he could just sense the animal beneath, the instinct of hunts and knowledge that this is what Garou, Kora, can do. Not so much of a visual way, but the way the mind has a power over everything else and tricks him into thinking she was more graceful then a dancer.
Tugged by his jeans has him chuckling low, and boots shuffling across the concrete as he leans gently back to ensure she made a show of pulling him along. "Are you starving?" His voice, maybe, hopeful - it's certainly taunting. While she drags him towards the car, he's fishing out his keys from his pocket. The doors are already unlocked.
[Kora] "We've got a place," she assured him, turning back to look at him over her shoulder, her eyes flashing in the light of the gloaming. " - not really a place, but a place to stay. It works for now. We just need something bigger; something that'll be solid enough to - " she pauses, considering him, her eyes fast on his face. " - solid enough that the spirits can see it, too. Really, that's what we're looking for; and I'm not sure that you'd want us there anyway.
"Though," the flash of light in her eyes settles to a supple gleam of appreciation as she continues, her mouth twisting at the corners, "- it's pretty damn cool of you to offer."
The car tweets its response when he fishes out his keys, unlocks the doors. The sound seems shrill after the muted silence of the storage locker, just their breathing once she turned off the speakers. Just her voice sometimes. Just his.
Then he taunts her, hangs back enough to make a show of resistance. She turns around, the trunk of the car behind her, the headlights and interior dome light on, glowly soft yellow in the blue shadows. She turns around, pivots, and, tucking all four fingers into the waistband of his jeans, pulls him forward, pulls him forward and steps into him without touching him, so close except where her knuckles are tucked against the hard muscle of his abdomen, except where their hips almost meet, except where her open mouth hovers close to his.
"Yeah - " she breathes the word with an open mouth, her own a scant sixteenth of an inch from his, lifted at the corners so that he cannot be quite sure whether she means to kiss him drowning or bite him. "I fucking starving."
[Trent Brumby] He offered and she had other plans, which was fine with him. He had nodded, only, in a simple acceptance.
Her fingers worm into his pants, which are snug against his waist, without need of belt. His skin is warm and the muscles hard under the soft flesh and the finer, also groomed, hair. Jerked forward he let out a surprised laugh, cut short by the way she's breathing into his mouth again, swearing this time and emphasizing with it. She really is sexy. She really does know how to use words and tone to get the best reaction. Now that he has both hands free, unlike before, she finds her waist behind grabbed. He steps forward, into her, guiding her with his grip to put her closer to the opened car, putting her backside into it. Hands slip around to her back and explore it openly.
"You gonna make it home?" His place, he means. But that's too many words for him to say right then. He ducks his head suddenly, dips it under her jaw to lay the beginning of slow kisses along the line of her jaw. He doesn't go for her neck right away, startling a Garou with that sort of movement is likely to get him some claws in his guts before he can even think. Instincts and training; Garou are bred for War, not making out in alleyways.
[Kora] It is her turn to let out a throat-caught groan of want, or frustration, some frission of the two, worked back together into something hungry and immediate. "I want you." He drops his mouth to her jaw, and she closes her half-opened eyes, tipping her pale head back. She'd adjusted the knot three times, four as they worked through the afternoon, and now it sways, still holding, against her shoulders and upper spine as she offers him the under side of her jaw, and lifts her face to the evening sky, such a present, pregnant hue - a strip of blue, cool and dark, though lighter than the native color of her eyes - evident between the buildings of the alley.
She sits back against the car, opens her thighs to his hips, breathing with a deliberation he can feel as his broad hands roam her back, the flanking muscles, the subtle surrow of her long spine between between. Three harsh breaths, four, as her fingers, tucked between them, the knuckles hard, the fingers warm, worm their way over to open the button on his pants. The fabric gives, just, as the button slides through the buttonhole, and she follows the movement of his head with her right cheek, finds the vicinity of his ears with his mouth. "That depends," she equivocates, as if her hands were not at work between them. " - are you gonna let me?"
[Trent Brumby] She doesn't offer any growls, but encourages him by tilting her head back. He takes the offer and drops his mouth lower, feeling the line of her throat with his mouth. There's even a hint of tongue along the side, tasting the salt of sweat and dirt from the day. Back up again, to her jaw, closer to her ear now that she's talking into his.
Her fingers had undone the button of his pants, opening it up enough to loosen the waist of it around his hips, making it less snug and fitting, more prone to fall down solid thighs. Drawing in a sharp breath, his lungs fill with air and his heart thuds stronger, harder. "Shit," he says, with feeling. Pulling back, he looks at her, eyes wider, brighter, barely believing he's getting his pants unbuttoned in an alleyway by a Garou that wants him in bed NOW. "You win." He couldn't do it here. It wouldn't be right. He had more respect for her then that.
Grabbing her waist, he pulls her from the car and in against her, stepping back in the process. "Come on. Into the car with you, Trouble." It's affectionate, amused, barely containing the way he looks at her with such desire.
[Kora] "I'm giving you trouble, am I?" she demands, as her feet hit the asphalt again, each a faint thud she cannot hear about the charged beating of her heart. He can taste the heat of her pulse at the base of her throat; the memory of the sun on her skin, her sweat, the grit of dust from the space, and her skin underneath it, warm as if she has been laying out in the sun, hotter where her blood runs through it, close to the surface.
"That's not even fair." She doesn't sound aggrieved. Her voice is raw and low, it burns more in her throat, in the vault at the back of her soft palate, that low resonance of husky laughter tinging the words with sunset colors - crimson and amber, all want. "You - " she follows in his wake, untangles her right arm from his body, presses her left palm against his lower stomach, where the groomed hair trails down - and reaches forward, catching his pants tugging the waistband closed, buttoning them with the same rather deliberate desire she displayed when she unbuttoned them, taking her time to savor the gleam in his eyes, the way he watches her, watching him. " - you were definitely goading me."
Then: "Listen, buddy." She steps forward again, her gait swaying, predatory, into him. " - you've got ten minutes to get me home. And maybe another minute after that to start - " brushing past him, but no. She leans in for another kiss in passing, breathes her demand for sex, into his mouth, then continues on, circling round the car without a look back now, headed for the passenger's side.
If he wants to meet his deadline, he won't be opening the door for her, tonight.
[Trent Brumby] His glad for the sort of underwear he wears, those snug boxer sorts that keep everything neatly arranged and stops assets from being caught in zippers and buttons. He had dropped his gaze to look at her hands working at his pants, which, well, to be honest, had him thinking other things - clear as day on his face and in his expression, before he's looking back at her with it written across his face.
There's no denying it. His grin is broad and sudden, saying everything. He was. He would do it again, maybe even in a few moments, maybe later or another day. He really enjoyed goading her and the way she reacted. He watched her walk away from him, after leaving him wanting for more kisses and breath on his mouth, so much that he had actually leaned after her for it, then caught himself short.
"Or?" He wanted to hear the punishment, sure that she'd be creative, sure that it would spur him on more and make him tempt between the two. But he's walking around to her side. She'd get there to open the door first, but he'd close it once she's in before moving over to the drivers to start up the car and pull on seat belts.
[Kora] "Or I'll make you wait," her voice is almost companionable, then. Except for the way she holds her body, her the way she settles her hips into the bucket seat of his sedan, the way her eyes spark when she looks up, reaching out to close the door and finds him standing there, already shutting it for her. The way her eyes drop from his gaze to his mouth to his waist, and lower, all with the same intent gaze. The way her mouth curls around that knowledge.
When he circles the car, climbs back into the driver's side, disappointed perhaps in her challenge, she is looking out the windshield at the gloaming, the way the buildings are cast in shadow while the sky is illumined, brilliant.
"I'll make you wait so long," absently, looking at the faint sketch of her reflection in the windshield. " - you'll be begging for it."
There is a simple shrug, neat, elegant beneath the bisecting seatbelt. She can still taste him in her mouth. She can still feel his hands on her body. When he looks at her, she remembers how he touches her. And when he touches her, she remembers how he looks. She moistens her lips, pale wide mouth, swollen, pink tongue. "Then I'll make you wait some more."
[Trent Brumby] The seats belt clips home and the engine starts up. He's looking at her, considering what she's saying, taking in the way she's burning in the passenger seat, knowing she would do what she said. Or at least having faith that she had the discipline to go through with her word.
He looks away, flicks on headlights and pushes the car into gear. "You would, too, and the thought really makes me hard." This comes from him quietly, honest enough to hear the light strangle of groan in his throat, similar to sounds she's already heard, muffled in bedsheets and her pale hair. The words could be misunderstood, but he doesn't think of it then and there, too wrapped up in what he was feeling, and then, in the way he's navigating the darkness of an alleyway to head through ghetto streets. Trying to make it home in ten minutes.
