[Trent Brumby] Dinner had been chicken keivs with garlic butter inside, over a bed of steamed rice and vegetables. It had been good enough, filling, and satisfied the hunger. There was beer to go with it, wine, water or soda. Trent didn't mind whether they were curled up on the sofa eating together or sitting at the dining table that shared the same living space. He kept conversation going, asking her about Chicago, what was new or changed with her, and generally being interested in her well being. He didn't ask about the challenge, not yet, nor did he get into a discussion about what happened in Seattle, other then saying his family was doing well and it had been nice to see them.
After dinner he had taken the plates into the kitchen, rinsed and stacked them in the sink to be washed properly another time, preferably when Kora was gone, and he had fetched another round of drinks to bring back into the living room. Settling on the sofa he took a drink from his glass, Trent having opted for white wine with his dinner, and relaxed against the back of the cushions as he looked from the new leather braided bracelet around his left wrist to Kora.
"For as much as we know about each other," he says to her, "we don't know all that much." Which was true enough. It didn't seem to concern him as much as it was curious. He was trying to bring himself to telling her more about him, without knowing where to start or how to broach the subject. "But I was thinking, when you gave me this," meaning the bracelet, "what that really means."
"And," he takes a deep breath, glancing away from her and towards the television screen that is flickering some popular series program shown at this hour of the night, "there's been this big part of my life that I didn't tell you about, and I think I should." A quick glance was given to her, and in that moment she can sense a great deal of unease and turmoil in him. "But I'm not sure how you're going to take it."
[Kora] Dinner is strange and lovely and domestic, eaten with proper silverware rather than plastics or the little foldaway camping kit tucked away in the bottom of her backpack - which is now tucked into the dusty corner of a huge old church, her clothing folded neatly inside, along with the rest of her belongings - or her fingers. She usually eats with her fingers, take out from some storefront, hotdogs from a street vendor. Fish and chips in some faux English pub. And so: they eat with proper silverware, sitting close at the corners. He drinks wine; she, beer. Though she asks him to pour it into a glass, if he has a proper one, rather than drinking it straight from the bottle. Says something about the flavors and the aroma, treating the beer with the same respect most people reserve for wine.
Before they curl up on the couch after, she takes off her boots, undoes the colorful laces and toes off the heels and peels the shanks away from her calves, tucking her white cotton socks over the long tongues and setting the boots by his shoes in the foyer when he disappears into the kitchen to rinse and stack the places. When he returns, she's sitting back in the couch, the heels of her bare feet on the edge of his coffee table, watching not the television, but the view from his living room window as dusk drops away from the sky and night descends over the city.
--
He returns and she accepts another beer from his hand, resting the glass against her thighs as he settles down beside her. We don't know that much, he says, her dark eyes are on him then, a faint, wry smile curving its way across her mouth. "I know." - she murmurs, underscoring his statement with her low reply without interrupting his train of thought.
The warm, intimate light in her eyes stills when he looks away from her, toward the flickering television. Her gaze drops from his face to his shoulders, watching as he chest and expands with the deep breath he draws in, alive to the unease that crawls underneath his skin now.
Shifting her beer from her left hand to her right, she reaches out, puts her hand on his right thigh, her skin pale against his jeans, the blunt, black-painted nails, the long fingers that contract as she gives him a faint squeeze. It isn't meant as reassurance, so much as a reminder of her presence - here, in this moment, as the summer night descends outside.
"Tell me."
Her dark gaze rises from his thigh to his eyes, steady, direct and sure.
[Trent Brumby] Her hand draws his attention and relaxes him a little, not fully, but enough that he is breathing easier and his stomach uncurls from the beginnings of a tight knot. He reaches down and covers her hand with his, his thumb brushing the back of her finger joints. It's a brief touch, before the same hand rises up and rubs the wide palm across his hair, head bowed as he scruffs the shorter strands. He lets out a breath, then slides off the chair, setting down his glass on the coffee table.
"I'll be right back," he mumbled softly, and left the room for his bedroom.
The suitcase is still opened on the bed, a shirt thrown over it and his closet door is still opened from earlier in the night. He goes to the closet and bends down, grabbing the black gym bag from the bottom. Alone in his room his anxiety runs free, and he's hesitating with his decision to go through with it. But a few moments later he's walking out of the bedroom, closet door closed and light switched off, to head back into the living room.
With his decision made up, he doesn't let his gaze linger so much on her so that the sight of her would dissuade him, but looks at the bag as he sets it on the other side of the coffee table, the tall bulk of his body blocking the line of vision to the television. The bag is unzipped and she would immediately smell the leather inside of there, locked up in the thick fabric that conceals the part of his life he doesn't share with those outside of it. "I really don't know how to explain it to you, Kora. Everyone gets the wrong impression when you try and explain what BDSM is." This is said as he rubs his hand across the back of his hair again, a rarely shown nervous gesture getting the better of him as he flicks his gaze back up towards her. "But I can answer your questions as best as I can."
Nothing is taken out from the bag, it sits open in front of him, like a can of worms. His hand drops from his hair and he worms his fingers into the hip pocket of his jeans. "I like to service women. Not now. Not anymore. I mean," there's a small wince in his eyes, "that is you, now. I'm trying to explain that I enjoy being yours." Right? He's second guessing what he's saying, it makes him more anxious in that quietly hidden way.
[Kora] Kora is still sitting back on the cushions of his couch, her heels planted against the edge of his coffee table, her toes bare, wiggling free, unpainted. There are bits of cotton fluff here and there from her socks clinging to her feet, and the pattern of the weave of the socks has been imprinted on her skin, a subtle waffle weave. The heavy twist of her hair - secured by a pain of chopsticks - is compressed against the cushions, the line of her body is a lean slouch inscribed against the distinct ninety degree angle defined by the seat and back of the couch.
Her dark eyes drop from his face to his body as he leaves room, linger there until he disappears down the hallway. When he returns to the room, she's looking out the window again, ignoring the television with a sort of thoroughness that suggests it is not part of her life.
Then he reenters the room; her gaze cuts to him unerringly. She tracks him across the space, listening to the quiet slap of his bare feet on the hardwood floor, glancing once - curiously - at the gym bag he carries before he puts it down on the coffee table in front of her, interposing his bulk between her and the television set.
She sits up, then, leaning forward, sets her bare feet on the hard floor. The motion is deliberate and it is fluid. There is something lethal about it - the ease with which she moves her lean frame - some new, careless grace.
Her mouth is still. She spares a curious glance for the now opened gym bag, sitting forward to brace her forearms on her thighs, and then reaches for the edge of it, pulling the zipper the last inch back to its stop without reaching inside. Not yet.
Her attention remains there for a handful of seconds, quiet but for the chatter of the television - some jingle, some adman, someone promising better skin, better body, better life. It must seem longer than that to him. He must measure it out in heartbeats.
Then she looks up again; her dark eyes find his pale ones, and she doesn't spare him the most direct of her looks. I like to service women - and there's a curve to her mouth then, provisional, passing - bemused or -
(there is a lean sort of tension in her body now. He might have missed it, consumed by his own anxiety. Or perhaps he is hypervigilent, ready for it - for something like it, the narrow, direct set of her shoulders, the straight way she holds her sinuous spine. The hint of tension in the fine muscles around her eyes.)
- "What am I," her voice is dry, her brow arched, dark eyes direct and gleaming on him. " - some sort of engine? Popping 'round for a tune-up?"
[Trent Brumby] He sees the tension in her, and the way she's leaned forward, lethal as she is, has him more on guard. It would be nice to think that he was completely trusting of her, of any Garou, but he's not and isn't. They can, and have, gone from reasonable to deadly within spaces of moments too quick for his human mind to fathom. Their Rage and instincts are everything that a Kinfolk learns to be cautious of, and sometimes fear. He doesn't fear her now, but there is some part of him that registers that she's a very real danger. Part of that is his own anxiety and past history that expects a particular reaction, a response what he says, how he acts, and that's what has fed his worry about raising the subject.
As that tension registers in the back of his mind, his heart thuds harder and quicker in his chest, but he forces himself to remain there, looking at her now, steadily. Her words had him confused for a split second before it turned to barely concealed alarm. Trent doesn't find amusement in it, whatsoever. "No," he tells her, bluntly, and with small flare of indignation. "It's not like that."
He has to pause, remind himself of others ignorance and misconceptions and that Kora was not a Black Fury. That she was not going to be unreasonable with him, that she'd hold it against him, and that they could talk about these things. It's a hope he's really holding on to, that it all won't change now that she won a challenge and he has, is, giving himself over to her. It's a willing trust he's holding onto. He tries to explain it a little better, without going into unnecessary details. "It was a poor way to put it," he's not a Galliard, "but it means that I ... I don't know," please don't make me say it, this is already hard enough, "I get fulfillment by belonging to someone, to you, and making you happy."
His hand slides from his pocket to run over his hair, eyes drop for a beat then raise to hers again. "I enjoy being submissive to you. It makes me feel ... whole."
[Kora] The noise of the television continues in the background. It changes, every fifteen seconds. Every thirty seconds. Some new offer, some new product, some new deep fried sandwich guaranteed to -
- from her perspective, he is backlit by the changing glow. Now the black near-curls that crown his head gleam blue, now orange, now red with reflected light.
This is how long humans pay attention the world around them: fifteen seconds to dream of their french fries. Twenty seconds to inhale them. She has held his gaze, just watching him, for far longer than that. Her eyes are fixed and level on his as he corrects her. She does not shy away from his flare of indignation, nor does it spike her rage.
"You're right," the admission is quiet and complete in the space when he pauses, as he gathers himself. As he remembers, reminds himself of who she is, and what she is. Of how she has treated him until now. " - that wasn't fair me."
--
When he looks back, she is still watching him, eyes gleaming with the reflected glow of the television behind him, with the city lights that cut into the apartment from the opened window. There's a car horn sounding in the distance, and a shout - greeting, maybe, or joy. Someone scored a goal. Someone scored a run. Someone in another apartment with another opened window cheers.
This is all distant. Her attention is for him, and him alone. His eyes drop from hers, a beat, and return. She never looks away from him. There is something unreadable about her expression not because she is concealing her reaction, hiding it beneath some facade, but because she is still telling this story to herself. Figuring out what it means to her. And so: her face is still, her expression neutral, provisional, but her eyes are fixed and so direct on his.
It makes me feel, he says, ...whole.
There is a beat of silence. It lasts two of her heartbeats. Then, she lifts her chin, past him toward the television behind him.
"Turn off the television," she says, quiet, patting the couch beside her. " - and come here."
[Trent Brumby] There's something in the way she says it, and the way she pauses in consideration before all that, that has him relaxed. It's like he's pushed over the brink now, and found acceptance. That anxiety slips back several notches as he turns from her, moving on the ball of a foot as he spins around to the television. His thumb presses into the power button, switching the television off in a wink of the screen.
Leaving his bag on the table, ignored now, he walked around to where he was sitting on the sofa beside her before, and eases to sit, turned enough that part of his back is against the arm of the sofa so that he faces her completely. His knee is up on the sofa, turned so that his foot tucks under the other thigh by his knee, taking up as little room in his corner of the sofa that his bulk can allow. It leaves more room for her, but the way his arm lays across the back of the sofa indicates that it's not because he was afraid to be near her, simply that he's giving her more freedom of movement then he allows himself.
Maybe it's because he's began to explain himself to her, that these small, subtle motions that come naturally to him, begin to make more sense. It's habit, a trained behaviour that has become natural to him, comfortable and relaxing without much conscious thought behind it. He looks at her now, with pale gray eyes, clear and with less worry. Tension has leaked away from his face, and although it still remains in a knot between his shoulder blades and spine, he's looking more confident and at ease beside her.
[Kora] There's silence, then. The creak of floorboards beneath his bulk, the sigh of the cushions as he settles himself into the smallest footprint his body can make in the corner of the arm. There's silence, backgrounded by the sounds of the living city that drift in through the window, echoing and distant. Her eyes drop from his face as he turns away from her, and linger on his body, where the cotton t-shirt pulls against his shoulders or his chest, showing off the definition of his well-worked muscles beneath.
He sits beside her, and she's still sitting forward, closer to his bag than he is, the scent of leather thick. There's a subtle change in her posture, the faint, living curve has returned to her spine - her torso is long, lean, this curve from her shoulders, braced forward over her forearms, which are resting on her thighs, down to her hips, all easy, like a parabola turned on its side.
So: he sits. She reaches out, palm up, for his hand. The left one, not the right. When he gives it, she turns the hand over, watching the way her bracelet sits against the tendons of his wrist.
"I would be the world's biggest hypocrite if I complained about other women from you past," her half-smile is wry, is knowing. She turns his hand over again, her eyes on their fingers, her skin pale, his rich and olive, already darkening from the summer sun. The dark hair on his fingers, on his forearm. " - but this is it, you know that. You're mine now, and even though I didn't have to fight tooth and claw to claim you, I will fight to keep you. If someone challenges me for you, I will rip her open."
This is all offered with the calm, quiet intensity she has. He knows it well. There's no - posturing with the violence she promises to anyone who tries to take him from her. It's spoken with this equinaminity, even and easy going, the emotion subsumed into the deeper tones of her voice.
Then she gestures, one of those animal cants of her head, toward his gym bag. "This stuff," she glances at it once, the contents lost in shadow, before returning her attention to his pale eyes. There's a certain intensity to the look. " - is it necessary?" Her voice is quiet, " - do I want to look inside."
[Trent Brumby] He gives her his hand as she asks for it. There's a hint of paler skin around the wrist there, the tell tale signs of where he usually wears a wrist-watch. It's not there today, wasn't there when she tied the leather around his wrist, but was left in the bathroom from where he took a shower earlier and never put it back on. While she watches his hand, he's watching the way she touches him, and lifts his gaze each time to meet his in turn. He's silent as he listens to her questions and what may lie beneath them.
It should upset him, on some level, that this female Garou next to him would rip another open because of him, for him, for herself even, but it doesn't. Instead it sends a quiet little thrill through him, exciting his heart in a different way then that anxiety had earlier. It's not the promise of violence, a bloodlust, that makes him react that way, but because of what such an action would represent; what this conversation represents. It makes his shine a little more, with that part of him that makes him Kinfolk more then human, at least that was a logical way to reason with why he enjoys hearing her talk about something ordinarily seen as morally wrong.
"No, it's not necessary," he answers of her question, giving a brief glance to the bag and back towards her. His thumb flexes to brush along the edge of her hand. "You can look inside. It's only equipment that I no longer need. You're perfectly dominant without the need of tools." It's a blunt honesty that doesn't beat around the bush, secured with the way she's touching him - a reassuring thing even if she hadn't meant it that way.
[Kora] "I'm perfectly dominant," she echoes him, her mouth curving wider, her chin rising as she cuts a look right back to him. Her eyes are bright with reflected light and level with this lovely sort of bemused humor that expresses itself in her body, in her shoulders and her spine, in the subtle inflection of her generous mouth and the faint tension around her eyes that suggests laughter withheld, swallowed back into the body, living through the skin.
Her voice is low. It always is, but now it drops and this seems deliberate, in that he has to strain to hear, has to shift closer, or at the least turn his head, to catch every word. "I promise you, no one has ever said that to me before."
- but that posture, just the way she sits up straight, the way she lifts her chin, the way she squares her body toward his - it all speaks on its own, some animal level, that underneath the laughter, she isn't laughing at all. That his blunt words hit some answering cord underneath, enlivening the wolf underneath her skin.
The laughter quiets. Her beer is cool in her right hand. Sweating, just, because it is summer and it is Chicago and it is warm and it is humid. She lifts it to her mouth without looking, takes a drink holding his eyes over the rim. And the laughter disappears.
"Say that again."
She means it. There's foam on her lips from the beer, and she licks it away as she lowers the glass, still watching him, like that was a challenge she's waiting for him to answer. She holds his gaze until he says the words again, until he answers her. Then and only then does she look away, drop his hand and lean forward, setting her beer down onto a coaster, bracing her feet on the floor, and delve into the bag. The equipment he no longer needs.
[Trent Brumby] Her laughter has him watching her, his head tilted a little to the side, not in the way hers does in that animalistic way, but to better the angle in which to take in the sights of her face and the way her mouth curves and face brightens with that suppressed laughter that is there in all but sound. He's smiling, faintly, but honestly, when she mentions that no one has said that to her before. He'd add more, but that rest of her, that isn't smiling, makes him a tad cautious to be completely open for now.
His gaze slips to her mouth as she drinks from the bottle and flits back to meet her gaze and the challenge of the words, which isn't much of a challenge for him but more of a test. "You're perfectly dominant without the need of tools," he tells her, repeats word for word, and with a seriousness that tells her it's very much what he believes. It's not a compliment but a statement of fact, of which he happens to find very appealing.
Inside the bag she finds several different tools, as he described them. To him they're not just that, but he's not going to explain that to a Garou. It was hard enough trying to explain it to just other humans, let alone another culture that he barely understands, that's mingled with animal instincts he couldn't understand even if he wanted to. There are several different lengths of rope, carefully wound back up and organized, they are fine, proper ropes from Japan that are strong and soft enough for her to know it's not the sort of rope used for camping. She finds several lengths of short chains, clips to go with them to make a combination of links between chains or the thick leather cuffs she finds, two pairs that have several metal hoops for attachments. There's a leather collar she finds with similar hoops and the buckle has the addition of a small padlock, so that it can't be taken off. The key is not with it. Then there are floggers and whips, a small assortment that are thicker to thinner - he'd explain the differences if she asked, but he wouldn't need to explain the cane in there, or the leather harness or rubbery ball gag.
As she goes through these things he sits there on the sofa, his hand having become a little clammy on the palm as he worries on her reactions, while trying not to let it slide towards that anxiety again. His gaze flickers to each thing she may pull out, or what he can see her looking at, continuously sliding to catch glimpses of reactions from her. But he's completely silent in his corner of the sofa.
[Kora] The ropes come out first, and she lingers on them, running the edge of her thumb up and down the fine, well-made twist, feeling the fibers beneath the edge of her thumb. Back and forth. The motion has a meditative quality to it, wordless and thoughtless. She turns over the first bundle, then, looks back at him, over her left shoulder, her eyes half-lashed and speculative.
He must find her hard to read, as she unpacks the tools he keeps in the bag, has kept zipped up and away on the floor of his closet as this - what is here, now - unfolded between them. He must find her difficult to read, because she is a thoughtful creature underneath it is. Because she reserves judgment, because she looks at something before she defines it, just as she is looking at the chains, lifting them out, feeling their weight in her hands and setting them aside, allowing the links to coil down each upon each atop the rope so that she does not scratch the surface of his coffee table. The collar, with its padlock, has her cutting another look back towards him, over her shoulder, this sort of speculative surprise written into the shape of her mouth, the arch of a singular eyebrow.
Kora thumbs the padlock as if it were a thing apart, watches it swing, and then sets the collar, too, aside. The first flogger startles her visibly. There's a sharply indrawn breath, both of her pale brows lifting above her dark, dark eyes - all the signs, none of them concealed, suddenly and all at once, as if she had walked into a wall she always knew was there. She exhales a breath, then, and that breath has the shape of laughter, the subtle huff of it twisting through her body, all the way through her spine. She removes a handful of the floggers, but leaves the rest of the bag's contents - the gag, the harness, the cane - tucked away inside.
Then, finished at last, she reaches for her beer, lifts it to her mouth, and takes a long drink. Briefly, it fills her senses, chases away the scent of leather. She swallows the mouthful, swallows her laughter, swallows her startlement. He can see how she composes herself as she swallows the drink, as she sets the beer back onto the coaster beside his fine Japanese ropes, his cuffs and his collars, his tools. How she composes herself, carefully finding her center, considering the things on the coffee table before she turns back to the kinsman she has claimed, won from another tribe, no less, as hers and no others.
Kora finds his eyes again. She shies away from nothing. "Are they just tools?" she asks him at last, her features open, her tension subsumed into her body. Turning away briefly, she glances aside at the coffee table, reaches for one of the floggers and picks it up, turning it over in her hand before looking back to him. "They aren't - " she is a Galliard, but there aren't proper words for this. Or rather: there are proper words, ones she doesn't know. " - they aren't the point. Just the means - " She shakes her pale head once, finds another path to her question - to the question underneath it. "You don't need these any more."
[Trent Brumby] Trent does nothing but watch her, if she has let go of his hand to rummage through the belongings its resting on the sofa by her leg, never too far away. His gaze flickers back and forth, a hint of a smile at the way she is surprised enough that it registers on her plainly, and when she had looked at him then, she found his eyes shining with a silent and harmless mirth at that.
He lets her drink without interruption, his own wine still taking up a small space on the coffee table where other things now are laid out for them to see. When she picked up one of the floggers his heart beat a little quicker, spreading blood to fill partially fill him in his jeans. It was a sight he wouldn't have thought he'd see, and even if it wasn't in the same context he may fantasize about, it was a startling thrill that zapped through him.
But he pays her attention when she's talking again, lifting his gaze to look at her with a seriousness that chases away the minds-eye image and draws him into the immediate now. "No, I don't need these anymore." His decision was final. "They are just the means." He's glad she understands that much and that he didn't have to explain too much. "You don't need them." She could, however, use them if she was so inclined. That was her choice. "I don't need them."
[Kora] "It turns you on," she cannot miss that. She does not miss that: the familiar surge of heat in his eyes, the quickening of blood is his body. Her dark eyes drop from his eyes to his lap, and then cut a quick, direct line back to his eyes. Her mouth is knowing, and wry. " - seeing me holding this, it turns you on. Just like the way you smell turns me on. Your skin, your sweat. Your blood underneath it. I can smell that. It makes me want you."
Still holding the flogger in her hand, she shifts positions, draws her left leg up under her body, bare toes curling as opens herself to him, pulling him so that she can straddle him, her knees on either side of his hips, her left hand on his right shoulder, holding him down as she settles herself above him.
"I can't hit you, though," she murmurs down at him, her dark eyes fixed on his pale gaze. As if in emphasis, she taps his shoulder with the handle of the flogger, then turns away to toss it back onto the table. It lands with a faint thud amongst the other things laid out there. " - and I like feeling your hands on my body when I'm fucking you. I like it when you touch me. I like it when you look at me. When I wear the clothes you bought me, it feels like you're both looking at me and touching me, and I think that from you, too."
When she twists back to him, her free right hand comes down onto his left shoulder, and she pushes him back down into the cushions of his couch, craning her neck to follow after him, to give him handful of nipping little kisses and half-bites. The kiss deepens, slow and seeking as she sinks her body down over him by slow, deliberate degrees. She stops once, inhaling through the nose when she comes up for air, and then pushes him back down again.
[Trent Brumby] "Yes." The answer is immediate and without denial, that heat flared again, and the more she tells him about how she feels, what he does to her, the more aroused he becomes. She picks her words well, and as she comes to straddle across him, his heart is thudding heavy for her.
His arms spread out across the back of the sofa, his body having shifted enough to allow room beside both his hips to accommodate her knees. He doesn't reach to touch her yet. There's things he wants to say, but none of them find a voice. The words are chased away by her mouth nipping at his and demanding he kiss her. He does, he's pressed down by her, as she presses into him, slowly and teasing, and he can almost taste his excited pulse on his own tongue. A small but pleased sound is just a breath coming up his throat, and its then, when she comes in for a second, breath stealing kiss, that his hands leave the sofa to run up her back and down again, drawing her down against the hardness of him.
She does this to him. Makes him forget mostly everything. Kora did not need tools, she used both words and body perfectly. It certainly helped that Trent would never forget that she is a killing machine under it all, one that would not hesitate ripping open a body, as she so boldly claimed. Rope and chains are nothing compared to the physical prowess she had, and floggers are nothing compared to the potential violence all packaged in the attractive Get of Fenris holding him against the sofa with mouth and body.
[Kora]
There is a low noise of pleasure in the back of her throat when he draws her hips down to his - this raw moment underscoring it when she feels him, hard for her, and moves against his body as if there were no clothes between them. As if she could will them away and take him thoughtlessly right where he is stilling on the couch. She is not kissing him anymore, not in that moment. Her face against his is twisted raw, constricted with need, her breath hot, sharp and panting against his stubbled cheek.
Then she stills against him, recovers herself. Reaches up and grabs his jaw and pulls his face so that it is even with hers, level beneath her as she touches her forehead to his and smiles down at him. He cannot see her mouth, but he knows she is smiling by the shape of her eyes, the subtle pull at the corners, by the curve of her mouth wide against his. "You're going to have to wait," this time, the grind of her hips into his is deliberate, controlled, tempting his control. " - you can wait, can't you?"
This is arch, not cruel.
" - because you and I," she continues, sliding her hands down the slope of his shoulders, over the thin cotton t-shirt he wears, over the hard bulge of his well-worked biceps, down over his forearms until she finds his hands on her body and begins to peel them away, capturing his hands with hers when she has succeeded in her task. Her voice is a rich thread of a thing, some sort of spun amber, too occluded with want to be gold. " - we're going to pack this stuff back up, and put it away together."
She means it. She lifts their clasped hands away from her body, pushes his hands up and back and out, using them as leverage to push herself back from his lap, finding the floor with that sort of blind physical confidence she must have to be what she is.
[Trent Brumby]
His hands slip down her back, directly to her hips as she moves against him, pressing the zip of his jeans uncomfortably into his hardened length, but he does not mind, far from it. He encourages her movement with a firmer grip that doesn't constrict her much, but makes her stay against him firmly. Breathing out heavier exhales warm air across her skin with their faces side by side.
As she recovers his grip lessens and he opens his eyes to look at her with a smoldering burn in his gaze. "Yes, I can wait," he confirms but without a smile. His yearning for her too much to be able to smile so easily right then, he wanted to do other things with his mouth, to have his hands under her clothes. But he can wait, even if he wanted to be doing something else.
His fingers curl around hers as she directs his hands away from her, and she finds no resistance to the way that his arms span out with her direction. Strength flows into them as she moves to stand, using them as resistance to steady herself. He waits until she has the balance before his grip loosens again and he begins to shift up from the sofa to stand. Although he's surprised that she wants him to put these things back away, he doesn't object, only nodding at her with a small hint of smile.
"Then can we stay in the bedroom?" Where he can do what he wanted to do when she walked in the door.
[Kora]
Her skin is flushed pink underneath, all the capillaries open, all the blood beneath her skin. She is still breathing hard, these short, shallow little breaths, and her knotted hair is disordered, dozens of the fine strands pulled away from the loosely structured updo falling back down to frame her face, pull across her cheek, her jaw. She reaches up to pull down two find strands sticking to the corner of her mouth and gives him a sidelong look, somehow both smoldering and wry.
"Then we can stay in the bedroom," she confirms, with a laugh that is born and half-dies in her throat as she watches him, finds the heat in her eyes answered in his own.
"C'mon," she says then; this, too, with a laugh and a hip check that seems less an acknowledgment, less a greeting, than an intimation of the ways her body can move, all the opposing planes. Another laugh: throat-caught, absurdist, before she bends and begins packing his tools back into his gym bag. She packs away almost precisely half of them, stopping just once to strike a pose for him with the largest and most wicked looking of his floggers. It is just the pose: she does not swat at him with it, playfully or otherwise, but she likes the way his pupils constrict when he looks at her like that. And she tells him so.
When the floggers and cuffs and collars and ropes and chains - all the tools and implements, all the restraints and gags - are packed away, she zips the gym bag half-way closed, leaving the final half for him to finish.
After dinner he had taken the plates into the kitchen, rinsed and stacked them in the sink to be washed properly another time, preferably when Kora was gone, and he had fetched another round of drinks to bring back into the living room. Settling on the sofa he took a drink from his glass, Trent having opted for white wine with his dinner, and relaxed against the back of the cushions as he looked from the new leather braided bracelet around his left wrist to Kora.
"For as much as we know about each other," he says to her, "we don't know all that much." Which was true enough. It didn't seem to concern him as much as it was curious. He was trying to bring himself to telling her more about him, without knowing where to start or how to broach the subject. "But I was thinking, when you gave me this," meaning the bracelet, "what that really means."
"And," he takes a deep breath, glancing away from her and towards the television screen that is flickering some popular series program shown at this hour of the night, "there's been this big part of my life that I didn't tell you about, and I think I should." A quick glance was given to her, and in that moment she can sense a great deal of unease and turmoil in him. "But I'm not sure how you're going to take it."
[Kora] Dinner is strange and lovely and domestic, eaten with proper silverware rather than plastics or the little foldaway camping kit tucked away in the bottom of her backpack - which is now tucked into the dusty corner of a huge old church, her clothing folded neatly inside, along with the rest of her belongings - or her fingers. She usually eats with her fingers, take out from some storefront, hotdogs from a street vendor. Fish and chips in some faux English pub. And so: they eat with proper silverware, sitting close at the corners. He drinks wine; she, beer. Though she asks him to pour it into a glass, if he has a proper one, rather than drinking it straight from the bottle. Says something about the flavors and the aroma, treating the beer with the same respect most people reserve for wine.
Before they curl up on the couch after, she takes off her boots, undoes the colorful laces and toes off the heels and peels the shanks away from her calves, tucking her white cotton socks over the long tongues and setting the boots by his shoes in the foyer when he disappears into the kitchen to rinse and stack the places. When he returns, she's sitting back in the couch, the heels of her bare feet on the edge of his coffee table, watching not the television, but the view from his living room window as dusk drops away from the sky and night descends over the city.
--
He returns and she accepts another beer from his hand, resting the glass against her thighs as he settles down beside her. We don't know that much, he says, her dark eyes are on him then, a faint, wry smile curving its way across her mouth. "I know." - she murmurs, underscoring his statement with her low reply without interrupting his train of thought.
The warm, intimate light in her eyes stills when he looks away from her, toward the flickering television. Her gaze drops from his face to his shoulders, watching as he chest and expands with the deep breath he draws in, alive to the unease that crawls underneath his skin now.
Shifting her beer from her left hand to her right, she reaches out, puts her hand on his right thigh, her skin pale against his jeans, the blunt, black-painted nails, the long fingers that contract as she gives him a faint squeeze. It isn't meant as reassurance, so much as a reminder of her presence - here, in this moment, as the summer night descends outside.
"Tell me."
Her dark gaze rises from his thigh to his eyes, steady, direct and sure.
[Trent Brumby] Her hand draws his attention and relaxes him a little, not fully, but enough that he is breathing easier and his stomach uncurls from the beginnings of a tight knot. He reaches down and covers her hand with his, his thumb brushing the back of her finger joints. It's a brief touch, before the same hand rises up and rubs the wide palm across his hair, head bowed as he scruffs the shorter strands. He lets out a breath, then slides off the chair, setting down his glass on the coffee table.
"I'll be right back," he mumbled softly, and left the room for his bedroom.
The suitcase is still opened on the bed, a shirt thrown over it and his closet door is still opened from earlier in the night. He goes to the closet and bends down, grabbing the black gym bag from the bottom. Alone in his room his anxiety runs free, and he's hesitating with his decision to go through with it. But a few moments later he's walking out of the bedroom, closet door closed and light switched off, to head back into the living room.
With his decision made up, he doesn't let his gaze linger so much on her so that the sight of her would dissuade him, but looks at the bag as he sets it on the other side of the coffee table, the tall bulk of his body blocking the line of vision to the television. The bag is unzipped and she would immediately smell the leather inside of there, locked up in the thick fabric that conceals the part of his life he doesn't share with those outside of it. "I really don't know how to explain it to you, Kora. Everyone gets the wrong impression when you try and explain what BDSM is." This is said as he rubs his hand across the back of his hair again, a rarely shown nervous gesture getting the better of him as he flicks his gaze back up towards her. "But I can answer your questions as best as I can."
Nothing is taken out from the bag, it sits open in front of him, like a can of worms. His hand drops from his hair and he worms his fingers into the hip pocket of his jeans. "I like to service women. Not now. Not anymore. I mean," there's a small wince in his eyes, "that is you, now. I'm trying to explain that I enjoy being yours." Right? He's second guessing what he's saying, it makes him more anxious in that quietly hidden way.
[Kora] Kora is still sitting back on the cushions of his couch, her heels planted against the edge of his coffee table, her toes bare, wiggling free, unpainted. There are bits of cotton fluff here and there from her socks clinging to her feet, and the pattern of the weave of the socks has been imprinted on her skin, a subtle waffle weave. The heavy twist of her hair - secured by a pain of chopsticks - is compressed against the cushions, the line of her body is a lean slouch inscribed against the distinct ninety degree angle defined by the seat and back of the couch.
Her dark eyes drop from his face to his body as he leaves room, linger there until he disappears down the hallway. When he returns to the room, she's looking out the window again, ignoring the television with a sort of thoroughness that suggests it is not part of her life.
Then he reenters the room; her gaze cuts to him unerringly. She tracks him across the space, listening to the quiet slap of his bare feet on the hardwood floor, glancing once - curiously - at the gym bag he carries before he puts it down on the coffee table in front of her, interposing his bulk between her and the television set.
She sits up, then, leaning forward, sets her bare feet on the hard floor. The motion is deliberate and it is fluid. There is something lethal about it - the ease with which she moves her lean frame - some new, careless grace.
Her mouth is still. She spares a curious glance for the now opened gym bag, sitting forward to brace her forearms on her thighs, and then reaches for the edge of it, pulling the zipper the last inch back to its stop without reaching inside. Not yet.
Her attention remains there for a handful of seconds, quiet but for the chatter of the television - some jingle, some adman, someone promising better skin, better body, better life. It must seem longer than that to him. He must measure it out in heartbeats.
Then she looks up again; her dark eyes find his pale ones, and she doesn't spare him the most direct of her looks. I like to service women - and there's a curve to her mouth then, provisional, passing - bemused or -
(there is a lean sort of tension in her body now. He might have missed it, consumed by his own anxiety. Or perhaps he is hypervigilent, ready for it - for something like it, the narrow, direct set of her shoulders, the straight way she holds her sinuous spine. The hint of tension in the fine muscles around her eyes.)
- "What am I," her voice is dry, her brow arched, dark eyes direct and gleaming on him. " - some sort of engine? Popping 'round for a tune-up?"
[Trent Brumby] He sees the tension in her, and the way she's leaned forward, lethal as she is, has him more on guard. It would be nice to think that he was completely trusting of her, of any Garou, but he's not and isn't. They can, and have, gone from reasonable to deadly within spaces of moments too quick for his human mind to fathom. Their Rage and instincts are everything that a Kinfolk learns to be cautious of, and sometimes fear. He doesn't fear her now, but there is some part of him that registers that she's a very real danger. Part of that is his own anxiety and past history that expects a particular reaction, a response what he says, how he acts, and that's what has fed his worry about raising the subject.
As that tension registers in the back of his mind, his heart thuds harder and quicker in his chest, but he forces himself to remain there, looking at her now, steadily. Her words had him confused for a split second before it turned to barely concealed alarm. Trent doesn't find amusement in it, whatsoever. "No," he tells her, bluntly, and with small flare of indignation. "It's not like that."
He has to pause, remind himself of others ignorance and misconceptions and that Kora was not a Black Fury. That she was not going to be unreasonable with him, that she'd hold it against him, and that they could talk about these things. It's a hope he's really holding on to, that it all won't change now that she won a challenge and he has, is, giving himself over to her. It's a willing trust he's holding onto. He tries to explain it a little better, without going into unnecessary details. "It was a poor way to put it," he's not a Galliard, "but it means that I ... I don't know," please don't make me say it, this is already hard enough, "I get fulfillment by belonging to someone, to you, and making you happy."
His hand slides from his pocket to run over his hair, eyes drop for a beat then raise to hers again. "I enjoy being submissive to you. It makes me feel ... whole."
[Kora] The noise of the television continues in the background. It changes, every fifteen seconds. Every thirty seconds. Some new offer, some new product, some new deep fried sandwich guaranteed to -
- from her perspective, he is backlit by the changing glow. Now the black near-curls that crown his head gleam blue, now orange, now red with reflected light.
This is how long humans pay attention the world around them: fifteen seconds to dream of their french fries. Twenty seconds to inhale them. She has held his gaze, just watching him, for far longer than that. Her eyes are fixed and level on his as he corrects her. She does not shy away from his flare of indignation, nor does it spike her rage.
"You're right," the admission is quiet and complete in the space when he pauses, as he gathers himself. As he remembers, reminds himself of who she is, and what she is. Of how she has treated him until now. " - that wasn't fair me."
--
When he looks back, she is still watching him, eyes gleaming with the reflected glow of the television behind him, with the city lights that cut into the apartment from the opened window. There's a car horn sounding in the distance, and a shout - greeting, maybe, or joy. Someone scored a goal. Someone scored a run. Someone in another apartment with another opened window cheers.
This is all distant. Her attention is for him, and him alone. His eyes drop from hers, a beat, and return. She never looks away from him. There is something unreadable about her expression not because she is concealing her reaction, hiding it beneath some facade, but because she is still telling this story to herself. Figuring out what it means to her. And so: her face is still, her expression neutral, provisional, but her eyes are fixed and so direct on his.
It makes me feel, he says, ...whole.
There is a beat of silence. It lasts two of her heartbeats. Then, she lifts her chin, past him toward the television behind him.
"Turn off the television," she says, quiet, patting the couch beside her. " - and come here."
[Trent Brumby] There's something in the way she says it, and the way she pauses in consideration before all that, that has him relaxed. It's like he's pushed over the brink now, and found acceptance. That anxiety slips back several notches as he turns from her, moving on the ball of a foot as he spins around to the television. His thumb presses into the power button, switching the television off in a wink of the screen.
Leaving his bag on the table, ignored now, he walked around to where he was sitting on the sofa beside her before, and eases to sit, turned enough that part of his back is against the arm of the sofa so that he faces her completely. His knee is up on the sofa, turned so that his foot tucks under the other thigh by his knee, taking up as little room in his corner of the sofa that his bulk can allow. It leaves more room for her, but the way his arm lays across the back of the sofa indicates that it's not because he was afraid to be near her, simply that he's giving her more freedom of movement then he allows himself.
Maybe it's because he's began to explain himself to her, that these small, subtle motions that come naturally to him, begin to make more sense. It's habit, a trained behaviour that has become natural to him, comfortable and relaxing without much conscious thought behind it. He looks at her now, with pale gray eyes, clear and with less worry. Tension has leaked away from his face, and although it still remains in a knot between his shoulder blades and spine, he's looking more confident and at ease beside her.
[Kora] There's silence, then. The creak of floorboards beneath his bulk, the sigh of the cushions as he settles himself into the smallest footprint his body can make in the corner of the arm. There's silence, backgrounded by the sounds of the living city that drift in through the window, echoing and distant. Her eyes drop from his face as he turns away from her, and linger on his body, where the cotton t-shirt pulls against his shoulders or his chest, showing off the definition of his well-worked muscles beneath.
He sits beside her, and she's still sitting forward, closer to his bag than he is, the scent of leather thick. There's a subtle change in her posture, the faint, living curve has returned to her spine - her torso is long, lean, this curve from her shoulders, braced forward over her forearms, which are resting on her thighs, down to her hips, all easy, like a parabola turned on its side.
So: he sits. She reaches out, palm up, for his hand. The left one, not the right. When he gives it, she turns the hand over, watching the way her bracelet sits against the tendons of his wrist.
"I would be the world's biggest hypocrite if I complained about other women from you past," her half-smile is wry, is knowing. She turns his hand over again, her eyes on their fingers, her skin pale, his rich and olive, already darkening from the summer sun. The dark hair on his fingers, on his forearm. " - but this is it, you know that. You're mine now, and even though I didn't have to fight tooth and claw to claim you, I will fight to keep you. If someone challenges me for you, I will rip her open."
This is all offered with the calm, quiet intensity she has. He knows it well. There's no - posturing with the violence she promises to anyone who tries to take him from her. It's spoken with this equinaminity, even and easy going, the emotion subsumed into the deeper tones of her voice.
Then she gestures, one of those animal cants of her head, toward his gym bag. "This stuff," she glances at it once, the contents lost in shadow, before returning her attention to his pale eyes. There's a certain intensity to the look. " - is it necessary?" Her voice is quiet, " - do I want to look inside."
[Trent Brumby] He gives her his hand as she asks for it. There's a hint of paler skin around the wrist there, the tell tale signs of where he usually wears a wrist-watch. It's not there today, wasn't there when she tied the leather around his wrist, but was left in the bathroom from where he took a shower earlier and never put it back on. While she watches his hand, he's watching the way she touches him, and lifts his gaze each time to meet his in turn. He's silent as he listens to her questions and what may lie beneath them.
It should upset him, on some level, that this female Garou next to him would rip another open because of him, for him, for herself even, but it doesn't. Instead it sends a quiet little thrill through him, exciting his heart in a different way then that anxiety had earlier. It's not the promise of violence, a bloodlust, that makes him react that way, but because of what such an action would represent; what this conversation represents. It makes his shine a little more, with that part of him that makes him Kinfolk more then human, at least that was a logical way to reason with why he enjoys hearing her talk about something ordinarily seen as morally wrong.
"No, it's not necessary," he answers of her question, giving a brief glance to the bag and back towards her. His thumb flexes to brush along the edge of her hand. "You can look inside. It's only equipment that I no longer need. You're perfectly dominant without the need of tools." It's a blunt honesty that doesn't beat around the bush, secured with the way she's touching him - a reassuring thing even if she hadn't meant it that way.
[Kora] "I'm perfectly dominant," she echoes him, her mouth curving wider, her chin rising as she cuts a look right back to him. Her eyes are bright with reflected light and level with this lovely sort of bemused humor that expresses itself in her body, in her shoulders and her spine, in the subtle inflection of her generous mouth and the faint tension around her eyes that suggests laughter withheld, swallowed back into the body, living through the skin.
Her voice is low. It always is, but now it drops and this seems deliberate, in that he has to strain to hear, has to shift closer, or at the least turn his head, to catch every word. "I promise you, no one has ever said that to me before."
- but that posture, just the way she sits up straight, the way she lifts her chin, the way she squares her body toward his - it all speaks on its own, some animal level, that underneath the laughter, she isn't laughing at all. That his blunt words hit some answering cord underneath, enlivening the wolf underneath her skin.
The laughter quiets. Her beer is cool in her right hand. Sweating, just, because it is summer and it is Chicago and it is warm and it is humid. She lifts it to her mouth without looking, takes a drink holding his eyes over the rim. And the laughter disappears.
"Say that again."
She means it. There's foam on her lips from the beer, and she licks it away as she lowers the glass, still watching him, like that was a challenge she's waiting for him to answer. She holds his gaze until he says the words again, until he answers her. Then and only then does she look away, drop his hand and lean forward, setting her beer down onto a coaster, bracing her feet on the floor, and delve into the bag. The equipment he no longer needs.
[Trent Brumby] Her laughter has him watching her, his head tilted a little to the side, not in the way hers does in that animalistic way, but to better the angle in which to take in the sights of her face and the way her mouth curves and face brightens with that suppressed laughter that is there in all but sound. He's smiling, faintly, but honestly, when she mentions that no one has said that to her before. He'd add more, but that rest of her, that isn't smiling, makes him a tad cautious to be completely open for now.
His gaze slips to her mouth as she drinks from the bottle and flits back to meet her gaze and the challenge of the words, which isn't much of a challenge for him but more of a test. "You're perfectly dominant without the need of tools," he tells her, repeats word for word, and with a seriousness that tells her it's very much what he believes. It's not a compliment but a statement of fact, of which he happens to find very appealing.
Inside the bag she finds several different tools, as he described them. To him they're not just that, but he's not going to explain that to a Garou. It was hard enough trying to explain it to just other humans, let alone another culture that he barely understands, that's mingled with animal instincts he couldn't understand even if he wanted to. There are several different lengths of rope, carefully wound back up and organized, they are fine, proper ropes from Japan that are strong and soft enough for her to know it's not the sort of rope used for camping. She finds several lengths of short chains, clips to go with them to make a combination of links between chains or the thick leather cuffs she finds, two pairs that have several metal hoops for attachments. There's a leather collar she finds with similar hoops and the buckle has the addition of a small padlock, so that it can't be taken off. The key is not with it. Then there are floggers and whips, a small assortment that are thicker to thinner - he'd explain the differences if she asked, but he wouldn't need to explain the cane in there, or the leather harness or rubbery ball gag.
As she goes through these things he sits there on the sofa, his hand having become a little clammy on the palm as he worries on her reactions, while trying not to let it slide towards that anxiety again. His gaze flickers to each thing she may pull out, or what he can see her looking at, continuously sliding to catch glimpses of reactions from her. But he's completely silent in his corner of the sofa.
[Kora] The ropes come out first, and she lingers on them, running the edge of her thumb up and down the fine, well-made twist, feeling the fibers beneath the edge of her thumb. Back and forth. The motion has a meditative quality to it, wordless and thoughtless. She turns over the first bundle, then, looks back at him, over her left shoulder, her eyes half-lashed and speculative.
He must find her hard to read, as she unpacks the tools he keeps in the bag, has kept zipped up and away on the floor of his closet as this - what is here, now - unfolded between them. He must find her difficult to read, because she is a thoughtful creature underneath it is. Because she reserves judgment, because she looks at something before she defines it, just as she is looking at the chains, lifting them out, feeling their weight in her hands and setting them aside, allowing the links to coil down each upon each atop the rope so that she does not scratch the surface of his coffee table. The collar, with its padlock, has her cutting another look back towards him, over her shoulder, this sort of speculative surprise written into the shape of her mouth, the arch of a singular eyebrow.
Kora thumbs the padlock as if it were a thing apart, watches it swing, and then sets the collar, too, aside. The first flogger startles her visibly. There's a sharply indrawn breath, both of her pale brows lifting above her dark, dark eyes - all the signs, none of them concealed, suddenly and all at once, as if she had walked into a wall she always knew was there. She exhales a breath, then, and that breath has the shape of laughter, the subtle huff of it twisting through her body, all the way through her spine. She removes a handful of the floggers, but leaves the rest of the bag's contents - the gag, the harness, the cane - tucked away inside.
Then, finished at last, she reaches for her beer, lifts it to her mouth, and takes a long drink. Briefly, it fills her senses, chases away the scent of leather. She swallows the mouthful, swallows her laughter, swallows her startlement. He can see how she composes herself as she swallows the drink, as she sets the beer back onto the coaster beside his fine Japanese ropes, his cuffs and his collars, his tools. How she composes herself, carefully finding her center, considering the things on the coffee table before she turns back to the kinsman she has claimed, won from another tribe, no less, as hers and no others.
Kora finds his eyes again. She shies away from nothing. "Are they just tools?" she asks him at last, her features open, her tension subsumed into her body. Turning away briefly, she glances aside at the coffee table, reaches for one of the floggers and picks it up, turning it over in her hand before looking back to him. "They aren't - " she is a Galliard, but there aren't proper words for this. Or rather: there are proper words, ones she doesn't know. " - they aren't the point. Just the means - " She shakes her pale head once, finds another path to her question - to the question underneath it. "You don't need these any more."
[Trent Brumby] Trent does nothing but watch her, if she has let go of his hand to rummage through the belongings its resting on the sofa by her leg, never too far away. His gaze flickers back and forth, a hint of a smile at the way she is surprised enough that it registers on her plainly, and when she had looked at him then, she found his eyes shining with a silent and harmless mirth at that.
He lets her drink without interruption, his own wine still taking up a small space on the coffee table where other things now are laid out for them to see. When she picked up one of the floggers his heart beat a little quicker, spreading blood to fill partially fill him in his jeans. It was a sight he wouldn't have thought he'd see, and even if it wasn't in the same context he may fantasize about, it was a startling thrill that zapped through him.
But he pays her attention when she's talking again, lifting his gaze to look at her with a seriousness that chases away the minds-eye image and draws him into the immediate now. "No, I don't need these anymore." His decision was final. "They are just the means." He's glad she understands that much and that he didn't have to explain too much. "You don't need them." She could, however, use them if she was so inclined. That was her choice. "I don't need them."
[Kora] "It turns you on," she cannot miss that. She does not miss that: the familiar surge of heat in his eyes, the quickening of blood is his body. Her dark eyes drop from his eyes to his lap, and then cut a quick, direct line back to his eyes. Her mouth is knowing, and wry. " - seeing me holding this, it turns you on. Just like the way you smell turns me on. Your skin, your sweat. Your blood underneath it. I can smell that. It makes me want you."
Still holding the flogger in her hand, she shifts positions, draws her left leg up under her body, bare toes curling as opens herself to him, pulling him so that she can straddle him, her knees on either side of his hips, her left hand on his right shoulder, holding him down as she settles herself above him.
"I can't hit you, though," she murmurs down at him, her dark eyes fixed on his pale gaze. As if in emphasis, she taps his shoulder with the handle of the flogger, then turns away to toss it back onto the table. It lands with a faint thud amongst the other things laid out there. " - and I like feeling your hands on my body when I'm fucking you. I like it when you touch me. I like it when you look at me. When I wear the clothes you bought me, it feels like you're both looking at me and touching me, and I think that from you, too."
When she twists back to him, her free right hand comes down onto his left shoulder, and she pushes him back down into the cushions of his couch, craning her neck to follow after him, to give him handful of nipping little kisses and half-bites. The kiss deepens, slow and seeking as she sinks her body down over him by slow, deliberate degrees. She stops once, inhaling through the nose when she comes up for air, and then pushes him back down again.
[Trent Brumby] "Yes." The answer is immediate and without denial, that heat flared again, and the more she tells him about how she feels, what he does to her, the more aroused he becomes. She picks her words well, and as she comes to straddle across him, his heart is thudding heavy for her.
His arms spread out across the back of the sofa, his body having shifted enough to allow room beside both his hips to accommodate her knees. He doesn't reach to touch her yet. There's things he wants to say, but none of them find a voice. The words are chased away by her mouth nipping at his and demanding he kiss her. He does, he's pressed down by her, as she presses into him, slowly and teasing, and he can almost taste his excited pulse on his own tongue. A small but pleased sound is just a breath coming up his throat, and its then, when she comes in for a second, breath stealing kiss, that his hands leave the sofa to run up her back and down again, drawing her down against the hardness of him.
She does this to him. Makes him forget mostly everything. Kora did not need tools, she used both words and body perfectly. It certainly helped that Trent would never forget that she is a killing machine under it all, one that would not hesitate ripping open a body, as she so boldly claimed. Rope and chains are nothing compared to the physical prowess she had, and floggers are nothing compared to the potential violence all packaged in the attractive Get of Fenris holding him against the sofa with mouth and body.
[Kora]
There is a low noise of pleasure in the back of her throat when he draws her hips down to his - this raw moment underscoring it when she feels him, hard for her, and moves against his body as if there were no clothes between them. As if she could will them away and take him thoughtlessly right where he is stilling on the couch. She is not kissing him anymore, not in that moment. Her face against his is twisted raw, constricted with need, her breath hot, sharp and panting against his stubbled cheek.
Then she stills against him, recovers herself. Reaches up and grabs his jaw and pulls his face so that it is even with hers, level beneath her as she touches her forehead to his and smiles down at him. He cannot see her mouth, but he knows she is smiling by the shape of her eyes, the subtle pull at the corners, by the curve of her mouth wide against his. "You're going to have to wait," this time, the grind of her hips into his is deliberate, controlled, tempting his control. " - you can wait, can't you?"
This is arch, not cruel.
" - because you and I," she continues, sliding her hands down the slope of his shoulders, over the thin cotton t-shirt he wears, over the hard bulge of his well-worked biceps, down over his forearms until she finds his hands on her body and begins to peel them away, capturing his hands with hers when she has succeeded in her task. Her voice is a rich thread of a thing, some sort of spun amber, too occluded with want to be gold. " - we're going to pack this stuff back up, and put it away together."
She means it. She lifts their clasped hands away from her body, pushes his hands up and back and out, using them as leverage to push herself back from his lap, finding the floor with that sort of blind physical confidence she must have to be what she is.
[Trent Brumby]
His hands slip down her back, directly to her hips as she moves against him, pressing the zip of his jeans uncomfortably into his hardened length, but he does not mind, far from it. He encourages her movement with a firmer grip that doesn't constrict her much, but makes her stay against him firmly. Breathing out heavier exhales warm air across her skin with their faces side by side.
As she recovers his grip lessens and he opens his eyes to look at her with a smoldering burn in his gaze. "Yes, I can wait," he confirms but without a smile. His yearning for her too much to be able to smile so easily right then, he wanted to do other things with his mouth, to have his hands under her clothes. But he can wait, even if he wanted to be doing something else.
His fingers curl around hers as she directs his hands away from her, and she finds no resistance to the way that his arms span out with her direction. Strength flows into them as she moves to stand, using them as resistance to steady herself. He waits until she has the balance before his grip loosens again and he begins to shift up from the sofa to stand. Although he's surprised that she wants him to put these things back away, he doesn't object, only nodding at her with a small hint of smile.
"Then can we stay in the bedroom?" Where he can do what he wanted to do when she walked in the door.
[Kora]
Her skin is flushed pink underneath, all the capillaries open, all the blood beneath her skin. She is still breathing hard, these short, shallow little breaths, and her knotted hair is disordered, dozens of the fine strands pulled away from the loosely structured updo falling back down to frame her face, pull across her cheek, her jaw. She reaches up to pull down two find strands sticking to the corner of her mouth and gives him a sidelong look, somehow both smoldering and wry.
"Then we can stay in the bedroom," she confirms, with a laugh that is born and half-dies in her throat as she watches him, finds the heat in her eyes answered in his own.
"C'mon," she says then; this, too, with a laugh and a hip check that seems less an acknowledgment, less a greeting, than an intimation of the ways her body can move, all the opposing planes. Another laugh: throat-caught, absurdist, before she bends and begins packing his tools back into his gym bag. She packs away almost precisely half of them, stopping just once to strike a pose for him with the largest and most wicked looking of his floggers. It is just the pose: she does not swat at him with it, playfully or otherwise, but she likes the way his pupils constrict when he looks at her like that. And she tells him so.
When the floggers and cuffs and collars and ropes and chains - all the tools and implements, all the restraints and gags - are packed away, she zips the gym bag half-way closed, leaving the final half for him to finish.
