manhattan ii.

Konstantijn
Konstantijn can see it.  That point of no return.  That moment her choice is made.  That moment all her struggles cease, and her eyes meet his.

It is not the first time he has seen surrender like this, and every time, every single time, he thinks of hunting.  He thinks of death.  He thinks of the prey he has borne to the earth, the thrashing limbs, the terrified beating of wings, hands, heart, that always inevitably settle into this.  Exactly this.

And yet: not exactly this.  It is not the first time he has seen surrender; it is not even the first time he has seen this woman submit to him.  Even so, it's different.  It's different this time.  What's in his breast is not the savage swell of triumph but something far more treacherous.  It's akin to what he felt when he saw her scar.  It's akin to what he felt when she told him: a son.  Stolen from me.  And when she held her hand across her mouth, as though to seal in a sob.  And when she flinched, as though he might strike her.  And

here, now:

when she looks at him; drops the pretense.  Forgets, like him, how to pretend.  Now, for once, she is honest and unguarded.  It pierces him like a spear.  It curves his ribs in on the great beating engine of his heart, pierces him through and through.  He can trace every step that led them to this juncture, but none of it makes sense.  He's reeling; he did not expect this, and could not have prepared for it.

She makes him burn.  She makes him ache.  The humans have a story: Adam and Eve, the rib and the lover.  Konstantijn wonders, half-drunk on the moment, if that progenitor of all mankind ached too, like a phantom limb remembering its amputated self, at the sight of his mate.


Take me to bed, she says.


So he kisses her.  There's no other possibility in that moment.  It's a ferocious thing, his brow furrowing with intensity, his mouth so harsh on hers he drinks the breath right out of her lungs; lets it back out into her mouth, a groan.  In the next second the world tilts, it spins.  His hands are at her small waist, and then gripping her ass: he lifts her bodily from the floor.  It's not the first time tonight she's had no choice but to straddle him, but this time there's no chair beneath her, nothing else to rest her weight on but him.  Compared to him, her body is so slight.  He's an engine of destruction, burning hot, his waist hard and lean between her thighs, his chest a solid wall against her torso.

The kiss falls apart.  He's breathing swiftly, smoothly, looking at her.  His pupils are blown.  His eyes are everywhere: her cheekbones, her mouth, the tip of her nose.  Her eyes.  He doesn't close his this time when he kisses her again, an open-mouthed, breathing affair, the tip of his tongue flirting with hers.

Without a word he carries her in from the terrace.  Leaves their half-eaten dinner, their wine, their scotch behind.  Someone will take care of it.  They're Silver Fangs, and such details are beneath them.  The sound of the city fades behind them.  The wet air from the river is replaced by cycled, conditioned ventilation.  The second story of his penthouse is a expansive as the first, but he navigates it from memory; barely even takes his eyes from her.  They pass a study, all smoked-glass desk and sleek shelves.  They pass a guest room, impeccably kept and largely unused, and its well-appointed but impersonal bathroom.  They pass an open area, a billiards table ... television, couch.

His room is darkened.  City lights kept it from utter darkness, but with the door closed they're shadows to one another.  He stops when his knees touch the side of his bed.  Gravity shifts again.  He sets her down at the edge.  Between frame and mattress the bed is waist-high; he doesn't have to bend so very far.  His hands don't seem to want to leave her body.  He runs them up her back, around her sides; he cups her breasts in his palms for a moment, and even through her brassiere she can feel the warmth of him, the strength there.

Then he's tugging her ruined shirt away from her shoulders.  Down, down; off.  Bending to her, putting his mouth on her shoulder, on her neck -- so hungry, biting at the strap of her bra where it crosses the lee of her shoulder.

"Take it off," he mutters, and saying it, reaches back himself - grabs his undershirt by the back, claws it up over his head in one motion.  Leaves it a scrap of fabric on the floor.  Bared, his torso is brutal, beautiful: massive and defined, a woven synergy of strength and tenacity.  Then his hands are on her again, and if she hasn't reached back to unsnap her bra yet he pulls it down, sweeps the straps down from her shoulders and pulls the cups down, pushes her down, holds her down to the bed where he bends over her, ravenous as an animal.

Puts his mouth on her breasts, then.  Takes her nipple in his mouth; devours her whole, the beat of her heart a flutter beneath his lips.  A savage sound rises in his throat.  He muffles it against her flesh.  His hunger is a rough, overwhelming thing.  He doesn't want to frighten her or hurt her, but -- god, he's wanted her since he saw her; he can't remember how to be gentle.  He barely knows how in the first place.

Victoria
For brief moments Victoria is laid bare, metaphorically rather than physically. He can see the whisper of brick and mortar put in place to protect her from savages like him, crumble. There is loneliness and regret and want and confusion reflecting back at the Silver Fang in the pale blue of her eyes. He would know then without question that no matter the Garou she keeps in Virginia or the wren of a mother who consumes too much alcohol and holds too much hate in her heart or the son that she had stolen on the pretence of carrying forward a lineage ...Victoria is alone.

Has been alone.
Has resigned to being just that, mated or not.

She is kinfolk. And when her life passes from this one to the next, no one will even ever know she had a story. No Galliard will relate her life's woes or accomplishments. It'll end in a smallsize coffin with a beautiful headstone and nothing more.

When their eyes lock for a few beats of her heart, that is what he sees. Everything she's terrified of and desperate for all at once. He kisses her hard and there's betrayal in that kiss and it's both bitter and sweet. He takes away her breath only to give it back in a bruising press of his lips to her own. He is a thing meant for death. A life that burns so bright, so fast, that it's only path is to burn out and fade away.

Hands grip her bottom. Feel the soft silk of her panties and the firmer edge of the garter. She is cool and smooth and soft - the way a woman is meant to be. Not firm or muscled, but soft and tender. Up the stairs, to his bed and it's there that he deposits her so that his hands can become as familiar with her breasts as his eyes have longed to. Teeth and lips and tongue sweep all along the sweet curve of her neck, her throat, and up her jaw in movements that are not quite deliberate but are certainly hungry.

Take it off he commands, and he would find her obedient at that moment because as hungry as he is to feel her beneath him, surrounding him, clinging to him, she is just as needy. Her entire body and every muscle within it is quivering. Arms reach round and unfasten her bra, he helps by pushing down the narrow straps. It falls to the floor, somewhere, forgotten. Before he can push her back and loom over her like some hungry beast, she's unfastening that narrow skirt and then wiggling free of it. It joins the bra leaving her in those panties and that carter and those silk stockings.

He doesn't want to hurt her or frighten her, he just doesn't realise he's already done both.

Victoria
Loneliness is not something he expected to see in her.  Solitude, certainly: to be alone by choice and not by accident or fate.  That, he expected.  Defiance.  Winter's chill, as cold as her eyes.  But not -- this.

Not loneliness.  Not regret.  Not confusion.  She looks so lost; he doesn't think he can find her.  He doesn't think she wants him to, or expects it, anyway, but all the same she lets him take her to his bed.  She helps him take her clothes off; no slow seductive striptease, this, but something rushed and silent and breathing in the dark.  His hands are rough and he can't help it.  There goes her shirt.  There goes her bra.  There goes that narrow skirt that he might have simply torn if it had remained on any longer.  He sweeps it all to the floor in a single push of his hand.

He's pushing her down, then.  His heart is a hammer in his chest.  He comes over her like a storm, like a beast; buries his face in her skin, drenches her body in kisses.  He sucks at her breasts until he feels her back arching, until the shivering in her core becomes something she can't hide.  She's trembling.  He lifts his head.  So like an animal is he: a wolf over a kill, a predator over prey.

His hand presses against her lower abdomen.  By design or accident, the heel of his hand rests where her body and womb were opened years ago; he doesn't seem to notice.  He curls his fingers under the waist of her panties, but he doesn't tug them off just yet, doesn't tear them off, doesn't shred them in his naked urge to find her.

A beat of pause; no more.  His mouth lowered to the soft slope of her stomach, then, touching against skin so soft and pale.

"You're shaking," he whispers.  "What is there to fear?"

Victoria
Whatever he translates from her eyes and gaze and expression is likely something he won't ever have the chance to see again. His hands are all over here, feeling the faint curve of her hips and the swell of modest breasts whose nipples harden beneath his touch or even the threat of it. Her breathing comes quicker, her heart races and when his mouth captures her breast and teeth she knows are capable of rending flesh and bone brush the too tender pale skin she arches into him with one hand hooked around his neck and fingers lost in  thick dark hair.

Theirs is not a graceful union - not yet, not this time. There's too much pent up want and desire and a need to know what the other feels like beneath them, around them, inside of them. He pauses, hand at her lower abdomen. Every time he takes notice of that scar and every time he touches it, Victoria tenses. That wound may have healed just less than a century ago, but he knows without question that it is as if opened and bare and bleeding.

"It doesn't matter." She says, twisting her upper body by scant degrees and tilting her head over to the side so that she can see him without craning her neck or lifting her shoulders up off his bed. "Not right now."

Konstantijn
An echo of what was said on the terrace:

"It matters to me."

He doesn't press, though.  She has her secrets.  He lets her keep them.  The tension in her is palpable whenever his hands are anywhere near that single scar, but he never was the merciful sort.  He scoops his hands under her bottom; he raises her hips from the bed and he kisses her over the scar,

at the edge of her panties,

between her thighs, a breath of silk the only thing between his mouth and her cunt.  He's shameless about it; ferocious; rubs his nose and his mouth, his face, against her.  Even here she's scentless, as pale and insubstantial as clear water.  Sudden frustration burns in him.  He seizes her panties in his teeth and drags them down, curls his fingers into the scrap of lingerie, rolls it down the smooth length of her legs as he rears up on his knees.  They drop to the floor: a last flag of surrender cast to the shadows.

There's a distance between then.  Enough for him to see her in her entirety: pale and lovely and perfect and fragile.  He's shrugged those bracers -- so classic, himself -- off his shoulders hours ago.  He undoes the button of his pants now, and then the zipper, and then there's just a moment where he pauses, where he reaches out, wraps his hands around her waist and runs them up her sides, covers her breasts.

Shields her a moment.  As though her nudity is too much for him to bear; too much for her to suffer.  "Should I tell you you're beautiful?" he wonders aloud; a murmur.  "You know you are.  I'll tell you something you don't know:

"I didn't expect you."  He rises up to stand on his knees, pushing his slacks down.  "I couldn't have foreseen this.  I'm afraid of where it will lead."

His boxer briefs are dark -- indistinguishable from black in this light.  Konstantijn is not shy about nudity.  There's a certain practice in the way he lifts his cock from beneath the waistband; curving and heavy, pulsing with his heartbeat until he has to hold himself in his hand, stroke his palm along the length of it to give himself some measure of relief.  He's so hard for her already.  That can't possibly be a surprise to her.  They've both been waiting for longer than they want to admit.

"Put your legs around me," he whispers.  "Hold on to me."

The mattress indents under his palm; then his forearm as he comes down over her.  His chest touches hers; then their abdomens align.  She's so soft; so small.  He overshadows her entirely in all his hard, angular strength, holding his weight over her so as not to crush her.  His mouth finds hers -- already there's a familiarity in that, the glancing, languid kiss he gives her, but that languor is a lie.  He lays his cock over her cunt; gives a single hard flex of his hips to rub the shaft of it along her slit; lets her feel the length of it, the thickness.

There's nothing languid about that.  There's nothing but a dark, raw hunger there, and the next kiss matches.  His eyes search for hers in the half-light; find her.  The lights of the city glimmer across their skin, sheen where sweat has begun to break out at his temple, the side of his neck.  He takes himself in hand again.  Fits the head of it to her cunt.

"Come on."  There's a new roughness in his voice; as though he has to grit his teeth against the urge to shove into her, plunge into her.  His penetration is slow, but it is not quite gentle.  It is inexorable; undeniable.  He stretches her open slowly.  Steadies her with a hand at her hip.  Pulls her up as he slides into her, inch after inch.  A sigh, "Oh, that's it."

Victoria
He tells her (again) that what she says or feels or thinks matters to him. He could say it a thousand times and the chanes are slim that Victoria wouldn't believe him. Thankfully, he leaves it alone, allows her to keep the small bits of herself private and away from the too intense glare from his eyes.

Hands on her bottom, hips lift off the bed and his mouth claims the soft flesh at her lower abdomen, at her thigh. But it becomes something more than that in the span of a breath. The quicening of her heartbeat. Mouth and nose and face nuzzles and press between her thighs with great insistence and it's maddening. Fingers curl into his bed linens - his duvet - and grip it as tight as she can. Teeth catch her bottom lip and long dark lashes lower like a fine curtain over the pale hue of her eyes.

When he kneels, raises to his knees, his body is silhouetted by the lights of the city filtering in through his windows. She cannot see his face nor those wolfish amber eyes, but she doesn't have to to realise that his attention is on nothing but her. Laid bare and vulnerable before him, he covers her breasts with his hand and her own lift to drag rounded, well manicured nails down his forearms until her palms cover the back of his hands for the briefest of moments. The beat of her heart is dangerously fast, he can feel each beat rattle against his touch.

Words. He's speaking and she draws open her eyes to half-lidded slits and watches him as he pushes slacks down off his hips and draws a hand beneath the waist of his boxer briefs to draw out the heavy, curve of is cock. He's swollen and her eyes drift lazily down and watch his hand stroke over the length of him. Her own fingers mender up her belly from her navel until her palm is covering one breast, massaging it in a way that men rarely can manage in their haste.

Hold onto me...

And she does. Thighs part wide, letting him settle his weight between them and without though she lifts her legs and wraps them around him near his hips. Lips press to lips and Victoria anchors one hand on his waist while the other cradles his jaw. The heaviness of his cock, the swollen head of it, are washed in an immediate sensation of heat. One hand guides him, hips thrust and beneath him she catches her breath; the sound a sharp gasp of air drawn in to fill her lungs. The walls of her body grip him tight, cover him in wetness and blanket him in overwhelming heat.

Konstantijn inches his cock deeper and deeper. Her thighs tuck in against his, calves and ankles and feet wrap round him. The hand that had been resting on his waist slides down and urges him deeper and deeper. She writhes beneath him, hips shifting and pushing until he's buried to the hilt inside her and the heat and weight of his balls rest against her.

She whines. Whimpers. The sound feral and not at all quiet.

Fuck me, she whispers to him. Teeth finding purchase on his bicep, biting firm before whimpering once more and then kissing the angry red mark all better.

Konstantijn
There's a curious gentleness about this, and Konstantijn is not a gentle wolf.  He's a savage, a brute.  He cornered her and harried her to this moment, but now that he has her here --

he's careful with her.  He forces himself to be careful.  The arm that supports his weight is hard and taut.  Every muscle bunched, every joint locked.  He strains against himself, because the truth is

he is hungry.  He is starved for her, and he wants to bear her down; pound her.  He fights against that urge because of what he saw out on the terrace.  Her hands trying to hide that scar.  Her eyes: a history of loss and loneliness.  He is not gentle.  He is an animal.  She is of his tribe, of his blood; his concern and his to protect -- and so has it been since time immemorial.  As powerful as the instinct to dominate and conquer and take is the instinct to ward and protect.  If that were not true, their race would have died out a long time ago.

And so: he holds her steady to keep her from taking too much, too fast.  He eases into her, gives her time to open, time to adjust.  But god, she makes it difficult.  She wraps herself around him.  She pulls him into her.  She rides up against him, rolls her hips, writhes, and he has to grasp her hip; he has to push her down to the mattress, hold her there, hold her still.  His eyes are closed, his brow furrowed with strain.  Lips parted.  Teeth half-bared.  His breathing is harsh already.  She whimpers, and she doesn't sound like some frightened, fragile thing at all.

She sounds feral herself.  Half-wild.  He remembers then: she is half-wild.  She's half a wolf, and when she bites him she cements it.  His eyes flash open; the force of his stare is very nearly physical, a jolt of impact.  There's a dangerous light there: an alpha born, unaccustomed to even this much defiance.

He snarls at her.
She whispers: fuck me.

Something trips; something snaps.  His hand pushes heavy and hard into her hair.  Grips at the back of her head.  He pulls her head back, he puts his mouth on her throat, sets his teeth to that flash of muscle in her neck.  It's something like a warning.  There's a growl in his chest, pressed so tight to hers.  A single, percussive slam of his hips into hers -- his cock into her, right to the base, every last inch -- sudden, very nearly brutal; a taste of what he could give her.

"Be careful, Victoria."  The whisper is a harsh, raw thing, his lips moving against the soft skin of her neck.  "I'm trying but I can barely control myself.  Ask me again and I won't even make the attempt."

Victoria
Konstantijn is as careful with Victoria as he is capable of being. She can feel him tremble with restraint, his own strength and corded muscles keeping the animal inside of him at bay. There is something very nearly sweet about the way that he protects her from his more base wants and needs. A hand on her hip, his body adjusting himself so that she's stretched and opened slowly rather than hard and fast and forceful.

If it's a struggle for him, it's maddening for her. She cannot be still, cannot wait for him to fill her up slowly after dragging the heavy length of his cock out of the warmth of her body. All of her desire is brought to bear in those first few moments and he holds her done. Insists with just his touch that she calm herself and allow him to be tender to her in a way that isn't common or normal for him.

The way that she told him to fuck her was not with the timid voice or tone of a girl who is unsure of what she wants or unaware of what she's getting herself into. Those two words were spoken on a sultry purr with a thick backing of confidence behind each one. That sound, that bite, that lick and lips upon his bicep threaten to let loose the wolf bearing down on the Garou's flesh begging for release.

Be careful, he says and she nods running her cool fingers down his sides. Ankles and calves and feet drag soft and smooth over the backs of his thighs and down to hook round the back of his knees. He tugs her head back and she bares her throat to him, listens to him speak again with attention that is acutely focused on the sound of his words.

A growl rumbles up in his throat, rattles in his ribs and rolls in his belly. It vibrates against her body as he slams his hips against her own, cock shoved deep inside of her until she quivers and whines low and audible. Her eyes are heavy lidded, slitted like the eyes of a cat resting too long in the warm noon day sun.

Fuck me, she whines, the small body beneath him asks for more than he may assume she can handle.

Konstantijn
What was it she said to him, a week ago and half a continent away?  Virgins are overrated.  Well; this much is obvious: Victoria is no virgin, no stranger to this primordial dance.  There's nothing shy or uncertain about the way she moves.  He saw fear in her eyes when he closed in on her out on the terrace -- not of him, perhaps, but of the moment, the situation, the threat he represented, the walls in her that came tumbling down -- but it was never fear of sex.  It was never fear of intimacy.

It doesn't matter, she said: of fear, of doubt.  Not right now.

She knows exactly what she's doing.  She knows what that slide of her hands down his sides would do to him.  The way his skin tightens to her touch.  The way the musculature beneath flexes of its own accord, reflexively.  The way his breathing changes, grows rough; the way his stomach tightens, his flanks, to drive himself into her another solid notch.  She knows how it'll make him feel when she wraps her legs around him like that, finds on his body footholds, lifelines, anchors to hold her to him

even as she's telling him -- giving him permission -- to let go.  Stop pretending he's not an animal.  Stop trying so damn hard, for once in his life, to be gentle and careful and not, not, not the ravenous beast he is.

She says it again: her lidded eyes, her parted mouth.  His eyes are on that haughty mouth of hers.  He's watching her, the catch of her lower lip beneath her teeth on that first filthy syllable.  The touch of her lips together, and then apart.

Fuck me.


It's all the blessing he needs.  He grabs her wrists.  They're frail in his big palm, in his strong fingers.  It's not the first time he's done this, not the first time he's restrained her or held her or arrested her like this, and perhaps all those other times were leading up to this.

Her hands aren't allowed to drive him mad any longer.  He slams them over her head, pins her wrists to the bed -- her body elongated, her breasts offered up.  Quite without hesitation he takes what is given, voluntarily or otherwise: his mouth is all over her, mauling her breasts, sucking on her tits, biting with ever-so-barely restrained violence at her nipples.  She has a glimpse of him at her breast, ravaging her like an animal at the kill: his blazing golden eyes, his eyebrows dark and harsh, his snarling mouth, the wreath and slide of muscle in his shoulders.

Then his free hand is at her waist, grasping her, easily encompassing the front-to-back span of her side in his grip.  He shifts and the mattress shifts with him.  She's negligible compared to his mass, a pretty little doll in his hands.  He's still holding her wrists down.  He's moving her, positioning her, dragging her a breathless few inches against him even as he's shifting his weight to his knees.  His mouth breaks from her skin; he's leaning over her, he angles her hips to accept him in a single rough pull of his hand, and then

he fucks her.  No apology; no warning.  Nothing held back now.

Just like she asked.  Pounding, slamming, plowing, hammering her like they've been going for hours already; like they've been fucking all along, like he's been waiting for just this, like she's wet and hot and slick and ready for him, for this, for this level of intensity.  His head is bowed.  His brow is furrowed.  His breath slides harsh through flaring nostrils, and then through clenched teeth.  His hand slips from her waist to prop against the bed; it gives him the leverage he needs to lean over her a little more, penetrate deeper, hit her harder, batter those last edges inside her until she relinquishes, surrenders, accepts all of him into her.

"Say it again," he snarls at her.  There's a growl on every thrust, punctuating the brutal slam of his cock into her, over and over.  " 'Fuck me.  I want you to fuck me.'  Say it."

Victoria
There is something to be said about the sharp intensity of physical pain. It's an awakening. An epiphany that puts everything into perspective. When you're certain you can't take any more, it pushes you a little further and insists that you can. It helps to remind you that you're alive. So she goads him and pushes him, gives the feral beast fucking her with restraint the permission to just let go. She's small and delicately put together, but durable. He doesn't know the things her body has been put through. He isn't fully aware of just how much she can take.

Hands grip her wrist, thrust them over her head. Mouth claims breast and nipple, devouring them with rumbling growls and teeth that graze her, reminding her of just what sort of predator he really is. He can feel her watching him then, with each sharp suck or threatening bite or fierce kiss. It drives her mad, watching his mouth move across her body. Victoria whines at him. She whines in a way that no human woman can.

The sheets stay in place as she is drug just bare inches across his bed so that he can fuck her. Hard. Just the way she requested. The way that she is angled, the tilt of her pelvis, the spread of her legs - it all allows him to dig deeper inside of her, feel himself nearly bottom out only to draw out and thrust back in. His room is filled with the sharp sounds of flesh to flesh. Low cast growls and genuine primal cries fill his bedroom. Echo off the walls and threaten to spread further throughout his loft.

She doesn't care, abandon has found Victoria and she is without walls or pretences or masks at that moment. He fucks her without care or concern, their flesh slapping against one another. He is already slick and coated with her wetness which threatens to become a bit more messy with each demanding fuck of his hips against her. Despite the rough dance they engage in, there is some oddly beautiful bit of movement in unison between them: he flexes his hips, she thrusts her own toward him, he goes for her breast and she arches her back to offer it up. They seem too familiar to be strangers, too comfortable to not be aware of one another. Yet, that's exactly what they are: no more than strangers connected by the loose ties of tribal blood.

Hovering over her, hands finding purchase on the bed, he growls and rumbles with each unforgiving battering of her body and she accepts it all with an honest, bare desire.

Say it again...say it..

"Fuck me..." She no longer whispers those words, but whines and gasps between them as each leaves her lips. "Fuck..yes fuck me...I want you to fuck me..." Her body trembles, her voice does the same. Glistening beads of sweat dot her brow, the hollow of her neck and down her belly.

Konstantijn
She shouldn't do that.

She shouldn't give him what he wants like that.  She shouldn't tell him to fuck her like that.  She shouldn't lay back for him like this, not when they barely know each other, not when he walked into her life a week ago with such arrogance, such presumption.  She shouldn't

give in

just like this, because the truth is: it just drives him closer to madness.  It just pushes him higher, makes him wilder, makes him wrench her hands harder against the bed, makes him drag her up in counterpoint to every thrust, makes him fuck her that much harder.

And she takes it.  She takes what he dishes out; there's more resilience in that sweet little body of hers than he suspected.  But then there has to be.  She's survived so much already, and he doesn't know the half of it.  He doesn't know the tip of the iceberg.  She's like ice, but no, no she's not; she's not ice at all but diamond, something hard and pristine, created by enormous heat and crushing pressure; something that must be shattered and cut and ground and polished to be

perfect.


She's perfect to him.  Every tremble of her body; every drop of sweat.  She drives him wild.  She's crying out now; there's no restraint in her either.  She's not ice, she's molten, he's coming down over her and wrapping his arms under her, letting go her wrists at last, gathering her in his arms, crushing her against his chest.  He surrounds her, fills her; the two instincts dueling in him coalesce into one.  Protect her.  Dominate her.  His teeth scrape her skin as he licks the sweat from the hollow of her throat, and then he bites down on her shoulder, grips her like a wolf mounting his mate, holds her still to -- quite frankly -- get fucked.

He's snarling like an animal now.  No words left.  No attempt to be human.  He's pounding her, hammering her to the mattress -- shaking the bed despite the weight of its foundation, its frame.  Good thing he has thick walls.  Good thing he has a two-level suite.  Good thing the neighbors can't hear them, though right now, right this moment, Konstantijn wouldn't care if they did.  He wants them to, wants them to hear the way he's making her cry out, wants them all to hear how prettily she surrenders, wants the whole fucking world to know:

she's mine, she's mine, she's already mine.  she always has been.

Victoria
Everything ceases to matter then. Time, space, objects. Just his hips relentlessly driving his swollen and hard cock deeper and deeper, over and over. He draws her forward, threatens to tug her up but doesn't. Konstantijn growls at her body. Growls at her. She grunts and whines and cries out with each cresting wave of orgasm that threatens to drown in her in an immense sea of pleasure. There is no shame between lovers, nothing matters right then. Not his neighbours or the way his bed shakes while he lays claim to her body. Not his offer of convenient, loveless mating and certainly not the Modi waiting so patiently to do what it is that Konstantijn has considered ...

The normal world and all of the problems collected in it is but a distant thing. So far away that she wonders if it exists. He overs, then wraps a strong arm with coiled muscles around her body. She cradles his jaw and has his mouth. They behave as familiar lovers one moment and  the animals his kind always has to hide the next.

Repeatedly she allows him to have her neck. Bite me, she whispers, then cries out softly when he does. Long pale fingers drag through incredibly soft thick dark hair. She is unabashed in that moment and he must wonder if he'll ever see her this way again. She told him nothing held past tonight, past that moment of maddening intensity when he made her cry for him, whine at him, need him.

They are sweaty, she drags her nose across his chest and kisses the skin there languidly. He holds her still, she wraps her arms about him, dainty hands holding loose to his hips. Konstantijn has pleased women before Victoria, he knows without question or doubt that he's pleased her too. Felt the muscles of her body tighten and flex around his shaft as the warmth of her orgasm washed over and covered him.

Without doubt, for that moment, Victoria Wilmington is without question, his.

Konstantijn
It'd be nice to say Konstantijn was concerned about such things as her enjoyment, her pleasure.  And the truth is at the beginning of this encounter he wanted to be.  He tried.  As with all attempts at magnanimity or true nobility in his life, it didn't last long.

It's been said before.  It's worth saying again: he's an animal.  He's selfish.  He wants; he takes; he leaves little enough for others.

Pure luck, then, that they match up so well.  At least in this alone -- whether because of fate or who they are or what they are -- they are aligned; they are perfect.  What he does to her might terrify another woman, might send her running from the room in tears, cursing him all the way out.  The way he fucks her, which is on the verge of violence; the way he bites her, seizes her in his teeth, holds her, as though any moment he might simply lose control, slip his skin, reduce her to a raw red stain on his bed.

It doesn't terrify her.  It makes her come.  She comes and it's a long cresting wave; it starts somewhere inside her and he feels it, those deep involuntary pulses in her cunt, that suddenly undeniable pull of her body that strikes a spark down the axis of his spine,

lights him off as well.

His hands grip her back.  His teeth leave marks.  Suddenly he's bearing her down with all his weight; fucking her with all the considerable strength of his body.  His own orgasm lights off like a detonation, a stormfront of heat that obliterates its way up from the center of his gravity.  His breath catches hard; then he roars against her shoulder, tattoos the sound there with clenched teeth.  He pins her, he penetrates her, he pounds his cum into her: as though if he held her tightly enough, fucked her hard enough, filled her deep enough, he could simply consume her.

Sate himself.

Cure himself of this unexpected and undeniable passion.



Afterward he doesn't move for some time.  His weight is barely still on his elbows -- enough that she isn't smothered.  Enough that she has room to do what she does: nuzzling his chest, kissing him over his heart.  Beneath his breastbone his heart is a hammer, pounding, pounding, slowing by degrees.

It's several moments before he finally moves.  Several moments before he trusts himself to move: some of his armor returned by then, some of his strength of will back in place.  A long deep inhale precedes motion, and then he lifts his head, kisses the side of her neck.  Slumps to the side, drawing himself out of her with a repressed shudder; turning on his back in a few slow, lazy, incremental shifts.

He says nothing for a while.  They are shoulder to shoulder; their legs are loosely tangled.  The city continues to shine through the windows.  Sweat lifts from his skin.  The beast in repose is a primitively beautiful thing: all thick biceps, broad chest, long limbs, softening cock.  Eventually he reaches over; lays his forearm across her lower abdomen, his hand wrapping around the far side of her hip.

"I think I'll follow you back to Virginia."  His voice has a rough, blurred edge.  "You should accept my proposal, Victoria.  We've something ...rare, between us."

His thumb sweeps a lazy arc across the crest of her hipbone.  Beautiful creature, he thinks.  Even his thoughts are lazy.

"I think we'd both be sorry if you let it slip away."

Victoria
He holds her with fingers that bear the promise of both greatness and murder. He bites into her neck with dull human teeth that still leave impressions on her skin. There's a beast beneath his skin and it's trying to claw it's way up through his bones and muscles and dermis and epidermis. Victoria can feel the wolf inside of him thrash at the bonds Konstantijn has wrested it into.

The warm waves of release spill over and across her body, tighten her muscles from head to toe while her hands hold fast to him. He's on the heels of her own, roaring and pressing the whole of his solid weight on her much smaller frame. There's no mistaking the feeling of his body pulsing and releasing waves of cum inside of her. It makes her gasp, her body arch and her legs cling to him.

For a few quiet beats the moment is tender. He rolls off her body and leaves her thighs slick and glistening. Shoulder to shoulder, his forearm over her belly to hold her at her hip. Victoria's eye lids are closed, she looks angelic - as peaceful if she were dead.

Strands of consciousness threaten to leave her when her eyes are closed, and then he speaks. Lashes lift, head turns. Blue eyes swivel to take in the shadows that play on his face, leave his eyes hollow holes and his cheeks gaunt. The spent kinswoman is too pale for the play of light and dark, she simply looks ethereal. Not of this world.

"There's a Wolf there waiting to claim me. We're in....a relationship." The words are a whisper, as if she were afraid to utter them any louder than that. He thinks they'll both be sorry if they let whatever this is go and she doesn't deny it. Not just then, anyway.

"He's climbing in Rank he calls it Adren.. Once he does..." She leaves the implication hang and turns her eyes away from him, though she leaves her hand resting cool atop the back of his at her belly. "When I go back to Virginia, I'll be going back to him." walls are rebuilt, masks fall into place.

She's not moving though, not until he makes her.

Konstantijn
Perhaps he should be angry.  Perhaps he should shout.  Demand to know what she's thinking, how could she, why would she, what.  Certainly the potential for violence is in him.  His rage burns so strong; more potent, even, than that of the wolf waiting for her in Virginia.

He doesn't rage, though.  He laughs - a low, dark sound.  The beast in him is satiated right now; lust and violence, after all, entwine so closely in the heart of an Ahroun.  Or maybe it's not that at all.  Maybe he's just that confident, that arrogant.  Maybe he doesn't care.  He's had her now, hasn't he?  And she knows all about men like him, doesn't she?  They always want women like her.  They take.  They always move on.

And yet still: her hand on his.  His hand across her midsection, his thumb stroking soft patterns over her softer skin.  He is quiet for a while.  Then she hears his head turn; he faces her, though she's turned away.

The question is a veneer of simplicity; a one-word composition of all the things he could ask her right now.  It is not angry.  It is not hurt.  It is soft, and curious:

"Why?"

Victoria
He laughs and the shape of her lips curve into a smirk that says she knows far more than she's letting on. Lying there together, basking in the heat from their bodies and the release their fucking had brought, she should be curled into him and comfortable. Without care or worry because whatever may be out there - however big and strong - would be met with something even bigger and far more strong in here.

Victoria doesn't allow herself that, though.
She takes the potential for that moment, the hint of promise in his words, and discards them.
Too much hope, she thinks. Far too much.

Why? One question that stretches out over every thing they've done tonight and everything they've said. Why did you kiss me? Why did you rip my shirt? Why did we just fuck like animals?

Why.

"Because."  It's like imagining the answers to the universe can be found in stars if you just look hard enough. One question, one word. Her head turns back so that her eyes rest on his face. Lips press to his chin and Victoria rolls onto her side, facing him, tucking one leg bent at the knee between his thighs.

Konstantijn
"No."

Like that every shred of humor, dark or otherwise, is gone.  She slides close to him, curling against him as though she wanted to play lovers.  Cuddle.  Or maybe she just wants another go.  It doesn't matter; his hand comes up and catches her by the jaw, gentle but unshakable.

"That's not an acceptable answer.  You know it isn't."

It's like he isn't naked in bed, the sweat of sex not yet evaporated from his skin.  It's like he didn't just fuck her, bury himself in her, lose himself in her -- if only for a few moments.  Konstantijn is rough and dark again, his savagery only barely masked by his cultured language, his flawless diction.

"You let me in tonight, Victoria.  In every possible sense.  So tell me why you would return to that lover of yours.  It can't possibly be loyalty, or you wouldn't be here in the first place.  It can't be love, or you wouldn't speak of him so dismissively.  It can't be duty; he is not your tribe.  You do not belong to or with him.

"You belong with me."  Another man, a lesser wolf, would have swallowed those words.  Kept them safe in his heart.  Not this one.  He is too bold for that; too dominant.  "Your blood and mine are the same, and blood calls to blood.  You know that.  You feel it.

"So tell me.  Why would you go back to him?"

Victoria
Maybe she thought it would of been that easy: fuck me, let me share your bed and when the sun creeps over the city we'll pretend it doesn't matter and that neither of us care. Konstantij isn't having it. The humour bleeds out of him and he takes hold of her jaw. Brows furrow. Body tenses.

His voice is smooth, the rumble of a feral wolf. One of her dainty hands lifts and fingers curl around his forearm, holding lightly to the arm that grips her jaw. He speaks as if he knows her. There's familiarity in those words, in that list he ticks off so non-chalantly - the reasons why that Fenris can't mean a thing to her.

You belong with me.Those four words are dirty and filthy. She hates him for saying them.

"I care for him." A pause, "He cares for me."

"Don't go to Virginia." She says firm. The feel of her soft palm slides up his forearm and to his bicep, back down and around until she's cupping his elbow lazily. "Please."

Konstantijn
Just now Konstantijn is beginning to notice Victoria never really resists outright when he manhandles her.  Not when he grabs her, not when he shakes her; not when he moves her, positions her, treats her rather like a lovely fuck-doll.  She has other forms of resistance, though.  Softer, more subtle things.  The touch of her hand.  The stroke of her palm, as though he could be gentled like this.  As though she could gentle him.

And perhaps she can.  His grip on her eases; slides away.  The back of his knuckles brush her jawline; then his fingers -- those dexterous, marvelous marks of humanity -- tangle with hers a moment.  Her touch slides away.  His bicep, then the jut of his elbow, the hard angle of bone there that could so easily reduce someone's face to a battered red mush.

Konstantijn tilts his head.  It is a consummately animal mannerism.  His brow is quizzical, then clearing.

"You genuinely think I'll die in Virginia," he says -- slowly; half-amazed.  "You think you're saving me."

Victoria
When she should be terrified, she is still. He grips her, grabs her, holds her and she takes it. He's just now noticing but she's been doing it all along. Long dark lashes lower at the feel of his knuckles brushing back against her jaw, Head tips into that touch, dangerous and comforting all at once.

Konstantijn looks confused. She can literally watch him trying to figure her out, a curious look rolls over his expression before giving way to a slow dawning of understanding.

He accuses her of caring. Of harbouring concern for his well-being, his life. Hand falls away from his elbow. The expression on her doll-like face hardens. "I don't want your death hanging over my head."

Yes, I care. Yes, I'll save you even if you're too proud to save yourself.

Konstantijn
It's more than understanding that passes over his face.  It's a complex, complicated interplay of thoughts and emotions; something that threatens to lend softness, tenderness, to that kingly face of his.  He looked at her like this outside on the terrace when he put together the story of her son, his birth.  He looked at her like this in his bed when he laid her down and she trembled like a leaf.

He touches her face again.  He strokes his knuckles over her cheek; runs his thumb across her mouth.  Explores her as a blind man might, by touch, learning the high arch of her cheekbone, the elegance of her eyebrow.  And all the while, the way he looks at her: the faint furrow to his brow, the darkness in those wild eyes.

"We all die someday, Victoria," he says softly, "and Ahrouns sooner than most.  I am a sacrifice born.  What I said earlier wasn't bravado; it was truth.  If I stay in New York City, I will die.  If I go to Amsterdam, or Paris, or Moscow, I will die.  It's inevitable.  I don't fear it.

"If I choose to go to Virginia, that's my choice.  If I die there, that's my fate.  It has nothing to do with you."

A pause.  His attention sharpens; focuses.

"Do you want to be mine?  Answer me honestly: yes or no.  I might never ask again."

Victoria
She is, quite suddenly, embarrassed.

She's embarrassed that he's seen her weak and that he's already begun to read through the cracks in her armour that he's caused. Her face is a delicate thing with cat shaped eyes that are not too wide or two narrow or too beady. Her nose is small and what some might consider slightly pug. Her mouth is something that's caused wars, that's brought down houses and melted the coldest of hearts. And all of those things - those eyes and that nose and her mouth - are set perfectly on a face that's as pale as northern snow. This what his much darker hand smooths across, the lines and angles of a face that is absolutely stunning.

He just wanted to protect her, take care of her. Victoria wanted none of it. Tenderness meant caring, caring led to love. She pushed the Fang to fuck her - hard - so that leaving and disavowing any knowledge of him and this would be so much easier. Now, he's doing it again. Watching her with wolf-like eyes, caressing her jaw and feeling the warmth of her lips. Becoming familiar with the shape of her bones because he doesn't want to forget.

He really ought to forget. They both should.

"Men always do this." She says low, gripping his hand and tugging it from her face. Without a hand to stop her Victoria is turning to climb out of his elevated bed, eyes already seeking out where her clothes have fallen in the darkened room. "I am not yours. Or his. Or theirs. Or anyone's. I am not a commodity to be traded. I'm not some bit of property to own or a trophy to hang on your arm when you feel like it. I've made a commitment in Virginia. Regardless of your opinion on my honour or loyalty, I can't pretend as if that commitment wasn't ever made."

A pause, a beat.

"This was a horrible mistake." A whisper, faint and distant drifts from her lips.

Konstantijn van der Valk
She takes his hand to remove it from her face.  But she takes his hand, and once taken that's a grip not so easily relinquished.  She turns to climb out of his bed.  The twist of her spine is liquid; poetry in motion.  And then it's arrested.  He holds fast to her, pulls her right back around to face him.

"You're always going on about men like me and women like you," he murmurs.  There's an edge in his voice now.  "I've told you already.  There are no men like me.  I'm not a man at all.  I'm a Silver Fang, and so are you."

A beat.  And then he's rising on an elbow, facing her squarely across that rumpled bed; those wrinkled sheets.

"Yes or no, Victoria."

Victoria
There is a lifetime of history in that spine. Decades of birthright in her bones. It might be easy to say that it's all been wasted. In her mid-twenties she's without a proper mate of her blood, heavy and pregnant with his heirs. It might be easy to say except for that fact that Victoria has already given the nation one sacrifice. One son. As pure in blood as she is. As true in birth beneath the heavy full moon as Konstantijn is. So, rather than a waste she is a promise of greatness. A mother to heroes.

Not allowed to leave, she's turned to face him once again. Long strands of blond waves hang loose across her right jaw, nearly covering her eye on the same side. Her eyelashes tangle with strands of her hair and the paleness of her eyes seems nearly luminescent in the shadows of his bedroom.

"There are always men and women like us, Konstantijn. There will be a beautiful monster like you, born beneath your moon, destined to die before he sees thirty five.  Thick with arrogance and promise. And another woman, like me, arrogant just like you and pretty enough to look at." A pause, " There are always others very near to what we are."

Her shoulder shrugs, she has to look away from him. Cannot handle looking at his face just then.


"No." She says. She says it with a voice that's pitched low and run through with stress. Pale jaws firm,  muscles tighten with resolve.


Konstantijn van der Valk
[percep + subterfuge: TRUTH? +WP: THIS IS IMPORTANT.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Victoria
(man+sub: not a thing to see here!)

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Victoria
He is an intuitive wolf. His senses rely on far more than just what his eyes can see. The tension in her muscles, the stiffness in her bones. The way that her eyes avert from his face and she cannot be out of his touch - grasp - reach fast enough. Victoria tells Konstantijn that she does not wish to be his. She tells him this with a voice that is struck firm and strong, but still bears the faintest threads of untruths.

Konstantijn van der Valk
There's no hesitation; just a dreadful flash of motion.  He yanks her back by that hand still caught in his, grabs her by the shoulder, wrestles her down on the bed.  An instant later he slams over her, caging her in, his rage beating so heavy in the air the edges of one's vision turn dark.

Nothing gentle about it this time.  Nothing seductive.  Nothing remotely safe; just a primordial rawness, a disturbing sense of a different sort of awakening in him.  A sense that as much as he'd wanted to fuck her, enjoyed fucking her, he just might enjoy tearing her to shreds just as thoroughly.

A beautiful monster, she called him.  Beautiful is disputable.  Monster is not.

"I told you."  His voice is a velvet growl, low, soft, rich.  "Don't lie to me."

Victoria
He isn't letting go. She is more aware of this now than she has been the entire night. Yanked back, her brow furrows deeply at Konstantijn, that expression giving way to uncertainty and then fear when he wrestles her back down on the bed. This is no young girl, too stupid to realise the gravity of her situation. Victoria is a woman schooled on interacting with Garou. She is well aware of the danger the Wolf hovering over her (caging her in, trapping her, keeping her there and still) poses. The only protest the blond kinswoman offers is a quick shrug of one shoulder that tells him to get off.

Still. It doesn't change the fact that her own Willpower is dwindling away, oozing out of her like sand in an hourglass counting down to the moment when she won't be able to bear the heaviness of his fury. The first sign of this comes now when she refuses to look at him and her body begins to tremble faintly beneath his.

All gentleness and civility has left him. Victoria finds she is suddenly becoming claustrophobic in the confines of his arms and the weight of his body.

"Let me go, Konstantijn." Blue eyes flirt with his own gold. He can read how uncomfortable she is. He can feel it in the tension and quiver taking over her muscles and bones.

Konstantijn van der Valk
It's a different sort of tremble this time.  He knows it.  He's intuitive; he's primal.  He understands the language of the body better than any other.  It's why he feels her lack of scent so keenly, so frustratingly.  It's why she never was able to hide her want from him.

Or her lies.
Or her fear.

And that's what he smells now: a scent at last from this scentless creature.  She smells like him.  She smells like fucking.  But she smells of fear.  That should twist in his heart like a knife; he, who an hour ago almost wanted to protect her.  Almost wanted to love her, and heal her, and fill that loneliness he saw in her eyes.

And it does twist in him.  But it also rouses him in some dark way; makes him want to bite her throat, taste her flesh.  Careful, he told her once.  Careful, he tells himself now.  Careful now.  There's the line.  Don't cross it.

He exhales slowly.  A pervasive pressure in the air eases.  His hand loosens on hers.  He drops his brow against her shoulder for a moment, just a few seconds; he wouldn't blame her now if she were stiff as a board, afraid to move.

Then he pushes himself up on his knees; sits back on his heels.  There's something unpracticed about the way he pulls his fingers back through his hair, tugging on his scalp, lacing his hands at the back of his neck.  His head bows and his eyes close a moment, then open again.  They find her wherever she is -- on the bed, off, dressing herself, preparing to flee.

"I apologize."  His fingers unlace; his hands fall to rest atop his thighs.  For once, he makes no move to follow her.  "Perhaps you're right.  This may have been a mistake."


Konstantijn van der Valk
[ffs.]

Victoria
The little woman beneath him is shaking. Not so much that it would be noticeable visibly, but the way he's lying on her - near her - he can feel each tremble as it arrests her body...like tiny little earthquakes caused by his Rage. He almost wanted something with her. Almost. Had stood on that dark and forboding precipice of want and had been prepared to fall blindly into the black. He had not intended it, but he was almost accepting of it.

Almost.

She almost ran. Almost pushed him to the point of sating his more dark and carnal wants and desires. Fed the dangerous monster with her fear and lies.

But the most peculiar thing happens when he drops his brow to press it upon the pale slender shape of her shoulder. Despite her fear and her feelings of loyalty to whoever is waiting back in Virginia...despite the churning in her stomach at the thought of accepting what he's offering...Victoria Wilmington does something quite unexpected: She wraps one tentative arm around his waist. Opposite hand cradling the back of his head gently, holding him to her and comforting perhaps not just him but herself as well.

Gathering himself, his wits, she lies beneath the Garou and just holds him. It's tender in the way that she wasn't able to accept from him earlier. Maybe he won't accept it now.

"Maybe I am." is said only after he's pushed himself up to his knees, then heels. Watching the way that he holds his head, the movement more an unaware thought than a conscious movement of his arms and hands. There's no quick movement to flee him. No flash of pale skin as the doe flees the wolf. She too drags her hands back through her hair, sits up and tugs her knees into her chest, legs crossed at the ankle. All of her private parts covered by either knees or ankles.

"I was glad to have met you." She says quietly, chin resting easy on one knee while her eyes fix on him and the strength she finds in his nakedness.

Konstantijn
It's easy enough to read her posture as self-protectiveness, and easy enough to attribute it to fear.  Fear of him.  Fear of what he almost did; that dark brink he always seems to balance on.  Konstantijn, who is so superficially confident, so superficially certain, is always at war with himself.  Animal instinct against animal instinct.  A side of him that wants to protect.  A side of him that wants to dominate.  A side of him that wants to claim.  A side of him that wants to destroy.

These urges tug at him always.  But Victoria, uniquely, brings them all to the fore at once.  It leaves him caught in the middle, tilting from one impulse to the other; so unstable, so volatile.

But we digress.  The point is: she curls up like she's afraid.  But he knows that's not it.  A moment ago, when he let her up, she didn't rabbit from the bed.  She didn't flee, and this time - for once - it wasn't defiance.  It was something else, truer, aching.  And a moment before that, when he was on the verge of something terrible, when he pulled back from that edge and set his brow upon her body like she meant something to him,

she wrapped her arms around him.  Like he meant something to her.  It made him startle, a minuscule jerk of his body that he couldn't quite hide.  She didn't let go.  She held him, and it was so hesitant that he knew she wasn't expecting it, either.  She hadn't planned it.

And now they've drawn apart.  And she's protecting herself, and he thinks perhaps it's because they're drawing apart.  He looks at her across the new distance.  Their eyes have adjusted to this dimness, and she can see him now: the powerful scaffold of his bones; the heavy, supple musculature that gives him such speed, such strength.  Absently a hand rises, as beautiful and strong as a marble David's: prominent knuckles, a cast of veins.  He mops his palm down the side of his face, across his mouth.  His eyes are lost in the shadow beneath his deep orbits, but that princely brow of his furrows; knots.

When his hand descends, he doesn't return it to his thigh.  He holds it out to her.  There's something hesitant here, too.  An extended arm.  A palm turned up.  The slightest bend of fingers, beckoning.

"Come here," he whispers.

Victoria
Her attention is focused to pinpoint clarity on Konstantijn's face. The shape of his fingers against the chiseled from marble jaw he bears. His body is a thing of near perfection: muscles and tendons against bones that weren't meant to be broken. Compared to him she is as if nothing. Too fragile and delicate, like a fine porcelain doll meant for sitting on a shelf and never for enjoyment.

The first stone is cast, his hand extends palm up. There's something genuine about that. Something gentle. She doesn't deny him now, not when they both seem to need the nearness of the other far more than the space she was rushing to put between them.

Arms unwrap from knees, the soles of her feet press to the bed and her body very fluidly rearranges itself from sitting on her bum to kneeling. The bed does not protest beneath her weight. It is strong like it's owner and remains sturdy and firm as she almost crawls across it toward him on her knees. Free hand touches his jaw, drifts back to brush at the hair around the top of his ear as if grooming him.

He told her to come to him, and there she is.

Konstantijn
He asked her to come to him.  And there she is.

She touches him first.  It feels like a sort of permission; he who never before this bothered to wait for such from her.  Remember the way he walked into her hotel room that first night: she held the door, she tried to make him wait, and he pushed his way in anyway.  That's Konstantijn.  That's who he was, and who he is outside this room.

Inside this room, a tiny bubble of space where what's happening outside hardly seems to matter.  It hardly seems to matter that he is the descendant of an ancient lineage; it hardly seems to matter that he is expected to take a mate, to breed, to pass his perfect genes on before the war takes him.  It hardly seems to matter that she is being courted by a Garou not of their tribe.  'Courted'; that's the word their Tribe would use.  Chased, he would say, disdainfully.  In a relationship, she said; he could not tell, did not look or did not want to look, to see if she was lying.

It doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter here; it doesn't matter in the grand context of what they feel.  He extends his hand.  She comes to him.  Her knees slide across the sheets, and then her hand touches his face, combs into his hair.  He wraps his arm around her; swoops her up as though she weighed nothing at all.

There's something breathless and exhilarating about his strength when it is used like this.  Suddenly they are so close again.  Suddenly he has borne her up onto his body, and she is astride him, her breasts against his chest, her knees to his lean hips, her thighs against his taut waist.  There's such intimacy in the melding of their bodies.  So much bare skin, so much contact.  He could so easily be inside her again.  They could fuck again,

but no; that's not why he called her back to him.  His arms wrap around her.  She's small enough, narrow enough, that the span of them encircles her utterly; that his hands spread open almost cover her back.  He holds her achingly close, as close as he can; turns his face to the curve of her neck.

Victoria
He says nothing. She has no words either. What was there to say? Words are what brought them near to ruin just a handful of moments ago. Long arms wrap around her lean frame and she drapes her own over his shoulders, one arm crosses his back and her hand lies lazy against his shoulder. The other is lost at the back of his head, in his hair, nails dragging lightly across his scalp. Warm breath pushes across the soft slope of her neck. He cannot smell her, but where she is lacking in an identifying scent his own has more than made up for it.

Head  tilts, tips to the side a few degrees to rest against his. Lips press to his head and get lost in his hair. On a deep inhale she takes in the smell of his hair and sighs. It would be natural for him to want to have her again. The way that he positions her in his lap is more than just suggestive; he can feel the heat of her against his pelvis.

"Do you want to sleep?" her voice breaks the silence that sat so heavy between and all around them. He can feel her heart beat slowing, that rapid thumping easing into something easier. Can hear her breath, slow and easy, against his head.

Konstantijn
There's such a deep, primordial comfort in this moment.  Heartbeats slow.  Respiration settles.  Something intrinsic and primal about the way she nuzzles him, then -- as though right now she remembers that she, too, is as much animal as human.

She asks a question.  He shakes his head: that slow, slight, deliberate motion.  Back and forth, twice, then once more.  No; he doesn't want to sleep -- and yet he is shifting his weight, and hers with him.  He lies back, stretches out.  The lights of the city glimmer and glow on the high ceiling.  His bed is hopelessly rumpled, but that hardly seems to matter.  It is a den; it is warm and safe and more than sufficient for sleep.

"You know what I want," he murmurs; an echo of himself.  "It's what I've always wanted."

His arm anchors her to his side.  He closes his eyes.