carnival.

[Sinclair] It's the middle of February, and it's nearly ninety degrees outside. Carnival is in full swing, with block parades increasing daily. Parties rage throughout the nights as tourists pour into the city for the fever pitch of the celebration through the Beta World City. Over and over, Cidade Maravilhosa has been playing through the streets. Samba schools are decked out in colorful, wild costumes. There are giant floats of green-headed men, roaring lions, abstract constructs that must have been inspired by some dream of the Wyld.

When Sinclair left Grant Park, shaken out of distraction by a few bewildered words from her rasp-voiced Alpha, she excused herself -- I have to run an errand. I'll be back tomorrow night, okay? -- and was at the caern talking to the Gatekeeper shortly after stopping by the Brotherhood. She ran fast. She burned through Rage, she arrived shaky-legged and parched and out of breath in the Petrobras Building

where she all but skidded into a tall, darkskinned Theurge in glasses, who greeted her like an old friend, throwing his arms in the air and trying to samba with her.

Roughly three-quarters of the Glass Walkers in this city are so drunk they couldn't remember her last visit, her last chiminage, anything other than that it was good that she was here during Carnival, that she should go commune with the Wyld and Weaver mingling together in the street, that here, here, she will need these --

Sinclair stood with brow furrowed and mouth open in confusion as brightly-colored condoms in clear packets like those around lollipops at the dentist's office were pressed into her palms, as a Cliath stepped on a higher-ranked Ahroun's foot during a dance and she hit him so hard in the face he dropped to the ground unconscious. Then everybody laughed, and Cidade Maravilhosa started up again.

On another day, they might have directed her to the Tijuca Forest to bring back this or that, to talk to this spirit or that, in payment and favor for allowing her free passage through their city. It's Carnival, though. There are literal pyramids and palaces being wound through the streets on floats, for fuck's sake. The Walkers welcome Sinclair; she's one of them, and they sense the glory and wisdom that hangs on her shoulders just as potently as the violence. They let her stay for a bit to wash up and have something to eat. And then they let her out into Rio de Janeiro.

The Marvelous City.

The moon is fuller, now, than it was about a week ago. Not by much. It's a sliver in the sky. It is the only unearthly light that can be seen. The stars cannot compete with mankind's effusions tonight: called Fat Tuesday in New Orleans, and some other places. Tomorrow at Mass, Catholics will adorn their foreheads with crosses of ash and begin the Lenten fast, their long abstinence before Easter. Very, very, very few of the revelers in the streets will be able to remember their own addresses tomorrow morning, much less where the nearest cathedral is.

Sinclair doesn't go to Copacabana Palace. She's here for one reason, and though one would think that singlemindedness would have her calling or texting or sending an e-mail on her phone or even going to the room and just waiting, that isn't what the Urban Predator does. She slips into the throngs of people, dressed down by comparison, still worn out from running all this way and faster than she did last time.

They're all sweaty. It rolls off arms and backs and soaks shirts. People are wearing as little as possible; Sinclair herself is in a reddish-orange cropped halter top pinstriped with gold to . It covers most of her scarification, though the top and bottom edges are revealed by the cut: vines. Birds. Delicately carved flowers.

Nobody looks much, though. Her Rage is almost completely burnt out, but they know a predator in their midst when they feel one. Her hair is tied up in two messy knots high on either side of her head, youthful and practical, both. She bares her tattoos, the metal in her arm, the symbol of earth on her neck. She is not the most ink-and-piercing-bedecked person in the crowd by a longshot. She is one of the only ones that makes people get the hell out of her way when she squirms between them.

For awhile, at least, Sinclair regains her legs by using them. She drenches herself in the madness of Carnival, the music, the dancers, the almost panicked release of it all. This is tribal. This is primordial. This, she understands. There are people here who do not flinch from her but who let her be in their midst, who bump up against her, jostle her, the way they sometimes do in clubs when they are too far gone or too rashly brave to realize they should get away from her. Sinclair dances. She loses herself in the mob for awhile, and is a part of it not because she is a part of humanity, but because she is alive. Just like all of them.

Well into the night:

she looks up at the moon, her pupils reflecting its sinister grin, and then turns in the direction of O Cristo Redentor. Towards Corcovado.

--

Jardim Botânico is silent. Daylight's long since gone and the gardens are closed to the public despite the fact that so much of the park is uncultivated, spreading wildly up the side of the mountain. The fountain at the end of the Avenue of Royal Palms is still going, though, flowing at the end of the rows of trees all descended from the same mother. Sinclair had no trouble getting in. She doesn't expect Alex to, either.

If he comes. She sent him a message on the way, while she was still in the midst of people. botanical gardens here are win.

And another, a few moments later: see you atyour room in maybe an hr. or here.

Her jeans are soaking wet up to mid-thigh. Her shoes are beside her knapsack on the ground by the edge of the lilypad-strewn pond she sloshed through. She's sitting underneath the sculpted harpist, her legs dangling off the edge of the fountain, water dripping from the toes even as it trickles out and down from the shallow pool above the pond in artful arcs.

Even if he doesn't come here, she'll see him soon. For now, she communes. Not with Helios, this time. With the ancient palms, each of them connected by ancestry, their roots tied together, their branches rustling overhead. With the water, constantly flowing, constantly washing, healing, keeping death at bay with its movement.

She remains quite still, herself, keeping her hands folded in her lap, her eyes closed. Beyond the breeze and the water and the palms and the distance, she can hear Carnival, still.

[Alexander] Even at night it's warm here. A tropical breeze winds silken and humid through lush greenery. Branches whisper, a sound that in northern climes is associated with cool evenings, chilly nights, but not in Rio.

Water flows in the fountain. Then it splashes. Someone's wading nearer, and when -- if -- Sinclair opens her eyes, she'll see Alexander coming at her, having cut across hedges and lawns and, finally, the fountain itself.

He's in cargo shorts; no shirt. Even by night she can tell he's tanned as fuck, brown as a hazelnut, still compact and ripped. His grin is a white flash in the dark. He comes right up to her, scoops her up, envelopes her in a bear hug.

Alex's skin is faintly sticky with sweat. It's also faintly tacky with ... what, body paint? It's not all tan on his skin. Brushed over his skin, fading in from the shoulders and the abdomen toward the center of his chest, is metallic bronze paint. Vaguely tribal designs adorn his breastbone, the sweeps of his collarbone, and the right side of his face. He's wearing a big gaudy torc that looks like metal, but is actually spraypainted plastic.

At least there's no feathered headdress. If he'd had one earlier, he had the good sense to toss it out. Or maybe just lose it.

"Mmmmmm," he hums against her neck. He's still squeezing. He might be drunk. "You've been missing out. I think I actually missed you."

He sets her down with a splash. He doesn't appear to be wearing shoes either. With an air of pomp and ceremony, he pulls the torc off his neck and, rather inanely, sets it on her head like a tiara.

Then he laughs.

[Sinclair] She's in a place where she shouldn't be, according to mankind's laws. Sinclair is far, far from her packmates, who protect her and protect others from her. She is out of her territory, out of her familiar comfort zone, but she is hardly out of her element. An oddity of a Glass Walker, Warcry seems at home in this semi-cultivated wilderness, just as much as she seemed naturally comforted by playing TF2 on his laptop. There are no predators here that could do so much as scratch her. The Wyrm has not encroached here, at least not in a long time, and at least not tonight.

But that doesn't mean she isn't alert. It's warm, breezy, tropical: Sinclair listens to the wind and she listens to the branches and she hears a footstep on the gravel some distance away. Her eyes slide lazily open, expecting to see a guard. Or maybe: a reveler dragging his girlfriend by the hand into forbidden territory, sneaking back into Eden without care for the angel who lost her sword a long time ago

because she didn't need it anymore.

It is not a guard. It is a reveler, though, but not some modern-day Adam. Sinclair is a colorful gargoyle at the edge of the fountain, the tips of her toes dangling several feet above where his head will come when he drops himself into the knee-deep pond and starts sloshing over towards her. A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. It would take him awhile to get across the pond, and a little while to climb up to where she is, but he could do it: they are both of them young, strong, agile, athletic.

So Sinclair doesn't jump down to tackle him in the pond surrounding the massive fountain. She doesn't offer him a hand up when he gets his feet steady on the saturated black rocks that make up the base. Alex pulls himself past the cherubs, up to the level of angels of music and scholarship, and Sinclair draws her long legs back up onto the water-filled ledge, the shallow bowl she's sitting on the edge of.

It isn't quite a scoop or a bear hug, then, with them both sitting or kneeling or all but lounging in the secondary, more man-made pool. There are no lilypads up here, just pristine waters. Alex does wrap her up, and she grins, putting her arms around his neck and pulls him to her, pulls his mouth to her face and lets the paint on his chest and shoulders imprint on her arms and her belly and her cleavage. But she doesn't kiss him. She sniffs at him, rubs her face against his. She's kneeling in the water, knees on hard rock, chill water rippling and dancing with the disturbance of their presence and movement, and just... greeting him, flicking her tongue out against his earlobe and the soft spot just underneath, the line of his jaw, his neck. She tastes sweat and smells alcohol. Tastes Alex, smells Alex.

Who squeezes, hums, tells her

I actually missed you.

Sinclair pulls back slowly, but not because of those words. She's smiling. She's dry from only the hips up now, except for the sheen of drying, cooling sweat on her skin. She looks him over now, greeting him with her eyes when before it was all nose, mouth, small sounds of recognition in her throat. She's still got her arms laid over his shoulders, around his neck, when he decides to give her a crown, setting it around the high little knots of hair she made back at the Petrobras building.

The illusion only exists because of the darkness, but for a moment, though perhaps he knows that she -- like Aaron -- cannot contact any ancestors of their tribe, What She Is is connected to a long, long line of creatures that will never cease at least some measure of anachronism. He may not know how often she's mistaken for a Get of Fenris, all pale hair and intense eyes and violence, savagery, ruthless strength. He may not guess: Fenris would accept her, if she went to him, recognizing in her that brutality as well as a certain long-forgotten nobility based on nothing more than being able to crush any who oppose you.

If, in a past life, Sinclair was ever crowned, it was while covered in the blood of enemies, rivals, and would-be usurpers.

But: she's a girl in her early twenties, which in this time is still so very, very young. And:

she's rolling her eyes upward as though trying to see her 'tiara', then she giggles soundlessly, unable. Grabs his wrist, pulls his hands around her again, and lunges forward to kiss him. Hard. Her own hands go to his lower back, press him to her, one moving down to his flank to all but grind his hips against hers, as though to fuse them together. She kisses him for as long as she dares, giving a soft moan that echoes what he said without the I think, without the actually, without hesitation ore restraint.

"I can only stay tonight," are the first words out of her mouth, breathy and just barely audible over the gurgle and splash and trickles of water, the brushing of branches together

like waving hands above them, meeting and parting in an endless cycle of greeting and farewell, a pantomime of humanity's infinite connection and separation when blown about by Time.

She kisses him again, a soft, warm press of her mouth this time. She remembers she's a Galliard, and he's not a wolf, and uses words: "I missed you. I really did."

Then she laughs, too.

[Alexander] "Well, let's make the m-- mmm."

That's when she kisses him. He stops trying to talk after a while, takes her face between his hands, returns it. Water runs past their feet; it's easy to lose their balance if they keep their eyes closed too long, like falling over while standing in the surf. They part and he opens his eyes, grins as she laughs.

"Let's make the most of it," he finishes. "Come on."

He gives her his hand. Then he jumps down from the fountain, landing with an enormous splash in the pond under it. Impossible to tell how deep it is, with the water murky and green by day, pitch black by night. Quite possible that they get soaked, but it's all right. It's so warm that it'd be a relief.

He wades for the shore, his hand wet now, warm and strong-fingered. "You've been out in the streets, right? Seen the crazy shit people are up to? Fuck me, Miami's a senior citizens community in Arizona in comparison."

[Sinclair] What he says, or what he was about to say, sends a shiver down Sinclair's spine. They're kissing like they haven't seen each other in ages, which, actually, is something of the truth. She was here for something like forty-eight hours, last time. She slept for over twenty of those, and the rest of the time was spent eating, swimming, talking, showering, dancing, sightseeing, surfing, losing her virginity, fucking as many times as she could handle it,

and then leaving, before she couldn't handle that, either.

Her eyes are moon-reflecting when he pulls away, her smile broad and filled with the laughter she just let loose. But there's an intensity there now, drive. Lust. She starts to lean forward and he offers his hand, but she doesn't take it. They jump down, both knowing how deep the water is because they had the audacity to wade through it. Lilypads waver and slosh away from them, chased by their impact, the ripples they leave.

The nice thing about being in the shape they are is managing to leap down in such a way, crouching slightly into the water, that they do not break their ankles or destroy their knees the way many people would, dropping from that height.

Then she takes his hand. Finds it in the water, or skimming the surface, tugs on his hand experimentally -- or competitively -- as they wade for the dry edge and clamber out onto the gravel path again. Sinclair goes for her shoes, but doesn't put them on. She picks up her knapsack and slings it over one shoulder, still holding his right hand with her left.

"Yeah," she says. "When I managed to get the Walkers in Petrobras to stop trying to samba with me, I went out and just wandered around for awhile before heading here. A cokehead tried to pick a fight with me." She laughs without finishing that story, starting to walk -- the wet ends of her jeans scuffing the gravel, which she does not complain about on her feet -- and then looks over at him.

This is ridiculously romantic. The thin moon. The fact that out here they can actually see stars. The fountain's murmuring. The lilypads. The avenue of imperial palms stretching on towards the entrance. The lush greenery all around them,

alone, alone,

and holding hands, containing smiles.

Sinclair doesn't look at him with wet eyes and fluttering smile, though. She looks sort of curious, a bit hesitant, simply unaware: "Do you want to head back out there?"

[Alexander] Alexander barks a laugh when she says some poor fuck tried to pick a fight with her. There's no mercy in that laugh. Sinclair's blood used to run with that of the Get; Alexander, given his name, might've once had some Fianna in his line. Whether it's ancestry or simply personality, nature or nurture, doesn't matter. The fact is, neither of them have much pity for fools and weaklings.

And she doesn't have to finish that story. He can imagine what happened. One solid punch, and some cokehead's Carnival was thoroughly ruined. Serves him right.

They're holding hands now, though. And this is ridiculously romantic. And he's stupid-happy. And those hands of theirs can probably beat someone to death. Possibly have beat someone to death. Not just Sinclair's, but Alex's as well. He's not a warrior, but he is a fighter. There's not a lot of softness or gentleness between them. There's not a lot necessary,

though when it had been necessary, it was there. Perhaps to the surprise of both.

"Nah," he says, batting his free hand in the air as though to dispel the very thought. "I've had enough of Carnival. If you hadn't seen it yet I was gonna show you, but since you have, fuckit. Let's find someplace and fuck 'til sunup. Did I tell you I went to Tokyo last week and swung by Sydney on my way back? You'd like the waves in Sydney."

[Sinclair] If she did not know how to throw a punch with such expert skill, Sinclair could have broken her hand tonight with as hard as she hit that man whose fear turned quickly into wrath. Most humans tonight have kept their distance, but he's not the first to have gotten -- by way of substances, desperation, whatever -- the gumption to single her out as Other, as Wrong, as Dangerous and decide he was going to Do Something About It, Goddammit.

He'd gotten in her face. He'd left spittle on her cheek, and she'd set her jaw and withstood it, because some part of her does have a quality of mercy. And then he grabbed her arm, trying to shake her, twisted the bar in her bicep

and she sent his teeth down his throat.

The man skidded when he hit the ground, as though blown back by power far more than what could be contained in the average-sized body of a well-above-average young woman. He was hit, hard, by a literal god of storms and kingship guiding her skill as to placement and force. Blood rushed from his mouth, and Sinclair walked forward

he thought she was gonna kill him now, kill him, kick his ribs in, pierce his heart, kill him, and he curled up tight

stood over him, crouched down, and growled in his face, teeth bared and hand still curled into a fist. It was a warning, a display of dominance outside of his experience, outside of what his own ancestral memory could conjure, and she didn't even think before she did it. That was when he started to weep, sputtering blood, and Sinclair

remembered where she was.

--

Serves him right.

--

She grins, then, laughter rising up before she presses it back down, though her shoulders tighten a bit with delight. It's a brief, girlish response. She pulls on his hand again, this time without competition. It's playful, although surprisingly strong, perhaps not-so-surprisingly insistent in the way she tries to get him closer.

He mentions Tokyo and Sydney and her eyes flicker. It passes quickly, though, and she chuckles. "Maybe I'll go someday."

She won't. They both know she won't. Even if she stays alive that long, she can't fly. No one on earth could bear having her in a plane with them, and it would take ages even by moonbridge, and... she has a pack. She has a sept she protects, a Hive they're going to start attacking, she has duty and responsibility that even being here is impinging upon.

But still: she's happy, and they're both a little stupid, and so she lies. Maybe one day she'll go surfing in Australia. Go to lands once held by the Bunyip. Meet a hoopsnake spirit and learn a new Gift, who knows.

She pulls Alex against her. "Here. Okay?"

[Alexander] She doesn't have to tug very hard to get him to come closer. Some of this surprises Alexander. He wouldn't have thought there'd come a time, there'd be a place, when he wouldn't be frightened when Sinclair wants him closer.

If he had to catalog the change, he'd say: it's because it's not Chicago. It's because it's Carnival, for fuck's sake.

The truth is: it's because he wants to be closer, too. And before, he didn't.

He does not, however, catalog changes and differences. He seems very much a creature of the Weaver with his toys and his regimen and his regulated, measured way of living. But he's not. Alexander is, in fact, a creature of the Wyld -- hotblooded, impetuous, quite often unwise, prone to doing things that make bystanders facepalm and shake their heads. Sometimes his reasons only really make sense to himself. Sometimes they don't make sense at all, except that they were things he wanted to do. Was driven to do. Had to do, for one reason or another.

Regardless: there was a change. He doesn't care how or why.

He goes with the tug, and their arms bump, and then they're walking together side by side and she's lying when she says she'll go to tokyo and sydney someday, but he knows she's lying not only because he's sharper than he looks but because

he knows.

So he stops, turning to her, and she says here, okay? and he smiles and his teeth are a flash again in the darkness and in response he dips his head and kisses her suddenly. They're both barefoot. He doesn't even know where his shoes are. It's not a long reach between him and her; just a dip of his head and a tilt of her chin, and their mouths are together, her soft lips and his lean cheek, the back of her neck, his bare chest.

"I was hoping you'd say that." He really was. He tugs her toward a row of hedges; a patch of longer grass behind it, a piece of the garden that's grown a little wild these past few weeks while everyone partied.

[Sinclair] They were walking side-by-side before. But when Sinclair pulls on him, pulls him closer, she's not trying to walk any further. She's turning towards him already, her breathing already elevating, trying to just... get him against her body, which is what she said the last time that she wanted so badly. She's missed him. So she's ready, when he bows his head to kiss her, eyes falling closed

because it's romantic, see

and letting out a soft pant when it breaks off. Her eyes are that intense shade of blue again, glinting with the moon, as ancient as this place. And it is: ancient. The deeper you go, the older the trees are, the less cultivated the grounds, the wilder it becomes. Some of the treetrunks are gnarled and gnotted, look almost diseased til you realize they're just... old. Different. And strong. There are cacti that look like swirls of fans. There are animals, though only the nocturnal ones are moving around now.

They could see greenhouses, gazebos, pavilions if they went further. They don't. And they don't even look, because he was kissing her and she was sighing into his mouth. There are other ponds, creeks, waterfalls, water everywhere, lush earth all around them. The hedges that they cross are, in actuality, nothing so controlled but sprawling bushes that don't grow in North America. The lawn leads downward to the edge of water. There's an overgrown bronze statue there of a woman carrying a wide, shallow bowl, staring down into the river.

They go like teenagers sneaking off, Sinclair dropping shoes and bag again beside the overhanging branches of the bushes they pass, taking hold of his waist and turning him if necessary, pulling him against her again regardless, kissing him

hard, again

and starting to work on the fasteners of his shorts.

[Alexander] Sprawling. Ancient. The farther in you go, the farther back you go, until the size of the trees and the wildness of the foliage, the lushness, seems prehistoric, seems cretaceous.

He almost expects the great soft beat of a giant dragonfly's wings; some iridescent insect the size of his face. There's only a woman who carries a bowl for the rain or the birds, though, and the river's edge, the water flowing past.

Now they aren't saying anything. Now it's dark, and only a sliver moon for light. It seems appropriate that his body is painted, that she's crowned. They kiss again, and this time it's hungry and wild, and she's tugging at his shorts and his hands are just at his sides, letting her, waiting for her, and

when she gets the shorts down, and the boxers, he reaches for her and grabs the tank top and more or less yanks it off. Her bra goes right after that. He fills his hands with her breasts

and mutters, "Oh my fuck," because he forgot about the fucking nipple piercing,

and then he's working on her shorts, too. The trees sigh over them.

[Alexander] [HALTER TOP AND JEANS.]

[Sinclair] [YEAH THAT'S RIGHT]

[Sinclair] The only truly monstrous thing here is Sinclair, though. Bestial, hungry, overeager, she all but rips the button of his shorts out of its hole, yanking the two sides of it apart rather than slowly drawing down his zipper. She doesn't bother pushing them off his hips but reaches inside for him, finding him through his boxers

and then under them, her kiss deepening, her breath turning ragged as she does something she... well.

She never really did this before. Once, he put her hand on him and wrapped her fingers around his hard cock as though to say for fuck's sake, Sinclair, I want you, which he said anyway. More or less. But like this, without being guided or given outright permission, just to touch him, to stroke it -- this, like so much else, is a first for her, in a way.

She moans, and Alex tries to yank her halter up and off, but it's tied around her neck. He gets it up over her breasts, though, which bares them, and if she has a bra it's in her knapsack, and if he'd really eyeballed her closely in the dark he could have realized this earlier. She gasps away from kissing him as his hands find her, eyes flicking closed before she forces them open again. Alex goes after her jeans, her wet wet jeans, and Sinclair looks vaguely nervous just before she kisses him again, just before his fingers shove down wet denim and just before his warm hands find damp, cool skin... and a soft little thong.

Which he's never seen her wear before, or seen amongst her tossed-aside clothes while she tore through her bag looking for something. Which is, for Sinclair, sort of new, too.

[Alexander] Dimly, he finds it curious and perhaps a little endearing that she's nervous. Only her second time with a guy, he remembers, or assumes, though for all he knows she's been livin' it up in Chicago. The thought is there and gone too fast for him to consider if that would bother him, if she were; later on, though, he might think about it again and decide that it doesn't.

He's just happy she's here. Right now. And anyway, then he's tugging her jeans down and they're all clammy and wet and he mutters something about and this is why we wear shorts and then he sees the reason for that vague nervousness, and his stomach moves against the back of her knuckles as he laughs quietly, delightedly.

His fingertips stroke the thin strip of fabric riding her hips. "Did you wear this for me?" he asks. He kisses her again, smiling, and then reaches between them to stroke her through her panties.

[Sinclair] A huff of laughter, when he critiques her choice of lowerwear. She's taken her hand off him, did it sometime when he started unfastening her jeans, and is letting her hand rest on his waist instead. She's still tan from the last time she was here, though she really wasn't here long enough to get all that dark to begin with. Her skin is a light golden brown, though under a crescent moon that glints off of water she looks paler.

The nervousness then, so far as he can tell when he sees her panties, has nothing to do with whether or not this is only her second time (fifth, whatever). It has to do with:

"I bought them to wea--ohgod," and the sentence falls into tatters when he touches her.

Hedonist or not, there's no question that Alex is far more experienced at this than Sinclair is. No one night stands for her. No bad boyfriends who did her wrong and didn't call. No random encounters because she just needed it. He's not the first person to play with her clit like this -- that would be Sinclair herself -- nor is he the second or third. But he's the first in a very long time, and he's the first that does it just seeming to enjoy what it does to her, rather than what he can do to her.

Which is a thin, but impossibly vital, line to draw.

She grabs onto him more tightly, moaning softly as she tips her head forward and rests her brow on his shoulder. Her halter's up around her chest. Her jeans are halfway down her thighs. His shorts and boxers are only partly pushed out of the way. "Oh god," she says again, slower now, more controlled, though she's gasping as her hips swing to match the rhythm of his fingers. "Oh, my god."

[Alexander] His mouth catches that last ohmygod, opens warmly and strangely sweetly over hers. He kisses her drenchingly, and he holds her. His arm wrapped around her, her body caught against his, turned a little so her shoulder is against his chest and his hand has room to move, he holds her steady, holds her up, while he touches her.

While he fingers her clit. While he strokes down down to brush the scrap of fabric aside, and while he slides his fingers over her pussy until he can feel her growing wet.

"Put your hand back on me," he whispers against her mouth. When she does, his brow furrows, his eyes close; he moans softly. "Yeah. Stroke that cock for me -- ah -- a little slower. Yeah. Yeah, that's it."

They're lost on their feet, holding onto each other. He's playing with her and her hips are moving and he's roaming her face with his mouth, kissing her cheek and her jaw and her chin and her lips, and after some time, some pleasure-drunk, immeasurable time, he tugs her down to the ground.

The verdant, dark smell of the earth and the river and the grass. He gets rid of the rest of her clothes then, and his own, and as soon as he can his hand is back between her legs, and he's half atop her now, leaning on one hip and one elbow, his legs tangling with hers and pressing them apart for his hand while he watches her, watches what she's feeling play itself out on her face.

He nips at her earlobe when he slides his finger inside her. "Oh, you're so tight," he murmurs, a rush, as though he were just discovering this for the first time. "I wanna lick it for you. Let me lick your pussy."

[Sinclair] Maybe she's starting to take it for granted that Alex isn't always an asshole without reason or cause or rationale. At least not to her. But Sinclair doesn't find it strange that he's sweet when he kisses her, that he's holding onto her not just to keep her in place but to keep her close, even if he is kind of drunk. She runs her hands up his back and pants in shattered gasps for air against him, moans thrown in here and there for flavor. She's at a loss, and utterly no good at trying to hide it.

Her once-cool skin keeps getting hotter, because it's in the fucking nineties out here, even with both of them damp from the pond. The air is oxygen-rich, dizzying if you inhale too much too deeply, like a drug itself. Sinclair's hips buck while she's being kissed, while she's being fingered, while she's reaching back down and finding his cock, thinking she's way too distracted to do anything, that she'll fuck it up.

Except she touches him, wraps around him as though this is natural, and starts to jerk him off with more longing than expertise. She slows when he gasps that ah!, hesitates, finds the pattern of his pulse or his hips and matches it with a musician's intuition of rhythm. It can't be that long before he pulls her to the ground. It certainly isn't that long before she's moaning, getting closer to him until her breasts press against his chest, all but pushing him downward, herself, with a heavy lean and a slight buckling of her knees.

They topple. Easily, catching themselves without having to stop what they're doing for more than a moment because, well... neither one of them is exactly the bed and breakfast type. The soft fall, the victory and satisfaction that comes without pain and effort, the pleasure without a little roughness -- that isn't a part of them. Which makes it all the more striking and surprisingly when they're gentle, when she's soft, when he's patient, when he puts a torc on her head like a crown and she blushes faintly when she grins

as they walk hand in hand through a botanical garden in the moonlight.

For fuck's sake.

Everything comes off. The thong she went out and bought solely because she wanted to make sure she looked like she wanted to fuck him as soon as she got her pants off, which is the truth. The jeans she got soaking wet in the pond and fountain. The halter top he unties from around her neck and drags up off of her torso, the cargo shorts, the boxers, leaving him in body paint and her in the makeshift tiara... till it falls off her head and rolls away, falling flat on the grass.

She's on top of him while they undress, tearingly. Kissing biting little kisses on each other, pausing while clothes come off to caress the skin underneath. He rolls himself on top of her then, and her legs spread instantly, wrap around him so she can grind against his thigh

which Alex stops her front doing, using his hand again. Sinclair arches, inhaling the scent of grass as it tickles her face, mouth opening. "Ah --" at first, and then harder: "Ah!"

Because he starts to fuck her with his finger, and her cunt is pulsing around that digit hungrily, wetly. When he says he wants to lick it, Sinclair doesn't look startled or offended. She doesn't jerk upwards suddenly, or away, appalled. Certainly not confused. The girl's watched enough porn, and she wasn't born in an Amish village. She moans, instead, at the very words out of his mouth

which she said she loved.

And reaches up, cupping her hand around the back of his neck, pulling him downward.

Which means yes.

[Sinclair] [front = from!]

[Alexander] Alexander would've never expected Sinclair to be shocked. He would've been shocked if she was shocked. As it is, he simply laughs - that breathless, quiet huff she remembers from the last time they did this

(though not quite like this)

that's simplicity and happiness and enjoyment and ... now his mouth is winding its way down her body; he's lingering at her neck and, she knew he would do this: at her breasts, sucking on the pierced nipple harder than the other, muttering yet again that it's sofuckinghot before he's going on, laying kisses all down her ribs and across her taut stomach

where he pauses, because he finds a ticklish spot, which he kisses again just to make her laugh, which makes him laugh,

before he goes on. Her thong's already gone. Her legs are probably open, and if they're not he opens them, swings her knees over his shoulders and drapes her calves down his back, raises himself on his elbows to, quite simply

eat her the fuck out.

He's enthusiastic about this. Perhaps that's unexpected; selfish, self-centered bastard that he is, or at least could be. Or perhaps it's expected after all. He rarely -- perhaps never -- does anything he doesn't want to do, but what he does do, he throws himself into with a headlong, reckless abandon. So: he fucks the fuck out of her with his mouth, kissing and sucking at her, licking her, fluttering and flicking and dancing his tongue over her on and on and on until he's all but grinding his mouth on her, his face on her, on the grass and under the stars and at the banks of the river.

[Sinclair] He loves that goddamn piercing. And this time it makes Sinclair laugh, an echo of his own, that he wants to lick and suck at it more than -- it seems -- any other part of her. She puts her hands in his hair then, or rather -- on his scalp, since there's hardly any hair to be found. A part of her sees that as practicality more than fashion. She's had her hair pulled so many times in a fight that she's considered shaving it down to nearly nothing, herself. But she doesn't. She doesn't trim her nails down to near-nonexistence and she doesn't chop off her hair.

She pierces her nipple and her arm and lets her hair get longer every day. And she chortles, throaty and delighted, when he finds that she's ticklish right under her navel, so much so that she wriggles, squirming away til he does it again, laughing outright this time. "Stopit!" she says, with that laughter, sucking her stomach in as retreat, batting at his skull

softly. So softly. It turns into a caress over the back of his ear, like his tickling turns back to focus. Sinclair does everything she can not to push his head down between her legs as he's rearranging them, placing them over his shoulders, tilting her hips up towards his face. She wants him, and she wants this, and

she's unbelievably nervous about it. Her cheeks are high with color, the squirming of her hips slowing for a moment until he actually licks her for the first time. And then she arches, hard and gasping, yanking her hands off his head like it's burning her, grabbing at the grass instead with a viciousness that explains instantly why she had to stop touching him right then.

She's a writhing, wild thing on the ground when Alex gets his mouth on her, spine arching and hips lifting. If she settles at any point, it's only because he murmurs for her to, or if he pauses, or if his mmph! sounds more surprised than enjoying, or if he puts his hands on her to try and soothe her. She bucks, she whimpers, and she puts her hands in her hair when she groans, disrupting the knots its tied into, unraveling them as strands unwind and pins fall out.... or almost do, but get tangled in her fair locks.

"Oh, fuck, oh fuck, Alex," she's saying, while he's flicking her clit with his tongue and playing with it, fluttering it, as though to proudly prove that he's done this before, that he can make her fall the fuck apart this way, too. Wetness flows out of her pussy, quickly lapped up, and she grinds her clit right back on his tongue, panting. "Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!"

No neighbors, now, to be disturbed by the sounds she's making. Just some animals, all of them bolting from the smell of a predator and the voices that sound like humans.

"Oh, that's so good," she moans, looking down at him, watching him between her thighs, overwhelmed by the sight of it. She's slowing a little now, the first rush of shock and startlement and nerves fading away. Now all she feels is his tongue on her, devouring her, pleasuring her, taking her. All she can see right now is Alex looking at her while he wraps wet lips around her clit and sucks. She lets out a small scream, arching again, getting louder: "That's so fucking good!"

[Alexander] He doesn't.

He doesn't try to get her to stop bucking, that is. He just laughs, muffled against -- well, against her fucking cunt, while she writhes and twists and bucks under him under his face is smeared with her wet.

Truth is, he is making this as good as he possibly can for her. While half-intoxicated, while sprawling on grass and under imperial palms, in the darkness, anyway. He's doing it because... well; that's a good question, isn't it? Alex can't quite answer it. Because: he can. Because: she hasn't had this before. Because: he wants to.

There we go.

And so his mouth stays on her, and he doesn't try to hold her down, though at one point she arches so sharply he bumps his teeth against her and then they both flinch and then she can hear him panting ow and laughing, stroking her with his fingers as though in apology

before his fingers are inside her again. And then he's fucking her with his mouth and his fingers, going at her with a feverish intensity while he rears up on his elbow and sucks at her and licks at her and

she's letting out that gasping little scream and he's going at her. He's not actually fucking her with his fingers. He's just filling her, staying inside her flexing cunt, feeling how wet, how hot, how tight, while he

does his damnedest

to get her off.

[Sinclair] It was like this at his hotel last time, too, in at least one way: Alex, doing what he could to make it good for her. And Sinclair, too overwhelmed to tell him she's grateful or comforted, too careful of his feelings to tell him she's relieved or surprised. She's not, this time, though: surprised, that is. Relieved, yess: he's on her, he's touching her, and he's pleasuring her, and this what she wanted so badly it took effort not maul him on top of the fountain, and it took effort a moment ago not to simply shred his shorts to get them off of him.

And relieved that he's laughing like that, not in mockery or amusement at her expense but... that happy sound he makes, when he's enjoying himself with something as close to purity as anyone his age is capable of. Pure is not a word one might easily associate with Alexander Vaughn. Innocent is not a word anyone would readily ascribe to Warcry. But they are, in this, both of those things.

Sinclair rubs her cunt on his face, wanton in her sudden unselfconsciousness, holding onto the earth while Alex licks and sucks at her. She yelps when his teeth bump against her, not quite the sharp, resistant Ow! when he sank his cock into her for the first time but a surprised and unhappy little sound. Lifting her head, she looks down at him again past breasts that rise and fall with every breath. She watches him, catching his eye for a moment when he strokes her, pets her back to relaxation.

Her head falls back with a whimper, her body shivering again with pleasure... only to arch again, squirm again, when Alex slips not one but two fingers into her this time. Sinclair cries out, her hand flickering upward from the grass as though to reach for him, stop him, gasp out I can't -- but he puts his mouth back on her and starts pleasing her again, so instead she groans and puts her hand on her breast to stroke and fondle her nipple. The unpierced one.

All around his fingers her cunt is squeezing, throbbing, slicking his hand while her hot little clit pullses in his mouth with tremors he can't quite sense but are like electric shocks to her. Sinclair doesn't touch him. She touches her tit, she grabs at the grass with one vengeful hand, she rides his tongue -- more gently than before, more carefully, though no less insistently, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck-- -- but she doesn't touch him.

Because she's about to come, and she keeps whimpering uncontrollably for it, and the nearness of that utter loss of restraint scares her. For a little while it seems like Sinclair is poised right on the edge of orgasm, wriggling and grinding her pussy on his tongue but not giving those last rolls of her hips that will send her completely over the edge. But she's so close. She's so close that she's not even aware what's coming out of her mouth, that she's just swearing and half-screaming at him, that she's telling him to fuck her, that she's moaning oh my fuck, alex, what are you doing to me. She's so close that he feels that spike when it happens, and he doesn't let her hold back anymore

but strokes his fingers in her, and flutters his tongue over her clit rapidly before laying it flat, and then he gives one long, lingering suck

and Sinclair loses her mind.

She almost closes her legs together on his head, hips twisting suddenly under his attentions as she tries to either escape pleasure or escape the lack of it, til her body decides for her and takes after it. He can feel her cunt starting clenching wildly, and he can feel her wetness coming out of her, and he can hear her whimpering as she comes, rolling her hips over and over again to try and prolong it, even when she's not sure she can stand it, even when she knows she can't stand it but keeps going anyway.

If anyone were to have walked through the gardens and found them tonight, there'd be no this isn't what it looks like. Because it is, really: she's very young and he acts like it, she's beautiful and he's intoxicated, they're sneaking into a park so late into the night it's closer to dawn than sunset, and they're fucking like horny teenagers, unconcerned and unwary, and

the girl is coming, loudly, her cheeks flushed pink with it and her mouth open for her moaning

while the man between her legs licks her all the way through it, savoring.

Fingers still buried inside of her, Alex can feel it when Sinclair starts to come down finally. He can feel the slowing of her pussy's clenching, taste and feel the last traces of slick flowing from her orgasm. He can hear her breathing calm a little, though it's still tremulous. He can see and feel Sinclair shaking slightly, see her head turned to one side, hair loose now, pale gold against the emerald green.

Her hand finally moves again, sliding down from her breast over her belly, stroking gently onto his scalp, caressing his head. Stroking, tenderly, the curve of his ear.

[Alexander] There's a certain tenderness at the end. He doesn't shove her screaming and flailing over the edge. He eases her, tips her, ...strokes her softly and deliberately and, to be frank, rather expertly past the point of no return.

And then his mouth stays on her, warm and thorough, while she loses her mind.

When it's over, and her legs have relaxed again, when she's sprawled rather shattered and shaking on the grass, Alexander kisses her clit one more time, then shifts. He moves over her and lays his head down on her belly, and his short hair -- a little longer than it was the last time she saw him, but still well within razorcut range -- is rather bristly under her stroking fingers. She can hear him laughing again, the soft enjoyment of it all, as he turns to kiss her just over her navel.

Then he draws his fingers carefully out of her, slow so as not to hurt her. Alexander isn't shy about things like this. He licks her slick off his fingers and his palm, lazily, with a hedonistic drunkenness, rolling off her and onto his back to do so.

After, he's tugging on her again. Gently, encouragingly; playfully.

"Come here," he says. "Get on top."

[Sinclair] There'll be no lauding of Alex's skill after this, and he knows it. There's a lot he doesn't know about Sinclair's past experiences with men -- or boys, really; she herself hasn't even hit 22 yet -- except that nobody ever got as close as he did last week. His only clue that this is as new to her as almost everything else is the way she seemed momentarily nervous, the way it took her a minute to relax under his ministrations.

Either way, whether she was a tease in high school who just never went All The Way or a modern-day Sandra Dee, Alex has to know that Sinclair really has no one to compare him to. He has to know that she wouldn't, even if she did.

She isn't whimpering anymore when she comes down and he lays his head on her. Sinclair is sighing on each breath, the way some do in sleep, caressing his scalp and his ear and touching him as though to soothe him -- as though to soothe herself. Her fingertips rub small circles into the prickle of his hair, surprisingly soft when pressed down. Her stomach flexes when he kisses her there, a few inches above that ticklish spot, and he's reminded of just how strong she is when, for a moment, he can feel the definition and firmness of her abdominal muscles.

When he draws his fingers out, Sinclair makes a small, breathed sound, a vocal amalgam of oh and ah at once. Her eyes close from it, and it isn't until she hears the lapping of tongue on flesh -- that is not her flesh, which may explain the confused, hungry, animal jealousy that flickers in her eyes and then fades away -- that they open again. She looks at him, rolling away lazily and sucking her taste off his fingers and licking it off his hand like a glutton, and her eyes glitter slightly as the moonlight skims the river water beside them.

She watches him, drowsy and replete, til he finishes and reaches for her. Sinclair is too languid to do much more than briefly resist -- no. don't wanna move. nuh-uh. -- and then roll towards him, growling softly in the back of her throat with this acquiescence. She crawls entirely on top of him, breasts resting on his chest now, legs spreading to tangle with Alex's lower half, one of her thighs pressed gently between his.

It happens to the be one covered in that viper tattoo. Which he can't see, from this angle, and wouldn't care about if he could: a moment ago that tattoo was squirming beside his face while he ate her pussy, and it didn't matter then, either.

Holding herself up on top of him, Sinclair moves her hips in slow, rather soft circles -- too sated, still, to go any harder -- and watches his face. "Slow," she says after awhile, after spending some time looking like she was having to search for the word. It could be a demand. It might be a request. It's possible she's simply telling him, and seeking his feedback.

And in explanation, softer, sounding a little more human, though that's more a lie than having Sinclair as a writhing, sense-led animal against his body: "I haven't --"

All too human-sounding, that. And all too human-sounding, the way that she cuts off, as though saying what she hasn't is embarrassing, or awkward, despite the fact that his breath smells like her cunt and his cock is pressing against her belly as hard and hot as a brand, rubbing slightly as she moves.

"With anyone else," Sinclair whispers, the swings of her hips heavy and distracting now, wanting, building back towards the ache of arousal she felt when she first saw him tonight. The ache she feels when she sees him, period.

She kisses him. If only to keep him from answering that.

[Alexander] Sinclair says I haven't and Alex knows what she means, even before she adds what she does. He knows the way he knew she meant

I bought them to wear down here.
For you.

which is not quite the same thing, but close enough not to matter. He knows, and knowing it, experiences such an unexpected jolt of -- what?

primal exultation. that's what.

that it surprises him. Startles him. She kisses him then, though, so he doesn't have to answer, and doesn't have to think about it anymore. Later on he'll still think about whether or not he would have minded if she fucked someone else, after all, and decide that he wouldn't; though of course, by then that will mean a little less. Later on, he'll also think, briefly, on why the first thing in his mind was still mine and decide that it doesn't matter, either

though maybe it does.

That's not on his mind right now, though. What's on his mind right now is that she's rubbing herself on him, they're writhing and sliding together on the grass like mating snakes, and

"Wait."

He breaks the kiss suddenly; he turns his face to the side, panting as she grinds against him. "Wait, I have no idea where my condoms are." Then he laughs, a short breathless huff. "And if I knock you up you're gonna owe me fifteen hundred dollars."

[Sinclair] That slight difference in how she was phrasing her answer when he asked if she wore the thong for him was only the difference between Yes, I did and I bought them to wear for you. Which, when you're dealing with the primitive mind, primal instinct, the part that wants to fuck so badly it doesn't care if it should run, is a pretty big difference, all told.

At least: it was enough of a difference for Sinclair to start to mention it, before he touched her, and she forgot English.

All of Alex's thoughts and feelings tonight are mostly a mystery to Sinclair. She used to be more empathetic. She used to understand people better. (She used to be called a natural-born leader, Most Likely to Succeed, Most Likely to Run for Office, Most Likely to... she used to be a lot of things.) But then she Changed, then her life Changed with her, and a lot of that didn't fit into what she became, or the world she was now in. Leadership amongst mortals is a far cry from leadership amongst wolves. And withdrawing into yourself, holding back everything, holding back from everything as though you will taint it somehow --

well. It makes other people difficult to read.

All she knows is that his eyes flash with surprise, and something else, and it's the something else that she recognizes, and so she kisses him. Hard. She won't let him talk, or can't help but kiss him as she moves on his body. Hers is soft in places, hard in others, but it's the soft parts he's touching, the soft parts that are stroking him the most decadently. When he tears his mouth from her, Sinclair moves to follow, only to hear a rather necessary word. She huffs out laughter in response, kisses him again, and gets up.

Or rather: she lifts her body and crawls half over him, reaching for her jeans and snagging them with a finger hooked at the waistband to drag them over the grass. She digs into the back pocket and pulls out a little plastic packet with a little rolled-up condom the color of a grape lollipop inside. Laughing, Sinclair comes back and pushes it into his hand.

Truth be told, what flashes through her mind is not the idea of pregnancy, of childbirth, of having a baby that would have a horrible time in the womb and a worse time upon meeting its mother. What flashes in her mind is simple: that it would be her parents, who started craving grandbabies when she was fifteen, who would pay Alex's fee if that would get them the goddamn kid.

She doesn't say it. She crawls back onto him and kisses him again, more fondly this time, smiling through it. "Don't ask," she says of the neon purple condom. "Seriously."

Walkers in this town're a buncha sex fiends, she's thinking.

[Alexander] "What -- wait -- " he's protesting when she picks herself up and goes. Maybe he thinks she doesn't have a condom either. Maybe he's about to tell her wait baby wait, I've got condoms in my wallet, really, lemme just look. Maybe he's about to ask if he can just fuck her thighs, then, if they couldn't actually do it; or maybe, god forbid, he was about to say hey I'll hook you up with the morning after pill!

But -- she's not leaving. She's grabbing her jeans and he's sitting up and she's handing him a little plastic packet and he's laughing in relief, saying, "Oh thank god I thought you were going to ... "

He sees the condom. Holds it up to the light.

"Is this purple?"

[Sinclair] Sitting up, Alex ends up abutting Sinclair's space even more. Which makes her grin. She nips at his jawline as he's rising up, nuzzling the side of his neck and reaching between them to search for -- find -- and fondle his cock while he takes the condom from her. She doesn't ask what he thought she was going to say or do, just murmurs wordlessly and softly in pleasure.

And then cracks up, throwing her head back. "Yeah," she manages after a moment of trilling amusment. "That was my Welcome Back to Rio present."

Her grin goes a bit lazy, a lot fond, as she looks at him. Her fingertips are stroking him idly now, slowly, her eyes sharp on him as she watches him react. "Put it on."

[Alexander] He lets out a laugh, a short surprised Ha! that falls to a tattered ah as she strokes him. Alexander forgets what he's doing. He forgets that the condom is purple, and that it should be on his cock, and that this would make his cock purple, which was a really funny thought a minute ago until

she started touching him

just like that.

And now his eyes are closed, and the condom is just forgotten in his fingers, and his mouth is open to breathe and to groan quietly and to say, "Oh fuck, oh yeah, just like that," until she says put it on and he remembers.

The plastic wrapping is torn open. "Like peppermint candy," he mutters, bemused, and then leans up to kiss her, hard, while he unrolls the condom over his cock. Her fingers are brushed out of the way by the rubber, and then he's taking her by the hip with one hand and stroking her pussy with the other, and he does this because he wants to touch her, yes, but also because

she's so fucking wet.

He rubs that onto the latex. Then he takes himself in hand and rubs the head of his cock over her slit, over and over, moaning softly into her mouth at her heat, her wetness, the feel of her even through the thin barrier that separates them now.

"You're so fucking hot," he says. "Do you know that? So fucking hot."

And then he's falling back to the grass. She's over him, the sickle moon in the sky, and he thinks even the sky wants to crown her, and then he thinks he must be drunk. Or intoxicated on this. Doesn't matter; he takes her hips in both hands and urges her on.

"Come on," he whispers. "Don't make me wait, ba-- Sinclair."

[Sinclair] "Just like that?" Sinclair echoes, not to be coy but because she's doing it again, and then again, watching him pant and respond to the soft stroke she's giving him. She wants to know if she's doing it right, even if she knows he won't be able to answer verbally if she is. Vocally, yes. Verbally, probably not. Alex's brow pulls with pleasure, and his chest caves slightly as he exhales, and Sinclair would smile if this were a competition and she were winning

but it isn't, so she shivers, tilting her head and moving to kiss him. Which he's doing, too, opening his mouth to hers devouringly. She keeps tasting herself on his mouth, which is new, and she's still figuring out what she thinks of it. Except: she also keeps licking his tongue slowly when they kiss, shuddering against him when they share breath and saliva and the pressure of soft lips. This might mean she likes it. This might mean that every time she tastes her own pussy and her own cum off his mouth, she remembers what he did to her, and it makes her wet.

"Ah!" she lets out, brow going into tight furrows and hands moving to his shoulders. Alex is touching her again. It's not likely to get old anytime soon, the way Sinclair reacts when he puts his hand between her legs, the way her knees buckle and the way she grabs at him, her body immediately trying to fuck even though all he's done is tease her clit a little, stroke her slit a couple of times. She gasps, surprised, because a moment ago he was rolling on the condom and she thought he'd just be pulling her onto him then, or telling her to get on, or something.

It's sort of funny, how she's always a little surprised when he touches her. Like it always, always catches her off guard.

Opening her eyes, Sinclair looks down at his hand stroking wetness onto his cock. The sight of that ridiculous condom makes her want to laugh again, but the sight of her slick on his fingers and his hand on his erection knocks it out of her. She bites her lower lip, opening her legs to straddle him completely now, sinking down just a little as he takes himself in hand. Alex's hand on her hip is restraining, for a moment, while he rubs himself on her. Sinclair shudders, fingernails digging into his shoulderblades.

Her head tips back, her spine elongating and stretching out, upward, arching her. So fucking hot, he says, asks her if she knows, and all Sinclair can do is keep trembling like that, hard ripples of enjoyment going through her at each touch, each word. The torc he laid on her is gone, the knots that her hair was tied in. She's undone, loose, and there's nothing man-made around her like there was the last time he had her, when she was laid back on soft pillows and expensive sheets.

He doesn't have to urge her on. He has to hold her back, if anything. Sinclair looks down at him as he falls away, her hands loosening on his shoulders. She follows him, at least partway, and for a moment her hands go to the grass, and then -- she looks at him, breathes, heard the hitch in his speech -- she puts her hands on his chest, caressing and pressing down at once, using his body for leverage or balance or anchor when she starts to lower herself onto his cock.

Which has a mind of its own, slipping against her pussy instead, smearing wet over her lips. Sinclair swears under her breath, half-aroused, half-frustrated, and looks down, taking him in her hand to guide him to her opening. When he presses there, her eyes fall closed as if by instinct, as though she can't handle any more sensory input right now. "Oh," she breathes, a whisper of an incantation, rolling her hips gently to start taking him in. Then:

"Oh." Harder. Louder. A groan, this time, aching for more, while she winds herself downward, letting go his cock and putting her hands back on his chest. Eyes closed, lips parted, Sinclair very

very slowly,

works her cunt onto Alex's cock, sparks going off in her mind as he gradually stretches her out.

[Alexander] It's hard to say what they're doing -- urging one another forward or holding one another back. Alex's hands on Sinclair's hips, and hers on his chest: they seem to serve something of both purposes. He remembers her saying slow. He remembers her arching in the grass as she came, and

now that sweet cunt is coming down on his cock. It's his turn to arch, head falling back, spine flexing. His fingers dig briefly into her hips. Then he forces himself to relax, gasps when her hips roll. His chest rises sharply under her hands, all firm, solid muscle-wall, packed tight and solid. His hands leave her hips, run from her wrists to her biceps, then reach to cup her breasts.

It's like that, holding her breasts, feeling her heart slam against the heel of his hand, that he waits for her to take him in fully. Now and then his brow furrows. Now and then his head arches back as though by primitive reflex. Now and then his hips flex suddenly, and just as suddenly stop.

He waits. He lets her move onto him, holding still for her, breathing quick.

When she's finally mounted him, finally on his cock, he raises his head to look at where they're joined. Then he lets it fall, letting out a long, quiet groan, as though he's found some relief. A moment, and they're both still. She's getting used to him again. He's learning how to breathe again.

Then his hands go back to her hips. He urges her to move; not up, but in slow, winding circles that make his breath shudder; makes him let out short, quiet sounds in the back of his throat. "That's it," he whispers. "That's it. Just like that. That's my good girl. Come down here and let me suck on your tits. Come on."

[Sinclair] Alex is at least slightly drunk. Sinclair is stone cold sober, intoxicated only by sensation, giving out soft little moans as she rolls her hips and takes him, inch by inch, until his cock is buried completely inside of her. She's sweating by the end, more than she was because of the heat of the night, more than she was even when he had her on her back and nearly screaming. She's panting quietly, looking down at his body laid out underneath her, muttering an oath, a blasphemy, an

"Oh my fucking god, that might be directed at the sight of it, or what she's feeling, or the sudden remembrance of touching his abdomen for the first time and telling him she knew that the enjoyment of girls looking at him was not why he made his body look like that.

The sudden realization, too, that she wanted this for a long time before she had it, and didn't think she would, and now that she does --

Sinclair leans over him, her hips guided into slow circles by his hands and then taking over -- it's a natural sort of grind, a baby to water, an instinctive seeking and giving of pleasure -- and she kisses him, kisses words out of his mouth, kisses him soulfully. Alex gets out the rest of what he says in between gasping, aching kisses from Sinclair's mouth, punctuated by her little moans. Relief.

She knows that sound, too.

"It's okay if you call me baby," she whispers to him, faces close together, her eyes open but unable to see his because she's murmuring against his shoulder, groaning suddenly when she squeezes him inside and heat and pleasure flood through her. She reaches up with one hand, lifting her breast to his mouth, breath quick. Maybe when her piercing taps his lips, he won't answer that, either.

[Alexander] But he does answer that. He doesn't say much to it, but it's an answer:
"Good, because -- "

Whatever the reason, it's lost. He flexes up and catches her breast in his mouth, sucking on her as he rolls his hips up against hers and muffles a groan against her skin.

Again, then -- and again. Rather gently, and certainly slowly, he moves into her. Tropical heat presses down on them, surrounds them; even the river sounds warm. After a while he lets go her breast, lays back, opens his eyes. Alex takes his hands from her hips and, as she had before him, grasps handfuls of turf, of grass instead.

Even in the dim moonlight, his body sheens with sweat. His bodypaint, waterbased, smears off onto her hands when she touches his chest. Smears back onto his skin when she touches his shoulders, or his biceps. He watches her, breathing steadily but fast, deep, whispering fragments of sentences under his breath like

so good. so good.
and
ride it. ride that cock. wind your hips like that -- oh, god, yeah.

while she rides him. Not for the first time, no; but the first time in a week or more, and one of the first times she's ever done this. With him. With anyone. His hands are back on her body. He holds her thighs, his palms warm against the outsides of her legs, his body hot under hers as they move together.

"A little faster," he urges her, after a while. "Can you handle it?"

[Sinclair] Good, because I wanna call you baby.

Good, because I can't fucking think to remember to call you Sinclair.

Good, because it's easier than saying your name.

Maybe it doesn't matter. If it does, Sinclair doesn't ask just then. She gasps as he takes her breast in his mouth, suckling the nipple and toying with the piercing, fucking her back slow and gentle -- at first -- as she gets used not only to his cock inside her, but his cock moving inside her now. She whimpers softly when he stops licking her nipple, watching him lay back. There are smears of bronze paint on her now here and there, not so intricate or swirling as they once were on his body, just... slashes of it, here and there.

"No," she whispers, reaching for his hands, pulling them back onto her body when he grabs at the grass, "touch me. Don't stop touching me."

And she fucks him, riding now -- albeit slowly, sinking down on him with each thrust and then grinding in heavy circles. Sinclair's physicality is undeniable: she knows her body better than most. She understands it. Moreover: she trusts it. It wasn't even Alex, really, that she trusted the first time they had sex, trust that he wouldn't go too fast or hard and hurt her. She trusted her body to accept it, to be ready for it, to handle it, to know what to do. This is one of the oldest instincts in reality, regardless of species. And her body is a pinnacle of evolution, both graceful and enduring, strong and agile, quick and powerful.

She's panting as she moves a little faster, hands on his chest, her exhales harsh and voiced: "Oh, yeah. Oh, fuck yeah. I missed this. Fuck, Alex, I missed fucking you."

Her back arches above him, her hands pressing down on his pectorals. She moves a little faster, then, ramping it up again. Apparently she can handle it.

[Alexander] Similar as they might seem -- young, athletic, jocks -- that's the difference between them.

Sinclair's body is what it is because it was built that way. It was created that way. From birth, from before birth, from every last base pair in her genes -- Sinclair was made perfect. In the image of some great and killing god. She doesn't have to work at it. She learns this and she learns that, to swim and to hit, to dance and to sing, but when push comes to shove, even if she spent her entire life in a padded cell or a locked cage,

she would still be a predator when they let her out.

Alexander, though: he has to work at this. Even a three week vacation in Rio-Sydney-Tokyo has taken a toll. When he gets back to Chicago he won't be able to run as far or as fast as he could before he left. He'll be just a little slower on the reflexes; he'll go down just a little faster when he's hit. He'll have to add the weights on again, benchpresses, legpresses, curls, pulls, and rebuild what he's losing just by not working at it.

He's not born for physical superiority. He never was made for it.

But: he is, now. Physically superior. The muscles under her hands are hard and hot, heated by their own internal metabolism. They roll and flex and bunch and ripple when he moves. When he moves into her. He fucks her even though she's riding him; they fuck each other, the river running by and the grass soft and green-smelling, the same way the earth beneath it smells old, smells dark. She missed this, she says. She missed fucking him.

He lets his head fall back, and he drags her hips down against him, a little harder, harder enough to slap their bodies together

and groans.

"You missed me," he says. Another woman, another girl, and it'd be a game of oneupsmanship. Part of the competition that so much of his sex is. I make you come, you lose. I fuck you into exhaustion, you lose. I get you in bed when you didn't even like me ... you lose.

But: she's not anyone else. And he's barely even aware he said it until it's out of his mouth and he's groaning because it feels good and because he didn't mean to say it, and then:

"I missed you too. Come down here. Come here and kiss me."

[Sinclair] The weakest Garou Sinclair knows is stronger than Alex. Maybe not in homid. Maybe not in lupus. Maybe they're metis and their claws flake apart. But the're all Garou, able to regenerate wounds and rend things apart with their teeth, their bare hands. They all have the capacity to be connected to a totem, and all that totem's strength. Sinclair's pack, in particular, is known for their warlord of a totem spirit and all the fighting ability he lays on them to that end. Lead. Dominate. Fight the war, get it done, and let them howl.

She'll never go soft, though. Age may take her sight, some of her strength, her wits, her control, Gaia knows what. But she will always be a wolf-woman, never fully either, and never fully needing or wanting to be. She would only be weakened by the limitation of a single form. Sinclair is a shapeshifter, and she is an evolutionary tyrant no matter what her prey, because she can always change to adapt for the hunt.

Alex has just the one body, and it is breakable, and it can be damaged permanently so much easier, and its strength will inevitably fade and fail long before his death. There are places he cannot go, things he cannot do, and they are so much more than the places and tasks that are beyond Sinclair. She is careful with him, partly because of that, but partly because it is simply in her nature to be careful with others, even other Garou. That doesn't mean she's always gentle. It doesn't mean she's always tender.

But she's sometimes a little bit gentle with Alex. She's sometimes tender. And that has nothing to do with the fact that he's Kinfolk. It has as much to do with the fact that she can also rough him up, fight him, push him and know he'll push back... but she told him this. More or less. By the pool at the hotel he was at last time, she told him why him. Why she wanted him, and strangely enough: most of what she said had nothing at all to do with sex.

Once, in Chicago, he told her he didn't want them to have sex. Because he'd never been with a woman and gotten up out of bed -- or wherever -- still respecting her. He didn't want to fuck up what they had, awkward and stilted as it was then. She knew he used sex as a weapon to mock and humiliate his partners. She called Marrick pathetic for wanting him despite that, for going after him when he didn't want her back. She would have felt pathetic if she'd ever really pushed, if she'd demanded, if she'd chased, thinking: he doesn't want me back.

She just didn't want to stick around, longing, facing that indifference all the while.

He's hardly indifferent, though. Or hasn't acted like it. Sinclair rolls against him, moans as she starts to ride him at a gentle gallop, their bodies slapping together not just once but again and again, her breasts bouncing and her body sinuous and sensuous on top of his. What he says surprises him, maybe, or should perhaps shock her. He didn't mean to say it. Sinclair, knowing what she knows about him, isn't surprised. She is too busy gasping, mewling yeah, yeah... yeah, baby, fuck me, I missed it so bad... without any trace of embarrassment, without any hint of shyness.

C'mere, he says. More or less. And she does, whimpering into the kiss she gives him, opening her mouth and mouthing over his lips, groaning when his tongue enters her mouth, gasping as slick smears and spreads between their bodies. "Fuck, Alex," she says, sounding like she's begging, the way she so often says his name, which, if she were anyone else, would tell him he'd won.

But then: she's not anyone else. And she seems to know that.

[Alexander] It seems to set him off, when she kisses him. It seems to flip some switch, push some button, and set him off on some collision course.

He grabs her, his hands on her cheeks, and he holds her mouth to his and kisses her, hard, almost bitingly, groaning into her mouth now as he flexes up into her body. Faster now, and then faster again -- steadily, slapping up against her, pounding into her. Hammering her now, suddenly and rather without warning, feet planted and knees bent, slamming up into her again and again and again until

he lets her face go, grabs her hips instead, grinds her hard against him and throws his head back gasping.

"Fuck I'm gonna come," he says, just like that, one rush of a sentence. He can't seem to decide if he's saying this is a warning or a promise, a beg for mercy or an imperative not to stop. "Fuck, baby, don't stop, I'm gonna come. I'm gonna come if you don't stop -- fuck, fuck -- !"

No neighbors tonight. No open windows. No pool below. No walls, no roof. Just a vast, dark garden that grows wilder and wilder as you delve deeper: like eden before the fall, isn't that what she thought? No neighbors to annoy or startle, then, when he

yells like that, openthroated and meaningless, bellowing his pleasure when he grabs her hips and pulls her down against his upward thrust and holds her there and

comes into her.

Just wildlife. Just creatures of the night, small animals already frightened by the presence of a predator, scurrying away in the undergrowth. Birds, fluttering startled in the trees above.

Even after, he doesn't want to stop. He still holds her hips. He's panting harshly, all but groaning on every breath, his hips jolting up against hers again and again ... and then he's urging her to move again. To ride his cock while he's almost too sensitive to bear it, to draw the last of his orgasm out into one searing belt of pleasure.

"That's it," he's gasping. "Keep going. Fuck. Oh my god. Fuck. Fuck."

Slowing now. Shuddering.

"Oh, my fuck."

[Sinclair] Perhaps it was inevitable, when he started kissing her that hard, when he grabbed her hips to hold her down on him and started thrusting his hips up hard and fast like that, that Sinclair would make a noise so close to the whimpering echoes of pleasure she's let out thus far but a few steps to the left, right on the edge of pain. She puts her hand on his chest after a few moments, unsteady at first from the force of their fucking, not quite pushing him down. She might just be trying to keep her balance, hold on.

"Alex," she says as he's grinding her down on his cock, her face pulling with sudden discomfort. She folds against him, burying her face in his neck, that hand on his chest curling into a fist, knuckles resting softly on his pectoral muscle. "Alex, no," which is actually rather quiet, if only because she's not allowing herself to say please, and because she's curled so against him.

He'd tell her not to stop, but she has. She's on him, she's holding him in her thighs and in her cunt and she's laying on top of him all warm and soft and vividly strong, and he's fucking up into her, but she's not fucking him back anymore. Sinclair grits her teeth and then, quite suddenly, fighting against two very conflicting instincts, opens her hand on his chest again, pushing down not to slam him to earth but to start to push herself away. There's an edge in her voice, sharp and pained and angry:

"Alex, no!" It isn't meant to be an order. It isn't quite a plea. It's a verbal expression of what she's doing, though, the timing atrocious and the feeling even worse, shoving him away when he's gettting so fucking close, pounding and hammering her and making her --

"You're hurting me!"

[Alexander] If Alexander weren't so bloody drunk on booze and -- frankly -- on sex, on the atmosphere, on the hyperrich oxygen and the heat; if Alexander weren't so goddamn close to orgasm he might've, would've likely stopped on the first no.

And the truth is, that's perhaps not purely chivalry. A large part of that might just be practicality accrued over years of one night stands and short-term flings based, in the end, far more on mutual usage than on any real affection or respect. And the bottom line is: a guy like Alexander doesn't make a particularly sympathetic defendant. If some girl takes him to court, his next MMA matchup is likely to be in the federal prison exercise yard.

But:

he is drunk. On booze. On sex. On Carnival. On Rio. On Sinclair. And he is so fucking close, and he can still taste her, and he can smell her, and her pussy is tight and wet and

he keeps fucking her. She says no, and he mutters baby come on, fuck, come on

and it's not until her hand pushes solidly on his chest, until she pushes herself off his cock, that Alexander abruptly

stops. Snaps his eyes open. Wakes the fuck up.

"Fuck!" This is a short, harsh shout, furious. "What the fuck, Sinclair!"

He's panting, as much sudden fury as arousal. His cock jumps against his belly, suddenly unmoored, and he's pushing himself up on one elbow and reaching down with the other hand, grabs his cock, grips for a moment simply because he doesn't know what else to do, then takes his hand off and slams it on the turf twice: mute frustration.

His body is slick with sweat. The paint on his chest and on his face is smearing, is running liquid. When a drop of sweat rolls down the curve of his ribs, it leaves a trail of orange and bronze. It's too dark to see, though.

Alex grips grass, closes his eyes, lets himself fall back, thumps his head once more against the ground as though to drive something out of his head.

"Fuck." This is different, quieter. Strange; it's anger first, then regret. Fear -- that she might rip his fucking head off for being too rough -- never was in the equation. His eyes open after a moment, find her. "I'm sorry." His breathing's still uneven. "I'm sorry. I got carried away." A blade of grass sticks to his palm when he reaches out to her, touches her gently, gingerly: her arm, her shoulder.

"Sinclair? Baby. I'm sorry, okay?"

[Sinclair] If he'd stopped on the first no, she wouldn't have separated physically from him. Didn't want to when she did, though it might not mean anything to say that. Sinclair is angry, and she's hurt, and yet: not afraid. And not wanting to move away, hurt back, or bolt. She could be in another form in an instant, dashing away on four legs like some shapeshifting maiden from legend.

She could be in another form in an instant, tearing out his throat with one bloody swipe.

Sinclair doesn't shift, or run. She slides off of Alex, making a noise he can't decipher because he can't hear it, swearing at her raggedly and loudly. Her hands are still on his chest, her hips poised above him, but when he snaps like that, she shoves herself away, gets off of him completely, opens her mouth to say... Gaia knows what. You've got two hands, Vaughn, I'm sure you can manage to fuck yourself.

What the fuck, you piece of shit?

You HURT ME, both an answer and a roar, if she but voiced it.

Sinclair doesn't, though. She's half-crouched, half-curled nearby on the grass, hands on the earth, hair hanging around her face: wavy from the knots it was tied into and askew from their tumbling, damp from her sweating, littered with grass from when she laid back and he fucked her with his mouth. Her knees have grass stains on them. Sinclair is staring at him with wide, cold eyes that don't seem of this world, her pupils so dilated that the color is but a thin ring around them.

Even in the darkness, Alex can see the swirls of lettering on her left hip against skin not so dark from sunlight yet, though no longer pale from winter in the Great Lakes. What had he said about that, when he'd asked her the story behind that tattoo? It takes great willpower to resist adverse conditioning, or something. Willpower, or stubbornness... a certain human complexity of decision-making at odds with feral simplicity:

pain we obey.

Sinclair stares at him, so still she almost seems like she's not breathing. So still it's not hard to imagine her covered in mud, hiding in foliage, waiting for her prey to lay down to sleep or let down its guard. Or maybe -- and this is harder to imagine, yet not so hard for him right now, having heard the way she yelled those last three words -- like the wolf being hunted by humans, waiting and watching to see if it's time to run, or time to kill.

But she's not really a hunted animal. And if she wanted to kill him, if she even wanted to hurt him, it would be done by now. So she must be waiting on the other shoe to drop, waiting to see if she should run.

He speaks, unevenly but with his eyes on hers, with his hand reaching out, and she doesn't flinch away -- as an animal might -- but she does breathe, a long and slow exhale. Sinclair doesn't catch his hand and nuzzle into his palm. Sinclair unfolds her limbs and crawls back over him, leans over him, kisses him.

Which might be unexpected.

"It's okay," she whispers, accepting his hands wherever they happen to fall on her, one of her knees on the ground beside his hip, the other dragging, resting next to the middle of his thigh. She doesn't quite offer herself back to him, open for him, reach for him to take him back inside. She braces herself above him on her arms after that long, slow kiss that tasted something like forgiveness -- or maybe just acceptance -- before she even murmured what she did. Looking down at him, she says quietly:

"I like it when you hold my hips like that, and I like it when you thrust into me fast like that, but... not at the same time. Not so soon, at least. That didn't feel good." Even as she's saying that last, Sinclair tips her head down and nuzzles him along his jaw, against his cheek. And draws her other leg up closer, straddling his hips again. There's almost apology in her tone, in her body language, as much as that -- perhaps quite unexpected -- warmth, that closeness-seeking she's displaying now. "It was okay last time I was here, but we'd fucked like two or three times by then."

She looks at him again, her hands on his torso, her body poised over his. "Are you okay?"

[Alexander] Alexander closes his eyes when she comes over him to kiss him like that. It's a conscious effort not to surge up against her mouth, not to deepen the kiss into something tearing and savage and hungry.

He lies where he is. He lets her kiss him. Returns it without escalating.

When she draws back, his breathing is a little steadier. He watches her as she speaks. A flicker of a frown over his brow when she says that didn't feel good; then it settles into something like regret.

His hand cups her cheek when she lowers herself to nuzzle him. There's something quite animalistic about the way she moved away, watched wary and tense, moved back over him, moves against him. In contrast, that touch of his hand to her face: that's starkly human, a gesture learned from and borrowed from humans.

Because neither of them, in the end, are truly human. She's nothing close. He's ... not quite.

"I'm okay," he says, when she pulls back a little. A small pause. Then he laughs under his breath, wry. "I'm dying over here, Sinclair."

[Sinclair] "Okay," she says, a smile flickering over her face, spreading her lips and flashing her teeth for a moment. She kisses him again, just as soft, just as slow, just as lingering as the last one. This one, she escalates herself, deepens and intensifies until he's panting again, until that momentarily steadied breath goes ragged and uneven again. She reaches for him, unsure of how to pick back up again, uncertain of many things, except:

she wants to be close to him. She wants to

do what she's doing, which is taking him in hand and very, very carefully fitting him inside of her again, moving slow because she's uncertain, moving slow because she's nervous again, moving slow because a moment ago she hurt, and a moment ago if he'd kept yelling she would have hit him in the chest with a fraction of her strength and run away.

Sinclair watches him, exhaling shakily as she sinks back down onto Alex's cock, her eyes falling closed as she does. When her hips settle on him, she opens them again, breathing, and leans over him. "Roll onto your side with me. Do it like that, okay?"

[Alexander] He makes a frayed sound in the back of his throat as she takes him in again, little by little. When she's settled his eyes reopen. They're very dark in this light; colorless and black.

His breathing is quick and shallow. He nods a couple times, then wraps his arm around her.

The grass bends under her when she rolls onto her side beside him. The earth beneath is solid. They're both close to it now, cradled on the turf. Even the earth is warm on a night like this: nearly as warm as a body, humid, dark. Every breath draws the rich scent of loam into their lungs.

He pulls her leg up around his ribs, folds it behind his back. His arm wraps around her, keeping her close

and he kisses her, slowly, as he starts to move into her again. Slowly. Much gentler now, rolling into her, long flexes of his body into hers.

[Sinclair] Arms and legs are entangled now, limbs criss-crossing. Sinclair is breathing in slow, quiet pants, her hands on his shoulders, arms folded between their chests. She's taking him in with fluid rolls of her hips, and every so often her exhale is voiced, tremulous, coinciding with the shudders that go down her spine. Her head is half-pillowed on his arm, tipping backwards as he moves into her.

Which drags his mouth from hers, making his lips brush over her chin, down her throat. She's holding him against her just as surely as he's holding her. They're moving the way they did that night when she woke up, woke him up, and he fumbled for a condom before pulling her leg around his waist, just where it is now. This is how they slept.

If he asked -- though he won't -- she'd tell him that was her favorite time, though on the surface... well.

It wasn't her loudest orgasm. It wasn't their most energetic fuck. She loves the way he talks to her when they're having sex, the shit he says in her ear while he's filling her cunt, but in the middle of the night last week they were all but silent, with nothing but a few gasped words here and there. And her whimpering, soft, near the end. And the quiet noises of their kissing, seemingly endless.

Something like the way it is now, grass tickling their necks and faces, sticking in their hair and to their skin, writhing together on the earth. Sinclair brings her head back and searches for his mouth again, moaning when she finds it, so quiet that the sound itself is tender.

[Alexander] That sound rolls around his mouth; returns to her from his lungs. They moan into each other's kisses, moving together on the grass, slow and writhing -- like mating snakes; like their hands were good for nothing more than

touching each other. Opening over her shoulderblades, stroking down her back. Pulling her hips against his and rolling his against hers. Their mouths fall apart. He pants against her chin, then nips at her throat, sucks at her shoulder. It stays slow, but can't stay gentle for long. He's moving into her firmly now, and his back is wet with sweat.

It's quiet where they are. Under an open dome of tropical sky, there's only plant life and wildlife. This isn't where the party is, tonight. They can hear it -- very faintly, when the warm wet wind blows right -- distant voices, calling and shouting and laughing; distant drumbeats and basslines, the samba reduced to its tribal roots by distance. They're not out there, though. They've been out there, seen what there is to see. Retreated back here, into themselves, into a modern day eden, back to something like

innocence. Which is a strange way to think of what this is, between them, but oddly apt. He is not often tender with his transient lovers. She does not often get to express much tenderness, period. He's a self-designated asshole. She's a monster.

They move together, though, and she doesn't think of him as Alex fucking Vaughn. He doesn't think of her as Sinclair, who might tear someone's head off with that mouth that's kissing him right now. He thinks of her as the girl he's with right now, right here, moaning softly in his arms and moving against him, strength in her body; softness, too.

Warmth in her mouth. Heat in her pussy, where he's inside her, stroking into her steady and firm, pulling breath after breath out of the air between.

[Sinclair] Scars interrupt the smoothness of her back, tiny ridges against his palms and fingertips. There's grass on her back and in her hair, grass sticking to his skin by his sweat, dirt under their fingernails, the taste of her cum in both their mouths. Sinclair runs her hands over his shoulders and wraps her arms around his neck, raising herself up on his body, using his torso as leverage to fuck him back. Her spine arches, and her breasts stroke his clavicles, and her lips fall then on his cheekbone, his brow, that voice of hers murmuring his name.

Muted beats and the roar of the crowd dimmed by distance interrupt the silence out there, but only intermittently. Mostly it's the lean, summer-thin river beside them, the wind in the boughs of trees and bushes, the unsteady quietude of Sinclair gasping yeah... oh, yeah... ah, ah... Alex... ohgod... Alex....

She keeps saying his name with that aching edge to it, so very, very different from the frustrated snap it sometimes held back in Chicago. So very different from the easy familiarity she said it with, some other rare times. She keeps wrapping her arms around him when he's inside of her like this, wrapping her legs more tightly around him, letting herself go with a surprising lack of restraint or wariness... especially considering how carefully she controlled herself the first time, afraid that she was going to hurt him if she didn't hold back.

Ironic, that.

"Don't stop," she whispers in his ear now, squeezing him inside. "Alex, don't stop. I want you to come in me."

[Alexander] Those words light something off; drives a rough pant out of him, barely shaped into words --

"oh fuck."

-- as he shifts; gets closer; wraps his arm up under hers, across her back to her opposite shoulder. He holds her tight to his chest, sealing almost all space away in between. Her hair has fallen from its earlier knots, is loose across her face, obscures her ear. He nuzzles it aside, finds her jawline and her neck, kisses her fiercely as he

moves into her a little harder, now. Flexes into her in powerful, controlled thrusts, the strength flowing from his back, from his flank. There's a ragged quality to his breaths. He's panting, fuck over and over again, meaningless, until at the last he presses his lips to her pulsepoint, hard.

"Fuck I'm gonna come -- "

-- that, muffled against her neck, falling apart into a tattered groan, a moan; not the bellows and shouts he looses in the day, in his room, in the sunlight, but something quieter, more ragged, a little more

vulnerable.

He moves into her mindlessly after that. Fucks her until he can't anymore. Slows. Stops. Alexander is trembling faintly, shaky at the edges, panting quietly. Holding her very close, very tight.

[Sinclair] She burned off her rage getting here as fast as she did, bolting from park to Brotherhood to caern to Rio de Janeiro, dropping favors and exhausting herself all the way just to get here, knowing she'd have to be back just as fast, just as soon. Sinclair is, right now, about as human as she gets. That predatory viciousness is still etched into every shift of her body, all dangerous strength and menace at your back. But: she's not at Alex's back. And she's not human, but she is vividly, drenchingly female, pouring breath and lust back into him with a moan when he kisses her.

Like that. Her hands hold his lower back, keep him against her, buried inside her, and her cunt is trembling but she's nowhere near orgasm, nowhere near coming, herself. Again. She bucks her hips softly, though, in response to the way he moves in her then, the way he shudders and gasps and starts fucking her in earnest, chasing pleasure that was earlier taken from him so abruptly.

Sinclair's was, too. But then:

Well. Maybe there is no but then. It still doesn't seem to matter, not right now, not when she's so warm and she's holding him so close even as he tightens his arms around her and ...comes inside of her like that, his hips thrusting and rolling loosely and eagerly. She draws her leg up his side, higher, moaning in his ear while he goes on fucking her, fucking her until he absolutely can't goddamn move anymore.

And she holds him then, too, her pussy clenching in slow, plaintive waves that send pleasure unfurling through her entire body. But Sinclair doesn't roll him onto his back and ride him like she was before, and she doesn't arch her back and wriggle for freedom and fuck his body to her own climax. She does, however:

hold him. And nuzzle the side of his face, breathing in leveled-out, strainingly controlled exhales. For a long while, she just keeps herself wrapped around him like that, stroking his back idly, heads resting together.

Then, quietly, laughter under the words: "When are you coming back to Chicago?"

[Alexander] Alexander is too blasted to speak for a while. He holds onto her, shuddering now and then, trying to catch his breath.

She nuzzles him. He can believe she never ever wanted to tear him open and eat his heart, like this. He can believe that the predator he sees when he looks in her eyes isn't all there is.

After a while he finds it in himself to move; to nuzzle her in return. His hand strokes her back. Finds the intricate scarification, which at once unsettles and fascinates his. His fingertips trace the patterns for a while. and then he simply lays his palm over them, as though he might heal her back to perfection again. Innocence. Whatever.

He draws apart a little. Looks at her. Her eyes are blue, but in this light they're simply -- dark-clear, like ice at night. He's drenched in laziness, in pleasure, sleepy with it. And yet -- a little regretful. Of how he hurt her. Of how he ruined her pleasure for her.

That's not something he's familiar with: regret. Compassion.

"Soon," he replies softly. "Maybe next week. Maybe this weekend." His hand moves; covers her cheek. Strokes her hair back. Touches her temple, her eyebrow. "Come back to the hotel with me." A faint, halfhearted attempt at humor -- "Let me make it up to you."

[Sinclair] He doesn't know yet why she has her nipple pierced. He doesn't know yet why she has so much of her back covered in not scars of war, scars of glory, but this strange, delicate tapestry he's laying his hand over, thinking to heal it. Maybe if he asked while not suckling her breasts like he was when he inquired about the piercing. Maybe if he asks, period. Sinclair doesn't lie, much. Doesn't see much need for not telling people what she can, when she can, when they want to know. Sometimes when they don't want to... but need to.

They hold each other, all but clinging while Alex recovers from his orgasm, sweating and shaking and nerves on fire. Sinclair aches around him, not from pain -- which was brief, and passing, and nothing more than a fading memory now -- but from arousal, unsatisifed but not frustrated. And she strokes his back, nuzzles his cheek, caresses him thoughtlessly and easily, as though this is nothing new to her. As though this doesn't feel strange.

Because maybe it doesn't.

She hated, from the start, how he was afraid of her. How he expected the worst. How he saw her as a monster, like everyone else. She liked how he told her the truth, though. That he didn't sugarcoat it. That he didn't dance around it or hedge his bets or hesitate to grab her by the fucking wrist because it seemed like the thing to do at the time. She liked that he was strong enough to lay it on the table: she scared the shit out of him. She hated that he didn't want to have her in his bed, naked, not just sleeping curled up near the wall but fucking him, moaning for him. She hated that she genuinely understood why, and could not blame him for it, and

she liked that she liked him anyway. That there was something other than lust in her, for him.

Sinclair resists when he pulls back. She breathes in deeply when he does, lifting her head so she can look back into his eyes. She's a mess, all sweat and grass and tangles. She seems... oddly replete, strangely lazy. Whole. Her eyelashes fall, fluttering like autumn leaves, when he puts his hand on her face. She exhales a soft sigh, comforted without need for pain or grief beforehand to justify the comfort being given. They stay closed while he tells her to come back with him, but open when he says that last part.

Her brow is furrowed slightly when she looks at Alex again. "There's nothing you have to make up," she says, almost a whisper. Then, after a heartbeat or two, watching him as he strokes her hair back, she turns her head and catches his palm with her lips, pressing a kiss there, eyes closing again with the contact. Her head stays turned, but her eyes open as his hand sweeps back. Slowly, she returns to facing him, sliding her arms further around his neck to hold him closer. "I didn't come here to get off."

A beat. A smile, lopsided and almost shy. "Besides, I ...did. And it was really good. And... nobody's ever done that to me before."

[Alexander] That makes him grin, suddenly and unabashedly, the corners of his mouth flirting up. He leans in. He kisses her; he presses against her; he flexes his hips into her where they're still joined, and

then he nuzzles her, the way she did him.

"Come back to the hotel with me anyway," he says. "We'll get barbecue down the street and take it up to the room and pig out and watch movies in Portuguese." The grin fades a little. Dies a natural death, leaves him serious again. "And we should fuck all night," he adds, softly.

[Sinclair] That grin finds a match in Sinclair's renewed smile: sudden, flashing, pleased. It dies more quickly than his, though, falling away into an aching parting of her lips when he flexes into her. She releases a huff of breath, caught off guard, as she clenches around him -- which surprises her more than him, more than likely.

"You don't have to work so hard to convince me," she says, the whisper she keeps her voice in ensuring that she sounds only half-teasing. She leans forward, nuzzling his cheek

and kissing him again, warmly, like she can't stop even now. "I came here to be around you," she says, as if that weren't already obvious, as if she hadn't already all but stated it, as if he didn't already fucking know by now.

Sinclair smiles again, this smile small, bright, her cheeks still pink from exertion and arousal, both. She hesitates just before she speaks again, but when she does, it seems as though Sinclair is quite content to stay lying in the grass naked and joined, just as the are, for a little longer. Even if she does seem a little shy about asking: "Why'd you say 'good' when I said it was okay to call me 'baby'?"

[Alexander] Alex laughs quietly. "'Cause," he says, "it was getting really hard not to."

The laugh dies to a grin, the grin to a smile. He touches her face again, and there's affection in that contact, that stroke of his thumb over her cheek. "I'd like calling you baby," he says. "Don't ask me why. I don't know why."

[Sinclair] Sinclair is not known for her self-control, and she's certainly not known for her ability to dissemble. So not only can Alexander see the reaction that gets, he can see how she struggles -- and ultimately fails -- to hide it.

She's close to him on the grass here, her thigh warm over his hip and the arch of her foot resting against one of his calves. He's still inside of her, and she's still holding him, their faces close together. They look more intimate than they've had time to become. But this is how they slept, the last time she was here. Even when he fell asleep resting his head on her stomach, sometime in the night they turned, fit themselves together like this.

Color flickers across Sinclair's cheeks, mostly lost in the darkness. She ducks her head a bit, then stops herself, and breathes in deeply before curling closer, holding him tighter. A low noise of contentment issues from her throat, and she asks the other thing that she's had on her mind, with the same bluntness and openness that affects almost everything else that comes out of her mouth:

"Have you?" There's a beat, then: "Slept with anyone else?"

And there's something, impossible to define, that sounds like she means what she says: slept with, as much as had sex with.

[Alexander] A shadow of tension crosses Alexander's face. As close as they are, she can feel his body tensing faintly; some flicker of the old fear in his eyes.

As useless, as frivolous as his life seems, as much of a prodigal wastrel as he appears to be, Alexander is surprisingly well-connected; intelligent and good with information. He trawls GWnet all the time. People tell him things, and he remembers. He has friends, or at least acquaintances, in vast and diverse circles. At least several of those are people who know things in the Nation.

So: he hears. All the time. About this Garou or that that was made a fool of by some kin; that had a mate, or maybe just a kin that they were interested in fucking once in a while, who ran around on them. Who sought a little comfort on the long nights when they weren't around. He hears about the bitter outcome every time, shame and exile at best, much more often bloody red death.

All this is knowledge behind his eyes, held in his quick mind as he draws a breath

and tells the truth.

"I met a girl a couple nights after you left last time. She took me back to her place. I stayed for a while and then went back to my room. There was another girl last night. I didn't stay the night either."

He falls silent -- nervous, waiting.

[Sinclair] There was a time -- not long ago, not nearly long enough -- when the mere shadow of humiliation would send Sinclair into the exact sort of bloody frenzy that Alex grows wary of when he decides to tell her the truth... even though, had he lied, there's every chance she would have believed him. Pretty girl, virgin when he met her, holding him inside her body and her arms and her legs and blushing because his hand is on her cheek, because he's telling her he'd like to call her baby. She might not even let herself see the lie, if it was there.

Doesn't matter. He tells her the truth. And she knows it even before it comes out of his mouth, because he tenses. And he's afraid. She sees it -- feels it, really, senses it physically before Alexander so much as opens his mouth -- and yet she stays. Sinclair convinces herself she stays because she's jumping to conclusions, that maybe he's just proud and admitting that no, he hasn't is making himself vulnerable somehow.

The truth is, though: she knows. And she stays because she doesn't want to let go of him.

But then he tells her what he does, and letting go of him is the only thing she wants, suddenly and vividly. Sinclair doesn't suddenly rear back and headbutt him. She doesn't go quiet and still, and she sure as hell doesn't duck her head and start crying. She plants her hands on his chest and shoves him back, hard, pulling off of him and wriggling away. "Get off," though he's not on top of her, then between her teeth: "get off me."

Sinclair doesn't call him an asshole, or break his ribs with a solidly placed kick once she gets to her feet. She's shaking, and if she were human she might grab a hold of her clothes now, pluck them off the grass to get herself dressed as fast as possible so she can leave him as fast as possible. But then the fact that she isn't human manifests itself in the exact way it didn't when he hurt her, when he thrust too hard and she squirmed out of his arms:

she's twisting away to go, and that's when her form shudders, when the outlines of her skin waver and dissolve, when flesh stretches and bones snap and reshape underneath, when thick and dark fur erupts across all of her. Sinclair is already running when her forepaws hit the ground.

[Alexander] If Sinclair were a human girl, Alexander might try to explain. Might brush it off: come on. It's Carnival. It's Rio de Janeiro. What did you expect? You should be happy it was two, and not twenty. Might give excuses: baby, I didn't really think you were coming back in a week. Might hedge: I didn't expect you to be faithful to me. Might argue: you never told me you wanted me to be faithful to you. If you had I would've never fucked you at all.

Might lie:

I figured we were just a one night stand. It didn't mean anything at all.

Or ... something. Anything. He would've talked, cajolingly or angrily or simply lying through his teeth; he would've calmed her down or fought with her and stormed off himself. It doesn't matter what he would've done. She's not a human girl. He wouldn't have told a human girl, period; he would've just smiled and said what she wanted to hear, because fuck if he was going to deal with the drama shitstorm that was sure to follow.

But: he told Sinclair. Because she's not a human girl. She's not

like the rest.

And then he doesn't have the chance to say anything at all. She's shoving him and he's falling back from her with a grunt and just beginning to sit up to say, pleadingly, "Sinclair," when she twists, and turns, and dark fur erupts and he catches his breath in a sudden jolt of fear but she's not going for his throat after all.

She's turning and bolting. He doesn't have a chance of catching her. He doesn't even try. The foliage rustles, dark shadows by the river, snaps back in her wake. Then she's gone. Her departure was so surreal and sudden that Alexander can't be quite sure all of this wasn't some sort of druglaced hallucination.

He falls back in the grass, covers his eyes with his hand, and thinks to himself: fuck. fuck. fuck.

[Sinclair] The Botanical Gardens cover almost three hundred and fifty acres. There's a reason Sinclair stayed near the entrance, if she was really hoping Alex would come at all. If she'd gone further in, it would take forever for them to find each other, especially with mobile coverage as spotty up here as it is. And that would be in human guises, with him pretending to be human and her pretending to be not-a-beast, possibly even calling out, looking actively, staying in the open where they could be seen.

Sinclair is a goddamn werewolf. If she wanted, she could use the water and slip sideways, go completely out of his reach, become more spirit than physical being just to escape what she's feeling right now. But even in the material realm, this new body of hers is the body of one of the better predators on dry land. She is lithe and dark and sleek, and though she's not particularly stealthy, Sinclair is deft and agile. She's in cultivated wilderness, and she can run faster than even the fastest, strongest of her packmates.

By the time he sits up, Sinclair is gone, and the bushes stop rustling a moment later, and then there's nothing but the murmuring of the river to accompany his thoughts. There's nothing but her backpack and her clothes in the underbrush to prove that she was ever there.

Well: that and the ridiculous purple condom on his cock.

That and her taste in his mouth.

That and her scent all. Over him.

--

She was born a female human, or very much seemed like it. Her mother doesn't think anymore about the nervous feeling she had holding Heather as a baby, nursing her, something crawling up her spine to try and alert her brain that small and helpless and weak or not, she was holding something inhuman. Something dangerous. They treated her for postpartum depression. They told her it wasn't terribly unusual for new mothers to feel convinced that their new baby wanted to hurt them. She got past it. Heather learned to talk (loudly) and walk (more like a stiff-legged run) and she carried her plastic baby doll with the soft stuffed body fucking everywhere.

Started cheerleading when she was still pre-pubescent. Liked sports. Would tolerate having her nails trimmed and her cuticles pushed down if her mama would paint her fingernails afterward. Usually pink. Often sparkly.

Got older. Got angrier, more volatile in her emotions in general. Wondered why certain people didn't like her no matter what she did or how she acted. Got crushes on boys. Got dumped by boys. Stopped dating sometime in high school. Got ridiculously high grades. Went to a ridiculously good school for college, as a result.

Slaughtered a man in the street.

Sometime later: got drunk and laughed as the skin on the back of her neck got stabbed over and over, staining her forever with ink, insisting it didn't hurt. Sometime later: laid on her stomach with her arms loose above her head the way people do when they get a massage, while blood dripped down her sides and waist from tiny, careful, slow cuts being made into her back. Sometime later: breathed deeply and steadily as she put the needle through her nipple, opened her eyes to look at the empty, endless sky as she threaded the steel ring through.

--

She's on her knees, deeper into the gardens, in homid because in many ways that is still the body she knows best, understands best. That is the body that is weakest, and she feels so weak right now, and so it fits.

Sinclair holds her arms around herself, folded forward and rocking slightly.

Crying.

--

Her eyes are dry and her fur covers her again, warm and protective, when she comes back. Sinclair's pawsteps are wary and almost silent as she approaches the grassy bank by the little river, pale eyes peering through the green to check and see if Alexander is -- maybe half an hour later, give or take five -- still there.

The knoll's empty but for her clothes. Her bag. Matted grass where she and he rolled around together, fucked, layed intertwined. She's very quiet for a a moment, just listening. She sniffs the air. He isn't there. Isn't nearby taking a piss. Sinclair keens softly -- whines -- and pads forward, not bothering to slip through the brush carefully. She sniffs the spot where they laid together. Turns.

Lies down, muzzle on her forepaws and tail tucked close, staring at the spraypainted plastic torc.

The wind changes, and tells her Carnival is still raging.

--

A little over thirty-six hours later, more or less: she's in the Loft. She's watching the Olympics. She's tossing Lukas rye bread, juggling fruits and vegetables, flicking the piercing in her arm to either freak out Fabienne or amuse herself. Or both. And she's doing everything -- constant distraction, constant violence, constant company -- to keep herself from thinking about Alex.