so easily left behind.

Brand

Mon 01:51AM CST
Brand has a habit of staying up late. At 1:30am when most the city and its 9-to-5er's are deeply asleep, his night is barely beginning to wind down.

The sprawling two-level penthouse condo is quiet. Most the pack's bedroom doors are shut; they're either out, or sleeping. In the common areas - the living room, the den, the library/study, the kitchen, the balcony - the rheostats are turned down low. Lights burn faintly amber. The stereo system is on, but most the speakers are on mute; only in the living room can the strains of some late-night lounge music or other be heard.

The door to the large downstairs balcony is open, the sheer inner curtain billowing silently. It's not quite warm enough for this, really, but coming from ice and snow as this pack did, a little cold never bothered them. The Ahroun lounges on the maplewood deck chair in the corner of the balcony, facing the clear glass railing. Out here music's reduced to the faintest suggestion of bassline, melody floating atop. Through it the city's lights are spilled glittering out to the edge of the dark lake in the distance. Skyscrapers are light-speckled shadows topped by flashing red. Far away, a trail of steady-burning lights marks jetliners coming in for landings at Chicago O'Hare.

Four or five or seven at a time, the line never ends. The world spins on and the humans travel and work and move and exist, all the while unaware of the wolf-kings in their midst.

The breeze coming in over the lake is frigid cold. No matter; the weave of his clothes protects him from it. In wool-spun slacks and a sturdy cotton-weave shirt, the edges softened after a day's wear, he manages quite well. No tie; coat on the empty chair opposite him; formal, lowkey, black-with-silver-clip suspenders shrugged off his shoulders and lying looped against his flanks. Somehow the effect is more casual, more relaxed, more undone than if he'd not worn them at all. A glass of rum and coke held loose in his big hand, heavy on the rum and light on the coke completes the picture he paints: nobility at ease; alpha wolf in his own domain.


Genevieve Breitenbach

Mon 02:26AM CST
Her bedroom door has been shut since early this evening.

Knock upon it and no answer will be given. She is out.

...and coming home again.
Nearing 2am and the front door is quietly opened; quietly shut behind her. A distinctive, but light sound, the tattoo of her heels along hardwood floors polished just yesterday by the daily maid. No louder than the billowing rustle of the sheer inner curtains of said balcony is the fine-fabric shiftings as she goes about the process of unbuttoning and drawing off the black woolen evening coat. The air around her scented of high-priced, imported tobacco; of premier vintage red wines; of nightblooming jasmine; of chilled, cool winds and that faint musky scent that echo in museum corridors.

Scents as subtley provocative as the seductive glint of one ankle as it glides past the flowing slit of her gowns form-draping skirt. Soft sounds as whisperingly touching as the string of black pearls upon a platinum chain that runs not around her neck, but rather down, down, down the line of her spine, displayed in well-toned elegence by the cut of the gown that rises up high at the neck and cuts away at the back and draws the eye there... then lower.. then outwards... then upwards... then within.

Moving further within the condo, she goes about quietly not from any demure attempt to hide the lateness of her arrival, but merely from the cadence of her stately presence that feels no need to draw forth attention with volume and ruckus.

One satin kissed arm rises up in grecian lines to draw out the pins that have kept up her hair all evening; hair acheing to return to it's rather unruly natural state thanks to the humidity rampant in the damp air that so tastes of snow-still-to-come on the tongue. And there.. there as she comes to a stand at the open balcony door -- there where the whiteness of the curtains tease coyly sheer about the sable jet of her liquid-fabric gown and golden-grain of her hair -- there where the soft ambient light from the room casts the distinctive, singular lines of her face in shadowed relief...
...there she is a woman made and grown in manner rarely seen these days.

"Will you miss it, do you think?"

Such is how she chooses to lend the harmonies of her voice into the stronger melody of citylife beyond and around, enveloping. Harmonies it is, for her voice is a surprising undertone - not the higher pitched, clear-as-a-bell tone one might expect from her visage... but something more alto-rich, resonant with a smokey tinge of balmy huskiness. A not of passing, mild interest...
...a wraithly distant key of thoughts (fears?) she cannot shake.


Brand

Mon 02:44AM CST
He doesn't start when she appears. Likely he's sensed her coming from a long way off, either by merit of her heels or, softer, the scent and smell of her; the presence she leaves behind in the room, slowly dissipating long after she has left it.

Relaxed on the maplewood slats, the Ahroun doesn't move when she appears to haunt his doorway. Close up the details are visible. There's a faint, healing scratch running alongside the line of his jaw. He is cleanshaven today, but missed a spot in the cleft of his chin. The collar of his shirt isn't merely undone - it's also turned up haphazardly, testament that he'd stripped off a tie earlier. Bunched it and put it in his pocket, perhaps, or tossed it atop his bed.

Her question turns his head where her appearance did not. Interior lights glow on half his face, strong swarthy features dusted with distant amber. The other half is cast in shadow, the lights of the city too far away to do aught but catch on his glass, and gleam in his green-flecked eyes.

He laughs a little after a moment. "What a question," he muses, his voice a low thrum undershot with a beast's growl. He casts his gaze out to the city again as a fisherman casts his net. Miss what? - he could ask that, feign ignorance, but it's not his way. There is a pause, contemplative. "Yes, I suppose so." He inhales deeply, his chest expanding against the crisp white of his shirt. Exhale, and, "But they say everything lost can be found in the depths of the Umbra. So perhaps there's nothing to miss."

He speaks so easily of his fate now. In his hand the glass moves, rocks gently. Liquor comes close to spilling but does not, always saved by a hairsbreadth or two. Eventually he sips.


Genevieve Breitenbach

Mon 03:09AM CST
With his gaze drawn ahead, towards the distant city, he cannot see the bit of polite smile that graces generous lips; bemusement with a hint of potential sauceiness. Even though he cannot see it, he can more than likely envision it in his minds eye for it is just the sort of expression she often dones... socialy acceptable mystery; for the smile doesn't quite touch her eyes. Not correctly at least... that smile could signify anything from passing interest to winsome understanding - the look in her eyes; however, is far more shrewed. The indigo depths shimmer with hard gained acceptance...
...on her own terms.

"Perhaps, so." Words spoken as easily and cool-passioned as his own. As if she too can speak of the subject without issue -- except that she so rarely ever used to speak of it. But her arrival here in Chicago seems to mark some sort of.. change. As gossamer vieled as most everything else about her - shimmering surfaced and swirling, pitch depths; the difference is nothing that can be easily pinpointed... and it may well be lost on him entirely.

Such things rarely matter in his position. In hers.

Moving forward, she deposites hair pins atop a side-table and draws up behind and a bit to his side... draws up and then graciously curves her spine, lowering and turning her head to graze (surprisingly?) warm lips just above where that scratch is already healing - not actually kissing the scratch in the manner of a dotting mother or sympathetic little wife -- but far more akin to a feral mate taking note of the wounds of her own. Brief and passing but sensuously lingering in feeling, the touch of her lips barely gone just as one fingertip smooths along that small missed batch of stuble at the cleft of his chin. She breathes what could be a sigh and then turns her head to look out over the cit from his eye level and--

--draws back upright.

"Shall I top off your rum and coke before I retire, Doenhoff?"

So formal. So smooth.
And yet so undeniably present.


Brand

Mon 03:21AM CST
So present. His mate. His matched half, the answer to the wildness crouching tooth-bared inside his breast. Silver Fang civility makes his response to her kiss and touch necessarily slight, even careless - he tilts his head ever so slightly to give her access to his jawline, and his eyes don't waver from the city. Her fingertips on his chin: he dips his head briefly, smoothly, even gracefully. His lips parting, his teeth scraping the side of her finger; his hands don't move at all. Her fingertip caught between his teeth briefly. Beast in repose, powerful and muscular and primal, the strength of his desire pulses strong for a moment, an almost-palpable pressure in the atmosphere, then ebbs back. He releases her finger from between dull human teeth.

[ Look through my eyes. ]

The city laid out: the sparkle of manmade stars. The tapestry of a world laid at his feet, there for the taking, there for the claiming, there and promised and delivered, and taken away again.

Whatever his calm, whatever his acceptance, that which is territorial in him cannot help baring its teeth. She draws upright and he moves like a whip. It's hard to imagine how fast he could be; one moment motionless, a sphinx. The next, his hand is wrist of her hand that had briefly braced against the armrest. The sword-callouses on his palm scrape her skin. He looks at his rum and coke as if he'd never seen it before, and then deliberately drains it.

The tumbler set down with a soft click, glass to tile floor.

"No." Alcohol-rough. Growl-rough. "I have had enough." He pulls her [...roughly.] down on his lap and then takes a moment, takes his time, takes his hand and pushes it through her hair, loosening the last traces of her coiffure. He looks at her, really looks at her, for what seems like the first time tonight. In his dark eyes, the umber and the green, a white-hot flame twists and turns.

"And the soiree tonight?" He pretends interest in her affairs; he doesn't need to pretend interest in her. "How was it."


Genevieve Breitenbach

Mon 04:01AM CST
She is not a woman who often acts without calculating risks and outcomes....
...which is to say that it is not surprise that causes her breath to catch in the alabaster sweep of her throat. A rich, soft sound - caunt up and whirled about in the next gust of chill wind that flaps the haphazardly updraw lines of his collar and carresses its teasing way up the exposed expanse of her back, up into the hair his claiming hand fully releases. Waves and curls and abandon are teased forth and an undeniable heat is kindled in her own gaze, entrapped and entrapping as he looks at her... fully and completely. As though for the first time... tonight.
Any passing observer would perhaps think her displeased, given that it appears to be a frown now on her wide mouth beneath the pronounced lines of her distincitve nose. But he would know - or should know... should feel and smell and see and hear that the serious expression is a strengthing of her self-controll as she reclines, reposed on his lap.. feline and drapped, legs curling up exposing close-work fishnet clad claves and thigh as the split of her dress slinks apart; her hands drifting to his arms to better support herself... she now set atop his lap like some basking creature of liquid ivory, jet, sapphire and gold--
--the energy needed to hold herself in check snapping through her like barely concealed electricity.

A knowing in her eyes:
One movement. One look. One touch.
It is in his power to break her.
But it is in hers to consume him.

Blink.

He is fiening interest in her activities and her large, cat-tilted eyes blink and she breathes a low chuckle, some of the sudden, intensity of their proximity ebbing away. Unabashed... not a hint of shyness in how she noew finds herself settled upon him. Again that sound of her faint amusement, the spreading of her lips in a deliciously lazy smile as her head turns, so her lips run along the calloused hand there. Without inhibition, the tip of her tongue traces a wet, heated line over the swell of his thumb pad before she bites there, slowly...

...then releases. Looks back to him, smiling once more, eyes flickering with the knowledge that the interest is all polite fiction. Make believe.
Whether she appreciates it or not is simply impossible to tell.

"Boring, for the most part. But it was a means to achieve an end and for that it's purpose was well met."

Eyes dare to settle on his again, searching there - an instant where her thoughts aren't at all on sex or boredom or anything of the sort but things far more taxing - then absolutely gone and her eyes drift to his healing cut which may well have been quite the gash - or more - earlier today.

"And your evening?"


Brand

Mon 04:35AM CST
He does not ask what end that might be.
What purpose she might have. What designs she drew herself, with her own life apart from his.

Briefly his dark gaze drops to her mouth; her mouth on his hand; her lips on his thumb. His own part on an inhale, slow and steady. Then she looks at him and he at her a beat after. They look at each other and the polite fiction is scorched away.

"Uneventful."

The brevity, even curtness, of his tone is enough to wither many a woman. But Silver Fangs are made of sterner stuff than that. It's only a signal: the time for talk is over. They could pretend to be civilized, man and wife, later. His big hands drop briefly to her thighs. Then one arm scoops beneath her and he stands, lifting her and her slinking dress, her stockinged legs, her loosened hair with him in one dizzyingly smooth motion.

Without a hitch he snags the emptied glass from the floor. Then he raises his face to her. Darkness close up, and darkness in his eyes. Barely enough light to see the details of her features by. Barely enough light to see if she smiles, or if she doesn't, or if she's ever afraid of the burn of his full moon rage, or if the intensity of it roused and roaring is enough to banish all emotion except the most primal and basic.

He kisses her. Claims her mouth hungrily. They sway; he sways gently on his feet from the intoxication of alcohol and her, holding her above the ground, against him, above him, easily. Then the french doors bumped open, and he moves inside, the roll of his gait balanced and counterbalanced through every muscle of his body pressed to hers.

The condo is furnished sparingly, but tastefully; sleek modern pieces juxtapose with a few ancestral works of art or war. Glass set down on the wet bar. She is not. Upstairs, the steps creaking. Their shadows long on the walls. His suspenders dangling lazily in the vicinity of his knees. The bedroom door squealing softly open, then shut. He sets her on the counterpane (his tie sprawled, a snake, behind her: he had taken it off here, after all.), and, steady but swift, undoes the rest of his clothing.


Genevieve Breitenbach

Mon 05:22AM CST
And so it transpires as such things have, do, and will.

In the bedroom; in this basic, primal act of so many things (release; union; selfishness; generosity; aggresssion; dominance; submission; battle; healing)they are perhaps more knowledgeable of one another than in any other arena of 'married life'. Surely neither lacks in interest, drive, or response for the other... in this act, perhaps, it is easiest to be mindlessly unified.

And so it goes--

He disposes of the remainder of his closing, steady of motion though quick and pressing. She, laid out before him, laid in waiting thought not passively so. There is no question to her roused response to him but there is a pleasure for her in awaiting his hungry advance - the frustration of urgency that likely leads to the rending of that find gown. ANd what does it matter?
Another gown can be aquired.

And so it goes--
Were familiarity has, as of yet, failed to breed apathy in this regard. Where round one leaves markings and tastes and smells of 'hard love' and round two contrasts in a slower re-aquaintence of form and shape and textures and preferences. Of skills laid aside in respect to a Totems wishes if not any actual regard to her own sensibilities; now once more used in manner perhaps all too surprising in one born to kill.

And so it goes--
--until satisfaction - at least momentary - is achieved and they are left lying there, in a tangle of sheets and bots of clothing remains. Bodies glistening of perspiration... lying apart from one another now, perhaps overheated now and seeking some space. Perhaps she always rolled away from him afterwards or he from her.. or maybe niehter knew which initiated the action. Perhaps neither cared...

...but this time - smelling of him and herself and both of them and one; smooth pale flesh glowing and vibrant in the healthy sheen of some of the best exercise around; breathing only now beginning to steady out even and full once more - this time she turns back to him. Draws back in close and lingers there... to catch her breath, or, it may be, to see if he'll allow it.


Brand

Mon 05:39AM CST
Her nearness he allows. Why not? If he wanted to shut her out, he could do that easily enough. A Fang's cold shoulder is the stuff of legend.

But, not tonight. Tonight he lies still, the rapid rise and fall of his chest slowing far sooner than hers. Eyes shut, he senses her nearness by the heat of her, and by the movement in the bedsprings. Eyes open, and he looks upon her, the darkness of the room seeming to fly sparking into his pupils.

Brand lifts a hand and touches her face, her mouth. He does not often smile at her, though she's seen him grin and laugh with his pack, his sister. He does not smile at her now, but instead watches her with a certain darkening intensity.

"And now that you've followed me here," he murmurs, as though this were the continuation of some other conversation, "what will you do, when I am gone?"


Genevieve Breitenbach

Mon 06:02AM CST
Though she's seen him grin and laugh with his pack, his sister...
...but he does not often smile at her.

The question is, does that - did it ever - bother her?
...if it ever did she never gave hint of it.

(I don't need that from you. From anyone.)
But now that she's followed him there...
(Actions speak far louder than words.)
...what then?

Her eyes remain closed, in quiet repose as her body relaxes wanting the languid stupour of post-coital bliss--
--which won't come this time around, it seems.

What will you do when, when I am gone?

"What answer would you like, Aurich?" Comes her own murmered response, at long last. For she takes her time about it. Shifting her long form against his, so much taller, so much more than she. Eyes opening at last, watching the first lights of dawn that turn the world a wraithly grey; make of the morning an avalon mist... her head resting on his shoulder, a hand at rest atop his chest... her words somber and low and, for once, there is not even a polite smile upon her lips.
"What is expected of me? My family shall no doubt wish to seek out a new mate for me, particuraly if I am still childless." Her eyes close once more but she continues, voice soft, yes, but steady still. "Or perhaps they will leave me be - for a time at least - to follow my own peruits. They were not so happy about my following you here -- they felt I should heed your orders. Both for the tradition of it and the advantage...." There her lips do twitch.. one naked shoulder, perhaps now sporting a bite mark or two, shrugs faintly. "Or perhaps you'd like to hear that I'll--" The words fade there... and, drawing a breath, she turns more onto her stomach, lifting her head to look up at him... her eyes searching his.
A frown...
...and, for once, a hint of what just might be uncertainty in that piercing gaze.

"Was I so mediocre - so average and forgetable - a mate to be so easily left behind?"

Searching.. for answers that will likely never come, then her eyes close and she lowers her head, resting her forehead at his collar.

"I'll find you or I'll keep your memory alive.. somehow."


Brand

Mon 06:26AM CST
In the uncertain grey light of the early morn his profile is kingly, strong and noble. He stares at the ceiling while she speaks, taking her time about it. Her body moves against his and against the sheets. His arm has found its place about her; his hand traces down the curve of her side, absently heavy, and up again. She fades off and he breaks in.

"I would like to hear the truth."

Her eyes search his - or they try. They try, but he does not allow it.

The eyes are the windows to the soul:
his are tumultuous, dark, brooding, heavy with thought. The color is variant. Almost black in this light. Deep and rich as mahogany in others. Resonant, amber-gold, in still others. And always, always flecked by green as vivid as grass, as crystal; a color not found in man but in wolf.

The eyes are windows to the challenge:
and perhaps that is why he looks away. Beneath his skin his rage burns steadily. Her will is strong enough to withstand it, but none can ignore it. And to stare him in the eye too long - it could invite disaster.

Or at least these are the reasons he would give if pressed.

She feels him breath in, the long slow expansion of that mighty chest. Only after she has set her brow to his collar does he answer, "Genevieve, you were not easily left behind."

Feel the unspoken volumes fill the space between words.
Feel the effort it took to say them at all.

His body is taller, stronger, more solid than hers. Yet it can fade across the barrier between worlds. Flesh to spirit. Spirit to memory. Memory to nothing, and nothing unto eternity. He takes her hand in his, against his breastbone beneath which beat his heart.

And a pause.
And a silence.
And a quiet laugh strewn with irony.

"No, love," and he kisses her knuckles softly, gallantly, "you won't."

A short while later he settles his stroking hand on the curve of her hip, draws the sheets up and closes his eyes.