Ian
The sun was down, though the hour wasn't yet so
late that Washington Park was empty of visitors. There were fewer now
than there had been when Kiara and Ian had arrived, and given time the
place was likely to get pretty quiet, but there were still cars in the
lot. Ian got there first, partly because he was running and partly
because Kiara had offered to take a detour with Grace. When he arrived,
he paced around the lot once, letting his heart rate slow and his
muscles cool. Gradually his breathing grew less pronounced.
There
were a couple of teenagers arguing a few stalls down from where he'd
parked his Audi. He ignored them as he passed by, and eventually they
got in their car and left. After that, he was left alone to wait. His
car sat idle beneath the overhanging branches of a large oak tree near
the end of the lot. Sodium light from a nearby streetlamp illuminated
the pavement around him, casting speckled shadows through the leaves.
Ian hopped up onto the hood of his car and lay back with his eyes
closed. He didn't bother to put his earbuds back in. Instead he listened
to the sounds of the park and the distant hum of engines from the road.
This
is how Kiara would find him when she arrived. Like a cat lounging in
the moonlight. She'd seen his car before, so she knew what to look for.
But given their particular awareness and sensitivity to each other's
presence, she probably wouldn't actually need to look to find him.
Kiara
Her
car was parked across the lot from his. Washington Park, busier when
she pulled in earlier, had left her little options for stowing her
vehicle. Though it stood now quite solitary in its corner, a red blight
amongst the shadows, somehow more obscure for the inky twilight and
somehow, of course, of course the car that belonged to a woman like Kiara Woolfe.
It
would be blood red. Some small and compact thing with stickers peeling
off the back window. With dust etched into the paint, clouding the
rearview windows. He's there well before her, detoured as the brunette
was walking Grace to the (relative) safety of her own destination, if
anywhere could be safe for any of them, being who they were. The
temperature has cooled a few degrees for the sun's absence and when
eventually, the Verbena closes on the parking lot, she's restored her
jacket to her body, a bag slung over a shoulder, basketball caged under
one arm, toted against her ribcage.
A set of keys are wound around her fingers.
If
she notices Ian (which she does), she doesn't acknowledge him lounging
on his car (yet) but heads to her own and unlocks the door, stows her
belongings in it and shuts it again. The sound of the door slamming
echoing for the near loneliness of the lot now. Occupancy dwindled down
to a lone two, one with the appearance of a creature quite at his
leisure and the other toying with her own.
Kiara's sneakers
crunch over the earth as she approaches. She doesn't need to look for
him, he's right about that, she knows the sense of him now. Has felt his
pattern curled around her own, knows what he feels like under her
hands. She reaches the wheel of his car, hands in her pockets, the
streetlight playing over her body.
She doesn't say anything at first and when she does, it's simple. Unfussed.
"Hey."
Ian
She
might not have shown. Whispered flirtations on a basketball court
weren't necessarily meant to be taken as a promise. And given enough
time, Ian probably would have found something else to occupy his
evening. But he waited, and there was nothing impatient about his
demeanor in that moment. His posture was relaxed, and were it not for
the shallow rate of his breath he might have looked asleep. Both of his
arms were folded beneath his head. One foot hung loose over the front of
his car while the other propped itself up on the hood. His own jacket
was still stashed in the back seat, unused. Given another fifteen
minutes or so he might need it, but sixty degrees was still tolerable
weather and he'd been running recently.
Hey.
Ian
knew that Kiara was there. He'd felt her approach from halfway across
the lot. But he didn't acknowledge her until she spoke. Then he opened
his eyes and turned his head to regard her, blinking slowly as his eyes
readjusted to the light.
"Hey."
He greeted her with
this small, subtle smile, then gave a slow, fluid stretch. When he was
done, he hopped down from the hood of his car and ran a hand over the
back of his hair.
"Was beginning to think you might not show."
Kiara
He
stretches, hops down from the hood of his car with all the sinuous
grace of the cat he so resembles and she watches him, Kiara, the corner
of her mouth hooking up as she does because it can't be denied it's no
hardship to do exactly that. Look at him, the way he moves, the lithe
grace of him.
She doesn't hide that she's watching him and
there's that boldness about her that was there on the court. She holds
her position, though a hand emerges to tender aside dark strands as they
drift into her vision, the wind scattering leaves somewhere, playing in
the fall of her hair before finding the tree branches, urging whispers
and creaks from the oak above his Audi. He was beginning to think she
might not show.
Her head cants a little, she leans a hip
against the side of his car, sliding arms over her chest. "But you
waited anyway." There's a hint of challenge there, a suggestive edge to
the way she studies his face and then looks away. Her profile all dark
edges and white on gray under the dull illumination of the light.
Glances
back again and turns her body toward him, fingers skating over the
curve of his car. Smoothing fingertips over the unblemished paintwork.
"I got delayed, walking Grace home. She loves me now so I figured it was
the least I could do." Her hand slides off his car, she takes a little
step closer.
"I'm glad you waited." Quiet.
Ian
But you waited anyway.
"I did."
There
was no trace of self-consciousness in his voice when he said that.
Maybe there could have been. Maybe he seemed like the kind of man who
didn't like to wait on anyone. Who didn't need to wait on
anyone. But his confidence wasn't that fragile, and sometimes
experiences were worth waiting for. He could be patient, when he wanted
to be.
Kiara was glad he'd waited, and Ian... didn't say
anything to that. But his smile returned, playing at the edges of his
lips. There was a pregnant pause, silent apart from the ambient noise of
the city. Then Ian stepped forward and cupped Kiara's face in one hand,
his fingers playing over the outline of her cheek and jaw, and just
like that the space between them closed. He leaned down and kissed her -
hard enough to feel insistent, his breath a rough gust of warmth
against her lips.
Kiara
He kisses her and cups
her jaw, the delicate bones of it warm beneath his fingers and she's
receptive almost instantly. Reaches up and wraps fingers around his
wrist where he's anchoring her face near. Opens her mouth into it when
his lips return and meets the hunger in it, pushes into his space and him into the side of the car while she steals the breath from his lungs the way she'd stolen her ball back on the court earlier.
The
first time they'd been together he'd kissed her first, tasted her mouth
with the bittersweet aftertaste of merlot still clinging to her lips.
It had been a mutual exploration, of bodies, of lust, of like minded
individuals, perhaps swimming against the current. Now, she's on the
offensive. For all that he could map the span of her waist between his
hands (maybe he has, at some point, who knew) and pull her off, Kiara
pushes into his space, bites the edge of his mouth and traps him there
between his car and her body.
Anyone could, in theory, walk
upon them like this. Pressed together against the side of his car with
their hands all over one another.
She drags her mouth away, lips kiss-stung, pupils blown and breathes, "tell me what you
want," while deliberately holding herself away from him. Poised on the
precipice of her lust while still attempting a maddening degree of
control.
Ian
Their energies met. Crashed and
broke like an ocean tide. And Kiara was not the first of the Awakened in
Denver for Ian to do this with, but she was the first to turn that question back around on him. To drag her lips away and say: tell me what you want.
Perhaps everyone just assumed they didn't need
to ask. Ian was a primal force. If he wanted something... well. Kiara
already knew what his passions were like. They were similar creatures in
this sense. But he didn't object when she pushed him against the car,
just as he hadn't objected that night when she'd taken him by the shirt
and led him to her room. Yes, he could have resisted. Could have pushed
her away. But that wasn't what he wanted.
They kissed like two
people who could have devoured each other (and maybe, in a darker
moment, they could have.) Kiara bit the edge of Ian's mouth, and Ian let
out a quick breath as his pulse gave an uptick. He ought to have been
tired from exertion, and he was - a little. But the ache in his muscles
was an afterthought compared to what he felt in his blood and on his
skin. There was hunger in the back of his throat. (Strange the things
that made people and monsters the same.)
Ian wet his lips. His eyes were nearly black in the reflection of the streetlamp.
"I want to drown in you."
Anyone
might see them like this. Despite the dark and the quiet of the park at
night. They were still in the open. This was still a public space.
Maybe he didn't care.
Kiara
There's a reason
she likes Washington Park. There's a reason beyond playing hoops or
running, it's the same reason she liked Central Park in another city.
Another reason why her coven drew her out into the suburban sprawl
outside Manhattan. A creature such as she was, Kiara needed the grounding of the earth. Needed the tactile reminder of who and what and how she was.
She
comes here and drowns herself in nature the way he wants to drown in
her right now. Her with her dark eyes and wet mouth and feeling like
she's fucking devouring him alive only to electrify his nerve
endings back into sensation every time she touches him. It strikes her -
or it will - that they've never told each other who they are, passing
beyond names and the recognition that they were alike, that they were
awake in ways other people weren't.
She says it plainly often - Verbena, descendant of the Pure Ones, the Aeduna, the Wyck ...
so many ways to say the same thing - to leech out the truth. The one
there in the instinctual, visceral reaction animals have toward her. The
one she broadcasts in her own way. The one you can feel, sometimes, when she's near and turns her gilded, loaded smiles your way. Pagan. Witch. In the old ways as well as the new.
It's
neither here or there really, but it's a discussion to come at some
point. It's the calm after the storm, perhaps and not for right now. Not
for when she's pressing him into the car and he's staring at her like
he is. She wants to hear him say it, say something, that much is plain.
She's
very close to him when he does say it and he can sense the smile as
much as feel it when she presses their mouths back together and says,
"You can, you know," in a private whisper and then takes his hand and
pulls it to her chest, under her shirt, over her heart. The warmth of
her skin. The rapid staccato of her heart beating just under the
surface.
"Go as deep as you want."
Ian
[Forces 2, coincidental, diff 5, needs 2 successes]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (1, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Ian
[And Life 1, diff 4 -1 (practiced)]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (2, 8) ( success x 1 )
Ian
[oh come on]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (4, 9) ( success x 2 )
Ian
Kiara
pressed his hand over her heart, and Ian closed his eyes as he felt the
beat of it beneath his palm. They'd never spoken about their Traditions
(or lack thereof.) Ian himself laid no claim to any organization (or perhaps more
accurately, no organization could lay claim to him,) but certainly he
had things that he believed. There were a great many things that Kiara
didn't know about him, including the fact that they'd both lived in New
York. But there were also things she did know that some others did not.
People like Grace or Sera, who'd spoken to Ian on many occasions but had
not seen the depth of his response to another person's heartbeat. Did
not know how much that simple thing could deconstruct all of the
carefully erected walls around his soul.
And it was willful, that letting go. It was a release. (Maybe they both needed it.)
Ian
closed his eyes and felt the beat of Kiara's heart beneath his palm.
And then he leaned back and looked up through the branches of the tree.
At the sky. At the stars. The light beside them hummed with electric
current. He gave a quick, stuttered breath and closed his other hand
into a hard fist - until the nails dug half-moon shapes into his palm.
And the light above them exploded into a shower of sparks that rained
down onto the pavement.
Then it went dark.
Ian
pressed his hands to Kiara's waist as he kissed her, flipping their
positions so that he could push her back against the hood of the car.
And unless she objected, he'd help lift her weight onto it, so that he
could press his hips between her legs and roll his pelvis in this slow,
fluid motion. Their athletic clothes were fairly thin, and didn't leave
much to the imagination. When he kissed her again, he pressed his hand
back over her heart and listened to the rhythm of her blood. Focused on
it. Until the details of her pattern grew more acute. Until he could
feel her pulse even when he wasn't touching her.
He pulled his shirt off and dropped it on the ground. The air didn't feel cold anymore.
Kiara
She knows the way it feels to give over to that sensation.
It's primal, base and instinctual and there isn't any finer example of what it means to
be alive than to press your palm against someone's chest and feel their
heart raging against the idea that it could ever stop, that the body
could cease to be, grow cold, no longer pulse with blood and sweat and
everything in between. Ian feels Kiara there, under her skin, beyond the sinew and bone. Feels her,
the pulse of her pattern, the threads that connect her to everything.
The strength, the desire, every frenzied beat like a synapse, firing and
crackling to life only to die before renewing itself.
She
gives him that, holds his hand there and breathes out jaggedly when he
flips her, the motion stealing her breath. The streetlight shatters,
sparks reflecting in the windows of his car before they die and she
curls a leg around his waist when he presses into her, rolls his pelvis
against hers and he can feel that, too. Her arousal, the sharp
noise she makes when he does it. He pulls his shirt off, she unzips her
jacket, throws it into the darkness blindly.
Sits up, slides
down the hood of his car to shed clothing. Shirt, bra. Shakes her hair
out of her eyes and lays back like an offering to be made. For the fact
she's half naked on top of a car in a public parking lot Kiara displays a
startling lack of hesitation. But then, it's nearly pitch black without
the streetlight. The only illumination coming from the moon and the
vague impression of another light across the lot, casting dull sallow
light across the square of gravel.
She pulls him closer.
Her
skin cast in starker contrast for the lights being out, she wraps an
arm around his neck, grabs his other hand and guides it back toward her
body, whispers against his ear.
"Put your hands on me."
Ian
She
didn't need to ask (demand, really,) but he liked that she did. And the
moment her skin was bare in the moonlight he could not help but touch
her. His hands found her waist again, thumbs pressing into her stomach
as he slid his palms slowly up the length of her torso, over the dips
and ridges of her ribcage until he reached the swell of her breasts. And
he bent down to kiss the base of her throat, an almost disarmingly
delicate thing - this soft press of open lips and warm breath. He could
feel her nipples beneath his palms and rolled his hands back over them
slowly.
A responsible person would say at this point: we should go somewhere. Somewhere safe. Somewhere private. But Ian was not a responsible person. (At least, not in that respect.)
Soon
his lips found their way down to where his hands were, and he rolled
his tongue over one of her nipples, glancing up to watch her reaction
before he closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of her skin. One of
his hands slipped down past the waistline of her pants and pressed
between her legs. Found the warmth there beneath her clothes and traced
over it.
His senses were full of Kiara's heartbeat. The pulse
and rhythm of it. The way it changed when he touched her or when her
breathing shifted. He didn't want to pull away, but he did, briefly.
Long enough to help her out of the rest of her clothes. He could have
been more careful - gone around instead of pulling them off. But he
wanted to see her stretched out like that, naked and beautiful on the
hood of his car in the shadows and the moonlight.
He kissed
the skin beneath her ankle bone, tracing the tips of his fingers up over
her calf. Then he kissed the inside of her thigh. Once. Twice. The
second time he bit down lightly. If her fingers were not already in his
hair, he would reach out to take her hand and put it there. Asking
without asking.
He'd promised her something back on the
basketball court. And he had every intention of fulfilling that promise.
Wanted it, just as he'd wanted it the first night they'd spent together.
But there was something about the way they were doing it now that made
it just that much more fucking perfect. He moaned when his lips found
her. When his tongue pressed into wet heat and slid up over her clit.
Everything about Kiara was alive in that moment, and it was so very easy
to lose himself in it. (To drown, as he'd said he wanted to do.)
Kiara
Perhaps
its the fact that she worships the elements, the Gods and Goddesses of
the Earth, the divinity in Nature itself that writhing naked under the
moon is not such a ridiculous prospect. Perhaps the voyeur in
her rejoices in it, the pagan in her certainly does. This is old magic,
energy raised by bodies joining together. She'd told Sera as much the
other night, hand open on the table, palm upward in a gesture of
supplication.
Energy, we're made up of it, we invoke it every
day of our lives. Every thought, every word ... it's breathing,
running, laughing ... sex. Just another kind of it. Another conduit for
connection, for raising consciousness to the next level. Kiara revels in
the way he touches her, spine arching slightly off the hood of his car
when he sets to mouthing his way down her body, when he slides his palms
over her ribcage (feeling the rise and contraction of her breathing),
the slope of her chest, fingers grazing her breasts; nipples. He looks
up the length of her body at one point to gauge her reaction and finds
her eyes open, watching him with rapt focus as he makes himself a
devotee, a worshipper at the altar.
Her head cants back, eyes
slide shut when his mouth moves between her legs. He guides her fingers
to his hair and blunt fingernails bite into his scalp, tugging and (to
some degree) guiding him right where she wants him. He had made
a promise, after all. He can easily drown in her responses, though. She
gives herself so wholly, Kiara, to the act of pleasure; attaining it,
harboring it there, right on the cusp that its impossible not to feel
entirely surrounded by, swallowed by it.
The heat of her
skin, the pulse of her pattern. The way she cages him close to her body
with the supple strength of her legs. He keeps his promise to her and
she lets him hear it when she comes. Head thrown back, brows knit
together as if in consternation, teeth sinking down into her lower lip
at some point hard enough to draw blood (and that's an offering too, of
its own sort).
Ian
In the moment, Ian didn't
think about the fact that making noise was probably a bad idea. Not when
the sounds Kiara made felt like velvet crawling up his skin. Her hands
were in his hair, knotting strands of it around her fingers as her body
grew taught and tense beneath him. Ian sucked in a breath when he felt
her come (felt it in more ways than one,) and the sensation was dizzying
and electric.
He didn't stop until she released her hold on
him. At which point he leaned over and kissed the edge of her
collarbone. Then her jaw. Then her lips.
"You're fucking beautiful like this."
She was always beautiful. He'd said as much before. But this time his voice held a note of quiet reverence to it.
He
didn't actually have a condom on him, so he had to pull away to open
the car. There was always at least a few in the glove compartment, and
he found one now, tearing open the wrapper as he shut the door and came
back around to where Kiara was resting on the hood. They still hadn't
been caught, and Ian was pressing their luck considerably, but that was
the thing about being Awake. You got used to being able to do things
that most people couldn't get away with.
Later, just after they'd finished, someone would
walk by. And Ian would send a mental impulse just in time to keep the
two of them from being seen. Probably they'd laugh about it.
But
for the moment, there was just the two of them beneath the stars,
surrounded by life and open air. And as Ian pushed into Kiara, he curved
his spine and kissed her and moaned against her lips. And for a while
he didn't think about anything else.
