Kiara Woolfe
Kiara Woolfe's apartment was on the 4th floor of the reputed Bank and Boston Lofts, a few streets shy of 16th Street.
Apartment
422, if we're being precise. It's a corner block, her apartment complex
with a marble entrance hall that rather gives off the impression of
setting foot inside some overly well to do hotel, or the lobby of a
bank. The high, arched ceilings and columns are original, as pictures
hung along the walls pronounce and the Verbena notes with idle grace,
stopping only once to adjust the strap on one of her shoes. Kiara's
apartment is equally situated on the corner, she stops at the end of a
long hall, key in the lock, a shawl sliding off her shoulders and tilts
her chin at Ian.
"I should warn you, I have a room mate." She
glances at the door, then smiles, turning the lock. "She's not here at
the moment, but all the same." She smiles as she backs into the
darkness, then re-appears with the flick of lights, illuminating a small
hallway that widens out into a spacious room. Large bay windows throw
back the city from below, lights winking as traffic winds through
Denver's streets below. The sounds of the city are distant from this
height though, as if pressed through layers of muffled resistance.
It's
an impressive space, though perhaps for someone like Ian who drives an
Audi and owns designer suits, it's nothing he hasn't seen once or twice.
Still, it's very ... fitting, somehow, for the image of Kiara Woolfe
with her unruffled humor and unconventional views. There are
still boxes stacked in one corner and propped beneath the windows, what
appears to be a functioning massage bed.
She hadn't been
joking, when she mentioned once what she did, apparently. She moves into
the space, turning on lamps and unhooks her shoes, carrying them in one
hand while she does. "So, this is it. My room." She points left.
"Sadie's room," Right, into the far corner. "Everything I can't cram
elsewhere room," this a gesture at the boxes and candles and stacked
pictures against a far wall.
"Kitchen." She glances over his shoulder. "Make yourself comfortable."
Ian Lai
Ian
was not unfamiliar with lofty spaces or high-end architecture, this was
true. But he could still appreciate them, and when they walked through
the fourth floor's entrance hall he glanced up at the high, arched ceilings
with an alert, contemplative gaze. His shoes echoed gently across the
marble tiles as they approached Kiara's loft.
The car ride
over had been a quick one. Kiara didn't live far from the gallery, and
Ian's Audi rode smooth and fast (particularly when he wanted to get
somewhere.) There'd been music playing: something trippy and sleek.
Kiara
gave him a brief tour and told him to make himself comfortable. Ian
removed his suit-jacket as he walked toward the kitchen. "Nice place."
He didn't comment on the massage table, though his gaze did linger on it
briefly when he passed. There was a chair in the kitchen corner by the
window. Ian draped his jacket over the back of it before turning to take
in the view.
"Does your roommate work with you?"
It
was casual conversation, because the two of them really didn't know
each other. There'd been only that one brief meeting at the cafe before
this. And yet, here they were. As was known to happen among young,
beautiful, available people. Ian shifted his focus back to the kitchen
and walked over to the center island, trailing a finger over the
counter-top. Kiara had mentioned wine, but he waited to see if she'd
offer. They might not even get that far.
A slant of his eyes to take in her profile. "I like your dress, by the way."
Kiara Woolfe
They don't know each other very well at all. And yet, by lieu of what, if not who,
they were they are perhaps more connected than they understand.
Inherently different, in detail, but the bigger picture ... it wasn't so
hard to see it. Kiara deposited her shoes somewhere shy of the sofa and
padded, barefoot into the kitchen to retrieve two glasses.
"In
a certain manner of speaking she does. Sadie works with crystals. We're
a sort of ... two for one deal, when it comes to some things."
She
turns, uncorking a bottle and laughs a little, under her breath as she
measures out two generous amounts of Merlot. He likes her dress. "Oh, I
know. " Kiara holds out a glass for his taking, her fingers cupping the
bottom, lightly brushing his when he accepts it. "It's a very
inspirational dress." She lifts her own glass to her lips, taking a sip
and holding his gaze for a moment that stretches, unraveling.
Her eyes are very dark, but there's something playful there beneath it.
"So
tell me," it's conversational as she sets the glass down, reaches up to
unpin her hair and let it fall loose around her shoulders. She's been
doing this since they set foot inside the apartment. First her shawl,
then her shoes, now her hair. There's a presumption there, somewhere,
probably. Or a decided lack of consideration for the steps to this
dance.
Because it is a dance. It always is, in a way. She apparently just thinks she's leading.
Kiara
digs her fingers through the heavy fall of her unbound hair, loosening
it from the coil she'd twisted it up into for the occasion. "Did you
change your mind about your soul needing rejuvenation?" The corner of
her mouth curls. "Because I'm very good."
Ian Lai
She
handed him a glass of Merlot. Their fingers brushed when he took it. Ian swirled the glass once, gently. His first sip was small:
measured, tasting. The second was longer.
Perhaps there
were assumptions being made, but if so, the two of them were very much
on the same page. It was a dance, yes. A conversation held both within
and between the lines. And Ian knew the steps well (he was, after all, a
dancer.) And if he was surprised or taken off-guard by Kiara's
assertiveness, he certainly didn't show it. If anything, his interest
sharpened. There was a quiet breath of laughter at her response to his
compliment, and his lips turned up into a wry, curling grin.
Kiara undid her hair. Ian watched the way it fell around her face.
"I don't doubt it. But it's not the rejuvenating part of you I'm interested in."
Their
eyes were the same shade of dark brown. Ian's were shadowed and
difficult to read. Less playful than hers, perhaps, but no less hungry.
Ian set his glass down on the counter and stepped forward to close the
space between them. There was a beat - time enough to step away or
otherwise indicate that she didn't want him near - then he reached up to
thread his fingers through her hair just as she had done a moment
earlier. It was a slow gesture, tactile and exploring, and when he
leaned in his breath grazed the curve of her throat. Then his lips. Then
his teeth (gently.) Finally his mouth found hers, pulling her into a
slow, lingering kiss. When he inhaled, he stole some of the air from her
lungs.
Kiara Woolfe
Her apartment smelled
like incense. It was subtle, upon entry, but it lingered in the air as
if to trumpet to the knowledgeable that this space had seen workings of a
sort. Perhaps those tendrils of magic lingered too, with their own
hallmarks. Kiara Woolfe certainly didn't seem to be the sort of woman
who hid what she was behind walls or doors.
She carried flyers around that pronounced it, after all.
And
yet when Ian sets his glass down and steps nearer to her there's a
definite sense that she's keeping some facets secret. Physicality was,
after all, only one part of the whole. There's little to the way she
waits for him to move closer and slide his fingers into her hair that
suggests resistance, though. That speaks that she is anything but
welcoming to the tactility of the moment.
She makes a noise, some quiet subvocal hm
of appreciation and tilts her face when his breath ghosts against her
neck; his lips; teeth. "Pity." It's a murmur, an answer to his question
as she slides her arms around his neck, tangles her fingers in the short
hairs at the nape and pulls, lightly. Scratches her fingernails against
his scalp and opens her eyes very close to his face long enough to
stare at his mouth.
To flit her gaze upwards and meet his eyes.
"I
was looking forward to seeing what was under the surface." She kisses
the edge of his mouth, just once, grazes their cheeks together and then
steps back, sliding her hands over his shoulders, feeling the shape and
breadth of his shoulders beneath his dress shirt before hooking a
fingertip between two buttons, tugging him forward as she begins to walk
backwards, journeying toward her bedroom.
"But I can work with this, too."
Ian Lai
[Per+Awareness (as empathy) hmm, what sort of resistance?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Ian Lai
There was a time when Elijah had threatened to tear Ian's shirt off (literally,) and Ian had responded with something like: how about not. Ian liked
his clothes. And now that his salary was no longer what it had been, he
was all the more conscious of how much they were worth. That he did not
now put up any protest when Kiara hooked her finger between the buttons
of his shirt likely said something about his state of mind.
She
was keeping him at a distance. Ian watched her closely for a moment, as
though trying to map out an impression of her thoughts. She sounded
faintly disappointed by his response, and for a moment he hesitated:
remained still and unmoving against the subtle pull of her hand. This
was neither lack of interest or indecision, but more... a moment of
careful, measuring observation.
"There are different ways to do that."
(But let's face it: when did a cat ever give away its secrets so easily?)
He
moved then, following compliantly behind Kiara as she led them to her
bedroom (though he'd have been just as happy in the kitchen; the living
room... hell, on the deck (if there was one.) When they arrived, he
pressed in behind Kiara and brushed her hair aside so he could kiss the
back of her neck. The scent of her skin and her hair wrapped around his
acute senses. He breathed her in. Marked it to memory. Sometimes he
was as much animal as he was human.
(Not a housecat, no. Something a bit more primal.)
"Tell
me what you want." He uttered this against her skin before stepping
back. His clothes felt restrictive now, and with a quick motion he
finished loosening his tie and pulled it free from around his neck.
[Life magic ftw - diff 4 -1 (practiced, yadda)]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (4, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Kiara Woolfe
He would probably not be the last person to find himself slightly confounded by Kiara.
It
was deliberate, without question. Those walls, those carefully built
restrictions between what was allowed to infiltrate and what wasn't. It
wasn't that she was cold, quite the opposite, actually. He pressed in
behind her and addressed his desires to her neck again and she smiled
around her response, her receptiveness was as felt (and felt,
her presence unfolding around him like warmth, waves of soothing energy,
mingled with the afterburn, ebb and flow, life and death, if you could
bottle the pattern of Kiara, it would be some intangible sense of
process, the natural cause and effect of life as a whole as impossible
to fight as to refute) as it had been earlier.
"What do I
want - " Her fingers make light work of the zip of her dress, it pools
at her feet in a whisper of sleek material and she's kicking it aside as
he wrestles with his tie. Steps closer and begins work on the buttons
of his shirt, her face shadowed by the fall of her hair as she works on
exposing his chest, sliding her palm over what she reveals with the edge
of a smile teasing her mouth.
"Sometimes grass is just
grass." She echoes her sentiments of earlier, pushing his shirt off his
shoulders and pressing close so they are skin to skin and he can feel
the heat of her body against his. "I just want."
She drops a kiss to a shoulder.
Ian Lai
Had
he ever told Kiara what he did for a living? Probably not. There hadn't
been much time for conversation on their last meeting, and this one...
was clearly leading in other directions. Either way, it was evident in
the cut of his frame that he did something physical - something athletic.
His musculature wasn't the kind of bulk you might find on a football
player, but rather sleek and toned. The cut of his torso gave an
impression of core strength, and if Kiara looked lower (if she felt
lower) she'd find the muscles in his legs equally developed. He was a
dancer, and he had a dancer's body.
Kiara took the lead again
in removing her dress. Ian watched her as it spilled to the floor,
tracing his eyes over her frame with this soft, contained hunger. Kiara
was beautiful. Beautiful and wild and rejuvenating and yes, he'd said
that wasn't the part of her he was interested in, but what else did he
really hope to achieve from this but rejuvenation? To be devoured and
rebirthed. Life was a cyclical process, and sex was very much a part of
that cycle. Ian knew that very, very well. He may not have been a
Verbena, but he was a student of Life as much as she was.
It
probably wasn't altogether healthy for him to even be here. Not with
everything that had happened recently. Not with the way he'd been
feeling (sharpened, unstable.) Not with the stark images of Victoria
Drake's grisly death and the scent of her blood still haunting his
senses. But people were complicated. Everyone had their coping methods.
Kiara
removed his shirt and pressed close, so he could feel the warmth of her
skin and the rhythmic drum of her heart. Ian focused on that pulse
until the sensation of it flooded his awareness. Until the details of
Kiara's pattern were as clear and present to him as his own: nuanced and
alive. Human and wanting.
She kissed his shoulder. Ian
wrapped his arms around her back and dragged his fingernails down the
length of her spine, pressing forward to catch her mouth in another
kiss. His lips were soft and insistent, and his teeth grazed her lower
lip.
Sometimes wanting was all there was, and all that was
needed. Ian stepped forward and pressed them back toward the bed. He
didn't seem to care much where his clothes fell. His hands slid away
from the small of her back so that he could pull the belt free from
around his waist. It dropped onto the floor with a heavy sound.
Kiara Woolfe
He hadn't told but that being said - she'd never asked, either.
It
hadn't been her intention at first to make deep impressions in a new
city. It was a safety house, a renegotiation point after New York. After
the mess that New York had become at the end. She'd never
asked a lot of things of Aisling, either, when it came down to it. Maybe
it was a pride thing, as much as self preservation. You didn't give too
much of yourself away and in return, you didn't ask for anything,
either. God only knew Kiara had grown up with adults who reinforced the
notion.
Stand alone. Do it alone. You are your only source of preservation, when it came down to it.
Of course, not everything was hers to bear alone. She was never alone, not quite. But here, but now, it
was different. It was entirely hers, it could be hers. Sex was easy, it
always had been with her. The physicality of sharing her body with
another person came as easily as breathing. She relished it, actually.
When his arms closed around her it shifted things into place.
She was a healer, the human body was her medium.
So
it's easy, this. Falling into cool, clean sheets with another person is
a magic she understands. It's a learned rote all its own and it,
invoking pleasure, finding her own, creates a conduit. There's a reason
her people use it so often in their working. Ian presses her down into
the bed and she wraps her legs around him and keeps him close.
Keeps him, invites him in. At least for tonight.
Ian Lai
There was rarely ever more than tonight
with Ian. Perhaps also next week or next month or whenever their bodies
happened to find their way back into each other's orbit. But for all
that it may have been temporary, this inviting was
not casual. At least, not for him. One might be hard-pressed to imagine
Ian having sex in a casual way. Passions found their outlets, even
among those who were as composed and contained as Ian and Kiara were.
She
invited him in, and Ian quickly made his way past what few clothes
still clung to their bodies. The way he kissed her was hungry and
reverent all at once.
"You're beautiful." He breathed this
against the delicate ridge of her collar-bone, before his lips found the
hollow at the base of her throat where her pulse was most visible.
Before he tasted the skin there and felt the rough jump of her pulse so
very close beneath his tongue. Then he said, "I want to feel you come."
Inevitably, his lips found their way downward.
And
afterward, there was nothing left in him but this overwhelming hunger,
and the need, however momentary, to be as close to Kiara's pattern and
her pulse as he could get. To have her warmth and her skin and her scent
wrapped around him. For as long as she'd let him stay.
At least, until the sun came up.
