i like your new place!

Erich

It is the morning after Melantha's very first night in the newly-constructed loft. It is not her first morning in the tinyhouse, nor her first night sleeping on some soft surface or other within that tinyhouse, but this is the very first time she has closed her eyes in her very own tinyroom, on her very own smallbed. This is the very first time she has opened her eyes to look out at the morning sky through her over own awesomeskylight -- unless of course she'd lowered the drape last night -- and also

the very first time she has rolled over to look over the edge of the loft

to see a furry dappled-grey Erich-wolf beneath the loft. He is sleeping. He is sprawled on his side the way animals are only in their own dens, surrounded by their own pack. Eyes closed, side rising and falling slowly, his long legs and large paws and stretched-out body quite blocking the narrow walkingspace between the kitchen counter and the couch.

He whuffs a little in his sleep. And, dreaming of chasing rabbits, his paws move and his whiskers twitch.

Melantha

The very first night that Melantha spends in her new bedroom, the third bedroom, her special little loft with dormer and skylights and shrine, she is a bit gleeful about it. It's new and it's hers and it becomes suddenly real how little in her life has been hers, truly her own, not a gift or manipulation or merely a tool with which to destroy a life. She has a few things. She has Erich and Charlotte. And now she has this, which -- in the midst of a shared space -- is just for her.

She brushes her teeth. She uses the ladder to climb up and she smiles softly down at them and then she pulls her curtains closed. Some moonlight and the glimmering of that almost-candle illuminate her from the other side as she unzips her hoodie and slips from her shorts and the whole house really feels every motion that any of them make, so the shifting about as she gets comfortable is obvious to Erich and Charlotte.

If she notices that Erich never takes the ladder to climb up to his own loft, Melantha doesn't poke her head out to ask why. The three of them work during the day, whether building something or hunting or taking care of what was hunted. They don't eat three square meals per day, but they eat well when they do. The sun goes down and Melantha starts looking at her bed. She sleeps quickly and easily, settled by the rhythm of their life and how familiar it is to her.

Morning comes, and light bleeds in not through the skylights (as they are draped) but later on, through the dormer window above the porch, which faces shade so it is not too bad. Melantha does not wake at dawn. She drowses for a while after the first touch of wakefulness that nudges her. She sniffs and rolls over. She

wakes truly after a while and rubs her face, yawning. Rolling the other way, she tugs her blankets around herself and scoots over to the edge of her mattress, which is when she sees the prongs of the ladder against her curtain, still waiting there, an indication that either Erich never used it to get to his own bed or Charlotte moved it back or... something.

Melantha reaches over, pulling open the curtain, then scoots a bit farther and pokes her head through the slit between the fabric. She looks over through the bead curtain where Erich sleeps. She hears a whuff and looks down, pale eyes bleary, to see Erich sleeping down there. Sleepy, uncomprehending, she just stares at him for a while, then sniffs again and puts her chin on the back of her hand. Reaching down at the bottom of her bed, then, Melantha tugs her hoodie up towards her and you think she's going to put it on, but: no.

She drops it over the edge. It falls on Erich's side. She is smiling drowsily at him when he wakes.

Erich

Erich-wolf startles awake, head and tail popping up together in some sort of weird reflex. He sniffs at the hoodie. Then he lays his head down again, whuffing loudly, stretching all four paws out in every which direction.

A moment later Erich-person sits up, borrowing that convenient hoodie to protect his modesty while he scrubs his face awake on his palm. He turns, puts his back against the couch, and smiles back up at Melantha.

"Morning." He's whispering because Charlotte is still asleep.

Melantha

Erich covers his junk with Melantha's hoodie. She laughs, a breath of it escaping before she covers her mouth. The distance they look at each other from is not so great, given the size of the little house. She smiles, lowering her hand again, and there is a desire in her heart that she does not clamp down on, clench around, fear, so: she trusts it. Whispers, just as soft:

"Do you want to come up?"

Erich

No; the distance is not very great at all. She's maybe six feet and change up from the ground. The lofts are so low that the top of Erich's head nearly brushes the ceiling when he walks under them. The tinyhouse is roomier in the middle -- roomy enough for the ceiling fan, and for light to cast in from what seems like every direction -- but it is still, in the end, so very tiny.

Sitting on the floor, Erich thinks a moment, considering the dimensions, the distances. Then he nods. "Yeah. I think I'll fit. Let me just, um. Get dressed." He hastens to add, "Not just for you. Just in case Charlotte wakes up too."

And so: he does. Well, first he ties her hoodie around his waist like an odd sort of loincloth, guiltily mentioning that he'll wash this out for her later. He moves the ladder, lays it against his loft, climbs up -- inadvertently mooning her on the way -- and then half-disappears through that wooden bead curtain to dig around his den. A little later his head pops back out, then his shoulders, then he swings around and, gripping the edge of the loft, lowers himself smoothly and silently down without using the ladder. The last few inches he drops with a very quiet thump.

Then he brings the ladder over again. And the truth is he could probably climb up into a loft without a ladder too, but: it's there, and it isn't any noisier than levering himself up, so he uses it. He's wearing shorts now. Her hoodie is somewhere in his loft, probably stuffed into a dirty laundry pile somewhere. And he crowds into her loft, ducking under the curtain, clambering awkwardly around in the small space until he finds a way to fit.

Then he smiles at her.

"I like your new place," he quips. "It's better than the penthouse and the apartment put together."

Melantha

At first, with that considering frown on Erich's face, Melantha thinks he's trying to figure out whether or not this is a Good Idea. Then he says yeah and I think I'll fit and she smiles, amused, because what he's really trying to figure out is whether or not her mini-loft will hold him. He decides he'll put on boxers, or something, and Melantha just smiles, letting the curtain fall closed.

So: she does not see him mooning her, after he starts climbing the ladder to his loft. She does not watch him through the bead curtain as he yanks on his underwear. She notices him coming when the ladder sets against the notches in her own loft, and scoots herself towards the dormer side of the mattress.

When Erich pokes his head through the curtain, there is Melantha: laid out on her bed, covered by her sheet, the comforter kicked away as the sun rose and heated their living space, her dark and tousled hair thrown over her shoulders and pillow, her eyes pale and glittering.

Erich cannot fit in the small space at the edge of her loft, between the edge of the mattress and the void, so he must come onto her bed. And he does, the curtain falling closed again behind him, his body carefully lying out next to her, or near her, or sitting up somehow.

She lays on her stomach, arms folded, head turned, looking at him with drowsy, sleepy eyes.

"Well," she says. "You did build it."

Erich

He

did not

expect her to be stretched out in bed like that, covered by a sheet. He has no idea what she does or doesn't have on under it, but his imagination instantly goes places. It makes him blush, and his traitorously fair skin reveals it instantly.

Erich doesn't look away and start hemming and hawing, though. He flushes, but he holds her eyes, and he smiles a little sheepishly at his own response. He moves around a little until he can get comfortable, and he does, in fact, stretch out next to her. On top of the sheet. The curtain closes off Melantha's little loft from the rest of the tinyhouse. Up here, with the little window over the porch and the skylights above, one feels almost more a part of the sky than the ground. Still contained, though. Still safe within the walls of this little house.

Erich smiles at the ceiling. "We built it," he says.

Melantha

That pink rush goes up under Erich's skin instantly, evidently, unavoidably. Melantha smiles as he turns colors, loose and happy and a little -- not embarrassed, not shy, but pleased and trying not to show how pleased she is. She decides not to roll onto her side. With only the sheet over her, and that only over her because of the warmth, that would just be mean.

So he stretches out next to her. On top of the sheet. In his boxers. And Melantha's smile endures. "Yup," she says quietly, and everything is quiet between them now because Charlotte-is-still-in-bed. Or because it's morning, and mornings must be quiet and still and gentle.

Melantha doesn't say much. She has a small bed, barely a full-sized mattress, and she just looks at him from across the scant few inches between them before

she moves over to him, sudden, her hand on his cheek and her sheet tugging down away from her breasts and her ribcage, her body coming up against him like a wave to shore, her mouth on his like a rainstorm.

Erich

Yeaaaah, in retrospect, Erich's going to wonder how he ever thought he could climb into Melantha's den, into Melantha's bed, in his BOXERS, with her naked under a sheet, and not end up right here.

Retrospectives are for the future, though. Right now, there's an instant of shock, and then a fumbling ecstatic moment of hands-on-her-breasts and mouth-on-her-mouth, his knee between hers, his body turning over hers and covering hers, before

he comes to a rapid halt, dropping his brow to her shoulder. Panting out.

"Wait. Wait wait wait." Mornings are for quiet. He's quiet, he is. "Are you sure?"

Melantha

Fumbling, ecstatic, thrilled to find himself not just welcomed but invited to Melantha's room and Melantha's bed and then pulled to her body and her mouth, Erich's hand instantly moves to cover her breast as soon as the sheet has tugged away from it. He is moving towards her, and the boards of the house creak in answer as he slides his thigh between her thighs, rolling her gently, smoothly onto her back.

He finds that she goes easily. She does not tug the sheets out from between them where they are tangled, but she doesn't push at him or gasp herself away from him in shock. She slides her hand from his jaw to his hair, up the back of his neck and scalp, grasping at him as he comes to cover her, pressing hard muscle between her legs. He finds her welcoming him, hardly averse to having him over her, arching her back in answer to his hand on her body.

When he pulls back, sudden and sharp and panting as quietly as he can, Melantha takes a draught of air, half a gasp, and closes her eyes, looking up at him, looking at him as he says waitwaitwaitwait, her fingertips still on his head.

"Sure of what?" she whispers, half-bared, cheeks flushed, eyes limpid. She gives a gentle, quick shake of her head. "We can't have sex right now. I don't want to do that to Charlotte. I just wanted to kiss you."

Erich

"No, I didn't mean sex," he whispers back. His skin is intensely aware, every square millimeter in direct contact with hers screaming glory and hallelujah at his brain. Makes it hard to concentrate. "Well, I mean, I did, but I also meant just... this. Us. Are you sure you want to ... make us a thing again?"

His heart is beating so hard. So fast.

Melantha

Her brows tug together, quick and sharp and aching. "I didn't know we weren't... still a 'thing'," she says softly. "Even without the sex."

Erich

"I wasn't sure what we were." On that confession, Erich exhales -- a soft sound, like a sigh. He drops his head, kisses her over her sternum. "I'm not sure what we are. I know we're friends. I know we both still want ... this. Each other. More-than-friends. But last we talked you weren't ready, and I didn't wanna push, and --

"I just wanted to be sure you were ready. For whatever it was we were doing. Kissing. Rolling around naked."

Melantha

When Erich kisses her again, even on a place so untraditionally erotic as her sternum, Melantha shivers softly against him, under him. She exhales, sighing the breath, a sound more pleasured and wanting than exasperated or tired.

She whispers, when he's done: "I wouldn't be rolling around naked with you, or kissing you, if I weren't ready for it."

Erich

That draws a huff of a laugh from him. His mouth quirks with a quick grin, his hands press against the mattress; he levers himself up along her body to kiss her again, quickly, right on the lips.

And then not so quickly. Settling over her, his weight coming onto his elbows, distributing onto her body: he kisses her again, exploratory, softer than those first frantic fumblings.

Melantha

Of course Melantha says something like that. That she wouldn't do it if she weren't comfortable with it. That she doesn't expect kissing or rolling around naked in bed to lead to sex. That she wants to respect their housemate while still doing what feels natural, what comes naturally, to both of them. All of them?

She gasps softly, tenderly when he lifts himself up and kisses her again. When his body settles to hers. When the sheets rustle as her kneels bend to either side of his hips, her hands loosening and running down his bared back. His chest is against her breasts.

He has to know what that does to her.

Erich

I love that.

He has a memory of that. She said it, he thinks. Or maybe he said it. Or maybe he thought it and then she said it, but any which way: it was in her tent, the sunlight filtering through the shell; it was in her bedroll, or his, it was indistinguishable by morning anyway. They had just made love for the first time ever,

or the first ten times ever,

and she was laying atop him, her breasts on his chest, and they both decided: they loved that.

He knows what that does to her. It does the same to him. She has to know what clasping his hips with her knees does to him, too. After all -- let's just say the evidence is hard to miss. Aha, aha, pun. It doesn't occur to Erich, not at the moment, or he'd say it aloud and then she'd laugh at him and -- he'd grin, goodnaturedly, sway when she shoves him, something like that.

He lowers his brow to hers. Because neither of them are grinning or swaying or laughing; both of them are too focused on the moment and the sensation and the exquisite pressure of their bodies together, mostly but tenuously separated by her sheet. Which is also new, barely slept-in. His lips touch hers. They aren't kissing right now, not really. He's just ... touching her, letting that contact vibrate through them.

And then after a while, he is kissing her once more. He is rolling gently to his side, his hand finding her thigh under the covers; lifting her knee over his hip again. He is pulling her closer, and when their lips stray apart he is kissing her under her jaw; he is kissing her neck.

Melantha

They haven't done this in months. Any of this. They were cuddled next to each other not so long ago, her head on his shoulder or his chest, her arm over his body, but it's not the same. It's not the same when he's hard as a rock through his boxers and the sheet, pressing to her as though somehow he could gain the same satisfaction as if there were nothing at all between them, not even air. It's not the same when she's stroking his sides, or when he's running his hand down to her thigh and lifting her leg up,

and the sheet is falling away from her leg as well,

and that newly-bared leg is wrapping around him, calf to his ass,

and he is kissing her throat, both of them straining not to moan aloud or gasp or pant or anything too loud because they love Charlotte so dearly, they want to protect her so badly.

Melantha exhales a soft gasp as he moves against her, his chest pressed against her tits, his cock hard through layers of cotton. She wraps her arms around him, her leg around him, licking his lips and her own as their kisses part, as he adores her with his mouth.

She draws him back up from her neck then, nuzzles him until he lifts his chin and gives her his mouth again. She kisses him deeply, soundly, for seconds on end, seconds that feel like minutes. Her cheeks are pink when they part, her eyes bright, her lips parted to breathe.

"You should go back," she whispers, "before Charlotte wakes up. I don't want her to --"

be freaked out. feel excluded. be disgusted. feel horrified. be unsure. feel. bad. at all.

Melantha kisses him again, quick and soft but not light. "We can do this again," she adds, her voice no larger, her lips moving next to his cheek, her eyes closed, lashes brushing his skin. It's still a whisper. A breath of sound. She hasn't moved from him, and he can still feel her flesh against his, warm and soft and smelling the way she smells, which is like earth and pomegranates and life and death and antiquity and rebirth. She kisses the end of his jaw, right under his ear, her arms still wrapped around him. "I'm not going to do anything that doesn't feel right. You don't have to worry."

Erich

Erich, who is closer to his instincts than many born of man, understands instantly that her hands drawing him back, her face nuzzling his under he lifts his head, and even her mouth lingering on his with that last kiss

are a form of closure. A sort of ending. He subsides, though not without effort. His mouth wants to follow hers when they part. His lips are parted still, his breath humid against her skin. For a moment, smelling her close to him with his eyes closed, smelling her the way she smells without a trace of perfume or overwrought bath product or overpriced fashion on her body, his mind is thrown back to a memory he didn't even know he had. He half-remembers a dream, a presence out of antiquity, strong hands on his shoulders; his own scent and form and soul searched, explored, learned and known.

He opens his eyes; the memory dissipates. He becomes conscious of her body against his, and his own body straining, wanting, the chambers of his heart and the vessels of his blood barely able to contain that want. He makes a very small sound, a very low and quiet noise, when she gives him that last kiss.

"Five more minutes," he bargains. "Just five more minutes, lying here together. No kissing or touching. Just give me some time to put my head back together and then I'll go back."

Melantha

"Okay,"

she whispers, and she's smiling softly, but she's wanting him too, and they are lucky he is wearing boxers and they are lucky she has stayed under her sheet. Or instead of lucky: wise. She slides her leg down, away, but she stays close. She tucks herself close to him, against his chest, as though to indicate: now it is time to put his arms around her, fold her to him, hold her there. Which is exactly what she is indicating.

"Okay."

Erich

Which is exactly what he does. He settles his arms around her, and he folds her to him, and he holds her there, and

together, they lie there. In her little alcove, on that little barely-fullsized-bed, beneath those skylights. After a moment Erich reaches up and slides one of the shades open, looking up at the flawless blue sky. They're quite high up here, a layer or two of mountain away from the city. And after a while, after his heart has stopped pounding, after his hard-on has stopped being the absolute center of his universe, he stretches a little, folds a hand behind his head, and considers the world outside.

"So why Denver?" he wants to know. He's whispering still.

Melantha

She huffs a soft, soft laugh, and she stays curled to him though she wants to kiss him again instead. She nuzzles his chest. "Why anywhere?" she asks, ever so cryptically. Then a slow pause: "It's in the middle. I thought wherever you and Charlotte were, you could get to me in the middle. And... it's always sunny here. There are mountains beside the cities. I thought it might have some wildness."

Her arms wrap closer around him, squeeze him. "I feel like it does."

Erich

Erich smiles at the ceiling. And the skylight. And the sky.

"It does," he whispers back. "I thought maybe that was why you chose it. It's a pretty big city, but it's knit a little closer to the land than most big cities. The people, the architecture, everything about it.

"I like it. I'm glad you came here. But remind me and Charlotte to take you down to Baja sometime. That's the cool thing about having a tinyhouse," and forgive him, but now he's bragging just a tiny bit, "you can just go where you want, when you want. 'Cause your house is right there."

A small pause. Then he squeezes her closer. "Our house."

Melantha

It must be torturous. Not just right now, with her naked or mostly-naked body curled up against him with only part of a sheet between them. All of the time: the smell of her, the look, the memory of how she feels when she comes with him, the way she smiles. It can't be easy for Mr. Ahrouns-Don't-Have-Social-Lives. Melantha doesn't worry; he'll deal.

He says he likes it, and she smiles softly, because it helps: it helps her feel better about the two of them bolting from D.C. the way they did. It makes her feel better for calling to them only for them to find her shattered, grieved, broken and empty.

Erich wants to take her to Baja. "Okay," she says quietly, smiling as he brags. "We'll go to Baja sometime."

She's quiet for a bit. Then: "Erich?"

He nods, or grunts, or says Yeah? or does something to tell her to go on, and when she goes on: "We really can't have sex in here," she whispers. "I really... am not okay with that. I think it would be cruel." But?

"But if we have sex, we... gotta go somewhere. Else."

Erich

If she looks at him now, his eyes are wide open, ticking over the ceiling like maybe he could read some secret code there. His thoughts are practically writ on his face: is she suggesting something? hinting? offering? does she mean go somewhere else ... right now?

In the end Erich decides not to read too much into it. He clears his throat a little. "Okay. I don't really want to ... with Charlotte downstairs. It'd be weird. She's like my sister, ew." A pause. "But -- why? I mean, beyond the obvious. Why are you so careful about this?"

Melantha

Erich isn't looking at her, so she can't see the sudden, stark darkness of her frown when he says ew. Something about 'sister' and 'ew' in the same sentence. Something about Charlotte and 'ew' in the same sentence. Something about it twists in her like a barb, and she doesn't like it. She frowns, and her brow furrows deeply.

"Um," she says, which is odd enough, the sense of a stirring distance,

"I think the obvious is plenty," Melantha tells him, because really: what is he getting at?

Erich

Like any animal, Erich can feel distance keenly. He can feel withdrawal and displeasure. And like any animal, he sometimes has trouble understanding the reason why. The more abstract ones, the ones that aren't so obvious as I just bit her! or I shed on her favorite sweater!

"Okay," he says; he sounds a little cautious. "I just -- well, nevermind."

Melantha

Melantha draws back. That distance opens up between them physically as well. She keeps her arms around him, but his chest is cool where her face used to be. Well, relatively cool: the house is warm. It is summer.

She is frowning. "What?"

Erich

Now he's frowning too; not angrily, but a little unhappily. "I don't want to fight, Melantha," he says quietly. "It's nothing. It's just that you weren't saying you don't wanna have sex with Charlotte in the house, which I get. You were saying we have to go somewhere else even if she isn't around." His bare shoulders move. "It just struck me as a little weird. That's all."

Melantha

She blinks, startled, but still frowning. "We're not fighting, Erich," she says, a bit on the tetchy side. She stops there, her lips together. Her eyes search his, the frown unabating, but she does think a moment before she says: "I was confused. Even if she weren't like your sister and you didn't feel 'ew' about it," and something about that bothers her, bothers her in a way she doesn't want to open up right now, "I think it'd be weird to have sex with someone else just downstairs.

"So I didn't get why you were asking about 'beyond the obvious'. Like... what exactly am I being overcareful about? And then when I tried to ask, you just shut down. Trying to get you to talk to me isn't starting a fight with you," she says, and realizing her voice is rising to a normal tone, she drops it again. More quietly, then: "You kinda... assumed I meant 'even if she isn't around', too. I didn't say that. But it is what I think."

There's a pause. Her frown finally eases. "Sex smells, Erich. And Charlotte's a wolf. We can't exactly run to the laundromat on a whim, either. I just... I think it's awful to fill some tiny space that is her home with the scent of something that is going to make her feel like she can't be safe and comfortable here. I don't think that's weird. I think that's compassionate."

Erich

"You think it'd make her feel unsafe and uncomfortable if we had sex in the house?" Now Erich looks troubled. He has no frame of reference for this: he's never had a roommate before, or a packmate who's been around long enough that this sort of difficult might arise.

Melantha

Her brow furrows again, but it's a different sort of frown now. Her eyebrows tug together, her expression aching. She lowers her voice, quiets it as she nods: "I think so, Erich. I promised not to tell you some stuff because she asked. I just... don't want her to come up to one of the lofts or walk in the house in lupus and smell something and it to set anything off in her that makes her feel bad. I really don't. It would break my heart to hurt her."

Erich

That's all Melantha has to say, really. Well: either of two things. A: that it would make Charlotte feel bad. B: that it would break her heart. Erich's heart crumples a little. He puts his hand behind Melantha's head, draws her down, wraps his arms tight around her.

"We won't," he promises. "We won't do that in the house and we won't hurt her. Okay? But... I'd like it if we could hang out in each other's lofts once in a while. I've wanted to sleep with you in my loft -- I mean just sleep -- ever since we built the house."

Melantha

Melantha has drawn back, but Erich pulls her close again, and she goes. Goes like she used to go, before they were broken from each other, before a phone call ended his time with her, which was so brief, for months. Goes when he knew that she trusted him, and when she knew that she trusted herself. She slides her arms around his waist, surprisingly slim and tapered for someone of his size. She closes her eyes to his chest as he assures her that he won't push on that, that he cares as much, that they will protect Charlotte together. It comforts her.

Of the two of them, she thinks, it is really more her job to protect their sister. But of course she would.

She nods against him. "Yeah." And that is all: because... yeah. Like sleeping with Charlotte. Like the three of them cuddled and eating sandwiches on Charlotte's bed. Like Melantha and Erich snuggling in Melantha's tiny!loft. Like Melantha and Erich hanging out in his loft, and maybe Charlotte can come sometimes, or maybe sometimes she can just sleep there, or whatever. Just: yeah.

Erich

Yeah.

Erich doesn't say anything back to that. He just inhales, exhales; the faintest huff on the latter. A sort of acquiescence without words. And then, for quite some time, he just lies there with Melantha. They lie there together as the sun creeps higher, as the little loft warms up. He yawns a little. He thinks to himself that it's really very nice here. That he can't think of very many things that might be better than

living in a portable tinyhouse

with his two bestest best friends.

At length, some internal clock or some awareness of Charlotte's daily habits has Erich stirring a little, raising his head; shifting aside Melantha's curtain to check on Charlotte's door. It's still closed, but he knows she'll be waking soon. He turns; he kisses Melantha's temple.

"We should get up," he whispers. "We can wash up and get breakfast started."

Melantha

They drowse together. They lie together. He just stays: five more minutes. And then he stirs, with Melantha lifting her head from his chest, looking at him sleepily to see why he's rolling away. The curtain parts and she peers past his chest and catches sight of his chest and resists the urge to lean over and lick him, tongue his nipple, suckle it into his mouth. She resists the urge to slide her hand down his abdomen and under his boxers and whisper that she wants him, because she does. She closes her eyes and breathes out and nods as he kisses her temple, instead.

"Mm," she says, which is agreement. "You have the best ideas."

Erich

Erich laughs softly. He sits up, and his eyes wander, and that faint flush creeps back into his cheeks, and then his eyes come back to hers.

"Flatterer," he says,

and then springs nimbly over her, twists, lowers himself down by the edge of the loft just the way he came down from his own loft. It's moments like these that Erich's nature and moonphase and bloodline show clearest. He moves so well, so smoothly, with a strength and agility a human body should not be able to possess.

He lets go. His feet thump gently down, rocking the tinyhouse just a bit. And then he reaches up to help Melantha down, just in case she didn't feel like taking the ladder right now either.

Melantha

No one can blame him. Her breasts are full, young, and he knows how her nipples feel when they harden in his palms or against his tongue. And those breasts are bared, her belly only half-hidden by a sheet, one leg stretched out and bared, the cotton not quite covering her entirely, and maybe if someone flew up and looked through the window in the dormer they could see her ass quite clearly when she rolls over. No one can blame Erich when his eyes wander and his skin turns pink.

Melantha smirk-smiles. He tells her she's a flatterer and that smirk-smile only grows. Then she watches him slip through the curtain, feels the rock of the house as he drops down. She leans over, looking at him through the slit in the curtains as he lifts his hand.

She grins. "I'm naked, dummy," though she doesn't mean it. She lets the curtains fall closed again. There's some rustling about as she pulls her shorts on from last night and finds a t-shirt that doesn't stink too much and tugs it on over her head, but by then, hopefully, Erich has considered their food situation. By the time Charlotte's door opens for the morning, Melantha is down the ladder, hair in a ponytail. Erich is searing ham in a cast-iron skillet. Melantha is slicing an apple. The mood between them is easier, gentler, than it has been in a long time.