They may or may not have once been Erich's, but those shorts are hers now. She sleeps in them, she works in them, and they are comfortable and sit low on her hips and she isn't wearing anything underneath them. Which he finds out. Because he pushes his hands under the waistband around her hips and feels her skin just going on, and on, and curving into his hands. His wrists are nudging them downward, exposing her a little, but she doesn't mind. She doesn't care.
When he comes down to her she thinks he's going to kiss her mouth, not her nose, thinks he's lustful and not playful, so, um. They collide a bit, and he ends up kissing her upper lip, and she huffs a laugh, breathy and almost soundless.
They head for the treeline a moment later, holding hands. "I like going on hikes with you," she tells him, as they head over to the water. As they walk into the cold of it, the current flicking their ankles and then their calves as they cross. "But I'm really looking forward to just being able to, y'know. Go to bed."
ErichTruth be told, Erich is lustful. He's quite lustful, thank you very much; he's so lustful that let's just say there was physical evidence when they pressed together like that. But sometimes his lust is a playful thing. Sometimes he's a playful thing. Sometimes,
sometimes he just likes to soften it a little bit. Because otherwise: god, sometimes his lust seems almost overwhelming. And he doesn't want to scare her off.
They head for the treeline, holding hands. The water feels good. He's not barefoot but he is in sandals: tough hiking sandals that maybe Melantha got him at some point, or Charlotte, because otherwise he'd just keep slogging around in those increasingly-filthy sneakers until the sneakers fell apart.
Erich laughs as the gain the opposite bank. "You know," he says, "I was just thinking that. I still wanna go on hikes. But it'd be nice if hikes were hikes and sex was sex and we didn't have to go on a hike every time we wanted to have sex. Or drive off somewhere or whatever."
He gives her hand a squeeze, smiling at her. "Let's try to get the frame all done this week. It'll be really easy to put walls up after the frame's done."
MelanthaThey have not rushed the building. Erich has done this once before, but neither he nor Melantha is an expert. They take their time, they work carefully, and lately they work a little less in the daylight hours. Sometimes Melantha wonders if Erich is going slow and purposeful because of lingering anxiety about her living apart. Sometimes she thinks he's going slow and purposeful because he wants to make sure, even more than with the first tinyhouse, that it doesn't leak, that it doesn't lean, that it doesn't creak or whistle, that it is safe and warm and safe and SAFE because Melantha will be all ALONE. She thinks, but she doesn't want to start a potential argument. Not about this.
"Sure," she says with a soft smile, when he says they should get the walls up this week. She squeezes his hand back. Sure. And yet also, coaxingly: "I think we can get finished within the next two weeks though." Because they can. Because even setting aside their inexperience and even setting aside time for thinks like rest and her Real Job, there's three of them working on this. They've hit the point where the hardest work has been done. Melantha steps up out of the water with him, Melantha who did not buy him shoes because he is a grownup and can figure out when he needs to replace his own shoes, her legs dripping water, rolling down her ankles. She has not let go of his hand.
"And it'll be nice to be able to roll over and sleep after," she says, because her mind isn't really on hiking. It's on sex. And she sounds a bit wistful, almost sighing: "Instead of having to clean up and hike back, or drive home, or whatever. We can just...zonk out. Naked."
They are in the trees again. Melantha takes her hand from his, but not to bolt from him, or scurry away from his lust, or her own. She just wants to take off her bra, which she does, peeling it up and over her head and off, shaking out her hair and carrying it by one strap, dangling at her side.
ErichDespite living with Melantha for more than a year now, Erich's still pretty amazed by the Great Disappearing Bra trick. And, we must admit, by its results. Maybe Melantha catches him eyeing her sidelong. Even if she doesn't, surely she notices when he,
noticing himself eyeing her like that,
just turns his head and looks. Because, well. Somehow, in Erich's book, it's always been better to just openly gawk than to do it all surreptitiously and underhandedly.
"Boobs," he points out. Because maturity. "Are we there yet?"
MelanthaBreasts. They're lovely breasts. Melantha has lovely, sweet, decadent breasts. They are a little lighter than the rest of her skin, if only because even when's laying out in the sun she's usually at least wearing a sports bra, like today. She has those soft nipples, and it's too warm out now for them to pucker and harden even when she bares them.
She's walking around in boxer shorts and bare breasts and there's no catching Erich doing anything. Just Erich turning his head and looking, which he is permitted to do. He says boobs. He asks if they're 'there' yet.
Melantha glances at him, quirking a brow with a sly half-smirk on her lips. "Yeah," she confirms, with amused patience that doubles as mild mockery. "Breasts."
That smirk doesn't quit. "There where yet?" she teases.
Erich"There," Erich expounds, "where we can stomp some bushes flat or bed down on some moss or something so we can fuck like rabbits.
"Y'know." He drifts a little closer, smirking back at her. "After I eat you out to your satisfaction."
MelanthaTheir fingers are lightly intertwined. Lightly, so the breeze can move between their hands and around their fingers and keep them cool. Intertwined, so they can be touching. Melantha laughs, in part because they should be so lucky, to find a bed of moss. They're lucky when the grass is soft.
Another reason she can't wait til she has a bed. A bed they can fuck in. And fall asleep in.
"I don't want to fuck like a rabbit," she informs him, a bit archly and a bit seriously, taking her hand from his so she can -- well. Drop the boxers off, stepping out of them as they thump in a pile around her ankles. She rises back up, picking up the boxers in the same hand that carries the bra, taking his hand again in her own. "Rabbits are small and kind of dumb and scared of everything and you're going to make them into a blanket or something. We're not small and dumb and scared."
She pulls him over, closer, turning to him as she does, so that when their bodies come together they do collide a bit, a thump of her naked body against his partly-clothed one, her half-shielded eyes looking up at his. "Did you like it?" she asks him, quietly. More seriously. More... vulnerably, though she doesn't entirely sound it, doesn't really look at it. She looks sort of wild and savage and predatory. She sounds lustful and eager and hushed. And yet somehow it's vulnerable. Her seriousness is vulnerable. It means something matters to her.
"You seemed to like it."
ErichThere's something lovely and decadent and wild about being able to do this. Being able to wander into the forest with their hands linked, their bodies half-naked and then most-of-the-way-naked and then just naked. Erich wonders if, after Melantha finishes her tinyhouse, she'll move down from the mountains. If she'll go back to the city. If she'll go to school there, all that. Maybe she will. He'll be happy for her, if she does. He'll follow her, most likely, he and Charlotte both. But --
some part of him will miss being able to do this. To be free and wild and pure and unashamed, like animals, like man before the Fall.
She shucks her shorts off too. Taking the hint, he starts to undo his; is working on it when he glances up and grins and points out: "Mittens. Not a blanket, mittens."
She pulls him over. They thump together. He is strong and muscular and solid all the way through. She has a strength of her own; she is not frail, she is not weak. Even when she pretended to be, she was not. He grins down at her, and then she asks that question in that quiet and vulnerable way, even if she doesn't look that way, and his grin quiets into a smile. He undoes his shorts and gives them a little push off the crests of his hip bones; as they fall he winds his arms around her waist and, with a quick little lift, brings her up off the ground.
"Of course I liked it," he tells her. "I wouldn't do it if I didn't."
MelanthaHer pants are off. It is a signal! His pants begin to come off. Time for no-pants.
"Mittens," she echoes, agreeably.
Between them, she can feel his clothing loosening and shedding. She shivers a little, parts her hips from his own so his shorts can fall, and then he's picking her up, but she's not wrapping her legs around his or leaning into him. She makes him hold her like that, one hand on each side of her, lifting her a few inches off the ground. She likes making him engage his core, maybe.
She half-smiles. "You say that like a cardinal truth," she says softly. "But people are always doing things they don't like to do. Liking something and wanting to do it aren't the same thing." She leans over, kissing the tip of his nose. Not playful, but... tender. Very tender. "I wasn't asking if you felt like you had to do it. To make me like you or to make me happy or whatever. I was just asking if you enjoy it." She leans over him again, kissing him beneath his eyes. One, two. "Because I want to know what you like. And how. And why. And all that."
ErichOkay, fine. He lifts her off the ground and she doesn't help him at all so he engages his core and his arms and his shoulders and his chest and pretty much everything because, well, you have to if you're going to hold your girlfriend suspended off the ground. You're kind of have a tug of war with gravity itself, here.
Considering Erich is literally fighting planet earth for Melantha right now, he's doing a pretty good job of it. His muscles are taut but they don't quiver. His grip is firm but he's not squeezing her to death, god. He's just: holding her up, they're face to face, they're having a serious, tender little discussion and she is also experiencing zero gravity at the moment. So.
He is kissed on the nose. He grins. He is kissed beneath the eyes. He closes them for that, trusting and content. Afterward they open again: very blue, very clear.
"Well," he thinks for a moment, "the truth is I like having sex with you most. And next-most, I like hanging out and talking to you. 'Cause in both cases we're really just... it's just us. And we're connecting. Face to face, heart to heart, whatever you wanna call it.
"I like oral too. I like how you go a little bit nuts and it's like... I can watch you get there. And that's fun. And I enjoy it. It makes me feel ... good, like I've given you something nice. A gift, you know? Like mittens, only better.
"But I like being face to face with you more. It doesn't mean I don't like going down on you. I just means I like it when we can see each other most."
MelanthaHe is
so
strong.
Every time it's displayed it turns her on. Every time she sees him as he is: young and fit and vigorous, unhesitating, unflagging. That his body is hard and his heart is soft -- he is the opposite of quite literally every other man she's ever been with. Who can blame her for engineering things so that she gets to see him like this more often: naked or at least most of the way there, his muscles in heavy use.
Of course she doesn't make it easy for him, even if she doesn't resist. She loves to see how long he can hold her, it's such a long time, without any help at all. And less and less over time does she worry about her attraction, what it means, what the strength of men can be and has been to her, how even those hard-hearted men could hurt her with those ugly, soft bodies.
She kisses him so tenderly, while he fights the earth for her. He is the not the first to have to do it. That's the beginning of the Persephone myth, isn't it? The tug of war between the earth, her mother, and the bridegroom: king of hell, father of wrath. Which would make Erich Hades, which isn't quite accurate, but...
oh well.
Like mittens, only better.
Melantha smiles at him, slow and happy and a little bit summer-lazy. "Thank you," she murmurs to him. And
"I love you," she whispers. Like a secret.
ErichErich is definitely not a Hades. Erich, if he had to be a Greek god, might be an Apollo: young, golden, beautiful, benevolent. Though, well. Apollo did some really douchey things too, so. Maybe Erich just isn't a Greek god at all, or any sort of god. He is a good son to his Mother. He is a good youth to his maiden. He is a good Erich to his pack, and
maybe that's enough. It certainly is for him.
"I love you too," he answers her, whispering, leaning up to kiss that slow-lazy smile off her lips. He brings her against his body, finally, their skins sealing together; and now she is leaning on him, and now he is wrapping his arms around her, and then,
then he's sinking to his knees, and nevermind that they have neither moss nor tramped-flat bushes under them; nothing but forest-floor detritus and dirt and twigs and maybe an errant patch of wildgrass or two. She's right: it'll be so much better when they actually have a bed.
For now, though, this will do. This is fine. This is great. This is perfect.
MelanthaSometime during that kiss, Melantha slides back down towards earth. She sinks against his body and even though it's summer, even though they're both very warm, she shivers. Her hands smooth over him and her skin slides against him and because Words Are Important she wants to tell him that no, really, thank you, because he was honest about what he likes most and what he likes best and why and he's so sweet and he's so nice and thank you, thank you for being kind and giving and sweet and nice.
Instead she just kisses him like that until she can't anymore, because he's sinking down, and maybe he's willing -- with one of her slim hands in his hair and the other on his shoulder -- to kiss her neck, because she's shivering like that. And maybe he's amenable when his body is lowering and she's asking softly, almost pantingly, almost plaintively, if he'll kiss her breasts, if he'll pause with his mouth over her nipple and lap it with his tongue slowly, gently until it perks and tightens in answer to some warm, wet attention. Maybe he does this because she asks, and maybe because he likes it, and maybe because both reasons are equally important between them, and maybe, perhaps, by the time his knees touch the ground she's already whimpering, her skin pinking slightly.
Maybe she's saying his name. Softly, and then louder.
ErichThere's something so effortless about this. A natural progression. It's not as though they walked somewhere, agreed on the site, agreed to stop, agreed to undress, agreed to initiate intimacy. That would be so awkward and manufactured and stiff. This: this is as natural as water flowing downhill. Rain falling from clouds.
They walked out here. They talked along the way, and laughed, and smiled, and joked. She started taking her clothing off and he watched and then somehow,
somehow they were touching, he was lifting her and she was making him prove his strength, like some suitor's ritual of old. He passed the test. She was pleased by his prowess, pleased by his strength; pleased by his shape and form, his nature, his disposition. She is pleased, and so:
so he is allowed to do this. Urged to do this: to go to her, to kiss her, to wrap her in his arms and kiss his way down her neck. He is inexpert -- he admits it, and admits it often -- but he is eager and he is willing and he wants to learn. There isn't a beat of hesitation as he crosses the border of her collarbones. He goes straight to those lovely, shapely breasts, boobs he termed them -- really, Erich -- and he cups them in his big clumsy paws and he licks them, sucks them, lavishes eager adoration on them.
His knees touch the ground. She's whimpering. She's all naked and warm and she's so beautiful, he thinks she is so utterly beautiful and granted he is certainly not the first man, woman or child to think so, but: he thinks she is beautiful, every inch, every moment, every movement, every word, every single thing she does. Even when she's frumpy in a old sweats, even when she's arguing with him over something absurd, even when she's asleep and her mouth is hanging open and she is drooling a little on his arm and her breath is terrible,
even then,
especially then.
So maybe that counts for something. Maybe that, as much as his muscles and his eagerness and his honesty and his pure heart, is why she gives him permission to love her. It doesn't bear too much exploration. He has other things in mind. He is kissing her stomach now, kissing her skin with both hands wrapped around her sides; he is kissing his way past her navel and the reason he kisses her over and over is not some bad attempt at being sexy or romantic or whatever-the-fuck.
It is simply because: he adores the taste of her, the feel of her, and sometimes Erich forgets that he is half-man and thinks he is all-wolf and thinks he has no better way of interacting with the world than with his mouth, his teeth, his tongue. He licks the crest of her hip. He leans around to bite her gently on the rump, because these are things excited Erichs do, and then he comes back around and runs his hands down and urges her legs apart.
"Are you gonna fall down if I lick your pussy standing up?" he whispers, grinning up at her. Teasing: "Do you need a tree to lean on?"
MelanthaThings have been awkward before. When it was obvious to both of them that there was lust, mutual lust, but neither of them knew just how bad an idea it might be to act on it. Then the woods. Then they were awkward here in Denver, when she couldn't, and they tried anyway, and there was no nature to it, no ease. Then the playfulness in his sleeping bag. They get awkward all the time. They get over it all the time.
She is smiling down at him, loosely and losing herself, while he's kissing her soft and firm and hungry and finding his way down her body. She gasps softly when he puts his mouth on her breasts, closing her eyes, smiling blissfully. She says his name. There's nothing to be an expert at, there's nothing to be clumsy with. His mouth is eager and his hands are cupping around her -- there is nothing else she'd ask for, right now. Finesse is overrated.
His warmth leaves her chest as he kneels. She shivers happily as he does, looking down at him, hair hanging down everywhere, stroking his hair and his shoulders. A muscle jumps behind her skin when he licks her hip; she makes a noise. He bites her and she catches a moan behind her whimper.
Parts her legs. Says, low and dark and wanting and blissed-out: "I need you to lick me," is all she says, heavy with wanting.
ErichHe'll take that as a no, then.
He'll take that as a go ahead. He'll take that as a hurry up, what are you waiting for. He'll take that at face value: she needs, and it's a need he can fulfill.
Erich flashes a grin. There's joy in it; a touch of savagery. There's lust in it, dark and deep. He has his hands on her hips. He has his eyes on hers. He nuzzles his way between her legs; he kisses her inner thighs. He kisses her cunt. He licks her there, just like she asked -- long and slow and heavy, not delicate at all. He's still looking at her eyes, looking at her face, watching. It's just like he said earlier. He likes watching her,
especially when he can see her starting to dissolve inside. He licks her again, again, thinking of dissolution; thinking of sugar cubes dissolving on his tongue; he puts his mouth on her and now his tongue is a steady beat against her clit, a lapping, a fluttering, a flicking. His hands keep a firm hold on her hips, just in case she decides her knees don't need to hold her weight anymore, and all the while he's going at her, eating her up, growling his avid enjoyment.
MelanthaA hard, open sound, somehow, even though her lips are together. She tenses at the first touch of his mouth: the way he kisses her, nuzzles open not just her thighs but the lips of her cunt. She opens her legs wider for him, holds onto him, leaning over him so she doesn't fall. Truth be told, most of the times Melantha has been eaten out have not been in those soft, palatial beds of hotels and condos and apartments and cabins and wherever else those men would take her. They were the sort of men who placed a lot more meaning on what body part they were using when she'd come, or pretend to come. This body part means this, that body part means that, doing it this way means you're a king, doing it that way means you're a slave.
Most of the times someone has kissed her like this, it's been in the woods. It's been on grass and moss and packed earth. She's been standing, trying not to fall. There's not always privacy when you live in huts and caves and lean-tos. You go on a lot of hikes. There's longing and aching and comfort in those collisions, there's a refusal to take ownership of one another. Strangely, there was sometimes so much sorrow: the hanging cloud of danger, the stab of feeling that something was being stolen from another generation.
Melantha would be lying if she told Erich she didn't think of that now. Those women, Black Fury kin or Black Furies by blood and fang. The woods, and the way those woods smelled different than these, how the sun felt different through clouds than it does in the wide open. She would be lying if she told him that her mind doesn't wander when she's having sex with him, if she told him that her thoughts never stray to before, to during, to after, to things both bittersweetly remembered and flinchingly avoided. Right now, because they are in the woods and she is standing over him and her wetness is dissolving like sugar on his tongue and his mouth is a heartbeat on her pussy, and it is different and it is the same and it is new and it is familiar and it is very sad and it is ecstatic.
She is remembering the way she was treated with honor. With a similar flavor of hungry, eager, inexpect lust tempered by respect. She wasn't being used. She wasn't being led into the woods by one of the sisters because she was a whore for Gaia, was she? Sometimes she was doing the leading. She was wanted, and she was honored, and she was cared for.
She's wondered a thousand times if it was lie, because nothing else made sense to her. Being given some cash and her old identity back and told to make her way in the world by herself, find your friends, farewell. It wasn't what she'd wanted. It wasn't what she thought was working for all those years. She wanted to be with Charlotte and Erich and she wanted to be wanted, and honored, and cared for. She wanted to be a part of her tribe. It was all that mattered to her. She just wanted them to love her.
Erich loves her. Kneels in the woods, naked and hard and and hungry. And he is honoring her and he is loving her and it brings back such sweet, painful memories that are somehow now confirmed for her as real. As truth.
Melantha is crying a little when she gets close to orgasm. She's clutching at his shoulders, a bit at his hair, rubbing her pussy softly against his mouth, fucking him back as he eats at her. She keeps on saying his name, his name, oh, oh fuck, his name. She's sweating, and she's on the verge of weeping, and she's so wet, and she's a river, she's rainfall, she can' t be held together, she's a flood, she's the water and she's drowning in it all at once. When her back arches and elongates she presses down a little too hard on his face, let's be honest, she's so into it, she's so far gone, but she can't stop now, she can't.
ErichThere's a myth that when you make love you think only of making love with the person you're currently making love with. It's a myth because that's just not how a mind works. A mind -- a consciousness -- is made up of a maze of associations; cues and responses, a network of memories strung precariously and intricately together.
Melantha is having sex in the woods. A man, a boy she loves, is going down on her in the woods. She thinks of the other men she has been with. The ones who loved her but did not cherish her; the ones who did not go down on her because that was for slaves, that was for wimps, that was for whipped little pussies,
any number of derogatory reasons. She thinks of the women she has been with, her sisters of Pegasus; the women she felt cherished by, honored by, cared for. She thinks of love. She thinks of her tribe. She thinks of what she did and what she wanted and what she hoped for and what she got. She thinks of these things, and all of them, each and every one, can be connected back to this place, this moment, this person, this act.
Like dewdrops on a spiderweb.
Like currents sparking along a synapse.
--
This place. This moment. This person. This act. Erich's mind is full of fleeting and errant thoughts too. He thinks of sugar cubes dissolving on his tongue. He thinks of the way her skin looks in the sunshine. Olive-toned, one might say, but not Erich, no. He doesn't think in such poetic terms. He doesn't think of his girlfriend as food, either. Plus: he doesn't even understand that phrase. Aren't olives green?
He's thinking of green olives, going down on his girlfriend. That is what he is doing.
He is thinking, also,
of the way she moves, and the way she sounds. He is thinking fervently of love, love, adoration, summer. He thinks she tastes just like summer, just like spring, persephone, maiden of the spring, daughter of the earth. He thinks he could drown in her, and he thinks also
I hope I'm doing this right,
but he must be because: oh, look at her. He's looking at her. She's clutching at his shoulders, folding over him; he's holding her up with his hands on her hips, on her bottom; he's closing his eyes and looking for her, finding her, licking her, lapping at her. He is not very good at this, but it doesn't matter. He does what he can. He does his best. He tries to learn from what her body teaches him. He enjoys her, enjoying him. He makes sounds of his own, low and sometimes growling, sometimes just -- consonants, mmms, because vowels are very hard when your mouth is full.
His hand opens over the small of her back. He holds her right there, close, tight, don't go away. He holds her there as she spills into a thousand pieces, fractures in on herself; her orgasm takes her over. She can't help herself, and she grinds on his face, on his mouth and his chin and his nose and he
doesn't mind at all. He doesn't stop at all. He groans against her flesh, eyes closed, mouth open; he tastes her, so wet, he accepts her, he takes her, he eats her up.
He thinks of the wolf in old fables, now. Isn't that what he's supposed to do? Eat her up.
Erich laughs, thinking that. It is soft and warm and gentle.
--
His arms are wrapped around her thighs and his cheek is to her lower abdomen. He is holding her like that, resting. Sometimes he turns his face a little and kisses her skin.
"Are you sad?" he whispers. He saw the tear-tracks on her face.
MelanthaShe'll tell him.
Maybe some other time, when she has a bed and he can be positioned a little more comfortably where his neck isn't going to get a kink in it just to get her off. Maybe when she has sheets to clutch a hold of and all that. She'll stroke his hair and tell him not there, not so hard, yes, softer, right here. No, go back to what you were doing before. Just like that. You can do it harder than -- oh. She'll tell him, even teach him, exactly what does it for her. Melantha still feels uneasiness about what's between them sometimes. There's so much she knows about men and so little of it that applies. There's so little she knows about relationships. But he likes to give her this, he enjoys it, he likes watching her, he likes being able to get her there. And she loves it. She almost sort of needs it.
So she'll tell him.
But the truth is, he's doing fine. He's patient and he's letting himself just enjoy it, he is a smart guy and he's probably learning the difference between the ow, wait tensing of her body and the oh please don't stop, don't slow down, don't stop tensing of her body. Both involve different tenors of outcry. There's some ear training to be done, too. Anyway: he's fine. He's sweet and eager and to be honest they are out here for a while and she's not telling him what to do and he's just sort of watching it unfurl with her. It's not a quickie, there was no way it was going to be a quickie, but it's okay, it's okay: their minds wander. Old lovers and spiderwebs, olives and rainstorms.
She comes, and their skins slip together, her rump under his arms, her back quivering beneath his hands. He'll have her on his chin, he'll have to wipe his mouth after the meal. Just to be polite.
--
Melantha's hairline is even darker than usual. She trembles, quivering, and just starts sinking downward as soon as Erich's head is out of the way. She's a tangle of limbs as she half-falls, half-slides into his lap, panting, sweating, wrapping her arms and her embrace all around him. Her hair smells like sweat, and her sweat smells like sex to him. Like heat.
Melantha shivers against his body. She can't bear to be touched right now, but she's wanting still. Oh, bodies. Always wanting, even when they can't bear it. She shakes her head, nuzzling herself under his chin, curling against his shoulder. "I'm okay," she breathes. "I'm --" but she doesn't want to stop right now, get into it, explain everything going through her mind. So she exhales, a long sigh, shaking her head again, lifting it, kissing his mouth, his cheek, his jaw, under his chin, licking sweat from his neck. "I just want to -- I just want this," she murmurs, reaching between their bodies, finding him, touching him, running her palm over it. She didn't mean 'this' as in, well, his cock, but that's sort of how it comes off, and she laughs breathily, emotionally, kissing his throat again, stroking him again. "I want to keep having sex with you."
ErichLet's be honest: that is exactly how Erich takes it at first. She wants this: as in, his dick. Well, that is fine. That is more than fine. That makes him flush happily, makes him laugh, makes his ego gain a few sizes, thank you very much. She laughs too. She kisses his throat -- he tips his head back -- she strokes him again and his eyes close and oh, he shudders all over. It's been a year-plus and he still can't, can't, can't get over how she makes him feel. He didn't know it was possible. He didn't think it could be possible.
She clarifies a bit. He lowers his head and he finds her mouth and he is a mess, but maybe she doesn't mind. Maybe she lets him kiss her, and if she does then by god he kisses her. His hands are running up her back, down her sides; up her sides, to her breasts. He touches her all over, like she's a living breathing miracle to him. She is.
"Okay," he whispers into that kiss. Of course okay. He is fine with this too; more than fine with it. He grins; they are still kissing. He accepted it easily when she told him she was okay. He is like that: trusting, eager. He believes her, and even if he thinks maybe there was something there, something deep and complex and big, he believes that she's okay. He understands that maybe,
just maybe,
right now she'd rather keep having sex with him than dig it out and paw it around and talk about it. So: okay.
He leans back. There's some mild awkwardness: his legs, his knees, he gets it all straightened out. He is on his back and he has brought her with him. She's on top of him. He runs his hands through her hair, combs it back from her face, but it's like fighting the tide: it keeps pouring over her shoulders, falling on his chest and his face. He doesn't mind. He loves her hair. She smells like sweat and sex and youth and purity and spring and earth and he loves her.
"I think you're beautiful," he whispers. "I don't want you to take that the wrong way and get grossed out, like maybe I'm saying hurr you're a fucking babe and that's all I care about, 'cause it's not. But I tell you you're smart and awesome and cool all the time, and I hardly ever tell you you're beautiful because I don't want it to come out wrong. So. I wanted you to know: I think you're beautiful."
MelanthaOf course she lets him kiss her. She kisses him eagerly, roughly, reaching into his hair with her free hand and licking his mouth, his tongue, licking his lips, licking her own taste off his chin. She is climbing onto him, steadying herself and she's going to draw him into her and fuck him like that, tasting her cum from his mouth and feeling his cock sliding into her. That's what she wants. That's what she thinks is happening now, the way he's kising her, the way he's touching her. She would really rather save the digging-into-her-past-and-feelings-and-misconceptions-about-her-own-reality-and-maybe-accepting-hard-but-healing-truths for, y'know,
after sex.
Erich topples though. Slowly and awkwardly and shifting her around and okay, she doesn't blame him for wanting to give his knees a break. So she grins and follows, climbs over him, reaching for his cock again with a grin on her face, touching him, leaning to kiss him again while he's pawing through her hair.
He whispers to her that he thinks she's beautiful, and he hopes that doesn't gross her out like maybe hare hunting might? He doesn't know, it's hard to know sometimes what will make her flinch and when it will be totally fine. But all he says is that he thinks she's beautiful. He's afraid of telling her that she's beautiful in case she misunderstands, in case she misses all the other things he thinks of her, in case it makes her scared or hurt to hear it.
Melantha is still, but she is on top of him, close to him, and after a second she stops climbing all over him and touching his cock and sinks down onto him, lays herself out over him, lowers herself to his chest and kisses his mouth again. This time it is slower, and softer, and lingers. She isn't grossed out.
"I'm not grossed out," she whispers, and kisses his neck. Soft. Kisses his chest, softer. Looks up at him. "When all you ever say to me is that I'm smart or awesome or cool or you like hanging out it starts to sound like you're talking to a buddy. And I want you to tell me that you love me, and you want me, and you think I'm beautiful, and that I make you hot."
She lowers her face again, licks his nipple slowly. Achingly slow. Does it again, softer, once it hardens on her tongue. "It's okay to tell me, and show me, that sometimes you want to fuck me so bad that it makes you crazy."
ErichHe can't think when she does thinks like that. When she strokes his cock; when she licks his nipple. When she kisses his neck. When she smiles a certain way, smirks a certain way, laughs a certain way. He can't think.
Erich's eyes fall closed. He sucks a slow breath, trying and failing to control a shiver that runs all the way through him. His hand cups the back of her head; he can't seem to decide whether he wants to hold her right there or make her stop so he can think or maybe encourage her to go south. In the end, none of the above. He just touches her. Runs his fingers through her hair again, thoughtless, aimless.
"Yeah?" he whispers. "Well. Right now, that's exactly what I want."
He opens his eyes. Gives her this crooked, wry little grin. Lifts his head and pulls her up and kisses her, hot and hungry and a little bit sudden. "That's exactly what I want," he repeats, lower. "I want to fuck you. Really, really badly. So."
He licks her lip. He grins at her.
"Pretty please?"
MelanthaRight now it's her thighs touching his cock. Her soft thighs, sort of sweaty, pressed against him. Her stomach, her breasts. She has her mouth on his chest, and he can't stop himself from shuddering. When he touches her head and she feels the tension in her fingers there's a flicker of it answering back to him, a tension that isn't arousal but resistance, wariness. And maybe it's not coincidence that she stops kissing his chest then and moves upward, kissing his mouth instead. He tells her that's what he wants. He wants to --
kiss her like that, hot and fierce. He wants to fuck her badly, and she loves him so she doesn't correct his grammar and she doesn't want to break this mood so she doesn't tease him about fucking badly. She breathes in, closing her eyes as they kiss again, again.
He licks her lips and grins, says pretty please, and to be honest, that makes her wrinkle her nose at him a little, give a squint to her eyes. There's a shiver in the air that isn't lust, but it's also not the wariness he sensed a second ago, a half-tremor of it. She kisses him softly, softer than his grin.
"I don't really want to be silly," she tells him, her lust like a tachometer revving downward, slowing in sound and motion, though she tries not to pull away physically, sensing how that would hurt him.
ErichErich's grin falters for a second.
Then it simply dissolves. That's not the same thing as his grin comes crashing down or his crest falls flat. It is a much gentler, more natural thing. A progression. She doesn't want to be silly.
And all of a sudden, neither does he. Sometimes his silliness is just a form of self-preservation. A kind of armor. Something he can hide behind just in case something he said or did goes awry. Oops. Well, I was just kidding. It's a kind of nudity, being serious. A kind of defenselessness, and a kind of honesty.
Neither of them are silly, then. They are looking at each other, and she is atop him, and he is breathing, and the lift and fall of his chest lifts and lowers her too. He starts to comb his fingers through her hair again. He strokes her hair and her back and he lifts his head; meets her somewhere there in between. He kisses her, and kissing her, starts to turn over. Starts to turn her under.
MelanthaStrangely, it's good that he says nothing. That he doesn't backpedal or explain. That he doesn't even apologize or stammer or... anything. He just doesn't say anything. Just touches her hair like that. She watches him, waiting for him to answer, to response, to something, but he doesn't. He just touches her, smoothing her hair back, and after a while she relaxes into it, sinks into it, lowers toward him as he is lifting up to kiss her again.
She kisses him, too. Slowly, feeling that fire rekindling, that warmth spreading again, molten, all through her. She breathes in, a little sharp, when he begins to roll over,
roll her under,
press against her.
"Erich," she whispers, but it's not a forestalling, a question. Just a naming. Her hands slide over his lower back. "Oh my god," she murmurs, feeling the muscles of his body move under his skin, feeling the weight and heaviness of them.
ErichHardly a palatial suite they're in. Hardly a five thousand dollar mattress they're on. There's dirt on his back, dried scabs of fallen leaves, tiny twigs. Stuck there by his sweat. Falling away when her hands brush over his skin, smooth over his body. There's probably dirt on her back now too. Fallen leaves and twigs. No matter what ad execs want you to believe, girls are human too. They sweat and they get dirty and they don't always glow and
hardly matters, any of that. His name sounds so good coming off her lips. He kisses her to see if he can taste it there, or something like that: hardly thinking, now. He is hot atop her, hard and heavy atop her, hard everywhere, hard muscles, hard cock. His mouth strays from hers and he makes a low, rough sound, bites at her neck, her shoulder.
Erich doesn't talk now, either. Sex is a conversation in and of itself. He shifts over her; his flanks tense and his back bows. His mouth is full of her, his teeth is gripping her. He finds her cunt with his fingers, inexpert and inexact, and then with his cock. He doesn't ask if she's ready, but he waits for her to show him that she is, and when she does,
when she does,
he pushes into her slow and firm. His breath comes harsh. He grabs a handful of -- something, nothing, dirt. Dirt under his nails, dirt on his palms. His teeth release her and then his mouth finds her and he kisses her again, this is a hard, needful kiss, it runs right through him. Their mouths part but he doesn't draw away. He breathes against her, his lips open to hers, as he starts moving inside her.
Slow and firm. Hard and heavy.
MelanthaHis name feels so good in her mouth, rolling over her lips, but his mouth feels better. His breath coming heavily like that, harshly, heated. His teeth in her skin. Melantha arches at that, shivering beneath him. She smooths all the detrius off of his back, casting it away, but it's a side effect. She can't stop touching him. She loves the muscles in his back, the way they roll and flex as she presses himself against her, rubs his cock along her cunt or she's rubbing her cunt against his cock, maybe. He feels so good. She tells him:
"You feel so good," and she means his body against hers and she means just: his body.
Melantha nuzzles him upward, kisses him again, hard, trying to reach down between them as he is reaching down between them and their hands are tangling and wet. She gasps and he's released; he can bite her again, like instinct, like he's drawn. He rubs against her, something like silent entreaty or maybe just each stroke a reminder that yes, yes, he's here, he's waiting, yes, god, yes. Melantha waits for him to enter her but he doesn't, he's waiting, and she shivers, whimper-whispering in his ear:
"Fuck me,"
which is a perfect way to be shown that she's ready, really.
He fucks her. Well: he pushes into her, slowly, firmly, grabbing the earth, leaving toothy imprints in her shoulder, finding her mouth. Melantha is kissing him fully, using his mouth and his tongue to relax herself because her body is tightening up so eagerly around him, she's getting ahead of herself. She makes a noise, and it's a beautiful wanton low noise behind her lips, an mmm that had a baby with ahhh and it feels about as good as the way her pussy squeezes him inside.
"Fuck me." she breathes into his mouth, while he's moving, flexing his back, his hips, pressing into her. "Just like that."
Erich"Oh-my-god," Erich mutters the first time she says that,
mutter-gasp-pants it, really, all in a rush under his breath. And she might think he's saying that because of the way she feels, because of how hot and warm and wet she is and how fucking mindblowing off the charts it is to be inside her,
and well, she wouldn't be wrong,
but it's also what she says. It's what she says, the way she says it; words he wouldn't have expected her to say just a few short months ago. Then again, a few short months ago, they wouldn't have fucked like this. She's come a long way. They both have. They've come a long way to meet each other right here, and now she's kissing him and he's kissing her and she's telling him again:
fuck me
and his eyes almost roll back, he almost has a fucking seizure. "God," he groans, "you can't say shit like that, I'm gonna -- mmph," and they're kissing again, and he's doing as he's told and doing as he should and doing as he must, it's a fucking physical compulsion, he fucks her. There's dirt on his hands and then there's dirt in her hair, sorry Melantha, because Erich has forgotten there's dirt on his hands and put his hands in her hair. There's something so sweet and hot and urgent about their love, like summer, like the birds and the bees.
MelanthaThat makes her laugh. Softly, darkly, more breath than voice. She gasps at the end, because he's fucking her, pushing his cock into her firm and hard like that, agreeable and inevitable. She's wet from one orgasm already; she's wet from new arousal, his mouth all over her and his hands, his body, the way he feels when he gets between her legs. She's so hot; she melts.
"You're gonna what," she insists, whispering it, refusing his kiss but not his body, running her hands up his sides. She's watching him, watching his face and his eyes and the madness coming in behind his features. "Fuck me?"
And she arches there, lifts her hips, tightens around him.
Erich" -- I'm gonna lose my mind."
So they don't kiss. She avoids it. His mouth lands on her jawline, on her neck. He kisses what he can reach; scrapes his teeth over her skin when that isn't enough. She says it again, she's doing it on purpose, he just knows it, of course she's doing it on purpose,
he groans again. He fucks her. The same moment, the same breath. A hard, smooth thrust, his brow bowed to her shoulder, or the forest floor; something. He wants her to know, ragged: "I'm gonna lose my fucking mind. Say it again. Oh my fucking god."
MelanthaShe can't tell him over and over to fuck her, fuck her, because he'll lose his mind. It isn't a compelling argument. Her legs are wrapping around him and she has such long legs, such sweet soft beautiful legs that hold him so tightly.
Melantha kisses him this time. She isn't groaning yet but the kiss is fervent, her hands going into his hair, her mouth sealing to his, her teeth scraping his lower lip. He can't. He can't, he can't, he puts his brow to her body and he's groaning as he moves into her, moves in her, telling her he'll lose his mind, say it again,
which just about makes her lose her mind, too. She shudders, starts really fucking him back, moving with him, guiding him with her hips. "Fuck me, Erich," she murmurs, panting it a little. "Fuck me. Fuck me."
ErichShe has such long legs. She has such soft skin. She has such nice boobs -- excuse us; breasts -- and she has such a sweet, warm, tight little --
the point is: she is so fucking perfect. She is so fucking perfect and so fucking beautiful and even when she is groggy and drooling on his arm and not-terrible-breathed-because-Melantha-never-has-terrible-breath she is perfect to him, and right now,
right now she is primal and all in motion and he is borne along by a wave of his own lust and she won't stop saying that thing she says, that thing that drives him out of his mind, and he is quite out of his mind now, beyond words, moaning against that biting little kiss she gives him, moaning against her shoulder and then biting her shoulder, muffling himself against her body.
Truth is in the grand scheme of things they can be as loud as they want, really. They're so deep in the wilderness no one can hear. And even if they did, no one here or anywhere has the right to judge them.
Green-filtered light, then. Birdsong in the trees. Dappled shadows and motes of light ride his back, glint in his hair, scatter over her breasts. Something so primitive and right and pure and undiluted about the way they mate, because this is mating. Her hands on his back and her legs wrapped around him; his hands in her hair and under her shoulderblades, under the small of her back. He loves her with singular focus, their bodies moving together in rhythm.
Pushing up on his forearms, then. Her hands on his body: on his shoulders or on his back or on his sides or on his chest. Somewhere, anywhere, so long as she's touching him, so long as she keeps her legs wrapped so secure around him. So long as she's there, close to him, kissing him, looking at him, seeing him, knowing him
even when he loses himself. Even when he falls apart and shatters and loses track of everything, everything, except the way she feels and the way she makes him feel and -- his arms wrapped around her, tight, his face buried against her hair. Erich groans, low in his chest and rough; shudders as he comes, kissing her neck, her jaw, wherever he can reach: over and over and over.
MelanthaHe's not Hades. He's not Apollo. He's just himself. Right now, like this, without any of the old crap hanging over his head: what happened on his Rite, how his family reacted, how much he misses his sister, whether he can be everything he thinks he should be here and now. He's just an Erich.
She thinks: he's so beautiful. When he's sweating, and he's sweating now, rising up on his arms, moving into her with all that energy, all that strength. The sun melts them together, inescapable, so of course she touches him, runs her hands all over him, holds onto him. Looks at him.
Sees him.
Loves him. Pulls him back down with her hands, lifting her head to kiss him, to feel him. She's quiet for that moment, quiet except for the gasping, the little whimpers of expectant lust, kissing him as deeply as she can while still breathing. Tells him there, then, like that, that she loves him. There's twigs and leaves in her hair and on her back, on his hands. They're a mess and getting messier. She groans a little as her mouth loses his, murmuring in his ear again:
oh. fuck me, erich. i love you.
-- bearing down on him, winding her hips around him as they fall back to earth, wrapping around each other, mating, fucking. Loving. In the end he doesn't need her to keep telling him that thing, saying that stuff that just makes him lose his mind. She knows he doesn't. She kisses him, and she murmurs to him that he feels good, he feels so good, which she only says because it's the truth and she wants him to know how he makes her feel. Good. So good. So of course she catches his mouth when he comes, when he's groaning. She tells him in whispers to kiss her, her breath moving on his lips as he's groaning, their lips brushing and sealing together. She swallows every sound he makes, her body clenching around his, holding him, holding onto this feeling as it rolls through her, all pleasure and all warmth, all love.
There are the spasms, then, which they cannot help. She catches her breath as he pushes into her, hard, one, two, three last times. She grasps at his body, holding onto his shoulder, his hip, wrapping herself around him and moaning low and helpless, grinding down on a him a bit. Sweat has turned dirt to mud against their skin. They are absolutely filthy, and she -- for some reason -- can't get her mind off of how his cum feels inside of her. She just flops down, though, drowsy, overwhelmed, trembling.
"I love you," she breathes, when she can. "I love fucking you." Because, as she realizes, that's true, too.
ErichErich is quite overwhelmed at the moment, thank you very much: he is overwhelmed and his heart is running the hundred meter dash and he just about dies every time she grinds on him, or pulses around him, or -- anything, really. It's a mercy when she relaxes. It's a mercy when she flops like that, even though it makes him laugh a little, murmured, indistinct.
"I know," he whispers: oh, aren't we the confident one today. He grins, his eyes closed; he nuzzles her neck, the lobe of her ear. He kisses her pulse and then he
sort of
just sprawls atop her, relaxing, more or less melting into a very heavy, very warm, very vaguely Erich-shaped glomp. "I love you too," he says. "I love fucking you, too." He nuzzles her. "A lot."
And a little later: "That was pretty incredible. I think we're good at this fucking thing."
MelanthaShe laughs. Lightly, but deeply, her chest shaking from it, underneath him as he snuggles with her. That's what it's called, Erich, what you're doing right now: you are snuggling your girlfriend. Even though they never really use that word; it's not how they introduce each other: my boyfriend, my girlfriend. They are packmates. And he's Erich and she's Melantha. And Melantha is laughing at Erich as he tells her that he knows. He knows that she loves him and loves fucking him, which is sort of funny and also sweet and also oddly a little sad, because the truth is, there was definitely a long period of time when he had reason to wonder if she still wanted him, if she liked it, if they'd ever get there again.
Even if he didn't wonder, Melantha did. She wondered, sometimes, if something was broken in her now, and she couldn't share it with him anymore.
She is nuzzled. Deeply and lovingly and all over. She grins, her eyes falling closed, rolling her head as he nuzzles and kisses her neck. As he adores her, showering her with it, refusing to slide out of her, move away from her. He just keeps snuggling, despite the heat and the sweat and the dirt. Her hand comes up from the ground, fingertips stroking his back. And so they lay there for a while, like that, the breeze pulling heat from their skin along with their sweat, evaporating in the warmth.
Later, he speaks. She grins, eyes still closed. "Yeah," she agrees, laughing quietly. "I can't wait for winter," she muses, winding her way further into his arms to be cuddled more tightly. "Tucked away in my little house, fucking under the covers to stay warm. Or being able to roll over in the morning and have sex if we want to. And if your breath isn't too gross." Her grin opens again, spreads again, bright and cheeky, even though her sleepy eyes are still closed.
Erich"My breath is never gross," Erich declares, so of course it must be true. "Like me, it is hale and hearty and sometimes bears the manly scent of gruff and unwashed manliness."
He opens his eyes. He grins at her, finds her grinning back at him even if her eyes are closed. And at last he rolls off her, which is really to say: he adjusts the two of them so that she's on top. This seems a little more fair. He is less squashable.
"I can't wait 'til your house is done," he adds, quieter; seriously. It's the first time he's said anything like this. It may be the first time he's felt anything like this. "There's gonna be a part of me that misses waking up with all three of us under one roof, I'm not gonna pretend there isn't. But ... I'm excited about you having your own place, too."
MelanthaShe wrinkles her nose, turning her head and opening her eyes to give him the full strength of her grossed-out wrinkled-nose face. Her eyes sparkle. As soon as they open and the light hits them, catching on the pale blue and turning her irises into prisms. "Hate to break it to you, but sometimes your breath is so toxic it's almost visible in the air." She leans upward, pecking a kiss on his cheek. "You should brush your teeth before you go to sleep."
And Melantha lays back down, and Erich rolls them around, and she ends up half atop him but not right-right on top of him because then, as she explains, his stupid ribs press into her stomach or something and it makes it hard to breathe so she slides a bit and snuggles against his side, her leg over him, her arm over him, her head on his shoulder, smiling.
They are both now dirtier as a result of all this. She does not mind. She bites his chin gently, scraping her teeth over him, an odd and savage sort of kiss. Her eyes stay open, her head tipped to see him as he says these things he hasn't really said before. Even though he's been working, so very hard, to help her build a house for herself that means she will be ON THE OTHER SIDE OF TWO WHOLE WALLS :[[[ and as he says it, she can hear the sincerity. The truth of it. He's not just putting on a brave face.
"I feel the same way," she admits quietly, touching his arm gently. "Exactly the same."
Erich"But then I wouldn't be able to fall asleep with the delicious flavor of mint chocolate chip in my mouth and god it's amazing I don't have ten thousand cavities, three root canals and a denture."
They roll around. They get resituated. They get comfortable, and they are totally snuggling, and he loves how she kinda wraps him up in her arms and legs when they snuggle like this. He doesn't say it aloud because he knows she'll probably tell him how silly and perpetrating-stereotypes he's being and ugh Erich stop being such a neanderthal but,
he loves how it makes him feel big and strong and like he's protecting her. Silly Erich.
He is nipped. He is kissed in a feral, animal way. He is touched and he is stroked and he feels so happy right now, so deeply and primitively content. His heart has slowed; the sweat on his skin is lifting comfortably, wicking heat from his core. She touches his arm and he touches her hand and they play a little loose game of caught-you, neither of them paying much attention.
"Good," he says quietly. "I mean, not good that you're going to miss it too, but... good that we feel the same."
Melantha"Yeah," she murmurs, again, playing with his hand, drowsing on his shoulder. She might laugh at him if he told her that her arms and legs wrapping him up makes him feel big and strong and protective but right now, and maybe for a while, it at least wouldn't start an argument. She might, in fact, confess that she likes that he is big, and strong, and she doesn't need him to protect her but... she likes that he is big. And strong. Quite a lot, in fact.
But Erich keeps his thoughts to himself. Melantha keeps hers, too. They are misers about this, wary of all their old arguments coming back in, creeping up their spines and locking onto their hearts.
She exhales, slowly and silently, mindlessly. "I was thinking a little about the sisters, while we were having sex," she says, but refuses to give it the air of confession. Even if it sort of is one.
ErichAt least there's this: at least Erich isn't such a Neanderthal that Melantha thinking about giiiirlz while she was having sex makes him turn into a frothing beast-of-lust. And at least he isn't so insecure that it makes him, well, insecure.
Erich shifts. He tucks a hand behind his head, which he likes to do when they're snuggled up like this, and he sort of looks at her the best he can from this angle. "Yeah?" he says: it's just an invitation to go on.
MelanthaHe does not turn into a frothing beast of lust, flipping her on her back and snarling something about fucking her until she knows she's with a real man, gross gross, awful, bad, gross.
And he does not shrink away from her, flaccid of cock and flaccid of heart, giving a whine of injury upon discovering that he is not both the rising and the setting sun of her heart.
He keeps on holding her, and they both skew their necks to look at each other, and he invites her to keep talking.
Melantha smiles, reaching up to run a fingertip along his jawline, fond of him. "Yeah," she confirms quietly, coming back to this word over and over today. He knows she had sex up there, in the mountains of wherever, when she was living among the Black Furies. Of course the metis, male or female, wouldn't be permitted to touch her -- even the most progressive Garou among them recoiled a bit at the thought of that. And none of them ever expressed any interest. Of course there were only women, or -- in their thinking -- as-good-as-women. Melantha comes from a sept of primitives, unashamed of bodies or sexual desire, willing and able to see the corruption of sexual desire in the human world and use that corruption to their advantage. Of course she had sex with them sometimes, and there was an atmosphere of sharing, of understanding of who and what she was, what she was doing out there.
"Sometimes being with them, after I came back from a mission, was sort of... cleansing. Like how you said that they sometimes made a mess of me, those men... this was going back and feeling like it was okay, I wasn't dirty, I wasn't a mess, there wasn't anything that had been done to me or changed about me. They'd do a ritual cleansing, because I'd come so close to the Wyrm, but being with one of the sisters would be like being accepted. Like really knowing that not just in Gaia's eyes, but their eyes, I was still okay. I was still myself, and lovable, and loved."
Melantha lays her head down, which takes her eyes from his for a bit. She strokes his chest, running her hand over his heart. "And I thought a little about how real that felt. Really true, you know? That I was accepted and I was loved. Or at least cared for and welcomed. And I thought about how that feeling, which feels really true, clashes with how much it hurt when they were like 'okay, good job, here's your identity back, now go out into the world and whatever'." She closes her eyes, exhaling softly. "I'm starting to think... maybe they weren't pushing me out. Or abandoning me."
ErichErich knows better than to jump in with his own interpretation here, now. He wasn't there. He will never be there, in the heart of one of those communes, living with and surrounded by and equal to the Black Fury females. He does not have that background, that foundation, that knowledge. He is not Black Fury, no more than he is Fenrir -- though for the latter, at least, he lived amongst them for so long that he does understand them.
Not the Furies. He could not. He never could.
So -- he doesn't take wild guesses. He listens: a little more clear-minded now, not so lazy-drowsy-replete as he becomes in the immediate aftermath of their lovemaking. She feels good pressed to his side. Her breasts are soft and her skin is soft and she is soft and warm and lovely and she makes him feel big and strong and protective,
even if she does not need his protection.
"Yeah?" he says again, quietly. "What do you think they were doing?"
MelanthaMelantha can tell he's thinking. He's thinking stuff. And he's also not interjecting it. He's just listening. Encouraging her to go on, welcoming, hearing, listening, accepting. She loves him so much right then she thinks she could burst. So instead she hugs him very tightly, holding him close with her soft breasts and her soft skin and her softness and warmth and loveliness and yay.
"I think they were letting me go," she murmurs, her brow so furrowed it aches. "I think... they didn't know what I really wanted. Why I did it all. I think they thought I'd already given enough, like they'd taken something from me. And that they should let me go."
She breathes in deep, exhales slowly.
ErichIf Erich was gross gross awfulbadgross he might think: my dick is AWESOME, sexing Melantha with my dick made Melantha have a VERY IMPORTANT EPIPHANY about her ENTIRE LIFE.
Erich, however, is not gross gross awfulbadgross. He is not Apollo and he is not Hades and he is not whichever-greek-myth-was-an-awful-womanhating-awfulperson. He is an Erich, and listening, he smiles. It's a smile that grows and grows until he's pretty much beaming at the sky, there, that lean hard arm of his giving her a big silent squeeze against his side.
"I think you might be right," he says, quiet and thoughtful. "I mean, I'm not a Black Fury. All I can do is think how I'd feel if I was in their shoes. And if one of my tribe did everything you did, went through everything you did ... I think at some point I'd feel like she'd given enough. Her whole childhood and teenager-hood, a lot of her innocence, maybe even a lot of her ability to trust men. Or people, in general.
"I'd feel like I'd taken that from her. I mean, I'd understand the necessity of it. It's a war and war isn't pretty. But ... I think at some point I'd hope she could move on and build a life and be normal in a way that I couldn't. And in a way that she couldn't, so long as she kept doing what she was doing.
"What you were doing."
Erich falls quiet. A sadness has crept into his heart. He thinks of it: what Melantha did, what Melantha gave, all those things that were taken from her or, at least, sacrificed on the altar of War and Vengeance and ... whatever else it is they worshipped, the Furies, the Garou, all of them. He wraps both arms around her shoulders. He kisses her temple.
"I don't think they thought about how you'd feel abandoned. Which doesn't excuse it, but ... I don't think they did that on purpose. At least, I wouldn't do it on purpose, if I was them."
MelanthaHer whole childhood and teenager-hood. A lot of her innocence. Maybe even her ability to trust men. To trust anyone.
That hits close to home, because it's not far from the truth. It stings a little to hear it, and to know that. She shifts a bit closer to Erich on the ground, willing him to wrap his arm around her again and hold her there. Like he could hold her tighter. Like he could hold her closer.
He kisses her head. "I don't think they thought they were abandoning me. Maybe they just didn't know that all I wanted was to be a part of them."
Erich"Yeah," Erich agrees quietly. "I don't think they knew that."
And he does hold her tighter. And closer. He senses that she wants it, or maybe even needs it; and besides, he wants to. There's a part of him that wants to roll over her again, keep her covered, keep her safe, keep her under the shelter of his flesh and bone.
He doesn't go that far. He just holds her to his side; kisses her hair, now. "Is that still what you want?"
MelanthaMelantha is quiet for a while. She doesn't know the answer to that. Or at least, it doesn't come readily to mind. She wasn't thinking of it until he asks. It used to be the guiding light of her life: to serve Gaia, to serve Pegasus. To worship Athena, the Three Fates, to be one of them forever. She would have died for her Tribe any day, any phase of the moon, if they'd asked it. If they woke her one night and told her that now it was time to have a child, she would have laid with whatever male they chose for her. If they'd woken her one night to tell her that now it was time to die on a pyre for a secret ritual, she would have gone willingly, even if it would have shocked her. She would have done anything for them.
Melantha is thinking, now to herself: wow. that is super fucked up.
She kisses Erich's chest. "No, I don't think so," she says quietly. She's silent for a bit. And then she says: "When my house is finished, I think... I'd like to drive myself back there. And see Damaris and visit them again. And... maybe talk to some of them about all this."
A beat. A standard phrase: "Get closure."
ErichErich doesn't know the half of it. Maybe he never needs to know. Never needs to think that Melantha would've done this, would've done that, would've done anything at all if only her tribe asked it of her. Maybe it's better that he doesn't know, because that was then and this is now, and it'd just make him howl inconsolably for a while.
Instead, he is kissed on the chest. This makes him smile, even though they're talking about such serious things. He shifts a little, his shoulder rolling under her head, his body turning until they're face to face. He smiles at her. He kisses her softly, softly, delicately.
"I think that's a really great idea," he says quietly. "Do you want us to come with?"
MelanthaHe kisses her softly, even delicately. She kisses him back, just as softly, not at all delicately. She kisses his mouth with a banked heat, slowing it down. She wants him again, suddenly and thoroughly, and moves her body against his to tell him so. Rolls her hips, to tell him to fuck her again. Soon. Shivers a little, while she's kissing him.
"No," she answers quietly, but honestly, without pretending she doesn't know her mind on this. She shakes her head a little, but her body is riding up against his, moving as though he's hard, as though they're fucking again already. She has her hands on his shoulders. She is thinking, a little, of rolling him back, laying him out, climbing on top of him. The intimation of it is there, but not the action.
"I think it would be good for me to go alone. And be silent. And --" she exhales, kissing his neck, his shoulder, like she can't stop herself. "Maybe you guys can set out a few days after I leave. Meet me up there. Drive down to Baja together. You guys are always talking about Baja and --" a little gasp, a sound of wanting, coming over her so suddenly she can't, she can't -- she really can't stop herself. "We can caravan. We'll see the ocean."
ErichThat's one of Erich's Great Regrets In Life. That they didn't take Melantha to see Baja. That they didn't have that roadtrip he and Charlotte wanted to have before they started building her house. So of course, when Melantha suggests the trip after all, suggests Baja, suggests caravaning, Erich is totally delighted. Erich, to be truthful, hadn't even thought of that before. Why hadn't he thought of it before?
Well. It doesn't matter. There's that little gasp. There's the way she's kissing him and kissing him and then all of a sudden he's kissing her too. He's not disappointed that she wants to go alone. He thought she might want to. He offered to go with her anyway, because:
well. Because he is an Erich, and because he loves her.
Both of which are reasons why, now, he wraps his arms around her. Turns onto his back, rolling her atop him in truth. Something so sure and unhesitating about that motion; her strong, gentle lover. Her hands press him down; it's a delicious sort of gravity. He strokes his hands up her sides, covers her breasts, lifts them in his palms as he lifts his head to kiss her. All the musculature of his neck, his chest, his abdomen: standing out in relief.
"We'll see the ocean," he repeats, which means nothing at all. They're neither of them thinking about the ocean now. He tells her this, bravely, because it so recently became okay again for him to say something like this:
"I want to fuck you. I want to go again."
MelanthaIt's not the same: going to Baja, one big trip, all of them in the same tinyhouse and same truck and together, before she goes off and builds her own. A farewell tour. It's not the same, because it's better: going together, Charlotte switching between the Jeep and the truck to keep one of them company, taking over if they get tired even though she really really really doesn't like driving so many no one will make her. They'll camp out on the way in their tinyhouses. They'll fix the porches so that they can park really close together and fold down a sort of gangplank that gives them one big porch instead of two little ones and have sleepovers and stay-up-all-nights. They'll go to the west coast and run out into the ocean in swimsuits and t-shirts. And it will not be like Melantha getting her own house changed anything. Because it isn't changing anything between them, about them, about who they are to each other.
Erich rolls under her, and Melantha pushes him, that intimation becoming reality. She straddles him, and sinks down on him, panting slightly as she does so, leaning over him to kiss him again, to move over him while he's touching her sides and lifting her breasts in his hands and sort of mindlessly saying something about the ocean. Melantha grinds against him a little, hungrily. She pants out:
"Tell me you want me to fuck you," she breathes, her hands braced lightly on his chest. "Say it."
ErichErich's throat closes; that's how suddenly, how badly he wants her. He swallows.
"I want you to fuck me." He gives her tits a gentle squeeze, and then his hands smooth down her sides, take her by the hips. "I want you to fuck me. I kinda need it. Okay?"
MelanthaMelantha shudders. She leans over him, kissing him harder, moving on him slightly, slowly, torturously but at least she's moving she's moving that way that blows out his synapses. She licks his neck. "Say it again," she breathes, working him inside of her. She's fucking him. She's already fucking him, giving it to him, riding him. "Say it."
ErichLater on, when they're done, when they're sweaty and tousled and panting and satiated, Erich is so going to say something to the effect of NOW YOU KNOW WHY I WAS LOSING MY MIND.
That's later. Right now:
"I want you to f-- "
the sentence dies halfway. She's licking his neck, holding his cock. Makes him feel at once as big and strong as she always does, but also: a little used. In a good way. That doesn't make sense but it does. Used for his strength, used for his size, used for his body, used for that cock of his that gets so hard so fast if she so much as breathes on him the right way. He can't think when she slides him inside like that, much less speak -- his eyes fall shut and his brow has a stitch in it and his lips are parted and he looks transported, caught out of time; she works herself onto him. He closes his mouth; he bites his lip. Tries again,
"I want you to fuck me." Erich opens his eyes, locks onto her. "I want you. Ride me. Fuck me."
MelanthaAnd she will laugh. And she will tell him it's not like she was wondering. She knew exactly why he was losing his mind. She knows exactly why she wants to hear it now: fuck me, fuck me from him. Especially from him. Right now, only from him. That's later. Melantha laughing and catching her breath and telling him that it turns her on when he tells her fuck me. That she likes the way he gets so turned on when she says fuck me.
Maybe he'll tell her how it feels, if he can process it: big and strong but sort of used but in a good way? Maybe she'll tell him she doesn't want to use him. But she does want him to feel appreciated. Feel like his strength, his size, his body, his very hard cock -- are all appreciated and adored just as much as his heart and goodness and cunning. Because that, she might just say to him later on, is all part of how she loves him. And hopefully he doesn't feel like just because she loves fucking his very hard, eager cock that it means she doesn't adore his earnest goodness or respect his ferocious cunning, because she totally does. She can totally love his very hot body just as much as she loves his heart and mind.
Which might make it easier for him to start telling her how much he loves her warm, sweet, tight little pussy. And her soft, sweet, responsive breasts and the way they feel in his hands. And how none of that overwhelms any of the other things he loves her for, and he's not using her either, and
so on.
Right now, though. He wants her to fuck him. She's fucking him. She's fucking him and he can barely take it, she can see on his face. She laughs, breathy and turned on, leaning over him as he forces his eyes open again. Tells her finally not just that he wants but ... fuck me. Something magical about those two little words. Desire and permission and command, all at once.
Melantha groans, leaning over him to kiss his mouth, hard this time.
Later on, when they're done, when they're sweaty and tousled and panting and satiated, she is so going to tell him all over again: she loves him.
And, yes: she loves fuckin him, too.
Melantha[FUCKING not fuckin'. lawd.]
