Ache and a Tug [Booker][NSFW]

[Eli Booker] The weather in Chicago had hit a warming trend. It began in the lower thirties and today's forecasters promised temperatures somewhere in the low to mid 40s. Everyone without a job or desire for higher education has begun to filter from their homes. The snow and ice are beginning to melt and for the first time in months, there's a real promise of Spring.

Eli has not seen Drew in a day or so. Hadn't expected to see her today. Today, he was in the middle of something - and that something wasn't exactly good.

There's a street on Cabrini - a crossroads bordered by Section 8 housing, liquor stores and a tavern. It isn't far from where the other Fenrir Kin resides, in fact it's probably within a few short blocks.

His tow truck is parked in the middle of the street, driver side door flung open carelessly. There were, at present, four young black males gathered at the rear of the truck. If Drew's windows were open, she'd hear yelling and bantering back and forth. If she were on foot approaching, she'd spot the mohawk sporting biker rounding the front of his truck like a man with a purpose.

[Drew Roscoe] On foot approaching is exactly how Drew comes across this scene. She’s on her way home, matter of fact, from work. This was another fine instance of her giving her services to the hospital and them sending her away earlier than anticipated because she’d blown through her workload early. So she’d taken the subway, gotten off at the substation nearest to her home, and started the walk back to her house. She was dressed for business, a pair of gray slacks, deep violet high-heeled shoes, and a black blazer buttoned up over her white blouse. Hair was pinned back, loosely curled, make-up light but defining.

She heard the ruckus before rounding the corner—yelling and anger, she could tell the aggression in the words even though she couldn’t make out the actual language, what was being said in full sentences. She’d let it slide typically, fights were far from uncommon on these streets, but what caused her to stop was the tow truck, the familiar vest and mohawk, and the defining intent in Eli Booker’s step as he rounds the front of his truck and goes toward the four men he’s being confronted by.

She pauses, staring up the sidewalk for a second, then those high heels find a new direction, a new pace. It’s not the kind of urgency that would have her running—if she wanted to run she’d kick those damn shoes off completely and be much faster. This was just more brisk, less idle wandering and wasting of time.

Her hands are in her blazer pockets, not yet reaching for the weapon she always keeps concealed at the small of her back under whatever coat or sweater she may be wearing. This might just be Eli’s fight, it might not come to that.

But she’d still be there for her kin.

[Eli Booker] "Fuck you, fuckin' nigger." He says, pointing an angry finger at one of the men. The word - that ugly word - doesn't sit right with any of them and it exacerbates the situation two fold. He is smart and keeps each man in front of him, though his eyes flicker continuously around him - cautious and leery.

It turns, quickly, into a shoving match between Eli and the taller of the four men gathered. That Eli is in a predominately ethnic area and hurling derogatory racist terms at the men doesn't seem to phase him. Not in the least. The other man is quick - quicker than Elijah. On the biker's shove the man bounces back as if projected by some sort of invisible spring. A right fist connects with Booker's jaw and chin and sends him back into the rear of his tow truck.

And, Drew knows some things about Eli: He always packs and more often than not sports a bullet proof vest. Rapper's and posers sport them for looks, Eli's reasoning is pure necessity.

There's a dribble of blood that forges a path from his mouth to his chin. He licks it. The rings that he wears connect with a gross pop to the black man's mouth. The punch sends him back two or three steps, enough for Eli to get a little breathing room.

Or so he thought. There's a flash of dull metal from his left, appearing from the waistband of one of the men's sagging jeans. There isn't honor among drug dealers and gang bangers it'd seem.

Booker hasn't seen Drew yet. The dark brown of his eyes is wild.

"Come on. Come on." He says quietly. So quiet that you'd have to be one of the men in the group to hear him. Or a lip reader.

"Come on, you mother fuckin' pussy." He whispers. The man with the gun holds the 9mm eye level to Booker's face. He leans into it, forehead against barrel. He's young, not a full blooded, stone cold killer just yet. He's unsure.

"Do it." Quiet. The man with the bloody mouth is regaining his footing, the other two men are confused by the white guy's actions. "DO IT" He screams, veins becoming more pronounced in his neck. This was akin to a Garou's Rage. If Eli were true born ...it would be ugly.

[Drew Roscoe] ”Hey!”

The situation went from bad to worse all in a landslide, and it had the feel of slipping down a grassy slope made wet with blood more than it felt like rocks rolling down a mountain. This looked cold, despite the heat and tension within the group of brawlers-turned-killers. Booker’s got the wild in his eyes of their People, something that has spilled into Drew a few times before, but certainly not to this point.

She hadn’t been noticed, they were wrapped up in the racism and the weapon and that crazy biker tow-truck fuck leaning his forehead into the barrel of the weapon that would kill him. But she’d stopped some ten feet away, drawn the gun from her back as soon as the metal flashed from the tall man’s side, and was holding it aimed straight at the man with the gun. Not close enough to make it kiss his temple, but her hold was steady, unwavering in the least, her aim true enough to earn her a deed name.

She wasn’t some scared woman that kept a handgun in her purse to protect her from a rough part of town. Her expression was serious, stern and hard, not wild and frightened. She wasn’t bluffing, she was warning—promising.

“We’re all gonna calm the fuck down. All of us.” Her eyes cut to Booker, sharp and pointed. “Everyone back up.”

[Eli Booker] He's grinning, but there's malice to it. There's a promise that if the man didn't have the gun in his head, Eli would rip his head off and shit (and piss) down his neck. His head is pressed hard against the barrel, the brown of his eyes is set firm on the man holding the gun to his head.

At least until Drew's voice cuts through the moment like a warm knife through butter. It doesn't snap Eli out of it right away, but the other men are telling her that she should get her dog on a leash. Do something with the crazy motherfucker 'for he gets a cap popped in his white ass.

"He won't do it. You're not going to do it. You're a fuckin' punk." He says, using Drew as a distraction to slap the man's hand away. Things threaten to escalate again but these four ...they aren't seasoned gansta's. These aren't the guys killing in Chicago's ghetto streets nightly. They want to be ...the hunger for it is there...they've just not cut their teeth yet.

There's blood pumping from his mouth, from his lip or jaw inside, and he hacks a huge wade of red ugliness and spits it off to the side.

"Fuck you." He says to one who's decided to talk shit even as they're backing up away from the crazy man and the white girl with the gun.

[Drew Roscoe] The men that made a half-circle around the one holding the gun to Booker’s head snapped their attention onto her, told her that she needed to reign this crazy motherfucker in. As far as they would go in this moment, it was as close as they would get to begging her to call him off. Get him back on his meds. Take him away, something. She makes a face and removes one hand from the magnum she held, the left one, freeing it up for when she closed the distance between herself and the group.

Eli snapped, slapped the man’s hand and gun both away from his face and snarled that they didn’t have it in them to kill him anyways, still daring them with wide eyes and bared teeth to do it, to put that bullet in his skull. Drew’s jaw is clenched, but her teeth aren’t showing, hidden behind lips painted some soft petal mauve. She comes to Eli’s side, but doesn’t reach for him with that free hand—not yet anyways. It’s loose in case she feels she needs to grab his shirt or wrist or waistband and haul him back.

She knew that violence was in them, but this situation was volatile and needless alike. She kept her gun on the man that had been at the front, the one that clocked Booker in his mouth and sent him back against the truck.

“Go on,” she advises the group of young black men. “It’s better for everyone that way.”

[Eli Booker] He is smiling at them. It's a blood red smile.

They turn to walk away then, something inside of Booker's mouth is open and bleeding freely. The man who hit him is checking his grill to make sure none of his gold got knocked out. They get at least fifty feet away before they begin posturing and Drew is close to Eli, she can feel the muscles beneath his dark boodie tense up tight like piano wire ready to snap.

"Punk ass bitches." He says, turning wild eyes toward Drew. He doesn't bare his stained red teeth at her. He just looks at her with a questioning look that could say where did you come from? or what the fuck, Drew? easily. His chest rises and falls with each quick breath. He isn't winded, he's mad.

"Why did you do that?" He asks her sternly, dark eyes cut down to stare at her face fully. "They wouldn't'a done shit. You coulda got hurt." He barks, then realizes what he's said and looks ...confused for a moment.

Again, he turns his head to the side and spits out another gob of bloody mess.

[Eli Booker] (boodie = hoodie, HA!)

[Drew Roscoe] As the men turn their backs and start walking away, Drew lowers the gun gradually, then finally relents and puts it back in its sheathe at her back once they’re about forty feet away, while they turn around to posture and call out but make no motion to return, to follow through on the promises that they make a quarter of a block away. She pushes up the back of her blazer to secure the weapon once more, safety going back on, and is straightening it when Booker turns to inquire why she interrupted, insisting she could’ve gotten hurt.

The look she fixes him with is some smoothie blend of concern, anger, and exasperation. He’s spitting a wad of blood and mucus to the side, and she’s curling her upper lip just a little, showing a flash of blunt pearly teeth. Her arms stay at her sides, but god knows that she wanted to give him a hard shove back into his tow truck.

For sake of maintaining image and the dominance he’d just earned himself against these men, she refrained. At least for now. When they were out of sight that could become another story quite easily, though.

“Oh, and I suppose you would’ve survived a bullet to the face if he got skiddish and pulled the trigger anyways? You say he wasn’t gonna do it—I say he didn’t want to do it. I say he could’ve startled, panicked, and then regretted it for the rest of his goddamn life.

“What the everloving hell is wrong with you? Do you think that was worth your life?”

[Eli Booker] Most (sane) human beings would have hurried to their vehicle, plotted their escape long before the men had made it as far as they have now. But Eli isn't any normal sane man. He stands there looking at Drew Roscoe and bleeding. Every nerve in his body is tingling as if electric.

"He wouldn'ta done it." he says firmly, as if he had some insight into the man with the gun's mind. She asks him if that was worth dying over and for a few very long seconds Eli stands there staring at Drew. He, for once, is doesn't have an quick comeback or witty reply. He's got nothing and so he turns for the driver's door (still open) of the truck and says -

"Get in."

[Drew Roscoe] Eli stares hard at Drew, no wit or shit-eating smile on his bleeding lips. She stares right back in a way that would have been sheer downright defiance a year ago, but today was just firm resolve. They wouldn’t snap away if he had Rage to back him up, they certainly wouldn’t without. She knew he wouldn’t strike her, wouldn’t draw the gun she knew for a fact he had to have on him somewhere and make her put her mouth around it. Despite this show of insanity, he was Family, he was her Friend, and she trusted him wholly.

He insists, after a few moments of silence between the two, that she get in the truck. The young woman in the nicely pressed business clothes, with her hair curled and her make-up pretty, does not argue. Visually she’s quite a change from the laid-back girl in a t-shirt and jeans, with the ponytail and big grin, but all in all she’s still the same. Petite, determined, someone he knew and could trust just as she did him.

She gets in the passenger side of the tow truck, leans back into the bench seat, but doesn’t bother to buckle herself in just yet. She waits for Eli, and while she does she’s leaned forward and digging through his glove box, looking for napkins or a work rag or anything of the like that he can put to his bleeding mouth.

[Eli Booker] "You look pretty." He says, spitting on the pavement one last time before jerking the door of his truck closed. She's waiting for him to - say something? do something? react? and he doesn't do any of those things. The truck's engine stirs to life, as trustworthy as Drew or himself, and he starts toward her home because it's the closest.

The short three or four block ride is swathed in quiet. If she turns to look she'll see his tongue working in his mouth, probably trying to find the source of blood. But, he doesn't turn to her or speak, even after he parks in front of her tired little faded house, he sits there with his hands on the steering wheel.

Eli doesn't get out of the truck, he doesn't invite himself into her home.

[Drew Roscoe] He compliments how she looks today, the fact that she spent time to look nice for work. She isn’t quite in the mindset to accept compliments on her appearance, so she just acknowledges what he says with a hum that could be construed as thanks, and continues to paw around in the glove box for something useful. This hunt is called off at about block two, and she just sits back and looks at the side of his face while he drives the short, quiet trip to the front of her house.

He parks against her curb, lets the engine idle, and makes no indication to come in.
This provokes a frown, albeit soft, on the Kinwoman’s face.

“You can take a break to come in and at least rinse that out with some water.” There’s a beat, a pause, it seems like maybe she won’t be lecturing him about how reckless he just was…

..but then she does.

“I don’t care about your hate or your pride right now, Booker, rest assured that that’s the last thing on my list of ‘shit to give a shit about’. What I’m worried about is you kissing his gun with your eyebrows. What’s that kind of risk proving to anyone?”

[Eli Booker] The radio had been on the whole way there, so low that it served only as white noise to the hum of the outside world as they passed by buildings and parked cars. Now, his hands flashes past the space between them and to the radio controls. It's turned up just a notch until the song playing is more discernible.

REO Speedwagon, Time for Me to Fly.

She's frowning at him and he can feel it, the drawn down corners of her mouth and the way that expression effects her eyes. Eli's left hand is shaking lightly, the skin beneath the rings he wears on every finger but his thumb is glaring an angry red shade. Eli's a southpaw. Who'd of known.

"I just didn't wanna invite myself in." Is the first sound of his voice that she gets. Eli is angry. He's so angry that his insides shake and tremble. There's a fury to him that's both frightening and admirable.

Then she starts to tell him about himself. About the recklessness of his behavior and just what the hell was he trying to prove. It's then that he remembers that Drew doesn't really know him at all.

"He would not have shot me." he says clearly, shaking his head and taking a moment to turn his head and look out of his window. "Sides, what would it of proven if I hadn't done it? If I would of let them fuck with me and turned the other cheek? I'd be just another white boy they just fuckin' assume they can push around and bully. Now they know. Now they won't fuck with me again. Guaranteed."

He pauses and turns his attention back forward, eyes narrow and focus on the car in front of his truck.

"If I see that nigger again, I'm fuckin' cutting his throat." And the way he's shaking, as angry as he is, he probably would make a very good attempt to do just that.

[Drew Roscoe] He's shaking, his hand is hurt but not injured from the rings rubbing harshly against his fingers when he landed his fists on the gangster kid's face. Drew's frown pulls into a conflicted expression, tight at the corners of her mouth and tired at the eyes. He says he didn't want to invite himself in, and Drew shakes her head, murmuring while she opens the passenger door. "I didn't have a key to give you, but the implement's the same. My door's open to you."

And again he's insisting that he wouldn't have been shot. That he had to prove himself, that now he'd made a face and a name with those kids and they wouldn't forget it, they wouldn't fuck with him because this was a man that would put his face to your gun. Hell, he'd probably lick it if he'd had a little more booze in him and just a little less rabid crazy.

The muscles at his arms and shoulders and back continue to tremble. It's surreal, almost, to see that kind of rage inside of a person without feeling the furnace that typically comes behind it, without worrying that he would snap and throw her through the windshield and leave nothing but her throat and a splash of blood in the passenger seat. She recalls that kind of anger, recalls how it felt that she could do nothing with it. The first time she'd heard a loved one had died, she'd hit her fist into another Kin's wall until it bled, then paced like an animal in her hallway yelling and swearing and shaking and feeling absolutely fucking sick because she knew that she couldn't do anything, not just for vengeance but with all of that potent hate inside of her. It would just burn and sizzle and she could hit the walls until her fists were both broken and useless but it still wouldn't go away.

He snarls about cutting that 'nigger's' throat, and Drew frowned, shook her head, and pulled the truck door closed again. He wasn't making any motions to get out of the truck just yet, and she wasn't ready to let him go or to leave him behind.

"Booker...," it's imploring and cautious, but not afraid. "What started all that in the first place?"

[Eli Booker] His heart beats a rapid tempo in his chest and when she says she didn't have a key but the feeling was mutual he turns brown eyes her way and nods once. This isn't typical Booker, but this is a side of him that Drew has to see -witness and come to grips with - to really know him. It was a lot of handle, more than some people cared to take on or get to know any further. There was a constant promise in being his friend - one day, he'd be dead. It might not be with all the glory and honor of a Garou. It might be no more than a newspaper clipping in the crime section of the Tribune: Body found dumped in Lake Michigan, or worse. It was a hard row to settle, but it was one that came with being his friend. Or his anything.

She's out of the truck and asking him what caused the fight. He takes the keys out of the ignition and hops out as well. His mouth is still bleeding. He's swallowing most of it, but now that he's out of the car a red stream of spit hits the pavement beneath his booted feet.

"They wouldn't get out of my fuckin' way." It's said as he rounds the back of the truck toward her. There isn't much more explanation given than that: they just wouldn't get out of his fucking way.

[Drew Roscoe] She waits, hands in her blazer pockets, against the curb for him to join her. He rounds the truck, spitting and scowling hard and explaining what started the fight. Something as small as not getting out of the way. She nipped the inside of her lower lip while watching him step up onto the curb alongside her. It wasn't about what had happened, it probably wasn't as much about who or what those guys were as it sounded like with slurs peppering his explanations. It was about dominance. About turf, domain, about making sure that people knew he was not to be Fucked With and going to whatever lengths it took to make the impression that they wouldn't.

People didn't point and laugh at Eli Booker, because he'd break them with his teeth, and he didn't even need to be able to shift to do that.

They were closer to their roots than they realized sometimes.

There's just quiet while she looks at his face, at the blood on his lip and chin, then just his eyes, unconcerned with the wounds he might've opened up during that fight, more concerned with him. The quiet stretches almost too long, but she knows it would be intolerable to him in this moment, with this much momentum and energy and adrenaline pulsing through him right now. She doesn't reach out for him because she won't have him thinking that she's about to coddle him, that she thinks he needs to be babied or anything of that like.

So she just sighs, takes her keys out of her coat pocket when she pulls her hands free, and starts up the sidewalk toward the front door of the faded blue house she called home. "C'mon."

[Eli Booker] She waits and he watches. There's a heat to his gaze that isn't born of Rage or anything preternatural or supernatural. There were reasons behind everything Eli did. There had to be boundaries and like dogs (wolves) there was a pecking order - he refused to be at the bottom of it anymore than could be helped. He'd done that, back there. Thankfully, he wasn't the one that pulled his gun. If he had been, the kid that held the gun to his head would be dead right now. Eli did not own the hesitation or reservation that the other young man did.

She sighs and he takes a step toward her. He was in motion, moving toward her to touch her or say something, but she moves toward the door with keys in hand and he's a few beats behind her. One last spit of blood meets the pavement before he steps inside.

Now, he doesn't want for Drew to give him permission to move through her home. Instead, he starts for the bathroom, brushing past her - shoulder to hers gently.

[Drew Roscoe] He might have reached for her, grabbed onto her and pulled her to him and squeezed out some of that frustration into a tight-armed hug that she would've not just withstood but given back to. He might've said something, be it sweet or meaningful or idiotic or hateful. But she didn't keep still long enough, and her keychain jangled faintly, heels clicked on the uneven sidewalk as she made way to the front door. She heard his boots behind her, heard him spit into the mostly-melted snow of her yard. They both paused only long enough for her to get the door open, and he brushes by her, his upper arm to her shoulder, to go to the downstairs bathroom that was pretty darn easy to find.

She steps out of her heels and leaves them near the front door for the moment, walks on bare feet into the kitchen instead. Runs the tap until it's warm and fills up a glass partway before leaving that on the kitchen island counter and goes to one of two closets in the dining room-- the one closest to the kitchen which turns out to be a pantry with one shelf devoted entirely to first aid (in their line of work it was necessary). A bottle of hydrogen peroxide is retrieved, mixed equally with the water in the glass, then put back.

She doesn't barge into the bathroom after him but waits for him to do whatever it is he needs to do-- compose himself, rinse his mouth with cool water, splash his face, neck, grip the sink until his knuckles turned white and fingertips turned purple because his rings would cut off circulation to them with so tight a grasp.

When he does come out, she's standing in the kitchen waiting for him with that glass in her hand. She'll hold it out for him to take and say blandly: "Swish. It'll taste like shit so don't swallow none, but it'll help."

[Eli Booker] The bathroom does is pushed to close but doesn't quite make it. There's a slice of open space that allows the sounds inside to bleed out into her hallway. It's quiet at first. The toilet lid goes down and he sits there, forehead against the cold porcelain of her sink or tub whichever happens to be closest. Fingertips grip the edge and he hangs there like a man on a ledge, clinging to something firm and solid. It passes and the water starts to run free of the faucet, she can hear it. He spits and spits until the water doesn't run as red anymore.

When that sound dies away Eli is freeing himself of his club vest. Of his hoodie. Of the crisp white tshirt beneath that. He's left standing in a woman better and and dark jeans that hang suggestively low (but not ridiculously) on his hips, exposing the waistband of his boxer briefs beneath.

Minutes pass - a handful of them at least - before he leaves the room. She tells him what to do, what will help, and he follows her instructions: glass in hand he tips it up, swishes and spits it into her bathroom sink.

When he returns to her kitchen the glass is left in the sink and he's holding the shirts he's peeled off.

"Thanks." He says, voice low and deliberate.

[Eli Booker] (Bathroom does = doors)

[Drew Roscoe] Glass plucked from her hands, Eli returns to the bathroom sink to finish rinsing out his mouth, this time with something that would help close the wound up, and Drew makes a quiet sound, between a sigh and a groan, rakes her fingers through her hair, put pauses when she finds that it's largely pinned up. So she busies herself while Eli rinses, and by the time he's come back out to her kitchen and rounded the island to put the now-empty glass in the sink, she's generated a small pile of bobby pins on the counter and has got her long, thick brown hair down in loose curls about her shoulders and down her back.

He's got his shirts in his hands rather than on his back, and to say that she doesn't observe the low ride of his pants would be a downright lie. To say that she lingers at the lean plain of his stomach, a change from the softer figure she'd known before, and licks her lips is an even bigger lie than that, though. Her eyes hop back up to his face when he pronounces his thank you deliberately, and they don't widen to look like she'd been caught with her hand (or eyeballs) in the cookie jar.

She just nods some, then turns and hitches her elbows back on the island counter, leans against it some and looks at him like she's trying to figure out what to do with him.

"You're calm, but you're not done," she concludes finally. "You've brought yourself back in but it's still in your blood and your belly." A weak ghost of a smile curves one side of her mouth, and an eyebrow lifts to match it. "I'd offer you a beer, but I think you're on the clock."

[Eli Booker] It would take a lot more than a few deep breaths and the coolness of porcelain against his bare skin to calm him fully. He isn't shaking, but were she to touch him he'd be warm against her skin. His shirts are tossed onto the nearest stationary object - a table or chair - and he starts to take off his rings. Each one - a skull, a grim repaper head, a skull with fangs - is heavy gold and could easily take out a tooth or three with the right pressure behind a solid punch. His hands is red, but the skin is intact and not bruised.

His tongue drifts over his lips in consideration. An expression of thoughtfulness touches his face. Drew had been eying him. Not the way that you stare casually at a friend as they change clothes while you're in the room. This was a look that stirred his blood and heated it more than it already was. Brown eyes cut toward her, refuse to leave her gaze for longer than at least ten or fifteen seconds.

It's an intense gaze. One that dares you to move, dares you to something more than what you're doing.

"I'm not done." He says quietly, one hand rubbing the red flesh exposed now by his rings. "...I'm done for the day." His eyes finally leave hers.

[Drew Roscoe] He'd caught her looking, but she left that alone. His eyes were hot and agitated and glued to hers, the dark brown that came with ethnicity to the warmer, simpler brown that Drew had. He was removing his rings and setting them on the counter, his shirts had fluttered over the back of the loveseat to his right.

He dared her to make a move, but she didn't rise to meet his challenge. He was fury, and she was tempered in this moment. She pulled from his gaze only to glance briefly at his hand while he rubbed it, then sighed and nodded some, moving a hand to scratch at her scalp with fingernails that were short but neatly rounded, tossling her hair some in doing so. She wasn't interested in playing coy, there were more dominant things on her mind right now.

Like whether Booker was ready to go back out that door or not, like whether she could help him back to even ground today or if she would have to let him walk that road on his own. She knew the moon was full overhead, she always kept track of the moon phase. She never knew it to affect the moods of the Kin, though. Maybe Eli was closer than the rest? Maybe genetically he was just a few patterns short of having been True? She didn't know, she wasn't one to ponder genetics like that.

"I wasn't meaning to tell you how to live your life there, Booker. I'm not gonna tell you not to go out all balls-swinging and full of fire. I just... don't want you stomping off with that white-hot in your chest and nothing to direct it at, is all."

[Eli Booker] "I'm good Drew." His eyes jerk away, look at his shirt and rings. She sighs and scratches at her scalp. They both seem on edge, him for obvious reasons ...hers are maybe a little more convoluted. What she wants is for him to be okay. He nods again. He's good.

"I"m...fine. I'll manage." He offers a smile that's tight lipped and draws his mouth in a flat line. His shirt and hoodie had found a place tossed carelessly on the back of her loveseat. Soon after, within minutes, his ass finds a place on the arm. He perches there, hands behind his head, fingers laced together loosely.

"I won't run out and knife the first fucker I see."

[Drew Roscoe] There is a moment where he's boring holes into her, forceful in presence, demanding that his gaze be met. Where it seems to falter is the point where she holds his gaze but doesn't blaze back at him. She's no cold fish, Drew Roscoe, but she has priorities. Perhaps she's mistaken in dealing with the situation as though Eli were a Garou, but that was all she knew with talking people down anymore. She wouldn't give an outlet for him to surge into, wouldn't give his rage (different from Rage but a close relative of) anything to burrow into and grow. But she won't move, won't leave him to come back down alone.

He insists that he's fine, promises he won't go stabbing random people, and breaks his eyes away from hers, moves to settle his weight back on the arm of the loveseat, joining the shirt, vest and hoodie that he'd tossed away to land there as well. Drew straightens away from the counter when he sits, like this is a game where only one of them could be relaxed at a time-- if one was to lean then one had to stand. She shrugs out of her blazer, at last, and leaves it to rest over a stool for the moment. This leaves the Kin in a simple, thin white blouse tucked into her slacks, with a necklace of purple and sterling trinkets that no doubt was supposed to go with the shoes she'd left at the door resting around her neck, at her chest. That necklace was over the shirt, under it, barely noticeable because it was such a constant, was a thin sterling chain that tucked away beneath the blouse's neckline.

Her arms would cross loose over her stomach, and she'd nod, shifting her weight toward Eli without actually stepping over to join him at the couch. "I trust that." Pause. "But I feel... I don't know, guilty, maybe? Like I'm slacking in being a friend if I shoo you away just yet." There's another pause, and she frowns softly and clarifies. "I'm not keeping you from going, I mean. But..." And again. "Well fuck," because she'd lost her words.

[Eli Booker] There is definition to Eli now. It is not - will never be - the strength and cut from stone structure of his Garou cousins, but she can see the cut and line of his biceps and triceps with his arms up and bent the way they are. He leans, she moves. It was as if they were pawns in a very dangerous, very curious chess game. Eyes so brown they could be black track her, stalk her positioning to his in the room.

For a brief moment he looks confused. His arms drop away from his head and he stands up straight, uncurling the five feet and eleven inches of his frame.

"Look I can go Drew. You got things to do or something. I didn't come to stay, hell I wasn't even comin' here when that shit popped off...don't think you can't tell me to get the fuck out. You owe me nothing more than what you've given me."

With that, he moves back toward the counter and his rings. Collected, he starts to slip them onto his fingers.

[Drew Roscoe] "Didn't I just say that I'm not chasing you out?"

Her hand caught at his arm when he moved to return to the counter, to go back to his rings and return them where they go. Her fingers curled into the inside of his elbow, arm tight to hold him. Of course she'd let him go if he tore away, but she didn't want to just brush him while he passed by, she wanted him to be still, to hear her.

"It's not about owin' each other anything, Eli." Her thumb swipes the outside of his arm, but her eyes don't drop. There's nothing timid to her, if there ever had been at all it was chased away and straightened out somewhere between having Garou Frenzy on her and having her leg chewed on by a Rat-beast on a runaway bus. Her eyes stay up on his, on his face, no longer worried about his mouth now that it's been rinsed and the blood had at least slowed enough that he didn't need to spit every two minutes.

"Favors and keeping tabs are for forged alliances and people you don't trust. I just care, alright?"

[Eli Booker] She has his arm. It's a light touch but carries purpose beneath it. Her thumb brushes inside of his arm and he nods, turning hooded eyes to peer down at her. He could taste the coppery taste of his own blood. His tooth sliced through the soft inner tissue of his jaw and the gash would hurt like a bitch for the next couple of weeks but for now it would be fine. He'd swallow the blood until his belly refused anymore and he threw it up. He's been there, done that before.

Eli would not hurt Drew. As sure as she knew the sun would rise and set she should know this. There's no inherent danger in touching him when he's wound up tighter than a spring ready to snap. She can feel the heat of his skin - not born out of Rage but out of sheer, unadulterated anger and hatred. He burns with it, like a fire stoked in his gut that refused to die down or simmer.

"Alright." He nods in acquiescence, his body turning to square straight with her own. "Thanks for back there." He says finally, unmoving - unwilling - to shake her touch from his arm.

[Drew Roscoe] The touch is enough to stop him, but it wasn't for physical force that he did as much as willingness. He may well have been waiting for an excuse to, for her to reassure him that she didn't want him out of the house and about on his way. He doesn't move his arm to shake her hand away, but instead turns to face her.

The thanks is met with a smile that seems more relaxed, more like the Drew he and everyone else was used to. It wasn't forced or weak, but small and easy instead. "You'd have done the same for me,"

Shirt or no shirt, touch wasn't unfamiliar or uncomfortable for them. She didn't hesitate to step forward and close the space between them, moving her hand off his arm so it could meet the other behind him, arms looping around his middle and chin lifting to touch his shoulder. Her chest swells against his with a deep breath, exhale grazes skin when she breathes out. It was like that breath was a punctuation separating the start of the day (the blood, the snarling, the guns, the madness) from the rest of it (this, here, now).

"Hell," she chuckled a bit. "I bet you would'a actually fired your gun."

[Eli Booker] The thin material of the woman beater he's wearing is soft beneath her touch. It smells like bleach and laundry detergent and the soap (Irish Spring) that he uses. She can see every tattoo he owns beneath it - the rusted out star of David on one side of his chest, the Celtic cross swathed in an Italian flag on the other. His first name down his left side (Elijah) and his last on the other (Booker), the word RIGHTEOUS across his midsection in angry black lettering... between his navel and ribcage is 1%. There are more, on his back and legs, but those she thankfully can't see. He is a walking story full of volumes.

"If I had to pull out my gun I would of blown his brains out." He says matter of factly. And that's really the truth of it. If it had gotten to the point where Eli's gun left it's holster, he would have been left no choice but to shoot.

Her breath against him pulls a heavy sigh from his lips and he lets his fingers get tangled in the thick mass of her dark hair. They massage her scalp, comb through the length of her locks and back again. She can feel the thought it takes to be soft. To be gentle. His anger is kept locked away, just beneath the surface, but it's there. Quiet and dangerous.

[Drew Roscoe] The touch and affection are returned as they have been with Booker. It's a back and forth, the ground they stand on. She'd broken whatever barrier of personal space that might've been between them for whatever reasons when she'd gone to visit him when he first returned to the city and leaned against his back. He had in turn moved her, held her to his front, and they'd stood that way for some time, close and personal and completely comfortable for it, with no tension or great show of restraint, no blushing or awkward fumbling of words and fingers to follow.

His arms moved around her, hands up to become lost in her hair, fingers scrubbing her scalp and lightly combing out the curls she'd put in this morning before work.

"That's probably the way it ought to be," she agrees, perhaps surprisingly, with his saying that he'd fire if he'd drawn his gun, and tipped her head down so her forehead touched his shoulder instead. Eyes combed his torso, picked out the tattoos that littered his flesh, and an ironic grin that would be difficult to understand crawls over her face when she takes pause on the Star of David. Her hands lift higher from where they'd rested, respond to the scalp rub by scratching between his shoulders for him. Not to be confused with nails that have probably raked down his back on a wild night with a whiskey bottle and a girl named Leela (sheena? gina?) before.

"Before long I'm going to have to stop giving warnings. The time it takes to ask a question is about the time it takes for a life to be lost, y'know?"

[Eli Booker] There were times when Eli didn't see Drew as a pretty woman. Then, there were moments when his breath would hitch in his chest when she touched him. It does that now, he swallows hard and rests the side of his chin against her head as it rests on his shoulder.

Eli didn't blush or play coy and neither did Drew. Neither had the time (or energy) to play such games. His fingers continue to comb through her hair hair until the curls she put in her hair this morning are now just fine waves of fullness. While his fingers, palms, move down her back she's looking at the ink beneath the thin shirt he's wearing. The star of David was a story they hadn't gotten to yet. They would one day, to be sure.

"It is." He says quietly. "If you pull it out you need to use it. You gotta believe the guy you pulled it on sure will." His fingers rest at the small of her back while her own fingers scratch between his shoulders. It elicits a rumbling growl of pleasure from his throat and raises gooseflesh on his dusky skin.

"If you pull it, shoot it. Even if it's just in the leg arm."

[Drew Roscoe] "Call me an optimist, then, because I figure that the sight and threat are enough on their own." The scratching goes from one shoulder then the next, hand making idle travel of its own accord across his upper back, below the straps of his thin wifebeater rather than trying to drag through the fabric. "I could say that guy ran, but I'm pretty sure you'd already scared the shit out of him by doing the crazy-dance." She didn't mince words, he'd acted like a damn lunatic and he knew it. If genes and birthright had twisted just so, played out only the smallest measurement differently, fur would've sprung up and bristled along his back and arms, and there would have been a lot more of a mess than just a cut mouth to work with. Drew'd probably have to go get her truck and come back for disposal detail.

"Give me two months and three more near-death experiences. I'm sure that'll all be pounded outta me for good by then."

His jawline rested against the side of her head, she felt the rumbling of encouragement when she'd scratched at his back through his face and his chest both, and took another deep breath, this fueled by contentment more than moving things forward. "I just don't typically shoot for anything more than the kill. Gotten so good at that that I guess I don't trust myself not endin' the person's life when I just wanna drive them away."

[Eli Booker] They always ended up here. Not in her house or his house but there, in this place with their arms wrapped around one another, the touch of skin separated by thin layers of clothing. His body is warm, her's is comforting. Their relationship was symbiotic, and they were better for it. She scratches his back and her fingers would run consistently over a handful of raised scar tissue.

"Fuck his life, he's a no good fuckin' spade. He'll either rob someone, sell them jacked up dope or rape some poor lady walkin' home from her second job she's gotta work to feed her four fuckin' kids cause some other spade ain't payin' child support." She can feel his muscles tense, they grow rigid and straight along his back.

His mind goes back to what she said, that he scared them off with his crazy dance. To that, he shakes his head.

"I got my point across. I don't give a fuck." He says, warm palms pressed to the small of his back.

[Drew Roscoe] All kinds of familiarity flooded her ears when he growled through gritted teeth about that spade and all the wrong he would do since he was let to run free. Booker didn't know her before Joe and Thomas got their claws in her and sorted her into the proper Kin she was today. He didn't know that she was all but engaged to a black man, living with him for over a year, sharing a bed, an apartment, a life and goal. Then Garou and the Wyrm came into the picture, and she'd watched the poor man she loved be literally consumed by a creature of gluttony. That night she'd wedged her shotgun into the foul thing's mouth and blown it apart while another Kin's pistol shredded everything else on the massive beast that twitched.

This was a story Eli didn't know, because it was all but forgotten save for along the whispers of glory that her name carried with the spirits even still-- spirits he wouldn't hear. His muscles tighten up, flex under her hands, and he pressed his palms to the small of her back where the magnum had rested before she removed it along with her blazer and laid it down on the stool. She stopped scratching to rub the tensed up muscles along his back, then simply let her palm rest near the back of his neck and shakes his head as well.

She already knew well that there was no sense in telling a bigot not to be. This was the kind of deep hate that was indoctrinated. It was as strong in him as her tribal pride was in her, because it was something that came with entering a phase of your life-- the biker gang for him, the skinhead gang for Joe. She'd given up on chasing words like 'spook' and 'eggplant' out of dictionaries long ago and instead let them slide.

"I know, I gotcha."

[Eli Booker] He does not rant. He does not complain or become angry because she placates him. He takes what she gives him and swallows it down because it was Drew. She was as important to him as his left arm. Eli knew nothing of Drew's past. She knew nothing of his heritage. It was almost an oxymoron to claim the closeness and familiarity that they both felt.

"Right." He says, and she can feel a small grin begin to worm it's way across his mouth. It doesn't full break into the engaging grin / smile she knows so well. Eli doesn't allow himself that yet.

"What were you doing today?" He asks, running his nose along the side of her hair to smell the scent that makes up Drew Roscoe. He'd never know her fully, not the way the Garou can with one deep inhale of the air around her, but what he could pluck out was good enough for Eli.

[Drew Roscoe] A Garou scenting her like Eli was would, first and foremost, pick up on breeding. It was a weaker whisper in her veins than what it was in Eli's, sullied by her father's lack of family name, but surviving because of her mother's strong roots dating far back into the time of castles and sprawling forests across Europe. It would smell of promise, of frost and blood and fresh warriors alike. Everything else on her Booker is able to catch like a Garou would, because he is close enough, because aside from breeding their noses were no stronger than a Kin's while wearing a man's skin. Shampoo, soap, and hint of (of all strange things) antiseptic. She did work at a hospital, after all.

"Was on my way back from work when I came across your party." With his nose in her hair, arms about her, she turned her head to his, touched her forehead to his cheek and shut her eyes. There was honesty here. They weren't holding back from one another, avoiding touch to prevent complications, but they weren't hustling forward like they were in a race, stumbling across a finish line before they knew what to do with each other.

"What about you? You don't have some list of abandoned vehicles and D.W.I.'s to haul off the streets, do you?"

[Eli Booker] "...and repo's and pretty ladies to haul out of ditches or fix their flat tires." He adds things to her laundry list of things he might have to do. There was not a lot of pretending with Booker. He was who he was and he made no apologies for it. His world was rough and demanded a great many things from him. He was not only expected to help his Garou (and kin) brethren but to one day give the nation children who may (or may not) be born with shifting blood. It was a mantle that he wore easily, accepting these expectations with a grin that said he'd get to it when he got to it. He wasn't in a hurry.

But now, with Drew, he couldn't be anything but in a hurry. He liked to see her. He enjoyed her company and more than that he enjoyed her touch. Now with her forehead against his cheek Eli turns into her. His head only moves an inch or fraction of, to bring his lips to near her nose and cheek.

"My boss is a fat bitch...he can get another guy to run shit today." He says, whispers, letting her eyelashes tickle his lips and chin.

[Drew Roscoe] She chuckled, grin spreading as naturally across her face as it ever does for her, when he mentions the repossessions and motorist assisting calls he probably got sent out on as well. His mouth was at her cheek, moving against it when he added in about his boss, that there was someone else who could work today. The hand at the back of his neck scuffed upward, over both buzzed short areas and the thick, wiry growth of black that was left behind to run along the center of his scalp.

"If you say so. I never met the guy, so...." It trails off appropriately, not for loss of words but because that's how a sentence like that ends, by leaving the decision of whether someone's a 'fat bitch' or not up to the person that deals with them frequently, that has met them and seen them and had enough leverage to pass such judgment.

The day wasn't quite the flourishing beauty today as what it had been the other day, it had dropped down out of the forties, but still maintained enough warmth to feel nearly spring-like. She didn't need to bundle up to walk home, but if she stayed still for too long the wind would cut a chill through her. She pointed this out with: "Well it's too cold to take advantage of your hog. It's on the other side of town anyways.

"I could make lunch, I suppose? Or we could go out for some drinks." The bridge of her nose nudges at his jaw, a small bump before she lifts her eyes to his. There's a thrill in that, eye contact with their faces so close, that one part of her mind pauses to (over)analyze. Thankfully that part was off in a corner, quiet, muffled, muted. The one that did work that would be later reviewed, rather than jumping up and down and insisting to be paid attention to. "Day's young."

[Eli Booker] (WP roll baby!)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Eli Booker] If Eli were not made up of such a strong mental constitution, things might have gotten weird. They might have gotten confused and convoluted because when Drew looks up into his eyes, it isn't easy for Eli to look away. The place inside of her that warms at a man's touch, that thinks of sharing a bed with another person slumbers. It doesn't in Eli. She looks up at him with eyes close to the same shade as his own and there's an ache in the pit of his gut. His hands move to hold her face still, they're nose to nose and she can see that there's something going on ...there's some kind of war being waged behind his eyes.

The pink of his tongue rolls across his lips and after a long moment Eli's hands slowly fall away from her face and rest on her shoulders lightly. He sighs, his nostrils flare and his dark eyes leave hers only because his forehead presses to hers.

"Trust me when I say, he is a fat ass." He pauses, "And a bitch." He does not touch on anything else that she said.

[Drew Roscoe] There's an ache in his gut, and a tug in hers to match when their eyes meet and stick. His hands come up from her back and hold her face, press to either cheek, fingers wrapping down past her ears and jaw. It's a moment of preventing her from pulling away, keeping her still enough to analyze what he was thinking, feeling, and every logical reason not to. The moment burns long, and his tongue sweeps past his lips before that chance nearly fizzles out.

It would have, too, if Drew didn't seize it. His hands drift down her neck to her shoulders instead, and he presses his forehead to hers. He gets out 'Trust me-' before the words are cut off by Drew's rolling up onto the balls of her feet and pressing her lips into his, catching the statement before it evolves too far. It could have been the pink of his tongue, or the nigh-black glint to his eyes, or simple proximity that spurred her on. It might have been growing for some time without being acknowledged because someone else blocked the way.

It's not clarified, not in this moment, because rather than explain herself she holds the back of his head and neck with one hand, the side of his throat with the other, tips her hips up near to his, and kisses him.

[Eli Booker] To say that he is surprised would be an understatement. Drew does what Eli was trying not to do. Her lips press to his and feel as good as he imagined they would. Both hands find a place on either side of her face, hold her there until they slip down and wrap around the kins waist and press her to him.

Eli's brow is furrowed deeply, his skin is warm.

There weren't any words right then. Nothing save for murmured Mmmmms buried in a kiss that was just a long time coming. Eventually it ends, their lips pull apart and while Eli isn't likely to drift far from her (lips still hovering near her own, nose still toying with her own) but he does move just enough so that he can look more fully into her eyes.

"Do you want me to go?" He asks, which either sounds like the stupidest question Drew's heard all day or the smartest.

[Drew Roscoe] She has yet to know him to push away from her, but she expected because that was due to her never giving him much shove in the first place. She didn't fear reprimanding or what would follow when she closed the distance between them completely like that, had no concern that he would jerk back or grip her shoulders firmly and reinstate space between them. She couldn't read people like Gina could, not near so well, but she wasn't an oblivious girl unable to read the bodies and faces of men.

Sure enough, his hands came back up to her face, his lips softened up willingly to hers, and what felt like pressure that had been a long time building was put into this kiss, more than just a peck, more than something innocent and testing. They both wanted it, they knew, so it lingered. His hands fell to wrap at her waist, and she pressed her belly flush to his and answered his hums that vibrated into her mouth with quiet, soft, encouraging noises of her own.

They didn't make out furiously, jam tongues down one another's throats like they were making up for lost time, though. The kiss broke apart so they could breathe, but Eli kept his nose alongside hers, his lips near enough that their breaths were mingled, lips were nearly whispering off hers when they spoke. He asked a question that she saw all of the reason behind, and she answered it by smoothing her hand over his cheek, back down to the side of his neck again.

"Not in the least." She speaks quietly, it's more breath than voice, but her eyes aren't glassy or lost when they meet his. He's making sure she's okay, and she's doing precisely the same. "But I don't want to rush you any." She didn't worry about things becoming weird. Had no concern for A Talk that might have to follow a kiss, a touch, or anything more. With Booker she felt like things didn't need to be explained, or drawn into a box, or set up with stipulations and rules. They seemed to continue standing on even ground and understanding one another without any of that.

[Eli Booker] There wasn't a lot that Eli feared. He wasn't afraid of gang bangers with guns or monsters that threatened to gut him with just a swipe of razor sharp claws. There were very few things that made his stomach quiver with uncertainty or his mind race with questions that all begin with what if, this moment just happened to be one of them.

She doesn't want him to go. He nods with lips so close they claim hers briefly before his nose rubs against the side of hers intimately.

His heart is beating a wild tempo in his chest the way it had earlier today. The warmth of his lips caresses the line of her jaw, the small space of flesh just beneath her ear and eventually he buries his face in the crook of her neck.

"Drew..." He says quietly, his body untangling from hers briefly. "We shouldn't do this..." That he says this seems to confuse him, the words have a hard time leaving his lips.Drew may not be able to read people as expertly as Gina...but if her perception serves her any, she'd know that his words do not match the intention of his hands as they run along the curve of her spine or his body as it wars with itself to move close and away all at once.

"Everything will change." He states, eyes drawn down to look at the top of her head.

[Drew Roscoe] Her answer to his catching a second kiss, more brief than the initial first meeting of mouths and bodies, is to hum quietly and smile just a little. His lips graze her jaw, then his face simply buries itself into her neck. She tips her head to the side, lifts her chin to give him all the room that he needed, so her nose wound up near his ear, breath caressing over it. They're still for a second, with his hands drift the firm muscle of her back and the somewhat more generous curve between waist and hips. She's running fingers lazily over the top of his head, from strip of thick black hair to buzzed scalp, when he speaks her name and pulls back.

Her hands fall from his head and neck, rest still on his chest as, despite his words of warning, she was still wrapped up in his arms, his hands still making paths down her back and back up again. She isn't insistent when she answers him, nor is she apologetic, embarrassed, stammering... None of the above applies. She looks at his throat while he speaks, he looks at the top of her head, then she leans back some to meet his eyes. Her expression is even as her voice is, though they carry so soft a note of... remorse? perhaps? something sad, that it's nigh impossible to detect, let alone place.

"Then we don't do this." But for those words, she still keeps close to him, rubbing the material of his shirt straps between her fingers listlessly, searching for motion, for touch, something tactile so her hands wouldn't be dead spiders at his shoulders. "But it comes down to going ahead like we have been, being near because it feels comfortable and good and letting things take the route that they would... the one they're trying to now... Or denying it, ignoring it, and letting an awkward kinda tension start building up in its place.

"I've tried to pretend something isn't there between people before. It never seems to work out nicely for anyone, you know? ...But I know what you're sayin' too."

[Eli Booker] It's happened before. Eli should know better. He does know better. Intimacy changes everything and even though the strength of their friendship was felt impregnable there was something about sharing this that always changed the lay of the land.

She says they won't do this, then. That they'll just go on the way that they have been. And that might be okay...for another week or maybe even a month. But eventually, at some point, they'd be right back here lips to lips, chest to chest.

"I don't even know what I'm saying." He lets out a huff of air that brushes her throat. Were this any other woman, Eli would have no problem deciding what to do or where to go from where they were right now. But this is dangerous, and he is trepidacious.

"You're right." It's said with a nod of agreement. This was something that wouldn't just go away simply because he thought that it needed too.

His hands leave her for just a moment, fingers grabbing the hem of the wife beater he's wearing and they lift, tugging it up and over his head. It's tossed with his other shirts and Eli takes Drew's hands by delicate wrists and lays them on the flat of his stomach.

"You promise me you won't end up hating me." He says, dark eyes (heavy lidded) focusing on hers.

[Drew Roscoe] He admits that she's right with an exhale that goes across her throat after he's ducked his head, and the sound of her chuckle is deeper for his ear being so near her voicebox. "I don't think I hear that enough," she tells him with that same old spin of humor that she's apt to keep. Because right now? He needed assurance that everything wouldn't change and come crashing down around his ears. That he hadn't just doomed the friendship they had by letting her near enough to become more than 'kiddo' or an alright girl to slam back some beers with. She wanted to let him know, even if it was with the small quip about his owning up to her being right, that everything else didn't have to go away in the process.

He lets go of her to grab the thin undershirt he was wearing by its hem and drag it off over his head, and she leans back just enough to give him the room to do so. Her eyes don't follow it when it sails by to join the others on the loveseat, but rather stay at his, even when he takes a hold of her wrists and guides her hands to his stomach. Fingers curl against warm, bare skin, and she just grins a little at him.

"I don't think I've got it in me to hate you."

Perhaps that's part of what made her different from any other woman. It certainly wasn't just that she was Kin, there were plenty of those about, especially in comparison to how many Garou there were. She said that she wouldn't hate him, and the words weren't empty. She meant it, though she didn't completely understand why they'd end up that way in the first place.

Now wasn't the time to ask that, though, rather she smoothed her hands from his stomach up, eyes dropping to look over the veritable quiltwork of tattoos he had splashed across his skin, what scars she could find and wondering the stories behind those more than the ink. Ink was choice, commemorating things that needed to be told. Scars, however, spoke stories all on their own. Those she could comprehend without filling the air with too many words, those she could feel raised under her fingertips and know the depth of the damage.

[Eli Booker] She doesn't have it in her to hate him. He knows that she does. Every woman he touches has it in her, eventually. Her fingers move against the warmth of his bare skin and until his brain reminds him that he needs to breathe, he's still.

Eli's body has been broken. In his early, leaning toward mid, twenties, he's suffered more damage than other (mortal) men his age could imagine. There are slice like scars along his side - between each rib bone. There are scars that might of once been bullet holes. Maybe that's why among his club brothers he's known simply as Cat.

He's got fuckin' nine lives.

His eyes move from her to the door thoughtfully. Unaware of who Drew has been keeping company with, Eli could be in very, very big trouble should a Garou with his mind set on courting the Fenrir kin show up. He had a death wish but even that thought gave him pause.

But...her hands are on his stomach and her body is close to his and this time there isn't any pretending. There's no stealing hugs or light touches beneath the guise of simple friendship.

"You got it in you. Everyone does...at some point. I have that effect on people." He grins, pressing the fullness of his mouth against her own.

[Drew Roscoe] In Drew's home, there was always the risk of a knock on the door. She got visits from tribemembers frequently enough, occasionally a male that would have his eye on her, because she was bred and she was strong enough to be mate to Chicago's late Jarl, because she didn't get the chance to have another male's children before he passed on, which meant her attention would inevitably be more focused on the potential children they could bestow upon her. Othertimes it would be a Kin, like Gina, jingling merrily with a bottle of something under her arm and a head full of stories to tell.

The least lucky they could get would be if her self-proclaimed Warden manifested, as he promised he would once every month, without bothering to use a door, let alone knock on one. Even still it was hard to say how he would react. Maybe he'd just be grateful that he was a Kin and not a Garou, like that made things less complicated somehow.

It was a risk, though, he was apparently willing to take because he grinned and pressed his lips to hers for another kiss after letting her know that she, like everyone, could come to hate him. Apparently that's just what he did to people. She grinned back into the kiss and pulled up flush against him once more, stomach-to-stomach, chest-to-chest. The silk-like fabric of her blouse was slippery, the necklace at her chest cold. Her mouth, though, was warm enough to cover for that, hands too as they slid over his ribs, slowly and downward, pausing at the scars and wondering vaguely what sort of surgery, injury, or torture could have left marks like that.

More than just that, though, her lips were parted for him and her heart was beating heavy against his own.

It seemed the 'fat bitch' would indeed just have to settle for getting somebody else to rescue ditch-bound damsels.

[Eli Booker] This entire scenario was populated with an enormous amount of what ifs. But, Eli doesn't care and apparently neither does Drew. The soft silk of her shirt rubs against the bare warmth of his chest and stomach. The cool metal of her chain stands in stark contrast to the other feelings assaulting his senses just then. His fingers tighten up into her shirt and if it's tucked neatly into her slacks, it isn't any longer. There wasn't a lot about Eli that was slow or sweet or tender. Yet, as the two of them become tangled with one another again he's trying to be those things...maybe for her or maybe because he's afraid of pushing her too hard.

Either way he is restrained. Lips on hers, his hands exploring the smooth surface of her back, the curve of her spine. But all of this is done with thought and consideration.

"C'mon." He says, booted feet moving him (and thus her) back toward the stairs of her house.

[Drew Roscoe] He untucks her blouse, slides hands up underneath to feel her shape without anything interfering. As is promised both by her history with dance and gymnastics alike and maintained by the necessity to be at her physical best at any given second, because even the slightest edge meant you could outrun or outmaneuver the thing trying to kill you, the muscles at her back were firm and present, her stomach toned but not so defined as his, basic physical laws kept a higher percentage of body fat than what it did on him. That's what kept the edges softer and more appealing.

He's pacing himself with her, kissing tenderly rather than diving in all harsh and fast, controlling the pace of his hands so he doesn't grasp roughly or squeeze too tight. He might fear that he would overwhelm her, make her change her mind if he moved too quickly or aggressively. Yet he still starts walking through the open space of the kitchen and to the dining room, to the door that closed the staircase off from the rest of the house. It was an old design, back when the mindset was that the upper level should be sternly for family, cut off completely when entertaining house guests. It had suited Drew just fine for exactly that reason-- she didn't want to invite the Garou she allowed a shower and a meal up near her bed.

Elijah, though? She walked along with him, ushered by his vocal urging and his pulling her with as as well.

A thought occurs as they get to the dining room, and she voices it after a kiss, breaking her lips from his and moving a hand from where it had settled at his bare waist to hunt for the doorknob behind her. "You've got one in your wallet, don't you?" Of course he knows what she's asking. Neither were sloppy young teenagers, stupid and fresh to the ways of the world. And despite smiles and grins and (on one side at least) optimism, neither was foolhearty enough to gamble with luck.

[Eli Booker] Truth be told Eli liked the floor plan of Drew's home. There was a distinct separation between what was private and what was not. Up there was her world, regardless of who happened to be bunking on her couch or mooching her hot water for a shower. His shoulder bumps the wall, the door knob jabs him in his side before she can fondle the door knob and slip it open.

She asks about protection and his lips leave hers, head pulling back so he can fully look at her. "What? You think I'm just some man-whore who keeps a condom in his wallet on the off chance he might get laid?" One brow is drawn up in a curious, demanding expression as their progress of moving up the stairs is drawn to a halt.

A beat passes...

"Okay, yeah. I've got some." A grin splits his face and his lips take on hers once more. "We're good." His hands slip down her back and he bends slightly at the waist so that he can lift her up. Both hands (and ten fingers) cup her bottom so that she can wrap her legs around his waist for security.

The maneuvering up the stairs is easier this way. The thud of his heavy boots echoes off the walls on either side of them and unless it's necessary, his lips do not leave hers.

[Drew Roscoe] Heads lean back from one another so a full take on facial expressions could be made. Drew's finding the doorknob, then twisting it and pulling the door open, stepping up against Eli, guiding him back a step to do so. He feigns being offended that she insinuates that he (like almost every other man she knew of) would keep a condom in his wallet just in case, and asks an incredibly rhetorical question. It's met with a lift of an eyebrow and a small smirk, and he grins, owns up, and leans in to claim a kiss. To get up the stairs he decides it's easier (and closer) to carry her. So he drops his hands to grasp at her rear, fingers digging in through the fabric of her slacks and no doubt exploring, enjoying what they find while carrying out the task of lifting and holding her to him.

Her legs circle his waist, spine curves a little more drastically, and a quiet 'mmf' sound is made into his mouth while he carries them up the narrow old staircase to the second level of the home.

The layout was large and open, probably designed to be more than just a bedroom, but that's what she made it to be for herself. In front of the staircase was a large window that overlooked the dreary street with a lounge chair in front of it, a lamp behind. This was likely where she went to escape, to read or look at pictures or hell, possibly even work when she had projects to bring home. To the left was a pair of doors-- probably a closet and a bathroom, though both were closed so it was hard to say which was which right off the bat. To the right the room opened up, gave way to a dresser, a bookshelf, and the queen-sized bed that was made and tucked in nicely, comforter in lighter tones of green and pillows stacked at the head of the bed.

As was the case downstairs, there were no personal pictures to be found up here, just things to break apart emptiness on the walls. She'd had her arms about his neck while they climbed the stairs, but near the top she slips her mouth from his, past to nip once, lightly at his ear before her forehead found his shoulder and stayed there for a second. This helped with balance (which was impeccable for this scenario anyways, being a partner dancer meant she knew how to hold her weight to make being carried, lifted, or thrown the easiest) while she put her hands behind her neck and undid the clasps on her necklaces, both of them

[Eli Booker] The placement of his hands makes it so his fingers are in warm places they have never been with Drew. The whole of his body becomes invested in each touch and kiss. Muscles become tight and tense with anticipation and his voice, when he speaks, is drawn husky and rich in tone.

Drew makes it easy to carry her. Effortless, really, and Eli is not the strongest man in the world - let alone Chicago.

Her hands reach back and start to unfasten her necklace (all of them) and Eli lowers her smaller frame so that she's standing on her own two feet. He's wearing a belt - simple and black and leather and worn. It's loosened without a glance downward, and without it his dark jeans slip down his hips just a bit further.

He's wearing boxer briefs - stripped dark blue and gray - that say Hanes around the waist band. While Drew is putting away her jewelry, Eli is removing his wallet and placing it on the floor next to her bed.

[Drew Roscoe] Her bare feet find the hardwood floor when he lowers her down at the tops of the stairs, and unlike the fumbling of youthful passion would dictate they didn't fall immediately onto the bed, tearing clothing away, breaking buttons and forgetting to take off boots until it was time for pants to come down and they got caught on the shoes. None of that, no. Eli loosened up his belt while Drew took off the necklaces and set them on a small end table by the sitting chair for the time being. Pins were already out of her hair, curls combed out by his fingers so there was nothing but loose waves left behind.

She looked back toward him, lifted an eyebrow when he set the wallet on the floor. She began unbuttoning her blouse, working from the top a few inches below her collarbone all the way down. "You know, you're welcome to the nightstands too..." The comment comes with a bit of a grin, and she shrugs the blouse down off her shoulders, tosses it onto the lounge chair instead. She hadn't bothered with a camisole today, the blazer had stayed on while she was at work. She's left in her slacks, waist-high, and a white bra. No, no lacy negligee to be found, not today anyways. She wasn't the kind of girl to worry about what her underpants looked like when going into the office.

No matter. Her skin was smooth, unblemished by scars, a vast and drastic difference to the canvas of Booker's own flesh. The one thing they did share, though, was black ink. Along her right side, from her ribs to her hip, was a mural of a tree done by an expert hand-- she must have paid quite a bit for this, laid through multiple sessions on an artist's table before it was all finished. That, though, was the only one to be found.

Her fingers graze lightly at the flesh of her own stomach, the gesture appearing a mite self-conscious though nothing else about her did, and she crossed the room to join him, reached out and ran the fingers of her other hand over the top of his chest. There's a moment's pause, and utter sincerity at the bedside when she asks: "You promise you won't hate me after?"

[Booker] There wasn't any rushing. No fumbling or clumsy fondling. This wasn't their first rodeo (as he's been told before) and both of them knew they'd get to where they wanted (needed) to be soon enough. Drew carefully sheds her necklace, her shirt and is left in her bra. It exposes the tattoo on her side and upon seeing it, Eli lets loose a long, low whistle.

"That's hot." He says, grinning from ear to ear. His shirt is removed, pulled over his head by the hem and then tossed with little regard to the floor. He walks out of his boots - toe to heel until his foot comes out of each one. Soon enough his pants fall around his ankles, the sound of change and keys and his wallet chain hitting the floor echoes off the wall.

"Habit." he says when she says he's welcome to use the nightstand. He bends down, rests the black leather item on the nightstand and straightens back out just in time to see her fingers drift over the smooth paleness of her stomach. It's there that his lips travel first.

Brushing against the back of her hand, her knuckles and then the top of her abdomen.

"Never." He'll never hate her he attests. "I can't hate you." He explains.

[Drew Roscoe] Her only answer to his complimenting the tattoo is a small grin. Ink was absolutely nothing new to Booker, be it on his flesh or that of the women he went to bed with. It just wasn't typically expected on a girl like her, small and sweet and full of smiles. She got plenty of raised eyebrows when she stretched her arms over her head to reach something and that bit of ink was exposed, or when she donned a swimsuit and went out with friends, showing exactly how much skin the design covered. It seemed awfully out of character for her.

...But then, one could imagine nobody ever expected to find her grabbing some half-monster's hair, jerking its chin up, and jamming the barrel of her revolver between its teeth so she could paint the floor with its brains.

He'd knelt down when she'd come near, and stayed low, knelt down. He leaned forward to her stomach, kissing at her hand, then the skin of her abdomen, just below the navel, underneath it. Muscles tighten under his lips, already toned, gently defined, and she settles her hands at the back of his head, scrubbing fingertips into his scalp and down his neck. Past the initial jump of muscles from contact, she seems content to lean in toward him, encouraging his touch.

His voice had gone rich and husky, hers was soft, as much breath as it was sound. "Good," she answers. "Then we'll be alright."

[Booker] Drew's tattoo is fitting. It's exquisite and delicate and seems to him to suit her perfectly. His are a mish mosh of different symbols and colors. His lifestyle, though, is even marked onto his flesh. He bears the 1% tattoo on the top middle of his abdomen showing that he is among the 1% of the motorcycle riding population that is not a law abiding citizen. The patch on the back of his jacket, the Grim Reaper with one arm outstretched and his scythe resting in the other is tattooed on his back, covering nearly all the flesh. There are numbers tattooed just beneath where the waistband of his boxer briefs rest - 22 then 13 in a diamond and then 69. There are smooth, perfect parts of Drew's flesh, Eli has very few of those places that aren't colored with some kind of tattoo ink.

Her hand touches the back of his head and his teeth nip at the flat of her stomach. Once up on his feet, Eli steps out of his pants, leaving him in just his underwear and socks.

"Yeah...we will." He says. They'll be good. He hopes that she's right. Turning, Eli starts grab a thin Trojan pack from his wallet, it's left to lay on top of the black leather.

[Drew Roscoe] There's a small shiver when his teeth scrape at her stomach, he feels it both under his mouth and hands alike. A hand rested at the back of his hand while he stayed knelt down, the other traced the tattoos visible through his closely-shorn hair, dipping down behind and under his ear to his neck as well. She had grown accustomed to quaking under teeth. When Joe had used them she'd always feared for her life, her heart would try to hammer its way out of her chest not with thrill but with sheer unadulterated terror. She'd loved him, but she could never, ever trust those teeth. Without a similar threat persisting behind Booker's touch, though, it was quite nice.

He straightened after that, left his pants at the floor and turned about to fish the condom out of his wallet, and Drew undoes the front clasps on her slacks and lets those slide to the floor near his. She's now down to the bra and a pair of similarly white panties, small thin hip-hugging things.

Rather than stand idle and wait for him to get ready, though, Drew steps up behind him, presses her chest and stomach against his back and leans into him. Her hands slide around to his stomach, just below his ribcage, and proceed to dust their way lower in nonsensical, plotless paths until fingertips are skimming the waistband of his boxer-briefs. She had her cheek pressed to his back at first, but now turned her head so her nose touched his spine. Breath whisked over his skin first, followed by lips. He can feel mouth take the shape of a grin while her thumb works just a centimeter or so under the elastic band.

"What was that you'd said before about not deflowering young Kingirls?"

[Booker] He stole touches and tastes and nips of her skin. She does the same, moving behind him once he turns. Maybe Eli was stalling. Maybe he didn't where to go from there, which is a rather silly thought because this surely isn't the first time he's been half naked with a woman. Though it is the first time he's been nearly naked with one Drew Roscoe.

The warmth of her breath, the feel of her lips, the promise (threat) of her fingers just beneath the waist of his briefs - it sends a chill through his body and paints his skin with goose flesh.

She mentions Kora and Eli nods.

"I did. And I won't." Turning, he finds her lips and presses his mouth to hers. Whatever she'd been thinking of saying is lost in the kiss. In a repeat of what he'd done on the stairs, Booker picks up Drew in the same manner and moves to the bed. He keeps moving until the back of his knees hit the side of her bed. He sits with her resting on top of him.

[Drew Roscoe] If there was something worth feeling intimidated by Drew about, she certainly didn't seem to realize it. If she was some sort of idol to be cherished, standing on a platform higher than the rest, she'd snort and insist that if anything she needed taller shoes to match everyone else. Booker wasn't new to the game, he probably (definitely) had more experience than her. But still he gets goosebumps when she slides her hands low across his stomach and nudges just past the last garment he wore.

I won't, he says, and turns to catch the grin she was wearing with a kiss, morph it into something else while he leans forward just enough to grasp her rear and lift her. As before, the lift is easy, she's got her legs about his waist and her hands at his arms to help distribute her weight more evenly, more comfortably through his frame.

Rather than laying her down, he sits and settles her into his lap. Drew refuses to let the kiss break, even while her knees find the mattress at either side of his hip, as she kneels rather than sits completely with her rump hovering instead of settling. Her hands go from the back of his neck to the fronts of his shoulders, her teeth nick lightly at his lip, once, both insisting passage and demanding more.

She'd felt more restrained earlier, like they were still asking permission and testing boundaries even as they made their way up the stairs. She didn't like the trepidation that whispered at the edges of the scenario, didn't want it there at all. So she did her best to drive it away by following teeth with tongue, sweeping it slow against his lower lip and humming encouragement into his mouth.

Stop holding back.

[Booker] She grins and her knees find purchase on either side of his hips.Drew doesn't sit on him, she hovers and because of this his hands rest on her back end before slowly trailing up and working to unfasten the clasps on her bra.

His body is not dead. It is very much alive beneath her touch and there are parts of him that he cannot fully control. Parts that swell and ache with each kiss and touch.

He can feel her push, demand more from him and it's that small nudge and gentle direction that brings his fingers to curl and tangle in the fullness of her hair, holding her to him their mouths locked in a heated kiss.

They are slowly becoming a tangled mess of arms and legs and body parts. Eventually, sooner rather than later, Eli's flipped Drew onto her back with his body wedged between her legs and a hand on the outer thigh of one leg. Warm lips brush her throat, down to her collar bone and further to the swell of her breast.

[Drew Roscoe] Hands go into her hair and tangle up there, keep her head still, contained, so there's little chance of her escaping (not that she would try in the first place). The kiss deepens, heats, and Drew seems satisfied with that, with the pace picking up and rolling with momentum.

There's only so much time that ought to be invested in kisses, and Eli decides when that time has come to its close, punctuates it by seizing her sides and flipping her down onto the mattress, back down face up. He settles between her legs, holds the outside of her left thigh and leans down to trail his mouth down her throat, her collarbone, her chest. He'd undone the clasps of her bra while they were still sitting upright, and she'd taken a second to shrug out of it, revealing bare breasts unmarred by any sort of scar tissue, though not for a lack of trying-- were it not for Last Watch's Child of Gaia she'd have a considerable claw mark from the bottom of her left breast crossing down her front to her right hip. Were it not for the healing powers of the Gaians, she'd be a lot more marked up than she was now (and probably dead).

She tips her chin up to give him room when he's at her throat, and rested one hand at the back of his head while the other curled in the pillows at the top of the bed. The leg he kept his hand on shifted so the inside of that thigh ran smooth along his waist and hip.

[Booker] His mouth refuses to be stationary on any one part of her body. His lips caress the tender flesh of her throat, the slender sides of her neck and down to her shoulders. While Drew is left in her jeans, Eli is in nothing more than briefs and socks. Fingers curl into the denim of her jeans, against the firmness of her thigh, as his lips move further toward her breasts.

This is the first place on her flesh that slows him down. His hand leaves her thigh and his body is shifted so that he's propped up slightly leaving space between his stomach and hers.

While his mouth takes care to show (first the left, then the right) each breast an equal amount of attention, his fingers are unfastening her pants and soon enough the cool air of the room is against the bare skin of her hips and strong legs.

Soon enough (though not soon enough) Drew is free of any clothing that might hide any part of her from his eyes. He, too, shakes loose of the last bit of cotton on his hips.

Neither of them wanted to be parents just yet. While Eli didn't know what this would be - if it would be anything at all - he knew it wasn't enough to bring any children into.

So his hands reach for the black Trojan on the nightstand. They fumble and fondle against whatever might be kept there by her. It's blindly that he grabs, his eyes are closed and his lips (and teeth) are dragging a trail across one thigh as he's reaching back.

[Drew Roscoe] He does a fine job of focusing attention to multiple tasks at once, Drew hardly seems to notice that he's unfastening her pants, more focused on the trail he's leaving from her throat to her chest with his mouth. Her fingers curl to find the edge of the comforter at the top of the bed, back arches some when he separates his stomach from hers, body reaching to rediscover contact though he maintains that distance, because his hands need it to do their work.

Her pants peel from her hips and legs, her panties go along with them. He's shed his boxer-briefs as well, kicked his socks off the bottom of the bed while he was at it. With nothing in the way, things were that much warmer, closer, insistent. His lips close around a nipple, and she breathes out a half-formed word, maybe 'god' or some sort of affirmation, it's rough to say with blood rushing in your ears like this.

Neither planned children to come from this, not anytime soon at least (if ever, at all). Drew hadn't mentioned anything about birth control, it was possible she was on it, equally possible that she hadn't bothered to return to that particular routine after Joe had passed, unknowing of how long mourning would take her, what time span there would be in opening up to a new lover. The condom was the safest, best bet, and his hands touch at an alarm clock and the edge of some hardback book before finding the plastic wrapper.

Down, further and lower, and his teeth drag across her stomach and down to her thigh, and her legs spread willingly to give him room. "Jesus, Eli," she vocalizes quietly, and moves her fingers from his scalp to drag her fingers along his reaching arm, nails too short to leave marks, but grazing none the less.

[Eli Booker] There's a brief moment when his mouth claims her. Tastes her. Caresses parts of her that are warm and private with lips and tongue. His hands, meanwhile, work to free the Trojan of it's packaging. When it's on, secure, and there's no chance that it could slip off or break free or anything just as bad, Eli lays a trail of kisses from Drew's lower abdomen up to her neck.

She had moaned or groaned something that might of been God or fuck or shit and as one hand cups around a strong, gymnasts thigh ...Eli utters the same. There isn't a jolt or push or hard thrust of himself inside of her. Instead, it's one long slow movement until he's deep within her and he's growling into her neck, face buried for what seems like forever.

Drew isn't forced to bear the whole of Eli's weight. He leans on his forearms, a knee slightly drawn up which pushes her other leg up just so. All the while, unless instructed otherwise, Eli's hips do not cease to move. Whether it is a slow slip of himself in then out or a lingering of him deep inside of her before withdrawing ...he isn't still.

[Drew Roscoe] Tongue and lips don't lay siege so much as visit the junction of her legs, tasting and exploring easily, taking their time rather than ravaging and tearing and nipping with teeth. She shivers, manages not to buck her hips from the jolt of initial contact (there had been an awkward moment in her teenage years, laying with her first boy, where he'd startled her doing what Eli was doing and she'd hurt his nose with her pubic bone, she knew now not to repeat that), and presses the heel of her foot into the mattress, arches her back and sighs.

Once the condom was where it needed to be, secure with no chance of slipping (Eli knew what he was doing, he wasn't a young kid on his first go-around, she could trust that it wouldn't fail), he worked his way back up her body, letting his mouth lead him. His hand grasps at the strong, sturdy muscle of her thigh, she grasps the back of his neck and brings his face to hers, lips and tongue seeking his, stealing his breath for a moment with a kiss that tasted like her. Then, not a plunge as much as a slide. He pushes his way inside her, slow and easy, giving her the chance to adjust instead of plowing on ahead and simply expecting that she'll keep up. His head dips down, face pressing into her neck, and the rumble of a growl vibrates under her ear.

Her arms go around him, looping under his so her hands can grasp at his shoulders. He presses her legs up, they happily oblige.

Slow though he may be right now, that doesn't mean he's still. He pushes in deep and she huffs a hot breath out by his ear, turns her head and bites at her own lip while lifting her hips to meet his, pressing as firmly to him as can be accomplished. It's assurance, confirmation, this gesture. Insisting that this was right, inviting to keep going, dashing any implications that there could be second thoughts clear out the window.

[Eli Booker] Neither of them are exactly new at this. She has learned not to buck into a boy's (man) face as he assaults her tender, sensitive parts with his tongue or lips and Eli is aware that this isn't the sort of woman he fucks hard. This isn't Joey or a whore or someone who slips into his attention at last call when all he wants to do is get it in.

There's no rage behind his movement. No anger or red hot heat that threatens to boil over into something rougher or dangerous. Eli is careful with Drew, aware that she is fragile in more ways than one.

His hips press to hers, then fall away. Hungrily his mouth claims her own, tongue seeking out hers and dancing frantically with it. Eli's brow furrows and lost within their kiss is a soft groan born of pleasure.

Eli's palms press into her bed, they brace his weight above her and if her eyes were open she'd see the flex and tightening of muscles through his upper body.

It could be just a few minutes or a handful of minutes that he moves within her this way, held up above her with long arms. Eventually, he lowers himself and shifts his weight, both hands on her hips and tugging her with him so that he's on his back and she's on top now.

Brown eyes soak in her body, palms smoothing up the flat of her stomach, caressing the tattoo on her side.

[Drew Roscoe] His hands post against the mattress on either side of her head, his face moves out away from her neck, from the curtain of thick half-curled brown hair so that he can seek her mouth out and claim it with a kiss, the sort that has his brow furrowed and lingers so that his quiet groans are muffled against her tongue and cheeks. He's slow with her, taking and savoring time instead of losing control and tossing rhythm out of the equation in favor of something more raw.

He supports her weight, and for that she's thankful. He's not near so heavy as Joe had been, but he still had a good seventy pounds or so on her. She wasn't weak, not by any stretch, because she was Fenrir and she'd been through what many Kin would be shocked at (but not in Chicago, in Chicago such trials were commonplace), but size still had to be considered. He wouldn't crush her, but to lay his full weight against her would be uncomfortable. Yet, despite that, she doesn't seem fond of having space between them. Her arms flex about his shoulders, help draw her in nearer so that their stomachs are flush, the insides of her thighs resolutely against his hips.

Some number of minutes lost to the alarm clock on the nightstand pass, and he's moving his hands to grasp at her hips and rolling onto his back, switching it around so that she was pressing one hand on the mattress to keep balance, then straightening up and settling above him. Her knees find purchase near his sides, hold as a base for motion. Her hair curtains about her face and shoulders, hangs before her eyes when she leans forward to put her mouth to his throat, delve her tongue against the hollow of it and let it trail down to his chest before she's straightening back up again.

His hands run up her stomach, firm with muscle but not so cut as his own, femininity preventing that. He trails his fingers along the paths that the black ink branches play out on her right side. She's gathering her hair up with one hand, out of her face and off her shoulders and back, holding it with one arm over her head that stretches her frame into something long and appealing on the eye. Her other hand splays over his stomach, and she finds rhythm rocking forward and back, lifting enough to slide him an inch or two out before settling her his downward once again.

[Eli Booker] They move, twist easily together so that Eli is on his back. The man with Drew isn't Garou. Nor is he any kind of athlete whatsoever. He does not run or jog or do cardio or lift weights. He smokes and is easily winded, so he's thankful for the relief of resting on his back against the cool sheets of her bed.

The feel of her tongue against his skin sends a rush of goose flesh across his body. It leaves him clenching his eyes shut as the muscles in his stomach and thighs tighten and tense.

He groans, mutters a few curse words and allows his hands to travel from her sides to cup the swell of her breasts.

When his eyes open she's taking an arm and swiping her hair back. The dark brown of his eyes meet hers and there's no threat - no rush of peril from Rage that's kept caged just beneath the surface of warm flesh. He's taken for a moment by just how beautiful Drew is, briefly he wonders what the fuck she's doing letting a guy like him anywhere near her.

There are minutes that pass, ten or fifteen maybe, and his hands find purchase on her hips. He holds her still, his body a tight bundles of muscles.

He's there. She can tell. It's written on his face, in the way that he holds her hips and presses himself deep inside of her. The way that he almost whimpers and growls all at once.

[Drew Roscoe] Eli Booker was a dangerous guy, half-unhinged when he decided he couldn't be bothered with keeping things personable and polite. Drew'd just watched him press his forehead to the barrel of a gun and positively snarl at the man holding the cannon to fire it. He could take a punch and give it right back, he was someone she'd want and trust at her side if things came down to violence, as they so typically do. That said, however, he was not an athlete. Fights were fast things, brutal in how quickly they tended to come to an end, they didn't require one keeping pace and breath even. Lucky for him, Drew was physically conditioned, and she was more than happy to take the reigns, sitting upright while his back pressed to the cushions, rolling her hips against his.

Angles would shift from time to time, she found one leaned forward that worked out well so she could kiss and nip at his chest and shoulder. More time passes, neither can be bothered with watching the clock. There's a film of sweat along Drew's neck and back when Booker's fingers bite into her hips, when he lifts himself off the mattress to bury into her as deeply as he can manage.

Drew drags herself up along his length and leans forward to murmur encouragement into his ear, catching the lobe between her teeth before pressing down as far as she could manage, face in his neck, grinding a few quick motions out and half-moaning her soft, breathy cries of pleasure against his skin.

Come on, she'd breathed.

[Eli Booker] Her hips work against his. She leans forward and her teeth nip at him, her tongue touches his skin. Eli's flesh is hot, feverish and flushed. It isn't until she whispers (come on) that his upper body shifts, moving as if to sit up. Arms wrap around her, cradle her into him while he lavishes kiss upon kiss upon kiss on her collar bone and throat.

There is a difference between orgasm when you where protection and when you don't. Were they unprotected Drew would know instantly that Eli has done exactly what she requested. The warmth of a part of him would fill her up. She'd feel it, the tensing of his body, of his erection buried inside of her.

But, with the soft sheath of a Trojan wrapped skin tight around him ...that sensation is lost. She would still feel the tension, the flexing, the shiver and groan / growl of pleasure that bubbles up through his throat and vibrates from his chest against her own. But it isn't the same.

Eli does not move, even after. He remains sitting up, Drew in his lap and his lips roaming the slope and curve of her neck and shoulder.

[Drew Roscoe] Urges are met with a physical response, immediate and unyielding. Eli's arms go around Drew's petite body, he draws himself up closer to her, chest and stomach flexing to do so. His mouth is at her throat and clavicle, pressing one kiss after the next while his hips flex to hers. Motion is fevered, anxious and working in the way it is when the finish line is right there. Drew tips her chin up, her breaths labored puffs that carried soft vocalizations on them over Eli's head, toward the ceiling.

Were it not for that condom, she'd feel a rush of warmth, a sensation of fullness that was difficult to describe without being very base, very animal in why it was so appeasing. Even without, though, the flex of his arms around her, the jerking half-twitches while he spills into the latex sheathe, the shiver and the sound he makes into her throat... it all indicates his moment, and excites her, helps drive her over her own edge.

Her lips press to the top of his head, arms around his shoulders and neck, nails biting dull and painless into his skin. Her breath catches, body goes still save for the trembling of muscles that have been so active now clenched so tight, suspended in motion. The warmth that had been growing in the pit of her stomach spread throughout, and when she exhales, finally, it's a shuddering thing before she relaxes against him, hips still making small half-aware rotations into his lap though her cheek rested against his temple, hands loosened at his back and arms going loose as well.

She sits still with her legs about his waist, bare chest to the top of his. This calm, fuzzy, sweaty moment that follows orgasm is a comfortable thing, and Drew relishes it by tucking her head and breathing his smell from his neck.

"See?" She says finally, quiet enough not to shatter the after-calm. "Not a lot of hate."

[Eli Booker] "Not yet..." He says, his breath flooding his lungs in quick waves. She buries her face near his neck and draws in his scent, he rests his forehead on her chest and feels her heart beat against his skull. Reluctant to move, he finally shifts so that they can both lie back on the bed, keeping her at his side with an arm drapped around her lazily.

Eli's eyes have fallen closed. He is satisfied and exhausted and comfortable at once.

"Just wait. You'll hate me. Eventually." He's grinning, peeking out of one eye at the other kin even as his lips brush against her forehead.

[Drew Roscoe] He lays back, lets her settle onto the bed beside him, and she wriggles her hips just enough to disengage from where they'd joined. He assures her that it may take time, but she'll learn to hate him, and she answers that with a chuckle, a shake of her head, and by getting comfortable enough to rest.

Her heart had beat against his forehead when it was settled just above, between breasts, it was heavier and faster than normal for obvious reasons. She wasn't struggling to catch her breath, but her breathing was still deep and steady enough that she hadn't recovered completely. Her leg hitched over his, she drew herself close enough that the moist warmth between her legs pressed to the front of his thigh, that his still slick, condom-cased parts were against her stomach. She hummed, sound not disagreeing or affirming, but merely content with the brush of lips on her forehead and acknowledging of what he'd said.

"We'll just have to see, then."