Private Hangover: Family Edition

[Aver Brand]

Knock

The sound echoed through the suite, stumbled over a discarded pile of clothes, and fell flat over an empty bottle on the floor.

Knock knock

A shape underneath the sheets stirred. There was a grumble, then the sound of glass tumbling to the ground as one long, tattooed arm grasped blindly at a nonexistent alarm.

KNOCK KNOCK

“Fuck,” croaked a voice that had smoked one too many cigarra and tipped one too many Whyren’s. “My fucking he—”

“Mr. and Mrs. Smith, this is housekeeping. May we come in?”

Fffffffffffffffffffff— “Give us a minute!”

Aver tugged the sheets off her face and grimaced at the bright light filtering from the balcony. She smacked the taste of Tatooine from her mouth. Considered weighing the poor choices that had culminated in the pounding headache behind her eyes. Reconsidered, and promptly began the indelicate process of extracting herself from the pile of bodies tangling her limbs.

Every movement elicited a groan of discontent from… she didn’t know any of these people, but what else was new? On her way off the mattress, Aver counted two men and three women, and that was just the bed. She almost stomped someone’s face as she set to the mountainous task of finding the fucking door to this fucking p—

“Mrs. Smith, are you there?”

“I said I’m coming!” She shielded her eyes from the (afternoon?) sun and stepped over a pair of twi’leks that had ended up halfway off the couch. The kitchen she only glimpsed – more bottles, several spilled packets of spice, a crushed bag of glitterstim… she could go on but preferred not to.

Baby steps.

Pausing in front of the door, Aver took a moment to slick back her hair (sticky from… well, take a guess) and sloppily do up the two remaining buttons on the shirt she’d pilfered off an unconscious zeltron on the carpet.

Mrs. Smith opened the door and flashed her best smile at the houseke– oh.

“Good morning, officers. How can I help you?”

 

[Rune Shamalain]

It was one of those moments where you wake up after rolling a 1 out of 12.

The splitting headache.

The double vision.

The churning gut.

The spinning room.

The all-over aching regret of every dumb thing you did during the night.

The aftertaste.

The knotted hair.

Rune woke up as one of those two unknown men in the bed. Except he wasn't an unknown - not to Aver Brand - but his face had been obscured, buried as it was in the mattress with a haphazard pillow thrown overtop. The knocking brought him to, the movement of a body in the bed set his stomach swirling. The continued knocking made him aware of the pounding in his skull.

"Huhhhh-" the man groaned from beneath a pillow, a rumpled bedspread, and various limbs of various humanoids strewn about like mismatched puzzle pieces. Aver was halfway to the door when he began to push himself up only to find the weight of some unknown twilek lolling over him. She made a noise, rolled a bit and snuggled into his back, her sleepy gaze blinking briefly at the chiaroscuro of the vast swathe of illustrated ink across his pale flesh. She kissed it.

"Kins-" he muttered, rubbing absently at his eyes, "I need to get up."

"Hmmmm, who's Kins? I'm Pekra."

Rune dropped his hand, eyes wide and red from far too much indulging into the ungodly hours of the night. Pekra? Who the fuck was Pekra? A groan sounded from his right - far too deep to be a woman. With a jerk he twisted, found himself entangled around the shoulders by a leg far too large and hairy to belong to a woman, and - "What the fuck."

"What's the problem? S-some-someone at the door?" a third body, another unknown woman yawned and stretched on the opposite end of the bed.

That was the straw. He panicked, scrambled, and tried with graceless desperation to get himself untangled from limbs, bedsheets, comforter, and woman, managing only to drop haplessly off the edge of the bed onto the ground, naked as the day he was born. Or, as the day he was spilled out of his clone tube, as it were.

"What the FUCK."

 

[Aver Brand]

“Good morning, ma’am. I’m officer Daniels, and my partner here is Grissk.”

The bald humanoid of the pair, whose eyes lingered a bit too long on her chest. The trandoshan flashed a grin and swapped the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. Baldie waved his holobadge in her face, then gestured to her outfit with his tablet pen “Mrs. Smith, I presume?”

Aver glanced down and noticed the lipstick decorating her thighs. “Yep, that’s me.”

And Mr. Smith? No fucking clue. There was only a black void where last night’s memories ought to be, and many men in the galaxy who would jump at the chance to warm her bed. Any one of the lovers littering the suite could be her would-be husband.

“Right. So we’ve had a couple complaints about noise and disturbance of peace.” Daniels scrolled down his tablet, “and… someone reported violent assault?”

Her smile didn’t falter. Decades of Sabacc and backroom deals will do that. “Excuse me? Based on what?”

“Based on—”

A loud thump sounded from the bedroom. Aver closed her eyes and exhaled.

“What was that?”

“Just Mr. Smith getting up to join us, I’m sure.”

“Yeah, we’re coming in. Step aside, ma’am.”

Aver plastered on her best fake smile and backed up just enough to obscure the kitchen with her broad frame. No need to add five types of drugs to this rapidly growing rap sheet. Even if it wasn’t going to make it out of the room alive.

The cops stepped past her and shoved the door closed. No blasters yet, but Grissk looked awfully twitchy with those claws of his. At least the fucking housekeeper was out of the picture. If bullshit went down, Aver knew she could snap them both like twigs before they so much as touched their guns, hungover or not.

“This is the ZPD,” announced Daniels as he took point, stepping over the zeltron out cold on the carpet. “Show yourself.”

 

[Rune Shamalain]

Pants.

Where were his fucking pants?

Rune managed to snatch a blanket off the back of the couch before dipping sideways into the fresher. Not out of any inclination that his pants would be in there, but to gain himself a moment of silence to try and piece together what the hell was going on. As luck would have it, he found his pants on the floor inside. Except they were half under a passed out zeltron whose skimpy dress of glitz and glitter was stained with blood. With ever so much graceless care, Rune attempted to extract the pants from the girl and he nearly got them before she slumped to the side.

Eyes bugged, Rune gave the pants one last yank and quickly pulled them on, hissing as the seam settled over deep bruise marks on his hips. What the fuck? The woman groaned on the floor, so he stooped to check on her. She was alive and breathing, but where had all the blood come from?

"This is the ZPD. Show yourself."

Oh....fuck....no.

A bite mark. A fucking bite mark. And not just a I-like-to-bite-during-sexy-times mark, a full on serrated flesh wound of the blood-sucker variety. Namely himself. He could smell himself on her.

Oh no.

Oh no no no no.

 

[Aver Brand]

Where the fuck was the other guy? Aver stared daggers at the sprawled bodies in the suite, few of which were twitching despite the cops’ less than dulcet tones. Fuck, her head hurt. The fuck did she take?

The disheveled firrerreo glanced over her shoulder at the smorgasbord of drugs spilled over the counter. She peered back at Daniels and Grissk, who were now beginning to check on the… were they whores, though? Couldn’t fucking remember if she’d just hired half the bar or charmed the pants off… what, ten people?

Both scenarios were plausible, to be honest.

With their eyes elsewhere, Aver slipped into the kitchen and summoned her deeply reluctant reserves of the Force to pack the array of illicit substances into a tiny ball of dust and plastic. She could fucking feel the pulse of her heart in her forehead. Fuuuuck. A quick twitch of her wrist, and the gravity of evidence landed in the palm of her hand. Time to dump the drugs.

She peeked past the doorframe – the coast was clear – then crossed the plush corridor separating her from the fresher. As soon as the door closed behind her, Aver turned around to find the toilet—

“Rune?” she hissed at the man who was somehow even paler than usual and staring at a… “the fuck are you doing here?”

 

[Rune Shamalain]

He'd been trying to wake the woman up when a third body entered the bathroom. Rune turned his bloodshot gaze upward from where he stooped, following the line of cut, muscular legs beyond thighs of thunder right to red- Rune quickly averted his gaze, "Aver?!" he hissed and scrambled to stand. Only, he'd scrambled too quickly and found himself without the proper ability to cope with sudden changes in altitude, and so ended up on his ass at the woman's feet.

What was he doing here?

What the fuck was she doing here?

Where the fuck was here?

Who the fuck was that?

How the fuck?

The man cringed at the heady swill of his brain knocking against the insides of his skull. A reverent pounding in his temples growing like drums of war.

"I-" he held his hand up to shield his eyes from the vanity lights - why were they so fucking bright? - and swallowed a bitter taste of major regret that had suddenly welled up from his gut as things slowly began to connect, "I'm asking myself the same question. What the fuc-"

The zeltron woman stirred where she sat, roused by the voices and Rune's tumble to the floor, opened her eyes to look at them both and SCREAMED.

 

[Aver Brand]

Before the zeltron got more than two harsh syllables out of her throat, Aver whirled on the spot and backhanded her into next week. The woman stumbled, gurgled, and collapsed over the edge of the bath in a tangle of spidersilk curtain. The support bar came crashing down on top of her, revealing not one, but two more bodies in the tub – a snoring houk and a chiss sprawled on top of his barrel chest. The lot of them looked positively fucking angelic, except of course for the dried streaks of red decorating their bare skin like some lind of abstract painting.

“What’s going on in there?!”

The fucking cops, of course. Aver growled and slammed her back against the door. “Everything’s fine, officers, my husband’s still a bit drunk, is all!”

She pinned Rune with her gaze and jerked her chin at the bath. “Clean up your shit,” she hissed, teeth bared against the pounding in her skull. “And gimme that bar.”

Daniels and Grissk probably weren’t the edgiest Sith on the council, but even they wouldn’t buy an excuse as flimsy as a zelton’s g-string.

 

[Rune Shamalain]

Rune felt those two seconds of terror strike him to the core as the woman bore a gaze of pure, unadulterated fear right into him. He froze, brought back to reality at the sound of Aver's hand cracking her across the face, and blinked in wild-eyed shock.

"Aver!" he hissed at her, Red Nebula did she have to hit the girl so hard? Now she was out cold and bleeding from her mouth. He didn't have time to calculate just how disgusted he felt in the moment, both with her and himself, because apparently there were authorities at the door.

Authorities.

Did she just call him-?

Rune made a gesture of growing aggravation, hands wringing into fists at either side of his face, and decided his head hurt too fucking much to maintain decorum. He shoved himself to his feet and staggered, drowsy with hangover, to the shower where he snatched up the bar and tossed it haphazardly at Aver, "What the fuck is going on?!" he snarled under his breath back at her and slapped the water on for the showerhead. It would wash away his shit and wake the tub's occupants. Three birds, one stone.

Well, probably only two birds. That girl wasn't likely to wake again quite so easily.

 

[Aver Brand]

"Aver!"

She met his eyes and shrugged with her whole body. The fuck did I do? Like letting the schutta scream her lungs out was the better option? Please.

Before they could get into it, the pounding started again – in her skull and on the door. Fucking hell if they got a second of reprieve. Aver caught the metal bar from the wrecked shower and gave it a test twirl. It’d do.

“Move away from the door, Mrs. Smith! Move, or we’ll be forced to… use force!”

The firrerreo snorted and dragged a hand across her face. Just shoot her now.

“Mrs. Smith!”

Fucking— “Yes, alright, calm your fucking tits! A man can’t dress in peace now, or what?” Her shoulders shook as she laughed in silence, then winced when it redoubled the pulsing pain behind her eyes.

“There’s a shower running, Mrs. Smith! You better not be washing away the—”

Aver stepped aside and the door swung open, revealing Daniels with his fist in the air. His gaze slid off the redhead and to the elusive Mr. Smith.

“—ass.”

The elusive Mr. Smith, who was presently bent over the bath and cleaning the blood off three limp bodies.

“What the fu—”

Baldie crumpled like a marionette as the mercenary struck his jaw with the bar. Before the trandoshan could so much as twitch the hand on his holster, Aver brought the rod around for another uppercut. With the loud crunch of steel meeting bone, Grissk was laid flat in the corridor.

“Figure out if they know anything,” she threw over her shoulder as she began dragging the cops into the kitchen, “I’ll take care of these two.”

Did that mean a blaster shot between the eyes? Tying them to the stove wiring with their own cuffs? Only the cosmic gods and their dice could guess at this point.

 

[Rune Shamalain]

He was frantically trying to scrub bloodstains off the two bodies in the shower, both of which he had no idea what they were - was that one a houk? Is that what female houks looked like? Please be a female houk....he wasn't actually sure if being a female would make the situation any better. And what the fuck was this one? It was a massive lump of dark, rubbery flesh-

The door swung open.

"--ass."

Rune looked back over his shoulder, eyes bugged while he full-body-stooped over the pile, smearing more than cleaning what he believed to be blood but it was, in fact, the wrong color of likeness. What the hell bled blue?

As if his eyes could not get any bigger, they did. All he could see from his vantage half-in the shower was Aver swinging for a home run. He barely heard the thud of bodies over the sound of the showerhead.

Find out if they know anything.

"They're not even conscious!" he yelled after her. When she didn't answer back he looked down to the houk, grabbed hold of its shoulders and began to wildly shake it, "wake up!"

~


Several minutes later and very sopping wet Rune staggered into the kitchen, hand grappling at the nearest solid objects that were firmly built into the floor to keep from keeling over, "A BAR-" he blurted, "they met us at a bar. Said some shitfaced redheaded butch invited them up," his gaze landed firmly, pointedly on her - what the fuck was she doing?

Rune chanced further steps and stumbled over to the table, planting his hands upon it to catch himself and giving a sudden, hurking gasp as it hit him-

There where people all around the table, at least a dozen of them. No one was fully dressed. Most hands were occupied with groping or drinking. Several were chanting, jeering. He watched his own hand shove Aver back onto the table, silvered skin glistening with spilled liquor.

"Fffff-" Rune swayed, eyes rolling as the vision continued unraveling in smeared, hazey glimpses. He felt sick.

A line of shimmering powder followed the ridge from her belly button, up the middle of her bare chest to the cusp of her neck. He leaned forward, paper roll set, exhaled and then -

HURK. Rune threw up over the side of the table as the memory of taste, sickeningly sweet and tarte blasting up his nasal passages and dripping down the back of his throat, stinging and biting and filling his head with spellbinding G L I T T E R.

 

[Aver Brand]

After tying up the two officers, Aver had rummaged around the kitchen for something to wash the taste of cotton from her mouth. She found an as-yet unfinished bottle of… well, it wasn’t Whyren’s Reserve, but for a morning-after disinfectant, it would do. It only took one tepid, stale swig to decide to upend the rest right past her tastebuds.

For the first time since waking up in a pile of bodies in some unknown hotel, Aver was sporting a shit-eating grin as she scrolled through the police tablet in her hands. Grissk was staring back, yellow eyes bloodshot and narrowed.

“Well, we got the where at least.” The trandoshan grunted, struggling against his own cuffs. “You’ll be fine. If I was gonna shoot you, you’d already be dead.”

The blasters and tasers she’d confiscated were still on the table. Their gas canisters and power cells, though… not so much. They were clogging up the toilet along with the compressed baggy of drugs; in a word, useless. With the cops disarmed, she and Rune were the only two creatures left in the suite capable of dishing out lethal violence. Speaking of which…

A decidedly non-lethal, sodden Shamalain stumbled into the kitchen. He babbled something about a bar and rapidly turned green as he grasped for support. No way. What was this, a whole fucking family of world-class lightweights?

“Are you still drunk?”

HURK

Aver curled her lip at the acrid-sweet smell of spice, alcohol, and bile as they splattered across the tile. She squinted, leaning forward from her perch against the counter – was that blood?

Oh. Oh no.

“I offered a couple interested folks a good time, so sue me,” she bit back, crossing her arms. “Also, shitfaced? Me? Look at your fucking self.”

“You give me a lecture on fucking and food and self-control and then…” she waved her glass at the pools of red in the vomit. “Like I don’t know what these—” the firrerreo bared her own fangs “—look like? Please.”

Aver poured herself a new helping of the trash-tier whiskey. “That girl,” she pointed at the fresher and arched a brow, “she wasn’t screaming at me.”

Grissk whimpered into his gag and squeezed himself deeper into the corner of the kitchen.

“Oh.” She tipped the amber down her gullet and flicked the droplets at the shrinking trandoshan. “We’re on Zeltros, by the way.”

 

[Rune Shamalain]

Those...

Those were a lot of red words.

Rune continued to swim as they battered his ears and joined the chorus of MERCILESSLY BEATING DRUMS in his temples. Every sentence punctuated a swooping POUND and the man sunk lower over his precarious lean on the table.

Lower.

l o w e r

Yep, he was on the floor. The floor was undulating like an angry sea. That sweet G L I T T E R was sitting at the top of his gut, burning at his esophagus like a bad meal that wouldn't go away.

"Could you-" Rune carefully eased himself back against the kitchen cupboards, eyes closed, body stiff against the dip and yaw of the room, "stop talking. For a moment. Excuse me."

HURK. Again.

 

[Aver Brand]

Fucking USELESS Shamalains.

Why did she get stuck with the hot useless one and not the hot useful one?

Wellllllll, Qui ain’t exa—

Aver groaned and wrenched her gaze from Rune to the ceiling. The room tilted at her violent gesture, and the whiskey slopped onto her hand as she caught herself against the counter.

“Or you could stop fucking puking everywhere. Fucking— making me sick.” She pinched her nose closed to stave off the smell and downed the paltry remainder of the booze. The burn did little to subdue the flaring headache in her temples, the pulsing pain behind her right eye. The fuck did she do?

The sound of spice sweat. The sight of blaring music. The taste of flashing lights.

And bodies. A crowd. A throng. A crush, a stampede.

A fucking rave.

She blinked herself back to her current, over-bright reality of noontime on Zeltros, her back against the drawers and her head in her hands. Grissk was staring at her from the other corner of the kitchen, bug eyed and half-chewed through his towel-gag. Daniels was still drooling against the stove, which… a problem, but for later and for someone else. And Rune…

Well, Rune was on her level. Or she’d stooped down to his. Either way, they were on the floor, except he was surrounded by bloody vomit so yeah, Aver could claim the moral high ground for once in her life.

Whoop-de-fucking-doo.

“Right. That’s enough.” She found her legs again, resolutely shoving down the drip-feed of memories where they were assuredly and easily moving to a beat, a deep, pounding bass right down in her c—

The mercenary hauled the pitiful blonde and pale onto his feet and then over her shoulder. Like an exceptionally handsome and chiseled sack of potatoes.

Out and onto the balcony they went. Nothing sobered a man up like fresh air and some good old mortal danger.

 

[Rune Shamalain]

Right here felt like a particularly fabulous place to just fucking die.

Rune slivered bleary, unfocused eyes of frosted blue on the yammering woman across the kitchen, tried to take a deep breath to say something, stopped as soon as his diaphragm hit his belly, and swallowed the rising need to vomit again. Gods. Make it stop.

Just breathe.

Slooooow down the heartbeat.

Shut down the brain.

Drift back off to-

"Hffff-" that was an Aver grabbing his arms, "what are you- no - Aver wait I-" fffff her shoulder was in his gut and he felt his body leave the corporeal realm. Well, the floor. Same difference. He gave a struggling grunt as the blood rushed to his head and the squeeze of his stomach over her shoulder forced the burn of bile back into his esophagus.

"Av - Aver put -" he went to try and brace himself against her and palmed her ass while the rest of him pathetically tried to wrangle himself free to no avail, "huuuuuuuuuh-" HRK.

As soon as Aver stepped out onto the balcony she'd feel it hot and wet down her backside.

 

[Aver Brand]

Aver, and the universe with her, screeched to a halt.

There was a slow-motion moment as she considered the sum total of decisions that had brought her to this point in life. She closed her eyes and exhaled the burn of whiskey and anger in her gut.

Breathe.

Remember to breathe.

Just bre— nope.

One bright Benduday in the middle of summer, Aver Brand yote Rune Shamalain right off the edge of the balcony.

 

[Rune Shamalain]

"Aver I-"

Huuuuuuh-OOP

"-m sorryyyyy~"

And thusly did the pale man fly nay, but plummet like a soiled, detestable, discarded undergarment. Such did he descend, past open balcony and morning riser, down down down to splash gloriously into the communal pool. Black ink on alabaster skin slapped righteously with the water surface, and many did the reposing tourist screech and flee, verily bathed in the surge of his wake.

Bubbles surfaced amidst the waves as he sunk into the depths of the pool's deep end.

And then several long moments later he resurfaced with a desperate, choking gasp, floundering in his hapless state of residual inebriation, to find his way to the edge of the pool where he grappled himself up and did collapse onto his back, heaving for breath.

Well, at least now he was arguably clean.

 

[Aver Brand]

No ragrets.

Icy eyes tracked Rune’s trajectory through the soupy air of a Zeltros afternoon. A nice parabolic arc if she did say so herself. Considering the preparation and foresight that had gone into the yeet – none – the results were rather awe-inspiring if she did say so herself.

Not that Aver was saying much. What was there to say when you had blood-vomit dripping down your asscrack?

SPLASH

Considering his svelte form, the male man made quite an impression where he smashed into the water. Someone else would’ve broken a leg at least , but not Rune, oh no. He had the audacity to emerge spluttering from the impact site in the middle of the pool, somehow looking better for the twenty-story drop.

Lucky that noon wasn’t exactly prime-time for soaking in tepid chlorine under the summer sun, or there would’ve been injuries for sure. Maybe even a death or two. And then they’d have the cops on their ass. Wait—

Aver groaned, peeled off the ruined shirt, and jumped after the Shamalain.

 

[Rune Shamalain]

Brand's tidal wave smashed against his front, rush into his open mouth-breathing and up his nostrils. He coughed, he sputtered, he choked, he wished he was dead, and then promptly let his entire self flop back onto the wet ferrocrete surface of the pool patio while Aver did her best impression of a drunken orca.

Rune was seeing bursts of light before his eyes but he couldn't be sure if it was the glimmering reflections of pool water under the bright sun, or bursts of flashing strobes and neon signs. He groaned, pulling both hands over his face to hide from the shooting pains in his vision...

Spoiler

...and in the blackness he saw himself clambering into the back of a limousine after a very drunk Aver who had in her expert state of inebriation, went to sit down and instead toppled backwards in through the door like a falling log. The pair of them landed in a heap spread across the belly of the speeder with the door smacking shut on their soles.

He pushed himself up, long hair having flipped over his eyes, and looked down at the woman beneath him. Sober Rune would have apologized profusely. Drunk Rune presently keening on pheromones just found himself inexplicably turned on and hungry.

Expertly inebriated was the word. Two words? Who cared. Aver definitely wasn't immune to zeltron pheromones, and neither was Rune, clearly.

"Is that a lightsaber in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

Rune did something very un-Rune-like, he smirked. Toothily. "Haven't-" the speeder lurched into motion, "-carried a lightsaber since I woke up in this body..." his expression was smug and completely lacking in any sense of gentlemanly poise. Without a single word more he sank in for her lips with gusto. Welp.

A smirk?!

Force, the man truly was trippin'. Not that the mercenary was in a much better state, mind. If she were just a fraction more sober; a shade less likely to drown a man between her thighs; a sight less angry and coping poorly with eMoTiOnS— well, she probably would've done the same thing, to be honest.

Aver pulled him down by his hair, happy to loosen the leash on her strength with a body that could take it. And could Rune ever.

Some would argue a kiss shouldn't be brutal, but there wasn't many other words that well described what was happening between them. The stark surge of arousal brought on by show of strength spurred him on more eagerly - the speeder banked a corner and he pitched to the side, his fangs catching Aver's lip and drawing the first well of blood. The tang of it hit his tongue and the reaction was instantaneous: Rune went rigid - everywhere before a shiver ran the course of his entire body.

"Gods I want you."

If she were sober, the taste of iron might've been enough to put some distance between them, but she was decidedly not, and so it only made things worse. After decades with Qui, she knew that reaction in her bones… and many other places besides.

Aver dug her fingers into his sharp jaw and rolled them over, squeezing his hips with her thighs as she slammed him against the floor of the limo. With a red-stained grin, she leaned in and sank in her own teeth until another droplet slid off her lip and into his mouth.

"Do something about it, then."

Couldn't say what winded him more, getting manhandled and pinned beneath a woman who could actually hold him there or the taste of her blood in his mouth. Rune lay there, momentarily stunned, bright blue eyes pinning, senses swimming in a veritable storm of stimulation, before he pounced. Well, as much as anyone pinned to the floor of a moving limousine could. Ensnaring her around the middle with a headily desirous and roving grip, he yanked her in flush against his body and claimed the woman's mouth again. The moment her blood hit his throat he felt his hunger ping, breaking from her lips to smear a bloodied kiss down her neck. Aver would feel the beastly strength of his hands gripping along her back before she'd feel his fangs since into her flesh.

The raw red lines on her back, the fangs in her neck – felt like thirty years ago. Like riding ego and bloodlust down to their inevitable conclusion of a fuck in the middle of a battlefield. Like flirting around a missing limb during a frontal assault and then doing something about it. Like ritual masochism surrounded by living technology, like turning a planet inside-out just to satisfy the selfish desire to straddle the top of the world.

At 54, she was straddling Rune Shamalain and riding the rapid high of bloodloss instead. #progress

At 54, she also had enough wherewithal to wrench him away when she felt her heartbeat flutter in her ears.

"I knew it." Aver rocked back in his lap with a rough laugh, icy eyes drifting closed as the limo swayed around her. Her fingers were still wrapped around his throat – a touch just firm enough to be a warning that any predator could recognize.

"I knew that speech on Thral was fucking bullshit."

Her blood fucking

SLAPPED.

Rune felt it in his chest first with a savage gnawing hunger for MORE, his gut next for the pang of sated need, his loins then with the burn need of something else entirely, into his limbs then as a rampant needling tingle of he had no fucking idea what, and then finally his head as a wave of elucidation slowly but surely slid over his conscious self like a titillating blanket of euphoria.

He did not ... no, could not hear the words leaving her mouth because they weren't words, they were flashes of light. And those eyes - fuck, those eyes were boring into his fever dream like an icepick lobotomy. Rune clasped his hands around her forearms as a surge of goosebumps stole up his spine and over his scalp, sending his eyes rolling into the back of his head as Aver's face split into red streamers. Rune breathed out an audible rumbling groan of pleasure that ended in the breathless words of "fffffuck me." Though it wasn't entirely clear if that was a request, a command, or an expletive of the kaleidoscope of visions his brain was now feeding him.

Oh Gods.

It was a dream. It was all just a really detailed, arousing, terrible drunken dream.

Rune was pretty sure it wasn't a dream.

 

[Aver Brand]

Water was good. Water was wet. Water washed away… well, not her sins, but at the very least the half-digested blood, which was the best she could hope for.

The impact with the pool had stolen most of her breath, but Aver still stubbornly refused to emerge from the depths until her lungs started to burn. Never before had she felt such a pressing urge to be clean.

When she finally burst up for air again, she swept the abandoned patio for any signs of the pale offender, her anger tempered by the tepid chlorine. And there he was, sprawled like a beached whale on the side of the pool, an arm thrown uselessly over his eyes to shield him from the light and the heat.

Silver muscle and red tattoos sparkled in the glare of the sun as she advanced on the Shamalain. Time to drag some answers out of the man. She yanked him forward by a loop on his sodden pants and stopped herself a breath short of pulling a Qui.

Rune’s pretty nose remained intact, if only just.

“I accept your apology.” Aver grinned at him point-blank, then shoved him back down on the edge of the pool. “You sober enough to talk now?”

 

[Rune Shamalain]

His head smacked the hard surface of the pool deck and the man cut loose a very unsavory expletive, arms snapping up to cradle his throbbing skull, already threatening to burst and now quite possibly leaking brain fluid.

"If you could stop moving me for ten minutes!" Rune growled into his arms with a pained groan, taking a moment to collect himself and his temper before even attempting to push himself to sit up. He squinted up into the sunlight streaming directly down into his eyes over Aver's shoulder, shielding his face with a wince only to discover the woman standing over him completely naked and sopping wet.

"Could you PLEASE find some pants ... or a towel or something."

Had this woman NO SHAME? People around the poolside were LOOKING and a crowd had slowly started to gather.