[Edward Bellamonte] (Today I feel . . .)
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9
[Edward Bellamonte] It’s nearly noon, and the city is in full swing – businessfolk are out and about for their lunch meetings, for coffee and bagles, for exercise. It’s cold, brisk, and everyone wears their winter clothes, but for the few who are brave (or crazy, though the two are hardly exclusive) enough to eschew it. Edward is not one of those few. After standing in line at a coffee shop (not a chain, but one that serves the closest to real, good coffee he’s been able to find since his return), he repairs to Izzy’s, where he sets coffee and a single flower (vivid red gerber daisy) on the floor in front of her door before rapping out a staccato knock and slipping just out of sight.
[Izzy Montoya] Izzy is not a morning person.
Izzy is most assuredly not a morning person when called out of her nice warm bed that she’d barely fallen into at 2am to get up again at 4am to tend to a crime scene. Nor when she fell back into bed at 9am. It’s safe to say that at noon, she’s still a little bit… grumpy, having decided to stay in bed until the last possible minute before reporting to work at 4pm.
And that’s when the knock on the door happens. That’s the trouble with being a light sleeper – even one little knock and she’s sitting straight up, hand on the gun on the dresser, and listening.
“MotherFUCKer.”
And so, eloquently expressed, she gets out of bed, thankfully sets the gun into the drawer of the nightstand, and grabs a silken robe. She slides it on and ties it around herself as she goes to the door, peers out of the peephole, then opens it with a “Someone better be fuckin dead…” Only to find steaming hot coffee, and a flower. She blinks, and then bends to pick up the offering (…smart boy…), robe parting to show a shapely bit of thigh, before she stands again and smirks. “Alright, you can come out. I won’t shoot ya… yet.”
[Edward Bellamonte] “Boo,” he says, all charm and smiles; when she stood, she found him directly in front of her despite having been nowhere in sight bare moments before. The shapely bit of thigh was appreciated, of course, and now? Well, he’s a Ragabash. Surprises are bound to be expected. “You look . . . quite fetching, you know.” It’s teasing, that, and light; there are no expectations, no strings, just sincere appreciation.
“It’s freezing out here. Let me in.” Not an order, though from anyone else it might sound as such – it’s a request, friendly. He’s a good boy, is Edward, as well as a smart one.
[Izzy Montoya] She just looks at him as he appears, right in front of her and smirks. “Lucky I didn’t have the fuckin’ gun if your gonna pull shit like that…”
But she steps back and pushes the door open anyway, so that poor Edward doesn’t freeze in the 3rd floor hallway of her heated building. She doesn’t say anything about looking fetching, because she looks a frightful mess – hair tangled and bedheaded, breath questionable, etc. But then again – she IS mostly naked. She stands in the kitchen a moment, thinking, before she grabs an empty beer bottle and rinses it out, fills it with water and plops the flower into it. Ghetto Vase. The highest of fashion. She takes a sip of the coffee as she heads toward the living room, and plops the ‘vase’ on the desk, before all but falling onto the couch. “What’s the occasion?”
[Edward Bellamonte] “It’s National Bring a Pretty Girl Coffee and a Flower Day.” He’s amused bouncy, bright; she hasn’t seen him this way. Well, as she’s only seen him once and that time he’d been mostly quiet and pensive (and considerate, and nice), it stands to reason. Then, “Of course I’m going to do stuff like that.” Grinning, of course, and full of crinkle-crash full moon electricity and energy. There is Rage, but the moon is not his, and so it’s (smothered by Will, at the moment) no more evident than usual. And third floor of a heated building or not, complaining of the cold got him in, so who is he to complain?
He has his own coffee (black, unadulterated) in hand, and smiles at the ‘vase’; it works and, oddly enough, it fits. With what he knows of her and her style, anyway.
“How’ve you been?”
[Izzy Montoya] She snorts. “That doesn’t explain why you’re here then…” Izzy has no illusions of being a great beauty. She knows she’s acceptable, and a far cry from ugly, but pretty? Well. No. She also knows that attitude can make or break a woman – and sometimes her’s does both. She makes up for it by rockin the bedroom Olympics. Everyone has a talent.
She tucks her feet up under her, and tugs her robe absently into place. The apartment is very much like he remembers it, though perhaps with a bit more of a lived in feel – magazines on the coffee table, along with the remote to her xbox, tv, etc. She lives like a bachelor – a clean one.
She hides a yawn behind her hand, and takes another swig of her coffee. “Alright. Working myself to death – you know how it goes.” Well, probably not.
[Edward Bellamonte] He kind of does, actually, if not in the way most people would automatically think. And it hasn’t happened recently, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened at all. “You should take a break every now and then,” is all he says. “If you want to go to France, I know a place.”
It’s hard to tell if that’s an offer, and if so of what, but it’s there – undefined, spoken impulsively.
“And I’m here because I’m checking in. And because I should probably ask when you want that table delivered, if you still want it.” He keeps promises when he makes them, this Silver Fang does. “Glad to hear you’re reasonably well.”
[Izzy Montoya] She laughs and arches a brow. “I think me being in france would prove every fuckin’ American stereotype they believe, don’t you?” That same bemused smirk settles across her lips as she lifts a hand to try and run through some of the tangles in her hair.
“But the offer’s appreciated. As for the table, you can bring it over anytime.” She gives up on the tangles after only a couple minutes, and instead stretches, arms above her head, back arching, spine popping, before she relaxes again with a groan. “Reasonably. You know what they say -same shit different day.”
She arches that brow again, slightly. “What about you…”
[Edward Bellamonte] “It’s a good day,” he says, and that’s obvious by the smiles, by . . . well, everything about him. Unless he’s at a poker table, Ed tends to wear most things on his sleeve. And the way he says it implies that there are some that aren’t – perhaps exceedingly so, more so than is normal. Things have happened, and he’s still alive and breathing despite it all, so there’s that. “When do you have to be at work?”
There’s a scheming look in his eye, plotting – he’s an idea, and if it doesn’t work out to enact it today, he’ll just have to try for it later.
“I haven’t had lunch yet. Or . . . breakfast for that matter, I don’t think.” Last night, his mood had been a very different thing; he hasn’t slept since the night before, which likely explains some of the manic.
[Izzy Montoya] Manic indeed. She watches him, seeing the smiles, the way he’s all but bouncing, and now… plotting. She glances at the clock, and shakes her head. “Not for a couple three hours yet.”
To say she looks suspicious is an understatement. He’s planning something. It’s obvious. But she simply takes another sip and asks innocent – minus the innocence. “And what is it you’d like to eat?”
….my what big teeth you have, Mr. Wolf.
[Edward Bellamonte] “Well, there’s the obvious,” he says with a mischievous waggle of brows and lick of lips – but that’s all teasing and innuendo, an amusing side jaunt. “But, again, I know a place. Do you like French food?”
Which isn’t to say, of course, that the other can’t happen first. It’s just to say that he really does have food in mind; he is a gentleman, and she is far more than a lay. She’s not one of the random humans he’s been with just to be with someone – they don’t get return visits, or on the odd occasion they have, there wouldn’t have been this much talking. Edward has layers.
Like an onion.
“It’s over in the Gold Coast. There’s time, if you’re interested.”
[Izzy Montoya] She chuckles, and then slides her legs out from under her again as she moves toward the edge of the couch. “Yeah, I like it alright. Sounds good – lemme take a quick shower and throw some clothes on.”
She takes another swig of the coffee, and then stands and moves toward the bathroom. Before she’s all the way to the door, she’s untied her robe, dropped it to the floor, revealing nothing but skin underneath, as she steps into the room. An invitation to wash her back, perhaps.
Regardless, the water starts, and the door remains open.
[Edward Bellamonte] It’s tempting, that invitation, and Edward is a man – more than, less than, whatever. There are some things that shouldn’t be tempted when the moon hangs full, however. unless one wants said temptation to be given in to. This is one of them. Edward does, indeed, follow, shedding shoes and nice shirt as he goes. Trousers land on the floor in the bathroom, heralded by the clinking of a belt buckle, and he steps in after her – even only washing her back, it makes most sense to be without these things, and to partake of the falling hot water.
A cloth is lathered and he does, indeed, wash her back – and her hair if she’ll let him – before touching her other than that. Before bending to kiss a bare shoulder, and then down to his knees. He does not just take, but gives when he is in the mood, and gives generously, indeed.
He has, as they say, quite the talented tongue.
to Izzy Montoya
[Izzy Montoya] Edward is a man, and more, and temptation is a dangerous game when the moon hangs heavy and full in the sky. One thing he’s bound to have discovered already, or perhaps will soon, is that Izzy loves nothing more than to play such dangerous games. If there were an award for ‘poke the werewolf’ – she would certainly win.
She smiles as she hears his clothing hit the floor, and feels the heat of his rage – not so much as some, more than others, and oh so controlled by the phase of the moon – against her back. She appreciates the care he takes in washing her back, her hair, and then… oh when he gives so generously, she appreciates that too…
It’s not every day that a Garou falls to his knees before a kin, after all, and she is shameless in the voicing of her appreciation, soft moans and cries directing his talented efforts as her fingers tangle in his hair, her other hand tightening nails into his shoulder as he leaves her shaky and breathless, every nerve in her body suddenly vibrantly awake and alive…
to Edward Bellamonte
[Edward Bellamonte] It’s like church, like ritual, like rite. Edward is a celebrant, however little that’s shown of late, and he enjoys life. He enjoys exertion, enjoys sun on his face, enjoys the sound a blissful kin makes when he’s on his knees before her. Only when those noises have crescendoed and climaxed does he rise to lift her, to wrap her legs around his waist . . .
. . . and after, there is kissing as the water loses its heat around them. “Just don’t go falling in love,” he murmurs, a teasing repetition of what she’d told him before. “Cuddling and lunch here, or lunch out?” He’s good with either, really.
to Izzy Montoya
[Izzy Montoya] There are few times when the mask is completely removed, where all her defenses, her smirks and jabs reduced to simple cuss words that beg for more, where she’s nothing but who she is at her very core – just Izzy. Just a girl.
Her legs are long, and wrap around him with ease, her arms sliding around his shoulders, her lips finding his with heated possession…
…and after, when the kisses are less heated, less insistent yet no less enjoyable for their languid touch, he teases her, and she laughs. “Never.” And then “You promised French food – I don’t think even you could manage that with my meager supply of leftovers.”
She untangles herself from him with a soft moan to stand on her own two feet again, and turn off the water that’s quickly turning from cool to cold around them. She steps out, grabs a towel for herself, and tosses him one with a smirk. “I might have to let ya bring me coffee in the mornin’s more often if you keep that up.”
to Edward Bellamonte
[Edward Bellamonte] He steps out of the shower after her, towel slung low on slim hips; he’s filling out nicely now, after a month with regular, healthy meals. He’s no longer as skin and bones as he once was, though he’s still just a hair too thin; it will even out, as the rest has. Her last, spoken as he’s pulling trousers over boxer briefs, gets a smirk, and a nearby towel teasingly snapped in her direction.
“You’d get spoiled. And then you’d get bored.” She wouldn’t – there’s something addictive about that sort of heat, that sort of play, and that willingness to experiment and try new things. But still, “I do what I can. And French food it is.”
Once they’re dressed, he’s leading the way downstairs and rather than going back to the loft for Kate’s car (his motorbike is hardly appropriate for this sort of thing, at least in the depths of December), he calls for a car. Not a random cab, but a car that comes with a uniformed driver and all; it’s very much a Young Gentry sort of affair. The arrive at the restaurant – a part of an old bed and breakfast whose origins go back to shortly after the Great Fire according to the historical marker outside – and he leads her in. The host greets them in French, which Ed answers fluently, his hand in hers . . .
heated possession, indeed
. . . until they’re led to a private table set in what can best be described as a ceiling to floor bay window, overlooking a winter garden and frozen koi pond.
“The menu here is fantastic,” he says, “and their wine list extensive. Order anything you like.”
[Izzy Montoya] She’d get spoiled, he says, and snaps the towel at her. She just smirks and works a brush through her hair with quick efficiency. She doesn’t bother blow drying it, just let’s it dry naturally, and gets dressed. It’s another in a long line of business casual outfits – slacks, tailored blouse – that he’s seen her in before. As adventurous as she is between the sheets (…on the couch, in the shower, the kitchen counter…) she is remarkably un-inventive with her wardrobe.
A stop at the entry way for her coat, badge, and gun, and she follows him downstairs – by using the stairs, not the elevator. He calls for a car, and the doorman is openly curious, yet gets nothing from Izzy’s expression. He’s already figured she by far has the most scary looking guests, so says nothing as Ed helps Izzy into the car.
She even lets him hold her hand. For now. He speaks French fluently, and they soon have a small private table, and she takes a seat, draping her coat across the back of her chair. She takes one look at the menu, and blinks, understanding exactly zero of it. She smirks over at Ed and nods. “I trust you.”
To order, at least.
[Izzy Montoya] (and fade!)