Slowly, baby, slowly (Mino)

[Fawn]

34th of Frost, 120xx

For those moments as he spoke she was silent. His fingers playing on her skin sending gentle, teasing reminders that threatened to pull her attention away from his words. And he was so close. She could make out the flecks gold in his eyes, nearly feel the rumble in his throat through his lips. She could even count his eyelashes if she tried.

Her lips were pursed, eyes curious, head tilted as she trailed her gaze from his lashes to lips, then back up to his eyes. As she stared into his eyes she brought her hand down from his had, running it across his cheek and chin, letting it fall to his chest beside the other, before she sat up with a start, blinking in surprise.

"Mino... yer startin' ta make me think that I'm the asset yer continuously 'checkin up on'." She said seriously. But seconds later she burst out laughing and fell back on him in a heap of giggles. Her hair tumbled across his chest as she wiggled atop him, though she calmed quickly and brushed some of her hair away from his face. "I'm just jabbin' ye. But really, that's so cool! Do ye even have one of those fancy houses with fence around it? I've always wondered what an estate was like. Oh oh! DO ye have maids and butlers? That hold trays of tea and wake you up instead of roosters? What about magic furniture?!"

Fawn rattled off her blatantly grandiose view of noble life with a grin as she tangled her fingers back in his hair and scratched just behind his ear with a giggle. Her laughter filled the space, and somehow the candlelight seemed brighter. As her laughter subsided she sighed contently.

"I hope I'm not keepin' ye from doing yer job, though. Please let me know if I am. I'd hate to get ye in trouble with yer family."

[Mino]

Fawn seemed to have a lot of preconceptions where it concerned nobility.

His lips twitched, either into a smile or perhaps a larger one — it was one of the two when he was around her. Either would be a safe bet to expect. Mino wondered where she got those ideas from. Had someone regaled her with tales of nobility? In a book, maybe? Regardless of what the source was, her wonder was enchanting. She seemed excited enough with the prospect alone.

“Magic furniture?” He blinked, brows furrowed.

The words were...not that significant, but touched on something all the same. His relationship with magic was not one that could really say he recalled. His brows furrowed deeper, a cloud of confusion over his mind as he continued to think of if they actually had any magic furniture. He was pretty sure there was a local artisan that made furniture like that. But he couldn’t recall ever actually seeing pieces from them in the house. He knew there were several practitioners in the house, but not of what they actually practiced. He might as well have hit a block, a dull throb in the side of his head. The only indication that he remembered anything was the churn of his stomach. Not the pleasant one he’d been feeling all night, but something else. Something scared.

“We do have maids and butlers. Though, they don’t stand at the ready with tea for us. And they don’t wake us.” No, he found himself wide awake when the sun rose. Maybe before on some days. He wasn’t sure when that had started, especially given the days that would bleed into sleepless nights. Another curiosity in his life, though he was sure there was some reason for it. “At least, no me anymore. My sisters get that treatment, given they need their beauty rest and all that. I’m already too pretty for my own good.” He flashed her a grin at that.

He wouldn’t answer further questions about the asset in question. She might have joked about it — but there would be something that his family would find use for her. Her skin was soft under his fingers; she already worked at the cabaret. They would think she’d be suited for Red. She was pretty, impressionable; Yellow could snatch her up quickly. Purple, perhaps, could have use for her. They always found reason to insert themselves in scuffles for assets.

He feared Red most, though. The unpredictability of the Lady was something to be feared. He’d seen the terror in the eyes of the girls there, and felt it himself at one point. But those memories were muddied, which he didn’t understand and wouldn’t dwell on. At least not while he was with Fawn.

“You’re not keeping me from anything.” His tone was far more serious than he would have wanted, but he meant it. He wouldn’t want her thinking that this — this peace — was holding him from something. “Wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

[Fawn]

34th of Frost, 120xx

Mino was only becoming stranger and stranger by the day. The first, he'd found her in an alleyway surrounded by cats. She'd thought him someone of her own stature, or at least low enough to be mingling throughout the streets at night. They'd sat. They'd talked. They'd parted, and then she'd thrown up on him and washed his hair. He spoke of assets, but not much of family. And now, she laid on him. A lord. Her mind was a bit clouded with the feeling of his fingers on her side, the wonder of where else they could go, if he perhaps was the type to enjoy his time at the cabaret for more than work. Not that Lunaria would allow her to experiment yet, but that didn't stop her from imagining it.

Fawn listened to him and smiled in return of his grin, eyes trailing over his lips and teeth.

A few seats over behind a smaller partition of curtains a couple had clouded the space around them with smoke. It wafted through the open slits of curtain to Fawn and Mino slowly. Creeping. And when it reached them brought with it the smell of oak and juniper berries- spicy, woody, bright as the sky at dusk. It tingled Fawn's nose and stirred her relaxing mind. She sat up. Her eyes locked with Mino's lips, hair falling over her shoulder and framing her face that was lit by dancing candlelight.

As she rose up, one of her legs brushed over his own. She straddled him, sitting then on his lap and staring down at him with some strange new seriousness that played with her brow and pupils that dilated as they scanned his form. His jawline, his chest, as if undressing him in her mind before trailing them back up to meet his gaze again.

"Aye, much too pretty."

It was then she laid down on him again, though this time directly on his chest. She pulled herself up on him, resting an elbow beside his head and beginning to entwine her fingers into his hair. There they swam. Floating through strands of soft tousled hair and leaving gentle brushes of her fingertips upon his scalp. She followed her fingers with her eyes to admire the way his hair parted for her, the way it fell around her hand, the softness of it and the brief glimpses of reflection in the shine of his hair from the cabaret lights. It was only as she dropped her gaze down to his eyes that she realized she'd been trembling again. Her movements that could have been fluid and perfected had been staggering with the nerves of her exploration, and she was as pink as a sunset. But she held his gaze all the same.

Her head then dropped to press her forehead against his. Her lips parted as she worked to steady her breathing. "I'm sorry, I think the smoke is doin' somethin' te me."

Excuse after excuse. But it made sense, she'd never felt like her body was on fire like this before. Never felt the strong, willful gaze of a man like Mino before. Never felt someone's fingers dance over her skin as if she was the only dancefloor they needed to perform. As if she was special. Marina had enjoyed her company, sure, but there had always been some lie coming from her hands. She'd never outright lied to Fawn, so far as she knew at least, but her hands that had brushed through her hair felt forced. As if she'd not done it from a place of want. They'd always hesitated, and so had she. But Mino didn't.. He was unabashedly, outright, bold. And his fingers were more honest than lips could ever be.

[Mino]

Well, this was something. Something he wasn’t sure he ought to be addressing. Not when it felt like he was hitting the curve of a fever pitch the longer she stared at him. Especially as she sat up. His hands slipped from her waist to her thighs, fingers playing at the hem of her skirt as she seemed to appraise him. A look that made his heart rate spike. Mino had his fair share of appraisals — heated and cold as ice — but they didn’t feel quite like this. Like the roles might have been reversed and he might very well find himself as the prey being devoured.

Appealing enough at the hands of the woman above him.

The praise might have been intended as simple agreeance, but it felt like something else. His ears twitched, a whine dying in the back of his throat. Smothered by the ever-present purr that never seemed to stop. His fingers pressed down just a touch harder, as if willing her to stay where she was. She was pretty like this — he wanted to remember it. Wanted to sear it into his memory like her pretty pink lips and bouncing red curls were. But she was laying down on him again, higher up on his chest than before.

He was starting to think he couldn’t really blame the ork from earlier for wanting to be touched. The sweet pressure of her weight over him, shifting with each movement she made, harkened urges for more. Barely there, not enough. Impatience was an infectious curse and his fingers teetered toward trespassing where they shouldn’t. He was an expert at doing things he shouldn’t but for her — he reigned himself in. Let the tips of them linger over her skin before sliding back down.

With her this close, so close, she smelled divine. Like he’d stuck his face in a bushel of catnip only to pass out in a field of lavender with a belly full of milk in the sun. His right hand slid back up from her thighs, wrapped around her waist to hold her closer still. He tipped his head back to nose at her hairline, dipping it down shortly after to go for her jaw. He sighed, content.

“That might make the two of us, then.” His lips spread into a smile against her skin. As he spoke, breath over her skin and voice in her ear, he had a singular wondering. A thought, but not quite so well-formed. A desire — a wanting to know if she tasted as good as she smelled. He wondered if that much was off-limits. Maybe if it were under the ribbon, where no one could see.

He didn’t want to stop touching her was the problem. Counter-productive, really. The hand around her waist twitched, then it was decided. It slid up her back, tangled in her hair. A short stop before it came to her neck and toyed with the ribbon. His nails caught on the trim the ribbon, traced it along her neck.

“I dare say you might give the other girls a run for their money, Fawn.”

[Fawn]

34th of Frost, 120xx

Fawn had made three mistakes that night.

Her first mistake had been when she'd hugged him. His scent washed over her like the tides of the ocean pulling her under. She had drowned herself in him as much as she could, and in some ways wished that very musk would cease her breathing lest it be tainted with something else.

Her second mistake had been when she'd taken his fingers in her own and lead him back to the hookah lounge. Each step it's own fateful bell ringing in the back of her head. Perhaps she'd known then what she would do, that she would end up positioned on top of him. Gently trembling, but hot. Eyelids drooping as her hands explored him more boldly than they had before.

And her the third mistake came when she pressed her forehead to his own. How had she not realized he wouldn't pull away, that instead he would somehow pull her closer? That his hands, with deliberate movement, would squeeze into her skin and draw a soft gasp from her lips. As she let it out her back arched in the smallest of ways. Her hips twitched in the same moment. And without much more than a flick of her eyes to his leaned in close to his lips. Just centimeters away. She could feel his breath on her skin, nearly taste him.

Should she? She was training to be a courtesan after all. It couldn't hurt, right? She wanted it. She wanted him. She liked the way his lip twitched just before it would curl into a smirk, the way his teeth would glisten like diamonds and tease her imagination with thoughts of them raking across her skin. She liked how his purr steadied her heart in one moment then shocked her the next, making her wonder what it was for.

She pulled away. A movement that felt like her chest ripped against her in desperation to disobey her body while she sat up on him once more. His hands left her hair. She hated that. Every shade of pink and red the world had to offer was painted upon her cheeks, framed by messy copper curls and a tiny, teasing ribbon whos tail ghosted over her collarbones. She shouldn't kiss him, she decided. She didn't want to in here. Not where her action could be mistaken for her job. No... she'd find a time to make it right, though.

As the girl collected herself with a steady breath she smiled and twisted her legs, bringing both to the same side and then standing in front of him, offering a hand.

"I canna do what they do, yet. So I don't think I'd make anyone run for their money. But, I do know ye came here to do work, and it's about time I headed home. But let me at least walk ye back to the bar."

[Mino]

Every gasp, every sigh — he felt like he was attuned to every breath that left her lips. The swell of her scent, ripening in this private space behind the curtain, flooded his mind and drowned out everything else. Relentless, persistent like he was knowing her to be. There were few people that had ever captured him, but never held him captive quite like she did. His mind certainly skipped ahead to where his body wanted to be. A mix of Frost-time depravity and desire he was sure existed under the first. The feel of her lips over his skin, of rake of her nails over the skin of his neck, his back, anywhere she might reach. The brush of a sigh against his neck, chased by honeyed notes. A new song for her to sing.

He blinked. She was gone. Not gone, but no longer in his grasp. No warm flesh beneath his fingers, or a sweet weight over him. It was cold where she had been. Even though she smiled, it felt like a loss. Not quite a gut punch, but the kind of assuring pat on the head that filled him with dissatisfaction. He flexed his fingers, curled and uncurled them a few times as he blinked again. Repeatedly. The haze of his thoughts were hard to come down from. He blamed it on the season. His ears twitched. This felt a little unfair. Was this what everyone felt like with him on occasion? His brows threatened to furrow, the nail of his thumb rubbing at the space between to disguise the start of the gesture as he let a smile bloom over his face.

“You don’t have to do what they do to draw people in, you know.” He took her hand, though he really didn’t need it. The sense of robbery — him, a thief, being robbed; imagine that — sat on his shoulders. He rolled them. “You’re enchanting all the same, and I suspect you know that already.”

Mino’s eyes lingered on the ribbon as the curtain drew back a second time. This time, without the cloud of her scent over his mind and drowning all sense, he knew who it was. A sorrowful sort of scent, like wisteria and lilies over the freshly turned soil of a new grave. They didn’t need to announce themself, so they didn’t. Nor did they seem to care that he was alone. It was with an impassive glance to Fawn that they spoke.

“Annie told me you were here.” Monotonous. They must have been tired. Lady Red wouldn’t be blessed if they didn’t get enough rest. Their scent grew stronger, how he knew they were coming closer. “I’m ready to leave.”

Nothing about him not being ready to leave, to have to part with Fawn. Eyes still on the ribbon, and every bit not acknowledging what had been said to him, he reached out for it again. This time he tugged at one end, rubbed his finger over the fabric.

“Mind giving this to me as a parting gift? I’ll return it next we meet.” His pupils were still blown, eyes wide with his request. Frankly, fatal when paired with the pout that pushed out his lips, returned from earlier with a vengeance.

[Fawn]

34th of Frost, 120xx

She was excited, warm, her limbs tingling as his fingers slipped into hers. There were not many things Fawn let herself resist, but acting upon a man without the right timing, that was certainly one. It wasn't a decision she enjoyed making in the moment, and perhaps if the curtain hadn't opened she'd have given in to temptation. But there it was, the damn curtain, the lights, all reminding Fawn that this was a job. And, who's to say Mino hadn't thought her boldness a byproduct of her employment?

"Oh!" She bowed at the woman haloed by the cabaret lights outside their cove of curtains. "We were just finishin' up!" She smiled. Her fingers absentmindedly had tightened their grasp on his hand, eluding to her own dislike of the end of the evening. If she had it her way she'd have walked home with him. She'd have stolen his lips surrounded by falling snow and melted the ice beneath their feat. She felt though, that this walk home would be one of the colder ones.

Her attention pulled back to Mino with a noise escaping her lips somewhere between a squeak and a gasp as he tugged the ribbon. She flushed. What kind of sound had that been, and in front of a stranger no less?

But a new smile pulled at the corners of her lips. He wanted the ribbon.. he wanted to meet again. Her heart skipped a beat. "Ah- y-yes!" She stuttered, tilting her chin to the side so he could better access the satin fabric. As she did, her eyelids drooped and pierced his, hunting for whatever thoughts may show themselves in his eyes. She could see his excitement and relaxed nature had shifted, that hauntingly hypnotic purr having gone quiet entirely, something she wasn't happy about. But a certain desire, hunger, still remained in his eyes. She liked that.

Once the ribbon had been removed she tilted her head back down. She was shorter, she'd forgotten that fact after laying atop him just moments ago. Did he like shorter girls, she wondered. Pink had not left her cheeks as she pondered his preferences. Whatever they were, though, she was at least happy to know he desired to keep somethings of hers with him. Fawn slid her hand from his with some hesitation but found elation once more as she wrapped them around his waist and buried her face into his chest. One hand slid up to the base of his skull where she gently played with the ends of his hair, sighing softly. She didn't want to forget how he smelled, or the sound of his heartbeat.

"Thank you for your time tonight, Mino."

[Mino]

She squeaked. Maybe; the sound was endearing all the same, and reminded him of a little mouse.

The nickname had been right.

The corners of his lips pulled up as she complied to his request, easily taking off the ribbon. With it out of the way, more skin was on display. Pink in the light; a rush of blood under her skin as she stared him down. He might not have been purring anymore, but he felt like he should. Giving Candy any more reason to stare wouldn’t be a good idea. It hit him, belatedly, that he should have asked her to put it on him; an excuse to have her hands on his skin again. He could reconsider it for the next time they meet.

If they ran into each other as often as they did, then luck would truly be on his side. A dash of it was still with him. Her arms wrapped around his neck as she embraced him. Mino blinked, but reciprocated easily. His hands found their place first at her waist, sliding over the corset of her dress to lock his wrists together and give her a squeeze. Unnecessary, but he’d wondered if she would make a sound at that, too. There was just enough strength in there to lift her to the tip of her toes before he set her back down.
“No, little mouse, thank you for your time tonight.” He was reluctant to draw back, letting his hands linger for as long as he could. “I knew you were working and I shouldn’t have taken you from your customers, but.” He smirked, a short flash of teeth. “It’s terribly hard having the luck of knowing you.”

One hand left her waist to play at her hair, gaze trailing the way the curls bounced. “I should be getting Candy home.”[/b] His voice was stained with the resistance of wanting to stay versus doing what he was supposed to. But staying any longer put her at risk with his sibling watching. He drew his durumagi around him as he let Fawn go, smile still on his lips. He lifted an elbow to be taken by the Fae.

"Until next time, Fawn."

It was cold. Colder than before when he stepped out into the night. He wondered if it had everything to do with the fact that he wasn’t still wrapped up in Fawn’s warmth.

[Paragon]

R E W A R D S

Fawn
XP: 8. Cannot be used for magic.
Lore Requests
Seduction: Let them peak
Seduction: Lean in Close, Tease
Seduction: Bring attention to your mouth
Seduction: Get them alone
Seduction: Compliment their appearance
Seduction: Paying attention to reactions
Building Relationships: Giving gifts to build bonds
Singing: Song Choice for Seduction
Dancing: Lead with your legs
Dancing: Wear something sexy

Mino
XP: 8. Cannot be used for magic.
Lore Requests
Appraisal: Recognizing the body parts of a person
Appraisal: Recognizing someone's scent
Appraisal: Change in someone's scent
Appraisal: The sound of money in a coin purse
Etiquette: Accepting a drink even if you don't want it
Etiquette: Giving someone some privacy when speaking to others
Etiquette: Escorting a lady home
Larceny: Inebriated people make for easy targets
Psychology: Some people mean what they say
Seduction: Utilize space, or lack thereof
Seduction: Dim lighting can make things more intimate
Seduction: The magic of touch
Stealth: Using the darkness to your advantage
Stealth: Take the seating in the back

Note: Um. Excuse me? Who...who gave you the right? Sir, Ma'am, this is a Wendy's.