Very Hot, Very Steamy, [Becca/Maalik]

[Rebecca Byron]

It took Becca twenty minutes to check everything she needed to check in the club, and she knew good and well that she would have to go back down in an hour, tops, to wrap up the sanitizing of the club. But she could have her hour, she could scrub all the sickness and shame off her and admit to being weak enough to need Maalik with her for that stolen time.

She stripped off the jewelry she still wore the moment she walked into the room, stepped out of her shoes, and pulled off the borrowed shirt that she'd been wearing and which smelled like the exact person who she least wanted to think about in all the world, the shirt getting balled up and stuffed into a trash can with unnecessary violence. She walked naked into the bathroom, having learned good and well how ridiculous it was to have body modesty around shifters. When she got into the bathroom, the smell of strawberry-scented steam rising and the sight of Maalik waiting in there had her smiling again despite the fact that her skin felt tacky and tight with dried sweat, despite the fingertip bruises on her hips and the makeup smeared across her face.

One hour. Hot water, sweet soap, and her demon love. It could be enough to heal her, if she let it.

[Maalik]

Maalik had taken the time to make himself properly respectable for Rebecca. As her bath had run itself, Maalik had popped to his own room and showered very quickly to get rid of any linger scents of William and the mess he had created of her husbands back. The memory would linger but Maalik didn't want Rebecca thinking of him.

When she finally came to her room, he was dressed in only leather pants, a spare he had at the club and nothing else. Why should he be dressed while she was naked? No, Maalik was happy to show his body off for Rebecca's viewing pleasure. He smiled faintly as she entered the room, naked and seeming more like herself then before. Taking her hand he assisted her in the bath, letting her sink into the bubbles. He knelt by the bathtub, close at hand. "Everything to your stands down on the floors?" he asked just for conversation. He knew they would be. Rebecca would not leave the horseman's dance floor to deal with herself until it was up to her standards

[Rebecca Byron]

"It's coming along pretty well. The tourists are almost dealt with, once the last of them has been rolled and we've double-checked that none of them remember anything upsetting, the rest will fall into place." She sank down into the hot water up to her neck, then bent her knees and sunk entirely beneath the water, disappearing under the bubbles for a moment and then coming back up with her hair wet and sleeked straight back, rubbing her hands over her face to erase the last of the melted makeup. She smiled at him and reached out to slide wet fingertips down the side of his neck. "We've gotten awfully good at cleanup by now. It's amazing what practice will do for you."

[Maalik]

Maalik nodded, one hand along the edge of the bath, fingers playing in the water as he knelt beside her. "However I doubt I will be the only one who will wish that this kind of practice will no longer be needed. It can be a good idea to get to accustomed to just wiping the memories of the mortals for our own fun." He smiled a little at that, blowing on the bubbles gently and watching them move.

"It was a learning curve. Now he is aware, William will have better control." he promised Rebecca.

[Rebecca Byron]

"He'd better." She was able to laugh a little now, feeling enough better to see the humor of it. "Or our carpet-cleaning bill is going to go through the roof and we'll be sponsoring 'Tin Foil Hat Nights' in hopes of keeping the pregnancy rate of Moorebank from tripling."

[Maalik]

That wasn't something Maalik had considered even with this mess. He imaged the clean up crew would be very hands on for several hours but the pregnancy rate never crossed his mind. Shifters were supposed to be infertile. "Trust a woman to think of such an outcome." he joked, taking her hand from the water and ignoring the droplets of water as he kissed her palm lightly. "I am sure William will be more sensitive to his emotions. It has been some time since the Arduer has been fully fed before tonight. He never had to control a starving beast. He needs to learn the medium. And I have faith that he will." he kissed her skin again, tasting her scent and the water on his taste buds

[Rebecca Byron]

The kisses to her palm sent a line of warm shivers up her arm, her nipples perked up under the thin blanket of fruit-scented bubbles. Once she would have sunk lower in the bath to hide it, but Maalik knew how he affected her. Why pretend? "I'm sure he will, or at least I really hope so. It would be sad if he never got to have sex again unless he were in a lead-lined bunker." The joking about it wasn't actually one of her masks, much as it always sounded like it to people who didn't know her well. It was actually a healing thing; when something hurt Becca deeply finding the funny side of it helped keep her from sinking down into her own pain. Helped keep things in perspective.

[Maalik]

"Now that is something you should not joke about. Dear Rebecca. Never allowed to have sex again. I fear William's head would explode." he teased, running his tongue from her wrist and along her palm, his kitty tongue collecting the water droplets of her skin.

[Rebecca Byron]

She laughed again, letting him hear the quaver that his tongue moving over her skin put into the sound. "Hey, there's a lead-lined bunker. You even know where it is. But still, preferable if it never comes to that."

[Maalik]

Maalik watched her face as he spoke so calmly about her husband, his lips concentrating on her palm though. "I suppose we could lock him up with Seregwen. Another arduer user would be able to control it correct?" he asked between the kisses along her hand, turning it over and fluttering kisses over her akin. "Until he learns proper control of course. The Butterfly would miss her mistress, just as the horseman misses her master."

[Rebecca Byron]

"Yeah," Becca said with a sigh. "That's what he needs. More Seregwen in his head." Her head dropped forward, she'd have been hiding in her hair if it weren't wet and slicked back straight to her head. "Hey, Maalik? Can I ask you something?" He wasn't sure he'd know, he might not have the perspective or something, but it occurred to her that of all the people she knew he might be the safest to ask.

[Maalik]

"Ah do not be so harsh on the mistress." Maalik said gently, his tongue flashing out to catch more of the dripping water. "You may ask me anything and I shall do my best to answer it to the best of my abilities."

[Rebecca Byron]

Rebecca rolled over so that she was lying on her side in the water, her cheek resting on her extended upper arm, thumb stretching out to brush the corner of Maalik's lips. "Does it seem to you like Seregwen's different now than she was before she died? I mean, duh, that would change anybody, with the dying and the humanity and the childbirth and so on. But lately it's seemed to me like there's something very..." she frowned, trying to think of the right way to put it, "joyless about her. Nothing makes her happy, not really. She's pleased when she wins a point in one of the games, or when it turns out that she was right about something, or even when someone surprises her in a good way, but it isn't the same. It's always seemed like the only people she ever really cares for in any meaningful way are the ones who start out as her pets and then transcend that one way or another--William, you, Aiden sort of. But even that seems muted now. Like something's missing out of her, like she's lost the capability to just enjoy anything unless it's got this aspect of victory to it."

This was the closest Becca could come to admitting that she was worried about Seregwen, but she was. The dark vampire just seemed off to her, and this awkward, rambling explanation was the best way she knew to define it.

[Maalik]

Maalik paused and thought about it, deeply considering the rambling question. "Perhaps." he said slowly. "I think it may have something to do with the time as a human woman. it changed her, and now she must find a medium to make sense of it all. I believe she is trying to hard to be the Seregwen the world wants. Or perhaps the awful truth is she is tiring of her decisions." Maalik paused, thinking to himself.

"This is all speculation. I do not have much to do with the Butterfly." he admitted to Rebecca

[Rebecca Byron]

"Yeah," she said quietly, sadly. "It's not like she and I have ever been friends or anything. But she matters; to the city, to William, to me too in a weird way I don't really understand. I just wish I could see her...like something. Be happy about something that wasn't more about winning than anything else."