Who: Pete Wisdom and Kate Pryde What: A sober reunion When: Backdated to Thursday August 13th (after this) Where: Pete's apartment Warnings: Kate's foul mouth, Pete's foul mouth, and smooching Status: Completed via GDOCS
What the hell was he thinking? That was the only thought running through his head in a mindless circle. Hands buried in his pockets, he stared down the amber contents of the decanter resting on the end table by the sofa. Originally, he had only one tumbler set out, the glass already emptied after the conversation he’d endured with Katherine. Now? She was coming to him again, but this time he was vastly more sober.
With a grim look on his face, he moved to retrieve another tumbler from the nearby cabinet and placed it next to its mate. Pouring a round for them both, already assuming they’d need it based on the words exchanged already, he slumped onto the couch. Covering his eyes with his palm, he exhaled a bit of that bottled up anguish he’d been carrying for years.
Then, with a derisive sniff, he acknowledged that it lingered in the air like the cigarettes he’d burned through already. Shuffling around his pocket, he produced another pack and tamped it against his leg several times in an almost anxious fashion. Half-expecting her to phase through one of the walls, he didn’t bother to look up to greet her when she made an arrival. Instead, he lit a cigarette, left an extra out on the coffee table, and tossed the pack aside.
For a moment, he merely sat there with the stick of tobacco lolling out of the corner of his mouth, not bothering to light it until she appeared.
A frustration that Kate hadn’t experienced since the day she couldn’t pass through the Krakoan gateways, was running rampant through her veins as she made her way to Pete’s apartment. She didn’t know what the hell she was doing. In retrospect? She didn’t owe him anything, not even an apology really, because she wasn’t the naive girl that broke his heart.
So much had happened since then, and even though she was trying to remember that it was still fresh for him? Kate felt like she was still attempting to phase through an impenetrable wall. Only this time? Well, this time the wall possessed the ability to cut deeper than being denied access to a proverbial paradise.
Eyebrows lowered, and fist thoroughly ready to connect with his face, she phased through his door and leaned back against it as soon as her eyes settled on him. This was a mistake right? She should have just stayed home or sought out Lockheed to make things right with him, but oh no! She couldn’t leave well enough alone could she?
The silence was so thick he could probably have cut it with one of his knives, but she somehow managed to curb the impulse to lay into him. Instead, she finally pushed herself off his door and moved to sit on the opposite side of the couch- reaching for the extra cigarette on the coffee table.
“Light,” she asked simply- her tone laced with all of that aggravation. Maybe punching him wasn’t completely off the table.
There she was coming back into his presence for the second time, less than forty-eight hours after his own arrival. It had been years ago since he’d boarded a boat to quite literally sail away from her and the rapport he’d built with the rest of Excalibur. During that time, he’d gotten quite good at actively not thinking about her, though it would come as little surprise. Stuffing his feelings down had been the natural course of things for Pete Wisdom long before he had ever gotten the privilege of being in Katherine Pryde’s orbit.
Once she took a seat, some part of him steeled for a fairly warranted punch to the jaw, he produced the lighter for her and then did the same for his cigarette. Taking a long drag from it, he exhaled a ring of smoke and stared through it morosely for a moment. Kate’s irritation with him was palpable, but only prompted him to reach for the filled tumbler meant for her and passed it over.
“Still can’t believe yer up to my old tricks now,” he said gruffly, not daring to make eye contact with her yet.
Looking at her while he was this sober would only cement the fact that she’d not only moved on and grown up more, but had met a fate he never wanted to hear befalling her.
Not even after the heartbreak.
Lies were prettier than the truth. Kate could easily feed him all the things that he would probably like to hear; that she thought of him constantly over the years, that her heart never mended from the self inflicted wounds, and that she was sorry she grew up. As she stared at him though, frustration growing because he refused to glance her way, the miniscule need to make him feel better about their situation went right out the window.
Taking a long drag she inhaled so deeply the smoke burned her lungs, before pulling her fist back and finally allowing it to connect with his jaw. It was probably more satisfying than it should have been, but she brushed it off like it wasn’t a big deal at all, and settled against the couch’s cushions to nurse her nicotine and alcohol.
“Yeah, well. They are good tricks.”
She really did hate this for him. As machochistic as Kate was in regards to herself? As much as she had changed? She still felt a great deal of empathy for those she cared about, and maybe now that she was sober, she was beginning to realize that she would always care about Peter Paul Wisdom.
He would, after all, always be the first.
It was still difficult to wrap his brain around the fact that, though a few years had gone by for him, more than that had befallen Katherine. Bordering on the precipice of what, almost a decade--short a year or two? He didn’t want to do the math, counting numbers and the gaps between them had caused their problem on her end in the first place. As happy as he truly believed he could have been with her, it was also an issue he couldn’t have ignored.
What did that mean for them now?
Before he could raise the tumbler to his lips, he felt the sting of fist crack against his jaw. Steeling his posture, he slowly lifted a hand to rub the soon to be bruised area without so much as batting an eye. Few could hit as hard as Katherine Pryde, but the strike wasn’t meant to harm so much as it was to send a message.
Silently, he took a drag from the cigarette and slumped back against the couch. Staring up at the as yet unfamiliar ceiling, he extended his glass out to her as a gesture for a toast.
“I hear you, Pryde,” he said, then finally turned his head to glimpse her through tired eyes. The years hadn’t been terribly unkind to him, naturally he had to make up for it by being that much harder on himself. “Give us a cheers, then, to a shite reunion, and we’ll start over. Deal?”
Unlike Pete, Kate’s eyes never left him- gauging his reaction to the message she was sending very carefully. She could have seriously hurt him if she wanted to, but that wasn’t her intent. The only thing she needed from him was thankfully made painfully clear through that restrained punch to his jaw.
She couldn’t change their history and even if she could? Kate wasn’t sure she would. Her life certainly would have been different if she’d been able to deal with the years between them. Maybe she would have been happier? But she certainly wouldn’t be the woman she was today, and that woman? Well, she was a force to be reckoned with now. Somewhat degenerate habits aside? Kate actually liked who she was now.
The only thing she didn’t like? Was this. If she could find the Entity, her punches probably wouldn’t be as restrained as they were with Pete.
Sighing when he finally turned those tired eyes her way, she took another drag before raising her tumbler. They were both entirely too sober for this. “That’s all I’ve been fucking trying to do here, Peter. But, deal.”
Kate trusted him to keep his word, and she would try not to hold it against him too much if he slipped back into his self-deprecating woes, but…
What now?
The apology she had given to him over that confounding network had initially fallen on deaf ears. So caught up in wanting to be angry at her, wanting her to hurt the same way she’d hurt him, he had purposefully ignored it. Time didn’t necessarily heal all wounds, especially not when it came to the kind of love Pete Wisdom had for Katherine Pryde. In those cases, it made it fester into something ugly, blighted, and he didn’t want to remember them that way anymore.
“Ah, yeah. Y’did. Liked it better outta my mouth though,” he responded obstinately, tipping his glass into hers and finishing it off. He’d agree they were much too sober for any further conversation. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t help matters between them at all. The unspoken question left lingering in the air was exactly that--what now, indeed?
Scratching the stubble at his chin, he discarded the glass and let his blue eyes wander back to her more matured face. She was too far for him to reach out and touch without losing the comfortable slouch of his current position, but it would be worth it. Too bad she wasn’t his to touch anymore. He was no Piotr, he’d never put his hands on her in demand of a flame that likely no longer existed.
“Suppose I should apologise, too,” he said rather stubbornly again, sniffing for good measure before stamping out the cigarette in the nearby ashtray. “For giving you a hard time, like always. Just…” He rubbed at his chin again, almost uncomfortably, then regarded her a bit more evenly this time. A hint of affection for her lingered in his gaze. “Never expected t’see you again, y’know? Never could make up my mind if I even wanted to.”
“You’ve always liked things better out of your mouth. A lot may have changed, but you’re still the most infuriating man I’ve ever known.” It didn’t surprise her that he conveniently chose to ignore her attempted apology, only focusing on the fact that she ‘moved on’. Kate could own up to the fact that she hurt him, but it certainly wasn’t her fault that they were having to acclimate to being so far apart in their timelines.
Out of all the men from her past that could have potentially shown up here, she couldn’t think of another she would have jumped so quickly to seek out. Maybe there was something to the whole notion of never forgetting how you felt about your first. That’s exactly what Pete was for her in so many ways that went far beyond physical intimacy, and being drawn into his gravitational pull again was reminding her of all the things she felt before she ruined them.
Sighing again, she downed her drink then shifted out of her seat to walk over and snub her cigarette out in the ashtray. The tumbler being discarded on the table broke her silence as she mulled over his apology for a few drawn out moments.
“You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t give me a hard time,” she muttered- catching that hint of affection in his gaze and offering him the slightest of grins. “I couldn’t ever make up my mind if I wanted to see you again, either,” she admitted and slipped back down on the couch decidedly closer to him this time now that her frustration was fleeting. Turning her head so she could regard him properly, she reached to touch the already forming bruise along his jawline. “Could be worse, though.”
Perhaps the hardest thing now was tolerating sharing the same space and knowing about all he could do was look at her. The torture he deserved--to some degree. It had taken two for the relationship to fall apart, communication failures between the pair of them. Maybe he should have told her sooner how she’d turned his entire world around, taught him how to be a team player and fight for something more than an order issued on paper.
Some part of Pete wanted to swat her hand away as she reached for him, fearful of the close contact and what it might do to him. With a sharp breath sucked in, he winced at the pressure on the now tender spot, but didn’t break her gaze. Seeing her with substantially more sober eyes would be his downfall, wouldn’t it? Meeting her at a pub, neutral territory, and sharing stories he knew would go forgotten, that had been far safer.
Suddenly distracted by that same hand, however, he grasped it abruptly to look at the tattoos upon it. Arching a very perplexed brow at her, Pete decided to focus on that distraction instead of how much closer she was to him now.
“What’s this about, then?” He asked, absently passing this thumb over the worlds inked into her skin.
As soon as his thumb brushed over part of the ‘Hold Fast’ branded onto her knuckles, Kate circled back to the idea that this was a mistake. She really shouldn’t have come. It was easier before, when they were both ridiculously drunk and in a space that didn’t belong to either of them. Being here with Pete like this, surrounded by the harsh late morning light without any of their safety nets within reach, held the potential to spell out both of their downfalls. Knowing that didn’t deter her though did it? It didn’t cause her to pull away from him no matter how much her heart was screaming at her that she should.
“It was done on a whim,” she replied while continuing to hold his gaze. “I had my whole crew get inked.” Smiling fondly at the memory, she tucked her hair behind her ears with her free hand. That day with everyone at the tattoo parlor was one of the happiest she’d experienced in the last year. “I um...may have become a pirate. Captain Kate Pryde of The Marauder at your service.”
Maybe talking to him like this was starting to get easier than she would like to admit. As long as she didn’t think about the scent of alcohol and cigarettes mingling with the cologne that was unique to Pete flooding her senses and triggering older perhaps more potent memories, she would be fine...right?
In that tiny gesture, the way she pulled her hair, she was Katherine again--the one he’d come to know and… well, he dare not speak its name. His blue eyes darted from her face to the tattoo only to catch a glimpse of her other hand. Never having a sense of boundaries with Kate, he snatched her other hand to hold them aloft between them, scrutinizing the words and wondering what exactly they meant to her.
“Lookit that, somethin’ else, that,” he remarked, not entirely conscientious of the fact that he had willingly touched her now let alone opted for hands. That had always meant something for them.
Then again, what didn’t?
Even so, it did feel like some weight had come off the interaction--at least on his part. God, he’d missed her and the way she filled his heart with something inexplicably better. How much faster would he have run her off if she’d ever known the impact just being in his orbit had given?
“Hold fast,” he read aloud, unwilling to release her from his very gentle grasp. Maybe she would allow him this tiny indulgence for now. “Fitting for a pirate. Got any dead man’s tales, Cap?”
Not everything about the girl he once knew was gone. It just wasn’t very often that she allowed any of it to surface. With him, falling back into the tiniest seemingly insignificant mannerisms felt effortless, and when he grabbed her other hand? A brighter smile tugged at the corners of her lips. Maybe these gestures weren’t trivial after all. Nothing ever was with them, though, was it? The weight of everything they did together was insurmountable.
Once upon a time it had been too much for her to handle. Finding love at such a young age wasn’t without its consequences, they were living proof of that. Looking at him now, unconsciously brushing her fingers over his, she wondered if things would have been different if they met later in her life. There wasn’t any point to lingering on those thoughts, because despite the fact that they ended in disaster? Kate wouldn’t change their time together for anything.
“Hold fast,” she repeated with the same fondness she displayed earlier. “You should have seen my sword and coat.” Tilting her head to the side with that smile still firmly in place, she was thankful they’d moved on from the tension- at least for now. “One time I phased my whole damn ship right into another.”
That was just a few hours before Shaw unleashed the vines that ultimately drowned her, but Pete didn’t need to know that or that sometimes she felt like they were still wrapped around her.
The hardships that she had endured seemed to be nearly balanced out by the memories she had of that crew. Pete refused to think too heavily on her demise, something he never would have wished for no matter how much resentment he bore. He was older, embittered that much more, and no doubt on a fast track to the grave himself based on his own unsavoury habits.
As he listened to her glorious tale, he began slowly tracing the letters of “fast” with his thumb. “Yeah, yeah. A right force to be reckoned with y’are, Pryde,” he muttered though sounded more prideful than derisive.
Years apart couldn’t comb over that godforsaken spark, could it? As he raised his melancholy gaze to glimpse her again, Pete found himself desperate for another drink for fear of listening to what his gut wanted him to do. Not yours. Not anyone’s.
“Pay good money to see that show,” he added as an effort to distract himself from otherwise unseemly thoughts. “The boat trick, too.” It was a bit cheeky of him, but he’d be lying to her and himself if he denied now that his dreams would be occupied by thoughts of her in a pirate captain’s garb issuing commands.
“What a sight that must’a been.”
“I am but I remember you being a hell of a force too.” Maybe if she wasn’t that much of a force, Shaw wouldn’t have seen her as a threat. Her crew was quite formidable and she was proud of them all, but Kate? She was lethal. It didn’t matter that she was a broken mutant. Her handicap didn’t hinder her performance. If anything, it provided the drive she needed to come into her own as the Red Queen.
And in the end? All of that pride had been her ultimate downfall. It was almost laughable. So much so that if it weren’t for the feeling of his thumb tracing the letters permanently etched into her skin and that familiar intensity of simply being in his presence, she may have succumbed to her self-doubt.
Usually she turned to alcohol to cope with her own depreciation but Pete was a preferable salve at that moment. Was that really fair to either of them, though? He wasn’t hers. He hadn’t been for years. So, why was she tangling her fingers with his properly instead of thanking him for his apology and returning to the apartment with the family she’d built here?
“The price for the show is steep,” she teased gently with a coy grin knowing full well he was probably picturing her in her Captain attire. “You would have loved it. All of it and would have fit right in alongside my heathens.”
Despite the relative simplicity of his mutant ability, she was undeniably right. Pete Wisdom could hold his own in a pinch against many a foe, her ex-boyfriend Piotr included. Granted, that was a person he would decidedly never want to face in combat again, he’d survived and was itself slated as a win. Probably not the best person to bring up at the moment, though Pete would be lying if he said he wasn’t curious what her love life was like… before she died.
“Held my own a time or two,” nodded Pete, a faint grin appearing. He didn’t know how to do anything else but stand his ground.
All things considered, his life had been quieter since he left Excalibur. It had been the only real home he’d ever known, so leaving it along with her had been the hardest thing he’d done in a long time. Recovering from that, well…
Perhaps he had yet to do it.
Flexing his fingers about hers, his grin tightened when she took on that tone he’d adored. It was enough of a distraction that he wouldn’t argue whether he’d actually fit in with her so-called heathens (hell, he’d barely fit in at Excalibur).
“And now? Where do I fit in?” It was a bold question, true to form.
How did she even begin to unpack all of the baggage she acquired since she saw him last? From the Brood drones, the whole mess with the Guardians and the Avengers, her brief retirement, the momentary insanity that was Piotr, Nate Grey erasing her memories, and all of the other fuckery in between that ultimately led to her life as a pirate queen liberating mutants around the world? Well, she felt as if she would be talking for at least a year to properly explain everything.
It was exhausting. Every last bit of it was exhausting. Perhaps that was why although she was quite cynical in regards to Goodland, she did enjoy the life she had here. It was easier. It was better. It was the first piece of relative normalcy she’d had in years- which was saying a lot because this place was far from ‘normal’.
If anyone deserved to experience that too, it was the man currently flexing his fingers around hers. Kate always believed he deserved better, that he was more than he would ever give himself credit for, and despite everything? That hadn’t changed.
His question caused a quirk of her eyebrow and an unconscious squeeze of his hands. Yep. Just as she told Remy? Peter Paul Wisdom remained the most infuriating man she ever knew. “Where do you want to fit?”
After all the things he had done, saying that he deserved anything good in his life would receive a heart laugh from the former spy. There were countless skeletons in his closet, some of them actively seeking vengeance to this day, and all of it amounted to being a limey, unforgivable brute of a man. In all of that, joining Excalibur, being with her--those had been the right things he’d done.
No matter what she’d been through, Pete had already resigned himself to be a willing listening ear to those plights. Enough time had passed that, he supposed, being around her was far preferable to the alternative he’d lived. That could have a lot to do with the warmth flooding him from the way their hands entwined, and certainly not the alcohol. They hadn’t imbibed enough for it to even remotely have an effect.
Where did he want to fit? It was a fair question, but she had to know the answer to that, didn’t she? He’d wanted her love, nothing more, nothing less. Once the gravity of it had been called into question, he had walked away like a coward. For all his bravery on the field, when it came to the women in his life, Peter Paul Wisdom unflinchingly opted for failure.
“Fuckin’... Christ, Pryde,” he shook his head at her in slight exasperation. “Where do you bloody well think?”
One day Kate would tell him everything. She just refused to speak the word into existence right now. They already did enough damage to one another to last a lifetime and adding in stories of her past, that held the potential to cause him more pain, wasn’t acceptable. Not today. Not after she’d already seen enough of that melancholy in his eyes.
Sighing as she tore her gaze away from his in favor of casting her eyes upon their joined hands, she allowed the warmth they produced to wash over her. Kate could easily see herself slipping back into old habits with him. He still loved her, that much was apparent from his brutish behavior and the quips he used as a defense mechanism. Falling for him all over again wouldn’t be an impossible feat, especially not when long-forgotten feelings were already beginning to resurface.
The question of if she should remained hanging in the air ominously. She was a mess and held just as much- if not more- of a chance to shatter his heart all over again.
Fuck it. She wasn’t the girl Pete knew anymore and while that should have caused more reservations? This Kate never backed down from what she wanted.
Finally meeting his eyes at his outburst of an admission, Kate untangled her left hand from his and moved to rest it against his cheek. “I think…” Trailing off she closed the gap between them, her lips crashing down onto his.
She absolutely wasn’t the same woman anymore. The few bits of her recent history had somehow only reignited that old flame without his even consciously realizing it. Years spread out between them and even now he was hopelessly in love with her. Pete should have realized, no matter the distance, that would never change.
It didn’t matter how much of a mess she might be, she was Katherine Pryde, the strongest woman he knew. She had proved that time and time again, never once failing to impress him with not only unyielding loyalty to her teammates, but also the unflinching prowess that comprised this irresistible pirate captain.
So, he was fucked.
Just like that, she was overcoming that one obstacle in the room: his uncompromising will to do the wrong thing. Her lips on his, her hand on his face, everything wrong evaporated from that same warmth they’d been cultivating since she had dared to edge closer to him. He released his grip on her other hand, opting to grip her by the waist and pull her onto his lap. This was so much better than wallowing in the despair over leaving her. Would it be perfect? Never. Flaws were what brought them together in the first place. She’d been an insufferable do-gooder and he had been an uncouth git. If it worked once, why couldn’t it work again?
Maybe he was getting too far ahead of himself, but the kiss--kisses?--were shutting down the last remnants of reasonable thought processing. All but one, he reasoned, and halted his own desired assault on her lips to first exhale and then graze them with hesitant words: “Y’sure about this… Kate?”
Wrong for each other in all the right ways, Kate should have known better than to ever believe she could resist the overwhelming gravitational pull that was Pete Wisdom. Their spark, while buried in a corner of her heart where he resided since he left, was just as bright as it was all those years ago.
Lips moving over his, stoking that warmth into a slow burning flame, her guards began to drop the moment he pulled her onto his lap- crumbling around the carefully laid foundation she constructed over the years. Regrets, what-ifs, frustrations, and the heartache she’d experienced over seeing him again slipped away as if all of it was a figment of her imagination. Although it was all likely to resurface numerous times throughout whatever the hell it was they were doing, Kate would take this reprieve from the dejection set to the chorus of their heavy breaths and a whimpering protest when he pulled back just enough to ask his question.
The sound of him calling her by her new chosen name brought everything back into a sharp focus, and her eyes that had closed at some point opened to seek out his gaze once more. “Pete…” Leaning to rest her forehead against his, she tried to catch her breath and work through that coveted haze that he was still able to cast over her.
“I’m never sure about anything.” But she did know that ever since arriving in Goodland, and so very often in her life, she felt displaced. Having John, Klara, Emma, and Remy helped- but this? Well, this felt like coming home. “But I’m trying. I want to try. Let me try.”
Excalibur had been the only real semblance of home Pete had ever known. Often he had wished he could have met Katherine sooner, been just a little bit younger, and life might have been a little less dark. He walked with many regrets, but the two he carried closest to his heart were failing his mother and leaving Katherine Pryde.
She may have been battleworn, scoffing at death’s door, but she was still every bit that wonderful girl who had phased a fist right through his chest and grabbed him by the heart to possess it whole. Perhaps this time she’d keep it, as long as Kate held it, Pete swore that he didn’t need it anymore.
Not that he was daft enough to speak any of that aloud. It would spoil the moment.
His left hand flew to the side of her face and cupped it, fingers tangling in strands of her hair. Mentally berating himself for dousing the moment with a whole bucket of water, he watched Kate sort through her thoughts with a mixture of reluctance and hope. Grasping for something that was no longer there didn’t settle with him, it was why he’d practically abandoned her.
“Do what you want, eh?” He offered, eyes closing as he breathed her in. The scent of alcohol, cigarettes, and Kate mingled perfectly in the area between them. “I’ll be sticking around…” Blue eyes opened to reveal her to him again, and he had to suck in a sharp breath just to stabilize the cocky grin on his face. “No choice in the matter anyway, is there?”
Leaning into his touch, Kate’s thumbs brushed over his cheeks, that glimmer of hope in his eyes causing her to press her lips to his once more. No longer viewing his appearance as some twisted joke, she resigned herself to focus on the now. It was what she preached so often wasn’t it? Despite the fact that a lot of her own time was often spent wallowing in the past while simultaneously trying to drown it all out in various masochistic ways.
“I always do what I want,” she murmured against his lips before exhaling the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She wouldn’t have blamed him if he decided he didn’t want to wait around while she tried to sort out her feelings. It wasn’t that she didn’t want him. There was a part of her that never stopped wanting Pete Wisdom, but now there was another- one more cautious that would worry endlessly about the potential they always had to destroy one another.
He’d been through a hell that she was responsible for, one that she wasn’t entirely privy to yet, and one that she was sure he would keep under lock and key for quite some time. The last thing she wanted was to ever be the driving force behind any future heartbreak.
Oh, but that cocky grin. It was too late for reservations now. No choice in the matter. She was already fucked. “There are worse places to be stuck in. I like it here,” she said emphasizing that last word by pressing closer to him. Yeah. She was so fucked.
It should have left him more divided. While he would argue that she owed him nothing, the scar on his heart couldn’t be healed overnight. As much as he wanted to believe that it could, and that he could get utterly lost in this reunion of clashing lips and bodies colliding, Pete knew it wouldn’t be so simple. Fortunately (or unfortunately), that appeared to be the case for her as well.
The grip he had in her hair tightened as she grazed him with honest words and pretty kisses. Maybe it wasn’t the love he still wanted, but it was as good a start as any. When he walked away, Pete never expected to see her again except for, perhaps, on the news doing good deeds with Excalibur. Naturally, he made sure to avoid any mutant-related updates as best he could and focused instead on making his own organization. He only had one relevant set of skills, after all, and returning to Black Air was vastly out of the question.
Now, she was flooding his world with her brazen American charm all over again. A little bit of potential heartbreak couldn’t be so bad, right? They didn’t have to call it anything, neither tryst nor the onset of a relationship, it could simply be something. Thinking that way made the whole idea of bedding her straightaway an easier pill to swallow.
The added emphasis to her location preferences issued a groan and subsequently, a scowl. “Not even through debatin’ this and you’re gonna go’n do that?” He clicked his tongue derisively at her, then contravened his own words by urging her closer in the same fashion again, but this time by also kissing her in the process.
As his lips lifted off hers, he descended down the welcoming column of her neck, “Stay, then.”