Hideaway Strath maybe my hearing ain’t 20/20 no more

Fury distorted Lotte’s memory of what exactly Hemlock had said, but it was definitely something along the lines of, “@Arturo said he wants to make my babies.” Definitely something like that. The soturi’s temper was at fever pitch — and the fact that it was a sweltering hot summer afternoon didn’t help her mood. She prowled through the underbrush like a hunting cat with a bone to pick, and she tailed the scent of her svelte, sweet-talking husband with a predatory gleam in her eyes. It had been a whopping three minutes or so when she lost her patience utterly and snapped back her head like a crash test dummy, but when her voice emerged from her throat it was warm and velvety and full of affection.

Lotte’s call for him is as smooth as velvet and as Ceannasach has never been one to deny his wife his course alters and his steps see him further from his patrols — eagerly put on hold to attend to her — and towards where Lotte’s summons had risen from. “Lotte,” Her names leaves his lips like a smoky caress as she comes into his view, his fiery twin sun gaze taking her in. She is a vision, he thinks in blissful ignorance. Ceannasach is yet unaware that Hemlock has broached the subject with his wife and that he is about to feel the burn of her volcanic ire as it rains down upon him like a holy, apocalyptic storm. Lingering in those last, fragile moments of ignorance, however, he strides towards her with a loving smile tugging at the edges of his lips and a glint to his burning irises that readily promise at wicked things.

Lotte ought to experience a moment of weakness when her husband enters the clearing, but the punch of heady desire she inevitably feels upon seeing the svelte, black-masked coywolf only aggravates her already glowering temper. Like a siren, she has lured him to this place; and like a siren, she will drown him in a sea of his own making.

Hämähäkki paints upon her dark visage a bright smile, teased at the edges with a sultry darkness, and approaches him as she always does. Her head and the crest of her neck melt against his throat, and she winds herself in a silky little ring around him. When she comes up parallel on his other side, her head rests almost idly upon his withers, and her tongue begins a wicked dance along the nape of his neck. “I have missed you, rakas,” she says honestly, warmly. Then, in the most innocuous, saccharine tone she can muster, she mentions with practiced nonchalance, “I have spoken with Hemlock; she told me of your offer.”

“I have missed you, too, Nightingale,” and he always would because she is the moon, the sun, the whole damn galaxy of his life. He will never love another as he loves Lotte — this Arturo knows in the very marrow of his bones. This, the gangster has known for quite some time. He awaits Lotte’s wrath as she speaks the words he has been expecting for a while: that Hemlock broached her upon the subject of the offer. Ideally, it should have been discussed between Lotte and him first but it wasn’t something he’d spent time contemplating, admittedly. It had struck him as an idea in the moment. He knows Lotte and thus her utter calm is …alarming to the gangster. More alarming than if her teeth would have torn into his flesh. Almost, he thinks he would prefer that outburst because this serenity he does not know what to do with. Then again, Arturo also isn’t sure what the fuss would be about if there was fuss. He sees things in a different way. It is not as if he is cheating on his wife. He simply offered a donation to Hemlock, remembering what she had spoken to him long ago and seeing how she loves Sirius and the Lotturos; and beyond that it is not an offer he made with any semblance of lightness. He does not make it a habit of offering to sire women’s children (a mess he’d much rather avoid for numerous reasons in all honesty but he knows Hemlock and he trusts her and thus it is different). He is certainty not aiming to replace Lotte by any measure. Arturo loves Lotte more than life itself.

“I see,” The gangster broaches the subject carefully, testing the waters before he dares to dive straight in; yet at the same time he will not deny it, or try to hide, nor make excuses for he believes there is nothing to hide. “if it upsets you or you tell me not to, I won’t.” Arturo tells Lotte straightforward, in a manner that he expects her to return with honesty about her feelings on the matter to him.

Lotte is spoiling for a fight.

Whether it's the continued heartbreak of being parted from her kaksonen or the perceived slight, her itchy paws or her growing sense of ennui, doesn't matter — she wants to wrinkle her muzzle at Ceannasach and fit him with the ugly she feels encased in. She feels fat and stagnant and out of place, and Hemlock's slender, tensile beauty mocks her. Venom pools upon the readied curve of her tongue, and unseen, her lips wrinkle to reveal her upper canines in a manner that is almost vampiric. She ignores his sweet words as tension builds in her body, but she stops preening warmly at his fur. The ruse is over; they both know it.

"Why was it not your mouth saying it first?" she demands of him, but she knows that whatever his answer is, it won't make her feel better. There's a fight brewing in her, and his gift for diplomacy is the one thing that might be able to talk her down — but that in itself is infuriating. It'll still be there, waiting for her to weaken enough to let it break free.

Torn between the desire to make a scene and the reluctance to draw attention to her emotional instability, "Play with me," Lotte begs, circling back around him to nip with spiced fervor at the curve of his haunch. Her touch is gentle and flirtatious; she's pulling her punches. Perhaps the entreaty to play seems utterly incongruous, but Lotte has always been a very physical creature; in her own way, she tries to find peace with the situation and with her husband's silence by venting her frustration in mock combat. In the tundra, a good brawl can solve a lot of problems — and wrestling with Dagfinn always did improve the soturi's capricious moods.  Sometimes the fact that Arturo isn't Dagfinn drives Lotte crazy.

Arturo is a gambling man, and thus he knows when the bluff and when to fold. This is not a moment to bluff. Her teeth had been close enough: within the kiss or kill range and she has stopped preening his fur. He calls her out and she responds with a question, one that he has not entirely disregarded as a possible question to be posed. “She wanted to ask you herself.” It was true enough for Hemlock was the one who had spoken up about broaching the topic to Lotte. “Perhaps, given your relationship with one another, it might have gone over smoother if it was her to broach the subject. Woman to woman.” This is all the gangster’s speculation, of course. He is not Hemlock and cannot construct a solid answer for Lotte, and refuses to speak for in any confident manner. Perhaps; that is the key word that he uses. It does not mean he is right or that he is wrong: merely that he calls it as he sees it.

She begs him to play with her, nipping at his haunch. It hardly seems like the tip to have a mock fight but …he has never been able to deny her what she has wanted before. There is no reason for him to start. So, Ceannasach gives into his wife’s wishes with the belief that sparring with her might assist in relieving what she has pent up.