SUMMARY: Details of Wink's visit to Lorelei in Chapter 41: Silver and Gold, of "Once Upon A Time," by LA Knight. After Wink has delivered Nuada's presents to Dylan at dawn (flowers and silly socks! whoo!), he takes his own sweet time making Nuada wait, and comes back to the lair at sunset with a smear of Lorelei's lip-rouge on his shoulder. Hmm, how'd he get that there?

PART 1: What's going on with Lorelei and Fafner's Cave this morning before Wink gets there to see her. Fans of Geri will enjoy.

WARNING: Adult language ahead.

A/N - German translations at the bottom in the end-notes. A few things may be quoted from or alluding to Chapter 37: When You're Gone (Part 1) of "Once Upon A Time," or other shorts in this fic.

"This looks pretty," Geri the fenris noted, as he reached up to finger at one of Lorelei's sparkling gold earrings that winked and flashed as it dangled in the soft tavern lights. One of his fingertips started to travel up the outer line of the shell of her pointed ear, softly, lightly.

Lorelei's eyes got a little wider. "Be careful!" She started. One of her hands snapped up to stop his dead in its tracks. Surprise and concern took over the face of the blond fenris, and he immediately asked, "Did I hurt you? Did I pull on your earring by accident or something? I didn't mean to, if I did, I'm sorry."

"It's alright," she answered, carefully peeling his hand away from her ear, and then giving him a lopsided smile. "Just be careful." Geri nodded, though it did not escape his powers of perception that the pulse-spot at his companion's slender throat fluttered suspiciously fast for having merely been given an uncomfortable pinch on the ear... supposedly. Both river-faery and lycanthrope turned their attention back to the cards in their hands. Every now and again, ultra-gold or shining copper eyes would flick to the other's face, each one trying to anticipate what the other one was plotting. Geri laid down a card, which Lorelei picked up. There was a gleam in her eye that spoke of inward gloating as she then laid down her hand with a smile. Geri's blond eyebrows went up, staring at the cards she'd spread before him.

"Well, fuck me dead," he said, hardly believing what he saw. "That's another hand I've lost to my amazing opponent." They both smiled as he reached for her cream-pale hand and gave her a congratulatory kiss on the back of her knuckles. Four queens and three kings lay proud and stately on the table in front of her, she'd definitely won this time. "However, while you may have won the hand, darling, the real victory lies in the total score."

"So, tally it up, then," the rhinemaiden told him, her voice like warm silk, smile still glittering in her eyes and curving her wine-red lips. After tallying their cards for the hand, they added up their respective total scores with the other hands that they had played. Lorelei's total came to four-hundred and ninety points, Geri's was five-hundred. He had won.

"Gratuliere!" Lorelei told him with a good-natured smile. The smugness in his gleaming feral eyes and fanged smile would have made Peter Pan look humble. "Your next seven drinks are on the house, as per the stakes that we agreed on," she said as she gathered up the cards to pack them back into the deck and return them to their rightful owner. As Geri pocketed the card deck, she asked him, "Would you care for one now?" When he nodded with a mumbled "yeah, sure" she snapped her fingers to beckon over a bieresal. "What would you like?"

The fenris looked at her with wolfish eyes, and said in a low voice that purred, "You know what I like."

The nuance was not at all lost on Lorelei, but she she gave it no acknowledgment other than a half-smile, fighting down a hint of color before it could reach her cheeks, and sent the bieresal off for Geri's drink. The almost-blush did not go unnoticed by the wolf-shifter, however. Few things, if any, ever escape the eyes of a predator. As the bieresal set down a large shot-glass full of dark red liquid in front of Geri he kept his eyes on her, and as he sipped he asked, the ever-present growls in his voice sending small shivers down the faery woman's spine, "Why so shy today, darling?" Lorelei brought her eyes to meet his, swept them briefly over his wolfish smile and almost leering copper eyes, and gave a very light shrug with one shoulder, by way of answer.

"How is your drink?" The rhinemaiden asked of her companion, voice like the ripples made by raindrops on a lake.

Geri took another sip of the blood in his glass, savoring the slick, slightly metallic taste of it. "Fine enough," he answered. "Though, I can't say that I haven't tasted sweeter," he said in a lower-toned voice, as he ever-so-lightly traced small circular patterns over the soft, niveous skin of the back of Lorelei's hand and wrist with the very tips of his sharp claws.

A somewhat lopsided smile slowly pulled at the corners of the river maiden's deep red mouth, and her golden eyes took on a knowing sparkle. "Still thinking about that kiss you stole that other night, huh?" She inquired.

How could he forget?

They had gone out dancing at another place in the neighborhood, and at some point in the evening they went outside, just to have some air, talk a little. He hadn't been able to take his eyes off of that temptingly rich red mouth of hers, nor could he get the scents of wine and lamb's blood that came from the stuff that she had dabbed on her lips out of his brain. Eventually he had watched those lips form the words, "Komm, lass uns tanzen," as she'd started to head back towards the crowd.

Mmmmm-no. Geri'd had other ideas.

The wolf-shifter had caught the hand of the gorgeous Rhine daughter, and gently pulled her back to him with a tug, saying, "Nein, let's stay out here a while longer."

Her glittering golden eyes had matched his own glinting copper ones, as he pulled her closer and put his arms around her waist, and then he'd started to turn them both around and around together, bodies pressed close, in a careless little kind of dance that had made her smile and giggle, her pearly pointed white teeth shining against the red of her mouth. Then Geri had brought his face close to Lorelei's, and ever so softly, slowly, brushed over her face and close to her mouth with the lightest touch of his lips, teasing her with that touch. Teasing himself, too, the whole idea was just too sexy - a siren in his arms with the scent of blood on her mouth - it nearly drove him crazy every time that he breathed in. When he'd pulled back to look into her eyes again, there was barely a shred of anything resembling humanity left in his form at all, he was almost completely changed - claws, fangs, hair, re-molded features - he was nearly all monster. But the look on her face had been calm, collected, and her breathing was even, though he could tell with his every sense that her pulse had quickened. Not fear. Excitement. "Like what you see?" Geri had said, in a rough, gravelly approximation of his typical growl. Copper eyes flashing in triumph, he'd cupped the side of her flower-soft face with one of his clawed hands, and brought his mouth down on hers, slow and hungry, loving the taste of skin, wine, blood, and honey all together. It was amazing.

Still thinking about it? Hell, a better question would be, when would he ever stop thinking about it?

He really was leering at her now, as he sipped from his shot-glass, with the kind of smile that only a wolf could smile on his face, and chuckling into his drink in a sort of voice that was low and dark and would have made Tim Curry proud. Lorelei rolled her auriferous eyes as she got up from the table where the two of them had been seated and started to walk over towards the bar. Coolly she tossed back to the lycanthrope over her shoulder, "Perhaps instead of stealing a kiss you may want to be worthy of one from a lady."

That wolfish smile on Geri's face pulled itself into a grin as he put down his glass and came close on her heels, saying, "Oh-ho! Darling, I do, and I would..." He caught the rhinemaiden about the waist from behind in a hold that was gentle, yet spoke of a restrained possessiveness. He put his fang-filled mouth to the spot where jaw met neck, just below her ear, a place where one could feel the pulse beat, and his surprisingly soft lips whisped over her skin as he finished, "If you would let me."

Long, thick, black lashes closed over irises of brightest gold like the wings of night folding over twin suns. Lorelei breathed in deep and slow, to center herself. It was like gazing unblinking into the depths of a priceless black opal, just being around him - dark and dazzling. His charm, his feral magnetism - Geri never failed to be of some interest when he was around. And damn it, her senses had enjoyed the experience of what he'd done when he kissed her.

But after that stolen kiss came the next morning. A morning that greeted her with waterlilies from Wink.

Seeing them had made her feel like she had been filled from head to toe with the sparkling essence of sunshine in Spring, it touched her heart so. How many times, how many hours, had she held those fragile water flowers in her hands, to her face, breathing in their fragrance and feeling their smooth softness? Then when the troll had come to see her again after that... "heartfelt advances," he had said. Not just pretty talk. He truly meant to pursue whatever had started unfurling between them that night that they had spent over wine and conversation. It was only for the briefest micro-instant immediately after he'd said it - about a fifth of a second at most - but she had felt as though she was going to go somersaulting into the sky, and had to force herself to keep her heels firmly glued to the earth. Not only that, but the river siren couldn't even count how many times those twenty minutes that she had spent alone together with Wink in the nook over Little Budapest at the Troll Market had replayed over, and over, and over again in her mind. "Wow" was too oversimplified a word for it, for everything that she had felt between them that time.

But... Geri? Let him?

"Well?" Geri softly growled over her skin, his husky voice was like a velvet coat placed on the shoulders of the god of savagery. "Lor-e-lei...?" He caressed the sounds in the syllables of her name with his tongue even as he sank his teeth into them, and the Rhine daughter shivered. The wolf-shifter felt the pulse at his beautiful captive's throat start to beat faster, but just as before, there was no fear in her. He ever so slightly held her body even closer to his as he trailed the touch of his mouth slowly upwards, gently nipping at the edge of her ear.

Lorelei's eyes flew open.

"Nicht!" Lorelei burst out, pushing the blond fenris sharply away.

Geri was thrown for a loop, and his coppery eyes were wide as he quickly put up his hands as if trying to surrender peacefully, saying, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

"You don't learn, do you?" The river maiden snarled at him with a scowl on her pretty, lotus-white face.

"Lorelei, I'm sorry!" Geri tried again. "I got carried away, I didn't-"

"Schnautze," she cut him off, coldly. "Have your drink," she spat, and started to stalk over to a back hall off one side of the bar.

Dammit! Geri let out a huff of air and ran a hand through his blond hair, this was not turning well. A few seconds passed before he took a deep breath and tried again. "Please," he said, with the closest-sounding thing to a pleading tone of voice as it ever got with him. Lorelei stopped. Okay, so far so good. She turned just slightly to look over her shoulder at him. "I'm sorry," he said again, quietly, and the raven-haired beauty turned to face him fully. "I'm just not very used to handling fragile things with care, if you couldn't tell," he explained with a wry smile, and the faery woman gave a very soft snort of a laugh and mirrored his wry expression with her own ruby red mouth. Actually, he was used to just taking whatever he felt like and tearing it apart, for all that it mattered to him, but for the first time in a long time, he actually wanted something - something that he couldn't just take. He wanted this fairy-tale princess on his arm, to shower her with all the jewels of the world and to feed her the beating, bleeding hearts of anyone that ever stood against either of them, for any reason. Damn him, he actually wanted her. Of all the things to happen to him, it had to be this, didn't it? He held out his hand to her, palm up, beseeching, "Thy pardon, milady?"

Another short, soft laugh, and a real smile came to her face at that. Now how could she stay cross with him for very long when he did something like that? It was almost adorable... Almost. Lorelei slipped her hand into Geri's. "Given," she told him, her voice as soft and cool as water poured over a burning cut. Some of that old wolfish glint returned to his copper eyes.

"Didn't break any skin, did I?" Geri inquired. Lorelei pulled back one side of her long, black hair, showing him her pale, pointed ear. Not a scratch. "Oh good!" He declared, and the pair shared a smile. Right then, a ringtone that sounded a lot like "Mitternacht," by E Nomine, started to sound off from Geri's pocket. The fenris snarled - literally snarled - and rolled his eyes as he took out his phone to check who was calling him. Oh for the the love of... He flipped open his phone. "What!" Geri barked.

A very deep, rough, and unamused-sounding voice on the other end of the line growled, "Where are you?"

"Where am I?" Geri echoed. "In. Public." He dropped his voice lower, "This had better be good."

"Watch your tongue, pup," the voice on the other end snarled. "Remember who it is that you're speaking to." The blond lycanthrope rolled his copper-colored eyes again.

"As if I could ever forget," he drawled. "What do you need?"

As Geri carried on his conversation, Lorelei drifted over to the back hall that she had previously been heading to. The hall led to the tavern kitchen, but between the door to the tavern proper and the door the kitchen there was a counter along one wall, with all its drawers and cupboards full of various and sundry first aid items for a vast array of creatures, given that there was such a colorful variety of folk that frequented her place, and unexpected things could always be expected to happen. Installed into this counter was a sink and a faucet, from which a smooth stream of pure water would flow when turned on. Pure water was a precious commodity almost anywhere in the world, these days. The whole city had a pipe-network that had been engineered by goblins to bring it to the Hidden population. Originally it had been for profit - gold and shiny things - no different than any other business cartel. But after enough deaths stacked up in the city once the humans started putting chemical additives into the municipal water supply, it became clear that such practice couldn't continue, for there was no alternative for Hidden folk, and it was made freely accessible, provided that you made it known that you needed it, spoke to the right goblins about it and had your place piped into the network. The Troll Market had such pipes running all over the place. Lorelei would never understand how humans could tolerate all those chemical additives and heavy metals in their water. It was disgusting.

There was a long, wide mirror on the wall just above the counter, and on the counter-top was the glass bowl full of waterlilies that Wink had sent. Lorelei had put them here because she wanted them to be a in a place where she would see them often. The river faery smiled to herself as she took a glass from one of the cupboards and filled it with some pure water from the tap, and then poured it into the flower bowl, topping off the water-level. The flowers would fade one day, given that they were severed from wherever they had grown, and she had no means to prolong their life, not like this, but for as long as she could, she would treasure having them. Lorelei gently lifted out a pure white flower, very lightly coming into contact with one of the bejeweled miniature koi swimming in the bowl with a fingertip as she did so, and held the bloom to her face. She breathed deeply the sweet fragrance of the water-flower in her hand, gently caressed at its soft white petals with her nose and her cheek, and closed her eyes.

She wanted to see him again. So much. Lorelei had always understood that Wink had a duty to his prince, and that the mutual pursuits of both men took them in and out of her life, season by season - a few days, sometimes half a year, who could ever know? But knowing such things only made her anxious now, waiting for that next time that they would meet up or that he would come by. She wanted to hear his deep voice again, see his smile and his twinkling one eye, she wanted... Lorelei smiled into the soft center of the white waterlily, remembering strong, rough troll fingers on her arm, on her shoulders, in her hair, and she didn't fight the light flush that came to her cheeks and chest at these thoughts, but rather, it made her smile to herself all the more. Taking one last deep breath, she returned the waterlily to the bowl with its fellows, and then filled the glass that she had pulled out with some cool water and took a long drink.

Upon the soonest opportunity that I am afforded, my dear Lorelei... She took another deep breath and let it out in a sigh.

Wiping the glass dry and putting it away, Lorelei returned to the main room of the tavern, where Geri had finished talking on the phone. The fenris met her halfway. "Listen," he said, "something came up, so I'm gonna have to go now." Lorelei nodded with an "okay" as Geri continued, "So, I'll see you... later, I guess." The river faery nodded again. The blond wolf-shifter reached for her hand, and gently brushed his thumb back and forth over her smooth knuckles as he slowly brought it up to his mouth, and placed a soft, almost courtly kiss on the back of her slender fingers, the hairs of his goatee tickling the back of her hand. His coppery stare into her ultra-gold eyes was full of glittering intensity, and he smiled his wolf's smile at her as he growled, "Auf Wiedersehen."

"Tschüs," she returned, with a smile on her own face, as Geri turned and left the room, heading towards the exit.

On his way out, Geri heard a deep voice rumble to him, "Best have a care with that one, boyo..." The fenris looked up and to his left, and met the one shining eye of a big, brawny, scar-faced cave troll. It was the same troll that had taken up Lorelei's attention when he had come around not that many days back. Geri's eyes nearly glowed in the dark with the glare that he leveled up at the face of the troll, who continued, "She was twice your age before you were even born." The blond wolf-shifter clenched and unclenched his clawed fists, and growled under his breath through gritted fangs, the troll only stood with his huge arms folded casually, very light smile playing over the edges of his mouth.

Geri didn't have time for this. He had somewhere that he needed to be. Snarling, he turned and stalked his way out of the door of Fafner's Cave, while the troll remained standing where he was, a smirk on his tusked face.

A/N - Yes, it's true, "fuck me" or "fuck me dead" is a common idiomatic obscenity for "incredible" or "unbelievable" or "I can't believe it."

- The card game that Geri and Lorelei are playing is a variation of Rummy.

- The "fifth of a second" thing is actually important, because I read somewhere that collaboratively averaged data in the field of Human Sciences shows that in relationships that last (we're talking "death do us part," folks that see their golden 50th anniversary, and so on), it only takes a fifth of a second to actually fall in love, and by the time you know it's happened, it's too late. Keep in mind that this is "relationships," and not "marriages" exclusively, though marriages are included.

TRANSLATIONS

Gratuliere! = Congratulations!

Komm, lass uns tanzen = Come on, let's go dance.

Nicht! = Don't!

Schnautze = German colloquialism for "shut your mouth"

Tschüs = bye