Sunderance: Chapter 27.1 - Correlative Action

The suit was crisp and pressed, with everything in perfect order. The collar of the white shirt, which had been worn more times than could be remembered now, looked like new against the gray of her fur and the simple silk tie was neatly knotted at her throat. The lapels were wrinkle and line free, smooth under the touch of her paws as she checked herself in the mirror one last time. Not just the suit. For a case of this importance, she had to be sure that everything was perfect down to the last strand of fur around her muzzle. A bunny didn’t appear before the eyes of a city like Zootopia looking less than professional, and she was pretty sure she was pulling that off even if she felt like throwing up. She managed a rueful grin at herself in the mirror as she considered the irony of how nervous she was about the long-awaited day in court. She was as ready as she possibly could be, knew she had a solid case and had no doubt that she wouldn’t be breaking down in front of the court like some first-year student trying to get past their first opening statement.

The feeling of irony was more about the figure that still slept in the bed behind her, sheets covering the lower half of his body while his torso remained bare. And she was shameless in her admiration of what she could see for a moment, the narrow but strong build of the predator so different from the males she had been raised around. It wasn’t a fair comparison, of course - as if anything in the rules of attraction and emotion was fair in her mind currently - but she wasn’t going to deny the fact that the orange and cream body of the Todd was more appealing than any buck she had ever known. Nor was she was going to deny that a part of that attraction was the danger of it all, the strength of the male who had protected her time and time again, and even the secrets he had kept from her.

She could have felt bad about that because she had never been interested in the tough guy/bad buck archetype that attracted so many of her friends through the years, but she didn’t. Mostly because she knew he wasn’t playing a part just to get some tail as so many males did. He just was what he had made of himself with the life he had, and what he had made of himself was insanely dangerous. And protective, helpful, supportive when she least expected it, spontaneously funny at times, sarcastic and sweet. The layers that had peeled away over the short time she had known him showed her who he would have been if his life had been different and if that trend continued?

You are Twitterpated, she thought to herself in words that had annoyed and embarrassed her when she’d heard them the first time. Turning away from the mirror to face the bed and look over the long, angular muzzle that rested on the pillow, she realized that she could have spent a long time looking at him. Leaving the bed to get ready for the case had been an exercise in willpower that had taken her longer than it should have and had made her wonder how he resisted the pull of alcohol every day. Or how he resisted her if his words about her being more alluring than drink were true.

Nibbling on her lower lip, she moved to the edge of the bed, watching the rise and fall of his chest before reaching out. She hesitated for a moment with her paw over his shoulder, then grinning to herself and indulged by letting that paw slide to his chest. Her fingers stroked through his fur slowly, savoring the warm depth of it and the strength of the body below it before she opened her muzzle.

Before she could say his name to wake him, however, her heart jumped into her throat when his paws reached out for her. For about a quarter of a second, she thought maybe he was having some killer fox/bodyguard instinctive reaction to being touched and expected to find herself in a great deal of pain. But that quarter of a second was all it took for his arms to wrap around her, one large paw pressed into the small of her back and the other behind her head, dragging her into the bed with him to squeeze the full length of her body against his. The surprise of it all was compounded by the chittering rumble that rose in his chest - where her face was now buried – and the tip of a long muzzle that nestled between her ears with a huff of hot breath.

While finding herself wrapped up and squeezed into the obviously still sleeping fox had not been her intention, being pressed into the scent and warmth of his body was hardly something she could complain about. Plus, the tickle of his breath against her ears was soothing and appealing all at once, causing her to release a little sigh into his chest ruff. All in all, the temptation to stay where she was for a few minutes longer was difficult to resist and the little smile that curved her lips. She released a little sigh, took just a moment to revel (wallow) in the still strange closeness she felt to the male, before she spoke in an almost conversational tone that seemed incredibly loud in the otherwise silent room.

“Nick, you’re going to wrinkle my suit,” she said, reluctantly turning her nose away from his chest and looking up so she could see his face. And as she’d expected, it didn’t take a lot of the spoken word to wake him, no matter how soft her voice was. Deep green eyes cracked open slightly as his ears flicked once, then blinked open fully. It didn’t surprise her how quickly the eyes became sharp and alert, though the smoky change in them when his gaze settled on hers set her pulse racing. His gaze moved over her for a moment, as if taking inventory of the fact that she was no longer naked, though his paws didn’t release her as he did so.

“You woke up before me?”

“That you asked that question answers it,” she said, her nose twitching twice as he turned his muzzle up and parted it in a huge, very toothy yawn. A sight that shouldn’t really have been as interested as it was, considering, but she kept her eyes on him as he licked his muzzle and turned his eyes back to her with a slow blink.

“I didn’t hear an alarm. Didn’t have trouble sleeping, did you?”

“No, I just woke up before you,” she muttered, her ears burning slightly as she remembered exactly what had dragged her out of sleep. She half expected him to simply accept that as the answer, though of course, he didn’t.

“Ah,” he murmured, seeming to catch the hint from her blush. Or maybe her scent. Neither of which he helped by nestling his muzzle against the base of one of her ears for a few quick sniffs. “I woke you up.”

“Insistently,” she replied, turning her ear away from his muzzle before the shivers trickling down her spine got out of control. Then she raised her eyes to him again, with a grin parting her muzzle as she managed to maneuver both paws to press into his chest, claws dragging through his fur until she felt him react in a very obvious way. “And you can stop that. I’m already awake and I have a court date to keep.”

“I don’t think any male has that kind of self-control,” he said, smirking down at her as she smirked up at him in kind.

The compulsive desire to kiss him was strong, especially considering how close their muzzles were together. But as intimate and alluring as the moment was? There was also a lot still weighing on her mind, still too much to do today to allow herself to get distracted by entertaining the idea of lingering in bed. And kissing him for the first time, she had no doubt, would be as much of a distraction as her ‘alarm clock’ was presently being. Finding the words or the will to actually move away from him was taking longer than she had thought it would, however. Luckily, he spoke for her.

“Well, unless you want a lot more of that insistence, you’re going to need to get out of bed and let me go shower,” he murmured softly, causing another little shiver to race down her spine, which set her tail to twitching quickly.

“You have to get your paw off my butt for me to get out of bed,” she commented, pleased with how calm she kept her tone considering how aware she was of him at that moment. And how fast her heart was racing when he leaned in close enough for his slowly flaring nose to touch to her twitching one.

“Shame,” he muttered, which caused her to grin at him when he slid his adventuring paw up to the small of her back for a moment before he wrapped both arms around her and surprised her with a warm, tight, sigh-inducing hug.

Then, before she even realized what was happening, he released her and sat up, rolling forward in a quick motion that had him tumbling off the foot of the bed and land on two paws. There he stretched, in all of his glorious nudity, long and lean and strangely beautiful for a long moment with a low growl rolling through his chest. It was enough to have her sitting up on the bed with the desire to reach out just to run her paws down his back.

Down, Judy. Down.

“I can be ready in fifteen minutes,” he said, looking at her over his shoulder without turning to face her. He continued to watch her as she dragged herself out of bed, smoothed down her suit, and did a quick check on herself before grabbing her phone from the side table.

“No rush,” she said with a quick glance at her watch as he made his way out the door. “We still have two hours before I need to be in court, so taking possible traffic and reporters into account, you can take twenty.”

He gave a short laugh, which she enjoyed, before leaving the room and her to her thoughts. And clean up. While her suit was thankfully wrinkle resistant and required nothing more than a few tugs to put everything back in place, her fur was a little more of a mess. She spent the next few minutes brushing and combing, listening to the sounds of the shower as she did so. With everything quickly put back into place, and the shower still running, she stepped out of the bedroom and walked to her desk. Her note pad, where she had been taking her notes for the cast since arriving in Zootopia, sat open to the first page of her two-page Opening Statement. Picking it up, she read over it once quickly, muttering to herself and taking her pen to make a minute change to the wording of the opening. Then, because she didn’t believe there was such a thing as being too prepared, she set her notes down and walked into the center of the room.

“Your honor,” she began, fully certain that if she could run through the statement without a hiccup after spending a night in the arms of her bodyguard?

Then she would have no problem doing the same with the eyes of the city on her.