heorte | when i go towards you it is with my whole life.

Something behind her ribs clenches for that little truth. It's a complicated shape. Not resentment—she can hardly begrudge him his past or be jealous of a woman who helped to make Ellis as he is for her now. But—

"It does. Matter to me. But—" Here, finally, her grip on him relents a little. "I have placed my trust in you."

At her hips, Ellis' hands shift, slide higher to the bend of her waist.

It is very obvious when he is thinking, Wysteria told him once. He remembers hearing her say such a thing as they were lying in clover, damp after having spent their afternoon in the water. His thumbs follow the pattern of her dress, up along the structure of sturdy fabric over her stomach, her ribs, as he lets the weight of that settle.

Her trust. Ellis has tried so very hard to be worthy of it.

"When I take you to bed, it will be when you've asked me to," Ellis says slowly. "You needn't give up something important to you on my account. I'm content to wait, as long as you wish so long as you intend to kiss me in the meantime."

Even this is mutable. When she's asked, Ellis tells her. But it's important that his desires remain a separate thing. He can wait. He has insisted upon it, after all.

His thumbs stroke along the fabric of her dress, palms set over her ribs as he speaks. She has loosened her grip and he'd ask her to hold on tighter, only there is only so long a man can remain in such a position without needing to attend to certain difficulties.

Still—

"Do you want me to undress you?" Ellis asks, and then more quietly, "Do you want me to touch you?"

Two questions. The game is long over, but.

What if she didn't intend to kiss him? Imagine if she were strictly cold. Or if she only told him how much she would like to him, were she allowed to do such a thing. Surely that's what she is meant to do. If she were very sensible, it's how she would have treated him for all these months. That first kiss he'd stolen from her in the little kitchen of the Hightown house— she might have allowed that. But only because it was cleverly done, impulsive and secret. But the rest? She has held his hand and laughed in his company and let him set his teeth to her lower lip. He has seen her in little more than a shift, and she has seen him in his clinging wet clothes.

Those things. Those are things she shouldn't have permitted if she were being very strict about the whole business.

"Yes," she says. Her thumbs are set gently at the high points of his cheekbones. "Very much."

"Somewhere other than your knee?" has the cadence of a joke.

But there are limits to what he is proposing. Or there is some undefined, hazy space that he is aware of them tripping towards.

It is difficult to deny Wysteria anything. And in this matter, Ellis knows already that it will be near impossible in the midst of this business to deny her if she wants—

Well, there are any number of things.

Ellis' hands shift by degrees, thumbs sweeping over the patterned fabric beneath her breast before falling back to her thighs. It will be a wrench to get to his feet. He is very fond of her hands on his face this way.

"Alright," he tells her, before catching one of her hands in his own, kissing her palm. "Come with me."

Which is when he does rise (slower, on account of stiff knees and the prickling ache of having been knelt for so long) with his hand keeping hold of Wysteria's to bring her up alongside him.

Come with me means no further than the soft-worn rug in front of the fireplace. It is where he kisses her again, folding down to her with one hand mapping out the fastenings of her dress along her back.

After saying so, it's the easiest thing in the world to let herself be brought up and out of the chair and to follow him to that rug before the fireplace. Even before they've traveled that far, Wysteria's spare hand has flitted out—touched absently toward his side and his tunic left wrinkled from the weight of the gambeson. She has pinched that fabric gently between her thumb and forefinger and felt the miniature rasp of the twill's weave—

She is very ready to set her fingers at his neck, and to sway faintly into the shape of his kiss. After all these minutes of reversed fortunes, the sensation of having to raise her face to him is almost strange.

Almost. Her fingers tucking beneath the edge of his tunic's collar. The line of her body shifted close in the loop of his arm.

"They starts at the bottom," she supplies helpfully. "The lacing ties do."

Perhaps this might go faster were he to break from her, give his full attention to the lacing. It is a small mercy that she is not wearing a dress fastened by a neat row of many buttons. Ellis might like tracing his fingers over them beneath the cover of her when they are sat side by side on the ferry or contained within a carriage, but it's a far easier business to undo laces than it is to devote himself to the unfastening of each tiny button on a dress.

Wysteria is so close that there is no reason not to bend to kiss her again as his fingers at her back find those lacings and the tidy bow securing them at the small of her back. A small tug signals the beginning: the lacing comes free, and Ellis begins to gently work the ties open as he returns to the business of setting his mouth to Wysteria's.

There is some low note of urgency, yes. But it is an unhurried kiss. Ellis is methodical in this, aware of himself as much as he is aware of her. Wysteria's fingers are warm at his collar and she is very yielding in his arms and the bodice of her dress is growing loose under his ministrations.

They've done this before. And Ellis has touched her before, yes. Hands on her bare legs. Hands on her hips and waist, her ribs, over the sheer fabric of her shift. There is some familiarity in the ritual. But the end point is less defined here. Ellis is attentive to that, even as he begins to think more of the easy pleasure of kissing her while he hands work her dress free, and the soft sound of her breathing and how little space exists between them, only the barest sliver necessary.

The growing slack in her bodice pricks at her attention, weighing keenly at the edge of her awareness despite what should be the wholly distracting shape of his mouth. But they are, all things considered, very mild kisses. So maybe it makes sense that she should be distracted from them by the shift and pull of Ellis' hands. After all, he has kissed her hundreds of times now (though he has rarely kissed her while also helping to remove her from her clothes—).

When there is space enough to warrant it, Wysteria briefly leaves off with the grasping shape of both hands so she might wrestle herself free of the sleeves secure to her bodice with yet another series of laces.

"You must tell me if I'm too demanding of you, Mister Ellis," is a fine thing to say as she presses back into his space. She hovers near the shadow of his kiss. "I don't wish to catch you unawares.

Too demanding.

Briefly leaving off his work, Ellis bends more fully to kiss her mouth, then her jaw, and then put the curve of his smile in against her neck. She is held close, drawn in and cinched up against his body.

They cannot quite stop here, with Wysteria half-undressed. But it is a fine moment to pause and set his attention to her throat, hands flexing over the loosened fabric over her hips.

"Tell me what you'll have off next," he murmurs there, against her skin. Like her undressing is a little game between them as well.

The scuff of his beard there on the sensitive skin of her neck prompts her to squirm, hands grasping in the direction of his shoulder or cheek as if to check him (though they land there and don't actually get as far as discouraging him).

"Must I make every decision?" is scolding though, punctuated by a tsking from behind teeth. It must be something he can feel under his mouth. She is certainly aware of how her voice vibrates against the contact—

"But"—because of course she has an opinion—"It seems very silly to stand about in half a dress."

A point to be argued, were Ellis not preoccupied with his mouth on her skin: should she not make decisions when she has such clear preferences and he has none?

But it doesn't materialize in this moment. His fingers find the hook and lacing securing her skirts, and works them loose. His mouth moves along her neck, down to the bend of her shoulder where one hand has gently shifted the fabric of her collar aside to make room for the progression of his lips. Here, he attends to the business of applying a soft kiss there at her collarbone before straightening.

"Here," he says, taking hold of the fabric by the discarded sleeves. "Step out."

As he draws the dress down her hips, down her thighs, to puddle on the floor. It puts him on his knees again, below her.

It tickles and warms at the same time, that wandering line of his mouth. Has he ever kissed her there at the joint of her neck? Certainly he has never presumed to turn back her collar and then kiss her under where it had lain. She is almost grateful for it when he draws back and down, taking her skirts with him. It gives her a moment to reconcile the prickle of heat at the back of her neck, and the jumping nerves of her interest, and—

"Oh, yes. Yes, of course." She hastens to step out of the pooled fabric, absently balancing herself off one of his shoulders to do it.

And then he is on his knees and she is in her scrubbed white shift and short stays and stockings and hair pins.

Habit dictates doing something more with this dress, one that belongs to Wysteria and will be worn again, than leaving it puddled on the carpet. And Ellis intends to, though Wysteria's hand at his shoulder has some ability to simply hold him in place. He wants to sway forward and put his face in against her stomach, set his hands to her hips. He's not tired but—

It is not what they're doing here, right now.

Ellis' hand slips beneath the hem of her shift, as he tips his head back to look up at her.

"Raise your hem. I'll have these off."

Since perhaps it is his turn to make some decision, and he is already knelt down, in a position to easily see this done.

There is something about the combination—the shape of the words arranged so and the warm brush of his fingertips and him up at her in exactly that fashion and most of all that Ellis has made a choice in the whole affair—that sends a flush of heat up the back of her neck. And reminds her abruptly that, hours ago, she had been quite lazy in dressing and hadn't bothered with finding ribbons that matched one another much less the green knit of the stockings themselves.

"They're not my best ones. And don't laugh," she says, the hand at his shoulder remaining steady there as Wysteria fishes at her hem with the other. "I'll die."

It should probably be a more tentative thing, this business of drawing up the edge of her shift and showing him her knee and not just because of her mismatched ribbons, either. But she finds it quite easy to do. It's as if there were something inherently pleasant in simply answering his request, however much she may have bullied him into making it. And there indeed are the questionable ribbons in question just above her knees. One is a very pale blue. The other is shockingly red—one of the pair she'd worn last Satinalia which had flashed while dancing at the slit of the play Empress's skirts.

There is no laughter; Ellis takes that instruction to heart. But there is a smile, curving warm across his face as one hand slides up her calf so he can run his thumb along that line of bright red ribbon.

"I remember these."

Or he remembers the costume that had gone along with them. The plunging neckline had been difficult to forget, if only because it was the first time he had seen her scar.

His thumb lingers, rubs back and forth for a few moments more, before Ellis tugs it loose. His hands come up to the tops of her thighs, and hooks careful fingers into the hem of the stocking. When he draws it down, it's with more contact between his palms and fingers over her calf than is strictly necessary. His fingers draw along her ankle again, coaxing her foot up so he might draw the stocking off entirely and set it aside with the puddled heap of her dress.

"Now the other," he instructs, steady in spite of close proximity to one very bare leg.

"They're very cheap ribbons. I never wear them, the red ones I mean, except by chance. I only bought them on account of the color needing to be very bold. Otherwise no one would have ever noticed them, and that was the whole point of the joke."

This, Wysteria prattles along on without much thought and certainly with very little intention—the bulk of her attention being somewhat distracted by the scuff of his work calloused hands. It's a very fine thing, she things, for someone to have a bit of wear on their hands. Maybe if Ellis had soft hands (a possibility she can only imagine academically because the prospect seems so absurd), the shape of his touch might be somewhat less interesting. And that would be a shame.

In any case, she swaps her hands between shoulder and skirt in order to fetch her hem up in the other direction and so too shifts her weight accordingly.

"I read in a poem once about a lady giving her lover one of her stocking ribbons. It seemed outrageously inappropriate at the time of me reading it. Not that you're one of those, of course. A, er—You're going to be my husband, so it would be very different. Anyway it's all hypothetical. You can't have either of these because I have got to go home with both my stockings up."

"Aye, you do."

Though in the course of Wysteria's explanation, Ellis has already reached hands up to the light blue ribbon. His fingers have skimmed along the topmost hem of her stocking. He's drawn the bow loose.

He is touching her more than he needs to. Maybe this will be the whole of it. Ellis can't pretend he isn't harboring some quiet type of uncertainty over the request Wysteria's made. But he curls one palm about her the inside of her thigh, just above her knee, then carefully insinuates his fingers beneath her stocking and encourages it down, with his fingers running the length of her calf in the process.

"I'll beg favors from you some other time," Ellis promises, looking up into her face as he lifts her foot by the ankle to complete his work. "Though you're already so generous to me that it seems unfair to ask more of you."

His fingers run down the whole length of her leg and the small hairs on the back of her neck prickle faintly in answer. She is thinking on it, the involuntary quality of the response, and so treats his remark with more flippancy than it warrants—

"Unfair? Please, Mister Ellis. I demand things of you constantly. It hardly hurts to ask."

But the fact that she is still holding her hem high, though barefoot and bare legged now, sharpens her attention directly. Her fingers shift absently about the fabric, hesitating there as if uncertain what she ought to do with it— With a brisk clearing of her throat, Wysteria releases her shift and his shoulder both.

"You may stay there as you are if you like," is a prim instruction as she begins to undo the lacing down the front seam of her stays.

There is a moment of indecision, before Ellis rises to cover her hands with his own and still her work.

"I'd like to finish," Ellis tells her.

He is not unfamiliar with her stays. Ellis remembers their room in the Marches, his hands spanning over her sides across the sturdy fabric. Here, in this room, one of his hands leaves Wysteria's, tucks fingers beneath the fabric against the light fabric of her shift. He can feel the shift of her stomach beneath his knuckles.

"Let me take this off."

Her hands still, having failed to press much further than untying to lace. That slight insinuation of his fingers between her layers would have made her pause even if he hadn't stilled her otherwise. There is something about it that—

"Very well."

See? There's no harm at all in stating his preferences.

"See how generous you are," Ellis tells her, head dipping to nudge a kiss to the corner of her mouth. His fingers tug at those lax laces, opposite hand drawing out from beneath the cinch of her stays.

Though he proceeds to take his time with the unlacing. Working each lace loose, slipping fingers back beneath her stays to tug the separate panels lightly, before returning to the laces. It's unnecessary. Ellis is taking his time with it for no reason but because he likes nosing into her space and kissing her each time he stops his work.

But there is only so much effort it takes to unlace her stays. Eventually, his work is finished. The garment is discarded. Ellis lifts a hand to her cheek, and kisses her again, properly, deeply, swaying in to her as he does.

By the time he sways back to kiss so earnestly, Wysteria finds herself quite keen to answer it—face tipped up and mouth insistent, her hands falling to elbows and seizing on the opportunity to grasp onto him there. All this tugging and working of his hands against her and the prickle of those punctuating kisses have made as neat work of any lingering awkwardness as he has the vast majority of her clothes. She is kissed by or kisses him, and either is drawn in close or presses herself so.

Which is different from standing before him or lying in a companionable fashion shoulder to shoulder or even from him leaning over her in some patch of clover to kiss her while their clothes had still been faintly damp. It's very close, defined by his tunic and the plain cotton of her shift and little else but what lays beneath either of them.

She makes a soft sound at his mouth. And then, as if embarrassed by it, sets her teeth to his lip to cover it with some sharper sting.

The sound Wysteria makes is good. The nip of her teeth makes it better. Ellis had set both hands at her hips, but they slip and slide by degrees up her back, clutching her close to his body. It’s a tight hold. In the moment, there is no sliver of space between them, just the heat kindled by their mouth and the lingering sting of her teeth at his lip.

The fabric of her shift is so thin. Ellis can feel the warmth of her skin almost as if he had put his palm against her shoulder blade.

“I’m not going to take this off,” Ellis tells her, so soft against her mouth as he plucks briefly at the fabric at Wysteria’s nape. “Not until we’ve said our vows.”

A statement Wysteria might mistake as a stall against her stated wishes for the evening, except that Ellis continues on as his hand runs down her back, then slides back up to the nape of her neck, thumb set against the beat of her pulse at the high point of her throat.

“But I am going to touch you. I promise.”

He should part from her long enough to step out of his boots, at least. But he puts his mouth to the opposite side of her throat instead, teeth and lips working down to her collarbone as Ellis waits for a rebuttal. He’s very certain Wysteria has some opinion on his intentions.

From the way she had started to draw back for I'm not going to take this off, going briefly taut in the tight snare of his arms, she clearly does have some opinion and it's at least half formed enough to threaten developing into an objection given the right motivation. But he (or the shift of his hands) beat her to it, promptly soothing that faint bristle of her nerve. The flicker of tension has already begun to melt out of her even before he sets his teeth at his neck.

Her hands on him briefly tighten their grip, the line of her flexing faintly in answer to his mouth and the squirm inducing tickle of his stubble. The exhale that answers him is both pleased and warm with frustration, equal partas impatient and grateful for the diligence. She'd said it mattered to her, the saying of the words. And it does, and it's heartening to be made certain he knows, and also she's going to expire.

"If you wish to. But I'm going to turn to ash otherwise— No, that'a not true. It really would be all right if you didn't wish to. We could play a different game. Or discuss a book, if you preferred it."

But please don't, say her clutching hands.

"I want to."

Words that feel very strange in his mouth.

They aren't untrue. They are just complicated. Yes, he wants to touch her. But all of that wanting comes in a tangle of other complications. Of wanting but worrying about wanting too much, wanting to the point where it crowds out what Wysteria might need from him at any given moment. Of wanting but losing sight of restraint.

His lips move against her collarbone, soothing every graze of teeth, as his hands sweep down her shoulders, down her spine, to rest at the small of her back.

"You can tell me about the bann's third cousin and whether or not he was properly introduced after we've finished," Ellis promises, against her skin. "Or while I'm taking my boots off."

Since he will have to take at least his boots off. There is some implication of extricating himself, at the tailend of the statement, his hands loosening, head lifting from her neck.

Which bann'a third cousin, she almost says, and then recalls the fiddly details of the latest volume of the book they've been sharing and scoffs a little. Partly at the prospect of a proper introduction, and partly over the prospect of Ellis drawing away from her. Boots? Who cares about—

"I suppose you are somewhat overdressed," is a very prim assessment of their current fortunes. "But only your shoes," she hastens to say. What is she meant to do with the rest of him? "You've less things than I do."

Which is not actually very true, but— Grudgingly, Wysteria loosens her grips on him.

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