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

The temptation to prod him between the ribs is allayed by the shape of his hand at her cheek and by the soft set of his thumb, and most of all by how he looks at her with so much painted to clearly in his expression. It's the face he wears that warms her cheeks and sends something behind her ribs blooming and overwrites any prickling uncertainty (not for what she wants from him, but maybe inspired by his constant reassurances which suggests she ought to have some second thoughts—). For a series of seconds, she searches that expression he wears. And over the course of those seconds, her own expression brightens by a half degree. Then by one, and by two.

Wysteria smiles up at him, flush faced and infinitely pleased.

"Take your boots off, Mister Ellis."

And then she withdraws from him, her and her wild cloud of yellow hair promptly moving toward the bed. She doesn't have to wait for him.

No, she doesn't.

And while she settles herself, Ellis collects her dress from the floor to drape over a chair. His braces join the garment, dropped lightly over the arm before he sits and makes short work of his boots to put beside Wysteria's long-discarded pair beneath the table.

Then he follows after her, tugging the laces of his tunic loose as he goes.

But that's the last of the alterations. Loosened laces, bare feet. He draws up alongside the side of the bed, and then, as they have done so many times now, settles himself along one side of the mattress. And then he turns in towards her, reaches to touch her, put a hand over her waist. He doesn't say anything, watches her expression as his thumb runs along her hip.

She has made herself comfortable, but not too comfortable, having climbed into the bed but lain over top of the covers. She has settled with her hands folded across her middle. She has not watched him too carefully as he has taken off his boots and his socks or loosened the laces of his tunic. And then there is the dip of the mattress, and the shifting line of his shoulders beside her. Wysteria has already unraveled her hands by the time Ellis turns and reaches for her. She is prepared to reach back for him.

If that thumb at her hip is careful and unobtrusive then her hands moving to touch him on either side of his neck are equally gentle. It's a delicate touch, but not without intention. After a moment's study—

"I'm going to kiss you now, Mister Ellis," she says, quite seriously.

Has she ever done so while lying in bed beside him? Not like this: drawing him to her or herself into his space. Kissing him softly. And then less softly.

Wysteria's decisiveness is a helpful touchstone.

Ellis carries an amused furrow of his brow into the kiss. They meet over the coverlet, Ellis first content enough to be kissed before coaxing her onto her back with soft nudging nips of his teeth and gentle pressure. It is all easily deterred. He is so attentive to her, focus narrowing down entirely to her hands and her mouth and any noise she might make as they move together.

The impulse to remind her, yet again, that she might ask him to stop, beats in the back of his head. But rather than say it again, Ellis is simply conscious of the drape of his body over hers. All that broad bulk of him bears her down into the mattress, yes, but it would be a simply thing to kick him away.

"You have to tell me what feels good," Ellis tells her, steady in spite of how shallow his breaths come. He catches a lock of her hair where it's strewn across the pillows, twirls it around her fingers. "And if I tread on your foot."

Compare this business to a dance once—

Perhaps it ought to be very intimidating, this business of being rolled over and him settling in close. But there is something thrillingly secure about the width of him, and the low pressure of being—not pinned, exactly. But some cousin to it, secured there by the breadth of his shoulders and just enough of his weight.

It's very appealing, she decides while all the small hairs of her body prickle in reply to him. This close, she can see all his dark eyelashes and the grey flecking his beard. And he is very warm both over her and under the curve of her palms.

"I will tell you everything," she reassures him. Funny, how that's what it feels like she's doing. "—Oh, but only if you agree to tell me if I ought to do something. You must promise not to be unduly delicate. I am a very quick study, Mister Ellis. Ellis."

Edited 2021-12-18 10:56 (UTC)

Having arrived at this point, it occurs to Ellis that he has very little idea of what he might ask of her in return.

But here there is a smile, a soft peck of a kiss to her mouth, a bump of noses. Silent agreement. Yes, she is a quick study. Yes, he will try very hard not to be overly delicate in his handling of her.

But when he ducks his head to kiss her again, there is some slight, instructive bent to it. It's an encouraging thing, even with all the tenderness set into the action. His hand leaves her hair to hook beneath the neckline of her shift. His knuckles graze her collarbone on his way down, skirt across her skin as he draws the loose, yielding fall of fabric to one side so he might lift his head from her mouth and consider the dark scar slashed there.

Into the quiet between them, Ellis might say some narrative thing, so Wysteria might anticipate what comes next. But he makes study of her, her expression and her scar and her collarbone and nearly her shoulder bare, before he lowers his head again to put his mouth there at the highest point of that dark line and begin working slowly, glacially down over the mark with soft kisses and the graze of teeth to mark his progress.

It's an ugly scar. Nevermind that he finds it dashing or has such a collection of his own—it is one thing for a Warden to be marked and battered, and quite another thing for a Kalvadan young lady of a reasonable well to do family to be sporting such a gruesome testimony to her own ridiculousness. And anyway, it does have a little to do with vanity. Even she would admit so. Although not to Ellis. To Alexandrie, maybe. Or to Maud. Someone who might appreciate the distinct agony of having once had a reasonably attractive bosom now marked with some flaw so blatant that it would always be the very first thing anyone noted. But— Well. Supposing Ellis means to use it as a sort of guiding line, then perhaps there are worse things.

The bristle of his beard is more notably really than the light set of teeth or even the soft series of kisses. And as he shifts lower along that dark ragged line, her hand creeps absently higher from the back of his neck and into the curls at his nape; this close, she can only see a little of his face but there is something pleasant in the slope of his shoulders.

"That tickles," Wysteria tells him, because he'd asked her to and because she means to prove that she can be perfectly amenable to following directions.

"Is it tolerable," is asked in return, directly against her skin. Ellis' mouth has progressed to the point of meeting the topmost hem of her shift. He could draw it down further, if he cared to. But he pauses there, leaving his grasp of the fabric at her shoulder to brace one hand at the mattress as his head lifts to look up at her.

"I know you hate it," Ellis adds, without waiting for a proper answer to his question. Or if not hate, then she doesn't care for it. Ellis' palm sets against her ribs, just beneath her breast, near enough to be improper under any other circumstance. "But I think of it as often as I think about the way there is sometimes soot here," marked by a slow upward stretch of his body, so he might put his mouth to the line of her jaw, and murmur against the high point of her throat, "Or ink on your fingertips."

Were her hands not occupied, and his mouth not busy, he might have put her fingers to his mouth as well.

"Or your hair when you let me take it down, or your hands."

But if he had to begin unraveling all the things he found particularly attractive about her, they might be here for ages. Until the dawn. And it would derail his promises otherwise, and he intends to keep them.

The low shape of his voice against her skin hums so pleasantly. The sensation of it is so keen that she might almost overlook the set of his hand across her ribs. With her boned stays and bodice on, it might not be such an outrageous place for him to touch her. Surely a hand has strayed close while dancing. But without them—

"I think it's charming that you're so very sentimental, Ellis."

It's true as much as it is teasing, though the way she can feel her own words vibrate under his mouth cuts some of the playful tenor.

Sentimental makes him laugh, low and stifled against her throat.

"Is that what I am?"

It is more tease than question. Wysteria has a habit of answering such things very directly, with more insight than she is given credit for.

And so he does touch her, as promised. The full press of his palm first, cupping as his thumb runs over the swell of her breast while he reapplies himself to the exploration of her collarbone, the downward slash of her scar. He thinks again of how thin the fabric of her chemise is. It's such a thin barrier; the heat of her skin is hardly blunted, and regardless, his mouth is tracking along the bared scoop of her chest left vulnerable by the drape of her chemise, following in a loose downward trajectory.

The fingers of his opposite hand nudge in at her hip. Bracing himself in this manner, he is afforded some room to maneuver. Wysteria has the suggestion of Ellis' bulk, broad shoulders and chest held over her to create sliver of space between them so that Ellis might touch her as he pleases.

Presumably this is not the sole point of his attention, but it is at least a starting point. An indication of intent, where otherwise he might have been suspected of skirting around the very edges of his promise to her.

"Oh, terribly," she begins to say, the hint of high spirits in it going sideways in reply to the shape of Ellis's hand and the line of his thumb. Somehow, she is surprised by it—as if despite everything he'd said to her and the fact that she had asked and their arrangement in the bed that there is still something shocking about actually being touched so. Her fingers at the nape of his neck flex absently. Beneath him, there is some notion of involuntary flexing tension that passes through her. Not pressing into the touch exactly or shifting up against the hand he has at her hip, but not not that either.

(Sentimental, and very true to his word.)

It is a little like having pressed so close to him as they'd stood earlier. She'd wanted to set herself against the width of him and to be closer to the warmth of him, and here are his hands and his mouth which are very warm indeed. Only that had been benign. She has laid her cheek on his chest before in a perfectly chaste fashion, after all.

But there can really be no arguing the purpose in this, now can there?

That tension doesn't pass unnoticed. It holds Ellis where he is, the swipe of his thumb slowing but not stopping, just as his mouth pauses at the low-slouched neckline of her chemise so the ministrations of his mouth have come to rest over the top of her breast. Wysteria has not said anything, but the lack of clear reaction keeps him from pressing onward. Ellis holds his place. He keeps hold of her, for the moment.

"Tell me," Ellis prompts, low against her chest. "I can feel you thinking."

Even without raising his head to look at her face, Ellis knows that there is no event in which Wysteria isn't thinking seven things at once. His weight shifts slightly, adjusting to realign himself to one side. The downward trajectory of his mouth is not indiscernible, but it is easily abandoned. There is much else he might set himself to, depending on what she might say.

She doesn't make a noise of frustration, but she does think it loudly enough that for a moment it is difficult to shift past that to parse what she had actually been turning over in her head prior this beat of slowed momentum.

"I was thinking," about something. His breath is very warm. "About that scene where the bann's son touches Katherine's breasts and that I told Lady Asgard it was very stupid. I have touched my own chest, Mister Ellis. It is not that compelling."

Yet there is the slow stroke of his thumb and the soft rasp of thin fabric between it and her, all of which is in fact rather interesting. There is something in the sedate touch that makes her want to squirm.

"But I think your hands are very nice."

Briefly, Ellis' smile is turned in against her breast, easily discerned.

And then—

"Remind me of which book that was."

As he shifts lower, mouth moving from bare skin to sheer fabric so he might apply his mouth as a counterpoint to the increasingly purposeful sweep of his thumb. The weight of his body settles carefully over her stomach so that he might keep hold of her hip. In this too, he reaches farther than is his habit, setting his thumb at the hinge of her thigh to hold on tightly, grounding himself as much as satiating the need to keep both hands in constant contact with her.

"It was—I don't remember the title. The author's name is"—what might be a thoughtful noise is strictly not one; despite the fabric of the chemise, the heat of his mouth and the weight of him is shocking—"Lavery, I think. It's the tragic one where her lovers duel in the flax field at the end and everyone but the main character dies. You remember. We spoke about how it's clearly meant as an allegory for the spread of the Chant among the Alamarri people."

Clearly. As clearly as the soft sound she makes under the sweep of his thumb across the stiffening peak of her breast isn't one of protest, though one of her hands has fallen to the collar of his tunic where fingers might twist softly at the twilled fabric. She is aware of the flush on the back of her neck. The soft shift of his hair under the fingernails of her other hand.

"It has that ridiculously obvious passage where someone falls in love with the main character on account of her befriending their mabari. Really. Why not simply write 'The Chant was effectively spread in Ferelden because Andraste appealed to the tradition of folkoric heroes among the southern tribes—'"

"I remember," comes on the heels of teeth, carefully applied. "Remind me, was it the book with the three gambling cousins, or was that a different one we read?"

They might talk about books for hours. There is enough material between them to string out while Ellis applies mouth and hands and listens to the way Wysteria's voice wavers in response.

At her thigh, Ellis' hand slides down to her knee. Not so long ago, when she'd been seated in her chair and Ellis had been knelt in front of her, he'd encouraged her legs to part for him. He repeats himself now, coaxing her towards some small splay of her legs so he might settle himself there.

"No, that's altogether a different book. That one was the one all about the three major campaigns of the war between Ferelden and Orlais."

Just as thoughtlessly as she'd allowed him to press between her knees then, she does the same here. Only in her chair there had still been some measure of distance between them. Here, doing so effects a neat erasure of it and the soft draw of an inhale past her teeth. The rise and fall of her chest and the absent stray of her hand from his collar to between his shoulder blades.

He seems so absurdly composed.

"Ellis—" He'd asked her to say what she found most pleasant. "I hope you don't mind, but I've a question of semantics for you. Do you suppose it would be cheating if you were to put your hand under the shift? I think the neck is loose enough to allow it."

Here, Ellis' head lifts.

"It is."

And while he might draw the neck of her shift into such a position as to allow it, that had not been on his mind.

And so he does arch up by degrees, hand leaving her hip to catch in her hair as he looks at her. As he studies her, Ellis' palm lifts higher by a fraction so that he might hook fingertips into the ruches along the neckline of her shift. It draws the fabric down slightly, though Ellis makes no real move to press further than that.

"Would you like my hand there?" is such a moot point that Ellis pairs it with a second question, asking softly, "Would you like me put my hand beneath your hem as well?"

Which is a different thing than beneath her neckline, surely. She'd blushed so furiously when she'd spoken of where he might touch her, back in that massive bed on Lady Paget's massive estate.

She blushes furiously now too, caught off guard by both the immediacy with which she had known the answer to the first question—Yes, she thinks she would like his hand there—and the audacity of his second one. And the fact that he is looking at her when he asks. And on account of the memory that she has sworn him to secrecy on the subject once already, and to say now would surely ruin that agreement.

"I had no idea you were capable of such smugness," is softly scolding and a placeholder for a proper answer. "Before I say, you must tell me what you're thinking. And don't pretend you have been nothing but innocent, because you have brought me to a room with one bed."

"We've shared a single bed before," Ellis answers in mild protest. He'd no real reason to expect they'd have done anything different this evening than they have on a number of other occasions.

But he does give her request due attention. What is he thinking?

Predictably, Ellis says nothing very quickly. He kisses her first, as he's drawn himself up high enough to do so. He'd like for this to stand in place of further discussion, but understanding the nature of the request—

"I've been thinking that I like the way you taste," Ellis begins quietly. "And I was thinking that I like seeing you flushed like this."

Easy enough to guess at, perhaps. Ellis is often predictable in what occupies his thoughts. His fingers draw along her neckline, across the top of her breasts.

"I was thinking that I wanted every part of this to be good for you."

Predictable.

"By happenstance, not by prior arrangement," she insists in that moment of silence, very nearly against the shape of his mouth as he shifts to kissing her. She is eager enough over the prospect of shared responsibility to needle the edges of the subject and risk putting him off what she actually wants to hear.

Nevermind the kiss. The brief opportunity to gently bicker back at him is pleasant enough to lighten the wound tight and too-attentive feeling in her chest. It grants her the patience to listen to what he has to say after it. That none of it is terribly surprising doesn't make the sentiments themselves unwelcome.

"I taste like a bottle of wine," is probably a generous albeit teasing assessment of reality (although they have kissed enough times since dinner that it's possible the tang of it has been stripped entirely from her tongue). "But I think the rest of it is all very reasonable, Ellis. I like when I can tell you want very badly to kiss me, which I suppose is very similar to watching me go all red in the face."

See, she is being very reasonable and logical about all of this. She is not being foolish or overeager. She is patient enough, even, to lean up a little so she might briefly catch his lower lip between her teeth before slipping back to look at him.

"Do you want to put your hand beneath my hem? Even if it is cheating. And even if you have said you wish to..." She searches for the right words and is only a little distracted by his weight and the hook of his fingers at her chemise's neck. "Proceed slowly."

Having settled himself here, over here, between the slope of her thighs with her shift wrinkled and rustled between them, the answer seems nearly a foregone conclusion. But with the question asked, it knocks Ellis back slightly. It sets him at some distance to consider the trajectory, where they might land if—

Ellis fingers turn the slight, silky ribbon tie at the center of her neckline in his fingers.

Truth comes slowly. As is his habit, Ellis takes his time scraping the words together, trying to string together an honest thought for her.

"I want to give you what you want," is not exactly an answer that Ellis expects to please her. So he amends, continuing on to explain, "I always want to touch you. Always. So if we are bending our rules, and you are coming to a compromise tonight, then I can bend to meet you. I want to."

Then, softer, "I want to touch you."

There is something in the slow, methodical way he works his way through the reasoning of it that sends heat creeping up the back of her neck. The meticulousness of it and how visibly he arranges his feelings in a line for her study prompts her pulse to thicken faintly in her neck. He is so very beautiful like this, all patient and strangely delicate. It is strange and lovely that he should be both at once a solid, heavy weight over top of her and then also this fragile thing.

"I suspect," she says very carefully. "That this may secretly be a very usual time in which people who are going to be married and who care for each other very much bend rules. So as long as you promise not to think less of me, or to wonder whether I've been terribly cruel in forcing you to agree to take me as your wife before I would—I want you to touch me, Ellis," she blurts out, cutting herself off. "I've wanted you to for ages now."

Ages, Wysteria says.

If Ellis were a different man, he might have said that Wysteria should have trapped him into marriage earlier so they might have arrived her sooner.

But Ellis knows himself. They have wound their way here in due time. He couldn't have given her more than he had at any point before this. And because Wysteria knows him, understands him in her way, Ellis thinks she understands this too.

But still, to hear the way Wysteria's voice dips over ages puts a hitch in his breath.

"I could never think less of you," Ellis murmurs, tugging loose that little ribboned tie. "When you've been so patient with me."

Ellis kisses her again, quickly and sweetly, before he levers himself down to return his mouth to her skin.

"And when I've been so in love with you," Ellis continues softly, as lingers over her throat, marking the heat there. He takes his time drawing the fabric of her shift aside to bare her breast. The brief sweep of his palm gives way to his mouth as he resettles over her, returns a hand to her hip, falling to her thigh and holding tightly there.

It is cheating. But she is very fond of winning games, and has been known here and there to indulge in some light trickery to arrange the odds in her favor. Getting what she wants by successfully bending the rules is just as pleasant as doing so properly. She has never felt particularly guilty about any of it. And she will not, she thinks, feel guilty about this. Not when Ellis is so in love with her, the warmth of that sentiment as palpable as the shape of his mouth on her throat is. And his hand, and—

She makes a soft sound, a gentle hitching of breath, and flexes involuntarily under his weight and his mouth and the hand grasping at her thigh. In the instant later, she breathes out a shocked little laugh. The bristle of his beard is very dramatic against delicate, eager skin. Which yes, that's more or less how she'd imagined it might be. The satisfaction inherent in having her suspicions confirmed is rather thrilling.

Certainly it emboldens her into chasing that hand at her thigh with her own—fingers slipping from his shoulder to skirt across the back of Ellis's knuckles or at his wrist.

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