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

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.

There is nothing as rewarding as tracking Wysteria's reaction. Every time he kisses her, puts a hand on her, and she responds, it is just so—

"Wysteria," is raw with affection, clear even when said directly against the swell of her breast. At the touch of her fingers, his hand turns up to catch at them as he drops kisses over her sternum, elbow bracing him against the mattress as he draws the neckline of her shift down further so he might divide his attention equally.

It was clever of them to keep the shift, keep his trousers and his tunic. Ellis has a moment to consider it as he uses their linked fingers to clumsily draw the sheer, drifting fabric of her shift up along her legs.

Even at the lake, Ellis had never properly seen her bare legs. Calves, ankles, but her thighs have always been hidden and briefly grazed by his fingers on one or two occassions. He doesn't see them now, considering how thoroughly occupied his attention is with her breasts.

But they have a shared goal. Ellis can multitask.

The way he says her name is a very fine thing, as pleasing as his insistence that they link fingers be though it makes the business of shifting her hem more complicated not less. But the fabric is very light, and Wysteria's smallest finger is more or less at total liberty and so may hook the edge of the thin cotton and help it more neatly along as their linked hands otherwise might simply rely that moving up her naked thigh would do the trick.

Otherwise, her attention is fully committed to the heat of his mouth and the forward fall of his curls, her hand which is still at liberty shifting to push back the latter and then tangle gently there in his hair. It's only when their linked hands have traveled high toward her hip that she thinks—

Gods, how ridiculous she must look under him with one edge of her shift rucked high and the other drawn low. From her vantage she is very aware of her patchwork nakedness. She can see a hint of her own bare thighs where she has gently spread her knees to accommodate his presence between them. Between it and the spill of her breasts and the keen sensitivity of soft skin to his hand (their hands) so high on her thigh, she almost laughs.

No, she does laugh, twisting a little under him in anticipation— "I'm sorry. It's not funny." It is though. Just a little. But her hand is slipping free of his grip, skirting instead to Ellis's wrist where her thumb might apply encouraging pressure.

The laughter is brief, but it's sweet. The tension in Ellis' body dissipates at her reassurance, soothed as much by that as her hand in his hair. He presses an answering smile in against her breastbone.

"It's alright."

Laughter is good. As long as Wysteria is content, all is well. Ellis draws his teeth along the peak of her nipple, the curve of her breast, before he lifts his head to look at her. He can think of all the other places he'd put his mouth, if didn't have the fabric of her shift to contend with, nor her fingers making a silent, insistent request of him.

With her hand extracted from his own, Ellis doesn't quite heed the nudge of her fingers at his wrist. Instead, he lifts his weight so he might reach between them and arrange her skirts more neatly. Baring her opposite thigh, fabric nudged into place as best Ellis can manage without lifting completely off her.

Not too high. There is still a draping stretch of sheer fabric to dip beneath when Ellis puts his fingers gently along the inside of her thigh, attentive to any tension in her body, waiting for further pressure of her fingers against his skin.

"Ellis—" is possibly a scolding little sound for the edge of his teeth, but really is for how he looks at her. She can feel the heat in her face glow warmer and it isn't due to the arrangement of her hem or his hand shifting against her inner thigh. Flush and impulsive, she moves her hand from his hair to cover his eyes loosely under the curve of her palm.

"How do you expect me to be sensible when you're looking at me like that? It's hardly fair."

Only— her thumb presses at his wrist. And her palm on his face turns faintly in a slanting effort to cover part of his mouth, which exposes an eye.

"It's no use. You're too handsome."

"Hush," he tells her, though how much weight does that carry when it's followed by his head turning further into her palm so he might kiss there? Were both his hands not thoroughly occupied, he might have caught her hand so as to manage the thing properly, but as it stands Wysteria is the recipient of a clumsy brush of his mouth.

"I've no other way to look at you."

It feels as if this affection is always present. Has he not always been transparent in this? He'd worried about it, not so long ago.

Now, he tells her this as his fingers make their way to the fabric of her small clothes. And there is some consideration as to whether he should take them off or not, but for the moment the exploration of his fingers is limited to the satin-soft fabric, following the hem around her thigh rather than pressing where she might soon instruct him to.

She fidgets at the touch, an involuntary little twitch and press of her thumb at his wrist and her leg along his side. That tickles too.

"Then I'll close my eyes," she says, and patently doesn't do that. Instead, Wysteria sets her thumb to his mouth and gently (instinctively) drags along his lower lip. If there's something a little thrilling about the brief, incidental contact with the edge of his teeth then—

Well, he started it.

(And maybe there is something just a little imploring in the look she gives him after and in the way her hand turns to cup his bristly cheek.)

"Don't."

Softly, as Ellis comes down to her by degrees. There is only so close he can be without impeding the business of his hand, but he can change the distance from which he holds himself above her. Just close enough that he might dip to kiss her, if her palm at his cheek and her thumb catching at his lip weren't so—

He'd had some time to think of what that possessed cat might have interrupted. Wysteria had put her hand just there, pressing into his mouth. Now, his lips part slightly, exhaling hard.

"Look at me," he requests, though Ellis suspects it isn't in Wysteria's nature to close her eyes when she might otherwise be observing the proceedings.

His palm sweeps across her belly. And then lower, to press firmly against her through the thin fabric of her smallclothes. And hold there, as if acclimating to the position they've levered themselves into. His breath comes faster against her hand, regardless of steady he holds himself otherwise.

Even if she weren't naturally compelled toward study, could she have refused such a request? So she is looking, her attention all bright and keen, as his hand skirts across her stomach. And even if the angle of her hip didn't immediately react in answer to the press of his eventual touch (though it does), and even if she didn't make some soft hitching sound (she does that too), her response to it would be impossible not to mark. It shows in the flush of her face and the glint in her eye and the faintest tremble of her lower lip. Her thumb across his mouth softens. The one at Ellis's wrist doesn't. She is very warm under his hand and that thin fabric between them is damp and it takes real effort not to—

She tightens her legs faintly about him to keep from doing the opposite. Her pulse druma in her chest, and Wysteria is aware of how it's rabbitting beat is sympathetic to the drag of Ellis's breathing against her hand or vice versa.

After a taut moment, she manages to venture— "It's not too much, is it?"

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1000.... tosses confetti

what an accomplishment

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