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

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?"

Against her thumb, Ellis draws in a deep breath. There is such a flimsy barrier between them here, and it will be a simple thing for him to draw it aside. Not just yet, but he is thinking of it in the same moment he thinks of leaning down to kiss her. When he presses, he can mark out the shape of her. The minute shift of his fingers as her knees clench at his sides is not so different from the tiny testing lunge he's given to using beneath a rift, squaring up a particular approach. For all that he's considered this, the inevitable moment when they might tread a little farther than they've done thus far, touching her here and feeling the soft warmth of her is surreal.

"For me?" Ellis questions, some breathless humor coloring the question. "No, I—"

Shaking his head might dislodge Wysteria's hand. Instead, he dips his head slightly, so he might catch the pad of her thumb in his mouth briefly as he applies careful pressure to her, marking out slow circles over her as he asks, "Is it too much for you?"

"No," is instant even as it slants slightly toward breathlessness. Her eyes have lowered to his mouth, thumb presses absently there in faintest parallel to— "No, it's not too much. I only asked because I know you worry. Which is very sweet."

Her knees have already loosened faintly about him. They tighten by that half degree again.

"I said already how much I like your hands," is just a little shy.

It is so rare to see shy on Wysteria. He is accustomed to reading so many things on her face, but not shyness.

Shifting his weight to one elbow, Ellis returns his hand to her breast. He resumes the methodical sweep of his thumb across her nipple as lower, his fingers lift away to hook into the waistband of her smallclothes. All his movements are telegraphed, easy for Wysteria to maintain her hold on his wrist or stall him if she cares to.

"Remind me what else you like."

This is a difficult question for her, Ellis knows. It's not because Wysteria is in any way indecisive, but because she's never—

There's never been occasion to discuss it. But Ellis asks now, even with his mouth parted for her thumb, breath gone shallow, even as he lays her bare and puts his fingers directly against the shocking heat of her.

She doesn't stall him. Her hand at his wrist has shifted naturally up along the line of his forearm, so that she is grasping him by the elbow by the time he touches her so directly. That it had been obvious in coming doesn't make much difference. It's still startling how direct the touch is, and how easily his fingers settle against the wet heat. The next stroke of his caloused thumb across her nipple prompts a little panting catch in her breathing and an involuntary rise of her ribs to press her breast more firmly into his hand.

What does she like? Other than his hands and what they're doing right this moment? She struggles after an answer.

"When I've kissed you and have pulled your hair too hard. You've made this—a sound. I think it's very pretty."

She can feel his breath across the pad of her thumb. The impulse to follow it is too strong to rationalize away; pressing her thumb past his teeth to the heat of his tongue sends a tingle of fascination through the whole length of her.

Had he meant to say something else? Perhaps, perhaps not. Regardless, Wysteria's thumb presses further and Ellis closes his mouth around it briefly.

It means there is quiet now, as his fingers map the wet heat of her. Touching lightly just to feel what makes her arch, before devoting himself properly to taking Wysteria apart.

It occurs to him that he'd like to take his time accomplishing it.

Ellis could never be called a quick study in other arena than the physical. This is not a training yard, but he observes just as attentively here as he might there. Wysteria arches up against his palm and Ellis adjusts, two fingers given to teasing the peak of her nipple while his tongue presses up against her thumb, breath coming faster now against her hand at his mouth.

He wants to say her name. Maybe it easy to read that on his face. His gaze hasn't wavered from hers since he put his hand into her undergarments.

There at his cheek and jaw, her nails rasp softly across the bristle of his beard. It's a slow scrape—not patient, just intent. A more focused placeholder as the point of her gaze flickers from the look in Ellis's face, to her thumb pressed across his lower lip against the shape of what he can't say waiting on his tongue, toward that gentle pinch of his fingers, and then fleeting restlessly back again. How is she meant to keep from splitting her attention? There is a real desire to memorize all the details even as the slow shift of his fingers muddy them—

With a soft sigh, Wysteria draws the pad of her thumb back across his teeth to press less gently again at his lower lip. Without her realizing, her hand has wandered from his elbow to Ellis's bicep. The clench of her knees has begun to give again, gently opening herself to his study.

"And when you want to kiss me. I like that too. Before you make yourself stop."

"I always want to kiss you."

If it sounds dashing, or flattering, it's only by coincidence. He is telling her the truth. It is rare that he looks at Wysteria and doesn't want to kiss her, whether in some small chaste way or otherwise. That has been a constant too, for such a long time.

And he kisses her now, as he draws two fingers through the heat of her then presses carefully down, sinking slowly in to the knuckle. No farther. Just there, while they kiss, while Ellis observes her. His mouth is very soft against hers, coaxing her mouth open as his touches her, sets his thumb to circle where his fingers had mapped moments ago.

Her "Ellis," before he kisses her is soft and, despite her being flustered, clearly tinged with fond humor. If it weren't for the press of his fingers, there might be some risk of her laughing against the soft shape of his mouth—not because it's funny, but because it's sweet and kind and pleases her.

Instead, the sound she makes is more gentle and aching. Her mouth opens willingly under his without much prompting at all and while the slide of her hand from shoulder to neck is less than graceful, the quality of her sighing little kiss remains delicate. Either she's more patient than anticipated or she's distracted by the circular press of his thumb.

The faintest way she twitches up into his hand suggests it's the second one.

It's a good sound. He likes hearing Wysteria make it. He kisses her as if he'd bite each of these delicate noises out of her mouth directly. There's a slow, languorous quality to it, broken by the catch of his teeth at her lip, soothed by his mouth again.

They might do just this. He could kiss her this way and be content. He can kiss her this way and think less of what else he would do with his mouth under different circumstances.

And he can kiss her this way while his hand works methodically at her breast, while he considers her body beneath him and the splay of her thighs, and sinks his fingers into her fully. The firm sweep of his thumb is only minorly impeded, some small shift in angle to accommodate the position. And he holds there, letting her acclimate to the sensation of it while he kisses her and kisses her and kisses her, as if he couldn't bear to stop.

Slowly, impulsively, she sinks her fingers into his dark curls and makes to hold him to her. It's hardly necessary. He will kiss her, at once wanting and methodical, even if she doesn't steady him against her—

The sound she makes into his mouth is high and light, pressed out of her by the shape of his hands. It's tangled up in his kisses and the absent searching of her tongue, and it comes again a second time in answer to Ellis's hand across her breast or the pressure of his thumb.

"Ellis," is snatched between the punctuation of his mouth. Her whole body is warm. "Ellis. What you like." Her fingers press. "Please tell me."

"I hardly know," is honest, but it will disappoint her. Ellis kisses her to stave off whatever immediate rebuttal he knows she must have. He is thinking.

He is trying to think. It would be a difficult question even if they were sat across at the table, fully clothed and with no part of their bodies touching. He thinks illogically of Cathán, but none of the things that they had done together are things he would ask of her.

The sound he'd made when she'd reclaimed her grip on his hair is honest too, the easiest thing at hand to say when he breaks from her mouth.

"I like when you put your hands in my hair, when you pull," he tells her, though trailing away incomplete. There is some quiet note of strain in his voice. The wet heat of her around his fingers makes it an easy thing to touch her in some earnest, purposeful way, drawing back and driving his fingers in again. He's careful not to lift his hand completely away from her, not far enough to slide free, nor far enough to lose the firm pressure of his thumb even if the circular slide is interrupted by motion.

He is meant to be speaking.

"I like the sounds you're making. And how flushed you are," he tells her, hand lifting from her breast to trail fingers across the flush spread across her chest. "And how you move when I touch you."

Something easily mistaken for the thrust of his fingers into her, but it is a more sweeping statement than that. He likes how she leans into him when he puts a hand at her elbow or her waist, the answering squeeze of her fingers when he takes her hand. Little things, yes. But they stick in his mind without fail.

Take, for example, this nearly unconscious shift of one of her hands to cover his where it's moved up across the flushed pink skin below her collarbones. Her other fingers remain tangled in his hair, not pulling but present. This one however tightens softly over his as if to gently pin it to the warm skin where her pulse is thudding. The echo of the soft gasp she'd made in answer to that first real drive of his fingers is still humming in her chest.

That's good, because those are things that would be very difficult not to do, she doesn't say. Instead she kisses him again. It's open and warm and hitches appreciatively under the pressure of his thumb.

"Ellis—" When sighed into his mouth, it sounds like little more than approval and wanting him rather than the precursor to a half formed thought that it is. Given the present course of his hand between her legs, Wysteria is sluggish to assemble the rest. Just its outline is enough to make her face feel very hot.

"Please." The flexing angle of her hip as if she might coax some further stroke of his hand is at least partly intentional. "Would you—do that again."

"Yes."

What other answer is there to give?

She didn't have to ask, but Wysteria has a very pretty way of saying please. He gives her his fingers, answers the hitching flex of her hips as he kisses the sighs from her mouth. And though that delicate quality remains, the driving press of his fingers becomes such a steady, unwavering thing.

There's no urgency to it. Ellis is in no hurry. He works his fingers into her and his thumb bumps against her and he kisses her through it, catching each gasp with his mouth. His palm flattens against Wysteria's chest, under the that light touch of her hand over heated skin. Ellis' fingers nudge up along her collarbone, and if he doesn't feel the thudding beat of her hear beneath the palm of his hand, he feels it where his fingers graze the hollow of her throat.

"Do you like this?" Ellis asks, quietly against her mouth. It feels as if she is warm all over, color high in her cheeks and flushing hot under his hand and then lower, around his fingers and hand. It feels as if he might drown in this kind of heat.

There is an instinct to this or at least an abundance of desire masquerading as such. If Ellis' hand pressed between her legs finds a rhythm, then she's chased clumsily after it—hips hitching in tentative or reactive shapes toward the slick press of his fingers, and her knees softly falling further open against the limitations of her chemise's raised hem.

Does she like this?

The fingers in his chair flex and tighten automatically. "Yes," is all exhale, the shape of it hot under the edge of her teeth. She squeezes his hand with her own. Yes, she likes being on her back in his shadow, and how carefully he is doing as she has asked him to. And she likes the rasping edge in his quiet voice and the flat span of his palm and the faint tremor that passed through her from under his thumb.

"Yes, I do." And less structured again, 'Yes,' pressed into his open mouth with her tongue, the formation of it more moan than not. She's warm all over, and is very aware both of the steady shape of his fingers and also how much simpler their slide into her is becoming—

Something in that thought quickens her pulse and her breathing. Once noted, it's impossible to fully dismiss. Instead the awareness of it sharpens, lodging behind her ribs and growing there. Her hand on his tightens. There's something equal parts reflexive and intent in how she moves his hand back to her breast and uses the press of her fingers and the coaxing of her palm to urge him back into feeling her there.

"Good," comes twinned with capitulation to the silent begging of her fingers on his hand, urging him back to the rolling, pinching pressure at her breast.

There is no world in which he would be able to stop kissing her, but he kisses her harder, deeper for that ragged assent. He has never heard Wysteria without a small avalanche of words at her disposal, and there is some satisfaction in finding her with only one close to hand.

Only one word, and such a satisfying one at that.

"You feel so good," comes after, because Ellis too is thinking of the way she's opened to him, of the wet-slick slide of his fingers and the permissive splay of her thighs under him. All the pulling and flexing of her hands and body beckoning him in is the kind of thing that scorches, that draws out a low, quiet request of: "Keep telling me."

It's not that the pace of his hands goes any faster. But there is some desperate, burning want turning over within him. There is a flush rising up beneath the open laces of his tunic. He touches her a little more firmly, meets the instinctive, restless movement of her hips with more assurance.

It's what comes of having mapped out some sense of what Wysteria wants. It's the sense of being on more familiar ground, and that shifts the caution by degrees to make room for something more purposeful.

Edited 2021-12-22 22:35 (UTC)

Later, she will reward one of Ellis's innocuous remarks with 'Keep telling me,' and laugh at him and at herself and then maybe tease him about some secret vanity. Honestly, Ellis. Where does this habit of fishing for compliments come from?

But obviously that isn't the point. It's even less the point in the moment when she answers him first with a desperate little cry and a squeeze at his wrist where his hand moves over her breast. She can feel the tingling pressure of that hard kiss on her mouth still. And some matching sensation winding tight even in counterpoint to the way her body gives.

"Ellis, please. Kiss me again."

Is really like asking for permission, as Wysteria draws him down those scant degrees by her hand in his hair. She kisses him as fiercely as she can manage, and after demands that he linger so she can cry softly against the corner of his mouth or past his teeth, 'It's good. Please, like that,' until the cant of her breathing swells suddenly sharper.

For a close moment, a ragged breath or two or maybe for the span of time it takes for him to pull back and press back into her or for his thumb to apply the right pressure, she is very keen on just the sensation of his fingers in and on her. The way she arches under him in orgasm is almost absurdly pronounced—an involuntary thrust against both his hands, head thrown back far enough that it exposes the full line of her throat and all but buries Wysteria's face in the pillow and the wild tangle of her loose hair.

With her face so turned away, Ellis settles for kissing her throat as he works her through the sensation, all firm pressure and steady rhythm as she tightens around him. His thumb presses hard just there, not moving but present all the same as he puts his mouth over the thudding pulse at the hollow of her throat.

She is so lovely. It is a wrench to take his hand from all the wet heat of her, though Ellis does, without lifting his mouth from her throat. He hitches down the fabric of her shift in the wake of it, as he gently levers himself lower to bracket her body with his own, close the sliver of space he'd maintained all the while he was touching her.

There are things he might say. (He is thinking beautiful, stuck on that singular descriptor.) But instead, he occupies himself with his mouth at her throat and chest, giving her time to gather some opinion or request to put to him rather than prompting her for it.

She is slow to collect herself, her hands on him either slipping uselessly to the side or sliding to the nape of his neck where she might apply some fleeting and gentle and entirely unconsidered pressure in response to the heat of his mouth thrilling absently under the broader buzz humming through her. The loss of his fingers may have prompted a short aching sound, but his weight on her is so reassuringly gratifying that she shivers when Ellis applies it. There is sweat prickling under her chemise. Heat radiates from the bedclothes. The soft sounds of his mouth on her skin hang pleasantly in her ear.

With a motion that is half clumsy and half just languid, Wysteria brushes the hair from her face. That flush is still very high in her cheeks when she looks at him. If he doesn't kiss her directly soon then she will have to ask him to.

"See. Your hands are very nice."

Wysteria doesn't need to ask. When she tips her head down to deliver this compliment, Ellis shifts up and catches her mouth with his own, nearly stifling the tail-end of her statement.

The kiss itself is indulgent. Ellis' hand has relocated to her hip over the thin fabric of her shift, and his fingers flex hard there as he applies a soft, languorous kiss to her mouth now that she's re-emerged from both pillow and the riot of her own hair. That breathless quality of her tone is deeply attractive, just as the hot flush lingering across her skin.

Sleep feels like an impossibility, but Ellis has some half-framed notion of what kind of proper course might follow: he will have to roll off her, they will have to pour water from the ceramic pitcher across the room to cleanse the lingering effects of the evening. Perhaps he will tie the little ribbon of her shift into place. Perhaps they will return to bed.

It feels far off. Ellis kisses her until they must break to draw breath, and then puts his face in against her neck. Despite his best intentions, the scrape of his beard might not be so easily washed away with cool water whenever they rise from bed.

There.

That's what she'd wanted from him—the pleasant abruptness of the kiss. It's slowness and him eager behind it. She is fully amenable to melting under it, draping an arms about his shoulders and leaving it there even after the kiss has broken off. She is all loose jointed and he is lovely in his heaviness. Wysteria presses a further kiss to his temple and indolent fingers card through his dark hair.

In rare form, she feels almost no immediate urge to say much of anything. It's very sweet to simply lay under him and press close her face. His beard rasping at her neck is pleasantly coarse. But eventually, inevitably, Wysteria finds her words again.

In the middle of the loosely defined net of her arms and the tangle of her air and the soft gusts of her breathing, Wysteria noses against his hair line. "Ellis," is excruciatingly fond. She can feel it in her chest. "I know I'm a very poor student, but you must swear to me that you'll tell me how I ought to touch you."

A poor student draws a quiet chuckle from Ellis. Wysteria is many things, but she is exceptionally quick on the uptake in most every situation Ellis has seen her approach. (Archery surely the exception that proves the rule.) He'd closed his eyes somewhere in the space of that quiet between them, Wysteria's hands pulling through his hair and her body tucked beneath him, it would have been such a simple thing to drift into sleep.

But the way she says his name draws him back. His eyes are still closed when he shifts very slightly, adjusting, putting his mouth once at the hinge of her jaw before relaxing back to where he had been settled moments ago.

"Aye," is a low rumble against her throat. "After the vows are said."

It tickles, that low rumble, and the contents themselves must satisfy her for Wysteria promptly presses another little kiss to his hairline.

"Aye," is all pitched imitation.

Maybe in the not so distant future, she will dislodge him from between her legs and ask that he put her shift back to rights. But for the moment the lazy motion of her hand through his hair continues in soft, impartial turns. Here and there, a curl is caught and twisted gently between her fingertips—

"I love you," she says. "You're so very sweet to me."

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