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

It is obvious. And it does make her laugh—not because it's funny (or not only for that reason), but due to some flush of high spirits and satisfaction. If that's his goal, he's done such a fine job of accomplishing it.

Warmed to her center by all of it, holding I love yous like notes folded in her skirt pockets, Wysteria allows herself to be drawn in without protest or indeed even second thought. Her hands are willing too, finding their way to his bicep and up the back of Ellis's bent neck and into his dark hair.

There's more purpose to it than there is to his picking at her overskirt's laces—her smiling at his temple, and kissing him there, and winding her fingers into his curls so as to distract him from her neck and shoulder. That way she might look at him when she says, all fond and flush and loving him, "Thank you for being so patient with me." If she exerts a little leverage, she can kiss the corner of his mouth, unserious and smiling. "But say it to me again, won't you? That you love me."

As it turns out, they're perfectly sufficient words.

How easily bidden he is, face lifting at the first tightening of her hands in his hair. Having her close again, settled in his lap and near enough that he might kiss her as he likes, answer the coaxing of her hands so immediately, is hardly incentive to give her any space to return to her earlier task. The ties pulled loose at her hips, Ellis' hands are freed to circle round her waist, press a palm to the small of her back, lift fingers to brush a few errant locks of hair back from her face as he tells her, "I love you."

Words made sweeter and more tender for how long he's kept them caught behind his teeth. Hoarded for months, years, polished smooth and shining like river stones for all that Ellis has lived through in the course of it.

His hand cups her cheek. He kisses her again, because there is no reason he shouldn't.

"I love you," a fourth time, unbidden, in the space between one kiss and another.

How happy he looks under her hands in the warm glow of the firelight, those practiced lines in his face and the slant of his brow bent in the fondest directions. Yes, he loves her. And yes, she is pleased with it. And yes, his hands are warm and his mouth is sweet as pressed cider. But the thing that warms, for which she seems the most fortunate for having so near, is the look in his face and how diminished the scar on his throat or his poorly set fingers or any of those other hard marks on Ellis's person seem in its shadow. How good it is to see his affections so powerfully in his face; how satisfying it is to hear him say so, not just as the object of it but because she loves very little more than she loves to be told true things.

It's very difficult to kiss him properly rather than simply smiling wide through the pleasure of having her requests so readily met. "Good," she tells him, a laugh in the note of it. "Because it would be"—she kisses him or he kisses her—"Very unfair and not at all equitable if you didn't. I'm far too fond of you for you not to feel the same."

When she does manage to kiss him correctly again, she is all enthusiasm: high spirits and good cheer, unvarnished in her affections and failing entirely to play at any bit of coyness. Is it chaste? No, certainly not. But delight comes far more naturally to her than any overthought attempt at being sensuous does, and the desire that stems naturally out from it is far more self-possessed and doubtless. It's important to me that you be satisfied, he'd said. It's difficult to imagine a state in which she might be more content than this one.

Fond of him.

Ellis' smile widens to hear it, the terms she uses to describe her affection. It is good, as is all the feeling behind her kiss. They are linked so tightly together. Ellis might have set shoulders against the headboard if he had any foresight, but he had come to her without any thought other than wanting to kiss her, and he tightens his hold about her waist propelled by that same wish.

"I do."

It cuts so simply through every other complex part of this arrangement. All his misgivings, all his fears, the looming approach of a future in which he can no longer remain with her, the thing that cannot be shifted or diminished or waved away is this: he is so in love with her. It is in his blood; it cannot be sliced out of him.

He would say it again, and again, against her mouth between kisses. The urge is certainly there. Wysteria has her leverage, and he is content to give over to her, kiss breaking open as one blurs into another. His hand slips from her neck to the delicate ribbon at the front of her chemise, loosens it with some vague intention to apply his mouth to her throat and shoulder, should he find a point at which he could lean away from her kiss.

Despite the rule she'd made only minutes ago, Wysteria brooks no argument against having that ribbon undone by him. Instead, encouraged by Ellis's wandering hand, she gives his hair a prompting tug and then relinquishes her hold on him in favor of addressing the lacing at the waist of her overskirt. She does not, however, surrender his mouth—insisting he continue to kiss her by way of her own jocular, smiling kisses as she eagerly frees laces and buttons. There's some giggly, glad spirit in it—he loves her and she loves him, and the sensation is warm as summer light on the face—that doesn't diminish even when Wysteria does at last break back from the kiss so as to insinuate her hands between them in order to undo the plain single wrapped tie of her stays.

"Help me out of these things," she says, entirely pleased to be contradicting herself. He can kiss her wherever he likes and in whatever fashion he cares for in exchange.

(He can be quick when he wishes to be.)

"Aye," is easy, thickly-spoken assent, blurred slightly by the kiss following on its heels.

All the time spent undressing her, taking his time to do it all slowly and with great ceremony, turns out to have some unforeseen benefit here: there is no reason to take his attention fully from Wysteria to do as he's bidden.

Would it be easier if they were upright? Perhaps.

But there is charm in this too. How honest he is in his reluctance to allow her to extricate herself from his lap, keeping her cinched in close even as he makes brief clumsy work of the borrow skirts, seeks the next set of laces to work open and discard.

In the course of the process, he is eventually obliged to slow while working free the laces of her stays. The quality of the kisses change as Ellis' body folds in towards hers, laying kisses to her jawline, then her throat while he works at this set of laces, the sturdy fabric pulled tight over her chemise that would be better tossed to the floor.

It takes real effort not to repeat that Aye back to him, softly teasing. Indeed, thank the gods for his mouth at her jaw and neck. They serve as able distractions—prompting hitching breaths and laughing exhales both rather than some cheeky remark.

If he's seeing to her stays, then Wysteria hurries to address the fastenings of her underskirt. That way, by the time the one is ready to shed, she's prepared to dispense with both sets of woolen and calico skirts as well.

"Wait, wait," isn't actually asking to slow the pace of his hands or his mouth at all. Rather, it's strictly to afford her the space to wrestle free of the great bulk of undone fabric and boning about her person, good cheer and haste both in equal measure as Wysteria otherwise grudgingly extracts herself from his lap.

In remarkably short order, and despite the requirement rearrangement of limbs and bodies, she is successfully stripped down to her chemise, to her bright red stockings and yellow ribbons, and the array of combs and pins still seeing her hair more or less arranged.

The chemise, she might keep. Ellis isn't going to invoke Wysteria's modesty outright, knowing how absurd that will strike her considering their aims for the evening. But llis at least doesn't reach for the gauzy fabric outright.

Instead, his hands return to her hips. Doesn't lever her directly back to his lap, but runs thumbs along her ribs and stomach as his hands span over the dip of her waist. Looks up into her face for a long moment before leaning up to kiss her. Slowly, thoroughly, because presumably he will be less able to continue if he intends to make good on his offer of—

"I'll take your hair down."

For the moment, the red stockings are permitted to stay.

"Before we go to bed properly."

Is it uncomfortable to sleep with combs in? Wysteria has expressed dismay about all number of things, but not yet combs and hairpins. Perhaps she has simply not worked her way to them.

It's so fine and slow a kiss that is checks some of Wysteria's momentum, replacing some of that laughing and smiling quality in her being with something more tender and attentive both. Or maybe that's the radiant heat of him more easily felt along the outside of her thigh now that there's much less fabric between them. Or maybe it's that look he'd fixed her with before he'd even kissed her. Regardless, it prompts a softer breath across his mouth when the kiss breaks, and invites her hands to chase absently after his wrists—

"So not just this moment, then."

Ha ha ha, what an excellent joke.

"No, not just this moment."

Ha, ha.

Regardless, he's not made much attempt to escape her grasp. His wrists are easily captured. It doesn't prevent him leaning back in to her, seeking her mouth again.

Suppose all they do is kiss. It is certainly slowing the process of undressing, but Ellis feels no particular urgency. He has already grown used to the idea that he won't grow tired of kissing her. Even now, with him stripped bare and Wysteria in her chemise, with the warmth of her so readily apparent when his hands fit to her waist or hip or perhaps even her thigh, he still has more thought for the way her breath hitch or her mouth opens under his when he kisses her.

And she is in such good spirits. Ellis has a fair amount to say on this too, if he were ever asked or the sort of man who spoke at length about anything. He has grown so terribly partial to the way she smiles, and all the more attached to the moments when he's confident he's the cause of it.

The way her mouth shifts under his, slanting toward a smile despite his kiss, suggests Ellis's plan—are maybe just the easy, straightforward confirmation—has met with some approval. Good. Fine though it might have been to debate the semantics of the thing, she finds herself quite happy with a simple assertion and with the patient, unhurried reinforcement of his lips. Meanwhile, the fingers wrapped about his wrists are very light. Not restrictive so much as they are merely following—ghosting gently along bidden in whatever directions Ellis might be compelled to wander.

Yes, this is all very agreeable.

Indeed, Wysteria is content to stay so arranged for a long measure: hands light, aware of the warmth of his skin and his bare forearms and his bare everything else, answering his kisses in kind and broadly feeling more and more pleased by the arrangement with each one. How pleasant it is to sit in this little room with the heavy curtains drawn very tight against the window, with a fire full in the hearth and a heavy fur piled at the end of the bed which isn't large but is perfectly suited to feeling welcome to the space so close beside to him. And how good it is when Ellis wants things—to put his hands on her, to kiss her, yes, but also that he plans to attend to her pins and combs and has already undone the little ribbon on her chemise in spite of her strict instruction. It's very cheering to be so aware of his sentimentality, and to in some sense own it.

Though, no. She rather means to do more than just kiss him or be kissed by him. So on the heels of some slower and more thorough kiss, having forgotten her intention to strip out of her stockings and dismissive of the difficulty that shifting closer may present should she later recall it, Wysteria makes to insinuate herself back into his lap. It seems very rational to hike the hem of her chemise up to do so.

The intent of the movement doesn't register immediately. Ellis is more preoccupied with the slow-going process of working the combs and pins from her hair. With his attention so divided, it is all done by careful instinct, unraveling pins as he finds them, drawing out combs gently so as not to tug or snag. It is not especially efficient, but efficiency is an easy sacrifice when the alternative would be to stop kissing Wysteria for any measure of time.

Of course, by degrees Wysteria closes the space between them. Ellis is obliged to leave off his work to catch hold of her by the waist. Here, they realign. The lift of her hem sticks in his head, even if Ellis doesn't yet reach to put a hand on Wysteria's newly bared knee.

"Wait," is not Stop. It is only a request to move along with him as Ellis shifts retreats those last few inches up along the mattress, so he might finally set his shoulders against the headboard.

Which coincidentally puts him within reach of the little end table with it's ceramic bowl. Likely meant for washing up, it's now a depository for hair pins and combs.

He is keeping carefully focused on the practical. Not on where Wysteria has settled her weight, or the drape of her chemise across her thighs, or how close they are, or how he will have such difficulty letting her out of his lap now that he has full knowledge of how well she looks tucked in this close to him.

Wait, he says, and she's very obedient to being coaxed up the mattress after him—leaning in after his hands and his mouth, and only a little shy at the prospect of actually settling her weight in his lap once Ellis has propped himself up properly against the headboard. It's a slow thing, her hair coming down under his hands and her settling there with a knee to either side of him. For how shockingly warm he is against the narrow sliver of space where skin is bared between the top of her stockings and the twist of her chemise's hem. Not that she hasn't been so very aware of his nakedness, of course. But being aware and being something like involved are two very different things.

(She is, as it happens, not at all focused on the practical. Rather, her attention is fixed firmly on the points of contact between them, and the fact that she ought to be embarrassed to have situated herself so but isn't. She is thinking, all at once, of lying on her back in that Kirkwall boarding house and how pleasant his weight has been.)

Wysteria doesn't directly return to kissing him though. Instead, with her hands light at Ellis's shoulders and her braids slowly unraveling into uneven waves with each soft scrape of pin sliding to the bottom of the ceramic basin, Wysteria squeezes her knees unconsciously about him—

"Ellis—" she starts to say, and then stops herself.

"Wysteria," is an easy echo, call and response as Ellis' fingers draw slowly through her hair. Hold there, for a moment, before his fingers slip in along her hairline, thumb over the pulse that beats high in her throat.

There is not much space in which he might lean back. But he does so, to what extent he can. Here, he might look at her properly.

"Will you tell me?" he murmurs, invitation rather than demand. His fingers fetch up the comb from where it was so firmly affixed at the side of her head, freeing another braid to unravel onto her shoulder.

Wysteria may well work her way around to whatever thought has presented itself to her. In the meantime, there is much to look at. Wysteria is flushed and her hair has come mostly loose, streaming down around her shoulders, and her mouth is red from being so thoroughly kissed. Ellis has seen nothing in his life more worthy of appreciation than her in this moment.

Well, yes. Of course she'll tell him. There is hardly any working her way around to it, even—just the briefly, delicate press of her thumbs at the muscles between his neck and shoulder and a flickering look that draws briefly down past his collarbones toward the radiant edges of his tattoo before it sweeps back up again to his face. How pretty his mouth is when it's so full like it is now.

"You will say so if I'm hurrying you too far along, won't you?" That faint press of her thumbs again, as if she has realized what her knees were doing and has chosen instead to subvert the impulse to her hands.

"I don't wish to impose on you."

It's such a slight pressure, the application of her thumbs there at the wings of his collarbone. In combination with the settling of her weight over his thighs, in his lap, it's so—

With her palms set so, the shallow quality of his breathing is easy to mark. Shallow but steady, not quite breathless when he finds an answer for her.

"I will," is a better promise than the alternative, though what goes unsaid is equally true: She is never an imposition.

But this is an offering made because Ellis knows how it pleases her when he offers an opinion, expresses a want for anything. This won't come easily, but he can promise to try.

His hands sweep down her shoulders, down her back, gripping her hips briefly before falling to the outside of her thighs. Just resting there, though Wysteria doesn't need to be steadied and she has arranged herself sufficiently close.

"I won't make you promise again," has some clear humor in it. How many times has he made her promise this?

At least a half dozen. Not that she's been counting, of course.

"Very good," she says. It has a prim sort of quality as if they have together decided to mark something off on a checklist. One can almost hear the scrape of Wysteria's pen crossing it off in one long scratch.

Her thumbs press once more very absently at their postings. In some sense, they're very close indeed. Outrageously so, really. But the distance involved in not kissing him is sufficient to allow for a brisk assessment of their respective states. For a brief and obviously calculating instance, Wysteria takes advantage of it to do just that. To measure Ellis's hands idle at her thighs, and the pull of his breathing, and how warm he is, and the grey in his hair and the quality of his attention on her. It's the sort look usually reserved for mechanical schematics or skewering items retained from the field inside her traveling kit so they might be transported safely home again. Very likely it is the same look Wysteria had only hours ago been devoting to a fade touched wolf's corpse. Fascinated, and thinking, and very intent.

"Then here is what I believe we ought to do," she says at last, quite resolved on the matter. "I would like to kiss you, say, six more times. And I would like you to make them whatever sort of kisses appeals the most to you. Once that's been accomplished, I'm rather of the opinion that you ought to put your hand under my hems and touch me like you've done before."

She is ignoring the heat on the back of her neck. Anyway, she is flush already so what difference do it make? Still, a speedy clarification and even swifter ammendment—

"Inside me, I mean. Unless the angles involved would be inconvenient. But I have some faith it can be accomplished."

There, see. A list.

Under such keen study, Ellis has the sense that if given any time at all, Wysteria will parse out how to take him apart in a matter of moments. She has developed such a talent for seeing through him already. He might have been laid bare in due time if she'd been left to her own scrutiny, regardless of whether or not he stepped out from behind that screen unclothed.

"The angles are right for it," Ellis tells her seriously, as if this is something that had been in serious doubt.

His palms flatten over her thighs, fingers tightening by degrees. Just enough to leave an impression; there is no need to encourage her further forward when she is well placed for what she's proposing. His grip flexes there, slides upward by degrees to take hold of her hips, then further, circling her waist and leaning in towards her.

"Will you kiss me after?" he asks, mouth against her collarbone. "When I've given you six more kisses, and put my hand under your hems?"

"I will," has the tenor of an oath, quite serious and more or less in parallel with Ellis's own apparent sense of gravity. His hands are very square and his mouth is very warm, and that doesn't count toward those aforementioned six kisses.

"If that's what you would like me to do, then I would be most happy to indulge you. After all, I would like it if you were—" What had he said down in the lodging house's public room? "—satisfied with all aspects of this as well, you know."

(And also because kissing him is a very fine way of spending the time and not at all any kind of imposition. Indeed, her hands have already begun to migrate from his shoulders to either side of his face in anticipation of receiving them—)

"That's why I ask, of course. I think it would be very charming to at least pretend at following your instructions."

The flow of her reasoning, instruction and demand, comes as a pleasant thrum under his mouth as Ellis' mouth moves up her neck. Perhaps guided by the framing of her hands, how Wysteria's palms settle on either side of his face, telegraph her intention.

Preoccupied there, Ellis' first, predictable instinct come and go. She could guess at them. Ellis has said variations on such sentiments before.

"I always want you to kiss me," must be familiar and predictable too. He must have said it before. (Or perhaps not; the sweet spot in which Ellis is considering what he wants and inclined to say it aloud tends to be small—) These words are applied to the underside of her jaw, underscored by his arms around her, one palm sliding up her back.

It's not instruction. But his head lifts after it, leaning up to catch her mouth.

Yes, that is more or less what she suspected his answer would be. He isn't at all hard to please like this, is he? Except for when he isn't, of course—in instances where she must explain herself at length to convince him that she knows the theory of what she's doing if not the effect, that she is perfectly aware of what she's asking for, that the presence of nerves doesn't equate to not wanting something.

But now hardly seems like the time to point it out, particularly not with his mouth so very warm under her jaw, and his hands so very present and engaged. Not whole she is in his lap and he is so shockingly naked and there is little more than the slip of her half rucked up chemise imperfectly separating them. When he moves to kiss her, Wysteria is thus very prepared for it and very pleased to have gotten her way. Her hands at the side of Ellis's face shift automatically—his ears in the crooks of her thumbs, her fingers pressing softly into his hair. There is a distinct flexion in her body between his mouth and hands in answer. Her knees tighten briefly about him and it feels like Very good, or maybe See, it promises to be a perfectly fine list.

Later, wherever later finds them, Ellis might ask how she arrived at the number six. There was surely some calculation behind the request.

But in the moment, he is occupied entirely with kissing her. Coaxing her mouth open, fingers pressing down at her back, over her shoulder blade. Wysteria is afforded the benefit of leverage, her weight settled over his thighs, slipping closer by degrees as Ellis' arms unconsciously tightening around her.

His thoughts drift back to that afternoon, stretched out across a bed of clover. Wysteria had her hands in his hair. What was true then is true now still: the combination of proximity and the slide of her fingers into his hair and the way she kisses him, it all leaves very little room for anything else.

And like that day beside the pond, when Ellis eventually breaks long enough for them both to gather a breath, it is all too easy to lean back in. The pause there is brief enough that when he asks, "Is that one?" it is said so closely that their lips brush, that slight contact melting back into a kiss without waiting for answer.

Some small hitch of breath suggests—

An answer undone by his mouth and how eager she is to answer it. How easy it is to deepen that kiss when given even the slightest license to—encouraging him with her tongue, and the further press of fingers through dark curls. And, yes. Very like that warm summer day with all that water drying on their skin, Wysteria's desire bleeds through it. Only here it's a less tentative, purely instinctive thing to lean into him. Wanting him is as recognizable as the satisfaction of being pulled close is.

Whenever the necessary break comes, however brief it is or isn't, Wysteria is swift to say "That's two," in some slanting, keen note close to his mouth. Her following laugh is short and pleasantly breathless, gusting warm in the exceptional narrowness between them.

How happy she is to insist on stealing her third kiss from him.

They have an end point in mind, don't they?

He is only obliged to recall at it when Wysteria breathes the number back to him. No, they aren't simply going to remain here, wound so close, trading kisses back and forth. She has made a request of him. And so Ellis' hands are obliged, somewhere between third and fourth kiss, to leave her back. It is a slow retreat. First fingers catching hold of her hips, thumbs at the bend of her thigh, as if she needs any steadying when she is so securely seated.

Eventually, his palms settle at the tops of her thighs. Hitch fingertips just up beneath the hem of fabric as it falls across her legs.

"Will you let me touch you?" he asks. "Even if I owe you two kisses still?"

As if he will stop kissing her at any point. There's no real danger that Wysteria won't collect in full.

It makes her smile, that roundabout way of angling toward something he wants. She almost laughs at him for it, and only doesn't because he's so pretty and on account of his fingertips trespassing where they ought not yet be.

"I'll allow it," has the high handed mock-seriousness of a blackhaller adjudicating from a seat in Denerim. And then for emphasis, Wysteria squirms a little closer (as if there's any closer to go). "But in exchange, there is something I would like in return. It's a very reasonable sort of trade, Ellis, I assure you."

And as he is well aware, her requests are so often the very definition measured.

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