She kisses into the trailing edge of a sound in response to her moving against him. Fingers squeezing but without protest, chin lifting to meet her. Kissing back, rather than only being kissed. Feels the urgency of it, or—if not urgency, that edge of meaning. The ache of it. Meets it in kind.
"I want you," murmured, as soon as there is space for murmuring.
Asking how long it's been seems like such a strange question. Derrica knows how long it's been, except that overnight that information has taken on new dimensions, distorted out of her ability to discern at easy glance.
It becomes something to ask later, in a little while. After she's answered this murmur of a request.
She kisses him first for it, which telegraphs her response before Derrica says anything else.
"Yes," in answer to the implicit, unasked question. He can have her. He does have her. "I want you too."
They are well-positioned for it. Derrica doesn't have to cede her grip on his hands, really, or let him up from where she's born him down into the mattress. But all that comes of that affirmation is a second shifting of her weight, flatting herself down across his chest while she kisses him.
If it were simply about their comparative sizes, Derrica has no illusions about Loxley's ability to buck her off. He permits her this. That too is something that glows like a coal in her chest.
There's an impulse is to wrap around her, slide his hands out from under hers, do as he had voiced, as she had permitted. To act impatiently. The even greater impulse is to do none of these things, giving a quiet breath out at that feeling of soft heat as she presses in closely, as she kisses him. The fingers laced between hers splay, briefly, then relax.
He doesn't do nothing, underneath her. Tilts his hips ever so to press against her, registering his own need in the quiet slide and shift. She kisses him and he kisses her back, eyes closed, shrinking the world into this space, the sink of the mattress and the warm weight of her on him.
Happy to be here, to bask in her presence, arousal like a slow simmer and also something else, an ache, higher in his heart.
She has been with people who could never give over to her this way. It is a kind of trust. Or beyond that, it is a kind of intimacy that seems so terribly delicate. So delicate that she would catch it up between her palms, shelter it there.
Doing such a thing would give it room to grow stronger. And whether or not she wants that—
"I want to be so good to you," she tells him, softly against his mouth. Meets the shift of his hips without releasing her grip on his hand to press further than the friction and catch of a spark that follows. Draws back just far enough to entreat, "Look at me."
There's a breath out that seems like it's going to form a sentence, kind of does, a quiet you are, but she moves against him and it trails off into more of a sound than words. Heels digging into the mattress behind her do something to relieve a little tension, aimed downwards out of sight, although the fine flexes of muscle through thigh, abdomen, shoulders, fingers, all observable.
She pulls back, and he opens his eyes, focusing more specifically when she speaks again. He is unguarded, intrigue and anticipation and, well, trust, that too, all easily read. Looking.
Just watching him would be a fine thing in and of itself.
Derrica's fingers loosen their grasp on Loxley's, trail along his wrists, his forearms, his elbows, as she straightens further. Watches his face, takes in the open quality of his expression and feels it twist into her chest.
A slight press of fingers to the delicate inside of his bicep, instructive, as she rises up onto her knees. Reaches between them briefly to guide him into her, before she resettles herself into Loxley's lap. It's a deliberately slow, easy motion. Derrica lets her body bow forward, hair falling over her shoulders, as she breathes around the sensation.
And remains there, having taken him in fully, breath gone shallow, to admire him, his body and his face, commit all the facets of his expression to memory before she moves again.
When Loxley moves his arms, its only to seek a fractionally more comfortable angle or two, allowing that unspoken instruction alone to keep them otherwise pressed to the mattress. Fingers loose, and then curling. Breathes in, holds it there as she takes him in slowly and deeply, and then held there, like that.
Breathes out again once she is settled, and now he shifts, a subtle arcing his back, chin lifting. There, restraint, the potential of movement rather than movement manifesting.
Refocuses, looks at her, all sweeping admiration from where they are joined together, then up her body as she shifts forwards, as her mouth parts to breathe out her tension. Now, a little sharpness in the haze, just the corner of his mouth upticking. Good morning.
The rhythm is deliberate, achingly slow. Drawing up and then settling back down into his lap, lingering there. Her hands slide from his chest back to the mattress, so she might lower herself down to set a deep kiss to his mouth.
Good morning, indeed.
It's sweet, having him spread pliant beneath her. It would be sweet any morning, even if the specter of his world and newly arrived memories weren't hovering over them. But it's better now to have him so firmly anchored in this moment.
There is nothing, nothing Derrica can to keep a Rifter here. She knows. She'd tried once, grasping at Holden as he slipped into nothingness.
And it would hurt just as badly to lose Loxley that way. That fact has made itself very clear.
"Loxley," she murmurs. Stalls out over the thing she means to say, all this affection that doesn't easily resolve itself into words. She kisses the corner of his mouth, breathes out as her hips roll slowly down against him, "Stay here."
There's only a quiet 'hm' when she says his name, lazy inquiry, and then a pause. Through the blur of eyelashes and close proximity, Loxley watches the slice of profile he can see of her, waiting to hear the thing she says. When she says it—well, first, a deep breath in at the movement that comes along with it, relishing the unbearable slowness and nearness of it all.
Maybe Thedas is the dream. It's certainly something every Rifter considers at least once, whether in those first panicky moments of rifts and demons and people shouting, or later. Now, for instance, in bed, with a lovely thing happening, with the most beautiful of women.
He doesn't say that. He says, "Right here," agreeably, cheekily, but he lifts his head a little to nuzzle a kiss against her cheek. "I'm right here." In a tone that says he is glad to be.
The press of his mouth to her cheek gives way to the turn of her head, catching him before he can retreat to kiss him properly. She's smiling into it, recognizing the absurdity of the request but pleased with his answer, the mellowed tone of his voice. Her hair falls in a curtain around their faces, remains there as she moves over him, rocks down into him.
What else might she say? That she would hate for him to be elsewhere? That she would keep him here until someone came looking?
"I want you here," which is broad enough to encompass Thedas and this bed and their present entanglement. "Does this feel good?"
She nips at his lower lip as punctuation, soothes it a moment later. All of this, conducted at such a deliberate, languid pace, has the potential to drag on and on. The flush of her skin and the shallow breaths against his mouth aren't of the kind that indicate urgency, or even any approach towards it. Maybe she does keep him here, whispering soft, sweet things until Loxley can't bear it anymore.
"Yes," still quiet, still a bedroom murmur, but a broader smile reforming after the edge of her bite, the kiss that soothes it. Pointy canines, good symmetry, it's a nice smile. "So very good."
There will be a tipping point where 'too much' and 'not enough' become a singular circle together, and maybe the next little tilt of his hips in time with the next roll of hers is a signal of that moment. It evokes a sound out of him, more senseless than the last, if still kept trapped behind his teeth and low in his chest.
"I want you here too," with less of a grin in his voice, although not none. "Doing this as long as we can stand it."
It's a little bit testing the waters when he raises a hand off the mattress, just touching her hair, pushing it back to let his palm graze against her cheek. Hard not to touch her. Hard to permit even the remote possibility that she might feel less than desired.
Hadn't she said something to that effect that first night after the joust? He'd had bruises, mottled deeper gray along his torso. She'd pinned him up against the headboard of this bed then.
She'd stayed that night too, she remembers.
"Let me hear you," is for whatever held in reserve. She could feel the catch of it, that sound.
Her movements have turned excruciatingly slow. All her muscles are shaking, just finely, as his hand comes up to touch her face. Does she want this contact more than she wants the shape of that game they'd almost been playing? As it turns out, yes. She does.
Loxley nods (silently, a little inverse to instruction) just once, and just subtly. A lot of this is subtle, including the fine-tuned responses of her body when he touches her, but when she does not steer away, he gladly sinks his fingers into her hair properly, while his other hand lifts, lowers, smooths a path up the outside of her thigh.
The next time there's a sound, in response to the slow squeeze and flex of muscle, the gentle shift of their movement, there's less of that silencing tension. In the confines of his room, thick walls and thick flooring doing much to muffle the late morning Lowtown outside, he always feels as though even the littlest noises out of him are loud.
They're not, but there is a rawness to it all, a need.
His hand slides up her side, gentle but firm pressure through the broadside of his palm, following her curves. It's touch for the sake of touch, rather than attempting to manoeuvre.
The trade here, permission to lift his hands from where she'd put them so he might set his hands onto her skin, is worthwhile enough that Derrica doesn't consider re-establishing any initial instruction.
It is not a touch asking anything of her. He is not asking that she modify her pace or adjust her angle. It is only Loxley's palms sweeping warm strokes across her skin as she moves over him. Slowly, slowly.
This is not necessarily about what feels good for her, though this does. It is about taking him apart, drawing out these minor, near-involuntary sounds from him. Or pushing him to whatever point exists where he cannot moderate his own volume.
"I'm going to keep you here," is a murmur too, her eyes searching his. "Right here."
In this room, in this bed, with sunlight spilling in around the shutters. (Unrealistic. Impossible, given the work waiting for both of them. But it suits, in the moment.)
Touching to touch. As much as to enjoy the sensation of her warm skin against his hands as it is to impart something pleasurable. Pleasure begets pleasure, but there is a selfish desire (that never feels selfish, when he is with her) to enjoy her, and touch her, and remap his hands on her body after so much of him had forgotten such a thing entirely. Doing so without demand still feels in spirit of their silent little contract.
And this time, at this promise from her, Loxley feels it like a rush of warmth, a downwards ache, and he lets himself respond with a sound, as she'd asked, a quiet drawn out groan. The next breath out, shakier, in time with the next rise of her hips, the next pushing down.
"Derrica," half-whispered, a signal, of the slow build she's drawing out of him. The real possibility he might ask for more, the usual sort of thing, harder and faster and messier, along with the indecision about whether he'd really want her to give it.
When she kisses him again, it carries a soothing, hushing quality. Not yielding. Maybe he will ask, but Derrica has no intentions for anything other than this pace she's set: so slow that it aches, drives the breath out of her as surely as it does Loxley.
"Not yet," is so, so gentle.
Loxley is always so good to her. All Derrica's best intentions have come apart under his hands, over and over. How many times has Loxley devoted himself to taking her apart first, before considering himself?
Maybe this was always in the cards, even without the tangled complication of his dream, all these new memories and the near miss of him vanishing hanging overhead. Without all this feeling, overwhelming and impossible, layering every movement.
She isn't unaffected. Just focused, watching him even as her breath goes shallow and she flushes hot. All of these things held in check as she moves over him, hands slipping to brace at his shoulders, use her own weight to bear him down into the mattress as he runs his own palms over herskin.
Later, he'd probably describe with better articulation of the after affects of such a dream. Of that slight sense of unhooking, weightlessness, that churn of adrift sense of place that he'd had to swim against when he first landed here. It isn't unfamiliar, that rootlessness, but certainly more existential when drawn between one reality and another.
This is all things counter to that. Bodily and focused, where any scattered sense of history or future is muted when the present becomes this vivid. Derrica braces her hands, rocks her weight that little bit forwards to bear him down, pinning him in place, beneath her. His hips twitch up, not very calculated, enough to feel the squeeze of her thighs on either side of him, feeling the way she moves with her own chosen pace.
Control slowly slipping free of his fingers, breathing gaining an edge of urgency, muttered things like gods, please for her to speed up, to drag them faster to a finish, an urge that never manifests in the touch of his hands, or more movement than those little, involuntary shifts beneath her.
When she lowers herself again, it is only to trade the pin of her hands for elbows at his shoulders. Sink her fingers into his hair again, brush back through the mass of curls, catch at the base of his horns. Derrica's nose brushes Loxley's, held close for a moment before brushing soft, loose kisses to his mouth.
"You're so good for me," she murmurs, whispers between each kiss. "Hold on just a little longer."
An indeterminate amount of time. Derrica has no set idea of exactly how much longer, only that she means to keep him suspended here until Loxley can't stand it anymore. It means devoting all her attention to him, narrowing everything down to kissing the pleas from his lips, breathing back affection and sweetness and praise back to him. The strain lives in all the muscles of her body, the clench and release of her fingers in his hair, but the pace she sets remains unwavering.
Unwavering until she feels Loxley arrive at some inescapable tipping point, where it is more important to give him what he needs rather than ask him to hold back. Yes first, before a question can even form. Yes, now.
It doesn't take long until the question of holding back or not holding back becomes impossible, driven so closely to that edge and held there, gently and firmly. He kisses her back greedily when she presses kisses to his mouth, broken off moans and half-formed pleas escaping between his fangs more and more.
Like this, with her pace and her weight against him and her words, there's no need for Loxley to worry about what he is doing for her, if it's enough, if it's good. 'Worry' is not really the right word for those other times, either, not with Derrica, but there is objective, motive, action. Here, there's only sensation, doing this one thing asked of him, sinking into it.
Derrica grants him that permission before the sounds he makes and the words uttered can tumble into proper begging. His hands finally grip properly as he climaxes, relief and tension strung white hot together, the next breath out long and vocal, arms winding up around her waist as far as this position allows.
This is the point. The way he comes apart, the sounds he makes, the way his hands clutch at her as the sensation rattles through his body. This is what she'd wanted. It doesn't matter whether or not she follows him over. What matters is having him, all flushed and pliant and contented.
She is still kissing him, slow and luxurious and easy, until he relaxes beneath her. And even then, it's only a matter of minor adjustments. Lifting her hips, resettling to drape comfortably across his chest. Touching just to touch him, fingers carding through his hair, slipping down to touch his cheek, trace the line of his jaw. Listen to him breathing, feel the rise and fall of his chest beneath her.
What else is there to say? All the soft, honey-soaked affections she's murmured to him, they still hang in the air. Her fingers press them gently into his skin, as she touches him, quiet as they breathe together.
There's a loosening all around, him first and then her. His arms slide around her, now, wilfully indulging in holding her smaller body to his own, the warmth radiating off of her. A shift of his spine, hips, aligning them both into a comfortable tangle.
A familiar tangle. And there's a world where Loxley woke up from months of dreaming to a colder bed, or one shared with a less empathetic presence, whether out of chance for it happening on an evening they didn't share, or even more abstractly, because it's a world where they hadn't sought each other out, and continued to.
Gratitude is a sharp and present twinge. That's what he calls it, anyway, that feeling, brow furrowing and chin lifting so he can kiss her forehead in a way he hopes conveys it.
If not the specific thing, then close enough to it that Derrica can divine the meaning behind the softness of the kiss and the expression on Loxley's face.
Her fingers are very light where they span his cheek and jaw. Derrica kisses the hollow of his throat, to stave off the urge to stretch up to catch his mouth again.
"Go back to sleep," she murmurs. "We can get up in a little while."
It's already late. A little more stolen time isn't going to make a difference now.
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"I want you," murmured, as soon as there is space for murmuring.
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It becomes something to ask later, in a little while. After she's answered this murmur of a request.
She kisses him first for it, which telegraphs her response before Derrica says anything else.
"Yes," in answer to the implicit, unasked question. He can have her. He does have her. "I want you too."
They are well-positioned for it. Derrica doesn't have to cede her grip on his hands, really, or let him up from where she's born him down into the mattress. But all that comes of that affirmation is a second shifting of her weight, flatting herself down across his chest while she kisses him.
If it were simply about their comparative sizes, Derrica has no illusions about Loxley's ability to buck her off. He permits her this. That too is something that glows like a coal in her chest.
slaps down that nsfw tag.
He doesn't do nothing, underneath her. Tilts his hips ever so to press against her, registering his own need in the quiet slide and shift. She kisses him and he kisses her back, eyes closed, shrinking the world into this space, the sink of the mattress and the warm weight of her on him.
Happy to be here, to bask in her presence, arousal like a slow simmer and also something else, an ache, higher in his heart.
good work
She has been with people who could never give over to her this way. It is a kind of trust. Or beyond that, it is a kind of intimacy that seems so terribly delicate. So delicate that she would catch it up between her palms, shelter it there.
Doing such a thing would give it room to grow stronger. And whether or not she wants that—
"I want to be so good to you," she tells him, softly against his mouth. Meets the shift of his hips without releasing her grip on his hand to press further than the friction and catch of a spark that follows. Draws back just far enough to entreat, "Look at me."
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She pulls back, and he opens his eyes, focusing more specifically when she speaks again. He is unguarded, intrigue and anticipation and, well, trust, that too, all easily read. Looking.
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Derrica's fingers loosen their grasp on Loxley's, trail along his wrists, his forearms, his elbows, as she straightens further. Watches his face, takes in the open quality of his expression and feels it twist into her chest.
A slight press of fingers to the delicate inside of his bicep, instructive, as she rises up onto her knees. Reaches between them briefly to guide him into her, before she resettles herself into Loxley's lap. It's a deliberately slow, easy motion. Derrica lets her body bow forward, hair falling over her shoulders, as she breathes around the sensation.
And remains there, having taken him in fully, breath gone shallow, to admire him, his body and his face, commit all the facets of his expression to memory before she moves again.
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Breathes out again once she is settled, and now he shifts, a subtle arcing his back, chin lifting. There, restraint, the potential of movement rather than movement manifesting.
Refocuses, looks at her, all sweeping admiration from where they are joined together, then up her body as she shifts forwards, as her mouth parts to breathe out her tension. Now, a little sharpness in the haze, just the corner of his mouth upticking. Good morning.
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Good morning, indeed.
It's sweet, having him spread pliant beneath her. It would be sweet any morning, even if the specter of his world and newly arrived memories weren't hovering over them. But it's better now to have him so firmly anchored in this moment.
There is nothing, nothing Derrica can to keep a Rifter here. She knows. She'd tried once, grasping at Holden as he slipped into nothingness.
And it would hurt just as badly to lose Loxley that way. That fact has made itself very clear.
"Loxley," she murmurs. Stalls out over the thing she means to say, all this affection that doesn't easily resolve itself into words. She kisses the corner of his mouth, breathes out as her hips roll slowly down against him, "Stay here."
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Maybe Thedas is the dream. It's certainly something every Rifter considers at least once, whether in those first panicky moments of rifts and demons and people shouting, or later. Now, for instance, in bed, with a lovely thing happening, with the most beautiful of women.
He doesn't say that. He says, "Right here," agreeably, cheekily, but he lifts his head a little to nuzzle a kiss against her cheek. "I'm right here." In a tone that says he is glad to be.
And Tassia, all its bullshit, can wait.
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What else might she say? That she would hate for him to be elsewhere? That she would keep him here until someone came looking?
"I want you here," which is broad enough to encompass Thedas and this bed and their present entanglement. "Does this feel good?"
She nips at his lower lip as punctuation, soothes it a moment later. All of this, conducted at such a deliberate, languid pace, has the potential to drag on and on. The flush of her skin and the shallow breaths against his mouth aren't of the kind that indicate urgency, or even any approach towards it. Maybe she does keep him here, whispering soft, sweet things until Loxley can't bear it anymore.
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There will be a tipping point where 'too much' and 'not enough' become a singular circle together, and maybe the next little tilt of his hips in time with the next roll of hers is a signal of that moment. It evokes a sound out of him, more senseless than the last, if still kept trapped behind his teeth and low in his chest.
"I want you here too," with less of a grin in his voice, although not none. "Doing this as long as we can stand it."
It's a little bit testing the waters when he raises a hand off the mattress, just touching her hair, pushing it back to let his palm graze against her cheek. Hard not to touch her. Hard to permit even the remote possibility that she might feel less than desired.
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She'd stayed that night too, she remembers.
"Let me hear you," is for whatever held in reserve. She could feel the catch of it, that sound.
Her movements have turned excruciatingly slow. All her muscles are shaking, just finely, as his hand comes up to touch her face. Does she want this contact more than she wants the shape of that game they'd almost been playing? As it turns out, yes. She does.
no subject
The next time there's a sound, in response to the slow squeeze and flex of muscle, the gentle shift of their movement, there's less of that silencing tension. In the confines of his room, thick walls and thick flooring doing much to muffle the late morning Lowtown outside, he always feels as though even the littlest noises out of him are loud.
They're not, but there is a rawness to it all, a need.
His hand slides up her side, gentle but firm pressure through the broadside of his palm, following her curves. It's touch for the sake of touch, rather than attempting to manoeuvre.
no subject
It is not a touch asking anything of her. He is not asking that she modify her pace or adjust her angle. It is only Loxley's palms sweeping warm strokes across her skin as she moves over him. Slowly, slowly.
This is not necessarily about what feels good for her, though this does. It is about taking him apart, drawing out these minor, near-involuntary sounds from him. Or pushing him to whatever point exists where he cannot moderate his own volume.
"I'm going to keep you here," is a murmur too, her eyes searching his. "Right here."
In this room, in this bed, with sunlight spilling in around the shutters. (Unrealistic. Impossible, given the work waiting for both of them. But it suits, in the moment.)
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And this time, at this promise from her, Loxley feels it like a rush of warmth, a downwards ache, and he lets himself respond with a sound, as she'd asked, a quiet drawn out groan. The next breath out, shakier, in time with the next rise of her hips, the next pushing down.
"Derrica," half-whispered, a signal, of the slow build she's drawing out of him. The real possibility he might ask for more, the usual sort of thing, harder and faster and messier, along with the indecision about whether he'd really want her to give it.
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"Not yet," is so, so gentle.
Loxley is always so good to her. All Derrica's best intentions have come apart under his hands, over and over. How many times has Loxley devoted himself to taking her apart first, before considering himself?
Maybe this was always in the cards, even without the tangled complication of his dream, all these new memories and the near miss of him vanishing hanging overhead. Without all this feeling, overwhelming and impossible, layering every movement.
She isn't unaffected. Just focused, watching him even as her breath goes shallow and she flushes hot. All of these things held in check as she moves over him, hands slipping to brace at his shoulders, use her own weight to bear him down into the mattress as he runs his own palms over herskin.
no subject
This is all things counter to that. Bodily and focused, where any scattered sense of history or future is muted when the present becomes this vivid. Derrica braces her hands, rocks her weight that little bit forwards to bear him down, pinning him in place, beneath her. His hips twitch up, not very calculated, enough to feel the squeeze of her thighs on either side of him, feeling the way she moves with her own chosen pace.
Control slowly slipping free of his fingers, breathing gaining an edge of urgency, muttered things like gods, please for her to speed up, to drag them faster to a finish, an urge that never manifests in the touch of his hands, or more movement than those little, involuntary shifts beneath her.
no subject
"You're so good for me," she murmurs, whispers between each kiss. "Hold on just a little longer."
An indeterminate amount of time. Derrica has no set idea of exactly how much longer, only that she means to keep him suspended here until Loxley can't stand it anymore. It means devoting all her attention to him, narrowing everything down to kissing the pleas from his lips, breathing back affection and sweetness and praise back to him. The strain lives in all the muscles of her body, the clench and release of her fingers in his hair, but the pace she sets remains unwavering.
Unwavering until she feels Loxley arrive at some inescapable tipping point, where it is more important to give him what he needs rather than ask him to hold back. Yes first, before a question can even form. Yes, now.
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Like this, with her pace and her weight against him and her words, there's no need for Loxley to worry about what he is doing for her, if it's enough, if it's good. 'Worry' is not really the right word for those other times, either, not with Derrica, but there is objective, motive, action. Here, there's only sensation, doing this one thing asked of him, sinking into it.
Derrica grants him that permission before the sounds he makes and the words uttered can tumble into proper begging. His hands finally grip properly as he climaxes, relief and tension strung white hot together, the next breath out long and vocal, arms winding up around her waist as far as this position allows.
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She is still kissing him, slow and luxurious and easy, until he relaxes beneath her. And even then, it's only a matter of minor adjustments. Lifting her hips, resettling to drape comfortably across his chest. Touching just to touch him, fingers carding through his hair, slipping down to touch his cheek, trace the line of his jaw. Listen to him breathing, feel the rise and fall of his chest beneath her.
What else is there to say? All the soft, honey-soaked affections she's murmured to him, they still hang in the air. Her fingers press them gently into his skin, as she touches him, quiet as they breathe together.
no subject
A familiar tangle. And there's a world where Loxley woke up from months of dreaming to a colder bed, or one shared with a less empathetic presence, whether out of chance for it happening on an evening they didn't share, or even more abstractly, because it's a world where they hadn't sought each other out, and continued to.
Gratitude is a sharp and present twinge. That's what he calls it, anyway, that feeling, brow furrowing and chin lifting so he can kiss her forehead in a way he hopes conveys it.
slaps down bow
If not the specific thing, then close enough to it that Derrica can divine the meaning behind the softness of the kiss and the expression on Loxley's face.
Her fingers are very light where they span his cheek and jaw. Derrica kisses the hollow of his throat, to stave off the urge to stretch up to catch his mouth again.
"Go back to sleep," she murmurs. "We can get up in a little while."
It's already late. A little more stolen time isn't going to make a difference now.