With Marcus laid bare to the waist, Derrica resettles. Reapplies her knee to his thigh, sets her hand to the the curve of his neck, thumb over his collarbone. Bears him back against the creaking wood of the chair, banking on how permissive he has been thus far.
“Not as many as you,” she admits. Knowing she has survived less. Knowing hers are far fewer, the perhaps better mended.
Her opposite hand returns to his side. Finds the scar there, draws her fingers along the slice of it, traces a nail at the nocked edge.
A short exhale as he's set back into the chair, something that is amused and impatient and interested all at once. The good kind of impatience, a kind of internal friction. Like the tickle of fingers, the edge of a nail, against ribboned semi-unfeeling scarring.
"Sometimes," Marcus says. Conscious of himself, the press of half-hardness against fabric, stirred enough by her proximity, gentle hands and focus. His hand finds a place at her leg again, fingers curling around the back of her thigh. "I don't regret them. There was little cause for scars like these, before."
Other sorts of hurts, certainly, ones that leave their mark; but these all feel like the result of stupidity, recklessness, bravery, and the freedom to be those things.
His grip sures up, at the back of the knee. A firmer tug that might steer her into straddling him properly.
A tug noted, indulged only by minor pressure and resettling of her weight into him. Her hand cupping his cheek again, thumb running across the scar there.
“I like hearing about them.”
Words to the tune of I like hearing things about you.
As familiar as they are, these are pieces of him she has been only glancingly aware of. Less so about what they mean to him, what he might have felt about carrying them.
“I like seeing you.”
In which looking and seeing overlap, blur together as she lays her palm flat over his side, narrows the space between them to near nothing. There is nothing truly pinning him other than his indulgence, and Derrica is finding the limits of that, flexing the quiet satisfaction of this leverage.
A quiet grunt leaves him at the pressure, the angle of her knee, not quite getting the thing he was steering for but not to the exclusion of other things. The things she says, the points of contact of her hands. No, he is allowing this, letting her pin him between knee and hands and the hovering over of her attention.
The scar makes for an appealing path, at least. Stippled through his cheek, a natural swoop broken off around the cut of his jaw, hooked back up to his mouth. Messy in the way the injury must have been, whether a healer got to it or not. After a couple of days travel and working, the bristle on his face is less neat than usual, and grows in patchier around those faded seams. It had been nice that he had someone, at the time, willing to touch it just as Derrica is now, and say something kind.
He isn't thinking of that person, eyeline wandered to her mouth, senses attuned to other details he can breathe in, like whatever she last washed her hair with, the clinging of the day to her clothes and skin. (Smoke still clings to him, shirt or no shirt, and the scent of blood wreathes the room.)
The chair creaks. With her leaning and balanced so, he can't claim a kiss without some more determined rearrangement, or pulling her down to meet him. The hand at her thigh skims back up to her waist, fabric of her tunic pulling a little taut as he forms a fist around it.
“I know,” is a whisper of acknowledgement for his hand, the tension in his body under her.
Her attention is so fixed on him. Aware that when she puts her mouth on his skin the coppery bite of blood will be there mingled with the salt of sweat, the day’s work written across him as surely as the scars she has been mapping out. The slow arch up, onto the balls of her feet, sliding forward as her knee presses into the flexing muscles of his thigh.
“I want to look at you,” she tells him. A little rueful, aware of how her own wants will soon be outweighed by wanting more of him than just the tenuous balance they’ve struck. “I want to keep you just like this.”
Her free hand trails down his chest. Lingers over this scar and that, over the rise and fall of breath, the flinch of muscle in reaction to her touch.
She could slip into his lap so easily. But it would give up all her leverage to do so.
It's nearly visible, the relenting. A thing he can give her, a for now somehow clear in these subtle shifts. The way his posture stiffened now undoes itself as Marcus settles those minute ways back, and his hand relaxes from that fist, settling flatter on her waist. Letting his thumb rub small circles where he can feel soft skin beneath fabric.
It is nice to be looked at and touched. Lets the arm near that scar relax, the mirrored marking he'd mentioned a cleaner, fainter slice up the inside of bicep. Dark hair and distinctly sunless skin, as if seven or eight years of freedom still hasn't seen fit to layer in warmer tones, freckles. The thigh that isn't pinned tips aside, and he doesn't mind that the line of his hard cock is more clearly visible, by now, against the seam of grey fabric.
Marcus breathes out at this first thing; nods. Yes, he had been anticipating this, the promise of a room to themselves, the time to spend enjoying it. How he had felt that keen edge of hunger, back in the estate, of baring her right there, and he has practice in checking those more selfish impulses, of riding out the impulse for more when already given so much, without strangling them completely.
Another longer breath out as her warm fingers tuck into the fabric of his waistband. Anticipating. His gaze has dropped that far, only rises back up on a delay at her question.
"Yes," he says. "When I let myself."
There has been some measure of restraint. It's a wonder he allowed himself to deviate enough outside of it for her to even notice, let alone act upon.
Even having posed the question, Derrica hadn't quite considered her own answer to it.
Her palm splays low over his belly, a realignment requiring the drawing back of her fingers from his waistband and laces. Prompts a realignment of her body in relation to his, a settling as her elbow meets his chest and her fingers slip down to the nape of his neck.
"Once," is a certain truth. "Then it felt..."
Transgressive, that is the word she wants. But Derrica doesn't have that exact word, which would so neatly cinch together the sense of intrusion that thinking of him had carried with it then. Maybe even, to some minor degree, now.
A twitch of her shoulder, the shrug moving through her entire body, stirs the drape of her tunic against his bare skin. Her fingers flex where she has set them, grazing the fabric of his waistband once more.
Marcus doesn't know the word, either, that should fit in that space of a pause, but he thinks he knows its shape. Something about what is or is not proper, maybe, or about border-crossings, the delicate definitions that they had defined and redefined. There is no room, here, between the press of her elbow to his chest and the play of her hand, for him to know guilt about it.
His hand guides up the curve of her side, not reseating the fabric or pulling it free, just feeling. Maybe following a path he'd imagined touching before, in fleeting fragments of want and impulse. Things that are better formed, now. Beyond that, he remains still, patient.
"Tell me," he says. Something a little less sober and serious to the question in the following scrape of eye contact. It is an indulgence, to ask. "That once."
Should she feel embarrassed now? Is there space for that self-conscious rise of heat in her face? She flushed regardless, thinking back, recalling that flutter of heat washing through her body. How elicit it had felt then, being so aware of his body, his hands.
What little space remains, she closes it. Her knee digging into his thigh, her own thigh set against him. Derrica doesn’t kiss him, not yet. The immediacy of that want is set aside as she looks at his face, leans into the press of his palm.
“We were sparring,” she tells him. “In the training yard.”
The exact day doesn’t matter, not really. It could have been any day, any entanglement.
“You caught hold of me after you’d knocked me back. And I remember thinking about what it would be like if you held me tighter, instead of letting go once I found my footing.”
Marcus lifts his chin a little as if anticipating a kiss, even as his focus is interested in her answer. His hand, warm, encouraging that closing of distance, of intimacy, as if on the verge of simply pulling her against him. His other hand lifts where he'd draped it, a gentle skimming of palm to her shoulder, her throat, fingers brushing into hairline.
Not directing, in this moment, but responding in ways where he is otherwise keeping still.
"I might have felt the same that day," he says. "And moments like it. But it was just as often simple things, at a distance. Seeing you at the stables, or tending to someone on the field. I'd feel an impulse to go over, for no good reason."
“I liked that you would stop to speak with me. I liked having your attention.”
That minor tip of the chin—
Derrica notes it. Can’t do anything but observe him, focus on every minute shift of his body in relation to hers.
“I wouldn’t let myself think of so many things, but there were so many times I’d hold my breath, waiting to see if you’d stop when you passed me.”
Having so settled in against him, she is able to slip her fingers further back, find the fastening holding his hair in place to tug loose. Luxuriate in the heat of his palms where he’s set each hand. Apply quiet pressure of her thigh against him as she hitches closer. It will only be a slight movement to straddle him, and there is some inevitability to it, the trajectory they have set themselves on.
That's nice, the feeling of her fingers tugging loose the cord that keeps his hair neatly together. After a long day, there will be a kink pressed into wave, but easily relaxed. Marcus slips his hand further back to Derrica's own more complex arrangement, feeling out the ties that keep her braiding together with patient and careful fingers.
Something to focus on while his impatience simmers closer to the surface, rubs raw in him. At the mix of discomfort and pleasure for the bracing of her knee into his thigh. At his bodily awareness for her nearness.
"I should have," he says, on the topic of stopping instead of passing by.
Here is when she kisses him, her body pressing fully against him.
It saves her from saying Yes. From admitting to wanting something she only barely understands herself. It is hard to address how fully she wants him, how deep that wanting goes.
Her fingers dig into his jaw when she breaks that kiss, exhaling a ragged breath. Her thumb skates along his lower lip.
“I thought of you putting your hands on me,” she tells him, so softly it is barely a breath between them. “I thought of you putting your mouth on me.”
Mouth and hands and teeth, the last omitted as her knee digs into his hip. As her thigh presses against him, as she breathes out against his mouth.
His hand goes into her only barely undone hair, and his arm wraps around high on her waist. Something like a hungry bite in the way he responds, a closing embrace that helps fit them together here on the chair, though his mouth is gentler, as hers meets it. The flush of his body against hers earning a growled groan of want. Chair creaking.
She pulls back, just enough to speak. Words, the brush of her fingers, her leverage all stay him for the moment.
An acknowledging sound. The arm around her waist loosens, just enough that he can tug the fabric out from her waistband, can slip his hand up to feel up along her spine without obstruction. The chair creaks again in time for him pressing his mouth back against hers, something more like demand in the firmness of it.
“Marcus,” isn’t admonishment or even a plea. Just a murmur of his name for the pleasure of saying it as her knee finally slides clear of his thigh.
“I thought of you touching me and I couldn’t—”
Maybe she had excused herself from his presence earlier than usual. It’s hard to recall how she had handled that flush of realization. It’s hard even now to put the full breadth of emotion into words for him, make him understand how her whole body had flushed hot then.
“I haven’t stopped thinking of you since that night,” highlights the gulf of time between that first time and the last as she puts herself into his lap fully. Dibs her fingers into the nape of his neck, murmurs against his mouth.
He brings her in close against him as she settles completely. Can hook his heel against the stretcher between the chair legs to press a thigh up against her as if with the intent of keeping her there. He hadn't been shy before and isn't now, that sense of himself pressed flush against her.
"I haven't stopped thinking about you either," murmured. "How much I want you. How much more of you I want."
This is a good start, her warm weight settled on him, the heat of her against his bare skin, the tunic offering only minor obstruction. The digging of fingertips. (Does not think about that slight lurch, of being informed of her other partners, not when he feels so central to her universe in this moment.)
“Have me,” is an easy offering. She has made it before. “I want you to have me.”
Offered without the flickering self conscious consideration of what more can she offer? How much more of her does Marcus want?
Derrica’s hand cups his cheek. Tips his head up to her, so she can kiss him as deeply as she pleases. Between them, she pulls deftly at his laces. The shock of contact, his hand on her skin after so much time spent carefully controlling the places they touch, spark a kind of urgency.
His lips part for her, yielding to that leverage, her insistence. Presses a small, textured sound at the feeling of her hands tucked between them, working loose his laces.
Marcus draws her tunic up in his hands, baring her back to the cooler room air, lower hem dragging until he can feel the flush of her skin against his own. A hand dips under, feeling for more layers to untie and loosen as the tenor of his kiss against her mouth gains its edge. Demands for a yielding in return, but minds his teeth where he might briefly catch her lip, that edge of hunger. Of want.
He goes to insist her top layers off of her, interrupting what she's doing, but will catch himself short if she is determined to finish her task first.
There is no real reason to stall, other than she is not finished kissing him and the minor delay feels intolerable after having put him off already.
And so there is a moment of determined hesitation, her teeth catching his lower lip, before she sits back. Allows him the space to lift the loose layers of her tunic and unfastened, utilitarian bindings, off of her in an easy sweep of movement. She makes this simple. It serves them both.
There is no flicker of self-consciousness. Even the moment of real awareness of being laid bare and the novelty of it comes and goes without any rising pull of tension to accompany it.
Marcus is less inclined to move to the next thing as her layers shed, listed back into the chair so that he can look at her some. So that he can rove his hands up her sides, map soft curves with a gentle sweep of his palm. Lowers that touch back down to her hips, at her behest, a flex and squeeze of fingers in sensitive places, the dip of bone and line of muscle.
Then, gentles more. Lets her up, with the skimming of his hands back down her thighs, no pressure for her to push back against.
Long enough that extricating herself from his grip and her balanced perch across his thighs and the rasp of his palms across her skin is a kind of wrenching loss.
But Derrica braces hands over his chest, uses him as leverage to shift her weight back and away, find her footing in the space between his splayed thighs. Here, her half-finished work is made plain: laces pulled loose but trousers more or less intact. The tie pulled loose dropped on the floor alongside his armor, his tunic, her bindings and shirt.
A smile warms her expression as she looks him over. Equal parts affectionate and wanting, making plain the warmth curling in her belly.
Instead of saying any of the things burning in her chest, her hands drop down to her own trousers. Picks free her own laces, shimmies the fabric down her hips to pool on the floor and step back to him.
“Take these off,” is a murmur of a suggestion, the only thing stalling her return to his lap.
There was just the beginning of a curling in at the shoulder that might suggest a different trajectory than her murmured suggestion. To follow what appeals, from what he can see to what he can touch to what he can taste. Her scars are less but still visible in warm lantern light and they make for tempting targets of his focus.
But, Marcus relaxes back that fraction. He would prefer her in his lap. He drags his focus back up to her face as his hands move to his waistband, tugging his trousers open further before lifting his hips the necessary amount to push fabric past them.
There, the scar he'd mentioned licks around his kneecap as he leans forwards just enough to shuck pants off the rest of the way, and then back. A hand reflexively skimming over himself, less a self-conscious thing than it is practical, instinctive, a light grasp of palm against thickened flesh. His other hand turns out, palm up, an offer for steadying her.
The offered hand is welcome, less for the support as she resettles herself across his thighs and more for the opportunity to lace their fingers together. Draw his hand to her mouth and kiss his knuckles softly as she maintains that sliver of distance between his body and hers.
“I like your hands,” cannot be any kind of revelation.
Or maybe it is, just slightly. It had been a dream, but Marcus had still used these hands within the reality conjured there. The memory of it lives somewhere in her body.
But Marcus has done much to dispel it. He has used his hands for much else in her company.
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“Not as many as you,” she admits. Knowing she has survived less. Knowing hers are far fewer, the perhaps better mended.
Her opposite hand returns to his side. Finds the scar there, draws her fingers along the slice of it, traces a nail at the nocked edge.
“Do any of them still pain you?”
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"Sometimes," Marcus says. Conscious of himself, the press of half-hardness against fabric, stirred enough by her proximity, gentle hands and focus. His hand finds a place at her leg again, fingers curling around the back of her thigh. "I don't regret them. There was little cause for scars like these, before."
Other sorts of hurts, certainly, ones that leave their mark; but these all feel like the result of stupidity, recklessness, bravery, and the freedom to be those things.
His grip sures up, at the back of the knee. A firmer tug that might steer her into straddling him properly.
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“I like hearing about them.”
Words to the tune of I like hearing things about you.
As familiar as they are, these are pieces of him she has been only glancingly aware of. Less so about what they mean to him, what he might have felt about carrying them.
“I like seeing you.”
In which looking and seeing overlap, blur together as she lays her palm flat over his side, narrows the space between them to near nothing. There is nothing truly pinning him other than his indulgence, and Derrica is finding the limits of that, flexing the quiet satisfaction of this leverage.
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The scar makes for an appealing path, at least. Stippled through his cheek, a natural swoop broken off around the cut of his jaw, hooked back up to his mouth. Messy in the way the injury must have been, whether a healer got to it or not. After a couple of days travel and working, the bristle on his face is less neat than usual, and grows in patchier around those faded seams. It had been nice that he had someone, at the time, willing to touch it just as Derrica is now, and say something kind.
He isn't thinking of that person, eyeline wandered to her mouth, senses attuned to other details he can breathe in, like whatever she last washed her hair with, the clinging of the day to her clothes and skin. (Smoke still clings to him, shirt or no shirt, and the scent of blood wreathes the room.)
The chair creaks. With her leaning and balanced so, he can't claim a kiss without some more determined rearrangement, or pulling her down to meet him. The hand at her thigh skims back up to her waist, fabric of her tunic pulling a little taut as he forms a fist around it.
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Her attention is so fixed on him. Aware that when she puts her mouth on his skin the coppery bite of blood will be there mingled with the salt of sweat, the day’s work written across him as surely as the scars she has been mapping out. The slow arch up, onto the balls of her feet, sliding forward as her knee presses into the flexing muscles of his thigh.
“I want to look at you,” she tells him. A little rueful, aware of how her own wants will soon be outweighed by wanting more of him than just the tenuous balance they’ve struck. “I want to keep you just like this.”
Her free hand trails down his chest. Lingers over this scar and that, over the rise and fall of breath, the flinch of muscle in reaction to her touch.
She could slip into his lap so easily. But it would give up all her leverage to do so.
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It is nice to be looked at and touched. Lets the arm near that scar relax, the mirrored marking he'd mentioned a cleaner, fainter slice up the inside of bicep. Dark hair and distinctly sunless skin, as if seven or eight years of freedom still hasn't seen fit to layer in warmer tones, freckles. The thigh that isn't pinned tips aside, and he doesn't mind that the line of his hard cock is more clearly visible, by now, against the seam of grey fabric.
"And then I get to look at you," Marcus says.
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Her fingers set over that slashed bicep. Thumb sliding over the raised scar as her eyes lift to his face, fall back to all he’s laid bare for her.
“I couldn’t look at you before.”
The first time. Both of them fully clothed, more or less. Allowances for Derrica’s gauzy attire must be made.
Her fingers, having lingered over his chest and the slow thud of his heartbeat, slide lower. Hook into the waist of his trousers and stay there.
“Did you think of this, before? Of us?”
What they might be like, even before they had begun learning how they might fit together.
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Another longer breath out as her warm fingers tuck into the fabric of his waistband. Anticipating. His gaze has dropped that far, only rises back up on a delay at her question.
"Yes," he says. "When I let myself."
There has been some measure of restraint. It's a wonder he allowed himself to deviate enough outside of it for her to even notice, let alone act upon.
"Did you?"
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Her palm splays low over his belly, a realignment requiring the drawing back of her fingers from his waistband and laces. Prompts a realignment of her body in relation to his, a settling as her elbow meets his chest and her fingers slip down to the nape of his neck.
"Once," is a certain truth. "Then it felt..."
Transgressive, that is the word she wants. But Derrica doesn't have that exact word, which would so neatly cinch together the sense of intrusion that thinking of him had carried with it then. Maybe even, to some minor degree, now.
A twitch of her shoulder, the shrug moving through her entire body, stirs the drape of her tunic against his bare skin. Her fingers flex where she has set them, grazing the fabric of his waistband once more.
"But I've thought of you since."
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His hand guides up the curve of her side, not reseating the fabric or pulling it free, just feeling. Maybe following a path he'd imagined touching before, in fleeting fragments of want and impulse. Things that are better formed, now. Beyond that, he remains still, patient.
"Tell me," he says. Something a little less sober and serious to the question in the following scrape of eye contact. It is an indulgence, to ask. "That once."
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What little space remains, she closes it. Her knee digging into his thigh, her own thigh set against him. Derrica doesn’t kiss him, not yet. The immediacy of that want is set aside as she looks at his face, leans into the press of his palm.
“We were sparring,” she tells him. “In the training yard.”
The exact day doesn’t matter, not really. It could have been any day, any entanglement.
“You caught hold of me after you’d knocked me back. And I remember thinking about what it would be like if you held me tighter, instead of letting go once I found my footing.”
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Not directing, in this moment, but responding in ways where he is otherwise keeping still.
"I might have felt the same that day," he says. "And moments like it. But it was just as often simple things, at a distance. Seeing you at the stables, or tending to someone on the field. I'd feel an impulse to go over, for no good reason."
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That minor tip of the chin—
Derrica notes it. Can’t do anything but observe him, focus on every minute shift of his body in relation to hers.
“I wouldn’t let myself think of so many things, but there were so many times I’d hold my breath, waiting to see if you’d stop when you passed me.”
Having so settled in against him, she is able to slip her fingers further back, find the fastening holding his hair in place to tug loose. Luxuriate in the heat of his palms where he’s set each hand. Apply quiet pressure of her thigh against him as she hitches closer. It will only be a slight movement to straddle him, and there is some inevitability to it, the trajectory they have set themselves on.
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Something to focus on while his impatience simmers closer to the surface, rubs raw in him. At the mix of discomfort and pleasure for the bracing of her knee into his thigh. At his bodily awareness for her nearness.
"I should have," he says, on the topic of stopping instead of passing by.
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It saves her from saying Yes. From admitting to wanting something she only barely understands herself. It is hard to address how fully she wants him, how deep that wanting goes.
Her fingers dig into his jaw when she breaks that kiss, exhaling a ragged breath. Her thumb skates along his lower lip.
“I thought of you putting your hands on me,” she tells him, so softly it is barely a breath between them. “I thought of you putting your mouth on me.”
Mouth and hands and teeth, the last omitted as her knee digs into his hip. As her thigh presses against him, as she breathes out against his mouth.
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She pulls back, just enough to speak. Words, the brush of her fingers, her leverage all stay him for the moment.
An acknowledging sound. The arm around her waist loosens, just enough that he can tug the fabric out from her waistband, can slip his hand up to feel up along her spine without obstruction. The chair creaks again in time for him pressing his mouth back against hers, something more like demand in the firmness of it.
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“I thought of you touching me and I couldn’t—”
Maybe she had excused herself from his presence earlier than usual. It’s hard to recall how she had handled that flush of realization. It’s hard even now to put the full breadth of emotion into words for him, make him understand how her whole body had flushed hot then.
“I haven’t stopped thinking of you since that night,” highlights the gulf of time between that first time and the last as she puts herself into his lap fully. Dibs her fingers into the nape of his neck, murmurs against his mouth.
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"I haven't stopped thinking about you either," murmured. "How much I want you. How much more of you I want."
This is a good start, her warm weight settled on him, the heat of her against his bare skin, the tunic offering only minor obstruction. The digging of fingertips. (Does not think about that slight lurch, of being informed of her other partners, not when he feels so central to her universe in this moment.)
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Offered without the flickering self conscious consideration of what more can she offer? How much more of her does Marcus want?
Derrica’s hand cups his cheek. Tips his head up to her, so she can kiss him as deeply as she pleases. Between them, she pulls deftly at his laces. The shock of contact, his hand on her skin after so much time spent carefully controlling the places they touch, spark a kind of urgency.
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Marcus draws her tunic up in his hands, baring her back to the cooler room air, lower hem dragging until he can feel the flush of her skin against his own. A hand dips under, feeling for more layers to untie and loosen as the tenor of his kiss against her mouth gains its edge. Demands for a yielding in return, but minds his teeth where he might briefly catch her lip, that edge of hunger. Of want.
He goes to insist her top layers off of her, interrupting what she's doing, but will catch himself short if she is determined to finish her task first.
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And so there is a moment of determined hesitation, her teeth catching his lower lip, before she sits back. Allows him the space to lift the loose layers of her tunic and unfastened, utilitarian bindings, off of her in an easy sweep of movement. She makes this simple. It serves them both.
There is no flicker of self-consciousness. Even the moment of real awareness of being laid bare and the novelty of it comes and goes without any rising pull of tension to accompany it.
“Let me up,” is more a request of Stay here.
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Then, gentles more. Lets her up, with the skimming of his hands back down her thighs, no pressure for her to push back against.
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Long enough that extricating herself from his grip and her balanced perch across his thighs and the rasp of his palms across her skin is a kind of wrenching loss.
But Derrica braces hands over his chest, uses him as leverage to shift her weight back and away, find her footing in the space between his splayed thighs. Here, her half-finished work is made plain: laces pulled loose but trousers more or less intact. The tie pulled loose dropped on the floor alongside his armor, his tunic, her bindings and shirt.
A smile warms her expression as she looks him over. Equal parts affectionate and wanting, making plain the warmth curling in her belly.
Instead of saying any of the things burning in her chest, her hands drop down to her own trousers. Picks free her own laces, shimmies the fabric down her hips to pool on the floor and step back to him.
“Take these off,” is a murmur of a suggestion, the only thing stalling her return to his lap.
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But, Marcus relaxes back that fraction. He would prefer her in his lap. He drags his focus back up to her face as his hands move to his waistband, tugging his trousers open further before lifting his hips the necessary amount to push fabric past them.
There, the scar he'd mentioned licks around his kneecap as he leans forwards just enough to shuck pants off the rest of the way, and then back. A hand reflexively skimming over himself, less a self-conscious thing than it is practical, instinctive, a light grasp of palm against thickened flesh. His other hand turns out, palm up, an offer for steadying her.
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“I like your hands,” cannot be any kind of revelation.
Or maybe it is, just slightly. It had been a dream, but Marcus had still used these hands within the reality conjured there. The memory of it lives somewhere in her body.
But Marcus has done much to dispel it. He has used his hands for much else in her company.
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