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.
His fingers straighten to brush against her mouth, her cheek, in the wake of that kiss. Become more specific, feeling along the soft press of her lips, down her chin, the side of her throat.
"I like touching you," has that faint trace of humour—how convenient, for them both—but is also sincere.
Marcus' other hand is on her thigh, smooths up along the muscle of it, thumb pressing that little bit former against the inner softness. Lifts that one up, and the next touch comes in the form of the backs of his knuckles pressing low against her abdomen, in that warm space between them she's maintaining. Stroking over soft skin, towards where the soft lay of hair runs coarser.
Watching her face, all the while. He is not immune to the keeping of strict boundaries, especially where Derrica is concerned, but will breach them with even the slightest hint that such a thing is welcome.
Yes, there is some humor in that admission. When Derrica smiles, it is for both that and for the way he says it, the softness in his expression underneath the flicker of amusement.
And all the while, she is considering the boundaries she is enforcing. She is considering the work of his fingers, the way he is touching her. Derrica could encourage his hand downwards quite easily. Marcus has slipped part of the way already, is so very close he might be traveling the scant distance himself.
But she interrupts. It is a small movement, realigning the attention of his knuckles to the raised line slashed across her belly. To do this while guiding over the flat of his palm to the series of punctures gouged up thigh and hip that had lived just outside the roaming of his hand.
These two scars, the most noteworthy she has to offer, set out for his inspection.
There is a breath pulled in when the trajectory of his hand is altered, skirting impatience before convinced into better behaviour for virtue of
he had said he wanted to look at her. So he can do that, relax backwards with a flicked look up at her face—a subtle have it your way in the set of his expression, more mischief than complaint—before looking at where his hand has been directed. Thumb skimming over those raised ridges of scar tissue along her belly, first, feeling as well as touch.
"What was this one?" he asks, turning his hand, admiring this loose configuration they've made together.
"A blade," she answers, lifting her hand from his, his inspection permitted to carry on unimpeded. Her fingers fall to his forearm, holding there for balance as she leans back slightly on his lap. It shifts her weight back across the muscle of his thighs, creates some distance in which Derrica can observe him as Marcus looks at her. Her braid slips from her shoulder, hanging down her back.
There are other, lighter marks. Other places a blade has touched and cut deep enough to leave a mark. They are scattered, one here along her ribs, one there at her breast, one high on her arm.
"It was before I wore any armor. I didn't have my own."
They only make a path by chance, he thinks, but Marcus follows it anyway. Fingertips trailing across her skin, making gentle lines between this speckling of old hurts. Her ribs, over her breast, the backs of his knuckles then smoothing over the mark to her arm. He can hold two things to be true at once: one being, that he regrets she's been hurt, that she ever needed to start wearing armor at all.
The other is that there's something assuring and comfortable in the way she too bears marks, maybe even more than he, whether or not they're a little more discreet.
This thought, far removed from the instinct that has him ask, "The Annulment?"
The invocation of that occurrence bringing a chill to her body, one eased almost immediately by Marcus' hands.
"I was lucky," is made quieter by the way her breath has gone shallow. Her fingers slide up his forearm, thumb finding the bend of his elbow. "There was a templar who tried..."
Who has she told this to? Ilias. Julius. (Leander had seen her, and she had seen him, while the tower burned around them.) If anyone would understand, it must be Marcus. But there is still a moment, a trailing kind of hesitation as she watches him, breathing beneath the warmth of his fingers on her skin.
"I killed him. Before he could get to his dagger."
This trailed off comment has his attention hike back up.
It's a look that demands to know more, only gentles by degrees at the news that this man is dead. All the same. His hand settles at her arm, the other at her thigh, and the former slides up to her shoulder, over it, her neck. Brushes his thumb down her jaw.
"Tell me of it," he invites. It's open, such a prompt, to share whatever measure of it she'd prefer, but there is no small piece of him that would specifically like to know how she killed him too.
Her fingers curl more securely there at his elbow. Though she had been the one maintaining such strict space between them, the combination of Marcus' invitation and the path of his hand encourage her closer. Draws her a few scant degrees in towards him, until she braces here free hand over his chest. Her thumb runs back and forth there, fingers arrayed beneath the bare trace remaining of his earlier injury.
"They were killing us," is hardly necessary to reiterate; she has spoken of this to him, in his hearing, before. "Enchanter Iria had told me to run, so I cut across the courtyard. I thought I could hide in one of the store rooms. He must have seen me pass."
Foolish, in hindsight. Derrica has had much time to think of all the things she should have done differently.
"I'd never been Silenced before. It felt like I was suffocating."
Her fingers trace down his chest as she draws in a breath, shakes her head a little. Self-conscious over this admission, aware of the luxury she is expressing to him. Marcus had suffered in his Circle. Maybe he had been made very familiar with what Silencing felt like early in his life.
It might not have occurred to him, that any Circle mage—even that of Dairsmuid—would have gone any amount of time without having felt what that specific phenomenon was like. But surprise doesn't sketch out across his expression, only absorbing that information as his arm settles around her waist. Doesn't pull her in closer, just holds them both there.
It's how it should be.
"Smothering," is agreement. That's how it always felt to him. These are both better words than the one the Order, the Chantry, has chosen to call it.
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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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"I like touching you," has that faint trace of humour—how convenient, for them both—but is also sincere.
Marcus' other hand is on her thigh, smooths up along the muscle of it, thumb pressing that little bit former against the inner softness. Lifts that one up, and the next touch comes in the form of the backs of his knuckles pressing low against her abdomen, in that warm space between them she's maintaining. Stroking over soft skin, towards where the soft lay of hair runs coarser.
Watching her face, all the while. He is not immune to the keeping of strict boundaries, especially where Derrica is concerned, but will breach them with even the slightest hint that such a thing is welcome.
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And all the while, she is considering the boundaries she is enforcing. She is considering the work of his fingers, the way he is touching her. Derrica could encourage his hand downwards quite easily. Marcus has slipped part of the way already, is so very close he might be traveling the scant distance himself.
But she interrupts. It is a small movement, realigning the attention of his knuckles to the raised line slashed across her belly. To do this while guiding over the flat of his palm to the series of punctures gouged up thigh and hip that had lived just outside the roaming of his hand.
These two scars, the most noteworthy she has to offer, set out for his inspection.
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he had said he wanted to look at her. So he can do that, relax backwards with a flicked look up at her face—a subtle have it your way in the set of his expression, more mischief than complaint—before looking at where his hand has been directed. Thumb skimming over those raised ridges of scar tissue along her belly, first, feeling as well as touch.
"What was this one?" he asks, turning his hand, admiring this loose configuration they've made together.
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There are other, lighter marks. Other places a blade has touched and cut deep enough to leave a mark. They are scattered, one here along her ribs, one there at her breast, one high on her arm.
"It was before I wore any armor. I didn't have my own."
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The other is that there's something assuring and comfortable in the way she too bears marks, maybe even more than he, whether or not they're a little more discreet.
This thought, far removed from the instinct that has him ask, "The Annulment?"
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The invocation of that occurrence bringing a chill to her body, one eased almost immediately by Marcus' hands.
"I was lucky," is made quieter by the way her breath has gone shallow. Her fingers slide up his forearm, thumb finding the bend of his elbow. "There was a templar who tried..."
Who has she told this to? Ilias. Julius. (Leander had seen her, and she had seen him, while the tower burned around them.) If anyone would understand, it must be Marcus. But there is still a moment, a trailing kind of hesitation as she watches him, breathing beneath the warmth of his fingers on her skin.
"I killed him. Before he could get to his dagger."
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It's a look that demands to know more, only gentles by degrees at the news that this man is dead. All the same. His hand settles at her arm, the other at her thigh, and the former slides up to her shoulder, over it, her neck. Brushes his thumb down her jaw.
"Tell me of it," he invites. It's open, such a prompt, to share whatever measure of it she'd prefer, but there is no small piece of him that would specifically like to know how she killed him too.
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"They were killing us," is hardly necessary to reiterate; she has spoken of this to him, in his hearing, before. "Enchanter Iria had told me to run, so I cut across the courtyard. I thought I could hide in one of the store rooms. He must have seen me pass."
Foolish, in hindsight. Derrica has had much time to think of all the things she should have done differently.
"I'd never been Silenced before. It felt like I was suffocating."
Her fingers trace down his chest as she draws in a breath, shakes her head a little. Self-conscious over this admission, aware of the luxury she is expressing to him. Marcus had suffered in his Circle. Maybe he had been made very familiar with what Silencing felt like early in his life.
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It's how it should be.
"Smothering," is agreement. That's how it always felt to him. These are both better words than the one the Order, the Chantry, has chosen to call it.
And that's all, listening.
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