He ducks his head, tip of his nose blunting against her crown, before he shifts the caped loop of his arms to lead her towards the bed. He sits first, hands out to draw her in. More awake, now, and she can tell that he's searching for something in her expression, open concern and curiousity in near-gold eyes in equal measure.
What an instructive thing it was, feeling Holden's hands in her hair one minute and listening to his voice dip fondly over some constellation Derrica would never see, and then feeling him go, turning just quickly enough to see. There is a difference between knowing a thing could happen and seeing it, being unable to stop it.
She'd burned through the immediate pain of it in Richard's room. It's muted now, dulled down to something exhausted and numb. Present enough to flare up if she speaks of it, so she doesn't. Loxley hasn't asked directly yet, and that is a kind of relief too.
Her fingers are very gentle when she cups his face, palms moving over the bristle of his beard. Bracketed so, drawn in close, she looks him over. (She likes this, the way he looks mussed and rumpled from sleep.) Puts her hands into his hair before she leans in to kiss him so, so softly.
Instinct says to let her do as she likes, for the moment, and so Loxley is still when she holds his face, and willing when she draws in close to touch her mouth to his. He presses a kiss in return, a hand high at her back and sort of half-keeping the blanket in place despite that it's slipped free everywhere else.
When that soft kiss ends, he presses a second in its place, similarly soft, briefer. His hand smoothing against the side of her neck, beneath the fall of her hair.
"Do you wish to talk about it?" he asks, without easing up on how close she's drawn them together.
There are so many different parts to the agony of it. Losing Holden. Watching him go. And being so reminded that Loxley might slip away, and that it would hurt just as badly.
What that means, when set against moments like this. (Loxley is so easy to like.)
But she owes him some explanation for turning up on his doorstep at this hour, waking him, intruding.
"Help me?" she prompts, which is ostensibly about all her layers, but comes in the same tenor she'd used for Can you take me to bed? A small request to hang on to him, for now. Though there is some levity when she reminds, "I'll need to manage my boots first."
No need to respond to the first thing with words. Loxley doesn't press. Not yet.
Levity he can do, certainly, amongst other things. The corner of his mouth quirks up, nuances of expression only just visible to human eyes in the dimness, and he reaches down to hook a grasp around her ankle. Gently but firmly, it's hoisted up to rest on his knee, so that he can work at her laces.
"We should simply go around without boots," he says, never mind the snow still caught in the buckles, "for occasions like this."
Her answering smile wavers, wobbly in spite of Loxley's acquiescence. Or maybe because of it, the way he gives her this care without any hesitation.
"Or I should take them off in the hall," she answers, lifting one hand to his shoulder. Balancing there, she can hook fingers into the ties of her cloak, shrug off the scarves to puddle in a heap on the floor. "To save us time."
Though that seems like asking to lose a pair of boots, but that's not a concern for this exact moment.
And definitely a good way to get rid of some boots forever, but you know. He slips the offending pair off along with her socks, leaning a little to drop it all on the floor by the foot of his bed. Leaning back in once he does so, sort of within kissing range but with more of an intent to continue his assistance, helping her out of layers of clothing with easy patience.
It's a nice thing, to be a warm body during a hard time, and there's no sense that that is all he is in this moment either. He guesses she came here by way of the Gallows, which can be a uniquely tiresome journey to make in the winter, but even if she hadn't, if she was just in the neighbourhood, Derrica is nothing if not assuring when it comes to being liked so much by her.
It's very early, and he's glad she's here, whatever it is that brought her.
There's no reason not to be kissing him. (A familiar thought, by now.) And so she is, once he's removed her boots and leaned back to her. Slow, thorough kisses as she pus her hands back into his hair. Derrica's layers are easily shucked off, shawls and thick sweater draped over her shoulders simple enough to shrug away. Loxley has clever hands and the ties and sashes cinching her tunic closed and her leggings around her hips hardly present a challenge.
The floor is cold under her feet. Derrica tiptoes up into the kiss right, makes a soft sound of entreaty as she leans further into him. She murmurs, "You're so good to me," against his mouth. She's told him a variation of such a thing before, and it is just as true now as it was then, but the words are raw around the edges.
He's curious, of course, but also interested in her now less-than-dressed frame pressing warmly into his. The blanket has joined most of her her clothing on the floor by now, stirred blood doing something to fend off the chill in the air. Later, he'll fuss with the stove in the corner, clean down the layer of water that inevitably gathers on the inside surface of the window, maybe find food.
For now, his sense of hospitality is limited to answering kisses, and small contented sounds as she touches his hair, leans against him. Ties and sashes come loose, fabric tugging, relaxing.
"I could be better," is not a self-reflection but a suggestion. His hands skimming down her back, her hips, capturing her in another kiss in his drawing them both for the bed.
Suggestion, yes, but one that prompts a smile beneath the application of that kiss.
What an impossible thing, Loxley being better than he is now.
"Yes," only comes after her feet have left the floor. After she's occupying space beside him, already tucking herself closer. What's left of her clothes, whatever hadn't already slipped to the floor, is shucked with a brisk twitch of shoulder and arm, casting away her tunic. There's little else.
She'd meant to go to bed. Hours ago. Before Holden—
Her hands run down Loxley's shoulders, splay across his chest. Reassures herself of the rise and fall of his chest, all the warmth of his skin and familiar array of scars.
He pulls her in where she hasn't already situated herself, bed creaking almost like a greeting to the combined weight of them in the slouchy mattress. The draw-string trousers he'd slipped on in getting to the door are easily push down, kicked aside as he kisses her, as she feels her hands over his chest. No new scars or bruises to speak of, just familiar grey skin that catches oddly silver in low light.
Please, she says. He feels a twinge of something, an odd but fleeting sort of anxiety that perhaps he won't be able to sufficiently give whatever it is she's really looking for, but it passes, and he kisses her throat, and draws her leg over his.
It doesn't take much to think: distraction, perhaps. And he can be distracting. His mouth to her throat and then further down, a hand in her hair, another roaming a bolder path down the front of her body, knuckles brushing over scars, palm pushing against that even warmer juncture between her legs.
That very first time, after the joust, Loxley had—
Not promised, not exactly. But she remembers his face, the way his voice dipped talking about where he'd put his mouth if he could. Not a promise, but the kind of hazy intent for the future that always tends to coalesce in the newness of any coupling. She remembers the clench of wanting exactly what he'd described the moment he'd said it.
His mouth is so warm, and his hand feels good pressed there while he applies mouth and opposite hand to her skin. It would feel very good, if she let him continue.
But her fingers slide into his hair, along the base of his horns, as she says, "Loxley, wait."
And it takes her a moment to resolve the urge into words, instead of simply drawing him up to her by the catch of her fingers in his hair. But she murmurs, "Come back."
She is easy to get lost in, as if Derrica weren't simply a person but a whole moment in time and place to exist. Not so much, though, that the use of his name and the direction that comes after doesn't snag his focus off from soft skin, the process of refamiliarising himself with her body.
He stays in intimate range but inches back up to meet her, hand resting on her hip and the tip of his nose bumping hers.
There's slight comedy to the query, "Yes?" even if delivered quietly, huskily.
Her hands slip from his hair to cup his face again, thumb over the bristle of beard. Loxley is so pleasant to look at, not just because he is so handsome but because she’s found herself very fond of how humor crinkles at the corners of his eyes and the sweetness of his smile. This is not what Derrica wants tonight, but she knows how good it would be to pin him under her and watch his face while she rides him, see every ripple of expression he gives up to her.
But no, that’s not for tonight.
“Stay here,” Derrica tells him, murmured into the space between them. “Don’t go too far away.”
It would be very good to have his mouth. But she wants to touch him, to feel Loxley over her more than she wants anything else. To be unmistakably aware of him, and his body and how gently he touches her and to be able to keep hold of him in return. Derrica kisses him softly after speaking, slow, thorough kisses as her hands keep hold of him, underscoring the request.
Something else, and he doesn't know what, but he would much rather do as asked than stop to find out. Loxley's eyes close as Derrica kisses him, receptive while she sets the pace and the closeness of it, her hands holding him like so. His pulls himself nearer, and her nearer, sliding an arm beneath and around her while his other hand roams over the slopes of her body.
"I'm right here," he murmurs between kisses. "I'm not going anywhere."
The crush of their bodies pressed close feels comfortably warm on this particular winter evening (or morning, depending on the direction you're coming at it). The impulse is to roll her under him, but his hindbrain remembers very nearly falling off the bed and the laziness of the hour compels him to settle them both into the sink of the mattress just like this, nudging a thigh between her legs.
It's not a wrong thing to say, but it hurts to hear. Like a hand pressing a bruise, raising a dull, twinging sort of pain. He's here, and that is a blessing. He's here, and nothing could stop him from going.
And somewhere, farther, a flicker of awareness about what she's doing in seeking this kind of comfort from Loxley. Derrica has had sex in which she is incidental, and so is her chosen partner. This is not that.
Neither sensation is enough to rattle her from the ease of sliding in towards Loxley, cinching in close, her own thighs tightening around his as she links her calf beneath him. This is good. Better. The quality of the kiss warms, opens under his mouth as his hand trails over her skin. Derrica's fingers leave his face, slip down his neck to his shoulders, holding there before she murmurs, "Come here," with the coaxing pull of her hands, asking for what Loxley had balked at: to let him settle over her, let his weight bear her down into the mattress. Derrica's fingers dig in at his shoulders, saying right up against his mouth, "I want you, Loxley. I want you inside me, please."
No, it's not distraction. It's something else, a different weight to the way their bodies meet on this particular night.
He moves as bid, following through that motion as if he hadn't hesitated. It affords them better intimacy, lets him sink against her and the bed, into the embrace of her arms around his shoulders, her legs tangled with his. It's nice, adding pressure and weight to their shared warmth.
Loxley kisses her mouth, her jaw and throat, half distracted by all the rest as he reaches down to touch her and touch himself, to guide himself into a gentle point of contact, to give her what she asks. He sighs, a sleep-rough sound, the hand braced against the bedding beside her shoulder gathering up loose cotton into a fist as he slides into her, new tension of a good sort hardening across his shoulders, down his back.
Lifts his head, kisses her again, dirtier and less precise this time.
A tingling ache is spreading from her collarbone, faint discomfort that finds no purchase as Loxley's body covers her, as he acquiesces to all her requests with a lovely sound. Derrica inhales at the stretch and slide of sensation, thighs flexing tighter around his hips. Her whole body arches to meet him, every muscled pulled briefly taut before the tension ebbs away and Derrica settles too, gripping his shoulders to hold him close as they kiss.
There is a reason Derrica so rarely chooses a position like this, gives herself over in such a way. It's difficult, impossible, to find someone like Loxley, who won't see it as invitation to pin her down in other ways too.
Her fingers slide into Loxley's hair again, nails scraping along his scalp as she makes soft, punched-out sounds into his mouth. The fingers of her opposite hand flex against Loxley's shoulder, hanging on. Not urging him on or demanding, just—
"Like this," is a murmur, so brief that it barely interrupts their kiss. "That's so good."
He always runs a little warm, hot under her hands. A fast metabolism, maybe, a latent energy. Maybe its his infernal blood, the same kind that gives him a little proof against flame, still running in his veins even while his outer shape has converted to something less devilish.
Or just this, and her, the gentle pace he sets that is no less firm and thorough. Loxley's head tips along with the scrape of her nails, soft inarticulate sounds given at each little thing, variation and sensation. A low, warm shiver at her praise murmured so softly, more tactile than anything else.
"Like this," he agrees.
The angle of an emerging sun is drawing a still-hazy knife of sunlight through the angle of his window. Even through thick glass, sturdy walls, the city slowly waking up is a distant background noise. Louder, though, the creaking of the bed, his shallow breathing, the sounds she makes. "I love hearing you," he murmurs, thoughtlessly, between kisses. "I love how you sound, like this."
While she hadn't asked in so many words, Loxley does give her what she wants: the warm weight of him over her, and this slow, intimate rock of their bodies. Her fingers tighten and loosen and tighten again in his hair. There's no reason to curtail her reactions, bite back moans or steady her breath. Her fingers draw down his spine, then back up, nails biting into his shoulder as he moves into her.
"Loxley," she breathes, tender over the syllables. It's the only thing that materializes, his name carrying deeper sentiments along with it. He's so warm. And Derrica is never going to get tired of the way his entire body reacts to praise, the way he reacts to her.
There's a long beat of quiet, gasping breaths. Derrica's heel braced against the mattress, thighs flexing at his hips, as her hand leaves his hair to cup his cheek. Her thumb slips along the bristle of beard, sets at the corner of his mouth as she says again, lower, "Loxley, please."
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charmoffensive) wrote2019-10-19 02:48 pm
no subject
He ducks his head, tip of his nose blunting against her crown, before he shifts the caped loop of his arms to lead her towards the bed. He sits first, hands out to draw her in. More awake, now, and she can tell that he's searching for something in her expression, open concern and curiousity in near-gold eyes in equal measure.
no subject
She'd burned through the immediate pain of it in Richard's room. It's muted now, dulled down to something exhausted and numb. Present enough to flare up if she speaks of it, so she doesn't. Loxley hasn't asked directly yet, and that is a kind of relief too.
Her fingers are very gentle when she cups his face, palms moving over the bristle of his beard. Bracketed so, drawn in close, she looks him over. (She likes this, the way he looks mussed and rumpled from sleep.) Puts her hands into his hair before she leans in to kiss him so, so softly.
no subject
When that soft kiss ends, he presses a second in its place, similarly soft, briefer. His hand smoothing against the side of her neck, beneath the fall of her hair.
"Do you wish to talk about it?" he asks, without easing up on how close she's drawn them together.
no subject
There are so many different parts to the agony of it. Losing Holden. Watching him go. And being so reminded that Loxley might slip away, and that it would hurt just as badly.
What that means, when set against moments like this. (Loxley is so easy to like.)
But she owes him some explanation for turning up on his doorstep at this hour, waking him, intruding.
"Help me?" she prompts, which is ostensibly about all her layers, but comes in the same tenor she'd used for Can you take me to bed? A small request to hang on to him, for now. Though there is some levity when she reminds, "I'll need to manage my boots first."
no subject
Levity he can do, certainly, amongst other things. The corner of his mouth quirks up, nuances of expression only just visible to human eyes in the dimness, and he reaches down to hook a grasp around her ankle. Gently but firmly, it's hoisted up to rest on his knee, so that he can work at her laces.
"We should simply go around without boots," he says, never mind the snow still caught in the buckles, "for occasions like this."
no subject
"Or I should take them off in the hall," she answers, lifting one hand to his shoulder. Balancing there, she can hook fingers into the ties of her cloak, shrug off the scarves to puddle in a heap on the floor. "To save us time."
Though that seems like asking to lose a pair of boots, but that's not a concern for this exact moment.
no subject
And definitely a good way to get rid of some boots forever, but you know. He slips the offending pair off along with her socks, leaning a little to drop it all on the floor by the foot of his bed. Leaning back in once he does so, sort of within kissing range but with more of an intent to continue his assistance, helping her out of layers of clothing with easy patience.
It's a nice thing, to be a warm body during a hard time, and there's no sense that that is all he is in this moment either. He guesses she came here by way of the Gallows, which can be a uniquely tiresome journey to make in the winter, but even if she hadn't, if she was just in the neighbourhood, Derrica is nothing if not assuring when it comes to being liked so much by her.
It's very early, and he's glad she's here, whatever it is that brought her.
no subject
The floor is cold under her feet. Derrica tiptoes up into the kiss right, makes a soft sound of entreaty as she leans further into him. She murmurs, "You're so good to me," against his mouth. She's told him a variation of such a thing before, and it is just as true now as it was then, but the words are raw around the edges.
no subject
For now, his sense of hospitality is limited to answering kisses, and small contented sounds as she touches his hair, leans against him. Ties and sashes come loose, fabric tugging, relaxing.
"I could be better," is not a self-reflection but a suggestion. His hands skimming down her back, her hips, capturing her in another kiss in his drawing them both for the bed.
no subject
What an impossible thing, Loxley being better than he is now.
"Yes," only comes after her feet have left the floor. After she's occupying space beside him, already tucking herself closer. What's left of her clothes, whatever hadn't already slipped to the floor, is shucked with a brisk twitch of shoulder and arm, casting away her tunic. There's little else.
She'd meant to go to bed. Hours ago. Before Holden—
Her hands run down Loxley's shoulders, splay across his chest. Reassures herself of the rise and fall of his chest, all the warmth of his skin and familiar array of scars.
"Please," she murmurs, an unnecessary addition.
no subject
Please, she says. He feels a twinge of something, an odd but fleeting sort of anxiety that perhaps he won't be able to sufficiently give whatever it is she's really looking for, but it passes, and he kisses her throat, and draws her leg over his.
It doesn't take much to think: distraction, perhaps. And he can be distracting. His mouth to her throat and then further down, a hand in her hair, another roaming a bolder path down the front of her body, knuckles brushing over scars, palm pushing against that even warmer juncture between her legs.
no subject
Not promised, not exactly. But she remembers his face, the way his voice dipped talking about where he'd put his mouth if he could. Not a promise, but the kind of hazy intent for the future that always tends to coalesce in the newness of any coupling. She remembers the clench of wanting exactly what he'd described the moment he'd said it.
His mouth is so warm, and his hand feels good pressed there while he applies mouth and opposite hand to her skin. It would feel very good, if she let him continue.
But her fingers slide into his hair, along the base of his horns, as she says, "Loxley, wait."
And it takes her a moment to resolve the urge into words, instead of simply drawing him up to her by the catch of her fingers in his hair. But she murmurs, "Come back."
no subject
He stays in intimate range but inches back up to meet her, hand resting on her hip and the tip of his nose bumping hers.
There's slight comedy to the query, "Yes?" even if delivered quietly, huskily.
no subject
But no, that’s not for tonight.
“Stay here,” Derrica tells him, murmured into the space between them. “Don’t go too far away.”
It would be very good to have his mouth. But she wants to touch him, to feel Loxley over her more than she wants anything else. To be unmistakably aware of him, and his body and how gently he touches her and to be able to keep hold of him in return. Derrica kisses him softly after speaking, slow, thorough kisses as her hands keep hold of him, underscoring the request.
no subject
Something else, and he doesn't know what, but he would much rather do as asked than stop to find out. Loxley's eyes close as Derrica kisses him, receptive while she sets the pace and the closeness of it, her hands holding him like so. His pulls himself nearer, and her nearer, sliding an arm beneath and around her while his other hand roams over the slopes of her body.
"I'm right here," he murmurs between kisses. "I'm not going anywhere."
The crush of their bodies pressed close feels comfortably warm on this particular winter evening (or morning, depending on the direction you're coming at it). The impulse is to roll her under him, but his hindbrain remembers very nearly falling off the bed and the laziness of the hour compels him to settle them both into the sink of the mattress just like this, nudging a thigh between her legs.
no subject
And somewhere, farther, a flicker of awareness about what she's doing in seeking this kind of comfort from Loxley. Derrica has had sex in which she is incidental, and so is her chosen partner. This is not that.
Neither sensation is enough to rattle her from the ease of sliding in towards Loxley, cinching in close, her own thighs tightening around his as she links her calf beneath him. This is good. Better. The quality of the kiss warms, opens under his mouth as his hand trails over her skin. Derrica's fingers leave his face, slip down his neck to his shoulders, holding there before she murmurs, "Come here," with the coaxing pull of her hands, asking for what Loxley had balked at: to let him settle over her, let his weight bear her down into the mattress. Derrica's fingers dig in at his shoulders, saying right up against his mouth, "I want you, Loxley. I want you inside me, please."
No, it's not distraction. It's something else, a different weight to the way their bodies meet on this particular night.
no subject
Loxley kisses her mouth, her jaw and throat, half distracted by all the rest as he reaches down to touch her and touch himself, to guide himself into a gentle point of contact, to give her what she asks. He sighs, a sleep-rough sound, the hand braced against the bedding beside her shoulder gathering up loose cotton into a fist as he slides into her, new tension of a good sort hardening across his shoulders, down his back.
Lifts his head, kisses her again, dirtier and less precise this time.
no subject
There is a reason Derrica so rarely chooses a position like this, gives herself over in such a way. It's difficult, impossible, to find someone like Loxley, who won't see it as invitation to pin her down in other ways too.
Her fingers slide into Loxley's hair again, nails scraping along his scalp as she makes soft, punched-out sounds into his mouth. The fingers of her opposite hand flex against Loxley's shoulder, hanging on. Not urging him on or demanding, just—
"Like this," is a murmur, so brief that it barely interrupts their kiss. "That's so good."
no subject
Or just this, and her, the gentle pace he sets that is no less firm and thorough. Loxley's head tips along with the scrape of her nails, soft inarticulate sounds given at each little thing, variation and sensation. A low, warm shiver at her praise murmured so softly, more tactile than anything else.
"Like this," he agrees.
The angle of an emerging sun is drawing a still-hazy knife of sunlight through the angle of his window. Even through thick glass, sturdy walls, the city slowly waking up is a distant background noise. Louder, though, the creaking of the bed, his shallow breathing, the sounds she makes. "I love hearing you," he murmurs, thoughtlessly, between kisses. "I love how you sound, like this."
Implicit, there: enjoying being the cause of it.
no subject
"Loxley," she breathes, tender over the syllables. It's the only thing that materializes, his name carrying deeper sentiments along with it. He's so warm. And Derrica is never going to get tired of the way his entire body reacts to praise, the way he reacts to her.
There's a long beat of quiet, gasping breaths. Derrica's heel braced against the mattress, thighs flexing at his hips, as her hand leaves his hair to cup his cheek. Her thumb slips along the bristle of beard, sets at the corner of his mouth as she says again, lower, "Loxley, please."
Please stay, is what remains unspoken.