[Scooting off the edge of the mattress, she first unfastens her cloak rather than working around it, dropping the mass of fabric and fur onto the edge of the bed, before moving on to divesting herself of the offending pants. It takes a little bit of fiddling through the parts in her outer robes to find the drawstrings, but then it's easy enough to slip them off her hips and kick unceremoniously free of the soggy, cold fabric.]
Not sure that would go over well. The guards are all on edge up there. Not that I can blame them...
[That is just the evidence and aftermath of a years long usurpation and civil war.
Patting down the rest of her clothes, she deems the longest outer layer to be too damp as well, quickly untying it and slipping it off to join the cloak, before smoothing her palms down her hair, checking for anything she needs to wring out. Satisfied there isn't, she crawls back up to settle next to Calhir, tucking her very chilled legs against him to start leeching some of his warmth.]
Takasato did sound curious to meet you, but I think that might have to wait until we're back in Kei.
[ He rumbles a disgruntled acknowledgement. That was why he was quartered down here in the first place. ]
...is there anything I can do for you? While we're here?
[ He should be gathering up those soggy clothes and hanging them by the fire, but it's hard when Youko's warming her poor cold legs against him. And, more selfishly, when she'll have to stay a bit longer if they're slower to dry. He pulls the covers back over her and rubs her calves with his hands, trying to restore them. ]
This doesn't suit someone as warm as you.
[ She's a summer creature in his mind, warm to touch. She just doesn't feel her usual self like this. ]
[At that grousing noise, she shifts so she can settle a hand against his knee, thumbing gently at the scales, considering what he could do. Making him wait around for her like a concubine, bored and ignored, wasn't remotely the goal of setting this up. She had honestly hoped he would enjoy the change of scenery and that by the summit's end she might have been able to introduce him to Takasato — the boy from her world who became Tai Taiho — but the atmosphere in Hakkei Palace is still too tense for suggesting something like that. There is one idea that comes to mind and that she thinks he'd be adept at, but it makes her uncomfortable to imagine issuing real orders to him.]
Do you want me to give you an assignment?
[Picking at the edge of the covers, she lets herself lay back down into the spot he'd placed her originally, pulling the thick comforter with her, watching him and his concentrated efforts with a small smile.]
Mm. You're probably right about that. When it snowed where I grew up — [She slips her free hand out from under the covers, spreading out her pinky and thumb as far from the three middle fingers as she can stretch them.] — it was only about this much in the whole season.
[ As she lies down he scoots back, letting her rest her legs in his lap while he warms them. Bare torso free of the covers, but then, this is still warmer than the outside and that hadn't bothered him.
Does he want an assignment? They've never sought to resolve the issue, as to whether he's formally a servant of hers. A member of her household is a subject, a visiting traveler being hosted by the court is not. And certainly he is a traveler - by his foreign birth, and by his nature, his wings that carry him from anywhere he does not wish to be.
But it's hard to say he's a visitor in spirit. When he shares her bed so often, when the thought of leaving her feels like a lance through the heart. Usually, it simply doesn't matter, because she wasn't born to thinking of herself as a ruler any more than he was used to thinking of himself as ruled.
In a command from her there's always a sense of that comfortable ambiguity eroding. Even when she asks first. But it also isn't as if only the ambiguity is good, and everything he might be defined as is bad. The same urge that had resolved him to follow her here regardless of her arrangements did not want the comfort of being a bedmate only, without responsibilities. ]
I do. But...
Right now... I am glad you asked first.
[ That's all he can really say. Unless one counts trying to blunt the moment with questionable jokes. ]
Better than I should get too bored and terrorize the courtesans.
[Watching him consider it makes her worry her lower lip, wondering if the suggestion would hang sour notes in an otherwise sweet moment of comfort. It has long been important to her that Calhir not be a subject. She has friends and confidants who straddle the divide of that servant-master bond with her and it is done with grace, but a lover doesn't belong there. Honestly, that keeps her from making a real suggestion of putting him up as a consort as readily as his own history does. No one stands beside the ruler, but in keeping these things ambiguous, there is a level of denial.
But he finally replies and Youko breathes out a sigh she didn't realize she was holding, relief relaxing her that last boneless fingerbreadth into the mattress, limbs going slack. She smiles up at him from her bed backing of red curls, chin ducking just under the corner of the comforter.]
You have a right to choose. I want to preserve that...
[Though she can't help scoffing and nudging him with her foot at the reappearance of his questionable brand of humor.]
They'll drink you under the table and take all your money doing it.
[She murmurs a soft assent, inching further down beneath the covers, steeping in the warmth that trust instills in her. It means something to have that, especially when she is still chipping away daily at the shape they wanted her slotted into.
That embellished performance with all his sighing pulls a laugh out of her.]
Well... I don't struggle to keep pace with your drinking.
As she settles and he feels her tension vanish his focus on warming her lower legs gives way to... curiosity is the wrong word, as much as he's explored her before, but the desire to renew that familiarity, and his hands move up, stroking her thighs. There's still a diligence to it, like he could just sit here and do nothing else for an hour, but his eyes are a little more intent on her than they were. ]
Yes, but you like to underestimate human resilience.
[Is there some crude allusion in that? Almost certainly not, least of all intentionally, but she can't control how it's heard.
The feeling of his hands slipping up from her calves draw little notice until they settle on her thighs, and even then there could be deniability in how soft the hitch of her breath is as he strokes her skin. The way her muscles tense, like she is resisting an impulse to clench her legs together, and the color renewed on her cheekbones as looks back at him from over the lip of the covers, is a far greater tell.]
[ The phrasing is anything but opportune, after that prior leg of the conversation, and he replies with only a raised eyebrow and a whispered: ]
Twice.
[ His hands respond to those minute movements of her legs, thumbs plying her inner leg and pressing in firmly, as though he's trying to loosen that tension. Or make it worse. Ravenous, insatiable, he can be those things, and she's not wrong that it only feeds his pride when she accuses him. But he can show restraint when it allows him to take his time winding her up. Watching the slow spread of that red is well worth the effort. ]
Not enough though? Shall I come in, again?
[ 'Under the covers' is the nominal meaning there, but... crude allusions. ]
[Bully. She only just manages to keep his stare while grumbling back, defensive:]
That has nothing to do with drinking.
[This is also not why she invited him along, though it has to be the most predictable outcome of the trip so far.
The increase in pressure is certainly not helping offload any of that tension, though it is effective at getting a bitten back whimper out of Youko and making her knees turn inwards, as if she might be ready to trap his wandering hands where they've strayed. That red will bleed all over before long; she can already feel the telltale prickle of heat running down her chest, under her remaining robes, destined shortly for the thighs he's toying with. She frowns up at him, sheepish at the offer and the connotations behind it, wondering if she has it in her to handle sidelong looks and raised eyebrows across the meeting table tomorrow from her closest (and most worldly) peer.]
[ He'd be quite happy to have her press his hands between her thighs, demanding he limit his attention but demanding he continue it at the same time. But he's happier to have her invitation. It's flattering, when there's a should but she chooses him anyway. All too aware that she overfeeds his ego, complains about it even, but she keeps doing it just the same. ]
Let me, then.
[ ...he'd love to dive into the bedding from his current end and work his way up her body, but sadly his wings do not lend themselves to such undercover infiltration. And as much as that might promote her blood flow, he would not actually be warming her if he... dallied on his way up. Instead he peels back the covers and settles in by her side, taking her in hand with that fearsome ease of his and pulling her flush to him, head tucked under his chin.
Not an... immediate threat to her comportment tomorrow. Though the way his hand reaches back down to resume its place on her leg once he's settled, not a resolved one either. ]
[It takes her a moment to relax into place, the conscious reminder that she is something small and slight to Calhir dragged again to the foreground as he pulls her up against him. It isn't a fact that ever slips fully away, but it isn't as if in her own mind she is delicate, and the distance between their heights is a more constant, reconcilable presence. She notches that extra bit closer, cheek resting against him, hands tucked into what little space exists between them. Warmer, secure.
It would be easy to fall asleep like this, a change of pace she'd welcome if the hand returning to her leg didn't detract from how relaxed she feels.]
You're saving me from a lecture...
[And she is damning herself as she is wont to do where he is involved. Letting what their conversation and connection has dredged up — that faint, familiar gnawing heat — reign, Youko shifts her thighs open just a little wider. Another invitation, another handful to feed his ego.]
[ Would she feel better if she knew that it's the same for him? No doubt the more they're together the more the feel of her body against him will become familiar, freshening or reprise of a favorite feeling etched into memory, but for now there's still a sense of surprise, that someone with her lively vitality and emotional weight feels quite so small and frail against his body. ]
Mm? Which lecture would that be?
[ Close to her ear, he barely has to murmur the words. He can't see much of her hair, with the covers pulled up high, but his hand always seems to end up there all the same, when it's at her back, collecting the strands he'd spread pulling her in.
The other hand though, the source of trouble. He could honestly say he wasn't sure that it would lead to this, that a cold and weary Youko might just take his warmth and leave it at that. But even cold and weary she'd blushed so when he'd touched her, and the sight had lent an urgency to the slow-building want for her he'd stewed in over the preceding week. So when her legs move his hand rises. Oh so close, smoothing over her skin, nudging her leg to open the rest of the way. ]
[There is some hesitation in her voice, not wanting to invoke the person who would be doing the lecturing — and the sighing all the while — out of consideration, but she can't quite help slipping into her kirin's patter despite those best intentions.]
'Needlessly neglecting Her Majesty's health and welfare.' That one.
[A shiver runs down her spine at the way his voice curls in her ear, low and soft, leaving her with goosebumps and on tenterhooks. And she would blame the latter on the nights she hasn't been able to escape the role of a visiting dignitary. Those beds at the mountaintop have been uncomfortably vast without someone wrapped around her.
The rise of his hand tracing up her skin makes her stomach drop ever so wickedly, and that prompting touch does its job with too much ease. She lifts her thigh up to hug along his side, spreading her legs and offering Calhir whatever access he could want. It might be obscured by the covers, but her skin is squarely in full bloom, ear-to-ear, top-to-bottom.]
[ Does that arch voice ever portent anything good? Not anything innocent, surely. His fingers stroke her lightly through the silk of her underwear. Keen for her reaction, whether it's heard or - with her huddled so close and her leg wrapped around him - felt. That shiver even before his hand arrived - she must be sensitive, needy. ]
Are there any needs of your body you haven't been attending?
[Never, and she knows how doomed she is whenever she hears it. The all-too-light stroke of his fingers cause a repeating hitch in her breathing, and a whimper Youko tries her best to bury somewhere between a bitten lower lip and his chest. The noise is as successfully silenced as the minute rock of her hips is stealthy.]
I haven't since... I'm a guest, so...
['Sensitive' is a kind word it. 'Pent up' is the more honest take.]
A guest needs to be austere, in control, above her base urges? A perfect figurehead?
[ Slow strokes turn to quick circles turn slow again. But harder, responding to her movement with the 'more' it demands. That whimper, the way she tries to hold back but can't... it does feed his ego, just like she thinks, but does she realize how it batters at his own self-control? It feels somewhere between the most indulgent pleasure and important duty, to him, to coax out the need she hides. ]
But if I was the one who gave in and slaked all my lusts on you, that wouldn't really be your fault, would it.
[ That 'all' sounds like a dangerous thought, even to him. He's aware of it too, that she has... things she needs to be doing. She can't be worn out tomorrow. Or unable to escape his bed, for that matter... ]
[What perfect figurehead? That expectation is a dead concept at this stage. No, what held her back was so much simpler: social mores.
Youko probably doesn't have the faintest inkling she erodes his restraint. After all, it always seems like she is the one taken apart, needy and shaking before they even start in earnest. Like now. The change in the pressure and rhythm pulls a shuddering breath from her, a more recognizable, less guarded moan, and it has her leg pressing tighter to his side. Leverage to help in stirring her hips against his touch, all while he offers her dangerous, terrible ideas in that register she enjoys too much.]
Can't take all— Calhir, I wouldn't be able to— they'd see through me—
Just a sliver. The trailing light of a star, the red sky at dusk... a sign that somewhere else you're alive.
[ ...sometimes he hardly feels like he knows where the words come from. His voice keeps to the rhythm of their bodies and the words supply themselves. Only they do describe his feelings, after all. Is it so bad if she shows some hint she isn't made of stone?
Sadly, he can't ask that as a purely rhetorical question. Perhaps it is. But his hands are responding to the insistent press of her hips, the moan, not her words, keeping up that pressure even as he tugs at the ties to her shorts. Pulling them off one leg and sliding them halfway down the other before his touch returns, scale against bare flesh. Pressing into her shallow with his knuckle, in the now-familiar way he favors, to keep those sharp claws away. ]
[It isn't the idea of showing that she is more than stone that concerns her, but rather the very obvious aftereffects of chasing hot-blooded ideas and showing that in a summit meeting. Two emperors might ignore the way she moves or any marks that aren't covered by her robes, but the third will undoubtedly, infuriatingly accept nothing she offers in explanation and tease her about her excursion. And then the delegations of four kingdoms would have a front row seat to how red the Imperial Kei can turn.
Not that Youko is of a mind to better explain this while he is loosening the ties of her shorts, or pulling the silk down and making her hips jump at the sensation of it peeling away from her heated skin. Certainly not when he presses his knuckle against her, just dipping in enough for her to feel the subtle difference of his scales against her slick flesh and to get her fingertips scrabbling at his chest, her mouth and the shape of her pleasure buried against his skin. Torture at its finest.]
[ He always feels acutely aware of his limitations when he touches her like this. A clumsy improvisation that doesn't do enough for her. Except that when she's keyed up like this it doesn't seem to make much of a difference; the movement of that folded finger, barely inside her, is enough to drive her body against his, full of wordless demands for more. Maybe it is only his ego that isn't satisfied, put off that there's no real skill or discernment on his part involved.
He could do more. But when she's clinging to him like this, leg squeezed tight around him, breath hot on his chest, it's hard to find the will to peel her off. If she's satisfied, that should be enough for him. So he keeps working with his finger, pace faster, arm holding her tight, wonder if she'll come from just this or reach a plateau where she, too, desires more. ]
Was it a long wait, Youko...? You're so sensitive...
[That is the double-edged sword of her having a receptive body; sure, she'll blush pleasingly on a dime, but she also takes very little to work into a lather. And that's before her imagination gets factored in. Not exactly generous to the ego, but he should take comfort in the fact that there is only one person Youko lets see her go to pieces like this.
The question pulls her from the haze enough that she shifts in his grasp, leg slipping down from where she had fixed it, and dislodging the blanket partially with a shake of her head. Peering up at him from under the drape of the remaining covers and a curtain of her own mussed red curls, she looks strung between arousal and guilt.]
[ 'Youko peering up at him red-faced' is a sight he sees constantly but never tires of. Every little variation on the theme is treasured, and the present view of her emerging from her bundled-up place under the cover is particularly... dare he say cute? Knowing he's responsible for that messy, unsteady look only makes it more appealing.
The guilt, less so. There is some part of him that's flattered that she cares so much for his well-being, amidst all her other troubles, and a part that that chafes at worry that feels excessive, but mostly he just wishes he could more easily set her at ease. ]
I missed you. Talking to you, feeling you like this...
[ He shifts down the bed, bringing his face closer to hers. And yes, part of 'missing her' is pure libido too, needs unsated. But he doesn't want to emphasize that aspect; he may feel she's too conscious of what her fellow rulers might guess, but he wants her to decide how far they go tonight from her own desires, not guilt. ]
[That 'I missed you' does some real heavy lifting with the guilt, smoothing it out into something softer, coy. It is easy for her to find a pitfall, to wind up feeling too needy, too hungry, too much all around sometimes, especially after a short absence, but that reassurance does wonders. She folds her arms against his chest, propping herself and the blanket up that little extra as he shifts closer.]
I missed you too. I haven't been sleeping well without you.
[Her tone is quiet, but honest. Steady. Hopelessly fond.
If her gaze drops while she shifts forward, bridging the gap between them to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth, it can wholly be blamed on her thoughts turning to what she would have answered earlier and the phantom sensation the memory drudges up with it. It isn't any easier to talk about when he isn't fishing for the information to tease her or feed his ego, but she only ducks her head a little as she repurposes the thought.]
I want to be tired out, but... usually, the next day... it's a little obvious my legs are still weak...
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Not sure that would go over well. The guards are all on edge up there. Not that I can blame them...
[That is just the evidence and aftermath of a years long usurpation and civil war.
Patting down the rest of her clothes, she deems the longest outer layer to be too damp as well, quickly untying it and slipping it off to join the cloak, before smoothing her palms down her hair, checking for anything she needs to wring out. Satisfied there isn't, she crawls back up to settle next to Calhir, tucking her very chilled legs against him to start leeching some of his warmth.]
Takasato did sound curious to meet you, but I think that might have to wait until we're back in Kei.
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...is there anything I can do for you? While we're here?
[ He should be gathering up those soggy clothes and hanging them by the fire, but it's hard when Youko's warming her poor cold legs against him. And, more selfishly, when she'll have to stay a bit longer if they're slower to dry. He pulls the covers back over her and rubs her calves with his hands, trying to restore them. ]
This doesn't suit someone as warm as you.
[ She's a summer creature in his mind, warm to touch. She just doesn't feel her usual self like this. ]
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Do you want me to give you an assignment?
[Picking at the edge of the covers, she lets herself lay back down into the spot he'd placed her originally, pulling the thick comforter with her, watching him and his concentrated efforts with a small smile.]
Mm. You're probably right about that. When it snowed where I grew up — [She slips her free hand out from under the covers, spreading out her pinky and thumb as far from the three middle fingers as she can stretch them.] — it was only about this much in the whole season.
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Does he want an assignment? They've never sought to resolve the issue, as to whether he's formally a servant of hers. A member of her household is a subject, a visiting traveler being hosted by the court is not. And certainly he is a traveler - by his foreign birth, and by his nature, his wings that carry him from anywhere he does not wish to be.
But it's hard to say he's a visitor in spirit. When he shares her bed so often, when the thought of leaving her feels like a lance through the heart. Usually, it simply doesn't matter, because she wasn't born to thinking of herself as a ruler any more than he was used to thinking of himself as ruled.
In a command from her there's always a sense of that comfortable ambiguity eroding. Even when she asks first. But it also isn't as if only the ambiguity is good, and everything he might be defined as is bad. The same urge that had resolved him to follow her here regardless of her arrangements did not want the comfort of being a bedmate only, without responsibilities. ]
I do. But...
Right now... I am glad you asked first.
[ That's all he can really say. Unless one counts trying to blunt the moment with questionable jokes. ]
Better than I should get too bored and terrorize the courtesans.
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But he finally replies and Youko breathes out a sigh she didn't realize she was holding, relief relaxing her that last boneless fingerbreadth into the mattress, limbs going slack. She smiles up at him from her bed backing of red curls, chin ducking just under the corner of the comforter.]
You have a right to choose. I want to preserve that...
[Though she can't help scoffing and nudging him with her foot at the reappearance of his questionable brand of humor.]
They'll drink you under the table and take all your money doing it.
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[ Said warmly; not a retort that her wants don't matter but an acknowledgment of the trust he has in her.
Enough to joke even when she's poking at his vaunted constitution. He sighs, all exaggerated dismay and wounded pride. ]
I'll never understand how you can have such respect for my stamina but none for my stomach.
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That embellished performance with all his sighing pulls a laugh out of her.]
Well... I don't struggle to keep pace with your drinking.
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[ That's his story and he's sticking to it.
As she settles and he feels her tension vanish his focus on warming her lower legs gives way to... curiosity is the wrong word, as much as he's explored her before, but the desire to renew that familiarity, and his hands move up, stroking her thighs. There's still a diligence to it, like he could just sit here and do nothing else for an hour, but his eyes are a little more intent on her than they were. ]
Feeling warmer?
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[Is there some crude allusion in that? Almost certainly not, least of all intentionally, but she can't control how it's heard.
The feeling of his hands slipping up from her calves draw little notice until they settle on her thighs, and even then there could be deniability in how soft the hitch of her breath is as he strokes her skin. The way her muscles tense, like she is resisting an impulse to clench her legs together, and the color renewed on her cheekbones as looks back at him from over the lip of the covers, is a far greater tell.]
Sort of. Starting to get there.
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Twice.
[ His hands respond to those minute movements of her legs, thumbs plying her inner leg and pressing in firmly, as though he's trying to loosen that tension. Or make it worse. Ravenous, insatiable, he can be those things, and she's not wrong that it only feeds his pride when she accuses him. But he can show restraint when it allows him to take his time winding her up. Watching the slow spread of that red is well worth the effort. ]
Not enough though? Shall I come in, again?
[ 'Under the covers' is the nominal meaning there, but... crude allusions. ]
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That has nothing to do with drinking.
[This is also not why she invited him along, though it has to be the most predictable outcome of the trip so far.
The increase in pressure is certainly not helping offload any of that tension, though it is effective at getting a bitten back whimper out of Youko and making her knees turn inwards, as if she might be ready to trap his wandering hands where they've strayed. That red will bleed all over before long; she can already feel the telltale prickle of heat running down her chest, under her remaining robes, destined shortly for the thighs he's toying with. She frowns up at him, sheepish at the offer and the connotations behind it, wondering if she has it in her to handle sidelong looks and raised eyebrows across the meeting table tomorrow from her closest (and most worldly) peer.]
I should—
[If they didn't get carried away, maybe—?]
I could... stand to be a little warmer...
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Let me, then.
[ ...he'd love to dive into the bedding from his current end and work his way up her body, but sadly his wings do not lend themselves to such undercover infiltration. And as much as that might promote her blood flow, he would not actually be warming her if he... dallied on his way up. Instead he peels back the covers and settles in by her side, taking her in hand with that fearsome ease of his and pulling her flush to him, head tucked under his chin.
Not an... immediate threat to her comportment tomorrow. Though the way his hand reaches back down to resume its place on her leg once he's settled, not a resolved one either. ]
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It would be easy to fall asleep like this, a change of pace she'd welcome if the hand returning to her leg didn't detract from how relaxed she feels.]
You're saving me from a lecture...
[And she is damning herself as she is wont to do where he is involved. Letting what their conversation and connection has dredged up — that faint, familiar gnawing heat — reign, Youko shifts her thighs open just a little wider. Another invitation, another handful to feed his ego.]
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Mm? Which lecture would that be?
[ Close to her ear, he barely has to murmur the words. He can't see much of her hair, with the covers pulled up high, but his hand always seems to end up there all the same, when it's at her back, collecting the strands he'd spread pulling her in.
The other hand though, the source of trouble. He could honestly say he wasn't sure that it would lead to this, that a cold and weary Youko might just take his warmth and leave it at that. But even cold and weary she'd blushed so when he'd touched her, and the sight had lent an urgency to the slow-building want for her he'd stewed in over the preceding week. So when her legs move his hand rises. Oh so close, smoothing over her skin, nudging her leg to open the rest of the way. ]
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[There is some hesitation in her voice, not wanting to invoke the person who would be doing the lecturing — and the sighing all the while — out of consideration, but she can't quite help slipping into her kirin's patter despite those best intentions.]
'Needlessly neglecting Her Majesty's health and welfare.' That one.
[A shiver runs down her spine at the way his voice curls in her ear, low and soft, leaving her with goosebumps and on tenterhooks. And she would blame the latter on the nights she hasn't been able to escape the role of a visiting dignitary. Those beds at the mountaintop have been uncomfortably vast without someone wrapped around her.
The rise of his hand tracing up her skin makes her stomach drop ever so wickedly, and that prompting touch does its job with too much ease. She lifts her thigh up to hug along his side, spreading her legs and offering Calhir whatever access he could want. It might be obscured by the covers, but her skin is squarely in full bloom, ear-to-ear, top-to-bottom.]
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[ Does that arch voice ever portent anything good? Not anything innocent, surely. His fingers stroke her lightly through the silk of her underwear. Keen for her reaction, whether it's heard or - with her huddled so close and her leg wrapped around him - felt. That shiver even before his hand arrived - she must be sensitive, needy. ]
Are there any needs of your body you haven't been attending?
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I haven't since... I'm a guest, so...
['Sensitive' is a kind word it. 'Pent up' is the more honest take.]
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[ Slow strokes turn to quick circles turn slow again. But harder, responding to her movement with the 'more' it demands. That whimper, the way she tries to hold back but can't... it does feed his ego, just like she thinks, but does she realize how it batters at his own self-control? It feels somewhere between the most indulgent pleasure and important duty, to him, to coax out the need she hides. ]
But if I was the one who gave in and slaked all my lusts on you, that wouldn't really be your fault, would it.
[ That 'all' sounds like a dangerous thought, even to him. He's aware of it too, that she has... things she needs to be doing. She can't be worn out tomorrow. Or unable to escape his bed, for that matter... ]
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[What perfect figurehead? That expectation is a dead concept at this stage. No, what held her back was so much simpler: social mores.
Youko probably doesn't have the faintest inkling she erodes his restraint. After all, it always seems like she is the one taken apart, needy and shaking before they even start in earnest. Like now. The change in the pressure and rhythm pulls a shuddering breath from her, a more recognizable, less guarded moan, and it has her leg pressing tighter to his side. Leverage to help in stirring her hips against his touch, all while he offers her dangerous, terrible ideas in that register she enjoys too much.]
Can't take all— Calhir, I wouldn't be able to— they'd see through me—
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[ ...sometimes he hardly feels like he knows where the words come from. His voice keeps to the rhythm of their bodies and the words supply themselves. Only they do describe his feelings, after all. Is it so bad if she shows some hint she isn't made of stone?
Sadly, he can't ask that as a purely rhetorical question. Perhaps it is. But his hands are responding to the insistent press of her hips, the moan, not her words, keeping up that pressure even as he tugs at the ties to her shorts. Pulling them off one leg and sliding them halfway down the other before his touch returns, scale against bare flesh. Pressing into her shallow with his knuckle, in the now-familiar way he favors, to keep those sharp claws away. ]
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Not that Youko is of a mind to better explain this while he is loosening the ties of her shorts, or pulling the silk down and making her hips jump at the sensation of it peeling away from her heated skin. Certainly not when he presses his knuckle against her, just dipping in enough for her to feel the subtle difference of his scales against her slick flesh and to get her fingertips scrabbling at his chest, her mouth and the shape of her pleasure buried against his skin. Torture at its finest.]
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He could do more. But when she's clinging to him like this, leg squeezed tight around him, breath hot on his chest, it's hard to find the will to peel her off. If she's satisfied, that should be enough for him. So he keeps working with his finger, pace faster, arm holding her tight, wonder if she'll come from just this or reach a plateau where she, too, desires more. ]
Was it a long wait, Youko...? You're so sensitive...
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The question pulls her from the haze enough that she shifts in his grasp, leg slipping down from where she had fixed it, and dislodging the blanket partially with a shake of her head. Peering up at him from under the drape of the remaining covers and a curtain of her own mussed red curls, she looks strung between arousal and guilt.]
It wasn't... long for you?
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The guilt, less so. There is some part of him that's flattered that she cares so much for his well-being, amidst all her other troubles, and a part that that chafes at worry that feels excessive, but mostly he just wishes he could more easily set her at ease. ]
I missed you. Talking to you, feeling you like this...
[ He shifts down the bed, bringing his face closer to hers. And yes, part of 'missing her' is pure libido too, needs unsated. But he doesn't want to emphasize that aspect; he may feel she's too conscious of what her fellow rulers might guess, but he wants her to decide how far they go tonight from her own desires, not guilt. ]
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I missed you too. I haven't been sleeping well without you.
[Her tone is quiet, but honest. Steady. Hopelessly fond.
If her gaze drops while she shifts forward, bridging the gap between them to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth, it can wholly be blamed on her thoughts turning to what she would have answered earlier and the phantom sensation the memory drudges up with it. It isn't any easier to talk about when he isn't fishing for the information to tease her or feed his ego, but she only ducks her head a little as she repurposes the thought.]
I want to be tired out, but... usually, the next day... it's a little obvious my legs are still weak...
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