flora
As Kaisel shifts, she moves with him as though gravity itself has rearranged to draw her closer. Her shirt rides up around her thigh, a ribbon of skin catching the moonlight as she stretches one leg long and lazy across the rise of his hip. There’s no pretending she doesn’t feel him—half-hard and pressing insistently into her—but there’s no rush to meet that momentum either. The arch of her spine into his hand is languid, almost feline in its pleasure, a silent affirmation that she feels it, that she wants to keep feeling it—but tonight isn’t about what they can make each other feel. It’s about what they can be. What they'll always be.
Her hand moves from where it rests on his chest, fingers skating across the shape of his collarbone and up the curve of his neck, until she finds the wild dark tumble of his hair. She cards through it slowly, reverently, brushing it back from his eyes so the moon can find the copper glint threaded through his lashes. The moment stretches between them, a silver-lit thread pulled taut but not tense, and her gaze lingers there—not at his lips, but at his eyes—searching for the boy she’s known most of her life and the man she’s only just beginning to understand.
His question drifts into the quiet like a paper lantern set upon dark water, fragile and glowing, and Flora, tangled in the arms of someone who's never been known to ask for much of anything, doesn’t answer right away. When she speaks, it’s not with words at first. She shifts slightly, resting her cheek more fully against the cradle of his arm, turning her face until their noses brush and her breath dances lightly against his. Her smile rises slowly, impossibly soft, and her lashes lower just slightly as she finally whispers, "Yeah."
Then she kisses him.
Not like she has in the past—not in the joking, lip-stick transferring way she'd done at her party, nor with the casual brush of contact against his temple or the back of his shoulder. No, this is something different. A kiss not necessarily meant to ignite, but to sustain. To keep warm what’s already burning low and steady inside her chest, and if anything else heats lower in her belly, it's entirely secondary. Her lips press to his with aching gentleness, a brush of affection so careful it might have been conjured by memory or moonlight alone, yet no part of the way they're tangled together suggests it's entirely friendly either. Still, her kiss doesn’t ask for anything from him, even as it offers everything: trust, affection, friendship and gratitude for being the kind of safe place that no one else in the world has ever managed to make her feel.
Her hand moves from where it rests on his chest, fingers skating across the shape of his collarbone and up the curve of his neck, until she finds the wild dark tumble of his hair. She cards through it slowly, reverently, brushing it back from his eyes so the moon can find the copper glint threaded through his lashes. The moment stretches between them, a silver-lit thread pulled taut but not tense, and her gaze lingers there—not at his lips, but at his eyes—searching for the boy she’s known most of her life and the man she’s only just beginning to understand.
His question drifts into the quiet like a paper lantern set upon dark water, fragile and glowing, and Flora, tangled in the arms of someone who's never been known to ask for much of anything, doesn’t answer right away. When she speaks, it’s not with words at first. She shifts slightly, resting her cheek more fully against the cradle of his arm, turning her face until their noses brush and her breath dances lightly against his. Her smile rises slowly, impossibly soft, and her lashes lower just slightly as she finally whispers, "Yeah."
Then she kisses him.
Not like she has in the past—not in the joking, lip-stick transferring way she'd done at her party, nor with the casual brush of contact against his temple or the back of his shoulder. No, this is something different. A kiss not necessarily meant to ignite, but to sustain. To keep warm what’s already burning low and steady inside her chest, and if anything else heats lower in her belly, it's entirely secondary. Her lips press to his with aching gentleness, a brush of affection so careful it might have been conjured by memory or moonlight alone, yet no part of the way they're tangled together suggests it's entirely friendly either. Still, her kiss doesn’t ask for anything from him, even as it offers everything: trust, affection, friendship and gratitude for being the kind of safe place that no one else in the world has ever managed to make her feel.
My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you
And now I'm covered in you
