don't wanna love me 'cause it feels too risky

flora

Flora's smile curls against the corner of Kaisel's mouth, warm and secretive, touched by something gentler than mischief and deeper than humour. She has some inkling of what that wish might be, nestled between the tilt of his voice and the tremble beneath his words. If it’s what she thinks it is—her safety, a life unburdened by shadows and threats, a world where she isn't always a target by the Family—then it’s a wish that both is and isn’t hers to grant. Still, as he pulls back to meet her eyes with that sly, charming look, she wrinkles her nose in return, playfully tilting her head. "If you’re waiting on me to turn into a giant gummy worm that you can take a bite out of whenever you want, you’ll have to wait just a little longer," she whispers, teasing layered over something quietly reverent.

And then he touches her. His palm skims across her ribs and goosebumps rise like morning mist in his wake, as though each nerve had been holding its breath until now. Her body, so used to performance and defence, becomes something soft and overly sensitive, wildly attuned to every stroke, every breath. When he presses their hips together, when she feels the full heat and hardness of his arousal pressing low against her belly, a gasp escapes her, sharp and unguarded. The flush it causes blooms low and deep, arousal spreading like honey stirred into warm tea—sweet and golden and slow. She’s had orgasms that felt less consuming than this single, aching press of want; though those ones had come from boredom, mostly, or mild curiosity. But even so.

Her back arches faintly as his mouth finds her breast, not with hunger but with something far more reverent. The warmth of his lips, the scrape of his breath—it unfurls something in her, and as he asks her what she wants, the answer rises through her with easy certainty.

What she wants is him. She wants the boy who'd always made her laugh, who’d carried too much weight in his soul and still found room for her. She wants the man he is now—strong and golden and goofy. She wants mornings with him pouring syrup over her pancakes and dusting her nose with icing sugar; the mess of domesticity and the thrill of everything uncertain. She wants this moment to last until the tide forgets to rise and the sun decides not to come back. She wants to hold the world still and let it echo only with the shape of his breath. She wants it to be him with her at the end of the world.

"You," she whispers, the word light with laughter and thick with truth. "I want you, Kai." How could it ever be anything else?

She knows what he's asking, though—what kind of touch she wants, what rhythm, what kind of yes she’s giving him. And so she reaches, one hand slipping downward to where his fingers linger at the edge of her underwear, guiding his hand beneath the fabric with no hesitation. She presses his middle finger into her, and even that single motion makes her breath stutter. She’s so wet, so open for him already, the heat of her like petals just now brushed by spring. When she brings his finger up, guiding it with hers to her clit, the press is light, almost teasing, but enough to make her shudder slightly, body singing with the anticipation that rolls just beneath the surface.

Still, she holds him there—not pushing, not rushing—just letting that touch breathe between them. Her voice is quieter now as she speaks close to his ear. "I want you," she repeats, "but slowly. Completely."

There won’t be any breathless begging, no fuck me's, no spirals of faster or harder, because this isn’t a moment they’re trying to conquer—it’s one they’re trying to savour. She wants to stretch it across time, to sip from it rather than gulp. But even so, even with her best intentions, Flora knows her body, and she knows his. She knows how easily this will tip from slow into something heady and unrestrained, the moment’s stillness yielding to the pleasure that will ripple through them like an undertow. So she smiles, lashes low, heat blooming at the base of her belly and spreading outward in steady waves—through her hips, her thighs, her fingertips, her mouth. "For as long as you can," she adds softly, a promise wrapped in invitation, already knowing they won’t make it nearly as long as they mean to. But gods, how sweet it will be to try.

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// Start a tiny riot //

Safety!? Fuck no. Wishing for safety is the equivalent of soaking.

Laughter rearranges all the tenderness without undoing it—because it's always been part of what binds them so completely—nudging it aside just long enough for him to picture her as the world's biggest gelatin wriggler. She's somehow still wearing all her rings, like fruit in a Jello-mold, and her hair is spun sugar. Once he can breathe again, he asks around the lingering grin, "so biting’s off the table?"

It's nothing gummy beneath his hand now though, just the soft warmth of her utterly open to him, an expanse of pliable skin that shivers under his touch in a manner that delights him thoroughly. All her small movements, her disrupted breaths, they're something he'll chase until dawn.

You.

The whole world seems to pause. He lifts his head from the embrace of her breast, gaze searching hers, looking for clarity, or maybe courage. Her answer is for a question he didn't think he asked, but it doesn't keep it from being the one he wants to hear. Gods, it’s all he wants, but it lands with weight. The kind that reshapes. The kind that threatens to wreck what came before. To give her that—to be that—means inviting the kind of consequences that don't just fade come morning.

But, what if... they weather that catastrophe together? What if, after the debris and ash settle, the suns till finds its way through, revealing not ruin, but something reborn? It could be something that looks like a beginning, not an end.

Oh—she has his hand.

Maybe he misunderstood, poured his wants into her voice. The time that had hiccupped into a halt now jolts forward like its making up for lost seconds as her fingers guide his to the center of her. All thoughts dissolve when she presses him into her, the heat and wetness there making his jaw slacken, a shaky breath escaping before he can stop it. She’s so ready for him, so soft and slick and perfect, and when she draws his hand up to her clit, keeping it there, his heart stutters and his cock pulses of its own accord against them. Her shudder beneath him feels like lightning under his palm, and shit, call him Zeus, he wants that on endless supply.

Desire tightens inside him with every breath she brushes along his ear, every word catching against the want he’s built around her for what feels like forever. His mouth curves slyly, eyes flicking across hers with a spark of something wicked. He leans down to kiss each breast in turn, then lets his path wander lower, a trail of kisses to her ribs, her stomach, the crease of her hip. At the hem of her underwear he pauses, a prize waiting to be unwrapped. His teeth catch the edge, tugging them down slowly with his mouth as he begins to slink off the back of the bed.

Before discarding them entirely, he lingers, a kiss pressed to the newly revealed part of her. "As long as I can?" he repeats, dangerously low, rough with desire. "Hmm." The sound hums low against her as his tongue finds her clit in light, savoring passes, his hands steadying her thighs as he works her just to the edge of tension. He wants to make her writhe, to make her need. Then, just as she starts to reach for more, he pulls back with a final press of his lips, a silent promise left in the heat of his breath.

He stands, peeling away her panties completely, discarding his shorts in a single motion. He catches her gaze as his hands curl around her thighs and drags her toward the edge of the bed. "I wonder... how long can you last?" It’s a challenge for them both, his cock pressing thick and ready against her, hips tipping automatically, like they no longer belong to him, desperate to be inside her. He hisses out a breath, aching to feel all of her wrapped around him—but there's something sweet in waiting, in teasing her open even more. He lifts one of her legs against his chest, a reverent kiss pressed to her knee, like he’s thanking every part of her for letting him in. His thumb settles back on her clit, deliberate circles and pressure applied, promising more, soon.

Kaisel

// Stop being so goddamn quiet //

flora

She laughs with him, light and warm, the sound gilded at the edges with breathlessness. It's a sound that had grown up beside his, that had learned how to twine around his joy like ivy curling toward sunlight. Her chest lifts with it, her whole body partaking in the moment. And when he grins and asks if biting’s off the table, Flora tilts her head, crooked and golden and flushed with affection. "I never said that," she murmurs, teeth flashing in a way that’s far too soft to be dangerous—but no less true for it.

Then there are kisses trailing down her belly and gods, if her laughter was bright, her silence now is molten. Each press of his lips maps new constellations into her skin, and her breath—already unruly—becomes a trembling thing. He'll be able to hear it, but he'll feel it too, the way her golden skin flinches beneath him in a dozen little starbursts of pleasure. Each one flares brighter than the last, and she’s fast becoming unable to tell where his mouth ends and her need begins.

She should be teasing him, she knows—should have some clever remark for the way his teeth catch at her underwear, the way his voice drops into that dangerous hum of a man who knows exactly what he’s doing. But then his tongue finds her clit and the whole world fractures. Her back arches like a bow, her lips parting in a gasp that very nearly becomes his name, and the sound that escapes her is not poised or regal, but wild and wanting. It rockets through her like lightning through copper wire, bright and searing and impossible to ignore. And if some tiny part of her had wondered—briefly, foolishly—if this would feel awkward or unsure, if the Kai she knew so well might somehow falter here, she knows now how laughable that thought had been. There’s no hesitation in his mouth, no shyness in the way he moves. Whatever he learned with that girl at graduation and the ones between she and his brief fling with Rebecca, none of it prepared her for how much he clearly paid attention. For how utterly wrecked she feels with just his tongue and his hands.

She reaches down, fingers trembling with the urge to tangle in his hair, to hold him there, to tell him to never stop—and then he’s pulling back, leaving her gasping. Her eyes snap open, heavy-lidded and full of disbelief, watching him through the heat-haze rising in her own skin. Her thighs tremble with the loss, her chest heaving with ragged, unsatisfied air. And then he stands, and it’s her turn to bask.

Flora drinks in every inch of him as his shorts fall away, the flush of arousal deepening across her cheeks, her neck, the curve of her breasts. It hadn’t started as physical between them, not really, or at the very least, not like this. And gods she has looked at him before, but she’s just never let herself see until now. And now? Now it’s impossible not to. The lines of him, the heat in his eyes, the strength in his arms as he grabs her and drags her toward the edge of the bed—it all sets her heart thudding like a war drum behind her ribs. It’s too familiar—that movement. It echoes the kitchen, that night, when his hands had been rougher, his arousal confusing for them both. She’d blamed Frey for the boldness then, convinced herself it was the god’s influence, a borrowed confidence. But here he is again, dragging her closer, just as he had then, and it has nothing to do with anything except for the two of them.

Her breath hitches as his thumb finds her again, circling her clit with a precision that makes her hips jerk, pleasure wringing a sound from her throat that’s perilously close to a plea. And though she’d said she wanted it slow, that she didn’t want to beg, every instinct in her is thrumming now with the urge to cry out for him; to ask, to ache, to shatter.

Her free leg curls around his lower back as her hips lift, greedy and urgent, pressing the slick heat of her against the length of him. The contact pulls a trembling gasp from her lips, her eyes dark with want, her voice little more than a ragged whisper. "Find out," she breathes shakily. Her heel presses against him then, guiding him, encouraging him, every fibre of her straining for him. "Have me," she whispers, and gods, while it might sound like a request, it can be anything Kai wants it to be.

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// Start a tiny riot //

This is too important to let wonder crumble to worry. He wants to preserve it—this perfect, fragile moment where they have each other and nothing else matters. He's imagined it too many times that this reality almost feels like something familiar instead of entirely new. Has it always been her? He'd never dared to see her in a light unshaped by Koa's shadow or Jack's reach. She had never been free for him to dream about, not in that way, though he'd found her among his pillows all the same, something quietly stolen in the daylight hours when hugs and laughter helped him trace the shape of her at night all over again.

Only now, when he’s too tired to keep pretending he feels otherwise, when her kiss asked for all the things he’s tried not to need, has he finally given in. To her. To everything that’s ever taken root inside him beneath the light of her particular glow. If this is all he’s allowed, then he’ll make it perfect—etch it into memory until it settles like marrow, so he can always remember exactly how it feels to let himself want her, to have her. He wants to hear every sound she makes, coax every tremble from her skin, memorize the rise and fall of her breath, the precise pitch of her moans, the way her body reaches for him... because it’s all an attempt to keep her echo with him.

Gods, her blush, such a simple thing, but even that soft arousal is something he means to capture for eternity. He’s entranced by the twitch of her hips, the tremble in her thighs, the sounds pulled helplessly from her lungs. He could spend hours like this, worshiping her with lips and fingers and praise until she forgets anything but the pleasure of unraveling beneath him. Just watching her could set him to his knees.

It's the hook of her leg against him, the broken words barely let into the world, that finally strips him of his restraint. Just the heat, the softness, the invitation of her threatens to undo him, a sensation so overpowering because of the ache for it. "Flora," he growls, voice almost pained as he sinks into her by slow degrees until she has all of him. He braces himself with one hand on her hip, the other curling against the leg he keeps high on his chest. It gives him the anchor he needs, something to lean into while the rest of him tries not to fall apart. He knew this would be his greatest undoing. It takes everything in him not to collapse into the sheer relief of surrender, not to let it carry him off before he’s had the chance to enjoy it.

For a second he doesn’t move, just savors the way she fits him. "Ro, gods," he pleads, as if she has been unkind with her perfection. "You feel too good." It’s everything he’s ever wanted, every indulgence distilled into the heat of her. He starts to move, rolling into her with deliberate intent that's like the drift of waves against the Sugar Tide. Steadily he sets a rhythm into her, his hand sliding from her leg down to where they connect, his thumb brushing her clit with a focus on the hitch of her breaths among each thrust.

Kaisel

// Stop being so goddamn quiet //

flora

The way Kaisel says her name sends goosebumps skimming across her chest, not sharp like static, but soft, like silk being drawn over sunburnt skin—gentle and electric all at once. It makes her smile, even as her lips part on a quiet, breathy moan, the syllables of his name curling against the back of her throat, too full of feeling to be sharp. Kai. Kaisel. Gods, Kai. But then he’s there, in her, and the world pivots around the ache that dissolves into satisfaction so deep she forgets what it's like to have ever needed anything more—until her body decides it does, until the slow, perfect stretch becomes a tease she cannot bear.

She cries out his name, the sound fraying with laughter at the edges, because gods of all the ways she'd imagined this in those late-night, half-joking daydreams—of sinking onto his lap just to see if she could make him blush, of licking a popsicle slowly down the stick just to ruin his train of thought—she had never quite imagined this. Never this heat. Never this tenderness. Never the dizzying realization that the boy who used to trail after the older kids with a quiet, too-clever smirk—the one who used to call her flo-ro just to watch her squawk like a wet bird—would be the one making her burn from the inside out.

It is absurd. Entirely impossible. And yet...inevitable, somehow.

His slow thrusts are steady, tidal, each one building upon the last until her spine feels like it’s arching toward something that hasn’t yet arrived but is promising to as his thumb becomes the axis her world starts to tilt around. She writhes beneath him without grace or apology, hips lifting to meet the rise and fall of his rhythm, chasing more, always more, far sooner than she expected. Her blush deepens to a blaze across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, a flush of scarlet in the low lamplight. She hadn’t expected to be so undone so early, hadn’t expected her own hips to rise of their own volition, chasing more of his touch, more of him. Her body is molten and wild, and yet she feels so safe, so right.

Sliding her leg from his shoulder, she curls it around his waist instead, drawing him closer with the quiet insistence of someone who no longer wants even an inch of air between them. Her hands find him in turn—one threading into his hair, the other sweeping down his shoulder. Her fingers splay across the starburst scar on his back, that pale remnant from Jack’s anger, from the night Kai had gone too far for her. And maybe her ring can’t heal it now, but she presses her palm there anyway. Presses like her touch might rewrite its meaning. As if she could alchemize pain into purpose, violence into something tender and glittering and whole. After all, it was for her he’d earned that wound. And now, in this moment, it becomes something else entirely. Not a mark of regret, but of loyalty. Of love. Of them.

"Kai," she whispers, like it was the first time she'd ever said his name properly, her voice barely clinging to the air between them. Rolling her hips up against him again, she lets her fingers slide down from his hair, across the sharp lines of his cheek, and along the strong line of his jaw. Her thumb brushes the corner of his mouth, reverent, and her voice drops lower still—less a request than a surrender. "Like you love me." Because no one ever has fucked her like that, not really. Jack had always brought her to dizzying heights, knowing exactly what she wanted and when that they might eclipse everything else together. If there'd been love in it, it wasn't the sort Flora understood. And Koa had always fucked her with more haste than depth if only because that's what summertime flings demanded. Given time, he would have, had she ever thought to ask. But this? This is the first time her body has felt like something undeserving of bruises, not to be conquered or claimed, but kept. And gods, if he answers her the way she hopes—if he gives her not just the pleasure but the meaning she’s never dared to want—she’s not sure she’ll survive it. At least if she doesn't, they won't have to worry about the what-now's that will come with the dawn.

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// Start a tiny riot //

Has there ever been a better sound than this? His name, stretched with want across her lips, less word than breath. It's the hit song of the summer, chart topper on his Spotify wrapped. Flora Kaito-Taliesin the Doubletake (feat. Kaisel Ashborn).

Even that sound can’t compete with the way she trembles beneath him, around him. The way her body arches, the way her hips chase him, the flush that rises like fire across her skin—it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. "That's my new favorite view," he croons, voice thickened with the awe of discovering yet more about her to admire. This is what he’ll remember in every moment he's alone after. Not just the pleasure, but the affection wound so tightly it feels like the first time and a lifetime all at once—like how each sunset belongs only to the day that it marks an end to.

He doesn’t even realize he’s holding his breath until her leg falls away, and as if it had been key to his structural support, he leans over her and onto the bed, as much tugged in closer by her insistence as her gravity. He tilts into the glide of her fingers through his hair, jaw taut with the edge he rides, every touch she grants him blooming sensation across his skin, his control fraying with each fresh current. That is, until her hand sweeps across the scar along his back. He freezes—just for a heartbeat.

Something cold spiderwebs along the skin there, caution. That jagged place, earned for her, burns anew under her attention. Not with pain, but weight. Because she feels it, sees it, not just as the aftermath of his recklessness, but for what it meant. She touches it like it's not a monument to his worst mistake, but something she can still hold with care and choose to see differently. Just as she tries to mold it into something other than failure and ruin, he chases the only warmth that could ever make it right, the one buried in her.

His name brings his gaze to her, half-lidded as her hand seems to touch him for the first time for all its slow and quiet exploration. Where her thumb connects with the corner of his mouth, he quirks his lips to kiss it, soft and grateful. For her. For this moment. For all the golden ones she's given him over the years, knowing or not. Every small tease that told him he mattered enough to poke at, every game where they fought for their win like nothing else could matter more, every small compliment handed out in passing because anything bigger would diminish it. "I don’t know another way," he admits softly, because with her, it's always been that, even when he wouldn't let it be.

He shifts then, hooking his arms beneath her back and lifts her to him, completely stripping any remaining space. A guttural note of pleasure breaks from behind his teeth as he manages to sink deeper into her like this, appreciating all the heat of her thoroughly as it now presses in with no room for anything but the two of them, wholly and completely. He carries her the short distance to the wall, the motion urgent but careful, like he's afraid he might wreck (tripping or otherwise) before he's loved her properly. Something clatters to the floor behind them—a lamp maybe, or a picture frame—but he doesn’t stop.

He presses her back to the wall, a perfectly fitted space among her shelving, the weight of his body and the cradle of his arms keeping her steady as his hips resume their rhythm, each thrust deeper now. He's given into the idea that this will be his undoing. Flora, it'd always been Flora that would manage it. He kisses her—deep, open-mouthed, all breath and wanting and everything he never let himself have.

Kaisel

// Stop being so goddamn quiet //

flora

If this moment had a title—if their tangled limbs and breathless laughter and moaning pleas could be captured in a sun-drenched vinyl pressed only for the two of them—it would be called No One Ever Loved Me Like You Did. And gods, how Flora feels it now, in every taut, humming line of Kaisel's body. In the weight of his eyes, in the quake of his breath when her name slips like smoke from her lips.

When he leans down into her again, when he fills her so completely that there is no room left for doubt or disguise, her moan tries to bloom into a cry and instead falters, dampened into the curve of his shoulder, trembling between laughter and tears. It’s all too much and not enough, the kind of exquisite overwhelm that makes a girl want to sob with the wonder of it. Because this—this—feels like being found, like coming home to something she never dared to even reach for.

But then he looks at her and says possibly the sweetest words he's managed yet, but Flora’s breath stutters, caught on a wire between pleasure and sudden, coiling panic. For a flicker, the thought scrapes across her mind like grit in silk: how does he always know? Was it possible he was a telepath like Jack? But the thought dissolves almost as quickly as it comes. Not because it couldn’t be true, but because it couldn’t be him. Kaisel, for all his daring, had never been a man of secrets. He wore his truths too loud, too loose-lipped and lionhearted. If he knew the deepest things she felt, it was because he’d been paying attention all this time.

All. This. Time. Maybe that was a better song title.

But then he's lifting her, and even as something crashes to the ground, Flora's world has narrowed entirely to the hooded copper of his gaze and the way it feels to be held in his arms, such that later when she notices the broken frame, she'll have no memory at all of it falling.

Flora's hands sweep into his hair, at his jaw, across his back, anchoring herself to the press of his body, to the swell of him inside her. When her spine meets the wall, her breath is driven from her, only to be stolen again in the next heartbeat as he resumes his rhythm, deeper now, each thrust like a tide reshaping the coastline of her body.

The hall is hardly wide enough to cage them, especially with the sprawl of her limbs and the way she burns to move with him. One long leg braces against the opposite wall as the other remains wrapped tight around his hips, allowing her to push back, to meet him, to lift and angle and give him everything. Her mouth finds his, lips parting, tongue tracing the melody of their song’s chorus like she’s trying to teach his the words. There is no coyness here, no teasing—just hunger, just heat—just the kind of vulnerable want that can’t be prettied up or performed.

Her body tightens around him and her breath hitches again, a hiccup against his mouth as his cock finds something deep within her that has her shivering against him. The edge of her pleasure crests, expands outward like sunlight under skin, blooming behind her ribs, coiling hot and high and unstoppable. "Kai, I’m so—" she gasps, her voice cracking against his jaw, "—close."

It’s like the beginning of a sneeze, that first electric pull of inevitability that lives in the spine and behind the eyes, but instead of releasing outward, her orgasm curls inward too, a collapsing star made of heat and heartbeat and breath. It draws everything in: her thoughts, her voice, the world. Her toes curl, her body tightens, and with a trembling cry pressed against his lips, her resolve finally crumbles entirely.

"Gods, please Kai."

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// Start a tiny riot //

A breathless chuckle escapes him when her leg braces against the opposite wall. “That's a bonus,” he pants, voice low and frayed. The angle is flawless—it lets him reach deeper, move freer, the leverage drawing out a raw sound from deep in his chest as he grinds into her, claiming every inch like it's the last thing he can do right.

That would be enough, but she gives him more. Her legs locked around him are a searing vice, melting into his need. Her hands tangled in his hair and roving across his skin, as insistent as he is in memorizing every detail of them, curls warm and tight against his ribs. Her mouth set against his in a kiss, it tells him everything. Gods, it's almost too much for him.

The tension in her thighs, the broken cadence of her breath, the way she says his name—all of it ignites in him with the kindling of all the match sticks he’s buried for years. He’d tried to be careful, to be good, but now it spills loose with every thrust and each touch. He can’t hold back the climax that seizes him when she cries out, his body jerking into her with a final kick as she whips through him with all the same intensity that delivered him his scar, and it wrecks him just as completely this time too.

His voice fractures around her name as every bit of restraint shatters, “Ffflora—I.” It’s a confession disguised as a groan, that he can't last any more, that after all this, forever does have an end. His jaw flexes, eyes squeezed shut as every bit of him tenses until it feels like even his hair has tightened against his head. Then everything is a shudder attempting to break him apart. It doesn't just empty him the way it normally does, it also makes room for her to fill him, with all of her and everything she is, even the things she could still be.

He doesn’t realize he’s holding her so tightly until his legs tremor. He eases, sliding down with her, collapsing in a heap on the hallway floor. They’re tangled, breathless, pressed skin to skin, and he never wants to move again. He sucks in air, head tilted into her, buried in the nest of her hair, arms still wrapped around her like he's scared to let go. A small, airy laugh bubbles out of him, broken, but full of wonder. He tilts his head back after a moment, nudging his nose against stray strands to find her face and press a kiss to her forehead, the tip of her nose, the corner of her mouth, where he lingers close and warm, still catching his breath.

She's on the air he brings in, all sun-warmed salt and morning—fresh and limitless with a new day. She's the promise of everything, the way dawn gilds the world and pulls it from the darkness, the way the sea sparkles under the reborn light. His lips brush hers with a grin he can't stop, "okay, was any of that even close to the sky-anchor swivel kiss?"

Kaisel

// Stop being so goddamn quiet //

flora

She means to say something about how flexible she is—something teasing and triumphant—but the words slip right out of her, undone entirely by the angle of his hips and the new rhythm it draws from him. Her jaw falls open instead, a breathless, hitched gasp caught halfway between a sob and a plea. She tries to chase it, to breathe through it, but the way he presses into her steals every word she might have used.

"Don’t stop," she pleads instead, the words tumbling from her lips like a secret she’s held too long. Her hand slips from his hair, fingers dragging down the sweat-slicked curve of his neck, across the planes of his chest, until they find the soft heat between them. It takes only a featherlight touch, a single press against her clit, to complete the circuit, to send her hurtling into that devastating, exquisite release.

His voice—her name—breaks against her skin, and it's that, more than anything, that bursts the dam. Her climax storms through her like summer thunder, ripping all sense of separation away, obliterating her understanding of where her body ends and his begins. It's not just pleasure—it’s pure sensation, uncontained, the kind that steals time and space and breath. Her back bows, her head tips forward, and every muscle seems to lock and melt in the same moment, her whole self unravelled and rewoven around him.

She doesn’t know how long she stays there, suspended in the burn and the afterglow. Long enough that when her mind surfaces again, she realizes she’s clinging to him with both legs locked at his hips and one hand fisted tight against his heart. She doesn’t let go. Won’t, not yet (not ever). Not when gravity tugs them gently down to the floor and the sea-drift lull of the Sugar Tide rocks around them like the whole world’s gone still just to let them fall.

Her laughter is muffled into the crook of his neck, soft and stunned and glowing with disbelief. Gods, she could stay like this, wrapped in his arms, tangled and breathless, their bodies threaded together with salt and sweat and something far more sacred. She could stay here for a night or a lifetime, and it wouldn’t feel like a compromise.

As sensation returns, she feels the press of his lips—forehead, nose, mouth—each one grounding her a little more, and still she won’t let him go. Her palms cup his cheeks, thumbs brushing across the curve of his grin as though she could hold it in place just a little longer. Her own smile matches it, wide and golden, as though it’s lit from within by everything they’ve ever been to one another, and the little bit more they are now.

She wrinkles her nose, then leans in to nudge it against his, a gesture that’s both tender and impish. Her lips trace a slow path: his forehead, the bridge of his nose, the tip of it where she lingers, humming with satisfaction. "Nope," she murmurs at last, smug and breathless and warm. "You really missed out by not looking at the cards."

She knows they should move, that they should get up and clean up, but when she finally leans back, just far enough to meet Kai's gaze, her eyes are still swimming with laughter and something far more tender beneath it. "I’m not sure I can move yet," she admits, voice honey-sweet and low, the words cradled between them like another secret. "Which, just in case you were wondering," Flora murmurs, brushing her nose against his once more before letting her lips softly find his. "Is both an excuse to stay here for another minute, and my way of saying that was really good for me."

Y'know, just in case he wondered.

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// Start a tiny riot //

He leans into the cup of her hands like it's the first touch he's ever known, like her fingers alone could teach him how to be held. He savors the drag of her thumb across his lips, how it leaves a soft tingle in its wake—every point of contact still sparking with something electric. For a long, slow breath, he just soaks her in. Her laughter still echoing faintly through him, her breath against his skin, the radiance of her smile, the way she looks at him like he might actually be enough.

A nearly inaudible sound leaves him, part hum, part sigh, as her nose brushes his with something intimate. He tilts into her more, chasing it, but she's on the move with a trail of kisses, each one something she's sealing into him that won't ever be removed. "Damn," he breathes, his voice still thick with spent wonder. "Guess I’ll have to keep trying until I get it right," he grins, slow and sharp at the corners, like he’s plotting a rematch. That stirs a whisper in his mind of what's next, what changes now, what they’ve done to each other that can’t be undone. He shoves it down. Now is still theirs, and he's going to hang onto every second of it.

He stretches with a groan, the kind that rumbles up from somewhere deep. "Hard agree. I’m not sure I’ll ever walk again," he says with put on dramatics, all an excuse to press her closer to him on the floor. Her nose brushing his again draws warmth through him, another contented sigh breaking free. As her lips find his, as she says that, he can't help but move, even if every part of him is still too steeped in the afterglow to approve of it.

He props himself up slightly, one arm braced beside her, the other sliding up her side until his hand cradles her face, reverent with each motion. His thumb glides along her cheekbone, careful and purposeful, like he could press every bit of his adoration into that single touch. His eyes remain fixed on hers, full of everything she means. "You're really good," he murmurs, aware it's utterly cheesy even as he says it, a soft laugh puffing free before he kisses her. It's not with urgency, but with everything that’s trembling inside him. It starts deep and grows deeper, as if there’s something in it too big to say aloud. Gratitude. Devotion. Wonder. Love, not yet named, not in that manner, but there all the same.

He breaks it and presses his forehead to hers, inhaling for a minute before pulling back to look at her. "C'mon Flo-ro, let's shower, or skinny dip, but either way we're getting wet."

Kaisel

// Stop being so goddamn quiet //

flora

Flora leans into his laughter like it’s sunlight, tipping her head back slightly as if to catch the sound on her skin and let it soak through to bone. She inhales it—greedy, fond, and full of that quiet delight only Kai seems to unearth from her in moments like these—and wrinkles her nose with the smallest, teasing shake of her head. “You should just take me up on the cards,” she murmurs, the idea feather-light and coaxing. But no sooner does the suggestion of later take root in her mind than her smile softens, blooming into something wistful. Because how can she even begin to imagine the afterwards, when the now is so golden it might collapse under the weight of wishing for more?

So she melts into him instead, cheek to chest, breath brushing skin. Lets the future curl into the back of her throat like the tickle of salt air—ever-present, but not spoken. Not yet.

As he stretches with that delicious, low groan, she slides her fingers up his sides, tracing over sex-warmed skin and muscle until her mouth finds his again. The kiss is slower this time, still heat-laced, but in the way of glowing embers tucked safely beneath the ashes—alive, sustaining, the kind you could rouse again come morning. She kisses him like she already knows she’ll want to, and gods does she know she’ll want to.

Flora’s about to tell him to shut up, because gods, that was absolutely a cheesy line—and she’d tease him for it too, if he didn’t kiss the protest right off her lips. And maybe that’s what does it. Maybe that’s the moment that breaks something open inside her, because suddenly all she wants is to stretch this evening into a thousand more. To take this soft, glowy version of him and press it like a flower between the pages of her favourite book, tucked somewhere she can always find it again.

Of course, their escapades have left more than heat tangled between their limbs, such that Kai is absolutely not wrong about their need to clean up. As the sweat cools and the air off the water drifts in with lazy insistence, she lets out a dramatic, long-suffering sigh that earns a grin of its own. “While skinny dipping is absolutely my preference,” she says, drawing out the syllables like silk, “and you can call me vain for it, but the thought of being out of your sight if we were to go up above? Hate it.” Her fingers draw slow patterns along his chest, languid and lingering. ”So, shower it is.”

Pushing herself upright takes more effort than she’ll ever admit—her thighs still trembling faintly, and not from any chill. She plants a hand behind her against the wall for balance, then extends the other toward him in offering. It’s a comically useless gesture, given the state of her limbs, but the point isn’t leverage. It’s contact; an excuse to keep him tethered as if she stops being fully herself anytime they part.

“The shower’s a tight fit for two,” she says with mock-innocence, glancing back over her shoulder with that smirk that always spells trouble. And then she tugs him after her, bare feet padding softly across the polished wood of the cabin floor until she pushes open a door and reveals the hidden alcove. Shells crunch softly beneath their steps, embedded like scattered treasure into the floor, and the walls are smoothed stone and moss, cool to the touch and softly glowing in the low light. Overhead, the rainshower bursts to live as Flora presses a button, its stream gentle but sure—like a summer storm that knows exactly how to soothe.

”Hope that won’t be a problem.”

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// Start a tiny riot //

"I thought it might be," he chuckles, "you are such a show off." Absolutely muttered as if he isn't. "Mmm—smart though too," he says in agreement with her choice, not particularly wanting to lose sight of her right now either. He grabs for the hand she has on his chest to press a kiss into the back of it, lips lingering over her knuckles, brushing another set of affection into her just in case she already forgot.

It isn't often that he can claim Flora lacks grace. Even when she does something on purpose to be silly, there's still some shape of her hard earned athletics, but this meager feet of standing is on par with a newborn giraffe's first steps. He can't bite back the laugh that breaks free, although he knows he's in no less fine shape than her, likely much worse honestly. Even so, there's a rich satisfaction that warms him—it's a grace that they have managed to gift each other. It’s the kind of sight he could watch night after night and never grow tired of.

He grabs for her hand and a devious gleam flickers in his gaze, clearly debating whether to drag her right back to the floor, but the promise of a shared shower waylays any further ground-level mischief. With a stagger and a flail of a leg for balance, he manages to flop himself upright as well, doing his best not to tug on her hand, but just to hold it, not letting go even when he's made it back to two feet.

"Seems like that's a benefit," he says with that low appreciation returning as he trails after the best sight possible, slipping into the shower with her without hesitation. The water is a different kind of salvation than her body had been, though it can only wash away the day—she's got the night, and with the space nearly absent between them, that's not spinning down any drain soon. He reaches over her for the soap, swiping it before she can manage and working a lather up in his hands.

He presses them against the small of her back, gliding up with soapy ease to the back of her neck where he carefully sweeps her hair to one side and presses a kiss at her nape. His thumbs roll against the muscle of her shoulders, searching for any residual tension he didn't already chase out of her. "Almost a shame it's not a bit bigger," he murmurs with a low hum of disappointment, like he’s already tracing the angles for just how he could have taken her again in here.

Kaisel

// Stop being so goddamn quiet //

flora

Flora’s laughter bubbles up, bright and breathless, trailing after Kai’s as if their joy were stitched together in the air between them. It melts into the mist curling from the shower, lingering like steam on skin, and there’s something so impossibly tender about the ease with which they move from pleasure to laughter, from tangled limbs to affection to teasing. It makes her ache, not from exertion, but from the way her chest seems to swell with something far too big to name.

She narrows her eyes as he swipes the soap, not because she’s annoyed but because he’s clearly inviting trouble, and she’s never been one to back down from a challenge. Yet whatever retort had been gathering behind her lips slips away as easily as the lather now gliding across her spine. His hands are warm, patient, reverent in a way that startles her even now. She’s known Kai to be daring, to be reckless and bold, but there’s something in the quiet press of his fingers, in the kiss he plants at the nape of her neck, that makes her legs weaken in a way no climax could. The way he touches her without ceremony makes her want every kind of touch he can give—gentle, hungry, adoring, wild.

His comment comes low, all disappointed hum and low-pitched teasing, and it draws a flush to her cheeks before she even turns. She does so slowly, deliberately, a grin ghosting over her lips as she spins in place, letting the soapy heat of her body press fully against his. Her back arches with feline grace, brushing her curves shamelessly along the hard planes of his chest and hips before she leans forward—just far enough to bend, just far enough to tempt, to let him imagine what it might be like to pin her in place like that with his hands clasped against her hips. Her fingers curl around the sponge on the floor, water streaming down her back, drawing attention to every slope and hollow and shadow. She holds the sponge up over her shoulder with a glint in her eye and the very picture of innocence on her face.

"See?" she murmurs, her voice thick with mischief and heat, the soft tease of it curling like smoke between them. "Plenty of space." And oh, there’s no mistaking the invitation in her tone, nor the heat that blooms anew beneath her skin at the mere thought of his hands on her hips, his mouth at her shoulder, his breath tangled in her hair as the water pours over them like rain on a wildfire.

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// Start a tiny riot //

He lifts his hands as she starts to turn, releasing her into her devious motion. There’s a half-smile edging in, already bracing for trouble, but the moment she presses against him, hot and deliberate, all pretense burns away. Her warmth cuts through the steam, practically scalding where she fits against him, and his body answers hers without hesitation. He can’t stop watching her, helpless to every motion—the bow of her spine, the soap trailing across the curves he's only begun to memorize, the way that damn smile blooms like she knows exactly what she’s doing. He loves it. All of it. All of her. He’s hardening again before he can stop it, the heat curling low and heavy, pulsing through him with fresh insistence.

He groans deeply as his hands bracket her hips and he steps flush to her. There’s no pretending now—not when she fits against him like this, not with the thought of what they could do here playing through his mind. "You are impossible," he mutters, voice frayed at the edges, hands gliding up her sides with slow, reverent pressure. He cages her gently against the wall, arms bracing on either side. His mouth finds the curve of her neck, kissing his way up slow and certain until he gets to the place just beneath her ear. There he sets his teeth against her skin with the faintest reprimand.

His forehead rests against hers as he drags in a breath that does absolutely nothing to calm him. "Gods, Flora," he breaths, sealing his mouth to hers in a kiss that's all restraint and aching appreciation, full of everything he wants but won't take right now. Breaking it takes effort, his jaw tightening with the resistance. "How dare you make me the responsible one here," he accuses with a harried grin, voice rough with the want that has already come roaring back. "We can barely stand. We are not going to die naked and slippery and end up the world’s worst cautionary tale."

He pulls away with all the struggle of a bird in a windstorm, slouching against the nearest wall as he reaches for the soap again. He begins to wash himself with the slow inattention of someone thoroughly distracted by the woman just inches away who's trying to ruin them both.

Kaisel

// Stop being so goddamn quiet //