C/W: In the same vein as the prior chapter with a little more detailed description. *clears throat* Kindly verify your date of birth and then proceed.
***
They tormented each other.
Close-lipped kisses and hovering touches and maddening clashes of heated gaze. Copper brunette and Cobalt blue. When one tried to access way in, the other covertly withdrew. When she wanted him to kiss her neck, he never did. When he came to the neck, she wouldn't let him.
He knew this match. She did too.
They would always contest. That was the element of their history. Their passions for each other. They would always wage wars against each other and they would neither conquer. They were on the same side of the battle line.
Delilah couldn't believe in the moment, staring up in the eyes of a stranger she had once despised, who had admired her from afar_ a man of rank known for his cold mysteries now straddling her with such uncharacteristic warmth in his eyes.
Years late, perhaps, but at last.
He removed himself from over her and cold air rushed over Delilah. He fell at the side of her and Delilah curled into his cave. He kissed her forehead and Delilah wondered at the precision of that kiss. He inhaled in deeply through her hair and Delilah pulled the pins out.
Then one single long finger found the pearl shaped buttons at the front of Delilah's borrowed cotton dress and between the careful pops, the bodice was at once very unrestricting.
Delilah shuddered.
His hand slipped in, the derisory chemise underneath not truly presenting the impediment it should have. She could feel the lines of his fingers as he traced the curvature of her ribs. Second, third, fourth.....twelfth.
Then the pliable, bottomless dip of the midriff. Like a parched valley.
The sudden raise of her hip. The mount.
The slope of her thighs. The moorland.
And back, he retraced his hand....the moorland, the mount, the dry valley ....as if he had just done checking her for her flaws, that one extra bone which could disfigure her, the one fault where he could abandon her. Found none. Back home.
But the fault...was still there.
The flaw glowered still. Would he abandoned her is she told him?
In the deeper recess of her being, Delilah realized, she was still dented. Disfigured.
Her breathing hitched and his hand, with that intimate connection, sensed it. Stopped short, right where it was. At her waist.
Dread settled in Delilah, stiffening her. Richard felt this too.
Transverse to her waist, his hand spanned her midriff. Velvet, smooth abdomen, then the other-side. The other waist. He let her go.
She was at once looking into his sharp, transparent eyes.
"Yes?" he asked.
Yes?
She was awed at how gracefully he could raise in question matters of lifetime without saying two words. Without limiting it in the bounds of what and why and when and how. Without telling her what to tell him. And how.
And How much.
Yes?
She could say what she desired. And not what she didn't. He presumed nothing. He guessed none.
أنت تقرأ
The Unchaste
التاريخيةKill the man who deserves to die and you have eradicated the weed by its root. That was easier Done than Said for Delilah Eves. However, death of Benedict Ainsworth_ a culpably aristocratic lord of London led Delilah back North, to Yorkshire, Yorkto...
