Tallethea
All the world outside of us fell away. With Lansing, pushing his hands across my back, pressing his lips to mine with fervor and a smoothness I can only imagine he's practiced a million times...but this wasn't rehearsed. It was careful, full of feeling, and tentative. Like at any moment he was going to pull away. That's why I couldn't help from soaking up every second. It may never happen again. I may never let myself...I shouldn't even be letting it happen now. But it was too late and too wonderful to refrain.
Dropping my hands from his hair to his shoulders, I gently pushed him down towards the bed until he was lying flat. He took me with him, craning his neck to reach my mouth as I hovered on my hands and knees. But I had different plans, ones that I had been dying to test out since that moment in the east room. He was letting me in, and I would never take that for granted again.
Planting slow kisses across his swollen lips, delicious jaw, to that little freckle on his cheek, and under his eye. I continued trailing them down his neck. Each one meant something and I made sure he knew it.
"Thea—" His eyes were rapturously shut, and his hands were sliding up my arms. A small laugh rumbled out of him as I pressed my lips to the column of his throat; one that made me kiss it again as he fumbled out, "If this argument is based on how—" My lips fell back to his in a slow kiss, and he breathed out, "What is it we're arguing about again?"
Smiling a little, I moved back to look at him and see those amber eyes light and disbelieving. It stirred me up, a feeling akin to nothing I've known before. But I didn't get time to make my smart reply, because he was grumbling something incoherent and taking me by the waist. He pinned me under him, bringing his knees between mine and not even a squeak could get out before Lansing was kissing me like he wanted to. Like I wanted him to. Hungry, open mouthed kisses that stopped my heart.
My own hands slid down his back, searching for the bottom of his shirt. I found that it made him bend into me. So, I did it again, and he dropped to his elbows, pressing his weight against me as I hooked a leg over the back of his. Once my hands found the hem, I tugged on it, just a little, and with some agility he lifted and yanked it over his head.
Everything about the way he was, not just his looks, although those were admittedly concussive, seemed to curl up inside my chest like a purring cat. I felt as if I were humming inside after drinking too much coffee or running too fast. It was his patience and kindness, and courage...he was everything I wanted to be. And yet, when he was staring at me with those raw eyes—staring in a way I dare not describe in fear I could never detail its capacity—-I knew he felt the same. It was the need to be close to the only person who could understand.
That cavernous stare was what I felt in my chest every time he touched me. As close as he was now, I had fallen thousands of feet. When he kissed me, and gods was he good at that, it was not a fall but a plummet into the sun. He had me falling up.
Lansing tossed the shirt carelessly behind him, before crashing back down and nuzzling my head to the side. A sigh escaping me as he took to kissing my neck and clavicle, exploring the skin just above the collar of my nightgown. His hand braced down, gripping my side, then hiking my nightgown up just enough to run his hand up my leg. My heart thundered when he stopped at my thigh and grabbed my hip instead, roughly pulling me to him. Bowing off the bed in response, a little bewildered moan had my fingers sliding around the back of his neck. Lansing moved as If to kiss me but held back before our lips met with a teasing grin. I pushed up, eager for more, but he only permitted a small brush between our mouths.
He was smiling again, then his fingers were tracing the collar of my gown, "Told you I'd get you in a dress."
Now get me out of it. "Doesn't count if it's a nightgown, Lansing."
A heated noise followed my saying his name, and the prince went back to slowly kissing my neck, dipping lower into that collar and pushing the shoulder of my gown aside. Almost like he couldn't make up his mind where he wanted to be, or how long he wanted to be there. I smiled when his hand slid down, gripping behind the knee of my other leg and looping it over his hip. Tightening my legs around him as I pulled his face back to mine, Lansing lost his breath for a moment.
Then he laughed quietly against my mouth, "So demanding."
I smiled, then I couldn't help but chuckle. The feeling of his lips was so soft and warm, caressing my skin as I trailed my fingers down his. Each muscle of his back twisted under my hands as I slid them around his ribs toward his stomach. Then, I sent them down, just to the waistband of his pants, and he broke away with a groan.
"Easy." His voice was deeper and, in a rasp, right by my lips. One I was fond of.
"Can't handle it?" I grinned, teasing, and genuinely happy.
A devilish smile took over that face, as he drew a slow line with his fingers down my stomach, "Can you?"
I could not. And with the blatant truth of that written all over my face, Lansing's lips crashed back to mine in a kiss that made my stomach twirl. But it was when my fingers went up, that things changed. Twisting around his hips, my hands flattened near his upper stomach, and pushed upward onto his chest.
He wrenched away with a sharp gasp and seized my wrist in his hand. Whether it was reflex or of his own volition...I think it scared us both. With wide and dreadful eyes, Lansing looked down at my open palm, fingers still slightly bent as if petrified. His breath was no longer erratic for the reasons it once was. Any soft emotion he wore was stripped away by sheer panic, and frost crushed the warmth in his face.
"Lansing?" I whispered confusedly, but then looking at where I had accidentally pressed, it all made sense. The skin around his scar was angry and red; I could feel the racing of his pulse in his fingers. Maybe it was mine...because I was seeing that dreadful landscape of scar tissue.
Starting at his upper sternum, it stretched monstrously down and over his left ribs. The skin was not neatly sutured, but instead looked as if it had regrown over itself hundreds of times. Even the cut was abnormal, jagged in some places and randomly speckled over his side, as if she weren't even trying to navigate to the heart alone, but more like she was going to pull it piece by piece out from under his lungs. Horror filled every ounce of my being at the sight of it stretching and twisting as he tried to capture his breath. Looking away, all I could do was sit up, and bring him back.
"Lansing..." What did she do to you?
Then he looked at me, taking a deep breath. My heart was going a million times faster than it should as he gently let go of my wrist. I knew where he was. In the East room again, hovering over me as those eyes seemed to search in my face for any sign of deception or threat. Another trick. Another game. Here to hurt him. I wanted to tell him no. That I was honest and real! That he was safe.
We suffered a long silence before Lansing's features softened out of its terrible remembrance. Recognizing me only to flush with a sickened look.
I tried to apologize, but he just shook his head and untangled himself, whispering, "It's okay."
It wasn't, but I let him be. I watched as he left the room.