[ Asked softly, still, although without the urgency of her first words. Her free hand is in his hair, patiently working through wind-tangles as she strokes her fingers through the strands.
The shake in his breath had made her heart squeeze unhappily in her chest, had burned away everything but the desire to cover him as a blanket might: keeping what warmth there was safe from the cold that snatched at it, whatever that cold might be. She doesn't know the whole of it, but she knows some; knows his birth father had left him to die, knows the long shadow his adoptive brother had cast, the lengths he had gone to in order to emerge from it...
And she knows the sharp and incredulous way her lord had laughed at the idea of her loving him, his uneasy ungainly softness when she had persisted.
Even in the middle of her own terrified fluttering it had broken her heart then, too. ]
I could tell you, [ she speaks against his hair. ] I could tell you down to the way you still when you are thinking, the way your fingers spread as if you could hold what you speak of when it excites you; but it will only be so much breath if you cannot understand for yourself why what I love in you should be worth loving, and you must understand in order to be loved.
no subject
[ Asked softly, still, although without the urgency of her first words. Her free hand is in his hair, patiently working through wind-tangles as she strokes her fingers through the strands.
The shake in his breath had made her heart squeeze unhappily in her chest, had burned away everything but the desire to cover him as a blanket might: keeping what warmth there was safe from the cold that snatched at it, whatever that cold might be. She doesn't know the whole of it, but she knows some; knows his birth father had left him to die, knows the long shadow his adoptive brother had cast, the lengths he had gone to in order to emerge from it...
And she knows the sharp and incredulous way her lord had laughed at the idea of her loving him, his uneasy ungainly softness when she had persisted.
Even in the middle of her own terrified fluttering it had broken her heart then, too. ]
I could tell you, [ she speaks against his hair. ] I could tell you down to the way you still when you are thinking, the way your fingers spread as if you could hold what you speak of when it excites you; but it will only be so much breath if you cannot understand for yourself why what I love in you should be worth loving, and you must understand in order to be loved.