What are you doing New Year's Eve?

[takecourage]

They step off the tram and walk up to the lodge together and Alex...really hadn't been prepared for how beautiful it all is. She's glad she went with the fancier dress now, velvet, off the shoulder, cut below the knee and paired with spike black heels with straps that wrap around her ankles. She'd have felt underdresssed in anything else.

She blows out a breath and, for a moment, she almost shrinks behind Darlington, trusting him to protect her from the unknown.

"I...don't think I'm going to fit in here," she says.

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[more_magic]

The shiver that runs down his spine as Alex's fingers twist into his hair is almost electric, the kind of sensation he doesn't know he's ever felt before. He's aware of a low, settling tension in the pit of his stomach, one that is familiar, and knows he's getting hard. A blush touches the line of his cheekbones, but he doesn't stop kissing her, doesn't pull back from holding her close.

The hand at her back finds the small metal tab of her dress's zipper, one fingertip doing nothing but touching it for the time being.

[takecourage]

She can feel him starting to get hard against her and it doesn't even occur to get to pull away from him. Her hand stays in his hair, the other skimming down his side and around to squeeze his ass through his pants, pulling him in closer still.

[more_magic]

She squeezes his ass and he laughs, the sound muffled against her mouth and edged with another, needier groan. "Alex," he breathes, nudging her head gently to the side and kissing along her jaw, towards the graceful line of her neck and the bared slope of her shoulders.

He's careful here, though it takes effort. He remembers the moths, the magic, the caution he'd given her once it was all over: be careful in the throes. Darlington never expected to have cause to take his own advice.

[takecourage]

This is so much more than it started off as, and Alex isn't about to start fighting it now. She keeps her hand tangled in his hair, her head falling back as he kisses down her throat, the blunt ends of her hair shivering against her bare skin.

"Darlington," she breathes. "Fuck, Daniel."

[more_magic]

His given name sounds beautiful, coming from her mouth, but it's an unusual enough occurrence to make him pause, though he stays pressed close. "This is..." he starts, looking at her with his lips parted and his hair mussed from her fingers, his hand running idly along the curve of her hip. "You're still...?"

He doesn't know what he's saying, what he ought to say, what he wants to. The bed is behind them, only steps away, and he can feel its presence there like some kind of weight.

[takecourage]

Her breath catches, tits heaving inside the press of snug velvet and a smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. She squeezes his ass again, her other hand shifting to cradle his cheek.

"Use your words, Darlington."

[more_magic]

Darlington leans into the hand against his face, and lets out another soft laugh as Alex squeezes his ass once again. "A fair request," he murmurs, his eyes closing briefly as he sets his thoughts to rights. He opens them again a moment later, asking the first and most important thing that comes to mind and doing his best to divorce it from the heavy, insistent pulse of his own desires.

"Do you want me to stop?"

[takecourage]

Alex wants to give that the thought that it deserves, she really does, but her body is taking over and she shakes her head, almost involuntarily, pressing close again.

"Don't stop."

She'll deal with the consequences of whatever this is tomorrow. For now, she just wants to let herself have something good.

[more_magic]

He'd have done what she wanted, no matter the answer, but as Alex shakes her head and presses her body to his again, it feels like a gift he hadn't known he was seeking until it came. His breath shudders out of him, his blue eyes finding her dark ones, seeing heat and surprise and need in their depths. For a moment, he wonders if the same might be said for his.

"I won't," he says, then kisses her again, firm and hungry, giving himself over to the moment once more.

[takecourage]

She gives herself permission not to think and just lets herself react to the way he kisses her, the waves of want that she can feel almost rolling off him. Her hands are back on his hair, holding him close, keeping him to the kiss.

[more_magic]

Even if he could pull away now, Darlington knows he wouldn't. Alex's fingers twist in his dark hair, keeping him in place, keeping him sunk into only what's happening between them now, and it's perfect. Both his hands now slide along the dark fabric of her dress, along the line of her back, pulling her as close to him as he can get.

As carefully as he can manage, if with considerably less grace than when he'd led her as they danced, Darlington starts to guide them back towards the bed, large and plush and inviting, full of a promise he hadn't expected when they'd first entered the room. When the back of his legs hit the edge of the mattress, he sits, tugging Alex down with him.

[takecourage]

She can feel the heat of his hands through her dress and, in a flash, she's remembering the heat of his breath against her through the lace of her panties on Halloween, his hands on her under her shirt as he'd pushed her back on her couch in Darrow. She's remembering every single time he's touched her, as well as every single time she's wanted him to touch her, and then he hasn't. He sits down on the bed and Alex goes with him, ending up in his lap, a leg on either side of his thighs, her toes barely touching the floor as they kiss, one arm curled around his neck.

[more_magic]

Alex straddles him, almost bird-light as she perches in his lap, and once again he thinks of Halloween, of only a week ago, of the dizzying whirl of his own desires. His hands map some of the lines of her body, pressed as close as they are, long fingers tracing hips and ribs and shoulders, straying along her back and tangling a little in the ends of her hair. He's still hard, knows she'll be able to feel it with the way she's sitting, but there's no shame in the thought of it.

He nips gently at her full lower lip before he moves away from the wonder of her mouth, restarting his trail of other, careful kisses from before along her neck--and then further, down her chest to the edge of the dress's neckline and the soft swell of her tits. They're long past prelude, and Darlington welcomes it all wholeheartedly.

[takecourage]

She can definitely feel how hard he is and she rocks her hips down against him, lets him know just how much she welcomes that, wants it. His mouth works it's way lower and Alex moans as his lips brush against the press of her tits under fabric.

[more_magic]

Darlington groans as she rocks down against him, just the friction enough to make his head spin--to say nothing of the way Alex moans as he kisses his way along the slope of her tits. His fingers find the metal tab of her zipper again; this time, he only hesitates a moment before he starts to pull it down, slowly enough that she has the space to stop him.

He would, he knows he would--but god, he doesn't want to.

[takecourage]

It takes her a moment to realise that he's starting to unzip her dress and, once she realises, she doesn't try to stop him. She tousles her fingers into his hair again, rocking her hips slowly.

[more_magic]

He undoes the zipper as far as it'll go with her sitting in his lap, his hand slipping beneath the fabric of the dress, splaying against the bare skin of her back. Given the line of the dress, he might have expected to find nothing beneath, but somehow it still takes him by surprise.

He groans again, mouth pressed to her chest, his nails scratching lightly down her spine as her fingers tug at his hair.

[takecourage]

"You can take it off," says Alex, already shrugging her shoulders, shivering at the feeling of his nails scratching lightly over her skin. He'd seen her in her bra before. This is different, obviously, but she realises that she's never cared less about that in her life. She wants to be seen by him.

[more_magic]

Darlington nods, struck wordless again in the face of that permission and the vulnerability it holds. Gently, he peels the top of the dress down, Alex helping it along with those rolls of her shoulders and the graceful way she pulls her arms from the sleeves.

The fabric pools around her waist, a dark eddy of velvet flowing across both of their laps, and the sight of it--and of her--is more beautiful than even Manuscript's hallucination had made it seem.

[takecourage]

Suddenly topless in front of him, Alex finds herself feeling shy in a way that she's almost never felt before. She lightly covers both tits with her hands, biting her lip over a smile.

"That was easy..."

[more_magic]

It's a step beyond anything that's happened between them up to now. They've been in each other's spaces, slept in one another's beds, seen each other fresh from the shower or tousled from sleep, but never this. The closest, maybe, was that first morning in Darrow; his hand roaming lazily across her tits as he came out of sleep, the easy sweep of his thumb against her nipple until she'd pulled away. But even that had been over clothing, and no real comparison to this at all.

When her hands go to cover herself, Darlington pulls back, looking up at her with a brief flicker of concern on his face until he sees the way she smiles, somehow both coy and shy. "Maybe so," he says, running a finger along the curve of her cheek. "But I don't mind it."

[takecourage]

She sees the flicker of concern on his face, even as it melts into a smile. She bends her head, kissing the corner of his mouth, and then she's slipping out of his lap, onto her feet, her hands still cupping her tits as she shimmies her hips until her skirt slips down to pool around her feet. It leaves her standing in front of her in lacy panties and hold ups. If she'd known he'd be seeing what she was wearing underneath, she might have gone with a garter belt instead.

[more_magic]

As Alex gets out of his lap, he's aware of the embarrassing tent at the front of his trousers, that evidence of how caught up he's been. He bites his lip, shifting a little where he's sitting on the bed as he watches the dress fall the rest of the way down, exposing her further.

Those snakes at her hips, heads and forked tongues seeming to peer out from the waistband of her panties, take him a little by surprise--but then, he hadn't seen them, that day at Il Bastone. He hadn't thought to remove anything more than the ones on her arms, to help her start anew and show her a little bit of the wonder still left in the world. For just a moment, he thinks about tracing their undulating curves with the tip of his finger. Instead, he simply looks up, his gaze taking in each part of her, seeing her, until his eyes meet hers again.

"Don't mind this, either," he murmurs, an almost bashful smile on his face. "If you had any doubts."

[takecourage]

"Yeah," she says, her eyes dropping to his lap and then flicking back up to his face. "I can see that."

She could blame this on the champagne, but she's not that drunk and she knows it. After a moment, she squeezes both of her tits and then takes her hand away, one coming to rest on her hip, the other tousling into her dark hair.

[more_magic]

With Alex this undressed, he feels almost off-balance in comparison, his tie only slightly askew and divested of nothing more than his jacket and shoes. He laughs, his cheeks flushing as her eyes flick down and then back up again. "Point taken, Stern."

She drops her hands, exposes herself a little more, and once again it feels like an act of trust. Like the tattoos, the slim silver barbells piercing her nipples are both unexpected and not; another mark of who she'd been, but more easily hidden. There's something almost beautiful about them.