NOTES: Stages of Love challenge: 'Intimacy'
Disarmed
His guns are the first to be laid aside, heavy in her hands as she pulls them from their holsters and lays them out on the bedside table.
Her cheek presses briefly to his chest as she reaches around his waist to unstrap the holsters. Through the linen of his shirt and the skin and bone of his chest cavity, Elizabeth can hear the beat of his heart, pumping in a steady beat.
The jacket is the first item of clothing to go, shrugged off one shoulder after the other and draped over the chair with a heavy slither.
Then come the knives.
Experience has taught her where he keeps them - in his boots, strapped to his calves, in the vambraces on his forearms, in the lining of his coat, in sheaths against his hips, and a half dozen bound up in the thickness of his hair.
Her hands skim over his torso, wondering if he's hidden another one somewhere, just to surprise her. He did once, flipping it out with the insouciance of a boy counting coup and trailing the tip from throat to bared navel while her pulse soared with fear - or excitement.
She lets her hands drift over the front of his pants, and he shifts slightly as her hands brush over his erection, already pulsing beneath the leather-like material. "Satisfied I'm not hiding anything?" There's a hungry note to his voice as he leans his hip against the desk.
"No." Elizabeth lets her fingers linger, running over the bulge with measuring familiarity. "But we'll get to that later."
His growl is eloquent in its frustration, but there's amusement in his eyes as her hands drift up his front to the throat of his shirt. She doesn't rest her hands against the muscle beneath his clothing - not yet. Instead, she takes a deep breath of sweat and musk and the almost-cinnamon spice of the herbs he uses in despite of Atlantis cleaning techniques and begins unbuttoning his shirt.
He arches one thick, dark eyebrow at her. The restlessness in him is stretched tense - the desire to be doing something.
He's not a man for standing still, but he's willing to humour her.
She'll make it up to him later.
Buttons slip from their holes and her fingers trace over the revealed skin while she presses her lips to his tattoo, to the left pectoral over his heart, to the top of the line of dark hairs that march down from his belly button into the waistband of his pants...
His muscles convulse against her lips and his hands close around her shoulders, hauling her up against him. His fingers cup her buttocks, pressing her firmly against his groin, and Elizabeth gasps at the blazing heat of his desire and the response it provokes in her: languorous fire. "Hurry up."
She eyes him, almost smiling her challenge. "Make me."
He makes her. She lets him, revelling in the freedom of letting go.
Ronon allows her to disarm him, never knowing how he disarms her.
- fin -