Chinese Quarters, Birmingham, January 1919

"Your name, sir?"

His eyes widened imperceptibly at her words, which only drew Lupe's attention to the delicate, dark lashes that framed them.

"Tommy Shelby."

She'd heard plenty of Birmingham accents in the few months she'd been here, but never one quite like his. His voice resounded through his chest solid and deep.

"Well Mr. Shelby, what can we do for you?" There was a soul under all of his sharp edges. A soul just like hers. They'd barely spoken at all but in these brief moments, he made her feel like they were the only two people in the world. Just a man and a woman. Lupe wondered what it would be like to feel that all-encompassing, magnetic focus every day.

"A room if you'd please." Tommy pulled closer to her and relaxed his death grip on his uniformed cap. He stood at least a head taller than her and she needed to crane her head up just to keep his gaze.

"Just the room? Or is there anything else we can…" Her words trailed into almost a whisper. Lupe was thirteen when she learned that trick. To pull a customer even closer. She wanted Tommy closer. Was he as struck by her as she was of him? "...provide."

"A woman like you should've caught my meaning."

With a red lipped smile, Lupe beckoned him towards the room she'd been assigned for the night. "You're quite mistaken, Mr. Shelby. There are no women like me."

She lit more red candles as he settled his khaki jacket and hat on the divan tucked in the corner. "My name is Guadalupe if you'd care to know."

"After 'The Blessed Virgin'? Interesting name for a whore." Tommy eyed her up and down as he spoke. She could practically see the intricate machinery that made up Tommy Shelby reevaluating her in his head. Lupe let her fingers pause in their mission of divesting her of her dress in order to skim them over the curve of his cheek as he almost unconsciously leaned into her touch.

She pulled away, the heat of his body a brand against her fingertips. A quick movement of a hairpin and her polished ebony curls tumbled down her back. "She absolves penitents of their sins. I absolve penitents of a different kind of sin."

He murmured into her ear with a hint of both steel and humor as he tucked himself into her side to settle those nimble, rough hands on her waist with far more care than Lupe ever thought a man would touch her with.

"And what would you know of my fucking sins?"

"You carry them about as well as you carry that uniform, Mr. Shelby. Like you carry that firearm by your side. The stories of suffering always differ but it all feels the same." Her mistake was known in the instant he pulled away from her and she cursed the words that tumbled unbidden from her mouth. Without him near, the icy breeze cut her to the bone. Lupe resisted the urge to drape herself soothingly on the sharp, geometric planes of his back that suddenly faced her, to count the vertebrae that peaked through his shirt with her lips.

"I didn't come here to talk about that damned war."

She sat on the ornate embroidery of the coverlet and gestured to the empty space next to her. "Then we won't." When Tommy finally sat, after a heartbeat of him just standing there, looking like he might flee and never come back, Lupe leaned her head against his broad shoulder. "It never happened. We can just be a man and a woman, sitting on a bed."

"... I'd like that." Hesitantly, he entwined his fingers with her own with a fragility that nearly broke her heart.

She thought happiness suited him more than the devastation currently painted in the tenseness of his jaw did. "How about you tell me of Tommy Shelby, the man." Her bitten nails absentmindedly traced the lines and calluses that tracked across his palms.

"Do you always talk this much?" The war might've stolen away what charm Lupe could tell he once had but the teasing lilt in his raspy, accented voice still got her heart racing. Tommy had lowered his face towards her, so close she could see his blown-out pupils, dark with lust, and smell the musk and salt on his skin. The candlelight flickered for a moment and sent warm shadows dancing across that wicked, sinfully generous mouth.

Ah, but she couldn't let him have all the fun. "We've got all night, Mr. Shelby. Have you considered yet that maybe I'd just like to hear your voice?" A gentle head tilt emphasized the curve of her smile and as she peered innocently through her thick lashes, she saw him bite his lip and inhale sharply-

His fingers grasped her chin, his mouth fluttering like a butterfly against the corner of her mouth as he spoke. "I ain't one for mindless chatter." Petal soft kisses were pressed behind her ear, down the fine marble column of her neck, the crook of her shoulder, then the hollow of her collarbone. He would drive her mad if she let him. No matter how pretty he was nor the warmth of the heat he ignited under her skin, she had no intention to let him.

Lupe sucked violet blooms under his jaw then lathed the shell of his ear with the flat of her tongue. The involuntary moan she wrung from him was well worth it. "But you are one for a mindless shag?" Beneath the fingers she'd settled on his neck, his pulse jumped at the huskiness of her voice.

"That's enough backtalk love, you've made your point." Tommy peeled the rest of the silken dress she'd started to undo earlier that evening and let it drift to the floor. With a giggle, she abruptly pulled away from him to unbutton her brassiere just out of reach, tossing a coy look over her shoulder. The way he burned while he watched her… the intensity in him averted her gaze, if only for a heartbeat.

That momentary submission was taken as the invitation it was. With the grace and agility of a hunter, stalking his prey, he moved to press himself flush to her back, those hands skimming here and there across her body without settling where he knew she wanted him to go. "And what exactly was my point, Mr. Shelby?"

"Sometimes…" He paused to tuck his face into her soft throat with a deep breath as if he wished to impress her scent and the taste of her skin into his mind and never forget it. "Sometimes I can't believe I made it back at all." Tommy didn't need to say it, but she heard the unspoken especially now. His gruff whisper sounded like something that might be spoken in the sanctity of the confessional.

Lupe turned to press his chest against hers and her lips against his. "Then let me prove it to you."