The Best-Laid Plans

by etsfanfics

Pre-DMC courtship of Elizabeth and Will. After Will and Elizabeth free Jack from the gallows, the couple battles with class differences, political intrigue and an entire smithy of swords, as they set out together to explore the expanding boundaries of their relationship and build their dreams for a shared future of new adventures.

23. The Earliest Convenience

His voice was in her bones. His name was in her voice. And her voice was in the sighing sea mists that shaped the night.

Then he was kissing her at last, a loving touch that grew slowly more sensual and inviting until their lips were caressing and embracing like lovers in their own world, preparing to consummate a new and amorous marriage. Her arms had wrapped about his neck and head, insistent he come closer, even as their noses burrowed against each other's cheeks. For an answer, Will's hands slipped up her thinly clothed back, sending rushes of bliss through her that flowed into a heady thrill after he closed his embrace and brought her entire upper body flush against his. There were no stays, no jackets, no coats caught between them this time, and the sudden, novel intimacy of her breasts compressed to his, with only meager, open-necked layers of linen for dress, made her break their kiss with a gasp.

Their gazes tangled, fires raging as brightly within them as without. Her heart was outright hammering for him, and to her astonishment, she could feel his hammering back. In ebbs and flows made deeper by her quickening breaths, the cushions of her chest pushed and eased against the sturdiness of Will's work-hardened planes in repeated laps of pleasure.

Oh, this felt good. It felt so good.

But almost agonizingly, she could also sense the way that this really was only the beginning, a scratching of the surface—somehow she could taste the way moving forward together could feel so much better than this already did.

In almost perfect unison, Will's mouth dove for hers right as she sprang for his. Their lips crushed together with a sudden urgency Elizabeth had been trying to contain for weeks, now finally unleashed with purpose. The way his tongue ran along her upper lip, pleading her access, hinted that Will's experience was not much different. Within moments of opening her mouth, he was inside, intently running his tongue along hers with decadent, plum-flavored strokes that conjured fleeting, little notes of enjoyment in her throat. She responded eagerly, enlacing him with sensuous motions that made his hands wander over her back and gather her fast to him. Her body sighed into his body, and she savored anew the nearness between them.

Then they were parted again. At first, Elizabeth thought it was to breathe, as her head was beginning to faintly spin. However, in the very next moment Will's breath was hot on her ear, and he began kissing her cheek.

The gentle gifts of his soft lips contrasted sharply with the rougher bristling from the stubble framing his mouth. She hooked her hands about his neck and shoulder, sank against his chest and let their bodies melt together, knowing he would hold her upright. And when his first kiss became two, then three, and his attentions moved from her cheek, to her ear, to the very receptive space beneath, a shiver ran down the entire length of her frame. But rather than a chill, it was a warm rush that settled in the bottom of her belly like the first shallow pourings of a fresh bath—it made her clutch at his shirt.

A moment of stillness settled, Will pausing over her tensed motions—as though unsure what her grip meant. She hugged him to her tighter in response, craning her head for his better access.

"I'm afraid something's happened to my pulse," she attempted to reassure with a tease. "Would you mind checking it again, to be safe?"

A little puff of blithe humor tickled her skin, made every hair on her person stand at attention. "If you insist—although I don't think there's any point…" His encircling arms held her closer, as he leaned them both to one side. "… I can already feel your heart trying to reach mine."

He melded his lips to her skin again, and the resuming of his kisses nearly made her trip over the words of her riposte, "Oh, now you've noticed? Typical craftsman! It only becomes real once it's under your touch…"

"Nonsense," he breathed. "I have eyes too."

And he pressed on—just as she'd wished he would for far too long, sending thrills up and down her spine from the touch of his lips beneath her ear, the hold of his hands across her back.

"Ah," she sighed, "and is that your real excuse for your past 'examinations' of my bosom?"

She felt his lips curl tight. "No."

They fell silent for a time, as he kept kissing her in what she now understood would be a winding path of worship along the underside of her jaw. She was delighted and wanted no interruption, no hindrance to this pilgrimage. So, as his lips traveled the edge of her jaw and paid their votives, she quieted herself enough to simply smile, lean backwards and tip up her chin, granting her reverer unimpeded invitation to the sensitive spaces underneath.

"Would you like to use it as an excuse now?" she breathed as his lips greeted her jaw.

Will moved a hand to cradle her head as he dipped them both further to the side. "Not unless you prefer the 'typical craftsman's' methods."

And perhaps they should not have been so exceptional, these cresting waves of paradise, tumbling over her from mere caresses and flighty flirtations. But it was all new, so new, and so much closer than any prior kisses or embraces Elizabeth had ever enjoyed. Their escape was metamorphosing more and more into the dreams she had once tried to deny having—only this was different, made better with these playful words she did not expect traded.

Remembering they had the entire night to keep enjoying themselves, remembering who it was that romanced her now, started her giggling against Will's hair as though she were a girlish fool.

His thumb stroked her ribs in tiny repartee, a tickle that made her squirm just a touch. "Is that a yes?"

"Only if you don't tickle me—don't you dare."

Will said nothing in return. Though his beard scraped and tickled, his hand settled. But she could feel his smile responding to her giddy laughter, little gusts of his own impish giggles beginning to toy with her already-stimulated skin.

She kept laughing anyway, not from any teasing touches but from the happiness tickling in her heart.

Then in a strangely quick change, his attentions began to feel both too much and not enough, at once. When he placed his open mouth under her jaw, it riled her bitterly. Every extra kiss he settled closer and closer to her throat felt hotter to her, like he was taking ardent little pieces from the fire inside her and spreading them like candles across her being—not only over the places his lips touched her, but in every other place their bodies were woven together. His hands were still in her hair, cradling her back; their chests still pressed their heartbeats together, twin rhythms in reach. Their song was growing wild. In herself she felt igniting newer spitting fires of desire not only to be loved but to act out her own love, just as thoroughly. Her fingers coasted down the side of his face and neck, teasing out the edges of her own irascibility upon his skin.

Once Will's lips came to take her chin, the will of her own snapped. She foiled his plans by roundly intercepting his mouth with hers. Elizabeth kissed him now, with a furor that coaxed his tongue to come back and make more love to hers once more. In mimicry of this smaller pulling motion, her hands slid up his front to cup the back of his head, urging him to come down and lie with her as she sank towards the blanket.

He submitted to her persuasions without contest, falling with a voiceless grunt.

Together they lay on their sides, fervidly entwining their restless bodies for an untallied space of time. Seconds, minutes or hours may have passed—if they had, Elizabeth could hardly tell the difference. Time was meaningless for now. All she knew, all she wanted to know, was her hunger and the feast: the leisurely, blissful indulgence with which hands, and hearts, and sighs, and sense, and love, and life itself all had begun to enfold her and him.

However, at length she felt her impassioned frenzy tempering, if only a shade. The need to catch her breath finally, temporarily overcame her urge to remain engaged with Will's attentions. So, she ran the hand not pinned beneath his side down his chest in soothing strokes, building her own mettle as much as his. Then with some effort, she finally decided to break their kiss. Reluctance held her as tightly as their embrace, prompting her to only let him go with the capture of his bottom lip between her teeth, tugging in a gentle, parting taunt.

He moaned weakly into her open mouth, his eyelids fluttering under the weight of an obvious wish to continue the exercises of their liaison.

"I forgot what we were saying," he confessed.

"So did I," she breathed another laugh.

For a few seconds, he remained brushing the edges of his nose across hers in minute consolations for their suspended intimacies, stoking her wanting with his own.

"It must not have been all that important."

Perhaps not. What was there to say now that could be all that important…?

She was tempted to humor him—to humor herself, really, and dive back into another kiss immediately. But gathered together as they still were, Elizabeth could feel Will's own need to breathe affecting him as well. So, after he instead began to inhale into his rest with her, she humored herself instead by slipping her arm around his torso, and falling back into the attentive haven of his gaze, so faintly glimmering in the night's deepened darkness.

There was a certain way Will had of looking at her, just like he was now. Not even moon-shadow could hide it. His ardent admiration made her feel like she could battle the world with all its trials and heartaches, even as she also believed she could tumble into him and trust he would cradle her, shield her, if ever those battles and heartaches threatened to overtake her. In him she saw her strength and her peace all at once. And a part of her wondered whether she could ever live to be a person who could offer such priceless things back to him, instead of the temporal trinkets and goods her wealth afforded them. Her gift showers all felt so cheap now in comparison.

With a knot of sudden, overpowering emotion caught inside her throat, at last Elizabeth choked back her own quiet, "I love you."

For a wonderful moment, Will's heart danced in his eyes with the firelight flickering, and she wondered if he could feel how her heart was leaping to join in. His lips had parted, with little bits and pieces of words stumbling over them as he seemed to be searching for a way to answer her.

"You kill me a little in the most exquisite ways, every time you say that."

As he spoke, he reached out to her, and ran his knuckles delicately along her jaw, smiling at her with that lopsided smile which could make her feet slip and stumble out from under her at the smallest shift in circumstances. She was lucky she wasn't standing now, that she was already trying to catch her breath. The knot was loosed. Effortless, instant, and broad, she smiled back at him, enthralled by the way she could feel so united with him not only through their touch, but through the depths and colors of their interwoven feelings.

She could feel her heart and lungs slowing at last, coming closer to the rhythm of the waves breaking on the shore, though they crashed with no less power. Winds called attention to the way she and Will had begun to sweat, but she didn't care. In fact, she wanted him still closer. He was so, so warm.

With a pointed smirk, Elizabeth hooked her ankle around his to satisfy herself a bit better.

"Death by a thousand cuts," she purred, somehow. "A fitting fate for a master bladesmith and his wife."

Will chuckled, and responded by running the toes of his untangled foot along her sandy sole—an abrasive, tickling motion that made her squirm against him, sparking new waves of giggles between them, with fresh currents of revelry inside her.

Then, bussing his cheek back against hers with a similar scratch, he let his lips return to hover just over her pulse, beneath her ear. "You've pierced me far too deep for that."

So had he done to her—his words and his tone of voice worked their way through her, swift and deft, like another mythic arrow with its head caught in passionate conflagrations. She had been wounded for him, and she was certain it was mortal. She knew now that arrow would not be removed, and she would bear its fiery piercings in her to the end.

Until then, they would find themselves entwined like this in times beyond count—oh the fortune of it! Their fingers kept tracing personalized, wordless love notes across each other's backs. And for a time Elizabeth was content to simply hold Will and be held, to gaze into his eyes and see her whole world shining in the night. Whether they sighed or laughed or whispered, her breath mingled with his, taking pieces of him back into the letter locks of her soul.

Though shadows were creeping over them, stories could still be glimpsed on Will's skin. She could map out the scant freckles on his nose, cheek, and chin, re-capture the whispers her kisses had left upon his parted lips, trace the evening's course into the bends of his expressive brow. Unsleeping dreams were glazed upon his mahogany eyes, with scenes she could have reveled in until dawn. As it was with finer wines, she felt her senses had all the familiarities of his features memorized by now—and yet when offered another serving, she still could never deny herself drinking him up. He had become her blessing, and was swiftly becoming her greatest vice.

When she reached out to cradle his head in her hands, her sigh was for only him to hear, "You're so beautiful…"

His lips parted with surprise, and she instinctively ran one thumb across his emotion. Had she never told him before, like this? Did he think she was making up flatteries for his sake?

Realizing how utterly hopeless she was, but not caring in the slightest, Elizabeth lifted her hand to try and comb her hands through his dark, salt-tossed ringlets. They'd already grown tacky from the sea's affections laying its own claim on him, and she was only able to weave her fingers so far.

They laughed together.

"Are you certain about that?" he asked. "Or should I apologize again for the mess?"

"I think both," she returned. "But then I do rather like your hair set loose like this."

"Do you…?"

"Mm."

Then bent on returning his prior favors, she lifted her lips to begift her own set of lingering kisses across the face that had beguiled her so, in these tides of night: a kiss to his eyelid, delicate and sweet; a kiss to the corner of his mouth with that damned dimple, smiling and coy; a kiss to his chin, inviting and—

Will tore a page from her book, zealously commandeering her progress and sweeping her mouth back into the embrace of his own. The sounds of whatever protest she would have uttered were quickly swallowed by them both. Elizabeth challenged him at first, initially affronted that he hadn't taken time to appreciate the doting adoration she had been bestowing on him so admiringly, and wishing to win the situation back. But he met her defiance with teasing evasions and playful counters, tongue thrusting and twirling and retreating much like she'd witnessed him do with his swords, enticing hers into a dueling dance she simply could not resist.

It was riveting, even a tad dizzying. And for the first time in their young courtship, Elizabeth found herself falling in total surrender to the flows of Will's advance.

Beneath her, she felt her side sink into the sand, as his hand slipped out from where it had been pinned against the blanket. When their mouths popped apart without her expecting it, a whine unwittingly broke from the back of her throat—until she felt him sliding his arm under neck.

"Here," Will quietly begged her patience and cooperation.

He was only repositioning their bodies. And with his elbow's crook now settled to form a convenient pillow, her sagging head and scrunched shoulder were eased up, out of the awkward angle she'd ignored in her fixation on tasting him, now that the taste of plums had faded.

Their lips jostled as they adjusted themselves together. With his supportive forearm now stretching down from her shoulder along the length of her spine, his hands met and settled near the center of her back. She was cradled by him now, and able to let her suspended muscles ease, relaxing into the bed his arms made for her.

Then their break was sealed back up—as immediately as they could they were connected again, somehow even more indulgently than before. He delved into her mouth greedily, while Elizabeth wrapped her free arm around his head to meet the depths of his greed with the raw ferocity of her own. With the fingers of each hand buried in the curls of his head or the folds of his shirt, she pulled Will towards her with tremendous insistence, encouraging his torso to bear down towards her, to roll with her into his cradling lower arm, so that she lay less on her side and rested more on her back. He followed her without breaking their connection, and the combination of his impassioned kiss with the more weighted crush of him against her felt exceptionally delicious to a degree she hadn't expected. She leveraged their new position to oblige them both, digging her hip against the sand and arching her spine to mold her front fully into him. Skin met glorious skin where their necklines gaped, and where their thin undergarments yet covered, still heat found radiant heat. Their upper halves were all but merged together, and she relished the experience overtaking her.

Why, how did this simple thing feel so goddamn good? Was this why poets rhapsodized about embraces? She never wanted to kiss this man standing apart or wearing stays ever again.

And she could feel she wasn't the only one pleased by this pose—Will had tightened his hold on her again, fingers flexing into her back, to lock their closeness into place. Now he was the one quietly moaning into her. With each desirous utterance passing from his mouth to hers, Elizabeth was growing more and more heady under the sensualities that were engulfing her frame, dazzling her mind. What a liquor this was, knowing how easily she could turn such luxuries back on him who she loved…

Then for the second time tonight, just as she was getting ready to take back claim of his mouth, Will rended their kiss apart abruptly. However, in doing so, he promptly buried his face under hers, making it immediately clear he was hunting for that place beneath her ear which had stirred her before.

"Another pulse check? How diligent…!" Elizabeth tried to joke, even as she lifted and turned her head, keen to assist him in his search.

"You mean, 'indulgent…'" The low answer wisped against her neck with the tips of Will's whiskers, it made her prickle pleasingly in other places.

Her lips quirked towards the stars above them. "Do I?"

His free hand coasted to cup her side, curling firmly across her ribs. And once his mouth found his mark, the latest changes in her breath were born not from surprise but a gleefully anticipated, raw enjoyment.

"Mm, I do…"

Different from before, his wandering lips now lavished her neck's tender spots, confidently retreading the trail he mapped under her jaw, across her throat, towards the mirrored place under her other ear.

Her grin flashed wide, sparkling like a mirror of the crystal carpeted skies above.

This trek seemed less like a journey of worship, and more like the beginning of a detour towards debauchery. No longer did Will's kisses feel like his well-known, gently offered tributes. Instead, they were now wet and breathy explorations of every angle of her thumping pulse, her fervid sighs, her mounting desperation. And she needed more of him, needed more of the skin that had, until just now, melded with the unshielded parts of her bosom. Driven to a quest of their own, Elizabeth's fingers set about tugging at the back of his shirt, making him shudder once or twice as she did.

"What are you doing?" he rasped.

Though he did not let his question deter him from his task. He continued with an altered course—his mouth now blazing his way down her neck. And the heat and humidity of his touch breathed tropic gusts of life into the fires glowing inside her, like the first warnings of a wildfire in her jungle's underbrush.

Elizabeth closed her grip, tighter.

"Balancing the scales," she sighed, then huffed through another haul at his clothes. Why was this so difficult to do?

Eventually, Elizabeth achieved her aim, yanking Will's shirt tails free enough from his breeches to plunge her fingers up its opening.

He shuddered and clutched her slightly tighter at her contact, groaning softly into her neck. "I don't feel 'balanced.'"

Yet onward his lips journeyed.

"Oh! My mistake!" she answered lightly. "I suppose that makes it your turn to try and correct it."

Will breathed another sound like a laugh. "Except you know I'm heavy-handed."

"Except for when you're not…?"

Sharpness spurred a gasp of surprise out of her. A warning scrape of his teeth across her was his answer, pushing her to dig her own fingers into him.

"Cheek," she accused.

She felt him smirk, and he kissed the spot that had taken his warning.

But her hands could now embark on their own explorations that would satisfy a few curiosities for herself. With the tips of her nails and finger drifting in interchanged lines and circles across his smooth, muscled back, she reveled in the heat sparking directly under the meetings of their skin, the bends and twitches of his very sinews' answers to hers—

Oh, things had definitely changed from before. Be it where he kissed her, or where she caressed him, there were no more reverent candles being lit across her flesh, but torches threatening to become bonfires. Her body had awoken, as keen and aware as she'd ever felt it before. Each sense was now so illuminated, she couldn't help but feel and taste and hear her own desires resonating through her all at once. The wrinkles in her shift rubbed against the skin of her back, her hips, her chest, magnified under every ardent touch and motion. Shifts in the sea's breezes fluttered against the hairs on her calves and arms, puckering her skin like gooseflesh. Though the night air felt so crisp as it filled her lungs, it was pure swelter when it left her, transformed inside her into exhalations of what had to be the first fires of passion.

She could feel everything twice as much as always.

And somehow it was not enough. These embraces, these kisses—again, it was all too much to bear and yet not enough to satisfy. It was a truth tripled by the burning coolness of Will's mouth. Through a path that wandered very little, wetness arrived at the hollow base of her throat. And when he latched his lips to her and sucked, she felt a surge of her own frantic heartbeat bolt through her veins, until her pulse was rhyming its beats not only inside her chest, or her neck, but even more notably within the soft cushions between her legs.

Disarmed somewhat by this new sensation, one she quickly found to be both exhilarating and agitating at once, she locked her knees together in a clench—whether to stifle the feeling or intensify it she wasn't certain. And even as he thrilled her, she found she still needed more of this touch, craved his mouth and hands to explore every inch of her skin and unearth every itching, pulsing part of her as desperately as though she were dying of thirst.

With this aim, Elizabeth tore her freer hand out from under Will's shirt. Easily, she shrugged to liberate her shoulder from under her night shift. Then she buried her fingers back into his raveled curls. And with insistent nudges against his scalp, she guided him to kiss her across this newly bared path. He took up her invitation readily, stimulating her with tarrying touches patterned between his lip's gentle grazes, his teeth's sharp nips, and the rasping tickles of his facial hair. With the hand she'd left behind him, she returned his favor, continuing to ghost and swirl the tips of her nails up and down the frames of his spine.

When his breath touched her again, it did so with a shudder.

His kiss quickly reached the pinnacle of her shoulder. And once he was there, she expected his path would first continue down the length of her arm, that he might kiss her down to her fingertips as he'd once spoken of before. She shrugged a smidgeon more to free additional expanses of her skin in offering for him, and considered wresting her arm free from the sleeve altogether.

It proved unnecessary. To her greater excitement, the direction of Will's lips veered on a different diagonal, and he began to pepper kisses downward, over the increasingly pliant planes of her chest.

A single, breathy laugh left her. "And what do you think you're doing, sir?"

It had been meant as a joke, but perhaps she'd taken upon the role of disapproval a mite too convincingly: he looked up, and the eyes that flashed towards her were rounded with some alarm.

For a reassurance she smiled, prodding her fingers into him. 'Go on—please come along and play.'

He understood her meaning at last, relief and mischief tugging his lips to one side. "I thought you wanted a craftsman's examination."

The pulse between her legs fluttered. "I wasn't aware craftsmen made such use of their mouths."

"Only if they've also moonlighted in piracy." He lowered smirking lips back to her cleavage.

Oh god, would they really go there? Did he hear the sound her breath made when he said that?

"And what does that have to do with anything, Mister Pirate? Are you on the hunt for treasure? Do you wish to take your spoils of my maidenhood upon this beach?"

The hand upon his back she coasted over his hips.

His eyelashes fluttered over darkened eyes, whispers flickered over his tongue, but in the end he only pressed his lips to her skin in answer, one time after another.

Elizabeth let her hands fall still and her eyes slip closed, taking full advantage of the comfortable recline which Will's arm had enabled her to settle into. She felt positively spoiled and elated to be so. And despite her relaxed position, she soon could hardly contain the thrills of expectation racing wildly through her now. This, all of this, was the very intimacy with him which she'd begun craving, even dreaming of, since her first stumbled awakenings into such amorous appetites. She had wanted him so desperately for what now felt like an eternity's past. Now she had him here at last, stamping his affections directly into her expectant flesh. And in a fleeting whirl, it felt too good to be real—enough so that a needling pang of paranoid dread made her wonder, fleetingly, whether this couldn't be another one of her dreams, simply made more vivid by having fallen into the deepest of sleeps.

After the first pleasant shock of Will's whiskered lips brushing against the subtle swell of her breast, his hair tickling its other, she knew better. With a thin involuntary whimper drawn from her lips, she held her breath, ready for a fresh push into uncharted territory.

Until he'd paused, simply hovering over her.

And he waited…

And she waited…

Her eyes flew back open, little bells of concern beginning to ring in the back of her mind over the prolonged break in his efforts. Was this moment actually too good to be true—not because it was a dream, but because Will could be unwilling to go any further with her? Had she said the wrong thing, calling this a spoiling? He hadn't seemed so disinclined to knowing her, earlier…

When she met his gaze, she found he'd raised his head to display a slight smile across his countenance. "Actually, perhaps we ought to make our end here, toni—"

"No!" she cried without a second thought, and tightened her fingers into fists against his back.

She was ready to argue, to reason, to beg, if she had to. But glimpsing a revelation of teasing humor in the shape of his cheeks calmed her alarm and made a blush bloom across her face. Key cards in her hand had been revealed without her even realizing they were now playing a game. But she couldn't be bothered by it—he was still holding her, and seemed to have no desire to let her go.

He said nothing in return, only giving bits of his teeth a flash, with that terrible, beautiful grin of his pulled askew. She paid rapt attention as he lowered his head back down, and let the sultriness of his breath whisk over the tingling, feverish skin of her décolletage. The bristly hairs on his chin grazed her provocatively. Then with his darkly dazzling eyes riveted steadfastly to hers, he lay a single, slow, scorching kiss to the thin chiffon plushness of her left breast.

Hot-blooded shivers coursed through her happily, before melting her back into a comfortable repose and settling near the thrum inside her thighs. Her mind was beginning to fill with waves of other noises that crowded out her thoughts of speech—distracted, she strove to make sense of the more carnal languages her limbs were now pruriently chattering in.

But the din didn't matter much. She didn't need to recite sonnets here. In fact, there was only one word she felt she needed in this particular moment:

"Continue."

The ardor in Will's eyes shifted its hue to a deeper, more sultry sable. Hooded by the forest of lashes that framed his vision, she watched his focus fall once again onto her charms. His fingers were digging deep into her back now, just as fiercely as she held to him. Downward he kissed and kissed and kissed, all but razing her reason on his wanton way along the edge of her shift's low-slung neckline.

But the treats from his mouth now working doggedly towards the center divide of her cleavage could not wholly distract Elizabeth from the way his contours had begun to drift farther and farther away from hers. In an act spurred by her own throbbing wants, she set out to rectify this mistake, disentangling her ankle from Will's and winding her leg up to hook her knee around his hip.

To her initial frustration, he resisted contact with her in their lower parts, instead twisting his hips back against the determined pull of her calf. However, whether it was in an attempt to soothe her, a hope to turn the tides in their little tug-of-war, or some other baser instinct, she also felt his hand abandon the place it had kept at her waist. And her frustration was swiftly replaced by a fresh thrill, when his fingers slipped across the loose fabrics of her skirt, sliding up her leg to firmly grasp her barely-dressed knee and draw it higher over his waist.

"Elizabeth…" he breathed, a restless hush.

A flurry of frisson overtook her at once: the lift of that one knee stretching her muscles in deeply satisfying places; the fondling of Will's hand, as it began to wander up the sensitive underside of her thigh, making each beat of her pulse feel more and more like his hammer was striking her core upon his anvil; the prickling titillation as Will's lips ventured into the undiscovered valley between her breasts. His journey there wasn't far—the edge of her light bodice barred him from more complete explorations. Even so, the few steps his lips could take shallowed her breath with delectated excitements.

… until his fingers arrived to firmly cup the curve of her bottom, at the very same time the cool-hot wetness of his tongue dipped between her breasts, reaching where his lips could not.

Elizabeth gasped softly, arching herself into Will's mouth to please her hungry heart, which was now pounding riotously across her tail. She needed more, needed to soothe the aching demands building to a point of insatiable vexation through any touch she could take. Desperate but aware of the way Will still pulled his center so determinedly away from hers, Elizabeth grabbed the wrist of his wandering hand, and led him to cup his fingers over her breast—a barely-restrained redirection from the nether-place she truly wished to lead him.

His head withdrew from her sternum, his gaze snapping up, searching hers with the flutter of a dozen questions, as though he were sifting her expression for a sign that she'd somehow, inexplicably moved him by mistake.

Briefly, she wondered whether she ought to have asked, rather than have assumed that his bold fondling of her thigh would transfer readily to other places of her choosing.

Yet of anything that could have done it, his eyes, ever clear as wide-open windows, gave his feelings away entirely: such bold, fiery enchantment and open longing she'd never seen in him so flagrant before. He wanted her as surely as she wanted him—she was certain of it, through this look alone. Yet even if dark of night or shadows of his uncertainties had clouded his visage, his feelings still would have been given away… by his thumb. In a motion that seemed almost absent-minded, Will's hand had shifted, so that his thumb had begun ever-so-delicately stroking that softest center of her breast, coaxing her emergent nipple into a fuller, happy bud through the scant fabric stretched across it. And despite the minuteness of the gesture, each movement caused clusters of little tingles to ripple down her body into that vat where her lust was collecting and stewing, deep below.

Her lips twitched into a pleased, flirtatious smirk.

"Blacksmith's hands?" she baited him breathlessly, hoping it'd remind him: this wasn't the first time she'd tried to have him touch her so.

Everything surrounding this moment was different from then—the firelight enhancing the dim glow of moon and stars, the sand and breaking waves serenading the night, the open-aired solitude painting every relaxed minute passing them by. And yet Elizabeth couldn't help recalling that missed connection at sea. It lived in her mind so constant and frequent, mingling with her longing for a different, better conclusion.

The ardor in Will's eyes crackled and roared louder and more blistering than the little bonfire beside them. She saw her smirk tug upon his lips, drawing them into their own coltish curve. "Right… I had almost forgotten."

However, still he remained—perusing her with his eyes, yes, but still altogether unmoved except for the titillating strokes of his hand and the shifting postures in his heavy-yet-steady breath. It was as though they'd come to stand together on the edge of a cliff, and even though she'd taken his proverbial hand, he wanted her to be the one to signal their step into their final leap.

"Are you certain?" he asked.

She nodded. To make it inarguably clear, she shifted his real, physical hand back to rest more fully atop her softness. Then she released his wrist to lay her own palm over his, cupping herself over him, through him.

"Don't stop," Elizabeth echoed their past.

Then she clenched her fingers around his, guiding him to squeeze her breast firmly.

For a second he seemed struck unbelieving, with a single laugh puffing from his belly. But in the next second Will took her cue, and began to move on his own volition again. His fingers kneaded her, gently at first. And while he did so, Elizabeth allowed herself to fall back against his supporting arm, sinking into the blanket and basking in the stimulating sensations now beginning to grip her, massaging her pumping pulse and stirring up her simmering hot arousal. With each press he made into her, a new wave of delight rushed through her body and left her lips in a contented sigh. Those sighs met the ears of her paramour, who, understanding her delectation, responded with gradually increased intensity to his motions. Measure by measure, he molded and moved her, until her building pleasures spurred her sighs into low, stringed hums of contentment, and all she wanted to do was bend herself into his nimble hands.

Reflexively, her fingers moved to his working arm and dug into him with the tips of her nails.

This slowed him some, and after a moment's uncertainty, he asked, "Good or bad?"

"Good," she groaned. "More."

Heeding her, Will resumed his service heartily.

And how delectably strange this was! Though he touched her in one part of her body, she could feel the relish of each squeeze tingling through other parts entirely—one awake and hungry part in particular. Each dance of his fingers, each push of his palm in her tender parts above, felt as though they were reaching and stirring her heated parts below.

It wasn't long after that, she felt things begin to change in her, again. The thrumming need in her was growing loud and raucous. And she began to wonder: how many times would it be that she reached this point of overflow—needing more in the midst of receiving, needing him in spite of his giving?

She felt the tips of his fingers slip along the hem of her neckline.

In a nearly frantic motion, Elizabeth wriggled her lower arm free from where it had been wrapped behind Will's back. Then grabbing his face with both her hands, she all but slammed their lips together in a steaming, stumbling reunion. She swived his mouth furiously with her tongue. He returned the favor by massaging her tit so vigorously it nearly hurt—and god somehow it felt even more gratifying that way. Once in the past, he'd complained about the handling of his hands being too rough for moments of delicacy, for her—and while that had proven untrue in most circumstances, here she could hardly do anything but breathlessly laud the chance to feel a moment of accuracy to this supposed "failing" of his. Not to be outdone, her hands wove back into his hair, where she grabbed his curls and twisted tight, capturing his own strained gasp in the cup of her mouth, while panting and moaning back into him.

Will, oh, Will…

She took her chance to finish what she'd started before—a chance to do some wandering of her own. With open lips drifting, she kissed her way down his bristly chin, nipped along his squared jaw, to the corner of his neck. Her arrival there spurred him to gasp and release her front in favor of clasping her thigh again, burying his other fingers tighter into her back, and once more uniting their chests in a fantastic crush. She could feel his heart thundering against her lips and breasts. Sighing, she eased her grip on his hair to resume gentler tracings along his scalp, before she took his earlobe between her teeth. She gave it just a hard enough bite to hear and feel him hiss a restless curse.

His hand slithered beneath the fabric draping her leg, seeming once again determined to seek out an appreciation of her backside—directly across her skin this time.

She wanted to tease him for it—to make some joke about the progress in his 'examinations'—but she was much too enflamed now to string the words together. Instead, it became a contest. Elizabeth lustily bent herself on what was quickly becoming a strange campaign of retaliation for all he'd been doing to her—on this night and well before. She began to scrape his neck with a cascade of toothy kisses in the same waterfall pattern he'd painted over her neck.

When her cheek brushed against the collar of his shirt, an additional impulse took hold of her. Her body was in a rage, and she could feel him resisting the pull of her leg less and less, could feel the cosseting of his fingers more and more. Perhaps he could be persuaded to finally give in with her and take the plunge, with just a nudge's incentive more. Rather than pursuing a longer course in any particular direction, she seductively ran one hand along his collarbone, widening the opening of his shirt as far as she could in the process. In a taunting trace mimicking his past tortures, she brought her tongue to the slope where his neck tapered into his shoulder.

She licked him once.

He hissed.

Then, rather than kiss him again, she fastened her open mouth to him as he had done to her, and began to suck and bite vigorously at his overheated flesh.

The grunts she drew out of him, the clutches digging into her skin, made her believe he was becoming overwhelmed—and perhaps for a moment he may have been. With her fingers still exploring beneath his shirt, she kneaded and probed for a similarly sensitive spot along his breast as her own. But without looking, it was difficult to find. Still, she had her hold over him—all he managed to say or do was let his head fall to her shoulder with low whispers of her name.

She was halfway to the point of pushing him down—making him lie beneath her, so she could lavish him in every way she wished—when the unexpected warmth of his fingers tucked past her neckline, invading the cradle of her nightdress' bodice.

Elizabeth was momentarily stunned to a sort of thrilled stillness as his heated fingertips lightly traced an arc directly across the silken skin of her breast. For a few suspended moments, her breath halted while his hand continued to brush against her, grazing in tickling explorations closer and closer to her sensitized center. Once or twice he paused, as though he was idly debating the resumption of their prior, more hearty exchange. Yet she remained fixed to him, frozen with her lips upon his shoulder, while his fingers rounded and considered squeezing her, before seeming to change his mind. Just as she was feeling a sense of impatient anticipation begin to crackle and spark inside her like spits of anger, his hand finally found his aim. Gingerly, Will positioned his thumb over her delicate, peaked nipple, giving it an appreciative little brush.

She shivered.

Then he pressed down and swirled, languidly.

Something wild boiled inside her like a wellspring—something made akin to the experience she'd had when he'd touched her there before. Except this time, it was magnified to a depth that threatened to sweep her away, if she was unprepared.

And she was unprepared.

With her breath leaving her in a rushing, "Oh!" Elizabeth melted backwards, and landed heavily against her companion's arm.

It was brief, but the increased intensity of the moment still left her reeling from some surprise. Will's movement hadn't been anything terribly different from his other touches. Yet just by bypassing a scrap of cloth, somehow a world of difference had come into his sway over her. And she lay on the brink of laughter over the mad reality of what it was they were both doing here, together. How deliciously naughty they were being! This was what the night had in store for them? Oh, she was all but shaking in her eagerness. She'd been imagining a night like this for ages. Now that it was happening she could barely resist giggling, overcome.

Giggling? While the one at the center of her most ardent dreams was fondling her? What was wrong with her?

It was only after coming out of this brief, intangible delay that she registered how Will was leaning over her again, with shapes of confusion molded into his demeanor.

Reaching for the side of her face, he chuckled through his bemused concern, "Are you alright?"

At first, all Elizabeth could do was smile up at him and shake her head like the cupid-struck idiot she was. Then, after realizing what Will had actually asked her, she belatedly changed the motion of her head from a shake to a nod. A throaty laugh finally managed to slip past her lips.

While it didn't appear to ease his confusion entirely, the perplexed way Will grinned back in spite of himself indicated that, even though he didn't understand her reaction entirely, he at least knew he hadn't done anything wrong by her.

They began laughing together again, rolling in a shared giddy mood with each other, like they were in the bubbling shallows of the shore.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, "I just… It was a surprise. A very pleasant one."

"It was a surprise to me too."

Their little bonfire, though burning lower in its ring, still made the night clear and warm. With gazes locked together through their merry song, Elizabeth could embrace another moment to allow herself to be taken in by how arrestingly handsome Will was to her, with his eyes so dark and bright at once. He was looking at her in that way again, brimming with his honest love, tenderly stroking her jaw with two careful fingers. His lips looked like heaven to her—she retraced them with her own fingertip lazily, and watched the tones of his expression melt and simmer. Even though it had slowed some, her heart was still beating rowdily for him. And she continued to feel its echo, replicating in perfect time her weighty rhythms of yearning between her legs.

She wanted him so. From each hair on his head and body, to the bare soles of his feet—and every roughened, sweetened, heated, heartened piece of him that lay between. She wanted his hands and his heart, his heat and his hopes. His everything… Everything.

And she would give him everything back, if he would accept it.

With another adoring smile and a gentle pull on his neck, Elizabeth lifted her head enough to softly press her lips back to Will's, in one sweet, lingering kiss. He welcomed her back easily, returning her affection with the same luxurious savor, cupping her head in his large hand once more. Their lips parted. But before they could be carried away again, she drew herself back.

She offered him her hopes on the cautious curving of her lips. "Do it again…?"

The obsidian in Will's eyes burnt with glowing cinders, and Elizabeth watched him mark different corners of her face seconds at a time, drifting through a dream space between her thoughts and his. Not for long. The corners of his mouth quirked upward, and it sent her heart back into a tussle.

His whisper bounced in their mutual good humor, "If you insist."

But when he bent his head to kiss her lips again, when he set his hand on a path trailing determinately up from the cage of her ribs, she stopped him with the placement of her fingers over his lips.

"Not like that."

Questions wavered in his eyes once more.

The search for an explanation stirred up little wrestlings of uncertainty in Elizabeth's stomach—twisting and turning competitions between the courage to pursue what she wanted and the unfounded worry that he'd turn her boldness away. But then she thought: he had been the one to slip his hand inside her gown, all on his own… twice.

They could be bold tonight, together.

Her mind thus made, Elizabeth sucked the inside of her bottom lip between her teeth to steel herself. Then holding a deep breath, she hooked her fingers around her nightdress' neckline, and rolled it carefully down to unwrap to the evening's chilling airs and her lover's watchful eyes those dainty, curving sweeps of herself she wished to share with him.

She was revealed now—not just in body, but in the wide-open exposure of her immediate intentions and desires for him. And it seemed such an overlong hour was passing, wherein all Will did was look at her with an inconvenient shadow cast across his countenance. She could glimpse his eyes as midnight lagoons, shaded by the canopy of his eyelashes. However, while they were highlighted with bits of stars and firelight, they were drawn far too deep and dark to read. His body was unmoving—not even that thumb of his moved against her ribs. Only his focus flickered up and down, back and forth in minute movements, over and over her form. In every other way he'd become as still as a statue.

Though the night was crisp across her skin, prickling the hairs on her legs and arms, Elizabeth felt a flustered heat spreading rapidly over her face. Was he admiring? Hesitating? Withdrawing? She resisted the little impulse she had to cover herself back up. Instead, she reached her hand for his arm, intent on dragging her fingers from his knuckles along his forearm—a cross between reassurances and subtle reminders that she had extended him a new invitation. Like a broken grip, she let her breath go in an anxious shudder.

Then she saw it: his inner fire, which had been casting his eyes over in smoldering smoke and concealing the true inferno roaring within. Amidst floods of relief, her heart pounded inside her—no longer in barely restrained, plodding stomps, but at an unbound gallop bent on escaping her altogether, in a mad dash towards him. Giddiness was taking her back with a renewed vigor, as though she were falling drunk from the addictive draught that was the sight of her beloved Will, more and more obviously enraptured by the sight of her nakedness, however partial.

Laughter began to bubble back up in her, this time heavily fueled by flattery.

"Are you alright?" she teased him. Her hand continued to trace its way upward over his arm and around his shoulder, wordlessly imploring him to come back down to her.

'Touch me again…'

Her words and movements spurred him back to life, returning his eyes to meet hers, quelling her doubts that he could not hear her.

"I will be…" he muttered roughly, and leaned into her again, at last.

Her head remained comfortably nested in the crook of one of his arms, like a pillow; her hand remained wrapped around his shoulder, like an anchor; his lips remained achingly soft in the kiss he laid upon hers, like a sacrament. But only the drape of his gaping, loose shirt touched her breasts, in maddening, brief feather-like brushes. While he kissed her progressively lower once, twice, three times, he himself kept his body pointedly, carefully hovering over her at this same agitating distance. Even his free hand had perched itself in the wrinkles of their blanket, instead of at her waist or…

What was he doing? He knew what she wanted—she'd told him. Was he taunting her? Whetting her? Had she not specifically asked him to touch her again?

"Will…!" she began to protest.

But long since out of patience and consumed by aggravation, Elizabeth changed her mind. She swallowed her words to lunge at her gallant instead, bent on wrapping her hands around his neck and ensnaring him in her own terms of engagement.

It was as though he'd been waiting for her: the moment she moved, his arms shot under her, lifting her and enabling them both to embrace each other in an ardent crash. Though her lips reunited with his on a desire path well-trod, their kiss sparked with a thrill as vibrant as it were the first.

She had thought she could sense every detail of their tactions before. But with her open bodice, each brush against him—more especially, each brush against the wide-open gape of his chest—had crescendoed into an infinitely more intense and tantalizing experience. It wasn't just their fabrics' little wrinkles she felt anymore, but the very threads in their weaves. Not just the smoothness of his skin, but the gentle tack of his sweat, the sultry heaviness of his breath. Truly, every touch on any length of exposed flesh felt so much more potent now, to the point that even the smallest brushes were making her shiver and jump. And the raw fervor seeping out of him, into her, oh…! If she could have his shirt by the end of the night, she would do it, just to have more of this...

By the end of the night? Hell, what was stopping her now?

Fueled as though it were by a fury, Elizabeth grasped the tails of Will's shirt again. And without the barest warning she began to haul the garment over his head.

He obviously hadn't expected it. With his arms still locked around her, the shirt had no way off his shoulders as she tried to lift it over his head. As such, it quickly became stuck in a weird sort of hood caught over those very unprepared shoulders.

From inside this badly made tent, a scoffing choke left Will's throat.

"Wait. Hold on—hold on, Elle!" he began to sputter and giggle as he struggled momentarily to free his arms from where they were pinned under her back.

Once his hands slipped free, Will bowed his head and raised his arms into a more helpful position for his doffing—a notably vulnerable position, with his flanks left very much exposed and altogether unguarded. For Elizabeth, the temptation was a distraction too terrible to resist. And with her lip bit over her own titters of amusement, she abandoned Will's shirt with her right hand, to instead reach underneath his trap and prod at the tender flesh of his side and stomach.

Another guttural sound, and Will writhed hard enough he lost balance, falling face-first into her stomach in his struggle to slip away from her reach, where he could break free from his unusual restraints.

"No-no, don't!" Elizabeth cackled, and made a fresh, fast grab for his shirttails once again, pulling them forward as she'd first intended. "I won't do it again, I promise!"

In response, Will said nothing, as though he were weighing her words for their honesty. If his face hadn't been hidden away, she would have wagered his eyes were narrowed to slits. But he seemed to relent, instead planting his hands on the ground to either side of her and rising himself back up on his knees, braced like a dog—braced… and again unguarded. Elizabeth hesitated, debating whether she ought to keep her promise or give into the impulse to attack him just once more. She didn't say exactly what she wouldn't do again, only "it." If she did something else entirely, she could simply just say that wasn't the "it" that she'd forsworn… But as she debated whether the new little torment ought to involve his armpit or the waist beneath his breeches, it took a moment too long. Her considerations were given away. She felt the most subtle shift in his weight from hands to knees—a hint of preparations to snatch her attacking hands before either could find their mark.

Ah, well. There was that other, more enticing game she wanted to win against him, anyway. And she missed his eyes already.

Giving his shirt another determined yank, she hitched it more than halfway off his body. Then with two more tugs and a spot of cooperative wriggling she freed him at last, unveiling his head in a rowdy mess of his curls netting thick across his face. And while he puffed and she laughed, Will uncuffed his hands from the sleeves, so he could sweep his hair back into something more manageable.

Elizabeth snatched and tossed the shirt away with a manner that was both grand and completely unceremonious…

And also unguarded.

She hadn't expected him to threaten revenge until her wrists were already pinned in the sand above her head. And she certainly hadn't realized he could hold them there so securely with only one hand, anchored firm against the ground. The tables had been turned. And with his free fingers Will was able to trace a slow warning shot across her unguarded ribs, just below her still very much denuded bosom.

"I could really get you for that, you know," he whispered low enough to send a rumble like distant thunder rolling through the caverns housing her heart and her… other things.

Suddenly the night's chill wasn't the source of the shivers racing through her spine anymore. Now they'd become each other's beholders. And she could feel his fiery gaze creeping over her, even as hers seared him with her scrutiny.

She opened her mouth, meaning to goad him a tad further. "Prove it," she might have dared with a clearer mind.

But the sight of him twisted her tongue over itself, and stopped her speech solid with fascinated distraction.

Twice before she'd seen him this way, though it had been many years since and never in a light like this. Once they'd stolen away together on an imaginary expedition involving some unplanned swimming on Will's part. But they'd still been children at the time, and the novelty of any nudity, however partial, had barely begun to part company with the bodily amusements of farting. Years later, Will had joined some friends in wrestling together on the edge of town, and she had caught sight of him from the carriage. In those years, he had been outright scrawny. Resilient and strong, yes, but in a way that was often deceptive, when his limbs were thin as the reeds of a willow—it was an impression that was made even more distinctive after he'd begun to spring up in height faster than his muscles seemed able to keep up with.

It was only within the last year or two that Elizabeth had begun to note the ways Will had begun to grow in different directions besides up. And now she could see all the subtle ways he differed from what she'd expected.

He was a workman first and foremost—even before tonight, while fully dressed, the broadened breadth of his back and the strength of his hands had made certain that fact never was fully lost on her. But bared as he was now, even under dim shapes cast in shade and flame she could see the ways he diverged from the ideals prized by the upper classes.

There was no longer an absence of flesh from his bones. Perhaps thanks to the meals she'd been feeding him, there was a slight softness in his sides—but even so, his shape lacked the roundness typical of one accustomed to abundance. Instead, years of labor, a voracious pursuit of sport, and the touch of time had begun to sculpt his body in deeply appealing ways.

His arms had retained an elegant length from his youth, yes. However, they also had begun to bear evidence of his life's work through their subtle bulking, especially where they met his body. His shoulders were broad and robust—obviously worked often and hard. His upper half was as pronounced as past glimpses had insinuated, with breasts taut and squared window's ledge… or something less ridiculous to say. And his waist appeared surprisingly stout, tapering only gradually to his narrowed hips. Where she expected to catch glimpses of his ribs, instead his sides were defined by hints of sinewy ripples of flesh that held her fascination, as they repeated in a pattern of widening waves down his otherwise flat belly.

Even in the dark, his skin was not what many would call pristine. The sun clearly knew him well, though she knew not why, when his trade confined him to long stretches indoors. Hardly any part of him appeared untouched by its rays throughout the years—lightly bronzed and hearty, with a smattering of stray freckles scattered here and there from his neck to his breast.

In almost every sense, Will's rustic features resembled something much more akin to artists' recreations of classic myths than the distinctly softer-sided, urbane gentlemen which filled her father's world. He was an embodiment of youthful vigor. And while some would insist the sum of it all made him look like nothing more than a poor countryside swain, to Elizabeth it cast him all the more in the adventurous airs of the sea. Looking at him made her feel as though the sun was loving her now, even in the dead of night. The effect was only more exaggerated in the way that they were lying tangled together on a beach, where the ocean breathed upon every one of her senses. And with his wild, windswept hair curling over such broad and strong shoulders… all at once, she had fallen altogether spellbound.

What magic had made it possible for the lanky boy at the center of her purest affections to transform so well under the emblems of her most indulgent desires? To her, he wasn't just beautiful—he was breathtaking.

But in between the rushes of excitement she felt from discovering these new sights of him, there were a few scattered flares of disappointment. After all, the image was incomplete—and she was nothing if not curious. When her eyes roved over him, over and over they inevitably would slip towards his hips, eager to find answers to the greatest of her curiosities about his design—only to be reminded that those answers still remained concealed from her.

Thinking how badly she was hankering to un-conceal him brought the blood in her quim to a boil.

And for a moment she was struck stupid, having quite forgotten what she was even doing with him. Here they were both sitting, ogling each other outright with their bodies unbosomed and billowing for air. How—why had this happened again?

Because she had needed to know his skin joined with hers. She still needed it. Whatever meaning shame and immodesty had held for her before was completely lost. She had laid open one small part of herself to lure him in, then taken his entire garment for own satisfaction.

"Now we're even…" she responded to his threat.

"No, I don't think we are," his voice ground back. And he slid his hand one arm, freeing her wrist. Then once his fingers ghosted her side, he bent towards her once more to slip both his arms around her afresh.

Oh, when his naked breast met hers, oh…! Elizabeth could have dissolved through the blanket and become lost in the sand entirely. In fact, she was convinced the only reason she hadn't was due to the action requiring her to slip from Will's embrace—and she had no volition whatsoever for such a separation.

She felt surrounded by the very essence of who he was, to the point of it filling all her senses—she could smell his muskiness beneath scents of his soaps, and it made her sanity slip even more. This was the first taste of what heaven actually was. It had to be. Every sanctimonious busybody who had ever condemned this sort of communion was either a liar or had never been so in love. She was convinced of it. Who could ever be held like this by someone they treasured and not feel the very rotations and lights of the universe preparing to burst from their soul?

God, why was she still wearing her shift at all?

"Have I failed to leave you breathless, yet?" Will whispered against her ear, disrupting her train of thought.

Another rush coursed under her skin like the northern winds whispering over the surf. "Only just…"

His kisses returned in a slow-rolling storm, mouth interfusing with hers, slow and searing. Then the winds shifted, and his lips began covering her like summer rain, trickling down her throat and chest. She clutched his shoulders, hugging him tightly to help him cradle her as he worked his way back towards the mark they both desired. Each pass of his mouth, each sweep of his hand, each tickling brush from his locks of hair heralded the sparks which struck out from the center of her heart, like pops of lighting along a dusky horizon. Her skin was humming well before each touch, and it sang perfect songbirds' rhapsodies long after he passed.

"Speak to me, Will…"

At length, Will's whiskers brushed her sternum, his lips slowing as his caresses approached. "What shall I say?"

"Anything," she sighed, and traced her fingers through his hair. "Tell me what you feel. Tell me how you love me."

"I am telling you…" In carefully deliberate steps, he crossed below the boundary previously cordoned off by delicate embroideries of cotton.

"Tell me more."

The storm was slowing, but only enough to allow a temporary calm within its eye to enfold them for a spell.

"I feel like I'm dreaming," he answered her. "But it's far too perfect to ever wake up."

Though the pitches of night still masked her vision, her body felt like it was bathing in molten sunlight distilled from a perfect afternoon. Over his head, she could make out the gorgeous dips and turns in the landscapes of his back. All the while, on the edges of her senses, she could feel herself being surrounded by a sea churning with anticipation.

"You look like a vision."

Each heated exhalation he left against her skin scorched her almost as fiercely as every little brush of his nose, chin and lips through her cleavage.

"You smell like a fantasy, a garden, a goddess."

And when he turned his head, and she felt his mouth greet the inner side of one virgin breast with a slower, more tender meeting, Elizabeth shivered, whimpered, as if love had fallen into her, instead of the other way around.

"I bathed just for you," she confessed. "Thinking about your hands and your lips, and hoping you'd…"

Things were happening so quickly now, buffeting her with surges of sensational novelties.

A disbelieving twitch tugged at his lips. "That's the dream talking."

While her nails traced loving patterns along his head and shoulders, she watched his concentration settle over her body. Her heart was skipping, and her head felt breezy.

Elizabeth shook her head. "This is absolutely real."

While his kisses changed direction, and climbed back up her neck, Will reached for her chest with a light hand. Again, he mimicked the circular patterns she mapped over him, feathering his fingertips around the circumference of her left breast, as though he were directly swirling the waters of her longing.

And his voice echoed her aching, and the sound rattled her bones, "God, I want to touch you everywhere."

The winding strokes sent ripples of pleasant pricklings down her spine, hastening the return of the storm inside her, roiling from the tips of her tits to the depths of her tail.

"Do it," she whispered. Flexing tension in her fingers rooted out new places to gather inside his hair, encouraging his closeness while keeping his curls away from his face. "Touch me and kiss me all over with surprises, like you did before."

He drew back to look at her, silent laughter gathered into wrinkles along his eyes. "If you ask for it, is it really a surprise?"

"It is when I've never felt it before." Her fingers coiled and uncoiled, nails tracing along his scalp, beckoning, beckoning…

A gentle smile. "Who can argue with that…?"

His lips greeted hers before their tongues slowly entwined anew. Once his hand settled to cup her again, this time she felt she knew what to expect. Her mouth curled against his, expectant. Yet when his thumb stretched out and brushed once across her unsheltered nipple, she shuddered deeply anyway and felt her body throb.

Will drew his head back again, brows perplexed but mouth teasing. "You're rather ticklish here, aren't you?"

"Apparently," she gasped. Then unable to restrain herself she ran her hand along his naked arm.

"Would you like me to stop?"

Despite his question, he was still running his thumb in more tantalizing rotations, spiraling lightly around her breast's central circle. It took Elizabeth a moment to remember that she'd warned him not to tickle her, at the beginning of all this—and belatedly she realized he'd honored that request, despite her tormenting somewhat hypocritically a little later.

With her breath caught in her chest, she shook her head.

"I think we've found an exception. I rather like how it felt when you pressed me before."

"And this?" he asked, and began to ghost two of fingers parallel, grazing along opposite sides of her nipple, forward and back…

There was a puddle of warmth beginning to gather in her belly.

"Better," she answered.

"And what about this…?" he asked once more, before taking her bud into the gentle pinch between his forefinger and thumb, then answering her with meticulous, swirled presses of pleasure.

Deeper into the jungle of his hair her hands burrowed—the throbbing of her pulse returned above and below. "Mm, better!"

His lips met her skin upon her lips, her neck, her chest. And while his fingers worked, he retraced his path down her breastbone a final time in a chain of kisses. Then the scalding touch of his lips began to trail a new path up the slope of her rightward breast. Beneath his fingers, still tantalizing the crown of its twin, Elizabeth's heart stumbled and started. Then a brush of his breath gave her only half a warning before she felt a warm, wet caress across her unclaimed nipple.

Like an excited reply, she felt the muscles along her cunt flair once in an unexpected, natural reflex she'd never felt before.

"Ooh…!" It was a sound which grounded the squeak of her surprise against the groan of her only slightly confused enjoyment. It was as though her body itself was grasping, straining, doing something on its own she couldn't completely explain, for the sake of a connection with him that wasn't there.

What the hell? Did he just lick her? Was he going to try what she thought he was, returning the favors she'd left on his earlobe and shoulder?

"Surprise," he quipped.

"Oh, lord…!" she tried to groan sarcastically, complete with a teasing roll of her eyes—it came out much more enthusiastic than that, thanks to him passing his tongue over her again.

The way he was holding her, the way she was bending into him made his fingers dig into her spine, but, oh, this felt worth it. He was repeating the stimulations of his hand and tongue over her excited tips, and into him she dug back, clinging with her own pricking nails into his naked shoulders. Her heart was in a craze from the way his touches were riling her. She felt her hunger for him shifting into a ravenous appetite made of rapidly madder forces, with passionate seas now swirling hot and furious in her guts. Where was his other hand?

Then without warning he took her into his mouth, and began sucking and carefully rolling her plump bud between his teeth and tongue.

Lightning started to crack within her, sending flashes of hot rain tumbling down through her spine. With a full-throated gasp, the exhilaration arcing through her curved her torso violently into him, this time as much out of the need to dig her hips into the ground as anything else. This time it did not stop him. While his mouth licked and teased one breast, his hand returned to kneading her other again. And even though she was already laying on the ground, her fingers flew from his hair to grab fistfuls of blanketed sand, as though trying to balance herself with the earth itself against the combined forces assailing her senses, inside and out.

She felt her cunt flex on its own again, once, twice, three times—as though her nethers had finally lost all patience with being neglected through this encounter and were demanding fair attention with a ferocity unlike any she had ever felt.

"Still good?" she felt Will's question breeze hotly across her skin, and the storm within her fought against the wildfires he was setting all over her.

"Yes!" she barely choked. Her own breath was becoming too churned up to capture any other proper sounds, let alone coherent phrases longer than, "Oh god, Will…!"

It was too much and not enough—she needed more of him, specifically between her legs. Now. The craving crashed over her in such an overpowering inundation, it was practically through instinct she'd dug her heels in the sand, accidentally pulling the edge of the blanket up in her desperation to twist her hips and rub her tail against anywhere on Will's body.

Where was his other hand?!

But he was twisted off to the side, at an angle that made it difficult to make proper contact. Without getting a leg over him like she'd done before, she could not really reach him. And while she floundered with this predicament, her lower body was practically begging for her to meet with some part of him, as quickly as possible.

So, in what could only be described as a fit of necessity, Elizabeth found a way to heave and twist and turn both of their bodies. In a few quick motions, the blanket was completely dislodged from under them. There was a grunt as her knee fell not-too-lightly against his gut. But after a brief tumble and shuffle, she had Will below her, pinned by the heels of her hands bearing down upon his shoulders, with her legs straddled across his stomach.

Sitting up and leaning over him, she could feel that she'd begun trembling from the tumult he'd started inside her. The only sounds she could take in for now were the rushes of their labored breathing and the pounding of her own heart. His hands had come to rest on her hips—so he didn't exactly seem to object to their change of position. And looking upon him now, feeling the influences they had over each other in a new way, wasn't improving her situation in the slightest. There was a satisfying look of surprised anticipation in Will's burning, starlit eyes. His hair was a tousled mess strewn across an even more snarled blanket, now practically a wadded pillow under his head. Sand was getting everywhere, sticking to the layer of sweat that had begun to coat his neck and shoulders. His bosom heaved a deeply distracting rhythm—one she could also feel working underneath her through the muscles in his stomach, synchronized enticingly with the beating effects of her desire.

Her pause for admirations hadn't gone unnoticed.

"Enjoying the view?" Will joked, a little out of breath.

Oh, yes. She most certainly was.

And clearly she wasn't alone. If she followed the direction of his gaze, she could see he too had let his eyes drift back down over his lover's body, readily fixating on the voyeuristic display she'd now accidentally presented to him at an entirely new angle—one which had enabled her previously slight breasts fall to a decidedly plumper advantage.

Her laughter came out in husky wisps.

"Almost as much as you, I take it."

She was more than happy to provide him an enticing lure towards the deeper waters in which she hoped to sink together.

Will appeared more than happy to be lured so. There was a heatwave simmering in his partially hooded eyes. His lips crept up into a smile of silent consensus, while his hands crept down into a blatant tease along the lengths of her thighs—

"Ah-ah-ah!" she chided. "You had your turn for advances—this one is mine."

Then countering her weight with her palms, Elizabeth wriggled her way out of his grasp and into his lap, using a series of stirring little shuffles, which involved an amount of rubbing wholly unnecessary and yet…

No… No, to her this was definitely necessary.

And not only did every little glide provide a delightful scratch for her raring, only-slightly-proverbial itch, but Will's answering argument had been snatched from his tongue when her hips passed across his. She might have thought it had been a bit of pain which robbed his speech at first—she could feel a part of a hardened something underneath one leg as she moved. Thanks to hearing Violet's recent crude talk, she had a solid guess what it was, and wondered whether she was pinching him or… something else unpleasant. She hoped not—it felt far from unpleasant to her.

But after giving an airy rasp of his own, he let his head fall back, let his eyes fall shut. And with his lips parted, she could see he had fallen even further, not into any pain but into a compelling bit of fervor.

The grin gracing Elizabeth's mouth was pursed in satisfaction.

She'd learned in the time surrounding her debut that there was a surprising ease with which she could turn certain men's heads without a single touch. As she'd toyed with that power at her father's various political engagements—at balls, at dinners, at late nights in wealthy, booze-filled parlors—she'd begun to figure out how she could turn much more than that, if she had a mind for it. And in a way, she relished it—that ability to take haughty, presumptive snakes, and melt them, mold them like clay into shapes they didn't realize suited her or her father's purposes until it was too late. All the wealth and power they'd amassed over their careers, their father's careers… yet all she had to do was tip her chin one way or load a word or two with questionable meaning in another, and she could have them all but snatched on strings wrapped around her polished, duplicitous fingers. It was thrilling in its own way.

Here, there was no duplicity. The only secret to her actions was one that was both known and still only half-spoken between them. Yet watching her influences play so boldly across the features of this man—whose greatest power in her eyes lay in the formidable sway of his own heart and body held over hers, feeling so keenly the effects of both their persuasions sealed tighter and more torrid between them—took the very same thrill, and magnified it in inconfessible ways. For years she had caught his glances, and hoped they meant what she hoped they meant, wished they could last longer than passing chances in time. Now here he was, ready and willing to melt under her. With only a few seconds of touch, Will had been driven into a deep distraction—to put it lightly.

His distraction suited her just fine, for it was her own making. And she'd become now driven deeply by only wicked intentions for them both.

After all, she'd been told revenge was a sin—even though she questioned what such condemnations were worth when it was wielded like this: one lover's eye for another. She had her own lips and tongue and teeth, while he had an entire torso uncovered for her to torment with barely-withheld ecstasies. Whether it took them to paradise or not, she wished to press against him while she kissed her way down to his navel, to make him gasp and writhe and tremble as he'd done to her.

She moved to do so.

The moment she laid herself upon him everything shifted. She heard thunder in her ears and saw lightning in his eyes. She tasted salt off his breast, blended into a savory-sweet cocktail of sweat and sea which she would tipple and lick as slowly as she possibly could. Both his hands were up her gown, running her wild with their strokes up and down her bare thighs. She smelled heat—the fire beside them, yes, but also spectacular, sweltry blooms of iron-raw ardor fused into him, into her. And she felt…

Water?

Against her toes…?! And feet?! And shins?! And—?!

Will's gasp filled both their chests, "The tide! Shit—!"

With reflexes flashing, Will grabbed the blanket that had become bundled under his head, and pitched it double-quick up the sand. Then they were prying apart and scrambling together in another instant, limbs tangling, untangling and grasping about, as crystal foams and obsidian surf swept beneath their camp in a shallow but far-reaching swell.

The fire hissed and sent up billows of white, ashy smoke that blew about in the wind. Whooping and gasping in surprise, Elizabeth righted her bodice, then finally stumbled to her feet with a sword and baldric rescued in each hand.

"Grab the lantern!" Will shouted, in less of a command and more of a delayed, panicked verbalization of his own plans. Before she could even consider his shout, he'd already snatched the tool up himself in one hand and swept up their basket in another.

Then Elizabeth made to run away from the now-receding water. After catching his foot on one of the rocks that had been meant to hold the blanket in place, and stumbling with a hiss, Will joined her in bounding through the soddened sand on her tiptoes towards the lumpy shadow of the blanket on the beach's higher ground. But something struck her like a slap across the face, and she spun around.

"Oh, hell! Fuck!" she shouted, and began to run back towards their washed out camp. "My coat!"

She'd been sitting on it before they'd started kissing, and had forgotten about it entirely.

Will, who had already deposited the basket on dry ground, broke into a sprint towards the water with the lantern's shutter open and swinging wildly, bypassing her in a breakneck chase of the retreating wave's whitest foams. While his eyes braved the shifting tides, she threaded her sights through the soaked beach, squinting for lumps and bumps on the smoothed sand that could be the deposits of her coat. She began to chew the inside of her lip in anxious frustration.

The gown was gone. How could it not be? With each passing second and failure to find it, she was more and more convinced of it. There was no way they were finding it out here—especially not in this darkness. The only bumps and disturbances along the washed out beach were things she'd expect: their ember-filled fire ring, a patch or two of seaweed, some rocks. No riding coats.

Losing her gown on its own would be unfortunate, yes. And if that were all it was, she'd be more willing to accept it. It was rather expensive, but in the end it was just clothing and could be replaced.

What couldn't be replaced was her father's trust, if he found out about this evening. They were both already on shaky ground with him as it was. There was no sophistry in any human language she could conjure to convince him that running away to the beach in the dead of night with her suitor, and then losing pieces of her clothing, could have been done with innocent intentions. Especially because, this time, father's suspicions about their indiscretions would have technically, in a manner of speaking, possibly been … correct. And while losing the gown didn't necessarily guarantee he'd find out about this midnight escapade, the act of covering for it wove yet another thread she would have to keep track of through her growing tapestry of lies—one she was certain he would not buy into, with all the other untruths he already suspected so easily.

And Will would take the blame. It wouldn't matter if she told her father the truth outright and confessed she was the one responsible for their grosser indiscretions, that she had thrown herself over him and been seconds from riding him rantipole. Even if father believed her, he would also choose to believe Will was then one responsible for maintaining their dignity, the one willing to say "no" to whatever impetuous proposal she presented him, the one to push her aside, if need be. It was him father would judge, however unfairly.

And whatever judgement was passed was certain to be long lasting.

She needed a good lie, a good plan for what to say once she got back home. She could claim she had sent the gown out with the linens for laundering—maybe she could pretend she'd bled through it on her last course. That could explain its absence for a little while, and he wouldn't want to question such a sensitive topic. After that… After that…

Shit. Where could it have gone?

"Here!" Will called suddenly.

What? Where?

Spinning in search of him, Elizabeth found Will tramping back through the waves with the lantern shining on a long, soggy mass held aloft in his free hand.

He'd found it!?

For a moment she could only stand and gape in her relief and bafflement, while the water lapped back in and sunk her feet into the silken sands. How had he found it? Even with the lantern's light, she had been certain it would have been impossible to recover. The sea had taken it—she was certain.

Will was out of the water and passing her by before she could marvel at his luck any longer.

"Let's go!" he huffed. Then he slogged with her to the edge of the tree line, several yards away from where the water had surprised them. He settled the lantern into the sand, with its light pointing out towards the sea. "This should be better."

Elizabeth hoped so, but she also couldn't help shaking her head.

"Shit…" she breathed, finally allowing herself to settle back down from their burst of excitement, still buzzing faintly in her hands.

Quietly, she watched as Will plucked away a piece of seaweed from her salvaged coat, then began to gently squeeze out the sea water. While moved by his consideration, she couldn't help noticing what a strange and lovely picture he made: tending to her garment while he himself stood bare-chested and dripping drizzles of sea water onto the sand.

"And where's your shirt?" she wondered.

He shrugged with a twitch of his head to one side. "I thought you tossed it up here somewhere? I'm sure it'll turn up."

Ah, she had, hadn't she? But she also hadn't paid any attention at all to where it landed. Her only concern had been about tossing it well away from the fire. How sad and ridiculous would it be if he was forced to walk home with only his waistcoat and jacket, because she had been careless?

It suddenly sunk in that she'd been peeling away their clothing on an open beach, with the same abandon as if they'd been secured in the privacy of a bed chamber. Undressing wasn't even necessary for what she'd ultimately wanted—to her understanding, most people simply tossed up their skirts, dropped the flaps of their breeches, and had done with it, fully clothed. But she had wanted more, had allowed herself to be carried away.

And he had followed her without protest.

Elizabeth's face flushed, though far from being out of embarrassment.

"Oh, we ought to look for it before the tide comes in any farther," she muttered, then picked up the lantern to return Will's search with one of her own.

He did not follow, choosing to keep tending to her coat. Even so, her search also didn't take terribly long, thanks to the lantern. The sea's winds had helped the shirt farther along her throw, but its path had somehow remained straight. She found the linen caught near the base of some bushes on the edge of the tree line, and was able to return it to Will just as he was spreading her coat over some other bushes to dry. He accepted her offering with a grateful smile and, somewhat to her chagrin, immediately put it back on—though he left it untucked, for the moment.

He didn't seem to notice her disappointment. At first she thought it might be from the darkness. But then, as her eyes adjusted back seeing outside the lantern's lights, she noticed he was staring rather intently into foaming inks of the sea's jetty waters.

"I could have sworn it doesn't usually come in that far," he muttered. She was able to vaguely read a confused pinch in his brow.

She shrugged back at him. "The sea does what it pleases, I suppose."

"Are you alright?" Orbs like black marble pinpricked with starlight turned back in her direction.

The question's abrupt shift in topic caught her off guard. But once she'd turned it over in her mind, she supposed their scrambled had involved some tussling and tripping about. In fact, she really ought to have been asking him that—he'd surprised her and beat her to it. But the warmth in his voice proved contagious, and reflected back at him in her smile. Could he see it?

"Yes, I'm fine. Just a little wet up my skirts," Elizabeth answered with a gentle laugh. Then taking a step closer to him, she offered back, "What about you? It looked like you tripped."

"Just some of the rocks. I'll be alright," he brushed off any calls for concern. Reaching to cup the back of her neck, he drew her towards him and planted a kiss of reassurance into her hair.

With their avoidance of their minor disaster and the return of his closeness, Elizabeth felt in her some of the sparks that had been doused by the sea's invasion, reignited. There'd been a bit of a setback, yes, but their secret was still safe. He was still here with her, paying her the sweetest attentions.

And the night was far from over.

Her approach to their disrobings hadn't made sense before. But now, well… they had both taken rather direct hits from the water and were soaked well above their knees. She couldn't see Will well enough to tell how wet he was, but she could see the growing number of dark splotches in the sand beneath him. They couldn't sit on a dry blanket like this—they'd soak it through! Fresh breezes were chilling her in harsh taunts of the sea's mischief, making her skin start to prickle unhappily—surely if they stayed wet too long, she'd start to shiver. And then they'd catch colds.

Vicious colds.

At which point, they could die… tragically early…

For the sake of their lives, she'd have to request they doff everything—even if it was only for the joke of it. He'd never buy the excuse wholesale, cheap as it was. But he might trade it in for a laugh anyway. And who knew? He'd been so willing the entire night, perhaps he'd play along some more…

But right as she'd begun to tell him, "You know I was planning on taking—"

He'd already jumped back into motion, declaring, "I'll get another fire going for you."

Then he was milling about his work again, as she muttered the rest of her flirtations to herself, half disappointed and half embarrassed with herself, "—off my shift…"

What was wrong with her? He'd just put his shirt back on not thirty seconds ago, and she was already scheming to make him take it off again? Hadn't she just gotten through musing over how nonsensical it was for them to undress here? Why'd she turn around and immediately start trying it over again? And while she was plotting ways to turn their discomfort to her advantage, he was thinking about her.

The sigh that escaped her was heavy laden with multiple frustrations. And a part of her wondered if their goings on would always be like this—her trying to entice him into indulgent little dalliances, him fixated on practicalities he thought she needed, when they'd hardly crossed her mind. In a way, he was doing it again: making assumptions for her benefit; choosing actions on those assumptions without her input. He probably hadn't even noticed he'd fallen back into the habit. She would have to point it out to him later.

'But then maybe this time he's right, and I ought to cool down…'

With… fire. Yes, that made sense.

But if drying off helped them keep their clothes on long enough for her not to seem too much like a wild animal when she pounced on him again, then perhaps it could be worth it. At the very least, it would allow them to dust off and lie on the blanket again.

Oh! The blanket! If he was going to rebuild his fire, she could help reset their camp.

'If there's a third time, we're switching jobs, though,' she joked to herself, and laughed at it under her breath.

This time when she shook out the bedspread, Will chimed in with a question, "How's the blanket?"

"Just wrinkled." She felt for any dampness as she knelt and smoothed it out, but found none. Mostly it was just coated in sand. "I think we managed to catch everything that was by our heads."

She expected him to agree or laugh in relief. When there was nothing for her answer, even after several seconds, she turned around. He'd gone to collect more rocks for adding to the new circle he was building. Since she needed rocks as well, she searched out her own, and secured the blanket—this time with a few more additions along its foot.

Apparently foreplay could make a mess of things.

With a smile to herself, she considered pointing out her silly preventative measure over this predicament. But while Will had returned, he seemed to be thinking about something—deeply.

So, seeing as she was done with the task she'd assigned herself, she decided instead to wordlessly invite herself into his. She knelt in the sand beside him, and offered extra hands for breaking sticks down and building another series of growing pyramids.

"I'm sorry," Will said suddenly, and it bewildered her.

Sorry? For what? Why?

As though he knew she would ask, he explained on his own, "I thought this was a good idea, but it's ended up a mess." He took a particularly thick stick and broke it in half with a strained snap! Then he added the two halves to their little pit, with less care than he had done before. "Perhaps we should just leave…?"

The lantern lit their workspace, but his silhouette remained dim. Still, she was surprised when she caught a frown creasing his brow, accompanying the odd amount of frustration that had taken root in his voice. He wanted to leave? And go where? Certainly, not home yet! Unless it was his home—she was ready to stay with him until dawn, if she could.

But why did he want to leave in the first place? Did he believe she thought the evening was spoiled, because of one little upset? Did she seem upset? Looking back, she hadn't exactly had time or thought for laughing about it, before….

She would just have to make him smile about it now.

With that in mind, she leaned towards him and let her shoulder drop into his, playfully. "Well, I do like a good bit of adventure with my romance, you know."

It worked. She heard his breathing hitch with light amusement, and could see the upward rounding of his cheeks betraying that coveted grin. "If that's what you want to call it when the sea tears us apart, then be my guest."

She smiled back at him widely, knowing he could see her more clearly in the lantern's light than she could see him, and hoping the sight of her cheer would salvage him from his defeated mood.

It did. In an echo of the evening's earlier hours, they built a fire up with less somberly silent chatter. And this time, when it came time for lighting, Will held the lantern open for her to catch the candle's flame on their chosen piece of starting tinder.

She was the one to light the flames in their makeshift pit.

Transfixed by the natural magics before her, Elizabeth watched as night gusts rapidly fanned the orange kindling into tiny, ravenous tongues of fire. In response, Will re-positioned himself to lie on his side between the breezes and the fire ring, acting as a break for the winds and encouraging the miniature flames to consume their food more slowly. They licked at the larger pieces of tinder greedily, but were not quite able to catch hold of it right away. Will reached into the pit and took one of the pieces of tinder in his hand, to light its end and spread the flames about with his helping hand.

Her mind wandered over the course of the night, while her eyes wandered over him in the growing firelight. The wind was playing with his hair again, and sand was beginning to plaster itself over the wetness upon his feet, calves and breeches. But she enjoyed seeing him reclined like this, relaxed and content. He always kept himself so busy, even at times when she felt he didn't need to be. It made the moments when they could simply take a short repose together feel all the more treasurable. So much so, that she was already reminiscing over the game of questions they'd played not more than an hour ago.

How could he think she'd be upset after all that had already happened tonight? Just the chance to giggle, chatter, and jest without any misgivings or hesitations had already shaped into a delight. And that was before…

The fire Elizabeth started leaping to life. When she found Will's smiling eyes waiting for hers across its glow, she felt twin flames begin to catch inside her belly again.

What an infuriating cycle this was. What would it take to let them break it—besides dodging rogue waves from an envious ocean?

She licked her lips and returned her sights to the shimmering depths of the fire's burning center. "You know… I was certain if we tried to fuck tonight, that it was a crocodile that would stop us."

Expectations for his reaction had intimidated her before, but now curiosity overwhelmed her anxieties. She watched thoughts flicker across his features as quick and fluid as the shadows shifting across his lips and eyes: surprise, confusion, understanding, fervor, then at last humor.

He gave his head a shake, and reached for an extra stick to toy with in his hands. "Just watch: now that you've said it aloud, it will happen."

They chuckled together in agreement. After all, that did seem to be how their luck played out lately, didn't it? Any moment they came close enough to each other to discover something new, a different something always seemed to sweep them apart—at least, until they could steal back another, better chance to try again. A crocodile may as well happen—they seemed practically fated for something else truly absurd to happen to them.

Will shook his head to himself in quiet amusement, before raising his eyebrows at her. "I doubt any crocodile that could come wandering here would bother us." He snapped his stick apart, throwing the smaller piece into the fire. "They're more likely to strike out at small children. And we don't exactly have to worry about that."

Elizabeth felt her smile begin to falter ever so slightly.

"Not yet, no," she agreed quietly, as a slightly cooler rush of reality suddenly struck her with Will's casual comment.

They didn't have to worry about small children right now. But if they continued with her desired course for the evening, then technically there was a risk that that fact of their lives could change rather quickly. And if that were to happen, there'd be no whisking away the evidence to the laundry to hide from father's judgments.

But then again, she'd heard of a strange number of affairs in her young life, with no such misbegotten evidences to show for them. Whatever chance there was for such unplanned surprises like that was likely small. Although, there was only really one way to find out. But seeing as they were already intending to marry anyway…

She shrugged a little at Will, and offered another, hopeful smile. "We would have to renew our efforts, first..."

This time it was Will's expression that slipped with somberness. His eyes turned down, bringing a piece of his heart with it. And only after a few more anxious snaps! at the current stick in his hand did his eyes return back to her, dark and rueful.

"I owe you an apology, Elizabeth."

Confusion swept her. Another apology? For what? The tides putting a momentary stop to their plans, still?

He opened his mouth, shut it again in reconsideration, then finally expounded, "… I didn't mean for you to feel as though I planned on bringing you here tonight just to fuck you. I wanted to spend time with you—real time."

Oh, that.

Wait… what?

That's what he thought she was getting at, what she thought she was feeling? Disappointment over their wanton actions? Was she hearing him correctly?

Yes. Will continued with his apology in full sincerity, "But I've acted like a scoundrel. I shouldn't have let myself get so carried away to begin with, and I'm sorry for making you think—"

Oh hell, was he actually this stupid? Or was he willfully closing his eyes to everything she'd said and done with him throughout this tropic night? She couldn't let him go on like this.

"You didn't make me think anything that I wasn't already hoping for," Elizabeth insisted, more loudly than she originally intended. But it got his attention and halted his misguided concession—that was what mattered for the moment.

Will's mouth seemed to forget what it was he wanted it to say entirely, as surprised questions danced in his visage.

She cocked an eyebrow at him, and crawled on her hands around the edge of the fire, until she was able to lean upon her elbows face-to-face with him. "May I remind you who was the one to start picking our clothes off?"

He didn't laugh like she'd hoped he would. Instead, he leveled another surprisingly earnest look at her. "But I am the one who first put my hands under your smicket."

The fire popped loudly behind her, but Elizabeth could not be moved to take her eyes from this man and the almost too-careful way he continued to handle her heart.

"I wanted you to," she whispered. And with her thoughts once again filled by their last broken entanglement, she pinched a corner of his shirt collar between her thumb and finger. "And if I may be perfectly candid, I would confess anew that I was hoping you had planned on bringing me here tonight to…"

She didn't say the rest, but she didn't need to. Happiness was moving back over his lips.

The grin upon her face was wide and bright. "Do you really think I perfumed my tits by accident?"

That earned her a laugh.

Their hands found each other's bodies again—Will's fingers cupping her head, while she'd taken a gentle hold of his shoulder. How many kisses had they shared tonight? And not a one of them tasted any less moving or miraculous than the last. How many breaths had they given and taken, from one soul to the other? And not once had she felt like she'd given more than she received. Their lips moved and mingled in persistent, luscious patterns expressive of their lingering longing, more and more and more…

Then, before the fire could burn out of control, Will let his mouth fall closed. And with a gentle final brush, he tipped his head, withdrawing his lips from hers but bringing their foreheads into gentle communion.

With her eyes slipped shut, Elizabeth let her other senses feast on the moment. Every exchanged breath, every breaking wave, every stroke of his thumb, every fiery flare at her back, every beat of her demanding heart…

"Are we moving too fast?"

She uncovered her eyes at the softness behind the doubts in Will's whisper. And she wouldn't have been able to restrain the laugh that bubbled up from inside her, if she tried.

"You're asking me?" she wondered in a tone that mixed her surprise with the humor it was swirling in.

With her head drawn back, she could properly watch the subtle smile that bent Will's lips just for her. "Yes."

It was an honest question, despite the sparkling ardor returning to his eyes. So, as her fingers came to play about his lips again, she offered him a slow, but equally honest answer. "I don't know… To me it feels like the world is too slow."

His breath puffed beneath his chuckles. "I suppose it is."

Then he took her hand in his, and kissed it lovingly across its palm.

She wanted to hold him again, with every length of herself that could gather him up. But there was something different lingering between them—something heavy, almost profound in the way it could resist the breezes and blazes that had so easily swept Elizabeth away. They'd come so far to settle like this together, over what felt was both an eternity and an instant at once. Now the steps they had left to take were mostly small and simple.

And yet, some of the evening's other thoughts had begun to invade her mind.

What if father was right? What if he was right, and their love made a child that broke all their hearts by arriving too early, consumed by the teeth of their impatience? Then what if Will bent himself so far trying to build their world faster than he was able, that it left him brittle and hollow? What if the upper world came down on them, and bent them both until they quietly shattered?

Would it still be worth it?

There were similar questions reflected in Will's eyes, as he turned Elizabeth's hand over and laid little patches of kisses across the segments of her fingers. "Walk with me?"

She nodded.