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LARK

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🎀 bowties this 😌

[haggle]

( it's a lie to say i waited — artificial-sweet, cotton candy fluff that's empty on the inside. doesn't feel right where the words stick between her teeth, even if some part of it is true. the best laid lies always start with a grain of truth, somewhere. hers is this: she always left the light on, a crack in the door. however faint. however small. the kind of hope that flickers, but never fully fails, even when it should. the kind you don't just move on from, even when you should.

she thinks it, again: her fool, her dumbass, taking his sweet ass time to figure out a riddle that was always easy to crack, a magician's trick that should have been obvious if he was paying attention: it was always gonna be you. it always was you. instead, her mouth splits into a grin. open horizons, limitless as the open sky, blinding to anyone kept in the dark, away from warmth and light and heat for too long. sweeps a hand, gesturing to a canvas of milky skin and scattered freckles. unwinds her robe to let it pool, meaningless, on the floor beside his head. a full-front view of the fucking masterpiece that's her tits, in case he needs the reminder — )

Uh, you've seen me, right? Hello.

( all elongated os, a snap of her forefinger and thumb in front of his field of vision, to spell it out for him: it would be weirder if it didn't turn him on. because she's the botticelli — the original, the muse. even when she doubted he'd ever come back to fight for a second chance, she had never doubted one surefire fact: any woman who came after would always have to compare to her, same as the forgeries of men who followed him. it's probably fucking weird to be turned on by that — the confidence she's ruined a man, left her fingertips all over his heart and body — but she's done weirder.

she kisses him the way someone kisses what they know is theirs, the way she knows he likes, the way she calls him a dumbass: a nip of teeth, unapologetic, little indents sunk into his lower lip. soothes it away with a kittenish lick, a little sweetness with his sting. huffs out a shaky sound into his mouth when his fingers tease the split seam of her, slip between the glossy spill between her thighs, smearing it into flushed skin like he's checking his work, signing his name, reminding her just how full she is. just how full she'll stay.

an affectionate puff of a laugh, even through her protest: )

That ain't fucking fair. You're not fighting fair and square, you cheating bastard.

( sure, she could stay pissed, and maybe she should. sorry's a weak word, doesn't put shit back together, but she can't remember the last time someone said it to her. remembered she's a person that bleeds and bruises. she laughs, instead, mean-girl mischief when she circles her hips, stirs him inside her, where he's softening and overstimulated. all is fair in love and war, as the saying goes. don't they fucking know it.

not a demand but a certainty, true as breath, as her lungs emptying and filling, as the solid leverage of her palms bearing down into his chest: )

Good thing you've got plenty of time to make it up to me, huh? Like, forever.

( it's not an i forgive you. not yet. it's a start, the first stitch pulling a wound closed. she'll learn to forgive it, completely, somewhere in that forever. not tomorrow, or the next day. maybe a month from now. two. a year. another five. but tonight? tonight, she'll let him make it up to her as many times as he can. )