If Magni is concerned with overexertion hurting her, Lakshmi is not. But then, she has the wondrous knowledge that, for as quiet and as well presented as the Lady of this house she makes the effort to be, she never was particularly the most fragile of her father's children. It was only through far too much work that she acted that way. Feigned those graces.
But Magni was quickly driving all of that from her. Has to pause, when she feels another feels, feels that stretch that makes her shiver, hot, hotter than the water. The inside of her aches tremendously, her hips rolling that isn't that she knows how to move, only that she must. Leaning her full weight against Magni, chest to chest, hip to hip, her arms tangling around her as she stretches out. Pushes back onto her fingers with a sensation that builds. The water splashing up, over, everywhere around the bath.
But unheeded by it or the propriety or that she should be more considerate in anyone. She doesn't care, she feels - good, full, empty, demanding. A litany of words that have little meaning by themselves but form together to the sharp little cries as she finds the rhtyhm of it between herself and Magni's hand. Her kisses so little to do with a soft touch as her body crests up, sinking down as her arms wind around her, slide over her body. At times, gripping Magni's wrist to thrust her deeper below the water, at others, sliding against her hair, whimpering softly against her lips.
It isn't enough, though, even when she does speed up. Still, too light in a way that is maddening. She doesn't know what to call it, but she's very sure she wants more than light, touches that still ask for permission. Permission has well and truly given.
One hand lowers, grabs the one of Magni's that isn't currently occupied and drops it lower. Not to hold her hand, to wind them together. But to drop it onto her rear, letting Magni's hand smooth over her skin as it's lapped at, and guide her not to smooth her hand over her slowly, meticulously, but to all at once for make Magni's nails sink in that is the way that Lakshmi wants, evidently wants as she tightens around the fingers deep within her. Has to hold a very deep breath that she can't get out. To show her that it was more than alright to take a firm grip, to sink back into her as much as she was into Magni.
"Your fingers are already in me, wife, stop being afraid to touch me." Is breathed out, demanding into her mouth as she moans, softly, teasing, her head dropping to lick a bead of water trickly down Magni's neck from her skin.
Those words from this woman she keeps picturing as so fragile and so delicate are— unexpected, to say the least. She remembers still the earnest, bright smile that first time Magni kissed her, how they'd woken up curled up together, Rani in clothes far too big for her and all the more charming and endearing for it. She had been charmed by her from so early on, protective of her from the first, and she had wanted her so long, but even with knowing that mischievous charm and the playfulness that was held within that proper, noble woman, thinking that wanting her so badly was not somehow an affront to that demure, gentle woman was hard for her.
And now, Rani's hips grind down against her, their bodies are so close, and she almost feels like the air is being stolen from her for how much she keeps wanting. The warmth of her tongue against her neck makes her moan a soft, keening sound that almost gives way to something lower and rougher.
That tongue, but those words. A blush is already burning red over her shoulders and her neck and cheeks, but deepens now. Her eyes, stark blue and briefly worried, before the words, their meaning, truly sinks into her. Comprehension, as she flexes her fingers against Rani’s rear and grips harder. Cautious again, before she reminds herself. Trusts her wife, rather than fretting.
“Fearful?” Teasing a little, retaliation, as she makes herself slow her hand all the more, leaning back with her chin tilting slightly upwards, playfully defiant, though she cannot keep up the ruse for long. She wants to touch Rani too fiercely, wants to make her feel good, and she jerks her closer to kiss her hard, nips her lip before sucking on it.
Less tentative, then. The motions become longer, drawing further before driving back in harder, pulling Rani closer with each thrust and moving faster. Kissing her throat and her jaw, before she murmurs against her ear, low and quiet.
“I’ve been thinking about you for so long. How you feel,” her fingers quicken, and the thrusts come harder, “how you sound.”
The effect is immediate. Her head rolls back, her braid splashing back into the water as it drops away from her body. Finally, at long last, the tension she wants, the focus she wants. It does not feel half made, half worried. Feels like she's wanted.
Feels like those words are all her own, devoured hungrily, biting, as with the touch comes the more important permission, to return it. Sure that Magni's will not leave her, will not stop, when she feels them rock up to the third knuckle all at once, pressing bodily in, "it's yours," she chokes out, trying to suck a breath back in as the words curl all low.
Seldom does she know what passes behind her Jarl's eyes. Often she wonders, even now, even after she has been kissed more than once and thoroughly if those eyes linger on her as more than just a requirement of the position. "When I adorn my body, it is you I think of as I brush against myself, when I say our prayers, it is your name first on my lips. You, yours." She means to bite her neck, but when the fingers speed up, her head rolls, turning to nuzzle against Magni with parted lips, immeasurable now, she is only the things that Magni reduces her in this moment. Her voice growing louder and more disjointed in her cries. Her eyes falling shut like somehow it might drag this out longer but has no more effect than leaving her with how her body burns and the feeling of Magni's breath and touch and heat.
Because if there were servants hanging about to know whether this marriage was now consummated, there could be no mistaking her voice. Pitched high, desperate, guttural honest, she didn't know what she was working for, towards, when this fever would break, just that if it didn't she was never going to be able to stand even being brushed against again.
Rani consumes her thoughts so often, and yet it feels somehow surreal that she might occupy her thoughts, as well. So cautious and so contained since past heartbreak, and not especially experienced in the ways of the heart beyond that attachment. It was not the way of things, was it? Purity and reputation could be so easily jeopardised. And this closeness, this moment was so important— she had been afraid to rush into it, to treat it as anything less than sacred.
A shudder rolls up her back, and she kisses her throat desperately, her jaw and her cheek. Would claim her lips, but those cries are too intoxicating and so instead she rests her forehead against Rani's cheek or her temple, wherever she might reasonably be able to do so with her head falling back. Her moves quicker, and then her fingers flex, pressing upward to that point which seemed to draw stronger reactions from her Rani, curving and pressing to try and bring her release and satisfaction.
Her other hand drags up Rani's back, so her fingers can tangle into her hair, and she tilts her head to murmur in her ear. "And I'm yours. All of me is yours." My heart, she would say, but her voice is too rough and she is trying to move quicker, muscles tensing and coiling.
"Magni," she seizes her with both her hands desperately slipping on her wet skin with her equally damp hands. Pressing their bodies together as tightly as she can.
Because she was wrong, she was wrong, it wasn't that if this didn't go anywhere. It was the damning knowledge of how she feels now. Where before it was heat, now it is flames. Her nerves searing inside of her skin. How was she supposed to know how to move away ever again, no thought to quiet herself, to let go, to ease back how her nails drag on steam-soft skin. Biting into her as her spine snaps straight, still, gasping, eyes screwed shut. No, she can't undo how this feels, how Magni had made her come so wholly apart. Like all her edges had unravelled, guttering against the wind, jumping to the closest surface as fire is want. All separated and not at all herself for how it escapes her.
Until she could stand no more, she sags down against her. Laying her head against her shoulder, utterly collapsed beyond movement. Her eyes still shut, her breath coming ragged as if she'd run a mile. Might have, her legs are shaking, below the water. Unable to lift herself even if she wanted too. But she doesn't, she doesn't want to separate even a part of them, wants to stay like this as long as she could.
To hear her name spoken like that— it leaves a wanting in her that she scarce knows what to do with. To hear Rani so wanting, as she grasped onto her is beyond her ability to describe. Her abdomen tenses, and she has to remind herself to take a breath, that she can breathe at all.
Her own wanting, though, is something she can set aside in favour of soft, soothing sounds. Carefully (a habit not easily broken by those desperate demands of before) Magni draws her fingers away from Rani, slow, making sure not to inadvertently jostle her in her tenderness, until she can bring both arms to loosely embrace her wife. She can feel the pleasant, lingering sting from Rani's nails. Tiger-marks, she thinks fondly. One of her arms is loosely slung about Rani's waist, the other trailing very slow and very light up and down her spine to soothe her, guide her breathing to steadiness as they lean together.
She will be still, gladly so, just enjoying this new closeness between them, the feeling of her weight and the shudder of her breath, that faint trembling. She's sure she should say something, but she cannot think of a single thing that could do justice to this moment, and so she holds her silence, and just commits all of this to memory.
She whines softly into her ear for the loss, still too strung out for her nerves to take the movement completely silent. But once it stops, she settles again, she settles back without further complaint.
"I have never felt such a thing," she admits quietly after they have been quiet for a time. Freely she could admit she did not have Magni's gift for silence, but right now, clever things were quite beyond her to say. Sighing warmly and lightly, leaning into the touches, enjoying them for what they were was far easier. But she stirs against her.
The laugh is perhaps blissfull in the naivety she otherwise enjoyed about all of this. Except for the way her mother had taken her aside to talk her through what must be expected in a bedchamber of her. "I see why people seek it out."
The water is slowly cooling around them, and maybe that serves to calm them both as well, heat siphoned from their blood. Her fingers map the contours of Rani's back, feather light, and Magni leans down to kiss her shoulder, smiling against the skin.
"I have never— before." Quietly, predictably, voice a little rough. "But I don't think I'll ever tire of seeing you like that." A kiss to her hair, so she can murmur against her ear, "hearing you like that."
Say it isn't so, but she giggles into her shoulder, fitfully embarrassed, certainly, but beyond concern. Too late to take it back. Hardly like she can pretend she hadn't enjoyed it thoroughly.
But she withdraws, perched still. Not really to go far as she looks over her, warmly, appreciatively. Something here, something she has done her level best to reserve since she had come. Just now - now she is unsure, certainly, not quite certain if it would be entirely permitted, but she settles herself like she has perched on a throne, regally tossing her hair. Playful, a mocking seriousness, "You've been a dreadful patient, I must tell you, as your Jarl."
Perhaps she is just a little bit too pleased with that laughter, entirely too endeared, heart feeling like it swells just for looking at the wonder of her. Entirely too charmed, too delighted, by the woman resting on her lap. It hardly seems possible sometimes, that she's found someone so very dear to her.
But, well. Magni leans back against the side of the bath, one brow quirked with amusement as she observes her Jarl.
She doesn't say it, but her mouth opens very slightly, a silent oh? Although she is doing her utmost to play into this moment of reprimand, she can't fully contain the smile that is playing around the corners of her mouth.
"Am I?" Impertinent, apparently, as she squeezes Rani's waist.
"Very," is the warmth infused word as she pushes at Magni's shoulder with a press of her fingertips.
"I am afraid it must be seen too, or I worry how it might affect you." Her eyes flicking up as the smile plays on her lips, threatening to break her committed performance. "It is a Jarl's duty to attend her subjects properly."
Magni gulps a little bit at that warmth, the intention in Rani's voice. Wanting and nervous in equal measure as she watches her wife, pupils blown, biting her lip without even realising it.
"And if I insist I am well?" There is a faint unsteadiness to her voice.
She realises, that she doesn't have to not touch when for a moment, she is utterly transfixed with how Magni looks. That little flash of white teeth that sink into her lip. A want - to reach for her. To replace those teeth with her own. Which is a giddy, marvellous thing - if like the act she is putting on, a tentative one - lifting her hand slowly to lay them on Magni's body. Not quite her own imaginings, still learning. Wrapping them around Magni's ribs and slowly beginning to slide them up to cup her breasts. Firm as she could be even if her giggles threaten to spill over.
"Are you saying you'd disobey your Jarl? I will be forced to act."
Her eyes slip shut with a quietly rasp of breath as hands settle at her ribs, press upwards, and she arches into them. Gaze heavy-lidded as she looks back to Rani, breathing a little shallow.
"You're all talk," she teases, head tilting, unconcerned.
Her eyes narrow, mockingly. Am I? And catching with it suddenly, she surges up against her. Her hands still on her breasts, firm, gripping her hands into her.
Seizing her suddenly and with no warning into a kiss. Pushing up on her knees so she can stay atop Magni and tilt her head back with the angle of the kiss. Pressing her teeth to do just what she had wanted to do - to replace her teeth with Lakshmi's own, sinking, scraping, sucking on her bottom lip between her own with a thready little eager noise. Groaning softly against her mouth before she pulls back. Looking down at her, nervous, worried she'd pushed too far.
"Is that - ?" permissiable. Broken in her act, but had to make sure, just as Magni had for her. It was one thing for her to play, another to lean into them, even if they playing. ( At what, she hardly knew but - )
God. When she is pulled into that kiss, when her teeth claim Magni's lip, she moans loudly into the kiss, and makes a tragic sound that she is a little embarrassed by when Rani draws back.
A nod, breathless, as she slides her hands to cup Rani's jaw, smiling up at her with such affection that she could barely grasp how to put it into words. Adoration and longing and warmth as she looks up at her. "I'm yours. Don't be afraid to touch me."
Echoing what Rani told her before, before she nudges the tip of her nose with her own. "I trust you."
She doesn't waste time, not with that. Not a second. That wholeness exchanged between them as she leans in, kissing her again, just as forcefully demanding, but she doesn't stay there this time, either. Not because she stops. Some deep need to claim every bit of her that she could not place, that was not fitting in any way for either of positions. Magni is the Jarl, her duties lie elsewhere, and beyond each other, here and now, Lakshmi always understood and respected that.
But right now? Right now she was hers, and they had as much time as they could be given for her to - to make sure Magni knew it. Knew how much she meant to her. A want that for all the grief her wife had known before Lakshmi had arrived, she would wash it away under this.
Her head turns, beginning to tilt down her neck, running her hands raggedly over Magni's body. "I have wanted to kiss you everywhere." She admits, somewhere near her ear, then further, by her collarbone, she bites, breathes into her skin. "I look at you, so often, wanting too. There are always others and I must not." She feels as feverish as when she had been touched if demanding in a different way.
She does not fully anticipate it - the rush, the eagerness with which Rani claims her. She hardly feels as though she can drink in the kisses fast enough, doesn't know where to settle her own hands because she is so aware of the warm touches running over her body, exploring. A whimper, as Rani bites her collarbone, and finally she grasps at her hair, encouraging her to carry on. More, harder, whatever she wants to do.
And those words. They are almost more than the touches.
"If I'd known I'd—" her breath hitches, "I'd have ordered them all away." Almost lost to breathlessness, as those hands keep moving over her body. It's intoxicating, and part of her doesn't want it to stop, just this part.
Her mouth doesn't leave her, not for a second, leaving her kisses like prayers, scattered holy words about Magni's body. Reverent in the way of devouring, tasting the water on her skin like a holy drink. The salt of the skin below it.
She goes, wandering, - stops only when she has to push back in the water a little to shift her angle. To replace her hands with her mouth on her breasts. Closing around her nipple, sucking harshly on a skin with her eyes - flicking up. Watching her tentatively to know if it is ... alright, certainly, but - enough, too little, too much, most especially.
Watching her, as gently, she scrapes her teeth over such sensitive skin.
A low moan rolls past her lips, and her head tilts back with the blissful torment of teeth, one hand bracing at the side of her bath so she doesn't grip at Rani too hard. Don't squirm, she tells herself, a useless lecture on conduct playing in her mind, as though either of them were concerned about conduct now.
She can't help a little retaliation, bringing one of Rani's hands to her lips so she can kiss the knuckles, and then sucks her index finger into her mouth, tongue dragging against the underside of it as she slowly draws it back.
Her head tilts, stopping in her meandering bath with a sudden stillness. Shivering in a way that had nothing to do with cool, for certain no part of either them was anything less than warm. Rather, with a panting soft breath, watching Magni with that sharpened warmth in her gaze.too pointed with an idea to be simply a dazed enjoyment.
Lakshmi swallow visibly. Trying to get her bearings, remember what she had intended before got carried away.
"I want you..." that much obvious, trailing off to drag her fingertip lightly against her lip. "... I want you to... To sit." her head nods to the stool that Lakshmi had been sat at just before. "I said I would wash you."
Her face was so warm with the daring of it, but she determinedly carries on.
A look to the stool, just faintly confused, but not one to deny the request made by her Rani, her Jarl. It means that she needs to move, which means moving Lakshmi from her lap, and that doesn't appeal at all. Her hand resting on Lakshmi's back tightens its hold, and she surges upwards and forwards, so she's crouching and holding Lakshmi in her arms, looking up to her and grinning. Mischievous ideas are promised in her gaze, in the way she's looking at her, but for now she has sworn herself to obey. Grinding against her would not be obeying. Continuing forward so she was on top of Lakshmi in the bath would certainly not be obeying.
Magni kisses her throat, gently bites at it, before she very carefully goes to set Lakshmi down to sit in the bath. "I thought being in the bath was more traditional for washing."
Lakshmi grips on with both arms as they lurch through the water. Sending a small wave over the lip of the tub from the suddenness of the gesture. Looking up at her in surprise and - enjoying how that feels in a way she did not expect. Being moved about like this, so intimately close - and maybe, she might even let her, follow it the rest of the way down.
But it passes, and she moves away, her body dropping lower so that it comes up to her neck, comfortably, the rest of her hidden below the suds. Her braid well and truly soaked down that there isn't much use keeping it like this. So she moves her hands to find it below the water and undoes the band that held it. Dropping it over the side before beginning to comb her mass of black hair loose. "There is so much of you, how can I reach you all?"
Her eyebrow quirks slightly as she stands in the tub, before slowly stepping over the side and standing on the bathmat. Suds roll down her body slowly, and the geometric triangular patterns (mountains, feathers, both) that work down her shoulders and her spine shine from the water. Her normally pale skin is flushed from the hot water, and she turns to look at Lakshmi in the bath, biting her lip very slightly. Her gaze betrays her, as she leans over the bath, hands braced on the sides as she leans closer to almost claim a kiss from Lakshmi, but keeping just out of reach.
"Not at all -" Only that everyone in Talonhold is giants. " - Just enough for me."
Bold words, Lakshmi, as she moves through the water, so too does she stay out of reach of that kiss. Though, her head tilts back, expectant if Magni did move closer. Eyes flicking down and back up to her face, watching how the soap trailed over her, the water trickled and pooled on her skin. The dip of her ribs, her collarbone, glistening in the candlelight, firelight, not the soft pink when they were flushed with the wind, but bathed warm colour of fire, glittering in her hair, her eyes.
Lakshmi's own hands move in front of her, wafting her nose lose black hair about her in tendrils. Inky dark in how they stick, hang over her body, curving over her breasts and body, hiding her partially. Reaching across to the few items she had given for the rather more exact purpose of the bath. Cleaning, refreshing themselves. From the bottles, she reaches for one from her home. An oil that when she uncorks the bottle, fills the room with the scent of flowers, rich, the perfume she always adorned herself with.
Gently, she tips it out into one hand and then sets it aside. Once away, she presses her hands together, rubbing the oil between them slowly, before moving closer and - not watching Magni's face, she lays her hands on her knees, one of each hand and - smooths them up her legs. But the texture isn't exactly smooth. There is a faint, grainy, texture to it. That spread as she runs her hands up Magni's legs in a symmetrical movement, then back down either leg until they reach the water. The oil spread she moves both her hands to one of Magni's legs, placing both her palms on her skin. Gently, in little circles with her fingers, she begins to massage her leg, working at the hard muscles there with - adoration, a want to touch, most certainly - but a care, to let Magni enjoy herself for a little while.
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But Magni was quickly driving all of that from her. Has to pause, when she feels another feels, feels that stretch that makes her shiver, hot, hotter than the water. The inside of her aches tremendously, her hips rolling that isn't that she knows how to move, only that she must. Leaning her full weight against Magni, chest to chest, hip to hip, her arms tangling around her as she stretches out. Pushes back onto her fingers with a sensation that builds. The water splashing up, over, everywhere around the bath.
But unheeded by it or the propriety or that she should be more considerate in anyone. She doesn't care, she feels - good, full, empty, demanding. A litany of words that have little meaning by themselves but form together to the sharp little cries as she finds the rhtyhm of it between herself and Magni's hand. Her kisses so little to do with a soft touch as her body crests up, sinking down as her arms wind around her, slide over her body. At times, gripping Magni's wrist to thrust her deeper below the water, at others, sliding against her hair, whimpering softly against her lips.
It isn't enough, though, even when she does speed up. Still, too light in a way that is maddening. She doesn't know what to call it, but she's very sure she wants more than light, touches that still ask for permission. Permission has well and truly given.
One hand lowers, grabs the one of Magni's that isn't currently occupied and drops it lower. Not to hold her hand, to wind them together. But to drop it onto her rear, letting Magni's hand smooth over her skin as it's lapped at, and guide her not to smooth her hand over her slowly, meticulously, but to all at once for make Magni's nails sink in that is the way that Lakshmi wants, evidently wants as she tightens around the fingers deep within her. Has to hold a very deep breath that she can't get out. To show her that it was more than alright to take a firm grip, to sink back into her as much as she was into Magni.
"Your fingers are already in me, wife, stop being afraid to touch me." Is breathed out, demanding into her mouth as she moans, softly, teasing, her head dropping to lick a bead of water trickly down Magni's neck from her skin.
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And now, Rani's hips grind down against her, their bodies are so close, and she almost feels like the air is being stolen from her for how much she keeps wanting. The warmth of her tongue against her neck makes her moan a soft, keening sound that almost gives way to something lower and rougher.
That tongue, but those words. A blush is already burning red over her shoulders and her neck and cheeks, but deepens now. Her eyes, stark blue and briefly worried, before the words, their meaning, truly sinks into her. Comprehension, as she flexes her fingers against Rani’s rear and grips harder. Cautious again, before she reminds herself. Trusts her wife, rather than fretting.
“Fearful?” Teasing a little, retaliation, as she makes herself slow her hand all the more, leaning back with her chin tilting slightly upwards, playfully defiant, though she cannot keep up the ruse for long. She wants to touch Rani too fiercely, wants to make her feel good, and she jerks her closer to kiss her hard, nips her lip before sucking on it.
Less tentative, then. The motions become longer, drawing further before driving back in harder, pulling Rani closer with each thrust and moving faster. Kissing her throat and her jaw, before she murmurs against her ear, low and quiet.
“I’ve been thinking about you for so long. How you feel,” her fingers quicken, and the thrusts come harder, “how you sound.”
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Feels like those words are all her own, devoured hungrily, biting, as with the touch comes the more important permission, to return it. Sure that Magni's will not leave her, will not stop, when she feels them rock up to the third knuckle all at once, pressing bodily in, "it's yours," she chokes out, trying to suck a breath back in as the words curl all low.
Seldom does she know what passes behind her Jarl's eyes. Often she wonders, even now, even after she has been kissed more than once and thoroughly if those eyes linger on her as more than just a requirement of the position. "When I adorn my body, it is you I think of as I brush against myself, when I say our prayers, it is your name first on my lips. You, yours." She means to bite her neck, but when the fingers speed up, her head rolls, turning to nuzzle against Magni with parted lips, immeasurable now, she is only the things that Magni reduces her in this moment. Her voice growing louder and more disjointed in her cries. Her eyes falling shut like somehow it might drag this out longer but has no more effect than leaving her with how her body burns and the feeling of Magni's breath and touch and heat.
Because if there were servants hanging about to know whether this marriage was now consummated, there could be no mistaking her voice. Pitched high, desperate, guttural honest, she didn't know what she was working for, towards, when this fever would break, just that if it didn't she was never going to be able to stand even being brushed against again.
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A shudder rolls up her back, and she kisses her throat desperately, her jaw and her cheek. Would claim her lips, but those cries are too intoxicating and so instead she rests her forehead against Rani's cheek or her temple, wherever she might reasonably be able to do so with her head falling back. Her moves quicker, and then her fingers flex, pressing upward to that point which seemed to draw stronger reactions from her Rani, curving and pressing to try and bring her release and satisfaction.
Her other hand drags up Rani's back, so her fingers can tangle into her hair, and she tilts her head to murmur in her ear. "And I'm yours. All of me is yours." My heart, she would say, but her voice is too rough and she is trying to move quicker, muscles tensing and coiling.
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Because she was wrong, she was wrong, it wasn't that if this didn't go anywhere. It was the damning knowledge of how she feels now. Where before it was heat, now it is flames. Her nerves searing inside of her skin. How was she supposed to know how to move away ever again, no thought to quiet herself, to let go, to ease back how her nails drag on steam-soft skin. Biting into her as her spine snaps straight, still, gasping, eyes screwed shut. No, she can't undo how this feels, how Magni had made her come so wholly apart. Like all her edges had unravelled, guttering against the wind, jumping to the closest surface as fire is want. All separated and not at all herself for how it escapes her.
Until she could stand no more, she sags down against her. Laying her head against her shoulder, utterly collapsed beyond movement. Her eyes still shut, her breath coming ragged as if she'd run a mile. Might have, her legs are shaking, below the water. Unable to lift herself even if she wanted too. But she doesn't, she doesn't want to separate even a part of them, wants to stay like this as long as she could.
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Her own wanting, though, is something she can set aside in favour of soft, soothing sounds. Carefully (a habit not easily broken by those desperate demands of before) Magni draws her fingers away from Rani, slow, making sure not to inadvertently jostle her in her tenderness, until she can bring both arms to loosely embrace her wife. She can feel the pleasant, lingering sting from Rani's nails. Tiger-marks, she thinks fondly. One of her arms is loosely slung about Rani's waist, the other trailing very slow and very light up and down her spine to soothe her, guide her breathing to steadiness as they lean together.
She will be still, gladly so, just enjoying this new closeness between them, the feeling of her weight and the shudder of her breath, that faint trembling. She's sure she should say something, but she cannot think of a single thing that could do justice to this moment, and so she holds her silence, and just commits all of this to memory.
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"I have never felt such a thing," she admits quietly after they have been quiet for a time. Freely she could admit she did not have Magni's gift for silence, but right now, clever things were quite beyond her to say. Sighing warmly and lightly, leaning into the touches, enjoying them for what they were was far easier. But she stirs against her.
The laugh is perhaps blissfull in the naivety she otherwise enjoyed about all of this. Except for the way her mother had taken her aside to talk her through what must be expected in a bedchamber of her. "I see why people seek it out."
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"I have never— before." Quietly, predictably, voice a little rough. "But I don't think I'll ever tire of seeing you like that." A kiss to her hair, so she can murmur against her ear, "hearing you like that."
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But she withdraws, perched still. Not really to go far as she looks over her, warmly, appreciatively. Something here, something she has done her level best to reserve since she had come. Just now - now she is unsure, certainly, not quite certain if it would be entirely permitted, but she settles herself like she has perched on a throne, regally tossing her hair. Playful, a mocking seriousness, "You've been a dreadful patient, I must tell you, as your Jarl."
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But, well. Magni leans back against the side of the bath, one brow quirked with amusement as she observes her Jarl.
She doesn't say it, but her mouth opens very slightly, a silent oh? Although she is doing her utmost to play into this moment of reprimand, she can't fully contain the smile that is playing around the corners of her mouth.
"Am I?" Impertinent, apparently, as she squeezes Rani's waist.
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"I am afraid it must be seen too, or I worry how it might affect you." Her eyes flicking up as the smile plays on her lips, threatening to break her committed performance. "It is a Jarl's duty to attend her subjects properly."
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"And if I insist I am well?" There is a faint unsteadiness to her voice.
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"Are you saying you'd disobey your Jarl? I will be forced to act."
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"You're all talk," she teases, head tilting, unconcerned.
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Seizing her suddenly and with no warning into a kiss. Pushing up on her knees so she can stay atop Magni and tilt her head back with the angle of the kiss. Pressing her teeth to do just what she had wanted to do - to replace her teeth with Lakshmi's own, sinking, scraping, sucking on her bottom lip between her own with a thready little eager noise. Groaning softly against her mouth before she pulls back. Looking down at her, nervous, worried she'd pushed too far.
"Is that - ?" permissiable. Broken in her act, but had to make sure, just as Magni had for her. It was one thing for her to play, another to lean into them, even if they playing. ( At what, she hardly knew but - )
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A nod, breathless, as she slides her hands to cup Rani's jaw, smiling up at her with such affection that she could barely grasp how to put it into words. Adoration and longing and warmth as she looks up at her. "I'm yours. Don't be afraid to touch me."
Echoing what Rani told her before, before she nudges the tip of her nose with her own. "I trust you."
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But right now? Right now she was hers, and they had as much time as they could be given for her to - to make sure Magni knew it. Knew how much she meant to her. A want that for all the grief her wife had known before Lakshmi had arrived, she would wash it away under this.
Her head turns, beginning to tilt down her neck, running her hands raggedly over Magni's body. "I have wanted to kiss you everywhere." She admits, somewhere near her ear, then further, by her collarbone, she bites, breathes into her skin. "I look at you, so often, wanting too. There are always others and I must not." She feels as feverish as when she had been touched if demanding in a different way.
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And those words. They are almost more than the touches.
"If I'd known I'd—" her breath hitches, "I'd have ordered them all away." Almost lost to breathlessness, as those hands keep moving over her body. It's intoxicating, and part of her doesn't want it to stop, just this part.
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She goes, wandering, - stops only when she has to push back in the water a little to shift her angle. To replace her hands with her mouth on her breasts. Closing around her nipple, sucking harshly on a skin with her eyes - flicking up. Watching her tentatively to know if it is ... alright, certainly, but - enough, too little, too much, most especially.
Watching her, as gently, she scrapes her teeth over such sensitive skin.
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She can't help a little retaliation, bringing one of Rani's hands to her lips so she can kiss the knuckles, and then sucks her index finger into her mouth, tongue dragging against the underside of it as she slowly draws it back.
Wordless approval, suffice to say.
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Lakshmi swallow visibly. Trying to get her bearings, remember what she had intended before got carried away.
"I want you..." that much obvious, trailing off to drag her fingertip lightly against her lip. "... I want you to... To sit." her head nods to the stool that Lakshmi had been sat at just before. "I said I would wash you."
Her face was so warm with the daring of it, but she determinedly carries on.
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Magni kisses her throat, gently bites at it, before she very carefully goes to set Lakshmi down to sit in the bath. "I thought being in the bath was more traditional for washing."
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But it passes, and she moves away, her body dropping lower so that it comes up to her neck, comfortably, the rest of her hidden below the suds. Her braid well and truly soaked down that there isn't much use keeping it like this. So she moves her hands to find it below the water and undoes the band that held it. Dropping it over the side before beginning to comb her mass of black hair loose. "There is so much of you, how can I reach you all?"
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"Are you saying there's too much of me?"
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Bold words, Lakshmi, as she moves through the water, so too does she stay out of reach of that kiss. Though, her head tilts back, expectant if Magni did move closer. Eyes flicking down and back up to her face, watching how the soap trailed over her, the water trickled and pooled on her skin. The dip of her ribs, her collarbone, glistening in the candlelight, firelight, not the soft pink when they were flushed with the wind, but bathed warm colour of fire, glittering in her hair, her eyes.
Lakshmi's own hands move in front of her, wafting her nose lose black hair about her in tendrils. Inky dark in how they stick, hang over her body, curving over her breasts and body, hiding her partially. Reaching across to the few items she had given for the rather more exact purpose of the bath. Cleaning, refreshing themselves. From the bottles, she reaches for one from her home. An oil that when she uncorks the bottle, fills the room with the scent of flowers, rich, the perfume she always adorned herself with.
Gently, she tips it out into one hand and then sets it aside. Once away, she presses her hands together, rubbing the oil between them slowly, before moving closer and - not watching Magni's face, she lays her hands on her knees, one of each hand and - smooths them up her legs. But the texture isn't exactly smooth. There is a faint, grainy, texture to it. That spread as she runs her hands up Magni's legs in a symmetrical movement, then back down either leg until they reach the water. The oil spread she moves both her hands to one of Magni's legs, placing both her palms on her skin. Gently, in little circles with her fingers, she begins to massage her leg, working at the hard muscles there with - adoration, a want to touch, most certainly - but a care, to let Magni enjoy herself for a little while.
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