To be really Greek one should have no clothes
Matthew had to know. He could tell the difference between a half-truth and a lie when Diana herself was not even sure what she meant, the difference between an autumn damask rose’s fragrance at dawn and in the hour after the sun rose. He was inhumanly swift, quick even for a vampire, at her side before she could speak, ready to take on any enemy, never counting the cost to himself. He was wise, his natural brilliance magnified by the many Matthews he’d already been, a builder and a father, a spy, a prince and a scientist, a poet. A friend, a foe, a lover. He had made a study of her and she’d found the he’d written her sonnets tucked away in a leather folio. It had made her blush to read them but she’d persevered, not stopping when he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her, his lips cool on the nape on her neck. After he’d made her cry out in inarticulate delight, she’d panted into his shoulder his closing couplet didn’t scan and there was an errant trochee; he’d only smiled against her temple. He knew so much, he had to know more.
He had to know she was lying in their bed, pretending to sleep, but watching him dress. He stayed within her view, when he could have retreated to his dressing room, and he’d opened the dusky velvet drapes so he stood bathed in the sun, his pale skin like candlelight. It was the same every day and Diana had yet to tire of it—Mathew stepping into a pair of skin-tight dark jeans, so finely made and expertly tailored than it was hard to believe they had anything to do with the Jordache jeans Sarah had stowed in the depths of her closet. Matthew, barefoot, shirtless, in Japanese selvage denim the color of Sept-Tours’ starless midnight, made Diana hold her breath in wonder.
When he picked up a cashmere pullover from the back of a chair, every muscle gleaming in the morning light; when he stretched his arms and arched his back, as deliberate and feral as a panther; when he drew the sweater over his head, his dark hair just barely tousled, mussed enough he ran his hand across it, baring the skin so recently covered, reminding her what it felt like to touch his body cool beneath the elegant clothes, he made Diana breathless.
He had to know. He had to smell jasmine and honey, he had to see her blue eyes turn indigo watching him, he had to hear her blood seething in her veins, singing for him. He had to know and he must like it; she knew he must love it, for it had become their morning ritual, and his voice when he greeted her held his recognition, his ardor and his joy.
@lady-lazarus-declermont I hope this suits (!)