( @lionfated )
Deep lavenders gave way to warm milky golds as the sunrise crept through curtains, spilling over bedsheets and sleeping bodies — well, one sleeping body. The other was just beginning to wake as light stretched over her eyelids and stirred her from slumber.
Delicate hands reached up to rub at her sockets, a tiny disgruntled noise catching in her throat — she was used to heavy dark curtains at home, it was not often she was awakened so early. But she had forgotten where she was, and with whom, until brown eyes opened blearily to peer around the momentarily strange room. It was only when she spotted the sleeping frame of the male next to her that she recalled fully the where and why of it all, but this did not keep her from startling a little and clutching the sheets up close to her chin.
He lay there, shoulders and back bare above the blankets, auburn hair tousled — perhaps her own doing. And he was not alone in his bareness, she noted, the sheets soft on her body and beneath toes as they curled against the mattress.
They had slept together last night — the first time between them. It had been nice, enjoyable, a little dreamlike in the way it still didn’t feel real even laying here next to him in the unfamiliar bed. She stared over the clutched sheets at his turned back before, in a fit of awkward jitters, she ducked her head under the blankets to hide her sudden giddiness lest he should wake and see her gawking.
She did not account for the fact that this was hardly more appropriate — if he woke up to find her head under the blankets along with everything else he might accuse her of being some sort of peeping Tom. But then again, they’d both seen it all now anyway, hadn’t they?
All except…
His back turned to her she spotted them — marks that she’d been too distracted to notice before. Battle scars no doubt, marking his beautiful, smooth skin. Her breath caught in her chest for a moment frozen in time before a curious hand reached out to touch, ever so gently, down between his shoulder blades and along his spine.
How many of these did he have?