(no subject)

[butterflyfactor]

Even with how long the walk back to the house is, I'm still tipsy when we get there. Not drunk- I can walk a straight line and recite the alphabet backward, but I would probably find it way more amusing than under normal circumstances. I'm at least glad I wore sneakers instead of real heels. It probably made things easier than I realize. But again- tipsy. Not drunk. Jamie isn't the only one harboring concerns over things he might do under the influence that he's otherwise resolved not to. At least, not just yet.

Layla pushed the door to the house open and knelt to catch Richards before he could run out, part of her dress still gathered in one hand as it had been for most of the walk.

"Hey, there, champ. No wild parties while we were out?"

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[howmanylives]

"Too much?" he murmured, sliding his hands fractionally lower. "Just said the word and I won't."

[butterflyfactor.livejournal.com]

"Not even close," she answered, lifting her hips so she could half-stand for long enough to reconfigure how she was sitting in his lap. It involved a moment of kneeling on the bed, head ducked so she could still kiss him, before her knees were on either side of his hips and her arms were around his neck, fingertips trailing along his shoulders, jaw, then up into his hair.

It was a really nice shirt he had on. She could tell, because she was practically wearing it. It had to go. She leaned back enough to reach down and pull it from where it was tucked in, and started undoing the last of the buttons.

[howmanylives]

Given the go-ahead, Jamie smiled like the Cheshire cat, and with practiced fingers, undid her bra, catching it as it dropped so he could toss it onto the floor. For a moment, he stared, transfixed, giving her a second to adjust before cupping one of her breasts, his thumb brushing over her nipple. His other hand braced on her hip, he then ducked his head to kiss his way down her chest, starting at her collarbone, and heading south from there.

[butterflyfactor.livejournal.com]

Layla took a breath, shivering as she pushed his shirt back. She ran her hands up his sides, then over his chest to his shoulders to start pulling the collar and sleeves of the shirt away from his neck and back. She ducked her head to graze her lips along the shell of his ear as her fingers started to trace the lines of muscles wherever they could find them. They had a lot of opportunities.

[howmanylives]

He let go of her long enough to shrug out of his shirt, using her help to free his arms of the sleeves. The air was cold against his skin, but her warmth more than made up for it, as he pulled her back in close. His mouth trailed lower, and he kissed the swell of her breasts, taking his time to make sure neither was ignored. A small, content sound made its way from the back of his throat.

[butterflyfactor.livejournal.com]

Layla curled her arms around his shoulders and bent her head to kiss his hair, huffing quiet breaths against his ear in place of words or noises because it was all too new for her to get a real handle on yet. She couldn't do anything but breathe.

[howmanylives]

Slowly, he made his way back up her neck, sucking gently on the point directly above her pulse, teeth just barely grazing her skin. He slipped his arms under hers, curling upwards so that he could hold onto her shoulders, his fingers slipping into the ends of her hair.

[butterflyfactor.livejournal.com]

Head falling back, she made a quiet noise that ranged just on the voiced side of a sigh. She pressed closer to him, turning her head so her lashes brushed his temple, arced her spine so the line of her torso from hip to ribcage was pressed against him. It was something she'd given a fair amount of consideration, over the past months. Living with the man you were going to marry, in one timeline, she figured her thoughts were more than allowed to go down certain avenues. With his body warm and against, around, her now, she had to admit that even compared to memories she hadn't lived yet, this was... better. There wasn't much comparison to be made, in fact.

"Mmn," she sighed, barely a murmur, ducking her head to kiss his shoulder then rub her forehead against it.

[howmanylives]

Having gone so long without the feel of skin against skin, so much of it was almost foreign, leaving Jamie's head spinning. For a moment, he didn't know where to go from there, his mouth still working over her neck, though his hips rolled up against hers of their own accord, the movement as graceful as he could make it given how they were sitting. What was left of his clothes was getting uncomfortably tight, and while stopping outright seemed a fairly remote possibility given her reaction, the chances of getting much further seemed to him equally as unlikely.

"Layla," he murmured, resting one hand on her thigh.

[butterflyfactor.livejournal.com]

She gasped quietly, breath hitching at the feel of him pressing up into her. Layla leaned back enough to catch his mouth with hers and kissed him thoroughly, while her hands slid down his torso to stop at his waistband. She felt alarmingly lacking in anxiety.

Maybe it's because I'm wearing underwear and sneakers and nothing else, or maybe it's the way he says my name. Probably it's both. Regardless, I feel weirdly confident in the moment, in a way I haven't felt since I showed up here. Knowing how fleeting this has to be, I plan on enjoying it.

"Jamie," she replied, pressing a smaller, softer kiss against his lower lip as her fingers undid the button of his fly.

[howmanylives]

"Please," he exhaled, swallowing heavily as he looked up at her, his expression bordering somewhere between plaintive and desperate. In that moment, it didn't matter that he was technically the more experienced or that he ought to be helping her through this and not the other way around. Intimacy of any kind had always been something of a gray area for him, one that he enjoyed, of course, but only when -- or if, as the case could be -- he remembered it. He could barely recall the last time he'd been in a similar situation, memories blurred together in a haze of colors and sounds, though it had to have been approaching on two years ago.

Admittedly, that's probably not the best thing to be thinking about right now.

[butterflyfactor.livejournal.com]

Layla kissed him again, hard, leaning into him as she did. With his pants undone she slid off his lap, lying back on the bed but only to more easily pull her shoes off. Having toed them onto the floor, she pushed herself up onto her knees, behind him, and slid her arms around him as she kissed the back of his neck.

"Off," she said, tugging on his pants pocket, although she didn't then immediately make this easier to accomplish so much as she kept exploring the muscles of his neck and back with her mouth.

[howmanylives]

A voice in the back of his mind wondered what the point was, but he didn't need telling twice in spite of the pervasive sense of doubt that kept wondering if she was going to follow through with anything, her rejection from Mardi Gras hard to forget even now. Feet planted on the floor, he leaned back against her, lifting his hips off up the mattress just long enough to push his pants down to the floor, kicking them off to the side. His underwear -- black boxer-briefs which should've really surprised no one -- stayed where they were for the time being, though they weren't hiding much.

On a whim, Jamie turned to look over his shoulder, his lips grazing her cheekbone as he tried to keep his breaths measured. It was more difficult than he'd anticipated, Layla as frustrating in this context as in any other. It was part of her charm.

[butterflyfactor.livejournal.com]

Definitely improved the view, at least. She pressed up against his back, turning her head to meet his mouth as her right hand fanned out against the skin of chis chest. She slowly slid her palm down, noting but not lingering over the scars it met, across the planes of his stomach. She tugged him back by the shoulder with her other hand, as if to direct him to recline back, then extricated herself from between his body and the bed so that he could. She was completely and totally winging it, but it seemed to be going well. At least, she knew what she was after in the moment.

She pushed his shoulders down and leaned over him, hair sliding over her shoulders in now-messy waves, then dipped her head to kiss him fleetingly, a few times.

[howmanylives]

Jamie had an idea -- vague, admittedly, though that wasn't necessarily a bad thing -- of where they were potentially headed, and as such, had no inclination to stop her, too curious to see if he was right or if it would all come crashing to a sudden halt. Pushing back her hair with one hand, he deepened one of her fleeting kisses, settling a little better on the bed as he did so, though his legs still hung off the side.

[butterflyfactor.livejournal.com]

Layla hummed softly into the kiss, resting against him for a moment, before pulling back to look over his face, gaze keen and observant as ever. She brushed their mouths together twice, kissed him again, then nudged his chin back with the tip of her nose and sucked gently on his Adam's apple. She scraped his neck carefully with her teeth, then moved to the hollow of his throat, lapping at the indentation in his skin with the flat of her tongue. It had taken long enough to get to this point at all, she was damn well going to take her time enjoying it. The feel and taste of him were things she'd wanted for what felt like a hundred years, and obligation to the correct sequence of events be damned, finally getting to experience them was worth what she'd had to go through to get them.

[howmanylives]

Wanting to touch her, the angle left something to be desired. Still, he tangled his fingers through her hair, his other hand spread wide against her back, nails pressing gently into her skin. Mixed in with the doubt was the unshakable sense that none of this was actually happening. Feeling wanted at all after what happened with Theresa was a luxury that still struck him as undeserved, though he couldn't find it in him to complain.

[butterflyfactor.livejournal.com]

The grooves on his chest were faded compared to the last time she'd seen them. Not by much, maybe, but enough where it struck her again how much time twenty weeks was. She paused, tracing her fingertips over the skin before pressing her lips in a lingering, almost chaste kiss to his sternum.

[howmanylives]

'Don't,' is on the tip of my tongue, though I bite back the impulse to give it voice. I once called Layla my salvation, but I deserve every scar I have, and her silent acceptance of all the things I've done and have had done to me is jarring and not, I feel, particularly earned. It's been two years for a reason. Maybe I'm just projecting in thinking that she's the one who's gonna stop this. Maybe it's all on me. Just because I want her, doesn't mean I should...

And now I'm back to months ago. What the hell's wrong with me? Focus, Madrox.

Worrying his lower lip, Jamie averted his gaze from Layla up to the ceiling, blinking a few times to clear his head, all the while hoping she didn't linger there much longer.

[butterflyfactor.livejournal.com]

She lifted her head and noticed that his attention was elsewhere. She paused a moment, then slid up his body, straddling his waist, and used both hands on either side of his jaw to turn his head back to her. She curled over and kissed him, twice.

[howmanylives]

His hands found her thighs, sliding up and back so that his hold of her was almost possessive, at complete odds with his earlier thought process. Such personal contradiction was nothing out of the ordinary, but if Layla had had an agenda in mind in moving, it had worked -- at least for the time being.

[butterflyfactor.livejournal.com]

Layla kissed him more deeply still, to the point where when she pulled back in the next moment her breath was coming a little faster and more audibly. She butted their noses gently together and licked the part of his lips. She'd been moving in a definite direction, to her mind, but they weren't in a hurry. She could take her time.

That was a nice thought.

[howmanylives]

Drawing his feet up onto the mattress, he steadied himself underneath her for a moment, knees bent on either side of her. It wasn't the most comfortable of positions, crammed sideways on the bed like that, though that wasn't much of a concern with her on top of him. Still, it could benefit from an improvement. Fingers splaying over the small of her back, he pulled her flush against him, keeping her close as he rolled them over so that they were then laying lengthwise. The sudden movement left him more than a little breathless as he appreciated the new vantage point, sliding further down her body even as he ran his hands up her sides.

[butterflyfactor.livejournal.com]

Stop the fucking presses, Jamie Madrox just took charge.

Layla gasped at the change in position, the change in weightiness and what pressed where, and how his body felt warm and over her instead of beneath. She moved instinctively to fit against him better, knees hitching over his hips, small of her back pressing up. She stretched in the direction his hands moved, moving her body with them and dragged her lips against his jaw to his ear. Passive had never been Layla's strong point, and there were a million ways to be active in any situation, even if you didn't ostensibly have the upper hand.

[howmanylives]

"My earlier warning still stands," he murmured, pressing quick, fleeting kiss to the line of her jaw, her neck, down her shoulder. For a moment he sucked the hollow of her throat, eyes flicking upwards to catch her reaction as he very deliberately rolled his hips forward against hers. "Just say the word."