April 6th, 1891 — Lach's House, Hebrides

Juliana was conducting an experiment. She had put a great deal of thought into this, and was controlling for every variable, or trying to. She had considered her choice of outfit very carefully. She needed to wear something that was exactly intermediately pretty, not a touch above or below. Something neutral, and modest. She'd worn her hair up, but in a style that didn't look too tight. It was intended to evoke a casual feeling without being immediately reminiscent of how she'd had her hair down on her previous two visits. It would have been better if she could have chosen a neutral location, but that was out of her hands. Regardless of the outcome of her experiment, secrecy was important, so she couldn't go find some relatively public place in order to stage the interaction. Besides, this was the only place she could be entirely sure of finding him: in his home.

Or she'd thought so, anyway. When she flooed in, he didn't appear to be home. She'd waited for a moment in the parlor, hoping the noise from the floo would alert him to her presence and draw him out. When it didn't, she'd called out tentatively, which had also evoked no response. After a few moments she'd wandered through the small house to confirm that it was, in fact, empty. She tried not to look at anything too closely, and certainly not to touch anything — it felt like compromising the experiment, wandering into his house and having the opportunity to see his things without his knowing. He ought to take his floo offline when he was out — unless he'd left through the floo, of course.

She'd gone back to the room with the floo and sat down to wait. She had no pressing commitments for the rest of the day; she'd told her parents she was going to visit Zach, and no one was likely to try and confirm her story. She hadn't brought anything to keep her busy, though, and she soon tired of sitting there just waiting. Hesitantly, she went to the kitchen and made herself a pot of tea, expecting him to appear at any moment and surprise her at the scene of the crime, so the speak. He didn't, though; the tea made, she returned to the front room and settled back in on the sofa, then turned her attention to a nearby book.

It wasn't a particularly good book. Juliana would have set it down if she'd had anything else to occupy her time, but she didn't, so instead she'd made a game out of replacing the more mundane word choices with longer vocabulary as she read over each sentence. Eventually, the door opened. She looked up, and quickly set the book and her cup of tea down so that she could stand. "Oh, good," she said, straightening out her skirt. "You're here."

Lachlan MacFusty

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   Lachlan MacFusty

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

Lachlan had gone from a physical job to an extremely physical job over the past few months, and despite being in good shape he still found himself out of breath before the rest of his cousins. Maybe it was the type of work; beaters were required to have strong upper body strength, but dragonkeepers—especially when interacting with and around the dragons—required strength, agility, endurance, everything. They always kept a safe distance, but there was a lot of running and lifting and Lachlan hated every minute of it, even though complaining had never once crossed his mind. The morning had been spent handling a pair of toddling dragons who'd decided to try and fight each other over their afternoon meal, which was probably Lach's least favorite thing, but on the upside he'd been allowed to leave for an early dinner after the conflict had been handled.

He'd washed himself down before returning home, but the thought of a real bath was still appealing. His hair was damp with a mixture of sweat and water, the blond waves slicked back as best as he could, although he found himself continuing to push it back as he approached his house. He had the equivalent of an outdoor mudroom at the back of his home, but his clothes had been so soaked and dirtied by the time he'd left the reserve that he'd changed into a spare pair before returning home, but he was so lethargic and his skin was so slick that all he wanted was to pull them off his body and take a long, hot bath. And he fully intended to do so, but upon opening the door he was snapped out of the temporary exhaustion and was suddenly very alert to the fact that Juliana Binns was sitting in his living room.

He would have laughed at the idea that she'd be here if his cousin had taunted him about it earlier in the day. Miss Binns was still angry at him, never wanted to talk to him again, didn't want to be at his house nor wanted him at hers, and altogether had been disturbed by the prospect of kissing him, which - admittedly was not very good for his ego, but was fair enough. He'd done his best to push the encounter from his thoughts, but every now and then between work and busying himself with housework he thought or saw something that reminded him of her. He wanted to see her again, if only to repair what ever crack in their acquaintanceship he'd caused, but actually seeing her in his home felt... bizarre. Out-of-place. And to make it all the stranger, she had a cup of tea in her hand, and - was that a book from his shelf?

"I... Did I miss a letter?" he asked, because she didn't seem the type to come by without thoroughly discussing the circumstances of their meeting. She hadn't been in the past, between her job and living with her parents and their scandal still circulating in certain corners of society. He found that his heart was beating faster than it had during his walk to his home, but it was not the good sort of quickening heartbeat. He was nervous - a little worried, even. It was only her casualness that kept him from assuming the worst.

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— way too attractive set by mj <3 —

She'd planned this interaction out meticulously before she'd come, but she'd always counted on finding him at home already, so she had never prepared for this transition. She waited a beat until he spoke, then hesitated. Oh, a letter. Should she have written first? Given the circumstances of their acquaintance she understood why he might have expected that, but she couldn't possibly have written. What on earth would she have said?

"Er, no," she admitted. She'd brought her hands together without thinking of it, fingers of her right hand wrapping nervously around the tip of her left index finger to fidget for a moment. Realizing what she was doing, she stopped and tried to force her nerves to be still. She shouldn't be nervous about this; it would disrupt her experiment. Or maybe the nerves were part of the results?

"Uhm," she said, almost wincing as she tried to figure out what to say next. After a half-second, she put her hands out to either side in a gesture that mimicked a muted explosion and muttered hesitantly, "Surprise."

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   Lachlan MacFusty

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

This was still mildly unsettling. Of course he had no issue with Miss Binns being in his home; he wasn't hiding anything there, nor was he displeased by her company when she was willing to be company instead of insisting she was one some sort of mission that did not allow for basic pleasantries such as tea. He couldn't help but look at the teacup in that moment, because frankly that was the most bizarre—and maybe the most telling—thing about her presence. She'd been here for longer than a few minutes, had looked through his bookshelf, and gone to the kitchen to make tea? And all without a letter? And now she was fidgeting and looked a little nervous, and he felt nervous too, as if he should have known she was coming to ensure he'd been here to receive her. As if he could have possibly known.

And he'd thought he'd been too familiar. Maybe he shouldn't be so nervous after all. Or maybe he should be, since this was out-of-character for her. He hadn't even realized that his heartbeat had slowed until it picked up the pace once more as he realized he probably ought to say something. "A surprise," he agreed, and hesitantly moved across the room until he found a seat in the armchair across the coffee table from the sofa. It was probably good to keep some distance between them, at least until he knew why she was here. He didn't want to spook her, or lead her make accusations that would lead to a whole thing by looking too comfortable in her presence.

The moment he fell back into the chair his muscles relaxed and he realized how tired he was—and also what a mess he probably looked like. Grass stains on the cuffs of his pants, a few dirt prints on his white shirt, and he probably reeked of grass and soil and dragon leather, which had a peculiar scent that some people found off. (He wasn't sure why he was so worried about how he smelled. She'd come into his house, not the other way around.)

"Did you need to talk to me about something?" he asked after he'd given himself a moment to simply breathe, "—or were you just in the neighborhood and stopped to visit?" The corner of his lips slid up into a joking smile, one because there was no neighborhood—he was very clearly in the middle of the wooded area next to an empty clearing—and secondly because the idea of her "stopping for a visit" was almost as unbelievable given the end of their last encounter.

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   Juliana Ainsworth

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— way too attractive set by mj <3 —

He was sitting down now, which distressed her. It was all so different than she'd imagined it would be. She'd imagined she'd come in from the floo to find him sitting on the couch, as he had been on previous occasions, and that he'd stand up when she came in and she would state her purpose here before they did anything else. She hadn't expected to be left alone in his house for an hour to entertain herself, and for him to come in with his clothes all dirty and his hair a little wet, and then to sit down and smile at her and make jokes. This was getting derailed already, and she hadn't even really begun.

"No," she said, looking down to realize she had started fidgeting with her hands again in front of her stomach. She was still standing, and made no move to sit. "I didn't want to talk. I've — I've decided," she began, steeling herself for what came next. "— that you may kiss me again. One time."

There, she'd gotten through it, and maybe that meant she could salvage her experiment after all. Only, as soon as she'd said it, she was seized by a fit of self-consciousness, because he had gone to the other end of the room instead of to where she was, and he'd sat down and started making jokes instead of what she'd expected him to say. "— if you like," she added, with a nervous flush to her cheeks.

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   Elias Grimstone, Hermia Bonaccord, Lachlan MacFusty

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

She didn't smile back after his joke, so his own smile began to fade, and then faltered even more as she began to fidget nervously. For someone who apparently did not come to talk, she looked awfully nervous, and - suddenly it made sense. The nervousness, not the words that followed, because those made absolutely no sense at all. He tried to think back to the last encounter, tried to remember her exact words the last time they were in this situation. He remembered her repeatedly saying no when he'd pulled away last time, how she'd demanded he move away from her, how she'd claimed he was ruining everything, and nothing between then and now seemed to logically explain why she was offering to let him kiss her.

His expression was frozen, his lips parted for words that never came, his brows knitted together in confusion. Slowly he became less a statue, his eyes flickering back and forth as he tried to make sense of her question, as he tried to figure out whether or not she was genuine in her offering or whether this was some trap. It definitely felt like a trap; she'd questioned him about his impulses last time, made him wonder whether he'd actually wanted to kiss her or if there was some weird ulterior motive that he wasn't yet aware of himself, and that alone would have made him think this was a trap. But then - she did look very nervous, and her cheeks were pink in way that irritated him slightly, because after all that it didn't feel right that she got to be the nervous one. She was the one who'd told him to fuck off in her own weird way, she was the one who made a big deal about how he should never have kissed her.

He couldn't be mad at her, though, even if he wanted to—he was too busy trying to make sense of her offer to add another emotion into the mix.

"Are you asking me to kiss you?" he asked, his brows softening. He rose to his feet in order to feel as though they were on equal footing, because he was suddenly feeling insecure, but he made no move towards her. His heartbeat was still too quick to be healthy, only it was accompanied by periodic pangs whenever he considered a new ending to this odd scenario—none of them good, even though he wished he could imagine one that way, because this was still too out-of-character of her for comfort. He sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and began to chew on it nervously. "Because if you - if you're doing this to mess with me - don't." He thought to Fallon, how she'd toyed with him however unintentionally, and although the nature of his relationship with Miss Binns was drastically different, the idea of being toyed with was unappealing nonetheless.

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— way too attractive set by mj <3 —

Was she asking him to kiss her? Well, she hadn't actually asked any questions, but other than that pedantic point, yes, she supposed she was. That was why she'd come, so that he would kiss her, and while she hadn't expected that she would need to actually ask she was sort of asking all the same. So this was good. And he was standing, which was good; this was closer to what she'd pictured. And this was going to be it. He was going to cross the room and put his hands on her face and press his lips up against hers, just like he had before, only this time she'd be ready for it.

He didn't do that at all. He stayed where he was, and he chewed his lower lip, and then he made a statement that utterly confused her. Her brows knit in confusion. "Mess with you?" she repeated, as though she hadn't understood.

  

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

His chest was so tight it felt like it was holding him in place. In fact, he was sure that the moment he tried to take a step forward his chest could constrict and he wouldn't be able to move at all, because the anxiety was setting in and it wasn't at all how he imagined (in hindsight; he hadn't actually imagined this beforehand) how he'd react if Miss Binns asked him to kiss her.

"You're... you're not going to yell at me for being willing to kiss you, I mean," he said, though it made more sense in his head than in his words, because all the emotions were there and he wasn't quite willing to let those out. Not after she'd berated him about letting his emotions get to him before. He took a breath and tried to elaborate, lest this turn into a game of back-and-forth about his meaning. "Or - so you could laugh if I tried. Do you actually want me to kiss you? Or is this some test to see if would still kiss you, because I would, but - I won't, not if you don't want me to." This wasn't making any more sense, he realized, or maybe it was—but it came out clunky and awkward and his nervousness and insecurities were on full display.

"Would you kiss me back?" he asked, which was probably the more efficient way to answer his concerns.

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   Juliana Ainsworth

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— way too attractive set by mj <3 —

For all his fumbling and rephrasing, Juliana thought she knew what he was getting at. That made perfect sense, actually, because a part of her did want to sit there and pick apart his motivations and his impulses, to dissect them so that she could trying to understand them (though not to laugh; that was projecting a coldness onto her that she didn't think was warranted given any of their previous interactions). It was not, however, the purpose of today's experiment. She wasn't testing him to see if he would kiss her. She'd actually taken it as a foregone conclusion, and she hadn't planned to be rejected. It hadn't even occurred to her at all until the second after she'd made her declaration. He'd kissed her before, and she'd just... assumed that whatever had made him want to kiss her before, it would still be present now.

Then he asked would you kiss me back, which was, at least in Juliana's mind, an entirely unrelated question. She hadn't thought that far through things. Well, of course she had thought of it, but that was about as far as things had gotten. She couldn't picture it, because she simply didn't have any experience to draw on. She supposed she'd seen people kiss, on occasion, but it wasn't like she'd ever actually observed it. She had never been kissed until the last time she was here, so she certainly didn't have practical expertise to draw on.

"Oh," she said, biting her lower lip and looking down at her hands again. "I — uhm." She hadn't expected there to be this much talking beforehand. She'd thought that when she made her announcement he would just come over and kiss her, and then the question of whether or not she would kiss him back could be decided by... science. Not by her. This was awkward, because the whole point was that she didn't know, but she didn't think he'd appreciate that answer. That was the experiment, really. She'd been turning over everything Camilla had told her weeks ago about what it felt like to like someone, and particularly about what it felt like if someone you liked kissed you. The last kiss had surprised her too much for her to remember feeling anything while it was happening, other than panic. This time, if she was ready for it and he kissed her again, she'd be able to figure out how it actually felt to be kissed by Lachlan MacFusty. Which she thought she was entitled to know, all things considered. Since he had kissed her, and all.

"I wouldn't know how," she admitted, glancing up at him nervously.

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   Lachlan MacFusty

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

She wouldn't know how. It was an answer that did not immediately quell his fears about why she was asking him to kiss her, or how she would respond if he did, but it did give him pause, and with the amount of overthinking he was doing it did not take him long to conclude that she was probably not going to yell or laugh at him for trying. Her answer spoke to her inexperience, and inexperienced women were unlikely to use kissing as a means to mess with a man—and really, with her cheeks so pink and her body language that suggested a nervous sort of sincerity, he was beginning to believe she meant it.

"That's okay," he answered quietly, nodding. She didn't seem like the sort of woman who ran around with men, even if she looked like the sort of women who ran around doing something. Scheming, maybe, but probably not kissing men. His breathing slowed, and he didn't feel as anxious anymore, except maybe about the thought of kissing her again. There was still a coffee table between them, and he briefly regretted his decision to put so much distance between them. He could feel the anticipation in the air, because he would kiss her again, if she was willing, and it seemed that she was, but he'd have to move around the table to get there and that was far too many steps to make without succumbing to anticipation.

But he tried. He took slow steps, his gaze snapping back to hers with each step as if trying to gauge her reaction. He finally made it around the coffee table, only a few feet's distance separating them. "Promise me you won't force me to go stand by the door after?" he asked, hoping to ease some of the tension with a joke as he stepped forward.

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— way too attractive set by mj <3 —

Oh, he was walking over — this was going to happen now, it was really going to happen. She had planned for this to happen, of course, that was the whole point of her being here at all, but now that it was actually happening it sent her insides into a fit of nervous fluttering. She met his eyes as he walked across the room towards her, chewing her lower lip. She ought to stop doing that — what if he got over here and kissed her and her lip was deformed or something, from all the chewing?

He was still walking over. It seemed like it was taking forever (was he intentionally walking so slowly?) but at the same time it was happening too fast, because this room wasn't that big and he was going to be here any minute and what if she still wasn't ready for this, despite all of the thought she'd put into it beforehand?

He was an arm's length away now, and he'd stopped. This close it was obvious how huge he was, compared to her. She had to look up at him in order to meet his eyes. "Sorry, no," she said quietly, still chewing her lip. "I can't promise anything."

She might spontaneously combust as soon as he closed the distance, with the way she was feeling at the moment. She could very conceivably need a minute to recollect herself, after he was finished. That said — she wasn't going to stop him.

  

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

He cracked a smile at her response, and momentarily the tightness in his chest dissipated and he only felt a little nervous. "Wouldn't except anything less from you," he admitted. She was right in front of him now, and she looked so small. He'd known she was small, and he might have even considered it once or twice before, but never had he been given the time to just consider her. He wondered whether he should take a step, put his hands where it felt most natural, and then kiss her, or if he should do it in one fluid motion so that it wouldn't be so clunky. She didn't have much experience, and he didn't want to make her think that kissing was supposed to be such an awkward thing, but he also did not trust himself not to make it awkward by virtue of being too eager.

So he stepped forward and brought a hand up to the side of her face, letting his fingertips trace the roundness of her cheeks before slipping across her jaw and finally coming to a rest under her chin. He tilted her head up, hoping to make this less physically awkward; he hadn't been thinking about the height difference last time, but now it was stuck on his mind. He gently pinched her chin between his thumb and forefinger and held her there, only then becoming aware of how his heartbeat had reached his fingertips.

He leaned down, not too swiftly as to surprise her but not too slowly to give her too much time to think about it, and pressed his lips against hers, his eyes fluttering shut at the contact. It was more softer than it was firm, but at least it was not so stiff. His stomach tightened, but he tried to resist the urge to lean in closer or touch his other hand to her waist, wanting to figure out how her body was going to react before he got too into it.

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— way too attractive set by mj <3 —

He touched her face. He'd done that last time, but she'd hardly been aware of it as anything other than an abstract fact. Now it was a sensation: his hands on her face, his fingertips at the edge of her jaw, his thumb on her chin. The anticipation might have been enough to make her shiver, but she stopped herself. She'd told him once, so this was only going to happen once, and she needed to focus. She needed to remember it, this time — she needed to really experience it this time.

His lips tasted salty but a little sweet, which surprised her. She'd expected him to taste the way he smelled: earthy, rough, vaguely rural. It was subtle, the taste, but it was there — not sugary sweet, but a sort of... clean sweet, which was another contrast to what she might have expected, given the state of his hair and clothes when he'd walked in. A man of surprising contrasts, she supposed — just like the softness of this kiss, which she remembered from last time, but which made so little sense from the way he looked and the sort of life he led.

She remembered to shut her eyes a half-second after he did. That was part of it, but she'd forgotten. She hadn't shut her eyes last time. Was that what he'd meant by kissing him back? Surely there had to be more to it than just this, because she wasn't actually doing anything except standing there with her eyes closed and making mental notes about the way he felt and smelled and tasted. Surely if that was all there was to kissing, it wouldn't be half so popular. Tentatively, Juliana pushed herself up onto her tiptoes, so that she could press her lips a little more firmly against his. Am I doing this right? she thought with a rush of nervousness, but of course there was no one to answer.

  

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

He waited, and waited, and waited for any reaction, any sign, and for a moment all she did is stand there and allow him to kiss her. He was not going to complain though; every few seconds a surge of warmth rushed through him, and it helped relieve any anxiety that remained. Unlike last time, when he'd practically pressed his lips tight against hers and just stayed there, unmoving, he was determined to make this a proper kiss, and was encouraged by the way she'd pushed her lips more firmly against his.

His released her chin and slid his hand back over her jaw and under under her ear, using a finger to push back the free strands of hair that framed her face. He couldn't possibly know what she was thinking, but he knew that she was thinking; she was probably over-thinking this, because she had a way of doing that. He wondered if she planned her movements with the same precision she'd planned to dismantle the rumors about them—which, he realized, they weren't exactly proving wrong at the moment. She hadn't wanted to kiss him, to make all of her efforts meaningless, but she was right here and she was almost kissing him back. Lachlan moved a half-step forward, his free hand finding her waist, and he angled his head to deepen the kiss, hoping, practically praying, that she would not recoil any second. He couldn't define his feelings for Miss Binns, but he did enjoy kissing her—that much he could say now with certainty.

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   Juliana Ainsworth

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— way too attractive set by mj <3 —

Oh, this was — things were changing. Maybe she'd done something right by trying to press up against him more, and she'd spurred this... or maybe it had been particularly awful, and had spurred this all the same because he had given up on waiting for her to kiss him back and had just decided to take matters into this own hands. He'd certainly taken her into his own hands. It had not occurred to her that he would touch her anywhere other than her face, but now he had one hand on her neck and the other on her waist. Was this part of kissing, being touched like this? Or was this a step beyond just kissing? She didn't know. She knew the academic overview of how children came into the world — it had, notably, been a subject of her book which had shocked the stuffy old scholars in the literary community — but the steps that might lead up to it were decidedly fuzzy. How many steps were there between kissing someone and having sex with them?

Not that she could think too long or hard about this (or about anything) when he was leaning down into her and the way he was kissing her was changing. She didn't know how to describe this, as opposed to how it had started, but it was definitely different. She made a brief noise of surprise that was smothered in his mouth. Her eyes fluttered open, but when she noticed that he still had his closed she closed hers again as well. They were still kissing, apparently, and she wasn't going to interrupt him this time. For the sake of the experiment she thought she needed one full kiss, whatever that ended up meaning. She did, however, feel that if he leaned in to her any more she was likely to lose her balance. In an attempt to proactively counter this, she reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck.

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   Lachlan MacFusty

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

She didn't recoil—in fact, she did exactly the opposite. The noise that left her mouth was unexpected and entirely unlike her; he almost regretted that he'd been kissing her right at that moment, because he wanted to know what it sounded like when it wasn't being smothered against his lips. The familiar jolt of arousal shot down through his stomach, and once again he was praying, but this time it was for his own sake—for his ability to keep his own body in check—rather than for her own reaction.

His grip on her waist tightened in response, and for a moment he thought the best reaction he might get going forward was another squeak or two, but then her hands snaked up around his neck, and it was his turn to gasp against her lips. His hand immediately dropped from her neck and joined the other to snake around her waist, and he pulled her against him the best he could manage given their height difference. He'd been so worried about startling her that he hadn't even considered that she might surprise him, but she had, and he was finding it increasingly difficult to calculate his every movement. His mind was cloudy, and every time he tried to think would she like this? or is this too much? he found himself mentally handwaving his concerns away.

She'd said he could have one kiss, and he wanted to make sure it was one he could remember when she inevitably disappeared for the next few weeks, but he was beginning to find it difficult to keep his breathing steady. He pulled back just enough to catch a breath, his face still close enough to hers to feel her breath on his face. His eyes fluttered open, and he stared down at her, trying to figure out what she was thinking, his eyes glazed with something—satisfaction, maybe desire. He wouldn't have been able to tell even if asked.

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— way too attractive set by mj <3 —