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As before, this is another roleplay attempt between Behold and Confrazzled, each commanding a character, and through its course trading paragraphs back and forth.  While edited for readability, it is intended more for our enjoyment and thus does not read quite like a traditional novella.  (Perhaps, in part, more like a harlequin romance novel.)  As a disclaimer, this attempt of ours is far more drawn out, focusing more upon a plot, character, and a delicious Steampunk setting than our prior attempts.  So be aware, it takes a long time to "get to the goods".  And this, my friends, is the section in which we do so . . .

Without further ado, enjoy!

 
Lissla dropped her jaw, to spill out a few words, but found, well, her tongue had knotted itself into a macramé of tangles.  This reaction, this was certainly a first.  Had the spell dissolved, now that the patrician mask had been stripped away?  Now that Vester was again himself?  "I . . .  uh, gods, it will feel good to get out of this dress," Lissla flopped her rather exhausted frame into the plush of the backwards-facing seat.  At least, insomuch as the starched supporting web would allow.  She still seemed rather propped upright, like a child's doll.  The sole schnicked-off lock had worked its way free, and now flicked itself across her forehead.  "I cannot believe that ladies in these contraptions have the energy to revel in parties like that so consistently. Glory blast!  Little wonder then they do little else—the fatigue is too overwhelming."

Chatter.  Vester couldn't help thinking that he'd be only too happy to help her out of those clothes entirely.  "It's a shame we didn't think to bring a change of clothes with us." he said, matching her airy chatter.  "Although I hardly think all Patrician couples we saw spent their evening surreptitiously planting bombs like we did.  It's not impossible, though, we didn't have time to clear this mission with Central."

"Hardly, indeed . . . though I suppose," Lissla absently fingered a lock that had loosened itself at her nape, winding it 'round her index finger, unwinding it.  "But invited into the residence of one of the three integral members of the Senate?  A rather different opportunity."  She paused, unwinding another pressed curl.  "I suppose that those couples perhaps made up in energy expended in their kisses.  Considerably less cursory.  Hells, Vester, I've had better kisses from catfish."  Well, she had kissed catfish, at the least.  They had been, what, ten?

In any event, Lissla had argued quite vehemently that Vester's current grand plan—something regarding a treebourne fortress if she could remember correctly—and he had coaxed her along this time with a sort of side-bet.  Well, he had been right, and in the infinite wisdom and logic of childhood, she had been the one to kiss the catfish.  Wait.  Wait, wait, wait.  Had she—blast!  Snot-spinners from the eighth hell, had she really compared Vester to a catfish?  That kiss had been . . . well, lacking in finesse, to say the least, but . . .  no, he hadn't meant it, and the cheeky grin now somehow unfurled over her cheeks informed him otherwise.

A gasp escaped him when she brought up the catfish incident, the shared memory suddenly unearthed from a dusty cabinet in his mind.  But her smile made him recognise the suggestion for what it was.  "I wasn't really trying; it, eh, was merely a ruse," he lied. And then, more confidently "But I'll make it up to you, some time."

The way she sidled up to him in response was enough to tell him that she would like that "some time" to be "now" just as much as he did.  His heart seemed to skip a beat or two, but nevertheless, his hands knew what to do, stroking a loose-hanging curl, lifting her chin by just a fraction to give him better access.  As he slowly brought his lips toward her slightly parted ones, it occurred to him that he wasn't exactly a practiced kisser.  He might not be that much better than a catfish.  But when their lips met, the soft, visceral presence of Lisslanna both incredibly familiar and arousingly strange, all doubts vanished from his mind.

A rush of heady excitement exhilarated her, and swept her thoughts from anything but her exalted Vester.  This was no fiction, no playacting.  This was . . .  well, it felt like surreality for the giddiness but soon that became overwhelmed with the more carnal feelings that forced themselves through the dreamlike aura of the scene, inciting a fervent passion.  Soon hands, knees, fingers travelled all about the two bodies, exploring curvatures unexpected, and plush beyond the creaking leather seats.  All while drinking deep from that shared kiss.

 
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The carriage ride seemed far too limited to constrain their passion, Lissla lamented, tugging her skirts to some rights for neither they nor her undergarments had yet left her frame.  Her cheeks were a little flushed and hair more than a little mussed as she took Vester's hand to dismount from the stagecoach, even now appropriately playing the patrician almost-virgin.  Sort of. 

It was not a coy ingénue who strode through the labyrinth of the base's corridors, towards Vester's room.  It was a woman who knew exactly what she wanted, and saw that there was far, far too much distance in between those points for her determined legs to eat up efficiently.  A woman who was quite, quite certain that debriefing would have to wait.

Vester, had, in fact, informed the driver to that extent, stating quite clearly that Lisslanna and he were both very tired, and would retreat for the night.  As to whether the man believed him was anyone's guess, and Vester couldn't bring himself to care as he caught up with Lisslanna in the caverns, calling out to her with a soft "Hey-la."

They merged into each other again, the creature stumbling through the halls an ecstatic tangle of four arms and legs and eyes, flesh seemingly fused where once two mouths had been.  How many people saw them like that?  They didn't notice anyone but each other.  Through some miracle, they managed to reach his small, cramped quarters, land on the bed where they'd slept together once already.

For a long time, they lay there, neither of them willing to be the first to stop.  But finally, the kiss broke.

"I love you," he said "I've always loved you."  He shouted the words.  He whispered them.  Or maybe he didn't say them at all, because Lissla understood already.

He hit his head searching for the small oil light, the room he'd occupied for the last two years suddenly unfamiliar in the dark compared to the body his hands had explored just moments ago.  But when the small, orange flame cast its flickering light on the walls, he was rewarded with the sight of Lisslanna, sitting upright in bed, struggling to undo the now golden-lit dress that had tortured her the entire night.

This was ludicrous.  Ridiculous.  Honestly, Lissla felt like nothing more than an Evenstide gift, one wrapped in stifling layers of swaddling, bound up with trailing ribbons and knotted bows, and with a lampshade thrust somewhere inbetwixt to create a distorted silhouette.  Surely the receiver could not possibly guess the shape of this gift?!  An eruption of curses spewed from Lissla, the sort that would make any lewd, longtime sailor or flinty soldier grin ear to ear and perhaps even teach him a thing or two.  Her yankings and tuggings grew more and more frantic until at last she pulled her hands away, breasts heaving wildly with exertion and frustration, and having strewn a few buttons from the back of her dress in the process.  "Blast it, Ves, can you help with this?" she glowered.

Vester's initial desire was to tear the sartorial torture device from Lissla's skin, but then it occurred to him that he did have a pair of scissors lying around somewhere.  Last used for sewing up his favourite, badly worn pair of trousers.

Fortunately, he didn't have to rummage through his belongings long to locate them, the sharp metal blades in his hands only a few moments later.  Gently, he tried to wedge them inbetween Lisslanna's soft skin and the black leather lace that held the corset together.

The material was tough, but eventually, it yielded to the ever-mounting pressure behind the scissor's blades.  When they closed with a snap, the ends flew apart, affording Lisslanna just a little more breathing room.  Eagerly, he moved on to the next, and the one after that, his lover's lush, feminine curves unfolding further with every snip.

Finally, the corset was undone, the rigid cuirass unclasped.  The joins of Lisslanna's arched spine seemed like little golden sand-dunes in the setting sun of the oil light, long shadows stretching out from them onto half of her back.  Small, red welts were visible between them, souvenirs of the contact between black lace and flesh.  Gently, Vester planted his lips on one of them, trying to make it better in a way that was not too far removed from how it'd worked in childhood.  "I'm so sorry." he whispered "You'll never have to pretend to be a Patrician again."

A little gasp emitted as lips brushed flesh, but even with the discarding of the cooper's hoops that had constrained her rib cage Lissla's lust for liberation remained unsatiated.  Particularly as a long, half-loosened coil of hair, a drooping, lopsided pompadour, flopped across her eye, blinding her vision of her lover.  "Glory blazes, I dare say not," she tore at it madly with her hands, fumbling to find the combs, the pins, the filigree of net-workings that had clasped it into its oddly-confected topiary's contortion.  The implements of bone and metal rained down onto the bed beside her, as locks too tumbled down about her shoulders, swinging to obscure her shoulders, her back, her breasts.  Odd strands protruded here and there, mussed and harried as they were, though her hands seemed to slow, somewhat.  She seemed assuaged, but something . . . something naggled at her.

By lice, by candle's flame, by pen knife, by sharp shears, by her own hand, hells, even by kitchen knife and the hand of a rebel grunt—Lissla had strongly considered each of these options.  But divesting herself of this last vestige of the Senate's, well, this seemed a far more ceremonious path than any other that she could have envisioned.  Providing, of course, that he was amenable.  That was the crux, no?

Lissla pursed her lips, and turned her visage towards her childhood comrade, now almost-lover.  The oil lamp flickered vaguely, cast her in a far more flattering golden glow than she could have, or would have thought to, select for herself.  The words seemed to flicker too, softly, more tender than any the brash young woman would normally utter.  "Ves I . . . that is, does all of me need to be . . ." she fumbled, and paused, to distill her words.  "Will you divest me of this last Patrician garment?" she stroked a hank of her hair meaningfully, twixting it amidst her fingers.  Her emerald eyes waxed widened and luminous, now that she dared meet his eyes at last.  "I . . . well, I would keep it, for you . . ." her stream of speech petered out, muted.

What did she mean?  Her hair?  Why would she ask him to cut off her hair?  It dawned on him that he'd mentioned he liked her hair short this evening.  To comfort her at the loss of that lock.  "You don't have to cut your hair just to please me." he said, stroking her golden-lit cheek "It looks good the way it is."

She shook her head briefly, the mess of it fanning out, a jet cloud over her shoulders before it settled back into place, slightly better behaved than it had been before.  "That is precisely the problem.  This hair, this," she seized a vast handful of it, "has never belonged to me, nor been my choice.  It has always felt stuck on top, another decree of the Senate."  She pursed her lips.  "But if you prefer it long . . .  I could hardly be inclined to mind, if it belonged to you."

"I've vowed to liberate people from the shackles of Ancelterri rule wherever I could." Vester replied, only half-serious.  "I have half a mind to do it right now.  But I'll take you to the camp barber tomorrow.  She's a magician with the shears."

"Only . . . half a mind?" Lissla asked, more than a little incredulously.  "Blast.  But then it shall be in between us all night."  Wait, she hadn't just thought those words, had she?  Her ears informed her otherwise.

Was she serious?  And yet her suggestion felt right, felt like it was something that should happen.  Something that would somehow undo the last four years.  How bad had her experiences in the Ancelterri camp been, that she seemed so eager to dispose all souvenirs of it?  The dull sense of guilt at having abandoned her so callously picked up for a moment, and while it could never compete with the joy he felt at being in her presence again, he knew that the two were tied, and that he'd never feel one without the other.

"Alright, uh I'm honored by your trust.  But you do understand I'll screw this up, right?" Vester replied, holding the shears anxiously.  "Do you want me to cut off just the longer sections?  That way Verena can fix it up for you tomorrow."

"You're the one who shall have to look at it," she joked, her tone tapering off to a near-purr, and tossing the weighty bulk of her hair rather unceremoniously behind her shoulder.  "That sounds sensible, but I am HARDLY in a sensible mood right now."  The back of her neck prickled in anticipation.

Vester was going to argue that he needed some sense of direction, but stopped when he realised it was quite clear to him how he wanted to see her again.  And that would involve cutting her hair quite a bit shorter than the blunt, chin-length styles Verena the camp barber seemed to specialize in.

Gently, he seized a single lock between thumb and index finger, running them along its entire length.  The natural malleability of her hair was still the same as he'd remembered it, the strand trying to remain in the position it had been coaxed into, until its' own weight forced it to fall down again. 

He repeated the manoeuvre, this time pausing his fingers at a hands' width.  Had that been the length she wore it when he'd left?  Or had it been longer back then?  Disregarding that one summer when old Galren had cut her hair a lot shorter than usual, one of the things that had further cemented their joint suspicion that 'Lissar' had been more than an accidental misspelling.

What was he doing, bidding his farewells?  Lissla herself couldn't wait to get rid of the stifling weight of it, the prickled-in heat bearing against the back of her neck.  The last obstacle between her, Vester, and their imminent appointment with the bed.  But then, she supposed that it was a rather reverent moment, potentially.  It would have been, for a lot of Patrician women, and she supposed that it was for herself, but for rather a different reason.  This man, the man that she loved, the man that she had ALWAYS loved, was sculpting her in the way that he desired.  Furthermore, he was sculpting her in the way that SHE desired, as well.  She trusted him and he was affirming that trust with far more than she could have hoped for.

And, blue blazes of glory, there would be hair all over the floor soon enough.  That was definitely something that she had looked forwards for far, far too long.

A hand's width from the root.  Maybe Lissla had worn it a little longer, but this way, it would be easier to cut.  The shears slid through the single tendril like butter.  He grabbed a second chunk of hair, now using his entire hand as a guide rather than just his fingers.  When he released it, it had been severed to a very satisfactory length, and he suspected that this was the way Galren had cut it as well, the blacksmith's strong, larger hands leading to a slightly longer hairstyle.

The lopped-off-lock tumbled into her still-pantalooned lap.  Lissla had long since discarded her stockings, but the bloomers, for some reason or another, still remained.  Perhaps overlooked because they had been the least restrictive of all of her garments.  The ebony lock slipped from her head, down the bronzed slopes of her breasts to coil starkly against the snowy fabric, like a wound spring. 

She was a wound spring herself, though the next snip sent another hank along the same path.  The freshly-blunted strands streaking across her cheek as they settled into their new place.  She smiled a little, as Vester seemed to be gaining steam.  "You are warming to the task already," she informed him proudly.  At least, pride infused to what little of her voice was not steeped in desire.

Vester seized hanks of hair at random, without regard for symmetry, or logic.  Tousled, uneven.  That was how her hair had always been.  Although it occurred to him that maybe part of that had been due to her own styling, or lack thereof.  He couldn't really imagine Master Galren delivering poor, uneven work, even when doing something that wasn't his trade.

He slowed down a little, tried instead to make sure that the edge of his fist rested flatly against the skin of her scalp, that the hair his hand enclosed was pulled as taut as possible, before snipping a lock off.  The hairstyle wasn't taking shape yet.  But what shape was it supposed to have, other than no shape at all?

Lissla felt her head lighten as the schi-schi-schnicking of the grating blades percussed a cadence.  Each snap of the shears set a fresh lock tumbling and Lissla's head seemed buoyed aloft, as if instead it sent an airship's ballast tumbling to the floor, rather than a few silken strands of spun ebony.  And the young woman's exuberant excitement did not wane.  It was all that she could do not to float away—or, more characteristically, bounce eagerly—beneath Vester's industrious hands.

Her forehead seemed to burn when he planted a kiss on it.  It was done.  Or it seemed done, he supposed.  The hairs snipped to a more-or-less even length everywhere.  "Could you . . . ruffle it a bit?" he asked "The way you used to?"

Vester's bootheels clicked against the cavern floor, as he began to circle her, surveying the effect.  For Lissla, The imprint of his lips tingled for a long time, even as she leaned her head forwards, pressing her chin into against his chest as she blinked up into his face.  "As in . . . intentionally?" she half-laughed, shaking her head a little so that the strands flew out and settled back into place.  Perhaps they presented a pretence of straightness, still undampened and thus still yoked into the longer wave pattern.  She raised her hands, rushed the opened fingers through her hair, from temples to tips.  Gloriously close tips.  Familiar, even despite the odd trailing hanklets that still clung, here and there, and that coated her shoulders rather messily.  "Mmm, that feels wonderful," she grinned mischievously.  "Though, now that I've been stripped of that conflasted Patrician finery, I suppose it's your turn . . ." she reached her eager fingers out, tugging at his jacket cuffs, whatever she could get ahold of, really.  Rather difficult from this angle and vantage.

Vester was only too keen to provide her with a better one as he sat down on the bed next to her, the two buttons of his waistcoat yielding quickly under her delicate but strong gunsmith's fingers.  She'd moved on to his shirt even while he was trying to shake off the sleeveless garment.

He studied her face, her intent gaze under the newly-shorn head of hair.  It didn't seem quite right.  He didn't remember her hair drooping downwards like this.  There had been no curls tucked behind ears, no hair covering her neck.  It went further than subtle differences between the way Lissla had mussed up her hair and the way the wind and water and stray branches had done it for her back then. It was clear that master Galren had cut it a bit shorter in the back, perhaps even the sides.  Did it matter?  Of course it didn't.  But on some level, he did want `his' Lisslanna back.

He leaned backwards, using his arms as support against the soft bed behind him, allowing Lissla to push his unbuttoned shirt backwards over his shoulders.  Her body arching over his, her arms all but wrapped around him.  The skin of her breasts tantalizingly close to being pressed against his.  Was this really the time to think about hair?

Lissla couldn't resist depositing a swift, inquisitive kiss on his chest as her fingers skimmed backwards, thrusting away the fabric in a crinkling rumble, revealing expanses of bare, candle-illuminated flesh.  Flesh she had longed to touch in this manner since adolescence itself, but only now was she being permitted to chart its hillocks and vales.  Over his ribs, up towards his shoulders, all but tearing the silky fabric away, Lissla's hands did not even pause as she kneaded the fleshier expanse of his dorsal muscles.  His clay-slick skin stretched taught over especially excellent machinery, her mechanic's touch told her, gloves long, long discarded in the ensuing fray.  And currently, quite forgotten.  However, even through the cloying fever of her own fervour, something felt awry.  Startled, she frowned.  "Spit it out," Lissla informed him.  "You are holding something back.  Spit it out."

"I . . . uh" shit, how could he explain something like this?  "I'm thinking it used to be a bit shorter at your neck.  Your hair, I mean," he sputtered. "I want to fix it, it really doesn't look right.  But, on the other hand, I'll probably just screw it up.  We can ask Verena to take a look at it tomorrow."  Yes, tomorrow.  Right now, they had more important things to do.

"Well, knowing you," she bit her lip playfully, laying her head back down on the pillow so that the remaining hanks of hair lay strewn out on the pillow, in a haphazard midnight halo.  "Knowing you, that is going to be bugging you all blue-blazing hours of the night.  One more thing between us," she rescinded a hand, raking it through her half-wild, quite-shorn locks.  "Conflast it, might as not finish up now," Lissla pawed at his chest, pushing him away lightly with one hand so that she could sit up on the already rumpled sheets.

Shortened curls flopped over Lissla's forehead as she suddenly bolted upright, a sight that was both half-forgotten and deliciously familiar at the same time.  And suddenly her face was very close to his, the interpersonal van der Waals force pushing his lips against hers before he could counteract them. 

Sliding his fingers through the curls as the nape of her neck seemed an almost natural thing to do, the contact his fingers made with the warm skin of her head the major third that completed the chord struck by lips and breasts.  How short had it been at the back?  Less than an inch, surely?  Gently, his fingers closed together, clenching hanks of hair inbetween them, before pulling backwards, leaving a void of colder air where skin had touched skin just earlier.

He could barely see some of Lissla's black curls fall, even though he knew that his scissor-wearing hand was neatly clipping them off exactly where they seemed to sprout out of the furrows between his fingers.  And when the light suddenly flickered and went out, he could see nothing at all.

The snippling seemed to her an incredibly erotic noise, whetting her appetite for him all the more, even as the silver shears darted their cool beak across the back of her neck, raising her goosepimples to full mast.  Thus it proved harder than Lissla had anticipated to stopper the fountain of kisses that threatened to burble over, and engulf Vester.  And then, the out-sputtered flame . . .

She reined in her instincts, trying to hold herself back for a moment.  For a time, all that could be heard was their joint heavy breathing, ragged and warm.  Clearly Lissla was not the only one a little anxious to get this over with.  Still, her voice ventured out a little reluctantly, tremulous as a candle flame.  ". . . You are done, yes . . . ?"  She bit her lip again, held her breath.  Had to remind herself to breathe.  Oh, gods, this was hard.  With his face less than a foot away, ragged, half-finished hair or no.  Hair-strewn sheets, or no.  To refrain from smooshing her lips to where she expected his to be, from the source of that out-whoosing breath?  Surely not too difficult a target.

"Done?  I was just getting started." he teased, but his fingertips were already searching the back of her head, crudely judging length by texture, the newly-shortened areas being quicker to recover from the ploughing of his hand.  And again, it clasped itself around hair, pulling it just slightly outward to present, once again, a carpet of long locks for his scissors to dispatch.

But should he, really?  It was pitch dark now, the cave not even allowing them to see each other using the patchy, colourless glasses of night vision.  Was this really the time to try to improve Lissla's appearance?

Of course, her hair was so much more.  It was texture, it was smell, it was the way it brushed against his fingers and stood up again.  And it was Lisslanna's link to Ancelterri serfhood.  Still, it could wait until tomorrow, right?

It took some concerted effort to gather her voice to her again.  "You do have a lamp somewhere, no?" barely a waver, though the tones still rasped a little husky with suppressed desire.  Mind, she would not mind seeing that prime specimen of musculature illuminated again, seemingly bronze-plated in the wan kerosene light.  "Never could leave a job half-finished," she joked, all camaraderie and no uneasiness.  She did, however, wait for the sharp snip and the swish of hair down her bared back before she eased herself closer to him, hips untzing across the tangles of sheets and strewn hair.

 
"I don't know.  Having light around will probably do very little to improve my cutting skills." Vester replied.  He could just about see himself cut hank after hank of hair, desperately trying to even things out as his lover's coiffure got shorter and shorter.  Best to go by touch for now, cut her hair so that it looked okay in his mind's eye.  Verena would scream at him tomorrow; Lissla wouldn't.

"And I sort of like the fact that I have to be very close to you to feel what I'm doing," he teased, his previously comb-like hand sliding down to the small of her back, providing just enough pressure to indicate that if she were to decide to sit a little closer to him, he certainly wouldn't mind.

Lissla shivered deliciously as his hand skimmed over her skin, playing her nerves as one might some arcane musical instrument, and strumming her to tingle with a vibrato hum.  "Mm.  Well I for one will not be able to argue with that logic," she veritably purred in reply.  All the while wriggling to press herself closer, her skin to her skin, flesh to his flesh, regardless of whatever his hands and those twinned blades were doing.

His back was cold, goosebumps sticking out not just because of the bubbling sense of joy in his gut at being this close to Lissla, but as a natural response to the chill of cold desert-night air reaching into even the relatively well-isolated rebel cave complex.  It only made the contrast with the cocoon of flesh his body now formed with Lissla's greater, her body to him feeling like the cast-iron cooking range in old Galren's smithy on a winter night. 

His hands were cold, though, shielded by the warm, coal-like glow of their mutual body heat by Lissla's back.  Gently now, he touched her skin again, wondering if there . . . yes, it was covered in goosebumps as well.

And her neck, too, had goosebumps, something he found out as he combed through her increasingly shorter hair again, shielding her head from contact with the ice-cold metal scissors that, snip after snip, covered her shoulders in a pelt of black locks.

Lissla's goosebumps, however, were no result of the chill air.  In contrast she felt flushed, a florid stain unfurled across her cheeks, negligible in the veil of midnight aside from the faintly emanating heat.  Though, despite this warmth, she shivered a little, so that the sprinklings of hair dusting her shoulders slid away, to cloy the bedsheets.  A few stubborn strands clung obstinately to her shoulders and back, finding purchase in the fine film of anticipatory perspiration.  Another trail of warmth where his fingers ran along her scalp, before he grasped a new hank to snip away, and Lissla could not help emitting a purr of contentment.  "Mmmm," she murmured, feeling a little shock in the way his muscles shifted about her.  "Are you sure that you have not done this before?" she couldn't help asking.

"I am." Vester said "And come tomorrow, so will you."  More and more, he was convinced that this haircut had been a bad idea from the start.  It was like they were pushing their attraction to each other into it, the otherwise unremarkable activity turning into a passionate, erotic pantomime.

But the results might not be that great, and Verena might have to cut quite a bit more off to even it out.  Vester didn't care--he'd thought Lissla to be quite pretty the one summer she wore her hair short.  But she might feel very different about it herself.  "Perhaps you should check how it feels." he said.  "When you're running your hands through it, I mean."

With a grin that he couldn't see, Lissla splayed her fingers wide, and raked them through her shorn tresses.  "Mmm.  I thought I knew how much I missed this, but hells, I had no idea just how much."  She zig-zagged her fingers a little near the back, flipping the blunted ends outwards.  It occurred to her just how much her locks felt like the bristly tip of a paintbrush, fresh-chopped as they were.  "I have half a mind to ask you not to stop here," she added, a little teasingly, daring to dart a small kiss to his cheekbone, true as any one of her rifles' bullets.

"You're going to hate me tomorrow, trust me." Vester laughed as the warm imprint of the kiss tingled on his cheek.  But his hands, too, found their way towards her head, joining Lissla's own in the exploration of her scalp.  "I could shear it off here," he said, punctuating the last word by lifting up one of the longer curls atop her head, "but I'd rather leave that for someone capable to do.  And there are some other things I want to attend to."

Saying that, his hands followed hers, softly tracing a smooth path towards her elbows, where they applied just the slightest pressure.  But enough so that she couldn't possibly push away the kiss he planted just above her breasts.

Her heart skipped a beat—skipped several beats, in fact—then seemed to race to catch up with itself.  "I cannot possibly imagine what those would be," she replied, a little too measuredly, considering the tumultuous state of her emotions.  "I could hardly venture to another barber, now.  And furthermore . . .  you are certainly welcome to venture a little lower, if you would like."

Vester's hands didn't miss a beat sliding down towards the crevice of Lisslanna's armpits--which had marked the extent of her hair just half an hour earlier--to her breasts, spine, ribs.  Exploring a body new and strange in form and familiar in smell so many other ways, tracing a chaotic pattern over his one love's skin to match the chaos in his own head, were the storm of passion picked up thoughts of love, desire and trepidation and threw them around in an incomprehensible whirlwind.

Should he?  Could he?  Uncertainty about what to do mixed with the vague realisation that his life would be very different from this day.  Would he ever be able to risk her life again on a mission such as they'd just completed? 

But outwardly, he showed no sign of hesitation as his hands slid downwards, towards the rim of the soft, white bloomers, now truly the last aspect of Lissla's Patrician garb remaining.

"You should," Lissla replied, sinking a kiss to his half-parted, wholly-incredulous mouth.  He was probably blinking in half-confusion now; she fancied she could see the glinting from the widened whites of his eyes, even in the pitch darkness of the cavern room.  Poor boy probably didn't even know he'd voiced his waffling aloud.  The thought made her smirk further—the thought of Vester, of all people, so unnerved.  Was this the same Vester who had ordered her hooded and bound, the epitome of a businesslike officer?  Was this truly him, here, giddy, unbalanced as any schoolboy?  As much as he had been over that baker's daughter that one jealous summer—Lissla choked back a snort at that one, really. 

"You should, you know," she walked her fingers from his shoulder to the nape of his neck, where they stroked and tugged at the still-slicked hair.  Drew him closer, so that her hot breath filled the contours of his ear, intricate and delicate as any rifle's workings.  As such, her voice diffused softly, so as not to damage them.  "Ready when you are," she bade, in the challenge to any childhood's game.

Her hands were swift and methodical, unbuttoning his bulging, tight trousers with the same natural ease as the bloomers had slid off her warm, soft legs, even in the dark.  And what followed was, if maybe not as easy, definitely natural, as their bodies, senses and actions blurred into the darkness of the night.

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