Chapter Text
It was the second day of the heatwave and she knew she was in for another restless night. Her attic room had been stifling; all the heat from the house seemed to rise, feeling like she was being gently cooked as she’d laid naked on top of the sheets.
Hours passed as she’d stared up at the ceiling, periodically getting up to re-wet her flannel and relishing the all too temporary cooling sensation against her skin.
As she had, her mind drifted to Lockwood. It always drifted to Lockwood. But as she’d wiped the cloth slowly across her chest and water trickled over her bare skin, those thoughts seemed more charged, more illicit. Was he lying in bed, as uncomfortable as she was right now?
That night when she’d burst into his room, he’d been under the covers wearing some sort of thick long black sleep pants. But surely tonight, their heavy weight material would be intolerable. Surely he’d be wearing nothing at all. Nothing. Naked. She felt a stirring between her legs at the thought of him and his lithe pale limbs stretched out.
It was already obvious that his build was lean; his dark clothes accentuated the willowy length of his body, but the brief glimpse of him that night as he’d flung back the covers and bent to grab a t-shirt, she’d very much registered the flash of his lightly defined chest and stomach; and of the soft sprinkling of dark hair that trailed from his belly button down into the waistband.
The suggestion, the thought of what lay beneath made her bite her lip. She could feel the steady building pulse of pleasure thinking about how it would feel to slip her fingers inside the elastic and gently pull it down over his slender hips…
And so her restless night has continued, drifting in and out of fitless sleep, with her overactive mind furnishing her with wildly inappropriate visuals of Lockwood and what her exploring his body might do to him.
She glanced up at him now, sat in his favourite high-backed chair, one long leg crossed over the other, his eyes scanning the open magazine resting in his lap. She smiled a little knowing despite his studious expression, he was only looking at the pictures.
His shirt sleeves were rolled up, exposing his forearms. Draped loosely over the arm of the chair, they looked almost delicate, but she knew there was strength in them. She watched the tendons flex slightly as his fingers moved to turn the page.
Her eyes travelled steadily up his body; noting that his tie was still in its usual place, slightly askew and pulled loose and his top button undone. Nothing out of the ordinary there. But from the way the white fabric clung to him, he was obviously sweating too. While his skin was its usual pale self with not even a hint of colour on those angular cheekbones, his temples were definitely glistening.
Suddenly his fingers reached up for the knot at his throat, idly working the tie loose until he began sliding its length from around his neck.
It felt like she shouldn’t be watching him like this, almost subconsciously removing his clothes, but she couldn’t pull her eyes away. Something about his slow, languid movements started that familiar throb between her thighs again.
His gaze was still on the open magazine as his fingers gently rolled the tie, their movement unhurried, as if he found the act of it therapeutic in some way. As they moved to the neck of his shirt, she followed them, watching the slow pull at a button, then another, mindlessly spreading the collar open to expose the skin of his chest to the still air of the room.
That. Collarbone.
Why on earth did she find the sight of its delicate structure so erotic.
She swallowed and wet her lips. Truthfully, she didn’t want him to stop. He could continue down the line of buttons until he spread open his whole damn shirt…