~electricghoti

She is curled with her back against him while he reads aloud from a book which is terrible in both content and written talent. The lewd content a joke shared between them, a method to distract and unwind each night in the pillowed loft above her bed. Where earlier his voice brought her laughter, now it served to lull in the late hour, persuading her lids to droop lower with each sentence until their weight caused her head to roll against his shoulder in full sleep. He quietly trailed off so as not to wake with abrupt silence, reaching behind to gently place the book on a nearby night table. He raised his free hand to shake her awake, intending to transition to the ridiculously ornate bed below them, but hesitated with his hand hovering above her shoulder. 

Bare skin emerged from loose fabric that slid from her shoulder as she shifted in her sleep, the sight of which arrested his attention, usurping his original goal. The tan of her skin compared with his lighter olive always seemed to hold a kind of fascination for him, like a physical display of the different worlds they lived in before combining as one. The barest dusting of faint freckles caught his eye in the faded, flickering light of the lone candle illuminating the space. They were a feature he had not noticed before, a small secret inadvertently gifted in her unconscious vulnerability. He brushed his palm against her shoulder to smooth the way for his lips to bless each mark on her skin with a feather kiss. Each time his lips committed another piece of her to memory. Each memory he would cherish for as long as he would live.