such selfish prayers, and I can't get enough

[losttheright]

It's strange sometimes, if Molly stops to think about it too much, how easy this has been. Effectively having a second chance with an ex and picking up not quite where they left off but being able to get right what they didn't before probably shouldn't be as straightforward as it's felt. Living with someone shouldn't feel so right after the last time she moved in with a boyfriend, and how much it seemed like she was just playing house. It's been five months or so since she ended the lease on her place and moved into Stephen's, and she hasn't once started to feel restless or like she doesn't fit here.

Granted, her priorities have changed somewhat since the two of them were first sleeping together all those years ago. And for that matter, it isn't like she's disinterested in sex. Her relationship with it — with herself, her body — isn't at all what it was when he was here before, but she and Stephen have always been compatible in that way. It's nice, actually, to know that the years between them haven't altered that, no matter what else might be different.

She's idly thinking about that as she wanders out into the living room half-dressed after a shower, her hair damp and limp around her shoulders and only a bra, red and lacy, paired with her jeans. "You haven't seen my plaid button-down, have you?"

Comments

[righttoplay]

Stephen leans back in his seat, brow raising and reading glasses tugged down as he looks her over. He's lucky for so many reasons, he knows that. He's lucky that she's here at all, that she even agreed to date him, let alone live with him, because she's brilliant and passionate and wicked in all the right ways. But looking at her now, it sure as hell doesn't hurt that she's also gorgeous.

"If I did," he says solemnly, "I would not tell you."

[losttheright]

"Oh, okay," Molly says, just barely biting back a laugh, though the sound of her voice and the curl of her mouth both betray her amusement anyway. It's an unexpected answer, but maybe it shouldn't be. Either way, she doesn't really care, and that's kind of enjoyable in its own right. She has, over these past few years, become self-conscious about her body in a way she never was before this place, and wasn't when they were together the first time, either. But she can be only half-dressed around him now and entirely comfortable with that. When they've been living together for months now, and sleeping together for longer than that, she thinks it probably ought to have stopped seeming so noteworthy, but it's a good thing, so she'll take it regardless.

She takes a seat on the couch, not entirely certain how she wants to play this, but enjoying the attention for the moment while she figures that out. "Guess I can just stay like this, then."

[righttoplay]

"I think that would be a good idea, yes," Stephen says, mock-serious. He looks her over, though, as he says it, taking in the long lines and curves of her body, the place where her hip bone dips just above her jeans, the red lace of her bra against pale skin. "A very, very good idea." He reaches out, resting a hand at her waist. For all his talk, there's no real intent in it yet, though god knows he's tempted to turn this into sex.

"Were you going somewhere?"

[losttheright]

It's a heady, kind of fantastic thing, the way he looks at her. On one hand, Molly is used to being on the receiving end of this sort of attention, whatever lull she'd settled into over the past year or two before Stephen turned up at her door, having remembered everything. On the other, she'll never really feel about her body the way she used to. With him, she's shed some of that developed modesty — kind of an inevitability, given that they live together — but that doesn't make it any less intoxicating to have him watch her like he can't take his eyes off her.

"Wasn't planning to," she says with a deceptively easy shrug, her fingers brushing against the back of his hand where he's rested it on her waist. "Just thought it would be a good idea to, you know, get dressed. But hey, if you've got other ideas..."