secondchances | return to paradisa

Steph lowers her legs, wanting to stand on her own two feet now that her very hot, very Italian taxi has gotten her to her destination.

"So. You're in love with me," she grins, less shocked now after some kissing and more giddy. "And you only told Molotov? She didn't try to beat it out of you?"

Ezio lets her down, but he slides her down the length of his body in the process, and he holds her there even after that –– he's not about to let her get away from him.

"I am in love with you," he says, and he'll say it as many times as she wants to hear it. He palms her ass. "And yes, she did try to beat it out of me, but she could not break me."

Oh, that makes her heart flutter, now. Any blushing that's faded is renewed, but even so when his hand cups her ass her eyes widen.

She can grab his ass now. Wasting no time, she wraps her arms around him and uses both hands, putting a curiosity to rest with one squeeze.

"Yep. Thought so."

About the beating and also the ass being nice.

Cheeky! She's more than welcome to, though.

"Thought so what?" he demands, laughing.

The butt's nice, but it's oddly nicer to just lean into him and not have to think about fifteen hundred other things, such as boyfriends and girlfriends.

"Not a lot of people were happy for us to be close friends, let alone throw the L word in there."

... even so, she hopes those people aren't skeletal remains around here somewhere.

"Who didn't want us to be friends?" he hums, partially to be difficult. Since when did those peoples' opinions matter? He starts easing her in a walk towards the bed, dancing around the more serious topics he know she'd like to avoid for at least a moment... but it floats around his mind, too.

"Oh, just most people from Gotham that strolled in." Especially once they figured out Ezio's profession. As she moves with him, hands still resting on his ass, she thinks back. "I know it doesn't matter--like, it really doesn't matter now--but it mattered to me when a lot of them were here. Just 'cause, you know."

The whole struggle for acceptance thing. It made her a little sensitive.

Ezio nods, and the backs of his calves his the bed frame. He doesn't pull her over with him, though. Not quite yet.

"It was unfair of them to judge you for your friendship with me because of my politics," he says. "That was never about you, dolcezza. They just wanted to believe what they wanted."

Old habits die hard. Stephanie opens her mouth, about to tell him it wasn't that simple, but her brain catches up to her mouth and she shuts it. She shakes her head with a smile.

"Yeah. You're right."

Because it's not like that's the here and now anymore.

"It's just hard to shake when it feels just like yesterday." Kinda.

He eases out of her grip so he can sit down on the edge of the bed, and his hands slide down just under her ass. That little tug on her thighs guides her to straddle his thigh. You know you want to, it's fun. He doesn't break his gaze on her eyes for even a moment.

"They will understand you someday," he promises. And then, a little wryly: "I'll make them if they refuse."

She'll straddle his thigh, but now it's her turn to do some subtle adjusting because her panties are clinging uncomfortably. He'll be flattered, surely.

Steph lightly bumps their foreheads together.

"You don't even understand me. But that's okay. We seem to get along okay enough, I think. What about you?"

Subtle! Not with his eagle eyes. Ezio scoots her right up close. He could joke that there's not a single man on earth who understands women, but he understands enough to know that kind of teasing has a time and place.

"We do," he agrees. "What about me?"

"Do you think I have a decent understanding of Ezio Auditore?"

Near the end of that question, she takes his wrist to turn it over. It's a hint to get rid of the blade. Fine for cuddling, not great for anything more.

He almost thinks to let her do it, indulge in a little bit of that strange intimacy of being unarmed by a loved one, but he does it himself, fingers working nimbly on the opposing buckle. It comes away easy, and he sets it down on the bedside table with a soft sound.

"Hmm," he muses. "I think you know my soul."

Maybe not much of his life, perhaps, but he doesn't need to be an Assassin around the woman he loves. He likes to have a person to escape into, to bury his nose into and simply be with.

And here she thought hearing he was in love with her would be the last thing to make her blush so hard she thinks she's dizzy from the blood rushing to her cheeks.

"Ezio. Ugh." She gives his chest the most ineffectual of shoves, and then sees if he catches on when she traces the shape of its opening. Might as well take that off so they're even. Evenish.

“Ugh?” he repeats, amused. “I give you my soul, and I get an ugh?”

But he does as asked, dragging his shirt up over his head and casting it aside. There it all is for her, everything she’s seen a hundred times or more but now is hers — broad shoulders, sculpted muscle, and all.

"It's a lot," she laughs, not wanting to call it out as cheesy when it is sweet. She wouldn't want him to stop saying that crap, anyway. It's all part of the package, as well as the bod, which is great. Nothing's changed here except now she can touch freely. It's like a buffet.

Thank god she doesn't say that aloud and just takes her plate, so to speak, letting her hands wander over his chest.

"So, what's it like for me to have my hands all over you now, huh?"

"It feels like you are having a good time," he replies, grinning, and he takes her cheek in one hand and passes his thumb over his lower lip. "A naughtier side of Stephanie Brown, certainly."

"Uh huh. I think you liked to believe I was some prude, just 'cause I wasn't jumping your bones the moment you flirted."

It was, maybe, a point of pride at one point that she resisted, but a prude? Pushing it.

"You certainly made me work for you," Ezio chuckles, and he goes back to kissing his way along her neck, licking here, sucking there. "I liked it. Every time you gave me that face, I wanted to get another out of you."

"I figured that part out," she replies. "I didn't really discourage you by making it fun."

She runs her hand from his neck to his shoulder, appreciating how that feels for moment.

"Guess you didn't need to come put boots on after all."

"And to think I have been accused of being a tease," Ezio hums, and he rocks her against his thigh when he reaches around her to start unbuckling those, too. Doing it blind because his head in her cleavage in the process, of course.

She's trying to not make it entirely obvious she's having a good time grinding against his thigh, but the pleasured sigh betrays her. Oops.

"Nope, you're definitely the tease," she tells him. "Do you need help back there?"

Steph laughs, trying to look back as he works on his boots. She'd kind of like to get the bra off, impatient, but there's no doing it like this.

"Not if it means you're going to stop doing that," he replies, still rocking her. He will have to, though; he can't exactly get the boot off the leg supporting her weight, even as he kicks the other off.

"A pause won't hurt." She has boots to remove, too, and she makes an attempt to push him onto his back, ducking down to give him a kiss, should he need any coaxing.

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