The (slight) rise of her breast under his hand pebbles; beneath her nightgown there is only skin, where if she’d planned the morning to go this way there might not have been. (Her undergarments divide into two categories: finely and comfortably practical, for her work clothes, or outrageously frivolous and meant to be seen and admired and not long worn. ) It’s familiar and it’s not— it’s the same, and it’s not. She can feel the flutter of her pulse and the way her wings shift behind her,

and it’s not unpleasant, if she allows it not to be. In this moment, where they are warm and close and there’s so little fabric left between them that she can feel him stiffening against the inside of her thigh and she doesn’t push away the way that want pools in her belly, the way she has been. The soft gown is headed to her waist from two directions and she could just— leave it there, it’s not as if he can’t get to her.

She is tempted to, for a moment. There’s a hesitation felt mostly in the coil of tension before she moves, leaning back enough that she can grasp her nightgown with both hands and pull it free over her head, wings rising behind her almost the moment they’re not confined by fabric.

(It feels more of a relief than she likes to admit.)