Diana Gabaldon · @Writer_DG
22nd Aug 2013 from TwitLonger
#DailyLines #MOBY #WRITTENInMYOwnHEARTSBlood #Book8 #OutMARCH2014 #thejoyofhabit
Jamie had been traveling in shirt and breeches, his new uniform and its dazzling smalls carefully folded into a portmanteau until we got within range of the army, so his disrobing was a simple matter of unbuttoning his flies and pulling off his stockings. Mine was complicated by the fact that my traveling stays had leather laces, and over the course of a sweat-drenched day, the knot had tightened into a stubborn nodule that resisted all attempts.
“Are ye no coming to bed, Sassenach?” Jamie was already lying down, having found a remote corner behind the bar counter and spread out our cloaks.
“I’ve broken a fingernail trying to get this bloody thing loose, and I can’t bloody reach it with my teeth!” I hissed at him, on the verge of breaking into tears of frustration. I was swaying with weariness, but couldn’t bring myself to sleep in the clammy confines of my stays.
Jamie reached up an arm out of the darkness, beckoning.
“Come lie down wi’ me, Sassenach,” he whispered. “I’ll do it.”
The simple relief of lying down, after twelve hours in the saddle, was so exquisite that I nearly changed my mind about sleeping in my stays, but he’d meant it. He squirmed down and bent his head to nuzzle at my laces, an arm round my back to steady me.
“Dinna fash,” he murmured into my midsection, voice somewhat muffled, “if I canna nibble it loose, I’ll prise it wi’ my dirk.”
He looked up with an enquiring noise, as I’d uttered a strangled laugh at the prospect.
“Just trying to decide whether being accidentally disemboweled would be worse than sleeping in my stays,” I whispered, cupping his head. It was warm, the soft hair at his nape damp to the touch.
“My aim’s no that bad, Sassenach,” he said, pausing in his labors for an instant. “I’d only risk stabbin’ ye in the heart.”
As it was, he accomplished his goal without recourse to weapons, gently jerking the knot loose with his teeth until he could finish the job with his fingers, opening the heavy seamed canvas stays like a clamshell to expose the whiteness of my shift. I sighed like a grateful mollusk opening at high tide, plucking the fabric out of the creases the stays had made in my flesh. Jamie pushed away the discarded stays, but stayed where he was, his face near my breasts, rubbing his hands gently over my sides.
I sighed again at his touch; he’d done it by habit, but it was a habit I’d missed for the last [ ] months, and a touch I’d never thought to feel again.