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 /   oo pls --  maybe simple curiosity for an introduction :0 

@PaleDevotion- / !! I’d love to plot some more!

@PaleDevotion- 
            /; I'm alright! 

@yourdarlingcook 
            
            ;// I’m good ! How about you ?

@PaleDevotion- 
            /; how are you? 

@PaleDevotion- 
            
            She doesn’t answer right away. 
            
            Lets the silence stretch, lets his words settle, lets him feel the weight of her attention without offering anything in return.
            
            Then she steps in and catches his tie, not sharply—deliberately. A claim, not a challenge. She draws him closer until the space between them is thin enough to matter.“A man who yearns,” she says calmly, voice low and unhurried, “is a man who earns.”
            
            Her eyes don’t soften. They sharpen.
            
            “You’re used to taking,” she continues, studying him now the way he’d studied her slow, exact. “Used to interest being immediate. Easy. I don’t work that way.”
            Her thumb presses once against his chest, right over his heart, testing.
            “I don’t belong to whoever wants me most. I belong to whoever can hold themselves steady when they do.”
            
            A beat. She releases his tie, but doesn’t step back.
            
            “So if you feel it,” she adds quietly, “that pull you’re pretending not to enjoy, don’t call it my doing. You stayed. You looked. You lingered.”
            
            Finally, a faint, dangerous curve of her mouth.
            “And if you earn it,” she finishes, “you’ll know. I won’t have to tell you.”

⋇【 @crims0nblack 】⋇
            
            Astarion’s smile lingers for a second too long, the kind that suggests he’s been both amused and mildly offended — and is enjoying the sensation far more than he should.
            
            “Yearn it from you?” he repeats softly, tasting the word like wine on his tongue. His eyes narrow just a fraction, not in irritation, but interest — the sharp, focused kind that means he’s finally paying attention.
            
            “Well now,” he murmurs, one hand lifting to rest against his own chest in mock offense, “I do believe that’s the first time I’ve been told I need to earn someone’s flirtation. Usually it’s simply… taken.”
            
            A beat. His gaze drifts over her again, slower this time, more deliberate — not assessing her as prey, but as a puzzle.
            
            “But safer diversions?” he continues, stepping sideways rather than closer, circling her just enough to test the space between them. “Darling, you’re speaking to a man who’s been dead for two centuries. Safety is a suggestion, not a lifestyle.”
            
            He stops in her line of sight again, eyes catching the moonlight, voice dropping into something quieter. Less performance. More honest.
            
            “Still,” he adds, lips curling. “If you’re offering to be interesting without trying to own me, bite me, or put a knife in my back… I might just find myself yearning after all.”

/ please feel free to start a new thread, I am clearing out my MB.

@PaleDevotion- /!! Pls