❝ my head is bloody, but unbowed... I am the captain of my soul. ❞
━ william ernest henley.
in which tommy shelby drags a dressmaker into peaky blinder business
and she's none too happy about it.
𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐌𝐀𝐒 𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐋𝐁𝐘
𝐏𝐑�...
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Eli's chest inclined and released with a deep and heavy sigh. The peacefulness of the brain slowly awaking from it's heavy slumber was in full swing and she rejoiced with the weight of sleep resting upon her eyelids, listening to the strange silence.
The silence was what brought her to open her eyes in narrowed suspicion — her house was rarely quiet. Then, with the sight of another's bedroom greeting her sharp blue gaze, her brain reminded her of some memories from the previous night. Breaths exchanged without a receipt, kisses stolen under concealing mouths, hungers indulged but never relieved. None of it enough to bred shame or regret in Eli's stomach.
Her head twisted slowly 'til she could face the man who was lounging against the headboard, puffing away on a cigarette as his fingers scribbled across the small pages of a notebook. His lips flickered with a smile before he even had time to flash his eyes towards her with small hopes she'd be too tired to notice. She didn't miss it though. She never missed anything. She was a seamstress after all and the woman's entire career rested on paying attention to detail.
"Mornin'," she greeted him first. She rose her arms in a long stretch and Tommy hissing in pain from having to catch the cigarette falling from his lips after catching a glimpse of her figure as the covers slipped off her toned body like water and silk. He'd thought she looked good last night but evidently a sober mind and some sunlight painted her a whole lot clearer.
Instead of responding, he put the cigarette back in his mouth and admired her body shamelessly. She didn't seem to notice. That or she simply didn't care enough to fault him for it. Her legs slipped over the side of the bed and she roped the sheets around her figure as she stood. Tommy's greedy eyes followed her until she had rounded the bed to his side and plucked the cigarette from his lips with a small knowing smirk. "I could have gave you one of your own, y'know?" He chided in a hoarse and husky voice.
Eli blinked back at him, her tongue running over the exterior of her lips before she mimicked the way he normally rolled the cigarette from sides of his mouth. His own lips parted at the unexpected action and stayed parted as her cheeks hallowed around the cigarette and sucked in a long draw. "But this one was already lit?" The smoke swam around her teeth as she spoke.
Tommy regretted one thing from last night and that was ever comparing the devil before him to an angel of the Lord. Eli knew what she was doing and there was no innocence in the way she was looking at him. With blood rushing to his lower regions and her barely clothed body towering over him, he was the lamb and she was luring him to the slaughter — or rather, back to the slaughter. "Are you trying to tempt me for a third, sweetheart?" He asked after she'd returned his cigarette to him.
