02-25-2017, 06:13 PM
(He’s not that bad looking…) (I know, I know.)
He smirks; doesn’t seem to mind that she hurls an insult or two at him - insults that she doesn’t mean, because he is more intimidating than ugly. Intimidating and handsome, she thinks but that thought is pushed down deep into a girlish corner of her mind that she often ignores. Paralee could be daft at times, even as she continues to look at him with a mix of wary regard and begrudging respect. Just as she is starting to admire him, he opens his damnable mouth and ruins it.
(Oh Paralee, you are no match for him!)
(Who says I have to be?)
“I don’t think my comebacks could get any uglier than your face,” she adds sweetly, her lips curling back in a smile. She sensed a meanness in him; a meanness that brought it out in her and bested her own cruel sensibilities. Paralee had to concede that he was indeed far better at this than she could ever be. It just wasn’t like her to keep up the charade and it had lasted long enough for her liking. “I don’t think I could ever be as rotten as you are.” she admits, lacking a shred of sorrow for that. She’d rather be her - silly Paralee, as happy as a bee buzzing about a flower. Except right now, he was this dark flower that she seemed to buzz about, attracted to in a way that isn’t just physical but something more, something dark that sent a thrill down deep into her bones.
(Don’t Paralee…)
(Don’t what? He’s fascinating.)
He teases her and she is taken aback by the surprising gentleness of it as he smiles at her, tugs her pale forelock to make the orange blossoms dance across the golden span of her forehead. His nearness makes her suck in a hasty breath before blowing it out slowly through her nostrils. “I suppose you can call me Flower,” she says casually, like she couldn’t care less what he called her. Even if she did, she’d not be likely to admit it to him as her eyes flick by him to the forest then back again. “Rotten, huh?” she chuckles, unable to keep the merriment out of her eyes or from her smiling mouth. “How could one such as I be as rotten as a leftover carcass on the ground?” Paralee sidesteps into a little spin that throws her flowery forelock into further disarray.
(See? He likes me.)
(Oh Paralee, you sweet fool!)
“Rip.” she states assertively as she comes up close to him in all his hulking big blackness.
“Are you a ripper, sir?” she teases, all flashing teeth and shimmying flowers as she takes a step back from his rhino-horned reach. He is still dangerous, she tells herself but hardly trusts the hard deceitful look of him because he gives her rare glimpses at a gentleness that lays beneath. She thinks about teasing him again but holds off, says instead - “I think I like you, sir.” and laughs some more, like she just said the most natural thing in the world that one could say. Of course, Paralee doesn’t divulge if it is just a genuine like of his masterful and mischievous nature or if it is more than that. A girl has to keep some secrets after all.
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