Today's OC Kiss Week prompt is Hands, featuring my paladin Dworic and @memetrash-coyote's forge cleric Therlin!
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"Here," Therlin says, "I'll help you with that."
"Thank you," Dworic says gratefully, letting go of the disobedient buckle to let Thorlin pull it instead. The strap had twisted and jammed it when he was trying to pull himself out from under the grick. At least it *had* been a grick; they had been afraid it might be drow snatching travelers, and he hates fighting people.
Therlin, though, knows his armor better than he does himself. She made it, after all. She knows just what other buckles to undo first to release the pressure, then takes her gloves off to handle it more delicately and undoes that buckle too. Before Dworic can reach the last two, she's undone them, fast and efficient, and his cuirass comes off in her hands.
"Thank you," he says again as she sets it aside, and reaches out before she can move to help him with his greaves or boots or gauntlets.
Her hands are warm in his own, thick with an armorer's muscle and callused, despite her thick leather gloves, where the hammer rubs when it swings. He smiles at the sight of her strong fingers in his gauntleted hands and lifts them to kiss the back. Then he turns them over to kiss the undersides too, those two callused spots at the join of her hand and thumb, once and then twice for each of them.
Laughing, she pulls her hands away before he can kiss them a third and third. Her fingers brush against her lips. She smiles at him and says, "Let's get the rest of that off you, and then you can kiss a few other places."
"Gladly," he says, low and fervent, already imagining what some of those places might be. But he can't get on his knees with his greaves still on, so he had best be swift to doff the rest of Therlin's fine armor in order to thank her for its make.
