He does his best not to seem Too Keen. "I would be interested, if you were willing."

"Would you mind if I changed in here? It's such a pain to go into and out of the bedroom."

"I wouldn't mind."

She goes into the bedroom and fetches out the intimate apparel she's designed. It's a profusion of lace and satin and silk, very hard to resolve into individual items. 

"You certainly know you're way around fabric."

"Thank you!"

She begins to strip: slowly, gracefully, every movement deliberate. It is not at all like a striptease; it seems very ordinary, like he's watching her undress in her own room, except that she moves as smoothly as a dancer. Her breasts are small and round, her nipples tiny and erect, her thighs soft and creamy-white; she has a thatch of dark hair between her legs.

He is very carefully trying to look like he's not looking. There's no way she isn't doing this deliberately, but there's no reason not to maintain plausible deniability until they can't.

"What do you think?" she says. She's wearing a silk chemise, light pink, with lace and floral trimmings arranged to draw the eye to the places that it's not at all doing a good job of covering. It's nearly transparent. He can see her stockings, and the lace garters holding them up; the garters against her pale skin make it look even paler.

"The floral trimmings really add something. Gives it a good texture," he says, carefully only talking about the clothes.

"You can touch it if you like. It's very smooth."

He can follow instructions. He keeps his touch very light, just skimming over the fabric with no pressure. "It really is. What fabric is this?"

"Silk."

Jing Yi feels the sudden impulse to kiss her. His mouth begins to move towards her lips without his permission. 

Plausible deniability has a lot going for it-- but she didn't invite him to her apartment by accident. She didn't strip in front of him by accident.

He kisses her.

Kissing women is quite different than kissing men.

For one thing, there's not the roughness you get on the cheeks of even the most stubborn queans. Evie's skin is as soft as the silk she's wearing. For another, she's passive, pliant and limp, waiting for him to lead the kiss, at a point where Nigel would have put his tongue inside Jing Yi's mouth and his hands in Jing Yi's hair. But her mouth is warm and she sighs under him in pleasure. 

If he has to lead the way, he is quite willing to do that. And there's something about kissing someone who is pliant but happy. It's a different sensation, and a little bit unnerving, her staying still with pressure instead of moving into it-- but it has its appeals.

How does she feel about him trying to hold her close?

She moves with him.

She's very small, even fragile; it feels like he could easily break her. 

All the more reason to treat her gently, as something precious and delicate like her silk flowers.

An impulse appears in his brain, almost like a voice whispering in some internal ear: it would be very nice to take her to the bedroom. The bed is soft and he could lie down with her on the bed and feel her pressed up against him and maybe things could go a little farther. Of course they can't go all the way, Evie is a nice girl, lingerie decisions aside. But maybe she would let him touch her a bit, before she stopped him. She's very willing in his arms.

He could resist the impulse, if he wanted to. It's just there, as a thought. 

It would be very nice, is the thing. And he is almost certain she isn't unwilling-- her actions couldn't have been accident, etc.

He leads her to the bedroom, in a mutant half-remembered waltz from when he had to learn how to for a part. At no point does his lips leave her face.

Fortunately, Evie is a very talented follow, and one nice thing about being a talented follow with an inexperienced lead is that they can get the lead exactly where they want them.

For example, where Evie wants Jing Yi is on the bed with his arms wrapped around her and his body pressed into hers.

The thing about dance is that it's a collaboration, and series of "yes, and--" with some formal trappings laid over it.

He's quite happy to end up on the bed. And oh, look. Evie has a neck he can access more easily here.

A neck is certainly a thing that Evie has, and kissing it makes her make genuine sounds for the first time-- soft and whimpery like they've been pulled out from her lips against her will, like she doesn't want to admit to Jing Yi quite how much he's arousing her or how easily he could convince her to make a decision she doesn't quite want to make. 

Those are some good sounds. Very good sounds.

He should be well-behaved. Be a gentleman.

What he actually does is see if kissing collar bones makes her make similar sounds.

Mmm it very much does. And now she's also squirming a little bit.

With the way they're pressed together-- not to mention how barely-there her clothing is-- she's got to be able to feel that he's hard. But she's not recoiling away from it or stopping him; in fact, the way she squirms is providing a bit too much friction against his cock to be accidental. The chemise rises up, showing a few inches of her softly rounded stomach. 

She has to know. She has to like it, if she's acting like this.

(She's so beautiful, so wonderful, and she actually wants him--)

Two can play the not-quite-plausibly-deniable squirming game.