Butterflies

The Whole Scene

Toward dawn, I dreamed of grassy mead­ows filled with but­ter­flies. Yel­low, brown, white, and orange, they swirled around me like autumn leaves, light­ing on my head and shoul­ders, slid­ing down my body like rain, the tiny feet tick­ling on my skin and the vel­vet wings beat­ing like faint echoes of my own heart.
I float­ed gen­tly to the sur­face of real­i­ty, and found that the but­ter­fly feet against my stom­ach were the flam­ing ten­drils of Jamie’s soft red thatch, and the but­ter­fly trapped between my thighs was his tongue.
“Mmm,” I said, some­time lat­er. “Well, that’s all very well for me, but what about you?”
“About three-quar­ters of a minute, if you keep on in that fash­ion,” he said, putting my hand away with a grin. “But I’d rather take my time over it—I’m a slow and can­ny man by nature,d’ye see. Might I ask the favor of your com­pa­ny for this evening, Mistress?”
“You might,” I said. I put my arms behind my head, and fixed him with a half-lid­ded look of chal­lenge. “If you mean to tell me that you’re so decrepit you can’t man­age more than once in a day anymore.”
He regard­ed me nar­row­ly from his seat on the edge of the bed. There was a sud­den­flash of white as he lunged, and I found myself pressed deep into the feath­erbed. “Aye, well,” he said into the tan­gles of my hair, “you’ll no say I did­na warn ye.”
Two and a half min­utes lat­er, he groaned and opened his eyes. He scrubbed his face and head vig­or­ous­ly with both hands, mak­ing the short­er ends stick up like quills. Then, with a muf­fled Gael­ic oath, he slid reluc­tant­ly out from under the blan­kets and began to dress, shiv­er­ing in the chilly morn­ing air.

All rights for the Pic­ture go to the right­ful owner Starz
Excerpt and Quote by Diana Gabal­don from “Out­lan­der“
I own not­hing but the editing