Mundie Moms

Sunday, August 31, 2014

After The Bridge (Jem & Tessa) Part IV


Jem & Tessa fans swooned over one of their favorite Shadowhunter couples while reading Part 1, Part II, and Part III of After The Bridge by Cassandra Clare. NOW Cassie finally gives Jem and Tessa fans what they've been waiting for. Please note Cassie's personal rating on the scene below (which we've hidden here. You'll have to click the link to keep reading). 
A story for those who might have wondered what Tessa and Jem did after they met on Blackfriars Bridge in the epilogue of Clockwork Princess.
Those who do not like Tessa&Jem together or Jessa sexytimes probably should skip this. (You will not miss anything that will affect your understanding of later books.) Those who like that sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.
After the Bridge alternates POV between Jem and Tessa. It will be posted in installments. This is Part Four. It is not the whole story. There are more parts. As this is one short story and not chaptered, each post will contain the whole story from the beginning up to the point where that part ends so that new readers or readers who don’t remember what happened won’t have to hunt down the previous post(s.)
[Also just a personal note: since starting to post this, I’ve been bombarded with requests to write Clace, Malec, Sizzy, Wessa, Jemma, Jordelia, ships that don’t even have names, etc short stories. I usually turn down requests to write short stories for published anthologies because I don’t have time — I really don’t have time to write a ton of short-story-length outtakes. I’m writing this as it grew out of a discussion with Holly Black and Kelly Link about romance shapes and sat on my head and demanded to be written. When that happens again, I will happily post what I write because I like to share free content. But I do need to focus on TLH and TDA right now, and nothing else is calling to be written. In other words, and I hope I am saying this the nicest possible way, I can’t take requests. We will all just have to see if inspiration strikes and hope it isn’t Mortmain/Benedict “The Worm” Lightwood.]
Meanwhile, definitely an R rating below. I admit I don’t really understand the rating system. SEXY TIMES. These characters are consenting and 135 years old, but I would probably keep the story away from kiddies.

After the Bridge (Jem/Tessa) Part III


Jem & Tessa fans swooned over one of their favorite Shadowhunter couples while reading Part 1 & Part II of After The Bridge by Cassandra Clare. I have a feeling you may become weak in the knees with reading Part III. At least I know Sophie is....


A story for those who might have wondered what Tessa and Jem did after they met on Blackfriars Bridge in the epilogue of Clockwork Princess.
Those who do not like Tessa&Jem together or Jessa sexytimes probably should skip this. (You will not miss anything that will affect your understanding of later books.) Those who like that sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.
After the Bridge alternates POV between Jem and Tessa. It will be posted in installments. This is Part Two. It is not the whole story. There are more parts. As this is one short story and not chaptered, each post will contain the whole story from the beginning up to the point where that part ends so that new readers or readers who don’t remember what happened won’t have to hunt down the previous post(s.)
AFTER THE BRIDGE 3/4
Now is the time of our comfort and plenty
These are the days we’ve been working for
Nothing can touch us and nothing can harm us
And nothing goes wrong anymore
......... 
She was wearing a dress of orchid silk faille, the sort of dress she might have worn to dinner when they had been engaged. It was trimmed in white velvet cords, the skirt belling out over — was she wearing crinolines? 
His mouth opened. He couldn’t help himself. He had found her beautiful through all the changing ages of the century: beautiful in the carefully cut clothes of the war years, when fabric was rationed. Beautiful in the elegant dresses of the fifties and sixties. Beautiful in short skirts and boots as the century drew to a close. 
But this was what girls looked like when he had first noticed them, first found them fascinating and not annoying, first noticed the graceful line of a neck or the pale inside of a feminine wrist. This was the Tessa who had first cut him through and through with love and lust commingled: a carnal angel with a corset shaping her body to an hourglass, lifting her breasts, shaping the flare of her hips.
He forced his eyes away from her body. She had bound up her hair, small curls escaping over her ears, and his jade pendant glimmered around her throat. 
“Do you like it?” she said. “I had to do my own hair, without Sophie, and lace my own laces …” Her expression was shy and more than a little nervous — it had always been a contradiction at the heart of her, that she was one of the bravest and yet the shyest people he knew. “I bought it from Sotheby’s — a real antique, now, it was far too much money but I remembered when I was a girl you had said orchids were your favorite flower and I had set myself to find a dress the color of an orchid but I never found one before you were — gone. But this one is. Aniline dye, I expect, nothing natural, but I thought — I thought it would remind you.” She raised her chin. “Of us. Of what I wanted to be for you, when I thought we would be together.”
“Tess,” he said, hoarsely. He was on his feet, without knowing how he had gotten there. He took a step toward her, and then another. “Forty-nine thousand, two hundred and seventy-five.”
She knew immediately what he meant. He knew she would. She knew him as no one else living did. “Are you counting days?”
“Forty-nine thousand, two hundred and seventy-five days since I last kissed you,” he said. “And I thought of you every single one of them. You do not have to remind me of the Tessa I loved. You were my first love and you will be my last one. I have never forgotten you. I have never not thought of you.” He was close enough now to see the pulse pounding in her throat. To reach out and lift up a curl of her hair. “Never.”
Her eyes were half-shut. She reached out and took his hand, where it caressed her hair.

* The reason for the note, is we know we have young YA fans, who love Cassie's work, and though this scene is sensual, beautiful and long time in the making (over 130 years), it may not be a suitable scene for younger readers.  We'd give it a PG-13 rating.

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