No Fury

Now: Twelve

My arms are never held down again, but he still has not met my eyes. I don't even know if he would be able to pick my face out of a crowd anymore. It has been two years since he asked me to say his name. Two years where the most I'd had from him were glances in the crowd, or the sight of him across the courtyard or riding across the field.

His attention the past three nights has been on my breasts. His hands, his eyes, his mouth between them before he even puts himself inside me. I wonder what this is for him: whether I am a distraction from the constant threat of war that looms over his head. Whether I am simply a plaything. Whether he can pretend he is still pure for the woman he will marry soon.

The first nights he stroked himself, or stared at my naked skin and then simply climbed over me, taking his pleasure. But tonight he touches me for minutes, hours, an entire lifetime, gasping in delight. He sucks as if nursing, fingers digging into the full swell of my breasts, hips rocking as I feel him grow hard and wet against my thigh.

The feel of his lips on my skin brings every drop of my blood to the surface. Sensation is a storm in my ears, fire in my veins.

"You taste like the rain," he says into my skin. "Like rain and honeysuckle."

The universe expands and collapses behind my closed eyes.

"Where did you come from?" he muses, sucking at where my pulse hammers in my throat. "Are you even real?"

I feel shame, horrible, bottomless shame when he reaches between us to steady his length and slides into me easily.

"Oh," he groans, breath stuttering. "God and Heavens above."

I squeeze my eyes closed even tighter, their surfaces burning. I am wet between my legs, slippery enough for him to enter in one slow push instead of a dozen fevered, jagged stabs.

I know enough about the meeting of bodies to understand it; my whole life I've heard the quiet grunts and exclamations of people moving together at night, all around me in cramped quarters .

Are ye wet for me, lass?
Look at this. Slippery on my hand. Are ye beggin' for it then?

The crude talk means something different to me now. It means hunger and need. My body wants his. And now he knows.

Will he think me a whore?

"I didn't expect . . ." he whispers, words fading into a lazy brogue: "I dinna expect it could be like this."

I open my eyes at this, watching his shoulders move over me in the candlelight. He says the same word again, and again. I can see the curve of muscle moving down his neck, across his back. I can feel the rocking of him over me, rhythmic. He grunts, deep and hoarse and moves in me for minutes, hours, an entire lifetime.