Plurk paste

Her hand slid into mine before I could sit up, her fingertips light on the Staryk ring, and I lay still, heart in my mouth. I hadn't come to her bed expecting this-- expecting to want more than what I had when I entered it. But I did; I wanted her again and again. I wanted, if it were possible, to hear that noise from her lips again, the one that sounded like pleasure, like she wasn't simply acting for my benefit when she said that things were good or didn't hurt. I wanted her hands on me again; not just on my hand, against my fingers-- not even on my cock-- but across my body, petting me, stroking me as she had done when she was exploring for her own purposes.

I wanted her to want me like I found I still wanted her: desperately, with a need I couldn't fully understand. Did women love that way, want that way? Did men want that way, or did they want nothing more than the gossip and rumors that were always put about, the pleasure that I had found inside her tonight? I didn't know. There was so much I didn't know; so much that for the first time I found myself wanting to know, rather than turning away immediately from the burning risk of it all.

I had no right, of course, to demand any of it of her; I lived at her sufferance, her service, her convenience. But still-- I wanted. I allowed myself to want everything for one chaotic, brilliant moment, without fear of it being snatched alight and burning from my thoughts, from my outstretched grasp.

After that moment, she pulled away-- the loss was like the return of that bedamned winter, for all that it was a perfectly warm night-- but she leaned across me to draw the bedcurtain the rest of the way closed before she sank back into bed, some decorous space away, our hands no longer touching.

A breath stole out of me against my will.

"You can leave, if you'd rather," she said.

My fingertips closed on the edge of my wish.

"I'll stay," I said.