My muse is rebelling.
If Delenn was perfectly honest with herself, John was not always a spectacular lover. At times, though she didn’t think it was intentional, he was a bit selfish; at times, he seemed to not know what she needed; at times he was awkward, especially on a Minbari-style sleeping pallet. And Human sexuality, in and of itself, had been something for her to get used to - two years ago, she’d been very excited about the Shan’fal, built it up to be bigger than life in her head, and while it had certainly been wonderful it was significantly less enlightening than she’d expected. She had tried very hard the next morning to keep the, “That’s it?” look off her face and in the end was glad that she had; he’d grinned ear-to-ear all day, and that was enough for her to be satisfied; and after that, it had gotten better with time - less painful, more fun, more passionate.
But despite his occasional shortcomings, something he was always good at, something that could make her forget equally well about a bad day or a misplaced kiss or awkward positioning, was what he did with his hands. After a brief caress of her body, he negotiated himself to sit behind her, one leg coming down on each side of her, and began to massage her muscles.
It was gentle at first, starting at her neck, working over her shoulders and down her spine, and then became more intense as he worked the deep tissue in the places time had taught him that she carried her stress. He drew sighs and the occasional “mmm” and “yes, there” from her, but for the most part, they were silent as he worked and she enjoyed. This was going somewhere, she knew it was, and as his hands worked their magic, she found she was OK with that.
A kiss, just barely, landed on the left side of her neck; he brushed her hair aside and trailed his mouth downward to her shoulder, bare except for the white spaghetti strap of her new sleeping robe. Here, the kiss paused - lips remained pressed against the skin for so long she wondered if something might be wrong. For the first time in nearly a half hour, she spoke coherently. “John?”
“I’m fine.” He lifted his mouth now, ran his hands up her arms, then massaged back down, his mouth still pressing a slow trail of tiny kisses along the line of her neck and shoulders.
“What are you doing?”
“Making a memory.” She felt more than heard him inhale deeply, as if memorizing her scent at that moment. And then his hands reached down to lift the sleeping robe up and over her head. Still he remained seated behind her, and he did not quicken the pace of his advances - he resumed the massage of her body, gentle, slow, with tiny kisses as the only indicator that he planned for it to escalate.
Tonight, she reflected, would not be one of the nights when he was a less-than-perfect lover.
She closed her eyes and leaned into his touch as it became less about a relaxing massage and more about a seductive exploration. He guided her to lie down on her stomach and she didn’t object, and then he was massaging and exploring other parts of her - the small of her back, her hips, her buttocks, her legs, her feet. She bit back a laugh when he reached her feet; his touch tickled, just a little, and she could picture him smiling too - he would only run his finger the length of her instep like that to illicit her laughter. And then he resumed a firm touch, working the stress down her calf, over her foot and out her toes. She sighed contentedly as he completed this task on first one leg, then the other, and then came to stretch out beside her.
Unbidden, she rolled onto her back, exposing the front of her naked body to his eyes and, if he wished, to the exploration of his hands.
He hoisted himself into a sitting position and she knew - he did wish.
It was different, she reflected as she closed her eyes to the familiar touch of his large hands on her face, her shoulders, her ribcage, different from how it had been before, but not in a bad way. It was simply that her body reacted differently.
He noticed it, too. He’d intentionally gone for a particularly sensitive spot just under her left armpit, and in the low light she still caught his frown of concern when it did not draw the expected response. He tried again, pressing more firmly and studying her face as he did so.
Their eyes met and she waited for him to speak.
“It’s different,” he said finally, a simple statement of fact.
“Yes,” she whispered.
And he nodded and resumed his exploration without another word.
His pace slowed considerably, and at first she thought this was because he was no longer interested. It wasn’t until the caress of his fingers to the underside of her left breast caused her to draw her knees up and hiss in a pleasurable breath that she realized, on the contrary, he was quite interested. He was exploring her body for new pleasure centers, the same way he’d done that very first time.
Delenn lost all track of time. Minutes or hours or days might have passed, and she felt only the gentle touch of her husband’s hands, the soft exploration of his lips, the coarse brush of his goatee against her sensitive skin. She came back to awareness as he nudged her to sitting and the touch changed from firm and exploratory to nimble fingers tracing light patterns across her back. She stayed still, concentrating as the touch was reduced to the pressure of a single digit, tracing deliberately. Her brow furrowed as she attempted to follow it.
“Lizzie and I used to play this game when we were kids,” he said as he stretched out beside her. Delenn waited only a moment before stretching out parallel to him, laying on her stomach once again. “We’d write messages on each others’ backs, and you had to figure out what the other person had written.” More gentle movements of his left index finger as he used it like a pen, swirling and drawing with just barely enough pressure behind his touch to keep it from tickling.
Delenn followed the movements - up, down, around… an English word - beautiful. She said as much aloud.
“You’re good at this game,” he breathed huskily against her ear, reaching out with his tongue to taste and trace the ridge of it.
Delenn sucked in a long breath, let it out… she wasn’t ready just yet. “Take off your shirt,” she instructed. “I would like to try.”
He complied, obviously in a slightly playful mood as he flopped down next to her on his belly, all smiles as he knitted his hands together and used them as a pillow on which to rest his head to one side, hazel eyes glimmering at her expectantly.
Delenn ran all of her fingertips over his skin first -- gentle swirls in a relaxing motion. She hesitated over a large scar. There were three of them, parallel, about an inch apart from one another, beginning just below his shoulder blades and running down four inches. Tonight was not the night to worry about their origin, about him. She traced a heart above the center one, between his shoulder blades - his eyes only sparkled more. Delenn paused, drawing random circles and lines until she nodded in decision and traced definitive letters.
“Fel,” John whispered, looking up at her, meeting her eyes, and she smiled as the playful glimmer gave way to desire, to purpose. “To love.” He didn’t move, just looked at her, so she moved her fingers again, tracing the lines and curves of another word. “Shan’aiva.” His voice was even softer than before. “To kiss.” Now he leaned in slowly, brought his face to hers and went in for the requested kiss. His legs were still stretched out to the side, his upper body propped up with the support of his right arm as he kissed her and brought the left arm around her neck.
“Your Minbari has improved,” she managed. He nodded, pulling her in blindly as he did not open his eyes between breaths, between kisses. Now John pushed himself fully into a seated position behind her, and where he had kissed earlier so gently, so innocently, he now let his tongue languish over the back of her neck, up to her earlobes where he sucked briefly, and then one more time she felt a single finger tracing across her back, over her spine… Kaszha’hak?
“Yes.” Delenn leaned back into her husband’s embrace, let him roll her beneath him as his fingers fumbled with the fastenings on his pants. Cumbersome Human garments, she’d always thought, and it flashed fleetingly through her mind now in the moments it took for him to finish disrobing and stretch out skin-to-skin on top of her.
Kaszha'hak. Make love. The way he'd phrased it as a question, even after all this preparation, brought tears to her eyes and cast aside any reservations she was still holding onto. "Afel'E," she breathed. "I love you."