[Etienne] - First Seduction
It’s always strange, when only after having given up hope for a thing does it actually occur. Sometimes, it’s a blessing in disguise; you find that with time and consideration, the thing you wanted has paled, or your wish for it has faded. Then again, sometimes it’s otherwise. Sometimes hope and desire flare up again like a wick held to a flame, and burn all the brighter for the time they waited.
The lightswitch in the storeroom, when I finally found it, was one of the ancient round ones, a simple button. Pressing it coaxed one dusty lightbulb to life, up near the rafters, and that muted light fell over a room brimful of cardboard boxes, wooden packing crates, old chests and pieces of furniture, and the occasional shapeless, tarp-wrapped bundle. I remember looking at M-A skeptically after my first glance around, but she just gave me one of those impossible looks of hers, cheerful and enthusiastic, and moved right on in.
My reluctance was part showmanship, of course. Of any room in the house, this one was the most likely to yield up both fascinating treasures and clues as to my blond counterpart’s history. Getting to explore it would be a rare treat, I thought, even if we were looking for shrunken heads. (And I suppose it was a measure of just how far I’d come, that I took her saying that in stride and merely asked how she came by them.) After thirty seconds at most I left the room and stripped to the waist; the shirt I’d worn that night was too nice for a crawl through a grimy storeroom. I had a thin tanktop underneath, which sufficed for decency; and from the approving looks M-A gave me when she thought me distracted, apparently it looked just fine.
From there, time lost meaning.
The first thing we did was clear a corner of the room and spread an old tarp there, and an amazing amount of junk went onto that tarp at her word, to be gathered up later and thrown out. Oddments of every shape and description she dismissed, tossed onto the heap which grew steadily. I saw it begin to bother her, the detritus of her past, and soon after she stopped looking at it, and simply began handing things to me to throw away. I did, noting what passed through my hands, surmising what I could… when I had the time to think on them.
That storeroom was packed to the eaves; with treasures, with junk, but mostly with stories. Only M-A knew what she wished to save, what she no longer wanted, and what might offer a clue as to the location of her lost collection. So I moved boxes, opened crates, listed off strange things beyond number, and held items up for her inspection. Some I put back. Others I threw away. And sometimes, she told me stories.
There was never a way to tell; this thing or that might spark her memory, and she would tell some tale. These were the dried eagle’s talons an ancient vaudun priestess had given her in Louisiana. This was a graceful vase which one of her family had sent to her from Siam, from the hand of a master potter. Here were books that some ancient little man from China had sold to her in San Francisco, carefully preserved against the day she could read them. And there, a bundle of feathers, improbably golden, from some Caribbean isle without a name whose people had befriended her. The stories went on and on, each improbable, each fascinating. I listened, and I helped as she directed… and I watched her as she moved.
It was perhaps something about the dim light, or the pleasant exertion, or the cramped intimacy of her storeroom, but I found myself noticing her as I hadn’t in some time. The long line of her back, and the muscles along her shoulders as she stretched high. The way her hair escaped the ponytail and curled in red-gold strands about her face. The strength of her legs and thighs as she lifted boxes or bundles with me. She was not beautiful in the sense of the day; not hers, the long-legged, willowy grace of the pinup girls and fashion models. Hers was a far more classic beauty, lush and supple and deliciously curved. And it sang in her smile, her infectious energy and enthusiasm for the task. I hadn't allowed myself see her, desire her this way for weeks now, convinced nothing was going to come of it... but that night my awareness was simply there again, wild and wanting, and I couldn't keep my eyes from her for long. More than once I almost did myself harm with my distraction.
What happened was perhaps inevitable.
My eyes lingered over her while I leaned against a stack of boxes, watching her pry open another crate and peer inside. "Oh, I think this may be- no, no. More rodent skulls. How many muskrat skulls does one woman need, anyway? Oh! A vase!"
She held up a frighteningly ugly thing, lopsided and clearly made by an amateur with a pottery wheel. I regarded it with an indulgent smile. "Oh, very nice. Ming Dynasty, I suppose? The amazingly historically valuable first offering from the hands of an obscure Chinese fellow who grew to be the greatest sculptor of his age?"
She shot me a look, then frowned at the vase. "No, I think this was a gift. One of those things that you keep and put out when the offender comes over. Put this in the pile over there, will you?"
"I see why. Hideous thing, but made with great love." Handing it off, she turned to put the lid back on the crate, and I swiftly set the vase onto the junk pile in the corner, which was beginning to overflow the tarpaulin. "You know, obviously we're going about this in the wrong way. I've come to the conclusion that your poor mislabeled collection is going to be found in the single most inconvenient place in this entire treasure trove." From there, I regarded the room, mentally cataloguing what we had already done. "Which either means at the bottom of that pile," I said, pointing towards a stack of crates which had all proved to be absurdly heavy, "or somewhere in that one," and waved at the two huge shipping crates stacked one atop the other.
She wandered over next to me and sat down, absently reaching out a hand to me while she considered the two spots I’d pointed to. "It's probably in that one, then," she said with a gesture at the larger crates. "Those mostly have animal bones too large to fit into smaller boxes, a human skeleton, and..." She trailed off, and I took her offered hand with a grin, going into an easy crouch to stretch my legs a bit.
"And? Don't tell me you need a moment to make up something suitably spectacular?"
She squeezed my fingers and answered my smile with her own. “Ah, Etienne. Would you believe I don't remember? You are very good to an eccentric woman for putting up with all of this."
She surprised me then, raising my hand to her lips and kissing my knuckles. I laughed at it, but it was a laugh meant to cover a surging of my blood as her lips brushed my skin. God, how do I so-suddenly want her again? I covered the thought with words, a slightly different truth. "Not at all. I could go on about good honest work, but seriously, the stories in here are legion enough to fascinate me forever. It's almost hard to believe all this stuff fits in your lifetime." I pulled my hand away, not trusting myself fully while she touched me, and surveyed the two huge crates.
"Oh, I've packed quite a bit into my life. Besides, the world is built on hard work.” She stood up, just behind me, so close I could feel her over the intervening space, and pointed over my shoulder at the higher of the two. “So. That one?"
"That one. I might as well just open it up there, though. No way we're moving it, unless we want to drag Roberto down here to help and maybe rig up a pulley or two." I picked my way over to the crates, mind working at logistics, and tested a smaller crate off to one side as a foothold.
"Oh, god, Etienne. Do be careful, there." Her voice as she offered me a steadying hand betrayed her sudden worry, and it made me smile recklessly. Finding a handhold, I boosted myself to the lid of the bottom crate in a single motion. A quick shuffle secured my footing there, and I examined the crate as best I could in the wan light.
"Label's torn off this one, it figures.” I tested the lid, half-expecting what I found. “Oof, top's nailed on, too. Where did we leave that crowbar?"
She hunted for it, found it hanging off another box, and handed it up to me. "Careful, there," she repeated, clearly not expecting me to listen. I managed to avoid rolling my eyes until I was standing straight again.
"I'm often careful." I muttered it just loud enough for her to hear, knowing she’d catch the reference to another day. Just not where you’re concerned. A puff of breath blew a cloud of dust off the box, far more than I’d expected, and set me to coughing. "Good god, M-A, how long has this been up here?"
She laughed at that, her lovely, silvery laugh, and it made me glance at her for a moment. "Not that long. I only moved back this year."
"Beautiful." My hunt along the edge revealed a few likely targets, and I worked the crowbar into the first seam and heaved. It took several tries before I found a spot with good leverage, and then I set up a terrible noise of squealing nails. It took several minutes of prying and pulling before the lid came up on one side, and I set my hands underneath it, careful of the nails, and wrenched it up higher to peer inside. Packing straw, and two lines of… something… I moved to the side a little to let more light in, and looked closer… then whistled. "No heads, I'm afraid, but what look like some damned nice plates."
She craned up, interested, and it bared a lovely line of her throat as I glanced down. "Oh? Let me see."
How could I refuse? Well, maybe to make you stretch a little further. Shut up, Etienne… "Sure, if I can..." I shuffled, then leaned over the side of the crate, reaching in to lay my fingers on one of the lovely pieces, done all in red glass and gilded in complex traceries. "Got it." I started to stand, drawing my upper body carefully out of the crate, and that’s when I slipped.
There was a confusion of movement, and I remember thinking absurdly that I was damned if I was going to break that plate. Something drew a line of fire across my scalp, one foot was over open space, and then my flailing left hand caught the edge of the box with almost my whole weight upon it, and erupted in agony.
M-A clearly missed what happened. She reached up for the plate I was holding out, miraculously unharmed, put her other hand out to steady me. "A plate isn't worth your life, love. Come down from there."
I couldn’t think past the burning in my hand, and I couldn’t find purchase for my other foot. My voice was unintentionally harsh. "Take the plate, M-A, so I can use that hand."
She obliged me without bothering to look at it. "What's wrong?"
I ignored the question and heaved myself up using my right hand, until I could feel for secure footing and achieve it. "Nothing, just... bumped my head." I glanced down, carefully uncurled my left hand from its agonized grip, and simply jumped, not able to think enough to climb. I landed next to her in a crouch, suddenly dizzy. I could feel a warm trickle down my forehead. "I... ai, merde..." I reached up with my right hand and pulled myself straight, supporting myself as best I could and trying to hide my left hand from her, but she grew statue-still.
"Show me," she said, in a voice which brooked no argument.
I hesitated, then stepped a few feet back, to let the light fall more fully on me… and I lifted my hand for her to see. I couldn’t look, myself; I knew it would hurt more if I saw it, and the pain transfixed me already. There was a patter on the floor, and I realized it was my blood, and wondered how badly I was hurt. M-A simply stared, her eyes too wide, her hands frozen halfway into reaching for me. I tried to summon a smile, a rueful grin to reassure her, but I think I failed miserably; every pulse of my heart was making my hand throb anew.
After a short eternity, her eyes fluttered closed, and she drew a deep breath. For a moment it seemed she was savoring the breath, but that must have been pain distorting the truth; she was bracing herself, I thought, against the shock of it. At last, her eyes snapped open and she took my hand, firm but surprisingly gentle. "Oh, love. C'mon. Let's get this taken care of." It hurt too much for me to argue, and I swallowed the lump in my throat and nodded.
Somewhere on the way out of the room, she found a dust rag we’d been using earlier and pressed a reasonably clean portion of it over my palm to staunch the flow of blood. I’d been trying to catch the patter in my other hand, and when I reached for the rag, I grazed her fingers with mine, covered in blood. It left a bright crimson smear on her pale skin, and I stammered an apology.
"A little blood never hurt me none. Here we are, let's go to my bathroom - it's closer." There was worry edging her eyes, I thought, concern in the lines of her face. She’s winsome when she worries, I thought incongruously.
She led me to the double doors at the end of the hall, into her bedroom. My fingers were spread wide by that point, rigid and white-knuckled. I barely saw the bed, in all its glory of damask canopies and dark-polished wood. With the heavy curtains covering the tall windows, the altar in the far corner was almost lost in shadows. She pulled me toward another set of double doors, and I tried for levity. "Hah... I finally get to see your bedroom..."
I’d caught her by surprise; she looked up sharply, her lips parted, her eyes gleaming in the soft light from the hall. God…
For a moment, she seemed lost, and then she looked away and tugged me into the bathroom, flicking on the more modern lights. "I- there's some peroxide under the sink. Sit there," she pointed to the toilet and crouched to rummage beneath the sink, still carefully not looking at me.
I brushed past her, close as I dared with my hand still bleeding in slow rivulets down my arm, and sat on the edge of the huge claw-foot tub instead, my heart hammering. Stop it, dammit. This is stupid. You’re bleeding like a stuck pig, and she’s… she’s… But I couldn’t think, not with the pain only just beginning to numb, and not with her looking over her shoulder with eyes full of concern. She produced a plastic bottle, a clean wash cloth and some cotton bandaging, soaked the cloth in the sink and came to kneel gently in front of me on the blood-spotted tile. "Here. Let's get this cleaned up, hmm?"
She reached for my hand, and I pulled the filthy cloth away slowly, wincing as it stuck to the wound. Blood welled again when the pressure eased, and I dabbed ineffectually at it, finally extending my dusty, blood-wet hand in resignation. She took it gently and looked at it, turning it in the light to see it better before pressing the damp cloth into the wound. The pain was fresh and searing bright, obliterating my reason and bending me forward at the waist. It took all my will not to writhe and scream; I contented myself with a harsh grip on the tub and a gasping groan. When I opened my eyes, hers were inches away, and she leaned her cool forehead against mine.
"Shh. It will be well."
She brushed the cloth over my wound, reached with nimble fingers to pluck wood splinters out of it. My breath came quickly, shallowly, but I did my best to laugh, mostly so I wouldn’t cry. "It was a... ha-aa... a very nice plate. If I'd known you were... willing to tor... torture me for it..." I winced at a particularly hard press of the cloth, and she raised up slightly and kissed my forehead before leaning close to look at the jagged wound again, her eyes intent and intense.
“Here,” she murmured quietly, and kissed my wrist, and that brush of lips over my pulse undid my control, bringing my breath in a shaky sigh. She drifted past my torn palm and laid more kisses on my fingertips. Don’t, Etienne, I thought frantically, but my fingers betrayed me, pressing lightly against her lips, then more firmly, drawing a fresh well of blood from the wound.
Her sharp intake of breath did amazing things to her chest, but I had only instants to notice it; her face bent even closer and her tongue darted out over my skin, throwing my head back and my eyes shut. She licked across my palm, and then into the wound, her tongue only barely touching the skin… and it hurt deliciously, wonderfully, a mix of agony and ecstasy. She sighed deeply against my skin, and it drew another sharp breath from me, this one less of pain. The fingers of my other hand were somehow on her shoulder without covering the intervening space, digging through the t-shirt to press hard against her skin.
I looked down and she looked up, and there was blood on her lips… but she didn’t look repulsed.
She licked her lips slowly, drew back enough to whisper, "We should wrap this."
For an instant, I’d forgotten the wound. I looked down at my hand, then met her eyes again, but something in me still didn’t hear her. My fingers stole past the edge of the t-shirt to graze her neck. I managed words, somehow. "You're... probably right..."
She pulled a little further away and fumbled, opening the bottle of peroxide. I knew this would be even worse than the cloth, and though I hissed when the first splash doused my palm in a stinging and bubbling surge, her smooth skin under my other hand somehow made it more bearable. She held my wounded limb still in her strong grip and bit her lip, holding the bottle and watching the peroxide sear at me.
Somehow I got my breath back with the liquid still hissing on my hand, and caught her eyes with mine. "Either do it... or put that bottle of acid down and stop drawing it out." I smiled, trying for flippant and coming close, and she gave me an unreadable look. I could fall into those eyes and drown…
She leaned in and kissed me.
I think a surprised sound escaped me, but I really had no idea. I was stunned for a moment, and then returned the kiss, my pain momentarily forgotten. It was a simple kiss, pure and sweet, rich with subtleties of meaning I couldn’t begin to piece together. My fingers slipped behind her neck, and I sighed into her, my lips opening slightly.
She pulled away an inch or so then, leaving me gasping. Her smile was full of mischief. "That wasn't what you meant, was it?"
I fumbled for a response to her maddening grin, and found a blush creeping up my cheeks instead. "I... no. That was not what I meant."
Her gaze went down to my hand, and she picked up the roll of bandages, brushing her lips over the inside of my wrist again. "We'll have to be gentle with this," she breathed as she began to wrap it. I laughed, traced her ear with my good thumb, and teased.
"I fear I... may not be much good for moving more boxes tonight." Go ahead… suggest something else.
She completed the bandage more quickly than I would have thought, tucking the ends of the cotton neatly and precisely. "Mm. Those heads can wait." She touched my cheek, tracing a line with her fingers from jaw to collar, brushing further down to hover over my chest.
A flex of the bandaged hand hurt, of course, but then I met her eyes and found desire there, finally uncovered after weeks and months. All my rue vanished under a tide of longing, but I still didn’t know, and I couldn’t let myself presume. I clung to a shred of caution, a drowning man to a straw. "In favor of...?" If you’re playing with me now, I swear to God…
She pushed forward again, brushing her cheek against mine, and kissed me just under the ear, then against my jaw. She breathed against me, "I have something that I think will fill our time nicely." Another kiss, further down my jaw.
The hell with it. I slid my fingers back along her neck, behind her ear and into her hair, tightening them against her scalp. I turned my head into her, kissed her temple, just behind her eye. "Stimulating debate? Research?"
She rocked back on her heels and looked up from beneath lowered lashes, and I didn’t know whether to melt or catch fire. "I had... something else in mind." She pulled me towards her, but rather than go down as she wanted, I stood up, pulling her along with my grip in her hair and molding her against me in a long, heated line. One of her hands was on my chest, and my heart thudded against her cold fingers.
"Tell me... but not too many words."
Her hand snaked around my neck, and she pulled me down to her even as she rose on tiptoes, locking lips with me again. This kiss was more, so much more, pretense and propriety stripped away; a burning expanse of probing tongues and soft sounds. When she finally pulled away, she arched a red-gold eyebrow inquiringly, that singular expression I’d come to so adore. My hand pressed hard into her lower back, keeping us pressed full against one another.
I fought for breath. "What are you wondering, cherie?"
"Just wondering if I need to use any words now."
Words were exchanged, after that. It was the two of us, that was hardly a surprise. Here and there we spoke, in witty banter and breathless exhalations, gasped exclamations and a few exquisite shivering cries. But in truth, no words were needed. We spoke volumes to each other without ever voicing a syllable; spoke in caresses, in the brush of lips and the heated pressure of gazes, in the surging rhythm of bodies moving together.
No… no need for words.
Words can come later.
The lightswitch in the storeroom, when I finally found it, was one of the ancient round ones, a simple button. Pressing it coaxed one dusty lightbulb to life, up near the rafters, and that muted light fell over a room brimful of cardboard boxes, wooden packing crates, old chests and pieces of furniture, and the occasional shapeless, tarp-wrapped bundle. I remember looking at M-A skeptically after my first glance around, but she just gave me one of those impossible looks of hers, cheerful and enthusiastic, and moved right on in.
My reluctance was part showmanship, of course. Of any room in the house, this one was the most likely to yield up both fascinating treasures and clues as to my blond counterpart’s history. Getting to explore it would be a rare treat, I thought, even if we were looking for shrunken heads. (And I suppose it was a measure of just how far I’d come, that I took her saying that in stride and merely asked how she came by them.) After thirty seconds at most I left the room and stripped to the waist; the shirt I’d worn that night was too nice for a crawl through a grimy storeroom. I had a thin tanktop underneath, which sufficed for decency; and from the approving looks M-A gave me when she thought me distracted, apparently it looked just fine.
From there, time lost meaning.
The first thing we did was clear a corner of the room and spread an old tarp there, and an amazing amount of junk went onto that tarp at her word, to be gathered up later and thrown out. Oddments of every shape and description she dismissed, tossed onto the heap which grew steadily. I saw it begin to bother her, the detritus of her past, and soon after she stopped looking at it, and simply began handing things to me to throw away. I did, noting what passed through my hands, surmising what I could… when I had the time to think on them.
That storeroom was packed to the eaves; with treasures, with junk, but mostly with stories. Only M-A knew what she wished to save, what she no longer wanted, and what might offer a clue as to the location of her lost collection. So I moved boxes, opened crates, listed off strange things beyond number, and held items up for her inspection. Some I put back. Others I threw away. And sometimes, she told me stories.
There was never a way to tell; this thing or that might spark her memory, and she would tell some tale. These were the dried eagle’s talons an ancient vaudun priestess had given her in Louisiana. This was a graceful vase which one of her family had sent to her from Siam, from the hand of a master potter. Here were books that some ancient little man from China had sold to her in San Francisco, carefully preserved against the day she could read them. And there, a bundle of feathers, improbably golden, from some Caribbean isle without a name whose people had befriended her. The stories went on and on, each improbable, each fascinating. I listened, and I helped as she directed… and I watched her as she moved.
It was perhaps something about the dim light, or the pleasant exertion, or the cramped intimacy of her storeroom, but I found myself noticing her as I hadn’t in some time. The long line of her back, and the muscles along her shoulders as she stretched high. The way her hair escaped the ponytail and curled in red-gold strands about her face. The strength of her legs and thighs as she lifted boxes or bundles with me. She was not beautiful in the sense of the day; not hers, the long-legged, willowy grace of the pinup girls and fashion models. Hers was a far more classic beauty, lush and supple and deliciously curved. And it sang in her smile, her infectious energy and enthusiasm for the task. I hadn't allowed myself see her, desire her this way for weeks now, convinced nothing was going to come of it... but that night my awareness was simply there again, wild and wanting, and I couldn't keep my eyes from her for long. More than once I almost did myself harm with my distraction.
What happened was perhaps inevitable.
My eyes lingered over her while I leaned against a stack of boxes, watching her pry open another crate and peer inside. "Oh, I think this may be- no, no. More rodent skulls. How many muskrat skulls does one woman need, anyway? Oh! A vase!"
She held up a frighteningly ugly thing, lopsided and clearly made by an amateur with a pottery wheel. I regarded it with an indulgent smile. "Oh, very nice. Ming Dynasty, I suppose? The amazingly historically valuable first offering from the hands of an obscure Chinese fellow who grew to be the greatest sculptor of his age?"
She shot me a look, then frowned at the vase. "No, I think this was a gift. One of those things that you keep and put out when the offender comes over. Put this in the pile over there, will you?"
"I see why. Hideous thing, but made with great love." Handing it off, she turned to put the lid back on the crate, and I swiftly set the vase onto the junk pile in the corner, which was beginning to overflow the tarpaulin. "You know, obviously we're going about this in the wrong way. I've come to the conclusion that your poor mislabeled collection is going to be found in the single most inconvenient place in this entire treasure trove." From there, I regarded the room, mentally cataloguing what we had already done. "Which either means at the bottom of that pile," I said, pointing towards a stack of crates which had all proved to be absurdly heavy, "or somewhere in that one," and waved at the two huge shipping crates stacked one atop the other.
She wandered over next to me and sat down, absently reaching out a hand to me while she considered the two spots I’d pointed to. "It's probably in that one, then," she said with a gesture at the larger crates. "Those mostly have animal bones too large to fit into smaller boxes, a human skeleton, and..." She trailed off, and I took her offered hand with a grin, going into an easy crouch to stretch my legs a bit.
"And? Don't tell me you need a moment to make up something suitably spectacular?"
She squeezed my fingers and answered my smile with her own. “Ah, Etienne. Would you believe I don't remember? You are very good to an eccentric woman for putting up with all of this."
She surprised me then, raising my hand to her lips and kissing my knuckles. I laughed at it, but it was a laugh meant to cover a surging of my blood as her lips brushed my skin. God, how do I so-suddenly want her again? I covered the thought with words, a slightly different truth. "Not at all. I could go on about good honest work, but seriously, the stories in here are legion enough to fascinate me forever. It's almost hard to believe all this stuff fits in your lifetime." I pulled my hand away, not trusting myself fully while she touched me, and surveyed the two huge crates.
"Oh, I've packed quite a bit into my life. Besides, the world is built on hard work.” She stood up, just behind me, so close I could feel her over the intervening space, and pointed over my shoulder at the higher of the two. “So. That one?"
"That one. I might as well just open it up there, though. No way we're moving it, unless we want to drag Roberto down here to help and maybe rig up a pulley or two." I picked my way over to the crates, mind working at logistics, and tested a smaller crate off to one side as a foothold.
"Oh, god, Etienne. Do be careful, there." Her voice as she offered me a steadying hand betrayed her sudden worry, and it made me smile recklessly. Finding a handhold, I boosted myself to the lid of the bottom crate in a single motion. A quick shuffle secured my footing there, and I examined the crate as best I could in the wan light.
"Label's torn off this one, it figures.” I tested the lid, half-expecting what I found. “Oof, top's nailed on, too. Where did we leave that crowbar?"
She hunted for it, found it hanging off another box, and handed it up to me. "Careful, there," she repeated, clearly not expecting me to listen. I managed to avoid rolling my eyes until I was standing straight again.
"I'm often careful." I muttered it just loud enough for her to hear, knowing she’d catch the reference to another day. Just not where you’re concerned. A puff of breath blew a cloud of dust off the box, far more than I’d expected, and set me to coughing. "Good god, M-A, how long has this been up here?"
She laughed at that, her lovely, silvery laugh, and it made me glance at her for a moment. "Not that long. I only moved back this year."
"Beautiful." My hunt along the edge revealed a few likely targets, and I worked the crowbar into the first seam and heaved. It took several tries before I found a spot with good leverage, and then I set up a terrible noise of squealing nails. It took several minutes of prying and pulling before the lid came up on one side, and I set my hands underneath it, careful of the nails, and wrenched it up higher to peer inside. Packing straw, and two lines of… something… I moved to the side a little to let more light in, and looked closer… then whistled. "No heads, I'm afraid, but what look like some damned nice plates."
She craned up, interested, and it bared a lovely line of her throat as I glanced down. "Oh? Let me see."
How could I refuse? Well, maybe to make you stretch a little further. Shut up, Etienne… "Sure, if I can..." I shuffled, then leaned over the side of the crate, reaching in to lay my fingers on one of the lovely pieces, done all in red glass and gilded in complex traceries. "Got it." I started to stand, drawing my upper body carefully out of the crate, and that’s when I slipped.
There was a confusion of movement, and I remember thinking absurdly that I was damned if I was going to break that plate. Something drew a line of fire across my scalp, one foot was over open space, and then my flailing left hand caught the edge of the box with almost my whole weight upon it, and erupted in agony.
M-A clearly missed what happened. She reached up for the plate I was holding out, miraculously unharmed, put her other hand out to steady me. "A plate isn't worth your life, love. Come down from there."
I couldn’t think past the burning in my hand, and I couldn’t find purchase for my other foot. My voice was unintentionally harsh. "Take the plate, M-A, so I can use that hand."
She obliged me without bothering to look at it. "What's wrong?"
I ignored the question and heaved myself up using my right hand, until I could feel for secure footing and achieve it. "Nothing, just... bumped my head." I glanced down, carefully uncurled my left hand from its agonized grip, and simply jumped, not able to think enough to climb. I landed next to her in a crouch, suddenly dizzy. I could feel a warm trickle down my forehead. "I... ai, merde..." I reached up with my right hand and pulled myself straight, supporting myself as best I could and trying to hide my left hand from her, but she grew statue-still.
"Show me," she said, in a voice which brooked no argument.
I hesitated, then stepped a few feet back, to let the light fall more fully on me… and I lifted my hand for her to see. I couldn’t look, myself; I knew it would hurt more if I saw it, and the pain transfixed me already. There was a patter on the floor, and I realized it was my blood, and wondered how badly I was hurt. M-A simply stared, her eyes too wide, her hands frozen halfway into reaching for me. I tried to summon a smile, a rueful grin to reassure her, but I think I failed miserably; every pulse of my heart was making my hand throb anew.
After a short eternity, her eyes fluttered closed, and she drew a deep breath. For a moment it seemed she was savoring the breath, but that must have been pain distorting the truth; she was bracing herself, I thought, against the shock of it. At last, her eyes snapped open and she took my hand, firm but surprisingly gentle. "Oh, love. C'mon. Let's get this taken care of." It hurt too much for me to argue, and I swallowed the lump in my throat and nodded.
Somewhere on the way out of the room, she found a dust rag we’d been using earlier and pressed a reasonably clean portion of it over my palm to staunch the flow of blood. I’d been trying to catch the patter in my other hand, and when I reached for the rag, I grazed her fingers with mine, covered in blood. It left a bright crimson smear on her pale skin, and I stammered an apology.
"A little blood never hurt me none. Here we are, let's go to my bathroom - it's closer." There was worry edging her eyes, I thought, concern in the lines of her face. She’s winsome when she worries, I thought incongruously.
She led me to the double doors at the end of the hall, into her bedroom. My fingers were spread wide by that point, rigid and white-knuckled. I barely saw the bed, in all its glory of damask canopies and dark-polished wood. With the heavy curtains covering the tall windows, the altar in the far corner was almost lost in shadows. She pulled me toward another set of double doors, and I tried for levity. "Hah... I finally get to see your bedroom..."
I’d caught her by surprise; she looked up sharply, her lips parted, her eyes gleaming in the soft light from the hall. God…
For a moment, she seemed lost, and then she looked away and tugged me into the bathroom, flicking on the more modern lights. "I- there's some peroxide under the sink. Sit there," she pointed to the toilet and crouched to rummage beneath the sink, still carefully not looking at me.
I brushed past her, close as I dared with my hand still bleeding in slow rivulets down my arm, and sat on the edge of the huge claw-foot tub instead, my heart hammering. Stop it, dammit. This is stupid. You’re bleeding like a stuck pig, and she’s… she’s… But I couldn’t think, not with the pain only just beginning to numb, and not with her looking over her shoulder with eyes full of concern. She produced a plastic bottle, a clean wash cloth and some cotton bandaging, soaked the cloth in the sink and came to kneel gently in front of me on the blood-spotted tile. "Here. Let's get this cleaned up, hmm?"
She reached for my hand, and I pulled the filthy cloth away slowly, wincing as it stuck to the wound. Blood welled again when the pressure eased, and I dabbed ineffectually at it, finally extending my dusty, blood-wet hand in resignation. She took it gently and looked at it, turning it in the light to see it better before pressing the damp cloth into the wound. The pain was fresh and searing bright, obliterating my reason and bending me forward at the waist. It took all my will not to writhe and scream; I contented myself with a harsh grip on the tub and a gasping groan. When I opened my eyes, hers were inches away, and she leaned her cool forehead against mine.
"Shh. It will be well."
She brushed the cloth over my wound, reached with nimble fingers to pluck wood splinters out of it. My breath came quickly, shallowly, but I did my best to laugh, mostly so I wouldn’t cry. "It was a... ha-aa... a very nice plate. If I'd known you were... willing to tor... torture me for it..." I winced at a particularly hard press of the cloth, and she raised up slightly and kissed my forehead before leaning close to look at the jagged wound again, her eyes intent and intense.
“Here,” she murmured quietly, and kissed my wrist, and that brush of lips over my pulse undid my control, bringing my breath in a shaky sigh. She drifted past my torn palm and laid more kisses on my fingertips. Don’t, Etienne, I thought frantically, but my fingers betrayed me, pressing lightly against her lips, then more firmly, drawing a fresh well of blood from the wound.
Her sharp intake of breath did amazing things to her chest, but I had only instants to notice it; her face bent even closer and her tongue darted out over my skin, throwing my head back and my eyes shut. She licked across my palm, and then into the wound, her tongue only barely touching the skin… and it hurt deliciously, wonderfully, a mix of agony and ecstasy. She sighed deeply against my skin, and it drew another sharp breath from me, this one less of pain. The fingers of my other hand were somehow on her shoulder without covering the intervening space, digging through the t-shirt to press hard against her skin.
I looked down and she looked up, and there was blood on her lips… but she didn’t look repulsed.
She licked her lips slowly, drew back enough to whisper, "We should wrap this."
For an instant, I’d forgotten the wound. I looked down at my hand, then met her eyes again, but something in me still didn’t hear her. My fingers stole past the edge of the t-shirt to graze her neck. I managed words, somehow. "You're... probably right..."
She pulled a little further away and fumbled, opening the bottle of peroxide. I knew this would be even worse than the cloth, and though I hissed when the first splash doused my palm in a stinging and bubbling surge, her smooth skin under my other hand somehow made it more bearable. She held my wounded limb still in her strong grip and bit her lip, holding the bottle and watching the peroxide sear at me.
Somehow I got my breath back with the liquid still hissing on my hand, and caught her eyes with mine. "Either do it... or put that bottle of acid down and stop drawing it out." I smiled, trying for flippant and coming close, and she gave me an unreadable look. I could fall into those eyes and drown…
She leaned in and kissed me.
I think a surprised sound escaped me, but I really had no idea. I was stunned for a moment, and then returned the kiss, my pain momentarily forgotten. It was a simple kiss, pure and sweet, rich with subtleties of meaning I couldn’t begin to piece together. My fingers slipped behind her neck, and I sighed into her, my lips opening slightly.
She pulled away an inch or so then, leaving me gasping. Her smile was full of mischief. "That wasn't what you meant, was it?"
I fumbled for a response to her maddening grin, and found a blush creeping up my cheeks instead. "I... no. That was not what I meant."
Her gaze went down to my hand, and she picked up the roll of bandages, brushing her lips over the inside of my wrist again. "We'll have to be gentle with this," she breathed as she began to wrap it. I laughed, traced her ear with my good thumb, and teased.
"I fear I... may not be much good for moving more boxes tonight." Go ahead… suggest something else.
She completed the bandage more quickly than I would have thought, tucking the ends of the cotton neatly and precisely. "Mm. Those heads can wait." She touched my cheek, tracing a line with her fingers from jaw to collar, brushing further down to hover over my chest.
A flex of the bandaged hand hurt, of course, but then I met her eyes and found desire there, finally uncovered after weeks and months. All my rue vanished under a tide of longing, but I still didn’t know, and I couldn’t let myself presume. I clung to a shred of caution, a drowning man to a straw. "In favor of...?" If you’re playing with me now, I swear to God…
She pushed forward again, brushing her cheek against mine, and kissed me just under the ear, then against my jaw. She breathed against me, "I have something that I think will fill our time nicely." Another kiss, further down my jaw.
The hell with it. I slid my fingers back along her neck, behind her ear and into her hair, tightening them against her scalp. I turned my head into her, kissed her temple, just behind her eye. "Stimulating debate? Research?"
She rocked back on her heels and looked up from beneath lowered lashes, and I didn’t know whether to melt or catch fire. "I had... something else in mind." She pulled me towards her, but rather than go down as she wanted, I stood up, pulling her along with my grip in her hair and molding her against me in a long, heated line. One of her hands was on my chest, and my heart thudded against her cold fingers.
"Tell me... but not too many words."
Her hand snaked around my neck, and she pulled me down to her even as she rose on tiptoes, locking lips with me again. This kiss was more, so much more, pretense and propriety stripped away; a burning expanse of probing tongues and soft sounds. When she finally pulled away, she arched a red-gold eyebrow inquiringly, that singular expression I’d come to so adore. My hand pressed hard into her lower back, keeping us pressed full against one another.
I fought for breath. "What are you wondering, cherie?"
"Just wondering if I need to use any words now."
Words were exchanged, after that. It was the two of us, that was hardly a surprise. Here and there we spoke, in witty banter and breathless exhalations, gasped exclamations and a few exquisite shivering cries. But in truth, no words were needed. We spoke volumes to each other without ever voicing a syllable; spoke in caresses, in the brush of lips and the heated pressure of gazes, in the surging rhythm of bodies moving together.
No… no need for words.
Words can come later.