232 - Your life is perfect

We stared at each other, and all the world, even the wind, seemed to stand still.

The warrior’s foreknowledge, that a stroke is coming before it comes, is a moment of crystal in the air, a mind-shimmer all over the body. I felt it and then our sword-hands were touching, the edge of his two first fingers extended, meaning his sword, touching the edge of mine, both having moved too fast to see.

We sat in silence, as in amber, with the whole world in the edges of our fingers, while outside my camp slowly rousted itself awake.

Then we threw ourselves together so fast and hard it almost hurt, and our world was each other’s warm tongues and hair clenched in fingers and bodies clinging together. “I… should… there’s,” he gasped, when he could. “A proper way… of doing this… I should…” I let go his shoulders to throw the bedclothes off him, wrap my arms around his hips inside his sleeping-robe and seize his manhood, which stood high and straining over a thatch of curly fair hair, deep in my mouth. All-Spirit, how long and how much did I want this? Having it almost put me in tears.

“No! No!” he gasped, trying to pull his hips away and yank my head back by grabbing my hair with both hands. “You shouldn’t! It’s wrong! I should be doing that to you!” You taste of your spirit, I thought. How can anyone on the Earthsphere, even in Arko, imagine I’m abasing myself by partaking of that?

I let go, to speak. “I’m doing what I want,” I said. “Why would you stop me?” While he sat silent, at a loss for words, I took him in again, all the way down to my throat, and reached my hands up under his night-robe to take his nipples between my fingers, for good measure. He ceased protesting, having lost words.

You have never felt what it is with someone who loves you; I want to show you that. You have suffered what every Arkan suffers; I want to give you relief in ecstasy. You have lived deprived; I want to fill that emptiness. I want to show you how beautiful you are to me, to reflect what you are back to you, to let you see yourself in your true essence. I want to love you, that’s all, Kallijas, in the greatest way possible, to put my love into sensation so that for a moment at least, it is all that is in your life, and your life is perfect.

All these things I put into my tongue and lips and hands. It was effortless, to let his pleasure be my whole existence. From denied passion for me, or inexperience—he could hardly know how to hold back—or long deprivation, or all these things, he came fast, like a boy, arching back and thrashing so hard he almost threw me off, and screaming closed-mouth from behind the hand he pressed over his lips. I’d forgotten to tell him to do that; at least one of us had a shred of sense.

When I had drawn every last drop out of him, he fell limp, panting, his face almost pained. By the harmony between us, I knew he felt so vulnerable he had a sense of being broken, as can happen. I took off my robe—we hadn’t even stripped, so he still wore his gloves as well as his robe—and slid in beside him, wrapping my arms around him and taking his head onto my shoulder. The tension that had crept back into him fell away again, and his head grew heavier on my arm. “Shefen-kas,” he said, and then lost words again, and I felt tears on my shoulder.

“You don’t have to explain anything,” I whispered. “I understand. Feeling often breaks free.” I stroked the golden tendrils of his hair that had come out of his hair-tie back from his face, putting it in order, knowing he’d be comforted by that, and kissed his brow. “Just rest.”

“Shefen-kas,” he whispered after a while. “I knelt for Abatzas, because… if I didn’t, he might take me. Because my grandfather told me, I should never give myself to any man, except one better than me. Especially the first time.” He drew back, to look me in the eyes, with that clear-sky gaze. From out front, distantly, I heard Chinisa say, “He’s still in bed. He was up late last night when allies came in. If Emao-e cannot help, you’ll have to wait.”

“Abatzas was not,” Kall whispered. “But you are.”

“No, I’m not,” I said. “Your equal, yes. Not better.”

“Shefen-kas…”

“Maybe he meant one as good as you.”

“It should be none but you,” he breathed into my ear. “In your heart, you know that. And by my choice, it will be none but you. May I have my choice?”

I tightened my arms around him, then loosened them again to let him turn his back to me. I found myself afraid, though. I’d done it with men who were virgins, and one Arkan—Skorsas—but never an Arkan who was a virgin. I didn’t even want to cause him a bare instant of the faintest pain. Maybe he was afraid too; how could he not be? I felt over his heart, found it pounding again. Of course my bed-oil was in the other room. Begging his forgiveness, I let go to tip-toe in for it. Niku snored lightly, smiling in her sleep. I felt like a thief, as I had stealing from the Director’s apartment.

“I’d die before I hurt you,” I said, when I was back in with him. “Give me your hand.” Slowly and delicately, as characters do it in the books Arkans call knuckle-suckers, I peeled off his glove. Like every Arkan’s, his hand was all nerves, twitching if I even breathed on it, or caressed close enough to the skin only to stroke the tiny hairs. He sighed, and then moaned.

“It’s… your turn… to take pleasure… not give it,” he said.

“The taking goes better if you are given, too. Other hand.” He writhed gently against me as I stripped it. When he was entirely naked, I could feel he was no longer afraid.

“I am made of flame for you,” I whispered. My heart was hammer-banging, my blood sang like wind through my temples. “But I’d die before I hurt you, so you’re on your honour to tell me if I do.” He nodded on my arm.

Between the two firm domes of muscle, his hair was silken on my finger. He gasped at the first touch, and began breathing deeply, purposely, as I anointed him. Against my arm I felt his eyelashes brush as he closed his eyes. I went very, very gently, as you must, with my finger first, giving him time to accept and then embrace each extent of touch so that he would want, and so open for, the next. As I did it with my manhood, the tent, the camp outside, the beginning bustle of the day, the smell of breakfast sausages frying, all fell away, and I knew nothing, not even myself, but him.

When I was fully in him, trembling all over and weeping though I felt no pain, he whispered through his own fast breaths, “I give myself… freely and without let. I won’t say… as vanquished to victor… because that hurts you, Shefen-kas… I know. But… I give myself… and am so reconciled… to life… in the eyes of Aras.”

I don’t understand, I thought. I don’t have to. You and I have always done better with motion than with words. You give yourself to me, I give myself to you, we move with love, that is all that counts. I began the slowest thrusting, throwing back my head. He threw back his head too, his hair pressing warm against my throat. A tiny cool hand smacked against my butt. He let out a gasping “Aigh!” as I twitched. “Ma’wiah!” Vriah said, giggling. “Ma’wiah, ma’wiah, love love love!”

“Chsshhhe… vengaaaaaahh,” Niku moaned in a gravelly voice from my bed, half-asleep. “You slept… more than I did… love… can you get her, pleeeease?”

Kallijas froze, as if he’d been pole-axed. “Love love love love Aba Aba!” Vriah piped, smacking some more. Every smack went to my bones. She’d pulled herself up by the edge of the bed.

“There’s… a… child… in… here,” Kallijas hissed, gasping. She could see nothing anyway, since my back was turned to her, but I grabbed and dragged the bedclothes over us, for his sake. It’s nothing to a Yeoli—I can’t remember the first time I knew some combination of my parents were making love—nor to a Niah, but considering all the other ways Arkans felt about sex, what he felt could not be good.

“Of course, love, I’ve got her,” I said, in Yeoli. “Sleep, it’s all right. Kall…” I dropped to a whisper and switched to Arkan. “I know you cannot see her, but… meet my daughter, Vriah. She’s just ten moons old and I’m sure she saw nothing.” My body was still singing, but now the fire in me turned darker, knowing it was about to be denied. What else could I do? He and I pulled away from each other as one, and I turned just in time to see her pour the bed-oil out entirely onto the night-table and stick a finger into the spreading puddle, fascinated. It spilled onto the tent-floor, so I knew this tent-room would smell like patchouli for days, if not months.

“Your… daughter…” She looked at us and her smile faded.

“Vriah. Here, sweetling.” Best I cuddle her before she screamed. I sat on the edge of the bed and held out my arms to her, while he wrapped the covers as tightly around himself as a courier-package, up to his nose. I noticed, through everything else, the spot on my head where Esora-e hit me suddenly hurting. She came suspiciously, frowning. “This is my… friend… Kall. You are hungry, love? Maybe you should go to Ama?”

“Ka!” she declared, with a bit of a shriek. “Ka Ka Ka Ka Ka!”

“Does she not… have a nurse?” he said. “Who cares for her?”

“You’re mistaking my war-camp for the Marble Palace,” I said. I began to feel as if I’d been turned inside out. “Ama has milk, Vriah-riah, you want that?”

“Nooo!!” Suddenly she knows a lot of words, I thought.

“You could just bring her to me, Fourth Chevenga,” Niku said peevishly from the other side of the canvas. “Or feed her something solid; have you not noticed she’s old enough now? I’m awake anyway. Why are you speaking Arkan, who are you talking to… oh.”

In the ringing silence, I heard Hurai say, out front, “We were supposed to start a command council meeting after breakfast. He’s never been late for one in his life. Is he all right?”

“Oh, judging by certain muffled but ecstatic noises I was hearing a little earlier, I’d say he’s just fine,” said Krero, between his teeth.

I hugged Kallijas around the neck, kissed him hard on the lips and whispered, “I’m sorry. I can’t. I love you. I don’t know when. But always, I love you, that doesn’t change.” I felt as if I’d had my insides reamed out. At least he’d had ecstasy. I swallowed my tears, threw on and belted up my robe, snatched up Vriah and went out to face what I must face, and be on the side I was on.