In Which Tarien Does the Gentlemanly Thing

April 29, 1172

There was something to be said about the groggy moments just before sleep, when the colors of the room swirled about to the center of the eye before fading to blackness, the sounds of the night breeze and the crackling fire swelling in crescendo before dying down to nothing. It was this during brief period, perhaps, that dreams were conceived, little sparks of the enhanced ordinary forming the framework for the surreal; an interruption might render the night a chronological void.

And yet, for something so powerful--so crucial--it was so delicate. The only force needed to break it was the mere creak of the door. So much for dreaming tonight; lucid-yet-hazy, Tarien heaved his eyelids upright and propped himself onto his elbows. He peered over the edge of the footboard and gaped. Perhaps he was asleep and dreaming after all. "...Arydath?"

It was dark and he was tired, but she was unmistakable, even in the dim light of the dying fire in the alcove. Even in the shadowy over of the corner entrance. Even in that silk gown he'd given her a month prior, the one she'd always passed over for her plain old cloth rags. It had to have been a dream--had to have been. "What are you doing here?"

She pressed her finger to her lips and blew a faint shh! "Don't say anything."

Stunned and confused and existentially unaware, he watched as she retreated to the door and shut it, only to return to her position across from him, drawing a little nearer. Tarien sat up and slipped one leg off the mattress; his toe had scarcely skimmed the floorboards when she froze him with a glare. "Don't get up."

What sort of trick was this? Tarien gaped; his dreams were most often either more indulgent or more heart-breakingly realistic. "Arydath..."

"I thought I told you to shut up."

Dream or not, she did sound like Arydath. Defeated, Tarien pulled himself back onto the bed, but crawled atop the covers before leaning back against the headboard; it was getting a little warm. "Arydath, really... what the hell?"

Arydath sighed. "You really can't take an order, can you?" She folded her arms behind her back and struggled as if grasping for some small, slippery object. "Figures, really."

He opened his mouth to respond, but was reduced to a mute, transfixed stare as she pried her laces from the back of her gown. She tossed the wad of gold ribbon to the floor and shook slightly, allowing the silk to slip downward against her olive skin. Sloped shoulders emerged as the sleeves fell, full breasts and sandglass waist following. The gown lingered for a moment on her curvy hips, then fell sharply to the floor, pooling around her ankles. Casual as she might have doused a candle, she lifted the mass of fabric with one foot and kicked it aside. "I don't think I ever thanked you properly."

This was the part where his dreams were always lacking. The naked Arydath that came to him in the night appeared in flashes--a breast here, a thigh there, the small of her back if the midnight muses smiled upon him. Here, however, she stood in full, just flesh and curves and cinnamon hair--all at once, not a piece missing or obscured. It was better than a dream. It was too good to be true. "You must have said it at some point."

"Does it matter?" She placed her hand on the bed post and spun herself onto the empty side of the mattress; after all those nights dreaming himself a reckless hedonist, he decided to be a gentleman and tried to look away. "They're just words. They don't mean anything on their own."

"From you, they mean the world to me."

"Damn good of you, then." She settled herself down and rolled onto her side, mere inches away. He could have touched her with little more than a twitch of his hand. "But I guess I'm a different sort; where I come from, we use gestures."

She grazed his thigh with the tickling tips of her fingers, the blood his veins surging toward his groin. He didn't think he could take it anymore; ungentlemanly or not, he looked at her. "Is that what this is? A gesture?"

With the force of someone twice her size, she pressed him to the bed's surface and answered him. Her tongue slipped past his lips and atop his own, spinning about with a fury he'd never even dreamed about--clockwise, counter-clockwise, seemingly both at once, the taste of her leaving his head spinning and his senses clouded. His veins split within his skin as his heart raced onward, his cock struggling against the confines of his loincloth; her leg gracing the region, she slipped her finger beneath the waistband and pulled the garment to his knees. She brought the kiss to his conclusion as he shook it off entirely, a strange sort of smile on her lips. "You could say so."

He didn't. He only pulled her closer and kissed her again. Just to be sure--just for his own peace of mind--he started slowly. The kiss lingered in a sweet stasis, her lips wide and full and honey-like, the calm ease of the moment almost as arousing as the passion of the last. He knew what he wanted to know. He didn't have to hold back any longer.

He ran his tongue across the ridge of her teeth and lowered her to her back. It was only gentlemanly to heed the request of one's beloved.

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