“Surely you must know that somehow your lovers respond to it.”
“Are you interested in having a dialogue about my previous lovers?”
“Perhaps.”
“Whatever game you’re playing, I don’t like it.”
“Must everything be a game?”
“I fear that everything must be.”
“And if it wasn’t, I suppose then it would be very serious, and would therefore have much further reaching implications.”
“Perhaps.”
He put his pants back on, buckled the belt. She was still determinedly turned away.
“And what are you wearing to this event?”
“That’s going to be a surprise.”
“A surprise? Why?”
He wanted to know. And yet at the same time he didn’t want her to know that it felt significant to him. But he was allowing himself to imagine her in a glorious gown.
He hadn’t seen her in anything like that since the wedding.
She had been…a vision.
Resplendent.
He had wanted her.
Utterly.
He still did.
This was the trouble with living with a woman. With her being his wife, even in a place the size of the palace. He couldn’t truly escape her.
“I didn’t know any of my previous lovers,” he said. “It was always opportune moments. Towns that we would be passing through.”
“Ah. I see. So casual sex is your thing.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I would say that much like I would try a different pub when we passed through towns, looking for whatever meal we might find, getting something to satisfy my hunger, I would treat sex the same way. It is an appetite, nothing more. There is no need to feel shame about it. There is no need to turn it into something more than it is.”
“Spoken like a man.”
“Why do you think that’s masculine of me?”
“Because you have the physical power. Even with this life that you didn’t choose, nobody sold your body away. By promising me to a stranger, my father promised my virginity to a man that I didn’t want. By kidnapping me and intending to take me as your wife, you laid a claim on it too. But you don’t think about being forced into bed, do you? So, of course, to you it feels simple. Of course to you it feels like something that shouldn’t carry weight, or shame. But for me, it can’t be that way.”
Her words were sobering in a way he hadn’t anticipated. “But I have not forced you into anything,” he said, the incendiary kiss burning between them.
“No,” she said. “You haven’t. But I didn’t know that. Not when I ran from you. You think that my wanting choices is silly. You think that my having dreams is silly.”
“You said this to me once before.”
“And you didn’t understand. I can understand why that feels shallow to you. Why can’t you understand for me that it feels like everything?”
