Maybe he won't come.
The thought brings relief and a strange ache in equal measure. Relief because I'm scared. The ache because if he doesn't come, it means I'm not even worth the effort of a duty he's obligated to perform.
I close my eyes.
I'm almost asleep when the door opens.
I don't move. I keep my breathing slow and steady, my eyes shut, my body still. I listen to him move through the room. The soft sounds of him undressing. The click of the bathroom door. Water running. Then silence.
The mattress dips.
He's beside me. Close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating off his skin, but he doesn't touch me. Doesn't reach for me. Doesn't say a word.
We lie there in the dark, inches apart, two strangers in a bed neither of us chose to share.
"I know you're awake," he says quietly.
I open my eyes.
"Yes," I whisper.
Silence.
"We don't have to do this tonight," he says.
Something in my chest loosens.
"The council," I start.
"The council can wait."
I turn over slowly. He's on his back, one arm behind his head, staring at the ceiling. In the dim light from the window, I can see the hard lines of his profile. The tension in his jaw. The way his chest rises and falls with controlled, deliberate breaths.
He's angry. Not at me, I don't think. At everything around me. At the situation that put us both here.
"Is that what you want?" I ask softly.
He doesn't respond. Doesn't look at me. But after a long moment, I hear him exhale. Slow. Heavy. Like he's letting go of something he's been holding all day.
“Am I not your…type?” I ask. My mother had warned me about this, that some men like a certain type of woman… that I must learn what that is and become it.
“You are very beautiful,” comes his reply, but it sounds strained. Disjointed, somehow.
I watch his profile in the dark. The muscle jumping in his jaw. The way his hand flexes against the pillow behind his head.
"Then I don't understand," I say.
He turns his head. Looks at me for the first time since he came into the room, and in the dim light, his eyes are something close to silver. Pale and sharp and searching.
"You don't have to understand." That same strained voice again.
"Then why..." I trail off, because I don't know how to finish the question without sounding like I'm begging him to touch me. I'm trying to do what I was taught. Fulfill the obligation. Play my part.
But something about lying next to him in the dark, close enough to feel the heat of his skin, makes my training feel very thin.
"I won't have sex with a woman who's only offering it because she was told to," he says. His voice is low, rough. Like the words cost him something.
I prop myself up on my elbow. He watches me, still as stone, but I can see the rise and fall of his chest picking up speed.
