Page 50 of Beds and Blades

His grip on me tightened. I tightened mine in response. My hand moved over him in slow strokes, feeling him grow harder with each stroke.

He was already substantial. He was becoming more so.

My thumb dragged over the head of him, and he broke the kiss with a sharp exhale.

His fingers curled.

I stopped thinking.

***

We lay tangled together in the aftermath, his arm around me, my cheek against the broad plane of his chest. His heartbeat was steady beneath me. His hand was at my hip.

I was aware of exactly what I had not yet done. What his body had not yet done to mine.

What the claiming required. What was waiting on the other side of a ring.

I was also aware of exactly how much I wanted it.

I wanted the claiming. I wanted the ring on my finger, the bond forming, and his eyes on mine in the moment that theology said the world was built for.

I wanted to feel him fill me—all of him—and I wanted to watch his face when he did, and I wanted him to watch mine.

My body had filed its recommendation. The recommendation was urgent and not remotely ambiguous.

My brain, which had been the department responsible for significant decisions for thirty years, was attempting to make a case for patience.

The claiming was not a small thing. It was lifelong. Permanent. Empathic. A bond with no quiet exit, no careful separation, and no convenient Mytharo divorce attorney.

My brain was screaming I need to think about this while my body was screaming something else entirely.

The case for patience was correct. I knew it was correct. I was making it to myself with full conviction. I understood exactly what was at stake, exactly what the theology required, and exactly why the restriction existed.

I looked at the ceiling. I looked at the ring on his left hand.

Then I looked at the broad terrain of his chest beneath my cheek and turned the word claimed over in my mind.

A man’s ring on my hand. His heart open to mine. My desire answered. I wondered what it would feel like to stop circling the word and mean it.

He reached over and moved a piece of hair out of my face. I let him. I was discovering that I had a limited and rapidly depleting supply of objections to things he did with his hands.

“Tell me something,” he said. “Your world. The one you came from. What was your life before all of this?”

I considered giving him the simple version.

I had been a doctoral student. I had lived in Philadelphia. I had written about dead Roman generals and attended conferences and knew exactly which grocery store sold the rotisserie chicken I liked.

All of that was true.

None of it was the answer.

“Small,” I said.

His hand stilled slightly against my hair.

“My life was small, quiet, and contained. That said, it was engaging intellectually. I had a doctoral thesis I believed in, and work I found genuinely consuming.”

I paused.