21 #2
It was just like every other man she’d ever done this with.
It felt good, but not spectacular. It certainly wasn’t going to make her have an orgasm, though there could be deep ripples of goodness if she surrendered herself to it, and really tried to like it, which she’d done a number of times, really tried very hard, because she was supposed to like this more than she did, wasn’t she?
It was the same, and she somehow thought, after that explosive first experience with Iahir, that it wasn’t going to be the same, that Iahir was going to be special in some way—maybe because he was an elf, one with a positively huge cock—that was going to mean that he made this act abundantly pleasurable for her.
“Are you with me, warrioress?” he breathed in her ear.
“I’m right here,” she said.
“You seem… it’s odd, because we’re quite close, but you seem far away.”
She bit down on her lip.
“I’m going to stop,” he said and slipped out of her.
“No,” she said, shaking her head, reaching for him, even as he moved away from her. “I don’t want you to stop.” She sat up. “You can’t always keep giving me a release and then forgoing your own. It’s maddening.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to be able to, anyway,” he said, stretching, yawning, his cock flagging under his own tunic.
“It’s strange. I’ve never quite felt this before, but you…
” He gazed at her. “I feel, erm, attuned to you, and it’s hard to enjoy myself if you’re not seemingly enjoying yourself as well.
And it’s rather peculiar, because you’re very obviously not attuned to me—”
“I am,” she protested. “That is, I was earlier. It was only that we started doing that, and it was ever so disappointing.”
He flinched. “Right. Well, I think I did say we should not do it outside like this—”
“That’s not why, and it’s not your fault,” she said. “I don’t think it is, anyway. It’s always like this, with everyone, it’s always just, you know, nice enough, I suppose, but it’s not… it was much better with your fingers on me.”
He lifted his gaze to meet hers, furrowing his brow. “Hmm.”
“Oh, never mind. I should not have said anything. There is something wrong with me, I think, that I do not find the act to be whatever it is everyone else finds it.” She went looking for her breeches. She lay on her back and wriggled into them.
Iahir was pulling on his trousers, still thoughtful. “I need to think about that. I’m going to get my pipe.”
“You and your pipe.”
“Also, I’m going to go down to the nearby stream to wash this.” He held up his cock sheath.
“Maybe that was the problem,” she said, pulling the covers up. “I’ve never done it with one of them before.”
“Maybe,” he said. “I suppose I likely would know if I was diseased. I suppose I’m not.”
“Well, honestly, if you were so worried about that, I think you should have stopped me from putting my mouth there.”
He grimaced. “I’m likely not.”
She sighed. She wasn’t concerned, truly, though perhaps she was being foolish.
“It does prevent you from getting with child, of course, so—”
“All right, all right,” she said. “Never mind.” She pulled the covers up over her head.
She lay there, feeling sulky and she didn’t know why.
She might have dozed, but she was aware, at some point, of the sweet smell of the smoke of Iahir’s pipe.
She did like the smell of the pipe, she had to say, even if she was not sure if she liked the idea of pulling smoke into one’s lungs, which did not seem to be a particularly intelligent thing to do.
She pulled the covers back, and he was puffing away on the edge of the blanket.
“Hello,” she said, feeling affectionate towards him.
“Ah, you’re awake, warrioress.”
“You’re smoking,” she said. “Any particularly brilliant thoughts?”
“Well,” he said, “I was thinking, when I was out rinsing out the sheath, that I may never have been very attuned to my other partners, and they might have been exactly the way you are when I was on them. Far away. Not always, I don’t think.
There have been times when it’s quite personal, staring into each other’s eyes, breathing together, all of that. ”
“Certainly,” she said, sitting up.
“Oh, it’s been that way for you?” he said.
She shrugged. “Not often.”
“I’m jealous,” he said to his pipe. But there was no accusation to it. He was only resigned.
“Don’t be,” she said. “This, with us, it’s different.”
“Except you said it was quite the same,” he said softly.
She hunched up her shoulders and hugged her knees to her chest. She gazed into the fire.
“I am sort of ashamed of myself,” he said.
“It simply didn’t occur to me to care, I don’t think, which I can’t make sense of right now.
I suppose I thought that if I was paying a woman, it didn’t really matter if I pleased her, because she was getting coin, really.
But it was beyond that. I really never thought much about her at all.
I really thought only of myself. I suppose I was entirely selfish.
The whole thing was about me selfishly using her body to rut into.
It was entirely about finding my pleasure using her flesh.
And now I look at you, and to do that to you, it feels… ”
Gathren shifted, because, despite herself, all this talk of being selfishly used as a body to rut into, about being a vessel only for his pleasure, it was making her sort of warm.
“I wouldn’t mind, I suppose, in some way.
The idea of that, of being only there for some man’s use, it makes me feel a bit aroused. ”
He raised his eyebrows, bringing the pipe to his mouth. “I had not expected that from you, warrioress.”
“Had you not, my lord?”
“I rather thought you’d want to use me for your pleasure.”
“I think I would,” she said, looking at him, his careless lock of blond hair falling over his forehead, and she liked the look of him, and she liked the idea of using him.
That warmed her, too. “I simply don’t know what to do with you.
I don’t see what there is about you that brings me pleasure.
I want it to be riding your cock, I suppose.
I’ve always wanted it to be that. And it simply…
it’s nice enough, but it’s not… it feels as if that’s more for your pleasure than mine, that is all. ”
“Mmm,” he said. “Yes, I think you’re right.”
“It’s some kind of design flaw,” she said. “The gods did not know what they were doing when they put women together.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I think maybe the gods were trying to protect women. Think of what would happen if women went after it the way men did. Think how often they’d get themselves with child and think of how often women die in childbirth and think of how difficult it is on their bodies and all of that. ”
She hadn’t thought of that. “That’s almost worse. We have all the pain and all of the difficulty and none of the pleasure.”
He smoked. “Well, perhaps, I suppose, but… well, have you noticed how empty pleasure is?”
She gazed into the fire. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t know, it seems to me that women get all the real things, and men get stuck with the shallow, violent things. I can never carry a child in my body, you know.”
“You wouldn’t want to,” she said to the fire. “Furthermore, I don’t want to.”
“You don’t know what I want,” he muttered.
“You want to be pregnant, my lord?” Perhaps she was mocking him.
“I want to be needed,” he said tightly. “I want to be necessary. I want to matter. No one questions the importance of mothers, you know.”
She glanced at him for a moment, understanding him, she thought. “Men matter. Men are important. No one questions the importance of men.”
He didn’t say anything.
“There’s a reason I wanted to be a warrioress, after all,” she said. “I wanted that, too. I wanted to matter.”
“Is that what you wanted, or did you want glory?”
She started to protest.
“I don’t mean it as an insult, warrioress, because I want glory, too.
We all want it. I suppose I used to think women didn’t, or that orcs didn’t, or that it was some exclusive desire of the wealthy Valeador man, but I see now, that was narrow-minded.
It’s easier for us to get it, that’s all.
” He shrugged. “Why do you think I killed the High King, you know?”
“Glory?”
He nodded.
“It wasn’t a particularly glorious way you did it.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
And then they were quiet.