2. A Wedding Night #3
“When it's dark we stop seeing light, just heat. Like…” The cot creaked as he stood. “Here.” His touch grazed the hollow of my throat. “Here…” My cheek. I almost flinched. “And…other places.” He sounded like he was laughing at me. “Would you like me to help you find the bed?”
No. “Yes,” I got out. “Thank you.”
His hands found my hips, guided me over. I sat, but he wasn’t done, a soft pressure on my shoulder guiding me down to recline while my mind screamed escape.
“Thank you,” I said again, habits of polite conversation all I had left to fight with. “The dark-seeing must be useful.”
“I won't say it isn’t fun watching you heat up.” He caught the hem of my skirt, his touch running upwards.
I caught his hand in mine, panic overcoming reason. He didn’t move from my grasp, and I found words, found the excuse, “That's unnecessary,” I got out.
“Unnecessary?” He didn’t sound angry. I held onto that. I hadn’t brought on anger yet. He just sounded amused. “You want to start with—"
“Yes.” I squeaked it into the darkness, and I waited.
He shifted, the cot creaking with him. “This seems ill-advised,” he said, and my heart leapt into my throat, and I thought I could endure what I knew was coming, but not some kind of inspection, not the intimacy of that from this stranger who said, “Not that I have experience with this, but they say the first time, if you take it too fast—"
“I'm fine. I just want…to do it. Please.” I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting.
The bed creaked. “... far be it from me to tell a woman what she wants.” His hand withdrew, and I could almost breathe. “We’ll go slowly.” He hiked up my skirt.
The memory fragments there. There was a deep burst of pain, a bloom of heat, like I was burning, and everything fragmented, like I was shattering on the inside.
I’d waited with women giving birth, and I’d heard them ask for it to stop, the ones on the first time, and I knew I couldn’t be that person begging instead of getting through.
I know I covered my face. I bit into the flesh of my arm.
He stopped, shifted. “Pushing through pain is not going to do you any favors.” He pried my arm up, away from my face. “We just met. I can't read whether you're tensing from wanting more or because it hurts.”
“I’m fine,” I said, and I hated that I sounded so small.
“Is this a human thing, that you’re so embarrassed?”
I was catching my breath, my body burning like we’d torn the skin away. I caught at his words. “We just met.”
He sighed, then— “Did you bite your arm?”
Heat flooded my face again. “Perhaps.”
He laughed again. “Alright. Alright. But if you’re going to hide your face, you need to talk to me. You need to tell me if you’re not okay.”
It seemed ridiculous, alien, that he thought there was somewhere in this scenario where I would be okay.
“Here.” He took my hand, and moved it to his shoulder.
I opened my eyes, and the barest threads of starlight had come in, giving me the shape of him above me.
“We’ll go slow. Keep your eyes on me, yes?
” I nodded. “You chose me for a reason, didn’t you?
So let that help. I didn’t win you with my charming personality. ”
And that was an interpretation of events that left my mind hollow, empty. “Okay,” I whispered. His skin was warm under mine.
He found my other hand, and brought it up, so I could hold his neck. “We belong to each other, do we not?” he said, something underneath the glibness of his words. “You'll have the disadvantages of having chosen me. Take the benefits.”
The benefits. I held onto his neck, his shoulders, smooth skin under mine, hair still damp at the back of his neck. Maybe it was easier, holding him.
He started again, agonizingly slow, then rhythmic, and I clung. His breath harshened, mine too, and it was surreal, listening to his gasps and mine. The pain was fire, but I could breathe through it, could let the piercing move through me. I gasped and clung. My nails bit into his skin.
Fingers of moonlight breached the window, falling over his face, his form above me.
He breathed deep, and pressed, and held.
When he pulled off of me, I wasn’t sure if I was breathing anymore. He rolled to his side, his back to the wall, and lay beside me in the narrow space, more of us in contact than a moment ago. His hand grazed my waist again. “I can appreciate human marriage traditions. Even if you are aggressive.”
I lay still in the quiet, because what was there to say? What would there ever be to say? I had survived. I had endured. I was not a virgin.
He hummed next to me, a breath into my hair.
“Normally I’d be embarrassed to leave it like this, but you’re fresh to this, and I’ve been beat half to hell, so I think that’s going to suffice for tonight.
” His hand flexed, possessive, on my hip.
“I apologize if I’m the only one who’s sated.
We can try again, when you’ve busted me out of here. ”
I ached, but I'd wait till he slept to inspect my body like Bogdana had taught me, to find how much credence to give my pain. I was bound to an orc. It wasn't Todderick. I'd chosen my destruction.
He curled closer, and I stayed very still.
“See you in the morning then, wife,” he said. And I lay in the darkness, feeling that sachet against my heart.