are slippery," he explained.
With surprise she looked down. Though naked, he wore a pair of fine leather slippers. The kind with a smooth sole.
She could not help but espy his masculine rear end while observing this and his nudity was made somehow even more nude by the addition of the slippers. She turned away.
"Do you need my assistance re-bandaging?" she asked, both hopeful and hesitative about his response.
"That would be agreeable to me." he said. Adding, "Wife."
She picked up the discarded bandages from the floor. They were still clean and she approached him slowly from behind, pulling them taut around his middle. Touching his skin shyly and delicately, and then tying them off with a skill she had picked up over the weeks at his bedside.
"There," she said.
His voice came huskily, "Thank you," and as he turned towards her again, she raised her eyes to the ceiling. She could not help but see his large, pulsating man sword standing out from his body like a pink and purple beacon. Her color rose even more, and she felt sweaty and tingly.
"Darling," he said, looking at her, very much not looking at him. He stumbled towards her slightly and she recognized once more that he was drunk. A part of her wanted to give in to him. It was a very strong urge, though she was afraid of what it might mean, but if he was too inebriated to remember the promise he had mentioned to her, it was her duty, her level headed wifely duty to make sure that he did not do something that he would later regret. He was quite close to her now, and she looked him in the eyes. His hands came to rest on her shoulders and he pulled her body against his. She felt his engorged member against her lower belly and felt a strange sensation, like something from a dream, at this peculiar and unfamiliar pressure. She steadied herself. She could not give in to the heady passion that was burgeoning inside of her.
"George," she said, trying to make her voice sound stern instead of caressing as it felt inclined to be in that moment. "You are inebriated. If you do not remember that... oh!" his hands had moved from her shoulders, one down the arch of her back and to the gentle swell of her left buttock, moving the soft, thin fabric against her skin, the other hand had located her right breast, nipple already hard from the cool air of the room and the unexpected arousal rising in her inexperienced body, he plucked at it gently. The fire in his eyes translated into a slow and gentle passion.
"I feel completely sober," he whispered into her ear. "The only thing I am drunk on," he moved his face down her neck, nudged some of her long golden hair out of the way, "is the smell of your skin, like honey," his tongue found exit from his lips and traced the gentle curve of her neck.
"No, you said..." she mumbled, feeling her legs weaken, she leaned on him, "You said, no."
"I think," his voice was rough, "there are things I can do that will not break... some... misguided promise," his mouth was on her collarbone, nipping along the line of it.
"Please," she moaned, "no, please, if you were to regret me, later..." she found tears as well as passion in her breaking voice.
"I could never regret you," he said, his voice becoming gruff.
Her feet left the ground as he lifted her with one arm, gently, hiding the pain he felt in a passionate grunt, he moved the 3 feet to his bed, and put her gently upon it, underneath his firm body. He felt impossibly solid, though she did not feel his weight at all.
She felt only a little terrified as he lifted her further into the bed, her head resting on his pillow, the blankets rumpled from his earlier fitful rest, she turned her face into the bedding, she smelt the scent of him there.
She looked at him earnestly in the darkened room, the candle seemed far away, the fireplace illuminated in its own way, making the whole thing seem more dreamlike and somehow, more
C. J. Cherryh
Learning to Kill: Stories
John O'Riley
Brenda Sinclair
Christopher George
Stephen Lloyd Jones
Karl Iagnemma
Celya Bowers
Jill Gregory
Aria Cunningham