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Jun. 9th, 2013 11:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
msmcknittington posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
loathlyladyEvrial’s leg was thrown over Maldynado’s shoulder. This was not, in itself, a problem. It had been there before a time or two. Many times, if she was being honest with herself, because there was much to be said for that position. The same was not true of the position they were currently in. While one leg was over his shoulder, the other was dangling uncomfortably between his thighs, since he was kneeling up on the bed. Which meant her back was not touching the bed, and the only thing that was keeping it in the air were Mal’s hands under it and her shoulders and neck pressed against pillows. Except Maldynado being Maldynado, his sheets and pillowcases were satin. And herself being herself, her skin was healthy and smooth, thanks to a carefully maintained diet to ensure top physical performance, so she slid across that satin like she was an oiled fish with every thrust he made.
Considering how very little the current position was working for her, the thought of oiled fish did not actually detract from the mood. If things didn’t get more interesting soon, she was going to start making a to-do list in her head. She had done that with her previous sweetheart, just as he stopped being all that sweet, and then he had promptly dropped off that to-do list.
“You said you tried this before?" she asked, wondering what she could do to stop sliding around. It wasn’t like she could hold on to Maldynado. He was too far away to even think about it. She missed being able to touch him. She wanted . . . she wanted something simple. Mal on top, one of her heels digging into the back of his thigh, her arms around him, his breathing ragged in her ear. Those thoughts stirred up some interest for her, but then his hands slipped a little and he surged forward, making her neck protest at the sudden movement.
He paused and shook his head to get the hair out of his face. A strand stuck to his lip, and he blew it off with a wet, unbecoming raspberry sound.
"More like I heard about it.."
"Are you sure you heard right? Because I'm hardly feeling anything and it's starting to chafe."
“You should be feeling something.”
“I know you’re there. It’s just not . . . enough.”
A look of determination came over his face. He gave a vigorous thrust and something sensitive got pinched. Evrial yelped and her head slid off the pillow, into the pile of coordinating cushions that Mal insisted on keeping on his bed. Her vision was blocked by a cloud of velvet and satin in shades of dark blue and gold, and decorative piping dug into her cheek.
“That hurt,” she said through the cushions. “Give me a second. Don’t move.”
Mal froze, and his hands tightened on her briefly.
"Well, I'm trying to make you feel something," he said evenly.
"Trying too hard," she said under her breath. It was nearly smothered by all the velvet and feathers, but not quite. He was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again, he sounded angry for the first time she could recall.
“Maybe if you were wetter you’d like it more.”
Evrial batted a small satin pillow off her face and glared up at him. What right did he have to look offended? He wasn’t the one with twinging private parts and a crick in his neck.
“If you hadn’t been in such a hurry to get me into this stupid sex pretzel, then maybe I would be wetter!”
He looked at her for a second, set his jaw, and drew himself out of her, letting her fall on the bed without ceremony. She let out a sigh of relief at the pressure being removed from her neck and struggled out of the mountain of cushions. With his back to her, he sat on the edge of the bed and shoved his hair out of his face. His other hand waved as he spoke, emphasizing his words.
“I have that big bottle of coconut oil in the nightstand. If you weren’t ready, you should have—”
“I hate the way it smells, and it’s hard to clean up. Especially on these slagging satin sheets. They’re so impractical.” She tried to prop herself up on her elbow, but it just slid out from beneath her and she collapsed again. “Useless,” she muttered.
His shoulders jerked before he twisted toward her. Oh, hell. That “useless” had not been directed toward him, but then he started speaking and her guilt evaporated.
“You never stop being critical, do you? I try to make you happy, try out something new to keep you interested, and you’re complaining about the sheets.”
“New? New? I didn’t want to try anything new! I just wanted to have sex with you, and you were all, ‘Oh, grouch, let’s try this thing. It’s called The Splitting Bamboo.’ I should have known as soon as I heard the name that I wanted no part of it. I am not bamboo, and I definitely don’t want to be split.”
He got to his feet and turned around to face her, hands on his hips and his face intense. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and glared back, equally as intense.
“If you don’t want to be split—” he made a sour face “—then I can’t imagine why you’re here. It’s not like you think I’m good for anything else.”
Her mouth fell open.
“What? Mal, no, I just wasn—”
“You’re always ready to tell me what I’m doing wrong, but the praise is slow in coming, unless we’re fucking, and then you finally have something good to say. But I guess this time not even that was enough.”
She frowned at him and felt something inside her curl into a hurt ball. She knew she was standoffish and prickly at times — he called her “grouch” as an endearment, for ancestors’ sake — but she didn’t think she was that bad.
“I guess you’d be used to that, wouldn’t you?” She grabbed a pillow and held it in front of her, feeling very naked all of a sudden. “I’m not some horny old lady who’s going to make you work hard for your tip. I’m not a client. I’m your . . . I’m your—” Her voice broke. “I don’t even know what I am to you, but I can’t believe you think I’m only here because you’re a good fuck.”
Mal sucked in a breath and contrition flashed across his face, but she wasn’t ready to let her anger go yet.
“Evi, I shouldn’t have—”
“You don’t get to call me Evi after what you just said. Or Ev, or Evrial, or grouch, or anything. I didn’t even want to sleep with you when all I thought you wanted from me was sex, and now you’re making me wonder if I wasn’t right all along. If you think I’m only here for that, why are you here?” Because he hadn’t found anyone gullible and desperate enough to put up with him for so long before this, a vile little worm of self doubt whispered in her head, making her anger dry up into nothing but sadness. Because girls like you will put up with anything to be with someone like him.
“I should go back to my flat,” she said in a small voice. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“Oh, Evrial, no. I was upset and I shouldn’t have said it. Don’t go.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. When she spoke again, the anger was replaced by slowly unfurling bewilderment.
“You shouldn’t have said it. You shouldn’t even have thought it. What kind of person would that make me, if I’ve been with you for months just because you’re good at . . . fucking?” She hugged the pillow tighter, feeling moderately dirty. “Through a war and all that nonsense afterward, and then— I introduced you to my family. Why would I do that, if that’s all I thought you were good for?”
Mal knelt in front of her, placing his hands on either side of her legs on the mattress. She didn’t know whether to look at him or touch him, so she kept her eyes fixed over his shoulder and let her arms stay wrapped around the pillow.
“I’m sorry, Ev,” he said. “I know you don’t think that, I just . . . With you, it’s new. I don’t know what to expect, and it makes me stupid and I say stupid, stupid things.” His voice turned rueful. “Stupider than usual.”
She swallowed and said, “I should criticize less. I’m sorry.” She looked at him at last, not really knowing what to make of the mix of emotions on his face. The concern and regret there scraped at her. She cleared her throat. “Do you want to put on some shorts so we can talk about this? I don’t think it’s going to resolve itself.”
"They're in the sitting room."
"Well, um, sit next to me then."
"No,” he said, smiling a little. “If my lovemaking prowess is being called into question I'm going to address that with all pertinent parties on display."
She huffed a laugh. It felt strained, but was welcome.
“Your prowess is not in question here. I think it’s more a question of how you feel like you have to use it.” She hesitated. “And whether or not it really is lovemaking or something, uh, else.”
His eyebrows shot up.
“What do you mean, something else?”
“It’s just that sometimes . . .” She trailed off and rubbed the spot between her eyebrows.
“You’ve got to tell me, Ev,” he said. “After all that, I need to know.”
She sighed and dropped her hand from her forehead. She was afraid if she started talking, she wouldn’t stop, and along the way, she’d say something she didn’t want to. Or more than she meant to, and they were heading into territory where a little caution could be very important. But maybe the truth was more so.
“Sometimes I think you get so wrapped up in making it exciting and interesting for me that you forget about yourself, so we end up not enjoying each other, because you’re so busy making sure I enjoy you.” Ancestors, she sounded like a very discreet self-help book — the kind that talked about conjugal felicity and amorous congress. “And that’s not lovemaking.” That wasn’t much better.
“You don’t want me to make sure you enjoy yourself when we have sex,” he said slowly and with disbelief.
“That’s not what I mean. Sometimes I want to make love to you, and not have you just tolerate it, because it’s some whim of mine. I don’t want you to feel like every time we have sex has to be a new experience, better than the last. I’m not going to get bored if we spoon sometimes or just . . .” She sighed again, this time wistfully. “Remember the time after you came back from that mission with Sespian during the war? That was excellent and it wasn’t fancy at all. Very straightforward.”
“That was desperation,” he said, somewhat dryly, but he was smiling. “I thought you might have been dead until I saw you.”
“Well, I thought you were dead, so I was . . .” Scared is what she had been. After he had fallen asleep, she had laid with her head on his chest, counting heartbeats, reminding herself it wasn’t a dream until she had fallen asleep. She still had bad dreams about it sometimes, looking for him among the ruins of Fort Urgot, turning over corpses that looked like him, but weren’t. Mal didn’t know. On the bad nights, he just mumbled, “C’mere, grouch,” and pulled her closer, rubbing her back until she fell asleep again. On the nights she spent alone in her own bed, she didn’t sleep well. “There was a lot of adrenaline involved,” she finished gruffly.
Mal’s lip curled disbelievingly.
“I do have some limits,” he said. “I’m not going to fake my death just so we can have amazing sex.”
“I don’t want you to! You don’t need to. I never want to experience that again.” She finally touched him, letting her hand come to rest on the spot where his neck curved into his shoulder. “Mal, we don’t even need to have sex if you don’t want to. If you’re tired or have a headache or are just not in the mood, we can just go to sleep. Or I can stay at my flat, and you can stay here, and I will be happy with whatever will make you happy. But I don’t want you to feel like you have to perform for me at my demand.”
“I don’t sleep well when you stay at your place,” he said after a long moment. “I’ve been thinking about getting a cat.”
“What?” Evrial stopped the slight massage she had been giving his neck.
“A cat, so that when you’re not here, it could sleep next to me and snore a little. Lick my face when I wake up.”
“Mal, I don’t do either of those things!”
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken, but there was amusement in his voice.
“I was thinking either Evrial or Hairball for a name. Mr. Whiskers if it was a boy cat.”
“Maldynado.” She grabbed his head in her hands and tilted it up so she could rest her forehead against his. “You are not going to name a snoring cat after me.”
He grinned.
“What if it’s a sassy calico with beautiful brown eyes and cold feet she presses up against me in the middle of the night?”
She glared at him and pressed her nose against his. “Not even then.”
“All right,” he whispered. “No kitty Evrial.” He took advantage of their position to catch her mouth in a kiss, light and affectionate, and she let him. She still felt a little off-kilter, but the kiss grounded her. It was everything them having sex before hadn’t been — in other words, intimate. When she laced her fingers through his hair and pulled him closer, Mal grinned against her mouth and pushed the pillow away from between them.
Too soon, he broke away and pulled back from her. At arm’s length, he studied her face, his own oddly shuttered. She raised an eyebrow at him, not sure what he intended.
“You should know, before we get too distracted,” he said in a careful way, “that not too many people I’ve been with—” he moved his hand back and forth between them “—have cared too much about what I was getting out of it. It’s always been enjoyable for everybody involved, but I haven’t necessarily been the priority there. So, I’m kind of left wondering why it’s so important to you.” He looked a little sheepish. “Not that our times together haven’t been incredibly and unexpectedly and deeply pleasurable, but why do you care so much, Evrial?”
She firmed her mouth before it could fall open in surprise and frowned at him.
“You’re my oaf. You’re important to me.”
“Er, what?” He looked startled, as if having her say it out loud after everything they’d been through together was still a surprise. She’d have to spell it out to him.
“I love you, all right?” she said, wishing the pillow was still in front of her. If she had felt naked before, now she felt totally exposed, and Mal’s slightly sick expression wasn’t helping matters.
“You love me?” he asked in a rough voice.
“Yes. I love you.” Saying it was easier the second time, but it was still awkward.
“You love me,” he repeated, sounding dazed. The sick look had passed, and now something approaching joy was there, as if he had just been given the solstice present of his dreams. Or a sassy calico cat. Who did not snore.
“I love you. You don’t have to rub it in, you know,” she said when he had repeated it a few more times under his breath.
He leered happily at her.
“You don’t want me to . . . rub it in?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows and leaning toward her.
“Well,” she said, seriously, “you haven’t reciprocated my statement, so rubbing isn’t on the menu quite yet.”
Some of the awkwardness she had been experiencing before came creeping over his face, and unexpectedly, he glanced away from her and then buried his face against her breasts. It was not an especially sexy move, given his expression.
“Uh, Mal?” Her arms came around his shoulders so he wouldn’t pull them both onto the floor. The satin sheets weren’t any less slippery at the edge of the mattress.
He mumbled something against her that she could quite make out, but she had a pretty good idea of what it was.
“Um, could you repeat that? I couldn’t quite catch it.”
He mumbled again, louder this time. She grinned.
“What was that? You need to speak up.”
This time he froze for a moment, before kissing her between her breasts and looking up at her.
“I love you,” he said perfectly clearly, dark eyes tender. “I love you, I love you, I love you. Do you need me to say it again?”
She shook her head, unprepared to hear him say it while he was looking her in the eyes. No wonder he had looked stunned, if the slow, pleased warmth spreading through her chest was any indication of what he had experienced.
“No,” she murmured. “I heard you that time.”
He rose up slowly on his knees, pushing her back on the bed, and then crawled after her. Supported above her on his forearms, he beamed down at her and asked, “Do you still not want me to rub it in?”
She laughed and grabbed him, pulling him down on top of her. Funny how more than two hundred pounds of sweet oaf kept her right in place on the slippery satin.
“Maybe a little,” she whispered in his ear. "But you have to let me do some rubbing, too."
Considering how very little the current position was working for her, the thought of oiled fish did not actually detract from the mood. If things didn’t get more interesting soon, she was going to start making a to-do list in her head. She had done that with her previous sweetheart, just as he stopped being all that sweet, and then he had promptly dropped off that to-do list.
“You said you tried this before?" she asked, wondering what she could do to stop sliding around. It wasn’t like she could hold on to Maldynado. He was too far away to even think about it. She missed being able to touch him. She wanted . . . she wanted something simple. Mal on top, one of her heels digging into the back of his thigh, her arms around him, his breathing ragged in her ear. Those thoughts stirred up some interest for her, but then his hands slipped a little and he surged forward, making her neck protest at the sudden movement.
He paused and shook his head to get the hair out of his face. A strand stuck to his lip, and he blew it off with a wet, unbecoming raspberry sound.
"More like I heard about it.."
"Are you sure you heard right? Because I'm hardly feeling anything and it's starting to chafe."
“You should be feeling something.”
“I know you’re there. It’s just not . . . enough.”
A look of determination came over his face. He gave a vigorous thrust and something sensitive got pinched. Evrial yelped and her head slid off the pillow, into the pile of coordinating cushions that Mal insisted on keeping on his bed. Her vision was blocked by a cloud of velvet and satin in shades of dark blue and gold, and decorative piping dug into her cheek.
“That hurt,” she said through the cushions. “Give me a second. Don’t move.”
Mal froze, and his hands tightened on her briefly.
"Well, I'm trying to make you feel something," he said evenly.
"Trying too hard," she said under her breath. It was nearly smothered by all the velvet and feathers, but not quite. He was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again, he sounded angry for the first time she could recall.
“Maybe if you were wetter you’d like it more.”
Evrial batted a small satin pillow off her face and glared up at him. What right did he have to look offended? He wasn’t the one with twinging private parts and a crick in his neck.
“If you hadn’t been in such a hurry to get me into this stupid sex pretzel, then maybe I would be wetter!”
He looked at her for a second, set his jaw, and drew himself out of her, letting her fall on the bed without ceremony. She let out a sigh of relief at the pressure being removed from her neck and struggled out of the mountain of cushions. With his back to her, he sat on the edge of the bed and shoved his hair out of his face. His other hand waved as he spoke, emphasizing his words.
“I have that big bottle of coconut oil in the nightstand. If you weren’t ready, you should have—”
“I hate the way it smells, and it’s hard to clean up. Especially on these slagging satin sheets. They’re so impractical.” She tried to prop herself up on her elbow, but it just slid out from beneath her and she collapsed again. “Useless,” she muttered.
His shoulders jerked before he twisted toward her. Oh, hell. That “useless” had not been directed toward him, but then he started speaking and her guilt evaporated.
“You never stop being critical, do you? I try to make you happy, try out something new to keep you interested, and you’re complaining about the sheets.”
“New? New? I didn’t want to try anything new! I just wanted to have sex with you, and you were all, ‘Oh, grouch, let’s try this thing. It’s called The Splitting Bamboo.’ I should have known as soon as I heard the name that I wanted no part of it. I am not bamboo, and I definitely don’t want to be split.”
He got to his feet and turned around to face her, hands on his hips and his face intense. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and glared back, equally as intense.
“If you don’t want to be split—” he made a sour face “—then I can’t imagine why you’re here. It’s not like you think I’m good for anything else.”
Her mouth fell open.
“What? Mal, no, I just wasn—”
“You’re always ready to tell me what I’m doing wrong, but the praise is slow in coming, unless we’re fucking, and then you finally have something good to say. But I guess this time not even that was enough.”
She frowned at him and felt something inside her curl into a hurt ball. She knew she was standoffish and prickly at times — he called her “grouch” as an endearment, for ancestors’ sake — but she didn’t think she was that bad.
“I guess you’d be used to that, wouldn’t you?” She grabbed a pillow and held it in front of her, feeling very naked all of a sudden. “I’m not some horny old lady who’s going to make you work hard for your tip. I’m not a client. I’m your . . . I’m your—” Her voice broke. “I don’t even know what I am to you, but I can’t believe you think I’m only here because you’re a good fuck.”
Mal sucked in a breath and contrition flashed across his face, but she wasn’t ready to let her anger go yet.
“Evi, I shouldn’t have—”
“You don’t get to call me Evi after what you just said. Or Ev, or Evrial, or grouch, or anything. I didn’t even want to sleep with you when all I thought you wanted from me was sex, and now you’re making me wonder if I wasn’t right all along. If you think I’m only here for that, why are you here?” Because he hadn’t found anyone gullible and desperate enough to put up with him for so long before this, a vile little worm of self doubt whispered in her head, making her anger dry up into nothing but sadness. Because girls like you will put up with anything to be with someone like him.
“I should go back to my flat,” she said in a small voice. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“Oh, Evrial, no. I was upset and I shouldn’t have said it. Don’t go.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. When she spoke again, the anger was replaced by slowly unfurling bewilderment.
“You shouldn’t have said it. You shouldn’t even have thought it. What kind of person would that make me, if I’ve been with you for months just because you’re good at . . . fucking?” She hugged the pillow tighter, feeling moderately dirty. “Through a war and all that nonsense afterward, and then— I introduced you to my family. Why would I do that, if that’s all I thought you were good for?”
Mal knelt in front of her, placing his hands on either side of her legs on the mattress. She didn’t know whether to look at him or touch him, so she kept her eyes fixed over his shoulder and let her arms stay wrapped around the pillow.
“I’m sorry, Ev,” he said. “I know you don’t think that, I just . . . With you, it’s new. I don’t know what to expect, and it makes me stupid and I say stupid, stupid things.” His voice turned rueful. “Stupider than usual.”
She swallowed and said, “I should criticize less. I’m sorry.” She looked at him at last, not really knowing what to make of the mix of emotions on his face. The concern and regret there scraped at her. She cleared her throat. “Do you want to put on some shorts so we can talk about this? I don’t think it’s going to resolve itself.”
"They're in the sitting room."
"Well, um, sit next to me then."
"No,” he said, smiling a little. “If my lovemaking prowess is being called into question I'm going to address that with all pertinent parties on display."
She huffed a laugh. It felt strained, but was welcome.
“Your prowess is not in question here. I think it’s more a question of how you feel like you have to use it.” She hesitated. “And whether or not it really is lovemaking or something, uh, else.”
His eyebrows shot up.
“What do you mean, something else?”
“It’s just that sometimes . . .” She trailed off and rubbed the spot between her eyebrows.
“You’ve got to tell me, Ev,” he said. “After all that, I need to know.”
She sighed and dropped her hand from her forehead. She was afraid if she started talking, she wouldn’t stop, and along the way, she’d say something she didn’t want to. Or more than she meant to, and they were heading into territory where a little caution could be very important. But maybe the truth was more so.
“Sometimes I think you get so wrapped up in making it exciting and interesting for me that you forget about yourself, so we end up not enjoying each other, because you’re so busy making sure I enjoy you.” Ancestors, she sounded like a very discreet self-help book — the kind that talked about conjugal felicity and amorous congress. “And that’s not lovemaking.” That wasn’t much better.
“You don’t want me to make sure you enjoy yourself when we have sex,” he said slowly and with disbelief.
“That’s not what I mean. Sometimes I want to make love to you, and not have you just tolerate it, because it’s some whim of mine. I don’t want you to feel like every time we have sex has to be a new experience, better than the last. I’m not going to get bored if we spoon sometimes or just . . .” She sighed again, this time wistfully. “Remember the time after you came back from that mission with Sespian during the war? That was excellent and it wasn’t fancy at all. Very straightforward.”
“That was desperation,” he said, somewhat dryly, but he was smiling. “I thought you might have been dead until I saw you.”
“Well, I thought you were dead, so I was . . .” Scared is what she had been. After he had fallen asleep, she had laid with her head on his chest, counting heartbeats, reminding herself it wasn’t a dream until she had fallen asleep. She still had bad dreams about it sometimes, looking for him among the ruins of Fort Urgot, turning over corpses that looked like him, but weren’t. Mal didn’t know. On the bad nights, he just mumbled, “C’mere, grouch,” and pulled her closer, rubbing her back until she fell asleep again. On the nights she spent alone in her own bed, she didn’t sleep well. “There was a lot of adrenaline involved,” she finished gruffly.
Mal’s lip curled disbelievingly.
“I do have some limits,” he said. “I’m not going to fake my death just so we can have amazing sex.”
“I don’t want you to! You don’t need to. I never want to experience that again.” She finally touched him, letting her hand come to rest on the spot where his neck curved into his shoulder. “Mal, we don’t even need to have sex if you don’t want to. If you’re tired or have a headache or are just not in the mood, we can just go to sleep. Or I can stay at my flat, and you can stay here, and I will be happy with whatever will make you happy. But I don’t want you to feel like you have to perform for me at my demand.”
“I don’t sleep well when you stay at your place,” he said after a long moment. “I’ve been thinking about getting a cat.”
“What?” Evrial stopped the slight massage she had been giving his neck.
“A cat, so that when you’re not here, it could sleep next to me and snore a little. Lick my face when I wake up.”
“Mal, I don’t do either of those things!”
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken, but there was amusement in his voice.
“I was thinking either Evrial or Hairball for a name. Mr. Whiskers if it was a boy cat.”
“Maldynado.” She grabbed his head in her hands and tilted it up so she could rest her forehead against his. “You are not going to name a snoring cat after me.”
He grinned.
“What if it’s a sassy calico with beautiful brown eyes and cold feet she presses up against me in the middle of the night?”
She glared at him and pressed her nose against his. “Not even then.”
“All right,” he whispered. “No kitty Evrial.” He took advantage of their position to catch her mouth in a kiss, light and affectionate, and she let him. She still felt a little off-kilter, but the kiss grounded her. It was everything them having sex before hadn’t been — in other words, intimate. When she laced her fingers through his hair and pulled him closer, Mal grinned against her mouth and pushed the pillow away from between them.
Too soon, he broke away and pulled back from her. At arm’s length, he studied her face, his own oddly shuttered. She raised an eyebrow at him, not sure what he intended.
“You should know, before we get too distracted,” he said in a careful way, “that not too many people I’ve been with—” he moved his hand back and forth between them “—have cared too much about what I was getting out of it. It’s always been enjoyable for everybody involved, but I haven’t necessarily been the priority there. So, I’m kind of left wondering why it’s so important to you.” He looked a little sheepish. “Not that our times together haven’t been incredibly and unexpectedly and deeply pleasurable, but why do you care so much, Evrial?”
She firmed her mouth before it could fall open in surprise and frowned at him.
“You’re my oaf. You’re important to me.”
“Er, what?” He looked startled, as if having her say it out loud after everything they’d been through together was still a surprise. She’d have to spell it out to him.
“I love you, all right?” she said, wishing the pillow was still in front of her. If she had felt naked before, now she felt totally exposed, and Mal’s slightly sick expression wasn’t helping matters.
“You love me?” he asked in a rough voice.
“Yes. I love you.” Saying it was easier the second time, but it was still awkward.
“You love me,” he repeated, sounding dazed. The sick look had passed, and now something approaching joy was there, as if he had just been given the solstice present of his dreams. Or a sassy calico cat. Who did not snore.
“I love you. You don’t have to rub it in, you know,” she said when he had repeated it a few more times under his breath.
He leered happily at her.
“You don’t want me to . . . rub it in?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows and leaning toward her.
“Well,” she said, seriously, “you haven’t reciprocated my statement, so rubbing isn’t on the menu quite yet.”
Some of the awkwardness she had been experiencing before came creeping over his face, and unexpectedly, he glanced away from her and then buried his face against her breasts. It was not an especially sexy move, given his expression.
“Uh, Mal?” Her arms came around his shoulders so he wouldn’t pull them both onto the floor. The satin sheets weren’t any less slippery at the edge of the mattress.
He mumbled something against her that she could quite make out, but she had a pretty good idea of what it was.
“Um, could you repeat that? I couldn’t quite catch it.”
He mumbled again, louder this time. She grinned.
“What was that? You need to speak up.”
This time he froze for a moment, before kissing her between her breasts and looking up at her.
“I love you,” he said perfectly clearly, dark eyes tender. “I love you, I love you, I love you. Do you need me to say it again?”
She shook her head, unprepared to hear him say it while he was looking her in the eyes. No wonder he had looked stunned, if the slow, pleased warmth spreading through her chest was any indication of what he had experienced.
“No,” she murmured. “I heard you that time.”
He rose up slowly on his knees, pushing her back on the bed, and then crawled after her. Supported above her on his forearms, he beamed down at her and asked, “Do you still not want me to rub it in?”
She laughed and grabbed him, pulling him down on top of her. Funny how more than two hundred pounds of sweet oaf kept her right in place on the slippery satin.
“Maybe a little,” she whispered in his ear. "But you have to let me do some rubbing, too."
