N. Jemisin - The Broken Kingdoms

So I got up and went over to the bed. I found his face with my hands, traced its stern lines. He shaved his head bald every morning. That kept people from realizing it was completely white, which was too striking for the low profile we were trying to keep. He was handsome enough without it, but I missed pushing my fingers into his hair. I ran my fingers across his smooth scalp instead, wistful.

Shiny regarded me for a moment, thoughtful. Then he reached up and untied the sash of my robe, tugging it open. I froze, startled, as he gazed at me—nothing more than that. But as he had somehow done long ago, on a rooftop in another life, just that look made me incredibly aware of my body, and his nearness, and all the potential that lay therein. When he took hold of my hips, there was absolutely no doubt as to what he intended. Then he pulled me closer.

I pulled back instead, too stunned to react otherwise. If my skin hadn’t still tingled where he’d touched me, I would have thought I’d imagined the whole thing. But that, and the roaring-awake of certain parts of me that had been mostly asleep for a long while, told me it was very real.

Shiny lowered his hands when I stepped back. He didn’t seem upset, or concerned. He just waited.

I laughed weakly, suddenly nervous. “I thought you weren’t interested.”

He said nothing, of course, because it was obvious that had changed.

I fidgeted, pushing up my sleeves (they fell back down immediately), tucking back a stray curl of hair, shifting from foot to foot. I didn’t close the open robe, though.

“I don’t know—” I began.

“I have decided to live,” he said quietly.

That, too, was obvious from the way he’d changed in the past year. I felt his gaze as he spoke, heavier than usual along my skin. He had been my friend, and now offered more. Was willing to try more. But I knew: he was not the sort of man who loved easily, or casually. If I wanted him, I would have all of him, and he wanted all of me. All or nothing; that was as fundamental to his nature as light itself.

I tried to joke. “It took you a year to decide that?”

“Ten, yes,” Shiny replied. “This last year was for you to decide.”

I blinked in surprise, but then I realized he was right. Such a strange thing , I thought, and smiled.

Then I stepped forward again, found his face, and kissed him.

It was much better than that long-ago night on Madding’s roof, probably because he wasn’t trying to hurt me this time. The same incredible gentleness without malice—nice. He tasted of apples, which he must’ve eaten on his way back from town, and radishes, which were not so pleasant. I didn’t mind. I felt his eyes on me the whole time. He would be the type , I thought, but then I hadn’t closed mine, either.

It did feel strange, though, and until he’d taken hold of my waist again, pulling me where he wanted so he could do all the things his gaze had implied, I didn’t realize what it was that had me confused. Then he did something that made me gasp, and I realized Shiny’s kiss had been just a kiss. Just one mouth on another, with no impression of colors or music or soaring on unseen winds. It had been so long since I’d kissed a mortal that I’d forgotten we couldn’t do that.

That was all right, though. There were other things we could do just fine.

I slept well into the small hours, until a dream made me start awake. I kicked Shiny in the shin inadvertently, but he did not react. I touched his face and realized he was awake, untroubled by my thrashing.

“Did you sleep at all?” I yawned.

“No.”

I couldn’t remember the dream, but the feeling of unease it had given me lingered. I pushed myself up from his chest and rubbed my face, bleary and painfully aware of the unlovely taste of my mouth. Outside I could hear a few determined birds beginning their morning song, though the chill in the air told me it wasn’t yet dawn. Otherwise it was quiet—that eerie, not-quite-comforting quiet one finds in small towns before dawn. Not even the fishermen were up. In Shadow, I thought with fleeting sadness, the birds would not have been so alone.

“Everything all right?” I asked. “I can make some tea.”

“No.” He reached up then to touch my face, as I so often did with him. Since his eyes worked just fine, I wondered if I dared take it as a gesture of affection. Maybe the room was just dark. He was always a hard man to read, and now I had to learn a whole new set of interpretations for the things he did.

“I want you,” he said.

Or he could just tell me. I couldn’t help laughing, though I nuzzled his hand to let him know his advance wasn’t unwelcome. “We’re going to have to work on your bedroom talk, I think.”

He sat up, shifting me easily to his lap, and pulled me into a kiss before I could warn him about my breath. His was no better. But it was my turn to be surprised, because as he deepened the kiss and smoothed his hands down my arms, gently pulling them behind me, I felt something. A flicker. A trickle of heat—real heat. Not passion, but fire .

I gasped, my eyes widening as he pulled back.

“I want to be inside you,” he said, his voice low, implacable. One of his hands pinned my wrists behind my back; the other massaged elsewhere, just right. I think I made a sound. I’m not sure. “I want to watch the dawnlight break across your skin. I want you to scream as the sun rises. I don’t care what name you call.”

That has to be the most unromantic thing I’ve ever heard , I thought giddily. He touched me more then, kissing, tasting, caressing. He had learned much about me in our previous session, which this time he used to ruthless effect. When his teeth grazed my throat, I cried out and arched backward, not quite voluntarily. The way he was holding my wrists meant that I bent how he wanted me to bend. He wasn’t hurting me—I could feel the care he took to avoid that—but I couldn’t break his grip. I trembled, my eyelids fluttering shut, fear and arousal making me light-headed as I finally understood.

Sunrise was coming. I had made love to a godling, but this was different. I could no longer see the glow rise in Shiny’s body, but I had tasted the first stirrings of magic in his kiss. He was not quite my Shiny, not anymore, and he would be nothing like my cool, carefree Madding. He would be a thing of heat and intensity and absolute power.

Could I lie down with something like that and get up whole?

“I want to be myself for you, Oree,” he whispered against my skin. “Just once.” Not a plea—never that. An explanation.

I closed my eyes and made myself relax. I couldn’t bring myself to speak, but I didn’t have to. My trust was enough.

So he lifted us, turning to put me under him on the bed, this time pinioning my arms above my head. I lay passive, knowing that he needed this. The control. He had so little power these days; what he could claim was precious to him. For some moments, he simply looked at me. His gaze was like feathers on my skin, a torment. When he actually touched me, it had the weight of command. I arched and shuddered and opened myself to him. I could not help it. As he pressed against me, into me, I felt the impossible heat of his body rise. He moved slowly at first, concentrating, whispering something. Godwords, like a prayer, almost at the threshold of my ability to hear them. The magic would not work for him, would it?

but he is different now, this is different—

and then I felt the words on my skin. I don’t know how I knew they were words. I shouldn’t have. Usually only my fingers were that sensitive, but now my thighs made out the arcs and curves and jagged turns of gods’ language, each character perfectly clear in my mind. It was more than words; there were strange tilted lines, too, and numbers, and other symbols whose purpose I could not decipher. Too complex. He had created language at the beginning of time, and it had always been his most subtle instrument. The words slid along my skin, wending down my legs, circling my breasts—gods. There are no mortal words for how it felt, but I writhed, how I writhed. He watched me, heard me whimper, and was pleased. I felt that, too.