(Track played while writing: https://youtu.be/EysLLJwX9-I)
The early morning sunlight struck the water harshly, sending blinding spangles in all directions. She squinted tightly while her bare toes inched over the muddy bottom of the pond, the digits carefully feeling for rocks or branches that might topple her. Dampness heavied the air, making her ink-black tresses cling to the sides of her neck. The water’s coolness was a pleasing contrast to the heat of the day, but not shockingly so. She relished the feeling of it lapping at her knees, then up along her thighs. The bottom hem of her underdress was gathered in her hands, held above her hips. She paused in her gentle water-march to peek from side to side around the pond. Tall reeds sheltered her chosen spot from neighboring houses and any wayward eyes. She smiled to herself, delighted at her secret indulgence, and continued into the water.
But the reverie was abruptly broken by the sound of steps in the grass nearby. Heavy steps. A man. Air was sucked in, and her lips planted tightly together to still her breath, and to listen. She heard nothing more; only the birds in the high boughs and the tiny lap of water against muddy banks. With her heart pounding painfully in her breast, she turned slowly in place to look back the way she had come.
Tarvarthal stood on the grass a stone’s throw away. His posture revealed his astonishment. His arms were held out slightly from his sides, his feet planted wide as if he had been caught mid-stride. A plain, off-white linen shirt covered his torso. The laces at the neck were undone. A few smears of dirt lay across the thighs of his trousers where he must have wiped muddy hands while working. She couldn’t breathe. Her own arms began to tremble with the rush and weight of embarrassment that seeped from the core of her bones. To drop her gathered garment would be to doom it to a soaking-wet fate. To keep holding it aloft meant that he could see the pale contours of her legs, just beneath the water’s surface.
Neither figure seemed able to break the terrible stare, or the painful tension that immediately roiled up into the air between them. She could see his chest rising and falling now, like a slow bellows. His face was faintly obscured by a patch of shade from a tree wherein he stood. His hands flexed, the fingers stretching out long, before curling back to make tight fists. A lark sang somewhere in a tree overhead.
All at once, the man exploded from his statue-like state. As his foot landed in a wide step, his hands were already coming around and up to grip the cloth of his shirt over his chest. Another step and it was yanked violently over his head and angrily cast aside. So impassioned were his gestures that she gasped and took a step backwards, startled.
He spared her no time to gather her wildly darting thoughts. His feet hit the water, casting spray in all directions as he strode on without a hint of slowing. The hazard of a wet garment was utterly forgotten, as if she had never thought it at all, and her hands loosed the underdress to sink into the pond. For the span of a heartbeat, it floated around her like an ethereal aura. But then Tarvarthal was upon her.
His body collided roughly with hers, and would have knocked her backwards but for the hands that were swift to close around her. There was a flash of sun-browned skin, laced with scars, but the view was cut off as he lifted her in a crushing embrace and thrust his lips onto hers. His mouth was the opposite of the pond’s gentle coolness. It was hot, rough, and impatient.
She felt that she might swoon as her eyes flew shut in a futile attempt to prepare for his affectionate assault. Her own foolishness overwhelmed her. There was no preparation to be had for this man, nor the feelings he aroused within her. When he stared at her from afar, she felt small and bashful and young. Now, as his hands groped along the curve of her spine, wetting her back in their careless travels up and down to the pond’s surface and the womanly swells that lurked just out sight, she felt none of those things. She was no longer a girl in his arms, but a woman. The evidence was in the way her hands moved of their accord, no longer hesitant and unsure of how to touch him, the palms sliding over the smooth, hard curves of his shoulders, thrilling at the feel of the bulging sinew under his skin. She had never kissed another man; therefore her kisses belonged only to him, her mouth readily dancing against his.
She could not feel the mud under her toes anymore. He was holding her aloft. One of his palms now cupped her cheek, and his fingers were cool and wet. His breath was hissing through his nose, his lips refusing to break from hers. Sounds of sloshing water mingled with that of hands sliding over skin and linen, and the occasional, faint grunt or whimper from a burning breast. An unbearable madness seemed to descend upon her. A deep, needful ache that urged her limbs to cling more tightly to him, to somehow get closer, to crush her body against his until she vanished entirely into him…
A cat was walking over her. Hard, insistent pawsteps flipped the scene from blinding sunlight and passionate kisses, to the disappointing familiarity of her bed. Her face was hot, and she could feel a sheen of sweat in the crease between her shoulder and neck. With a groan, she gently pushed the stump-tailed cat away and rubbed the heel of her hand over her face. Her arm flopped back onto the coverlet, and she lifted her head ever so slightly to peer at the bedroom door.
Was he out there now, at this very moment? Her pulse began to thud anew as the dream replayed without effort in her mind. Would he be shocked to know that such thoughts could be entertained by her? Was it normal for a young woman being courted to dream such fantasies? Did....did he ever dream this way about her?
The thought alone was enough to make her chest ache, as if her heart had come to a halt. A fresh wave of heat flooded into her cheeks. A thrumming tension vibrated through her body, agonizing and bittersweet. She longed to see him in that moment, more than she longed for her next breath. But propriety and decorum held her in place, knowing that it would be improper in every conceivable manner, to rush out of her room in her underclothes, flushed and sweaty and breathless.
“Oi…” she moaned, and the moan melted into a soft laugh.
