Maiden chapter three
Jun. 15th, 2009 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maculategiraffeI've been working on Intake Counselor 8, but it's giving me a little bit of stick (I should have known better than to try to control Hanna!) and while I sort it out I thought I'd go ahead and get this up. So to speak.
Rita's office was a place she liked to retreat to; gently lighted, painted a soft cloudy-morning gray, and completely lined with shelves. Some held the tools of her trade, many of which were decorative enough that she resisted the urge to tidy them away into drawers: she had three wands, three chalices, three daggers, and three stones, all well-tried and fitted to their purposes. She also had a biggish tray of sand on her desk, for sigil work, and a few functional candles. The rest of the shelves was filled with books: books by famous women of letters, and by men, too, from before the Enlightenment. Rita liked to do the research.
In the exact center of the room a circle had been cast with salt and rowan water, big enough for two full-grown people to sit comfortably inside. The gray carpet was discolored under the circle; Rita always cast it in the same place, and always the same size. She'd added a little powdered myrrh to the salt this time, and mixed a few drops of her own menstrual blood with the water; there was no sense taking chances.
She sat at her desk, trying to concentrate on a book on parturitive generation; she was taking conscientious notes, although the author's tone annoyed her, the casual assumption that it was the dearest wish of every woman to abolish the necessity of men altogether. Emily talked the same way; her daughter's father, Tim, was kept as carefully as Emily's wands and daggers, but as far as Rita could tell he was accorded slightly less attention and affection than the daggers.
When a knock came at the door of the office, Rita rose to open it, and was unsurprised to find Kyle on his knees; she reached out both her hands to raise him to his feet. His face was blotched with red, streaked with patches of imperfectly wiped-away tears. Rita resisted the impulse to take him in her arms and kiss him, to comfort him; instead she drew him inside the room and closed the door behind him, then went back to sit down at her desk, motioning him to come and stand before her.
When he saw the circle, he went white under the blotches of red, even as his lips curved and he exhaled in a small, mirthless chuckle.
"Kyle," Rita said, not unkindly, "I want to talk to you about what you did to Sean."
He bowed his head, waiting.
"I realize now that my order should have been clearer," said Rita. "But nevertheless, you could have been a little kinder. He was shaking like a leaf when I arrived."
Kyle stayed still, his head still lowered.
"What was it, some sort of male-dominance thing?" she asked. "Cruelty to establish your place in the barnyard pecking order?"
Kyle didn't answer.
"I was hoping you two could be friends," said Rita.
Kyle looked up at that, swift and-- no doubt about it-- angry, his eyes snapping, his brows drawn together, pulses of knotted muscle-heat coming off him. Rita was startled, but although her heart beat a little faster, she was disciplined enough that none of her power surged in automatic anger to bring him to his knees. Kyle might be bigger and more muscular than she, might loom a bit as he stood over her, but he was no threat. Still, it was easy to understand why so many women did not permit men to stand so close to them, or to stand in their presence at all, and why so many more had a habit of making sure it hurt every time their skin touched that of a man. The primitive instinct-- a man menaced, a woman cowered-- was still coded deep into their biology, even all these years after the Enlightenment.
"Friends?" Kyle said-- no, growled, a voice off the veldt, fur-throated and primitive. "He's replacing me."
"He is not replacing you," said Rita, making sure her voice was calm, low, and reasonable, in contrast to his. "I've brought him here to perform a function that you cannot perform. I am not sending you away, nor am I giving him your place in my affection."
"What about in your bed?" Kyle demanded, his voice too loud and rough, the anger still pounding off him in waves. Rita refused to believe it was necessary to draw up any power in her defense-- not with Kyle-- but she made it a clear warning when she answered coldly, "You will not speak to me in that tone."
Kyle went to his knees at once, pressing his forehead to the ground, the heat of his anger chilled with fear so that it tasted uncannily like Sean's mingled apprehension and arousal earlier.
"I allow you a great deal of freedom in private," she told him as he knelt, waiting for either forgiveness or punishment, all his senses heightened in anticipation of either one; he'd listen well to anything she said now. He'd told her before that he-- and, he thought, all males-- could sense nothing of the power except its effects, had no idea how much of it had been drawn up to strike until they were already screaming in agony. He didn't know, then, that she had nothing in her hands, nothing to hurt him with. "I expect you not to presume on that by taking a tone you know to be inappropriate."
The anger was swallowed in the fear; he was almost cold now, his forehead still pressed to the floor in silent penitence, his heart racing like a rabbit's in obvious anticipation of pain. When Rita leaned down and touched his back, his whole body jerked as if her hand had been electrified-- which he'd probably expected it to be.
"Kneel up," she said, and he obeyed and buried his face in her lap, his hands coming up to grip her calves almost painfully.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "Please."
"I'm sorry, too," Rita admitted, laying a hand on the back of his neck, and a quick quiver went over Kyle's body, some combination of relief and something else. Gratitude, maybe. "I should have been clearer about what I was asking you to do. Getting him clean and naked would have been enough. I wasn't planning on just coming in and throwing a leg over."
He made a puff of air against her leg that might have been a laugh, his hands still clasping her calves. She added, an answering smile in her voice, "That's not how I did it with you, is it?"
His head rocked in her lap, back and forth, a negative.
"I don't want Emily to be right," she told him, and his hands tightened convulsively on her legs, clinging to them as if they were branches on the edge of a cliff that he had mostly fallen off. "About you making trouble for Sean."
He said nothing, and she let her fingers trail gently under his shirt collar, caressing his top vertebrae as she added, "If you need-- do you need-- should I just have him stay out of your way?"
He didn't answer for a while. Then he said, "No, that's not-- I'll be-- nice. I'll help him. I just-- didn't want-- to do that."
"I appreciate your obedience," she told him, "and I'll try not to put you in a position like that again."
"Thank you," he said, a little stiffly, but she let it pass.
After a silence, he asked, his voice rough and gravely again, but distinctly void of menace, "Should I-- get in the circle?"
"Not just yet," she said, and he relaxed a little, but not enough. "And it's not-- I didn't cast it to punish you. It won't hurt."
"Oh," he said on a quick exhale, just that, but his head went heavier in her lap, his shoulders losing their tautness.
"I should have said that right away." Rita slid a hand under his chin, lifted his face, and leaned down to touch her lips to his forehead; he managed a small smile, up at her. She smiled back, and he cleared his throat.
"He," he began. "Sean, he-- you know-- he looks like me."
Rita nodded. "I know. I-- at the center-- he reminded me of you." She smiled again, sadly. "I was hoping you could consider it a compliment. That the one who attracted me was the one who reminded me of you."
"Well, there's that way of looking at it," said Kyle, trying to keep smiling, "and then there's the way where-- my sperm doesn't work, so you go out and find a younger, cuter version of me whose sperm does work."
"He is not cuter than you," said Rita. "And we don't know yet whether his sperm works."
"But if it does--" Kyle's smile melted downward like ice in a flame. "I--"
"Oh, Kyle." Rita touched his shoulder through the soft, much-washed cotton of his shirt, squeezed it gently. "I'm sorry-- I know this is hard on you. It's-- not what I wanted, either. You know I wanted you to be the one to give me a child."
"I could keep trying," said Kyle, suddenly surging with energy, his eyes tearing up again. "I could still--"
"It's been two years," said Rita softly. "It's not going to happen."
Kyle buried his face in her lap again.
"It doesn't matter," said Rita, stroking his back. "Not that much."
"It doesn't matter? There's a new man in your bed--"
"He's not in my bed now," said Rita. "And he won't be, tonight. You will."
"Tonight?" Kyle looked up again, quickly, prickling with confusion. "But--"
"You know we can't-- keep trying," said Rita, as gently as she could. "Not now. If Sean can help me conceive, there mustn't be any doubt about the-- paternity. But there are other things we can do. I want to hold you, I want to kiss you-- I want to wake up next to you-- and--"
She watched his face for a moment, and then said, "There's something else-- I want to try. Stand up."
Kyle lurched a little as he obeyed, and gripped the hands she held out to him to steady him.
"Don't be afraid," she said, squeezing his hands, before she let them go. "Take off your clothes."
Kyle pulled off his shirt, folded it neatly, and set it down on the floor before he unbuttoned his jeans, folded them too, put them down, and peeled off his underwear, exposing his soft, vulnerable-looking penis, nestled among his curly pubes. She rose to her feet and stood, facing him.
"Undress me," she said.
He reached out to touch the top button of her dress with one tentative finger, before he undid it, and then slowly unbuttoned every button before he stepped forward and laid his hands on her shoulders. She held her arms back so that he stepped closer, breathing quickly, his body heating up like mad, his growing erection brushing lightly against her panties, as he slid her dress backwards off her arms; he carefully folded it and set it down on top of his own clothes before he put his arms around her and fumbled with the clasp of her bra; she kissed his neck, and he shuddered with pleasure and lost his grip on the bra for a moment before he finally got it undone and stepped back again to slide it off her arms. Then he knelt, reached up to her hips, and slid her panties down to her ankles, bowing down further to press his lips to the inside of her ankle. She smiled, stepped delicately out of the panties, and reached her hands to him; when she had raised him to his feet again, she slipped her arm through his and led him over the line of salt, into the circle.
He stepped closer to her, almost involuntarily, not quite lifting his arms to put them around her, but she slid hers around him and stood on tiptoe to kiss him, and he kissed back hungrily, so that she didn't break away as soon as she had planned. His mouth was salty, as if he'd been tasting his own tears; she kissed him softly, tenderly, and then finally pulled away and knelt.
She didn't look up to see the expression on his face; she was concentrating on his penis, lifting from its little nest of hair right in front of her nose. She lifted a hand to touch it, then, deliberately, pressed her lips to it. He gasped.
She put her tongue out and licked the little slit, the hole, then opened her mouth and took the head inside, fitted her lips around the deep ridge. He was getting hard, and it swelled in her mouth, making her open wider. She sucked softly, then tried to fit more of it into her mouth. It was an awkward shape, thick and unwieldy, obviously not designed to fit in a mouth. She tried not to scrape him with her teeth; that would hurt him, and she didn't want to hurt him.
He staggered, buckling at the knees, and she took her mouth off him quickly and said, "Sit."
He crashed down, catching himself with his hands, and sat there staring up at her, his knees drawn up and parted, his mouth hanging open slightly.
"How did that feel?" she asked him. "Do you mind if I--"
When he didn't respond, she leaned down, between his legs, but he said quickly, stumbling over the words, "I-- I can't-- if you-- I'll orgasm. Please--"
"You may," she said, smiling.
"No, I mean-- I might-- in your mouth."
She laughed a little, startled. "Oh-- don't do that."
"I'm not sure I can-- stop myself," he said rapidly, sounding desperate. "If you-- I don't want to make you angry-- not now-- I don't have to orgasm--"
"I want you to," she said. "I want to--" She hesitated, and then said, "If you-- if you do, while my mouth is on you, it's okay. I won't be angry."
"But--"
"It's just semen," she said, half to him and half to herself, and leaned down to take him in her mouth again; he moaned as she slid her tongue around him and pushed her mouth down further on him, suckling.
His gasp and shudder and the contraction between his legs weren't really adequate warning before thick salty-sweet liquid shot into her mouth and down her throat, making her choke and cough and pull back. Kyle pitched face-forward onto the ground, breathing hard, and Rita put a hand on his back, petting him reassuringly until she could get her breath back to say, "It's-- all right-- I'm all right-- are you? All right?"
Kyle didn't respond for quite a while, and Rita kept stroking his back as his breathing evened out, licking her lips thoughtfully. It wasn't a bad taste.
"Forgive me," he whispered finally, and Rita pulled him back up into her arms, against her breast.
"There's nothing to forgive," she said, and laughed again, nervously. "I said-- you could."
"You--" he choked. "You-- I-- why?"
"I wanted--" Rita hesitated again, wondering whether to try to explain everything-- why she'd cast the circle-- and then decided that wasn't really what he was asking. He was just a man, after all. "I wanted to try it. Was it-- good? Did it feel good?"
Kyle moaned again by way of answer, a shattered, defenseless sound, and Rita smiled.
"I'll do it again, if you like," she said. "In bed, tonight."
"Rita," Kyle whispered.
At the sound of her name on his lips, she kissed him again, deeply, thinking of the first time his lips had touched hers; it had been he who leaned his face towards hers, with a daring that startled her, and pressed his mouth against her mouth for just a second before he pulled back, wide-eyed and white-faced in anticipation of her anger. She hadn't been angry, though; she'd pulled him back in and kissed him again, the way a woman kissed a woman, as he trembled in her arms.
Now, when she broke the kiss, he said, "Let me-- please you. I'll do anything--"
"Later," said Rita, smiling, and brushing his hair back from his sweaty forehead with her fingers. "In bed, tonight. Right now, I have work to do. Would you like to stay in here with me, while I do it, or--"
"Please," he whispered, and she kissed his forehead again.
"All right," she said briskly. "Come out of the circle. Let's get dressed."
Rita's office was a place she liked to retreat to; gently lighted, painted a soft cloudy-morning gray, and completely lined with shelves. Some held the tools of her trade, many of which were decorative enough that she resisted the urge to tidy them away into drawers: she had three wands, three chalices, three daggers, and three stones, all well-tried and fitted to their purposes. She also had a biggish tray of sand on her desk, for sigil work, and a few functional candles. The rest of the shelves was filled with books: books by famous women of letters, and by men, too, from before the Enlightenment. Rita liked to do the research.
In the exact center of the room a circle had been cast with salt and rowan water, big enough for two full-grown people to sit comfortably inside. The gray carpet was discolored under the circle; Rita always cast it in the same place, and always the same size. She'd added a little powdered myrrh to the salt this time, and mixed a few drops of her own menstrual blood with the water; there was no sense taking chances.
She sat at her desk, trying to concentrate on a book on parturitive generation; she was taking conscientious notes, although the author's tone annoyed her, the casual assumption that it was the dearest wish of every woman to abolish the necessity of men altogether. Emily talked the same way; her daughter's father, Tim, was kept as carefully as Emily's wands and daggers, but as far as Rita could tell he was accorded slightly less attention and affection than the daggers.
When a knock came at the door of the office, Rita rose to open it, and was unsurprised to find Kyle on his knees; she reached out both her hands to raise him to his feet. His face was blotched with red, streaked with patches of imperfectly wiped-away tears. Rita resisted the impulse to take him in her arms and kiss him, to comfort him; instead she drew him inside the room and closed the door behind him, then went back to sit down at her desk, motioning him to come and stand before her.
When he saw the circle, he went white under the blotches of red, even as his lips curved and he exhaled in a small, mirthless chuckle.
"Kyle," Rita said, not unkindly, "I want to talk to you about what you did to Sean."
He bowed his head, waiting.
"I realize now that my order should have been clearer," said Rita. "But nevertheless, you could have been a little kinder. He was shaking like a leaf when I arrived."
Kyle stayed still, his head still lowered.
"What was it, some sort of male-dominance thing?" she asked. "Cruelty to establish your place in the barnyard pecking order?"
Kyle didn't answer.
"I was hoping you two could be friends," said Rita.
Kyle looked up at that, swift and-- no doubt about it-- angry, his eyes snapping, his brows drawn together, pulses of knotted muscle-heat coming off him. Rita was startled, but although her heart beat a little faster, she was disciplined enough that none of her power surged in automatic anger to bring him to his knees. Kyle might be bigger and more muscular than she, might loom a bit as he stood over her, but he was no threat. Still, it was easy to understand why so many women did not permit men to stand so close to them, or to stand in their presence at all, and why so many more had a habit of making sure it hurt every time their skin touched that of a man. The primitive instinct-- a man menaced, a woman cowered-- was still coded deep into their biology, even all these years after the Enlightenment.
"Friends?" Kyle said-- no, growled, a voice off the veldt, fur-throated and primitive. "He's replacing me."
"He is not replacing you," said Rita, making sure her voice was calm, low, and reasonable, in contrast to his. "I've brought him here to perform a function that you cannot perform. I am not sending you away, nor am I giving him your place in my affection."
"What about in your bed?" Kyle demanded, his voice too loud and rough, the anger still pounding off him in waves. Rita refused to believe it was necessary to draw up any power in her defense-- not with Kyle-- but she made it a clear warning when she answered coldly, "You will not speak to me in that tone."
Kyle went to his knees at once, pressing his forehead to the ground, the heat of his anger chilled with fear so that it tasted uncannily like Sean's mingled apprehension and arousal earlier.
"I allow you a great deal of freedom in private," she told him as he knelt, waiting for either forgiveness or punishment, all his senses heightened in anticipation of either one; he'd listen well to anything she said now. He'd told her before that he-- and, he thought, all males-- could sense nothing of the power except its effects, had no idea how much of it had been drawn up to strike until they were already screaming in agony. He didn't know, then, that she had nothing in her hands, nothing to hurt him with. "I expect you not to presume on that by taking a tone you know to be inappropriate."
The anger was swallowed in the fear; he was almost cold now, his forehead still pressed to the floor in silent penitence, his heart racing like a rabbit's in obvious anticipation of pain. When Rita leaned down and touched his back, his whole body jerked as if her hand had been electrified-- which he'd probably expected it to be.
"Kneel up," she said, and he obeyed and buried his face in her lap, his hands coming up to grip her calves almost painfully.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "Please."
"I'm sorry, too," Rita admitted, laying a hand on the back of his neck, and a quick quiver went over Kyle's body, some combination of relief and something else. Gratitude, maybe. "I should have been clearer about what I was asking you to do. Getting him clean and naked would have been enough. I wasn't planning on just coming in and throwing a leg over."
He made a puff of air against her leg that might have been a laugh, his hands still clasping her calves. She added, an answering smile in her voice, "That's not how I did it with you, is it?"
His head rocked in her lap, back and forth, a negative.
"I don't want Emily to be right," she told him, and his hands tightened convulsively on her legs, clinging to them as if they were branches on the edge of a cliff that he had mostly fallen off. "About you making trouble for Sean."
He said nothing, and she let her fingers trail gently under his shirt collar, caressing his top vertebrae as she added, "If you need-- do you need-- should I just have him stay out of your way?"
He didn't answer for a while. Then he said, "No, that's not-- I'll be-- nice. I'll help him. I just-- didn't want-- to do that."
"I appreciate your obedience," she told him, "and I'll try not to put you in a position like that again."
"Thank you," he said, a little stiffly, but she let it pass.
After a silence, he asked, his voice rough and gravely again, but distinctly void of menace, "Should I-- get in the circle?"
"Not just yet," she said, and he relaxed a little, but not enough. "And it's not-- I didn't cast it to punish you. It won't hurt."
"Oh," he said on a quick exhale, just that, but his head went heavier in her lap, his shoulders losing their tautness.
"I should have said that right away." Rita slid a hand under his chin, lifted his face, and leaned down to touch her lips to his forehead; he managed a small smile, up at her. She smiled back, and he cleared his throat.
"He," he began. "Sean, he-- you know-- he looks like me."
Rita nodded. "I know. I-- at the center-- he reminded me of you." She smiled again, sadly. "I was hoping you could consider it a compliment. That the one who attracted me was the one who reminded me of you."
"Well, there's that way of looking at it," said Kyle, trying to keep smiling, "and then there's the way where-- my sperm doesn't work, so you go out and find a younger, cuter version of me whose sperm does work."
"He is not cuter than you," said Rita. "And we don't know yet whether his sperm works."
"But if it does--" Kyle's smile melted downward like ice in a flame. "I--"
"Oh, Kyle." Rita touched his shoulder through the soft, much-washed cotton of his shirt, squeezed it gently. "I'm sorry-- I know this is hard on you. It's-- not what I wanted, either. You know I wanted you to be the one to give me a child."
"I could keep trying," said Kyle, suddenly surging with energy, his eyes tearing up again. "I could still--"
"It's been two years," said Rita softly. "It's not going to happen."
Kyle buried his face in her lap again.
"It doesn't matter," said Rita, stroking his back. "Not that much."
"It doesn't matter? There's a new man in your bed--"
"He's not in my bed now," said Rita. "And he won't be, tonight. You will."
"Tonight?" Kyle looked up again, quickly, prickling with confusion. "But--"
"You know we can't-- keep trying," said Rita, as gently as she could. "Not now. If Sean can help me conceive, there mustn't be any doubt about the-- paternity. But there are other things we can do. I want to hold you, I want to kiss you-- I want to wake up next to you-- and--"
She watched his face for a moment, and then said, "There's something else-- I want to try. Stand up."
Kyle lurched a little as he obeyed, and gripped the hands she held out to him to steady him.
"Don't be afraid," she said, squeezing his hands, before she let them go. "Take off your clothes."
Kyle pulled off his shirt, folded it neatly, and set it down on the floor before he unbuttoned his jeans, folded them too, put them down, and peeled off his underwear, exposing his soft, vulnerable-looking penis, nestled among his curly pubes. She rose to her feet and stood, facing him.
"Undress me," she said.
He reached out to touch the top button of her dress with one tentative finger, before he undid it, and then slowly unbuttoned every button before he stepped forward and laid his hands on her shoulders. She held her arms back so that he stepped closer, breathing quickly, his body heating up like mad, his growing erection brushing lightly against her panties, as he slid her dress backwards off her arms; he carefully folded it and set it down on top of his own clothes before he put his arms around her and fumbled with the clasp of her bra; she kissed his neck, and he shuddered with pleasure and lost his grip on the bra for a moment before he finally got it undone and stepped back again to slide it off her arms. Then he knelt, reached up to her hips, and slid her panties down to her ankles, bowing down further to press his lips to the inside of her ankle. She smiled, stepped delicately out of the panties, and reached her hands to him; when she had raised him to his feet again, she slipped her arm through his and led him over the line of salt, into the circle.
He stepped closer to her, almost involuntarily, not quite lifting his arms to put them around her, but she slid hers around him and stood on tiptoe to kiss him, and he kissed back hungrily, so that she didn't break away as soon as she had planned. His mouth was salty, as if he'd been tasting his own tears; she kissed him softly, tenderly, and then finally pulled away and knelt.
She didn't look up to see the expression on his face; she was concentrating on his penis, lifting from its little nest of hair right in front of her nose. She lifted a hand to touch it, then, deliberately, pressed her lips to it. He gasped.
She put her tongue out and licked the little slit, the hole, then opened her mouth and took the head inside, fitted her lips around the deep ridge. He was getting hard, and it swelled in her mouth, making her open wider. She sucked softly, then tried to fit more of it into her mouth. It was an awkward shape, thick and unwieldy, obviously not designed to fit in a mouth. She tried not to scrape him with her teeth; that would hurt him, and she didn't want to hurt him.
He staggered, buckling at the knees, and she took her mouth off him quickly and said, "Sit."
He crashed down, catching himself with his hands, and sat there staring up at her, his knees drawn up and parted, his mouth hanging open slightly.
"How did that feel?" she asked him. "Do you mind if I--"
When he didn't respond, she leaned down, between his legs, but he said quickly, stumbling over the words, "I-- I can't-- if you-- I'll orgasm. Please--"
"You may," she said, smiling.
"No, I mean-- I might-- in your mouth."
She laughed a little, startled. "Oh-- don't do that."
"I'm not sure I can-- stop myself," he said rapidly, sounding desperate. "If you-- I don't want to make you angry-- not now-- I don't have to orgasm--"
"I want you to," she said. "I want to--" She hesitated, and then said, "If you-- if you do, while my mouth is on you, it's okay. I won't be angry."
"But--"
"It's just semen," she said, half to him and half to herself, and leaned down to take him in her mouth again; he moaned as she slid her tongue around him and pushed her mouth down further on him, suckling.
His gasp and shudder and the contraction between his legs weren't really adequate warning before thick salty-sweet liquid shot into her mouth and down her throat, making her choke and cough and pull back. Kyle pitched face-forward onto the ground, breathing hard, and Rita put a hand on his back, petting him reassuringly until she could get her breath back to say, "It's-- all right-- I'm all right-- are you? All right?"
Kyle didn't respond for quite a while, and Rita kept stroking his back as his breathing evened out, licking her lips thoughtfully. It wasn't a bad taste.
"Forgive me," he whispered finally, and Rita pulled him back up into her arms, against her breast.
"There's nothing to forgive," she said, and laughed again, nervously. "I said-- you could."
"You--" he choked. "You-- I-- why?"
"I wanted--" Rita hesitated again, wondering whether to try to explain everything-- why she'd cast the circle-- and then decided that wasn't really what he was asking. He was just a man, after all. "I wanted to try it. Was it-- good? Did it feel good?"
Kyle moaned again by way of answer, a shattered, defenseless sound, and Rita smiled.
"I'll do it again, if you like," she said. "In bed, tonight."
"Rita," Kyle whispered.
At the sound of her name on his lips, she kissed him again, deeply, thinking of the first time his lips had touched hers; it had been he who leaned his face towards hers, with a daring that startled her, and pressed his mouth against her mouth for just a second before he pulled back, wide-eyed and white-faced in anticipation of her anger. She hadn't been angry, though; she'd pulled him back in and kissed him again, the way a woman kissed a woman, as he trembled in her arms.
Now, when she broke the kiss, he said, "Let me-- please you. I'll do anything--"
"Later," said Rita, smiling, and brushing his hair back from his sweaty forehead with her fingers. "In bed, tonight. Right now, I have work to do. Would you like to stay in here with me, while I do it, or--"
"Please," he whispered, and she kissed his forehead again.
"All right," she said briskly. "Come out of the circle. Let's get dressed."
