Household Gods by Harry Turtledove & Judith Tarr

Author:Harry Turtledove & Judith Tarr [Turtledove, Harry & Tarr, Judith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466828407
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2012-07-31T21:00:00+00:00

It wasn’t as awkward as she’d feared it would be. The body remembered, and the mind wasn’t inexperienced, either. She let him lead, and followed as she could. It was much like living in this world. After a while, the dry tightness went out of it. She relaxed and flowed with it, took the release when it came, and was profoundly glad to have been given the gift.

Afterwards, they lay side by side on the narrow bed, body to body as they couldn’t help but be: one of them would fall out otherwise. Nicole looked up at the ceiling. She could make it out by now, by the starlight filtering in through the unshuttered window.

Titus Calidius Severus rested a hand on her hip. It was an easy touch, undemanding, and strikingly intimate. “Happy?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered, on the whole sincerely. Given the way the Romans took male domination as an article of faith, she’d wondered—too little too late—if he would climb on, get his jollies, and climb off again, wham-bam-thank-you-ma’ am. If he had, she would never have let him see the inside of her bedroom again.

But he hadn’t. He’d taken the time and effort to make sure she enjoyed herself. He hadn’t made it seem like effort, either; he’d plainly been enjoying himself as he pleased her. Entertainment, she thought. If your options for pleasure were as limited as they were here, wasn’t it sensible to string out the ones you did have, to make them last as long as you could?

“Yes,” she said again, more firmly this time. “I’m happy.” In a way, taking Calidius Severus to bed had been like making love for the first time. He knew better than she did how her body—no, Umma’s body—responded; what it wanted, what made its synapses sing. That wouldn’t last, not with her living inside it, changing it, but this time at least it had been true.

Umma’s body was different from her own, sensitive in a place or two—the web of flesh between thumb and forefinger, the fold at the crook of the elbow—where she hadn’t been; less so in the earlobes, which was a pity. The shaving of the pubic hair, the naked skin where she’d been used to something quite different, changed the way she felt. She’d had to swallow giggles once, which she could never have explained without getting into trouble. Razor burn down there?

As for how it felt, scratchy bits aside—she couldn’t exactly tell. Better? Worse? She frowned. More precise, perhaps.

She moved a fraction closer to him, a conscious decision and one she didn’t intend to regret. “And you?” she asked. “Are you happy?”

She’d intended it for a rhetorical question. She had no doubt he’d liked what was going on while it was going on. And he answered, “Oh, yes,” but his voice held a trace of uncertainty that surprised her. After a moment, he went on, “Some of the things you did … you’ve never done before.”

If he hadn’t been lying there next to her, she would have kicked herself for stupidity.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.