Clever Enough - part 1
MiraMalin
He had glimpsed her, the real person, he thought, if only he was clever enough
to understand her. He would always try to gain that extra perception by
viewing her, in the early morning, as she lay awake, her cool cheek pressed
against the soft linen of the pillow. The pounding of her heart seemed like
the shuddering of the engine relentlessly driving the train that would one day
bear him away from her through the remains of the night, away from youth and
into exile; and away from the quiet impeccable silence of familiar domesticity
to unknowable new dangerous terrain.
He was pensive and a little anxious, when he slipped into the small guest room
in her attic garret in Port Ilmarel. There was a faint stench in the air, a
smell he was familiar with yet couldn't place. The same blonde man whom he had
seen Milady with a few nights before lay next to her now: or at least he looked
like the same man.
He crept through the room, moving through the garments that littered the floor
to the far corner of the room. This was a shadowy corner, untouched by the
dawn coming in from the window. Here he crouched, drawing his knees up under
his chin. He set the sketch pad that he always carried at his feet, and pulled
from his pocket a thick pencil.
From his corner he had a perfect view of the loving couple's prone bodies. The
stranger was facing away from him. He studied the flat back and how the line
of his body was perfectly silhouetted by the glow of Port Ilmarel, through the
metal railings behind her.
There were times when it took a thousand tried to catch a shape, but this time
was different. His hand slid across the paper as if greased, and there was the
man's back. With a flick of his wrist the stranger's buttocks were recreated.
Then Milady's hand absently laid over the man's hip took shape on the page. The
youth looked over to Milady's sleeping face. It hurt a little inside to see
how her eyes looked worn and the wrinkles around them looked so deep. She
wasn't a bad person, in fact she was one of the hardest working and kind women
he knew. She was comfort and solace now that the young Count was just alone.
So very alone.
He outlined her face roughly as he had done many times before.
Then her long thick hair mussed by a night of intimate relations. Then he
moved to her chest, with its determined firmness and gentle rounded contours.
Her waist was covered by the blanket, just a single leg peaked out and was
slipped in between the legs of the man she lay next to.
When he was finished with their bodies, he drew the messy bed and the tangled
clothes around it. He moved his sight to the half open window, drawing it and
the buildings behind them.
Holding the sketch pad up, the young man smiled at his work. He looked up and
saw that the sun was just starting to rise. He knew he had to wake Milady
soon, and knew how awkward it would be to wake her with her 'guest' in bed.
He tiptoed out of the room and began the daily routine of making chocolate.
He purposefully made a lot of noise in hopes it would rouse her. Fortunately
for him it worked and he didn't have to go back in the room or go to the
embarrassment of waking the lovers. After a few minutes of listening to yawns
and the sound of draws opening, she wandered into the room .
"Mornin' young man," she cooed as she stretched and sat down. He came over and
placed the chocolate down in front of her, letting Milady absently kiss him on
the forehead.
"Good morning, Milady." he said, bowing respectfully to complete the morning
ritual. She looked at him as she walked around the room preparing for the day.
He was becoming a handsome man and the duke would soon be after him, unless
something could be done, she thought silently as he smiled, going about his
duties.
Milady's hair was a rich chocolate brown colour. As usual, the fringe was
spread across her face, making the young count want to reach up and brush it
back. A few strands fell across her face, obscuring her eyes for a moment. Her
eyes were crystalline, brown, oval and very large. Her skin was light and her
clear complexion, meant that he could never see imperfection in her. She was
the perfect reflection of his love. He smiled as she caught him watching her
with his winsome grin. She smiled back at him knowing the phase that what
about to escape his lips.
"You know, Milady, as ever, you look almost perfect."
She smiled wider and shook her head, every morning it was the same thing. Then
she remembered the thing that made this morning different, the man asleep in
her bed. She wondered when the best time to bring that very fact up was. She
did not have to worry.
"Milady?" She looked up from her drink.
"Yes my dear young count?" The boy looked away as he mumbled, "When should
we... uh... bring your... um... friend back to the land of the living?"
Milady stopped chewing and pretended to cough, embarrassed. "Oh, yes. I
almost forgot about him." He looked up at the clock. "Don't worry about
him, Count Alan. Your art calls I think - you had better get down to the
gardens."
He nodded and shuffled off to his room to dress.
"Count," Milady called as he left the room, "I love you."
"Count" was her chosen title for him, a generic title that she had used for
him, as long as he could remember. His given title, Mrquis of Miramur, was too
specific and far too dangerous to be used now, under the Duke's oppressive
rule.
It would assert the ownership and power that lay within him, a stregth that
Milady had taken away from him for his safety, a few year's before as the ducal
hordes poured through the passes to take the little province.
He smiled a shy smile and replied,whispering "I love you too, Milady."
Love and Light
Miramalin
c31/7/99
Slip into these folds and be lost with me
comple...@myplace.com
Charlene
MiraMalin
Chapter 2 - Part 1 My Own Cup
He felt that he had all the time in the world that night, relaxing as he lay in
the warm darkness of his room. He drifted off to sleep, trying to recreate an
image of swaying hips in his dimming consciousness. Those swaying hips, he
could not be sure whose, moved, delicately, enticingly, back and forth, almost
in a dance. He saw that this vision wore a skirt just tight enough, and a red
blouse that seemed sewn just for her body. She smiled at him as he pursed his
lips in surprise, her lips just barely stained with dark pink lipstick, but the
girl-woman faded slowly out of existence as he reached across the dream toward
her.
The next day, both Milady and the girl were wearing tight skirts and form
fitting red blouses. He chalked it up to coincidence as he took chocolate with
them, their eyes latching onto his. Each woman smiled with the same pink lips
from the dream. The mug that he drank from shook on the way to the table.
"I would know you anywhere," Milady said as she looked up at him and the girl
murmured assent to this proposal. True, he seemed like any run of the mill
artist, but, they knew that his seeming wholesomeness masked a deeper
sensuality. Indeed, as he looked into their brown eyes, he thought he saw a
spark of something. And the girl, less experienced in the art of the tease
than Milady, broke the spell, looked up towards him and blushed.
Did women really blush anymore? he mused. He had thought that they didn't,
having taken the coolness of milady as his role model. And here was this
newcomer into their household. And she BLUSHED! He smiled, and said he was
going to get another cup of chocolate.
The girl felt it. She felt the heat in her cheeks. Bother, was she actually
blushing? For HIM! He was just hers, she thought. Milady had whispered of
those deep green eyes; that olive, almost tanned skin, those shoulders, but she
just wished she could see them for herself. He came back to the table, with a
steaming cup. "Pleasant way to breakfast," he remarked casually, as he sat
down at the tiny table.
"Am I really blushing?" she started. "It must be because it is so really nice
to meet you again ..... "and added quietly, imperceptibly, mischievously:
"Milord".
It was his turn to blush now as she recovered the advantage. Did this minx not
know the danger that her games could put him in. He gazed at her in fury.
Milady touched his arm and he stopped suddenly, embarrassed at the anger rising
in him. The girl blushed harder, if possible. She almost thought she must
look like a red pepper now.
He chuckled. "It seems I flush and you blush. Yes, you are blushing. And it
is very charming. I think I am yours already!"
"Very funny," the girl responded, sticking her tongue out.
"Perhaps," he added. And suddenly they were comfortable. Laughter rang out
across the quiet attic rooms and the girl got up to clear away the table.
The image of her hair falling across her face as she leaned across the tables
stayed with him throughout the day. It wouldn't make room for anything else,
but he didn't really mind. It did make painting more difficult, however. But,
he managed to make some progress with a canvas eventually.
It was no surprise at all that she featured at the centre of his painting. He
had a vision of the girl in a dark dress that fell in forest green folds to her
calves and left bare her pale shoulders and smooth back. He drew her sitting
before him on the ground, a shady ground that felt soft and moveable beneath
his brush. He painted her on a long stretch of beach, alone for miles. The
burnished sun hung low in the sky, as if its own heavy weight were dragging it
down. Her face was inches from his, and she was leaning in, reaching out to put
her hand on his cheek as she kissed him.
It seemed natural, kissing this girl whose name he didn't even know. He
immersed himself in the concept of her presence completely, letting the feel of
her wash over him like the waves on the beach on which they sat. Yet she pulled
away from him, and no matter how hard he tried to see her, she faded out of his
vision. Her voice wrapped delicate tendrils around him. "Tonight."
He nearly tripped headfirst out the French windows when he saw the dress she
wore to supper that evening. He swore to himself that he wasn't going mad as
he carefully and deliberately carried his glass of wine to the dinning room
table. This is not happening, he told himself. But it was happening, because
she was wearing that green dress. She walked up to him and placed her hand on
his cheek, feeling him flinch, his skin slightly sore from exposure to the
afternoon's sun
"It seems as if you've got a little sunburn there, 'Milord'."
Drops of red wine splattered to the table as he jumped, startled by her voice.
"Feels as if you were down at the beach." She smiled coyly as she cleared dirty
plates and mugs off the table in front of him.
"The beach?" He stammered. "No, I... I didn't go to the waters edge today.
No."
Her smile stretched across her pretty lips even further as she turned away,
leaving him shaking and sweating and staring after her.
Milady knew that the Count loved vivaciousness. She saw him in her mind's eye,
watching the girl rushing over the paving stones outside her house and jumping
on and off the low walls of the fountains in the nearby square. Sometimes the
girl even ended up splashing through the shallows, laughing as the water
sprinkled over her face and hair, shouting as she tumbled down, weighed down by
waterlogged clothing. She liked him, he knew and he hoped she loved him too.
And thinking of the way she always hugged a little too long, in her dreamy way,
he knew this for certain.
At one o'clock in the morning, he finally succumbed to slumber, in his dreams,
he heard the echo of that splashing in the crashing of waves, breaking on the
shore close by, but he couldn't see them. Then he realised it was because it
was dark; pinpoints of sparkling light dotted the night sky, and behind him
rose the full moon. And she stood under it, a purple cloth clinging to her
beautiful body.
Breath caught in his throat. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he was
dreaming, but the texture of her skin, the way the moonlight glinted off the
beads of sea spray that dripped like melting wax down the hills and valleys of
her body. It was all too realistic. Too breathtakingly, wonderfully real.
She stepped closer to him and put her hands gently to his face. "Are you
afraid?" She asked, her words so quiet that the sounds of the crashing sea
almost took them before he heard them. He could only nod, his eyes closed.
He felt himself being gently pulled to the ground, his knees sinking slightly
in the soft grains of sand. She guided him onto his back and straddled him,
placing her palms on his stomach and moving them slowly, deliberately, over his
skin and up to his chest, where she gently caught his nipples with her thumbs.
He'd never felt a more real, concrete sensation, dream or otherwise.
He laced his fingers behind the small of her back and she leaned down, her long
dark hair tickling his stomach enough to make him gasp for a breath. Her lips
placed a row of minute kisses from his navel to the hollow of his neck as she
worked her way up his body, and all the while her hands were massaging him to
life, although by now it wasn't a difficult job.
"I like water, don't you?" She asked, her lips grazing his ear. Before he could
answer, he felt water flowing over his legs and stomach. He looked down and
noticed that they were now in some sort of pool created by the tide.
He leaned back against smooth rock, holding her against him as she took the
soft folds of his earlobe into her mouth, sucking gently. The incoming tide
created a slow rhythm in the shallow pool that became their metronome.
His pulse raced from nervousness and fear. She sensed it, reaching behind her
to take his hands from her waist. Grasping them lightly in hers, she placed his
palms on the softness of her breasts and pressed. The tiny beads of her
nipples as they bit into his palms called his adrenaline out of its hiding
place. She pulled his hands slowly down her body as her eyes stayed locked on
his. When they reached the soft down between her legs, her head rolled back and
a moan wafted out over the beach.
He pushed a finger gingerly into uncharted territory, the water eddying around
it as he moved gently with the tide's rhythm. As she moved her hips against his
hand, he leaned forward, the sensations overriding any hesitation he'd felt
before.
She licked the beads of sea water that dripped from her body. If moonlight has
a taste, he thought, surely this is it. Then, she reached down to remove his
hand and replaced it, letting the water course in and around them as she slid
him into her, her hips meshing with his as they fell into the natural rhythm
that the crashing waves beat out. Dream time took over; seconds stretched into
minutes, minutes into hours. The tide rose with them.
The crashing waves, the rising tide, her snaking hips. He rose to a crescendo,
afraid that it was too soon, but she dug fingernails deep into his shoulders
moments before his own release, and cried out as she threw her head back. Her
lips locked with his for interminable minutes. Then she shifted to stand in
the small pool. His breathing attempted to level itself as she leaned down to
his ear. Her hair tickled his shoulders as she spoke.
"Minxette" she whispered. "Call me Minxette."
Then, she turned away and stepped out of the pool, moonlight flowing down her
legs in delicate streams of sea water. She turned and walked away from him down
the beach, fading out of his vision with every step.
The door to the breakfast room seemed made of iron as he pulled it open the
next day. He'd considered slipping out and leaving Milady and the girl to
breakfast alone. Something had changed his mind though. Milady was still
asleep, but the girl was there, hidden in the kitchen.
He took his chocolate from the dresser and called to her politely thanking her
for preparing it. He turned and headed for his table. Suddenly Milady was
sitting across from him. A beautiful purple dress curved where she curved. She
was smiling at him and urging him to look behind him. He turned reluctantly
and there, framed in the kitchen was a youthful purple dream. His mouth dried
up, but urged on by the smiles of Milady just behind his head he decided to
take his destiny into his hands.
Milady knew straight away that the Count and Minxette hungered for each other
at every possible level. Nothing could change things since he had first watched
her in the gardens and they had held the future together at that breakfast
table. She doubted if anything could have changed things now.
"Minxette," he ventured. Her smile rose higher in the corners of her lips.
"Would you join us?" He swallowed hard.
"I would like nothing more," she murmured in reply. "And nothing less than my
own cup, Count Alan."
Love and Light
M
c1/8/99
comple...@myplace.com
Charlene