“For what?”

He stared at me for a moment gauging my reactions and I managed a small smile for him. I wasn’t sure what I felt. The only thing I could sort out was that my heart wanted to jump out of my throat and my lips still tingled where he had kissed me.

This time I was the one who leaned forward ever so slowly watching his eyes as he watched mine until vision became extraneous to the world of feeling that focused on the touch of our lips together, the rasp of his slight stubble against my palm as I reached up to feel the muscles in his jaw.

I’m sure it was only a few seconds but it seemed like an eternity we kissed, a little more firmly than last time but still quite light. Why this slight pressure should make me feel this way I had no idea but that heat returned and this time, stayed and grew. Then his finger came up and traced along my jaw and another thrill joined the first.

I had to pull back for a moment, this was too much to handle right now. I realized my eyes were closed as I drew back a little and wondered at that… I hadn’t even realized I closed them. When I opened my eyes there his were, one gray and one blue, staring straight into my soul. His hand trailed from my jaw to my cheek, wiping a tear I hadn’t realized I’d shed away.

He gazed into my eyes for a moment and then withdrew, sensing somehow that I was at my limit. I was at once grateful and bereft, wanting to reach out and draw him back but unable to as my hand fell away from his jaw and seemed to trail off into the air with the slowness of dreams. We both slid back into our seats with that same languid pace and stared into the fire, feeling the stone grumble in sympathy with the air as bolts of lightning ripped it apart into its constituent particles.

After a few moments we had both drained our beers and I got up to get us another. One wall of the kitchen was transparent, facing out from the sheer cliff face and only inset half a meter or so. As I stood working the wires to open them I was transfixed by the show outside. Brilliant flashes showed the slopes on the other side of the valley, wildly tossing trees in chaotic motion and wisps of cloud floating between.

I’m not sure how long I stood watching but I felt Absalom come to stand beside me with his silent gait and felt… somehow safer, warmer. I handed him his long forgotten beer and took a sip of my own.

“I do not thik I could ever tire of this.”

“The storms are spectacular up here.” He was quiet, reflective.

“Those too.” I looked away from the storm and into the maelstrom of my own emotions for a moment. “But more… watching them with you.”

He didn’t reply but did take my hand and lead me up a staircase I hadn’t noticed beside the extensive pantry. This opened out into decently sized lounge area which ran lengthwise along the outside of the rock face with a high ceiling. A flash of lightning showed that the floor was just as transparent as the roof and walls.

There were lounges, chairs and tables scattered around the area so it looked like a long verandah hanging in space with no floor. The effect would have been stunning in almost any weather but in the fierceness of this storm it was otherworldly. It was time for me to take the lead, to make sure I could control how far things went. I trusted Absalom implicitly but I wasn’t sure if I trusted myself just then.

I skipped ahead a bit and drew him over to a wide chaise lounge that looked built for 2, sitting without letting go of his hand and scooting over to make room for him to sit… but not too far as I wanted to be touching him.

He sensed my intent and lowered himself next to me, sitting so that our legs just touched. As slight as the contact was it felt electric, sang along my nerves and brought more warmth than his physical closeness should have. I leaned into his warmth and raised his arm a little, encouraging him to wrap it around me along the back of the lounge.

Nestling into him and feeling enfolded by his musky scent was so relaxing that I simply sat there with my ear against him, the faint noises of his pulse and breathing almost hidden beneath the increasing violence of the storm outside. I noticed the lightning would repeatedly strike in particular locations and started wondering… was he harvesting any of that energy or just diverting it?

I decided to wonder about that later and just enjoy the show. We sat there like that, his arm around me and me leaning into his comforting bulk until I drifted off to sleep. He must have done the same because when I awoke in desperate need of a bathroom we were still in the same posture but the early morning sun was pouring almost horizontally at us.

I managed to slide out from under his arm with a little bit of effort, it was quite heavy. He remained asleep apparently while I scampered off to the bathroom. As I entered I caught sight of myself in the mirror. Still the same, all angles and planes. Somehow, though, for the first time in a long time I didn’t see a skeleton. In a piece of 20th century speculative fiction an author wrote of a species called the Heechee, who had no body fat at all and I could imagine in some way that I was that type of alien… that being able to see my bones and muscles was normal.

I knew it wasn’t so… but how do you break that cycle? I realized that for the first time in a very long time I had eaten very well, more than 3 days worth of food in 2 meals by my old standards. Maybe, just maybe, I was beginning to see a way clear.

I had eaten my fill with only twinges of guilt and even now that guilt was not what it had been. I did not feel the need to hate myself for being so selfish as to no longer be hungry. Somehow, Absalom had taken that from me, at least for a few moments.

I did not sense that he was a man who slept easily yet he had fallen asleep holding me… in the middle of a tempest. Was it possible that I was able to help him in some way too? Could it be that we were somehow healing each other?

Was it possible that I was one of those women who needed someone else to complete them? I had always thought of that as a weakness and tried to avoid any hint of it but here I was, realizing that this man brought to my life something I had never been given, something that I very much needed.

How do you know if you are thirsty when you have never experienced water?

Once you have had the first sip, how do you not plunge your head into the river and drown trying to absorb a torrent long denied a path to the sea? How do you not fear that the torrent will simply take you along to your doom, filling its need as you fill yours?

More to the point, was any of this something I really wanted to fear? I had ample reason for fear and all sorts of resistance… but every fiber of my being was straining for the water.

I took care of my morning ablutions, including the needlespray shower I had come to love. When I emerged from the shower cubicle I didn’t look any different… but I realized I didn’t have any clothes with me and had no desire to rewear yesterday’s slept in swimsuit. I did the normal thing with a bath sheet but this thing was big enough to make a sari out of so I did just that. Somehow the plush fabric felt just right.

I emerged into the kitchen area to find a very naked man with is back to me, busily tending something or other on the griddle in front of him. For a moment I couldn’t move, being stuck in place, staring. I had seen almost this exact view with him in his swim briefs but there was something about him being just that primal. I could see his manhood dangling from behind and I found it entrancing, hypnotic.

I wondered if I would ever be able to be so comfortable within myself. Literally the only place I had ever been completely naked was the bath and a hospital. For some reason a little part of me whispered that I should join him, that it would be rude to embarrass him and then I blushed to my toes realizing what I was contemplating.

Blushing or not, I found myself undoing my improvised sari and laying the material aside on a chair. Until this point I had thought him unaware of my presence but as the cloth rustled to its rest his rumble followed.

“I hope you don’t mind, I tend not to wear clothes if I don’t have to.”

“And you feel like you do not have to, with me here, watching you?”

“That isn’t how I meant it.”

“I understand. Still, the question is valid? Do you feel like you do not need to cover yourself with me here?”

He cocked his head, still paying attention to the grill, his back to me. “I feel naked with you here, right now, and I usually don’t. Do I want to cover myself? Desperately.”

He paused for a long moment. “The thing is that I am not comfortable with clothes and I wanted to be comfortable and for you to be comfortable… I really thought you’d be in the bathroom a few more minutes.”

I thought for a moment, content to let the hissing sizzle of the griddle fill the silence. I knew this man was going to be my mate, my other half, with the sort of certainty that I knew I would have to pee when I awoke in the mornings. I had to do this now.

“Absalom?” He was still busy at the grill, keeping his back to me.

“Yes Kadijah?” I could hear the longing and fear in his voice and in a way it comforted me to know that he felt the same as I. It took me a moment to find the right words in English, my mind kept jittering back and forth between languages.

“Turn around please?” I could not keep the tiniest quaver of fear out of my voice. A milliard things raced through my mind, chief among them the wish that he would find me attractive and the fear that I would be repulsive to him.

He turned and his eyes did not look at my body. I know because my own eyes were locked onto his and our gaze met. For an eternity we stared into each other’s eyes before I made the first move. I flicked my gaze down to his chest… right that moment standing corded with muscles as he gripped a spatula and tongs with all his strength.

I felt a flush begin in my face and a warmth in my core as I saw him follow suit, his eyes dropping down to take in my small and rather underdeveloped breasts. I felt like crossing my arms in front of them to cover myself but resisted the impulse and instead squared my shoulders and let my hands hang by my sides.

I saw his gaze flick down and I did the same, making sure he saw me do it.

I saw his eyes widen as his own flicked down and then up to meet mine and my training told me that meant arousal… I knew my own eyes had done the same.

“Would you like an omelette?”

His demeanor, aside from the color on his cheeks and on his… oh my… his member which jumped… Was calm, as though it was every day that he showed his rampant manhood to a naked woman in his kitchen and offered to feed her.

I did the whole blushing down to my toes thing and my nipples tried to jump off my chest.

Before I could think to hold myself back I said to him “Perhaps a kiss first, then breakfast?”

To my great disappointment he refused.

“Milady, it would not be proper for me to take advantage of you in such a way at this time…”

He winked as he said it and I took that as a promise of future amour…

The strange thing was that I was in much the same emotional state.

I found myself saying “Good Sir… I shall be content to await our proper betrothal and handfasting.”

We both looked at each other in amazement, completely disregarding our naked states and had the same realization.

He was he first to say it. “Is this our betrothal…?” There was a sense of wonder in his voice.

I had to think about that for a moment before I realized what I wanted, needed to say.

“Do you wish it to be?”

He was silent for so long that I began to worry about what he would say when a small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

“More than anything in my life.”

“Then I accept.”

I registered the evidence of his arousal and though a part of me discounted the possibility that it was due to me… It still made me feel as though we were on some level equal as my nipples crinkled hard.

“You mentioned something about an omelet?”

“I was thinking hash browns too…”

We fell to working together, seemingly dancing around in the kitchen and brushing lightly against each other… teasing but not teasing, simply small coincidental caresses. After the first moments I was comfortable with him in a way that I have never even been comfortable with myself…

I began to understand that this was a new thing for him as well. Could it be that something so simple as being naked together was healing a part of our souls that had been damaged by pain and isolation? It wasn’t about arousal, although that made its presence known rather frequently. It was about being so open and free that it didn’t cause embarrassment or even anything more than a simple sharing of beings, souls.

We sat and ate in the slanting morning light in what I had decided to call the Crystal Verandah. It seemed even more grandiose, intimidating even, to feel as though you were walking on air above jagged rocks hundreds of meters below.

The things he called “Hash browns” were an exquisite combination of shredded potatoes fried to lightly crispy brownness, mixed in with chunks of ham and onion and then covered with a cheese that, though bland, fit perfectly. The omelet was nothing I would have recognized as such in France but it too was a delicious confection.

We ate in near silence, broken only by my little moans of appreciation as I savored the food. I could only manage to eat a little less than half what was on the plate and even that was more than I usually ate in a day. I did not want to be rude so I toyed with the food, pushing it around on the late and trying to make it look as though I was still eating.

“Kadijah?”

I looked up into his eyes and saw infinite tenderness.

“You do not have to pretend. You do not have to feel guilty for not eating everything sat in front of you. You do not have to feel guilty for eating your fill, ever.”

I looked back down at the uneaten food, now a mangled and unappetizing mess. It seemed as though it was time to rip all the old scabs off, let the wounds breathe.

“I have eaten more than my fill. What I just ate is more than I normally eat in a day. Yesterday I ate 3 days worth of food with you and it made me feel very uncomfortable… not just physically.”

Back up to meet his gaze and fall into his bottomless regard. “It is something I have struggled with. When I was a very young child, before Ebola came and changed everything, my father would feed me before he fed my sisters so I always saved most of my food for them. There was still nothing I could do, they all died, all of them… only I survived. I did not want to survive, I wanted Allah to take me to his grace and release me from hell.”

“Eating always reminds me of that, of the blood and pain and fire and terror… I feel guilty if I am not at least a little hungry, as though someone else is going without because of my greed.”

I couldn’t speak for a moment and he waited while I choked back tears.

“The therapists have helped me with that a great deal. I have been getting better and now… well I seem to be getting better a little more quickly. I would like to be able to gain some weight…”

“I think you are beautiful the way you are… You remind me of Aeon Flux from the animated series. Sharp angled, dangerous and sexy.”

I felt my face heat again as he said that. “I always thought of myself more as a Heechee…”

“If so, then you’d have to be StarMinder…” His voice was husky.

I had no reply.

“Kadijah you are beautiful to me as you are. If you gain weight you will be beautiful then too. Even if you were not beautiful in body I would be in love with you still. Your soul has called to me my entire life…”

“It is just hard for me to believe that anyone can think of me in that way. I do not feel beautiful, attractive… any of that. I don’t even know what that means. I didn’t know sex could be anything other than violent rape until I was rescued and it took me many years to believe it.”

“I will never push you to do anything. If you ever do want to…. You know…” he blushed. “I will be learning about it along with you.”